Donald Trump Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #442
- I don't know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist. - Yeah, they do. So I figure it's all right
to call them a communist. Yeah, they call me a lot
worse than I call them. - A lot of people listening
to this, myself included, that doesn't think that
Kamala is a communist. - I believe you have to
fight fire with fire. - Politics is a dirty game. - It is a dirty game. It's certainly true. - How do you win at that game? - They suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don't know if it's
curable from their standpoint. - I think we would probably
have a better world if everybody in Congress
took some mushrooms, perhaps. - First of all, medical
marijuana has been amazing. I've had friends and I've had others and doctors telling me that
it's been absolutely amazing. - The list of clients that went to the island has not been made public. - Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it? - The following is a conversation
with Donald Trump on this, the Lex Fridman podcast. - They getting smaller and smaller. - They getting smaller. I mean, people do respect you more when you have a big
camera for some reason. - No, it's cool. And about 20 guys that you
pay a fortune to, right? - Alright. Okay, you said
that you love winning and you have won a lot in life,
in real estate, in business, in TV and politics. So let me start with a
mindset, a psychology question. What drives you more? The love of winning or the hate of losing? - Maybe equally, maybe both. I don't like losing and I do like winning. I've never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force. - You've been close with a
lot of the greats in sport. You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, you have people like Michael Jordan who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys? - Well, they do have something different. You know, the great champions
have something very different like the sports champions and you know, you have
champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports. You see it over a weekend
or you see it during a game and you see that certain people stand out and they keep standing out. But it's there for you. It doesn't take a lifetime to find out that somebody
was a winner or a loser. And so the sports thing
is very interesting. But you know, I play golf
with different people and there's a different
mindset among champions. There's really a very different mindset. There's a different thought process. You know, talent wise, sometimes you can't tell
the difference in talent, but at the end of a
weekend they seem to win. And it's very interesting,
like as an example, Tiger or Jack Nicholas,
he was a phenomenal winner and he does have a
different way about him. And Tiger has a different way
about him and Michael Jordan. And you would think
that there'd be one way. Arnold Palmer was the
nicest guy you'd ever meet. And then you have some champions
that aren't really nice. They're just focused on doing their job. So you have, you know, there's
not one type of person. But the one thing I would
say that everybody seems to have in common is they're very driven. They're driven like beyond. - They don't seem to give up easily. They don't give up. They don't give up. But they do seem to be, you
know, they have a passion that's maybe more than
people that don't do as well. - You've said that
politics is a dirty game in the past - It is a dirty game. It's certainly true. - So if it is a game, how
do you win at that game? - Well, you win at that
game by getting the word out and by using sense. You have to have a
feeling where it's going. You also have to have a
feeling of what's right. You can't necessarily
just go, what's popular? You have to do what's good for a country, if you're talking about countries. But you have to get the word out and you have to just
continuously, like for instance, you have a great show,
you have a great podcast, it's very well watched. And I'm sitting here and I do
this, a lot of people see it and I do other things and
a lot of people see that. And I go traditional also, you know, you have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant, could be less significant, I don't know. But it's changing a lot. The whole plane of
platform is changing a lot. It's changed a lot in the
last two, three years. But from a political
standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing,
what they're watching. And you have to get on. I just see that these platforms
are starting to dominate, that getting very big numbers. I did Spaces with Elon and they got numbers like
nobody's ever heard before. So you know, you wouldn't
do that on like radio. No matter how good a show, you wouldn't do those numbers on radio. You wouldn't do them on television. - You've been successful in business, you've been successful in politics. What do you think is the
difference between gaining success between the two different
disparate worlds? - Yeah, and they're
different. Very different. I have a lot of people
that are in business that are successful and they'd
like to go over to politics and then you realize they
can't speak, they choke. You know, it's hard to make a
speech in front of thousands. Let's say you're talking
about a big audience, but I get very big audiences and you know, for many people
it's virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. You know, it's not an easy
thing to do and it's an ability. But I have many people that
are very, very successful in business, would love to do what I did. And yet they can't pull the trigger. And in many cases I
don't think it would work almost for everybody it's not gonna work. It's a very tough thing to do. It's a big transition. And now if you talked
about people politics going into business, likewise, that wouldn't generally
work out so well either. It's different talents,
it's different skills. I have somebody who wants
to go into politics so bad, but he's got a little problem,
he's got stage fright. Now he's a total killer, but if he gets up into a
stage in front of people, he doesn't do well, to
put it mildly actually. I mean, he does badly. - So you have to be able
to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience. - Look, if you're a
politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. There are a lot of people
can't do that. I've seen it. They can't even think about
doing it. And they don't. There are many people
in business right now, I could name them, but I
don't wanna embarrass anybody. They've been talking about
running for president for 15 years and they're very big in business,
very well known actually. But it takes guts to
run, like for president, I can tell you it takes guts to run. It's also a very dangerous profession if you wanna know the truth, But dangerous in a different sense too. But it takes a lot of
courage to run for president. It's not easy. But you have, and you
know, same people as I do, there are a lot of people that would like to run for president that are very, very
successful in business, but they don't have the guts to do it. And they have to give up a lot. - One of the great things about people from the business world is
they're often great deal makers, And you're a great deal maker and you've talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and
Zelenskyy would accept. What do you think that deal looks like? - I think the deal, and I
wouldn't talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal if I win as President-elect, I'll
have a deal made, guaranteed. That's a war that shouldn't
have happened. It's terrible. Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country and she's probably worse than him. That's something that
should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it's a much tougher deal to make than it would've been before it started. Millions of people, I think the number's gonna be a lot higher when you see this all
at some point iron out. I think the death numbers
are gonna be a lot higher than people think. When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down
all over the place in Ukraine, I think those numbers are
gonna be a lot higher. They lie about the numbers.
