"I think we’re sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble. ... We’re not at 5 percent unemployment. We’re at a number that’s probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised, to make politicians – and in particular presidents – look good. And I wouldn’t be getting the kind of massive crowds that I’m getting if the number was a real number.

"I’m talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession. Look, we have money that’s so cheap right now. And if I want to borrow money, I can borrow all the money I want. But I’m rich. ... If somebody is a great, wonderful person, going to employ lots of people, a really talented businessperson, wants to borrow money, but they’re not rich? They have no chance ..."

Is it a good time to invest now? "Oh, I think it’s a terrible time right now ... because the dollar's so strong. ... You have – think of it – you have cheap money that nobody can get unless you’re rich. You have the regulators are running the banks. Not the guys that are being paid $50 million a year to run the banks. I mean, when you look at many of your friends that are running banks that are being paid $40 and $50 million, yeah, they’re not running the banks. The regulators are running the banks. You have a situation where you have an inflated stock market. It started to deflate, but then it went back up again. Usually that’s a bad sign. That’s a sign of things to come.

"Part of the reason it’s precarious is because we are being ripped so badly by other countries. We are being ripped so badly by China. It just never ends. Nobody’s ever going to stop it. And the reason they’re not going to stop it is one of two. They’re either living in a world of the make-believe, or they’re totally controlled by their lobbyists and their special interests. Meaning people that want it to continue. Because what China, what Mexico, what Japan – I don’t want to name too many countries, because I actually do business in a lot of these countries – but what these countries are doing to us is unbelievable. They are draining our jobs. They are draining our money.

"I can fix it. I can fix it pretty quickly. ... I would do a tax cut. You have to do a tax cut. Because we’re the highest-taxed nation in the world. But I would start ... I would immediately start renegotiating our trade deals with Mexico, China, Japan and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying us.

"We’re not a rich country. We’re a debtor nation. We’ve got to get rid of – I talked about bubble. We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt." How long would that take? "Well, I would say over a period of eight years."