# Donald Trump Press Conference Q&A in New Jersey | August 15, 2024

Auto-transcribed by https://aliceapp.ai on Thursday, 15 Aug 2024.
Synced media and text playback available on this page: https://aliceapp.ai/recordings/B9LuVxSK6T_8sP7jvcw0XEqpb4a5hNOd

* Words       :  7,280
* Duration    :  00:38:13
* Recorded on :  2024-08-15 20:45:00 UTC
* Uploaded on :  2024-08-15 22:32:27 UTC
* At          :  Unknown location
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## Speakers:
* Donald Trump - 91.91%
* Reporter - 2.87%
* Reporter - 2.64%
* Reporter - 2.58%
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Donald Trump [00:00:00]
If you'd like, we can ask a few. 

Reporter [00:00:01]
Mister President, it's been reported that you recently spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu, maybe as recently as yesterday. Can you clarify when the last time was you talked to him? 

Donald Trump [00:00:09]
Hm. 

Reporter [00:00:09]
And what advice, if any, you're giving him about a ceasefire, about ending this war? 

Donald Trump [00:00:13]
The last time I saw him was at mar a Lago, and he came with his wife and, um, a large group of people, and we had a very good relationship with him and with Israel. Again, this would never have happened. October 7 would have never happened. Would have never, ever happened. And he, uh, asked for the meeting. We had the meeting. It was about 2 hours, two and a half hours long. And, uh, I expect I might be talking to him, but I haven't since then. The. 

Reporter [00:00:40]
Did you encourage him not to take a ceasefire deal? Did you give him any advice about ending the war? 

Donald Trump [00:00:44]
He knows what he's doing. I did encourage him to get this over with. You want to get it over with? It has to get over with fast. But, uh, have victory. Get your victory and get it over with. It has to stop. The killing has to stop. Yes. Please be honest. Thank you. President. 

Reporter [00:00:59]
President Trump, you've spoken very passionately about how God saved your life. And I'm wondering, have you put much thought into why God saved your life? As in, for what purpose has he been shielding and protecting you? 

Donald Trump [00:01:14]
So I don't know if you heard the question. You've spoken about God saving your life that I've spoken passionately about it, and something happened, because that was a miracle. I never looked that way. The audience was massive and it was in front of me. I never have that particular graph. That was a graph on, as you all know now, that it's very, uh, I think everyone knows it very well, but it showed the great numbers on illegal immigration. It was the lowest point we've ever had, and it was one that I use less than 20% of the time. It's always at the end of the speech, not at the beginning of the speech, and it's always on the left side, not the right side. And yet, for some reason I called it, it's not on a teleprompter. I do things largely without a teleprompter, frankly, because it's hard to hold an audience if you're going to go for an hour and a half or 2 hours reading a script. And I just talked about it and I moved to my right, turned sharply to my right, ping. And if I didn't do that, I'm not here with you. So, yeah, God has something to do with it. It's a miracle. And God had something to do with it. And maybe it's. We, uh, want to save the world. This world is going down. This world is going down. So it could be. But I believe that. I believe that my sons are very good shooters. They're like, uh, scratch golfers better, relatively speaking, with shooters, great shooters. And Eric and Don both told me from 130 yards, I said, well, that's pretty far away, isn't it? They said, no, that's like a 1ft putt with, you know, weapons like the one being used. Plus he was a good shooter. This guy was a good shooter. He went to the range and shot a lot and he was supposed to be a pretty good shooter. They said a bad shooter would hit the target almost 100% of the time. So something, uh, happened. And I have to say the secret, uh, service sniper did an amazing job. He had 5 seconds to find the target and hit the target. And he hit the target within think of this, 5 seconds. And he was much further away because he was over here and this other person was over there. So you have to give credit. And I have to also say about secret service, when I was hit, I knew it, because when I touched, there was blood pouring all over my hand. I said, I guess I know what that is. And I went, I was going down for protection and they were screaming, get down, get down. There was bullets and uh, those secret service guys were. And person Kate, they were on top of me and I. A matter of, I think 3 seconds. It was time to. And bullets were coming out. I would hear the bullet. I didn't realize you could hear it, but now I know very well, uh, those bullets were going right over my head. They were there and very brave. There was nobody that said I'm not going to be going there. They just uh, they were there very quickly and they were very brave. They were. And there were mistakes made. Obviously, he shouldn't have been up there. The roof should have been taken, uh, care of. And there were mistakes made. There's no question about it. But, uh, there was a lot of bravery also. We have to remember that. Okay, thank you very much, mister president. Brian. Thank you. 

