FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump Updates on Russia-Ukraine Peace Talks In Remarks To Governors

We’re talking about billions of dollars. Great job, Lee. Really, it’s sad, but it’s a great job you’ve done in a very short period of time.

But I think Marco or Scott or Howard, wherever Howard may be, he’s — we want to congratulate him. He did it. Great. It was a great session. He got no Democrat votes. I said, he’s been a Democrat all his life, and he got no Democrat votes. They all called him to apologize. And, you know, honestly, that shouldn’t be. But he got approved yesterday.

Cabinet Introductions

But today, I’m delighted to welcome America’s governors to the White House. And I’ve known many of you for a long, long time. And this week, we’re forging even stronger bonds of cooperation to better serve the American people. I also want to thank the members of my Cabinet who have joined us for this meeting. And they really have — they have gone right off the bat.

And I also want to thank Senator Thune, because I’m hearing we set a record on approvals. And I was screaming. I thought it was going so slowly. I think we — and we have a record. So I apologize to anybody I screamed at. But no, it was announced this morning. I think we had a record for the number of positions. So that’s great. And they’re great people.

So I’ll begin by introducing Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He scares me because he got 99 votes. So that’s either unbelievably good, because he’s an incredible diplomat, and therefore he’s Secretary of State, and you couldn’t have picked it, or I’m a little nervous about you, Marco. And the only vote he didn’t get was our Vice President, who couldn’t vote because he was — he had just left. So that’s a — you got 100 percent.

But it really says something. I think it says working together. It’s an amazing — an amazing tribute, I think. I’ll let you know about it — I’ll let you know about it in about two years, everybody. But Marco has been great, and he’s been in some big meetings with people at the highest level of states that we would say — states meaning other countries — that we would have said wouldn’t have dealt so well, but they’re dealing very well.

You have a great group of people with Steve Whitkoff and Michael Walsh. And we’re making amazing progress. I mean, we’ve made more progress on that situation, which is Ukraine, than they have in three years. Again, it’s so sad that it began. But we’re also working very hard on the Middle East, another one that wouldn’t have happened.

We would never have had — you wouldn’t have had October 7th. They had no money. Iran was broke. We had sanctions up on Iran that nobody’s ever seen before. They were literally broke, and they were not giving any money to Hezbollah, to Hamas. And how about Hamas yesterday with the babies? How about that? You know, we’re going to take that. We’re going to continue to take that. I don’t think so. But I want to just thank you, Marco, for doing a great job.

And Scott, you also. Scott went all the way to Ukraine. I said, don’t do it. That’s why they have telephones. But he — look, it’s always better to meet in person. But I just didn’t feel that it was good. And it was dangerous. You saw things on that train ride that you didn’t like, I understand. You know, it’s a pretty dangerous ride, the long ride. How long was that? Ten hour ride. It’s after you get there. And a very dangerous journey, but he wanted to do it. He’s a patriot. He wanted to do it. It’s better to do it than it is with a telephone. Always better.

I always say it’s much better to meet in person, but that was dangerous. I didn’t like — I like him. Therefore, I didn’t want him to do it. If I didn’t like him, I would have suggested he do it. I can’t say, go back today and let’s give it another shot. But I hear that — I hear that they’re going to agree pretty much with what — but that’s not the big thing. The big thing is getting it done. And we’ll get it done.

Also, somebody who’s been so popular right from the beginning, very, very little opposition. But she’s fantastic. She was the Attorney General of Florida for eight years. Highly respected. And just an amazing person, amazing leader and woman, Pam Bondi. Good, Pam. You got enough, boy? You got a lot of work over there, I’ll tell you. She’s going to be unbelievable. I don’t even think about it.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Doug, I don’t know if Doug’s here, he was last night. Oh, good. You just disappeared right into the woodwork. Doug is a man who made a lot of money, actually, but in technology. Sold to Microsoft for a lot, and decided he wanted to do a Trump thing, and he did, and he won easily. Then he became a great governor of North Dakota, and really good, and he was all of a sudden thrown into the oil business, right?

He took that to a level that nobody ever thought possible. The job you’ve done there has been amazing. I watched, he ran, and I said, I like that guy. He was one of the few that didn’t hit me. He was after my position, but he never said anything bad about me. I said, okay, that’s one checklist that we have good. It’s one of the ones, but he was an amazing governor, and he really became an expert on energy.

When I was with him, I realized I wanted him someplace. I didn’t know exactly where, but I thought it would be the Department of Energy. I kept talking because the state has done so well, and I said, look, I want you to just hold it, and I want to put you there. He sits there. I have somebody much better than me on energy. Who? Chris Wright. I said, who the hell is Chris Wright? He said, is Chris here? I don’t even know. Is Chris here? Hello, Chris.

Where am I giving him some buildups? I did the same thing last night, but he’s the top guy in the whole, they say, on the planet for energy, and all forms of energy, even clean, beautiful coal that we’re going to be using like Germany does now. They’re opening up a plant a week, and they’re opening up in China more than somebody told me, two plants a week, but we’re supposed to use the wind, which doesn’t work. It doesn’t work from a practical standpoint, but I just want to welcome you because you had the greatest man when he said, you’re probably the only man, because I know Dougie’s got a big ego, and you’re the only man I’ve actually heard him say something. He said, he’s so much better than me on energy. He’s better than anybody, and so we made a move, and you gave up a tremendous position to do this, and we want to thank you, but we have to get going, because when we bring the energy costs down, we’re going to, we have more energy than anybody in the world.

Energy Policy

We just didn’t use it. Can you imagine? Biden’s got us up in Venezuela instead of taking ours, so that we go to Venezuela, where they’d have very heavy stuff, and we have the best stuff in the world. We have more liquid gold, and it’s really great liquid gold, too. We have more under our feet than anybody else, but we went to Venezuela to buy oil instead of taking it from our own land and, you know, drilling a little hole in the ground. About how big is that hole? About a foot? About a foot, yeah.

