- 5 months ago
President Trump takes reporters' questions at the Kennedy Center.
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00:00Do you have any questions? Yes, please. Hi, sir. There's a new reporting that the
00:08Russians have hacked into some computer systems that manage U.S. federal court
00:13documents. I wonder if you've seen this reporting and if you plan to bring it up
00:16with Putin when you see him later in the week. I guess I could. Are you surprised?
00:20You know, he's surprised. They hack in. That's what they do. They're good at it.
00:24We're good at it. We're actually better at it. But no, I have heard about it. I've heard about it.
00:34Please. Thank you, Mr. President. You mentioned you mentioned congressional Democrats.
00:40You have not yet met with Democratic leadership, but there's a funding deadline at the end of September.
00:46Would you do you plan to meet with Leader Schumer and Leader Jeffries to discuss that situation?
00:51Well, I will, I guess. But it's almost a waste of time to meet because they never approve anything.
00:58If we want money to fight crime, if we want money to do only good things, just good things.
01:03Let's not even talk about controversy. They don't want to meet about anything.
01:07They really are. They're they're they're stuck. They don't know what to do. They have
01:13probably more. I would say more than half are sane. But they are led by insane people. And they
01:21the kind of things that they're pushing are not something we have a communist running for the
01:26mayor of New York. And I wish him well. I may have to deal with him. I mean, it's not it's not even
01:31conceivable. Yeah, it's not even conceivable that that could happen. And maybe he won't win. But he won
01:37the the primaries by quite a bit. You know, shockingly, he won the primaries. So and and you see some of the
01:45people supporting him that truly don't believe what he's espousing. So I mean, we will meet,
01:54but nothing's going to come out of the meeting. But here's the advantage we have is that we have
01:58a great we just passed the great big, beautiful bill that had all the biggest tax cuts in history.
02:03no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security. Think of it. The think of that for the seniors, no tax on
02:10overtime and all sorts of things. You go out, buy a car. You can deduct the interest payment.
02:17If you borrow money, you can deduct the interest payment for your taxes. So many things. But the
02:23biggest thing is from a business standpoint, deductions, you know, that was tremendous.
02:28It's going to our country is roaring. Our businesses are you're going to see some numbers in
02:3412 months when these factories are open. You know, we're opening factories all over the world,
02:38all over the all over the country. But that's all spreading to I think we're spreading the wealth
02:42all over the world, if you want to know the truth. But we're opening them in this country at a level
02:46that we've never seen before. We've never seen. So they just don't want to prove anything. They just
02:52we meet with them and they say, as Nancy Reagan said, just say no. They go, just say no. They're
03:00afraid to approve anything. If we say we want to stop crime in this country or as an example, bail.
03:08We want to make it so that people of their if they murder somebody, they're in jail. They don't get out
03:13on no bail. They say we don't want that. We want people to murder somebody and they immediately are
03:18released and they go out and murder somebody else. Big problem. A tremendous problem. By the way,
03:23we're going to go for statutes in D.C. and then ultimately for the rest of the country where that's
03:28not going to be allowed because it was when they did the cashless bail thing that the numbers really
03:37started going up in this city, in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles, no matter where they have
03:42it, the numbers went through the roof. So so we're going to meet with them. Of course, I'd like to
03:47meet with them. We're going to tell them all these good things and they're going to tell us no.
03:50And then we're going to go out and we're going to vote it in by the Republicans, because I don't
03:53believe that we I don't believe that anybody is capable of making a deal with these people.
04:00They have gone crazy. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Your federalization of the
04:08police has a 30 day limit unless Congress acts to extend it. Are you talking to Congress about
04:13extending it or do you believe 30 days is sufficient? Well, if it's a national emergency, we can do it
04:17without Congress. But we expect to be to Congress before Congress very quickly. And again, we think
04:23the Democrats will not do anything to stop crime, but we think the Republicans will do it almost
04:28unanimously. So we're going to need a crime bill that we're going to be putting in.