Reporter [00:04:19]
I'm gonna talk about credit card debt for just a second. 

Donald Trump [00:04:22]
You've got all these record. 

Reporter [00:04:23]
It's a record 48% up and many families using going into debt just to pay for groceries. What's your message to Americans right now that you can make America affordable again? 

Donald Trump [00:04:35]
Well, I would say my message to them. So he said, credit card debt is at the all time high. It's never been like this. What's your message to, uh, America? How we're going to solve that and what will they do? You know what I think they should do? They should on November 5 or sooner, if it's early voting, which largely it is, which is ridiculous. We should have one day voting paper ballots, we should have voter id and we should have proof of citizenship because people are voting and people are going on now without citizenship. We should do it, and maybe we'll be able to get that done, too. It's one of the things I want to do. But my message to them would be very simple, vote for Trump and we're going to fix the problem. We're going to get it fixed. We'll get it fixed. 

Reporter [00:05:18]
Follow up question. Good. Kamala's been promising on day one I'll do this. And for basically four years, she's promised this day one, what will you do on day one to turn this country around. 

Donald Trump [00:05:30]
So she is saying when she gets in, she's in now, and especially with Biden because, I mean, he's not in the best of shape. But you know what? She's in there now. She can do anything she wants. And she's still saying, if you elect me, I'll do this, I'll do. Why didn't she do it? Here's my one question. That's the easiest question because she complains about everything. Everything. Why didn't she do it? That's all I ask. On, um, day one, we're going to drill, baby, drill. And, uh, we're going to close the border and we're going to let people come in, but they're going to come in legally. They're going to come into our country legally. But on day one, we're going to do many things. You know, I can do a lot of things at one time, but the question's often is, what's the first thing you're going to do? I would say we have a tie. We're going to close the border. We're not going to let, we're going to stop the millions of people coming in, and we're going to take all of the criminals that have come in and we know every one of them. I know, and the local police know better than anybody else they're going to work with us. I've spoken to a lot of the sheriffs, every police, virtually every law enforcement group in America has endorsed Trump. Um, I don't think anybody's endorsed Kamala. Not one. I don't think anybody's endorsed him. And you know that better than anybody in Florida, in all over California, they've endorsed me. We have the relationship I have with law enforcement, and these are great people and people that we have to really cherish and respect and let them do their job and protect them. And you'll always have a bad apple in everything. You have bad apples as reporters, that I can tell you many, I'd say about, uh, 80%, but you're always going to have bad apples, but you're going to have very, very few, when you look at it, very, very few. You have to let them do their job. You have to protect them. But basically, we're going to drill, baby, drill. We're going to get the energy prices down almost immediately, and we're going to close the border, and we're going to get the crooked ones out, the bad ones out, and we're going to let a lot of people come in because we need more people, especially with AI coming and all of the different things. And the farmers need, everybody needs, but we're going to make sure that they're not murderers, killers, uh, drug dealers, and the kind of people that we have largely coming in right now. 

Reporter [00:07:39]
Mister President, Mister President, many of your allies who want you to win in November say your current strategy isn't working, that you need to stop with the personal attacks on Kamala Harris and deliver a more disciplined message. Do you agree? And also, you added more people to your campaign today. Is that a sign of a shifting strategy? 

