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Sean Hannity FULL END SHOW 1/8/26 | FOX BREAKING NEWS TONIGHT THUSRDAY JANUARY 08, 2026
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00:00And welcome to Hannity, and tonight we are live in Washington, D.C. for my exclusive interview
00:08with President Donald Trump. That's moments away. It is his first sit-down interview since
00:14the U.S. captured Nicolas Maduro. But first, tonight, we do begin on the other side of the
00:19country in Portland, Oregon, where an investigation is now underway after an incident earlier today
00:25where U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents fired their weapons in the line of duty.
00:32The agents, thankfully, are okay. The two other people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds,
00:38one of whom we are now learning is believed to be a member of Trende Aragua. Anyway,
00:44our very own Kevin Cork has an update on all of this, a full report. Kevin.
00:49Evening, Sean. As you pointed out, a Border Patrol agent shot two people in Portland, Oregon,
00:53this afternoon after the driver of that car allegedly attempted to run over federal officers.
00:58Now, this all unfolded. About 2.19 local time, Pacific time, of course, that's when agents
01:04identified themselves. This was, by the way, a targeted stop of an alleged member of Trende Aragua,
01:11the Venezuelan gang. Now, after the agent identified himself, the driver and that passenger,
01:16who's also believed to be a part of that gang's prostitution ring, tried to weaponize the vehicle
01:22and run over law enforcement officers. After the driver, of course, was hit by gunfire,
01:27they were found about 10 minutes later. The driver and the passenger were both apparently
01:31hit. As you point out, they were taken to local hospitals, Sean. We do not have an update
01:35on their conditions tonight. Now, this, of course, comes on the heels of yesterday's shooting in
01:40Minneapolis of a woman who also allegedly attempted to speed off in the direction of officers,
01:45despite being told to get out of the vehicle. Of course, she died from her injury, Sean.
01:49All right. And, Kevin, we are expecting some type of press conference coming up shortly,
01:55right? That is correct. We got a little blurb earlier, but we're expecting a more fulsome
02:00news conference to be coming our way just shortly. And as we get information,
02:04we promise to pass it along to you. But for now, back to you.
02:06All right, Kevin Quark, thank you. Now, this was a huge week for the president,
02:10both at home and abroad. And in the coming days, so much at stake. Earlier, I sat down with
02:16President Trump. In the West Wing, here is part one of my exclusive interview with President Donald
02:21J. Trump. You've done quite a bit of decorating since I've been here.
02:25Well, I have. Great to see you, sir.
02:26I didn't know it was a full hour. It was going to be maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
02:31But you do that to me every once in a while.
02:34I think I was pretty clear. But thank you for your time. We always appreciate it.
02:38There's really not much in the news. So there's not a real lot to talk about.
02:42But let's start with Venezuela. Narco-terrorist,
02:47indicted, guy that we're losing 200 Americans a day to drugs.
02:52Yeah.
02:52Walk us through this decision in Venezuela.
02:56Well, it wasn't a hard decision.
02:57Democrats wanted him and Republicans wanted him.
03:00And nobody had what it takes to get him or didn't want to get him.
03:04I don't know. Something happened. But he killed a lot of people. He sent a lot of bad people into
03:08our country. He emptied his prisons into the United States. He emptied his mental institutions
03:14and insane asylums into the United States. And did a lot of very bad things. But he was a big
03:20drug pusher. You see that? Because all the boats that we shot down, they came out of Venezuela.
03:25A lot of drugs. There's a lot of boats and a lot of drugs. There's very few boats operating right
03:29now. There's almost no boats. You can't find any boats. I don't think anyone would go fishing in those
03:33But not a lot of people want to go fishing anymore. But we've knocked out 97% of the drugs coming in
03:40by water. And we are going to start now hitting land with regard to the cartels. The cartels are running
03:49Mexico. It's very, very sad to watch and see what's happened to that country. But the cartels are running
03:54and they're killing 250,000, 300,000 people in our country every single year. The drugs. It's horrible.
04:01It's devastated families. You lose a child or a parent. I mean, parents are dying too with drugs.
04:07So we've done a really good job. We're knocking it down. The numbers are really getting to be
04:13they're always going to be too high if you have one person. But they're going down just like the
04:17border. The border was a total mess for years. I did it the first time very quickly. And this time
04:23I did it even better because this was a bigger mess. This was a border like no other probably in the
04:29history of the world. There's never been a border like that when anybody could just walk into your
04:32country. The border is ostensibly really closed now.
04:35Closed. You can't come in. And nobody comes. Nobody even tries.
04:39And the people in Texas, Arizona, all these places that are won by such big numbers,
04:44they are so happy with the border. They had homes that they weren't even able to live in their home.
04:50Every day people were knocking on their door. Every hour. And it's just a great honor to be
04:57involved with it. The ICE and Border Patrol and all of the people have been so good. Tom Holman,
05:03Kristi Noem. The people have done such an incredible job. You have no idea.
05:08You've made a number of profound announcements and then a new announcement today.
