When asked if he's losing patience with Kim Jong Un:
About China:No, I have greater patience than any human being in the world. [...] People don’t understand that about me. I have great patience. [...] I don’t think I have to do anything. I have a -- you know, I’ve -- I’ve had a good -- now, that can always change, but I’ve had a good relationship with Kim Jong Un, and I’m not saying it won’t change. It could change. The whole situation could change. But you’ve had no missile testing, you’ve had no rocket testing, we got back our hostages, and there’s been no nuclear tests. And that’s pretty good. [...] And I signed a document -- you know, that document I signed said there will be a denuclearization. You know, everyone says we didn’t agree -- we agreed to a lot of very positive things. [...] I look -- if you look at those points, it’s -- it’s everything. Now whether or not people live up to it, we’ll see. [...] I have sanctions -- no, I left the sanctions on. You know, the sanctions haven’t come off. But I have hopes that North Korea will be successful. I can’t tell you that with surety, but I think we’ve certainly done better than anybody else, and we got all those things done that I told you about, including getting our hostages back.
About NAFTA:Did you just release a story [...] that I’m putting out $200 billion? Who was the genius that?
BLOOMBERG: Me. Am I wrong?
Uh, I refuse to say. Not totally wrong. I can’t do that to you, Jennifer. That’s my Jennifer. You know how much I liked her when I first met her, then she started to kill me. But that’s actually not-- wasn’t your fault. It was somebody that you were dealing with that wasn’t so good. Right? I never blamed you for that. I know the good. But this one you like, right?
[...]
And what I did is, because of North Korea, I delayed my decision by a little bit. I was going to do trade with China right away, and a couple of things happened. One thing happened is I got to know President Xi, who I like a lot. OK? Another thing that happened is with the North Korea -- and -- and if you people remember, if you go back to the end of the Obama administration, we were ready to go to war with North Korea, just so you understand. You know, when people say, ‘Oh, what have you done?’ We don’t feel that now. OK?
[...]
[A]gain, the best thing that China and I have going -- and -- and the U.S. have going -- is that President Xi and I have a really great relationship. OK?
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But it is interesting, Jennifer, isn’t it? Remember, they said he’s going to cause a war when I said rocket -- you know, when I did the rocket man thing and worse. Much worse. They said war. And with Putin, which was actually one of my best meetings because of my talk on Syria, Ukraine, Israel and other things. I think it was one of my best meetings. I think the press covered it unbelievably fake. It was real fake news but -- but it was a very good meeting. The NATO meeting was phenomenal.
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Just to --just to finish, I think a lot of good things are going to happen, but I delayed my devaluations. Monetary, you know, on the monetary -- the devaluations. My currency manipulations, and also my tariffs, for a period of a year, with China, because I wanted to get as much help as -- as they could give us with respect to North Korea. That had an impact. So I delayed it. But there came time when I couldn’t delay it anymore because it’s too much money that they drain out of our country. Just too much money. That’s where we are now. So I put 50 -- I hope you can cover this pretty much as I say it because you can’t really cut it out. It’s – it’s a story.
About the World Trade Organization:[M]any countries that, you know, were going in through Mexico and into a backdoor. They were coming in through a backdoor. So in that sense it was aimed at many countries that were taking advantage of the United States. The Mexico deal’s an incredible deal. If you want to keep your companies here -- look, I grew up where companies were leaving. NAFTA was the worst deal -- one of the worst deals ever made. OK? There were numerous of them. The Iran deal, which, by the way, has had a major impact on Iran. When I came into Iran -- when I came into here, it was a question of when would they take over the Middle East. Now it’s a question of will they survive. It’s a big difference in one and a half years.
About EU trade:And if they don’t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO. We rarely won a lawsuit except for the last year. You know, in the last year, we’re starting to win a lot. You know why? Because they know if we don’t, I’m out of there. I’ll take them out. We’re starting to win lawsuits that we never -- you know that. We never won lawsuits because the courts are stacked. You know they -- it’s sad. We have a minority on the courts.
