TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks with Larry Kudlow of Fox Business, 2.9.26
[Video]
Note: [Larry Kudlow interviewed Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room of the White House at 3:00 PM on November 9, 2026. The interview aired on Fox Business' 'Kudlow' on February 10, 2026 at 4:00 PM Eastern. Video courtesy and copyright Fox Business.]
Larry Kudlow: Mr. President, welcome. Thanks for coming back to the Kudlow Show. We appreciate it, sir.
President Trump: Thank you. Thank you, Larry.
Kudlow: Anyway, I thought I'd start with, um, Dow 50,000. Congratulations with America. That was your, uh, Truth Social. Um, the economy is hitting on all cylinders. Uh, most of the experts have been completely wrong about it. So as you look at this thing, it's the midterm elections and so forth. Um, how good a year is it gonna be, 2026?
Trump: Well, I think it's gonna be great. The, uh, you know, when you say 50,000, and by the way, uh, S&P 7,000-
Kudlow: Yes.
Trump: -- which is, I guess, almost the equivalent, I think.
Kudlow: It's a huge number.
Trump: When you think about it, right? And, uh, I remember when I first won, they said, "If he gets the Dow up to 50,000 by the end of his fourth year, he will have done miracles." And we're at the end of the first year. So, uh, when you think about it, that's great. And the S&P, the same thing. And, and everything else.
I mean, everything's going great. We inherited a total mess from Biden, and not only the borders, but the economy, the inflation, the inflation was the worst ever in history, they say 48 years, but basically ever in history. And the prices were high, and you don't hear them use the word affordability anymore. They can't use it because we brought the prices down. Uh, oil now, I was in Iowa last week, and they were $1.85 a gallon, and if you go all over the country, in many cases now, it's broken $2 a gallon, and that's like a major tax cut.
Kudlow: Yeah, yeah.
Trump: And we've given them that too, in the Great Big Beautiful Bill. So we've had a very good run, and we're wanting to keep it going.
Kudlow: So interesting. Falling energy prices permeates the entire economy.
Trump: It's so big.
Kudlow: Hundreds and hundreds of, uh, people don't understand that, uh, and never give you credit for it. So the signature legislation embodying the policy was the One Big Beautiful Bill. It was the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Trump: That's right.
Kudlow: Um, tax cuts, deregulation, uh, energy dominance and the tariff reciprocity. Um, is there any plans to do a second Big Beautiful Bill? Is there another reconciliation bill out there? There might be deeper tax cuts or more deregulation or what? Anything of that nature?
Trump: So when I first came in, we met with John Thune, who's a terrific guy, and with, as you know, Mike Johnson, the speaker. And we had about 17 different bills. And I said, "Let's put them all together." And everybody was against, they weren't really, but it was a long shot.
Kudlow: I lobbied you for One Big Beautiful Bill in November.
Trump: You did. You did.
Kudlow: It was after the Army-Navy game.
Trump: You did it. And plenty of people said, "You can't get it done. Don't do it. It'll be bad." And we put everything together and this was a four-year package and we put it together and we got it passed. And it was sort of a miracle because, you know, there's, see, I think it worked the other way. There was something in there for everybody, and that's how we got it passed.
I'm not sure that we would have gotten very many of those bills, but we had many bills, we put them all together. And so in theory, we've gotten everything passed that we need. Now we just have to manage it, but we've gotten everything passed that we need for four years. Uh, do we have other things in mind?
Yeah, we do. We have things in mind. And we have, uh, perfecting a little bit of what we did, because this is really, this is the biggest bill ever passed in the history of Congress, and it's a great thing. But we also have other bills we wanna get. We wanna get the Save America Act passed. Save America is on voting.
We want people to have voter ID. We want people to have proof of citizenship, and we wanna have, uh, no mail-in ballots other than if you're in the military, or you're sick, or you're away, or some reasonable but good excuse.
Kudlow: Can that get done, you think, before the midterm elections?
Trump: Well, it polls at about 94%.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: Including Democrats are at 87% other than Democrat politicians because they cheat.
Kudlow: It, it's a huge vote. Uh, I guess the House is gonna re-vote on it because of the, um, photo ID.
