The following is a transcript of President Trump’s July 19, 2020 interview with "Fox News Sunday."
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX ANCHOR: And hello again from Fox News in Washington. Today from the White House, we're on the president's patio just outside the Oval Office.
President Trump, you've agreed to answer all manner of questions, no subject off-limits. Thank you and welcome back to "FOX NEWS SUNDAY."
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you very much.
WALLACE: Let's start with the surge of the coronavirus across the country in recent months. You still talk about it as, quote, "burning embers." But I want to put up a chart that shows where we are with the illness over the last four months. As you can see, we hit a peak here in April, 36,000 cases...
TRUMP: Cases.
WALLACE: ... a day.
TRUMP: Yes, cases.
WALLACE: Then -- then it went down and now since June, it has gone up more than double. One day this week 75,000 new cases. More than double...
TRUMP: Chris, that's because we have great testing, because we have the best testing in the world. If we didn't test, you wouldn't be able to show that chart. If we tested half as much, those numbers would be down.
WALLACE: But -- but this isn't burning embers, sir? This is a forest fire.
TRUMP: No, no. But I don't say -- I say flames, we'll put out the flames. And we'll put out in some cases just burning embers. We also have burning embers. We have embers and we do have flames. Florida became more flame like, but it's -- it's going to be under control.
And, you know, it's not just this country, it’s many countries. We don't talk about it in the news. They don't talk about Mexico and Brazil and still parts of Europe, which actually got hit sooner than us, so it's a little ahead of us in that sense.
But you take a look, why don't they talk about Mexico? Which is not helping us. And all I can say is thank God I built most of the wall, because if I didn't have the wall up we would have a much bigger problem with Mexico.
WALLACE: But, sir, we have the seventh highest mortality rate in the world. Our mortality rate is higher than Brazil, it's higher than Russia and the European Union has us on a travel ban.
TRUMP: Yeah. I think what we'll do -- well, we have them under travel ban too, Chris. I closed them off. If you remember, I was the one that did the European Union very early.
But when you talk about mortality rates, I think it's the opposite. I think we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.
WALLACE: That’s not true, sir. We, we, we have a -- we had 900 deaths on a single day...
TRUMP: We will take a look...
WALLACE: ... just this week...
TRUMP: Ready?
WALLACE: You, you can check it out.
TRUMP: Can you please get me the mortality rate?
TRUMP: Kayleigh's right here. I heard we have one of the lowest, maybe the lowest mortality rate anywhere in the world.
TRUMP: Do you have the numbers, please? Because I heard we had the best mortality rate.
TRUMP: Number, number one low mortality rate.
TRUMP: I hope you show the scenario because it shows what fake news is all about. Ok, go ahead.
WALLACE: OK, OK. I don’t think I’m fake news but I will -- we’ll put --
TRUMP: Yeah, you will --
WALLACE: -- put our stats on --
TRUMP: You said we had the worst mortality rate in the world --
WALLACE: I said you had --
TRUMP: -- and we have the best.
WALLACE VOICE OVER: All right. It’s a little complicated. But bear with us. We went with numbers from Johns Hopkins University which charted the mortality rate for 20 countries hit by the virus. The US ranked 7th better than the United Kingdom but worse than Brazil and Russia.
WALLACE VOICE OVER: The White House went with this chart from the European CDC which shows Italy and Spain doing worse. But countries like Brazil and South Korea doing better. Other countries doing better like Russia aren’t included in the White House chart.
WALLACE: California locking down again. Florida, deadliest day of the entire pandemic. Hospitals at capacity at a number of places around the country. Shortages of testing, shortages of personal protective equipment for nurses and doctors.
A lot of people say this is because we don't have a national plan. You talk about states. We don't have a national plan. Do you take responsibility for that?
TRUMP: Look, I take responsibility always for everything because it's ultimately my job, too. I have to get everybody in line.
Some governors have done well, some governors have done poorly. They're supposed to have supplies they didn't have. I supplied everybody.
Now we have somewhat of a surge in certain areas. And other areas we're doing great. But we have a surge in certain areas. But you don't hear people complaining about ventilators. We've got all the ventilators we can use. We're supplying them to other countries.
We go out into parking lots and everything, everybody gets a test. We find -- if we did half the testing -- with all of that being said, I'm glad we did it. This is the right way to do it. I'm glad we did what we're doing. But we have more tests by far than any country in the world.
WALLACE: But, sir, testing is up 37 percent.
TRUMP: Well, that's good.
