TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, 1.22.26
[Video]
Maria Bartiromo: Mr. President, thank you so much for talking with us today.
President Trump: Thank you.
Bartiromo: You have talked about this framework, the beginning of a framework that you've spoken with the NATO secretary about. Can you tell us anything about that? Does this ultimately mean that the US will ultimately acquire Greenland?
Trump: Well, I don't know if I can say that, but it could be -- I mean it's possible. Anything's possible, but in the meantime, we're getting everything we wanted -- total security, total access to everything, have as many bases as -- have all the equipment that we want. And very importantly, you know, we're building the Golden Dome, we call it, it was called the Iron Dome.
Somehow the Golden Dome sounded a little bit better. But we have a technology that's second to none. You saw what we did with Israel and that's our genius that did that and it's amazing. It's just, you know, it's foolproof and we're going to be building it, and it works much better when we have access to Greenland -- just covers more territory, covers it more accurately. The missiles will be more accurate by having it. It's very important strategically as a piece and we will have everything we want. We're getting everything we want at no cost.
Bartiromo: So, the Golden Dome will be on Greenland?
Trump: A piece of it, yes. And it's a very important part because it's -- everything comes over Greenland. If the bad guys start shooting it comes over Greenland. So, we knock it down. It's pretty infallible; it's amazing. You know, Ronald Reagan had the idea a long time ago, but we didn't have any technology at that point. The concept was great, but there was no technology. Now we have unbelievable technology. I mean, virtually 100 percent.
Bartiromo: So, what are we talking about, an acquisition of Greenland? Are you going to pay for it? I mean --
Trump: We're talking about it. It's really being negotiated now, the details of it. But essentially, it's total access. There's no end. There's no time limit. We're not doing a 99- or a 10-year or anything else. You know, the famous 99-year deals that you hear about -- because countries can't do it for that; countries go on longer. And so, I think it's going to be something that's very well -- already it's being reviewed very well. I noticed the stock market went up very substantially after we announced it, but the details are being negotiated now. It'll be very good.
Bartiromo: So, because the GDP of Greenland is like $3.3 billion, but people are valuing Greenland at between $50 billion and almost $1 trillion. So, what are you willing to pay for Greenland?
Trump: Well, I'm not going to have to pay anything. We're going to have total access to Greenland. We're going to have all military access that we want. We're going to be able to put what we need on Greenland because we want it. We're talking about national security and international security. So, we're going to not have to pay anything, other than the fact that we are building the Golden Dome and the Golden Dome is going to be something that's going to be very amazing.
It'll be Israel times probably 100 and we need it. I think we need it and it's all going to be made in the United States. We have the best weapons in the world. We have the best companies in the world. We want them to produce faster, and you know, we've put a mandate out, you're going to have to produce faster, whether it's the Patriots or the Tomahawks or the F-35s or anything else. We make the best equipment, but they have to make it a lot faster.
Bartiromo: And you've said you want a defense budget of $1.5 trillion for 2027. How do you pay for that with the $37 trillion debt load?
Trump: Yeah, the money that's coming in is astronomical. You know, we'll be taking in over $600 billion this year alone in tariffs. And that's because we're doing it nice and easy. We're not even doing it strongly. We hope we have a good decision from the Supreme Court. If we don't, we'll figure something else.
But it certainly makes life a lot easier if we have that decision that we're waiting for. If we don't, we'll do something else. But we have a lot of money coming in. We have a tremendous success. We have over $18 trillion could be -- it could be, when I get the final numbers, it could be more than that now because, you know, that was a month and a half ago.
But we have $18 trillion coming into the country in the form of investments. We have thousands of businesses being built all over the country. And you see it, you report on it better than anybody else. I appreciate that. But you know, when you think of $18 trillion-plus, no country has done anywhere near that, like that's probably four times, five times more than any other country has ever done.
Bartiromo: And I always say money goes where it's treated best. So, you've got the right policies, obviously.
Trump: But they want to be treated good. They want to know that, you know, we have a -- look, we have a country that's hot. We had a dead country one year ago. This was a dead -- under Biden, you know that better than anybody. But we were a dead -- the king of Saudi Arabia said it to me; I use it all the time. He said one year ago you were a dead country. Now you have the hottest country in the world. And we are -- we're the hottest country in the world.
