TRANSCRIPT: President Trump speaks with Dan Bongino on His Podcast, 2.2.26
[Video]
Dan Bongino: What an incredible honor, uh, to welcome back to the show for the first time on the new Dan Bongino Show. The most transformative president in my lifetime, and frankly, probably any other lifetime either. President Donald J. Trump. Mr. President, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.
President Trump: Well, thank you very much, Dan, and you too. I was very unhappy when you left the FBI, but I was very happy that you have your show, which is so good. So I'm okay with this. It's net neutral. I call it a net neutral. [Laughs]
Bongino: Well, Mr. President, I want to thank you for the opportunity. The past year has been absolutely incredible. And given that, you know, you're a results guy. Having, we, obviously, we were friends before, but working for you is a completely different experience. You are a results guy. You're a spreadsheets guy. How, how would you get to a net present value positive with what you're doing? And I'll never forget an Oval Office meeting we had in light of the DC crime numbers today. Hadn't had a homicide in a record amount of time in DC thanks to your leadership. We're sitting in the Oval Office, and I was talking to you about the homicide rate plunging, and it was only about three months into my term there.
I said, "Mr. President, what we're doing down in Memphis and elsewhere is working." And I'll never forget, I said, "We're doing the broken windows, Rudy Giuliani style policing." You looked at me and you said, "Hey, how do we take this nationwide?" And you never ever let go. You stayed on top of it with me and Cash. You were all over it. You're such a hands-on guy. And it was just so refreshing to work for someone who doesn't get into all the hype and all the nonsense, but cares about the numbers. It's probably your business background of what it is, but amazing job on that.
Trump: Well, we have the best crime numbers we've ever had. We have the lowest number of crimes in 125 years, since they record it. That's in 1900. You think of it, 125 years. That's despite a lot of bad people coming in through the border that shouldn't be here and we're getting them out. You got a lot of them out yourself. We're doing much better than anybody would think. And yet we have our lowest, think of it. A lot of criminals came into our country, we're getting them out, and we're getting them out fast. We have to fight liberal judges and, you know, fake governors, very terrible governors and mayors, guys like, uh, just take a look at Minnesota. Walz, he's a disaster. But if you think about it, uh, I was reading the Washington Post this weekend, and they have a big story on crime in DC. It's way down.
Bongino: Right.
Trump: And they're, the whole purpose of the story is why? We can't figure it out. What happened?
Bongino: [Laughs]
Trump: Is it the police department, they stepped up their game? What is it? They talked about everything. And then toward the end, they had a little thing that, of course, Trump surged a lot of very tough military into it. And it was that surge that did it, I would say 97.2%. Okay, let's put it that way. But here I'm reading this story about how crime is now. They didn't even want us to do. They didn't even want us to go. And so Washington was a very, very dangerous city. Many murders, many really horrible crimes. They came from all over the place. It was horrible. It was, you couldn't walk down the street. Now you can walk anywhere you want. But the story was, why is it so good? It's so good. They admit now that it's good, but they refused to give us credit. We're the ones that totally did it. And we worked with the police, but without us, you'd have crime at, at record highs. You'd have crime that was out of control. And can you imagine, I read, I had to read a story where they're looking for the answer as to why crime over the last six, seven months, exactly the timing that we got in, but over the last six, why that crime is way down.
And they barely acknowledge us. They say, "And also, Trump did a surge of the military, very big, strong people that, you know, Tren de Aragua doesn't like them very much. They'd walk in, they'd beat their crap out of them." And, uh, we brought those people, and you know better than anybody, you were there. We brought those people back to Venezuela, back to places where they came. Some were so dangerous that we put them in jail because we couldn't take a chance they could come back. But think of it, with all of that, I read this story, and the headline is something to the effect that crime in DC is way down. What's the reason? And everyone knows what the reason is. If it weren't for us, you'd have crime, you'd have stats that were worse, were worse than they were under Sleepy Joe Biden. So we do a great job. We don't get credit. And the only thing we can do is go on shows like yours. We have a big audience and talk about it because people get it immediately. It's a terrible, terrible thing. The news is so corrupt and so fake, it's unbelievable.
Bongino: Mr. President, I'm gonna correct the record for the hack goon, uh, life loser media right now because I was there. I was there with you. I was there with Stephen Miller.
