TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks to Reporters on Board Air Force One, 1.4.26
Question: Mr. President, you came from a different way this time.
President Trump: Absolutely. Yeah, a little bit different. We have some good people. We have Senator Lindsey Graham.
Senator Lindsey Graham: Hello, everybody.
Trump: We have Howard Lutnick in commerce. We have Steve Miller. We have a lot of people. We have Aaron. We have a lot of people. Go ahead.
Question: -- Mr. President.
Trump: Hi.
Question: Have you spoken with any of the US service members who were injured during that operation in Venezuela?
Trump: Yes, we have calls into them. I don't want to speak. Uh, they're all in good shape [Inaudible]
Question: -- you detail what watching that was like when all of this played out in Venezuela and what Maduro was doing that moment when [Inaudible]?
Trump: Well, I knew the possible danger. I mean, it was a very dangerous operation. It was amazing that we had a few injured, but all are in good shape right now. Uh, but I knew there was great danger. You got off a helicopter, the helicopters were being shot at. Uh, they got on the ground with amazing, amazing talent and, and tremendous patriotism, bravery.
Trump: The bravery was [Inaudible] Lindsey, the, they got off the helicopter and the bullets would fly in all over the place. As you know, one of the helicopters got hit pretty badly, but that, we got everything back.
Question: -- then --
Trump: -- everything back and, uh, nobody killed.
Question: -- next question is, who's in charge of Venezuela right now? Have you spoken to the newly sworn-in president there, Rodriguez? And what are your thoughts on the entire situation when you said the US would run Venezuela?
Trump: We're dealing with the people. We're dealing with the people that just got sworn in. And, uh, don't ask me who's in charge because I'll give you an answer and it'll be very controversial.
Question: What does that mean?
Trump: It means we're in charge.
Question: Have you spoken with her?
Trump: We're in charge.
Question: Have you spoken with her?
Trump: -- No, I haven't, but other people have.
Question: Do you want to?
Trump: Yeah, at the right time, I will.
Question: -- the US give Delcy Rodríguez any guarantees in exchange for cooperating --
Trump: No.
Question: -- with your administration?
Trump: -- but she's cooperating.
Question: Is she, are you gonna demand freedom for elections in the short term in Venezuela?
Trump: Well, it depends, you know, when you're talking, we have to do one thing in Venezuela, bring it back. It's a dead country right now. It's a country that, frankly, we would have been if, if I had lost the election, we would have been a dead country. Venez- -- we would have been Venezuela on steroids. Venezuela right now is a dead country.
Trump: We have to bring it back, and we're going to have to have big investments by the oil companies to bring back the infrastructure.
Note [Crosstalk]
Trump: -- the oil companies are ready to go. They're going to go in, they're going to rebuild the infrastructure. You know, we built it to start off with many years ago. They took it away. You can't do that.
Note [Crosstalk]
Trump: They can't do that with me. They did it with other presidents.
Question: -- soon do you think --
Note [Crosstalk]
Question: -- can an election can take place in Venezuela? How, how soon can an election take place?
Trump: Well, I think we're looking more at getting it fixed, getting it ready first, because it's a mess. The country is a mess. It's been horribly run. The oil is just flowing at a very low level, much lower than, even if it was badly run, it should have more income, more oil than what they're doing. So, we're gonna have the big oil companies go in, and they're gonna fix the infrastructure, they're gonna invest money. We're not gonna invest anything. We're gonna just take care of the country. We're gonna cherish the country. We're gonna take care, more importantly, of the people, including Venezuelans that are living in our country that were forced to leave their country.
Note [Crosstalk]
Trump: -- they're gonna be taken very good care of. Yes, ma'am?
Question: Have you spoken with the oil companies --
Trump: Yes.
Question: -- about going into Venezuela?
Trump: I have.
Question: Which ones?
Note [Crosstalk]
Trump: -- of them, basically.
Question: -- commitments from the oil companies?
Trump: They wanna go in so badly.
Question: -- you speak with them before the operation took place about --
Trump: Yes.
Question: -- you maybe tip them off without oil --
Trump: Before and after. And they wanna go in, and they're gonna do a great job for the people of Venezuela, and they're gonna represent us well.
