TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Speaks with Joe Kernen of CNBC on 'Squawk Box', 4.21.26
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Joe Kernen: President Donald J. Trump. President Trump, welcome. Thanks for joining us this morning.
President Trump: Well, thank you very much, Joe.
Kernen: You are very welcome. Can you give us, I think it's on everyone's mind, the latest on where the Iran negotiations stand? We now know Tehran has publicly confirmed that it will send representatives to the meeting with Vice President Vance. What do you expect? What are you hearing at this point, sir?
Trump: Well, as I said two days ago, when they said they won't send them, I said they'll be sending them. They have no choice but to send them. What I think is that we're going to end up with a great deal. I think it's got -- I think they have no choice. We've taken out their Navy, we've taken out their Air Force.
We've taken out their leaders, frankly, which does complicate things in one way, but these leaders are much more rational. It is regime change, no matter what you want to call it, which is not something I said I was going to do, but I've done it, indirectly maybe, but I've done it. And I think we're in a very strong negotiating position to do what other presidents should have done during a 47-year period.
We have 47 years where these blood thirsty people have been killing a lot of soldiers, a lot of our soldiers and a lot of other people. They killed 42,000 people over the last two months and you get to a point where people don't want to mention that -- they don't like mentioning that. 42,000 unarmed protesters, innocent, unarmed protesters, many of them hung.
So, we're not dealing with the nicest group of people, but we're dealing with them very successfully. And the blockade has been a tremendous success. They said two days ago, we will open the Strait. I said, no, we're not going to open the Strait until we have a final deal. No, no, we want to open the Strait. They said, we're not opening. We totally control the Strait, just so you understand with all the fake news out there.
Kernen: And, Mr. President, we've seen 100 days of the largest protests in Iran since the revolution in 1979. And I know how much you respect and admire and are concerned with the Iranian people themselves. And this is, I think, in large degree, one of the reasons you decided to embark on this whole thing, maybe among other things, but the timing was right.
If we get close in negotiations right now, but the deadline for the ceasefire is tomorrow, if it looks like things are progressing, will you not necessarily extend it to a definitive amount of time, but will you let it keep going if there's progress in the talks before taking --
Trump: Well, I don't want to do that. We don't have that much time because by the time both parties get there, as you know, they just got the okay to go forward, which I knew they were going to do anyway. I mean, I don't think they had a choice, they have to negotiate. And the one thing I'll say is this, Iran can get themselves at a very good footing.
If they make a deal, they can make themselves into a strong nation again, a wonderful nation again. They have incredible people, but they seem to be bloodthirsty, they're led by some very, very, unfortunately, tough people. And I don't mean tough in a good way, I think it's very negative for the country because we're much tougher than they are, like not even close.
But they have to use reason, and they have to use commonsense and they can get themselves into a great position to make themselves into a great country, but a legitimate country, not a country based on death and horror.
Kernen: And I think regimes only respond to certain things. And I understand your threats to bomb the bridges and the electric grid, but I don't think the regime cares about the people of Iran. And if you did that, I'm sure it's the last thing you'd probably want to do, but it would hurt at least some of the people that we care about and why we embarked on this in the first place. So, that would be, I'm sure, a last resort for you.
Trump: It's not my choice, but it will also hit them. It will hurt them militarily; they use the bridges for their weapons, for their missile movements. You know, they're trying to move the missiles because we've obliterated most of their missiles. And they're trying to move their missiles around even during the ceasefire, which I think was a good thing because we're totally loaded up. We have so much ammo, we have so much of everything that we have, like much, much more powerful than it was four or five weeks ago.
So, we've used this to restock, and they probably have done a little bit of restocking. We caught a ship yesterday that had some things on it which wasn't very nice, a gift from China, perhaps, I don't know, but I was a little surprised. Because I have a very good relationship and I thought I had an understanding with President Xi, but that's all right, that's the way war goes, right?
