Transcript: President Trump Remarks at NATO Summit in Hague, Netherlands

And that means life. Life is disappearing also in the cities and towns. Should have never happened, would have never happened if I was President. I’ve said it a thousand times, and it never did happen. It’s never even thought about.

But it’s vital that this additional money be spent on very serious military hardware, not bureaucracy. And hopefully that hardware is going to be made in America because we have the best hardware in the world. You saw that, where 14 missiles were shot at us the other day. And they were very nice. They gave us warning. They said, “We’re going to shoot him. Is 1 o’clock okay?” They said, And everybody was emptied off the base, so they couldn’t get hurt except for the gunners. They call them the gunners.

And out of 14 high-end missiles that were shot at the base in Qatar, all 14, as you know, were shot down by our equipment. Amazing stuff. Amazing that they can do. It’s like shooting a bullet with a bullet. It’s the same thing. If you think about it, 14 out of 14, and they were they weren’t even that surprised. I said, “You do that well often.” They say we pretty much do, sir.

Defense Industrial Base and Ukraine Deal

The Ukraine crisis has also highlighted the urgency of rebuilding our defense industrial base, both in the United States and among the allied nations. We cannot afford to be dependent on foreign adversaries for critical minerals. And as you know, we made a deal with Ukraine to take a vast amount of the land they have for minerals. We need it.

And once again, I want to thank all of the people in the Netherlands. Incredible people. It’s a great place. And all of the NATO allies for the tremendous summit that we just had.

Official Assessment of Iran Strike

A letter just came in, and the statement came in from the Atomic Energy Commission of Israel. And I just wanted this an official letter. And they’re very serious people. As you know, the devastating U.S. strike on Fordo destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility totally inoperable. It was devastated. We assess that the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons for many years to come. This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material, which it won’t. It’s so sad that that whole thing had to go.

But I just want to thank our pilots. You know, they were maligned and treated very bad, demeaned by fake news. CNN, which is back there, believe it or not, wasting time, wasting it. Nobody’s watching them. So they just wasted a lot of time wasting my time. And the New York Times, they put out a story that well, maybe they were hit, but it wasn’t bad. Well, it was so bad that they ended the war. It ended the war.

Somebody said in a certain way that it was so devastating. Actually, if you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war too, this ended a war in a different way. But it was so devastating. Also, they have out of Dubai just came that Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman. This is Iran’s foreign minister says it’s near, its nuclear installations were very badly damaged by the American strike. So what bothered me about these reports that with fake reports put out by the New York Times failing. I call the failing New York Times because it’s doing terribly. Without me, it would be doing no business at all. But and by fake news, CNN and MSDNC, all of these terrible people, you know, they have no credibility. You know, when I started, there were 94 percent credibility. The media now it’s at 16 percent. And I’m very proud of it because I’ve exposed it for what it is.

But when I saw them starting to question the caliber of the attack, was it bad? Well, it was really bad. It was devastating. They obliterated. You can’t get into the tunnels. They just put that over. That just came out. They can’t. There’s nothing. There’s no way you can even get down. The whole thing is collapsed in a disaster. And I think all of the nuclear stuff is down there because it’s very hard to remove. And we did it very quickly when they heard we were coming. It was, you know, you can’t move it very hard, very dangerous, actually, to move to. And they also knew we were coming.

So I don’t think too many people want to be down there knowing we’re coming with the bunker busters, as we call them. We’re the only ones that have the best equipment, best nuclear equipment and we have the best equipment in the world.

Submarine Operations and Precision Strikes

And by the way, we can’t forget our submarine, which was out there. Submarines, actually, but submarine was out there. We shot 30 rockets into an area, every single one of them. I think it was almost 400 miles away. I think it’s about 400 and long. It was in the ocean long ways away. And we shot we shot a total of 30. Every single one of them hit within nine inches from where it was supposed to be. It took a lot because we didn’t do just four. We did two others in addition, which hadn’t been completely destroyed. So we hit him with a submarine from hundreds of miles away. Amazing. Just amazing equipment. Greatest submarines in the world. Nobody’s even close to 20 years behind us when it comes to submarine technology.

