TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks with Maria Bartiromo on Her Fox Business Show, 4.15.26
[Video]
Maria Bartiromo: Mr. President, thank you for sitting down with us, we appreciate it. You've had a real reaction to the blockade. Are you happy with the reaction since you put this blockade in place in the Strait of Hormuz?
President Trump: Well, it's been pretty amazing, actually. I thought that was going to happen. They reacted to this even -- I think it was, you know, we've obliterated them. And this almost seems to be more of a reaction than we had before, so we'll see. I mean, look, it only matters, the end result, and we're doing very well.
We started off with Venezuela, we showed everybody how good -- I built the military; I rebuilt and built the military my first term, I didn't know I was going to be using it this much. But we have the greatest military in the world, not even a contest. And think of it, they have no Navy, they have no Air Force.
Everything's been wiped out. They have no anti-aircraft equipment, they have no radar, they have no leaders. The leaders they have are -- now it's a new regime, OK, and we find them pretty reasonable, to be honest with you, by comparison pretty reasonable. It really is a new regime, and I think we're doing very well. But it only matters what the end result is and maybe it will happen fairly soon. Who knows?
Bartiromo: And you told me on Sunday that you think they will ultimately consent and say they're not going to continue building a nuclear weapon. How will you verify?
Trump: Well, first of all, if they don't, we're not making a deal, OK, so there's no deal. This whole thing -- it is really about no nuclear, they cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if they're going to have a nuclear weapon, we'll be living with them for a little while, but I don't know how much longer they can survive.
I don't know how much longer they can go because they've been hit very hard. And as an example, we could take out every one of their bridges in one hour. We could take out every one of their power plants, electric power plants in one hour. We don't want to do that because someday you're going to have to rebuild, and it takes you 10 years to rebuild a bridge. Even if you're Trump, it takes so long, it takes a long time, and power plants are just as bad. So, we'll see what happens.
Bartiromo: Did you get any pushback, like, from the Chinese or the Saudis about blocking the Strait of Hormuz?
Trump: No, I had none, I had none.
Bartiromo: Let me move on to domestic issues, sir. What are your top priorities now for the economy for the rest of the year?
Trump: To be honest, we are doing so well. You look at this, I hit the 50,000 Dow mark, which everyone said couldn't happen in four years, I did it in one year. I hit the 7,000 S&P mark in less than one year, which was a number, as you know, you reported it, they said if at the end of four years you hit those numbers; I did it at the end of a year.
And I said, now we have to do a little bit of a turn, a detour to a place called Iran, and we have to stop them from ever having a nuclear weapon. And if you told me that in the midst of it, we would have a stock market that's almost as good as it was two months ago -- just about, very close -- and that we'd have oil, that we'd be selling oil, that oil would be at 92 or whatever it is right now instead of 200, because a lot of people said, oh, it will be 200. This is in the midst of everything.
No, I think we're doing very well and maybe people assume we're going to win this thing pretty soon. We've beaten them militarily totally. The only thing they have is the Gulf and I think now -- with the Strait, as they call it, and I think now, I don't know how they hold up.
Bartiromo: Well, I mean, that's what I'm saying. I mean, the backdrop has changed -- I know it's been only a month or so, but oil prices are up 50 percent, the stock market had a tough first quarter, stocks are still up.
Trump: You know, you're right. You're right but they're not up -- I thought -- I mean honestly --
Bartiromo: Neither was [Inaudible]
Trump: I thought there'd be much -- and I was willing to do that, to stop a nuclear weapon to be used against this country or the Middle East -- anybody in the Middle East, they were going to take out the Middle East. To stop that it was certainly worthwhile being much higher than it is right now. If you told me that we were going to be at only 92 a barrel, $92 a barrel, I would have been very surprised. And you know what? I'm very happy and it's going to come dropping down very big as soon as it's over and I think it can be over very soon. If they're smart, it will end soon.
Bartiromo: Overall, the impact on the economy, do you expect a hit to growth? Do you expect a spike in inflation?
Trump: Well, look, there's a hit because, you know, we go through it for whatever it is, six weeks and there's going to be a hit, but it's going to recover, I think, fully. Somehow, they misquoted me. I think oil will be down to the levels it was. You know, they said, I expect oil to be high at the midterms. I don't expect that.
I think that we will be somewhere around where we were, maybe even lower. This is going to -- when this is over, I think the stock market is going to boom. It's already booming. Again, nobody thought we could be at 50,000 during my four terms on the Dow or 7,000 on the S&P, and we hit numbers that nobody thought possible.
