Transcript of Trump’s Pre-inauguration Press Conference at Mar-a-Lago

They’ll be brought down to a very low level. And that’s going to bring everything else down.

That’s what caused it to go up, along with the ridiculous spending on the Green New scam. All this money, trillions of dollars. It’s like throwing it right out the window what they’re doing. And they’re trying to spend so much now. They’re just taking money and giving it to anybody that wants it for any project at all. If it’s if it’s certified under the Green New scam. And they don’t work. And it’s too expensive.

Biden Administration Not Providing Smooth Transition

DONALD TRUMP: And you know, they told me that we’re going to do everything possible to make this transition to the new administration. Very smooth. It’s not smooth because they’re doing that. They are playing with the courts, as you know, they’ve been playing with the courts for four years.

I got a lot more votes because I got the highest number of votes ever gotten by a Republican by far, actually, by a lot. And you know, we had a great election. So I guess it didn’t work. But even to this day, they’re playing with the courts and their friendly judges that like to try and make everybody happy on the Democrats side. It’s called lawfare. It’s called weaponization of justice. And it’s happened at a level nobody’s ever seen before.

Legal Challenges and Criticism of Justice Department

DONALD TRUMP: So many. I defeated deranged Jack Smith. He’s a deranged individual. I guess he’s on his way back to the Hague. And we won those cases. Those were the biggest ones. And the press made such a big deal out of them. But we did nothing wrong. We did nothing wrong on anything.

And the people saw that, you know, when they vote to win a Republican, it’s not easy for a Republican — when the Republican wins the popular vote by millions and wins all seven of the swing states. People said, well, he could win four. We won all seven and we won them by a lot. And that tells you we won.

That tells. And they’ve been watching this injustice. I call it the injustice department. What they’ve done is so bad. The whole world has watched that. And it took work, but it got me a lot of votes because when explained, we have a judge in New York is a very crooked judge. I’m under a gag order. I can’t even talk about aspects of the case that are the most vital aspects.

I’m under a gag. Do you know that I’m the president elect of the United States of America? I’m a former, very successful president. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We had borders that were sealed and beautiful. We had everything was good. We had no wars. We defeated ISIS.

We had no wars. Now I’m going into a world that’s burning with Russia and Ukraine, with Israel. We took a look at that attack on October 7th, the attack on Israel with the horrible way they got out, not the fact that they got out. I would have been out before them.

But we would have been out of Afghanistan with dignity and strength as opposed to looking like a bunch of fools with 13 dead and many, many badly, horrifically injured. Nobody ever talks about them. No arms, no legs. Nobody ever talks about them. The way they got out was outrageous, leaving billions of dollars of brand new military equipment that I bought in the hands of the Afghans and specifically the Taliban. It’s the group. And we were doing very well. We would have been out.

We would have been respected. I think it’s one of the reasons it was so badly handled, that withdrawal, where people are jumping onto airplanes, falling off the sides of airplanes when they’re 3,000 feet in the air. And nobody’s ever seen anything like that. The worst.

And because of that, I think Russia went and attacked Ukraine. When they saw that, they said, These guys are incompetent. They don’t know what they’re doing. But we know what we’re doing now. And that’s going to all end. And we have a great military. I defeated ISIS. As you know, we were in no wars.

I just finished a couple. And we got also our soldiers guarding Syria and Turkey. We’re in the middle. We had 5,000 soldiers. They would have been gobbled up with two armies. We had one army, 300,000. We had another one, five or 600,000, looking, getting ready. We had 5,000 people in the middle.

I said to a general, How do 5,000 people do in that case? And the general just looked at me, said, Not well, sir. Not well. And I took him out. And you know what happened? Nothing. I got criticized. I saved 5,000 lives, actually. And we did a great job, and we’re going to do an even better job, because now we have a tremendous amount of experience. We have people that I can rely on.

But the 625 million acres, people can’t realize that’s like the whole ocean. Take an acre. You know, an acre, you have a house on a half an acre, on a quarter of an acre, or an acre. If you have an acre, you have a big deal. Now you multiply that by 625 million acres. It’s like — feels like the whole ocean.

And that’s our strength, you know? People can say we manufacture, we don’t manufacture. The thing we have, we have oil and gas more than anybody in the world. We’re going to have more of it, too. But they took away 625 million acres of offshore drilling. Nobody else does that. And they think they have it, but we’ll put it back. I’m going to put it back on day one.

I’m going to have it revoked on day one. We’ll go immediately, if we need to. I don’t think we should have to go to the courts. But if we do have to go to the courts — you know, they try to be sneaky.

They go in and they sign. Remember, this is a man that said he wants the transition to be smooth. Well, you don’t do the kind of things — you don’t have a judge working real hard to try and embarrass you, because I did nothing wrong. By the way, I did nothing — absolutely nothing wrong.

If I did something wrong, I wouldn’t be standing here right now because I’ve won all these cases. Nobody has ever won so many cases as I have against the Justice Department. I mean, Jack Smith had cases all over the place. People were being subpoenaed.

Lives were being ruined. They were spending everything they had — money. We were helping them out. We had to. They were being — they were subpoenaing people from — that had no idea what they were even talking about. That’s a sick group of people. And it was all to influence the election. It was all a fight against a political opponent.

We’ve never had that in this country. We have had that in certain countries. We’ve had that in third-tier countries. We’ve had that in banana republics. But we’ve never had that in a place like the United States. I don’t even know if it’s been on a small level. I’m sure it has been on a small level, but this was the largest level ever. They brought this moron out of the Hague.

He’s a mean guy. He’s a mean, nasty guy. His picture was perfect, because you look at his picture, you say, that’s a bad guy with his robe — his purple robe. And he executes people. He shouldn’t be allowed to execute people because he’ll execute everybody. He’s a nutjob. But we won all of those cases with him. And I mean, I don’t know the judge in Florida, but we had a brilliant judge in Florida that saw right through it, and we won the case.

She was a brilliant judge with great courage. You know, the left, as we call them, the radical left, they have a way — they play the ref, and they play it very hard. They play the ref. They go and say horrible things about judges and prosecutors. And some judges and prosecutors say, look, the only way I’m going to get these people off my back is to give victory to them. They’re playing the ref. I think it’s illegal what they do. It’s almost like talking — it’s worse than talking to a judge.

But the judge in Florida, Judge Cannon, was brilliant and tough, and she didn’t stand for it. And I don’t know her. And never met her until the case, and I don’t believe I said even one word to her. But she was very, very strong and very, very brilliant, and her opinion was so brilliant that they dropped their appeal. They couldn’t beat the appeal. So that’s what we’re up against. So they say we’re going to have a smooth transition. All they do is talk.

