Press Conference: Donald Trump Holds a Press Conference at the NATO Summit in Ankara - July 8, 2026

That's a lot of press. Wow. Well, it's important stuff. And, you know, our team out here, well, they've all become stars, superstars actually. But we want to thank you very much we've had a tremendous time and I think a great success and we just concluded a very successful NATO summit here in Turkey, and I want to thank President Erdogan, who's a really a great man.

He's a great leader. He's a friend of mine, been a friend of mine for a long time. He's a strong person, a very strong personality, and that's why he runs such a successful and good company -- country, and really a great, I would say, a great country. Militarily, he's, uh, very powerful. People leave him alone.

But he's really done a fantastic job. And from the moment we got off the plane, you look at -- the airports were beautiful. They built -- they built a new terminal for our arrival. Everything was beautiful. And so I just want to thank President Erdogan, who's done a fantastic job in Turkey. And I also want to thank NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

Mark is an extraordinary person, smart, great leader. It's not easy leading so many leaders like that. Got a lot of leaders and they're strong personalities, every one of them. And Mark -- Mark does an unbelievable job, couldn't find anybody better. I just want to say there was tremendous love in that room.

The press got to see the -- the sitting but they didn't get to see the speaking. And I actually said, it's too bad the press couldn't see this, because every one of them spoke for a little while and I spoke for a little while. And it's a big -- it's a lot of speeches. We kept it short, but it's too bad the press couldn't have seen what we -- what we were doing in that room because it was very smart people.

And they have a lot of good in their heart, not evil, good. And they're doing a great job for their country. The world is doing well. We have -- uh, as you know, the oil is down we'll see whether or not we keep it down. We should keep it down. We're doing things that should have been done 47 years ago with Iran.

And I just want to say that throughout my first term and over the past 18 months, the United States has led a historic effort to dramatically increase the defense spending and to have equipment that no other country in the world has, when you look at Venezuela. When you look at Iran, essentially demolished their military and a couple of weeks.

They had a good military, they had a good navy. They had 159 ships, every one's at the bottom of the sea. They had hundreds of airplanes they were all gone. They were all lying burned up on the runways. They were totally decimated. Their radars, gone. Their -- everything's gone. Their leaders are gone, frankly, and their combat capability is pretty low.

They have a small percentage of missiles left. They have some of the launchers, missile launchers left, call them launching pads. But most of that's been destroyed, too. So we are, uh, we have the strongest military in the world by far not even close. Everybody admits it. Last year, summit in the Netherlands was great also and we achieved an unprecedented agreement to increase the annual defense spending.

And it's the benchmark, raising it from two percent to five percent of GDP, which everybody said was impossible. And now they're all thanking me, and most of the countries have agreed to it. We have a couple of couple of that didn't, but I have a feeling they're going to and pretty quickly. In fact, today they were very positive.

One of them in particular was -- I didn't think a good team player. Today, was a great team player. As all of the leaders understand very well, the United States remains by far the largest contributor to NATO monetarily and maybe otherwise, and the strongest military anywhere in the world and they Respect us as a country again.

They didn't respect us two years ago. They laughed at us. NATO laughed at us. Everybody laughed at us. They don't laugh anymore. There's no more laughing. This year, we invested a record $1 trillion in our armed forces, and we're going to be asking for $1.5 trillion coming up. And we have the money being spent on the best equipment anywhere in the world.

In the working session this morning, we discussed the progress other members are making toward the five percent target, and they're making great progress. Many of these countries are very rich, by the way. We don't have tow feel sorry for them, but it doesn't mean they're properly protected. t's a big difference.

Some have truly answered the call and others are making big changes, and will be answering the call. I think I can say, in all cases, they're going to be answering the call. And we'll be -- we'll be taking in over $1 trillion a year toward defense and that's a tremendous amount of money. It's a big up. They were at two percent.

