Donald Trump Jr., Vice President of the Trump Organization, spoke with Brian Kilmeade about President Trump helping Dan Bishop win his election in North Carolina, Beto O’Rourke desperately trying to cling to his last few seconds of political relevance by continuing to push for an assault rifle ban and his hope that James Comey and Andrew McCabe face legal ramifications for the sake of restoring confidence in the justice system for the American people.
Watch here:
Transcript:
BRIAN KILMEADE, FOX RADIO HOST: Our privilege to bring in Donald Trump Jr. He was just out with the president this week at his big rally in North Carolina for Congressman — now Congressman-elect Dan Bishop, which was successful.
He’s the vice president of the Trump Organization and author of the upcoming book “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us”.
Don, welcome back.
DONALD TRUMP JR., EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Good to be back with you, Brian. Twice in one day. You know, “Fox & Friends” and now this.
KILMEADE: I know.
D. TRUMP JR: It’s a good day.
KILMEADE: I know. Let’s see if our relationship can handle it. I think it can. And also —
(CROSSTALK)
D. TRUMP JR: I may be overloaded in Kilmeade, yes?
KILMEADE: You got it. Again, the rivalry is reinvigorated.
I have a book coming out. “Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers” couldn’t be more different than yours. Will this jeopardize our relationship as we compete for the best-seller list?
D. TRUMP JR: Hey, listen, I think everyone can win in this thing. That said, if I lose, it will definitely jeopardize our relationship, but the fact —
(LAUGHTER)
— that you have me on shows that I think we’re in pretty good standing, buddy. So yes. No, I imagine they’re a little bit different.
KILMEADE: Yes. No, Trumps don’t lose. That’s what scares me.
D. TRUMP JR: Exactly.
KILMEADE: But Don, first off, let’s take a step back. Earlier this week there was some people advising your dad, the president, not to go for Dan Bishop.
He was trailing and they were going to try to say that you don’t have momentum, the party’s in trouble if, Mr. President, you show up and Dan Bishop loses.
Can you describe that process and what was really at stake as the president has the rally and Bishop gets the win?
D. TRUMP JR: Well listen, you know, I wasn’t necessarily involved with their process. I stay on the outside.
Obviously, I’m very active. I was down there the week before doing fundraisers for Bishop and doing, you know, sort of mini-rallies for him.
I came back down to be able to intro my father and Vice President Pence, you know, and it was an amazing time.
But the reality is, you know, my father’s going to fight for those who he believes are going to fight for him. You know, he will take those political chances. He will go down there, and it turned out to be a great success.
Now, it was funny watching the typical media sound bites. I mean, this is the kind of hypocrisy that I will cover in “Triggered” when it drops out. But the media say, well, Bishop only won by 2 points and Trump carried the district by 17 and this — you know, they don’t talk about that, in 2017, there was redistricting and they changed up the whole map, right? They neglect to inform their people of that because that wouldn’t be a convenient message.
You know, so this is what we’re battling against, but I think Dan Bishop was a great candidate. He was someone who’s going to support us.
I think, most importantly, he recognizes and recognized how important it was for his voters to be supportive of Trump and the MAGA agenda. And you know, I think that’s going to be important because we want to keep this winning going.
KILMEADE: Obviously, the one thing that I’ve always wondered is when the president hops on the debate stage to debate, maybe for the first time — and he’s in the middle because he got the best ratings early, the best percentage, doing the best in the polls — how much did he study his other opponents? Because he seemed to know the weak — he knew where Walker was weak in Wisconsin.
He knew where Jeb Bush was weak. He thought it was his personality. He know where Rubio — he thought lacked substance. He knew something about — he knew everywhere — everyone’s solar plexus was on that stage.
I’m wondering when you saw the homework being put in. How much was put in?
D. TRUMP JR: Honestly, the homework was him, you know, watching these people.
I mean, no one understands marketing and branding and — you know, better than Donald Trump, right? I mean, he’s the guy that invented it in real estate. He’s the guy that gets it.
So he didn’t do the conventional homework. I can almost guarantee you that there’s not been a presidential candidate in history who probably did less debate prep.
His debate prep has been his whole life watching these guys, watching, you know, bureaucrat politicians make promises that you can’t deliver on.
