TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Hosts Republican Senators in the Rose Garden for Lunch, 10.21.25

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President Donald Trump: Hello, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you. What a friendly group this is. No Democrats are here, right? Well, I want to thank everybody. This has been a labor of love. You know, we took over a building that was not properly taken care of. It just wasn't. It's a very special building and we are taking care of it. This was grass. And when you have a news conference -- and this was going on for many years, but everybody would just sink into the mud. It was extremely luxurious grass, especially when it was raining, because you'd go back -- you'd go down about five inches into the mud. And when we had a press conference here, all the press standing back there, they'd be cursing me. The women would be lifting up their shoes, saying, you've destroyed my shoes.

This is terrible. So we got a stone that's the exact same stone and color as the White House itself because we wanted the friendly feeling of that light color. And it reflects the sun and it keeps you cool even in the summer, and we've had press conferences. We finished it about a month ago. This is, as you see over here, the Presidential Walk of Fame. And we had this long wall with half windows because that used to be a swimming pool on the other side of the wall. That was the swimming pool where Jackie would say, I hear women inside, are women inside? Quite a famous. I'm not saying anything. This was a part of a movie and the Secret Service said, no, ma'am. There's no women in sight, ma'am. I'm sorry, ma'am, you're going to have to move along.

But I hear women inside. No, ma'am. You'll have to move along, ma'am. So that was the famous swimming pool. Now it's even worse. It's for the media. They covered the pool up. They covered the pool up and now it's for the media and I think we have a small representative group. I don't think they allowed the rest of them. I don't -- I can't believe it. What happened? They're all on the other side of the wall. Can you believe it? Because this is supposed to be sort of a private event. And there is no such thing in politics as a private event. Lindsay, you learned that a long time ago, right? The great Lindsay Graham, doing fantastic -- you're up 34 points, Lindsay.

Lindsay Graham: Thank you.

Trump: That's not bad. I'll tell you, it's not bad. So we did the Presidential Walk of Fame from the great George Washington all the way to -- well, I think we have to rate him above me. So he's less than great, less than George. Somebody went up there, they say, you're the third best president in the United -- this was on television, third best. And they said, who are the first two, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. And I got extremely angry at this man. You know, you can't -- it's going to be -- it's going to be tough to beat, Mr. Senator, it's going to be -- John. It's going to be very tough to beat Washington and Lincoln, but we're going to give it a try, right?

Hey, they didn't put out eight wars, nine coming, all right. We put out eight wars and the ninth is coming, believe it or not. So I just want to say, it's great to be with you. And when we're finished, later on, we're going to have a little quick lunch. And they do great food at the White House. And this is used sometimes for evening where we have -- we've had some incredible people for the evening and some of the big foreign leaders have been coming. And most excitingly, on the other side, you see the -- the fence and the wall, we're building a world-class ballroom. You know, for 150 years, they've wanted a ballroom here. We don't have a ballroom. We have a little cocktail area, but we don't have a ballroom. The -- the East Room, it's called, is a very small cocktail area.

It holds about 88 people if it's -- if it's tight. And we said -- I said, if I do this again, I'm going to get a ballroom built and we're putting up our own money. The government is paying for nothing. You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back. You hear that sound? Oh, that's music to my ears. I love that sound. Other people don't like it. I love it, Josh. I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. In this case, it reminds me of lack of money because I'm paying for it, so it's the opposite. But it's going to be one of the most beautiful ballrooms anywhere in the world and it's going to be able to take care of tremendous things -- when you have, as an example, I'm going to see President Xi in two weeks.

I'm going over to South Korea. We're going to meet in South Korea. We're going to talk about a lot of things. They want to discuss the fact that they're paying 157 percent tariff. It's a little -- a little higher than they thought. And we're doing very well. I think we're going to do well in that negotiation. We've done well, as you know, with Japan, with South Korea, with Europe. The European nations got together, we made a deal and it was all based -- without the tariffs, you could have never made the deal. I'll tell you what, tariffs equal national security. Remember that, tariffs equal national security. You got to remember that.

