Transcript: President Trump Meets with U.S. Travel Industry Executives – Sept 2, 2026

And Secretary Duffy is going back to Congress. He wants to be able to modernize the safety equipment on airports, the airport towers, all of the things that will make it really the safest anywhere in the world. We’re very safe right now, but we are using 50 year old equipment, and we’re going to have the latest and the greatest.

And Sean’s going to be going back to Congress very soon asking about that. Also asking for permission to build new towers. Tower design and structures have changed a lot, including the height of the tower. So we’re going to be asking for that to redo the towers in the country. They’re very obsolete, very old, very obsolete.

Some of them aren’t particularly safe. But all of that safety equipment, you know, that horrible accident that took place with the helicopter and the airline, it would never have happened if we had the modern equipment. Bells would have gone off two minutes before they unfortunately met, and we have to have that. And so the technology is there, but we’re not using — we’re using very old technology. It should have been done by other presidents, but we’re going to get it done.

And Congress has been very good about it, hearing us, and they’ve given us the additional seed money. The initial seed money is already there, and the system will be second to none. And you won’t have horrible things happen. Even on runways where they bump into each other or crash into each other. You won’t have any of that.

But I’m thrilled to report that 91% of the recent international visitors said they were satisfied with their trip to The United States. And I don’t know what about the other 9%. I’m trying to figure why would that happen. I’m not sure I like that statistic. But you guys will inform me later on.

Looking Ahead to the 2028 Olympics

In less than two years, the world will return to the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and we’re pleased to be joined by the chair of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics. And that’s Casey Wasserman, who’s a very good friend of mine, and he’s — you’ve really done a great job. You’ve done a great job in getting it together. Now we have to make sure it goes off. Yep.

Like FIFA, flawlessly. Right? Yes, sir. But he’s a real professional, great professional, very respected all over the planet, and especially in Los Angeles, and he’s going to do a fantastic job. But we’re working closely together to ensure it is incredible success.

We want to make this the best Olympics of them all. So this is a summer that showed the world America is back and stronger than ever, bigger, better than ever before. Think of it, FIFA, all those years of FIFA, and we did literally five times the numbers of the second most successful FIFA. It’s The United States. And I give great credit to Gianni.

Gianni was with us right from the beginning, headed FIFA, and we worked together really well, but they’ve never had anything. They’ve never had a success like they had. And with the help of the people here today, we’re going to do the same thing with respect to the Olympics and everything else. I mean, it’s not only Olympics, it’s every day and every night and every weekend. They’re not thinking about one event.

They’re thinking about every weekend. That’s why they’re so successful. So now I’d like to ask Geoff Freeman to say a few words and followed by president of MGM Resorts, Bill Hornbuckle, president of American Airlines, Robert Isom, and president of Hilton, Chris. Oh, and this is my — where’s Chris? Right here.

Oh, it is. He’s a good — he’s a friend of mine. He’s done a good job. So you’re going to say a few words? Yeah.

And maybe I’ll start off with Sean Duffy, and then you guys can go in that order. Okay? Thank you.

Remarks from Secretary Sean Duffy

SECRETARY SEAN DUFFY: Thank you, Mr. President. This is a group of individuals that represent the travel industry that want to come in and thank you for a great summer of travel.

I thought the coolest thing from the summer was we know the country in which we live in, and it was great to see travelers from around the world come to America and remark on social media how beautiful it is, how friendly people are, the great restaurants and shopping and the number of flights and car rentals and the buses that they took. People were raving about America. They had a wonderful experience, Mr. President. And also as they came out for the celebration of our birthday on the July 4, a lot of people came to DC for the for the Grand Prix, the IndyCar. But it’s a time that we travel, whether it’s with business or families, but it’s a time that families can spend together whether it’s in the car and going to see our great national parks or going to a theme park.

Just a lot of opportunities for us to put our phones down and spend time together. If I can make one comment, we got $12.5 billion for air traffic control, and there’s been no greater supporter of building a brand new air traffic control system than President Trump. That $12.5 billion is going to be completed in the spend, all deployed by the end of your presidency, by the end of 2028. And we need additional money for software because that’s the magic that’s going to bring us more efficiency in the airspace. We’re going to come out with an announcement shortly in the next thirty days on what we’re working on.

It will be — this will be the best in the world. We have more airplanes in the airspace than anyone bar none. And I think as travelers have come to the country, they also remarked at how many flight options we have, how many airlines we have, how many scheduled options they have. So it’s been a great experience, but we have the best hotels, the best cars, the best roads, the best rental companies, the best resorts in the world. And this is the time to say, Mr. President, you drove an economy and opportunity for us to even make it better, and it’s the time to say thank you for your leadership and your help in making that happen.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you so much. Great job. You’re doing a great job. Okay. Go ahead, fellas.

