[Maria Bartiromo interviewed Donald Trump at the White House on June 27, 2025. The interview aired June 29, 2025 at 10 a.m. on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures. Video courtesy and copyright Fox News.]
Mr. President, you are just coming off one of the most consequential weeks anybody has ever seen, from striking Iran, to going to NATO, to announcing two deals, and then the Supreme Court victory. Have you been able to digest what has occurred in the last seven days?
Not really. It was a pretty wild period of time. And I really think, in six months, we have taken the country and turned it around. It's -- I was told by the king of Saudi Arabia, by the leader of Qatar and the leader of UAE when we went over there -- we brought $5.1 trillion investment into the United States.
They said, you're presiding now over the hottest country in the world. And a year ago, we thought your country was dead. It could never come back. It was so incompetently run by a very bad president. And I said, you're right. This country is hot. And that was a couple of months ago. Now we're talking about what we have done recently.
So the country is really going. The numbers are great. I watch you in the mornings, and you're giving those numbers, and they're really good. No inflation. We have a bad Fed chairman, but other than that, we have, you know, great -- it doesn't even matter. The numbers are so good, it doesn't matter that he keeps the rates artificially high.
But it's been an amazing -- it's been an amazing period of time.
When you went to the Middle East and you strengthened those relationships with all of those countries you just mentioned, did you have an idea that you would have to do something with regard to Iran? Because you teased it a little. You said, look, they have got to come to the table and talk. Something's going to happen.
Well, it was getting a little bit hot. And we knew they had a lot of sites, probably three plus the one. But it's -- they had three main sites. And we knew they were going to have to either give them up. And I thought we could do it during negotiation. And we just about had it done. And then they said, we want enrichment.
Enrichment doesn't mean like air conditioning. And it doesn't mean to jack up your car. Enrichment is a bad word. And they said, you got so much oil, what do you need that for? And they said, well, we need it. We need it. And I wouldn't let that happen. I think people wouldn't have understood it if I allowed that to happen.
So we had a 60-day talk. And that delayed them a lot. And then we said, let's go at it. And it just worked out. And we want it to work out also for Iran. They were beaten up. And so was Israel, in all fairness. They were both very tired. We call it the 12-day war. That was an intensive war. But the thing that I wanted to do, and I have said it on your show.
If you look back 30 years ago, or 25 years -- we have been doing your show a long time, and nobody liked you. But you look back at the early interviews, I would say Iran cannot have another up. They have wanted this for years. And they were weeks away from getting it. And those pilots went in there with that -- those beautiful planes and the most sophisticated bombs anywhere in the world.
Think of it. They can go 30 stories deep into granite. Who would think that's even possible? And they did obliterate it, it turned out. Then we had to suffer the fake news, where the fake news in CNN and The New York Times was saying, well, maybe it wasn't as good as Trump said. Maybe it wasn't totally obliterated, but it was destroyed, but not -- just horrible.
And I could see it happening. And they tried to build that into a story. And then it turned out, no, it was obliterated like nobody's ever seen before. And that meant the end to their nuclear ambitions, at least for a period of time. And a lot of people have said, well, do you think they're going to start again?
I said, the last thing they want to do right now is think about nuclear. They have to put themselves back into condition and shape.
You tweeted: "The Democrats leaked an intelligence -- "
They should be prosecuted.
Who specifically? Do we know?
The people that leaked it.
Do we know? Will you be able to find out?
You can find out. If they want to, they could find out easily. You go up and tell the reporter, national security, who gave it? You have to do that. And I suspect we will be doing things like that.
Well, those pilots were so courageous. And you want to honor them. Are you going to do something for them? Are you --
Yes, they're going to come to the White House. But you -- what you said is right. These people flew 36 hours in a small space, a big plane, but a small space. It was mostly occupied by bombs. And they flew so brilliantly. And they hit a target the size of this circle. They -- a little target, they say half the size of a refrigerated door from 50,000 feet up in the air going at a rapid speed, because they're going very fast when -- they're over a pretty rough territory.
And they hit it every single time, and then they knock out two other sites aside from that.
Do you think that the Iran regime hid some of the enriched uranium before the strikes?
No. You mean did they take it out of the deep one?
Yes.
No.