But I will tell you that we have -- our military is incredible what we've done. I mean, think of it, in the first three days, we took out their entire Navy, 159 ships -- 159 ships, and wiped out their Air Force, wiped out their anti-aircraft, all of their anti-aircraft apparatuses, all gone. All of their radar is gone.
Their leaders are gone -- you know, their leaders are gone. The whole thing is gone and, frankly, this should have been done a long time ago. It would have been a lot easier because they were a lot less lethal a long time ago.
Kernen: So, to be clear, you're saying that you need at least the prospects for a signed deal today and tomorrow, or else you would resume bombing Iran?
Trump: Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with. But we're ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go; they are absolutely incredible. You know, I built the military in my first term, I'm using it now. The military, when I took it over from Barack Hussein Obama, they had just -- It was so depleted, so sad.
And I built it in my first term. You remember those big numbers. You talked to me about it once. That's a lot of money for military. I built it -- we did a great job with our military, and we're using it now and rebuilding it too. We've done a lot of rebuilding also in my first year of the second term. But we have a tremendous -- we have the most powerful military in the world, everybody knows it.
Kernen: Since we're kind of tight on time, can we just talk about what -- something else happening today and that that is your pick for fed chair, Kevin Warsh, on Capitol Hill. We've had a couple of guests today say the best thing that we need now is for Jay Powell to leave in May like he's supposed to and to have Kevin Warsh in as fed chair for that next June meeting.
But we still have this Justice Department probe hanging over. And I've seen things that you've said in recent interviews, Mr. President. And I just want to ask you again if it would be possible for the Banking Committee to completely investigate all of your concerns about the cost overruns and the testimony of Jay Powell in front of Congress?
If you could take that off ramp to get this moving and Jay Powell leaves, Kevin Warsh goes in, is that something you'd consider dropping the DOJ probe to let the Banking Committee handle it?
Trump: Well, I could --
Note: [Crosstalk]
Trump: From the standpoint, Joe -- from the standpoint that we have to find out why a small building costs close to $4 billion -- it's not finished, by the way, they have a long way to go. They ripped down the most beautiful ceilings, they'll never build them again, the most beautiful thick -- foot-and-a-half thick walls of solid masonry, they're never going to be built again.
They put up six-inch sheetrock walls, and they say, sir, we have no insulation, it's not in the budget. I mean, these walls, they had the best -- that building was so beautiful, I would have fixed that building, I would have had it brand new, beautiful for $25 million and they're going to spend close to $4 billion.
Maybe more than that, I don't know, it's not finished. In fact, I looked at it the other day; I'm afraid Kevin will have to have an office next to me in the White House because that building's not going to be done. He's not going to be able to use that building for a long time. And, you know, he had a complaint.
He said -- I didn't realize this -- he said, the saddest thing is they ripped down the best building. He said there was a building that had beautiful board rooms that he used many times when he was there, beautiful board rooms and meeting rooms, it was so beautiful, the nicest in Washington. He said they ripped it down.
And maybe they did that to save money like Gavin Newsom, the railroad where they made it shorter in order to save money. But it's still 25 times over budget. But the worst I've ever heard is the railroad in California and I think this might be worse. Think of it, I would have fixed that building, beautiful, quickly.
$25 million would have been like a brand-new building. I would have -- all the ceilings would have been left; all those beautiful thick walls with gorgeous moldings would have been left. You're going to get a sheetrock ceiling, a sheetrock wall without insulation. They said, sir, insulation is not in the budget.
Insulation costs you 100 bucks a room. The whole thing is crazy and they're at 4 -- there I think it's going to cost more than $4 billion when it's finished. Somehow -- no, but, Joe, somehow we have to find out how this can happen. It's not the first time. How does this happen? Did the contractor make $3.5 billion?
Kernen: If the Banking Committee could take it over?
Trump: I can't imagine that "Too Late" is taking money on construction, I can't, but it's possible. But we have to find out. Why is a job that should have cost $25 million, costing billions and billions of dollars? You know, I built the hotel, it's now the Waldorf, I sold it to Waldorf, and it's now the Waldorf.
