Trump opens up about assassination attempts

Welcome back to Special Report in Abu Dhabi, the UAE, with President Donald J. Trump. Putin doesn't go to Turkey. You thought about going, if he was going. Well, I had a problem, I mean, I consider the Middle East very important. And I had a problem, because Thursday I was going to be in the UAE, okay, which is where I am now. We're going to be leaving in a few hours, and have another couple of stops. It's a pretty grueling schedule. A lot of people said, how the hell do you do it? By the way, how the hell do you do it? I don't know. I think it's genetics. It's genetics. I had a father who was very strong, and I had a mother who was very strong. They lived to ripe old ages, and they were great people. And it's meeting after meeting. And not only that, it's speech after speech. Big ones. It's not like, big ones. It's like, last night, if you look, he got up and made a beautiful speech. Mohammed, he got up and made a beautiful speech. I wasn't told I even had a speech to make. So I had to make a speech, off the cuff. Do you think Biden could do that? I don't think so. Actually, it was a pretty good speech, I looked at it, it was pretty good. I didn't know I was doing it, so. But you know, it's meeting after meeting with the highest level people. These are great people. They love us again. They were not feeling love at all. They were going to China. They're not going to China anymore. You were going to go to Turkey, Putin doesn't show, Zelensky shows. What do you think? No, no, I was never scheduled to go to Turkey. No, you weren't scheduled, but you were talking about maybe you would go, if it all came together. I might have, I might have. But I tell you what, I would not have wanted to disappoint UAE, because that was my stop. Yeah, big deal. And if I went to Turkey, I couldn't go here. And it would have been, it would have been very hard for me to say I'm not doing it. On the substance, what do you think is going through Putin's mind? You know, you said, get to the table. You said, stop bombing. He hasn't stopped bombing. He's not at the table. And what do you think is happening? Well, he is at the table. And he wanted this meeting. And I always felt there can't be a meeting without me, because I don't think a deal is going to get through. There's a lot of hatred on both sides. I have a very good relationship with Putin. I think we'll make a deal. We have to get together. And I think we'll probably schedule it. Because I'm tired of having other people go and meet and everything else. And with that being said, I think Steve Whitkoff has done an incredible job. But it's a very tough job. And it's a job that, because of position, that I think I'm the only one that's going to be able to do that one. And I think we'll do it fast, too. So I think Putin is tired of this whole thing. He's not. And he's not looking good. And he wants to look good. Don't forget, this was supposed to end in one week. And if he didn't get stuck in the mud with his army tanks all over the place, they would have been in Kiev in about five hours. And who gave the javelins? Do you remember who gave the javelins? Was it Barack Hussein Obama? No, it was Donald Trump gave the javelins. Do you think your perception of it has changed? Is Putin now the obstacle to peace, in your mind? Look, I had a real rough session with Zelensky, because I didn't like what he said. And he was not making it easy. And I always said he doesn't have the cards. And he doesn't have the cards. And, you know, I'm being honest, he doesn't have the cards. You're dealing with a massive army, and you're dealing with somebody that's brave, that had great equipment. But I haven't seen you get personal. On Truth Social, you said, Vladimir, stop. He hasn't stopped. And you had once said that maybe you need to look at other things, like sanctions or banking, because maybe they need to be pressured in a different way. And I'll be doing that if that happens. And do you think it's time? I don't want to see 5,000 people. You know, outside of the money, which is a big deal, but the money is the money. The money we can make up. I can make up the money on one trip like this. OK? I mean, think of it. This trip, I made 12 times the money that we're talking about. I made that money in a few days. I've always been good with money. But it's not about the money. It's about pressuring Putin, right? No. But I've always been good with money. I make money. I made in four days, I made 12 times what we spent in Ukraine. So the money is the money. And what bothered me, I hated to see the way it was, you know, excuse me, pissed away. I hated to see that checks were set for $60 billion. Every time Zelensky, I think he's the greatest salesman in the world, far better than me. Zelensky, he comes to Washington. He walks out with $100 billion every time he came, $100 billion, $100 billion. Now his abilities were shrinking because the last time he only got $60 billion. But Congress is very upset about it. You know, they're saying, where is all this money going? And we sent checks. We don't know. We sent just checks. We sent just cash. Where is it? The Europeans have been very badly hurt by this. They spent a lot of money also. They spent $100 