TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Holds a Cabinet Meeting at the White House, 7.8.25

[Video]

 

President Trump: You want to move down? We have some --

 

Unidentified: Yes, please.

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Trump: -- come down, if you want. Leave the cameras there. That's fine. But -- but if you want, there's a lot of room over here. CNN should move out to the end [Laughter] -- way out to the left.

 

Unidentified: [Laughs] -- to the left.

 

Trump: Are you able to get them all in the room. Are they in?

 

Unidentified: Yes sir.

 

Unidentified: They're in.

 

Trump: Are you okay? Thank you very much. We've had a tremendous six months, and we've had a tremendous two weeks, which now is I guess three weeks. And we have a tremendous group of people here that have done a great, unified, beautiful job. I want in particular, because of what she's gone through this last few days, have done an incredible job, as you know. Kristi, you are -- I'm going to ask you to say a few words about Texas. The first person there was -- the first person I saw on television was you actually, and you've worked great with the governor who's terrific. And you might want to tell a little bit about the trials and tribulations. But we appreciate the job that you and everybody have done. You had people there as fast as anybody's ever seen. So, I really appreciate it, we all do. And maybe you could say a few words.

 

Secretary Kristi Noem: Sure. Well, thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for your leadership. Texas is strong and the people of Texas are incredibly strong. They've gone through something that is absolutely horrific, and it is heartbreaking to watch these families suffer the way that they are. As soon as this flash flooding event happened, the governor has activated his emergency responders. Nim Kidd is his emergency management director, who is incredible, and has immediately worked with the local first responders to get help to individuals and get them evacuated, put requests in to me. We deployed, sir, right away, as you know, because you and I were talking a lot during this time -- the Coast Guard, we also had some assets out of Customs and Border Protection. Our BORTAC teams went in and helped with rescues and clearing debris so that we could get roads open and people get the help that they need. I think when I got there the most served that day, as soon as I arrived on site, was getting a briefing from all the emergency responders, was just how unified they were in focusing on the fact that they were there to save lives. They were there to rescue people, find people who were still alive and to reunify them with their family members. We as a federal government don't manage these disasters, the state does. We come in and support them, and that's exactly what we did here in this situation. FEMA went to an enhanced level immediately. But as soon as you signed the major disaster declaration, we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned, through state block grants to help them with cleanup. And we're still there in presence. And FEMA has been deployed and we're cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA, streamlining it much like your vision of how FEMA should operate. And it's been a much better response to help these families get through this terrible situation. We still are looking for people. We're still looking for a lot of little girls and other family members that were camping along that river. And they will continue until they find every single person and we will continue to help them and assist in that. I was surprised when I got there at the camp that day right after this happened, the parents that were there, the parents that were looking for their children and picking up their daughter's stuffed animals out of the mud and finding their daughter's shoe that might be laying in the cabin and just hugging and comforting people matters a lot. I'm extremely grateful for God's hand in that whole situation because hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people were saved. And this is a time for all of us in this country to remember that we were created to serve each other. We were -- God created us to take care of each other and that, when we do that, we are happier, we are more fulfilled and we can walk alongside people on their worst day and help them get through it and come out the other side knowing that we can continue to live a life that God has purposed for us. So, they're grateful for you. Several times the day after the flooding, you and Melania were on the phone with me, and I want to thank you for that. That meant the world. I was able to tell many of those folks that I had been visiting with you and that you had said whatever they need, Kristi, let's deploy it and get it down there and be helpful. And on Sunday, when the families were waiting at a church to identify their children's bodies, Franklin Graham and I called in and prayed with the families and read some scripture with them. And he was incredible in making himself available to that as well. We'll be back down there in a couple of days and continue to do all we can. But this is an unprecedented event, it really is. There's been tragedies like this around the country. But every one is unique in different situations. And the response the federal government had supporting the state through this, I'm proud of the people that stepped up and immediately came. The Coast Guard, when they came in, they had a difficult time even getting the aircraft in and landed. They had to try several times in the weather to get it in and deploy. And I think we've heard about our one Coast Guard member that was responsible for saving over 165 people, but that entire crew did incredible work. And all the first responders there did incredible work. And I know people are getting tired now, but they're getting reinforcements and volunteers are showing up. And I just want to commend the governor and his team for being the leaders. And they're so thankful that you're letting them make the decisions and manage the response like it should be, and then us supporting them with the resources of the federal government. We've already deployed dollars to the state, much like the block grants that you've talked about. So, they're grateful for that, sir.

 

Trump: There's never been a wave like this outside of the breaking of a dam. This was almost a wave that ended up being 30-feet high, more actually. Now with a dam, you can understand it. But this approached almost with that speed. When you see a dam break, it's not a pretty sight, it wipes out everything. And this is the kind of thing that built up so fast and it's happened two or three times before over the years, but not to this extent. But tell them when you met the father who was picking up the daughter's clothing and --

 

Noem: I had walked through the cabin where all the little girls died, and I had kind of fallen apart in there, but I walked out of the cabin and a gentleman was standing there and he said that man over there needs a hug. And so, I walked over to him, and I hugged him, and I said, do you work here. And he said no, my little girl was in that cabin. And he said, and I just found her best friend about an hour and a half ago, she had passed away, and he just fell apart. And so, then we just hugged and talked for probably an hour about that. But then there was another -- the grandpa was there looking for his granddaughter as well. There was a dad there of one of the counselors. The counselor was alive, but she was dealing with the fact that she had hung on to some of these girls and was trying to keep them out of the floodwaters and had gotten hit by something and had lost two of the girls and wasn't able to hang on to them and was going to live the rest of her life thinking about that moment when she wasn't able to hang on to these girls. But these parents were picking up their kids' belongings out of the mud and throughout the camp and putting them in bags. And then one of the dads said I knew 50 of these girls here. So, I knew that was her dress, my daughter's friend's dress. So, he was picking it up and putting it in a bag to return to her parents. And so, it was a -- and then the director was there, comforting everybody, who had lost his father the night before too, and he was still there trying to facilitate all of these parents grieving their children and find them. So, the strength of people is incredible. One of the things that I asked there that day was that they all have escorts or counselors when parents come in. So, from that point that when they came into the camp that they have somebody with them when they're going and looking for their children's belongings or looking for their children. And so very emotional, but also just so tragic.

 

Trump: Yeah. The relationship with Texas and the governor has been obviously very good for years, with me, but the relationship with Texas and their first responders and us with our first responders and lots of other people and we brought in a lot of helicopters from all over. We had a lot of helicopters. It was actually dangerous, a lot of helicopters up there. But they were real pros and they were responsible for pulling out a lot of people. And we got them there fast and Texas had some good ones too. But the response has been incredible and the fact that we got along so well. I don't know. I don't even think that's a political thing. But we got along so well and it was so unified. I think a lot of lives have been saved. As bad as it was, you could have lost almost double or triple. This thing was just really horrible. Well, congratulations on a great job and appreciate it. I know you're going down. I'll be going down on Friday with the first lady. We'll be taking a trip and we don't want to get in anyone's way because that's what happens. The president goes and everyone's around focused on -- I don't want anyone to focus on us, but it's possible they could have somebody saved still. You know, there's a lot of areas. It's a big area and it's probably unlikely at this point, but there could be. I mean, they're thinking there could be the possibility. But what a tragic situation. Good job and we'll see you on Friday and we'll finish out the day here. I think you've been reading a lot about -- it's a terrible topic when you talk about financial after this. But we have a big country and we've been doing very well. The tariffs, as you know, are starting to come in at record levels. Tremendous amounts of money are coming in to our country. We never did that before. We're not used to it. We only have tariffs going out. We only adhere to the rules of other nations who charge us tremendous tariffs because we were led by stupid people, or people without any business sense. And I'd like to ask Scott, you could maybe talk a little bit about how well we're doing with regard to the money coming in and the big money will start coming in on August 1st. I think it was made clear today by the letters that were sent out yesterday and today. Go ahead, please.

 

Secretary Scott Bessent: Yes, sir. We will have taken in about $100 billion in tariff income thus far this year and that's with the major tariffs not having started until the second quarter. So we could expect that that could be well over $300 billion by the end of the year. We don't agree with CBO's scoring, but for those who do, the CBO scored tariff income over the next 10 years at $2.8 trillion, which we think is probably low. And sir, under your leadership, we're witnessing --

 

Trump: And they gave us no credit during this last little, the great Big Beautiful Bill. I always use the word great. I add that to it because it really is what it is. There's never been anything like it actually. And I want to thank all the Republicans that voted for it. And I want to scold the Democrats because they're voting for tax cuts. They're voting for no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime and many, many other things far more important than that. Great health care and frankly, every Democrat should lose their election because it was purely political, the vote. They were told not to vote for it. So think of it, we got 218 to 2. And then with the Senate, we had 50 to 3. Democrats didn't vote at all, not one positive vote, with all of the good things in their economic development money, tremendous border money. Now you're loaded up on the border. And I don't think we're going to need so much of it because we had zero come in last month. So I'm not sure how much of it we want to spend. You may think about that. You may actually think about saving a lot of money because the wall's been largely built and it obviously worked. But you may want to think about that. So I think it's incredible when I watch the Democrats and they have standard lines like they had Russia, Russia, Russia. They had the laptop from hell. It all came from Russia. They make things up and they go with it and they feed it to you people, in many cases. And they said, here's the line. And I hear the new line is death. Oh, it's death. Everyone's going to die. It has nothing to do with that. In fact, we're saving our country. Death is from allowing 25 million people into our country, of which three or four are stone-cold, hard criminals. 11,888 are murderers, many of them committing more than one murder. That's death and the Democrats did that. Joe Biden did that by allowing people to come in here just totally unchecked, unvetted, open borders, open borders. The whole world was dumped into our country from prisons, from gangs from mental institutions. We have many people walking the streets, walking in areas that we don't know anything about that came out of insane asylums. They released the insane asylum population into our country. And it's amazing the job that you and Tom Homan are doing, by the way, on that. But we have to get them out and we have no choice. We have to get them out. And we are getting them out. So Pete, do you want to tell them about our great military and how well we did with respect to the bombers and the B-2? We had the pilots here two days ago and they were incredible people. Go ahead.

