On Monday, Feb. 27, 2017, President Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States of America, sat down for an exclusive interview with Breitbart News’ Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle in the Oval Office. What follows is a complete transcript of that interview.
BREITBART NEWS NETWORK (BNN): “The first thing I wanted to get is your reaction to the Oscars last night—the big mistake with the Best Picture award and what did you think about that?”
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP (POTUS): “I think they were focused so hard on politics that they didn’t get the act together at the end. It was a little sad. It took away from the glamour of the Oscars. It didn’t feel like a very glamorous evening. I’ve been to the Oscars. There was something very special missing, and then to end that way was sad.”
BNN: “The big thing I kind of wanted to zone in on right off the bat is ‘the opposition party,’ the media—“
POTUS: “Well, it’s not the media. It’s the fake media.”
BNN: “That’s what I was going to—“
POTUS: “There’s a difference. The fake media is the opposition party. The fake media is the enemy of the American people. There’s tremendous fake media out there. Tremendous fake stories. The problem is the people that aren’t involved in the story don’t know that.”
HOPE HICKS: “Just the fact that they didn’t report that accurately proves your point.”
POTUS: “Which accurately?”
HICKS: “They said ‘Oh Donald Trump said the press is the enemy of the American people.’”
POTUS: “Right. They take ‘fake’ media off. They say ‘the media is the enemy of—well, they didn’t say the ‘fake media.’ I didn’t say the media is the enemy—I said the ‘fake media.’ They take the word fake out and all of a sudden it’s like I’m against—there are some great reporters like you. I know some great honorable reporters who do a great job like Steve [Holland] from Reuters, others, many others. I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about the fake media, where they make up everything there is to make up.”
BNN: “Right and that’s what I wanted to zone in on with you because I know you made that very clear in your CPAC speech. Can you kind of more clearly define what standards and quality we should expect from those who are doing reporting?”
POTUS: “It’s intent. It’s also intent. If you read the New York Times, if you read the New York Times, it’s—the intent is so evil and so bad. The stories are wrong in many cases, but it’s the overall intent. Look at that paper over the last two years. In fact, they had to write a letter of essentially apology to their subscribers because they got the election so wrong. They did a front page article on women talking about me, and the women went absolutely wild because they said that was not what they said. It was a big front-page article, and the Times wouldn’t even apologize and yet they were wrong. You probably saw the women. They went on television shows and everything.”
BNN: “Yes, it was pretty embarrassing for the Times.”
POTUS: “[They said] ‘we really like Donald Trump and he [the Times reporter] totally misrepresented us. He said he was going to say good and it was absolutely bad.’ This was a front page article, almost the entire top half of the New York Times, and it was false. It was false. Did they apologize? No. I call them the failing New York Times and they write lies. They write lies. Nobody would know that. For instance, when people read the story on the women—first of all, the reporter who wrote the story has a website full of hatred of Donald Trump. So, he shouldn’t be allowed to be a reporter because he’s not objective. It’s not all, but it has many negative things about Donald Trump. But he shouldn’t be allowed to write on Donald Trump. And, he writes that story. But that’s one of many. So, when you read the Sunday New York Times, it’s just hit after hit after hit. And honestly, I think people are wise to it because if you look at the approval rating, you see it’s down. You know, it’s gone. There’s very little approval.”
BNN: “Now, during the campaign, one of the things you and a lot of your campaign guys like Peter Navarro talked about was breaking up some of these oligopolies in the media. If you look at the media, part of the problem seems to be that a vast majority of the media companies are owned by just a handful of different companies. Obviously, there’s a looming merger between AT&T and Time Warner. I wanted to see what your thoughts are on that and if CNN’s pretty bad behavior over the course of—they really don’t seem to be making an effort to get it right—does that give you hesitation in terms of approval of the deal?”
POTUS: “I don’t want to comment on any specific deal, but I do believe there has to be competition in the marketplace and maybe even more so with the media because it would be awfully bad after years if we ended up having one voice out there. You have to have competition in the marketplace and you have to have competition among the media. And I’m not commenting on any one deal, but you need competition generally and you certainly need it with media.”
BNN: “Now, obviously, tomorrow night is your first address to a joint session of Congress. It’s a big speech. Can you give some of the broad strokes to expect?”
