Trump Unfiltered

On October 6, President Trump sat down for a frank exchange of views with Forbes’ editor, Randall Lane, and chief product officer, Lewis D’Vorkin. Here is a condensed version of that 50-minute exchange.We quote the president verbatim and have not corrected errors of fact. The full transcript is available at www. forbes.com/trump-interview.

- Randall Lane

FORBES: You’ve always talked about having fun as a key to business. Are you having fun?

TRUMP: I am having fun. I’m enjoying it. We’re accomplishing a lot. Your stock market is at an all-time high. Your jobs, your unemployment is at the lowest point in almost 17 years. We have fantastic numbers coming out. And I think we’ll have, over the course of the next, fairly short period of time, and more importantly over a long period of time, we’re going to have great numbers coming out of our country.

What’s your personal thought?

I enjoy success. And we’re having tremendous success, as a country. We have some difficulties, with respect to North Korea, the Middle East. I inherited—and I’ve said it often— I inherited a mess. The country was having many different problems. Among them, the Middle East, ISIS, which we’ve done more with respect to ISIS in nine months than we’ve done in nine years. But we have really done, we have done, I would say eight months in eight years, to be specific. But we have done a really, really good job with the military. We’re building up our military. We just had an over $700 billion budget, which will be approved. We’re—you know, there’s been few times where the military was more important than what it is right now. And, in addition to that, which is by far the overriding element, it’s lots of jobs in the United States.

Now that we’re almost a year from the big upset and the big win, do you think your business back ground prepared you for this job? And were you ready, now that you have a year in?