WALLACE: I understand. Cases are up 194 percent. It isn't just that testing has gone up, it's that the virus has spread. The positivity rate has increased. There – the virus is…
TRUMP: Many of those cases...
WALLACE: ... worse than it was.
TRUMP: Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day. They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. Many of them -- don't forget, I guess it's like 99.7 percent, people are going to get better and in many cases they're going to get better very quickly.
We go out and we look and then on the news -- look if you go back to the news, all of your -- even your wonderful competitors, you'll see cases are up. Cases are up -- many of those cases shouldn't even be cases. Cases are up because we have the best testing in the world and we have the most testing.
No country has ever done what we've done in terms of testing. We are the envy of the world. They call and they say the most incredible job anybody's done is our job on testing, because we're going to very shortly be up to 50 million tests.
You look at other countries; they don't even do tests. They do tests if somebody walks into the hospital, they're sick, they're really sick, they test them then, or they'll test them in a doctor's office. But they don't go around have massive areas of testing and we do. And I'm glad we do, but it really skews the numbers.
WALLACE: I’m, I'm going to do you a favor, because I'm sure a lot of people listening right now are going to say, "Trump, he tries to play it down, he tries to make it not being as serious as it is."
TRUMP: I don't play it -- I'm not playing -- no, this is very serious.
WALLACE: 75,000 cases a day.
TRUMP: Show me the death chart.
WALLACE: Well, I don't have the death chart.
TRUMP: Well, the death chart is much more important.
WALLACE: But I can tell you, the death chart is a thousand cases a day.
TRUMP: Excuse me, it's all too much, it shouldn't be one case. It came from China. They should've never let it escape. They should've never let it out. But it is what it is. Take a look at Europe, take a look at the numbers in Europe. And by the way, they're having cases.
WALLACE: I can tell you cases are 6,000 in the whole European Union.
TRUMP: They don't test. They don't test.
WALLACE: Is it possible that they don't have the virus as badly as we do?
TRUMP: It's possible that they don't test, that's what's possible. We find cases and many of those cases heal automatically. We're finding -- in a way, we're creating trouble. Certainly, we are creating trouble for the fake news to come along and say, "Oh, we have more cases."
Look, we do something that nobody's ever done. Not only the ventilators, where we're supplying them all over the world. We did a testing program the likes of which nobody's ever done before.
WALLACE: The head of the CDC, Dr. Redfield, said this on Tuesday.
TAPE: July 14, 2020
DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, CDC DIRECTOR: "I do think this fall and winter of 2020, 2021, are probably going to be one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health."
WALLACE: Do you agree with Dr. Redfield?
TRUMP: I don't know and I don't think he knows. I don't think anybody knows with this. This is a very tricky deal. Everybody thought this summer it would go away and it would come back in the fall. Well, when the summer came, they used to say the heat -- the heat was good for it and it really knocks it out, remember? And then it might come back in the fall. So they got that one wrong.
They -- they got a lot wrong. They got a lot wrong. The World Health got a tremendous amount wrong. They basically did whatever China wanted them to. And we'll save now almost $500 million a year, which is nice. But the World Health got a lot wrong.
WALLACE: But, this is one of the sharpest criticisms of you.
TRUMP: I agree.
WALLACE: People say that you talk about the world as you’d like to see it rather than follow the science.
TRUMP: No, I…
WALLACE: Well – let me just, let me just ask the question, sir. Why on earth would your administration be involved in a campaign at this point to discredit Dr. Fauci, who is the nation's top infectious disease expert.
TRUMP: Because we're not. If one man from my administration doesn't like him because he made a few mistakes -- look, Dr. Fauci said, "Don't wear a mask." Dr. Fauci told me not to ban China, it would be a big mistake. I did it over and above his recommendation. Dr. Fauci then said, "You saved tens of thousands of lives" -- more than that. He said, "You saved tens of thousands of lives."
Dr. Fauci's made some mistakes. But I have a very good -- I spoke to him yesterday at length. I have a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci.
WALLACE: But -- but, sir, this week -- this weekend, your White House put out a series of statements, so-called mistakes that Dr. Fauci had made. One of your closest aids -- one of your right-hand men, Daniel Scavino, put out this -- you've seen this?
TRUMP: Well Dr., look, look…
WALLACE: Dr. – Dr. – ‘Dr. Faucet,’ which shows him as a leaker and an alarmist.
TRUMP: Well, I don't know that he’s a leaker ….
WALLACE: Why, why would you do that?
TRUMP: He's a little bit of an alarmist. That's OK. A little bit of an alarmist.
WALLACE: He's a bit of an alarmist?
