Press Gaggle: Donald Trump Walks Reporters Through White House Ballroom Construction - May 19, 2026

[The gaggle was conducted amid a great deal of background and construction noise. The audio and transcript were cleaned as best possible.]

A lot of people have been asking to see what we've done. A lot of work, hundreds of billions of dollars already on the ballroom and it's coming out, I think, incredibly. We have some renderings of the finished product. It's all knit together. At the top of the ballroom is what they call a drone gallery. We have tremendous amounts of military able to be on the top.

It'll be the highest point; it'll be actually higher than this building across. We have sites all over Washington, so that's important. But it will be something very special. So, if you look up at the top, you'll see some interesting things, and I'll show that to you in a second. You want to grab that, please?

I'll show that to you in a second. The facade of the building -- there will never be another building like this built, that I can tell you. I've built a lot of great things, but there will never be anything like this built. And what we have is the roof is dead flat with absolutely nothing but strength on it, it's very strong steel.

It's drone proof, and it's meant for our military to be able to stay on it, you get a view of Washington. Also, for the drone building capacity, some of that takes place right down here. You can see the very large piping and the other things that -- it's a very complex building. It's all knit together, the roof goes with the ground floor, the ground floor goes with the roof.

The roof also goes down into the basement. Everything is connected, intertwined -- elevators, heating, air conditioning. It's one building, that's why we're trying to explain that. This is one well-knit building; one thing doesn't work without the other. Very importantly though, in terms of the beauty, probably the closest thing to this would be the US Supreme Court, the facade of the US Supreme Court.

So, here's a couple of things you can look at. How are you? All right? There will never be another thing like this, I don't believe, built from a cost standpoint. This is all my money and donors' money; this is tax free. So, everyone's talking about they're going to give money, they're going to give money -- but the money they're going to give is really for the security of that and the whole White House premise and I guess you probably need that nowadays.

We've done the fencing on the outside of the White House, it's all titanium. You see the black fencing, that's been just done recently, and it was approved originally by me, and it's been completed and it's very powerful, very powerful. A tractor, a bulldozer cannot knock it over, it goes down deep, and it's titanium, which is the strongest of all of the metals, much stronger than steel, as an example.

The ballroom is all -- it's going to be a tremendous, tremendous thing. As an example, what happened a couple of weeks ago at the White House Correspondents Dinner could not happen here. One thing that we have is we don't have people living above it. We don't want that, that's no good where they have 1,000 units above it, with the elevator coming right down next to where the convention, or whatever it may be, is. So, this is a room that's been wanted for 150 years by presidents.

We have no room to have an event. The only way you can have an event is if you build a tent on the lawn, and a tent does not do the job. And by the way, if it rains here, because this is built on a wetland, the lawn is impossible to deal with; the water goes over everybody's shoes, literally goes over the shoes.

So, and they've had a lot of catastrophes with a tent. So, we have this and, if you take a look at this section, this is the different façade. So, this is a Greek -- more or less it comes out of Greece. This is the ultimate facade for Greece. This faces the Treasury building. This faces -- this is a different façade, that's Rome, and that faces the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, etc.

So, you have two facades, primarily you have two entrances, you have here, you have here, but the primary entrance is through the White House, directly through the White House and it's really something. I think you can see the complexity. All of these columns go directly up to the roof, and the roof is a barrier.

It's a shield because it's made out of -- the sidewalls are steel, impenetrable steel, and also impenetrable glass. The glass is approximately four inches thick, and yet it's amazing. You can see through it as though it didn't exist, it's amazing, and it can stop just about anything, just about anything.

On the other side of the glass, we have steel and concrete so that -- the glass is very powerful. What's holding the glass is equally as powerful and that's here. You can see they're just about ready to go up to the top. All of these columns, they go directly right to the roof of the building. And again, we call it a drone port; it's set up for unlimited numbers of drones.

Purposely, we don't have any air conditioning equipment up there because we don't want anything coming down through the pipes. If anybody gets -- normally, you'd have a lot of air conditioning equipment on the roof. We built it all inside the building, inside the case of the building, because we don't want to have anything having to do with air or air quality or any problems playing with the air.

