Transcript for Donald Trump Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #442

This is a transcript of Lex Fridman Podcast #442 with Donald Trump. The timestamps in the transcript are clickable links that take you directly to that point in the main video. Please note that the transcript is human generated, and may have errors. Here are some useful links:

Table of Contents

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Introduction

Lex Fridman (00:00:00) I don’t know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
Donald Trump (00:00:03) Yeah, they do. So I figure it’s all right to call them a communist. Yeah, they call me a lot worse than I call them.
Lex Fridman (00:00:08) A lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.
Donald Trump (00:00:15) I believe you have to fight fire with fire.
Lex Fridman (00:00:17) Politics is a dirty game.
Donald Trump (00:00:19) It is a dirty game. That’s certainly true.
Lex Fridman (00:00:21) How do you win at that game?
Donald Trump (00:00:24) They suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint.
Lex Fridman (00:00:35) I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms perhaps?
Donald Trump (00:00:41) First of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing.
Lex Fridman (00:00:53) The list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
Donald Trump (00:00:57) Yeah, it’s very interesting, isn’t it?
Lex Fridman (00:01:03) The following is a conversation with Donald Trump on this, the Lex Friedman Podcast.

Psychology of winning and losing

Donald Trump (00:01:09) They’re getting smaller and smaller.
Lex Fridman (00:01:11) They’re getting smaller.
Donald Trump (00:01:11) Right?
Lex Fridman (00:01:13) People do respect you more when you have a big camera for some reason.
Donald Trump (00:01:15) No, it’s cool. And about 20 guys that you pay a fortune to. Right?
Lex Fridman (00:01:18) All right. Okay. You said that you love winning. And you have won a lot in life, in real estate, in business, in TV and politics. So let me start with a mindset, a psychology question. What drives you more, the love of winning or the hate of losing?
Donald Trump (00:01:41) Maybe equally, maybe both. I don’t like losing and I do like winning. I’ve never thought of it as to which is more of a driving force.
Lex Fridman (00:01:51) You’ve been close with a lot of the greats in sport. You think about Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, you have people like Michael Jordan, who I think hate losing more than anybody. So what do you learn from those guys?
Donald Trump (00:02:06) Well, they do have something different. The great champions have something very different, the sports champions. And you have champions in other fields, but you see it more readily in sports. You see it over a weekend or you see it during a game. And you see that certain people stand out and they keep standing out. But it’s there for you, it doesn’t take a lifetime to find out that somebody was a winner or a loser. And so the sports thing is very interesting. But I play golf with different people and there’s a different mindset among champions. There’s really a very different mindset. There’s a different thought process.
(00:02:50) Talent wise, sometimes you can’t tell the difference in talent. But at the end of a weekend, they seem to win and it’s very interesting. As an example, Tiger or Jack Nicklaus, he was a phenomenal winner and he does have a different way about him and Tiger has a different way about him and Michael Jordan. There’s never one, you would think that there’d be one way. Arnold Palmer was the nicest guy you’d ever meet. And then you have some champions that aren’t really nice, they’re just focused on doing their job. So there’s not one type of person. But the one thing I would say that everybody seems to have in common is they’re very driven. They’re driven beyond.
Lex Fridman (00:03:39) They don’t seem to give up easily.
Donald Trump (00:03:41) They don’t give up. They don’t give up, but they do seem to be, they have a passion that’s maybe more than people that don’t do as well.

Politics is a dirty game

Lex Fridman (00:03:51) You’ve said that politics is a dirty game-
Donald Trump (00:03:54) Yeah.
Lex Fridman (00:03:54) … in the past.
Donald Trump (00:03:56) It is a dirty game. That’s certainly true.
Lex Fridman (00:03:59) So if it is a game, how do you win at that game?
Donald Trump (00:04:02) Well, you win at that game by getting the word out and by using sense. You have to have a feeling where it’s going. You also have to have a feeling of what’s right. You can’t necessarily just go what’s popular, you have to do what’s good for a country if you’re talking about countries. But you have to get the word out and you have to just continuously, like for instance, you have a great show, you have a great podcast, it’s very well watched. And I’m sitting here and I do this, a lot of people see it and I do other things and a lot of people see that. And I go traditional also, you have traditional television, which is getting a little bit older and maybe less significant, could be less significant, I don’t know. But it’s changing a lot.
(00:04:48) The whole plane of platform is changing a lot. It’s changed a lot in the last two, three years. But from a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they’re watching and you have to get on. I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate, they’re getting very big numbers. I did Spaces with Elon and they got numbers like nobody’s ever heard before. So you wouldn’t do that on radio, you wouldn’t do those numbers, no matter how good a show, you wouldn’t do those numbers on radio, you wouldn’t do on television.

Business vs politics

Lex Fridman (00:05:28) You’ve been successful in business, you’ve been successful in politics. What do you think is the difference between gaining success between the two different disparate worlds?
Donald Trump (00:05:37) Yeah, and they’re different, very different. I have a lot of people that are in business that are successful and they’d like to go over to politics and then you realize they can’t speak, they choke. It’s hard to make a speech in front of, let’s say you’re talking about a big audience, but I get very big audiences. And for many people it’s virtually impossible to get up and speak for an hour and a half and have nobody leave. It’s not an easy thing to do. And it’s an ability. But I have many people that are very, very successful in business, would love to do what I did. And yet, they can’t pull the trigger. And in many cases, I don’t think it would work. Almost for everybody, it’s not going to work. It’s a very tough thing to do. It’s a big transition.
(00:06:35) Now, if you talked about people in the business and politics going into business, likewise, that wouldn’t generally work out so well either. It’s different talents, it’s different. I have somebody that wants to go into politics so bad, but he’s got a little problem, he’s got stage fright. Now, he’s a total killer, but if he gets up onto a stage in front of people, he doesn’t do well, to put it mildly actually. He does badly.
Lex Fridman (00:07:03) So you have to be able to make hard decisions like you do in business, but also be able to captivate an audience.
Donald Trump (00:07:09) Look, if you’re a politician, you have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. There are a lot of people who can’t do that. I’ve seen it. They can’t even think about doing it and they don’t. There are many people in business right now, I could name them, but I don’t want to embarrass anybody, they’ve been talking about running for president for 15 years. And they’re very big in business, very well known actually, but it takes guts to run. For president, I can tell you it takes guts to run. It’s also a very dangerous profession if you want to know the truth, but dangerous in a different sense too. But it takes a lot of courage to run for president. It’s not easy. But you have and you know the same people as I do, there are a lot of people that would like to run for president that are very, very successful in business, but they don’t have the guts to do it and they have to give up a lot.

