Administration of Donald J. Trump, 2026
January 27, 2026
The President. So what do you think? Should I talk to them for a little while? It's always exciting. You all doing all right? You going over to the speech?
Q. How are you, Mr. President?
The President. You going over to the speech?
Q. Yes, sir.
The President. Good. We're going to have a good time. Nice group of people.
Q. Mr. President, is this going to be the kickoff for a lot of travel?
Immigration Enforcement Actions/Gasoline Prices/Political Demonstrations in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Q. Do you plan to pull agents out of Minnesota?
The President. We'll do whatever is appropriate. You know, we secured the border.
Remember that.
Representative Zachary M. Nunn. That's right.
The President. We secured the border. We did things that nobody thought was possible. We had 25 million people come through the border. When I took over, it was a mess.
You take a look at what we did in terms of pricing. So you had gasoline at $4.50. Now it's at
$1.99 in many places—a gallon, $1.99.
Rep. Nunn. One eighty nine in Iowa, sir.
The President. That's right. And what are you here?
Rep. Nunn. One eighty nine up in—[inaudible].
The President. One eighty nine. [Laughter] And he's a very honorable man. He doesn't make up stories—$1.89.
When I took over, you were $4.50——
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. ——$3.50, $5, all over the place. No, we'll have prices coming way, way down.
But remember, we secured the border. Crime is down all over the country. We just had a crime report coming out from, I think, one of the networks, which they hate to hear this, but crime is the lowest number ever recorded.
So, you know, when they say—and you know, we talk about Minnesota, but in Minnesota, you probably read, their crime is way down. You know why? Because we took out thousands of criminals out of Minnesota, and that's why it's good. So, anyway——
But we have—Tom Homan is over there. We all love Tom.
Rep. Nunn. Yes. Tom is great.
The President. And he met with the Governor, met with the mayor. He's going to meet with the mayor, I guess. And it's going very well.
But remember this: Even Minnesota, their crime is down. And you know why it's down? Because of what we did. We took out thousands of criminals—career criminals, bad criminals, people that came in from Venezuela.
By the way, how did we do in Venezuela? Not bad, right? [Laughter] But people that came in—Venezuela—from—think of it: People that came in from countries all over the world. They came from the Congo. They came from all over the—all over South America, all over Latin America, all over Africa. They came from everywhere. And they came out of prisons, in many cases. They came out of mental institutions, in many cases.
And we're getting them out. And we got a lot of them out, but we have now the safest country we've ever had. Washington, DC, went from being a crime-ridden place to a place that has virtually no crime——
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. ——in a period of a couple of months. So it's—we're very proud of what we've been able to do.
And this is a State that's been with me all three times, right?
Rep. Nunn. Since the very beginning, boss.
The President. We won it.
Rep. Nunn. Since the very beginning.
The President. We won it all three times. I'd like to give it another one too, if you want to know the truth. [Laughter]
The President's Schedule
Q. Are you going to do a lot more traveling coming up?
The President. Yes, I'm going to do a lot of traveling. I think so. I mean, I like traveling to places I love.
I love this place. This was the beginning of my politics, right?
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right.
The President. And it treated me well, right from the beginning too.
Q. Mr. President, what's your message for farmers?
Q. Mr. President, do you feel that the——
The President. Say what?
Q. What is your message for farmers?
Q. Do you feel, Mr. President——
The President. Wait.
The President's Staff/National Economy/2026 Midterm Elections/Federal Assistance to Farmers/Tariffs
Q. Mr. President, why did you decide to shake up your leadership team in Minnesota and send Tom Homan and——
The President. I do that all the time. I shake up teams. Everybody here—these are a lot of owners of farms and places, and you shake up your team. If they can't do the crops fast enough, they get—and look, we have an incredible team. We did something that nobody said was possible. We didn't go back to Congress and ask for legislation. We closed the border.
And in the last 8 months, they have—and this is actually hard to believe: Nobody crossed the border. Right? Nobody.
Rep. Nunn. Huge.
The President. They say nobody. I don't even know if that's possible. [Laughter] But you know, it's Democrats that do the report. It's a very liberal group that does that report. It's a very important report. And for 9 months—I guess 8 months, 9 months—we have nobody coming into our country unless they come in legally.
We want them to come in legally. You need people to work for you. But we did something that—I would say people thought that was absolutely impossible, and we were able to do it. So we're very honored by what's happened to our country.
In addition, we have $18 trillion coming in building plants, building auto factories, building AI factories. Like, no——
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right.