So, you'll notice it's a dead flat roof with no equipment on it. All of the equipment is inside of the building, and that's for safety reasons. Normally you'd do a lot less expensive, you'd do it a different way. So, all of this was paid for by myself and -- because I keep hearing, like, I'm not -- we are making a gift of this place.

This is a gift; this is not going to be paid for by the taxpayer. We have a judge that thinks it's a terrible thing, that we're making a gift. He said it's terrible that we're making a gift, it should be paid for by the taxpayer. That's one I've never heard before. I'm sure -- maybe -- I don't know, maybe he doesn't understand.

This is a gift to the United States of America. And more than a gift, it's going to be one of the most beautiful buildings that's ever been built in the country or in Washington, DC. So, here's the other facade you see over here. And again, this is taking these -- these great classical buildings, they're taken out of different parts of the world from very glamorous times.

This is Rome, they like the flat roof. Greece likes the -- they call it the triangles, and you see that. This is a porch that looks out over the city. Also, it's developed in such a way that we can have military there, but the entire roof is developed for military. It's very high -- they're higher than just about anything else.

They have a 360-degree vision of Washington, DC. They have a massive drone capacity; not only is it drone proof, if a drone hits it, it bounces off. it won't have any impact. But it's also meant as a drone port, so it protects all of Washington, the roof of the building, OK? Now, does anybody have any questions?

If you want, you can take -- I think you can bring your camera down. You might want to take a look at the complexity. These are all different rooms down here. They're building a hospital. They're building -- it's a military hospital. They're building all sorts of research facilities. Also meeting rooms and rooms that go hand in hand for the military using the ballroom.

And the ballroom is really a shield and protecting all of the things that are built here. This goes -- as you see, it's already up to the ground. This goes down very deep. You get a better view right over here. This is down, because we've already done these floors, but these are already down two floors. That is down about six stories deep; that's big stuff.

You build a ballroom, you build it flat, you just build a ballroom, it would have been built [Inaudible] It's all knit together. Between the drone proofing, the missile proofing we have, and the drone capacity upstairs, we can have all sorts of military up there. I hate to use the word snipers, but we have great sniper capacity.

It's built for our snipers, not the enemy snipers, our snipers. And because of the height, we get a very clear view of everything all over Washington. Yeah.

Mr. President, you mentioned that this is being paid for out of pocket. But why is Congressman Cox -- explain the difference between --

Well, they're not. Congress is approving -- yeah, Congress is approving money for security. It may go -- some of it may go here for additional security, I don't know. But Congress is approving money, but this building, I mean, I put I put up the money to build this building along with a lot of great patriots have put up a lot of money to build the building.

And we have a building that is going to be -- I think it's going to be potentially the most beautiful building in all of Washington. And with that is great military capacity. We're building it in conjunction with the United States military and the Secret Service.

[Inaudible] approve that money, can this project still be completed?

Well, they have a budget in the Secret Service and the military to do some of the work that you see right here. So, the answer is I think they want to enhance what you see. It's very powerful, you see what's happening, it's a powerful [Inaudible] it's 9,000-pound concrete. If you know anything about concrete [Inaudible] but they probably want to enhance the area that they're going to spend money.

This is a very sacred piece of land. This is the White House, and they want to do things, but all of -- everything that you see and the money that's being put up to build the ballroom -- and again, the ballroom, it's necessary for the ballroom to be built with what you see over here. It's all knit in, the air conditioning, the heating, the drone capacity, the shield.

You know, the ballroom becomes a shield for everything that you see right here. Without that, they couldn't have this. They couldn't build the lower floors. Without that shield over the top of it, it's a shield that will totally protect what's downstairs. They have a lot of things going on downstairs and some of it you see.

This goes down six stories because it's already been built. This will be -- very shortly this will be in the form of -- the roof goes along these lines. Basically, it goes outside. You see where the wood is, you're going outside of that line, and then it goes straight up. And it's all protection and everything's together.

You can't build one without the other. And what we have is we have the safest building ever built, in my opinion. You can have -- and you know, the other thing is when -- we're right on budget, we're right on plan. The only budget change would be that we doubled the size -- at the request of the military we doubled the size, but we're right on budget, right on plan.

