The Left's "Mostly Peaceful" Terrorists + Guest Eric Trump | Episode 135

26:06Dan Bongino:Once they identified themselves as immigration agents, he sped away. Then he abandoned the car. He was found in a brushy area that was 200 yards away with the help of an Iowa State Police canine. Per ICE, according to the ICE officials, agents found a loaded gun and a fixed blade hunting knife and$3 ,000 in cash in his vehicle. That loaded gun detail? Chad, is it or is it not illegal for an illegal alien to possess a gun in the United States? it's illegal this is that's a felony brother that's a felony so you have an illegal alien in possession of a loaded handgun a glock 19 inside of his vehicle he also had a couple thousand dollars in cash and a fixed blade hunting knife they said in the car per the ice officials roberts first entered the united states in 1999 on an f1 student visa at saint john's university and then he was ordered removed from the United States in 2024.

27:11Dan Bongino:Proceedings were held in absentia. And then in April of 2025, this year, an immigration judge in Dallas denied a motion to reopen his immigration case. Fox is told that Roberts also has a weapons arrest in 2020, though the disposition of that charging case is currently unclear. Here's a mugshot of him. Rumble.com slash Vince for the video. You can see the mugshot of the guy. You got his official superintendent portrait. He looks all clean and dapper. There he is in his Orville Redenbacher bow tie. And then you got him in his mugshot. It looks a lot more frazzled in his mugshot. And they've also got a picture of the gun, the loaded Glock 19 inside of the vehicle, sitting on the floor mat of the vehicle itself.

27:56Dan Bongino:So they take him into custody. So here's the thing. there's it's not just this dude who is there illegally you know he's he's the superintendent of schools in Des Moines Iowa now how in the world did that happen how did this dude become the superintendent of schools in Des Moines Iowa and one of the answers to this question appears to be that the school board is dominated by a bunch of lefties and among the lefties who dominate the school board, you've got Michelle Obama's former chief of staff, a woman by the name of Jackie Norris. She's the chairwoman of the Des Moines school board. And the school board now is pretending like they knew nothing about this.

28:42Dan Bongino:This guy defrauded them. They just had no way of knowing that he was an illegal alien. I'm sorry. What? You didn't run his paperwork? Chad, any of you employers? Does anybody run an I-9 check, a status check on whether or not this guy's in the country illegally or he's even eligible to work in the United States of America? What kind of process do they even have in Des Moines, Iowa? And how is it that Michelle Obama's chief of staff is overseeing all of this and this guy's taking a$300 ,000 paycheck? He's an illegal alien in the country? right now it's one thing for this guy to be taken into custody he's got legal problems of his own what i want to see next is what do the feds do about this school board what are we going to do about a school board that hires an illegal alien who illegally possesses a weapon in the united states of america who is obviously defrauding everybody what do we do about all this i don't think this is the end of this saga and i doubt it's the end of this saga as far as the trump administration's concerned.

29:46Dan Bongino:More on that coming up. Also, Eric Trump will be with us here in just a moment. We've got a lot to discuss with the president's son and his great new book, Important. Stand by for that. Hey, great sponsors of this program include Blackout Coffee, probably the official coffee of all of us here at Silverlock. There's a reason for that. This is bold, unapologetic America first coffee. It is roasted fresh right here in the United States, not grocery store junk. Blackout Coffee delivers rich, high quality roasts that actually tastes like freedom. And now you can set it and you can forget it with auto refill and recurring delivery.

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31:51Dan Bongino:Use the code Vince at checkout. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. All right. Joining us right now is the son of the president of the United States. His name is Eric Trump. He's the executive vice president of the Trump organization. And he's got a great new book out, Under Siege, My Family's Fight to Save Our Nation. Sir, good to have you with us on the program today. Good to be with you, Vince. The boy, the title of your book, the subject of your book, I feel like we're all kind of obsessed with this.

32:24Dan Bongino:It is amazing that your family has continued to stay in this fight. Tell me about kind of what you capture in this book, Under Siege.

32:34Eric Trump:So I named it about three years ago, right? And they were killing us. They were absolutely coming after us in every way, shape. Obviously, you know the impeachments and you know the raids on Mar-a-Lago. You know what they did with the FBI and the DOJ. They spied on the campaigns. They took away our free speech. They threw my father off of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I became the most subpoenaed person in American history, right? And I could go on and on and on. Then you had the 91 indictments. You had the Alvin Bragg. You had the Jack Smith. You had Letitia James. You know, they tried to pull my father off the ballot in Maine.