They try and keep them low. They knock down a building
that's two blocks long. These are big buildings. And they say one person
was mildly injured, no, no, a lot of people were killed. And there are people in those buildings and they have no chance. Once they start coming
down, there's no chance. So that's a war that
absolutely has to get done. And then you have Israel and then you have a lot of other places that are talking war. The world is a rough place right now. And a lot of it's because of the fact that America has no leadership. And I believe that she'll be
probably worse than Biden. I watched the interview the other night. I mean, it was just a softball interview. - So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more? - I don't know. I can't believe the
whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that
should have never been in there. They kept them in a basement. They used Covid, they cheated,
but they used Covid to cheat and they cheated without Covid too. But you had somebody in there. And now we have a woman that is not, I mean she couldn't do an interview. This was a really soft interview. This is an interview where they're given a multiple choice
questions, multiple guess. I call it multiple guess. And I don't think she did well. I think she did very poorly. - How do you think you'll
do in the debate coming up? It's in a few days. - So I've done a lot of
debating. Only as a politician. I never debated, my first debate was the Rosie
O'Donnell debate, right? The famous Rosie O'Donnell
debate. The Answer. But I've done well with debates,
I mean, I became president. Then the second time I
got millions more votes. I only got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the
first time, you would win. You can't not win. And I got millions of more votes on that and lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the
world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation 'cause inflation's just eating
up our country, eating it up. So it's too bad. But there are a lot of
things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. I'll tell you, you have
to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East.
So could the Middle East. - So maybe let's talk about
what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelenskyy. Do you think Putin would
be willing to give up any of the regions that already captured? - I don't know. I can tell you that all of
this would've never happened. And it would've been very easy because you don't have, like that question wouldn't be asked. You know, that's a tougher question once that starts happening. 'Cause he has taken over
a lot of territory now. I guess they're insurgents now too, right? So, you know, it's a
little bit interesting that that's happening
and that it can happen. And it's interesting that Putin
has allowed that to happen. Look, that's one that
should have never started. We have to get it stopped.
Ukraine is being demolished. They're destroying a great culture that's largely destroyed. - What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations? Leverage of, let's say friendship, the carrot or the stick? Friendship or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power. - So it depends on who the person is. Everyone's different,
negotiations interesting because it depends on who the person is. And then you have to guess or know through certain
knowledge, which is, you know, more important, the carrot or the stick. And with some people it's the stick. And with some people it's the carrot. I think the stick probably is generally more successful
in that, you know, we're talking about war. But the kind of destruction
that we're witnessing now, nobody's ever seen, I mean
it's a terrible thing. And we're witnessing it all over. We're witnessing it in
all parts of the world. And a lot of things are
going to get started. Look what's going on with
China, look at Japan. They're starting to re-arm
now they're starting to re-arm because China's getting, you know, taking over certain islands. And there's a lot of danger in the war right now in the world. And there's a great
possibility of World War III and we better get this thing done fast because five months with
people like her and him, he's checked out. He just goes to the beach and thinks he looks
good in a bathing suit, which he doesn't. He sort of checked out. Hey look, you know, you can't blame him. That was a coup. They took it over. They took over the presidential deal. The whole presidential thing
was taken over in a coup. He had 14 million votes.
He had no votes, not one. And nobody thought it was gonna be her. Nobody wanted it to be her. She was a joke until six
weeks ago when they said, politically, they felt
they had to pick her and if they didn't pick her, they thought they'd be a problem. I don't know if that's right or not. I actually don't think it's right. But you know, they thought it was right. And now immediately the
press comes to their aid. - If we can go back to China. On negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century? - Well, there are ways,
now here's the problem. If I tell you how, and I'd love to do it, but if I give you a plan, like I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia. And I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan, but an idea for China. Because we're in a lot of trouble. They'll be in a lot of trouble too. But we're in a lot of trouble. But I can't give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I'm not gonna be able to use them. They'll be very unsuccessful, you know, part of it's surprise, right? But they won't be able to help us much. - So you have a plan
of what to say to Putin when you take office. - No, I had a very good
relationship with him and I had a good relationship
with Zelenskyy too, but had a very good
relationship with Putin. - Tough topic, but important.