 

Secretary Pete Hegseth: Yes, sir. Truly a historic mission and demonstrated the skill and courage of the United States military from those B-2 pilots and families that we had a chance to meet, sir, to the fighter pilots to the refuelers to the maintainers to the air defenders who defended the base. What was demonstrated on the world stage was American military might and capability. And it wasn't just Fordo and Isfahan and Natanz that took notice in Iran. It was the rest of the world, that we have a decisive commander in chief willing to use these capabilities, which are the best in the world. As the president pointed out, no one else could have done what America did there on that night and everyone took notice of that. With the One Big Beautiful Bill, sir, we've got $150 billion additional to invest in Golden Dome and all the other weapons systems and stockpiles and ship building priorities of yours. Another month, another historic recruiting bump. It's not just the Army and the Marine Corps anymore, it's the Navy, the Air Force and the Space Force, all historically ahead of where they've ever been. So historic spirit inside the military. We had a chance to be at NATO, Marco and I, and see how the world responds to us saying it's time for you to shoulder the burden and take the lead for your continent. It only happens with President Trump leading and we're proud to be a part of what's going on at the border, sir, with now a fourth National Defense area where we're helping get to that number zero in securing the border. But that mission, Operation Midnight Hammer, reestablish deterrence. It reversed what happened in Afghanistan. You saw the debacle of what Biden allowed to happen in Afghanistan and what that did to our image. President Trump said with Operation Midnight Hammer, reestablishing American leadership and deterrence, and we are proud to be a part of it, sir.

 

Trump: And our so-called enemies were watching. They watched every minute of it. They watched. It was very few people that weren't watching, actually, but they watched every minute. It was a perfect military performance, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time. I mean, if you compare that to the same country, the hostages from years ago, Jimmy Carter -- was unfortunate for Jimmy Carter. He was a nice man. But with the helicopters going down, the sandstorms, the prisoners, they got captured, then the election and the prisoners and Reagan and all the problems. It was nothing but problems. And that was a failure and ours was not only the pilots, I mean, those machines flew for 37 straight hours. They didn't stop. They went skedaddle, you know the word skedaddle. I mean, skedaddle. They dropped the bombs and somebody said skedaddle, let's get the hell out of here and every bomb hit its mark and hit it incredibly. And as you know, the Atomic Energy Commission said it's gone. That place is gone. We had a lot of fake reporting, mostly from CNN, where the scammer writer, a writer for CNN, who should be fired, by the way. She was involved with the 51 fake intelligence agents, if you remember that. She did that story, created a story out of it. She created a story out of the laptop from hell, saying it came from Russia, but it actually came from Hunter Biden's bedroom, or worse. And just a scammer and she's still at CNN, which is pretty amazing. But we'll ask you a question about her. But they came up with this concept that maybe the attack wasn't that good. And I saw it happen right after the attack. I saw this person on CNN, I actually watch -- I like to watch the enemy. You learn from the enemy and I watch because you have to know where they're coming from. And I watched her say, Anderson, you know, I'm hearing stories that maybe they didn't hit their target. Maybe it wasn't that good a hit and they we're hearing stories. The next day it was a little more and the next day a little more. After three or four days, she was saying, you know, I don't know, I don't think it was that -- except by that time everybody knew it was hit perfectly. The evidence is in the planes, the evidence -- well, the pilots are their best evidence. But they actually came out of their plane, because they were here the other day, and they said -- it was so sad -- we did such a good job. We flew into very dangerous airspace. I'll never forget, we were in the Situation Room, and they said they have entered Iranian airspace, and everyone took a deep breath because they had more missiles pointing at them. But the equipment is so good. It's stealth, way up in the air and it was stealth. And they went right through that, and they sort of -- by the time they found out they were there, they were already gone. That was the word skedaddle, get the hell out of here. But they were right in the most dangerous airspace in the world. And they took those big, beautiful, very fast -- they're unbelievable planes. I mean they become really beautiful works of art. I always thought they sort of were cool, but now they look better than just cool. Don't they, huh? But they dropped the loads and literally they would hit. If you look at this table from here to there, they had half a refrigerator door is the way to best explain it. Take a refrigerator door, average size, cut it in half -- that was their target. They hit every single one. Then we had 30 missiles, Tomahawk, shot from submarines 300 miles away. Every one of them hit their target. It was a perfect mission. Then they came back almost 37 hours, every plane worked perfectly, the mechanics were here too. I said you've got to get the mechanics here. We didn't have any problems. If you remember, they had a lot of problems with the helicopters, but they did fly through a dust storm, which they shouldn't have done. Sometimes you say let's go back and try it on a nicer day. Dust and sand don't work well with helicopters, if you know much about helicopters, but that was a horrible embarrassment to us. Then we had Afghanistan, which I think was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. And we would have gotten out -- I was the one that got them down. I would have kept Bagram, the big air base, which right now is controlled by China, among the most powerful runways in the world. Thick, thick with concrete and steel, anything could land. And right now, there were one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. I was keeping it, outside of that we were leaving, and I would have been out faster than them, but we would have gotten out with strength and dignity. Instead that was the most botched up mess I've ever seen. They left all that equipment behind. And every year they have a parade, running down some third-rate street, with the equipment and it's supposed to be Fifth Avenue, it doesn't work. But with all that equipment that they left, they should have taken every ounce of it. I was taking every -- I said every screw, every bolt, every nail you take out of there. And Milley said, I remember one time, sir, we're better off leaving the equipment. Why? Well, it's cheaper. I said cheaper. You mean it's cheaper to leave a $150 million airplane rather than flying into Pakistan or India or someplace, or just flying it straight home, it's cheap. Yes, sir. That's when I knew he was an idiot. It didn't take long to figure that one out, but they left all that equipment, but they left their dignity behind. It was the most embarrassing moment, in my opinion, in the history of our country. Not that we got out, we should have not been there, but that we got out the way we got out with great embarrassment and death. You had 13 young people. I've gotten to know their families very well, but you had hundreds of people killed that nobody talks about. You had the other side, many people were killed, many people are walking around with no legs, no arms from, that whole thing. They left from the wrong airport. They should have left from Bagram because Bagram was a big base with hundreds of miles of fencing and territory around it. Nobody would be able to get near it and they left. So, we've done a great job and I think people are really starting to see it. They're starting to appreciate it. Pete's done fantastically. That mission was a work of art, and I have spoken to some of our perceived -- I don't know if they're enemies, but they're perceived as being potential enemies. And they essentially said the same thing, very impressive. There wasn't a thing that -- we didn't even -- we didn't lose an engine, we didn't lose -- it's just they landed, and they were cheered. But the sad thing was they were cheered and one of the pilots said, you know, we were a little concerned because when we got out, we were told that on television they were reporting that we may have missed our targets. Sir, we hit every target. That's what I do for a living. We hit every target. In fact, when I saw when we dropped, when the bombs hit, a yellow haze came over the horizon that I've never seen before, it just lit up the whole horizon brighter than the sun. It was like looking into the sun, he goes we hit our target. Because you know what that was, that was exploded. But they were a little downbeat because they listened to that fake CNN reporting, and the fake New York Times, they worked together to try and say that it wasn't perfect. They couldn't say they missed. All they could say is maybe it wasn't perfect, and you ought to fire that reporter immediately. You should fire her, a real fake. And so, I just want to congratulate those pilots. And a lot of people don't like bringing things like that up. I do; I always like confronting because otherwise the public doesn't know that you're a bunch of crooked people. But they know, they've learned, and the media has to straighten out their act. You know the media is down to 17 percent approval. You've got to do a little better than that. It's important for the country that you do better. I think they ought to make a lot of changes. I think changes are going to be made to the media. But it's hard to have a really successful country if you have a corrupt media and we really have a corrupt media and nobody really knows why. I mean, why would you want to have open borders and criminals pouring into our country? Why would you want to have men playing in women's sports, transgender for everyone? You know, you'll have to figure that out. But some of you don't. I mean, I'm looking at some people, they love the country, but I look at other people and they can't. But we're really proud of our military. It was -- and the people that maybe don't like us or want to play games with us because I think that, had you not had the situation in Afghanistan, I don't think Putin would have gone in. I think when Putin looked at how stupid and incompetent that operation was, he said, wow, this might be a chance. And we're dealing with him now, too. That's -- we're not happy with Putin. I'm not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now, because he's killing a lot of people. And a lot of them are his soldiers, his soldiers and their soldiers mostly, and it's now up to 7,000 a week, and I'm not happy with Putin. OK, any questions? Yes.

 

Question: Yes, sir, you just said that you're not happy with Vladimir Putin. Is there anything that you plan to do to act on that feeling?

 

Trump: I wouldn't be telling you don't. We want to have a little surprise. You know, one of the things we did with the attack is that -- you asked that question, I don't want to -- I didn't mean to be rude, but I'm in a rude -- because I'm looking at some of these crooked people up here. So, I'm rude, but your question was asked very nicely. But one of the things we did is we went over every fact. We wanted to get every fact straight. We wanted to have the distance straight, the number of pilots straight. Everything had to be correct because we want to be -- this was a very important mission. If we failed on this mission, it was beyond the war that, obviously, we had with Iran and Israel, a lot of hatred, a lot of years and years of hatred, centuries of hatred. People have never seen anything like it. So, we wanted to be correct with all our facts. So, you know, what I was doing is just asking, it would be great if the media would be correct with their facts, that's all we ask for. So -- and go ahead. So, finish it up.

 

Question: Oh, yes, just sort of turning back to Russia, if there's anything that you would signal about your displeasure with them?

