PALM BEACH, Florida — Former President Donald Trump excoriated Democrat President Joe Biden for screwing up efforts his administration began to make important stuff in America again during an exclusive interview with Breitbart News.
Trump, who sat with Breitbart News for more than two hours at his Mar-a-Lago resort in late December, said that when he was president “it was happening” that major critical industries were moving back to the United States from overseas. But, now that Biden is president, Trump argued that is no longer happening despite all the bluster from Biden’s White House claiming that he is interested in making things in America again.
“Even the CHIPS Act, money goes to foreign countries,” Trump said, bashing one of Biden’s signature legislative achievements that authorized billions of dollars supposedly to make semiconductor chips in America again. “How about that?”
“We were moving big on bringing all of that back,” Trump continued. “I did that through a system of tariffs and other things and frankly we’re not going to protect you if you take our businesses. We don’t want you taking our businesses.”
The Trump administration saw for the first time in decades an influx back into the country of major critical industries—and a slowdown in the drain out of the country of other critical industries. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports essentially saved those industries. Now, under Biden, U.S. Steel—once a “powerhouse” company representing American strength—is reportedly possibly about to be sold to a Japanese competitor. With Biden in the White House, this is a commonality across many industries, from the semiconductor industry after the CHIPS Act failures to the metals industries to even the production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, some reports published late last year show that Biden as president has let proposed medical glove manufacturing facilities wither on the vine after Trump tried to jumpstart them at the end of his administration. That’s not to mention what has happened to the auto industry under Biden, which has been so bad that the biggest autoworkers strike in years paralyzed the industry last autumn.
Trump noted during the interview too that the United Autoworkers (UAW) union, which held a strike against the big three U.S. automakers last year, faces major issues because of Biden’s push towards electric vehicles. Trump argued that because of this, while he will probably not win the UAW president Shawn Fain’s support—Fain is a committed Democrat—he will win the rank-and-file in large part because the United States does not have the structures necessary to make electric cars in America.
“The United Autoworkers is in very big trouble because of this electric vehicle policy,” Trump said. “You can’t make electric cars in this country. The United Autoworkers is in very, very big trouble. I think I’m going to win their vote. I guess I probably can’t win the top guy because he’s I guess a committed Democrat but I think we’re going to get a lot of labor unions supporting me. Their people vote for me. Many of the Teamsters workers, go and quiz it and poll it, those workers are voting for me.”
In the immediate aftermath of this interview, Trump met with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien. Asked to expand on why he thinks he will win these union workers in November, Trump said there are many reasons.
“I think it’s a lot of things. I think they watch him on television,” Trump said. “They’re smart people. They see they him and know they can’t vote for this guy. You watch this guy—he can’t answer a question. How can you vote for him? These union people are smart. I have unions talking to me that would have never talked to any Republican before and they’re talking about it because they’re saying how can you support a guy like this?”
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Drake Enterprises, an automotive parts manufacturer, on September 27, 2023, in Clinton Township, Michigan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Trump said that the Biden administration’s policies with regard to pushing electric vehicles have been a commercial failure because consumers do not like electric cars.
“First of all, he’s selling out to foreign countries at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said. “All of the things we were doing to bring it back, he’s letting it go. What he’s doing to the auto companies is going to be a disaster. The reason they make these cars, because the auto companies aren’t that stupid, but the reason is they get huge subsidies for making electric cars. They’re sitting all over the United States right now and nobody wants to buy them because they’d like to be able to drive a little while before they need to go and recharge it and sit for an hour. The electric car policy is a disaster. I’m not knocking electric cars. I think all products of that nature are wonderful, but they don’t go far and they’re very expensive.”
Trump further expanded on electric vehicles by noting they are “fine” if a driver does not want to go “long distances” and has “extra money to burn,” but that China will be making all of them and the U.S. automakers cannot keep up.
“Electric cars are fine if you don’t want to drive long distances and if you have extra money. They’re all going to be made in China,” Trump said. “The big plants are there. We can’t do what China can do for that—but they can’t do what we can do for a thing called gasoline. If you got rid of all the cars in this country and went to electric immediately, it would only have a tiny little impact on emissions—a very small impact. If you immediately said no car will be combustion, no car will be fed through gasoline, the impact will be so small, but we’re going through and he’s actually destroying lives by doing this. The cars are too expensive. They’re not going to be made here. They just don’t go far.”
Trump, who just won the Iowa caucuses and appears to be on the glide path to the GOP nomination for president and set for a rematch with Biden, also told Breitbart News in this piece of this interview that he does believe that because of these Biden failures he is cutting into the Democrats’ coalition ahead of November and breaking down Biden’s electoral protection.
“The Democrats have an automatic advantage because they have the biggest base,” Trump said. “They have a base of certain groups. I think that base is being eroded. I think the African Americans are coming to me. I think the unions are coming to me.”
Trump told a story about how a friend of his who is a Democrat once asked him why he is not winning by more against Biden than he is in polling.
“A friend of mine who’s actually a Democrat, but he votes for me, he called me and he says ‘Can I ask you a question? How come you’re only up by 10 or 11 points? That’s not a lot considering….’” Trump said. “I explained to him, ‘They have a base, an automatic base, no matter who it is. If you put a child in there, they have a base of 39 points or whatever it is.’”
But, Trump argued, he believes the Democrats are worried about him being the GOP nominee for president and are engaged in some vicious tactics inside their own party. He referenced how Democrats crushed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s now running as an independent, and are in the process of doing the same to Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN). Democrats in Florida literally canceled their primary election to coronate Biden without even giving the voters here in the Sunshine State a say.
“Look what they did to Kennedy,” Trump said. “Look, Kennedy wasn’t a threat, but he was at 15 percent. That’s embarrassing. You’re an incumbent and a guy is in there knocking you. They made it impossible for him to even campaign. It’s incredible—and then they say I’m a threat to democracy? Dean Phillips, I hear he’s doing a big number on him, right?”
On that note, Trump argued that Democrats are masters of projection. Part of why he thinks they are arguing he is a threat to democracy or fascistic or authoritarian or whatever else they come up with, Trump said, is because they themselves are engaged in that exact behavior and are simply accusing Trump falsely of doing the same while not admitting their own misdeeds.
“They always do what they say you do,” Trump said of Democrats. “In other words, they blame you for what they do. That’s what they’ve done. They make a living off of it. If they were as good at running the country as they are at cheating on elections and these other things, which they’ve been doing for years before I came along—think about it. Look at their policy: high taxes, open borders, high interest rates. They have the worst policies. They cause tremendous hatred. The level I think right now that there’s more division in our country than we’ve ever had. It started with Obama.”