And they also equal wealth for our nation because we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in a very friendly manner, given to us by nations that used to take it from us. And they used tariffs on us. We never used it on them because we were foolish. We were led by people that weren't business people. But it really does, it equals national security. And I wouldn't have put out -- I mentioned eight wars, nine coming. Of the eight, five were based solely on trade and tariffs. India, Pakistan were going at it. Two nuclear powers and serious nuclear, seven planes shot down. They were ready to go. And I called them up, I said, you go to war and we're not doing a trade deal.

And they said, well, what does one thing have to do with the other? I said, it has a lot. You're nuclear powers and if you do it, we're not doing a trade deal. And 24 hours later, they called me, we have decided not to do it. We stopped the war. We stopped a potential disaster, a nuclear disaster because of trade. And it's been really amazing. But the tariffs have made us a wealthy country. They've given us tremendous defense. They've given us things that we can do for other countries, very positive. But again, really, it's -- it's national security, it's national defense and they are so important and it's incredible that presidents, for the most, part didn't know how to use them, when to use them.

If you go back, you'll see some of the presidents that were the most successful were believers in tariffs. And I even see foreign countries now that we are doing very well with, taking ads, don't go with tariffs. They're taking ads. I saw an ad last night from Canada. If I was Canada, I'd take that same ad also. But they're actually on television taking ads. But I do believe that everybody is too smart for that. We have a very, very big and important case coming up. We should win the case based on the legal merit. We should also win the case based on all of the things I just said, but we're a wealthy country again.

Last week, as you know, they were -- they found $31 billion. They came to see me, sir, we found $31 billion. They said, we don't know why. I said, was this a good find or a bad find? It was a good find. It was a plus 31. We used to finding 31s, right, for the last 30 years. I said, check the tariff shelf. Well, those tariffs haven't kicked in. Yes, they did, they kicked in two months ago, check it. He comes back two hours later, sir, you were right. We have an additional $31 billion, billion, not million, Lindsay, billion, that we just found from tariffs. They kicked in earlier than we thought. You were right.

We're a wealthy nation again and we're a nation that can be secure. We're a nation that can start paying down our debt and with tariffs, we're the wealthiest nation ever in the history of the world. Without them, we've got a slog, we've got a slog. But remember this, other nations, including China, Japan, European nations, they used tariffs against us for many years. That's why we owe $37 trillion. That's why. But they used tariffs very successfully against us and we had presidents that never fought it, but now you have a president that does fight it.

So I just want to welcome you to with the incredible Rose Garden, it's just an incredible place. It was done -- we did it, brought it back to health. It was in very bad shape actually and we brought it back to health. First Lady Melania did a fantastic job on it, the surrounds and everything. It's all brand-new wiring -- you know, underneath there's a lot of wire, a lot of things. Everything brand new, everything beautiful. The only thing we did is we had to get a hard surface here because nobody could use it because of the grass. So, I just want to welcome you. And I hope you're going to be here a lot. We're going to use it for meetings. We're going to use it for press conferences.

Now we can use it, it was unusable before and now we can use it. But everything that you see was redone, all of this was redone and the whole White House is being redone. Some of you came through what called -- they called the Rose Hole, they call it different names, but you probably noticed, I don't know if you came through this door. Did you notice the white marble floor that was put there. That was made out of Home Depot tiles about one foot by one foot. They were all broken, about 30 years old, and I replaced it with book matched marble paid for by your friend President Trump. It's like -- it's amazing how people like it when you say you paid for it. When I say I paid for it, they say, oh, I love it, but it really -- they did a beautiful job, the great, great talents.

They're very talented marble people I have, and they replaced it with beautiful Paradiso marble and statuary marble and it's really, really beautiful. I want to thank the outstanding leadership team, and you really do have that. Majority Leader, John Thune, who's been my friend. He really, really has done an amazing job. Thank you, John. Thank you. Done an amazing job. I didn't get to know John as well in the first term and I've gotten to know him very well over the last nine months, John, and you're doing a fantastic job. Thank you very much. Really great. Majority Whip, John Barrasso, an outstanding man. Thank you, John.