04:34And it's going to pertain initially to D.C. It's almost we're going to use it as a very positive
04:40example. And we're going to be asking for extensions on that long term extensions,
04:45because you can't have 30 days. 30 days is that's by the time you do it. We're going to have this in
04:51good shape. And don't forget in the border, everyone said it would take years and you'd have to go back
04:57to Congress. I never went to Congress for anything. I just said, close the border. And they closed the
05:03border. And that was the end of it. I didn't go back to Congress. We're going to do this very quickly,
05:09but we're going to want extensions. I don't want to call national emergency. If I have to, I will.
05:13But I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously.
05:18Please go ahead. Thank you, Mr. President. Would you encourage members of the press to do ride
05:25alongs with the D.C. police to understand how serious this crime issue is? Sounds it's OK to me if they
05:31want to do it. We're going to work with the D.C. police. A lot of very good people in there. Not all,
05:38but a lot of very good, very, very professional. And, you know, we have a big force. I think they said
05:443,500, you know, they're always asking the mayor, who's a very nice woman,
05:49but got to do the job. You know, we've worked with the mayor for six months and she's been here for
05:54many years. And the numbers are worse than they ever are. Don't let anyone tell you they're not.
05:59And the whole statistical charts that they made, the whole thing is a rigged deal. They got rid of the
06:06guy that because he didn't want to do the numbers the way they wanted to. And they put their own numbers
06:10out. They said it's the best in 20 years. No, it's the worst in 20 years. But we're going to have
06:17we're going to be very open about what we're doing. So if the media wants to ride with
06:21police, if they want to do it, if they feel it's safe, that would be OK.
06:27Yeah, please, go ahead. Sir, with President Zelensky.
06:30Thank you, Mr. President. Mary Margaret with Daily Wire. Two questions on D.C., if that's OK.
06:34How do you feel about Mayor Bowser's level of cooperation and her choosing to advocate for D.C.'s statehood
06:39right now? And while the state, let me do that one. Statehood is ridiculous.
06:45We want to straighten the place out. Statehood's ridiculous. It's unacceptable. It's the Democrats
06:52want it because the Democrats have, you know, about 95 percent in this little area. Even I,
06:58I didn't get it very much. They want that. They want to pick up two senators and it's not going to happen.
07:04It's not going to happen. And that's the least of the reasons why, by the way. But that's one of the
07:08reasons why. What we want to do is make Washington, D.C., the greatest, most beautiful, safest capital
07:15anywhere in the world. And that's going to happen. I mentioned the word bones before. The bones here,
07:20the bones. We have the greatest bones. When you look at that Supreme Court building, I think it's
07:24one of the most beautiful buildings. When you look at some of the buildings here, it's so magnificent.
07:29And everything's good. But it's just dirty and not properly maintained. It's not taken care of.
07:35Potholes in the roads. All of it's going to happen very quickly. We're going to
07:39seek a relatively small amount of money for fix-up. And we're going to put it out to bid.
07:45And we have great contractors here, great road builders. And we're not ripping roads apart so
07:50they're closed for four years as they redo the concrete bases. And you don't need that. We need a
07:56beautiful topping by a very talented asphalt type person, somebody that does the job. We go out,
08:04you know, when we get, when I get contractors, I use great contractors. To me, contractors are,
08:09great contractors are very special, like a great surgeon, like a great teacher, like a great nurse.
08:16A great contractor is very important. We'll only use the best. And we, when you put a coat of asphalt
08:21on that top, two inches of asphalt, three inches of asphalt, it looks brand new. You take all the garbage
08:27off. They, they receded, as we call it, or different names, but they take the bad stuff
08:34off and they put the good stuff down. It takes not a long period of time. A matter of a few days,
08:39you'll have a beautiful, magnificent road. You fix up the curbs. You get rid of the medians in this town
08:47are just horrible. You know, you're writing on, I think to myself, leaders come from foreign countries.
