TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Meets with the Artemis II Astronauts at the White House, 4.29.26
[Video]
President Trump: Well, thank you very much. We have some people that have captivated the attention of the whole world, not just our country, the whole world, and they're very brave.
And that was a not a rocket under them, I never saw anything like that we were talking about it. I don't know how they do it; I wouldn't want to do it. But it takes people like this to make our country great. And again, I've never seen anything -- everybody I knew, they wanted to see the launch, and they especially wanted to see a successful landing.
And, Jared, I want to congratulate you. What you've done at NASA. I made a great choice. And if you have any questions for any of us, feel free to ask. But we're very proud of these people, they have unbelievable courage, unbelievable. A lot of other things, too, by the way. To get in there, you have to be very smart, have to do a lot of things physically good.
So, I would have had no trouble making it, I'm physically very, very good. Maybe a little bit of a problem, I don't know, Jared, we'll have to try it sometime. Is a president allowed to go up in one of these missions?
Jared Isaacman: We can get working on that, Mr. President.
Trump: We'd have no problem, right?
Isaacman: We can launch more rockets -- the opportunity.
Trump: We'll have to try it. Congratulations very much. And by the way, the families are over here, beautiful families. And they're in the Oval Office and they walked in they said, wow, the Oval Office. Everybody likes the Oval Office. So, any questions, please.
Question: Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, it's a great honor to meet all of you. Congratulations and welcome to the White House. I've had the privilege of interviewing Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon. Is that what you would like to do? And, Mr. President, do you think that will happen during your second term?
Trump: Well, we have a shot at it. I mean, we don't like to say definitely, because then you say, oh, we failed, we failed. Because we were -- I think we could say we're ahead of schedule. So, we have a good shot. We've authorized it and I think with this team and with -- Jared's done such an amazing job at NASA. I think we have a good shot, right? We'll see.
Isaacman: Yes, Mr. President, we have an achievable plan now back to the moon. And we're back in the business of launching moon rockets with frequency. So, we just send Artemis II around the moon; we're going to launch Artemis III in 2027. We'll protect for up for two opportunities in 2028 to return astronauts to the surface of the moon.
Trump: I like space. You know, I started Space Force, as you very well know, it's been very, very important. And they tried to kill it. And actually, the military would not let the Biden administration kill it. They wanted to kill it and it's going to turn out to be one of our most important things. I think it will turn out to be one of the most important things they did.
But we got involved with NASA bringing it back. And I was saying, when I first looked at some of your facilities, they had grass growing on the runways, right, in between the cracks of the asphalt. But not anymore, it's really strong. And you know what they do? One of the things they do that's so important is for our military, military offense and defense.
And a lot of people say, well, is it worth it? It's really worth it because what's happened militarily -- you see what we're doing militarily. A lot of that comes from space, So, it's been pretty great. Good question. Yeah.
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I have two questions for you. First, on topic of space, do you have an update on the UFO files and what might be -- when we're going to be seeing those?
Trump: Well, I think we're going to be releasing as much as we can in the near future. For some reason, and I guess it's just a reason that's been in the minds of people for a long time, and that is such -- they want to find out about UFOs and anything having to do with UFO or related material. And we're going to be releasing a lot of things that we have.
And I think some of it's going to be very interesting to people. I've interviewed people, my first term primarily, but I interviewed some pilots, very solid people, and they said they saw things that you wouldn't believe. So, you're going to be reading about it. Yes.
Question: Sir, you spoke to Vladimir Putin not too long ago. Did you talk to him about --
Trump: I did today.
Question: Did you talk to him about progress in the space area and what else did you talk to him about?
Trump: I didn't talk about space, Bill. I talked about Ukraine and I talked a little bit about Iran. I talked about a few different subjects, mostly about Ukraine. And we had a very good conversation. I think we're going to come up with a solution relatively quickly, I hope.
Question: What does he want?
Trump: I think he'd like to see a solution; I can tell you and that's good.
Question: What involvement does he want to have in the Iran situation?
Trump: He told me he'd like to be involved with the enrichment if he can help us get it. I said, I'd much rather have you be involved with ending the war with Ukraine. To me, that would be more important. Because we're going to have that -- look, we're not going to let Iran have a nuclear weapon. And we've knocked out their Navy, we've knocked out their Air Force, we've knocked out their anti-aircraft everything apparatus, everything they have.
Their radar, they have very little left. And they have some missiles, a small percentage, they have a small percentage of missile making facilities. We knocked out about 80 percent of them. The rest could come very quickly if we don't make a deal. They're not going to have a nuclear weapon. They know it and just about everybody else does, and so we talked about that a little bit.
