Good morning, Mr. President.
I hope you had a good time this weekend. We had a lot of very interesting things happen. I think we're making a lot of progress on Ukraine and Russia. There's always conflict but I think we're making a lot of progress getting it stopped. We just want to see thousands of soldiers a week stop dying because they're dying at numbers that we probably haven't seen since the Second World War for no reason whatsoever, it's a shame, it's a shame.
So I think we are making progress step-by-step. There's tremendous hatred between the leaders, if you call the whole situation leaders, but I think we'll get that done. And the Middle East, a lot of things are happening with respect to Iran. We'll see if we can get something done and, if not, it's going to be a bad situation, very, very bad.
On all the oil sanctions that you mentioned today, when will they start?
So we have a couple. We have the secondary tariffs on Iran. We'll probably give it a couple of weeks and if we don't see any progress we're going to put them on. We're not putting them on right now but, if you remember, I did that six years ago and it worked very well, to put it mildly. If the election weren't rigged, you would have a situation where there would be no problem with Iran today, but it was.
Biden didn't know what he was doing, obviously, and we have a very rough situation in the Middle East because of that. You ended up with October 7th, and you would have never had October 7th, and you would have never had Russia going into Ukraine, likewise. We're going to make a decision on secondary tariffs on Iran based on whether or not they're going to make a deal.
If they're going to make a deal, then we're never going to put secondary tariffs on, we're going to hope they have a great, long and successful life as a country, but we'll see what happens. Very interesting. I can't imagine them doing anything else but making a deal. I would prefer a deal to the other alternative, which I think everybody in this plane knows what that is. That's not going to be pretty and I do not prefer that.
Mr. President, on the tariffs, you said at one point that the tariffs Tuesday would be more conservative than what people might think. There's reports that you are maybe now looking to make the tariffs higher. Are you weighing higher tariffs?
No. The tariffs will be far more generous than those countries were to us, meaning they will be kinder than those countries were to the United States of America over the decades. They ripped us off like no country's ever been ripped off in history and we're going to be much nicer than they were to us, but it's substantial money for the country, nevertheless.
On the tariffs that you're planning, so you're expecting to hit something like 10 to 15 countries, is that right?
No, no.
All of the countries across the board?
Who told you 10 or 15 countries?
Well, we heard that so we heard that you were going to aim for the 15%.
But you didn't hear it from me.
Okay, so how many countries will be in that initial tranche?
You'd start with all countries so let's see what happens. There are many countries in the world. I haven't heard a rumor about 15 countries, 10 or 15 countries.
So you're starting with all countries?
Well, essentially all of the countries that we're talking about, would be talking about all countries, that's not a cutoff. And if you look at the history and you look at what's happened to us, you go to certain places, go to Asia, and you take a look at every single country in Asia, what they've done to the United States in trade and, by the way, in military in a certain way.
But take a look at trade with Asia, and I wouldn't say anybody has treated us fairly or nicely but we are going to treat them, we're going to be much more generous to them in terms of heart but it'd be much more generous than they were to us.
You said you were not joking about a third term, about possibly wanting a third term. Does that mean you're not planning to leave office on January 20th?
I'm not looking at that but, I'll tell you, I have had more people ask me to have a third term, which is in a way it's a fourth term because the other election, the 2020 election was totally rigged so it's actually sort of a fourth term in a certain way. I just don't want the credit for the second because Biden was so bad, he did such a bad job.
I think that's one of the reasons that I'm popular, if you want to know the truth. I think I'm popular because we've done a great job. I think we've had the best almost hundred days of any president, and most people are saying that, and it's an honor. We're bringing back our country, we're respected as a country again, and we're strongly respected, and people are amazed.
I was with some very important people today and they said that they've never seen a turnaround of a country as fast as this. Even look at our border, we have nobody coming in, and you can come into our country but you have to come in legally. But we have nobody coming into our country, it's almost shut down.
They've never seen anything like it.
The Constitution limits a president to two terms. Is it your understanding that they have to be?
Well, I even didn't want to talk about it. I'm just telling you, I have had more people say please run again. They said, we have a long way to go before we even think about that but I've had a lot of people. Yeah, go ahead, did you have something?
Yeah, I just wanted to ask, do you think that's an appropriate precedent to set, even if it wasn't you in this position to see a president serve a third term?
I don't want to talk about a third term now because no matter how you look at it you've got a long time to go. We have a long time. We have almost four years to go, and that's a long time but, despite that, so many people are saying you've got to run again. They love the job we're doing. Most importantly, they love the job we're doing.
But you said you were upset with Putin. Would you say your relationship with Vladimir Putin is at its lowest point right now?