05:13Announcement number one was 30 to 50 million barrels of oil that they will be handing over to
05:20you and you will sell it on the market at market prices. That money will be used for the people of
05:26Venezuela and the people of America. Then they made an announcement yesterday that they will buy all of
05:32their goods from this country. Today we learn that the holdovers since Maduro is gone have agreed to
05:41free all of the political prisoners. It indicates they want peace with Donald Trump to me. How do you
05:49interpret it? We asked him to do that and they've been great. They really have been. I mean,
05:53everything we've wanted, they've given us. We went in. We took Maduro out. Amazingly that nobody was
06:01killed. We didn't lose a soldier. Some people wounded, but we didn't lose a soldier. A couple of very brave
06:07helicopter pilots were wounded pretty badly, but they're good. They're in good shape. And it was
06:13an amazing attack. The other side was lost a lot of people, unfortunately. But you know, this house
06:18was in the middle of a fort with thousands of people and soldiers and everything else. And we went
06:24right into the middle of a fort. Who would think you could do that and not lose anybody? But they had
06:29it planned so beautifully. General Raisin Cain and Pete Hegseth were fantastic. Marco has been doing a
06:35great job. Vice President. The whole group is, it's just a fantastic, it's a fantastic group.
06:42Let's talk a little bit about, you make these decisions. I don't care if it's this case,
06:48Operation Midnight Hammer. In the one case, you're here in the White House in the Situation Room.
06:55You're watching this unfold in real time. In this case, you have operationally the same thing,
07:01a Situation Room down in Palm Beach in Mar-a-Lago. You make that ultimate call. You are the
07:08commander-in-chief. Right. You're watching it unfold in real time. What is that like?
07:13Well, I've done it now quite a bit. We took out Soleimani, which was a big deal. I mean, a very big deal.
07:19Middle East. He was very bad to people. Killed a lot of people. Everybody you see, just about 95%
07:28of the people you see walking around without legs or without arms. That was the roadside bomb. That
07:33was his baby. He loved it. We took him out. We took out al-Baghdadi. He's the founder of ISIS.
07:39We did Midnight Hammer, which was obliterate the Iran nuclear threat. And it was a total obliteration,
07:46as they found out. The B-2 bombers and the best pilots anywhere in the world.
07:51They did it at night with no moon, totally dark. And every bomb went right down an air
07:58shaft deep into a granite mountain. It was amazing. And we did this. And they're similar
08:04in a way. I don't know. This seems to have gotten the imagination maybe even more than the other
08:10ones. But I think they're very equal in many ways. But I don't know. Maybe taking out the nuclear
08:18threat from Iran. It's very important. But in terms of captivating attention, this seems to be
08:24something that is beyond anything that anybody's seen. Especially the operational details.
08:30Well, the bravery involved. You know, I mean, to have people coming, going into an army fort
08:35with, you know, thousands of soldiers, land a helicopter right in the middle of it,
08:42break down a steel door, because, you know, it was a fortified house, break down a steel door,
08:48run through the hallway shooting, and come out 10 minutes later with a guy who wasn't quite able
08:56to get into a safe house. You know, there's a safe...
08:59I heard they got to him within three minutes. Less than three minutes.
09:03It was so fast. I mean, nobody's ever seen anything like it.
09:07But the safe house wasn't safe, because they had blowtorches that go through steel like it's butter.
09:13They didn't have to use them. But we have... These are great people. These are really brave people.
09:20Even coming down those ropes, you know, they're coming down ropes off the helicopter.
09:23And they run... I was thinking to myself, I wonder if I could do that. I'm going to have to give it
09:28a try sometime. But they do it like it's a stairway, like it's a beautiful stairway.
09:33And they're on the ground instantly, and they're ready for action. These are brave people.
09:39We have the greatest soldiers in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world.
09:42Nobody can match us. You know, a lot...
09:44You know, I rebuilt the entire military during my first term.
09:47Good thing you did.
09:48Biden gave some of it away, a lot of it, but not a lot relative to what I bought.
09:54But he gave a big chunk to Afghanistan, which was just insane.
09:58That was one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of our country.
10:02This was the opposite. This was a total...
10:05You know, if you think about Jimmy Carter with the hostages, or you think about the Afghanistan disaster
10:11that we had not so long ago with Biden, where it was just mass confusion and the death of 13 great
10:20soldiers who I got to know. I got to know the families very well.
10:23Great people. But also, and nobody talks about him, 48 people so badly injured,
10:29and hundreds of people dead.
10:31Hundreds of people. You know, when those bombs were off, because I count the other side,
10:35but there were hundreds of people killed,
10:38all because of an incompetent group of politicians and generals and people that shouldn't be there.
10:44Let's talk a little bit, maybe an underreported story, but we know for a fact that both the Russians
10:56and the Chinese provided missile and ballistic missile systems.
11:02They did it to both. They helped Iran and they helped Venezuela.
11:08But you were able to dismantle that.
11:09You talk a lot about American military superiority, and then that goes into the issue
11:14that you raised this week of raising the budget for 2027 from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion.
11:22We need it. You know, when you look at the threat out there,
11:25we have the best equipment in the world. We make the best equipment in the world.
11:29We make just, you know, there's nothing even close.
11:32But we need it because there are some real threats out there.
11:35Yeah. Well, I think we certainly do.
11:38Let me ask you about this. And I think this is important.
11:41With every military operation comes risk, and you have to obviously weigh that risk.