Trump: Right.
Kudlow: Wh- -- which is so important. Um, actually you need a photo ID to vote on the floor of the House even though Democrats are opposed to a voter ID.
Trump: That's right. That's right.
Kudlow: They can't vote for their own bill.
Trump: But, but think of it, uh, so you have a thing called Save America Act, Save America Act. And Schumer's gonna say, "I oppose it." How do you oppose Save America? So this is simply on voting. Voter ID, uh, we want a statement that you are a citizen of America. I think that's a reasonable thing to ask. And no mail-in ballots, which are very corrupt. No country in the world is doing mail-in ballots or especially the way we do them. I mean, they send them all over the place. Nobody knows. It's totally corrupt. No country in the world does what we do.
Kudlow: I vote in the state of Connecticut. Uh, you don't need a photo ID. You can vote if you just show them a credit card or a debit card, which anybody can get their hands on. I think it's a scam. I mean, it's just remarkable.
Trump: Well, Connecticut is a very corrupt voting place. That's why a guy like Blumenthal can keep getting elected because it's, uh, you know, he admitted that he, uh, cheated on the war like nobody's ever cheated. He said he was a great war hero from Vietnam. And I went to Vietnam for a couple of days and I spent two more days than he did there. You know, he was never there. And he keeps getting elected, sort of amazing. It's, it's amazing that he was able to get out of that one. But I bring it up because it was one of the most, maybe the most egregious I've ever seen.
Kudlow: Anyway, let's come back to the economy, if I may. Um, you had a line in your speech to Davos. I wanna read it. "It used to be when we had a great quarter, a great month, great earnings, great anything, any good news, the stock market went up. We have to do that again." So the thought occurs to me, it's happening. You've had great earnings, you've had great GDP, you're running 4% plus on GDP. Nobody thought that possible. Inflation numbers are relatively muted. So it looks like now we're back to where you want it to be. The stock market will go up on good news, and because of your Federal Reserve appointments, um, we're, we're, we're, they're not gonna take the punch bowl away just because the economy is growing. I think that's what's happening.
Trump: So you're old enough to know -- [Laughs]
Kudlow: Yes, sir.
Trump: Okay? And I am too, unfortunately --
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: -- in both cases, right? But we're old enough to remember when the stock market, when there was good news, the market went up. When it was bad news, the market went down. That's the way it should be. Goes up. Now, if there's good news, the market goes down because everyone said, "Oh, inflation, they're so --" They have the yips. You know, golfers have the yips, they can't sink a three-foot putt. When the word inflation, even the concept of it, well, growth doesn't mean inflation.
Kudlow: Hmm.
Trump: And what it means is you can never really grow the country --
Kudlow: Mm.
Trump: -- because as you do well, they keep trying to put you down. And so when good news is announced, I mean, sometimes great news is announced and the market literally crashes. Bad news is announced and the market goes up because of interest rates, because they say, and we have to go back to the old system. When we have good news, the market should go up. And we have bad news, the market should go down. And we'll take care of inflation as it comes. We can take care of it. I took care of it. I had the worst inflation in history with Biden, aside from borders and everything else that we had to take care of. But we had the worst inflation in history, and now, for the last three months, as you know, it was 1.3%.
Kudlow: Mm. You know, you said in Davos also, good growth can actually bring inflation down.
Trump: Correct.
Kudlow: Supply side growth --
Trump: Happened with us.
Kudlow: -- if y- -- if you're putting more goods on the market --
Trump: Right.
Kudlow: -- that brings prices down.
Trump: Yeah. It happened with us. I mean, we have great growth. And our growth hasn't even, you haven't seen, we have $18 trillion invested in this country. Nobody's ever had anything like it. We haven't. When I say nobody, it's not even close.
Kudlow: Hmm.
Trump: Not even close. I think the record is $3 trillion. We're at 18 trillion. And, you know, they talk about, uh, construction jobs are way up, right? Well, they're up because they're building all these factories all over the country. You have car plants under construction. You have, I spoke to Mr. Toyota in Japan. I said, "What's your name?" "Toyota." I said, "If your name's Toyota, you're a very rich guy." He's about 90 years old. And he said, "I'm gonna invest $10 billion in the United States building plans."