We’d do a little tiny hole, and we could have taken it instead of all of the problems, and then we’ve made Venezuela strong again. You know, they’ve given them a lot of money. They never thought they were going to have so much money, and all the people are leaving, so you’re going to have one guy sitting there with a lot of oil under his feet. That’s not a good situation, but we’re having talks about that whole mess. What a mess. That was another one that was done. He was ready to quit. He was going to be out. Marco, you know that better than anybody. Marco’s been very staunch against what took place there, and we were going to have that in any form we wanted it, but Biden made them strong. It was the worst administration in history, and I say that with a lot of Democrats, but I think you believe it, too.

You just can’t say it, but you believe it. But I just want to thank you, and if you get those prices down, you know, that’s what caused inflation, the energy. I’ve been suspending, but I think even more so the energy. The energy went up. They stopped the oil leases. They stopped a lot of things that we were doing, and then they went back to what we were doing as much as they could, because the prices were going through the roof.

Remember that initial surge? It was brutal, and they went back. They let any rig that we had up just drill, and they ended up doing similar numbers, but we wouldn’t have been at those numbers. We would have been double or triple those numbers. Those were from years ago, but energy caused our problem, but I just want to thank you for recommending him, and what we’ve done is he’s the head of Department of Energy.

Department Restructuring Discussion

He’s Department of the Interior, and it’s really screwy, because the Department of the Interior has all the energy, other than some nuclear energy that you’re in charge of, but he has all the energy. He has all the land, all the great places, the best. We have more than any other country in the world, and he’s in charge of it. The problem is he can’t drill, and he drills, but he has no land, so what do we do?

We said, “I have an idea. Let’s merge them,” so we merged them intellectually. I don’t know if we did it legally, but we did it intellectually, so now he gives up the land, and he gives up the drillers, and you’re going crazy, right? You’re going wild, and you’ll do it beautifully, environmentally well, Lee, we’ll make sure, but we have a lot of things, but we had to merge.

Agricultural Secretary and Policy

Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins, who’s so fantastic, and she’s been at the head of so many different things and loyal from the beginning. She even opened up when we had a rather shocking defeat. She opened up, we call it an institute. I’ve never seen anybody raise money like her. She raised hundreds of millions of dollars on this fabulous thing, but I said, look, we want to win another race, because I think it’s really important to win twice, and I won three times, if you think about it. Only the Republicans smile when I say it, which happens to be true.

But Brooke has been amazing, and it was really tough, because this last election, I go to a person and say, “Sir, I just gave you $10 million.” “Oh, where did you give it to?” “I gave it to Brooke.” “You gave it to Brooke. She’s spending it on policy.” We don’t have to worry about policy. We have to worry about getting elected, right?

Immigration and Border Security

And we inherited all of the problems. You know, at some point, a few months down the road, we won’t be able to say, it’s so much us. But the big things, really, we can blame other people for, to allow criminals into our country at levels that nobody’s ever seen before, to allow people from jails to have countries from all over the world be allowed to empty jails into an open border.

They emptied jails and prisons, mental institutions and stay in asylum, gang members, drug lords, drug people, people on drugs, people that are very sick. They allowed them to come into our country totally unchecked, unvetted. And right now, we have a great gentleman, Tom Holman, who’s doing an unbelievable job, and Christine Ohm.

Health and Human Services Discussion

Secretary of Health and Human Services, nobody knows this particular gentleman. He sailed right through. I thought he’d get a lot of — I said, “Well, he’s going to get a lot of Democrat votes, Ron.” I said, “It’s going to be an easy one, right?” I told Ron to stand just — I said, “This one’s going to be so easy for you to get all those Democrat votes.”

And where is Bobby? Where is Bobby? So, if you go back 15 years ago, we had, like, nobody. It was 1 in 20,000. Now we have 1 in 34. Is that right? 34. So, 34 or 36 kids have autism. And if you go back, I guess, 18 years, whenever that was done, it was 1 in 20,000. So, again, from 20,000 to 34, 36. That’s unbelievable. So, there’s something wrong. There’s something wrong. We’ve done something wrong.

Healthcare Costs and Administration

There’s something you’re going to figure it out. Maybe it’s a spray that we spray all over the place that nobody else does. Other countries don’t. The Pennsylvania Dutch, they don’t do anything, and they’re amazingly healthy and he understands he’s working with Dr. Raz who’s this really smart guy. I know him very well and those two guys are going to figure out and they’re also going to figure out why in the United States we pay $1,300 for a drug that we were talking about and in London they pay literally they pay $200 even less $88.

Cabinet Introductions

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, another one I know very well, he’s going to be fantastic. Scott Turner. So Scott, congratulations man. Oh man, you are something. He got up and we had a great meeting yesterday, right? He got up and spoke, he’s a good speaker that one and everybody loves you, everybody knows you, great guy you’re going to do fantastic. Anyway, got a good recommendation from Ben Carson. Once Ben Carson recommended you, I said alright that’s okay, we love Ben Carson, nobody like Ben.

Secretary of Energy I introduced Chris Wright and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins. I know Doug so well. Oh where’s Doug? Voice during the Mueller hearings that beautiful voice. Do you know remember the catastrophe that every Democrat remembers is when Mueller went to testify? This was not a good situation that’s where it all ended Pam when he didn’t know anything about anything and Dougie said you don’t know what we’re talking about do you? This was not a good day for them but it was a good day for justice I can tell you that for fair justice.

EPA and Economic Development

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, he ran for governor of New York. In theory you have no chance but actually he almost won. He did it was a fantastic run, amazing run and he’s very smart. He was a congressman, he was fantastic on the hoax, the various hoaxes. I had a lot of hoaxes, so many I don’t want to name them all. We don’t have enough time but he was always very strong, great lawyer, tremendous lawyer and also a big believer in the environment and keeping it good and clean and healthy.

Yesterday I had Tim Cook in the office from Apple. He’s investing hundreds of billions of dollars. I don’t know I hope he’s announced it, hope I didn’t announce this but what they have all I do is tell the truth, he that’s what he told me now he has to do it right. So it’s good but he’s investing hundreds of billions of dollars and others too. We’re gonna have a lot of chip makers coming in, a lot of automakers coming in.

