'Brian was kissing my a** when I was president': Trump to punish US banks for discriminating against conservatives

After the reports that the White House is preparing an executive order to put pressure on big banks in the US for their discrimination against conservatives, US President Donald Trump subtly confirmed it, saying the banks certainly did discriminate. Talking at an interview with the CNBC on Tuesday (August 5), the American president gave his own example, saying he had "many accounts" loaded with cash, but the banks did not take him as a customer.

A journalist questioned Trump, "The Wall Street Journal is reporting that you're preparing an order to punish banks that discriminate against conservatives, including potentially the Bank of America ... Can you tell us about that executive order, what's in that?"

The US president responded, saying, "Well, they did discriminate. I had JP Morgan Chase, and I had hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. I can see they want to do something bad if you don't have any money; they took people out. But now I'll give you an amazing example. I had hundreds of millions, I had many, many accounts, loaded up with cash, and they told me, 'I'm sorry, sir. We can't have you. You have 20 days to get out.' I said you gotta be kidding. I have been with you for 35-40 years."

"I was never in this situation before. I never had anything like it," he added. He continued saying, "I call up Bank of America routinely and I speak to him, I speak to couple of people, and they had zero interest ... Brian (CEO of the bank) was kissing my a** when I was president and when I called him after I was president, to deposit, a billion dollars plus and a lot of other things ... he said 'we can't do it, no' ... and that's because the banks discriminated against me very badly, and I was very good to the banks," Trump added. "We had the greatest economy in history when I was the president. and by the way, our economy now will blow that away," he said.

Banks violating Equal Credit Opportunity Act?

On August 4, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was planning to punish major banks in the US that discriminate against conservatives.

"A draft of the executive order, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, directs bank regulators to investigate whether any financial institutions might have violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, antitrust laws or consumer financial protection laws," the report said.

Trump threatens to raise tariffs

In the same interview, Trump also said that he will raise the tariff imposed on India. The American president said, "India has not been a good trading partner, because they do a lot of business with us, but we don't do business with them. So we settled on 25 per cent, but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours, because they're buying Russian oil. They're fueling the war machine."