11:47And I think Americans would want to know what goes into your thinking,
11:52because there's a whole new military doctrine.
11:55I call it the Trump doctrine. I think it's widely misunderstood.
11:58No forever wars. However, that doesn't mean you don't use the might and power of the U.S. military.
12:05You mentioned Baghdadi, Soleimani. I'll add the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan.
12:10Right.
12:10The ISIS caliphate.
12:12And then taking out Iran's nuclear weapon sites.
12:15And now our hemisphere.
12:17Right.
12:17Are you calling it the Donnero Doctrine?
12:19Well, they call it the Donnero. I didn't call it that.
12:21But they're calling it the Monroe Doctrine.
12:23And now they call it the Donnero, which is basically safety for this part of the world.
12:28And, yeah, I mean, it's pretty simple.
12:32We don't want drugs pouring into our country.
12:34We don't want bad people coming into our country,
12:36like happened for four years under Biden,
12:39who was a disgrace, worst president in the history of our country, horrible.
12:43We had some other bad ones. Let me tell you, Obama was a terrible president.
12:46The divisiveness and the hatred that was caused.
12:49And many of the people allowed into the country.
12:52But what Biden did was a step beyond anything that anybody's ever done.
12:55We had millions of people pouring through the border.
12:58Now we have nobody coming in unless they come in legally.
13:02Let's talk about, you said, for the interim,
13:04you will be in charge.
13:07Okay.
13:07Obviously, the remaining leadership underneath Maduro,
13:11they've made, I mentioned earlier,
13:13three major concessions, 30 to 50 million barrels of oil.
13:17They're going to buy and purchase all their goods from America.
13:20Now they're releasing political prisoners.
13:22Yeah.
13:23Okay.
13:24What is your ultimate goal for the governance of Venezuela?
13:28This is that nobody thought they would ever see again
13:31are being released, yeah.
13:32And in many cases, good people is what I understand.
13:36But prisoners, nobody ever thought they'd be released.
13:39So we're going to be working with them
13:42and leadership of the country.
13:45And so far, we've been working very well.
13:48You know, we've picked up the Russian freighter
13:51that trudged out there.
13:53I want to ask you about that.
13:54Well, they had some Russian ships guarding it
13:56and they decided not to mess around with us.
13:59And we took that one.
14:00That's unloading the oil.
14:02But we're getting, we're taking billions and billions of dollars worth of oil
14:06and it'll be hundreds of billions of dollars.
14:09It'll be trillions of dollars.
14:10But we're going to be there until we straighten out the country.
14:14We'll see how the country's doing.
14:16But we'll be running the oil.
14:17We're meeting tomorrow with all of the big oil executives.
14:20We're going to be right here in the White House.
14:21We're going to meet with the, you know, biggest oil people in the world.
14:25They're all coming here.
14:26The top 14 companies are coming here.
14:29They're going to go in.
14:31They're going to rebuild the whole oil infrastructure.
14:33They're going to spend at least $100 billion.
14:36And it's an unbelievable oil that they have
14:39and an unbelievable quality of oil and amount of oil.
14:43When they nationalized the oil industry in Venezuela,
14:47going back to the 1920s,
14:49American companies had invested billions.
14:52We built it.
14:53All of it.
14:54And then it was taken away from us.
14:56Stolen.
14:57It was stolen from us.
14:59And it was taken away, you know, years ago over a period of time.
15:03But it was taken away in the early 2000s, even beyond that.
15:07But the early 2000s.
15:09And I just took it back.
15:13I can't imagine them being able to,
15:18they have the largest oil reserves in the world.
15:20I can't imagine without American investment, ingenuity, engineering,
15:27and our assistance that they would ever be able to tap into the vast resources that they have.
15:33Again, the largest in the entire world.
15:35So that will be a big part of it.
15:37What does that mean in terms of America's new partnership with Venezuela?
15:44Well, it means lower oil prices all over the world, which is great for everybody.
15:49It means lower oil prices for America, which I have it down.
15:53Don't forget, I inherited a mess.
15:54I inherited, they talk about affordability.
15:56There was no affordability under Biden.
15:58He had the worst inflation in history, the highest and worst inflation in history.
16:04Prices were through the roof, and I'm fixing it.
16:06I inherited a mess.
16:08I say it all the time.
16:09I inherited, because people don't understand.
16:11I inherited a mess.
16:13Open borders.
16:15Millions of people in this country that shouldn't be.
16:17We're moving them out.
16:18We're moving them out pretty rapidly, too.
16:20You know, murderers and drug dealers and just some of the worst people in the world came
16:26in, not only from Venezuela, from all over.
16:28The Congo, the Congo sent us tremendous numbers of people.
16:31I don't know what it is with the Congo.
16:33They open their jails, and they walk into our country.
16:36They drive them up to our front entrance.
16:38They get out, and they walk right into our country.
16:40And these are tough, hardened criminals.
16:43These are real criminals, and from many countries.
16:45I mean, they came from Africa.
16:48They came from the Middle East.
16:49They came from South America, but a lot came from Venezuela.
16:53They opened, he opened his prisons and sent all of the people from his prisons into the
16:58United States.
16:59Why not?
16:59I do the same thing of our way.
17:01You take the people.