Tariffs and Economic Strategy

They stopped two plants in Mexico. They were under construction, starting construction, they just stopped them. They’re gonna build here instead because they don’t want to pay the tariffs. The tariffs are amazing. It’s good. I said it’s — I got myself in a lot of trouble — I said it’s my favorite word in the dictionary, the word tariff. It’s such a beautiful word and the fake news kills me. They said, “What about love? What about God? What about family?” I said, “I’m in trouble.” I said, “So now it’s my fourth favorite word. I say love, God, family, just a couple of others I could enter there too, but my fourth favorite word.”

Administration Appointments and Closing Remarks

And OMB director Russell Vought, thank you Russell. You’re gonna be incredible. I know he took some hits but I know how good he is, how honest he is, and he’s fantastic with the numbers. Director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Where’s Tulsi? Is she here? Hi Tulsi, I haven’t really seen you. Good luck. Do well. Have fun.

We built a building, the building cost like 12 billion dollars to build it loaded up with intelligence lots of luck for you to get out right? Good. It was treated pretty rough for a person that’s an incredible patriot. We’ve all known that so it’s nice that you’re sitting with Bobby because you too, you went through a lot but you know what you’re going to be stars.

Final Remarks on Election and Unity

Over the past month our new administration has taken unrelenting action to fix every single disaster that we inherited and we inherited a lot of them, the border being I think actually I think it’s the most difficult one of all. The rest we can get fixed including foreign countries that are doing things that they shouldn’t be doing and one of the reasons that we won the election by so much because we won it in everywhere we won the popular vote we won the seven swing states all seven by a lot we won by millions of votes.

We had another thing that was pretty amazing. We had of the 3,000 counties, we won 2,500 of them and the Democrats won 500. That’s a lot. They’ve never seen anything like it. Actually you would have thought that the numbers would even be much higher when you win 2,500 counties to 500 counties. That’s when you look at the map you’ve all seen the map the one that got certified and came out just recently it’s like almost totally red.

And it’s my honor we’re going to just work it out but we really become the party of common sense and I think it’s important. I think it’s important for the Democrats common sense that we’re going to deal with you and we’re going to deal on a common sense basis and I know a lot of you agree with a lot of the things. I don’t know sometimes you’re not allowed to say it unfortunately but I think we’ll be all better off if everybody says it. That includes Republicans saying the right things.

So on day one I declared a national emergency on our southern border to stop the invasion of our country because we were being invaded.

Immigration and Criminal Activity

Millions and millions of people I figured 21 million people and of that two or three million were criminals and many of them were people that countries didn’t want. They would put them in these massive large caravans – I came up with that name a long time ago, that’s what it is, it’s a caravan. And these are people in many cases they might not be criminals but they’re people that the country didn’t want, they didn’t work, they didn’t – they needed help all the time or they needed assistance or whatever.

Our country’s got a lot of people in it right now and we’re going to make sure that everybody’s treated fairly but we got to change it. It’s the most difficult problem I think.

ICE Operations and MS-13

Additionally, the heroes of ICE have been really hunting down the really bad ones and we are going that they’re incredible people. ICE, they were being shunned by Biden, they were being mopped. And let me tell you these are tough, tough men and women but they’re tough. They’ll see like a MS-13 band of thugs out on Long Island and they’ll bring up the paddy wagons.

They get in and they’ll say no, one of them, two of them killed two young girls in Long Island. For some reason they like Long Island, MS-13 loves Long Island. I don’t know what that’s all about but two young girls walk into school, 16 years old in the morning, they were accosted by a group of MS-13 thugs and they don’t use guns as much, they use knives, they like using knives and they cut them up, cut them into pieces and left them and killed them, cut them up into pieces, little pieces.

Law Enforcement Operations

And ICE went in, they have no fear of these guys. They went in and they just knock the hell out of them and they’ll go into a pack – not like a political pack, political packs are slightly nicer, but a pack of these MS-13 people or Tren de Aragua, people from Venezuela, they’ll just walk in. All you’ll see is fists going for five minutes, and then you’ll see these guys walk out and they got them between their legs and they’re bringing them, getting them the hell out of the country. These are rough people that we have to deal with.

Terrorist Organization Designation

But ICE is incredible, Border Patrol is incredible, law enforcement, the people in law enforcement. We make their job so difficult by allowing people like this into our country, but you shouldn’t do it. So I’ve just designated the group from Venezuela, Tren de Aragua, as a foreign terrorist organization.

Criminal Activities in Colorado

They’re like me, they’re in the real estate business. They take over real estate. And they literally take it over. They just claim it, and they tell tenants to get the hell out of it if you don’t get out. They had one case where a guy called the cops and they went in, you call the cops, yes, and they cut off his fingers. He says, “You don’t call them anymore, you cut off the other fingers in your other hand.” These are not nice people.

State and Federal Cooperation

But federal, state, and local cooperation has to be the backbone of border security. So I hope, as governors, I know all the Republicans are very much in tune with Tom Homan and Kristi and everybody, but I hope everybody, because ultimately you want to get the criminals out of your state.

And we’re focusing on the really bad ones. We have 11,088 people that we know of that are murderers, that are actually murderers. And I can’t imagine anybody wanting them in their state, whether you’re a Republican or whether you’re a Democrat or whatever you may be. I mean, we have many of them murdered more than one person. Some murdered more than five people, and they’re in our country. They let them out of jails.

International Cooperation on Deportation

These were convicted people, and they let them out of jails because it’s very expensive to have somebody in jail for a lifetime or whatever it might be. And they brought them in here. The American people expect every city and state to fully honor ICE detainer requests, and we hope they can, and to ensure the safe transfer of criminal aliens into federal custody.

For immediate removal from our country, you know, many of the countries that we’re not ever going to let it back under the Biden administration. I remember it’s Venezuela. He’s a tough guy. And others, they said, “We’re not letting them back. They’re out of here, and you’ll never bring them back. They’re not coming into this country.”

And Biden said, “Well, we can’t bring them back. They won’t take it.” Well, we took them. And every single country now you start with Colombia, you start with Venezuela. In fact, they actually offered to send planes to pick them up, and they’ll pick them up so that we don’t have to go through the expense of sending a plane. Is that correct, Marco? Even Marco couldn’t believe that one.

