Transcript: Trump Holds Press Conference At NATO Leaders Summit in Turkey – July 8, 2026

I don’t want to say me because you’ll say, “He’s so conceited. He’s such a conceited person.” But they do. I mean, you know, they like the job I’m doing. They said, “We love, sir, we love you.” These are grown people saying that. Isn’t that nice? Maybe, I don’t know. Maybe they’re trying to get to me.

And the way they did, because there was tremendous unity in that room. And I urge all nations to accelerate their plans to get the benchmark as quickly as possible. The benchmark is going to be at five percent. That’s the number it should have been for years.

Defense Spending Surge and American-Made Equipment

As a result of the commitment we achieved last year, defense spending of other NATO members surged by more than almost one hundred and fifty billion dollars in 2025, and much of that money is being spent on American-made equipment. They all want American-made equipment. We’re pushing very hard to have the defense companies, they’re great. We make the best equipment, the Patriots and the Tomahawks, and everything we have is considered to be the best. Not by me. Everybody wants it.

I wish we made it faster because we could sell as much as we could make. And as you know, I had Lockheed and every one of the companies, Raytheon is an example, Boeing. So many of those great companies are now building plants. They had big plants, but they were using them twenty-four seven. I said, that’s not the way to do it. You have to build more plants. You don’t have to just go overtime.

No tax on overtime. Remember that, please? No tax on overtime. Those people are happy. But they were doing literally twenty-four hours to get the Tomahawks done and Patriots done and all of the other defensive and offensive equipment done. It’s the most sought-after equipment in the world. You saw that with Venezuela where they had a lot of great equipment. It wasn’t ours and it didn’t work. Our equipment works, but we have to produce it faster for other countries.

For everybody, including ourselves, we have to produce it faster. So we think within a year, year and a half max, we’ll be, instead of waiting for a year or two years, we’ll be having it on a two-week wait, maybe a one-week wait. That’s what I want. And it’ll do really well. A lot of people are just waiting. They want to get this defensive equipment. Maybe in particular, the defensive equipment, but offensive and defense.

As much of that money is being spent on American-made equipment, that’s the money that the European and Canada are spending, European countries mostly, and Canada. And they’re spending that with the United States largely. And it’s American-made, made in the USA, as we say, weapons, munitions, supporting thousands of American jobs.

Record U.S. Jobs and Investment

This will increase. We have the highest number of jobs. Right now, we have the most people working in the United States that we’ve ever had in the history of our country. We have the biggest investment ever made, nineteen point two trillion dollars. That’s six times more than we’ve ever had. Think of it, six times, and what did that were tariffs.

Without the tariffs, I think we would have done fine, like at about two or three. The last administration had much less than one trillion invested for four years. We have nineteen point two trillion invested in one year. We haven’t gone into the extra almost a half a year, one and a half years. Those numbers won’t come out for a little while. So we have nineteen point two trillion, not billion, not million, trillion with a T, invested in plants and equipment that’s being built all over the country.

Manufacturing Boom and Tariff Policy

Eli Lilly is building plants, big drug, Merck, all of them, the drug companies are building. The car companies are building like crazy. In fact, as you probably saw, a big announcement yesterday, Toyota is leaving Mexico and they’re going to build one of the biggest car manufacturing plants in the world in Texas. That’s because of the tariffs, because we don’t mind if you build in Mexico, but if you build in Mexico, you have to pay twenty-five percent tariff. If you build in Japan or if you build in any place, China is a much higher tariff, versus a hundred percent tariff, because we don’t want to lose our jobs. We don’t want to have our workers lose their jobs.

We have the largest number of plants being built for the most money ever in the history of our country. Car plants, AI plants, and all other plants, pharmaceutical plants, chips. We’re not giving anything. All we’re saying is, if they don’t start, we’ll give them a year and a half to two years to build their plant. If they don’t have that, they have to pay a hundred percent, two hundred percent, even two hundred and fifty percent if they make a chip or if they make a car, if they make pharmaceuticals.

So the pharmaceutical companies are moving in at record levels. There’s never been anything like what’s happening. Let me put it a different way. I’ll put it to you in a more broad fashion. There has never been anything like what has happened with this country or any other country in the history of the world. There has never been growth. There’s never been manufacturing plants being built. We have so many being built.

