Steve Strang's Interview with Trump

0:00 Welcome to the Strang Report with Steve Strang on the Charisma Podcast Network. This episode was produced to discuss and address issues within our nation and around the world from a Christian worldview. Hello I'm Steve Strang and welcome to this very special edition of the Strang Report. Today I'm interviewing the man I believe will be the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. This was a scoop for us. We're going to publish the interview in Charisma Magazine, but we're giving it to our podcast listeners first. I have in the studio with me Dr. Steve Green who went with me to the interview and we're going to talk about kind of the behind-the-scenes things and you're going to want to stay tuned to hear this interview with Donald Trump after this word from our sponsor.

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1:44 Welcome back and welcome to Dr. Steve Green. You do your own podcast. You're well known to our listeners and I'm glad to have you here and I was glad to have you with me on the interview and I thought it would just be interesting as we set this up that we tell our listeners a little bit about what happened and our own feelings about it. Well thank you Steve. It was really great for me to be with such a big deal guy like you to be able to get into an interview with Donald Trump. I mean we went into that interview for our listeners. We had a private interview with Donald Trump and the only people in the room with us are these four great big old guys that were standing in the corners they're about eight foot tall and seven foot wide shoulders and it was an experience just to watch them watch us and of course I watched Donald Trump as Steve was interviewing him and it was just an amazing experience to see how gentle and kind and listening Donald Trump was. He was not that aggressive take the podium and screaming everybody. He was listening to Steve's questions and I thought he gave thoughtful answers. He did and I've had the privilege of interviewing three U.S. presidents George H.W. Bush. I actually met with him at the White House. It was a group setting then I interviewed George W. Bush with six other Christian journalists. It was a little bit more like a press conference except that we were around the table in one of these historic rooms in the White House. I was so nervous I didn't even remember the name of the room and we each could ask one question and then I was able to interview Barack Obama. Wait a minute what's your question we all want to know what was the one question you asked you remember. Well I had a whole list of questions

3:14 and we all had to kind of jump in a little bit like a press conference and I remember thinking that person just asked my question. That person just asked my question. That hurts. And you know I would have to go back and pull that out of the archives to see what question I did ask because our story that we did about it was about the whole interview and what was going on at the time. But I very clearly remember this that before I asked the question I said Mr. President I want you to know that I pray for you every day and he stopped and he said I really appreciate that. He said when I work the rope line you know which is where there's a rope and there's the public and they shake hands. He said people are saying that to me more and more and he said I really appreciate that. And then I went on a great memory and asked my question which I admit I can't remember right now. But contrast to that to my interview with Barack Obama where it was a group setting with probably about 40 Christian leaders not everyone got to ask a question. I jumped in and I asked him the only difficult question of the day and I very clearly remember it. I said Mr. President the group of people that I write for are very conservative Christians and almost everyone is against abortion.

4:22 So how do I explain to them your position on abortion? And he gave me kind of his answer that I read in his book. Really? He said that abortion is never preferred. We need to try to avoid abortion and we need to take care of the children that are born and blah blah blah. However I was never invited again to any meetings with Barack Obama. That's right. And contrast that to our interview with Donald Trump which we started in June to try to get this interview. We decided that we should write about the campaign as we have on every campaign since 1984. We've written about them. I was able to get a very short phone interview with John McCain. The John McCain people did not even really reach out to the Christian community very much. It was not an interview really worth talking about. For some reason they felt some obligation to give us a few minutes on the telephone. With this one I told them that we would go anywhere. We would submit our questions in advance and so forth. I was expecting to have to go up to New York and interview him.

5:22 I thought I'd really do it at Trump Towers. We were told fairly early that they would grant an interview but then we could never nail them down on when. And then they suggested that we interview Mike Pence which we want to do after he was selected as a running mate. But we said we've got to have an interview with Donald Trump if we're going to put his picture on the cover of Christmas magazine. Which we are. And in October we're going to print a slightly edited version of this interview that our listeners are going to hear in just a minute. Now we edited it not to change any meaning but to just clean it up and there were some redundancies where he would make the same statement twice and we took that out. In fact today I was actually working on that so it was fresh in my mind. But we had 10 minutes. It was here in Orlando. He spoke to a group of about 500 pastors and they arranged two interviews afterwards. CBN had an interview before us.

