Press Gaggle: Donald Trump Speaks to Reporters Before Air Force One Departure - November 8, 2026

Mr. President. Mr. President.

Hello, everybody. So we did a lot over the weekend. We had very good talks on Ukraine and Russia. And as you know, we have a meeting tomorrow in Abu Dhabi. It actually started today, but pretty much tomorrow and Tuesday. And we're working very hard to end that Russian and Ukraine nightmare, where so many people get killed.

On the Iran thing, we haven't had anybody killed in seven, six months. It's a different war. So in Russia and Ukraine, they're losing 25,000 mostly soldiers every month. You haven't had one person from the United States, a U.S. soldier, killed for six months, maybe even more than that, having to do with Iran.

Uh, so we are -- and they will never have a nuclear weapon. And they understand that, and they've acknowledged that. Okay. Question.

Mr. President, what made you suggest Dana White, and are you serious about it or are you kidding around?

Well, if you look at -- you saw the assistants I put. I posted the greatest wrestlers and UFC fighters in the world, right? Like Khabib, like Justin, Justin Gaethje, who's phenomenal. And you see a lot of rough faces there. And you would have thought that people would have said, "He's having a good time." I, I will tell you, I, I was only kidding.

But Dana loves the idea and there's only one Dana. He's great. I don't know. He would be -- you wouldn't mess around with him so much. But, uh, so, I was kidding, of course. When you look at the fighters that I put in, that's why I said some don't come from our country. They come from parts unknown. They come from, uh, a lot of areas that are very rough areas.

But, uh, so I was kidding. But I think Dana likes the idea and he is a very capable guy. So he's actually coming tomorrow. Of course, I was kidding. And you could see that because I put all of the great fighters as his assistants that they're all gonna come with him. But, uh, it was, it was just a little fun.

But Dana is actually coming tomorrow, actually on other -- for other reasons. I think he's gonna be in Washington, so he's gonna come over and see me.

Mr. President --

That was an example of something where I was kidding. And then people said, "You know, that's actually a pretty good idea." Yeah, go ahead, please.

Mr. President, Nvidia is investigating Jensen Huang's relationship with the Chinese spy. Have you spoken to Jensen Huang today?

I have not spoken to him about it. I just know he's a fine person, but you never know what is going on. Um, I'm sure -- I hope everything's fine there. He's done such an incredible job. And, uh, so I would certainly hope that -- he's a fine person, in my opinion.

In hindsight, do you wish that you had acted on the intelligence when you were briefed about the spying last year?

No, I don't think so. I think, you know, I think he's an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it. No, you can't do that with people. He was, uh, he's done an amazing job for our country. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. We have the highest stock market.

Now, we did right after the, uh, election. I was not on the ballot. But right after the election, we did lose $3 trillion. The highest number ever, which tells you that the market considers the Democrats to be a disaster. Uh, 401(k)s went down only because of the Democrats, not because of Republicans and me, but the market went down at a level that I guess almost hasn't been seen before, but it's coming back because the next day, we announced unbelievable job and growth numbers.

Should he stay on as CEO of Nvidia?

I think so. Oh, yes.

Mr. President, is he going to go with you on your trip to Asia next week?

I don't know, but I'd certainly take him. I mean, we'd have to find -- I haven't heard he's done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody, but, you know, so does, so does everybody else.

Mr. President, Democrats say they want to impeach RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth. How do you feel about that?

They gotta get back to the country. You know, you saw what happened, uh, last week with the $3 trillion. Three trillion with a T. They gotta get back. These are two very fine people and RFK Jr. was a Democrat until -- and he's had those views and the views on all of the things that he's been doing.

And he's a very popular guy. A lot of people agree. And Pete Hegseth, so he wins two wars. We won in Venezuela. We've taken out hundreds of billions of dollars. We won in 48 minutes. And we won in Iran. We won that in Iran. It's just a question of closing it out now or later. We may wait. The, uh, some of their neighbors would prefer that we just keep it the way it is. And again, we haven't lost anybody.

No soldiers been lost. If you look at Vietnam and if you look at all these others, there were, for many years, there were thousands, tens of thousands of people killed, soldiers. With us, so we've gone two wars. We've lost -- and by the way, one is too many, but we've lost 18 soldiers in two wars, and the one war is seven months.

The other one was 58, 48 minutes. And we made a fortune on Venezuela. We've taken out, again, billions and billions, many times what we paid for the war. And we're getting along great with Venezuela and Venezuela's doing well because all of a sudden they have big activity. But, uh, with Iran, they're never gonna have a nuclear weapon.