It’s all talk. Everything they do is talk. We’re going to have a smooth transition. And then they take 625 million acres, and they essentially landmark it so you can’t ever drill there again.

Well, we’re going to be drilling soon. We’re going to be opening up ANWR. We’re going to be doing all sorts of things that nobody ever thought was even possible. But remember when — and just to get off the subject, because I couldn’t believe it when I heard it yesterday.

I couldn’t believe the size of it. I mean, you put down a map and put this up, it’s just massive. And remember that that’s worth probably — I mean, I’ve had estimates — $40 to $50 trillion. That’s more than our national debt. Essentially, he’s throwing it away. He’s throwing it away. He’s taken $50 trillion. So if we owe $35 trillion, he’s taken $50 trillion of value and thrown it right out the window.

We can’t do that. Nobody can do that. One other thing he did yesterday, which was, in many ways, worse — it’s hard to believe it can be worse — he wants all gas heaters out of your homes and up in your apartments. He wants them to be replaced by, essentially, electric heaters.

I don’t know what it is with electric. This guy loves electric. We’re going to be ending the electric car mandate quickly, by the way. This guy loves electric. And we don’t have enough electricity. And then we have AI, where we need more, and he wants to get — he wants everybody to have an electric heater instead of a gas heater. Gas heater is much less expensive. The heat is much better. It’s a much better heat. As the expression goes, you don’t itch. Does anybody have a heater where you go and you’re scratching and — that’s what they want you to have. They don’t want you to have gas where you don’t have the problems of the electric.

And the source is plentiful. They’re much cheaper to operate. They’re much better. They work much better. They look much better. Sixty percent of homes and apartments have gas heaters. He wants them all removed quickly. These people are crazy.

There’s something wrong with them. There’s something wrong with them. They also want to go back — and they have already started that — to, when you buy a faucet, no water comes out because they want to preserve. Even in areas that have so much water, you don’t know what to do. It’s called rain. It comes down from — it comes down from heaven. And they want to do — no water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip.

So what happens? You’re in the shower 10 times as long, you know. No water comes out of the faucet. You want to wash your hands. They want to go back to even stronger than what they have right now. I — as you know, I ended that policy. I get — you can have all the water you want. It makes no difference.

It comes weird. Especially in certain areas, we have so much water, we don’t know what to do with it. But these are all things. They want very, very little water to go into your dishwasher, almost none. And you know what people do? They just keep pressing, pressing, pressing, keep it going. They end up using more water. Likewise, washing machines — they want in your washing machine to have very little water coming out of the washing machine.

So when you wash your clothing, you have to wash it four times instead of once. You end up using more water. We’re a party of common sense. And things that I’m telling you now is really all about common sense.

Turning the Economy Around

And January 20th, we’ll turn the economy around very quickly, because right now we are — when I think of our economy, I think about inflation. That’s what we have. We have inflation, I believe, at a level that we never had before. There’s never been anything like it.

And over the next four years, the United States is going to take off like a rocket ship. But really, it’s already doing it. If you take a look, just last month, SoftBank announced the $200 billion. I think it’ll be $200. He said between $100 and — I said, how about making it $200? And he sort of said yes. But let’s say it’s $100, but it might be $200. Right, Brian?

Dollars. United States creating more than 100,000 jobs. Hussain just announced a tremendous investment that he’s going to make, and that’s money that’s in the bank. He’s going to come and do it, and he’ll do a great job, and he’ll build the best centers in the country, I guarantee, because I know the way he builds.

Since my election, the stock market has set records. The S&P 500 index has broken above 6,000 points for the first time ever. Never even close. In a single month, small business optimism soared 41 points. It’s not a 41. It went up 41 points, and that’s the largest in the 39-year history of the group that does it. According to Gallup, the American people’s confidence in the economy has just surged to the highest level in history. That’s why I have a news conference like that.

I take the greatest business leaders in the world. I say, hey, do you want to say you’re going to invest the money? They’re not looking for news conferences. They’re saying, what am I doing here?

They go in and they invest money, but it’s good to know where the smartest business people in the world are investing, and they’re investing in the United States. So we’ve done this all in two months of not being there. We haven’t been there. And it’s pretty amazing, and we think we’re going to do some really great things, really great things.

America’s Golden Age

We’re being respected again all over the world. The Panama Canal is a disgrace, what took place at the Panama Canal. Jimmy Carter gave it to them for $1, and they were supposed to treat us well. I thought it was a terrible thing to do.

It was the most expensive structure ever built in the history of our country, relatively. It would be the equivalent of substantially over a trillion dollars today. We lost 38,000 people. Think of it, 38,000 people, they died from malaria, mosquitoes. They were unable to stop the mosquitoes. They paid people five times more to take the job. Many of those people died. We gave it away for a dollar.

But the deal was that, you know, they have to treat us fairly. They don’t treat us fairly. They charge more for our ships than they charge for ships of other countries. They charge more for our Navy than they charge for navies of other countries.

They laugh at us because they think we’re stupid, but we’re not stupid anymore. So the Panama Canal is under discussion with them right now. They violated every aspect of the agreement, and it’s — they morally violated it also. And they want our help because it’s leaking and not in good repair. And they want us to give $3 billion to help fix it. I said, well, why don’t you get the money from China? Because China has basically taken it over. China is at both ends of the Panama Canal.

China is running the Panama Canal. And they come to see this Biden, this guy who should never have been allowed even to run for President. Of course, he shouldn’t have either, because that never happened. It had to be two people, not one.

But they want $3 billion to fix the Panama Canal that’s run by China and makes a lot of money, China. One of the most profitable structures ever built, because you have ships lined up back to Florida, frankly, and they just keep going through, and the numbers are staggering — half a million to a million dollars a ship. And they took it away from us, meaning we gave it to them for a dollar. But not going to be — not going to happen.

What they’ve done to us, they’ve charged us — they’ve overcharged our ships, overcharged our navy. And then when they need repair money, they come to the United States to put it up. We get nothing. Those days are over.

Working with the Republican majorities in Congress, we’ll cut taxes, slash regulations, raise wages, and boost incomes at a pace the world has not seen before, and certainly not from our country. We had a big chunk of it for the first three years of — prior to COVID coming in, in my administration. We had the greatest economy in history. We cut the most regulations in the history of our country, and I did that all in four years — by four times more than any other President cut.

