Dave Ramsey Interviews President Trump!

Dave Ramsey:
This inflation thing is a big deal. So in the first 90 days, the strokes that you make to change the economy when you’re elected, that’s pretty dramatic.

President Trump:
I believe I’ll be able to get energy down to 50% of what it is right now within a period of less than a year. I know small businesses are where jobs come from. When you guys in government can take your hands off small businesses, we’re able to employ people and change things.

Dave Ramsey:
So how can you help small businesses?

President Trump:
You have to love what you do. If you don’t love what you do, it’s not going to work. It’s the largest tax cuts in the history of our country. That’s why we became so successful.

Dave Ramsey:
You think we can do that again?

President Trump:
Yeah, I think we can go lower. If I don’t turn my head at the exact 90° angle, if I was a little off, I’m not doing this very nice interview with you.

Dave Ramsey:
I hear you going back to Butler to finish the speech.

President Trump:
I am. I’m going to say… Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here with The Ramsey Show. If you don’t know what The Ramsey Showis, it’s a show about life, about money, about relationships. It’s not a show about politics. We specifically, over the years, have tried to remind you over and over again that what happens in your house is more important for your success than what happens in the White House. We also realize that this election is a really important time right now. People are really looking at what’s happening—there’s a real divisiveness in the air, a lot of anger in the air. So our team reached out to Vice President Harris’ team about the opportunity to sit down with her for a long-form interview, and we reached out to President Trump’s team about the opportunity to sit down for a long-form interview with him, and to talk about ideas, talk about what’s going to happen—not what has happened and not about personalities, and not about name-calling, because both sides are pretty good at all of that stuff.

And the fact that I sit down with either one of these candidates is going to piss some of you off, and frankly, I’m perfectly fine with that. It’s something I wanted to do, and I felt like it was something we needed to talk about. So I find myself sitting here in Trump Tower getting ready to interview President Trump for a few minutes. I think you’re going to find this really interesting.

So, President Trump, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us.

President Trump:
Honor to be with you.

Dave Ramsey:
Good to hang out with you. As you know, we do a show called The Ramsey Show and talk to regular folks every day calling in, most of the time with financial trouble, sometimes with financial victories—stuff we’ve taught them to do, the basic Grandma’s common sense stuff, right? And that audience that’s going to be watching this—they’re not concerned with a lot of things, but they are concerned with $8 eggs, $5 gas, 7% interest rates, and a house they can’t afford with wages not going up as fast as house prices. This inflation thing is a big deal. So, in the first 90 days, the strokes that you make to change the economy when you’re elected are a big deal. What are the first things you’re going to do in that area?

President Trump:
Well, in terms of inflation, you’re right, and it’s almost inflation over the economy, if you want to really know because people are getting wiped out like never before. I think it’s the highest inflation we’ve ever had. They say it’s the highest in 48 years. I think it’s the highest ever. There’s never been any mess like this, and it’s because of what they did with energy. Also, then they topped it with spending with money—trillions and trillions of dollars that they didn’t need, that’s just being wasted. But the first thing you have to do is get the energy down. If you get the energy down, other things are going to follow. You want to get the interest rates down too. And interestingly, even interest rates are going to follow energy because it’s going to take that burden off the shoulders of the economy and off the shoulders of inflation itself.

We are going to drill at a level that you haven’t seen since, let’s say, four or five years ago—but even more so. We would have been so dominant by this point. If you remember, when you go back to the beginning of this really failed administration, what they did was they turned off the energy, they turned off everything that I had.

Dave Ramsey:
You turn back on the Keystone?

President Trump:
Yes, you’re going to turn back on the drill baby drill line. And in your acceptance speech at the convention, it says it all. I’d like to use another line, but there’s no line that’s better. We’re going to drill, baby, drill. The fact that they turned it off, and then the energy—if you look back at the very initial period of their administration, the numbers started going through the roof. The energy numbers. Inflation was good, and then they went back to Trump-type things, but we would have been three to four times more dominant. We would have been taking care of Europe, we would have been taking care of Asia. ANWR in Alaska is the biggest find anywhere in the world. It could be as big as Saudi Arabia, and I got it. Ronald Reagan couldn’t get it, nobody could get it, but I got it. It was done, ready to start, and when these people came in, they turned it off. They terminated it.