So that’s one. And the other was from the Atomic Energy Commission. And they have about three or four of them now coming in from Atomic Energy Commissions from various places. But the one that we have that just came out, we released it a little while ago, was from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. Numerous of them are getting to see the site, and the site has been demolished.

Stealth Operations and Military Excellence

And again, we had these brave patriots, these incredible flyers, these people that can fly a plane better than anybody can fly a plane going into a very hostile territory, flying into the territory that has got more missiles and things pointed at it. But it was very stealth. They didn’t get to see it. It was dark. That’s the amazing thing about the shots. They hit the shots perfectly, and yet it was dead dark. There was no moon. There was no light. It was virtually moonless. It was very dark, and they hit the shots were hit perfectly.

But when they get demeaned, and they were very upset about it because they knew how strong it would be back in Missouri. The pilots flew about 36 hours, two ways, far distance and in those incredible B-2s. And we then had the F-22s, or we had the F-35s, or we had other planes. And we had, I think, a total of 52 tankers. That means the big tankers because the refueling was a lot for all of the different planes that we sent. Incredible operation.

And I have to say, General Raising Gain was incredible. That’s why he beat ISIS. We beat ISIS in a matter of weeks. I was told it would take four to five years. We did it in a few weeks, and he was great. That’s why he’s the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff right now because I had a very good experience with him. He knocked out ISIS in a period of literally a few weeks. Amazing. And it was supposed to take a few years, five years to be exact.

NATO Financial Commitments

So we had a great victory there, and we then came here, and I think we had a great victory here. But this is an ongoing project. This is the safety of Europe, the safety of the world, and they’ve raised it from two percent to five percent, something which nobody, and you’re talking about over a trillion dollars a year. So we’re talking about a lot of money from coming in from countries that were not paying nearly enough to be effective.

So I have, as you know, Marco Rubio with me and Pete Hicks, Secretary of State and Secretary of War. Should we say Secretary? It used to be called Secretary of War. Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors. It used to be called Secretary of War. In fact, if you look at the old building next to the White House, you can see where it used to be Secretary of War. Then we became politically correct, and they called it Secretary of Defense. I don’t know. Maybe we’ll have to start thinking about changing it, but we feel that way.

Q&A Session Begins

TRUMP: Do we have any questions, please? Wow. That’s a lot of questions. Who’s a nice person? Oh, you’re not a nice person, but I’ll let you ask one. Go ahead. What’s he going to ask? He is not nice at all. I know him well.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for taking the time before flying home. You just said you believe the conflict between Israel and Iran is over. What makes you so confident it is? And what do you do if it isn’t?

TRUMP: Because I dealt with both, and they’re both tired, exhausted. They fought very, very hard and very viciously, very violently, and they were both satisfied to go home and get out. And can it start again? I guess someday it can. It could maybe start soon. I think a big telltale sign was when, as you know, Iran somewhat, by not much, violated the ceasefire. And Israel had the planes going out that morning. There were a lot of them, 52 of them. And I said, “You got to get him back.” And they brought him back. They didn’t do anything. They brought him back. It was very good. I thought it was amazing.

Actually, they fought a hell of a war. They fought very hard. I think the war ended actually when we hit the various nuclear sites with the planes. And I just hope you people can give these pilots. These are the best pilots in the world. They’re the best shots in the world. They call them shots. That’s what they are. And wait a minute. And I just hope you can give them the respect they deserve because they came home to fake news. And like, “Oh, gee, there was hardly any damage.” The things are decimated.

So but I think no, I think they’re very much finished. I think Israel is going to get back to doing what they do. And I think that Iran is going to get back. You know, Iran is a huge advantage of great oil and they can do things. I don’t see them getting back involved in the nuclear business anymore. I think they’ve had it. They’ve been at it for 20 years. And I don’t see that happening either. Now, if it does, we’re always there. It won’t be me. It’ll be somebody else. But we’re there. We’ll have to do something about it.

Yes, please. Go ahead. Go ahead. Fake news. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Here we go. When you hear this question, you should really say how great our soldiers and our warriors are.

