Remarks: Doanld Trump Announces Renaming Defense to Department of War - September 5, 2025

How are you? Well, thank you very much. We'll start by signing three very important bills. And Will, would you discuss them please?

Yes, sir, this is H.R. 2808. This is the Home Buyers Privacy Protection Act. The Congressman here was the lead sponsor, so I think maybe he --

John Rose, yes.

-- can say more about it than I can.

John, please.

Well, it's difficult for Americans to buy a home, particularly after the last four years, sir, but with the president's signature today, we're going to make it easy for people to buy a home without getting hassled. For years, their private personal information has been bought and sold in the open market, resulting in them getting innumerable phone calls and text messages.

But with your signature today, we're going to put an end to that so that when Americans try to realize the American dream of owning a home, they're able to do so without being harassed.

Good job. Good. It's a great honor, John. OK. OK. There it is and that's going to help a lot of the homeowners of our great country. John, want to hold that?

Sure.

Thank you, John, very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. OK. Will, you go ahead.

And I want to leave you with this gift from a constituent back in Tennessee.

Oh. Oh, I could use that at night.

It's an American flag.

That's very nice. I like that.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you very much. That's very nice.

Next, we have a number of executive orders for your attention, sir.

OK.

From 1789 until 1947, our nation won some of its greatest military victories. Under the direction of a Secretary of War operating within a Department of War. Today with this executive order, you will authorize the current Secretary of Defense and the current Department of Defense to once again embrace this great lineage and once again be named the Secretary of War and the Department of War.

So this is something we thought long and hard about. We've been talking about it for months, Pete and I and Dan. Dan came into the fold. By the way, a great general. He headed up the -- I wouldn't call it an attack, I'd almost call that one maybe even more than an attack, what he did with Iran. You saw the success of that operation.

It was perfect. In fact we have -- this was sent to me by the great company that makes that particular B-2 bomber and it was flawless. It was actually flawless. They flew for 37 hours back and forth and there wasn't a bolt that was out of condition. There wasn't an engine failure, there was no problem. It was a perfect attack, and it knocked out any possible nuclear capability for Iran, which nobody wanted to see and we weren't going to put up with.

So great job, Dan. And we've been talking about this Department of War. So we won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between and then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense. So we're going Department of War. And I'd like to ask our Secretary of War to say a few words, Pete Hegseth.

I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now. We have the strongest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world. We have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far. There's nobody to even compete and you see that with this and so many other things.

The Patriots are the best, every element of the military. We make the best by far. So Pete, I'd like to ask you and maybe Dan, Dan Razin Caine to say a few words. Please.

Mr. President, thank you. After winning a war for independence in 1789, George Washington established the War Department and Henry Knox was his first Secretary of War. And this country won every major war after that to include World War I and World War II. Total victory, Mr. President, as you've said. Then 150 years after that we changed the name after World War II from the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947. And as you pointed out, Mr. President, we haven't won a major war since.

And that's not to disparage our war fighters, whether it's the Korean War or the Vietnam War or our generation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That's to recognize that this name change is not just about renaming. It's about restoring. Words matter. It's restoring as you've guided us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory and clarity as an end state, restoring intentionality to the use of force.

So at your direction, Mr. President, the War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It's going to fight to win, not, not to lose. We're going to go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.

So this War Department, Mr. President, just like America is back. Thank you for your leadership and your clarity. We're going to set the tone for this country, America first, peace through strength, brought to you by the War Department. We're back.

All right. Thank you very much, very well-stated and really, it has to do with winning. We should have won every war we could have won every war. But we really chose to be a very politically correct, or wokie, and we just fight forever. And then we'd, you know, win or lose -- we wouldn't lose, really. We just fight to sort of tie.

We never wanted to win -- wars that every one of them we would have won easily with just a couple of little changes or a couple of little edicts. You know, I was told that ISIS would take five years to win and Dan Caine, when I told him how long would it take, he said, I think about four weeks, sir. I said, what do you mean four weeks?

I was told five years by the people in Washington. You know who they were, five years. I said, you can't do it in four weeks. I actually flew to Iraq to meet with him and I met him at a big air base. And remember that famous day, right? It turned out to be a famous day for our country because you're now the joint -- head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the biggest deal.

And he is because he did things that everybody said he couldn't do. So they said it was going to be five years and he knocked them out in about four weeks total, 100 percent. We took over and ISIS was gone and pretty amazing, but we never fought to win and now we -- if we have to fight at all -- you know, we solved seven wars.

We have the one that I thought was going to be probably one of the easier ones and that's with President Putin and Ukraine and that turned out to be one that's a little bit more difficult. But the seven are done and they were supposed to be much more difficult to solve. I solved every one of them and we're going to get the other one done too.

But it turned out to be a little bit more difficult than I thought and it'll get done or there'll be hell to pay, but -- because they're losing 6,000 to 7,000 -- it used to be 5,000. I used to tell you 5,000, now it's almost 7,000, I guess 7,000 people last week, 7,813 people, young soldiers died, Russian and Ukrainian, not American soldiers.

But it's a shame, and it's just, you know, the human lives and I want to see it stop. But General Caine has done a fantastic job. And again, defeated ISIS, which they said would take a long time and it didn't take a long time at all. And did other things that people said really couldn't happen. We have the greatest equipment in the world.

We have the greatest soldiers in the world. Uh, Dan say a few words, please.

Yes, sir. Thank thank you, Mr. President. It's -- it's a true honor for me today to represent the incredible men and women of America's joint force today and every day the 2.8 million service men and women stand ready to fulfill our sacred duty to protect America at home and abroad. As the president said, America's military is the single most powerful fighting force in the world.

The mission you and the secretary have given us is clear and unambiguous to deliver peace through overwhelming strength. And I remind everyone that the US military can reach any adversary at the time and place of our choosing. Service to this nation is an incredible gift and we're grateful and honored every day to do so. Thank you, Mr. President.

Well, thank you and it's an honor to sign this and we will do that right now. I think that's a big one. I'll be honest. I think that's a big one.

That's a big one, Mr. President.

Do you have any questions on this subject? We're going to be discussing the G20 in a couple of minutes. But yes, please. Mr. President, what gave you the idea for this rebrand? And a question for you, the newly minted secretary of War, what message does this send to our enemies, to our allies, to the American people?

And again what gave you the idea for this rebrand at this moment in history, sir?

I think it sends a message of victory. I think it sends a message really a message of strength. We're very strong. We're much stronger than anyone would really understand. And again, you know, having -- having the great equipment, we have just so much better, you look at all of the uh, just any of it submarines as an example.

We're 20 years ahead of anyone else, nobody even compares and I let a lot of this happen in my first term. You know we totally rebuilt our military and then of course you had that catastrophe in Afghanistan where they gave up a lot of the equipment. But a relatively small amount, but a lot. It was a lot in Afghanistan.

I think it was the most -- General, I'd say it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country the way that happened, the way they went to the wrong airport. They should have gone to Bagram, not the local airport with no security with tight quarters, etc. You know what happened. I think it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.

Frankly that was under the Biden administration. It was terrible and we were going to be leaving, but we were leaving with strength and dignity. We were going to keep Bagram because Bagram is one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. We're going to have that all to ourselves. A big, beautiful place built many years ago for money that today would be the equivalent of, you know, many, many billions of dollars.

You couldn't build it. The longest runways, the most powerful runways in terms of load capacity. And we just walked away from it. So stupid. And there were fools, the people were fools. No, we're, uh, we have the strongest military. And I think that indicates we have the strongest military and, you know, we had it and we won World War I. We won World War II. We won everything before and as I said, we won everything in between and we were very strong, but we never fought to win.

We just didn't fight to win. Uh, we didn't lose anything, but we didn't fight to win. We could have won every one of those wars quickly, but they went a route that I think was probably, uh, politically correct, but not correct for our nation. So I think the Department of War sends a signal. Yeah, please.

You alluded to this a little while ago, but you said that this rename is a quote, "a good reflection of where the world is at right now." How do you square naming it the Department of War when you've been pursuing peace in so many different parts of the world?

Well, I think I've gotten peace because of the fact that we're strong. If we weren't strong those seven deals I told you about, the seven wars, a majority of them wouldn't have happened. They happened for two reasons, trade and our strength. Those are the two reasons and probably strength may be more important than trade.

