Interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News

PIRRO: Mr. President, thanks so much for doing this. Joe Biden has indicated after the Woodward information came out that your handling of the coronavirus and that situation was not only despicable but it's almost criminal. What do you say to Joe Biden?

THE PRESIDENT: Well I think a statement like that is criminal because we did a much better job than he could ever have done. As you know he was months later before he even thought the ban was a good thing and ultimately he had to apologize for what he did. We would have lost hundreds of thousands of lives and what I said to Woodward was actually good. I said calm, we need calm. We don't need panic. You want me to jump up and down and start screaming, is everyone going to die, is everyone going to … That's not what leadership is about. I'm a cheerleader for the country. We need calm. That's all I've said, and by the way, that was done after, that was done after I had already banned China –

PIRRO: Right.

THE PRESIDENT: From coming into the country. So I took big steps.

PIRRO: That was in February. You did the ban January 31.

THE PRESIDENT: So Jeanine, I took tremendous steps, everybody knew how I feel, otherwise I wouldn't be banning China and then shortly thereafter I banned Europe. We saved hundreds of thousands of lives with each one of those bans and saved probably two or two and a half million lives by doing what we did early.

PIRRO: So you say that your timing was good but let me ask you about Bob Woodward's timing. He did this interview with you on February 7 where you talked about how dangerous the virus was and yet he waited until September, seven months later, to announce to the American public how dangerous you said it was. Was his timing good?

THE PRESIDENT: Look, he is an opportunist and not a bad guy to be honest, he's doing his thing. His first book I didn't have anything to do with it and he wrote things that were false and untrue and I could have straightened it out and I said, "Let me do," I took quite a few phone calls, 16 phone calls or something like that and we had some good conversations, not long, but good conversations. I don't even know if the book is good or bad. I can tell you that what this says is that I said don't panic, we don't want panic. The press will make everything look bad because it's fake, the fake news, most of it. I'd say 85% unfortunately, that's the number we're up to. But I discussed with him lots of different things. I think that they were very good discussions. We'll see how it comes out but on this subject if you look, and he's actually being [inaudible] because if he thought it was wrong, then he should have reported it early. If lives were going to be lost, he should have reported it early. The truth is he didn't think there was anything wrong with it and I think that he thought it was surprising that the press even picked it up. It's fake news. It's all fake news.

PIRRO: Well in fact when he called you in March a month later you said to him, "I didn't want to cause panic," and that's precisely why I as a leader didn't go out just say everyone's going to die.

THE PRESIDENT: Well go out and look at the great leaders of the world. Winston Churchill stood on the rooftops in London, very calm, making speeches. Winston Churchill. You want calmness. You don't want to somebody going to be jumping up and down. I could do that too. I could jump up and down, say, "Oh, this is terrible. This is terrible." We want strength, we want leadership and we don't want panic.

PIRRO: What about the vaccine itself? Now Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the Gallup survey that they just did says that the acceptance of the vaccine is pretty much going along political lines. The Democrats don't want to accept it because they don't trust it because it's coming out of your administration.

THE PRESIDENT: They don't want it because they think it's going to make me look good and it wins the election for me but we're very close to a vaccine. We also have already come out with therapeutics. If you look at remdesivir and others, the plasma, you take a look at the things that we've come out with already and the number, we're 85% better in terms of fatalities. You look at the kind of numbers, I don't know if you've been seeing this but we're really rounding the corner and this is actually without anything further than we already have and we have some very good things out there already in terms of … I would say in terms of … You can't use the word cure yet but pretty close to a cure. You're going to be pretty close to a cure. The vaccine itself, I mean it could come out in October, but whether it's October, November, December, it's going to come out very soon. We have great companies that are very advanced and the results are going to be very good.

PIRRO: Well the numbers, you're correct, the numbers are going down, and there's a question as to whether or not the lockdown works, that maybe people need to get outside and if the coronavirus cases are dropping and Joe Biden now is coming out and saying, "On the advice of the scientists I would shut it all down again." How do you think that's going to work for him?

THE PRESIDENT: Well it would be a disaster and we're setting records on job production. We're 10.4 million for the last four months. Nobody's ever seen numbers like this, we're setting records by millions and millions of jobs. The country's coming back, it's a super V, it's beyond a V, it's a super V, retail sales are beyond any number they were ever at. I mean think of it, we're doing numbers now as we're rounding I think the final turn, and that's with, without, it doesn't matter. With or without. Having the vaccine is great, it's going to happen very soon. Could happen in October, it could very well happen October but we're rounding the turn on the virus. They have to open up. It's only the Democrats that are closed and in my opinion they're closed for political reasons. They have North Carolina, you have Michigan, you have a couple of other states that are …

New York, I mean, look at New York, what they're doing in New York, that poor city with the restaurants. You can't go to a restaurant. It's like a ghost town. What they've done to New York and people are leaving is disgraceful between Cuomo and DeBlasio. That combination, I've never seen anything like it in my life. Coming from New York, it's a very sad thing to witness, but we have to open up our states, totally open them. They're keeping them closed because they want on November 3, they want to have the numbers as bad as possible. Based on the numbers that you're seeing it's not even affecting this but probably it would be better if these states were open. Forget about numbers though. The people that are inside those lockdowns, they're suffering between depression, losing their jobs, drugs, alcohol, all of the different things that are happening to those people. That's causing much more damage than the virus itself.