And originally, we were going to build a much smaller room, and it wouldn't have done the job. It just wouldn't have done the job; you have too many events. Like if we have President Xi coming here, we have no place to put him. We had the King and the Queen the other day, and we had 1,000 people wanted and we ended up having 100 people sitting in a very small room.

And it has been this for a long time, but maybe more important is the safety element. This is a shield, it protects everything that's inside, everything that's on top. And, obviously, the White House was built in 1792. It's awfully hard to do that kind of a capacity that we did here. So, this will give future presidents -- but you have to understand, when this is finished, my term ends shortly after that.

This is really for other presidents; this is not for me. This is my gift to the United States of America. I'm going to be able to use it very little because, when it's finished, we're talking about six or seven months, but it will be used for hopefully hundreds of years for other presidents. And there will never be anything like this built again.

There'll never be a room built like with the safety. As an example, if we had the white House Correspondents Dinner here would have been no problem.

When it opens, you'll have about six or seven months. Have you [Inaudible] to that around that time?

I have. I'd better not tell you about that, Daniel. But yeah, everybody wants to be here for the first event. So, we're talking about heads of nation. So, we have some very special places that it could happen. If we had literally the Queen where we had an event that would have been [Inaudible]. I mean, we literally were in a little room in the White House.

Now we're not even talking about safety. Presidents have been asking for this literally from the time the White House had been built. But on record, for 150 they said what about a bigger room. And you all know, you probably attended, they have some where they use tents. If it rains, it's a disaster.

People are asking if this is going to be a gift for America, future presidents and the country. What's your hope for America?

We have to have a safe country; we have to have a great country. We have to make sure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. All of the things that you see me fighting for so hard and it's always tough. You know, we're negotiating with Iran and then you have the Democrats -- I call them the Dumocrats -- putting in a bill that Trump should immediately stop.

Do you know how it is to negotiate with countries? You're beating them badly, they come to the table, they're begging to make a deal -- because they're begging to make a deal. I hope we don't have to do the work, but we may have to give them another big hit. We may have to give them another big hit. I'm not sure yet.

You'll know very soon. But how do you feel when you're negotiating, you're winning every point, and they say but in Washington, they want to stop you from negotiating. They want to stop you and it's only political. It's the Dumocrats, they're dumb. It's a new name; it's a very accurate name. So, I'm in the middle of a negotiation, I'm saying you cannot have a nuclear weapon, and it comes over the wire that the Dumocrats want to stop Trump from further negotiations.

They want to stop Trump from, if he has to, giving them another slap. They want to have a nuclear weapon to blow up the Middle East and to blow up, frankly, the world. It's not going to happen. Nice to see you, by the way.

[Crosstalk]

How close were you to [Inaudible]

I was an hour away. We were all set to go. You're talking about yesterday.

Yes.

We were going to be striking very -- it would have been happening right now. Yeah, it's all done. The boats, the ships are all loaded, they're loaded to the brim, and we're all set to start.

[Crosstalk]

Nation's intelligence that convinced you [Inaudible]

They said that they feel they've had, for the first time in almost 47 years. You know, Iran's been the bully of the Middle East for 47 years. I mean, literally the bully of the Middle East. [Inaudible] they wanted a nuclear weapon. Had I not terminated Barack Hussein Obama's Iran nuclear deal, had I not terminated it -- see, that's the wind.

That can't happen with the real structure.

On Cuba, what do you want to see [Inaudible] the option of military action [Inaudible]

You're talking about Cuba. Well, we're going to see. Look, Cuba is calling us, they need help. Look, Cuba is a failed nation. Cuba needs help and we'll do that. [Inaudible] it's like an exercise game. Give that to me, I'll hold it. It's so beautiful. See, I look so thin. They'll say, oh, he's gotten so thin because I'm holding this.

You don't have to look at my waist; you can look at this. You saw enough of my waist along with President Xi in China.

Are you confident that you can reach a diplomatic deal with [Inaudible]

With Cuba? I think so. Yeah, I think so. I am very prone toward the Cuban Americans. They've been incredible people. Many of them have lost family members. They've been very badly hurt themselves; they've been imprisoned. They've come to this country and they've been very successful. The Cuban American people of Miami, I mean, they are amazing people.