AI, Energy, and TikTok

And in the big ones, like AI, some of the AI, we let them build their own electric plants. We force them to build. We don’t want it because the old grid that we have wouldn’t be able to supply. They need, just as an industry, more energy than the entire country produces right now, when you think of it, which is incredible. So take all of the energy that the United States produces and that one industry, which is so big, so powerful, it needs more than that. In fact, some people say almost double.

So this was my idea. I said, you can never service that. You can’t reinvigorate the grid. You can make it better, but nothing like that. You wouldn’t be able to build. And we’re leading China in AI. Well, in most, just about everything. But we’re leading China in AI.

Even in TikTok, you know, I was watching somebody say, “Oh, the TikTok deal. It’s so bad.” Well, because they say the deal was incredible, but they think the word that gets out is bad, except the numbers just came out, and I’m number one on TikTok. And all I do is talk about communism. Right? So it’s sort of good. I used it to get elected too. But, you know, you have to get your word out.

But the numbers came out just a little while ago, and I was number one. Some ridiculous number. I’ve never heard of numbers like that, but number one. And all these entertainers, they’re number twenty-seven, twenty-nine. It’s crazy. I don’t even understand myself. But that means that my word’s getting out about how great our country is, how successful our country is, and how bad communism is, and how bad these lunatics are that are running for election that don’t sound good, don’t think good, and don’t look good.

I don’t see any looker. I don’t see anybody with the look. You know, you need the look, I guess. You need something, but they don’t have it. And I think they’ll fade fast. And it’s not social democrats. This is not social. These are communists that are running. And they don’t want God. They don’t want successful things to happen for our country. They don’t want to have a successful country. I think they’re sort of crazy.

Scaling Up U.S. Defense Production

As European nations rebuild their militaries, American equipment will be the largest beneficiary. The defense companies are going to be making most of that equipment. They want the American equipment because it works better. It’s not a question of anything else. We make the best equipment in the world.

And to that end, I provided other leaders with an update on the steps we’re taking to rapidly scale up production in the United States. And they wanted to hear that because they don’t really want to get it in four years, five years. They want to get it, like, in a week. And we’ll actually be at a point like that in the not too distant future with the plants that are being built. The defense plants are incredible. Lockheed is building, I think, five. Some of them are building three, four, or five, and they’re big ones.

Trump on Iran, Defense Investments, and Communism

TRUMP: It’s going to quadruple the output that we have with the munitions and the basic equipment itself, whether it’s a Patriot or Tomahawk missile or any of the missiles that we make. We make many missiles, different types for different occasions.

And just today at the summit, we announced three billion dollars of new defense investments with US companies, and Lockheed Martin will establish a world class Patriot missile sustainment facility, a big deal in Europe. They’ve given a tremendous incentive by Europe to do that. All goes to the benefit of us and Europe because they’re getting the best equipment. Northrop Grumman is moving forward with the sale of advanced American drone technology.

We’re actually the leader in drone tech. A lot of people don’t know that. We have the most sophisticated drones in the world. And we’re a real — I guess we’re the leader, but we’ll soon be the leader by many times over. And Lockheed and Rheinmetall are announcing a partnership to build the Army Tactical Missile Systems, which is a big deal.

And Andrilles is announcing a deal to build their new Barracuda missiles, which is a very highly sophisticated, fast missile, and we’re doing that for Poland. Poland is doing very well, by the way, with a very, very good president, great president, I think. All of these agreements directly benefit the US defense industry base. And what it really does is it means jobs.

And again, I have to just say that when Toyota announced yesterday, I wasn’t that surprised, but everybody wanted to get that. That’s the largest — I think it’s going to be the largest plant in the world, car plant, and they’re moving into the United States. And again, they’re doing that to avoid paying the tariff because if you build your product here, you pay no tariff. If you don’t, you pay a twenty five percent tariff, depending — thirty five percent sometimes, sometimes a hundred percent, two hundred percent, depending on what the product is.

As an example, we’re doing great on steel because we charge tariffs. So now all of a sudden, the steel industry, which was absolutely dead a few years ago — I revived it in my first term, pretty good. And then they blew it in the Biden term. What a shame. They just blew it right out the window. They had no idea what they were doing, and I quickly revived it at the beginning of this term, year and a half.

And the steel business is through the roof. We don’t even make aluminum anymore. Now we’re going to have the largest aluminum plant in the world being built in Oklahoma. I love Oklahoma. Seventy seven out of seventy seven counties. Three times. And it’s great. It’s a great state. They’re going to be building the largest aluminum plant in the entire world in Oklahoma starting very soon.

