Remarks in an Exchange With Reporters Prior to Departure From Royal Air Force Mildenhall, United Kingdom

The President. Okay. Thank you very much.

So this was really a historic day, to put it mildly. Right? Wasn't it amazing? Even that last meeting, when you see the heads of those countries, those are serious countries, right?

But it was—I thought it was fantastic. I thought—and seeing the—I mean, the so-called hostages, but those kids come back home and the way their parents just went crazy.

Your father would not be that way with you. He'd be okay, but he wouldn't be like that.

Q. I would get a hug. [Laughter]

The President. A hug. A minor hug. Okay. Come on, Peter [Peter Doocy, Fox News]. Let's go. No, he would be. I'm only kidding.

So how you doing? Everybody okay? Every—good?

The President's Visit to the Middle East

Q. How are you feeling?

The President. I feel good. I mean, you know, it's a long day, right? It's a long day. And we did a couple of big ones. That first one was—it's getting great reviews. I will tell you that. There's a lot of meat in there.

They're dissecting it and just playing it all night long. It's been very good. I think it's a very important day, because nobody thought this was possible. So, very good.

And the press has been very respectful, for a change. Doesn't happen often.

Go ahead, Peter. Let's go.

New York City

Q. What does it tell you about the world that it seems like you got a much better reception in Israel than you would get in, like, New York City right now?

The President. I think I get a great reception in New York City—[inaudible].

Q. I'm not saying that you don't, but it was like—it was on another level today.

The President. Well, yes. You're right. It was incredible. But I went to the Bronx, and we had 30-, 31,000 people in a park in the Bronx in New York City during the campaign—31,000. You remember that. And it was the friendliest crowd you've ever seen and very diverse. But it was friendly. So, I mean, New York is good. It's good.

Q. New York City, bad example. But it was—I don't know if you could see through the——

The President. Are you admitting you made a mistake? [Laughter] I don't believe it.

Q. I would——

The President. This is breaking news.

No, I'm kidding. Let's go. Go ahead.

Q. First rule of politics: Never admit a mistake.

The President. Never admit. [Laughter]

The President's Visit to the Middle East/U.S. Cease-Fire Agreement Between Hamas and Israel/Fox News

Q. But it was—in the motorcade, I don't know if you could see, there were people——

The President. They were fantastic.

Q. ——hanging out of every apartment balcony, inside the Knesset.

The President. It's—okay, so I've heard—like, they said, "If you did Russia or if you did, you know, lots of different combinations"—they say the Middle East blows it away. And I said, "Why?" By experts.

It's just thousands of years. Nothing's been done. It's a whole thing with the Arabs, Jewish people, this, that, everybody. It's just never been done before. And there's a certain mystery to the Middle East.

I mean, look, it's only because of ratings. You know, you're only as good as the ratings, right? If they weren't getting ratings, your people at Fox would—and by the way, Trey is excellent.

Q. He does a really good job.

The President. He was really good.

Q. He and his whole team——

The President. We did a very quick interview. I was running to the second one, where we were pretty late.

Q. Something that we heard from some Israelis on the ground: They want to know how the peace holds when you are not the President. So 3 years from now——

The President. I can't answer it. I can't answer it. I know this—and you are all witness—we go and I get 25,000, 35,000, 40—if you look at—a normal President will get 300 people. And that's not bad. You know, they'll go to a ballroom, they get 300 people. We get 35—we had 117,000 people in New Jersey.

And so I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I'll be out there fighting for whoever it may be.

Q. Did——

Q. Sorry. Go ahead.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel

Q. Yes. Did you tell Bibi beforehand that you were going to go off script and try to get him a pardon?

The President. No, I actually told him I didn't want to bring up the pardon, but it was just a perfect spot. It was good timing—wouldn't you say?—because he was getting a very good hand. And when they stopped, I said, "Why don't you give this guy a pardon?"

If he didn't get a good hand, I wouldn't have done that. But the timing was—what do you think, Katie [Katie Pavlich, Townhall.com]? Good timing for that one, right?

Q. I think people thought it was pretty funny, yes. Yes.

The President. It was. It worked out well. It's a little risqué. You know, I'm bringing up a pretty sore subject in Israel. But the people were fantastic. They were really fantastic.

Q. Mr. President, you spoke to——

The President. Oh, here we go.

Q. ——Egyptian——

The President. She's going to ask more questions, this one.

Go ahead.

Q. I have some good questions, I promise.

The President. You do. You were very nice today.

Go ahead.

Egypt/Chicago, Illinois/Use of Military Personnel in U.S. Cities

Q. You talked to President Elsisi, and you spoke about, in that room, how Egypt has so little crime. And you said it's all about leadership. You talked about——

The President. Well, they're very strong on crime.

