Donald Trump Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #442

00:00:00.000 | I don't know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.

00:00:03.140 | Yeah, they do.

00:00:04.140 | So I figure it's all right to call them a communist.

00:00:06.600 | Yeah, they call me a lot worse than I call them.

00:00:08.820 | A lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn't think that Kamala is

00:00:14.540 | a communist.

00:00:15.540 | I believe you have to fight fire with fire.

00:00:17.940 | Politics is a dirty game.

00:00:19.380 | It is a dirty game.

00:00:21.020 | It's certainly true.

00:00:22.020 | How do you win at that game?

00:00:24.100 | They suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don't know if it's curable

00:00:33.740 | from their standpoint.

00:00:35.360 | I think we'd probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms,

00:00:40.760 | perhaps.

00:00:41.760 | First of all, medical marijuana has been amazing.

00:00:46.440 | I've had friends, and I've had others, and doctors telling me that it's been absolutely

00:00:51.320 | amazing.

00:00:53.160 | The list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.

00:00:57.520 | Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it?

00:01:03.400 | The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this The Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:01:09.680 | They're getting smaller and smaller.

00:01:10.680 | They're getting smaller.

00:01:11.680 | Right?

00:01:12.680 | I mean, people do respect you more when you have a big camera for some of these.

00:01:16.000 | No, it's cool.

00:01:17.000 | And about 20 guys that you pay a fortune to, right?

00:01:20.080 | All right.

00:01:21.080 | Okay.

00:01:22.080 | You said that you love winning, and you have won a lot in life, in real estate, in business,

00:01:29.160 | in TV, in politics.

00:01:31.040 | So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question.

00:01:36.680 | What drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing?

00:01:41.440 | Maybe equally.

00:01:42.440 | Maybe both.

00:01:43.440 | I don't like losing, and I do like winning.

00:01:47.640 | I've never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force.

00:01:52.060 | You've been close with a lot of the greats in sport.

00:01:56.040 | You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali.

00:01:59.080 | You have people like Michael Jordan, who I think hate losing more than anybody.

00:02:04.640 | So what do you learn from those guys?

00:02:06.600 | Well, they do have something different.

00:02:08.840 | The great champions have something very different, like the sports champions.

00:02:13.240 | And you have champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports.

00:02:18.080 | You see it over a weekend, or you see it during a game.

00:02:21.720 | And you see that certain people stand out, and they keep standing out.

00:02:27.680 | But it's there for you.

00:02:28.680 | It doesn't take a lifetime to find out that somebody was a winner or a loser.

00:02:33.960 | And so the sports thing is very interesting.

00:02:36.120 | But I play golf with different people, and there's a different mindset among champions.

00:02:45.120 | There's really a very different mindset.

00:02:48.420 | There's a different thought process.

00:02:50.880 | Talent-wise, sometimes you can't tell the difference in talent, but at the end of a

00:02:54.960 | weekend they seem to win.

00:02:58.360 | And it's very interesting.

00:03:00.600 | Like as an example, Tiger or Jack Nicklaus, he was a phenomenal winner.

00:03:06.300 | And he does have a different way about him, and Tiger has a different way about him, and

00:03:10.680 | Michael Jordan.

00:03:11.680 | And there's never one...

00:03:13.280 | You would think that there'd be one way.

00:03:15.200 | Arnold Palmer was the nicest guy you'd ever meet.

00:03:18.760 | And then you have some champions that aren't really nice, they're just focused on doing

00:03:24.200 | their job.

00:03:25.640 | So you have...

00:03:26.640 | There's not one type of person.

00:03:30.120 | But the one thing I would say that everybody seems to have in common is they're very driven.

00:03:37.240 | They're driven like beyond.

00:03:39.960 | They don't seem to give up easily.

00:03:41.480 | They don't give up.

00:03:42.960 | They don't give up, but they do seem to be...

00:03:46.000 | They have a passion that's maybe more than people that don't do as well.

00:03:51.640 | You've said that politics is a dirty game in the past.

00:03:55.440 | Yeah.

00:03:56.440 | It is a dirty game.

00:03:57.440 | That's certainly true.

00:03:59.240 | So if it is a game, how do you win at that game?

00:04:02.040 | Well, you win at that game by getting the word out, and by using sense.

00:04:08.840 | You have to have a feeling where it's going.

00:04:11.860 | You also have to have a feeling of what's right.

00:04:13.640 | You can't necessarily just go what's popular.

00:04:15.520 | You have to do what's good for a country if you're talking about countries.

00:04:19.280 | But you have to get the word out.

00:04:21.040 | And you have to just continuously...

00:04:22.800 | Like for instance, you have a great show, you have a great podcast.

00:04:26.080 | It's very well watched.

00:04:28.040 | And I'm sitting here and I do this, a lot of people see it.

00:04:30.760 | And I do other things, and a lot of people see that.

00:04:34.440 | And I go traditional also.

00:04:35.880 | You have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older, and maybe less

00:04:41.820 | significant, could be less significant, I don't know.

00:04:45.280 | But it's changing a lot.

00:04:48.600 | The whole plane of platform is changing a lot.

00:04:52.920 | It's changed a lot in the last two, three years.

00:04:56.440 | But from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they're

00:05:00.560 | watching and you have to get on.

00:05:03.280 | I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate.

00:05:08.120 | They're getting very big numbers.

00:05:10.520 | I did Spaces with Elon and they got numbers like nobody's ever heard before.

00:05:19.360 | You wouldn't do that on like radio.

00:05:21.680 | You wouldn't do that, those numbers, no matter how good a show.

00:05:24.160 | You wouldn't do those numbers on radio.

00:05:25.600 | You wouldn't do them on television.

00:05:28.640 | You've been successful in business, you've been successful in politics.

00:05:31.240 | What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different

00:05:36.440 | disparate worlds?

00:05:37.440 | Yeah, and they're different, very different.

00:05:40.460 | I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful and they'd like to go

00:05:45.080 | over to politics and then you realize they can't speak.

00:05:50.880 | They choke.

00:05:53.100 | You know, it's hard to make a speech in front of that.

00:05:55.200 | Let's say you're talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences and for many

00:06:01.080 | people it's virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have

00:06:08.160 | nobody leave.

00:06:10.320 | It's not an easy thing to do and it's an ability, but I have many people that are very,

00:06:16.200 | very successful in business, would love to do what I did and yet they can't pull the

00:06:24.440 | trigger.

00:06:25.880 | In many cases, I don't think it would work, almost for everybody it's not going to work.

00:06:30.960 | It's a very tough thing to do, it's a big transition.

00:06:35.200 | Now if you talked about people in the business and politics going into business, likewise

00:06:41.840 | that wouldn't generally work out so well either.

00:06:45.120 | It's different talents, it's different skills.

00:06:46.800 | I have somebody who wants to go into politics so bad, but he's got a little problem.

00:06:50.880 | He's got stage fright.

00:06:52.640 | Now he's a total killer, but if he gets up into a stage in front of people, he doesn't

00:06:58.280 | do well, to put it mildly actually.

00:07:01.200 | I mean, he does badly.

00:07:03.240 | So you have to be able to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able

00:07:07.920 | to captivate an audience.

00:07:09.280 | Look, if you're a politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds.

00:07:12.920 | There are a lot of people who can't do that.

00:07:15.360 | I've seen it.

00:07:17.160 | They can't even think about doing it and they don't.

00:07:21.520 | There are many people in business right now, I could name them, but I don't want to embarrass

00:07:25.120 | anybody.

00:07:26.120 | They've been talking about running for president for 15 years and they're very big in business,

00:07:31.960 | they're well known actually, but it takes guts to run.

00:07:35.960 | Like for president, I can tell you, it takes guts to run.

00:07:39.640 | It's also a very dangerous profession, if you want to know the truth, but dangerous

00:07:44.600 | in a different sense too.

