Michael Barbaro: All righty. We are on our way up through the West Wing, past the press secretary's office, past the cabinet room,

Speaker: sitting under a great portrait of George Washington in his younger days.

Speaker: Come on, guys.

Speaker: You ready for us?

Speaker: Come on inside.

Michael Barbaro: From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Speaker: How are you?

Speaker: Good. Good to see you, Mr. President. Did you see that? Just came out.

President Trump: Number one on Tik Tok. Trump.

Speaker: All right.

President Trump: I'm a little older than the average age on Tik Tok.

Michael Barbaro: On Wednesday night, in the middle of a defining moment for President Trump's second term.

Speaker: Well, thank you, Mr. President, for seeing us. You know, everybody,

President Trump: I do. I do. You

Speaker: Katie Rogers.

Speaker: Hi, Katie.

Speaker: And of course, Tyler.

Speaker: Nice to see you.

Michael Barbaro: Four White House reporters from the Times sat down with him for an extended interview in the Oval Office. Did you see my various truths today? They were sort of

Speaker: they were sort of sparkling sparkling today.

Michael Barbaro: One of them, David Sanger, walks us through their conversation.

Michael Barbaro: It's Friday, January 9th.

Michael Barbaro: So, David, four New York Times reporters walk into the Oval Office. What could possibly go wrong?

David Sanger: Sounds like a the setup to a punch line. Tell us about this experience.

David Sanger: Well, the president's second term is about to hit its one-year mark. And I think it's a considerable understatement for anybody who's been listening to the Daily or reading the Times to say that this is truly one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.

Speaker: Mhm.

David Sanger: Trump has just executed his most audacious overseas intervention. I've been talking to him for a couple of weeks about sitting down for a full on thereord New York Times interview. As you know, the relationship between President Trump and the New York Times has been occasionally slightly fraught.

Speaker: Yeah. And latigious.

David Sanger: And latigious.

Speaker: He sued us over the past few months

David Sanger: only for $15 billion. But in the end, he very happily agreed to it. And we were told that the moment would be 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday night.

Speaker: Mhm.

David Sanger: And we actually thought that was a good piece of timing cuz we figured we would probably be his last appointment of the day. Right.

David Sanger: And anybody who has dealt with Donald Trump, and I've dealt with him for a few years, knows that if you're the last appointment of the day, you're likely to be sticking around for a while.

Speaker: Mhm.

David Sanger: We didn't leave the White House till after 9:00 p.m.

Speaker: Right. You got a meaningful chunk of his time.

David Sanger: We did. Interrupted some by a few side moments, including the president wanting to show us some of his architectural plans and visit what he's done up in the residence and so forth. But a good oh just shy of two hours of it was an actual deep probing conversation about this past year, foreign and domestic issues. And our goal, Michael, was to try to do something deeper and hopefully more revealing than what the president does every day when he stands up briefly in front of reporters on Air Force One or does a gaggle, as they call it, around the Resolute Desk. And readers and listeners are going to have to determine if you succeeded.

Speaker: Yeah.

Michael Barbaro: All right. Well, to that point, walk us through the interview.

Speaker: Sit down, please.

David Sanger: So, we settled in, sat down, arrayed around the Resolute desk. It was me and Tyler Pager, Zolan Cano Young's, and Katie Rogers.

Speaker: Mhm.

Speaker: Marco, why don't you join us for a couple of minutes? Is that okay?

David Sanger: Already inside the Oval Office was Secretary of State Marco Rubio. We were about to learn why. And right away, Michael, we had to sort through a few logistics. So we have an understand this is only used for your reporting.

Speaker: So this is what we wanted to ask you about. I think in two different interviews in the first term we used the audio to go on the daily and the first thing we had to go do was negotiate that we could actually use this recording for the daily.

Speaker: Right. Thank you. Because without that negotiation we don't have this episode.

Speaker: Anything for the daily. Michael,

President Trump: let's leave it for a little while. Fine. For a little while. We'll see how it goes. And we were just a few minutes into the conversation.

Speaker: Is he on the phone? So, can you turn that off for a second?

David Sanger: When an aid came in and handed the president a note.

Speaker: He's about to have a call with President Petro. And this call is off the record.

David Sanger: Okay. Saying the president of Colombia was on the phone, the country, not the university.

Speaker: That's right.

Speaker: Can you turn them off? You give me a word.

David Sanger: Yeah. Off. And what did that mean to you knowing that the president of Colombia was calling him in this moment?

David Sanger: The first thing that came to mind was, "Oh, we have to get up and walk out." But just as I was getting up to go do that, the president waved at me just like, "No, David, please stay." Right? And the second thing that I thought was if the president of Colombia is calling, it's because he's worried about the fact that President Trump said just the other day he better watch his ass because he could be next.