6:15 Then they left and then as you just said we had him to ourselves. He was remarkably gracious. He seemed to listen. He showed respect. He went to get himself a bottle of water I guess. And he asked me if I wanted something which you don't expect with the stereotype of Donald Trump. And he asked me if I wanted to take a picture with him. That's right. Us. All of us did this together. That's amazing. He never felt too busy. I never at any time in the interview thought he was trying to truncate to get you out of the room. He's actually once said okay if you're finished I'm in. He was fine with it. He wanted to talk to you. I had a very nice podcast recorder and I must have been nervous although in a way I wasn't nervous but you know I was preoccupied about my questions. You have to push a couple of buttons and I pushed all but the last one and found that my recording did not happen. However we made a backup recording and we made a little video. All guys do backup plans. We forget stuff. I have learned to do backup plans and so what you're going to hear is the interview on an iPhone. It's not as good a quality but you can listen to it and we're going to play it for you now unedited. And then afterwards Dr. Steve Green and I will talk about a little bit more behind the scenes things with what happened with Donald Trump and how we're going to use it. Enjoy this interview. I think you'll find that Steve did a great job with his questions and listen to the calm that our future president is giving in his answers to Steve String. You're going to enjoy this. So first question is evangelicals and Catholics have been under attack from the Obama administration for their pro-life convictions

7:49 and desire to be left alone to enforce government acceptance of that which violates their biblical views on marriage. How can you reassure them that you will respect religious liberty for them? Well I think that you know I even mentioned in my speech that religious liberty is is the foundation without religious liberty you don't have liberty and I feel that so strong and so many other people do except they don't express it and plenty of politicians do but they don't express it. So religious liberty is something that I find that I cherish and you will never be disappointed. And when you met with evangelical leaders of course I wrote this report to you. Right.

8:33 You said that you would support repealing the Johnson and then so churches and ministries can maintain tax exemption. That's right. Without giving us a freedoms. How will you do it? Well I'll start it very early on. I'm actually starting it if you wanted to. I started it already because I put it in the platform. You know it's in the platform. A lot of people didn't even know what it was and that I put it in the platform and now a lot of the pastors and ministers have seen it and they can't even believe it because how this happened in the first place is shocking how they were able to take it away. So it's not something that was written from the beginning and you know this is something that was written by a very strong politician. That's all it is. But it makes it silences great people. It silences people that we want to hear. They're afraid to open their they're afraid to talk about anybody because they can lose everything. You know can lose everything with this. And we will I will do if I win one of the first things I will do is lobby very strongly to have this terminated and I will tell you something it won't be hard because your lobby is so powerful. So even Democrats are going to approve it because this is bigger than men bigger than women in terms of numbers of people. So I'll be able to get it done. I have absolute confidence that I'll be able to get it done. You've been lied for the very strong bond with your adult children. Why does it spend the secret that you have such a close relationship with your children

10:05 and they're very obvious respect for you? Well I worked very hard when it came to my children and one of the things that I would tell them all the time is no drugs very important no cigarettes. I also tell them no cigarettes but no drugs no alcohol no cigarettes and I would say that to a point where they would go you know every time I did go out or see them and say no drugs no alcohol no cigarettes. And you know I have friends I have very small children but their children are hooked on drugs or they hooked on alcohol. I had cigarettes because of the health fat because it's just easier if you don't smoke. I was lucky enough not to smoke if I did smoke I mean I have friends I can't get off and they're strong people. But if you've never started it's not a problem. Same thing with drugs same thing with alcohol if you've never started it's not a problem. And that's a big fact I mean the fact that they're not hooked and you know hopefully right and you never know what's a fragile world so who knows what happens but I would always talk about drugs alcohol and to a lesser extent cigarettes. As president who will you reach out to for spiritual counsel and why do you feel that president meet God's wisdom and guidance? Well I have many I have so many friends including Paula White who's here but I have many friends within the community and some of the people who are in there today but one of them who's been so incredible is Franklin Graham.

11:35 Franklin Graham has been I mean he's been amazing he's been really terrific. Silver close to Franklin Pastor Jeffers has been terrific. Paula White has been incredible. So many so many and I will I really like to stay with people that have been so loyal because they were here at the beginning where this was a very very little tiny flame and they were here when everyone was saying well you can't be actually 70 because actually the real level was 18 originally off the record if you include Gilmore. If you include Gilmore but you know how do you beat 16 seasoned politicians because there were 17 total but how do you beat 16 seasoned politicians and in the case of Ben Carson who's a terrific guy who endorsed us and Carly but how do you beat you know these tremendously talented people and so they were there at the beginning I guess something nice about people that were there at the beginning. You've already said these support Israel's claims of Jerusalem as a capital. Yes many evangelical Christians are very strong supporters of Israel. How will your policies toward Israel differ from your opponent? Well for one thing I support Israel. I don't think I think I don't think Obama supports Israel. I think it's the worst thing that's ever happened to Israel. The Iran deal is a disaster for Israel and I'm