Remarks from Geoff Freeman, U.S. Travel Association

GEOFF FREEMAN: Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, thank you. We’re certainly grateful for all the effort that was put into making the World Cup, America 250, an immense success. It’s because of policies you implemented on the visa side, on the customs side. We welcomed millions of travelers this summer. The only thing Secretary Duffy left out was their love for ranch dressing and oversized gas stations.

They got to see everything the country had to show off, and it made Americans feel a sense of pride, right, things we take for granted. We think we can keep this momentum going. You set the record in your first term in 2018. We welcomed nearly 80 million travelers. We think we can exceed that.

We can blow that out the water. Let’s get to 100 million. Let’s make The US the world’s most visited destination. That’s France today. It’s been that way for decades.

We’d like to work with you as an industry to go win that title back, to make The US the world’s most visited destination, and we think we’ve got the momentum right now to do it. Thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Okay. Go ahead.

Remarks from Bill Hornbuckle, MGM Resorts

BILL HORNBUCKLE: Mr. President, I’m Bill Hornbuckle from MGM.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Hi, Sean. How are we doing? Good to see you again. Good job. We thank you.

BILL HORNBUCKLE: So first and foremost, thank you. On behalf of all of us, on behalf of the association, this was a great summer. And I think Secretary Duffy knows this. We’ve had an opportunity to meet with the secretary and some of the other secretaries. Travel is difficult.

Travel needs your leadership. It needs people like Andrew who have pulled World Cup together to ultimately help Casey go not only for the best Olympics this country’s ever seen, but beyond. If we’re going to meet Geoff’s goal of 100 million, we need your help. We need your direct involvement, and we know we can make this better. If we can get there, it’s 400,000 more jobs.

And in a place like Las Vegas, it means a lot to us. I want to also thank you on behalf of our employees. No tax on tips. It’s gone a long way. Thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s good. And overtime.

BILL HORNBUCKLE: Yes. Yes. It’s been very good.

Remarks from Robert Isom, American Airlines

ROBERT ISOM: Thank you. Mr. President, it’s great to be here. Thank you for hosting us. Thank you for all the support you’ve been giving our industry this summer, but broadly. And thank you for the industry on behalf of the industry for all the support you’re giving the economy and trying to have the economy grow at a faster pace.

This summer, as you heard, and as you stated, was the best summer we’ve ever had in the history of our business. Bar none, America’s 250 was extraordinary. The World Cup was extraordinary. The Indy Cup here in my hometown was extraordinary. That was fabulous.

But I think the bigger story, which you should be proud of, and we would like to thank you on this. As a result of the most favorable regulatory policy that we’ve seen probably in a generation, most favorable tax policy that we’ve seen in modern times. An investment cycle that is simply breathtaking, both AI, but of course, AI infrastructure, but also reshoring infrastructure that is going on around the world. When you put all of that together, what it is driving in terms of economic growth is extraordinary. And I think the bigger story is that what we have seen starting in the second half of last year is a big, of course, a great summer, but a big uptick broadly in the business.

I started saying this a year ago when everybody was saying, K economy, K economy, the rich are getting richer, the high end is doing better. I kept saying with all these policies that you’re advancing, everybody else is going to get in the game because the middle class and everybody else has to get in the game to make this happen, and that’s what’s happening. So what I’ve been saying very publicly over the last six or twelve months is it’s really a C-shaped economy because not only are we seeing broad growth from an economic point of view, but it’s growth where you’d want to see it. It’s growth that’s going to ultimately drive, I think, drive middle class real wage growth in a way we haven’t seen in a generation. Leadership that you’ve been providing has been great for our business.

Thank you for what you’ve been doing. I think it’s sustainable. I would guess you do too, and we stand ready as Geoff and Bill said to do our part both in inbound, international, and goals there, but otherwise, to make sure that we’re contributing everything we can contribute to the growth of this incredible economy. So thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And your money. Where, Geoff?

Remarks from Chris Nassetta, Hilton

CHRIS NASSETTA: Thank you very much. Mr. President, I just I’d like to say that —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Please.

CHRIS NASSETTA: From a commercial aviation perspective, the eyes of the world have been on us, and we’ve certainly delivered.

Records at American — but records for the industry in terms of transportation, and it’s broad based every aspect. And no doubt it’s a result of the economy and also the job market. So as we get into the summer, I want to give a shout out to Secretary Duffy. You’ve absolutely chosen the best person possible. With these record levels of traffic.

