Iowa Town Hall with Donald Trump 1/10/24 Transcript

… and Martha MacCallum joining me now. Guys, have you ever done a town hall with Donald Trump?

Yes.

Yes we have. We did 2020 right before COVID crashed in.

In Scranton, Pennsylvania.

We were in Scranton, Pennsylvania, yeah, at that time.

Big crowd, lots of questions. So we’ve done the whole town hall thing with then the president, now the former president, and it is exciting. There’s some really great questions from Iowans tonight, Jesse.

So what are the questions geared towards? Is this a Biden type of question or is this, how are you going to survive all these legal challenges? Is it policy? What’s the flavor?

[Inaudible 00:00:39] see. And also look at what’s been happening legally as well. A lot of interesting stuff happened and we had a shift in the race tonight with Chris Christie dropping out.

Sure did.

So that is a bit of a changing dynamic that you and Kayleigh were just talking about, so we’re going to get that in as well.

All right, well-

It’s a cornucopia of questions.

Oh, good. Beautiful word. And stay warm.

It’s really all about you, Jesse. We have a lot of questions for everyone about you.

Great. I heard Bret doesn’t like the chilly air, so just put a hat on him. Thank you guys.

It’s a little cold. All right, Jesse. Here we go. Thanks a lot, Jesse. Ladies and gentlemen, get set. We are just seconds away from our third straight town hall of the week right here in Des Moines.

It’s been a really busy week, right?

It has been.

So as we approach the top of the hour and the start of this evening’s special, let’s welcome to the stage here in Des Moines, Iowa, Former President Donald Trump. Welcome. We’ll do it again. There we go.

Thank you very much. All right, Bret.

Mr. President. Thank you very much.

Thank you very Much.

Welcome, Mr. President.

Thank you very much.

Great to see you.

The first major test for the Republican presidential nomination is almost here.

We’re going to win the Iowa caucuses and then we’re going to crush crooked Joe Biden.next November.

Tonight, former President Trump will address the most pressing issues facing the nation.

Our economy.

The debt.

Woke ideology.

But a gauntlet of legal perils hovers over his campaign.

They’re not after me, they’re after you.

There’s no confusion about who Trump is.

While his leading rivals on unleash attacks,

He’s running on a lot of the things he promised to do in 2016, but then did not do.

Chaos follows him and we can’t be a country in disarray.

Five days from the pivotal first in the nation caucuses.

The path to crowning the Republican nominee starts here.

I’m going to be there, we’re all going to be there together and we’re going to be first. You’re first in the nation because of me, but we’re going to be America first again. It’s America first.

Welcome to Des Moines, Iowa. Good evening from the Iowa Event Center. Tonight, the last of three special town halls this week, just days before the first in the nation Iowa caucuses featuring Republicans who want to be president. I’m Bret Baier and we’re here in Des Moines as we take a live look outside. It’s cold, it’s brisk, it’s snowy, but we’re warm inside with a lot of questions from Iowans.

Indeed, we are. Good evening everybody. I’m Martha MacCallum. Great to have you with us. Tonight, we are joined by a roomful of Iowa Republican voters. Some of them are decided, some of them are undecided. That’s why they’re here tonight. Some of them have been here more than one night over the course of this week because they look forward to questioning the candidates. And tonight it’s the former president and the GOP front-runner. And we note once again that none of the campaigns have input into who was invited, what the questions are that will be asked tonight.

Thank you for being here, Mr. President. We appreciate you making the track. And before we begin, we want to offer our condolences to you and the former First Lady Melania Trump for the loss of her mother last night.

Thank you very much. Great woman. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

We do want to note that today there was some breaking campaign news. Take a listen.

It’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I’m suspending my campaign tonight for President of the United States. I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be President of the United States again.

So that was the big news. Late today, the former Governor of New Jersey dropped out of the race in New Hampshire. You saw it there. There’s a lot of speculation now that there could be a combining of forces of the people who supported him. He had about 12% there. And by some estimates, you’re ahead by an average of 14 in the Real Clear Politics average polling-

In New Hampshire.

… in New Hampshire. So if that 12 goes to Nikki Haley, she could give you a run for your money there.

Well, you have Democrats in New Hampshire and they vote and you have independents in New Hampshire at large numbers and they vote. And I have polls that show me leading by a tremendous amount in New Hampshire and a lot in Iowa and nationwide were leading by almost 60 points. So I’m not exactly worried about it. I understand New Hampshire very well. I’ve won it twice and did very well with New Hampshire. I love the people. They love me, I think. We did a good job for New Hampshire economically and even from the standpoint of the military taking care of the vets. And I think we’re going to do very well in New Hampshire.

(05:56)
Now, Chris Christie was in and he got a hot mic I heard about. I thought actually the biggest story wasn’t the fact that he dropped out. Nobody cared too much about that. But he had a hot mic where he was talking to somebody about the weather and he happened to say that she doesn’t have what it takes. She’ll be creamed in the election. And I mean, I know her very well and I happen to believe that Chris Christie is right. That’s one of the few things he is been right about actually.