War in Ukraine

Lex Fridman (00:08:05) One of the great things about people from the business world is they’re often great deal makers and you’re a great deal maker and you’ve talked about the war in Ukraine and that you would be able to find a deal that both Putin and Zelenskyy would accept. What do you think that deal looks like?
Donald Trump (00:08:24) I think the deal and I wouldn’t talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal if I win as president-elect, I’ll have a deal made guaranteed. That’s a war that shouldn’t have happened. It’s terrible. Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country and she’s probably worse than him. That’s something that should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it’s a much tougher deal to make than it would’ve been before it started. Millions of people, I think the number’s going to be a lot higher when you see this all at some point to iron out, I think the numbers are going to be, the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think. When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place in Ukraine, I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher.
(00:09:12) They lie about the numbers. They try and keep them low. They knock down a building that’s two blocks long, these are big buildings and they say one person was mildly injured. No, no, a lot of people were killed. And there are people in those buildings and they have no chance. Once they start coming down, there’s no chance. So that’s a war that absolutely has to get done. And then you have Israel and then you have a lot of other places that are talking war. The world is a rough place right now and a lot of it’s because of the fact that America has no leadership. And I believe that she’ll be probably worse than Biden. I watched the interview the other night, it was just a softball interview.

Kamala Harris interview on CNN

Lex Fridman (00:09:59) So you would like to see her do more interviews, challenged more.
Donald Trump (00:10:03) I don’t know. I can’t believe the whole thing is happening. We had a man in there that should have never been in there. They kept him in a basement. They used COVID. They cheated, but they used COVID to cheat. Then they cheated without COVID too. But you had somebody in there and now we have a woman that is not, she couldn’t do an interview. This was a really soft interview. This is an interview where they’re giving her multiple choice questions, multiple guess, I call it multiple guess. And I don’t think she did well. I think she did very poorly.

Trump-Harris debate

Lex Fridman (00:10:36) How do you think you’ll do in the debate coming up, that’s in a few days?
Donald Trump (00:10:39) So I’ve done a lot of debating, only as a politician. I never debated. My first debate was the Rosie O’Donnell debate, the famous Rosie O’Donnell debate, the answer. But I’ve done well with debates. I became president. Then the second time, I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win, you can’t not when. And I got millions of more votes on that and lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation because inflation is just eating up our country, eating it up. So it’s too bad. But there are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. I’ll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East.
Lex Fridman (00:11:39) So maybe let’s talk about what it takes to negotiate with somebody like Putin or Zelenskyy. Do you think Putin would be willing to give up any of the regions that are already captured?
Donald Trump (00:11:49) I don’t know. I can tell you that all of this would’ve never happened and it would’ve been very easy because you don’t have, that question wouldn’t be asked. That’s a tougher question. Once that starts happening because he has taken over a lot of territory, now I guess they’re insurgents now too. Right? So it’s a little bit interesting that that’s happening and that it can happen. And it’s interesting that Putin has allowed that to happen. Look, that’s one that should have never started. We have to get it stopped. Ukraine is being demolished. They’re destroying a great culture that’s largely destroyed.
Lex Fridman (00:12:32) What do you think works better in those kinds of negotiations? Leverage of let’s say friendship, the carrot or the stick, friendship or sort of the threat of using the economic and military power?
Donald Trump (00:12:46) So it depends on who the person is. Everyone’s different. Negotiation is interesting because it depends on who the person is. And then you have to guess or know through certain knowledge, which is more important, the carrot or the stick. And with some people, it’s the stick. And with some people, it’s the carrot. I think the stick probably is generally more successful in that we’re talking about war. But the kind of destruction that we’re witnessing now, nobody’s ever seen. It’s a terrible thing. And we’re witnessing it all over. We’re witnessing it in all parts of the world and a lot of things are going to get started. Look what’s going on with China. Look at Japan, they’re starting to rearm now. They’re starting to rearm because China’s taken over certain islands and there’s a lot of danger in the war right now, in the world.

China

(00:13:46) And there’s a great possibility of World War III and we better get this thing done fast because five months with people like her and him, he’s checked out, he just goes to the beach and thinks he looks good in a bathing suit, which he doesn’t, he’s sort of checked out. Hey look, you can’t blame him. That was a coup, they took it over. They took over the presidential deal. The whole presidential thing was taken over in a coup. He had 14 million votes. He had no votes, not one. And nobody thought it was going to be her. Nobody wanted it to be her. She was a joke until six weeks ago when they said we’re going to have to, politically, they felt they had to pick her. And if they didn’t pick her, they thought there would be a problem. I don’t know if that’s right or not. I actually don’t think it’s right, but they thought it was right. And now, immediately the press comes to their aid.
Lex Fridman (00:14:48) If we can go back to China, on negotiation, how do we avoid war with China in the 21st century?
Donald Trump (00:14:56) Well, there are ways. Now here’s the problem. If I tell you how and I’d love to do it, but if I give you a plan, I have a very exacting plan how to stop Ukraine and Russia. And I have a certain idea, maybe not a plan, but an idea for China. Because we do, we’re in a lot of trouble. They’ll be in a lot of trouble too, but we’re in a lot of trouble. But I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them, they’ll be very unsuccessful. Part of it is surprise, right?
Lex Fridman (00:15:31) Right.
Donald Trump (00:15:31) But they won’t be able to help us much.
Lex Fridman (00:15:35) So you have a plan of what to say to Putin when you take office?
Donald Trump (00:15:39) Yeah, I know [inaudible 00:15:40]. No, I had a very good relationship with him and I had a good relationship with Zelenskyy too, but had a very good relationship with Putin.

