Chris Cillizza at the Post has the whole transcript of PP’s conversation with Tucker Carlson yesterday.

The Twitter section is worth reading carefully.

CARLSON: So on March 4, 6:35 in the morning, you’re down in Florida, and you tweet, the former administration wiretapped me, surveilled me, at Trump Tower during the last election. How did you find out? You said, I just found out. How did you learn that?

TRUMP: Well, I’ve been reading about things. I read in, I think it was January 20 a “New York Times” article where they were talking about wiretapping. There was an article, I think they used that exact term. I read other things. I watched your friend Bret Baier the day previous where he was talking about certain very complex sets of things happening, and wiretapping. I said, wait a minute, there’s a lot of wiretapping being talked about. I’ve been seeing a lot of things.

Now, for the most part, I’m not going to discuss it, because we have it before the committee and we will be submitting things before the committee very soon that hasn’t been submitted as of yet. But it’s potentially a very serious situation.

CARLSON: So, 51,000 people retweeted that. So a lot of people thought that was plausible, they believe you, you’re the President — you’re in charge of the agencies. Every intelligence agency reports to you. Why not immediately go to them and gather evidence to support that?

TRUMP:  Because I don’t want to do anything that’s going to violate any strength of an agency.  We have enough problems.

And by the way, with the CIA, I just want people to know, the CIA was hacked, and a lot of things taken — that was during the Obama years.  That was not during us.  That was during the Obama situation.  Mike Pompeo is there now doing a fantastic job.

But, we will be submitting certain things and I will be perhaps speaking about this next week, but it’s right now before the committee, and I think I want to leave it.  I have a lot of confidence in the committee.

CARLSON:  Why not wait to tweet about it until you can prove it?  Don’t you devalue your words when you can’t provide evidence?

TRUMP:  Well, because “The New York Times” wrote about it.  Not that I respect “The New York Times”.  I call it the failing “New York Times”.  But they did write on January 20 using the word wiretap.  Other people have come out with —

CARLSON:  Right, but you’re the President.  You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.

TRUMP:  I do.  I do.  But I think that frankly we have a lot right now.  And I think if you watch — if you watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word wiretap, you would feel very confident that you could mention the name.  He mentioned it.  And other people have mentioned it.  But if you take a look at some of the things written about wiretapping and eavesdropping —

And don’t forget, when I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes.  That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old fashioned stuff.  But that really covers surveillance and many other things.  And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing.

But wiretap covers a lot of different things.  I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.

CARLSON:  Do you talk to anyone before you tweet?  And is there anyone in the White House who can say to you, Mr. President, please don’t tweet that, who you would listen to?

TRUMP:  Well, let me tell you about Twitter.  I think that maybe I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter, because I get such a fake press, such a dishonest press.  I mean, if you look at — and I’m not including Fox, because I think Fox has been fair to me, but if you look at CNN and if you look at these other networks, NBC — I made a fortune for NBC with “The Apprentice”.  I had a top show where they were doing horribly, and I had one of the most successful reality shows of all time.  I made — and I was on 14 seasons.  And you see what happened when I’m not on.  You saw what happened to the show was a disaster.  I was on — I was very good to NBC, and I — they are despicable.  They’re despicable in their coverage.

CBS, ABC, you take a look at what’s going on — I call it the fake press, the fake media.  It is a disgrace what’s happening.  So, let me just tell you —

CARLSON:  But then they say to you, but you’re — I mean, as you know, the response — look, so you had this big speech to the joint session on Tuesday.  You had great press all week, bipartisan, and then you let off this tweet, and immediately, people say —

TRUMP:  No, it wasn’t that tweet.  They had other things —

CARLSON:  You can’t back up what you say.

TRUMP:  Excuse me.  I had a very successful night.  Joint session, it was very successful.  I got reviews even from people that I would never think I was going to get good reviews.  I got great reviews. And then all of a sudden they came up with a new dialogue in order to kill that.  So that speech was hot for about two or three hours after the speech was made, because they came up with other things, having to do with other people, that they shouldn’t have been able to do and they shouldn’t have done, but they did it.  And you know exactly what I’m talking about.

So the news is not honest.  Much of the news.  It’s not honest.  And when I have close to 100 million people watching me on Twitter, including Facebook, including all of the Instagram, including POTUS, including lots of things — but we have — I guess pretty close to 100 million people.  I have my own form of media.  So if I tweet two or three or four or five times a day, and if most of them are good — and I really want them all to be good — but if I make one mistake in a month — this one, I don’t think is going to prove to be a mistake at all.

CARLSON:  Do you think it’s OK to make — the counterargument, even from people who support you, who say look, I support Donald Trump, I believe what he believes, and I want him to succeed badly, but if the President says something that cannot be proved or is demonstrably untrue, he devalues his own currency.

TRUMP:  Let’s see whether or not I proved it.  You looked at some proof.  I mean, let’s see whether or not I prove it.  I just don’t choose to do it right now.  I choose to do it before the committee, and maybe I’ll do it before the committee.  Maybe I’ll do it before I see the result of the committee.  But I think we have some very good stuff.  And we’re in the process of putting it together, and I think it’s going to be very demonstrative.  But just on Twitter, if I don’t do that, I won’t get my word out.  Because when I tell — when I say things, the press doesn’t cover it accurately.  They cover it very inaccurately.  Much of the press.

Some of the press — by the way, some of the finest people I know are reporters.  Reporters are wonderful.  I’m talking about the fake media, the fake news.  And there’s a lot of fake news.  So if I’m not going to — if they’re not going to do me the honor and the public the honor of spreading my word accurately as it was meant, and you know exactly what I’m talking about, because there’s been nobody in history that got more dishonest media than I’ve gotten.  You look at some of the stories in “The New York Times”.  You look at some of the stories in “The Washington Post”.  Take a look at what’s going on with CBS and NBC in particular and ABC — take a look at CNN.  It’s a complete hit job.  No matter what you do, no matter how good — no matter how great it is, they don’t report it in a positive fashion.

So, when I can reach, whether it’s 90 million or 100 million or 80 million, however many people it may turn out to be, when you add everything up — and then of course it gets disseminated from there, when I can reach that many people, Twitter is a wonderful thing for me, because I get the word out.

CARLSON:  Does it ever go through any kind of mediator —

TRUMP:  Sure it does.  Sure.  Sometimes I’ll —

CARLSON:  Do you show your staff and —

TRUMP:  Sometimes I’ll have something and I’ll say, what do you think about this?  A lot of times, my staff comes to me and they say, could you do a tweet on this or that?  Because it’s not being shown correctly.  I mean, they’ll come to me a lot and they’ll say, could you do — I probably wouldn’t be here — I’m not talking about Twitter, because it’s really Twitter, Facebook, and lots of other things, OK.  But I might not be here talking to you right now as President if I didn’t have an honest way of getting the word out.