33:02Eric Trump:They tried to pull him off the ballot, you know, in Colorado. Right. They laughed at him. They tried to silence his voice. And we had to create truth social literally because we didn't have any other way to to communicate, you know. And I named the book after after this. Right. They debanked us every single day. The biggest banks in the country were shutting down all our bank accounts. They were trying to take our name off the top of buildings. And so I came up with the name Under Siege because that's what I was. Anything that wasn't in Washington, D.C., I was handling. And then all of a sudden they tried to kill my father.

33:30Eric Trump:Right. And I said it on on Hannity a couple weeks before it happened. I go, you know, I said this, Vince, I took a lot of heat for it. But I said it would only make sense that they try and do the next thing, which is inflect physical harm. And sure enough, they tried to kill him in Butler and they tried to kill him at the golf course. And then you saw what they did to all of our friend Charlie, you know, two weeks ago. And that's what they've done to this movement. They put it under siege. They put our family under siege. They put my father under siege. You know, they put every Republican, every conservative under siege.

33:59Eric Trump:And it's, you know, kind of behind the scenes story of all of that, how they tried to destroy us, you know, using the legal system, using weaponized politics, using, you know, dirty law enforcement and how we ultimately prevailed and created the greatest political movement in the history of the world.

34:17Dan Bongino:Can I ask, how is your father capable of enduring all of this? So one of the things I've noticed about your dad is that he has the most unusual ability to survive the most vicious attacks I've ever seen out of any human being, actually. Because it seems like whatever they throw at him, the effect is not to diminish him, but only to make him stronger. And certainly it rallied more people to his side. How did that happen?

34:45Eric Trump:Well, I mean, that's like the great irony of this whole thing. It's the unintended consequence of their actions, right? I mean, I sat there every single day with him in those courtrooms, you know, as they read off indictment after indictment, all BS, and we've had them all overturned now. But the guy was an absolute animal. And we'd go from there and we'd go to a fundraiser and he'd use the microphone on, you know, when he could. A lot of times he couldn't. So I'd be out on the courthouse steps speaking because he had every gag order put on him that you could possibly imagine. But, you know, listen, first of all, my father, I think that, you know, the harder people hit him, the harder he hits back.

35:14Eric Trump:that's always been a quality. You see that every single day as he kind of goes on the counter offensive. He's always been a great counter puncher. Second of all, we probably have some kind of masochistic, you know, trait to us as a family, right? And, you know, again, like, you know, the more pain you inflict probably, you know, the more we want to ultimately win and succeed. I think we're all stubborn as hell. I think he's stubborn as hell. And then kind of last but not least, I think we've all, you know, learned to compartmentalize it as a game. It's not a nice game. It's not a fun game. We know why they play this game.

35:45Eric Trump:You do as well. Dan did as well. We all we all know the game that's being played. Like no one has blinders to the game that's being played right now. Right. And so when you can take the emotion out of it, when I got my hundred and twelve subpoena, I no longer felt it anymore. I just understood it was the game that the Democratic Party played, you know, for their own purposes. And so when you can take emotion out of something, you can you can, you know, kind of get through it a little bit easier.

36:09Dan Bongino:Was there ever a moment where it felt insurmountable? Like, was there ever a moment, And especially in the intervening years between the two presidencies where you personally looked at it and go, I don't know if he could actually get elected again. Everything the left has thrown at him, this seems pretty big.

36:24Eric Trump:I remember coming out of the courthouse with my father. I talk about in the book and and he looks at me. He goes, honey, I don't know how, but we're going to win. And I look back at him and I said, we either win or we're all going to be in jail. Like, that's the reality. We did not a damn thing wrong. Right. I mean, you've seen every single one of these cases that they threw against him and me and all of us disappear. You know, they're all gone. We just we just beat Letitia James. She threw a five hundred sixty million dollar verdict using crooked judge. And the appellate courts overturned it, saying that it was it was absolutely.