00:07:46.800 | But it takes a lot of courage to run for president.

00:07:49.440 | It's not easy, but you have, and you know the same people as I do, there are a lot of

00:07:55.120 | people that would like to run for president that are very, very successful in business,

00:08:00.960 | but they don't have the guts to do it, and they have to give up a lot.

00:08:05.240 | One of the great things about people from the business world is they're often great

00:08:10.120 | deal makers, and you're a great deal maker, and you've talked about the war in Ukraine

00:08:16.920 | and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelensky would accept.

00:08:22.440 | What do you think that deal looks like?

00:08:24.920 | I think the deal, and I wouldn't talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal

00:08:29.720 | if I win as president-elect, I'll have a deal made, guaranteed.

00:08:35.080 | That's a war that shouldn't have happened.

00:08:36.520 | It's terrible.

00:08:37.520 | Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country, and she's probably

00:08:42.760 | worse than him.

00:08:44.760 | That's something that should have never happened, but it did happen, and now it's a much tougher

00:08:50.500 | deal to make than it would have been before it started.

00:08:54.280 | Millions of people, I think the number's going to be a lot higher when you see this all at

00:08:59.200 | some point iron out.

00:09:00.480 | I think the numbers are going to be, the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than

00:09:03.400 | people think.

00:09:04.900 | When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place

00:09:09.240 | in Ukraine, I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher.

00:09:12.800 | They lie about the numbers.

00:09:14.000 | They try and keep them low.

00:09:15.720 | They knocked down a building that's two blocks long.

00:09:17.760 | These are big buildings, and they say one person was mildly injured.

00:09:23.640 | No, no, a lot of people were killed, and there are people in those buildings, and they have

00:09:29.480 | no chance.

00:09:30.480 | Once they start coming down, there's no chance.

00:09:34.920 | That's a war that absolutely has to get done, and then you have Israel, and then you have

00:09:39.600 | a lot of other places that are talking war.

00:09:42.120 | The world is a rough place right now, and a lot of it's because of the fact that America

00:09:47.820 | has no leadership, and I believe that she'll be probably worse than Biden.

00:09:53.560 | I watched the interview the other night.

00:09:55.560 | I mean, it was just a softball interview.

00:09:59.680 | So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more?

00:10:02.960 | I don't know.

00:10:03.960 | I can't believe the whole thing is happening.

00:10:06.240 | We had a man in there that should have never been in there.

00:10:09.280 | They kept him in a basement.

00:10:10.480 | They used COVID.

00:10:11.480 | They cheated, but they used COVID to cheat, and they cheated without COVID, too.

00:10:15.880 | But you had somebody in there, and now we have a woman that is not ... I mean, she couldn't

00:10:21.800 | do an interview.

00:10:23.160 | This was a really soft interview.

00:10:24.880 | This is an interview where they're giving her multiple choice questions, multiple guests.

00:10:30.680 | I call it multiple guests, and I don't think she did well.

00:10:35.240 | I think she did very poorly.

00:10:36.840 | How do you think you'll do in the debate coming up?

00:10:38.680 | It's in a few days.

00:10:39.960 | So I've done a lot of debating, only as a politician.

00:10:43.200 | I never debated.

00:10:44.200 | My first debate was the Rosie O'Donnell debate, the famous Rosie O'Donnell debate, the answer.

00:10:51.360 | But I've done well with debates.

00:10:52.360 | I mean, I became president.

00:10:53.720 | Then the second time, I got millions more votes than I got the first time.

00:10:58.120 | I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win.

00:11:04.180 | You can't not win.

00:11:06.680 | I got millions of more votes than that, and lost by a whisker.

00:11:14.040 | Look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems.

00:11:19.000 | Look what happened with inflation, because inflation is just eating up our country, eating

00:11:23.400 | it up.

00:11:24.400 | So it's too bad.

00:11:25.680 | But there are a lot of things that could happen.

00:11:30.200 | We have to get those wars settled.

00:11:31.520 | We have to get ... I'll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done.

00:11:34.800 | That could end up in a third world war.

00:11:36.360 | So could the Middle East.

00:11:38.060 | So could the Middle East.

00:11:39.600 | So maybe let's talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelensky.

00:11:45.920 | Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions they already captured?

00:11:49.320 | I don't know.

00:11:51.120 | I can tell you that all of this would have never happened, and it would have been very

00:11:56.280 | easy, because you don't have ... That question wouldn't be asked.

00:12:00.080 | That's a tougher question.

00:12:01.560 | Once that starts happening, because he has taken over a lot of territory, now I guess

00:12:05.800 | they're insurgents now too, right?

00:12:08.920 | So it's a little bit interesting that that's happening, and that it can happen.

00:12:16.560 | It's interesting that Putin has allowed that to happen.

00:12:21.040 | Look, that's one that should have never started.

00:12:24.780 | We have to get it stopped.

00:12:26.640 | Ukraine is being demolished.

00:12:29.520 | They're destroying a great culture that's largely destroyed.

00:12:32.760 | What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations?

00:12:36.200 | Leverage of, let's say, friendship?

00:12:38.840 | The carrot or the stick?

00:12:40.480 | Friendship or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power?

00:12:46.200 | So it depends on who the person is.

00:12:49.240 | Everyone's different.

00:12:51.440 | Negotiation's interesting, because it depends on who the person is.

00:12:54.960 | And then you have to guess or know through certain knowledge, which is more important,

00:13:00.940 | the carrot or the stick.

00:13:03.920 | With some people it's the stick, and with some people it's the carrot.

00:13:07.400 | I think the stick probably is generally more successful, in that we're talking about war.

00:13:15.200 | But the kind of destruction that we're witnessing now that nobody's ever seen, it's a terrible

00:13:22.680 | thing.

00:13:23.680 | And we're witnessing it all over, we're witnessing it in all parts of the world.

00:13:29.560 | And a lot of things are going to get started.

00:13:31.680 | Look what's going on with China.

00:13:34.180 | Look at Japan.

00:13:35.180 | They're starting to rearm now.

00:13:36.320 | They're starting to rearm, because China's getting, you know, taking over certain islands.

00:13:40.680 | And there's a lot of danger in the war right now in the world.

00:13:45.080 | There's a lot of, and there's a great possibility of World War III.

00:13:49.880 | And we better get this thing done fast, because five months with people like her, and him,

00:13:58.000 | he's checked out.

00:13:59.000 | He just goes to the beach and thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, which he doesn't.

00:14:04.320 | He's sort of checked out.

00:14:05.320 | Hey, look, you know, you can't blame him.

00:14:07.400 | If that was a coup, they took it over.

00:14:09.640 | They took over the presidential deal.

00:14:14.520 | The whole presidential thing was taken over in a coup.

00:14:17.440 | She had 14 million votes.

00:14:19.840 | She had no votes, not one.

00:14:22.400 | And nobody thought it was going to be her.

00:14:24.020 | Nobody wanted it to be her.

00:14:25.320 | She was a joke until six weeks ago when they said we're going to have to, politically,

00:14:31.860 | they felt they had to pick her.

00:14:34.560 | And if they didn't pick her, they thought there'd be a problem.

00:14:38.800 | I don't know if that's right or not.

00:14:40.000 | I actually don't think it's right, but, you know, they thought it was right.

00:14:44.200 | And now, immediately, the press comes to their aid.

00:14:48.120 | If we can go back to China on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st

00:14:55.720 | century?

00:14:56.720 | Well, there are ways.

00:14:57.720 | Now, here's the problem.

00:14:58.800 | If I tell you how, and I'd love to do it, but if I give you a plan, like I have a very

00:15:05.960 | exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia, and I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan,

00:15:13.860 | but an idea for China, because we do, you know, we're in a lot of trouble.

00:15:19.400 | They'll be in a lot of trouble, too.

00:15:21.600 | But we're in a lot of trouble.

