The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Sharyl: There’s a lot of intrigue surrounding the release of the Epstein files. Martin Luther King files, John F. Kennedy files, some current and former FBI agents are saying, some of them telling me that they feel the FBI establishment came out ahead in the standoff, sort of with the New York FBI field office over releasing the records. And your attorney general Pam Bondi demanding them, but not getting all that she wanted. Is that process still on track? I think that’s one of the most often questions I’ve been asked the last couple of days to release these records on Epstein, MLK and JFK.

President Donald Trump: Well, Pam Bondi’s done a phenomenal job in every respect. And there could have been some holdback. I haven’t heard too much about it, but they could. But the bottom line is the records are getting out. The Kennedy records are getting out. Those are the ones they really wanted to see the most were the Kennedy’s. And during my administration, as you know, I released a lot of ’em. But then a lot of people started coming in. People that I respected, people that worked for the administration asked me not to release the rest.

Sharyl: Did they say why?

Trump: And I respected that. They gave me certain reasons, but I respected that. And I did say, I must tell you, I said that I probably wish I did release the whole thing ’cause I have no idea what’s in there. But since then they found, and we found, 2000 more documents on Kennedy. And the one they want most is Kennedy. And it’s gonna be released. It’s, it’s moving along and it’s moving along pretty rapidly. It doesn’t, doesn’t go that rapidly.

Sharyl: In weeks maybe?

Trump: Yeah, I would say weeks. Yeah I say weeks.

Sharyl: Well, let me switch gears and go to the media next. It’s understandable that you would hold the media accountable for its mistakes. And I would argue that nobody has suffered that more than you have in the course of you

Trump: Well, you suffered it a little bit in all fairness

Sharyl: Yeah. But, not as much as you

Trump: your wonderful career, but you suffered it.

Sharyl: But as a supporter of a robust free press, do you worry sometimes that the settlements you’re getting against big press organizations and so on might have a reverse effect and chill the press and make people think that you’re doing something to crack down on a free press?

Trump: Well, they really lied about me. I mean, in so many ways, you know that and you understand that. And you’ve had it yourself to a large extent. I mean, you know, larger than most. But they were very dishonest. That’s why I came up with a name, fake news, fake news. And you’re right, I’ve had some good luck suing these people. And I have some others in there that are, and I’m doing that. I’m doing that for the people of this country. We need a free press. A fair press. I said, we need borders. We need a fair press. We need to stop crime and elections have to be perfect. And they’re not perfect. They’re a disaster.

Sharyl: I tracked medium mistakes when you first came into office the first time, and there were too many really to count. But I tracked him as best as I could. I’m looking at ’em this time. And I’m not seeing as many when we’re talking about false reporting and fake information. Not that some of that isn’t out there, but I don’t see it to the same extent I did in the 2016 time period. Do you think the media is treating you better now?

Trump: No, I think that, I’ve become more experienced in handling the media. I think the media respects me more. You know, I’ve done this twice. You know, when I first came in, don’t forget, I had never done it. I won this incredible election and I relied on people for recommendations. And now I know everybody in Washington that you’d want to know. And we have a great staff. And I had a great staff before too. Look, I rebuilt the military and all of the things we did, the great things that we did, the taxes were the biggest tax cut in history. All the things we did. And I had a lot of great people, but I had some that I wouldn’t have put in, in retrospect, I think now we have unbelievable people. But no, the media has, I find it to be that it hasn’t changed. What has changed is I think Facebook and Google and a lot of them have become, I think a guy like, Bezos is, I’ve gotten to know him and I think he’s trying to do a real job. Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with the Washington Post. And that wasn’t happening before. My first time. I had Google against me. I had Facebook against me, I had Instagram, I had everybody against me. The whole world was against me. But I mean, 97% of it was just like horrible. It was, and it was really crooked. It was really dishonest. And I think I fought them well. And now I’m actually winning awards for the fact that, you know, a lot of that stuff is coming due now. It takes a long time through the court system. They have CBS as an example. They totally changed the answers of Kamala Harris. They, they took other answers and put ’em into a slot. They’d ask her a question. She gave a horrible answer. They took it just before the election. One day before the election. They took the answer and they put an entirely different answer into the slot. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.

Sharyl: One quick follow up. There are some people are saying to the extent CBS 60 Minutes was considering some kind of settlement with you, that was almost like a blackmail thing, or that they were doing that because they were afraid now that you’re president that there are certain things you could do that would hurt the corporation. What are your thoughts about that?

Trump: I don’t think so. I mean, look, they were wrong. Hey, they took an answer from another part of an interview that was much later.

Sharyl: They said it was from the same question, but

Trump: Ah, they didn’t say that. They even, I’ll tell you what, they advertised. The way they got caught was they advertised a little piece of that answer. And then when it was shown on television, that piece wasn’t there anymore. So we said, ‘well, wait a minute, what happened to the,’ the answer was so bad, so incompetent that she would’ve lost the election just based on that. It was such a horrible answer. And they took another answer from another part. And, you know, down deep in the interview and they put it into that. They slotted it in. I never even heard of that before. Nobody did. And they admit that they’re guilty. So we’ll see what happens. I mean, I think, they have problems.

Sharyl: A lot of what you want to do, of course, the big things, it’s already meeting up with legal challenges and protests and opposition and a good deal of it would require Congress’s help to codify it and kind of get around that.

Trump: Yeah, what we’re trying to do that, we’re trying to do it, we’re doing executive orders at the fastest rate that anyone’s ever seen. We had our cabinet, as you know, approved at the fastest level. John Thune has done a great job. Mike Johnson has done a great job. The leaders and the Speaker, they’ve been fantastic. We have done, you know, really we’re going at at breakneck speed. And I think everyone’s saying ‘they’ve never seen anything like it.’ Now you’re comparing it to people that honestly should have never been there, should have never ever been there. What they’ve done to our country is not even describable. But, we’re doing a good job.

Sharyl: We’ll continue our conversation with President Trump after a short break.

Watch video here.