0 what i believe and like i said to the policeman, my weapon is my words and i'll always use my words to fight for more freedom and a smaller government in canada. i will be back in manitoba. >> tucker: we're out of time, maxime, we're rooting for you, come to america. thank you. >> sean: by the way, tucker, i agree with you. welcome to "hannity." we begin with this fox news alert. the 45th president of the united states, donald trump will join us for an exclusive interview. first, a recap of joe biden's sippy cup pathetic incoherent, at times angry and unhinged performance in geneva, on top of his disastrous g-7 meetings. let's be clear. the so-called summit will vladimir putin did absolutely nothing to advance any american interests in any way. that's a fact. instead vladimir received a massive platform in exchange for zero concessions whatsoever and putin then used that platform to take shot after shot after shot at our country. the united states of america. joe, of course, is nowhere to be found correcting the record because he was afraid to stand next to vladimir. probably because he's not capable of doing it. putin did not commit to ending the cyberattacks against our country. he didn't take responsibility for the highjacking of over a hundred u.s. companies, nine federal agencies. he didn't free to free americans now wrongfully imprisoned in his hostile regime of russia. he didn't take responsibility for the havana syndrome attack against the u.s. diplomat. he didn't agree to stop poisoning and killing his political enemies. he didn't agree to curtail his military aggression in eastern europe and around the world and yesterday russia conducted a massive naval drill about 300 miles off the coast of our state of hawaii. the first time they have done this since the cold war. i wonder, joey, if that was a coincidence, when you think your pal vladimir did it on purpose? we all know the answer. putin also gifted a spy satellite to iran. how generous. joe biden was unable and unwilling to hold putin accountable for anything, as the chairman of the human rights foundation put it together even on msdnc putin got what he wanted. does that surprise anybody? remember, just after joe shuttered the keystone xl pipeline, high-paying jobs, that he took away with the stroke of a pen, joey turns around and gives vladimir putin, you know, the nod. he literally says okay on the nord stream 2 pipeline into germany. that would bring the country that we're helping to defend against russia, that would bring them closer and help make russia richer again. by overriding the state department recommendation. joe was told not to do it and he did it anyway. he gave the waiver and lifting all u.s. sanctions on the project, and what do we get in return for this grand gesture that will enrich vladimir putin and russia? nothing. we got nothing. appeasement doesn't work. has never worked. never will work. especially when the commander-in-chief is like joe, frail and weak and constantly cognitively, well, weakened. putin doesn't respect and he doesn't fear joe biden in any way. so let me be clear. we're not rooting for that hostile actor, that murderer, that killer, from that hostile regime. he's a killer. he's a thug, and frankly, he's evil. he's a criminal in charge of a massive nuclear stockpile. so obviously, it is critical that the u.s. has a president who is sharp, mentally alert, tough, tenacious, and a president willing to turn the screws on vladimir to keep him in check. unfortunately, joe is not that guy. this week, joe bumbled his way through europe embarrassing the u.s. every step of the way. today he showed up to the summit with a pile of flash cards that he was constantly referencing, and had a hard time keeping up with. following the summit, no joint press conference. why? because the administration knew darn well joe would be humiliated and for good reason. instead joe delivered a short scripted speech from a tell prompt -- teleprompter. he botched his favorite line from your declaration of independence. don't believe knit we've got the videotape. >> i made it clear to president putin and will continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights because that's what we are. that's who we are. the idea is we hold these truths self-evident that all men and women, we haven't lived up to it completely but we've always widened the arc of commitment and included more and more people. >> sean: all men and women are created by the thing, you know, the thing, god, joe, god, creator of everything. joe was clearly flustered. look at your screen. at one point he took off his coat, dropped it on the ground. took off his sunglasses, put them back on. then off again, then back on again. as you can see joe did not look particularly sharp. as short prepared remarks he took a few questions from a handful of, once again preselected reporters. even that was too strenuous for sippy cup. just watch as joe becomes completely unhinged after a very normal reasonable question, even from a fake news cnn reporter. take a look. >> why -- behavior, mr. president? >> i said -- what i said was, let's get it straight, i said what -- is the rest of the world -- [inaudible] i'm -- why you stating the facts. [inaudible] >> denied any cyberattacks [inaudible] how does that help to be a constructive -- [inaudible] >> sean: looks like grandpa got agitated at the reporters. can you imagine if it was president trump who said that? everyone, fake news, cnn, they would be apoplectic and that would go on for weeks. the hysteria would be off the charts. instead the fans at cnn are more than happy to take a tongue lashing. a few minutes after that outburst he was still agitated, saying the media was being too negative. apparently he thinks he deserves more praise from his friends and the media mob that put him into the protection program as a candidate. take a look. >> you've got to be negative, you've got to have a negative view on life. >> you never ask positive questions. why, in fact, having an agreement? we'll find out -- the thing that always amazes me about the questions, apologize for having been short. if you were in my position, you said, i don't think -- i think it's really going to be bad. guaranteed nothing happens. >> sean: joey, i don't remember anyone asking you why you stood with the former klansmen who filibuster the 1964 voting acts to stop the immigration of schools and school busing because you thought public schools