State of Mankind

Kash’s Corner
Kash Patel and Jan Jekielek

Audio Video PDF

In this exclusive interview, Trump and Kash—who previously served as a top White House aide and Pentagon chief-of-staff—discuss the state of the country, the threat from communist China, the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, the investigation by Special Counsel John Durham, and much, much more.

Tune in this Monday to watch the full interview.



Below is a rush transcript of this Kash’s Corner episode from Feb 7, 2022. This transcript may not be in its final form and may be updated.


Kash Patel: Mr. President, thanks so much for joining us at Epoch Times and Kash’s Corner. We’re excited to have you and thank you for being with us today here at wonderful Mar-a-Lago. We’re glad to be talking with you.

I want to jump right in, sir. We know what your administration accomplished against China, against the CCP, and how you made Xi Jinping respect you. And we saw how the last year has gone, sir. Mr. President, what does the next three years look like? How do we take on China? What does the next administration, the next president have to do not to just get us back to where we were, but even further along.

President Donald Trump: It is the saddest period of time that I’ve ever seen for our country. We had everything so good. You’re a part of it. The borders, the relationships with other countries, they respected us. We made trade deals that were good deals. We broke bad deals and made great deals, like we got rid of NAFTA, (North American Free Trade Agreement) which was a horrible thing. And we have the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) with Canada and Mexico.

But this is the saddest time for our country, and I think the most embarrassing time for our country. Look, the borders are a disaster with millions of people coming in. Everything’s a disaster. There’s nothing good, inflation. But the point that was the worst, I think, was that whole the way they withdrew from Afghanistan.

I got it down to 2000 soldiers. We were going to get out with strength and dignity and our equipment, no deaths. The way they withdrew from Afghanistan was like we were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. And to take out the military before you take out—now they’re hostages, we’ll call them the hostages, the Americans, and some others—but now they’ve just taken 1000’s and 1000’s of people out of Afghanistan. They don’t even know who they are and where they come from. We are going to pay a big price later, you watch. You are going to pay a big, big price with terrorism and other things. But it is so sad to see it.

Mr. Patel: How do we reset China?

President Trump: It’s got to be reset. China now is going to be on a rampage. I think after the Olympics, bad things will happen with respect to Taiwan. If the election weren’t rigged, this stuff would have never happened. It was a rigged election and a disgraceful situation. And what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine, what’s happening with North Korea, what’s happening with Iran, now they are renegotiating from weakness.

We would have had a deal with Iran in one week, after the election, it was going to be done. They were all set to make a deal. They would have made a deal in one week. Instead, this deal they’re talking about now is a disaster for our country. It’s just you need new leadership. I could give you 20 different things. I could say, “Do this, do that.” They’re not going to do it.

Mr. Patel: They’re not going to do it, but I think what America wants to know is what should be done, because no one in a position of power like you, Mr. President, is saying “What should be done?” It was great, I agree. I was part of your national security apparatus, and we took on Iran. We withdrew from Afghanistan smartly with conditions and put America first. But people are out there, and I talk to them. They want to know, “What do we do? We know it’s gotten so bad.”

President Trump: Well, you need leadership, though. It’s easy to say what you can do. You close the border, you go back to stay-in-Mexico, you go back to all of the policies that we had, catch-and-release, we ended it. It’s easy to say that’s what you have to do, but they’re not going to do that. I used to think they were just grossly incompetent. Now, it’s a combination of that and their policy is so bad. So, it’s easy for me to say you have to get strong with China, you have to do tariffs, you have to do a lot of different things. But they’re not going to be doing it.

Mr. Patel: If they don’t do it, what do we tell Americans? What do we tell the world? Tell them to wait three years?

President Trump: I’ll tell you that we have got a problem, because three years is a long time. Look, they have destroyed our country in one year, and they’re going to get three more years. They rigged an election, they’re going to get another three more years. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen. Because our country has never gone down so much, so fast.

We have never been in this position, what they’re doing to our country, in terms of criminal justice, in terms of trade, and in terms of our military. We have these woke generals that don’t know what the hell they’re doing, where they leave $85 billion worth of equipment behind and they move the military out before they move the people out.

It’s easy to say. I could give you a list of things. I could give you a list of 10 to 15 items and every one would be perfect, but they’re not going to do them. They’re not closing the border. I used to think that they were just late. The wall could have been done and completed in three weeks. It was almost complete. It took two and a half years to get it started because I had to win 11 lawsuits, mostly from Congress and Democrats. I won all the lawsuits, and it was almost complete.

We had the lowest numbers ever, on our southern border. Now we have the worst numbers and that includes drugs. The drugs are 10 to 15 times more than they were one year ago. Think of that, 10 to 15 times, they say. So, we can give you everything to do, but it’s just a waste of time. Because unless you have the right people, they’re not going to do it.

Mr. Patel: So, speaking of the right people, sir, we have a midterm election. And it looks like the Republicans are poised well. Can leadership in the House and the Senate, like when Chairman Nunes and I were running the Russiagate investigation, can we have oversight investigations that help stall or pause the bad policies? And do we have that leadership coming into Congress?

President Trump: You have a lousy leader in Mitch McConnell, and he’s proven that a lot. But having the Senate is a good thing. And getting the House is going to be like a stopgap. Because it will be able to stop a lot of the things that are being done to destroy our country.

So, getting the House is a very big thing, because you need the House majority, which we should be able to get. I mean, some people are saying by 45 votes. We could get them by a lot, maybe even more than that. And who wouldn’t vote for the Republicans right now? And if we get the House, we can stop most of this stuff from happening, at least. That’s so big.

But what they are doing in between now and November, that’s a lot of time. They are going full speed to get as much as they can. They were never given a mandate, to use mandated as a different term. Because the mandates are bad, right? But they were never given a mandate in this election. Because even if you looked at it where they won, they didn’t, they lost by a lot. But if you look at the number, it was so close. So that’s not a mandate to destroy our country.

Mr. Patel: But Americans are seeing that it’s going the wrong way.

President Trump: It’s going the wrong way. If somebody won an election by 40 points, maybe could do whatever you want. But this was a thing that they just snuck over the line. And it’s all coming out. Look, they lost the election. And now they’re destroying the country. So, think of it. They’re destroying our country; they’re making us a different country. We’re becoming like a socialist or a communist state.

We no longer have a press. The press is absolutely the enemy of the people. We don’t have a press. If you do a story that is very important from your view, you can’t get the story out. It’s very hard to get the word out. That’s why what you do is so important, because you will find a way. But we don’t have a free press anymore. We don’t have a fair press anymore.

Kash, you really have to wonder why they would want to have a weak military? Why would they want to have high interest rates and higher taxes? And why would they want to have no border? I mean, no border? Why would they want to have no voter ID, for example, or sanctuary cities that take care of criminals? All of these things—defund the police? Why do they want to defund our police? They want to take money away; they want to take our police away. Why? It can’t possibly be good. So, either they’re stupid, which I don’t think they are, or they hate our country. Why do they want to do this stuff? Why does somebody want to defund the police? And you see the crime rates in these Democrat cities, it has gone through the roof, like it’s never been before.
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