President Donald Trump continued to push that his tariffs are going as planned in an interview with BlazeTV’s Glenn Beck.
Beck admitted at the top of the chat that he was not a fan of tariffs, but said he trusted Trump’s instinct to make deals.
Trump has kept a 10 percent tariff in place for almost every country around the world – and paused his higher reciprocal tariffs for 90 days so those deals could come together.
‘I don’t have to negotiate. I don’t have to negotiate. I’m talking to people out of respect, but I don’t have to,’ Trump told the former Fox News host.
‘So we’re this giant store that people want to come in and buy from, we’re the United States. We have the richest consumers, etcetera, etcetera, right?’ the president continued.
Trump said he was currently negotiating with ’70 different countries.’
‘We’re negotiating, we’re showing great respect, but in the end, we may make deals, but either that or I just set a price and I say “here’s what you’re going to pay for the privilege of servicing the United States of America,”‘ Trump said.
‘And they have an option, they can maybe talk to me a little bit or they can not shop,’ the president added.
President Donald Trump talked tariffs with BlazeTV founder Glenn Beck at the White House on Wednesday
Glenn Beck, a former Fox News host, admitted that he wasn’t a fan of tariffs but told his audience he had confidence that Trump could cut deals
Trump also said Wednesday that he could reimpose some of the reciprocal tariffs earlier than the 90-day deadline.
‘In the end, I think what’s going to happen is, we’re going to have great deals, and by the way, if we don’t have a deal with a company or a country, we’re going to set the tariff,’ Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. ‘I’d say over the next couple of weeks, wouldn’t you say? I think so. Over the next two, three weeks. We’ll be setting the number.’
Trump told Beck it would be ‘an ambition’ to make TheBlaze founder a fan of his tariffs.
‘I’m going to make you a fan of it,’ Trump told Beck.
‘I would love to be a fan,’ Beck replied.
Beck spoke about a number of other subjects with Trump, including why he believed he would be able to get a Russia-Ukraine peace deal.
‘I don’t believe Vladimir Putin would be doing this for anybody else but me,’ Trump boasted.
Trump continued to express frustration with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who Beck even referred to as a ‘punk.’
‘You said it,’ Trump responded.
The president pointed to his explosive meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office in late February, saying that the Ukrainian leader was ‘screaming’ at him.
‘He’s asking for more, just more and more and more, and he doesn’t have the cards,’ Trump said again.
Trump added that Putin ‘thus far, he’s been easier to deal with than Zelensky.’
Beck, a longtime conservative commentator, wasn’t a fan of Trump when he launched his first bid for the White House in 2015.
Beck called out Trump for not being a true conservative.
But now Beck has come around.
As he introduced the interview, Beck spoke of the president’s ‘tremendous sense of humor.’
‘I was with him just 45 minutes ago, and now I’m here, and already memes are going out with the two of us. Between a picture of Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush he decided to put a painting of him in between,’ Beck said. ‘And he’s doing it as a troll.’
‘He has a very funny sense of humor,’ the former Fox News host said. ‘It’s driving the left out of their minds.’
The rather colorful piece of Trump art was placed in the East Wing’s booksellers hallway, usually reserved for portraits of first ladies.
Trump has made some more serious changes to the White House decor, including adding a lot of gold elements to the Oval Office.