Remarks Following a Cabinet Meeting and an Exchange With Reporters

The President. Thank you very much. We've had a tremendous 6 months, and we've had a tremendous 2 weeks, which now is, I guess, 3 weeks. And we have a tremendous group of people here that have done a great, unified, beautiful job.

I want, in particular, because of what she's gone through this last few days—done an incredible job, as you know—Kristi, you—I'm going to ask you to say a few words about Texas. The first person there was—was first person I saw on television was you, actually, and you've worked great with the Governor, who's terrific, and you might want to tell a little bit about the trials and tribulations.

But we appreciate the job that you and everybody have done. You had people there as fast as anybody has ever seen. So I really appreciate it. We all do. And maybe you could say a few words.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem. Sure. Well, thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for your leadership. Texas is strong, and the people of Texas are incredibly strong. They've gone through something that is absolutely horrific, and it is heartbreaking to watch these families suffer the way that they are.

As soon as this flash flooding event happened, you know, the Governor has—activated his emergency responders. Nim Kidd is his emergency management director, who is incredible and has immediately worked with the local first responders to get help to individuals and get them evacuated, put requests in to me.

[At this point, Secretary Noem continued her remarks, concluding as follows.]

And all the first responders there did incredible work. And I know people are getting tired now, but they're getting reinforcements, and volunteers are showing up, and I just want to commend the Governor and his team for being the leaders. And they're so thankful that you're letting them make the decisions and manage the response, like it should be, and then us supporting them with the resources of the Federal Government.

We've already deployed dollars to the State, much like the block grants that you've talked about.

The President. Right.

Secretary Noem. So very grateful for that, sir.

The President. There's never been a wave like this, outside of the breaking of a dam, because this was almost a wave that was—ended up being 30 feet high—more, actually.

Now, with a dam, you can understand it, but this approached almost with that speed. When you see a dam break, it's not a pretty sight. It wipes out everything. And this is the kind of thing that built up so fast.

And it's happened two or three times before over the years, but not to this extent. But—tell them, when you met the father who was picking up——

Secretary Noem. I——

The President. ——the daughter's clothing and—so sad.

Secretary Noem. I had walked through the cabin where all the little girls died, and—I—had kind of fallen apart in there, but I walked out of the cabin, and a gentleman was standing there, and he said, "That man over there needs a hug." And so I walked over to him, and I hugged him, and I said, "Do you work here?" And he said, "No, my little girl was in that cabin." And he said, "And I just found her best friend about an hour and a half ago. She had passed away." And he just fell apart. And so, then we just hugged and talked for probably an hour about that.

[Secretary Noem continued her remarks, concluding as follows.]

So the strength of people is incredible. One of the things that I asked there—that day was that they all have escorts or counselors when parents come in that—so, from that point that when they came into the camp, that they have somebody with them when they're going and looking for their children's belongings or looking for their children.

And so, very emotional, but also just so tragic. You don't——

The President. The relationship with Texas—and the Governor has been obviously very good for years with me—but the relationship with Texas and their first responders and us with our first responders and lots of other people—and we brought in a lot of helicopters from all over. And we had a lot of helicopters. It was actually dangerous. A lot of helicopters up there. But they were real pros, and they were responsible for pulling out a lot of people.

And we got them there fast, and they—Texas had some good ones too. But the response has been incredible. And the fact that we got along so well—I don't know, that's not—I don't even think that's a political thing. But we got along so well, and it was so unified.

I think a lot of lives have been saved. That could have been—as bad as it was, you could have lost double or triple. This thing was just really horrible.

Well, congratulations on a great job, and I appreciate—I know you're going down—I'll be going down on Friday with First Lady. We'll be taking a trip. And we don't want to get in anyone's way, because, you know, that's what happens. The President goes, and everyone's around focused on—I don't want anyone to focus on us.

But it's possible they could have somebody saved still.

Secretary Noem. Yes. Yes, it is.

The President. You know, there's a lot of areas. It's a big area, and you know, it's probably unlikely at this point, but there could be. I mean this—they're thinking there could be the possibility. But what a tragic situation.

Good job. And we'll see you on Friday——

Secretary Noem. Yes.

The President. ——and we'll finish out the day——

Secretary Noem. Yes.

The President. ——here.

I think you've been reading a lot about—it's a terrible topic when you talk about financial after this, but we have a big country, and we've been doing very well.

The tariffs, as you know, are starting to come in at record levels. Tremendous amounts of money are coming into our country. We never did that before. We're not used to it. We only have tariffs going out. We only adhere to the rules of other nations who charge us tremendous tariffs because we were led by stupid people—poor people without any business sense.

And I'd like to ask Scott—you could maybe talk a little bit about how well we're doing with regard to the money coming in. And the big money will start coming in on August 1. I think that was made clear today by the letters that were sent out yesterday and today.

Go ahead, please.

Secretary of the Treasury Scott K.H. Bessent. Yes, sir. We will—taken in about $100 billion in tariff income thus far this year, and that's with the tariffs. The major tariff not having started till the second quarter. So we could expect that that could be well over $300 billion by the end of the year.

We don't agree with CBO scoring, but for those who do, the CBO scored tariff income over the next 10 years at $2.8 trillion, which we think is probably low. And you know, sir, under your leadership, we're witnessing——

The President. And they gave us no credit during this last little—the "Great Big Beautiful Bill"—I always use the word "great." [Laughter] I add that to it because it really is what it is. It's never been anything like it, actually.

And I want to thank all the Republicans that voted for it. And I want to, you know, scold the Democrats because they're voting for tax cuts. They're voting for no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. And you know, many, many other things far more important than that—great health care.

And frankly, they—every Democrat should lose their election because it was purely political—they were told not to vote for it. So think of it. We got 218 to 2. And then with the Senate, we had 50 to 3. Democrats didn't vote at all that. Not one positive vote with all of the good things in there: economic development, money—tremendous border money.

Secretary Noem. Yes.

The President. Now you're loaded up on the border, and I don't think we're going to need so much of it, because we had a—we had zero come in last month, so I'm not sure how much of it we want to spend.

Secretary Noem. Finish the wall.

The President. You may actually think about saving a lot of money——

Secretary Noem. Finish the wall.

The President. ——because the wall has been largely built, and it obviously worked. But you may want to think about that.

But—so I think it's incredible when I watch the Democrats, and they have standard lines, like they had "Russia, Russia, Russia." They had the "laptop from hell." "It all came from Russia." You know, they make—they make things up, and they go with it, and they feed it to you people, in many cases. And they say, "Here's a line." And I hear the new line is "death." "Oh, it's death. Everyone's going to die." There's nothing to do with death.

In fact, we're saving our country. Death is from allowing 25 million people into our country, of which three or four are stone-cold, hard criminals. 11,888 are murderers, many of them committing more than one murder. That's death, and the Democrats did that.

Joe Biden did that by allowing people to come in here, just totally unchecked, unvetted, open borders—open borders. The whole world was dumped into our country, from prisons, from gangs, from mental institutions. We have many people walking the streets, walking in areas that we don't know anything about that came out of insane asylums. They released their insane—the insane asylum population into our country.

And we're—it's amazing the job that you and Tom Homan are doing, by the way, on that.

But we have to get them out, and we have no choice. We have to get them out. And we are getting them out.

So, Pete, you want to tell them about our great military and how well we did with respect to the bombers and the B–2? We had the pilots here 2 days ago, and they were incredible people.

Go ahead.

Secretary of Defense Peter B. Hegseth. Yes, sir. Truly a historic mission and demonstrated the skill and courage of the United States military—from those B–2 pilots and families that we had a chance to meet, sir, to the fighter pilots, to the refuelers, to the maintainers, to the air defenders who defended the base.

What was demonstrated on the world stage was American military might and capability. And it wasn't just Fordow and Isfahan and Natanz that took notice in Iran, it was the rest of the world—that we have a decisive Commander in Chief willing to use these capabilities, which are the best in the world. As the President pointed out, no one else could have done what America did there on that night. And everyone took notice of that.

With the "One Big Beautiful Bill," sir, we've got $150 billion additional to invest in Golden Dome and all the other weapon systems and stockpiles and shipbuilding——

The President. Right.

Secretary Hegseth. ——priorities of yours.

Another month, another historic recruiting bump. It's not just the Army and the Marine Corps anymore. It's the Navy, the Air Force, and the Space Force, all historically ahead of where they've ever been. So, historic spirit inside the military.

We had a chance to be at NATO, Marco and I, and see how the world responds to us saying, "It's time for you to shoulder the burden and take the lead for your continent." It only happens with President Trump leading.

And we're proud to be a part of what's going on at the border, sir, with now a fourth national defense area——

The President. Yes.

Secretary Hegseth. ——where we're helping get to that number zero in securing the border.

But that mission, Operation Midnight Hammer, reestablished deterrence. It reversed what happened in Afghanistan. You saw the debacle of what Biden allowed to happen in Afghanistan and the—what that did to our image.

President Trump said, "With Operation Midnight Hammer, we're reestablishing American leadership and deterrence," and we're proud to be a part of it, sir.

The President. And our so-called enemies were watching. They watched every minute of it. They watched. It was very few people that weren't watching, actually. But they watched every minute. It was a perfect military performance, the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time.

I mean, if you compare that to the same country—the hostages from years ago. Jimmy Carter—was unfortunate for Jimmy Carter. He was a nice man. But with the helicopters going down, the sandstorms, the prisoners—they got captured—then the election and the prisoners and Reagan and all the problems. [Laughter] It was nothing but problems. And that was a failure.

And ours was—not only the pilots. I mean, those machines flew for 37 straight hours. They didn't stop. They went, "Skedaddle." You know the word "skedaddle"? It means skedaddle. They dropped the bombs, and they—somebody said, "Skedaddle. Let's get the hell out of here." [Laughter] And every bomb hit its mark and hit it—hit it incredibly.

And, as you know, the Atomic Energy Commission said it's gone. That place is gone. We had a lot of fake reporting, mostly from CNN, where the scammer writer—a writer for CNN—who should be fired, by the way. She was involved with the 51 fake intelligence agents, if you remember that. She did that story—created a story out of it. She created a story out of the laptop from hell, saying it came from Russia, but it actually came from Hunter Biden's bedroom or worse. And just a scammer, and she's still at CNN, which is pretty amazing. But we'll ask you a question about her.

But they came up with this concept that maybe the attack wasn't that good. Maybe it—and I saw it happen. Right after the attack, I saw this person on CNN. I actually watch—I like to watch the enemy. You learn from the enemy. And I watch because you have to know where they're coming from.

