Administration of Donald J. Trump, 2026
January 20, 2026
The President. Wow. That's a big crowd. [Laughter] That's a lot of people. I think it's, like, a record.
So these are accomplishments.
[At this point, the President held up a stack of papers.]
We have a lot of accomplishments. And as you know, this is the anniversary—first anniversary—January 20. And it's been an amazing period of time.
We have a book that I'm not going to read to you, but these are the accomplishments of what we've produced all—page after page after page. Individual things. I could stand here and read it for a week and we wouldn't be finished. But we've done more than any other administration has done, by far, in terms of military, in terms of ending wars, in terms of completing wars. Nobody has really seen very much like it.
I think it's appropriate that—because Minnesota is so much in the fray—and I say to my people all the time—and they're so busy doing other things, they don't say it like they should. They're apprehending murderers and drug dealers and a lot of bad people.
And these are just some of the more recent ones that we have, and I can show you some of the people.
[The President held up printouts of mug shots titled, "Minnesota Worst of the Worst."] Vicious. Many of them murderers.
These are all out of Minnesota. Just Minnesota. I say, "Why don't you talk about that more?" Because people don't know. Do you want to live with these people? "International [Intentional; White House correction] murder." These are people that are living—were—they're apprehended and either put in jails in their country, from where they came—or the countries respect us, and so they actually put them there. In the old days, they didn't respect our country.
Biden wouldn't do this, because he let them all in. You know, if you didn't have open border policies of Biden, none of this—all the things that we—all the time that we spend talking about Minnesota and everything else—most of them are coming from out of the country. And it's been caused by a previous administration.
Look at this. One after one.
[The President again held up mug shots titled, "Minnesota Worst of the Worst."]
Boy, these are rough characters. These are all criminal illegal aliens that—in many cases, they're murderers; they're drug lords, drug dealers. They're the mentally insane. They're—some of them who are brutal killers—they're mentally insane. They're killers, but they're insane. These are just in Minnesota.
California—it's worse. In other States, it's worse. No, Minnesota, the crime is incredible. The financial crimes are incredible. And the problem is because of the agitators and insurrectionists—whatever you want—troublemakers, but they're paid agitators and insurrectionists.
Nobody talks about the fact that $19 billion, at a minimum, is missing in Minnesota, given, to a large degree, by Somalians. They've taken it. Somalians. Can you imagine?
And they don't do it. A lot of very low-IQ people—they don't do it. Other people work it out, and they get them money, and they go out and buy Mercedes Benzes. And they come from here. They have no money. They never had money. They never had a life. They never had a government. They never had a country, because there's basically no country.
Somalia is not even a country. They don't have anything that—that resembles a country. And if it is a country, it's considered just about the worst in the world. They come here, and they become rich, and they don't have a job.
I was told that Ilhan Omar is worth $30 million. She never had a job. She's a crooked congressman.
[The President held up and paged through a stack of mug shots titled, "Minnesota Worst of the Worst."]
So here—it's another one. And I have—oh, by the way, we just took out—that's what—these are all what ICE is doing, and it's a dangerous job. These are rough—these are rough people.
Weapons. This one here is very bad.
I'm going through this because I think we have plenty of time. I'm going to place—beautiful place in Switzerland, where we'll be. I'm sure I'm very happily awaited for. [Laughter]
[The President held up and paged through mug shots.]
In Switzerland, they don't know about this. They don't have this problem. They have other problems, but they don't have this problem.
Look. Killed somebody. Look at—and these are rough people. These are not—this was all allowed into our country through open borders. The dumbest policies.
You know, men in women's sports is dumb. But to me, having an open border for the world to come in—drug dealers and prisoners.
Venezuela, as an example, opened their prisons into the United States. That's why—one of the reasons I felt so strongly against Venezuela. Now I'm loving Venezuela. They've been working with us so well. It's been so nice.
And an unbelievably nice woman also did a very incredible thing, as you know, a few days ago. She's—we're talking to her, and maybe we can get her involved in some way. I'd love to be able to do that. María. Maybe we can do that.
But we're dealing with the people in Venezuela—the President and all of the people in Venezuela, and we've been doing great. The oil companies are getting ready to make massive investments there. They have more oil than even Saudi Arabia.
[The President held up mug shots.]
There you go. These are real—these are rough ones—this is all Minnesota, every one of them. This is one State out of many. And these people are—let's see, yes, these are all, so far, people that came from outside of the country. They were allowed in by Sleepy Joe Biden, Crooked Joe Biden—whichever you like. You can call him whatever you like. They're both right. He's sleepy, and he's crooked.
That was the worst President we've ever had, and we've had some bad ones too, I can tell you. All you have to do is look at trade.
[The President continued to hold up and page through mug shots.]
I—you're not getting bored with this, right? I hope you don't, but these are people that you have to see.
Strongarm rape, aggravated assault with a weapon, and many other crimes. Gang member.
Known as one of the toughest people around. These are tough people.
So this is what the people are trying to protect, because all ICE wants to do is get them out of our country, bring them to prisons and jails and mental institutions from where they came. That's all they want to do.
They're patriots, and they have to be abused by guys like Don Lemon, who's a—you know, a loser, lightweight. I saw him—the way he walked in that church. It was terrible.
I have such respect for that pastor. He was so calm. He was so nice. He was just accosted.
What they did in that church was horrible, yesterday.
[The President continued to hold up and page through mug shots.]
Look at this here. Twenty-four convictions. Twenty-four times convicted. They're not charges. These are convictions. So he comes from outside the country. Do you think he's going to be good here? Convicted 24 times. He's going to be good here, right? It doesn't work that way.
There's a man—murder. One of many. One of many.
All they want to do is get them out. They want to take them out of our country, and we're met with paid agitators and insurrectionists, troublemakers. They're paid.
You know, when the woman was shot, I felt terribly about that. And I understand both sides of it. But when she was shot, there was another woman that was screaming, "Shame." "Shame, shame, shame." Right? You saw it. So loud, like a professional opera singer. She was so loud and so professional.
She wasn't a woman that was hurt, like, "Oh, my heart's injured." She was a professional. "Shame, shame." She's screaming, "Shame, shame." I said, "That's not a normal person that's—that's a professional." These are professional agitators and professional people that want to see our country do badly.
But that's not happening, because we have the hottest country anywhere in the world, despite this stuff. Look at this.
[The President continued to hold up mug shots.]
All top-of-the-line criminals. They're not going to be good. They're not going to be well-behaved here. I could do—I could do thousands. We had over 3,000 in the last fairly short while, just in Minnesota. What's the number, Karoline——
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Ten thousand.
The President. Ten thousand.
Press Secretary Leavitt. Ten thousand criminals arrested in Minnesota alone.
The President. Ten thousand criminal—and these are serious criminals. Now, how can a place with 10,000 criminals—how can you have a state? And yet they're fighting us.
Yes, I like that guy. He keeps nodding to me. You agree with me, I guess.
Q. [Inaudible]
The President. I like him. I don't know who he is, but I like him. He keeps nodding. He says, "You're right." [Laughter] He's obviously a little on the right side, maybe.
[The President continued to page through mug shots.]
Look. These are rough ones. So this—we just took this off a stack. We have many stacks like this, like I could go 30 times what I'm showing you now.
Relations with Hizballah. That's nice. Why do we allow them in our country?
I'm just looking at these charges. It's just pretty incredible. Many murderers. Many, many murderers—people that murdered.
So what ICE does—and Border Patrol is incredible too. I mean, they're—Paul Perez and that group is incredible. Mostly Hispanic, by the way. They're, like, 60 percent Hispanic. You know, they talk about Hispanic—they're mostly Hispanic, right? And they're unbelievable people.
And then they say, "Oh, we discriminate against"—I love Hispanic. They are unbelievable, entrepreneurial. They have everything. I did great. I did the highest—nobody ever got numbers like I got, from the standpoint of being a Republican.
But even the—if you look at Texas, I won the entire border along Texas, between Texas and Mexico. Never happened before. Nobody's ever done that before. I did it. As a Republican, I did it. I love the Hispanic.
And they accuse us of all sorts of things. Sixty percent of the people we're talking about—they're the best people we have, and they're Hispanic. The Border Patrol is largely Hispanic. ICE is largely Hispanic. They're unbelievable people. I don't know how they can take the abuse.
[The President continued to hold up mug shots]
They're taking rough—they're taking rough people like this, like all of them.
We have—so we have 10,000, at least. I could have done 10,000 of them. You're lucky I only did, like, a hundred. And this is just—this isn't even the worst of the group. They have murderers. They have some people we can't use their picture for legal reasons, but they're up for murder in their own country, and we would jeopardize their case.
Well, we send them back. We send them back, and we coordinate with other countries—a tremendous amount of work. All allowed in here by an open-border policy of the worst President in the history of our country—a man that didn't win the election, by the way. He got—it was a rigged election. Everybody knows that now.
And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly. We caught them.
We caught them.
So I just want you to know that. It's a terrible thing.
Here's the book on accomplishments, and this is something——[The President removed a binder clip from a stack of papers.]
Ooh, I'm glad my finger wasn't in that sucker. [Laughter] That could have done some damage. But you know what? I wouldn't have shown the pain. [Laughter] I would have gone back. Boy, did you hear that? That was nasty. But I would not have shown the pain. I would have acted like nothing happened as my finger fell off. [Laughter] That was a nasty—I think somebody did that.
I think someone—it was him.
[The President pointed at a reporter.]
That's—it was my man. How are you? You didn't do it? I know you didn't. I know you didn't.
So—but here is the—here's the book.
[The President held up a stack of papers and fanned through them.]
These are all things we have—I'm going to read a few of the samples, but look at this. These are all—each line is something that we did. Nobody did that before. And it's big stuff too.
Look, we have the hottest country in the world.
[The President dropped the stack of papers on the floor.] [Laughter] So I will read you a few.
We ended Biden stagflation. We were in stagflation. That's a disaster. That's far worse than inflation. As you know, he had the biggest inflation in the history of our country—they say 48 years—pick your choice—but they had the biggest inflation in the history of our country. We have it right down to a normal number now. We're going to get it even a little bit lower.
Created superhigh—what we've done with—with growth is incredible. We created superhigh economic growth.
And America is booming. It's booming. There are thousands of businesses right now that are being built. Many of the biggest factories in the world are being built right in our country. They're not going to other countries. They're leaving other countries.
Fourth quarter GDP is on track to pass perhaps much more than 5-percent growth, and that's despite the fact that we had a Democrat shutdown. They shut down our country, and we had 5 percent. Nobody in this room has ever heard about 5 percent. I think it could be 20 percent if we do it right, if we don't—every time we have good numbers, they raise interest rates.