08:52You see, with leaders all the time. They're friendly as they came in from India recently
08:56and from everywhere. They came in from a war that we just ended, Azerbaijan, and you know that,
09:05and Armenia. We just ended the war. The two leaders came in. One of them said, my country looks better.
09:12The roads are better than, you know, we were talking about it. I said, what do you think?
09:15He said, well, the roads are better in Armenia than they are in, in Washington, D.C. It's embarrassing.
09:23And, uh, I was asked at the last press conference, they said to me, how important is it? You're doing
09:30world peace. We're going to Friday, on Friday to Alaska, meeting with President Putin, Russia.
09:36How important it is that the capital is important? I said, very, very important. I told my father,
09:41said to me, when you see a restaurant and you want to go and you want to have dinner and then you go up
09:48to the front door and it's dirty, turn around and go back because the kitchen's dirty. It's the same
09:53thing with the capital of the United States of America. If it's dirty and unsafe, it sets a bad
09:59tone for the rest of the world. So we're not going to do that. We're going to have this capital fixed up,
10:03safe, clean and beautiful in a very short period of time. Go ahead, please in the back. Yeah, please.
10:10Mr. President, how were your calls this morning with European leaders? And was it your call
10:16not to invite President Zelensky to your meeting with Putin?
10:19No, just the opposite. No, no. We had a very good call. He was on the call. President Zelensky was on
10:25the call. I would rate it a 10, you know, very, very friendly. I know the leaders because I was at
10:32NATO, as you know, I took it from two percent to five percent, two percent that wasn't paid,
10:37five percent that is paid, which is trillions of dollars in defense capability.
10:44No, it was always going to be I was going to meet with President Putin. And then after that,
10:48I'm going to call the leaders and President Zelensky. I'm going to call President Zelensky,
10:54and then I'll call probably in that order the leaders. There's a very good chance that we're
10:59going to have a second meeting, which will be more productive than the first,
11:02because the first is I'm going to find out where we are and what we're doing. Again,
11:07this is Biden's war. This isn't my war. He got us into this thing. And it should have never happened.
11:12This war would have never happened if I were president. But it is what it is. And I'm here
11:16to fix it. And I'm here to stop 6,000, 7,000 people last week. 7,213 people last week were killed,
11:24mostly soldiers. But missiles being lobbed into towns don't exactly help either. But mostly soldiers.
11:31And Ukrainian and Russian, they're not American soldiers. But you know, if we can save a lot of
11:36lives, it would be a great thing. I've done, I've done five, I've stopped five wars in the last six
11:42months. And on top of that, we wiped out the nuclear capability of Iran, obliterated it. It's
11:49turned out to be a correct word, by the way, because you know, some of the press say, well,
11:52maybe it wasn't obliteration. It was obliteration. And we're going to meet with, I would say,
12:00the second meeting. If the first one goes okay, we'll have a quick second one. I would like to do
12:06it almost immediately. And we'll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President
12:13Zelensky and myself, if they'd like to have me there. And that would be a meeting where maybe it
12:19could be absolutely work. But the first meeting will not work that out. Certain great things can
12:23be gained in the first. It's going to be a very important meeting. But it's setting the table
12:28for the second meeting. I think the second meeting, if the second meeting takes place.
12:33Now, there may be no second meeting, because if I feel that
12:38it's not appropriate to have it, because I didn't get the answers that we have to have,
12:41then we're not going to have a second meeting. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.
12:47I didn't ask you. Go ahead, please. I just wanted to ask you. Thank you, Mr. President.
12:52What involved were you in the selection process of these honorees?
12:56I would say I was about 98 percent involved. No, they all went through me. They came over,
13:04Rick and Sergio and everybody. They said, I turned down plenty. They were too woke.
13:11I had a couple of wokesters. No, we have great people. This is very different than it used to be.
13:19Very different. These are great people. And not, they're not, I don't have any idea the
13:24Republican because they want people that the Kennedy Center has everything. Look at the Academy Awards.