Energy Emergency and Infrastructure

To combat inflation, I declared a national energy emergency, and we had to do that. One of the things we’ve done is, by doing that, we can go very quickly. You know, a lot of companies are coming in, but they need tremendous electricity, massive electricity. Who would have thought that, right? But they need more electricity for AI than we have right now in the country.

In other words, we have X — we have electricity now for the whole country. They need that just for that one industry. So they’re coming in with — and we’re going to be leading. We’re now leading on that. We’ve really opened it up, and I hope it’s good. But we opened it up, and we’re leading China by a lot.

Energy Infrastructure Development

But China is giving them tremendous electricity because they do whatever they want to do. We’re working with Li, and I’ve told these people they spend — they’re going to spend hundreds of billions — trillions of dollars, actually. So I need double the energy that we have right now, and even more than that, from what I’m understanding, which is hard to believe.

In other words, take every car, every thing, every building. We need — whatever it is, 100 percent of the energy, we need that amount just to be in the number one position. And we need really more than that to really dominate, which I think will be dominating.

Power Plant Development

But I told them — and they can’t believe it — I said, “We’re going to get you quick approvals and you’re going to build your own electric plants so that you’re going to create your own electricity when you build your plant, which will be massive.” These are massive plants. But when you build your plant, we’re going to let them build an electric-generating plant where they build, like, a utility.

In other words, instead of using Con Edison, like we have in New York — hello, Governor. Nice to see you back there. And we do have Con Edison, and they don’t do a bad job, actually. They could be a little cheaper with the price, perhaps, but they’re not too bad. But we build our own utility.

Energy Independence and Grid Security

They can have their own utility. If they have any extra, they can put it onto the grid. But this way, they’re not subject to a bad grid, or a dangerous grid, or a grid that gets taken out by bombs, or war, or anything else. So they actually couldn’t believe it. They said, “You think you can get that approved?”

Yeah, I get that approved very quickly. They couldn’t believe it, and they’re so happy. And they’re going to do some in Virginia, some big ones. But we’re going to go, and this way, it’s really self-serving.

Alternative Energy Discussion

They just have this massive building with a large electric-generating facility that’ll be powered by natural gas, mostly. Some will use coal. Some will use nuclear. Clean coal. I would say clean coal. But some will use nuclear. They have their right to do it. None will use wind, because wind doesn’t work. It’s just terrible how an environmental person can like wind. It kills the birds. It’s very expensive. It’s seven, eight times more expensive than other forms of energy.

Every wind turbine in the country that goes up needs massive subsidies. It’s the only — it’s really the only energy that needs subsidy, essentially. The solar is doing okay, so it’s the only one.

Tariffs and Economic Policy

To combat inflation, I declared that national energy emergency, and we’re going to unleash the liquid gold under our feet to bring the prices way down. That’s going to happen. And again, we’re going to have a big part of it. It’s going to be natural gas, which is very, very clean. And clean coal.

And as you know, we’re going to be announcing tariffs on cars from foreign countries of 25 percent. That’ll be done in probably April 2nd. I was going to do it April 1st, but I said I don’t like that date. It’s going to cost a lot of money to wait one day. You know, it’s — I don’t know. What do I do there, Pam? Maybe I’ll — should I do it just April 1st?

Government Efficiency and Spending

We created the new Department of Government Efficiency, which you may have heard about. DOGE, which is now waging war on government waste, fraud, and abuse. And we’ve begun the largest deregulation of industries and other things. It’s proper deregulation that has ever done. I lead the way on — my first four years, we did more deregulation than any other president in history.

And I brought a little list along that I thought I’d just read. Some of the places — when you mentioned DOGE — some of the places that this money has gone — and these are the ones that I feel I can read. There are some that are so nasty and dirty and horrible that I don’t want to really read them because they — I assume they have television on.

I guarantee they do. I let the press in today because we have nothing to hide, right? It’s much better. They said, “Do you want to let the press in?” I said, “Why not? You think Biden would do that? I don’t think so.”

Government Spending Examples

$520 million was given for a consultant to do ESG — that’s Environmental, Social, and Governance — investments in Africa. $520 million — $25 million to promote biodiversity, conservation, and social responsibility behavior in the country of Colombia — $25 million — $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants.

They have no place in particular they were thinking of. There is no location. The money was sent out, but they have no idea where it’s going. $42 million to social and behavior changes in Uganda, and $10 million for Mozambique medical male circumcision — people that want to be — will have to be circumcised in Mozambique.

Government Spending and Fraud

$14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia, $486 million to consortium for elections and political process strengthening, of which $22 million was for inclusive, participatory political process in Moldova. And $21 million going to my friend, Prime Minister Modi, in India for voter turnout — we’re giving $21 million for voter turnout in India. What about us? I want voter turnout too, Governor — $29 million to strengthen the political landscape in Bangladesh. I went to a firm that nobody ever heard of. Got $29 million. They got a check. Can you imagine? You have a little firm. You get $10,000 here, $10,000 there.

And then we get $29 million from the United States government. They had two people working in that firm. Two people. I think they’re very happy. They’re very rich. They’ll be on the cover of a very good business magazine pretty soon for being great scammers. $20 million for fiscal federalism and $19 million for biodiversity in Nepal, and $47 million also for improving learning outcomes in Asia. Asia? Asia’s got a lot of money. $50 million plus another $50 million for condoms for Hamas. They gave $50 million, and it worked out so well, they gave another $50 million a little bit later. Condoms, $100 million for Hamas.

Social Security Fraud

And we’re also uncovering outrageous incompetence and fraud in the Social Security. And I read this last night, so, Governor, you’re going to be bored hearing this, but, you know, you never get bored because it’s not possible to even believe it. So if you live 100 years, it’s a long time, but let’s assume that they had millions and millions of people living because they have, like, 10 million people in the Social Security living. But let’s go over, over 100. So now you’re more than 100 years old.

