Remarks and an Exchange With Reporters Aboard Air Force One En Route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland

The President. Okay. We had a big day today. Had the bill passed, and I think it's going to do very well in the House. We'll see how that works out, but looks like it's ahead of schedule. We'll see what happens. Happy about it. This was great today, going down to Florida, seeing what Homeland and Ron and everybody else have been able to do in a very short period of time. So, happy about it. I hope you enjoyed it.

Go ahead. Any questions?

Representative Thomas H. Massie

Q. Sir, a question about Massie.

The President. What about him?

Q. Can you just give us a little idea of not only who you want to replace him——

The President. Well, I just don't think he does a good job for the country. He's always a no. They call him "Rand Paul, Jr." He's always a no. Nothing constructive at all—at all. I mean, just terrible—Thomas Massie from Kentucky—and—nothing constructive. I don't think he's a very smart guy. Good education, but that's about it.

Q. I guess what I should have asked is, to what degree are you trying to make an example out of him so that no one else like——

The President. No, I don't care about—I don't think about him. I mean, you know, when I oppose somebody, I oppose somebody. And, for some reason, the voters—almost always, they seem to go along with me, because they know I'm working hard. I have a nice, high IQ. They like that. You know, we like high-IQ people. But they know I make good decisions. That's why we have the hat: "Trump was right about everything," right?

But you know, I don't like guys like—they just keep saying: "No, I vote no. I vote no." There's nothing—let him do something. Let him get what he wants to vote "yes." But, if you look at his voting record, he's always against.

Q. So who do you like?

The President. Well, he's going to have an opponent. He's got——

Q. [Inaudible]

The President. He's going to have a big opponent, a good opponent, who's going to win. A poll just came out, and it showed anybody I endorse against Massie, Massie loses by 25 points. So he's going to be history, I think.

The President's Legislative Agenda

Q. How much—sir, how much arm-twisting do you think you'll have to do to get it past the House now? What's your game plan for that?

The President. I felt the Senate was going to be tougher than the House. We got there. We got pretty much what we wanted.

It was—it's an amazing—in fact, it's the biggest bill ever passed, if we get this done. You know, most of the people wanted seven or eight different bills. And I thought that was tougher, because it'd be, you know, a hundred percent, but then there'd be nothing. You—this bill has something for everybody by doing it this way. So we're happy about it. We're happy with the result.

Possible Amendments to the President's Legislative Agenda

Q. Sir, are you concerned that they're going to want to make further changes in the House?

The President. Well, they're going to ask for certain changes probably. I don't know. I mean, I guess what would happen—if that happens, you'd then have to run it fast past the Senate. So, you know, it never ends. I don't know if that's going to happen.

Timeline for Passage of the President's Legislative Agenda/Senator Thomas R. Tillis

Q. Do you think it's still possible to get this done by Friday?

The President. I guess that's been done, right? On occasion that will happen, where they'll make a change and they'll get it passed, so it would go pretty quickly. But I think the Senate was a very big move, and they worked very hard.

I didn't get along with Tillis, and he resigned. That's good.

Q. Who do you want——

The President. That's a good thing.

Q. Who do you want to run for that seat, sir? Thom Tillis's seat?

The President. Well, somebody that would really be great is Lara. She grew up there, but they live in Florida. They have a very good life, and they—you know, they're great people. She did fantastically running the RNC. She's even got a show that's—it's, like, the number one show. And Mark Levin is likewise—I mean, they have the number one, number two show over the weekend. So she's done well. She's a great person, Lara Trump.

I mean, that would always be my first choice, but she doesn't live there now. But she's there all the time. Her parents are there. You know, she really knows North Carolina well. And I won it three times.

I don't know who the candidates are going to be. I think you're going to have one of the Congressmen step up and should do very well.

Q. So has she talked to you about it at all, about——

The President. No, not at all. I—it's so soon. I had it out with this guy 2 nights ago, and he resigned, you know, which I was happy about. He did us all a favor.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem

Q. Sir, you spent a lot of time with Secretary Noem today, obviously. Did you discuss with her at all this report about an $80,000 dark money payment she received in '23 and appears to have been kept off her Federal disclosure forms this spring?

The President. No, I haven't. I didn't know. You're telling me this for the first time.

I think she's done an amazing job.

Q. On—Secretary Noem. And you know, you talked about how——

The President. Who are—who are you with?

Q. The Washington Examiner, sir. Christian Datoc.

The President. Okay. Good paper, actually.

Q. Thank you.

Immigration Enforcement Actions

Are you concerned, right now, again, with the speed of the deportations? Obviously, Tom Homan, Stephen Miller have talked about, "This isn't enough." What exactly is "enough"?

The President. Well, it's going to take a long period of time. We're going to have a lot of—we're going to have a lot of angst, because it's a tough thing. But no, I'm—I think they're doing an amazing job.

