TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks with John Fredericks on His Radio Show, 4.20.26
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John Fredericks: Is President Trump on mic? Okay.
President Trump: Yes, I am.
Fredericks: We've, oh, we've got him. Fantastic. President Trump, John Fredericks here. Thank you for calling in on such short notice. Thank you for all you do. Greatest president in maybe history, uh, for the accomplishments that you've had. We just, uh, really wanna start by telling you how much, uh, we all honor and appreciate what you're doing.
But I tell you what, right now in Virginia, I've never seen anything like this in my life, this rig map. Uh, we're on a vote no bus tour. We've barnstormed Virginia. Hakeem Jeffries has spent upwards of $100 million with dark money to get this thing passed to basically, uh, rip any representation out of Virginia, going from 6-5 to 10-1. Democrats here, it is the most egregious thing I've seen in a lifetime of covering politics, but it's very close. We have come back. Early voting numbers were better than expected. If we can get to turnout tomorrow, President Trump, we're gonna defeat this referendum.
Trump: Well, it's terrible. It is true, John. It's, uh, nobody's ever said anything like it. It's so unfair. They even say it's unfair. They say, "Oh, they'll do it once and maybe they'll go back to what it was." It's, the whole thing is ridiculous. And she's been a horrible governor. Look at all the problems that we've got with her.
The whole country is talking about it actually. And I guess she goes down as the worst governor for the first period of time, short period of time ever. [Laughs] But she's, here, she's totally different. She said she was gonna be a moderate. She wasn't gonna raise taxes. And literally in her first day, she wiped out all of the good that was done by your excellent governor.
Glenn did a great job. He was a great governor. And, uh, she just wiped it out. And not only wiped it out, she put taxes on every single item. You cut your lawn, you, you wash your laundry. The, it's the craziest thing I've ever heard. She went absolutely bonkers, and you just can't have this. And this is what they're going to be doing with this referendum.
If the Democrats, look, if they get additional house seats, at some point, if they get these additional seats, they're gonna be making changes at the federal level. So I cut taxes more than anybody's ever cut them. They will change that. So they wanted to raise taxes. They wanted to raise regulations. They wanna have men in women's sports.
They wanna have a transgender mutilization of your children for everybody. It's a mutilization of your children. They wanna have every single thing that you don't want. The open border thing is, is gonna be one of the easiest for them. They're gonna open up their :border. They're gonna have people pouring into our country by the millions just like they did, I mean, what, what Biden's biggest sin was, in my opinion, was what, what he allowed to happen at the border.
Fredericks: Mm-hmm.
Trump: Because other things, I've already fixed inflation largely. I mean, as soon as we get out of, as soon as we get them to no nuclear weapons in Iran, which is gonna happen, I think very quickly, actually, we're, we've just decimated them. But as soon as we get that, uh, you're gonna see prices drop, you're gonna see energy come down like you've never seen it before.
All these things are gonna happen. But I got rid of, you go right before, and even now, you go right before the, the fact that I had to make that little journey. After having the best economy in history, I said, "Well, we're gonna have to take a little journey down to Iran." I know you're in favor of what we're doing. I think --
Fredericks: Yes.
Trump: -- frankly, everyone is, they don't talk about it, but you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. You wanna see a stock market get hit. You cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And they'll use it here. They'll, they'll take out the Middle East or knock out Israel and the Middle East and they'll come to Europe and they'll come here because they are, let's say ill, [Laughs] very ill and, uh, we can't let that happen.
So we're doing great. And I think we're gonna, we've already won militarily. They have no Navy. They have no Air Force. They have no, frankly, they have no leaders. They have no anti-aircraft mechanisms and machinery. It's all gone. It's all gone. But they have no leaders and you see what's going on. So we, we now are, are controlling the Strait.
We're not letting them to get any, you know, they're losing 500 million a day by us blocking, uh, the blockade, blocking the, the Strait, the Hormuz Strait. And a lot of good things are happening. But, so we cut taxes more than anybody in history, and they wanna raise them. Uh, the economy hit an all time high, the Dow, and frankly, it's very close to it right now. [Laughs] You know, with all of this, it's actually very close to it right now, but it hit the all time highest ever.
S&P is 7,000, and think of that. They thought you couldn't do that in four years, and the Dow is over 50,000. They said it can't be done over, over four years, it'll never be done. All of that's gonna be destroyed. Your 401ks are gonna go down. All of that, the great things that we did now on a national basis, it's gonna be destroyed.
And Virginia's gonna be one of the biggest losers. You know, we brought in tremendous business and jobs for Virginia, and now she got lucky, frankly, and she takes advantage of that. But Glenn and myself, we brought all those jobs into Virginia, now they're gonna, uh, frankly, there are companies now are trying to get out of their deal because they don't wanna move to Virginia because of her. So when you see it all happening like this, uh, you just have to vote no. It has to vote no. You can't let this happen on the ballot referendum.
Fredericks: Mr. President, if we can get your base out tomorrow, this is now a base election. We're gonna turn the corner and win this by people voting no and it's gonna get defeated, which is gonna change the entire narrative for the midterm. Uh, President Trump, what is your message to your voters in Virginia? You got 45%, uh, 48%, I think, only got beat by five here.
Trump: Yeah.
Fredericks: What is your message? And, and when you did this in '21, you were the reason that we had Glenn Youngkin as governor. I said this 100 times --
Trump: Right.