They had the JC -- if, if you look at what, you know, the O- -- Obama deal, the Obama nuclear deal, that was a road to a nuclear weapon. It was a, a terrible deal. So I ended that, and then we hit them with the B-2 bombers, and we made it impossible for them to get their nuclear dust. So when you say about Pete Hegseth, I mean, he's guilty of two things, basically winning two wars.

And the second war, we knocked out their nuclear capacity and probably saved Israel and probably saved the Middle East.

I believe we saved the Middle East and Israel combined. And it's awfully hard to say, "Let's impeach somebody who did that," because if you look at Afghanistan, and if you look at Iraq, and if you look at Vietnam and all these wars that we fight, it, it, you know, those people may, if they're gonna do it to Pete Hegseth, what about -- think about it. We had a war in Venezuela, which everyone said don't do. Uh, China was involved.

Every -- China left. We took it over. It's doing great. It's a big victory. It lasted less than hours, 48 minutes. Then we have a war in Iran. We blew up their nuclear dust. They're not gonna have nuclear weapons. And we saved Israel and the Middle East. If they would've had it, there would be no Israel right now.

There would be no Middle East. And what are we gonna do with one of the guys that was most responsible? They wanna impeach him. Uh, fi- -- they have to go back and -- why didn't they impeach Lloyd Austin when he was missing in action for two weeks, right? And, and presided over one of the worst things anyone's ever seen, 13 dead, hundreds killed at the airport, the Afghanistan --

[Crosstalk]

On Israel, what's your reaction to Gadi Eisenkot being tasked with forming a new government?

Well, he's, you know, they're both fighting for that. They're very similar in terms of, uh, their policy and their, their view. And I guess he said very nice things about me. He says he loves Trump. But I don't know. I haven't seen what's happening, but it's certainly a, a contest between him and Bibi Netanyahu.

We'll see what happens. Whoever, they have very similar views. They're both strong on what I do.

Mr. President, do you think that next week you're gonna have a trilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping?

Well, I'm gonna be going to, uh, China. He just left here. And one of the meetings, I think, will be with President Putin and President Xi, and that'll be interesting. We'll talk a lot of things, including denuclearization, but we'll be talking a lot of things. We're trying to end the war in Iran, and we're doing well because, you know, we ju- -- all we have to do, we're choking it off.

We have Operation Iron Gate that just went into effect. That means nothing comes in by land. And as you know, the naval blockade, nothing comes in by water. So we have it very well blocked off. And, uh, they're not paying their soldiers, they're not paying their guard. They, uh, have 301% inflation, uh, they have no money, and they're, they're not doing well.

And at some point, they're gonna be reasonable. Now, I could go in and blow them up right now. The problem with that is you'll never be able to rebuild it. If I blow up the bridges and the power plants, the thing that takes, is the hardest to rebuild are the big bridges. They have very big bridges. They're the big -- the mountainous terrain and they're connected by bridges.

It'll take them years. It would take them 10, 12, 15 years to rebuild. Also, power plants. Second is power plants. The thing that's second hardest is power. To rebuild that, that puts an awfully big burden on the people. I don't like that. Go ahead.

Mr. President, U.S. Central Command is putting out a reward for information about Iran moving their nuclear materials. Do you have information? Is that a concern?

No, it's just -- no. If they are, we wanna know about it, and we'll take them out. But we have not, we have not seen it. You know, through Space Force, which I created in my first term, we're able to read the, the patch, your name right over here. We're able to see anything. We know exactly what's going with Pickaxe Mountain, as an example.

We never hit Pickaxe because there was no activity there, but we could do that in five minutes if we needed to.

[Crosstalk]

Has, has, has JD Vance's comments about Iran questioning some of those decisions, has that impacted your relationship at all?

No, not at all. But a lot of people didn't like his comments, but not me. Um, he was right, other than one thing: He should have wa- -- made one other statement, one statement that I think is very important. "If you had it to do again, would you do it again?" The answer is yes. Uh, I can tell you if I had it to do again, this historically, for history, will go down as one of the best things we ever did because if they ever had a nuclear weapon, they would blow up the world.

You know why? 'Cause they're crazy. Thank you very much, everyone.

[Crosstalk]

Mr. President [Inaudible] wanted to investigate --

-- donors of, of yours, your [Inaudible]

Well, then we'll investigate their donors because their [Laughs] donors did bad things. Okay. Thank you.