Transcript: President Trump Holds Cabinet Meeting, May 27, 2026

There are two ways. It depends on the way you ask the question.

But a pill that would sell in Germany or in, let’s say, in London for $10 was selling here for $130. And I got the countries to all agree, otherwise they would have had to pay big tariffs. They didn’t want to go into it, but I had some very interesting discussions. They said vehemently no. And then, when I said, “That’s all right, we’re going to charge you a 50 percent tariff on everything you sell into America.” And they said, “Well, like we said, we’ll say yes.” And every single country agreed and every drug company agreed.

So we have most favored nations. So we were paying the highest drug prices in the world. Now we’re paying the lowest drug prices in the world. So that pill that I talked about would go from $10 to $20. The world is bigger than the U.S. Hard to believe, but it’s true. So it’s not like you cut it in the middle. You just had to go up a little bit. But a little bit is a doubling of a price. So a little bit is a lot. So the pill would go from $10 to $20, and we’d go from $130 to $20. Think of that.

So we would get — if you remember, some of you were at the news conference. I had my first term where I got the prices down one eighth of a percent — one quarter, one eighth of a percent — my first term. And I’m so proud of it because prices — drug prices hadn’t come down in 28 years, and I was the first one to do it. But now I’m getting them down not one-eighth of a percent. I’m getting them down 400, 500, 600. Or if you want to use it a different way, you could say 70 percent, 80 percent, 90 percent, 50 percent.

Nobody has ever seen anything like it. And I got that through, well, everybody knew it was taking place, but we paid the highest prices anywhere in the world. Now we’re paying the lowest prices anywhere in the world, and the press refuses to write about it. I think it’s the biggest thing. And for healthcare, you know, so much of it is prescription drug prices and drug prices. And with them coming down, the healthcare is going to come down very substantially.

We recently added nearly 1,000 low-cost generics, too, as I said. And that’s, you know, 1,000 drugs. And it’s all on, and this was not given by me. This was given by Dr. Oz and Bobby. And I wasn’t sure whether or not I loved the idea, but they said, “We want to use Trump.” TrumpRx.gov is what it is. And it’s the hottest site, I think, anywhere on the planet, from what I understand, Bobby. Right?

It’s really great. People are calling up, and they’re buying drugs for a fraction, for literally a fraction of the price. And it should be the biggest story. And on that alone, we should win the midterms. On that alone, we should win the midterms. But the press doesn’t talk about it. It’s the biggest thing to happen in the drug industry ever, maybe. Ever. And the press doesn’t even want to write stories about it.

Military Strength and Iran

We made the largest-ever investment in U.S. Military, $1 trillion. And we’re asking, actually, for $1.5 trillion for the coming year. And we have the strongest military anywhere in the world, as you know. You saw what we did with Venezuela. That worked out very quickly.

And we’re doing really equally as well with Iran. Iran is very much intent. They want very much to make a deal. So far, they haven’t gotten there. We’re not satisfied with it, but we will be. We will be either that or we’ll have to just finish the job. But the Navy is gone, as I’ve said a thousand times. The Navy is gone. The Air Force is gone. Everything is gone, and they’re negotiating on fumes. But we’ll see what happens. Maybe we have to go back and finish it. Maybe we don’t.

Right now, I mean, you can speak to Steve Witkoff and Jared. They’re doing a good job. But right now, I think it looks like they want to just make a deal. They want to — they have — I don’t think they have a choice. They’re just going back to the Internet because they’re getting clobbered. Their economy is in freefall. They have 250 percent inflation. Their money has no value. Their whole economic system is broken down.

They thought they were going to outweigh me, you know. “We’ll outweigh him. He’s got the midterms.” I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I’m doing that for the world. I’m not doing it just for us. And we’ve had great support from other nations, by the way. We don’t need it at all, but we’ve had great support from other nations. The problem is, you always get the support when you don’t need it. When you need it, you don’t get the support.

With Operation Epic Fury, our warriors are ensuring that the world’s number-one state sponsor of terror never obtains a nuclear weapon, and they won’t.

Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Crackdown

Under the leadership of Vice President J.D. Vance, very proud of this, the White House Task Force to eliminate fraud is waging war on waste fraud, theft, and abuse like nobody has ever seen before. He looks like Eliot Ness. Do you ever see Eliot Ness? I’m telling you, the guys that are up there, rural central cast, they’re standing behind. What a group of people. No, it looks like a movie. I’m going to make a movie out of it, I think.

And they’re finding billions and billions and billions of dollars. And I just said that’s good. He said, “You haven’t seen anything yet.” Just said that. And, you know, if he does really great, we’ll have a balanced budget without having to do anything. This is the kind of money they stole. They’re crooks. They’re thieves. And I hope that Todd is going to do a real job. These are crooked people. These are thieves. This isn’t, like, a mistake.

Just talking about one person, he got hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars for securing one man for taking care of one elderly man. He was a service. He got paid millions of dollars for taking care of one man. Total crook. They’re all crooks. The Somalians are what they’ve done to Minnesota. The Somalians, crooked as hell. Ilhan Omar, crooked as hell. They’re all crooks. And we got them. We got them. Now we’re putting the clamps on. But, boy, I tell you, that’s an impressive group of guys that you have behind you.

I was watching that. And a couple of very strong women, too. But I was watching that last night. I said, “I’m proud of you guys.” In two months, we’ve exposed tens of billions of dollars of defrauded taxpayer money, prosecuted numerous fraudsters, Todd, and stopped billions of suspicious payments. Very suspicious.

“Oh, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Well, you see, I’m getting reports from Todd, from JD. I’ve never seen anything like it. The kind of — just hundreds of billions of dollars were stolen. And no other administration would do what we’re doing. They’d let it go. Everybody was getting rich.

And I think we have a chance to save Social Security without doing anything to it by just the numbers of fraudulent people on Social Security. People that are 115 years old, 125 years old, getting payments. It’s funny. I said, “No, do those payments get turned back?” No, they accept them. Well, somebody is getting the payment. It’s not a person that’s 125 years old. But that’s the least of it.

The numbers that we’re finding out, we have great people in Social Security. We’re going to make our Social Security so strong, so good that you’d never say anything like it. We’re going to protect. I said right from the beginning, we’re going to protect our people and Social Security. If the Democrats ever got in, you wouldn’t have said Social Security would be bankrupt, people wouldn’t be getting anything.

Last week, they took down two of the largest Medicaid fraud cases in Minnesota history, as well as the largest autism fraud case ever charged by the federal government. You saw that with millions of dollars just being stolen. Everybody had autism. Everybody had autism, they said. It was incredible, actually. And I really, I mean, I’ve just seen some, I see what they’re doing. You haven’t seen anything yet. So, congratulations, J.D. Be vicious like they are. They’re violent people. They’re violent, vicious, scum.

Tribute to Tulsi Gabbard

Before asking Vice President Vance to speak about these efforts, I want to express our tremendous gratitude to our outgoing Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who is a terrific person, actually. She’s come up with some findings that were pretty good. And Tulsi has worked tirelessly to restore trust and focus on the intelligence and with the intelligence community.

Fraud, Foreign Policy, and Cabinet Updates

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They all respected her. They listened to her. She gave us leads that were pretty much — people thought they were dead, and they weren’t dead. They were right there. And she was able to expose a lot of things that we used at the FBI with cash and with Todd and with JD and everybody else.

It was amazing. She dramatically reformed the Office of Director of National Intelligence, cutting the staff by 40 percent, and she prevented countless terrorists and cartel members from entering the United States. She exposed mountains of evidence related to the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, one of the probably the greatest hoax in the history of our country. Although, when you look at the fraud coming out, there’s a lot of them. I mean, honestly, there’s a lot of them.