would become racial jungles. that would be a tough question. i don't remember you ever being asked that question. ultimately zero agreement struck so the so-called big summit wasn't so big at all. joe isn't worried. he thinks putin will change his malignant ways because he wants the world community to like and respect him. that's not how it works, joe. is joe really that dumb? i'm hoping he's just playing dumb on tv. putin doesn't give a rip what the united states or europe thinks or feels. he cares about power. he cares about money. he runs his country like a mob boss. he'll continue to kill his political rivals and he'll conduct criminal activities all around the world and probably bribe top children, vice presidents moving forward. unless he's seriously challenged. sanctions, financial penalties, expansion of u.s. gas, are critical tools for american through peace diplomacy with russia but sadly joe biden prefers a different approach. appeasement, giving up energy independence, getting rid of american jobs but waivers for vladimir. that approach will never work. president trump will respond to all of this in just a few moments. first, joining us, ranking member of the house judiciary committee, congressman jim jordan along with former trump white house chief-of-staff mark meadows. mark, we start with you tonight. your overall feeling about this and, to me, i think one of the greatest weaknesses, the reason i suspect joe wouldn't stand next to vladimir and do a press conference is because whatever they prepared for joe to say, probably before leaving washington, if they stuck with the talking points and it didn't happen, vladimir would have corrected him right then and there and embarrassed him on the world stage. that's my suspicion. what's your take? >> well, obviously, that's one option. it's pretty pathetic when joe biden is more strenuous in his arguments with a reporter than he is with vladimir putin. we believe vladimir putin is going to change. here's what's going to happen. he's going to get more and more bold. he saw the weakness of joe biden, the president of the united states. he never saw that when donald trump was in the white house. listen, here's the problem. he didn't get the easy questions from the seven hand selected reporters that he had to call on. he didn't get to answer what flavor of ice cream he liked. when you're looking at joe biden you have to think, well, the curtains are blowing but the window must be closed. >> sean: you know, jim jordan, you were all over this, i was all over this, mark meadows was all over this, when you stand back we heard nothing but three years of lies, a hoax, and conspiracy theory about trump. the only person that colluded in 2016, that paid for the dirty russian disinformation dossier, that was hillary clinton and the dnc, and the deep state that then didn't verify it because it was all full of lies. as the bulk of information to secure pfizer warrants to spy on candidate trump and president trump. i don't know of any trump that got paid a penny from any oligarch in russia but i do know a guy by the name of hunter with no experience that got $3.5 million from a russian oligarch, former first lady of moscow. how is it the media can get it all upside-down and ask backwards? you've got to help me out with that. >> yes, president's son gets paid by a russian oligarch, the wife, and you have joe biden taking off sanctions and approving the pipeline. i'm old enough to remember when the press called that collusion but it's a whole different set of rules for this guy. you have to right questions what did we gain? what did america gain? absolutely nothing from this. and again, that's on top of what already happened with the sanctions and the pipeline. contrast this with president reagan who said, mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall. trump said america first all the time and joe biden said what can we do about climate change? what do we need to give up? that's what the world now sees and it's scary when you think about this is the guy making decisions and our adversaries see the exact same thing that you and i see and all the viewers see. >> sean: i want to get your take on this, mark meadows. unfortunately, both or you were not very friendly to me because i would ask for information and you often hid it from me but you knew it was true and then would you say, yes, but i can't talk about it. i would ask the obvious question, am i over the target? and i might get some affirmation or read into it affirmation but the reality is, it was -- ukraine bayed the bidens. russia paid the bidens. kazakhstan paid the bidens. china paid the bidens. imagine if it was donald trump's family that made all of that money. >> listen what they do is have one standard for the democrats and another standard for president trump and his family. and when you start to see that that's what the american people hate. jim is exactly right. when you start to see what joe bind has given away and what the american people have received in return, zero, not a single thing, and yet, what we continue to see is a weakness abroad. listen, he gets an "f" for his broad performance and quite frankly, the only good news about him going abroad is that he's doing less damage over here and it's really sad. but it's also important to remember, sean, every time, they are going to accuse president trump of doing things that they actually are guilty of. >> sean: when you compare four years of -- i'll ask president trump about this tonight, jim jordan, but when you compare four years ago to today and you look at what donald trump, when he went to the g-7, he rocked that conference. >> yes. >> sean: he went in there and said, sorry, the day of us paying all of your bills is over. the day of unfair trade agreements, that's over, too. and, oh everybody, was offended. but who benefitted? the american people. >> the american people benefitted. donald trump is a leader who knows what he believes and went and did it and told the world why he was doing it because it was good for our country. it happened to be good for the world when we lead, not when we show weakness. never forget this, too. the obama-biden administration, remember what they gave you, ukraine. they gave them mre's. this came out during the impeachment he gave them javelin missiles to deal with the russian aggression, and then what do they do? they impeach him when he has a phone call with the ukrainian president. it's