So you don’t think it changes the dynamic much?

I don’t know if it does or not. Look, we’re winning tremendously here. I think we’re 20, 24 points up. I brought some polls if you want to see them, just in case. But I think we’re 24, 25 points up. But New Hampshire’s interesting, it’s a great place, a great state, unbelievable people, but they allow independents and Democrats to vote in the Republican primary. You say, what’s that all about? So it’s a little bit false in that regard, but even with that, I think we’ll win substantially.

Mr. President, we want to get to our first questioner. Robert is an optometrist from Ankeny. Robert, where are you? Do you know which way you’re going to caucus on Monday?

Yes, I do.

Okay. Can we ask you?

I’m going to vote for the third time for President Trump.

Oh, I like him. I knew I liked Robert.

What’s your question for the former president?

I just wanted to say also thank you President Trump for your support of the vets. My wife and I and my oldest son are all veterans of the United States Army and we appreciated what you [inaudible 00:07:24].

Thank you very much, Robert.

Some of my friends that supported you in twenty-twenty are not this time because they believe a Trump presidency will bring four years of chaos due to your haters. What is your response to them?

Well, I think, first of all, I’m glad you’re asking the question and I’m very glad that you started off by saying you’re with me because I want you on my side. I figured maybe Fox would’ve written that question if it was just the second part of the question. But just so you understand-

We didn’t write any of the questions. You all wrote the questions. Just to be clear.

We’ll figure that one out pretty soon. But they have chaos now. They have chaos at the border. They have chaos in the military. People are going woke. We have the greatest military in the world except for the top where they want to turn this beautiful thing we built. We beat ISIS, knocked them out. It was supposed to take four years. I did it in literally three months. It was supposed to take four or five years.

(08:23)
Ut we have chaos now. Look at today with Hunter Biden going into Congress and just sitting down and the bedlam that’s been caused. Today, you have chaos. We have, I think more with Joe Biden. He can’t put two sentences together and he’s representing us on nuclear weapons with Putin and Xi and all of these very smart people. The media hates when I say they’re smart, but let me tell you, they’re very smart and they’re very cunning. And I think you had very little chaos. I think most of the chaos was caused by the Democrats constantly going after me.

(08:58)
And remember this, remember that with phony Russia, Russia, Russia. I mean if you look at Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, everything was phony. The FISA warrants the lying to Congress. They had chaos. They were the ones that caused the chaos. We didn’t have chaos. We got the biggest tax cuts in history, the biggest regulation cuts in history. I had no wars. I’m the only president in 72 years, I didn’t have any wars. And they love that narrative, but they use that narrative because they have nothing else. Now, the new narrative they have, as you know, is I’m going to be a dictator. That’s going to be the new narrative. Because a guy like Biden, there’s nothing he can run on. Everything he’s turned out, it’s turned out badly. The border is a disaster. The worst border in history. I think the worst border in the history of the world. We had the best border in the history of our country. We never had a border like that.

(09:51)
So I think we had very little chaos. I think we had tremendous success. And frankly, until COVID came along, and then we did a great job on that too. We never got the kind of credit that I got on the economy. But we had the greatest economy in history. And you take a look at our numbers. The numbers were so much better than they are right now. We had no inflation. We were energy independent. We had so much energy, we were ready to start supplying energy, selling energy to Europe, Asia. We would’ve started to pay down our debt. And then when COVID came along, we had to do a little bit of a course change. But we had an incredible four years, again, the greatest economy in the history of our country with no inflation. Pretty good.

So I just want to follow up.

Thank you, Robert.

Yeah, thank you for your service and for your question. Thank you for being here tonight. One of the things that Ron DeSantis said in a town hall this week was that it might feel good to Republicans to vote for you and support you in the primary, but he felt they shouldn’t leave the general election potentially up to 12 jurors in a DC court. What do you say to him about that?

Well, it’s a witch hunt by… it’s weaponization, if you look at, it’s election interference by Biden because he can’t win at fair and square, so he’s doing that. And interestingly, you see what happened in Georgia with Fannie Willis and a million dollars almost to her boyfriend as the prosecutor of Trump. That one’s blown up now. It’s horrible what has taken place. But it’s very interesting, when you look at Ron’s numbers, he’s practically out of the race. In fact, a lot of people say he’s leaving the race after Iowa because he’s doing so poorly. He’s also doing very poorly, as you know, in New Hampshire. I mean really poorly. And I’m leading Biden in every single poll that’s been taken over the last month or two. I just see one, I’m leading in Michigan by 11. That’s great. The autoworkers are smart, they know that Biden has sold them down the tubes with the electric cars, all electric car mandate, the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. And they’re going to all be made in China too.

(11:54)
So I think when you look at what we’ve done, we are doing a great job and we did a great job and that’s why I’m leading in the polls by 60 and 70 points.