13:30It gets lousy ratings now. It's all woke. All they do is talk about how much they hate Trump.
13:36But nobody likes that. They don't watch anymore. That used to have 45 million people watching.
13:41And remember The Apprentice, first season. The Apprentice had 42 million people. The Academy Awards
13:47at 41 million people. We were the second show to the Super Bowl. But since then, the Academy Awards have
13:53gone down to, I think they've gone down to numbers that are like a regular show because it went well.
14:02Would I, we're not doing it for that reason. We're doing it because we want the great talent. But
14:06these are great people. So I was very, I was just a very long answer. But I was very involved.
14:15Thank you, Mr. President. The Biden administration was auctioning off border wall materials. But
14:19we're hearing now that those, the auctioneers selling those materials back. Are you finishing
14:24building the wall? Well, I built hundreds of miles of wall. And I was getting very close. I actually
14:31finished the wall. But then I added another 200 miles because when you do the original wall that
14:37I said I was going to build, which I got built, and I got it to the specifications of the Border Patrol
14:42and ICE, the exact. They wanted steel. They wanted concrete inside. They wanted rebar inside that.
14:47They wanted it to have, to have wires. We have, the walls are wired for, you know, all of the internet
14:52stuff and security things. And we built it hundreds of miles. We did great. That's one of the reasons,
14:58even now we're able to have such good numbers at zero, essentially very little people coming in.
15:04But Biden, I ordered for another 200 miles. I was going to do another 200 because it's the way it is.
15:12And we're all set to do it. Then we had the bad election result, the horrible, horrible,
15:17what happened to our country, what they've allowed to happen to our country. And we are taking now
15:23that wall back. They sold the wall. Now this is expensive stuff. Hardened steel, very expensive.
15:329,000 pound concrete and rebar. Rebar is very expensive. The hardest rebound. No, it's very,
15:38very hard to cut. You have different materials. It's very hard to cut because they cut it down if
15:42they can. It's very hard to cut. And Biden sold it for pennies on the dollar, three cents on the dollar,
15:53four cents on the dollar. He sold it. And I said, these guys really don't want it. That was when I
15:59first realized when I saw the wall was being put up because we could have finished the rest of the
16:03wall in about four weeks, anywhere from three to four weeks. It was all set to go. It was laying down,
16:07ready to be put up. The foundations were. And they took over and they said,
16:15we're going to sell the wall. And they sold it, as you know, for pennies on the dollar.
16:19Well, Pam Bondi has been working very hard on suing that company. And I think they reached a
16:25settlement where we're taking the wall back. But they stole the wall from us. That wall is so expensive
16:31to build. And we had it, as you know, hundreds of miles of it. And they came along and they basically
16:36sold it for scrap. And what a shame that is. But that was when I first realized that these people
16:42actually want to have open borders. And no country has, who has, poor countries don't have open borders.
16:49No, we had open borders where people just walked in that didn't matter what they looked like, who they
16:53were. They could have, we had 11,888 murderers, half of whom killed more than one person.
17:01Pearson. I mean, literally killed more than one person. And this is who we took into our country.
17:10So the wall is the least of it. But we're going to buy, we're going to take the wall back. We're
17:14paying a small amount of money, as I understand it, to get it back, to get rid of the litigation.
17:19We'll take it back. We'll put it up. Go ahead in the back, please.
17:30I want to take it back to the Kennedy Center, if I can, just for a second, Mr. President.
17:34Sure.
17:34From what I understand, the Les Mis show exceeded everyone's expectations. Attendance,
17:40revenue, across the board. That's great.
17:42Do you anticipate future shows to basically do the same?