Kudlow: Hmm.
Trump: But everybody is. They're all doing it. They're all doing it. And they're building AI. We know about that. We're leading China. We're leading everybody in everything. This is the greatest period of, of anything that we've ever, we've ever seen. Plus, we have a powerful military, a great military, a strong, that I rebuilt in my first term, because I had a great first term. You remember very well you were there, but we had the greatest economy in the history of our country in my first term. We're blowing it away now.
Kudlow: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, the numbers are even greater now. Um, so Kevin Warsh, your Fed, uh, nominee, so he, he wants to change their models. He doesn't believe that growth causes inflation. It's a whole new game. It may take him a bit to, um, change the board staff, but it seems to me that, uh, he's gonna change that. Now, is that the principal reason why you wanted him there, changing models?
Trump: I liked him. I don't know. You know, it's not even- -- U- --v uh, yeah, it's that, but I just liked him. I think he's a, somebody that's gonna be a real influencer. I think he's, agrees with what I'm saying. Larry, we are paying so much more interest than we should be paying. We're the strongest country in the world.
Kudlow: Mm.
Trump: When, and let's go back again another 20, 25 years. We were always the lowest interest rate. Even if we weren't doing well, our country was a lower, we used to pay, like, almost nothing. Other countries would always, no matter what. Now, we're like number 38 --
Kudlow: Mm.
Trump: -- because we have had stupid people running our country. You know, I had an incident with a very nice country, Switzerland. They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe, and we had a $42 billion deficit and we weren't taking anything. I said, "Well, we have to do something because we have to even that up a little bit." I didn't have to get everything at one time. So I put on a 30% tariff, which is very low. Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was half the deficit. Then I got an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland, and she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. "Sir, we are a small country. We can't do this. We can't do this.
We are a s- --" I couldn't get her off the phone. "We are a small country." I said, "You may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you." "No, no, we are a small country," again and again and again. I couldn't get her off the phone. So it was at 30% and I didn't really like the way she talked to us. And so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39% and then they, I got inundated by people from Switzerland and I figured, you know what, we'll do something that's a little bit more palatable, at least now.
But I realized that all these ki- -- you know, Switzerland you think of as, you know, ultra sh- -- ultra perfect ev- -- every, they're not. They're only that way because we allow them to rip us off and make all this money. And I could say the same thing with another 40 countries. You know them better than I do. You and I could name them.
Some are much more egregious. And I realized then that the only reason we aren't doing the kind of numbers that we should be doing is because we have, we've allowed countries over the years to take advantage of, by the way, with tariffs. They charged tariffs. We didn't charge tariffs. We didn't charge anything.
We were, honestly, we were stupid people, run by stupid people. We lost our chip business to Taiwan. We lost our car business to Mexico and Canada. We lost our car business to Germany and Japan and everybody else. I mean, all over the world, South Korea. Look, we haven't really, and, and I'm being very conservative now.
I'm, I'm really being a very conservative person. But we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money, and you know what it's doing? They're moving here. That's why it's $18 trillion. They're moving their plans here because they don't want to pay tariffs. And only stupid
people or people that really hate Trump could argue with us. And the other thing --
Kudlow: And you, and you love factories. You love it when they build factories.
Trump: I love it.
Kudlow: I always say --
Trump: I want Japan to come and build factories here.
Kudlow: I said if you want to understand a good chunk of his trade policy, it's about factories, building factories here. Isn't that fair?
Trump: Well, we're building a record number in history. There's never been anything like it.
Kudlow: It looks like it.
Trump: And, uh, and that means auto plants, not just AI. Now, AI, we're leading China by a lot. You know, I did something with AI. So AI, for whatever reason, needs massive amounts of electricity, right? More electricity than the entire country produces right now by double. Now, who would even think that's possible?
Well, we're not gonna get that off the grid, or we can't rebuild our grid overnight. And everyone said we can never really dump because China does very well. You know, they have lots of coal. They use coal. Like nobody uses coal, clean, beautiful coal. So what happens is, by the way, we've reinjuvenated coal also, but we're not allowed to use the word coal without saying clean, beautiful coal, because it needs a PR job, right?