Q. You talked about some of the Governors——

The President. Like, you wouldn't believe how strong, but they are very strong. But they don't have the kind of crime. They don't have the violent crime—they may have other kinds of crime, but their violent crime—you can actually walk down a park and not get mugged or hit over the head with a baseball.

Q. Do you want to see some U.S. Governors be more like Egypt?

The President. No, I want them to be stronger and tougher and not allow us to have record-breaking crime in Chicago and different places. I want them to admit they have crime.

So there were 4,000 shootings in Chicago—murders—over a fairly short period of time, meaning, like a year and a half, I think. They had 4,000 murders. Many, many thousands of "you're hit by a bullet, but don't die." I want them to say: "We have a problem. Could Trump bring in the troops and solve the problem?" Like I did in DC, like I'm doing in Memphis.

Have you seen the crime is way down in Memphis? And we've only been there seven days. Way down.

Q. The courts have been standing in your way here. It's held up.

The President. They have been. Well, the lower courts have.

The President's Authority To Deploy Military Personal to U.S. Cities

Q. Are you thinking about using the Insurrection Act or are you prepared——

The President. No, the lower—well, I could use it. If I wanted to, I could use it. Look, that's a very simple answer: I'm allowed to use the Insurrection Act. In fact, that was on Stephanopoulos today—his Slopadopoulous show. They asked Sloppy Chris Christie about the Insurrection Act. He said, "Well, if you're talking about the Insurrection Act, he's got the absolute right to use that." And he said a couple of things that were good.

He said 50 percent of the Presidents that served in office have used the Insurrection Act. And the Insurrection Act, according to all of them, said it can't even be challenged.

I'm not—I don't have to go there yet because I'm winning on appeal. You know, you're right. We're losing with radical-left judges, generally—radical-left judges, and we're winning on appeal, so we'll see what happens.

Public Safety Concerns in Chicago, Illinois

Q. I'll be speaking to Governor J.B. Pritzker tomorrow. Do you have any messages or questions for him?

The President. Well, I think he should beg for help, because he's running a bad operation and he's letting people be killed in his city because he doesn't want—in Chicago. And I love Chicago. Chicago can be a great city again and very quickly.

I would have Chicago cleaned out, the criminals removed. We would remove them. You know, in DC, we took out 1,700 career criminals, hardline criminals. That's why it's so good right now.

DC is setting records the other way. It's never been so safe. And the restaurants have never done better business. They're opening up new—they were closing restaurants. Now they're opening new restaurants.

I can do the same thing on a larger scale in Chicago, and Pritzker should ask me to do it.

But when you mentioned Insurrection—I mean, you were the one that mentioned—one of you mentioned Insurrection Act. Yes, I mean, I could do that. And many Presidents have.

Q. Do you have an updated——

The President. Fifty percent—Katie, 50 percent of the Presidents have used the Insurrection [Act; White House correction] because they don't want to go through this stuff where somebody said there's no crime and 4,000 people got shot. You know? Right?

You, I don't have to convince, because she's—tends to be on the conservative side.

Lapse in Federal Government Appropriations/Illegal Immigration

Q. Do you have an update on the Schumer shutdown and Democrats still continuing to refuse to vote for the——

The President. Well, it is the Schumer shutdown. I mean, it's—look, they want to have health care for illegals that have come in. Many of these people are criminals, and they want to have health care. And what it also does is it—you know, we have nobody coming in now. We have it really locked down. If they start winning cases like this, we're going to have a rush on our border because they're going to come up for health care and the other things that they give away.

Look at Newsom: education, health care. He gives everything away. People come up for that. People come from other countries for that. So we can't have it. We can't have that.

We have people coming into our country, but they're coming in legally.

Q. Do you have any more meetings with leaders——

The President. We have the strongest border we've ever had. But they are coming in, Katie. They're coming in legally, through a process.

The President's Communication With Members of Congress/2024 Presidential Election/Political Demonstrations in Los Angeles, California

Q. Do you have any—any planned meetings with House and Senate leadership on the Republican side to figure out——

The President. No, I meet with them. I talk to them all the time. John Thune has been great. And Mike has been great, the Speaker. He's been great. Those two guys have done a great job. But we're dealing with a bunch of radical-left lunatics that have lost an election in a landslide. They don't even admit that.

I mean, think of it. They lost the election 2,700—in terms of counties—to 525. Two thousand—that's where the map is entirely, right? They lost all seven swing States. They lost the popular vote. And then, they say, "Oh, the election was close." She says the election—the election was a landslide. But they lie.

You know, they'll—they can take any subject, like Newsom does. He says, "Oh, no, Los Angeles is doing great." If we didn't go into Los Angeles, you would have had to—they would have had to cancel the Olympics.

