Lex Fridman s Donaldem Trumpem s automatickými titulky pro ty z vás, kterým se je nedaří aktivovat.

The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this The Lex Freedman podcast.

They get any smaller and smaller, they get smaller, right? I mean, people do respect you more when you have a big camera for some reason. No, it's cool. And about 20 guys that you pay a fortune to, right?

Alright, okay. You said that you love winning and you have won a lot in life—in real estate, in business, in TV, in politics. So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question: what drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing? Maybe equally? Maybe both?

I don't like losing and I do like winning. I've never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force. You've been close with a lot of the greats in sport. You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali; you have people like Michael Jordan, who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys?

Well, they do have something different, you know? The great champions have something very different, like the sports champions. And you know, you have champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports. You see it over a weekend or you see it during a game and you see that certain people stand out, and they keep standing out. But it's there for you. It doesn't take a lifetime to find out that somebody was a winner or a loser, and so the sports thing is very interesting.

But you know, I play golf with different people and there’s a different mindset among champions. There's really a very different mindset. There's a different thought process. You know, talent-wise sometimes you can't tell the difference in talent, but at the end of a weekend they seem to win, and it's very interesting.

Like, as an example, Tiger or Jack Nicklaus; he was a phenomenal winner, and he does have a different way about him. And Tiger has a different way about him and Michael Jordan. And there's never one. You would think that there’d be one way. Arnold Palmer was the nicest guy you’d ever meet, and then you have some champions that aren't really nice; they're just focused on doing their job.

So you have, you know, there's not one type of person, but the one thing I would say that everybody seems to have in common is they're very driven. They're driven like beyond. They don’t seem to give up easily. They don’t give up—they don’t give up. But they do seem to be, you know, they have a passion that’s maybe more than people that don’t do as well.

You've said that politics is a dirty game, yeah, in the past. It is a dirty game, that's certainly true. So if it is a game, how do you win at that game?

Well, you win at that game by getting the word out and by using sense. You have to have a feeling where it's going. You also have to have a feeling of what's right. You can't necessarily just go what's popular; you have to do what's good for a country if you're talking about countries. But you have to get the word out and you have to just continuously—like, for instance, you have a great show. You have a great podcast; it's very well watched. And I'm sitting here, and I do this, a lot of people see it.

And I do other things—things that a lot of people see that—and I go traditional also. You know, you have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant. Could be less significant, I don't know. But it's changing a lot—the whole plane of platforms is changing a lot. It's changed a lot in the last two or three years.

But from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they're watching, and you have to get on. I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate; they're getting very big numbers. I did spaces with Elon and they got numbers like nobody's ever heard before. So, you know, you wouldn't do that on, like, radio. You wouldn't do that—those numbers, no matter how good a show, you wouldn't do those numbers on radio. You wouldn't do them on television.

You've been successful in business, you've been successful in politics. What do you think is a difference between gaining success between the two, the two different disparate worlds?

Yeah, and they're different—very different. I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful and they'd like to go over to politics. And then you realize they can't speak—they choke. You know, it's hard to make a speech in front of that, let's say you're talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences.

And you know, for many people, it's virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. You know, it's not an easy thing to do and it's an ability. But I have many people that are very, very successful in business would love to do what I did, and yet they can't pull the trigger. And in many cases, I don’t think it would work almost for everybody. It's not going to work; it's a very tough thing to do, it's a big transition.

And now if you talked about people in business—in politics going into business—likewise, that wouldn’t generally work out so well either. It's different talents; it's different skills. I have somebody who wants to go into politics so bad, but he's got a little problem. He’s got stage fright. Now he's a total killer, but if he gets up onto a stage in front of people, he doesn’t do well to put it mildly, actually. I mean, he does badly.

So you have to be able to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience. Look, if you're a politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. There are a lot of people who can't do that. I've seen it—they can't even think about doing it. And there are many people in business right now—I could name them, but I don’t want to embarrass anybody—they’ve been talking about running for president for 15 years, and they're very big in business, very well-known actually.

