President Donald Trump sat down with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night to give his first interview since he was sworn in for his second term.
In the first instalment of the two-part interview, the president repeated familiar false and unsubstantiated claims about the 2020 election, the California wildfires and immigration.
Trump also leveled a not-so-thinly-veiled threat at Joe Biden, suggesting he should have pardoned himself in addition to pre-emptively protecting his family members.
This is what Trump revealed during his first interview as President.
Immigration fearmongering
On the heels of ushering in anti-immigration executive orders that will upend communities across the country, Trump took the opportunity to reinforce his messaging.
He hit out at Biden and accused him of opening the borders so that other countries could empty their jails and mental institutions into the U.S., without offering any evidence of this happening.
“To allow people to come in, and I believe the number’s 21 million people and a large percentage of them are criminals, all over the world. Prisons from all over the world have been emptied into our country by Biden,” Trump said.
“There are people coming in with tattoos all over their face,” Trump added. “Their entire face is covered in tattoos. Typically, you know, he’s not gonna be the head of the local bank.”
Pardons of the Jan 6 Capitol rioters — and Joe Biden ‘should’ve pardoned himself’
Trump told Hannity that he decided to pardon 1,500 January 6 Capitol rioters because “nobody’s ever been treated so badly” and repeated false claims about the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Biden.
“Number one, they were in there for three and a half years,” Trump said. “They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged, and they were protesting the vote and that you should be allowed to protest about.”
“Most of the people were absolutely innocent, okay, but forgetting all about that, these people have served horribly a long time,” he added.
Later in the interview, Trump said that it was “a sad thing” that Biden hadn’t pardoned himself when he safeguarded his family members from any future prosecutions.
“Joe Biden has very bad advisers. Somebody, somebody advised Joe Biden to give pardons to everybody but him,” he said.
“This guy is running around giving everyone pardons. The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon.”
“And if you look at it, it all had to do with him,” Trump added.
California should get ‘nothing’ until Newsom ‘releases the water’
In the interview with Hannity, Trump railed against FEMA, the federal agency charged with the response to natural disasters and other emergencies, and lashed out at familiar enemy Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, over the response to the wildfires.
“Look at what happened in Los Angeles. That’s like a nuclear weapon went off,” Trump said, referring to the deadly wildfires that have ravaged thousands of acres of land and destroyed homes.
“What’s happened to Los Angeles? And you know, that thing went for four or five days. Nobody was even fighting it because they didn’t have any water. The fire departments aren’t funded properly, and the firefighters were brave as hell. They were fighting without water. I mean, they turn on a fire hydrant, there’s no water that comes out.”
The president referred to Newsom as “an idiot” while he also expressed concern that the homes of the most wealthy had been destroyed. “Some of the wealthiest, most powerful people lost their homes, and it looked like our country was helpless,” he said.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until then, let water flow down into there.”
Trump also told Hannity that FEMA should “be a whole big discussion very shortly,” and said he’d prefer ending the agency’s federal mission and make individual states responsible for dealing with natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other matters normally handled by the federal agency.
“FEMA has not done their job for the last four years. … But unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really — it gets in the way.”
He used the example of Oklahoma — before digressing about how he won all 77 of the state’s counties in the election.
“I love Oklahoma,” Trump said. “But you know what, if they get hit with a tornado or something, let Oklahoma fix it. And then the federal government can help them out with the money.”
‘Four years of hell’
Hannity gave Trump the opportunity to reflect on the toll the last four years took on him in the courts during the criminal and civil proceedings against him.
“I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with,” Trump said. “I spent millions of dollars in legal fees, and I won, but I did it the hard way.”
After the election, the Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith who led two sprawling criminal investigations against the president filed motions to dismiss them both after a years-long attempt to prosecute Trump for 44 crimes.
Earlier this month, a Manhattan judge presiding over Trump’s criminal hush money trial declined to send him to jail but preserved the jury’s historic guilty verdict.