00:15:23.720 | But I can't give you those plans, because if I give you those plans, I'm not going to

00:15:27.120 | be able to use them.

00:15:28.120 | They'll be very unsuccessful.

00:15:29.120 | You know, part of it's surprise, right?

00:15:31.760 | But they won't be able to help us much.

00:15:34.800 | So you have a plan of what to say to Putin when you take office?

00:15:38.760 | No, I had a very good relationship with him, and I had a good relationship with Zelensky,

00:15:43.360 | too.

00:15:44.360 | But I had a very good relationship with Putin.

00:15:47.760 | Tough topic, but important.

00:15:49.540 | You said lost by a whisker.

00:15:51.900 | I'm an independent.

00:15:53.540 | I have a lot of friends who are independent, many of whom like your policies, like the

00:16:00.580 | fact that you're a deal maker, like the fact that you can end wars.

00:16:07.060 | But they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread

00:16:15.980 | fraud and this kind of stuff, fake election scheme.

00:16:19.720 | What can you say to those independent voters to help them decide who to vote for?

00:16:24.860 | Right.

00:16:25.860 | I think the fraud was on the other side.

00:16:26.860 | I think the election was a fraud, and many people felt it was that, and they wanted answers.

00:16:35.380 | And when you can't challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it.

00:16:39.260 | Otherwise, it's going to get worse, not better.

00:16:43.060 | And there are lots of ways to solve this problem.

00:16:45.620 | Go to paper ballots, and do it the easy way.

00:16:48.420 | I mean, the paper ballots, and you have voter ID, and you have same-day voting, and you

00:16:54.660 | have proof of citizenship, which is very important, because we have people voting that are not

00:16:58.740 | citizens.

00:16:59.740 | They just came in, and they're loading up the payrolls.

00:17:04.620 | They're loading up everything.

00:17:05.620 | They're putting students in schools that don't speak a word of English, and they're taking

00:17:10.380 | the seats of people that are citizens of our country.

00:17:15.180 | So look, we have the worst border in the history of the world.

00:17:22.620 | We have coming into our country right now millions and millions of people at levels

00:17:27.180 | that nobody's ever seen.

00:17:28.300 | I don't believe any country's ever seen it.

00:17:31.340 | And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen.

00:17:35.380 | We don't do anything.

00:17:37.380 | And we have a person who was the Border Czar, who now said she wasn't really the Border

00:17:41.740 | Czar, but she was.

00:17:42.740 | She was the Border Czar, but she was in charge of the border.

00:17:45.860 | And we have her, and she's saying very strongly, "Oh, I did such a good job."

00:17:52.300 | She was horrible, horrible.

00:17:54.580 | The harm she's done.

00:17:56.220 | But we have people coming in from other countries all over the world, not just South America.

00:18:01.860 | And they're coming in from prisons and jails.

00:18:04.400 | They're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums.

00:18:09.580 | And they're street criminals.

00:18:11.620 | Right off the street, they take them.

00:18:13.640 | And they're being given to our country, drug dealers, human traffickers.

00:18:19.500 | We're destroying our country.

00:18:21.500 | This is a sin what's been allowed to take place over the last four years.

00:18:25.000 | We're destroying our country.

00:18:27.260 | And we'll see how that all works out.

00:18:30.380 | But it's not even believable.

00:18:33.000 | And now you see, you saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela

00:18:42.940 | taking over big areas, including buildings.

00:18:46.980 | They're taking over buildings.

00:18:47.980 | They have their big rifles, but they're taking over buildings.

00:18:52.900 | We're not going to let this happen.

00:18:54.660 | We're not going to let them destroy our country.

00:18:57.260 | And you know, in those countries, crime is way down.

00:19:00.180 | They're taking them out of their prisons, which is good because it's good for them.

00:19:03.900 | I do the same thing.

00:19:05.240 | By the way, if I ran one of those countries, any country in the world, I would make sure

00:19:08.540 | that America has every one of our prisoners.

00:19:11.140 | Every one of our criminals would be here.

00:19:13.340 | I can't believe they're going so slowly, but some aren't.

00:19:17.540 | But they all are doing it.

00:19:20.020 | And we can't let that happen.

00:19:21.540 | They're emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States

00:19:27.460 | of America.

00:19:28.460 | We can't let that happen.

00:19:30.100 | So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election,

00:19:34.780 | whether it's media bias or big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing

00:19:41.460 | that bothers people.

00:19:43.060 | Well, I don't focus on the past.

00:19:45.500 | I focus on the future.

00:19:46.500 | I mean, I talk about how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is, how bad things like,

00:19:53.420 | which is important, Afghanistan was, in my opinion, the most embarrassing thing that's

00:19:58.820 | ever happened to our country.

00:20:00.800 | And because of that, I think Putin went in.

00:20:02.440 | When he said how stupid we were, Putin went in.

00:20:07.100 | But it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.

00:20:11.620 | I really believe that.

00:20:13.860 | But, you know, we left 13 dead soldiers.

00:20:19.300 | Think of it, 13 dead soldiers.

00:20:21.540 | Many soldiers horrifically hurt with arms and legs and everything else gone.

00:20:27.400 | We left hostages behind.

00:20:29.140 | We left Americans behind.

00:20:31.220 | We left military equipment, the likes of which nobody's ever left behind before, billions

00:20:37.300 | and billions of dollars of equipment.

00:20:40.580 | They're now selling the equipment.

00:20:41.580 | They're one of the largest arms dealers in the world.

00:20:45.980 | And very sad, very sad.

00:20:50.100 | And you know, we were there for a long time.

00:20:52.700 | I was going to get out.

00:20:54.860 | We were getting ready to get out there.

00:20:56.380 | We got interrupted by the election.

00:20:58.540 | But we would have been out with dignity and strength.

00:21:02.540 | We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there because they knew

00:21:06.140 | it was going to be tough.

00:21:07.900 | I dealt with Abdul.

00:21:09.460 | Abdul was the leader.

00:21:12.140 | And we got along fine.

00:21:14.180 | He understood.

00:21:15.180 | But, you know, they were shooting, they were killing a lot of our people before I came

00:21:19.100 | down.

00:21:20.100 | And when I got there, I said, I spoke to him, I said, "You can't do it.

00:21:23.780 | Don't do it anymore."

00:21:24.980 | We went 18 months before this happened, this horrible day happened.

00:21:30.380 | We went 18 months and nobody was shot at or killed.

00:21:34.060 | What do you think that was, the carrot or the stick in that case in Afghanistan?

00:21:37.060 | The stick.

00:21:38.060 | Definitely the stick.

00:21:39.060 | The threat of military force.

00:21:40.980 | That was the stick.

00:21:41.980 | Yeah.

00:21:42.980 | It doesn't have to be, but that was the stick.

00:21:43.980 | Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more.

00:21:48.340 | For this election, it might be a close one.

00:21:51.700 | What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win

00:21:56.740 | or lose?

00:21:57.740 | Well, I hope it's not a close one.

00:21:59.700 | I mean, you know, I don't know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed our

00:22:04.340 | country.

00:22:05.340 | The division, the bad economy, but to me, in a way, the worst is what they've allowed

00:22:11.500 | to happen at our border, where they've allowed millions of people to come in here from places

00:22:16.140 | that you don't want to know about.

00:22:18.660 | And I can't believe that there's going to be a close election.

00:22:21.220 | You know, we're leading in the polls, but, and it looks close, but I think in the end,

00:22:26.900 | it's not going to be a close election.

00:22:29.380 | What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis?

00:22:32.140 | Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about?

00:22:35.540 | Well, you've got to get the criminals out of here fast, right?

00:22:39.260 | You know, the people from mental institutions, you got to get them back into their mental

00:22:43.180 | institution.

00:22:44.180 | No country can afford this, you know, it's just too much money.

00:22:47.380 | You look at what's happening in New York and Chicago and LA and lots of places, and you

00:22:53.740 | take a look at what's happening.