REPORTER: I think everyone appreciates our soldiers and our warriors. I do have two questions for you, Mr. President. You just cited Israeli intelligence on these attacks. Earlier, you said U.S. intelligence was inconclusive. Are you relying on Israeli intelligence for your assessment of the impact of the strikes?

TRUMP: No, this is also Iran made the statement. And it’s also if you read the document that was given that Pete can talk about if you’d like. The document said it could be very severe damage, but they didn’t take that. They said it could be limited or it could be very severe. They really didn’t know other than to say it could be limited or it could be very, very severe. And you didn’t choose to put that because it was very early after. Since then, we’ve collected additional intelligence. We’ve also spoken to people, have seen the site and the site. The site is obliterated. And we think everything nuclear is down there. They didn’t take it out. Okay. Question, please. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Blue dress.

REPORTER: Thank you so much, Mr. President. Yesterday, you said China can now continue to purchase oil from Iran. Are you giving up on your maximum pressure campaign with sanctions right now with Iran?

TRUMP: No, look, they just had a war. The war was fought. They fought it bravely. I’m not giving up. They’re in the oil business. I mean, I could stop it if I wanted, to sell China the oil myself. I don’t want to do that. They’re going to need money to put that country back into shape. We want to see that happen.

Would it? No. If they’re going to sell oil, they’re going to sell oil. We’re not taking over the oil. We could have. You know, I used to say with Iraq, “keep the oil.” I could say it here, too. We could have kept the oil. No, China is going to want to buy oil. They can buy it from us. They can buy it from other people. But you’re going to have to put that country back into shape. It desperately needs money.

Putin Assessment and Peace Efforts

REPORTER: Mr. President, Secretary General Rutte has described President Putin as an adversary, a threat, an enemy. Do you view him the same way? And in addition to that, you mentioned General Kellogg, your chief of staff. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Kellogg. He has said that Mr. Putin has territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine. Do you view that in the same way?

TRUMP: Possible. I mean, it’s possible. I know one thing. He’d like to settle. He’d like to get out of this thing. It’s a mess for him. He called the other day. He said, “Can I help you with Iran?” I said, “No, you can help me with Russia” because, you know, in the last few weeks, we took care of India and Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia. I think on Friday we have coming in. The Congo is coming in and Rwanda is coming in. It was a vicious war that went on, a machete war, heads chopped off all over Africa. They’re coming in. We did two others. In addition to that, nobody’s ever done anything like this.

No, I consider him a person that’s, I think, been misguided. I’m very surprised, actually. I thought we would have had that settled easy. I’ve settled four of them in the meantime. But he did call up and he said, you know, he’s close to Iran. He’d like to help us get a settlement. I said, “No, no, you help me get a settlement with you, with Russia.” And I think we’re going to be doing that.

Iran Nuclear Material and Future Negotiations

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. You’ve made clear your position on what impact the strikes had. I wanted to ask you, what is next with Iran? For instance, is there any indication from U.S. intelligence that Iran was able to move any material?

TRUMP: No, we just the opposite. We think we hit him so hard and so fast they didn’t get to move. And if you knew about that material, it’s very hard and very dangerous to move. It’s called, it’s called, in many people they call it dust, but it’s very, very heavy. It’s very, very hard to move. And they were way down. You know, they’re 30 stories down. They’re literally 30, 35 stories down underground. We think we got what we think it’s covered with granite, concrete and steel.

REPORTER: Are you interested in restarting negotiations with Iran? And if so, have they…

TRUMP: So our people, Marco could answer this, but our people are not. I’m not the way I look at it. They fought. The war is done. And, you know, I could get a statement that they’re not going to go nuclear. We’re probably going to ask for that, but they’re not going to be doing it. But they’re not going to be doing it anyway. They’ve had it. They’ve had it. Now, maybe someday in the future we’ll want that. But I’ve asked Marco, do you want to draw? I just asked him the question as we were walking on the stage. You want to draw up a little agreement for them to sign? Because I think we can get him to sign it. I don’t think it’s necessary. Marco, do you want to talk about that, please?

