Transcript - Interview: Greta Van Susteren Interviews Donald Trump at The White House - September 16, 2020 | Factba.se

Greta Van Susteren

00:00:00 - 00:00:02 (3 sec)

Mr. President, nice to see you sir.

Donald Trump

00:00:02 - 00:00:04 (2 sec)

Thank you very much, Greta.

Greta Van Susteren

00:00:04 - 00:00:14 (10 sec)

Mr. President, last February it was reported that you said that you had downplayed the coronavirus. And then recently you said that you have up-played it. So downplayed her up-played?

Donald Trump

00:00:14 - 00:00:34 (21 sec)

It's totally a mischaracterization, and it just keeps going on and on and on and nothing. I don't want people to panic. So I'm not going to stand out there and say, "Oh, everyone's going to die. Everyone's going to die." The leader of a country, it's so ridiculous. Winston Churchill. When he stood in buildings, he was saying how wonderful everything was and be brave and fight and be smart.

Donald Trump

00:00:34 - 00:00:57 (22 sec)

And don't panic. In the meantime, bombs were being dropped down on London. So what I said was exactly perfect. And the news goes around, this Woodward, who frankly, I mean, I watched him, he's sort of exhausted. I look at him, I think he's been very discredited over this. The people that read it, the people that understand it, say I said exactly the right thing.

Donald Trump

00:00:57 - 00:01:20 (23 sec)

I also said last night, as I said previously, let my actions speak. Because I closed down the border into China, which was heavily infected. Everybody told me don't do it. It was way too early. Thousands of people would have died had I not done that. Thousands, tens of thousands of people. Then I closed down the border to Europe way early, and everyone said, "Oh, he closed down the border." Then they all admitted I was right.

Donald Trump

00:01:20 - 00:01:32 (12 sec)

Even Sleepy Joe. He said, "He was right. He was right in doing it." But he called me xenophobic when I did it. They were months behind me. So I was way early. My actions speak louder than my words, but my words were exactly perfect.

Greta Van Susteren

00:01:32 - 00:01:36 (4 sec)

You've mentioned China. Has China been straight with us about the virus?

Donald Trump

00:01:36 - 00:01:54 (18 sec)

No, because when I spoke to President Xi and he told me he had it under control. That was very early in all fairness. Maybe he didn't even know, but I think he probably did, but they told me they had it under control. They were constantly saying that. We wanted to send over our doctors, you know that? And they didn't want that.

Donald Trump

00:01:54 - 00:02:04 (10 sec)

And by the time people started seeing all of the dead bodies in China, I said, "That's not under control." And that's when I banned China from coming into this country.

Greta Van Susteren

00:02:04 - 00:02:09 (5 sec)

Should there be a consequence to China? Has China contacted you and said, "Look, we're sorry that we-

Donald Trump

00:02:09 - 00:02:25 (16 sec)

I'm not doing much with China right now. I'm not happy with China. What they did is incredible to the world. Not only to us, 188 countries all over the world. We made a great trade deal with China. It's already proven to be a great trade deal. The farmers are doing better than they've ever done, the manufacturers.

Donald Trump

00:02:25 - 00:02:32 (6 sec)

But I consider that very small, relative to what happened to us, and what happened to Europe and what happened to the world.

Greta Van Susteren

00:02:32 - 00:02:34 (2 sec)

What's the role of the WHO in this?

Donald Trump

00:02:34 - 00:02:56 (22 sec)

Well, we were paying them $500 million a year. China was paying them $39 million a year and they were China-centric. They were just in the bag for China. And I terminated our role. Let's see if I change that, but I terminated it. We saved $500 million. We're paying them many times more than China, and they weren't treating us properly.

Donald Trump

00:02:56 - 00:03:08 (12 sec)

Now, this is long before I came in. This is for years, but why would we pay them so much? China was paying $39 million. We were paying $500 million, and China had more sway than the U.S. And we didn't let that happen.