Bartiromo: You've been talking about a reconciliation program with the Republicans. Can you articulate to our audience why a reconciliation package is important, and why you want to see it on your desk by June?
Trump: Because we can't get any Democrat votes. With reconciliation we can get things passed. The good thing is the Great Big, Beautiful Bill, that was for years wrapped into one, now we're doing some additional things. But, you know, the Great Big, Beautiful Bill, I think it's the biggest, the best piece of legislation.
It should be called the Great Big, Beautiful Tax Cut Bill because you have no tax on tips and look how that's working out, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. We have people, and you see it -- I see it on your show, I watch your show, your show's great -- we have people that are making $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000. They had no idea it was coming. And it's turning out to be even better than we anticipated for people.
Bartiromo: But there are rules around reconciliation, that it requires deficit reduction, right? How will you ensure that you've got a decrease in spending?
Trump: Well, we have to go by the rules and we're going for those rules. And if we didn't go by the rules, we couldn't even put it in, we wouldn't be able to submit it. And nobody believes that more than me. The one thing I really felt strongly about was the military. We built this great military that we have right now, and everybody acknowledges it, whether it's China or Russia.
We have the greatest military in the world. And I built that in four years, my first term, it's a great -- including adding Space Force. You know, a lot of the things that you see that work so well is because of Space Force. It was a great thing that we added when we went for Space Force.
Bartiromo: So, what can you put in the reconciliation bill other than funding Customs and Border Patrol and ICE? Anything else?
Trump: Well, we're doing mostly that. This is mostly about that because the Democrats don't want to do it. Then we're putting some things as we go along. But, you know, you've heard the expression we want to keep it sort of slim because we want to make sure that -- I have the safest border in the history of our country.
Nobody came in. I'm not even sure I can believe that. But the Democrats do the numbers. It's really, you know, the agency that does that is they tend to be on the Democrat side, to put it mildly. In the last nine months, not one person came across the border illegally. Now compare that to 25 million people coming across by Sleepy Joe.
Bartiromo: I was there, I went to the border six times, I saw it, I understand what you're saying.
Trump: They came in by the millions, hundreds of thousands a week just pouring in, totally unchecked, totally -- and you know, the countries, I know the leaders of most of these countries, they're very smart, they're street smart, some are highly educated, some aren't, but they're very street smart. They don't send their good people to us when they do a caravan, 25,000, 30,000 people in a caravan.
You don't have the good -- you have people that frankly, even if they're not criminals per se, they don't want to work or they want welfare, or they -- they sent all these people to our country. What the Democrats have done to us should never be forgotten.
Bartiromo: Can you put the SAVE America Act in the reconciliation plan?
Trump: I'd love to do it, and we'll certainly look at it, but I mean, there's nothing easy -- and it has to be called SAVE America, as you just did. A lot of people like to go with the SAVE Act, nobody knows. It's SAVE America, it's voter ID, it's you have to be a citizen to vote.
Bartiromo: Proof of citizenship.
Trump: Ideally mail-in voting, you'd knock the hell out of it.
Bartiromo: Can you make it a budgetary item?
Trump: It's good for the military. You know, the military's the way they have to be able to use it, etc. Somebody that's sick, somebody that's away, you can't. And you do mail-in voting. But mail-in voting cut back so that it's fair.
Bartiromo: It's Tax Day. What do you want to make sure people understand about the changes that you put in the tax code in the Big, Beautiful Bill? And how significant are these refunds that people are getting?
Trump: OK, well, the refunds are really significant, and it makes it less complicated to do your tax return, much less complicated. But the people -- I mean, I think you're seeing this, you're reporting it, everybody's reporting because now it's gone into effect and people are getting refunds of $5,000, $8,000, $11,000 that they had no idea they were getting. It's turned out to be better -- as good or better than I said it would be.
Bartiromo: Is that going to be enough to offset the increase in gasoline prices?
Trump: It will be because gasoline is coming down very soon and very big.
Bartiromo: So, you think gas prices will be lower before the midterm elections?
Trump: I think there will be much lower -- before midterm, much lower, yes.
Bartiromo: OK, now, you've suggested --
Trump: I mean, that's on the assumption that we stop a country that cannot have a nuclear weapon from -- if you give Iran a nuclear weapon, you want to see bad stock markets? You won't have a country. The world will be blown up. You can't do it, you cannot do it. So, on the assumption we have that settled, hopefully long before that, and maybe almost immediately.