Most of them are in Miami, in Florida, but mostly in Miami. I'm very, very prone to helping them. They've been -- I think I got 97 percent of their vote. I want to help them. Now they have family members in Cuba. They've been treated very, very badly. They've been treated extremely badly. And we're going to get that solved.

That's not going to be hard for us to solve.

But you said you've got about [Inaudible]

Well, I don't know about changing the regime. I can do that. Whether you change a regime or not -- you know, it's been a rough regime, they've killed a lot of people. But it's a country that really needs help. It has nothing. They can't turn on the lights, they can't eat -- we don't want to see that.

Mr. President, [Inaudible]

They called me over the last two days to say they've made a lot of progress. Because we have them negotiating with us. And primarily Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait a little bit and Bahrain and some of the others. And we have them negotiating with them. We're all working together, it's like a team, and Israel, of course, and Israel has been a great partner.

And so, we are negotiating together. I got a call from numerous of these people. They know the people in Iran. Don't forget, when you talk about regime change, I think it's the ultimate regime change because the first level and the second level are no longer with us. They're someplace different; they're no longer with us. We have real regime change.

But I got a call yesterday, sir, can you wait? We think we're close to a deal. Now, I've heard it before with these people and they change their mind. I made deals with them, no nuke, we immediately get the nuclear dust. And they said, you're the only one who can get it because the bombers did such an unbelievable job that the mountain literally collapsed on top of it. They said us and they thought China would be the only two countries that could even get it. But I think it's important to get it, maybe psychologically more than anything else.

[Crosstalk]

How long [Inaudible]

They knew I was getting ready to attack. I didn't tell them. I never tell anybody when.

You're in constant contact with them?

I never tell anybody when. But they knew that we were very close. I would say we were -- I was an hour away from making the decision to go today. And we would probably not be talking about a beautiful ballroom today; we'd be talking about that. No, I had made the decision. So, they called up, they had heard I made the decision, they said, sir, could you give us a couple more days because we think they're being reasonable.

[Crosstalk]

For Iran to come to the table?

Well, I'm saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday something, maybe early next week. A limited period of time. Because we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would start with Israel, they would blow it up and they would blow it up fast, but they'd blow it up. And I'll tell you why.

They'd go after Saudi Arabia, they'd go after Kuwait, they'd go after UAE, they'd go after Qatar, they'd go after -- I think they'd go after the entire Middle East, and it would be a whole different negotiation. It would be nuclear holocaust. And there's no question in my mind that they'd use it, there's no question.

And I deal with these people; they're extremely radicalized. These are not people like when I deal with you. You're a very nice guy. These are people that are seriously radicalized. They would use it -- the only question, would it be the first minute, the first hour or the first day.

[Inaudible] time if there comes a point soon where [Inaudible]

I'm not doing this politically. Look, everyone tells me it's unpopular, but I think it's very popular. When they hear that it's having to do with nuclear weapons, weapons that could take out Los Angeles, take out major cities very quickly. When they hear that -- I'll tell you what, when we explain it to people, I don't really have enough time to explain it to people, I'm too busy getting it done.

When they understand, I think it's frankly very popular. But whether it's popular or not popular I have to do it, because I'm not going to let the world be blown up on my watch, it's not going to happen.

[Crosstalk]

Will Thomas Massie and your [Inaudible] Do you think your candidate can beat him and what are you seeing?

Yeah, Thomas Massie is a terrible Congressman, he's been a terrible Congressman from day one. Dealing with him is just a horrible -- I don't think he's a Republican; I think he's actually a Dumocrat. He's not a Libertarian. You know, sometimes they say he's a -- he's really a Dumocrat. He votes against us all the time.

He voted against the border wall. He voted against men playing in women's sports. He voted against transgender for everybody, the mutilation of your children. He voted against, again, open borders. We have the best border we've ever had right now, nobody's coming in. I mean, a report just came out in the last 11 months.