I built it for $201 million. It's a bigger building than the federal -- and it was hotel rooms with bathrooms and partitions. And it's much more expensive to build a hotel room than it is a nice empty office space, right? And I built that for $201 million. This now is eight years ago or so, but think of it, this building, you look at it, it's a little building, it's over -- I think it's going to cost over $400 million and here's the thing, it's going to be nothing compared to what it was.
This is -- they spent $4 billion and it's nothing compared to what it was. It was beautiful, beautiful ceilings, they were all destroyed, they took them down. I don't know why.
Kernen: If the DOJ, though, if this goes forward with Department of Justice and it delays him being confirmed, Kevin Warsh, it's kind of counterproductive for what you're trying to do in terms of changing the MO of the fed up to this point. So, I'm just trying to look for an off ramp to get for you.
Trump: Well, it is, and it isn't, Joe. You have to find out why a thing like that could happen, because if you have hundreds of projects like that, you know, very few are like this. But if you had hundreds of projects like that, you'd have to find out why that happens I mean, because we obviously don't do it right.
But, you know, we have some really people -- we have some great people in government that can do jobs. I build under budget, ahead of schedule. I'm doing a ballroom now, it's a much bigger job than that and it's going to cost, depending on finishes, like $300 million, it's a much bigger job than this -- ahead of schedule. And I have lawsuits every week from all these people, all the do-gooders that stop progress in our country, but people love it.
Kernen: I'm going to give Becky a chance, Mr. President. To get, you know --
Trump: You can have some extra time. I know my people said 20 minutes, but you can have some extra time.
Becky Quick: Oh, thank you, sir. All right.
Kernen: That's good.
Trump: You can even put Andrew on the phone. You know, you told me Andrew would not be there, and I said I don't care if he's there or not.
Kernen: That was last week -- that was last week. [Laughter]
Trump: You can even put Andrew on.
Note: [Crosstalk]
Trump: He'll make a comment to me.
Kernen: Thank you, Mr. President.
Trump: He'll make a comment to me. When he tried to get me on he said, I promise I'll have Andrew Ross Sorkin, he will not be there.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: That's --
Trump: You can put him on a --
Kernen: I didn't say I'd have him. I said, he's not in last week, but then you canceled because you were on the West Coast.
Sorkin: Thank you, Mr. President. I'll chime in in a minute.
Kernen: He's going to be so --
Sorkin: Becky, go ahead.
Trump: Joe said you were going to be there and that's why --
Note: [Crosstalk]
Trump: But I don't mind if he's there, I like him, I respect him, he's just wrong on a lot of issues.
Kernen: There you go.
Quick: Mr. President, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about what you -- hi, sir -- let's talk a little bit about what you expect from your next fed president. There had been a lot of expectations; you've been very clear about wanting lower rates. But with the situation in Iran right now with higher oil prices, most people tell us that that's going to have to wait.
The market itself is not anticipating lower rates or any rate cuts until at least the second half of this year. There's only a 41 percent chance or something of that, according to the market itself. Will you be disappointed if your new fed chair, if he gets approved, doesn't cut rates right away?
Trump: I would, but let's talk about Iran first. Iran, I'm looking at your numbers now as I speak. I mean, the market's up. We're going to be at 50,000. That's where we were just a little while ago when it started. And when I hit 50,000 on the Dow and 7,000 on the S&P, I said, well, I hate to do this to everybody, but I'm going to have to journey down to a place called Iran and not -- make sure they don't have a nuclear weapon because they will blow up the world.
You want to see a bad stock market, try blowing up the Middle East and then Europe, and then they come for us, right? And we're not going to let that happen. So, I said to the people -- I said to my people, they're all gathered, all these wonderful guys, Scott Bessent, the whole group, Howard, they're all doing a good job.