So if we -- I was very proud of all those wars, those wars that could not be settled and I settled all of them and we'll get the other one settled also. That'll get settled. But without the strength we wouldn't have settled any of them. Yeah, please.

Is your -- is it your expectation that Congress will codify this name change in the law?

I don't know, but we're going to find out, but I'm not sure they have to -- we're signing an executive order today, uh, but we're going to find out -- we're going to see if they do, we're going with it and we're going with it very strongly. There's a question as to whether or not they have to, but we'll put it before Congress.

Do you know how much this rebrand will actually cost and are there any concerns about, you know, the Pentagon's mission actually cutting back on spending?

Yeah, yeah. But not a lot. You know, we know how to rebrand without having to go crazy. We don't have to carve a mountain or anything. We're going to be doing it not in the most expensive. We're going to start changing the stationery as it comes due and lots of things like that. We're not going to be doing things like have been done in the past.

When they change the name of forts, that shouldn't have been changed. Those names of the forts should not have been changed, at least for the most part, uh. And as you know, many of them have been changed back already at the request of the communities. Every one of those communities said we want our name back like Fort Bragg as an example.

The people in that community wanted that name back, they refused to call it anything else, but Fort Bragg. So we're not going to be spending very much money on that. Yes, please.

When you spoke with the Europeans and Zelenskyy earlier this week, did you preview this for them and did you say what security guarantees they might be involved?

No, no, no. This is nothing to do with anybody, but the United States of America, the people of America, this is who I talk to about changing a name. This is a very important change because it's a -- it's an attitude and we know how to win. We've been winning and we're going to win like you've never seen.

Wait'll you see these factories start to open up that are being built all over the country. You're going to see things happen in this country that nobody expects. We have over $17 trillion in investment coming into the country. We never did anything even remotely close to that. We've never -- no other country has either, by the way.

Uh, so you're going to see things that are pretty amazing. But uh, it's really about winning.

And what about the security guarantees aspect of that with Ukraine, sir?

Well, we'll work that out well. We'll help them. Look, we want to save a lot of lives. So we'll do something with that. I think people expect that we'll help them. We'll -- Europe will be first in by far and they want to be first and they want -- they want to see it end. Europe wants to see it end and it'll end.

It'll end all of a sudden it's going to come together. You watch. Yeah, did you want something? Right there. Yeah, behind you please. Yes.

Yes, sir. You haven't been shy about taking bold, decisive offensive action to protect American values. Strikes in Iran, strikes this past Tuesday on the positively ID Tren de Agua narco terrorists. Is that going to be a critical function of the Department of War?

It depends on the individual instance. You know, we don't want drugs coming in from Venezuela or anybody else or any place else and we'll be tough on that and we don't want, uh, human trafficking. We don't want to see people coming in where they open their prisons from all over the world and they dump their prisoners into our country, which is what they did in the Biden administration, where they took Insane asylums and, uh, places of -- that held people that were seriously mentally ill, mentally incompetent, mentally dangerous and they dumped those people into our country and we're trying to get them out now.

Uh, what they've done -- what the Democrats and Biden have done to this country will go down in infamy what they have done to our country and especially that you know, they created The worst inflation we've ever had, that's nothing compared to what they did with the people in our country right now. And we're getting them out and it's not easy when you have the liberal judges destroying our country.

But, uh, we've won them all. We've won it all, ultimately won it all, hard process. It should be easy. And we know who it is. We know exactly who we're looking for. We had 11,000 murderers dropped into our country. We've gotten a lot of them out, uh, or in some cases, they're so dangerous. We're afraid to get them out because they'd come back in. But for the last 120 days, zero people came in. Can you imagine?

This is me speaking, but these are, uh, figures developed by, they say a pretty liberal group of people. They admit that zero people came into our country. Think of that. Uh, a year ago, it was millions of people were coming in millions. They were coming in. Uh, you could look at them and you could say big trouble.

And that's what we have in our country. But we're getting them out. And despite that, we're doing really well. Yeah, please.

Comment on the recruitment levels [Inaudible]

Yeah, well, the recruitment is the most exciting thing. So, uh, when I was campaigning for the office numbers were coming out that the recruitment numbers -- General, you could speak to it better than anybody. The recruitment into the military, all branches of the military and police and firemen and everything else.

Anything having to do with like a public service, the numbers were horrible, record-setting bad and now they're record-setting good. We're setting every record every month for recruitment. We're packed in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, my beautiful air -- I love Space Command. I love space -- I see Space Command, but Space Force has been -- we've got a waiting list of people wanting to go in. A year ago, especially a year and a half ago -- you know, when I took the lead in the polls, which was very early, it really helped with the recruiting.

And when I went from November 5th on, it's been amazing. And over the last four or five months, it's been -- we're just packed. It was very hard to get police officers. Now, the departments are loaded up. Everyone wants to be a policeman or woman. So it's been a great thing. General, do you want to talk about that?

Sir, as you've said, serving our nation is an incredible gift that we give and the reward on that gift pays back exponentially year over year. And I think the young people of America are seeing the importance of service and whether it's in any of our armed services or in local police, fire and rescue. Service is an important thing that I personally encourage and I know everyone else in government service sees that same reward.

And Pete, on recruitment, what do you think?

I was down at Fort Benning, the newly properly renamed Fort Benning yesterday, watching Army basic training and they're so full, they can't barely handle the throughput. It is truly historic across all the services, as you said. It's been a surge into the -- I was going to say the Defense Department, but I will say the War Department.

And that you might almost call it a vibe shift, an attitude shift, a feeling that the country is back, that service is back. And there were military families last year, Mr. President, that said, I don't know if I can recommend -- I mean, I wrote a book on this. I don't know if I can recommend service to my son or daughter given what's been done to our military.

You heard it over and over and over again and I hear from those same military families right now, sir, and they're saying, I recommend to my kids that they go into this department, this Pentagon under this commander in chief who they know you'll have their back and they want to serve. So it is historic and it's the biggest reflection of how motivated Americans are by your leadership, sir.

You know, it really, it's nothing more than spirit, love for the country, I guess the esprit de corps, as they say, you have more of that than we've had maybe ever, frankly. But to see a turn over a period of less than a year, I would say, but to see a turn, nobody wanted to go into the military, now everybody wants to go into the military.

Jennifer, you want to --

Yeah. There's some new reporting on North Korea and this Navy Seal incident in 2019. Can you say if the administration is engaged with North Korea on that incident since it happened recently?

Yeah.

And then could you share some --

I don't know anything about it. No. I'd have to -- I could look, but I know nothing about it.

Can you confirm that it happened?

I don't know anything about it. I'm hearing it now for the first time.

OK. Great. And then on the Hyundai, it's been in Georgia with the arrest of some workers construction workers at the plant. Have you heard any feedback from Hyundai?

I just heard about that a little while before the news conference and I would say that they were illegal aliens and ICE was just doing his job, but I know nothing about the instance. It happened a little while ago. OK?

There has been some pushback on that though from South Korea already. And of course, you know, they pledged to invest 150 billion in the US And they were just here last week. Are you concerned at all --

Well, they have the right to sell cars and things in our country. You know it's not like a one-sided deal.

Are you concerned at all about, you know, your immigration agenda, potentially clashing with these economic goals?

Well, we want to get along with other countries and we want to have a great, stable workforce. And we had, as I understand it, a lot of illegal aliens, some not the best of people, but we had a lot of illegal aliens working there. So you know, look, they're doing their job. That's what they have to do. These are people that came through with Biden.

They came through illegally, they came into our country, so we have to do our job.

Mr. President, the now Department of War has been involved in the crime cleanup in D.C. You've tasked Congress with proposing and passing a crime bill. What are some things that you would really like to see codified in that crime bill?

Well, I think one of the things is the cashless bail is killing it. When that came out -- originally, when that came out the first time, that's when you saw the real big crime start to happen. Cashless bail, what a disaster that is. You murder somebody, you don't have to put up bail and you go out in the street, you murder somebody else.

That's what's happened. It happened so often. And that's one of the things and other of the things you're reading about. You know, is this standard, but just a certain toughness. I have to say one of the elements of fascination for people over the last period of time has been what's happened to D.C. So we've gone from one of the most dangerous cities in our country to a -- what they call a safe city.