PIRRO: Well what's interesting, you mentioned North Carolina. Voting has already started in North Carolina. They're on lockdown. How do you think that impacts people who want to vote for you?

THE PRESIDENT: Well look, I'd like people to go out and vote but if they want to sign something … You have solicited and unsolicited ballots –

PIRRO: Right. Mail-in. Yep.

THE PRESIDENT: In the country. They're going to send out 80 million unsolicited. In other words people that don't even know what a ballot is, all of a sudden, here comes a ballot. Now we don't even know if the people are going to get it. That's my problem. Supposing they're not sending them to Republican neighborhoods. Supposing they're not sending them to wherever. Or supposing the people aren't giving them back, or they go out and they harvest them. Somebody … It could be either way, but the Democrats seem to do that. I mean they played that game for a long time.

PIRRO: Yeah, I've prosecuted those cases. So I'm familiar with it.

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you might have to prosecute a lot more. The fact is they're playing very dirty. 80 million ballots. We never had any number like that, anywhere close to that, and you're going to see a mess on Election Night that's going to be … It's going to be legendary, and all they have to do is say, "Go out and vote," or request a ballot. Get what's called a solicited ballot or absentee, a lot of people use the word absentee. Get an absentee ballot where you request it, it comes to you, you vote and you send it back. That's different, but they're just sending out all over, they're sending out 80 million ballots.

PIRRO: Well they're generic and a lot of people don't know what to do with them, a lot of people have moved, a lot of people have died, the registration rolls, a lot of them haven't been purged, it's a whole problem.

THE PRESIDENT: How about signatures? They don't even want to have signatures verified.

PIRRO: They're not confirming. Right. [inaudible]

THE PRESIDENT: They don't want to have signatures verified. Where are they sending them? Who are they sending them to? Who's sending them back? Who's sending them back? It's a very … It's so unconstitutional, it's so dishonest, and you have states that can't even do small elections that way.

PIRRO: So what can you do about it?

THE PRESIDENT: Well we're in courts, in many, many courts right now and hopefully the courts are going to decide because if they don't you're going to have one hell of a mess on Election Night.

PIRRO: So you talked about Election Night. I want to talk about Election Night also but it brings me to the issue of law and order and you, when you ran in 2016, you were the law and order candidate. It's almost prescient to think that four years later, that is one of the main issues. So we've got this anarchy going on in the streets, we've got towns and states run by Democrat governors and mayors who are refusing to allow the National Guard to come in. There are people in those cities and states who want order to come in, but you can't go in unless they request your help.

THE PRESIDENT: That's right. Every problem.

PIRRO: What are you going to do … Let's say there are threats, they say that they're going to threaten riots if they lose on Election Night, assuming we get a winner on Election Night. What are you going to do?

THE PRESIDENT: We'll put them down very quickly if they do that.

PIRRO: How are you going to do that?

THE PRESIDENT: We have the right to do that, we have the power to do that if we want. Look, it's called insurrection. We just send them in and we do it very easy. I mean it's very easy. I'd rather not do that because there's no reason for it but if we had to we'd do that and put it down within minutes, within minutes. Minneapolis, they were having problems. We sent in the National Guard within a half an hour. That was the end of the problem. It all went away.

PIRRO: Kenosha.

THE PRESIDENT: You look at Kenosha. Look at the problems they had. In fact the sheriffs there, the police chief, they're all on my side, 100%. Law enforcement all over the country is on my side and I will say this. Look, we have … Even with the horrible things that are going on in New York and Chicago, all run by Democrats. Everything we're talking about is run by Democrats. We're not talking about one Republican place. It's all run by Democrats. Even the police chiefs, they're all quitting all over the country. Every single one, I think I saw 15 or 20, every single one of them is from a Democrat city. Look, before China sent us the plague, before the plague came in, we had the best crime numbers in history. When the plague came it changed things, let's face it, it changed things, but all of the problems are in Democrat run cities. They're badly run, the taxes are too much, they want to defund their police. Biden is all in that. He hasn't still to this day used the term law and order. He's afraid to use the term because he's going to lose. He would lose the radical left supporters that he's got if they even show up for him because there's a question as to whether or not they're going to show up, but they don't want to talk about law and order.