It shouldn't—in the old days, if you had good numbers, they'd lower interest rates, or they wouldn't do anything. Here, they try and kill it. They always try and kill success. Over the last 20, 25 years, that's the way—in the old days, if you had good numbers, the market would go through the roof. Today, if you have good numbers, the market goes down.
But by the way, we've had the best stock market in history, the best 401(k)s in history, and we inherited a mess. The numbers that we inherited are way—were way up, and now we brought them—almost all of them—way down. We brought them way down.
I mean, I'm not getting—maybe I have the—bad public relations people, but we're not getting it across. We inherited high numbers, and we brought them way down.
And look at gasoline. They have places in the country now $1.99 a gallon—$1.99, $2.30,
$2.50. I guess the average now they're saying is $2.31. I mean, he was at $4.50 and $5 for periods of time.
And he went back to the Trump formula, but he didn't do it properly. And he really went back to parts of it, because they were—it would—you would have had $8 gasoline if they didn't. But he didn't do it properly. He had people that didn't know what they were doing.
Core inflation for the last 3 months is 1.6 percent—1.6. Their core inflation was so high that nobody could even calculate it.
Under Biden, real incomes declined $3,000. Think of that: $3,000. That's a year. In 12 months, Trump real incomes went up by $2,000 and $3,000 and even, in some cases, $5,000. It's a tremendous difference.
Stock market has set 52 alltime record highs during the course of the—actually, the 11 months, because this was done on 11 months. Now we're—now we are actually officially 12 months, as of today. Fifty-two alltime record highs. That means 401(k)s did great.
I have people see me all the time—policeman that guard us really well, and got to know him a little bit. And they said: "Sir, you're making me look so good. My 401(k) is through the roof.
My wife thinks I'm the greatest genius and I'm a financial genius, like Warren Buffett." [Laughter] He told me that. He said—I think they have better returns than Warren Buffett right now.
But he said: "All my life, my wife has been criticizing me for not being smart financially.
Now, all of a sudden, she's—she loves me more."
But we added $9 trillion in value to retirement accounts, saving many people. I mean, they were going out of business. Think of it: We added $9 trillion of value to retirement accounts, savings accounts, and 401(k)s. That's during the course of 12 months. And I think it's probably 11 months, because I don't think they have it for the 12. They have it for the 11. Added $9 trillion of value.
Lifted more than 1.2 million Americans off food stamps in 1 year. They would have had another 1.2 million. We would have had—welfare would have gone up, and instead of investing
$18 trillion in our country—now it's probably more than that—but $18 trillion and having thousands of plants being built all over the country, you would have had thousands of plants closing all over the country, and you would have had disinvestment, and you would have had welfare going way up.
You know, if you look at SNAP—take a look at SNAP, what happened with that. It was at
$7 billion, and it came out to over $51 billion. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. The past administration, they had no clue. Or they were really bad, but they basically had no clue.
But they did have a concept. I mean, they're still trying to sell the idea of men playing in women's sports. You saw that in the Supreme Court. I mean, some of those justices were fighting for them too. They were fighting for them. But you saw that just the other day in the Supreme Court: men playing in women's sport. It doesn't work.
Secured a record-breaking $18 trillion in commitments for new investments: Apple, Nvidia, SoftBank, Oracle, TSMC, Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly and Company, Micron, AstraZeneca, General Motors, Hyundai, Ford, Honda, GE Aerospace—many, many others.
I left a Ford plant a week ago in Michigan that they were going to close 2 years ago, and now they just announced that they're going 24 hours around the clock, making cars. Tariffs did it. I don't know what the Supreme Court is going to do. I think it—to me, it reads so plainly.
Couldn't be plainer.
You're allowed to do a license. Tariff is probably less severe than what a license could be. But think of it. You're allowed to do a license, and then they have a clause at the end, something to the effect, "Or what is necessary," or something to that effect. And what is necessary was tariffs. I don't know where there's a case even there.
But we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars, and if we lose that case, it's possible we're going to have to do the best we can in paying it back. I don't know how that's going to be done very easily, without hurting a lot of people.
But we're waiting for that case anxiously, and we have tremendous national security because of tariffs and tremendous income. You know, we have—and by the way, no inflation. So, everyone said, "Oh, tariffs will cause inflation." We have no inflation. We have very little inflation. Biden had inflation, and he didn't do tariffs. We had a huge problem.
We had—we have a 62-percent reduction in our trade deficit. So, if you had a 1 percent reduction—a normal President would have a 1-percent, 2-percent reduction—everybody would hi-—be high-fiving. I had a 62 percent reduction. Next year, we won't have a trade deficit.
We secured most favored nations agreements to slash drug prices by as much—I—to me, I think this might be the biggest thing of all. We get zero talk about it. The New York Times had a story way in the back of the paper, a little story about it. I think it's the biggest thing there is, when you talk about health care.
Drug prices will go down more than ever before for any country, because we was—we were priced at such a level that we were subsidizing the entire world. Big place, the world. We were paying 10, 12, 13 times more than other countries—13 times more, not 13 percent. Thirteen times more. A pill that was selling in London for $10 would sell in New York for $130. That's 13 times. More than that, even.
But we secured most-favored-nations agreements to slash drug prices by as much as 300, 400, 500, and even 600 percent including with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Gilead Sciences, EMD Serono, and many others.
If you look at some of the prices that are coming down, where a price would come down
$1,300, coming down to $87—think of it. So something that was costing $1,300 is now costing
$87. And the fake news doesn't want to write about it.
That's why I do this. I don't like to do this, to be honest with you, but I do it because got to get the word out.
We signed "One Big Beautiful Bill"—I call it the "Great Big Beautiful Bill"—delivering the largest tax cuts in history: no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. We made interest on car loans tax deductible for U.S.-built automobiles only, so if you build the—if you buy an automobile built in the United States. We're not doing it for Germany and Canada and different places. We're doing it only if it's built here. We want them to be built here.
A lot of the Canadian auto plants are closing, and they're moving into the United States.
Same thing with Mexico, same thing with Germany, and same thing with Japan and other countries. They're moving into the United States because of tariffs, because they don't want to pay the tariffs. It's too much. They can't pay the tariffs, so they're coming here. Nothing different than what other smart countries did, but it works better for us.
Under my leadership—if it's not done properly, but it's done properly. We have, again, more—more plants being built than at any time in the history of our country.
Passed the largest spending cuts in American history, and that was true in my first—you know, we had a tremendous first term also. We rebuilt our military. We had one of the best—we had the best economy in the history of our country, but we're blowing it away now. This—when this stuff starts opening up, you're not going to see anything like it, probably, ever again.
We slashed the Federal budget deficit by 27 percent in a single year. Think of that. Twenty-seven. You know, you could do it 2 percent, 1 percent, a half a percent. Twenty-seven percent. And that's with all of the things we have to do, all of the people we have to put on the payroll to get rid of people that are murderers.
Again, when you see people in Minnesota that are murderers, these people are fighting to keep them there. And I say to Kristi and to Tom Homan—they're great people. They're working so hard.
Look at the border. The border is now secure. First time—you know, Biden said you couldn't do it. You need legislation. I had no legislation. I said, "Close the border." Within 1 month, we had almost nobody coming in.
Now, for the last 8 months, nobody came into our country illegally. And I find that hard to believe, because you'd think somebody—because it used to be millions of people just poured into our country, and the people that do that are Democrat, sort of, aligned. So, I mean, they're not doing me any favors.
We had nobody come in. We have a very strong border. We have very few people coming up. They're not going to make the trek because they know they probably won't be coming in. So it's not as hard as you think.
But I didn't have to go back. Remember they said, "We need legislation to close the border"?
They had millions of people coming in a month. We have nobody coming in, and we're getting their murderers out—murderers, people from prisons and jails.
Many countries opened up their prisons and dropped them into the United States. Those are the people we're getting out. And we have a lot of heart. And I said, "You've got to lighten up on this." We have a lot of heart for people. They came in illegally, but they're good people, and they're working now on farms, and they're working in luncheonettes and hotels and all. And we're not looking to—we're looking to get the criminals out right now—the criminals.
And I think it's very important. I mean, I see—every once in a while, you see a story, we take somebody. They should be out because they came in illegally. So, in theory, they should be.
But we're focused on the murderers, the drug dealers, the mentally insane. We have a lot of mentally insane killers. I mean, you can't even talk to them. It'd be nice if you could have little reason, but you can't even reason. These are seriously ill people.
You have a couple of countries where they were loaded up. Their mental institutions and insane asylums were loaded to the gills. They couldn't get—they're empty now. But they're filling up because we're bringing them all back. We know where they came from. And every country accepts them.
You know, under Biden, they wouldn't take—they had so little respect that they'd bring them there, and they wouldn't take them. They'd said, "Get the hell out of here." They would—we'd be bringing a plane in to land in a country, and they'd put five planes on the runway so you couldn't land the plane.
So they'd come back with the people that they were bringing back. They don't do that with me. If they do that with me, they have problems. They don't do it. They accept them back. They're not happy about it, but they accept them back.
Cut a record number of regulations. I promised to eliminate 10 old regulations for every 1 new regulation. Instead, we cut 129 old regulations for each one added. Think of that. I wanted to do 10. Last—my first 4 years, I did—when we put on a new regulation, you had to cut eight. This year, I said, "You have to cut 10."
Instead, we cut 129. So, every time—so far. Can't remain like that, I don't imagine. I hope it can, because we have so much wasted regulation—stupid regulations. Regulations where they go by California, which is a disaster State with a Governor that truly is doing a bad job. He's killing that State. If he ever ran the country, this country would be Venezuela very quickly.
Using tariffs, slashed the U.S. trade deficit by an incredible 77 percent. The trade deficit is down—and that doesn't include the last month, where we had our best month.
We slashed the trade deficit by an incredible 77 percent in 1 year with no inflation—something that everyone said could not be done. So we had essentially no inflation. In fact, the last month, we had very—almost no inflation.
But we slashed the trade deficit by 77 percent. If you slashed it by 1 percent, that was good.
Again, we did that with tariffs and intelligence, and we did that with November 5, a great election.
We secured historic trade deals to reduce barriers on U.S. exports with countries covering 40 percent of all U.S. trade. Think of that.
American exports are up by more than $150 billion this year. People said: "Oh, we're not in exporting. All we do is buy." If you keep buying, you're not going to have a country for very long. So we increased exports by more than $150 billion.
Investment in American factories is up 41 percent. That's a record. Nobody goes 41 percent up. You go 2 percent up, 1 percent up. You go down by 3 percent.
If Kamala got elected, the 41 percent up would be 41 percent down.
We removed over 270,000 bureaucrats from the Federal payroll. That's another thing. So we have—you know, we announce our unemployment numbers. Call it "unemployment" or "employment." And they were very good, but we could make them great.