You said, "Lost by whisker". I'm an independent, I
have a lot of friends who are independent, many
of whom like your policies, like the fact that you're a deal maker, like the fact that you can end wars, but they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff. Fake elector scheme. What can you say to
those independent voters to help them decide who to vote for? - Right, I think the fraud
was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud. And many people felt it was
that and they wanted answers. And when you can't challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it. Otherwise it's gonna
get worse. Not better. And there are lots of ways
to solve this problem. Go to paper ballots, do it the easy way. I mean the paper ballots
and you have voter ID and you have same day voting and you have proof of citizenship,
which is very important because we have people
voting that are not citizens. They just came in and they're
loading up the payrolls, they're loading up everything. They're putting students in schools. They don't speak a word of English. And they're taking the seats of people that are citizens of our country. So look, we have the worst border in the
history of the world. We have coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people at levels that nobody's ever seen. I don't believe any
country's ever seen it. And they would use sticks and so stones not to make it happen,
not to let it happen. We don't do anything. And we have a person
who is the border czar who now said she wasn't
really the border czar, but she was the border czar, but she was in charge of the border. And we have her and she's saying very strongly,
"Oh, I did such a good job." She was horrible, horrible.
The harm she's done... But we have people coming
in from other countries all over the world,
not just South America. And they're coming in
from prisons and jails. They're coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums and
they're street criminals right off the street they take them and they're being given to our country, drug dealers, human traffickers. We're destroying our country. This is a sin what's been
allowed to take place over the last four years. We're destroying our country. And we'll see how that all works out. But it's not even believable. And now you see, you
saw in Aurora, Colorado a group of very tough
young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas,
including buildings. They're taking over buildings. They have their big rifles, but they're taking over buildings. We are not gonna let this happen. We're not gonna let them
destroy our country. And you know, in those
countries crime is way down, they're taking them outta their prisons, which is good because good for them. I do the same thing. By the way, if I ran
one of those countries, any country in the
world, I would make sure that America has every
one of our prisoners, every one of our criminals would be here. I can't believe they're going
so slowly, but some aren't. And but they all are doing it
and we can't let that happen. They're emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America. We can't let that happen. - So a lot of people believe
that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election, whether it's media bias or
big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is a
thing that bothers people. - Well, I don't focus on the
past, I focus on the future. I mean, I talk about
how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is, how bad things like, which is important. Afghanistan was, in my opinion,
the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to our country. And because of that, I think when he said how stupid we were, Putin went in, but it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. I really believe that. But you know, we left 13 dead soldiers, think of it, 13 dead soldiers, many soldiers horrifically
hurt with arms and legs and everything else gone. We left hostages behind,
we left Americans behind, we left military equipment, the likes of which nobody's
ever left behind before. Billions and billions
of dollars of equipment. They're now selling the equipment. They're one of the largest
arms dealers in the world. And very sad, very sad. And, you know, we were
there for a long time. I was going to get out, we
were getting ready to get out. Then we got interrupted by the election, but we would've been out
with dignity and strength. We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there because they knew it was gonna be tough. I dealt with Abdul. Abdul was the leader
and we got along fine. He understood, but you
know, they were shooting, they were killing a lot of
our people before I came down. And when I got there,
I spoke to him, I said, "Can't do it. Don't do it anymore." We went 18 months before this happened, this horrible day happened. We went 18 months and nobody
was shot at or killed. - What do you think that
was? The carrot or the stick? In that case in Afghanistan? - The stick, definitely the stick. - So the threat of military force, - That was the stick, yeah, it doesn't have to be,
but that was the stick. - Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more. For this election, it
might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose? - Well, I hope it's not a close one. I mean, you know, I don't
know how people can vote for somebody that has
destroyed our country, the inflation, the bad economy. But to me in a way, the
worst is what they've allowed to happen at our border where
they've allowed millions of people to come in here from places that you don't want to know about. And I can't believe that that's
gonna be a close election. You know, we're leading in the polls, and it looks close, but I think in the end it's
not gonna be a close election. - What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you will think about? - Well you've gotta get the
criminals out of here fast. You know, the people
from mental institutions, you gotta get them back into
their mental institution. No country can afford this. You know, it's just too much money. You look at what's happening
in New York and Chicago and LA and lots of places and you take
a look at what's happening. There's no country can afford
this, we can't afford it. And we've gotta get the
bad ones out immediately and the rest have to be worked on. You know, it's happened before. Dwight Eisenhower was sort
of a moderate president, moderate type person, but he hated when he saw
people pouring into the country and they were, nothing like now. You know, I probably got elected in 2016 because of the border and I told people what was
happening and they understood it. And I won the election. And I won the election I
think because of the border. Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016. I had it fixed too. The last week of my, the
famous chart that I put up was exactly that, you know, the chart. When I looked to the right,
I said there's the chart, that was not a pleasant experience, but the chart that I put up said, and that was done by Border Patrol. That was the lowest number that we've ever had come into our country in recorded history. And we have to get it back
to that again. We will. - Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you've publicly said that you don't have any direct
connection to Project 2025? - Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too.