Donald Trump [00:07:58]
No, I think it's a sign of we want to close it out. We have great people. Susie is fantastic, as you know, and Chris is fantastic. They're leading it. Uh, Corey Lewandowski is coming in. Uh, he'll be, you know, personal, uh, envoy or he'll be at some, at some level, they're going to be, you know, they're, they're doing a great job. Look, we've taken, with all of the abuse we've taken from the fake news media, all of this horrific abuse we take. And all I want to do is make the country good. All I want to do is have strong borders and good education. We want to have choice for education. So important, so many different things. You would think it would be the other way. We rebuilt the military. We did so many great things. But that's the way it's been for Republicans and I guess more so for me than anybody in history. And that's okay because we're leading in the polls, for the most part, we're leading in the polls. We were leading Biden by a lot. We're leading now. But I think when she's exposed, I think we're going to beat her by a lot more than we would have beaten Biden by, because he had a little group of people that have been voting for him for a long time. She doesn't have that. People don't know who she is. Uh, as far as the personal attacks, because of what she's done to the country, I'm very angry at her that she'd weaponize the justice system against me and other people. Very angry at her. Uh, I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she'll be a terrible president. And I think it's very important that we win and whether the personal attacks are good, bad. I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a soundbite. And she called JD and I weird. He's not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio state, graduated in two years at the top of his class and all of these different things. And we have this guy that's running a, uh, failed, really, a very failed state who's had a terrible career. I mean, you have him saying they're weird. No, he's a weird guy, and she's weird in her policy. Who wouldn't want to have strong borders? Who doesn't want to have lower taxes? You know, all my life, I've watched as politicians campaigned, and I've always been on, you know, for the most part, on the other side, on the side that these people are on. And they always talked about, we're going to reduce taxes. This is the only campaign I've ever heard where they're saying, we're going to increase your taxes. And then people say they're going to vote for them. I don't know. So I don't think so. I don't think people know who she is yet. When people. Because really, people didn't know. You can ask the man on the street. I saw it on one of the shows today. They asked the man in the street, what's the last name of Kamala? Nobody knew. It's Harris. Nobody knew the last name. I don't even use it because nobody knows who I'm talking about. People don't know who she is. She's a radical. Left socialist. But beyond that, I mean, she's way beyond socialism, who's going to destroy our country. And when they find out, I think you're going to see something. But right now, even not knowing her, and with, uh, all of the, like, the COVID of Time magazine, they didn't put a picture. They got a great artist to do with the. What was that all about? You know? What was that all about? The whole thing is crazy. I just want to win for the country. Uh, some people say, oh, why don't you be nice? But they're not nice to me. They want to put me in prison. Just so you understand. They tell me I should be nice. They want to put me in prison. It's never happened before in the history of our country. I did nothing wrong. I have crooked judges, I have crooked prosecutors, and they're all Democrats, all Democrat areas other than in Florida, where you had a brilliant judge who ruled in my favor. I won the case. The documents case won it in its entirety. And Jack Smith deranged. Jack Smith suffered a defeat. But in New York City, everything's clubhouse. I know it very well. I grew up there. I know it very well. And we have a very crooked system, and it's one of the reasons that New York is dying. Nobody wants to come in. No companies want to come in because they're. The courtroom system is so corrupt, both at a federal level and at a state level and a city level. And they put you into an area where you have 3% republican vote. It's all a rig deal, just like Foni, f a n I, Fawni, uh, with her boyfriend. And I think that's been discredited, too. They've been discredited. But think of it. They don't want me to be a little bit nasty. They want to put me in prison. Me. They want to put me. It's never happened before in the history of our country. It's happened in third world countries, but it's never happened here. And they're in danger because