But we've slashed tremendous numbers of people off the Federal payroll. Because ultimately, if you're on the federal payroll—I mean, we have—we have jobs where they had 10 people for every job.
So we cut—now, if you want to see some good numbers, I'll put—I'll hire a million people. We cut millions of people off the Federal payroll. I don't like doing that, but the good news—I don't feel badly, because they're getting private sector jobs, and they're getting, sometimes, twice as much money, three times as much money. They're getting factory jobs. They're getting much better jobs and much higher pay.
But all I have to do is, say, like, you know, what the Democrats do all the time. They hire a million people, and then they hire another million and another million. They load it up and it says, "Oh, they only have a 3 percent unemployment rate." It's a fake rate.
So, with us, we're proud of the fact that we cut so many, because—again, I don't want to cut people, but when you cut them, and they go out and get a better job, I like to cut them. And sometimes, they have to be forced to do that, because, you know, it's like they want to stay where they are. They don't know.
And then all of a sudden, they end up—we have many cases, Karoline, where people were devastated. They hated Trump. "I got cut from my very boring Federal job," where they had, again, sometimes 10 people to do one job. And they were very upset. And now they ended up with a job where they get paid three times more money. They're ending up buying houses. It's, like, crazy.
So they went from not liking me to liking me a lot, because they're—it's hard to get—we need people. We need people. It's one of the reasons—I mean, I want to—when you have good people on the farm or good people in hotels and everything else, we want to work with them as much as we can.
Under Biden, one out of four jobs added was a government job. Think of that. So 25 percent of the jobs added. That's—when you—when you know that, that's 25 percent jobs aren't real jobs. But again, I could do that. I could add 2 million jobs right now, and would have an unemployment—I could say, "Just hire some more people." I do the opposite. I say, "Get rid of
everybody that's unnecessary," because that's the way you make America great again. When you have, you know, all these jobs where people are sitting around doing nothing and they get a lot of money by the government, it's no good.
But that's what the Democrats do. They show, "Oh, we were at 4-percent unemployment." That's a good number, but they just add jobs, or they wouldn't cut—they would never cut jobs.
Under Trump, 100 percent of all new jobs created have been in the private sector. Think of that: Not 1 percent has gone to Federal.
So, under Biden, one out of four was a government job. Under Trump, 100 percent of the new jobs created—100 percent came from the private sector. That's how you make your country wealthy and strong and good.
We inherited the worst border in history and turned it into the strongest border in history. Illegal crossings have plummeted to the lowest level ever recorded, down 99.999 percent—that means down a hundred percent—99.999. I want to find out who that one person is.
For 8 months in a row, zero illegal—and these are government numbers; these are not my numbers—for 8 months in a row, zero illegal aliens were admitted to our country. Zero. Nobody came in, unless they came in legally.
We have a big process for having people come in legally, by the way. A lot of people are coming in legally. They have to prove they love our country. They have to prove that they're not going to need welfare. A lot of things they have to prove.
For the first time in 50 years, we are now seeing reverse migration, where we're getting—because we're getting all of these illegal people out. People that came in illegally, many cases, they're criminals—in many, many cases. You remember when they used to say that the people that come into our country as immigrants are very nice people? "They're wonderful people. They don't commit crime."
No, they make our criminals look like babies. They make our Hells Angels look like the sweetest people on Earth. The Hells Angels are now considered a nice, high-quality person. I like the Hells Angels. They voted for me. [Laughter] I think—they protected me, actually, believe it or not.
But they make our criminals look like babies. These are some of the most vicious people anywhere in the world. They came from the Congo. The prisons—I know the Congo because I ended the war with the Congo and Rwanda. Tough group. Very tough group. They came from prisons in the Congo—some of the toughest, meanest people you'll ever meet. Thank you very much. They allowed them to come into America. These are tough people.
Before my election, 100 percent of net job creation was going to foreign migrants. Since my inauguration, 100 percent of the net jobs created have gone to American-born citizens. That's a big thing. In other words, we're now taking care of our people. One hundred percent of net jobs created have gone to the American-born people. Before that, we didn't care.
Designated Tren de Aragua, MS–13, and the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and we've hit them hard. You've seen what we've done on the water. We're starting to do that on land. The land is much easier, actually. Water is incredible. We did that on the water so that when you do it on the land, they don't go to the water. Nobody's going into the boat business right now, I can tell you.
Ninety-seven percent down: drugs coming in by water. Think of it: 97 percent. Nobody ever heard of that before, ninety—they heard 2 percent, 1 percent. It went up 2 percent. Ninety-seven—and we're looking for the 3 percent. Who the hell are the 3 percent? They're crazy.
But we've taken out almost a hundred percent of the drugs coming in by water. Now we're going to be, very shortly, starting drugs coming in by land. We know exactly where they're coming from.
Removed tens of thousands of illegal alien gang members, drug dealers, murderers, child predators, human traffickers, fraudsters, savage criminals, and others. We removed them from our country. They're out. They're gone. In some cases, they're so dangerous that we put them in jail, because we don't want to give them to their country. Their country doesn't do anything, and they end up coming back. We have some that we just—they're so bad that we don't want to really release them. We want to put them in a jail where we know they're properly ensconced.
Think of that: "Removed tens of thousands of illegal alien gang members, drug dealers, murderers, child predators, human traffickers, fraudsters, and savage criminals." Why wouldn't you want them removed? The reason is because these are insurrectionists that are doing this work.
And you know, they're going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody, or—you know, they're dealing with rough people. They're going to make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.
I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was—had the tragedy. It's a tragedy. It's a horrible thing. Everybody would say—ICE would say the same thing.
But when I learned her parents and her father, in particular, is like—was a—I hope he still is, but I don't know—was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump. Loved Trump. And, you know, it's terrible. I was told that by a lot of people. They said: "Oh, he loves you. He was a"—I hope he still feels that way. I don't know, it's hard. Hard situation. But her father was a tremendous—and parents—were tremendous Trump fans. That's so sad. It just happens. It's terrible.
Halted all refugee admissions to the United States, including from Somalia—which is a terrible, terrible place—and other dangerous places.
And we also stopped the pirates, because they get the same treatment as the drug boats. So, when Somalia—the Somalians, you know what they're good at? That's about the only thing they're good at, is they're good at pirating ships at sea. Big ships.
So you have a huge oil tanker with millions of gallons, millions of barrels of oil, and if it gets hit by a big weapon, the whole thing blows up. And they don't want to fight, because if they do—they're told by their insurance companies, "Do not hand over the ship." And they're not allowed to have any guns on the ship. They're—literally, you have these massive ships being taken over by a Somalian small boat with a big weapon, because if they hit the side of the ship, the ship can blow up to—I mean, you talk about a blowup. Bad—we've seen—we've seen some bad things happen.
And the insurance companies—some of these ships cost more than a billion dollars to build, and the insurance companies say, "Look, we'd rather give them money than take a chance on a billion-dollar insurance policy." But they don't have to worry about it, because we hit them the same way we hit the people with the drugs in their boat. They don't know what the hell happened.
But all of a sudden there are no pirates at sea. Do you notice? We haven't had a boat taken in a little while. Came out of Somalia, a really corrupt place. It's not a country. They don't have government. They don't have anything.
I always hate to see this Ilhan Omar. She comes from Somalia, a backward country—probably the worst country. Maybe—they say it's the worst country in the world, if it's a country. I don't even think it's a country. There's no organization or—they don't have police. They don't
have military. They don't have anything. They just have people running around, killing each other, and trying to pirate ships.
But she'll come here—comes, and then she wants to tell us how to run our country. "The Constitution says that I am entitled to this." I can't stand her.
Terminated all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens and kicked 275,000 illegals off of Social Security. They were illegally getting Social Security—275,000 people.
I'm telling you, it's not that this is pleasurable, but if I weren't elected President, this country was destroyed—was going to be destroyed quickly—very quickly. I think within a year, if you had Kamala or a Joe type. I mean, Joe was a disaster, but if you had Kamala—he was the replacement.
I was up by, like, 25 points on Joe, and they said, "Hey, let's get somebody else." This never happened—I was a—I had so many firsts. You're leading somebody by a lot, and they say: "Oh, let's take him out. Let's put someone"—that's like I said to Dana White the other night. I said: "You know, Dana, it's like you have a fighter, two fighters. One guy is winning by a lot, and they say, 'Oh, let's take this guy out. Let's put a new fighter in the ring with him.'"
That's what happened to me. I was doing great with Biden. The whole campaign was against Biden. All the money was spent against Biden. And all of a sudden, I got Kamala. Everyone is saying, "Who the hell is she?"
But that didn't work out too well for them. But never happened before. We are about lots of firsts.
Designated English as the official language of the United States of America. We did that very powerfully.
And while we're at it, we also took the Gulf of Mexico and now it's the Gulf of America.
Because we have 92 percent of the shoreline. It always bothered me. I'd say, "You know, we have most of the shoreline." Mexico has a small percentage; talks about 8 percent. We have 92 percent. And I said: "Why is it the Gulf of Mexico? It should be the Gulf of America."
I was going to call it the "Gulf of Trump," but I thought that I would be killed if I did that. [Laughter] I wanted to do it. I wanted to. My people worked so hard. "Sir, I don't think it will look too good." "I'm telling you, it's a good thing. And it'll be hotter than ever," I said.
No, but I decided not to do that. I'm joking, you know, when I say that. I was not going to call it the Gulf of Trump, because tomorrow it'll be, "Trump wanted to call it the Gulf of Trump, but he was rebuffed by his people." My people don't rebuff me too much, right? [Laughter]
Press Secretary Leavitt. It's true. They would write that.
The President. The "Gulf of Trump." That does have a good ring though. Maybe we could do that. It's not too late.
No, we have the Gulf of America now. It's great. It's—our country is proud for—the attack on Venezuela, the attack on the Iran nuclear capability. Wiped it out. I mean, be—first administration, Soleimani, the father of the roadside bomb; al-Baghdadi, the father of ISIS, who was rebuilding ISIS—we wiped them out. Done a great job.
Signed an order that will end birthright citizenship for children of illegal migrants. You know, that case is in court right now. That case was meant for the children of slaves. All you have to do is look at the years. Look at the—look at the years where the cases were filed and where the decisions were made. They were right at the end of the Civil War.
They're trying to say that—you know, they're—and China is making a big business out of that. They come to the country, they have a child, they have an American citizen, they get all the benefits. It had nothing to do with that. That was for the children of slaves. And I hope the Supreme Court so rules.
Designated fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. It is. We lost, I believe, 300,000 people last year—this year. Three hundred thousand people. That's like filling up one of those big football stadiums five times. It's not even believable. I mean, you could be in a war, and you wouldn't lose that many people. So we designated fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction.
