Donald Trump (00:02):
Thank you very much for being here. We have largely an energy group today. We're looking to be very energy dominant and we will be in a very short order. These are great professionals. But before we do that, we'll be signing an executive order having to do with COVID and schools.
(00:20)
Lindsay?
Lindsay (00:21):
Yep. So this first executive order, it prohibits federal funding for COVID-19 vaccine mandates in schools.
Donald Trump (00:30):
Okay. And that will… Meaning they want to clear that up, the discrepancy.
Lindsay (00:34):
So any schools that require students to be vaccinated with COVID-19 shot, then there's no more federal funding.
Donald Trump (01:03):
Okay. Okay. That solves that problem.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Sir, will the Department of Education have to handle that?
Donald Trump (01:09):
Yes. It'll go through the Department of Education.
(01:12)
Okay, thanks.
Lindsay (01:12):
Okay. And-
Sean Duffy (01:16):
Can I make one comment, Mr. President?
Donald Trump (01:18):
Yes, please.
Sean Duffy (01:19):
As a father of nine, thank you. We should have parental freedom to decide what vaccines our kids take as opposed to school systems and governors forcing upon the people that love these kids the most, which is the parents. So thank you for signing that.
Donald Trump (01:33):
Great. Thank you very much. People wanted that very badly. Okay.
Lindsay (01:37):
Okay. And here is an executive order establishing the National Energy Dominance Council. So that will be chaired by the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Burgum and the Vice Chair, Chris Wright. And so this will reduce costs with respect to energy, establish American independence with energy, and also unleash energy dominance.
Donald Trump (02:01):
Good. Thank you. And this is a big deal. We have more energy than any other country, and now we're unleashing it, to put it nicely. And I'd like to ask, Doug, you're going to be heading it up, you and Chris, would you say a few words about it, please?
Doug Burgum (02:16):
Yeah, absolutely, sir. Good afternoon. President Trump wisely understood that, under the Biden administration, there was a war against American energy. And today that war officially has ended. President Trump, on day one, declared a national energy emergency. And this is a real emergency, because under the Biden administration restricted the production of oil and gas. Production is still coming, but when you stop holding leases, when you take 625 million acres of land out of ocean land out of production possibilities through an executive order, you're really restricting the balance sheet of America. But today, as President Trump said, this is unleashed. The National Energy Dominance Council will be made up, all the folks that are standing beside me here, other cabinet leaders and many more represent President Trump's wise decision that we need a whole-of-government approach to unwind.
(03:10)
The Biden administration had a whole-of-government approach that had the war against US energy. Now we need to turn that around 180 degrees and unleash that potential. We've got to unleash it from the Gulf of America all the way up to Alaska. We have amazing resources in this country and we haven't been getting a return on them. Many of these are under public lands. The interior has 500 million acres of surface, 700 million acres of subsurface, minerals, critical minerals, and offshore close to two billion acres. And that balance sheet is the biggest balance sheet in the world, and it's been completely underutilized.
(03:46)
Everybody knows we have 36 trillion in debt as a country, but no one knows how many hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets we have. And President Trump is asking us to go get a return on that investment for the American people. And with that, we're going to have prosperity at home with lower prices. And we're also going to have peace abroad, because the wars that we've been engaged in, our allies have been fighting over the past few years, have been funded by the oil sales of our adversaries. So we have an opportunity.
(04:14)
And we also are in an AI arms race with China. The only way we win that is with more electricity. And we also have an energy emergency in terms of electricity. Too much intermittent, unreliable, not enough baseload. We've been shutting down the baseload that we have. President Trump is going to reverse that and it's going to allow us to win the AI arms race, which is the most important thing that we have to do relative to our future.
(04:37)
So with that, I want to say again thank you to President Trump and I want to thank my fellow members of the Energy Council here. I'm going to kick it over to the Vice Chair, Chris Wright, who's the Secretary of the Department of Energy.
Chris Wright (04:48):
Thank you, Secretary Burgum. Today is truly a great day for our country today. And Secretary Burgum laid out so many of the problems the last four years. If you put barriers in front of energy, you make it more expensive, you make it less reliable, you make it harder to do business here and harder for our consumers to pay their bills.