Bilateral Meetings and Summit Highlights

TRUMP: Over the course of the past two days, I had a number of excellent discussions with other leaders at the summit and held productive bilateral meetings with essentially all of them. We had dinner last night. Just about all of them were there. President Erdogan of Turkey as well as President Zelenskyy, and he just came in as you probably saw at a little press conference. And also President Al-Sharaa of Syria, who’s doing an unbelievable job in unifying Syria. What a job he’s doing.

Syria was a mess with what happened with the previous government. You know that? Very dangerous place, and now it’s just come together. He’s done a fantastic job. People are talking about it.

In every conversation, it was clear that America is back and we’re stronger and bigger and better than ever before. We have more jobs, as I said, than ever before. And we’re respected again like maybe never before. We are so respected as a country.

That’s why — I told the secretary general, Mark. I said, it’s too bad the press could not see what’s happening in this room. You saw the big round circle with all of the leaders of all of those countries. And I don’t know, I think they should allow it. The theory is that they won’t be speaking quite as freely and it won’t be quite as good, but who knows? It was amazing, actually. The unity in that room was incredible. There was really a love. It was sort of pretty wild. There was a love in that room that was great.

So this was a tremendously successful summit. And again, I want to thank President Erdogan of Turkey, and so many of the presidents — presidents, prime ministers, they were all here from NATO, the NATO countries. And in particular, we have to thank the secretary general, Mark Rutte, for doing a fantastic job. He really put on a tremendous — he’s just a unifier. He’s a tremendous unifier.

Press Conference Q&A

TRUMP: So I could take a few questions. We’ve done a few of these already today, so I don’t think we should take too many. We’re going to keep it a little bit short, and I know a lot of you are going home. Some are going with me. So go ahead, please.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Sir.

TRUMP: Yes. Yes.

REPORTER: Mr. President —

TRUMP: No. No. The gentleman right here. The very tall gentleman who’s very insecure. He doesn’t want to ask that question. He’s a handsome guy, but he’s very insecure. Go ahead. Do you want to shout it out? Give him a mic. How about giving him a mic? You shout it out.

On the Iran War

REPORTER: Mr. President, your operation in Venezuela has been involved in a military success, and yet the Iran war seems to be a strategic dead end for you. Why are you apparently unable to end the Iran war?

TRUMP: So I think we’re doing just the opposite. The Iran war has been a tremendous military success. And I can only answer the question by saying they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. I think it’s been — I was there for one reason: that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I call it — we denuclearize Iran, and that’s happened. They will never have a nuclear weapon. That stuff is so far down under a mountain. It’s a granite mountain that collapsed on top of it. It’ll take months to get it out. I think it’s a tremendous success, Iran.

And you see the oil prices are lower than they were when I started. And people like to say that, but look, they have no military left. Their air force is gone. As I said, their ships are gone. A hundred and fifty nine ships are gone. They’re at the bottom of the sea. Their radar is gone. Everything is gone.

So when you say not a success, it’s a tremendous success. The fake news likes to say how well they’re doing. They’re doing terribly. They have three hundred and fifty percent inflation. When the war started, they had like six percent, five percent. They want to make a deal, but they don’t know how to make a deal. And then they go around shooting ships at night. I don’t like that.

You know, they’re dealing with very fine people. They’re dealing with Steve Witkoff. They’re dealing with Jared Kushner and JD Vance, and they’re dealing with Marco and Scott. They’re dealing with great people, but I don’t know. I think they’re a little loco. They’re a little crazy.

But they told us they’d like to go to the funeral — the funeral of a person who killed a lot of people. Khomeini killed a lot of people over the years and was there for a long time. Don’t forget what we did — should have been done forty seven years ago. It could have been done any time within forty — this has gone on for — they were the bully of the Middle East.

So they’re a much different country now. In one day, all of their anti aircraft things are gone. That doesn’t mean they’re not going to get a plane at some point, but all of it’s gone. Everything’s gone. Their leaders are gone. They had leaders, they’re gone. And they had another set of leaders, they’re gone. Now they have another set of leaders, they may be gone. Who knows?

And you know what? I may be gone too because I’m their number one target. It’s out all over the place. I’m their number one because they’re scum. That’s the way they act, and that’s the way they’ve done it for forty seven years. But I’m doing what’s right for the country. I’m doing really what’s right for the world. They have to be stopped.