But, uh, China has an ability to make a lot of it. You gotta respect them and admire them. They're making a lot of electricity. But we're gonna make more because I'm letting everybody that builds a plant build their own electric plant. They're gonna become like a utility.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: So they're building a massive plant that's four miles long by four miles wide. I mean, buildings that nobody's ever seen. And I'm letting them build electric plants, generating plants. Some are nuclear, some are oil and gas, some are coal as a backup, you know, just in case for emergency reasons. But they're building their own electricity. They're building their, they're producing their own electricity. And anything they have left over, they'll sell it into the grid. And it's been unbelievable. And now we're building, I mean, we are dominating everybody in the AI --
Kudlow: With 100% depreciation, immediate expensing.
Trump: So big.
Kudlow: Which is so huge.
Trump: They, they take it all in one year. They take the cost of a factory, they deduct it in one year.
Kudlow: So you're get, you're saying to them, you know, if, if you build here, you don't have to worry about tariffs.
Trump: No tariffs.
Kudlow: And if you build here, you're gonna get an incentive. You can write it off in the first year. I mean --
Trump: And other incentives. But the biggest one, I've always said, you know, one of the reasons my first term was so successful, we passed a, a tremendous tax cut bill also. But one of the things we did is one year depreciate, in other words, you take whatever you're investing, whatever it is, you write it off in one year. It used to be 38 years.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: 42 years, depending on where you were, but 38 years on average. And I let him take it at, and you know what it meant? It meant much greater growth. We had tremendous growth, and I think it's being superseded by a lot. The other thing is, you know, I've been watching you for years. I'm so proud of you. And you're part of the alumni, you know? [Laughs]
Kudlow: Yes, sir.
Trump: And, uh, I wanted you, I'll tell your audience. First of all, he's great. Second of all, his ratings are great, and they should be, but I wanted to keep Larry in any form possible, but he said, "I have to go out and mix some money." So it's one of those things. And your show's been a real success.
Kudlow: Thank you, sir.
Trump: Your show has been a real success.
Kudlow: Appreciate that.
Trump: But I will say that we have, we, you know, I've been watching you and everybody else for years, and they say, "3% growth, oh, this is great, GDP, 3% GDP. Two and a half --" They're very happy, "Two and a half, 2%, 1%," they're happy with anything. We should grow 15 or 20%. Larry, every time we're growing, they stop it by announcing that, you know, we're gonna raise interest rates and stuff.
So we did, we're gonna do 5.4%, it was announced, five point, with a democratic shutdown, which cost us at least a point and a half, okay? People don't realize we could've been at 7%. We should be at 15%. If, I'll tell you, if our new head of the Fed, who I think is gonna be great, and he's, he's a really high quality person.
He was a very, and your friend Kevin was great, but I wanted to keep him with us too. I said to k- -- I wanna keep, I had the two Kevins, right? But I wanted to keep him with us, he's doing great. But if he does the job that he's capable, we can grow at 15%. W- -- I think more than that.
Kudlow: Well, 15 is a big number, sir.
Trump: But Larry, you can do it. The problem is every time, we used to grow at 15% and, you know, when we were starting as a country, we were growing.
Kudlow: Yes.
Trump: Because we had spirit and we had the right incentives. Today, we have a lot of socialism.
Kudlow: I love it when you talk about incentives.
Trump: A lot of communism. We have a lot of bad things.
Kudlow: Yes.
Trump: But there's no, look, we did 5.4 with a shutdown. Think of it. We can do that. This country can do it. Tariffs are very important. The money we're taking, I'm taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money. And we're gonna start paying down debt. What, this country has never been so strong, militarily or any other way.
Note: [Commercial break]
Kudlow: When did you know you wanted Kevin Warsh?
Trump: So --
Kudlow: Officially, it was two Fridays ago, but when did you really know?
Trump: Well, I made a mistake. He was a runner up, if you wanna say that.
Kudlow: He was a finalist in the --
Trump: Yeah, he was.
Kudlow: -- first term.
