Washington DC:
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday sat for his first interview since returning to the White House and targetted his predecessor former President Joe Biden for issuing several pardons for family members and officials on his last day in office. Mr Trump claimed he was given the option to pre-emptively pardon himself at the end of his first term, but chose not to.
“I was given the option, they said, ‘Sir, would you like to pardon everybody, including yourself?'” Mr Trump told Fox News Channel’s Hannity on Wednesday.
“I said I’m not going to pardon anybody, we didn’t do anything wrong. And we had people that suffered, they’re incredible patriots … you had Bannon put in jail, you had Peter Navarro put in jail. We had people who suffered. And far worse than that, they lost their fortunes. They lost their, whatever, nest egg,” he added.
When asked how he felt about returning to the Oval Office, the President said, “Well, it was a lot of work and as you know, I felt that we shouldn’t have had to necessarily be here.”
Insinuating that had he been re-elected in 2020, Mr Trump stated, “It could have been done, a lot of work could have been done, it would have been over.”
Adding to his claim, the President said, “We wouldn’t have inflation, we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan disaster, we wouldn’t have October 7 in Israel where so many people were killed and you wouldn’t have a Ukraine war going on. But with all that being said, I think it’s bigger. It’s bigger than if it were more traditional.”
President Trump also asserted that America’s problems are “all solvable,” touting the “very unified” Republican caucus in Congress.
“They’re all solvable problems … with time, effort, money – unfortunately – but they’re all solvable,” Trump asserted.
“We can get our country back…But if we didn’t win this race, I really believe our country would have been lost forever,” he added.
