Donald Trump Receives Applause at Economic Club of Chicago: ‘We Have a Corrupt Press’

Former President Donald Trump received applause from the audience at the Economic Club of Chicago after declaring, “[W]e have a corrupt press.”

Trump, who sat down with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait, talked about dealing with Big Tech, explaining that there is a fine line on how to deal with it.

“Sometimes you have to fight through these threats. … I’m not a fan of Google. They treat me badly. But if you — are you going to destroy the company by doing that? If you do that, are you going to destroy the company? What you can do without breaking it up is make sure that it’s more fair,” Trump explained, noting that the news is bad “because of fake news, because the news is really fake.”

“That’s the one we really have to straighten out. We have to straighten out our press, because we have a corrupt press,” Trump said, prompting applause from the audience.

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Trump also addressed concerns that he would hand over tech policy to Elon Musk.

“No, no. I have great respect for Elon. Look, I saw that rocket ship come in yesterday and go right back to where it took off … and I said, ‘What the hell?’ I was I was on a phone talking about, probably politics and the television, and the television’s on, and I’m seeing this big thing where the white paint was burned off. … I see this big, massive tube that’s 10 stories, 20 stories tall, come down. I told the person on the phone, ‘Wait a minute. I’m seeing something that’s — I don’t believe it. Neither does anybody else here,'” Trump said.

“I watched, I watched that come down, and I watched it come down and come across those big levers. … It was coming in hot, and all of a sudden … you see the fire kick in. And I called Elon. I said, ‘That’s the most incredible thing.’ I said, ‘Can Russia do that?’ ‘Nope.’ I said, ‘Can the United States do it?’ ‘Nope,'” he said, adding that he would put Musk in charge of cutting wasteful spending.