Welcome.
It is Verdic with Center, Ted Cruz, and it's Ben Ferguson with you. It's so nice to have you with us, and certainly if you're listening on radio right now as well, we love having you with us as well. And this is going to be a really fun show tonight Center, because we're gonna get to have a good friend of ours on take a pause sort of from politics for a moment, talk about a cool new book that is out and what was behind writing this book, and I'll let you take it from there.
You know, Ben, I got to say, we try to count on being honest and candid with our viewers and listeners, and yet you just claim that we're going to take a break from politics, and this is about as far away from taking a break from politics as I can possibly imagine.
Today.
We are very pleased to welcome our friend Eric Trump, President Donald Trump's son, who has a brand new book. A brand new book came out this week. The book is entitled Under Siege, My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation. He is in the midst of his nationwide book tour right now, and in classic Trump fashion, he's on the list. And there's only one place to be on the list, and that is at number one. It's the number one best selling book in America right now. And Eric, this
is your first book. It ain't bad debuting at number one. Congratulations and welcome.
Mister senator.
Now it will probably be my last book as well, because we're not I'm not doing this again. You know, the return, the return on time of books is especially when you put your heart and soul into it. But yeah, we're number one on Amazon, We're number one on all the lists, and it's I mean, it just went viral.
I think. You know, people in this country are pissed off.
And mister Centater, you you've done a better job fighting against a weaponization of government than I would say just about anybody other than maybe Donald Trump, right, who's had to face all of this. And you know, I became the pinata in this whole fight because I was the one guy who didn't have constitutional protections. I was a civilian, you know, I was a guy that was running the Trump organization. I was the guy that ran everything that was outside of Washington, DC for my father when he
went into the White House. And what they tried to do to us, what they tried to do to our family, what they tried to do to this nation, what they tried to do to you and and all your viewers on this show is unthinkable, and somebody had to materialize it because there's the greatest governmental corruption this nation has ever seen.
Well, you're right, and they launched everything they had at your father, at your family, four separate indictments. On top of that, the asinine case from the New York Attorney General trying to argue that somehow global international banks are innocent wifes who are deceived and are apparently are unable to value real estate because you know, giant banks have
never had to value real estate in the past. I will confess, for me, maybe the most absurd moment of all of it was when the idiot judge in New York valued bar a Lago at eighteen million dollars, which I'll confess I saw it.
I would have bought it for that.
I saw your dad not shortly after that, and I offered it on the spot. I said, miss President, I'll give you twenty million right now. Well they too, I mean, as you as you know, you can't buy a hot dog stand in Palm Beach for eighteen million dollars, and that notion that to me, it was the most ludicrous. It was a relatively small detail of what was a pile of idiocy upon idiocy. But you guys were the targets of it, and and it it cannot have been fun.
Mister Center.
I became the most openied man in American history for doing absolutely nothing wrong. I'm not Hunter Biden. I never had a speeding ticket in my life. I've lived a very straight, very good life, hard working guy, no games, never even approached the line, you know, raised right, you know, and and they tried to destroy us. I was the one those gang calls from the FBI. You remember the Russia hoos very well because you were probably the best
person in fighting against it. Eric, I hear you have secret servers in the basement of Trump Tower communicating directly with the Kremlin. I go, excuse me, I literally started, mister Center. I started laughing. I started laughing. I go, First of all, you don't keep servers in basements because basements flood. Second of all, were like largely cloud based. And they did it so a greedy woman could get about three extra votes, right, And they used that as
their explanation as to why she lost. And then it was at peachment number one, and then it was a peachment number two, and then it was them attacking Cavanaugh, and then it was one hundred and twelve subpoenas that I received for again doing nothing wrong. And then it was a weaponization of every attorney general and district attorney in this country, whether it be Latitia James or Alvin Bragg or Cy Vance or Fanny Willis and her boyfriend in Fulton, Georgia, you know, or Jack Smith or Comy
and everything that they did. Then they spied on her campaign. Then they did the weaponization of Faiza. Then they took my father off the ballot in Colorado, and then they took him off the ballot in Maine. And when that didn't work, they tried to silence his voice and get rid of his First Amendment right.