Conducted numerous successful military strikes against narcoterrorists operating in our hemisphere, including the water strikes—drugs brought in by ocean.
So I told you that we're down by, I mean, close to a hundred percent. It's hard to get somebody to pilot those boats. Very hard. They have to be people that don't watch television, don't read the news. And we just blew up their facility. They had a docking facility where the drugs were stored.
And now we have a great relationship with Venezuela. We're getting along fantastically with the leadership in Venezuela, so we wouldn't have to do that. This was done before—before the attack.
But we captured and brought to justice the outlaw dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who, through drugs, killed millions of people in our country. Tremendous drug dealer. Also sent millions of people into our country, including Tren de Aragua, the worst gang. They say it's the worst gang in the world.
They took over parts of Colorado. They'd just take the apartment building. They just took it away. Just took it away, like, "We're here." They cut the hand off one man because he called the police. Do—"who called the police?" "I did. You took my apartment from me." Boom, no hand. This is what they sent us.
Restoring law and order—new category. DC and Memphis—Federal Task Forces deployed massive numbers of Federal law enforcement officers and National Guard to restore safety. Crime down in DC is almost down to nothing. DC was a very, very dangerous place, and I think you probably know better than I do.
I have—a lot of people in the media thanked me for that, but some of them found it hard to thank me. But you know, DC is now—look how beautiful. DC is now—you can walk right from here to a restaurant, right through the center of town. You can be with your child, with your loved one, with your lover. Your lover is not going to be killed anymore, so he can act like a real lover. [Laughter] But you can be—you can walk right through the middle of the town.
And DC is beautiful again too. You know, you notice we took all the fences down? Almost all the rest are coming down. We took—got the graffiti all off.
National Guard has been amazing. You know, we didn't tell them to do that. That's not their job description, but they were picking up garbage and everything. They were great.
And I don't know, to me, they're—to me, a town, it looks better when you have military people. These are big, strong guys. The bad guys look at them, and they say, "We're not going to mess around."
But what they don't know is that we took over 2,000 people out—permanently out of DC These were career criminals.
But I feel much better seeing those people there. I went in a couple of times and had dinner in DC. I walked right down the middle of the street. I felt very safe. A year ago, I couldn't have
done that. I would have been crazy to have done that. Secret Service wouldn't let me do it. They weren't thrilled anyway, I will tell you. [Laughter] It wasn't like they were thrilled, but—but we did it, and it was great.
But DC is a great thing, and we have virtually no crime in DC anymore. And before—before we did this move, it was—and we could do the same thing with Chicago. You know, we brought Chicago down 25 percent, even though we just had a minimal crew there.
We brought Wisconsin down. We brought Minnesota down—way down, even though everything is a fight—you know?—because they want to keep those people that are lying on the floor. They want to keep those people in Minnesota, but they really don't. I don't think the real people of Minnesota—it's a very corrupt place, and the elections are totally corrupt.
I feel I won it all three times. Nobody has won that State since Richard Nixon. It's a rigged state, and the Somalians vote as one group, even if they're not citizens. And they vote as one group. And you know, you get 600,000 votes against you. They all ought to get the hell out of here. They're bad for our country.
Nationwide, achieved the largest reduction in violent crime on record. So this just came out: "Nationwide, over the last 11 months, achieved the largest reduction in violent crime on record, including the largest 1-year drop in murders ever recorded." Almost 2,000 lives were saved.
That's despite the fact that we took in criminals under the leadership of the Democrats and Joe Biden.
More—motor vehicle theft is down by 100,000 vehicles nationwide. That's another.
Nationwide, the motor vehicle theft is out—was out of control, and now it's very much in control. It was down by more than 100,000 vehicles to a low—a record low.
Began the process of eliminating cashless bail policies across the nation. You've got to get rid of your sanctuary cities. And I hope our people know that we're not going to pay sanctuary cities. We're not going to pay them anymore. They are a sanctuary for criminals. They hold criminals.
We're not going to pay sanctuary—they can sue us, and maybe they'll win, but we're not giving money to sanctuary cities anymore, as of the beginning of the month.
We began the process of eliminating the cashless bail. Well, cashless bail is where it all started. It's a disaster. And then other places. I don't know if it started in New York. I remember it starting in New York.
So, if somebody comes in, murders somebody, and they let them out, no bail, no nothing. Basically, cashless bail means you just get the hell out. And they go outside. We have one case where a guy murders somebody, gets released, and goes out and murders somebody. Two people in 1 day.
No, we got to get rid of cashless bail. They've got to pay. You've got to have bail. There's a reason for bail, long tested.
Signed an Executive order to bring back mental institutions and insane asylums. We're going to have to bring them back. Hate to build those suckers, but you've got to get the people off the streets.
You know, we used to have—when I was growing up, we had, in my area in Queens—I grew up in Queens. We had a place called Creedmoor. Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big—I said, "Mom, why are those bars on the building?"
I used to play Little League Baseball there, at a place called Cunningham Park. I was quite the baseball player. You wouldn't believe it. But I said to my mother, "Mom"—she would be
there. Always there for me. She said, "Son, you could be a professional baseball player." I said, "Thanks, Mom."
I said, "Why are those bars on the windows?" Big building. Big, powerful building. It loomed over the park, actually. It was pretty—she said, "Well, people that are very sick are in that building." I said, "Boy." I used to always look at that building, and I'd see this big building—big, tall building. It loomed over the park. It was sort of—now that I think, it was a pretty unfriendly sight.
But I'll never forget. I don't know if it's still there, because they got rid of most of them. You know, they—the Democrats in New York, they took them down, and the people live on the streets now. That's why you have a lot of the people in California and other places, they live on the streets. They took the mental institutions down. They're expensive.
But I'd say: "Why does that building have those bars? Boy." It didn't—it wasn't normal. You know, you're used to looking at, like, a window. But this, when you look at it, all the steel—vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called a mental institution. That was an insane asylum.
Designated antifa as a domestic terrorist organization and many others. It is. America is respected again on the world stage. That's another topic.
Obliterated Iran's nuclear enrichment capability, and Operation Midnight Hammer was one of the most successful anyone's ever seen.
CNN, fake news—I don't know where they are. CNN. Anybody from CNN here? Fake news. Nobody wants to raise their hand anymore. They used to—"I'm here." [Laughter] Now, if you're with CNN, you don't raise your hand.
But they said, "Well, maybe it wasn't that successful," which I really went an-—I was angry because these pilots took their life in their hands. Two o'clock in the morning with no moon, dead dark, guns shooting at them. They went in with those beautiful B–2s, and every single bomb went down an air shaft and obliterated it.
And CNN came out and said, "Well, maybe it wasn't." By their—by a scam writer—a scam writer who wrote, you know, fake stories—a lot of fake stories on other topics, right? Because when we did it, we said, "That's a terrible thing."
You know, the pilots came back, and they said, "We hit everything." They did a great job.
Then, on top of that, we launched from a submarine about 30 Tomahawks, on top of everything else. The place was obliterated.
CNN said, "Well, maybe it wasn't that bad." It was—it turned out it was worse than—it was—you know who could tell you that? The Iranians would tell you that. [Laughter] Because if they do anything, they're going to have to start a brandnew place.
But they did an amazing job. That was a—it was like what we did with Venezuela. I mean, nobody's ever seen a military operation like that.
Ended eight unendable wars in 10 months. These were unendable wars. Cambodia and Thailand fighting for years. Kosovo and Serbia. The Congo and Rwanda. Pakistan and India. They were really going at it. Eight planes shot down. They were going to go nuclear, in my opinion.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan was here, and he said, "President Trump saved 10 million people and maybe much more than that." They're both nuclear countries.
Israel and Iran.
Egypt and Ethiopia were going to fight over a dam, and I got them to stop. I still got to work it out, because they put a dam up in Ethiopia that stops the flow from a little river called the Nile. I always think of the Nile being in Egypt. You know? The beautiful Nile with the pyramids, but they put a dam up. You know who paid for the dam? The United States of America—it's the biggest dam, I think, in the world. They put a dam up.
I said: "How did you let that happen? Why would"—we have done that. We financed it. This country would—I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it was a Republican President, but I don't think it was. I think it was a Democrat. But what a terrible thing.
So Egypt, basically, is—you know, they don't have enough water in the Nile, and they use that for a lot of things, including entertainment and travel and tourism and everything. I mean, I don't know, they've got a big dam. I've got to work that one out now too.
Armenia and Azerbaijan. President Putin told me, "I cannot believe you settled that war. I've been trying to settle that war for 10 years." Armenia and Azerbaijan. They were fighting it for many, many years, and I ended up getting the heads of the both countries in my office—the beautiful Oval Office, much more beautiful now than it ever was. And one sat on one side, and one sat on the other. Said, "You know, I've been the head of Azerbaijan for 22 years, and for 22 years I've been killing his people." And the other gentleman—and both very good guys—said, "I've been here for seven years, and for seven years I've been killing his people."
And they started over there, and within an hour, they were next to each other. And by the time we ended, they were hugging each other. And it's been a great peace, you know?
I should have gotten the Nobel Prize for each war, but I don't say that. I saved millions and millions of people.
And don't let anyone tell you that Norway doesn't control the shots, okay? It's in Norway. Norway controls the shots. They'll say, "We have nothing to do with it." It's a joke. They've lost such prestige.
Got all—that's why I have such respect for María doing what she did. She said: "I don't deserve the Nobel Prize. He does." When she got it, they named—they said: "Wow, that's amazing. I thought President Trump would get it. President Trump deserves it. He ended up eight wars." How nice, right? She's a good woman.
Got all 20 living hostages returned to their families and the remains. They all came out. We got the 20 living hostages. We got the 28 hostages. They have one left that we think we know where it is. Amazing. Looked like we weren't going to get anywhere near that. Now they've gotten almost—and more importantly, we got many more—hundreds. We got them all. If we didn't do it, you wouldn't have had—most of those people would have been dead. I don't know if that's covered properly, but, you know, the 20 is great. They were the last ones. I always said the last 20 are going to be hard, but we got them. We got the last 20, and we got close to 28 of the bodies of the dead.
And to those parents, that was just as important as getting their son back alive. They were almost even more intent on getting—they knew their son was dead. They wanted to get the body. I got him back.
We just created the Board of Peace, which I think is going to be amazing. I wish the United Nations could do more. I wish we didn't need a Board of Peace. But the United Nations—and you know, with all the wars I settled, the United Nations never helped me on one war.
I mean, I guess I'm not blaming them. I didn't call them to help. But I got, you know, the Presidents and Prime Minister together. We knocked heads. We got along. And they liked me, I liked them. Every single one of them nominated me for a Nobel Prize. Every one of the wars, almost among many other people, nominated me for a Nobel Prize.