Because you were pretty clear, you can't have a weapon. You're going to have to come to the talks. Something's going to happen.
I don't think they did, no. I think, first of all, it's very hard to do. It's very dangerous to do. It's very heavy, very, very heavy. It's a very hard thing to do. Plus, we didn't give them much notice, because they didn't know we were coming until just then. And nobody thought we'd go after that site, because everybody said that site is impenetrable.
You can't -- you're not going to be able to -- this way they did it, it's at the bottom of a mountain, and it's granite. Granite's the hardest stone. And it's granite. So, no, they didn't. But I do believe they had people there, because you had cars. You know, they were saying cars. And those were masons.
Those were people working with concrete. They were trying to seal up the entrance to where the bomb would most likely go in. And they did that. They were working on that. And the bomb went through it like it was butter, like it was absolute butter.
Because I saw reports that there were 400 kilograms, 800 pounds that they moved. But I wonder if it's traceable. I mean, if they were to have moved --
They didn't move anything.
They didn't move anything?
You know what they moved? Themselves. They were all trying to live. They didn't move anything. They didn't think it was going to be actually doable, what we did. And what we did was amazing. And they -- we went -- there were energy commissions that went there now. No, it's just thousands of tons of rock in that room right now.
That room - - the whole place was just destroyed, and the other two also. Now, Israel was able to do damage, but we did the final damage. And we have the greatest submarines in the world. We launched 30 rockets from submarines. Every single one of them hit their target.
How will you know if he tries to start things up again? Because Iran just said that they are halting cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
The last thing they're going to be doing right now, for a period of time at least, is nuclear. They have had it. They have been trying it for 25 years. The last thing they're going to do is nuclear. We had to hit them, though. They were close to getting a nuclear bomb, absolutely.
Yes. I mean, and, look, I have heard from people inside Iran that the regime in Iran has executed more Iranian civilians in the past 48 hours than the number of Iranians who died in the 12-day war. So, I mean, you have got a regime that's been building ballistic missiles, building or trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Why should we think that they're actually going to give up on this?
Well, they might not give up, but they are going to give up on it a while. They're exhausted. They are exhausted. They took hits like nobody's ever taken. And, frankly, Israel is tried. They wanted to. It was the perfect time. We went in, we destroyed their nuclear capability, and we stopped. It was a beautiful thing.
And they couldn't have gone on much further. And Israel was very -- that was a very intense 12 days, very, very intense.
Has any other country suggested to you recently, as a result of this, that they want to join the Abraham Accords?
Yes. So, we have some really great countries in there right now, and I think we're going to start loading them up, because Iran was the primary problem. I actually thought Iran would -- I actually thought -- we had a period of time where I thought Iran would join the Abraham Accords along with everybody else.
And, frankly, they would have been better off than where they are right now.
And what about the Abraham Accords? Would Syria enter?
Well, I don't know, but I did take off the sanctions at the request of some of the other countries in the area that are friends of ours. I took off the sanctions on Syria to give them a chance at -- the sanctions are biting. They're very strong. And we have sanctions on Iran too. And you take them off when -- I sort of gave the expression today, you get more sometimes with honey than you do with vinegar.
So, you waive the sanctions on the oil with the work of China. So you're allowing China to still buy the oil from Iran.
No, I didn't say that. We have the sanctions on. And if they do a job, and if they can be peaceful, and if they can show us they're not going to do any more harm, I would take the sanctions off. And the sanctions would make a big difference, as you know. When I was -- we had a great success in the first time.
We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. By the way, it's going to be absolutely -- this is better. This is going to be, I think, even much better. But we had the greatest economy in history. And we use sanctions. You use them very carefully. Sanctions cost us a lot of money. It's not just, gee, we're going to put sanctions on. When you do sanctions, it costs a lot of money.
But I would - - one of the things I was thinking about doing, you start waiving them for countries like -- if they -- if they behave themselves, like Iran, where they can sell oil and they can do the things that you want to be able to do. The sanctions are very powerful, and it makes it difficult. I'm not looking to make it difficult.
I want them to have a good life. But they were trying to develop a bomb. And the reason you try and develop a bomb like that is to use it.
But I want to get your take on China, really, because you have announced an agreement with the Chinese Communist Party, where China will export the rare earth minerals.
