The 37 most outlandish lines from Donald Trump's interview with Hugh Hewitt
One in a continuing series
As part of his campaign’s re-start, Donald Trump is back to giving interviews to friendly faces around the conservative media-sphere.
On Thursday he sat down with talk show host Hugh Hewitt. Hewitt, to his eternal credit, posted a transcript of their conversation. I went through it and picked out the lines from Trump that you really need to see. They’re below.
“Well, I wouldn’t get into that, and it’s not a good thing to, because those things, you just don’t tell to the world’s favorite radio host. You can’t do that.”
The question Trump was asked was whether he would intervene militarily if China sent ships to invade Taiwan. As a former president, there would be no issue with Trump offering up an opinion on the question — if, that is, he knew what Hewitt was talking about.
“You have to keep some things to yourself in terms of strategy, because we’re working hard, and we think we’re doing really well, and we could get very, back there very soon.”
So he’s not saying what he would do because he might get elected president again in two years time. Riiiiiight.
“I can tell you this. I could tell you this. Ukraine-Russia would have never happened if I was there.”
But the question was about Taiwan and China, right? Right.
“I want to make it so that Ukraine and Russia have to fight, and fight for the last time. And we’ve got to make peace.”
Uh, what?
“I ended everything, and Putin will tell you the worse he’s ever had is Trump. You know, they talk about Trump, he loved Putin. I get along well with Putin, but nobody was tougher on Russia than I was.”
Probably worth noting here that we know from U.S. intelligence community that Russia actively wanted Trump to win the 2016 election because they believed he would be better for their interests than Hillary Clinton. Also, not for nothing, here’s a list of 37 times Trump was soft on Russia.
“And by the way, I’m suing Pulitzer, and this should be almost the end of that, because if a judge and jury see this report, to give back the Pulitzer Prizes, because the New York Times and the Washington Compost got, and they got it, and they got it strongly, they got, they had all of the different things.”
Try to diagram this sentence. I dare you.
“I would be entitled to a revenge tour, if you want to know the truth, but I wouldn’t do that.”
Trump was asked whether he would seek revenge on people who wronged him if he was elected again in 2024. He said no. Then he said this. So….
“I get along with him great. He always liked me. You saw that, and he doesn’t like Biden at all, and he’s arming up.”
This is Trump on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Never forget the “love letters.”
“You know, she said numerous times, I put it up, actually, that I would never run if our president runs. He was a great president, et cetera, et cetera. She said that numerous times. But she’s a very ambitious person. She just couldn’t stay in her seat.”
This is, I think, Trump restraining himself when it comes to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. This is him being as, um, nice as he can be about an opponent. Also, he’s right: Haley did say she would never run against Trump.
“It would depend….It would have to depend on who the nominee was.”
Trump, again, refuses to say that he will support whoever wins the Republican nomination in 2024. Mostly because he’s not going to! Read this!
“It was the only question that I answered not terribly, but I didn’t answer it, you know, I think I had a good excuse. I was just in the game and you asked me about the triad, the nuclear triad.”
Hewitt asks Trump here whether he is still mad about the nuclear triad question from a debate in December 2015. (Hewitt was one of the moderators.) Here’s in part, how Trump responded when the question was initially asked: “Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible; who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important.” Which tells you this: He had zero idea what the nuclear triad was (or maybe is).
“I think I gave a half-assed answer, but it wasn’t as good as some.”
Fact check: True!
“But no, I’m going to do a list, and I very well might name some of the people. We have great names that want to be with us. We have great support, tremendous names. We got J.D. Vance yesterday. He endorsed.”
In which Trump goes from saying he will release names of potential Supreme Court picks to touting his endorsement from Sen. J.D. Vance. Seamless.
“Well, first of all, that’s not Pompeo’s nickname. Believe me. That’s not it.”
Hewitt suggests here that Trump refers to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as “My Mike.” Apparently not. Or not anymore.
“He took a little bit more credit than he should, but that’s okay with me. It’s all, you know, going to the same, because we did, we did a great job.”
Again, this is Trump playing nice. Sure, Pompeo took too much credit but that’s ok with Trump! All good!
“Don’t forget, these guys, before I even got in, they were spying on my campaign, long before I got in.”
[Narrator voice]: They weren’t.
“And if I didn’t fire Comey, and if I didn’t fire McCabe and Strzok and Page and all of that scum that was in there, you would have had, they were trying to do an overthrow'“
So, the FBI was trying to overthrow the government? Seems like a big story! Why haven’t we heard more about it!