He doesn't want to see them have a nuclear weapon either. But I had a long talk with President Putin. I suggested a little bit of a cease fire, and I think he might do that. He might announce something having to do with that. Did he announce it yet?
Question: No, but I was wondering, I was just going to ask you about it.
Trump: No, I asked him about, even if it's a little cease fire, there's so many people being killed it's so ridiculous.
Question: Mr. President, in light of today's Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, do you want Republican states in the South to look at redrawing Congressional districts before the midterms?
Trump: [Inaudible] tell me, when did the ruling come out? I've been with the astronauts; I've been with contractors because we're trying to get the ballroom built ahead of schedule. It's right on schedule -- it's ahead of schedule now, I want to keep it that way. And I was also with -- commissioning some people, but one of -- David Warrington's son, I don't know, you know, David, everybody knows David. He's got this incredible son. So, he was just sworn in, so we had other things. Tell me about what happened.
Question: Well, some think that the ruling could create more Republican held Congressional seats in the South.
Trump: That's good.
Question: Yeah, would you want --
Trump: That's the kind of ruling I like.
Question: Would you want them to pursue that?
Trump: [Inaudible] that happen?
Question: Well, the Supreme Court ruled on it this morning.
Trump: Really? Is that right? Tell me about the ruling. This is CNN, fake news.
Question: On your call with President Putin today, do you think the war in Iran ends first or the war in Ukraine?
Trump: Well, we talked about -- more about the war in Ukraine, but he would like to be of help. And I said before you help me, I want to end your war. So, we had a good talk. I've known him a long time. I think he was ready to make a deal a while ago. I think some people made it difficult for him to make a deal, but we talked more about Ukraine.
Question: But which war do you think ends first?
Trump: That's an interesting question. Coming from you, that's very interesting. Which war would end first? I don't know; maybe they're on a similar timetable. I think Ukraine, militarily they're defeated, OK? You wouldn't know that by reading the fake news. But militarily, look, their Navy -- so, they had 159 ships. Every ship is right now underwater. Typically, that's pretty good. What do you think, Jared?
Isaacman: I think it's great.
Trump: I mean, it's going to be hard for them to make a naval comeback, OK? Now they have an Air Force, every one of their planes has been shot down or has been decimated. They have missiles, about 82 percent are gone. And they have drones, and most of them are gone. Most of the factories are mostly gone. And we have tremendous anti-drone equipment now between lasers and that new, very special machine gun that knocks them out of the air like flies.
And we use bullets instead of million-dollar missiles to knock out a $30,000 drone. So, I would say Jared would tell me that, with everything you just heard, typically we're in pretty good shape. And in addition, their economy is crashing, as you know, their money, they call it their money, they don't have a name for it. Their money is valueless.
They've got inflation that nobody's ever seen before. Other than that, I think they're doing quite well. If you read The New York Times, you'd say you'd say they're doing wonderfully because it's fake news. Or if you watch CNN, I mean, you cover it all the time. You think they're doing well. You think they're doing well where they have no Navy, no Air Force, no anti-aircraft apparatus -- other than what they may have put there -- they may have brought in some light stuff during the ceasefire, and we know exactly where it is, so it will be knocked out within the first 15 minutes.
Note: [Crosstalk]
Question: Thank you very much, Mr. President. I have to go back to the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. I know you said you haven't seen it.
Trump: When did it come out, just now?
Question: No, it came out this morning, but basically very much narrows the Voting Rights Act.
Trump: Would you consider it a win for --
Question: A win for Republicans?
Trump: I love it.
Question: But my question –
Trump: This is very good. We can end this conversation. I want to read it. Wow.
Question: My question for you, Mr. President, is that some Republican governors have not responded in terms of what they're going to do, I guess early voting, for example, in Louisiana.
Trump: Republican governors?
Question: Republican governors.
Trump: What about it?
Question: Early voting begins Saturday there, for instance. Should they redraw the map in the next couple of weeks?
Trump: I would. I mean, it depends. I mean, some states don't need to redraw and some do. I mean, I know what the concept of the rule, I just haven't seen the result. Yeah, I would say generally I would think that they would want to do it. Some are great and some, you know, didn't make much difference. Yeah, I would say they wouldn't do that they have time to do it. Yeah, please?
Question: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to ask you, there's a lot of drama on the House floor today several bills were stalled and a rule took two hours to pass today and there's still some tension over the Farm Bill. Do you think that you need to get more involved legislatively on Capitol Hill?
Trump: Well, we want the Farm Bill. The Democrats don't. We want -- we want security, OK. We need security. We want security. The Democrats don't think we need security they actually do but they have -- they suffer greatly from Trump derangement syndrome, uh, like at levels that nobody's ever seen. They're sick people.