We’ve had to do some things different. And the investments that we’re making in infrastructure, the hiring that we’ve done, and especially this modernization work that we’re doing is leading to great results. As we finish out this summer, we have a busy Labor Day weekend. We’re going to hit all kinds of records this weekend. The only thing I can help ask a little bit of help with this.

Can you help me with the weather a little bit? American has a flight every fourteen seconds coming up, and, but, again, we got to have Claire’s guidance. And as we look forward, these big events, you know, certainly World Cup has been fantastic. America 250, we can’t wait for more of them, and we look forward to Olympics and many, many other things. Okay.

So thank you, Mr. President.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Great. Say hello to American. We like America. So what’s happening is amazing.

It’s not really covered properly, but it’s something that’s never happened before. The new number — because I’ve been saying $19.2 trillion for a while, but the new number’s coming out. It’s going to be over $20 trillion is being invested in The United States. There’s never been a country even close to that number. A lot of it is because of the tariffs, because people don’t want to pay tariffs, so they build their plants here.

Investment, Trade, and China

Honda just announced they’re coming in with a big one. Monster. Big. We have many car companies that are coming in from Canada. As you probably have been reading, they’re not thrilled, but, you know, they took them from us, and now we’re getting them back.

They’re coming in from Mexico, from — if you take a look at South Korea, they’re coming in from South Korea, Japan, and also from Germany. We have a lot of car plants going up. AI is going up. We’re leading China in AI very substantially. By the way, we have the president of China coming on the twenty fourth.

That’ll be very exciting. Be great. Love to have him. We have a lot of good productive things to discuss with President Xi. But there’s never been a time when $20 trillion of investment is coming in, and the other number was by China many years ago, the previous record.

But this is a record that’s five times greater. It’s incredible what’s happening with our country. And I guess it’s not covered as much as it should, but it will be covering. And when you see the construction numbers, you see the construction workers, but soon you’re going to see the people that work in the car plants and factories. And as an example, Eli Lilly announced they’re building five major places, labs, where they make the drugs that they sell.

All of them, they’re coming in from other countries. Coming here. Merck, medicines, everything. They’re coming back to The United States at levels never even thought possible before. And in a year from now, you’re going to see numbers that are incredible.

And the next president is going to — I hope you people remember when the next president comes in in two and a half years, going to say what a great job he or she did, I did it. They’re have numbers. They’ll be opening up and somebody’s going to be sitting behind this desk or one of the seven that you have a choice of. And they’re going to be saying, what a great job I’m doing. This is the most incredible thing.

And we did it, and you did it, and you helped us a lot. The investment for your companies are incredible. One of the greatest — great industry. So I just want to thank everybody here. It’s the numbers are record setting.

The entertainment numbers in our country are every — just about every number you name, no matter what industry, is record setting. This is entertainment and hotels and things, and they broke a record by a lot. The airlines are doing incredible business, I think, probably better than you’ve ever done before. And we do want to modernize your system though, you know, your system of safety, you could call it, and that’s where Sean is doing something very special. A lot of guys wouldn’t want to take that one on.

Should have been done a long time ago, actually, but certainly should have been done over the last twenty years. You know, the equipment really became good over the last twenty years, but actually, the only advantage is now it’s really good. If we would have done it ten years ago, it’s a tremendous advancements have been made over the last ten year period. So we’re going to be getting Sean the newest and the greatest, and it will be something and Congress is very much behind it. Obviously, this is safety.

I think it’ll be bipartisan, but this is about safety. So, do you have any questions?

Press Questions

REPORTER: Mr. President, thank you, President Trump. You posted today on Truth Social. When are the Iranian people going to rise up and fight?

If that’s what you want, will you send the CIA in to arm Iranians?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I wouldn’t want to say that to you, Peter. I’d love to tell you that, but it wouldn’t be appropriate to say. But I mean, I understand their plight. They’re being shot.

Right now, you know, these gentlemen sit here in the lap of luxury, and they see things, but over there, it’s not so luxurious. As of three months ago, they had 52,000 protesters were killed. Can you imagine this, fella? And now I hear the numbers probably twenty, twenty five thousand more. They have close to 65,000 protesters killed.

So when I ask that question, I ask it sort of knowing the answer. The only answer is that they’re being shot. The regime is getting weaker and weaker by the day, and at some point, they’re not going to be able to shoot so easily because I think the people aren’t going to take it. But I did pose that question because, you know, it would be time. But unlike most people can’t kill their people like that.