Literally nobody has been allowed into our country illegally. We're taking people legally; they go through a process. But nobody is coming into our country. But we've taken out hundreds of thousands of people. We had 10,000 -- it was 10,800, 11,888 murderers. Many of these murderers allowed into our country from prisons, they were in prisons.

Many of these people killed more than one. More than 50 percent killed more than one person. This was gross malfeasance. This was on behalf of the Biden administration -- I don't know Biden because I don't think he knew he was alive. But Kamala was the border czar. She never called, not one time -- she never called the Border Patrol, she never called ICE, she never called law enforcement.

She never went to the border. Think of it. I used to call every single day, and that's recently. Now I call less; we have nobody coming through. We had caravans coming through with 10s of thousands of people pouring into our country. We had no idea who they were. We would have been -- I'll tell you what, our country would have been destroyed.

If they won this election, our country would have been -- we have now the hottest country anywhere in the world. If they had won the election our country would have been destroyed. Our country was a dead country two years ago, and now we have really the hottest country in the world, and this is the ballroom, and it's going to be something incredible, you see the quality of it. And they go right -- those columns go right into the roof and, on top of the roof, we're going to have the greatest drone empire that you've ever seen, and it's going to protect Washington.

Thank you all very much. We have a little breakfast for you.

Really?

Yeah. Where is the breakfast? I have it where is it? Oh, it's right over here. We have a little bit of a breakfast for you. I figured it'd be nice to you for a change.

[Inaudible] thousands of people gathered there, it was great.

Yeah, I did. Scripture.

[Inaudible] glad to see that happen and are you pleased with the turnout?

Well, I think that it was great. Thousands of people showed up and it was a beautiful everything, beautiful day. I did, I did scripture. You think it's easy to read scripture? It's not easy to read scripture. That's a whole different ball game. That's not like reading a speech -- we will build the wall. This is a whole different deal, but I did it proudly and I guess it was broadcast.

We had tremendous passion. I think religion is very important for a country. I think having -- this country was built largely on religion if you look, it was built. And when you have strong religion, you have less crime. It's just a fact. You know, whatever it may be, it's like, gee, I want to go to heaven, so I'm not going to do this or that.

Who knows? But we have a country that was based on religion, and I'm very proud of that. And if you look and you see all of the polling, I mean, polling is so fake, but on this it's not fake. Religion is really going up in the last year. And during the time, I mean, really during the time I first got elected in 2016, it's a much different thing.

I'm very proud of that. Religion is a good thing. Christianity, it's a great thing for our country. I mean, so many of the things that's we're done, the successes that we've had have been based on Christianity and religion. So, I'm very proud of that. Religion is taking off like our country has taken off.

Our country is hotter now than it's ever been. And I'll tell you, religion is making a tremendous comeback. You look at churches today, they're full. You go back two or three years, nobody was going. No, we're very happy with it.

[Inaudible] any [Inaudible] that we see happening?

Yeah. No, I'm always concerned. I see things happening. Look, from the beginning of mankind you've had that; you've had the good and you've had the bad. I'd like to get rid of the bad, but somehow that's going to be there. But the good has been many times what it was, really many times what it was.

On the ballroom, if [Inaudible] $1 billion for your security funding, would you be willing or would you [Inaudible] ask for that money?

Well, this is money for the whole premises, including the east wing, this is the east wing section. But the ballroom is, as you see, it's going up. It's ahead of schedule. It's larger because they wanted more military capacity. They wanted more drone capacity. They needed a larger room and, frankly, we needed a larger facility.

And so, we're doing that, and we've done this in strict coordination with the military and with the Secret Service and they've been great to work with. The money that they're talking about is the surrounding areas and maybe enhancing some security aspect of it. But the building -- the building, as you see, it's a very active site and a lot of people are amazed.

And by the way, that floor goes down three floors, just so you understand. You're seeing almost the top floor. That floor goes down three floors and there are many things in there having to do with security. And many of those things are going to be taken from there and put onto the roof of the building. And that has to do with drone and missile capacity.

[Crosstalk]

Done renovations to the White House [Inaudible] why [Inaudible] you are so mad about your renovations?

Because I'm doing it.