In recent days you seem to issue a warning that if in the courts, and even the US Supreme Court, if they didn’t treat you fairly, that maybe there would be bedlam in the country. You use that word, bedlam in the country. And in the last two days, at the same time, in the last two speeches, President Biden is focusing his campaign on the threat to democracy and political violence. Take a listen.

I’ll say what Donald Trump won’t, political violence is never ever acceptable in the United States political system. Never, never, never.

All right, so to Robert’s question, this is clearly a focus of the Biden campaign. So can you say tonight that political violence is never acceptable?

Well of course that’s right. And of course I’m the one that had very little of it. Take a look at wars, again, I didn’t start, I wasn’t involved in wars. We beat the hell out of ISIS. We won 100%. We brought our troops back home. Look at the violence that we’ve had. Look at the violence we have recently with-

Right, but when you say bedlam, what do you mean? You say-

Bedlam? I think you look at Joe Biden, it’s bedlam. You have a man who can’t lead. You have a man who can’t find his way off a stage after he makes a speech that lasts for about two minutes. Now I think Bedlam is Joe Biden. I think that he’s using this. This is just a political ploy. “Trump is a dictator. He wants to be a dictator.” It’s interesting, I did a show, Sean Hannity, did you ever hear of him? He’s a very nice man. And he said essentially, “You’re not going to be a dictator, are you? Tell me.” I think he was trying to give me a nicer question than maybe you guys would. He meant it very well. I said, “I’m going to be a dictator for one day. We’re going to do two things. The border, we’re going to make it so tight you can’t get in unless you come in legally. And the other is energy. We’re going to drill, baby drill. After that, I’m not going to be a dictator. After that, I’m not going to be a dictator.” And the press-

So you weren’t saying that if the-

No, no. And the press picks it up. So I said, I’m going to be a dictator for one day. They cut it, they go, “I’m going to be a dictator.” But they cut the rest of the sentence. No, no, I am not going to be a dictator. I’m going to manage like we did. We were so successful that the country was coming together. It was actually coming together and coming together well, it was a beautiful thing to see and we’re going to do that again.

All right, let’s bring in-

And by the way, that’s why I have the poll numbers that I have because the people, I think this audience is an example, I mean, I asked the question, I said, “How many people came last night? How many people came the night before?” And I got a very honest answer, not many compared to what we have. We had a great crowd and have a great crowd. Thank you very much.

We want to hear from some.

We do have a big crowd tonight. That’s absolutely true. So let’s hear from Jane Jack, who is a teacher from Rhodes, Iowa. Jane, thank you so much for being here. And you said that you plan to caucus for DeSantis, but you’re not completely decided. Is that right?

No, I will be caucusing for DeSantis. But I will say, Mr. President, I am extremely grateful that in your first term you accomplished so many great things, but it was also with the help of many great people. Since that time, you have publicly criticized and personally demeaned so many of them. If you’re given four more years, how will you convince good people to take the risk of working with you?

I have a lot of people that want to work with me. I have people calling. Just as I’m getting on the stage, I had a call from two of the very most important people in the military want to come to work for me. Everybody wants to come to work for us. We’re going to have no trouble. We had great people. We had a couple that were not great, stiffs as I would call them, but that’s true with anybody. But now I’ve gotten to know Washington, I’ve

… gotten to know the people. I know the best. I know the smart ones, the dumb ones, the weak ones, the strong ones. And I think you’re going to see something like you’ve never seen before. And the people in this room know it. We did an amazing job and the reason we have support is because of the job we did.

(16:17)
Now, you like Ron DeSantis, but he wouldn’t even be around today. He’d be working in a pizza shop or perhaps a law firm if I didn’t endorse him. I endorsed him, took him from nothing to winning an election, and I was all for him. And then one day he said he’d run against me four years later after I got him in. And I said, “That’s not a loyal person. We can’t have that. That’s not a loyal person.”

(16:40)
So I think you’ll be very impressed with what we’re going to do. We’re going to have the greatest economy in the world, which we don’t right now. We have horrible, horrible inflation. And you’re never going to get that 30% down. You might even it, but you’re not going to get it down.

(16:56)
But thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Let me just ask you a follow-up on that about who would be in your cabinet, in your administration, if you are the nominee, which I know you expect to be, who would be in the running for vice president?

Well, I can’t tell you that, really. I know who it’s going to be.

Give us a hint.

We’ll do another show sometime.

Well, what about any of the people who you’ve run against, would you be open to mending fences with any of them?

Oh, sure, I will. I will. I’ve already started to like Christie better.

Christie for vice president?

I don’t see it. I don’t see it. That would be an upset, Christie for vice president. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to announce…

I do want to get to this other question before we move on to the big issues. And that is Jacqueline, she’s from West Des Moines, and I think you said you’re undecided. Are you making your decision?

That’s correct.

And do you have a couple people that you’re looking at?

Trump and Vivek.

Okay.

Good.

And what’s your question tonight for the former president?

My question is, I would like to know, what do you plan to do in your next term that you didn’t quite get finished during your first term?

