President Donald Trump discussed his extraordinary political comeback and his deluge of executive orders while continuing to hammer old enemies Wednesday evening during his first Oval Office interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
The returning commander-in-chief, who survived an assassination attempt last year, is enjoying a bit of a honeymoon after a more convincing electoral victory last November. He has seen his favorability ratings go up while enjoying a Republican-controlled Congress ready to usher through his agenda.
Trump said that many of the challenges facing the U.S. are “solvable” but that it will take “time, effort and money, unfortunately.” He did not get into specifics.
“We can get our country back, but if we didn’t win this race, I really believe our country would have been lost forever,” he said.
During the hourlong interview, Trump focused as much of his energy on past grievances as he did his plans to move the country forward. He remained as aggressive as he was on the campaign trail, even as Hannity encouraged the president to be reflective on his journey back to the Oval Office.
The Fox News host peppered the president with questions on several issues. Among them: the federal role in helping with disasters; using troops to enforce the law at the U.S.-Mexico border; and the reason he pardoned supporters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol four years ago.
Here are the important moments from Wednesday’s conversation.
Former President Joe Biden, who left office with an abysmal 36% approval rating, and his out-of-power party remains one of Trump’s favorite targets.
Asked about what it felt like returning to the Oval Office, the president said it will be “a lot of work” reversing his Democratic rival’s tenure and that many things should not have happened during the Biden years.
“We wouldn’t have inflation, we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan disaster, we wouldn’t have Oct. 7 in Israel where so many people were killed and you wouldn’t have a Ukraine war going on,” Trump said.
Trump promised at his inaugural address that “national unity” would return. But much of this week has seen the returning president continue to pummel out-of-power foes. He called former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, a “crying lunatic.”
Trump said voters rejected the Democrats’ ideas because they were failing the country and that Democrats are only good at “cheating.”
Trump and Biden’s presidencies are glued together in various ways, including their controversial use of presidential pardons within hours of each other.
Biden exited the White House using a series of preemptive pardons, citing unspecified crimes due to fear of reprisals by the incoming Trump administration. Among those blessed with a clean slate were several members of Biden’s own family, such as his son Hunter Biden, who had been accused of influence peddling.
The use of preemptive pardons was something the former president told CNN he wouldn’t do back in December 2020, prompting Republicans and some Democrats to label his actions as hypocrisy.
“This guy went around giving everybody pardons,” Trump said.
Trump then suggested Biden made a mistake by not giving himself a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon,” he added. “And if you look at it, it all had to do with him.”
Hannity eventually brought up Trump extending pardons and clemency to roughly 1,600 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including top members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, two right-leaning militia groups.
Trump promised to pardon the rioters during the 2024 campaign, and the president described them in glowing terms while glossing over violence against law enforcement officers. He said that many were incarcerated for years and were mistreated. Trump repeated again, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen.
“And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote,” Trump said. “You should be allowed to protest.”
One subject that millions of Americans will be keen about is what the second Trump administration plans to do about TikTok, which Trump suggested is not as great of a national security threat as critics of the platform’s Chinese ownership make it sound.
“You’re dealing with a lot of young people. So is that important for China to be… spying like young people, young kids watching crazy videos?” Trump asked.
On his first day in office, Trump took executive action to save the app, which faced a ban in the U.S. after it defied bipartisan legislation to cut ties with Chinese parent company ByteDance. He gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve and set to work on an alternative arrangement.
Trump told Hannity that any electronic device made in China, from telephones to computers, could also be used to spy on Americans.
“You can say that about everything made in China. Look, we have our telephones made in China, for the most part. We have so many things made in China. So why don’t they mention that?” he said.
The U.S. has banned the sale and import of some communications equipment made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE for that reason.
He’s not a changed man, per se.
But Trump told Hannity the attempt on his life during a rally in Butler, Pa. last July, when a bullet grazed his ear, deepened his faith in God.
Trump also spoke about the assassination attempt during his inaugural address earlier this week, but reflected more Wednesday on how close he was to dying.
“I don’t think I’ve changed, but I think that has taken place, yeah,” he told Hannity of his faith. “Because when you look at, statistically, I should never be here.”
Trump suggested in the interview that he plans to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which assists states with responding to tornadoes, storms and other disasters.
The comment came while Hannity and Trump were discussing the Republican president’s approach to pushing through his legislative agenda. Trump said wildfires in California had changed his calculus.
“FEMA is a whole ‘nother discussion, because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,” he said. “But unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really, it gets in the way. And FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Trump said that if a state like Oklahoma has a tornado, they should fix it themselves with the help of federal funding. “FEMA is getting in the way of everything,” Trump said.
It was not clear what type of reforms Trump had in mind. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