Trump: Sure.
Bongino: I was there with Tony Salisbury, your entire amazing crew over there with AG Bondi and Todd and everyone else. And, and of course Cash. And I remember early on, Cash went to you about Operation Viper in Memphis, where at your direction, we surged assets into Memphis. We absolutely destroyed the crime rate there. We were locking up gang members, mutts, dirt bags, all of these people. And I will, I, I'm, I was there. I remember you saying, "Well, where do we go next? And then where do we go next?" And I personally spoke to just about every SAC, special agent in charge of the FBI and the big field offices. And Mr. President --
Trump: Right.
Bongino: -- I told him, I said, "The boss watches." I said, "I'm telling you right now, if there's a news story about a homicide in Kansas City or whatever it is," I said, "I promise he's calling or Steve's calling or someone else. What are we doing?" So anyone saying otherwise that this wasn't at your direction, it was some like accidental statistical blip is completely full of crap. I was there, I saw it, I saw it, and that's a hill I'll absolutely die on.
Trump: So with Memphis, if you remember, we got calls, I got calls from everybody. The mayor wanted us, the governor wanted us. It's so much easier when they want you. You know, you don't have to fight them like in Minnesota. But in Memphis, crime is down 75% after about two and a half months. We're gonna have it down to practically nothing. It was really dangerous, one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Then I got a call about New Orleans. And I got it from the governor of the state, Landry, who's a great governor. He said, "We need help. We got a crime ridden mess. People are getting killed every day." I sent our guys there. Crime is down 80% in two and a half months, 80%. And he called me yesterday, he said, "This is the most amazing thing I've ever seen." I said, "It's not amazing." Now, in Chicago, as you know, we put people there and we brought it down, but we only have a limited, uh, a really limited force because they fight us so hard that you can't really do the right thing.
You know, you just sort of do it easy. And yet we've taken crime down 25%. We have a incompetent governor, he eats too much. We have an incompetent governor. We have a, a mayor who's really a low IQ person. They don't want it. I, I'll tell you what, if I were a Democrat governor and I was in charge of Chicago, as an example, or mayor, I would be begging Trump: to come on. Maybe I'll take credit for what he does like they do, 'cause every time we do something, they take credit. We, we've, we win all the time. We have a case in San Francisco. They have a very liberal mayor and he wants to do what we do. But I explained to him, and he's a nice guy, and I have a lot of friends, you know, Silicon Valley stuff. I have a lot of friends up there. And they really want him to, want to give him a chance.
He's a good guy. He begged me not to do it. I said, "Look," this was six months ago. I said, "Look, give it a shot. But you can't do what we do because we take criminals out, bring them back to their country. You can't do that. You have to get rid --" You know, in, uh, Washington, we took over 2,000 people out and moved them back. And the other thing, 2% of the people create 90% of the crime. Think of that. So when you start moving these guys out, you have a huge impact on crime. You've got sick people. They, these are 2%. Think of that stat. So you don't have to arrest the entire population.
Bongino: Right.
Trump: 2% of the people create na- -- and it makes sense, right? You know, they, they create crimes every day over and over. Then you put them in jail, they come out, they do five crimes in one day. These are sick people. And they have bad people. And they'll never be good, by the way, for the liberals that wanna make them in, bring them into a wonderful, uh, person of society. They go, "We can bring them back into society, society." No, because eventually they'll kill you, you know?
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: Eventually they will kill you. But 2% of the people create 90% of the crime. And we take those two, and we go after those 2%. Now, Minnesota, if we, if they allowed us to do the job, it's a mess. There's something in the water up there. And I love the state. I won the state three times, but I got no credit for it. I won that state three times, but it's a rigged state, really rigged badly with the Somalians, uh, and the Somalians and the theft. And I guess you studied it, but I hear it's over 19 billion dollars, okay? Can you imagine? They have a country where they have no money, they have no nothing, and they come over here and they steal. They're able to steal more than 19 billion notes. And we're, we're right on their ass.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: We're right there.
Bongino: That was one of the first cases when I got in, uh, office [Inaudible]
Trump: But these, these are people that don't work.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: Yeah. Dan, these are people that don't work. These are people that are just not an asset to our society, to put it mildly. And we gotta get them out, most of them, and it's most of them.