you create a precedent for doing that. And once that happens, uh, that's a really bad thing. You know, in the years before, and I've said this a few times, not too much, but, uh, with Hillary, she was subpoenaed by congress to give everything she's got. And she burned it. She acid washed it. Bleach bit, they call it. She totally scrubbed it. And then they broke everything. With hammers, with fire. Uh, they burned it. And then she said, I don't have anything. Well, it turned out that she had a lot to give. And everybody said, lock her, uh, up. Lock her up. And I used to go easy, just easy, easy. Then we wondez. And I said, wouldnt it be terrible? And, you know, I lose. Some people are upset when I did this, but you have to look at it maybe differently now. I say, wouldnt it be terrible to put the wife of the president, former president of the United States, into a prison? Now think of that. Hillary Clinton, she was secretary of state. She was the wife of a president of the United States who used to be a friend of mine before I ran for, you know, for politics. He was a friend of mine. Used to play my golf course all the time. Have a great golf course right next to their home in Westchester. He used to be there all the time. It was his favorite course. But you know what? I could have done that very easily. She was so guilty. And I said to my people, wouldn't it be terrible to put I don't know. Wouldn't it be terrible to take. And we won the election. Wouldn't it be terrible to take a former secretary of state who was the wife of the president of the United States and put her into a prison? But that's what they want to do with me. And I did nothing wrong. It's all crooked politics and really crooked judges. You know, I have a gag order. Do you know I can't even talk about it right now? Uh, do you know that I have a judge who has a gag order? He doesn't want me to talk. And the reason he doesn't want me to talk is because what I say is so devastating and so horrible for him. But think of it. I have a gag order. There's never been a politician in history, I mean, probably for any politician, for a city council office, I'm the leading candidate to be president. I won virtually unanimously. I beat everybody the quickest. It was the quickest primary in history. There's never been one that was done so early. I had people that were very talented people, and I beat them by 45, 50, 60, 70, 80 points. There was never a close race. Nobody was even close. Good talent. They weren't close. And I'm running against the Democrats. So it's a two party system, whether we like it or not. Republican, Democrats. Uh, I'm the Republican, and I'm leading, but let's say I'm tied, but I'm leading. I believe I'm leading by a lot more than people think, and I believe we'll be leading by a lot more. And I have a judge who put a gag order in me. So when you ask me a question, or when you ask me a question, I can't give you an answer, because if I give the answer, they want to put you in jail. He said, we'll put him in jail if he talks beyond the gang order. And this is in a state where the. Unfortunately, the laws have been very bad, and they haven't been upheld by the appellate divisions generally. Although I have one case where we judge, um, uh, a certain judge, I won't use names, but the attorney general case where we won five appeals on the same case, the most ever trial, it was a ridiculous, horrible decision, where you have a very, very biased voting population and a judge whose hatred of Donald Trump was beyond belief. And we won the case, but he ruled a ridiculous amount of money. Civil case ruled ridiculous. Now, this is a. What they're doing is, um, interference with an election. They want to interfere. Look at the one thing they want to sentence right before the election takes place. Let's sentence him. Because who's going to vote for him if we sentence. Let's sentence him right before. No, this is interference with a presidential election at a state level. And it's a state that always goes democrat. It's interference. And as you know, the Supreme Court ruled recently on immunity, and I'm immune from all of this stuff that they charged me with. But isn't it a terrible thing? And yet, Hillary Clinton, when it came time to make a decision, I said, I don't want to put a. The wife of the president of the United States in prison. I want the country to come together and to be unified. And here it is a few years later, and these people say, let's put him. Why? Because I challenge an election. Because I want to challenge an election or some other reason. Uh, it's a really disgraceful thing. It's a shame, and it's a very dangerous thing for both parties, because once they start that ball rolling. Once they started rolling, that's a, uh. That's a nasty ball. Yes, please, please. 

