Transcript - Interview: John Hook of Fox 10 Phoenix Interviews Donald Trump at the Border Wall - June 23, 2020 | Factba.se

John Hook

00:00:00 - 00:00:02 (3 sec)

OK. What does the wall represent to you?

Donald Trump

00:00:02 - 00:00:20 (18 sec)

What really represents a lot of work from day one. We've needed it. We're now up to 220 miles, which is tremendous, and we're in the Yuma section, but we have sections going all the way to the ocean. And it's a -- it's been a real achievement and we'll have -- we'll be at about 450 miles by the end of the year.

Donald Trump

00:00:20 - 00:00:29 (9 sec)

And it'll be completed very shortly after that. And it's had a tremendous impact on, uh, on stoppage of people coming into our country.

John Hook

00:00:29 - 00:00:37 (8 sec)

Now, your opponent said recently that he would not guarantee he'd continue this construction on the wall. He's saying that there are other priorities. We need to spend money on.

Donald Trump

00:00:37 - 00:00:56 (19 sec)

Well, he wants open borders. He wants people pouring into our country and he wants, you know, drugs and all the other problems. You'll never solve it without this. No, he'll -- he'll complete it. You'd have a revolution if they didn't do it. People are so happy with it. And this is a large piece, but wherever we have the wall, it just stops it dead.

Donald Trump

00:00:56 - 00:01:10 (14 sec)

You can't get over it. It stops it dead. So, uh, illegal immigration is a big problem. Open borders, a big problem. Crime comes in tremendous drugs, human trafficking. Uh, hopefully he will get the chance. I'm not sure he'd even know the difference.

John Hook

00:01:10 - 00:01:17 (7 sec)

Mr. President, I have to ask you. You've got a lot of Americans who are really worried about what's happening in this country right now.

Donald Trump

00:01:17 - 00:01:17 (1 sec)

John Hook

00:01:17 - 00:01:29 (11 sec)

A third of them think we're actually heading for civil war. They think the country is coming apart at the seams. What would you say to reassure Americans that this republic will continue to stand?

Donald Trump

00:01:29 - 00:01:48 (19 sec)

So I think we're doing really well. The jobs are back. We were doing unbelievably well until the pandemic. The virus came over from China and that really, we had to close our country. We saved millions of lives by doing it as you know, millions and millions of lives. And now we're putting our country back and it's getting -- it's going very quickly.

Donald Trump

00:01:48 - 00:02:08 (20 sec)

The jobs are up to a level that nobody's ever seen before. Two weeks ago, we had a jobs number, the best in history, the best that we've ever had. We had a retail sales number last week. That was un -- unbelievable, it's coming back very fast, coming back a lot faster than anybody thought possible. And I think you're going to see something very special.

Donald Trump

00:02:08 - 00:02:27 (19 sec)

So we built the strongest economy in history, once, that we had to close it in order to save potentially millions of lives, we did it, did a great job with it. The people did a great job with it. Now we're rebuilding the economy. The third quarter will be really great, which is coming up. The third quarter is going to be very, very good.

Donald Trump

00:02:27 - 00:02:29 (2 sec)

Next year is going to be one of the best years we've ever had.

John Hook

00:02:29 - 00:02:34 (5 sec)

You said early on that the country was not built to shut down.

Donald Trump

00:02:34 - 00:02:34 (0 sec)

John Hook

00:02:34 - 00:02:37 (2 sec)

That was your gut instinct early on.

Donald Trump

00:02:37 - 00:02:37 (0 sec)

John Hook

00:02:37 - 00:02:46 (9 sec)

My question is, were you right with that gut instinct? Did you let people like Dr. Fauci and others talk you into shutting down the country and should it have been done differently?

Donald Trump

00:02:46 - 00:03:09 (22 sec)

No, we did the right thing because as if we didn't do what we did and now we understand the disease also nobody's ever seen anything like this, certainly not since 1917, over a hundred years ago. So now we've done the right thing because we saved millions of lives. But now we opened the country and we'll have flames, we'll have fires a little bit and we'll put them out, but we did the absolute right thing.

Donald Trump

00:03:09 - 00:03:27 (18 sec)

Otherwise, we would have had it. if you look at Brazil, if you look at Sweden, if you look at other people that tried keeping it open, other countries, they have suffered just lives like nobody's ever seen before. So we're going to be at 115,000. That 115,000 could be two-and-a-half or 3 million lives. And it's all too many.

Donald Trump

00:03:27 - 00:03:48 (21 sec)

One is too many. As you know, one is too many. It should have never happened. China should have never allowed this to happen, but it happened all over the world, 188 countries all over the world, but we've done a real job. And now we're rebuilding our country. And again, our jobs numbers and our retail numbers, the best increase we've ever had.

John Hook

00:03:48 - 00:03:52 (4 sec)

Central argument for your reelection, what would it be?

Donald Trump

00:03:52 - 00:04:10 (18 sec)

I think just that I rebuilt the greatest economy ever, and I'm going to rebuild it again. So I built in a short period of time, the greatest economy we've ever seen, best job numbers, best unemployment numbers, best stock market numbers, and look at the stock market today. We're very close to hitting new records.

Donald Trump

00:04:10 - 00:04:22 (12 sec)

NASDAQ just hit a new record. So NASDAQ is now higher than the pre, than three months ago, I think we're going to have an economy that's every bit as good and maybe better for certain reasons. You were making inroads with the African-American --

Donald Trump

00:04:22 - 00:04:22 (0 sec)

John Hook

00:04:22 - 00:04:34 (12 sec)

-- voters through the economy. Would you consider going into Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, LA, places like that and taking your message right to the people of color.

Donald Trump

00:04:34 - 00:04:51 (17 sec)

And we have done that and we are doing that, and somebody's going to have to, because the Democrats, it doesn't work. Every one of the cities, you mentioned, every city that we're talking about that has problems is run by radical left Democrats. They're controlling Biden. You see what he's doing with energy.

Donald Trump

00:04:51 - 00:05:10 (19 sec)

He wants to close down energy. He wants to close down everything. Uh, there's no way he'd end a wall because the wall gives us good immigration, good immigration policy, but the radical left controls, Joe Biden, and that's a disaster. And every city where we have a disaster, you look at Seattle and state.

Donald Trump

00:05:10 - 00:05:17 (7 sec)

You look at Seattle, look at all these cities that are in trouble. It's all run by the Democrats. The Republicans are doing a great job.

John Hook

00:05:17 - 00:05:30 (13 sec)

One more, uh, Tillerson, these guys, Tillerson, Bolton, uh, your generals, they're -- they're not only kind of turned on you, but they're saying it's should not fit for office.

Donald Trump

00:05:30 - 00:05:31 (1 sec)

Well, they're really --

John Hook

00:05:31 - 00:05:36 (5 sec)

General Kelly, this -- How do you square that with Americans who might be concerned about this caliber of person?

Donald Trump

00:05:36 - 00:05:45 (9 sec)

No, they're not concerned. They see what happened. They see the job that we've done. These are people that would love to be back in the action. And I have no interest in having them back. Thank you very much.