(05:08)
With this fantastic action from our president, we now have authority across the government to lean in to fix these problems. And I'll start out with one specific right away. This morning I signed our first LNG export license, unpausing the pause in action, the Commonwealth LNG project that'll be on the Gulf Coast in Louisiana is now officially ready to go. This will be a large construction project for American workers. It'll draw demand for more American energy production that'll be shipped overseas to our allies. Many more of those to come.
(05:44)
We're also working aggressively to roll back standards that have made appliances more expensive for Americans and dishwashers that take two hours long and don't get your dishes clean. Nobody likes that. That's about standing in the way. And with this president, President Trump and our new National Energy Dominance Council, there's so many things we can do to make American lives better, bring down costs and grow opportunities.
(06:10)
And with that, I'm going to kick it over to a fellow member of the council, our Administrator of the EPA, Lee Zeldin.
Lee Zeldin (06:16):
Thank you, Secretary. And honored to be serving on the Energy Dominance Council. At EPA, we're doing our part to power the great American comeback. And President Trump has made it clear that he wants EPA to be doing our job to ensure that we are unleashing energy dominance however we can help, that we are assisting in making America the AI capital of the world, that we are pursuing permitting reform, that we're helping to bring back American auto jobs.
(06:43)
This is the mandate of the American public, the Trump mandate was clear and the guidance from President Trump to me when he asked me, thankfully, for the opportunity for us to be able to serve together in partnership to unleash energy dominance, this is a moment that we must meet.
(07:02)
To that end, it is important to note that the prior Biden-Harris EPA issued a waiver to California for tailpipe emissions. This was a rule that should have been submitted to Congress. We will submit it to Congress. Congress will have the opportunity, through the Congressional Review Act, to make that waiver go away.
(07:22)
We will do everything in our part to help the American people to make life in America more affordable. The golden age of American success is upon us. If you're excited about the last three weeks, that was just a taste of the main event, the entree to come the next four years being the greatest term in the history of the American presidency.
(07:44)
With that, I'd like to introduce Sean Duffy.
Sean Duffy (07:47):
Thank you. So first of all, thank you for the work on dishwashers. We use more water to wash our dishes before we put them in the dishwasher.
Donald Trump (07:55):
That's right.
Sean Duffy (07:56):
We're not saving water, we're using more water. So thank you for that. But I'm also joining the EPA. We've introduced our rules to start to look at the CAFE standards. So we're looking at how much it costs for end users when they put gas in their car. And the Biden era standards are costing billions of dollars in taxes and carbon credits, which drive up the cost of vehicles. And so, we're going to remedy that, rectify it, and make sure we're bringing down the cost of a car, number one.
(08:31)
Number two, if I could just mention, Mr. President, per your direction, we are going to move forward with a permitting process for the Texas GulfLink Deepwater Port, making sure we can move energy in and out of the country. So that was held up for five years and it was stonewalled, bureaucrats got in the way. We're now going to move forward with that, making sure we have great oil infrastructure in the country.
Donald Trump (08:55):
That's great. Thanks. Great job.
Sean Duffy (08:57):
Howard Lutnick.
Donald Trump (08:58):
Yes.
Howard Lutnick (08:59):
So the nanny state, you're feeling the end of the nanny state, from straws made of paper to regulation endlessly harming Americans and holding us back. It slows down our production and manufacturing, which we were talking about with the Prime Minister of India yesterday. You're hearing that about energy dominance. It's going to go away. We're going to care about Americans. The Trump administration, and this president cares about Americans. And you're going to feel a change. You're going to feel the price of energy coming down. You're going to feel prices coming down. You're going to feel an explosion. The golden age of manufacturing of America has always been there, it's just been stifled by regulation, and that time is over.
Donald Trump (09:49):
Thank you very much, Howard.
(09:49)
Please.
