5 things Donald Trump said in his interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity

On Monday night, former President Donald Trump made his first appearance on Fox News since announcing his bid for president in 2024. Although he has been at odds with the cable network in recent weeks, Trump spoke to host Sean Hannity about the classified documents found at Mar-A-Lago, his relationship with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and how he would solve the Russia-Ukraine conflict if he was president.

According to Semafor, Fox News had put a “soft ban” on Trump because of Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch’s feelings about Trump. Murdoch reportedly wants the Republican Party to move on to a new candidate.

Trump has been critical of Murdoch on social media platform Truth Social, particularly when it comes to Fox News’ coverage of his claims about election fraud. “How does Rupert Murdoch say there was no election fraud when 2000 Mules shows, on government tape, that there were millions of ‘stuffed ballots,’” Trump asked over Truth Social while referring to Dinesh D’Souza’s election denial film.

Here are five things Trump told Hannity in the interview, which aired Monday night.

• Hannity and Trump said that handling of classified records would be “the biggest problem” for Hillary Clinton and also criticized President Joe Biden.

“Joe Biden’s got 1,850 boxes in Delaware,” Trump said. “Now they say he’s getting paid off by China and he’s got boxes stored in Chinatown. He’s got boxes in University of Pennsylvania,” as well as in Biden’s “beautiful Corvette.”

“Nobody talks about that,” Trump said. “What he did is so bad.”

He then alleged that the FBI told him the documents needed to be under a double lock and key and that there was no need for a raid. “This is election interference,” he said, before saying he got more supporters because of the raid.

• “Remember this. This is the Presidential Records Act. I have the right to take stuff,” he told Hannity when asked if he had looked through any of the boxes.

Trump said he has given the FBI everything, including tapes they didn’t ask for. “I wasn’t holding anything back,” he said, before hinting about the tape of the raid itself the FBI supposedly doesn’t want released. “‘If possible,’ they’ve asked me and I’ve so far adhered to it,” Trump said before Hannity stopped him and said, “I’ll take that tape.”

Trump described the raid as “terrible,” adding that “the way they’ve treated people is terrible.”

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• Hannity asked Trump about whether Republicans should “embrace the tactics of the Democrats” by encouraging mail-in voting and ballot harvesting. In response, Trump said: “Mail-in ballots are automatically corrupt. If you have mail-in ballots, you’re going to have a very dishonest election.” The former president then cited France as an example of a place where mail-in ballots were replaced with paper ballots. “And by 10 o’clock in the evening, everyone was happy — it was announced and that was it,” he said.

Hannity rephrased the question, saying that these were tactics Democrats are currently using, to which Trump responded that Republicans had no choice but to go along.

• Hannity spent time digging into Trump’s relationship with DeSantis. Trump said that the two weren’t friends, and that he doesn’t know him well. “He was one of over 150 people that would go on television and defend me. And he was no Jim Jordan,” Trump said.

Trump said during the interview that he is responsible for DeSantis’ political success. “Ron came to see me, tears in his eyes ... ‘Will you endorse me?’ I said, ‘Ron, you’re so far behind, I can’t imagine that if you got George Washington’s endorsement combined with the late, great Abraham Lincoln ... I don’t think you could win,’” he said, while saying that GOP opponent Adam Putnam was beating DeSantis by 30 points.

Trump said that DeSantis would be “working in a pizza parlor place or a law office” if he hadn’t received Trump’s endorsement.

Related

• DeSantis responds to Trump’s attacks, adds some jabs of his own

• About the threat of a nuclear war, “which would make WWI and WWII look like patty cakes,” Trump said he would solve the crisis in Ukraine within 24 hours by sitting down with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

“There’s a very easy negotiation to take place,” he said during the interview. “But I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation. It will never work.”

“Now, a year and a half — that’s a long time. I can’t imagine something not happening. The key with that is the war has to stop,” Trump said.