Note [Crosstalk]
Trump: But, you know, the infrastructure's rusty, rotten, most of it unusable. It's old, it's broken. You see pipes laying all over the ground. Hasn't been, nothing's been invested for years. Chevron's in, as you know. They've done a good job, but even they, they, they haven't been in a position to invest money because they're, they're at a month-to-month basis.
Note [Crosstalk]
Trump: They're only there because I wanted them to be there.
Question: Yeah. Are there any contingencies in case, uh, the military in Venezuela is unhappy with, uh, the US and the way it's running, uh, Venezuela? Do you guys have plans for anything?
Trump: -- Venezuela thus far has been very nice, but it helps to have a force like we have. You know, we were ready for a second wave. We were all set to go, but we don't think we're gonna need it.
Question: There's about 17 billion worth of oil reserves in Venezuela.
Trump: More.
Question: Is that going to be --
Trump: -- mean trillion.
Question: It, and is that going to be something --
Trump: -- you say billion or trillion?
Question: I said billion.
Trump: -- said 17 billion?
Question: [Laughs]
Trump: It's much more than that.
Question: Okay. So, what is going to happen to those reserves? Um --
Trump: Well, we're gonna run everything. We're gonna run it, fix it. We'll have elections at the right time. The main thing you have to fix, it's a broken country. There's no money. There's inflation, like we would've had, if I didn't win this election, we would've been Venezuela on steroids. Lindsay would know that.
Trump: You might say something on that, because you were, we were talking before. We would've had a doubling up of very bad things, things that cost us a lot of money like welfare, frankly. We wouldn't have had jobs. And instead of having $18 trillion in, we would've had at least five to 10 trillion dollars leaving the country.
Trump: So our costs would've gone up and all of the money that's, you know, we're setting a record and it's long broken. And that's it, that's after 10 months. We haven't included the 11th month yet. So we think we're gonna hit over $20 trillion. The all-time record is three by another country known as China. About 10 years ago, they did three.
Trump: We're doing, we're gonna do close to 20 trillion. There's, by the way, there has never been anything like this ever before. And it's all because of tariffs and the election. But it's because of tariffs.
Question: There was a time --
Trump: Without tariffs, we wouldn't have 10 cents being invested.
Question: There was a time back in 2016, and I remember your RNC speech, and you were saying that regime change and a nation-building --
Trump: Where? Where?
Question: When you were speaking at the RNC back in 2016, you were criticizing --
Trump: Go ahead, what did I say?
Question: -- were criticizing regime change and nation-building, the US being involved in that. It seems obviously that your stance has changed on that. What led to that? The end of the US nation-building now is that --
Trump: This isn't a country that's on the other side of the world. This isn't a country like we have to travel 24 hours in an airplane. This is Venezuela's in our area. The Don Roe Duncan. Secretary --
Question: So is that what you would say that we're in, we're in the business of nation-building now?
Trump: Well, no, we're in the business of having countries around us that are viable and successful and where the oil is allowed to freely come out because that's good. It gets the prices down. That's good for our country. Uh, we have a, a very sick neighbor. It's not a neighbor, but it's close to a neighbor. And that's Venezuela, it's very sick.
Trump: Columbia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he's not gonna be doing it very long, let me tell you?
Question: What does that mean? He's not gonna be doing it very long.
Trump: He's not doing it very long. He's, he has, uh, cocaine mills and cocaine factories. He's not gonna be doing it very long.
Question: So there will be an operation by the US and --
Trump: It sounds good to me.
Question: Secretary Rubio mentioned --
Trump: -- know, why because they kill a lot of people. Yeah?
Question: Secretary Rubio mentioned Cuba yesterday in his remarks. Does the US have a plan, uh, to do so --
Trump: Well, Cuba always survived because of Venezuela. Now, they won't have that money coming in. They won't have the income coming in. You know, a lot of Cubans were killed yesterday. You know that. A lot of Cubans were killed.
Question: Do you know how many --
Trump: -- bodyguards. No, they're looking, but a lot of, there was a lot of death on the other side. No death on our side. Uh, but there was a lot of death on the other side, unfortunately. But a lot of Cubans were killed yesterday, trying to protect him.
Question: Do you though there's been, um, protestors killed in Iran. You said we were locked and loaded, ready to go. What is the line there for when the US is going to get involved in those protests?
