Donald Trump chastised overwhelmed air traffic controllers, cast blame and doubt in response to poor economic indicators and claimed that increased access to food stamps had put “the country in jeopardy”, in an exclusive interview on Fox News Monday evening.
Speaking with Laura Ingraham, the president shared his thoughts on a wide range of topics from housing mortgages to foreign policy, interspersed with insults flung at his political opponents that were teed up by Ingraham’s questions, including Gavin Newsom, the California governor and Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader.
During the conversation, which aired as the Senate voted to end the longest government shutdown in US history, the president also discussed his vision for addressing the healthcare subsidies that have been at the heart of the funding impasse.
Democrats have been pushing for an extension to the tax credits that make Affordable Care Act healthcare premiums more affordable for millions of Americans, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Republicans have condemned the credits, saying they only enrich insurers.
“I want the money to go into an account for people where they buy their own health insurance,” he told Ingraham, suggesting the strategy could be called “Trump Care”. “They’re gonna feel like entrepreneurs. They’re actually able to go out & negotiate their own insurance.”
Ingraham also asked Trump about his post on Truth Social that railed against air traffic controllers who took time off their intensely stressful work in recent weeks, as national shortfalls caused flight delays and safety concerns.
The Federal Aviation Administration had already been grappling with a shortage in air traffic controllers when the shutdown began. But as paychecks stopped, the crisis worsened. Many were working up to 10-hour days, six days a week without pay, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and still struggling to afford basic needs. Some reportedly had to take second jobs to make ends meet.
Meanwhile, thousands of flights were canceled at the nation’s busiest airports.
“Life is not so easy for anybody,” Trump said during the interview. “Our country has never done better. We should not have had people leaving their jobs.”
Trump also stood by the claim in his post, that he would send a $10,000 bonus for anyone who worked throughout the entirety of the shutdown. Pressed on where those funds would come from, he said: “I don’t know. I will get it from some place. I always get the money from some place, regardless. It doesn’t matter.”
On other topics of money, Trump scoffed.
Ingraham asked Trump about affordability concerns and if more needs to be done to bring costs down and the president denied there was an issue. “More than anything else, it’s a con job by the Democrats. Costs are way down,” Trump claimed.
He also said it was “not even a big deal” when pressed about how a proposal to introduce 50-year mortgages would add two decades to the path to homeownership. “I mean, you go from 40 to 50 years,” he said, before Ingraham corrected him, saying 30 to 50 years.
Trump then took the moment to blame Joe Biden and his “lousy Fed person” Jerome Powell, saying that the Federal Reserve Chair “is going to be gone in a few months”.
“If we had a normal person, the Fed would have really low interest rates,” he said.
He also reiterated claims the US economy is the strongest it has ever been: “I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we ever had.”
The president broadly pushed back against all criticism, from his political rivals and from allies alike.
“Maga was my idea. I know what Maga wants better than anybody else, and Maga wants to see our country thrive,” he said, responding to Ingraham’s questions about whether he was breaking with his base in supporting the continued admittance of Chinese students into the US.
Trump did champion Republican policies though, and credited GOP legislators for the outcome of the shutdown, which leaves ACA subsidies out of the funding compromise.
Asked about where this leads Schumer, who is facing calls to step down, Trump said Schumer had simply tried to go too far: “He thought he could break the Republicans – and the Republicans broke him.”