But the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, a great hoax, a very dangerous hoax, and to revoke security clearances of officials involved. And she declassified numerous historic documents of special public interest, including related to the JFK and RFK assassinations, which everybody wanted to see. And we’re now releasing a lot of things having to do with space, you know. People are very interested in that. It actually became the number one topic.

We’re releasing a lot of information having to do with extraterrestrial things. And people are totally fascinated by it. It’s amazing. I wasn’t sure if they would enjoy it. It’s literally trending number one.

Can you believe it? So, a lot of people out there like it. But we’re releasing all of that information. And, Tulsi, we’re praying for you and for your husband. Your husband is not feeling great, but he’s going to feel great soon.

You’re going to make him — you’re going to get him better. And he’s a wonderful guy. So just say hello and thank you for the great work you’ve done. We appreciate it. Thank you very much.

And now I’d like to ask J.D. to say a few words about the war and fraud, followed by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who’s doing fantastically, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another one. I mean, we have great people. And the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, central casting. He loves war.

I don’t know, I guess. I mean, that’s all. He’s a good man, that one. And Scott Bessent, you talk about a guy doing a job. Been fantastic.

Thank you, Scott. Really fantastic. And a lot of the success that we’re having with other countries is what you’ve been able to do and find. And SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler. And all of the people here have been great.

We’re going to just do those few, and maybe if you have some questions, we’ll go to others. But everybody around here has got a lot to say, but we did that once, and it lasted for like four or five hours. It was a little much. We want to be open. So now if I do it this way, they’ll say, he didn’t let anybody talk.

But let’s start with JD, and you can talk about a really, really important thing. Bringing our country back to honesty. A tremendous amount of money is involved. Go ahead. Thank you.

Vice President Vance on the Fraud Task Force

VICE PRESIDENT VANCE: Yes, sir. Well, first of all, thank you for your leadership, sir, and for making it possible. I often find, in the Fraud Task Force, that there sometimes are barriers that we need to break down, agencies that need to coordinate. And I’ll come to the President and say, “Mr. President, I need your permission to do —” and he’ll say, “For what?”

“For the Fraud Task Force?” And they’ll cut me off and say, “Yes, go do it.” So the fact that we have dedicated presidential leadership is really what’s made this possible, because it does require — we’ve got great people around the table, but sometimes these agencies don’t know how to work together at the lower level. And that’s one of the things we’ve had to turn on and force with the Fraud Task Force.

So I want to shout out just a few all-stars here. Linda at the Department of Education has been amazing at finding student loan fraud. You’ve got people who are either illegal aliens or aren’t even actually real human beings who are getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Education for student loans. We have cut that off. We found a lot. We’re going to find a lot more.

Scott at HUD has been amazing because a lot of the fraud that we see is housing fraud, people claiming benefits that they’re not entitled to. Or again, sir, sometimes completely made-up people who exist purely to collect fraudulent money from the American taxpayer.

Brooke at the Department of Agriculture — something I had no idea about until I started this work, sir — we send hundreds of billions of dollars to the states to administer the food stamp program. The federal government has no insight into whether those food stamps are going to people who are legally entitled or whether those people actually even exist. And so we’re working on a number of mechanisms to actually force the states to verify that the people who receive these benefits are actually entitled to them.

And I can go down the list. I’ve gotten a lot of support from a lot of people in this room. Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Oz have been particular all-stars on this, and Kim at HHS. What they’ve done with the Medicaid fraud — we’ve found tens of billions of dollars in Medicaid and Medicare fraud just from their hard work. We’ve cut that off.

And, yes, Mr. President, we’re going to find a lot more. The final thing I want to say, Mr. President — and I know that Todd maybe has something to say about this as well — but I always try to remind the American people, and certainly remind the Cabinet officials. By the way, Kelly at SBA has found tens of billions of dollars that were from fraudulent loans that were given under the Biden administration, and we’ve now cut that off and recovered a lot of that money.

So this has been a whole-of-government effort, Mr. President. The team really deserves a great deal of credit here. But the final point I want to make, sir, is I always try to remind the American people that fraud is fundamentally a crime with two victims. The most obvious victim are the American taxpayer.

They pay their taxes, they expect the money to go where it should go, and that’s not happening because of the fraudsters. But there are also victims — people who benefit from these programs that don’t exist if we’re not actually taking care of the fraud issue.

And let me just give one example to build on something you said earlier, sir. One of the people that Todd just prosecuted was a person who was collecting a lot of money from the American taxpayer to take care of elderly citizens — people who worked their entire lives, paid their taxes, should have had dignity and nobility in old age, but it was deprived from them by fraudsters who say that they’re taking care of them, who collect a check to take care of them, but then abuse and neglect these people. And particularly one man who died because he wasn’t getting adequate care, and that guy was still collecting benefits to take care of a person who he had completely neglected.

So not only do you have an American taxpayer who’s paying into these programs, you have an elderly citizen deprived of his dignity because we’re not going after the fraudsters. Well, now we are.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: How much money did he get?

VICE PRESIDENT VANCE: Sir, hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe more than that. But we think that that exact type of fraud has been replayed all over our country. That particular case was outside of Minneapolis. We expect that there are tens of thousands of people who are collecting fraudulent money to take care of people, and they’re not actually taking care of them.

We’re, of course, going to get to the root of as much of it as we can. But again, sir, it’s been — I wouldn’t say fun, because you find out how much people have been taken advantage of. But it’s certainly very good and valuable work. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to do it.

Acting Attorney General Blanche on Prosecuting Fraud

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Attorney General, please.

ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL BLANCHE: I’ll just continue to talk about what the Vice President was just talking about — the way that we are actually — it’s one thing to uncover fraud, which we’ve done, and that’s part of it, but it’s also prosecuting the bad guys that are doing it and stopping it from continuing. And that’s where you have — everybody in this room has inspector generals.

And for many years, these really hardworking law enforcement members would identify fraud, and nobody did anything about it. DOJ prosecuted it, but spent very little resources on that. So what we’ve done, just in the past 51 days, over 400 law enforcement actions in this country related to major fraud. That’s search warrants, that’s arrests, that’s convictions, that’s indictments that are filed. And that’s just 51 days.

And it’s not just the great prosecutors. It’s the FBI agents, it’s DHS and HSI agents, it’s everybody in this room that has inspector generals that are now — they have been freed up. And it’s because of you, it’s because of the Vice President saying this is going to be a priority of what we are going to do, not just the Department of Justice, even though we’re the prosecutors that are putting bad guys in jail. It’s also the law enforcement at every agency, FBI and DHS. And so we’re already seeing results.

We had a $1 billion fraud conviction at trial last week out of Florida. And this was an organization that was stealing from senior citizens in Florida, duping them. There were call centers set up in the Philippines and they were duping them to buy medical equipment that they didn’t need, that they would never get, and that the taxpayers paid for. And so that’s a good win.

We arrested 15 guys in Minnesota last week. The Vice President mentioned one of them. These are people that are just stealing. And many of them are here illegally. And so you have people who are in this country illegally, who are then taking advantage. And the Vice President says something a lot that resonates with me — the generosity of the American people, the generosity of everybody in this room, the leadership to take care of the people in this country that deserve it the most. Children who are supposed to get food at school, and you have men just stealing, taking that money.