Reporter [00:18:08]
Quick questions here. Nikki Haley told our brett bear that republicans need to stop whining about Kamala Harris. Focus on courting those independents of suburban women, the moderates out there. What do you think of that strategy? And would you consider having Nikki Haley on the campaign trail with you? 

Donald Trump [00:18:24]
Sure. I. I think that we've done very well. I think that we're hitting a nerve. I think this is a different kind of a race. All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that's going to destroy our country. Uh, you know, I fought Nikki very hard. I beat her in her own state by legendary numbers. Uh, and I get along with her fine. I appreciate that she endorsed me and all of that. Uh, no, I think that, uh, I think relatively to what they're doing and how radical they are and how, in many ways, how sick they are. I think I'm doing a very calm campaign. I mean, we're here. There's no shouting. Now, you'll say he ranted and raved and not you, but some of you will say he ranted and raved. I didn't rant and rave. I'm a very calm person. Believe it or not. If I wasn't, I, uh, probably wouldn't be around anymore, you know, probably wouldn't be around. But, no, I think, uh, I appreciate her advice. I, uh, have to do it my way. You know, I ran against her and I did it my way. People said I should maybe do it a different way, but I won in South Carolina by numbers that nobody's ever seen before. You know, it wasn't even close. And I think she's a good woman. I'd love to have her support. Yeah, she give me. She gave me support, but I'd love to have her go around and campaign. 

Reporter [00:19:36]
Quick follow up on the economy. You mentioned this in your remarks. Vice President Kamala Harris wants to put a ban on price gouging. Do you think that the federal government should be responsible for determining food prices? 

Donald Trump [00:19:48]
Well, not only responsible, they probably can't do it legally, and that will drive up prices. She, uh, wants no fracking now. She may go and change that. I think she's already changed it, but she wants to have no fracking. I want no fracking. But for her whole life, she said that no fracking. Then about. I don't know when, a couple of months ago, all of a sudden, when she started looking at polls, remember this? She all of a sudden says, fracking. I don't think any, uh, of. I won Pennsylvania, and I did much better the second time. I won it in 2016, did much better the second time. I know Pennsylvania very well. I don't think there's any way in hell that somebody that's intelligent living in Pennsylvania is going to vote for somebody that basically will eventually end fracking, end fossil fuel. So whether it's Oklahoma or Texas or Pennsylvania, a big energy state, people don't realize that 350,000 people work in that industry. But maybe more importantly, they don't want to pay $9 a gallon for gasoline. So, uh, no, I think that, uh, she's made statements. I don't know how you get out of it. I don't know how you can say for ten years there'll be no fracking. I mean, we have tapes of her laughing at the stupidity of the question. Of course I'm not going to allow fracking. Then all of a sudden, a few months ago, she comes out in favor of, oh, yes, I'd allow fracking. Uh, I don't think anybody in Pennsylvania will be. I think she's going to do very badly in Pennsylvania. Uh, you have to frack. We need the energy and Pennsylvania needs the jobs, but Pennsylvania needs the energy also. That energy is going to support our new system for AI and all of the other modern things that need massive amounts of electricity and energy. Massive. So it's a very good question, actually. But, uh, we have to. We have to unify as a country. We have to come together, and I think we can. You know, I get that question oftentimes. And I used to think maybe there's no way, because, you know, some people want a border, some people don't want a border. Most people do want a border, but there's such a difference in people. But just before COVID coming out, so three years, we won a long period of time, and we had an economy going the likes of which no country had ever seen before. I think you would agree there's never been anything like it. And people were coming together. People were calling me very, I would call them radical left, but I would say very liberal people, very progressive people. They came to me. We would like to get together. In fact, we worked out criminal justice reform. I was the only one that could have done that. I won criminal justice reform, and I got that for black leaders that came to see me. Criminal justice reform. Obama couldn't do it. Biden wouldn't even try. But nobody could do it. I got that done, and I got conservative votes. To get it done, they needed at least five very conservative votes. It was very hard to do. I got that done. Our country was coming together. And, you know, I can tell you the story of criminal justice reform. Um, when you do that, that means that's a big step. But I was seeing people that were not seeable, that I wouldn't want to see them and they wouldn't want to see me. And all of a sudden, we were having. I was having lunch with people that if I told you who they were, you wouldn't even believe it. Our country was coming together. Success was bringing our country together, and it could be done. Success will bring our country together again. It can be done. It was an amazing phenomenon. And I used to say, I don't know, it's awfully tough to get it together. I've never seen anything like it. Like, for instance, me getting criminal justice reform done. And I did that with Democrats and some very conservative Republicans who said, it's very unfair where people are staying in jail for 35, 40 years, and today they wouldn't even be charged with a crime for what they did. And we got it done, and I was very proud of it. But our country was coming together. The black population had the best numbers they've ever had on jobs, on income, on everything. The hispanic population had the best numbers. Asian population, men, women, young people with diplomas from, uh, the best schools. Harvard, MIT, the Wharton School of Finance. They were all coming together, and everybody was happy. Every. And young people without a high school diploma, the best MIT students and people without a diploma were all working. They were getting. They were making more money than they've ever made. Every single. There wasn't one group that wasn't doing better than it was the year before, two years before, or ten years before. It was the best our country had ever do. And we were leapfrogging China. China didn't have a chance. I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Hundreds of billions of dollars. No president ever took in ten cents. And what happened was an amazing thing. We had a great, successful country, and our country was unifying. It was the first time anyone's seen it, but our country was unifying. 