2020 election

Lex Fridman (00:15:47) Tough topic, but important. You said lost by whisker. I’m an Independent, I have a lot of friends who are Independent, many of whom like your policies, like the fact that you’re a dealmaker, like the fact that you can end wars, but they are troubled by what happened in the 2020 election and statements about widespread fraud and this kind of stuff, fake election scheme. What can you say to those Independent voters to help them decide who to vote for?
Donald Trump (00:16:24) Right. I think the fraud was on the other side. I think the election was a fraud. And many people felt it was that and they wanted answers. And when you can’t challenge an election, you have to be able to challenge it, otherwise it’s going to get worse, not better. And there are lots of ways to solve this problem. Go to paper ballots. Do it easy way, I mean the paper ballots and you have voter ID and you have same day voting and you have proof of citizenship, which is very important because we have people voting that are not citizens. They just came in and they’re loading up the…
Donald Trump (00:17:00) They just came in and they’re loading up the payrolls, they’re loading up everything. They’re putting students in schools. They don’t speak a word of English, and they’re taking the seats of people that are citizens of our country. So look, we have the worst border in the history of the world. We have coming into our country right now, millions and millions of people at levels that nobody’s ever seen. I don’t believe any country’s ever seen it. And they would use sticks and stones not to make it happen, not to let it happen. We don’t do anything. And we have a person who was the border czar, who now said she wasn’t really the border czar, but she was, she was the border czar, but she was in charge of the border. And we have her and she’s saying very strongly, “Oh, I did such a good job.” She was horrible, horrible. The harm she’s done…
(00:17:56) But we have people coming in from other countries all over the world, not just South America, and they’re coming in from prisons and jails. They’re coming in from mental institutions and insane asylums and they’re street criminals right off the street. They take them and they’re being given to our country, drug dealers, human traffickers. We’re destroying our country. This is a sin what’s been allowed to take place over the last four years. We’re our country. And we’ll see how that all works out, but it’s not even believable. And now you see, you saw in Aurora, Colorado, a group of very tough young thugs from Venezuela taking over big areas including buildings. They’re taking over buildings. They have their big rifles, but they’re taking over buildings.
(00:18:52) We’re not going to let this happen. We’re not going to let them destroy a country. And in those countries,, crime is way down, they’re taking them out of their prisons, which is good because good for them. I do the same thing. By the way, if I ran one of those countries, any country in the world, I would make sure that America has every one of our prisoners, every one of our criminals would be here. I can’t believe they’re going so slowly, but some are. But they all are doing it and we can’t let that happen. They’re emptying out their prisons and their mental institutions into the United States of America. We can’t let that happen.
Lex Fridman (00:19:29) So a lot of people believe that there was some shady stuff that went on with the election, whether it’s media bias or big tech, but still the claim of widespread fraud is the thing that bothers people.
Donald Trump (00:19:42) Well, I don’t focus on the past. I focus on the future. I mean, I talk about how bad the economy is, how bad inflation is now, bad things like… Which is important. Afghanistan was, in my opinion, the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to our country. And because of that, I think Putin went in when he said how stupid we were. Putin went in, but it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. I really believe that. But we left 13 dead soldiers, think of it, 13 dead soldiers, many soldiers horrifically hurt, with arms and legs and everything else gone. We left hostages behind. We left Americans behind. We left military equipment, the likes of which nobody’s ever left behind before. Billions and billions of dollars of equipment. They’re now selling the equipment. They’re one of the largest arms dealers in the world.
(00:20:45) And very sad, very sad. And we were there for a long time. I was going to get out. We were getting ready to get out. Then we got interrupted by the election, but we would’ve been out with dignity and strength. We were having very little problem with the Taliban when I was there, because they knew it was going to be tough. I dealt with Abdul. Abdul was the leader, and we got along fine. He understood, but they were shooting, they were killing a lot of our people before I came down. And when I got there, I spoke to him, I said, “You can’t do it. Don’t do it anymore.” We went 18 months before this happened, this horrible day happened. We went 18 months and nobody was shot at or killed.
Lex Fridman (00:21:33) What do you think that was? The carrot or the stick, in that case, in Afghanistan?
Donald Trump (00:21:37) The stick, definitely the stick.
Lex Fridman (00:21:38) So the threat of military force.
Donald Trump (00:21:40) That was the stick, yeah. It doesn’t have to be, but that was the stick.
Lex Fridman (00:21:44) Well, let me just linger on the election a little bit more. For this election, it might be a close one. What can we do to avoid the insanity and division of the previous election, whether you win or lose?
Donald Trump (00:21:58) Well, I hope it’s not a close one. I mean, I don’t know how people can vote for somebody that has destroyed our country, the inflation, the bad economy. But to me, in a way, the worst is what they’ve allowed to happen at our border where they’ve allowed millions of people to come and hear from places that you don’t want to know about. And I can’t believe that there’s going to be a close election. We’re leading in the polls and it looks close, but I think in the end it’s not going to be a close election.
Lex Fridman (00:22:29) What do you think is the right way to solve the immigration crisis? Is mass deportation one of the solutions you would think about?
Donald Trump (00:22:35) Well, you’ve got to get the criminals out of here fast, right? The people from mental institutions, you got to get them back into their mental institution. No country can afford this. It’s just too much money. You look at what’s happening in New York and Chicago and LA and lots of places, and you take a look at what’s happening. There’s no country can afford this. We can’t afford it, and we’ve got to get the bad ones out immediately and the rest have to be worked on. It’s happened before. Dwight Eisenhower was sort of a moderate president, moderate type person, but he hated when he saw people pouring into the country, and they were nothing like. Now, I probably got elected in 2016, because of the border, and I told people what was happening and they understood it. And I won the election.
(00:23:25) And I won the election, I think because of the border. Our border is 25 times worse right now than it was in 2016. I had it fixed too. I had it the last week of the famous chart that I put up was exactly that, you know the chart. When I looked to the right, I said, “There’s the chart.” Bing. That was not a pleasant experience, but the chart that I put up said, and that was done by border patrol. That was the lowest number that we’ve ever had come into our country in recorded history and we have to get it back to that again. We will.