And so that’s what we’re focused on. We are standing up — as you know, Mr. President, you allowed us to stand up a new division at the Department of Justice. The entire existence of that division is to combat what we’re talking about. And then every U.S. Attorney’s Office is now focused on it as well. So this is something that will result in a better place for every citizen of this country and save money, a lot of money. And also it’s the right thing to do for our tax dollars, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And billions of dollars was given out just very quickly before Biden left office. Billions and billions were given out. And I know of many cases, but one — I don’t know what’s happened with it, but I think you’re looking at it. I know Lee was involved in it environmentally. Stacey Abrams was given $2 billion for an account that had $103 in it, an environmental fraud, I guess.

And she had $103 in this newly opened account. And before leaving office, they put $2 billion into the account. And they had no reason for existence. They were unable to say what they did with it. $2 billion.

Lee, do you want to just mention something about that?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Thanks for your leadership, Mr. President. That was canceled. And they no longer have access to that $2 billion.

You told us to make it a priority. Now, this happened as soon as you came in. After the election, before your inauguration, they were caught on video saying that they were rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before your swearing in, because they were afraid that once you were sworn in, you were going to stop it. Well, that part, they were right.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We’re happy to do it, Mr. President. The Department of Justice, under Todd Blanche’s leadership, they just secured another big win in the appeals court on some recently canceled grants for different agencies. So, great attorneys making sure that this accountability is delivered over the finish line. It’s been a big, great team effort.

Manufacturing, Investment, and Economic Growth

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And we’re building more — most importantly, we’re building more factories and plants in the United States now than at any time ever before. $18 trillion coming in. That’s not including the 12th month. That’s 11. And I say it often, that the Biden administration had much less than $1 trillion, and we have $18 trillion.

And when those numbers, those final numbers, come up, they’ll be even higher than that. That’s a record in the history of the world. No country has ever done that. And that money is going into plants, and you are giving them very fast approvals. Thorough and environmentally correct, but fast approvals. And you’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you very much.

Secretary Rubio on Iran

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Another man doing a fantastic job, I think we all agree, is Marco. You’re all over the place, right? I watched you last night in three different locations. So tell us about Iran.

SECRETARY OF STATE RUBIO: Well, first of all, the bottom line is Iran is never going to have a nuclear weapon. And if recent events have done anything, just remind us once again that they are the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And they can never have a nuclear weapon. Now, the President’s preference, Mr.

Secretary Rubio on Iran, Border Security, and Ebola

SECRETARY RUBIO: President, your preference is told us repeatedly, as always, to negotiate these things and to figure out if you can have agreements. Diplomacy is always the first option. And we continue to work on that through your envoys, Mr. Woodcoff and Kushner and others, the Vice President, who have been very involved. And if we – if there’s an agreement to be made, we want that to be made.

I think there’s been some progress and some interest. And we’ll see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made. I just want to remind everybody, Mr. President, you know this well, you have other options available to you if that doesn’t work. But the bottom line is that we prefer the negotiated diplomatic route, and we’re going to give it every chance to succeed.

I know you’re giving it every chance to succeed, Mr. President, but here’s the bottom line because I keep getting asked, what is this all about? It’s very simple. Iran, and these people in charge of Iran, can never have a nuclear weapon, and they will never have a nuclear weapon, and they most certainly will not have one as long as you’re President of the United States. On that point, it’s very clear.

Just two quick things I want to touch upon. One, you touched upon the border and security. Part of securing our border is dealing with the people that are in this country unlawfully, many of whom do not want to go back to the country that they originally came from for a variety of reasons. Either we can’t send them there or some judge ties us up. And one of the key things we have achieved is now 20 countries have signed third country national agreements, meaning these are safe countries where individuals who refuse to go back to their country of origin can be sent to that country instead.

We’ve gotten 20 countries now around the world who have signed agreements that allow us to deport people to those places. What often happens when you go to the person who’s here unlawfully and say, we’re going to send you to this third country, is all of a sudden they decide they’d rather go back to their home country instead. So it gives the ability to enforce all laws and we work very closely with the Department of Homeland Security on that front.

Something else that I know is concerning people, because it’s on the news, is Ebola. Our number one obligation, you know, we’re involved in foreign policy, but even our foreign policy, the number one priority of our foreign policy is to protect the American people.

We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States. And so we’re very — the State Department and other agencies represented here, the Centers for Disease Control, HHS, others, are working very, very hard to contain this crisis to the countries where it’s currently located, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And so we’ve surged assistance to make sure that that is being contained there. And obviously, multiple agencies involved here are also very involved in tracking people, just to make sure that nobody comes into this country that has Ebola and creates a problem for us. And we feel like we’ve got good efforts in place to do that.

And Americans should feel assured that the President and his administration is doing everything we can to protect them on that front.

Armenia Peace Deal and the Trump Route for Prosperity

SECRETARY RUBIO: My last point, you said I was all over the place. One of the places I stopped in last night was to initial the Trump route for prosperity in Armenia. This is a key linchpin of the peace deal that you were able to achieve between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And in addition to that, we also signed a critical minerals MOU with them and a strategic engagement one as well.

So just a reminder of another war you helped to settle, Mr. President. But from that has now we are seeing the emergence of a great new relationship with Armenia that really had grown stagnant for a very long period of time. So we’re doing well on that front as well. Thank you.

Cuba and Venezuela

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And could I just ask you, Cuba and Venezuela, what’s going on there?

SECRETARY RUBIO: Well, interesting. On Venezuela, that process continues, that three-phase process, you know, of obviously stabilization, recovery, and transition. I would just say, just since January 3rd of this year, okay?

And I think this number is right, and Chris or Doug can correct me on this, but I think over 10 million barrels of Venezuelan oil have been delivered to the United States since the 3rd of January. That industry’s being professionalized for the first time ever. It’s going to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. They are selling oil in the market at market rates. The money’s going to an account in the United States, controlled and monitored by Treasury, audited by KPMG, and it’s for the first time ever the money’s not being stolen.

It’s going to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Cuba’s in a lot of trouble because unfortunately for them it’s run by a bunch of incompetent communists and being communist is bad, being an incompetent communist is like the worst. But the country’s been taken over by this company called Gaysa that basically controls 70% of the economy. None of the money in that company goes to help the Cuban people. None of it.

So we’ll be talking to them. We’ll be working on it. You know, we want something good for the Cuban people. And hopefully, there’ll be a good outcome there for them. There needs to be.

It’s 90 miles from our shores. And having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.

Energy Dominance and Record Oil Production

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So we’re producing right now more oil by double than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined. It’s never been anything like that. We have — we don’t need oil. We don’t need the straits. We don’t need anything. But we have more oil now being produced by double — by two times — than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined. Great — a great stat. Do you want to say something about that?

SECRETARY BURGUM: Well, I would, President Trump, under your leadership, we’ve opened up lease sales on public land. This is land that was put away for the benefit and the use of the American people, like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The Biden administration had illegally stopped holding lease sales during their administration. President Trump famously said, “Drill, baby, drill,” but before you can drill, you’ve got to open public lands. Between the lease sales that have happened in the Permian, in the Bakken, and on the North Slope, just since January of this year, it’s over $4 billion of revenues come into the Treasury.

That’s 13 times more than the Biden administration brought in on lease sales in the entire four years there in the office. Sir, your policies brought that in in five months. So with that, a lot of excitement, a lot of activity. We also inherited, just in one district, in Carlsbad, New Mexico, 5,600 unprocessed applications to drill for oil and gas on public land. And when we’re drilling on public land, those companies pay a royalty.

And that money comes to all of our citizens, and it goes to local school districts, and it goes to states. It is the core of the economy in parts of our country. The team down there, working for the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management has dropped that by 91%. It’s one of the reasons why they had a record lease sale is because now people go, “I can bid on federal land and I’m going to get a permit to drill and it’s not going to take me five years to get it. I’m going to get it in a month or less.”