And they’ve killed hundreds of thousands of people. They killed fifty two thousand protesters over the last three months. So when you say we’re not doing well, I think we’re doing phenomenally well. Our military has been incredible.

Plus, we had a blockade. Did we have a blockade? Did you ever see a blockade work that way?

On Venezuela and the Southern Border

TRUMP: You know, for you that said we’re not doing well there — we did great in Venezuela. That was a one day war, and they’re a very good military. You know, it’s a very military country. We took out one of the worst human beings in the world, Maduro, and he’s in jail waiting for trial. But what he did to this country was incredible, including the fact — not only the drugs, but he had people pour into the country from prisons. They opened up their prisons. They allowed them to come in. We’re getting them out. We’re getting them all out.

But we have — with the Biden open border policy, with Kamala as your — remember? She was a borderer, but she never called border patrol, never once, and she never went to the border. The border was a disaster. Now it’s fixed. It’s fixed where we have nobody — and I don’t do these numbers — zero people come in through our border, through our southern border. Zero. And that’s been announced now every month for the last twelve months. Zero.

We had millions of people come in under Biden — twenty five million people, I think more than that. And they weren’t people that you want. And for the most part, they were drug dealers. They were escaped from — think of it — all the prisons. And I’m not just talking about from South America. I’m talking about from the Congo. I’m talking about from all over the world. The prisons were emptied out. They were emptied out into our country. They had the worst murderers. We had people allowed in our country that should never — and they walked in through an open border policy.

And all I’m saying is that you’re lucky we won this election.

On the Dangers of Communism

TRUMP: Yeah, please. Go ahead.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Who are you with?

REPORTER: NTT —

TRUMP: Why don’t you say your name and who you’re with? They’re always helpful.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President, for doing this. Iris Tao with NTT, which assists your media with the Epoch Times. On communism — you’ve been issuing a wake up call to Americans at home about the dangers of communism. Now you’re speaking on the world stage. What’s your message to people both living under communist and socialist regimes, but also people living under democracies like in Europe and America who might not have realized how close communism has come to home?

TRUMP: Yeah. That’s a great question actually. But look, I want to get the word out because what’s forming is communism in the country. And communism’s easy to sell. I would be the greatest communist in history. I’d be right up there with Lenin. I’d be as good as anybody. “You’ve got free rent for the rest of your life.” What they don’t say is that you’ll be living in squalor in twelve months. “You’ve got the free house. Would anybody like to have a free house?” We’ll take it away from somebody. We’ll give it to you. You’ll have murders all over the place. Communism is a disaster. It’s been proven to be for thousands of years under different names, but same thing.

It’s very important. And it’s funny — one of the reasons I do so well with Hispanic people — I set a record, Republicans. I get great numbers for the election to help me get elected in a landslide — the Hispanics — because a lot of them came from countries that were essentially communist. You know, whether you call them radical socialist or communist is not that much, but there is a little difference. When they say “social democrats, we’re social democrats,” it sounds so nice. It’s not nice. It’s a very dangerous term.

So I do talk about it, and I talk about it on TikTok, and I talk about it everywhere. I talk about it here. And you’re right, it has become international, but it’s never worked and it’s not going to work. What is working is the United States.

Think of it — we have more jobs than we’ve ever had. People are making more money than they’ve ever made. I’m talking about workers now. I’m talking about workers. They’re making higher salaries than they’ve ever made before. It’s just the best system. And it’s got flaws, but everything’s going to have a little flaw. But it’s been amazing.

And when I watch what’s happening and I see these low lives getting — I mean, they’re low lives. I watch them. I know good people. I know quality people. These are essentially low lives. And when I see what they’re talking, I think they’re very dangerous.

In many ways — and I’ve said it, then I said, “Boy, that’s a pretty big statement.” Then I realized, a couple of people said, “I think you’re probably right.” I think this country, with this thing that’s going around, is in more danger than it was during World War One, World War Two. If you talk about September eleventh, if you talk about Pearl Harbor, that was big danger. I think this — I think the concept of us going communist — because one thing that happens when you go communist, you never come back. Never comes back. You die in squalor. You die a horrible death. You die in squalor, and it gets very evil and very nasty.

TRUMP: Yeah. Please go ahead.

Trump’s Changing View on Iran’s Leadership

REPORTER: Mr. President, Tyler Pager with the New York Times. Last month, you said Iranian leaders were “very rational people, nice people to deal with, strong people, smart people.” Today, you said they were “scum, sick people, and being led by sick people.” What changed?