Kevin (09:51):
Mr. President, I just want to say that you've built such an incredible team and Secretary and Chairman Burgum, that he's been working on this his
Kevin (10:00):
… Whole life. And so what I expect you to see, sir, is action as early as next week that it's going to shock people about how good it is for Americans. And so thank you for your leadership, sir.
Donald Trump (10:09):
Thank you very much, Kevin. And we are also working on a project that has been under wraps for 20 years. Everybody wanted it. It's been held up by New York. It's a pipeline that will bring down the energy prices in New York and in all of New England by 50, 60, 70%. It should have been done years ago. We'll be speaking to New York and New York is actually the biggest beneficiary because their energy costs are very high. This will reduce them very substantially.
(10:42)
But, all of the governors want this to happen, and I think it's going to happen. It's now going to happen. It's something that would rather not have to go eminent domain. We'll do that if we have to in New York, but hopefully we won't have to do that.
(10:57)
This again will bring down energy prices in New England by numbers that nobody can even believe. Probably 50, 60%, maybe even more than that. A lot of them don't even pay energy because they have no energy. They use logs, they go out and they cut down a tree. It's really a terrible situation. So we're going to get this done and we can have it done. Once we start construction, we're looking at anywhere from nine to 12 months. If you can believe it's going to go very rapidly.
(11:24)
The other thing I'd like Doug to mention, the 635 million acres that Biden so viciously took out of our net worth. If you look at it from the standpoint of a company, you talk about net worth, they've destroyed our net worth. We're putting it back. It will be back as of this afternoon. And Doug, could you mention that all of the millions and millions of acres that he just handed back to nobody.
Doug Burgum (11:55):
Yes. The executive order by President Biden that wiped out these trillions from our balance sheet, President Trump signed an executive order instructing me as the Secretary of Interior to unban that ban. And that's been accomplished. And so those are back on the U.S, balance sheet.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Sorry, which one is that?
Doug Burgum (12:12):
The 625 million acres of offshore that was banned from further lease sales.
Donald Trump (12:18):
Further anything.
Doug Burgum (12:19):
625 million acres is one-third the size of the lower 48 that was taken off our balance sheet. It's back on there now. President Trump cares about the American people. He knows that these public lands belong to the public. They don't belong to Washington bureaucrats from the prior administration. And we're going to make sure that we get a return on investment for the American people.
Donald Trump (12:38):
The amount of money that he took off our balance sheet, if you look at it, it is a balance sheet. It was incalculable. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And he did that I guess in the last few days of the administration. He just wiped it out. 635 million acres, which if you sit down and look, that's a major part of the ocean. And he just gave it away and took it away. And fortunately it wasn't done with an act of Congress or anything. And we did it in a, I think very abbreviated, very quick and very legal procedure. And it's now back on our balance sheet. It's back as part of our country. What they did was so horrible. It was just a terrible thing to do, an unbelievable thing to do.
(13:22)
Also, they mentioned dishwashers and sinks and showers and the whole thing. We're going to get rid of those restrictions. You have many places where they have water. They have so much water, they don't know what to do with it. But people buy a house, they turn on the sink and water barely comes out. They take a shower, water barely comes out. And it's an unnecessary restriction.
(13:42)
And basically, I think we're going to be going back to the Trump rule. We had it and everybody was happy. And then these people came in and they restricted it again. So we're going back and we'll get it approved by Congress. In addition, we'll get it approved by Congress. So for four years it's good, but we're going to get it permanently taken care of.
(14:01)
And again, very environmental, very environmentally friendly. But we want to be able to, when somebody turns on a sink to wash their hands or presses the button for a dishwasher, and there's barely enough water to… I mean there's no water, and they do, they press the button 10 times, they run it 10 times. So it ends up costing a lot more. So I know you're working on that. And where are we on that?
Lee Zeldin (14:26):
We're working closely with the Department of Energy with regards to rules that were enacted during the Biden administration. Inside of the EPA are overhauling the water sense standards that are there to update them for the American people to bring down cost of living and combat inflation and just pursue common sense.