I said, fellas, I've got a little bad news for you, I'm going to put a little wrinkle in your numbers. Why, sir? We're going down to a place called Iran, and we're going to make sure that they never have a nuclear weapon because they'll use it to blow up -- because they're religious fanatics, and they will use that weapon to blow up the world.
But they'll start with Israel and the Middle East, and we're not going to let that happen. And they said, wow, that's going to be bad. I said, yeah, it's going to hurt the market, and it's going to drive up the price of oil and whatever it is. But that's peanuts compared to what would happen if we let this happen.
And I told them 47 years, other presidents wanted to do it, they never had the guts, the courage to do it. I said, we have to do it. And they understood. They're very professional, they're great guys, great people. Jamieson is doing such a great job, all of them. And so, I said, we're going down and we're going to -- we're going to do our little thing.
And we did and we knocked out -- we've totally won the war. You know, if you read the New York Times, you think, oh, gee, when are we surrendering? We have totally beat them militarily and otherwise, and otherwise. I mean, I wish I could I wish you could hear the conversations we have with them. We are victorious.
If we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. And they can't get the nuclear dust because it was obliterated by the B-2 bombers that went in. They never got the credit they should get. They've tried to get down there -- you know, we have cameras from Space Force on it all the time. They've tried to get down; they can't get down.
That place was obliterated; they did such a good job. The left tries to make it -- you know, tries to demean all the time, like, oh, well, maybe it wasn't totally obliterated. It was, and they can't get it or they would have they would have tried to get it. But the fact is that we took this little journey.
And if you would have told me that the Dow was almost, I'm looking at your thing, I mean, literally, we're at 50,000. And if you would have told me that oil is at 90 as opposed to 200, I would be frankly surprised. And you know what is happening? Boats are finding other sources; they're going up to Texas and Louisiana.
They're going to Alaska and they're going to other places. It's an amazing phenomenon, you know, when there are problems, people find out how to take care of things. And the Straits are very important, but people have found out. I mean, you're taking a look, look at your numbers right now. I'm looking at where the stock market's up and where it's, you know, look at that, S&P. The numbers are what they were when we started this whole thing.
I thought they'd be down 20 percent or down a very substantial amount, even when it was down more a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised. I thought it would be down much more, and I thought the oil would be much higher and I'm very happy to say that it wasn't. And when it's over, and it will end, when it's over, you know they wanted it to be over immediately.
And I just looked at a little chart, World War I, four years and three months; World War II, six years; Korean War, three years; Vietnam, 19 years; Iraq, eight years. I'm five months, OK, five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly, I would have if I were president, I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won because essentially, we've won here, OK. I mean, people can play games, the Democrats can say, well, we should have done better.
No matter what, if I did it in one week, they'd say we should have done better. Look at Venezuela, I took it over in 45 minutes. It was basically a 45-minute -- and by the way, a very strong military country. And we took it over in a day, but let's be nice. But we basically took it over in 45 minutes. We took it over during the attack in 45 minutes.
And they would say, I'm surprised they haven't said it, that you should have done it in 30 minutes, it took too long, you know. So, it's tough, but we can't let traitors -- We can't let traitors like Schumer put pressure on you where they say we want out. Think how bad that is. I'm negotiating with these people and they're telling us we have to get out now, we have to get out now, we have to get out now.
And they were in a war for 18 years. They were in a war for, think of that: Vietnam, 19 years; Iraq, eight years. So, I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed; I have all the time in the world. I want to make not a good deal; I want to make a great deal. I don't want to do this, go through this and, you know, we have -- I mean, if you look at this, what we've suffered in terms of losses, we lost 13 men and that's terrible.
I wish we didn't lose one. But if somebody would have said we've done this and obliterated that country, obliterated it, and we lost 13 men, people would have said, that's not possible to have done that, it's not possible. So, we've done a great job. And I don't want to be rushed by people that are really treasonous as far as I'm concerned, where they're -- and it's just, you know, I watch this low IQ guy, Hakeem Jeffries, he's a totally low IQ person.