Most people try and reason, they talk, then there might be an overthrow. In Iran, they kill the people. When they get out to protest, they kill them. They shoot them right between the eyes. They have two forms, machine guns and snipers.

And they use them — sometimes the machine guns and sometimes the snipers. They like the snipers better because all they do is have a crowd of 200,000 people and a person goes down here right between the eyes. And they’ll have three snipers doing it, and it’s a horrible thing to watch. So that’s why it’s not happening. And who can blame them?

Who can blame them? But the regime is getting weaker by the day.

REPORTER: Mr. President, I have two questions. One on the topic here. Do you have anything else up your sleeve, big events coming up between now and the Summer Olympics — and the second is on South America.

I know you’re trying to cement a lot of your ties down there. Are there any plans? There are no major military — basically, no military bases in South America. Do you have any plans to South America.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah. It’s great that you mentioned South America because, as you know, I endorsed a gentleman, Abelardo de la Espriella. I liked his name. I guess that means he’s a tough guy. Don’t know. But he’s now the president of Colombia. He wasn’t expected to win. He was one of ten people running.

He wasn’t the favorite person, and he turned out and he’s doing a great job, but he was elected. We have numerous people, Argentina, lots of people that I got elected. And that part of our hemisphere is really turning out to be very much different than it was. They’ve gone from being left to going right. They’re all going right.

We have a good relationship with Brazil, a good relationship, really, with just about all of them now. They have a lot of respect for our country. They didn’t respect our country two years ago at all. And so we’re doing very well in South America, Latin America. We’re doing very well, and these people flying.

I mean, they’re the ones that they get you there for the most part, and they’re all doing very well. That whole thing is opening up. There’s great cooperation between our country and all of South America.

REPORTER: Mr. President, Canada is America’s second largest trading partner. Are there any plans for renewed trade talks between The US and Canada?

And has there been any decline in terms of Canadian tourism to The US? And perhaps you folks —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I don’t know. I can tell you this. You know, Canada has been ripping off The United States for many, many years, for decades, many decades. We lost anywhere from $60 to $100 billion with Canada.

We traditionally lose that for the last fifteen years. It’s a very unfair deal. They charge tremendous tariffs to our farmers. They take advantage of our farmers. They take advantage of our tourists.

They take advantage of airlines. Something that nobody brought up, I’ll bring it up right now. They think it’s so sensitive, but I don’t find it sensitive. Canada has all of its major banks here, and with their biggest source of income, far bigger than they are in Canada. They basically don’t allow banks of America to be in Canada.

That’s sort of emblematic of the way they treat us. Think of it. So they have their banks here, Bank of Canada, all of them, big banks, big beautiful banks. I think they have six or seven major banks here. We don’t have our banks there.

You know why? They don’t allow it. I had a case about a week ago where a friend of mine was buying a Gulfstream jet. And he said, you know, it’s a crazy thing. We’re not able — that Canada won’t certify Gulfstream. Won’t certify it.

Gulfstream is the best private jet, you know, considered the best of the best. And they won’t certify it in Canada because they make a competitor, Bombardier Global Express. And so their competitor didn’t want them to have competition. So for approximately nine years, this has been going on. They won’t certify Gulfstream.

So he’s very friendly with Gulfstream. He told the head of Gulfstream to call me, gave him the numbers, we called and spoke. He said, sir, I’ve spent $60 million trying to get certified in Canada. I can’t get certified in Canada. They won’t do it.

So I immediately said I’m putting a major tariff on Bombardier and other things that they sent until they’re certified. They got certified in two hours. I got a call from the prime minister. “President, what seems to be the problem?” I said, well, you have a little problem.

For nine years, you didn’t certify Gulfstream. Essentially, can’t sell any plane in anything having to do with Canada, but Bombardier has free reign over The United States. Both good planes, very good planes. And I said, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to charge you tariffs on various products, including Bombardier. We put a nice big — and within thirty minutes, I guess, it took maybe less, everything got certified.

He told me they spent millions and millions of dollars on legal fees over about a nine year period trying to do it. I did it in a matter of moments, but that’s the way they treat us. And I thought that was really egregious. It was incredible because everyone knows how good the Gulfstream is. It’s the best plane.

And for them to not be allowed to sell it in Canada, but that’s the way they are. And people are surprised when I say it. Like, I have China coming here. A lot of people say, who’s the toughest one to deal with? Is it China, sir?

Is it China? Is it Vietnam? I said, no. Actually, it’s Canada. Canada has felt emboldened.

We — they had presidents that didn’t know what was happening. Not only the last one, all of them. I mean, they just were taken — our country’s been taken advantage of by Canada. They took 20% of our car industry out. I don’t blame them for that, but if we would have had a president that knew what was happening, nobody would have left.