00:22:55.140 | There's no country can afford this, we can't afford it.

00:22:58.740 | And we've got to get the bad ones out immediately, and the rest have to be worked on.

00:23:03.820 | You know, it's happened before, Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate president, moderate

00:23:09.380 | type person, but he hated when he saw people pouring into the country, and they were.

00:23:14.700 | Nothing like now.

00:23:15.700 | You know, I probably got elected in 2016 because of the border.

00:23:21.220 | And I told people what was happening, and they understood it.

00:23:23.940 | And I won the election, and I won the election, I think, because of the border.

00:23:28.180 | Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016.

00:23:35.420 | I had it fixed, too.

00:23:36.620 | I had it, the last week of my, the famous chart that I put up was exactly that.

00:23:42.860 | You know the chart?

00:23:43.860 | When I looked to the right, I said, "There's the chart, bing."

00:23:48.500 | That was not a pleasant experience.

00:23:50.700 | But the chart that I put up said, and that was done by Border Patrol, that was the lowest

00:23:55.340 | number that we've ever had come into our country in recorded history.

00:24:00.140 | And we have to get it back to that again.

00:24:02.820 | We will.

00:24:03.820 | Let me ask you about Project 2025.

00:24:05.900 | So you've publicly said that you don't have any direct connection to Project 2025.

00:24:09.580 | Nothing.

00:24:10.580 | I know nothing about it.

00:24:11.580 | And they know that, too.

00:24:13.420 | Democrats know that.

00:24:14.420 | And I purposely haven't read it, because I want to say to you, I don't, I have no idea

00:24:18.740 | what it's all about.

00:24:19.820 | It's easier than saying, "I read it," and you know, all of the things.

00:24:23.820 | So, I purposely haven't read it.

00:24:26.940 | And I've heard about it, I've heard about things that are in there that I don't like.

00:24:32.740 | And there's some things in there that everybody would like.

00:24:35.680 | But there are things that I don't like at all.

00:24:40.300 | And I think it's unfortunate that they put it out.

00:24:44.820 | But it doesn't mean anything, because it has nothing to do with me.

00:24:47.980 | Project 2025 has, it has absolutely nothing to do with me.

00:24:53.100 | You posted recently about marijuana, and that you're okay with it being legalized, but it

00:25:00.740 | has to be done safely.

00:25:01.740 | Can you explain your policy there?

00:25:03.380 | Well, I just put out a paper.

00:25:05.980 | And first of all, medical marijuana has been amazing.

00:25:09.940 | It's been, I've had friends, and I've had others, and doctors telling me that it's been

00:25:15.380 | absolutely amazing, the medical marijuana.

00:25:20.860 | And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana.

00:25:27.500 | It's got to be a certain age, got to be a certain age to buy it.

00:25:31.500 | It's got to be done in a very concerted, lawful way.

00:25:37.140 | And the way they're doing it in Florida, I think, is going to be actually good.

00:25:41.260 | It's going to be very good.

00:25:43.140 | But it's got to be done in a good way.

00:25:44.700 | It's got to be done in a clean way.

00:25:46.660 | You go into some of these places, like in New York, it's all, it smells all marijuana.

00:25:50.700 | You can't, the way, you've got to have a system where there's control.

00:25:55.780 | And I think the way they've done it in Florida is very good.

00:25:58.940 | Do you know anything about psychedelics?

00:26:01.460 | So I'm not a drug guy, but I recently did ayahuasca, and there's a lot of people that

00:26:08.100 | speak to sort of the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics.

00:26:16.420 | I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms,

00:26:21.900 | perhaps.

00:26:22.900 | Now, I know you don't, you stay away from all of that stuff.

00:26:28.020 | I know also veterans use it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff.

00:26:32.020 | So it's great, and it's interesting that you're thinking about being more accepting of some

00:26:37.660 | of these drugs, which don't just have a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose, a treatment

00:26:44.580 | purpose.

00:26:45.580 | We put out a statement today.

00:26:46.580 | We're going to put out another one probably next week, be more specific, although I think

00:26:51.100 | it's pretty specific.

00:26:53.440 | And we'll see how that all goes.

00:26:55.660 | That's a referendum coming up in some states, but it's coming up, and we'll see how it does.

00:27:02.420 | I will say it's been very hard to beat it.

00:27:06.820 | You take a look at the numbers, it's been very hard to beat it.

00:27:09.860 | So I think it'll generally pass, but you want to do it in a safe way.

00:27:14.620 | Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend, Joe Rogan, because you had

00:27:18.820 | a bit of tension with him.

00:27:20.820 | So when he said nice things about RFK Jr., I think, you've said some not so nice things

00:27:26.060 | about Joe, and I think that was a bit unfair.

00:27:29.860 | And as a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast, because he is legit the greatest

00:27:37.860 | conversationalist in the world.

00:27:39.620 | So what's the story behind the tension?

00:27:41.540 | I don't think there was any tension, and I've always liked him, but I don't know him.

00:27:49.860 | I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana, and I shake his hand.

00:27:55.060 | I see him there, and I think he's good at what he does, but I don't know about doing

00:28:00.700 | his podcast.

00:28:01.700 | I mean, I guess I'd do it, but I haven't been asked, and I'm not asking them.

00:28:08.220 | I'm not asking anybody.

00:28:09.620 | It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation.

00:28:11.780 | No, it's not.

00:28:12.780 | It's not really a negotiation, and he's sort of a liberal guy, I guess, from what I understand,

00:28:19.460 | but he likes Kennedy.

00:28:20.620 | This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us.

00:28:23.940 | He's going to be great.

00:28:24.940 | He's doing...

00:28:25.940 | Bobby's going to be great, but I like that he likes Kennedy.

00:28:29.220 | I do too.

00:28:30.220 | He's a different kind of a guy, but he's got some great things going, and I think he's

00:28:36.940 | going to be beyond politics.

00:28:38.220 | I think he could be quite influential in taking care of some situations that you probably

00:28:43.540 | would agree should be taken care of.

00:28:45.860 | The Joe Rogan post is an example.

00:28:47.500 | I'd love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the posts on truth.

00:28:54.740 | Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative, or are you just speaking your mind, and are

00:28:59.980 | there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted?

00:29:03.900 | Yeah, I do, but not that often, honestly.

00:29:07.500 | I do a lot of reposting.

00:29:10.180 | The ones you get in trouble with are the reposts, because you find down deep, they're into some

00:29:14.780 | group that you're not supposed to be reposting.

00:29:18.700 | You don't even know if those groups are good, bad, or indifferent, but the reposts are the

00:29:22.620 | ones that really get you in trouble.

00:29:25.620 | When you do your own words, it's sort of easier, but the reposts go very quickly, and if you're

00:29:31.100 | going to check every single little symbol, and I don't know, it's worked out pretty well

00:29:38.860 | for me, I tell you.

00:29:42.540 | Truth is very powerful, truth.

00:29:45.700 | It's my platform, and it's been very powerful, very, very powerful.

00:29:49.580 | Goes everywhere.

00:29:50.580 | I call it my typewriter.

00:29:53.140 | That's actually my typewriter.

00:29:54.140 | What are you doing usually when you're composing a truth?

00:29:57.700 | Are you chilling back on a couch?

00:30:00.740 | Sometimes beds.

00:30:01.740 | Okay.

00:30:02.740 | A lot of different things.

00:30:03.740 | Like late at night, and just-

00:30:06.020 | I'd like to do something late at night.

00:30:07.940 | I'm not a huge sleeper, but whenever I do them past three o'clock, they criticize you

00:30:16.580 | the next day.

00:30:17.580 | Trump was up, truth thing.

00:30:20.820 | Trump was truth thing at three o'clock in the morning, and there should be no problem

00:30:25.060 | with that.

