Transcript - Interview: Joe St. George of Scripps Television Interviews Donald Trump - June 22, 2020 | Factba.se

Joe St. George

00:00:00 - 00:00:04 (4 sec)

Mr. President, thanks for taking a few moments to ask --

Donald Trump

00:00:04 - 00:00:04 (1 sec)

Joe St. George

00:00:04 - 00:00:12 (8 sec)

-- answer a few of our questions. I want to start with the coronavirus. I watched the rally in Tulsa, you told your supporters how you closed borders, created PPE --

Donald Trump

00:00:12 - 00:00:13 (0 sec)

Joe St. George

00:00:13 - 00:00:25 (13 sec)

-- but sir, there was no physical distancing inside that event. You're going to Arizona tomorrow, an indoor church for a rally with young people, thousands of young people. Are you potentially putting the lives of Americans at risk by continuing to hold these indoor events? Cases in Arizona are spiking, sir.

Donald Trump

00:00:25 - 00:00:39 (14 sec)

Yeah, no, I don't think so. We're just -- I'm making a speech tomorrow for a group. That's a very, very good group, young people, and I don't know how they have it set up, but I'm going to Arizona. It's a great place. Great state.

Joe St. George

00:00:39 - 00:00:41 (2 sec)

Not worried at all then.

Donald Trump

00:00:41 - 00:00:46 (5 sec)

I'm not worried about it. No, not at all. We watch it. We're very careful.

Joe St. George

00:00:46 - 00:00:58 (12 sec)

I have a lot of viewers in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, who are still struggling economically, sir. They spent all of that first stimulus check. Are you going to get them a second stimulus check`?

Donald Trump

00:00:58 - 00:01:01 (3 sec)

Yeah, we are. We are, look, we had this --

Joe St. George

00:01:01 - 00:01:02 (1 sec)

When? When are you gonna get it?

Donald Trump

00:01:02 - 00:01:19 (18 sec)

We had this going better than anybody's ever seen before. We had the best job numbers, the best economics, the best economy we've ever had. And then we had the virus come in from China and now we're rebuilding it again. We will be doing another stimulus package. It will be very good. It will be very generous.

Joe St. George

00:01:19 - 00:01:22 (3 sec)

How much? How much? How much? People wanna know

Donald Trump

00:01:22 - 00:01:25 (3 sec)

You'll find out about it. And you'll find that.

Joe St. George

00:01:25 - 00:01:27 (2 sec)

When are you going to do it? When are you gonna announce it?

Donald Trump

00:01:27 - 00:01:34 (7 sec)

Uh, I think over the next, uh, I think it's going to be bipartisan. I think it's going to be over the next couple of weeks, probably.

Joe St. George

00:01:34 - 00:01:44 (10 sec)

On Saturday night, you said that you told your staff to slow the testing down to improve the numbers. Does that mean someone watching this right now when their local news is not going to get a test because you asked your staff?

Donald Trump

00:01:44 - 00:02:05 (21 sec)

We do more testing than any country in the world by far, 25 million tests. Other countries do 1 million. Every time you do a test, as you do more tests that shows more and more cases. So we're so far advanced, both in terms of the quality and the amount. And we're doing all these tests and it shows cases if other countries aren't doing, or if we did slow it down, we wouldn't show nearly as many cases.

Donald Trump

00:02:05 - 00:02:16 (11 sec)

You're showing people that are asymptomatic. You're showing people that have very little problem. You're showing young people that don't have a problem, but we're doing so much testing 25 million tests. Nobody thought that was possible.

Joe St. George

00:02:16 - 00:02:17 (1 sec)

But did you asked to slow it down?

Donald Trump

00:02:17 - 00:02:39 (22 sec)

Uh, if it did slow down, frankly, I think we're way ahead of ourselves. If you want to know the truth. We've done too good a job. Because every time we go out with 25 million tests, you're going to find more people. So then they say, oh, uh, we have more cases in the United States. The reason we have more cases because we do more testing than any other country by far, by probably 20 million people.