RUBIO: Mr. President, I think you President Trump has shown a willingness to meet and talk to anybody in the world who’s interested in peace. I don’t know of any president that’s been as willing as he has to meet with anyone and talk about peace. We’d love to have peaceful relations with any country in the world. And so obviously, that’ll depend on Iran’s willingness not just to engage in peace, but to negotiate directly with the United States, not through some third country or fourth country process. But I know of no president, probably in our modern history, that’s sought peace more than President Trump has.

REPORTER: You’re in no rush. Is that right?

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what. Look, we’re going to talk to them next week with Iran. We may sign an agreement. I don’t know. To me, I don’t think it’s that necessary. I mean, they had a war. They fought. Now they’re going back to their world. I don’t care if I have an agreement or not. We the only thing we’d be asking for is what we were asking for before about we want no nuclear. But we destroyed the nuclear. In other words, that’s destroyed. I said Iran will not have nuclear. Well, we blew it up. It’s blown up. The kingdom come. And so I don’t feel very strongly about it. If we got a document, wouldn’t be bad. We’re going to meet with them. Actually, we’re going to meet with them.

Meeting with Zelensky and Ukraine War

REPORTER: Yes, Mr. President. Netherlands TV. Thank you for visiting our country.

TRUMP: Thank you.

REPORTER: Of course, like to know how you slept last night at the house.

TRUMP: Oh, I slept beautifully.

REPORTER: Probably more serious question. I think you just had a meeting with President Zelensky. Did you discuss any ceasefire in this Russo-Ukrainian?

TRUMP: No, no. I just I wanted to know how he’s doing. He was very nice, actually. You know, we had little rough times. He was there. Couldn’t have been nicer. I think he’d like to see an end to this. I do. I think what I took from the meeting couldn’t have been nicer, actually. But I took from the meeting that he’d like to see it end. I think it’s a great time to end it. I’m going to speak to Vladimir Putin, see if we can get it ended.

But look, these are brave people. They’re fighting these wars all over the place. You know, last week they had, I guess, close. I told you seven close to 7000 young soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers were killed. Seven thousand in one week. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. So I’ll be speaking to Putin. No, I had a good meeting with Zelensky. And I had a lot of good meetings. We had a lot of good meetings with a lot of people, a lot of great leaders. But he’s fighting a brave battle. It’s a tough battle.

Finland Relations and Icebreaker Negotiations

REPORTER: Thank you. Iina Hallikainen from Finland, Ilta-Sanomat. You have played golf with President Alexander Stubb. How do you see Finland as a NATO ally and partner? And how would you describe your relationship with our president?

TRUMP: He’s a very good golfer. Okay. In fact, he was in his college golf team. He went to a good college in the South, as you know, a very good college. And he was a good golfer. We had a good time. I think my relationship’s great. I want to buy icebreakers. You know, you’re very good at icebreakers. And I actually made him an offer. I didn’t go to Congress. They’ll try and impeach me for this. But there’s an old it’s not old. It’s fairly new, but it’s used icebreaker. And I offered him about one third of what he asked for. But we’re negotiating. We need icebreakers in the U.S. And if we can get some inexpensively, I’d like to do that. Actually, they’ll fix it up, make it good. Also, we may buy some icebreakers. You know that you make you’re the king of icebreakers. That particular country,

PRESIDENT TRUMP: they make them good. They make them really good. And they know what they’re doing. And so we’re negotiating with them for about 15 different icebreakers. But one of them is available now. It’s old and it’s, you know, old. It’s like five, six years old. And we’re trying to buy it. I’m trying to make a good deal. All I do my whole life, my whole life. That’s all I do is make deals.

Yeah, please. Go ahead, sir. Go ahead.

REPORTER: Yeah, question for a news hour, Dutch TV. First of all, on Article 5, on your way here, you spoke about the commitment of the U.S. to Article 5, saying, “I’ll give you my definition once we’re here.” What is your definition? And may the U.S. commitment to Article 5 change in case some of the NATO members do not reach the threshold that was discussed today? My second question is following up on a colleague on Iran. What Intel reports do say that everything over there was obliterated?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, well, there are numerous of those reports and they’re coming out fast and furious. But the most respected ones we’ve already seen. And I will say that on a very confidential basis, they’re looking at the reports, like numerous reports, and including people going to the site and checking the site. And they’re going to be having — I guess you’re going to be having over the next couple of days a full — you’re going to encapsulate it. But no, the site was obliterated, just like I said it was. And just like the pilots should be given credit for.

