Trump tells Lex Fridman that he lost the 2020 election "by a whisker"

Former President Donald Trump had an extensive interview with Russian-American computer scientist and podcaster Lex Fridman in which he touched on many different topics, from the 2020 election, his first term, Hillary Clinton, the current wars across the globe and also the upcoming debate with Kamala Harris.

Fridman, who considers himself an independent, was quite cordial during the conversation, though he asked Trump about tough issues, including the political divide embedded within American society and how power in a second term might affect him personally.

"As the leader of the United States, you were the most powerful man in the world. As you mentioned, not only the most famous, but the most powerful. And if you become leader again, you’ll have unprecedented power. Just on your own personal psychology, what does that power do to you? Is there any threat of it corrupting how you see the world?" asked Fridman.

Trump explained that, since he was already in the Oval Office, a second term would not have a negative effect on him. He recalled, specifically, the case of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was not "jailed" despite the deleted emails scandal.

"No, I don’t think so. Look, I’ve been there for four years. I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president’s wife and put her in prison. She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. She’s so lucky," Trump asserted.

"Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me too. They wanted to see something, but… I could have done something very bad. I thought it looked so bad," continued the former president, who then said that, despite his good behavior as president, Democrats continued to promote "hoaxes" to persecute him politically once he left office.

"They’re all hoaxes, but they have all these dishonest hoaxes just like they did in the past with, Russia, Russia, Russia. That was a hoax. The 51 different agencies or agents, that was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax. There were so many hoaxes and scams. But I didn’t want to put her in jail, and I didn’t. And I explained it to people. They say, “Lock her up. Lock her up.” We won. I said, “We don’t want to put her in jail. We want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. You don’t bring the country together by putting her in jail.” But then when I got out, they went to work on me. It’s amazing. And they suffer from massive Trump derangement syndrome, TDS, and I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint."

In a telling moment in the conversation, Trump was asked about his upcoming debate with Kamala Harris and, in a lengthy response, asserted that he lost the 2020 election "by a hair" despite doing what it took to win against an adverse backdrop.

"How do you think you’ll do in the debate coming up, that’s in a few days?" asked Fridman.

"I’ve done well with debates. I became president. Then the second time, I got millions more votes than I got the first time. I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win," Trump said, before admitting he narrowly lost to Biden.

"And I got millions of more votes on that and lost by a whisker. And look what happened to the world with all of the wars and all of the problems. And look what happened with inflation because inflation is just eating up our country, eating it up. So it’s too bad. But there are a lot of things that could happen. We have to get those wars settled. I’ll tell you, you have to get Ukraine done. That could end up in a third world war. So could the Middle East. So could the Middle East."

In other parts of the interview, Trump and Fridman discussed the political ideology of Kamala Harris, who was labeled a "Marxist" by the Republican candidate.

For Fridman, the Democratic candidate is simply using economic demagoguery to win votes heading into the election.

"There’s a lot of people listening to this, myself included, that doesn’t think that Kamala is a communist," the podcast host said.

"Well, she's a Marxist," Trump retorted.

But Fridman disagreed.

"She’s advocating for some policies that are towards the direction of democratic socialism, let’s say. But there’s a lot of people that know the way government works and they say, well, none of those policies are going to actually come to reality. It’s just being used during the campaign (...) Groceries are too expensive. We need them cheaper, so let’s talk about price controls. And that’s never going to come to reality."

Trump, on the other hand, believes the idea of price controls "could come to reality."

"Look, she came out with price control. It’s been tried like 121 different times at different places over the years, and it’s never worked once. It leads to communism, it leads to socialism, it leads to having no food on the shelves, and it leads to tremendous inflation," the former president said.

In another part of the conversation, Trump and Fridman talked about foreign policy and wars around the globe. The host highlighted the Republican candidate's ability to negotiate and asked him about how he would stop the war between Russia and Ukraine.

Trump, quite frankly, answered that the answer was difficult and the solution even more so.

"I think the deal and I wouldn’t talk about it too much because I think I can make a deal if I win as president-elect, I’ll have a deal made guaranteed. That’s a war that shouldn’t have happened. It’s terrible. Look, Biden is the worst president in the history of our country and she’s (Harris) probably worse than him. That’s something that should have never happened, but it did happen. And now it’s a much tougher deal to make than it would’ve been before it started. Millions of people, I think the number’s going to be a lot higher when you see this all at some point to iron out, I think the numbers are going to be, the death numbers are going to be a lot higher than people think. When you take a look at the destruction and the buildings coming down all over the place in Ukraine, I think those numbers are going to be a lot higher."