In first sit-down interview | Says many of the challenges facing the US  are ‘solvable’ but will take ‘time, effort and money’

Agencies WASHINGTON

President Donald Trump discussed his extraordinary political comeback and his deluge of executive orders while continuing to hammer old enemies on Wednesday evening during his first Oval Office interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Trump said that many of the challenges facing the US  are "solvable" but that it will take "time, effort and money, unfortunately". He did not get into specifics. "We can get our country back, but if we didn't win this race, I really believe our country would have been lost forever," he said.

During the hour-long interview, Trump focused as much of his energy on past grievances as he did his plans to move the country forward. He remained as aggressive as he was on the campaign trail, even as Hannity encouraged the President to be reflective on his journey back to the Oval Office. Here are the important moments from Wednesday's conversation.

'A lot of work' undoing Biden's mistakes

Asked about what it felt like returning to the Oval Office, Trump said it will be "a lot of work" reversing his Democratic rival (Joe Biden's) 's tenure and that many things should not have happened during the Biden years. "We wouldn’t have inflation, we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan disaster, we wouldn’t have October 7 in Israel where so many people were killed and you wouldn’t have a Ukraine war going on," Trump said.

On pardons

Trump and Biden's presidencies are glued together in various ways, including their controversial use of presidential pardons within hours of each other. "This guy went around giving everybody pardons," Trump said. "The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn't give himself a pardon," he added. "And if you look at it, it all had to do with him."

On Trump extending pardons and clemency to roughly 1,600 people charged in the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol,  he said, "And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote," Trump said. "You should be allowed to protest."

Concerns about TikTok

"You're dealing with a lot of young people. So it is important for China to be… spying like young people, young kids watching crazy videos?" Trump asked. Trump said  any electronic device made in China, from telephones to computers, could also be used to spy on Americans.

Assassination attempt

The President said he’s  not a changed man, per se. “I don't think I've changed, but I think that has taken place, yeah," he told Hannity of his faith. “Because when you look at it, statistically, I should never be here."

On FEMA overhaul

On his  plans to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which assists states with responding to tornadoes, storms and other disasters, Trump said the wildfires in California had changed his calculus. “FEMA is a whole ‘nother discussion, because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,” he said. “And FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I'd rather see the states take care of their own problems.”