As far as Article 5, look, when I came here, I came here because it was something I’m supposed to be doing. But I left here a little bit different — differently. I said — I watched the heads of these countries get up. And the love and the passion that they showed for their country was unbelievable. I’ve never seen quite anything like it. They want to protect their country and they need the United States. And without the United States, it’s not going to be the same. And you can ask Mark or you can ask any of the people that were there. It was really moving to see it. They love their country. They were so respectful of me because I’m the head of the United States.

And I made — you know, the king of Saudi Arabia, when I was in — I was in the Middle East. So I was in Qatar for a different reason, not a reason to get shot at. We were in there for economic development reasons — Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. All three leaders of those countries — and we took back $5.1 trillion into the United States. All three leaders said, you know, you’re presiding over the hottest country in the world. The United States right now is the hottest country. Everybody wants to be there. Everybody — everybody wants a piece of it. He said, a year ago, your country was dead. You had a deadhead running it. You had a country that was dead. And it was dead. You had people pouring through the borders. It had inflation. You had everything. He said, you’ve made it in five months at that time. You’ve made it the hottest country. This is the hottest country in the world. The United States right now is the hottest country in the world.

And when I was around that table, it was a nice group of people, many of whom I knew from previous — when I saw the passion they had for the country, almost everyone — and you probably have the tapes. It was very public, but almost every one of them said, “thank God for the United States.” Without the United States, we couldn’t — they couldn’t really have NATO. It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work. It will in the future, because now they’re paying much more money, but it wouldn’t work. It was great. And I left here differently. I left here saying that these people really love their countries. It’s not a ripoff, and we’re here to help them protect their country.

Spain’s NATO Contributions and Trade Implications

Okay, we’ll do one or two more.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. A question on Spain. Are you satisfied with today’s —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, I think Spain’s terrible, what they’ve done. No, I do. They’re the only country that won’t pay the full up. They want to stay at 2 percent. I think it’s terrible. And, you know, they’re doing very well. The economy is very well. And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening. No, Spain is the only country that — are you from Spain? Good. Congratulations. You’re the only country that is not paying. I don’t know what the problem is. I think it’s too bad.

So we’ll make it up. You know what we’re going to do? We’re negotiating with Spain on a trade deal. We’re going to make them pay twice as much. And I’m actually serious about that. We’re going to make Spain — I like Spain. I have so many people from Spain that — it’s a great place, and they’re great people. But Spain is the only country out of all of the countries that refuses to pay. And, you know, so they want a little bit of a free ride. But they’ll have to pay it back to us on trade because I’m not going to let that happen. It’s unfair. It’s unfair, isn’t it?

Ukraine War Progress and Global Conflict Resolution

All right, sir, please. Go ahead, right in the back. Yeah, you, tall one. The tall man.

REPORTER: Mr. President, Johannes Ketterer from Austrian National Television. Now, you once said that you would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. You later said you said that sarcastically. Of course it was sarcastic. But you’ve now been in office for five months and five days. Why have you not been able to end the Ukraine war?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Because it’s more difficult than people would have any idea. Vladimir Putin has been more difficult. Frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky. You may have read about him. And it’s been more difficult than other wars. I mean, look, we just ended a war in 12 days that was simmering for 30 years, frankly. We ended Rwanda and the Congo. It’s coming to sign the documents. We’ve already signed basic documents, but they’re coming, I think, to the White House on Friday. We ended. Serbia was going to go at it.

But maybe the most important of all, India and Pakistan. And that wasn’t whether or not they may someday have nukes, like we’re talking about in the Middle East, like we’re talking about with Israel and Iran. This is the half nuclear weapons. I ended that with a series of phone calls on trade. I said, look, if you’re going to go fighting each other, it’s going to — it was getting very bad. You know how bad that last attack was. It was really bad. If you’re going to go fighting each other, we’re not doing any trade deal. No, no, no. You have to do a trade deal. They said, we’re not doing any trade deal.

