- In today’s CEO Daily: President Donald Trump talks to Fortune about his dealmaking philosophy.
- The big leadership story: The energy CEO taking on the sector’s dual demands: more power and lower bills.
- The markets: Mixed globally as Trump threatens Iran.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. My colleague Alyson Shontell spoke with Donald Trump at the White House last week. (A small group of Fortune executives joined her in the Oval Office and did not take part in the interview.) This is a president who takes pride in, as he told Shontell, doing “deals every day that no normal person would make.” A few takeaways:
On taking stakes in U.S. companies: “Some people actually think it’s un-American, what I do. They say, ‘You’re taking their company away,’” the president said. But he sees such moves as a patriotic way to boost the economy, and if anything, he would like to do more, recounting last year’s visit from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. “I said, ‘Give the country 10% ownership for free in Intel.’ He said, ‘You have a deal.’ I said, ‘Shit, I should have asked for more.’” Added Trump: “I want to help American companies. There’s nothing in it for me other than I want companies to do well.”
On the national debt: Musing about this intractable problem, the real estate president casts it in a way that’s likely to blow the minds of economists and others who are concerned about how much the U.S. government now owes. Trump calculates the potential worth of natural assets like the Grand Canyon and even America’s surrounding oceans. “If you put down the value of these things, it’s like hundreds of trillions of dollars,” Trump said, and by that measure, “if you kept [the national debt] at $40 trillion, you’re way under-levered.”
On the Iran war: “I can tell you one thing—they’re dying to sign [a deal],” says the president. “But they make a deal, and then they send you a paper that has no relationship to the deal you made. I say, ‘Are you people crazy?’” It’s an intriguing and head-spinning conversation in the way that so many with Trump turn out to be. You can read the full story here. Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
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