Now they’re all coming back. All they would have had to do is charge tariffs, and they would have put tariffs on. You build a car in Canada, you have to pay a 25% tariff, and nobody could pay. And if that didn’t work, you make it 50%. Or if that didn’t work, you make it 100%.

And we have everybody coming — or you stop doing business with the nation. You know, when we lose $60 to $100 billion with Canada, I could say, well, if we don’t do business because we don’t need — we have more oil and gas than they do. We have tremendous forests. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need the things they have.

They need what we have. They do most of their business with us. I’ve heard numbers 95%. We do a very small percentage compared to others. We do a very small percentage by comparison to that.

But they need us. We don’t need them. They’ve taken advantage of us for years, and it’s time to stop. We can’t lose $60 to $100 billion a year for the privilege of allowing them to make — we don’t want their cars. We want the cars to be made in Detroit and in South Carolina and in Tennessee and in all of our places where we make cars.

We don’t want them to be made in Canada. So this is nothing against anybody, and this started with Trudeau. Trudeau and I used to have it out pretty good, and now we have this new guy who is a nice guy, but, you know, he’s just — and then they have the other guy, the slob. I guess some people call him a slob. I don’t want to call him that because I want to be nice.

But and I did change the name of a certain lake to Lake America, just like I changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. People in this country love it. You know? We have 92% of the frontage. And why was it Gulf of Mexico?

We have most of the frontage, almost all, 93, 94%. So we do things like that because we’re fighting for our country. Canada has taken advantage of us. They have ripped us off for years, and now we’re turning the tables very very easily turning the tables.

REPORTER: Mr. President, on the subject of foreign visitors to The United States, what’s your reaction to the recent news that Prince Harry and Meghan have left The United States and have gone back to Britain?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m happy about it. No. I was not a fan. I thought, look.

I had a very good relationship with the Queen. Really good. I got to know her very well. A really good relationship with King Charles. I know him as Prince Charles.

And King Charles, I’ve known him for a long time. He’s great. Great guy. And I thought they treated the royal family with great disrespect. I didn’t like it.

I didn’t like the way she acted. I thought she was terribly disrespectful to the Queen, to King Charles. And I don’t know. Maybe I’m different. I wouldn’t have taken them back.

Right, Tim? Mr. President, if I were the royal family, I would not have taken them back.

REPORTER: Mr. President, the recent resumption of US strikes in Iran have sent oil prices back up to $95 a barrel. How come that?

How long will this renewed campaign go for? And also, given that what you’ve said about having destroyed the Iranian military, what is there still left to strike and why?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: K. We have controlled and we are controlling the Hormuz Strait. We are bringing lots of boats out every day with millions of barrels of oil.

We are, for the most part, doing it without trouble. Every once in a while, they shoot a drone and knock it down. But we have control of very strong control. They were trying to rebuild their radar systems and a missile system and a mine drop. You know, got rid of all the mines in the Hormuz Strait.

They were trying to build a rocket that drops mines. Who does that? Did you ever build a rocket that dropped — I never heard of such a thing, but that’s what they were doing. They were building it.

It was almost finished, so we took it out. We saw that they were building it. We see everything that they’re doing. They can’t move — they can’t go to the bathroom without us seeing it. So we saw that.

We took it out. We took out some other things, and then we hit them last night because they took a shot at us in Jordan, at our base in Jordan. We knocked all of them down. There were, I guess, eight missiles that were shot. We — they were all knocked down.

One let go because it was so inaccurate. It landed in the middle of the desert someplace, so we let it go. Sometimes we let them go if they’re not aimed correctly. It’s an amazing science. What they can do is absolutely incredible.

We had a case where 111 were shot at a certain ship, fellas. And 100 out of 111, all 111 were knocked down. Can you imagine that? You know, five years ago, seven years ago, you couldn’t do that. Today, we have technology that’s incredible.

Nobody has technology like we have. So we hit them hard last night, very hard. They gave a little love tap, but we hit them very hard last night. We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz, some defensive, some offensive. They were trying to see the ships because they can’t see the ships.

You know? We’re taking out a lot of ships. They can’t see it because they have no radar because we blew it up. And we blew up much more than their radar last night. It was a very heavy attack last night, and we’re prepared to do another one anytime we want.

So how long is — team to get back and forth? I do think this. We had gasoline selling when I decided that I have to go in and stop this because we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon. So a little more than a year ago, gasoline in Iowa. I was in Iowa making a speech.

