Watters: Why did you pick J.D. Vance?

President Trump: We've always had a good chemistry. Originally, J.D. was probably not for me, but he didn't know me. And then when we got to know each other, he liked me, maybe more than anybody liked me, and he would stick up for me, and he'd fight for the worker as much as I fight for the worker. We just had an automatic chemistry.

Watters: When you were down, by the podium, we heard a lot of kerfuffle. You said something about shoes. Shoes. What was that?

President Trump: Well they wanted to put me on a stretcher. They had a stretcher, and they wanted to put me on a stretcher, and I said, 'I''m not going on a stretcher', because I just felt it was the ear…they thought I was hit elsewhere. They thought I was hit actually in this area [motions to his stomach area], and I wasn't. I said. 'I'm telling you I'm okay. I'm fine. I'm gonna get up. I want to get up. I'm not going to be taken out on a stretcher'. We had a little argument.

Watters: Joe Biden called you after this guy tried to take your life. How'd that conversation go?

President Trump: It was good. It was a nice conversation. He said, 'You're lucky you turned to the right'. It was; obviously somebody briefed him.

Watters: No one told you not to take the stage?

President Trump: No, nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem.

President Trump: I know many people in the FBI. They're great. They tend to be at the mid and lower levels, and they're MAGA. They are Make America Great Again people.

Watters: Are you at all suspicious he had help?

President Trump: Well you just don't know. It doesn't look like, but now we're finding out that he had some encrypted phone numbers to foreign countries, which a little but surprises me…I would say probably he was a loner, but you don't know that. They have to check out the phone numbers, they have to check out the phone. I think they were able to break into his phone. I think. I hope. I would hope so. For a crime like this, you have to be able to break into a phone. They pride themselves on not allowing people to break in. And government can't get in. Apple can let you in, so I don't know exactly what happened.

Watters: If you are elected, you can declassify the assassination attempt files. You could clear things up like that. You'll do that, right?

President Trump: Yeah, sure. There should be nothing to hide here. I think, frankly, many things are known right now, but some of the things that are known are bad. How did somebody get on that roof, and why wasn't he reported? Because people saw that he was on the roof.

President Trump: She came to see me, actually [Cheatle]. It went very nicely, she was very nice, I thought. But somebody should have made sure there was nobody on that roof. That roof is a dead-aim right on to the stage. They said they didn't have the manpower for it, which is crazy.

Watters: You'd investigate the people that hid Joe Biden's condition?

President Trump: Well I think somebody has to look at it. Look, you had people that lied to the American public, and I'll tell you what, you ought to take a look at his doctors, because his doctors keep giving him this wonderful report.