And I watched her say: "Anderson, you know, I'm hearing stories that maybe they didn't hit their target. Maybe it wasn't that good a hit. And you know, we're hearing stories." The next day, it was a little more, and the next day a little more. After 3, 4 days, she was saying: "You know, I don't know. I don't think it was that"—except by that time, everybody knew it was hit perfectly.

The evidence is in the planes. The evidence will—the pilots are the best evidence. But they actually came out of their plane, because they were here the other day, and they said—it was so sad. "We did such a good job. We flew into very dangerous air space." I'll never forget. We were in the Situation Room. And they said, "They have entered Iranian air space." And everyone took a deep breath, because they had more missiles pointing at them, but the equipment is so good. It's stealth, way up in the air, and it was stealth, and they went right through that.

And they sort of—by the time they found out they were there, they were already gone. That was the word "skedaddle." "Get the hell out of here." [Laughter]

But they were right in the most dangerous air space in the world. And they took those big, beautiful, very fast—they're unbelievable planes. I mean, they become really beautiful works of art. You know, I always thought they sort of were cool, but now they look better than just cool, don't they, huh?

But they dropped the loads, and, literally, they would hit, if you look at this table, from here to there. They had a half a refrigerator door is the way to best explain it. Take a refrigerator door, average size, cut it in half. That was their target. They hit every single one. Then we had 30 missiles, Tomahawks, shot from submarines 300 miles away. Every one of them hit their target.

It was a perfect mission. Then they came back, almost 37 hours, every plane worked perfectly. The mechanics were here too. We—I said: "You've got to get the mechanics here. We didn't have any problems." If you remember, they had a lot of problems with the helicopters, but they did fly through a dust storm, which they shouldn't have done.

Sometimes you say, "Let's go back and try it on"—and I said that dust and sand don't work well with helicopters, if you know much about helicopters. But that was a horrible embarrassment to us.

Then we had Afghanistan, which I think was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. And we would have gotten out. I was the one that got them down. I would have kept Bagram, the big air base, which right now is controlled by China. One—among the most powerful runways in the world—thick, thick with concrete and steel, anything could land.

And right now—they were 1 hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. I was keeping it. Outside of that, we were leaving, and I would have been out faster than them, but we would have gotten out with strength and dignity.

Instead, that was the most botched up mess I've ever seen. They left all that equipment behind. And every year, they have a parade running down some third-rate street with the equipment. You know, it's supposed to be Fifth Avenue. It doesn't work. But with all that equipment that they left, they should have taken every ounce of it. I was taking every—I said, "Every screw, every bolt, every nail, you take out of there."

And Milley said—I remember one time, "Sir, we're better off leaving the equipment." "Why?" "Well, it's cheaper." I said: "Cheaper? You mean it's cheaper to leave $150 million airplane rather than flying it into Pakistan or India or someplace or just flying it straight home? It's cheaper?" "Yes, sir." That's when I knew he was an idiot. [Laughter] Didn't take long to figure that one out.

But they left all that equipment, but they left their dignity behind. It was the most embarrassing moment, in my opinion, in the history of our country. Not that we got out—we should have not been there—but that we got out the way we got out with great embarrassment and death.

You had 13 young people. I've gotten to know their families very well. But you had hundreds of people killed that nobody talks about. You had the other side—many people were killed. Many people are walking around with no legs, no arms from that whole thing. They left from the wrong airport. They should have left from Bagram, because Bagram was a big base with hundreds of miles of, you know, fencing and territory around it. Nobody would be able to get near it. And they left.

So, you know, we've done a great job. And I think people are really starting to see it. They're starting to appreciate it.

Pete's done fantastically. That mission was a work of art. And I have spoken to some of our perceived—I don't know if they're enemies, but they're perceived as being potential enemies. And they essentially said the same thing, "Very impressive." There wasn't a thing that—we didn't even—we didn't lose an engine. We didn't lose a—it just—they landed, and they were cheered.

But the sad thing was, they were cheered, and one of the pilots said: "You know, we were a little concerned, because when we got out, we were told that on television they were reporting that we may have missed our targets. Sir, we hit every target. That's what I do for a living. We hit every target. In fact, when I saw—when we dropped—when the bombs hit, a yellow haze came over the horizon that I've never seen before. It just lit up the whole horizon. Brighter than the Sun. It was like looking into the Sun." He goes, "We hit our target, because you know what that was that was exploding."

And—but they were a little downbeat because they listened to that fake CNN reporting and the fake New York Times. They worked together to try and say that it wasn't—wasn't perfect. They couldn't say, "They missed." All they could say is, "Maybe it wasn't perfect." And you ought to fire that reporter immediately. You should fire her. A real fake.

And so I just want to congratulate those pilots. And you know, a lot of people don't like bringing things like that up. I do. I always like confronting, because otherwise the public doesn't know that you're a bunch of crooked people.

But they know. They've learned. And the media has to straighten out their act. You know, the media is down to 17-percent approval. You got to do a little better than that. It's important for the country that you do better. I think they ought to make a lot of changes.

I think changes are going to be made to the media, but it's hard to have a really successful country if you have a corrupt media, and we really have a corrupt media, and nobody really knows why. I mean, why would you want to have open borders and criminals pouring into our country? Why would you want to have men playing in women's sports, transgender for everyone? You know, you'll have to figure that out. But some of you don't. I mean, I'm looking at some people, they love the country, but I look at other people, and they can't.

But we're really proud of our military. It was—and the people that maybe don't like us or want to play games with us—because I think that had you not had the situation in Afghanistan, I don't think Putin would have gone in. I think when Putin looked at how stupid and incompetent that operation was, he said, "Wow, this might be a chance."

And he's—we're dealing with him now too. That's—we're not happy with Putin. I'm not happy with Putin, I can tell you that much right now, because he's killing a lot of people. And a lot of them are his soldiers—his soldiers and their soldiers, mostly. And it's now up to 7,000 a week. And I'm not happy with Putin.

Okay. Any questions? Yes.

U.S. Airstrikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities/News Media

Q. Yes, sir. You had just said that you're not happy with Vladimir Putin. Is there anything that you plan to do to act on that feeling of unhappiness?

The President. Well, I wouldn't be telling you. Don't we want to have a little surprise? [Laughter] You know, one of the things we did with the attack is that—you asked that question, and I wish—I don't want to—I didn't mean to be rude, but I'm in a—rude because I'm looking at some of these crooked people up here, so I'm rude. But your question was asked very nicely.

But one of the things we did is we went over every fact. We wanted to get every fact straight. We wanted to have the distance straight, the number of pilots straight. Everything had to be correct, because we want to be—this was a very important mission. If we failed on this mission, it's—it was beyond the war that, you know, obviously we had with Iran and Israel, and a lot of hatred—a lot of years and years of hatred, centuries of hatred. They've never—people have never seen anything like it. So we wanted to be correct with all our facts.

So, you know, what I was doing is just asking—it would be great if the media would be correct with their facts. That's all we ask for. So——

Go ahead. So finish it up.

Russia/Ukraine

Q. Oh, yes. Just returning back to Russia.

The President. Yes.

Q. If there's anything that you would signal about your displeasure with them?

The President. Well, I'm just—look, I'm very unhappy with them. There's no reason for this. It's turned out to be tougher, but it's—it's only tougher—and I will say, the Ukrainians were brave, but we gave them the best equipment ever made. We gave them the antitank busters that knocked out tanks. I mean, you just aim them in the direction of the tank and the tank is gone. We gave them missiles, the latest and the greatest. They were able to shoot down a lot of things that would have normally wiped out—you know, probably would have been a very quick war. It would have been a war that lasted 3, 4 days. But they had the benefit of unbelievable equipment.

And Europe gave them too. We gave them far more because—Biden shouldn't have done that. He should have equalized. It—we should've given them the same, or we should have given, actually, less than Europe. But—it affects Europe much more than us, but we're in there for over $300 billion. Europe's in there for over $100 billion. But still, Europe gave a lot.

And I will say this, the Ukrainians, whether you think it's unfair that we gave all that money or not, they were very brave, because somebody had to operate that stuff. And a lot of people I know wouldn't be operating it, and they wouldn't have the courage to do it. So they fought very bravely, but we gave them the best equipment in the world.

We make the best military equipment by far. There's nobody close. You look at other equipment from other countries, it's not even close. That's why everybody wants to buy our equipment. And that's why we're going to step up these contractors now that make it, and they're brilliant, but they make it too slowly, and we have to step them up, Pete, and let them make it at a much higher rate. Unfortunately, we have to do that.

But if you look at our Patriots, if you look at our Tomahawks, if you look at our—well, what we do with tanks is—you wouldn't want to be driving a tank. You would feel nice and secure. But they are—"Javelins," they're called, and I gave them the Javelins. Remember, they said, "Trump gave the Javelins, and Obama gave them sheets." [Laughter] Right? They called Obama at that time. Barack Hussein Obama, if you haven't heard, did a terrible job.

But that was a war that—should have never happened, and a lot of people are dying, and it should end. And I don't know—we get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin for—you want to know the truth. He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

Russia/U.S. Sanctions

Q. Do you want to sanction him?

Q. Mr. President——

Q. Lindsey Graham has a sanctions bill on Russia. Do you want him to move ahead with that?

The President. I'm looking at it, yes. No, I'm looking. The Senate is passing—and passed a very—very tough sanctions. But yes, I'm looking at it.

Q. And you'd sign that?

The President. It's an optional bill. It's totally at my option. They passed it totally at my option and to terminate totally at my option. And I'm looking at it very strongly.

Q. Yesterday you said you wanted to see more votes——

Q. Mr. President Trump, can I ask really—the Council——

The President. Go ahead, please.

Tariffs/Chairman of the Federal Reserve System Board of Governors Jerome H. Powell/North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Q. The Council of Economic Advisers released a new report saying that imported goods have actually decreased in price from December through March.

The President. I know. Isn't that amazing?

Q. Well, my question is, the Fed Chairman——

The President. The tariffs.

Q. Well, the Fed Chairman keeps saying that tariffs are—going to cause price increases. Are the prices just not passed through yet?

The President. Are we—Chairman of the Fed?

Q. Yes, exactly. Are the prices——

The President. Well, you'd do a better job than him. [Laughter]

Q. Thank you. Are the prices just not passed through yet?

The President. No, I think what's happening is everything's evening out. You know, when we charge tariffs—see, what people don't understand: The other countries have been—almost every country charges us tariffs. We had deficits with everybody for years, for—decades. And we were like this big monolith that made bad deals with everybody.