 

Trump: Well, just -- look, I'm very unhappy with them. There's no reason for this. It's turned out to be tougher, but it's only tougher. And I will say the Ukrainians were brave, but we gave them the best equipment ever made. We gave them the anti-tank busters that knocked out tanks. I mean, you just aim them in the direction of the tank and the tank is gone. We gave them missiles, the latest and the greatest, they were able to shoot down a lot of things that would have normally wiped out -- probably would have been a very quick war. It would have been a war that lasted three or four days, but they had the benefit of unbelievable equipment. And Europe gave them too -- we gave them far more because Biden shouldn't have done that. He should have equalized it, we should have given him the same or we should have given actually less than Europe. It affects Europe much more than us, but we're in there for over $300 billion. Europe is in there for over $100 billion, but still Europe gave a lot. And I will say this, the Ukrainians, whether you think it's unfair that we gave all that money or not, they were very brave because somebody had to operate that stuff. And a lot of people I know wouldn't be operating it. They wouldn't have the courage to do it. So, they fought very bravely, but we gave them the best equipment in the world. We make the best military equipment by far, there's nobody close. You look at other equipment from other countries, it's not even close. That's why everybody wants to buy our equipment and that's why we're going to step up these tractors now that make it and they're brilliant, but they make it too slowly and we have to step them up, Pete, and let them make it at a much higher rate. Unfortunately, we have to do that. But if you look at our Patriots, if you look at our Tomahawks, if you look at our -- well, what we do with tanks is -- you wouldn't want to be driving a tank. You would feel nice and secure, but they are Javelins, they're called. And I gave them the Javelins. Remember they said, Trump gave the Javelins and Obama gave them sheets, right? They called Obama at that time, Barack Hussein Obama, if you haven't heard, did a terrible job. But that was a war that that should have never happened. And a lot of people are dying and it should end. And I don't know, we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin for -- you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

 

Question: Mr. President, Lindsey Graham has a sanctions bill on Russia. Do you want him to --

 

Trump: I'm looking at it. Yeah, no, I'm looking -- the Senate is passing and passed a very tough sanctions bill. Yeah, I'm looking at it.

 

Question: Can you sign that?

 

Trump: It's an optional bill. It's totally at my option. They passed it totally at my option and to terminate totally at my option. And I'm looking at it very strongly. Go ahead, Please.

 

Question: The Council of Economic Advisers released a new report saying that imported goods have actually decreased in price from December.

 

Trump: I know [inaudible]--

 

Question: Well, my question, the chairman --

 

Trump: With the tariffs.

 

Question: Well, the fed chairman keeps saying that tariffs are going to cause price increases. Are prices just not --

 

Trump: Chairman of the fed?

 

Question: Yes, exactly.

 

Trump: You do a better job than him.

 

Question: Thank you. Are the prices just not passed through yet?

 

Trump: No, I think what's happening is everything's evening out. You know, when we charge -- see, what people don't understand, the other countries have been charged -- almost every country charges US tariffs. We had deficits with everybody for years, for decades and we were like this big monolith that made bad deals with everybody. You know, we rebuilt South Korea. We stayed there. It's OK. We rebuilt it and we stayed there. And they pay us very little for the military. I got them to pay billions of dollars and Biden then canceled it when he came in. I said to South Korea, as an example, we give you free military essentially, very little, and I think you should pay us $10 billion a year and they went crazy, but they agreed to $3 billion. So I got $3 billion with a phone call and I was satisfied. I said, but next year we have to talk and then we had a rigged election and we never got to talk and you know what Biden did, they probably went to him and they said, listen, Trump treated us terribly and we shouldn't be paying anything and he cut it down to nothing. So that's what happens. It's ridiculous. That's the other thing, we're talking to countries about contributing to the military, not only just paying more in NATO but contributing. We have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea. We have 45,000 soldiers in Germany, 52,000 actually. And you know, that's a huge economic development for them. That's tremendous amount -- that's like having a city. That's tremendous money for them and it's a tremendous loss for us. So we're talking -- in a very nice way, we're talking to them about it. It's very unfair. We supply the military to many very successful countries. I mean, South Korea is making a lot of money and they're very good. They're very good, but they should be paying for their own military.

 

Question: President Trump, can I ask you a question about Jerome Powell as well, and then a question to the commission --

 

Trump: A question about what?

 

Question: Jerome Powell. And then I have a question for the attorney general. Jerome Powell, who you've been pressuring to lower interest rates, he's facing accusations of lying to Congress which is a potential crime, about the --

 

Trump: Then should resign immediately. We should get somebody in there that's going to lower interest rates.

 

Question: Do you want Congressional--

 

Trump: Why don’t you call for his resignation?

 

Question: Do you want Congressional Republicans to investigate --

 

Trump: OK with me. I think he's terrible. Look, we're paying, I call him too late, t-o-o, too late, like too tall Jones for the Dallas Cowboys, right? Too late. He's always late, but he wasn't late with Biden before the election. He was cutting him like crazy. It didn't help too much, did it? But he was cutting them like crazy before the election with Kamala and Biden. He was trying to get them in, I guess. I don't know. He was recommended by somebody that worked for me. I like you better.

 

Question: Can I ask the attorney general a question too?

 

Trump: Sure.

 

Question: Your memo and release yesterday on Jeffrey Epstein, it left some lingering mysteries. One of the biggest ones is whether he ever worked for an American or foreign intelligence agency? The former labor secretary who was Miami US Attorney Alex Acosta, he allegedly said that he did work for an intelligence agency. So could you resolve whether or not he did? And also, could you say why there was a minute missing from the jailhouse tape on the night of his death?

 

Attorney General Pam Bondi: Yeah, sure. If I could--

 

Trump: Could I just interrupt for one second?

 

Bondi: Sure.

 

Trump: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking -- we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time? Do you feel like answering?

 

Bondi: I don’t mind answering.

 

Trump: I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration, but you go ahead.

 

Bondi: Sure, sure. First, to back up on that, in February I did an interview on Fox and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said -- I was asked a question about the client list and my response was, it's sitting on my desk to be reviewed, meaning the file along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that. Also to the tens of thousands of video, they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein. Child porn is what they were, never going to be released, never going to see the light of day. To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you on that. And the minute missing from the video, we released the video showing definitively -- the video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was showing he committed suicide and what was on that, there was a minute that was off the counter and what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was every night, they redo that video. It's old, from like 1999. So every night, the video is reset. And every night should have the same minute missing. So we're looking for that video to release that as well, showing that a minute is missing every night. And that's it on Epstein.

 

Question: Mr. President, on tariffs again, August 1st you said is the deadline. What incentives do countries have to negotiate? It seems that deadline keeps moving. It was April 2nd, now it's --

 

Trump: We didn't move -- no, no, it's always been August 1st. That's when we're paying it. A statement was put out today and I put it out just to make it clear, it wasn't a change, it was August 1st. We don't change very much. You know, every time we put out a statement they say he made a change. I didn't make a change, clarification maybe. No, August 1st, they pay and everybody pays, everybody has to pay and the incentive is that they have the right to deal in the United States. If they don't want to, they don't have to pay and they don't have to deal here. But if they want to buy and make a lot of money and sell in the United States, they have to do that. You know, if you go back and look at some of the good presidents, our country was the wealthiest, proportionately the wealthiest from 1870 to 1913, it was an all tariff country. We didn't have income tax. That came in in 1913, we had tariffs and we had so much money we didn't know what to do with it. I mean, we had a couple of presidents that were very, very strong. McKinley, I guess more than anybody, but he was the Tariff King, but he was very, very strong. It was sort of sad. He made a fortune for this country, became very rich and then Teddy Roosevelt went out and vice president and he spent the money and they said Roosevelt was a great president. And let's say he was a great president, but the money was paid by McKinley with tariffs. Tariffs are charged by other countries at levels that are ridiculous. And you know, I call those other countries and every one of them is willing to give us everything now, by the way, just so you know. Sir, we'll charge you no tariffs, nothing. We'll give you everything. We'll give you access to our markets. We'll give you everything. Is that a correct statement, Scott?

 

Bessent: Yes, sir.

 

Trump: Howard, would you say that's a correct statement?

 

Secretary Howard Lutnick: Exactly correct.

 

Trump: It's like FG they just don't -- because they're very spoiled because for years they ripped us off and we didn't have a president that understood it or secretary of treasury or secretary of -- a lot of different secretaries are involved. But certainly, Commerce secretary was not doing their job. I don't know about Kelly, she's small business. We'll keep it that way, OK? Her small business is bigger than almost all big businesses when you add it all up. But no, they are very respectful of our country, but the incentive is that they have the right to do business with us. Without that, they don't have the right to do business. And that will be OK too. Yeah, go ahead.

 

Question: In the 24 hours, will we hear a flurry of deals?

 

Trump: Yeah, we have a lot of them going out, but the deals are mostly my deal to them. We're picking a number that's it's low, we don't want to hurt them, and fair. We're picking a number that's lower than -- in most cases lower than what they charged us. But it's amazing when you've paid all this money for years and they get one president that's a little bit different and a little tougher on this subject and they're willing to drop everything they've been charging us for years and years. I mean, we have countries going we will have no -- you don't have to pay any tariff to come in and do business. They're giving us total access to their countries. They gave us no access to the country. They say you cannot go into our country, OK, good. Now it's -- we will give you total access and you don't have to pay any tariffs. But please don't charge us tariffs. And we don't like that deal. So, the letters I send out are -- we have made some deals, we can make a lot more deals. It's just too time consuming. It just makes it more complicated. And we can do things over the years too. You know, we're going to -- we're not hard line, but it's about time the United States of America started collecting money from countries that were ripping us off, ripping us off and laughing behind our back at how stupid we were. OK? Thank you. In the yellow.

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Question: On the tariff issue -- so, you've talked about India coming, but then a couple days ago you issued a new tariff threat to members of the BRICs countries for -- if they align with anti-American policies.

 

Trump: 10 percent charge.

 

Question: That would be India, Brazil--

 

Note: [Crosstalk]

 

Trump: That's right, they have to pay 10 percent if they're in BRICs, because BRICs was set up to hurt us. BRICs was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar as the standard -- take it off as the standard. And that's OK if they want to play that game, but I can play that game too. So, anybody that's in BRICs is getting a 10 percent charge.