TRUMP: I got to know them. So I’ve said that about a lot. Now when you say rational, I think they’re much more rational than level one, level two. Level one is gone, level two is gone. This is level three.

I think they are more rational, but based on their actions over the last week or two, they’re not doing a service to the people. And I think more than anything else is I got to know them, and I’m not sure I want to make a deal with them. We can play games, but I’m not sure I want to make a deal. I just finished the job.

Oil Markets and Iran’s Nuclear Threat

REPORTER: Thank you, President. Steve Sedgwick from CNBC. The oil markets are up today around about seven percent for WTI and Brent as well. The world is taking you at your word, sir, that the MOU is over, that the ceasefire is over. What happens next, sir? Are we on the cusp of a full scale return to a full—

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what happens next. We’re never going to see Iran have a nuclear weapon because that’s much more important than the numbers you’re talking about. The prices of oil are dropping like a rock. Now they’ll be up a little bit, and this will end very quickly. We have a tremendous — we have an oil glut right now because we got all those votes out of the strait, and it’s going to drop.

And I’ve predicted everything. I’ve been right about everything, and I have been for a long time. That’s how I got to be president three times. That’s how I won three elections. I did very well in the second one. Won it. It was a rigged election. But I’ve been right, and oil’s coming down.

Now, I have to make sure of one thing, that we don’t have lunatics having control over nuclear weapons. So we have that now. There’s no way they have a nuclear weapon. We have cameras, as an example, on the site that does beautiful B-2s at one o’clock in the morning, ten months ago, blew up. They blew it up. We have cameras. That’s called Space Force, if they’re in space.

But we have cameras that can read the badge of the person going over to a site. Mohammed something. We say, it’s Mohammed something. Is there with shovels? Well, shovels won’t get you there. The biggest machinery in the world probably won’t get you there, if you want to know the truth. It’s way, way below. But we’re watching that. And if anybody goes there, they get blown up. So nobody’s going to touch that. Eventually, we’ll take it.

But what we do have is — that’s gone. If we wouldn’t have had that, they would have had a nuclear weapon, and they would have wiped out Israel. If I weren’t president, Israel wouldn’t exist. And we did it two times.

When the JCPOA, the Obama deal, when that was originally conceived, everything went to Iran. $1.7 billion in cash, hundreds of billions of dollars. They thought they could buy peace with these people. You can’t do that. So the big thing we have — more important than anything we can talk about — is you can’t let lunatics have nuclear weapons, and we’ve stopped that. And that should have been stopped on a couple of other occasions too with different countries, but they didn’t do that.

Security Concerns and Iran’s Kill List

REPORTER: President Trump. Nelson from the New York Post. I’d like you to address speculation that you’re leaving Ankara not in the new Air Force One because of security concerns involving Iran. You’ve spoken today twice about them possibly assassinating you and possibly being successful. Did that concern have something to do with—

TRUMP: Well, I speak about it a lot because, you know, the life of a president is very dangerous. It’s five point two percent. You know what a race car driver is? One tenth of one percent. A bull rider, that looks pretty dangerous to me. It’s one tenth of one percent. No. It’s five point two percent — you don’t make it. You should have told me you’re an excellent reporter. You should have told me that years ago. Maybe I wouldn’t have run. It’s a very dangerous profession.

No. I’m number one on the kill list for Iran. They’re lovely people. I’m number one. So I don’t know. I can’t tell you that, but I don’t really care because I’m doing my job and I’m doing it, I hope, better than anybody’s ever done it because we have a country that’s hot and really, really successful. But I mentioned it only because it’s on the list. I mean, it came out. There was another list came out yesterday, and I’m number one on — I like being number one on TikTok better, but I’m number one on the list for killing.

The New Air Force One

REPORTER: Sean McCreash, New York Times. But why aren’t you flying the new plane home?

TRUMP: Say what?

REPORTER: Why aren’t you flying on the new Air Force plane?

TRUMP: It’s flying to Europe to one of the big bases — two or three of the big bases — where we can show it to the people, and we’ll be going home by normal methods. But we have it going to Europe to a couple of bases. Actually, one in particular, but it’s going to go to a couple of bases — stop so the soldiers can see it because it’s truly magnificent.

Expectations from European Allies

REPORTER: Mr. President, Hari Jimedia Tuncakoc, Turkey. President, it seems that the war with Iran may start again. What do you expect from your European allies?

