TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News Radio for His Radio Show, 11.21.25
[Video]
Brian Kilmeade: Hey, Mr. President. Thanks so much for joining me. I truly appreciate it.
President Trump: OK. Absolutely, Brian. Good.
Kilmeade: Big meeting today at 3:00 with the mayor elect of New York City that you've clashed with before from afar. What do you expect when you meet him face to face?
Trump: Well, I don't really know. He's got a different philosophy. He's a little bit different. I give him a lot of credit for the run. He did a successful run and we all know that runs are not easy, but I think we'll get along fine. Look, we're looking for the same thing. We want to make New York strong and, you know, there's just such a different philosophy, but I'll let you know. I'll let you know over the next year, Brian. OK?
Kilmeade: So I know sometimes when you go to sit down with you, Mr. President, sometimes you'll whip out a list and you'll say, did you say this about me in the past?
Trump: Yeah.
Kilmeade: I know Piers Morgan has said that. This is something that might be on your list that he said about you after he won, by the way. Cut three.
Note: [Begin audio clip]
Zohran Mamdani: [Audio clip] This is not only how we stop Trump, it's how we stop the next one. So Trump:, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you, turn the volume up.
Note: [End audio clip]
Kilmeade: So it was a little bit of an in-your-face when a time he should usually, after a victory speech, be kind of magnanimous.
Trump: Yeah.
Kilmeade: Your thoughts on that?
Trump: Well, I was hitting him a little hard too, in all fairness. It was, you know, hard to be totally friendly toward the opponent. You know, his opponent wasn't -- he had some interesting opponents, but he ran a good race. I don't know exactly what he means by turn the volume up, because turn the volume up -- he has to be careful when he says that to me, but nobody really was able -- I said, what does that mean, turn the volume up, does that mean let's go at it?
Kilmeade: Yeah. It's --
Trump: I don't think so. I mean, he was very nice in calling, as you know. And we're going to have a meeting. I guess we meet at 3:00 today.
Kilmeade: Right.
Trump: And I think it's going to be quite civil. We'll find out. You'll be the first to know.
Kilmeade: I know. We'll see it at 3:00. Will you open up the doors to the press after?
Trump: I think so. I mean, it's fine with me. I would think so. He's a politician, so I don't think he has a problem. The one thing I notice about politicians, the answer is always yes, other than with Biden.
Kilmeade: So when -- one thing he did say --
Trump: Biden didn't open up doors to his brain. But --
Kilmeade: There's one thing he does say that probably won't be great. He says, I never go back to the days when Eric Adams would go on national television and open the door for the NYPD handling civil immigration enforcement. He doesn't expect cooperation between the NYPD and ICE. That's got to be disappointing.
Trump: Well, we're going to be talking about it. I just can't imagine that where you have hard core criminals, and this is about criminals. You know, you can make a case the other way, having to do with others. But you know, when you have a murderer, when you have a known murderer, known rapist or known whatever it is, drug dealers all over the place, I can't imagine that anybody wants to keep them, but I'll have that discussion with him today. Absolutely.
Kilmeade: Yeah, we'll talk about immigration a little bit later, but I also want to talk about something else that matters a lot. And that's that tape that those veterans and Elise Slotkin put out talking about urging, I guess, or reminding our troops that they don't have to obey orders, listen to a little of it.
Note: [Begin audio clip]
Unidentified: [Audio clip] You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.
Note: [End audio clip]
Kilmeade: So you get the spirit of it. Your reaction was pretty direct, this is really bad and the -- dangerous to our country. The words cannot be allowed to stand, seditious behavior from -- from traitors. And you want to say punishable by death. So people thought that you were saying death to those politicians. What were you saying?
Trump: Well, if you look at sedition, if you look at, you know, that type of -- it's a form of -- a very strong form of being a traitor. It's a terrible thing to say. I must tell you, I heard it and I thought it was some kind of a comedy situation. I thought they were -- you know, it was some kind of a skit. And -- because I couldn't believe that they'd say it. And I watched Democrat Congressmen and one Democrat Senator yesterday in one of the shows, didn't even want to discuss it. They said, whoa, don't get me into that one. They didn't want to get into -- that is a really serious charge. I'll tell you what, what they said is -- and it was. I mean, I don't know about the modern-day things because, you know, modern day is a lot softer. But in the old days, if you said a thing like that, that was punishable by death.