Well, one of the things would be energy. Even though I set records on energy, but I was going to be energy dominant. We were energy independent and we had your bills down low. We had your gasoline for the car down to $1.87 a gallon. We had it down even lower than that at some points. Now it’s at 4 and $5 and that’s not acceptable. Your home heating bills are four and five times higher than they were with me. So I’d be doing that.

(18:34)
I’d finish up the wall. We built over 500 miles of wall. That’s one of the reasons we had the great… And we got Mexico, by the way, we got Mexico, very importantly, to give us 28,000 soldiers free of charge. That’s more money than anybody can even imagine, free of charge. And we also remain in Mexico policy, not remain here, remain in Mexico. So we did a lot of great things. And I would just say we’re going to just keep expanding. We rebuilt the military. We even did something that hopefully nobody in this room needs so, but Right to Try, where we’re able to use space-age medicines that won’t be approved for four or five years, that work in many cases. And I saved thousands and thousands of lives with Right to Try.

(19:23)
Thank you very much.

So we’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to go talk about the economy when we come back. That is the number one issue in every poll on voters’ minds. So join us when we come right back with lots more questions for President Trump. Good to have you here, sir.

Welcome back to our Town Hall with former President Donald Trump live from Des Moines. Let’s get back to some questions.

Yeah, let’s get right back to our questions. This one’s from Shellie Flockhart. There she is.

Hi. Hi, Shellie.

Shellie, thank you for coming out tonight. What are you thinking about Monday night and who you’re going to support and what’s your question for President Trump?

He’s sitting right there.

Oh, thank you. I knew that. I knew that when I looked at you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Yes. So my question is, you are a business owner. I’m a business owner. I own a small business and time is money. Would you ever allow a shutdown in the future?

A shutdown in terms of COVID or a shutdown in terms of budget? Because they’re talking about a budget shutdown right now, but you’re talking about a COVID shutdown?

Correct.

No, I wouldn’t. And I never did. I let the governors make their decisions. And some of them, like from South Carolina, you know Henry McMaster and frankly, North Dakota, a few of them, Tennessee, they didn’t shut down at all. Florida did shut down. Ron DeSanctus shut down, or, as he’s known, Ron DeSanctimonious. He shut his state down very violently, actually, and shut the highways down, the roads down. I’m a federalist in a sense because that’s the federalist way.

(24:56)
No, I didn’t actually have a shutdown despite the fact that some people wanted to and some people didn’t want to. But we had some great governors. And the governors that did the best job were Republican governors and they were the ones that didn’t shut down.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Love you.

Appreciate it.

But a lot of people say that you listened too much to Dr. Fauci. You were president at the time, could have perhaps influenced keeping things more open. And of course Ron DeSantis would definitely argue with your characterization of how he handled it.

But if you go back and look at the records, you will see that the biggest fan of Dr. Fauci was Ron DeSanctimonious. He was a big fan. He said, “I go by” exactly quote, “I go by what Dr. Fauci said.” He said that two months in all the way through. And that eventually changed when that wasn’t the dessert of the day. But Ron DeSanctus was a big Dr. Fauci fan, and nobody wants to cover that. I say it every time. I don’t care if he was or not. But when they hit me with this question, Dr. Fauci was not a huge factor in my administration. He became a much bigger factor in Biden’s administration. He was there. He was somebody that was in government for 40 years. He did it for 40 years, so a long time. And what do I say, “You’ve been doing this for 40 years, get out.” But he wasn’t a big factor with me. He was a really big factor after I left with Biden.

On an economic shutdown, you said this week in an interview that if there’s an economic crash that you hope it happens now, that you don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.

I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.

You’re not saying you’re hoping for a crash, just to be clear?

No, I think this. I think the economy is horrible except the stock market’s going up. And I think the stock market’s going up because… Stock market’s going up and I think the stock market’s going up because I’m leading Biden in all of the polls. Every poll. Every single poll for the last, with states that normally are not easy to lead. When you’re leading in Pennsylvania, you’re leading in Michigan, you’re leading in Wisconsin, we’re leading in virtually every state and of the swing states. And overall, we’re leading by a lot nationwide.

(27:13)
But I would say this, we have a situation which I believe the stock market goes up because I’m leading. I think if I wasn’t leading, the stock market would be 25% lower. And I think frankly, if I didn’t win, I think the stock market would crash, I believe.

But you said when there’s a crash, I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover.

Well, I think there will be a crash if I don’t win. And I say that and I do not want to be Herbert Hoover. Do you know who Herbert Hoover was? 1929 he was the president and that was not a good time to be. I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. And I won’t be Herbert Hoover.

So with regard to when Governor Haley was here the other night, she talked about the $8 trillion added to the debt when you were president. How do you address that? What would you say?

Very easily. We were doing better than anybody has ever done for two and a half years. And then COVID came along. We were getting ready to start selling oil to Asia, to Europe. We were going to pay down our debt where we were at that time at like $29 trillion. Now we’re $36 trillion. But we were going to start paying down our debt. We were going to do things that nobody could believe.

