Press Gaggle: Donald Trump Speaks to Reporters After Air Force One Arrival - October 1, 2026

Thank you very much, everybody. We just landed in Texas, which we won by massive numbers three times, and we have a lot of great people with me. I think you recognize all of them, otherwise you weren't doing this for too long a period. James Lankford, you know, Senator, you know, Senator Cruz, and we have some of the best Congressmen on the planet here, so we appreciate. You have any questions?

What's your economic message today? I know yesterday you said sometimes you don't get that message --

Well, that's true. We have to get the message, because we have the best numbers of any President in history. The one thing we don't do, you know, we don't get a fair shake from the media. If they'd report them, they just don't report the numbers. So we were just talking about it and said, we're watching one of the stations and they're announcing the best numbers ever, lowest poverty numbers, best poverty numbers.

Nobody's ever seen anything like it. The best individual numbers that anybody's ever seen. The best. Uh, the highest stock market, 81 times now, in a short period of time. The best stock, the best 401-Ks. Everything, nobody could compete. And maybe most of all, $21 trillion be invested factories being built all over the United States.

There's never been anything like it, but the press doesn't report it. Yeah.

[Inaudible] you were asking for a European country to release some of their diesel stock to try to bring prices down at all.

Well, we may do that. They have some diesel, but the prices are coming down. All prices are coming down. So we inherited the worst numbers ever from the Democrats and we're bringing them way down. Inflation is very little problem right now. The one thing we have is oil is a little high, but oil is much lower than it was for Biden.

And we did something that Biden didn't do. Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. So we did that and Biden, unfortunately, and many other presidents decided not to do that.

Mr. President, diesel prices have indeed started to trend downward even from last week. How do you plan to underscore the message of the growth that we've seen this term in your in your remarks today? And yeah.

The question is -- I wish more people would ask that question. We have great numbers we're doing a great job of management. We're ending -- Iran will very soon be ending one way or the other. It'll either just say, look, they have 301 percent inflation. They have no money, they have no currency. Their military has been defeated, their navy is gone, their air force is gone, everything's gone.

And, uh, one way or the other, it's going to end very quickly. And when that ends, oil prices are going to drop like a rock.

[Inaudible] confirm that Iran was involved in the RAF Fairford failed terror plot? How will you respond?

I can't say that with confirmation, but it's looking like that. Yeah. I mean, today we're here for a Peterbilt. It's a big, great company. And they're building a massive plant and we're cutting a ribbon of sorts and it's an honor. And then we're going to Oklahoma with James. I don't know if other people are coming from Texas, maybe not.

[Inaudible]

What do you hope to accomplish in Oklahoma today?

Just a speech. We're going to give a speech on how well we're doing. They know it. I just watched, they have a line that goes two miles long trying to get in, in bad weather, actually, pretty bad weather. And the people are just, they're great. They're great. They are they are just saying nobody's done a job like we've done there's never been a job done, like we're done, but we haven't gotten the word out.

So I say we've done a bad public relations job, but a great management job and that's more important.

[Inaudible] Oklahoma, 77 -- 77 counties, you won all of those counties in Oklahoma, all of them.

I think I should move there. But I'll never challenge James, I promise. I've already endorsed him, so I can't. Can you endorse somebody and then run against?

Mr. President, you've been critical of CNN and other media outlets for their coverage. What do you feel about those who feel like you're doing too much with your executive power? You're using it too much to go after political opponents against the media and things, like that.

I don't think I've used it at all, at all. If you look at Obama, what he did was far worse. He -- he'd go and use his executive powers at a much level. For instance, when he had leaks, they would arrest the people that the reporters, unless they gave them the names and the addresses of the reporter or whoever it is that gave the leak.

Obama used to go in and if there was a leak, they would say to people, you have 15 minutes, and if you don't give us the information, you're going to jail. And I guess two people went to jail, 10 people gave it up. I haven't done that yet.

Mr. President, what's your message to campaign predictors that the House is a foregone conclusion and that the Republicans will lose?

Well, I don't know. They say so but, you know, they didn't know I was going to go campaigning all over the country and I am. And we have great people. We have some of the greatest Congressmen. This man is one of the bravest men you'll ever meet. He happened to be at the shooting. He happened to be, unfortunately, that day, practicing for the baseball game that they ended up winning but he was there in that field, which was a hell of a -- with great bravery, by the way.

And I'm not surprised. No, we have great -- these are representative of our people in Congress. They're world-class people. We have a very deep bench in every way. Yeah.

After the [Inaudible] execution last night in Tennessee, are you going to be pushing for any changes for capital punishment?

Well, that was an interesting situation. But you're going to have to speak to Tennessee about it. Whether or not they're going to go forward -- you know what that was about, that was an execution where the medication didn't exactly work. He would answer it better than anybody. How does that happen? He's a great doctor.

It shouldn't be very difficult, right?

[Inaudible]

They still do. I think they support -- the Latino voters, I think all the voters, I think if I ran today, I'd win by 25 percent.

[Inaudible]

Well, you know, the immigration but we have to do what we have to do. We're getting murderers, drug dealers, rapists, people that have been really bad people for a long period of time, people with terrible records, people that came out of prisons. That's our first priority. We're getting them out we're getting them out fast and we're getting them out, you see, in record numbers.

You're visiting some red states. Why the red states of Oklahoma, Texas? Are you going to go to battleground --

You know what, we talked about it on the plane. Oklahoma, I'm going there out of respect. I haven't been there in a while. They've given me a record vote all three times. Nobody's ever done all 77 counties, I did it three times. And I'm really doing it to say thank you. I'm doing some -- Alabama, the same thing.

I have many states, Texas. I mean, I won Texas by a lot. Now, Texas, I guess we have a race. We shouldn't have a race because, frankly, Ken is -- Ken was a great attorney general and he is a great attorney general. And the other guy is -- he's a freak, in my opinion. He's a -- he's a total freak. And you know what, the country can't have a negative vote like that.

Whether they like him or don't like him, if you like Texas and if you love -- if you love your country, you can't give a vote to this mass body of people because bad things are going to happen to our country. Look at the borders in Texas, they had open borders, they went through hell. I came along, they were closed in 60 days.

So we just had our 17th month where zero people came in, hard to believe, actually. Over a period of 17 months, we had zero illegal aliens coming in. Please.

Mr. President, how deleterious will the Democrats be to [Inaudible]

I think if the Democrats get in, we will end up in a financial depression. We will go into a depression the likes of which we've never seen before. It'll be 1929. That's my opinion. They're grossly incompetent. They have no idea what they're doing. Thank you very much, everybody. Say hello [Inaudible] you owe that guy a lot.

How is he doing, OK? [Inaudible]