You just know he doesn't know Jean-Claude's last name.[T]hey do a lot more auto business than we will ever do. In other words -- well, first of all, it’s not just tariffs; they also have barriers up to our cars. They have a – they’ll take the barriers down and they’ll charge us no tax, but it’s not good enough, because they will always sell more cars. Their cars -- their habits, their consumer habits are to buying their cars -- not to buying our cars.
[...]
[T]hey have a strength with cars, and we have a strength with agriculture and many other things. They won’t let many of our products into Europe. So, the European -- if you look at the -- if you look at Europe, you look at the whole situation as to trade, OK, with Jean-Claude -- the great Jean-Claude, who came here.
A wall. Well no wonder our cars can't get into Europe.I mean, I will tell you -- but Jean-Claude. Look at the European Union -- Union, it’s as restrictive as any single country in the world – including China. European Union doesn’t let our agricultural products in. They have a wall. They don’t even -- it’s not even a tariff; they have a wall.
Well what is it about their standards that block our products then? Of course it's that their standards are higher.They don’t want it. They don’t let our agriculture -- and they create, you know, standards that make it impossible because they have standards that-- that -- like, with medical equipment, they created new standards so we can’t get our medical equipment -- not that the standards are higher. It’s just that they’re different.
Again, that's a lie about the steel plants. And, what's-his-name will not tell you otherwise.Look, it’s all about the cars. And the – do you understand what I mean by that, Jennifer? It’s all about the cars. We can talk steel – and I’ve rebuilt the steel industry in this country in six months. It’s rebuilt, it’s – when I say rebuilt, it’s really rebuilding fast. You call up the head of U.S. Steel, chief executive officer, what’s his name? Great guy. He’s – he’s opening up six or seven plants, he’s going to open up others, he’s spending billions of dollars.
About the aluminum tariffs:
He's pretty short on specifics.BLOOMBERG: People are losing their jobs though on the aluminum tariffs and things like that. Is that – does that worry you?
TRUMP: I know, the – the aluminum business is doing much better. It was – it was a dead business. There’s so – and I only charged 10 percent on that one because of that. It’s a – you know, it’s – it was a little more delicate.
Steel is – and I’ll tell you what’s going to happen with steel, they were dumping like nobody’s ever seen dumping before. Historic dumping. And don’t believe 2 percent by China. It was trans-shipping.
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So you understand what I mean by that, because every time I read an article it says, oh, but China only sends us 2 percent. I say give me a break, take a look at the countries where they’re coming from. Some countries don’t even do steel and they’re sending us 4 percent of the product. So – so – but – but I have to say, the steel industry is – is one of my pride and joys. I’m going tonight to Indiana, and I don’t know if you saw the lines, the lines started forming today at 4 o’clock in the morning.
On currency:
Everything he's said about a strong dollar is negative, but he likes the sound of the words "strong" and "powerful", so it's okay.Well, look. I put a man in there [ed:at the Federal Reserve] who I like, who I respect. And in private life, I always liked -- in private life, please put it that way. In private life, I always liked a weak dollar and a low interest rate, OK? A strong dollar was only good if I wanted to buy Turnberry in Europe, in Scotland or if I wanted to buy Aberdeen or if I wanted to buy Doonbeg in Ireland. It was the only thing the strong dollar was good for. That was in my private life. And I did. I bought a lot of things when the dollar was very strong and the, you know, Ireland had crashed and Europe was crashing. I bought a lot of great stuff, including the great Turnberry, as you know, right? As president, I feel a little bit differently. As president, there’s something really nice-sounding about the fact that our dollar is so strong and so powerful. The bad news is that it makes life more difficult when you’re looking to sell product to the rest of the world. And they are cutting their currencies very substantially, far more than they should be allowed to do. And we’re not being accommodated. I don’t like that.