00:30:26.060 | Then when you think about time zones, how do they know that you're in a time zone, like

00:30:30.260 | an eastern zone?

00:30:33.340 | Every time I do it after two or three o'clock, it's like, "Why is he doing that?"

00:30:44.140 | Truth has become a very successful platform, and I like doing it.

00:30:51.140 | It goes everywhere.

00:30:52.140 | As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere.

00:30:54.460 | The country seems more divided than ever.

00:30:56.420 | Yeah.

00:30:57.420 | What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?

00:30:59.700 | You can get rid of these two people.

00:31:01.460 | They're terrible.

00:31:02.460 | They're terrible.

00:31:03.820 | You don't want to have them running this country.

00:31:05.700 | They're not equipped to run it.

00:31:06.700 | Joe just ... Joe is a disaster, and Kamala, I think she'll end up being worse than him.

00:31:17.260 | We'll see.

00:31:18.260 | I think a lot's now ... The convention's over with, and I see I'm leading in just about

00:31:23.140 | all the polls now.

00:31:24.980 | They had their little honeymoon period, as they call it.

00:31:29.380 | We'll see how that all goes.

00:31:30.820 | Who knows?

00:31:31.820 | From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you're talking about a positive

00:31:37.580 | vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.

00:31:41.420 | Yeah.

00:31:42.420 | I think you have to criticize, though.

00:31:44.420 | I think they're nasty.

00:31:46.900 | They came up with a story that I looked down and I called soldiers that died in World War

00:31:53.420 | I, suckers and losers, okay.

00:31:56.300 | Now, number one, who would say that?

00:31:58.940 | Number two, who would say it to military people?

00:32:00.860 | Nobody.

00:32:01.860 | It was a made up story.

00:32:02.860 | It was just a made up story.

00:32:05.940 | They like to repeat it over again.

00:32:07.420 | They know it was made up.

00:32:08.940 | I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said.

00:32:13.980 | They don't want to hear about that.

00:32:16.640 | Like she lied on McDonald's.

00:32:18.020 | She said that she worked at McDonald's.

00:32:22.500 | It's not a big lie, but it's a big lie.

00:32:25.380 | They just went and they checked.

00:32:28.020 | Unless she can show something, they don't talk about, the press isn't going to follow

00:32:31.180 | up with it, but I'll keep hammering it.

00:32:34.460 | She never worked at McDonald's.

00:32:35.540 | It was just a cool thing to say, "Hey, I worked at McDonald's."

00:32:42.180 | One of the worst was two days ago, I went to Arlington at the request of people that

00:32:47.660 | lost their children.

00:32:50.620 | There'll always be children to those people.

00:32:52.260 | You understand that.

00:32:53.260 | That's not a politically incorrect thing to say.

00:32:56.900 | The mother comes up, "I lost my child."

00:32:59.620 | But the child is a soldier.

00:33:03.140 | Lost a child because of Biden and because of Kamala.

00:33:08.580 | Just as though they had the gun in their hand because it was so badly handled.

00:33:13.620 | It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big airbase.

00:33:16.060 | It shouldn't have been done at a small little airport right in the middle of town where

00:33:21.100 | people stormed it.

00:33:23.980 | It was a true disaster.

00:33:28.420 | They asked me if I'd come and celebrate with them three years, three years, they died three

00:33:35.460 | years ago.

00:33:36.460 | I said, "I'm going to try."

00:33:38.460 | I got to know them because I brought them here, actually.

00:33:42.500 | One night, they almost all came here and they said, "I wonder if Trump will actually come

00:33:48.300 | and see us."

00:33:49.300 | I heard they were here.

00:33:50.300 | And we stayed for like four hours listening to music up on a deck right upstairs, beautiful.

00:33:57.020 | And they were great people.

00:33:58.180 | So they called me over the last couple of weeks and they said, "We're going to have

00:34:02.380 | a reunion, a three-year reunion.

00:34:04.300 | Would you be able to come?"

00:34:05.500 | It was very hard for me to do it logistically, but I said, "I'll get it done."

00:34:10.340 | And I got there and we had a beautiful time.

00:34:14.060 | I didn't run away.

00:34:15.060 | I didn't just walk in, shake hands, and walk out like people do.

00:34:19.700 | And I wasn't looking at my watch like Joe Biden does.

00:34:24.180 | And it was amazing.

00:34:26.340 | So I did it for them.

00:34:27.460 | I didn't do it for me.

00:34:29.420 | I don't need the publicity.

00:34:30.420 | I mean, I get more publicity probably than anybody.

00:34:33.460 | You would know that better than me, but I think maybe more than anybody.

00:34:37.300 | Maybe more than anybody that's ever lived.

00:34:39.700 | I don't know, but I don't think anyone could have any more.

00:34:42.660 | Every time you turn on television, there's like nine different stories all on different

00:34:46.140 | topics in the world about Trump.

00:34:48.160 | As an example, you interview a lot of people, good people, successful people.

00:34:54.180 | Let's see how you do with this interview versus them, okay?

00:34:57.660 | I can tell you right now, you're going to get the highest numbers you've ever had by

00:35:01.480 | sometimes a factor of 10, but when a gold star family asks me to come in and spend time

00:35:16.460 | with them, and then they said, "Sir," we did a ceremony and then we went down to the graves,

00:35:22.320 | which was quite a distance away, they said, "Sir, would you come to the grave?"

00:35:29.280 | And then they said when we were there, it's very sad actually, because these people shouldn't

00:35:34.100 | have died.

00:35:35.100 | They shouldn't have died.

00:35:36.100 | They died because of Biden and because of Kamala.

00:35:39.720 | They died because it's just like if they pulled the trigger, okay?

00:35:42.720 | Now, I don't know if that's controversial to say, but I don't think it is.

00:35:48.040 | Afghanistan was the most incompetently run operation I think I've ever seen, military

00:35:52.400 | or otherwise, they were incompetent.

00:35:55.160 | But the families asked me if I'd go.

00:35:57.280 | I did go.

00:35:59.460 | Then the family said, "Could we have a picture at the tombstone of my son?"

00:36:03.800 | And we did.

00:36:04.800 | Son or daughter, there was a daughter too.

00:36:08.160 | And I took numerous pictures with the families.

00:36:11.280 | I don't know of anybody else that was in the pictures, but they were mostly families, I

00:36:15.520 | guess.

00:36:16.520 | That was it.

00:36:17.520 | And then I left.

00:36:18.520 | I spent a lot of time with them.

00:36:19.520 | Then I left and I get home that night and I get a call that the Biden administration

00:36:25.640 | with Kamala is accusing me of using Arlington for publicity.

00:36:31.920 | I was in news, just the opposite, just the opposite.

00:36:36.520 | And actually, did you see, it just came out, the families actually put out a very strong

00:36:40.960 | statement defending me.

00:36:42.520 | They said, "We asked him to be there."

00:36:44.960 | Well, politicians and the media can play those games, and you're right.

00:36:49.000 | Your name gets a lot of use.

00:36:50.600 | You're probably legit the most famous person in the world.

00:36:56.000 | But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat.

00:37:02.160 | Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who

00:37:08.800 | are Democrats themselves, or of that persuasion, progressives, liberals, and so on?

00:37:14.200 | Well, look, I respect the fact that everybody's in there.

00:37:19.600 | And to a certain extent, life is what you do while you're waiting to die, so you might

00:37:25.320 | as well do a good job.

00:37:27.240 | I think in terms of what's happening now, I think we have a chance to save the country.

00:37:33.520 | This country's going down.

00:37:35.880 | And I called it with Venezuela.

00:37:37.200 | I called it with a lot of different countries.

00:37:40.040 | And this country's going down.

00:37:41.920 | If we don't win this election, the election coming up on November 5th is the most important

00:37:50.000 | election this country's ever had, because if we don't win it, I don't know that there'll

00:37:54.080 | be another election, and it's going to be a communist country, or close.