We—you know, we rebuilt South Korea. We stayed there. It's okay. We rebuilt it, and we stayed there. And they pay us very little for the military. I got them to pay billions of dollars, and Biden then canceled it when he came in.

You know, I said to South Korea, "As an example, you know, we give you free military, essentially. Very little. And I think you should pay us $10 billion a year." And they went crazy, but they agreed to 3. So I got 3 with a phone call, and I was satisfied. I said, "But next year, we have to talk."

And then we had a rigged election, and we never got to talking. And you know what Biden did? He—they probably went to him, and they said, "Listen, Trump treated us terribly, and we shouldn't be paying anything," and he cut it down to nothing. So that's what happens. It's ridiculous.

That's the other thing. We're talking to countries about contributing to the military. Not only just paying more in NATO, but contributing. You know, we have 45,000 soldiers in South Korea. We have 45,000 soldiers in Germany—52,000, actually. And you know, that's a huge economic development for them. That's tremendous amount. That's like having a city. It's tremendous money for them, and it's a tremendous loss for us.

So we're talking—in a very nice way, we're talking to them about it. It's very unfair. We supply the militaries to many very successful country. I mean, South Korea is making a lot of money, and they're very good. They're very good, but you know, they should be paying for their own military.

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

Q. President Trump, can I ask you a question about Jerome Powell as well? And then a question to the Attorney General.

The President. A question about what?

Q. Jerome Powell. And then I have a question for the Attorney General. Jerome Powell, who you've been pressuring to lower interest rates—he's facing accusations of lying to Congress, which is a potential crime, about the opulence——

The President. Well, then he should resign immediately. We should get somebody in there that's going to lower interest rates.

Q. Do you want congressional Republicans to look into that?

The President. Why don't you call for his resignation?

Q. Do you want congressional Republicans to investigate and pursue and punish?

The President. It's okay with me. I think he's terrible. I think—look, we're paying—I call him "Too Late"—t-o-o—"Too Late." Like "Too Tall" Jones for the Dallas Cowboys, right? [Laughter] "Too Late." He's always late, but he wasn't late with Biden before the election. He was cutting them like crazy. It didn't help too much, did it? But he was cutting them like crazy before the election, with Kamala and Biden. He was trying to get them in, I guess. I don't know.

He was recommended by somebody that worked for me. I like you better. [Laughter]

Secretary Bessent. Thank you.

Deceased Convicted Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein

Q. If I could ask the Attorney General—could I ask the Attorney General a question too, President Trump?

The President. Sure.

Q. Your memo and release yesterday on Jeffrey Epstein——

Attorney General Pamela J. Bondi. Yes.

Q. It left some lingering mysteries. One of the biggest ones is whether he ever worked for a American or foreign intelligence agency. The former Labor Secretary—who is a Miami U.S. attorney, Alex Acosta—he allegedly said that he did work for an intelligence agency. So, could you resolve whether or not he did? And also, could you say why there was a minute missing from the jailhouse tape on the night of his death?

Attorney General Bondi. Yes, sure. If I——

The President. Hey, Pam, could I just interrupt for one second?

Attorney General Bondi. Sure.

The President. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy has been talked about for years. You're asking—we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. Our—and are people still talking about this guy——

Q. They are.

The President. ——this creep?

Q. There's a lot of interest, yes.

The President. That is unbelievable. Do you want to waste the time on the—do you feel like answering?

Attorney General Bondi. I don't mind answering, President.

The President. I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this, where we're having some of the greatest success and also tragedy, with what happened in Texas. It just seems like a desecration.

But you go ahead.

Attorney General Bondi. Sure. Sure. First, to back up on that, in February, I did an interview on Fox, and it's been getting a lot of attention because I said—I was asked a question about the client list, and my response was, "It's sitting on my desk to be reviewed," meaning the file, along with the JFK, MLK files as well. That's what I meant by that.

Also, to the tens of thousands of video, they turned out to be child porn downloaded by that disgusting Jeffrey Epstein. Child porn is what they were. Never going to be released. Never going to see the light of day.

To him being an agent, I have no knowledge about that. We can get back to you on that.

And the minute missing from the video—we released the video showing definitively—the video was not conclusive, but the evidence prior to it was showing he committed suicide. And what was on that—there was a minute that was off the counter. And what we learned from Bureau of Prisons was, every year—every night, they redo that video. It's old, from like 1999. So, every night, the video is reset, and every night should have the same minute missing. So we're looking for that video to release that as well, showing that a minute is missing every night.

And that's it on Epstein.

Tariffs

Q. Mr. President, on the tariffs—on the tariffs again. August 1, you have said, is the deadline. What incentives do countries have to negotiate? It seems that deadline keeps moving. It was April 2, now it's——

The President. We didn't move it. No, no. It's always been August 1. That's when they're paying it. A statement was—put out today, and I put it out just to make it clear. It wasn't a change. It was August 1.

We don't change very much. You know, every time we put out a statement, they say, "He made a change." I didn't make a change. A clarification, maybe.

No, August 1, they pay. And everybody pays. Everybody has to pay. And the incentive is that they have the right to deal in the United States. If they don't want to, they don't have to pay, and they don't have to deal here. But if they want to buy and make a lot of money and sell in the United States, they have to do that.

You know, if you go back and look at some of the good Presidents—our country was the wealthiest—proportionately the wealthiest from 1870 to 1913. It was an all-tariff country. We didn't have income tax. That came due in—that came in in 1913. We had tariffs. And we had so much money, we didn't know what to do with it.

We had—I mean, we had a couple of Presidents that were very, very strong—McKinley, I guess, more than anybody, but he was the tariff king. But he was very, very strong. And it's sort of sad. He made a fortune for this country, became very rich, and then Teddy Roosevelt went out and—the Vice President—and he spent the money. And they said Roosevelt was a great President. And let's say he was a great President, but the money was made by McKinley with tariffs.

Tariffs are charged by other countries at levels that are ridiculous. And you know, I call those other countries to say—and every one of them is willing to give us everything now, by the way, just so you know. "Sir, we'll charge you no tariffs. Nothing. We'll give you everything. We'll give you access to our markets. We'll give you everything."

Is that a correct statement, Scott?

Secretary Bessent. Yes, sir.

The President. Howard, would you say that's a correct statement?

Secretary of Commerce Howard W. Lutnick. Exactly correct.

The President. It's like they just don't—because they're very spoiled, because for years, they ripped us off, and we didn't have a President that understood it or a Secretary of Treasury or—Secretary of—a lot of different Secretaries are involved. But certainly, Commerce Secretary was, you know, not doing their job.

I don't know about Kelly. She's small business. We'll keep it that way. Okay? [Laughter] Her small business is bigger than almost all big businesses when you add it all up. [Laughter]

But no, they are very respectful of our country. But the incentive is that they have the right to do business with us. Without that, they don't have the right to do business, and that will be okay too.

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

Q. And will there be a flurry of deals——

The President. Yes, go ahead.

Q. Will we hear—in the next 24 hours, will we hear a flurry of deals that are finished?

The President. Yes, we have a lot of them going out, but the deals are mostly my deal to them. We're picking a number that's low—we don't want to hurt them—and fair. We're picking a number that's lower than—in most cases, lower than what they charged us.

But it's amazing when you've paid all this money for years, and they get one President that's a little bit different and a little tougher on this subject, and they're willing to drop everything they've been charging us for years and years.

I mean, we have countries going, "We will have no—you don't have to pay any tariff to come in and do business." They're giving us total access to their countries. They gave us no access to the country. They'd say, "Well, you cannot go into our country"—okay, good. Now it's: "We will give you total access, and you don't have to pay any tariffs, but please don't charge us tariffs." And we don't like that deal.

So the letters I sent out are—we have made some deals. We can make a lot more deals. It's just too time-consuming. It's just—makes it more complicated. And we can do things over the years too. You know, we're going to—we're not going to—we're not hard-line. But it's about time the United States of America started collecting money from countries that were ripping us off—ripping us off and laughing behind our back at how stupid we were.

Okay? Thank you.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Yellow. In the yellow.

BRICS Bloc Nations

Q. On the tariff issue. So you've talked about India coming, but then a couple days ago, you issued a new tariff threat to members of the BRICS countries for——

The President. Yes.

Q. ——if they aligned with anti-American policies.

The President. Ten-percent charge.

Q. That would be India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa——

The President. That's right, they have to pay 10 percent if they're in BRICS, because BRICS was set up to hurt us. BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar as the standard—take it off as the standard. And that's okay if they want to play that game, but I can play that game too. So anybody that's in BRICS is getting a 10-percent charge.

Q. Is that immediate, sir, or is that——

The President. Yes, pretty soon.

Q. ——if they engage in some behavior?

The President. Well, if they're a member of BRICS, they're going to have to pay 10 percent tariff just for that one thing. And they won't be a member long.

I thought BRICS was—you know, I said this about a year ago, and it largely broke up. But, you know, there are a couple that hang around, but I thought it largely broke up.

BRICS is not—in my opinion, not a serious threat. But what they're trying to do is destroy the dollar so that another country can take over and be the standard. And we're not going to lose the standard at any time. If you have a smart President, you will never lose the standard. If you have a stupid President, like the last one, you would lose the standard. You wouldn't—you wouldn't have the dollar as your—and if we lost the world-standard dollar, that would be like losing a war—a major world war. We would not be the same country any longer. We're not going to let that happen. The dollar—you ever hear the expression, "Dollar is king"? The dollar is king. We're going to keep it that way. Okay?

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

And I'm just saying, if people want to challenge it, they can, but they're going to have to pay a big price, and I don't think any of them are willing to pay that price.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Red dress, please.

European Union

Q. Thank you, Mr. President. Are you optimistic about reaching a tariff deal with the European Union soon?

The President. Well, the European Union has been speaking to us—Ursula and the whole group—and they've been very nice. They treated us very badly until recently. Now they're treating us very nicely. It's like a different world, actually. They've treated us very badly. They were among the toughest to deal with. Actually, in many respects, they were much worse than China.

Look at what they do to our companies. They sue Apple. They sue Google. Seventeen billion they got from Apple on a lawsuit that they didn't have a case. They have, you know, judges that are European Union judges, and they ruled—they take so much money away from our country in terms of that, in terms of other things that they do. They're very tough, but now they're being very nice to us, and we'll see what happens.

