President Trump sits down with Axios White House correspondent Marc Caputo for a wide-ranging conversation about power, war and America’s role in the world. The conversation centers on Iran, where Trump defends the military campaign, the deal that followed and his decision to stop short of further escalation. He also discusses the Strait of Hormuz, Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu, Cuba, Venezuela, artificial intelligence, Anthropic, China’s AI race and how he thinks about maintaining power in the final stretch of his presidency.

MARC CAPUTO: So I wanted to present this to you, just the map of the Western Hemisphere… When you look at this, do you see this as a fundamentally American hemisphere? Is this fundamentally American? PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: More and more so, yeah. More and more so. We’re much more respected. So we had a man that couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs. And I don’t want to talk about it because if I ever trip a little bit, they’ll say, oh, this is terrible. Okay, can happen. But you can’t trip every time you go on a stage. We had a man that wasn’t respected. He wasn’t smart 40 years ago. He was the worst thing that ever happened to old people because I have old people, friends of mine that are 93, 95 years old. They’re 100%. Gary Player, great golfer. I play golf. He shot 71. He’s 90 years old, and he’s mentally exactly the same as he was for the last 30 years. There are a lot of people. Biden was the worst thing that ever happened to old people because you guys were not honest with the public. The public saw it. He was a disaster. And you know the worst thing he did? Inflation was really bad, but that wasn’t the worst thing. Because I inherited all this stuff. Look at what’s happening with prices. Now they’re coming down, and with the oil, they’re really coming down. I had to make an excursion to stop a very vile little group of people that are smart, very smart. The Iranians are very smart people. They’re sort of primitive genius, but they’re smart. I had to stop them because if they had a nuclear weapon, they would use it. And you want to see Bedlam? Let them blow up a couple of cities, someplace like they would have blown up Israel. If it weren’t for me, Israel would not exist today because I terminated the Barack Hussein Obama deal, the JCPOA, which was a road to a nuclear weapon. They would have had it five years ago. They would have used it within the first week, in my opinion, and Israel would no longer be with us. Israel would have been gone years ago had I not done that. Now what surprised me most is they waited so long. They waited until I came back. They didn’t do it intentionally. They didn’t think I’d be coming back. A lot of people didn’t think so because of weaponization. They weaponized government. But I came back with a roar, better than before, I think, better than before. And think of it. Israel would have been gone if we didn’t hit them with the B-2 bombers. They were all that enriched material. They were one month away. It was right there. They could have walked out. They can’t do that anyway. You know, the B-2 bombers did their job with those great pilots. The mountain collapsed on top of it. It collapsed on top of it. Had we not hit them, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have used it on Israel. They would have used it also on Saudi Arabia. And you saw that on Qatar, on UAE, on Kuwait, Bahrain. Because when that war started, I guess my biggest surprise, almost immediately, missiles were flying at these five other countries. I said, why is he doing it? And you know what that did? That brought those five countries right into my lap. They were great. CAPUTO: And last one, artificial intelligence. TRUMP: Excuse me just one second. If it weren’t for Donald Trump, and Bibi Netanyahu worked well with me, but he will tell you, we’re the ones with the guns. We’re the ones with the whole deal. We’re the ones with the B-2 bombers, et cetera. If it weren’t for Donald Trump, Israel would have been eviscerated. CAPUTO: Your relationship with Netanyahu is — TRUMP: It’s good, but we have to keep him a little bit sane. CAPUTO: Are you going to be able to control Israel from attacking Lebanon? TRUMP: Yeah, I will be. CAPUTO: How? TRUMP: They have a lot of respect for me, and they do as I say. Remember this. If I don’t terminate the JCPOA, remember, that was a road to a nuclear weapon, legally. It says right there. And Obama thought he could pay them off. He gave them billions and billions of dollars, $ 1.7 billion in cash. It was a well-known story, but it didn’t work. You can’t bribe your way out of it. You can’t pay off your way. But if I didn’t do that, and if I didn’t attack their nuclear supply 10 months ago with the B-2 bombers, Israel would not exist today.

RealClearPolitics Videos