Donald Trump (14:43):
Good. Well, we have more oil and gas than anybody else in the world. We're opening up ANWR again. As you know, we got something. Ronald Reagan couldn't do it. No president was able to do it. I got it. And the first week in office, the Biden administration terminated that. ANWR is the biggest site, probably bigger than Saudi Arabia, we don't know yet, but it's of that size or bigger. And we hit gold and I call it liquid gold, but we hit gold and for whatever reason, they terminated it. And we were just ready to start utilizing it.
(15:17)
This could take care of all of Asia energy wise, very close to Japan. In fact, Japan wants to go and be our partner doing the pipeline, going right into the ships. So they expressed tremendous interest. So did Prime Minister Modi of India. And just in closing, both Prime Minister Modi and the Prime Minister of Japan, both very good people, they said we couldn't make a deal. We couldn't get any energy. I mean, you wonder what was going on with our country. They couldn't make a deal to get any energy from the Biden administration. They just couldn't do it. There was nobody to deal with. They didn't know how to go about it. And they're very happy that we are here, but we're going to really benefit our taxpayers and we're going to benefit our country.
(16:03)
So I want to thank everybody for coming. This is a very big bill. This is really going to be energy dominant. We're going to be energy dominant like nobody else. And this doesn't even discuss all of the electricity that we're going to be producing for all of the AI plants. They need double the electricity at least that we have right now. So you take all of our electricity that we have, all over the country just for AI to do it right, and to win that war, which we're leading by a lot because of what we've done over the last few weeks. We're leading by actually a lot.
(16:36)
But if you take all of it, we have to double our electricity needs just for the AI. And that doesn't include the other technologies. So it's a real honor to sign this bill. We're going to also work on CAFE standards. Lee, you're going to be doing that and make that whole situation, bring that back into reality. And I think very quickly, having to do with cars. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Did Modi cut any tariffs yesterday as part of your meeting, sir?
Donald Trump (17:05):
No, but in two weeks we will have another one. Yesterday was very big. Reciprocal tariffs was very big. And I explained to the prime minister of India, Prime Minister Modi, very good man. His tariffs are very, very high. India's tariffs are among the highest. And I said, well now we were very low. We were the lowest. They're just about the highest. There are others as high but not much higher. And I said, "No, no. From now on, what we do is what you charge us. We charge you." It's very simple. So whatever you're charging us, you can go as high as you want. Whatever you charge us, we charge you. And I wouldn't say they were thrilled to hear that, but that's the way it is. Tariff, I told you, is a beautiful word. Fourth most beautiful.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Did he make any pledges about BRICS nations not undermining the dollar you had threatened 100% tariffs.
Donald Trump (18:00):
BRICS, the BRICS nations. I think that's breaking up rapidly. We said that if they're going to go in and do anything to undermine the dollar, that includes China. I don't even know that they're a member of BRICS, but they had a few nations get together to try and play cute. And I said, we're going to put a hundred percent tariff on every one of those nations. And at the mere thought of saying that, I think that's all broken up. That idea has no longer sailed. Now that would be a terrible thing for our country. It'd be bad for the world. They wanted to undermine the dollar. Six nations got together, they want to undermine the dollar. That didn't work out too well. Not going to happen.
(18:39)
And we're getting along with a lot of nations now, frankly, there's a lot of respect for the United States. We have regained the respect that we should have, but we've also done things to deserve it. I mean, we've freed up our country. And you're going to see this is basically energy dominance, and it's going to be environmentally clean, environmentally wonderful, and taxes will be very reasonable based on this.
(19:04)
We're going to make more money than anybody's ever made with energy. We have more energy than anybody else. And it's clean energy, very clean, beautiful energy. We're lucky we have it. I call it liquid gold under our feet and we're going to utilize it. So this is a very big bill, and I have a very talented group of people behind me. This gentleman was the number one man in all of the oil industry. They said there's nobody like him. Chris Wright. And Doug, Doug actually made a tremendous fortune in technology. And he said, I'm going to run for the governorship of, he loves the state, of North Dakota. And he did. And he made it so energy powerful. I think he's more proficient at energy than technology. But what do I know? And this guy, everybody knows him. Sean, he's done a fast study on transportation and
Donald Trump (20:00):
He knows he's learned a lot over the last few months. He's learned a lot. He's really been great. And Howard has built one of the great companies, Cantor Fitzgerald. It was wiped out, completely wiped out other than a few people left in Europe, and he rebuilt the company into a bigger, better company. Cantor Fitzgerald is absolutely one of the top companies on Wall Street, stocks, bonds, trading. And he took that … I mean he literally watched the plane go into the building, into the World Trade Center. Amazing story. That alone is amazing story.
