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President Trump, good to be with you tonight here in Rochester at the Opera House in New Hampshire. Obviously, very big news today. Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race. What's your reaction? Well, look, he worked very hard. It's a tough go. And he worked hard. His wife is a terrific woman. They both work very hard. And he endorsed me in dropping out. He endorsed me. So I appreciate that very much. And I think we'll do very well. I think we were headed to a very big victory on Tuesday, just like in Iowa. And I think maybe now it even gets to be bigger because most of those people are going to go with me, I suspect. So he was supposed to come here to New Hampshire tonight, but he stayed in Florida. Did you speak with him? No, I didn't. I didn't. Somebody wanted to have a call, but I wasn't able to because, you know, I'm doing you. And then I go and make a big speech or a lot of people waiting right now. But he, you know, look, he fought a very good, he fought very hard. It's a very tough thing to do. Well, you guys traded a lot of tough words during the course of the campaign. You called him to sanctimonious. And then in the statement tonight, he brought up covid and your elevation of Fauci. Did you see his statement as embracing and really endorsing in a full-throated way? Look, it's very hard for him. He's going out and it's not like you feel wonderful when you do it. So he said, I think we did a fantastic job on covid. Nobody knew. You know, I've been given tremendous credit for the economy, for the military, for foreign policy. The one thing I've never been given credit for was the job we did in covid. We did a fantastic job with all of the all of the medicines. And if you look at Regeneron, all of the things that we did, we did a fantastic job, have never been given the credit for that. And basically, I allowed the governors to do their states and people like Henry McMaster, who was here yesterday, who, by the way, endorsed me. He's the governor of South Carolina. Almost every politician in South Carolina endorsed me, which is a little bit tough for Nikki. But when you go and you do a job like that, I relied very little on Fauci. By comparison, Fauci became much more important for Joe Biden. He liked Fauci. But he was there for like 40 years. And he was out there every day in all of the news. But if you listen to Fauci, I mean, many of the things that Fauci recommended, as you know, you know, he wanted to keep it open to China. And I said, no way, we're not going to keep it open. We he actually admitted after that, that I saved hundreds of thousands of lives. I closed it immediately to China. And everybody said, what are you doing? There was a room of 11 people. He was one of them. And they all said, no, and now they give me credit for having closed it. It would have been far worse. So no, but when Ron goes out, I thought he was actually pretty gracious, to be honest, because I think the fact that he endorsed was a big factor. But if you think about it, he wants low taxes. And I gave the largest tax decrease or cut in the history of our country bigger than Ronald Reagan. Would you do larger cuts, corporate? Yeah, I was planning on doing it. In fact, had the result been different, the result was just fine, by the way. You'll probably cut that out. But that's okay. But the more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country. But had had I been president at the time, we would have had a lower debt we were going to pay off. We were going to drill baby drill, you know, we were going to drill and get our inflation down. The inflation has been killing our country. No matter what you're making, the inflation just wiped it out and just ate it up. And we were going to do some phenomenal things for the country. And then, you know, the result of the election was not did not make a lot of people very happy, frankly. Let me ask you about Ron DeSantis. You said you didn't speak. Did he reach out to you? And I'd rather not comment would maybe ask Ron that question. But I'd rather not comment. But he was very nice. Look, he left. It's a very hard thing to do. He left. Somebody said, what are you going to do with the name to sanctimonious? I said that name is officially retired as of this moment. We are retiring that name. So would you can you see him potentially in your administration? I mean, how much do you think you could work together after the race? It's so raw right now when you ask me that question. I heard about this two hours ago. So this is just something that just took place as I was coming here. And we have a tremendous audience outside. So I haven't thought in terms of that. But look, I got along with him very well until this happened. And he ran against me. I got him elected. I actually got him elected. That was not even a question. And he ran. So I was insulted by that. I didn't think it was appropriate. And now I guess it doesn't matter to me much anymore. So Nikki Haley says now she has the two person race that she's always wanted. She has been coming after you strongly in the past few days. It's worked both ways. And you've come after her as well. She she keeps bringing up your age lately. What do you say about that? Well, I think I'm a lot sharper than her. I would do this. I would sit down right now and take an aptitude test and it would be my result against her result. And she's not going to win. Not going to even come close to winning. In fact, when I heard the word cognitive, you know, I've taken two of them now. I took one with Doc Ronnie, who's now a fantastic, you know, White House doctor and a fantastic congressman from Texas, Admiral, the White House doctor, Jackson, Ronnie Jackson. And he's now a great congressman from Texas. I took one then and I took one recently. I think the result was announced and it was I aced it twice. I aced it. But I would say that, you know, I've actually called for a cognitive test for anybody running for president because I actually think that's a good idea. It'd be nice to have an intelligent person be president. But Kelly has two, I believe. So how do you see the race between the two of you? And in the coming days, as this close, you know what the number is. She's getting killed. She's she's being destroyed in that race. And when she when we get to South Carolina, I'm up 40 or 50 points on her. I saw a poll today that 51 point I'm up 51 points and she was governor. You saw last night, we had a tremendous crowd. We had a record setting crowd last night. And almost the entire delegation of politicians, the governor, the lieutenant, everybody, all people that worked with her, they were there endorsing me. And the entire state has practically endorsed me. But we're way up. We're up anywhere from 40 to 50 points in South Carolina. We're up in Nevada. Don't forget we go to Nevada. Nobody mentions this. We go to Nevada before we go to South Carolina. And in going to Nevada, I have 100 percent of the vote because they looked at the polls both run to they looked at the polls and they withdrew. You know, it's a caucus state. Right. And they look on a ballot and you're on a caucus. It's very confusing. No, no, no, no, no. It's the delegates. Yeah, there's no reason to be on a ballot because you don't get any delegates. That's just a sham. No, it's a caucus state. And I'm the only one in the game. So we get 100 percent. And that's, you know, relatively big state. And nobody mentions that. But when we go to South Carolina, we're very strong in South Carolina. So in terms of Nikki Haley and the future and what happens, there's always this discussion about potentially a third candidate, a no labels candidate. Chris Christie's name has been mentioned. Nikki Haley's name has been mentioned. I'm not sure if she would be eligible with the sore loser laws. But what do you think about that? What would your message be to candidates who might consider doing that? Well, they usually they pick candidates that failed in other parties. I mean, look, you have two parties. It really is a two party system. It was designed for that. And usually when you see no labels or you see third party candidates, the one that had an impact was Ross Perot, I would say more so than anybody even close. But generally speaking, it's people that have been losers in their own party. And that's what they do. Some of these third parties, many of them helped me a lot. The Democrats are not happy with it. I like a two party system.

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