Bongino: I wanna tell the audience --
Trump: They have 92%, 92% don't work.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: And they have an unbelievable system, cor- -- corrupt system of welfare. You know, many of them drive Mercedes-Benzes. They had nothing when they came over. The good news is, do you notice they don't see ships being stolen any more from Somalia? 'Cause we hit those guys with the same weapon that we take out the drug dealers from the ocean.
Bongino: Oh.
Trump: We stop, every time we hit a boat, we knock out, we saved 25,000 on each boat --
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: -- and pretty accurate, each boat is responsible for the death of 25,000 Americans. Think of that, okay? And we knock them out like candy. We are knocking 'em out. We also do that with the pirates in Somalia. That's why you don't see ships being taken anymore because they don't play games.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: So, you know, they were stealing ships every day. Now, it takes courage to steal ships.
Bongino: Right.
Trump: They don't do it, you understand. And you did a great job while at the FBI, and I appreciate it.
Bongino: Oh, thank you, sir. I appreciate it. Well, it was under your leadership and working with Kash was amazing. He was just an incredible leader over there.
Trump: Yeah.
Bongino: There was another thing I want the media to hear about and the audience as well that you did. I was there, I saw it, no one's gonna BS me about it. You had a totally different approach to getting illegals out of the country. Um, we use Title 8 a lot. Title 8 is an easy way to get people here illegally out of the country. We say, "Well, what's unique about that?" Your approach with Steve Miller and AG Bondi and Todd was totally different. It was like, if we are lock up, say we went out and did a violent crime roundup with the FBI and our DHS and DEA partners --
Note: [Crosstalk]
Bongino: -- marshalls, all you great folks out there, and we gave you 10 minutes to cooperate. I mean, being a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point.
Trump: Right.
Bongino: And your approach was, "Listen, either give us something valuable about someone up the criminal food chain or get the hell out. We're not gonna store you in our jails for 10 years, waste $100,000 a year on food and shelter and, and interviews and, and AUSAs, United States attorneys debriefing you. Either produce valuable information or get the hell out." When I first told the guys that at the FBI, they were a little shocked, that, "Well, well, we can debrief them over and over." No, no. Get them the hell out. And this was a revolutionary approach and the results speak for themselves, the lowest crime rates in modern US history.
Trump: Well, we want one thing in Minnesota. We can get out of there really fast. We want their prisoners. They've got jails with murderers --
Bongino: Yes.
Trump: -- and drug lords, rapists. They've got jails with the worst, the worst people, and they come out, you know, Tren de Aragua, they come out, uh, uh, uh, the worst gangs. We have the worst gangs. They have gangs that are so bad they look at you and they knife you up. You know, we had it in Washington. They're all gone, by the way, they're all gone. But all we want is, they have a lot of prisoners. They call it sanctuary city, and sanctuary cities are a disaster. So I put out an order, anybody that does a sanctuary city, not getting any money. Let's see what happens. You know, they'll get, uh, wiped out by these liberal courts. But the people understand, nobody could do the job that we've done, nobody. There's nobody. They wouldn't, you know, they, they just go through a system --
Bongino: Right.
Trump: -- and you have to be very tough as well. Look, I took over a border where 25 million people came into our country, many of them murderers, 11,888 murderers, drug dealers, uh, drug addicts all over the place. They always send their drug addicts, their, their people with trouble, alcoholic. They, they ended, they, they took over the mental institutions of their country, and they sent every single person in a mental institution over our border with Texas with their open border policies. So we have millions of people, most of them are bad, to be honest with you, because they're not gonna send their good people. They want their good people like we, we don't wanna have our good people leave. They only send their bad people, and the best of their people are people that don't work. Those are the best ones.
The people that came in, they don't work, and they don't want them either because they don't wanna pay welfare. So they've sent all of their people, millions and millions of people. We have to get them out. And by the way, if Republicans don't get them out, you will never win another election as a Republican. If you don't get these, these people are all pitted so they vote, and they make all this crap with the voting, "Oh, well, you can vote. You can do whatever you want." It's crazy. I mean, it's crazy how you can get these people to vote. And if we don't get them out, Republicans will never win another election. Think of it. I won in a landslide. I won every swing state. I won the popular vote by millions. I won everything. I won a thing called counties, the counties that were, it's such a big vote. That's why the map was entirely red when you looked, it had two little purple lines or two blue lines on each side, but it was all red.