(20:35)
He was delayed because his wife insisted that he finally, after years take his child to school. So he took his child to school that one day because normally he would've been in the building at 6:00 in the morning. That's that business. So you owe your wife a lot and your child a lot. But his wife insisted that he take his child to school. For five years he didn't do it. He was horrible. What kind of a father was he? Okay, I'll do it. And he was therefore driving down at 8:43, whatever the time was, down the West Side Highway and he saw the plane go into the side of the building.
(21:12)
He said, well. And he occupied the top three floors of the World Trade Center, of the one building of the World Trade Center and you know what happened there. He lost 100% of the people in that. His whole company was there. And he rebuilt his company step by step over years and became bigger and stronger. And he gave a tremendous amount of the profit to the families of the people that died, which he didn't have to do. And now he's working with us. He did an incredible job. I mean, anybody in that world, they know Howard Lutnick very well.
(21:50)
And I'm honored to have him running commerce. He's going to be incredible. He loves the country. And Lee was a great lawyer, a great congressman, very successful person, both as a lawyer and as a congressman, and knows a lot about the environment, cares about the environment. And we were lucky, I was very happy that you joined and he-
Lee Zeldin (22:11):
Thank you for calling.
Donald Trump (22:11):
… He was with me right from the beginning, always was with me. And I've always been with him and Kevin Hassett. Everybody knows Kevin and he's fantastic. And you and Lindsay, you and your team are incredible. The job you've done, we really appreciate. Thank Will and the job you guys are doing is really fantastic. We're knocking this out. Brian, do you have a question?
Brian (22:33):
I actually do. What kind of piqued my interest is growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast natural gas, the LNG that you mentioned, what's the potential for new jobs or growth in that area? I think that part of the country, Southwest Louisiana, Southeast Texas, they depend on that.
Chris Wright (22:51):
I would say that potential is simply tremendous. 20 years ago, the United States was the biggest importer of natural gas in the world, and we had natural gas prices two or three times higher than they are today. But with shale revolution and great entrepreneurs in Texas and Louisiana and across our great country, we are now today the largest net exporter of natural gas in the world. And so much of the world is depending upon, natural gas is the fastest growing energy source, has been for 50 years. We were the driver of that and then we paused.
(23:27)
We stopped our ability to grow natural gas exports. Both the Japanese government and Indian government express great distress about that. They're going to count on energy imports from the US and we may just change our mind. So I think they're thrilled to see the actions of this president say, America's open for business. Yes, we have the energy. We have the people. We have huge job opportunities and investment opportunities, not just in the oil and gas industry, but all those surrounding communities that are lifted up by that more production here.
(23:57)
And as we produce more production at scale, not only does it allow us to export, but it becomes more efficient and it helps us drive down the cost for our domestic consumers as well.
Brian (24:06):
Yeah, I know they're really happy to just let you [inaudible 00:24:09]. Thank you because I grew up that area.
Donald Trump (24:12):
Thank you, Brian. And I will say this, that this all started eight years ago when I got elected. We were doing this not to the extent that we're doing it now, but we were doing this and we became number one in oil and gas by far. And we were number three, even number four, some would say. When I left, we were number one by a lot. And then they pulled way back and the prices started going through the roof and then they went back to my plan. But by that time, the prices had already gone up, so they really disrupted it. But now we're going to take it to a new level.
