Donald Trump appeared on Fox Business Monday morning to speak his mind on a broad range of issues, from the Bitcoin price rollercoaster to his Facebook ban, which was recently extended until 2023, to a possible replacement for Mike Pence in the event of a new run for the presidency in 2024.
Commenting on the prospects of a run for the House in 2022, Trump said “so many people are saying” that he should do it, but added that “that’s highly unlikely.”
Sticking to the elections theme, he was asked whether he would consider Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his running mate if he ran in 2024, Trump said “sure I would.”
“You know there are numerous people that are great. I would certainly consider Ron. I was at the beginning of Ron. I was the first one to endorse him when he came out as a congressman that a lot of people didn’t know. My endorsement helped him tremendously. I know him very well, he’s a great guy,” Trump suggested.
The former president praised DeSantis and other Republican governors for opening up their states and easing COVID restrictions, while blasting Democratic governors for keeping schools and businesses closed.
Threat of New Malaise Days
Commenting on the Biden administration’s efforts to pump hundreds of billions of dollars in addition money into the economy, including via a new infrastructure bill which has been heavily attacked by Republicans, Trump suggested that it would cause “inflation that’s gonna be rampant.”
Praise for Biden
Praising his administration’s foreign policy and saying he was “very proud” that the US “got rid of some of these endless wars,” Trump expressed support for the Biden administration’s decision to follow through with the pullout from Afghanistan. “We started that train rolling, it was just about completed, and frankly I’m very happy that they’re going to continue it,” he said.
Trump went on to blast Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, calling him a “dangerous” person, and suggested that the tech mogul had duplicitously praised him while he was still president.
“You know, Zuckerberg would come to the White House to have dinner with me, couldn’t be nicer. ‘Sir, you’re number one, congratulations, number one on Facebook,’ all this crap. He would bring his wife,” Trump recalled.
“They have to be stopped and they will be stopped – eventually they are going to be stopped,” Trump said of Facebook and other social media platforms, calling the decision to ban him a threat to free speech. “We don’t have free speech anymore, and who are they to tell us what ideology we should be talking about, what politics we should be talking about. They are a disgrace.”
Trump was permabanned on Twitter and had his Facebook suspended earlier this year after the 6 January Capitol riots amid allegations by the tech companies that he helped instigate the violence. He denies any wrongdoing.
In addition to being attacked by Democrats, Trump has been slammed by some senior members of his own party in recent months as neoconservatives seek to regain control. On Monday, former Representative Liz Cheney – who has been waging an anti-Trump crusade for the soul of the Republican Party, accused Trump of using language that’s “essentially the same” as that of the Chinese Communist Party.
“When he says that our system doesn’t work…when he suggests that it’s, you know, incapable of conveying the will of the people, you know, that somehow it has failed – those are the same things that the Chinese government says about us. It’s very dangerous and damaging,” Cheney said.