Mr. President --
Well, thank you very much, everybody. We wanted to take some of the members of the cabinet out to dinner to say, uh -- And here we are. We're standing right in the middle of DC, which, as you know about, uh, over the last year, was a very unsafe place. Over the last 20 years, actually, was very unsafe. And now, it's got virtually no crime.
Uh, we call it crime-free. We're gonna be announcing another city that we're going to, uh, very shortly. We're working it out. The governor of a certain state, uh, would love us to be there, and the mayor of a certain city in that same state would love us to be there. We'll announce it, uh, probably tomorrow, and it's gonna be something where we'll do like we did here.
But this city, here I am standing out in the middle of the street. I wouldn't have done this, uh, three months ago, four months ago. I certainly wouldn't have done it a year ago. Uh, this was one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now, it's as safe as there is in the country. So we're here with cabinet members having dinner and, uh, everybody should go out.
The restaurants now are booming, people are walking -- Thank you. Thank you. The restaurants now, the restaurants now are booming, people are going out to dinner where they didn't go out for years, and it's a safe city. And I just wanna thank the National Guard. We loved, uh, working with the mayor and the, uh, the chief.
And, uh, we all worked together and the, the outcome is really spectacular. We have a capital that's very, very safe right now.
Mr. President [Inaudible] uh, speak, uh, Israelis strike earlier today --
Well, I'm not thrilled. I'm not thrilled about it.
Can you just tell us more about your conversation with --
I don't have to do that. I'm just -- I'm not thrilled about the, the whole situation. It's not, not a good situation. But, uh, I will say this. We want the hostages back, but we are not thrilled about the way that went down today.
Did they notify you in advance, Mr. President? Did Israel tell you in advance?
No. No.
So you, you weren't caught by surprise, sir? You --
I'm never, I'm never surprised by anything, especially when it comes to the Middle East.
[Inaudible] worry about stuff?
Uh, I'll be giving a full statement tomorrow. But, uh, I would, uh, tell you this. I was very unhappy about it, very unhappy about every aspect and, uh, we got to get the hostages back. But I was very unhappy about the way that went down.
Mr. President, when do you plan to speak to Putin? I mean, you said soon. Is that gonna happen this week?
Yeah, it'll happen. We have that one, and we have Gaza going on. We want to get them both solved and ended.
So Putin, it's gonna have -- The call will happen this week?
I think so. I think this week or early next week. Thank you. Thank you. Enjoy it.
Did you sign, did you sign the Jeffrey Epstein letter that --
It's not my signature, and it's not the way I speak. And anybody that's covered me for a long time know that's not my language. It's nonsense. And frankly, uh, you're wasting your time. All you do is trying to get off the great success of DC and about 200 other things we've done that are so successful. Uh, this is a great, great success, and we have so many s- -- I don't think any president in their first eight months has any, had anywhere near the success that we've had.
So will you meet with Epstein victims? Do you plan to meet with?
I don't know about, nobody suggested that. Certainly, uh --
But you will eventually right now?
-- certainly I don't like that whole situation with respect to anybody being abused or hurt, but I haven't, uh, I haven't even thought about that. Thank you all very much. Have a good time. Thank you.