Kilmeade: Yeah, but you're not saying -- you're not threatening them. A lot of people were interpreting that as a threat and their security.
Trump: I'm not threatening them, but I think they're in serious trouble. I would say they're in serious trouble. I'm not threatening death, but I think they're in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death.
Kilmeade: Do you worry, Mr. President --
Trump: The seditious behavior. That was a big deal --
Kilmeade: Do you worry --
Trump: Today, nothing's a big deal. Today's a different world, OK? It's a softer mic -- it's a meeker, milder world. But I will say this, I think what they did is really bad. The hatred is pretty strong. But what they say, you know, essentially don't follow the orders of the president of the United States, to the military.
Kilmeade: So do you worry that some of your guys are going to say no?
Trump: And you know, you have [inaudible] young privates and young corporals and young sergeants and they're not scholars, necessarily. There might be a few, frankly, but they're not scholars. They don't, you know, study the Constitution etc., etc. They know that. So these are people -- these are bad people. These are people that, in my opinion, broke the law. Now what happens to them, I can't tell you, but they broke the law. That is a terrible statement. I can say, if I ever said that and there were a Democrat as president, all hell would have broken loose and it has broken loose. I have had more calls from people, even Democrats, saying what a horrible thing that was.
Kilmeade: So do you worry that someone on the Gerald R. Ford will say, hey, I don't want to do this Venezuelan mission, I don't want to sit out in the ocean, I'm out? You know, do you worry about them saying, I don't want to go to Chicago and be in the National Guard, I'm out? Do you worry about that?
Trump: No, I don't worry about anything like that because I'm a leader and they do as I say, but it certainly is not a good situation. You know, it could happen. With certain leaders it could happen. I don't think that it happened with me, but you know, you never know. Look, that was a very terrible -- that was a -- that was a traitorous statement.
Trump: That was a horrible thing to do. I think -- I believe they broke the law very strongly. I think it's a very -- I think it's a very serious violation of the law. Yeah [ph].
Kilmeade: I know Todd Blanch seems to be looking into it, your assistant -- your assistant deputy -- or your deputy [inaudible]
Trump: Well, I think Pete Hegseth is looking into it too. I know they're looking into it militarily. I don't know for a fact, but I think the military is looking into it, the military courts.
Kilmeade: Mr. President, this week, there's a lot of stories about the FBI investigation into Thomas -- Thomas Crookes. And Miranda Devine got a -- had a source that said that he had a huge social media footprint and that it was mischaracterized by the former FBI director and his deputy saying it was just anti-Semitic. It was beginning -- according to the social media reports, if they're posting, if they're correct, in the beginning, they were pro you. At the end, it was anti-Trump and anti -- they have a few threats on -- about Fox too. Are you currently happy with the investigation into Crookes that your FBI is doing?
Trump: Well, I wasn't happy with Christopher Wray and I wasn't happy with that whole situation with him, but I do have confidence in Kash, a lot of confidence, and the DOJ. And they are giving me reports and their reports are seeming to balance out. So I have confidence in these people. I didn't have confidence in Christopher Wray. I thought Christopher Wray was not good at the job he did.
Kilmeade: So do you -- so in other words, so Miranda Devine said over the weekend that you weren't confident and Eric seemed upset, but for the most part, you feel as though you are fully briefed if Crookes had international ties?
Trump: Well, I wasn't confident with Christopher Wray, but in this group it's a different group and it's Kash as opposed to Christopher Wray and I have confidence in Kash.
Kilmeade: Health care. I know just like the war in Gaza and Ukraine, you inherited it.
Trump: Right.
Kilmeade: Obamacare is not affordable. The deductibles are roughly $6,000, But a lot of your voters are stuck with it. And they're saying if I can't afford my health care, it seems like Republicans, like Katie Britt and Senator Cassidy and Tillis are saying, Mr. President, let's do something with the subsidies, let's try to help people out.
