Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade spoke with former President Donald Trump ahead of his final rally in New Hampshire Monday night in a softball interview for the ages.
Speaking to Trump aboard his plane, Kilmeade said the aircraft was “fantastic,” and then asked about a government plane that Trump used for four years.
“As much as you love this plane, how is it different from another plane you’re aspiring to get back on: Air Force One?”
After Trump replied that that plane is “always Air Force One—even if this is nicer,” the Fox host couldn’t help but praise Trump’s physique.
“I haven’t seen you in a while. You look like you’re in fighting shape!” he said with a big grin. “How much weight did you lose?”
At his arraignment in Georgia last August, the four-times indicted former president self-reported his weight to be 215 pounds—25 pounds less than at his arraignment in New York that April. (Trump also apparently had grown an inch in that time.)
“Maybe 15, maybe 20,” Trump replied, prompting Kilmeade to eagerly inquire how he was able to accomplish such a feat.
“The hard way. I work,” Trump said, as Kilmeade laughed. “I have been so busy. I haven’t been able to eat very much. I’m not able to sit down and eat like a person like you. You can sit down and eat. Me, it’s a little bit tougher.”
“Because you’re always moving,” Kilmeade added.
Kilmeade’s later questions had to do with whether the 77-year-old considered this campaign to be his last—”I don’t think of it that way,” Trump answered—and why he chose Laconia, New Hampshire as the location for his final speech before the state’s primary, which he ended up winning Tuesday. Trump didn’t offer any specifics, just commending the “fantastic people” there.
Kilmeade, admiring the plane’s “beautiful couches,” then requested to see other parts of the aircraft.
Towards the end of the walk-through, the Fox host praised Trump’s “passion” for the news. “It’s always been there,” he said, after a photograph from 2000 showed on screen of Trump with several newspapers on the desk in his plane.
Trump, who has repeatedly called the media the “enemy of the people,” responded: “I still have it, and I still have articles, too. I like articles better than the internet, if you want to know the truth. I like paper. I like to touch it.”