a double standard but the american people see it for what it is and they appreciate the leadership that president trump displayed. >> sean: knowing he's the hostile evil actor that he is, last question, mark meadows, what is putin thinking tonight, in your view? >> he's thinking there is a new day for him. an open door, basically for him to do whatever he wants to do. he didn't get that kind of response from president trump. i can tell you it was always firm. it was always america first, and candidly, that's not the message that putin got tonight and it's a sad day for the american people when we have thrown up the white surrender flag when traveling abroad. >> sean: congressmen mark meadows and chief, thank you both for being with us. no president in the modern era was tougher on russia and putin that donald trump although the mob and the media constantly lied about it. ignoring hillary's dossier and the russian money. we had increased sanctions under trump, expansion of oil and gas production making us energy independent for the first time in 75 years. that, too, was donald trump. a decisive military confrontation in syria. that humiliated vladimir. but perpetual sore loser hillary clinton, she can't stop rehashing her favorite russia, russia, russia conspiracy theory from 2016. now, for those of you at the "new york times," got pulitzer s you need to return. maybe you can remind them that hillary paid for the dirty dossier. russian dossier. take a look. >> putin made it his mission to deny me the presidency in part because, you know, i did raise issues that were uncomfortable with him. i did speak out about the oppression, and frankly the rigged elections in russia, because i do think you need both an inside and an outside game. you need a public and a private approach to putin, and, you know, that's what joe biden gets. >> sean: while she's the one that paid for that disinformation, used to spy on candidate transition team and later president trump. the bidens made millions from russia. the russian oligarch that i just mentioned and the first former first lady of moscow. the bidens, that's right, they got the money. not the trumps. how ironic, how pathetic, maggie, the "new york times," abc, nbc, cbs, fake news cnn and msnbc really are. president trump will respond, but first, joining with us reaction, former state department spokesperson morgan ortegas and others. let's get your perspective on how you think putin reads this today. >> it's funny, you were just playing that clip from hillary on a private and public approach. president trump lived that every day of his presidency. if you look at the actual actions, not the words but the actions that president trump took in addressing russian wrongdoing, there is over 52 actual sanctions, executive orders and legislation that the president was responsible for in taking on russia. in 2017 alone, you had president trump addressing the yahoo hack and imposing sanctions. you had treasury sanctions. how many times was steve mnuchin in the press shop addressing and outlining sanctions that we were taking against russia? you had to legislation that was signed, banned russian software, export restrictions, the global -- act, legal weapons, jim jordan sort of alluded to it but there were legal weapons that were actually delivered, lethal weapons, delivered to ukraine, and there was another 50 other actios taken by the trump administration. what i just shot out was what happened in 2017. another narrative that was upside-down, it was donald trump who signed the executive order in 2018 addressing russian interference in american elections. so yes. he treated vladimir putin decently. he was diplomatic, but so was ronald reagan when he met with mchale gorbachev, and he also said they were the evil empire and one of the most evil places on the face of the earth. ronald reagan and donald trump together address this issue. >> and he walked away and gave us a line, i use often to this day, trust but verify. dan hoffman you have the great distinction of scaring the hell out of me both in sing bother and helsinki, telling me in singapore the chinese were probably following my every move, you were a hundred percent certain, and in helsinki you gave me the good news that the russians were following me. i didn't particularly like it. i'm outside did great country i love doing my job. my question to you is, you know russian intelligence. you know the minds of former kgb operatives like putin, what is he thinking tonight? >> i think what vladimir putin is thinking is that he kind of got the reset that he was looking for. he doesn't want to have a price for having invaded ukraine and annexing crimea, using a banned chemical weapon against his own citizens including in the uk, interfering in our elections, launching a solar wind pack and allowing cyberhacking groups to homestead on his territory. when he got today was kind of a reset. our ambassadors are going back to work in their respective capitals. there will be ongoing dialogue between our two nation on cybersecurity. but there was nothing to hold putin accountable. for me the heroes of today's summit was the free press. they were the ones exposing putin's hypocrisy and false equivalencies and the kgb propaganda spewing out of his mouth. >> ortegas, you worked for our mutual friend, former secretary of state pompeo. i asked him about the biden administration getting lectured on human rights abuses by of all countries, china, in anchorage, alaska. we have an offer. pompeo will debate vladimir and putin can pick the russian moderator. i don't think he would duck and hide the way biden did and wouldn't do a joint presser. >> no. >> sean: my question is, you know the intelligence and red the briefings before, how does putin interpret today? >> first, that would be must see tv, sean. you're always must see tv but i think we need to make that happen. one of the things that you said earlier that hillary clinton said you need to deal with putin differently in public and differently in private. i can't tell you how far that was from the truth from my experience. when pompeo went out and said something to the press, that's exactly what he said to putin and to the foreign minister who he met with many times. in fact, i think it's dangerous to try and have a public per son -- persona and a private persona. when you look at what you're trying to get out of it, it's a normal meeting. i don't know why they call it