But it takes guts to run, like for president, I can tell you—it takes guts to run. It’s also a very dangerous profession, if you want to know the truth. But, uh, dangerous in a different sense too. But it takes a lot of courage to run for president; it’s not easy.

But you have, and you know the same people as I do—there are a lot of people that would like to run for president that are very, very successful in business, but they don’t have the guts to do it and they have to give up a lot. One of the great things about people from the business world is they’re often great deal makers, and you're a great dealmaker.

And you've talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelensky would accept. What do you think that deal looks like?

I think the deal—and I wouldn't talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal—if I win as president-elect, I’ll have a deal made, guaranteed. That's a war that shouldn't have happened; it's terrible.

Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, and she's probably worse than him. That's a—that's something that should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it’s a much tougher deal to make than it would have been before it started. Millions of people—I think the number's going to be a lot higher when you see this all at some point iron out. I think the numbers are going to be—the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think when you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place in Ukraine.

I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher. They lie about the numbers; they try and keep them low. They knock down a building that's two blocks long; these are big buildings, and they say one person was mildly injured. No, no—a lot of people were killed, and those—there are people in those buildings and they have no chance once they start coming down.

There's no chance. So, um, that's a war that absolutely has to get done. And then you have Israel, and then you have a lot of other places that are talking war. The world is a rough place right now, and a lot of it's because of the fact that America has no leadership. And I believe that she'll be probably worse than Biden.

I watched the interview the other night—I mean it was just a softball interview. So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more?

I don't know; I can't believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should have never been in there—they kept him in a basement—they cheated. But they used COVID to cheat, and they cheated without COVID too.

But, uh, you had somebody in there and now we have a woman that is not—I mean she couldn't do an interview. This was a really soft interview; this is an interview where they’re given a multiple choice questions—multiple guess, I call it multiple guest—and I don’t think she did well. I think she did very poorly.

How do you think you'll do in the debate coming up? It's in a few days.

So I've done a lot of debating—only as a politician. I never debated. My first debate was the Rosie O’Donnell debate, right? The famous Rosie O’Donnell debate, the answer. But I’ve done well with debates. I mean, I became president; then the second time I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win; you can't not win. And I got millions more votes on that and lost by a whisker.

But look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems, and look what happened with inflation because inflation's just eating up our country—eating it up. So it's too bad.

But, um, there are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. We have to get—I'll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done; that could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East.

So maybe let’s talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelensky. Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions they already captured?

I don't know. I can tell you that all of this would have never happened and it would have been very easy because you don’t have—like that question wouldn't be asked. You know, that's a tougher question. One that starts happening, see, he has taken over a lot of territory. Now I guess there are insurgents now too, right?

So you know, it's a little bit interesting that that's happening and that it can happen and it's interesting that Putin has allowed that to happen. Look, that's one that should have never started. We have to get it stopped. Ukraine is being demolished; they're destroying a great culture that's lost—completely destroyed.

What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations, leverage of let's say friendship, the carrot, or the stick—friendship, or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power?

So it depends on who the person is. It's—everyone's different. Negotiation is interesting because it depends on who the person is, and then you have to guess or know through certain knowledge which is, you know, more important—the carrot or the stick?

And with some people, it's the stick, and with some people, it's the carrot. I think the stick probably is generally more successful, and that—you know—we're talking about war. But, um, the kind of destruction that we're witnessing now, nobody's ever seen. I mean, it’s a terrible thing, and we're witnessing it all over—witnessing it in, um, in all parts of the world.

And a lot of things are going to get started. Look what's going on with China; look at Japan. They're starting to rearm now. They're starting to rearm because China is getting, you know, taking over certain islands. And there’s a lot of danger in the war right now in the world. There’s a lot of—and there's a great possibility of World War III, and we better get this thing done fast.

Because five months with people like her and him, he's checked out. He just goes to the beach and thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, which he doesn’t; he sort of checked out. Hey look, you know, you can’t blame him—that was a coup. They took it over. They took over the presidential deal. The whole presidential thing was taken over in a coup.