Thank you. Great guy, too. Conference Chair, Tom Cotton, he loves that military. He loves it. He loves the military. Policy Committee Chair, Shelley Moore Capito. Shelley, thank you very much, Shelley. Vice Chair, James Lankford, very good. James, thank you. And you know, we have everybody but one person here. You know, everybody showed up. I figured you'd have like -- I'd say 40 would have been a good number, right? We have everybody; we're just missing one person, you'll never guess who that is. Let me give you -- he automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it's good politics. It's really not good politics.

He's an automatic no, but I don't know. Look, if he wanted to come, I'd probably let him come, right. I'd let him come, begrudgingly, but we'd let him come. And National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair, an unbelievable guy, Tim Scott. You know, Tim, I shouldn't say it because it's so -- I don't know if it's good or bad. But Tim ran and he was very effective and very good. But he was -- on the debate stage and everything else, he was good just because he's good, but he wasn't as good as they thought he was. And when he got out of the race, he endorsed me almost immediately. And I used him as a surrogate. And I wasn't sure if I should, because you know, sometimes I want a total lunatic to get up and fight for me. And Tim is a really good person.

So, I wasn't sure and I put him on the stage and he ripped the heart out of everybody. He was so brutal; he was so unbelievable; turned out to be absolutely one of my best surrogates. And it includes a lot of you people that were here, you were all surrogates. But Tim ripped these people apart. And after watching two or three times, then I wanted him all the time.

Right, Susie? I said I want Tim Scott, get up there, but he was so good. And I said to him, Tim, when you fought for yourself, you were much different. When you fought for me, you were a tiger, you were like unstoppable. You were. It really was -- you all saw that. What's the difference? He said I've never liked selling myself and I love selling somebody that I really do believe in. I really believe in you, and I just felt that way.

And it was so nice the way he expressed it. And I want to tell you, you are a champion, you are a winner and congratulations. Thank you very much. I never love telling that story because I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad story, but I'm telling you, you are an amazing guy and you fought for me so hard, and I really appreciate it. You got to be my number one choice, Tim. So, something happened. I appreciate it, and you're doing great doing what you're doing right now. I also want to thank the entire Senate Republican Conference for your tremendous work on confirmations. Boy, did we have a couple of weeks, huh? We had some -- we got -- I signed like 150 of them, and I didn't use an autopen by the way, I signed them.

You know, when you're signing these important -- like a general getting approved from three star to four star and all of these different things and big confirmations and, you know, big stuff, you really have an obligation to actually sign it, I think. You probably noticed right there number 46 we put up, right? We put up a little bit of an autopen, we have 46, we have 45, we have 47, that's -- it's very interesting. Yeah, 46 is an autopen, it's up there, it stays up there. People like it. It's probably gonna stay up there for a long time, it's true. And I know you're looking into that and, by the way, the autopen person said he never spoke to Biden.

He worked the autopen, you're not allowed -- you're not allowed to do that. So, if you're looking at anything, just remember it. And remember, they treated us very badly. They treated us very, very badly. So, I think you're allowed to just report the truth, including the confirming of my cabinet much faster than first time. I mean we went so fast, and I give John Thune and all of you credit for that. It was amazing. All of a sudden, I was calling John -- John, I've got to get him approved, come on, John, you can -- because I was getting like one every two weeks. And you know people, they left their job, and they left everything, and it looked like they were -- All of a sudden, it was like an avalanche.

They walked in, James and James, my double James, I call them, they walked in and they had like so many of them. I said you've got to be kidding. Is this like -- are you for real? Right, James? John Thune did his job and you got them all done. And you have all those people out there working now and instead of being very upset with the fact that we couldn't get them approved quickly. So, I really appreciate it. You used a method that I wish you could use on US attorneys. You know, I have 10 US attorneys who are phenomenal, phenomenal, a Harvard or Yale, a this, a that all top. And the problem is they're not going to ever be confirmed, I guess. I put them in, they'll be there for three or four months, whatever it is, and then they have to leave.