Trump: Right. I agree.
Kilmeade: Are you -- are you going to -- are you going to start working in a bipartisan way?
Trump: Yeah, we -- we have something where instead of the insurance companies getting the money -- you know, they're making billions and billions of dollars and it's lousy health care. They call it the un-Affordable Care Act, right? It is the un-Affordable Care Act. And I always said that. I said, this thing is going to explode. It's no good. And it is exploding and it's unacceptable. It's too expensive for people. It's no good for the country, but it's worse for the people. It's lousy health care. And I want to give the money that we give to the insurance companies directly to the people, let the people buy their own health insurance, and that's what's going to happen. I believe that there's good support on both sides for that. And Katie's working on it. A lot of people are working on it. Rick Scott is working on it. Many, many Senators are working on it. And you know, we have a June -- we have a January 30th date coming up. I'd like to see if we could do it by then. They say, well, let's go another year and I said let's see if we can get it done by January 30th. So there are a lot of people, including Democrats, that are working on this.
Basically, taking your money, not giving the insurance, let them -- let their stock go down. Who the hell cares? They've made a fortune on this. Obama, what he handed to the insurance companies -- and I said it from the beginning, I said this is an insurance company scam and it's a scam against the people. And we don't give the money to the insurance company, we give the money directly to the people and they buy their health insurance. It's a great and fairly -- you know, it's a very complex subject, but it's fairly -- we have made it a lot less complex. You'd get better health insurance and you'd save a lot of money.
Kilmeade: So Senator Cassidy agrees with you. He's an expert, a former doctor and Rick Scott, I understand it. So in other words, for people listening right now, many of which voted for you, some didn't, that are just concerned about their bills, you're going to do something to help them?
Trump: Yep.
Kilmeade: That's -- okay.
Trump: We're going to do a lot. Not something, we're going to do a lot. We're going to get their -- we're going to give them better health insurance for less money.
Kilmeade: Gotcha.
Trump: Let me put it very simply, better health insurance for less money.
Kilmeade: So let's talk about --
Trump: You can't do better than that.
Kilmeade: Let's talk about Venezuela. You have this unprecedented build up in our hemisphere. It's Monroe Doctrine in 2026. They call it the Monroe Doctrine. And you basically said, I'll speak to Maduro. He reached out through emissaries or directly. When you speak to him, is the message simply you have to go? Is there any scenario where he stays in power?
Trump: Yeah. Brian, look, you are somebody I have a lot of respect for. Everybody respects you and congratulations on your success. You did -- you're a hard worker and you do a great job and you're a friend. I'm not allowed to say that, but you're a friend of mine. You're a great guy, but I can't tell you that, Brian. I'm sorry, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to tell him.
Kilmeade: OK.
Trump: I just don't do that. You know, maybe other politicians do. I can't do that. And then they prepare for that or unless I want to send a mixed signal. And I don't like lying. But no, I can't tell you what I'm going to tell them, but I have something very specific to say. Look, what they did -- drugs are horrendous, and you know, they're one, but you also have Mexico, you have Colombia.
Colombia is horrible in the drug situation. I mean, they have cocaine plants, where they make cocaine. It's horrible. Colombia is horrible and we're going to deal with that. We're dealing with it all. We're dealing with things that nobody else ever even thought to think about and it would be a lot easier not to do it, but not really, because it's destroying a big chunk of our country.
When you look at the death and destruction and the family, what happens to a family with kids that get hooked. And not only kids, parents get hooked to, everyone. The numbers are unbelievable. I think we lost last year, 200,000 people. That's death. But when you multiply that times three or four for the people that are affected, the parents or brothers or sisters, it's a -- it's a terrible situation.
And Venezuela is a big part of it. But Venezuela did one thing that nobody else did to that extent. They emptied their prisons into our country, Tren de Aragua, the gang, the -- their prisons were emptied into the US, empty.
Kilmeade: Right. And Mr. President, don't you think the message to Mamdani -- yeah.
Trump: And they're not getting away with that. And we're bringing them back but they're not getting away with it.
Kilmeade: Yeah, the message to Mamdani is if you want socialism, look at Venezuela, it doesn't work.
