FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump’s Surprise Mar-A-Lago Press Briefing (Dec 16, ’24)

There’s a whole light over the entire world. Many people, some reporters in speaking to him, they said, you know, it actually is true. A couple of them are not necessarily friends of mine, but they said it is actually true that there’s a light shining over the world. We’re trying to help very strongly in getting the hostages back, as you know, with Israel and the Middle East. We’re working very much on that. We’re trying to get the war stopped, that horrible, horrible war that’s going on in Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine.

We’re going to get a little progress. It’s a tough one. It’s a nasty one. It’s nasty. People are being killed at levels that nobody’s ever seen. You know, it’s very level fields. And the only thing that stops a bullet is a body, a human body. And the number of soldiers that are being killed on both sides is astronomical. I’ve never seen anything like it. And rapidly, I get reports every week, and it’s not even, you know, it’s like just going down. Nobody’s seen anything like it.

It’s a very flat surface, a very flat land. That’s why it’s great farming land. It’s the breadbasket for the world, actually. But it’s very flat, and there’s nothing to stop a bullet but a body. There’s no protection, no nothing. And what’s happening there is far worse than people are reporting for both sides. So we’re going to do our best, and we’ve been doing our best, and we’ll see what happens.

But since the election, I’ve been working every day to put the world at ease a little bit to get rid of the wars. We had no wars when I left office, and now the whole world is blowing up.

But there’s great optimism, and you saw that by SoftBank. Starting on day one, we’ll implement a rapid series of bold reforms to restore our nation to full prosperity. We’re going to go full prosperity and to build the greatest economy the world has ever seen, just as we had just a short time ago when we had it in my term. We had the greatest economy that the world had seen. We were blowing away everybody. Our country was doubling up on China, doubling up on everybody, and everybody knows it. And then we had to slow it down with COVID, unfortunately, at the end. But even then, I gave it back with a substantial increase of the stock market, bigger than it was pre-COVID. So it was pretty amazing.

Already, preparations are underway to slash massive numbers of job-killing regulations, eliminating 10 old regulations for every new one. You put a new regulation on, you have to get rid of 10, and we’ll be able to do it. And that was about the percentage we had. We’ve already cut more regulations than any president has ever cut by far, actually, by approximately five times. Some of those regulations, unfortunately, were put back on, but we’ll catch up very quickly. We’ll catch up with it.

Biden Administration Policies

One of the things I’d like to ask the Biden administration, as you probably heard, there are two events that took place. I’m not talking about a friendly takeover, a friendly transition, as they like to say. This is a friendly transition, and it is. But there are two events that took place that I think are very terrible.

One is that if people don’t come back to work, come back into the office, they’re going to be dismissed. And somebody in the Biden administration gave a five-year waiver of that, so that for five years, people don’t have to come back into the office. It involved 49,000 people. For five years, they don’t have to go. They just signed this thing. It’s ridiculous. So it was like a gift to a union, and we’re going to obviously be in court to stop it.

The other thing is really terrible. We spent a tremendous amount of money on building the wall. The wall was designed specifically by the Border Patrol because it’s very hard to climb. They need to have see-through. They need it to be steel because you can’t cut this. It’s very powerful steel. It’s very hard steel. It’s a special type of steel, but very, very hard to cut.

Inside the steel, as you know, we pour concrete, and that’s a grade 10 concrete, which is a very strong concrete, very as though you were building about a 60-story building. It’s very powerful concrete. They’ve made tremendous technology advances in the word concrete. Who would think that? But I know that from the construction industry. Today, what you can do with concrete is incredible.

So we have a very strong concrete. And then we have a rebar. We put rebar inside the concrete, and the rebar, likewise, is very hard to cut. So it’s a very expensive process, very expensive wall.

And then we put an anti-climb plate on the top. You saw that. And I didn’t like the look of it, but then when I watched, we had people testing. We had mountain climbers actually testing, and they were not able to get over the anti-climb plate. They said, all right, I guess we’re going to put it on. That plate on top, which I never loved the look of it, but it works so unbelievably well. You have to do it.

So we spent a lot of money on building it, and we have hundreds of miles that we put up. A lot of people don’t realize, but we did 571 miles of wall. That’s why we had such good records, in addition to the fact that Mexico helped us with their military. They kept people out, and they were actually very good under the past leader.

But now we ordered an additional 200 miles of wall. It’s very expensive, and now it’s about double the price of what it would have been six years ago. And the administration is trying to sell it for $0.05 on the dollar, knowing that we’re getting ready to put it up. And what they’re doing is really an act. It’s almost a criminal act. They know we’re going to use it, and if we don’t have it, we’re going to have to rebuild it, and it’ll cost double what it cost years ago, and that’s hundreds of millions of dollars because you’re talking about a lot of wall.

I built much more than I said I was going to build, but then after it was built, I said, you know, we can do some more because it’s sort of like water. People flow through, and that will pretty much really take care of it. And what happened is they just, as you see, they’re trying to sell it for $0.05 on the dollar, and that’s really, that has nothing to do with a smooth transition. That has to do with people really trying to stop our nation.

And all it means really is that we’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more, not even talking about the time. Time would be pretty long, but we’ll spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall that we already have. And people have already come back to us that have deals at $0.05 and $0.04, and one guy at $0.03 on the dollar, and they offered to sell it back to us at more money than it cost us to build substantially.

Can you believe it? So they make a deal with the United States to buy it for pennies, and then they call us and they say, “Do you want to buy it back? We’ll sell it back to you for hundreds of dollars a foot.” Hundreds of dollars, from pennies to hundreds of dollars a foot. And we can’t let this take place.

Now, we’re going to go. I spoke with the Attorney General of Texas. I spoke to the senators of Texas. I spoke to a lot of people, and hopefully they’ll be able to stop. We’re going to be having a restraining order. But just think about how ridiculous it is. And this is just people that don’t want this country to succeed.

Waste and Fraud

DONALD TRUMP: And this has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican. This has to do with common sense. We won on common sense, and this is maybe one of the most egregious examples I’ve seen. So the people that are buying it or trying to buy it are trying to make a deal with us to sell it back at hundreds of times more. Hundreds of times more than we paid.

And this is all because the Democrats. So I’m asking today Joe Biden to please stop selling the oil. We’re going to use that to create a strong barrier. And it worked. That’s why our numbers were so good.

