Remarks: Donald Trump Holds a Bilat with Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria - July 8, 2026

Well, thank you very much. I'm with the highly respected president of Syria, and we are working together. We were -- right from the beginning, we were responsible, along with actually President Erdogan, uh, also felt very strongly. And he's done a really fantastic job as president. He's unified the country in a very short period of time.

I'd say like a year and a half, about a year and a half. And right from the beginning, it was a real mess. It was a very, uh, disjointed place and he's brought it together. He's a strong person. He's a great leader. He's respected by everybody, including me. And we're proud to have them together. We're just here to talk a little bit.

We released sanctions from the country, which, really, I think was a big boost. Sanctions was a very important thing, and we're proud of the job he's doing. Syria's, uh, become a very stable -- I mean, it's amazing, in a short period of time, it's really been stabilized and we're proud of that and to be part of the Middle East.

Syria had one of the great cultures, the professors and lawyers and doctors, and had one of the great cultures of any country, not just Middle East. And then it went through this terrible period of time but, uh, it's a country that a lot of people are very proud of, and they're proud of the job he's done.

Thank you very much, Mr. President. Would you like to say something? Go ahead.

[Via interpreter] Uh, we have made a great achievement in the toppling of the former regime.

[Via interpreter] And as President Trump said, in a year and a half, we made an achievement in bringing the country together, unifying the country, and put it back on track.

[Via interpreter] Of course, this is due to our strong people, the strong Syrian people that the President Trump talked about.

[Via interpreter] And then the historic decision that President Trump has taken by lifting the sanctions on Syria.

[Via interpreter] As well as the help of friendly countries and the loving countries in the region, Turkey and other countries in our neighborhood.

[Via interpreter] The entire Syrian people thanks President Trump.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Proud of you. Do you have any questions?

Mr. President, are you going to remove Syria from the state sponsor of terrorism list?

I think I will, yeah. I think I will. Why wouldn't I? He's done a great job. Uh, maybe he would have brought that up in a little while. That's a good question. Yeah. Any problems with that?

No.

I think we should. Yeah, I will.

Do you still want Syria to help with Hezbollah in Lebanon?

They could help. We'll find out. I think we're making a lot of progress, but they could help. He would do -- he would do a very good job.

Mr. President, [Inaudible] Netanyahu has been critical of aspects of your relationship the last couple of days with President Erdogan of Turkey. He said that, um, that Erdogan has imperial ambitions on neighboring countries, you know, presumably --

Well, he hasn't been involved with Syria -- you know, if you think, he hasn't been involved with Israel at all. And he's left it alone. I wouldn't say he's a friend, because he's not a friend of, as you know, of Netanyahu, or Bibi. They don't get along, I think. But, you know, for me, he's been great. Look, Turkey has been fantastic and a fantastic ally.

They're also a NATO country. And Israel, we've done -- no president has done as much for Israel as I have, nobody even close. If you look at -- I mean, just look at all the things with Jerusalem, all the different things that we've done, um, the Golan Heights. I did things -- nobody has ever done anything for Israel like me and we've made tremendous progress.

And we're going to -- we've made a lot of progress with Iran, too, wiped out their military, but they should have been done 47 years ago.

If I could, do you think that, uh, that Prime Minister Netanyahu should be reelected this election? Would you like to see --

I can tell you this, he's been a great wartime president. We worked out, prime minister -- he -- so we work with each other very closely and we went through a very big thing. We did a big thing together. And, in my opinion, he's been a great wartime prime minister. I don't know anything about his politics.

I'm not sure. Uh, I would think he should be popular because he did a very good job. We had a -- we had and have a very good relationship, but he was a great wartime prime minister. If you had other prime ministers, you know what, there wouldn't be an Israel right now. You know that, there wouldn't be. It would have been blown to pieces by Iran.

If you had a different -- if you had a weak prime minister, you wouldn't have -- and if you had a different president, I guarantee you there wouldn't be. It wouldn't -- Israel wouldn't exist today if you didn't have me as president.

President Trump, sir?

Danny?

[Inaudible] Energy Information Administration revealed that US crude oil production set a new record in the month of April under your leadership.

That's right.

Why is it important to keep hitting numbers like this at this moment in time? Why is it important that you were able to get this done and keep it on this trajectory?

Yeah. Well, we -- you know, when we decided to do this, it's called the denuclearization of Iran. We have to do it. We have to have it. They're not -- they're never going to have a nuclear weapon and they admit they're never going to have it, but they behave badly, always behave badly. There's something wrong with them.

But when we did this, we thought oil would go much higher and it didn't go very high, and now it's coming way down and you're going to see oil drop very low. Now maybe we'll do some other things that could lift it a little bit, but I don't think it's going to lift it a lot at all. I think oil is coming down.

There's tremendous amounts of oil. Uh, Scott, what would you say about that?

Yeah. So record production under President Trump in his first term, now in his second term, the US is an energy superpower. It's why we weathered the conflict better than anyone else. And they're -- just this weekend, Bloomberg wrote that there is an oil glut out there, and we think that safe, secure American oil, maybe even should trade at a premium to the rest of the world.

So we have -- if you add it up, you take Saudi Arabia and take Russia, two big oil producers, we do more than twice as much. We do more than -- think of it, Saudi Arabia, Russia put together, we do more. And that's not including Venezuela. It's pretty amazing, right? And this all happened during my term.

We started it the first term.

Biden blew it, because he had no idea what he was doing. But we, uh -- we are making -- we are producing more oil right now than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined, by almost double. OK. Any other questions? Yes. Yes, ma'am.

You said that dealing with the Iranians is a waste of time. How do you plan to get the nuclear material and nuclear assurances that you want?