They were actually a one percent. I got them to two percent. Then I wanted to get them to five and we got up to five the last time. And they're -- you know, just again, if you could have seen the respect and the love in the room and it's love really for the country, for our country. I don't want to say me because you'll say, oh, he's so conceited, he's such a conceited person, but they do. I mean, you know, they -- they like the job I'm doing.

They said, we love -- sir, we love you. These are grown people saying that. Isn't it nice? Maybe -- I don't know, maybe they're trying to get to me. And, in a 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 that five percent number. That's the number it should have been for years. As a result of the commitment we achieved last year, defense spending of other NATO members surged by more than almost $150 billion in 2025, and much of that money is being spent on American made equipment.

They all want American made equipment. We're, uh, pushing very hard to have the defense companies, and 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 , it's -- 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, uh, every one of the companies, all of the companies, Raytheon, as an example, Boeing, so many of those great companies are now building plants. They had big plants, but they were using them 24/7. 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 go --they were doing literally 24 hours to get the Tomahawks done and the 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 that 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, will 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, you know, just waiting. They're waiting. They want to get this defensive equipment, maybe in particular the defensive equipment, but offensive and defensive, 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. 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, $19.2 trillion.

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 1 trillion invested for four years. We have $19.2 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 a $19.2 trillion, not billion, not million -- trillion with a T invested in plants and equipment that's being built all over the country.

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 a 25 percent tariff. If you build in Japan or if you build in any place -- now China has a much higher tariff, this is a 100 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 you 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 100 percent, 200 percent, even 250 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 -- put it to you in a more broad fashion. There has never been anything like has happened with this country or any other country in the history of the world. There has never been growth, there has never been manufacturing plants being built -- we have so many being built.

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 -- 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 about 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 for --. 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 never heard of numbers like that, but number one. And all these entertainers, they're number 27, 29. 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 a social -- no, 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. As European nations rebuild their militaries, American equipment will be the largest beneficiary. Yhe 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, it's incredible.

Lockheed is building, I think, five. Some of them are building three, four or five and they're big ones. It's going to quadruple the output we have with the munitions and the basic equipment itself, whether it's a Patriot or a 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 $3 billion 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 been 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 Anduril 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 25 percent tariff depending, 35 percent sometimes, sometimes 100 percent, 200 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 we are -- 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. 77 out of 77 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.

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, had 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 their 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 wish 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. The really 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, Turkey, and President -- 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 -- his was just something -- he just -- he's a unifier. He's a tremendous unifier. 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. I don't think we should take -- wait. So 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. Sir, yes. Yes. No, no, no, the gentleman right here. The very tall gentleman who's very insecure.

He doesn't want to ask the question. He's a handsome guy, but he's very insecure. Go ahead. Do you want to shout it out? Give him a mic.

I'll shout it out.

How about giving him a -- shout it out.

Mr. President, your operation in Venezuela has been lauded as 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?

So I think we're doing just the opposite. The Iran war has been a tremendous military success. And, you know, 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. 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. 159 ships are gone. They're at the bottom of the sea. Their radar is gone. Everything's 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 350 percent inflation. When the war started, they had like six percent, five percent. They have 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 -- of a very -- uh, a person who was killed, a lot of people, Khomeini, killed a lot of people over the years and there for a long time.

Don't forget, what we did should have been done 47 years ago. It could have been done any time within 40 -- this has gone on for -- they were the bully of the Middle East. So they are 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 47 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 thousands -- hundreds of thousands of people. They killed 52,000 protesters over the last three months.

So when you say we're not doing well, I think we're doing phenomenally well. We -- our military has been incredible. Plus, we had a blockade. Did we have a blockade? Did you ever see a blockade work that way? 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 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 we -- 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 border czar, remember, she was the border czar, 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 -- 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 12 months, zero. We had millions of people come in under -- 25 million people, I think more than that, under Biden.

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.

But they had the worst murderers. They had the -- 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. Yeah, please. Go ahead, go ahead. No. Yes, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. President. Iris Tao --

Who are you with? Why don't you say your name and who you're with? It's always helpful.