Trump: Oh, that's good.
Kilmeade: The other thing, the Colombian president came out and said Maduro should go. I was kind of shocked at that because you're sparring with the Colombian president who's up for election. So maybe there's some support in the region for him to do what Aristide did from Haiti and get out. And I'm sure there's a bunk bed available with Assad somewhere in Russia, as long as he leaves, because you have a rightful government that won an election and can't take power because they don't have control of the army.
Trump: Yeah, well, we're going to see and we're going to be very much involved and we're going to -- I'll be speaking to them in the not too distant future, but I can't tell you what I'm going to be saying.
Kilmeade: So let's talk about Ukraine.
Trump: You understand me.
Kilmeade: I totally understand it. A 28-point plan has been out there. There's a report that you gave Zelenskyy until next Thursday to essentially agree to it. He is saying all the right things. He's open to it. He's meeting with Dan Driscoll, your Secretary of the Army. But some of the points on there that are -- I guess everything's in flux until it's done. No one has to tell you about a deal. It looks like Ukraine has to cut their personnel to 600,000. It looks like they got to give up some land that they have not lost in the war. They cannot join NATO.
Trump: No, that they will lose in a short period of time. Yeah.
Kilmeade: The whole of Donbas?
Trump: They're losing land. They're losing land. They just -- we're in -- we're in it for one thing. We want the killing to -- you know, they lost 25,000 people last month between the two countries, 25,000 people. It's out of control. It's a bloodbath. Remember the famous word bloodbath?
Kilmeade: Right.
Trump: Remember, when they tried to make that an interesting [inaudible]
Kilmeade: But you know that if you don't stop in Ukraine, he's going to have -- he's going to have problems -- they're going to be another, the Baltics are going to be in trouble.
Trump: They'll be stopped. He's not looking for more war. Look, he's taking punishment. Say what you want. I mean, this was supposed to be a one-day war that entered [ph] four years now, OK? But in all fairness, we gave them the best military -- we make the best equipment in the world. We gave -- we gave Ukraine the best military equipment anywhere in the world. Nobody makes -- and we gave them a lot of it, but somebody had to use that equipment and say what you want. They were very brave. Do you agree with that? They're very brave.
Kilmeade: They're great fighters. They're great fighters. And the other thing, Mr. President, you're not pulling off the sanctions while you wait on the 28-point plan because it seems like every time you do --
Trump: No, no, not at all.
Kilmeade: Vladimir Putin wants you to stop that.
Trump: We have very strong sanctions.
Kilmeade: So they go in today, don't they, against Lukoil, Lukoil, Lukoil and --
Trump: They go in very soon and they're very powerful, very powerful. I mean, you know, it makes it very hard to sell oil. That's a big thing. That's -- you know, the whole -- their whole economy is based on oil. But no, I'm not doing anything having to do with taking back sanctions.
Kilmeade: All right. Understood. So is next Thursday the deadline that you gave, a loose deadline for Ukraine?
Trump: Well, we have -- you know, I've had a lot of deadlines, but if things are working well, you tend to extend the deadlines. But Thursday is a -- we think an appropriate time.
Note: [Commercial break]
Kilmeade: So today, we find out that 52 more Christians were kidnaped from their school in Nigeria and they're being held for $100 million ransom. What do you say to people who think that this is not an urgent situation and that needs to be acted on? What's your answer to those critics?
Trump: I think Nigeria is a disgrace. The whole thing is a disgrace. They're killing people by the thousands. It's a genocide and I'm really angry about it. And we pay -- you know, we give a lot of subsidy to Nigeria. We're going to end up stopping. The government has done nothing. They're very ineffective. They're killing Christians at will. And you know, until I got involved in it two weeks ago, nobody even talked about it. The New York Times doesn't write stories about it. Nobody writes stories about it. They're killing people, hundreds of thousands of people and the New York York Times and all that garbage that people read, that are forced to read, they write all garbage, the most dishonest group of people. But when you look at it, they don't -- can you imagine, they don't even cover it. They hardly cover a story like this. It's like, I don't even know if they cover it at all, but not only them, others. When you look at the lack of coverage and yet other things that are totally unimportant get massive coverage, it's disgraceful. What's happening in Nigeria is a disgrace.
