FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump News Conference at Trump Tower, New York

Our country’s never been under siege like this.

Border Security Policies

DONALD TRUMP: Four years ago, Kamala inherited the most secure border in U.S. history, with the lowest illegal immigration on record. You know the chart. I love that chart. I love that chart. I probably wouldn’t be here right now except for that chart. Those who violated our borders were captured, detained, and quickly sent back home under the Trump administration.

But on her first day in office, Kamala Harris terminated every single Trump policy that sealed and secured the border. She ordered an immediate stop to the completion of the border wall. It was almost complete. We built hundreds and hundreds of miles of wall, and it worked. I always said, walls and wheels. Everything else is obsolete. But walls and wheels, and this wall worked. And we were ready to build and throw up another 200. Could have been done within weeks. Everything was complete. The wall was all built, ready to go, laying there, ready to be fixed. All they had to do was throw it up, and you would have had an extra 200 miles of wall, far more than I promised in the election.

She suspended all deportations. She instituted catch and release across the entire southern border. And we had catch and release also. We released in Mexico. Her catch and release was to release in the United States and never see them again. She sent Congress a bill demanding amnesty for all illegal aliens. Every single illegal alien, even if they’re criminals, even if they’re murderers, even if they’re drug dealers, human traffickers. She wanted amnesty for everybody. Radical left. This is a radical left person.

Immigration Policies

DONALD TRUMP: She terminated remain in Mexico, something that took me and a lot of talent, a lot of other people. But it took a lot of talent to get from the President of Mexico, a good man. But we got it. You had to remain in Mexico. You couldn’t come in under any circumstance. You weren’t allowed into the United States until we checked it out, and many people did not come in and were not allowed to come in because they didn’t check out. They were drug dealers. They were gang members. They were in jail for murder in a couple of cases. We wouldn’t let them in.

And she canceled every safe third agreement. Anybody here, I think, would know what that is, but that was a horrible thing that she did. And she canceled remain in Mexico. Here we have something, remain in Mexico. You don’t have to explain it. She canceled.

She ordered ICE to halt the removal of virtually all criminal aliens, including MS-13 gang members, the worst gang anywhere in the world, they say. Evil, evil gang. She ended all of our programs that we instituted to stop child and woman trafficking. The trafficking is at a level now that it’s never been before. I had it down to the lowest level it’s been in 32 years because we had such a strong border they couldn’t get through. But now it’s the worst it’s been in 32 years plus.

Child Trafficking and Border Statistics

DONALD TRUMP: And then she lost, and this is probably the worst statistic of them all, 325,000 children. Think of that. Three and a half years. She lost 325,000 children, and they’re either dead, being sold into sex slavery, or just plain missing. Think of the number, 325,000, if that were a Republican instead of her. And she was the border czar. She says, well, I wasn’t the border czar. She was. And tomorrow she’ll make a case that, oh, she did a fairly good job. You can’t say much. You can’t justify it.

She should save her airfare. She should go back to the White House and tell the President to close the border. He can do it with the signing of just a signature and a piece of paper to the Border Patrol. Instead, she’s going there to try and convince people that she wasn’t as bad as everybody knows she was. She was the worst in history. Grossly incompetent, weak, and ineffective. But all you have to do is ask Brandon Judd, Border Patrol. You could ask any of them. Tom Holman. We had the best people that we’ve ever had. And they said Trump was the best President on the border ever.

Policy Changes and Executive Orders

DONALD TRUMP: She ripped up every single reform that we put in place to stop asylum fraud. She ended a travel ban that was unbelievably successful. We had the strongest travel ban anywhere in the world. And it was upheld by the United States Supreme Court. She canceled Title 42. That was a medical title. She canceled it. Very hard to get.

And altogether, she took 93 executive orders that I put on, all which made the border the best border we’ve ever had in recorded history. And she terminated them, along with Joe Biden. The worst administration in the history of our country. And on the border, it’s not even close.

Illegal Immigration Statistics

DONALD TRUMP: Because of these acts, in less than four years, 21 million illegal aliens at least. That’s the real number. You don’t hear that. You hear 15, 16. Sometimes you hear 17. The number is at least 21 million. And on top of that, you have gotaways. That’s gotaways. People that came over or got away. And they’ve stormed across our border like nobody in history on any border anywhere in the world. There’s never been any border in history where you had millions of people storming us like that. No third-world country would allow it.

But she allowed it because she’s incompetent. She allowed it because she never went there. She says she went once, but it was not the right location. It was a location that was very mild and no danger. She never went there. She’s going there tomorrow. After almost four years, she’s going there tomorrow to try and show you what a great job she did. But even now, the numbers are terrible.