He had 14 million votes; she had no votes— not one. And nobody thought it was going to be her; nobody wanted it to be her. She was a joke until six weeks ago when they said, we're going to have to politically—they felt they had to pick her, and if they didn’t pick her, they thought there’d be a problem.

I don’t know if that’s right or not; I actually don't think it's right. But you know, they thought it was right. And now, immediately the press comes to their aid. If we can go back to China on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century?

Well, there are ways. Now here’s the problem: if I tell you how—and I’d love to do it—but if I give you a plan, like I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia, and I have a certain idea—maybe not a plan, but an idea for China—because we do, you know, we’re in a lot of trouble. They’ll be in a lot of trouble too, but we’re in a lot of trouble.

But I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them. They’ll be very unsuccessful, you know, part of it’s surprise, right? Right? But they won’t be able to help us much.

So you have a plan of what to say to Putin?

Yeah, I know. Take office, no. I had a very good relationship with him, and I had a good relationship with Zelensky too, but I had a very good relationship with Putin.

Tough topic but important, you said you lost by a whisker. I'm an independent; I have a lot of friends who are independent, many of whom like your policies, uh, like the fact that you're a dealmaker, like the fact that you can end wars. But they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and, um, statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff—fake elector scheme. What can you say to those independent voters to help them decide who to vote for?

Right, I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud, and many people felt it was that, and they wanted answers. And when you can't challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it. Otherwise, it's going to get worse, not better.

And there are lots of ways to solve this problem—go to paper ballots, do it the easy way. I mean, the paper ballots, and you have voter ID, and you have same-day voting, and you have proof of citizenship, which is very important, because we have people voting that are not citizens. They just came in and they're loading up the payrolls; they're loading up everything. They're putting students in schools; they don't speak a word of English, and they're taking the seats of people that are citizens of our country.

So, look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have coming into our country right now millions and millions of people at levels that nobody's ever seen. I don't believe any country's ever seen it; and they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen; not to let it happen. We don't—we don't do anything.

And we have a person who is the border who now said she wasn't really the border, but she was. She was the border; but she was in charge of the border. And we have her, and she's saying very strongly, "Oh, I did such a good job." She was horrible—horrible—the harm she's done. But we have people coming in from other countries all over the world—not just South America—and they're coming in from prisons and jails, they're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums and they're street criminals right off the street. They take them, and they're being given to our country—drug dealers, human traffickers.

We're destroying our country. This is a sin what's been allowed to take place over the last four years. We're destroying our country, and we'll see how that all works out, but it's not even believable.

And now you see—you saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas—including buildings—they're taking over buildings. They have their big rifles, but they're taking over buildings. We're not going to let this happen; we're not going to let them destroy our country.

And you know, in those countries crime is way down. They're taking them out of their prisons, which is good because good for them. I do the same thing, by the way, if I ran one of those countries, any country in the world, I would make sure that America has every one of our prisoners, every one of our criminals would be here.

I can't believe they're going so slowly, but some aren’t, and but they all are doing it, and we can't let that happen. They're emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America; we can't let that happen.

So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election—whether it's media bias or big tech—but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing that bothers people.

Well, I don't focus on the past; I focus on the future. I mean, I talk about how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is, how bad things like—that’s important. Afghanistan was, in my opinion, the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to our country. And because of that, I think Putin went in when he said how stupid we were. Putin went in, but it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country— I really believe that.

But you know, we left—we left 13 dead soldiers. Think of it—13 dead soldiers. Many soldiers horrifically hurt with arms and legs and everything else gone. We left hostages behind; we left Americans behind; we left military equipment the likes of which nobody's ever left behind before—billions and billions of dollars of equipment.

They're now selling the equipment; they're one of the largest arm dealers in the world. And, um, very sad, very sad. And, you know, we were there for a long time. I was going to get out; we were getting ready to get out, then we got interrupted by the election. But we would have been out with dignity and strength.

We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there because they knew it was going to be tough. I dealt with Abdul; Abdul was the leader, and we got along fine. He understood. But you know, they were shooting; they were killing a lot of our people before I came down, and when I got there, I said—I spoke to him, I said, "Can't do it; don’t do it anymore."