TRUMP: A little bit of an alarmist. Let’s – let me just say. Dr. Fauci at the beginning – and again, I have a great relationship with him. I spoke with him at length yesterday. Dr. Fauci at the beginning said, “This will pass. Don’t worry about it. This will pass.” He was wrong. Dr. Fauci said, “Don’t ban China. Don’t ban China.” I did. He then admitted that I was right.
WALLACE: But you made mistakes, too.
TRUMP: I guess everybody makes mistakes.
WALLACE: I was going to say, you said at one point…
TAPE: January 22, 2020
TRUMP: It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.
TAPE: February 26, 2020
TRUMP: When you have 15 people. And the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done.
TAPE: July 1, 2020
TRUMP: I think we're gonna be very good with the coronavirus. I think that at some point that's going to sort of just disappear. I hope.
TRUMP: I'll be right eventually. I will be right eventually. You know I said, "It's going to disappear." I'll say it again.
WALLACE: But does that – does that discredit you?
TRUMP: It's going to disappear and I'll be right. I don’t think so.
WALLACE: Right.
TRUMP: I don't think so. I don't think so. You know why? Because I've been right probably more than anybody else.
WALLACE: Then there are masks. From the first day that the CDC said that people should wear masks on April 3rd, you said you weren’t going to. You wore a mask for the first time in public…
TRUMP: Yes.
WALLACE: …at Walter Reed this weekend. Question, the CDC says if everybody wore a mask for 4-6 weeks, we could get this under control. Do you regret not wearing a mask in public from the start, and would you consider – will you consider a national mandate that people need to wear masks?
TRUMP: No I want people to have a certain freedom, and I don’t believe in that. No, and I don’t agree with the statement that if everybody wear a mask everything disappears. Hey, Dr. Fauci said don’t wear a mask. Our Surgeon General – terrific guy – said don’t wear a mask.
Everybody who is saying don’t wear a mask – all of sudden everybody’s got to wear a mask, and as you know masks cause problems, too. With that being said, I’m a believer in masks. I think masks are good.
But I leave it up to the governors. Many of the governors are changing. They’re more mask into – they like the concept of masks, but some of them don’t agree. I do say this – schools have to open.
Young people have to go to school, and there’s problems when you don’t go to school, too. And there’s going to be a funding problem because we’re not going to fund – when they don’t open their schools. We’re not going to fund them. We’re not going to give them money if they’re not going to school. If they don’t open.
WALLACE: Two points on that. First of all, what the Federal government gives is only – is 8 percent.
TRUMP: Ten percent and you know what – that’s a lot of money.
WALLACE: And you’re going to take – do you know where the money goes? It goes overwhelmingly to disadvantaged kids and children with disabilities.
TRUMP: Let the schools –
WALLACE: Why wouldn’t you put -- send more money so the schools would be safer?
TRUMP: Chris, let the schools open. Do you ever see the statistics on young people below the age of 18? The state of New Jersey had thousands of deaths.
Of all of these thousands, one person below the age of 18 – in the entire state – one person and that was a person that had, I believe he said diabetes.
One person below the age of 18 died in the state of New Jersey during all of this – you know, they had a hard time. And they’re doing very well now, so that’s it.
WALLACE: The stimulus bill is running out at the end of this month.
TRUMP: Yes.
WALLACE: The Republicans say they want liability limits, which the Democrats don’t like. You say that you want a payroll tax cut, which even some Republicans are cool to.
TRUMP: But a lot of Republicans like it, though.
WALLACE: Will you only sign a bill that has those two provisions?
TRUMP: Well, we’re going to see. But we do need protections because businesses are going to get sued just because somebody walked in. You don’t know where this virus comes from. They’ll sit down at a restaurant. They’ll sue the restaurant, the guy’s out of business.
WALLACE: Right.
TRUMP: So we do need some kind of immunity. You do need it just like you need immunity for the police, OK, whether they like it or not. You need immunity for the police. But they do need a form of immunity. You don’t know if they caught it. And nobody’s ever going to be able to prove it one way or the other.
You can’t put these – you know, the people that – look, the Democrats don’t want to do that because they’re total – they’re totally captured by the lobby of lawyers. The lawyers’ lobby is probably the most powerful in the country.
WALLACE: What about the payroll tax cut?
TRUMP: I want to see it. I want to see it.
WALLACE: And if it isn’t in the bill?
TRUMP: I’ll have to see but, yeah, I would consider not signing it if we don’t have a payroll tax cut, yes.
WALLACE: Hot enough for you here, Mr. President?
TRUMP: It’s hot. It’s about, well, sort of almost record breaking stuff.