Because anytime you have -- as you know, anytime you have a Democrat Senator, not even two, just one, they'll say because of the time we're in we're not approving that person. We're not approving, they never do, they won't approve and therefore, because of Blue Slip, I have to tell the person after three months, I'm sorry, you'll have to leave and I put somebody else in. And I've had Democrat Senators say the only one we'll ever approve is a Democrat. This is not constitutional. And you really -- I hope you can look at that Blue Slip thing because I have 10 people that are phenomenal and they're going to have to leave office. Highly educated, top of their class, everything, and they're going to have a mark on their career that they were a US attorney for three months or four months and then they had to leave.

And that's so unfair, it's unfair to the public because the public voted for me by -- in a landslide and I'm supposed to be picking the US attorneys, and this goes for judges also, but actually more so even for the US attorney with the Blue Slip. So, I have these phenomenal people, many of them, young, but truly fantastic people. And they're wondering what's going to happen in another three, four or five weeks. They're going to have to leave office. I think it's a shame and I hope you can do something about it because I'd like to tell those people, you know, we put you there and you're not going to have on your resume for the rest of your life you were there for four weeks or six weeks and you left like you got canned.

So, I hope you look at that, very important. And after your pivotal changes to the Senate rules last month, as a result, this is what you did, the unprecedented obstruction by the Democrats. We've confirmed more than 175 public servants, people that are phenomenal, to key posts and that's just been over the last couple of weeks. It's an unbelievable thing what you've done, John, all of you together. So, working closely with me and House Majority, the Republican Senate also gave us the largest working-class tax cut in American history. And you passed the Laken Riley Act to throw illegal alien criminals out of our country. You passed the Genius Act and the Take it Down Act with the support of our wonderful First Lady.

She got -- by the way, she got actual support from the other side. It was bipartisan. I think Rand didn't vote for it again. I think it was only Rand. You had bipartisan support other than maybe Rand. But another one I'm going to ask you to vote for, and it's in the House now and I hear it's doing well in the house, James. It's Kate's Law. A young lady named Kate Steinle. I remember it so well, probably eight or 10 years ago now, in San Francisco. She was holding hands with her father on the San Francisco pier, looking out into the water.

This beautiful -- everything was beautiful, but the person wasn't beautiful that did this. And this was an illegal alien that came into our country five times, was thrown out four or five times. They don't even know, but a lot. And came back and shot her through the head. And she went down and she looked at her father, daddy, daddy, something happened, something happened and she immediately passed away in his arm. And I mean, you can imagine. It was so sad, such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful person. Her father was destroyed, you know, virtually destroyed and they passed a -- they wanted to pass what they call Kate's Law. And it's now again in Congress, and I hear we're going to get it passed in Congress. And when it gets up to the Senate, I hope you guys can pass it. And basically, very simply, it says that if you're an illegal alien and you come in and you get thrown out, if you come back and get caught, you have to spend 10 years in jail.

Very simple, very simple. If they would have had that, Kate Steinle would be alive today. That was a big event at the time. If you remember, Bill O'Reilly, for those of you that like Bill, I think -- I like Bill, but he was the one. He was -- he devoted his life to that law, trying to get it passed. I think it's time that we pass it, so that if you get taken out of the country and you come back illegally, knowing that this law is in existence, you go to jail for a 10 year period. And it's going to keep the repeat offenders from coming in. It's going to really keep them from coming in. Senate Republicans have already voted 11 times to get our government back and open for business. We have record business. We're going to be -- I think by the time I had my -- I hit month number 12, I think we're going to have $20 trillion of investment.

We're over $17 trillion right now. As an example, President Biden had less than a trillion for four years. We're going to have $20 trillion in less than 12 months and we're over $17 trillion right now. So it's the largest -- it's the largest amount in our country by far, by many times. That's in our country. But here's the one, it's the largest amount in the history of the world. There has never been a country that's had anywhere near $17 trillion, or it will be $20 trillion, and it's going up fast. A lot of it's because of tariffs, because they're coming in because they don't want to pay tariffs. In other words, they make their product in a certain country and they used to just send it in here and there was no charge, absolutely.