[Inaudible] you've got the water [Inaudible] going in, all of it, [Inaudible]

Yeah. Well, it's a sad thing actually. You know, and that's very nice, I appreciate the question. First, I said, oh, this is going to be a negative question and then I heard it. She's really saying why do they hate you for fixing the water fountains. So, we have four -- because I want to see Washington be beautiful, for me it's very important.

But as an example, you mentioned the water fountain. We didn't have one water fountain, and I think we have 40. We didn't have one in Washington that worked. And soon they'll all be working; many of them work right now. I think one of the best things, Obama -- President Obama, President Biden spent much more than $1 million on the reflecting lake between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

They spent much more. They spent, some people say, $200 million. Do you know what they got out of it? A closed lake. It never opened and, when it did, it was shut right away. It leaked. It was a disaster. I'm doing a job on the reflecting lake for a fraction of what they paid. Now I've upgraded it so -- I got so into it, I've upgraded it like you wouldn't believe.

I'm doing all the walkways outside; I'm doing it properly. But it's a much bigger job. But you see it's happening now. It's going to be beautiful; it's going to be waterproof; it's going to be reflecting again. I took over a dirty, filthy thing that wasn't open and it was disgusting. And friends of mine would come to the Lincoln or Washington and they'd say, sir, it's disgusting.

I said what's disgusting? The reflecting lake. So, I drove down, I looked -- where Secretary Burger was fantastic, on Interior he's fantastic and we got together and we have -- it's under construction right now. I want to get it open before July 4, which we'll easily be able to do. It will be open before that.

But easily be able to do, July 4 being a very special day. And it is going to be beautiful, beautiful blue color, dark blue color. It's very reflective. I put a thing out yesterday showing the reflection. We did a little test, we wanted to see it, it's unbelievable. It's like a mirror.

[Inaudible]

It's like a mirror, it's beautiful.

And I saw there were guys out there, almost like -- are they hand painting it? Is that how they're doing it?

Yeah, well, they're fixing the stone outside and they're sandblasting the stone. We're doing a much bigger job than we wanted to do. But think of it -- Obama and Biden spent over $100 million and, you know what they got? Nothing. They opened it up and it leaked like a sieve, and they closed it and it stayed closed.

They've been working on it for years. I've been working on this for a couple of months. When it's finished it's going to be incredible. But we have other fountains, beautiful fountains. They haven't worked in 30 years; they're just sitting there rotting. And most of them are now open. And right across the street, I made a donation and I'm building Lafayette Park.

And it's going to be beautiful.

[Inaudible]

About $10 million.

Are you happy with the [Inaudible]

Well, I put up the America flag.

No, the American [Inaudible]

I think so. I mean, I'll let you know. I wanted a lighter color blue. The person that really knows this stuff said, no, dark is much better. You don't see the leaves and you don't -- you know, things will get in there. But most importantly, the dark reflects much better.

Mr. President, can we ask you -- [Inaudible] do desperately that MAGA is divided?

Well, I think it's the strongest it's ever been. You take a look at what happened in Louisiana two nights ago when a certain senator was very disloyal to me and to the Republican party. He's not even allowed to run for office. We have another big race; this guy Massie is terrible. Let's see what happens.

It's not easy beating incumbents, but we have a great guy running against Massie. Massie is a terrible Congressman -- I think the worst Congressman the Republican party has ever had. That'll be tonight; that'll be good television and we'll see what happens there. But I think MAGA has never been more together actually.

And I'm going to be making an endorsement today in Texas. I'm going to be putting out an endorsement in a little while in Texas, a great state. You know, I won Texas all six times, meaning primaries, the race, and I got the highest vote in the history of Texas. And I love Texas, but I'm going to be making an endorsement at about 12:30-1:00 today for the big race, the senate race in Texas and I hope you find it good.

I do think -- I mean, I appreciate the question because, even CNN, they did a poll two or three weeks ago. They said Trump is at 100 percent. That's Harry Enten. I like Harry Enten, got a lot of energy, I like him. But he did a poll, and he's a good pro, and he gives the good and the bad. But I think he's an honorable guy because he's done a lot of good.