TRUMP: No. I don’t think it’s going to start again. I think it’s going to go very quickly. They hit a couple of ships, and so we hit them much harder. When they hit, we hit ten times harder. You know, we hit much harder than they do. We have a lot better equipment than they do. We may even — somebody asked before, do you think you’ll hit them tonight? I said, we might. Yeah. We might. But when they hit, we hit. You know? We use their language. We speak their language.

No. I don’t think so. I think anything that happens is going to be over very quickly. And we’ll only make it safer, including for oil. Oil is going to be very free, very easy, and it’s going to happen very fast. We have the Hormuz Strait. The boats have pulled out. I mean, there’s a gusher of oil right now. We have a lot of oil. And no, anything that happens is going to happen very fast. We’re not looking for long term.

Criticism of European Allies’ Response

REPORTER: Mr. President, Ines de la Pitera with MS Now. You said today that countries like Spain, Italy, and the UK were not there for the US and its war with Iran. Should those countries be attacked? Will the US be there for that?

TRUMP: What a — that’s a failing network. Why would you want to work for them? MS Now, can you imagine? They wanted to get away. They took the name NBC because they were embarrassed by it. Go ahead.

Well, I’ll tell you what. Number one, Spain has been very bad, but, you know, Italy has been good, and almost all of the countries have been good. They just had a bad moment. They didn’t help us. We didn’t need their help. But if we would have wanted their help — I said, by the way, if I want help, sir would rather remain on the sidelines. And I didn’t like that answer.

UK gave an answer that was sort of weirder than that. I said, would you like to help? They said, we do, but we want to wait till the war is over. This was not in the spirit of Winston Churchill.

So, yeah. I mean, I’ll tell you what, I can only say if there’s one word that comes out of today, it’s unification. I’ve never seen anything like it. Every one of those countries, they love us. They love each other. That was tremendous unification. It was a nice thing to say. That was a very fair question too.

US-Turkey Relations and the F-35 Program

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. Eda Atul from Haber Global TV, Turkey. President, after your meeting with President Erdogan, can you tell us whether you and President Erdogan reached an understanding on Turkey’s return to the F-35 program and the future of US-Turkey defense cooperation? And do you believe US-Turkey relations are entering a new chapter right now?

TRUMP: Well, I had a great relationship in my first term. You remember Pastor Brunson, and he was put in jail for thirty-five years, and I called — he was an evangelical hero, actually. Very good man. And I called President Erdogan and he let him out. I didn’t pay anything like Obama and Biden paid billions of dollars all the time. I never paid anything for anybody. I just tell him, let him out. Let him out.

But in this case, I didn’t say it the second way. I said it the first way. I said, look, he’s been — he’s a good man. He’s highly respected and the evangelical, and I’d like you to let him out. And he was in my office, in the Oval Office, the following day — Pastor Brunson.

I had a great relationship. When Sleepy Joe Biden got in, bad things happened with a lot of things between the border. Everything was bad. We were laughed at all over the world, and we had a very bad relationship with a lot of countries. I think Turkey was one of those countries. But that changed on November fifth when we had the election. And it’s one of our best relationships. We have a great relationship.

And they’re talking about the F-35 airplane. And it’s the best plane, and everybody wants it. And we have to make a decision who we give it to. I mean, my inclination — because he again, he stayed out of — he’s not a huge fan of BB, and he’s not a huge fan of Israel, but he stayed out of that war. He could have gone into that war very easily and he didn’t. At my request, he stayed out of that war. He’s been a very good ally.

I mean, Marco could tell you we have a very strong relationship with Turkey. It’s a very big country. It’s a very powerful — militarily, it’s the second most powerful country in NATO. It’s a NATO country. So whether or not we do that, I haven’t totally made up my mind. But my inclination is to say, look, he’s done everything — he’s helped us in so many different ways.

And you know who else has been good to us? China. China never came into the war. They get fifty percent of their oil from Hormuz Strait. They never came into the war. They never said, I’m going to send a ship in — five destroyers along each side of the ship. They never did. No. President Xi has been great.

Everyone’s been sort of great, to be honest. You know why? Because they respect our country again. They laughed at our country. They thought we were a bunch of fools. They saw a president that couldn’t talk. He couldn’t walk. It was a disaster. They lost respect for our country, but now they have more respect for our country than they’ve ever had before.

TRUMP: Thank you all very much. We’ll see you back. Thank you very much, everybody.

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