Speaker: After Nicholas Maduro's ouster, he could be next to be ousted.

David Sanger: That's right. And at just that moment, JD Vance came in and settled in next to Marco Rubio to listen to the conversation.

Speaker: Got it. Now, the conversation itself was off the record, but it turned out that some of our colleagues down in Colombia had just sat down with President Pro. So, we had New York Times reporters at both ends of this conversation. They had left before the call happened, but Petro was very clear with them. He said, "This is a scary moment for Colombia. This is Donald Trump. We could well get the Venezuela treatment."

Speaker: So, presumably, he's calling to beseech President Trump to treat him kindly.

David Sanger: That's exactly right.

Speaker: Got it.

David Sanger: So, the call ends.

Speaker: Okay, let's go.

David Sanger: We turn our recorders back on.

President Trump: I hope that was interesting. Was that interesting to you?

David Sanger: Very interesting. And that began a really wide-ranging conversation. And in the first part, not surprisingly, we spent a lot of time on foreign policy.

Speaker: Great. So, let me tell you where we want to start. Um, your decision to capture Maduro and declare that the US was in charge for the foreseeable future, I think, raised a question of whether you believe, as your aid, Steven Miller, put it so clearly the other night, that international nicities are gone. That countries operate by strength. He I think he said, "Govern by strength, government by force, governed by power." And I think that left a lot of people wondering whether you believe you have the right as the world's largest superpower to go in and extinguish any threat or seize any resource you think is in the US interest particularly in the Western Hemisphere. If there's a threat, you use the word threat, you certainly would have the right, any country would have the right to do that. Uh without the threat, much less so. And frankly, I do believe in the nicities. I get along with a lot of people. I get along with

David Sanger: for most presidents, military power is the very last resort after everything else, every form of diplomacy has failed you. So, I wanted to get the president focused on the question of what criteria he uses to exercise the most extreme and deadly form of American power, which is the military. but also try to figure out how much of a motivation in Venezuela was the fact that it's sitting on the world's largest reserves of oil. You've gone in in part to get a resource which you just declared today.

President Trump: Well, I got in I I got in for numerous reasons. Number one, the drugs are pouring into the country. You know that. Number two, the people are pouring into the country were. except now we have a 100% strong border.

Speaker: That all this talk about a threat from drugs, from criminals and all that might be secondary to his true motivation here.

President Trump: No, the oil happened to be there.

President Trump: Don't forget the oil will take a while, but we have it set. Although we did get, you know, many barrels of oil today as you probably know.

President Trump: Uh and uh that's fine, but we didn't do that. We didn't even know about the all of the oil that was being stored there.

Speaker: So supposing you're Xi Jinping and you've watched the events of the past

Speaker: few days.

David Sanger: And I wanted him to talk a little bit about the long-term implications of this, the precedent it sets. You may also be thinking that if you're Xi that you could use the same logic to decapitate and control Taiwan or why couldn't Putin use that argument, same argument, it's a threat to grab the rest of Ukraine or go beyond into other former Soviet states. In other words, have you created a precedent that you may come to regret later on?

President Trump: No, because this is this was a real threat. You didn't have people pouring into China. You didn't have drugs pouring into China. You didn't have all of the

Speaker: that what happens if you're Xi Jinping and you're watching this thinking, boy, this is useful when I'm justifying going after Taiwan.

David Sanger: The president engaged on this, but I'm not sure he'd given it a huge amount of thought before we started discussing it.

President Trump: And uh that's up to him what he's going to be doing, but you know, I've expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that.

David Sanger: And at some point, Tyler Pager jumped back in to bring the topic back to the central question of Venezuela.

Tyler Pager: How long do you think you'll be running Venezuela?

President Trump: Only time will tell.

Tyler Pager: Like 3 months, 6 months, a year longer.

President Trump: I would say much longer than that.

President Trump: Much longer. And we have to rebuild.

President Trump: You have to rebuild the country. And we will rebuild it in a very profitable way.

President Trump: We're going to be uh using oil and we're going to be taking oil. We're getting oil prices down and we're going to be giving u money to Venezuela which they desperately need. We're going to be helping.

David Sanger: One of the things that we all really wanted to know was what would it take for the president to actually send American forces back on the ground in Venezuela?

Speaker: On the importance of the military, what would trigger a decision to send ground troops into Venezuela?

President Trump: Uh, I wouldn't want to tell you that because, you know, I can't I can't give up information like that to a reporter as good as you may be. I just can't talk about that. There's a possibility I would do that. Absolutely. you know, a second

Speaker: because the US has really never tried an experiment like the one that we're seeing play out now, which is a kind of virtual or remote control occupation,

Speaker: right?

Speaker: Running a foreign country kind of by phone

Speaker: or by having an armada floating just offshore.