Dave Ramsey:
Nobody could believe it.

President Trump:
Nobody could believe it.

Dave Ramsey:
I don’t know if people realize that 10 to 15% of the entire economy is energy, and it weaves its tentacles through everything else. So $5 gas affects the bread truck delivering the bread, and that affects the cost of the bread. Then, so you getting that plentiful right changes everything.

President Trump:
Exactly. So, I have a little thing that I’ve been saying lately because I think it’s easily achievable. You know, we pay very high energy costs, especially now, but we’re paying very, very high. I believe I’ll be able to get energy down to 50%, 50% of what it is right now, within a period of less than a year.

Dave Ramsey:
Wow, that’s pretty good.

President Trump:
It’s going to happen fast.

Dave Ramsey:
So, what are you going to do to make that happen?

President Trump:
We’re going to drill. We’re going to frack. We’re going to do things that they—well, they have tremendous assets. Taking the regulations off—taking the regs off is a big thing. We have to. They put them back on. They put regulations back on in areas that have no environmental real meaning. They don’t let them drill. They’re taking leases away—government leases that you’re hearing about. I think we can get energy costs down to half of what they are. If we do that, that’s pretty dramatic. All of those inflated prices are going to come down with it.

Dave Ramsey:
I think the other piece of that—and I know he was part of your administration, and you and I were talking before we turned the cameras on—we have a mutual friend in Art Laffer, and I know he helped a little bit with the tax code in the last administration. And I personally have experienced the Laffer Curve, that lower taxes cause increased revenues to the federal government because it heats up the economy. And I’m a small business guy. When you lower my taxes, it doesn’t mean I put it in my pocket—it means I hire people.

President Trump:
Right.

Dave Ramsey:
So, talk about lowering taxes in the first year of your administration.

President Trump:
Yeah, you probably saw my plan, and I think we have something really good. Yesterday, I was in North Carolina, which is great—that was the furniture capital of the world. And China then went in and did a number and took so much of that business. You know, most of that business, the talent—I used to go there to buy furniture for hotels and things.

Dave Ramsey:
North Carolina?

President Trump:
Yeah, in Hickory. I was in Hickory yesterday and made a speech, and we’re going to bring it all back. What we’re doing is, there’s sort of a two-phase approach. Number one, I took taxes from 39% to 21%. You know that better than anyone. It’s the largest tax cut in the history of our country, and that was great. That’s why we became so successful.

Dave Ramsey:
You think we can do that again?

President Trump:
Yeah, I think we can go lower. And I’ll tell you what I’m doing—I’m bringing it from 21 to 15. But you have to manufacture your product here, and then you pay 15%. And then I’m going to put tariffs on countries so they can’t come in and steal our business, so that our businesses can now be competitive.

Not that I mean… China came in and just stole all our furniture and many other industries, by the way, including steel. And I saved steel by putting 50% and 100% tariffs on all of the steel that they were dumping. But we’re going to do it. So, in other words, this is a dream for you. Then we’re bringing the tax rate from 21—remember, it was 39%, and it was really 50% if you add state and local and all the other things—so we’re going to bring it down from 21 to 15. I got it down to 21, which everyone said was impossible, and got it approved by Congress. So, it’s there, and we’re going to bring that down to 15. But you have to make your product in the United States.

Dave Ramsey:
And we do see federal revenues go up when the taxes go down because the economy grows.

President Trump:
You saw it with me.

Dave Ramsey:
We saw it with Reagan too.

President Trump:
You saw it with Reagan. So at 39%, and then down to 21%, you would think we’d do half, or much less. In the first full year, we did much more revenue in the United States than we did at 39%. In other words, we took in much more money.

Dave Ramsey:
Which is how you solve the deficit. I mean, Bill Clinton almost balanced the budget with the exact same plan.

President Trump:
That’s true. That’s true, he did.

Dave Ramsey:
And cost-cutting.

President Trump:
Yeah, we have plenty of cost-cutting to do too, and that’s okay. In fact, I’m going to ask Elon, who’s a great guy, but he’s got a good sense of that. There’s tremendous cost-cutting that we can do and affect nothing. Just… we’re not going to affect anybody, we’re not going to hurt anybody. We have to save Social Security and keep it good and solid. I don’t want to be raising ages or anything.