It's a totally safe city. In fact, I set up dinner in Washington, D.C. next week. I wouldn't have done that. To be honest, I would have had an obligation not to do it before I came into office or even at the very beginning when things were so corrupt and so dangerous out on the streets. So Washington, D.C. has had virtually no crime.

We even have a mayor that's admitting to it and she's a, you know, liberal Democrat, in all fairness. She's a person that hasn't gotten exactly along with Republicans over the years. And she said she's never seen anything like it. So Washington D.C. is a totally safe city. We have virtually no crime. It's gone from the most unsafe city in the United States, almost, just about, to one of the safest cities, maybe the safest city in the United States.

That's a tremendous complement to our military, what we did. The National Guard has done a fantastic job. Yeah, please.

Mr. President, can I ask about Florida real quick. The Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez was at the white House yesterday as part of a leadership summit.

Yes.

I understand you met with him separately. Mr. President, what did you to talk about? And also did you explore him running for Florida attorney general?

I didn't. We didn't talk about that, but he's done a fantastic job. He's respected all over the country, really. He's a leader and he has done a just a fantastic job. We didn't discuss anything having to do with his future. I'm sure he'd be very good at that.

My second question, Alligator Alcatraz, sticking with Florida, a major ruling appeals court blocked a federal judge's order to close it and it could remain open for now. Your reaction?

I think they've done a fantastic job in building it, the governor and everybody else that's been involved. It's an incredible facility. It's housing people for, usually a very short period of time before they get brought back to their countries. As you know, we focus on criminals before we focus on anybody else, and we're taking thousands and thousands of criminals out every month out of our country, some of them murderers.

And I think Florida has done a great job by building it and whether it's Alligator Alcatraz or anything else you want to call it. I was there. I visited with the governor, with other people. I guess Nikki was there. Tom Homan's been there a lot. A lot of people have been there from -- it's an amazing facility for what it is. It's not a hotel.

It's not supposed to be a hotel, but they've done a great job with it and I'm very happy with the judge's decision.

You also mentioned Venezuela. I want to ask one more follow up question on that. On the US strike [Inaudible] the Venezuelan drug cartel, the Maduro regime is pushing back today. In fact, they say the US seeks regime change through military threat. Your reaction to those words and also, would you like to see regime change in Venezuela?

Well, we're not talking about that, but we are talking about the fact that you had an election, which was a very strange election to put it mildly. I'm being very nice when I say that. I can only say that billions of dollars of drugs are pouring into our country from Venezuela. The prisons of Venezuela have been opened up to our country.

They've taken their prisoners the worst prisoners, murderers, Tren de Aragua, the worst prisoners that you can ever imagine are now happily living in the United States of America. Now, many of them we've gotten out. It's not easy to get them out because of the liberal system that we're working with in many cases, not in all cases.

But millions and millions of dollars and billions of dollars of drugs are pouring out of Venezuela and other countries. Look, China, what they're doing with fentanyl is a terrible thing. It comes through Canada and it comes through Mexico, but a lot of it's coming through Venezuela. Venezuela has been a very bad actor and we understand that.

And when you look at that boat, you look at the -- you see the bags of whatever it is. Those bags were -- you know what those bags represent, hundreds of thousands of dead people in the United States. That's what they represent. Yeah, please.

Mr. President, your reaction to the jobs report this morning?

Well, I'm going to talk about that in a minute. We have our great people here, so I'll talk that in a minute. Let's talk about this. We'll give a couple of the -- because these two people want to get to work on the Department of War, so let's keep them first. Yeah.

Mr. President, the DOJ is reportedly considering a ban on transgender people owning guns after the Minneapolis shooting. Do you think --

Are we talking in the military?

No.

OK. I thought you were talking about in the military. I'll refer to that then differently because it's not a military question. I'll be able to pass on that very nicely unless you'd like to talk about it. No, Pete doesn't want any part of that question. Yes, please.

Mr. President who, do you blame for losing India to China in your post earlier today in the morning you didn't put that out.

I don't think we have. You know, I've been very disappointed that India would be buying so much oil, as you know, from Russia and I let them know that we put a very big tariff on India, 50 percent tariff, very high tariff. Uh, I get along very well with Modi, as you know. He's great. He was here a couple of months ago.

In fact, we went to the Rose Garden and it was -- the grass was so soaking wet. It was so such a terrible place to have a news conference. I said, well, let's use a beautiful white stone emblematic of the White House, okay? And it's been very well received, but we had a news conference in the -- in the -- on the grass.

That was my last news conference I had on the grass, because everybody sunk in, you probably sunk in every reporter out there. They ruined their shoes. We made that change. It's been a really well received change. Yeah, please go ahead.

On Venezuela, you've sent F-35s down to Puerto Rico. You've sent naval vessels in the Caribbean. You're concerned about drug -- drugs being illegally sent into the --

[Crosstalk]

-- Yeah.

How do you describe this build up this situation?

Well, I just think it's strong. We're strong on drugs. We don't want drugs killing our people. I believe we lost 300,000, You know, they always say 95, 100,000. I believe they've been saying that for 20 years. I believe we lost 300,000 people last year. I know families that lost their son. Those families will never be the same.

I know a family lost a daughter, a beautiful daughter. In fact, it was like she took something that she thought was like a minor deal and it turned out to be riddled out with fentanyl. Uh, the size of the head of a pin and you're dead. And no, we're stopping the drugs. We're going to save a lot of people.

Look, uh, whether it's 100,000, but it's not -- it's 300, 350,000 people died last year from drugs. And we're not going to let that happen to this country. Think of that, think of you're in a war and you lose 300,000 or 600,000 in the, uh, pretty much between Gettysburg and all of that, the Civil War, we lost what, 600,000, so we're losing half of that every year to drugs.

We're not going to do it. We're not going to allow it to happen. You think of the wars, if we lost 600,000 people in a war, but we lost -- we lose that every two years more than that. So it's 300 to 350,000 people. And when I see boats coming in like loaded up the other day with all sorts of drugs, probably fentanyl, mostly, but all sorts of drugs and we're going to take them out.

And if people want to have fun going on the high seas or the low seas, they're going to be in trouble. I will tell you, boat traffic is substantially down in the area that happened and they called it the runway. It's a runway to -- it's a runway to the United States and boat traffic is very substantially down on the runway.

You can imagine why. I think anybody that saw that is going to say, I'll take a pass, I don't even know about fishermen. They may say I'm not getting on the boat. I'm not going to take a chance.

What happens if Venezuela flies jets over US Naval vessels again?

Well, I would say they're going to be in trouble. We'll let them know about that. We heard that happened, but it wasn't really over, not like they described. But I would say, General, if they do that, you have a choice of doing anything you want, okay? If they fly in a dangerous position, I would say that you can -- uh, you or your captains can make the decision as to what they want to do, all right?

Sir -- sir, we have one more.

[Crosstalk]

-- you said they didn't go over.

Say it?

How close did they get? You said the planes did --

[Crosstalk]

Well, I don't want to talk about that, but if they do put us in a dangerous position, they'll be shot down. Thank you very much, everybody. So we're going to now cover the G20 and I'm going to let these people go back to the Department of War and figure out how to maintain peace. Okay.

Thanks, Mr. President.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Congratulations, General. Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Great job.

Sir, just before G20. We do have one more EO for you today and I should also say that the Department of War EO that you signed was actually your 200th EO since you came back into office on January 20th. That's more than Joe Biden did in his entire term in office. More than Obama did in either of his two terms in office.

So it's a momentous accomplishment. And congratulations.

That's good, but Biden never signed one.

No, you signed one up in here.

They've been signed by the Autopen, right? Didn't he? So we really beat him by much more than you think? [Laughter]

This the 201st executive order, sir, this relates to hostages and wrongfully-detained Americans. This provides a new legal mechanism to declare foreign countries to be countries that engage in those sorts of practices and gives your administration powerful tools to get American hostages out. This has been a focus of your administration this time around.

Adam Boehler's here and, uh, he's -- he's done incredible work already. This will give him even more.

I think it's great and Adam is amazing. So Adam, do you want to describe how many hostages we've gotten out together? You and I and you and a couple of other people that we know and me and a couple of other people that you don't know. But we've gotten a lot of hostages, do you want to describe it?

As the president, You brought back 72 hostages since your term, if we compare that to President Biden, he has gotten 20 taken. So he is negative.

Twenty taken?

Twenty taken.