We went 18 months before this happened; this horrible day happened. We went 18 months and nobody was shot at or killed.

What do you think that was—the carrot or the stick—in that case?

In Afghanistan, the stick—definitely the stick. The threat of military force—that was the stick. Yeah, it doesn't have to be, but that was the stick.

Well, let me just linger on the election a little, a little bit more. For this selection, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose?

Well, I hope it's not a close one. I mean, you know, I don't know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed our country—the inflation, the bad economy. But, but to me, in a way, the worst is what they've allowed to happen at our border, where they've allowed millions of people to come in here from places that you don’t want to know about.

And I can't believe that that's going to be a close election. You know, we’re leading in the polls, but—and it looks close—but I think in the end it’s not going to be a close election.

What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about?

Well, you’ve got to get the criminals out of here fast, right? You know, the people from mental institutions, you got to get them back into their mental institution. No country can afford this; you know, it's just too much money.

You look at what’s happening in New York and Chicago and LA and lots of places, and you take a look at what’s happening—there's no country can afford this. We can't afford it, and we've got to get the bad ones out immediately, and the rest have to be worked on.

You know, it's happened before. Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate president—a moderate type person—but he hated when he saw people pouring into the country, and they were nothing like now. You know, I probably got elected in 2016 because of the border, and I told people what was happening and they understood it, and I won the election.

And I won the election, I think, because of the border. Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016. I had it fixed too. I had it—the last week of my—the famous chart that I put up was exactly that. You know the chart, when I look to the right, I said, "There's the chart being up." That was not a pleasant experience, but the chart that I put up said—and that was done by border patrol—that was the lowest number that we’ve ever had come into our country in recorded history.

And we have to get it back to that again. We will.

Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you've publicly said that you don't have any direct connection to it?

Nothing. I know nothing about it and they know that too. Democrats know that, and I purposely haven’t read it because I want to say to you I don’t—I have no idea what it's all about. It's easier than saying I read it and you know all of the things—no, I purposely haven’t read it. And I've heard about it.

I've heard about things that are in there that I don’t like, and there are some things in there that everybody would like, but there are things that I don’t like at all, and I think it’s unfortunate that they put it out. But it doesn't mean anything because it has nothing to do with me. Project 2025 has absolutely nothing to do with me.

You posted recently about marijuana and that you're okay with it being legalized, but it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there?

Well, I just put out a paper, and first of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends, and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing—the medical marijuana. And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana; it's got to be a certain age—got to be a certain age to buy it.

It's got to be done in a very concerted, lawful way, and the way they're doing it in Florida I think is going to be actually good. It's going to be very good, but it's got to be done in a good way. It’s got to be done in a clean way. You go into some of these places, like in New York, it’s all—it smells all marijuana. You can’t—the way you've got to have a system with is control. And I think the way they've done it in Florida is very good.

Do you know anything about psychedelics?

So, I'm not a drug guy, but I recently did Ayahuasca, yeah, um, and there are a lot of people that speak to sort of the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics. I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms, perhaps.

Now, I know you don’t—you stay away from all of that stuff. Um, I know also veterans use it for dealing with people with PTSD and all that kind of stuff, so it's great and it's interesting that you're thinking about being more accepting of some of these drugs which don't just have a recreational purpose but a medical purpose, a treatment purpose.

So we put out a statement today. We're going to put out another one probably next week, be more specific—although I think it's pretty specific—and we'll see how that all goes. That's a referendum coming up in some states, but it’s coming up, and we'll see how it does.

I will say it’s been very hard to beat it. You take a look at the numbers, it’s been very hard to—so I think it'll generally pass, but you want to do it in the safe way.

Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him. So when he said nice things about RFK Jr, I think you've said some not so nice things about Joe, and I think that was a bit unfair. And as a friend of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world.

So what’s the story behind this tension?

Well, I don’t think there was any tension, and I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I mean, I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there, and I think he's good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I mean, I guess I'd do it, but I haven't been asked and I'm not asking them, you know? I'm not asking anybody.

It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation.