 

Question: Is that immediate, sir?

 

Trump: Yeah, pretty soon.

 

Question: Or is that if they engage in some behavior?

 

Trump: Well, if they're a member of BRICs, they're going to have to pay 10 percent tariff just for that one thing, and they won't be a member along. I thought BRICs was -- you know, I said this about a year ago and it largely broke up. But you know, there are a couple that hang around, but I thought it largely broke up. BRICs is not -- in my opinion, not a serious threat. But what they're trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard, and we're not going to lose the standard at any time. If you have a smart president, you will never lose the standard. If you have a stupid president like the last one, you would lose the standard. You wouldn't have the dollar as you know. And if we lost the world standard dollar, that would be like losing a war, a major world war, we would not be the same country any longer. We're not going to let that happen. The dollar -- you ever hear the expression, the dollar is king, The dollar is king, we're going to keep it that way, OK?

 

Note: [Crosstalk]

 

Trump: And I'm just saying if people want to challenge it, they can, but they're going to have to pay a big price. And I don't think any of them are willing to pay that price.

 

Question: Thank you, Mr. President. Are you optimistic about reaching a tariff deal with the European Union soon?

 

Trump: Well, the European Union has been speaking to us, Ursula and the whole group, and they've been very nice. They treated us very badly until recently. Now they're treating us very nicely. It's like a different world actually. They've treated us very badly. They were among the toughest to deal with. Actually in many respects they were much worse than China. Look at what they do to our companies, they sue Apple, they sue Google. $17 billion they got from Apple on a lawsuit that they didn't have a case. They have judges that are European Union judges, and they ruled -- they take so much money away from our country in terms of that, in terms of other things that they do, they're very tough. But now they're being very nice to us and we'll see what happens. We're probably two days off from sending them a letter. We are talking to them. I just want you to know a letter means a deal. A lot of people said we've got 200 countries. We can't meet with 200 countries. We have a few trusted people that know what they're doing, that are doing a good job, but you can't do it. You have to do it in a more general way. But it's a very good way. It's a better way. It's a more powerful way. And we sent him a letter. You read the letter. I think it was well crafted. And mostly, it's just a little number in there. You'll pay 25 percent, 35 percent. We have some at 60, 70 percent. Those are ones with massive -- where we have massive trade deficits because they've treated us very badly. But I would say in every case, I'm treating them better than they treated us over the years. Don't you agree with that? I could have done much -- I could have been much harsher. I don't want to do that. We want to have relationships. But in every case they treated us far worse than I'm treating them. I'm treating them very good. I could go higher with the tariffs, but I don't want to hurt them. That's why when you just read and you come up with the number, it's so incredible that prices are actually going down. Just so you know, when I got in everyone said, oh, eggs, eggs are going through the roof. That was the first. I was in for about four days, and they started screaming at me about eggs. I said that's Biden's problem. I didn't know about eggs, but eggs went up about five times. You did a fantastic job, and we ended up shortly -- in fact, for Easter, they said go out and buy plastic eggs, you can't use real eggs. Well, we bought 200,000 eggs for the White House, for the Easter egg hunt that we have at the White House and there were eggs. We had the price down and now the price is lower than it was before. We did a good job with eggs, but we did a good job with groceries. Prices are down in this country, a big part of it's oil, the oil. You had a couple of places last week you had a $1.99 for oil, for gasoline. Nobody thought they'd see that. I want to get it lower if I can. But we've done a good job. You've done a very good job. Do you want to say a couple of words about that, you and Chris about what's happening with energy?

 

Secretary Doug Burgum: Well, absolutely, but I would say on the pricing side, President Trump, the fact that you've endorsed and supported a policy of energy dominance, that sends a signal to the market that we're going to have more supply. You talked during the campaign about inflation being a country buster. You've broken the back of inflation in six months, among all the other things you've accomplished.

 

Trump: We have no inflation.

 

Burgum: And we've got -- and heading into the 4th of July, these were the lowest gas prices at the pump in four years. And again, for Americans, this is like hundreds of billions of dollars that stay in their pockets because we lowered the price of gas at the pump. But when we lower the price of energy, it lowers the price of food, it lowers the price of the clothes you wear.

 

Trump: It’s the biggest thing.

 

Burgum: It’s the biggest thing.

 

Trump: It's like a big tax cut. When you get energy down every $0.50 is like a massive tax cut and we've gotten it down much below that. You know, we had great energy, great low prices, everything else when the election turned over. I'm being -- I'm trying to be nice about it. It turned over shockingly, but nevertheless it happened. Energy started going up and it went up really bad and then it went back to the Trump policy. The problem was they didn't know how to do that, and he lost it. He lost that sucker, that big sucker was out of control and his energy prices went way up and that's what caused it, but it was also stupid spending. They spent money like -- they used to use the term drunken sailors, but I won't use that term, although it is very descriptive. I won't use that term. I refuse to use it. But they spent money at levels that nobody had ever seen before. And trillions and trillions of dollars wasted on the green new scam, the greatest scam in the history of our country. Other than maybe Russia, Russia, Russia, that might have been. But the green new scam was the single greatest scam in the history of our country and continues to be. But it's weakened badly. It's hobbling along because people are finally -- they're finally getting it. But they spent trillions of dollars on the green new scam, getting nothing for it, devised by a couple of young people that weren't even good college students, not even good students, check out their marks.

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Trump: No, not for CNN, not for CNN. Go ahead.

 

Question: The last jobs -- in the last jobs report, Mr. President, in the last jobs report, manufacturing jobs actually lost 7,000 jobs. When will the investments that you've been talking about have an effect?

 

Trump: Well, they're building the plants now, about seven have started. We're going to have hundreds started within a short period of time. Lee Zeldin, who may be the most important man in this room, I'm sorry, but he's the one that gets the permits. Where is Lee? He's the one that has to get the permits for the plants and the factories and permits that used to take five years, he's getting in record setting times. AI, we're leading China a lot in AI. And if we go with this, you know, I'm allowing the plants to build their own electric. They'll be -- I'm allowing them to become an electric utility so they can produce their own electricity, because we need double the electric -- to be successful with AI, which is the biggest thing now, we need double the electricity that we have, which is hard to believe. We need even more than that. And they're building plants with their own electricity substations. They don't have to use the grid, and anything they build extra, they're putting into the grid. So, we're supplying the grid with brand new electric sources. And you know, it's funny, when they came to see me, they never even asked for that. I told them about it. The reason they didn't, they thought that was an impossibility -- you're not allowed to build your own electric. These -- the massive investments that are being made in building electricity for their plants and they're going to have, I think, Doug, a lot of electricity left over and that electricity is going to be passed into the grid and give us no more -- like, you look at California, they have blackouts and brownouts every week. They're totally out of control. They have a really incompetent governor. Where's Chris? Is he here? Do you want to speak to the subject?

 

Secretary Chris Wright: Yeah, I think a huge thing in the One Big Beautiful Bill, Mr. President, because of your leadership, is the ending of these subsidies as you call them, the green new scam that saves our country $0.5 trillion over the next 10 years. But American taxpayers are paying twice. They're paying that money, $0.5 trillion in subsidies and they were paying more expensive electricity price. If you subsidize something, you should at least lower the cost of it. But in this case, we were subsidizing something and paying more for it. So the One Big Beautiful Bill had two huge things, ending wasteful spending. Wind, solar and batteries combined are three percent of US total primary energy, three percent for $1 trillion, another $0.5 trillion coming. It's just not a good investment hurting our businesses, hurting our consumers and the One Big Beautiful Bill also unshackled oil, gas and coal development in the United States onshore and offshore. Secretary Burgum has been working tirelessly on how by getting the government out of the way private businesses will develop more resources in the United States, lowering costs for American consumers and making much better leverage for the United States to help our allies abroad and reduce the power of our adversaries abroad. So just a huge win on the energy front all around and I thank you for your leadership.

 

Trump: We're setting records now on energy and there'll be nothing compared to what they'll be in about a year from now, but we're setting records. And wind is a very expensive form of energy. It's very bad for your beautiful surroundings, the plains and the valleys and the birds are dying all over the place. You know, the whole thing is a disaster. They're almost exclusively made in China, not that I have anything against China because I don't. I have a great relationship with President Xi. But I asked him, how many wind farms do you have? He makes them, but they don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you, very, very few. And wind is tremendously expensive and is very ugly. And if you own a house that's inside of a windmill, your house is worth less than half and people -- and you hear noises. And interestingly, in New England, you probably read where for 50 years they had two whales washed up, 50 years. And last summer, they had 14 washed up. Now, I'm not saying that's the wind farm that was built, but maybe it is, right, probably is. It's tremendously expensive and it can only be done with subsidy. I know a man that's in that business and one of the biggest in the world actually, runs a company that builds these stupid windmills. And he said, I hate the business because it's the only energy where you need subsidy. He said, energy shouldn't need subsidy. You should make money with energy, so wind. The other one is the solar, those big solar fields, they're taking our farmland. Our farmers are like mortified by it. They hate it. It's very, very inefficient and very ugly too. Probably better than a windmill, but you go around and you see all these things that are three miles long by three miles wide and you say what the hell is that, and it's a lot of plastic from China. It's plastic, black plastic from China. No, we want to be smart. Look, China right now is building 58 coal-fired plants, 58 big ones. They have 62 on the books to build. We've reintroduced clean, beautiful coal because you can do a lot with coal now, clean, beautiful coal and natural gas and all of the other things that we have. But we don't want wind and we don't want solar because they're a blight on our country. They hurt our country very badly and smart countries don't use it. Solar sounds good, I will say and I like -- on occasion you'll see a roof which is made of solar brick, but it's a smaller use. We need the kind of thing that's going to fire up our plants and it's not going to be wind. It's very intermittent, as you probably know, but they've spent a fortune. They've spent trillions of dollars on this stuff and I'll just give you one other story. A friend of mine is a very successful guy. He went back to see his mother in Minnesota. He hadn't seen her in a long time and he wasn't back for 10 years, which isn't a nice story. I mean, you don't see your mother for 10 years. He's got some difficulties, which I know the guy, he does have some difficulties. He's very successful, but probably not the nicest person. It was actually longer than 10 years. But he went back and he told me he wanted to go and look at the valley. There's a valley in Minnesota that he thought was so beautiful and hadn't seen it in a long time. He was driving along the road and said, oh, my -- I'll use the word gosh, oh my gosh. He said, oh, oh. He said, it looked like a junkyard. You had 159 windmills. They were all over the place. Some were old, some were newer, different companies, different shapes, different sizes, different colors, many of them were terminated. Terminated meaning closed. You can't take them down because the environmentalists don't let you bury the blades because they're made out of a fiber they say is bad for the earth. So they want you to put them up, but they don't let you take them down. But many of them were turned off. He said it looked like a junkyard. Go to Palm Springs, California and take a look at that pile of junk and you go into a wealthy neighborhood, before you get there, you have to ride through hundreds of windmills that are -- most of them are turned off, they're rotting, they're rusting, they're 30 years old, 20 years old and they have a very short life. You know, those windmills have a very short life, especially the ones that are in the nice, salty Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, where the salt just gets onto that steel and decimates it. No, it's a horrible, horrible thing for our country and I speak out. It would be nice to say wind because it sounds so good, doesn't it, Doug, wind, wind, but it's not. It's these ugly machines and they're all made. You got to see, some are a little taller, a little shorter. They're made by different companies. They have different stocks. They have different blades, they have different everything. It is so horrible. And if you look at smart countries, they don't use it. Smart countries don't use it and we're now a smart country. We're a brilliant country. We're not smart, we're brilliant now. We're going to be a brilliant country. We have to be because we have to catch up for some really stupid people that did a bad job. Yes, Brian.