Democrats know that. And I purposely haven't read it because I wanna say to you, I have no idea what it's all about. It's easier than saying I read it and you know, all of the things. No, I purposely haven't read it and I've heard about it. I've heard about things that
are in there that I don't like and there's some things in
there that everybody would like. But there are things
that I don't like at all. And I think it's unfortunate
that they put it out, but it doesn't mean anything because it has nothing to do with me. Project 25 has, it has
absolutely nothing to do with me. - You posted recently about marijuana and that you are okay with it being legalized, but
it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there? - Well, I just put out a paper and first of all, medical
marijuana has been amazing. I've had friends and I've had others and doctors telling me that
it's been absolutely amazing, the medical marijuana. And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana. It's gotta be a certain age, gotta be a certain age to buy it. It's gotta be done in a
very concerted, lawful way. And the way they're doing it in Florida I think is gonna be actually good. It's gonna be very good, but it's gotta be done in a good way. It's gotta be done in a clean way. You go into some of these
places, like in New York, it smells all marijuana. You've gotta have a system
where there's control. And I think the way they've
done it in Florida is very good. - Do you know anything about psychedelics? So I'm not a drug guy, but
I recently did ayahuasca. And there's a lot of people that speak to sort of the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of
these different psychedelics. I think would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress
took some mushrooms, perhaps. Now I know you stay away
from all of that stuff. I know also veterans use
it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it's great. And it's interesting that
you're thinking about being more accepting
of some of these drugs which don't just have
a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose,
a treatment purpose. - So we put out a statement today, we're gonna put out another
one probably next week, be more specific, although
I think it's pretty specific and we'll see how that all goes. That's a referendum
coming up in some states, but it's coming up and
we'll see how it does. I will say it's been very hard to beat it. You take a look at the numbers, it's been very hard to beat it. So I think it'll generally pass, but you wanna do it in a safe way. - Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my
good friend Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him. So when he said nice things
about RFK Jr, I think, you've said some not so
nice things about Joe and I think that was a bit unfair. And as a fan of Joe, I would
love to see you do his podcast because he is legit the greatest conversationalist
in the world. So what's the story behind the tension? - Well, I don't think
there was any tension. And I've always liked him, but I don't know him. I only see him when I walk
into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think
he's good at what he does, but I don't know about doing his podcast. I mean, I guess I'd do it,
but I haven't been asked and I'm not asking them, you
know, I'm not asking anybody. - Sounds like a challenging
negotiation situation. - No, it's not really a negotiation. And he's sort of a liberal
guy I guess, you know, from what I understand. But he likes Kennedy. This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us. He's gonna be great.
Bobby's gonna be great. But I like that he
likes Kennedy. I do too. You know, he is a different kind of a guy, but he's got some great things going and I think he's gonna be... Beyond politics, I think he
could be quite influential in taking care of some situations that you probably would agree
should be taken care of. - The Joe Rogan post is an example. I would love to get your
psychology behind the tweets and the posts on truth. Are you sometimes being
intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind and are there times where you regret some of the truths you've posted. - Yeah, I do. I mean, but
not that often, honestly. You know, I do a lot of reposting. The ones you get in trouble
with are the reposts because you find down deep,
they're into some group that you're not supposed to be reposting. You don't even know if those groups are good, bad or indifferent. But the reposts are the ones
that really get you in trouble. When you do your own
words, it's sort of easier. But the reposts go very quickly. And if you're gonna check
every single little symbol, and I don't know, it's worked
out pretty well for me. I tell you, truth is very powerful. And it's my platform and it's been very powerful,
very, very powerful. It goes everywhere. I call it my typewriter, you know, that's actually my typewriter. - What are you doing usually
when you're composing a truth? Like are you chilling back on a couch? - Couches, beds, lot of different things. - Like late at night and just... - I'd like to do some late at night. You know, I'm not a huge sleeper. But whenever I do them, you
know, past like three o'clock, they criticize you the next day, "Trump was truthing at three
o'clock in the morning." And there should be no problem with that. And then when you think about
time zones, how do they know that you are like, you
know, in a time zone, like an Eastern zone? But every time I do it after like two or three o'clock, it's
like why is he doing that? But it's gotten, I mean, you know, the truth has become a
very successful platform and I like doing it
and it goes everywhere. As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere. - The country seems
more divided than ever. What can you do to help
alleviate some of that division? - Well, you can get rid
of these two people. They're terrible. They're terrible. You don't want to have
them running this country. They're not equipped to run it. Joe, it's a disaster, okay? And Kamala, I think she'll
