Do that, but that's great. Nice to see you all. Got it?
Hold on.
Come on over here, fellas, Dough, Jared. Come on over. Well, I just want to thank everybody for being here. This has been a structure the likes of which has never been seen anywhere, actually. The most incredible part nobody will understand that, but is what's underneath it, that's probably by far the most difficult.
This is the easy part. This is the part that people see, but what's underground, they don't see. But that's the most difficult part and we did it in record time. We're ahead of schedule. We're under budget. The whole thing is a miracle, and it's all because of you. I say to the media, these are all our construction people.
We had over five -- we have over 500 people in the room and this will be the ballroom. Right here is the ballroom. Over here, you're going to have magnificent columns on this side, outside, exterior columns. It's very much like the Supreme Court. They're actually taller and they're even more magnificent.
They're fabricated now. They're being carved out of beautiful limestone, and they'll be Corinthian, the Corinthian design, which is considered the -- the creme de la crme, and they'll be up -- well, when will they be coming, do you think? When? Next week? Oh, you're going to start next -- whoa, that's good.
That's way ahead, huh? That's good. You're doing good. Thank you. Thank you, Bo. How's Bo? Has he done a good job? And for the media, you can see the -- that'll be essentially a glass, beautiful glass tube coming into the ballroom right from the east side of the White House using the current ballroom, which is a tiny room.
It holds like 90 people. Using the current room for cocktails, etc., etc. So you'll have tremendous, uh, it's just a tremendous structure. It's a structure the likes of which has never been done. The ceilings are over 50 feet high. That's like a five story building. And I don't think there's any ballroom -- I doubt there's a ballroom in the country with 50 foot ceiling.
And you'll be able to have dinners for as many people as you want. We had King Charles here, and we could -- we were very restricted. He asked -- he said, could we have about 350 of our people? I said, we don't hold 350, we hold about 98. So having 350 is a little tough. But we had President Xi of China, and he left two weeks ago, and he was amazed when he looked at the structure.
He studied it with us. And he also found the helipad, done by you guys also indirectly, but the helipad has been amazing. People are -- it's a great thing of beauty and when you fly over the White House and you see it -- in fact, it's so good, I never even got sued, because normally I get sued, don't build it, don't build it. You know, they sue me all the time.
And then we're doing the arc, the beautiful, like the arc de Triomphe, but better, more beautiful, actually, much more beautiful. And as you know, we're doing the National Garden of American Heroes, which will be something beautiful. And we're upgrading the trash island. You know what Trash Island is, it's the golf course.
They have a -- a terrible golf course. We have a problem with the judge. She wants it to stay a terrible golf course, but I don't think that will be allowed to happen. And that'll be world -- we'll have US Opens. It's open to the public. It'll be open to the public. It'll be beautiful. And essentially, we've beautified Washington, DC. We had 83 monuments, statues, etc., right, Doug, 83? We just opened up the reflecting pool two days ago, and it's magnificent.
First time in -- well, let's see, it opened in 1922 and it never worked, never worked. It always leaked, but now it's not leaking. We had vandals that did a lot of damage, actually, real, real scum. But it's now open and it looks beautiful and it's going to be with us a long time. But we did a total of 83 monuments and statues and fountains.
Many had graffiti in them for 50 years. Uh, for the most part, I would say, Doug, maybe none of them worked in all of Washington. And we beautified it. We've got rid of the homeless encampments, where they took over all your parks. And we're in the process of redoing all of the grass, brand-new grass, everything.
And so it will be graffiti -- you see that building right over there, it had graffiti all over it. It was a disgrace. We got rid of it. It was not easy to do. You know, when you have limestone especially, it sort of sinks in a little bit, Bo. Not good, right? When you have limestone, when you have granite, it's a lot easier, but -- but so this is a special structure.
Uh, it's going to be, uh, not only one of the biggest, but it'll be the most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere in the world, and they've been trying to get it for 150 years. And for the media, these are the people that built it. This is about 525 people. And they -- they really worked hard, steelworkers, the steel is just almost being finished.