13:07 very supportive of Israel. I have tremendous friendships in Israel. I have a son-in-law who's Jewish and a daughter. I have a daughter who's Jewish so I will be very strongly in favor of Israel. In the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament it says to be kind to the stranger in the land. How would that scripture guide your policy and immigration? Well I think that's good but we have to be careful at the same time. We're allowing people to come into the country. We don't know anything about them. There's no paperwork. There's no documentation. You see what's going on in Germany and France and many other places where they had an open door policy essentially and it's going to go on here too. I mean we've allowed thousands and thousands of people into a country who have no idea who they are. At the same time we want to build safe havens. We want to build safe havens and we're going to get the Gulf States to fund that money because it's a tremendous amount of money and this country doesn't have it. So we want to take care of people but we can't allow them in because we just don't know. You see what happened in Saint Bernardino. You see what happened in Orlando right here. You see what happened with the World Trade Center. We can look at all over the world and look at what's going on in France, Nice, Germany. We just can't. We have enough problems so we can't do that. You know you talked about the rough and tumble campaign, the 17

14:43 candidates and so forth and you have went over the evangelical vote and you've changed a lot. How has this whole process affected you spiritually? Well I can tell you I've always been spiritual but I really appreciate evangelicals because they really supported me. You know when somebody supports you you feel pretty good about and I'd go into a very evangelical state and people would say oh gee I won't win that state and I ended up winning in a landslide because I had tremendous support. You see the polls where people are leading they supported Trump over other people that in theory they could have supported very easily and they didn't. So I think the fact that I had that tremendous support from the evangelicals meant a lot to me and it will mean a lot to me in the future.

15:32 You know before you spoke they had a speaker talking about Judeo-Christian values in the founding of the nation and so forth. In our secular society a lot of people discount that. Do you believe that America was founded on Judeo-Christian principles? Yeah I think it was. I think to a large extent when I look at football coaches being fired because they held a prayer on the field like yesterday I think it's absolutely terrible. I think it's a terrible thing. I see so many things happening that are so different from what our country used to be. So now religion is a very important part of me and it's also I think it's a very important part of our country. Final question what is the most important thing in your life?

16:26 Well you know you always have to say family. It's family is the most important thing from that standpoint. Religion is very important but I assume you're not talking about religion or family but you know those two things are very important. Belief is very important. But you would always have to put family number one. And then give us some advice as we tell your story and persuade people like you're encouraging that crowd except instead of a church you know we'll be speaking to hundreds of thousands and several millions. Well I'm going to get the job done. I'm going to do a great job for religion and for the evangelicals. I'm going to do a great job and that's why we got a standing ovation from pastors who don't give much of standing ovation. Just to state if a lot of people speak.

17:21 So that was a great honor but I will do a great job. I will get the job done and I'll get it done properly and there will be a great thing for the evangelicals. Well I hope you enjoyed that interview. You know actually I have put the video of it that was on Facebook live on our website. It's already been out. It's been very interesting to read the comments. We decided to put it on a podcast to get the word out and it is an exclusive for us and we're going to be very glad to have it in print where it's a little more permanent and I want the readers to see it in our October issue where it's part of a package. We have several other articles that we're putting together to make the case for how Donald Trump should be the next president of the United States. I interviewed Ted Cruz on my podcast before the very first primary and I endorsed him for president. He was my first choice but the very day he dropped out of the race I switched over to Donald Trump and I'll admit that I've really warmed up to him as I've gotten to know him. He seems to be interested in Christian things. Christian principles are important to him. He says he's going to support as you just heard religious liberty. He's going to try to repeal what's called the Johnson amendment. I think that is significant. I know of no other president or even political candidate that has said that he would get rid of this which is really gagging ministers and churches from being involved in the political process. Actually Matt Staver the head of the Liberty Council who of course is an attorney

18:53 says that no church has lost their tax except status except one who lost it for one day where they really did something pretty grievous and what it is is that a church itself cannot endorse but a pastor can endorse himself. He can say I'm your shepherd. I try to help you get through life and make right decisions and wrong decisions. I'm going to share with you what I'm going to do as a private citizen to vote my convictions and you can make your own decisions but I'm going to support this candidate or that candidate. That is perfectly legal but a lot of pastors don't know that and they just say oh we need to stay away from it entirely. In fact right after the interview as you know I came back to our office where we had a meet and greet for a Christian leader in our area. It was already planned and I was concerned I was going to have to leave it but I came back and I was talking about it and how I was endorsing Donald Trump and so forth and one of the ministers said oh you are so bold to speak about politics and I said well first of all we don't have a 501 C3 ministry even though we consider what we do in ministry. We pay lots of taxes. We pay lots of taxes and I consider it paying rent to live in America. You know I'm very philosophical about it but I've endorsed someone for president every year since 1984 and we've spoken up about a lot of political things over the years but yet this pastor who is at reception in my own headquarters talking at a private setting with no other media there. We weren't recording it. I thought that somehow I was stepping into territory that I shouldn't have so I think that just goes to show you the