(24:45)
It's going to be amazing. And we're also, it's very powerful, clean coal. We have more coal than anybody. This is good, beautiful clean coal. And if you notice China's opening up a coal plant a month, Germany is now opening up a coal plant every two months. Very powerful. It's probably the most powerful source of energy in terms of generation of electricity and other things. And we're going to utilize our good, clean, beautiful coal and oil and gas. We have more than anybody of everything, and we're going to take advantage of it.
(25:21)
And I appreciate everybody being here.
Speaker 4 (25:23):
Mr. President-
Donald Trump (25:26):
Yeah, please.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
On the interview. Can I ask you, sir, about what's happening in Munich? Senator Roger Wicker shepherded Defense Secretary Hegseth through his confirmation, he got him through that process and then he had some tough words for him overseas. He said it was a rookie mistake for Secretary Hegseth to outline what would or would not happen as far as Ukraine's membership in NATO goes and then-
Donald Trump (25:47):
I haven't heard that. I mean, Roger is a very good friend of mine and Peter's obviously, he's been doing a great job-
Speaker 5 (25:52):
Did you know [inaudible 00:25:53]?
Donald Trump (25:53):
I haven't heard. Let me look at. You tell me something. I have not heard about this.
Speaker 5 (25:59):
The question I had is were you aware of what Secretary Hegseth was going to say in his speech at NATO?
Donald Trump (26:05):
Generally speaking, yeah. Generally speaking, I was. So I'll speak to Roger, I'll speak to Pete. I'll find out.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Mr. President.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Energy Dominance Council, that is for all forms of energy, does that include wind and solar?
Donald Trump (26:15):
All forms of energy, yep.
Speaker 6 (26:16):
And the pipeline you mentioned, sir, is that Constitution Pipeline in New York?
Speaker 7 (26:23):
Yes.
Speaker 6 (26:23):
Is that the property that's going to be?
Donald Trump (26:23):
I believe. Yeah, that's what it is. And they've been trying to get it for 20 years. And what it means is for New York, Upstate New York, and even everywhere in New York, also other states, but in particular New England, that New England will now I think will cut the energy prices and big cuts in New York too, but cut the energy prices literally in half. We have the permits. We have permits that just about everything we need a New York permit and I would imagine they'd want to do it because their energy prices will come down so far. And it's a lot of jobs for New York.
(26:57)
It's a great thing for New York. Everybody wants it. We'll be meeting with the various governors, governor of New York and the other governors too. And we can have it built in about nine months and let's say one year. But we can actually have it built in pretty close to nine months. It's all set. We have most of the permits, almost all of the permits
Speaker 6 (27:16):
And just you're prioritizing energy dominance today. You've also prioritized trade balance. The oil industry is a little worried about the steel tariffs. I mean, they put 20,000 feet steel in the ground at a well. How will you balance that? Is there a possibility-
Donald Trump (27:30):
You're talking about steel and aluminum?
Speaker 6 (27:31):
You need steel tariffs.
Donald Trump (27:32):
So the steel, I saved the steel industry in my first term by putting on tariffs because China was dumping massive amounts of steel. Others also, but mostly China. And I put very substantial. We took in $600 billion worth of tariffs from China. No other president's taken up, literally haven't gotten 10¢ from China, not 10¢. And hundreds of billions of dollars came in from China and they understood it. They understood what I did. But the dumping stopped. And had I not done that, you wouldn't have one steel mill. I think I can say not one steel mill operating in this country.
(28:10)
And we need steel. We need steel. I mean, there are some things you have to have and steel is one of them for military, etc. So I think steel is going to be very strong. It's going to be very strong. I think it'll go back to being really powerful. We saved it. I mean, we were talking about US Steel last week. US Steel would've been closed, totally closed. We saved it, and now it's going to become, I think, very, very profitable. The tariffs are going to save a lot of industries.
Speaker 8 (28:39):
Mr. President, can I just follow up on US Steel just quickly, sir?
Donald Trump (28:41):
Yeah. Go ahead. Finish up.
Speaker 8 (28:44):
If the Japanese company that's interested in US Steel wants to take a minority stake as opposed to full ownership, is that fine with you?