Trump: We'll take a look. We're watching it very closely. If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're gonna get hit very hard by the United States.
Graham: -- I just add something? So when he first got elected in January, we met, you know, biggest comeback ever. We talked about like --
Trump: -- think so, really?
Graham: [Laughs].
Trump: I didn't feel it was a comeback, actually. So --
Graham: 'Cause the first one was, the bottom line is, we talked about a drug caliphate in our backyard. You know, we had Venezuela, we have Cuba, we have Columbia in our backyard, and these three countries have been condemned ever since I've been in politics. Joe Biden put a $25 million bounty on Maduro's head. Chris Smith, the day he got inaugurated, said, "I hope Trump will hold Maduro's feet to the fire." You did. So what has he done? He's gonna clear our backyard of a drug caliphate. Countries run by narco terrorist dictators who murder, rape, send drugs into our country to kill thousands of our citizens. To my Democratic friends, you should be celebrating this. When Bin Laden went down, I was the first applaud President Obama. This was one of the most sophisticated military operations in the history of the country. What they were able to do was amazing. They knew we were coming. We had part of the, a good part of the Navy, and they were able to capture this man alive. No military in the world could have done it, and as to this commander-in-chief, he did something people talked about doing. You just wait for Cuba. Cuba is a communist dictatorship that's killed priests and nuns. They've preyed on their own people. Their days are numbered. We're gonna wake up one day, I hope in '26, in our backyard, we're gonna have allies in these countries doing business with America, not narco terrorist dictators, killing Americans. This is a big friggin' day. And everybody in the world is thinking differently than they were just a few days ago because of what you did.
Question: Do you think you're gonna --
Trump: By the way, you know, you mentioned something that's interesting. Lindsey mentioned Bin Laden. You know, I wrote about Bin Laden one year before the attack in the World Trade Center. And I said, "You gotta go after Bin Laden." It was in my book. And very few people wanna say that, but it was in my book. You know that I think you, you've actually talked about it. But, uh, if they would've had, if they would've listened to me, they would've taken out Bin Laden and you wouldn't have had the World Trade Center tragedy. Did you know that? I predicted Bin Laden -- Did you know that? No, but did you hear that? Did you know that? Yeah. No, I wrote a book. It was one year before the attack that the book came out, and it talked about, there's a whole page, a whole section dedicated to a guy named Bin Laden who's a bad guy who you have to take out.
Graham: I learned something every day. Well, I did not. I just heard it right now. So, I'll get the book. But right after the election, he told me, "I'm gonna clean up our backyard." Now, this was long before, this was before he took office. This is one of the president's priorities is to make sure that people in our backyard, narco terror states, will not continue to kill Americans without, the number of people that would be alive today because Venezuela will be in different hands is gonna be tens of thousands. This is something to be celebrated --
Trump: And not just -- Not just Venezuela. It's what's coming out of Venezuela --
Graham: -- whether you like him or not? Yes.
Trump: -- in the form of ocean-going and gulf-going and seagoing-boats. Every time we knock out a boat, and we've done a lot of them. We did three over the last few days. They're very rare now. You don't see too many of them. But drugs by sea are down 97%. Think of that. But now we're gonna stop them by land too. The land is easy. We had to do the sea before we did the land because it just works out. And by the way, you have to do something with Mexico. Mexico has to get their act together because they're pouring through Mexico, and we're gonna have to do something. We'd love Mexico to do it. They're capable of doing it, but unfortunately, their cartels are very strong in Mexico.
Question: I remember one time you actually, speaking of Mexico, I asked you about, uh, Claudia Scheinbaum, and you told me at one point you had offered to send US troops into Mexico --
Trump: Sure, I did.
Question: -- to combat, uh, drug trafficking there. Is that something you're seeking for now?
Trump: Well, I like Claudia. I think she's a terrific person. I would say every single time I talk to her, I offer to send troops.
Question: And she's just not willing?
Trump: She's concerned. She's a little afraid. The cartels are running Mexico, whether you like it or --
Howard Lutnick: It's like it or not.
Trump: Not nice to say --
Lutnick: It's a fact.
Trump: -- but the cartels, the cartels are running Mexico.
Lutnick: It's a fact.
