BEDMINSTER, New Jersey — Former President Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president in 2024, told Breitbart News exclusively in a long-form video interview of his major policy vision for a return to the White House should voters send him back to the Oval Office next year.
Trump, who is currently leading by far in the GOP primary and in many cases leading or tied with incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden in general election surveys, said he is confident and hopeful he will be able to hang on and win another term in the White House.
Former U.S. President and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump gives a thumbs up as he leaves after speaking at a campaign rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on July 29, 2023. (JOED VIERA/AFP via Getty Images)
“I think so. I hope so,” Trump said when asked if he believes he will win next year. “I hope so for the country or we’re going to have a country that’s finished. I have people coming up to me all the time crying — men, women, strong people, smart people — and they’re crying say ‘if you don’t win, sir, our country is finished. Our country is finished.’ I believe it.”
Trump supporters watch a video featuring their candidate inside the Erie Insurance Arena before a political rally for Former U.S. President Donald Trump on July 29, 2023, in Erie, Pennsylvania. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
On his first day in office, Trump told Breitbart News he would again “create the greatest economy ever, in history.”
“You know, we had the greatest economy in history,” Trump said. “We’re going to do it again. Our jobs numbers, our employment numbers, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world frankly — and we’re going to do that again. But we’re going to be drilling for energy. We’re going to be using what’s under our feet — liquid gold. Then we’re going to start paying off debt and reducing taxes.”
Trump bashed “Bidenomics,” arguing that that low unemployment numbers the Biden administration is touting are fake because of how the economy has been restructured during this administration.
“It’s a false number though because a lot of people aren’t working,” Trump said, also adding that “real wages are way down” and “family income is way down.”
U.S. President Joe Biden in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on June 15, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“Inflation was caused by energy to start off with,” Trump said. “Now, it’s caused by everything — but it was caused by energy. We’re going to be drilling. We have more liquid gold than anybody. We’re going to make a fortune on that. We’re going to get energy way, way down in this country. That means your electric bills, your heating bills, your gasoline — everything is going to come way down. Inflation is going to go away. We had no inflation. We had virtually no inflation. We had the perfect number, actually-perfect number. Everything was going great. Then they rigged an election. But we had virtually no inflation. We had the greatest economy in history, the best employment numbers ever in history. We had all of this going so beautifully. We’re going to start it again — and we’re also going to seal up our border. People can come into our country but they have to come in legally.”
Trump’s interview with Breitbart News was taped on Thursday July 27 at his golf club in northern New Jersey. As the Breitbart News crew came in to set up, the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster course was building up preparations for the upcoming LIV Golf tournament which will take place here next weekend from August 11 to 13. Trump’s original push for LIV was shunned by some in the golf world, but the former president ended up being proven correct when earlier this summer the PGA Tour announced it was merging with LIV. Trump enjoys pointing out that, yet again, he was right — this time about LIV — and that his many critics were, likewise yet again, wrong.
“We called a lot of things right actually if you look but I did,” Trump said. “I said these guys should take the money and just relax. Just take the money and go out and play. The ones that listened to me made a lot of money and the ones that didn’t listen, they’re not so happy right now.”
Former President Donald Trump plays during the LIV Golf Pro-Am at Trump National Golf Club, Thursday, May 25, 2023, in Sterling, Va. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
To get back to the presidency, the pinnacle of power on the planet, Trump has several enormous tasks ahead of him. First, he needs to power through a crowded Republican primary field — which although he leads it significantly he still has some major GOP players running against him. Then, he needs to fight his way through a growing series of legal battles. Trump has been indicted in three separate cases now, once by the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and twice now by the Department of Justice’s Special Counsel Jack Smith. A possible fourth indictment, from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia, looms. The night of this interview, the DOJ’s Smith added more charges against Trump in the first case — the documents case — and added a third defendant. Smith this past week indicted Trump on more charges in a separate case, the January 6 case in Washington, DC, for which the former president was arraigned on Thursday. Then, if Trump makes it past all those hurdles, he has to defeat Biden, the sitting president who ousted him in the 2020 election — someone who has come under intense scrutiny recently for major corruption issues. What’s more, Trump also faces a Republican Party establishment wary of his return to power — many of the same globalist Republicans who opposed him in the past are working against him again.
During the course of this interview, Trump discussed all of these hurdles and issues with Breitbart News. Several stories on them, including his response to the new charges in the documents case, his thoughts on Biden corruption revelations and health problems, his views about Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), his plans for the first GOP presidential primary debate scheduled for August 23, and his thoughts on key differences between America’s two major political parties, have already published. In this broader piece, which also contains the full video interview, Trump’s full thoughts on all of these topics — and perhaps more importantly what he intends to do policy-wise should he pull off the greatest comeback in American history — are laid out in detail.