The President. ——no other country in the world has done what we've done in the last year, and I think it's the most successful first-term President. There's never been a year like this in the history of the country——
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right. The President. ——for a first term. And you've been a great Congressman. Rep. Nunn. Thank you, sir.
The President. And he's been with me from the beginning, this guy. Make sure to take good care of him. He's been with me. [Laughter]
So I—you know, I'm going around, and I'm going around because, hopefully, we win the midterms. And it's very scary because——
Rep. Nunn. It starts here.
The President. ——like, it's 2 out of 50 years or something like that.
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right.
The President. For some reason, when a President wins, Republican or Democrat, even if they're a good President—and hopefully, I'm a great President.
Rep. Nunn. That's right. [Laughter]
The President. Based on the first year, I'm a great President. [Laughter] And we had a great first term too. People don't—we rebuilt our military. We had phenomenal financial numbers, but I think this term is blowing away——
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. ——really every term.
But traditionally, when a President gets elected—out of, I think, 50 years, they've had two that won. I don't understand it.
Rep. Nunn. You're going to be the next.
The President. They've had two, so we have to—and one was by unusual circumstance. So there's something psychological. If you win the President—whether you're Republican or Democrat.
With that being said, the polls look very good. Everything looks very good. And you have great Congressmen here—Congress men and women here. And we love Iowa. We love Iowa.
Participants. We love you.
The President. And I think I just—didn't I just give—didn't I just give the farmers $12 billion, right?
Rep. Nunn. Sixty-six billion in total. The President. Well, I gave total 66. Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. But just recently, we gave the farmers——
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. ——$12 billion because they were treated unfairly by foreign countries. I said, "How much?" They said, "Twelve billion." I said, "They got it."
You know where I got it? Tariffs. I got it from the tariffs. Without the tariffs—without the tariffs, we wouldn't have a—and, again, you know, most of these—we right now have more factories and plants being built in our country——
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right.
The President. ——than we've ever had before. That came in because—they're coming because they don't want to pay the tariffs. So I said, "If you build here, you don't have to pay tariffs." So it's great.
Q. Mr. President, you talked a lot about——
Strength of the U.S. Dollar/Currency Devaluation
Q. Mr. President—are you comfortable, Mr. President, with the current value of the dollar? Do you think it's declined too much?
The President. No, I think it's great. I mean, the value of the dollar—look at the business we're doing. No, the dollar's—dollar's doing great.
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. You know, it's very interesting. If you look at China and Japan, I used to fight like hell with them because they always wanted to devalue their yen. Do you know that? The yen and the yuan. And they'd always want to devalue it. They devalue, devalue, devalue.
And I said, "Not fair that you devalue." Because it's hard to compete when they devalue. But they always fought.
No, our dollar's very good.
ABC News
Q. You talked a lot about Minnesota, Mr. President. Some of your own administration officials have labeled Alex Pretti a domestic——
The President. By the way, this is ABC fake news, this one. [Laughter] She hasn't asked me—she hasn't asked me a good question in years. [Laughter]
I think a nice woman, but I don't really like her too much.
Q. Mr. President, some of——
Q. Do you think——
The President. Go ahead. What? What? What'd you say?
Q. Mr. President, it is an important question, Mr. President though.
Q. Would you like—would you like to see the——
The President. I'd say ABC is about as bad as they get.
Q. Mr. President, it is an important question because you do have——
Strength of the U.S. Dollar/Federal Workforce Reductions
Q. Mr. President, would you like to see the dollar's value decline more? Would that be helpful to Iowans?
The President. No. No, I'd want it to be—just seek its own level, which is the fair thing to
do.
Q. Mr. President——
The President. You could have it—I could have it go up or go down like a yo-yo.
I'll give you an example: unemployment. I could create the greatest unemployment numbers
or employment numbers ever. All I have to do is hire 3 million people and put them into the Federal Government, and you have 10 people, you know, for one job, right? [Laughter]
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right.
The President. And what we've done is, we've cut the Federal employees, and they've gone to the private sector.
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. But if I wanted, I could hire a million people tomorrow, put them in the Federal Government, and she'd be writing a story: "Unbelievable employment. Unbelievable employment."
Q. Do you agree with the assessment——
The President. But we have great unemployment numbers.
Rep. Nunn. Yes.
The President. I think they're great. Is there one number that's bad? Can you tell—is there one number that's bad? There's not one.