Greta Van Susteren

00:03:08 - 00:03:27 (19 sec)

I assume that the Democratic base is going to vote for Vice President Biden, Republican base is going to vote for you. That leaves the independency undecided, and of course the wild card is to get out to vote, to get your base out to vote. 67% of the American people in a recent ABC poll say they don’t, they're skeptical of how you handled the coronavirus.

Greta Van Susteren

00:03:27 - 00:03:28 (1 sec)

What do you say to them, the independents, and?

Donald Trump

00:03:28 - 00:03:47 (19 sec)

Well, first of all, I think we're going to get a lot of Democrats voting for us, because of law and order, because they're tired of seeing what they're seeing. Every Democrat city, or most of them, if you look at the top 25, even the top 50, they're practically all Democrats cities that are having this horrible time with law and order.

Donald Trump

00:03:47 - 00:04:03 (17 sec)

The Republican cities are doing very well, because the Democrats have no clue when it comes to law and order. What they've done with no cash bail, and so many other things they've done is the least of it. And they're unsafe. So I think we're having a lot of Democrats coming over as Republicans. And you see that.

Donald Trump

00:04:03 - 00:04:13 (9 sec)

We just had a poll, Rasmussen just came out at 52%. In another poll, I'm even higher. And there was another poll that just came out, I'm even higher.

Donald Trump

00:04:13 - 00:04:29 (17 sec)

I think we're winning Florida, I think we're winning Pennsylvania. I think we're winning North Carolina. I think we're winning New Hampshire. I think we're winning Michigan. We were two up in Michigan. It's the same. Here we go again, the same thing as last time. They come out with these fake polls, saying this or that.

Donald Trump

00:04:29 - 00:04:48 (19 sec)

There's no way we're losing Florida. Florida has been so strong. I've been great for Florida, look at Florida, the best year they’ve ever had. But every state had the best year before the plague came in. Virtually I think every single state had the best year they ever had when I was, before the plague, before the China plague came in.

Donald Trump

00:04:48 - 00:05:08 (20 sec)

And now, by the way, most importantly, we're building that up to a level that's going to be greater than it was before. If you were looking at this as a super V, they were saying it can't be a V, and now they all admit it's beyond a V. We're setting records on jobs, the jobs that came here over the last four months” 10.4 million jobs.

Donald Trump

00:05:08 - 00:05:28 (20 sec)

That's a record the likes of which nobody has ever seen before. Our retail numbers are the best they've ever been. Retail, the best they've ever been. No, I think we're going to have a super V, I think next year is going to be great. And I mean, even more so I think our third quarter that we're in right now, which gets announced just prior, like around November 1st, maybe a little before that.

Donald Trump

00:05:28 - 00:05:46 (18 sec)

I think our third quarter is going to be incredible. And that's going to be very good before the election because people see I know how to handle the economy like nobody else. I had it, I opened it up. It became the best we've ever had. And then we closed it. We had to. By closing it, we saved two and a half million lives, in my opinion.

Donald Trump

00:05:46 - 00:06:05 (19 sec)

Two and a half million lives. If we would have gone herd... And I'm fine with herd at a certain level, but not then, we would have had two and a half million people dead. According to many people. I would say that your average. Could have been two million, it could have been a million and a half, but a lot different than the numbers we have right now.

Donald Trump

00:06:05 - 00:06:24 (19 sec)

So, no, I think we handled it incredibly well. We did ventilators that nobody thought you could do. Now we're supplying them to the world. We have vaccines coming in a matter of moments. I mean, literally it's very close. Great companies, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and others. We have vaccines that nobody would have had.

Donald Trump

00:06:24 - 00:06:47 (23 sec)

If you go to the last administration, the FDA was a disaster. They were a disaster on the swine flu, and the swine flu, which is H1N1, that Joe Biden calls N1H1, but he's not right about that. He can't remember the two letters. What happens is, on the swine flu they were a disaster. In fact, the man that was in charge of it said we were a disaster.

Donald Trump

00:06:47 - 00:06:49 (2 sec)

We didn't know what we were doing.

