Remarks During a Meeting With President Emmanuel Macron of France and an Exchange With Reporters in New York City

President Trump. Well, thank you very much, everybody.

It's a great honor to be with a friend of mine, Emmanuel Macron, President of France. He's doing a really good job. He's fighting hard. He's fighting on a lot of fronts. He's helping with regard to the Russia-Ukraine catastrophe.

And his words of wisdom mean a lot. And we've been friends for a long time now, really—from the first term on. And I appreciate your being here. It's really nice.

Thank you, Emmanuel.

President Macron. Thank you.

President Trump. Please.

President Macron. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President.

I'm very happy to have the opportunity to exchange with President Trump and our teams. And, indeed, we have a lot of things to do together, and especially fixing —I mean, these crazy wars we have.

And I just saw the message you issued after your meeting with President Zelenskyy——

President Trump. Yes.

President Macron. ——and I think this is a very right one. I mean, if we back completely Ukraine in the situation, given the Russian economy is suffering—I mean, there is this opportunity of a good future.

President Trump. It is.

President Macron. So we will back them.

President Trump. I think so. I think so. They're very enthusiastic in a lot of ways.

And that's been a terrible war. It should have ended. And Russia should have stopped it, but they've been 3½ years, and they've gotten not so far. So we'll see what happens.

But the other side can fight too, and they've proven that. Maybe it's a—it could be that Russia is a paper tiger. I don't know what they are, but 3½ years of fighting and killing everybody—of killing 7,000 people a week—for nothing. For nothing.

So it's a very sad situation, but most of you have seen the recent statement I put out a little while ago, and I'm glad you got it, but I feel that way. I really do feel that way. Let them get their land back.

President Macron. Yes.

President Trump. So we'll see how it all works out.

And I—in the meantime, I hear France is doing well and you're doing well. And he's been my friend, and we've gotten along on just about every subject there is to get along with, other than, occasion—on occasion, wine. [Laughter] I say, "Wouldn't you like to pay a couple of dollars to put the wine in—into America?" But we've never—we've always treated you good, right?

President Macron. We will try to fix all these issues, but we have very good discussions.

And I think peace as an objective everywhere——

President Trump. Right.

President Macron. ——in Ukraine as the Middle East, is a very—is a common objective we have. So we will work hard on that.

President Trump. Emmanuel has actually helped me with a couple of the wars. We settled seven wars. The biggest disappointment—but I think that will happen eventually—is the Ukraine and Russia situation. But we've settled—I thought that was going to be the easiest one because of my relationship with Putin. But unfortunately, that's—relationship didn't mean anything, unfortunately.

But when I needed some advice and when I needed some help in terms of a country in that part of the world, you were always there, and you helped me settle some of these seven wars. I'm very proud of the seven wars, but you helped me settle them, and I appreciate that.

President Macron. Thank you.

President Trump. Thank you very much.

Any questions for the President?

[At this point, several reporters began asking questions at once.]

Gaza, Palestinian Territories/Hostages Held in Gaza, Palestinian Territories

Q. President Trump, President Macron just said that if you want the Nobel Prize, you should put an end to the war in Gaza. What's your response to that?

President Trump. Well, they say that altogether. I mean, it's Gaza, it's Russia, it's everything. I think Gaza is going to come along. We're going to have a very important meeting, and my next meeting, actually, is going to be very important with leaders in the region. And we're going to talk about Gaza. We're going to see if we can do something about it.

We want to stop that. We want to get our hostages back or their hostages back. We've gotten all of the American hostages, as you know. And Alexander—all of them have been back. Steve Witkoff has done a great job. And Marco always and—everybody. I mean, we have—Scott got involved and strongly involved.

And from a financial standpoint, we're doing some things that are pretty good. We put Iran out of commission. Very important. That was called the bully of the Middle East, and they're out of commission.

Now we're going to have a meeting today. I think it's going to be a successful meeting with all of the leaders of many of the biggest—I would say, the most important countries having to do with Gaza, indirectly and directly. And that's going to take place just in a little while.

So I'm sure you'll be there, and we could have an outcome very quickly.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Palestinian Statehood/Hamas Attacks of October 7, 2023, on Israel

Q. Why do you believe the recognition of a—of Palestine is a gift to Hamas?

President Trump. Well, I think it honors Hamas, and you can't do that because of October 7. You just can't do that. But we want our hostages back, and we don't want them back in, you know, ones and twos and take the next 2 years to do it. We were the ones that got the hostages back.

And I always said—I told Steve. I told Marco. I was always saying the last hostages are going to be the toughest ones. But you can't honor them by doing anything like you suggest. All you can do is say, "We want our hostages back, and we want the war to end." We're going to want it to end.

But you always have to remember—people forget—October 7 was one of the most savage days in the history of the world. There's never been anything like that. We're talking about babies being sliced in half. You're talking about young children having their heads chopped off. You can't forget that.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

President Macron. And just, perhaps, to make it clear on that, I think it's why—why, yesterday, 11 countries did recognize Palestine, not t as—I mean, it was not a decision taken like that—neither by U.K., nor by Canada, nor by France. It's a—it's just a big change.

Nobody—President Trump is totally right. Nobody forgets the 7th of October.

I went there a few days after, taking families in my—hands, and we experienced all together these horrific attacks. And by the way, we lost a lot of French people in these terrorist attacks.

But after almost 2 years of war, what is—what is the result? Once again, they killed the top leaders of Hamas. It works. This is a great achievement. But at the same time, you have as many Hamas fighters as you had the first day, so it doesn't work to dismantle the Hamas. This is not the right way to proceed.

So we need a full-fledged process, and we worked very hard on the day after. And I totally share the sequencing: the release of all hostages, a ceasefire, the resume of humanitarian aid the day after in Gaza to stabilize the land.

And we need a political perspective, and this is why we took this decision on recognition.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Israel-U.S. Relations/Hostages Held in Gaza, Palestinian Territories

Q. Mr. President, why is France supporting terrorism?

President Trump. Well, I have to say that I am on the side of Israel. I've been on the side of Israel, really, my whole life. And we are going to get a solution, and it's going to be a solution, hopefully, that's good for everybody. But it's time to stop.

We're going to have that very important meeting. I think the meeting we have coming up in the next hour is going to be one of the most important meetings that we'll have here. And we've had some important meetings. We've had some great meetings.

And I understand where you are and where other people are too, and we just have to get this solved. We have to get the hostages back. We want to get the war over. That's very important. We're going to end the war, get the hostages back, and we want them all back. We don't want to have one and then we'll give another two in about 3 months from now. We've been doing that for a long time. And in all fairness, we've gotten a lot of hostages back.

But you have 20 hostages, and you have probably 38 bodies—dead bodies. And the people that I see—and I speak to Israeli families. I was speaking to American families before, but we got them back. But I speak to Israeli families, and they want this son who died. They want their dead son back as much as though he were alive. And it's an amazing thing to see, and it's a horrible thing, actually, to witness, but I've seen it a lot.

So they have 20 hostages. They have 38 dead bodies. And we have to have them back, and we have to have them back immediately.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.