36:57Eric Trump:But had we not won, they would have figured out a way to throw us in jail. There's just no question about it. And so, yeah, it was dark. I was sitting there when they read off the 34 felony counts in the New York case. And my father turned around. I was the first person he saw. He shook my hand. We walked out. We went right to a fundraiser. He just never stopped. He never gave in. He never apologized. He never, ever stopped. And, you know, it's a law of unintended consequences. You know, every single day that Americans saw him in that courthouse, they go, this thing's a sham. And they ended up moving out to the polls in record numbers.

37:28Eric Trump:Right. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote. Every state in the country tacked further to the right. We won 11 counties in California that had never been won by Republican before. We won Miami-Dade by 11 percent. I mean, Miami-Dade hasn't gone Republican in 37 years, and we won by 11 percent. And so whatever they did clearly did not work, as you know better than anybody.

37:52Dan Bongino:So, Eric, I talked to your brother earlier this year about where he was when he found out that your father was shot in Butler last year. He described that he was on the water with his daughter and they came racing back in order to sort of get their bearings and figure out what was going on with your dad. Where were you when you found out about all of this?

38:10Eric Trump:I had my two kids in my lap. I was in New York just for a weekend. My kids were there with me and I was working on email. I was watching the rally. You remember, Vince, that was a lot of people were speculating that, you know, my father was going to announce, you know, the vice presidential pick. And that's why he's being live streamed to everybody, you know, when the shots, you know, kind of rang out. And I've done a lot of competitive shooting in my life. It's something that I know very well. I mean, a guy shooting at 130 yards with a modern rifle with modern optics, it's like, you know, Tiger Woods missing a six inch putt.

38:38Eric Trump:It just doesn't it doesn't happen. And that was a that was a scary moment. I'm saying, you know, remember, he was wearing a dark suit. We didn't know if he got shot in the torso, you'd never be able to see the blood, obviously, because the suit was so dark. And that was a horrible moment. It was a horrible feeling. It was a horrible feeling for the entire country. And by the grace of God, he wasn't killed as close as he came. And, you know, and then we saw, obviously, what just happened to Charlie, you know, in the same kind of, you know, very graphic fashion. And, you know, these people are violent.

39:11Eric Trump:They're insane. you know they spent the last 10 years calling us fascists yet they're the ones dressing up in all black crawling onto roofs with sniper rifles and and and shooting people as they're out there exercising their first amendment right you know the the least fascist thing you can imagine you know and it's a it's hard to believe it's where we got to but by the grace of god he's

39:33Dan Bongino:he's alive i can imagine you breathing some sigh of relief when you saw him stand up and chant fight fight, fight on that stage. Did you learn anything about your father that day? Because I saw that and I thought to him, I already liked your dad, obviously, I've supported him through each election. But it was at that moment that I was like, that's a man. That response right there, that was the most masculine energy I've seen any presidential candidate ever put forward. And it was in a moment where, you know, nobody's ready for that. And he just answered the call. What did you think of that?

40:03Eric Trump:Vince, my entire life, you know, in the business world, I've seen people fake it. All right. And, and, you know, act, act apart, you know, that's not really ingrained in their DNA. And, you know, when you have blood running down your face, when you just got shot, when there's an active threat out there, you don't know if the guy's dead, you can't tell, you know, you know, what, what's going on. If there's another shooter out there and he doesn't give a damn and he stands up, by the way, against the wishes of the secret service, you can probably only imagine they didn't exactly want him standing up, you know, only to put his fist in the air.

40:33Eric Trump:That's, that's not scripted. You know, if you were a coward, you would have cowered at that moment. If you weren't brave, you would have seen it in that moment. You know, he meant that. That was pure instinct. And, you know, he's the greatest fighter ever. Dana White had the greatest line. He goes, listen, I'm in the, you know, obviously Dana White of the great UFC. He goes, I'm in, you know, the tough guy business and I've never seen anybody like this guy, right? I mean, he's the toughest of all the tough guys. And it's the only reason we won, you know. Listen, he had to go against 16 candidates in 2016, 16, 16 Republicans that actually knew a damn about politics.

41:06Eric Trump:You know, we're really good at building hotels and buildings and all sorts of things. And, and then go against Hillary Clinton, who's maybe the greatest, you know, in terms of family political dynasty of the century, you know, like you better be tough as hell. And he's, he's the greatest. I love the man to death. And, you know, no one has those genetics.

