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Mr. President, if there is a shutdown, how many federal workers do you plan to lay off?
Well, we may do a lot and that's only because of the Democrats. And as you know, they want to be able to take care of people that have come into our country illegally and no system can handle that. And so, we're totally opposed on that. But we can't take it -- we just can't do it. I'd love to do everybody; I'd love to do the whole world, but our country can't handle people that come into our country illegally.
And they want to give them full health care benefits. They want to open the wall again. Can you believe it? I can't even believe it. They want to open the wall. They haven't taken away boys playing in women's sports. They haven't done that -- men playing in women's sports. It's like they don't change. They lost an election in a landslide, and they don't change.
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How long do you plan to give Hamas to respond to the ceasefire proposal you've laid out?
Well, we're going to do about three or four days; we'll see how it ends. All of the Arab countries are signed up, the Muslim countries all signed up. Israel is all signed up. We're just waiting for Hamas and Hamas is either going to be doing it or not. And if it's not, it's going to be a very sad end.
Do you have a deadline? Mr. President, is there room to negotiate or is this a take it or leave it deal? Is there room to negotiate with Hamas or is this a take it or leave it deal?
Not much. You know, with Hamas we want -- very simple, we want the hostages back immediately and we want some good behavior. And you know, it's pretty simple. You don't get similar. Think of it, we've signed every country in the Middle East. This is like an impossible thing. It's never been done before.
This is more than Gaza. Gaza was big stuff, but this is -- Gaza is a piece of it.
And if they reject the deal, you said that Israel has your back and could do whatever they need to do. What do you envision that looks like? What does that look like?
I will let them go and do what they have to do, they can do it pretty easily. I would let them go and do what they have to do. You know, we've killed about 25,000 Hamas, so certainly they've paid a big price for October 7th. And this is a whole new group. You know, they come in and they come in and they keep coming.
But this is a whole different group, and their leadership has been killed three different times. So, they've paid a big price. We hope that they're going to have a nice calm life. Maybe it won't happen. But if it does, it will be one of the greatest things ever to happen. We'll have actual peace in the Middle East.
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Are you preparing to take strikes against drug gangs in Venezuela, sir?
We'll see what happens with Venezuela. Venezuela has been very dangerous with drugs and with other things, and they've been very, very dangerous. So, we'll see what happens with Venezuela. We had a lot of drugs coming in through what we call water drugs, just a simple term. We don't have any boats on the water.
There are no boats. There are no fishing boats. There are no anything. So, we hit a number of boats, you probably saw that. And since we did that, we have absolutely no drugs coming into our country via water because it was lethal. And now we'll look at cartels. We're going to look very seriously at cartels coming by land.
What do you plan to tell the Department of War in this address? Why gather all the generals in one place for this?
Well, this is only an esprit de corps. Do you know what an esprit de corps is? It's only a spirit. We're going to be talking to them. Pete Hegseth is talking right now. I'm going to have to leave because I have to talk to them, but these are our generals, our admirals, our leaders. And it's a good thing.
A thing like this has never been done before because they came from all over the world. And there's a little bit of expense, not much, but there's a little expense to that. We don't like to waste it. We'd rather spend it on bullets and rockets frankly, but this was the one time we had to do a great spiritizing.
It's going to be great. I've seen it already. We have every general, every admiral, we have great people. We have our real warriors over there. And when they're not good, when we don't think they're our warriors, you know what happens? We say you're fired, get out. We had some real bad ones last time. I rebuilt the military, the entire military.
But I had a couple -- and I had unbelievable people. To do that you have to, but I had unbelievable people in there, but I also had some bad ones at the top like Milley and Mattis and that Lee Esper [sic]. I called him too always too-late Esper. He was horrible. But I learned because that was -- I was just in there and I put these people in; they were recommended by rhinos and others and they're not good.
What we have now is the best, but even despite that, I rebuilt the military in my first term. We had a great first term, we had the greatest economy ever and it's being beaten by a lot this time. So, I'm going over, I'm going to be meeting -- I'm going to be meeting with generals and admirals and with leaders.
And if I don't like somebody, I'm going to fire them right on the spot.