TRANSCRIPT: Press Gaggle: Donald Trump Speaks to Reporters On Board Air Force One - July 4, 2025
[Video]
President Trump: Hello everybody.
Question: Hello, Mr. President.
Trump: So we had a great time in Iowa. Very successful. A lot of people, I think they enjoyed it, but it's been a great state for me. We won it all three times and, uh, very special. Tomorrow's gonna be great. We're gonna have the B-2s flying and we have Christie, the whole group. Including – A lot of great congressmen. We have everybody. And we have Doug Burgum. If you have any questions, Brooke Rollins, agriculture. Do you have any questions? Let us know. But we all had a great time in Iowa.
Question: Mr. President, has Hamas agreed to the latest framework for a ceasefire and hostage deal?
Trump: Uh, we'll see what happens. We're gonna know over the next 24 hours.
Question: Mr. President, you had the best border numbers in the month of June in the country's history. Now with the one Big Beautiful Bill signed by you, you've set the bar so high when it comes to border security, what is the expectation moving forward, sir?
Trump: I love this guy. [Laughter] Oh, I love him. He's like my favorite person. Uh, well, we just wanna see if we can keep going up. We have had, we had great numbers. I appreciate you saying it. We have had --
Brooke Rollins: Yeah.
Trump: But we just want to keep 'em going up, right?
Rollins: That's right.
Trump: That's all we can do. Thank you.
Question: Mr. President, you talked about farmers and trying to, uh, give them some relief. Uh, can you, can you talk a little bit more specifically about, you mentioned legislation tonight at the rally.
Trump: Yeah, I'll let, I'll let my agricultural genius talk about it.
Rollins: Yeah. [Laughs] Thank you, sir. Yes, we have been hard at work. The president gave a directive that farmers needed to make sure they could farm and, and, uh, do their harvests and milk their cows. So Stephen Miller, myself, the top team in the White House has been working on, including Secretary Noem, including Secretary Chavez-DeRemer on the H2A streamline. The current visa system that allows seasonal workers in. So we are hard at work. We've already made some changes. We're gonna make it cheaper, more efficient, and more effective for those farmers. We will have a 100% legal workforce very, very soon thanks to President Trump's leadership.
Question: Mr. President -
Trump: Good answer, right?
Question: Mr. President?
Trump: Yes.
Question: We're 10 days away from the anniversary of your assassination attempt. Do you know any more now about the assassination attempt that, than you knew then?
Trump: Well, the FBI was in the other day with a lot of people, including the Attorney General who's doing a great job, Pam Bondi. Uh, and uh, I'm very satisfied. They gave me a complete presentation. I was very satisfied.
Question: There is a report that you held a secret meeting today with a Saudi official. Are you any closer on, uh, expanding the Abraham Accords? Any, any news from that?
Trump: Yeah, we are. It's one of the things we talked about, the Abraham Accords. Now that Iran has been taken out in terms of a nuclear threat, and they have been completely taken out, at least for a very long time, uh, I think a lot of people are gonna be joining the Abraham Accords. We have four great countries already, but we're gonna have a lot of people, I think, joining the Abraham Accord.
Question: Mr. President.
Trump: Yeah.
Question: Some polls have shown the Big Beautiful Bill to not be very popular. I'm wondering how confident are you in being able to sell it to the American people?
Trump: Yeah, I think it's very popular. Uh, it does many things, but one of 'em is the biggest tax cuts in our country's history, and that alone makes it very popular. The only poll that was done was a, uh, Democrat poll, and the last two of the little bit controversial things, but good things for the country. Uh, the tax cuts alone, so it's the largest tax cut in the history of our country, and that alone makes it very, very popular.
Question: Mr. President, can you talk a little bit about your expectations for the celebration next year? Obviously a bit of a preview tonight. You talked about the Patriot Games. You highlighted a possible UFC title fight at the White House.
Trump: Right.
Question: What are your expectations for the celebration next year?
Trump: Well, I think it's gonna be a great celebration. It's gonna be as big a celebration as we've ever had. And remember, we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics also. So we have that plus we have 250. Uh, I think it's gonna be a, a wild time. It's gonna be a great time for this country. It's gonna be the golden age. Thank you.
Question: Mr. President, what's next, uh, for, for Russia and Ukraine? Are you still speaking, are you speaking to Zelenskyy tomorrow and, and what are you hoping the next --
Trump: I'm speaking to President Zelenskyy tomorrow, early in the morning. And yeah, I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin because I don't think he's there. I don't think he's there.