POTUS: “We’re going to be talking about healthcare. We’re going to be talking about Obamacare, and what we’re going to do about the disaster known as Obamacare because it’s a complete and total disaster. We’re going to be talking about taxes. We’re going to be talking about the economy generally. We’re going to be talking about the military and spending money on the military, and the border, and we’ll be talking about many different subjects and as much in a up-tone is the fact that I inherited a mess. It’s a mess, whether it’s the Middle East or it’s Obamacare—where costs are out of control—or it’s so many other things. I mean, things are much different than people thought and people get it. We’re going to fix it. The important part is we’re going to fix it.”
BNN: “So kind of breaking down a few of those different things, the first thing would be the inheriting of a mess. Can you give us a few examples of some of the things that are a mess?”
POTUS: “The Middle East is a mess. North Korea is treading on very dangerous territory. North Korea is a mess. Our border is a total disaster. Our trade deals are beyond bad—beyond bad. The result looks like they were negotiated by children. We’ll fix them. And Obamacare is just in terrible shape, with increases that go as high as 116 percent.”
BNN: “Now, you mentioned the increase in military spending for the budget. There’s reports out that there’s anywhere from a $54 billion to a $84 billion increase in military spending in the budget—“
POTUS: “Well, I won’t use numbers, but I want to increase our military spending significantly. We have to. Our military is depleted. Our equipment is old and tired and we’re going to have the finest military that the United States has ever had by far.”
BNN: “It seems like there is a big focus on national security—a national security budget?”
POTUS: “We’re going to have great national security. We are going to have the finest equipment, the finest military we have ever had, and it will be the finest in the world.”
BNN: “Now, since you’ve been in office, I wanted to see—over the last month or so, a little more than a month now—I wanted to get your thoughts on A, putting up a wall on the border and B, enforcing our immigration laws in the interior like we’ve seen from DHS?”
POTUS: “We’re going to have a wall. The wall is ahead of schedule. We’re going to have a wall and it will be a great wall and it will stop the drugs from pouring in and destroying our youth. And it will stop people from coming in that aren’t allowed to come in. But we’re going to have a wall and it’s ahead of schedule already now, and Gen. Kelly wants it badly now and everybody wants it.”
BNN: “Also on the border front, there are transnational criminal organizations that operate in Mexico and they’re spreading drugs into the United States while also facilitating illegal immigration, human trafficking, et cetera. There are even reports recently that the cartel-connected gang MS-13 has been recruiting even in elementary schools here in Washington, D.C. Local news here reported that last week. I wanted to see what kind of actions we can expect—“
POTUS: “Well, you’ve already seen the action. Look at what Gen. Kelly has done. He’s getting the bad ones out. They’re going. We’re focused on the bad ones. But he’s getting the bad ones out and they’re moving now and they’re moving fast.”
BNN: “So the next thing I wanted to ask you about, obviously you mentioned healthcare and tax reform. Give us a timeline on what to expect on both of those and what kind of tax cuts to expect?”
POTUS: “Yeah, we are moving very quickly, healthcare I’m going to be talking about tomorrow night including timing. Taxes will come after the healthcare because from a budgetary standpoint it’s much cleaner and much better if you do that. But we’re moving very well both on budgetary matters and on healthcare and on tax cuts. Tax cuts will be very substantial, for business and for people.”
BNN: “This weekend, also, the Democrats just elected their new chair. I wanted to see—it was kind of a brutal process in their party. They’ve got minorities in both the House and the Senate, and statehouses across the country and governorships. I wanted to see what your thoughts are on the new Democratic chair and—“
POTUS: “Well, I don’t know anything about him. I wish him a lot of luck. I don’t know anything about him. I think that the process seemed rather unfair to the Bernie supporters but of course that’s standard because Bernie has always been treated badly by the Democrats.”
BNN: “Now, in terms of the renegotiation of the trade deals, and all that kind of thing—you’ve talked about doing this on a bilateral basis, can you kind of give us a—“
POTUS: “Yeah. We’re going to do it bilaterally, we’re not going to have a big mosh pit. We’re going to do it bilaterally, have deals with—we’ve already started the process. We’re going to do individual deals with individual countries so we don’t get bogged down.”
BNN: “And then you’ve also talked about, and this will be my last question, you’ve also talked about dealing with Big Pharma. Can you tell us your thoughts are on that?”
POTUS: “We want competition. There’s no competition and we’re going to get competition in that business and it’ll be good for everybody and ultimately Pharma.”
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