Migrant Relocation Programs

DONALD TRUMP: And remember, they’re flying people over, and they haven’t stopped that. They’re flying hundreds of thousands of people over the border right now. They never stopped that. They didn’t think they’d be caught, but they were two weeks ago. From prisons and jails, mental institutions, and insane asylum, all these are sane asylums where you have the sickest people, mentally ill people, and terrorists at record levels. We’ve never had terrorists come into our country like this. They come, and they keep coming and coming, and nobody has ever seen anything like it.

People that go to the border, they look professionals, and they said there’s never been anything like this in the history of the world, and they’re destroying — they are destroying the fabric of our country. She did nothing to stop any of it. In fact, she encouraged them to keep coming, and you know that. For years, she did. Only recently did she say, oh, well, we’re going to try and put a stop to it.

And I ask again, you know, this should be the why didn’t she do it speech. Why didn’t she do it? All of these things, including unrelated elements to what we’re talking about now, like taxes, like military, like so many other things, why didn’t she do it? She’s got plans for the future. Why didn’t she do it? She’s been there almost four years.

Kamala created a brand-new program to fly in migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua, and resettle them in American communities, including small towns all across our nation, but in particular in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. Nobody can believe it. These towns have been destroyed, and the mayors of the towns and the governors of the states can’t talk about it because they’re embarrassed that they allowed it to happen.

Digital Immigration Programs

DONALD TRUMP: In addition, through her phone app — something totally new now — it’s a phone app for migrants, where migrants call in, highly sophisticated migrants. She’s allowed virtually unlimited numbers of illegals to press a button, schedule their illegal immigration appointment at our ports of entry, and show up to be released into the interior of our country. Can anybody believe this?

And they’re invading our towns. It’s an invasion of our country like no country has ever had to suffer before. And this was purposeful. They did this on purpose. This was not a mistake on their part. They did this on purpose because their policies are so wrong and so evil and so unfair. And there’s only three reasons they’d want to do that. Number one, they’re incompetent, and I’m not sure that that’s the reason. Number two, they want it for the votes. Number three, you know what that one is. We don’t have to talk about that one. But there can only be a very few reasons, because they’re destroying our country at a level that’s never been seen before.

Border Statistics and Community Impact

DONALD TRUMP: Importantly, as part of this con job — it’s a con job — none of the illegal aliens she is smuggling in through the ports or on the airplanes — think of it — big jet planes loaded up with migrants flying into the middle of our country and going to Iowa and lots of other states. They’ve all become border states. We only have border states now. And they’re counted in the Border Patrol statistics.

And when you do that, you can add a lot of numbers, because they’re not taking those counts. They want to have those counts not included in the numbers. In Aurora, Colorado, Springfield, Ohio, where it’s been a mass invasion, these were two beautiful, successful towns — idyllic. And they’re in trouble. Big trouble. And very unfair. The people want to leave. They want to get out. But everyone is afraid to say, I want to get out, because they want to be politically correct.

And other towns just like them — hundreds of them all over America — Americans have watched their communities destroyed by this sudden, suffocating inundation of illegal aliens. It’s an inundation. It’s an invasion. This influx has overwhelmed our schools. They’re taking the seats of students that can no longer go there, and they don’t even speak English. They’re trying to fire a lot of people and hire interpreters. Can you believe that?

They want to get rid of some people. They want to hire — Springfield is looking — the mayor said it the other day — looking for interpreters, because nobody in all of the 32,000 people that took into the town — think of this. You have a town of 50,000 people, and almost instantly you have 32,000 people, in this case from Haiti. Most of them don’t speak English. So they’re looking for interpreters. You have to get them out. We have to save our country. You have to save these towns.

Economic Impact and Job Market

DONALD TRUMP: They flooded the job market with low-wage migrants, but many cases, migrants that also have horrible criminal records — murder, drug dealing, so many different things, a lot of human traffickers, and it’s mostly human traffickers in women. Last month, American-born workers lost 1.3 million jobs. This is last month. You know, when they lowered the interest rates, they weren’t doing it necessarily just for political. Our economy is terrible, especially when you add inflation into it. Inflation has destroyed our middle class. It’s destroyed our senior citizens.

And all of these people coming in are horrible for the black population and the Hispanic population. They’re taking the jobs of the black population at levels that they’ve never seen before — Hispanic also. They’re suffering, and the families are suffering. They go out, they think they have a job, and they’ve lost a job to an illegal migrant. So we’ve lost 1.3 million jobs last month. Think of that. And now we’ve gained, out of that number, 635,000 jobs. But every single one of them was an illegal migrant.