It was a dollar and 95 cents. And then it went to a dollar 85 past another station. I went — $1.95, think of that, and $1.85. And right after that, I called everybody into the office, made my speech, and I said, we have a problem because Iran is soon going to have a nuclear weapon.

And I hate to do this, but we’re going to have to do it. Oil will go up, and probably the stock market will go down. Well, the good news is the stock market hits new records every day, so the stock market wasn’t affected. Although, it would even be higher, believe it or not. The stock market will go up, but it’s very simple.

Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. As soon as it’s over, which I don’t think it would be very much longer. I don’t know how much more they can take, but, you know, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. And I’m not affected by the election. Number one, I’m not running, but my party’s running, and I’m going to help my party.

But I think my party respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And frankly, other presidents should have done that, but they didn’t have whatever it takes to do it.

REPORTER: Mr. President, can you talk about your endorsement? Mr. President, you met with oil industry leaders, and you previously accused them of price gouging. Is that something you brought up with them?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah. I did. I want the retail prices. These were mostly retailers, and I want the retail prices to come down.

REPORTER: Mr. President — and has the — the question on data centers real quickly?

REPORTER: Mr. President, on Ukraine, something you’ve said for a long time is that the war should have never happened. And something you used to say, which was proven correct, was that the Biden administration, along with much of the mainstream media, was lying about the number of Ukrainians who were dying in the war. And now we’re seeing they’re having a shortage of young men. There’s these horrific videos coming out of Ukraine where they’re kidnapping them off the streets. Their moms, their wives are being thrown to the ground and sprayed with mace while their loved ones get taken away.

I’m wondering, have you seen these videos? Because the mainstream media is also not reporting on those. If you haven’t seen them, could I send them to Steven Cheung or another member of your staff to show you?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I know. Put them out.

But I know about the videos. I heard about them very strongly. Look. It’s a war that should have never happened. If the election weren’t rigged in 2020, that war would have never happened, and it didn’t happen for four years.

You know, I was 2016 to 2020, and I would talk to Putin about it. It would have never happened. Zero chance. And when I left, I saw what was going on, and I said, you know, these guys are going to go to war. I thought it was crazy.

It just wouldn’t happen. So it’s one of the — you know, the way it happened for me was a lot of people say it was more important. It was more important with the — skip and doing this, that this is a more important term than it ever could have been. But I will say this one thing is that war would have never happened and all those young, mostly soldiers, but people, you know, missiles going into towns, but mostly young soldiers. 25,000 soldiers a month are being killed.

Can you imagine that? That’s like a stadium. 25,000 on average, and many of them are Ukrainian. You know, they like to say, oh, it’s all Russian. Well, there are a lot of Russians.

Probably more Russians because they’re offensive. You know, they’re on the offense as opposed to the defense, and more people die when you’re on the offense. But tremendous numbers of soldiers, both Ukrainian and Russian, are being killed, and they ought to stop that stupid war. And we are continuing — you know, I stopped eight wars. Eight.

Some of them would be thought of as much tougher to stop than this, and I got them stopped. But there’s tremendous animosity between the two presidents, tremendous animosity. But I think it’s going to be pretty close. It’s going to be time. They seem to have a new burst of energy, but I think they’re going to be — I’m dealing with both of them, and I think they’re going to stop it.

REPORTER: But you’re right about that. Mr. President, on Russia as well, is there any hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin would do another summit with you in the near future?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, we do it if I wanted it, but I want to do it when we’re ready to do a peace deal. I want to do it with — you know, we want to have good relationship with Russia, Ukraine, with everybody. It’d be great for business.

Russia’s got great land and very valuable land. A lot of good things happening, but, no, we could do one. I bet I could do it immediately. I want to do it when that war is ending, and I think we will.

REPORTER: And on the tax credit, were you surprised to see Gavin Newsom come out and support that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That he supported the —

REPORTER: The federal tax credit.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, the federal — well, he supported two things. He supported the Trump accounts for children. You know?

When they’re born, they’re going to end up — when they’re 18 or 21, they’re going to end up being rich people, maybe. And good chance, at a minimum, they’re going to have a lot of money. But at a maximum, they could actually be rich. And these are people in many cases that have no money. But I understood that he just came out and he supported the television.

Just so you know, Canada again, but Canada — Canada, number one. But The UK, Australia, many countries give tremendous incentives to take our film industry, our entertainment industry, television industry, the making of the product into their countries. I mean, Canada’s booming because they give tax incentives. We don’t give anything, and we should. And this is probably more of a Democrat thing, frankly, because they seem to be the Hollywood.