You know, he predicted I was going to do great with the Muslims in Michigan, and win Michigan, and I did. I did good and I won Michigan by a lot. He made a lot of good predictions. But he did a poll two weeks ago that said Trump is -- I mean, this is up, you can check, 100 percent popularity with MAGA. MAGA is most of the Republican party.

The RINOs are gone to a large extent. A few of them are still left, so hopefully we get rid of one tonight in the form of Tom Massie who's horrible. But no, it's been busy. But I'll be making a statement in a little while as to who I'm endorsing in Texas for the senate. And there are those who say whoever I endorse is going to win.

I don't know if that's true, but historically that's absolutely true, I just don't like to say because I don't like to brag.

[Crosstalk]

Make up your mind, I mean, like --

Well, I've had my mind made up for a long time. But I just think it's going to be -- I just think it's appropriate.

[Crosstalk]

Word is that President Xi told you during your meeting that perhaps Russian President Vladimir Putin would come to regret invading Ukraine. Did he say that to you?

No, he didn't. No, he never said that.

Your ballroom is a gift to the country.

It's a gift. It's a gift from me and from incredible successful companies and patriots. And they put up close to $400 million. And you see what's happening and it's beautiful. And again, it's ahead of schedule, unlike the fed building. This building at $400 million, the fed building at $4 billion and it's a tiny little [Inaudible] comparison.

You've spent a lot of time renovating the White House [Inaudible]

I do. Putting up the American flag, that flagpole, on each side.

Why was this [Inaudible] part of your legacy [Inaudible]

Well, this is the most important because, number one, security. And number two, it was so needed just on a social basis for presidents. And again, I'll be here for a very short period of time. When this opens, I'll be here for a very short period of time. This is really being built for other presidents, it's not being built for me. And I'm a really good builder.

The thing I do best in life is build; I'm a great builder and I build beautiful product. There will never be anything like this. I always admired the façade of the Supreme Court. I said I wonder if that can be duplicated or better -- even not to say better -- but even better, and we've actually bettered it. What we're doing is something that will -- you'll never see it again.

Mr. President, one more on Iran, if I may. When you were having your discussions with the regional partners, the regional leaders, did they express to you any concern about Iran's ability to still retaliate in the event of a US attack?

Sure. They have a little ability. Their missiles are 82 percent gone, we estimate. Their capacity to build is very little right now because we hit all of their manufacturing areas. Same thing with drones, they're largely gone but they still have a little capacity, yeah. Not much but they have a little. Their Navy is completely gone; their Air Force is completely gone.

President Xi has promised me that he's not sending any weapons to Iran. That's a beautiful promise. I take him at his word. I appreciated it. We had an amazing time in China. Look, we got along very well before this. But President Xi and I had really an amazing time. I think he'd say the same thing. But he promised that he's not sending any weapons.

And you know, if you think about it, he gets 40 percent of his oil, he's not sending oil boats in, tankers in with 20 destroyers alongside it. No, he wants -- he does want it open. Like me, I want it open. And we'll get it open. But Iran has used the straits as a military weapon for 47 years, really much more than that.

And that's not their strait, that's international waterways. That's not for them to do. And look, they've learned their lesson. If I left today, it would take them 25 years to rebuild. But we're not leaving; we're going to do it right so that in five years, 10 years, if you have a bad president who doesn't want to do what's right to do, this should have been done by Obama, it should have been done by Biden, it should have been done by other presidents long before me. And everybody agrees to that.

There I'd do it.

Mr. President, [Inaudible] the federal gas tax. Are there other initiatives that you're [Inaudible].

Well, there may be, it's very temporary, yeah. Yeah, there may be. Anything to keep it down. Look, as soon as this war is over, gas is going -- you know, I had gasoline down to $1.85 in Iowa. I was in Iowa and the stations had it at $1.85. But I was down to, in many cases, less than $2.00 a barrel -- a gallon.

And then I said to myself, this is great, we just hit a new high in the stock market, everything is going good. I'm sorry, but we have to go down and take a little journey down to -- we have to do something. We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon. You want to see the world explode? You want to see a problem?

And this is peanuts. And I appreciate everybody putting up with it for a little while, it won't be much longer. But you're going to have -- and frankly, there is so much oil out there. One of the things that is happening is these big ships are coming up to Texas, Louisiana and Alaska and they're loading up. But I don't even think about that.