Donald Trump (28:49):
A minority stake, I wouldn't mind greatly, but what they're doing right now is they're going to be investors and they're going to be investing in, I think, debt and various other things. But we didn't want to let US Steel go to a foreign company. US Steel was the greatest company in the world for a period of 15 years. It was the big deal 80 years ago or so. And psychologically, we can't even think about letting that happen. But what is going to happen, and we've already seen it. You see it in the stock price with the tariffs US Steel is going to be a real powerhouse again.
Speaker 9 (29:25):
Just a follow-up on Jackie's question about Munich. Vice President Vance's speech to the conference has ruffled quite a few feathers in Europe.
Donald Trump (29:33):
What did he say to ruffle them? I don't know.
Speaker 9 (29:35):
He was talking about the freedom of speech and migration in Europe. Do you believe that European leaders have a fundamentally different view of the world than this administration's?
Donald Trump (29:44):
Well, I heard his speech and I tell you, you're talking about JD's speech, right?
Speaker 9 (29:48):
Yes, sir.
Donald Trump (29:49):
I heard his speech and he talked about freedom of speech, and I think it's true in Europe. It's losing. They're losing their wonderful right of freedom of speech. I see
Donald Trump (30:00):
See it, I thought he made a very good speech actually, a very brilliant speech, yeah. And Europe has to be careful, and he talked about immigration, and Europe has a big immigration problem. Just take a look at what's happened with crime, take a look at what's happening in various parts of Europe. I thought his speech was very well received actually, I've heard very good remarks.
Speaker 10 (30:21):
And in regards to Ukraine as well, yesterday you mentioned that you thought Ukraine's NATO aspirations were one of the main reasons that the war broke out. Who do you blame for the war, Ukraine or Russia?
Donald Trump (30:33):
Well, I think this, I think that there were a lot of people to blame. All I can say is very simply, if I were president, that war would never have happened. And you know what else wouldn't have happened? The Middle East wouldn't be all blown up and October 7th wouldn't have happened either. Those two areas, you wouldn't have inflation, you wouldn't have October 7th, you wouldn't have Russia and Ukraine fighting, none of those things would've happened if I were president.
Speaker 11 (31:00):
So to follow up-
Speaker 12 (31:00):
Mr. President…
Speaker 11 (31:00):
Earlier this week?
Donald Trump (31:00):
Yeah, please.
Speaker 12 (31:00):
You mentioned auto tariffs the other day, when do you plan to unfold them?
Donald Trump (31:04):
Howard. I'd say over the next… Sometime maybe around April 2nd. I would've done them on April 1st. Believe it or not, I'm a little superstitious. No, literally we had it planned for April 1st, I said, "Let's make it April 2nd." Do you know how much money that cost? That costs a lot of money just that one day, but we're going to do it on April 2nd, I think, is that right?
Speaker 13 (31:25):
That's right.
Donald Trump (31:26):
Okay, thank you.
Speaker 12 (31:27):
The lead prosecutor in Eric Adams' case resigned today saying, anyone who didn't press forward would be a coward. What's your reaction to that and to the overall implication that politics were at play here?
Donald Trump (31:39):
Well, I don't know about it. Obviously I'm not involved in that, but I would say this, that if they had a problem, and these are mostly people from the previous administration, you understand, so they weren't going to be there anyway, they were going to all be gone or dismissed. If not, they know on Tuesday they're all being dismissed. The whole country is being, because what you do is you come in and you put new people in. So when you say resign, they were going to be gone anyway, but I know nothing about the individual case. I know that they didn't feel it was much of a case, they also felt that it was unfair with the election. Look, I would know that better than anybody because I was weaponized more than any human being in the history probably of the world and I won the election in a landslide, winning all seven swing states, winning the popular vote and everything else.
(32:27)
Because the people got it, it was weaponized and I was weaponized literally weeks before the election. But I think there's also something to be said, I read that there's something to be said for what they were doing. It looked to me to be very political. But why didn't they bring this up like four or five weeks ago, six weeks ago, or whenever it happened? They just sat around and didn't complained, then all of a sudden they complained and they know they're all being dismissed anyway, so you know the way it is. That's called politics, I guess.