Could be very soon. But when that's settled, gas prices are going to go down tremendously and gasoline, gas prices, cost per barrel, fill up your car, per gallon, per any way you look at it, numbers are going to go down, electricity is going to go down. You know, it fuels sort of everything, not just cars.
It fuels the economy. If you get that down, one of the reasons I was so successful my first term is I was able to keep gasoline prices down, I was able to keep energy down. Now, look, if I decided not to go into Iran, which would have been a terrible thing. For 47 years, no president had the guts to do it, and they should have done it. And I know at least one and I know -- I think all of them that are living -- are sitting back watching this and saying we should have done it. This should have been done long before me; it would have been much easier to do. It should have been done long before me.
Bartiromo: Mr. President, let me ask you --
Trump: What Obama did with that Iran nuclear deal, that was the worst deal ever made. That gave them a path to a nuclear weapon, a short-term path to a nuclear weapon. I terminated it. It was the greatest thing I did. They would have had a nuclear weapon four years ago. Then we hit him with the B-2 bombers eight months ago.
They would have had a nuclear weapon within one month, maybe two weeks, and they would have used it on Israel and the Middle East, and they would have used it on us too. And not just Israel by the way, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, countries that were shocked when they got hit. You know, these countries were not expected to be hit because they were going after those countries. They were going over take over the Middle East and we stopped them.
Note: [Commercial break]
Bartiromo: You've got a major meeting coming up next month with President Xi. I want to get your take on China and how this shift in oil, particularly because of Iran, particularly because of Venezuela and what you've done, even your comments on Cuba. How does that change the dynamic of this meeting with President Xi?
Trump: I don't think it does. I mean, he's somebody that needs oil. We don't. He's somebody I get along with very well. He just wrote me a beautiful letter.
Bartiromo: He wrote you a letter?
Trump: Yeah, he did. He responded to a letter that I wrote because I had heard that China is giving weapons to -- I mean, you're seeing it all over the place -- to Iran. That China's giving weapons --
Bartiromo: Did he say he's giving them?
Trump: Yeah, and I wrote him a letter asking him not to do that. And he wrote me a letter saying that essentially, he's not doing that.
Bartiromo: OK. Well, we just heard from the FBI recently that there was a major cyberattack attributed to China. What response is under consideration for that cyberattack?
Trump: We do it to them. They do it to us, we do it to them, you know?
Bartiromo: Well, when was the last time we did a cyberattack?
Trump: Well, I don't know, I'm not going to tell you that. But we do them, they do us, it's been like that for a long time.
Bartiromo: So, it's not going to be addressed?
Trump: Oh, yeah, I'll address things but, you know, it is what it is. Look, China's China, they're never easy, but we're doing great with China. I'm the toughest person on China anywhere in the world. I put on a 100 percent tariff on Chinese cars. We don't have a Chinese car in the whole country. And if you look at Europe, they're being inundated with Chinese cars, and it's killing their car companies, OK? There's nobody tougher than me. Don't forget, I put a 20 percent tariff on them for what they've done with fentanyl.
I put a penalty; I call it a penalty. I put a 45 percent tariff -- I had a 145 percent tariff where they literally were -- they were going to go out of business. Look, there's never been anybody tougher in China than me, but I also have a good relationship with President Xi and that's a good thing. Remember this, TikTok, billions and billions of dollars.
Not the biggest thing; in terms of China bigger is the other things I do. But everybody said they will never approve the deal, it's a hard no. President Xi said it's a hard no, we will never do it. Then American businesspeople got together, paid billions of dollars. And I called up President Xi, I said, you know, it'd be a good thing if you did it and he did it.
Note: [Commercial break]
Bartiromo: China wants to beat us on so much, you know that, from space to AI.
Trump: And we want to beat them -- and we want to beat them, too.
Bartiromo: I want to ask you about AI.
Trump: Maria, Maria, Maria, but we want to beat them, too.
Bartiromo: Will we beat them?
Trump: Well, we're leading in AI because of me. We're leading, you know why? I'm letting them build their own electric power plants. They're becoming a utility. I said to Mark Zuckerberg, congratulations, you're in the electric business. Because if I didn't do it -- that was my idea actually. They're building these massive plants and if they took it from the grid, the grid wouldn't be able to handle it. I said, no, if you want to build it, you have to build your own power.
And then they will be giving excess power back into our grid. And these things are all under construction right now. So, we're beating China on that. We're beating China on the economy. We have a great economy. Remember, if I didn't want to make that little journey to Iran, it was a journey, I said, we're going to have to do this for the good of the world.