Question: And speaking of those US troops, I mean, one thing that Americans and a lot of people are wondering, you just sounded like you weighed out another strike, not another land strike at least in Venezuela. You sound like you weigh that out. But --
Trump: Well, we, we haven't, we didn't need it. We were prepared to do a second strike if we needed. We're totally prepared. And we're still prepared. No, it's not. If they don't behave, we will do a second strike.
Question: The question is that the American troops, are they going to be on the ground there doing any kind of peacekeeping? I think Americans are very --
Trump: It depends. It depends on what happens. It depends a little bit on the new administration, if you want to call it that.
Question: So if you see that pushback from Rodriguez and ultimately --
Trump: Well, I don't think there was pushback. I think that, frankly -- Well -- You, you know, you hear a different person than I hear. We talked to them, yeah. They've been very good. That's all right. It's not a bad term. Go ahead.
Question: Now, are you, are you going to demand that Delcy Rodriguez let opposition figures return, or free any political prisoners?
Trump: We haven't gotten to that yet. Right now, what we want to do is fix up the oil, fix up the country, bring the country back, and then have elections. We better bring the country back, otherwise you're just gonna have, you're gonna have a, a mess that's so bad. It was really bad. It's gonna get a lot worse unless we go in and fix it.
Question: Is the US, is the US gonna reopen its embassy in Caracas or get the DEA?
Trump: We're thinking about it. We've been asked to do it. We've actually been asked to do it.
Question: You and Putin, and on the phone, of course, and then Zelensky at Mar-a-Lago -- You told me that your, uh, New Year's resolution was peace on earth. Do you think that 2026 in, if you could set a deadline of when the Russia-Ukraine war --
Trump: I don't do deadlines, but I would say that, you know, like as an example, Thailand and Cambodia -- I was very proud of that. Wait a minute. And they started up again and they got it solved. I give myself 1/4 of a point for that. So now I'm 8 1/4 points because they started up, Thailand and Cambodia, and now it's okay.
Question: So where does it actually stand between Russia and Ukraine right now?
Trump: I think we'll have a deal at some point. Hopefully, they're not too distant. So I don't know if you saw the numbers just came out. 30,000 soldiers were killed -- 30,000. 27,000 the month before.
Graham: Yeah, this month.
Question: Have you and Senator Graham discussed additional Russia sanctions?
Trump: We discuss it all the time. There's nothing else I talk to him. I don't consider him very exciting to talk to him except -- except when we're talking about legislation. And we talk about legislation all the time. You think that's an exciting relationship?
Graham: It's not.
Trump: -- we, uh, we talk a lot about legislation and we have great legislation coming. Do you want to tell them?
Graham: So the tariff bill, so here's what I believe. I don't think we could have secured the border without the threat of tariffs. I don't think we'd have a European trade deal without the threat of tariffs. So if you want to end this conflict, then put pressure on Putin's customers. He sanctioned the two largest oil companies in Russia, which is the biggest pressure anybody's put on Putin since the war started. But we have 85 co-sponsors to give this president -- yeah. So this bill would allow -- Yes, sir. So he put a 25% tariff on India for buying Russian oil. I was at the Indian ambassador's house about a month ago, and all he wanted to talk about is how they're buying less Russian oil. Would you tell the President to relieve the tariff? This stuff works. So I'm hoping we'll bring the bill up, and it's from zero to 500. He picks the number. Nobody else does. But if you're buying cheap Russian oil, keeping Putin's war machine going, we're trying to get the President the ability to make that a hard choice by tariffs. I really do believe that what he did with India is the chief reason India is now buying substantially less Russian oil. So I hope we pass this bill soon.
Trump: It's hurting Russia very bad, the sanctions. Well, and they wanted to make me happy, basically. He wanted to, modi's a very good man. He's a good guy. He want, he knew I was not happy. And it was important to make me happy. They do trade -- we can raise tariffs on them very quickly and it would be --
Graham: People are afraid of that.
Trump: -- I'll tell you something, the Russian economy is lousy. But what's really lousy is the Venezuelan economy. The Venezuelan economy -- is I think the worst economy I've ever seen. If you look at inflation, it's, things are doubling every day. It's a disaster. We gotta fix the country fast.
Question: President Trump, are there gonna be anymore, you said the oil companies are gonna go right there. Are there any other companies that you've talked to about, uh, dealing with Venezuela?