(28:23)
You take a look at Saudi Arabia, you take a look at some of these countries, take a look at Russia. Biden drove up the cost of energy. That’s what caused inflation. But it’s also what caused Putin to become rich enough to go and prosecute a war. And he never even talks about it. He’s the one that caused that war, both rhetorically and by the fact that he drove up the price of oil to a hundred dollars a barrel, which is getting close to record. And Putin was making a fortune. He’s the only guy who made a fortune during a war. If he didn’t have it… I was at $40 a barrel. If he was at $40 a barrel, Putin wouldn’t have done it.

(29:00)
Now, he wouldn’t have done it for another reason, me. He wouldn’t have done it. But he also wouldn’t have done it because he couldn’t have done it because oil wasn’t high enough. At a hundred dollars a barrel, he made a lot of money and he’s making a lot of money because it’s so high.

(29:16)
It’s also what caused the inflation. Because energy is so big, it’s such a big deal that when energy goes up, if you make donuts, if you make hamburgers, anything you do, you have trucks that deliver your product, you have to heat your stoves, your ovens, anything you do, it’s all energy. And we had the highest cost of energy in history.

(29:39)
When they talk about New Hampshire, New Hampshire has the highest price of energy, the highest cost of energy of any state in the nation. They should vote for me because I’m going to cut their energy price in half.

So when Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis hit you again and again on this $8 trillion figure and call you a big government Republican, what do you say to them?

I say very simply, we were starting to pay down debt. We were going to pay down a lot of debt. When COVID came along, if I didn’t inject this country with money, you would’ve had a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen. You had to inject money. We gave businesses that were going bankrupt, temporarily bankrupt, but they needed money. We helped businesses. If I didn’t do that, you would’ve had a depression in this country. That was a very good investment.

(30:26)
And now what they should be doing, instead of the kind of debt that they’re building at record levels, they should be paying down their debt and they ought to go into the energy business instead of this green, new scam business that they’re in.

But what about the future? What about cutting spending. $34 trillion in debt, let’s look at what you would do in terms of getting that number down. What would you get rid of?

We have a lot of cutting, but we also have a lot of income. We have more liquid gold under our feet, energy, oil and gas than any other country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. And when I came in, we were number four. When I left, not that long a period of time, four years, we were number one by a lot. And we were soon going to double up Saudi Arabia and Russia combined. And we were going to make a lot of money. We have a lot of potential income. DeSantis wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. Nikki Haley wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. Nikki Haley wanted to raise the age from 65 to 74, 75 or 76.

But only for young people in their 20s. That’s going to run out of money-

That’s what they say-

So at some point, someone has to address it, right?

That’s what they say when it starts. They say only for young people. It’s only for young people. And then it doesn’t work for young people and they end up getting up to people that are of the age where it matters. No good.

All right. Let’s go to Kim, a small business owner from Grimes, is that correct? Kim, where are you?

That is correct.

Do you know

Who you’re caucusing for on Monday.

I am proud to say I am a caucus captain.

For?

President Trump.

With a white and gold hat.

I have that white and gold hat.

Thank you very much. That’s beautiful. Thank you very much.

What’s your question for the former president?

You’ve said that you can take care of the border in 24 hours after taking office. How will you gather the several millions that have already entered our country illegally and return them to their country of origin?

Great question. It’s not sustainable for our country. We have millions and millions of people here. It is not sustainable. Did you see in New York City with it getting the regular students out and they’re putting migrants in their place? We are going to have the largest deportation effort in the history of our country. We’re bringing everybody back where they came from. We have no choice. We have no choice.

Denise is here as well. Denise, where are you? Denise came to our town hall last night. She came in saying that she was, if I remember correctly, you were leaning towards President Trump, but you did say you heard some things last night that you liked. So where are you tonight?

I spoke with a lot of my really close friends after last night. They were all up and wanted to know how it went, and we got back to President Trump. We just-

Oh, I love you.

Now you went ways without me. He just mentioned, I think something that you’re concerned about. What’s your question?

You just answered part of it that our kids were displaced in New York City-

That’s right.

… in the place of illegal migrants so what I want to know in the spirit of making America great again, can you do something about the sanctuary cities?

Yeah. Well, they’re going to be ended because the Democrats are going to end them because you can’t sustain it. If you look at New York, you have a mayor of New York who now is really hostile to the administration because New York City, that’s my place. I love New York. It’s gone. It’s had a tough time. The previous mayor was the worst mayor in the history of our country, de Blasio. Do you ever hear of de Blasio the worst? But what’s happened is this country cannot sustain 15 or 16 million people because I think that’s the real number. I think by the time his administration ends and hopefully quickly, it’s going to be 18 million people. That’s bigger than New York state, that’s bigger than just about every state other than one or two. 18 million people.