And he's always ranting and raving, oh, this war is so terrible, terrible. They shouldn't be saying that when we're in the midst of a negotiation, because it does hurt us somewhat. It gives the other side some hope and I don't want them to have hope.
Sorkin: Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about Anthropic if I could, for a second, because this is a company that your administration has declared a supply chain risk. And I want to understand the determination for that. There's a view by some that it's political. But more importantly, at the same time that this is happening, reportedly, the NSA and other parts of the government are using Claude, which of course is the large language model of Anthropic and how do you square that?
Trump: Well, Anthropic is a group of very smart people, but they started telling our military how to operate, and we didn't want that. And they tend to be on the left, radical left, but we get along with them. In fact, they came to the office, they came to the White House a few days ago, and we had some very good talks with them.
And I think they're shaping up. They're very smart, and I think they can be of great use. I like smart people, I like high IQ people, and they definitely have high IQs. You know, it's one of those things, and I think we'll get along with them just fine.
Sorkin: So, do you think a deal will be made so that Anthropic will be allowed to be used inside the Defense Department in the future?
Trump: We want the smartest people. Now, in the meantime, we replaced Anthropic with somebody else. You know who they are and they're very, very smart people, Sam Altman, a very, very smart group. We have a lot of smart groups. We have some brilliant people. We have the most brilliant people in the world. President Xi told me that.
He said, Silicon Valley, he called it Silicon Valley during a conversation, I have a great relationship with him. He said, you have the smartest people in the world. And we do, you take a look at what's happening with Jensen and all of these people, and it's a great honor to be working on. I think Tim Cook, you know, I see he's retiring.
I wrote a piece about him today and I got to know him very well. He's a fantastic person, did an unbelievable job. And I say it respectfully, but if Steve Jobs had lived and ran the company, it might have done good, but it wouldn't have done, I think, nearly as good as the job Tim has done. And I got to work with Tim, so I really know it -- I know what I'm talking about. He's a very unusual guy, he gets things done.
Kernen: Mr. President, yeah, we did read your entire Truth Social post. I just want to return for one second and make an analogy. You saw what inflation did to the Biden legacy and administration. So, 22 percent price increases. By the time he was leaving, it was down to about where it is now, about 3 percent, but not a single --
Trump: No it wasn't. It was down to 5 percent, it wasn't down --
Note: [Crosstalk]
Kernen: But not a single person --
Trump: And the reason it was down was because I had won the election and it started falling after I won the election and I started getting prices down from right after November 5th.
Kernen: If you needed to prevent that from happening -- let's say Chair Warsh thought for whatever reason, there's some type of energy shock, who knows, with the blockade. Let's say that things got too hot. At that point, just to make sure there was no inflation, would you allow him to raise rates or not cut rates?
Would there ever be a period where you could see that that was something that a fed chair needed to do? And you said he might have an office right near you, he might not want an office right next to yours, sir, I don't know, after what happened to Jay Powell, he might want to be across in those new digs maybe.
Trump: Maybe I'd like him next to me. Actually, it's not a bad idea. Maybe Jay Powell did us a big service in retrospect. I call him "Too Late," he's just too late. He's always too late except when it came to before the election, but that didn't quite work out well for him. So, the answer is I want Kevin, I think Kevin's great.
He's really -- he's central casting in a true sense, OK? I think he's going to do a great job. Yeah, if there's time for -- I've been in favor of interest rate rises to stop inflation. I think it sort of is effective. But there's one thing, and nobody ever talks about it but me, unfortunately, so I'm sure it's not correct, but I think it is. We should be -- we should have the lowest interest rate in the world.
When I was a young guy growing up, we always had the lowest interest rate worldwide, we always did. And then, 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it started where Switzerland and other people had lower rates than us. And I just had a thing with -- if you take a look at some of the, let's call them like elite countries, they're only elite because we allow them to walk away with $30 billion and $40 billion a year.