Trump: And I made a mistake because I had somebody that was, uh, my, uh, secretary of the treasury wanted him so badly, so badly. And, you know, I, I didn't feel good about him. But sometimes you listen to people, and it was a mistake. It was really a big mistake. But, um, I think we're gonna do something that's really spectacular. And then, Biden renewed him, which was shocking to me. That was bad because Biden renewed him. I said, "Oh boy, this is lousy, because if I win, I'm gonna inherit this guy for a period of time."
Kudlow: Can I just raise one point?
Trump: And all he has to do is lower interest rates. Interest rates should be lower. You know, every point is $600 billion. Think of that. $600 billion. All he has to do, if we went down two points, we don't have a deficit anymore. And that's without cutting. And it's just a paper charge. When you think about it, it's a paper charge.
We should be the lowest interest rate in the world. The reason I bring up the Switzerland, because we should be lower than, we should be lower than everybody. You know, Switzerland's like, just about the lowest. If I charge them tariffs, they would not be doing very well. They would not be doing very well.
I treated them very nicely, actually, but they would be, and many other countries would not be doing very well. So I'm being very judicious, to put it mildly. But, uh, this country should have the lowest interest rates in the world. We keep the world going. We allow, you know how many def- -- when I got here, almost every single country in the world that we did business with made money off of us. We didn't make money.
We had deficits with everybody. And I call that a loss. You know, a lot of people say, "Oh, it doesn't matter." It does matter a lot. To me, I call it a loss. So we are losing money with every single country in the world, just about. There were a couple, I don't know what happened. Maybe we got lucky. But we had the worst negotiators.
And we had presidents that were lousy business people. And, you know, I liked Ronald Reagan, but Ronald Reagan was bad on trade. Everybody has problems. He was not good on trade. He allowed Ja- -- Japan to come in and Germany to come in. But we both like him. And he was a good president, but he wasn't good on trade.
Kudlow: I cut my teeth with him, but, but Bob Lighthizer would disagree with you. I, I, I don't wanna spend too much time on --
Trump: The tariffs?
Kudlow: Reagan was tougher than you, than you think on the international --
Trump: No, only on trade. I think, well, he had the big, big shootout with Japan and he, he folded.
Kudlow: But he wasn't --
Trump: And they came in and took our car market.
Kudlow: Can, can I go back though?
Trump: Look, I'm a fan of his, and I thought he was a, you know, just sort of a, had a great presence. But on trade, if you look at every president we have over the last 50 years was bad on trade. Every single one.
Kudlow: Well, they didn't understand your --
Trump: But I'm not bad on trade. I'm real good on trade.
Kudlow: -- your argument on reciprocity. I mean, people didn't understand that.
Trump: No, they didn't.
Kudlow: All right. Probably, I didn't understand it when I first came to work for you. And it changed a lot of, it changed a lot of thinking.
Trump: Well, you were amazing because you weren't a tariff guy because you haven't thought about it that much. But when you do think about it, we're losing a fortune. I mean, the country lose, we have $36 trillion for a reason. But, and this is over years and years and years, but you kept an open mind to tariffs, which is something that, or I wouldn't have been able to make a deal with you, I would have said, and almost immediately, you saw the kind of money that started coming in.
Kudlow: Well, that's right. The, but the thing is, you, you yourself, on reciprocity, you're bringing down barriers, okay?
Trump: Yeah.
Kudlow: Tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers and so forth. So I, I think in your heart of hearts, you're actually a free trader. If you could get the kind of reciprocity that you want. And you've already, the Wall Street Journal editorial page will never give you credit for it, but you have lowered barriers. We have now lower export barriers. We can sell a lot more American goods abroad than ever before, because of the reciprocity policy. Um, but nonetheless, you're bringing in close to 300 billion last year alone in revenues.
Trump: And that's being nice.
Kudlow: So it works. It works.
Trump: And that's being nice. And that's being very nice and gentle. I mean, it's, uh, look, I settled eight wars. Of the eight wars, at least six were settled because of tariffs. In other words, I said, "If you don't settle this war, I'm gonna charge you tariffs because I don't wanna see people getting killed." And they said, "Well, what does this have to do --" I said, "You're gonna be charged," like India and Pakistan.