(34:36)
Remember this, many of those people come from jails and prisons. Many of those people come from mental institutions and in insane asylums, and many of those people are terrorists. I saw on Fox the other day, it was horrible but beautiful because from my standpoint in 2016 they had no terrorists that they know of that came into the country. None. You had the travel ban. They call it the Trump travel ban. They tried to make a big deal. The Supreme Court very intelligently approved it. Without that, we would’ve had blow ups. So we had no terrorist attacks at all during my four years. We had the Trump travel ban, and by the way, Iran was broke, Iran was broke. I said to China, if you buy oil from Iran, you’re not dealing in here. They immediately dropped.

(35:20)
India, France, Italy, all of these countries were buying from Iran. Iran would give out billions of dollars to terrorists. They had no money. I watched a Democrat congressman the other day on one of the shows and he said, “I’ll say one thing about Trump.” He said, “Trump. I’ll say one thing about Trump when he did that number on Iran, they were broke. They were absolutely broke.” When I left, they were broke. They had no money. There was no money for Hamas, for Hezbollah. There was no money for anybody. They had no money. And you would say that too. I mean, I think even the two of you would say they were absolutely stone broke. And you know how much money they have now? In three years under Biden they have $250 billion.

(36:05)
Again, the energy business is a big business. And not to mention the five hostages that they paid $6 billion for. Not to mention, they got $10 billion for supplying some electricity to Iraq, which by the way they own and Iraq has $300 billion and essentially it’s a subsidiary of Iran. It should have never happened. Remember I used to say a long time ago when I was a civilian, now I’m sort of a civilian, but I think I’ll never be quite a civilian again. I’d love to be. But I used to say, don’t go into Iraq. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. But if you’re going to do it, keep the oil. Do you remember keep the oil. They didn’t keep the oil. So they have $300 billion and we have nothing. We have nothing. They used to say about wars to the victor belong to spoils. We go into some place, we obliterate it and then we leave. We are run by fools. We’re run by stupid people, but we ran it very smart for four years and we won everything. We won everything.

Mr. President, you’re talking a lot about policy. You get questions about what a second term’s going to look like. When you’re in your rallies, you spend a lot of time talking about retribution, and so there are questions about how much a second term of a Donald Trump presidency, second term, would be about retribution and looking backwards in grievances and how much would be looking forward?

Well, first of all, a lot of people would say that that’s not so bad. Look what they did. Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, the FBI, Twitter hoax, the 51 intelligence agents hoax. All of these different hoaxes that they did. I mean, a lot of people would say, that’s probably quite normal. I’m not going to have time for retribution. We’re going to make this country so successful again, I’m not going to have time for retribution and remember this, our ultimate retribution is success. When we had just prior to the China virus coming in, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be accurate as opposed to COVID, it is the China virus.

(38:04)
It came out of Wuhan, and I said a long time ago to your show it came out of Wuhan. They were saying it came out of caves, bat caves, 2000 miles away. It came out of Italy, it came out of France. No, it came out of Wuhan, the labs, and by the way, I don’t think it was done. I think it was done out of incompetence. That’s what I think. I believe that a scientist went out, said hello to his girlfriend, and that was the end of that. She died and then people started dying all over the place. But who knows? Who knows? I can tell you one thing I got along with President Xi, but I took in $400 billion in tariffs and taxes from China, and one of the reasons China’s not doing so well today is because of those tariffs and Biden wants to cut them.

(38:47)
He got paid off by China after all so he wants to help the people that gave him a lot of money, but he is a Manchurian candidate in a true sense. He got money from China, he got money from Russia. You remember the debate where Chris Wallace, how is he doing I wonder. But Chris Wallace, when I said to Biden, I asked him a question. I said, how come you got three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife and Chris Wallace wouldn’t let me ask me. I said, why are you stopping this? Now it’s turned out to be a big deal. I got three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife. I tell you this, we’re going to have a success that’s so great that I won’t have, hopefully, I won’t have time for retribution. There won’t be retribution. There’ll be success.

Mr. President, before we wrap up this, there is this report, house Democrats documents that say that nearly $8 million in payments to your businesses from foreign governments, China included, Saudi Arabia while you were in office. They say Article 1 of the Constitution says, you can’t accept money from foreign governments while president. Would you pledge to divest from your business in the second term, as other presidents have done? That’s what they’re reporting.

I own hotels all over the… I don’t get free money. Somebody rents a hotel room, et cetera, et cetera. Much money I gave back. In fact, I didn’t have to do it. George Washington was a very rich man. People don’t know that. In his essentially White House, which wasn’t built, but they had an office, he had a business desk and he had a country desk right next to each other. You’re allowed to do that. I didn’t do it. I put everything in trust and if I have a hotel and somebody comes in from China, that’s a small amount of money and it sounds like a lot of money. That’s a small… But I was doing services for that.

(40:25)
People were staying in these massive hotels, these beautiful hotels because I have the best hotels, I have the best clubs. I have the best clubs. I have great stuff, and they stay there and they pay. I don’t get $8 million for doing nothing like Hunter. I don’t get $500,000 for doing a painting. It’s not a bad idea, I guess if you can get away with it. When I heard that one, I said, there’s no way they get away with that. But they got away with that. I guess they got away with it. No, there was an [inaudible 00:40:57] lawsuit against me where the radical left sued me for that and I won the suit and the judge said, “They go to his hotels. What’s he going to do?”