And so it’s just it’s exciting to see your vision. And of course, with this energy dominance, us, as you noted, largest oil producer in the world, largest natural gas producer in the world, largest natural gas exporter, this is an opportunity for us to bring prosperity and affordability here at home, but also being pretty abroad. So President Trump, your energy dominance strategy with Chris Wright, Lee Zeldin and all the people that are working on this, people around the room — it’s been really incredible. And of course, you mentioned Venezuela, but all that flowing to our Gulf Coast refineries is also helping to keep the price of gas down at home.

So again, it’s an amazing transformation. Bottom line is the center of geopolitics around energy has moved from other parts of the world to the Western Hemisphere in the last five months. You turn Venezuela from a sanctioned adversary into a strategic ally in 45 minutes. Never happened in history before.

And what’s going on in Alaska? When I was there last week in Alaska in the North Slope, 80,000 barrels a day coming online at Pico. That wouldn’t have happened with you. It’s up by Willow on the North Slope. That’s going into the Alaska pipeline. 20% increase just off that one field.

So, amazing work. Energy is a high-tech industry, and those guys are crushing it, and they’re loving the fact that they can provide affordable, reliable, secure energy for America.

California’s Oil Reserves and Washington D.C. Beautification

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And we’re working very hard in California. You know, a lot of people don’t know this, but California has tremendous, tremendous oil reserves. Used to be number three in the nation, and the radical left has just wiped it out.

And we’re working very hard to get that open again and get it so the people — their gasoline prices, their lack of energy, is just staggering. It’s staggering. And we’re actually making very good progress. Even people that were against that at one point now they’re saying, “Wow, that’d be great.” But people don’t realize it was one of the — right, crazy — was one of the top drilling states.

What are the — I would say, in terms of reserves, as among the top in the country. Nobody thinks of that with California. Everything was just closed down — really violently closed down. And we’re opening up some of it, and we’re being met with actually great spirit because they’re paying so much for gasoline, and they don’t have to be doing that. And they have a very incompetent group of leaders, like grossly incompetent.

So I think that’s going to be something. On a slightly smaller subject, while Douglass is speaking, Department of Interior, he and his people have done a fantastic job on D.C. D.C. is looking beautiful. The fountains are almost all open.

We had 28 of them. And we have one in particular, a very long lake, we call it — a reflecting lake — between the Lincoln Monument. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. You take a look at — between Lincoln and Washington, you have the longest — like 2,400 feet long. That’s longer than the tallest building in the world, if you set it on the side.

And it’s almost 200 feet wide. And actually, it was built in 1922. And from 1922 on, it really never worked. It always leaked, and it was a problem, and a lot of things. And hundreds of millions were spent.

The Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work, and they failed. And we’ll be spending — you’ll give me a number, but I think it’s a very low number. It’s like in the number that we originally talked about, where we cleaned it, we fumigated it. We had 10 major truck dumpsters of garbage taken out. Can you believe it?

A friend of mine came in, a very substantial person from Germany. He wanted to see the Washington Monument. He wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial. And he said, “I looked, but that horrible reflecting pond is disgusting. It’s filthy, dirty, and disgusting.”

I said, “Really?” I drove down. I said, “Secret Service, let’s take a drive.” And we went down. I said, “That’s terrible.”

And for the most part, it didn’t work. I mean, they wouldn’t even have water in there. But when they did, it was just dirty, filthy water that leaked out. And we got to work on it, and it was supposed to cost almost $400 million — think of it, $400 million — because it’s like putting the skin on a skyscraper. But bigger.

Much bigger. Many skyscrapers, you could almost say, other than for the world’s tallest — think of it, the world’s tallest skyscraper is shorter than 2,400 feet. So we went to work, and over the years, I built hundreds of pools. I build them every time I built the building. I always liked to build Olympic-sized swimming pools, and I was very aware of swimming pool, what goes into making a swimming pool.

It’s not as simple as people think. You never want it to leak. You want a beautiful surface. I said, “You know, I have an idea, Doug.” We sat down.

I said, “Let’s take that long thing where we’re going to fix it with concrete, which leaks concrete, all sorts of other materials that all leak and don’t look good. They’re gray. And, you know, swimming pool. I have a swimming pool right up the road. I built it 22 years ago. It’s perfect. Does it ever leak? No, it’s perfect. Good contractors.”

I actually called in a couple of the contractors, got some ideas from them, and I gave it to Doug, and Doug’s done an unbelievable job.

And so they were going to spend maybe $400 million. I don’t know. You never know with cost overruns and everything, but it was going to take years to build. Three years, four years. And we’ll have it done before July 4th, substantially before July 4th.

If we didn’t have such bad weather the last four or five days, we could have been almost done. We have to — you can’t do this in the rain. And what they did is they cleaned it. They took out, as I said, more than 10 dumpsters of garbage shovels. It was disgusting.

Every corner had massive amounts of — I guess that’s the way the tide goes. But it had massive amounts of garbage. We then steam-cleaned it. We then sandblasted it. And then we pebble-blasted it.

Renovating the National Mall: The Reflecting Pool and Beyond

PRESIDENT TRUMP:

That’s a bigger version of sand. We made the surface as good as it can be. And we’re now covering it with the most beautiful blue, very thick. You think of it as a very sophisticated form of rubber. No leaks, no problems.

And it’s beautiful. It’s called American Flag Blue. That was the color we chose. And we are probably 70 percent finished with it. It’s going to be finished.

The hard part is done. And then we decided to do much more than we originally — what I originally thought. I was just going to do the surface, but we said the problem is the outer ring looks pretty bad, too, when you walk on. So we sandblasted that. This is all additional work. We didn’t want to do — you know, when you do something like this, when you do the one, you think the other looked okay, but then when the other, you see the new surface, the old stuff that looked okay looks really bad.

So we cleaned that, sandblasted it, the walkways, all of it. It’s a tremendous amount of area. You know, again, it’s thousands of feet long, very wide. This is where the people stand, not the water part, the dry part. And we had a combination of granite and stone, and we’re pointing it, fixing it.

The joints were terrible, everything. The whole place was a mess. And when it opens in a couple of weeks, long before July 4th — we won’t have it for July 4th weekend, but it’ll be long before that — you will see something that’s really going to be beautiful. And now we’re looking at the World War II fountain because that’s also in pretty bad shape. On the bottom, we’re going to duplicate it, I think, with the — maybe with a slightly different color, actually.

We’ll go with a lighter color. But Doug and I have a lot of fun doing it. Your staff is fantastic. They’ve really worked well. But the concept — so think of it.

Instead of spending two, three, four hundred million dollars — and it will never work — we’re going to spend like $10 million, maybe, $12 million. Instead of spending four years, we’re going to spend, like, if you add it all up, like, a couple of months. And instead of going through four Fourth of Julys as a horrible construction site, we’re going to have it open before the Fourth of July. And the difference is it’s better. Somebody said, “Oh, well, but it’s not the same.”

You know, some of the fake news would say, “Well, but it’s not.” No, it’s like the pen, sir. The pen is better at $2 than it was at $2,000. This is the same thing. This is far better.

Won’t leak. It’ll last for 50 years, maybe 100 years. They didn’t even know. I said, “How long will this last?” “Oh, I think you’ll get 50 years out of it.”

We did the swimming pool treatment, but they said, “Sir, for a little more money, we can get industrial strength.” I said, “That sounds good to me.” Same colors, same everything, same stuff, but it’s much — it’s actually much stronger. It’s used for industrial. I said, “I love that.”