And the head of law enforcement said—and he said it very strongly—"We could not have handled this if Trump didn't bring those people in." Two weeks later, he said, "Oh, we could have," because he was told to say that. But we did a great job in Los Angeles.

You wouldn't have lost—first of all, you lost half of it with the fires. And this would have been—I think this would have been maybe even worse. They have—they had no control. When we went in, they had—the police had totally lost control. And he admitted it—the head, whoever he is, whatever his name is—he admitted it very strongly.

U.S. Cease-Fire Agreement Between Hamas and Israel

Q. What's your reaction to President Bill Clinton giving you credit for ending the war in Gaza?

The President. I've always liked Bill Clinton. I've always gotten along with him. He used to be a friend of mine. Came to my wedding, you know? So did she. A lot of people don't know that.

But no, he's—I've always liked him. I thought it was very nice, actually.

And what is he doing? He's telling the truth. Because nobody else has been able to do it—talking about the Middle East.

Yes.

Peace Efforts in the Middle East

Q. Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about your conversations with world leaders today. You said that everybody is unified over your plan, but we heard from President Sisi calling for a two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state.

The President. You're talking about a different plan. I'm talking about something very much different. We're talking about rebuilding Gaza. I'm not talking about single state or double state or two state. We're talking about the rebuilding of Gaza.

Q. What's the road ahead for governing Gaza? Because——

The President. Well, we have to—I mean, a lot of people like the one-state solution. Some people like the two-state solution. So we'll have to see. I haven't commented on that.

Q. How do you see bridging that gap? Because you have the Arab countries being very clear about——

The President. At some point, I'll decide what I think is right. But I'd be in coordination with other states and other countries.

U.S. Cease-Fire Agreement Between Hamas and Israel

Q. And are you satisfied—I mean, some people might say it feels premature declaring peace for the whole Middle East. You know, 3,000 years of peace and so on.

The President. [Inaudible] You want more people to be killed? What do you want? Another 3-, 400,000 people to be killed? Is that what you're looking for?

Q. But in terms of the risks in Gaza. You know, we're already seeing——

The President. Risks? Risks? So, you mean, let them fight on for another couple of years and let some more buildings fall down on top of people and keep it going? No, no. We did it the right way. We did it—I think our timing was perfect, actually.

Q. And in terms of——

The President. You don't really mean that. You mean you want them to fight on, right?

Q. No, I'm just asking about the phase two of the negotiations and how confident you are that those can get underway——

The President. You know, we have a lot of power. That that was a power room. Those people—those are the richest countries. I think with—now with tariffs, I think we're the richest country in the world, actually—the United States. We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars.

But those are, you know, really, seriously rich countries, and they can handle it.

Russia/Ukraine

Q. Some of those players and particularly Erdoğan, could they also help in the war between Russia and Ukraine?

The President. Yes, Erdoğan can. He's respected by Russia. Ukraine, I can't tell you about. But he is respected by Putin, and he's a friend of mine. You know, you can see.

Why—I get along with the tough ones. I don't get along with the weak ones. I get along with the tough ones. I don't know what that is. But Erdoğan has been great with me.

You know, when NATO has a problem with Erdoğan, which they often do, they call me to talk to him, and I've never failed in working it out, like, immediately. Is that right?

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. That's true, sir.

The President. Right? How's Karoline doing? Is she doing good?

Q. She's doing great.

The President. Should Karoline be replaced?

Q. That's up to you, sir.

The President. It will never happen. [Laughter]

Press Secretary Leavitt. Nobody wants to speak up for me?

The President. It will never happen. [Laughter] Look——

Q. You're doing a great job.

Press Secretary Leavitt. Thank you, Katie.

The President. Look at that face and those—Katie—and those lips. They move like a machine gun, right?

Press Secretary Leavitt. [Inaudible]

The President's Meeting With World Leaders in Egypt

Q. Do you want to elaborate on the countries you consider weak?

The President. They really are? Okay.

Press Secretary Leavitt. Yes.

The President. What?

Q. Do you want to comment on the leaders you consider weak who were in that room, specifically?

The President. No, I won't comment on that, but you know probably who they are. But anyway——

Q. Just to be clear, before we——

The President. I don't know that really—yes, there were a couple in the room, but—but overall, I—overall, I thought—that was an amazing group of people. I don't think they've ever seen an assemblage like that—between power, money, you know, et cetera, et cetera. There's never been anything like that.

So we're up. But you know what? I have to—because the plane is going to take off. But we'll come back later.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine

Q. Are you hosting Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday?

The President. I think so, yes.

Press Secretary Leavitt. Yes.

The President. Bye, everybody.

Q. Thanks, President Trump.

Q. Thank you.

The President. Have a good time. Thank you, everybody.