17:02They're nothing but trouble for you, and they're killers, and they're the worst people that you
17:07can imagine.
17:08I mean, some of the crimes are so bad, you wouldn't believe it.
17:11We just accepted them into our country.
17:13Nobody did anything about it.
17:15So we're getting them out.
17:16Washington, D.C., as an example, is very dangerous.
17:19And now it's very safe.
17:20I mean, everybody's coming to Washington.
17:23It's a very safe city now.
17:25And before, when I took over, it was really a danger.
17:27It got really bad.
17:29We had it pretty good.
17:30But it wasn't really a focus, because you didn't hear the level of danger until my second
17:35term.
17:35My first term, we watched Washington.
17:38But it wasn't like it was the big deal.
17:42Now, all of a sudden, when I came here, I was hearing stories about the kind of crime that
17:46they had here.
17:47People come in from Iowa and from Indiana and great places, and they end up calling the
17:52parents that your son has been killed.
17:54It doesn't happen anymore.
17:55Well, we have a very safe...
17:57Washington, D.C., is a very safe city.
17:59We put our national guard there.
18:01They're all central casting.
18:03You take a look at these guys.
18:04It's great.
18:04We won the case on merit, based on merit from the Supreme Court, a great victory.
18:08A courageous victory, actually.
18:10But this country is now based on merit again.
18:13Let me ask you about Maria Corina Machado.
18:18I've had her on TV this week.
18:20Yeah, she's a very nice person.
18:21Okay.
18:21She won the Nobel Peace Prize.
18:24When she accepted that peace prize, she dedicated it to you.
18:28She said to me this week, both on TV and radio, that she wants to give the Nobel Prize, her
18:35Nobel Peace Prize, to you for liberating her country.
18:39In 2023, she won over 92% of the vote to be the leader of the opposition.
18:46Maduro kept her off the ballot.
18:49Do you have any plans to meet with her?
18:51And would you accept the Nobel Prize she wants to hand to you?
18:55Well, I understand she's coming in next week sometime.
18:59And I look forward to saying hello to her.
19:01And I've heard that she wants to do that.
19:03That would be a great honor.
19:04I did put out eight wars, eight and a quarter, because, you know,
19:08Thailand and Cambodia started going at it again.
19:11I'll put the list up if you want.
19:13So you put the list out.
19:14It's a hell of a list.
19:15But I've stopped eight wars.
19:18And I think, you know, it's been a major embarrassment to Norway.
19:22Now, I don't know what Norway has to do with it, but that's where the committee is located,
19:26a lot of Norwegian people.
19:27And it's been a very big embarrassment to the country of Norway, whether they have anything
19:34to do with it or not.
19:35I think they do.
19:35They say they don't.
19:37But, you know, when you put out eight wars, in theory, you should get one for each war,
19:41OK?
19:41Because some of these wars were going on for 30 years.
19:44India, Pakistan was ready to go at it big.
19:46And these are two nuclear countries.
19:48I got that one stopped.
19:50Eight planes were shot down.
19:51They were really at it.
19:52And I got it stopped.
19:53It was a big one.
19:54And you look at the Congo, Rwanda and the Congo, they've been fighting for 30 years.
20:01And I got it stopped.
20:02I got so many wars.
20:04So it's such a beautiful thing.
20:05It makes me feel so good.
20:06Not because of a Nobel Prize, but because I saved millions and millions of lives.
20:11And that's what really makes me feel good.
20:14All right.
20:14We'll take a break.
20:15We are in the Roosevelt Room.
20:17We're in the White House.
20:18More with President Trump on the other side as we continue.
20:20From Washington, D.C. and the White House.
20:24All right.
20:26We are in the Roosevelt Room.
20:27We're in the White House.
20:28We continue our discussion.
20:30President Donald J. Trump with us for the entire hour.
20:34Let me go back to this issue of the political future for the people of Venezuela.
20:41Now, it's interesting.
20:42You mentioned all of the criminals and the people let out of prisons that were sent to
20:47our borders and our country.
20:48That's Trende, Aragua.
20:49That's cartel members.
20:50Some of the worst criminals in the world were let into our country.
20:54Known terror ties.
20:55Through Biden's open border policy.
20:58Anybody could come in.
20:59And that will get into the issue of Minneapolis going on right now.
21:03But back to this one issue, do you foresee a Venezuela that will have free and fair elections?
21:13And I would have little doubt that the opposition would probably win handily if they were free
21:19and if they were fair.
21:20Yeah, I do see that and I think that's happening.
21:22But before we do that, it's going to take a while to do it.
21:25We have to rebuild the country.
21:27They couldn't have an election.
21:28They wouldn't even know how to have an election right now.
21:30The country has become third world and they wouldn't know how to have an election right now.
21:35We're going to rebuild the oil and the oil infrastructure will be in charge of it.
21:39It's going to do great and make a lot of money and we're going to take it from there.
21:44But we're going to rebuild the country and we're ultimately going to have elections.
21:47When you talk about increasing defense spending, and I go back to the campaign and I go back
21:54to your first term, foreign policy usually doesn't get a lot of discussion.
22:01And in many ways, you have dedicated a lot of time, energy and resources.
22:06Very important for our country.
22:08How is that in America's first interest?