There's something wrong with them. They don't want to pay anybody for security. They don't like ICE. They don't like Border Patrol people. They don't like the people that keep us safe. You know, when they ran this, they let 25 million people into our country and many of those people were from prisons they were from mental institutions, drug dealers, murderers. 11,888 murderers, half of whom committed more than one -- they -- more than one murder.
They -- they think that was fine. I happen to like law enforcement. They essentially want to defund law enforcement and I don't think the public's going to let them get away with it. You know, we got it all approved in the great, big, beautiful bill. And they want to renegotiate we don't like that. Yeah?
Question: Mr. President, the king's speech that he made to Congress, he spoke strongly, forcefully about the necessity for a strong NATO alliance. He also spoke about the necessity to continue to support Ukraine. Did his speech in any way change your thinking on either of those issues?
Trump: Well, you have to understand, my thinking is, I think, exactly correct but I was very disappointed with the fact that when we called on them to give us a little hand, we didn't need it. I actually did it just to see whether or not they'd be there. When we called on NATO to give us a hand with Ukraine and -- and in particular the most recent, you know, we -- we asked them to do certain things on Ukraine and we also wanted them to do things with Iran and on Ukraine they're very much involved, but they didn't do things the way we would like to see.
You know, it's been going on for a long time and on Iran, uh, they weren't there, as you know you know it better than anybody they weren't there. Uh, the king is fantastic. We spent a lot of time together. We had a lot of talk. We talked about this also and, uh, he loves his country, and he's a great king, and he's a great friend of mine and I think if he were doing that, if that were up to him, he would have probably helped us with Iran.
He would have done -- he would have followed the suggestions we made with respect to Ukraine because, you know, we have some disagreements on Ukraine and, uh, not having to do with NATO so much as European countries. But, uh, no, he -- he, you know, he's coming back tomorrow. We had an incredible evening last night, and he's leaving tomorrow he's going to come back and see us before he leaves and, you know, but I think he's a phenomenal representative for his country I think the people in the United Kingdom should be proud I love this speech yesterday.
I watched it. I loved the speech last night. Um, I don't know about my speech. I thought my speech was OK too, but, uh, I thought he was -- I think he's an unbelievable king and by the way, an unbelievable queen. They are a great couple.
Question: We were talking about how busy you were this morning. James Comey was in court. He self-surrendered and he's now in charge a second time. This time over a social media post with seashells that said 86 47. Do you really think that he was endangering your life or threatening your life with that?
Trump: Well, if anybody knows anything about crime, they know 86. You know what 86? It's a mob term for kill him. You know, you ever see the movies? 86 the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates. 86 him. That means kill him. It's -- I think of it as a mob term. People think of it as something having to do with disappearing, but the mob uses that term to say when they want to kill somebody, they say, 86 the son of a gun.
I'm trying to keep the language nice and clear they don't use that term son of a gun they use another term, but that's a mob term for killing. Yeah?
Question: But do you really think your life is in danger?
Trump: Probably, I don't know. You know, based on -- based on what I'm seeing out there, yeah. They the people like Comey have created tremendous danger, I think, for politicians and others. You know, Comey is a dirty cop. He's a very dirty cop. He cheated on the elections. He tried to help Hillary Clinton as you know.
He dismissed a lot of things that he should have proceeded with. I wasn't involved, but he should have proceeded with. Now, he's a dirty cop he's a crooked man. Yeah?
Question: Mr. President, you just described a disagreement between the US and Keir Starmer on support for Iran. Did your visit with the king smooth that over [Inaudible] any more?
Trump: My visit with the king really was just -- it was extraordinary. I mean, he's an extraordinary man, he's an extraordinary person and it helps that from the standpoint that, you know, when you like the king of a country so much, it probably helps your relationship with the prime minister. But, you know, in that case, the prime minister, I said, do you want to send a little help?
He said, no, we'll send it after you win the war. I said, that's not good -- that's not good. What do you think of that, Jared? Sending help after we win the war? I don't know, something --
Isaacman: -- A little late, sir.
Trump: -- something that bothers me. I don't want to get you guys involved, but I can imagine what you're thinking.
Question: The United Arab Emirates, the UAE, they pulled out of OPEC. What do you think about that?
Trump: Yeah. It's great. I mean, I think it's great I know him very well, Mohammed, and very smart and he probably maybe wants to go his own way. That's a good thing. I think ultimately it's a good thing for getting the price of gas down, getting oil down, getting everything down they have it all he's a great leader actually. So no, I'm I'm OK they're having some problems in OPEC.