Greta Van Susteren

00:06:49 - 00:06:57 (8 sec)

Speaker Pelosi says that you handled the coronavirus poorly. And that the Abraham Accords is a distraction to-

Donald Trump

00:06:57 - 00:07:20 (23 sec)

It's so incredible. You know, it's so unfair, no matter what you do, they say it was done poorly. They'll say, we just had record numbers of employment. Well, it should've been more. We just did something else great. Well, it should've been better. Makes no difference. You could say anything. I know, Schumer, we made this incredible trade deal on something and Schumer said he should have kept the tariffs, and I did keep it tariffs.

Donald Trump

00:07:20 - 00:07:20 (1 sec)

I kept all of them.

Greta Van Susteren

00:07:20 - 00:07:23 (2 sec)

Why is this such a bad relationship?

Donald Trump

00:07:23 - 00:07:40 (17 sec)

It's just bad because there is a tremendous animosity. I will say this. It was coming together before the plague came in. We were getting calls from Democrats wanting to get together because everybody had a job. We had the best employment numbers we've ever had. We had the best numbers we ever had, best stock market.

Donald Trump

00:07:40 - 00:08:00 (20 sec)

By the way, stock market right now is setting records, its records. And we're rounding the corner of the plague, I mean on this whole horrible thing. We're rounding the corner. And it is a disgraceful thing that China did to the world. I will tell you. But we're rounding the corner on COVID. There's 15 different names.

Donald Trump

00:08:00 - 00:08:24 (24 sec)

There's 22 different names for this thing. I like best “China virus” because it's the most accurate. But we're rounding the corner. And the stock market is at essentially an all time high. It looks like it's going up still further And if people didn't sell their stocks, when the China virus came in, which some people did, unfortunately, but if they didn't, they're making more money than ever before, their 401ks are great.

Donald Trump

00:08:24 - 00:08:25 (1 sec)

Nobody else could have done that.

Greta Van Susteren

00:08:25 - 00:08:43 (19 sec)

There are a lot of people who don't have 401ks. The stock market's great for me, it's great for people who have money in the stock market. But we've got a lot of problems with people who don't have jobs. And we don't have a stimulus bill from Capitol Hill. I know they signed the executive order late in July to try to bridge that gap until we do have one, but we don't have one.

Greta Van Susteren

00:08:43 - 00:08:48 (4 sec)

And that money that you authorized is about to run out. So what about the students though?

Donald Trump

00:08:48 - 00:08:53 (5 sec)

Well, first of all the stock market is for everyone. You have people that own five stocks of a company, it's for everybody. And so-

Greta Van Susteren

00:08:53 - 00:08:58 (5 sec)

Well there are a lot of people who don't have any stocks. I mean people who work at a Subway might not.

Donald Trump

00:08:58 - 00:09:13 (16 sec)

But you're talking about 60% or 70% of the population in one form or another has stocks. And if the stock market's good, you talk about an indicator, that means that companies are good. The big companies are good at putting out jobs. So it's a good thing for the jobs market. And our jobs market's been amazing.

Donald Trump

00:09:13 - 00:09:32 (18 sec)

Look, we just set a record in four months, a four months record, and there's not even the second, a four-month record. 10.4 million jobs, nobody's ever seen anything like that. But if the stock market weren't good, you wouldn't have that record. So it's an early indicator and a very strong indicator. But a lot of people benefit from that.

Donald Trump

00:09:32 - 00:09:49 (17 sec)

As far as stimulus is concerned, the Democrats want to give and bail out states that are Democrat states, Democrat run that are in big trouble. They're always in trouble. Their taxes are too high. Their crime is too high and they want to use this to bail out the states. And we want money to go to the people.

Donald Trump

00:09:49 - 00:10:05 (17 sec)

Very simple. We want money to go to the people because it wasn't their fault. And we'll see how it all works out. I will tell you there's a chance of something that happened as of the last four or five hours, because I think the Democrats are seeing the light. We'll find out.