22:11Because that's what you stand for.
22:12Well, like the Middle East was blowing up when I got in.
22:15And it was everybody was fighting, everybody, which in all fairness has been going on for
22:19about 3,000 years in the Middle East.
22:21And we now have peace in the Middle East.
22:22Nobody thought that was possible.
22:24But you have some great countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and many other countries that have
22:31been around a long time.
22:32They're very wealthy.
22:33They were, in many ways, put out of business.
22:38They weren't able to do business.
22:39You know, tremendous wealth for the world.
22:43The oil supply was hurt.
22:44Everything was hurt.
22:45I mean, you had things happening in the Middle East that were bad.
22:48Not only in Gaza with the death and the destruction going on for years.
22:54And it's been cleaned up.
22:57It's amazing.
22:58It's been cleaned up.
22:59Now, there'll be some remnants right now.
23:02We're going to have to see what happens with Hamas.
23:04We're going to have to see what happens with Hezbollah and Lebanon.
23:07But we have 59 countries that signed on.
23:10And they want to go in and help if we should have to do something with Hamas, which is a
23:15possibility.
23:15Now, I think they're going to do what they said they were going to do.
23:19They were going to disarm.
23:20But they've been armed for a long time.
23:22They've been a little slow to disarm.
23:24Yeah, they've been a little bit slow.
23:25Will you support Israel?
23:26Will you put them on a timetable?
23:27Well, I would.
23:28But first, we'll see whether or not they're going to be disarming.
23:30Look, I'm all for it if they don't.
23:32They made the promise that they were.
23:33If they don't.
23:34They've made an agreement that they're going to disarm.
23:37So we're going to have to assume that they're going to.
23:39But, you know, it's not their nature to disarm.
23:41It's not exactly their nature.
23:43Hezbollah has been very bad in Lebanon.
23:46But overall, I mean, we have an amazing situation compared to what it was.
23:50And we really do have peace in the Middle East.
23:52And I will say Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and other countries have been amazing.
23:57They've been, you know, so helpful in getting it done.
24:00But the biggest thing was the attack on Iran.
24:04If you if you had a strong Iran, a respected Iran, a powerful Iran, like I guess it was
24:10at one point, you know, a year ago, year and a half ago, you wouldn't have been able to make peace because the other countries wouldn't have been able to have that dark cloud hanging over them.
24:19And they by by knocking out their nuclear potential, you know, they would have had a nuclear weapon within two months by knocking that.
24:27That's why I had to go in.
24:28Every president wanted to go in and none of them did.
24:31You mean you didn't want to send cargo planes of cash and other currency?
24:35Oh, it's terrible.
24:36I mean, I've never seen hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars were sent in cash on Boeing 757s.
24:42Beautiful Boeing seven.
24:44They opened the cash was piled up to the ceiling.
24:47I never even knew a president could do that.
24:49How do you do that?
24:49What do you do?
24:50Call the banks.
24:50You know, they emptied out every bank in Virginia and Maryland to get that cash, and they sent it over there and gave it to them.
24:58No, we took the opposite approach, exactly the opposite approach.
25:01Are you following the protesting that is taking place all over the country of Iran now?
25:08Yeah, I'm following it very closely.
25:09And have you read that the Ayatollah, Ali Khamenei, is now, has a plan B to go to Russia?
25:17Or someplace, yeah.
25:18He's looking to go someplace.
25:19Do you believe that Iran, you think the country is on the verge of collapsing?
25:23Well, it could be.
25:24I mean, what they've done is they start, in the past, they've started shooting the hell out of people.
25:30And all of a sudden, people without any weapons whatsoever are standing there and you have machine guns gunning them down.
25:36Or they grab, take them to prisons and then hang them and kill them.
25:40So they played rough.
25:41And I said, if they do that, we're going to hit them very hard.
25:44Well, we're going to hit them hard.
25:45We're ready to do it.
25:46If they do that, we're going to hit them hard.
25:48And so far, for the most part, there's been some of it.
25:52But for the most part, they haven't.
25:54There have been people killed.
25:56Some of them, the crowds are so big that some of them have had really, like, were stomped on.
26:02Literally, it was terrible.
26:04The crowds are just, they're massive.
26:09The enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible.
26:14But there's been people killed.
26:16But it's more from death by, it's literally stomping.
26:20It's people running in a certain direction.
26:23So we'll see what happens.
26:24We'll see what happens over there.
26:26They know, though, that it's a stampede is, I guess, the best word.
26:30They have, like, a stampede.
26:31You talk about stampede for cattle.
26:34But the people are stampeding.
26:37And you're losing a lot of people with the stampedes.
26:39There's so many people protesting.
26:42Nobody's ever seen anything like what's happening right now.
26:45But I have put Iran on notice that if they start shooting at them, these people are totally unarmed people.
26:51And they love their country.
26:53They want something to happen.
26:54Look at their country.
26:55They've gone back 150 years.
26:59But I've told them that if they do anything bad to these people, we're going to hit them very hard.
27:04So if there is mass murder by the Iranian Ayatollahs and those leadership, you're pledging to the people of Iran that you will come to their aid.
27:15I've said it very loud and very clear.
27:18Yeah, that's what we're going to do.