But I don't do that so much anymore. I sort of put a clamp on that with the tariffs and charges that we charge them. Because they were elite, because they were making billions and billions of dollars from the United States, largely, and other reasons. And they run a good operation, but it's easy to run it good when you make that much money where we have these massive deficits with -- you take a look at some of the countries.
But Switzerland is one. They talk, oh, yes, we are small and brilliant. Well, they're brilliant because they pay us almost nothing. Now they pay a little bit; they should pay much more, we'll get that up a little bit. But if you take a look at Denmark, you take a look at all these countries. You think of them so good, they pay such a low interest rate.
Well, if we charge them -- and what happened with me is I charged some of them and they squawked like you wouldn't believe it. They called and, we are a small country. All of a sudden, I realized they're not elite, we're elite. We're being sucked dry. And we can't do that. And you'll see that, you know, we had a little setback with the Supreme Court.
They said, I can charge tariffs, but I have to do it a different way. And because of what they did we have to pay back $160 billion. All they had to do was add one sentence, just one sentence, and that's you don't have to pay anything taken in thus far back. But because they didn't add -- and by the way, it was a close call too.
There were justices that were powerful that I was right on the tariffs, but because we lost by just two votes, you know, just a little vote, two votes, we have to pay back $165 billion. They could have with a little -- one sentence, you don't have to pay back tariffs that have already been received. You start from this point and you do it a different way.
So, we're doing it a different way, we're going to end up with the same -- actually we'll end up with bigger numbers actually. But it's a little more unwieldy, but it's the way it's been done. But it's so sad that --
Kernen: Mr. President --
Trump: The Supreme Court didn't want to save our country with one sentence, $165 billion. And we're giving a lot of that money back to people that hate our country. So, I'm not happy with the Supreme Court, I'll be honest with you, OK.
Sorkin: Mr. President, on that topic, there's a whole number of very large companies, including Apple and Amazon and others, that have not sought reimbursements yet for the tariffs. I mean, they haven't tried to collect refunds. And from what I understand, part of the reason that they have waited is because there is a worry about, frankly, offending you. Would you find it offensive for them to try to collect a refund?
Trump: It's brilliant if they don't do that actually. I actually think if they don't do that, they got to know me very well. I'm very honored by what you just said. If they don't do that, I'll remember them, I will tell you that. Because I'm looking to make this country strong. The Supreme Court could have helped us. Now they have birthright citizenship.
They'll probably rule against us, no country in the world has it. It's horrible for our country. And I just see it, you know, I see some of these Republicans that are nominated by me asking the real bad questions and looks like maybe we're going to lose that one, too. Look what happened with NIL. They destroyed college sports, the court system destroyed.
So hard to put that one back, Humpty Dumpty. So hard to put that one back together. You know, we had 150 years of rulings and everything else and they had such a great system, it was a scholarship system. You get free college if you're a good athlete, you get this, you get that. And it took care of every sport, fencing, not only football.
Now it's all football and the football is bringing down colleges because they're losing. Did you see Penn State lost $500 million last year? Florida State lost $450 million last year. They can't lose that kind of money. They don't make that kind of money. And the courts, the courts, the court system, a person that never had anything to do with sports, a very liberal leaning Democrat, liberal.
She decided that the sports system that was in place for 150 years is no good. She never went to a game before. It's no good and she said it's unconstitutional. And unfortunately, NCAA didn't even appeal it. You know, I've won a lot of cases on appeal. To be honest with you, we've got some really bad judges.
But I've won a lot of cases on appeal, some great people, some -- we have, fortunately, some great people in the appellate courts. And I've won cases, they didn't appeal it and, because of that, college sports is a disaster right now. You have many people staying in college because they're going to make more money than they would if they went into baseball, Major League Baseball, or the NFL. They can make more money.
You know, a seven-year freshman, we have a seven-year freshman. It's crazy what they've done. And this is a person that never went to a game, acknowledged not familiar with sports, but she overruled everything. She said it's all unconstitutional, start all over again. And thank goodness we have people like Randy Levine and others that -- Coach Saban, who's so great.
