President Trump told Buck Sexton in an exclusive interview Thursday that his administration is “very much involved” in the unrest in Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd in police custody and said the coronavirus outbreak shows a clear difference in his approach to running the country and Joe Biden’s.

Trump’s presidency finds itself in the midst of what seem to be its toughest challenge. The country is slowly reopening while fighting a global pandemic, Minneapolis is experiencing unrest after a black man’s death in police custody and Trump is facing an opposition party that seems to be rooting for his failure at every turn in order to win back the White House.

Trump touched on the unrest in Minneapolis after Floyd's death in police custody.

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said earlier that Trump was “very upset” when he saw the video of a police officer pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck while he was pinned to the ground.

She said Trump immediately “picked up the phone” and asked the FBI to expedite the investigation.

“I watched it like everyone else did,” Trump said. “That was a horrible thing that I watched. Horrible.”

Trump is no stranger to adversity. Democrats spent the better part of his first term trying to remove him from office, but have failed, and the president said the U.S. is on the verge of a great comeback.

Trump acknowledged that the country has been hit hard by the economic downturn, but he said he believes the economy is ready to thrive.

“I think you’re going to see some very good numbers coming into the third quarter. And I think the fourth quarter is going to be terrific. And I think next year’s going to be a great year,” Trump said.

The interview with Sexton was wide-ranging. Trump touched on the possibility of state bailouts and said the federal government has to consider that in many of these cases these states have had “25 years of bad management.” He said a lot of Republicans want to avoid bailing out these states.

Democrats have done their best to try and criticize the president over his coronavirus response, but Trump told Sexton that his administration did everything right. He mentioned the early travel ban on China. Trump said losing “one life” to the virus is too many, but considering the fact that China failed to stop the spread in its early days, the number of fatalities in the U.S. are not as high as previously feared.

“This should never have happened but we’re at the lower and of the lower models,” Trump said.

IT WAS A COUP

Trump continued to blast the Obama White House and Democrats for the “attempted coup” of a duly elected president. He said what happened to his transition team is something that is known to happen in third-world countries, not in the U.S.

He praised Attorney General William Barr and John Ratcliffe, the new head of national intelligence and said they are doing a terrific job handling what he has called “ObamaGate.”

“I believe you are going to see things that will shock the minds even of the people that were most skeptical,” he said. “It is incredible. I think it’s the greatest scandal, political scandal certainly in the history of our country. This makes Watergate what they did to us. Many of us. But what they did to this country makes Watergate look like small potatoes,” he said.

Much of the fallout involves top Obama officials being involved in the “unmasking” ofMichael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser.

“I believe you are going to see things that will shock the minds even of the people that were most skeptical,” he said. “It is incredible. I think it’s the greatest scandal, political scandal certainly in the history of our country. This makes Watergate what they did to us. Many of us. But what they did to this country makes Watergate look like small potatoes,” he said.

TWITTER FIGHT

Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that could challenge laws that have protected social media giants from being sued or held liable for individual posts on their platforms.

The president and other Republicans have said companies like Facebook and Twitter have treated conservative voices unfairly for years.

Trump told Sexton that “it’s dangerous for a country” where a company can literally call the elections.

Trump has 80 million Twitter followers and has used to platform to speak directly to voters.

But the company recently placed a fact-check warning on one of his tweets about mail-in ballots, which many saw as a game-changer. It was also recently revealed that one of the company’s head “fact-checkers” posted anti-Trump messages in the past, including calling some in his White House “Nazis.”

“There are those who say it’s an incredible miracle, the miracle of 2016, because they were very much against us. But now they’re insane. They’ve gone insane. And you look at what’s going on along with some others and often is working with the Democrats and they’re very well aligned with the Democrats, as is the media aligned with the Democrats with the exception of a small amount,” he said.

ATTACK ON BIDEN

Trump said Joe Biden, his likely 2020 challenger, “looks like a lost sheep,” and is being directed by people in his campaign that are much smarter than he is.

“I think Biden himself is not at all smart," Trump said. "I don’t think he knows what’s going on. I see tweets come out where they analyze this thing or that thing or 15 different events that took place and they analyze them very brilliantly. But that’s not put out by Joe Biden. That’s put out by people that are surrounding him, wanting to get him into office,."

Trump made his case for re-election and said that Biden would not be as tough on China and said he will continue to nominate conservatives for the Supreme Court and federal courts. He said he will continue to support Second Amendment Rights and will lead the economy back to its levels before the coronavirus outbreak.

“So we’ve done a lot. Hopefully, that’s going to be good enough because we need to four more years to cede religious liberty. So many other things that we’ve done that nobody else would do,” he said.