So what did they do?
Took him off of YouTube, took him off of Twitter, took him off of Facebook, took him off of Instagram. And when that didn't work, when we popped up true social, what did they do? They had every judge imposed gag orders on him and.
Then they rated mar Lago.
I was the guy that got the call when third FBI agents were outside screaming in a phone to me turn off the security cameras at m R A Lago. They did everything they could, and then they de banked us, and then they deplatformed us. They tried to bankrupt us,
they tried to imprison us. And I'll never forget walking out of that jail cell with my father in New York after the thirty four felony accounts right which have all been overturned, and I said, Dad, we either win the White House or you and I are in jail for doing absolutely nothing wrong. That's how diabolical the pendulum was. And they were doing it to the people in this country as well. They were debanking them. They were going
after their pastors, they were going after their churches. They were weaponizing the irs.
You know.
They were skipping great people who had worked their butts off their entire year because of DEI hires and literally ruining upward mobility of people across the country. They were corrupting their children. They were teaching them revisionist history. This siege wasn't just against the Trump family, it was against all of us.
It was against both of you, it was against.
Every person watching us right now, and people are pissed off in this country, and that's why this book went to number one.
You mentioned mar Lago a second ago and getting that phone call. Can you just explain how insane that day must have been, because I know people we saw it on TV, but you were on the inside. And when you're getting a phone called, they're telling you to turn your cameras off.
So like, what time of day is it, what are you doing?
It was about seven fifty eight o'clock in the morning when I got a call from my team. They say, the thirty FBI agents and they have a search warrant. I go, what are they searching? I'm not sure if I understand, Like we have like such a great relationship with law enforcement. It was bizarre at the time. I go, how would I not know about this? From Secret Service? How would I not know? I mean, they didn't give
anybody warning. And I'll never forget, I said. I finally figured out what they were doing, and I said, did anybody let my father know? And it was my team, really and they said no, And I go, we'll call him right now, and we met in his office and that's when he wrote up that beautiful tweet, as you remember, And the FBI was so damn pissed that we sent out that tweet. They wanted to have the narrative, they wanted to be able to release a story, and instead
my father writes that beautiful tweet. You know, right now, the FBI is raiding the famous Mara A Lago, my home, you know, And the world went crazy. The world couldn't stand it. It was the worst decision that they ever made. And remember, Senator, they said it was on behalf of Nara right National Archives. Does anybody I went on Hannity that night, I go, does anybody actually believe with glorified library send thirty FBI agents to invade Mara A Lago with firearms?
Give me a break, right?
And then sure enough it comes out there was Joe Biden, and it was Merrick Garland, and it was the whole host of criminals that weaponized the entire system. But I'll never forget that call. Thirty FBI agents outside of mar A Lago. They searched Milania's room, they search Baron's room. They took attorney client privileged documents, they took hippa documents.
You can't make it up.
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Right now.
I know you're going to try to terrorize in New York Times a little bit. That's the hardest thing is just to screw with them and be at the top of their list. So everyone listening, I hope you'll buy the book just so we can screw with them a little bit. Center you've been at the top of that list, it's hard to get there.
Well, I will say, Eric, you should brace yourself. It doesn't matter how many copies of the book you sell. The New York Times is going to insist that like left Handed Transgender Witches, is the number one book in America, and to be fair, in the New York Times newsroom, it probably is the number one book in America. But but if you get outside the New York Times and to the rest of America, there are a lot of
people right now that are going to Amazon. Go to Amazon right now by Eric truck Trump's book Keep It at number one, Annoy a Liberal by two, buy one for yourself, and buy one to give a liberal just to drive them crazy. And and and to say, explain to me again how you think weaponization is a bad thing. Because because your you're liberal friends, to the extent you have any that they haven't defriended you, They're not going
to have an answer to that. Eric, tell me what was your dad's reaction when you went in and and told them, okay, the FBI agents are here. I assume he was pissed, But like, what was his immediate reaction when you tell him that It.