It really worked, and it worked well. And it’s very expensive to do. And I’m asking Joe Biden to stop his people from giving it away. It’s something that people can’t even believe is happening. So hopefully Joe will be able to stop it.

Energy Policy

We’ll soon unleash American energy, and this will be done at levels not seen before, issuing quick approvals for pipelines, drilling, and other infrastructure. It’ll be clean energy, and we’ll bring in the price of electricity, and we’re going to bring it down fast.

We’re also going to create clean coal. Clean coal is something that has really taken over. We have coal that will last for over 1,000 years. We have so much coal. And with the process, it becomes clean coal. It’s very powerful energy, unlike wind. It’s very, very powerful.

And we’re going to be doing a lot of clean coal for the people of West Virginia and others, Wyoming, so many states. We have great states. And they’ll be happy to hear it. We’re going to be very much into clean coal. I don’t ever use the word coal. I use the word clean coal.

Tax Cuts

And I’ll keep my promise to pass historic tax cuts for American families, workers, and businesses that create jobs in America. As you know, we’re giving tax cuts if they do it here. We brought it down from 44 percent, 42 percent. In some cases, it was 39. We brought it all the way down to 21 percent.

Now we’re bringing it down to 15, but only if they make their product, their car, or whatever they’re doing in the United States and the U.S. And people are thrilled. I’ve had the smartest people on Wall Street call me. They said, “Where did you get that idea?” And it doesn’t seem that complicated, right? But it’s like the paper clip. Nobody ever thought of it. One guy thought of it. Everybody looked at it. They said, “Wow, that was a good idea. Why didn’t I think of it?”

But we’re bringing it down six more points. And that will put us really at the best level we’ve ever had for bringing in business. We’ve never been down to that level. We’ll be among the lowest-taxed states, and a lot of businesses are going to come in. Between that and our taxing and tariff policies, we’re going to have business like nobody’s ever seen in this country before. That’s why we’re having a 41-year record in optimism from small businesses and big businesses.

And I’ll keep my promise to pass historic tax cuts for families, workers, and businesses that create jobs in America. Any business that invests $1 billion or more in the United States will be eligible for fully expedited permits and approvals, including environmental approvals from the federal government. So when companies come in, if they’re going to invest $1 billion or more, there will be many of them. And they’ll go into Detroit, and they’ll go into a lot of places where we want them.

You saw how well I did with the autoworkers. We did unbelievably. You saw how well we did with the Teamsters. And also, the nonunion, we’re a record 98 percent, 97 percent. Nobody’s ever gotten numbers like that because we’re bringing business back. And they’re all coming back. We lost them over years of stupidity, I call it. I call it the years of stupidity, the decades of stupidity.

Eliminating Waste and Fraud

Through the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk has been working very hard with various people, including Vivek. We’re going to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud. And I can only tell you, I’ll give you a little early report, they’re finding things that you wouldn’t even believe. So we’re looking to save maybe $2 trillion, and it’ll have no impact. Actually, it’ll make life better, but it’ll have no impact on people. It’s not like we’re – we will never cut Social Security, things like that. It’s just waste, fraud, and abuse.

Illegal Immigration

And we’ll immediately restore the sovereign borders of the United States and stop illegal immigration, which is costing us, I believe, trillions of dollars a year. I think it’s a cost that nobody’s ever seen anything like it. I don’t know. How can you be satisfied releasing prisoners into the United – Think of this. You’re releasing prisoners from jails all over the world, not just in South America. From the Congo, I would talk about it all the time. They’re a very big sender of people. But from all over the world, they’re sending prisoners out of their jails. Some of their jails are empty, and they will be empty soon if this ever continues.

I spoke with the President of Mexico, and as you know, I spoke with Justin Trudeau of Canada. And we told them it’s not fair, not right. We can’t let these people come into our country. And they understand they’re very much on notice, and they’re going to have to stop this from happening. They’re going to have to stop it.

We lose a lot of money to Mexico. We lose a lot of money to Canada, tremendous amount. We’re subsidizing Canada. We’re subsidizing Mexico. That can’t go on. And I get along with the people of Mexico and Canada very well, but we can’t let that happen. Why are we supporting and giving other countries hundreds of billions of dollars? It’s not fair. It’s not right. And the people of Mexico and Canada fully understand that. We’ve talked about it before, but now we’re doing something about it.

We started, and then we had to fix the COVID situation, and that’s what we did. But now we’re doing it. We’re doing it from the beginning. Howard will be largely in charge. We’ll be working on it together. Howard’s terrific. He’s done a fantastic job, and he’s really helped us a lot with transition. I think we have fantastic people coming in.

Defeating Inflation and Creating Jobs

So all of these policies will help us rapidly defeat inflation, create millions of new jobs, and put money in the pockets of the hardworking families of our country, pay off debt. We’re going to be paying off a tremendous amount of debt. We’re at $36 trillion. You don’t want to be there.

And we’re going to be using a lot of the money that we make. We’re going to be opening up a lot of businesses that are going to be pouring in because of our tax policy. And we’re going to use the money that we made to pay off debt and to reduce taxes. We’re going to further reduce taxes.

If you remember when we reduced them last time, that brought a tremendous amount. We brought it down to 21 percent, and that was the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. And nobody ever thought this would happen, but this is what’s supposed to happen. We actually ended up taking in more revenue at 21 than we did at 40 percent, which was pretty amazing. But this will be the most exciting and successful period of reform and renewal in all of American history, maybe of global history. The Golden Age of America, I call it. It’s begun. So it’s the Golden Age of America, and that’s what it’s going to be.

Avoiding Intervening Problems

And we hope we don’t have any intervening problems because things happen. Like, out of nowhere came the China virus. Out of nowhere came other things we don’t want to have. You know, when I left, we had no wars. We had no problems. The Middle East was good. We did the Abraham Accords. We did things that nobody felt were even possible.

But think of it. Four years ago, we had no wars. You didn’t have Russia going into Ukraine. They wouldn’t have done it. They weren’t even thinking about it. When they saw what happened in Afghanistan, I think they gave them an idea. But they wouldn’t have done it. They would have never gone in. President Putin would have never gone in. And now you look at all those people are dead. All those cities are destroyed.