Speaker: Would you do it if you couldn't get at the oil? Would you do it if they didn't kick out the Chinese and Russian?

President Trump: I can't tell you that. Uh I really wouldn't want to tell you that, but they're treating us with great respect. As you know, we're getting along very well with the administration that is there right now. Uh they're giving us everything that we feel is necessary.

David Sanger: But President Trump insisted to us that right now he's getting from the Venezuelan government, which is essentially all filled with Maduro's appointees. Everything that he wants, and most of what he wants is access to the oil. Given what has happened in Venezuela, the threats against Colombia, the discussions about taking Greenland, buying Greenland, however you're framing this right now, is there anything that you think can constrain your power on the world stage if you believe that something is against national security? Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop you if you wanted to?

President Trump: Yeah, there's one thing. My own morality, my own mind. That's the only thing that can stop international law. And that's very good.

President Trump: I don't need international law. I'm not looking to hurt people. I'm not looking to kill people. I've ended, remember this, I've ended eight wars. Nobody else has ever done that. I've ended eight wars and didn't get the Nobel Peace Prize. Pretty amazing. Obama got it. He was there for a few weeks and he got it. He didn't even know why he got it. They they asked him why did he get it. He was unable to answer the question. I ended eight wars. I if you look at those wars, these were tough wars to end too. And let me tell you, India and Pakistan were going at it as you know, they were going at it. But but that was one of eight, but we ended eight strong wars, some going on for more than 30 years.

Speaker: But do you feel your administration needs to abide by international law on the global stage?

President Trump: Yeah, I I do. I you know, I do. But it it depends what your definition of international law is. But the answer is I do. But we have to keep the United States safe. We have to keep parts of the world safe that we feel responsible for. NATO is not feared by Russia or China at all. Not even a little bit. We're tremendously. David, I found this exchange that the president had with Katie Rogers really fascinating because he is saying that at a moment when he is exercising power arguably as never before that international law is not much of a constraint on him. The only constraint really is his personal judgment. And he goes on to say that he thinks that situation, him exercising American power kind of at his whim is what instills in our foes and even in our allies like NATO the respect and fear required to operate in this world. I think this is one of the most fascinating windows into the way President Trump thinks because as you just heard there, he views the only check on his power to be his own moral compass.

Speaker: Mhm.

David Sanger: And that outside institutions, whether they're the UN or an international treaty,

Speaker: only means what he interprets it to mean. Mhm.

David Sanger: And that tells you that he wants to operate as a leader with fundamentally no check at all because he thinks he's a good person and therefore the world can rely on

Speaker: his good judgments,

David Sanger: his good judgment and his good heart.

David Sanger: And so we thought we'd sort of stress test that by turning to Greenland.

Speaker: Can I circle back to what you had said about NATO? If you had to choose between obtaining Greenland and preserving NATO, what's your higher priority there?

President Trump: Well, I don't want to say that to you, but it may be a choice. You have to understand Russia is not at all concerned with NATO other than us. China is not at all concerned with NATO other than us because sadly, you know, Europe is becoming a much different place. And they really do have to shape up. I want them to shape up. I think we'll always get along with Europe. But

David Sanger: what he's essentially saying is the US holds all the cards, has all the power, and NATO's not going to have a choice because there is no NATO without the United States. And therefore, if the price of keeping the alliance together

Speaker: is handing the US the right to control Greenland, they're going to do it because they don't have another choice. Are you prepared to send troops to Greenland if they do not give over the territory?

President Trump: Well, we already have troops in

Speaker: more troops to militarily take over.

President Trump: I mean, we take over. We have, you know, good section of troops and I've had troops there and and I've, you know, upped it.

Speaker: I was there this summer and you could send as many troops as you want. And you haven't done it. How come?

President Trump: Because I want to do it properly.

Speaker: And properly means own it. really it is to me it's ownership. Ownership is very important. You know

Speaker: why is ownership important here?

President Trump: Because that's what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can't do whether you're talking about a lease or a treaty. Uh ownership gives you things and elements that you can't get from just signing a document that you can have a important to you or to

President Trump: psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I've been right about everything.

Speaker: And you would use military force to get that.

President Trump: I didn't say that. You said that.

Speaker: I'm asking you, would you?

President Trump: Yeah. I wouldn't comment on that. It's I don't think it'll be necessary.

Speaker: And can you just explain what he means by that? The psychological value of owning Greenland, not just controlling it, not just having a lot of influence over it, but owning it. The way I read it was, "Hey, I spent my life as a real estate developer and I know that you have way more control if you own than if you lease."

David Sanger: But that also means I fundamentally don't believe in relying on alliances. and the fact that Denmark, a member of NATO,

Speaker: a member of NATO, which basically controls and protects Greenland, it's not enough for him to have an ally that he's got to do it himself. Now, you got to ask yourself, where does that logic end,

Speaker: right? Does it end with China taking over Taiwan? Does it end with Russia taking over Ukraine?