Was actually remarkably calm.
You know, it's it's you know, I've seen my father pissed many times, but he doesn't get pissed off and in situations of kind of like great anguish and stress. Right, it's no different than Butler. But you know, almost foreshadow Butler is the same thing. It's it's I probably would have been pissed in Butler and I think he was actually remarkably calm, especially in the aftermath of what happened. And you know he was always his commist in the worst moments, always, I mean and center. You saw many
of them. I mean you were there for many of them, in so many different ways. You know, he never let emotion fly. It was it was a very he goes, you gotta be kidding me, all right, honey, meet me in my office. You know, we're going to write up a statement. And that's when he let that truth fly, and you know, the rest is history. I mean, for the next month, they had helicopters buzzing over mar a Lago and you know the scenes of that front gate. You remember this, the cop car from the front gate
of mar Lago. I mean, mar Lago became, not that it wasn't probably already, but he became the most famous property in the world. Based on on that raid and what they did, and then the aftermath of all of it, we find out Jack Smith was bringing in classified folders and effectively staging photo shoots on the.
Office floor of my father's office.
But you know, as I said before, guys, I mean they were going through Malania's closet they were going through Baron's room. They literally they took his medical records, right like hipA related records. That pissed off the judge. I can only tell you they took attorney client documents right. That also really pissed off Eileen Cannon, the judge on the case. You just you couldn't believe it. And then
you know, again, all of this was stage. You think Donald Trump just leaves classified folders fanned out perfectly on the floor. I mean, it was all staged. It was all set up. They wanted to imprison him. They wanted to take his voice. They wanted to imprison him. They wanted him behind bars. They didn't want him to be able to campaign. They wanted to weaponize a system in any way, shape or form, and they weren't able to do it.
A lot of people remember the deplatforming, and you mentioned that earlier, and you go back to the end of his first term in office. But one of the things you mentioned earlier on was they tried to ruin your businesses by d banking. You can you explain for people that don't understand just how critical that was in a time and the Trump organization you've been handled the family
business to run it. And now you're finding out you can't even have banking the way that you need to have banking to literally run businesses, whether your big business are small business. A lot of people listening right now. If you don't have a bank, you don't have a business.
Yeah, Ben, it was that times one hundred.
I mean they they literally it was coordinated by the administration, There's no question about it. And they called up and they said, listen, congratulations, you cancel the account. I was getting these letters. I got one from Capital One. They had three hundred bank accounts. And these aren't like baby
bank accounts. These are massive commercial buildings that have hundreds of tenants, you know, thousands of people working in these buildings, hundreds if not thousands, of vendors, heavy real estate taxes. I mean people, hundreds and hundreds of people depend their livelihoods depend on on these businesses. They've got complicated lock box provisions and loan you know, loan documents, thousands of inputs coming in like this, you know, and they just
called up. You know, your accounts are going to get closed. You've got one or two days to move them, and congratulations, you're done. All because we wore a hat that said make America great again.
That was read.
These were commercial buildings, these were condominium associations, these were small golf courses, these were you know, residential shops, were scrow accounts, things that had nothing to do, nothing to do with politics whatsoever. And they canceled us like we were dogs. Capital One was the worst.
JP.