We're probably 2 days off from sending them a letter. We are talking to them.

I just want you to know: A letter means a deal. You know, a lot of people said deal—you—we've got 200 countries. We can't meet with 200 countries. We have a few trusted people that know what they're doing that are doing a good job, but you can't do it. You have to do it in a more general way. But it's a very good way. It's a better way. It's a more powerful way.

And we sent them a letter. You read the letter. I think it was well crafted. And mostly, it's just a little number in there. You'll pay 25 percent, 35 percent. We have some at 60, 70. Those are ones with massive—you know, where we have massive trade deficits, because they've treated us very badly.

But I would say, in every case, I'm treating them better than they treated us over the years. Don't you agree with that? Wouldn't you say?

Secretary Lutnick. I do.

The President. I could have done much—I could have been much harsher. I don't want to do that. We want to have relationships. But, in every case, they treated us far worse than I'm treating them. I'm treating them very good. I could go higher with the tariffs, but I don't want to hurt them.

That's why, when you just read, you come up with the number. It's so incredible that prices are actually going down. Just so you know, when I got in, everyone said: "Oh, eggs. Eggs are going through the roof." That was the first—I was in for about 4 days, and they started screaming at me about eggs. I said, "That's Biden's problem." I didn't know about eggs.

But eggs went up about five times. You did a fantastic job. And we ended up shortly getting—in fact, for Easter, they said, "Go out and buy plastic eggs. You can't use real eggs." Well, we bought 200,000 eggs for the White House—for the Easter egg hunt that we have at the White House, and there were eggs. We had the price down, and now the price is lower than it was before. We did a good job with eggs. But we did a good with groceries.

Prices are down in this country. Oil—a big part of it's oil—the oil. You have—you had a couple of places last week, you had $1.99 for oil, for gasoline. Nobody thought they'd see that. I want to get it lower, if I can.

But we're—we've done a good job. You've done a very good job. Do you want to say a couple of words about that—you and Chris—about what's happening with energy?

Secretary of the Interior Douglas J. Burgum. Well, absolutely. But I would say on the pricing side, President Trump, the fact that you've endorsed and supported a policy of energy dominance, that sends a signal to the market that we're going to have more supply.

You talked during the campaign about inflation being a country buster. You've broken the back of inflation in 6 months, among all the other things you've accomplished. And——

The President. We have no inflation.

Secretary Burgum. And we've got—and then heading into the Fourth of July, these were the lowest gas prices at the pump in 4 years. And, again, for Americans, this is like hundreds of billions of dollars that stay in their pockets because we lowered the price of gas at the pump. And when we lower the price of energy, it lowers the price of food, it lowers the price of every—the clothes you wear.

The President. It's the biggest thing.

Secretary Burgum. It's the biggest thing.

The President. It's like a big tax cut. When you get energy down, every 50 cents is like a massive tax cut, and we've gotten it down much below that.

You know, we had great energy, great low prices, everything else. When the election turned over—I'm being—I'm trying to be nice about it—it turned over shockingly, but nevertheless, it happened—energy started going up, and it go—it went up really bad, and then he went back to the Trump policy.

The problem was, they didn't know how to do that. And he lost it. He lost that sucker. That big sucker was out of control, and his energy prices went way up, and that's what caused it.

But it was also stupid spending. He—they spent money like—they used to use the term "drunken sailors," but I won't use that term. Although it is very descriptive, I won't use that term. I refuse to use it.

But they spent money at levels that nobody had ever seen before. And trillions and trillions of dollars wasted on the "green new scam"—greatest scam in the history of our country, other than maybe "Russia, Russia, Russia." That might have been. But the "green new scam" was the single greatest scam in the history of our country, and continues to be, but it's weakened badly. It's hobbling along because people are finally—they're finally getting it.

But they spent trillions of dollars on the "green new scam," getting nothing for it, devised by a couple of young people that weren't even good college students. You know? Not even good students. Check out their marks.

Yes.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Q. Can you clear something up——

Q. Mr. President, can I ask you about the latest jobs report?

Q. Can you clear something up, Mr. President, on what you said last night?

The President. No, not—not for CNN.

Q. You said you want to send more arms——

Q. The last——

The President. Not for CNN.

Go ahead.

Q. You said you want to send more arms to Ukraine——

Domestic Manufacturing Investment/Energy Production

Q. The last jobs—in the last jobs report—Mr. President, in the last jobs report, the manufacturing jobs actually lost 7,000 jobs. When will the investments that you've been talking about have an effect on ——

The President. Well, they're building the plants now. About seven have started. We're going to have hundreds started within a short period of time.

Lee Zeldin, who may be the most important man in this room—I'm sorry—[laughter]—but he's the one that gets the permits. Where is Lee? He's the one that has to get the permits for the plants and the factories. And permits that used to take 5 years, he's getting in record-setting times.

AI—we're leading China a lot in AI. And if we go with this, you know, I'm allowing the plants to build their own electric. They'll be—I'm allowing them to become a—an electric utility so they can produce their own electricity, because we need double the electric—to be successful with AI, which is the biggest thing now, we need double the electricity that we have, which is hard to believe. We need even more than that.

And they're building plants with their own electricity substations. They don't have to use the grid. And anything they build extra, they're putting into the grid. So we're supplying the grid with brand-new electric sources.

And you know, it's funny, when they came to see me, they never even asked for that. I told them about it. The reason they didn't, they thought that was an impossibility. You're not allowed to build your own electric. These are massive investments that are being made in building electricity for their plants.

And they're going to have, I think, Doug, a lot of electricity left over, and that electricity is going to be passed into the grid and give us no more—you know, like, you look at California. They have blackouts and brownouts every week. It's—they're totally out of control. They have a really incompetent Governor.

Where's Chris? Is he here?

Secretary of Energy Christopher A. Wright. I'm here, Mr. President.

The President. Do you want to speak to the subject?

Secretary Wright. Yes, I think a huge thing in the "One Big Beautiful Bill," Mr. President, because of your leadership, is the ending of these subsidies—as you call them, the "green new scam." That saves our country a half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. But American taxpayers were paying twice. They were paying that money, a half a trillion dollars into subsidies, and they were paying more expensive electricity price.

If you subsidize something, you should at least lower the cost of it. But in this case, we were subsidizing something and paying more for it. So they big—"One Big Beautiful Bill" had two huge things: ending wasteful spending—wind, solar, and batteries combined are 3 percent of U.S. total primary energy—3 percent for a trillion dollars, another half a trillion dollars coming. It's just not a good investment, hurting our businesses, hurting our consumers.

And the "One Big Beautiful Bill" also unshackled oil, gas, and coal development in the United States, onshore and offshore. Secretary Burgum has been working tirelessly on how, by getting the Government out of the way, private businesses will develop more resources in the United States, lowering costs for American consumers and making much better leverage for the United States to help our allies abroad and reduce the power of our adversaries abroad.

So just a huge win in the energy front all around, and I thank you for your leadership.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

The President. We're setting records now on energy, and there'll be nothing compared to what they'll be in about a year from now, but we're setting records.

And wind is a very expensive form of energy. It's very bad for your beautiful surroundings. The plains and the valleys and the birds are dying all over the place. You know, the whole thing is a disaster.

They're almost exclusively made in China. Not that I have anything against China, because I don't. I have a great relationship with President Xi. But I asked him, "How many wind farms do you have?" He makes them, but they don't have a lot of wind farms, I'll tell you. Very, very few.

And it—wind is tremendously expensive and is very ugly. And if you own a house that's in sight of a windmill, your house is worth less than half and people—and you hear noises. And interestingly, in New England, you probably read, where for 50 years they had two whales washed up—50 years—and last summer, they had 14 wash up.

Now, I'm not saying that's the wind farm that was built, but maybe it is. Right? Probably is.

It's tremendously expensive, and it can only be done with subsidy. You know, I know a man that's in that business. And one of the biggest in the world, actually. Runs a company that builds these stupid windmills. And he said, "I hate the business, because it's the only energy where you need subsidy." He said: "Energy shouldn't need subsidy. You should make money with energy." So, wind.

The other one is the solar—those big solar fields. They're taking our farmland. Our farmers are, like, mortified by it. They hate it. It's very, very inefficient and very ugly too. You know, probably better than a windmill. But you go around, and you see all these things that are three miles long by three miles wide, and you say, "What the hell is that?" And it's a lot of plastic from China. It's plastic—black plastic from China. No, we don't—we want to be smart. We're going with—look, China right now is building 58 coal-fired plants—58 big ones. They have 62 on the books to build. We are—we've reintroduced clean, beautiful coal, because, you know, you can do a lot with coal now—clean, beautiful coal—and natural gas, and all of the other things that we have.

But we don't want wind, and we don't want solar because they're a blight on our country. They hurt our country very badly, and smart countries don't use it.

Solar sounds good, I will say. And I like, on occasion, you'll see a roof, which is made out of solar brick, and—but it's a smaller use. We need the kind of thing that's going to fire up our plants, and it's not going to be wind, you know. That is very intermittent, as you probably know.

But we've—they have—they've spent a fortune. They've spent trillions of dollars on this stuff.

And I'll just give you one other story. A friend of mine, he's very successful guy. He went back to see his mother in Minnesota. He hadn't seen her a long time. And he wasn't back for 10 years—which isn't a nice story. I mean, you don't see your mother for 10 years. [Laughter] She's got some difficulties—which I know the guy, he does have some difficulties. He's very successful, but probably not the nicest person. It was actually longer than 10 years.

But he went back, and he told me he wanted to go look at the valley. There's a valley in Minnesota that he thought was so beautiful and hadn't seen it in a long time. And he's driving along the road, and he said, "Oh my"—I'll use the word "gosh"—"Oh my gosh." He said, "Oh, oh." He said it looked like a junkyard. You had 159 windmills. They were all over the place. Some were old, some were newer, different companies, different shapes, different sizes, different colors. Many of them were terminated—terminated—meaning closed.

You can't take them down because the environmentalists don't let you bury the blades, because they're made out of a fiber they say is bad for the earth. So they want you to put them up, but they don't let you take them down. But many of them were turned off. He said it looked like a junkyard.

Go to Palm Springs, California, and take a look at that pile of junk. And you go into a wealthy neighborhood. Before you get there, you have to ride through hundreds of windmills that are—most of them are turned off. They're rotting, they're rusting. They're 30 years old, 20 years old, and they have a very short life. You know, those windmills have a very short life, especially the ones that are in the nice, salty Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean, where the salt just gets under that steel and decimates it.