Reporter [00:25:00]
Um, m I know you're saying that you're leading in some polling, but there is other polling out there. A Fox News poll out just yesterday has you up by just one point. How do you break one or two points? 

Donald Trump [00:25:11]
Yeah. And Fox News has always been my worst poll, believe it or not. And even Fox News had me up by one or two points yesterday. Came out, I think, two points. One point. Uh, I also think, you know, I tend to poll low, in some cases, really low. You know, in 2016, I was polling low because people didn't want to say who they're voting for. I don't know if that's supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is. Uh, and we did very well in 2016, and we did much better in 2020. Much better. But bad things happened through Covid. Bad, very bad things happened. So we're not happy about that. Yes, I've seen you around a little bit, so go ahead, please. Mister President, thank you for giving. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. 

Reporter [00:25:53]
So you talked about how Covid from. 

Reporter [00:25:55]
China was offense too far. 

Reporter [00:25:57]
What's your plan for holding China accountable. 

Donald Trump [00:25:59]
If you get reelected? Well, I want to get along with China. Uh, I had a great relationship with President Xi. We made a fantastic trade deal. $50 billion of farm products and manufacturing products they had to buy here, and they were adhering to it. They don't adhere to it anymore because they don't respect Harris or Biden. But as you know, we signed a trade deal with China, and it was actually better than even the USMCA. It was a great trade deal. China had to buy 50 billion, not 15 billion, not anything else. $50 billion, and it was a great trade deal. I, uh, think that that's one of the underrated things. I think we'll have a great relationship with China. I hope we're going to have a great relationship, but it's got to be a fair relationship. China was taking advantage of the country for years, but so was every other country. In all fairness to China, every single country was taking advantage of the United States. I can't think of one country where we were doing better than them. Japan was taken. Abe was my dear friend, one of the great men, great leader. But all of these countries were. I used to say, who signs these agreements? Every. Actually, it's amazing that we economically survived because we had such bad negotiators, or people were getting paid off. I actually looked at some deals. I'd say, nobody could be so stupid to sign a deal that's so one sided. Whoever made this deal has been paid off. And then I'd look into it a little bit. Yeah. And all of a sudden, he's working as an agent for that country. Three years later, five years later, now we change a lot of those deals. South Korea. We changed the South Korea deal from a horrible deal to a good deal. I changed the Japan deal, but I made a great deal with China. They had to buy $50 billion worth. They never bought anything like that. In fact, it was a misunderstanding. When I said the people were negotiating, what number are we talking about? They said, 15. I thought they said 50. So when they came back to me, they said, sir, we're all set to get it going. I said, good. What's the number? 15. I said, you told me 50. Why are we going down to 15? They said, no, we said, 15. I said, you told me 50. Actually, I heard them wrong. They said 15, but I heard them wrong. So I said, go back and get 50. And we got 50 instead of 15. And it was great. You know, I, uh, really think that we can have a great relationship with China. We can have a great relationship with, uh, a lot of countries that right now, one of the things with China, I know as much as any country, but all of the countries, the one thing is they have to respect you if they don't respect you. And, you know, uh, I was very tough in countries like Japan, and yet Abi, who was a great man, assassinated. Horribly assassinated. He was a great man. He was a great leader. But I believe, and I was very tough on him. I was very tough on Russia. Russia. I was probably the toughest. I ended Nord Stream two. I ended the biggest deal they've ever done. The biggest pipeline in the world, the biggest. All of Europe was going to be supplied by Russia. And I ended the deal. It was dead. And then Biden comes in and approves it, and they say, oh, I was nice to Russia. No, Putin actually said to me one time, you know, if you're supposed to be, like, friendly with me, I would hate like hell for you to be angry at me, because you are brutal. Think of it. Not only that, the sanctions, but forget the sanctions. I ended Nord Stream M two. The pipeline was dead. And then Biden comes in and he got $3.5 million, in all fairness, from the mayor of Moscow's wife. Remember that? During the debate, we brought it up, and Chris Wallace, who's not the father, he is not. There is no resemblance between him and Mike Wallace that I can tell you. He said, you shouldn't be talking about that. I said, why not? They got three and a half the family, $3.5 million from the mayor of Moscow's wife. Why wouldn't I talk about that? He wouldn't let me talk. I said, what do I. I'm negotiating against two people, not one. I turned out to be right, because a year later, that was a big scandal. Why did he get $3.5 million? But Biden approved immediately the pipeline in Russia, Nord Stream, and he killed the Keystone XL pipeline. 48,000 jobs. He killed it. He did the exact opposite of what he should have done. Yes, please. I know you had your hand up. Nice to see you. 

