Trump's advice to 25-year-old self: 'Don't run for president'

At a forum with millennials Thursday, when asked what advice he’d give his 25-year-old self, President Donald Trump said he’d tell him to avoid the road to the White House.

“Don't run for president,” Trump said, apparently in jest, as he went on to complain about the media coverage he’s gotten since becoming a candidate.

“All my life, I've gotten really — look, we all get a knock. But I got the greatest publicity. I was getting such great until I ran for office,” he said.

But the president added that he is heartened by having “exposed” the media for what he sees as unfair bias.

“There's a lot of fake news out there. Nobody had any idea. I'm proud of the fact that I exposed it to a large extent. We exposed it. It's an achievement,” Trump said, even as he qualified that he has respect for some journalists.

The president made the remarks during a discussion with Charlie Kirk, a millennial rising star in conservative media who is the founder of the grassroots conservative youth group Turning Point USA.

He also commented on his own political popularity in the context of the midterm elections, saying he hopes his political appeal is transferable to other Republicans even as he admitted it may not be, noting the energy in the room for the recent rally he held in Pennsylvania for Rick Saccone, who lost in spite of the president’s support.

“I don't know if it's transferrable. They say a lot of it is not transferable. They may not like me. They all say I'm going to do great in 2020. You know, let's see what happens. Right? They don't know if it's transferrable. I hope it's transferrable. We have to do our agenda. We have to win in '18. We have to get the agenda. We need more Republicans,” he said.

He also predicted as he had before, that House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's "crumbs" comment will become the 2018 equivalent of Hillary Clinton's 2016 "deplorables" comment.

In January, referring to Republican claims about the benefits of their tax plan, Pelosi called them “the bonus that corporate America received, versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers.”

In September 2016, Clinton famously said half of Trump supporters "are what I would call the deplorables — you know, the racists and the haters and the people who are drawn because they think somehow he’s going to restore an America that no longer exists.”