No, I don't think so. I don't think he's going to go back on his word. You're talking about Putin. I don't think he's going to go back on his word. I've known him for a long time. We've always gotten along well despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It's a hoax created by Clinton and Schiff and all of these lunatics, and that really was a dangerous point.
That was a very dangerous thing they did to this country. It was a pure, unadulterated scam, hoax. But no, I think he'll be okay but if he isn't --- I was disappointed in a certain way, some of the things that were said over the last day or two having to do with Zelenskyy because when he considers Zelenskyy not credible he's supposed to be making a deal with him, whether you like him or you don't like him, so I wasn't happy with that but I think he's going to be good.
I certainly wouldn't want to put secondary tariffs on Russia but, if they were put on, it would not be very good for them. We put secondary tariffs on, as you know, in Venezuela, and it's had a very strong impact on Venezuela. You know that every ship just got out and they left. A lot of them left, they dropped the hoses right into the ocean and they left.
They didn't want to be there for a minute because they didn't want those tariffs to catch on or they didn't want me to see them there. The Venezuela secondary tariffs, all secondary tariffs are very strong because essentially it says if you disobey our orders you cannot do business in the United States of America, and that's the cash cow.
Will that apply to Chinese companies buying Russian oil as well, if you plan to go ahead with those?
In the case of Venezuela, as you know, China pulled up anchor and left. They were there, they had two ships there and they left empty, they didn't want to take a chance. No, we're not playing games. Okay, any other questions?
Sir, will you verify, are you planning to leave office January 20th, 2029 or are you saying you might not?
Go ahead, any other questions?
On TikTok, the deadline's coming up.
We're working on TikTok, we have a lot of potential buyers. There's tremendous interest in TikTok. The decision is going to be my decision, as you know, through Congress. They've given me the power to make the decision. We have a great team of people essentially taking bids. We have a lot of people that want to buy TikTok.
We're dealing with China also on it because they may have something to do with it and we'll see how that goes, but I'd like to see TikTok remain alive. I mean, I'll be honest. Selfishly speaking, I won the young vote by 36 points. Republicans generally don't do very well with the young vote and I think a lot of it could have been TikTok, it could have been Joe Rogan, and it could have been a lot of things, but it was also TikTok.
TikTok is, it's very interesting, a lot of people want to buy it.
If no deal, will you extend the deadline?
Well, there'll be a deal with TikTok, I'm pretty sure. We would, we would.
Mr. President, a deadline for Russian President, Vladimir Putin. Is there a deadline for Russian President, Vladimir Putin, to agree to a ceasefire?
It's a psychological deadline. If I think they're tapping us along I will not be happy about it.
Do you think they are right now?
I don't know. I don't know. I don't think so, I think he wants to make a deal and I think Zelenskyy, by the way, I see he's trying to back out of the rare earth deal. If he does that, he's got some problems, big, big problems. We made a deal on rare earth and now he's saying, "Well, you know, I want to renegotiate the deal." He wants to be a member of NATO.
Well, he was never going to be a member of NATO, he understands that, so if he's looking to renegotiate the deal he's got big problems. Go ahead.
Mr. President, have you had any more outreach from the automakers and are you reconsidering that at all?
No, no. The automakers are going to make a lot of money, the American automakers, or international automakers, if you're talking about they're going to build in the United States. The people that are going to make money are people that manufacture cars in the United States. Outside of the United States, that's going to be up to them, I don't care too much about that.
But you have a lot of companies coming into the country to manufacture cars. As you know, the Autoworkers Union, I did great, I won Michigan by a lot. But the Autoworkers Union, they were fantastic to me but now they're really fantastic. Even Sean Fain, who I don't know, but he obviously wasn't a supporter of mine, he's a Democrat.
He said wonderful things about Donald Trump. He said, "I can't believe this is finally happening." The people that manufacture automobiles in the United States are going to make money the likes of which they've never seen before. But beyond that, we have the computer companies, the chip companies, the pharmaceutical companies.
We have lumber, we have everything, steel. They're all going to do really well as long as they do their product in the United States. Thank you very much, everyone.
On this question about stagflation now, is that something that you're worried about, given the impact of your efforts to readjust the economy?
I haven't heard that term in years, I don't know anything about it. This country is going to be more successful than it ever was, it's going to boom. We're going to have boom town USA, we're going to boom at many industries and we're going to bring manufacturing and we're going to bring product. For instance, we need pharmaceuticals in a company.
We don't want to be buying our pharmaceuticals from other countries because we're in a war, we're a problem. We want to be able to make our own. We have our own lumber, we have our own energy. We don't need energy from Canada. We don't need lumber from Canada. We don't need anything from Canada. We don't need cars from Canada, as an example.
I think we're going to have, I call it the Golden Age of America, I believe this will be the Golden Age of America. Thank you very much, everybody.
Have you decided on your first foreign trip?