 

Question: Yes, Mr. President, I've got a quick comment, some feedback as a native Texan, someone that I grew up bringing my kids to a camp very near the affected camp now. Thank you on behalf of Texas. I've gotten hundreds of messages that want to thank -- they say, if you're in the cabinet room, you can tell the president and his team, on behalf of Texans, thank you so much for the quick response and the loving and the hugs. I saw that, that you gave. Two quick questions.

 

Trump: I saw a Palestinian Senator. His name is Schumer. He's a Palestinian. No, he's a Palestinian. He's become a Palestinian. He's abandoned the Jews, but I saw him say, it's Trump's fault. Yeah, yeah, that's right, it's Trump's fault. He was actually -- do you ever see Jon Lovitz, the liar, where he goes, yeah, yeah, I went to Harvard, that's right. This was Schumer, he goes, yeah, yeah, it's Trump's fault, that's right, it's Trump -- I actually saw that stupid guy try and blame it on me and I said, man, that's a tough one to take. But his career is limited because I hear AOC is going to beat him and she's no bargain either, by the way. Go ahead.

 

Question: Let me just say, that's an example of an America first team effort to get this country back. So that's what America First looks like for the viewers watching us at home. But two questions, it looks like we have a rogue judge, an Obama-backed rogue judge that is attempting to block the funding to Planned Parenthood, which the Big Beautiful Bill cuts off the funding to Planned Parenthood. Any plans to challenge that?

 

Trump: Go ahead.

 

Bondi: Absolutely. Yes, we're on it. We're on it. And I texted, I believe I talked to yesterday, Secretary Lutnick and Secretary Bessent, I reached out to you to let you know that we were on it in the Big Beautiful Bill.

 

Question: Wonderful.

 

Trump: I let her handle that question. Did you notice? I said, go ahead, handle that.

 

Question: Toss it to her. Then my second question for Secretary Rollins, you did an amazing press conference today in front of the Department of Agriculture. You talked about the Farm Act and the need to get China out of our country, owning farm land. For the viewers at home that might have missed that, can you recap what that means for national security to make sure we can grow our own food?

 

Secretary Brooke Rollins: Well, thank you, Brian. Sir, if you don't mind.

 

Trump: Go ahead. Please.

 

Rollins: Yes, this morning Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Noem and Attorney General Bondi and I had a press conference at the USDA. I just happened to have a chart in case it came up. But obviously, the Chinese owning of farmland in our country is a massive national security issue. And for the media, you can see the yellow is where all of the farms have been purchased over the last number of years and the red is around all of the military bases where that farmland has been purchased. So this is a massive national security issue. The press conference this morning included three of our greatest governors, as well as Sarah Sanders from Arkansas, Jim Pillen from Nebraska, and Bill Lee from Tennessee. The states have begun taking a leadership role to ban the purchasing of China farmland. Obviously, Congress needs to step up and catch up and we're going to be working alongside of them as well. We had some of our members, great members of Congress there. But it is time, and I think that this morning was symbolic of many things, the first of this administration working every day to effectuate President Trump's leadership and unequivocal support of America First. But second, just how close we are as a cabinet. I don't know in any other administration that you'd have four cabinet members at the USDA on a Tuesday morning when it's about 110 degrees outside with the sun beating down on us talking about, sir, your vision. So, I think it was a great day. It was just the start. There's an executive order coming and some other things coming behind that. But protecting America's farms isn't just about protecting our farmers, it's also about national security. So, that's what we discussed this morning.

 

Trump: I do want to say that I think we have had a really good relationship with China lately and we're getting along with them very well. They've been very fair on our trade deal, honestly. And I hope we're going to have a great relationship. It's a big, strong powerful country. We're more powerful than they are. We have much better military equipment than they do, but we are getting along with them very well. I'm getting along with President Xi very well, we speak often. And with all of that being said, and I understand what you're saying, but I think we're getting along with China very well.

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Question: Mr. President, you want to send more weapons to Ukraine, as you said last night. Last week, the Pentagon paused some shipments of weapons to Ukraine. Did you approve of that pause?

 

Trump: We want to put defensive weapons because Putin is not treating human beings right. He's killing too many people. So, we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I've approved that.

 

Question: So, who ordered the pause last week?

 

Trump: I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?

 

Question: So, who ordered the pause last week?

 

Trump: I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?

 

Question: I think that’s a question [inaudible]

 

Trump: Go ahead.

 

Question: Mr. President, on immigration. The Secretary of Agriculture did say this morning that undocumented workers would not be covered by any amnesty from working on farms. You had said maybe that the ICE folks won't go after those folks on farms. So, which is it?

 

Trump: No, no, there's no amnesty. What we're doing is we're getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program. Do you want to explain that, please?

 

Rollins: Yeah, this morning we talked about -- of course, this was a top-of-mind question -- this morning we talked about protecting the farmers and the farmland, but obviously this president's vision of no amnesty, mass deportation continues but in a strategic way and then ensuring that our farmers have the labor that they need. Secretary Chavez-DeRemer has been a leader on this. Obviously, this comes out of the Labor Department, but moving toward automation, ensuring that our farmers have that workforce and moving toward an American workforce. So, all of the above --

 

Trump: We've got to give the farmers the people they need, but we're not talking amnesty. Laura, do you want to say something?

 

Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer: Yeah, thank you, Mr. President, on this. Thank you, Secretary Rollins. How important this is never to displace the American worker. What the Department of Labor is doing is focusing on what the law entails now, being more modernized, more streamlining, to work through the H programs. We're going to have a concierge approach to that where we have developed a new office to answer the need of our farmers, ranchers and producers and not to displace the American worker and follow within the law now. And that does not include an amnesty program at all. And we've seen that working and will continue to have that roll out. On the other topics that we've somewhat talked about, the jobs numbers, Mr. President, four months in a row, we've seen those jobs numbers increase. That's an exciting time for our manufacturers, that was asked earlier. We know it's going to take some time, but through that deregulation process that Lee and I are working on as well, the Department of Labor has rolled out 63 new deregulations that we're going to be moving through. In the first Trump administration it was successful with over 30. We've just rolled out 63 new ones in order to double down on those manufacturing companies to let them know that we have signaled through this process that we will assist them in getting the workforce that they need. It's an exciting time. That One Big Beautiful Bill, that was the signal to my former colleagues in Congress to get this done. It's been an important time. I spent time on the ground visiting seven states in nine days prior to that bill being passed because it was the most pro-worker piece of legislation that we will ever see really in this country right now. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security, that matters to the American worker because we don't want to take their money and give it back. We want them to keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets currently and that's what they're excited about. And as I move forward with this tariff talks, I heard a company, orthopedic company in Indiana say to me, for the first time since you have taken office, Mr. President, their increase in their bottom line by 8 percent since these tariff talks have happened. Not one company has said the President is not doing a good job. These tariff talks are working; they're feeling it on the ground. The media has told a false story because what's happening on the ground is positive and that's what we're seeing in these jobs numbers. So, I really, through the Department of Labor, to come in behind all the secretaries and build this workforce is going to be key to the American worker. So, thank you for what everybody did this last week. The One Big Beautiful Bill is a doubling down of this, and we're going to see these workers start to grow. And that apprenticeship program is going to be working. We'll have that million apprentices across the country.

 

Trump: That's right, it's going to be. As you know, we're building plants all over the country now, which you weren't building any plants four years ago, you weren't building anything. But those plants, when they open up, it's going to be -- you'll see numbers like you haven't seen ever. I don't think in history, you'll see -- you'll never see numbers like what we're going to see in the very near future. Many of them are building the plants, some are just starting right now. You know, it's a brand-new administration. And they wouldn't be here except for two things: November 5th, the election; and the tariffs. And frankly, I guess the election was more important because of the tariffs. I mean, another person wouldn't have done this, but they're coming in because of the tariffs. They have to -- they're not going to pay 25, 30, 40, 50 percent, 70 and 100 percent. And we'll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals. We're going to give people about a year, a year and a half to come in. And after that, they're going to be tariffed. If they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country, the drugs and other things into the country, they're going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 percent. We'll give them a certain period of time to get their act together. But they were all here, now they all left, they went to other places because we allowed -- people that sat in this room allowed it to happen and I don't allow it to happen. The people in this room don't allow it to happen. So, we're going to be announcing pharmaceuticals, chips and various -- a couple of other things, you know, big ones. We did steel, as you know, they're 50 percent. We did aluminum 50 percent. Lumber just came out.