We have -- a lot of people got together. But it's very hard to put that one together I will tell you right now, it's a tough one, but they're going to do the best. But if the courts had common sense, they would have done -- they would have done something that could have been very easy to do and made everybody happy.
If they had common sense, we would not be paying back almost $200 billion in tariffs so stupidly. In many cases, the enemy, the enemy is getting this money, the people that have hated the United States, we're giving them checks for billions of dollars. It's so sad to see and it would be nice if the court system and the Supreme Court could have done things a little bit differently.
Very sad. Actually, it's very sad. It's called no common sense. And look at the rulings we're getting on illegal immigrants. I mean, they're coming in murderers and everything else. We have a murderer, a many time murderer, it's really hard to get them out of our country. But we don't stop.
Quick: Mr. President, just in terms of putting things together, there are -- there was a story earlier this week about United potentially wanting to buy American. Senators from both sides of the aisle have warned that that is a step too far. You should not be putting these two large airlines together. Have you thought about that proposition? Would you be in favor of it?
Trump: I just heard it a few days ago. And I know them both very well. I don't like it. No. I don't mind mergers. I think I'd love somebody to buy Spirit as an example. You know, Spirit's in trouble and I'd love somebody to buy Spirit, it's 14,000 jobs. And maybe the federal government should help that one out, you know, I tell my people.
But with American, it's doing fine, and United is doing very well. I know the United people, they're doing very well. I don't like having them merge. It's just like all of these aerospace -- defense companies and aerospace companies. We used to have hundreds of them and now we have like a very small number, and you get one bid and it makes them lazy.
I came down very hard on them two or three months ago because it takes too long. We have the best equipment in the world, we have the best, you know, the Patriot systems, the Tomahawk systems. We have the best stuff in the world by far. You know, the other day during this crazy war, we had 111 -- there's a dispute as to 111 and 101. I want to be exactly accurate with you people, because otherwise you'll create stories that I exaggerated.
We had 101 or 111 -- nobody was able to get it right, but the result was the same -- missiles shot at one of our great assets out in that area, a ship. And out of the 111 missiles shot, every single one of them was shot down, going at 3,000 miles an hour, right? You know, not easy, it's like a needle in a haystack.
They used to call it impossible to do. So, they go 3,000 miles an hour. Every single one of them was shot down, mostly by Patriots, but every one of them was shot down. Think of it, 111 missiles coming at you, and every one of those missiles is now lying at the bottom of the sea like the Navy -- like the Iran's Navy is lying at the bottom of the sea.
It's amazing, but we've got to make it faster. So, I have a push. You know, Raytheon took billions of dollars, billions, many -- I don't even want to tell you how many because I'm embarrassed -- for stock buybacks instead of buying plants. So, I made it illegal for them to do that. No defense company, they have to build new plants.
So, we have plants, Raytheon now is building five, they're all building -- Lockheed is building three or four. They're all building plants because we need speed. We don't want -- you know, you order a Patriot and they say, we'll have it to you, sir, in three and a half years. We want it in a week and that's where we are now. They're building plants all over the country, and they're going to do well for doing it.
Kernen: Mr. President, we appreciate all your time. If you have time, I want to ask you one more question.
Trump: Go ahead.
Kernen: And, you know, we have allies now in the Middle East. Maybe some are -- we can maybe count on more than allies in other parts of the world, but.
Trump: They're much better allies than NATO, that I can tell you.
Kernen: The UAE is asking the US for some type of financial lifeline. I don't know if it's a solvency problem, it's more of a liquidity problem. And I know we did, Secretary Bessent did something with Argentina that that worked out. Is there some type of swap possible to -- a currency swap with the UAE to help if they need it? And do you think there would be backlash because it's such a wealth -- or perceived to be such a wealthy country? Is that under consideration?