We did that in four years. And we were just getting started. We’ll impose new tariffs so that the products on our stores will once again be stamped with those beautiful words, Made in the USA. And we are not treated well, as you know, by Canada.

Canada is subsidized to the tune of about $200 billion a year, plus other things. They don’t essentially have a military. They have a very small military. They rely on our military. It’s all fine, but, you know, they got to pay for that. It’s very unfair. I have so many great friends. One of them is the great one. Wayne Gretzky. I said, Run for prime minister, you’ll win, and it’ll take two seconds. And he said, Well, am I going to run for prime minister or governor? You tell me. I said, I said, I don’t know. Let’s make it governor. I like it better. But no, something is going to have to be done.

Same thing with Mexico. We have a massive deficit with Mexico, and we help Mexico a lot. They’re essentially run by the cartels. And I can’t let that happen. Mexico is really in trouble. A lot of trouble. Very dangerous place. And we’re going to be announcing a future date pretty soon.

We’re going to change because we do most of the work there and it’s ours. We’re going to be changing. So the opposite of Biden, where he’s closing everything up, essentially getting rid of 50 to $60 trillion worth of assets. We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring that covers a lot of territory.

The Gulf of America. What a beautiful name. And it’s appropriate. It’s appropriate. And Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country. They can stop them. And we’re going to put very serious tariffs on Mexico and Canada because Canada, they come through Canada, too. And the drugs that are coming through are at record numbers, record numbers.

So we’re going to make up for that by putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada, substantial tariffs that we want to get along with everybody. But, you know, they have to it’s it’s got — it takes two to tango. We’re approaching the dawn of America’s golden age; this is going to be a golden age for America. We have things that nobody else has.

We have more natural resources. We have number one. Nobody knew that until I came along. I made us number one. We’re number three. I made us number one in a very short period of time in drilling. And you know, you can talk about windmills. They litter our country. They’re littered all over our country, like like dropping paper, like dropping garbage in a field. And that’s what happens to them, because in a period of time, they turn to garbage. Most expensive energy ever. They only work if you get subsidy.

The only people that want them are the people they’re getting rich off windmills, getting massive subsidies from the U. S. government. And it’s the most expensive energy there is. It’s many, many times more expensive than clean natural gas. So we’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built off the coast of New Jersey. They want to build like 200 windmills that people are going crazy. Nobody wants them. And they’re very expensive. They don’t work without subsidy. You don’t want energy that needs subsidy. Energy is a good business.

You don’t need subsidy. But when you build these massive towers and they’re 25 stories tall, 40 stories, they have 170 stories tall. The blades, they take three ships to ship them. It’s crazy. They’re dangerous. You see what’s happening up in the Massachusetts area with the whales, where they had two whales wash ashore and I think a 17 year period. And now they had 14 this season. The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously.

And they had actually over, I think, 125 or something over a number of years, over a number of years. And we don’t want that to happen. It’s a disaster from — it’s amazing the way a true environmentalist would say, oh, we love wind. It sounds good, but that’s about where it ends.

You know, after 10 years, you have to redo them. And what happens is they don’t do that. They let them stand and they rust and they say, because of the environment, I’m not a believer in this, but they say you can’t because it’s a certain fiberglass that the blades cannot be buried in earth, that that’s an environment. So what do you do with them?

What do you do with them? And I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to Palm Springs, California or any of these places where you have long term windmills standing. They’re a disaster. They’re rusting, rotting, closed, falling down. This is as you enter Palm Springs and they put new ones next to them because nobody wants to take them down, because why should they take them down? It’s very expensive to take them down. And you can’t do anything with them because the blades, you can’t bury them because of the environmental protection. We’ll look at that.

It doesn’t make sense, but that’s what they say. So we are at the beginning of a great, beautiful golden age of business. And I think we’re also at a golden age of common sense, because everything I’m saying to you from a simple water faucet that doesn’t allow water to come out appropriately to all of the other elements of what we do and what we’re going to do — to take 50 to 60 trillion dollars off our country’s balance sheet, because some man that has no idea what he’s doing has no idea. You know it.

I know it. The Democrats know it. And what they did is a crime by allowing that to happen. And I’ll bet you, if you asked him today, how much acreage did you submit, essentially, did you destroy, you destroyed the economic viability of drilling in the ocean.

And with AI coming along and all, you know, a lot of people don’t realize that AI is going to be a big thing. But you’ll need double the electricity, at least, that we have right now. So right now, we produce electricity for many, many different things. AI is a very big deal in terms of the future.

China is already building electric facilities, big, bold electric facilities. And you know how they’re being fired up with coal? They’re being fired up with coal. And we’re going to build bigger and better ones. People like Hussain that are doing the same thing as he is. I’ll bet they don’t do it as well, because I know how he does it. But they’re doing a lot of things. The problem is they can’t get their permits, because I say, build the plant with the building.

So with the structure, build the plant. Because you’re going to grid, the grids are old. So they said, that’s a great idea. In other words, build your electric facility alongside of your plant. And you could have extra output if you want, because once you build it, you can make it larger pretty inexpensively. You could have extra output, which you’ll sell to the public. But build it with the plant. And people are loving that idea.

So we’re going to have a lot of fun making America great again. And it’s going to happen, I think, very, very quickly. It’s already happened. So I would say this, and this has been pretty openly reported by the news, there’s never been anything like what’s happened in the last — since we won the election, a couple of months, since we won the election, the whole perception of the whole world is different.

People from other countries have called me. They said, Thank you. Thank you. The perception of the whole world is different. We’re going to have to settle some big problems that are going on right now. We’re going to have to settle up with Russia, Ukraine. That’s a disaster. I look at numbers every week, the number of people being killed in that war.

People don’t know. Mostly soldiers now. But the towns have been obliterated. This was a Biden fiasco that he got — that should have never happened. If we had a real President, if we had a President that knew what he was doing, Russia would have never, ever gone in. But they did go in, and we have a mess. The cities are all blown up. The people have largely left.

And the soldiers are killing each other at levels that haven’t been seen since the Second World War. So we’ll have to get that one straightened out, too. That’s a tough one. Much tougher than it would have been before it started, I can tell you that. The deal could have been made just by an average dealmaker. Deal could have been made on that. So thank you all for coming. We’ll take a couple of questions.

Yeah. Go ahead. Please.

REPORTER: Mr. President, thank you. I wanted to touch on the world on fire that you mentioned. But let’s start, if we could, with your references to Greenland and the Panama Canal and so forth. Can you assure the world that as you try to get control of these areas, you are not going to use military or economic coercion?