And counties I won by 2,750, think of this, to 550, 2,750 to 550. It's becoming a very good count because it's accurate. You know, it covers the whole country. It's like a landslide. But you're never gonna have that again if you don't get these people out. These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, "We wanna take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places." The Republicans aught to nationalize the voting. And then we have states that are so crooked and they're counting votes.
We have states that I won that show I didn't win. Now you're gonna see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order and the ballots, you're gonna see some interesting things come out. But, you know, like the 2020 election, I won that election by so much. Everybody knows it. They put a woman in jail, Colorado, put a woman in jail, a wonderful woman, a 72 years old, had cancer, because she was a voting inspector. She was in charge of a voting area, and she saw boxes of votes come in. So she went over to check it, and they put her in jail for voter manipulation, and she's still in jail, and they better let her out fast. And they're suffering a big price, Colorado. They have this woman in jail who's 71 years old and probably has cancer, she's sick, and they put her in because she challenged somebody who was dumping ballots into a box, okay? And they didn't put them in jail. This was during Biden's term. The worst president in history, and we had some bad ones. I mean, look, uh, Barack Hussein Obama, I call him the great divider –
Bongino: Right.
Trump: -- that people couldn't stand him. They, you mentioned his name, they go crazy. They start booing the hell out of him.
Bongino: [Laughs]
Trump: We had some really bad ones. I mean, Jimmy Carter wasn't exactly the greatest. Jimmy Carter didn't exactly have the hit on Vanezu- -- Venezuela that I, remember his hits, they always turned out to be a disaster.
Bongino: Right.
Trump: He went out, he had a hit, the helicopters were crashing into each other, the hostages and everything. That's why Ronald Reagan won the election, was so pathetic. But we do it right. We've got the greatest military. I built the military, you know that, in my first term. I built the military --
Bongino: Right. Absolutely you have.
Trump: -- that they gave, they gave a piece of it away, but it was, it's a lot, but it's still a pi- -- a piece compared to what I built, and we have the most powerful military. And my attack on Iran with, you know, Operation Midnight Hammer where we wiped out their nuclear threat, which they would've had a nuclear weapon within a month, and we knocked it out.
And our attack on Venezuela was, um, um, you know, like unbelievable. And the nice thing about Venezuela, we're getting along great now with the government. We talk to them every single day. We took 50 mi- -- 50 million barrels of oil. It's on its way right now to Houston to be refined, and we're gonna help them a lot and we're gonna benefit by it all. So it's gonna be great. It's gonna be an amazing place. You know, it was a great country 15 years ago --
Bongino: True.
Trump: -- then it went socialist and I would say it didn't do too well.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: [Laughs]
Bongino: Mr. President, this, I know you're busy, but last question, but you just kinda segued nicely into it. The Donroe Doctrine, as they call it, your, your, your, your posture with we have to dominate this hemisphere. Uh, I've had, again, the honor of working for you for the last year, and I get to read the PDB, the President's Daily Brief. Now, I'm not the president, you are, but principals and deputies get roughly the, you get all the really, really, really good stuff. But we get most of the good stuff. And I can tell you without obviously giving up anything classified or secret that there are a lot of threats from space, from the ocean, from traditional air, ballistic missile threats, threats to the grid. You see this every day, the media doesn't. You know, I find it kind of tragic that the media, a bunch of 18-year-old journalists with, uh, who barely got out of Jay School who don't know a thing about anything, who've never read this at all, you know, are busy criticizing you about this hemispheric dominance policy you, you showed in Venezuela. We're not gonna let this happen. That was my last day at work, by the way [Inaudible]
Trump: And Argentina --
Bongino: Argentina.
Trump: -- and Honduras --
Bongino: And look at --
Trump: -- and many other places.
Bongino: Look at some of the results you've had. Even in Panama yesterday, there was a, a ruling against China and the ports. This is working --
Trump: Yeah.
Bongino: -- and this threat picture is so bad, you are absolutely spot on. It is not the 1960s anymore. We have to control this hemisphere from a national security perspective.
