Transcript - Interview: Tim Boyum of Spectrum News 1 Raleigh Interviews Donald Trump - August 24, 2020

Tim Boyum

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

Mr. President, again, welcome back. Thank you for some time. It's obviously a very big week for you. You were talking to delegates earlier today. There are reports that you're going to make an appearance each night this week. Is that true and can you give us any insight what that might look like?

Donald Trump

00:00:13 - 00:00:35 (22 sec)

Well, we may do some clips each night, but the big night is going to be Thursday night, but we'll be doing some clips with the hostages that we brought home, many hostages, over 50. We brought them home and I'm so happy about it. One of the -- one of the many things I'm actually happy about. And so we have some clips, but we'll be doing in and out, but not too much. The big night is really Thursday night.

Tim Boyum

00:00:35 - 00:00:38 (4 sec)

Speaking of that, what type of role are you playing in -- in crafting this speech?

Donald Trump

00:00:38 - 00:00:58 (19 sec)

Well, that's a big role, I will say. On that one, I'm involved very much, and hopefully you'll like it. I gave a little bit of a speech today, when we accepted very -- very nice numbers. You saw the numbers coming in. So I did something this morning which covered a lot of territory, actually. But we look forward to it. Thursday night, it's going to be exciting.

Tim Boyum

00:00:58 - 00:01:10 (12 sec)

You're here today talking with farmers and those that benefit from this as well. Farmers are struggling in a lot of parts of the country. A lot of it is supply chain issues. Does anything more need to be done to help farmers in North Carolina across the country?

Donald Trump

00:01:10 - 00:01:28 (18 sec)

Well, we are. As the pandemic moves its way up, because if you look at Florida and the different places, Arizona, it's really doing, you know, on the way down, and as it moves out, the farmers are doing better and better. But we've opened programs, like this program, and it's from the farmers to the people that want to eat, that have to eat.

Donald Trump

00:01:28 - 00:01:54 (26 sec)

And it was so obvious. And I looked at it. I said: "You have hungry people here. You have farmers here that had too much," in terms of their product, and we moved it over to here. Everybody got helped. The farmers did well, and the people are eating great, great, beautiful, clean food. So it really worked out very well, and the farmers were just telling us how incredible a program it's been, but also for the people that were hungry. So we're very proud of it.

Tim Boyum

00:01:54 - 00:02:12 (18 sec)

Back to the issues of the -- the election, and you've made a distinction between universal mail-in voting and absentee mail-in voting. In North Carolina, we already have more absentee requests than we had an all of 2016, but just 15% of those are Republicans. Are you concerned that there might be confusion among Republican voters about what you support and don't?

Donald Trump

00:02:12 - 00:02:32 (21 sec)

Well, I'm concerned there's just confusion. I'm concerned that it's just not a fair situation, because they're mailing out -- forget about absentee, and absentee we like, but forget about absentee, when you look at the fact that they're going to be mailing out 80 million ballots to people that haven't even asked for them, and people are going to get ballots they don't even know -- number one, are they the right people?

Donald Trump

00:02:32 - 00:02:53 (20 sec)

Is it a Republican area, a Democrat area? Who's getting the ballots? And if you look at five, six, seven different occasions over the last month, it's fraught with -- with error and fraud and problems. And now they're talking about 80 million ballots. It's a crazy thing. They are -- it's not -- It's not going to work out well.

Tim Boyum

00:02:53 - 00:03:03 (10 sec)

What specific evidence of the fraud do we have? Because some, especially on the other side of the aisle, will say the only fraud there's been with absentee voting has been, in states like North Carolina, the Ninth District.

Donald Trump

00:03:03 - 00:03:22 (19 sec)

Well, if you look at the -- just take a look at the numbers, take a look at New York, Carolyn Maloney. It was a disaster. They mailed out ballots and it was a disaster. They don't know what they're going to do. They're -- so many of them are bad. Look at Patterson, New Jersey. I think 21% of the ballots are no good.

Donald Trump

00:03:22 - 00:03:39 (17 sec)

They have no idea how to count them. Virginia, the same thing, and now, many other places. Now, you're talking about on a whole nation, the whole nation is going to be getting -- I discussed it really at great detail this morning in North Carolina, in Charlotte. But, if you look at what's happening, it's a disgrace.

Donald Trump

00:03:39 - 00:03:55 (17 sec)

It's a disaster. It -- it can't work out well because there's so many areas -- even when you have a very small number of votes in a small area, they're all being challenged. I mean, look, absentee is good. The best thing is go to the voter booth and vote.

Tim Boyum

00:03:55 - 00:04:08 (13 sec)

One last question, because I know your time is precious. I appreciate it. Over the weekend, you criticized, sort of the FDA, for potentially delaying whether it's a vaccine or therapeutic. Do we have evidence of that or is that a gut feeling that you have?

Donald Trump

00:04:08 - 00:04:25 (17 sec)

Well, I think there's some evidence and I think it's a big gut feeling, a nd in the meantime, we got what we wanted last night with the convalescent plasma, and that was approved and that has a tremendous impact on people, positive impact on people. And we have Remdesivir and I think we're going to have vaccines very, very soon.

Donald Trump

00:04:25 - 00:04:32 (7 sec)

It's going to be very soon. We're way ahead of, years ahead of what some other administration would have done. Years ahead. I think we'll have the vaccines very soon.

Donald Trump

00:04:32 - 00:04:54 (22 sec)

[Note: Audio ends, via lip reading] Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. [Unclear] Thank you. Great job. Thank you very much. Thank you.