DONALD TRUMP: No.

REPORTER: Mr. President, can you tell us a little bit about what your plan is? Are you going to negotiate a new treaty? Are you going to ask the Canadians to hold the vote? What is the strategy?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. I can’t assure you. You’re talking about Panama and Greenland. No, I can’t assure you on either of those two. But I can say this. We need them for economic security. The Panama Canal was built for our military. I’m not going to commit to that now. It might be that you’ll have to do something. I’m not going to commit to that. The Panama Canal is vital to our country. It’s being operated by China. China. And we gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn’t give it to China.

And they’ve abused it. They’ve abused that gift. It should’ve never been made, by the way. Giving the Panama Canal is why Jimmy Carter lost the election, in my opinion. More so, maybe, than the hostages. The hostages were a big deal. But if you remember — and nobody wants to talk about the Panama Canal now because, you know, it’s inappropriate, I guess, but — because it’s a bad part of the Carter legacy. But he was a good man.

Look, he was a good man. I knew him a little bit, and he was a very fine person. But that was a big mistake. Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake. We lost 38,000 people. It cost us the equivalent of a trillion dollars, maybe more than — probably the most expensive — they say it was the most expensive structure, if we call it a structure, which I guess you can, ever built. And giving that away was a horrible thing. And I believe that’s why Jimmy Carter lost the election, even more so than the hostages. Those two things.

REPORTER: If I could just follow up on Ukraine and Iran, the two negotiations you’ll be heading into. On Ukraine, you said just before it’s a lot more complicated now. Much more complicated.

DONALD TRUMP: Because it would have never started.

REPORTER: Right. But it has started. It’s — you’ve got —

DONALD TRUMP: Well, not only started, the cities are largely knocked down. They’re —

REPORTER: So you’ve got what you’ve got. At this point, would you — to hold on to leverage in dealing with President Putin, would you make a commitment to the Ukrainians that you will keep supporting them during the negotiations?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I wouldn’t tell you if that were the case.

REPORTER: But would you make a commitment to provide a security guarantee if they do enter into an armistice or a ceasefire along the lines of the French and the Germans?

DONALD TRUMP: So you know, a big part of the problem was Russia, for many, many years, long before Putin said you could never have NATO involved with Ukraine. Now, they’ve said that. That’s been, like, written in stone. And somewhere along the line, Biden said, no, they should be able to join NATO.

Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feeling about that. But there were a lot of mistakes made in that negotiation. And when I heard the way that Biden was negotiating, I said, you’re going to end up in a war. And it turned out to be a very bad war. And it could escalate. That war could escalate to be much worse than it is right now.

REPORTER: Do you believe they can never join NATO?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, my view is that it was always understood. In fact, I believe that they had a deal, and then Biden broke it. They had a deal, which would have been a satisfactory deal to Ukraine and everybody else, but that Biden said, no, you have to be able to join NATO. And that’s always been. And nobody knows more about NATO than I.

You know, years ago, when I first started this, I didn’t know too much about NATO, but I got it right anyway. I said, they’re taking advantage. I’m the one that got, and the Secretary General was here, as you know, two weeks ago, saying that if it weren’t for me, NATO wouldn’t even exist right now, because I raised from countries that weren’t paying their bills. At that time, 28 countries, 20 of them were not paying their bills, 21 to be exact.

They weren’t paying. And or they were paying a very small portion. And I raised over $680 billion. That was the number he gave by saying, if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you. And as soon as I said that, the money came pouring in. But Obama could have said it. Other people could have said it. Bush could have said it. Nobody said it but me. I took a lot of heat. They said, oh, that’s a threatening statement. Well, they weren’t paying their bills.

I said, we’re not going to protect you if you’re not paying the bills. So in a true sense, I saved NATO, but NATO is taking advantage of us. And one of the problems that I have, and I’ve said it openly, I said it to President Zelenskyy, Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we’re in now. Whether you like that situation or not, Europe is much more affected than the United States.

We have a thing called the ocean in between us, right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe? And you know, they’re a similar size, a little smaller, but they’re a similar size economy as the United States when you add them up. And yet Europe is in for a small fraction of the number the United States is in.

Now, Biden could have called them up during the term. That’s what I did. I said, you have to pay your bills. And they all, one stood up. I won’t say who, you’ll probably have it because the media hated to report on it. But a prime minister up from a country, you know, a famous meeting of 28 nations with no press, no anybody in the room, he stood up, he says, does that mean if we don’t pay our bill? And at that point, it was 2 percent. It should be 5 percent.

It should be 5 percent, not 2 percent. But at that point, it was 2. But many people didn’t pay. Some people didn’t pay anything. But many people were away, including Germany. Germany was at less than 1 percent.

REPORTER: [Question Inaudible]

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think NATO should have 5 percent.

REPORTER: [Question Inaudible]

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Well, you can’t do it at 2. I mean, at 2 percent, every country, if you’re going to have a country in a regular military, you’re at 4 percent. I think they should be. You know, they’re in dangerous territory. I think you should be. They can all afford it. But they should be at 5 percent, not 2 percent. I’m the one that got them to pay 2 percent.

And a gentleman stood up, a prime minister stood up, and he said to me, Sir, could I ask you a question? You’re saying we have to pay our bills. If we don’t pay our bills, will the United States protect us from Russia? I said, If you don’t pay, you mean you’re delinquent? He said, Yes. He said, If you’re delinquent, we will not protect you. I took a lot of heat. Although it was somewhat closed door, I took a lot of heat from the media.

And you know what happened? The money started pouring in. That’s why NATO has money. And the Secretary General said it was the most incredible thing he had ever seen in a negotiation.

Now, if I would have said, Yes, we will, nobody would have paid. If I would have loved to have said, Yes, we’ll protect you even if you don’t pay. But that’s not the way life works.

REPORTER: Mr. President, two questions related to each other. First, you said on your first day of office, you’re going to pardon January 6th defendants. Were you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, we’re looking at it, and we have other people in there. And as you see, I guess 24 or 28 people came now from the FBI. That came out very quietly. Nobody reported it. But they had people in some form related to the FBI. They had four or five people that were strongly related to the FBI. We have to find out about that. We have to find out about Hezbollah.

We have to find out about who exactly was in that whole thing, because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted. You know, I see it all the time, and you see it, too. People that were doing some bad things weren’t prosecuted. And people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now.

So we’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons. Yes, please.