But Putin told me, "I cannot believe you got this war settled. I've worked on it for 10 years." Because it's his territory.
Rescued 83 American hostages and citizens detained from abroad without paying a lot of money. Paid no money.
Apprehended terrorists responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing that claimed the lives of 13
U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan, the lowest point in the history of our country. That was a Biden disaster.
I was getting out, but I was getting out with dignity and strength. We were the boss. Oh, we were the boss. They wouldn't do a thing against us. And this very stupid person got in, and what a shame. They should have left from Bagram, which is the big military base, which has hundreds of acres around it. Should have left from Bagram.
Terminated visas of Hamas sympathizers and deported pro-jihad foreign nationals.
Got NATO members to agree to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP from 2 percent.
And they pay the 5 percent, and they didn't pay the 2 percent.
And by the way, I did more for NATO than any other person, alive or dead. Nobody has done for NATO—and I think, for the most part, they'll tell you that. I think you could ask the Secretary General about that, but he said it a lot: I've done more for NATO than anybody. And I see all this stuff, but NATO has to treat us fairly too.
The big fear I have with NATO is we spend tremendous amounts of money with NATO, and I know we'll come to their rescue, but I just really do question whether or not they'll come to ours. You know, just—I'm just asking. Just saying, right? Do you remember during the debate? Just saying.
Signed $1 trillion investment in U.S. military, and next year, we hopefully will go to a $1.5 trillion. We're building battleships that are 100 times more powerful than the battleships of World War II, which are the big, beautiful—those big, beautiful things with the guns.
I said, "What about bringing them out of dry dock?" They said, "Sir, what we're building will blow them away." It's—think of it: These ships are 100 times more powerful than the battleships that you see on "Victory at Sea." Do you ever see "Victory at Sea"? What a great thing that is to watch.
Renamed the Department of Defense into the Department of War—which everyone loves, by the way.
Signed landmark critical minerals deals with Australia, Malaysia, Thailand, Ukraine, Japan, and many others. We're going to have so much rare earth. It's actually not that rare. Getting it processed is rare, but there's a lot of rare earth. There's a lot of earth around, I can tell you.
Withdrew from the corrupt World Health Organization, where we were paying hundreds of millions of dollars a year. So we were paying $500 million a year, and China was paying $37 million a year. I said, "Why aren't we paying the same as China?" They said, "Well, nobody asked." I said: "China has got 1.4 billion people. We have 350 million, probably, with all the illegals." You know, China probably knows more accurately. But we have much smaller, in terms of the number of people—we have a much more powerful military, but we have much smaller—I rebuilt the military during my first term, by the way.
And while they gave away a lot to Afghanistan, the Taliban—which was just horrible, seeing them—every year, seeing them do that military down some dirty street is a disgrace.
But while they gave—while Biden gave a lot of it away, it's a tiny fraction compared to what we did. I rebuilt the military, and now we're continuing to—to build it, and bigger and better. We need it. Peace through strength.
But we withdrew from the corrupt World Health Organization. So I remember we were paying $500 million. They were paying $37- or $39 million. And I said, "How come?" So I withdrew, and they called, "We'll give you the same deal that they had." I said, "Well, it should be less than that." Because if they're at 37, and you have three times, four times the number of people—even maybe five times, I don't know—so, it should be less. But I didn't want to chisel around.
And I thought about it. So I could have taken $500 million to 37, and everybody knew it. I chose not to do it because it was actually very popular when I got out, because they were terrible. And so, I chose not to take that deal.
First thing Biden did is go back into it. You know what he paid? More than $500 million. So I actually called him. I said: "You know, you can buy it for less. You can make a deal at
37. There's no reason to pay 500." They didn't care. They paid more than 500. Did you know
that? They paid more than $500 million. I made a deal at 37. I could have had 37. They were public about it. "We'll give you the same deal that China has for 37." And they paid $500 million—they paid $500 million. That's the way you ruin a country.
And it's the same attitude that, you know, you have on everything else with these people.
They were terrible.
The anti-American U.N. Human Rights Council, we ended. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, we ended. And the fake Paris climate accord, which was a rip-off of America, where we had to pay a trillion dollars and they were paying nothing. China didn't kick in until 2035. We kicked in immediately. We were supposed to pay a trillion dollars. Russia went to a standard of 1991, which was a dirtier standard, but we had to pay top dollar. So I terminated that. Another rig.
We ended the woke lunacy and restored common sense. Abolished all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion—DEI—policies throughout the Federal Government and the private sector. They're gone, everybody. They're gone. Terrible.
Terminated the "green new scam" and ended the insane electric vehicle mandate. I love electric vehicles. That caused me a little problem with a man named Elon, but he understands, and he's a good guy. We get along. But I said, "Elon, we can't have all electric cars. Just can't do it." I like the electric cars. I like his car, but—in particular, I like his car, but we can't do that because some people don't want an electric car by 2030.
And to build the power stations all over the country would have cost $4 trillion. Four trillion. That's more than any country has. If you got China, the United States, and everyone, you couldn't do it. And it would have taken years. And yet they were supposed to be switching over. Electric vehicle mandate.
Some people don't like electric cars. Some people want hybrids. Some people want regular gasoline-powered cars. We have more gasoline than anybody. And now, with Venezuela, we have—you know, we have 62 percent of the market, when you include Venezuela.
So I ended the "green new scam," and I ended the insane electric vehicle mandate. Now you can buy a gasoline-powered car, a hybrid, and you can buy a electric vehicle. I mean, if you
think—if you want electric, you can buy it. Make a good deal on them right now, because they made a lot of them.
Permanently stopped Joe Biden's ridiculous CAFE standards. That's having to do with the environment. So ridiculous.
Canceled the EPA's absurd—totally absurd tailpipe emission standard, which made you spend hundreds of thousands—it made—for hundreds of thousands of cars, the numbers—the cost numbers were incredible that the consumer has to pay.
Imposed 25-percent tariff on all foreign automobiles and 100-percent tariff on Chinese cars, which don't come into the country because of tariffs. Only because of tariffs. If we didn't have tariffs, you wouldn't have any car dealer. We have now more car factories being built in the United States than ever before because of tariffs. If they take those tariffs away, China will eat our lunch. They'll take all of our car business.
Now, there's another way of doing it, but it's more cumbersome, et cetera, et cetera. I don't want to scare you, but it's more—much more cumbersome, not as good. Not as good for national security as this. We have a perfect system right now. We're making a fortune. We've never been stronger.
And I hope the Supreme Court does the right thing for our country, because if they don't—it's such a problem—it's just so—it would be so sad. We're doing so well because of tariffs.
And the people that are heading up the lawsuit—like this guy named Leonard Leo, who's a bad guy—and people that are very China-oriented and foreign-car-oriented and foreign-business-oriented—but, in particular, China—they're suing to get rid of tariffs because they don't want tariffs. Like Koch—Koch has businesses outside of the United States. If you have them outside, you don't want tariffs. But because of tariffs, they treat us well. Without tariffs, they would treat us very badly, as you saw for many years. They respect us more now than they ever have respected us, by a lot.
And revoked the California emissions waiver to stop San Francisco Communists from regulating the automobile industry and destroying automobiles and the industry in the nation. I was with Bill Ford of Ford Motors. I was with all the people at General Motors the other day, and they are making more money and building more cars than they've ever—they are doing so good, all because of tariffs and what I've done. And they're building their plants all in the United States.
We opened ANWR for drilling. That's a big deal.
Launched a massive Alaskan pipeline project to export natural gas to Asia.
We made a deal with South Korea and with Japan that gives us money the likes of which nobody has ever seen before.
Signed Executive orders to end Biden's war on coal and put—I say clean, beautiful coal; I never say the word "coal"; it has to be preceded by the words "clean, beautiful coal"—and put miners back to work. The miners love Trump. I think I got a hundred percent of their vote.
We banned transgenders from the military. We don't want transgender in the military.
Ordered reinstatement of patriots expelled from our military with full backpay. So we had some people that were terminated, and they're coming back into our military.
Fired the woke Boards of Visitors at our military Service Academies. The Boards of Visitors were run by radical-left—maybe Communists, maybe not, but they were still heavily radical left, and they were bad for us.
Signed an Executive order to remove anti-American propaganda from Federal museums and national parks.
Required the Federal employees to return to work in-person or be fired. We don't want them sitting in their home, on their bed working. We want them in an office that we're paying for in Washington, DC, or wherever it may be. And we've largely taken care of that mess. That was crazy. I guarantee you they're out on the ballfields. I guarantee you they're out playing golf. And you can't run a country or a company that way. I think it's happening even so with countries and companies. But we had so many of our Federal workers that wouldn't come into work.
Signed an order banning all government censorship and restoring free speech.
Made it the official policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders. This was not a tough one. Two genders. Can anybody guess what they are? Male and female. I think the Democrats know that too, but they refuse to admit it.
Banned the use of puberty blockers, hormone injections, and other chemical and surgical mutilation of children. Can you imagine saying this 15 years ago—that we banned the use of puberty blockers, hormone injections, and other chemical and surgical mutilation of our children? You know, when I say it, I say: "Is—do I have to say that?" I actually asked my people today. "Yes, sir, because people—that's where the country went."
Banned men from playing in women's sports. Big Supreme Court case. And, I mean, I—I can't believe it: Some of the Justices were fighting hard for men to be able to play in women's sports—a couple of them. I can't imagine it, but—I think anybody that rules that way should lose a lot of credibility.
But we banned men from playing in women's sports. All you have to do is look at the records. Look at weightlifting records. Look at swimming records. Look at track and field. It's not fair. It's very demeaning to women.
Banned transgender ideology and critical race theory from our schools.
Secured unprecedented settlements with Brown University, Columbia University, and many other colleges, including the University of Pennsylvania—where I went, the great ole Wharton School of Finance—to restore fairness and merit.
We're working with Harvard right now. They've been very anti-Semitic. Terrible, what they've done. And we'll see what happens. I hear we have a deal, but who the hell knows with them. They have a lawyer that wants to show how hot he is.
Ended taxpayer-funded student loan forgiveness for radical—left and anti-American activists. Can you believe it?
Began the process of abolishing the Federal Department of Education and returning education back to the states. And Linda McMahon is doing a fantastic job.
Ended Joe Biden's weaponization of our Government and removed his handpicked radical-left Marxist prosecutors from the Department of Justice, like deranged Jack "Sick" Smith. He's a sick son of a bitch.
They gave me the worst of the worst, and here I am. How did that happen? How did that happen? He's a sick guy, and Letitia James is sick, and Alvin Bragg is sick. They're sick people—and others.
Fanny—Fani—you can't call her "Fanny." She doesn't like it. She wants to be called Fani.