Fredericks: -- no Trump, no Youngkin. What is your message to your base voters tomorrow to get out and vote?
Trump: Well, first of all, I'm doing in, at 7:30 a telerally, and I'm gonna get a good message out, but I'm doing a telerally. And I never fail with those telerallies, they're great. You have a lot of audience listening and, when I did it. And that's what I did for Glenn. And, uh, we had 500,000 people go out and vote. It was unbelievable.
Fredericks: Mm-hmm.
Trump: Vote for him. And it was unbelievable. We just did a limited one. I think today's, hopefully it's in the whole state. I don't know what they did, but I hope it's throughout the whole state, but I'm doing one at 7:30 right after I finish your call. See, you came first, John, so I don't know if you appreciate that, but you came first.
Fredericks: I do appreciate it.
Trump: But those telerallies are amazing. You know, they, they pinpoint it and they spot it out. And basically, I'm saying the same, what I, what you just said. We have a country that was lost. We had a country that was disrespected and laughed at all over the world. Now, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
We cut taxes. We cut everything. We did everything. Everything that you could say, I l- -- named most of them. But I did, we did everything. Look at the auto business. The auto business, we're making cars again. We're doing things having to do with, and by the way, with the proper use of tariffs, I brought in $18 trillion.
Obama brought in less than $1 trillion in four years. I brought in $18 trillion in less than one year 'cause I haven't adjusted the last, the last month. Well, we brought in a lot too, but it was, for 11 months, it was 18 trillion of new investment. More than any country has ever done by a factor of four, by four times more than any country has ever done.
China did a lot, years ago. We just beat it by many, many times. Nobody's ever had. This is 18 trillion of investment coming in. That means jobs. That means everything. Our country was respected again. And I will say this, and I've said it a number of times, the King of Saudi Arabia, when I was over there, they put in $2 trillion into our country.
They invested, which is great. But he said, "You know, one year ago," he was talking about during Biden, he said what, at the time, he said, "One year ago, your country was dead. We never thought it was gonna come back. And now, you have the hottest country anywhere in the world." What's gonna happen if we lose these, these elections, you know, the House, in this case, the House and just, it's gonna be a disaster.
If they do this, they're guaranteed to pick up a lot of seats. And it's, everybody knows it's unjust, including them. I mean, you have this lightweight, uh, the, uh, I call him the junior, the semi-junior speaker who I guess was campaigning over there. And he is, uh, he's terrible what he did, what, what he's done representing the Democrats.
And we have some, we have some great people, I'll tell you. We have Mike Johnson's done a great job. They're all, but we're always fighting against this, this, uh, the, the one thing that Democrats do, they stick together, even on really horrible policy. I always say they have horrible policy, but they stick together. They impeached me, and they had no right to impeach me.
Fredericks: Right.
Trump: And they did it like in f- -- nobody even knew it was gonna happen, and all of a sudden, you get impeached by these people. And they're just, you almost think they hate the country. But when it's all said and done, you're gonna get huge tax increases. You're gonna have all of the things that you didn't want are gonna happen, and all of the things that we've done.
Look at what happened to Virginia. What happened there is horrible. Your taxes are gonna go through the roof, by the way, and a lot of those companies will not be moving in. So, we're gonna bring it back just to what we want, and our country's gonna be greater than ever before. And basically, it's MAGA, you know, MAGA.
Uh, and we're gonna make sure that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, by the way. That's gonna, it's very close to being over, and we're gonna make sure. And I did it in three months, in two months, actually, like, two months, think of it, in two months, what they couldn't do in 12 years --
Fredericks: Right.
Trump: -- 13 years, 15 years between Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. And we, uh, we've done some job. We wiped out their whole military apparatus. So now, we have to get it done, and we will get it done because I always get things done. But I will say you're gonna, your, your taxes, they wanna bring your taxes up, John, to a level that you've never seen before. And she's already doing that in Virginia.
Fredericks: Mm-hmm.
Trump: And that's not what she campaigned on. She campaigned on being a moderate, and she's actually more le- -- liberal probably almost than anybody that's attained office.
Fredericks: Mr. President, we're just about out of time, and I really wanna thank you for joining us today. Your final message to Iran today. They're saying they might not negotiate. They might not go to Pakistan. They fired on a ship. What is your message to the Iranian regime now?
Trump: Well, they're gonna negotiate. And if they don't, they're gonna see problems like they've never seen before. And they're gonna negotiate, and hopefully, they'll make a fair deal. And they'll build their country back up, but they will not have, when they do it, they will not have a nuclear weapon. They will have no access to, no chance of having a nuclear weapon. And we can't allow that to happen. That, that would be, that could be the destruction of the world. We're not gonna let that happen.
Fredericks: President Donald J. Trump, President Trump on, as always, it's an honor to have you on my show. I happen to be a firm supporter of what you've done in Ir- -- Iran. I think, uh, we finally have to get this scourge off the face of the earth, so we thank you for doing that. We thank you for your time. You got a telerally coming up today at 7:30PM Eastern in Virginia. You've gotta prepare for that. Thank you for being with us, Mr. President. I, I s- --
Trump: Thank you very much. We had no choice in, I have to say, we had no choice in Iran. It wasn't like we had a choice. We had to do it. We really did. And we've done a great job. And we'll get it closed out, and everybody's gonna be happy. And John, thank you very much, and you do a great job. Thanks a lot, John.
Fredericks: Thank you, sir, thank you.