Greta Van Susteren

00:10:05 - 00:10:10 (5 sec)

In terms of working with the House, are you able to work with speaker Pelosi at all?

Donald Trump

00:10:10 - 00:10:32 (23 sec)

If I have to, I'll work with her. They did a totally immoral impeachment. So it's always hard for me to say, "I want to deal with this woman." Because it should have never happened. It was based on a perfect phone call. I got impeached over a phone call that was perfect, with a man I didn't know. The Ukrainian president, the president of Ukraine.

Donald Trump

00:10:32 - 00:11:01 (29 sec)

And I got impeached. They actually impeached me. 196 to nothing Republican vote. And then the Senators, 52 and a half, to and a half. If you look at it, I got impeached over a perfect phone call. We studied that call, lawyers have said, "You did nothing." People get impeached over big deals. They impeached me over a phone call with the president of Ukraine that was a perfect call.

Donald Trump

00:11:01 - 00:11:27 (26 sec)

So I will say that it's always difficult when you have that kind of person that you're dealing with. Because it was a disgrace. Now they thought the call was much different, because they believe Schiff. And you know, he was a scoundrel, but they believed Schiff when he stood up in Congress and read a call that bore no relationship to the actual call.

Donald Trump

00:11:27 - 00:11:46 (19 sec)

Fortunately they transcribed the call. Otherwise, it would have been my word against the sleazebag Schiff and he should have been prosecuted for what he did. He got up and he repeats a phone call that didn't exist. Eight times quid pro quo. There was no quid pro quo. [crosstalk] No, but you understand that.

Donald Trump

00:11:46 - 00:12:10 (24 sec)

Eight times quid pro quo. And there was no quid pro quo. He made up a phone call. He repeated it to Congress, he repeated it all over the place and it wasn't true. I got impeached over that. So when you say get along, it's not that easy to get along. Because they're scoundrels. Yeah go ahead.

Greta Van Susteren

00:12:10 - 00:12:24 (14 sec)

You mentioned the prosecution, there's a report that they've opened a grand jury investigation into former National Security Advisor John Bolton. And I think you tweeted in June that he should be sent to jail. Do you worry that this looks political, may have an impact on-?

Donald Trump

00:12:24 - 00:12:38 (14 sec)

I don't think it's political, John Bolton revealed a lot of stuff that he shouldn't have. He probably took the job for that reason. He did a bad job. I think he's incompetent. All he wants to do is go to war with everybody. But actually he served me well for only one reason, everyone thought he was crazy.

Donald Trump

00:12:38 - 00:12:55 (16 sec)

Everyone thought he was stupid, but they thought he was a nut job who only wanted to go to war. So when I brought him into a meeting with a foreign country, they assumed I was going to war because John Bolton was one of the people that said go into the Middle East. I mean, look, I don't know that he was a big force, frankly.

Donald Trump

00:12:55 - 00:13:15 (20 sec)

He wasn't that respected, but he was one of the forces that said go into the Middle East. That was the worst deal, the worst thing to happen, the worst decision made in the history of our country. We've spent $8 trillion on the Middle East. The place is a mess. It's just a total mess. I'm bringing it back by the way.

Donald Trump

00:13:15 - 00:13:36 (22 sec)

And I'm also bringing our soldiers back, as you know, very rapidly, soon we won't be there. And we don't need it by the way. We're energy independent, which is great. But I'm bringing soldiers back. But John Bolton wanted to go into the Middle East. I asked him before I left, I said, "So tell me, do you think it was a good decision when you went into Iraq?" "Yes I do." I said, "Tell me why.

Donald Trump

00:13:36 - 00:14:02 (25 sec)

Tell me why." He couldn't explain it. John Bolton is incompetent, okay? But here's what he did: He released classified information, highly classified information and confidential information, all different categories. John Bolton should never have been allowed to do that. You know, the young sailor that sent a picture home to his mother and other people.