end up being worse than him. We'll see, I think a lot's now, you know, the convention's over with and I see I'm leading in
just about all the polls now. They had their little honeymoon
period as they call it. And we'll see how that
all goes. Who knows. - From my personal opinion,
I think you are at your best when you're talking about a
positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side. - Yeah, I think you have
to criticize though. I think they're nasty. They came up with a
story that I looked down and I called soldiers
that died in World War I suckers and losers, okay? Now number one, who would say that? Number two, who would say it
to military people? Nobody. It was a made up story. It
was just a made up story. And they like to repeat it over again. They know it was made up. I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said. They don't wanna hear about that. Like she lied on McDonald's. She said that she worked at McDonald's. It's not a big lie, but it's a big lie. I mean they just went and they checked and unless she can show
something they don't talk about, the presses are gonna follow up with it. But I'll keep hammering it, but she never worked at McDonald's. It was just a, you know,
sort of a cool thing to say, "Hey, I worked at McDonald's", you know. But one of the worst was two days ago I went to Arlington
at the request of people that lost their children. They'll always be
children to those people. You understand that, that's
not politically incorrect this thing to say. The mother comes up, "I lost my child", but you know, the child is the soldier. And lost the child because of Biden and because of Kamala as just as though they
had the gun in their hand because it was so badly handled. It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big air base. It shouldn't have been done
at a small little airport right in the middle of town
where people stormed it. It was a true disaster. And they asked me if I'd
come and celebrate with them. Three years, they've died three years ago. And I said, "I'm gonna try." I got to know them because I
brought them here, actually. One night they almost all came here and they said, "I wonder if Trump will actually come and see us." I heard they were here, I came, saw them. We stayed for like four hours listening to music up on a deck
right upstairs, beautiful. And they were great people. So they called me over
the last couple of weeks and they said, "We're
gonna have a reunion, our three year reunion,
would you be able to come?" And it was very hard for
me to do it logistically, but I said, "I'll get it done." And I got there and we
had a beautiful time. I didn't run away, I didn't just walk in, shake hands and walk out like people do. And I wasn't looking at my
watch like Joe Biden does. And it was amazing. So I did it for them. I didn't do it for me. I
don't need the publicity. I mean, I get more publicity
probably than anybody. You would know that better than me. But I think maybe more than
anybody, maybe more than anybody that's ever lived, I don't know. But I don't think anyone
could have anymore. Every time you turn on television, there's like nine different
stories all on different topics in the world about Trump. As an example, you
interview a lot of people, good people, successful people. Let's see how you do with this
interview versus them. Okay? I mean, I can tell you right now you're gonna get the highest
numbers you've ever had by sometimes a factor of 10. When a Gold Star family asks me to come in
and spend time with them, and then they said, we did a ceremony. And then we went down to the graves, which was quite a distance away. They said, "Sir, would
you come to the grave?" And then they said, when we were there, it's very sad actually because these people shouldn't have died. They shouldn't have died. They died because of Biden
and because of Kamala. They died because it just like
if they pulled the trigger, okay, now I don't know if
that's controversial to say, but I don't think it is. Afghanistan was the most
incompetently run operation I think I've ever seen. Military or otherwise,
they were incompetent. But the families asked
me if I'd go, I did go. Then the families said, "Could we have a picture at
the tombstone of my son?" And we did. Son or daughter. There was a daughter too. And I took numerous
pictures with the families. I don't know of anybody else
that was in the pictures, but there were mostly
families I guess, that was it. And then I left. I spent a lot of time with them, then I left and I get home that night and I get a call that the Biden
administration with Kamala is accusing me of using
Arlington for publicity. Just the opposite. Just the opposite. And actually did you see it just came out, the families actually put out a very strong statement defending me. They said, "We asked them to be there." - Well, politicians and the
media can play those games. And you're right, your
name gets a lot of views. You're probably legit the most
famous person in the world. But on the previous thing,
in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat.
- Yeah. - Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most
about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves
or of that persuasion, progressives, liberals and so on? - Well, look, I respect the
fact that everybody's in there and you know, to a certain extent, life is what you do while
you're waiting to die, so you might as well do a good job. I think in terms of what's
happening now, I think, you know, we have a chance to save the country. This country's going down and I called it with Venezuela, I called it, with a lot
of different countries. And this country's going down. If we don't win this election, the election coming up on November 5th is the most important election
this country has ever had. 'Cause if we don't win it, I don't know that there'll be another election and it's gonna be a
communist country or close. - And there's a lot of
people listening to this, myself included, that doesn't think that Kamala is a communist. - Well, she's a Marxist. - Her father's a Marxist.