They’ve also — as you know, and you’ve heard me talk about it, it just happened very recently, we found out — 818,000 jobs were fraud. They fraudulently claimed that the economy picked up 818,000 more jobs than they stated. And a whistleblower or leaker let it be known that that was false, that the 18 — the 818,000 jobs was a false fraud. It was a fraud. It should be investigated, by the way.

But Biden knew about it, and Kamala knew about it. And they were going to release the real figures right after the election. But by putting 818,000 phony, fake, disgusting jobs that don’t exist — by putting them on the rolls, it made them look much better a short while ago. But they didn’t quite make it to past Election Day. So to that whistleblower or leaker, I want to, on behalf of the American public, thank you very much.

Kamala Harris’s Background

DONALD TRUMP: These people are a fraud, just like nobody talks about it. But Kamala never had a job at McDonald’s. Her resume talks about McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s. When I worked at the French fry counter, it was so tough, so hard. She didn’t work there. She never worked at McDonald’s. It was a lie.

Crime and Immigration

DONALD TRUMP: Most heartbreaking of all is Kamala’s migrant invasion has brought massive crime into our country at levels that nobody has ever seen before. We’ve never seen levels like this. And during the debate, I mentioned that, and David Muir, a real lightweight, whose ratings have gone way down, by the way, because he lost credibility — I had one against three, but I think we did great.

But David Muir of ABC — fake news — when I said that crime is way up in our country, he corrected me. He corrected me on so much, and it was right, what I said. He didn’t correct her one time, and what she said was wrong — absolutely wrong. So many different — Charlottesville, she was wrong. All of the different things, almost everything she said, and she was never corrected.

But he corrected me in crime. He said, No, no, crime has not gone up. I said, Crime has gone up massively. He said, I’d like to state for the record that crime has not gone up. Now, you don’t know this, but we had a deal with ABC that there will be no corrections of any kind, and they violated the deal. Why? Because they’re bad people and they’re fake news. So he did it many times to me during the debate. He violated the deal. That’s the deal. Because you can take anything and try and make up stories with it. We had a deal where that wouldn’t happen.

Media and Debate Controversy

DONALD TRUMP: You could do whatever you wanted as soon as the debate was over. But he did it in total violation of what our agreement was. And a lot of people are standing right over there. We’ll tell you exactly what it was. We’ll show you what it was. David Muir has lost all credibility. The other person, I never heard of her. I never want to hear of her. She was terrible. I don’t know how she ever got her job in the first place.

But we have a country to save, and we can’t have fake news like that. And his ratings deserve to go down.

Crime and Illegal Immigration in New York

DONALD TRUMP: Here in New York City, an estimated 75 percent of arrests in midtown Manhattan and over 60 percent of arrests in Queens are now illegal aliens. They’ve given you the fake stories that the illegals coming into the country are much better than our people. They don’t commit crimes. These are some of the worst criminals anywhere in the world.

And they don’t just come from South America. They come from all over the world. The Congo in Africa, a lot of them coming from the Congo. The Middle East, Asia, they do come from South America, but not all. They’re coming from all over the world, and they’re emptying out their jails, and they’re emptying out their mental institutions. The money they’re saving is beyond belief in what they’re doing to our country. And if I were the president of one of those countries, I’d be doing the same thing. I’d say, let’s empty out our jails into the United States.

We’re dumping ground for the rest of the world, and it’s going to stop starting on January 20th. But the most important day in the history of our country is going to be November 5th, American Day.

Violent Crime Incidents

DONALD TRUMP: Three months ago, in Queens, an illegal alien released into our country by Border czar Harris approached two 13-year-old children with a machete in broad daylight, forced them into the woods, tied them together by the wrists, and raped the young girl, hurt the girls very, very badly. They caught him because he put it on tape, he put it on film. When he caught him, he thought it would be nice to have it on tape to show his friends.

In June, two NYPD officers were shot at point-blank range by an illegal migrant from Venezuela. By the way, the crime rate in Venezuela is down to the lowest level it’s ever been that they know of because they’ve taken their street gangs, they’ve taken their criminals off the streets, they’ve taken their drug dealers, and they’ve emptied their jails almost. They’ll be emptied very soon, within the next two months. I guess they can’t get enough buses. But they’re bringing people at record levels to our country. These are criminals. And their crime rate is the lowest it’s been ever that anybody can remember.

Caracas has become a safe and wonderful city, unlike our cities that are getting worse and worse with this horrible invasion that Kamala, in particular, because I’m no fan of Biden. He’s been a terrible president, doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he proved that during the debate. But you know what? He assigned her the job.

