Live from Virginia Wednesday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream – host Fredericks welcomed former President Donald Trump to the show to discuss the infrastructure bill passing, Mitch McConnell’s future in the Senate, and what could inspire him to run for president in 2024.
Fredericks: If the Republicans win back the House and the Senate in the midterms. Mr. President, if we can straighten out some of the voter fraud that’s going on, a lot of us think it’s going to be a pretty sweeping victory. Are you in favor of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy returning as Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House?
Trump: I’m working with Kevin McCarthy. We have a tremendous power of endorsement. When I endorse somebody, they win, you know, that. I mean, it’s 128 and two, and it’s great. It’s a wonderful thing. Endorsements usually don’t mean very much.
They say, you know, the expression that an endorsement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. But the endorsements where people go up 30, 40, 50 points. So that’s a very important thing. We have many races. But I am working with Kevin.
I think Mitch McConnell is a disaster. You mentioned the infrastructure. All he wants to do is survive and be good to China because he has a lot of business in China with his family.
Mitch McConnell should not be the leader. He’s done a terrible job. Those 19 votes, remember, one of the reasons they did the 19 votes and the $1.2 trillion was to stop the $3.5 trillion, right?
Fredericks: Right.
Trump:Â I said, tell me, how does that work? And nobody could explain it. But they said by doing this, we’ll be in a better position to stop the really bad bill, which is following down. Well, what happened?
It got approved in one day in the House. You saw that, right. One day it took one day. Unanimous Democrat approval. I said, oh, I see. So now you did the 1.2, and I felt it was the opposite. So did you. I said if you approve that, it makes it easier than 3.5.
Fredericks: Exactly.
Trump: And so they did the 1.2 trillion, which is actually you said 19. I think it’s 11 percent infrastructure. Speaking of McConnell. So I had a $2 trillion plan for all infrastructure. We would have rebuilt the country. We would have rebuilt it.
Not the nonsense they’re talking about. Most of it is just the Green New Deal nonsense, which is just going to destroy our country. $3.5 trillion is almost all New Deal stuff. The New Deal, by the way, was great compared to what they’re talking about.
This Green New Deal is a disaster for our country. But the $1.2 trillion was supposed to be used because that was going to be a buffer to make it very hard for them to approve. They approved it in one day, meaning phase one. They approved it in the House in one day. And Mitch McConnell couldn’t get the money to do the infrastructure.
And it should have been easy. And he wanted to cut it down to $500 million. And I said, we’ve got to rebuild a country and these are real jobs. You would have had a brand new, beautiful country.
It would have been fantastic. He couldn’t do it. I said, well if you don’t do it, they’re going to do it. And that’s exactly what happened. They did it. Now the problem is they’re not spending it like we were going to spend John.
Fredericks: Exactly.
Trump: They are spending it or nonsense.
Fredericks: When you get elected again in 2025 and I think you’re going to run and win. That’s just my prediction. I believe that’s going to happen. You’re going to inherit a massive federal deficit, Mr. President. It’s going to be 30 something trillion dollars. This is unsustainable. We’ve already got problems with the Petrodollar between Saudi Arabia and Putin. As president again, what are you going to do to sustain us through this debt? How do we get past this?
Trump: Well, we have problems with our own, because when we have a disaster, the dollar was one of our greatest assets. And when we have a disaster and show a sign of weakness, as we did two days ago, when you look at what happened in Afghanistan that affects our dollar, that affects our currency.
It’s largely psychological. And when you have a thing like that happen, John, it’s so sad. That affects us in so many different ways that people don’t even think about. But no, we’re going to be at $34 or $35 trillion and in deficits.
And it’s a big problem, John. (Chuckles) That’s a big problem. The question is, what’s going to happen? Well, I have a question as to what’s going to happen when all of these states come out and they say we won the election.
I mean, what’s going to happen? You tell me what’s going to happen? Are we going to have a country left in three years? If it keeps going like this, John, you’re not going to have a country left. Frankly, the currency is the least of your problems.
You’re not going to have a country left. We’re letting in millions and millions of people through the southern border. Not hundreds of thousands. When they intervene, even when they intervene, they wanted to do catch and release again. I got it out. Stay in Mexico.
Fortunately, we had a great judge who said, Stay in Mexico is good. Hundreds of thousands of people were pouring into our country. And I won Stay in Mexico.
The first thing they did is end it so that everybody comes in here, if you’re a criminal if you’re anybody that wanted to come into this country, just walk in. We have millions and millions of people coming into our country every year.
Now, you know, it was never stronger. Our Southern border and was helped largely by the wall and largely by Mexico. We had 280 Mexican soldiers standing across our border at a cost of zero. Now I said, I’m going to put tariffs on your car, on your cars. They sell us.
They make now 30 percent of our cars. Before I got 32 percent of our car, our automobile business was taken by Mexico. I said, look, and I like the President a lot. He’s a great guy, a different kind of a guy than us. But that’s okay.
Not everybody’s going to be like us in terms of their viewpoints. But I said you’ve got to put people. We don’t want people coming through. And he made his northern border with Honduras and all of that, he made his Southern border, the southern border that we call the southern border, and his border with Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador, he made that much stronger.
And our southern border, or traditional southern border, he made that really very difficult to get through, because I said, if you don’t do that, we are going to have to tariff your cars.
And that’s billions and billions of dollars. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it anyway. You want to bring back the business, you want to bring back our automotive business, put the tariffs on those cars, you’ll bring it back in about two seconds.
We have a great relationship with Mexico but all of that ended with Biden. All of it ended. And you have millions of people pouring into our country. We have no idea. And by the way, they’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from all over the world.
It’s a terrible thing that’s happening. So my question is, forget about currency. You may not have a country left. And then you have a fiasco like in Afghanistan, where we’ve lost respect all over the world. The thing we had that was most respected was our military. And now people think our military is a joke.
Fredericks: Mr. President, getting the midterms put your cards on the table. How many seats do the Republicans have to win in 2022 that would inspire you to make the decision to make another run for President in 2024?
Trump: I actually think it works both ways. If we didn’t win, I’m not sure that my chances wouldn’t be enhanced in a certain way. And if we do win, they will give me no credit whatsoever.
They’re not going to give me credit. (Fredericks chuckles) But what happens is I do those Tele town halls. We’ll have 20, 30,000 people on. I did 58 of them, John. 58. Every single person I called won. Because if I do a congressional district and I get 5000, 10,000, 15,000 people on a call, that Congressperson can’t lose.
So you were expected to lose. In fact, you said one-time a long while ago before the last one, the Republicans in the House, we’re going to lose 25 to 35 seats.
Fredericks: That’s correct. I did say that.
Trump: We gained. We didn’t lose one. We gained 16. That was 100 percent because of me and Kevin McCarthy. I will say that it was 100 percent because of what I did with respect to endorsements. Most importantly, it was a Tele-Town Hall.
That’s a telephone call that hits a certain district. And they were very strong. And the good news is if somebody else does it, nobody else is getting that much. Like Biden with his circles. He couldn’t fill up his circles.
And we’ll have 50, 600 people show up. That, by the way, is your own poll. But, I mean, what’s a better poll than that as to who won the election? And I’m going to do that again…
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Sure miss President Trump at the helm.