Trump: Well, that's right. And here's the main thing. We were laughed at a year and a half ago. We were laughed at as being stupid people. We were laughed at not as, as not, we see a guy falling up the stairs going into an airplane. I gotta be very careful going in. You [Laughs] ever notice how slowly I -- nice and slow. I'm not looking to set any records [Laughs].
Bongino: [Laughs].
Trump: You don't wanna go down. Could happen. I mean, you know, could happen. But it can't happen three times in one shot. Okay? The three times going up to stair. I don't think you'll ever see anything like that, but it could happen. So I have to be a little bit open, I'd have to say. Could happen, but you ever watched me, I come down nice and slow. I'm not looking to set any records, okay? That was the one thing I, I have to tell you. It's probably the only thing I respected, and yet it didn't look elegant at all. He bopped down the stair.
Bongino: Right.
Trump: He would be in the middle. I thought it looked so terrible. You know, I mean, this is the President of the United States. He's bopping down, you know, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And I kept waiting for him to fall and he didn't.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: So I would rather have other traits than that. And I didn't even like the look of it. But I, I was impressed with his, uh, ability to go down the stairs like that. I mean, I wouldn't wanna do it. You know, those stairs are very slippery.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: And I always used to say --
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: -- he's an accident waiting to happen. And to the best of my knowledge, it didn't happen, so I give him credit. But it happened, uh, many falls with Biden. Aye yai yai. What a president.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: We're respected. The bottom line, Dan, we are respected again like never before. And they saw what happened in Iran with, uh, you know, where we took out that nuclear with those beautiful B-2 bombers. We just ordered 25 more of 'em. The, even the newer upgraded version, you gotta see these things. They're invisible. But we just stopped that. And what we did with it, and don't forget, I got Soleimani, I got al-Baghdadi in my first term, two of the worst, the, the worst ever. The worst ever. The two, the biggest and the worst. One was the founder of ISIS. He was rebuilding it. I took him out. And the other one was the father of the roadside bomb and the, the, the leader of, let me tell you, if he lived, he was a leader, the military leader of Iran, if he lived, that attack that we made on Iran would not have been the same thing. He was a great general, and they don't have that now.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: So we did a great job. We're respected all over the world. I spoke with China, he goes, "Very impressive, very impressive." I spoke to Putin, he goes, "Wow, that was something." And that's what we want. We have to be respected.
Bongino: Yeah. Mr. President, uh, again, it was a tremendous honor. I cannot thank you enough, uh, to be able to d- -- do the job I did under your leadership. The way you just let us, uh, you let us cook. Mr. President, you said, "Go get them, go get 'em, boys." You told me and Kash, "Go get 'em. Lock these guys up."
Trump: Go get 'em.
Bongino: And --
Trump: Go get 'em.
Bongino: -- I, I tell everyone in the media that. I said, "If you work for him and you're in the room with him, he demands results. There's none of this friendly c- -- you want a friend? Get a freaking dog. Produce results or get the hell out of there." And I really appreciate the opportunity to do what we did. What an honor. And thank you so much for joining us on our first show. It was great to see you at the wedding yesterday for the great Dan Scavino, by the way.
Trump: Yeah [Laughs].
Bongino: Hilarious speech.
Trump: It is great.
Bongino: You're the best MC. Every time you get the mic, everybody was cracking up. That was great. So really good job [Laughs].
Trump: I know. We had a little fun.
Bongino: Yeah, we did.
Trump: That was an easy one.
Bongino: Yeah.
Trump: But listen, you did great in the FBI.
Bongino: Thank you, sir.
Trump: And I'm very torn, as I said. I think, uh, [Laughs] maybe, maybe I'd rather have you where you are because there's, you know, very few people can do what you do.
Bongino: Thank you, sir.
Trump: Very few people can do what you do and --
Bongino: It's an honor.
Trump: -- your voice is a very important one, so I'm very happy with that also. So, thank you for your service. Thank you for a great job. And I'll be around when you need me.
Bongino: Thank you, sir. Great to talk to you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.
Trump: Thank you, Dan. Bye.
Bongino: There you go, folks. The 47th and 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, I can't say it enough. What an honor to have worked for such a transformative figure. Whew.