Trump: My whole life has been winning

Nobody in recent memory has a more highly developed sense of public confidence than the freshly minted Republican nominee for president. Still, as I sat down with Donald Trump late last week, I couldn't help but wonder. Let me ask you a question I've wanted to ask you for months now. I have a sense that back on June 16th, what Donald Trump was thinking was, you know something, I might win a primary or two, I might win a caucus or two, but you know, the worst thing that's going to happen is the brand is going to be improved. I'll be better known. I'll be more famous than I am today. Business is going to be in. You never thought you'd be sitting here on this day as the nominee of the Republican Party. It's such a great question and such an interesting question. And I think about it myself. I mean, you know, I think I must have, Ted, because I do like to win. And I believe that if I didn't think I was going to win, I wouldn't have done it. So somewhere deep down in the mind, I must have said, I'm going to win. All right, I'll check the microphone. The afternoon of his acceptance speech, Trump did a walkthrough and a mic check. I love the media. Well, I was being sarcastic and saying how much we love the media. Now, the media has been very dishonest, but we put up with it. But I let people know about it. There's tremendous dishonesty in the media, but I let people know about it. It's been a mixed blessing for you. It's been a blessing and you wouldn't be where you are today without the media. Yeah, I think you're right. How did that work? And by the way, some are tremendously honest, but you have tremendous dishonesty in the media. Tremendous. I've never seen anything like it. More so in the last number of months, I think, than I've ever seen it. With that being said, you have to power through it. And I do that. And it seems to be working out pretty well. But I do like to expose it. When you talk about exposing the media, what the media is there to do, what we are supposed to do is keep you honest. Yeah. And you've had your share of misstatements over the past few months. Without the media, who would know about that? Well, I think that I'm an honest person. I feel I'm an honest person. And I don't mind being criticized at all by the media. But I do want them to be straight about it. Trump seems to deal with unpleasant reality by ignoring or denying it. The ex-presidents, the leaders of the party, the ones who ran for president, are pretty much arrayed against you. Oh, I don't think so. Now you have to— Well, I mean— I don't think so. Look— The Bushes are, the McCains are, the— Ted, let me explain something. The people like me, I got the most votes, almost 14 million votes, in the history of the Republican Party. We're talking about Dwight D. Eisenhower. That's Republican. Now you've got to convince the independents. Now you've got to convince some of the Democrats. But I'm way up with independents. How do you convince the doubters? How do you convince the people who are sitting out there? And there are a lot of people sitting out there saying, I can't believe that Donald J. Trump is the nominee. Well, my whole life, though, and you've, you know, covered me for a long time. We've known each other a long time. My whole life has been winning. I mean, I've won. Whether I did The Apprentice, went on television. You can't compare anything he's done before. Tremendous success in business. Tremendous success with—I go into television. I do a show. It's a big success. I write books. They're very successful. There's nothing like running president of the United States. I agree. There's nothing like it. How do you convince those doubters? How do you convince the folks that you're going to have to, you're going to have to get those people in the middle? I think on November 8th, I think that's the way you convince them, to be honest with you. If you haven't convinced them before November 8th, you're in trouble. Right now I'm up in many of the polls. What are you doing? What are you saying? I mean, you talked at one point. In fact, I heard you say it several times. Oh, I can be so presidential. I haven't seen it yet. Well, I mean, I still see that flair of temper. I still see that Donald Trump who likes to jab people in the ribs when he feels he has to. We're going to see more of that or less of it? I mean, you're going after Hillary. There's no question of that. I mean, she's a competitor. Just like when I'm running the nation, if that happens. Is it going to get nasty? With Hillary? Well, I mean, she's taken very nasty ads and all. I mean, it's not like me. It's sort of funny that you say I'm going after her. She spent $102 million on negative ads. Everyone says, oh, you're going after Hillary. She spent $102 million on negative ads. I haven't literally bought an ad. I will. We have a lot of money. What is it that's going to be different about the Trump campaign now that you're in a general campaign? All I can do is talk about policy, which I'm very good at. All I can do is talk about the things we're going to do for our country. Rebuild our depleted military borders, trade. Obamacare is a disaster. It's a total disaster. Our health care plan is a total disaster. How important are the debates going to be? I think they'll be very important. I always think they're less important than people think. But, you know, in the other debates, I was in 11 debates. Every poll had me winning every single debate. Every single poll had me winning every single debate. And I look forward to the debates. You know what William F. Buckley said? He said, never debate someone who is not a debater. You're not a debater. I think I surprised a lot of people. But I enjoyed the debates. My biggest question when I got into this is what's going to happen with the debates? Because I've never debated professionally before. You know, I debate. My whole life is a debate in a way. But, you know, to go on a stage and I went on against people. That's all they do is debate. That's, you know, they're politicians. And I actually loved debating. I enjoyed it. One last question. I have this image of you sitting there in your jammies at night, doing your texting and your tweeting and your Facebook. Give me a visual image of when does Donald Trump text and tweet and all that? Well, I think there'll be very little of that if I win. I think it's, you know, it's a little bit different. But right now I'm in a very nasty contest with a person who's a very nasty person who, by the way, tweets and texts and, you know, spends. Is it you tweeting? Are all those tweets yours? No, but oftentimes it's me. I mean, you know, oftentimes it's me because I get out a message. Between Facebook and Twitter, I have over 20 million people. And that's a big audience. And it's also you and the media and everybody's watching. It allows you to circumvent. It allows me to get across a point very quickly in seconds. I mean, there was never anything like that. And I have such a big base. It's such a big, you know, 20 million people. That's a tremendous more than that's going to be much more. I think I'm gaining probably 100,000 people every few days. And that gives me a big, big base in terms of a campaign. In terms of a presidency, I don't think I'd use it very much at all. All right. You've been kind to do this. I know you've got a couple of things on your agenda. Thank you very much. Thank you.