And, in fact, I had the general, who really was very impressive. The general from Pakistan was in my office last week. You know, Prime Minister Modi is a great friend of mine. He’s a great gentleman. He’s a great man. And I got them to reason. I said, we’re not doing a trade deal if you’re going to fight. And if you’re going to fight each other, we’re not doing a trade deal. And you know what? They said, no, I want to do the trade deal. We stopped the nuclear war. Go ahead.

Go ahead, Jeff. Here’s another beauty, Jeff. Here’s that beauty, all right. Go ahead.

Ukraine Funding and Dutch Opposition Leader Meeting

REPORTER: Mr. President, a follow-up on Ukraine. Will the United States contribute any more money to Ukraine’s defense this year to the $5 billion that allies are giving? And one question, you had another meeting with the Dutch opposition leader, Mr. Wilders. Can you tell us about that meeting? And are you upset about his anti-Muslim stance?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m not upset about it. It’s just his view. He’s unhappy with the way things are going in this country and various countries. He was an opposition leader. And I was asked to meet with the opposition leader by the people that are running. I think they have some deal where if you have a meeting, you’re supposed to meet with an opposition leader. I said, that’s strange. We don’t do that. But I met with the — I didn’t know him. He seemed like a very nice guy. But he’s in opposition to the current people, and that was set up by the current people. So I assume when I met with

TRUMP: the prime minister, you’re supposed to meet with the opposition. We’ll have to try that sometime in our country. Let’s not do it. But he was very good. As far as the money going, we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot of spirit. Look, Vladimir Putin really has to end that war. People are dying at levels that people haven’t seen before for a long time. Go ahead. Go ahead. White shirt. Oh, she’s all excited. BBC News Ukrainian. Where are you from?

REPORTER: I’m from Ukraine.

TRUMP: Oh, wow. So my question to you is whether or not the U.S. is ready to sell anti-air missile systems Patriot to Ukraine. We know that Russia has been pounding Ukraine really heavily right now. Are you living yourself now in Ukraine?

REPORTER: My husband is there.

TRUMP: Wow. I can see you’re very — you know, it’s amazing. And me with the kids. I’m in Warsaw, actually, because he wanted me to be — Is your husband a soldier now?

REPORTER: He’s — He’s there now?

TRUMP: Yeah. Wow. That’s rough stuff, right? That’s tough. And you’re living here?

REPORTER: In Warsaw. And you’re a reporter?

TRUMP: I am. Good. So let me just tell you, they do want to have the anti-missile missiles, okay, as they call them, the Patriots. And we’re going to see if we can make some available. You know, they’re very hard to get. We need them, too. We were supplying them to Israel. And they’re very effective. A hundred percent effective. Hard to believe how effective. And they do want that more than any other thing, as you probably know. That’s a very good question, and I wish you a lot of luck. I mean, I can see it’s very upsetting to you. So, say hello to your husband, okay?

REPORTER: Thank you.

TRUMP: Go ahead.

Federal Reserve Chair Criticism

REPORTER: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. You were criticizing — Where are you from?

TRUMP: Bloomberg News.

REPORTER: Oh, Bloomberg. That’s wonderful. You were criticizing the Federal Reserve chair before coming to this summit.

TRUMP: Yeah, I think he’s terrible.

REPORTER: I was wondering if you’ve begun interviewing different candidates for the Fed pick.

TRUMP: Yeah, I know within three or four people who I’m going to pick. I mean, he goes out pretty soon, fortunately, because I think he’s terrible. We have no inflation. We have a tremendous economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff money is pouring in. Factories are being built because they don’t want to pay the tariffs, so they’re building them all over the country. I think we’re close to $15 trillion — I told you, $5.1 trillion from the Middle East alone — but of investment money coming in. There’s never been anything like that in the history of our country. But we have no inflation. And we have borrowing, because Biden, stupidly, they did short-term debt. So we have borrowing coming up. And, you know, we’ll go 10 years, maybe longer, maybe shorter, but we’ll go a long period of time when we do the debt. And because of him, because of this guy, we will have to pay — for years, we’ll be paying for him. And I said to him, listen, there’s no inflation.

