Trump Tells CNBC the One Thing ‘Nobody Ever Talks About’ But Him ‘So I’m Sure It’s Not Correct’

President Donald Trump revealed to CNBC hosts Joe Kernen, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin on Tuesday that there’s one thing “nobody ever talks about” besides him “so I’m sure it’s not correct, but I think it is.”

Trump gave a lengthy interview on Tuesday morning’s edition of CNBC’s Squawk Box, which included several newsworthy or otherwise attention-getting exchanges on a variety of topics.

In one exchange, Kernen tried to ask Trump a hypothetical, but first had to gently and quickly fact-check the president about the inflation rate at the end of former President Joe Biden’s term.

Trump then went into an answer that included the admission that his beliefs about interest rates are not widely or narrowly shared — as well as several false claims:

CNBC HOST JOE KERNEN: I just want to return for one second and make an analogy here. You saw what inflation did to the Biden legacy in administration, so 22% price increases. By the time he was leaving, it was down to about where it is now, about 3%, but not a single-

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It was down to 5%, it wasn’t down to…

CNBC HOST JOE KERNEN: Or three, but but not a single person with…

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And the reason it was down was because I had won the election and it started falling after I won the elections and I started getting prices down from right after November 5th.

CNBC HOST JOE KERNEN: If you needed to. To prevent that from happening. Let’s say, Chair Wash thought, for whatever reason, there’s some type of energy shock, who knows with the blockade, let’s say that things got too hot.

At that point, just to make sure there was no inflation, would you allow him to raise rates or not cut rates?

Would there ever be a period where you could see that that was something that a Fed chair needed to do? And if– he said he might have an office right near you, he might not want an office, right next to yours, sir. I don’t know after after what happened to Jay Powell. He might want to be across in those new digs, maybe.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Maybe I’d like him next to me. Actually, it’s not a bad idea. Maybe Jay Powell did us a big service and we have to–.

I call him too late. He’s just too late, he’s always too late except when it came to before the election, but that didn’t quite work out well for him.

So the answer is I want Kevin. I think Kevin’s great. He is central casting in a true sense. Okay, I think he’s going to do a great job.

Yeah, if there’s time for–.

I’ve been favor of interest rates rate rises to stop inflation. I think it sort of is effective.

But there’s one thing, and nobody ever talks about it but me unfortunately, so I’m sure it’s not correct. But I think that it is.

We should have the lowest interest rate in the world. When I was a young guy growing up, we always had the lowest rate worldwide. We always did.

And then 15 years ago, 20 years ago it started where Switzerland and other people had lower rates than us.

I just had a thing with, if you take a look at some of the, you know, let’s call them like elite countries. They’re only elite because we allow them to walk away with 30 billion and 40 billion dollars a year, but I don’t do that so much anymore.

I sort of put a clamp on that with the tariffs and charges that we charge them.

Tariffs are not charged to other countries, they are paid by U.S. importers. The inflation rate did not go down after November 5, it went up. Kernen was correct, the inflation rate was at 3% when Biden left office, not 5.

Watch above via CNBC’s Squawk Box.

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