Bartiromo: So, do you still expect growth in the economy this year, no recession?
Trump: I do, I mean, I do. Look, we had a couple of months where, you know, I had to go to a war. I had to go and fight either a military operation, some people would call it a war, some people call it a military operation. It was easy because we have the greatest military in the world. But I had to divert because if I didn't do that, right now, you would have Iran with a nuclear weapon. And if they had a nuclear weapon, you would be calling everybody over there sir, and you don't want to do that.
Bartiromo: Well, you keep saying was. Is this war over?
Trump: I think it's close to over, yeah. I mean, I view it as very close to over. You know what? If I pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that country. And we're not finished. We'll see what happens. I think they want to make a deal very badly.
Bartiromo: That's pretty unprecedented -- I mean, having direct talks like that.
Trump: I have talks with everybody, but it's very effective. I think you're going to have a great deal. I'm doing a great job for the country and for the world. You know, we've had no help -- zero from NATO. We're there for them, they're not there for us. We spend -- you saw the chart that came out a couple of days ago with a big monster red ball, that was us, and all these little satellite balls.
And it represented the money spent on military and NATO. And it's ridiculous, and they should have been better. They should have said we'll send somebody. It's a small operation compared to a big operation. But NATO was not there for us. And what it means, if they're not there for us here, they're not going to be there for us. So, why are we why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO if they're not going to be with us? If they're not going to be with us on Iran, they're not going to be with us on a much bigger subject than Iran.
Bartiromo: Did you see that Britain suffered the biggest growth forecast downgrade in the G7?
Trump: Yeah, well --
Bartiromo: So, their economy is impacted.
Trump: It's the UK. I would say this, they've got to stop with the windmills, and they've got to open up the North Sea. They have the North Sea in Aberdeen, Scotland. It's the biggest, one of the most incredible oil fields anywhere in the world, it's got hundreds of years left. And you know what they do? They closed it because they want so much that the oil companies -- the oil companies -- are begging them to go there.
They called me, please speak to them. They made it impossible because of the environmentalists, the horrible environmentalists that hurt that country so badly. And they're going with windmills, destroying their fields all over the place. They have that problem and then they have the problem of immigration. What Europe has done with immigration, most of the countries, not all -- what they've done with immigration is horrible.
Bartiromo: Do we still have the same relationship with Italy right now and Giorgia Meloni?
Trump: No, no. She's been negative. Anybody that turned us down for helping with this Iran situation we do not have the same relationship. Just so you know, Italy gets a lot of oil from the Strait, you can call it the Strait of Hormuz or the Hormuz Strait. I said, which is better? They said either is OK, but you can call it either one.
The only thing you can't call it is the Trump Strait. They don't like that idea. By the way, speaking of that, I did a thing that people like very much except for Mexico. I took the Gulf of Mexico, and we now call it the Gulf of America. That's not bad.
Bartiromo: And Google changed it, I know that. Did you see --
Trump: And Google -- and by the way, Google was great on that.
Bartiromo: Did you see Europe is now drafting a program and plan to open up the Hormuz Strait without the United States.
Trump: That's so sad. We're doing it now. By the way, it's opening, the ships are coming back and forth. Oh, without the United States. It just shows you, how can you have a country, how can you have a group of countries with that attitude? Look at Greenland. We should have Greenland to protect the world against Russia and China. The mention of it, all of a sudden they get -- you -- this country should not be paying trillions of dollars to NATO.
Bartiromo: Mr. President, I've got to ask you about AI. This is an important question, I think, for our audience. And we saw reports that Treasury Secretary Bessent and Chairman Jay Powell called an emergency meeting with the major banks because they said that there was a risk over the anthropic model. And the worry is that bad actors are actually going to be able to hack into these banks and -- faster than institutions can actually respond. Do you see this as a systemic threat?
Trump: Not systemic, we'll work it out. AI is very important. Billions and even trillions of dollars is being invested in our country because of it. It's got some bad aspects; it's got mostly good aspects medically and so many other ways. You'll be finding cures to diseases that you would have never found before.
There are a lot of good things, but we have to be careful with it. Like everything else, we have to be careful with it. But when you tell me, Bessent, he's great. When you tell me about Jerome "Too Late" Powell, he's a disaster. Here's a man who took this little, tiny building and a couple of other, a little tiny complex, and he's spending more than $3 billion. I want to know who the contractor is, because that contractor is making billions of dollars, perhaps. So, he's doing a bad job. He should be lowering interest rates.