Donald Trump

00:02:39 - 00:02:55 (16 sec)

So when we have more cases, you look at some of these countries that don't even report. You think China's reporting their numbers. Do you think that other countries, I won't mention names, are reporting that numbers? We are so far advanced in testing and in some ways that hurts us.

Joe St. George

00:02:55 - 00:03:01 (6 sec)

How many times do you want to debate Joe Biden? We've heard you want to go more than three times.

Donald Trump

00:03:01 - 00:03:19 (18 sec)

Uh, I'll do whatever I'm supposed to do. I don't think he wants to debate at all. I've seen that, uh, he wants to try and blame COVID for that too. He's not getting out of his basement. He's got a, you know, basement deal going. And when people see what's happened to Joe, uh, he wasn't good at primetime and now we'll see what happens.

Joe St. George

00:03:19 - 00:03:35 (16 sec)

Respectfully, sir, I covered politics in Colorado for five years. This morning, you tweeted about how mail-in ballots will be -- will be fraudulent, but I never did a story or heard your friend, Senator Cory Gardner, say that mail-in ballots are fraudulent. People in Colorado have been voting -- voting by mail for years, sir.

Joe St. George

00:03:35 - 00:03:36 (1 sec)

Any specific evidence?

Donald Trump

00:03:36 - 00:03:36 (0 sec)

Joe St. George

00:03:36 - 00:03:39 (2 sec)

Where's the specific evidence that there is --- there is --

Donald Trump

00:03:39 - 00:03:42 (3 sec)

There are thousands of cases all over, uh, thousands.

Joe St. George

00:03:42 - 00:03:43 (1 sec)

Donald Trump

00:03:43 - 00:03:51 (8 sec)

I don't like the system and I did pretty well in Colorado could have won Colorado, but, uh, I could have won. I almost, uh,

Joe St. George

00:03:51 - 00:03:53 (2 sec)

Do you blame mail-in ballots, sir?

Donald Trump

00:03:53 - 00:04:11 (18 sec)

Uh, I can't tell you what it is. I thought I would have one Colorado, frankly. I love Colorado and the people like me and we have a lot of the similar values. Uh, we do a lot of economic development there. A lot of things are planned. No, I don't like mail-in ballots. I don't think it's good for Colorado either.

Donald Trump

00:04:11 - 00:04:31 (20 sec)

I don't know. Did the -- did they find anything in Colorado? I can tell you this. There are thousands of cases all over the -- One -- An example, an example, all over the country you have thousands of cases. A friend of mine gets a ballot, his son, unfortunately, passed away seven years ago. He gets a ballot for his son to vote.

Donald Trump

00:04:31 - 00:04:40 (10 sec)

That's one case, but there are thousands and thousands of cases. The other thing is with mail-in ballots, people can forge them. Foreign countries can print them. They get the same paper the same press --

Joe St. George

00:04:40 - 00:04:43 (3 sec)

Why don't you order them to have Americans print the ballot, sir?

Donald Trump

00:04:43 - 00:05:08 (25 sec)

Uh, I'm not ordering anything. I'm just, uh, we shouldn't have mail-in ballots. You should have certain things. If you can't be at a location like I'm here. And I can't vote in Florida, I'm at the White House. So you do something where that's taken care of. And that works out fine. But in California, they sent tens of millions of slips out, of balance out.

Donald Trump

00:05:08 - 00:05:29 (21 sec)

They put them in mailboxes, people take them, they take them from the mailman and they print them. They fraudulently print them. It's a very bad system. It's going to lead to a tremendous fraud and we're trying to stop it. Mail-in ballots are a disaster. And I'm sure they're not good in Colorado too.

Joe St. George

00:05:29 - 00:05:31 (2 sec)

You're gonna make any changes to your campaign?

Donald Trump

00:05:31 - 00:05:35 (4 sec)

Uh, we're doing, I think, very well. We just started.

Joe St. George

00:05:35 - 00:05:39 (4 sec)

So you still trust your campaign manager?

Donald Trump

00:05:39 - 00:05:49 (10 sec)

I trust everybody. Yeah. I trust everybody. We're doing very well. I had a lot of the same people on the first campaign.