President Donald Trump again ripped Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, promised to unveil a health-care plan soon and bemoaned how he’s treated by the media during an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night.
In a special edition of “20/20,” ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos spoke with Trump one-on-one over two days. Aside from Trump’s comments teased last week that he would likely take information on political opponents if it were offered to him by foreign powers during the 2020 election — which Trump later walked back — here are five highlights from Sunday’s interview, according to a transcript from ABC News:
On Fed chief Jerome Powell: “He’s my pick. And I disagree with him entirely.”
“Frankly, if we had a different person in the Federal Reserve that wouldn’t have raised interest rates so much, we would have been at least a point and a half higher” [referring to the first quarter’s 3.2% rise in GDP].
“I’m not happy with what he’s done.”
When asked by Stephanopoulos if he was worried his criticism was putting Powell in a box, Trump replied: “Yes, I do. But I’m going to do it anyway because — I’ve waited long enough.”
On health care: “I’m very much for preexisting conditions,” Trump said, adding that under his future plan, people with preexisting conditions would be charged “much lower.”
“You’ll see that in a month when we introduce it. We’re going to have a plan. That’s subject to winning the House, Senate, and presidency, which hopefully we’ll win all three. We’ll have phenomenal health care.”
When asked when the plan would be revealed, Trump said: “We’ll be having a plan much before the election. Soon. Fairly soon. It’s almost complete.”
“It’s going be a great plan. Now, that’s all subject because the Democrats won’t vote for it. It’s not their kind of a thing, because it’s too good.”
On tariffs: “The tariffs are what is allowing us to make great trade deals. If we didn’t have tariffs, I couldn’t have even spoken to Mexico. . . . if we didn’t have tariffs, we wouldn’t be able to speak to China.”
“People don’t understand tariffs, but I understand them. And I also understand the power of tariffs.”
Trump also suggested raising tariffs on Chinese imports even more: “We have … right now, we’re getting 25 percent on $250 billion. And in the end, we’re going to get probably 25 percent or so. And it could be even increased. But 25 percent on $550-$585 billion. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars coming into our country,” he said, despite the fact that it’s American companies and consumers that actually end up paying for most of that. “The tariffs have been very beneficial.”
On his treatment by the press: “Nobody’s ever been treated badly like me. . . . Abraham Lincoln was treated supposedly very badly. But nobody’s been treated badly like me.”
On why he didn’t testify under oath to special counsel Robert Mueller on questions about obstruction: “Because they were looking to get us for lies or slight misstatements. I looked at what happened to people, and it was very unfair. Very, very unfair. Very unfair.”
When asked if he was worried about being prosecuted after his term, Trump said: “Did nothing wrong. There was no collusion.”
“You don’t even hear Russia mentioned anymore. Russ- Russia’s not mentioned. Now, it’s all about obstruct– obstruction of what? They built up a phony crime.”
“I gave them 1.5 million pages of documents, right? I gave them four or five hundred witnesses. I let Don McGahn testify.
“There was no crime. There was no collusion. The big thing’s collusion. Now, there’s no collusion. That means they set– it was a setup.”
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