And whether you call her a border czar or just say that she was put in charge of the border, doesn’t make any difference. Same thing. She’s done a horrible job. And she’ll be out there tomorrow, standing probably in front of the wall that I built, trying to say what a wonderful job she did. And the fake news will believe her because that’s what they want to do. But she didn’t. And I hope everybody out there understands that.

The Border Patrol custody was incredible. And I have to say that Border Patrol has done an amazing, an amazing job under the circumstances. And you heard Tom Holman many times say there was never anywhere near anybody as good as President Trump when it came to all of the things that we’re talking about. The border, crime on the border. He said there wasn’t anybody even close as president.

More Violent Crime Incidents

DONALD TRUMP: In Albany last May, an illegal alien who was caught and released by Kamala Harris stalked and raped a 15-year-old girl, driving up behind her, abducting her by force with a metal pipe and raping her again and again, over and over, and hurting her very badly.

In Indiana this June, a woman was kidnapped by two illegal aliens, brought to a house, held down and raped, and then forced into the back of a car while illegals drove around talking about how to kill her. Let’s find out how to kill her. She threw herself out of the moving vehicle, was badly hurt, but escaped. And she said, they didn’t mean to rape me. They meant to kill me. That was her statement.

Earlier this year, an illegal migrant from Haiti granted entry by Kamala and her horrible policies. And in particular, her phone app, which nobody can even believe exists. And the people that deal with the phone app are the cartel heads, if you can believe this. They’re actually put there, I believe, for the heads of the cartels. And they call it, and they tell you exactly where to illegally bring the people that they’ve, in many cases, abducted the phone app. I hope the press looks into that.

Brutally stabbed this woman to death. Two people in suburban Middletown, New York, are looking at this with a life that will always be shattered. It will be shattered and can never be the same. The brutality was unbelievable.

Criticism of Kamala Harris

DONALD TRUMP: And despite all of this, Kamala Harris intends to stand before the American people tomorrow and lie. She’s going to lie just like she did about her job at McDonald’s. Just like she did about the 818,000 jobs that they created that were fake jobs. They didn’t exist. It’s a fraud. And there’s nothing nice about what I’m saying. Our country is in trouble.

And we need people that know how to take care of our country and take care of our border. Without borders and without fair elections, we have no country. She wants to pretend that she had a secure border, but all you have to do is look at the numbers. The worst border anywhere, probably anywhere in the world, there’s never been a border like this.

A third-world country would have used sticks and stones to get people out. They wouldn’t let millions and millions of people invade. But if that were true, and if she were going to announce tomorrow that she’s going to do something about it, why hasn’t she done it? And why didn’t she do it almost four years ago?

All of these things she could have done four years ago. You will hear Kamala claim that the reason the border is not secure is that Congress has refused to pass her atrocious border bill. It’s the worst bill you’ve ever seen. It would allow people to come in here at levels that would be incredible and would allow them to get citizenship.

But it was not a border bill. It was an amnesty bill. And they duped a couple of people that shouldn’t have been duped. It would give her the power to put all newly-entering illegal aliens on a fast track to citizenship. It would enshrine and expand catch-and-release. And it would give a permanent feature of federal laws that are absolutely unacceptable.

Criticism of Proposed Border Bill

DONALD TRUMP: She keeps talking about this law that they tried to put through Congress. But fortunately, Congress was too smart for it. It would have been a disaster. It would have established a minimum number of illegal aliens who must be important because two million people per year, at a minimum, would have been, under this ridiculous bill, would have been allowed into our country. Two million people.

Now, of course, that’s peanuts compared to what’s coming in now and what’s coming in when the damage was really done. And look, the damage was done. They’re trying to make it look better now. But the damage was done over the first three years. They’re trying to do anything to make it look better, because it doesn’t poll very well for them.

But it polls very well for me. I think I won the election in 2016 because of the border. I fixed the border. I couldn’t even talk about the border. My people would say, Sir, nobody’s listening. You fixed it. Nobody cares. And then I got millions of more votes in 2020 than I got in 2016.

The most votes of any sitting president in history, by far. But I couldn’t talk about the border because I fixed it. I fixed it. It was great. But now we can’t talk about the border because this border, they unfixed it. This border is the worst border. And by the way, 25 times worse and more deadly than the border in 2016. That was considered a good border by compared to this.

But it would provide illegal, the bill, alien taxpayer-funded lawyers. Every illegal alien would have a taxpayer-funded lawyer. This is the bill that she said she wants. And funnel millions of dollars of left-wing organizations, people, to come into our country.