They don't take our people so often.

So, Mr. President, when we spoke, you said that that was a primary focus and I'll tell you the job is easy because of you.

And we paid nothing too.

We paid nothing, we paid -- 6.

Six billion. They always paid $6 billion for five people, $6 billion, uh, it was just a number I kept hearing not only that $6 billion plus we'd get like, uh, one person and they'd get six. They got one uh, the Prince of Doom, they called him. He was the number one arms merchant anywhere in the world ever and they got him out and on top of that we paid money.

So uh, no, we don't do that. You know, once you pay money, then a lot of people start disappearing. They start grabbing reporters too. They think the reporter is going to get a lot of money and to me they would. [Laughter] You would be -- you'll be well taken care of. I want to -- I'd better stress that because otherwise we have headlines.

He said this or he said that. No, I'm not smiling about it. But they would. They'd be grabbing reporters, they'd be grabbing everybody, uh, and especially when you pay the kind of money that Biden and Obama -- they used to pay money, that was crazy. We don't pay. And if you don't pay, they find it to be not a lucrative business anymore.

That's fantastic. Would you like to say something?

So, um, it's really -- Special Envoy Boehler, it's Ric Grenell, it's Steve Witkoff who brought Americans home. But with this EO you are signing today, you are drawing a line in the sand that US citizens will not be used as bargaining chips and it provides your secretary of State Marco Rubio, the same tool set to punish states who take our citizens wrongfully the same Way that we can punish those who sponsor terrorists.

This is a very significant EO you are signing today, sir.

Thank you, Sebastian. Very good. You're doing a great job too.

And this is your director for hostage affairs at the NSC here. So Julia was seminal as well to all of this.

I heard you doing unbelievable. Would you like to say something?

Absolutely. It's -- it's a outstanding EO, absolutely unprecedented action against those foreign adversaries who would take our people. They now know they are on notice and it's not acceptable and if you take our people now, you will pay.

You know Adam gave up a job where he was making tremendous amounts of money. Big, big stuff top of the line Wall Street and he wanted to do this. He wanted to do hostages. I offered them other jobs too, very big jobs. He said -- I was shocked. Actually, he didn't want him, he wanted to do hostage negotiation and, uh, pretty amazing.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Appreciate it. Thank you all. Do you have any questions for them on this very important subject?

I think it shows a lot of your leadership as far as fighting for Americans and fighting for humans. And I think that, you know, Joe Biden, uh, with a negative territory.

Oh, he went way negative.

Way negative and you're actually making progress on this, I think this does send a message to the world that we don't negotiate. We're -- we're going to stay strong and that type of, uh, what they call business.

Well, one, one little anecdote that may be of interest. We were told by numerous families who had missing loved ones during the Biden administration that this building, Biden's National Security Council told those families not to talk about their missing loved ones, to be quiet, not to create any pressure on Biden and on Jake Sullivan.

The key propagator of the Russia hoax. This administration has met with those families on a weekly basis. People like Adam, yourself, sir, your envoys are doing everything to get every single American home, not to tell them not to talk about their loved ones, but bring them home.

Well, you know, I can tell you one story that was amazing a few weeks ago, very little written about it, but there should have been. But it was a very nice gesture, the head of Belarus, who's a very respected man, strong -- strong person, strong leader, uh, he released 16 hostages. John Cole, a lawyer who works for me, a great lawyer, actually one of the greatest lawyers.

But John Cole was over there and he heard that they had seizures. And you know about this, 16 people he released and I just want to thank the head of Belarus. But while John was over there, they had, I believe, another 1,400 hostages, now not from us, from places all over the world and just pretty tough place, in all fairness.

But they had 1,400 and I believe they're going to be releasing a lot of those 1,400. They're not -- I think very few, if any.

We got -- we got pretty much ours back and we didn't pay anything. But I very much gave my respects to the leader of the country was -- again, he's a very strong man, but he's got 1,400 or 1,500 or a large number, and we're talking about releasing them. Some are political. I guess a lot of them are political.

And looks like they're going to be released at some point in the pretty near future. So it's a great thing. They have to respect your country. They respect you and they respect your country, they release it. If they don't, then you have to pay $6 billion, I mean, $6 billion. Can you imagine that, paying $6 billion?

Kind of related, but not really. But could you comment on Tina Peters, who's been locked up in a -- behind bars in -- from Colorado defending the election? I think you put out a Truth Social a couple days ago about it.

We have a wonderful woman who was an election official and she saw cheating in Colorado and she viewed it as horrible. And she said, what's going on here, and she went to the machine and she tried to open to find out whether or not it was cheating and they went to her and they said, did you touch this machine, yes, and they arrested her.

They arrested her instead of the people that did the cheating. It's a state charge, so it's hard to do anything with, but we're going to -- we're going to do something. What they did in Colorado -- look, Colorado just went to all mail in mail-in voting. That means they cheat. That's why they lost -- That's one of the reasons, but that's a big reason why they just lost the whole Space Command situation that is going to Alabama.

But when you have mail-in-voting, you have nothing but cheating. But this woman is a -- is a real patriot and they put her in jail for a long time. She's 72 years old, 73 years old. And she wanted to find out -- she didn't do anything. She touched the machine, she looked at the machine, she's trying to find out what was going on and they went and arrested her for doing that.

And it was supposed to be the other way around. I'm glad you brought that up. They should let her go, let her out. Thank you. Yeah, please.

This isn't really a subject that's talked a lot about, Mr. President, but what about your teams' strategy has made them so effective in getting a record amount of these hostages, many of whom have been forgotten about?

I think they respect us. I think they respect us. They know we're not going to pay. Adam is a great negotiator. Steve Witkoff is a great negotiator. Seb is a great negotiator. They're all smart people. They're a little bit natural negotiators. Some people aren't good negotiators, nothing you can do about it.

And they're afraid of you, so yes.

Well, maybe, I don't know. I hope so or whatever.

We have the best --

I'd like to say respect, but you know, whatever, whatever it takes. You know, I actually say whatever it takes, but we've got a lot of people out and we'll continue. We don't have too many in. How many are you working on right now?

There's not a lot left.

We got most of our people out. We got them mostly back.

Mr. President, do you have an update on the negotiations to release the rest of the hostages in Gaza?

We're in very deep negotiation with Hamas. We said, let them all out, right now, let them all out and much better things will happen for them. But if you don't let them all out, it's going to be a tough situation. It's going to be nasty. That's my opinion. Israel's choice, but that's my opinion. They got to let them out.

You got 20 plus -- you have about 38 dead people, young, beautiful dead people. And I'll tell you, the parents want them every bit as much, almost more than as if their son or daughter were alive, but you have many dead people that are coming out as part of the deal. It's 20 people, but I think of the 20, there could be some that have recently died, is what I'm hearing.

I hope that's wrong, but you have over 30 bodies in this negotiation. Can you believe? I mean, we negotiated for people that are living here. We -- we know that at least 30 people are dead and we're negotiating to get them out. The parents want them back so badly, so badly, as if they were alive, every bit as much.

It's really pretty amazing. It's very sad. I'm in the middle of it. And I put out the other day, I said, we want all 20. We don't want two. You know, I was the one with myself and my people, with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner was great on this. But they got a lot of people. We got almost all of them out.

They're down to 20. But Adam, we got like a tremendous number out. But I always said, when you get down to the final 10 or 20, you're not going to get them out unless you're going to do a lot and doing a lot means capitulation. That's no good either. It's a very tough situation, but I put out the other day, let them all out, every single one.

No more twos and ones, we'll give you one this week and in two months we'll give you two more. And there's negotiation going on right now. OK?

And real quick, what is the biggest challenge you face with the Hamas right now, 10 to 20, what do they want to let them free?

Well they're asking for some things that are fine. Look, you have to understand, you have to remember October 7th, you know, people forget October 7th. It's not an easy thing to forget, right? But people forget or they may be purposely forget October 7th. So you know, you have to put that into the equation very strongly.

It's amazing. Some people even deny it. They deny it, crazy. But I've seen tape that's as violent as anything that you can imagine. Many of you have seen those same tapes. So you have to put that into the equation, too. So it's not an easy situation. It's a tough one, but there are 20 people, maybe a little less, but there are 20 people that we want out.