As I understand it, this will be the last piece of steel. Everybody in the room signed it, all of the workers, not just the steelworkers, the -- the plumbers, the electricians, the painters, everybody signed it and I'm going to be the last to sign it. And I'm going to have Doug sign it and Jared, did you sign it? Yeah.
And I want to thank -- you've done a fantastic job. Well, let's get it finished first, OK? But right now we're ahead of schedule, under budget, and it's moving very nicely. Everything should happen like that. You know, the Federal Reserve building is an example, is out of control. I didn't do it, but it's a shame, what's going on, you know, with the waste and the fraud and the stupidity.
But they're over $3 billion for a small building, $3 billion, and, uh, but this doesn't have those problems. It has none of it. What happens at the Federal Reserve is a disgrace with it, and then they tell you about interest rates, right? They can't build a simple building. They renovate. They can't renovate a building, but they tell you about interest rates.
And -- and, uh, they tell you wrong, unfortunately. But I want to thank everybody. You're special people. I grew up with you. You know, every one of you, I grew up with you, maybe in a different form, maybe genetically, maybe it was your father's or your mothers. But I grew up in construction sites, and, uh, a lot of your families are doing this for a long time, and you're the best in the business.
I heard in doing the beams, you know, these beams are among the heaviest beams ever set. And Bo was telling me, we're talking about it, if you look at that roof, that roof could actually hold helicopters on it, as big as the yard. Where as normally, as you know, I say this for the media, uh, a helicopter would touch that roof, would come right through the ceiling.
That can -- you could put as many helicopters as you want on the roof. That's a very powerful ceiling. It's drone-proof, it's missile-proof, it's bulletproof. The side walls, the glass is bulletproof, and drone-proof. There's no drone can pierce it, there's no bullet can pierce it, no matter how big the glass, when you see it, you'll see it coming it's starting to come now.
It's this thick. And yet it's perfect vision. It's hard to believe you can do that. So it's heavy bulletproof glass. It's also drought proof and small missile, if you can believe it, small missile. And what happens is you can take a look at it, put it in front of your face, and you can see through it just like I'm seeing you right now.
It's pretty amazing. Amazing stuff, the technology they have today. So you have, um, the ceilings are drone-proof, missile-proof, bulletproof. The -- the floor is very thick and all from underneath is totally, uh, designed in such a way, it's the safest -- this is the safest place in Washington. When -- when we're having a dinner, this will be the safest place.
So you can have world leaders, you can have your president sitting here. They've been wanting, uh, a much bigger space, a much better space than they've had for 150 years, presidents, you've heard me say it. What they never intended was getting something like this. This is going to be very safe. You can just sit here and let -- let people do whatever they want.
You're -- nothing's going to happen. This is the most -- most powerful building, structurally, the most powerful building they say ever built and it was designed that way, so the president can have safety. And he's having the president of China or Russia or any place else, when they're having dinner, when they have 2,000 guests, 2,500 guests, they're totally safe.
They -- it's impervious. So I just want to tell you that what you've done is amazing. What you're -- what you're building, you're almost -- we're going to be finished pretty soon, but the hard part is done. And the one thing that I'm most fascinated with is what they've done underneath because what -- you know, this goes down five stories.
It's five stories underneath. And the military came to me and they said, sir, we've never had this opportunity at the White House, because it's fragile and going underneath the building would have been possible. We did -- we did everything they wanted and it's something. This -- they said that's been their dream for 50 years.
It's been the dream of presidents to have a ballroom for 150 years. So, we have everything. And on top, and you'll start to see it, we're building a -- it's a drone port. It holds as many drones as you want, can hold over 100 drones at the maximum size, too.
The weight -- weight is no problem, and you see that when you see the power of the structure, when you look at steel. Normally that would just be light steel; you see it a lot when they build a plant where it's very light steel, you can barely walk on it, it's dangerous. It's just -- it's called a rain roof.
This is a roof that's a structural roof and rarely done because the span is so long that it's very hard to do structurally. We ordered the marble for the floor. The marble is a really magnificent marble. It's a cut, it's a vein that people have been after for 50 years. And the owner of the quarry didn't want to sell it, but he liked me, and he also was so honored to be doing it for the country, for the White House.