You know, it’s nice to say they want their land back, but the cities are largely destroyed. They’ve left Kiev because probably maybe they want to use it or occupy it, but they haven’t done it. They’ve done a lot of damage, but relatively compared to the other cities, very little. But many of those cities are gone. Those beautiful towers, those beautiful buildings that they had are now laying on their sides, destroyed, totally destroyed. The turrets and all of the magnificent 1,000-year-old, 2,000-year-old structures that were very strong are blown to smithereens.

You look at some of those cities and not one building standing. So, you know, when you say take over the country, take over what? Take over what? That’s a hundred-year rebuild. Take a hundred years to rebuild it, and you can never have it the way it was. What a shame. It should have never happened. It would have never happened. If I were President, that war would have never happened, nor would Israel have happened with the attack on Israel.

Inheriting Challenges

So we’re inheriting big challenges at home and all over the world. Again, we had no wars. We had no problems. We had no inflation. We had no inflation. We had it less than 1 percent. Perfect number. And then we had inflation, the likes of which I say I don’t believe the country has ever seen inflation like that. They say 38 years. I don’t know. I think it’s probably ever.

But we’re going to take care of all of it. We’re going to get the prices down by energy. The energy is going to come in. We have more energy than anybody else. We’re going to use it. We don’t have to buy energy from Venezuela when we have 50 times more than they do. It’s just insane what we’re doing.

So we will not rest until America is richer, safer, and stronger than it has ever been before. And we have a big head start. Last time, we didn’t. And last time, we didn’t know the people. We didn’t know a lot of things. But by the time we got it up and going, it was incredible.

Again, we built the greatest economy in history for that period of time, and we’ll do it again. I believe substantially more so because we understand, number one, the people of Washington. I know them. I didn’t know any of them, virtually. I relied on other people for recommendations. Some were very good recommendations. We had some great people. Bob Lighthizer I thought was great. We had a lot of great people. But we had some people that I wouldn’t have used in retrospect, and now I know them better than anybody, better than they know themselves.

Thanking Masa Son

So once again, I’d like to thank Masa for what he’s done with that investment, which will end up being $200 billion, I believe. But I just want to thank him. He’s just an outstanding man. When you have that kind of brainpower wanting to invest in this country, that’s money that he can’t invest elsewhere. So that’s a big investment, but it makes me feel very good. It makes me feel that we’re absolutely on the right track. So thank you to Masa. And we’ll take a couple of questions. Jeff.

Question & Answer Session

REPORTER: Can you tell us what you said to Prime Minister Netanyahu during the call on Saturday? And have you spoken to President Putin since your election?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m not going to comment on the Putin question, but I will comment on Bibi. We had a very good talk. We discussed what is going to happen. And I’ll be very available on January 20th, and we’ll see. As you know, I gave warning that if these hostages aren’t back home by that date, all hell is going to break out, and very strong. But we generally just discussed. I asked him, where are things? Mike Waltz is doing a great job, by the way. Everybody is very happy. I think he’s doing a fantastic job. But he was very much involved in the call. But it was a recap call more than anything else.

REPORTER: How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok, Texas?

DONALD TRUMP: Who?

REPORTER: How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok, Texas?

DONALD TRUMP: We’ll take a look at TikTok. You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, because I won youth by 34 points. And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that.

Now, Joe Rogan did, and some of the other people that were recommended by my son, Barron, who have — he knew names. I said, who is that? Tell me, who is that? Dad, you’ve got to be kidding. I can’t believe you don’t know. And I did those interviews. And it was actually sort of cute, if you want to know the truth. But we did them. And that had an impact. But TikTok had an impact.

TikTok

DONALD TRUMP: And so we’re taking a look at it. But, you know, we won youth. Republicans are always 30 points down in youth. I don’t know why. But we ended up finishing. There was one poll that showed us down about 30. We were 35 or 36 points up with young people. So I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart, I’ll be honest.

REPORTER: Yes?

REPORTER: Are you entertaining the idea of preemptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities?

DONALD TRUMP: Against Iran’s nuclear facilities? Well, I would answer you that. I mean, it’s a wonderful question. But how can I – am I going to do preemptive strikes? Why would I say that? Can you imagine if I said yes or no? You’d say – that was strange of the answer that way. Am I going to do preemptive strikes on Iran? Is that a serious question? How could I answer a question like that?

REPORTER: President Trump, would you –

DONALD TRUMP: Say it.

REPORTER: Would you support Israeli strikes on Iran?

DONALD TRUMP: How could I tell you a thing like that now? It’s just so – you don’t talk about that before something may or may not happen. You know, just – I don’t want to judge. I don’t want to judge you. I just think it’s just not something that I would ever answer having to do with there or any other place in the world.

REPORTER: President Trump. President Trump. I’m asking this of you, and I ask this clearly. Do you believe there’s a connection between vaccines and autism? Do you believe there’s a link?

Vaccines and Autism

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I don’t. Look, right now, you have some very brilliant people looking at it. I had dinner the other night with the head of Pfizer, the head of Eli Lilly, and RFK, as you know, and Oz. And we had – and other people within the administration that are involved in the medical. And we’re looking to find out. You know, if you look at autism – so 30 years ago, we had – I’ve heard numbers of, like, one in 200,000, one in 100,000, and now I’m hearing numbers of one in 100. So something’s wrong. There’s something wrong. And we’re going to find out about it.

REPORTER: Mr President, Mr President, Mr President. Mr President. Mr President. One more thing. Mr President, can I follow up, please? Can I get your –

REPORTER: Can I follow up on Robert Kennedy? He’s on the Hill today. He’s meeting with senators. What do you say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that will make their kids less safe?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I think he’s going to be much less radical than you would think. I think he’s got a very open mind. Or I wouldn’t have put him there. He’s going to be very much less radical. But there are problems. I mean, we don’t do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing. And we’re going to find out what those problems are.

And another thing that came up – the dinner was fascinating because I had Bobby and I had, again, the head of Pfizer. You know who that is. He’s a highly respected man who has run an incredible company, likewise with Lilly, the top two people. And we had the head of the industry also. So all companies were represented.

So let’s have it out now a little bit. And, you know, what came out of that meeting is that we’re paying far too much because we’re paying much more than other countries. And we have laws that make it impossible to reduce. And we have a thing called the middleman. You know the middleman, right? The horrible middleman that makes more money, frankly, than the drug companies, and they don’t do anything except they’re a middleman. We’re going to knock out the middleman. I’m going to be very unpopular after that statement.