billion. We spent $350. It shouldn't be that. It should have been the other way around. But they have not been treated, wait, they have not been treated right by anybody. This is a war that they're, you know, spending a lot of money on. We've been treated worse than them because we had a very stupid person as a president. And if I can solve that problem, and it's a bad problem, because I will tell you, Putin, it was the apple of his eye. He never would have done it if I were president. Never ever would have done it, 100%. I think you even, most people, actually even Democrats say that it wouldn't have happened. But we inherited a mess, okay? I think it's going to get solved. But you know that Putin wanted the whole thing. He didn't want a piece. He didn't want a chunk. He wanted the whole thing. Somebody said, well, what do we get out of it in terms of, let's say, Ukraine? You know what they get out of it? A large portion of the country. It's just, there's, Senator Lindsey Graham has 73 co-sponsors on this bill to sanction Russian oil, and anybody who buys Russian oil, he's making the pitch for the bill saying why should China get the benefit of cheap oil from Russia as Putin continues the war. At some point, there has to be leverage on Putin, and I assume that you've talked about that. Nobody uses leverage better than me. Look what I did to Iran. Look what I did. So it's changing. It's not changing. I always had that. I will use that if I have to. I'd rather not use that. By the way, that's a big deal. I just put it on Venezuela. It's secondary sanctions, it's called. And I just did it with Venezuela. You could do it with Iran, too. I just did it with Iran. It's basically, if you buy oil from Iran, you can't do business with the United States. And you see the ships just leaving that port. You know, in Venezuela, it was an amazing, shiny ship. Why not do it with Russia? You had to see, well, I will if I don't, honestly, I will if we're not going to make a deal. We're going to see whether or not, this is turkey time, you know, this is now, we're talking turkey. And we'll see what happens. That would be crushing for Russia, because they're having a hard time now with the economy. Oil prices are low, you know. It would change the dynamic. So he's incompetent. He doesn't want to see the war, because, you know, everything he said was wrong. The way he talked about Putin, the way he said the threats, I mean, it's just wrong. But here's what was really wrong. He let oil go from $65 to $100 a barrel. Putin was making a fortune. Now I have oil down, so nobody's making a fortune anymore. And it's going to go down further, because I'm drill, baby drill, you know. He closed up everything, and then he opened it. You know what people don't realize, they said, oh, no, he's using, he closed it up, and it drove oil through the roof. And then he said, go back to Trump. Go back to Trump. In other words, go back to what I was doing. And he didn't, but they did to a large extent. He didn't go all the way. And I would have been double that by that time. But he didn't go all the way. And what happened, he forced the prices up, the oil prices up. And that, Putin made a fortune during that period of time. Yeah. Did you see this thing with the former FBI director, James Comey? I did. I just saw it on the news. You know, he puts up this post showing 8647 in the sand, saying, cool shell formation on a beach walk. Your director of national intelligence was asked about it last night, and she said this. Whatever James Comey intent, he and people like him need to be held to account according to the law, which is something that he claims to have given his life for and stands by the rule of law. Fantastic. The rule of law says people like him who issue direct threats against the president of the United States, essentially issuing a call to assassinate him, must be held accountable under the law. Do you believe Comey should be in jail? I do. Do you? So, I saw that this morning. You know, there's a big time gap. And he knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear. Now, he wasn't very competent, but he was competent enough to know what that meant. And he did it for a reason, and he was hit so hard. Because people like me, they like what's happening with our country. Our country's become respected again, and all this. And he's calling for the assassination of the president. Obviously, he apologized and said he doesn't want to apologize for violence, but what do you want to see happen? What do you want to see happen? I don't want to take a position on it, because that's going to be up to Pam and all of the great people. I have Cash. I have Pam. I have great people. And I'm going to let them, because if I tell you something, they'll say, oh, I'm not going to get involved. But I will say this. I think it's a terrible thing. And when you add his history to that, if he had a clean history, he doesn't. He's a dirty cop. And if he had a clean history, I could understand if there was a leniency. But I'm going to let them make that decision. He knew exactly what it said. It's a dangerous time. I see security around here. It's very tight. You're in the Middle East. You've had two assassination attempts, one, obviously, where you