So we’re going to have that open. It’s going to be really, really beautiful. And it’s a very important thing. You know, we can’t have people looking at the Washington Monument, going to the memorial. You take a look, the Lincoln Memorial, it was built, I guess, a little after the Lincoln Memorial.

It’s embarrassing. It was so horrible. I never saw anything like it. It was filthy dirty. It was Biden.

And they spent — between the two of them, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix this thing. Now, when Biden — when Obama did it, he spent way over $100 million. And they had a great idea. “Let’s use the water from the Potomac.” Because environmentally, they liked it.

Somebody said that was good. But the water from the Potomac was not suitable for this, to put it mildly. It was disgusting, what happened. And so they spent hundreds of millions, over $100 million, and they immediately closed it. It was closed for many months, and nobody did anything.

It was closed. It’s basically been closed. But go back to 1922. It was always sort of — people think of it as beautiful, but it was always a mess. It’s going to be unbelievable.

It will be unbelievable. It’s actually exciting. I want to ride over there today if I can. You know, I always have a problem. Secret Service is in love with my walking along, checking the sidewalk, the new sidewalk, to see whether or not they pointed it correctly.

But they do. We have great contractors doing the job. But we’ll spend a very tiny amount of money, and it’ll be better than it ever was when it was built in 1922. It’s very exciting, actually. To me, I love construction.

It’s very exciting. And we do many things. We did 28 or 29 fountains. I made a contribution to redoing Lafayette Park. That’s the entrance to the White House.

And it was an embarrassment. The floors were broken. They had bricks. The bricks — some of the bricks were missing. You know where they’re missing? They took them out to throw at people. We’re going with them. It’s going to be a world-class park. It’ll be open pretty soon. They’re doing a lot of work over there.

That was a contribution that I made with some other people. And it’s going to be really beautiful. That was really the front door to the White House, but you couldn’t even use it. It was so terrible. People would come to the White House, and it was so terrible.

So, with that, I’m going to ask Pete to talk about some of our great success. Including Venezuela, you might talk.

Defense Achievements: Iran, Venezuela, and Global Security

SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH:

Absolutely, sir. I think, actually, your efforts on the reflecting pool are actually a great segue. If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people.

And when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged war against us and our people, there’s only one man over the course of both Presidencies who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon, as Marco said. So whether it was Qasem Soleimani, whether it was scrapping the Obama deal that was going to give him a weapon, whether it was the 12-day war or Operation Midnight Hammer, you created the conditions to ensure the American people and the world are safeguarded from this generational threat.

And so when you authorized Operation Epic Fury, just like you talked about with the reflecting pool, we didn’t do the same old thing the way we’d done it in the past after Iraq and Afghanistan and the way we waged wars. Instead, you said we’re going to do this smart, we’re going to do it overwhelming, we’re going to use maximum lethality, and we’re going to bring them to their knees. And so whether it’s their Navy that’s at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, their Air Force, their air defenses, or their defense industrial base, they may have missiles, but they can’t build more right now, and they can’t build more drones right now, and they can’t build more ships.

And so they came and cried uncle, to talk, which Steve and Jared and the Vice President and others are doing so ably. And during that time, we put in a world-class blockade and they haven’t been able to bring anything in or anything out from Iranian ports. And we know from the intel that their economy is hurting big time because that is their lifeblood. And again, bringing them to the table. So whether it is through the efforts of your negotiators that they ensure that they never have a nuclear weapon or we have to go back to the War Department to finish the job that way.

We’re prepared to do that. And I think even our reach on the dark fleet of Iranian tankers, no Iranian tanker around the globe is safe. We’ve seen seizures all around the globe, again, choking off their economic lifeblood. But all of this is possible, Mr. President, thanks to the investments that you’ve made in this department, firing on all cylinders.

Record Recruitment and Defense Investment

For the second year in a row, we’re at historic recruitment rates. Last year, we said that here. This year, we beat it even faster. The American people are excited about what you’re bringing to our department, our defense industrial base. $50 billion in private investments.

Because of your — the meetings you’ve held, defense manufacturers are investing in new plants and new manufacturing, new production lines so that we’re getting weapons faster than ever. And then the $1.5 trillion that you’ve committed to the department going forward, that’s a million American jobs. One million American manufacturing jobs. That’s Golden Dome for America. That’s F-47. That’s B-21. That’s $50 billion in drones.

We’re going to lead the world in drones, shaving years off of production of all of those, everything under budget and ahead of schedule, which is what the warfighter deserves. And we saw it. You mentioned Venezuela, Mr. President. You saw it on display there. Think of the fact that our Southcom commander just landed via helicopter at our embassy, peacefully at the welcome of the Venezuelans, because we’re now partnering with them, hopefully, even on the counter-cartel mission, as we secure our hemisphere. So we’ve secured that southwest border. We’re going to war with the cartels through the America’s Counter Cartel Coalition.

Venezuela is a big part of securing our energy future and defending the homeland. And then I just want to note one more thing to give you a sense of how committed this President is. Maybe a year ago, he heard the call of Nigerian Christians who were being targeted and killed by ISIS in Nigeria. And he said, “Pete, I want the War Department to focus on ensuring that we do everything we can to protect those Christians.” Partnerships like that can take time behind the scenes, but he never wavered on it.

And we got the assets there, and over the last month — and there hasn’t been much coverage of this — we killed ISIS number two in Nigeria, who’s most responsible for killing Christians and trying to target the US homeland, and have since, because of the intel we gathered, killed hundreds of ISIS members who were targeting and killing Christians in Nigeria, creating a whole new opportunity there. So there’s a lot of things we do that the media pays attention to, and a lot of things that the President empowers the Department to do, on behalf of the American people, that he deserves great credit for.

PRESIDENT TRUMP:

The President is doing a great job. You’re doing a great job. I just want to say, on recruitment, we’re very proud of the fact that, for the previous four years, previous administration, they had — I mean, they couldn’t recruit people.

And that included, by the way, police and firemen and others. They were not proud of our country. And they couldn’t recruit anybody with a uniform and was having a hard time recruiting. And they sent record-low numbers. They were way, way behind.

And literally from November 5th, it started. It started even before we got going. But from the time we won the election to now, we’ve had numbers of recruitment, the likes of which we’ve never had. Record recruitment in every single branch. And that includes police and firemen. Record recruitment. So we’re very proud of that. Thank you. Great job.

SECRETARY PETE HEGSETH:

Thank you, sir.

Small Business Growth and Economic Revival

PRESIDENT TRUMP:

Kelly, please.

KELLY LOEFFLER:

Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. You’re leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known. And I see that every week as I travel this country, main streets across dozens of states from Alaska to Maine, but in many of those states two or three times. I hear it everywhere I go, “Please thank the President for putting us back on track.” They thank you. They love you. They want more of what we’re doing, tax cuts, deregulation, fair trade, energy dominance.

Small businesses are spring-loaded, and we see that in the jobs numbers. In the last two months alone, we’ve created over 300,000 private sector jobs in this country. Most jobs are created by small businesses, two out of three. And small businesses, as you know, make up 99 percent of all businesses in this country and account for half of our GDP. So when that part of the economy is finally working again, they’ve gotten out from $5 trillion of regulation that the Biden administration put on hard-working small businesses.

They penalized growth, investment, hard work, and success. But thanks to the working family tax cuts that every single Democrat voted against, hard-working families, the welders, the waitresses that I meet on factory floors across this country from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, where I’ll be tomorrow. Brooke and I are going to Arizona tonight. So we see this everywhere we go. It’s one of the most under-reported stories in the media. Main Street is back. And that’s because America first.