Trump: It is, but it's been a good country, it's been a good ally of ours and, you know, these are unusual times. They were -- more than anybody else, I mean, it was shocking because we thought that they'd shoot missiles at Israel, but not every other country in the area. And, you know, UAE got hit with 1,400 missiles.
Now, fortunately, they had the Patriots, and they had great defense and they were able to shoot down most of them. But they did get hit hard, they were hit the hardest of the group, actually. And they're really led by incredible people. And yeah, I mean, I'm surprised because they are really rich. You know, they invested -- a year ago, I went there and I got them to invest $1 trillion in the United States.
They're building a tremendous plant in a great state called Oklahoma, aluminum plant, smelting plant. Beautiful, incredible, top of the -- it'll be the best anywhere in the world. You know, they're very good for this country. So, yeah, if I could help them, I would. I mean, we're helping them much more with what we're doing with the war because, you know, the bully of the Middle East was Iran.
Iran was a bully and bullied all of these countries around. And they threatened them all the time and they threatened about the Hormuz Strait; they threatened -- sometimes some people call it the Strait of Hormuz, which is actually a more beautiful wording. But they threatened them all the time. And so, we're really doing a big job there.
Those five countries have been great, and Israel's been great. Israel's been a great partner for us. It's like they say, we're the big brother, they're the small brother. But the small brother has been very helpful to us. You know, they've displayed great courage. And yeah, if UAE had a problem -- I'd find it hard to believe, but if they had a problem, we would be there for them, yeah.
Kernen: Are the Saudis impatient now or do they want -- are they on the other side? Were they finished?
Trump: Well, he's another great guy. You know, he gave me the famous line that I use a little bit. He said, a year and a half ago, sir, you were a dead country, now you're the hottest country anywhere in the world. He said that to me and it's true. We were a dead country. We had a guy that wasn't respected, we had a country that was laughed at, he couldn't walk up a flight of stairs.
Forget about down, he couldn't walk up a flight, but he was falling all over the place. I have to be careful because if I do trip or fall, it's going to be the biggest -- that's why when I get out of those planes, I walk nice and slowly. I'm not looking to set any speed records. But we had an embarrassing country.
We had a country that was going to fail. This country would have failed, if I didn't win this election. I'll tell you, I've had many people tell me that, many people that aren't necessarily of the Republican persuasion or MAGA. But we've had many people say it, that this country would have failed if I didn't win this election. You people wouldn't be looking at the numbers you're looking at right now.
Kernen: So, the Saudis are not -- are they taking it economically on the chin to the point where they want you to end this? Or are they saying finish the job?
Trump: I think they're doing great. I spoke to him yesterday, he wasn't asking for anything. He wants to -- they're fighting. You know, they're helping us. They're helping us on the Strait, they're helping us all over. The ones that aren't helping are NATO. You know, NATO said to me, no, we'll send somebody as soon as it's over.
I said, that's not really -- you know, we don't need them. We'll never need them actually, they'll need us. They need us desperately because they're a paper tiger. But I've said that -- by the way, I've said that for a long time. Before I was in politics, I used to say it. I was not in politics, but I sort of enjoyed it and I liked watching things and I always said they were a paper tiger.
And Europe has to straighten themselves out. Between energy and immigration, they have to straighten themselves out or they're not going to have a Europe anymore.
Kernen: Yeah, we could talk NATO, but I know you've obviously got a lot to do. We will be watching for any Truth Social posts about the negotiations, whether you hear what's happening. But thanks for all your time this morning, Mr. President, we greatly appreciate it.
Trump: Well, thank you. And Becky, thank you. And Andrew, I'm glad you were on the phone, I'm really glad. Even though Joe totally misrepresented, I don't mind that at all, OK?
Kernen: That's not true.
Sorkin: Thank you, Mr. President, we'll talk soon.
Trump: Good to hear your voice.
Kernen: He's a kidder. Kidders like to kid. Thank you, Mr. President.
Trump: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Kernen: We'll talk to you soon. Squawk on the Street is next.