During a portion of an interview with the Fox News Channel that took place on Monday and was aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of “Special Report,” 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump responded to the amount added to the national debt under his administration by stating that “we had to fix the country” and there was going to be energy revenue before COVID hit and he doesn’t regret COVID spending.
Host Bret Baier asked, [relevant exchange begins around 1:30] “The U.S. added $8 trillion to the national debt under your administration, about 3.5 trillion before COVID. Much of that time, you had a Republican Congress. So, if voters are concerned about the debt, why should they believe you’ll address the debt in another term?”
Trump responded, “I love the question, because we had to fix the country. When I took this country over, it was broken. And we created a machine and the oil was starting. We were energy independent. We were within four months of energy dominance. … We were going to make so much money as a country. You look at Saudi Arabia, you look at the wealth that they built. We have more oil than they do. I got ANWR approved in Alaska. It’s as big or bigger than Saudi Arabia. The first day of the Biden administration, they terminated the deal. Ronald Reagan tried to do ANWR. He was unsuccessful in doing it. Bush tried. Everybody tried to do it, all for years and years, for 60 years. I got it done. It was all done. They were getting ready to drill, and Biden ended it. Bret, we were going to make so much money, now, everything was set, then we got the COVID, COVID came in, our gift from China, and we had to do other things.”
Later, Baier asked, “So, it is a big part of that spending, COVID. Do you have regrets about how you handled that?”
Trump shook his head and said, “No.”
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