Death of Alex J. Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Q. Do you agree with the—do you agree with the assessment from some of your own officials that Alex Pretti is a domestic terrorist or an assassin?
The President. Well, I haven't heard that, but——
Q. Do you agree with that, Mr. President?
The President. ——certainly, he shouldn't have been carrying a gun. But all of—hey, look, bottom line: Everybody in this room, we view that as a very unfortunate incident. Okay?
Rep. Nunn. That's right. That's right. That's right.
The President. Everyone. Unless you're a stupid person. Very, very unfortunate incident.
I don't like that he had a gun. I don't like that he had two fully loaded magazines. That's a lot of bad stuff. And despite that, I say that's a very unfortunate incident.
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
Q. Will you make an exception——
[At this point, several reporters began asking questions at once.]
Venezuela
Q. Mr. President, you said that you are the de facto President of Venezuela. I don't know, maybe you were joking when you said that. Is the U.S. a de facto member of OPEC right now?
The President. Well, I'll tell you what, we are a very strong presence in Venezuela. We're going to get a lot of money for Venezuela. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, with the exception, I think, of our country, and it's tremendous——
Rep. Nunn. Yes.
The President. ——bigger than Saudi Arabia.
And we had a very strong moment with Venezuela a couple of weeks ago, and we are working beautifully with Venezuela. I will tell you, they're going to do better now than they ever did—than they've done ever at any point. And we're going to be making a lot of money for them and a lot of money for our country.
We have a very good relationship with the leaders of Venezuela, and we're going to keep it that way.
Q. Sir, sir, on Greenland—on Greenland, sir——
Cuba
Q. What are your plans, Mr. President—what are your plans for Cuba, Mr. President? What are your plans for Cuba?
The President. Well, we're going to see what happens with Cuba. I don't know, anybody interested in Cuba in this room? Not too many people want—[laughter]—this is not a Cuba room, but that's all right. There are plenty of them around, especially in Miami.
Rep. Nunn. [Inaudible]—Cuban.
The President. And Cuba will be failing pretty soon.
Q. Sir, on Greenland——
The President. Cuba's really a nation that's very close to failing.
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President. You know, they got their money from Venezuela. They got the oil from Venezuela. They're not getting that anymore.
Rep. Nunn. That's right.
The President's Poll Numbers
Q. You were talking about the polls earlier. Clearly, your base is with you. Strong in support of their—they're very supportive——
The President. Stronger than—by the way, our base—no, our base—our base is with us. I think they're the best poll numbers—the real poll numbers—I think we have the best poll numbers we've ever had.
Think of it: If I were to run again—if I run again, would you—[laughter]—would anybody be happy if I ran?
You know—so we have the best poll numbers we've ever had. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.
Rep. Nunn. Thank you, Mr. President.
Death of Alex J. Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Q. Mr. President, did you hear from—did you hear from Greg Abbott saying you need to recalibrate your response? What did you make of that, sir?
The President. No, I didn't hear that. Did you?
[The President visited with restaurant patrons; no transcript was provided. He later resumed speaking as follows.]
Great people here. Great—great people in Iowa. I hope you give them they respect they deserve. I hope you give them the respect, because they are amazing people.
NOTE: The President spoke at 2:36 p.m. at the Machine Shed restaurant. In his remarks, he referred to White House Border Czar Thomas D. Homan; Gov. Timothy J. Walz of Minnesota; Mayor Jacob L. Frey of Minneapolis, MN; and Alex J. Pretti, who was killed in a confrontation with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis, MN, on January 24. A reporter referred to Gov. Gregory W. Abbott of Texas.
Categories: Interviews With the News Media : Exchanges with reporters, Urbandale, IA. Locations: Urbandale, IA.
Names: Frey, Jacob L.; Nunn, Zachary M.; Pretty, Alex J.; Walz, Timothy J.
Subjects: 2026 midterm elections; ABC News; Border security; Crime rates; Cuba, political and economic stability; District of Columbia, law enforcement improvement efforts; Farmers, Federal assistance; Federal workforce, reduction efforts; Gasoline costs; Illegal immigration; Iowa, President's visit; Manufacturing industry, domestic investment; Minnesota, death of protesters in Minneapolis; Minnesota, Governor; Minnesota, immigration enforcement actions; News media, Presidential interviews; Tariffs; U.S. dollar, value; Undocumented immigrants, deportation of criminals; Unemployment rate; Venezuela, oil supply and refining; Venezuela, U.S. military capture and exfiltration of President Maduro.
DCPD Number: DCPD202600058.