He thinks people who make decisions by flipping a coin should be in charge???I -- I’m -- I’m not-- look, my businesses have been very strong. I’ve done very well. I understand it. I think I understand it better than the so-called economists, where you -- mostly, it’s a flip a coin and pick. Is it heads or tails? They have no clue. But -- but at the same time, I’m not sure that we should ever allow politicians to control very important things, you know, strong monetary policy, the things that the Fed right now controls.
WTF?[W]hat I’m saying is that we are fighting horrible trade deals that were made by people that were either incompetent or didn’t care. And -- and I should be -- I should be allowed -- and -- and they -- and those -- those countries are being accommodated by their monetary policy. Our country is not.
LOLSANDERS: Sir, we have just a few more minutes.
TRUMP: Leave it a little bit longer, it’s fine. I actually find it intellectually stimulating. What time are we leaving for Indiana?
He doesn't know what indexing is, does he?
BLOOMBERG: Do you imagine that you would make a decision before the midterms on indexing?
TRUMP: I -- I don’t want to say that, but it’s something that a lot of people like. How do you feel about that -- indexing?
BLOOMBERG: In foreign countries, lots of people index.TRUMP: Right. Have you -- have you taken a view on it, from Bloomberg?
BLOOMBERG: Bloomberg, I think, on the whole, we’ve -- I don’t -- we haven’t opposed it.
TRUMP: Hmm?
BLOOMBERG: We haven’t opposed it.
TRUMP: Yeah.
When asked about Jeff Sessions:
About the payment to Stormy Daniels:I have a great cabinet. I’m really happy with my cabinet. I’ve made some replacements. Mike Pompeo’s becoming a star. You look at my cabinet members, we have really great cabinet members. There are those that say this is the best cabinet ever assembled. We really have great – and you’ve heard that, Sarah, too. We hear it a lot. We – and we have great judges. I put on judges that – when I got here, I had 145 openings. Nobody’s ever had that before. And that was because something happened in the last three years of Obama where he didn’t put judges on. I think they forgot. I really do, I believe they forgot. And there’s nothing more – you know, there’s probably nothing more important – other than war and peace, there’s probably nothing more important.
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I do question, you know, what is Jeff doing? [...] I’ll say this. There was no collusion. I think almost everybody, even in your business, is saying there just is no collusion. There were no Russians. If there were, you would have known about it. There was collusion between the Democrats and the DNC and Russia. [...] I’m just telling you this, you read any of the great – you read the great scholars, the great legal -- there should have never been a special counsel. It shouldn’t have been set up. [...] So, I’d just like to have Jeff Sessions do his job and if he did, I’d be very happy. But the job entails two sides, not one side. Now, I have not purposely, and not from any legal standpoint because from a legal standpoint, I’m allowed to get totally involved. But I have, purposely, not gotten involved. But, you know, at some point I guess that could change.
Next question.Well, I don’t want to get into it because it’s been covered so much. So, we won’t get into that. Let’s get into more important things. I can say this, there’s no campaign violation whatsoever. And if you watch all of the good legal pundits, you’ll see that. No campaign violation whatsoever. There is none. And most of them -- other than fake news -- admit that. There was no campaign violation.
BLOOMBERG: There are some in the legal community that say you could prove that if there was a pattern of Michael making payments over a long period of years, then -- then it would be argued that it was--
TRUMP: Jennifer, there was no campaign violation -- all of them.
BLOOMBERG: --if those payments would have been to protect the Trump business brand.
TRUMP: All I’m saying is this -- every lawyer that everybody’s spoken to said there’s no campaign violation. So.
BLOOMBERG: Not every lawyer.
TRUMP: Well, other than the fake news--
BLOOMBERG: The federal prosecutors.
TRUMP: --of which there was, there was quite a bit. Go ahead. Next question.
Then he proceeded to refuse to comment on Google, Facebook, and the removal of Don McGahn as White House Counsel, which foreign leader he would call in the event of a terrorist attack on the US, whether John McCain would have made a better president than Obama (although he says he has a very strong opinion on it), and Turkey's incarceration of a US pastor, other than he's disappointed in Erdoğan.
And I’m doing a great job. Somebody said what do you grade yourself? I said an A+.
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