No, it's a horrible, horrible thing for our country. And I speak out—it would be nice to say "wind," because it sounds so good. Doesn't it, Doug? "Wind." "Wind." But it's not. [Laughter] It's these ugly machines, and they're all made—you've got to see, some are a little taller, a little shorter. They're made by different companies. They have different stocks. They have different blades. They have different everything. It is so horrible.

And if you look at smart countries, they don't use it. Smart countries don't use it. And we're now a smart country. We're not a—we're a brilliant country. We're not smart, we're brilliant now. We're going to be a brilliant country. We have to be, because we have to catch up for some really stupid people that did a bad job.

Yes, Brian [Brian Glenn, Real America's Voice].

Q. Yes, Mr. President. I've got a quick comment, some feedback as a native Texan, someone that grew up bringing my kids to a camp very near the affected camp now. Thank you, on behalf of Texas. I've gotten hundreds of messages that want to thank—they said, "If you're in the Cabinet Room, you can tell the President and his team, on behalf of Texans, thank you so much for the quick response and the loving—the hugs"—I saw that—"that you gave."

Quick—two quick questions. I've got——

The President. I saw——

Q. Go ahead.

The President. ——a Palestinian Senator. His name is Schumer. [Laughter] He's a great Palestinian. No, he's a Palestinian. He's become a Palestinian. He's abandoned the Jews. But I saw him say: "It's Trump's fault. Yes. Yes, that's right, it's Trump's fault."

He was actually—do you ever see Jon Lovitz, the "Liar," where he goes: "Yes, yes. I went to Harvard. That's right. I'm a"—[laughter]. This was Schumer. He goes" "Yes. Yes, it's Trump's fault. That's right, it's Trump."

I actually saw that stupid guy try and blame it on me, and I said, "Man, that's—a tough one to take." But he's—his career is limited, because I hear A.O.C. is going to beat him, and—she's no bargain either, by the way.

Q. She's not.

The President. Go ahead.

Q. Well, I'm just saying, that's an example of an America-first team effort to bring—to get this country back. So that's what "America first" looks like for the viewers watching us at home.

But two questions. Looks like we have a rogue judge—an Obama-backed rogue judge—that is attempting to block the funding to Planned Parenthood, which the "Big Beautiful Bill" cuts off the funding to Planned Parenthood. Any plans to challenge that?

The President. Go ahead. Yes.

Attorney General Bondi. Absolutely. Yes, we're on it.

Q. I figured you would say yes.

Attorney General Bondi. We're on it. And I texted, I believe—I talked to, yesterday, Secretary Lutnick and Secretary Bessent. I reached out to you to let you know that—that we were on it in the "Big Beautiful Bill."

Q. Wonderful. And then my second——

The President. I let her handle that question. [Laughter]

Q. All right. She's—yes——

The President. Did you notice? I said, "Go ahead, handle that"—[laughter].

Q. Yes. We'll toss it to her.

China-U.S. Relations

And then my second question was for Secretary Rollins. You did an amazing press conference today in front of the Department of Agriculture. You talked about the Farm Act and the need to get China out of our country, owning farmland. For the viewers at home that might have missed that, can you recap what that means to national security to make sure we can grow our own food?

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. Well, thank you, Brian. Sir, if you don't mind.

The President. Go ahead. Please.

Secretary Rollins. Yes, this morning, Secretary Hegseth, Secretary Noem, and Attorney General Bondi and I had a press conference at the USDA. I just happen to have a chart in case it came up.

[Secretary Rollins held up a chart.]

But obviously, the Chinese owning of farmland in our country is a massive national security issue. And, for the media, you can see the yellow is where all of the farms have been purchased over the last number of years, and the red is around all of the military bases where that farmland has been purchased. So this is a massive national security issue.

The press conference this morning included three of our greatest Governors as well: Sarah Sanders from Arkansas, Jim Pillen from Nebraska, and Bill Lee from Tennessee. The States have begun taking a leadership role to ban the purchasing of China farmland. Obviously, Congress needs to step up and catch up, and we're going to be working alongside of them as well. We had some of our members—great Members of Congress there. But—it is time.

And I think that this morning was symbolic of many things. The first, of this administration working every day to effectuate President Trump's leadership and unequivocal support of "America first." But second, just how close we are as a Cabinet. I don't know in any other administration that you'd have four Cabinet members at the USDA on a Tuesday morning when it's about 110 degrees outside, with the sun beating down on us, talking about, sir, your vision.

So I think it was a great day. It was just the start. There's an Executive order coming and some other things coming behind that. But protecting America's farms isn't just about protecting our farmers. It's also about national security. So that's what we discussed this morning.

The President. I do want to say that I think we have had a really good relationship with China lately, and we're getting along with them very well. And they've been very fair on our trade deal, honestly, and I hope we're going to have a great relationship.

It's a big, strong, powerful country. We're more powerful than they are. We have much better military equipment than they do. But we are getting along with them very well. I'm getting along with President Xi very well. We speak often.

And with all of that being said, and I understand what you say, but I think we're getting along with China very well.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Ukraine/U.S. Security Assistance

Q. Mr. President, you want to send more weapons to Ukraine, as you said last night. Last week, the Pentagon paused some shipments of weapons to Ukraine. Did you approve of that pause?

The President. We want to put defensive weapons because Putin is not—he's not treating human beings right. He's killing too many people. So we're sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine, and I've approved that.

Q. So who ordered the pause last week?

The President. I don't know. Why don't you tell me?

Q. Mr. President——

Q. I think that's a question for the Pentagon.

The President. Go ahead. Yes.

Immigration Enforcement Actions/Farmworkers/Domestic Manufacturing Investment

Q. Mr. President, on immigration. The Secretary—the Agriculture Secretary did say this morning that undocumented workers would not be covered by any amnesty who are working on the farms. You had said maybe that the ICE and folks won't go after those folks on farms. So which is it?

The President. No. No, there's no amnesty. What we're doing is we're getting rid of criminals, but we are doing a work program.

Do you want to explain that, please?

Secretary Rollins. Yes. This morning we talked about—of course, this was a top-of-mind question—this morning, we talked about protecting the farmers and the farmland. But, obviously, this president's vision of no amnesty, mass deportation continues, but in a strategic way, and then ensuring that our farmers have the labor that they need.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer has been a leader on this. Obviously, this comes out of the Labor Department. But moving toward automation, ensuring that our farmers have that workforce, and moving toward an American workforce—so, all of the above—

The President. We've got to give the farmers the people they need, but we're not talking amnesty.

Participant. That's right.

The President. Lori, do you want to say something about that?

Secretary of Labor Lori M. Chavez-DeRemer. Yes. Thank you, Mr. President. On this—thank you, Secretary Rollins—how important this is never to displace the American worker. What the Department of Labor is doing is focusing on what the law entails now, being more modernized, more streamlining.

To work through the H programs, we're going to have a concierge——

The President. Right.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. ——approach to that, where we have, you know, developed a new office to answer the need of our farmers and ranchers and producers and not to displace the American worker and fall within the law now. And that does not include an amnesty program at all. And we've seen that working, and we'll continue to have that roll out.

On the other topics that we've somewhat talked about—the jobs numbers, Mr. President—4 months in a row we've seen those jobs numbers increase. That's an exciting time for our manufacturers.

The President. Right.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. That was asked earlier. We know it's going to take some time, but through that deregulation process that Lee and I are working on as well, the Department of Labor has rolled out 60 through—63 new deregulations that we're going to be moving through. In the first Trump administration, it was successful with over 30. We've just rolled out 63——

The President. That's right.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. ——new ones in order to double down on those manufacturing companies, to let them know that we have signaled through this process that we will assist them in getting the workforce that they need.

It's an exciting time. That "One Big Beautiful Bill"—that was the signal to my former colleagues in Congress to get this done. It's been an important time. I spent time on the ground visiting seven States in 9 days prior to that bill being passed, because it was the most proworker piece of legislation that we will ever see, really, in this country right now. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security—that matters to the American worker, because we don't want to take their money and give it back. We want them to keep more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets currently. And that's what they're excited about.

And as I move forward with those tariff talks, I heard a company—orthopedic company in Indiana—say to me, for the first time—since you have taken office, Mr. President, their increase in their bottom line by 8 percent since these tariff talks have happened.

The President. Good.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. Not one company has said, "The President is not doing a good job." [Laughter] These tariff talks are working. They're feeling it on the ground. The media has told a false story, because what's happening on the ground is positive, and that's what we're seeing in these jobs numbers.

So I really—through the Department of Labor, to come in behind all the Secretaries and build this workforce is going to be key to the American workers. So thank you for what everybody did this last week. The "One Big Beautiful Bill" is a doubling down of this and we're going to see these workers start to grow.

And that apprenticeship program is going to be working.

The President. That's right. That's going to be great.

Secretary Chavez-DeRemer. And we'll have that million apprentices across the country.

The President. We—you know, as you know, we're building plants all over the country now, which you weren't building any plants 4 years ago. You weren't building anything.

But those plants, when they open up, it's going to be—you'll see numbers like you haven't seen ever. I don't think in history you'll see—you'll never see numbers like what we're going to see in the very near future.

Many of them are building the plants. Some are just starting right now. You know, it's a brandnew administration, but—and they wouldn't be here, except for two things: November 5—the election—and the tariffs. And frankly, I guess, the election was more important because of the tariffs. I mean, another person wouldn't have done this. But they're coming in because of the tariffs. They have to. They—they're not going to pay 25, 30, 40, 50 percent, 70 and 100 percent.

And we'll be announcing something very soon on pharmaceuticals. We're going to give people about a year, year and a half to come in, and after that, they're going to be tariffed. If they have to bring the pharmaceuticals into the country—the drugs and other things into the country—they're going to be tariffed at a very, very high rate, like 200 percent. We'll give them a certain period of time to get their act together.

But they were all here. Now they all left. They went to other places, because we allowed—people that sat in this room allowed it to happen. And I don't allow it to happen. The people in this room don't allow it to happen.

So we're going to be announcing pharmaceuticals, chips, and various—couple of other things. You know, big ones. We did steel, as you know. They're 50 percent. We did aluminum, 50 percent. Lumber just came out.

Secretary Lutnick. Why don't you announce copper?

The President. And we did cars. Cars. And now, today we're doing copper.