He says, but maybe there’ll be some. I said, if there is some, what you do is raise the rate. I’m okay with that. You raise the rate, and two years from now or a year from now. But because the rate’s high, we have to pay more for debt. It’s pretty equal. In other words, if it’s 4 percent, it’s 4 percent. If you drop it a point, you’ll pay 3 percent. So it’s fairly equal. Not necessarily, but fairly equal. So we’re going to end up paying maybe two points or three points more. Three points would be about $900 billion a year because of this very average mentally person. He’s an average mentally person. I’d say low in terms of what he does. Low. Low IQ for what he does, okay? Anyway, so instead of paying $900 billion, we don’t want to pay $900 just because he doesn’t want to lower the rate. I said, if there’s inflation in two years or three years or one year from now, you raise the rate. You take care of the inflation, among other things. But he’s probably a very political guy, I guess. I don’t know. I think he’s a very stupid person, actually.

Spain NATO Payments

TRUMP: All right, one more. Let’s go. How about you? Go ahead. She looks so happy and everything.

REPORTER: Thank you. I’m from Spain, too. I’m Annabelle from La Vanguardia. I wanted to know if— You’re where from?

TRUMP: Spain, too. I wanted to know if you want to— That’s the Spain corner right there. Shouldn’t have said that. That’s okay. I do like Spain, by the way. I think it’s unfair that they’re not paying, but go ahead. Are you going to negotiate directly with Spain about—

REPORTER: I’m going to negotiate directly with Spain. I’m going to do it myself. They’re going to pay. They’ll pay more money this way. You should tell them to go back and pay. You’re a reporter? Tell them to go back. They ought to join all of those countries that are paying 5%. Spain’s going to be just about the only one that’s not. They were the most hostile toward doing it. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Okay.

Intelligence Assessment on Fordo

TRUMP: All right, Kelly, go ahead. Here we go. Here’s another one. We got them all today. So, Mr. President, you talked about expecting some on-the-ground assessments at Fordo and other sites. Is that really an U.S.?

REPORTER: It’s been obliterated, Kelly. It’s been obliterated. What is your message, Senator, to the intelligence community when they present reports? You’re not disputing the D.I.A. report. You’re just…

TRUMP: They presented a report that wasn’t finished. We’re talking about something that took place three days ago.

REPORTER: I understand. The report was done three days ago.

TRUMP: Wait a minute. Yes. All they can do is take a guess. Now, if you take a look at the pictures, if you take a look at how it’s all blackened, you know the fire and brimstone is all underground because it’s granite and it’s all underground. You don’t show it. But even there, with all of that being said, the whole area for 75 yards around, the hole where it hit is black with fire. The group that’s run by this gentleman, in fact, you may want to talk about it for a second because we’re going to issue a report. And I think it’s not even a very exciting report at this point. It’s been obliterated, totally obliterated. And they did a report, but it was like, if you look at the dates, it’s just a few days after it happened.

REPORTER: Understood, sir. So they didn’t see it. They said it may be very severe. Understood. Go ahead. Do you have a message for the intelligence community, though, in terms of unvarnished information getting to you, that it’s not…

TRUMP: I don’t really have a message. I would say issue the report when you know what happened. I wouldn’t say that it could be severe or maybe not. They use the word severe. It could be severe or maybe it’s not. So people like you picked up and said, oh, it’s not severe. No, the report was not a complete report. Yeah, the message was probably wait till you know the answer before you… And sir, did you not have a public opponent here, Zelensky, meeting for a tactical reason with President Putin? Let him answer this question.

Secretary Hegseth Defends Military Operations

TRUMP: Hello, Mr. Secretary.