It would've been a nuclear war in my opinion. They were really going at it. 10 planes were shot down. They were going at it. You know, the Prime Minister of Pakistan said, "President Trump saved at least 10 million lives when he got us to stop fighting," because he, they were gonna go nuclear, in my opinion.
And without tariffs, that wouldn't happen. I said to numerous of these countries, they do business with us. I said, "If you're gonna keep fighting --" Uh, Azerbaijan, you know, they were, they were fighting for, that one was going along for I think 32 years, I got it solved in one day. I said, "Listen, you do a lot of trading with us. We're gonna charge you tariffs if you don't settle." We settled that war in like one and a half days. If I didn't know, so it gives us tremendous national security.
Kudlow: That's the point. So soon the --
Trump: We're waiting for a big decision in the Supreme Court.
Kudlow: Right. The Supreme Court should take --
Trump: I hope so.
Kudlow: -- cognizance of this.
Trump: I just don't know. I hope so.
Kudlow: Tariffs are a economic tool, but they're a national security tool.
Trump: Totally.
Kudlow: You just did the India deal, uh, 18%. Ho-hopefully they won't be buying oil from Russia. But that's another example –
Trump: They were buying a lot --
Kudlow: -- of foreign policy.
Trump: And now they're buying very little. They cut way back. And I just gave them a little bit of push.
Kudlow: Little push.
Trump: But, but, uh, I just hope the Supreme Court does what's right for the country because now, will I figure something out? But the answer is yes. But it will be much, it won't be as beautiful as it is right now.
Note: [Commercial break]
Kudlow: Tim Scott, Senator Scott, is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Um, he wants to get Kevin Warsh up and going for his hearings and he wants to get him passed. But it's being blocked, uh, by Senator Tillis of North Carolina. But Tim Scott said, okay, Jay Powell inept, no question about that. Uh, I, I think he's done more to under-undermine Fed independence in addition to his poor monetary decision.
Trump: He's so, he's been, he's been terrible, I agree.
Kudlow: But inept is not criminal. And so the question is, can the Justice Department settle the Jay Powell business so you can get on with the business of getting Kevin Warsh confirmed?
Trump: He's so bad that, I mean, interest rates should have been cut. We should be two points lower right now. Two points. Um, but he's building a, a small little complex. Very small. Small. I just built a hotel not so long ago in Washington for a tiny fraction that's bigger than that, you know? And bigger than that on Pennsylvania Avenue.
And I built it for a tiny fraction of what they've spent. I'm building something right now in the White House, one of the greatest ballrooms so desperately needed anywhere in the world for a fraction of what this guy's doing. So you have this little complex of a couple of buildings and they're gonna be close to four billion dollars, four billion.
It's the most expensive construction job ever built anywhere in the world per square foot. It's crazy. And they're either corrupt, which somebody's corrupt has to be, or grossly incompetent. Now, we know he's incompetent, but the question is, is he corrupt?
Kudlow: Mm.
Trump: They're spending, I would've, I would've been able to do that job for $25 million and it would've been much better than what they're ending up with. What they've done to that place is unbelievable. I could've done that job, fully done it, and I'm good at this stuff, for $25 million. I think they're gonna come in at $4 billion. So --
Kudlow: But sir, is it worth holding up the worst nomination?
Trump: I don't know. I mean, we'll have to see what happens. I would be, uh, look, I've been fighting Tillis for a long time, so much so that he ended up quitting. So let's see. Uh, if it happens, it happens. But Jeanine Pirro's doing, doing it. I didn't, I wasn't involved in it. Jeanine Pirro's doing it. She's very good.
She's very strong. And we'll see how it happens. But, but, uh, Larry, when you're doing a job, I could have done the job for $25 million, much better, would've been open two years ago, and they're gonna be, I think they're gonna be over $4 billion. $4 billion for a little, I think, the most expensive in history per square foot. So, I don't know, something's wrong.
Kudlow: Yeah.
Trump: And we can't let that happen either. You can't, somebody got rich, I can tell you that. Maybe it wasn't him, but it was maybe a contractor or somebody. They're pretty good at taking money.