Project 2025

Lex Fridman (00:24:04) Let me ask you about Project 2025. So you’ve publicly said that you don’t have any direct connection to-
Donald Trump (00:24:09) Nothing. I know nothing about it. And they know that too. Democrats know that. And I purposely haven’t read it, because I want to say to you, I have no idea what it’s all about. It’s easier, than saying I read it and all of the things. No, I purposely haven’t read it and I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard about things that are in there that I don’t like, and there’s some things in there that everybody would like, but there are things that I don’t like at all. And I think it’s unfortunate that they put it out, but it doesn’t mean anything, because it has nothing to do with me. Project 25 has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Marijuana

Lex Fridman (00:24:52) You posted recently about marijuana and that you are okay with it being legalized, but it has to be done safely. Can you explain your policy there?
Donald Trump (00:25:03) Well, I just put out a paper and first of all, medical marijuana has been amazing. I’ve had friends and I’ve had others and doctors telling me that it’s been absolutely amazing, the medical marijuana. And we put out a statement that we can live with the marijuana. It’s got to be a certain age, got to be a certain age to buy it. It’s got to be done in a very concerted, lawful way. And the way they’re doing in Florida, I think is going to be actually good. It’s going to be very good, but it’s got to be done in a good way. It’s got to be done in a clean way. You go into some of these places, like in New York, it smells all marijuana. You’ve got to have a system where there’s control. And I think the way they’ve done it in Florida is very good.
Lex Fridman (00:25:59) Do you know anything about psychedelics? So I’m not a drug guy, but I recently did Ayahuasca and there’s a lot of people that speak to the health benefits and the spiritual benefits of these different psychedelics. I think we would probably have a better world if everybody in Congress took some mushrooms perhaps. Now I know you don’t. You stay away from all of that stuff. I know also veterans use it for dealing with PTSD and all that kind of stuff. So it’s great. And it’s interesting that you’re thinking about being more accepting of some of these drugs, which don’t just have a recreational purpose, but a medical purpose, a treatment purpose.
Donald Trump (00:26:44) So we put out a statement today, we’re going to put out another one probably next week, be more specific, although I think it’s pretty specific and we’ll see how that all goes. That’s a referendum coming up in some states, but it’s coming up and we’ll see how it does. I will say it’s been very hard to beat it. You take a look at the numbers, it’s been very hard to beat it. So I think it’ll generally pass, but you want to do it in a safe way.

Joe Rogan

Lex Fridman (00:27:14) Speaking of marijuana, let me ask you about my good friend, Joe Rogan. So you had a bit of tension with him. So when he said nice things about RFK Junior, I think you’ve said some not so nice things about Joe, and I think that was a bit unfair. And as a fan of Joe, I would love to see you do his podcast, because he is legit the greatest conversationalist in the world. So what’s the story behind the tension?
Donald Trump (00:27:42) Well, I don’t think there was any tension. And I’ve always liked him, but I don’t know him. I only see him when I walk into the arena with Dana and I shake his hand. I see him there and I think he’s good at what he does, but I don’t know about doing his podcast. I guess I’d do it, but I haven’t been asked and I’m not asking them. I’m not asking anybody.
Lex Fridman (00:28:09) It sounds like a challenging negotiation situation.
Donald Trump (00:28:11) No, it’s not really a negotiation. And he’s sort of a liberal guy, I guess, from what I understand. But he likes Kennedy. This was before I found this out, before Kennedy came in with us. He’s going to be great. Bobby’s going to be great. But I like that he likes Kennedy. I do too. He is a different kind of a guy, but he’s got some great things going. And I think he’s going to be beyond politics. I think he could be quite influential and taking care of some situations that you probably would agree should be taken care of.
Lex Fridman (00:28:45) The Joe Rogan post is an example. I would love to get your psychology about behind the tweets and the post on truth. Are you sometimes being intentionally provocative or are you just speaking your mind and are there times where you regret some of the truths you’ve posted?
Donald Trump (00:29:04) Yeah, I do, but not that often, honestly. I do a lot of re-posting. The ones you get in trouble with are the re-posts, because you find down deep, they’re into some group that you’re not supposed to be re-posting. You don’t even know if those groups are good, bad or indifferent. But the re-posts are the ones that really get you in trouble. When you do your own words, it’s sort of easier. But the re-posts go very, and if you’re going to check every single little symbol, and I don’t know, it’s worked out pretty well for me. I mean, I tell you, truth is very powerful, truth. And it’s my platform and it’s been very powerful, very, very powerful. Goes everywhere. I call it my typewriter. That’s actually my typewriter.
Lex Fridman (00:29:54) What are you doing usually when you’re composing a truth, are you chilling back on a couch?
Donald Trump (00:30:00) Couches, beds.
Lex Fridman (00:30:01) Okay.
Donald Trump (00:30:02) A lot of different things. I mean-
Lex Fridman (00:30:03) Late at night and just-
Donald Trump (00:30:06) I’d like to do something late at night. I’m not a huge sleeper, but whenever I do, I’m past three o’clock, they criticize you the next day. Trump was up. True thing. Okay. Trump was true thing at three o’clock in the morning and there should be no problem with that. And then when you think about time zones, how do they know that you are in a time zone, like an Eastern Zone, but every time I do it after 2:00 or three o’clock, it’s like, “Why is he doing that?” But it’s gotten… Truth has become a very successful platform, and I like doing it and it goes everywhere. As soon as I do it, it goes everywhere.