a summit. my inclination is perhaps they didn't want to put putin and biden together because he was embarrassed by the chinese when he lashed out, so that allowed for 45 minutes for putin to rail against the united states, lie, do all things that putin normally does. there are two things your viewers have to think about for the next four years. we're in a nuclear arms race with chine and russia. this administration may not be talking about it. but you should know that china and russia are engaged in a nuclear arms race even if we're closing our eyes and not wanting to deal with it. so if we want to have this administration, president biden says, he wants to have more talks on nuclear weapons with the russians, if the chinese aren't included in this it's a fallacy. we need to seriously be looking at that. >> sean: i think china is baker -- is a bigger threat. thank you all for being with us. thank you, dan hoffman and morgan. joining us now on the phone, 45th president of the united states, donald trump is with us. mr. president, sir, welcome back, it's been too long, how are you? >> president trump: i'm very good, sean, thank you very much. >> sean: let's start with the events today. your overall thoughts, and i want you to address -- i'll get to a very specific question but let's start with your overall thoughts today, and what biden was facing in putin, and then we'll move on from there. >> president trump: well, i guess overall we didn't get anything. we gave a very big stage to russia, and we got nothing. we gave up something that was unbelievably valuable. i stopped the pipeline. nordstrom, and that pipeline was stopped and it was given back, and nothing was gotten for it. and it was -- it was another day. performance arc, you'll take a look at how various people performed. mainly the two people and you have to form your own judgment. i think it was a good day for russia. i don't see what we got out of it. >> sean: you mentioned nordstrom. this is an important question because joe biden got a recommendation from his state department, they said do not grant this waiver. okay. joe granted the waiver. he did it while simultaneously, with the stroke of a pen, eliminating high paying career jobs in the energy sector on the keystone xl pipeline. then, i'm going to take it one more step further. if it was donald trump that did everything joe did here, and then it was donald trump's son, don jr., eric trump, that had moneys transferred to their company from a russian oligarch, first lady of moscow, why do i expect you would be accused day and night, 24-7, of family collusion. i don't know. i think there would be a lot different coverage? >> president trump: you just have to read the news for five years. from the day i came down the escalator, we've been under investigation and it turned out to be all false stuff. it was a terrible thing with the russia, russia, russia, which actually made it difficult to deal with russia. it was a phony deal created by schiff and clinton. it was a disgrace can, absolute disgrace, and it really was dangerous and very bad for our country. but i guess you probably see, it was a few days ago, up to 12, and now it's up to 19 different things where we were accused, and it turned out to be absolutely false. whether it's the wuhan lab, the good old wuhan lab, when i mentioned that it was like a firestorm hydroxy-chloro -- it's all coming out. i think people understand it. in many ways we're stronger now than ever before. they understand the deception and the horror that these people put this country through. it's really very sad actually. >> sean: let me go into this double standard issue that i've been discussing here, and that's, we went through three years as a country, and i covered it almost every night. every major newspaper, abc, nbc, cbs, they all i got wrong about the trump-russia collusion. but now we know the truth. we know hillary clinton paid for the dirty russia dossier, that even steele doesn't stand by and the sub source doesn't stand by that dossier she paid for was then used to spy on you as a candidate and the fiser court was lied to and it was used to spy on you in your transition phase and as president. we also know that money from russia made it to a prominent political family in america. hunter biden, joe's son. again, i ask you, it was the three years when you were in office, four if you include the ukraine, what do you make of the double standard? some people get pulitzers over such phony coverage? >> president trump: they did get pulitzers, they got pulitzers for absolutely incorrect and opposite reporting. it was horrible reporting, and there are many people that should have gotten pulitzers where they had it right but they were not considered and it's a disgrace. pulitzer is another one that's been disgraced by this whole last 4 1/2-year period, five-year period. but from the day of that wonderful ride down the escalator, from that moment, investigation after investigation, and the people that were guilty, they just float right through. it wasn't done, the doj didn't do anything about it. i guess they felt, they want to be soft. this group doesn't feel that way, but, you know what? i left that up to doj. i left that up to the people running doj. and i wasn't involved. i would say that probably, maybe less involved than i should have been. maybe i should have been forcing it. but a lot of very guilty people were not in any way prosecuted. and i'm talking about very, very serious things. if you look at comey and mccabe and all the things that went on and they weren't prosecuted, if you read the horowitz report, and, of course, everyone is still waiting for durham, what happened to durham, how is that allowed to go into another administration. >> sean: by the way, is he in the witness protection program? i would like to know where he is too. he disappeared. >> president trump: but you didn't even have to go into durham. you could have just taken the horowitz report, and i have a lot of respect for mr. horowitz. the i.g., and he wrote a report that was devastating to comey and devastating to mccabe and they didn't do anything with it. it's incredible actually. incredible. very sad. very sad for the country. but, you know, i guess they felt they shouldn't, and yet this administration feels the exact opposite. if people don't do anything wrong they want to go after them. big difference. and, you know, it's a tough standard, but hopefully you have