Q. Copper and lumber. What would that tariff be on—the sectional tariff you're talking about?

The President. I believe the tariff on copper—we're going to make it 50 percent.

Secretary Lutnick. Fifty percent.

Q. Any breakthroughs on Gaza——

The President. See, I'm glad he didn't question me, because I started to say, "Hmm." [Laughter]

Q. Any breakthroughs——

The President. I sort of—just sort of thought, "What would that be?" That was a quick one.

Q. Did you have any breakthroughs——

The President. I didn't have much time. But he—agreed with me. That's why he's Howard, right? [Laughter]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel/Gaza, Palestinian Territories

Q. Any breakthroughs on Gaza with the Prime Minister—and there's reports that you're meeting with Netanyahu again tonight. Is that accurate?

The President. Yes, I am. He's going to come over again tonight. We're talking about Gaza. It's mostly Gaza right now. It's—he's done—he's been very unfairly treated. I think what they've done to him in Israel is very unfair, having to do with this trial.

You know, he's a wartime Prime Minister, had an unbelievable outcome, and I think he's been treated very unfairly.

But he's coming over later. We're going to be talking about, I would say, almost exclusively, Gaza. We got to get that solved. Gaza is a tragic—it's a tragedy. It's a tragedy, and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to get it solved.

Steve, could you talk on that, please?

U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steven C. Witkoff. We're in proximity talks now, and we had four issues, and now we're down to one after 2 days of proximity talks. So we are hopeful that by the end of this week, we will have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire.

Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released. We're meeting, at the President's direction, with all the hostage families to let them know. And we think that this will lead to a lasting peace in Gaza.

The President. And you're doing a good job. It's a tough one. It's a tough one. A lot of hate. You know? This is called long-term hate. But we think we're going to have it solved pretty soon—hopefully, with a real solution, a solution that's going to be holding up.

Political Parties/Former White House Senior Adviser Elon R. Musk/U.S. DOGE Service

Q. And can I follow up? This is, I think, the first Cabinet meeting since Elon Musk has not been a special Government employee and not here anymore. He's now saying he's going to create a third political party. Are you worried about the impact that that could have?

The President. No, I think it will help us. It will probably help. Third parties have always been good for me. I don't know about Republicans, but for me. [Laughter] Yes.

Q. Are you second-guessing any of the cuts that DOGE made since——

The President. No, no.

Q. ——you described him as "off the rails" the other day?

The President. No. No. Look—look, we cut hundreds of billions of dollars with DOGE. We could have done it differently. I would have done it differently a little bit, maybe, but it was something that—we saved a lot of money.

You can always second-guess. I guess some of the people in this room maybe would have done it slightly differently, and some would have done it exactly the way it was done.

But it was—it was dramatic, and it was important. And we found a lot of things, like billions of dollars given to people for environmental protection, where they had a hundred dollars in the account—like in Atlanta, Stacey—and then you had another one with $20 billion here—$20 billion here and $2 billion here and $15 billion and—Lee, you might want to mention just a couple of those things we did—we really got because of DOGE.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee M. Zeldin. At the Trump EPA, the "One Big Beautiful Bill" was filled with many big, beautiful wins for the taxpayer. It delivered a sledgehammer to the "green new scam," billions of dollars rescinded.

So it's a big deal for the American taxpayer who sees money go through pass-throughs that are, you know, filled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest. They see unqualified recipients, they see reduced agency oversight, and they want accountability with their tax dollars. And they got it.

[Administrator Zeldin continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

But you know what? God bless America, because at the end of the day, President Trump is here, J.D. Vance is here, and the greatest Cabinet ever assembled to deliver that much needed and highly demanded accountability.

Secretary Rollins. Well said.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

Q. Mr. President, on Ukraine——

The President. That was a very good—[laughter].

Secretary Rollins. Well said. Well said.

The President. And that's from the heart. That's from the heart.

Ukraine/Russia

Q. On Ukraine. The Ukrainians have asked the International Court to go after Russia for using toxic chemicals in the fight. Germany and Dutch have—Germany and the Netherlands have had intelligence saying that. What does U.S. intelligence believe, and what do you believe, about the use of chemical weapons?

The President. Do you know about this, Pete?

Secretary Hegseth. [Inaudible]

The President. Hmm?

Secretary Hegseth. But John might know—Ratcliffe.

Q. And would you agree that that's a case for the court in the Hague?

The President. Well, I'd ask John maybe to discuss it, if you'd like, John.

Central Intelligence Agency Director John L. Ratcliffe. Well, Mr. President, obviously, chemical weapons—if it's documented in its use—it's illegal. It's against all international laws of armed conflict and treaties. And obviously, I can't share in this room with this audience the intelligence that I can share with you privately, but obviously, you're not going to stand or allow for any violations——

The President. That's right.

Director Ratcliffe. ——of international law by anyone.

The President. That's right. Thank you.

Q. So did he——

The President. Could I ask Sean to—Department of Transportation, Sean Duffy, former great congressman, very popular, decided he'd go out and make a couple of bucks. He made a lot—[laughter]—and he got bored with that though. He likes serving people better—the people.

And could I ask you to just discuss a very important subject to me? And that's the modernization of our equipment at airports so that planes aren't crashing into each other and bad things don't happen. It should have been done many years ago. We were going to do it, and then the election precluded that, unfortunately, but we're doing it now. Could you tell them where we are?

Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy. Yes, if I could start with Newark. We—you guys all covered what happened in Newark. We had outages for—a couple 30-second outages a couple months ago. We have, in 2 months—Mr. President, it's historic speed—laid new fiber lines for communication and tested those in the next month. So those new lines in for the—for the Philly TRACON that controls the Newark airspace, they're up and running——

The President. Great.

Secretary Duffy. ——lightning-fast speed. June was——

The President. That's pretty good.

Secretary Duffy. June was the most on-time June ever in the history of Newark for air travel. So, that's going incredibly well.

By the way, we shouldn't have dealt with this because Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg had moved the center from New York to Philadelphia. They didn't test the lines. They didn't do the work, which—what—which is what brought us all these problems.

[Secretary Duffy continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

And per your direction, right now, we are interviewing what we could call a general contractor or an integrator, one company to——

The President. Right.

Secretary Duffy. It's a massive project. The FAA is not qualified to manage this kind of a project, so we are now going through the process of finding who that one company will be to manage the whole project. We'll interview those companies together and make that selection. So, we'll write one big, beautiful check—[laughter]—to one beautiful company that'll be responsible for this whole build.

But if I could just make one last point, we are—this is not enough money. We're going to need more. It's—but this is a massive new start.

The President. It's a start.

Secretary Duffy. The biggest investment—we'll need some more money on top of it. But a great start from the "Big Beautiful Bill."

The President. It's a starter.

Secretary Duffy. It's a starter.

The President. It was very important to us. And just to cover that, you know, there have been accidents. And my pilots, I would often hear them say, "Oh, good"—and they would use a different system, a different country, to land in New York. They'd use the radar and other things from a different country. I said, "What's that?" And he says, "Oh, our system is so bad."

And I knew that. We were all set to start. And Buttigieg came in, and he—it's—what they did was so crazy, because they hooked copper into fiber, into steel, into all—they had all different systems. They had hundreds and hundreds of contractors—different contractors for different airports. They spent billions of dollars, and they made the system worse, because you can't hook copper into fiber. It doesn't work that way. You just can't do it. It's not doable. But they tried to do it, didn't work out too well. And in the end, it was a—just a complete disaster.

We want to have one great company. Now, Raytheon is going to bid. IBM is going to bid. We have five or six bidders that really are good and do this stuff. And we want one.

I told—because I know about overruns. I look at the railroad out in California headed up by one of the worst Governors in our country—who I used to get along with, actually—but he's just—you know, when you lose 25,000 houses, and you would have had your cities burned down. If we didn't step in, Los Angeles would have been burned to the ground.

But you look at that, and I said, "I really know how to build, and you've got to have one guy, one contractor, one great one"—whether it's IBM, or Raytheon is good, and—but you have four or five of that are really, really great, and they're all bidding against each other. But you don't want to have one doing the wire and one doing the digging and one doing the demolition and one—and then they're all saying—they all blame each other because they're saying, "They were late, and therefore you have to pay me millions of dollars more money."

I know this system so well, and we're going to have a great company do the whole thing. We're going to get a fantastic price. Maybe we'll get them—they're very big and very strong, and maybe we'll get them to make a contribution toward it—toward, you know, getting it done at the right price.

But we're going to have a great system. When we finish, we will have the best system on Earth done by one of the two or three best companies. There are only few companies that can do this.

This is not—but if you would have seen what this other group did, they were going—they were going crazy. They had—I think they—I heard 3,000 contractors. And then when it all came together, guess what? It didn't work. It's a disaster.

So we are—we're going to have a—in pretty short period of time—it's going to take us about 2 years to build it, and we'll have a contract given out probably over the next couple of months.

Secretary Duffy. That's right.

The President. We have some great bidders, some great companies that want to do the job. You're going to have great air traffic control.

Secretary Duffy. Just to make one last point on this. So the last administration signed a contract with an American company to fix the copper to fiber, and that contract was a 15-year contract. The system is failing today. But that's how idiotic and incompetent the last administration was.

[Secretary Duffy continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

Again, the last administration wasted so much money on projects that never work. If you're going to have high-speed rail and you're going to invest billions, we should actually have high-speed rail in America, not boondoggles that fund political friends and allies and family members.

The President. They have—from San Francisco—inside of San Francisco to inside of Los Angeles—it should have never been built, because airplanes do it better. And you could drive it. You could drive it. No problem with driving it. The roads aren't even crowded.

So they were going to do this. Somebody's idea—somebody got paid off a lot of money.

And they started it—it was going to cost a very small amount of money, and it ended up costing literally hundreds of times what the original. And now what they did is they said, "Well, going into the city is too big a deal, so we'll leave it 25 miles short of the city." So now they're leaving it. They're not going to finish it really.

They're building—it's not the same project. So now they're leaving it outside of San Francisco and outside—short of each. They just want to get it done, and it's—I've never seen cost overruns—you know, if you have a cost overrun of 10 percent, you should be ashamed of yourself; 20 percent, you should not do any more jobs. This is a cost overrun of 2,000 percent—something like that. It's unlimited. And it's not finished, and maybe it will never get finished.

And I told Sean, look at it from every standpoint—but I—we don't want to—you know, we—have Federal money going into that, and it's like throwing it out the window. So whatever you can do to stop it.