Question: Mr. Kevin Warsh passed a hurdle today the Senate Banking Committee confirmed his nomination to the Senate floor. He'll be on the Fed in mid-May. Is it your expectation that he can persuade the other Fed governors to lower interest rates because he --
Note: [Crosstalk]
Question: -- recently?
Trump: I mean, they should because it's a good time to lower them. We're the most prime country anywhere in the world. We're right now having investments made in our country at a level that nobody's ever seen. No other country has ever seen it. Tens of billions of dollars are being invested factories, auto plants, AI. I mean, not just AI. Because AI is new.
We're leading China by a lot in AI, as you know. I'm letting them build their own electric plants. They're building them otherwise you could never do it -- it was a concept that I came up with. I'm very proud of it. And by the way, they're building electric plants that people in the utility industry have never seen before.
They're saying, man, that's incredible. So they're building these massive buildings that cost billions of dollars, and they're building their own electric plants. They're not taking from a source or the old grid, you know, an old grid that wouldn't be able to do it. No, we're leading with everything but in the history of our beautiful world, there's never been a country that has so much money being invested in it as us and tremendous number of auto plants by the way.
The auto plants are coming out of Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Germany, they're all coming to the United States. And the reason is I have a very smart tariff policy we got we were taken advantage of for years we were being ripped off by other countries for years and those days are over. Yeah?
Question: Mr. President, regarding Iran. How long are you prepared to maintain the blockade? Could that go several more months?
Trump: Well, the blockade is genius, OK? The blockade has been 100 percent foolproof. It shows how good our Navy is, I can tell you that. Nobody's going to play games. We have the greatest military in the world, and I built much of it during my first term, and we've been building it since and the greatest anywhere in the world, nobody even close.
And, uh, and you see that every -- whether it's Venezuela, which -- and they have a good military in Venezuela, but it was over in one day. It was actually over in about 48 minutes. Uh, Iran, the same thing. I mean, militarily, we've wiped them out. They have no military left. Their -- their -- it's all -- the Navy's at the bottom of the sea.
The Air Force is never going to fly again. Uh, we've -- we've got an amazing military. Now we -- now they have to cry uncle. That's all they have to do. Just say we give up -- we give up but their economy is really in trouble so it's a -- it's a -- it's a dead economy.
Question: So the Operation Fury and the blockade get Iran to nuclear talks fast enough or do you think another wave of strikes will be necessary?
Trump: I don't know it depends. We have talks we're having talks with them now and we're not flying anymore with 18-hour flights every time we want to see a piece of paper. We're doing it telephonically and it's very nice. I make a call or I have my people make a call and you know the answer. I always like face-to-face.
You know, I consider it better. But when you have to fly 18 hours every time you want to have a meeting and you know what the meeting is all about. And you know, they're going to give you a piece of paper that you don't like before you even leave. It's ridiculous. They've come a long way. The question is whether or not they're going to go far enough. So at this moment, they will never be a deal unless they agree that there will be no nuclear weapons. Yeah, go ahead, please.
Question: Are you considering relocating NASA's headquarters out of DC? States like Florida, Texas and Ohio have expressed interest.
Trump: You're going to have to say it differently.
Question: Sorry. Are you considering relocating NASA's headquarters out of DC once the lease is up? States like Texas, Ohio and Florida --
Trump: Well, the best man to tell you that is the man standing right over here. You heard that question with those beautiful ears of yours? He's got great hearing, you know, he's got super hearing.
Isaacman: Trick of the trade, sir.
Trump: What's the answer to that?
Isaacman: I think the answer to that is we have a number -- we have 10 amazing centers around the country that all kinds of bubble up to contribute to the mission we're able to undertake, like Artemis II. I think in terms of the headquarters, we have a lot of people very interested in our mission. So, being here in DC gives us the opportunity to kind of interact from all our stakeholders, make sure we make the right decisions for the nation.
Trump: Yeah, DC is an advantage, I guess, for you. He's got to go around, he's got to see some Senators, make sure they keep going, right?
Isaacman: Yes, Mr. President.
Trump: Probably staying around is not so bad. And importantly, Washington, DC is now one of the safest cities in the country. When I came here a little more than a year ago, it was a very unsafe city. And now, maybe even more importantly than that, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. And you helped make it hot.
You helped make it hot. When a year and a half ago, and I say it a lot, the King of Saudi Arabia, but others also. The King of Saudi Arabia said, Mr. President, a year and a half ago, a year ago, we thought you had a dead country. We thought the United States was a dead country, and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world, and we do. And believe it or not, I mean, when everybody in the world was watching that incredible performance by NASA, these incredible people behind me -- where they get the bravery, I have no idea.
But you're a big part of it, you really are. We have the hottest country in the world. Thank you very much, everybody.