an attorney general now that will be fair, but i'll say that the people running the justice department and the people in it, don't forget, you have tens of thousands of people, and they were put there by obama, they were put there by everybody, they were put there by a lot of people that came, including clinton, but they were also put there by bush and, you know, you see what goes on with that whole group, so you have a lot of people put in there by bush and clinton, put there by obama, and then you put some in yourself and you can't do anything about it, i guess. i don't know. but i think they were very, very soft and maybe rightfully so, but they were very, very soft, and probably they wanted to be very fair. but a lot of people don't look at it that way. it's a shame. there was such guilt and such a horrible thing happened. they were spying on my campaign. you know, if you think about it, all the way back, almost at the beginning, when i made a statement that my campaign was spied on, it was one of the biggest moments, it was, nobody could believe it. then it turned out that -- it was more than spied on, much worse than being spied on but they didn't do anything about it. to me, that's a terrible thing for our country. >> sean: i don't see that biden got anything from putin, and i can't believe that american energy workers were, with the stroke of a pen, lost their high paying career jobs for the same exact thing, the waiver, that biden gave on nordstrom. i can't believe it. let me ask you this. if you were still president, would you have given that waiver, and secondly, what would you be doing about the cyberattacks that are ongoing? colonial pipeline, the attacks on our meat industry, how would you be handling that with putin? >> president trump: well, in the waiver, nobody really understands that i was the one that stopped it. i stopped it from being built and i went to germany and i said, listen, we protect you with nato at a very low cost and they are very delinquent. they are only paying half of what they are supposed to be paying and what they are supposed to be paying is very low, 2%, and they are paying half so we protect you. we have 52,000 soldiers over there which is like a major, major city, frankly. they make a fortune with us, and then they go and they pay russia billions and billions of dollars for energy. so i said let's get this straight. we protect you, and the people that we protect you from, the country, you're paying billions of dollars. how does that work? and there are others. so i got nato to pay $430 billion more than they were paying because the united states was paying for almost all of it. i mean, think of it. we pay for their protection, and they excuse the word, they screw us on trade, that's the only word that's really descriptive enough, because they are in many ways worse than china or as bad as china on trade. how many chevrolets are being sold in berlin? not too many. how many chevrolets are being sold in paris? not too many. maybe none. and yet, we sell their products, their wines and their cars and their mercedes and their bmw's and everything else, we sell it all over our country, and all of that was stopping. we were ready to go and then we got hit by the pandemic, and nobody did as good a job with the pandemic as we did and that's why we're leading world in terms of coming back, and that was all set long before biden came in, including the fact that we came up with vaccines in less than nine months when a lot of people, everybody, said it was going to take three to five years and you probably wouldn't be successful. and if we weren't successful, sean, i'll tell you this, would you have another 1917 tragedy, where almost a hundred million people died. but we were successful, so it was a great thing. >> sean: let me ask you, in your summits and in your conversations with putin while president, what did you learn about him? have you spoken to him since you left office, and was it a mistake for biden not to hold that joint press conference with putin? >> i got along really well with him. nobody was tougher on russia. he would say that, but nobody was tougher on russia. you never heard of nord stream. you never heard of all of the things that we did in terms of sanctions, so many sanctions. and i was loving the idea of taking them off. i would loved to have taken them off as soon as they got their act together. we had a great shot at having an unbelievable relationship with russia. it could have been fantastic. it could have been really good for both countries. we have things -- a lot of good things could have happened. i had a very good relationship with putin but nobody treated him tougher. he understands. nobody heard of the pipeline until i got involved. and i said, wait a minute, the pipeline is going to germany and all over europe. what's going on? why are we protecting you people? again, and it was just unbelievable. i got so much for that, and to give up, the stoppage, i stopped it. and to give it up, and then if you see what they did, and the numbers, 48,000, not 8,000, but you see what they did with the keystone xl pipeline, where they stopped it. almost on the first day, and that was never mentioned during the debate. i kept saying, you know, you're not going to be energy independent, you're not going to do for pennsylvania, for texas, for all of these places where we're doing so well with energy, we won't be energy independent two months from now. making windmills all over the place, ruin our land and kill our birds, to kill everything, and they are very intermittent as you learned from watching over the last four months. it's intermittent energy. it's not good. it's not going to power our great factories, and -- it's a real problem. >> sean: yes. there was a question of whether ukraine would join nato, and biden's answer is, they have to clean up corruption, and -- so they can't join nato, they have got to clean up corruption, but his son made a fortune and he leverage the billion dollars and bragged about it, of u.s. tax dollars, and this is a big issue to you because you went over the impeachment over this leveraged a billion dollars to get a prosecutor in ukraine fired. got six hours to do it and son of a b they did it. now, i'm just imagining if they are too corrupt to join nato how come it's okay for hunter to make all of that money when he made it on good morning america that he had in experience in energy, gas, in the ukraine and