17:46I like that guy. Now that's called a question. Okay. And he's a great reporter,
17:53actually. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah, it did great. Les Mis did great,
17:58broke records and was sold out and beautiful. And we anticipate a lot of that happening. There's a
18:06thirst for it. And especially when the crime is knocked out. You know, when we knock out crime,
18:10some people probably stay away from places like restaurants and other things. It ruins your whole
18:16fabric. It ruins your country. And when somebody thinks they have about a 25% chance of getting
18:24mugged, they say, let's not go to restaurants tonight. We're going to make it so that they have
18:27no chance of getting mugged. And it's going to happen soon. And yeah, we think we're going to have
18:32a lot of very successful evenings here, please.
18:35Thank you, Mr. President. Will Russia face any consequences if Vladimir Putin does not agree to
18:42stop the war after your meeting on Friday? Yes, they will. Yeah.
18:47What will the consequences be? Sanctions, tariffs? There will be. I don't have to say. There will be
18:51very severe consequences. Yes. Yeah, please. Can I ask you a question about the Fed? Right next to you,
18:57please? Yeah. About the Federal Reserve. Oh, the Federal Reserve. My favorite. Too late. He's too late.
19:03You're considering suing Jay Powell. Can you update us on your thinking about that and tell us
19:08where you are in your search for a new chair? Well, he took a building that could have been
19:12painted and fixed. Like, we're going to fix this building for very little money.
19:16He took, and that was in better shape. He took a building and they just, what they did to that
19:22building, they built a basement under the building. It didn't have a basement.
19:26This is simple to understand. The building is right next to a thing called the Potomac River.
19:31The beautiful Potomac River. That means lots of water. And the water is right under the building.
19:38And they decide to build a basement under the building in the Potomac River.
19:44So in order to do that, you need the biggest pumps that God ever created. And they were pumping their
19:50hearts out. But as big as those pumps are, you can't pump it fast enough because it's the Potomac River.
19:56If the pump were bigger than this room, you couldn't pump it. But they tried. And they've been building
20:02a basement. And I said, why did you want to build a basement? I thought it would be a good idea, sir.
20:06A basement is the least valuable floor in a building. I know a lot about real estate. The
20:11least valuable thing is the basement. And you don't build a basement under a building that
20:18is two feet above the river that's right next door. You know, it's right near the river. People
20:25don't realize the river is right out their window. And that — that's the beginning. They — they did
20:31a — just a terrible job. They — instead of — I could take a ceiling like this, they'd rip out the ceiling
20:38because they see a crack. Let's rip out the ceiling. And I would fix the crack. And I would paint the
20:43ceiling. And under the ceiling, they put the most incredible protective material. They go out by
20:49three-quarter-inch, brand-new, gorgeous three-quarter-inch plywood and sheetrock, hardened sheetrock.
20:59And they had it all over the building. So if a little piece of flake came down. But the problem
21:05is when they took the ceiling down and it would hit. They spent millions of dollars on protective
21:10material that you didn't have to spend anything. He could have done that job for 25 million dollars
21:16and they spent 3.1 billion. He said 2.7, but it's really 3.1. They just don't want to include one of
21:23the buildings in the deal. But it's going to be much more than that. And I think he'll be long gone by
21:28the time it finishes because they've got a long way to go. And then I hear they want to hire 3,000
21:34economists. What are they going to do? And he got it all wrong. He's too late. We call him
21:40Jerome Too Late Pell. It will live with him forever. I believe that name will live with him
21:45forever, along with the name Pocahontas and some of the others. He worked closely with Pocahontas,
21:50by the way. She's another beauty. But we have a real problem there. They're way over budget.
21:58And they did a job that shouldn't have been done. It was unnecessary to be done.
22:01Instead of — I could have gotten the greatest wallpaper anywhere in the world from the finest
22:07stores in the world. I could have fixed up a wall a little bit. It would have taken about two hours
22:12and covered it with the most magnificent silk and the most magnificent paper for
22:18thousands of dollars as opposed to tens of millions of dollars. What a shame it is that they did. But they
22:24would take down areas of the building that shouldn't have been taken down. They could have literally been
22:28painted. And they didn't do that. So they've got a long way to go. And I think it's just grossly
22:35incompetent. But not quite as incompetent as his decision not to do interest rates, take down interest
22:44rates. Because just like they shouldn't have taken down a ceiling, they should take down interest rates.