Now, if they have to pay a 20 percent, 30 percent, 50 percent, 100 percent or two percent tariff, they say, well, it's better if I build my plant in the United States. It always amazed me for -- you know, I did this first term. We had the -- we had the greatest economy in the history of our country in first term. We had COVID and we did a good job with that. That was a -- that was a curse for every country in the world. It was terrible. But we had the greatest economy we ever had. But if you remember, I started the tariffs, but I held it off because it wouldn't have exactly been good at the time to tell France -- you know what they were going through.

You know what's Spain was going through and Italy was going through -- that by the way, we're going to charge you tariffs. But I had started the process. I was all -- we were going -- the country was doing good and I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China. I put the full tariffs on China. Biden left the tariffs because he couldn't -- it was too much money, but they gave so many exceptions that they were essentially meaningless. In other words, he has tariffs, but you don't have to pay if you look at somebody the wrong way. You don't have to pay. So they didn't pay very much. But with me, they were paying hundreds of billions of dollars. And again, I have a great relationship with President Xi. I expect to be able to make a good deal with him and he'll make a good -- I want him to make a good deal for China, but it's got to be fair.

For years they were making $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion, $700 billion and we'd be making nothing. It was a one-sided -- honestly, we built their military. We built China's military with the money that we lost for so many years getting ripped off. So now we're going to have a fair deal and I think we're going to have a very successful meeting. Certainly, there are a lot of people that are waiting for it. And maybe it won't happen. Maybe it won't happen. Things can happen where, for instance, maybe somebody will say, I don't want to meet, it's too nasty. But it's really not nasty, it's just business and we're going to -- we're going to do a good job representing you people and representing the people of our country. Unfortunately, in a craven and pointless act of partisan spite, Chuck Schumer, who I've known for a long time, and the radical left Democrats are holding the entire federal government hostage to appease the extremists in their party. And they are extreme. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. It's -- they're extreme and you know what, we had a landslide election.

We won the popular vote by a lot. We won the swing states, all seven. Remember, they said, oh, if Trump could get three swing states, he'd be -- and, well, I didn't get three, I got seven. We got all seven by a lot, by record numbers. We won the Electoral College, 312 votes. They said it's very hard for a Republican. It's harder for a Republican. Although now I think we've swapped it. I think it's now harder for a Democrat. Because if you see what we've done with the Hispanics, with the Black workers and Black men, and recently a poll came out with Black men and women are doing so well. You know, they want security. They don't want to have their city destroyed.

Women in Chicago, beautiful Black women walking around with red MAGA hats because they don't want to be mugged and shot and everything else. And then you see a Democrat get up and tell you how safe it is in Chicago. Do you know they've had, in a fairly short period of time, 4,000 murders? This is over a short period of time, 4,000 murders. And they had a holiday where they had 28 people killed and almost 100 shot. And then you listen to this guy, Pritzker. I've known the family for a long time. They threw him out because he was no good and he became governor. He's got money through the family and he didn't make -- he's got money through the family.

But they threw him out. He became governor. I said, I wonder how he's going to do. It's -- it's a crime palace. It's a shame. And you know, what we did in DC is unbelievable. You people, you can walk down the middle of the street -- Mr. Senator, you can walk down -- you can have your wife meet you at the restaurant and she's not going to be accosted, shot, beat up, raped. It's unbelievable how bad it was. It was one of the worst in the country and now it's -- it's stone-cold -- I don't say the word perfect, but it's pretty damn close. And you know, they used to have -- they would average more than a murder a week in Washington, DC. This is just before we got here, a murder a week.

Think of that, the capital of -- in my opinion, the capital of the world, they come from Iowa, they come from Indiana, they come from Florida, you call up the parents, I'm sorry, sir, your son has been shot and killed. We have no crime here now. We have no crime. And the National Guard has been unbelievable, the job, unbelievable. And you know, it also looks better. I do a tour. I hop in that beast. I feel very safe in the beast. The windows are this thick. But I hop in the beast and I tell the Secret Service, let's drive around town. I used to do that myself. I could drive myself around. I actually like that better. But now I don't think it's a good idea.