Morgan was horrible. Bank of America was horrible. First Republic was terrible. But it wasn't just the banks. It was platform Shopify. Shopify literally gave us a notice they do all the e comm platforms in the middle of the night, turned off our accounts like we were nothing right. We were selling golf polos that we have, you know from mar A Lago. And they did everything they could took to hurt us, to turn off the rails right again. They wanted our voice gone, They wanted us bankrupt, they
wanted the name off of every building. They wanted us thrown out of New York. You had Letitia James, I was trying to repossess our assets. I mean it was almost like forfeiture. It was not constitutional. Hence the reason the appellate courts throughout the case five zero and we got a resounding victory two weeks ago or three weeks ago.
Guys, they tried everything they could.
And because I was the guy outside of Washington, DC, because I ran the company, it all fell on me. That's how I became the most opened person the history of this country, having never done a damn thing wrong. They wanted to get to my father coming through me.
That Now, were these business accounts personal accounts both? I mean, how many accounts are we talking about?
Roughly like what.
Five five hundred? You know, lots of those being business accounts, all of them being us. You know, my wife has a like athletic clothing line. You know, JP Morgan Chase wouldn't open up an account, so you know, for her, she's not Donald Trump, She's not the Trump organization. They did this to everyone in the family. If you even came close. You know, if you even came close. I have a little farm with a couple buddies. They canceled that account. Doesn't wear a Trump name, it can't. They
were indiscriminate. If it was six degrees of sep in narration from Trump, they canceled us. And honestly, guys, you know, I'm an outspoken you know, a big fan of you know, cryptocurrency.
That's how I found crypto because I realized how quickly financial institutions can be weaponized against the American people and realize that there's nothing that can be done on you know, using traditional financial institutions that can't be done better, faster, cheaper, safer, and more efficiently using cryptocurrency.
And I'm the biggest proponent of it.
Did did they even even purport to give you any explanation or do they just say no, it's canceled like like that that they didn't was there any details or you just get phone calls or get an email and say, okay, this account's done.
Yeah.
Other other than a lot of those, you know a lot of the people that worked in the in the banks who otherwise said this is the most I can't believe it. I can't believe what my bank's doing. This is all political. That's what they're saying in the corridors every day. They canceled you for political reasons. There's no other explanation they're telling us, you know, they're telling us
we can't talk to you ever again. I was unbelievable, and I would not wish that on my worst enemy, to take the rails of being able to pay employees. These are housekeepers, these are janitors, these are engineers, these are security officers, these are drivers, hospitality workers, to not be able to pay them a salary, all because somebody wanted to politicize a system against a candidate because they happened to be a conservative and they believed in making America great again.
SATA, this is a story that we're hearing about the weaponization of the private sector, not the government, the private sector against the Trump organization. The moment that he just said, five hundred bank acounts just shut down, I'm shocked by that. I think you were as well.
That number.
I'd never heard anything remotely close to that. I mean, that really is stunning. So you're running your families outside businesses, you get these calls. What do you do when you're given what you said, twenty four hours forty eight hours notice, Like, were there banks that were willing to welcome your business or what did you do with with five hundred accounts being canceled.
You're a lot of attorney generals, and you had a lot of government institutions that were going to these banks and don't even think about don't touch that account. You know, Letitia James was doing that to the bonding companies when we had to after the initial ruling, when we had to post a six hundred million dollar bond by the way, that that was like five times the size of the Boeing bond. That that made them, you know that literally it was it was it was the biggest bond ever
seen in the country, you know. And she was going to the very same institution saying, don't even touch that bond. So we had to post the bond based on the court before we had everything overturned, and she was going to the biggest assurance company saying, you don't touch that bond. You know, you're you're registered in New York and if you touched that bond, I'm going to think less favorably on you. That's how badly they weaponize the system. What do you do when you get those letters? You want
to crawl under your desk. And honestly, I had I had probably one hundred people in the company that didn't sleep for a six month period of time who were distraught, and thank god we had enough little local banks you know that that you move all the accounts unthinkable, right to these little local branches who want to take your money. But these weren't the JP Morrigans, these weren't the Bank
of Americas. They were still a little They were a small, little mom and pop regional banks that did the right thing and honestly probably saved us based on the fact that they were willing to do the right thing. This didn't just happen to us. I was on the campaign trail, I'd hear from people every single day. You know, my
bank canceled me. Why well, my company makes a spring and the spring goes in a fishing reel, and that fishing reel sold at bass pro shops, and bass pro shops sells twelve games duck hunting ammo, and they thought the affiliation. I heard this everywhere I went. I heard it from the crypto guys. I believed in bitcoin. I believed in stable coin. I believe in the future of kind of modern finance. And because I believed in crypto currency,
my banks canceled me. Well, COVID canceled me, Bank of America canceled me.