Donald Trump

00:14:02 - 00:14:26 (25 sec)

They go to jail for a long period of time. You can't do that. And that was not nearly as vital, as important, as John Bolton. John Bolton is an incompetent person and I'm telling you, all this maniac wanted to do is go to war. Let's go to war, let's go to war. He was crazy. But I used him for my own purpose, but ultimately we had to get rid of him.

Greta Van Susteren

00:14:26 - 00:14:30 (3 sec)

All right. Who's next in the Middle East decree, which country do you think-

Donald Trump

00:14:30 - 00:14:37 (7 sec)

Well, we have a lot. We have six countries now that want to sign. We'll get them all. I think we'll get all of them.

Greta Van Susteren

00:14:37 - 00:14:48 (11 sec)

And how does that translate into, how do you tell people, let's say in Michigan where you won by 11,000 votes or so, in terms of inspiring them to come out. How is this important to them?

Donald Trump

00:14:48 - 00:15:09 (21 sec)

Everything's important. Look, Michigan has car factories now. They didn't open a factory in 40 years and we have factories now being built and have been built under my leadership. Michigan had the best year they ever had last year because of me. I got Prime Minister Abe, a terrific guy. I got prime minister Abe to build car factories.

Donald Trump

00:15:09 - 00:15:26 (17 sec)

Germany, Japan, I said, "You've got to start building in our country now. We want you to build in our country." This is nonsense. When you build your cars in Germany, you build your cars in Japan, you send them over here. In the meantime, our people aren't building cars. And that's why the unions are in favor, not the top people in the unions because that's a whole different story.

Donald Trump

00:15:26 - 00:15:46 (19 sec)

But the people in the unions know, they understand it. If you look at Ohio and Michigan and South Carolina and North Carolina and so many other places, we have energy there that's unbelievable, what's happening with car plants for Michigan. They've never had anything like this. They are doing great only because of what I did.

Donald Trump

00:15:46 - 00:16:04 (18 sec)

And I think I won Michigan last time, I think this should be a lot easier to win it, and I just saw a poll where I'm two points up. Michigan is always hard for a Republican for whatever reason, but I guess I'm a little bit of a different kind of a Republican. The fact is that Michigan, I think I should win easily with all the production.

Donald Trump

00:16:04 - 00:16:30 (26 sec)

Michigan had the best year they've ever had prior to the China virus. And now they're going to be coming back strong. Now the problem with Michigan is the governor has them shut down. It shouldn't be shut down. They should be opened up. The governor has them totally shut down and it's purely political. And on November fourth, right after the election, the governor will say, "Okay, it's time to open up." She's trying to make the economy look as bad as possible.

Donald Trump

00:16:30 - 00:16:48 (18 sec)

And that goes for North Carolina, that goes from Pennsylvania, where, by the way, we won a big case two days ago where the court ruled it was unconstitutional to shut down the state to the level that they were doing it. But to shut down the state, and Pennsylvania is going to be opened up now because of it.

Donald Trump

00:16:48 - 00:16:58 (10 sec)

Because Democrat governors are trying to shut down states because they want to look as bad as possible for the election. [crosstalk] No we're looking good-

Greta Van Susteren

00:16:58 - 00:17:01 (3 sec)

Including in Wisconsin where you won by 23,000 votes?

Donald Trump

00:17:01 - 00:17:19 (18 sec)

Well, that's another one. The governor is trying to shut down the state. There's no reason to shut it down. I mean, the states that are doing the best are not the shut down states. We did the right thing. We closed it up. We learned about this horrible disease. You know, how it affects seniors and especially seniors that have problems.

Donald Trump

00:17:19 - 00:17:37 (18 sec)

And we opened it up and it's a super V, and we're going to have the best year economically next year that we've ever had, unless Joe Biden had got in. And he’d raised taxes to a level that will strangle everything. And he'll put back regulations. So I cut more regulations than any president in history by far, no matter how long they serve.