41:22Dan Bongino:Given the venom that's been spewed at him and the attempts on his life, I imagine anybody with the last name Trump right now to include yourself must have some incoming all the time. What's the security situation like for you? I'm not asking you to describe your security. I'm just saying, what kind of incoming have you received as just being the son of the president?

41:43Eric Trump:I think from the day I stepped on the stage, and you probably know I stepped on the stage before anybody. I mean, I've been there since the earliest days of 2016, and I never left that stage, and I never hid. And I can't tell you how many thousands of rallies I've done, how many rallies standing on top of a John Deere tractor with a bullhorn I've done all across the nation. I mean, literally thousands. I mean, we went out there and we fought like hell. And I mean, obviously we have secret service these days, but, you know, listen, the world's a scary place. I can't tell you how many envelopes full of, you know, powder I got that exploded in our faces as we opened it up.

42:16Eric Trump:You know, obviously people want to do these anthrax scares and all sorts of things. I mean, you know, too many to count.

42:21Dan Bongino:I mean, has that happened to you personally or did people opening your mail experience that?

42:26Eric Trump:No, no, it's happened to myself. It's happened to my wife. It's I and by the way, this isn't like this isn't like once or twice. This is like more times than you care to count. Now, you know, some some jerk chops up Tylenol or, you know, baby powder or something along those lines. But it's yeah. I can't tell you how how many of these that we've had. I mean, the you know, the tolerant left isn't all that tolerant as I've as I've quickly come to find out as they've tried to kill my father. And we clearly like the same thing to happen to all of us. And I spent a lot of time talking about it in the book.

42:54I mean, it's Vince, it's exactly what they want.

42:57Eric Trump:They wanted the siege, right? They wanted us scared. They wanted us hiding in a basement. They wanted us doing what Joe Biden did in 2020 and never leaving the basement. They did not want us on that stage. They did not want us at those rallies. They did not want us on those campuses. They did not want us in those churches, right? I mean, they want us hiding. They want us nowhere to be seen by the general public. And that's why they were censoring us. And that's why they were taking us off of Facebook and Twitter. They want our voice gone. That's the intent of all of this. And unfortunately, as dangerous as it is, as dangerous as we've seen it be, you know, based on everything that we've seen over the last year and a half, we can't cower to this stuff.

43:37Eric Trump:We just can't. We're going to lose our country if we do. And that's a big premise of this entire book. Yeah.

43:44Dan Bongino:So this past weekend, we saw going into the weekend, we saw James Comey gets prosecuted. And the prosecution, as we understand the indictment, is based on lies that he told the Congress five years ago in September of 2020. And the way the left is treating this story right now is if Donald Trump is weaponizing the United States Department of Justice and that this is some sort of novel weaponization of the department. And now don't just you wait until Democrats are in control again. We'll use the Justice Department in a weaponized way. What do you make of of that storyline that the left is pushing right now in the wake of the prosecution of Comey?

44:23Dan Bongino:And, of course, the investigations into people like Letitia James and Adam Schiff?

44:27Eric Trump:Oh, the great irony. I mean, you and I can sit here for the next hour and go through how many people they got on, quote, unquote, perjury in the last. and let's just go, I mean, we could go through them. The great irony, I mean, the people who are weaponizing law enforcement, I mean, are these the same people that spied on my father's campaign? Are these the same people who made up dirty dossiers about my father? And I won't even say it because we're on a podcast, but you know the stories that were in the dossiers. I mean, are these the same people who raided his home, literally called me up and told me, hey, you know, Eric, do me a favor, turn off all security cameras.

45:01Eric Trump:I'm like, I'm not turning off the security cameras on Mar-a-Lago, you know, because they didn't want to see Mar-a-Lago get ransacked by FBI agents.

45:08Dan Bongino:I'm sorry, who told you to do that?

45:11Eric Trump:The FBI. When they got to the property, when they got to Mar-a-Lago, I got a call saying the FBI immediately wants all security cameras turned off. And I said, I spent a lot of time talking about this in the book. I'm not turning off our security cameras. Like, no way am I turning off our security cameras. You can only imagine Mar-a-Lago has a lot of security cameras. They also wouldn't let our lawyers be anywhere near the property when this happened. I mean, it's insane to think there's never been a group that's weaponized a system more than the other guys. I mean, it's pretty amazing when you hear where a guy clearly lies.