Bartiromo: But do you think that Kevin Warsh is going to get confirmed next week?
Trump: I think so, I hope so. Yeah, I hope so.
Bartiromo: But I mean, Thom Tillis is still blocking it.
Trump: Yeah, but Thom Tillis is an American, he knows what to do. I think he's -- let's see what happens.
Bartiromo: Will you tell or at least advise Judge Jeanine to end that probe -- criminal probe into Jay Powell so that Thom Tillis.
Trump: Well, it's really more than that. It's more than a criminal probe. It's criminal probe, I guess, but it's also a probe on incompetence. How do you take a little building? I built a hotel for $201 million that's bigger than that building down the road. It's a little while ago, seven years ago, eight years ago.
I built the Trump Hotel which I sold to Waldorf Astoria. It was a good deal. I built it like around $200 million in construction. They're going to spend maybe $4 billion. And you know what? I'm not sure the thing's ever going to open. You know, I do that stuff very well. I went past the site the other day I was driving past and I said take me past the Federal Reserve Building.
They took me past; there's very little work done inside. Kevin may never get to have the use of that building. And he told me something very interesting, he said, the saddest part of it is they ripped down the most beautiful building of them all, they ripped it down. He said they had board rooms and various rooms in that building that were the most beautiful in Washington and they ripped it down.
What they've done to that -- so, it is probably corrupt, but what it really is is incompetent. And we have to show the incompetence of that -- and he headed the job. He was, you know, this guy Jerome --
Bartiromo: You want Jay Powell out of the way. Isn't he easiest way to get him out of the way to end the probe?
Trump: Does that mean we stop a probe of a building that I would have done for $25 million that's going to cost maybe $4 billion? Don't you think we have to find out what happened there? You know, we have other jobs like that, like the railroad in California where it's 25 times more than it was originally going to cost.
And I think they're going to end up abandoning it, OK. That's Gavin Newsom, or as I call him, Gavin Newscum, who's so bad. But that's the one. But I think the Federal Reserve building is just as bad. And so, whether it's incompetence, corruption or both, I think you have to find out, I really do, I think you have to find out.
Bartiromo: So, you're not going to drop the probe?
Trump: I'm not planning -- I have to find out.
Bartiromo: And he said he's not leaving if, you know.
Trump: Well, then I'll have to fire him, OK? If he's not leaving on time -- I've held back firing him, I've wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial, you know. I want to be uncontroversial, but -- he will be fired.
Bartiromo: And you think Kevin Warsh can get confirmed? Do you think Thom Tillis is going to give you a vote?
Trump: Well, we're going to have to find out. He might not, but that's why Thom Tillis is no longer a Senator.
Bartiromo: OK. On the on the AI thing --
Trump: You know Thom Tillis is no longer a Senator, right? He quit.
Bartiromo: Well, he's on his way out.
Trump: Well, no, he quit, but he quit. And I think he doesn't want the legacy of stopping a great -- a person who could be great. I think Kevin Warsh is going to be great. He doesn't want the legacy of having an incompetent guy stay there for longer than is necessary. I know Thom Tillis, he's a good man, I don't think he's going to hurt.
I know he said what he said, and maybe it's true, in which case I'll have to live with it. But not as chairman. This guy is a bad chairman, really bad chairman. And I was surprised when Biden extended him, to be honest with you, but he did. Interest rates should be much lower than they are right now.
Bartiromo: And you think they will go lower later this year?
Trump: When Kevin gets in, I do, yeah.
Bartiromo: Just to close the loop on AI, Mr. President, in a worst-case scenario, could that be the kind of technology that undermines confidence in the banking system?
Trump: Yeah, probably, but it could also be the kind of technology that allows greatness in the banking system, makes it better and safer and more secure.
Bartiromo: So, should government have some safeguards? Should there be a kill switch for some of these AI agents?
Trump: There should be but let me say we're leading in AI. We're leading China by a lot actually. We're building plants that nobody ever imagined before. And it's going to be a tremendous -- bigger than the internet, it's going to be tremendous. And there are always difficulties when you're at this stage of something. But when you mentioned banking, it can also make banking much bigger, much safer, much more efficient.
Bartiromo: Let me just ask you about the midterms. Do you expect the Republicans to lose seats in the House? And what does that mean for your agenda?
Trump: Well, I just left with Mike Johnson and some great people, some great Congressmen and women and -- in the Oval Office. I think we're going to do good. Now, with that being said, when somebody gets elected president, that party always loses the midterms, I don't know why, I don't know why. Nobody can explain it. I asked people that are deep into the psychological world.