22:49Every point costs us $360 billion a year. Think of that. $360 billion for one point.
22:59And we should be down at one percent because we're the leader of the world. We were always the lowest
23:03interest rate for — until like a certain time ago, decade, couple. But we were always because we were
23:10the United States of America. So even if the country was run badly, we were considered like to be super
23:15prime. And now he's got us in a bad place. So we're paying $360 billion a year for each point.
23:23Now, I believe we should be three or four points lower. So that's over a trillion dollars we pay
23:29every year in interest. And it's really just a paper calculation. You sign a document and you save
23:37almost a trillion dollars because that number equates very much to the bonds that we have to buy.
23:43But despite that, we're powering through it. And we have the greatest economy maybe we've ever had.
23:50But the housing sector, people aren't able to get good mortgages. They're paying too much because of
23:56Jerome Tulate Powell. He's truly incompetent. And we'll be making another — we put a very good man in
24:01temporarily in the one spot because one of the people that was appointed by the Democrats left early.
24:08And I heard left because that person wanted lower interest rates. And I heard her quit,
24:15but I have no idea. I'm sure she won't say that.
24:20I'll be naming a new chairman sometime within the next — I think I'll name it a little bit
24:24earlier, the new chairman. I'm down to three or four names. All good. All great. The problem is you name
24:32them and then they turn out to be not good. That's happened to me a couple of times. You name somebody,
24:37they tell you everything you want to hear, and then they go in and they turn out to be not good.
24:41I mean, he told me everything that I thought was appropriate. He turned out to be stiff. You know,
24:46real stiff. But other than that, I think he's doing a very good job. Yes.
24:50Okay, maybe one or two more. One or two more. Yes, sir, please. Go ahead.
24:55Mr. President Scott Besson. Are you the Treasury Secretary?
25:01You don't want me for Treasury. I don't know. I don't know. You look like
25:04he could do a good job. Go ahead. I keep my family budget okay. Sir,
25:08when you meet with Vladimir Putin Friday in Alaska, do you believe you can convince him
25:15to stop targeting civilians in Ukraine? Well, I'll tell you what, I've had that
25:20conversation with him. I've had a lot of good conversations with him. Then I go home and I
25:25see that a rocket hit a nursing home or a rocket hit an apartment building and people are laying dead
25:29in the streets. So I guess the answer to that is no, because I've had this conversation. I want to end
25:35the war. It's Biden's war, but I want to end it. I'll be very proud to end this war along with the five
25:41other wars I ended. But I guess the answer to that is probably no, because I would have had a good
25:47conversation with Vladimir. I knew him very well. I got along with him great, actually. We had the
25:51Russia, I had to go through the Russia Russia hoax. And it was actually, it's, it was a strain on the
25:57relationship. I actually would told him, I said, you know, they got this phony investigation going on,
26:03Russia, Russia, Russia, totally phony, created by Adam Schiff, Shifty Schiff, and Hillary Clinton,
26:10and the whole group of them. And it made it very dangerous for our country because I was unable
26:15to really deal with Russia the way we should have been. I'm looking at Pam because I hope something's
26:19going to be done about it. These people put our country at great danger. And Adam Schiff,
26:25it was all made up. It was a hoax. The Mueller report came out. They all hated me. They had 18
26:30Trump haters. And they said, I did nothing wrong. They were, they couldn't, they couldn't believe,
26:35they couldn't find anything after years of investigation. It was all a hoax. It was a
26:40hoax created by the Democrats, but in particular Schiff and Crooked Hillary, the whole group. And
26:48now we've learned all the stuff that's come out over the last two months is incredible through
26:53intelligence. And hopefully something's going to happen with it. These are people that put our country
26:58in danger, in real danger. I want to thank you all very much. Thank you very much.
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