MAGGIE HABERMAN, political reporter: I’ll start, thank you, Dean. Mr. President, I’d like to thank you for being here. This morning, Kellyanne Conway talked about not prosecuting Hillary Clinton. We were hoping you could talk about exactly what that means — does that mean just the emails, or the emails and the foundation, and how you came to that decision.
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Mr. Trump leaving The New York Times after meeting with reporters, editors and the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., on Tuesday. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times
TRUMP: Well, there was a report that somebody said that I’m not enthused about it. Look, I want to move forward, I don’t want to move back. And I don’t want to hurt the Clintons. I really don’t.
She went through a lot. And suffered greatly in many different ways. And I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious. They say it was the most vicious primary and the most vicious campaign. I guess, added together, it was definitely the most vicious; probably, I assume you sold a lot of newspapers.
[laughter]
I would imagine. I would imagine. I’m just telling you, Maggie, I’m not looking to hurt them. I think they’ve been through a lot. They’ve gone through a lot.
I’m really looking … I think we have to get the focus of the country into looking forward.
SULZBERGER: If I could interject, we had a good conversation there, you and I, and it was off the record, but there was nothing secret, just wanted to make sure. The idea of looking forward was one of the themes that you were saying. That we need to now get past the election, right?
MATTHEW PURDY, deputy managing editor: So you’re definitively taking that off the table? The investigation?
TRUMP: No, but the question was asked.
PURDY: About the emails and the foundation?
TRUMP: No, no, but it’s just not something that I feel very strongly about. I feel very strongly about health care. I feel very strongly about an immigration bill that I think even the people in this room can be happy. You know, you’ve been talking about immigration bills for 50 years and nothing’s ever happened.
I feel very strongly about an immigration bill that’s fair and just and a lot of other things. There are a lot of things I feel strongly about. I’m not looking to look back and go through this. This was a very painful period. This was a very painful election with all of the email things and all of the foundation things and all of the everything that they went through and the whole country went through. This was a very painful period of time. I read recently where it was, it was, they’re saying, they used to say it was Lincoln against whoever and none of us were there to see it. And there aren’t a lot of recordings of that, right?
[laughter]
But the fact is that there were some pretty vicious elections; they say this was, this was the most.
They say it was definitely the most vicious primary. And I think it’s very important to look forward.
CAROLYN RYAN, senior editor for politics: Do you think it would disappoint your supporters who seemed very animated by the idea of accountability in the Clintons? What would you say to them?
TRUMP: I don’t think they will be disappointed. I think I will explain it, that we have to, in many ways save our country.
Because our country’s really in bad, big trouble. We have a lot of trouble. A lot of problems. And one of the big problems, I talk about, divisiveness. I think that a lot of people will appreciate … I’m not doing it for that reason. I’m doing it because it’s time to go in a different direction. There was a lot of pain, and I think that the people that supported me with such enthusiasm, where they will show up at 1 in the morning to hear a speech.
It was actually Election Day, they showed up at, so that was essentially Election Day. Yeah, I think they’d understand very completely.