Guys.
I heard this all over the place. You know, we need to make this illegal, and it is it's illegal in a lot of states and under a lot of banking clauses. But the fact that you can literally, I mean, could you imagine if if AIGHTE and t or of Rise and just decided to cancel all conservative cell phones.
Yeah?
Right.
If you can't bank, you can't survive. If you can't bank, you can't eat. If you can't bank, you can't pay employees. And yet they turned us off like we were dogs.
How much money do you think that trump when you guys were out during the four years and under siege like this, How many business deals got blown up because people were afraid even to just do business with you, because they're afraid their business will be affected negatively and they could be targeted. I'm assuming that was a reality for quite some time.
Well, I talk a lot about it in the book. I mean the reporters that just made their whole livelihoods. David Farrenholdt from the Washington Post and and and others, you know, made their entire livelihoods calling up you know, vendors of ours, calling up our employees, calling up brides and grooms that were gonna get married.
At one of the properties, one of the hotels.
And they were harassing people that were getting married at Trump resorts.
Oh I have I have more emails than you can possibly imagine. You know, I hear you're gonna go get married at at Mr Lago. Oh really, you know this might have to make the front cover of of our respective paper. You know, can you please get me comment? And these brides and grooms are saying, I just want to get married in peace, you know, I just you know, there's a beautiful property. I'm not a political person. I just you know it's it's it's a five star property.
I love the place. It's convenient, my family lives nearby. Whatever the hell of the reason they were doing that. They were extorting employees, They were going up to employees. They frankly tried to do it to me. Hey, you tell us anything about Donald Trump, will let you go. You know all the problems.
They tried to turn you against your own father.
Alvin Bragg, Are you kidding me? Cyrus vance all of them. They they weaponized every da in and AG to try and flip every single person to say anything negative, to get any negative testimony against Donald Trump for their own political purposes. Absolutely, that was the whole game. They played,
and no one in our company broke. Guys, this was the siege that I dealt with every single day, right, I mean it was it was all of these factors that came together, all at once, all the time, doing anything they could to to to just chop us off at every single I mean, when they made up the dirty dossier, when they made up right, I mean they have stories about prostitution in there, about golden you know, what's right? What do you think they were trying. They
were trying to divorce my father. They were trying to destroy his marriage. They were trying to break up our family. That's what they were trying to do. Also, a greedy woman could get, you know again, two more votes. These people are sick, These people are deranged, and there's been zero accountability for any of it. And as a son who fought by my father's side every single day during
this battle, somebody had to tell this story. Somebody had to tell the inside perspective of the lens that a corrupt government will go to besides just spying on campaigns and despite just you know, raiding homes, you know, all the things that they did to try and destroy us, to try and destroy make America great again and try and destroy conservatives all across the country.
Look, it was unmitigated evil, and it was driven part of it was driven by hate. Today, the defining characteristic I think of the Democrat Party is they hate your father. Yeah, uh, and they hate your family. I mean that anything connected to your father they hate. And I think it also, though,
was a deep contempt for democracy. I think every one of these indictments, I think the weaponization that we saw their underlying terror is that the voters would do what they did in November of twenty twenty four and vote to re elect your father. And this was all about undermining democracy and preventing the voters from doing that. You know, Eric, you mentioned earlier that you described yourself as as the most subpoena man in America. How many subpoenas did you get?