WALLACE: You know, we wanted to do it inside. This is your choice.
TRUMP: But I wanted you to sweat a little bit.
(LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: Well, we both are. There has been a spike in violent crime in America in recent weeks. We’ve seen deaths up in New York, deaths up in Chicago, shootings. How do you explain it and what are you going to do about it?
TRUMP: I explain it very simply by saying that they’re Democrat-run cities, they are liberally run. They are stupidly run. We have forced them in Seattle to end the CHOP because, you know, we were going in that following day. You probably have heard it. We were getting ready to go in. We were all set, and when they heard that we were going they set their police force.
WALLACE: Liberal Democrats have been running cities in this country for decades.
TRUMP: Poorly.
WALLACE: Why is it so bad right now?
TRUMP: They run them poorly, it was always bad but now it’s gotten totally out of control and it’s really because they want to defund the police. And Biden wants to defund the police.
WALLACE: No he, sir, he does not.
TRUMP: Look. He signed a charter with Bernie Sanders; I will get that one just like I was right on the mortality rate. Did you read the charter that he agreed to with…
WALLACE: It says nothing about defunding the police.
TRUMP: Oh really? It says abolish, it says -- let’s go. Get me the charter, please.
WALLACE: All right.
TRUMP: Chris, you’ve got to start studying for these.
WALLACE: He says defund the police?
TRUMP: He says defund the police. They talk about abolishing the police. They talk about illegal aliens pouring …
WALLACE: I look, I look forward – I look forward to seeing that.
WALLACE: Meanwhile, the George Floyd murder has reignited the issue of racism in policing in this country. I want to give you a couple of statistics. Nationwide blacks are twice as likely, fewer in absolute numbers, but in terms of per capita, blacks are twice as likely to be shot and killed by police as whites are. In Minneapolis, over the last five years, police used force against blacks at a rate seven times that against whites.
Can you understand why blacks would be angry at that?
TRUMP: Of course I do. Of course I do. Many whites are killed also. You have to say that.
WALLACE: I understand that.
TRUMP: I mean, many, many whites are killed. I hate the sad – but this is going on for decades. This is going on for a long time, long before I got here. You know, if you look at what’s gone on in Portland, those are anarchists and we’ve taken a very tough stand. If we didn’t take a stand in Portland, you know we’ve arrested many of these leaders. If we didn’t take that stand, right now you would have a problem like you, you – they were going to lose Portland. So let’s see…
WALLACE: Ok, let’s see.
TRUMP: …what this says here: Prosecutions, sanctuary cities, incentivize illegal aliens, expand asylum, abolish immigration detention –
WALLACE: That’s not –
TRUMP: No. I, I – we’ll find it.
WALLACE: Ok.
TRUMP: This thing is many pages long.
TRUMP: End prosecution of illegal border crossers. Support deathly -- and these are the worse things, sanctuary cities –
WALLACE: Sir, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not disagreeing with you on any of those. I’m disagreeing about defund police –
(WALLACE VOICE OVER: The White House never sent us evidence the Bernie-Biden platform calls for defunding or abolishing police—because there is none. It calls for increased funding for police departments--that meet certain standards. Biden has called for redirecting some police funding for related programs—like mental health counseling.)
WALLACE: This week you said that Black Lives Matter and the Confederate flag are both matters, issues of freedom of speech.
TRUMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: But in the case of the Confederate flag, there are a lot of people who say these were traitors who split from this country, fought this country in large part to preserve slavery. Is the Confederate flag offensive
TRUMP: It depends on who you’re talking about, when you’re talking about.
TRUMP: When people – when people proudly have their Confederate flags, they’re not talking about racism. They love their flag, it represents the south, they like the south. People right now like the south. I’d say it’s freedom of, of, of many things, but it’s freedom of speech.
WALLACE: So you’re not offended by it?
TRUMP: Well, I’m not offended either by Black Lives Matter. That’s freedom of speech. And you know, the whole thing with cancel culture, we can’t cancel our whole history. We can’t forget that the north and the south fought. We have to remember that, otherwise we’ll end up fighting again. You can’t just cancel all...
WALLACE: But let me ask you this when it gets to be more than just cancel – well, maybe this is cancel culture. The National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA, you have threatened to veto it because in the bill, and this was supported by Republicans as well as Democrats, it would rename army bases named for Confederate generals. Now this is a bill that funds military operations, it gives soldiers a pay raise.
TRUMP: Yeah.
WALLACE: You’re going to veto that?