27:19I have this hat.
27:21I guess you were playing golf with Lindsey Graham.
27:23I did that for Lindsey Graham.
27:24Yeah.
27:26Well, it says, make Iran great again.
27:28And what he means by that, because I said, this is a little tricky hat.
27:32What do you want me to say with this hat?
27:33I don't know.
27:34Can I auction this off on eBay?
27:36Can I sell this?
27:37It's probably worth a lot of money.
27:38Kept my signature.
27:40But he asked me to sign that.
27:41I said, you know, there's a lot of definitions for that.
27:44And what he's talking about is the people that are protesting, I guess is the only word you can use.
27:51It's really the biggest protest I've ever seen.
27:53The people that are protesting, if they take over the country, he wants to see if Iran can be great again.
27:58You know, years ago, a friend of mine was a developer from New York.
28:02And I was a young developer and he went to Iran and he built buildings in Iran and he made a lot of money and he did very well.
28:08And it was like condos and rentals.
28:11And he loved Iran and he thought it was great.
28:14And he did a lot of work.
28:15He did a tremendous amount of work.
28:17He loved the people.
28:18He thought they were so incredible.
28:20And then it all stopped when this stuff started happening.
28:23In 1979, then 444 days, Americans held hostage.
28:30Yeah, that was right.
28:31It was not a good time for Jimmy Carter.
28:34It wasn't a good time for his politics.
28:37No, it didn't work out very well for anybody.
28:40If, in fact...
28:41Well, you know, I think about that, though, if I could interrupt.
28:44Because, you know, when we were going into the middle of Venezuela with helicopters landing in an army fort,
28:51we have thousands of soldiers and you have people with guns all over the place.
28:55I thought so much about that Jimmy Carter catastrophe.
28:59We had so many hostages taken, American hostages.
29:02We had the helicopters crashing.
29:04You had the sandstorms.
29:06If you had sandstorms, you should come back.
29:09But they tried to blast through the sandstorm.
29:11Nature always wins, remember?
29:13Oh, with the helicopter.
29:15Nature always wins.
29:17And helicopters don't have that kind of an engine.
29:20You know, there are a lot of moving parts.
29:22They don't like sand blowing into their gears.
29:24But anyway, they decided to go forward.
29:28I should have come back.
29:28But I was thinking about that because, you know, here we are going into actually a much more dangerous situation.
29:35If you think about it, on Venezuela, we're in a fort, a military army fort.
29:41And the house was built there for protection.
29:43And we're going in with helicopters, with jets, with helicopters.
29:47I mean, the jets preceded the helicopters and did an unbelievable.
29:51These are unbelievably talented pilots and people and very brave people.
29:56So I was thinking a lot about the Jimmy Carter thing.
29:59I don't know what he would have done or how he would have done if that didn't happen.
30:03But there are those that say that destroyed his chances of winning election and, you know, lost that election pretty big.
30:11He might have lost it anyway, perhaps.
30:13But there was no question after that mess.
30:15And I was saying, well, I hope that doesn't happen with me.
30:17But we have Raisin Cain and all of these great people.
30:20And they did an unbelievable job.
30:23You know, you started in your first term, the Abraham Accords.
30:26Right.
30:27And I would argue beyond Israel, it's other countries in the region, Egypt, Jordan, the Saudis, and pretty much every country.
30:36Right.
30:37That they probably were breathing a sigh of relief as well as the Israelis because they didn't want Iranian hegemony in the region and a nuclear-armed Iran.
30:47Well, you had to stop that.
30:49You had no choice.
30:50And it should have been done long before I got there.
30:52It should have been done earlier.
30:54They just, you look back and Obama should have done it.
30:59They all should have done it.
31:00Clinton should have done it.
31:02Obama went the other way.
31:03I mean, Obama decided to go with Iran.
31:06I mean, he was, I don't know how Jewish people can vote for Biden and Obama.
31:10They were absolutely on the side of Iran.
31:12They were against Jewish people.
31:13Oh, Mom, Donnie.
31:15Well, we're going to find out.
31:16Your favorite mayor.
31:17Well, I have a very nice relationship, but I thought it would take at least maybe a month or two months before he went after me.
31:25He hit me on the attack on Venezuela, which is pretty unusual because not too many people have hit us.
31:31That was a perfect attack.
31:34Think of what we've done.
31:35I mean, we've taken over a whole country.
31:37We're going to make the country strong and good, and we're going to ultimately be able to vote and put somebody in that they like.
31:45The oil that we've taken, we've taken $4 billion worth of oil in one day, and that'll increase.
31:52We're going to have it rebuilt.
31:54All the big oil companies are coming in.
31:56They're going to make a lot of money, and Venezuela is going to get some of that money, and we're going to get some of that money.
32:01And we've brought stability to the region.
32:04We've brought stability and much lower oil prices.
32:07You know, we have gasoline now down to, in many cases, $1.99 a gallon.
32:13And with Biden, it was $4.50, $5.
32:17We have it way, we've brought it way down.
32:20We've done a great job.
32:21When the word affordability, prices are way down, they're going to go lower.
32:26Prices, you know, everything follows oil.
32:28Oil is so big.
32:29Everything follows oil.
32:30If oil prices are down, everything's down.