Speaker: Does it end with the United States demanding that doesn't stop at Greenland? Maybe we need Iceland as well. So David, based on how the president talked about the use of American power overseas and especially the use of American military power overseas, what were you left thinking by the end of this part of the interview? I was left thinking that the president feels himself unconstrained by law, convention, or the systems that the United States itself built at the end of World War II after the world had gone through two horrific

Speaker: NATO and the entire system of international law.

David Sanger: That's right. But at the same time that he's not a wararmonger, right? He actually does want that peace prize. He does want to be known as a president of peace. And yet when he's given the choice between long, slow, boring diplomacy and quick action by special operations breaking down doors, he'll go for the special operators.

Speaker: What you're describing is a set of extraordinary contradictions even for Donald Trump.

David Sanger: Absolutely. And that is what is both maddening and fascinating about covering the Trump presidency because you're not going to fit this man into some simple set of theories. He is a bundle of contradictions.

Michael Barbaro: Well, David, after the break, we are going to turn to a similar bundle of contradictions when it comes to domestic affairs. We'll be right back.

Speaker: on behalf of both of them. Have they got us?

Speaker: I want to make sure we have time for domestic policy too. Um uh ICE did shoot and kill an American citizen today according to early reports.

Michael Barbaro: David, tell us about the conversation that the four of you had with the president about domestic issues. Well, Zolan kicked it off with questions about this horrifying scene we had all just seen play out in Minneapolis just hours before.

Zolan Cano Young's: Uh we have also seen protesters met with violent tactics and pepper spray. In some cases, American citizens have also been wrongfully detained. Do any of these incidents or tactics make you think ICE has gone too far?

President Trump: Well, I think that ISIS has been treated very badly. Don't forget, I got rid of thousands and thousands of killers, murderers. They've gotten rid of thousands of people that were led into our country during the Biden administration so stupidly. Uh they're very they're very brave, very citizen was shot today.

Zolan Cano Young's: That's right.

Zolan Cano Young's: Does this make you uncomfortable?

President Trump: Well, I Everything makes me uncomfortable. I want to see nobody get shot. I want to see nobody screaming and trying to run over policemen either or, you know, law enforceed by local officials in the

Speaker: Well, if you take a look at the tape, I saw the same tape that you must have seen. I just saw it. There were several

Speaker: there were several angles on that.

President Trump: Well, I know. But if you take a look at that, that was a vicious situation that took place. And if you go before that, and in my opinion, the the screamer, that woman that was screaming shame, shame, shame, that's not normal. That was a practiced, rehearsed, professional agitator.

Speaker: Even so, are those appropriate policing tactics for somebody to fire into a vehicle like that in your mind? Is that

President Trump: Well, they ran him over. I mean, they ran

David Sanger: and Trump just sort of reflexively defended the officers and claimed that the driver had run over one of them

Speaker: and we had all seen this video and immediately sort of stepped in to challenge the account

Speaker: tried to run.

Speaker: Video didn't look like he was he was run over.

President Trump: Well, I'd play the tape for you right now. Do you want to just whip it out? Looked to me to be very bad. I I just put out the tape. And so Trump said,

Speaker: "Well, let's just watch it together."

David Sanger: And to our surprise, that's exactly what happened.

Speaker: Have any of these have any of these tactics made you uncomfortable? You know, you've had citizens that have also been wrongfully detained here?

President Trump: Yeah, we've seen that one.

Speaker: We've seen that video.

President Trump: Yeah.

David Sanger: One of his aids brought over a laptop, slowed down a a version of the tape.

Speaker: Does not look like the ICE officer has been run over there. And then maybe from a different angle we would see.

President Trump: The way I look at it.

Speaker: Oh, sure. If you look at that,

Speaker: it's terrible scene.

Speaker: Yeah, we all agree on.

Speaker: You say it's horrible to watch. You said that on truth. So, do you think that goes I hate to see it. It was sort of a strange form of real time factchecking of the president with it clear that the president wasn't entirely comfortable with what he was seeing on that laptop.

Speaker: Mhm.

Speaker: Or what these ICE agents were doing.

Speaker: So just take a step back here because this

David Sanger: and then from there the president sort of turn to a a different topic about what the real aim of the president's immigration restrictions are and who they're supposed to target. challenge, but I do.

Speaker: Your administration has also suggested that some people who are naturalized citizens could see their citizenship strict. Uh, which groups do you think should lose citizenship?

President Trump: Well, I think Somalia is a disaster to be honest with you. I look at what's happening in Minnesota and you look at this country, it's one of the worst in the world. It's acknowledged to be truly one of the most corrupt, one of the most vicious, violent countries in the world. Uh, even the ships, they go after the ships. They don't do that anymore because if they go after the ships, you know what? They get hit by the same missile that we hit the drug dealers.