HEGSETH: Yeah. There’s a reason the president calls out fake news for what it is. These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people in the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom. And then the instinct, the instinct of CNN, the instinct of The New York Times is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons, to try to hurt President Trump or our country. They don’t care what the troops think. They don’t care what the world thinks. They want to spin it to try to make him look bad based on a leak. Of course, we’ve all seen plenty of leakers and what leakers do. They have agendas. And what do they do? They share the whole information or just the part that they want to introduce. And when they introduce that preliminary, a preliminary report that’s deemed to be low, a low assessment, you know, a low assessment means low confidence in the data in that report. And why is there low confidence? Because all of the evidence of what was just bombed by 12, 30,000 pound bombs is buried under a

TRUMP: mountain, devastated and obliterated. So if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Fordow, you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran’s nuclear program is obliterated. And somebody somewhere is trying to leak something to say, “oh, with low confidence, we think maybe it’s moderate.” Those that dropped the bombs precisely in the right place know exactly what happened when that exploded. And you know who else knows? Iran. That’s why they came to the table right away, because their nuclear capabilities have been set back beyond what they thought were possible because of the courage of a commander in chief who led our troops, despite what the fake news wants to say.

REPORTER: But you’re not disputing the report said what it said, even though it was initial.

TRUMP: The report said what it said, and it was fine. It was severe, they think, but they had no idea. They shouldn’t have issued a report until they did. But we’ve gotten the information. I think Pete said it better than you can say it. And you know, you should be proud you especially you should be proud of those pilots and you shouldn’t be trying to demean them. Those pilots flew at great risk, a big chance that they’ve never come back home and see their husbands or their wives.

Criticism of Media Coverage

TRUMP: Let me just tell you, you and NBC fake news, which is one of the worst. And CNN, New York Times are all bad. They’re sick. There’s something wrong with them. But you know what? You should be praising those people instead of trying to find something. By getting me, by trying to go and get me, you’re hurting those people. They were devastated. You know, I got a call from Missouri, great state that I won three times by a lot. And I got a call that the pilots and the people on the plane were devastated because they were trying to minimize the attack. And they all said it was hit, but “oh, but we don’t think it was really maybe hit that badly.” And they were devastated. They put their lives on the line.

TRUMP: And then they have, and I’m not referring to you, but real scum, real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. It should be the opposite. You should make them heroes and heroines. You should make them really people that they were so devastated when they heard this news. And you know what they said? One of them, I spoke to one of them, said, “sir, we hit the site. It was perfect. It was dead on” because they don’t understand fake news because they have a normal life, except they have to fly very big, very fast planes. But it’s a shame. You should be making them heroes. All right. In the back. Go ahead. Back. White. Yeah. White jacket. Yeah. Go ahead. Give my mic.

NATO Leadership Dynamic

REPORTER: Hello. Deborah Haynes from Sky News. Mark Rutte, the NATO chief, who is your friend. He called you daddy earlier. Do you regard your NATO allies as kind of children?

TRUMP: No, he likes me. I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll let you know. I’ll come back and I’ll hit him hard. OK, now. He did. He did it very affectionate. “Daddy, you’re my daddy.”

REPORTER: Do you regard your NATO allies, though, as kind of like children and they’re obviously listening to you and they’re spending more and you’re obviously a parent?

TRUMP: No, I’m not a parent. I think they need help a little bit at the beginning and I think they’ll be able to. And I think they’re going to remember this day. And this was a big day for NATO. You know, this was a very big day. They took it. One of the gentlemen said, “You know what? We’ve been trying to raise money for raise the rate for 30 years,” he said, “20 years from almost the beginning.” And he’s been there for a long time. He said, “Until you came along, it never happened. What you did is amazing.” It’s been sort of an amazing day for a lot of reasons, but also for that. Yeah, go ahead.

REPORTER: They can do it without you, though, in the future. Can they do it?

TRUMP: Well, ask Mark. Just ask Mark.

Closing Remarks

TRUMP: OK, so we’re heading back. We’re heading back. I want to thank these two gentlemen behind me. They’re incredible people. Both of them. They’re really. They’ve done a fantastic job. And Susie’s in the front, and she’s done great and Monica. Thank you very much. It was quite an exciting time. And we’re going to be heading back. We’ll be back soon. And we’ll see you in Washington, D.C. Remember this. We have the hottest country anywhere in the world. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

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