TRUMP: No, because they’ll get their pay raise. Hey, look, don’t tell me this. I got soldiers the biggest pay raises in the history of our military.
WALLACE: Understood.
TRUMP: I got soldiers brand new equipment, brand new jets, brand new rockets, brand new – $2.5 trillion. I did more for the military than any president that’s ever had this office.
WALLACE: But you’re going to veto this bill?
TRUMP: Because I think that Fort Bragg, Fort Robert E. Lee, all of these forts that have been named that way for a long time, decades and decades…
WALLACE: But the military says they’re for this.
TRUMP: …excuse me, excuse me. I don’t care what the military says. I do – I’m supposed to make the decision. Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two World Wars, nobody even knows General Bragg. We won two World Wars. Go to that community where Fort Bragg is, in a great state, I love that state, go to the community, say how do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg, and then what are we going to name it
We’re going to name it after the Reverend Al Sharpton? What are you going to name it, Chris, tell me what you’re going to name it? So there’s a whole thing here. We won two World Wars, two World Wars, beautiful World Wars that were vicious and horrible, and we won them out of Fort Bragg, we won out of all of these forts that now they want to throw those names away.
And, no, I’m against that, and you know what, most other people are. And I even – I don’t believe in polls because I see the fakest polls I’ve ever seen, but that poll is a 64 percent thing, which actually surprised me. We won World Wars out of these military bases. No, I’m not going to go changing them, I’m not going to go changing them.
WALLACE: So you’ll veto them?
TRUMP: I might. Yeah, I might.
WALLACE: At Mt. Rushmore on July 3rd, you said that we face a far-left fascism in this country and then you said this.
TAPE: July 3, 2020
TRUMP: Our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it we’re not heroes, but that were villains.
WALLACE: You said our children are taught in school to hate our country. Where do you see that?
TRUMP: I just look at – I look at school. I watch, I read, look at the stuff. Now they want to change -- 1492, Columbus discovered America. You know, we grew up, you grew up, we all did, that’s what we learned. Now they want to make it the 1619 project. Where did that come from? What does it represent? I don’t even know, so.
WALLACE: It’s slavery.
TRUMP: That’s what they’re saying, but they don’t even know. They just want to make a change. Cancel culture – I hate the term, actually, but I use it
WALLACE: But are they teaching people to hate America?
TRUMP: Oh, I think so yeah, I think so. Look at the professors. Look at what’s going on in the colleges. If a conservative goes on a college – and look, we have as many as them. Excuse me, I think to the best of my knowledge, we’re sitting at the White House and the Oval Office is right behind me. We have as many as them.
WALLACE: Who’s them?
TRUMP: The liberal radical left, and I’m not talking all – I think liberal, I could tell you I like a lot of liberal people. I like a lot of liberal governors and senators, but, but Chris, we have a radical left destructive ideology and it’s being taught in our schools.
And don’t act like you’re surprised to hear this – there are books written about it, and we can’t let that go on. We can’t let them change the true meaning of what we’re all about and that’s what they’re trying to do and I don’t want it to happen. Not on my watch. It’s not going to happen on my watch.
WALLACE: Mr. President, you'll be happy to know that Fox News has a new poll out today and you're going to be the very first person to hear about it. In the national horse race, Joe Biden leads you by 8 points, 49 percent to 41. That's 3, 4 points slimmer than it was a month ago. And on the issues, people trust Biden more to handle the coronavirus by 17 points, on race relations by 21 points, and even on the economy they trust Biden more by 1 point. I understand you still have more than a hundred days to this election, but at this point you're losing.
TRUMP: First of all, I'm not losing, because those are fake polls. They were fake in 2016 and now they're even more fake. The polls were much worse in 2016. They interviewed 22 percent Republicans. Well, how do you do 22 percent Republican? You see what's going on. I have other polls that put me leading, and we have polls where I'm leading. I have a poll where we're leading in every swing state. And I don't believe that your -- first of all, the Fox polls, whoever does your Fox polls, they're among the worst. They got it all wrong in 2016. They've been wrong on every poll I've ever seen.
WALLACE: I -- I must tell you...
TRUMP: No, I'm just telling you. And let me ask you this, so on the economy -- so I've always led on the economy by a lot.
WALLACE: I know, which is why I was surprised by this number.
TRUMP: Biden can't put two sentences together. They wheel him out. He goes up -- he repeats -- they ask him questions. He reads a teleprompter and then he goes back into his basement. You tell me the American people want to have that in an age where we're in trouble with other nations that are looking to do numbers on us.
WALLACE: So let me ask you a direct question.
TRUMP: No, no...