There you go. We want to hear more from Iowa voters. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be back here in Des Moines with more of our town hall with former president Donald Trump.

Welcome back everybody to our town hall with former President Trump. We’re glad to have all of you with us tonight. We want to try to get in a few more questions here. We have a lot of good ones. Let’s go to Rebecca. She is a mom of six from Ogden.

Yeah.

There she is. Hi Rebecca.

Hi.

Are you decided, leaning towards one person or another?

We’ve all got leanings here in Iowa. Yeah, well, for me, it all comes down to this question.

Okay.

So between you sir, President Trump and Ron DeSantis, because you both talk a lot about pro-life, your record, and that’s my number one issue and the cry of my heart is justice for all people, and I’ve been vocal and celebrating with you all of your pro-life victories from the past. But then in this campaign you’ve also blamed pro- lifers for some of the GOP losses around the country, and you’ve called heartbeat laws like Iowa’s, terrible, and so I’d just like some clarity on this because it’s such an important question to me.

Okay.

I’d like for you to reassure me that you can protect all life, every person’s right to life without compromise.

So, that’s a great question. I appreciate it too. You wouldn’t be asking that question even talking about the issue because for 54 years they were trying to get Roe. V. Wade terminated and I did it and I’m proud to have done it. They wanted to get it back, right? You wouldn’t have that because there would be no question. Nobody else was going to get that done.

We celebrate that, yeah.

And we did it and we did something that was a miracle. When I walked onto the stage today, a gentleman in the back, probably works for Fox, nice guy said, “Sir, I’d like to thank you.” I said, “For what?” He said, “You saved 2 million lives in the last three years. You saved 2 million lives.” And I said, “Thank you very much.” I knew exactly what he meant. 2 million lives, and nobody’s done more in that regard than me. Now, I happen to be, for the exceptions, like Ronald Reagan with the life of the mother, rape, incest, I just have to be there. I feel, I think probably 78%, I saw a poll, about 78% it was Ronald Reagan, he was for it. I was for it. But I will say this, you have to win elections, otherwise you’re going to be back where you were and you can’t let that ever happen

And again, you’ve got to win elections. If you look at it, Ron DeSantis, I don’t know what he really believes because you never know with a politician and he’s just another politician as far as I’m concerned. But his poll numbers have gone down to a level that he’s going to be out of the race very soon. He’s going to be out very soon. I watched him last night. He’s standing up with his shoes, his fancy shoes, and he’s going to be out of the race within, a lot of people say before New Hampshire. I don’t know if that were the reason. I hope it wasn’t the reason. I hope it’s for other reasons. I can see a lot of other reasons why he shouldn’t be, but he’s doing very, very poorly. It happened to coincide with that because a lot of people say if you talk five or six weeks, a lot of women don’t know if they’re pregnant in five or six weeks. I want to get something where people are happy. This has been tearing our country apart for 50 years. Nobody’s been able to do anything.

(48:56)
And again, you can only ask that question and you ask it brilliantly, and I understand exactly where you’re coming from. I love where you’re coming from, but we still have to win elections and they’ve used this… We have some great Republicans and they’re great on the issue and you would love them on the issue. And a lot of them have just been decimated in the election. Decimated. I mean, absolutely. We’re going to come up with something that people want and people like. I would love you to… First of all, you have to go with your heart. You have to go with your heart first. Go with your heart, your mind, go with it. But you do also have to put in there a little bit. You have to win elections. But if it weren’t for me with Roe v. Wade, you wouldn’t even be talking about this stuff, you wouldn’t be asking that question because we’d write back… Remember this, they’re the radicals, we’re not the radicals, because they’ll kill a baby.

(49:48)
Remember I had the debate with crooked Hillary Clinton, which I don’t call it crooked anymore, I use that now for Joe Biden as you know. I call her beautiful Hillary. She’s a beautiful woman. But in the debate with Hillary Clinton, they said she’s willing to rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month. And I never heard this. It happened to me. It just came to me during that debate. I didn’t go up there thinking I was going to say that. And she even winced. Nobody wants to see that happening after a certain period of time. Nobody. They’re the radicals because they’re willing to kill the baby in eight months, nine months, or even after birth. If you remember the former governor of Virginia where he said, you kill the baby after the ninth month or even afterwards, you set the baby aside and you have a conversation with the mother and if the conversation… Can you imagine? But these are the radicals.

(50:43)
We’re not the radicals. We are not the radicals, but we’re living in a time when there has to be a little bit of a concession one way or the other. And I think I want to get it right. I have to get it right. But without what I did, you would never even be asking that question because there was no chance that that was going to happen. For 54 years, they campaigned on that issue and nobody pulled it off but me. So I think you’re going to be happy in the end. Thank you very much.

All right, thank you very much for that question. Let’s go to Beau. Beau, you’re from Madrid, Iowa.

Madrid, Iowa.