Cracking Down on Fraud: SBA and PPP Loans

I’ll tell you the other thing about fraud. Small businesses are particularly hurt by the fraud, because they’re some of our biggest taxpayers in the country. And they show up every day. They work hard to provide for their employees, to build their businesses. They’re working, they’re doing it the honest way. And they see fraudsters taking from the American people. It’s taxpayer money.

And so you think about, at the SBA, we found $200 billion in fraudulent PPP loans that the Biden administration tried to hide and forgive and sweep under the rug. We’ve turned the first $22 billion of that over to Treasury for collections and to DOJ for prosecution. Our Inspector General is already announcing that people are going to jail. There are jail sentences now being served. We’ve announced that 140,000 people have been barred from ever getting SBA loans again, defrauding the government for about $9 billion.

So we are going to continue our work under the great leadership of Vice President Vance and appreciate the partnership because it’s really accelerated our ability to get the job done. But then just back to small businesses, we have record business formation in this country.

Cabinet Meeting: Economy, Washington D.C., and Iran

That’s another story that the media won’t tell you. Over half a million businesses on average a month this year. So it’s not just record people working, strong job creation, business formation, and all-time records in this country. But we have manufacturing expansion for consecutive months. That means that’s a leading indicator, meaning that we have expansion coming.

Another story the media won’t tell you, 98 percent of all manufacturers are small businesses. Seventy-five percent of our defense industrial base is small business. They’re our main exporters. And so, America first, free trade, fair trade, deregulation, tax cuts, and energy dominance is helping workers on Main Street. And that’s why they tell you to tell me to tell you, Mr. President, thank you and they love you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you, Kelly.

And I just say, you know, we went to China last week. We had an amazing meeting with President Xi. The relationship is very good. We’re doing a lot of business with China now, but it’s not where they were ripping us off. For years and years, they ripped us off like nobody ever got ripped off. It’s now a very profitable business that we do with China. And they respect our country again. We have the strongest military in the world by far, and they respect our country again.

Scott, please.

Secretary Bessent on Economic Resilience and Prosperity

SECRETARY BESSENT: President of the United States, Vice President of the United States, Secretary Rubio, President of the United States. Sir, on the economy, two words, resilience and prosperity.

The continued resilience of the economy speaks for itself even during the Iran conflict, and it speaks to the strength of your leadership. Pro-growth policies are creating conditions for American families and businesses to prosper. We’re entering the second half of our 250th anniversary year with renewed optimism and momentum. It has never been a better time to be an American, and as you said earlier, we have a record number of Americans working. The economy that you are building is not only strong, but secure and resilient and better positioned to compete globally.

Real GDP has risen 2.7% over the past four quarters, something that many economists said couldn’t be done. In the first quarter of 2026, despite the Iran conflict, GDP grew at a 2% annual rate. The Atlanta Fed GDP now is predicting 4.3% for this quarter. In terms of prices, I believe the prices are transitory. Oil will be lower than pre-conflict levels.

When this ends, natural gas is already down, as you mentioned, drug and pharmaceutical prices, they are plummeting, and rent is down. We are more resilient to energy price fluctuations due to your energy dominance agenda, deregulatory efforts, and we have never sold so much energy to the rest of the world. Business investment rose at a 10.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter. Capital expenditures and business equipment rose more than 17 percent and that is the result of the tax bill and tariffs. Jobs related to commercial construction, factory construction are up 90,000 since your inauguration.

In the past two months, the private sector, as Kelly said, has added 313,000 new jobs. And those are private sector jobs, sir, including 13,000 manufacturing jobs. We have construction jobs. We’re building the factories and those will turn into manufacturing jobs. The stock market has hit new highs.

The stock market lives in the future. It is seeing the other side of this conflict. It is a strong symbol of optimism for the future. Corporate earnings are high and wages are doing well. For the tax season, we had the best tax filing season in history, which is a victory for Main Street.

The average refund was nearly $3,300, an 11% increase from last tax filing season, and importantly, 62 million returns at one of your four signature policies. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime. They reduced taxes. 85% of our seniors paid no taxes on Social Security, and the deductibility of auto loans for American-made cars.

For what I believe is the most important government benefit for young people since the GI Bill, the Trump accounts — the app will be available on all major platforms tomorrow morning. And it will place the American dream into the palms of the hands of parents and children. Nearly 6 million kids have been signed up for Trump accounts and they will launch on July 4th, and it will be a great symbol of the 250th anniversary.

Main Street prosperity workers have seen positive wage gains. The unemployment rate remains low at 4.3 percent, and private sector job growth is strong. So, just to reiterate, resilience and prosperity have been the marks of your second term.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s been great. It’s been amazing. Excellent. Any questions?

Questions on Washington D.C. Safety and the 250th Anniversary

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. [inaudible] with MTV Sister Media, with the Epoch Times, there’s been a lot of teaming up, basically, and fight crimes here. And as a lot of Americans and people from all around the world are coming to the nation’s capital ahead of the major 250th birthday events here, how important is it for you to really keep delivering all these results? But also, what does it mean for America’s identity on the national and international stage?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So I’m very proud of D.C. Because when we came here a little more than a year ago, it was a very dangerous place. And now it’s a very safe place. It’s been incredible what’s happened. As you see the crime numbers, we had restaurants closing up, and nobody wanted to go to a restaurant. They were afraid to walk to work. It was a very, very dangerous place, very unsafe. And now it’s a very safe place.

We brought in the National Guard. We worked with Cash and the FBI, and Janeen is doing fantastically, and Todd, and everybody. And it’s now a very safe city, and people are pouring in. And you see the grass is all beautiful. We put a lot of new grass in because, you know, like people, grass has a life, too. This grass, it was about a long time.

But the waterfalls we talked about and the fountains are — most of them are in the final stages or fixed. People are writing me letters. People are talking about it. They’re all — we have some of the most beautiful fountains in the world. And there wasn’t one — not one — that worked. We had 29. Out of the 29, not one worked, in addition to the reflecting pool, which is even — you know, that was the big one of them all, but that was a disaster.

So, with all of that — we — this place is looking beautiful. I rode through it yesterday, where the fences are down. The homeless aren’t staying here any longer. We have — we’re helping them out, but we’re not — you know, we just can’t have them in the nation’s capital. And when foreign dignitaries come in, they’re saying, the first thing they say to me, “This place has really changed.” They saw that it was going down. Our whole country was going down, just like D.C. was going down.

And as you know, the restaurants were closing up. There weren’t very many restaurants, and now they’re opening up. You can’t get a space. And everyone is going out to dinner and they’re safe. And we have the national security and we have the National Guard. And we’re going to keep them. You know, I want to, by the way, just in case I mention, keep them. Okay? And don’t lower the number either. Somebody said, “Oh, are there less?” I said, I hope not, but don’t lower the number if you don’t mind. Okay? We’re going to surge this summer, too. They look great.

You know what? They give people — we have — we took out 5,000 criminals, hardcore criminals. By the way, 90 percent of the crime is calculated. 2 percent of the people do 90 percent of the crime. That’s a great number. Because when you get rid of 2 percent, 2 percent you can get rid of. Ninety percent you can’t get rid of. Two percent. So, two percent create 90 percent of the crime. Ninety-one percent, actually, to be exact.

And we have really — we moved 5,000 people, Todd, out of here. These are career criminals. Many of them came over from the last administration through the open border, the ridiculous open border. No vetting. Nobody knew who they were. They came out of prisons. They came out of — they’re drug dealers. They were people from mental institutions. And Washington, D.C., is now a safe and beautiful place. And it’s only going to get more beautiful.