00:38:00.560 | And there's a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn't think that Kamala

00:38:07.160 | is a communist.

00:38:08.800 | Well, she's a Marxist.

00:38:11.520 | Her father's a Marxist.

00:38:12.520 | That's right.

00:38:13.520 | And she's advocating-

00:38:14.520 | It's a little unusual.

00:38:15.520 | Yeah.

00:38:16.520 | She's advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism,

00:38:21.600 | let's say.

00:38:22.600 | But there's a lot of people that kind of know the way government works, and they say, "Well,

00:38:25.560 | none of those policies are going to actually come to reality.

00:38:29.680 | It's just being used during the campaign to, groceries are too expensive.

00:38:35.160 | We need them cheaper.

00:38:36.160 | Let's talk about price controls," and that's never going to come to reality.

00:38:39.840 | It could come to reality.

00:38:40.840 | Look, I mean, she came out with price control.

00:38:43.400 | It's been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it's

00:38:48.520 | never worked once.

00:38:49.880 | It leads to communism.

00:38:51.880 | It leads to socialism.

00:38:53.880 | It leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation.

00:39:00.520 | It's just-

00:39:01.520 | It's a bad idea.

00:39:02.600 | I remember we used terms like communism for her, and I don't know if you know this, but

00:39:06.320 | some people call you a fascist.

00:39:08.360 | Yeah, they do.

00:39:09.360 | So, I figure it's all right to call them a communist, yeah.

00:39:12.160 | They call me a lot worse than I call them.

00:39:14.200 | They do indeed.

00:39:15.200 | It's just sometimes-

00:39:16.360 | It's interesting, though.

00:39:17.360 | They'll call me something that's terrible, and then I'll hit them back.

00:39:20.720 | And they'll say, "Isn't it terrible what Trump said?"

00:39:22.600 | I said, "Wait a minute, they just called me ..." So, I believe you have to fight fire with

00:39:27.360 | fire.

00:39:28.360 | I believe they're very evil people.

00:39:30.440 | These are evil people.

00:39:32.240 | We have an enemy from the outside, and we have an enemy from within.

00:39:37.480 | And in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics, and I think you have

00:39:42.720 | to fight back.

00:39:44.280 | Whenever there's a lot of fighting fire with fire, it's too easy to forget that there's

00:39:49.240 | a middle of America that's moderate and kind of sees the good in both sides, and just likes

00:40:00.360 | one side more than the other in terms of policies.

00:40:02.720 | Like I said, there's a lot of people that like your policies, like your skill in being

00:40:07.600 | able to negotiate and end wars, and they don't see the impending destruction of America.

00:40:15.120 | We had no wars when I was president.

00:40:17.920 | That's a big thing.

00:40:18.920 | Not since 78 years has that happened, but we had no wars when I was president.

00:40:23.360 | We defeated ISIS, but that was a war that was started that we weren't anywhere near

00:40:27.840 | defeating.

00:40:29.280 | But think of it, I had no wars, and Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, said

00:40:35.680 | the world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump.

00:40:39.320 | Now, that's what he said, so I'm not using that term, but I think they respected me.

00:40:43.000 | But he said China was afraid, Russia was afraid, everybody was afraid.

00:40:47.960 | And I don't care what word they use.

00:40:52.520 | Probably that's even a better word, if you want to know the truth, but let's use the

00:40:55.780 | word respect.

00:40:56.780 | If they had respect for me, they had respect for the country.

00:40:59.240 | I mean, I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline.

00:41:05.160 | Nobody else could have done that.

00:41:06.160 | I ended it.

00:41:07.160 | It was done.

00:41:08.160 | Then Biden comes in and he gave it, he approved it.

00:41:11.200 | So we're defending Germany and these other countries for peanuts compared to what it's

00:41:16.760 | worth, and they're paying the person we're defending them against billions and billions

00:41:22.360 | of dollars for energy.

00:41:24.240 | I said, "How does that work?"

00:41:26.560 | And we had it out with them and it worked out good, and they paid hundreds of billions

00:41:30.680 | of dollars.

00:41:31.680 | Or you wouldn't even have a NATO right now.

00:41:33.260 | You wouldn't have NATO if it wasn't for me.

00:41:36.280 | As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world.

00:41:41.180 | As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful.

00:41:44.360 | And if you become leader again, you will have unprecedented power.

00:41:50.160 | Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you?

00:41:53.200 | Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?

00:41:56.240 | No, I don't think so.

00:41:57.560 | Look, I've been there for four years.

00:42:00.600 | I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton.

00:42:03.240 | I thought it looked terrible to take the president's wife and put her in prison.

00:42:08.800 | She's so lucky.

00:42:10.440 | I didn't do anything.

00:42:12.040 | She's so lucky.

00:42:13.840 | Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me to, they wanted to see

00:42:20.960 | something.

00:42:21.960 | But I could have done something very bad.

00:42:24.560 | I thought it looked so bad.

00:42:25.840 | Think of it.

00:42:26.840 | You have the president of the United States and you also had Secretary of State, right?

00:42:29.480 | She was.

00:42:30.480 | But you're going to put the president's wife in prison?

00:42:34.600 | And yet when I got out there, you know, they have all these hoaxes.

00:42:37.320 | They're all hoaxes, but they have all these dishonest hoaxes, just like they did in the

00:42:43.000 | past with Russia, Russia, Russia, that was a hoax.

00:42:47.000 | The 51 different, you know, agencies or agents, that was a hoax.

00:42:53.080 | The whole thing was a hoax.

00:42:54.320 | The whole, there was so many hoaxes and scams.

00:43:00.760 | But I didn't want to put her in jail.

00:43:03.200 | And I didn't.

00:43:04.200 | And I explained it to people.

00:43:05.200 | You know, they say, "Lock her up, lock her up."

00:43:07.640 | It doesn't.

00:43:08.640 | We won.

00:43:09.640 | I said, "We don't want to put her in jail.

00:43:12.440 | We want to bring the country together.

00:43:13.800 | I want to bring the country together."

00:43:16.340 | You don't bring the country together by putting her in jail.

00:43:20.200 | But then when I got out, you know, they went to work on me.

00:43:23.600 | It's amazing.

00:43:24.600 | And they suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS.

00:43:33.620 | And I don't know if it's curable from their standpoint.

00:43:36.960 | A lot of people are very interested in footage of UFOs.

00:43:41.720 | The Pentagon has released a few videos.

00:43:46.220 | And there's been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots.

00:43:49.660 | So a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage,

00:43:55.820 | which a lot of people claim is available?

00:43:57.180 | Oh, yeah, sure.

00:43:58.180 | I'll do that.

00:43:59.180 | I would do that.

00:44:00.180 | I'd love to do that.

00:44:01.780 | I have to do that.

00:44:03.880 | But they also are pushing me on Kennedy.

00:44:06.540 | And I did release a lot.

00:44:07.860 | But I had people come to me and beg me not to do it.

00:44:11.440 | But I'll be doing that very early on.

00:44:13.660 | Yeah.

00:44:14.660 | No, but I would do that.

00:44:16.760 | There's a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein, releasing some of the documents

00:44:21.180 | on Epstein.

00:44:22.180 | Why the hesitation?

00:44:23.660 | I don't think...

00:44:24.660 | I mean, I'm not involved.

00:44:26.100 | I never went to his island, fortunately.

00:44:31.840 | But a lot of people did.

00:44:33.380 | Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?

00:44:42.620 | He was a good salesman.

00:44:43.620 | He was a hale and hearty type of guy.

00:44:48.660 | He had some nice assets that he'd throw around, like islands.

00:44:52.300 | But a lot of big people went to that island.

00:44:57.260 | But fortunately, I was not one of them.

00:44:59.940 | It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the

00:45:05.220 | island has not been made public.

00:45:07.460 | Yeah.

00:45:08.460 | It's very interesting, isn't it?