I mean, he saw right away what all of their weaknesses were. It didn’t take hours of studying. He didn’t have to do focus groups. He just saw it intuitively. You know, that’s the way he functions.
And so, he was able to dismantle these people — you know, especially like the Jebs of the world — in seconds that his other political opponents weren’t able to do in decades.
And so, you know, it’s just the way he sort of works, and he can visualize those things. And then he can sum those people up in two or three words faster than any human being alive. And guess what? It sticks.
KILMEADE: Let’s talk about Beto O’Rourke at home in Texas, had the crowd behind him. Listen to what he would do with guns and gun control. Cut 15.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DAVID MUIR, ABC ANCHOR: You said, quote, “Americans who own AR-15s and AK-47s will have to sell them to the government, all of them.”
You know the critics call this confiscation. Are you proposing taking away their guns, and how would this work?
BETO O’ROURKE (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am. If it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield, if the high-impact, high-velocity round when it hits your body shreds everything inside of your body because it was designed to do that so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield and not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers. Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
KILMEADE: So how would — you know the gun community. You’re an avid hunter.
D. TRUMP JR: Yes.
KILMEADE: How would that go over?
D. TRUMP JR: Yes. Well, I’m an avid hunter, a competitive shooter. I think — you know, I get this. I don’t know what a high-impact round is, certainly not as it relates to an AR-15.
You know, listen. It’s sound bites. Beto is doing — desperately trying to cling to his last few seconds of political relevance.
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but, you know, there are those on the left that if you go more radical and you wave your arms in the air like a crazy person — I mean, you know, that’s Beto’s mark. That’s all he has left.
We all know he’s not going to be a nominee. We all know he’s not likely to make the next debate stage, so let’s just go further radical to try to at least, you know, carve out a niche with the base.
I think it’s insane, the notion of gun confiscation. You’ve seen what it’s done. You’ve seen what the assault weapons ban did. It did nothing to stem that violence.
Now, they won’t address, you know, gun crime in Chicago, because obviously that would be racist. It’s absolute lunacy what you’re doing. And as we all know, all those proposals do would be affect law-abiding citizens, those who are actually willing to abide laws.
Just like, you know, the war on drugs really did a wonderful job stopping people from doing drugs. You know, we outlawed them. Great. That’s wonderful. What’d it do? Nothing.
You know, yet another failed attempt, yet another way to try to take away God-fearing, law-abiding American citizens’ rights. And I think it’s ridiculous. But again, that’s what Beto has to do to be able to remain relevant, you know, in — I guess the last breath of a political career.
KILMEADE: Well, you know, the thing is, Don, too, is that it’s his last breath, but he actually — who would actually take people’s guns away? That would be law enforcement which has been vilified by the Democratic Party, like I’ve never seen before.
D. TRUMP JR: Well, listen. I mean, I speak to law enforcement all the time. I mean, you know, again, from my shooting background, competitive shooting, all that, there’s so many — there’s so much overlap — and, I mean, those guys have a rough job.
It’s not easy. Especially over the last, you know, decade where, you know, you’re going to give the benefit of the doubt to the guy with a 30-page rap sheet, who broke free while being arrested, runs himself into a wall, tries to injure himself, so as to be able to then sue those same police officers for excessive force. I mean, it’s really disgusting.
And so, you know, we have to defend our law enforcement officers whether that’s ICE, whether that’s your local P.D., whether that’s the boots-on-the-ground guys in our federal agencies.
You know, maybe not the Comey and McCabe bureaucrat scumbags that have sort of taken over the upper echelons of those agencies and really weaponized them against conservatives, but certainly — and against Donald Trump and perhaps even myself. But you know, the boots-on-the-ground guys, they all get it.
And I think real Americans, God-fearing Americans, the hardworking men and women of this country, they understand that law enforcement is in their corner —
KILMEADE: Right.
D. TRUMP JR: — you know, looking to help them. And that is not an easy job anymore and we’ve got to support them.
KILMEADE: So in debate two, the mistakenly went after Barack Obama — oops — and forget about your dad, Don.
And you know, last night they were all over your dad, and here’s an example. Kamala Harris.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But the bottom line is this. Donald Trump in office on trade policy — you know, he reminds me of that guy in the Wizard of Oz, you know, when you pull back the curtain it’s a really small dude.