Fani Willis.
I won. Can you imagine some—putting somebody through that? And then if I suggest that somebody may be guilty of a terrible crime: "Oh, he's weaponizing government. Trump is weaponizing government. It's terrible." Can you imagine? They say to me about weaponizing—I don't weaponize anything.
But what they did to me, nobody ever went through what I went through. And here I am in a place called the White House. It's a beautiful place. Who would have thought, right?
Signed legislation to cut all taxpayer funding to woke and biased NPR and PBS. And they're sort of gone now, I guess. I heard they're closed up. They were terrible. They were so unfair.
They were so terrible.
Officially reinstated Columbus Day. I like the name "Columbus Day." The Italian people are very happy about it. Remember, when you go to the voting booths, I reinstated Columbus Day.
That was an easy one. Christopher Columbus.
Cut Social Security wait times by 50 percent, serve 65 percent more Social Security recipients by phone, and are on track to doubling the service and performance compared to the Biden administration. We're two and a half to three times better and faster.
Slashed VA claims backlog to the lowest number ever recorded.
Created Trump Accounts, starting with $1,000 for every newborn baby. This is something that's become so popular. And I give Mr. and Mrs. Michael Dell—Dell computer—who put in six billion two hundred and fifty million dollars. Started with nothing, and he actually invested all that money to give to kids so that when they grow up, they have an account that might be worth a lot of money. It will be riding with the markets. And, you know, they can—at 20 years old, 21 years old, they could have $100,000. They could have a lot of money. That's going to be amazing. But I give a lot of credit to Mr. and Mrs. Michael Dell.
Signed a AI Executive order to ensure the United States dominates the future of artificial intelligence. So we're leading China. We're leading the whole world. We're producing more electricity than we ever have, because I'm allowing every one of those plants to build their own electric facility. We're giving them very, very fast approvals, unlike Los Angeles with the fire.
So the Federal Government—I want to give a lot of credit to Lee Zeldin. The hardest approval for the 20,000 houses or more that burned down in Los Angeles—because they didn't have the water. They didn't allow the water to come down from the Pacific Northwest. They routed the water into the Pacific Ocean, so we had no water there. Not—no, he had. I would say, "Open up the water. Open it up" to the Governor, to the mayor. They didn't want to do it.
They wanted to protect a tiny, little fish that's—you know, I said, "How can you have a fish when you don't have any water?" It was just an excuse, I guess.
But it's amazing. We took 20,000 houses, and Lee Zeldin—the most—the toughest permit is from the Federal Government. Within 2 weeks, every single permit was given to the people to build their houses.
Then you have the incompetent mayor of Los Angeles. She's—[inaudible]—who decided to go to Africa during the fire. So you have this incompetent mayor. And I had it out with her the night when I got—right after the fire, I went there.
She said, "We're working on it so that we can have everybody starting to build within 2 or 3 years." Remember that? I said, "You mean 2 or 3 days." "No, I mean 2 or 3 years." And the place went crazy.
Well, they still haven't gotten their permits. But every Federal permit, every single one has been given a year ago. And Lee Zeldin has done a great job, and he's done a great job in the
approval of all these big plants and factories and all of the electricity that they're creating for themselves.
I said to Zuckerberg, I said to all of them—I said to Jeff Bezos, I said to everybody—Mark Zuckerberg couldn't believe it. He said, "You know, where are we going to get all the electricity?" Because you need double the electricity that the current—the country currently makes just to fire up those big plants.
I said: "Well, nobody can do that. So what we're going to do is let you make your own electricity." Nobody believed it. And I said, "We're going to get you fast permits." So we get them within 2 weeks, and they're coming up with some of the most incredible electric plants you've ever seen.
So each one of those massive buildings, AI or otherwise, is building their own electricity, they're building their own plant, and it's incredible. Many of them are under construction already. They going to have—we're leading AI, and we're leading China by a lot.
Established a MAHA Presidential Commission. Banned many artificial food dyes, as you know. Issued new vaccine recommendations and created a new real food pyramid. And Bobby and Dr. Oz have been incredible.
Provided $12 billion in aid for American farmers. Just gave them $12 billion in aid because they got screwed by other nations.
And the number of drug dealers have fallen every single month since I took office. Drug dealers are way down in the United States.
And that's a small version of what's sitting right there. That's just a small version.
We took a country that was dead, and it's the hottest country in the world right now. And that's after one year.
So let's go.
[Several reporters began asking questions at once.] That's a lot of people.
Go ahead, please. Yes, go ahead.
Board of Peace/United Nations
Q. Thank you so much, Mr. President. I have two questions for you. One, do you want your Board of Peace to replace the U.N.?
The President. Well, it might. I mean, the U.N. just hasn't been very helpful. I'm a big fan of the U.N. potential, but it has never lived up to its potential. The U.N. should have settled every one of the wars that I settled.
I never went to them. I never even thought to go to them. They should be able to settle those wars. They don't. I believe you've got to let the U.N. continue because the potential is so great.
Brazil/U.S. Trade Policy
Q. And another one, Mr. President. You invited Lula from Brazil to be part of the Board of Peace.
The President. I did.
Q. What role do you——
The President. I did.
Q. ——expect him to play, especially——
The President. A big role. I like him.
Q. ——related to Venezuela?
The President. Yes. I like him.
Q. And another one, because the U—the EU——
The President. Are you from Brazil?
Q. Yes. The EU and Mercosur just signed a trade agreement this weekend, which is going to be the biggest trade zone—free zone in the world.
The President. Right.
Q. At the moment, you are talk a lot about tariffs. What is your reaction to that? So, two questions: Lula and then——
The President. Well, I—look, I just think this. I think we have trade like we've never had before. We're doing better in trade than we ever have before. We're not being ripped off by every country in the world like we were before. We're doing numbers that nobody's ever thought possible. We're the richest we ever were. It's because of tariffs and the proper use of tariffs, and we're also the most secure.
As an example, Iceland—without tariffs, they wouldn't even be talking to us about it. So we'll see what happens. I think it's going to work out quite well.
Yes. Right behind.
President Emmanuel Macron of France/Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. How would you characterize your relationship with Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer right now? And have you spoken to them since your Truth Social post last night?
The President. No, I haven't, but I think I get along very well with them. I mean, they always treat me well. They get a little bit rough when they're—you know, when I'm not around, but when I'm around, they treat me very nicely.
And you know, I like both of them. They're both liberal. They've got to straighten out their countries. You can't—you know, London is having a lot of problems. And if you look at Paris, got a lot of problems.
They have two problems: immigration and energy. They've got to stop with the windmills, and they got to go back—like, U.K. has an unbelievable asset called the North Sea. Norway uses it, makes a fortune. They have a better section of it, and they don't do it. They could straighten out their countries, and it would be good. But I get along very well with them.
Yes, go ahead.
Nobel Prize for Peace/Norway/Russia/Ukraine
Q. Mr. President, you told Norway's Prime Minister that——
The President. Are you from Norway?
Q. No. [Laughter] You told——
The President. You look like you would be from Norway. She looks like she's from Norway. [Laughter]
Go ahead.
Q. You told Norway's Prime Minister that you not winning the Nobel Peace Prize made you feel less obligated to think purely of peace. Why would not——
The President. Well, I lost a lot of respect for Norway, and I believe——
Q. But why would not winning that prize affect——
The President. And I believe very strongly that Norway controls the Nobel Prize. But you have to understand, I settled eight wars. I've had every one of those wars—every participant wrote—I didn't ask them to do it. They sent in strong recommendations—you know, they make recommendations for that. But I settled eight wars. No President has probably ever settled one war. I don't know if—think of it: I did eight.
The reason I do it is because it's easy for me to do. And I didn't do it for a Nobel Prize. I did it because I'm saving a lot of lives. I'm trying to settle the final one. I'm trying to do Russia-Ukraine. And when Russia's ready, Ukraine's not. When Ukraine's ready, Russia's not. But they're losing 25,000 people a month, on average. And I'm trying to get that one done. But no, I feel——
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
But I feel that Norway has tremendous control over who gets the Nobel Prize, despite what they say.
Greenland
Q. Mr. President, how far are you willing to go to acquire Greenland?
The President. You'll find out.
Use of U.S. Tariff Revenue
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. Kevin Hassett has said that those $2,000 tariff rebate checks would be up to Congress to decide whether or not to disperse that. Do you agree with Kevin Hassett on that——
The President. I don't know.
Q. ——or do you think you can do that unilaterally?
The President. No, I don't know. I don't think we would have to go the Congress route, but you know, we'll find out.
The reason we're even talking about it is that we have so much money coming in from tariffs that we'll be able to issue at least a $2,000 dividend and also pay down debt for the country. But we'd do a $2,000 dividend to the people of our country. We'd probably set a limit of—you know, income limit where it made sense. But we will be able to make a very substantial dividend to the people of our country. I believe we can do that without Congress.
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
Diego Garcia Island
Q. Sir, last night, on Truth Social you said that the British plan to hand the base at Diego Garcia over to Mauritius and then rent it back was "an act of great stupidity." Previously, you've backed that bill. Is it now your position——
The President. Well——
Q. ——that the deal should not go ahead?
The President. ——I think that they—you know, when they originally were going to do it, they were talking about doing some concept of ownership. But now they're looking to essentially just do a lease and sell it, and I'm against that.
You know, it's a reasonably—nothing like Greenland, but it's a reasonably important area of the globe. Not to—anywhere near Greenland, but I think they should keep it. I don't know why they're doing it. Do they need money?
Syria
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. With your support to the Syrian Government, most probably you avoided another civil war and a bloodshed in Syria, especially after the fall of the regime.
The President. I did a good job. I did a good job.
Q. And the Syrian Government, the last 2 weeks, had to use some force to implement its force on specific areas. And with your——
The President. Well, to keep the prisoners, the terrorist prisoners, which is some of the worst in the world, at bay. So they were able to keep that.
He's working very hard. The President of Syria. He's working very, very hard. Strong guy, tough guy. A pretty rough résumé. But you're not going to put a choirboy in there and, you know, get the job done.
I spoke with him yesterday, because we were talking about the prisons and, you know, what was going. We have some of the worst terrorists in the world in those prisons, and he's watching them.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] Go ahead.
Governor Gavin C. Newsom of California
Q. Mr. President—Mr. President, Gavin Newsom is going to be at Davos, if he's not already there. You're probably going to run into him. I presume that this is for him to raise his platform for 2028, but what do you anticipate his foreign policy platform is going to be if he's there talking?
The President. I don't know. I mean, I don't know that he's going to be the nominee. I—I know this: I had a very good relationship with Gavin Newsom when we were, you know, in office together. I was President. He was the Governor of California. We had a really—he would talk about it often. And somewhere we just went astray.