Secretary Duffy. Fifteen billion dollars and not one track has been laid. Fifteen billion dollars and we're 16 years into the project, not one track.

[Several reporters spoke at once.]

New York City Mayoral Race/New York State Representative Zohran K. Mamdani/District of Columbia

Q. President Trump, on New York. President Trump, on New York—on New York, you're the most prominent Republican in the country from the city. What do you want to——

The President. And anywhere else too. [Laughter]

Secretary Rollins. Any other city.

The President. I think I can—I don't want to be a wise guy. Perhaps I can. Maybe Marco? [Laughter]

Q. But how do you want Republican voters in the city to vote in the upcoming mayoral election? Should they vote for Eric Adams? Should they vote for Sliwa? Should they pick someone else?

The President. Well, look, number one, you have a Communist running, and you shouldn't vote for him. He's a disaster. He's leading. He's got the Democrat nomination, because that shows you where the Democrats have gone. He actually wants to take over the grocery stores of John Catsimatidis, who is a great guy, a rich guy, a grocer, does a good job. Wants to take over—he actually called me the other day. He's concerned his stores are going to be taken from him, and they won't be run like John runs them, believe me. He runs a good operation. But he actually said he wants to run his own grocery stores.

No, this is a man who's not very capable, in my opinion, other than he's got a good line of bullshit, and he's convinced them to go with him.

Now, as you know, Cuomo, who does have capability, is running, but he got knocked out. And now they're running as a—you have Eric Adams, the current mayor. You have Cuomo, and you have Curtis Sliwa. And Curtis runs every—every 4 years. He seems to be a fixture on the running scale, but—[Laughter]—

Q. Do you want him to drop out?

The President. ——but, you know, it's—I'm not getting involved. [Laughter]

But I can tell you this: I used to say we will not ever be a socialist country, right? Well, I'll say it again. We're not going to have—if a Communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same. But we have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to. We could run DC.

I mean, we're looking at DC. We don't want crime in DC. We want the city to run well. Susie Wiles is working very closely with the Mayor, and they're—doing all right. I mean, in the sense that we would run it so good. It would be run so proper. We'd get the best person to run it. And we would—the crime would be down to a minimal. It would be much less. And you know, we're thinking about doing it, to be honest with you. We want to—we want a capital that's run flawlessly, and it wouldn't be hard for us to do it. But we're—and we've had a good relationship with the Mayor, and we're testing it to see if it works.

But New York City will run properly. We're going to bring New York back. I love New York. You know, I love New York, for a long time. Then we had a bunch of crooked people in there.

You have an attorney general who's a total—stone-cold crook—New York State, Letitia James, a total crook. All they do is want to go after political opponents. They do what's ever expeditious for them.

She's the one that took out Cuomo because she wanted to run for Governor, and then she ended up getting 1 percent of the vote. She polled at 1 percent. She dropped out, went back to attorney general.

You have a lot of crooked things going on in New York. We're going to straighten out New York. It's going to—and maybe we're going to have to straighten it out from Washington.

But when I see a Communist who has actually gotten a Democrat—pretty much gotten a Democrat nomination—they also went to that new form of voting, which is a beauty. You go in there in third place, you come out in first. That's that—that form of voting that they have gone to, you know what I'm talking about, is not—is not too good.

We're going to do something for New York. I can't tell you what yet, but we're going to make New York great again. Also, we're going to make it great again with the country.

What we've done in this country in the last 6 months, nobody has ever seen it. And I— told the story: The King of Saudi Arabia—I was over there. They gave us $5.1 trillion between Saudi Arabia and U.A.E., Qatar. Three stops, $5.1 trillion coming into our country as an investment—biggest investment ever made—and it's all going to good stuff. I mean, all real big, good stuff: energy projects—big, big things.

But they—all three told me essentially the same thing, "We thought your country was dead, and now you've got the hottest country in the world." We're, right now, riding the hottest country. We are. And you can all be proud of it. We're in the hottest country. This is the hottest country in the world. There's nobody close.

Made hotter by some great pilots and great machines that nobody else has. Those great, big, beautiful machines—they rode those machines right into the toughest territory, and nobody knew what the hell happened. And then they hit their targets perfectly, and it was complete and total obliteration. And that's why that war ended, Steve. They told me that's why the war ended. The war ended when they saw that; it was over. And we're very proud of it.

But we have the hottest country in the world right now from a country that was close to dead. And if I didn't win, if you would have had the other person win—we all know who she is—whether it was she or Biden—they're the same. She—he may have been more competent than her, and that's hard to believe, right?

But if you had that ideology in, I don't believe you would have had a country anymore. I think you would have had a country that was broken up, but we had a dead country. Now we have the hottest country in the world. And everybody knows it, and everybody said it.

Mr. Vice President, do you have anything to say? [Laughter]

Vice President James D. "J.D." Vance. Well, thank you, Mr. President. I just want to say that I'm very proud of the whole team. I think everybody has worked together. You see Pete and Marco and Steve working on some of the diplomacy, Kristi and Pam working on the border. We just have a really, really solid team.

The President. It's true.

Vice President Vance. And we've done a lot of good work.

And, in particular, I want to congratulate the White House staff, led by the President, on getting the "One Big Beautiful Bill" passed.

Secretary Rollins. Yes.

Vice President Vance. I was personally skeptical, sir. I never told you this, but I was skeptical we'd be able to get that thing done by July 4. We did it because we worked together, and we worked very well.

So it's an honor to be a part of it, but I'm really proud of you guys for doing a great job.

Secretary Rollins. Well said.

The President. The beautiful thing about it, it had something for everyone.

Vice President Vance. That's right.

The President. Most people said it had to be broken into seven bills it's so big. The problem was that some of those seven have nothing for anyone, but they had to be done for the country. You know, sometimes you have to do things for the country that aren't necessarily popular. We had a couple of them, and that wouldn't have worked. So the "One Big Beautiful Bill"—many people said it could never be approved—"too big," "too everything," "it's too much." But it had something very big and very important for everyone, and it's great for the country.

And remember, the Democrats have come up with a false narrative—you know, just whatever. It's just a line that they send to everybody, and they print. I think in the case of this, it's: "Death. Death. Everyone is going to die." I heard that, "Everyone's going to"—it's just the opposite. Everyone is going to live. What we're doing is saving our country and making it much bigger, better, and stronger than it ever was.

I'd like to ask—Marco has been doing such a great job. Do you have anything to say?

Secretary of State Marco A. Rubio. Well, it's a—just going through a list here, Mr. President, and I think the Vice President is pointing out the great team you have, but—and all these achievements that have happened domestically. But you think about it, under your leadership, we prevented and ended a war between India and Pakistan; NATO is now at 5 percent for the first time ever——

The President. Right.

Secretary Rubio.——the highest numbers ever; a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda; a 12-day war that ended with an American operation that we're the only country in the world that could have done; hopefully, pretty soon, a peace deal between Azerbaijan and—and Armenia; the entire Middle East and the infrastructure of it has the potential now to change because of Syria and Lebanon. And it hasn't even been 6 months.

The President. That's right. [Laughter]

Secretary Rubio. It hasn't even been 6 months, so it's a——

The President. That's a lot.

Secretary Rubio. ——a great testament to your leadership and this team.

The President. Yes. Thank you very much, and you've done a fantastic job.

Could I just ask Linda—she's involved in so much. She's so talented and so good, and she's working on a couple of little things, like Harvard—[laughter]—who was given $5.5 billion over a short period of time. We caught them on that one. That's crazy.

But you're working on so much. You want to bring education back to the States. How are you doing?

Secretary of Education Linda E. McMahon. Well, absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity. I think, on the "Big Beautiful Bill," what we saw, you know, with school choice—we did this, finally, on a national basis—at the State level, but there are opportunities now for scholarships more and more often for kids who are in failing schools. It's going to be a big turnaround.

I think one of the biggest accomplishments we had over the past week was University of Pennsylvania with the title IX——

The President. Right.

Secretary McMahon. ——ruling that, you know, Lia Thomas was stripped of her title. Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan and other women who have stood, you know, so strong against men in women's sports. And when you put out the—you know, the Executive order, I mean, that just solidified and gave them the opportunity.

So those are a couple of really, really big wins. And thank you for that opportunity.

The President. And how are you doing with Columbia and Harvard?

Secretary McMahon. We're negotiating hard. I think we're getting close to having to—having that happen. It's not wrapped up as fast as I want it to, but we're getting there.

The President. Okay. Good. And you've done a fantastic job.

Secretary McMahon. Thank you.

The President. Thank you very much.

Secretary McMahon. It's been a good team. We've got a team——

The President. You have a great team——

Secretary McMahon. ——around this table, a lot of people have helped with that.

The President. That's right. Thank you very much.

Maybe, just in closing, you know, we spent a lot of time, effort, very little money on this room. This is called the Cabinet Room. It's been here for a long time, and it had some pictures that were—not many of them and not very good ones. And I actually spent time in the vaults. The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures and artwork, and I picked it all myself. I'm very proud of it.

That's Andrew Jackson, the great Andrew Jackson. That's a gentleman named—and we call him President Polk. He was sort of a real estate guy. He was—people don't realize he was one of—he was a one-termer, but he was a very good President. But—and I'm not sure I should be doing this: He actually gave us the State of California. He was the one—[laughter]—he was the one that—[inaudible]. [Laughter] So I'm not sure. Maybe he won't be there for long. [Laughter]

But if you notice, the frame is the exact same size, almost, as the other one—as Andrew Jackson. So that was a part of the reason, too, I have to be honest. But Polk is—was actually a very good President who's got the same frame that I needed. Okay? [Laughter]

And up here you have the original, George Washington, right behind the light. And then you have Dwight Eisenhower, who was a very underrated President—built the interstate system and he was the toughest President, I guess, until we came along. But I don't mind giving up that crown, because I don't want to be too tough on it, but we want to be humane. But he was the toughest President on immigration. He was very strong at the borders—very, very strong, and sometimes you can be too strong. And he was strong on the borders.

And during a certain period of time, they were so strong that almost every farmer in California went bankrupt, and we have to remember that. We have to work together, and we have to remember that.

But he was a very good President and a very good general and a very good President, and I thought he deserved a position somewhere on this floor.

And then you have—this is very exciting to me—he was not a Republican, to put it mildly, but he was, you know—he was four-termer. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And if you notice, we have lot of ramps outside. We have ramp—people will say, "That's an unusual place for a ramp." It was because of him. He was wheelchair bound, but he was an amazing man.