Bartiromo: Mr. President, are our relations with Europe, deteriorating or worsening? I mean, French President Macron called the Greenland situation colonialism. European leaders have these emergency talks to try to retaliate or stop your plans. You're threatening France with 200 percent tariffs on wine and champagne. There's been a real reaction from the European group, so.
Trump: Well, they put a service charge on us, you know, which is something that they're going to have to remove. I think we get along good. But you know, I've always debated, we are always going to be there for them, but will they be there for us. I've always said that, you know, if we ever needed them because NATO has very much been a one-way street.
We actually paid -- until I came along, we were paying for -- I think we paid 100 percent the cost of NATO. They weren't paying and we were paying. We have hundreds of thousands of soldiers in Germany. We have 50,000 soldiers in other countries. We have a lot of soldiers, not only Europe and other places.
And you know, we want that to be reciprocal. We want to be liked and respected. So, I've always said, and we get along very well with NATO, I think. But I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them. And that's really the ultimate test and I'm not sure of that. I know that we would have been there or we would be there, but will they be there?
And let's hope that that never happens. We've never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them. You know, they'll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that and they did. They stayed a little back, a little off the front lines. But we've been very good to Europe and to many other countries.
And you know, now under my administration that began -- because we had a very successful first term that began then. But it has to be a two-way street, and it's been a two-way street much more so, and now it's really been a two-way street.
Bartiromo: So, what should we expect from the European countries? I mean, they've got this EU anti-coercion instrument that would be, you know, services -- impacting our services, as you said. And then the Danish pension fund said that they're going to exit US treasuries, $100 million treasuries at the end of December. European countries hold trillions of stocks and bonds from the US. Do you worry that they would start selling those in retaliation?
Trump: No. If they do they do. But you know, if that would happen there would be a big retaliation on our part, and we have all the cards.
Bartiromo: And how much of all of this -- you've been so tough on so much. I mean, Venezuela, Iran, etc., a long list. How much of this is messages to China and Russia as well?
Trump: They see what happens. Look, we attacked Iran. We wiped out their nuclear capacity one night. This was supposed to have been done for the last 25 years, and it wasn't, by American presidents. And we did it and it was a tremendous success. We wiped out, as you know, al-Baghdadi, that's ISIS, the founder of ISIS, and he was rebuilding ISIS.
I knocked him out first term. Soleimani, that was a big one. He's the father of the roadside bomb, all the young people that you see without arms and legs, and their faces were blown to pieces. And that was -- 95 percent sure it was al-Baghdadi. He was the father of the roadside bomb. He's gone; he's wiped out.
And recently Venezuela. But a big one was, you know, you take a look at what we did. We would not have peace in the Middle East if we didn't take out the nuclear capacity from Iran, we wiped it out. Operation Midnight Hammer, it's called, and that was an incredible feat. Every single bomb went right down those chutes and exploded, 100,000-pound bombs, massive bombs, they went right through.
In the dark of night, no moon, no anything, every single bomb hit its target perfectly. And then recently Venezuela. You know, that was -- some people think that was sort of the most amazing because this was in a major military fort, one of the biggest military forts. Went in, did the job, came out. Nobody can believe it happened. Nobody killed, no equipment lost, pretty amazing.
Bartiromo: It could be that what you did in Venezuela galvanized the people of Iran. And I want to get your take on next steps because you told the people of Iran, you're with them, help is on the way. We understand from reports, at least 20,000 people are dead. How do you know they're no longer killing citizens? And will you finish the job?
Trump: Well, I had two different reports. I mean, I hear different numbers, much different than those numbers. But I will say that they were going to hang 837 people that you know about and that was sort of a done deal. And I said if you do that, you're going to pay a big price. You're going to get hit harder than anybody's ever been hit before. And they decided not to do that. So, they didn't hang those people on Thursday. Last Thursday, they were going to hang. Can you believe that we're talking about this?
Bartiromo: No.
Trump: It's from a thousand years ago, right? But that's what we're dealing with. And yet smart, cunning people. But it's an ancient way of life. They were going to hang 837 people, and I said, in the very strongest of language, don't do it and they didn't do it. So, that was a big thing. And from there, we'll see what happens.