What I think about is you can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and they won't have a nuclear weapon and they fully understand it.

Mr. President, I wanted to ask you how to get people to buy in America. And this was some time ago; this was during your first term. And you told me [Inaudible] success. Based on that, why do you continue to do what you do knowing that some people are criticizing, but at the same time [Inaudible]

Well, you have some people disagreeing with like the Iran thing. To me it's no question. To me you have to have borders, you have to have walls, and you have to let people in legally, but you have to have borders. Some people think you don't have borders, you should let anybody -- murderers, drug dealers -- you should let them in. So, there are some -- but I said to you once, I remember it, the greatest healer of our country, when we had -- just before COVID we were so successful.

You know, we had the best economy we've ever had in my first term. This term is going to blow it away, I think. And you see all the numbers. Even during the war, we have the highest stock market we've ever had. I thought the market would go down 25 percent. And I was OK with that to get rid of a nuclear potential holocaust.

It would've been a nuclear holocaust. So, going down 25 percent is OK if you're going to get rid of a nuclear holocaust. So, most people agree with me. When I'm with people and they say, oh, get, why do -- and I'd say here's the problem. Is it OK for Iran? And they are very volatile people, I'm being nice.

Is it OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon? Everybody says no. I said, then we have nothing further to discuss. It's like one of those things. And they will never have a nuclear weapon, not going to happen. And probably that's going to be very soon. So, one way or the other, whether it's military or an agreement, that will start opening up very soon.

Mr. President, why did you wait so long to [Inaudible] the subject has now -- both of their names are going to be on the ballot.

No, I'm waiting -- I've pretty much always known who I was going to endorse. I just thought this was a good time. You know, the voting started and I thought this was a good time. I'm going to be doing that very shortly.

[Crosstalk]

Have you put any thought into potentially endorsing someone running against JB Pritzker, like Darren Bailey. JB Pritzker is a slob of a governor. You know, he could call me and I'd send the National Guard in. Chicago would have no crime. Look at Washington, DC. Did you see the crime stats are down to like nothing.

People go to restaurants now, a new restaurant. Restaurants were all being closed in Washington; now they're building new restaurants and it's a hot city. We've got a beautiful city. We have very little crime, almost no crime, and we could have the same thing in Chicago. All he'd have to do is say, president, I don't want to have any crime in Chicago, can you help me out?

In three months, Chicago would be a different place. Is the [Inaudible]

What can I say? He's so bad. He's so bad.

Mr. President, you're going to -- You talk about making healthcare more affordable. You've done that and you made a major announcement yesterday --

A big announcement and got no coverage. I reduced drug prices by 50, 60, 70, 80 percent and it gets no coverage. I think it's maybe, other than medical itself, like a cure. I think it's the biggest thing to happen in healthcare ever maybe. I brought the prices -- we paid the highest price in the world. Now we're paying -- as of now, we're paying the lowest price in the world.

Prices of drugs have gone down 70, 80, 90 percent. For 28 years they never went down. In my administration I got it down one-eighth of one percent, and I thought it was great. The first time -- the only time in 28 years that it went down. Now I've got them down 50, 60, 70 and even 80 percent. And that has a huge impact on healthcare.

Listen, go have breakfast, have a good time. Have breakfast, enjoy your site, you can shoot down there, but the next time you come here those columns will be standing even taller.

How long did it take to design the underneath [Inaudible]

Actually, the underneath part is a good question; it's far more complex than the upper. What you don't see are the floors underneath here and they are very, very important rooms down there, the most important. And this was the one opportunity for the military to do something. You know, they came -- normally I'd build a ballroom on flat land; I wouldn't have any of this.

It would have been built very fast; I'm a very fast builder. We're way ahead of schedule here, but we went down six stories. So, it's actually far more complex than what -- the easy part is up. But again, we have a drone proof roof, we have all -- it's all sealed. And all of this that you see is totally sealed.

And we use it as a drone port. We can have unlimited drones up there and drones are what's happening right now. Thank you all very much. Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

What do you have for us? What are we served?

Right over here.