We have 4.7 million Social Security numbers. The people from the age of 100 to 109. So if you’re 100 to 109, we have 4.7 million people on our Social Security rolls, right? Well, that’s a lot of people. I haven’t, you know, I knew one guy was 100. The great Lenny Litwin. He was a builder in Manhattan. He lived to 103. You knew him. He was one of the greatest builders. He was so happy. He was the reason he lived. He loved building. He’d build a building a year, right? Never had a problem. You knew Lenny Litwin, I would think, Governor. He was a great guy and got along with everybody. He got along with Democrats, Republicans. Everybody loved Lenny. When he died, it was a bad day for New York, I’ll tell you. He was a great guy. But he lived to 103, 104 because he just loved his business.

He was designing a new building at 103, and that was the end of it. He didn’t quite get the design finished. But you had 3.6 million people aged 110, substantially older than good old Lenny. From 110 to 119, you have 3.6. These are the people on the rolls. Now we’re looking to see whether or not they’ve been paid, because if they’ve been paid, then you’re just using those numbers to take out the money, all the money that’s paid to those people.

3.47 million people from the age of 120 to 129. 3.9 million people aged 130 to 139. 3.5 million people aged 140 years old to 149 years old. I think this is the case for Pam. I think I might give you this, Pam, just so you can have it. In fact, I will. 1.3 million from age 150. There’s 1.3 million people, they’re saying, are alive and receiving Social Security. Now that’s the only thing we’re checking.

Are they receiving it? If they’re receiving it, that makes it much worse. If they’re not receiving it, that just makes it incompetent. They shouldn’t be on the rolls. And the only thing good about this is that when we take all these people off the rolls and we have tremendous fraud underneath people that are 80 and 60 and 50 and everything else. But this is really incredible.

1.3 million from 150 to 159. And over 130,000 people are on the rolls of Social Security over the age of 160 years old, including 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. So we have, think of that, we have 1,039 people who are 220 years old to 229. We have one person at 240 years old. And here’s the beauty of them all. We have one person at 360, which is strange because the country is 250. So they’re 110 years older than the country.

Here, Pam, you better take a look at this. That’s much better for you than for me. Now the question is, are they getting paid? Because somebody maybe is getting paid. Yeah, I have a feeling you are. I said, what a convenient thing. This is so nice. We created this department, DOGE, and the kind of numbers there are incredible. It could be $500 billion, but it could be a trillion dollars. It could be even a trillion five. We’re going to find out.

Investigation and Audits

I mean, I’m actually going with Elon, and Elon is doing a really good job. And I said, who are these people that travel you? We call them the DOGERS. And I said, what are they? He said, they’re generally young people with extremely high IQs who are very good with computers. Because you have to be good with computers. So when one of these scammers talks and tries to tell them why it’s perfect, they say, no, no, it doesn’t work that way. It’s very hard to talk them out of something when they have you.

But we’re actually going to Fort Knox because I want to see, do we have the gold? Do we still have, whatever it is, tons of gold? I hope we do. Wouldn’t I be disappointed? Fort Knox. You go up here and about Fort Knox, you can’t get in. You can’t even see it. Nobody sees it. You go there and the place is dry. Would that be terrible? There’s another one. Maybe you should go with us to that one. But we’re going to go in there pretty soon.

They’re going to open the doors to Fort Knox. If any governor would like to go with us, we’ll include. Do you want to go with us on that one, Ron? That could be good. Could be interesting. Can you imagine if we open it up and there’s no gold? Well, I think there will be. For one reason, it’s really heavy. You still borrow gold. You’ve got to be strong. But we’re looking at everything.

Deregulation

We have the largest deregulation campaign in history. And again, I did more than anybody, but this blows it away. And for one, every time we put in a new regulation, we’re not allowed to put it in unless we terminate 10 old regulations. So it’s 1 in 10. We did 1 in 7 in my last administration. And the problem is some of them were put back, foolishly put back. There was no reason for them. So if you truly want a turbocharged economy, you have to do that, and you have to get rid of the regulations.

I think one of the reasons we – I mean, before COVID, and we did a great job with COVID in getting – it was a hell of a thing for all of us, everybody. But some countries were – some countries will actually never recover for what they went through. But we ended up giving back. When we turned over the reins, we – the stock market was higher than just previous to COVID coming in, which was an amazing achievement.

But we were – just prior to that, we were – I will never forget. I was sitting down with two consultants. The two great pollsters, they said, Sir, this economy is so good. We had the greatest economy in the history of the world. We were doubling up China. We were – I was also charging China hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, which nobody – no president charged them anything, but they were killing us. And – but we were beating everybody. Everybody said that in 2018, China was going to overtake us as the biggest economy in the world. And by the time I got finished, we were so much bigger than China, and we still are now. But another four years like we had just passed, you will have China being much bigger than you.

There’s no reason – if we have a smart president, there’s no way that they should ever be able to catch us. But the pollster said to me, Sir, if Abraham Lincoln and George Washington came back from the dead and they ran as president and vice president, they’d never be able to beat you.

COVID-19 Origins

I said, Thank you very much. The next day, I go into my office, and a group of scientists are sitting. They said, Sir, we’d like to tell you, there’s something very bad happening in China. There’s dead bodies all over the place. And that’s the first time I heard the word pandemic in a long time. And that’s where it started. And you know where they were? All around the Wuhan lab. That’s why I was – from day one, I was saying, they had little slits like this. You saw them from the air, from space. And they were just little slits, but they were body bags. There were black body bags all over, so many. And that’s where it came from.

Election Integrity

One other thing, just before we leave, I think you should do this. I mean, for safety and security and for the good of our nation, you should do it anyway, regardless. Even if it costs 10 times more, but it actually costs you just a tiny fraction. If you went to paper ballots and you’re voting – and I would hope that every Republican would – so it costs exactly 8 percent of what the machines cost. These machines, they’ve got something going. They get business. It’s amazing.