00:45:11.860 | Probably will be, by the way.

00:45:13.680 | So if you were able to, you would be...

00:45:15.460 | Yeah, I'd certainly take a look at it.

00:45:17.300 | Now, Kennedy's interesting because it's so many years ago.

00:45:21.820 | They do that for danger, too, because it endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera.

00:45:27.180 | So Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing.

00:45:32.660 | But yeah, I'd be inclined to do the Epstein.

00:45:34.420 | I'd have no problem with it.

00:45:36.020 | That's great to hear.

00:45:37.660 | What gives you strength when you're getting attacked?

00:45:39.780 | You're one of the most attacked people in the world.

00:45:43.460 | I think you can't care that much.

00:45:47.300 | I know people that care so much about everything, like what people are saying.

00:45:51.380 | You can't care too much because you end up choking.

00:45:55.820 | One of the tragic things about life is that it ends.

00:45:59.300 | How often do you think about your death?

00:46:00.860 | Are you afraid of it?

00:46:02.420 | I have a friend who's very, very successful, and he's in his 80s, mid-80s.

00:46:10.900 | And he asked me that exact same question.

00:46:14.100 | I turned it around.

00:46:15.100 | I said, "Well, what about you?"

00:46:16.820 | He said, "I think about it every minute of every day."

00:46:20.460 | And then a week later, he called me to tell me something, and he starts off the conversation

00:46:25.420 | by going, "Tick, tock, tick, tock."

00:46:29.460 | This is a dark person, in a sense, but it is what it is.

00:46:38.700 | If you're religious, you have, I think, a better feeling toward it.

00:46:42.260 | You're supposed to go to heaven, ideally not hell, but you're supposed to go to heaven

00:46:47.020 | if you're good.

00:46:48.660 | I think our country is missing a lot of religion.

00:46:51.020 | I think it really was a much better place with religion.

00:46:54.580 | It was almost a guide, to a certain extent, it was a guide.

00:46:58.820 | You want to be good to people.

00:47:00.620 | Without religion, there's no real, there are no guardrails.

00:47:05.060 | I'd love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country.

00:47:09.100 | Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there, and thank you for talking

00:47:12.620 | today.

00:47:13.620 | Look, I love the country.

00:47:15.100 | I want to see the country be great, and we have a real chance of doing it, but it's our

00:47:19.060 | last chance, and I appreciate it very much.

00:47:22.860 | Thank you.

00:47:23.860 | Thank you.

00:47:24.860 | Thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Trump.

00:47:27.940 | To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

00:47:32.060 | And now, as I've started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments

00:47:37.100 | and answer a few questions.

00:47:39.180 | If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfriedman.com/ama,

00:47:46.460 | or get in touch with me for whatever other reason at lexfriedman.com/contact.

00:47:52.180 | I usually do this in a T-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I'll keep my suit and tie

00:47:57.420 | on.

00:47:58.420 | So first, this might be a good moment to look back a bit.

00:48:02.100 | I've been doing this podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost have to say

00:48:08.500 | thank you.

00:48:09.500 | I'm truly grateful for the support and the love I've gotten along the way.

00:48:14.260 | It's been, I would say, the most unlikely journey, and on most days, I barely feel like

00:48:19.220 | I know what I'm doing.

00:48:20.620 | But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations.

00:48:24.500 | Now, each conversation is its own unique puzzle, so I can't speak generally to how I approach

00:48:29.980 | these.

00:48:30.980 | But here, it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations with world leaders,

00:48:35.660 | of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time.

00:48:40.100 | I read a lot of history, and I admire the historian perspective.

00:48:45.100 | As an example, I admire William Shire, the author of many books on Hitler, including

00:48:49.940 | The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

00:48:53.220 | He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively to the degree that one could.

00:49:00.940 | Academic historians, by the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he

00:49:06.020 | editorialized a little too much.

00:49:09.700 | I think those same folks criticize Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History podcast.

00:49:15.820 | I respect their criticism, but I fundamentally disagree.

00:49:20.060 | So in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat.

00:49:25.300 | I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there's a spectrum between the ephemeral and

00:49:31.260 | the eternal.

00:49:32.260 | The outrage mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current

00:49:37.940 | thing, the current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision.

00:49:42.460 | But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten.

00:49:47.380 | A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture.

00:49:53.140 | Now this is much easier said than done.

00:49:57.540 | It's not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them.

00:50:01.700 | It's not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck

00:50:08.180 | at, but let's say it's a work in progress.

00:50:12.700 | You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment

00:50:17.220 | in a way that is conducive to such a conversation.

00:50:20.060 | This is hard, really hard with political and business leaders.

00:50:24.000 | They are usually super busy and in some cases super nervous because, well, they've been

00:50:29.780 | screwed over so many times with clickbait gotcha journalism.

00:50:33.980 | So to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard.

00:50:39.320 | And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration.

00:50:43.620 | And I've been thinking a lot about why.

00:50:45.700 | I don't think it's just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the

00:50:49.660 | content.

00:50:51.580 | I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist relaxes things and

00:50:58.700 | allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details.

00:51:03.740 | Because I think it's in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought

00:51:07.940 | to light.

00:51:09.380 | Anyway, I look forward to talking to more world leaders and doing a better job every

00:51:15.020 | time.

00:51:16.020 | As I said, I would love to do interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political figures

00:51:20.540 | on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary.

00:51:27.500 | And on the right, JD Vance, Vivek, George W and so on.

00:51:31.560 | And on the topic of politics, let me say as an immigrant, I love this country, the United

00:51:37.220 | States of America.

00:51:38.620 | I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth.

00:51:41.820 | And I'm grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics

00:51:47.080 | to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well.

00:51:52.500 | I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others.

00:51:56.020 | I probably should do a better job of that.

00:51:58.760 | But I've been doing most of this myself.

00:52:00.760 | All the reach out, scheduling, research, prep, recording, and so on.

00:52:04.340 | And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome, with a voice

00:52:08.620 | in my head constantly pointing out when I'm doing a shitty job.

00:52:12.340 | Plus a few folks graciously remind me on the internet, the very same sentiment of this

00:52:19.820 | aforementioned voice.

00:52:22.100 | All of this while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots and

00:52:25.960 | doing some cool AI research with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company,

00:52:30.600 | or maybe starting my own.

00:52:32.360 | All of these options make me truly happy.

00:52:35.300 | But like I said, on most days, I barely know what I'm doing, so who knows what the future

00:52:40.300 | holds.

00:52:41.300 | Most importantly, I'm forever grateful for all of you, for your patience and your support

00:52:47.000 | throughout this rollercoaster of a life I've been on.

00:52:49.860 | I love you all.

00:52:51.460 | Okay, now let me go on to some of the questions that people had.

00:52:56.500 | I was asked by a few people to comment on Pavel Durov's arrest and on X being banned

00:53:02.100 | in Brazil.

00:53:03.100 | Let me first briefly comment on the Durov arrest.

00:53:07.260 | So basic facts.

00:53:08.940 | Pavel Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption

00:53:14.300 | mode.

00:53:15.300 | It's not on by default, and most people don't use the end-to-end encryption, but some do.

00:53:20.980 | Pavel was arrested in France on a long list of charges related to quote-unquote criminal

00:53:27.260 | activity carried out on the Telegram platform and for quote-unquote providing unlicensed

00:53:34.300 | cryptology services.

00:53:36.220 | I think Telegram is indeed used for criminal activity by a small minority of its users,

00:53:41.500 | for example, by terrorist groups to communicate, and I think we all agree that terrorism is

00:53:46.780 | bad.

00:53:47.780 | But here's the problem.

00:53:49.500 | As the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

00:53:54.360 | And there are many cases in which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are.

00:53:59.940 | But there are other cases when governments, especially authoritarian-inclined governments,

00:54:05.420 | tend to propagandize and just call whoever's in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists.