REPORTER: Mr. President, go ahead. Mr. President.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know who these middlemen are, but they are rich as hell. And we’re going to knock out the middlemen, and we’re going to get drug costs down at levels that nobody has ever seen before. And that really, I tell you, we spent more time talking about that with Bobby and with the executives and Oz, all of them. We spent more time talking about that than anything else.

REPORTER: Thank you, President Trump. What about the polio vaccine?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m a big believer in it, and I think everything should be looked at, but I’m a big believer in the polio vaccine, the Salk vaccine.

REPORTER: Do you think schools should mandate vaccines? Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t like mandates. I’m not a big mandate person. So, you know, I was against mandates. Mostly Democrat governors did the mandates, and they did a very poor thing. You know, in retrospect, they made a big mistake having to do with the education of children. You know, they lost like a year or two years of their lives. The mandate was a bad thing. I was against the mandate.

REPORTER: Mr. President. Mr. President. Yes, please. Do you expect Ron to mandate it to appoint Laura Trump to sign her marker review?

Laura Trump and Ron DeSantis

DONALD TRUMP: No, I don’t. I probably don’t, but I don’t know. Ron’s doing a good job. That’s his choice. Nothing to do with me. Lara’s unbelievable. I mean, she was incredible. The job she did at the RNC, chairman, along with Michael Whatley, the combination. But I can just speak for Lara. She is so highly respected by women. I mean, even her workout routines are through the roof. She lifts 150 pounds. I don’t know how the hell she does it. She’s a bad example for men and women, of course, because I wouldn’t be able to beat her, I don’t believe. I’d try like hell.

But, no, she’s an incredible woman. And, you know, it’s funny. People oftentimes talk about nepotism. I never had, when I put her there, people said, how did you get her to do it? You know, she could have run for the Senate in North Carolina. Ted Budd would be the first to say. And he wouldn’t have run. Nobody would have run.

And she just said, no, I want to really focus on my children. When the election, and my family, she has a great family. When the election started getting closer, I asked her, would she go to Washington and work on the, you know, as chairman of the committee, along with Michael Whatley. And they did such an unbelievable job, especially on cheating. They stopped it. Or at least they stymied it. Too big to rig. And we won in a landslide. You know, we won tremendously. She did an amazing job.

Now Ron is going to have to make, because Marco has been really a star already. And we haven’t started. But, you know, we see signs of, from some people very early, we see signs of stardom. And Marco has done incredibly. He’s sort of born for it. It was such an easy decision. The Marco decision was such an easy.

But he leaves a vacancy in Florida. And Ron’s going to have to make that decision. And he’ll make the right decision. I also know that Lara’s got so many other things. I mean, she’s got so many other things. People want her to be on television. They want to give her a contract. You know, her predominant thought is our country and her family. Those are her thoughts. But she’s got so many other things that she’s talking about. He’ll make the right decision.

REPORTER: Mr. President. Mr. President. Mr. President.

Primaries for Opposing Senators

REPORTER: Should senators who oppose your nominee, your cabinet nominee, should they be primaries?

DONALD TRUMP: If they are unreasonable, I’ll give you a different answer, an answer that you’ll be shocked to hear. If they’re unreasonable, if they’re opposing somebody for political reasons or stupid reasons, I would say it has nothing to do with me. I would say they probably would be primaries. But if they’re reasonable, fair, and really disagree with something or somebody, I can see that happening. But I do believe that if they’re unreasonable, I think we have great people. I think we have a great group of people.

Pam has been unbelievably received. Take a look. Pam Bondi. So many have been just unbelievably received. I think Pete Hegseth is making tremendous strides over the last week. He’s going to be great. Look, he went to Princeton. He went to Harvard. He was a great student there.

But he really was, from the first day I met him, all he wanted to talk about was military. He’s just a military guy. I think it’s a natural. This was my idea. And, you know, Pete Hegseth gave up a lot because he was going big places in Fox, big, big places, a lot of money. And he didn’t even hesitate.

When I said, do you want to do this, he said, absolutely. I said, you know, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll never have the opportunity that you have right now in terms of the world of entertainment or business, whatever you want to call it. You’ll never have that opportunity again. In fact, it could be just the opposite because it’s nasty out there.

He said, I don’t care. I have to do it for my country. He gave up a tremendous amount. If this didn’t work, it would be a tragedy. But that’s what he loves. He loves the military. I never talked to him about anything else. I didn’t talk about the military.

He had come to see me about a soldier that was unfairly treated and could I help. That’s the only thing I virtually ever talked to him about. And I always remembered it. I’ve seen him many times, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a subject on anything other than military with him. That’s where his love is. And he didn’t say, well, I’d like to think about it. I’d like to talk to my family. He said, not even a contest.

And you know he was going through the roof over there. He was doing great. They have the number one show, that Saturday and Sunday with Will and Rachel. That was great chemistry and this didn’t work out for him. It would be actually sort of tragic. Yeah.

REPORTER: Would you consider pardoning Eric Adams?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I would. I think that he was treated pretty unfairly. Now, I haven’t seen the gravity of it all. But it seems, you know, like being upgraded in an airplane many years ago. I know probably everybody here has been upgraded. They see you’re all stars, and they say, I want to upgrade that person from NBC. I’m going to upgrade him. And that would mean you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. I don’t know. Somehow.

I mean, I’d have to see it because I don’t know the facts. I think he was treated. You know, it’s very interesting. He essentially went against what was happening with the migrants coming in. And, you know, he made some pretty strong statements like, this is not sustainable. I said, you know what, he’ll be indicted soon. And I said it not as a prediction, a little bit lightheartedly, but I said it. I said, he’s going to be indicted. And a few months later, he got indicted. So, yeah, I would certainly look at it.

Troops on the Border

REPORTER: Can I ask you a question about the drones?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, we had 5,000 troops along the border. And I asked a couple of generals, so we have an army of 250,000 in Syria, and you have an army of 400,000. They have many more people than that. Turkey is a major force, by the way. And Erdogan is somebody I got along with great. But he has a major military force. And his has not been worn out with war. It hasn’t been worn out with all of the other things. I mean, he’s built a very strong, powerful army.

