How Trump woke me up for a surprise interview

Donald Trump is used to calling reporters from the blue. It seems that the US president prefers a telephone conversation without a cuff in an interview with a camera sitting.

It was my turn on Monday night. And I’ll be honest with you – I fell asleep when the White House rang.

I spent the best part of five days, believing that he had an outward chance of getting an interview with him, to mark a year after the experience of his life in Butler, Pennsylvania.

My reporting from this shooting made global titles and probably attracted the president’s attention. So I thought that this connection may be a way to secure a presidential interview – quite rare things for foreign news organizations in the United States.

On Sunday night, I was told that I was minutes of call, so my team and I stood ready to record, but it didn’t come.

Until last night, I gave up the interview, which happens and after a long weeks on the road without a day off, I was exhausted and a nap. Then the phone rang.

I answered, and the voice of the press secretary Carolyn Levitt came over the speaker: “Hi Gary, I’m with the President here, here you are.”

I entered my living room, tormenting myself for my digital recorder; The line fell and I decided I lost it. But they returned to the line and I spent almost 20 minutes talking to Trump about everything-from that fateful night in Butler, to his disappointments with Vladimir Putin, to his newly discovered faith in NATO and his opinion on the United Kingdom.

Here are my five key absorptions from our surprising conversation.

He was very reflecting a few things and sounded quite vulnerable, talking about the attempted murder – it is clear that it is unpleasant to talk about it.

For a president, loved by his supporters that he spoke so frankly and without a filter, there were times of reflection and some long pauses before answers that the public rarely sees.

Asked if the attempted murder had changed him, the president conveyed a hint of vulnerability as he said he was trying to think about it as much as possible.

“I don’t like to live in this, because if I did, it would be, you know, it can be life -changing, I don’t want it to be.”

Developing, he said he liked “the power of positive thinking or the power of positive not thinking.”

There was also a very long pause when I asked him if he trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the end, he replied, “I trust almost no one to be honest with you.”

Turning to domestic American policy, I asked if the President’s plan for the mass deported work – both in terms of speed and given that some people were swept away by which president he might not want to see a deported.

The president insisted that his team had done a “great job” by performing his promises to his campaign, citing a drastic reduction in migrants passing to the United States from southern neighbor Mexico.

Some of Trump’s team expressed powerlessness that deportations were being done too slowly. When I pressed it on the question of how many deportations in this second presidential term would celebrate success, Trump refused to give a figure.

“Well, I don’t put a number, but I want to get the criminals quickly and we do it as you know,” he said. “We bring them to Salvador, many other places.”

Trump expressed his dissatisfaction with Russian President Vladimir Putin – restricting a day in which he threatened to hit Moscow’s economy with secondary sanctions if a deal for war in Ukraine was not achieved within 50 days.

After holding a campaign for

He again pointed out that there was a gap between words and actions by Putin: “I thought we made a deal four times and then went home, and you see, just attacked a nursing home or something in Kiev. I said,” What the hell was it all? “

Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski and other European leaders have long accused Putin of being not serious in ending the war. For them, the feelings of doubt will be nothing new.

But when I asked Trump if he had ended with the Russian leader, he continued to leave the door open: “I didn’t end with him, but I’m disappointed with him.”

I told Trump that once he assumed that NATO was outdated and he replied that he now believes that the Western Military Union is “the opposite of it.”

He was fresh from the household of NATO Chief Mark Rute – a person he looks like he could work well. The pair exchanged warm words in front of the world cameras and announced that the United States would sell NATO weapons, which would then be handed over to Kiev.

During our call, Trump said that he was giving up his insult, that his country had spent more on defense in proportion than in his allies.

“It was very unfair because the United States paid almost one hundred percent of it, but now they pay their own bills and I think it is much better,” he said, it seems that it is a bet last month by NATO members to increase the defense costs to 5% of the economic production of each country.

“We changed NATO a lot,” he told me.

Trump emphasized his respect for the United Kingdom and his Prime Minister, Sir Kiir Starmer, with whom last month signed an agreement to remove some trade barriers. “I really like the premiere a lot, even though it’s liberal,” Trump explained.

Trump stressed that the relationship between the two countries is just as “special” as many Britons like to believe, adding that he believes that the UK will fight with the United States at war.

He sounded relaxing over the perceived ease against him. Although his state visit to the United Kingdom later would not lead to a speech to parliament this year, he did not insist that legislators be recalled. “Let them go and have fun,” he said.

Trump labeling his future host King Charles “Big Gentleman”. He got rid of a recent speech, which was delivered to Canada’s parliament by the monarch, which is seen as the approval of Canadian sovereignty of Trump’s threats.

He even had a joke. “You have many different names you go,” he said. “England, if you want to cut several areas. And you go Britain and you have the UK and you have the UK. You have more names than any other country in history, in my opinion.”