Questions on Joe Biden’s Interview Tapes

REPORTER: Thank you so much for having us in here today. What are your thoughts? Why do you think that Joe Biden is trying to sue this Department of Justice — former President Joe Biden — to have his tapes that he did interviews on blocked from the American people hearing them? Do you think that he’s trying to hide something? And maybe Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche could comment on if they will counter sue and release those tapes to the American public.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I’d like to see it. I don’t know. Maybe there’s some constitutional reason. I don’t know. I’d like to. I would like to see what he has to say, because we can never allow what happened to this country to happen. The man was grossly incompetent. And the Democrats — I call them the Democrats because the policy is so bad. But they — they came very close to destroying our country. We can never let it happen again. And I hope that you’re able to produce that. I think it would be a very interesting reading from people.

Questions on Iran, the Strait, and Gas Prices

REPORTER: Mr. President, Iran once controlled the Strait of Hormuz. Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the strait, and would they have to open it immediately or would you be open to that happening over a period of time?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, the strait is going to be open to everybody. And who would control it? It’s international waters. Nobody’s going to control it. We’re going to watch over it. We’ll watch over it, but nobody is going to control it. That’s part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody is going to control it. It’s international waters. And Oman will behave just like everybody else, and we’ll have to blow them up. They understand that. They’ll be fine.

REPORTER: How much economic pressure do you feel, Mr. President, to get the strait open?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, you have to understand, the United States has so much oil that we are an exporter of oil. So we have plenty of oil. We’re very lucky. We’re blessed with the greatest piece of land in the world from that standpoint. And we have more than anybody else. And now, when you add Venezuela to it, we have, I think, 64 percent of the world’s oil. And we’re getting along very well with Venezuela, by the way. It’s being run really beautifully.

The big companies are moving in. They’re going to be — it’s going to be amazing because it’s also — like us, they’re very — they’re very blessed in that sense. But we have natural energy that no other country has. We have more than anybody else. So it’s really a world problem, because most of the world doesn’t have that. And we’re making it available.

During the closing — I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the satellite pictures — boats — hundreds of boats lined up. It looks like — I used to say, the Long Island Expressway with the cars. They’re lined up, and they’re coming to Texas, Louisiana, they’re coming to Alaska to fill up their boat, their big boat. Some of them are really big. You know, 2 billion gallons. Even bigger than that now they make them. They make them up to four, Chris, I hear. Now they make them up to four. The four are now the big ones. Used to be the ones. Now it’s four million barrels of — think of that — four million barrels of oil in one boat.

But they’re lined up, and they’re right now heading to Texas, and they’ve already filled up and they’ve gone back. In addition to that, you have a lot of boats. You have about 1,400 to 1,500 boats in the strait wanting to get out. And at the right time, we’ll release them.

REPORTER: But the American people, sir, are seeing higher gas prices. It’s still $4.45.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, it’s come down. Well, it’ll come down a lot. It’ll come down to where it was before. We had it — when I was in Iowa, we had — we’re driving by, and we saw gas stations — $1.90 a gallon, $1.85, $1.87 were the three that we saw. We had it down in some places below. Now, we can’t help California where they charge so much tax. You know, you lower it and they charge tax. They’ve got to straighten the act out in California. But we had gasoline down to a very low number. I think we’ll be hitting that number shortly after that whole excursion ends.

But regardless of anything, as Marco said, better than anybody can say it, you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon. They would use it instantly. They wouldn’t think about it. They would use it instantly. I’ve gotten to know them. They would use it instantly.

REPORTER: Does that give you more urgency, Mr. President? You’ve said that you’re in no rush to make a deal. But with gas prices that are so high across the country, people are paying more for travel. Does that give you more urgency to make the deal?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you, the primary urgency — I have already said this, it wasn’t covered properly — but the primary urgency is that we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. But at the same time, we have a tremendous amount of oil, gas, coal. We have tremendous amounts of energy.

Iran Nuclear Deal and Cabinet Meeting Discussions

TRUMP: We’re blessed with something very special. Those prices are going to come down. They’re going to come down fast. I think that you’ll see actually, Todd, I think you’re going to see lower prices that we had even before we did this. Now, I knew there’d be an increase.

I said, “We have a choice. We don’t have to do anything. And in two years, or one year, or two months, because Iran would have had a — if we didn’t hit them with the B-2 bombers, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks from that date, because they were ready to go. And if they had a new weapon, a nuclear weapon, it would have been used already. It also would have been used had I not terminated the Obama deal, the Iran nuclear deal, as we call it.”

That was in my first term. Had I not terminated that, they would have had a nuclear weapon a long time ago. I would say it was a guarantee that it would have been used. And it would have blown up Israel. It would have blown up the entire Middle East.

And that’s never going to happen.

Questions on Russia, China, and Iran Sanctions

REPORTER: Would you be comfortable with Russia or China taking their stockpile of hydrogen and uranium, and have they offered to do that?

TRUMP: No, I wouldn’t be comfortable. That would not make me comfortable.

REPORTER: Is Iran less — considering easing sanctions on Iran to allow Iran to sell its crude to market?

TRUMP: No, we’re not talking about any easing of sanctions or giving money. No sanctions, no money, no nothing. We have control of money that they claim is theirs. We’ll keep control of that money. When they behave properly and when they do what’s right, we’ll let them have their money. But right now, we’re not doing that. And it’s not — one thing is not contingent on the other.

On the Recent Shooting and Personal Safety

REPORTER: Mr. President, on the shooting last weekend, it came barely a month after the third assassination attempt against you, which made the White House the first pundit’s dinner. What was your reaction when you first heard about the latest shooting, and what gives you the courage to really keep doing your job effectively without thinking about these threats every day?

TRUMP: Well, I can’t think about it because if I thought about it a lot, I wouldn’t be a very good president. I wouldn’t be here, probably. I’d be up in some room with a locked door and say, “Just leave me alone.” So I can’t really think about it. It’s something that it’s a sad part of life. It’s a dangerous business. What I’m doing is a dangerous business.

And they say — look, we have been maybe the most consequential, but we certainly have been one of the most consequential. This group has been a very consequential administration. And they say if you’re not consequential, you don’t have so much problem. If you are consequential, you do. So you have to look at that.

But it’s a shame. It’s a very sad fact of life. Look, anybody in office — not only in this country, in other countries too — but when you are a consequential President, your life is in grave danger. I knew that.

Status of Iran Nuclear Talks

REPORTER: Mr. President, how would you characterize the current state of the talks with Iran? I guess if it were a football field, what yard line would you be on?

TRUMP: Well, I think we’re doing very well. I think they are starting to give us the things that they have to give us. And if they do, that’s great. And if they won’t, then the man on my left is going to finish him off. It could happen.

REPORTER: Is there a time frame in your mind?

TRUMP: I mean, it happens quickly. The problem is, every time I mention a timeframe — for instance, I see — you know, we’ve been doing this for a few months. Vietnam lasted 19 years. Korea lasted eight years. Afghanistan lasted many years. They were all many, many years, and we’re into it for a few months.

And I read about people like you. “What’s taking so long?” But we’re in it. You know, we lost between two wars, two big wars, Venezuela and Iran. We lost 13 souls, 13 great people. Met the parents. Great people. And it’s a terrible thing.

But 13 — if you look at the war casualties and the deaths in wars from Vietnam and all that, they lost hundreds of thousands of people in numerous of these wars. We want — we’re very cognizant of that. We want to lose very few. We want very few to be injured. We’re very careful. But war is war. War is dangerous. But we’ve lost 13.

And so the Democrats took an ad putting into it the 13 people that were lost. And when you look at hundreds of thousands of people that were lost in the Middle East, Iraq, all the different wars we were in, we have done an amazing job. With that being said, I hate to lose 13. I hate to lose one. But we’ve been very capable.