32:32I mean, you can look as soon as it's just, it affects everything.
32:35It affects the truck that delivers donuts.
32:38It affects the stove that makes the donuts.
32:40It affects everything.
32:41Two more issues on foreign policy and national security.
32:45Then I do want to do a deep dive into the economy.
32:48I want to ask you, I don't see...
32:50The economy is unbelievable, by the way.
32:52We're going to get to that.
32:53I know, but it's unbelievable.
32:54Can Cuba survive without Venezuelan oil?
32:58I don't see how it can.
33:00Can who survive?
33:01Cuba.
33:02Cuba.
33:03No.
33:04Cuba totally relies on Venezuela for money and for oil.
33:09And they give Venezuela protection.
33:12That was always the deal.
33:13They're very tough.
33:14They're good soldiers.
33:15They got wiped out.
33:16But Cuba gives protection to Venezuela, and Venezuela gives Cuba money through oil.
33:28Yeah.
33:28And it's worked that way for a long time.
33:30You talked about...
33:31But it doesn't work that way anymore.
33:32So I don't know what Cuba's going to do.
33:33I think Cuba's going to fail.
33:35Well, it's got...
33:37I don't think there are any alternatives to Cuba.
33:40I don't know how they survive without Venezuelan energy.
33:42We have great people from Cuba.
33:43Marco Rubio is great.
33:45He knows Cuba very well.
33:46Some people said...
33:47Somebody told me today it was Marco's revenge.
33:50I said, well, maybe it was.
33:51But a lot of great people.
33:54Yeah.
33:54A lot of great people.
33:56We'll see what happens.
33:57You live in South Florida.
33:57We want to do something to help Cuba.
33:59Yeah.
34:00But let me...
34:01You mentioned Vladimir Putin.
34:02You know who the Cubans I want to help?
34:04No.
34:04I want to help the Cubans in the United States that got treated so badly by Castro.
34:09Because we have a lot of Cuban population here.
34:12We have some of the best people in the country, Cuban.
34:14And I want to help those people.
34:15They got treated so badly.
34:17They left on rafts.
34:19And they got just thrown out.
34:22Broken down.
34:23Those people are going to be taken care of.
34:25Broken down, dilapidated, rickety boats, shark-infested waters, inner tubes, because things were so bad there.
34:31They came in and...
34:32Yeah, they came in and the worst...
34:34The worst floating vessels that there have ever been.
34:38And circled by sharks and everything else.
34:42And many of them, as you know, many of them didn't make it.
34:45You talked about peace and your involvement around the globe and the success that you've had.
34:52You said many times that you thought the easiest conflict to resolve would be the European conflict, Russia and Ukraine.
35:00And now you've pointed out many times that it became the most difficult.
35:04A couple of things on that issue.
35:08Vladimir Putin, you did...
35:11We did take out this Russian flag tanker along with Great Britain.
35:16Right.
35:17Tough decision, number one.
35:19Number two...
35:20I didn't think it was a tough decision.
35:21Will you support the sanctions bill?
35:23I think there are 84 or 5 senators that want...
35:27Yeah, they only do it if it's subject to me.
35:29And, you know, I support it.
35:31You support it.
35:31I hope we don't have to use it.
35:33You know, we have big sanctions on Russia right now.
35:36Yeah.
35:36Russia's economy is very bad.
35:39But they are much bigger than Ukraine.
35:41You know, they're a much bigger, more powerful country from that state.
35:45Did Vladimir call you after this tanker was seized?
35:48I don't want to say that.
35:49But the fact is that the Russian ships...
35:53It was a submarine and a destroyer.
35:55They both left very quickly when we arrived.
35:58And we took over the ship.
36:00And the oil is being unloaded right now.
36:03All right.
36:04We'll take a break.
36:05We are in the Roosevelt Room.
36:06We're in the White House.
36:07More with President Trump on the other side as we continue.
36:10From Washington, D.C. and the White House.
36:12We continue our discussion with President Donald J. Trump.
36:20We're in the Roosevelt Room.
36:21We're in the White House.
36:22A lot of news going on around the world and here at home.
36:26Let me move on to the economy because if you look historically...
36:31First, we'll talk about...
36:32This is a midterm election year.
36:34Three times in the last hundred years...
36:37Yeah.
36:37...the party in power was able to maintain control.
36:40Four times in the last hundred and fifty years.
36:44You discussed this when you met with Republicans this past week.
36:48So historical trends are not with you.
36:51However, historically, peace and prosperity do drive elections.
36:55We just took a trip around the entire globe.
36:58And you have your fingerprints pretty much everywhere, all over the map.
37:03And...
37:03We've done great everywhere.
37:05It's amazing.
37:05It's an amazing phenomena that on two or three occasions...
37:10I don't know.
37:11It depends on how far you want to go back.
37:12But if you go back a long way, the sitting president, whether it's Democrat or Republican,
37:18always loses the midterm.
37:20Even if they've done well.
37:22Almost always.
37:23And, you know, you'd think it would be like a 50-50 deal.
37:27Even if the president's done a great job.
37:29I think we've done a great job.
37:30We've done maybe the best job ever in the first year.
37:33But they always seem to lose the midterm.
37:36There's something down deep psychologically with the voters that they want maybe a check
37:43or something.
