Speaking to John Solomon and Amanda Head in a 25-minute interview that touched on a variety of topics and started with what Trump would do in a potential second term, the former president said that in his opinion, the most urgent issue was the supply chain.
“You go to a store, they don’t have bread. We’re like a third-world country. They don’t have things. You go to buy something at Tiffany’s, you go to buy something at a hardware store – high, low – they don’t have product,” the former president explained.
“Even me, when I order things like furnishing for a building they say it’s going to take nine months to get it. Used to be same day service. Supply chain, we never heard the term [when Trump was in office]. The system was working. The system is broken. We are going into socialism and we are going into communism,” Trump asserted.
It should be noted that the supply chain issues began during the COVID19 pandemic and product shortages were present during the Trump Administration. Multiple media outlets covered empty shelves in stores from the early days of the pandemic and after the 2020 election. The CEO of Tyson Foods warned about supply chain issues in April 2020 and Axios reported that 75% of American companies were being “disrupted” by supply chain issues as early as March 2020.
President Biden and his administration are not immune from criticism on the issue. The supply chain issues that began at the onset of the pandemic remain unsolved over a year after Biden took the White House. However, Trump’s assertion that the US supply chain was working throughout the duration of his administration is a tenuous claim.
Trump would go on to talk about Hunter Biden’s laptop, immigration, inflation, oil prices, China, the 2020 election and other issues. He also asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to reveal any dirt they have on the Biden family.
This was not the first time Trump has compared the US to a third-world country. He did it in reference to the 2020 election results and in 2017 when touting an executive order designed to address infrastructure problems in the country.