Trump: Many. Outside of the oil business. Well, the oil business, yes, but outside, yes. Howard, do you wanna talk --
Lutnick: So you have steel, you have minerals, right? All the critical minerals. They, they have a great mining history that's gone rusty. So steel, aluminum, minerals, I mean, this is all, it's a rich. It was once upon a time one of the great economies and cultures of the world, and it was destroyed, and now President Trump is going to fix it and bring it back before --
Trump: -- but it's not easy. It's really gone bad. -- it's got potential. What? They have rare earth, but everybody has rare earth. Rare earth is not rare. What's rare is the processing. We're doing processing plants all night. There's no such thing as rare earth. Rare earth is everywhere. What isn't everywhere is the processing of rare earth, and we have a lot of places going up right now.
Question: -- thing we haven't heard you specifically react to is the Minnesota fraud that we've seen play out being --
Trump: Well, it just doesn't get worse. I've reacted. It's, it's almost not even believable. This very stupid low IQ governor, he's a very stupid man, because you know, I had a campaign against him with JD and he's a stupid man and he's a corrupt politician and the Somalians are ripping off our country to the tune of, looks like $19 billion, but that's only what they can find. So usually when you look at it, 19, that would mean it could be 50, but the numbers are astronomical. Think of it. They have a dead country. They don't have government. They don't have anything. They don't have a military. All they do is run around shooting people and, uh, trying to capture ships. You know, we don't let them take ships anymore. You know why? We use the same exact missile on them that we use on the drug carriers, and it's very effective. -- notice there's nobody capturing ships anymore? 'Cause as they head out to go capture the ship, and the ship doesn't want to fire back because it's very flammable stuff in many cases. Uh, and the insurance companies don't want, because they've, you know, they built a billion-dollar ship, and they don't want anybody firing rockets into the ship. But we're hitting them so hard, and, uh, it's very similar. Same, same missile system. It's called deadly accurate. And do you notice that ships aren't being taken anymore? The pirates aren't, well, no. It's actually very easy. They head out, we say, "Guess what? There's pirates." Bing. That's the end of the pirates. -- shipping, the shipping business is coming back because, see, these are little things that we're doing, and I'm doing it not just for American ships, I'm doing it worldwide because we don't want ships taken by Somalia, Somalia pilots, pirates. But what they are doing is they're stealing money from the American taxpayer. And every one of them should be forced to leave this country, including Ilhan Omar, who's a total crook. And she's one of the leaders of it. Not the only because he's not that smart. But think of it, $19 billion, at least, they've stolen from Minnesota and from the United States. It's actually more from the United States because Minnesota puts in, and we're not gonna pay it anymore. We're gonna have Waltz go pay, we're not gonna pay them, and we're not gonna pay California, and we're not gonna pay Illinois with a big slob of a governor that they have that doesn't want, you know, we brought down crime by 25%. He didn't do anything. He's not doing anything. But they want us to leave. He had a, he had a day where they had 17 murders, not too long ago, 17 murders and 77 people shot. But 17 died. And then he talks about, "Oh, we ha- -- we can handle." He can't handle it." But we pull back, and we'll go in at the appropriate time. But we're the ones that brought the crime down. We brought it down 20%. They didn't bring it down. Pritzker didn't bring it down. Same thing with Gavin Newsom. If we didn't go in to Los Angeles seven months ago when they had the riots, even the police commission -- the head of police said if we didn't have the federal government go in, we would have lost total control of the city of Los Angeles and they would have had to cancel the Olympics. Thank you.
Question: Speaking of Los Angeles, the National Guard, you pulled out, uh, the National Guard out of Portland --
Trump: We did. -- you know what? Do you know that Portland, we got it down to almost no crime? Do you know that? But we pulled it out. We had a Supreme Court decision. We can go back. We're allowed to go back in, but we'll go back in when the, the crime starts. Look, the crime will soon start because that, they now know that we're out. And at the appropriate time, we'll go, go back in and we may, if we, you know, we're allowed to, most powerful thing we have, we haven't used the Insurrection Act.
Question: You're considering using the insurrection?
Trump: I would always, I've always considered it. -- we haven't needed it anywhere. 48% of the presidents of this country have used it. Bush used it, I think, 22 times or something, you know that one, right? I mean, Bush the elder.
