President Donald Trump says he is “having a lot of fun” as he reflected on how his second administration feels different from the first.
In an interview with The Atlantic, the president said that this time around, he is running “the country and the world.”
“The first time, I had two things to do—run the country and survive; I had all these crooked guys,” he told the outlet. “And the second time, I run the country and the world.”
Sources inside and out of the White House told The Atlantic that Trump has been “having more fun than he’d had in his first term.”
“The first time, the first weeks, it was just ‘Let’s blow this place up’. This time, he’s blowing it up with a twinkle in his eye,” lobbyist and Trump ally Brian Ballard told the outlet.
During Trump’s first 100 days in office, he has implemented a sweeping anti-immigration agenda, launched a global trade war, dismantled federal agencies through the Department of Government Efficiency, talked about annexing Greenland and making Canada America’s 51st state.
“I’m having a lot of fun, considering what I do,” Trump said. “You know, what I do is such serious stuff.”
The Atlantic’s report charts Trump’s remarkable “rise from the political dead” following his downfall from the January 6 Capitol riot. In the interview, which was secured when the outlet got ahold of Trump’s person cell phone to request the sit-down, the president said that he still believes that he won the 2020 election.
When he was quizzed about why he cannot “let go” of the false claim, he said it’s because he is “a very honest person.”
“I’m a very honest person, and I believe it with all my heart,” Trump said. “And I believe it with fact—you know, more important than heart. I believe it with fact.”
“I’d like to say that that is reality,” Trump added. “Probably I do create some things, but I didn’t create that.”
Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen ignited chaos in the nation’s capital. He was swiftly exiled as tech companies banned him from their platforms and major corporations cut ties with him.
One MAGA influencer told the outlet that Trump’s ban “gave rise” to the right.
“Him being banned gave rise to people like me, because the president’s supporters followed me to find out what he was saying,” the influencer said. “It backfired on the tech people who deplatformed him, because it platformed all of us.”
Trump believes that his comeback, and the criminal prosecutions that followed Jan. 6, only made him stronger. “Yeah, it made me stronger, made me a lot stronger,” he said. “Normally, it would knock you out. You wouldn’t even live for the next day.”
Trump says Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have ‘been great’
Trump praised tech billionaires Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg in the sit-down interview after they have shown the president support, unlike during his first term. “He’s 100 percent. He’s been great,” the president said, referring to Bezos. “Zuckerberg’s been great,” he added.
Bezos and Zuckerberg have been accused by critics of cosying up to Trump since his second term began. The Amazon founder, who owns the Washington Post, announced in February that he was making major editorial changes to the paper’s opinion content. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” Bezos told staff. “We’ll cover other topics too, of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Zuckerberg, who called Trump a “badass” following the assassination attempt in July, has also followed Elon Musk’s X by abandoning its use of fact checkers on Facebook and Instagram.
Trump said that the billionaire class now holds him “in a higher level of respect” when asked why he thought they were “prostrating” themselves before him.
“Maybe they didn’t know me at the beginning, and they know me now,” Trump said.
Days before Trump’s inauguration, he gleefully showed a friend his recent call log. “Look who called in the past hour,” Trump said holding his cell phone, and reeled off names that included Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg, according to The Atlantic.
“I had a talk with him:” Trump on Pete Hegseth
Trump revealed he has “had a talk” with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth over reports of “chaos” at the Pentagon under his leadership.
The Atlantic asked the president about recent reporting, including how Hegseth has installed a make-up studio at the Pentagon, and Trump “smiled” in response to the question, according to the outlet.
“I think he’s gonna get it together,” Trump said. “I had a talk with him, a positive talk, but I had a talk with him.”
Trump is standing by Hegseth following his use of the Signal app to discuss sensitive military plans, and last week’s revelation that he created a second Signal chat that included his wife.
“Maybe don’t use Signal, okay?” Trump said he told staffers in light of what happened.