Division

Lex Fridman (00:30:54) The country seems more divided than ever. What can you do to help alleviate some of that division?
Donald Trump (00:30:59) Well, you can get rid of these two people. They’re terrible. They’re terrible. You don’t want to have them running this country. They’re not equipped to run it. Joe, just Joe, it’s a disaster. And Kamala, I think she’ll end up being worse than him. We’ll see. I think a lot’s now, the convention’s over with, and I see I’m leading and just about all the polls now. They had their little honeymoon period as they call it, and we’ll see how that all goes. Who knows?
Lex Fridman (00:31:31) From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you’re talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side.
Donald Trump (00:31:40) Yeah, I think you have to criticize though. I think they’re nasty. They came up with a story that I looked down and I called soldiers that died in World War I, suckers and losers. Okay. Now number one, who would say that? Number two, who would say it to military people? Nobody. It was a made-up story. It was just a made-up story. And they like to repeat it over again. They know it was made up. I have 26 witnesses that nothing was said. They don’t want to hear about that. She lied on McDonald’s. She said that she worked at McDonald’s. It’s not a big lie, but it’s a big lie. So they just went and they checked and unless she can show something, they don’t talk about the presses are going to follow up with it, but I’ll keep hammering it. But she never worked at McDonald’s. It was just sort of a cool thing to say, “Hey, I worked at McDonald’s.”
(00:32:41) But one of the worst was two days ago. I went to Arlington at the request of people that lost their children. They’ll always be children to those people. You understand that. That’s not politically incorrect thing to say. The mother comes up, “I lost my child,” but the child is a soldier. And lost the child, because of Biden and because of Kamala, just as though they had the gun in their hand, because it was so badly handled. It should have been done at Bagram, which is the big air base. It shouldn’t have been done at a small little airport right in the middle of town where people stormed it. It was a true disaster and they asked me if I’d come and celebrate with them. Three years. Three years. They died three years ago.
(00:33:37) And I said, “I’m going to try.” I got to know them, because I brought them here, actually. One night they almost all came here and they said, “I wonder if Trump will actually come and see us?” I heard they were here. I came. We stayed for four hours listening to music up on a deck, right upstairs. Beautiful. And they were great people. So they called me over the last couple of weeks and they said, “We’re going to have a reunion, our three-year reunion.”
Donald Trump (00:34:00) … couple of weeks and they said, “We’re going to have a reunion, our three year, would you be able to come?” And it was very hard for me to do it logistically, but I said, “I’ll get it done.” And I got there and we had a beautiful time. I didn’t run away. I didn’t just walk in, shake hands and walk out like people do. And I wasn’t looking at my watch like Joe Biden does. And it was amazing. I did it for them. I didn’t do it for me. I don’t need the publicity. I get more publicity probably than anybody. You would know that better than me, but I think maybe more than anybody, maybe more than anybody that’s ever lived, I don’t know. But I don’t think anyone could have anymore. Every time you turn on the television, there’s like nine different stories all on different topics in the world.
(00:34:48) As an example, you interview a lot of people, good people, successful people. Let’s see how you do with this interview versus them. I can tell you right now you’re going to get the highest numbers you’ve ever had by sometimes a factor of 10. But when a Gold Star Family asks me to come in and spend time with them, and then they said, sir… We did a ceremony. And then we went down to the graves, which was quite a distance away. They said, “Sir, would you come to the grave?” And then they said, when we were there… It’s very sad actually because these people shouldn’t have died. They shouldn’t have died. They died because of Biden and because of Kamala, they died because just like if they pulled the trigger. Now, I don’t know if that’s controversial to say, but I don’t think it is.
(00:35:47) Afghanistan was the most incompetently run operation I think I’ve ever seen. Military or otherwise, they’re incompetent. But the families asked me if I’d go, I did go. Then the families said, “Could we have a picture at the tombstone of my son?” And we did. Son or daughter. There was a daughter too. And I took numerous pictures with the families. I don’t know of anybody else that was in the pictures, but they were mostly families, I guess. That was it. And then I left. I spent a lot of time with them. Then I left and I get home that night and I get a call that the Biden administration with Kamala is accusing me of using Arlington for publicity. I was in the news. Just the opposite. Just the opposite. And actually, did you see, it just came out? The families actually put out a very strong statement defending me. They said, “We asked them to be there.”
Lex Fridman (00:36:44) Well, politicians and the media can play those games. And you’re right, your name gets a lot of views. You’re probably legit the most famous person in the world. But on the previous thing, in the spirit of unity, you used to be a Democrat. Setting the politicians aside, what do you respect most about people who lean left, who are Democrats themselves or of that persuasion, progressives liberals, and so on?
Donald Trump (00:37:15) Well, look, I respect the fact that everybody’s in there, and to a certain extent, life is what you do while you’re waiting to die, so you might as well do a good job. I think in terms of what’s happening now, I think we have a chance to save the country. This country’s going down and I called it with Venezuela, I called it with a lot of different countries. And this country’s going down if we don’t win this election, the election coming up on November 5th is the most important election this country’s ever had because if we don’t win it, I don’t know that there’ll be another election and it’s going to be a communist country or close.