Speaker: Question is, would you strip them of their nationality?

President Trump: If they deserve to be stripped, I would. Yeah.

Speaker: So, what would the criteria you would

President Trump: Well, we're looking at criteria right now. But if they deserve to be stripped, David, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Yeah.

Speaker: You don't think that your comments about those of Somali descent have painted a broad brush on your own citizens?

President Trump: I don't care. I want great people in this country. I want people that love the country. And I think that many of the people that came in from Somalia uh they hate our country. They came and they and not only do they hate our country, they've ripped off our country. They've ripped it off. They've stolen billions of dollars. It's shocking from where they came, they had nothing. And they come here and they steal. And it's an embarrassment to the intelligence of the people of Minnesota and to the people of our country

Speaker: in your view

President Trump: that that they would be allowed to do it. I I I've heard many people that say this is generalizing in population and find these comments.

President Trump: You call it whatever you want.

Speaker: I want to ask if part of your immigration agenda is also aimed at changing the racial makeup of this country.

President Trump: No, not at all.

Speaker: Is part of this this agenda aimed at

President Trump: I just want people that love our country. It's very simple. I want people that love our country. I want people that respect our country, respect the laws of our country. And uh I want people that can embrace our country

Speaker: because you've you've support all refugees

President Trump: that can make America great again.

Speaker: You have a tra on the majority African.

David Sanger: And Zolan raises an interesting point. The the only immigrants who can come in right now are white South Africans, right?

Speaker: Refugees

Speaker: the way of refugees.

President Trump: Well, I haven't seen that. I mean, I certainly haven't seen that. But over the years, it's been very much the opposite of that. Very, very much the opposite of that. Uh people are coming into our country. Nobody's doing it based on race.

David Sanger: Trump is positing to you all that his immigration restrictions are not about race. They're not intentionally about race when the reality is that they are allowing for very few people of color to enter the country. The people who are banned from entering the US right now and there are bans on a lot of countries. They are almost uniformly from countries where the populations are black and brown. The very few people he is letting in are white. The pattern becomes difficult to ignore. It sure does. And look, he says he just wants people who love this country to be allowed in. But what we're learning is he basically only wants to favor white South Africans as I raised with him or the immigrants he wants the most are those who bring special skills that can help our economy and uh that's a a very select group.

Speaker: Do you think some industries still need immigrant labor?

President Trump: Yes.

Speaker: Which ones?

President Trump: They need inexpensive Well, they're different things. We need people to come in. Just so you understand something, I'm all for people coming into our country through the border legally. If they come in legally, I want them more than they want me and more than they want this country. And if you look at my first term and if you look at this term, I want we need people. We're building factories all over the country who are building. You said,

Speaker: but I want them to come in to be protected respectfully. I want them to come in legally. But you said agriculture and hotels uh that you wanted ICE to use common sense against them, right? I want them to use

Speaker: Have you directed ICE to ease deportations against those industries? Yes. Are there other industries that you've directed ICE?

President Trump: Because I watch farmers and I deal with farmers and I want 90% of the farmers, more than that, and they're great people. And they have great people working for them who have been working for them for 25 years. They're almost like a member of the family.

Speaker: Are there other in those people thrown out of the country? Are there other industries or companies that you've directed ICE to ease deportations on?

President Trump: No, the South Korean case

Speaker: some some service industries uh some I'll give you an example in Georgia with South Korea.

President Trump: They make batteries. Batteries are very complex and they're very dangerous to make and they make them and they brought in three or 4 hundred people who specialize in

Speaker: them all

President Trump: and they throw them out. And I was very angry about it. You know why? because they have to open a factory and you can't take a person off the street who's never seen a battery before and think that they're going to make highly complex batteries.

David Sanger: He actually invoked the ICE raid on that Kyai plant in Georgia where they deported a whole bunch of South Korean workers who were there setting up a a car battery factory.

Speaker: You have to allow them to bring some of their experts with them or they're never going to be able to open their plant. It sounds like you were angry at at ICE for this raid on the Hyundai facility.

President Trump: I was not happy about it. Nope. I was not happy about it. Uh they're making batteries. Batteries are very dangerous and actually very complex and they brought people that make batteries and those people would have trained our people how to make batteries and at some point they would have gone back because they want to go back to their country. They might not. So, in Trump's telling here, and I was struck by this, that a fair number of American workers just may not be qualified to do the kind of highly technical manufacturing that he's prioritizing right now, something like, you know, car batteries. And what's interesting about that, of course, is, you know, President Trump runs on a message of remembering forgotten America, the bluecollar workingass Americans, you know, many of whom used to be in the manufacturing sector who need jobs now in the new economy. And he's kind of saying, let's be honest, a lot of those people, they can't do this work.