It would enable human trafficking. And by the way, she also wanted to have transgender operations for illegal migrants that were in detention. Now, think of that. She also wanted, as you know, to defund the police. She wants to defund the police. She was one of the leaders in the Defund the Police movement, and that lasted for years. And anybody that wants to defund the police for one day should never have the right to be President of the United States. And she was one of the leaders in that movement.

But think of that. She wants to give sex change operations to people in detention that came in illegally and are classified as illegal migrants. If they want a sex change operation, she said, that’s okay, we’ll do that. The only way to secure our border is to fire radical Border Guard Kamala Harris this November.

Economic Criticism

DONALD TRUMP: Look, we talk about the border. She’s been just as bad on everything else. We have the worst inflation, I think, in the history of our country. They say 48 years, but that’s pretty bad too. But I think the actual number of years is, I think it brings it out to the worst ever.

Kamala Harris endorsed abolishing ICE. She is seen as a down-with-deportations opportunist. But people don’t realize that the people of this country want deportations of those criminals. They want the murderers out. They want the drug dealers out. They want everybody out who’s going to hurt them. They want to have a safe country.

As I said before being interrupted by lightweight anchor David Muir, crime is massively up in our country. I was very lucky. The Department of Justice released numbers right after that debate. Somebody in there might like me. But they released numbers, giving the real numbers, and the numbers were unbelievably shockingly high, the highest ever. And I haven’t gotten an apology. I want an apology from ABC.

She supports free taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal aliens and even, as I said, some of the horrible things that she’s willing to do, including the sex change operations for people in detention. She called for abolishing immigration, detention centers. She wants to have detention centers, but detention centers that you can get out of.

Remember when, in 2014, Obama built cages, and the fake news tried to say, I built them. Fortunately, we had a great American that said, no, these were built during the Obama administration, and Biden knew about it. But I don’t think Biden knows too much.

Sanctuary Cities and San Francisco

DONALD TRUMP: And we have one other thing that she’s called. She’s called the grandmother of sanctuary cities. I’m going to terminate all sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals. They’re sanctuaries for criminals. And you know, you can go to California, where she ruined San Francisco. She destroyed San Francisco.

May have been the greatest city in the world 16, 18 years ago. And now it’s a practically unlivable place. And I hate to say that. I have property in San Francisco. It’s not a good thing to say. But this far supersedes my ownership of property. It’s an unlivable place. It was the best city.

Bob Tisch of Lowe’s, a friend of mine, great guy, wonderful man. He was in San Francisco. He was in Chicago. He had big businesses all over the Tisch family. Bob Tisch used to tell me that he thinks San Francisco is the greatest city in the country. Passed away quite a while ago. But and San Francisco probably was. And now it’s not even livable.

She destroyed it when she was the D.A. And she destroyed the state of California, along with Gavin Newsom. She destroyed the state of California when she was the A.G. If you can’t say the phrase illegal alien, she said, then we can’t trust you to secure the border.

Criticism of Kamala Harris’s Policies

DONALD TRUMP: She said, you’re not allowed to say the phrase under any circumstance illegal alien. But that’s what they are. And it’s that simple. She didn’t want you to use that term. If you used that term, you’d be fired. And by the way, she fired everybody in a row. She couldn’t get along with anybody.

You know, it’s interesting. Five months ago, she was considered the worst vice president in history. She was laughed at, scoffed at for three years. She was the worst. Her staff hated her beyond belief. They were quitting. She had almost nobody wanted to work there. She couldn’t get people to work for her. And she was just considered as bad as it gets.

And she wasn’t going to be chosen. There was no way that she was going to be chosen to replace Joe Biden. We had the debate. After the debate, they said, no, this guy, we got to change him.

Claims About Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi

DONALD TRUMP: I think we’re up 21 points. But they went in there and everyone knows they threatened the 25th Amendment. They threatened him with the 25th Amendment. They said, Joe, you’re going to get out. And Nancy Pelosi led the charge.

And Nancy Pelosi has a little problem because her husband sold their visa stock, had a lot of visa stock. One day before visa was announced that visa is being sued by the Department of Justice. Think of that. Nancy Pelosi sold vast amounts of visa stock one day before the big lawsuit that we all read about a few days ago was brought against visa. You think it was luck? I don’t think. She should be prosecuted.

Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted for that. I think you should also be prosecuted for J6 because she turned down 10,000 or any number she wanted, soldiers or National Guard. And I hope you all read John Solomon and what John Solomon wrote two days ago, because if you read it, you’d see that Donald Trump did absolutely nothing wrong. It’s a scam. It’s a scam.