But we drive around in the streets. The place is looking much -- the grass is good, the -- the fences are down. There's no tents. There's no anything. We are looking like -- it's just a whole new look. And the most important thing, there's no crime. And we're going to fix the roads. We have great pavers. We're going to fix the medians in between the roads, which are -- half of them are falling down. We're going to take some of the tiles off the bridges -- the tunnels that you have. They've been up for 40 years. They're rotted. And we'll put up brand-new, gorgeous white tiles like it's supposed to be. And -- but this place is looking really good and we haven't even started the real fixing up of the -- of the town.

We're getting rid of the graffiti. You notice there's almost no graffiti anymore. A lot of that beautiful statuary marble had red graffiti all over, had bad signs up, and it stopped. We've taken out 1,700 career criminals and people that came in through an open border. They came in through Biden's open border and we've taken them out. The thing having to do with all of the elements in the great Big, Beautiful Bill, I'll tell you, it's amazing what we've done, $200 billion in in costs for medical. What we've done, $50 billion for rural hospitals, and remember, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on -- think of -- think of all of these things that we've done.

This is the biggest -- this is the greatest bill, social security, no tax on overtime, but no tax on tips. I got that from a waitress in Nevada. I was making a speech and I'm at one of my restaurants in the hotel I own there, and I say how are you doing. Well, sir, it's terrible, they're taxing my tips, they're going -- I didn't even -- I wouldn't have even thought that. And I looked at it and she said to me, sir, there should be no tax on tips. I said say it one time more, no tax on tips. I walked outside to the press; I said there will be no tax tips. She was right and we won that state by a lot. That's not a state that we win by that much, David, but we won it by a lot.

So, it was pretty good. But that bill is chock full of so many different things. So, it was the biggest bill -- I'm actually saying this to the fake news so that they maybe print it, but maybe not because you people know -- it was the biggest bill ever passed in Congress and what we did was a little risky. We put everything into the bill, John, right, and some people were against it. They said no, you've got to do small bites, and we gave it a shot, and we got it passed. I got a call from John, he said it was 3:00 in the morning. Sir, we have four hard no's. Could you please call them? I say what time is it, John?

It's 4:00 in the morning, sir. So, I call up one of you sitting right here. I said, Jim, could I say hello to you? It's 4:00 in the morning, right? He said, sir, you have my vote. I said wow. Then I called up another person. I'll use fictitious names. Doug, could I get your vote. You've got it, sir. Then I called up another one. How about Josh, Could I have your vote, Josh? Because I like Josh. And Josh, who can be very difficult, said, sir, you have my vote. His wife was screaming at him on the other side, sir, you have my vote. But I called people, and they weren't really hard-nosed, they wanted a little attention, unfortunately, at 4:00 in the morning.

Sometimes I like the ones that don't like the attention, but we'll take it any way we can. And we got it passed right, John? And nobody thought that could happen because you have a small majority. And how about in the House? We had a majority of three. We actually went down after that for a period of about two months. We went down to a majority in the house of one. And I kept saying, you know, because I'll tell you Mike Johnson's great. The team, these two teams, did you ever see two people more different? One's tall, one's slightly less tall. We want to be polite. They are very different people, but they're the same in terms of talent.

They did an unbelievable -- the two guys, and they get along incredibly well. We all do, we get along great. But we passed a bill -- we don't need to pass any more bills. We got everything in that bill. There's nothing else we have to put. We got the largest tax cuts in history. We got the extension of the Trump tax cuts. We got all of these things. And you know, remember they lie. They will look at the -- I saw it the other day, somebody they were talking about, I call it the Great Big, Beautiful Bill. But that's what it is. It's a great, big, beautiful -- the biggest bill ever passed. And what they say, they make up stories.

And I saw they were interviewing a Senator, and they said, well, what's wrong with that bill? He didn't know what to say because there's nothing he can say, it covers everything. He said, death, death, it brings death. Now if I'm a regular person and I hear that I say, oh, that's terrible, but it's just the opposite. It brings life, it brings Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, it secures all those things, and they just are so bad. You know, they said death, it was like death and there's nothing about death. Theirs is death because they're going to lose Medicaid, they're going to lose Social Security, they're going to lose Medicare.