Question: Can you [Inaudible]
Trump: And I, I'm very disappointed. Well, it, it's not, I'm just saying, I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad. This is Biden. This isn't me. This is Biden's war. It wouldn't have happened. If I were president, uh, it wouldn't have happened. So, you know, I, I, in one way, I hate to get too involved, because it's Biden's war. President, uh, it wouldn't have happened. So, you know, I, I, in one way, I hate to get too involved because it's Biden's war. And, uh, I got stuck in the middle of it, just like I did with immigration and a lot of other things that they screwed up. But I was not happy with the conversation. No.
Question: Mr. President, a couple weeks ago, you said that you were on the cusp of a historic settlement with Harvard University. What's changed since then? Do you think you're closer to an agreement or do you think Columbia could go for --
Trump: Oh, no. I think, I think we're gonna probably settle with Harvard. We're gonna probably settle with Columbia. They, they wanna settle very badly.
Question: How much?
Trump: There's no rush. A lot of money.
Question: [Laughter] Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about one of the words you used during your speech, shylocks. That's widely viewed as an anti-Semitic phrase. Did you intend for that word be used that way?
Trump: No, I've never heard it that way. To me, a shylock is somebody that's a, uh, a moneylender at high rates. I've never heard it that way. You view it differently than me. I've never heard that. Go ahead. Anything else?
Question: Mr. President, what do you make of the deal, uh, that your lawyer struck, uh, with CBS's parent company? Uh, can you talk, uh, uh, talk about that? And have you had any conversations with, uh, Larry Ellison about expectations you might have for Skydance and PSAs that they would run should they take over Paramount?
Trump: Well, Larry Ellison is a friend of mine. He's a great guy. I think he's the buyer. But, uh, we did a deal for about $16 million plus 16 million, or maybe more than that in advertising. So it's a combination of 16 plus, 16 plus. So it's like 32 to maybe $35 million. I think that what they did, what they, and this has nothing to do with Larry Ellison. I think he's gonna run CBS really well, and I think he's making a good deal to buy it. I think he's great. He's got a son who's a fantastic young man too. Uh, but, uh, what they did was incredible. They took an answer from Kamala just before, the day before the election, and it was a horrible answer. And they took the answer out in its entirety, and they put another answer in. A different answer that was a different part of the interview because the answer she gave was so bad, it was like election-threatening. And I have never, I've seen it all, but I've never seen that. Nobody has. And we understand that was done in other locations also with respect to answers. But think of it, one of the most important question, maybe the most important question, she gave a horrible answer to it. So they took an answer from another part of the interview and they inserted it. Nobody's ever seen that before. So I think they made a wise decision to settle.
Question: And is that 16 million for the ads, is that part of, uh, contingency for your administration to approve the merger or the, the sale of the company?
Trump: No, it has nothing to do with that. It has to, this is totally separate. This was when I was running. This had nothing to do with what was taking place in government. This is when I was running. Uh, this was the, essentially the night before the election, and they did this and we thought it was despicable, actually.
Question: [Inaudible] Haven't made a deal?
Trump: No. We're gonna start sending letters out to various countries starting tomorrow. We'll probably have 10 or 12 go out tomorrow. And over the next few days, uh, I think by the 9th, they'll be fully covered. And they'll range in value from maybe 60 or 70% tariffs to, uh, 10 and 20% tariffs. Uh, but they're gonna be starting to go out sometime tomorrow. We've done the final form, and it's basically going to explain what the countries are gonna be paying in tariffs. And it's, uh, very important. It's a lot of money for the country, but we're giving them a bargain.
Question: Mr. President.
Trump: 'Cause if I went by the true deficits or, uh, by other, uh, ways of measuring, it could be a lot more. We, I, we don't wanna- --
Rollins: That’s right.
Trump: I don't wanna stretch it too much. We want to keep it pretty reasonable.
Rollins: Yeah. Yeah.
Question: Mr. President --
Trump: And I think it's, actually, I think it's very reasonable.
Rollins: Yeah.
Question: Mr. President. Mr. President, what countries will you be sending those letters to first?
Trump: Uh, we're gonna be sending to, well, you're gonna see tomorrow. I'd rather give it tomorrow, but we have probably 12, 10 to 12 tomorrow. And then after that, we'll be sending 10 or 12 a day. And as we get along, as we get to the smaller countries, uh, we're pretty much gonna keep the tariffs the same.
Question: Are there any countries that will have a little flexibility with that deadline?
Trump: Not really. I mean, they'll, they'll start to pay on August 1st. The money will start to come into the United States on August 1st. Okay? In pretty much all cases. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you.
Rollins: Thank you, everyone.
Question: Thank you. Thank you, sir.
Trump: Thank you very much.