Reporter [00:30:33]
Thank you. Mister president, thanks for taking my question. Uh, you referenced your conversation with Elon Musk earlier this week. I want to ask you about that. You praise how he treats workers, saying they go on strike, and you say, that's okay. You're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone. Are you really comfortable with companies threatening to fire workers who go on strike? 

Donald Trump [00:30:50]
Well, no. I want companies to get workers that are going to love them and work for a wage that lets the company make a profit so they can go and expand. Uh, in that case, they moved, as you know, they moved the company from California, Elon, uh, from California to Texas, because they were able to get things that California wouldn't give. And I did ask him one question. Uh, you're moving a very big company out of California that's been there for years into Texas. Did the governor ever call you and say, like, let's work it out because we don't want to lose you? And he said, he never called, Governor Newscomb. He never called. And you would have thought, if I were governor of California and if Elon or anybody else, they have oil companies leaving, I would be calling. But no. Uh, Elon wants to run an efficient company, and if he has to get, he got rid of a lot of people on X or former Twitter. A lot of people don, and it still works. It still works. So, uh, you got to run the company, uh, productively, and there are going to be a lot of jobs around. I want it so that a person doesn't have get lucky and find a job. I want a person that could look for ten jobs and all ten companies want them. And you negotiate a great, much more than you'd get by doing what you just suggested. So, you know, he's a strong man. He's a strong guy. He's a brilliant guy, and he wants to get the best he can, and he wants to get the best workers. Uh, he pays a lot of money to a lot of his workers. Uh, it's, to a certain extent, supply and demand, but ultimately, that's what's going to lead to a great country. 

Reporter [00:32:24]
So just to follow up on that really quickly, because some people took at that as you saying that you would be comfortable with companies threatening to fire workers. Sean O'Brien, who spoke at the republican national Convention, saying that firing workers who are wanting to organize or striking is economic terrorism. So just to be clear, that's something that you. 