REPORTER: Good afternoon, Mr. President. It’s good to see you again. Two questions about Syria and the ongoing war in Gaza. About Syria, the Pentagon disclosed last month the U.S. has some 2,000 troops in Syria. That’s almost double the number, initially, we were told, of 900. Will you keep that troop capacity the same upon taking over Gaza?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I won’t tell you that because that’s part of a military strategy. But I will say it was Turkey. Turkey’s been after that country in different names and different forms and shapes for 2,000 years. Those people that went in are from Turkey.

And President Erdogan is a friend of mine. He’s a guy I like, respect. I think he respects me also. He’s the one that didn’t go after certain people after I requested that he not. You know who I’m talking about? The Kurds. I don’t know how long that’s going to be, because they’re natural enemies. They hate each other.

But he didn’t do that yet, and he didn’t do it in the past also. He started, and I said, please don’t do that, and he didn’t do it. But if you look at what happened with Syria, Russia was weakened, Iran was weakened, and he’s a very smart guy. And he sent his people in there through different forms and different names, and they went in and they took over. And that’s the way it is.

REPORTER: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt you. Do you have concerns about HTS taking control of Syria?

DONALD TRUMP: By the way, I have the envoy here. Is that in the back? Standing with my son, Eric, is Steve Witkoff, who’s just got back from the Middle East, and he’s done a fantastic job. He’s a great dealmaker.

I said, what we need there is a dealmaker, because nobody makes a deal. We have people that understand where the rivers are and where the meets and bounds are, but they can’t talk. They can’t make deals. Steve’s done a great job. I just want to thank you, Steve. You’ve been working endlessly for months, and he’s working specifically on the hostages, trying to get them back.

REPORTER: Well, now, my second question is, come up —

DONALD TRUMP: Steve, come up for a second. Maybe you might want to say a couple of words.

REPORTER: Sir, I lost at least another hostage.

DONALD TRUMP: I didn’t — I didn’t know Steve was going to be here, actually.

REPORTER: Neither did I.

DONALD TRUMP: He’s done a fantastic job. And it’s a dangerous job, too, and we appreciate it. He didn’t know about this kind of danger and the other dealmaking he does. Now he sees a lot of big danger. Come on up, Steve.

REPORTER: Mr. President, can I ask you a second part of the question?

DONALD TRUMP: Yes. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

STEVE WITKOFF: Well, I think we’re making a lot of progress. And I don’t want to say too much, because I think they’re doing a really good job back in Doha. I’m leaving tomorrow. Back to go to Doha. But I think that we’ve had some really great progress. And I’m really hopeful that by the inaugural, we’ll have some good things to announce on behalf of the president.

I actually believe that we’re working in tandem in a really good way. But it’s the president, his reputation, the things that he has said that are driving this negotiation. And so hopefully, it’ll all work out and we’ll save some lives. I believe we’ve been on the verge of it.

I don’t want to discuss sort of what’s delayed it. No point to be negative in any way. But I think it’s the president, his stature, what he said he expects, the red lines he’s put out there. That’s driving this negotiation. I’m going back probably either this evening or tomorrow night.

REPORTER: Are you confident there’ll be a deal before January 20th, or is that something that’s likely to happen? If there’s a deal even at all, and we’ve been hearing this now for the better part of…

DONALD TRUMP: I know.

STEVE WITKOFF: I would say…

DONALD TRUMP: There better be. Right.

STEVE WITKOFF: I would say that the president is exasperated. I don’t want to talk for him. But look, I don’t know anyone who delegates better than President Trump. He gives us a lot of authority to speak on his behalf, and he exhorts us to speak emphatically. And emphatically means, you better do this, because the alternative…

REPORTER: Do you think they’re waiting for President Trump to take office?

STEVE WITKOFF: No. I think they heard him loud and clear. Better get done by the inaugural.

REPORTER: But when you say, all hell must be paid… All hell must be paid if they don’t release the hostages. Do I have to define it for you? All hell will break out.

DONALD TRUMP: If those hostages aren’t back, I don’t want to hurt your negotiation, if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is.

And they should have given them back a long time. They should have never taken them. They should have never been the attack of October 7th. People forget that. But there was. And many people are killed. They’re no longer hostages. I have people from Israel and others calling, begging me to get…

You know, we had also people there from the United States, just so you know. They’re holding some so-called hostages from the U. S. But I’ve had mothers come to me and fathers crying, can I get the body of their son back? Can I get the body of their daughter back? That beautiful girl, where they threw her in the car, pulled her by her ponytail, and threw her in the car like she was a sack of potatoes. I said, what happened to her? Sir, she’s dead.

Like a 19-, 20-year-old beautiful girl. And the way they treated her. And I just say it this, very simply, Steve’s got a job to do. He’s a great guy, great negotiator, great person. They respect him over there already. It’s what we needed over there. We have people that know everything about the Middle East, but they can’t speak properly. They don’t know.

He’s a great negotiator. That’s what I needed. I could have sent that gentleman right over there who’s saying he’s a great negotiator. There are people, they’re rare. Great negotiators are very rare, like a great surgeon. But we have the right person. But I tell this, I don’t want to hurt the negotiation. If the deal isn’t done before I take office, which is now going to be two weeks, all hell will break out in the Middle East.

STEVE WITKOFF: Okay? Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.

DONALD TRUMP: You’ve done a great job. Thank you.

REPORTER: More than 140 police officers were injured by rioters on January 5th. Will you pardon anyone who attacks a police officer?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt. She was killed. And there was actually somebody else that was killed, also a MAGA person. But people don’t give it 100 percent credibility. I’m going to find out about it and we’re going to find out. But Ashli  Babbitt was killed. She was shot. She should have never been shot.

She was shot for no reason whatsoever. In fact, they say that she was trying to hold back the crowd. And the crowd was made up of a lot of different people. So we’ll see. But I will tell you this, the person that was was killed was Ashli Babbitt. The other thing is, when they talk, you know, there was never charges of insurrection or anything like that. But if there were, this would be the only insurrection in history where people went in as insurrectionists with not one gun. OK, and let me tell you, the people that you’re talking about have a lot of guns in their home for hunting and for shooting and for entertainment, a lot of good reasons.

But there wasn’t one gun that they found. And why didn’t they find the bomber, the pipe bomber? You know, they know who the pipe bomber is. The FBI knows who it is. The status of the FBI has gone down so far and the status of the DOJ, or as I call it, the Department of Justice, the Department of Injustice, being laughed at all over the world. And hopefully with Pam Bondi and with Kash Patel and with other people that we’re putting in that will all come back. If you do a poll in the FBI, I guarantee I’m at like 90 percent with the agents of the FBI. But they have hurt, hurt that incredible place.