Question: What are your short term next two weeks, what do you need from Delcy Rodríguez?
Trump: Listen, total access. We need total access. We need access to the oil, and to other things in their country that allow us to rebuild their country.
Question: What, what are the things?
Trump: A lot of things. Roads that aren't built, bridges that are falling down. Yeah, bridges that are falling down. Nobody can go anywhere.
Question: -- on Greenland, uh, you know --
Trump: On Greenland now?
Question: Yeah, on Greenland.
Trump: -- did we come up to Greenland? [Laughs]
Question: So do you expect to take an action against Greenland?
Trump: Well, I don't want to talk about Greenland. Let's talk about Venezuela --
Question: Cuba.
Trump: -- Russia.
Question: Let's talk about Cuba.
Trump: Ukraine.
Question: [Laughs]
Trump: We'll worry about Greenland in about two months. Let's talk about Greenland in 20 days.
Question: -- going to as well, we talked so much about energy.
Trump: By the way --
Question: Let's talk about Cuba.
Trump: -- I have to, I will say this about Greenland. We need Greenland from a national security --
Question: Strategic.
Trump: -- situation. It's so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not gonna be able to do it, I can tell you. [Inaudible] You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security in Greenland?
Question: They added one more dog sled. [Laughs]
Trump: It's, it's true.
Question: Sir, what would the --
Trump: They thought that was a great move.
Question: [Laughs] What would the justification be for a claim to Greenland? What would the justify --
Trump: -- I don't want to talk about Greenland now. I'll just say this. We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And the European Union needs us to have it, and they know that.
Question: [Crosstalk] [Inaudible] operation in Venezuela will affect your relationship with Xi Jinping and China?
Trump: -- I don't think so. I have a very good relationship. We have the power of tariffs, and he has other powers on us, you know?
Question: -- you still planning to travel to see him in April?
Trump: Yeah. I'll be going in April.
Question: I think there's some confusion from, uh, Americans and maybe the community in the world when it comes to what you said about Rodriguez earlier today in a phone interview.
Trump: Why?
Question: Well, you said, you said that she would face, uh, the same fate, if not worse, Maduro.
Trump: Worse.
Question: -- it sounds like you're talking to her on the phone --
Trump: I am.
Question: -- and wanting to work with her --
Trump: -- me, my people are just the same thing.
Question: -- you are considering her in power. Can you just clarify where you stand on Delcy Rodríguez right now?
Trump: I don't have to, I don't have to tell you. I just say that she will face a situation probably worse than Maduro, because you know, Maduro gave up immediately.
Question: So she could also pass --
Trump: He raised his hand, he gave up. And he did the right thing, but he gave up. Uh, so we were actually, we were so effective and it was so fast and violent. It was very violent.
Graham: -- yeah.
Question: -- we were so effective, he raised his hands, he gave up.
Question: What was the most violent moment during that time?
Trump: I don't want to tell you.
Question: -- you and FOX, did you get --
Trump: There were some bad moments, but there was some very violent moment. I don't want to tell you.
Question: -- you get a briefing at all on Maduro's first night in US --
Trump: Yes.
Question: -- and what can you tell us about that?
Trump: I have a total briefing on every aspect of it, but I, I don't think it's appropriate to talk to the press about it. You'll find out.
Question: When it comes to him in court tomorrow, I mean, what's the end game here with Maduro? Does he [Inaudible]
Trump: We're just gonna go through a slog of a trial. Uh, the judge is very respected. Hellerstein. He's a highly respected judge. We'll see how we do. Uh, the case is, it's infallible.
Graham: Yeah.
Trump: People are so happy with what we've done. You know, you go down to Miami, you go down to a lot of places --
Graham: Yeah.
Trump: -- and they're all dancing in the streets of this country.
Question: This is what --
Trump: -- he was a rough, he was a rough man. Killed millions of people.
Graham: Yeah.
Trump: He killed millions and millions of people.