 

Lutnick: Why don't you announce copper?

 

Trump: And we did cars -- cars, and now today we're doing copper.

 

Question: What would that be on -- the section --

 

Trump: I believe the tariff on copper, we're going to make it 50 percent.

 

Lutnick: 50 percent.

 

Question: Any breakthroughs?

 

Trump: I'm sort of glad he didn't question it because I sort of -- just sort of thought what would that be? That was a quick one. I didn't have much time, but he agreed with me. That's why he's Howard. [Laughter]

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Question: On Gaza with the prime minister? And there's reports that you're meeting with Netanyahu again tonight.

 

Trump: Yeah, I am -- he's going to come over again tonight. We're talking about Gaza, mostly Gaza right now. He's been very unfairly treated. I think what they've done to him in Israel is very unfair having to do with this trial. You know, he's a wartime prime minister, had an unbelievable outcome and I think he's been treated very unfairly. But he's coming over later. We're going to be talking about, I would say, almost exclusively Gaza. We've got to get that solved. Gaza is a tragic -- it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to get it solved. Steve, could you talk on that, please?

 

Witkoff: We're in proximity talks now and we had four issues and now we're down to one after two days of proximity talks. So, we are hopeful that by the end of this week we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire, 10 live hostages will be released, nine deceased will be released. We're meeting at the president's direction with all the hostage families to let them know. And we think that this will lead to a lasting peace in Gaza.

 

Trump: And you're doing a good job. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. A lot of hate, this is long-term hate, but we think we're going to have it solved pretty soon. Hopefully with a real solution, a solution that's going to be holding up.

 

Question: And this is, I think, the first cabinet meeting since Elon Musk has not been a special government employee, not here anymore. He's now saying he's going to create a third political party. Are you worried about the impact that that could have?

 

Trump: No, I think it will help us. It will probably help. Third parties have always been good for me. I don't know about Republicans, but for me.

 

Question: Are you second guessing any of the cuts that DOGE made since --

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Trump: No, look, we cut hundreds of billions of dollars with DOGE. We could have done it differently. I would have done it differently a little bit maybe, but it was something that we saved a lot of money. You can always second guess. I guess some of the people in this room maybe would have done it slightly differently, and some would have done it exactly the way it was done. But it was dramatic and it was important and we found a lot of things, like billions of dollars given to people for environmental protection, where they had $100 in the account, like in Atlanta, Stacy. And then you had another one with $20 billion here and $20 billion here and $2 billion here and $15 billion. And Lee, you might want to mention just a couple of those things we really got because of DOGE.

 

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin: At the Trump EPA, the One Big Beautiful Bill was filled with many big, beautiful wins for the taxpayer. It delivered a sledgehammer to the green new scam, billions of dollars rescinded. So it's a big deal for the American taxpayer who sees money go through passthroughs that are filled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest. They see unqualified recipients. They see reduced agency oversight and they want accountability with their tax dollars and they got it. So in the example of the Stacey Abrams connected NGO, they received $100 in 2023. They got $2 billion in 2024. They had to complete training on how to develop a budget that was put into their grant agreement. They, out of nowhere, started paying a CEO $800,000, a COO $450,000, 22 people making over $150,000 out of nowhere. This is tax dollars. So money go through pass throughs, through other pass throughs, through other pass throughs and we lose oversight over it. And you see that it's going to force Biden officials. It's going to former Obama officials. It's going to Democratic donors. And we're not here saying we want to take money from a left-wing NGO and give to a right-wing NGO. We want to give it back to the taxpayer. This is about us being good stewards of American tax dollars without any apology or regret. That's why President Trump was elected last November, because there are a whole lot of people who maybe they hadn't voted Republican in a long time. Maybe they didn't even vote for President Trump the first time around in 2016, but they're regretting that vote from 2016 and they were making it right in 2024. So the One Big Beautiful Bill gave us the tools to rescind billions of dollars more. We're seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars that'll get wasted per electric vehicle as an example of this money that was going through it. They gave $50 million to a group called Climate Justice Alliance. They say that climate justice runs through a free Palestine. The Biden EPA gave $50 million to a group that says climate justice runs through a free Palestine. We say that if you're going to spend a dollar in the name of remediating an environmental issue, then spend the dollar on remediating an environmental issue. We say that we can protect the environment and grow the economy. We want to help grow more baseload power in this country. So why is it that it took this long for this team to get assembled, to be able to fix the mess that we inherited? But gosh, we love showing up at our jobs every single day, first thing in the morning because all day long, we get things done for the American taxpayer and Congress did its part last week by passing One Big Beautiful Bill to deliver this accountability and to cut off the green new scam. So maybe it's a bad day for Stacey Abrams. Maybe it's a bad day for all those well-connected Democrats getting paid off. But you know what, God bless America because at the end of the day, President Trump is here, JD Vance is here and the greatest cabinet ever assembled to deliver that much needed and highly demanded accountability.

 

Unidentified: Well said.

 

Trump: That was a very good answer.

 

Unidentified: Well said.

 

Trump: And that's from the heart. That's from the heart.

 

Question: [Inaudible] Ukrainians have asked your national court to go after Russia for using toxic chemicals in the fight. Germany and the Netherlands have had intelligence saying that what does US intelligence believe and what do you believe about the use of chemical weapons? And would you agree that that's the case [Inaudible]

 

Trump: Well, I'd ask John, maybe to discuss it, if you'd like, John?

 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe: Well, Mr. President, obviously chemical weapons, if it's documented and its used, it's illegal, it's against all international laws of armed conflict and treaties. And obviously I can't share in this room with this audience the intelligence that I can share with you privately, but obviously you're not going to stand or allow for any violations of international law by anyone.

 

Trump: That's right. That's right. Thank you. Could I ask Sean to -- Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, former -- great Congressman, very popular, decided to go out and make a couple of bucks. He made a lot, and he got bored with that though. He likes serving people better, the people. And could I ask you to just discuss a very important subject to me? And that's the modernization of our equipment and airports so that planes aren't crashing into each other and bad things don't happen. It should have been done many years ago. We were going to do it and then the election precluded that, unfortunately, but we're doing it now. Could you tell them where we are?

 

Secretary Sean Duffy: Yeah, if I could start with Newark. You guys all covered what happened in Newark. We had outages for a couple of -- 32nd outages a couple months ago. We have, in two months, Mr. President, it's historic speed, laid new fiber lines for communication and tested those in the next month. So those new lines for the Philly Tracon that controls the Newark airspace, they're up and running lightning fast speed.

 

Trump: Very good.

 

Duffy: June was the most on time June ever in the history of Newark for air travel. So that's going incredibly well. By the way, we shouldn't have dealt with this because Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg had moved the center from New York to Philadelphia. They didn't test the lines. They didn't do the work, which is what brought us all these problems. But in the Big Beautiful Bill, we got $12.5 billion. This is a historic investment in air traffic control. And so what the money is going to allow us to do is move from move from copper to fiber all over the country. So new copper lines. We think we can do that in a year and a half to two years. We have a radar that dates back to the 1950s, some of it from the 60s and 70s. We get brand new radar across the country as well. We have some infrastructure money to build Tracons and centers, the enroute centers that control the traffic across the country. So this is a massive new start to rebuild air traffic control. And again, this is dilapidated. Americans think that their government takes care of them and makes investments that are necessary to make the country work. And for 30, 40 years, the investments weren't made. And so under your leadership and direction, we are making those investments. And per your direction, right now, we are interviewing what we could call a general contractor or an integrator, one company to -- it's a massive project. The FAA is not qualified to manage this kind of a project. So we are now going through the process of finding who that one company will be to manage the whole project. We'll interview those companies together and make that selection. So we'll write one big, beautiful check to one beautiful company that will be responsible for this whole bill. But if I could just make one last point, this is not enough money. We're going to need more, but this is a massive new start, the biggest investment. We'll need some more money on top of it, but a great start from the Big Beautiful --

 

Trump: It’s a start.

 

Duffy: It’s a start.

 

Trump: It's very important to us. And just to cover that, there have been accidents and my pilots, I would often hear them say, oh good -- and they would use a different system, a different country to land in New York. They'd used the radar and other things from a different country. I said, what's that? Oh, our system is so bad. And I knew that. We were all set to start and Buttigieg came in and what they did was so crazy because they hooked copper into fiber, into steel, into all -- they had all different systems. They had hundreds and hundreds of contractors, different contractors for different airports. They spent billions of dollars. And they made the system worse, because you can't hook copper into fiber. It doesn't work that way. You just can't do it. It's not doable, but they tried to do it. It didn't work out too well. And in the end, it was just a complete disaster. We want to have one great company. Now, Raytheon is going to bid. IBM is going to bid. We have five or six bidders that really are good and do this stuff. And we want one -- I tell -- because I know about overruns. I look at the railroad out in California headed up by one of the worst governors in our country, who I used to get along with actually. But he's just -- when you lose 25,000 houses and you would have had your cities burned down. If we didn't step in, Los Angeles would have been burned to the ground. But you look at that, and I said, I really know how to build. And you got to have one guy, one contractor, one great one, whether it's IBM or Raytheon is good. But you have four or five that are really great and they're all bidding against each other. But you don't want to have one doing the wire and one doing the digging and one doing the demolition and one. And then they're all saying they all blame each other because they're saying they were late and therefore you have to pay me millions of dollars more money. I know the system so well and we're going to have a great company do the whole thing. We're going to get a fantastic price, maybe we'll get them -- very big and very strong and maybe we'll get them to make a contribution toward it, toward getting it done at the right price, but we're going to have a great system. When we finish, we will have the best system on earth and done by one of the two or three best companies. There are only a few companies can do this. This is not -- but if you would have seen what this other group did. They were going crazy. They had -- I think I heard 3,000 contractors, and then when it all came together, guess what? It didn't work; it's a disaster. So, we're going to have, in a pretty short period of time, it's going to take us about two years to build it, and we'll have a contract given out probably over the next couple of months. We have some great bidders, some great companies that want to do the job. You're going to have great air traffic control.