- [Trump] That's right. It's a little unusual, you know. - She's advocating for some
policies that are towards the direction of democratic
socialism, let's say. But there's a lot of people that kind of know the way government works and they say, "Well none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It's just being used during
the campaign to, you know, groceries are too expensive,
we need them cheaper, so let's talk about price controls. And that's never gonna come to reality. - It could come to reality. Look, I mean, she came
out with price control. It's been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years. And it's never worked once. It leads to communism,
it leads to socialism, it leads to having no food on the shelves and it leads to tremendous inflation. It's a bad idea. - Whenever we use terms
like communism for her, and I don't know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist. - Yeah, they do. So I figure it's all right
to call them a communist. Yeah, they call me a lot
worse than I call them. - They they do indeed.
It's just sometimes... - It's interesting though, they'll call me something that's terrible and then I'll hit them back and they'll say, "Isn't it
terrible what Trump said?" I said, "Well wait a minute,
they just called me..." So I believe you have
to fight fire with fire. I believe they're very evil
people. These are evil people. You know, we have an
enemy from the outside and we have an enemy from within. And in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics. And I think you have to fight back. - Whenever there's a lot
of fighting fire with fire, it's too easy to forget that
there's a middle of America that's moderate and kind of
sees the good in both sides and just likes one side
more than the other in terms of policies. Like I said, there's a lot of people that like your policies,
that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars and they don't see the impending
destruction of America. - You know, we had no
wars when I was president. That's a big thing. Not since
78 years as that happened. But we had no wars when I was
president. We defeated ISIS. But that was a war that was started that we weren't anywhere near defeating. But think of it, I had no wars. And Viktor Orban, the
prime minister of Hungary, said, "The world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump." Now that's what he said. So I'm not using that term,
but I think they respected me. But he said China was
afraid. Russia was afraid. Everybody was afraid. And I don't care what word
they use, it probably, that's even a better word
if you wanna know the truth, but let's use the word respect. They had respect for me. They
had respect for the country. I mean, I ended the
Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline. Nobody else could have done
that. I ended it, it was done. Then Biden comes in and he approved it. So we're defending Germany
and these other countries for peanuts compared to what it's worth. And they're paying the person
we're defending them against billions and billions
of dollars for energy. I said, "How does that work?" And we had it out with them
and it worked out good. And they paid hundreds
of billions of dollars. Or you wouldn't even
have a NATO right now. You wouldn't have NATO
if it wasn't for me. - As the leader of the United States, you were the most
powerful man in the world, as you mentioned, not only the most famous but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you'll have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world? - No, I don't think so. Look, I've been there for four years. I could have done a big
number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible
to take the president's wife and put her in prison. She's so lucky I didn't do
anything. She's so lucky. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of
people pushing me too. They wanted to see something. But I could have done something very bad. I thought it looked so bad. Think of it, you have the
president of the United States and you also had Secretary
of State, right, she was. But you're gonna put the
president's wife in prison? And yet when I got out there, you know, they have all these
hoaxes, they're all hoaxes, but they have all these dishonest hoaxes just like they did in the past
with Russia, Russia, Russia. That was a hoax. The 51 different, you
know, agencies or agents, that was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax. There was so many hoaxes and scams, but I didn't wanna put
her in jail and I didn't. And I explained it to people, you know, they say lock her up, lock her up. We won. I said, "We don't
wanna put her in jail. We wanna bring the country together. I wanna bring the country together." You don't bring the country
together by putting her in jail. But then when I got out, you
know, they went to work on me. It's amazing, and they suffer from massive Trump Derangement Syndrome, TDS, and I don't know if it's
curable from their standpoint. - A lot of people are very interested in the footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos and there's been anecdotal
reports from fighter pilots. So a lot of people wanna know, will you help push the Pentagon
to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available. - Oh yeah, sure, I'll do
that. I would do that. I'd love to do that. I have to do that. But they also are pushing me on Kennedy. And I did release a lot,
but I had people come to me and beg me not to do it. But I'll be doing that very early on. Yeah, no, but I would do that. - There's a moment where
you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some
of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation? - I don't think I had... I mean, I'm not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately. But a lot of people did. - Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed
him to get so close? - He was a good salesman. He was a hailing hardy type of guy. He had some nice assets that
he'd throw around like islands. But a lot of big people
went to that island. But fortunately I was not one of them. - It's just very strange
for a lot of people that the list of clients
that went to the island has not been made public. - Yeah, it's very interesting isn't it? Probably will be by the way. Probably. - So if you are able to, you'll be... - I'd certainly take a look at it. Now, Kennedy's interesting
'cause it's so many years ago. You know, they do that for danger too, because you know,
endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera. So Kennedy is very different
from the Epstein thing. But yeah, I'd be inclined
to do the Epstein. I'd have no problem with it. - That's great to hear. What gives you strength when
you're getting attacked? You are one of the most
attacked people in the world. - I think you, you can't care that much. I know people that care
so much about everything, like what people are saying,
you can't care too much because you end up choking. - One of the tragic things
about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it? - I have a friend who's
very, very successful and he's in his 80s, mid 80s. And he asked me that exact same question. I turned it around. I said,
"Well, what about you?" He said, "I think about it
every minute of every day." And then a week later, he
called me to tell me something and he starts off the
conversation by going, "Tick, tock, tick tock." Yeah, this is a dark person,
you know, in a sense. But it is what it is. I mean, you know, if you're religious, you have I think a
better feeling toward it. You know, you're supposed to
go to heaven, ideally not hell, but you're supposed to
go to heaven if you good. I think our country's
missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much
better place with religion. It was almost a guide, you know, to a certain extent it was a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion, there's no
real, there are no guardrails. I'd love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country. - Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there and thank you for talking today. - Look, I love the country. I wanna see the country be great and we have a real chance at doing it, but it's our last chance and
I appreciate it very much. - Thank you.