Thank you, Mr. President, for doing this. Iris Tao with NTD. We're its sister media, with The Epoch Times.

OK.

On communism, you've been issuing a wake-up call to Americans at home about the dangers of communism.

Yeah.

And 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?

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 -- 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 12 months. You've got a 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, you know, it's funny, one of the reasons I do well so well with Hispanic people, I set a record, Republicans, I get great numbers for the election, helped 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, uh, it's been amazing.

And when I watch what's happening -- and I see these lowlifes getting -- I mean, they're lowlifes. I watch them. I know good people; I know quality people. These are essentially low lifes. And when I see what they're talking -- I think they're very dangerous in many ways and I've said it -- and then I said, boy, that's a pretty big statement then I realized, you know, 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 I, World War II. If you talk about September 11th, if you talk about Pearl Harbor, that was big danger. I think this is -- 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 -- you die a horrible death. You die in squalor, and it gets very evil and very nasty. Yeah, please. Go ahead.

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? And do you think --

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 -- 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. Let's just finish the job. Yeah, please. Go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. President. Steve Sedgwick from CNBC. The oil markets are up today around about seven percent for WTI and Brant 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 full conflict?

Well, 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 boats out of the strait and it's going to drop.

And I 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've got to -- 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 those beautiful B-2s at 1:00 in the morning 10 months ago blew up. They blew it up. We have cameras, that's called Space Force, 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 we have that, 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, and you can't do that. So, the big thing we have is -- 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.

Yeah, please.

Steven 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 --

Well, I speak about it a lot because, you know, the life of a president is very dangerous, it's 5.2 percent. You know what a race car driver is, one-tenth of 1 percent. A bull rider, that looks pretty dangerous to me, it's one-tenth of 1 percent. No, it's -- 5.2 percent is 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 mention 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. Go ahead.

Shawn McCreesh, New York Times. But why aren't you flying the new plane home?

Say what?

Why aren't you flying on the new Air Force One home?

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.

Yeah, please. Go ahead. Do you want to go? OK, go ahead.

Mr. President, Haj Media, [Inaudible] Turkey. Mr. President, it seems that the war with Iran may start again. What do you expect from your European allies?

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 10 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 him tonight?

I said we might, yeah, we might. But when they hit, we hit, you know. It's what -- 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 will only -- and will 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 -- we're not looking -- we're not looking for long term. OK, go ahead, red.

Mr. President, you said today -- Inez La Cuetara with MS NOW, you said today that countries --

You're with who?

MS NOW.

MS NOW, 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, let's go. Wait 'til you hear this question.

You said today that countries like Spain, Italy and the UK were not there for the US in its war with Iran. Should those countries be attacked, will the US be there for them?

Well, I'll tell you what, number one, Spain has been very bad. But you know, Italy's 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 the help. But if we would have wanted their help -- I said, by the way, if I want help -- sir, we'd rather remain on the sidelines.

And I didn't like that answer. UK gave an answer that was sort of weirder than that. They went out -- 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, and it was a very fair question, too. Yeah, green, green. Yeah, you're wearing green, right?

Thank you, Mr. President. Adal Tru from Haber Global TV, Turkey. Mr. 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?

Well, I had a great relationship in my first term. You remember Pastor Brunson, and he was put in jail for 35 years, and I called. He was an evangelical hero, actually, a 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 any for anybody, I just tell them 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 a good man, he's highly respected in 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 5th 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 again, he stayed out of -- he's not a huge fan of Bibi 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. You know, it's a very big country; it's a very powerful -- militarily it's a very -- 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 we -- 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 50 percent of their oil from Hormuz Strait; they never came into the war.

They never said, I'm going to send a ship and five destroyers along each side of the ship, they never did. No, he was -- he's been -- President Xi's 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, he was a disaster. They lost respect for our country, but now they have more respect for our country than they've ever had before. Thank you all very much. We'll see you back. Thank you very much, everybody.