I mean that's the last we had to do with them for a little while. But if we didn't take out their nuclear threat, there would not be peace in the Middle East. Nobody could have done it; they were all afraid. They were afraid -- they used to say the bully of the Middle East, that Iran was the bully of the Middle East. Now they're not such an effective bully anymore.
Bartiromo: Well, if they keep killing people, will you go back?
Trump: Well, I don't want to talk about that because I don't want to put myself in a position. I can't say that. I don't want to say it because I think it would be stupid for me to say that.
Bartiromo: Of course, and I get that. I want to turn to the economy, Mr. President, because when I first interviewed you when you first came back, it was about a month after the inauguration for your second term, I asked you, Mr. President, what do you want the economy to look like in four years. And you were very clear, you said I want the private sector to rule the day.
And since then, in the last year, you've taken a 10 percent stake in Intel, you've taken a stake in MP Mountain Pass. You told the defense companies two weeks ago, don't pay any dividends, don't do buybacks until you produce the weapons that we need. So, please explain to our audience how is that free market capitalism?
Trump: Well, it's very free market. We have defense companies that were making a fortune, they were buying back stock with all their money. And then they come to us for money if they want to -- you know, we want to buy something or we want to have plants built and they'd say could you Loan us the money? And they'd be doing tens of billions of dollars of stock buybacks.
So, I'm not letting them do it. I want them to put money into -- you know, we have the best equipment in the world, the Patriots, the Tomahawks, the F-35s. All of our equipment is the best. Other countries want it and we want it. We need more. It takes too long to get it. And I said we're not going to do that anymore. So, also, they're making tremendous amounts of money. I mean, $25 million, $50 million, $37 million a year. That's a lot of money. That's almost as much as you make.
Bartiromo: No, I'm not. [Laughter]
Trump: You work harder than them. No, but they were making -- I asked one of the gentlemen, what are you making. Sir, I make $24 million a year. How come it takes me five years to get your particular thing that they make, right? So, I put a cap on that for a period of time. For a period of time. I said you have to build more plants.
When we order -- when we need Tomahawks, I want them within 24 hours. When we need any kind of -- a Patriot or whatever I want, I want to have it quickly, I don't want to be waiting three years for it. What kind of a thing is that? And you make all this money. And I'm prohibiting them from doing stock buybacks and you know they haven't even complained about it.
Bartiromo: Well, so, free market capitalism, unless it's a national security issue?
Trump: Look, it's free market, it's stupid market letting that take. Why would I let them do stock buybacks and we give them -- you know the businesses from us. So, I want to buy -- and interestingly their stocks went up because we raised the budgets. You know, our budgets are higher. We're going to buy more military equipment.
We have to -- in this world, we have to. We have the strongest military; I rebuilt the military in my first term. We have the strongest military we've ever had and we're going to keep it that way. And you get a little glimpse of that with Iran nuclear. But you got to a really very current glimpse from two weeks ago with Venezuela.
We have the smartest, we have the strongest, we have the best equipment. You know, they had a lot of anti-aircraft stuff that didn't exactly work too well.
Bartiromo: Well, thank God for our military and for our community and chief on that --
Trump: We have the greatest, strongest military in the world and we make the best equipment. We have to make it faster.
Bartiromo: Mr. President, let me talk about affordability because, just in the last 100 days, you announced a list of things that you want to be putting in place, bringing down the cost on a number of things: a 10 percent cap on credit cards; $200 billion in purchases of mortgage backed securities; banning institutions from owning single family homes. How soon would you expect those policies to actually move the needle on costs?
Trump: Well, I think they're going to kick in pretty quickly, but we're doing great on affordability. You know, that's a word that the Democrats made up. They're the ones that caused the problem. When I inherited this, when I came into office, I had eggs that were five times higher than they ever were and the people were screaming at me. Remember, the famous like two days after I came in, what about eggs? What about eggs?
Bartiromo: Yeah, I just got to office.
Trump: I said, do we have a problem with eggs? I just got here, right? And we have that down now lower. But food prices are coming down. Look at gasoline, $1.99 in a lot of places. We're down to $1.99 in a lot of places. We're with $2.30 overall, but we're down to a dollar. It was $4.50, $5, I mean think of it, it was 4 -- you were spending a lot of places over $5, We have it at $1.99 That's better than any tax cut.