(LAUGHTER)
(END AUDIO CLIP)
KILMEADE: OK. When you pull back the — when you pull back the curtain — when you pull back the curtain, is that the impression?
D. TRUMP JR: Well, listen, not at all. The irony of her saying that to George Stephanopoulos was kind of funny and probably not lost on those who actually follow this, you know. Hey, listen, it’s whatever — cheap shots.
I mean, she has definitely been sort of the one that I thought would have probably been a break out, you know —
KILMEADE: Yes.
D. TRUMP JR: — three months ago, and she’s grossly underperformed.
I mean, just very little personality, doesn’t bring much to the table. Sort of — she’s the only one laughing at her own jokes.
It’s actually, you know, probably the biggest a dud of the ones that, you know, probably I thought may have had a chance. It’s not.
The reality is look at what — you know, trade policy, the irony of any of those Democrats up there given that they implemented NAFTA, given that they’re the ones that shipped the American dream abroad.
I mean, they’re literally trying to own, you know, or distance themselves from their own policies pretending that Donald Trump’s, you know, is — it’s nuts. I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it.
So Donald Trump’s actually fighting for the American worker. He’s brought and created 6 million new jobs, 1 million of those in manufacturing.
The asinine policies of the left have shipped those jobs abroad for the (ph) — years. But again, there’s no one in the media that’s actually going to say those things.
So they can say that on a debate stage, no one’s going to question it. No one’s — and it becomes gospel, you know, which is the problem of what we face.
I mean, we’re not just running against a Democrat candidate and their platform. We’re running against a complicit media who is functioning as their marketing wing and won’t actually call them out for this nonsense, you know that Joe Biden or Kamala or any of these people can talk about trade given what the Democrat Party has done on trade — it’s ludicrous to me.
KILMEADE: A couple of other things. You mentioned Andy McCabe.
Now it turns out his lawyers failed in trying to get the case against him tossed out.
Now it’s up to the U.S. attorney general to decide whether he’s going to be indicted or not.
He now — and what he’s being indicted on, he acknowledges now that he authorized two FBI officials to speak to a reporter for “The Wall Street Journal.” He denied that. He said that — then later he said that Comey said he could. Comey said I don’t remember ever giving him permission to do that.
They also determined that four times — at least four times he lied, three times under oath, one time on tape about his role in all of this.
This thing seems — by almost legal experts Republican and Democrat aside — to be heading towards an indictment. Does it stop there?
D. TRUMP JR: Listen, I hope they go after all of these guys. I mean you could see even from the I.G. report the stuff on Comey — I mean he basically used the FBI as his own little personal marketing department and to build up himself.
And then he runs around like this was a great victory lap, like he was in the right.
I mean, what we’ve seen is disgusting. And I really hope that something happens, because it shows sort of the dichotomy of the law.
I mean, if you’re one of the bureaucrats, if you’re one of the elite, if you’re a leftist, you can sort of get away with anything. You can do whatever it is. You can utilize the FBI as your own little personal P.R. agency. And you can lie with impunity.
Imagine — imagined (ph) I tried lying under oath when I was talking to these committees — imagine what would’ve happened to me had I done what these guys have done. It wouldn’t be pretty.
KILMEADE: Well, I got–
D. TRUMP JR: It wouldn’t be pretty. And I think–
KILMEADE: Yes.
D. TRUMP JR: — the American people have lost faith in a lot of those institutions, because they see them repeatedly getting away with it time and time again.
So I think for the sake of these intuitions, for the sake of the future of our country and for the sake of the confidence of the American people in our justice system, I really hope that something does happen.
KILMEADE: Lastly, the impeachment is moving somehow, someway even though it’s denied by Nancy Pelosi, but then Nadler tells us they’re outlining rules.
So — and the moderate Democrats are fearing this happens because they’ll get blown up, because the American people don’t want impeachment. They want to see — they know an election’s around the corner regardless.
Listen to what Nancy Pelosi said, because this does affect you.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: Mr. Raskin has his legislation on emolument.
You probably do also know the committee on which he serves chaired by Mr. Cummings, that there’s an investigation of federal dollars being spent at Trump-owned properties.