No, it's not; it's not really a negotiation. And he’s sort of a liberal guy, I guess, you know, from what I understand, but he likes Kennedy. This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us. He's going to be great; he’s doing—Bob’s going to be great. But I like that he likes Kennedy, I do too. You know, he’s a different kind of a guy, but he’s got some great things going, and, uh, I think he’s going to be beyond politics.

I think he could be quite influential in taking care of some situations that you probably would agree should be taken care of. The Joe Rogan post, as an example. I would love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the posts on Truth.

Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative, or are you just speaking your mind? And are there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted?

Yeah, I do, I mean, but not that often, honestly. You know, I do a lot of reposting. The ones you get in trouble with are the reposts because you find down deep they're into some group that you're not supposed to be reposting. You don’t even know if those groups are good, bad, or indifferent, but the reposts are the ones that really get you in trouble.

When you do your own words, it's sort of easier, but the reposts go very quickly, and if you're going to check every single little symbol—and, uh, I don’t know, it's worked out pretty well for me. I tell you, it’s uh, truth is very powerful—truth. And it's my platform, and it's been very powerful, very, very powerful. It goes everywhere; I call it my typewriter. You know, that's actually my typewriter.

What are you doing usually when you're composing a truth?

Like, are you chilling back on a couch, couches, beds? Okay— a lot of different things. I mean, like late at night, and just I’d like to do some late at night. You know, I'm not a huge sleeper, and but whenever I do them, you know past like 3:00 AM, they criticize you the next day, "Trump was up truthing."

Okay, "Trump was truthing at 3:00 in the morning," and there should be no problem with that. And then when you think about time zones, how do they know that you're like, you know, in a time zone, like an Eastern zone?

But every time I do it after like 2 or 3:00, it’s like, "Why is he doing that?" But it's gotten— I mean, you know the truth has become a very successful platform and I like doing it, and it goes everywhere. As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere.

The country seems more divided than ever, yeah. What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?

Well, you can get rid of these two people—they're terrible, they're terrible. You don't want to have them running this country; they're not equipped to run it. Joe—just Joe, it's a disaster. Okay?

And Kamala, I think she'll end up being worse than him. We'll see. I think a lot’s—now, you know, the convention's over with, and I see I'm leading in just about all the polls now. They had their little honeymoon period, as they call it, and we'll see how that all goes.

For my personal opinion, I think you are your best when you're talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.

Yeah, I think you have to criticize though. I think—I think they're nasty. They came up with a story that I look down and I call soldiers that died in World War I “suckers and losers.” Okay, now, number one, who would say that? Number two, who would say that about military people? Nobody! It was a made-up story; it was just a made-up story, and they like to repeat it over again.

They know it was made up. I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said; they don’t want to hear about that. Like she lied on McDonald's; she said that she worked at McDonald's. It's not a big lie, but it's a big lie.

It's so, you know, I mean they just went and they checked, and unless she can show something, they don’t talk about it. The press aren’t going to follow up with it, but I'll keep hammering it.

But she never worked at McDonald's; it was just a, you know, sort of a cool thing to say, "Hey, I worked at McDonald's." You know? But one of the worst was, two days ago, I went to Arlington at the request of people that lost their children. They'll always be children to those people, you understand that? That's not a politically incorrect thing to say.

The mother comes up, "I lost my child," but you know the child is a soldier and lost the child because of Biden and because of Kamala—as just as though they had the gun in their hands because it was so badly handled.

It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big air base; it shouldn’t have been done at a small little airport right in the middle of town where people stormed it. It was a true disaster, and they asked me if I’d come and celebrate with them.

Three years—they died three years ago. And I said, I’m going to try. I got to know them because I brought them here, actually. One night they almost all came here, and they said, "I wonder if Trump will actually come and see us." I heard they were here; I came, said so.

And we stayed for like four hours listening to music up on a deck, right upstairs—beautiful—and they were great people. So they called me over the last couple of weeks and they said, "We're going to have a reunion, our three-year reunion. Would you be able to come?" And it was very hard for me to do it logistically, but I said, "I'll get it done," and I got there, and we had a beautiful time.