Yes.
What does that mean in terms of this upcoming tariff structure? You have got a pause in terms of the more steep tariffs. That ends August 12. Are you going to extend that? Are you going to keep that in place or go back to a higher tariff on China?
China is going to be paying a lot of tariffs. But we have a big deficit. They understand that. I have a great relationship with President Xi. We have to do something about the deficit, because we have a big trade deficit with China. Biden let it get up to a trillion dollars. Think of, it a trillion dollars deficit with one country.
He let them just take them over the coals. We're not going to do that. But we're doing a rare earth deal, but we're also doing -- remember, we have all of the air flying parts. They can't fly their airplanes without us. So we had some cards also. But it should have never gotten that way, because we should have been doing the -- they call it magnets.
It's rare earth, but they call it magnets, a specific type. And they're making those magnets for us right now. And things are well. And we have a -- we have a deal with China. It's a good deal, I think, hopefully for everybody. We had a deal with China where it was 145 percent tariffs. And I will tell you, everything stopped in China.
I saw that. Everything stopped. And we did China a favor, but we're getting along well with China. I think getting along well with China is a very good thing. But they are paying substantial tariffs.
Well, I noticed that, because it seems like you go so far with China, but you don't sort of use the leverage that you can use. I mean, look if --
If I ever had to use it, I'd use it. But when there's no reason to use it, that's good too.
Well, we did just arrest three or four Chinese nationals who tried to bring a pathogen into the country that gets people sick and destroys food supply. We have got hacking.
You don't know where that came from, though. I mean, did that come from the country or is that through wackos that happened to carry something? You know, you just don't --
Well, there was one that he signed that he would be -- one of them signed a paper saying that he would value Mao Zedong's value system. So there was that. And then they hack. Didn't they hack into our telecom system? They have been stealing intellectual electoral property, the fentanyl, COVID, I mean, all of this stuff.
So how do you negotiate with obviously a bad actor and trust them on economics?
You don't think we do that to them? You don't think we do that to them? We do. We do a lot of things.
So, that's the way the world works?
It's the way the world works. It's a nasty world.
And then you just do a trade deal?
We do. Well, we made a lot of money with this trade deal. I do a trade deal if it works. We made a lot of money with the trade deal.
You think that China is going to stop bullying companies to give them information in terms of -- in exchange for getting those rare earth minerals now?
[Crosstalk]
Well, the companies shouldn't put themselves in that position. They really shouldn't. Now. I will say this. China right now needs those companies much more than they needed them two years ago. Two years ago, China could do that. Today, they can't, because they need those companies. They need Apple. They need all -- Apple is building -- spending $600 billion, $700 billion in the United States building plants.
They were never going to do that. Think of it, $700 billion. But a lot of the companies that are in China are now relocating back to the United States. So, yes, China is going to treat them much better as they need them. They didn't need them under Biden because they were ripping us off left and right. They need them under Trump.
You just had a big success at NATO, getting the members to agree to spend more on defense. Is there anything you can do to get Congress to codify this --
[Crosstalk]
-- to get their governments to codify it?
You can -- what you do, the best insurance is, if they don't do it, you leave. You don't do business with them anymore. You don't do business. You have to have a certain trust. But you can also say trust, but verify. But we're making unbelievable --
There is litigation around the legality of those tariffs. Are you going to be able to get more trade deals done before you hear from the International Court of Appeals in August?
Sure, but we won the litigation. And we had the delay. And we had some radical left judge. And then we had it overturned. And we're doing well in all of our litigation. We're doing well on the tariff litigation. Look, if some judge said we can't do tariffs, we would fall prey to the rest of the world who would do tariffs and are doing tariffs on us. If we couldn't fight them back with tariffs, this country would be in terrible shape.
We would be like this innocent lamb being led to slaughter. So, no, we're doing great on economics. We're doing great on tariffs. Tariffs is just a part of it. We're drilling like never before. That's how the oil got down low.
The Supreme Court victory that you got today, Friday, do you think that could apply to the tariff litigation that's pending here in terms of the legality of your tariffs? Does that affect that at all?