Donald Trump [00:32:43]
They weren't organizing against Elon. He let them go because, uh, he was having a lot of problems in California. They were making it impossible for him in California. What they were doing with the taxes and everything were making it impossible for him. And Sean O'Brien's a great guy from the Teamsters, you're talking. Yeah. Sean is great. Uh, I think Sean would understand it better than anybody. Don't forget the unions are really threatened by what's coming in, by these millions and millions of people coming in. Sean O'Brien understands that, uh, the black population is absolutely threatened, the hispanic population is absolutely threatened because these people are coming in, they're going to take their jobs. They're going to make it very, very hard. What's happened in our country is very dangerous, very bad thing. 

Reporter [00:33:28]
The one more on the economy, sir, because, um, Governor Tim Walls is out on the campaign trail today, and he's been saying that he believes that you want things to get worse so that you can campaign on it, that you're rooting for failure. 

Reporter [00:33:41]
What's your response? 

Donald Trump [00:33:42]
I wish I didn't have to do this. If our country were run by Democrats and it was run beautifully, where we were really being productive and everything else, I would have never done this. I wouldn't have done it if I thought I couldn't have won. I think I can win. I think I can win easily. Once they're exposed for what they are, which is, you know, radical left lunatics, and that's what they are, they're going to ruin, she's going to ruin our country. Going to ruin our country. And I just hope the people of our country, and I believe they are because I see it already happening, but I hope they are able to think for themselves, because if they think for themselves, if they look at the destruction that's going to be caused by Kamala and this person from out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere. A state that, I love that state, but a state that's doing so poorly where he's the one that signed in tampons in boys bathrooms. He signed a bill that boys bathrooms, all boys bathrooms in Minnesota will have tampons. And what's going on? What's wrong with us? What's wrong with us as a country? So, no, I would, uh, if we had somebody doing a phenomenal job, I would be extremely happy. What I want to do is I want to see even the last few months, I hope the country does really well, even though it would make it probably a little bit harder to win. I hope the country does really well. It's country first. I want our country to do great. If they were great leaders, I would be the first to say they're doing a fantastic job. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. 

Reporter [00:35:25]
Do you regret debating president biden so early on in the race. 

Donald Trump [00:35:29]
Do I regret debating biden? So it was his request. He said, we should get the debates on early. And I was willing. Don't forget, I got cnn. I got jake tappa and dana. Bashdhehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe they're not trump people. Uh, they wanted to have a debate where their mics are turned off when the other person's answering the question. They gave me every single thing that I couldn't approve, and I said, yeah, I'll do it. So they got the debate on their terms. They got the network that they dreamt of. But that was really his decision. I had to decide whether or not I felt I wanted to debate them, and I think they didn't want to debate, but I agreed to every single thing. It was a debate where they said, we'll give him something that it'll be impossible for him to accept. And I accepted all the terms other than when they had us sitting down at a desk and I said, I think that makes us look bad. I don't want to sit down. Let's stand up. And they agreed to that. Other than that, uh, we gave them CNN. We gave them Dana, and we gave them Jake. And by the way, I have to say, jake Tapper and Dana bash were undead, believably straight and honest, and I give him a lot of credit for that. A, uh, lot of people were saying you couldn't have a fair debate. I think we have that with ABC. I have some people at ABC that don't like me too much. Uh, I find it to be about the worst. George Slobodopoulos. I have a lot of people at ABC that I find it to be actually the most unfair of all the networks, and they want to do it on ABC. Whatever. Uh, you know, I don't mind the question that you're asking, though, about whether or not the debate should have happened would have been a better question to ask of Joe Biden, because had he not done the debate, he would still be running for president, and people would be hiding him, just like they're hiding her right now. You know, they're hiding her no different than him, because I believe she's grossly incompetent, and I don't think that when people hear what she has to say, they're going to buy it. Thank you all very much. 

Reporter [00:37:40]
Wheaties or cheerios? Which one are you, which one are you picking? 

Donald Trump [00:37:49]
She's 100 years old. She wants my autograph. I think we should do it. 

Reporter [00:37:53]
Go do it. 

Reporter [00:37:57]
The president. Follow him if you can. I think it's going to be a mess. President Trump.