Speaker: Well, I think what he's saying is they certainly can't do it at the beginning. You can't just

Speaker: immigrants can.

David Sanger: That's right. That you can't just drop a car battery factory and expect it to be up and running, right, without the help of the technical workers that they need to get it up and running and the American workers aren't going to catch on until that happens.

President Trump: To be honest, I'd love to be able to create an immigration policy that works for everyone.

Speaker: You like a comprehensive immigration reform?

President Trump: I would love to do it if it was possible.

Speaker: Is Congress willing to go do that? George Bush tried.

President Trump: If the Democrats would do it, I'd do it. I'd love to have a comprehensive uh immigration policy, something that really worked. It's about time for the country to have

Speaker: What would that look like?

President Trump: Excuse me.

Speaker: What would a comprehensive

President Trump: I don't want to go into that because it's a very uh it's a very ticklish subject, but I believe that uh there is a plan that can work for everybody.

David Sanger: David, I wonder if you were as surprised as I was in listening to this interview by the president's sudden enthusiasm for something like comprehensive immigration reform. I'm sure you remember this as well as I do. Comprehensive immigration reform is a word that if a Republican invokes, they are in big, big trouble because it almost always implies that you're going to create a legal path for those here illegally. That's the comprehensive part of immigration reform. In the past, President Trump has sought to kill any form of comprehensive immigration reform. And suddenly he's saying, "I want this."

David Sanger: You know, Michael, to hear President Trump come back and discuss this, I was sitting there thinking, "How is his own base going to go react to this?" Because yes, the core of it is you do find a pathway for at least some to get to citizenship. And I'm not sure the current Trump base is ready for that.

Speaker: Can we move on to the economy? I would like to ask you about uh Republican pollsters lately are warning that you and the party is losing ground with young voters, particularly young men who are concerned with job prospects.

President Trump: Could I have the Tik Tok uh thing?

Speaker: But what would you say to those young rigged polls? Look, the polls are rigged just like the writers. But there's these are Republican pollsters who are warning your party that you are

Speaker: not doing enough focus on American jobs.

President Trump: I can't tell you. I I think I'm very popular. This just came out from Tik Tok.

Speaker: It came out just recently

President Trump: that Donald Trump was number one on Tik Tok and the most popular person. So you can have these. I don't

David Sanger: David on the economy. The president pretty forcefully waves off the idea, which we keep finding in poll after poll and in election results from the last off-year election, that voters, including many Republican voters, are persistently feeling anxious about the economy and they don't think he is focused enough on it. You know, we kept trying to steer him back to this to try to get him to think about the economic anxieties of ordinary Americans.

Speaker: Mr. President, so many voters voted for you because of the economy. And I think Katie just wanted to get out.

President Trump: The economy is probably the best. It's Look, the economy right now, I have trillions and trillions of dollars coming into this economy, more than any nation has ever had by far. Our economy is unbelievable. And I'm bringing down the prices. Remember this. I didn't cause the high prices. Biden did.

Speaker: The Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait one second. I inherited a mess. Listen. I inherited a mess.

President Trump: I inherited a highly inflated, horribly run country. The borders were bad. The military was bad. The Afghanistan was the worst worst day in the history of our country. Maybe in the I think it was the lowest point. Do you know what that was? The lowest point. And we may right now be at the highest point.

Speaker: There are good signs and the economy is growing. Wages are keeping up with inflation. But there are other indicators that people are are hurting. High earners. 10% of high earners make half of the economy grow.

President Trump: I'm bringing they're hurting because of Biden. I'm bringing

Speaker: No, high earners are not hurting. It's the low earners. It's the middle earners. It's the people that you promise to help. What do you say to If you look at my achievements, the greatest uh percentage-wise, the greatest beneficiaries of my economy in my first term were lowincome workers. And it's turning out to be right now blue collar workers are doing better than anybody else percentage- wise as they measure that. Uh I inherited a mess. It was high prices. It was high inflation. It was high crime. You know, did you see where murders are the lowest they've ever been? Did you see where crime is at the lowest point it's ever been? Do you know why? Because they closed the border and we don't have criminals pouring into our country.

Speaker: Mr. President, do you

Speaker: a few more on the economy? Do you think um are you basically telling Americans that they have to wait a little bit longer, particularly low and middle income Americans?

President Trump: No, it doesn't. I can't fix what they destroyed in four years immediately. But if you look at it, I have more investment income coming in than any president than any country has ever had. What I've done,

David Sanger: I mean, it felt in these exchanges that this concept of the president as insulated from the American economic challenges of this moment was very vividly on display. And you don't sense that he is empathetic to those who are worried about the economy. In fact, he kind of disputes the premise that there is anything wrong with the economy.

