Hello everybody. We have a long flight today. But we're going for a good reason. Do you have any questions?
What do you hope Steve Witkoff will get out of his meeting with Putin today?
He'll be calling me. They just left the meeting. I haven't been briefed yet. But, he had -- I hear, a pretty good meeting.
Any update on Secretary Hegseth, your confidence in him?
About what?
With Signal, having Signal on --
I don't view Signal as --
On his work computer, what do you think?
I don't view Signal as important. I think it's fake news, really. I don't view it as important.
You said you were going to be meeting with some leaders while you were in Rome attending the Pope's funeral, who were you --
I'm going to be meeting with some people in Rome, yes.
Who are you meeting with?
And a little bit quickly, and frankly it's a little disrespectful to have meetings when you're at the funeral of a pope, they say. So, but I'll be talking to people, I'll be seeing a lot of people.
With Zelenskyy, sir?
Including the -- yes -- including the prime minister of Italy. Very, very good prime minister.
President Biden, any plans to talk with him, he's going to be there?
Oh he is? I didn't know. I mean, it's not high on my list. It's really not.
Sir, can I ask you about this judge in Wisconsin who was arrested because of immigration issues. What's going on with the case there?
That's a terrible thing, the judge was arrested because he was housing a Tren de Aragua, right? Is that the one you're talking about?
Yeah.
It's pretty surprising. It's terrible.
Mr. President, you said that you've spoken to President Xi multiple times. Is that since taking office, sir?
I don't want to discuss that. But I'm speaking to a lot of people from China, but I'm speaking to people from all over the world, on the tariffs, and we're making very good deals, very good deals, we're going to make our country rich, we're not going to be ripped off like we have been for the last, literally, 50 years.
Mr. President, there was a car bomb in Moscow this morning that killed a Russian general. Do you have any reaction to that?
Who killed what?
Russian general killed by a car bomb.
Well, well, you're just telling me that for the first time. Where did this take place?
It took place in Moscow. It was a Russian general.
That's hitting close to home, right? That's a big one, yeah. I'll look at it. If I hear anything I'll let you --
When you see these leaders in Rome, it's more like mix and mingle at the funeral right? Or do you have any individual one on ones?
It's a little tough because we don't have much time and we're arriving at about 11:30, and we have some people meeting us already and then I'm taking pictures with the military tonight, when we get to the house at 12 o'clock, the embassy, so we don't really have much time. As you know tomorrow morning we're leaving early.
I think that we're going to try and see a couple of people that are important to what we're doing.
Why did you feel it was important to go to the pope's funeral?
I just thought it was out of respect. You know, I won the Catholic vote. And I think it's the first time that ever happened for a Republican, won the vote, but, and I won it by a lot. And, I have great relationship to the Catholics. Very simple. But I won the Catholic vote. We got 56 percent of the vote.
I don't know why we didn't get more, honestly. But we did well with the Catholic vote, and our relationship is very good so therefore I think it's appropriate.
Secretary Bessent said that you wouldn't drop tariffs on China unilaterally, that you would need to see some kind of movement. What do you want to see from China?
Yeah, no, he's right about that. Well, I'm not going to drop them unless they give us something that's, you know, substantial otherwise I'm not going to drop them. It'll all work out. Those things always work out. You know, we're working on a lot of projects right now. The wall is solved. The border is the most secure it's ever been.
We're having a very hard time with judges because they don't want people to be moved out of the country. Shockingly, nobody's ever had this before, no other president, there's never been a time when this has ever become an issue where they talk about due process when you have millions of people that you're moving out that are really bad people, very dangerous people, and you have a judge who wants every single one of them to have a trial.
So they want us to have millions of trials, therefore. And how long does a trial take, weeks? A trial can take weeks. It's -- that's not what it's about. That's not what our country is about. And that's not what I got elected on. And these are judges that just want to, you know, show how big and important they are.
They're local, federal judges. And they shouldn't be allowed to do it. You know, we have hundreds of thousands of people that we want to get out of the country and the courts are holding us back. Some judge that nobody ever heard of is holding us back. It's very dangerous for our country. I mean, you want to see a country that'll have crime?
Let that happen because it's really dangerous for our country and I can't believe the Supreme Court would let that stand.
What kind of movement do you consider substantial from China?
Well, free up China. You know. Let us go in and work China because frankly, that's what we wanted last time. We almost got it and then they backed out of that deal. But we had it, to go into China and to sell our product, sell our wares, in other words, it's called, to open China, that would be great, that would be a big win, but I'm not sure I'm even going to ask for it because they don't want it open.
They don't want it open. Big thing on the tariffs. But because of tariffs, I can possibly get that. What do you think? Opening up China would be a big win, right? The problem is no matter how big the win is, the press will not give me credit for it. If I got the greatest win in history -- if I got -- they'll pass trillions and trillions of dollars, they'll give us anything we want, the press will say, "Trump, he just had a terrible defeat, he suffered a terrible defeat." But, the people know.
No, I think we're going to have a lot of big wins. I don't know if it's going to be covered that way by the fake news, but, the wins are going to be very substantial. You know, we're losing, we were losing, with Biden, $5 billion a day, think of it. $5 billion a day. I've got that number way down and soon it's going to be very very positive.
We're gonna make -- we'll be making $5 billion a day. But we have a little ways to go yet.
Mr. President, can I ask you about the Texas Senate primary? The Texas Senate primary with John Cornyn and Ken Paxton? Are you going to get involved? Have you talked to the candidates?