And and and and did you testify a lot of times? Were they demanding documents? What subpoenas were coming?
In one hundred twelve subpoenas. I sat in more depositions than any human being in the history of of of of depositions. And by the way, these are like big boy subpoenas, right, They're all coming from you know, your close friend Elizabeth Warren as we like to call our Pocahontas. And in many and many others we turned over. I mean, they would ask for document discovery, you know, please give us every email in the company, and they would a
thousand words. But aside from that, they would list national and international. Well, all our hotels are Trump International Hotel, and all our golf courses are Trump National Golf Course. You could probably see where this is going. Every email signature of every person in the company either has the word national or international in it. That's their fishing expedition. I actually brought this to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court specifically told them you can't fish right, and
they they did it anyway. The judges didn't give a damn. They wanted to find any comma that was out of place, and they couldn't. I mean, in the Letitia James trial, literally Deutsche Bank was on the stand saying that Trump was the best lender that they've ever had.
Right.
We made them hundreds of millions of dollars, paid off every loan, paid it off ahead of time, never missed a payment. Even in the darkest days of COVID, when they made a shutdown our properties. We never missed, we never defaulted, we never breached a covenant. And then one day I wake up to the nightmare of your fine six hundred million dollars for doing nothing wrong with banks
that loved us, that testified that they loved us. I mean it was you know, and that's because you had a crooked judge again, got overturned five zero at the next court. But they rigged out the entire system. And you're seeing them do that right now, right, You're seeing them do that in Washington, DC, where ninety four percent of the cases that go in front of the lower Course are literally, you know, going against the administration, and then they all have to go up on a po
and get overturned. But guys, the beautiful thing about the story is we won, right. I mean, the media loss, The media lost their credibility. No one likes the mainstream media. I mean, my wife is on Fox News on a Saturday and nine pm, and she's getting four expra ratings of CNN on the same time slot on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday in primetime slots. Right, no one likes the mainstream media. ABC's dead, NBC's dead, CNN's dead and independent voices like these podcasts are winning the day.
And by the way, she is doing an awesome job. I had a chance to be on her show, and she's she's a great interviewer because she's relaxed, she's having fun, she's asking real quiest questions and and it's night and day. Uh you know, I I will occasionally do do CNN. Poor Ben was on CNN for six seven years. I actually think he has a padded room and he like like puts on a straight activity remembers those.
Times fighting comedies for seven years.
Hey, listen, I just came off Caitlyn Collins about twenty minutes ago, right, So it's not some prayers.
You know, it's it's so bad. Let me ask you when all of this was coming in. And it is not exaggeration to say there has never been a political leader subject to more weaponization, more assaults, more insanely unfair attacks than that than your father has been.
Was there ever a time that.
That that you felt yourself giving in to despair and and and do you think your dad ever did?
Yeah?
Honestly, it's like we're like masochistic, We like we like pain or something along those lines or it's like a weird a weird trade, right, And I think it served us well. But now I think we were so pissed off at that point. We wanted to fight, and we wanted to win. And we want to save the Constitution. We want to save the American flag. We want to save religion in society. We want to save the Second Amendment. We want to end end wokeness. We wanted to stop
the dei nonsense. You know, men my size swimming in women's sport. We wanted to save the greatest country in the world against absolute lunacy.
And so we never gave up. We never stopped fighting.
We went out there and we punched back every single day, and we did that as a family. I never left that stage, and honestly, I've never been more proud of a human being in my life.
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All right, So, our guest with us is Eric Trump, Senator.
You and I were just talking with him about this really his family being under siege. You talked about these big boy subpoenas part of that is to financially hurt you. What did you, guys, spend just doing the fighting of all the lawsuits against you during that four year period?
How much did it cost you?
Roughly four hundred million?
Yeah, guys, I laugh when people I, oh, Trump is profiting off of go man, I go, wha wait?