One other thing, you have a lot of people living in the suburbs, you know it well. You live in Westchester, you know it well. I ended a rule or regulation where low-income housing has been forced into the suburbs and this has been going on for a long time but especially so under Biden and Obama. I ended it, I terminated it. Not going to happen anymore unless I'm not here in which case they're going to [inaudible] worse. So the suburbs are not going to have these projects forced into them. Now who in the suburbs is not going to vote for me? They're going to make the projects bigger, better. They're putting Cory Booker in charge. I mean one of the most liberal, the most liberal is Kamala, but Cory's right there, and he's going to be in charge of building projects in the suburbs. You're going to destroy your suburbs. It's already happening because you see what's going on, you see what they've done. They take over the zoning and they force projects, projects. Really terrible situation.

PIRRO: So the cities are being destroyed and the combination of lawlessness and the pandemic shutdown, New York City, and now the suburbs but you know –

THE PRESIDENT: Well the suburbs are going to be next.

PIRRO: Yeah –

THE PRESIDENT: Look, the suburbs, the people, these same protesters, but they're not protesters, they're anarchists, they're agitators, and they're rioters –

PIRRO: Who are they? Who are they?

THE PRESIDENT: They're people that in many cases are paid –

PIRRO: By whom?

THE PRESIDENT: And then their stupid kids.

PIRRO: Who's paying them?

THE PRESIDENT: By people that we're looking at right now. We're looking at them right now.

PIRRO: Can you tell me?

THE PRESIDENT: No, not yet, but you're going to be finding out pretty soon. Look, they're stupid people too, because they'll be overthrown as soon as they get their wish. These people don't respect them, they're just using their money. These are super liberal people that have money and they're helping these anarchists and their agitators and they're dangerous … Did you see what happened over the weekend with the people walking up to a restaurant and grabbing the steak off –

PIRRO: Grabbing their food –

THE PRESIDENT: The plate and biting the steak and then dropping it down, two elderly people having dinner at a restaurant and they walk in and they take a steak and they take the potato and they eat it?

PIRRO: That's exactly the problem. Now you're waiting to be asked in. When does that change? When you do cross the Rubicon?

THE PRESIDENT: Well in Kenosha they asked me in, and we did a job like nobody's ever seen before.

PIRRO: But if they don't ask you when, there are American people who want you.

THE PRESIDENT: Then you're not allowed to do it, unless you do insurrection in which case it's just not big enough for insurrection.

PIRRO: You won't do insurrection before an election?

THE PRESIDENT: You don't need it. You don't –

PIRRO: Not yet?

THE PRESIDENT: Oh I'd be willing to do it in a heartbeat if you needed it but we don't need it. Our National Guard –

PIRRO: When you do need it?

THE PRESIDENT: Our National Guard is so good and so tough.

PIRRO: But they've got to be asked.

THE PRESIDENT: By the way, police departments, in places that we're talking about, Seattle, we were going into Seattle and they solved the problem the night before we got there.

PIRRO: Yeah, they didn't want you there.

THE PRESIDENT: We were getting ready to go, they heard we were going in.

PIRRO: Did you hear Ted Wheeler's numbers? Like 20% in Portland.

THE PRESIDENT: Ted Wheeler's a disaster. He's a laughingstock. He went out to protest with the so-called agitators and they were going to destroy him. They were going to beat him up badly, he fortunately had security but they were going to beat him up badly. The man is a disaster. If he would say come into Portland, within a half an hour, the whole thing would be solved.

PIRRO: He's not going to say that.

THE PRESIDENT: The governor's gotten closer. Look, what's going on out there? I will tell you –

PIRRO: That's Kate Brown [inaudible]?

THE PRESIDENT: The governor has gotten closer. I've spoken to the governor two days ago.

PIRRO: Good.

THE PRESIDENT: They're arresting a lot of people that we sent in the U.S. Marshals for the killer, the man that killed the young man on the streets. He shot him.

PIRRO: Right. Yeah, in cold blood.

THE PRESIDENT: I mean it was on television. Just cold-blooded killed him. He didn't like his hat or he didn't like something and it wasn't a Trump hat.

PIRRO: Right. It was peaceful prayer –

THE PRESIDENT: It was a lot, it was a religious hat, and he shot him, cold blood. Two and a half days went by and I put out when are you going to go get him? The U.S. Marshals went in to get him and in a short period of time, they ended in a gunfight. This guy was a violent criminal.

PIRRO: A lot of them out there.

THE PRESIDENT: The U.S. Marshals killed him and I will tell you something, that's the way it has to be. There has to be retribution when you have crime like this. There can't be guys standing up that want to fight, they want to fight. You can't throw bricks at people [inaudible].

PIRRO: But the problem Mr. President, you and I both agree. The problem is there are now prosecutors who are not prosecuting the protestors. This is like a grassroots level, they're being funded by socialists who are now electing people like I used to prosecute crime, they're letting them go.

THE PRESIDENT: So what's going to happen, and this is a shame, you're going to have a backlash like you've never seen if these people don't stop. Because you have very smart, very tough people that aren't going to take it any more and once they say we're not going to take it anymore, its going to end in a very vicious backlash and that's a terrible thing.

PIRRO: How does it end?