got hit by that bullet in Butler. There's a lot of frustration that we still don't know about that shooter in Butler. And we don't know about his communications. We get stonewalled all the time asking questions about it. Is there frustration on your part? Will we get transparency? Will we know the bottom line story? It's very interesting, because we have great people. I think Pam is incredible. I think Cash is incredible. And they're doing a great job. They're being recognized as doing a great job. I was given an explanation early on, sort of a little bit pre-them. And I thought it was strange. You know, the one guy had 18 cell phones. I have a lot of cell phones, but I have like two. You know, I call that a lot. And I think I probably make more calls than him. It's like that's all I do. And I had to, why does somebody have 18? Another one, the first one, the one from Butler, he had three apps, very unusual apps, and two of them were foreign apps. And then he ends up with a white shoe lawyer, meaning a super lawyer from Pittsburgh, you know, the big city. And they live outside of Butler in a little place. Where did they get this lawyer that would represent IBM and would represent Exxon Mobil? But you're the president. Can't you find out? No, no, I know, I know, I know. I'm relying on my people to tell me what it is. You know, we have deep-seated craziness in this country. And I'm relying on my people. And so far they, and they're good. But so far they, and in this case it's Secret Service, they tell me it's fine. But it's a little hard to believe, to be honest with you, okay? It's a little bit hard to believe as I get that throbbing feeling. Yeah, yeah. I get a little throbbing feeling. If you find out, we'd love to know. We continue to ask. And a lot of people ask us. It's a little bit, it's a little bit strange. We have incredible people in there now. So can't blame them. Well, you've been very generous with your time. I'll just wrap it up with this. This is, in the minds of Democrats, Republicans, a very successful trip. Big picture. Because it's this way, do you want to do more foreign policy trips? Do you want to go talk to China's Xi Jinping? You're a force of personality as far as getting things done on a business front. Do you think that that's the model that you're going to have going forward? So, well, it's a very hard model. It's a very taxing model, you know, when you do this. So when you say, do you want, is it fund? Yeah. Now, I did say I was standing next to all three of them over the last few days. And, you know, with tremendous fanfare and everyone going crazy and everything else, it's at a level that nobody's ever seen before, honestly, nobody's ever. I'm getting calls back in the United States, we've never seen anything like this. It's so good for our country. So I'll do it again. And I'll do it. And yeah, I would certainly China, where it's important. It's important in a different way. This was very important to keep in our fold. You know, it's just, they're in our fold. They are back loving the United States again. That was a full embrace and nobody's ever seen anything like it. I mean, seriously, I asked, have you ever done this before? Last night, two nights ago, I said, have you ever done anything for? No. Would you? No. Not even close, you know, with the hundreds of camels and horses and this. It was beautiful. I mean, all three, all three. If you said which was the best, I couldn't tell you. And they were different. They were all at the top level. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. It was an honor. But that really, to me, it showed love. It showed, you know, there's a love. It's almost like they were shut out for a long time, just shut out and treated horribly and they shouldn't have been. And all of a sudden they were allowed back in and they give you an embrace that's 20 times what it perhaps should be. I mean, it was just a beautiful thing to see. So we're in great shape. The Middle East is great. Now we have one problem in the Middle East, Iran, and I'll get that problem solved. It's going to get solved one way or the other. Hamas and Israel, that's eventually going to get solved, too. Well, that's a big problem. I think Iran is right now the big problem. That's also a problem. Hamas is big. And we want to take care of the people. Look, people are starving. You know, you see what's going on right now. People are starving. One of the things that one of the three great leaders that I saw two nights ago said to me, please help the people, the Palestinians. I said, other than the Abbas, what do you mean by that? He said, they're starving. And he meant it with his heart. They're starving. So I've already started working on that. It's a deep problem, but we'll get it solved. And a very immediate and a very big problem is, you know, I'm so proud of what we were able to do with India and with Pakistan. Well, it's a potential problem like that that we have here. I'll get it solved. And one way or the other, I'll get it solved. It's either going to be done nicely or it's going to be done violently. And 99.9 percent want to do it nicely if we can. Well, Mr. President, we appreciate the time. Safe travels home. Thank you very much. Thank you, Brett. Good job.