Law enforcement. I mean, you think of the FBI. They raided this house. By the way, they could have told me, could I see this guy? I would have given him. I actually told him, come in any time you want. You can see anything. They raided the house and the case was dismissed. And now I’m in litigation. I’m suing them for doing that. And I feel so badly doing it. I’m the president of the United States and I’m suing the United States.

But I’m suing them for other things, too. The FBI has gone so. Its reputation has been so horribly hurt between Comey, who is the worst, and all of the others. What’s happened to the FBI is we’re going to make it great again. We’re going to make the FBI great again. We’re going to make the Department of Justice fair and strong, but fair again, because all they did was attack me because I’m their political opponent. And that includes with local judges like Merchan. You ought to find out why do I ask him?

Why do I have a gag order where I’m not allowed to speak? Think of it. I’m the president of the United States and I’m not allowed to speak. Why? Because if I did speak, people would understand the scam. It’s a scam. And we have very dishonest judges and New York judges are very bad. We had one that valued this house at 18 million dollars because it was good for that case.

He actually valued that chandelier is worth more than 18 million dollars. He valued this house at 18 million dollars. And we have another one who was so nasty, so horrible, such a brute, most vicious, vile person. These are New York judges. We’ve won most of the cases, so we’re very happy about that. Please.

REPORTER: Back on Greenland. Their position is clear. But how do you direct your staff to take specific actions, to draw up plans? And can you elaborate again? You didn’t rule out military coercion in this meeting, did you?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I’ve been told that for a long time, long before I even ran. I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time. You have approximately 45,000 people there. People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it.

But if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world. You look at — you don’t even need binoculars. You look outside, you have China ships all over the place. You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen. We’re not letting it happen.

And if Denmark wants to get to a conclusion — but nobody knows if they even have any right, title, or interest. The people are going to probably vote for independence or to come into the United States. But if they did — if they did do that, then I would tariff Denmark at a very high level.

REPORTER: Have you asked your staff to draw up plans for acquisition? I mean, are you — are you active in doing that?

DONALD TRUMP: No, we’re not at that stage. But we have people — I haven’t even entered office yet.

REPORTER: Secondly, sir, Elon Musk has drawn criticism and a lot of attention for some of his actions and provocative statements about foreign affairs, including in Europe. Your reaction to that, is that appropriate for Russia?

DONALD TRUMP: You mean where he likes people that were — that tended to be conservative? I don’t know the people. I can say Elon is doing a good job. Very smart guy. I don’t know the people you’re talking about. I mean, I’ve heard a lot of things about a couple of people that are running for office, but that’s not so unusual. Yes, please.

REPORTER: I wanted to ask you about Ukraine and Putin. How soon do you anticipate going to meet with Putin to discuss the Ukraine situation?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I can’t tell you that, but I know that Putin would like to meet. I don’t think it’s appropriate that I meet until after the 20th, which I hate because, you know, every day people are being — many, many young people are being killed — soldiers.

You know, the land is very flat. And hundreds of thousands of soldiers from each — many hundreds of thousands from each side are dead. And they’re laying in fields all over the place. Nobody can even collect. There’s landmines all over. It’s a disaster. But it’s very flat. It’s great.

It’s farmland. And it’s very, very flat. And the only thing that stops a bullet is the human body. And the human body is stopping a lot of bullets.

REPORTER: Do you expect to have a conversation in the next — within the next three to six months?

DONALD TRUMP: I hope to have six months.

REPORTER: First three to six months.

DONALD TRUMP: No, I would think — I hope long before six months. Look, Russia is losing a lot of young people, and so is Ukraine. And it should have never been started. That’s a war that should have never happened. I guarantee you, if I were President, that war would have never happened.

REPORTER: Mr. President, who would you like to nominate to replace Michael Barr as vice chair of the military?

DONALD TRUMP: I’ll be announcing somebody.

REPORTER: Mr. President — Mr. President, you were working under the assumption that you’re serious about making Canada the 51st state of the United States. The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada said, under no circumstances will it ever be the 51st state.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s all right. Maybe he won’t win. But maybe he will. I don’t —

REPORTER: You would suggest —

DONALD TRUMP: Listen, I don’t care what he says.

REPORTER: When you say you’re considering military force to acquire Panama and Greenland, are you also considering military force to annex and acquire Panama?

DONALD TRUMP: No. Economic force. Because Canada and the United States — that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better for national security.

Don’t forget, we basically protect Canada. But here’s the problem with Canada. So many friends up there. I love the Canadian people. They’re great. But we’re spending hundreds of billions a year to protect it. We’re spending hundreds of billions a year to take care of Canada. We lose — in trade deficits, we’re losing massive — we don’t need their cars.

You know, they make 20 percent of our cars. We don’t need that. I’d rather make them in Detroit. We don’t need the cars. We don’t need their lumber. We have massive fields of lumber. We don’t need their lumber. We have to unrestrict them, because stupid people put, you know, restrictions on, but I can do that with an executive order.

We don’t need anything they have. We don’t need their dairy products. We have more than they have. We don’t need anything. So why are we losing $200 billion a year and more to protect Canada? And I said that to, as I called him, Governor Trudeau. I said, Listen, what would happen if we didn’t subsidize you? If we didn’t — because we give them a lot of money.

We help them. As an example, we’re buying icebreakers, and Canada wants to join us in the buying of icebreakers. I said, You know, I — we don’t really want to have a partner in the buying of icebreakers. We don’t need a partner.

But —

REPORTER: Do you think the U.S. is rightfully claiming U.S. treasuries?

DONALD TRUMP: No right. Nope. No right. Here’s what we have. We have a right not to help them with their financial difficulties, because we owe $36 trillion, too. We’re going to start knocking it out pretty fast, but we’re going to be able to do it because of energy and other things.

But — no, no. No right. No, no. No right. But why are we supporting a country, $200 billion-plus a year? Our military is at their disposal, all of these other things. They should be a state. That’s what I told Trudeau when he came down. I said, What would happen if we didn’t do it?

He said Canada would dissolve. Canada wouldn’t be able to function if we didn’t take their 20 percent of our car upmarket. So, again, they send us hundreds of thousands of cars. They make a lot of money with that. They send us a lot of other things that we don’t need. We don’t need their cars. And we don’t need the other products. We don’t need their milk. We got a lot of milk. We got a lot of everything. And we don’t need any of it. So I said to him, Well, why are we doing it? He said, I don’t really know. He was unable to answer the question. But I can answer it. We’re doing it because of habit.