Attendees cheer during a campaign event for former President Donald Trump in Pickens, South Carolina, on July 1, 2023. (Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump explained in this interview several major crises that have afflicted Americans during the Biden presidency, from the wide-open U.S. border with Mexico to the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan to the Russian war in Ukraine to Biden’s mishandling of U.S.-China relations.
“When you look at our border with millions of people coming in from places unknown, places where we have no idea where they’re coming from, and nobody does anything about it,” Trump said. “Many of these people are from jails and prisons and many of these people are from mental institutions and they’re terrorists and they’re pouring into our country. It’s so sad to see what’s happening. Look at Afghanistan. We gave them $85 billion worth of equipment. We lose 13 soldiers but so many have been horrifically wounded and horribly wounded. We left Americans in Afghanistan. Look at what happened with Afghanistan, how bad that is. That is I think the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. That’s how bad it was. We were like surrendered, but I had them in such great shape. We didn’t have a soldier killed in 18 months under me — 18 months not one soldier even shot at, because they knew not to do it. Then I go out and they do this ridiculous situation getting out. I was the one that was getting out, but we would have gotten out with strength — 21 years is enough. We were getting out with strength, with power, with dignity. When we got out, it was like we surrendered. We took the soldiers out first. Who ever heard of that? We took the soldiers out first. We gave up Bagram air base which would have been great for China because it was only an hour away from where they make their nuclear weapons. So sad what’s happened. Remember this. Ukraine would have never happened. Russia would have never ever attacked. Ukraine would have never ever happened if I were president. It wasn’t going to happen and it didn’t happen. For four years it didn’t happen. And, I can’t tell you what China’s going to do, but it would have never happened — Taiwan would never happen — they wouldn’t be having ships circling around. They wouldn’t be doing what they’re doing right now.”
U.S. soldiers stand guard behind barbed wire as Afghans sit on a roadside near the military part of the airport in Kabul on August 20, 2021, hoping to flee from the country after the Taliban’s military takeover of Afghanistan. (WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP via Getty Images)
To have a shot at winning the White House back, Trump will first need to win the Republican nomination again. As previously reported, Trump explained to Breitbart News how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was once his chief rival for the GOP nomination, now is “crashing badly.” One of DeSantis’s top outside advisers, Jeff Roe of the pro-DeSantis Super PAC Never Back Down, earlier this summer said this primary election would not be focused on economic issues but instead cultural ones. “The fight for the soul of the party isn’t about tax cuts or trade deals,” Roe told Axios in early June. “It is this cultural combat that we have as a country.”
Asked about that framing of the major issues in this election — that fighting woke is more important than economic nationalism — Trump told Breitbart News simply: “I disagree.”
Trump said the economy, China, and the border and immigration will be front and center in this election, as well as the uneven two-tier system of justice on display right now as Trump fights multiple indictments from federal and state officials.
“I think it’s going to be won on the economy — and it’s going to be won somewhat on holding China back and holding all these countries back that are all after us,” Trump said. “But we have tremendous problems from within because I didn’t have a problem with China. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China and no other president took in anything. I didn’t have a problem with other countries. Look at what I did with North Korea. I held them back. Now all of a sudden they’re testing missiles and nuclear and everything else again because they don’t respect Biden. But the problem that we have with these sick people like people that appoint special prosecutors because that’s what they are — they’re prosecutors, they’re not counsels, they’re prosecutors — and people appoint them in order to try and gain favor politically. That’s a real problem for this country that a thing like this can happen.”
As such, since the issues of the race align with what Trump is focused on, he accurately noted he is currently winning the fight — a polling lead he relishes.
“I think that the election is going very well for me and I think you’d agree with that, Matt — I’ve known you a long time — but it’s going well for me. I’m up by 40 and 50 points and sometimes more than that,” Trump said. “And I’m up on Biden and we have to take back our country. We have to have a wall — and I built hundreds of miles of wall and it was great but we now have to build more. You know, I built hundreds of miles of wall and when that was completed they said certain areas should have more and we got that all built, all ready, and all we had to do was install it. It would have taken three weeks. It was ready to be installed and then we had a rigged election. Because of that they didn’t build — they didn’t put up the wall. It was already built. It was ready to be put up. The easy part is putting it up. It was all built. That’s when I realized for the first time these guys actually want to have an open border but think of it. They want high interest rates. They want open borders. They want no voter ID. They want high taxes. They want to quadruple taxes. You know, they want the taxes to go up — your taxes, everybody’s taxes to go up three or four times. I never heard of that. All my life I never thought I’d run for office, you know, growing up. I loved real estate. I loved business and all the things I was doing. I never thought I’d do this. But I was politically motivated and I always enjoyed it and watched it. I’ve never seen somebody run on raising taxes. These people want to raise taxes and quadruple everyone’s taxes. I think it’s crazy. I think it’s crazy. I gave the largest tax cut in history. I gave the largest regulation cut in history. We had the best jobs numbers in history for everybody — African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, male, female, everybody. We did a good job and I think that’s why I have these big poll numbers.”