All of those things are going to be gone because the whole country would be bankrupt and you're not going to have any kind of medical insurance. So, with us, it's the opposite and it's a great bill. We don't need any more. And I want to just say from the beginning, our message has been very simple. We will not be extorted on this crazy plot of theirs. They've never done this before. Nobody has -- you always vote for an extension. Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democrats need to vote for the clean bipartisan CR and reopen our government. It's got to be reopened right now. We're not doing that. They are the obstructionists. And the reason they're doing it is because we're doing so well.

We're doing well all over the world. We're doing well with the close to $20 trillion that I just told you about. It will be that number. But even if you take it down to over $17 trillion, that's a guarantee. We're doing well with everything. Car plants are pouring back into our country. AI plants, we're leading, we're dominating China right now in AI. And I did something that I think you'd like because we have an old grid. It's a tired grid. It doesn't have the juice that you need to fire up these plants. You know, these plants will need more than double the energy we have right now for the whole country. That's how big it is, and we can't do that. There's no way we can do that. China is building right now, 52 power stations.

But I did something better, I'm letting everybody build their own power plant, so they'll become like an electric utility in addition to AI. But if they want to build their own plant and we get their approvals within less than a month -- it used to take five years prior to rejection. Sometimes a guy in Louisiana -- they had one, it took 12 years and then they got rejected. I got it approved in two weeks when I got into office, that was the first term. And the plant is up now and it's been a great thing for the state. I did it twice actually. I got two of them that were dead after 12 years and I got them approved, both of them, in less than a week. And that's what we're doing.

Lee Zeldin, by the way, is doing a phenomenal job, environmental commission, I have to tell you. He knows that we have to get them fast and we're getting them fast. So, we're leading China in the AI race by a lot. Under Biden, Democrats voted 13 times for continuing resolutions to keep the government open. And all we want is simply to ask them to do it once again. They always voted for it. They never voted against it. Nobody votes against it, but they do that and they do. It's partially my fault. I mean, I'm watching you and I'm looking at all these great faces that I've seen, really great people. I think with few exceptions, a couple of you I don't like that much, but with few exceptions great people.

And you look at what they do, and you look at the game they play and it's a horrible game. And you know, we have the hottest country ever. This is the hottest country anywhere in the world. And I say this, I'm sure you've heard me say it, but I was over in the Middle East, and the king of Saudi Arabia and others also said essentially the same thing. They said, you know, president, a year and a half ago your country was dead. We never thought we'd see this. And right now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world. We do. We have the hottest country anywhere in the world, which tells you about leadership and that includes your leadership. So, as you know, my door is always open to anyone.

It's not like that AOC, how about her? Where she said -- she's talking about having rebellions and everything. She said, well, my door is always open, but she's not the leader. I'm sure the leaders felt very nicely about when she said her door is open. Who the hell wants to go into her door anyway? She doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. She's the one that started. You know, I remember, I'll never forget, she never took a course on the environment. And I watched her one day and she was on television said yes, our planet will be dead within 12 years. That was a long time ago. Our planet was supposed to be dead, remember the 12-year theory.

We were environmentally dead. No, these people, they've got an agenda that nobody quite understands. The good news is they don't understand it either. They really have no idea. But the people do, the people understand. We're giving you the biggest tax cuts in history. All of these things, it all adds up that we should do fantastically well in the midterm. The only thing wrong with the midterms is that statistically when you look, a president gets elected and for some reason -- and nobody, even the great John Thune cannot explain to me, for some reason, even if he's a reasonably good president. And we've had success like nobody. But for some reason, you lose the midterms.

I don't know why, I mean the odds are tremendously against, like 92 percent or something. It doesn't make sense. If you have a great presidency, it only makes sense that you win the midterms. So, there should be no reason for it. Somebody's going to explain. There might be some dark deep psychological reason where they want to vote the opposite way. I don't know what it is, but we have to win the midterms otherwise all of the things that we've done, so many of them are going to be taken away by the radical left lunatics. I mean, we're going to end up with a communist mayor in New York, can you believe it, a communist? Remember, I would always say we will not have a socialist elected in our country.