45:41I mean, he lies in his testimony.

45:45Eric Trump:And all of a sudden, this is the weaponization of government. When for the last, you know, 10 years, you know, I've been getting calls from the FBI saying, I hear you have secret servers, you know, communicating directly with the Kremlin in the basement of Trump Tower. And I'm sitting there saying, excuse me, guys, we don't have servers in the basement of Trump Tower. You know, basements flood. You don't put servers in basements. Second of all, we're like a largely cloud based computing company. So like you don't really have servers to begin with. But like, I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it.

46:11Eric Trump:They are the most dishonest. They are. I mean, look at all these stories about them coming out and literally spying on people who had search words in Google for the Bible. MAGA. Look what the IRS was doing, you know, to conservative organizations, to, you know, to churches. Their entire platform has been weaponizing government, you know, at the behest of the American people. I don't want to hear it when you clearly have a guy who perjured himself during congressional testimony.

46:42Dan Bongino:Were you pleased to see him indicted on Friday?

46:46Eric Trump:Listen, I don't want to see anybody indicted. At the same time, there's a lot of really bad people who have done really, really, really bad things in this country, Comey being one of them. He knew the Russia thing was a total sham. I mean, I told him it was a sham. Come over to Trump Tower. If you want to see if we have secret service, come over to Trump Tower. I'll walk you down to the basement right now. Come over. I give you five minutes to be here. Let's go. And they didn't give a shit. I mean, they wanted to see that narrative continue, Vince, for a three-year period of time. These people pitted the two biggest nuclear superpowers against each other, almost making communication impossible.

47:24Eric Trump:Also, that a greedy woman could get what, you know, five more votes and it didn't work. All while talking about it, you know, talking about an email saying, you know, this could be our October surprise. And they define October surprise as something that they pop on you so late that it does the damage, but they don't have enough time to disprove it, you know, I mean, that's the dirtiness of politics. They spied on the campaign, right? They raided my father's home. They indicted him twice. They pulled him off a balance. They silenced his voice. They sent me 112 subpoenas when I've never gotten so much as a parking ticket.

48:03Eric Trump:And the reason they did that is my father had executive branch protection, so you couldn't subpoena him, but guess who you could subpoena? The guy that ran the Trump organization, which was his entire legacy, which was our wealth, our voice, our assets, our company, right? We probably spent$400 million on legal fees, meaning personal legal fees, defending ourselves from all of this. And then it comes to great irony when I see these talking heads saying, you know, he's weaponizing is weaponizing government when you clearly have somebody on camera who blatantly lied. And one other thing, not to be long-winded, what the hell was Comey doing as FBI director?

48:44Eric Trump:Leaking files to the New York Times. Like, why does everybody forget that? Like, does anybody think that's appropriate conduct? You know what I want my FBI director to do? Like, make sure terrorists don't crash planes into buildings. Like, make sure that our streets are safe. You know, not leak files, you know, adversarial to another political party to the New York Times. I think we should all be questioning his motives as well if that was his job responsibility.

49:10Dan Bongino:Are you happy that Cash Patel and Dan Bongino are now running that agency?

49:14Eric Trump:So I think you know how much I love Cash and you probably know how much I love Bongino. You know, Bongino has been a friend of mine for a very, very long time and Cash has as well. And here's where I can tell you, these guys are unbelievable Americans. They're straight as hell. They love this nation. They love the flag. They will not allow our nation to be hurt. They will not allow our flag to be desecrated. You know, they're God fearing people. And and that's a beautiful thing. I've I've never had more faith in an agency. And by the way, if there's one thing that we learned about law enforcement coming out of Charlie Kirk's, I mean, what was it, 32 hours and six minutes?

49:51Eric Trump:You know, that they had the guy in custody. You know, they did a hell of a job versus the usual, you know, top floors of the FBI who under the last administration weren't locking up anybody. Crime was going the exact opposite. They weren't getting the top 100 fugitives in this country. They found very few of them. And what they were doing, they were spying on my father's campaign. They were weaponizing the DOJ to go after Donald J. Trump, and they were raiding his home. I don't see Cash doing that, and I certainly don't see Dan doing that. And I think they're taking their jobs incredibly seriously because they're great Americans.