And so we have 5,000 soldiers in between a 5-million-person army and a 250,000-person army. And I asked the general, what do you think of that situation? He said, they’ll be just – they’ll be wiped out immediately. And I moved them out because – and it took a lot of heat. And you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing. I saved a lot of lives.

Now we have 900. They put some back. But 900, if you’re talking about two – now one of the sides has been essentially wiped out, but nobody knows who the other side is. But I do. You know who it is? Turkey. Okay? Turkey is the one behind it.

He’s a very smart guy. They’ve wanted it for thousands of years, and he got it. And those people that went in are controlled by Turkey. And that’s okay. It’s another way to fight. But no, I don’t think that I want to have our soldiers killed. But I don’t think that will happen now anyway because the one side has been decimated.

Unrest in the Region

REPORTER: Mr. President, are you concerned about more unrest in that region, or do you think it will calm down?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, nobody knows what the final outcome is going to be in the region. Nobody knows who really the final. I believe it’s Turkey, and I think Turkey is very smart. He’s a very smart guy, and he’s very tough. But Turkey did an unfriendly takeover without a lot of lives being lost.

I can say that Assad was a butcher, what he did to children. You remember, I attacked him with the 58 missiles, unbelievable missiles coming from ships 700 miles away, and every one of them hit their target. But I did that. That was the red line in the sand. Obama drew it, and then he refused to honor what he did. He said, if anybody goes across the red line, and Assad killed many more children after that, and Obama did nothing, but I did. I hit him with a lot of missiles.

In fact, President Xi was sitting here the night he was in that dining room having chocolate cake. Remember the famous chocolate cake? And that’s when I explained what we were doing as the missiles were shot. And it was amazing as to precision because every one of those missiles hit its target from a long distance away.

Had President Obama drawn the line where it meant something, you wouldn’t have even had Russia there. But in the end, I never understood why Russia went there. They were not getting very much out of it. But now their time has taken up with Ukraine, and we’d like to get them to stop on Ukraine, and Ukraine stop also.

Zelensky at the Cathedral

As you know, when I went to the cathedral, which was fantastic, the job that they’ve done in France, and the job that Macron, you know, Emmanuel did, he did a phenomenal job on the rebuilding of that cathedral. It’s magnificent, and they did a great thing. And they had great respect for our country. They treated me, meaning I’m the country, I’m the representative of our country, and we were treated with great respect.

And one of the people that came to pay his respects is, as you know, Ukraine, Zelensky. And he would like to have peace. He wants peace. Everyone’s being killed. It’s the worst carnage that this world has seen since World War II. I have pictures of fields where bodies are lying on top of bodies. It looks like the old pictures of the Civil War, where just bodies are all over. Just if you saw those pictures, you’d feel more strongly about it. It’s got to stop, and we’re trying to get it. Well, we’re going to see. We’re going to be talking to President Putin, and we’ll be talking to the representatives, Zelensky and representatives from Ukraine. We’ve got to stop it. It’s carnage.

REPORTER: What about the kids?

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Good to see you. Good to see you.

REPORTER: Can you comment on the drones that are flying around with New Jersey ports? It seems like the American people have a big…

Government Knowledge

DONALD TRUMP: The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it’s a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. And for some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.

I can’t imagine it’s the enemy, because if it was the enemy, they’d blast it out. Even if they were late, they’d blast it. Something strange is going on. For some reason, they don’t want to tell the people. And they should, because the people are really – I mean, they happen to be over Bedminster. They’re very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won’t spend the weekend in Bedminster. I’ve decided to cancel my trip.

REPORTER: Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t want to comment on that.

REPORTER: Two quick questions. First on vaccines, do you want RFK Jr. to revoke any vaccines?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I want him to come back with a report as to what he thinks. We’re going to find out a lot. We’re doing two things. We’re going to have tremendous cost savings that will come out of this. That’s a minimum. And we’re also going to have, I think, very serious discussions about certain things, whether it’s pesticides.

You know, Europe doesn’t use pesticides, and yet they have a better mortality rate than we do. They don’t use pesticides. In fact, they use it as an excuse not to take our farm product. We spend billions and billions of dollars on pesticides. And something bad is happening. Again, you take a look at autism today versus 20, 25 years ago. It’s, like, not even believable.

So we’re going to have reports. No, nothing is going to happen very quickly. I think you’re going to find that Bobby is much – he’s a very rational guy. I found him to be very rational. No, nothing – you’re not going to lose the polio vaccine. That’s not going to happen. I saw what happened with the polio. I have friends that were very much affected by that. I have friends from many years ago, and they have obviously – they’re still in not such good shape because of it. No, that was – and many people died. And the moment they took that vaccine, it ended. Dr. Jonas Salk did a great job. So I don’t anticipate that at all.

But we’re going to look into finding why is the autism rate so much higher than it was 20, 25, 30 years ago. I mean, it’s, like – it’s 100 times higher. There’s something wrong, and we’re going to try finding that.

Drug Prices

DONALD TRUMP: We’re also going to find out why are we paying more than other countries. And we were in the process of doing that through transparency and other things. We were doing a good job on that first term, and we brought it down. We got the $35, all of the different things. We got – we were the ones that got all of that done. Every one of those things, we got them done.

I said, you know, I hope I win because otherwise somebody is going to take a lot of credit for what we did. But now what happens is we’re going to have a big conversation on price. Why is it that Germany and UK and other countries are paying so much more for the same box of medicine made in the same plant? Why is it that we’re paying many times more? And I know the answer, because our government didn’t do what they were supposed to do. And what I put in place was terminated unexpectedly by the Biden administration, and they shouldn’t have terminated it. It would have had a huge impact.

REPORTER: And, Mr. President, one quick question. On Ukraine, you mentioned that some of the areas are already decimated. Do you believe that Ukraine should cede territory to Russia?

Ukraine Ceding Territory

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m going to let you know that after I have my first meeting. But a lot of that territory, when you look at what’s happened to those – I mean, there are cities that – there’s not a building standing. It’s a demolition site. There’s not a building standing. So people can’t go back to those cities. There’s nothing there. It’s just rubble.