Proposed Immigration Policies

DONALD TRUMP: On day one of my new administration, I will stop all migrant flights immediately. They should stop them tonight. She can do that. Just sign one little page saying, stop the migrant flights, but she won’t do that. They’re infecting our country. They’re destroying our country.

I will shut down all entries through the migrant phone app, something that most of you haven’t even heard of, but it’s very active and taking in thousands and thousands of people a week. I will end catch and release, and I will restore, remain in Mexico. I’m going to tell Mexico, thank you very much. You’re putting it back right away. You’re putting it back, and they will do it too when I tell them.

I will bring back Title 42. I will send a federal law enforcement, large group of people, but a tough group of people to liberate Aurora, Colorado. The governor of Colorado is petrified of these gangs. These are Venezuelan gangs with equipment better than our military has, going in with guns. The governor of Colorado is a coward. He’s afraid to do what you have to do.

In every other town that has been taken over by the migrant gangs and criminal alien thugs, and I think I’ll go to a couple of these towns over the next two weeks, you’ll see for yourself what’s happened to them. They’ve been literally destroyed.

Proposed Legislation and Deportation Plans

DONALD TRUMP: I will send Congress a bill to ban sanctuary cities in the first day that I become president. And I will tell you, whether it’s California or any place else, you might have guys like the governor in Newsom or others that are governors wanting it. Nobody knows why. But the people don’t want them. You can go and ask the people of California, do you want sanctuary cities? The people, including Democrats, will say, we don’t want them.

We will seal the border. We will stop the invasion, and we will begin the largest deportation of criminals, the criminal element, which is a large portion. We will start that immediately. Dwight Eisenhower had the largest deportation effort ever in our country, President Eisenhower, because he hated the fact that people were able to pour across our border. This will be much larger than that.

But we will get rid of the drug dealers. We will get rid of the human traffickers. We will get rid of the murderers, the people that came out of jails, and the people that came out of mental institutions. They will all be gone. It will happen very quickly. We will be dealing with local law enforcement, who knows everything about every one of them. Their name, their serial number, they know everything. We respect our police, and we’re going to respect law and order again.

So I appreciate everybody being here. I just wanted to make this statement before Kamala goes down to the border. Anything she says tomorrow you know is a fraud, because she was the worst in history at protecting our country. So she’ll try and make herself look a little bit better, but it’s not possible. Normally, I would save this speech until after she leaves, but there’s not a thing she can say to make it change.

Meeting with President Zelensky

DONALD TRUMP: As you know, President Zelensky has asked to meet with me, and I will be meeting with him tomorrow morning at around 9:45 in Trump Tower. And it’s a shame what’s happening in Ukraine. So many deaths, so much destruction. It’s a horrible thing.

And one of the things that are very bothersome to me is the fact that Europe is paying only a small fraction of the money that the United States of America is paying. And we have an ocean between Russia and ourselves. They don’t. So I see what’s happening there. It’s very, very sad. But we’re in for numbers that nobody can even believe.

NATO Funding

DONALD TRUMP: And as you know, the European nations, as a combination, their economy is fairly close to the size of ours, so it’s similar. They should be equalizing. They should start paying up. I did this with NATO. I made them all pay. Bush would make a speech and leave. Obama would make a speech and leave. And I said, you got to pay. If you don’t pay, we’re not going to be there. And everybody paid.

And the Secretary General, good man, he said, I’ve never seen anything like it. For 10 years, we’ve been trying to get them to pay, and it was only Trump that was able to do it. He was very honest. It’s true. That’s where they have the money to do what they’re doing right now. But they all paid, most of them anyway. Hundreds of billions of dollars they paid, and they paid it fast.

They said, sir, does that mean you won’t protect us if we don’t pay? I said, you mean you’re delinquent? Yes, let’s say we’re delinquent. No, you won’t be protected. The money came pouring in. Nobody else wanted to say that. And the press thought it was terrible that I made that statement. But if I didn’t make that statement, we’d still be paying. You know, we were paying for NATO, most of it, almost all of it, maybe all of it, for years.

So I’m going to see President Zelensky tomorrow. And thank you all very much. Thank you.

REPORTER: Mr. President, has Mayor Adams been a fair trial?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know the mayor well, but he’s been fairly generous to me in his statements for a while. I thought you had the worst mayor ever that we had prior to him.

I will say this. I watched about a year ago when he talked about how the illegal migrants are hurting our city and the federal government should pay us and we shouldn’t have to take them. And I said, you know what, he’ll be indicted within a year. And I was exactly right, because that’s what we have. We have people that use the Justice Department and the FBI at levels that have never been seen before.