Speaker 11 (32:57):
[inaudible 00:32:58].
Donald Trump (32:58):
Yeah, please.
Speaker 11 (32:59):
Earlier this week you predicted that all hell would break loose if Hamas didn't hand over all of their hostages. What do you expect to happen tomorrow in terms of government?
Donald Trump (33:08):
I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow at 12 o'clock. If it was up to me, I'd take a very hard stance. I can't tell you what Israel's going to do, but I watched the last people come out, and I looked at a before and an after picture. One guy was a big, strong, healthy guy, you could say he was a little bit overweight. He's not overweight anymore, he looks like he just came out of the Holocaust, it looks like a Holocaust picture. I've looked at him for a long time and they've been treated very badly. A young lady came out last week, her hand was blown off. Literally her hand was trying to stop a bullet that was headed for her face. She put up her hand, she goes like this, and wiped out her fingers and a lot of her hand.
(33:52)
Now, I would take a different stance, but it depends. Look, it depends what Bibi is going to do, it depends what Israel's going to do. And now I understand they've totally changed, Hamas has totally changed, they want to release hostages now again. But you have to see this started by them saying, "We're not going to release the hostages as we said we were." I said, "Good, you have till 12 o'clock on Saturday," which is tomorrow at 12 o'clock, "to do it." And we didn't hear anything, then all of a sudden two days ago, they said, "No, we've decided we're going to release the hostages." But I actually think they should release all of the hostages.
(34:33)
Remember, as bad as they looked, I don't like to say that, but they look real bad, four days ago, five days ago when I saw them and the young ladies that came out were treated really badly/ you don't know what happened, but I do, they were treated really badly. But as bad as they look, the ones that follow probably will look a lot worse. I think they're sending out their most healthy, and they've been hit hard on that, Hamas, so they probably didn't want to release, but obviously they changed their mind. I said, "12 o'clock tomorrow." And all of a sudden, two days ago, yesterday, they said, they're going back to releasing. But this all started by them saying, "We are not going to release any more hostages." And then yesterday they said they are going to release the hostages, but I think they should release all of the hostages.
Speaker 12 (35:26):
[inaudible 00:35:27]. About 75,000 workers took this deferred resignation, it's a little bit short of the 5% to 10% goal you were hoping to hit. Do you think you'll have to make up the rest of that number in layoffs?
Donald Trump (35:36):
No. Look, that's 75,000 more than we would've had, and nobody knows what that final number is because in the end, I think a lot of people aren't going to show up to work. A lot of people, they got used to staying home and, "Working." But I wonder if they had other jobs or other things, they have a lot of problems with that. No, 75,000 is a lot of people, and we paid them well, we gave them a lot of months of severance pay, if you call it that. But no, I think you'll probably have some more too in addition. It's a big, tremendous saving for [inaudible 00:36:08]. We want a downsized government but make it better. Run it better, but downsize. Yeah, please.
Speaker 10 (36:13):
Sir, can I ask about the UK? I understand that you had a phone call with Keir Starmer yesterday?
Donald Trump (36:17):
I did. I just signed a letter to him. He asked for a meeting and I agreed to the meeting, we're going to have a friendly meeting. Very good, we have a lot of good things going on, but he asked to come and see me, and I just accepted his asking.
Speaker 10 (36:32):
Do you have a date for that, sir, and what do you hope to-
Donald Trump (36:34):
Very soon, I think he wants to come next week or the week after.
Speaker 10 (36:36):
And what do you hope to discuss?
Donald Trump (36:37):
I don't know. It was his request, not mine, but I met him twice already, we get along very well, he's very nice guy. Thank you very much everybody, [inaudible 00:36:47]thank you. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Thank you [inaudible 00:36:49]. [inaudible 00:36:51].
Speaker 14 (36:47):
Thank you press, thank you. Thank you press.
Speaker 10 (36:47):
Thank you, sir, thank you. Thank you, sir.
Donald Trump (36:47):
Thank you, good day.