And we’re doing it because we like our neighbors, and we’ve been good neighbors. But we can’t do it forever. And it’s a tremendous amount of money. And why should we have a $200 billion deficit and add on to that many, many other things that we give them in terms of subsidy?

And I said, That’s okay to have if you’re a state. But if you’re another country, we don’t want to have it. We’re not going to have it with European Union either. European Union, we have a trade deficit of $350 billion. They don’t take our cars. They don’t take our farm product. They don’t take anything. And so we’re not going to have it with them either. Brian, go ahead. Yes.

REPORTER: Happy New Year, by the way.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you.

REPORTER: We have some breaking news. You may not be aware of this, but it looks like Cannon has blocked the DOJ from releasing the Smith’s report until further court proceedings. Get your thoughts.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, that’s a big story. Yeah. Well, if I get it right, the the fake witch hunt started by the DOJ having to do with books and records and Biden had many more, and he wasn’t protected by the Presidential Records Act. I was. But all of that fake stuff that that took the lives of people, I mean, literally destroyed people.

People are destroyed because of what they did, destroyed. But we got to be president. But Biden did it for 40 years. He did it when he was a senator. That was illegal. And they ruled it was illegal. How about that? They said it’s illegal, but he’s unfit to stand trial.

So he can stand and be president of the United States. But the prosecutor found that he’s unfit for trial. I was going to use that as a major talking point, but I never got to use it because all of a sudden I had a new candidate who was also sort of unfit to stand trial. Right.

So what you’re saying is that the judge just blocked the — So Cannon was thrown off the case. They dropped their appeal because he had no case. They dropped all of that. The lawsuits against us. They lost the lawsuit. So this is deranged Jack Smith. So he dropped the lawsuits. He was told to by the DOJ because they had no lawsuit. They lost in court in front of a very strong and a very brilliant judge. They lost in court. And that pertained to other cases in other courts.

So he wanted to do a report just before I take office, probably. So he’ll do like a 500 page report and it’ll be a fake report, just like the investigation was a fake investigation. And I said, well, wait a minute. This guy was thrown off in disgrace, in disgrace. He’s gone back to the Hague or wherever they’re going to send them in disgrace because he failed so badly because it was a fake case against a political opponent. They thought they were going to use this to beat me. So what you’re saying is the — and I’m just hearing that that they’re not allowed to issue the report. So if they’re not allowed to issue the report, that’s the way it should be, because he was thrown off the case in disgrace.

Why should he be allowed to write a fake report? It’ll only be a fake report. That’s great news.

REPORTER: And if I can just follow up real quickly, you want to comment. Many Americans are angry that we’re sending millions of dollars every month to the Taliban. Do you anticipate —

DONALD TRUMP: it’s not even believable? Billions of not millions, billions. We pay billions of dollars to essentially the Taliban, Afghanistan. And that’s given by Biden. That’s the same man that took away 50 to 60 trillion dollars worth of value from the United States. That’s probably our most valuable asset. Took away our most valuable asset.

This can’t be allowed to happen. We are now a nation of common sense. When he does that, six hundred and twenty five million acres. This can’t be allowed to happen. Thank you for the information. Most other people probably knew about it, but they wouldn’t have told me that —

REPORTER: you vowed to bring down the prices at grocery stores very fast.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, we will do it fast.

REPORTER: But then you recently told Time magazine that bringing down prices would be very hard. So what can the American people expect when you get into office?

DONALD TRUMP: It’s always hard to bring down prices when somebody else has screwed something up like they did. But we’ll bring them down. We’ll get them down.

Energy is going to bring down prices. We’re going to have a lot of energy and energy is what brought it up. Energy and their bad spending is what brought it up. And energy is going to bring it down. We’re going to have prices down. I think you’re going to see some pretty drastic price reductions. As an example, food, bacon, ham, apples, everything has gone through the roof. It’s one of the reasons I won.

So as you know, as I said, inflation was one of the reasons I won. But I think the biggest reason I won was the fact that they are allowing prisoners to come into our country. They release their prisoners, their murderers. Prisoners of murderers are now walking around the streets of our cities and farmland all over murderers, people that have killed many, 32 percent have killed more than one person.

They release them from their jails, their prisons, and their mental institutions and insane asylums into our country. I believe that’s the reason we got such a large vote. Maybe one or two more questions. Yeah, please. Go ahead. Go ahead.

REPORTER: Can we — you go.

REPORTER: Can you — President Carter is laying in state today in Washington. You had some harsh words for him about the Panama Canal. Is there any disconnect there? Do you feel a little bit bad about doing that on the state?

DONALD TRUMP: No, look, I liked him as a man. I disagreed with his policy. So hey, he thought giving away the Panama Canal was a good thing. I think it cost him the election. That and the hostages.

I actually think that was a bigger factor because that’s a deal that just should not have been made. But again, this was a question that was asked of me. I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t want to bring up the Panama Canal because of Jimmy Carter’s death. But people don’t bring it up. But, you know, you and other people have asked me about it. No, it’s a deal that I was very strongly against. I was a young guy when this took place.

But just why would we spend all of that money, lose 38,000 people to malaria, the mosquito? They were dying. It was horrible what was happening. They paid them four times more than they would make in the United States. But they knew they were going to go over there and die. And they died in the jungles of malaria. There was nothing we could do to stop it, 38,000. And then we gave it away for one dollar.

REPORTER: You appeared to open the door in your radio interview yesterday for a two-bill approach. Is it still your preference for one big, beautiful bill, as you have said?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I like one big, beautiful bill. And I always have. I always will. If two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early. Now, you have to understand, for immigration and for the wall, we won the case on the wall. You know, they tried to sell the wall for five cents on the dollar, by the way.

And we had, fortunately, a judge that stopped that. But they were already discarding the wall. And five cents on the dollar. And you know what they were doing? They were calling us up and saying, we’ll sell it back to you at 200 cents. In other words, double what we paid for it. So they were going to buy it from this guy for five cents on the dollar. They were making deals.

And fortunately, we had a very smart judge that stopped it, called. I think he called for an investigation, too. And he should. But think of it. They were selling the wall that was exactly the wall that the Border Patrol wanted. That was designed by them. Steel, concrete, rebar. Exactly as they want. Very, very heavy steel, very powerful steel, hard to cut. Very, very heavy 7,000-pound concrete, which is a very strong concrete. Everything was top of the line. Very expensive.