So I wish him luck. I don’t know anything about what he did. But I told a lot of group, a lot of people. Right over there, that group was saying, you know, sir, you were right about that. When they mentioned that, I said, they came in and he was pretty strong about it. He said, this is really unfair to make us carry this burden. We shouldn’t be doing this. This is New York City. I mean, your parks are loaded up. I just passed recently Madison Avenue, the Roosevelt Hotel. It’s like nobody would recognize it. That’s Midtown.

But he came out very strongly against it. He was right, by the way, because it’s ruining our country. He was honest. And I said, he will be indicted within a year. And that’s what happened. I noticed the indictment is very old. It goes back a long time. Well, I had the same thing. They went way before the statute of limitations.

So I wish him well, but I said that he will be indicted because he did that. You take a look. That’s what they do. These are dirty players. These are bad people. They cheat and they do anything necessary. These are bad people. And we need an honest Justice Department. We need an honest FBI. And we need it fast.

REPORTER: [Inaudible]

DONALD TRUMP: Yes. He’s coming tonight. Well, I’m going to see him in about an hour. So I have to be nice, right? But I actually think he’s very nice. I think he ran a great race. He did very well. It’s very early, but he’s popular. And I’ll be seeing him and I’ll send you regards.

REPORTER: Who are you with?

DONALD TRUMP: Who are you with? Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Thank you.

Well, I think Nigel is great. I mean, I’ve known him for a long time. He had a great election too, picked up a lot of seats. More seats than he was allowed to have actually. They acknowledged that he won, but for some reason, you have a very strange system over there. You might win him, but you don’t get him. Nigel is a fantastic person.

REPORTER: President, you do not understand what it takes to win this war?

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, then I should immediately cancel my appointment? Yeah. He knows I understand. Look, look, I hate to see the carnage. If I were president, it never would have happened. Russia would have never attacked Ukraine. Never ever. And by the way, President Xi would have never even thought about Taiwan, which he’s thinking about very seriously now, flying planes over it every single day.

But President Putin would have never attacked. When I look at the horror show that’s gone on, and the level of death is far greater than what is being reported. When you look at those cities, they’re all knocked down, those beautiful, gorgeous golden domes there, shattered and lying on their side, never to be replaced again. You can’t ever replace that, 2,000 years old.

When you look at the heritage of that really very vibrant country in so many different ways, and you see how it’s been so broken, the people, so many people dead, where they have to use old soldiers, old men, and young boys because they’re running out of soldiers. It’s a very terrible thing. And then you see that the United States is paying for most of it, and Europe is not chipping in. And all you have to do with Europe is the same thing I did with NATO, say you have to pay.

And if you say you have to pay, they will. It’s very unfair to the United States. But I look forward to seeing him tomorrow. We’ll see. I do believe I disagree with him. Well, he doesn’t know me, but I disagree. But I will say this. I believe I will be able to make a deal between President Putin and President Zelensky quite quickly.

REPORTER: What does that look like? What does that look like? What does that look like?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to tell you what that looks like.

REPORTER: The Vice President suggested today that your strategy with Ukraine amounts to surrender to Russia. How do you respond to that?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. And it’s not a surrender. My strategy is to save lives. I want to save lives. Millions of people are dead, millions more than they even think about. And it’s not my fight, but it is a fight to save humanity. That is a terrible — let me explain. That is a terrible war that would have never happened. And it didn’t happen.

I even have Democrats — I watched them on Face the Nation and some of the shows this weekend. They said, well, we agreed that it wouldn’t have happened if Trump were President. I was very generous of them. But it would have never happened. That’s what bothers me even more. There was no reason for that war to happen. But it did happen, and millions of people are dead, including soldiers from both sides. It’s so sad to see it.

And I’ll meet with President Zelensky, and we’ll see what happens. But I believe I can work that out. It would have been — I will say this — it would have been a lot easier to work out prior to the start. And Putin never, ever even thought about going in. And it was the apple of his eye. I knew him very well. We had a very good relationship, despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It was a total hoax.

But we had a very good relationship. Fortunately — otherwise, we could have ended up in war over there. This is very dangerous. You know, when you make up stories like that, it’s very dangerous. The laptop from hell was very dangerous. But Putin told me often, it’s the apple of his eye. But I said, Vladimir, don’t even think about doing it. He would have never done it.

And then, of course, through stupid oil policies and energy policies, where oil got up to almost $100 a barrel, Putin said, wow, I have a lot more money than I thought I had. And he prosecuted the war. But even if it went up — and it wouldn’t have gone up like that. That’s what caused inflation. That and stupid spending for the Green New Deal, which was a Green New Scam, it turned out. Do you notice that they don’t ever mention anything about environment anymore? What happened to the environment? They don’t mention it.