I said, why is it that a voter votes for the opposite party, even when you have a good president? I think I had the greatest year, the greatest opening year. I've read the greatest -- look, I ended eight wars, a ninth is coming, but I ended eight wars. Nobody's ever ended one war. Who's ended one? Nobody.
I ended eight. We have the biggest tax cuts ever. We have the biggest regulation cuts ever. The greatest economy ever, pretty much including the fact that I took a detour into Iran in order to stop something that could have destroyed the world, right? But even when you have a great president, they tend to lose the midterms.
It doesn't make sense to me so we're going to try turning it around. You know, in 50 years, I guess the president, the person, the party with the president has won twice. Why that happens, I don't know. We are really working hard to turn that around. We've had the greatest year in the history of the presidency, first year. And we should be given credit. Look at the border. So, we had a border that was an open sieve. You covered it better than anybody.
Bartiromo: So, is that the message the voters --
Note: [Crosstalk]
Trump: I should get -- I should get credit.
Bartiromo: The border. Is there anything else you relieve them for?
Trump: Yeah, I think we should -- well, I think we have to bring it back to talk. We don't need help on the border. But, you know, I built over 1,000 miles of wall. We have to talk about it because we should be given credit for having taken this disaster where people were criminals, were coming in from all over the world and pouring into our country, the worst thing.
It's the worst thing that's ever happened. It was like an invasion. And we should be given, Maria, credit for it. So, I'm going to be talking about it. But I'm also going to be talking about we gave the voters the biggest tax cut in history, the biggest regulation cuts in history, the best economy in history.
And now what we're doing is we went, we took this path, we knocked the hell out of Iran. We stopped them from having -- they're not going to have a nuclear weapon regardless. By the way, I could leave tomorrow; they would never be able to have a nuclear weapon -- for years they wouldn't because their country is devastated.
They don't have a Navy, they don't have an Air Force, they don't have an airplane. They're all gone and the press does it write about it? The New York Times, you'd think -- if you read the New York Times, this fake, horrible newspaper, you would think they're doing well in the war. They have nothing left.
They're going to make a deal. We'll see what happens. We have to explain to the to the voters, so importantly, the great job that we've done, because there's no reason why the Republicans should be losing. These people, they'll open up the borders again, they'll have transgender for everybody, they'll have men in women's sports, they'll end no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for our seniors. They'll end it all. And if people hear that, I don't see how we lose the election.
Bartiromo: Final question on space, because Artemis II, what a success. Congratulations.
Trump: Yeah, it's great.
Bartiromo: Do you expect the United States will beat China in this race to the moon? And what do you want to say about the astronauts who circled the moon in Artemis II? Where's that going?
Trump: So, number one, they were great. I spoke to them as they were circling, right, just after they came out of the dark, that dark cavity. Great, they're great. I'm the one that started that program. NASA was closed, totally closed. There was grass growing on the runways. I went there, I was there in Florida, looked at -- got pictures of all of their facilities.
They had grass growing out of their cracked asphalt in Florida and elsewhere. And I said, you know, this is terrible, let's start it up. And we started it up and it gave great pride. Everybody watched that the other night, it was really something. Everybody, everybody I know watched it, they watch the landing, they watched the takeoff.
And it gives us pride and something very good will come out of it. But, you know, from a military standpoint, it's very helpful. And one of my greatest achievements, I think, will be the fact that I started Space Force because we were losing to Russia and China, and now we're way ahead of them.
Bartiromo: And we're going to beat China to the moon.
Trump: I think so. Look, we already did many years ago. You know, maybe they'll get lucky, they'll send a ship up or something. You know, they tried yesterday to send a ship, and it wasn't very successful to put it mildly. I think so. I don't like to put myself in that position. If they beat us, I'll say, oh, I said on Maria's show, you know.
But we're looking to have -- we have a very good guy, Jared, who, you know, he's doing a very good job as the head of NASA. Very proud of him. And I think we'll probably win, but I don't want to get into that because if they win, I don't want you saying, oh, Trump was wrong. Trump was wrong, what a terrible thing.
The fact is, we're way ahead in space, we're way ahead in the military, we have the greatest submarines in the world, we have the greatest military in the world. Nobody makes equipment like us, whether it's the Patriot or the Tomahawk. We have the best military equipment anywhere in the world and we're going to keep it that way.
Bartiromo: Mr. President, thank you.
Trump: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Bartiromo: Thank you so much.