20:25 mindset that too many ministers and pastors have. A lot of fear for the government. I want to add one thing to your comments before we run out of time and that's how he spoke of his children. You know I've always said that I would rather see a man's children than his resume. I can learn so much about the parent by the quality of the children and of course many of us have watched his children and have seen such amazing work out of them. We respect him. You asked him that question about what were the things he said to his children. What did he expect and you heard his answers and when he focused on the things that they shouldn't do they sounded like middle America. You know get home on time. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't take drugs and he just repeated it over and over again.

21:06 He said they got sick hearing it. I said it so much. I respect a man who cared so much about his family that he set rules that children of means like that of the wealth that they grew up with could have been in all those things and frequently are. So I have amazing respect for him and I know he picks good leaders. I've been supporting of him right from the beginning because I know that he'll select good people and we'll have a good administration. Well I'll say one more thing before we wrap this up. You know I put some things about Donald Trump on my own Facebook page and I go in and I look at people's comments and this one lady posted a column that she wrote on the Huffington Post and so I clicked on it and I read it and she said you know the Bible says that you need to be kind and soft spoken and this and that and this and that and Donald Trump is anything but that and she went on and on and actually she made some pretty good points about what Christians should do and not do but I replied to her and I said you know what what you say is true but I said you're picking a speck out of Donald Trump's eye and I didn't even say a log. I said a forest out of Hillary Clinton's eye starting with where she stands on the issues. How can you ignore that?

22:13 You can't ignore it and then on top of it is the lying about the emails, the whole mess in Benghazi. I don't even know how to articulate her own foundation. I mean just in the news today is that the foundation if she's elected president will quit taking donations from foreign governments and from corporations. I mean that's admitting that is a conflict of interest or has the appearance of the conflict of interest and it's been happening again and again and again even though she was questioned about this before she became secretary of state and gave assurances that this would not happen but it's happened and it's not only speculation but there's proof with some of these emails that have come out and so I think that people need to not just go based on personality.

22:58 You know we all had an opinion of Donald Trump before he ever ran for office. You know we saw him on reality TV. He was in the news all the time. They called him the Donald, remember? Yes. You know he makes his money in casinos. I mean we could go right down the list but God has used other people to be change agents at critical times in history and I dare say that most of the people listening to this podcast and reading our magazine believe that we are in dire, dire straits and not only that but if Hillary Clinton is elected it's going to get worse and I believe that God has raised up a man who is strong enough to stand against the tide and to try to at least change some things in the right direction. This is an extremely important election and I encourage people not only to vote but help us get out the vote and to forward this podcast to people and encourage people to read the stuff that is on our website. Of course there's a lot of other good stuff too.

23:55 We're just trying to do our best to get out the word and after looking at all the issues and examining things and interviewing Donald Trump himself we have come to the conclusion that this is the right thing to do. We are not a part of his campaign. Nobody's paid us anything. Nobody's twisted our arm to do anything. We're doing it because we believe it deeply and I hope that people will take this to heart and I hope that we're able to influence Christians to go out and vote. You know there's reason to believe that Mitt Romney would have won had the Christian vote gone to the polls but a lot of people were so uncomfortable voting for a Mormon. A Mormon who believes in family values and on a lot of the issues agrees with us but he's a Mormon and I don't approve of Mormonism any more than any other Christian does but if he had been president I doubt that a lot of the things that have happened in the last four years would have happened and we have to just believe that this is an important election especially in the swing states Christians have to go to the polls and influence their family and friends. We all have a circle of influence and if we would all influence our circle of influence at the grassroots level I believe that Donald Trump will be the next president the 45th president of the United States. Whatever you do would you pray before you go ask the Lord to guide you to give you direction to give you leadership of the Holy Spirit as you vote. Steve said the most important thing we can all do is just get out the vote. Tell your neighbors shake the dog shake the trees shake something but let's all get

25:29 out there and vote. Well said and with that we'll close and I'll thank you for listening today to this edition of the Strang Report on the Charisma Podcast Network. God bless you all. Thank you for listening to the Strang Report with Steve Strang. To read more from Steve visit his blog The Strang Report on CharismaMag.com again it's The Strang Report on CharismaMag.com. This has been a production of the Charisma Podcast Network. Steve and Joyce Strang are the founders and owners of CPM. Dr. Steve Green is the executive producer of the Charisma Podcast Network.

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