got millions of dollars. what if your sons of millions of dollars for that with no experience? >> president trump: when he said that, i was very surprised that he said it because he said basically ukraine is corrupt. and that was the whole purpose of what was going on, and frankly, we had an obligation, even a legal obligation, we have an agreement signed with the ukraine, and that agreement says you've got to be honest, you've got to run a straight country, and they don't do that, and when i saw that statement, i was surprised because i guess you hear different numbers but it's 183 thousand per month for his son to consult to an energy from an energy company in ukraine, to consult on energy but he admits he knows nothing about energy. the whole thing is just terrible. the money from russia. $3.5 million from the wife of the mayor of moscow, former mayor of moscow. what -- remember i asked that question, and your friend, your very dear friend chris wallace said, no, no, you can't ask that question. i want to know why is the mayor of hoss o moscow's wife paying him $3.5 million? and chris wallace protected him because he couldn't answer the question. so chris wallace protected him, good old chris wallace. he'll never be mike. this is what we go through. we no longer have a fair and free press. whether you like it or not, and i hate to say it to you because you're a big believer in the press despite what you go through but we no longer have a free and fair press. >> sean: i said in 2007, sir, i wish i came up with fake news but di say journalism in america is dead and i don't think i was wrong. i think i probably understated it. let me ask this. because two weeks -- last week, joe biden said to our military that global warming was the biggest threat they face. the week before he had said white supremacy is the biggest threat to america. i don't know. i think china, russia, north korea, the iranian mullahs might be bigger threats, radical islamic terrorism. what's your reaction to that answer? >> he said that the military told him and the generals, which was, i can't believe that, but maybe, but they shouldn't be working as generals any longer. global warming is our biggest threat. when you look at china and you look at the military apparatus, which i was really doing a big job on, i have a very good relationship there, too, and it was a fantastic relationship until covid, or the china virus came in, and after that you know, we made a great trade deal with the farmers of this country and the manufacturers are doing fantastically because of -- the farmers are doing better than they have ever done now because of what i did, not because of what these guys did, we did a fantastic thing, but when you look at it and when you look at what happened, sean, and you see that horrible, that horrible thing that came at us from china, and came at us from the wuhan lab, it changed my whole line of thinking and you just, i really hope and i believe it was an accident. it was incompetence. i guess some people don't necessarily agree with that. they think maybe there was purpose to it. which would be absolutely terrible. but we have to find out more about it. why did it happen? how did it happen? how could anybody be so incompetent? and that's not a group of incompetent people. >> sean: mr. president, if i could add one thing here. >> president trump: i believe it was a terrible accident but i believe it came from the lab. >> sean: why would you think it was an accident? we knew -- there is actually video out now of bats in the wuhan virology lab. we knew that they studied coronaviruses, and we now know from the emails from the great dr. fauci, the flip-flopper, that gain of function research was being done there. so it seems like the most logical conclusion. the only question is, is there a possibility that u.s. tax dollars helped pay for the gain of function leading to covid-19? >> president trump: we ended that, sean, and we heard about that, i ended that but it started in 2014 under obama and when i heard about it we ended it very rapidly. i said, can you imagine, and it wasn't even wuhan, it's just that we were paying china on top of everything else, we're now paying for their research and other things, ridiculous. so we ended that, as soon as we heard about it. we did a lot of things against china. not that i want to be against china because i had a great relationship with president xi. i have a lot of respect for him but i banned china from coming into the country very early before anybody, fauci, nancy pelosi was dancing in the streets of chinatown, and they were all saying what i did was xenophobic and horrible and racist, and then they said four months later, i saved thousands and thousands of lives. but i banned china from coming in. and it's lucky i did. i banned europe from coming in because you saw what was happening, especially in certain countries in europe and i banned europe from coming in and everybody said that was terrible but we saved tens of thousands of lives. now we have to get back, schools have to get open, and frankly, we're lucky we have the vaccine but the vaccine on very young people is something that you've got to really stop. you have to get back to running your country. i mean, i don't see reasons, and i am a big believer in what we did with the vaccines, incredible what we did, you see the results, but to have every school child where it's 99.99%, they just, you know, they are just not affected or affected badly, having to receive a vaccine, i think it's something that you should start thinking about because i think it's unnecessary. uwant china to pay $10 trillion, don't you? >> president trump: the number is much higher than that but there is only so much they can pay and that's to us and the world, the numbers are bigger throughout the world. look, countries have been destroyed over what they did. and whether, by accident or not, and i would hope that it was an accident, i hope that it was through incompetence or an accident, whether it was by an accident, whatever it is, you look at these countries, they will never, ever be the same. our country was hit so hard but other countries were hit much harder. look at what's going on in india now. they used to say, oh, look how well india is doing because they were always looking for an excuse. look how well india is doing. the fact is, india has just been devastated now, and virtually every country has been devastated. i think