Donald Trump

00:17:37 - 00:17:58 (21 sec)

We had the biggest tax cut in history. I've rebuilt our military, our courts, we're going to have 300 judges at least by the time this term ends. And so by the end of this term, we're going to have 300 federal judges. Nobody's ever heard of anything like that. And two Supreme Court judges.

Greta Van Susteren

00:17:58 - 00:18:01 (3 sec)

So what would be your plan for the next term, if you say that you've done all this?

Donald Trump

00:18:01 - 00:18:19 (18 sec)

Well, I'll tell you. Next year is very important because the Supreme Court, you could have one, two, three, or four justices. You know, a lot of people say that's almost the most important thing. I think the military probably is, but I fully get it. You could have one, two, three or four Supreme Court justices for the next president.

Donald Trump

00:18:19 - 00:18:39 (19 sec)

And we have conservative, good solid people. I made a list. He can't make a list because he's got a bunch of radicals that would go onto the Supreme Court. He would have radical left people. And he can't put that out because you couldn't be president if people saw that list. If people saw his real list, because Joe isn't running it.

Donald Trump

00:18:39 - 00:18:59 (21 sec)

The radical left...Joe is gone, let's face it. You know, we're all trying to be nice. I don't have to be nice anymore because you made up a phony military report where I said bad things on the graves of soldiers with many people around. You're crazy, you know what it's called, disinformation. And you understand that word, they make up a story and then they go with it.

Donald Trump

00:18:59 - 00:19:04 (5 sec)

So I don't have to be nice. Joe is shot. He's mentally shot.

Greta Van Susteren

00:19:04 - 00:19:06 (2 sec)

What's your debate strategy?

Donald Trump

00:19:06 - 00:19:23 (18 sec)

Just do a great job and debate on my record. Because nobody has a record like I have. Look, in three and a half years I've done more than any other president in the first three and a half years. And nobody even disputes that. When you look at what we've done, even Space Force you know, we did Space Force, I didn't even used to talk about that.

Donald Trump

00:19:23 - 00:19:35 (12 sec)

The wall is built, almost finished. The wall will be finished very soon. We have incredible numbers on the border and we have other things to do. We're going to be coming out with immigration and various other things very soon.

Greta Van Susteren

00:19:35 - 00:19:42 (7 sec)

Do you have any regrets, just look back with 20/20 hindsight, given how you handled the coronavirus? Do you think to yourself, "I wish I had done...?"

Donald Trump

00:19:42 - 00:20:01 (19 sec)

I think we did a great job with coronavirus, except at public relations. They spent so much time working. Look, we would have lost two and a half million people, as I've said. We're at 185,000, and it's too much. One person is too much. Because it never should have been allowed to happen by China. They should have never allowed it out.

Donald Trump

00:20:01 - 00:20:21 (20 sec)

They stopped it from going into China, but they didn't stop it from going into us. We did a great job except public relations-wise, my people got outplayed. Just like you said before, Nancy Pelosi said this or that, no matter what you do, if you say, "We did this," they say, "Well, it wasn't good enough.

Donald Trump

00:20:21 - 00:20:44 (23 sec)

If you say, "We did that..." This is standard fare for the Democrats. They say it wasn't good enough. We did a phenomenal job on coronavirus, a phenomenal job. Ventilators, vaccines, wait until you see, we almost have the vaccine. A Biden campaign, a Biden administration wouldn't have had it for three or four years, okay?

Donald Trump

00:20:44 - 00:21:03 (19 sec)

You know that. They couldn't get anything through the FDA. But take a look at the swine flu. They had the swine flu, which was much easier than what we had, much lesser. The swine flu, it was a total disaster. And the person that said it was the man that headed it up. It was so bad, they gave up, they totally gave up.

Donald Trump

00:21:03 - 00:21:08 (5 sec)

Now they're telling us how to run things. It doesn't work that way.

Greta Van Susteren

00:21:08 - 00:21:13 (5 sec)

Mr. President, thank you sir.

Donald Trump

00:21:13 - 00:21:16 (4 sec)

Thank you very much.