Question: Is that where you stand strongly for --
Graham: I just say something? We got the, this is a good thing, not a bad thing. President Biden put a $25 million bounty on the guy's head. Why? Because he was a horrible criminal, murderer poisoning our people. Every administration has been saying, "He's a threat to our country. He's a bad guy." This is the first guy that's actually done something about it. Here's the story for me. He could be in Turkey today, but he's in New York. So if you tell people in Cuba, "You need to stop being a communist dictatorship threatening America, you should go somewhere else. You better take the offer." Maduro has nobody to blame but himself. He gave him a way out. He chose to defy Trump and the US military. And his ass is in jail where he deserves to be. And every president has said the same thing, but he did it.
Trump: You know, one of the things that is happening, and I think you see it, you see it all the time. Howard, you've seen it. Uh, that Cuba is ready to fall, you know.
Graham: Yes.
Trump: Cuba looks like it's ready to fall. I don't know how they, if they're gonna hold down.
Question: There a final [Inaudible] --
Trump: Cuba now has no income. They got all of their income from Venezuela, from the Venezuelan oil. They're not getting any of it.
Question: Is there a final --
Trump: Cuba literally is ready to fall. And you have a lot of great Cuban Americans --
Graham: Yes.
Trump: -- that are gonna be very happy about this.
Question: Marco Rubio has really had your ear, it seems throughout this entire process. I know that Vice President Vance was just down the street when this whole operation was, um, playing out, but would you say that Marco Rubio has your view more than the vice president right now?
Trump: They both do. Oh. And JD's very smart, doing a great job. And so is Mark. No, both.
Question: It sounds like you're saying --
Trump: I would say equal.
Question: The go-to, and you were just talking about Cuba and what could come next there. Are you considering US action in Cuba?
Trump: We're not gonna, I think it's just gonna fall. I don't think we need any action. It looks like it's going down. It's going down for the count. You ever watch a
fight?
Question: I have.
Trump: They go down for the count. And Cuba looks like it's going down. What do you think, Howard?
Lutnick: It's going down. They, they've lived off of Venezuela, right? The economics were all Venezuela, right? That's why you said they, the protective force of Maduro was Cuban, right? They were Cuban guards. So they were just paying Cuba when that money stops.
Graham: -- don't hire them in the future.
Lutnick: [Laughs] Yeah. They weren't very good. [Laughs]
Trump: People from our country who were forced to come over, people we didn't want, you know, they were from Cuba. People from different countries like to stay in those countries, whatever. Whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. And people want to go back to Cuba.
Graham: Yeah.
Trump: -- they want to work in Cuba, but Cuba's going down for the count. Thank you very much, everybody.
Question: President, is, is Elon Musk back in the fold? You had dinner with him last night at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump: Who?
Question: Elon.
Trump: Elon? Elon's great. Uh, I say about Elon. He's 80% super genius and 20% he makes mistakes. But he's a good guy. He's a, a well-meaning person. He is.
Question: I ask you about one more thing that I've been wanting to ask you the last couple of days? You were said that you were very --
Trump: She's got a lot of questions.
Question: I do. I do have a lot of questions. [Laughs]
Trump: Tell, tell him who you with. Go ahead.
Question: -- with NewsNation. My name's Libbey Dean.
Trump: Excellent.
Question: So you said that you were really very angry with the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy if he was the one who conducted that strike on Putin's residence. Now who --
Trump: I don't believe that strike happened.
Question: Right. So Putin had said in that phone call to you that that strike happened. You came out and said that and you believed Putin. There was some criticism --
Trump: There is something that happened fairly nearby, but it had nothing to do with this house.
Question: Did you believe Putin in that moment and then go say that about [Inaudible] --
Trump: 'Cause nobody knew at that moment. I mean, that was the first I heard about it.
Question: So why not be --
Trump: He said that his house was attacked. Uh, we don't believe that happened as, you know, now that we've been able to check.
Question: Yeah.
Trump: -- that was the first we ever heard about it. We just hoped that Russia and Ukraine get it settled.
Graham: Amen.
Trump: You know, it's costing us nothing. In fact, we make money because unlike Biden. Biden gave $350 billion, gave it away. Now, I got a lot of it back because we did a rare earth deal going into rare earth. And we're gonna get a lot of that money back, maybe all of the money, maybe more than all of the money. But, uh, we get paid now, whenever we send anything, they paid. So this isn't an economic thing for us. This is a soul. This is a, this is a situation where, uh, on average, 25,000 souls, 25,000 soldiers mostly, and some people from Kiev and different cities, but a very small number by comparison. But 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers are being killed every single month. And they're not from America. They're from Russia and they're from Ukraine. And if I can get it stopped, I'd like to get it stopped. And I think we will. Thank you very much everybody.
