WASHINGTON — “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson” sat down this week with President Trump for an exclusive, wide-ranging interview at the White House.
Attkisson spoke with Trump on a variety of topics, from the war in Iran to the upcoming midterm elections, to his son Barron Trump’s potential political aspirations.
Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel:
Trump’s decision to attack Iran
With the latest developments on Iran, there is hope and a promise from the Trump administration that gas prices will soon go back down.
ATTKISSON: Few politicians, I think, would be prepared to take a political hit on something as important to so many Americans as oil and gas prices in the short term. Even for something very important in the long term.
TRUMP: Yeah.
ATTKISSON: The political and media climate, I don’t think they really allow for this sort of thing. They want immediate reactions and responses to things.
TRUMP: Well, I think it’s easy when I say it and somebody like you says, you know, answer that question and gives me a couple of seconds, it’s really easy to answer. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon because they’re crazy. We cannot let them have access to nuclear. Obama did it. If, if I didn’t terminate the Iran nuclear deal, they would have had it and they would have used it on Israel and the Middle East right now and, and maybe beyond, you know, they have, they actually had rockets that you saw that the other day that could reach Europe.”
In another question, Attkisson asked Trump about current combat operations in Iran.
ATTKISSON: So is it accurate to say you think the combat operations are over and done, but there…
TRUMP: Maybe- No, I didn’t say that. I said, they are, they are defeated, but that doesn’t mean they’re done. We could go in for two more weeks and do every single target. We have certain targets that we wanted to … And we’ve done probably 70% of them, but we have other targets that we could conceivably hit. But even if we didn’t do that, you know, that would just be final touches. But even if we didn’t do that, it would take them many years to rebuild.
Will Democrats try to impeach Trump again?
The Congressional Midterm elections are six months away, and both Democrats and Republicans are measuring their odds of walking away with control of Congress and America’s political legislative agenda.
ATTKISSON: How do you feel today about the Republicans’ chance in the midterms? And if the Republicans were not to hold control of Congress, how does that change your strategy as president?
TRUMP: Well, they’ll find a reason to impeach me, even though a lot of people said I had the greatest first term in the history of it. They’ll try and impeach me probably. But, see, we don’t play that game. We don’t play like them. They play dirty. They have bad policy, you know? If they had normal policy, it would be, it’d be a lot tougher, frankly. But when they have men in women’s sports, transgender mutilation of your children for everyone, open borders so that the world can pour into our country, criminals.
We took in 25 million people over the Biden four years, and 11,888 were murderers, most of whom, more than, substantially more than 50%, committed more than one murder. Welcome to America. Now we have the strongest borders we’ve ever had. We have, as you know, we, for 11 months, they say nobody has come into our country illegally. You know why? Nobody tries. Nobody makes the trip up. Uh, the trip is not worthwhile because they know they’re not going to get through. So once they know that, they don’t make the trip. But we’re running a great country. We’re respected by everybody now. Again, we weren’t respected. We were a laughing stock for four years. We were a very, very, unsafe place. You know, murders are down now to the lowest in 125 years, the year 1900, but we were a country that was a dead country, and now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.
Trump on vaccines and vaccine safety
ATTKISSON: Do you think there should be a vaccine safety commission?
TRUMP: A commission on what?
ATTKISSON: Vaccine safety, something to examine. Something like he proposed back then.
TRUMP: No. Look, I believe in vaccines, but I don’t believe that you know, you have to have a mandate for all of them. The polio vaccine’s amazing. It’s, you know, wiped it out. And I believe in vaccines, but you know, I think we’re up to 88 vaccines. And I really feel that if vaccines, they were given in smaller quantities. They want to cut some out and that’s good too and I agree with that. 82 is too many. If you look at Denmark and other countries, you have 12, 14, I think 17. And we have like 82. But I look at these beautiful little babies and they get a vat, I mean, like a big glass of, of stuff pumped into their bodies. And I think it’s a very negative thing to do.
Trump on NFL games leaving free TV
There’s growing controversy over NFL games increasingly appearing on pay programming, costing fans big bucks to be able to follow their favorite teams.
ATTKISSON: Your justice department is investigating the NFL for moving a lot of viewers from free broadcast television into more expensive pay programming like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Peacock, and YouTube where the NFL makes more money. Do you think this is price gouging on America’s favorite sport? Should the government do anything about it?
TRUMP: I think it’s just tough. It’s tough. You got people that love football. They’re great people. They don’t make enough money to go and pay this. It’s, it’s tough. And they could be killing the golden goose. I mean, they have that stupid kickoff thing that you can’t watch. It’s unwatchable. I hate the games where they, you know, they have the new phony kickoff. I don’t think it’s any safer. Um, I hope college football doesn’t do that. Do you know what I’m talking about, right?
ATTKISSON: I, I’m not a big-
TRUMP: You know the football, you are not a football fan. These people know what I’m talking about. That, that, that, you know, they ruin the game. But they have to be careful because, you know, others have tried this and all of a sudden you don’t have a sport anymore. Probably will.
ATTKISSON: Government will step in and do something.
TRUMP: There’s some, there’s something very sad when they take football away from many, many people. Very sad. I don’t like it.
Will Barron Trump enter politics?
ATTKISSON: Do you see your son Barron going into politics someday?
TRUMP: Well, maybe. He’s certainly a popular guy, but we have a lot of members of my family that are very popular. You know, they have good kids. They’re very good kids.
Fort Knox gold audit plans
ATTKISSON: What happened to the audit of Fort Knox?
TRUMP: Which one are you talking about?
ATTKISSON: There was, I think, when you first got into office, you and Elon Musk talked about auditing the gold to make sure it’s there.
TRUMP: Well, we wanted to go knock on the door. Fort Knox. Very thick door. And to see whether or not we have any gold in there, because we take a look at it. It’s a very interesting question. Yeah, we played with that. I wonder if they left the gold in Fort Knox because they steal a lot.
ATTKISSON: No need to really do that, though?
TRUMP: Well, I don’t know. I think it’s, I do want to go to Fort Knox sometime. I want to see if the gold is there. Which I’m sure it will be.