Kilmeade: So your U.N. ambassador got something I haven't seen before, Mike Waltz 15-0. They have -- UN has signed off -- the Security Council signed off on the Trump Peace Plan in Gaza. I read that they've set up a unit in a warehouse. The first floor is Israelis. The second floor is us, as well as international representation from Egypt to Qatar. And they're working on bringing peace to the area. But Hamas says they're not putting down their weapons. What could you do to get us to phase two in this effort to have peace?
Trump: Well, we're going to see. Let's take a look at Hamas, what they do, because we just started that process. Let's see what happens. I will say this, we have now peace in the Middle East. We have countries signed on. We have so many countries that have signed on. In fact, it changes every single day. Countries are being added. There's never been a time like this in the Middle East. You have peace in the Middle East. Now, you have Hamas, which has been, you know, beaten very badly. You have Iran, which has been beaten very badly and their nuclear capability taken away and they want to make a deal and we probably will make a deal with Iran.
But you have peace for the first time in the Middle East. You have real peace in the Middle East. You have Hezbollah with Lebanon, which is not good, but that's a relatively small situation, not a good situation, but small. But you had things -- one year ago you had nuclear weapons, you had -- Iran was boasting about how strong they were. You had -- this is a totally different Middle East right now. And you have countries that want to make peace as opposed to countries that had no idea of making peace. We've taken a big, dark cloud off of the Middle East by bringing Iran back down to size.
Kilmeade: Understood. And lastly, Mr. President, what do you say to people who see the rise of AI and they say, my goodness, we saw that Amazon cut back 9,000 jobs, not because of performance, but because they got automated, they got robots and they were able to AI and be more efficient? What do you say to people who are nervous about AI and think that it's going to be the end of their jobs, their occupation, their living? What's your message to them?
Trump: Well, what's going to happen is economies will get so much bigger that you'll have tremendous numbers of jobs, including the making of AI itself. We have plans that are being built in this country, producing AI, artificial intelligence. I never liked the idea with the word artificial, but that's what they call it, so let them call it. We have the biggest plants in the world being built. So people have to build those plants. People have to operate the plants. People have to do a lot. What's happening is the whole -- from our standpoint, I can tell you as a country, our country is getting much bigger, much wealthier. We have $20 trillion being invested in the United States. Under -- if you took a look at past years, but if you go back just to Biden, they had less than -- substantially less than $1 trillion over four years.
Kilmeade: Right.
Trump: I have $20 trillion in one year. It'll be about $20 trillion in one year, a record. No other country ever in history has done that. All of that money, much of it goes toward jobs. So yes, I agree with you, it will make things more efficient, but it will also make things much bigger. It's going to level out beautifully.
Kilmeade: Mr. President, I can't thank you enough for the loyalty to the show, but the first time I ever interviewed you, I was at Sports Phone, the lowest rung of media and you were promoting the Alex Stewart Tyson fight. And when I went up to talk to you, I've had Yankees and other Major League Baseball players just walk past my mic flag. You actually talked to me before Warner Wolf, so I go, this guy -- and you were one of those famous guys in New York. And I said, this guy's -- he's a great guy and because you care about the average person and you showed me that respect. And I walked back with this great interview with Trump:, the promoter, and I'll never forget it. So thanks so much for your time then and now.
Trump: Well, maybe I spotted talent. You know, maybe I saw you and you were a young guy, young, nice, handsome guy and maybe I said, this guy's got a big future, I'd better be nice to him and I was right. See that. So maybe I didn't do it for myself. Maybe I really did something that I spotted great talent, look how well you've done. So I'm very proud of you. You've done a great job. I'm proud of you.
Kilmeade: And I think you've done well for yourself too, two term president.
Trump: I've done OK. I've done OK. But we watch each other. That's very nice.
Kilmeade: Absolutely. Hey, Mr. President, I'll see you today at 3:00. I look forward to it. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.
Trump: Very good. Thank you very much, Brian. Very nice. Thank you.
Kilmeade: Thank you.