President Trump was on CNBC today, and boy did he take it out on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The first five minutes of the 27 minute clip below are basically the President laying the Chamber out and field-dressing it.

Watch the interview – a transcript of the first 5 minutes follows below:

Host: I guess Mr. [Myron] Brilliant (yes, his real name) who was on from the Chamber of Commerce, you got to see a part of that interview Mr. President – what did you make of it?

Trump: Well, I guess he’s not so brilliant. Look, without tariffs we would be captive to every country, and we have been for many years. That’s why we have an $800 billion trade deficit for years – we have a big deficit with every country. They take advantage of us in every way possible, and the U.S. Chamber is right there with them. And I assume that…I’m a member of the Chamber, maybe I’ll have to rethink that because when you look at it, the Chamber is probably more for the companies and people that are their members than they are for our country.

Without tariffs, we would be outside of – something that I won’t even mention, we would be absolutely at a competitive disadvantage the likes of which you’ve never seen. Now, people haven’t used tariffs, but tariffs are a beautiful thing when you’re the piggy bank, when you have all the money. Everyone’s trying to get our money.

China, the China deal’s gonna work out. You know why? Because of tariffs. Because right now China is getting absolutely decimated by companies that are leaving China, going to other countries, including our own, because they don’t want to pay the tariffs. And China will, in my opinion, based on a lot of facts and a lot of knowledge, China’s gonna make a deal because they’re gonna have to make a deal.

Host: The deal with Mexico. You’ve alluded to something you’re going to make clear later. You’ve heard the criticism – can you go into exactly what else was part of that deal that you haven’t made clear yet?

Trump: Well, I’m gonna tell you that most people, the people having to do with borders and illegal immigration, they understand exactly what that is. But we purposely said that we wouldn’t mention it for a little while, because it has to be brought by their legislative body, it has to be taken to a vote. So we didn’t bring it up, but most people know that answer, and it’s another very powerful tool in addition to the other very powerful tools we got.

We had none of these tools, or virtually none. They’ve been talked about for 20 years with Mexico. Until I said that, and it wasn’t a threat – I thought that we’d be receiving billions of dollars [in tariffs], frankly.

And you know what happens with tariffs? Companies will move out of Mexico, and they’ll move out of China, and they’ll come into the United States. They’ll go to other countries, too, but in the case of Mexico, I’d say we’d get virtually 100% of the companies. They make a product and they sell it into our country.

We lose a tremendous amount of money every year into Mexico. For years, we’ve lost over $100 billion per year on trade with Mexico.

And of course, then we get into the second problem we have with Mexico, the drugs coming across the border. We want to have very powerful borders, and you can’t do it unless you have these deals with Mexico.

And the New York Times wrote a story like I’d already done the deal. It’s nonsense. We’d talked about it for months and months and months, and they wouldn’t get there. So we just said look, if you don’t get there, we’re just gonna have to charge you hundreds of billions of dollars in “taxes.”

And we would’ve been just fine, because what would’ve happened [crosstalk] – what would’ve happened is the companies would move into the United States, back where they came from.

They [Mexico] took 30% of our automobile companies, our car companies, they moved into Mexico – they would all move back if they had to pay a 25% tariff. They would all move back, it’s a very simple formula.

Now, that would leave Mexico in an unbelievably bad position, and we don’t want that, either. And I spoke with the president of Mexico, I get along with him very well, and we made this deal. But this is something the U.S. has been trying to get to for over 20 year with Mexico.

As soon as I put tariffs on the table, it was done. It took two days.

He’s [Mr. Brilliant] is not protecting our country. He’s doing a great disservice. And frankly, I’ve never had support from the U.S. Chamber because they know where I stand on these things. I don’t need money, I don’t care how things are [with the Chamber and its members] – the only thing I care about is our country.

He’s protecting all of those companies that are members who like it just the way things are, and they have companies in Mexico, and they have companies in China.