Excuse me.
If you want to come in, I'll break down the finances. You want a Trump's profit. We spent four hundred million dollars to defend ourselves against nonsense, the fact that we did not have secret servers communicating with the Kremlin, the fact that Don wasn't a Russian agent.
Remember you had Adam Schiff out there every single day.
Donald Trump Junior is a Russian agent, guys, if he wasn't. If he wasn't protected by the speech and debate laws, you would have, honestly, the guy would have been worth a zero. He would have been living in a shoe box based on the fact that you would have sued him for slander and taken everything that he ever had. It was all made up lies. They did everything they possibly could to take us down. We spent over four
hundred million dollars between that. You know, Letitia, you know Alvin braggsy Vance, you know Fanny.
I mean, I could go on and on the raids the Mara alive.
What was the worst to deal with?
Between Alvin Braggs, Sye Vance, Letitia, James jack Smith, who was the worst?
Probably Letitia, if you want to know the truth. I mean, it was so corrupt.
And I don't know Alvin Braggby's you had Breshawn, I mean Judge Barshawn's daughter is like that, the head digital fundraiser for the Democratic Party. And the guy wouldn't recuse himself, and literally you'd be sitting in these courtrooms guys, and I would not leave my father's side. I sat next
to him every single day. If he was there, I was gonna be there as a son to support him, you know, and most of the time, some of these cases I wasn't gagged in so normally I was the guy in the courthouse steps, you know, shouting and yelling at the cameras as to what the hell was actually going on, because that's the only way you could communicate a message. But guys, I mean, you had liberal and I mean liberal reporters who were in that courtroom shaking
their head saying none of this makes any sense. I mean, they shut down all of Manhattan, Lower Manhattan for a hundred thousand dollars payment that my father didn't even make, made by a lawyer. They indicted him thirty four times. I mean, you know, al Capone had had one fell
in the indictment. They indicted my father thirty four times for one hundred thousand dollars payment, by the way, by a district attorney who ran on the premise, you know, of reducing what you know, just decriminalizing just about anything. You know, you can shoot somebody in the face in Times Square and it was decriminalized, and you're gonna let them out, and you know, you're gonna have community policing
and all sorts of nonsense. I mean, he ran on the premise of literally emptying Rikers Island, so you had no criminals in there. Yet you know, thirty four felonies in six month period of time is shutting down New York in the FDR drive every day over one hundred thousand dollars.
I mean, it wasn't believable.
If only your father were mugging people in Times Square, then Alvin Bragg would never have prosecuted him. But instead he committed the unspeakable sin of not only being president of the United States, but being an extraordinarily successful and bold president of the United States, which is an unpardonable sin. All right, we don't have much much time left, but I want to take it a little bit lighter and ask what was it like?
Like?
Your father is unique. I've never in my life have I met anyone remotely like your father. He and I have spent a lot of time together. He has extraordinary courage. But before he was president, what was it like growing up as a kid with Donald Trump as your father?
Like? Like, like, how what was he like as a dad when you were ten?
Honestly, the greatest dad you can ever imagine, expected big things from us, right, I mean every day I go give him kiss before I went to school. Honey, no drink drinking, no drugs, no smoking. You better get good grades. And by the way, never trust anybody. Right he did once in a while I had that he never never trust anyone. Hey, that's probably that was going to be I said, I probably benefited us pretty well, so amazing guy. You know, listen, we're spoiled as hell. And that we
lived in you know, Trump Tower. We had a beautiful roof over our head. We were always well fed. We we had the best education, but we were never handed money. We're never handy cash. If we wanted something. If I wanted a fishing road, congratulations, you're working for it. I got on our construction sites when I was eleven years old, doing demo, doing electrical HVAC you know, running back hose excavators.