I just hate the way California is being run. We actually have people leaving. It's never happened before, but I hate the way it's being run.
He and I had a very good relationship that really—close to the word "exceptional," but now we seem not to.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] The President. No, no.
Q. Thank you.
The President. Above.
Q. Thank you so much, President Trump. Cara Castronuova from LindellTV.
The President. Sure.
2020 Presidential Election
Q. And you spoke earlier about the 2020 election. Now that Maduro is in U.S. custody and he was criminally charged, has any more information emerged that you could share with us regarding Venezuelan election software and Venezuelan ties to tampering with the 2020 election? And would you consider speaking to Maduro personally in prison, in New York, to get some answers on Venezuela's involvement with the 2020 election?
The President. No, I don't think I would be doing that. I think my lawyers would be very unhappy if I did that, but——
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
Yes, they've learned. They've learned some things. Please.
U.S. Tariff Policy
Q. What happens to the tariff threat to Greenland if the Supreme Court comes out and rules against you on the tariffs? And are you—
The President. Well, I'll have to use something else. I mean, look——
Q. Are you willing to use force?
The President. You know, take a look at the word "license." Take a look at other things. I mean, we have other alternatives. But the—what we're doing now is the best, the strongest, the fastest, the easiest, the least complicated.
Greenland
Q. Sir, if you move ahead with the Greenland-related tariffs on Europe—you secured almost a trillion dollars of commitments from them to invest in the United States—does that go kaput, out the window, if that happens?
The President. I doubt it. Look, they want to—they need that agreement very badly with us.
They really do. They fought very hard to get it. So I doubt that, but we'll see what happens.
We have a lot of meetings scheduled on Greenland. I'm leaving tonight, as you know—Davos. And we have a lot of meetings scheduled on Greenland, and I think things are going to work out pretty well, actually.
Group of Seven (G–7) Nations
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. Will you still go to Paris for the G–7 emergency meeting, as offered by President Macron?
The President. No. I wouldn't do that, no. [Several reporters spoke at once.]
Because, you know, Emmanuel is not going to be there very long, and, you know, there's no longevity there. I—he's a friend of mine. He's a nice guy. I like Macron. But—but he's not—he's not going to be there very much longer, as you know. And I think—you know, I have meetings with the people that are directly involved, not some of the people you're talking about.
Q. Thank you so much, Mr. President. And happy one year.
The President. I've never seen this room like this. [Laughter] Is this a celebration of the first year?
Q. Yes!
Q. Yes!
The President. Have you ever seen it? I've never seen this many.
Press Secretary Leavitt. It's packed.
The President. I hope we have a very good——
Q. Congratulations.
The President. I hope we have a very good structural floor. You know, this used to be a swimming pool. You're sitting over a swimming pool. I could see that happening.
But this—we need a good structure here, don't we, huh? Yes.
Q. Thank you so much, Mr. President. Happy 1-year anniversary.
The President. Thank you.
Syria/Kurdish Population
Q. And my question is Syria—on Syria. The Kurds is the most loyal U.S. partners facing attacks by some Syrian elements within the Syrian Government. What will you do to ensure the Kurdish rights protected under effective forces against terrorism in Rojava, Syria, continue, as the Kurdish see you as a President does not abandon his allies?
The President. Well, I like the Kurds, but just so you understand, the Kurds were paid tremendous amounts of money, were given oil and other things. So they were doing it for themselves more so than they were doing it for us.
But we get along with the Kurds, and we are trying to protect the Kurds. That's correct. [Several reporters spoke at once.]
National Economy
Q. Ahead of your speech in Davos, can you give us a preview of what we can expect as far as, you know, laying out the plans for Americans to be able to buy homes?
The President. I think, more than anything else, what I'm going to be speaking about is the tremendous success that we've had in 1 year. I didn't think we could do it this fast. Think of it. It's just now 12 months.
And you know, I say it often: We have the most successful country in the world. We have the hottest country anywhere in the world, by far. And this country would have been absolutely stone-cold dead.
And I'm going to be talking about it. I'm going to be—because, you know, a lot of them could use some of the advice as to what we did. They need energy. They—you take a look at their energy policy. They're going to destroy themselves with what they're doing with the windmills and all the nonsense. They need energy help badly or they're going to be in big trouble. And they need immigration help badly.
How much longer do you want to go?
Press Secretary Leavitt. You have a call with——
The President. I do. I do.
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
I have a very—I have a very important call with President Erdoğan, who I like——[Several reporters spoke at once.]
——who I like a lot.
All right. One or—one or two more questions. Go ahead.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] Go ahead, please. Go ahead. [Several reporters spoke at once.] Red. Red.
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate you taking the time to take my question——
The President. Yes.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] The red blouse, go ahead.
National Economy/Consumer Prices/Venezuela/Oil Supply and Refining
Q. You talked a lot at the beginning of this about the economy, some positive economic indicators. Polling shows the majority of Americans don't feel the economy is doing well. Are you worried you're making the same mistake as President Biden——
The President. No.
Q. ——by telling them that they should——
The President. I hope I don't make the same mistake as him. Look, I inherited a terrible—I mean, I'm—it's a great question, because we inherited a terrible, terrible mess. Between the border, between all the problems, the whole country was falling apart. And in 12 months—less than 12 months—I mean, in 12 months, we have the strongest border we've ever had. We have prices that are much, much lower than they were for the last time—we inherited very high prices. We inherited—remember this: Inflation was at a historic high. We had never had inflation like that. They say 48 years, but whether it's 48 years or ever, we had the highest inflation, in my opinion, that we've ever had. Prices, because of that, were very high.
I inherited—we brought down eggs immediately. Remember, the first news conference, they were screaming at me about eggs. I was in the position for two days, and they're screaming—we brought eggs down to lower than what they were before. And, by the way, they continue that way.
We brought the prices down from when I came into office—and from what Biden had—way down. We're going to bring them down further. But the job we did is a miracle. One of the reasons I'm doing this today is to explain. We inherited a mess, and we've made it a beautiful, beautiful picture.
Think of gasoline at $1.99 in many States—$1.99 a gallon. It was $4.50, $5—in some cases,
$6 or $7. We're at $1.99. And energy is so big that, with energy, everything else comes down. But the prices are coming way down, and they're going—we're going to bring them down further.
But we started up here with these guys. We inherited a country that was broken. We inherited a country—and I—I have a very warm spot. We've done very well with Venezuela. And by the way, that, even in itself, is going to help us bring down the oil prices.
I mean, the Venezuelan oil—we've taken 50 billion—50 million gallons of oil. We've taken 50 million barrels of oil out of Venezuela in the first 4 days. We've got millions of barrels of oil left. We're selling it on the open market. We're bringing down oil prices incredibly.
And when they come down—and they've already come down. Again, $1.99 a gallon for oil.
Nobody thought they'd ever see it. All right. One or two more.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] Go ahead. Go, go, go. Yes.
Q. Thank you, Mr. President.
The President. Yes.
Iran/Political Demonstrations
Q. I want to ask you about Iran. Is the military option still on the table? And can you assure us that the killing in Iran has stopped? And I'm wondering: In regard to your peace council, which members have to pay $1 billion?——
The President. So, with Iran, are you from Iran?
Q. No. I cover the White House.
The President. Where are you from?
Q. I'm Palestinian American.
The President. So, with Iran, they were going to hang 837 people, and I let it be known that—and we let them know that if that happens, that will be a very bad day for them. And they decided not to do it. They didn't hang the people.
I can't tell you what's going to happen in the future, but supposedly, they've taken that off the table. But they were going to—last week, they were going to hang, on Thursday or Wednesday, one—they were going to hang—hang, I think, 837 people, and they didn't hang anybody. So, we're just going to have to see what happens with Iran.
Is the military option off the table? [Inaudible] [Several reporters spoke at once.]
Go ahead.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] Go ahead. Please.
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll take your question.
Q. Thank you—thank you, President——
The President. Go ahead. Right here.
The President's Foreign Policy
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. You promised during your second Inaugural to always put America first. I'm curious: How would you winning the Nobel Peace Prize improve the lives of average, everyday Americans? Why is this prize so important?
The President. It wouldn't improve the lives of any—what would improve the lives of people are people that are living. I saved probably tens of millions of lives in the wars. You know, if you add up the numbers—just if you look at—if you look at any one of those wars, you're talking about millions of people. You multiply it times eight.
But when you look at India and Pakistan, that could have been 10, 15, 20 million people. Could have been more than that. So I saved millions of people. So that, to me, is the big thing.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] What?
National Economy
Q. A moment ago—thanks, sir. You suggested a moment ago that perhaps the reason why a positive story about the economy isn't getting through is because of, you know, bad communications people. But are average Americans wrong to still feel high prices? And how much longer does the White House hope that they will stay patient?
The President. So I think a lot of people—a lot of people are listening to the fake news a little bit, and I'm not blaming anybody. I think—I blame ourselves. I think we've done a much better job than we're able to promote. We're not promoting. We're doing a great job, and we're sort of letting the promotion take care of itself.
One of the reasons I'm doing this news conference: I think it's important. We have taken a mess and made it really good. It's going to get even better. But if you look at prices from a year or a year and a half ago, you look at the Biden prices, they were way up through the sky.
And you know, they use the word "affordability." They just say "affordability," and they don't talk about it. They created the affordability problem, and we have—we are solving it. We have solved a lot of it.
Again, everybody agrees in this room, I think, gasoline prices have come—per gallon—way down. When that happens, everything else comes down. But they've come down way down.
Many of the groceries have come way down. It's all happening, and it's happening strong.
But if you go back a year, a year and a half, 2 years, take a look at those prices, and look at the prices now.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] Go ahead.
Q. Mr. President, on Venezuela. You made—you made a condition that was——
The President. Where are you from?
Q. I'm from Spain.
The President. Nice place.
Venezuela/Status of Political Prisoners
Q. Thank you. You made a condition that the political prisoners should be freed. It seems that they are not being as fast as they promised in the beginning. Would that be an issue for the current government?
The President. Yes, they've agreed that they're going to let, I guess, most of them out, all of them out. Depends on what they did. But they have released a lot of—they have a lot—released a lot of political prisoners in Venezuela.
Please.
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
Panama Canal
Q. Mr. President, earlier on last year, you had mentioned—you had indicated that you want to take back the Panama Canal. I know we've heard a lot about Greenland. Is that still on the table?
The President. I don't want to tell you that. Sort of. I must say, sort of. That's sort of on the table.
Okay, one more. Yes. Blonde. Blue. [Several reporters spoke at once.]
Yes, go ahead. Ma'am, go ahead. With the blue, holding the computer.
Greenland/North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Q. If a consequence of your determination to take control of Greenland is the ultimate breakup of the NATO alliance, is that a price you're willing to pay?