So paper ballots – and paper is very sophisticated today. It’s called watermark. It’s impossible to copy, impossible to cheat. It’s actually hard to believe that a piece of paper is highly sophisticated, but it’s watermark, and it’s very — it’s amazing, actually, when you see it. You can’t cheat. But if you went to paper ballots and same-day voting, and if you went to voter ID — and also, one other thing. You want a proof of citizenship. Those four things — proof of citizenship, voter ID, paper ballots, one-day voting. And if you went to two-day voting or three-day voting. But some of these states, you go, and you had 64 days.

You know, California just finished up just a short while ago. They were voting a week and a half ago. They’re trying to finish them up. And other states, too. They were weeks after the election. I mean, if that were a closed election, you’d have to wait for weeks and weeks and weeks. You’ve got to finish fast, Brian. Thank you for your help. We did very well in Georgia. It was very nice. But some of these states — if you had a closed election, you wouldn’t know who won.

And then, you know, once that happens, then you really never know who won. But you would save tens of millions of dollars. Forgetting about right, wrong, and security, safety, our country, our Constitution, and all of this. Number one, you’d have a much safer election. Number two, everybody — you’d know the results of your election by 10 o’clock. Everybody. It’s a beautiful system. It’s boxes of 5,000. Boom, boom. And you can go and examine each box. It’s so simple and so good.

I was — I did ask Elon because he knows more about computers than anybody. And I said, What do you think of the voting system? He said, Computers are not meant for voting. It’s just not a good — it’s too many transactions taking place too quickly. It’s just not — he said, Honestly — and I’ve gone to the best people, the smartest computer minds from MIT, from others. My uncle was a professor for 41 years at MIT and a brilliant guy. And I got to know a lot of the people up there. And they will tell you that the most secure way that you can secure the election, and probably the fastest way because there can be very little hanky-panky, is paper ballots. Can you believe it?

So, I hope, Sarah, that — certainly the Republican governors. But if you want to save a lot of money, you go to paper ballots. It’ll cost you 8 percent of what the costs are now. And that’s based on a good deal for machines. And then when you go through the, you know, days and weeks and months of waiting — France had mail-in ballots. Anytime you have mail-in ballots, you’re going to have fraud, without question. And France had it, and they went back to paper ballots. And I saw their election, and their election was over at 9 o’clock, and their numbers came in at 10.05. And there were no complaints. There was no — they had a winner, they had a loser. Thirty-nine million votes, and it was done.

We’re one of the only people that has now mail-in voting. One of the only countries that has mail-in voting. Remember Jimmy Carter when he did a commission? And I think they had Scoop Jackson. They had some, you know, at the time, big senators. And their conclusion was, if you have mail-in voting, you’re going to have massive fraud. And we had it in New York with a congressional race. Remember the congressional race? It took them forever to — like, six months later, they declared — who was it, Jerry Nadler or somebody? They declared him the winner. Oh, six months later. But it was somebody.

Oh, no, it was the woman, all right, the congressman. I won’t mention her name. But she won, but she didn’t win. And it was really very sad to see that whole thing. Democrat. There was a Democrat and a Democrat. There was a primary, but they had the mail-in voting. It’s just a disaster. So it’s very, very expensive. If you want to save money, if you’re not — if you really believe that the computers work, which they don’t, but if you want to save a lot of money, all you have to do is go to paper ballots, and you’ll be cutting it down by, you know, millions and millions of dollars.

So, America will take off like a rocket ship. You’re going to see things that’s so great for the governors. And Democrat governors are going to have — you know, you’re going to get the benefit of this. You’re going to be opening up plants, and you’re going to be — I hope we have enough people. We’re going to let — and we want people to come into our country, by the way. I do, but they have to come in legally. So, we need people in the country, but they have to come in legally.

Executive Order on Women’s Sports

Two weeks ago, I signed an executive order banning men from playing in women’s sports. Many Democrats are fighting me on that. I hope you continue because you’ll never win another race. And it’s just crazy. If you look at what happened with the boxing, if you look at what happened with the weightlifting numbers, where a record that hadn’t been broken for 19 years got shattered by — you know, they put up — an eighth of an ounce here, an eighth of an ounce there, and it’s 218 pounds or whatever it was left. And it hadn’t been broken in 19 years. And then a guy walks up who transitioned. He transitioned.

And he knocked out that record by about 100 pounds. That will be a record not going to be broken again in a long — so we put a ban on it and — to protect women. I mean, the women, if you watch the Olympics, you had two transitioned people that were fighting in the women’s boxing. They have a women’s boxing category. And if you saw that, it was brutal. What happened to the — the Italian woman was a really good boxer. After one punch, she said, No, no, no more, no more. I’ve never been hit. It was a left. It was not even a — it was just a left jab. She got hit so hard, she said, I can’t do it. They forced her to go out.

No, go out. Go out again. You’ll do it. Goes out again. Hits — gets hit again. No, no. That’s a — she didn’t want to die. And that’s crazy. But the NCAA has complied immediately, by the way. That’s good. But I understand Maine — is Maine here, the governor of Maine? Are you not going to comply with it?

[GOVERNOR OF MAINE:] I’m complying with the state and federal laws.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m — we are the federal law. Well, you better do it. You better do it. Because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t. And by the way, your population, even though it’s somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports. So you better — you better comply, because otherwise you’re not getting any — any federal funding.

Every state — good, I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics. Every state has a responsibility to comply with Title IX. They have an obligation — a legal obligation. And we’ll be enforcing aggressively, and we’re going to be protecting our citizens. We’re going to protect.

Education Reform

So, just to end, this administration has been fighting for parents’ rights and universal school choice. We want to do something that I think many people in this room want. And even if you don’t, I think you do want it, but you might not be able to say it. We want to move the schools back to the states so that Iowa and South Carolina and Georgia and all the states can run your own school system. And you’ll do a fantastic job. Kim, you’re going to do great. I’ve been — I used your example because you’re so much into the education. Done a great job with school choice. And you’ll do with your school choice. That’ll be the easy thing. But we want to get it back, take it away.

So, just some stats still. It lasts — it’s usually with 38, 39, or 40 out of 40. They take the 40, I guess, biggest, most important, whatever it might be, but 40 countries. And we were 38, 38, 39, and congratulations. But two months ago, three months ago, we hit number 40. So, we were last in terms of education in the world. And we were first in another category, though. We were first in cost per pupil. So, we spend much more.