Just like when I knocked down a building in Manhattan, which is actually – this is worse, actually, because we do it step by step. This thing has just got demolished. And, by the way, in those buildings are many people. Many people were in those buildings. You know, when they said the number in Ukraine is going to be a much higher number of death, is going to be a much higher number than you’re hearing. They’re big buildings. This is what I did very well. And these are very long buildings. They’re 15 to 20 stories high. They’re massive buildings.

I was surprised at how big. And they’re flattened like a pancake. One or two bombs hit them and they just collapsed. And they’d say nobody was hurt. Well, nobody knows who was in those buildings. There were a lot of people in those buildings. They’re going to find that when they start doing the removal. Many more people are being killed in the Ukraine war with Russia than is being reported. And that includes soldiers. The soldiers are being – it’s a carnage that we haven’t seen since the Second World War. It’s got to be stopped. And I’m doing my best to stop it.

Yeah, please, go ahead.

Meeting with Mrs. Abe

REPORTER: You had a meeting with Mrs. Abe yesterday, but Japanese Prime Minister – Mrs. Abe.

DONALD TRUMP: Mrs. Abe.

REPORTER: And Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba is hoping to have a meeting anytime soon. Are you –

DONALD TRUMP: I will do that. In fact, I sent him a memento. I sent him a book, the Prime Minister. But Mrs. Abe was very close with our First Lady, with Melania, and she loved Melania’s book. And she called and wanted to know if she could have – I was very close to the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. He was great. He was a great man.

And his wife wanted to know if it would be possible to have dinner. And it was just out of respect to Shinzo. And, yes, I’d love to see the Prime Minister. We will do that. I actually sent him a book and some other things for him through Mrs. Abe.

REPORTER: Will that happen before the inauguration day?

DONALD TRUMP: It could. If they’d like to do that, I would do that. Yeah. I have great respect for the position. And if he’d like to do that, I’d be here. Highly respected man.

That’s right. Highly respected. He’s been an ambassador before. Did a fantastic job.

DONALD TRUMP: We consider Japan very important. He’s very highly respected. Okay.

World Leaders at the Inauguration

REPORTER: Which other world leaders have you invited to the inauguration? Which other world leaders have you invited to the inauguration?

DONALD TRUMP: The world leaders are calling me. And some really would like to meet.

REPORTER: Are they coming?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I mean, literally, they’re calling me. And I’ll be seeing some of them. I think it’s rude not to. I mean, it’s hard to say I’m not going to see you. And I’ve spoken to way over 100 where they call to congratulate on the – not only the election, but the size of the election, the extent of the victory. And they were great. I mean, I spoke to over 100 countries. You wouldn’t believe how many countries there are. And I’m trying the best I can to get back to everybody, but there are a lot of countries, and every one of them – literally everyone called, and it was very nice.

So, yeah, I’d see some if some felt it was an emergency. I’ve seen – as you know, I’ve seen President Zelensky. He came to France while I was there for the cathedral opening. They actually had about 70 presidents and prime ministers and, in one case, a king. And we saw some great people. I also met with William, and I was very impressed by William. I think William is terrific. I was very impressed by William. As you know, I met with him too.

REPORTER: President Trump, did you invite Zelensky to the inauguration?

DONALD TRUMP: No, but if he’d like to come, I’d like to have him. I mean, I didn’t invite him, no.

REPORTER: Are you disappointed that China Xi won’t be at the inauguration?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know that he won’t be at the inauguration. I mean, I haven’t really spoken to him about it. I don’t know that, actually. I would say that if he’d like to come, I’d love to have him. But there’s been nothing much discussed. I have had discussions with him, letters, et cetera, et cetera, at a very high level.

You know, we had a very good relationship until COVID. COVID didn’t end the relationship, but it was a bridge too far for me. But if he’d like to come, I’d certainly be there. He hasn’t – just so you understand, he hasn’t said one way or the other because a lot of people say he won’t come, he will come. People think he will come, he won’t come.

It’s something we barely discussed, just about didn’t discuss. But I have had, especially through letters, some very good conversations. You know, because China and the United States can, together, solve all of the problems of the world, if you think about it. So it’s very important.

You know, he was a friend of mine. I mean, he was here for a long time, right in that spot, except sitting in a very comfortable chair. He wasn’t standing like you are. But we spent hours and hours talking, and he’s an amazing guy. The press hates when I say that, but he’s an amazing person.

REPORTER: On the border, on the border. Can I ask you about the United Healthcare shooting? Real quick.

United Healthcare Shooting

REPORTER: United Healthcare shooting. I think it’s terrible. Can you give us your thoughts about that? And what do you make of the reaction around the affected shooter? Does that tell you anything about how people think about healthcare?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s a terrible thing. I think it’s really terrible that some people seem to admire him, like him. And I was happy to see that it wasn’t specific to this gentleman that was killed. It was just an overall sickness as opposed to a specific sickness. That was a terrible thing. It was cold-blooded. Just a cold-blooded, horrible killing.

And how people can like this guy is – that’s a sickness, actually. That’s really very bad. Especially the way it was done. It was so bad, right in the back. And very bad. A thing like that, you just – you can’t believe that some people – and maybe it’s fake news. I don’t know. It’s hard to believe that that can even be thought of. But it seems that there’s a certain appetite for him. I don’t get it.

Defamation Lawsuits

REPORTER: Yeah, please. Can you come in on – I want to expand on the defamation lawsuits. Could you see moving that to other people with individual platforms, social media influencers, people that –

DONALD TRUMP: Or newspapers, yeah.

REPORTER: Yeah. Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, I do. I do. Because they’re very dishonest. We need a great media. We need a fair media. We need – it’s very important. And we need borders. We need walls. But we need borders. And we need fair elections.

You look at California. Millions and millions of ballots were sent out. They’re still counting the vote in California with the machines. They’re counting the vote. If you had paper ballots, your votes would have been counted four weeks ago, three weeks ago.

Now, you need fair elections. You need borders. And you need a fair press. And the press is – no, I see others. I have a few others that I’m doing. As an example, we’re bringing – I’m doing this not because I want to. I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to.

I’m going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time. And then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points, and it became the biggest story all over the world because I was going to win Iowa by 20 points. The farmers love me, and I love the farmers.

And it was interesting the way she did it. She brought it down two weeks before. She said I was going to only win by four. That was a big start. But that was good because she brought it down from, like, 22 points to four, or whatever the number was. Way up. Way up. An easy win. Never even thought to go there. I respect them. I love them. And they understand there’s no reason to go there because she brought it from way up, walk away, which it was.