But they’re putting migrants into Social Security when they get finished. If she got elected, this country is going bust. If she got elected, we’re going back to 1929, the Depression. It would be a disaster for Medicare and Social Security. They’re allowing millions and millions of people to come in. You can’t use these schools anymore. The quality of life in this country has gone so bad because of what they’ve done.

Dave Ramsey:
One of the things that our viewers know about us is we work with tens of thousands of small businesspeople. Coaching them, 54% of the gross domestic product is businesses with 500 people or less. Almost everyone in America—over half, almost 60%—of people work for a small business. And I know small businesses are where jobs come from, not from government. So, politicians don’t create jobs—small businesses do.

It pisses people like me off when the politicians say they’re the ones making the jobs. We’re the ones making the jobs. But when you guys in government can take your hands off of small businesses and allow us to do our thing, we’re able to employ people and change things. So how can you help small businesses?

President Trump:
Well, the best way is just letting them do what they have to do. But we still have to give them a playing field. If we don’t give them a level playing field, they will die, and that’s what happened before. That’s why China came in. That’s why all the… they came in, and they came in at a level like nobody’s ever seen, and we did nothing about it. So the word “tariff” to me is a very beautiful word because it can save our country, truly.

And yet, I think because of graft, because of a lot of consulting payments and other things that are given by other countries, we have so much fighting with politicians on using it. I saved our steel industry by putting tariffs on steel that China came in and dumped. And you know what they do—they dump and dump and dump. Everybody goes out of business, then they buy those businesses very cheap, and then they raise the prices to higher than they ever were.

That’s one of the many benefits that they have if they want to do it. But by putting tariffs on, as an example in the furniture business in North Carolina, it was so vibrant. They stole our business, and they charge us if you wanted to build a furniture place. If you want to sell your furniture in China, they won’t take it. But if you want to build a plant in China to make furniture in China using their labor, they’ll open it.

We’re doing the same thing. But a lot of people are like, “Oh, well, we don’t want to have tariffs.” The country was at the richest point in its history in the 1890s. It was all tariffs. If you looked at William McKinley as an example, he was a big tariff president. They had committees that were put in charge of what to do with the money—we were taking in so much money. And McKinley would say, “Why should we let other people come in and steal our factories and steal our workers and steal our jobs? And why shouldn’t we benefit?” And he tariffed the other countries, and we made so much.

And then they went to the income tax system later on, but they would actually have—they had a blue ribbon committee. Our country was so rich, they didn’t know what to do with the money. And this blue ribbon committee was set up to determine how can we spend all of this money? And they took it in through tariffs.

But we can turn our country around, make it strong, and then guard it with tariffs.

Dave Ramsey:
Let’s change gears for a second. My wife Sharon and I were in Scotland two weeks ago, and we played a bunch of different courses there, including Turnberry, which, arguably, according to the golf guys I was playing with, is the nicest course in the UK right now.

President Trump:
Good.

Dave Ramsey:
And certainly, the halfway house lighthouse out there—Turnberry is amazing. But what I came away with, not only is the golf course great—just to give you a huge compliment, you know that—but the staff and the team, the excellence in the hotel, in the restaurants, in the golf shop, everybody we dealt with… talk about what it’s like to work for Donald Trump. How do you hire leaders and put people in place that do that? Because I know you’re obviously not there personally managing that, but you put a culture in place in your organization, and that applies to the administration as well—hiring people that are quality leaders.

President Trump:
Well, my son Eric is very much involved, and he runs a lot of it. And Don helps out a lot, and Ivanka to a lesser extent. You know, she’s a great mother and everything. She did a fantastic job in the administration. All she wanted to do was get people jobs. She’d go around and see Exxon, see Walmart. She wanted jobs for people. It’s really pretty amazing. She could’ve had a very glamorous job, and she would’ve done well. But Eric’s done a great job, and I did a similar type of job when I was doing it. Now, I’m doing a thing called running for president, so I don’t get to do it as much.

But we rebuilt Turnberry. Turnberry was considered one of the greatest courses in the world because the land is so incredible, right? With the ocean, and you know that ninth hole over the—you’re hitting over the ocean.