I mean, when you think of it, we took over Venezuela in one day. We have done a similar job, but we said, “We’ll give them a little chance,” at the request of somebody that we greatly respect from Pakistan, the Field Marshal and the Prime Minister. They’ve been great. They asked us, would we pause the war for a little while, because they’d like to do so. We’ll do that.

But we had them beat. They’re no better now. We could close it out very quickly. If we can do it in a different way, that would be good. If we get everything we want. But we could close that out very, very quickly. And we may have to. I don’t think so, but we may have to.

The World Cup

REPORTER: The question is about the World Cup, if I could. The U.S. spent a lot of money getting the World Cup here and increasing infrastructure. Does the economic benefit outweigh the cost?

TRUMP: No, the World Cup is great. It’s the most successful they’ve ever had, ticket-wise. They’ve never had anything that sold so quickly. It’s amazing because it’s the United States. You don’t think of — I call it soccer. You know, it’s just easier to do because we have football and they have two footballs, right? They call it football. But most people never thought they’d see anything like that.

The World Cup has turned out to be the most successful World Cup from the standpoint of what’s happening than they’ve ever had.

ICE Operations and New Jersey Protests

REPORTER: Thank you so much. Robin Ortiz with the Turning Point USA. I have one question for you and one question for Vice President J.D. Vance on the fraud. What’s your message to the New Jersey leaders pushing back against ICE operations at the detention hall?

TRUMP: About ICE? Or about NICE, as I call it? NICE. The NICE facility. I’d love to change the name, call it NICE. They do a great job.

And it’s all paid for, protesters. You know, you can see by the signs. The signs are all made by the same beautiful factory. It’s a printing plant. In fact, I’m thinking about using it. They do such a nice job. These aren’t protesters. These people are fake. They’re all paid for.

And I will tell you, Tom Homan and that whole group, and now Markwayne is so incredible. Markwayne, do you want to just respond to that?

We run the finest facilities anywhere in the world of their type, but we have some horrible killers. We have killers. We have guys that have murdered numerous people in there. And these are the people they’re trying to protect. There’s nobody that runs a facility like we do.

Markwayne.

MARKWAYNE MULLIN: Yeah, it shows this radical left Democrats’ priorities when they decide to go out and protest a detention center where we’re housing rapists, child predators, murderers, drug dealers, and they choose Memorial Day of all days to go protest something that they say — it’s because they’re on a hunger strike — when there was only a handful of individuals that was refusing to eat because they want their ethnic group or their ethnic right food.

Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want. The fact is we’re giving them the calories they want. This isn’t Holiday Inn. We’re giving sanitation. But for the Democrats and the governor, like Governor Sherrill and Senator Kim and Senator Booker to go out and do something like this of all the days is very frustrating.

And we see Antifa signs are literally out there. The local police refusing, literally refusing to respond, they barricade it, not allowing our employees to come in and out. ICE has to go out there, remove the barricade, and then you have one of the senators complain because he got splattered with a pepper ball. I’m sorry. You probably should not have been there.

TRUMP: You know, one thing I’ll say about that — the local police, I know a lot of the New Jersey police, they’re phenomenal. They love us. But they’re told not to do anything.

They love us. They love him. They even love me a lot. And I’m in New Jersey a lot. It’s great. I mean, I think it’s a great place. It’s got a group of people running it now that are having a hard time. But they really like this administration. They love this administration more than any administration they’ve ever had. And they’re thanking me all the time.

And, you know, I see those guys going up and down the Jersey Turnpike with their big, beautiful hats on. They say, “I’d like to look like that someday.” They’re great. No, these are great people, and they love him, and they love ICE, and they love the Border Patrol, and they’re not allowed to talk to anybody. It’s like — but it all comes from the top. They have to follow orders. They want to keep their jobs.

Federal Gas Tax Holiday and the Knicks

REPORTER: Are you expecting Congress to pass a federal gas tax holiday?

TRUMP: A gas tax holiday?

REPORTER: Yeah, to suspend federal —

TRUMP: Well, it’s something we might talk about. Let’s see what happens over the next week, two weeks. A lot of good things are happening.

REPORTER: So, are you going to the next game next week?

TRUMP: No, I was invited to the — I was going to go on Wednesday, but they closed it out very quickly. They’re great. And Jim Dolan is a great guy. He, as you know, owns and is in charge of Madison Square Garden. He’s having a good year. Boy, what a team. They win all their games. They really have some great players. I think I’ll be going to one of the games. I was invited by numerous people and Jim, and I think I’ll be going. It’s great.

Great to see you. Yeah, the Knicks have really suffered for years. And they’re doing right now very well.

Iran Deal — No Agreement Without Substance

REPORTER: Do you accept an agreement with Iran that just calls for further talks on the Iran deal? Or is it the only option to find them?

TRUMP: No. The basics. No, I would for some of it, you know, because it’s a memorandum of understanding for speed. One of the things that will happen is the strait will open immediately. Immediately. But it’s got to be perfect. I’m not going to do this. I didn’t do this to get a crummy agreement.

The worst agreement ever signed was by Barack Hussein Obama. What a horrible agreement that was. It was a setback for this country, for the whole world. The Middle East would have blown itself up. No.

I would like to have the countries we were talking about — with Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, and the others — we’d like to have them immediately join the — and Steve Witkoff is working on that with Jared and some others. But we’d like to have them join the Abraham Accords. It’ll be historic if they do it. And I think they owe that to us, to be honest. I think those countries owe it to us.

Steve, are you going to get them to sign?

STEVE WITKOFF: We’re definitely pushing it.

TRUMP: I’m not sure we should make the deal if they don’t sign. You want to know the truth. If they don’t sign to join the Abraham Accords, I don’t know that we — you know, we have countries in there already. UAE, great. Great countries, bold countries. And it’s turned out to be so good, so effective. And so we’re requesting strongly that they join. It’ll be great. It’ll be great for Saudi Arabia. It’ll be great for Qatar and Kuwait, the whole group.

REPORTER: So the Iran deal might be contingent on more countries joining.

TRUMP: I don’t know. I don’t want to say that. I’m not going to give you what’s contingent, what’s not. I can say that we can make a good deal right now, but maybe not a great deal. And if it’s not a great deal, I’m not making it. Because we can make a great deal with this guy right here. But it’s a lot nastier. Probably wouldn’t go as quickly. Yeah, we wouldn’t be talking about as quickly, but it would be foolproof.

But I think we’re doing very well, Steve. I think we’re doing pretty well in terms of the negotiation. But we’ll see. If it’s not going to be a real deal — because Obama had that horrible JCPOA, whatever it was — it was the worst deal. It was a path for Iran to have a nuclear weapon very quickly. Years ago, they would have had a nuclear weapon. We might not be here talking about it right now. They would have had a nuclear weapon.

And frankly, Obama picked the wrong country. He should have picked another country. I won’t tell you what it was. But he picked the wrong country when he picked Iran. But we have things understood now with Iran. It’s been nasty.

Closing Remarks

TRUMP: They’ve lost their leaders. They’ve lost. And it really is regime change. You know, we didn’t set out for regime change, but by the fact that we’re dealing with a totally different group of people than we were at the beginning. And frankly, I find them to be much more reasonable.

I actually find them to be smarter, but I find them to be much more reasonable. This is regime change. One regime is gone, another regime is gone. We’re dealing with the third. Pieces of it, because some of them are gone, too.

And I find them — I think — how can you have a stronger regime change than that? You know? So, I do find that — I’d like to thank you all very much. We’re doing great. Our country is doing fantastically well, and this group of people is outstanding.

Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

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