In addition, the Great Big, Beautiful Bill just kicked in and now you have no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security for our seniors, no tax on overtime. That bill is going to have a huge -- and you have of course the one-year deduction for -- build a plant and you can deduct it in one year.
Bartiromo: I was just going to say the depreciation seems like it's really having an impact on people.
Trump: We have thousands of businesses being built all over the country. There's never been a time like this in our country. And you know, a lot of that's the $18 trillion that's pouring in. I spoke with Eli Lilly the other day. He's a great guy, a great leader. And I said, what are you doing? He's building five plants.
They're spending billions and billions of dollars bringing back the drug industry into this country. Many of them, I think all of them; they all want to come. And it's because of tariffs because they don't want to pay the tariffs, very simple. And I think they were very happy with November 5th, the election.
Bartiromo: On the cap on credit card rates, and of course they were up to 28 percent, 30 percent in some cases. One analyst --
Trump: How can you do that? Look, I'm all for free enterprise and everything else, but you have a guy, goes out and he's a little bit late on his payment and he ends up filing for bankruptcy, right? 28 percent. Whatever happened to usury? Whatever happened -- you know, they used to have laws that you can't charge too much, but 28 percent, 30 percent, 32 percent. I don't think anyone knows that. I think they get a bill, and they end up just going bankrupt.
Bartiromo: Well, one analyst said it's going to cut earnings for the banks between 5 percent and 16 percent.
Trump: It's a one-year deal. We've got to let people get back on their feet.
Bartiromo: And Jamie Dimon says that it's an economic disaster.
Trump: They were destroyed. These people were destroyed during the Biden years. They were destroyed. We had the highest inflation in history. Look at inflation -- for the last three months, it's 1.2 percent, last three months. You know, it takes a little time to get there. And I'll tell you, the oil price is coming down so much, gasoline.
When you get gasoline down to less than $2, and we've largely done that. It's coming down and it's coming down -- we're drilling more than we've ever drilled. We have more coming in. And we just took over, as you know, 50 million barrels of oil from Venezuela. And they gave it to us, they had to get rid of it, they gave it to us. It could be close to $5 billion. No, we're doing really well. Our country is -- I mean, you report on it better than anyone else. Our country is doing as well as it's -- I think it's done better than it's ever done.
Bartiromo: Are you going to release a budget next month? And do you want to see another reconciliation package?
Trump: Well, I think we have a problem because I think we're going to probably end up in another Democrat shutdown because that's the only way -- you know, when we came out with the numbers over five, everyone was shocked. But remember, we would have been up a point and a half more. We would have been at six and a half, maybe more than that except for the shutdown. The shutdown cost us a lot, and I think they'll probably do it again. That's my feeling. We'll see what happens.
Bartiromo: So, will you release a budget?
Trump: We're going to have a budget.
Bartiromo: What's in the budget?
Trump: Well, too early? I mean, you know we have a long way. That's an eternity when you talk about a couple of weeks in this world, that's an eternity. But we're negotiating the budget right now. We're negotiating healthcare. I don't want the insurance companies to get the money. I want the money to be paid directly back to the people.
And when it comes back to the people -- by the way, everyone is in love with it. You know what happened? I'm looking and -- on your show, but I'm looking and I'm reading the papers and I'm seeing that these insurance companies are up 1,000 percent, they're up 1,700 percent, 1400 percent. And I say what the hell.
This is money being given by the government and it has to do with largely, a lot of it, Obamacare, the money is going -- you know, that was designed to make insurance companies rich. The Democrats are very big for the insurance companies. That's why you probably won't have an agreement on paying directly to the people because the Democrats are totally owned by the insurance companies.
But the money should be paid into a healthcare savings account or whatever. But the money should go directly to the people. You'll end up paying less money. You'll have much better health. They're going to go out and buy their own healthcare. Think of it, they'll have better healthcare for less money?
Bartiromo: Do you think we'll see another reconciliation plan? Do you want that?
