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I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal.

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Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this.

On the side of a beautiful mountain in central Virginia where it's apple season with the king of the apple in central Virginia. His name is Eric. You might recognize the last name, Eric Trump. How are you doing, Eric? I'm doing what you? It's good to have you back. I never thought I'd be king of the apple, but we planted about 16,000 apple trees at Trump winery, Trump sideries, so I guess that makes us king of the apple now. That'll do it for you. How has the Cidery division? And if you don't know, the Trump family purchased this winery, what, 10 years ago? Yeah, a little bit over closer to 15 years ago. And it's become the largest winery on the East Coast of the United States. And we started cider two years ago when we planted, as I said, close to 16,000 apple trees. People love the winery. People love the cider. We're distributed in 42 states, I think seven or eight countries around the world. Again, the largest wineries, the Mississippi River, and we've won every award. We won San Francisco last year. I mean, we've absolutely done great, but people love the wine, people love the cider, and people just love the property.

Well, and I've told you this before, when you're in Charlottesville, aside from trying to get the tour of my studios, first free coffee bar, but the Trump winery, the tasting room, the cidery, it is absolutely stunning.

It's all the best views of Virginia as well, and I'm not saying that just because Eric's taller than I am and I'm intimidated. So, you know, you're here. It's the first year of the apples and you've been having folks in the community come up and do Apple picking here as well. How is that gone? Listen, what's more All-American than, you know, apple picking, right? And we have one of the ciders is called donnie apple seed we're having a lot of fun with it we have a passion patriot we're thinking about and our general managers he kill me for saying this but we're thinking about an impeachment so it'll be a it'll be an apple slider but it'll be peach base but so we're thinking about calling it, and we've got a red, white, and blueberry, where I've

all have fun with the cedars, but honestly, they're delicious. They're made the same way that we make our sparkling wines. They're the best thing you'll ever taste. They're, they're amazing, and the whole property is incredible. And the hotel is, I mean, you can't even get into the hotel. It's very small.

We only have 14 rooms, and people book it up literally

months in advance, and it's, it's been so incredible this whole property. Travel guides have called

the Albuhral House, which is their hotel here, one of the best destination bed and breakfast

inns in the nation. And again, nothing Trump does is done halfway. You told me that when you guys took over the winery here, Eric.

I have to ask, though, growing up in New York City like I did, you know, there's parts of upstate New York, which we all, in New York City, we called upstate New York, Westchester, where there was Apple picking.

Please tell me there are some instances where you and your dad went apple picking up in, you know, upstate New York. And it's still traditional. My kids, too. I take them, I try and take them every year. And listen, what's a better, what's a better tradition? And now in Virginia, they're actually doing apple picking a little bit different. We obviously have incredible apple trees, but they're also, we're taking a lot of the apple trees and putting them on trellises similar to what you do with wine. Oh, wow. And what it does is for small kids, it makes a lot easier. They're actually able to go and pick the apple versus trying to climb to the top of a tree. And so you get better yields, you get better apples, you get better varietals. And so, you know, we've really, you know, we have pink lady apples.

We have, I mean, there's 30 different varietals of apples. People come out here, they have the greatest time. And the food is absolutely exceptional. Of course, now you have to take secret service protection with you. It's not as easy as go away. It's a different way to do apple picking. I'm going to segue into you've just released your new book Under Siege.

Talk about this... a different way to do apple picking. I'm going to segue into you've just released your new book Under Siege.

Talk about this look inside the family.

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