Former President Donald Trump on Not Firing Fauci, Lockdowns, COVID Vaccines, and More

For years, you've been saying that the reason you didn't fire Anthony Fauci was because he'd been there for a long time, that you would have taken heat, that it would have created a firestorm, quoting your words. Then, for the first time in May— I also said I didn't listen to him too much. I'm getting there. But then in May, you started saying, well, he's a civil servant, so I couldn't, technically. The truth is, though, not only did you not fire Fauci, who is loathed by many, many millions of Republicans in particular, but also some Democrats. By the way— You made him a star. You made him a star. This is the criticism of you, that you made him the face of the White House coronavirus task force, that he was out at every presser, that he was running herd for the administration on COVID, and that you actually gave him a presidential commendation before he left office. Wouldn't you like a do-over on that? I don't know who gave him the commendation. I really don't know who gave him the commendation. Presidential commendation. One went out for Mark Milley, too. Somebody probably handed him a commendation. He probably— But let me just tell you about Fauci. Fauci was very important in the Biden administration, and much less important. If you know, he didn't want to stop China. He wanted to let everyone come in from China. I stopped it. I overrode it. I overrode many of the things he did. He was much less important to me. Now, with that all being said, he's been there for years. He was respected. He lost a lot of the respect because of COVID, but he was respected. And on COVID, if you know what I did, I let the governors run their states. And many of the governors opened up their states. Some of them didn't. Florida, by the way, was closed. But if you take a look at Henry McMaster, he had his state, South Carolina, open. You take a look at South Dakota. Take a look at Tennessee. A lot of the states were not closed. And I allowed— it's the federalist system. I allowed the governors to do that. I also allowed Democrat governors to do that. But I don't think any of them, none of them did it. Wouldn't you like to go back and try to clip his wings? This guy was pushing mask mandates on us. He wanted the most extreme measure at every turn. Okay, look, I'm not one that blames a system that if you're civil service or if you have some other protection that you can't get fired because I've done things that are a lot worse than that. You're big on the firing. So, yeah, I fired a lot of people. I fired Comey. And that was one of the great firings. I fired Comey, and then I fired a lot of other people in the FBI. And they were great firings because the deep state and they were at work and they were not good people. But I wasn't, I was not a big fan of Fauci. If you look at Ron DeSanctimonious, he was, this guy said the greatest things. I can give you articles that Fauci's great. He's wonderful. We love him. We don't do anything without Fauci. This went on for months. But he didn't listen to Fauci. He did 100%. Look, I will give you, he shut down Florida. For a month. Oh, he shut it down for a lot of long. He shut down the beaches. He shut down the roads. He shut down a hospital. He was shutting down everything. He also had long lines of people getting the jab, as he called it, let's all go get the jab. The guy tried to change history in Florida. Now, eventually Florida was open, but a lot of these other governors didn't shut down at all. South Dakota didn't shut down. McMaster, South Carolina didn't shut down. Tennessee, there were states that didn't shut down at all. They probably did the best job. But Ron DeSantis was under a lot of pressure, especially given the population, the age of a lot of Florida's citizens. I'm not trying to blame anybody, but he should say, I closed it down. Eventually we opened it, but I closed it down. But I gave him the right to keep it open if he wanted to. I let the governors make the determination as to whether or not to close it down. But let me ask you this, because this is the number one question I ask my audience. What would you like me to ask President Trump? These are your fans. This is the number one question they wanted me to ask you, that you shut the country down for six weeks in spring of 2020. Operation Warp Speed. Excuse me. Rushed through. I didn't really. Let me ask that question. This is my audience's question, I gotta get it out. But I let the governors shut down. Some did and some didn't. Some didn't shut down at all. Operation Warp Speed, though. That was on the vaccines. They were rushed through. They have helped but also hurt a lot of people. And your White House actually supported mask mandates. So wouldn't you like a do-over on any of that? Look, when this came in, nobody knew what the hell it was. It sounded like an ancient, you know, pandemic. You thought that was from 200 years ago or from 1917. We never thought you'd have a pandemic. Nobody had any idea. We got word that bad things were happening in China, right around the Wuhan Clinic. And I was the one that said it was in the Wuhan Clinic. And, you know, I stuck with it and it was. It was absolutely. It came out of the Wuhan Clinic. But you take a look and what we did was, this was brand new. Nobody knew what the hell it was. There's dust. Somebody said there's dust coming in from China. And it's killing people in Italy and it's killing people in France and it's going to kill people here. And by the way, I shut it down to China. That was a big move. I saved thousands, hundreds of thousands of lives by doing it. But honestly, nobody, I don't blame a lot of people because nobody knew what it was. Now we do understand it somewhat. Nobody really understands it even now fully. But nobody knew what COVID was. And it wasn't even a name. I called it the China virus. I still do. I call it the China virus. It came out of China. You know, they call it COVID and COVID-19. As far as the vaccine's concerned, you had the original COVID. And the vaccine had an impact on that. And there are some people, I will tell you, some friends of mine that are Democrat, I think they voted for me, but they're Democrat. Very smart people, top people. They say, you know, I don't understand one thing. Why don't you talk more about the vaccine? It was one of the greatest things you've ever done. Now, think of that. They say to me, and I say, I'm not going to talk about it one way or the other. First of all, no mandates. I don't want mandates. I never had mandates. Florida sort of had a mandate because they were giving the vaccine. They were demanding everybody take the vaccine. That's another thing. But no mandates, no anything. I didn't demand anybody take it. But I have people on the other side, not my side, although probably there are some on my side too. They said, you saved a hundred million people because I got it done in nine months as opposed to five years to 12 years. A lot of people- You're proud of it. No, I'm not proud of it. I'm saying what Democrats think. Democrats- I get it. And I'm not somebody who denies some of the good that the vaccines did. I lived through that too. But of course, a lot of people have been vaccine injured. And that's one of the questions. Those people are mad that they were rushed through and that they can't sue. Well, I never gave mandates and people have to make their own decision as far as I'm concerned. Now, some places had mandates, very strong mandates, largely Democrat governors and probably some Republicans, et cetera, et cetera. But there are Democrats that say, why aren't you talking about that? It's one of the- They really believe strongly. One said, you say- And this is very smart people. They said, you saved a hundred million people worldwide. In 1917, it could have been as much as a hundred million. It ended the first world war because all the soldiers were dying of this horrible disease of 1917. You know, it actually ended the first world war. The soldiers were dying. There was one of the lines, they're fighting and they're dying of this horrible disease. They said, you might've saved a hundred million people, 50 million people. Why aren't you talking about it? I said, I'm not talking about it. But what I did do is I got something done for that specific thing. I also got Regeneron and I got a lot of therapeutics done, which were great. I also got the robes and the leather and the rubber and all of the different things, the ventilators. We did a tremendous job. And it's never, you know, they appreciated what I did with the economy. I got a lot of good marks on economy. I got a lot of good marks on a lot of things, rebuilding the military, getting rid of ISIS, the biggest tax cuts in history. I never got, I think, the credit that I deserve on COVID. And I'll tell you the way I look at it. It came in and nobody knew it was. We have to put ourselves back then. I had a meeting and we had a lot of professionals in the Oval Office. They say, sir, something bad is happening in the world. I said, what's that? And they said, people are dying. They're dying in China, in this area. And there was pictures of body bags all over the place, black body bags, satellite pictures. And they were all over. I said, that's strange. And then we'd have another meeting the next day. And the next day, and all of a sudden, they had something where the first person died in the United States and then another. And then it died. Then they started dying all over Italy and all over Europe. Nobody really knew what it was, Megan.