I didn’t run away; I didn’t, you know, I didn’t just walk in, shake hands, and walk out like people do, and I wasn’t looking at my watch like Joe Biden does. And it was amazing. So I did it for them; I didn’t do it for me.

I don't need the publicity; I mean I get more publicity probably than anybody. You would know that better than me. But I think maybe more than anybody—maybe more than anybody that's ever lived. I don't know, but I don't think anyone could have more. Every time you turn on television, there's like nine different stories all on different topics in the world of—as an example, you interview a lot of people, good people, successful people.

Let’s see how you do with this interview versus them, okay? I mean, I can tell you right now, you're going to get the highest numbers you ever had by sometimes a factor of ten.

But, um, when a Gold Star family asks me to come and spend time with them, and then they said, "Sir, we did a ceremony," and then we went down to the graves, which was quite a distance away. They said, "Sirah, would you come to the grave?"

And then they said, said, "When we were there, it’s very sad, actually, because these people shouldn't have died. They shouldn't have died. They died because of Biden and because of Kamala." They died because it's just like if they pulled the trigger, okay?

Now, I don’t know if that’s controversial to say, but I don’t think it is. Afghanistan was the most incompetently run operation I think I’ve ever seen—military or otherwise—they’re incompetent.

But the families asked me if I’d go; I did go. Then the family said, "Could we have a picture at the tombstone of my son?" And we did—son or daughter; there was a daughter too. And I took numerous pictures with the families.

I don’t know if anybody else was in the pictures, but they were mostly families, I guess—that was it. And then I left. I spent a lot of time with them, then I left. And I get home that night, and I get a call that the Biden administration, with Kamala, is accusing me of using Arlington for publicity.

I was in—I was just the opposite, just the opposite. And actually, did you see that just came out? The families actually put out a very strong statement defending me. They said, "We asked him to be there."

Well, politicians and the media can play those games, and you're right; your name gets a lot of views. You're probably legit the most famous person in the world. But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat. Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves, or of that persuasion—progressives, liberals, and so on?

Well, look, I respect the fact that everybody's in there. And you know, to a certain extent, life is what you do while you're waiting to die, so you might as well do a good job.

I think in terms of what's happening now, I think, you know, we have a chance to save the country. This country is going down, and I called it with Venezuela; I called it with a lot of different countries, and this country is going down.

If we don't win this election, the election coming up on November 5th is the most important election this country has ever had because if we don’t win it, I don’t know that there’ll be another election, and it’s going to be a communist country or close.

There's a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.

Well, she’s a Marxist; her father’s a Marxist, and she’s advocating—it's a little unusual. You know, she's advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of, um, democratic socialism, let’s say.

But there are a lot of people that kind of know the way government works, and they say, "Well, none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It's just being used during the campaign to—you know, uh, groceries are too expensive; we need them cheaper, so let's talk about price controls," and that's never going to come to reality.

It could come to reality. Look, I mean, she came out with price control; it’s been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it's never worked once. It leads to communism; it leads to socialism; it leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation. It’s just—it’s a bad idea.

Whenever we use terms like communism for her—and I don’t know if you know this—but some people call you a fascist.

Yeah, they do, so I figure it's alright to call them a communist.

Yeah, they call me a lot worse than I call them. They do indeed, uh, it's just sometimes it's interesting, though. They'll call me something that's terrible, and then I'll hit them back, and they'll say, "Isn't it terrible what Trump said?"

I said, "Well, wait a minute; they just called me." So I believe you have to fight fire with fire. I believe they’re very evil people. These are evil people. You know, we have an enemy from the outside and we have an enemy from within, and in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics.

And I think you have to fight back.

Whenever there's a lot of fighting fire with fire, it's too easy to forget that there's a middle of America that is moderate and kind of sees the good in both sides and just likes one side more than the other in terms of policies.

Like I said, there's a lot of people that like your policies that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars, and they don’t see the impending destruction of America. You know, we had no wars when I was president; that's a big thing. Not since 78 years has that happened, but we had no wars when I was president.

We defeated ISIS, but that was a war that was started that we weren’t anywhere near defeating. But think of it; I had no wars. And Viktor Orban, the Prime Minister of Hungary, said, "The world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump."

