Key lines from Trump’s first Oval Office TV interview

CNN
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President Donald Trump won’t rule out investigating former President Joe Biden in a Fox News interview that aired Wednesday.

Speaking to Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump also repeatedly criticized California Gov. Gavin Newsom, placed possible conditions on funding for wildfire-ravaged California and vowed to punish cities that do not cooperate with his immigration agenda.

Here are key lines from the interview:

Trump criticized Biden’s decision to pardon members of his own family and some Trump appointees, including members of the January 6 committee and witnesses and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

He then said it was perhaps a “sad thing” that Biden had not issued a pardon for himself.

“And you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing is, he didn’t pardon himself,” Trump told Hannity.

Later in the interview, he added, “Well, I went through four years of hell with this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars in legal fees and I won, but I did it on the hard way. And it’s really hard to say that they didn’t have to go through it all. So it’s very hard to say.”

Asked whether he wanted Congress to investigate his predecessor, Trump replied: “I think we’ll let Congress decide.”

Asked whether he wanted the attorney general to investigate Biden, Trump said he could have had “a big number done” on his 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton.

“You know, I was always against it,” added Trump, who has threatened to lock Clinton up for nearly a decade.

Trump said he would seek to “immediately” release the FBI files on John F. Kennedy once the files are reviewed.

Asked by Hannity if he would release the Kennedy assassination files, Trump mentioned that he already released some of those files as president, but was dissuaded by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from releasing additional information.

“I did it with Kennedy, to a certain extent,” Trump said. “But I was told by some of our officials not to, and you know you have to respect them.”

Trump promised early in his first term to release files on the Kennedy assassination. In October 2017, the US government released over 2,800 records related to the assassination, but avoided releasing more following last-minute requests from national security agencies.

Trump said Pompeo felt “it just wasn’t a good time to release them.” He added that he would release the files “immediately” after getting the information.

Trump brushed aside concerns that TikTok’s data collection could leave American personal information vulnerable to China, telling Hannity: “Is it that important for China to spy on young people? On little kids watching crazy videos?”

Trump was pressed by Hannity over concerns that TikTok — which is owned by China-based parent company ByteDance and thus subject to China’s data collection requirements — is a “spy app for the Communist Chinese.”

“But you can say that about anything made in China — look, we have our phones made in China for the most part, we have so many things made in China, so why don’t they mention it?” Trump said.

One of Trump’s first actions after taking office on Monday was to sign an executive order delaying enforcement of TikTok’s federal ban, which took effect on January 19. During Wednesday’s interview, he told Hannity that “a lot of people want to buy” the app in the United States, which would allow it to continue operating domestically without running afoul of the law.

Trump’s embrace of the platform is a reversal from his first term in office, when he issued an executive order effectively banning TikTok, saying the app’s data collection “threatens to give the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information” and could enable Beijing to to “build dossiers of personal information for extortion and conduct corporate espionage.”

Trump criticized Newsom’s response to the state’s recent devastating wildfires, saying the federal government shouldn’t “give California anything” unless it changes its water policy.

During the discussion of the fires, Trump repeated criticism of the state’s management of its forests and blamed its water policies for exacerbating the fires, and accused Newsom of keeping water in reservoirs in Northern California to protect the delta smelt, an endangered species.

“I’m going to put out a statement today, I don’t think we’re going to give California anything until they let the water flow,” Trump told Hannity.

While there has been a water shortage in Southern California, experts have previously told CNN that there is no basis to link the fires to efforts to protect the melt.

CNN’s Donald Judd and Alejandra Jaramillo contributed to this report.