You know, I grew up working with my hands on our construction sites with many of the guys that work for me today. And you know what, he wanted us to learn a trait. He wanted us to learn the value of a dollar. And by the way, he wanted us to be tired as hell at the end of the day. You know, because listen, don't give type A kids or any kid, but don't give type A kids money or free time, because bad things happen.
And he was an amazing father. He is an amazing father.
And everything we've ever done, we fought together, whether it's real estate, whether it was The Apprentice. I was on that for seven seasons, and then in politics. I mean when he decided to run, he said to us, he goes, you know, kids, let's do this. You know, I was on Megan Kelly. I didn't know what the hell immigration was. I mean, Senator, this was not my world. I built, you know, hotels, and all of a sudden, I'm in the.
Middle of box, I a wall, and now you're on TV.
I've got ninety illegal immigrants around me, and I'm battling all of them, and I don't know the first damn thing about illegal immigration, right. I mean, like, this is not the world that we came from. But my father's a remarkable guy. My mother was an amazing powerhouse and strict, demanded manners, demanded respect, demanded work ethic and either the
greatest parents you can ever imagine. I spent a lot of time in underseaged talking about you know, being raised by them, and you know it is unique in so many ways, but they they did everything they could in this strange world that we lived in, uh, to ground us and make sure we turned out to be hard workers, normal uh, you know, and didn't have any of these kind of Hunter Biden esque problems. I don't have a laptop from hell, you know, I don't do finger paintings selling it to you know.
Foreign nationals all over the world.
You know, never married my you know, my brother's ex wife, Like, never did that kind of stuff. No drugs, no, you know, no perversion. I was always a good kid who believed in God and believed in hard work and you know, lived an honest life.
Eric, I can't tell you how many times, dozens, if not hundreds of times people have commented that one of the things they admire most about your dad.
Is is you and your brothers and sisters.
And listen, it is hard for for any successful person to to raise good kids.
It's challenging. There's a lot of pressure and.
And you know, I, I know, know your entire family, and I will say literally people early on throughout the process, they'll comment, well, you know, somehow his kids are like, like not messed up and incredibly successful and put together and and I mean it's all right, let me ask you. Let's let let's say we have some young parents that
are listening to this podcast. Are there any lessons a young parent by the way, uh, you know Ben, Ben has young kids, I have teenage Are there any lessons any lessons from your dad that that young parents should know or lessons that you've tried to apply.
Yeah, keep them poor and make them start working early. Honestly, I mean that's what it is. Keep them poor. Don't don't give type A kids money and don't give them endless time. That's just a bad recipe, right, And and you know, I can't tell you, guys how many friends I had, you know, who were who were peers who went to school with me, And you know, three quarters of them ended up in rehab and and a lot
of them went down bad roads. And guess what they were getting ferraris you know when they're you know, sixteen years old, Like, what what do you ever want to aspire to to to get? If if that's that's how you're being raised? I mean, does it surprise you that those people don't have work?
Ethic.
Does it surprise you that they go down bad roads? And my father would never let that happen to us. And you know, he made us work our butts off. And believe me, if I wasn't good at what I did real estate wise, I would not be in this chair.
I mean, forget about bapotism for a second.
It.
You know, if we weren't incredibly capable, believe me, I wouldn't be running one of the largest real estate empires anywhere in the world. And he made us work, and he made us prove that we were good at what we do, and we fought every single day. And we're an incredibly tight family. And he's a remarkable person. He's my best friend. I love him to death, and I'm so proud of him, especially in a week where he's
accomplished as much as he had. I am so damn proud of he, of what he did and what he's accomplished. And the hell of a journey, guys, it's all worth it. This is all worth it. The siege is all worth it based on you know, the great things that are happening to our country, in our world.
Grab the book Under Siege Amazon right now. Eric a pleasure. Have you on, don't forget, grab the podcast, share wherever you can, and thanks for joining us. It's Verdict with Ted Curs, Ben Fergus and with you will see you back here on the podcast all week long.