Now that’s what he said—so I’m not using that term, but I think they respected me. But he said China was afraid, Russia was afraid; everybody was afraid. And I don’t care what word they use; probably that's even a better word if you want to know the truth, but let's use the word respect—they had respect for me; they had respect for the country.

I mean, I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline. Nobody else could have done that. I ended it; it was done. Then Biden comes in, and he gave it—he approved it. So we're defending Germany and these other countries for peanuts compared to what it's worth, and they're paying the person we’re defending them against billions and billions of dollars for energy.

I said, "How does that work?" And we had it out with them, and it worked out good, and they paid bills; they paid hundreds of billions of dollars or you wouldn't even have NATO right now. You wouldn't have NATO if it wasn't for me as the leader of the United States.

You were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous but the most powerful, and if you become leader again, you will have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?

No, I don't think so. Look, I've been there for four years. I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president's wife and put her in prison. She's so lucky I didn't do anything. She's so lucky. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me to—they wanted to see something, but I had—I could have done something very bad.

I thought it looked so bad. Think of it; you have the president of the United States, and you also had the Secretary of State, right? But you're going to put the president's wife in prison.

And yet when I got out, they’re—you know, they have all these hoaxes—they're all hoaxes—but they have all these dishonest hoaxes, just like they did in the past with Russia, Russia, Russia; that was a hoax.

The 51 different, you know, agencies or agents, that was a hoax; the whole thing was a hoax. The whole thing—there were so many hoaxes and scams, and—but I didn’t want to put her in jail. and I didn’t.

And I explained it to people—you know, they say “lock her up, lock her up.” It doesn’t—we won. I said we don’t want to put her in jail; we want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together.

You don’t bring the country together by putting her in jail. But then when I got out, you know, they went to work on me. It's amazing, and they suffer from massive Trump Derangement Syndrome—TDS—and I don’t know if it's curable from their standpoint.

A lot of people are very interested in footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos and there’s been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots, so a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available?

Oh yeah, sure. I'll do that; I would do that; I’d love to do that. I have to do that, but they also are pushing me on Kennedy, and I did release a lot, but I had people come to me and beg me not to do it. But I'll be doing that very early on.

Yeah, no, but I would do that.

There’s a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation?

I don’t think I—I mean, I'm not involved; I never went to his island, um, fortunately. But a lot of people did. Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?

He was a good salesman; he was, you know, was a hunky, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he'd throw around, like islands—but a lot of big people went to that island, but fortunately I was not one of them.

It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.

Yeah, it's very interesting, isn’t it? Probably will be, by the way. Probably.

So if you're able to—you’ll be, yeah, certainly take a look at it. Now, Kennedy’s interesting because it's so many years ago; you know they do that for danger too because, you know, it endangers certain people, etc, etc.

So Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing, but yeah, I'd be inclined to do the Epstein; I’d have no problem with it.

That's great to hear. What gives you strength when you're getting attacked? You're one of the most attacked people in the world.

I think you can’t care that much. I know people that care so much about everything like what people are saying; you can’t care too much because you end up— you know, one of the tragic things about life is that it ends.

How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?

I have a friend who’s very, very successful, and he’s in his 80s—mid-80s. And he asked me that exact same question. I said I turned it around; I said, well, what about you? He said, "I think about it every minute of every day." And then a week later he called me to tell me something, and he starts off the conversation by going, "Tick-tock, tick-tock."

Yeah, this is a dark—this is a dark person, you know, in a sense, but, uh, it is what it is. I mean, you know, if you're religious, you have, I think, a better feeling toward it; you know you’re supposed to go to heaven—ideally, not hell—but you're supposed to go to heaven if you're good.

I think our country is missing a lot of religion; I think it really was a much better place with religion. It was some—it was almost a guide, you know, to a certain extent; it was a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion there's no real—there are no guardrails.

I'd love to see us get back to religion—more religion in this country.

Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there, and thank you for talking today.

Look, I love the country. I want to see the country be great, and we have a real chance of doing it, but it’s our last chance. And I appreciate it very much.

Thank you.