And the marble floor, you'll see it, is the most beautiful marble you'll ever see. It's a special vein. This is a vein that everybody wanted for a long time and I got it and I got it for the floor of the ballroom at the White House. And it's going to be beautiful; the walls are going to be very -- you'll see a lot of glass, a lot of you will be looking at the Treasury building, which is right there.
You'll be looking at the front of the White House. And you see, if you look back there, you're looking at the other side of the White House; you have north and south. And the kitchen is underneath because I put the kitchen on top -- and we have large staircases coming from the kitchen. If I put the kitchen on top, you would lose three walls because the kitchen takes about 30 percent of the space.
So, the kitchen is all this space that you have right underneath, and it's going to be top of the line. So, there has never been anything built like this and it's for the country and it's free. You got it free of charge, thank you very much. And some great patriots have devoted a lot of money, given a lot of money to get it built.
And so, we didn't use taxpayers' money to build this ballroom. And it's going to be -- when it's completed, it'll be the best anywhere in the world. You know, when I was in China, we went to the Great Hall, it's called the Great Hall of China and it's, you know, it's incredible. But this is actually larger.
This is larger and it will be -- it'll be the most magnificent. When you see what we're doing between the marbles and the bronzes and all of the different things that we're doing, top of the line, great architects, our top architects. And we have another man that's worked with me for a long time together.
And we -- we're the ones that not only cleaned up Washington in terms of graffiti and opened up, you know, the statues and the fountains and fixed everything up and made it beautiful and everybody's talking about it. But a man that helped us a lot with crime because crime is almost nonexistent now in Washington.
We went from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to one of the safest cities in the country. And people, all day long, the White House I walk in, the people that work there, thank you, sir, thank you, thank you. So, we have a White House where people can walk to work. When I first came in two years ago, my first term was -- it was different, it wasn't -- you didn't have the kind of crime, it developed during the Biden administration.
It may have had to do with COVID, nobody knows exactly, but it was a killing field, Washington, DC. And we worked together with experts, and we brought in the National Guard, which -- who were fantastic and we worked with Washington police. And we have now one of the safest cities anywhere -- anywhere in the world, but anywhere, certainly, in the country.
And again, this was a place where a young man would leave Iowa, come to see the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, Jefferson, come to see whatever, come to see the White House. And they'd call up the parents, I'm sorry, but your son has been killed. And they send the son home in a casket or the daughter in a casket.
Three a week, we're losing three people a week, three murders a week by savages. And we moved them out; we moved over 5,000 people out of Washington, DC. They came in through the open borders, and they came in viciously and violently. And we had a lot of problems with Democrats because they wanted to protect killers.
I mean, I don't understand it, but who does? Who does? Makes no sense. But we got them out of here, we moved them back. Some were so violent, some killed many people that we didn't want to send them even back to their country. We hate to take the cost of having them in jail for the next 50 years, but we didn't want to take a chance that they'd be able to come back.
And, you know, speaking of being able to come back, for the last 17 months, zero illegal migrants have been allowed into our country, zero, which is something that nobody thought was possible. So, we're very happy about that; we're very happy about Washington, DC, people are coming to Washington. All the restaurants were closing because of crime, and now all the restaurants, you can't -- if you're a restauranteur, you can't get a space, you can't get a space.
And people are dining and they're having a good time and they have a safe -- it's the capital. It's the capital of our country, we have to make it beautiful, and we have to make it safe. And this will be down, this building, when it's completed, will be one of the great -- one of the great buildings in Washington, DC, and they'll understand that.
Most people understand it just -- this whole magnificent space will be a very important space in the future life of our country. So, with that, I'd like to have the Secretary of the Interior, a great man, a great success, a fantastic governor for eight years in North Dakota, a very successful businessman.
And he's done a really great job running Interior and thank you very much, Doug Burgum, everybody. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. President. Today, of course, is a day of celebration, and it's a day of gratitude. It's a day of celebration because as our builder-in-chief, the greatest builder that has ever been president of the United States knows, like he said, he grew up on construction sites. When you get to this spot, the tradition is the workers have all signed the beam.
