Remarks in an Exchange With Reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland

The President. Hello, everybody.

Q. Hello, Mr. President.

The President. 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 very special.

Tomorrow is going to be great. We're going to have the B–2s flying.

And we have Kristi, the whole group——

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem. Yes.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. We're all here, sir.

The President. ——including a lot of great congressmen. We have everybody, and we have Doug Burgum. You have any questions? Brooke Rollins, Agriculture. If you have any questions, let us know. But we all had a great time in Iowa.

Cease-Fire and Hostage-Release Deal Between Israel and Hamas

Q. Mr. President, has Hamas agreed to the latest framework for a cease-fire and hostage deal?

The President. We'll see what happens. We're going to know over the next 24 hours.

Border Security

Q. 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" being signed by you, you've set the bar so high when it comes to border security. What is the expectation moving forward, sir?

The President. I love this guy. [Laughter] No, I love him. [Laughter] He's, like, my favorite person.

Secretary Rollins. That's a good question.

The President. Well, we just want to see if we can keep going up. We have had. We had great numbers. I appreciate you saying it. We have had.

Secretary Rollins. Yes.

The President. But we just want to keep them going up, right?

Secretary Rollins. That's right.

The President. That's all we can do. Thank you.

Domestic Agriculture Industry/Farmworker Immigration Status

Q. Mr. President, you talked about farmers and trying to give them some relief. Can you talk a little bit more specifically about—you mentioned legislation tonight at the rally.

The President. Yes, I'll let my agricultural genius talk about it.

Secretary Rollins. [Laughter] Thank you, sir.

Yes, we have been hard at work. The President gave a directive that the farmers needed to make sure they could farm and—do their harvest and milk their cows.

So Stephen Miller and myself, the top team in the White House has been working on—including Secretary Noem, including Secretary Chavez-DeRemer—on the H–2A streamline, the current visa system that allows seasonal workers in.

So we are hard at work. We've already made some changes. We're going to make it cheaper, more efficient, and more effective for those farmers.

We will have a 100-percent legal workforce very, very soon thanks to President Trump's leadership.

Q. Mr. President——

The President. Good answer, right? [Laughter]

Representative Zachary Nunn. Yes. [Laughter]

2024 Assassination Attempt on the President in Butler, Pennsylvania

Q. Mr. President——

The President. Yes.

Q. ——we're 10 days away from the anniversary of your assassination attempt.

Secretary Rollins. Yes.

Q. Do you know any more now about the assassination attempt that—than you knew then?

The President. 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. And I'm very satisfied. They——

Q. You are?

The President. ——gave me a complete presentation. I was very satisfied.

Saudi Arabia/Iran/Middle East Peace and Integration Efforts

Q. There's a report that you held a secret meeting today with a Saudi official. Are you any closer on expanding the Abraham Accords? Any news from that meeting?

The President. Yes, 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—I think a lot of people are going to be joining the Abraham Accords. We have four great countries already, but we're going to have a lot of people, I think, joining the Abraham Accords.

Q. Mr. President——

The President. Yes.

The President's Legislative Agenda/Tax Code Reform

Q. 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? And how do you——

The President. Yes, I think it's very popular. It does many things, but one of them is the biggest tax cuts in our country's history, and that alone makes it very popular.

Q. How do you plan——

The President. The only poll that was done was a Democrat poll. And they'll ask two of the little bit controversial things, but good things for the country.

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.

The President's Plans for Future Celebrations

Q. 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.

The President. Right.

Q. What are your expectations for the celebration next year, sir?

The President. Oh, I think it's going to be a great celebration. It's going to 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. I think it's going to be a wild time. It's going to be a great time for this country. It's going to be the golden age. Thank you.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine/President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of Russia

Q. Mr. President, what's next for Russia and Ukraine? Are you still speaking—are you speaking to Zelenskyy tomorrow? And what are you hoping the next——

The President. I'm speaking to President Zelenskyy tomorrow, early in the morning. And yes, 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. And I'm very disappointed.

Q. Can you share any more about what he said?

The President. Well, 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. It wouldn't have happened. So, you know, I—in one way, I hate to get too involved, because it's Biden's war, and 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.

Harvard University/Columbia University

Q. 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 first?

The President. No, nothing. I think we're going to probably settle with Harvard. We're going to probably settle with Columbia. They want to settle very badly.

Q. How much?

The President. There's no rush.

A lot of money. [Laughter]

The President's Remarks in Des Moines, Iowa

Q. 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 to be used that way?

The President. No, I've never heard it that way. To me, a shylock is somebody that's 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?

Oracle Corp. Chairman and Chief Technology Officer Larry Ellison/Skydance Media's Proposed Acquisition of Paramount/CBS News

Q. Mr. President, what do you make of the deal that your lawyer struck with CBS's parent company? Can you talk about that? And have you had any conversations with Larry Ellison about expectations you might have for Skydance and PSAs that they would run should they take over Paramount?

The President. Well, Larry Ellison is a friend of mine. He's a great guy. I think he's the buyer. But 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 billion.

I think that what they did—what they—and this has nothing to do with Larry Ellison. I think he's going to 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.

But 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 questions—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 has ever seen that before.

So I think they made a wise decision to settle.

Q. And is that $16 million—for the ads, is that part of a contingency for your administration to approve the merger—or the sale of the company?

The President. No, that 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. This was the—essentially, the night before the election, and they did this, and we thought it was despicable, actually.

Tariffs/Trade Negotiations

Q. Mr. President, on tariffs. For countries that don't get a letter right away and that you haven't made a deal with, will——

The President. So we're going to 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—I think by the ninth—they'll be fully covered, and they'll range in value from maybe 60- or 70-percent tariffs to 10- and 20-percent tariffs. But they're going to be starting to go out sometime tomorrow.

We've done the final form, and it's basically going to explain what the countries are going to be paying in tariffs, and it's very important. It's a lot of money for the country, but we're giving them a bargain——

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

——because if I went by the true deficits or by other ways of measuring, it could be a lot more. We—I—we don't want to——

Secretary Rollins. That's right.

The President. I don't want to stretch it too much. We want to keep it pretty reasonable.

Secretary Rollins. Yes. Yes.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

The President. And I think it's—actually, I think it's very reasonable.

Timeline for Tariff Negotiations

Q. Mr. President, what countries will you be sending those letters to first?

The President. We're going to be sending to—well, you're going to 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, we're pretty much going to keep the tariffs the same.

Q. Are there any countries that will have a little flexibility with that deadline?

The President. Not really. I mean, they'll start to pay on August 1. The money will start to come into the United States on August 1—okay?—in pretty much all cases.

Thank you very much, everybody.

Q. Thank you.

The President. Thank you.

Secretary Rollins. Thank you, everyone.

The President. Thank you very much.

Q. Thank you.

Q. Thank you, sir.