Communism and fascism

Lex Fridman (00:38:01) There’s a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist.
Donald Trump (00:38:09) Well, she’s a Marxist.
Lex Fridman (00:38:11) Her father’s a Marxist.
Donald Trump (00:38:12) That’s right.
Lex Fridman (00:38:13) And she’s advocating-
Donald Trump (00:38:13) That’s a little unusual.
Lex Fridman (00:38:15) She’s advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism, let’s say. But there’s a lot of people that know the way government works and they say, well, none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It’s just being used during the campaign to… Groceries are too expensive. We need them cheaper, so let’s talk about price controls. And that’s never going to come to reality.
Donald Trump (00:38:39) It could come to reality. Look, she came out with price control. It’s been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it’s never worked once. It leads to communism, it leads to socialism, it leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation.
Lex Fridman (00:39:00) It’s just-
Donald Trump (00:39:01) A bad idea.
Lex Fridman (00:39:02) … whenever we use terms like communism for her, and I don’t know if you know this, but some people call you a fascist.
Donald Trump (00:39:08) Yeah, they do, so I figure it’s all right to call them a communist. They call me a lot worse than I call them.
Lex Fridman (00:39:14) They do indeed. It is just sometimes-
Donald Trump (00:39:16) It’s interesting though, they’ll call me something that’s terrible and then I’ll hit them back and they’ll say, “Isn’t it terrible what Trump said?” I said, “Well, wait a minute. They just called me…” I believe you have to fight fire with fire. I believe they’re very evil people. These are evil people. We have an enemy from the outside and we have an enemy from within. And in my opinion, the enemy from within are radical left lunatics. And I think you have to fight back.
Lex Fridman (00:39:44) Whenever there’s a lot of fighting fire with fire, it’s too easy to forget that there is a middle of America that’s moderate and sees the good in both sides and just likes one side more than the other in terms of policies. Like I said, there’s a lot of people that like your policies, that like your skill in being able to negotiate and end wars and they don’t see the impending destruction of America.
Donald Trump (00:40:15) We had no wars when I was president. That’s a big thing. Not since 78 years as that happened, but we had no wars When I was president, we defeated ISIS, but that was a war that was started that we weren’t anywhere near defeating. But think of it, I had no wars and Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary said, “The world has to have Trump back because everybody was afraid of Trump.” Now that’s what he said, so I’m not using that term, but I think they respected me. But he said, “China was afraid. Russia was afraid. Everybody was afraid.” And I don’t care what word they use, it probably that’s even a better word if you want to know the truth, but let’s use the word respect.
(00:40:56) They had respect for me. They had respect for the country. I ended the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the Russian pipeline. Nobody else could have done that. I ended it. It was done. Then Biden comes in and he approved it, so we are defending Germany in these other countries for peanuts compared to what it’s worth, and they’re paying the person we’re defending them against billions and billions of dollars for energy. I said, “How does that work?” And we had it out with them and it worked out good. And they paid hundreds of billions of dollars. Or you wouldn’t even have a NATO right now. You wouldn’t have NATO if it wasn’t for me.

Power

Lex Fridman (00:41:36) As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you’ll have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?
Donald Trump (00:41:56) No, I don’t think so. Look, I’ve been there for four years. I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president’s wife and put her in prison. She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. She’s so lucky. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me too. They wanted to see something, but… I could have done something very bad. I thought it looked so bad. Think of it, you have the President of the United States, and you also had Secretary of State, she was, but you’re going to put the president’s wife in prison. And yet when I got out, they have all these hoaxes.
(00:42:37) They’re all hoaxes, but they have all these dishonest hoaxes just like they did in the past with, Russia, Russia, Russia. That was a hoax. The 51 different agencies or agents, that was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax. There were so many hoaxes and scams. But I didn’t want to put her in jail, and I didn’t. And I explained it to people. They say, “Lock her up. Lock her up.” We won. I said, “We don’t want to put her in jail. We want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. You don’t bring the country together by putting her in jail.” But then when I got out, they went to work on me. It’s amazing. And they suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint.

UFOs & JFK

Lex Fridman (00:43:36) A lot of people are very interested in the footage of UFOs. The Pentagon has released a few videos, and there’s been anecdotal reports from fighter pilots, so a lot of people want to know, will you help push the Pentagon to release more footage, which a lot of people claim is available.
Donald Trump (00:43:57) Oh yeah, sure, I’ll do that. I would do that. I’d love to do that. I have to do that. But they also are pushing me on Kennedy, and I did release a lot, but I had people come to me and beg me not to do it. But I’ll be doing that very early on. Yeah, no. But I would do that.

Jeffrey Epstein

Lex Fridman (00:44:16) There’s a moment where you had some hesitation about Epstein releasing some of the documents on Epstein. Why the hesitation?
Donald Trump (00:44:23) I don’t think… I’m not involved. I never went to his island, fortunately, but a lot of people did.
Lex Fridman (00:44:33) Why do you think so many smart, powerful people allowed him to get so close?
Donald Trump (00:44:42) He was a good salesman. He was a hailing, hearty type of guy. He had some nice assets that he’d throw around like islands, but a lot of big people went to that island. But fortunately, I was not one of them.
Lex Fridman (00:44:59) It’s just very strange for a lot of people, that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public.
Donald Trump (00:45:08) It’s very interesting, isn’t it? It probably will be, by the way, probably.
Lex Fridman (00:45:13) If you’re able to, you’ll be-
Donald Trump (00:45:15) Yeah, I’d certainly take a look at it. Now, Kennedy’s interesting because it’s so many years ago. They do that for danger too, because it endangers certain people, et cetera, et cetera, so Kennedy is very different from the Epstein thing but I’d be inclined to do the Epstein. I’d have no problem with it.
Lex Fridman (00:45:36) That’s great to hear. What gives you strength when you’re getting attacked? You’re one of the most attacked people in the world.
Donald Trump (00:45:43) I think you can’t care that much. I know people that care so much about everything, like what people are saying, you can’t care too much because you end up choking.

