Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, President Trump discussed the plight of hostages held by Hamas.
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00:00On Gaza, you said there's been progress and progress in the Middle East.
00:05At the moment, as a colleague said, Israel, Netanyahu is saying he now wants to conquer Gaza.
00:11Is there any prospect of any movement on that? Are you happy with what Netanyahu is doing?
00:14Well, we've done very slowly because we want to try and get as many hostages saved as possible.
00:20And we've done a good job in that regard.
00:23Two weeks ago, I had 10 hostages come in and they thanked me profusely.
00:27And I said, you have nothing to thank me about.
00:29But what they went through is incredible.
00:32They lived in a pipe.
00:33You know, they keep hearing about caves.
00:34It was a pipe three and a half feet high.
00:37And they didn't know if they were going to breathe.
00:39They didn't know if they were going to live to the next day.
00:41They lived like hell.
00:42I couldn't believe the stories I was hearing.
00:44And they weren't grandstanding.
00:46These were people that were seriously mistreated.
00:48One was in for 512 days.
00:51One was in for 361, I guess, days.
00:55And one was in for a shorter period of time.
00:58And the stories were unbelievable.
01:00I said, how many people are left?
01:02How many are left?
01:03They said 59.
01:05I said, oh, wow.
01:07That's more than I thought.
01:08They said, well, only 24 are living.
01:10But now it's 21.
01:12That was a week ago.
01:12Now it's 21 are living.
01:14And these are young people.
01:15These young people don't die.
01:18Old people die.
01:18Young people don't die under these conditions.
01:20So of the 59 people, and they said 59.
01:25And I said, really?
01:27But they said, only 24 are living.
01:31And I now correct.
01:33I say 21.
01:34Because as of today, it's 21.
01:35Three have died.
01:37So this is a terrible situation.
01:40We're trying to get the hostages out.
01:42We've gotten a lot of them out.
01:43As the expression goes, there's 21 plus a lot of dead bodies.
01:48You know, parents came up to me on numerous occasions.
01:51But a couple in particular, they came up to me two weeks ago.
01:54And they said, please, sir, my son is dead.
01:58Please get us back his body.
02:00They wanted his body.
02:02He's dead.
02:02They know he's dead.
02:03They wanted his body as much as you would want the boy if he was alive.
02:08It's a very sad thing.
02:09Thank you very much, everybody.
02:11Thank you, guys.
02:12Thank you, Christ.