We want the -- the bodies of -- of -- these parents, they are -- I've never seen anything like it, the level of love that they have, they want their children back. And you know, I see demonstrations, big demonstrations in Israel about the hostages, not about the war, about the hostages, which puts Israel in a tough position because, you know, it's tough to prosecute a war when you have people wanting -- they want the 20 people back.

They just want them back very badly and everything that goes with it. So it's very sad. Thank you very much. We're going to talk now about the G-20. I figured we could wrap two or three up. The last time I took a day off, everybody said bad things happened to me. You know that, Seb? I took one day off. I didn't take it off.

I was working. In fact, I was here, but I didn't do a news conference and they said bad things happened to the president.

[Inaudible] fake news, Mr. President.

It's fake news. You know, if you look, Biden, he had a press conference. He missed it for about a year, right, about a year and I never saw any stories like that about him. He didn't have -- and when he had one, they'd ask him what flavor ice cream do you like? He'd say, vanilla. That's -- how many times have they asked him that question?

Every -- it's, what's your favorite ice cream, sir, vanilla. OK. That's enough. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. They don't have to go through this, but we all have a good time. We only do it for one reason. I think it's good for the country and we are very transparent. There's never been transparency like we have.

There's nothing to hide. So thank you very much on this, Will, great job. Appreciate it.

Appreciate it. So we're going to talk about Florida, the great state of Florida now because it's going to be a very exciting thing to host the G-20. And as we celebrate our nation's 250th anniversary next year, the United States will have the honor of hosting exactly that, the G-20 summit right here in America for the first time in nearly 20 years.

This afternoon, I'm thrilled to announce that the 2026 G-20 conference, which will be -- I could read off the countries that we're talking about, but you know who they are, I think. Does anybody want me to list them? Specifically, Jennifer? You're OK? OK. But will be held in one of our country's greatest cities, beautiful, Miami, Florida, where we have the mayor with us, Mayor Suarez.

And I want to thank Francis for being here. He's -- I thought he might be in this office. You know, he almost got. There a couple of votes, right? A couple of -- it's not as easy as they think, right? It's not that easy, but he's an amazing guy, very popular and very popular in Florida. The agenda for next year's summit is being organized by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who is right here.

Hi, Scott. I saw him standing over there, nice, tall, good looking guy, but he moved -- he moved very quickly. Karoline, you did a good job. Does Karoline do a good job, would you say? Is she a star? How do you compare her with the last administration's person? No, you don't want to get into that. Yeah, I think we're very happy with Karoline.

But Scott Bessent is talking about a good job. He's done a fantastic job and we're very proud of him. He's very much involved with the G-20 and the NEC Director Kevin Hassett, who's truly a talented guy. And he's certainly being thought of to go to a different position and we'll find out about that pretty soon.

I don't know. Would you like to be -- I won't ask you that question. I think -- who wouldn't want -- I think it's the greatest position in the world. You know, you come out, you make a speech and then you go and go away for 30 days or 40 days and you come out and make another speech, the market goes up or down depending on what you want to say.

I've never seen an easier position than that. Unfortunately, you need good instincts and we have somebody in there now that doesn't have them. We call him too late. But it will focus on unleashing economic prosperity by eliminating the burdensome regulations, unlocking affordable energy and pioneering new technologies.

And it's going to be very important. The United States is already leading by example and America is the hottest country anywhere on Earth. We have more being built under construction now than they think, anybody that they've ever seen. I mean, literally, some of these -- some of these places are just really unbelievable what they're building, the size.

You know, if you spent $50 million on a shopping center someplace -- that's a big building, pretty big building. But when you spend $50 billion on essentially a building, they have buildings going up for $50 billion. They're going to be building their own electricity. And many of them have been given permits already to go and they're starting construction.

Some have started construction quite a while ago, and very early in the administration. We let them do that. You know, we have a grid that's obviously an old grid. It's been around for a long time, could never handle the kind of numbers that you're talking about in terms of electricity and we're letting them build their own plants.

They build their own plants with their structures. So they build their structure, they build their buildings and they build an electric producing plant with it, like Con Edison in New York that I grew up with and like others that make electricity. They make it for New York. These plants will make it for their building, for AI. Then you have a lot of the car plants going up. Most of them won't need that kind of electricity, but they have the right to do that also.

So we're allowing companies to build electric plants. They become essentially, Scott, I guess they become utilities, right, if you think about it. And it's very exciting. We're going to end up with more electricity than China and it's going to be built at no cost to us. And I'm telling them, build more than you need and you'll sell it back into the grid.

So they'll be able to sell it back into the grid on top of everything else at no cost to the American taxpayer. It's very exciting. And frankly, if we didn't do that, we wouldn't be leading with AI. We wouldn't be probably even doing any AI. It would be 20 years to get an approval. So they're building massive amounts of electricity as we speak.

We've eliminated $5 trillion worth of federal regulations. Another big thing since I took office. And if you remember the first term, we took out more regulation than any other president in history, times -- you could add the top four and they wouldn't come anywhere close to what we were. That's one of the reasons we had such economic -- the most successful four years of any president economically.

And this is blowing it away. I think this will blow it away. When these plans start to even getting close to opening, I think you're going to see numbers that we've not seen before. And we've increased oil production by more than 300 barrels a day. That's a lot. Blue collar wages are rising at the fastest rate in 60 years and trillions of dollars of investment is pouring into the USA. It's going to be over $17 trillion very shortly.

And nobody ever thought a thing like that was possible. What made it possible were number one, they were happy with November 5th. They were happy with the election. And number two, the tariffs are bringing countries in. I mean, it's so vital to our country. It's before the courts now and I hope we're going to do very well.

We had four great opinions just come out, as you know, from judges. In a couple of cases there were Obama appointed judges that felt they had to do what was right for the country, so I respect that greatly. I respect them for doing it, but we have very strong opinions and it will end up going to the Supreme Court.

And it's just vital for the country vital, Absolutely. We're at a level that we've never thought we'd be at and it's because of the tariffs. Countries are pouring into our country because of the -- you avoid tariffs if you build here. If you don't build here, you pay a lot of money. But if you build here -- so what people are doing is they're coming in, they're building here, no different than what other countries have done to us. But we have a big advantage over other countries.

We have a market that is -- that we built up during our four years that was amazing. We took a commanding lead during that four-year period. So it's been -- it's a very exciting thing, but I look forward to showing our incredible success to the world. When we visit Miami next year and I'd like to ask Mayor Suarez truly a highly respected gentleman who's loved in his city.

And we're going to -- we're going to do a great job. We're going to work together and do a fantastic job. Mayor, would you say a few words, please?

Of course, thank you, Mr. President. It's a tremendous honor to be with you here today in the Oval Office to make this historic announcement, just looking at the sign which is so beautiful.

Good job.

Yeah, it's a great job. You know, as you know, Mr. President, you were elected by double digits. You were the first Republican President over 30 years to win Miami-Dade County.

That's right.

And you did it because you followed through on your promises. And in Miami, what we're doing is we are following through on those promises as well. We've kept taxes low. We've kept people safe. We've leaned into innovation. We've grown 150 percent in the last 10 years. We've created one of the most intriguing ecosystems in the world.

And this decision is not only generationally important for the city, but it puts the city on the map as one of the truly great global cities. So on behalf of all of the workers of Miami, those that work in the hospitality industry, I know you own many hospitality assets and properties, all of the small business owners who are going to benefit economically from having the G-20 in Miami --

Right, tremendous, tremendous benefit. It's going to bring in millions and millions of dollars.

Let me just say thank you. We thank you for believing in us. We thank you for highlighting our city in a time where we have the lowest homeless rate in 11 years.

Yeah.

We're on the precipice of having the lowest homicide rate in history, and with the lowest taxes. So we're following your America First agenda --

That's great.

And we're creating success in, you know, Miami's the greatest city in the world, we believe.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

[Inaudible]

We'll see you down there -- We'll see you down there before then, but we'll see you down there.

Of course.

Scott, would you like to say a few words?

Yes, sir, so we're excited to have the G-20 and what's important about the G-20 President Trump's America First initiative does not mean America alone, it means America leads. So we will be holding the G-20 in the capital of the world, Miami next year to showcase the beginning of President Trump's second term will be, a year and a half into it, we will have done peace deals, tax deals, trade deals.

