Remarks During a Meeting With President Ursula von der Leyen of the European Commission and an Exchange With Reporters in New York City

President Trump. Well, thank you very much. It's a great honor to be with a very powerful, very smart woman, and a friend of mine—become a friend of mine. And she does a fantastic job running lots of different nations.

And, Ursula, thank you very much for being with us. Thank you——

President von der Leyen. Thank you.

President Trump. ——very much.

President von der Leyen. Thank you for having me here. I'm very looking forward to our conversation.

President Trump. Yes.

President von der Leyen. I think it will be mainly around Ukraine——

President Trump. Right.

President von der Leyen. ——the missing children, and certainly the new hybrid threats we are experiencing in Europe.

So thank you very much for making the time.

President Trump. Well, thank you very much, and we will. We'll have a very good conversation.

Any questions, please?

Q. How soon do you think—sorry—Madam President, how soon do you think that Europe can stop buying Russian oil and gas fully, like President Trump has asked for?

President von der Leyen. Yes. President Trump is absolutely right. We're on it. We have reduced already massively the gas supply from Russia, completely gotten out of Russian coal, and massively also reduced the oil supply. But there's still some coming to the European continent.

So what we do now, we put sanctions out to those ports where, for example, LNG is coming from Russia. And we want to put tariffs on oil supplies that are still coming to the European Union.

So we are really getting after the last bits of oil and gas coming from Russia to the European Union. We want to get rid of it.

Q. When do you think you'll be able to do that? You had previously said 2027, and you're looking at a quicker timeline now.

President von der Leyen. We want to be out earlier, absolutely. So, till the end of the year, we have the phasing out. We have now the sanctions on the table proposed. Member states have to agree.

But we have to be faster, because every payment is filling Putin's war chest. This cannot be.

President Trump's Address to the United Nations General Assembly/President Trump's Foreign Policy Achievements

Q. Mr. President—Mr. President, hello. It's nice to see you. During your speech to the General Assembly, you talked about the U.N. not reaching its potential. Do you see any kind of consequence if they don't step up and do what they should on a number of issues?

President Trump. Well, they've never really reached—not just now. They've never reached their potential. The U.N. could be unbelievable with certain people running it. And, no, it's never reached the potential.

Look, I put out seven wars, if you think about it, and I'm not the U.N. But I—and I wasn't helped by the U.N. I was never even given a phone call. But you have a list of the wars, and these were wars that were pretty much unstoppable. These were wars that were not going to be settled. One was 31 years. One was 32 years. One was 35 years. And altogether, a total of seven. Two were starting. And I was never called by the U.N.

I was never like—can—I didn't even think about it, frankly, until after we did it. I never gave it a lot of thought. And then, recently, I started thinking, you know, we were never helped by the U.N.

And the U.N. has tremendous potential. Tremendous potential. It's going to, hopefully, put out the wars themselves. I mean, someday it's going to do what I've been doing, and they should be able to do it.

Thank you for that question. I appreciate it.

Q. Just to follow up——

Q. Sir——

President Trump. Yes.

United Nations Reform/Russia/Ukraine

Q. Given what you just said, what structural changes would you like to see in the U.N.? And what role do you think it can play in peacekeeping, for example, going forward, given—what you just said?

President Trump. Well, it's a fantastic role in peacekeeping. It should be great. I mean, we shouldn't have any wars if the U.N. is really doing its job.

I know they were involved originally with Russia-Ukraine, and that didn't get done, because that was the time to stop it.

But no, it's a—it's fan—I always say about the U.N.: fantastic potential, but it's all about the people. You know, you can have a wonderful concept, but if you don't have the people.

The U.N. has never lived up to its potential. But I'm the example of it. We do all these wars, and we weren't helped by the U.N. We weren't hurt by them, but we weren't helped. They didn't do anything, and they're supposed to be solving these problems.

Thank you very much, everybody. We have a lot of meetings. We have a lot of meetings to go. Thank you.