 

Duffy: Can I just make one last point on this. So, the last administration signed a contract with an American company to fix the copper to fiber and that contract was a 15-year contract. The system is failing today, but that's how idiotic and incompetent the last administration was. And under your leadership, we're saying, listen, we don't have time. We don't have 15 years, we don't have five years, we have to do it right now. And so, the president always talks about on time and on budget. We have embraced that; we are going to be on time and on budget. And by the way, you mentioned a train out in California, stay tuned for -- probably give us five days and you'll have an answer on what's going to happen with the $4 billion that we potentially have invested on a train that's going to go nowhere. It's going to be $120 billion that will never connect San Francisco to LA. Again, the last administration wasted so much money on projects that never work. If you're going to have high speed rail, you're going to invest billions, we should actually have high speed rail in America, not boondoggles that fund political friends and allies and family members.

 

Trump: They have from San Francisco, inside of San Francisco to inside of Los Angeles, it should have never been built because airplanes do it better and you could drive it. You could drive it, no problem with driving it. The roads aren't even crowded. So, they were going to do -- this is somebody's idea, somebody got paid off a lot of money and they started it. It was going to cost a very small amount of money, and it ended up costing literally hundreds of times what the original. And now what they did is they said well, going into the city is too big a deal. So, we'll leave it 25 miles short of the city. So, now they're leaving it. They're not going to finish it really -- it's not the same project. So, now they're leaving it outside of San Francisco and outside -- short of each, they just want to get it done. And it's -- I've never seen cost overruns -- you know, if you have a cost overrun of 10 percent, you should be ashamed of yourself. 20 percent you should not do any more jobs. This is a cost overrun of 2,000 percent, something like that. It's unlimited, and it's not finished, and maybe it will never get finished. And I told Sean, look at it from every standpoint. But we don't want to -- you know, we have federal money going into that and it's like throwing it out the window. So, whatever you can do to stop it.

 

Duffy: $15 billion and not one track has been laid. $15 billion and we're 16 years into the project, not one track.

 

[Crosstalk]

 

Question: On New York, you're the most prominent Republican in the country from the city. What do you want to --

 

Trump: Anywhere else too. [Laughter] I think I can say. I don't want to be a wise guy. Perhaps I -- maybe, Marco?

 

Question: How do you want Republican voters in the city to vote in the upcoming mayoral election? Should they vote for Eric Adams? Should they vote for Sliwa? Should they pick someone else?

 

Trump: Look, number one, you have a communist running, and you shouldn't vote for him. He's a disaster. He's leading, he's got the Democrat nomination because that shows you where the Democrats have gone. He actually wants to take over the grocery stores of John Catsimatidis, who's a great guy. A rich guy, grocer, does a good job, wants to take over. He actually called me the other day, he's concerned his stores are going to be taken from him and they won't be run like John runs and, believe me, he runs a good operation. But he actually said he wants to run his own grocery stores. Now this is a man who's not very capable, in my opinion, other than he's got a good line of bullshit and he's convinced them to go with him. Now as you know, Cuomo, who does have capability, is running but he got knocked out and now they're running as a -- you have Eric Adams, the current mayor, you have Cuomo, and you have Curtis Sliwa. And Curtis runs every four years. He seems to be a fixture on the running scale -- but, you know, it's -- I'm not getting involved. [Laughter] But I can tell you this. I used to say we will not ever be a socialist country, right? Well, I'll say it again, we're not going to have -- if a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places where we have to -- we could run DC. I mean we're looking at DC. We don't want crime in DC. We want the city to run well. Susie Wiles is working very closely with the mayor and they're doing it right. I mean, in the sense that we would run it so good. It would be run so proper, we'd get the best person to run it and we'd run -- the crime would be down to a minimal, would be much less. You know, we're thinking about doing it to be honest with you. We want a capital that's run flawlessly and it wouldn't be hard for us to do it. And we've had a good relationship with the mayor and we're testing it to see if it works. But New York City will run properly. We're going to bring New York back. I love New York. You know, I love New York for a long time. Then we had a bunch of crooked people in there. You have an attorney general who's a total stone-cold crook, New York state, Letitia James, a total crook. All they do is want to go after political opponents. They do whatever is expeditious for them. She's the one that took out Cuomo because she wanted to run for governor. And then she ended up getting 1 percent of the vote. She polled at 1 percent, she dropped out, went back to attorney general. You have a lot of crooked things going on in New York. We're going to straighten out New York. It's going to -- and maybe we're going to have to straighten it out from Washington, but when I see a Communist who has actually gotten a Democrat -- pretty much gotten the Democrat nomination, they also went to that new form of voting which is a beauty. You go in there in third place, you come out in first. That form of voting that they have gone to, you know what I'm talking about, it's not too good. We're going to do something for New York. I can't tell you what yet. But we're going to make New York great again. Also, we're going to make it great again with the country. What we've done in this country in the last six months, nobody has ever seen it. And I told the story, the king of Saudi Arabia, I was over there. They gave us $5.1 trillion between Saudi Arabia and UAE, Qatar, three stops $5.1 trillion coming into our country as an investment, biggest investment ever made. And it's all going to good stuff, I mean all real big, good stuff, energy projects, big, big things. But they all three told me essentially the same thing -- we thought your country was dead and now you've got the hottest country in the world. We're, right now, riding the hottest country, we are and you can all be proud of it. We're the hottest country. This is the hottest country in the world. There's nobody close, made hotter by some great pilots and great machines that nobody else has, those great, big, beautiful machines. They rode those machines right into the toughest territory and nobody knew what the hell happened. And then they hit their targets perfectly and it was complete and total obliteration. And that's why that war ended, Steve, they told me that's why the war ended. The war ended when they saw that it was over, and we're very proud of it. But we have the hottest country in the world right now from a country that was close to dead. And if I didn't win, if you would have had the other person win. We all know who she is, whether it was she or Biden, they're the same. He may have been more competent than her and that's hard to believe, right? But if you had that ideology in, I don't believe you would have had a country anymore. I think you would have had a country that was broken up, but we had a dead country. Now we have the hottest country in the world and everybody knows it and everybody said it. Mr. Vice President, do you have anything to say?

 

Vice President Vance: Well, thank you, Mr. President. I just want to say that I'm very proud of the whole team. I think everybody has worked together. You see Pete and Marco and Steve working on some of the diplomacy, Kristi and Pam working on the border. We just have a really, really solid team and we've done a lot of good work. And in particular, I want to congratulate the White House staff led by the president on getting the One Big, Beautiful Bill passed. I was personally skeptical, sir. I never told you this, but I was skeptical we'd be able to get that thing done by July 4th. We did it because we worked together and we worked very well. So, it's an honor to be a part of it, but I'm really proud of you guys for doing a great job.

 

Trump: The beautiful thing about it -- it had something for everyone. Most people said it had to be broken into seven bills, it's so big. The problem was that some of those seven have nothing for anyone, but they had to be done for the country. You know, sometimes you have to do things for the country that aren't necessarily popular. We had a couple of them and that wouldn't have worked. So, the One Big Beautiful Bill, many people said it could never be approved, too big, too everything. There's too much. But it had something very big and very important for everyone and it's great for the country. And remember, the Democrats have come up with a false narrative, you know, just whatever. It's just a line that they send to everybody and they print -- I think in the case of this, it's death, death, everyone's going to die. I heard that, everyone's going to -- just the opposite. Everyone's going to live. What we're doing is saving our country and making it much bigger, better and stronger than it ever was.

 

Secretary Marco Rubio: Well, it's just going through a list here, Mr. President, and I think the vice President's pointed out to the great team you have and all these achievements that have happened domestically. But you think about it, under your leadership, we prevented an end to the war between India and Pakistan. NATO is now at five percent for the first time ever, the highest numbers ever, a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, a 12-day war that ended with an American operation that we're the only country in the world that could have done, hopefully pretty soon a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the entire Middle East and the infrastructure of it has the potential now to change because of Syria and Lebanon, and it hasn't even been six months.

 

Trump: That's right.

 

Rubio: It hasn't even been six months. So it's a great testament to your leadership and this team.

 

Trump: Well, thank you very much and you've done a fantastic job. Could I just ask Linda, she's involved in so much, she's so talented and so good and she's working on a couple of little things like Harvard, who has given $5.5 billion over a short period of time. We caught them on that one. It's crazy, but you're working on so much. You want to bring education back to the States. How are you doing?

 

Secretary Linda McMahon: Well, absolutely and thank you for the opportunity. I think I'm on the Big Beautiful Bill, what we saw with school choice, did this finally on a national basis at the state level, but there are opportunities now for scholarships, more and more of them for kids who are in failing schools. It's going to be a big turnaround. I think one of the biggest accomplishments we had over the past week was University of Pennsylvania with the Title 9 ruling that Lia Thomas was stripped of her title. Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlon and other women who have stood so strong against men in women sports. And when you put out the executive order, I mean, that just solidified and gave them the opportunity. So those are a couple of really, really big wins and thank you for that opportunity.

 

Trump: And how are you doing with Columbia and Harvard?

 

McMahon: We're negotiating hard. I think we're getting close to having that happen. It's not wrapped up as fast as I wanted to, but we're getting there.

 

Trump: Thank you. And you've done a fantastic job. Thank you very much.

 

McMahon: Thank you, been a good team around this table, a lot of people to help with that.