We've made the US the best place to come, start a business, have tax certainty, energy certainty and regulatory certainty and it's going to be an exciting event. And the US, just as the president was saying earlier about the Defense Department of War, the US is back on the international stage as a leader.

We have whittled down the G-20 back to basics. We are making it work for the American people better than ever. We have the G-20 had become basically the G-100 this past year. So it will be a concentrated group in Miami, seeing the best America has to offer with American leadership, thanks to President Trump.

Thank you very much. Great job and a great job you're doing. Kevin, would you like to say a few words?

Sure. Mr. President. I think this G-20 meeting where the world leaders will come to the great city of Miami is going to be viewed as one of the most important meetings in global history because what's going to happen is the golden age is going to be documented so well in The data by next summer that you're going to have one of the best speeches written for you that you've ever seen because we're just going to be talking about the accomplishments of the next year.

I think so. A lot of these plants are going to be open by then.

Yeah, exactly.

And a lot of jobs are coming in like I think we've never seen before. It's going to be great. Monica, would you like to say something?

Thank you, Mr. President. We're so looking forward to having the United States of America host the G-20 in Miami in December of next year. And we're also looking forward to having this as a showcase of American strength, vision, innovation and power under your bold leadership, Mr. President. It is going to be the G-20 in the Trumpian golden age.

OK. Thank you very much. Any questions on the G-20, G-20?

You just said a moment ago that you were very complimentary of Kevin's work and I was just wondering if he's your man for the [Inaudible]

-- of Kevin?

Yes.

No, I am very [Inaudible] I think he's fantastic. Yeah.

For the fed, he's your man?

I didn't say that. I said he's fantastic, but no, I mean, I sort of know who I'm going to pick, but no, I didn't say anybody in particular, but Kevin is certainly one of the three. They say four, but probably three. That he's a highly respected person. He's great. He's great. He believes in low interest rates and we all do, but sometimes you have to raise them to stop inflation.

We had the worst inflation, I guess, essentially that we've ever had in the Biden administration and it really hurt people. You know, costs are way down. Our energy costs are way down and you know, when energy comes down, everything comes down and we brought down the price of groceries and specifically the price of eggs.

You remember that first week when you were screaming about eggs, I said, I know nothing about them, I just got here. That's Biden's problem. But we got the cost of eggs down to really low numbers, so we brought costs down for people.

And, you know, it's something I said and the Democrats have this false narrative, they say, oh, costs went up. They just say things that it's just like incredible. If you look at energy, I think you're going to be at $2 a gallon with cars very shortly, $2. It was $4, $5 under the Democrats. It's a huge -- it's like a massive tax cut.

And speaking of tax cuts, we gave you the largest tax cut in history in the bill that we just approved the largest tax cut in history and there will be no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. One of the big things you get is you buy a car and you borrow money to buy the car, you're allowed to deduct your interest, which, Scott, has never happened before.

You know, rich, people like to talk about deductions, middle income, they never gave them deductions. I got them one of the best deductions, an interest deduction. So it's great. Jennifer, please.

Yeah, a couple questions on the G20, sir, is there any update on your plans to attend this year's G20? And then are you saying for next year?

I'll be going this year, it's in South Africa, I won't be going. Uh, JD will be going, great vice president and he looks forward to it. But no, I won't be going to that.

And then, I guess, for 2026, are you saying it'll just be exclusively the 19 countries, the two blocs? There won't be any [Crosstalk]

-- No, we're going to invite other countries, uh, as observers, they call them observers, but they'll have something to say. But we're going to invite Poland. Already I've issued them an invitation, great. They were just here, as you know, great leader, great new leader. And one of the big surprises I was so happy I endorsed him actually.

And he won and he's going to be a great leader of Poland, but I've invited Poland already.

What about -- Mr. President -- about Russia?

Oh, that's interesting. I haven't thought of that. No, I haven't thought of that. That's an interesting question. I'm going to think about that for a little while.

Mr. President, you just mentioned that the tax cut bill. Why the rebrand from One Big Beautiful Bill?

Oh, I just save words, I said the bill. It's one big -- I actually call it the great -- I actually call it the great big, beautiful bill, but it's a lot of words, you know.

[Off-mic] Republicans to kind of talk about it? [Crosstalk]

No. You know, I -- you know, I just want them to say what's in it. It's an incredible bill for the middle class, for the working person. You know, we -- we are a party of the working. It used to be the opposite. The Democrats were for the working people and the Republicans were supposedly for the rich, the Republican Party has taken in millions of people and the Democrats have lost millions of people.

They've gone crazy. Honestly, I think they're crazy. Uh, what's happened to them, I don't know. They have -- they suffer major Trump derangement syndrome and it's -- it's turned out to be actually a disease, but it's a disease of weak people and stupid people because all we do is we cut taxes, we create great policy.

Their policy is so terrible. They refuse to acknowledge, as an example, I see today, it's a big debate again, the women, uh, they don't want men playing in their sports. They don't want it. The Democrats want men to play in women's sports. I saw the great governor. We have, uh, Governor Youngkin talking about it today that the woman who's running against a Republican candidate who's excellent, uh, is like so much into the, you know, men being able to use women's bathrooms.

Okay, what's that all about? Men playing in women's sports, uh, wants open borders again. Once they want -- actually after what we've gone through with millions, I think 25 million people came in from prisons, from -- from mental institutions, drug dealers, drug addicts, they're pouring into our -- they poured in. Now we have none coming in, we have -- the border has been sealed for a long time actually almost since I got into office.

Remember when the Democrats said we need legislation? I didn't have any legislation. I said close the borders and now the borders for the last four months, not one person has been allowed to come into this country illegally, not one. Done by people that would normally like to see you look bad. Those are the numbers, so it's been an amazing job.

Yeah, please.

Mr. President, this is going to be a major event and a major meeting for South Florida for you, for Mayor Suarez. I know this is not until next year in Miami, but do preparations begin today. And if so, what is being done?

They've already begun. We first have to deconflict our [Inaudible] with the dates and so we have already started doing that and so thanks to the president's team --

-- He started a long time ago actually. If you knew him, he was -- he was working on this long before this press conference.

Yes, sir.

It's in good shape going to be great.

Mr. President, we learned this morning that we've lost 78,000 manufacturing jobs this year. How do you explain that?

Well, one thing we have is, you know, we have the interest rates are too high that was you know, a matter of the Fed, but the other thing is so many different -- so many different elements aren't included yet. And one of the things we've learned and we've learned that the hard way watching over the last few months are the corrections that people have been making.

They'll say you're losing jobs and then they'll say, by the way, we have a correction a month later of, you know, 100,000 jobs are missing. They actually had a correction once of 850,000 jobs. But I'll let Kevin just speak about that a little bit because I heard him speaking about it this morning. I thought he did very well.

Thank you very much, sir. Well, I think that if you look at the indicators, there's capital spending boom industrial, production at all time high. The Atlanta Fed says GDP now is north of 3 percent and so all the indicators are saying that things are really strong. And what we've also seen is that Goldman Sachs put out a study yesterday that said that the August number tends to be really messed up because of seasonal adjustment things and they tend to be revised way up. And so I think if they were revised up, which has happened on average over the last 15 years by about 60,000, then everything else would make sense.

But right now we're puzzled about the BLS numbers and looking forward for new leadership there to make it so that the numbers are more reliable.

And again, we're building, you know, they've started building all of these factories and plants including car factories, car factories are coming back. You know, we lost more than 50 percent of our car production over the years. And I think we're going to get all of it back. It's coming back in, uh, really rapidly.

Really. We're building a lot of car plants, Indiana, places that you don't think of it so much are taking, but also Detroit, lots of places. It's coming in where I think we're going to get everything -- you know, we've lost it over a period of 40 years and I think we're going to get it all back in a very short period of time.

And big ones, big plants, incredible plants that were never going to come back without without the tariffs, they wouldn't have come back. And I think without the election on November 5th, they wouldn't come back. The election was very important also. Yeah.

[Off-mic] who've been here, Mayor Adams of New York has announced that he's staying in the mayoral race there. Can you react to that but -- but also --

-- Cause no, I mean he has to do what he wants to do.

[Off-mic]

No, I -- yeah, I mean he's free to do what he wants. It would seem to me and everybody in this room including you that the only way you're going to beat the communists because you have a communist running, which is fine. I'll have to deal with the communists in New York City. I never thought that was going to happen.