And, by the way, second wasn’t even close. So, you have Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, China. So, there goes the big country theory right there for 1.4. They’re rated number five. That’s a little bit scary, isn’t it? But they’re all — Diolch am wylio’r fideo. Diolch am wylio’r fideo. …rated well, spend much less per pupil than we do. We spend the most per pupil and we’re rated less. Think of that. Can anything be worse than that, Sarah?

So what happens is we are going to make a very strong push on closing up the Department of Education. We’ll have one person sitting there just to make sure that they’re teaching English, reading, writing, and arithmetic, okay? Just that’s all. The rest of it is up to the governors.

We have great governors, really smart people. Brian, I think you’d love to have it in Georgia because you could do a great job. You’re being told Ron would love it. Ron’s sitting there saying, oh, give me the education. You’re being told by people in Washington that don’t know much about your state and maybe don’t like your state, maybe don’t like you, maybe don’t like your pupils about what they should be doing. I’ll tell you what.

We will compete. Many of our states, I figure 35 of them, we’re going to have 35 great ones, we’re going to have five that are okay, then we’ll have another five that are blah, and then we’re going to have four or five not so good. But in a place like New York, we could take it as an example, Westchester County, you go Westchester, Suffolk, you go out in Long Island, you do upstate New York, you break it up into quadrants, Manhattan.

But I think you could do a great job. I think the states will do a fantastic job. And we send the money directly to the states, and we’re not looking even for the cuts, but you’ll spend a lot less money. You’re going to spend a lot less money. You know, as somebody that’s spent a lot of time in Washington over the last number of years, it seems like every building is the Department of Education, but I’m saying, what do these people do? What do they do?

But if we could send education back, and Linda, as you know, is going through the process right now, and I think she’s doing really well, she’s great, Linda McMahon. And I said, Linda, you’re trying, I really want you to do a great job, but you’re really only doing a great job if you have no job by the time we finish. You have to create no job for yourself, because we want this to go back to the states. And she agrees. And if we can do that, I think it’s going to be one of the most important things we can do.

So the governors, the people in this room, Democrat, Republican, will run their own school system, and we’ll back them 100 percent, and we’ll pay like we do now. But I think we’ll end up having to pay probably half. But that’s not the reason I’m doing it. I’m doing it because we give really bad education. And as far as the teachers’ union, I love teachers. And I imagine unions might form in some of these places, and if they do, that’s fine. You’ll deal with it. So this isn’t against unions.

It’s because I won unions. I won the Teamsters. When you win the Teamsters, that’s serious. But I put in a person as Secretary of Labor who—I really did it because the unions treated me so well. The autoworkers. I mean, so many of the unions, the firefighters, the police unions, I got like 98 percent of the vote. We’re looking for the other 2 percent. Nobody can find them. So, you know, I grew up in New York, which was union territory.

But we want to be able to have great education. If we don’t have education in this country, this country is going to go down. When you hear China, it’s rated number four and five every year. And, you know, they’re a serious, serious competitor.

Closing Remarks

So I want to thank you all. And I do want to say again, call me at any time. I will take your call. If you’re a Democrat, I will put you ahead of the Republican. If I have a Democrat or Republican call sign, I will put the Democrat first. Okay? I promise. And probably—sort of promise, right? No, I will. We’ll take good care of the people in this room. And it’s an honor to be with you. You’re very, very smart people. To do what you do, to get elected, it’s a tough—it’s a tough business.

But if you could take back education, and if we could do some of the things that we just laid out very easily in this plan—and you have a federal government that’s behind you all the way. All the way. We’ll be sending help. As an example, if we do get rid of FEMA, which we should—very expensive, doesn’t work. But we’ll be sending federal help in. And if you have a big hurricane or a tornado or all of the things that I’ve been watching, and you’ll be taken care of much, much better than you’re taking care of now. You have to wait around for these people to come, and they come so late. But the worst example was what you had to go through in North Carolina. What happened there was a terrible thing.

So congratulations on your victories, and you’re going to have many more victories. And I’m here for you. If you want to ask a couple of questions, you could, if you’d like to. Yes, please.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] Thank you, Mr. President. So I think we share a sentiment about disaster response and how we can make it better. We’ve all had disasters. We usually love to see the President after a disaster that’s, you know, never fun. We have fires, other people have floods, hurricanes. We want to be a part of helping to make a federal emergency response work. So changing FEMA to not put these square pegs in round holes. So involve our group, because we’re the ones on the other end of it. And say, oh my God, why are they coming with this when we need that right now?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Good. Thank you very much. That’s very nice. I agree. Yes, please.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] Mr. President, thank you for welcoming us. As we go through the process of putting in your priorities as President, would you give us an opportunity to speak with you about, say, return on investment?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] Before we go, for example, into, we’ve heard and we await the decisions you make and the Secretary will make. But for instance, on Medicaid or Medicare.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Sure.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] So if you could give us, our proposed, perhaps give us an opportunity as Governors to prove to you that we can make these programs worthwhile. That might help us in our work.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I love that. I think it’s great, Bobby. I think it’s great. One of the things we’re really focused on is bringing down the costs. And we haven’t been treated very fairly, especially over the last four years. And as you know, we had transparency, which is one of the biggest things that could have happened. And Biden, for whatever reason, terminated that. That would have brought down the costs tremendously. But we’d love to have your ideas on any of them. Medicare, Medicaid, any of it. And we will, if those ideas are good, you probably have better ideas than anybody as Governors. So we would love that. Thank you.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] On that issue of health care, we’ve talked about it before. If we reform the health care industry, if you try to do that in the first administration and they try to fight it back every step of the way, we all deal with high health care in government and the private sector. And if we reduce that, 20% of our GDP, down to 10 to 12, you can pay for a lot of things in government that we can’t currently do it. We need to get the industry in mind to help us do it as well.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, you’re a good example of it. And in your state, they’ve done a good job. But you’re going to get those numbers down even lower. I know that. That’s something very strong for you. And as you have ideas, I’d love you to pass them along to the other Governors here. But there are some states that have done a really, really good job with that. And we are totally open to suggestions. Thank you. Yes, Henry.