Kudlow: Hmm. Well, waste fraud and abuse is a big issue. It's a big political issue.
Trump: Yeah.
Kudlow: I mean, it's a drain the swamp issue. And so, one of the things I wanted to ask you is, what's happened to DOGE and is there a chance of, you know, a DOGE 2.0? You got over $200 billion of savings.
Trump: Yeah.
Kudlow: The GAO and, and also Elon Musk thought it'd be 500, 600 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse. So a lot of people say this is a hot issue for the midterms, going after waste, fraud, and abuse. And that includes, of course, all the welfare waste, fraud, and abuse, all the travesty of this --
Trump: It is going on right now.
Kudlow: -- what's going on in Minneapolis.
Trump: Yeah. Yeah.
Kudlow: It's all of the piece. And is there a way of going after that this year?
Trump: Well, there is, and, and DOGE really continues in a different form. The one thing I didn't like about DOGE, I wanted to do it, where a secretary would like --
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: -- uh, the VA, uh, education where she's doing great. He's doing great, by the way, both of them.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: But, uh, cut 10% of your payroll, cut your costs, cut, you know, in other words, be specific. When you cut, get rid of the people that are doing a lousy job, okay? In other words, take care of the people that are doing a good job. And I didn't want a general cut, but DOGE was great. We cut it. You know, we saved a lot of money. We found a lot of really bad contracts where Stacey Abrams was given like $2 billion, I think, for some environmental where she had $100 in the bank and --
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: -- they gave her $2 billion. Oh, so many different things like that. And I think that's in a certain way where it was. Now, we're still doing it. And one thing you're, you know, our employment numbers are very good. But remember, we cut hundreds of thousands of people. I don't want to say it because it sounds so nasty, but it's not nasty.
We have to make America great again, right? You don't do that by hiring all federal workers. We want them to be in the private sector. I've cut hundreds of thousands of jobs, and we still have good employment numbers.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: But if I want to have the greatest employment numbers you've ever seen, all I have to do is say, I'm going to hire a half a million people.
Kudlow: But you want --
Trump: That's what the Democrats do.
Kudlow: But you want the private sector to have it.
Trump: No, what happened is the people I cut are now working in the private sector.
Kudlow: Right. Right.
Trump: And they probably hated me when they lost their job and now they love me. They're making twice the money.
Kudlow: So you're gonna still go after the whole waste, fraud, and abuse issue?
Trump: Well, I am in Minnesota. Take a look at Minnesota. So we think it's at least $19 billion of fraud, medical, every fraud. Somalia has come in here. What they've done to our country, these people, they've come into our country and what they've done with that fake Congresswoman, she's so bad. Uh, no, we're gonna get to the bottom of it. We have the best, we have the best people in the, maybe in the whole country looking at that. We're looking at California too, because California's worse. But, you know, if we, uh, find 50%, you know, look, they've been robbing and ripping off this country for many years, for decades, right? If we find 50% of what's happened, we have a balanced budget --
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: -- without cutting anybody.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: We have a balanced budget, and we'll find it. Minnesota's very corrupt. California's very corrupt. A lot of states are very corrupt.
Note: [Commercial break]
Kudlow: It just seems to me, in general, you know, writ large. If you abide by the immigration laws, stop all this sanctuary city business, that's the most affordable thing possible. You save, I mean, I look at what's happened in New York, okay? Uh, what Mayor Adams had to spend, he spent a fortune on, you know, $10, $12 billion, maybe $15 billion, uh, because he was giving money away to illegals.
Trump: Yeah.
Kudlow: Many of whom are criminal illegals. I mean, it seems to me if, if those laws are upheld, if sanctuary cities, for example, are defunded as some, as you have talked about, Lindsey Graham has talked about, that's an affordability issue. There are huge savings there, and you can go after the waste, fraud, and abuse.
Trump: So Lindsey Graham is really hot on getting rid of sanctuary cities?
Kudlow: Yeah.
Trump: I'm backing him 100%.
Kudlow: Yeah.
Trump: We gotta do it. Uh, we're hot and it's sort, sort of the Security Act, you could call it, but we have to do it. You know, sanctuary cities are only good for people. It's sanctuary for criminals, okay? They, they are protecting criminals. Those states could hand those people over to us. Their crime would go down, we'd get them out of the country.