U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a ceremony commemorating the 200th mile of border wall at the international border with Mexico in San Luis, Arizona, June 23, 2020. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
As for other candidates in the GOP presidential primary field, Trump has a mixed view on them. Some he likes, some he does not. While it’s no surprise that Trump despises former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie or former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, or that Trump likes Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) or businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, here he explains why.
“Some are good and some I think are terrible,” Trump said. “I think some are terrible. I think some are not good people. A guy like Christie is just wasting his time, you know, nobody likes him. Nobody respects him. He left the governorship of New Jersey with an 8 percent approval rating. That says it right there — 8 percent. But you have some very good ones. I get along very well with Tim Scott. We did opportunity zones together. I think that Ramaswamy is doing very well. He speaks very well of me and he says I’m a great president and I say oh good is he running against me, actually? But he’s very good. That’s one of the reasons he’s doing well because he speaks well of me. I think you have a few that are very good and you have some that aren’t good. I think this Asa Hutchinson — he’s polling at zero. He’s wasting his time. Why is he running? This is the point. Why would I do a debate with a guy like that that’s running who’s at zero and he’s just going to ask a nasty question? Why would you do that? But Asa Hutchinson’s wasting people’s time. But you have some very good people in there too.”
Assuming Trump hangs on and wins the GOP nomination as expected, he said he “probably” expects to face Biden in November 2024 in what would amount to the rematch of the century. Trump told Breitbart News that he believes that while he outperformed expectations in 2020, COVID upended the entire election — and that in 2024, he thinks “there’s more spirit” than in 2020 or 2016 since Americans can now see just how much of a “disaster” the Biden administration is.
“Well, we did great the last time. I can tell you that, but COVID caused a lot of problems even though we did very well on that,” Trump said. “If you look at the Republican governors, and I let them do their thing, they had great success — but this was a worldwide disaster coming in from China, the China virus as I call it. What a shame. But we did very well. We got more votes than any other sitting president ever by far actually and we got much more votes, many more votes than we did the first time. The first time we got 63 million. I got millions more votes than we did the first time which is very unusual for a president, for a sitting president. So we got the most votes of any sitting president in history, and I think that we’re going to do very well. I will say that as well as we did in terms of getting the most votes ever, as well as we did, I think there’s more spirit this time because they see what’s happening to our country. This man is a disaster. The whole administration is a disaster.”
If elected again in November 2024, Trump said he has several goals he intends to accomplish immediately on day one in office.
First, he said, he would “immediately seal up our border.”
“You come in, but you have to come in legally,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to take all these people — the criminals — out of our country because you don’t have jails that have people in them. You go to South America, they have empty jails right now because they’ve dumped them in America. They have empty mental institutions — and plenty of terrorists, we’re going to get them out. We know who they are because of our great police in this country. They know who they are locally. They know who they are. We’re going to get them out.”
He also said he would “stop inflation” by unleashing American energy production.
“We’re going to be drill baby drill,” Trump said. “We’re going to be drilling for oil — liquid gold under our feet. We’re not going to use Venezuela oil and oil of these other countries that are ripping us off. We have more oil than anybody. Anybody.”
Then, he said, he will end the Russian war in Ukraine.
“I’m going to get the Russia-Ukraine thing settled up quickly,” Trump said.