“They spied on my campaign, and I got rid of them all. I got rid of them all. But it was more than them. It was more than them, and you know that. And you know that’s coming again.”
Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Deep State!
“Hugh, let me just say this. They spied on my campaign. We had an amazingly solid group of people, and a tremendously solid, what I did with tax cuts, regulation cuts.”
The question Hewitt asked? “Tell me about the nicknames for Youngkin and Abbott and Pompeo.” Which is a dumb question! But still.
“I rebuilt the military that they gave so much of it to Afghanistan.”
“I”
“And by the way, Truth Social is the hottest thing and it’s doing great. I hope all your listeners get on Truth Social, because that’s where it’s at. It’s doing unbelievable.”
Again, the question Trump was asked was what nicknames he had for some of his potential opponents. But, yeah, Truth Social, sure.
“I’m sitting there with like 90 million people. By the way, I should have had 200-250. I think I had way over 200 million when you include, I had, according to Zuckerberg, another beauty, I was number one on Facebook.”
Donald Trump says he should have 200 million Twitter followers. How? Um, not sure.
“I had to dig my way out of that, because I have a lot of things to say, and I did. And I did with a thing called a press release. You’re one of the few people. You’re at an age where you remember the word press release.”
Trump’s solution to being de-platformed off of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? The press release of course!
“It’s called Truth, and Truth Social is the hottest thing there is.”
Yes, yes you’ve mentioned that.
“I could go back to Twitter whenever I want, and you know, I have some ideas planned. But you know, it’s just not necessary. Truth is so hot, and I’ll always have Truth. Truth Social.”
If I was an investor in Truth Social, this quote would not put my mind at ease that Trump wasn’t going back to Twitter.
“Ron DeSantis got elected because of me. You remember he had nothing. He was dead. He was leaving the race. He came over and he begged me, begged me for an endorsement.”
This is going to be a familiar attack line by Trump — DeSantis was nothing before the Trump endorsement. And, to be frank, there’s some truth there! It’s hard to imagine DeSantis winning a GOP primary for governor in 2018 without the backing of Trump.
“He said if you endorse me, I’ll win. And there were tears coming down from his eyes. He said if you endorse me, I’ll win.”
Tears in his eyes, eh?
“And I got, I did two rallies, two or three rallies, average size like massive. They were massive.”
“Average size like massive”
“And then I got him into the general, and then they say will you run against the president like two years later. Will you run against the president, and he says I don’t want to talk about that. This is not something we’re talking about now. I said that’s not a very good answer.”
To summarize Trump’s position on Ron DeSantis: I made you. You owe me.
“But Nikki suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from. She’s overly-ambitious.”
Doctor Trump diagnoses the patient.
“Every once in a while, Fox will put up a phony poll, because Fox is not Fox of old. That, I can tell you. I’m sure you know that, too.”
Trump has been beating this drum for a while now — the notion that Fox isn’t sufficiently loyal to him. Which is a hell of a thing.
“I did very well in those debates. I mean, I mean, supposedly legendarily well. And then nobody wants to write that.”
Legendarily well!
“And we were talking to them, doing it very nicely. And then all of a sudden, they raided the house, and they shouldn’t have done that.”
The reason that the FBI raided Trump’s Mar a Lago home in search of classified documents is because Trump and his associates wouldn’t turn them over. Trump wound up having more than 300 classified documents at Mar a Lago.
“No, the Republicans, me in particular, because, and the other thing is you know, they are a party of, if you look at the Democrats or the Marxists or the Communists, whatever you want to call them, because they didn’t stop.”
Word salad.
“Our country is a dumping ground, and we’re not talking about the three countries or the four countries that we always talk about. We’re talking about something much different than that.”
USA! USA!
“I have a lot of great people. Look, I rebuilt our military. I got us the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history, right to try, created Space Force, which by the way was a great thing to do, because we’re getting clobbered by China and Russia.”
This is not edited. He went from praising "his “people” to this riff on all the things he did. Straight to it. Also “I.”
“I know all the people, and we’re going to do, we’re going to do something, I think we’re going to have a great campaign.”
“I know all the people.” This feels like a good place to end.
Thank you for this Chris. CNN’s loss is Substack’s gain. In Trump’s world, the only operative pronouns are “I” and “me”. No “our” or “us.” His narcissism knows no bounds.
We have to make Russia and Ukraine fight, but also have to make peace between them. Then, I suppose always has his cake and eats it too.
Is the Pulitzer lawsuit going to cost him and his lawyer another $1 million? We can only hope.