They can't do what we could do. We could get them out of the country. They can't do it. But they're sanctuaries for criminals. They have the wor- -- they have killers, they have drug lords, they have, they have Tren de Aragua all over the place. Now, with that being said, we have the strongest border in the history of our country.
We have Democrat people giving us the statistics that no people have come into our country illegally in the last eight months. Even I can't believe that totally, but I'll take it. But essentially, no people have come in. Nobody's coming through our border. They only come in legally. We've done an unbelievable job.
I don't think we've given any credit. One of the problems that I find in politics, so I got elected to a large extent on the border. I've done such a good job in the border that nobody wants to talk about it anymore. Like when I mentioned border, "Sir, they don't wanna hear about it. You solved that problem." I don't get any credit for anything.
I mean, I do these things. You would say I've done a great job at the border, right? Nobody coming in. We have a strong border. Drugs are way down. You know, by knocking out those boats, we drop, we have dropped drugs, fentanyl, about 33%, and now we're gonna start on land, we had to do the boats first because they would go immediately to the boats.
If you hit them on land, they go to the boats. So we do the boats first. Now there are no boats. Now we're gonna hit them on land. We're gonna hit them very hard on land. We've knocked down drugs. Every one of those boats, it's nasty, but every one of those boats that shot down in the, in the seas, you've been watching it, we saved 25,000 American lives.
So we've done a great job. The problem is that I'm not sure that people see it. Maybe we have a public relations problem because I don't know that we get it out the way it should because I don't think anybody has had a more successful first year as a president than I have with all of the things we did. And then in the previous administration, my previous, my first term, I rebuilt the military.
And that's why we hit Venezuela, tremendous success. As you know, we have a massive floatilla right now going over to Iran. We'll see what happens. I think they wanna make a deal. I think they'd be foolish if they didn't. We took out their nuclear power last time and we'll have to see if we take out more this time.
Kudlow: Do you think a deal with the Iran with this current regime would ever really stick?
Trump: I don't know. I mean, uh, I don't know. I know one thing, they wanna make a deal. They wouldn't talk to anybody else, but they're talking to me. But, you know, it's a good question. A lot of people say no. And I would say that I'd rather make a deal. It's gotta be a good deal. No nuclear weapons, no missiles, no this, no that, all the different things that you want.
But some people worry that, uh, they've been very dishonest with us over the years, right? Very dishonest. Obama, Obama and Biden, what they did in terms of, uh, creating a monster with Iran was terrible. That Iran nuclear deal was one of the dumbest deals I've ever seen.
Kudlow: So you've been very generous with your time. Just last question. Can you beat history on these midterm elections?
Trump: Yeah.
Kudlow: Carry the House and the Senate for the GOP. Can you do it on the economy? Do you need more communication? Do you need more marketing? Do you need more help? I mean, the, the numbers are on your side. The question is, does the public know this?
Trump: Well, you know, we have a fake news that doesn't get the word out. That's why I love doing an interview. We get the word out.
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: But, uh, so you ask a question. Uh, in 50 years, a president that's won, even a popular president, somebody that's done well, I'm popular and I've done well. I mean, I think we have the greatest economy actually ever in history. We broke 50 and we broke 7,000. They said I wouldn't do that for four years and I did it in one year. We have to get the word out, okay?
Kudlow: Mm-hmm.
Trump: If we can get the word out, we should win. The problem is that historically, two times the presidents won in 50 years, two times. I don't know what that is. There's something down, deep, psychological. And some of them were good presidents and they still lost, they lost, when a president wins Republican or Democrat, they lose the midterms.
We're gonna change that. I hope. We're trying very hard. We're gonna change it. We inherited a, a country that was going to die. We had a dead country. Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. That's said by everybody. We have the hottest country in the world. I guess I have to sell that because we should win in a landslide and we'll do everything we can to do it.
Kudlow: Thank you for your time, Mr. President.
Trump: Thank you, Larry, very much.
Kudlow: You're most gracious, sir.
Trump: Thank you very much.
Kudlow: Most gracious.