A Fox News host finally got the president off the phone, but only after two tries, a live interruption and an on-air confession that he was going to get into trouble.
President Donald Trump, 80, phoned into Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” from the White House on Sunday, Oct. 25, 2026, and spent nearly all of the roughly 25-minute interview talking, leaving interim host Larry Kudlow, 79, to spend the last stretch of the segment trying to end it.
Kudlow eventually broke in mid-sentence. “I’ve got to let you go. I’m going to get into trouble. Good luck!” he told the president.
Nobody would bother Kudlow, Trump replied, because the host had just gotten good ratings and the country is the hottest anywhere in the world. Kudlow said goodbye a second time. Trump kept going anyway: “I’m proud of you, Larry! I’m proud of you.” The line then cut off.
Once the line went dead, Kudlow told viewers he loved talking to Trump and called the two of them old friends.
He Called the Campaign Herculean
Kudlow, who ran the National Economic Council as Trump’s economic adviser during the president’s first term, is one year Trump’s junior. He opened by telling the president he was on a roll and calling his campaigning “herculean.”
Trump counted 14 rallies in nine days and said he was heading back to Ohio. The president praised Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, a former football player, and said Husted would not talk about his own playing days — something the president said he himself would never pass up, because he would have claimed to be the greatest of all time.
The president also delivered a backhanded endorsement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate, brushing off complaints about how Paxton dresses and how he talks as irrelevant. What matters, Trump said, is that Paxton is a great attorney general.
Kudlow supplied the economic numbers, saying retail and same-store sales were up almost 10% year on year, the fastest in decades. Both men talked up an Audi plant in Macon, Ga. Kudlow acknowledged that gasoline prices are temporarily too high.
The Optimistic Note Ran Long
Trump praised Kudlow before the first wrap attempt, calling him “One of my great students of all time.” Kudlow thanked him, then asked him to “end this campaign on an optimistic note.” The invitation bought nearly two more minutes.
“I’m campaigning harder than I would for myself because we have so many good people, and they want to keep it going, and I don’t want to see them turning around,” Trump said.
He said the United States has “number one growth in the world.” Kudlow said yes. He said the country now has the lowest crime. Kudlow said yes again. Trump described pre-MAGA Washington as a killing field that looked like hell and said the city is now clean and beautiful, a change he dated to after what he called big vandalism on the Reflecting Pool.
Kudlow looked glum on camera through that stretch, wincing, shifting in his seat and nodding along. Trump said the king of Saudi Arabia had called the United States the “hottest country in the world.” The military, he said, was something he rebuilt in his first term, and former President Joe Biden then gave much of it away to Ukraine. Biden could have charged Europe and did not, Trump said; he sells to Europe, and Europe pays the United States.
The Transcript Tells the Same Story
The transcript of the call shows a lopsided conversation. Of its 4,877 words, 3,731 came from Trump, or 77%, and he held the floor for 1,106 of 1,491 seconds. Kudlow managed 1,146 words.
Fox Pulled the Plug in Perry
The network had already cut away from Trump’s rally in Perry, Ga., on Oct. 24, after he started ridiculing Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Fox switched to its in-studio anchors, who talked about his appearance. One said Trump was in “rare form.” Another said he was “letting it all loose.”
At that rally, Trump referred to unsubstantiated claims that Omar, 44, legally married her brother, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, in 2009 to help him secure U.S. immigration status.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned the attack in a statement Saturday, Oct. 24. “Donald Trump has consistently trafficked in vile and xenophobic rhetoric against the Somali American community, targeting Congresswoman Ilhan Omar with unhinged personal attacks and baseless accusations,” he said.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations carried out a search of Omar’s Washington, D.C., home on Oct. 12. The search came amid a reported criminal fraud investigation into her immigration paperwork. Jeffries addressed that search in the same statement: “After lawlessly sending his violent DHS machine to Congresswoman Omar’s home earlier this month, the President is once again peddling sick propaganda against her at a moment when political violence is surging.”