Question: [Inaudible] You've talked about returning some control to American companies. Did that play at all into your decision to capture Maduro?
Trump: What really played is the fact that he sent millions of people into our country from prisons and from mental institutions and drug dealers and every drug addict, and every drug addict in that country, in his country, was sent into our country. Think of that. Every single drug addict from Maduro's country, which isn't really his country, and it's certainly not his country anymore, every drug addict and every drug dealer is, has been sent into our country. Now we're getting him back, but it's a very laborious job to get him back. Very hard job to, and of course, we're not getting a lot of good backup from certain judges, from certain radical left. But we're doing well on appeals, because the people doing the appeal seems that the judges are much more sane. What these super radical left judges are doing to our country, it's incredible. But if you take a look, Maduro sent hundreds of thousands and even millions of people from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, drug dealers, drug addicts, everybody. He sent anybody with a [Inaudible] it could never be forgiven. And other countries have done the same, but nothing like Maduro's done.
Question: During the campaign, you, you talked about ending American foreign intervention. What changed your mind with Venezuela? What, what kind of drew your interest there?
Trump: The fact that he sent drugs into our country, we're stopping it rapidly with what we're doing with the, the sea, because they come in, a lot of it comes in by sea, but it's not coming. The drugs coming in, as I said before, by sea, are down 97%. You should be saying, "Thank you very much, President Trump. Great job." Uh, now they can't get anybody to pilot those boats. You know, it's 97%. I'm trying to figure out who are the other three percent?
Question: Would you say the operation resolved --
Question: What's the response from supporters who voted for you, who may be glad and relieved to see Maduro in custody --
Trump: Voters that voted for me. Yeah.
Question: [Inaudible]
Trump: -- me just tell you.
Question: [Inaudible] Venezuela.
Trump: Voters that voted for me are thrilled. They said, "This is what we voted for."
Graham: So let's just think about it. What is the right response when a country sends in tens of thousands of people to overwhelm your system? When a country is a narco terrorist state that floods your country with cocaine that's aligned with Hezbollah, what's the right response? You blow up the vote before they get here. You take down the, the source of the problem. President Trump didn't wake up one day and say, "Hey, let's take Venezuela." He did what other people talked about, but didn't have the balls or the guts to do it. This is a good thing. This is not interventionism. This is making America safer. We're gonna be more prosperous, because of the business deals and there are gonna be Americans alive today, because he shut down a narco terrorist state called Venezuela. This is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Trump: The oil companies are gonna go in and rebuild their system. They're gonna spend billions of dollars, and they're gonna take the oil out of the ground, and we're taking back what they sold. Remember, they stole our property. It was the greatest theft in the history of America. Nobody has ever stolen our property like they have. They took our oil away from us. They took the infrastructure away. And all that infrastructure's rotted and decayed. And the oil companies are gonna go in and rebuild it. We're not gonna spend very much money at all, if anything. But the oil companies are gonna go, we're gonna take our oil back. But we're gonna also do things that, when you look at what he did, the drugs are terrible.
Graham: Awful.
Trump: Also terrible, he sent hundreds of thousands --
Graham: Yes.
Trump: -- of people into our country that should not be here. And that means from prisons, that means Tren de Aragua, the gang --
Graham: Yes.
Trump: Tren de Aragua that comes out of Maduro's country. He was very friendly with that gang. Well, they're having a hard time right now. You know, we had Tren de Aragua all over Washington DC, and they got the hell beat out of him. Washington DC is the safest city right now in the United States. Thank you very much.
Question: President, if you had to sum up Operation Absolute Resolve, would you say that it was about oil or it was about regime change?
Trump: It's about, uh, peace on earth.
Question: Is it peace on earth?
Trump: Peace on earth. You gotta have peace. It's our hemisphere. The Monroe doctrine was very important when it was done and other presidents, a lot of them, they lost sight of it. I didn't. I didn't lose sight. But it really is, it's peace on earth. Thank you very much.
Question: Thank you very much, Mr. President.