And it turned out to be in the election, too, by the way. It was a win by many, many points. And then she brought it down very smartly to four a couple of weeks before. And everyone said, wow, that’s amazing. He’s only up by four points. Then she brought it down to where it was down by three or four, whatever the number she is. And that was the Des Moines Register. And it was their parent.

And in my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference. You know, she’s gotten me right always. She’s a very good pollster. She knows what she’s doing. And she then quit before. And we’ll probably be filing a major lawsuit against them today or tomorrow.

We’re filing one on 60 Minutes, you know about that, where they took Kamala’s answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else she said later on in the interview, which wasn’t a great answer, but it wasn’t like the first one. The first was grossly incompetent. It was weird. And that was fraud and election interference by their news magazine, a big part of CBS News.

So, as you know, we’re involved in that one. We’re involved in one which has been going on for a while and very successfully against Bob Woodward, where he didn’t quote me properly from the tapes. And then on top of everything else, he sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do. He could only use them for reporting purposes, not for sale purposes. And he admits that, and I think we’ll be successful on that one.

And we have one, very interestingly, on Pulitzer, because reporters at The New York Times, Washington Post got Pulitzer Prizes for their wonderful, accurate, and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Well, it turned out to be a hoax, and they were exactly wrong. People, like many people, John Solomon, Sean Hannity is not for Pulitzer, but Sean Hannity got it right. Many people got it right. Tucker got it right. Jesse got it right. Lara got it right. Janine got it right. A lot of people got it right.

They didn’t get anything. They gave it to reporters that got it absolutely wrong, and now everybody admits it was a hoax. And I want them to get back, take back the Pulitzer Prizes and pay big damages. And I think we’re doing very well on that one. They have no excuse for it. They gave a Pulitzer Prize to writers that got Russia, Russia, Russia wrong.

And so I think we’re doing well. And I feel I have to do this. I shouldn’t really be the one to do it. It should have been the Justice Department or somebody else, but I have to do it. It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press. Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.

Venezuela

REPORTER: Are you worried about Venezuela? Sure. Have you been in touch with Venezuela?

REPORTER: For January 6th defendants, you have said in the first few minutes of your administration you want to issue pardons for January 6th defendants. Does that include – will that be a blanket pardon?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you’ll find out. But it’s going to go quickly.

REPORTER: And just to follow up on your – In terms of your mass deportation plans, have you had any preliminary discussions with countries like Venezuela, from where the Tren de Aragua gang is now popping up?

DONALD TRUMP: They’ll take them back.

REPORTER: They’re going to take them back?

DONALD TRUMP: They’re all taking them back, yep. And if they don’t, they’ll be met very harshly economically. Okay? They’ll all take them back. You know, Venezuela and other countries were not behaving very well with us during my administration, and within 24 hours they were behaving very well. They’ll all take them back.

Jeff, nice to see you, Jeff. This is like the old days, right? You’ve looked – actually, you look much better now than you did four years ago. What are you doing? What’s he doing? All right, go ahead.

Executive Orders and Priorities

REPORTER: Thank you, sir. The first day you had mentioned that you’re in office, I imagine you’ve got some executive orders that you want to go through. Can you tell us what your priorities are?

DONALD TRUMP: We’ll have a lot. Well, I’ll bet you could tell – you could say as well as I could. We will have many executive orders and other things that we’ll be signing on the first day.

REPORTER: Can you also – going back to my initial question about the Middle East, you said that your conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu was kind of a review. Did you repeat that?

DONALD TRUMP: We just had a very good conversation. And the real conversations will start on the 20th. But we had a really good conversation, and I think we’re going to be in a good place in the Middle East. I think the Middle East is – will be in a good place. I think actually more difficult is going to be the Russia-Ukraine situation.

I see that as more difficult. I don’t think they should have allowed missiles to be shot 200 miles into Russia. I think that was a bad thing. And that brought the Koreans in, North Korea, another man I get along with very well. I’m the only one that does. But that did a lot of bad things. I don’t think that should have been allowed, not when there’s a possibility and certainly not just weeks before I take over. Why would they do that without asking me what I thought? I wouldn’t have had them do that. I think that was a big mistake there, Matt.

REPORTER: Will you reverse that decision when you’re in office?

DONALD TRUMP: I might, yeah. I thought it was a very stupid thing to do.

Tim Cook Meeting

REPORTER: Do you have any reaction to Tim Frost? When you say that there will be hell to pay if the hostages are not released before January 20th, what does that mean?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they’re going to have to determine what that means. But it means it won’t be pleasant. It’s not going to be pleasant, yeah.

REPORTER: How was your meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook? And did you talk about tariffs in that meeting?

DONALD TRUMP: The meeting with who?

REPORTER: Apple CEO Tim Cook.

DONALD TRUMP: I did have dinner with Tim Cook. I had dinner with sort of almost all of them, and the rest are coming. And this is one of the big differences, I think, between – we were talking about it before – one of the big differences between the first term.

In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend. I don’t know. My personality changed or something. But I had – as you know, I had Sundar from Google, but I also had Sergey. Nobody reported that. Sergey is the owner, the primary owner, along with his friend, as you know. And Sergey was here also. I can’t believe you didn’t pick that one up. Nobody picked that up. But I will tell you.

No, it’s a big difference. The big difference is that the first time, everybody was fighting me on all fronts. And we had a great administration. We got the biggest tax cuts in history, rebuilt the military. Too much of it was given away to Afghanistan, stupidly given away, horribly given away.

I think that’s one of the reasons that Putin went in to Ukraine, when he saw the stupidity of a million of these guys. They’re stupid people, very stupid people. If he didn’t – if they didn’t do such a – you know, we were pulling out of Afghanistan, but I would have pulled out with dignity and strength. They wouldn’t be having parades, I guarantee you, showing our equipment that they left behind, because we weren’t going to leave any equipment behind, not 10 cents. We were going to take every screw and every bolt.

So, yeah, the biggest difference is that people want to get along with me this time. Well, they’ve gone through four years, and, you know, it wasn’t easy for me, but it wasn’t easy for them either. And that’s a great thing, though. Getting along is a great thing. So Tim Cook was here. I think he’s done an incredible job at Apple. He talked about the future of Apple. It’s going to be a bright future.