Speaker: That's right. Or that new technology like artificial intelligence would bring about more economic anxiety.

Speaker: Mr. President, just on AI, there are many Americans who are concerned that AI is going to

President Trump: uh AI is going to take their jobs and they will not will be out of work. I think just the opposite. I think AI is going to be a tremendous job producer. I think that we have so many jobs. My biggest problem isn't taking the jobs, it's that we don't have enough people to fill the jobs

President Trump: and that's where robots come in. And so I I think you've got to come to your own conclusion about whether or not there's anything in this interview that would make an ordinary American feel better about supermarket prices or tightening job market or the anxieties that come from the arrival of a new and somewhat terrifying new technology that's going to have effects that none of us can predict. So David, how does this interview ultimately come to an end?

David Sanger: Well, the president had stuff he wanted us to see.

Speaker: These are two personnel actions that Scavino's team asked the president to

President Trump: Oh, I'll sign it in two seconds.

Speaker: Sorry, sir.

President Trump: This is a much more important thing to do. So, this is the ballroom right here. It's beautiful. People love it.

David Sanger: And after nearly two hours of conversation, he got up, started pointing out paintings he had dug out of the vault of the White House and hung.

President Trump: Oh, get the get me the model real fast.

David Sanger: talked about his plans for the White House complex.

David Sanger: All a reminder that while he is taking out the leader of Venezuela and threatening to re-engage with the Iranians and denying that there's any reason for people to be anxious about the economy.

President Trump: As an example, have you seen the white marble floor there?

Speaker: No.

President Trump: Well, I'm going back up. So, if you want, you could follow me. Yeah, that' be okay.

Speaker: Well, let me just finish this. So,

Speaker: he's also busy thinking about rebuilding the White House.

Speaker: Sir, do you want to show them the renovation?

President Trump: Yeah, let's go. Come on. That we had enough. Nice setup, right, Katie? Good. Two hours, Katie. I could go nine hours.

Speaker: We're going to continue.

Speaker: Sir, can I get two signatures?

President Trump: You know, I did a uh a treadmill with the military.

Michael Barbaro: Well, David, thank you very much for walking us through this fascinating conversation with the president. When we come back, we're going to ask that all four of you who conducted this interview sit down together and briefly reflect on the conversation and what you all took from it. So, we'll be right back.

Michael Barbaro: So, Tyler, Katie, Zolan, David just walked us through the highlights of the interview that the four of you did with him because this went on for so long. There's inevitably a lot of material that we couldn't cover. So, I want to begin by just asking each of you, what's one thing he said that we probably didn't cover with David that's really going to stick with you when you reflect back on this interview, Katie? I think it's the degree to which the president throughout this interview really wanted credit and he wanted gestures of goodwill from people he wanted respect from be it Democrats, Republicans, members of the news media, the American public. And one of the ways I felt that that was manifesting during this whole encounter was he's building a ballroom where the East Wing used to be big enough to host an inauguration inside for future presidents.

Katie Rogers: And he kept going back to this idea that he's a builder. He mentioned that maybe he was a better builder than he ever has been at politics. And at one point he summons a military aid to bring in an architectural rendering with miniature models of the ballroom and is sort of almost telling us and himself that building being built over there. They'll be thanking me as if this is the project that will do it. That will give him this credit that he has been seeking in this term, his last term, and throughout his time in public life.

Michael Barbaro: Zolan, what about you?

Zolan Cano Young's: Katie made the good point of how the president is so motivated by whether or not he's getting credit. And it's not just about whether he's getting credit now, but it seems he's also motivated by whether or not he got credit in the first term. And he did not seem bothered at all when we asked him about his relatives and the business deals and the money that they've made across the world throughout his second term. When we pressed him on this, he was saying, well, in his view, his family showed restraint in the first term and he didn't get credit.

Speaker: Showed restraint in terms of what he was willing to do in the name of making his family money.

Zolan Cano Young's: That's right. And thus now in this term, he said that he was pretty much unbothered about the business deals that his family has been able to pursue. All this, I think, speaks to a president who's so much more emboldened in this second term. And I think we saw up close and personal just how emboldened he is.

Michael Barbaro: Tyler,

Tyler Pager: one thing that I think stood out to me, Michael, is a conversation we had about anti-semitism because it's become such a flash point within the Republican party as we see this intraparty warfare over whether or not there is space in the Republican party and the broader Make America Great Again movement for people who espouse anti-semitic views,

Speaker: influencers,

Speaker: right? And JD Vance, his vice president, said basically that as long as you love America, you're welcome. And he didn't want to institute purity,

Speaker: even if you're anti-semitic.