It's an amazing portrait, and we used to have him in the room—a different portrait, and it was a terrible portrait. It was almost like it was done by a child. And I used to say, "You know, I can't believe that he would have approved of that portrait of himself." And I was in the vaults and looking at things. I said, "What's that?"

And we have some great curators here. We have six curators at the White House. They have two for paintings. They have them for furniture. They have them for different things. I guess cost is no object. Okay? [Laughter] Cost is—maybe I'd have one, but that's all right. But we have six, and they're very talented though.

And he said, "That's a picture of FDR." I said, "Really? Let me see it." They took off the wrapping. It was very well preserved. And I said, "That's the picture they've been looking for for years. That was the picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt." And I said, "Oh, wow." And likewise, that fit—see frame—frame-wise, you—it just doesn't work—[laughter]—it doesn't work if you have—I want to be nice, but it doesn't work if you have a big frame, a little frame and you—but it's like perfection. I'm a perfectionist.

The mirror was down in the vaults also. I said, "Where is this from?" And it's a very old, very storied mirror. Beautiful. We put that up.

And then over there is Honest Abe Lincoln, and that picture was in his bedroom. And we thought that this would be a very important place, because this is where wars are ended. I'm not going to say wars are declared. I'm going to say wars are ended. Okay? We'll be positive.

And that's the picture of Abe Lincoln from his bedroom. Sat in the bedroom for many, many years. That was his favorite picture of himself. And the Lincoln Bedroom is very famous.

You remember when Bill Clinton had it, and he rented it out to people, okay? [Laughter] We don't do that.

But it's an incredible room, and we took that picture from his bedroom. That's Abe Lincoln.

And then over here you have John Adams. And it's—this was the—they were the first occupants of the White House—1800—and John Quincy Adams, Mrs. Adams—they were the first occupants.

So we have them looking at each other, and in between their stare is Abraham Lincoln trying to make peace. And that picture was in a room that I have that was not important like the Cabinet. I gave it up. I said, "I have to give it up," because that's one of the greatest pictures in the White House.

The White House has tremendous art. And the Oval Office, when we're there, we'll go over that. That's really been something.

Then we got the drapes, and we got the whole thing. We got new drapes. We got new—it wasn't a big expense—very, very small.

And we took some of the chinaware and silverware and trophyware—they call it—from the vaults, and we had it cleaned up. Hadn't been shined up in 100 years. Some of this has sat in the vaults for over 100 years. Amazing. Over a hundred years. Many of the pictures that were put up in the Oval Office, as an example—those two, as an example.

So he was President. They moved in in 1800, and he won the election, I believe, in November of 1800—John Quincy Adams. And we thought that would a—he was considered to be a good President, and he was the first occupant of the White House, so it sort of made sense.

And I love the frame of those pictures. Look at those frames. You know, I'm a frame person. Sometimes I like frames more than I like the pictures. [Laughter]

And we're—we have the flags of the Marines, and Space Force now has its own flag. I'm very proud of Space Force. But the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force—the whole thing. And Coast Guard is right there. You never forget the Coast Guard. They do a great job. So we have the flags throughout the office.

And it's really become quite a beautiful place.

Secretary Rubio. What about the clock?

The President. I don't want to tell this—oh, Marco pointed it out. No, I was going to leave the clock.

So, as President, you have the power—if I go into the State Department or Department of Commerce or Treasury, if I see anything that I like, I'm allowed to take it. [Laughter] Do you believe this?

So I'm in Marco's office—I see this gorgeous clock—grandfather clock, and there it is. I said, "Marco." [Laughter] He didn't know about—I had to read him the rule and regulation. [Laughter] I said: "Marco, I love this clock. Look at it. It's beautiful." He said, "What clock?" [Laughter] I said—I said, "The clock that's in the other room is incredible, and nobody gets to see it there. Marco"—I tried to talk him into it first, and it sort of worked. And then I had to use a little more. [Laughter] I said, "I'd love to take that clock out and put it in the Cabinet Room." He said: "No. Are you serious?" I said, "Marco—I have the right to do it, Marco." And he said, "All right, what the hell." [Laughter] So that's his contribution to the Cabinet Room.

But it's—by the way, it's an incredible clock.

And you know, it's an important room, so you may see it again. Maybe we'll move it back sometime. [Laughter]

Anyway, so that's—and that's pretty much it, but it really is great.

Here, we put up, you know, these—these lamps have been very important, actually, whether people love them or not. But they're—if you see pictures like "Pearl Harbor" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!", you see movies about the White House and where wars are being discussed, oftentimes they'll show those lamps or something like those lamps, something that looks like them—probably not the reals, because I don't think they're allowed to—this is a very important room. This is a sacred room, and I don't think they made movies from here. You never know what they do.

But they were missing medallions. See the medallions on top? They had a chain going into the ceiling. And I said: "You can't do that. You have to have a medallion." They said, "What's a medallion?" I said, "I'll show you." And we got some—some beautiful medallions, and you see them. They were put up there. Makes—the lamps looks better—so we did these—these changes. And you know, when you think of it, the cost was almost nothing. We also painted the room a nice color—beige color. And it's been—it's been really something.

The only question is: Will I gold-leaf the corners? You could maybe tell me—my Cabinet could take a vote. You see the——

Participant. Yes.

Participant. Absolutely.

Participant. It's expensive.

The President. ——you see the top-line moldings, and the only question is, do you gold-leaf it? Because you can't paint it. If you paint it, it won't look good, because they've never found a paint that looks like gold. You see that in the Oval Office. They've tried for years and years. Somebody could become very wealthy, but they've never found a paint that looks like gold. So, painting it is easy, but it won't look right

And the question is whether or not we should gold-leaf it.

Does any—Linda, do you have an opinion?

Secretary McMahon. I'd gold-leaf it.

The President. You like it the way——

Secretary McMahon. No, I'd gold-leaf it.

The President. You'd gold-leaf it?

Secretary McMahon. Yes.

The President. Who would golf-leaf it? Could I—raise your—how about——

Would you gold-leaf it?

The President's Fondness for Former President William McKinley/Geographic Names

Q. Well, I was going to ask about McKinley, one of your favorite presidents—if he is——

The President. Well, he—McKinley was a great President who never got credit. In fact, they changed the name of Mount McKinley, and I changed it back because he should have been—the people of Ohio were very—he was the Governor of Ohio. The people of Ohio were very happy when I did that, I heard.

Vice President Vance. Yes, sir.

The President. They were very insulted. They took the name of Mount McKinley off. That was done by Obama a little while ago, and I had to change it back. I changed it back.

He actually was a great President. He was a President—he was the—tariff—the most—I guess, since me—I think I'm going to outdo him, but he was a tariff President. He believed that other countries should pay for the privilege of coming into our country and taking our jobs and taking our treasure. That's the way he explained it: They took our jobs, and they took our treasure, and for that they should pay. And he made them pay, and he built a tremendous fortune.

In fact, in 1887, they had the great tariff committee—it was set up in 1887—because our country had so much money, we didn't know what to do with it. And they set up a committee of, as they called them, "elites"—a term that we have to change, because I think a lot of the people that are elites aren't elite. I think the people that aren't elite are elite. So we're going to have to maybe switch that around somehow.

But they had a committee that was set up to spend the money, because it was such a large amount of money. At that time, it was—nobody had seen anything like it. And it all came in from tariffs, and people didn't pay tax. There was no income tax system.

I told you that went—that came back in—in 1913 that came back and lived well for a while, and then you had the Great Depression.

And then later, they brought—they tried to bring back tariffs, but the whole thing was—you know, this was after the Depression. That was one of the great misconceptions is people like to say, "Oh, but it was during the"—no, the—we went—the country had a Great Depression. And then after the Depression, as—after—long after it started, they brought back tariffs to see if they could save it. But it took them, really, 25 years—wouldn't you say?—about 25 years to get out of the Great Depression. A lot of people don't understand that.

But I thought it would be interesting for you to get a little view of this room. This is a very important room, very powerful room, great room. And we've done similar, but even beyond this, in the Oval Office.

We brought back pictures of some of the great Presidents. Many of them were in the vaults for over a hundred years—originals all; beautiful, beautiful things. And rather than sitting in a vault downstairs for 128 years, I thought we should display that, and we did that, I think, in a really good way. We've gotten very high marks.

But it's interesting. People walk into that room, and they look around the room, they don't even want to talk to me. They want to—they could—[laughter]—they could look at it for hours. It's funny, when people come into the Oval Office, it's such an incredible—it's a sacred place.

When people come into the Oval from—the biggest people in the world, the Presidents, Prime Ministers, Kings, Queens—in one case at least, queens—and the biggest businesspeople in the world—they walk into that office and they always say—they'd say, "There's no place like this in the whole world," in terms of the power and—I mean, it's beautiful and all, but there are other beautiful offices.

You have businessmen that have offices that are, you know, full floors of office buildings with floor-to-ceiling glass, and they walk in there and they say: "There's no place like this anywhere in the world. There's no place." And you know, it's what it represents, maybe more than the physicality of the room itself.

So it's an honor to have you all. Media, it's an honor to have you. I just want to say we have a fantastic Cabinet. Every one of them is a star in my book, and if they're not, I'll let you know about it. I don't care. [Laughter] I'll throw them to the wolves. I'll throw them to the wolves in 2 seconds, because our country comes first, right?

But I just want to thank you all for being here. It's been a lot of fun.

Q. Thank you.

Q. Thank you.

The President. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.

White House aide. Thank you, press.

Q. Anything about FEMA, Mr. President? What's your view of FEMA right now?

White House aide. Thank you, press.

Q. You had said before you wanted to ween the States off of it.

White House aide. Thank you, press.

The President. I'll tell you some other time.

Thank you.

FIFA Club World Cup

Q. Are you going to Club World Cup? Are you going to deliver the trophy for the World Cup?

White House aide. Thank you, press.

The President. Yes, I will. I will.

Q. You will? Are you bringing the trophy with you?

White House aide. Thank you, press.

The President. Are we talking about next week or in a year?

Q. Yes, it's Sunday. Are you going to bring the——

The President. I'm going to go.

Q. You're going to bring the trophy with you?

The President. I'll be going to the game. Yes.

Q. Are you delivering the trophy?

The President. Yes, I'm going to deliver it. I have it in my office.

Q. Yes, I know.

Participant. You're giving it up?

The President. You're right.

Participant. You're giving it up? Oh, no.