The President. You mean the breakup of——
Q. Of the NATO alliance.
The President. It's very interesting question. So I think something is going to happen that's going to be very good for everybody. Nobody has done more for NATO than I have, as I said before, in every way. Getting them to go up to 5 percent of GDP was something that nobody thought was possible—and pay. At 2 percent, they weren't paying. At 5 percent, they are paying.
And they're buying a lot of things from us, and they're giving them, I guess, to Ukraine.
That's up to them, but they're giving them to whoever they're giving them to. But they're buying a lot.
I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy and where we're going to be very happy. But we need it for security purposes. We need it for national security and even world security. It's very important.
How about in the front?
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
The President's Accomplishments/Border Security
Q. Thank you very much. First of all, last year, you told me that you believe that the reason you won election is because God put you in this place so you—that you could save the world. Looking back one year, do you feel like God is proud of the effort that you've played?
The President. I do. Actually, I think God is very proud of the job I've done, and that includes for religion. You know, we're protecting a lot of people that are being killed—Christians and Jewish people and—lots of people are being protected by me that wouldn't be protected by another type of President.
No, I think a lot of people are very proud of the job we've done. We've had an amazing year.
This has been one of the greatest years. Even some people that wouldn't necessarily love me instinctively, they're saying this was an incredible year. We've had an incredible year economically.
Look at our border. Our border was a disaster. People poured—millions—it was an invasion into our country of a lot of very bad people. Good people too, but a lot of very bad. People from prisons and drug dealers and gangs and horrible people. Murderers. Thousands and thousands of murderers allowed into our country.
And we now have the strongest border of any country. There's probably not a country—I guess North Korea has a pretty strong border, by the way. But there's not a country in the world that has a border like we do. And we took it from the worst border. We had the worst border in the world. Now we have one of the strongest borders in the world.
[Several reporters spoke at once.]
All right. One more—one more question.
Greenland
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. You said you're confident something is going to get worked out in Greenland, but Greenlanders have made it clear they don't want to be part of the U.S.
The President. Well, I haven't—I haven't——
Q. What gives the U.S. the right to take away that self-determination?
The President. I haven't spoken to—when I speak to them, I'm sure they'll be thrilled.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Q. Mr. President, are you committed to keeping the U.S. in NATO?
The President. I've had such a good relationship. I've made it so much better, so much stronger. It's so good now. NATO is so much stronger now.
I don't agree with a lot of the things they've done, but that was done before I got there. I think NATO has been good. Sometimes it's overrated, sometimes it's not. But we have a strong NATO.
When I came here, we had a weak NATO. We had a NATO at 2 percent and they weren't paying. You had a nothing NATO. NATO is—whether you like it or not, it's only as good as we are. If NATO doesn't have us, NATO is not very strong.
[Several reporters spoke at once.] Yes. No, behind you, please.
Q. Thank you, President Trump.
The President. Yes, go ahead.
The President's Favorite Accomplishments
Q. Really appreciate it, sir. We've heard a long list of accomplishments from the last year. Could you cherry-pick the top three? And then looking forward, what are your three most important priorities in 2026?
The President. So I think the building of a really powerful military has been a great achievement. And that would include the Venezuela thing. That would include the attack on Iran
and the wiping out of the nuclear threat. I think that's been really amazing, what we've done militarily.
I think what we've done in business has been incredible. We have $18 trillion coming in.
Plants are being built all over the—thousands of plants are being built all over the country. Eighteen trillion is a record. No country has ever come anywhere even close to that. I think that's a record.
And I think that most favored nations for drugs is something that nobody thought they'd be able to get. Tariffs helped me there, because the nations would have never gone along with it if I wasn't able to say, "If you don't go along with it, we're going to put a 10- or a 15- or a 20-percent tariff on your nation." And they went along, and our drug prices are going to come down at numbers never even seen before—never even thought possible before. So, those would be three things.
Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. [Several reporters spoke at once.]
NOTE: The President spoke at 1:49 p.m. in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to Rep. Ilhan A. Omar; Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado; Interim President Delcy Rodriguez Gomez of Venezuela; independent broadcaster and former CNN program host Don Lemon; David Easterwood, pastor, Cities Church in Saint Paul, MN, where protesters interrupted service on January 18 due to Easterwood's reportedly serving in a local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement capacity; Renee Nicole Good, who was killed when shots were fired into her vehicle during a confrontation between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and protesters in Minneapolis, MN, on January 7, and her parents Donna and Tim Ganger; Paul A. Perez, president, National Border Patrol Council; Warren E. Buffett, chairman and former chief executive officer, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.; Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem; White House Border Czar Thomas D. Homan; Gov. Gavin C. Newsom of California; former Vice President Kamala D. Harris, in her capacity as the 2024 Democratic Presidential nominee; Dana F. White, chief executive officer, Ultimate Fighting Championship; Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan; President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin of Russia; President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan; Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia; Secretary General Mark Rutte of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Elon R. Musk, cofounder and chief executive officer, Tesla; Leonard A. Leo, cochairman, the Federalist Society; Charles G. Koch, chief executive officer and chairman, Koch Industries, Inc.; William C. Ford, Jr., executive chair of Ford Motor Co.; Steven P. Lehotsky, attorney, Lehotsky Keller Cohn LLP; former Department of Justice Special Counsel John L. Smith; New York State Attorney General Letitia James; Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr.; District Attorney Fani T. Willis of Fulton County, GA; Michael S. Dell, chairman and chief executive officer, Dell Technologies, and his wife Susan; Mayor Karen R. Bass of Los Angeles, CA; Mark E. Zuckerberg, chief executive officer, Meta; Jeffrey P. Bezos, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board, Amazon.com; Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Mehmet Oz; President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil; President Ahmad Husayn al-Shara' of Syria; and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. He also referred to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist organization. Reporters referred to Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway; National Economic Council Director Kevin A. Hassett; and former President Nicolas Maduro Moros of Venezuela, who was captured, along with his wife Cilia Flores, in a U.S. military operation in Caracas, Venezuela, on January 3 and exfiltrated to the
U.S. for criminal processing in New York City. The transcript was released by the Office of Communications on January 21.
Categories: Interviews With the News Media : Press briefing with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt; Interviews With the News Media : Exchanges with reporters, White House.
Locations: Washington, DC.
Names: Shara', Ahmad Husayn al-; Aliyev, Ilham; Bass, Karen R.; Bezos, Jeffrey P.; Biden, Joseph R., Jr.; Bragg, Alvin C., Jr.; Buffett, Warren E.; Dell, Michael S.; Dell, Susan; Easterwood, David; Erdogan, Recep Tayyip; Ford, William C., Jr.; Ganger, Donna; Ganger, Tim; Harris, Kamala D.; Homan, Thomas D.; James, Letitia; Kennedy, Robert F., Jr.; Koch, Charles G.; Leavitt, Karoline; Lehotsky, Stephen P.; Lemon, Don; Leo, Leonard A.; Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio; Machado, María Corina; Macron, Emmanuel; Maduro Moros, Nicolas; McMahon, Linda E.; Musk, Elon R.; Newsom, Gavin C.; Noem, Kristi L.; Omar, Ilhan A.; Oz, Mehmet; Pashinyan, Nikol; Perez, Paul A.; Putin, Vladimir Vladimirovich; Rodriguez Gomez, Delcy; Rutte, Mark; Sharif, Shehbaz; Smith, John L.; Starmer, Keir; White, Dana F.; Willis, Fani T.; Zeldin, Lee M.; Zuckerberg, Mark E.
Subjects: 2024 Presidential election; Afghanistan, withdrawal of U.S. military forces; Armenia, Prime Minister; Armenia, relations with Azerbaijan; Artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies; Automobile industry, strengthening efforts; Azerbaijan, President; Azerbaijan, relations with Armenia; Board of Peace; Border security; Brazil, President; California, Governor; Carbon emissions, reduction efforts; Cashless bail, efforts to eliminate; Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; China, trade with U.S.; Citizenship; CNN; Coal-based energy production, expansion efforts; Critical minerals, supply chain improvements; Department of Education, proposed closure; Diego Garcia, U.S.-United Kingdom joint military facility; District of Columbia, law enforcement improvement efforts; Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, restriction efforts; Domestic terrorism and extremist violence, efforts to combat; Economic improvement; Egg prices; Electric and hybrid vehicles, promotion efforts; Electricity capacity, expansion efforts; Environmental Protection Agency; Europe, defense spending levels; Federal deficit and debt; Federal employees, return-to-office policy; Federal regulations, reduction efforts; Federal workforce, reduction efforts; France, President; Gasoline costs; Gaza, hostages held by Hamas; Geographic names, efforts to restore American greatness; Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam project, regional negotiations; Greenland, ownership and administration; Group of Seven (G–7) nations; Hamas political-paramilitary organization; Household income and wages; Illegal drugs, interdiction efforts; Illegal immigration; India, relations with Pakistan; Inflation; Interest rates; Iran, political demonstrations; Iran, U.S. airstrikes on nuclear facilities; Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist organization; Japan, trade with U.S.; Manufacturing industry, domestic investment; Minnesota, death of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis; Minnesota, immigration enforcement actions; Minnesota, Somali immigrants; National Guard; Nobel Prize for Peace; North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Nutrition assistance programs; Oil and natural gas, domestic production; Opioid epidemic, efforts to combat; Pakistan, Prime Minister; Pakistan, relations with India; Paris Agreement on climate change; Prescription drug costs, reduction efforts; Religious freedom; Russia, conflict in Ukraine; Russia, President; Secretary of Education; Secretary of Health and Human Services; Secretary of Homeland Security; Social Security program; Somalia, piracy; South Korea, trade with U.S.; Sports, efforts to restrict transgender participation; Suspected drug-trafficking vessels, U.S. airstrikes in Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific; Syria, Kurdish population; Syria, President; Tariffs; Tax Code reform; Tennessee, law enforcement improvement efforts in Memphis; Transgender athletes, efforts to restrict participation; Transgender servicemembers, status of service in U.S. military; Transnational criminal organizations; Trump Accounts, children's savings program; Turkey, President; U.S. Border Patrol; U.S. diplomatic efforts, expansion; U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; U.S. military readiness, improvement efforts; Ukraine, Russian invasion and airstrikes; Undocumented immigrants, deportation of criminals;
Unemployment rate; United Kingdom, Prime Minister; Venezuela, human rights issues; Venezuela, Interim President; Venezuela, investment by foreign oil companies; Venezuela, oil supply and refining; Venezuela, relations with U.S.; Venezuela, Tren de Aragua criminal organization; Venezuela, U.S. military capture and exfiltration of President Maduro; White House Border Czar; White House Press Secretary; World Health Organization.
DCPD Number: DCPD202600040.