Dave Ramsey:
How good a golfer are you?

President Trump:
Well, I’m a 13.

Dave Ramsey:
All right.

President Trump:
That’s not great.

Dave Ramsey:
I’ve only been playing for five years. I’m just learning.

President Trump:
Oh, really? You enjoyed you and Bryson’s 50.

Dave Ramsey:
Wasn’t that fun?

President Trump:
That was a great video, that one did well in terms of the ratings.

Dave Ramsey:
It did. And he can swing a club.

President Trump:
He can swing, and he’s a great guy. He is very long, very straight, and you know what—he’s a great putter. He’s one of the best putters in the world.

Dave Ramsey:
That was quite an exciting thing. We got it down to 50.

President Trump:
You actually pulled one hole off, I watched it.

Dave Ramsey:
Yeah, all rolled on you. You carried one hole even more than one if you wanted to.

President Trump:
Well, we did well. We did well.

Dave Ramsey:
You did it. Very fun.

President Trump:
Yeah.

Dave Ramsey:
So, what leadership qualities, when Eric’s hiring, did you teach him to look for?

President Trump:
Well, I like the recommendation business, but what I like best is taking people that are in the company and moving them up. You take a waitress, as an example, and she becomes the head of the restaurant, because you know if certain people are good. When they work for you already, you know them—that’s better than recommendations. But if you don’t do that, or if you can’t do that for some reason, you really need strong references. And then, they have to enjoy their job. If they don’t enjoy their job, they’re not going to be very good at it.

Dave Ramsey:
I ended up at a table with Ronnie Barrett, the Barrett .50 cal, a friend of ours. I ended up at a table with him at an NRA convention with Eric and Donald, got to spend some time with both of them, and you’re right—they’re impressive. How do you raise great kids? What’s your secret?

President Trump:
Well, thank you. The grandkids, too, are turning out great.

Dave Ramsey:
Your granddaughter killed it at the convention.

President Trump:
Oh, how about that convention? Wow, she’s a great golfer, by the way.

Dave Ramsey:
She’s a great speaker, too.

President Trump:
Yeah, she’s a beautiful person in every way. She took over that whole Republican convention, didn’t she? And Kai—our beautiful Kai.

Dave Ramsey:
So, what’s your parenting style?

President Trump:
The one thing I always told my kids: No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Now, in my day, there were no drugs. There was alcohol and cigarettes, and I had a brother who went through a lot with alcohol. He taught me a lot—my brother Fred. He had a problem with alcohol, to put it mildly. He was quite a bit older than me, and he’d always say, “No alcohol. I never want to see you drink.” Very strong. And he’d also say, “No cigarettes.” Because, you know, cigarettes are like—you don’t need them. If you don’t smoke, if you don’t drink, you have no problem with staying off it. But when you do drink, it gets very hard to stay off it. I’ve seen very strong people who cannot get off it.

But the way you get off it is if you never start. If you never start, I never had a glass of alcohol in my life. I’ve never had a glass of alcohol, if you can believe it. I think largely because of my brother. I think if I did, I probably would’ve had a problem, you know, personality type and all. But I never had it—I have no longing for it. I have friends that are “on the wagon,” as they say, and I watch them watching trays of drinks go by, and it’s like they have… you know, it’s a thing that they can’t get over. Same with smoking. I’ve seen guys just grab somebody’s cigarette after not having one in a long time, and to them, it’s like the greatest sensation.

If you’ve never smoked, you don’t have that problem. So, I tell people for their children: No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes.

Dave Ramsey:
They obviously work really, really hard. How do you teach them work ethics?

President Trump:
They have to like what they do. If they don’t like what they do… My kids like what they do, and I would say, genetically, I’m a believer in genetics. You know, I like it, I’m good at doing certain things. You know, racehorses… slow racehorses don’t produce a Kentucky Derby winner, right? That’s not the way it is. But you have to have an ability at something, and if you don’t have the ability, don’t do it. But most importantly, do something you like. Whether it’s your parents or not, you know—your parents want you to go into a business, or they want you to go into a store with them if they have a store. I would say that you have to love what you do. If you don’t love what you do, it’s not going to work. I’ve never seen it. If you don’t want to get up in the morning and go to work…

Dave Ramsey:
Now, a lot of people say, with all the people that come after you, “Do you really love getting up in the morning?” You understand that, right? You’re attacked left and right.

