The AP Has Released the Transcript of Their Interview With Donald Trump. It’s Insane.

A Rambling Disaster, a Cornucopia of Lies

Last Friday the Associated Press broke the news that President Donald Trump said he will be releasing “massive” tax cuts this week, on Wednesday. The White House minutes later was forced to roll back that claim, and the President about an hour after that rolled it back even more. 

That news came from a one-on-one sit-down with President Trump and an AP reporter in the Oval Office, and it was just one small portion of Trump’s interview with the AP. It was a rambling disaster, a cornucopia of lies and falsehoods, and who knows what. Literally. 16 times the AP had to use the word “unintelligible” because they couldn’t make out what Trump was saying. 

Here are a few excerpts from the published transcript.

This, is, everything:

TRUMP: OK. The one thing I’ve learned to do that I never thought I had the ability to do. I don’t watch CNN anymore.

AP: You just said you did.

TRUMP: No. No, I, if I’m passing it, what did I just say (inaudible)?

AP: You just said —

TRUMP: Where? Where?

AP: Two minutes ago.

On Trump’s 100 Day Contract with America:

AP: You did put out though, as a candidate, you put out a 100-day plan. Do you feel like you should be held accountable to that plan?

TRUMP: Somebody, yeah, somebody put out the concept of a hundred-day plan. But yeah. Well, I’m mostly there on most items. Go over the items, and I’ll talk to you …

During the campaign, Trump released a first 100 days contract, written in the first person, that says at the end, “This is my pledge to you.” But now that he will miss almost every point on it, “somebody” put it out.

Trump says he has “great chemistry” with all the foreign leaders.

TRUMP: Yeah, it’s funny: One of the best chemistries I had was with (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel.

(Crosstalk) AP: Really?

TRUMP: Chancellor Merkel.

TRUMP: And I guess somebody shouted out, “Shake her hand, shake her hand,” you know. But I never heard it. But I had already shaken her hand four times. You know, because we were together for a long time.

AP: Did you expect you would have good chemistry with her?

TRUMP: No. Because, um, I’m at odds on, you know, the NATO payments and I’m at odds on immigration. We had unbelievable chemistry. And people have given me credit for having great chemistry with all of the leaders, including el-Sissi. …

TRUMP: So it was a great thing to see that happen.

Imagine if Obama had said this in an interview?

Trump admits he said NATO is obsolete because he didn’t know much about it:

TRUMP: They had a quote from me that NATO’s obsolete. But they didn’t say why it was obsolete. I was on Wolf Blitzer, very fair interview, the first time I was ever asked about NATO, because I wasn’t in government. People don’t go around asking about NATO if I’m building a building in Manhattan, right? So they asked me, Wolf … asked me about NATO, and I said two things. NATO’s obsolete — not knowing much about NATO, now I know a lot about NATO — NATO is obsolete, and I said, “And the reason it’s obsolete is because of the fact they don’t focus on terrorism.” You know, back when they did NATO there was no such thing as terrorism.

AP: What specifically has NATO changed?

TRUMP: (Cites Wall Street Journal article) … I did an interview with Wolf Blitzer, and I said NATO was obsolete — I said two things — obsolete, and the country’s aren’t paying. I was right about both. I took such heat for about three days on both, because nobody ever criticized NATO. I took heat like you wouldn’t believe. And then some expert on NATO said, “You know, Trump is right.” But I said it was obsolete because they weren’t focused on terror.

NATO actually has been focused on terror, long before Trump falsely said they weren’t. Specifically, since 1980.

Trump repeats lie he negotiated down the price of F-35’s:

TRUMP: … A little before I took office there was a terrible article about the F-35 fighter jet. It was hundreds of billions of dollars over budget. It was seven years behind schedule. It was a disaster. So I called in Lockheed and I said, “I’m sorry, we’re going to have to bid this out to another company, namely Boeing,” or whoever else. But Boeing. And I called in Boeing and I started getting competing offers back and forth. …

TRUMP: I saved $725 million on the 90 planes. Just 90. Now there are 3,000 planes that are going to be ordered. On 90 planes I saved $725 million. It’s actually a little bit more than that, but it’s $725 million. Gen. Mattis, who had to sign the deal when it came to his office, said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” We went from a company that wanted more money for the planes to a company that cut. And the reason they cut — same planes, same everything — was because of me. I mean, because that’s what I do.

TRUMP: Now if you multiply that times 3,000 planes, you know this is on 90 planes. In fact, when the Prime Minister (Shinzo) Abe of Japan came in because they bought a certain number of those … The first thing he said to me, because it was right at the time I did it, he said, “Could I thank you?” I said, “What?” He said, “You saved us $100 million.” Because they got a $100 million savings on the 10 or 12 planes that they (bought). Nobody wrote that story. Now you know that’s a saving of billions and billions of dollars, many billions of dollars over the course of — it’s between 2,500 and 3,000 planes will be the final order. But this was only 90 of those 2,500 planes.

AP: And you expect those savings to carry out across that full order?

TRUMP: More. I’m gonna get more than that. This was a thing that was out of control and now it’s great. And the woman that runs Lockheed, Marillyn (Hewson), she was great. But all of a sudden it was a different kind of a thing. You know?

That’ a lie, as The Washington Post noted back in January when Trump also said it, almost word-for-word as he did last week. The Post reported that “the Pentagon had already announced cost reductions of roughly $600 million before Trump began meeting with Lockheed Martin’s chief executive. Once again, we award Trump Pinocchios for taking undue credit.”

Finally, Talking Points Memo Editor Josh Marshall makes this keen observation:

 

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Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr and a CC license