- Thank you. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Donald Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, as I've started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments
and answer a few questions. If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama or get in touch with me
for whatever other reason at lexfridman.com/contact. I usually do this in a T-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I'll keep my suit and tie on. So first, this might be a good
moment to look back a bit. I've been doing this
podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost
have to say thank you. I'm truly grateful for the support and the love I've gotten along the way. It's been, I would say,
the most unlikely journey. And on most days, I barely feel
like I know what I'm doing. But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations. Now each conversation is
its own unique puzzle. So I can't speak generally
to how I approach these, but here it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations
with world leaders, of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time. I read a lot of history and I admire the historian perspective. As an example, I admire William Shirer, the author of many books on Hitler, including "The Rise and
Fall of the Third Reich". He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively
to the degree that one could. Academic historians, by
the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he editorialized
a little too much. I think those same folks
criticized Dan Carlin and his hardcore history podcast. I respect their criticism,
but I fundamentally disagree. So in these conversations
with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat. I think in the realm of
truth and public discourse, there's a spectrum between
the ephemeral and the eternal. The outrage mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current thing, the
current viral shit stormer of mockery and derision. But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten. A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture. Now, this is much easier said than done. It's not just about
having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them. It's not even just about having
the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at, but let's say it's a work in progress. You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive
to such a conversation. This is hard, really hard with political and business leaders. They are usually super busy
and in some cases super nervous because well, they've been
screwed over so many times with click bait, gotcha journalism. So to convince them and their team to talk for two, three,
four, five hours is hard. And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration. And I've been thinking a lot about why. I don't think it's just
about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content. I think the longer form with a hypothetical
skilled conversationalist, relaxes things and allows
people to go on tangents and to banter about the details because I think it's in the details that the beautiful
complexity of the person is brought to light. Anyway, I look forward to
talking to more world leaders and doing a better job
every time as I said. I would love to do
interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political
figures on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC,
Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary, and on the right, J.D Vance,
Vivek, George. W and so on. And on the topic of politics,
let me say, as an immigrant, I love this country, the
United States of America. I do believe it is the
greatest nation on earth, and I'm grateful for the people
on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well. I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others. I probably should do a better job of that. But I've been doing most of
this myself, all the reach out, scheduling, research
prep, recording and so on. And on top of that, I very much have been suffering
from imposter syndrome with a voice in my head
constantly pointing out when I'm doing a shitty job. Plus a few folks graciously
remind me on the internet, the very same sentiment of
this aforementioned voice. All of this, while I have the option of just hiding away at
MIT, programming robots and doing some cool AI research
with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company or maybe starting my own, all these options make me truly happy. But like I said, most days I
barely know what I'm doing, so who knows what the future holds. Most importantly, I'm forever
grateful for all of you for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster
of the life I've been on. I love you all. Okay, now let me go on
to some of the questions that people had. I was asked by a few people to
comment on Pavel Durov arrest and on X being banned in Brazil. Let me first briefly comment
on the Durov of arrest. So basic facts, Pavel
Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption mode. It's not on by default, and most people don't use
the end-to-end encryption, but some do. Pavel was arrested in France
on a long list of charges related to quote unquote "criminal activity carried
out on the Telegram platform" and for quote unquote, "providing unlicensed cryology services." I think Telegram is indeed
used for criminal activity by a small minority of
its users, for example, by terrorist groups to communicate. And I think we all agree
that terrorism is bad. But here's the problem, as the old saying goes, one man's terrorist is
another man's freedom fighter. And there are many cases in
which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are. But there are other
cases when governments, especially authoritarian
incline governments tend to propagandize and just call whoever's in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists. There is some room for nuance here, but to me at this time, it seems to obviously be
a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor
access into every platform so they can have censorship
power against the opposition. I think generally government
should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social media platforms. And I think arresting
a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the
platform he built is just nuts. It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram and on people working at
every social media company and also people thinking of launching a new social media company. Same as the case of X
being banned in Brazil. It's I think a power grab
by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil. He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading quote
unquote "misinformation". Elon and X denied the request. Then de Moraes threatened to arrest X representatives in Brazil. And in response to that, X
pulled the representatives out of Brazil obviously to protect them. And now X having no
representatives in Brazil, apparently violates the law. Based on this de Moraes