Would be double what we paid for it then, six years ago. But let me just tell you, they were selling it for five cents on the dollar to people. And those people were calling us, asking us to pay them 200 cents, because it’s a good deal because we can have it immediately. And you know what immediately is? Just leave it in place. No, no. The papers haven’t written that, though. You understand?

That deal is like all the other things that these people do. These people either hate our country or they’re very stupid. And I don’t believe they’re stupid, because nobody can cheat on elections like they cheat and be stupid. They either hate our country or they’re stupid.

So remember what I said, because nobody wants to report it. They were selling the wall for five cents on the dollar and trying to resell it back to us for 200 cents or less, but for 200 cents on the dollar. That’s a nice return.

REPORTER: [Question Inaudible]

DONALD TRUMP: I watched their news conference and I thought it was a very good news conference. I think they’ve honestly I think they’ve come a long way Meta Facebook. I think they’ve come a long way. I watched it. Actually, I watched it on Fox. I’m not allowed to say that.

REPORTER: Say it. Do you think he’s directly responding to the threat that you have made to him in the past?

DONALD TRUMP: Probably. Yeah, probably.

REPORTER: The last time you were here, you were asked a question about the U.S. possibly launching a preemptive strike on Iran. You said you wouldn’t answer that question.

DONALD TRUMP: On who?

REPORTER: On Iran. The U.S. launching a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

DONALD TRUMP: I said I don’t — I don’t talk about it. It’s a military strategy. But it is a legitimate question.

REPORTER: [Question Inaudible]

DONALD TRUMP: Well, not really, because only a stupid person would answer it. Look, it’s a military strategy. And I’m not answering your questions on military strategy. All right. One more. Brian, go ahead.

REPORTER: Could you give us a preview of what you might be talking to leaders of Congress who expected to come here the next couple of days? And you’ve got a very supportive Congress behind you.

DONALD TRUMP: They’re great. So we have a wonderful Republican Congress. We have a leader that I have a lot of confidence in. I think he’s going to be, hopefully, a great leader, a great speaker. And we have a leader, by the way, in the Senate, I think has been great. John Thune has been doing a fantastic job. But it goes through the House first. And the question is whether or not we do the two bills or one bill. And, you know, look, I can live either way.

I like the idea of the one big bill. But I can live either way. But they’ll be coming down. The senators also will be coming down. And then, ultimately, we’ll be meeting in the White House in a few weeks. But right now, this is the winter season. You know, they sort of call this the winter White House. It was built.

I don’t know if you know this. Marjorie Merriweather Post and E. F. Hutton built this. It was the greatest of all the estates in our country. And I saved it. And I got a lot of credit for saving it. Most of these big, great houses have been knocked down in Palm Beach. Just about all of them, actually. And, you know, you’ve built 10 mansions on one site. But we saved it. But this was built as the southern White House.

And she gave it to the government. And, by the way, Jimmy Carter gave it back. He said it’s too expensive for the United States. So, I didn’t realize that. Actually, Jimmy Carter. Nixon was through Watergate. He came down. Nixon came here once. And he thought it was incredible. But he had a thing called Watergate, if anybody remembers that. And so he had other things on his mind, to put it mildly. And Jimmy Carter felt that it was too extravagant for the country. So, fortunately for me, he gave it back to the foundation. And I bought it from the foundation.

REPORTER: Mr. President, on reconciliation, some Republicans say, in trade for a massive bill that you and they share the interest in, they want to see big spending cuts. Do you agree with that?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m okay with spending cuts. I like spending cuts. It’s just I’m on the record for spending cuts. And the debt ceiling was given to us. It shouldn’t have been. But it was put in our lap. And what I want, in terms of debt ceiling, isn’t the ceiling. I just don’t want to see a default. That’s all I want. I never talked about spending more money, necessarily.

All I want to see is no default. Because nobody knows what would happen if there was a default. It could be 1929, and it could be nothing. But that was put into our lap. And it shouldn’t have been, but it was. And so we’ll handle it. But debt ceiling is not about raising a lot of money. It’s really just about extending it. I just want to see an extension.

REPORTER: Mr. President, on immigration. How much can you do by executive order? Are you planning to do on executive order when it comes to immigration? And how much do you want Congress to tackle this issue? And also, on day one, what kind of orders are you expecting?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I have the safest border in the history of our country, by far. You remember the famous chart that I brought down. I love that chart very much for a lot of reasons. But I have the safest border, by far, in the history of our country. And when I took it over, it was a mess.

Nothing like it is now. This is 10 times worse. I got elected because of the border the first time. And I think I got elected largely because of the border the third time. And the second time, I did equally well. Well, not as well as the last time, but I did very well. And I will say, this was too big to rig. You know the expression? Too big to rig. They couldn’t do it. They tried, but they couldn’t do it. I didn’t get very much from Congress at all.

I just said that we’re being invaded and I took the money out of the military. Much of the wall, I built 500, over 500 miles of wall. Much of that wall was built through money that I put into the military. We took it out because we couldn’t get things from Congress in those days. And we took it out. And that wall was built largely with money coming from the military. So, very simple. I went to the military.

I said, our country is being invaded by, very simple, nothing like what’s invading our country now. They weren’t releasing prisons into our country and they weren’t releasing mental institutions in, but some bad dudes were coming in. And I said, our country is being invaded. And I took that money largely from the military.

I was sued nine times by the Democrats in Congress and I won all those suits. And we ended up building 571 miles of wall. Once that wall was built, they started going around it. So we’re going to add another 200. That would have been up in three weeks. And then we had a very unfortunate election result. And they said, we don’t want to put it up. We’ll sell it. And they started selling it for five cents on the dollar. What a shame. So we’ll do this again. I just want to thank everybody very much.

I’m just telling you, this will be the golden age of America. This is the golden age of America. We’re going to have a great country again. We’re a country right now under siege. We have so many different problems. And nobody respects us overseas, but now they do. The Italian Prime Minister, as you know, came here the other night. Just flew in and flew out.

She wanted to see me. And great respect is being shown. When I went to the cathedral in France, great respect was shown by the Prime Minister, the President, by everybody. France was – and, by the way, I have to say they did a great job in the cathedral.

But great respect is being shown to our country again. And we have a great country, but we have to run it properly. It’s going to be run properly. We want to get back those hostages for Israel and for us. You know, we do have people that are hostages being held. And I’ll just say it again. If this deal is not done with the people representing our nation, by the time I get to office, all hell is going to break out. Thank you very much.

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