The president's going to sign the beam. This is the last beam that's going into place; it's going to be raised up, and that's what we're here to celebrate. But none of that would have happened without the great American worker. America was built by people that innovate, built by people that build great things and build great things well and build them quickly.
There's 512 of them here wearing their jackets out there. Let's hear it for all the great American workers that are here today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Think of it, just over a year ago, this project was just getting started, and here we are today at a beam signing. And of course, that wouldn't have happened without President Trump.
The vision that he had for this city for safe and beautiful also extends right here to this site, the White House. The National Park Service, which is part of the Department of Interior, is responsible for the restoration at the White House. President Trump has done more to restore the beautiful historic White House than any president.
So, when the teams are over there, and some of you have worked over there, you're restoring history. When you're working here, you're making history. This is going to be a gift for the next 100, 200, 250 years. This building will stand the test of time, historic events will happen here, and they will look back to this day knowing that all of you were part of it and it wouldn't have happened without President Donald J. Trump.
Thank you, Doug. Thank you. And, Jared, would you come up and say a couple of words? They've done such a fantastic job of building; they've been our primary contractor. Please.
Thank you, sir. It's a real honor to be able to work on this campus every day, to be able to work under the leadership of the president. I just want to thank everybody that's been involved in the project; it's really a spectacular effort over the last year to get us to this point. We want to celebrate by raising the final beam.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. Great job, thank you. And before you do that, you know, was sort of mentioned a little bit during the campaign that -- about why does Trump spend time on the White House? Well, first of all, it's very little time. Second of all, I like it, it's good -- for me it's relaxing, for somebody else it's the opposite, but for me it's really -- I love construction.
But that beautiful white facade was half falling off, and you know that because some of you helped us with it. It was in terrible shape; the moldings were down in many cases, probably 20 percent of the moldings were off the building. You'd have windows with a beautiful window and a molding on one side, and the molding was missing for many years on another.
And it bothered me very much because that's what I do, I like beautiful things and especially when it comes to the White House. And we had a group of very talented people work with me for the last year, and we've totally redone the facade of the White House in the finest exterior plaster. The place was falling apart, it was cracked, it was broken.
The windows were broken and cracked; we replaced numerous windows that were cracked. In fact, in some cases, it was outright broken. And you'd look at it as a guest and when President Xi was here two weeks ago, he said, wow, the condition is so beautiful. He said, I remember it wasn't that way a long time ago.
But I will tell you that right now, it's flawless and it's beautiful. And, you know, when I get criticized, like, why are you working on the White House, I'm doing it because the White House is the ultimate symbol of America, and it's got to be pristine.
It's got to be perfect. And if you take a look at it, that's what it is right now. You have no idea how much work we had to do. Would take a fiberglass molds of the other side of the -- of the molding that was broken, because they're very intricate, and they take it back to shops and they'd remake moldings and they'd put it up the way it used to be. I mean, you'd have windows with one third of a molding left, and it looked like hell to anybody that knows.
I think to people that don't know, it wouldn't have looked good. So we did that. I'm just looking here and I'm looking at that beautiful facade, how it's gleaming. And then we re-caulked it, re-painted it, and it's -- it's good for another 200 years now. You know, it opened in 1792 and it was in -- it was in terrible, embarrassing shape, including the entrances.
You'd walk in, there were broken stones. There were stones with big holes in them. It was terrible. So that's why I did it, because that's the ultimate symbol -- symbol of our country, and this is now a part of that symbol. This will be something very special. And so we're putting up the last piece of steel.
I thought it would be appropriate to have the media here. You see something really great. Thank you all. I want to thank you all. Great job you've done, and we'll see you again at the official opening, which won't be in too long a period of time. You're all invited. Thank you very much, everybody. We're going to lift this and then we'll do it.
You guys need to go back.
Ideally [Inaudible] if it does, we'll call your family.
[Crosstalk]
Come on over here, I think, press. Want to come over? Stand right there. See the thickness and size of that steel? You can land anything on top of that roof, anything. But it'll be all drones. Why don't we ask if you want a couple of questions while they're rigging it? How about having that in the background?