This is something I didn't think was going to happen, Scott. You're going to have to explain this one because we're going to have a communist mayor. It would seem to me that if he stays in uh, if you have more than one candidate running against him it can't, you know, can't be won. If you have one candidate if he's the right candidate.

I would -- I would say that Cuomo might have a chance of winning if it was a one on one. If it's not one on one, it's going to be a hard race and we'll get used to a communist and he's going to have to go through the White House and get approvals for everything. And we're going to make sure that New York is not hurt.

We want to make sure that New York is cherished and taken care of. And so I didn't know he was running or not running.

But you didn't offer him an ambassadorship?

No, I didn't. I didn't do that. No, I wouldn't do that. It's nothing wrong with doing it, but I didn't do that.

Did any other administration -- -- For the G20, we understand that it'll be held at Doral?

Yes, it's going to be at Doral. Yeah.

You considered that with the G-7 last time you decided against it. Why go forward with it then?

Well, I think that everybody wants it there because it's right next to the airport, it's the best location. It's a beautiful -- beautiful everything they actually requested that it be there because the location is the best and we -- we will not make any money on it. You know, we're doing a deal where it's not going to be money, there's no money in it. I just want it to go well and it's going to be -- each country will have its own building.

It'll be -- I think it'll be really a beautiful thing and Doral's been very, very successful. One of the most successful properties in the country and, you know, frankly it's the problem is in December that's this the biggest month in Florida.

Absolutely.

So, um, you know, using it for -- uh, you can't get a room in Florida in December, January, etc. That area and that's the time we're talking about. So from that standpoint, it's not good, but we want to make sure it's good. I think Doral would be the best location. And again they'll have their own buildings.

It'll be incredible for them and being like ten minutes -- less than ten minutes from the airport. And it's the big airport, international, all of the planes will be able to land go right into their quarters. So I think it'll work out very well.

Earlier on your answer, sir, you said that your -- maybe three candidates or --

Three candidates.

Can we interpret that, do you like Secretary Bessent in his current role?

Well, like him too, but I had him as a fourth. No, I had four. You know, you were talking about four and now I'm talking about three. He told me, I'm not leaving. He wants to be doing -- and if he was leaving, I mean he would certainly be one of the people I'd want to, but I asked him specifically. I could ask him right now, would you rather stay where you are as treasurer or would you rather go to the --

Sir, I'm the only person on the planet who does not want the job.

OK. Thank you. He really told me, he said, I love what I'm doing. I wouldn't want to really take him because he is doing a great job.

Are the top three still in this group [Inaudible] Mr. Waller --

I am looking at Kevin also and I'm looking at -- yeah, I would say you could say those are the top three. Good job. It's very good.

You're saying you believe Andrew Cuomo would be the best one on one candidate against [Inaudible]

Well, I think, if I'm going -- I'm only going by the polls. It's not an endorsement or anything. It just seems that he's second. And what you do to win is you take the guy who's second and you hopefully add one and two. But maybe if the one isn't getting out, then he's not getting out. And that's OK. I think the mayor is a very nice person.

I helped him. He got caught up in a scam by the Biden administration, what they did. So I helped him out a little bit, but I would understand why he doesn't do it. I do think this, I think if you have more than one candidate, we've got ourselves a communist mayor in New York. And I don't like communist mayors.

I don't like them. Yeah.

You passed the One Big, Beautiful Bill, sir, five months with all [Inaudible] events next, World Cup, G-20, America 250. Given this blistering economic outlook for the year of 2026, how much growth do you think is reasonable for us to expect [Inaudible]

Well, I heard -- and you know, we were in a very downward path with Biden and I heard that the most we could do was a one percent GDP and now I'm hearing 3.2 percent and 3.5 percent and all -- and our big year won't be really next year. I think it will be the year after because when these plants start opening up, it takes a period of time to build them, we're going to have tremendous job growth.

It's unprecedented. We have unprecedented -- in history, there's never been anything like it because we're going to have more than $17 trillion invested. There's never been anything like that, if we did $1 trillion in one year and this is six months, seven months, because it really -- we really focused on it over the last six months.

But we're going to be doing -- nobody's ever seen numbers like this. When this stuff starts opening up, our country is being rebuilt. And by the way, Washington D.C. is being rebuilt. You know, in addition to the fact that we have a safe city now and our National Guard was fantastic and worked with the mayor, worked with everybody, we're also doing a refurbishing of Washington.

We're going to reduce some of the roads, the surfaces. We're going to redo the medians. We're going to take the broken tiles off the tunnels and put brand new tiles up and we're going to regress all the parks. They're going to be re-grassed by people that build world-class golf courses. And not necessarily people that work for me because I don't care about that.

I just want to -- I'm very good at grass. You know, grass has a life just like you have a life, right, has a life. Well, this grass has been up longer than it's like four lives, okay? That's why there's a lot of areas where there's just no grass, but we're going to regress all of the parks. We're going to -- in a year from now, you won't even recognize it. Graffiti is gone.

The tents are gone. The medians falling into the roads are gone. The potholes will be gone. The marble is going to be polished and beautiful. It's all going to be beautiful. We're working with Clark Construction, who's, you know, one of the -- well, definitely the biggest here, one of the biggest in the country.

And they've been great and we're going to do about a 10-mile radius from the White House, from the Capitol, looking sort of at both of them, go right in the middle of both of them and start drawing circles and everything is going to be spit-shined. You know, when the head of Poland came here last week and when other leaders came here, they came -- a lot of them have been here over the last eight months.

I say, what do you think, and they said that we're a little surprised at the look, the filth on the road. Now it's much better. We've got it much better, but we have to do some construction things. I mean, you know, you have medians that are all broken and rotted and rusty and disgusting. And it's going to -- they're all going to be changed.

You're going to have a very different look. You're going to have the look of prosperity, not the look of poverty. But the big thing right now initially is -- we -- we have no crime in Washington. You literally have no crime. They said it's down 87 percent. It's not down 87, it's down like 100 percent. We have almost no crime.

People are going to restaurants that wouldn't have even thought about it and I know families that have gone four or five or six times to restaurants over the last few weeks and you people are in the same category. I mean, I -- yes?

I agree on that --

Thank you.

[Inaudible] kids [Inaudible]

It's a whole different place, right?

Yes.

That's very nice and you're so tough usually. I like her now. No, she -- no, because she was truthful. Is that a correct statement, Brian?

Yes, sir, it is.

I heard you were actually mugged. You're a big strong guy. I heard --

You can't do anything when he has a gun.

No, no, you can't. You know, you say, thank you very much, right?

Can I follow up on the beautification of D.C. --

Yeah. Yeah.

Just out front of the White House is a blue tent that that originally was put there to be an anti-nuclear tent for nuclear arms. It's kind of morphed into more of an anti-American, sometimes anti-Trump at many times.

Where is this blue tent?

Right in front of the White House on the North Lawn on the other side of the Black Gate in Lafayette.

I haven't known this.

All of us in here walk right by it every day. It is an eyesore --

Oh, I didn't know that.

Let me just --

[Inaudible] take it down. Take it down, today, right now. Nobody told me that. So you're saying there's a blue tent.

It's been there for 30 plus years. It was originally a peace tent, but it's kind of morphed into something --

Morphed into radical left. OK.

But what I've heard --

Is it in the ellipse? Where is it?

No, it's in the Lafayette Park. It's --

Lafayette Park. Take it down. OK.

OK. What's interesting about it is, I've had people tell me it's a public health hazard because people sleep in there, they eat, there are rats. But also, it could be a national security risk because people can hide things in there. There could be weapons in there.

OK. We're going to look into it right now. We have removed over 50 tent sites, not 50 tents, hundreds and hundreds, maybe a thousand. I think it's over 1,000 tents, but 50 sites. So I'm a little surprised to hear that. But we're going to look into it right now.

Thank you, sir.

Lafayette.

On the National Guard.

Yes.

D.C. mayor has gotten on board with the cleanup of D.C., but the D.C. attorney general has said that he plans to be suing you for [Inaudible]

Yeah. Can you imagine -- we have an attorney general who's not related at all to the mayor, by the way. You know, it's a totally separate department. We've got so many separate departments. You have -- the district attorney has nothing to do with the mayor. The whole thing is crazy. But how about this, we just set a record on low crime in Washington D.C. and we have a man suing us to let us go back to high crime.