It could. But, again, the tariff litigation, if you look at it, there are alternatives if we have to use them. They're not as good because they're not as direct. They're not as biting, but they're very good, so that you have alternatives. But we want to use this particular asset, this particular grouping.
This -- these -- the words of this are so beautiful. They were meant for it. But what happens with the tariffs is that, if a judge ruled against us -- and this is part of how you win, fairness. Fairness is also a part of the law. If a judge ruled against us on tariffs, we would fall prey to other countries destroying us. We can't do that.
If they do tariffs on us, we do tariffs on them. If they charge us, we charge them. Then they never charge us.
[Commercial break]
I want to move on to the Big Beautiful Bill. And you have asked to have this on your desk by July 4. You think you're going to get it in that timing?
I don't know. I mean, I can't tell you that. I hate to say yes. I'd like to say yes. But the problem is, if we're two days late or five days late, everybody says, oh, you had a tremendous value. Whenever it is as long, as we have it. It's very important. If we don't have it, there's a 68 percent tax increase.
If we don't have it -- the debt ceiling extension is very important. They gave a debt ceiling. The Republicans gave a debt ceiling because of the importance of doing it. They did that for the good of the country, and Republicans voted for that. They did a big favor. I don't know that I would have done it, to be honest with you, but whatever.
They did a favor. Now the Democrats won't do that favor back. In other words, you never want to violate your debt confidence. So they gave -- you know what I'm saying. They gave this four months early. It was due on September 28, right before the election. A group of Republicans got together and said, you know what?
This is so serious, we should do this for the good of the country. I understand that. Now it's their turn to do it, and they won't do it. There are a lot of bad people in the Democrat Party.
How are you going to deal with the $9 trillion that's coming due this year?
Just turn it over. Oh, well, let me tell you that we're going to do it this way. We're going to turn it over short term, because we have a stupid person at the Fed. If he would lower the rates -- but I don't want to have to pay for 10 years debt at a higher rate. And then we're going to get somebody into the Fed who's going to be able to lower the rates.
We should be at 1 percent or 2 percent. If you look at Switzerland, they're the lowest right now. They're at much less than one point. And, frankly, we should be there too, because, without the United States, the whole world doesn't work.
And you have teased a couple of names. You talk -- you said you have a couple of people in mind to -- as a successor to Jay Powell.
I have three. They would all be good, yes.
But you're not going to do that right now. So why do that? Just to put more pressure on him to cut rates?
Yes, people -- no, because reporters ask me, I mean, do you have other names? I say, yes, I do, anybody but Powell.
And would it be Kevin --
[Crosstalk]
He's a bad person.
Yes.
Kevin is very talented. But I don't know that it's going to be him, but he's a very talented guy. He wouldn't be doing what Powell is.
Mr. President, I think I know your priorities in the Big Beautiful Bill. I mean, obviously, you want to get the tax cuts extended. And you have got other tax cuts.
Many other things, though. It takes care of the border.
The border.
[Crosstalk]
There's also no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime.
Correct.
[Crosstalk]
But I have spoken to a few senators, and they have gotten together, like Rick Scott and Ron Johnson and Mike Lee. And Rick Scott's worried about the overall cost. And Mike Lee is worried about the Inflation Reduction Act. And --
No, the Inflation Reduction Act is what caused a lot of problems.
So then why don't you just take that out of the bill?
And it was the Biden administration --
[Crosstalk]
Why are there still green subsidies in there?
I'm all for that. I think we shouldn't be giving money to all of these scams. But what happened is, some of them have been started, like projects. And if you stop, it's in the middle. So I understand that too. And people work there. And they're working there and they're from the district of a congressman or a senator.
But, no, no, the Inflation Reduction Act was another Biden scam. And when I say Biden, it's not Biden. It was the lunatics that work around the -- in the Oval Office, around the beautiful Resolute Desk. It's not Biden, because I don't think Biden knew what was happening. I think that the autopen is one of the biggest scandals in the history of this country, because the person that operated the autopen was the president of the United States.
And I think that that's going to be sought out, and we're going to find out what happened.
Well, I believe it's this week, that's one year ago, which was the debate where his mental capacity was exposed to so many people who didn't know it. Many of us saw it obviously in advance. And now James Comer at the Oversight Committee wants lots of people to come in. Who would you like to see come in and testify on that under oath?