This is beyond appalling.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
KILMEADE: What’s your reaction to that as the guy running — you and Eric, running the place? Has there been a mix of —
D. TRUMP JR: Honestly (ph) —
KILMEADE: — politics and business?
D. TRUMP JR: Not even a little bit. I mean what they neglect to talk about is that we voluntarily gave up all of our international deals.
We’re not even — can’t even look at new deals abroad. It’s so nonsense.
But again, collision failed, racism failed, obstruction failed, you know, the cover-up failed.
So, they got to try to come up with something to remain relevant. And you’ve never seen an attack on an American president duly elected. You’ve never seen an attack on his family like this.
The reality is Donald Trump’s been a businessman, but he hasn’t been involved in this since he took office. He hasn’t done anything with these things.
So, they will point to anything in their desperation to try to create a narrative.
And again, the media will be totally complicit in all of this. They’ll let it go. They’ll let it drag on. They’ll continue their attacks on us, but you know what; I’m excited that we have an American businessman in office.
I mean, another thing that I talk about in the book — in “Triggered,” because we’ve have failed politicians who have been nothing but bureaucrats. They’ve never had a job.
They’ve never held a position where they’ve had people’s live dependent on their success, their family’s wellbeing. They’ve never run businesses. They’ve never done anything. They talk about it in theory, not in practice.
You’ve seen now with the results of what happens when you actually let a businessman run the country like a business. And because of that, we’re winning.
You know, 6 million new jobs created, 6.2 million people no longer on food stamps because of the policies implemented by Donald Trump, and yet, you know, the media runs on, it’s so terrible — the Nancy Pelosi, the sound bites.
They haven’t done anything. They’ve had control. They haven’t done anything other than ship away the American dream.
We’ve reversed so much of that, and it’s important. That’s why, you know, I wrote the book. That’s why I’m out there fighting for my father on a daily basis.
It’s why, frankly, it’s become much more of my focus even than the business, because it’s more important to me as an American, as the father of five young kids, to make sure that these policies keep going for another four years after his term is up, because we can get this country on the right track again.
KILMEADE: Right, they talk brutally. And it’s easy to say, well, I voted for him or, I support him, but imagine if it’s your dad.
It’s hard to shut off that that’s-my-dad gene that’s in all of us when our family’s attacked, which happens to you guys multiple times a day.
D. TRUMP JR: Hell yes.
KILMEADE: Not that he’s ever a victim. I know that he always attacks back, but it’s —
(CROSSTALK)
D. TRUMP JR: No, he’s not. And hey, I’m not either.
And what — I was probably — I think it’s safe to say, the number two person that they were looking at in their hit list with all of these — the nonsense and failed investigations, you know, the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people, $40 million, 19 FBI lawyers, two and a half years of, you know, of dud in the Mueller report.
You know, I was the number two probably heaviest recipient of their crap, and this is what the left will do.
If they can do that to the sitting president of the United States, who won’t they destroy? Who won’t they try to take out to get their way?
Look what they did to Kavanaugh. Look at what they did to the Covington kids. I mean, high school kids. More than happy to try to destroy their lives to prove a point and make their — to get their sound bite out there. You know, the Democratic Party —
KILMEADE: Got you.
D. TRUMP JR: — have lost their way. It’s not Democrats, OK? I know plenty of them that are great people. Many of them voted for Trump.
It’s the leftist wing of the Democrat Party who’s taken over —
KILMEADE: Yes, which made the debate kind of scary.
D. TRUMP JR: — who are really now running things. That’s what should be scary —
KILMEADE: Hey —
D. TRUMP JR: That’s what should be scary to all Americans.
KILMEADE: Yes, Donald Trump Jr., thanks so much.
Preorder “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.” And don’t be afraid to then click on Brian Kilmeade and order “Sam Houston and the Alamo Avengers”.
Totally different books, but you can afford it.
D. TRUMP JR: But really do “Triggered” first.
(LAUGHTER)
You know, send it to some of your friends. I think — you know, you send it to the members of Congress on the left, I think they’d love it.
(LAUGHTER)
KILMEADE: Donald Trump Jr., always trying to get the upper hand. Thanks so much.