that's one of the reasons that i feel it's very important to find out where it came from, how it came, i think i know, i mean, i feel certain about it, but certainly china should help. right now, their economy and our economy are the two economies that are coming back up the fastest. i mean, if you think about it, in certain ways maybe they benefitted very greatly, i mean, very, very greatly, and i can tell you they benefitted with the u.s. because we were in the process of doing things where we caught up to china at a level nobody thought was possible and once the china virus came in we had to take a very different -- look, whole world changed. you didn't think about the economics. you thought about saving people and saving lives so the world changed. it was a different ball game. we did the great trade deal. a big piece of it but we did the great trade deal and it helped a lot of people. manufacturers and farmers in particular, but, you know, after that horrible disease floated in from china, however it came in, and it came in through numerous ways, once that disease came in from china, i had a whole different attitude. it was a terrible thing. >> sean: let me go back to the campaign, and i want to play a tape for you here. i compared joe biden, i've shown video of him from 2012, 2016, i, you know, he lived in his basement bunker throughout most of the campaign in 2020. i used to argue he was in the big tech media mob protection program and they let him hide without asking him any questions did the bare minimum of anybody campaigning and i have a highlight reel that i put together, but i'm saving that for another day but this happened at the g-7. joe has had a lot of these cognitive misfires, let's call it that and this is the one that he had because he had called putin a killer. and he was asked about it, he didn't want to give that answer because he was about to meet with putin and your reaction to joe and do you think he's up tote job physically and mentally? let me play this. >> putin laughed at the suggestion that you had called him a killer. is that still your belief, sir that he is a killer? [laughter] can i answer the first question? i'm laughing, too. well, look, i mean, he's made clear -- [frog sounds] the answer is, i believe, he's in the past essentially acknowledged that he was, there are certain things that he would do or did do. >> sean: in all seriousness, mr. president, that scares the hell out of me. have you noticed the same thing in. >> president trump: maybe the only time i have ever disagreed with you is about the age because, i guess joe is going on to be 79 fairly soon. and that's not old relatively speaking. i know bernie marcus, great gentleman, founder of home depot, he's 92 and a hundred percent, i spoke to him, he's a hundred percent, and other people are in their 90s and 80s and they are doing great. so, you know, his age is not the problem. and, look, i hope he has no problems. i want him to do well. i want him to go out and do well. i think the election was unbelievably unfair but i want this guy to go out and do well for our country. i don't want to see a scene like that i watched it yesterday, i thought it was terrible. terrible. nobody knew what was happening. >> sean: let me move on to the economy. we now have inflation. we now have jobs that people are taking and businesses now are turning down the federal government's extended unemployment benefits. the price of lumber through the roof. the price of gasoline up an average of a dollar ten per gallon. the price to heat your home is up. meat is sky -- skyrocketing. any item delivered by a truck you're paying a lot more for and we're getting rid of energy independence which you gave us as president for the first time in 75 years. what's your take on the state of the economy and the impact the current border crisis has on it and i'll do a follow up on that? >> president trump: so the lumber is really a function of supply and demand. we have so much, but they are putting environmental restrictions on trees now that are so bad, and we're trying to make deals with canada. i can tell from you personal experience canada is very, very tough. canada is as tough as anybody. it's very unfair the way canada treats us, and i had it down to a science. it was so good, it was so -- we were doing so well. everything was coming down. we signed the usmca, mexico-canada, but we were not being taken advantage of anymore and i was going to tariff the hell out of their cars coming into the united states if they did and they knew it and as soon as i left, they started playing games and now you look at lumber prices because we get a lot from canada and you look at what's going on with milk and the fact that they don't take us but we take them. so many things they did, to the farmer that i straightened out and now it's going back to worse than it was because there is nobody there complaining about it. canada treats this country very, very badly. so does europe, by the way, and china you know about but europe in some ways treats us as badly as china. >> sean: let me ask you this question. i want to ask it and i'll ask you about 2022 and 2024 in a minute. it seems to me that conservatism, and i remember, maybe you do or don't, when you were thinking about running for president, times that i would interview you and private conversation that is we had at the time, explained what i believed in. i really haven't changed much. i believe in liberty, freedom, capitalism, our constitution, low taxes, less government interference, bureaucracy, a constitutionalist on the bench, school choice, law and order, safety and security, so people can pursue happiness, free market solutions for healthcare including protecting preexisting conditions. i want secure borders. i absolutely positively want energy independence for a lot of reasons. and free and fair trade and peace through strength. that pretty much sums up sean hannity's philosophy. it was thought that you were considering maybe laying out the trump america first, make america great again agenda, how close is my lifelong held beliefs to what you would put on paper if you ever considered it and are you considering it? >> president trump: well, i am, and frankly, if you think of it, that's what i've been doing and talking about for a long time and i guess that's why we got them by surprise in 2016 and in 2020 we did much better than we did in 2016. shockingly, we were supposed to win easily