Trump: I'd like to see it. It's hard when you have a majority by three, you know, it's hard because you have a guy like this loser, Massie, he's a real loser and you have other guys, they just automatically vote no. Rand Paul, I always got along well with Rand Paul, but he's always a no vote. Someday you're going to have to explain it. Some psychiatrist ought to go see him.
Even a really great bill they just vote no. I don't know what it is. I think they think they get good publicity. They really don't. They hurt the country because if you're voting no, then you're giving the Democrats and socialism and communism frankly, because you have communists frankly. I mean, when you look at some of the plans being put out by them, these are communists, these aren't socialists, these are communists.
Bartiromo: Well, I mean, they want to upend your agenda. And the probe of Jay Powell, what -- even Republicans -- Thom Tillis said that we're not going to move any nominations through until this is --
Trump: That's why Thom Tillis is no longer there. You know, he's going to be out. He wasn't able to run. He checked his poll numbers; he couldn't have won.
Bartiromo: So, you're not afraid that they're going to stop your agenda?
Note: [Crosstalk]
Trump: OK, look, they've been fighting me for 10 years.
Bartiromo: I know.
Trump: And here we are. This isn't the White House, but I'm going to the White House, I'm not going someplace else. And they've been fighting me for 10 years. They're very, very unfair fighters. They're sick. I mean, in many cases, I really think they're mentally ill, they've got a problem. Because when you look at what they do, when you look at the things -- even you take a look, they're still fighting for men in women's sports, transgender for everybody?
Open borders, let the world pour in. We have people coming in from the Congo, prisons in the Congo, prisons in Venezuela, prisons from all over the world, let them come into our country. And we've done an incredible job. We closed up the southern border 100 percent. I didn't go back to Congress. He said you can't close it because I need legislation for Congress.
I said no, you don't; you need a president. But think of it. We have a situation where the border is 100 percent closed. It's so beautiful. We're taking people into our country. We need people for all these businesses that are opening, but they're coming in legally.
Bartiromo: You want legal immigration.
Trump: We did an unbelievable job on the border and really nobody talks about it. You know, the one thing I find in politics, you solve a big problem -- I got elected pretty much on the border and other reasons, but the border was a big one. I've won; I made it. I did a great job on the border within four weeks.
Look at Washington, DC. Washington, DC is a totally safe city. You can walk with your husband down the street, nothing's going to happen. A year ago, you would have been -- you would have had a 50-50 chance of being slugged.
Bartiromo: Will all of this be enough to keep the majority for the Republicans in the midterms?
Trump: I don't know. The only thing I don't really fully get -- I don't understand how it could be possible. But if you look over 100 years, the president, Republican or Democrat, no matter how well -- we're having a great presidency. Even the radical Left lunatics say this was a one hell of a year for Trump. So, we're having a great year.
But Democrats have had good years as presidents do and they lose the midterms. So, for whatever reason, I mean, I think I saw where it's two out of the last 50 years, one, two and you say how is that possible? So, there's something psychological that if you're president, no matter how well you're doing, you don't do well in the midterms.
And this is Republican, Democrat, the numbers are staggering, it doesn't make sense. We should do well. We should do well and we're going to fight like hell to do well because, look, we don't want to have anything -- what we've done is we've created a miracle. This country is stronger. It's doing better than it's ever done and you're going to see that.
And you know, we inherit a lot of debt -- 36, but growth will make that a small number. You know, if we grow like I think we're going to grow, debt becomes small and we're going to pay off debt. We have so much -- if we win that Supreme Court case, it will be so incredible, but we'll be paying off debt. We'll be probably issuing some dividends.
We did it with the $1,776 for the soldiers. 17, think of that, that was great. It was $1,775. And I said, well, if you add $1 to it, it's $1,776. That's a good -- that was meaningful. But we did it for the soldiers, all of the soldiers, the Army -- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, all of the services got it. And I mean, I was just walking over here for an interview. Five soldiers, good looking guys, our guys stopped me. They said, sir, thank you for $1,776. So, it's really good.
Bartiromo: Oh, that's great. Mr. President, I know you have limited time, and we so appreciate you stopping by and talking with us. Thank you so much.
Trump: Thank you very much.
Bartiromo: Congratulations, Mr. President.
Trump: You've done a great job. Thank you.
Bartiromo: Thank you. So have you.