More on President Putin and Russia, and on energy:

Q Do you think you’ll invite Putin to the White House?

THE PRESIDENT: I would say yes, yeah. At the right time. I don’t think this is the right time, but the answer is yes I would. Look, it’s very easy for me to say absolutely, I won’t. That’s the easy thing for me to do, but that’s the stupid thing to do. Let’s be the smart people not the stupid people. The easiest thing for me to tell you is that I would never invite him. We will never ever talk to Russia. That all of my friends in Congress will say, oh he’s so wonderful, he’s so wonderful. Folks, we have perhaps the second most powerful nuclear country in the world. If you don’t have dialogue, you have to be fools. Fools. It would be the easiest thing for me to say to Maggie and all of you, I will never speak to him, and everybody would love me. But I have to do what’s right.

And, by the way, I only want to make great deals with Russia. Remember this, I have built up — we’re getting $57 billion more for the military. Hillary was going to cut the military. I’m a tremendous fracker, coal, natural gas, alternate energy, wind – everything, right? But I’m going to produce much much more energy than anyone else who was ever running for office. Ever. We’re going to have clean coal, and Hillary wasn’t. Hillary was going to stop fracking. She was going to stop coal totally. Hey, in West Virginia I beat her by 42 points. Remember, she went and sat with the miners and they said get the hell out of here. So, I was going to — if Hillary got in, your energy prices right now would be double. You’d be doing no fracking. You’d be doing practically no fossil fuels.

So Putin, everything I do is the exact opposite. I don’t believe — in fact, the one question that I didn’t ask him that I wish I did — but we had so many other things going, and really the ceasefire was a very complicated talk, it was a very important talk to me because I wanted to see if we could start a ceasefire.

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Now, why does that affect Russia? Because Russia makes its money through selling of oil, and we’ve got underneath us more oil than anybody, and nobody knew it until five years ago. And I want to use it. And I don’t want that taken away by the Paris Accord. I don’t want them to say all of that wealth that the United States has under its feet, but that China doesn’t have and that other countries don’t have, we can’t use. So now we no longer have the advantage. We have a tremendous advantage. We have more natural resources under our feet than any other country. That’s a pretty big statement. Ten years ago, five years ago even, you couldn’t make that statement. We’re blessed. I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to say oh, okay, we won’t use it. But think of it. So, if Hillary is there, you’re going to have a far less amount of fuel. Therefore, energy prices will be much, much higher. That’s great for Russia.

So, the next time I’m with Putin, I’m going to ask him: who were you really for? Because I can’t believe that he would have been for me. Me. Strong military, strong borders — but he cares less about the borders — but strong military, tremendous. We’re going to be an exporter of fuel this year. We’re going to be exporting. What was the first thing I signed when I got in? The Keystone Pipeline, and the Keystone Pipeline goes from Canada all the way through our country right into the Gulf, and the ships are there to take it all over and compete with Russia.

More on Energy:

The first thing I signed, the first day, was the Keystone Pipeline. That first * was the Keystone and the Dakota Access Pipeline — also Dakota Access. Now, what does that mean? Dakota Access takes it to the Pacific. Who do they compete with? Russia. Hillary would have never signed — that was with the reservation — she would have never signed it. I was given great credit for that one. That was a tough one. First day. It’s also 48,000 jobs between both of them. The other one I signed, that was the Keystone. That was dead. That was dead for two years. It was never going to happen. I revived it on day one. You know, you’ll check, please check it. I have to be exactly accurate. They’ll say, oh I wasn’t totally accurate. But that goes to the Gulf, right? Competes with Russia.

More on Energy and Russia:

THE PRESIDENT: So now oil is getting to be record low — and gas — because we’re producing so much. That means Russia — and you know Russia *** is having a little hard time because it has come down so much.