Hollywood is dead, and they wanted to be revived. And I’ve spoken to Netflix, who’s a fantastic — Ted, who’s fantastic, and Ari Emanuel and many others. And Jon Voight came to see me about it. Jon Voight came to see me about it two days ago. He’s a friend of mine.

He’s a phenomenal actor. Did some of the greatest movies of all time. I said, so, Jon, what’s up? He goes, sir, Hollywood is dying. You got to do something.

I said, what do you think we should be doing? And he talked about the tax credits, and all I’m going to do is offer the tax credits that other countries are offering. I don’t have to do any more. They all want to be in Hollywood. They don’t want to lose Hollywood.

And the unions want that. The unions are going to work alone. I’ve done a lot of work in that the last week. And I think we have bipartisan support. I think we have tremendous Democrat.

I understand Adam Schiff is totally in favor of it, and I’d like to get it done. We call it the Motion Picture Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act. You think Biden could have done that? I don’t think so. What do you think?

REPORTER: I don’t think so.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Mr. President — number one, he wouldn’t have done that, but number two, he wouldn’t have remembered the name. But just so you understand, so it’s a revitalization act for that industry, and it’s a beautiful thing. It’s going to work very quickly. These people don’t want to fly to Australia to do a movie.

You know, it’s a twenty two hour flight, and they don’t want to fly twenty two hours, and they don’t want to go to Canada. But Canada offers big subsidies and big credits, you know, beyond just credit. They offer subsidy. And we’re going to match any country, and we’re going to bring 100% of that because every one of them, they want to make Hollywood. They want to make movies in Hollywood.

That’s — they grew up wanting to be in Hollywood. Now you can’t make a movie in Hollywood. It doesn’t make sense. So we’re going to bring it back.

REPORTER: President Trump, what do you think about the plea deal down in Florida today? Tiger Woods, who famously called you as he was being arrested, has agreed to have a suspended driver’s license for five years.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, look, I know Tiger very well. He’s a great guy. He’s unique in so many ways and especially as an athlete, but also as a man.

You know, he suffers great pain. Great pain. It’s a very tough situation because they didn’t find alcohol on him. You know, he didn’t test positive at all for alcohol. But because of his horrible back, because he had, in my opinion, a bad doctor, but he had a back operation that did not work out well.

And he is under pain. And so it’s a tough deal when you’re taking a pain killer because you’re under pain and tremendous pain, and you have a problem and you test positive. He would have told him that. I mean, it’s a prescription pain killer, but I thought it was very fair. I mean, I think he’s going to have somebody drive him.

I told him that a long time. Why don’t you get somebody to drive you? So he’s going to have somebody drive him from now on. And, you know, he’s just a very special guy. I’m glad that was resolved.

REPORTER: Mr. President, it just came out that James Talarico in Texas called capitalism oppressive and said it needed to be dismantled.

Do you think by embracing socialism and bashing capitalism, you know, Democrats — that’s a wise move for Democrats?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, that’s one of the least of the bad things he said. He said a lot of bad things. He’s — I mean, they have a name, a nickname for him. I don’t want to use it, but the name happens to be “Talefrico” because he is one of the worst candidates I’ve ever seen.

And, you know, we have a guy named Ken Paxton. And some people don’t like the way he dresses or some people don’t like the way he interviews or talks. But you know the one thing about him? He was the best attorney general in this country for the last ten years or more. The most effective, the hardest working.

He was the best attorney general in The United States. And so I don’t care about an interview, and I don’t care about the way he dresses. All I know is that he was considered by almost everybody to be the best single, strongest, smartest attorney general in The United States. And I can attest to that because we have a lot of business at both governmental and when I was in the private sector. He was the most effective guy there was, and I think he should win on the basis of that.

REPORTER: Mr. President, on Venezuela, what’s stopping you from demanding Venezuela set a firm date for the election?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: On what?

REPORTER: On an election. What about it? What’s stopping you from asking Venezuela to set a firm date for an election?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Oh, I just don’t think they’re ready yet. You know, it’s very new. We took them out of a dictatorship, and we’re getting along great with the government. Delcy, as you know, is doing a very, very good job, very highly respected. And oh, we want that, and they want that.

Delcy wants it, but they’re not ready yet. You know, we’ve taken them out from a very powerful, ruthless dictatorship where many people were in jail. You know, those people have largely been released from jail. They were political prisoners. But we should’ve had that in this country too.

We had a vicious — that last four years was run by some — not Biden so much. He didn’t know what the hell was happening. But the people that surrounded him at this desk, they were vicious, violent people. Smart people, but they were nuts. Radical left lunatics.