Well, they're both friends of mine, I like them both. In a way, I wish they weren't running against each other. But I like Paxton. I like Cornyn. They're both good people. So, I'll make a decision at some point along the road but you have two very good men.
I have a question on your immigration agenda. Yesterday, a judge in San Francisco put a nationwide injunction on you guys taking money away from sanctuary cities. Your reaction to that, and then I have a question about the markets.
Well, it's unbelievable when you hear a judge in San Francisco or a judge in San Diego does nationwide injunctions, having to do with the whole country. Sitting behind the bench, the local bench, even though in some cases, in many cases, they're a federal judge. But a judge can close down -- we should close down sanctuary cities, we shouldn't have sanctuary cities.
And we'll see how that turns out. Sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals. That's what they are. They're sanctuary for criminals, they protect criminals. And we should close them down. If we want a safe country, you have to get rid of sanctuary cities.
Mr. President, on India and Pakistan, there are tensions after the attack in Kashmir. Do you have any message for them? Have you been talking to their leaders?
Well, I'm very close to India and I'm very close to Pakistan, as you know. They've had that fight for 1,000 years in Kashmir. Kashmir's been going on for 1,000 years, probably longer than that. And, it was a bad one yesterday, that was a bad one, over 30 people.
Are you concerned that there's now tensions on the border between them? How concerned are you about that? Well, there have been tensions on that border for 1,500 years. So, you know. The same as it's been. But they'll get it figured out one way or the other. I'm sure of that. I know both leaders. There's great tension between Pakistan and India but there always has been.
So, you've done the one 90-day pause on some of the tariffs. Is it possible you'll do have to do another 90 days, or another extension?
Probably unlikely. I figure no, pretty much. We'll have deals made, but we'll also make deals. In other words, we'll just set the tariff, and it'll be reasonable, very reasonable. And that'll be the end of the deal, is when we set the price. They want to come in, now they set the price for their country, but everybody wants to come into ours.
They don't want to come into -- most people don't want us to come into theirs.
Do you think the markets are adjusting to your tariff policy? I think so, when you look at what's happening, I think so. I said there'd be a transition. People haven't understood it. Now they're starting to understand it. Look, think of it this way, we've lost billions of dollars a day for years on trade.
Billions. Not going to happen. We're going to make billions of dollars. Because that's not sustainable.
Mr. President, can you commit that nobody on your financial team was giving any type of tips to Wall Street executives about deals with India? There was some reporting yesterday that people had heads up on Wall Street possibly to make money. Can you commit that that did not happen?
I can commit to myself. That's all that I can commit. You know, I have thousands of people that work for me but I can't imagine anybody doing that.
And if they did?
I have very honorable people, that I can say, so I can't even imagine it. No, I haven't even heard that, actually.
Sir, there have been some concerns about access to food, medicine coming into Gaza. When you spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu the other day, did that come up at all, about access to humanitarian aid going into the strip?
No, but Gaza came up. And I said, "We've got to be good to Gaza. Those people are suffering. We've got to be good to Gaza. We've got to take care of them." There's a very big need for medicine, food and medicine. And we're taking care of them.
In terms of like opening up more access points or --
We're pushing people very hard.
Pushing the Israelis?
We are.
To open up more access points?
Very hard. To get food and medicine into Gaza.
How did the prime minister respond to that?
Well. He felt well about it.
You've got these Iran technical talks tomorrow --
The Iran situation is coming out very well. We've had a lot of talks with them. And I think we're going to have a deal -- I'd much rather have a deal than the other alternative. That would be good for humanity.
Would it start with an interim deal of some sort?
I think it's going to be pretty much, we're going to do lots of long term -- it's a very simple deal. One thing, they just can't have a nuclear weapon. I'm saving them a lot of money just on that. Having a nuclear weapon is really expensive but it's also very dangerous. And they can't have a nuclear weapon.
Just that, I'm saving them billions of billions of dollars because that's what it would cost. Now, that being said, the Iran deal is coming along very well. We're dealing at the highest levels of Iran and I think they want to make a deal and we want to make a deal. There's some people that want to make a different kind of a deal, a much nastier deal.
And I don't want that to happen to Iran if we can avoid it. Thank you very much, everybody.
What's on tap for Melania's birthday?
Oh, she's going to have a great birthday. She's got a working birthday. She's up front. I should send her back. You want to have somebody answer questions? I'll send her back into the lion's pit. Susie, let's send Melania back to the lion's pit. That's funny. By the way, they would love that, wouldn't they?
Can we see your office up there sometime? Yeah, you can come up. We'll let them come up later, okay? We'll do it. Maybe going back.
Are you taking Mrs. Trump to dinner, or have you had time to get her a president? You've been very busy.
I'll take her for dinner on the Boeing. I'll take her for dinner on Air Force One. I haven't had much time to buy presents, no. We've been pretty busy. But it's working out, things are working out very well. People are starting to understand how good tariffs are, for us. You know, tariffs have been used against us for 50 years.
Now -- I never understood it as a private person, why we allowed that to happen. You know, it goes back a long time. But I never understood it. Why did we allow that to happen? Where we couldn't go into China, but they could come here. We couldn't go into Europe, but they can come here. So many. Every place.
We couldn't go into India, they could come here. I never understood why they allowed that. And I don't blame the countries, I blame the presidents for allowing it to happen. But you have a different kind of a president now, so, thank you very much.
Thank you.