50:24Dan Bongino:Yeah, and this is why I'm convinced. I'm knowing Dan as I do. This is why I'm convinced as to why he's been staying there. You know, there was like the reported some drama or something between them, him and the Justice Department wrote this year, whatever. I mean, whatever, however, any of that's true or not. But the reality is like, like your father in a way, he's made some personal sacrifices in his own life in order to do this job. And in and by doing that, the only reason he's there is because he believes in the mission. That's it. It's as simple as that. And so when I see the indictment of Comey this week, this past week, it's a clear sign that that's the kind of thing he's sticking around for.

50:59Dan Bongino:He meant it when he said he's going in for accountability. And sure enough, they're producing it.

51:03Eric Trump:Yeah, I just I find it ironic that literally they they get every Republican on perjury over the last 10 years or perjury.

51:12Dan Bongino:Yeah.

51:13Eric Trump:Right. I'll put that I'll put that in quotes, you know, but then when one of the one of the guys actually lies. But you're right. I mean, listen, Dan Bongino did very well. His show was incredibly successful. He had an unbelievable career. He had every opportunity. Believe me, he did not go into the FBI for financial gain, that much I can tell you as a guy who knows Dan very well. And my father didn't either. Everybody talks about, oh, Trump's our quote unquote profiting off of government. That's one of the big sound bites of the left. Tell me that after I've spent$400 million on legal fees. Tell me that after we self-funded an entire campaign because we had no donors because no one believed in us.

51:50Eric Trump:Tell that to my father who donates his salary every quarter to a charity of his choice that's pertinent to the US and then has to pay taxes on the money he otherwise donated because it's effectively phantom income. Give me a break. Dan didn't need this job. Donald Trump needed this job like a hole in the head. Believe me, his life would have been a hell of a lot better flying around on Trump Force One, playing golf every day and seeing his grandkids than taking the thousands of arrows he has, including being in courthouses in every state in the country, every blue state in the country, I should say.

52:22Eric Trump:But they love this nation and they want to see the best for it and they want to fix the incompetence.

52:26Dan Bongino:Now, you brought up an issue I wanted to ask you about. I mean, I was like, next time I talk to Eric Trump, this is what I want to ask him about, is this idea that somehow your dad is doing this job to enrich himself, that he's self-dealing. The whole point is that he's just he's taking the job to enrich himself. Now, you and I both know that's absurd. Everyone who's watching us knows this is absurd. But it is like kind of this deranged sort of never ending talking point from the left, the same people who supported Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and all of the, you know, the the profit taking they were doing from their time in government.

52:54Dan Bongino:But I look at that and I go, wait a second, your dad is donating 100 percent of his salary. It's literally paying a 100 percent tax rate on all the earnings he's getting from from his job as president of the United States. You you you guys swore off foreign business deals, as I recall, as a result of his time in office. If foreigners were staying in the Trump hotel in D.C., you weren't even taking profits off of that. And then you would donate the proceeds from the from the the money that was being put into the hotel, you know, into the government. So like with all of that said, like, I'm just I'm wondering, where's the where's the self-dealing going on, Eric Trump?

53:32Eric Trump:I'm trying to figure that out as well. All while I, you know, I see again, I'll put it in quotes, my quote unquote counterpart or or nothing alike, you know, selling finger art to the Chinese for, what,$500 ,000 a painting or whatever the hell was reported. Maybe I should get into the art business. I just became an unbelievable artist. I wonder why. I've never seen an organization that had so many entities as the Bidens had, and yet they don't have a website. I can't figure out what product they're selling. Just give me the nature of their business. I'm saying this kind of rhetorically because we all know exactly what was happening there.

54:12Eric Trump:The whole world knows what was happening there. I mean, they were selling influence. It's very simple. And guess what? When you can't sell influence the traditional way, you start selling art at hyped up prices to people who otherwise need influence because the value of art is clearly subjective. It's a shame. You know the business that we've been in for four generations. We've had one of the great hotel companies on earth, one of the great golf companies on earth. We do residential real estate towers better than anybody on earth. I've been doing it since I was 11 years old. So it's kind of funny.

54:43Eric Trump:It's like we got out of business when my father got into office, whereas Hunter got into business when his father got into office.

54:50Dan Bongino:Did you ever think of buying one of Hunter's paintings just to make all of your problems go away?