I’m so sorry.

Madrid.

I knew I could get through every city, I thought. Well, Madrid. Do you know how you’re going to caucus?

Trump, a hundred percent.

Oh, I like it.

All right. You do have a question.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

How would you deescalate global tensions and keep the United States out of foreign wars?

Yeah, do it through peace through strength. I just saw something where I was the only president, for 78 years, no war started. Now I wiped out ISIS. I did a thing that was, I won’t go into names, I won’t go into specifics, but we did a thing that nobody thought was possible, did it very quickly. I withdrew from Syria, I withdrew from Iraq, I withdrew. They want to put people back. We’re in countries that don’t even want us. We’re with countries that a lot of you never even heard the names of these countries. There’s a great leader, in my opinion, is very strong. Some people say it’s terrible to say that, but he is, Viktor Orban. He’s the Prime Minister of Hungary. And they asked him, “What would you do? There are wars all over the world right now.” He said, “What I do is make sure the American people vote for Donald Trump for president, because when he was president, China feared him.”

(52:29)
I don’t want to be feared. But he used the term, I’m not using the term, President Xi’s a very tough cookie. But I think they did fear us. China feared him. Russia feared him. Everybody. I even got along with Kim Jong Un. Getting along with people with hundreds of nuclear weapons, it’s not a bad thing. They want to make it like a bad thing. It’s a very good thing. But peace through strength, they didn’t want to mess around. It would’ve never happened in Ukraine, Russia would’ve never gone in. Would’ve never happened, the recent attack on Israel. Would’ve never happened. A hundred, I mean 0% chance that was going to happen [inaudible 00:53:06] repaired.

(53:08)
And I rebuilt our entire military and think of it, Biden gave $85 billion worth of our military to Afghanistan so stupidly. Brand new tanks and planes and everything. 700,000 rifles and guns, 70,000 vehicles, many of them armor plated vehicles. And by the way, people died, 13 great soldiers died. I’ve gotten to know the families very well. Many horribly hurt and hundreds of people killed when you include those hundreds of people killed in the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. So I really appreciate the question and I appreciate very much that you’re with me and I’m with you, too. Thank you.

So from the other side of the party, there are many like Governor Haley who said that you are now more of an isolationist than you were and that you got many concessions from NATO members as president to increase their defense budget.

Hundreds of billions of dollars.

But there’s a real concern what a second Trump term would mean. Would you be committed to NATO, for example, in a second Trump term?

Depends if they treat us properly. Look, NATO has taken advantage of our country. The European countries took advantage of… I want to use the word starting with an S, but I don’t want to do it because I see some young, very good-looking children in the audience, and I assume they’re watching on television, but they took advantage of us on trade, and then they took advantage of us on our military protection. Of the 28 countries at the time, only eight countries were paid up. We were paying the difference. And I went to them. I said, “If you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you.” And they said, “Do you mean that?” I said, “I mean that.” And the next day, billions of dollars poured into NATO. The reason they have money right now to prosecute what they’re doing with helping Ukraine is because of the money I got them. So peace through strength.

Mr. President, we appreciate your time. Thank you-

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

… for being here in Des Moines.

Good to have you with us tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

So we’re going to be right back with just a quick final segment right after this time out. Stay with us.

Hey guys. Welcome you on our YouTube channel Factum News and you are watching some political news of USA. Gerald Langan sit down with MSNBC as [inaudible 00:55:32]. Guys, welcome you on our YouTube channel Factum News. And you are watching some political news of USA. Our country released on a government that administers justify fairly and secures the border period. If Congress believed that special council Jack Smith is running his prosecution based on political calendar and falling, that must no longer be founded. Similarly, if it think Secretary Alessandro Mayas is purposefully aligned, the invention of our country, we should not be funded either.

Well, thank you for watching our Town Hall with Republican presidential candidate, former President Donald Trump. We hope you enjoyed the past three nights with the candidates, as the former president works the crowd here signing some hats. We also want to thank all the voters who attended our three Town Halls. They braved the elements. There are some elements out there and asked some really important questions that are really top issues for the candidates in this race.

Didn’t see that shot outside. It is snowing like crazy out there as President Trump greets some of the people in the crowd here. We also want to thank this Iowa Event Center, there it is, for hosting us. No weather forecast needed. It’s quite clear what’s happening here. So join us please this weekend for Fox’s special coverage previewing the Iowa caucuses. Neil Cavuto kicks off on Saturday. The story will be here on Sunday in its regular time at 3:00 PM Eastern from here in Des Moines.

And special report will also have a show this Sunday from Des Moines at our normal slot, 6:00 PM Eastern. Monday night, the election special Democracy 24. The Iowa Caucuses will air at 10:00 PM Eastern. We’ll have some of our biggest names here with us in Des Moines, along with Fox Reporters spread out all over the place. Have a great evening from Des Moines. I’m Brett Baier.

And I’m Martha MacCallum. Good night from Des Moines, Iowa. Gutfeld is-

Wow. Yeah. Yeah.