Here's the transcript, for posterity. Just stunning. I'll put it in spoilers cause it's looooong.
► Show Spoiler
SANDER GERBER: Thank you, Mr. President, for all the details on your economic policy. As you alluded to, tariffs are the other side of sanctions. And given that China is our major trading partner with our largest imbalance and possibly our chief security – national security threat to the United States, how can we better institutionalize trade policy and national security policy to be coordinated?
DONALD TRUMP: So I had a great relationship with President Xi of China – really very close relationship. Now, look, he likes China, I like us, so – but I don’t want to sound foolish. He was my dear, dear friend. He’s a tough guy. He’s a fierce person. I say, very smart.
You know, when you say, he’s smart, the fake news goes crazy. He said, President, Xi is smart. And I say, yeah, well, he controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He’s smart.
But we had a very good relationship with China until COVID. And when that came in, it was a whole different ballgame, as far as I was concerned. You know, we made a great China trade deal, maybe better than the USMCA, and I’d never talk about it, because what happened with COVID, for the whole world – $60 trillion in, you know, deaths – 70 million, 60 – nobody even knows how many deaths. And it all came out of Wuhan.
So it changed my relationship. But I think I have a great relationship with China. I had one before, and they respected us, but they respected us because they no longer thought we were fools. They used to think we were fools.
Because we built China, they would take over $500 billion a year and use it for their military and other things. And we got nothing out of that. We got some cheap product. We got – you can buy 19 pencils instead of two.
Who the hell cares? You can buy 16 dolls for your daughter instead of two nice dolls. And we got very little out of that relationship. They got a tremendous military power, and they still have it today.
But I believe we will have a very good relationship with China and with a lot of other countries that we’re not getting along with too well today. And things are going to straighten out. We’re going to get them straightened out very quickly. Very important that we get along with the rest of the world.
You know, we have things today called nuclear weapons. I rebuilt our whole military, including our nuclear capability. And so I got very familiar with it. And I say this often because I had an uncle who was the longest-serving – I believe the longest-serving.
I was told that by MIT. But he was their 39, I guess, or 41 years longest-serving professor in the history of MIT. And nuclear was something he knew a lot about. We used to talk about it.
I’d say, Uncle John, there’s no way. He was telling me about this incredible power that was being unleashed, potentially. And I say, Uncle John, you could never – and you know what? He was very modest, because I’ve seen the destructive capability.
And this world is going to have to get along, because if that’s ever unleashed, we already have too many countries that have at least remnants of it, some of it. But probably five countries, if you think. And Kim Jong-un, when I was – went to the White House after winning in 2016, I sat with President Obama, which is a ritual. And you sit and you talk.
And I said, What’s the biggest problem? He said, North Korea is the biggest problem. I don’t think it’s solvable. I said, Have you tried calling him or talking to him? And actually, the answer was yes, and he wasn’t responded to. But I did, and we were very safe. It started off a little rocky, if you remember. Little Rocket Man, I called him, and he called me things too.
He’s got a red button on his desk. I said, I have a bigger red button, and my red button works, I said. And then it started getting a little nicer, and then one day I got a call that they’d like to meet. And it was a great thing.
We had a great meeting. We had two meetings – actually, two great meetings, summits. And we had no problem with them. Now they have a problem because they’re not liking this administration.
They don’t respect this administration at all. So we have to get along. We have to get along. We can’t have World War III. You’re going to end up in World War III, just like you should have never had Russia go in. It would have never happened if a competent person led us. It would have never happened. He led them into it.
And I’m not blaming Biden. But you know what? What he was saying was exactly the wrong thing. I said, we’re going to have an invasion because of a lot of the rhetoric. It was stupid rhetoric. But it would have never happened. Not only for that reason, oil was down low. You know, oil was almost at $100 a barrel.
So Putin is one of the only people – I mean, it’s – nothing’s easy in life. But Putin at $100 a barrel – war works. At $40 a barrel, it didn’t work at all. So we’re going to get back to an intelligently run place, a place where other countries aren’t using the word – nuclear.
That word was never talked about during my – because I knew the power of it. And I talked to Putin about it. I talked to President Xi about it. I think we were going to do – you remember the talk where we were going to reduce nuclear capability substantially – all three of us.
We’re going to start it. We’re going to reduce very substantially. And then we had the election, and after the election, they didn’t talk about that or anything else, frankly. But we have to be very, very careful, because the destructive capability of nuclear – when people talk about global warming, I say the ocean is going to go down one hundredth of an inch within the next 400 years.
That’s not our problem. Our problem is nuclear warming. And we’d better be smart, and we’d better have smart people at the top that know how to deal, because these people don’t know how to deal. Putin came out today.
He endorsed Kamala. And I didn’t know. Was I supposed to call him up and say, thank you very much, I appreciate it. But he endorsed Kamala. I have a feeling. I don’t know. I don’t know exactly what to say about that. I don’t know if I’m insulted or he did me a favor.
But we have to get along with the world. We can’t have war because of the destructive capability. You can be the head of the biggest bank wherever the hell Jamie is sitting. You can be the head of the biggest bank in the world, and a couple of nukes in your bank doesn’t mean a thing.
You got to get along. This is such an important job. It’s a dangerous job too, a very dangerous job. If you look at statistically, being President is very dangerous. That throbbing feeling I have, oh, that throbbing feeling. No, it’s a very dangerous job, and you have to do it right. And if you don’t do it right, bad things will happen to the world, things like you’ve never seen before. Okay, thank you very much.
And then they applauded.
Philly Boondoggle