Mortality and religion

Lex Fridman (00:45:55) One of the tragic things about life is that it ends. How often do you think about your death? Are you afraid of it?
Donald Trump (00:46:02) I have a friend who’s very, very successful, and he’s in his 80s, mid 80s, and he asked me that exact same question. I turned it around and I said, “Well, what about you?” He said, “I think about it every minute of every day.” And then a week later, he called me to tell me something. And he starts off the conversation by going, “Tick tock, tick tock.” This is dark person in a sense, but it is what it is. If you’re religious, you have I think a better feeling toward it. You’re supposed to go to heaven, ideally, not hell, but you’re supposed to go to heaven if you’re good. I think our country’s missing a lot of religion. I think it really was a much better place with religion. It was almost a guide. To a certain extent it was a guide. You want to be good to people. Without religion there are no guardrails. I’d love to see us get back to religion, more religion in this country.
Lex Fridman (00:47:09) Well, Mr. President, thank you for putting yourself out there, and thank you for talking today.
Donald Trump (00:47:13) Look, I love the country. I want to see the country be great, and we have a real chance at doing it, but it’s our last chance and I appreciate it very much.
Lex Fridman (00:47:22) Thank you.
Donald Trump (00:47:23) Thank you.

Lex AMA

Lex Fridman (00:47:25) Thanks for listening to this conversation with Donald Trump. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, as I’ve started doing here at the end of some episodes, let me make a few comments and answer a few questions. If you would like to submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfridman.com/ama or get in touch with me for whatever other reason at lexfridman.com/contact. I usually do this on a T-shirt, but I figured for this episode, I’ll keep my suit and tie on, so first, this might be a good moment to look back a bit. I’ve been doing this podcast for over six years, and I first and foremost have to say thank you. I’m truly grateful for the support and the love I’ve gotten along the way. It’s been, I would say, the most unlikely journey.
(00:48:16) And on most days, I barely feel like I know what I’m doing. But I wanted to talk a bit about how I approach these conversations. Now, each conversation is its own unique puzzle, so I can’t speak generally to how I approach these, but here it may be useful to describe how I approach conversations with world leaders, of which I hope to have many more and do a better job every time. I read a lot of history and I admire the historian perspective. As an example, I admire William Shirer, the author of many books on Hitler, including The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. He was there and lived through it and covered it objectively to the degree that one could. Academic historians, by the way, criticize him for being a poor historian because he editorialized a little too much. I think those same folks criticized Dan Carlin and his Hardcore History podcast.
(00:49:15) I respect their criticism, but I fundamentally disagree, so in these conversations with world leaders, I try to put on my historian hat. I think in the realm of truth and public discourse, there’s a spectrum between the ephemeral and the eternal. The outraged mob and clickbait journalists are often focused on the ephemeral, the current thing, the current viral shitstormer of mockery and derision. But when the battle of the day is done, most of it will be forgotten. A few true ideas will remain, and those the historian hopes to capture. Now, this is much easier said than done. It’s not just about having the right ideals and the integrity to stick by them. It’s not even just about having the actual skill of talking, which I still think I suck at, but let’s say it’s a work in progress. You also have to make the scheduling work and set up the entirety of the environment in a way that is conducive to such a conversation.
(00:50:19) This is hard, really hard with political and business leaders. They are usually super busy and in some cases super nervous because, well, they’ve been screwed over so many times with clickbait got you journalism, so to convince them and their team to talk for two, three, four, five hours is hard. And I do think a good conversation requires that kind of duration. And I’ve been thinking a lot about why. I don’t think it’s just about needing the actual time of three hours to cover all the content. I think the longer form with a hypothetical skilled conversationalist, relaxes things and allows people to go on tangents and to banter about the details because I-
Lex Fridman (00:51:00) … agents and to banter about the details, because I think it’s in the details that the beautiful complexity of the person is brought to light. Anyway, I look forward to talking to more world leaders and doing a better job every time as I said. I would love to do interviews with Kamala Harris and some other political figures on the left and right, including Tim Walz, AOC, Bernie, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary. And on the right, J.D. Vance, Vivek, George W. and so on. And on the topic of politics, let me say, as an immigrant, I love this country, the United States of America. I do believe it is the greatest nation on earth, and I’m grateful for the people on the left and the right who step into the arena of politics to fight for this country that I do believe they all love as well.
(00:51:52) I have reached out to Kamala Harris, but not many of the others. I probably should do a better job with that, but I’ve been doing most of this myself, all the reach out, scheduling, research prep, recording and so on. And on top of that, I very much have been suffering from imposter syndrome with a voice in my head constantly pointing out when I’m doing a shitty job. Plus a few folks graciously remind me on the internet, the very same sentiment of this aforementioned voice. All of this, while I have the option of just hiding away at MIT, programming robots and doing some cool AI research with a few grad students, or maybe joining an AI company or maybe starting my own, all these options make me truly happy. But like I said, on most days I barely know what I’m doing, so who knows what the future holds. Most importantly, I’m forever grateful for all of you for your patience and your support throughout this rollercoaster of the life I’ve been on. I love you all.
(00:52:51) Okay, now let me go on to some of the questions that people had. I was asked by a few people to comment on Pavel Durov’s arrest and on X being banned in Brazil. Let me first briefly comment on the Durov arrest. Basic facts, Pavel Durov is CEO of Telegram, which is a messenger app that has end-to-end encryption mode. It’s not on by default, and most people don’t use the end-to-end encryption, but some do. Pavel was arrested in France on a long list of charges related to “criminal activity” carried out on the Telegram platform, and for “providing unlicensed cryptology services.” I think Telegram is indeed used for criminal activity by a small minority of its users, for example, by terrorist groups to communicate. And I think we all agree that terrorism is bad.
(00:53:47) But here’s the problem. As the old saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. And there are many cases in which the world unilaterally agrees who the terrorists are, but there are other cases when governments, especially authoritarian inclined governments, tend to propagandize and just call whoever’s in the opposition, whoever opposes them, terrorists. There is some room for nuance here, but, to me at this time, it seems to obviously be a power grab by government wanting to have backdoor access into every platform so they can have censorship power against the opposition. I think generally governments should stay out of censoring or even pressuring social media platforms, and I think arresting a CEO of a tech company for the things said on the platform he built is just nuts. It has a chilling effect on him, on people working at Telegram and on people working at every social media company, and also people thinking of launching a new social media company.