[HENRY:] Mr. President, thank you for having us here. It’s the de minimis rule in tariffs. We’ve got the amount that is self-declared now is $800. If you package, you say you package coming from wherever, it’s under $800. It’s not inspected. There’s no tariff on it. Problem is, there are a lot of things coming in that are over that.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s right. And we’re not doing that anymore. And also, there’s fentanyl coming in, I think, to all of these states. That’s the real problem. And I think that everyone is sharing that. Thank you, Henry.

Fentanyl and Drug Policy

So, I had a deal with President Xi just prior to leaving office, but before the election, that President Xi was going to give the maximum penalty to anybody sending fentanyl into the United States. His maximum penalty is death. If you notice that every country that has the death penalty has no drug problem. They execute drug dealers. And when you think about it, it’s very humane because every drug dealer, on average, they say, kills at least 500 people, not to mention the damage they do to so many others. But they kill less. large numbers of people, China, Singapore.

Actually, there are quite a few, many in Asia, where they have the death penalty. There’s no drug problem whatsoever. They come to our country because we have a much softer policy. We give them a slap on the wrist and say, kill a lot of people. So, we are going to, I mean, I don’t know if our country is ready for it. I am ready for it. The death penalty if you deal drugs, you know, you have to set out guidelines like fairly large numbers, etc. But you’ll have it go down very greatly.

One of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to do an advertising campaign. They’re working on it right now and that’s saying how bad drugs are for you. I was speaking actually to the president of Mexico saying, you know, you can’t send the people through your country. And I said, you know, you’re not a big drug-taking nation. You send us plenty of drugs, but the people aren’t drug-taking. And she said, yes, we’re not a consumer nation. That was a very interesting term. And I said, so why aren’t you? What are the reasons? Why is it? It’s true, Mexico, they don’t have a lot of drug problems in terms of taking the drugs.

He said, well, two things. And a lot of you could do the second thing. He said, we have very strong family values. I said, but so do we. I mean, I see people, they die of a drug overdose, the daughter, the son, the mother and father will never be the same, never be the same. Their life is ruined. Their life is over. I’ve seen it so much. So we have strong family values, also family members and relationships, just as strong as Mexico.

Anti-Drug Advertising Campaign

What’s the other? Well, we spend a lot of money on advertising, saying how bad drugs are for you. And I said, oh. I never learned anything on phone calls. This time I learned something. I said, you know, I never thought of that. Because we set up, like, committees. And you can’t have the death penalty, I guess. But someday somebody is going to get sick of it and do it, and you won’t have any drug problem in this country.

But — and you can do it on an individual state basis for the governors in the room that want to do it. But you will not have a drug problem in your state if you did it.

But I will say this. We have a situation where we have now hired a couple of the best agencies, and we’re going to spend about $100 million, maybe $200 million on advertising, saying that when you take certain drugs — a drug, fentanyl, et cetera, et cetera — it destroys your skin, it destroys your teeth, it destroys your brain, it destroys everything. And really horrible commercials. I mean, I’ve seen the first of them, and they are brutal. They are brutal. And when some young kid is sitting down watching this commercial a couple of times, I really don’t think they’re going to be taking drugs. So I think that this is — I mean, this is a big statement, but I think we can drop it 50 percent, 5-0, by doing this.

And I give her credit. She was talking to me about it, telling me about it. But I knew immediately, as soon as she said it, it was not — she didn’t have to say any more. She went on to tell me different things, but it was just the concept of it. And I think states can do that, too. If you do commercials talking about how horrible it is, drugs — I mean, what it does, you look at their skin. It gets eroded. Their teeth are — you can tell. I mean, you can see a person that takes a lot of drugs, especially fentanyl and some of the others — the bad ones, the real bad ones, some of them, the heroin. It’s unbelievable what it does to people. And we’re going to put very, very strong ads. And now that I’m thinking about it, I think you should put on strong ads, too. Really strong ads.

I think it’s an unbelievable thing. We’ll all do it. We’re going to do it on a national basis. But you can do it individually on an individual basis.

And you can also look — I think — you’ll have to get rulings on this, but your states have the right to go death penalty also for drug dealers. And — but only do that if you want to get rid of drugs, because if you don’t do that, it’s a little tough. But I think the advertising will have a huge — I think we can get it down by 50, 50 percent.

We set up — we did great. We got it down 18 percent. I said, that’s not a lot, though. Everybody was giving us credit. Oh, 18. And 18 percent, to me, we set up committees with the First Lady of the United States on a blue-ribbon committee. But they didn’t know too much about El Chapo and the various people that we’re talking about.

It’s a smart group of people. But I’ll tell you what, the advertising could be unbelievable. And I hope the states do it. You’re not talking about a lot of money. You’re talking about peanuts, actually. I mean, with $50 million, you could just cover the state. And if you did that, and I’m going to do it, I think we can get drugs way down. I think we can get it down by 50 percent when you see it. I’ve seen some of the ads that — man. If a person looks at the ads that I saw, they’re not going to be taking drugs. So, good question.

Thank you, Henry, very much. How about we’ll do one more? Yes, please.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] Hi. Thank you. As we talk as governors, we implement a lot of the social welfare programs, Medicaid or job training or rental assistance. Each one has different requirements that create cliffs and benefits that make it hard for people to recover. Things as simple as work requirements for able-bodied adults. If we could synchronize across TANF, Medicaid, all these other programs, let’s make it a trampoline to get people back on their feet instead of a hammock to climb up —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s good. I think if you could get together and work together, you’d bring down costs just on that basis. I think it would be — I think it would be really great. Do you want — go ahead, please.

[UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNOR:] Mr. President, I wanted to say thank you. It’s one or two words a lot of times we don’t say. Thank you for your extraordinary leadership, your courage, all that you do. And just so you know, even in the state of Nebraska, you’re inspiring Nebraskans to get comfortable being uncomfortable, to stand up for what we believe in — create family, hard work, the American dream — stand up and talk about common sense. So, we’re incredibly grateful.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, Governor. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody.

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