In his own words...

Presidenting is hard: the 10 most embarrassing quotes from Donald Trump’s AP interview

Donald Trump sat down with Julie Pace from the AP to talk about his first 100 days in office and it was as freewheeling and incoherent as you might expect.

“The one thing I’ve learned to do that I never thought I had the ability to do” Trump said when asked about the challenges of the job, “I don’t watch CNN anymore.”

Throughout the interview, Trump spewed all sorts of false assertions about his leadership skills, pushed untrue narratives about his popularity and success, and once again made it explicitly clear that he doesn’t really know what the hell he’s even talking about.

Scroll down for 10 of the most ridiculous quotes from Donald’s interview…

On being president:

Well, the one thing I would say–and I say this to people–I never realized how big it was. Everything’s so (unintelligible) like, you know, the orders are so massive. I was talking to–Number one, there’s great responsibility. When it came time to, as an example, send out the 59 missiles, the Tomahawks in Syria, I’m saying to myself, “You know, this is more than just like, 79 (sic) missiles. This is death that’s involved,” because people could have been killed!

On CNN:

Okay. The one thing I’ve learned to do that I never thought I had the ability to do. I don’t watch CNN anymore. … They treat me so badly. No, I just said that. No, I–What’d I say?–I stopped watching them! But I don’t watch CNN anymore.

On the media, in general:

I never thought I had the ability to not watch what is unpleasant, if it’s about me. Or pleasant. But when I see it’s such false reporting, and such bad reporting, and false reporting that I’ve developed an ability that I never thought I had. I don’t watch things that are unpleasant. I just don’t watch them. … I don’t watch CNN anymore. I don’t watch MSNBC anymore. I don’t watch things. And I never thought I had that ability. I always thought I’d watch. I just don’t.

On the wall:

The opponents are talking $25 billion for the wall. It’s not going to cost anywhere near that! I think $10 billion or less. And if I do a super-duper, higher, better, better security, everything else, maybe it goes a little bit more. But it’s not going to be anywhere near (those) kind of numbers. And they’re using those numbers; they’re using the high numbers to make it sound impalatable (sic).

On his base:

People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall. My base really wants it. You’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base. I think my base is 45 percent. You know? It’s funny.

On his speech to Congress:

A lot of the people have said that, some people said, it was the single best speech ever made in that chamber.

On the media, again:

I have learned one thing, because I get treated very unfairly, that’s what I call it, the fake media. And the fake media is not all of the media. You know, they tried to say that the fake media was all the–No! The fake media is some of you. I could tell you who it is, 100 percent. Sometimes you’re fake, but–but the fake media is some of the media.

On his high TV ratings:

I have, it’s interesting, I have, seem to get very high ratings. I definitely. You know, Chris Wallace had 9.2 million people, it’s the highest in the history of the show! I have all the ratings for all those morning shows. When I go, they go double, triple. … On any, on air, (CBS “Face the Nation” host John) Dickerson had 5.2 million people. It’s the highest for “Face the Nation” or as I call it, “Deface the Nation.” It’s the highest for “Deface the Nation” since the World Trade Center. Since the World Trade Center came down!

On how “big” everything is:

The financial cost of everything is so massive, every agency. This is thousands of times bigger, the United States, than the biggest company in the world. … It’s massive! And every agency is, like, bigger than any company. So, you know, I really just see the bigness of it all.

On why being president requires “love”:

Well in business, you don’t necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything affects people. … Here, everything, pretty much everything you do in government, involves heart, whereas in business, most things don’t involve heart. In fact, in business you’re actually better off without it. You have to love people. And if you love people, such a big responsibility.

Related: 10 shockingly awful quotes from Donald Trump’s Black History Month speech

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