Mr. President? Mr. President?
You let me know when they're ready.
Mr. President [Inaudible] in the House?
Uh, we'll stay out of it. They're going to be -- I mean, they'll be -- you know, Jim, Jim was -- I think he was really -- uh, all of them, everybody, everybody that we're dealing with, but the speaker was fantastic. The, uh, the people under him were fantastic, all good people. I guess right now you have two candidates, right?
Did you ask the speaker [Inaudible]
No. No, no.
Mr. President, Vice President Vance says the reason Republicans lost the poor -- lost last night was the war in Iran.
Well, I think it's largely true, because it drove the gasoline up a little bit, short term, and probably that's, uh, probably it's true. But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I'd have to do it again because long term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon.
So you feel like it was worth it, to lose the Senate --
I do, yeah, I mean, well, you have no choice. I mean, I thought the oil would go up a lot more and I did it on that basis. You have no choice, you have to do it. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon, or everything that you see here, someday might not exist. And, uh, maybe this -- this building might be the only one that does.
So yeah, I think that, uh -- look, I mean, I'll get along probably with the Democrats, unless they want to be destructive, but I have the power of the veto. So if we don't like what they're doing, or they'll they've already called and they want to talk about things and that's fine. But yeah, people -- the Iran thing, we had to do, and we continue to do it. Uh, we have tremendous oil flowing out of the Hormuz Strait now.
At the beginning, there was none. And, uh, probably, that's the primary reason, the -- the price, not the war, the price.
Sir, you held 30 rallies across the country. You made your final speech in front of the reflecting pool. Do you have any regrets about the way you closed out the campaign?
No. Look, I mean, if I were on the ballot, we would have won. You saw the people that were packed, thousands and thousands of people at every rally. And if I was on the ballot, we would have won, but they just -- you couldn't transfer that love, there was such love at those rallies, it was incredible. And we weren't able to transfer the love to candidates.
Did any [Inaudible] try to talk you out of [Inaudible] that speech on Monday?
Which one are we talking about?
The one at the reflecting pool. Did any [Inaudible] advise you to do something different?
I heard it was a very good speech, got great reviews. That was only a speech on the reflecting pool. That had nothing to do with anything else. That was a speech very much like this is today on this incredible place that we're building at the White House. It's going to be here for many, many years and serving our country well.
That -- that was only a sort o- a ribbon cutting because the reflecting pool hasn't worked since 1922. It's, you know, over 100 years it's never worked. It's always leaked and was always a mess and we fixed it, we made it great. That was not a speech, that was just talking about the reflecting pool and then a couple of other comments.
I mean, our speeches were really the speeches made at the 30 rallies and those speeches were -- that was tremendous love. It was -- it was pretty amazing.
[Inaudible]
I can't tell you that. They may tell you, but I can't tell you.
[Inaudible] impeachment at all? [Inaudible]
No, no, no.
Are you concerned about it?
Not even a little bit. I think it would destroy -- I think it would destroy the Democrat Party, if they did that, because impeachment for no reason, what, for having a successful country? Our country is more successful now than at any time in its history. Watch the beam go up. Thank you.
[Inaudible]
No. [Off mic] chandeliers.
Mr. President, if you want, you [Inaudible] stay there?
I'll stay here.
You sure? All right. We're good to go. Now envision chandeliers all over your ceiling. Envision marble floors. It's going to be beautiful. This will be the most beautiful ballroom.
Given you [Inaudible] yet?
Yeah, probably July. Right, right away; it's going to be great. Middle to end of next year depending on surfaces. Watch your step. OK, you know what you're doing. That's not steel that's used on a roof to hold back rain, you know; it's to hold helicopters. Did you guys see the helipad from up top, how beautiful that is? It's incredible.
I saw it from the Washington Monument.
It's incredible. This is going to be more incredible.
[Inaudible]
I sort of feel the press should be here. This was a non-press event. I said this is the greatest, right? Can you see the helipad from over there?
Yes, yes.
These are very talented people that do that, very talented. They put all this steel up in three weeks, can you believe it? The whole thing was done in two and a half weeks, pretty amazing. How are you? Good? Good job. And that'll fit perfectly within a hundredth of an inch, can you believe it?