37:44I don't know what it is exactly.
37:45But you would think when you have a victory and then on top of the victory, you have a
37:49great, successful presidency, it would be an automatic win.
37:52But it's never been a win.
37:54I mean, almost never been.
37:55You said two times or three times in a hundred years.
37:58It's right around that number.
37:59So think of it out of, you know, the elections take place every two years in this case.
38:05And to people who grew up a couple of times in many, many years, it's hard to believe.
38:11And it doesn't make sense.
38:12And nobody's been able to define why.
38:14So I think hopefully we're going to change it because we've had incredible.
38:19We passed a great, big, beautiful bill.
38:21Tax cuts for everybody.
38:22You know that one person.
38:23Tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime.
38:28Deductions.
38:28If you buy a car, you take a loan from a bank, you can deduct the interest on the loan.
38:34Nobody ever thought that was going to happen.
38:36And we have so many things.
38:39And we're respected all over the world again, like we've never been respected before.
38:44I mean, we're respected.
38:45Look at NATO.
38:46NATO agreed to go from 2% to 5% and they pay us the money.
38:50You know, we don't lose anything in terms of money.
38:52What I do want to stop in the war with Ukraine and Russia is, last week it was just reported
38:58they lost 32,000 soldiers the week before for the month.
39:02The month before, they lost 27,000.
39:06And the month before that, they lost 26,000 soldiers between the two of them.
39:12And I'd like to be able to save those souls.
39:15You know, it doesn't affect the United States very much.
39:17It really doesn't.
39:18We sell, you know, Biden gave them $350 billion.
39:23Can you imagine?
39:24We didn't get any of it back.
39:26But I did actually, I made a deal for rare earth.
39:28I said, listen, if we go any further, we're going to, we want rare earth.
39:32We want to get our money back.
39:33And I made a deal with Ukraine.
39:34It was a very fair deal where we get our money back.
39:37I had to work to get the money back.
39:39This is Biden's war.
39:40This isn't my war.
39:41I would like to stop it because there's so many people being killed.
39:44Let me go to the economy.
39:45Mostly soldiers, but so many people.
39:48So I've always been a movement conservative.
39:51I've always believed in supply-side economics, starting with Reagan.
39:55At the time, 70 to 28 percent, he dropped the tax rates.
39:59Longest period of peacetime economic growth.
40:0221 million new jobs were created.
40:05Now, this one big, beautiful bill, largest tax cuts in history.
40:09Yeah.
40:10Unlike any president before you, you have secured trillions in monies dedicated to new manufacturing,
40:17including automobiles, semiconductor chips, rare earth would be part of it.
40:22More than anybody has ever gotten.
40:24Okay.
40:25So all of this is now in the, it's going to be infused into the economy.
40:30It's in the hopper.
40:31It's going to be infused into the economy.
40:32But we just ended the third quarter with 4.3 percent GDP.
40:38We just have the lowest gas prices in five years, as you pointed out.
40:42That impacts everything everybody buys at every store that they go to.
40:48No tax tips over time.
40:50That, I worked in the service industry.
40:53I worked in the construction industry.
40:55That helps workers.
40:56That helps families.
40:57Sure.
40:58Scott Besson said that people are going to feel it in their paycheck.
41:01They're feeling it at the pump.
41:03You look at all of this.
41:04You've created, a little shy of a million new jobs already.
41:09Manufacturing.
41:09That's after inheriting the economy.
41:11It's really not your economy for the first six, eight months.
41:14And they're private sector jobs.
41:17They're not government jobs.
41:18Don't forget, I could have the greatest numbers in history.
41:21All I have to do is hire a couple of million people, put them in government.
41:23That's what Biden did.
41:25He just put people in government.
41:26You had 10 people for one job.
41:28I did the opposite.
41:29I've trimmed down government.
41:32Any numbers that we have are with a very trimmed down government.
41:36I could come up with unemployment or employment numbers that are so good
41:40that, like, nobody's ever seen.
41:42Just say, fellas, hire two million people right now.
41:46But you can't make our country great that way.
41:48That's how you go into trouble.
41:50That's how you become Venezuelan.
41:51A lot of people don't understand, in the big, beautiful bill,
41:54there's something known as 100% depreciation.
41:57Yeah.
41:57That is putting an accelerant on manufacturing.
41:59One year depreciation.
42:01Right.
42:01You can depreciate your entire investment if you're building, for example,
42:06a manufacturing facility.
42:07In one year.
42:08In one year.
42:09As opposed to 40 years.
42:10And it may not seem like a big deal,
42:12but for people that are struggling financially,
42:15to be able to deduct the interest on your call loan,
42:18that's what I'm about.
42:19So I had the most successful economy in the world in my first term.
42:22We did great.
42:23I think that was the single biggest.
42:25I had that, but that was for a much shorter period of time.
42:27It's not as good as this one.
42:29But that was the reason I believe that we were so successful.
42:32We had great jobs.
42:33We had great everything.
42:35We had the greatest economy.
42:37This economy will blow it away.
42:38I believe this economy is going to blow it away.
42:40But we have that.
42:41And now we have it for 10 years.
42:44And we'll have more Hannity coming up with President Trump straight ahead.
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