banned X in Brazil. Once again, it's an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over
the channels of communication. I understand that this is complicated because there are evil people in the world and part of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people. But as Benjamin Franklin said, those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. So it's a trade off, but
I think in many places in the world, many governments
have leaned too far away at this time from liberty. Okay, next up I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I'll condense it as follows. "Hello, Lex, I'm a programmer and I have a deep fear of
slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed
my programming skills." Let me first say that
I relate to your fear. It's scary to have a thing
that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away. For me, programming is a passion. And if not for this
podcast, it would probably, at least in part, be my profession. So I get an uncomfortable
feeling every time Claude, the LLMI use for coding at this time, just writes a lot of excellent, approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the
skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that
the collective intelligence of Stack Overflow exceeds the
skill of many programmers, many individual programmers. But in many ways it still does not. But I think eventually more and more the professional programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I'm at least
doing is to ride the wave of the ever improving
code-generating LLMs, and keep transforming myself
into a big picture designer versus low level tinkerer. What I'm doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to
whatever state of the art tool is for generating code. So for me, currently I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor and before that it was
Emacs to VS Code switch. So Cursor is this editor
that's based on Vs Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates the code
generation really nicely into the editing process. So it makes it super easy
to continually use the LLMs. So what I would advise and what I'm trying to do
myself is to learn how to use it and to master its code
generation capabilities. I personally try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch. So using my understanding of programming to edit the code that's
generated by the LLM versus sort of writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to
generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill. I think this applies to
many other careers too. Don't compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary on some
deep sort of human level, the threat of being replaced, but at least I think we'll be okay. All right, next up I got
a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of
anxiety about the future. Just recently he graduated
with a bachelor's degree and he's thinking about
going to grad school for biomedical engineering,
but there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many
times in the message. It took him an extra
while to get his degree, so he mentioned he would
be 32 by the time he's done with his PhD, so it's a big investment. But he said in his heart he
feels like he's a scientist. I think that's the most important part of your message. By the way, I'll figure out
how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes. Now onto the question. So thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University
for my bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees and I took a while just as you're doing. I did a lot of non-standard things that weren't any good for
some hypothetical career I'm supposed to have. I trained and competed
in judo and jiujitsu for my entire twenties,
got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a
lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of
non-technical books, history, philosophy and literature. I took courses on
literature and philosophy that weren't at all required
for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees. Like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes, many for example on
theoretical computer science that were way more than
were needed for the degree. I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn't directly
contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity
and the joy of exploring. So like you, I took the
long way home as they say, and I regret none of it. Throughout that people around me and even people who love
me wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially
because I had very little money and so I had a sense like
time was running out for me to take the needed steps
towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I
was filled with anxiety and I still am filled
with anxiety to this day, but I think the right thing
to do is not to run away from the anxiety but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing
with everything you got, the things you're passionate about. As you said, very
importantly in your heart, you know you're a scientist, so that's it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a
scientist with everything you got. Get to a good grad school,
find a good advisor and do epic shit with them. And it may turn out in the end that your life will have
unexpected chapters, but as long as you're
chasing dreams and goals with absolute unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also try your best
to be a good person. This might be a good place
to read the words "If" by Roger Kipling that I often
return to when I feel lost and I'm looking for guidance
on how to be a better man. "If you can keep your
head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself
when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and
not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don't deal in lies or being hated, don't give way to hating and yet don't look too
good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not
make dreams your master, if you can think and not
make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two
imposters just the same. If you can bear to hear
the truth you've spoken, twisted by naves, they
make a trap for fools or watch the things you
gave your life to broken and stoop and build them
up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap
of all your winnings and risk it on one turn
of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your
heart to nerve and sin you to serve your turn long
after they're gone. And so hold on when there's
nothing in you except the will, which says to them, hold on. If you can talk with
crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings or
lose the common touch. If neither foes, no loving
friends can hurt you. If all men count with
you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving
minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that's in it and which is more,
you'll be a man, my son." Thank you for listening
and see you next time.