You had a very powerful, very nasty dictatorship in Venezuela, and they’re just not going to be ready for it yet, but soon. We look forward to doing it and soon.

REPORTER: Mr. President, how serious are you about renaming the Strait of Hormuz the Trump Strait? And how would you do it?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It was just thrown out.

REPORTER: Your endorsement of Darlene Graham was pivotal. It was crucial in helping her win her runoff election. There’s another close election that’s happening out in Alaska.

Senator Sullivan is in a tight race. Good man. Do you anticipate actually traveling out to Alaska to help him out?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Don’t have to go with me. I’m just kidding.

Yeah. I do. I’ll go out there to fight for him. Just to show you how crooked the Democrats are. First of all, they have ranked choice, which is a crooked form of voting.

It’s totally dishonest. Ranked choice. They throw everybody into a hat and somebody backstage that nobody knows picks a winner. It’s ridiculous. But they have a man — we have a very good senator named Dan Sullivan.

The Democrats put up another man named Dan Sullivan. So we have two Dan Sullivan’s on the — and by the way, the other man who had never been in politics had never voted. He hasn’t voted for years. A totally set — pretty nonpolitical person, I guess, but never had any thought of running. All of a sudden, he’s running for the Senate in Alaska.

His name is Dan Sullivan. They have the same name. And that guy got two and a half percent in the recent primary. And that’s — you know, two and a half percent is a lot when it comes to winning elections, and it’s a disgrace. They went to the court, and the court made it a little bit easier.

They put an initial or something on the one name, but it’s very unfair. I will go to Alaska to help Dan Sullivan get elected. Dan Sullivan, it’s like Ken Paxton. Dan Sullivan is a great senator. Dan — I mean, you look at the things he’s on, he would call me all the time because I think — no, I definitely know.

Nobody has helped Alaska like Trump. We’ve invested billions and billions of dollars and created trillions of dollars in value. You have Japan. You have South Korea. You have all of these people now going to Alaska to load up with fuel, load up with oil, build pipelines, everything else.

Dan Sullivan’s done a great job, and I will — it’s a long trip. I love Alaska. You know, I won Alaska by a landslide.

REPORTER: 13 and a half points, sir. How much?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: 13 and a half points. I thought it was 23 and 24.

REPORTER: Why did you think — 13.5 is a lot. Why do you think — Mr. President, you won it by 13 and a half points. Why is this race so close given your strength there?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s close for one reason, that they have a phony Dan Sullivan. This guy’s a phony. And he was put up by the Democrats, and they don’t admit it, but it’s been so proven. So I will go to Alaska to make sure that a great senator gets reelected. I will be going to Alaska.

I’m going to be going the last thirty days before the election. I’ll be making a lot of stuff. You see how I helped Darlene? You see how I helped the future governor of Oklahoma? He was way behind, and I endorsed him.

And I did tell — the town halls for him. I did and he ended up winning against somebody that seemed to have an insurmountable lead. He’s great. He’s going to be a great governor for Oklahoma. I won in Oklahoma, they have 77 counties.

As you know, all three times, I won 70 counties. They like me. Peter, I think I should just move there. They like me. They seriously like me in Oklahoma.

And you know who’s second? It was Ronald Reagan at 56. But I won 77 out of 77 counties in Oklahoma. And I endorsed him, and he won. And it was an amazing victory.

You know, there was a victory that everybody said couldn’t happen. So I’m going to be campaigning for numerous people, both congressmen, a few governors. I love the governors, but we’re interested in the Senate, and we’re interested in the House. So I’ll be campaigning for the House members, and I’ll be campaigning for senators.

REPORTER: Are you concerned, President Trump, tonight — hang on that note.

Are you concerned about the lack of Senate confirmed individuals at both the civilian and military level at the Department of the Army right now?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I think they’re trying to get them confirmed as quickly as possible. The Democrats hold up the confirmation like crazy. I mean, you — I mean, you don’t get one vote. We could have George Washington.

See that man right up there? He was good. See the other man, Ulysses S. Grant. See the other man, Abraham Lincoln. I’d say those are three top ones.

If I put them up for nomination for a fairly routine position in the military, the Democrats would not give them one vote. What do you think of that, Peter? You know it’s true. Now you could also look over there, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Ronald Reagan, Monroe — the Monroe Doctrine as opposed to the Donroe Doctrine.

They’re — make that. But I could take those three. Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, George Washington. And if I put them up in this modern era, they would get no Democrat support.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, guys. Thank you, John. Thank you. Yeah.

One vote. Is that a new — you guys. You can keep going. Thank you, guys. You can keep — Yeah.

You know who gave this to me. Know what — you. I don’t know.

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