DONALD TRUMP: They don’t mention that the ocean is going to rise a quarter of an inch over the next 500 years. They don’t mention it anymore. It’s incredible. I will say this, though. What they should start mentioning is nuclear warming. Because we’re in grave danger, the world is in grave danger, and you better get smart people. You know, during my term, I never mentioned the word nuclear. But that’s the warming that you’re going to have to be very careful with.

And we’re very close to World War III. Whether it’s the Middle East or that, October 7th would have never happened. Iran had no money. That’s probably why you hear the stories about Iran. Only a consequential president would have this happen. Only a consequential president. But Iran would have made a deal with us. It would have been a great deal for them.

The only thing is they cannot have nuclear weapons. And we would have had it because Iran had no money during my administration. They were broke. And they would have made a deal, and they would have been happy. And they would have had an unbelievable civilization. But it didn’t work out that way because of a thing that was very sad to watch. That was the election. A very sad thing to watch.

REPORTER: Would you still make a deal with them now, after everything that’s happened? If you were re-elected?

DONALD TRUMP: Make a deal with who?

REPORTER: Would you try to make a deal?

DONALD TRUMP: Make a deal with who?

REPORTER: Would you try to make a deal with Iran of some kind if you were re-elected?

DONALD TRUMP: Sure. I would do that. I believe in getting – you know, it doesn’t matter. I have a – I have a great memory, but it’s a memory that wants to serve the people. We have to make a deal because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.

And they would have had a deal. I would have said we would have had the results of the election been correct. We would have had a deal within one week after the election. I was prepared to get it done within one week after the election.

They could have done that too, but they had no idea how to go about it. They could have done it because I gave them a country that wanted to make a deal. They had to. There was no money to Hamas. There was no money to Hezbollah because Iran didn’t have the money. Now Iran has $300 billion. They made it all in the last – they made it all in the last three and a half years. The sanctions came off.

They made it all in the last three and a half years. Plus, they essentially have Iraq as a subsidiary, and Iraq has $300 billion. So Iran is a very rich country. They have $600 to $650 billion, including Iraq. Iraq doesn’t like it when I say that, but that’s true. They’re really a subsidiary because, foolishly, Bush wiped out – you had two forces, two powerful forces. One of those forces got wiped out, and now the other force, after a thousand years, walks in and just essentially takes it over. So it’s very sad to watch.

But Iran now is a big force because they’re very rich. Iran was not rich at all. Iran didn’t have the money to take care of the various organizations of terror. Okay.

REPORTER: Mr. President, yesterday at the UN General Assembly, you came together to call for an immediate ceasefire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is speaking at the UN tomorrow. He has refused to do that. What would you do differently to prevent the Middle East from –

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you have to have that ended, one way or the other. The world isn’t going to take it. You have to have that ended, and I would think that we’re getting close to a point where maybe it can end pretty soon. But you’re going to have to end. That’s unacceptable. The whole thing over there is unacceptable. That’s another one. October 7th would have never happened – would have never happened.

Ukraine and Russia would have never happened. Think of it. Would have never happened. Inflation would have never happened. Think of the world. The Afghanistan pullout in that way. We would have pulled out, but we would have pulled out with dignity and strength. I’m the one that got it down to that number.

But I would have kept Bagram because Bagram is this massive air force base that we built many, many years ago with billions and billions of dollars, the most powerful runways that can hold more load than any other runway in the world. And we walked away from it. And it wasn’t Afghanistan that was the problem. We walked away from a great military base that we built to the highest specifications that was one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.

We are being run by Kamala, who is grossly incompetent. All you have to do is look at her interview last night. Look at her interview with Oprah. Look at her interview with the gentleman from Pennsylvania. All you have to do is look around and you’ll see it. We had four years of incompetent leadership we cannot, as a country, sustain another four years. Thank you very much.

REPORTER: Do you believe that Ukraine should turn over some of its own land to Russia in order to end the war?

DONALD TRUMP: We’ll see what happens.

REPORTER: What’s your message to the West?

DONALD TRUMP: We’ll see what happens. Let’s get some peace. We need peace. We need to stop the death and destruction. Don’t you think? Wouldn’t that be nice? Huh?

REPORTER: Do you have a plan to meet Netanyahu?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, we’re going to meet a lot of people. Many of the leaders have been calling me and they want to meet, so I guess they see the poll numbers. We’re leading in the polls, by the way, very seriously. The Daily Mail just came out with a very big poll, and we’re up by 10. So that’s an honor. But we have no choice. If we don’t win this election, we’re not going to have a country. Thank you very much.

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