00:54:11.780 | There is some room for nuance here, but to me, at this time, it seems to obviously be

00:54:17.900 | a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor access into every platform so they

00:54:23.560 | can have censorship power against the opposition.

00:54:26.580 | I think generally, government should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social

00:54:31.680 | media platforms.

00:54:33.260 | And I think arresting a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the platform he built

00:54:38.660 | is just nuts.

00:54:40.820 | It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram, and on people working

00:54:45.100 | at every social media company, and also people thinking of launching a new social media company.

00:54:50.740 | Same is the case of X being banned in Brazil.

00:54:54.340 | It's I think a power grab by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil.

00:55:00.460 | He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading quote-unquote "misinformation."

00:55:05.020 | Elon and X denied the request.

00:55:08.940 | Then de Moraes threatened to arrest X representatives in Brazil, and in response to that, X pulled

00:55:15.060 | the representatives out of Brazil, obviously, to protect them.

00:55:20.120 | And now X having no representatives in Brazil apparently violates the law.

00:55:24.900 | Based on this, de Moraes banned X in Brazil.

00:55:28.980 | Once again, it's an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over the channels of communication.

00:55:34.900 | I understand that this is complicated, because there are evil people in the world, and part

00:55:39.900 | of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people.

00:55:43.980 | But as Benjamin Franklin said, "Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a

00:55:48.300 | little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

00:55:53.300 | So it's a trade-off.

00:55:54.700 | But I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this

00:55:59.820 | time from liberty.

00:56:01.980 | Okay, next up, I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with.

00:56:08.420 | I'll condense it as follows.

00:56:10.220 | "Hello Lex, I'm a programmer, and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance, because

00:56:17.380 | I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills."

00:56:20.940 | Let me first say that I relate to your fear.

00:56:25.700 | It's scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken

00:56:29.820 | away.

00:56:30.820 | For me, programming is a passion, and if not for this podcast, it would probably, at least

00:56:36.700 | in part, be my profession.

00:56:38.460 | So I get an uncomfortable feeling every time Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time,

00:56:45.300 | just writes a lot of excellent, approximately correct code.

00:56:49.780 | I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at

00:56:54.900 | least in the same way that the collective intelligence of Stack Overflow exceeds the

00:56:59.300 | skill of many programmers, many individual programmers.

00:57:02.260 | But in many ways, it still does not.

00:57:06.220 | But I think eventually, more and more, the task, the profession of programming will be

00:57:12.340 | one of writing natural language prompts.

00:57:15.220 | I think the right thing to do, and what I'm at least doing, is to ride the wave of the

00:57:21.620 | ever-improving code-generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big-picture designer

00:57:27.380 | versus low-level tinkerer.

00:57:30.540 | What I'm doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art

00:57:35.780 | tool is for generating code.

00:57:37.460 | So for me currently, I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor, and before that it was

00:57:42.740 | Emacs to VS Code switch.

00:57:45.340 | So Cursor is this editor that's based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates

00:57:53.060 | the code generation really nicely into the editing process.

00:57:56.660 | So it makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs.

00:58:01.640 | So what I would advise and what I'm trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and

00:58:05.060 | to master its code generation capabilities.

00:58:08.340 | I personally try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language

00:58:14.020 | first versus writing code from scratch.

00:58:17.620 | So using my understanding of programming to edit the code that's generated by the LLM

00:58:25.020 | versus sort of writing it from scratch, and then using the LLM to generate small parts

00:58:29.860 | of the code.

00:58:30.860 | I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill.

00:58:34.780 | I think this applies to many other careers too.

00:58:37.420 | Don't compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better.

00:58:42.740 | But yes, it is scary on some deep sort of human level, the threat of being replaced.

00:58:52.060 | But at least I think we'll be okay.

00:58:54.620 | All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who

00:59:01.340 | is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future.

00:59:05.500 | Just recently, he graduated with a bachelor's degree and he's thinking about going to grad

00:59:09.260 | school for biomedical engineering.

00:59:11.580 | But there is a lot of anxiety.

00:59:13.380 | He mentioned anxiety many times in the message.

00:59:16.580 | It took him an extra while to get his degree.

00:59:18.320 | So he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he's done with his PhD.

00:59:23.380 | So it's a big investment.

00:59:25.020 | But he said in his heart, he feels like he's a scientist.

00:59:29.220 | I think that's the most important part of his message, of your message.

00:59:33.220 | By the way, I'll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes.

00:59:37.940 | Now onto the question.

00:59:39.460 | So thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question.

00:59:43.820 | My own life story is similar to yours.

00:59:45.780 | I went to Drexel University for my bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees.

00:59:52.060 | And I took a while just as you're doing.

00:59:55.620 | I did a lot of non-standard things that weren't any good for some hypothetical career I'm

01:00:01.220 | supposed to have.

01:00:02.660 | I trained and competed in judo and jiu-jitsu for my entire 20s, got a black belt from it.

01:00:10.060 | I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry.

01:00:14.580 | I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy and literature.

01:00:19.940 | I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren't at all required for my computer

01:00:24.260 | science and electrical engineering degrees, like a course on James Joyce.

01:00:29.220 | I played guitar in bars around town.

01:00:32.820 | I took a lot of technical classes, many, for example, on theoretical computer science,

01:00:38.060 | that were way more than were needed for the degree.

01:00:41.180 | I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn't directly contribute

01:00:47.200 | to my dissertation.

01:00:49.140 | It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring.

01:00:53.800 | So like you, I took the long way home, as they say, and I regret none of it.

01:01:00.900 | Throughout that, people around me, and even people who love me, wanted me to hurry up

01:01:05.100 | and to focus, especially because I had very little money and so I had a sense like time

01:01:12.620 | was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career.

01:01:18.740 | Just like you, I was filled with anxiety and I still am filled with anxiety to this day,

01:01:24.760 | but I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into

01:01:28.980 | it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got, the things you're passionate about.

01:01:36.180 | As you said, very importantly, in your heart, you know you're a scientist, so that's it.

01:01:41.720 | You know exactly what to do.

01:01:43.620 | Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got.

01:01:47.320 | Get to a good grad school, find a good advisor, and do epic shit with them.

01:01:53.680 | And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long

01:01:58.320 | as you're chasing dreams and goals with absolute, unwavering dedication, good stuff will come

01:02:04.000 | with it.

01:02:05.320 | And also, try your best to be a good person.

01:02:08.800 | This might be a good place to read the words "if" by Roger Kipling that I often return

01:02:14.240 | to when I feel lost and am looking for guidance on how to be a better man.

01:02:21.200 | If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.

01:02:26.140 | If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting

01:02:30.080 | too.

01:02:31.220 | If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, or being lied about don't deal in lies, or

01:02:36.400 | being hated don't give way to hating, and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise.

01:02:43.240 | If you can dream and not make dreams your master.

01:02:46.080 | If you can think and not make thoughts your aim.

01:02:48.940 | If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.

01:02:54.920 | If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

01:03:01.360 | or watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build them up with worn

01:03:07.000 | out tools.

01:03:08.900 | If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss,

01:03:15.520 | and lose and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss.

01:03:22.540 | If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they're

01:03:28.160 | gone, and so hold on when there's nothing in you except the will which says to them,

01:03:35.260 | hold on.

01:03:36.920 | If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, or walk with kings nor lose the common

01:03:41.880 | touch.

01:03:42.960 | If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you.

01:03:46.600 | If all men count with you, but none too much.

01:03:51.420 | If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run, yours

01:03:57.760 | is the earth and everything that's in it, and which is more, you'll be a man, my son.

01:04:05.520 | Thank you for listening, and see you next time.

01:04:08.320 | [Music]

01:04:08.820 | [Music]

01:04:10.820 | [Music]

01:04:12.820 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Donald Trump Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #442

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