(00:54:50) Same as the case of X being banned in Brazil. It’s, I think, a power grab by Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice in Brazil. He ordered X to block certain accounts that are spreading “misinformation.” Elon and X denied the request, then de Moraes threatened to arrest X representatives in Brazil, and in response to that X pulled the representatives out of Brazil obviously to protect them. And now X, having no representatives in Brazil, apparently violates the law. Based on this de Moraes banned X in Brazil. Once again, it’s an authoritarian figure seeking censorship power over the channels of communication.
(00:55:34) I understand that this is complicated because there are evil people in the world and part of the role of government is to protect us from those evil people. But as Benjamin Franklin said, “Those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s a trade-off, but I think in many places in the world, many governments have leaned too far away at this time from liberty.
(00:56:02) Okay, next up I got a question on AI, which I emotionally connected with. I’ll condense it as follows. “Hello, Lex. I’m a programmer and I have a deep fear of slipping into irrelevance because I am worried that AI will soon exceed my programming skills.”
(00:56:23) Let me first say that I relate to your fear. It’s scary to have a thing that gives you a career and gives you meaning to be taken away. For me, programming is a passion, and if not for this podcast, it would probably at least in part be my profession so I get an uncomfortable feeling every time, Claude, the LLM I use for coding at this time just writes a lot of excellent approximately correct code. I think you can make a good case that it already exceeds the skill of many programmers, at least in the same way that the collective intelligence of stack overflow exceeds the skill of many individual programmers, but in many ways it still does not. But I think eventually more and more the task, the professional programming will be one of writing natural language prompts. I think the right thing to do, and what I’m at least doing is to ride the wave of the ever improving code generating LLMs and keep transforming myself into a big picture designer versus low-level tinkerer. What I’m doing and what I recommend you do is continually switch to whatever state-of-the-art tool is for generating code. For me, currently I recently switched from VS Code to Cursor, and before that it was Emacs to VS Code switch. Cursor is this editor that’s based on VS Code that leans heavily on LLMs and integrates the co-generation really nicely into the editing process. It makes it super easy to continually use the LLMs. What I would advise and what I’m trying to do myself is to learn how to use it and to master its co-generation capabilities. I, personally, try to now allocate a significant amount of time to designing with natural language first versus writing code from scratch, so using my understanding of programming to edit the code that’s generated by the LLM versus writing it from scratch and then using the LLM to generate small parts of the code. I see it as a skill that I should develop in parallel to my programming skill.
(00:58:34) I think this applies to many other careers too. Don’t compete with AI for your job, learn to use the AI to do that job better. But yes, it is scary in some deep human level, the threat of being replaced. But at least I think we’ll be okay.
(00:58:55) All right, next up, I got a very nice audio message and question from a gentleman who is 27 and feeling a lot of anxiety about the future. Just recently he graduated with a bachelor’s degree and he’s thinking about going to grad school for biomedical engineering, but there is a lot of anxiety. He mentioned anxiety many times in the message. It took him an extra while to get his degree, so he mentioned he would be 32 by the time he’s done with his PhD, so it’s a big investment. But he said in his heart he feels like he’s a scientist. I think that’s the most important part of his message, of your message. By the way, I’ll figure out how to best include audio and video messages in future episodes.
(00:59:37) Now onto the question. Thank you for telling me your story and for submitting the question. My own life story is similar to yours. I went to Drexel University for my bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees, and I took a while just as you’re doing. I did a lot of non-standard things that weren’t any good for some hypothetical career I’m supposed to have. I trained and competed in Judo and Jiu Jitsu for my entire 20s, got a black belt from it. I wrote a lot, including a lot of really crappy poetry. I read a large amount of non-technical books, history, philosophy, and literature. I took courses on literature and philosophy that weren’t at all required for my computer science and electrical engineering degrees, like a course on James Joyce. I played guitar in bars around town. I took a lot of technical classes, many, for example, on theoretical computer science that were way more than were needed for the degree. I did a lot of research and I coded up a bunch of projects that didn’t directly contribute to my dissertation. It was pure curiosity and the joy of exploring.
(01:00:54) Like you, I took the long way home, as they say, and I regret none of it. Throughout that, people around me and even people who love me wanted me to hurry up and to focus, especially because I had very little money, and so I had a sense like time was running out for me to take the needed steps towards a reasonable career. And just like you, I was filled with anxiety and I still am filled with anxiety to this day, but I think the right thing to do is not to run away from the anxiety, but to lean into it and channel it into pursuing with everything you got, the things you’re passionate about.
(01:01:36) As you said, very importantly, in your heart you know you’re a scientist, so that’s it. You know exactly what to do. Pursue the desire to be a scientist with everything you got. Get to a good grad school, find a good advisor and do epic shit with them. And it may turn out in the end that your life will have unexpected chapters, but as long as you’re chasing dreams and goals with absolute unwavering dedication, good stuff will come of it. And also try your best to be a good person. This might be a good place to read the words If by Roger Kipling that I often return to when I feel lost and I’m looking for guidance on how to be a better man.
(01:02:18) “If you can keep your head when all about your losing theirs and blaming it on you. If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too. If you can wait and not be tired by waiting or being lied about, don’t deal in lies or being hated, don’t give weight to hating and yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise. If you can dream and not make dreams your master. If you can think and not make thoughts your aim. If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same. If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools. If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss. If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they’re gone and so hold on when there’s nothing in you except the will, which says to them, hold on. If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue or walk with kings nor lose the common touch. If neither foes, nor loving friends can hurt you. If all men count with you, but none too much. If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run, yours is the earth and everything that’s in it. And which is more, you’ll be a man, my son.”
(01:04:05) Thank you for listening and see you next time.