Asked earlier in the interview about how he would do that, Trump said he did not want to tip his hand too early but is confident given his relationships with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian president Vladimir Putin that he can end it quickly. He also noted that the United States has spent nearly ten times as much money as European nations on the effort, arguing that that is unfair since the European nations are much more directly affected by the war.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky speak during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)
“Well I don’t want to do too much into that because I can’t tell you this and then I’m supposed to sit down and negotiate,” Trump said. “But I will get it ended. I know both of them very well. I know Zelensky and I know Putin very well. I’ll get it ended and I’ll get it ended very quickly. I say in 24 hours. I really believe I can because that thing is a disaster. It’s a human bloodbath and we have to get it ended. It has to end. When people say well, who do you like or who do you this? Look, we have spent $200 billion on that war and Europe has spent $20 billion on that war. You tell me that’s fair? We spent $180 billion more than Europe. The European Union, or if you look at it because it’s very similar you look at NATO, the only reason NATO has any money is because of me. Because of me they have money. I came in and said wait a minute you people haven’t been paying. We’ve been financing it. Then on top of that they make trade almost impossible for us so I broke that open too. But we’re at $200 billion and they’re probably at $20 billion. But think of it — $200 billion versus $20 billion or something thereabouts. Do you think that’s fair? It affects them a lot more than us. But regardless of that I want to get it ended because I want to stop all those people from dying. You look at those cities. They’ve been obliterated. The death toll is much higher than what they’re talking about. That’s the other thing. They don’t talk about it. The death toll is much higher. But I want to get that war ended because people are dying at levels where we haven’t seen in a long time before.”
Trump said that foreign policy elites’ obsession with Russia hurts the United States when it comes to more significant adversaries such as China.
“Biden went out two weeks ago and he said, ‘we don’t have any ammunition,’” Trump said. “I rebuilt our entire military and we had so much ammunition we didn’t know what to do with it. Now we don’t have enough ammunition because we’ve given it to Ukraine and others but we’ve given it to Ukraine. He goes out and stupidly admits that we don’t have ammunition. Now, if you’re China don’t you like that? If you’re North Korea, don’t you like hearing this? He shouldn’t have done it. That’s probably classified information he gave out. But when you think about it, he goes out and says we don’t have ammunition, how stupid is that to say? And to allow it to happen?”
As for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), America’s greatest adversary, Trump has threatened the CCP that if China does not vacate Cuba — where the CCP is building a spy base right now — within 48 hours of him retaking office, he would levy the biggest tariffs China has ever faced. But China’s activity in Cuba is hardly the only action the Communist regime in Beijing is taking in the Western Hemisphere. Trump particularly noted that China is taking control of the Panama Canal, a key shipping lane that connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Chinese President Xi Jinping attends the joint press conference of the China-Central Asia Summit in Xian, in China’s northern Shaanxi province on May 19, 2023. (FLORENCE LO/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
“They’re all over South America,” Trump said. “They’re taking over the Panama Canal that we lost tens of thousands of people building because of the mosquitos right? Malaria. They’re taking over the Panama Canal from Panama. They’re running it. We built it. We stupidly gave it to Panama for a dollar, stupidly. How stupid was that? We gave it to Panama. That was Jimmy Carter. We gave it to Panama for one dollar. How stupid was that? We lost thousands and thousands of people building the Panama Canal. It was like building in hell, and we hand it over for one dollar. Now China takes it over. It’s not even believable. That we allow this stuff to happen is not even believable.”
Asked if this means that Biden has abandoned the Monroe Doctrine — policy articulated two centuries ago by then-President James Monroe that holds that intervention by world powers in the Americas could be construed as hostility to the United States — Trump said that Biden abandoned America altogether.
“He abandoned the country. He abandoned our country,” Trump said. “Look, the biggest story — one of them of many I guess — but the biggest story that the papers don’t write about is what you just said, is Cuba. They are building military operations right now in Cuba. The papers don’t even want to talk about it. When I heard that I said that will take care of itself because there will be a mad on rush in the United States when they hear it. But you don’t hear it. This is why I get 90 percent of the Cuban vote because I protect the people from Cuba that happen to be living in this country, or Cuban-Americans. What happens is the Cuban-Americans are never going to be able to go back to Cuba because China is taking over Cuba. That would never have happened. They never would have even thought about doing that during the Trump administration.”
With the CCP’s “Made In China 2025” plan timeline just over a year away, Breitbart News asked Trump why America does not have a plan like that.
“Well, we did” during his administration, Trump said.
“I was beating China and I told President Xi I don’t like the 2025 because that sounds like a threat,” Trump said. “And he took it away. But now he’s reinstituted it under Biden but you know he took that away — do you remember? Six or seven years ago they talked about 2025. I said that sounds very threatening. Essentially it sounds like the world is going to China in 2025. Well, the way it’s going now, it is. But we had it so we were just beating them at every level. We were beating them at trade. I put tariffs on that saved our steel industry because they were dumping steel here. I put tariffs on and our steel industry was totally saved. The people that like me most are the steel companies and the people that work in steel mills because our steel industry was dead. We weren’t going to have a plant in the whole country. They were doing thing to us that were terrible. I also told President Xi ‘I don’t like your 2025 statement, I think it sounds very threatening, I don’t like it.’ And he withdrew it. But now he put it back again.”