Seriously?
Yeah, they rarely have -- they rarely have to do any chopping. Watch. Pretty amazing, right? The entire building, every single hole was perfect, which is rare, but we had great people. The Federal Reserve not quite; they had the opposite. What a shame. See, those guys are standing under -- personally, I'd pass on that because if one bolt, ooh, ooh, ooh, if one bolt fell down, that's it, you're history.
Pretty amazing. Look at it. Would you like to move over there, Danny, right under that? Look what's right under there. We'll send Margot. Let's send Margot, hold on. No, if anything fell off there, but they do it -- except the Secret Service guys not very well protected. I don't think he has any idea what's going on. See the way that fits?
Fits like a glove. See the sprug that they put right through it. That fits perfectly. Now they bolt it in and that's the end of that. Pretty good, right?
Yep.
It's pretty good. Go ahead, did you have any other questions?
Did you know the vice president was going to post that X message talking so much about the results and the war and how it impacted it?
Well, I knew the war was going to impact it, but whether it impacted or not, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon.
No, but the vice president wrote a very lengthy post about how the war impacted the results last night.
Well, it did.
Did you know he was going to --
I knew he was -- I know how he feels about it. I think it was -- I think it was fine, yeah. I thought it was good. We knew that. I know that -- I knew that when I went in and we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon and they will never have a nuclear weapon.
Have you spoken to Vice President Vance this morning?
Yeah, I did.
Yeah, about [Inaudible]
I speak to him about a lot of things. But, I mean, we'll see what happens. Everybody -- you don't know who's talking about running. You can have people running; you're going to have a lot of people, maybe a lot of people running, maybe nobody's going to run. Maybe he won't run; I don't know who's going to run.
But I can tell you that, as far as that war is concerned, I would have done nothing different. We've totally broken their military, their navy is gone, their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft is gone. That's a dangerous job. I don't know how they do it. That is a dangerous job.
[Inaudible] a tree on the beam, can you imagine?
Well, it's just there. It's a thing that they do. And here's the interesting thing, somebody will walk after we're gone -- they'll walk right across that, pick up the tree and walk. There aren't too many people can do that. You need very good balance. No, do you know that? They'll leave that tree, when we're gone, a guy will walk right on that tree, take it.
Sir, on Iran, you said that the war was going to end immediately after the midterm elections and that crisis --
Well, it did end. No, I didn't say that; I said their nuclear weapons will be destroyed. And that happened with Midnight Hammer. Pretty great, yeah. And you know what? They fall sometimes and when they fall, it's terrible.
Sir, so, when do you think it will end, the Iran war?
Whenever I want it to, but it's got to be done right. And we're never going to let them have a nuclear weapon, it's got to be done right. But of course, I knew that. I knew fuel would go up. I thought it would go up two or three times higher than it is. And now today it's coming down. And yesterday it dropped or the day before it dropped 10 points.
No, we've done a great job. The Hormuz Strait is open, it's producing -- the Wall Street Journal -- cover of The Wall Street Journal a couple of days ago, it's producing more oil right now than at any time prior to the war.
Are you considering replacing Secretary Hegseth?
No, I think he's doing a very good job.
So, you don't want him to fill Marsha Blackburn's Senate seat to be appointed to be Senator?
Well, I think he -- I think he's doing a very good job. And I actually think he'd be very popular if he did that, but I haven't heard that at all.
Did he give you advice on how quickly you could speak [Inaudible]?
No, no, look, when I said fast, we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon very early on when we did the raid. Great stuff, right? You ever seen [Inaudible] If you want to see the helipad, bring the cameras over here, let me show you. Watch your heads. The helipad is so beautiful. People [Inaudible] should I walk out the other way?
I probably should walk through the men, right? Walk through the men. Jared, I think, uh, I'll go this way. I'm going to just say goodbye.
Yeah, if you want to walk through, I'll give you a hand and you want me to get him?
Does that happen often, where you get bad [Inaudible] -- we'll see you at the opening or before then, there's going to be [Inaudible]
We're going to hold them to it. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.