We're going to have to be here for a little while to make this really work long-term after we're gone. And so we're going to meet that head on and I suspect we'll be very successful. And I can always declare a national emergency because this was a national emergency. But right now, we have the safest city.

We have now one of the safest cities in the country. We had almost the worst. I mean, a city that was as bad as some of the horror shows that you've heard about for years. And we going to fix some of those horror shows. OK.

Mr. President, [Inaudible] ruling today that you posted on Truth Social about, the Europeans fining Google, can you --

So Google is a great company. Yeah, Google is a great company, American company. Apple is a great American company and so many others and the European Union, I don't know why they do it, but they -- they have been fining them numbers that have been astronomical, more so before I got here. But Apple paid $17 billion, a fine in the last year, Apple, $ 17 billion on a case that a lot of people think they weren't guilty of. And no, I'm going to be speaking to the European Union about it. It's not fair.

And Google just got fined $3.5 billion and they've already paid $13 billion. They're up to $16.5 billion. And people say there was nothing wrong with what they did. It's almost a source of income to run Europe. It's become a source of income. And many other companies too, mostly tech companies, but we can't let that happen.

We can't let that --

What are you seeking from the Europeans and by when?

No, I can just say you can't do that. I mean, you know, they respect us now. They didn't respect us a year ago. European Union respects us. Look, they're paying us $950 billion, right? They got to respect us. They were very disrespectful of our country. I have great respect for Ursula. I've gotten to know her very well and I just don't think it's fair that they're taxing -- and really, it's almost become like a tax.

It's almost -- it's become so regular and I've gone to lawyers and I've asked them, what do you think? They said, they didn't do anything wrong. We can't do that. It's not fair. And it's interesting. I don't hear that about China and I don't hear that about other places. I hear it about the European Union.

We were talking about it last night. I think -- we had a gathering. That was the highest IQ group of people, I think any room has ever had, last night. You know, it was about as high as you can have. All the tech geniuses were there. They -- they love their computers. They would tell me more about chips than I want to know.

Did this come up last night?

Yeah, it did. It did come up. A couple of countries said -- companies said that they were -- they were taxed by the European Union. It's interesting, they weren't complaining about in that regard. China, they weren't complaining about other places. It's the European Union and they have. Apple was, again, forced to pay $17 billion last year.

So I think we're going to change that around. It's just not fair. We don't want that to happen to our companies. And you know, if somebody does that we should be doing it to them. They've got to pay, let them pay us, but you just can't do that to our companies. Yes.

Was Elon Musk invited to the dinner last night? I wanted to go back to the G-20 real quick in Miami. You know South Florida very well, many cities are being considered for the G-20. Was this a hard decision or did Miami just stand out to you?

It wasn't a hard, really. I mean, look, it's got the weather. We're in December so it's you know, cold in some places and that's beautiful to cold, weather's nice. It's all nice, you know, depending on the city. But no, Miami really wanted it. The mayor really wanted it. The people down there really wanted it. You might just address that for a second, Mr. Mayor.

Yeah, as I said, I mean a conference of this kind does two things. Number one is it puts us on a global map with the great global cities and I think that's something that we've been trying to achieve for a generation. And I think number two, it's a tremendous boon for your economy. I mean, as the President knows, he has multiple hospitality assets.

The working people of Miami, the small business owners are going to benefit tremendously from the economic impact of a conference like this in our city. So it's an image thing, but it's also benefiting working people in our community.

Do you think Xi and Putin will attend the G-20?

That's an interesting question. I'd love them to if they want to, I mean they can, you know, as observers. They'd be observers. I'm not sure they want to be an observer, but if they want to, we can certainly talk.

Can I ask you another Florida question? The vaccine mandates that were rolled back for school children, what do you think about that?

Well, I think we have to be very careful. Look, you have some vaccines that are so amazing. The polio vaccine, I happen to think is amazing. A lot of people think that COVID is amazing. You know, there are many people that believe strongly in that, but you have some vaccines that are so incredible and I think you have to be very careful when you say that some people don't have to be vaccinated.

It's a very -- you know, it's a very tough position, so I'd give you an answer. I'll give you a feeling. But just initially, I heard about it yesterday and it's a tough stance. Look, you have vaccines that work. They just pure and simple work. They're not controversial at all. And I think those vaccines should be used, otherwise some people are going to catch it and they endanger other people.

And when you don't have controversy at all, I think people should take it. OK?

One more follow up on your comments on the taxes. On the upcoming tax bill, are you discussing -- do you want that new tax bill to eliminate inflation from calculating [Inaudible]

When you say the upcoming tax bill, because when you have an upcoming, we just passed the biggest tax cut in the history of our country, so there's nothing upcoming. There's something that we just passed. So we passed the biggest tax cut in the history of our country for the middle class, for the worker and that's the only bill that we're really talking about.

We did a good job. It's very comprehensive. And I will say, the Democrats, if you gave them every point that they wanted, every point that they've dreamt of all their lives, you wouldn't get one Democrat vote. They really are. They've become deranged, sick. It's crazy. If you gave them a list of the top 10 things that the Democrats wanted and you put them in a bill to get passed, you wouldn't get one vote.

It's the only thing they have. They stick together, but they're dying, I mean, they're down to 16 percent approval rating, the lowest rating in history for either party. And we have the highest rating we've ever had. The Republicans have the highest rating we've ever had.

On the National Guard, have you decided which city that you want to go into?

Yeah, I have. I have. I'm not going to say it now, but yeah, I have. We're going to go into -- we're going to go into another place and straighten it out. And I will say this, I watched today, I didn't know that was continuing to go on, but Portland is unbelievable, what's going on Portland, the destruction of the city.

Are you going into Portland?

Well, I'm going to look at it now because I didn't know that was still going on. This has been going on for years. So we'll -- we'll be able to stop that very easily. We'll be able to stop it. But you know, that was not on my list, Portland. But when I watched television last night, this has been going on -- you wouldn't be standing -- if you were the mayor, you wouldn't be -- can you imagine what they're doing?

They're walking in and throwing smoke bombs into stores. These are paid terrorists. OK? These are paid agitators. These are professional -- I watched that last night. I'm very good at this stuff. These are paid agitators. They get paid money by radical left groups, not radical right groups, radical left groups, and they get paid a lot of money and you see it with the signs.

You know, they all have perfect signs that are printed. They look as good as that sign. Those signs are made in basements. They're made at professional printing offices and they cost a lot of money. These are paid agitators and they're very dangerous for our country. And when we go there, if we go to Portland, we're going to wipe them out.

They're going to be gone and they're going to be gone fast. They won't even stand the fight. They will not stay there. They ruined -- they've ruined that city. I have people that used to live in Portland. They've left. Most of them have left. But what they've done to that place is just, it's like -- it's like living in hell.

Yeah, go ahead. Thank you for your statement before.

AP is reporting that you would be banning visas to delegations who will be attending the UNGA, the UN General Assembly, including Brazil. Your reaction on that, sir?

Whose banning them?

The Trump administration.

Well, I don't know. We are talking about things. We're very upset with Brazil. We tariff them very high because of the fact that they're doing something that's, you know, very unfortunate. I love the people of Brazil. We have a great relationship with the people of Brazil, but the government of Brazil has changed radically.

It's gone very left. It's gone very radical left and it's hurting Brazil very badly. And they're doing very poorly, very, very poorly. So we'll see.

And are you ready to reset relations with India at this point?

I always will. I'll always be friends with Modi. He's great, Prime Minister. He's great. I'll always be friends, but I just don't like what he's doing at this particular moment. But India and the United States have a special relationship. There's nothing to worry about. We just have -- we just have moments on occasion.

How are trade talks going with India, with other countries that you haven't reached a trade deal with? Secretary Bessent --

They're going great. Other countries are doing great. We're doing great with all of them. We're upset with the European Union because of what's happening with not just Google, but with all of our big companies. They just, you know, hit them with these mass -- these unbelievable fines, you know, $17 billion and $14 billion and they use that money to run Europe.

It's almost become like common. It's almost become a yearly occurrence like it's a tax. So it's very unfair. I want to thank you all very much and we'll see you around. We're going to see you in Florida, but we'll see you a little bit before that, I suspect. OK?

What are you having for dinner tonight?

Well, I'll be having something good here. I'll be at the White House.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.