54:55Eric Trump:Well, I was thinking about it, and that probably would have worked very well. Maybe I would have had to pay$750 ,000 as opposed to$500 ,000. But I'm sure I at the right price, I'm sure I could have had all of DJT's problems go away. Absolutely. And by the way, you know, joking aside, it would have been the easiest deal I've ever made. I spent a lot of time in order to see you talking about this. But had I ever gone to them and said, listen, guys, here's the deal. We're gonna make a little like, you know, silent deal. My father's not going to run again. He's going to pull himself out of the race.

55:22Eric Trump:You in return, drop all these cases, all these indictments, all these felonies. You know, they were trying to get a$560 million judgment against us, which we just got reversed totally. They would have dropped that faster than you can snap your fingers. You know, that's what they wanted.

55:40Dan Bongino:So actually, on that front, I've heard, and maybe you could tell me what you know about this. I've heard that maybe in his first run for president that there were billionaires who were trying to buy him out of running, that people were trying to raise money to get him to drop out of the race. They didn't want him to do this. Have you seen that? People trying to offer him something to not be in politics?

56:00Eric Trump:Can I give you the biggest one? This will probably make news. How about NBC? Right. I mean, NBC came in two weeks before he announced, right, with a contract. And I was there in the room because I was on The Apprentice, as you remember very well, you know, for seven seasons. And they had a contract about this big. The contract was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. It would have been billions through the term. But, you know, they wanted him to run another couple of seasons of The Apprentice. And the numbers were absolutely staggering, right? And I remember being in the room and he goes, guys, I'm thinking about something else.

56:32Eric Trump:I can't agree to this. I mean, he knew the value of that contract. And that would have kept him out of the race. That would have kept him from announcing, right? Because he would have been, you know, he would have been obviously conflicted out. He would have had to have done the reality TV thing. And he looked at them and he looked at Mark Burnett and said, you know what, guys, I'm going to have something else on my mind. He didn't tell them that day what it was, but obviously everybody kind of inferred and knew, and I certainly knew. And then, you know, not too long after, obviously, you know, he went down that golden escalator.

56:58Eric Trump:So there is no question that that was an attempt to keep him out of out of politics. Now, it also would have worked great for NBC because NBC was making an absolute fortune off the show. What was interesting, the second he went down that escalator, NBC turned on us as a family like we were absolute dogs. Right now, NBC was dying. CBS was was was destroying them because they had Survivor and all sorts of things. Right. So like The Apprentice was the one thing that NBC had. As soon as my father said, you know what, guys, I'm going to hang this up. I'm not going to agree with the extension. I want to go do something else.

57:29Eric Trump:NBC turned on him like this. The executives, we knew every single one of them. The producers, we knew every single one of them. In a minute, they treated him like a dog when he was their saving grace two weeks earlier. And so, yes, there's been plenty of people who have tried to buy him out of politics. And unfortunately, it's, you know, unfortunately, it's clearly never worked.

57:49Dan Bongino:And you're convinced that that NBC offer was an attempt to keep him away from from the White House.

57:55Eric Trump:I think the NBC offer was an attempt to keep him away. I mean, listen, he still had the number one reality TV show. I think there was obviously massive commercial benefits for it. But yeah, I think I think, you know, the side intent of that was clearly to keep him away. And and listen, all the indictments and all the nonsense and all the ways that they put him under siege were a way to make his life so damn uncomfortable and our family's life so damn uncomfortable and costly and time consuming and not fun that they thought he was just going to kind of fold up the towel and throw it in. And honestly, they underestimated who Donald Trump is and his conviction.

58:29Eric Trump:And frankly, all of us as a family who went out and fought our asses off every single day.

58:33Dan Bongino:And you still are. The book is Under Siege. The author is Eric Trump. He's the son of the president, as you know. And I'm so grateful for your time today, Eric. Good to talk to you, sir. Thanks so much, Vince. There he is, Eric Trump, as always. So nice to talk to these guys, get a firsthand experience of what it's like to be in that orbit, to have to deal with all of that garbage. And thank God they're doing it on behalf of the rest of us. All right. So a great conversation with Eric. Our thanks to him. I've got the big national radio show coming up today. That's 12 to 3 Eastern time. You can get the local listings, thevincshow.com, or watch us live on Rumble, rumble.com slash Vince.

59:07Dan Bongino:I'm back with you tomorrow with another big episode of Vince.