Remember, I'd say that all the time and I was right. We skipped socialist, we got a communist elected, so I didn't tell a lie. I didn't tell a lie; I was right. We'll have a communist, not a socialist. But we've already seen the impacts of the dangerous game that they're playing. Democrats are causing delays in our air traffic control system. So important, we wouldn't have had -- you know, this Pete Buttigieg, he spent billions of dollars on fixing the air traffic control that used copper wire going into glass wire.

Any electrician here, or any nonunion electrician would say you can't hook copper into -- into glass; it doesn't work. They spend billions of dollars, they turned on the system and it was stone-cold blank. We're getting a brand-new system. We have bids out now. We have three great companies bidding and I want one bid. Sean Duffy is doing terrifically. I want one bid. I want just bid, and they're responsible for everything, not where you had -- they had like a thousand contractors. Every contractor, they're all running around. In the end, if one of them does a bad job -- we want to be able to blame somebody and it's going to be one of the very big companies, because there's a lot of interest in it. So the air traffic control system is going to be rebuilt.

Over one million federal workers right now, as you know, are going unpaid. That's the Democrats fault. And children tourists unable to visit the museums in Washington, DC, that we now have beautiful safe streets but we don't have the museums open. We should probably just open them. But we are doing things that nobody's ever done, nobody's ever seen. So all of this and the pain that the Democrats have caused during this reckless and completely unnecessary affair, and you could call it the Schumer shutdown, or the Democrat shutdown, you can call it whatever you want. And I will say this, that we have Darth Vader, you know Darth Vader, right? Darth Vader is a man who I think is sitting right -- is Darth -- Stand up, please, Darth Vader.

Stand up. Does everybody know? This is -- they call him Darth Vader. I call him a fine man. But he's cutting Democrat priorities and they're never going to get him back. And they've caused us and they've really allowed us to do it. And by the way, thank you. You're doing a great job, I have to tell you. So really a great job. Because many of the things that they're cutting, like the New York Project, $20 billion, we're cutting it. They're not going to get it back. I mean, they're not going to get a lot of things back. They may not get it back. Maybe we'll talk to them him about it, but they're losing all -- the things that they wanted.

But many of the things that they wanted are things that we don't want, the things that are just so bad for our country and we're cutting those things out. So while they thought they were doing maybe bad, maybe indirectly, they're doing good. The cynical comment that they've made all over the place and all of their cynical remarks proves beyond all doubt that Schumer is a calculating political partisan, but we knew that. But he's somebody that's in deep trouble. He's losing in all of the polls. He's even losing to AOC plus three. Remember plus three? What happened to the plus three? Are they still around? I had one -- I met the -- when I was at the United Nations, I met the president of Somalia and I said, I have somebody I'd like to give back to you.

He said, no, thanks, we don't want her. He didn't want anything to do with her. But today I'm calling on every Senate Democrat to stop the madness, to let our country get back. In the greatest moment in the history of our country in terms of wealth, in terms of job creation and in terms of investment coming in, these guys go on strike. It's really a shame. So I'm asking them to be smart. It's not working. They're getting killed in the polls. The public understands what they're doing. They're doing the wrong thing. And with that, I just want to say, welcome to the White House. When we're finished -- they do a great job. When they're finished, we're going to all come in. It'll be a little crowded, but that's OK, into the Oval Office.

We'll talk a little bit, a couple of minutes, got some interesting things. And I think I'd like to have, if I could, John, come up and say a few words and we can close it out. And by the way, this is an open mic. It's open to the world. I think they can hear me out on the street. If anybody wants to come up and say after John, say it. We're all friends and you can speak your heart out. But we've got to get our government open and the Democrats are trying to keep it closed. Thank you. John, please.

John Thune: Mr. President, yes, sir.

Trump: Thank you, man.

Transcript courtesy of CQ Factbase