Tyler Pager: Right? And I asked President Trump whether or not there was room in his movement for people with anti-semitic views. And he said, "No, I don't think we need them. I don't think we like them." And that puts him at odds with leading Republican figures, including his vice president, who seemed more open to including people who spread hateful views within the party.

Speaker: It was a moment where he really came out quite strongly against people who spread anti-semitism when this debate is coursing through his movement and among his supporters,

Speaker: right? He's drawing a pretty bright red line there. So, one last question for each of you. What is your ultimate takeaway from this conversation? For me, there were moments in this interview where it almost seemed like the president was a bystander to his own policies, to his own agenda. There were times where he would speak, for example, about an interest in comprehensive immigration reform and a potential pathway to citizenship.

Speaker: Well, he has also directed his aids to go pursue mass deportations. And you know, he talked about, well, ICE needs to be careful around certain industries.

Speaker: You run ICE.

Speaker: Yeah, you run ICE. And also Steven Miller works for you. Steven Miller has been clear about pursuing mass deportations as well. So it was that distance he almost seemed to sort of try to create between himself and in some of the actions that his administration is taking.

Speaker: Yeah, that is fascinating. Katie, what about you?

Katie Rogers: My major takeaway from this is that there are many faces to President Trump and even throughout that interview. It was a real exercise in wrangling those different personas because he was combative. He was upbeat at times. He was very almost docel when we were asking him probing questions about his health. And so instead of being the President Trump who has called reporters sedicious for asking questions about his health,

Speaker: he allowed Tyler to ask him if he'd ever taken a GLP1 medication before. He said no.

Speaker: Quick interjection. Oh yeah. What did he say?

Speaker: He said he had not, but he probably should.

Speaker: David asked him if he was on any blood thinners besides aspirin. The answer was no.

Speaker: Yeah. Very personal questions. I asked him if he had ever had a heart attack. These are questions

Speaker: no.

Speaker: The answer was no. But the point is this was a different version of him and you never know which version of him you are going to get and he knows that. He knows that if a foreign leader calls him that person does not know who is on the other end of the line.

Speaker: Which persona?

Katie Rogers: Yes. And that means that this president can dangle consequences can show up as magnanimous. he can show up as threatening. I think that is my main takeaway going forward.

Michael Barbaro: Fascinating. David, you know, all presidents in their second term turn more to foreign policy, not only because they've got greater leverage and greater freedom, but because they want to establish a legacy. And I think the first thing I took away from it is this is somebody who thinks about building a foreign policy legacy and building buildings. The second thing that really jumped out at me was that he was spending this time with the New York Times because he really wants an approval for this new vision of a muscular America.

Michael Barbaro: And I think he was making what he thought was a significant investment in trying to explain a new approach to managing the globe. Tyler,

Tyler Pager: what was remarkable to me as we were in there for quite some time was just watching how the Oval Office operated and the bubble around the president to support all of his needs. Whether that's him pressing the red button on his desk to get a Diet Coke or the aid that runs out multiple times of the Oval Office to pick up different pieces of paper that he has requested she print out as evidence for whatever point he's making or just the people walking in and out of the Oval Office with notes, whether that's a foreign leader on the call or an aid is waiting outside to him combining meetings. There were documents he had to sign and he just had that person come in with the paperwork as we were sitting there for the interview. His phone, his personal cell phone was ringing multiple times. He took one call from the Fox News anchor Brett Bear. But it was really just quite amazing to see how chaotic, frankly, the Oval Office can be. And we've reported on how this unfolds, but I think sitting in the Oval Office for an extended period of time and watching it up close really gives you the sense of how Trump makes decisions, how he thinks, and how his world operates.

Michael Barbaro: Well, to all four of you, thank you very much.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Thank you, Michael.

Michael Barbaro: Here's what else you need to know today.

Michael Barbaro: The A's are 52, the NAS are 47. The motion is agreed to. The joint resolution will be placed on the calendar. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators voted to advance a resolution that would force President Trump to seek congressional authorization for continued military operations in Venezuela. Five Republican senators joined all Democrats in backing the resolution. One of them, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, said that one factor behind his vote was Trump's suggestion made in his interview with the Times that the United States might remain involved in Venezuela for years.

Michael Barbaro: And in Minnesota, local authorities are accusing the federal government of blocking them from investigating why an ICE agent killed a 37year-old woman in her car. The accusation came as federal immigration agents in Portland, Oregon, shot two people in their car on Thursday, apparently under similar circumstances.

Michael Barbaro: Federal officials accused the two people in Oregon of weaponizing their car against the agents.

Michael Barbaro: Today's episode was produced by Asta Chhaturvveni, Stella Tan, and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Rachel Quester with help from Paige Cowed. Contains music by Rowan Misto and Dan Powell and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Aphim Shapiro.

Michael Barbaro: That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Boro. See you on Monday.