at 64 million votes and we got 75 million votes and we didn't win. but let's see what happens on that. the whole thing is shocking, but it's common sense. look, when you talk about a strong military, when you talk about the economy, when you talk about, we don't want inflation. inflation is going to kill the economy. by the way, now you're going to see very soon a big interest rate increase all of a sudden. that's step one. i don't know if you remember during the carter administration where the prime rate went up to 21%. i was there. i was there. and you couldn't get anything. it was -- the economy came to a halt. and, you know, when you look -- you mentioned lumber but when you look at -- we'll no longer be energy independent within a matter of weeks. they are closing down everything. what's happening is not to be believed. i tell you the biggest beneficiary is saudi arabia, russia, and the middle east. they talk about me with russia. got along with putin because i was so tough. look, they will make russia so rich because of what's happening. when i left it was $1.87 for a glen -- gallon of gas. it will go up to $6 or $7. mark my words. you could triple people's taxes. that costs more money 40 middle income people. frankly, for our country it's a disaster. it's going to stop everything. and we were at a point where we were getting the fuel for zero. in fact, they would give you $38 if you took it. nobody has ever seen anything like it. now we had to straighten that out because that would have hurt our industry, but we ended up with a great industry with low prices and now we're -- within a matter of weeks we'll no longer be energy independent and we're going to be relying again on the middle east and russia, and all of these other people because we are being led very, very stupidly and i said this during the debates, and people didn't listen. but i said it during the debates. but actually people did listen, and they voted properly, and that's the way it goes. but they lied. they didn't talk this. they never said, this is a bernie sanders' dream what's happening right now. he can't believe it because this is far worse than bernie was ever going to be. bernie sanders would never have even thought to suggest some of the things that are happening right now. >> sean: let's look at the border and the stay in mexico policy is gone. border wall construction has stopped. catch and release is back. it's really just catch and we'll send you to one of the states with free transportation. you see where, you know, we're up dramatically, nearly 200,000 illegals each month, and that opens up other areas of the border for cartels. your take on how toe fix this? >> president trump: we had the most secure border in the history of our country. it was hard getting it there because we had to win lots of lawsuits and that included on the wall. the wall would have been finished within months. all of the material is sitting right there rotting. they stopped it like very early, first, second, and third day, they stopped it. now they want to start it again which is interesting. go tell the contractors that but it was sitting there and now it's sitting there rusting and it's a shame. it took us 2 1/2 years to win all the lawsuits and it was almost complete, and then they came in and they stopped it. and one of the reasons, we built almost 500 miles of wall and one of the reasons we've been so successful is because even though it has gaps, which were easily closed, very easily, it has gaps. what happened is the wall was so good in terms of illegal immigration, and you mentioned things that people don't mention, drugs, drug smuggling was down to the lowest point it's been in years and also human trafficking. usually of women, by the way. it's a vicious business and it's a big business, and we had that down to the lowest point in years and years and years. and now it's worse than ever. >> sean: we have three minutes left. let's talk about 2022 and then the obvious question for 2024. 2022 seems like a bellwether. you've got the house in play. florida seat. georgia senate seat. north carolina, south carolina, new hampshire, wisconsin, ohio, arizona. if that's not bellwether, i don't know. what do you anticipate your involvement for 2022 will be, you started endorsing some people. you'll be out on the road, and what are your thoughts on 2024? will you be making a comeback? >> president trump: sean, i'm very honored to say that my endorsement means more than any endorsement that has ever been given by anybody. i mean, we're winning with just one republican party chairman of north carolina, and of georgia, and of other places. we just won two races in texas. we won a great race in louisiana. this is just intermediate to what's happening. i'll be working and getting a lot of great people elected, and, you know, again, go up 20, 30, 40 points sometimes. the fake news doesn't like talking about it. but the numbers are really incredible, so i'm working on 22, getting a lot of good senators and a lot of good congress people elected, and then we'll be making a decision on 2024. but if you look at the numbers, people are liking me more now than ever before but i think that's the reason, the reason is, they are watching what's happening with our country. they are watching no energy independence, they are watching the board. never has it been a scene like what's happening at the border, and the deaths that's being caused, this isn't just border, it's deaths, and criminals pouring in. they are looking at the economy, inflation and interest rates. they are looking at gasoline prices. and i guess it's making me very popular. >> sean: is there anything, we have one minute left, if you do run in 2024, what might you do differently? what do you know now that you didn't know in 2016? >> president trump: we ran a very successful administration. we had the greatest economy in history. we had 160 million jobs. nobody was ever even close to that. and we did it twice because then we did it after the pandemic. we came with the vaccine, we did a lot of great things and we did it after. but i was under siege with fake investigations and everything. i was doing this while i was under siege from phony people with phony russia, russia, russia, that was caused by clinton and the dnc democrats. and all of that, and we did it. we built space force. we rebuilt the military. we got the largest tax cut in history, the largest regulation cuts in history.