Well, we've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground. Nobody's going to be able to get it except us, because we have the equipment that can get it. But the -- I call it the nuclear dust. The nuclear material is so far down underneath the mountain and now that's been determined that it would take massive machinery that we have that no other country has.

They can't get it.

So you have no plans to go in, boots on the ground?

Why would I go in now? I'd go in when they're completely either eliminated or whatever -- or an agreement is made.

Mr. President?

Yes.

If you cut off trade to Spain, does that mean that you're going to have to renegotiate a trade agreement with the EU?

With who?

With the EU, with the EU [Inaudible]

Um, we're going to see what happens with the EU. You know, they've treated us very badly for years and they took advantage of us. Look, we're very close to those countries, right? And to, uh, everybody in the EU. The problem is they took advantage of the United States for years, just like him. They took advantage of Syria.

He's bringing it back and I'm bringing the United States back. We have the greatest economy we've ever had. We have the biggest investment. $19.2 trillion is being invested right now in the United States. $3 trillion was the number -- the record. Under Biden and under the past administration they had less than a $1 trillion for four years.

We have $19.2 trillion in 12 months. Think of that. We had the largest amount of money being invested in a country in history, pretty amazing. $19.2 trillion, with a T. So, uh -- and they're building factories all over the country. I think, yesterday, Toyota announced they're leaving Mexico and they're coming.

Um, not that Mexico's thrilled about it, but they're leaving Mexico, where they're coming to the United States to build what will be, I believe, the largest automobile plant either in the world or at least in this country.

Mr. President?

Daniel.

[Inaudible] a domestic question. You announced on Truth Social a couple of days ago that Walmart is cutting the price --

Yeah.

-- to 15 percent. How big of a deal is that for American customers this summer?

So Walmart has agreed to cut their prices very substantially, because things are going down. We're getting it down. We inherited very high prices. We inherited the highest prices in the history of our country, for 48 years, to be exact. But I don't believe, but I think it's an issue. So under Biden, they had tremendous inflation.

Under the Dumocrats, we had tremendous inflation, record-setting inflation. And now, inflation is way down, everything is great. We have -- the prices are coming down. But we inherited -- you know, they talk about different -- they use different words to describe it. They had very high prices.

The prices are coming down. And when the oil comes -- you know, the oil is coming way down. The oil dropped by 50 percent in the last month, and when that comes down, it brings everything else down. Its affordability and they came up with a word affordability. You know, like, I take over, I'm there for one day and they say affordability, affordability.

I said, I've been here for -- remember with the eggs, the first day or two days later, I have my first news -- and they talked about eggs. They said, the eggs have gone up five times. I've been in office for one day. And I said, well, we'll have to do something. In fact, they told me not to order eggs for the Easter egg hunt at the White House, I should use plastic.

I said, we're not doing that. And by the time we came, it was a couple of months later, that happened, and we ordered thousands of eggs. And right now, eggs are way down, the prices are way down and they're coming down further. So they made up a phony word that they used, they said affordability. They're the ones that caused the affordability prices, I didn't. But I brought it down and the oil is coming down very big.

Brant crude is up slightly today on the --

A little bit, yeah, because we hit them. Any time we hit them, it goes up a little bit, to $2.

Is that what you mean -- is that what you meant when you said that we might see oil prices lift a little in response to --

A little bit, yeah, $2, very little. It's down from, let's say $135, down to $69. It's dropping and everything else drops when -- as oil goes, so goes everything else. But any time we hit it, we hit Iran, oil goes up a little bit. It's all right. And you know what we're doing, we're de-nuking it, right, we're de-nuking Iran.

They're not going to have a nuclear weapon. All right. One more question.

Sir, do you think Israel should withdraw troops from southern Lebanon?

Well, I talked to Bibi about that. Yeah, I think they're going to. I think they want to. I don't think it's a question of me, I think it's a question, they want to. And they're getting along with Lebanon. They're signing deals with Lebanon, first time ever. Marco, talk about that.

Yeah, we have an agreement that -- and it calls -- that's the goal at the end. Obviously, Israel is concerned about their security but the president did a great job bringing those two countries together for the first time ever.

It's a big thing. First time in many years, right?

Almost ever.

So we have a deal with Israel and Lebanon, and yeah, they'll leave. And I think it's going to work out very well. But we're here for this because Syria has turned around as fast as I've ever seen. Well, actually, I turned the United States around very fast. I inherited from a man who was not smart, not a smart person.

We inherited from the man where they were running this country so badly with the open borders. I think there were 25 million people allowed into our country, and that includes 11,888 murderers, most of whom murdered more than one person, OK, and we got most of them out, or we have them in jail, and we've done a great job.

Washington, DC now is considered one of the safest cities in the country. If he came to Washington, DC a year and a half ago, he'd fear for his life, even though he never fears for his life before, because it was very dangerous. But somehow his territory might have even been a little more dangerous. I joke because, you know, he comes from a rough environment.

Would you say that's right, Tom Barrett? It's sort of funny to think -- I don't think he'd be too concerned with Washington a year and a half, but we had a very, very unsafe Washington, DC, and now it's one of the safest cities in the country. We put the military in, we brought the -- Washington went from being an unsafe to one of the safest cities.

And crime is down 94 percent. We don't play games. And we removed over 5,000 career criminals, many of whom came in through the open borders of Joe Biden. We did the same thing with Memphis, Tennessee. We did the same thing with, uh, in Louisiana. You have to speak to the governor because New Orleans, the crime rate is down 78 percent, 70 -- in a little while, and they had the best Mardi Gras they've ever had.

So we're doing a good job, and he's done a great job, too. And I thank you very much. Thank you very much, everybody.