President Trump:
I do. I do, because we make so much progress. We’re doing great on the campaign, as you probably see. We’re leading in the campaign now, doing well. We beat Biden, and we’re up so far on him. And then they said it’s like a fight—you’re in a fight, and they change the fighter in the middle of the fight. They change the fighter, and now we’re beating her very badly.

Dave Ramsey:
That’ll be interesting. It would be interesting to see her on the show.

President Trump:
Yeah, because I don’t believe she would be able to answer any questions on what you discuss better than anybody else.

Dave Ramsey:
Well, I’m happy to have her if she’d come.

President Trump:
I’m sure she would be… sure she’d love to come. She wouldn’t come.

Dave Ramsey:
I hear you’re going back to Butler to finish the speech.

President Trump:
Yeah, I’m going to say… as I was saying.

Dave Ramsey:
Right. So, when that happened and you got in the car, I know I saw a clip the other day—Melania was watching on television. She saw the… saw the shot, saw you dodge, saw you go down, saw you get up.

President Trump:
Yeah.

Dave Ramsey:
How fast were you able to get on the phone and talk to her?

President Trump:
Well, I know she was calling, and you know, it was a little tough to take a phone call with blood pouring down your ear. People don’t know—the ear is the bloodiest part. If you get hit in the ear, it bleeds because there’s a lot of blood. But, no, I spoke to her. By the time I got to the hospital, I had spoken to her. She was sort of watching it, but she held off for a couple of minutes. Then somebody called her and said, “He’s okay, he’s okay.” She said, “What do you mean, he’s okay? What does that mean?” She had no idea. Then she went back, pressed it, and caught up. Now, it was tough for her. Tough for my son too. He came out, somebody had said, “Your father just got hit,” and he came in very, very riled up.

Dave Ramsey:
Yeah, it’s a tough thing.

President Trump:
It was a tough day. I don’t recommend it for anybody. I got very lucky, or maybe more than luck. If I didn’t turn my head and start talking about the immigration chart at the precise moment, I don’t turn my head at the exact 90° angle, if I was a little off one way or the other… I’m not doing this very nice interview with you. I wouldn’t be around to do this interview.

Dave Ramsey:
When you were in the White House for four years, you were talking about loving your work earlier. I have the privilege of loving my work—that’s why I still work.

President Trump:
You do.

Dave Ramsey:
That’s why I still do it. I don’t need to, obviously, anymore—just like you don’t need to. What was the most rewarding thing in the four years that you were there for you?

President Trump:
So, my whole thing is “Make America Great Again.” That’s why I do it. And we did it. Then COVID came, and we did a really good job on that. So, it was always about making it great again. I had the country going, just prior to COVID coming in, at a level that nobody had ever seen. And even if you go all four years, it was so good that even with that terrible interruption that destroyed the world, we had the greatest four years. The economy was so great, the job numbers were the best ever, etc. And I think just that concept of what I had done—the performance—yeah. But individual things, like getting the tax cuts approved, the biggest tax cuts in history, the biggest regulation cuts in the history of our country. Rebuilding the military—we did a job in the military. I rebuilt the whole military, and then you see a lot of that military being given to Afghanistan stupidly, because they left the country. And now you see them parading it back and forth. That was, I think, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, what they did.

But there were a lot of individual achievements that we had—the creation of Space Force. You know, Space Force is now dominating space. When I came, there was no Space Force. It’s the first time since the Air Force—78 years, maybe 80 years by now. And we are dominating space now, and we wouldn’t be. We were in third place by far, and now we’re way in first place. And it’s very important militarily—it’s very important.

Dave Ramsey:
President Trump, thanks for taking the time. Your team told us you’ve got a speech here in a few minutes, but we were still able to squeeze this in. I appreciate your time, and I appreciate you hanging out with us.

President Trump:
It’s a great honor. I’ve watched you for many years. I shouldn’t say that, but I can say it from both of us—I’ve watched you for many years. You’re a real pro.

Dave Ramsey:
Thank you very much.

President Trump:
Thank you, brother. Good to see you.

Dave Ramsey:
Thank you very much.