 

Trump: That's right. Thank you very much. Maybe just in closing, we spent a lot of time, effort, very little money on this room. This is called the Cabinet Room. It's been here for a long time and it had some pictures that were -- not many of them and not very good ones. And I actually spent time in the vaults. The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures and artwork and I picked it all myself. I'm very proud of it. That's Andrew Jackson, the great Andrew Jackson. That's a gentleman named and we call him President Polk. He was sort of a real estate guy. People don't realize he was one a one termer, but he was a very good president. And I'm not sure I should be doing this, he actually gave us the state of California. He was the one. He was the one that hooked it up. So I'm not sure, maybe he won't be there for long. But if you notice the frame is the exact same size almost as the other one, as Andrew Jackson. So that was a part of the reason too, I have to be honest. But Polk was actually a very good president, who's got the same frame that I needed, OK? And up here you have the original George Washington right behind the light and then you have Dwight Eisenhower who was a very underrated president, built the interstate system. And he was the toughest president, I guess until we came along. But I don't mind giving up that crown because I don't want to be too tough on it, but we want to be humane. But he was the toughest president on immigration. He was very strong at the borders, very, very strong. And sometimes you can be too strong, though. He was strong on the borders and during a certain period of time, they were so strong that almost every farmer in California went bankrupt. And we have to remember that we have to work together and we have to remember that, but he was a very good president and a very good general and a very good president. And I thought he deserved a position somewhere on this floor. And then you have -- this is very exciting to me. He was not a Republican to put it mildly, but he was a four-termer. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt and have you noticed, there were a lot of ramps outside. We have ramps. People say it's an unusual place for ramp. It was because of him. He was wheelchair bound, but he was an amazing man. It's an amazing portrait and we used to have him in the room, a different portrait and it was a terrible portrait. It was almost like it was done by a child. And I used to say, I can't believe that he would have approved of that portrait of himself and I was in the vaults and looking at things. I said, what's that? And we have some great curators here. We have six curators at the White House. They have two for paintings. They have them for furniture. They have them for different things. I guess cost is no object. OK? Cost is -- maybe I'd have one, but that's all right. But we have six and they're very talented, though. And he said that's a picture of FDR. I said, really, let me see it. They took off the wrappings, very well-preserved. And I said, that's the picture they've been looking for years. That was the picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and I said, oh, wow. And likewise that fit C frame. Frame wise, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work if you have -- I want to be nice, but it doesn't work if you have a big frame, a little frame, but it's like perfection. I'm a perfectionist. The mirror was down in the vaults also. I said, where is this from? And it's a very old, very storied mirror, beautiful. We put that up. And then over there is Honest Abe Lincoln and that picture was in his bedroom. And we thought that this would be a very important place because this is where wars are ended. I'm not going to say wars are declared. I'm going to say wars are ended, OK? We'll be positive. And that's the picture of Abe Lincoln from his bedroom, sat in the bedroom for many, many years. That was his favorite picture of himself. And the Lincoln bedroom is very famous. You remember when Bill Clinton had it and he rented it out to people. OK? We don't do that, but it's an incredible room. And we took that picture from his bedroom. That's Abe Lincoln. And then over here, you have John Adams and this was -- they were the first occupants of the White House, 1800. And John Quincy Adams, Mrs. Adams, they were the first occupants. So we have them looking at each other and in between their stare is Abraham Lincoln trying to make peace. And that picture was in a room that I have that was not important like the cabinet. I gave it up. I said, I have to give it up because that's one of the greatest pictures in the White House. The White House is tremendous art. And the Oval Office, when we're there, we'll go over that. That's really been something. Then we got the drapes. We got the whole thing. We got new drapes. We got new -- wasn't a big expense, very small. And we took some of the chinaware and silverware and trophy where, they call it, from the vaults. And we had it cleaned up, hadn't been shined up in a hundred years. Some of this is stored in the vaults for over 100 years, amazing, over 100 years. Many of the pictures that were put up in the Oval Office as an example, those two as an example. So he was president -- they moved in, in 1800 and he won the election, I believe in November of 1800, John Quincy Adams, and we thought that would be a -- he was considered to be a good president and he was the first occupant of the White House. So it sort of made sense and I loved the frame of those pictures. Look at those frames. I'm a frame person. Sometimes I like frames more than I like the pictures. And we have the flags of the Marines and Space Force now has its own Flag. I'm very proud of Space Force. But the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, the whole thing. And Coast Guard is right there, never forget the Coast Guard. They do a great job. So we have the flags throughout the office and it's really become a quite a beautiful place. I don't want to tell this to -- Marco pointed it out. I was going to leave the clock. So as president, you have the power, if I go into the State Department or Department of Commerce or Treasury, if I see anything that I like, I'm allowed to take it. Do you believe this? So I'm in Marco's -- I see this gorgeous clock, grandfather clock and there it is. I said, Marco -- he didn't know about this. I had to read him the rule and regulation. I said, Marco, I love this clock, look at it, it's beautiful. He said, what clock? I said, the clock that's in the other room is incredible and nobody gets to see it there. A little more -- I'd love to take that clock out and put it in the cabinet room. He said no, are you serious? I said Marco, I have the right to do it, Marco. And he said all right, what the hell. So, that's his contribution to the Cabinet Room. But by the way, it's an incredible clock and, you know, it's an important room. So, you may see it again, maybe we'll move it back someday -- anyway. So, that's -- and that's pretty much it, but it really is great. Here we put -- you know, these lamps have been very important actually, whether people love them or not, but they're -- if you see pictures like Pearl Harbor and Tora, Tora, Tora, you see movies about the White House and where wars are being discussed. Oftentimes, they'll show those lamps or something like those lamps, something that looks like them, probably not the reals because I don't think they were allowed to. This is a very important room. This is a sacred room, and I don't think they made movies from here. You never know what they do, but they were missing their medallions. See the medallions on top. They had a chain going into the ceiling and I said you can't do that, you have to have a medallion. They said what's a medallion, I said, I'll show you and we got some beautiful medallions, and you see them. They were put up there, makes the lamps look better. So, we did these changes. And you know, when you think of it, the cost was almost nothing. We also painted the room a nice color, beige color, and it's been really something. The only question is will I gold leaf the corners. You could maybe tell me, my cabinet could take a vote. You see the top line moldings. And the only question is do you gold leaf it because you can't paint it. If you paint it, it won't look good because they've never found a paint that looks like gold. You see that in the Oval Office, they've tried for years and years. Somebody could become very wealthy, but they've never found a paint that looks like gold. So, painting it is easy, but it won't look right. And the question is whether or not we should gold leaf it. Does any -- Linda, do you have an opinion?

 

McMahon: I’d gold leaf it.

 

Trump: You like it the way --

 

McMahon: No, I'd gold leaf it.

 

Trump: You’d gold leaf it. Who would gold leaf it? Could I -- raise your -- how about would you gold leaf it?

 

Unidentified: [Inaudible] McKinley, one of your favorite presidents.

 

Trump: Well, McKinley was a great president who never got credit. In fact, they changed the name of Mount McKinley, and I changed it back because he should have been -- the people of Ohio were very -- he was the governor of Ohio. The people of Ohio were very happy when I did that. They were very insulted. They took the name of Mount McKinley off. That was done by Obama a little while ago and I had to change it back. I changed it back. He actually was a great president. He was a president -- he was the tariff -- the most, I guess, since me. I think I'm going to outdo him, but he was a tariff president. He believed that other countries should pay for the privilege of coming into our country and taking our jobs and taking our treasure. That's the way he explained it. They took our jobs and they took our treasure and for that they should pay. And he made them pay, and he built a tremendous fortune. In fact, in 1887, they had the Great Tariff Committee was set up in 1887, because our country had so much money we didn't know what to do with it. And they set up a committee of, as they called them, elites -- a term that we have to change because I think a lot of the people that are elites aren't elite. I think the people that aren't elite are elite, so we're going to have to maybe switch that around somehow. But they had a committee that was set up to spend the money because it was such a large amount of money at that time. It was -- nobody had seen anything like it, and it all came in from tariffs and people didn't pay tax. There was no income tax system. I told you that went -- that came back, in 1913 that came back and lived well for a while and then you had the Great Depression. And then later they brought -- they tried to bring back their tariffs. But the whole thing was, you know, this was after the depression. It was one of the great misconceptions as people like to say. Oh, but it was during the -- no. The country had a Great Depression and then after the depression, after -- long after it started, they brought back tariffs to see if they could save it. But it took them really 25 years, wouldn't you say, about 25 years to get out of the Great Depression. A lot of people don't understand that. But I thought it would be interesting for you to get a little view of this room. This is a very important room, very powerful room, great room. And we've done similar but even beyond this in the Oval Office. We brought back pictures of some of the great presidents, many of them were in the vaults for over 100 years. Originals all, beautiful, beautiful things. And rather than sitting in a vault downstairs for 128 years, I thought we should display that. And we did that I think in a really good way. We've gotten very high marks. But it's interesting, people walk into that room and they look around the room. They don't even want to talk to me, they want -- they could -- they could look at it for hours. It's funny, when people come into the Oval Office, it's such an incredible -- it's a sacred place. When people come into the Oval from -- the biggest people in the world, presidents, prime ministers, kings queens in one case, at least, queens and the biggest business people in the world. They walk into that office, and they always say there's no place like this in the whole world in terms of the power. I mean it's beautiful and all, but there are other beautiful offices. You have businessmen that have offices that are full floors of office buildings with floor to ceiling glass and they walk in there and they say there's no place like this anywhere in the world. There's no place, and what it represents may be more than the physicality of the room itself. So, it's an honor to have you all, media. It's an honor to have you. I just want to say we have a fantastic cabinet. Every one of them is a star in my book. And if they're not, I'll let you know about it. [Laughter] I'll throw them to the wolves, I'll throw them to the wolves in two seconds because our country comes first, right? But I just want to thank you all for being here. It's been a lot of fun. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

 

Unidentified: Thank you.

 

Trump: Thanks everybody. Thank you press. Thank you press.

 

Question: [Inaudible]

 

Trump: I'll tell you -- I'll tell you some other time. Thank you.

 

Question: [Inaudible]

 

Trump: Yeah, I will. I will. Are we talking about next week?

 

Transcript courtesy of CQ Factbase