But we have many others also, and not in that business. And we do have Jeff Bezos, Amazon, coming in sometime during the week. Look forward to that. We have a lot of great executives coming in. The top executives, the top bankers, they’re all calling – and honestly, in the first – I don’t know what it was. It’s like a complete opposite. In the first – and the press has covered that fairly, actually, for change. The first one, they were very hostile. And maybe it was my fault, but I don’t really think so. They were just very – right from the beginning. And this one is much less hostile. It’s really the opposite of hostile.

Duke Lacrosse Case

REPORTER: Can I get some reaction? I know that you had some, I believe, involvement 18 years ago with the students at Duke accused of raping lacrosse. Now we have this development.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I thought it was a hoax when it happened, the Duke situation. I didn’t believe the woman, as you know. And you destroyed – they destroyed the lives of these kids. They destroyed – and I don’t care what they got. Their lives have been destroyed. Their lives have been shortened by what took place. And now the woman admitted that it never happened. That is horrible.

And as you know, I took a lot of heat when I said that this is – this did not happen. And those kids were beautiful kids with beautiful families, and they were, in some cases, will never be the same. They will never be the same.

REPORTER: Have you talked to them by chance?

Postal Service

REPORTER: Do you have any thoughts on the Postal Service? You mentioned Bezos a second ago, and I’ve always thought Bezos would be a key person to go in there and really streamline the logistics of the Post Office. But they lose billions.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, there is talk about the Postal Service being taken private. You do know that. Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. It really isn’t. You know, it’s a lot different today with – between Amazon and UPS and FedEx and all the things that you didn’t have. But there is talk about that. It’s an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time. We’re looking at it. I think we’re looking at that along with a lot of others.

REPORTER: Any questions for Howard, by the way?

China Trade Deal

REPORTER: Sure, I’ll ask one. Mr. Secretary, do you see another trade deal with China coming?

HOWARD: I think the President –

DONALD TRUMP: That’s a tough one.

HOWARD: Oh, it’s easy for me. You’re sitting next to me, so it’s okay. The President has a very clear agenda for tariffs, and I think reciprocity is something that is going to be a key topic for us. How you treat us is how you should expect to be treated.

DONALD TRUMP: I’m not saying that it’s reciprocal. If they tax us, we tax them the same amount. They tax us – Forget it. Just for a second about the word tax. They tax us, we tax them. And they tax us – almost in all cases, they’re taxing us, and we haven’t been taxing them.

REPORTER: Is there a deal already underway?

DONALD TRUMP: What?

REPORTER: Is there a deal already underway with respect to that?

DONALD TRUMP: Let’s just say this. We’re going to make great deals, and we have all the cards.

China Trade Deals

DONALD TRUMP: And until I came along – Don’t forget – And Howard was going over the numbers with me last night. We took in $600 billion and more in taxes and tariffs from China. No other President took in $0.10 – not $0.10 – not $0.10. And, no, we’re going to be doing things. We’re going to be treating people very fairly. But the word reciprocal is important because if somebody charges us – India – we don’t have to talk about own. If India charges us 100 percent, then we charge them nothing for the same. You know, they send in a bicycle, and we send them a bicycle. They charge us 100 and 200. India charges a lot. Brazil charges a lot. If they want to charge us, that’s fine, but we’re going to charge them the same thing.

That’s the big thing. And you want the senators – some of them aren’t necessarily business people. When I give that to them, they say, “That sounds fair to me.”

REPORTER: Are you concerned that tariffs might hurt the stock market rise to 15 and the economy more broadly?

DONALD TRUMP: Make our country rich. Tariffs will make our country rich.

REPORTER: But won’t they increase prices?

DONALD TRUMP: Properly used. And make – No, well, I didn’t have any inflation, and I had massive tariffs on a lot of places. We put tariffs on steel. If I didn’t put tariffs on steel – 50 percent and more – they were dumping steel in – China and others. I put tariffs on, and it stopped. And we took a fortune. We made a fortune on it. Tariffs. Properly used, which we will do. And being reciprocal with other nations. But it will make our country rich. Our country right now loses to everybody. Almost nobody do we have a surplus to. There are a couple of countries, and they’re embarrassed by it. But almost nobody. And tariffs will make – I always said, to me, tariffs – the most beautiful word in the dictionary. It’ll make our country rich.

You go back and look at the 1890s, 1880s, McKinley, and you take a look at tariffs. That was when we were at our – proportionately the richest. Right? It’s a currency. Free with a deal from –

REPORTER: Did you get through a good spot?

Ukraine Situation

REPORTER: Back on Ukraine, Mr. President. What should Zelensky, if anything, be prepared to give up to now?

DONALD TRUMP: He should be prepared to make a deal. That’s it. It’s got to be a deal.

REPORTER: No?

DONALD TRUMP: It’s got to be a deal. People being killed. That is a war that’s too many – you’ve got to make a deal. And Putin has to make a deal. Putin has to make a deal. And Putin would have never gone in if I was President. If I was President, we wouldn’t have had inflation. Our oil prices would have been lower. I had a good relationship with Putin. He would have – despite the Russia hoax, which made it more difficult. If we had that election, if it were an honorable election, we wouldn’t have had any of the problems that we’re talking about right now. Putin would have never gone in. Peace on Europe.

REPORTER: Will you make that deal before you take office? Do you still think you can make that deal?

DONALD TRUMP: I’m going to try.

REPORTER: Will you ask Putin to give up Assad?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I haven’t thought of it. I think we have to get on with our lives. We’ll have to see what happens. But right now, Syria has a lot of – you know, there’s a lot of indefinites. Nobody knows what’s going to happen with Syria. But I think Turkey is going to hold the key to Syria, actually. I don’t think you’ve heard that from anybody else, but I’ve been pretty good at predicting.

I want to thank you all, and we’re going to make America great again. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

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• President Trump Remarks on US, Israel Attacking Iran (Transcript)
• President Trump on Economy, Energy in Corpus Christi, TX (Transcript) 
• Bulwark Podcast: w/ Susan Glasser on Trump’s State of the Union address (Transcript)
• Douglas Macgregor: US-Iran Diplomacy Fail (Transcript)
• The Truth About Trump’s State of the Union w/ Sen. Bernie Sanders (Transcript)