And you know, we're doing a lot of home deportations. We're doing a lot of deportations—self-deportations, where they come in and they deport, and then they want to come back into the country. And they can only come back into the country—under no circumstance—unless they go out the proper way. Otherwise, they're never coming back in.

No, I think it's going very well. Look, Biden did us a tremendous disservice when he allowed this to happen to our country. And I always said it's the toughest thing. You know, I had inflation, and I got rid of it. We don't have inflation. I had a bad economy, and we got—you know, we set a new stock market high today.

We're doing unbelievable. The country is doing unbelievable. I always said the most difficult thing is what happened at the border, allowing 21 or 25 million people to come into our country. It's the most difficult thing.

Q. Are you thinking—[inaudible]——

The President. It's a very hard thing. I think we're doing a fantastic job in getting them out. But you have a lot of self-deporting, a lot more than people understand. And those people are eligible, maybe, to come back in.

Tariffs/Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Jerome H. Powell

Q. Mr. President, are you thinking of extending the pause on tariffs beyond July 9?

The President. No. No, I'm not. I'm not thinking about the pause. I'll be writing letters to a lot of countries, and I think you're just starting to understand the process.

We've dealt with Japan. I'm not sure we're going to make a deal—I doubt it—with Japan. They're very tough. You have to understand, they're very spoiled. I love Japan. I—I really like the new Prime Minister too. Abe was one of my closest friends, as you know. The new Prime Minister is great. He's a very strong guy.

But they and others are so spoiled from having ripped us off for 30, 40 years that it's really hard for them to make a deal. You know, it's very hard.

As an example, with Japan, they won't take rice. And yet they desperately need rice. You know that. But they won't take rice. They won't take other products that we have. But think of it: They need rice so badly, but they won't take rice. I figured that was an easy one.

Or the cars. As you know, they send out millions. We didn't give them one car in 10 years. They won't take any cars, but they'll sell millions of cars. So we told them, "Sorry, you can't do that."

And we have a great relationship, a great reliance, and really a great sort of a partnership, in a way. But on trade, they've been very unfair, and those days are gone.

So what I'm going to do is, I'll write them a letter; say, "We thank you very much, and we know you can't do the kind of things that we need, and therefore you'll pay a 30 percent, 35 percent," or whatever the number is that we determine, because we also have a very big trade deficit with Japan, as you know, and it's very unfair to the American people.

So they maybe will be happy. They maybe won't be happy. But some countries we won't even allow to trade. But for the most part, we'll—we're going to determine a number and just, very simply, write them a nice letter, probably one page or a page and a half at the most, and it's going to be essentially: "Congratulations. It's going to be an honor to allow you to go and do business in the United States of America," because it really is an honor to be able to do that. But we never viewed it that way in this country.

And you saw we took in $129 billion in tariffs already, and we haven't even started. No inflation. Our country is strong. Our interest rate should be three points lower. If our interest rate was three points lower, that's almost a trillion dollars in cost, and it's done just by the signing of a pen. But we have a moron at the head of the Fed. He's a moron.

Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Chairman Position

Q. Speaking of Jay Powell, do you have a top choice of someone to succeed him?

The President. I do. I have two or three top choices, actually.

Q. Can you tell us those?

The President. No. [Laughter] You almost got me there. No.

Q. Sir, back to——

India-U.S. Trade

Q. Are there other trade deals that are close to being done that you think you will announce over the next week?

The President. Yes. I think we're going to have a deal with India, possibly. And that's going to be a different kind of a deal. It's going to be a deal where we're able to go in and compete. Right now we—India doesn't accept anybody in. I think India is going to do that, and if they do that, we're going to have a deal for less—much less tariffs.

Q. DeSantis was smart——

The President. Thank you for telling me, by the way.

Q. Oh, you're welcome.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas

Hey, real quickly: You mentioned Alejandro Mayorkas.

The President. Yes.

Q. He was impeached in the House, but cleared in the Senate.

The President. Yes.

Former President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

Q. Investigating him. Could we investigate the autopen? What's our investigation on that?

The President. Well, the autopen is under investigation. The autopen is a serious thing. I think it's one of the most serious things I've heard.

Mayorkas was a terrible, terrible Secretary, but he was given orders to do things, and the people that gave those orders probably have pardons. You know, Biden pardoned a lot of people. The only one he didn't pardon was himself. But I don't know if I'd do to him what he did to me.

Problem is he wouldn't understand what happened, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

Q. There's a video with Speaker Johnson is telling him about how he stopped the LNG gas——

The President. Right.

Q. ——and he thought it was something else.

The President. Oh, he—[laughter].

Former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush

Q. How many more examples do you think there are that Speaker Johnson—or that President Biden just didn't, in fact, know what he was doing?

The President. President Obama was a terrible President. President Biden was the worst President in the history of our country. President Bush should not have gone into the Middle East and blown the place up, so I don't give him high marks either.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Q. Thank you.

The President. Thank you.

Q. Thank you, sir.

The President. I give Trump very high marks.

Goodbye, everybody.