Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript Interview with Donald Trump

Interview

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: If a guy like corrupt Joe -- because you say it better than anybody with the quid pro quo with his son - - I mean --

SEAN HANNITY, HOST: Zero experience Hunter, that's how I (ph) --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Can you imagine if I made that statement that he made? He's on television -- I don't know, I guess he didn't know he was on or something. I'm looking at that tape, that can't be.

And the press, the media, the fake news media -- and it is fake, it's terrible actually -- but they don't want to put it on. I say, why don't you ever put that clip on? They don't want to. Could you image if that were me instead of him?

HANNITY: The clip you're referring to, because I played it often, is Joe Biden bragging, I told -- I said, fire the prosecutor or you're not getting the $1 billion and you've got six hours.

TRUMP: Right.

HANNITY: Now his son, who has no experience in oil, gas, energy or anything to do with Ukraine, was getting paid millions of dollars. So son of a B -- his words -- they fired him and his son continued to make more money.

But by the way, there's also another -- Peter Schweizer outlines this well in his book --

TRUMP: Right, it's a great book.

HANNITY: -- $1.5 billion deal -

TRUMP: China.

HANNITY: -- with no experience that I can find in private equity with the Bank of China after flying with his father a week earlier on Air Force Two.

TRUMP: And I asked some of the biggest people on Wall Street -- the smartest, the -- I know them all. I know rich ones and poor ones, OK? I know them all.

I said, can somebody walk into China and walk out 10 minutes later with $1.5 billion to manage, where you get hundreds of thousands -- even millions of dollars a year -- for managing it? He said, it's an impossibility. They don't do business that way.

This young guy who didn't have a job, who got thrown out of the military service, didn't have a job for a number of years -- all of a sudden, he's making millions of dollars a year. Don't forget, Ukraine paid him 83 -- but it was turning out to be $150,000 a month. They have him $3 million up front. They're paying a lot of money. What -- what's this thing about?

And the father is there saying, get rid of the prosecutor. If you don't get rid of the prosecutor, forget it. Was it $2 billion? You're not going to get it.

HANNITY: One billion.

TRUMP: I never saw anything like this. And you can't find that clip today.

HANNITY: I have it.

TRUMP: Oh, you have it? You're --

HANNITY: I play it.

TRUMP: -- about it.

HANNITY: Yes.

TRUMP: Thank goodness we have Sean.

HANNITY: All right, thank you. Let me stay on Joe Biden. I think you'd agree with this statement because - - and you're living it -- but I would say being the president of the United States of America is the hardest job in the world, because the free world depends on the president. TRUMP: My job was made -- just to say -- my job was made harder by phony witch hunts, by Russia, Russia, Russia nonsense. I was tougher on Russian than any president that's ever lived. Any president -- nobody's done what I've done with sanctions and all -- exposing the pipeline deal going into Europe, nobody did that. Nobody even talked about it. I've been tougher on Russian than anybody. Even our military -- how about the fact that we've become the number one energy in the world through me, and that's their primary business?

HANNITY: By the way, that's the first time in 75 years we're energy independent.

TRUMP: We're energy independent. We're the number one in the world. We're number one --

HANNITY: Number one producer.

TRUMP: Yes, in the world.

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HANNITY: That has (ph) never happened.

TRUMP: By far.

HANNITY: We have the election in 131 days. It's been 84 days since Joe Biden had to answer any questions. There's a lot going on in the world. I heard he might be making it out of his basement bunker today.

It's interesting, you know, what Terry McAuliffe said, I'm fine with Joe in the bunker. You know, he only sees two people a day, his two body men. And I think this question is fair. They asked it in 1984 about Ronald Reagan. And that is, do you believe that Joe Biden has the strength, the stamina, the mental alertness -- is that a nice way to say it, because seems confused a lot. He can't seem to utter three sentences without looking down. He can't even do a podcast.

Does he have the strength that we would need in a president, in your view?

TRUMP: I can only say that I go 20 hours a day and I'm all over the place, and everybody really says it. And what I've done is it does take a lot of - - it takes a lot of energy. Takes a lot of energy, and if you don't have a lot of energy, you're not going to be a good president. I really believe that, you need a lot of energy to do this job. You need, up here really good, but you need a lot of energy and --

HANNITY: Tough skin I'd say too.

TRUMP: -- it has to be coupled with a lot of other things. So, I don't know. I don't want to comment on it. But look, we'll see. The fact is that he was OK against Bernie in the debate. He really was. It surprised me. He was OK. Now at other debates, he was terrible. You know, I though that he was out of it, because he had two or three debates, the other debates, pre-Bernie, where it was so bad, I said, he's not a candidate -- he can't be a candidate. And he has something that's very unique. He didn't go down that much, he went down a couple of points. Instead of being out of it, he'd go down a little bit, because they've known him for a long. You know, he's been doing this for 47 years or something.

HANNITY: Fifty.

TRUMP: Yes, whatever. Long time.

And what has he done? When you think, what has he done?

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