I would say Lisa, who was in there.
Is that the deputy A.G. at the time?
Yes, Yes, who's --
Lisa Monaco.
Who is a big supporter of Andrew Weissmann. These are people that I think are very bad people. They had radical left lunatics working there. And they took over that office. They didn't want Biden. And then, after a little while, they realized he's incompetent. This is really a good thing. And they ran that thing.
Look, Biden was never for open borders. Biden was never for transgender for everybody. He was never for men playing in women's sports. He was never for that. Biden is a disaster. This is a disastrous -- but the worst thing that he's done to us, inflation is terrible. But I have solved that problem already.
Inflation is bad and other things are bad and many things and the fact that we have no respect all around the world for the country. But now we do at a -- I think maybe at the high -- we took it from the lowest to the highest level in six months. But if you look at what he did to the border is so bad, so much of my time is spent on the border.
Last month, we had no people coming.
I know. It's -- well, you give --
But the -- the bad part is, he let in 21 million people. And we have to check those people, totally unvetted, totally unchecked. And 11,888 have murdered people. Half of them have murdered more than one person. People come in from gangs, from prisons. They emptied out -- Venezuela emptied out its prisons.
And --
But are you backing away from this, though? Because, recently, you said let's ease up on taking in people who are working hard, working, like, in farms and hotels.
I don't back away. What I do have, I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years who are good, who possibly came in incorrectly -- and what we're going to do is, we're going to do something for farmers, where we let the farmer sort of be in charge.
The farmer knows. He's not going to hire a murderer. But when you go into a farm and he's had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren't going to do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away, it's a problem.
I'm on both sides of the thing. I'm the strongest immigration guy that there's ever been. But I'm also the strongest farmer guy that there's ever been. And that includes also hotels and places where people work, a certain group of people work. So we're going to -- we're working on it right now. We're going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass, where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away.
But, no, I want -- the criminals are going out of this country.
Right. You said it from the beginning. You wanted to first focus on the criminal.
That's right. Criminals are gone.
But I'm wondering if this change in giving people a pass is a response to the critics who said the execution was a little clumsy. People were afraid to go to work. They were afraid to run into ICE. They said, look, if you give a quota to somebody and say, go get me 600 people who are here in the country illegally, we will come back with 600 people, even if it's not the right 600.
So the execution was unbelievable, because you had -- you have no people coming through our border anymore.
Right.
That's part of the execution. So it wasn't clumsy. What was clumsy is the fact that they allowed millions and millions of people to pour into our country. Take a look at some of the scenes, it's on your show all the time, where thousands of people are trying to bust through a wall. They literally break down walls, there's so many people.
And they're thousands of people. And they have no idea who those people are. This, to me, is the worst part of Biden. The worst thing he did was the whole thing on immigration. Now, with that being said, we know who they are, a lot of them. It's hard. When they come in, they have no papers, they have no nothing.
Just go ahead in. Everybody can come in. They were emptying, I'm telling you, a lot of the Congo. We just made a deal with the Congo to stop the war. They would empty their prisons into the United States, many other countries, not just South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, parts of Europe, rough parts of Europe.
Their prisons were emptied into the United States. And the people -- you saw the people.
I --
They run into the country. To me, that's a sin that we can never forget. We can never forget what Biden and that group of lunatics at worked for him have done to our country.
I believe -- pardon me. I believe that half of the world's cobalt is in the Congo.
Yes.
Are you going to be able to help develop that? Will the U.S. participate in developing that cobalt?
Yes, they want me to. They actually want me to. Their head, who's a very respected guy -- look, I just stopped a war. This war was going on for 30 years. Six million people were killed between Congo and Rwanda. And my people came to me. They say, they want you. They don't want China. They don't want Russia.
[Commercial break]
All right, so July 9 is coming up. What are you going to do about the end of the pause in the tariffs?
It's so simple. We're sending letters out. I'd rather do it now. My guys say -- I have great guys, Scott, Howard, other people, Jamieson. They want to -- they are talking to all these countries. We made a deal pretty much with India. We made a deal with China. We made a deal with U.K., great people. We made deals.
But I'd rather just send them a letter, a very fair letter, saying, congratulations. We're going to allow you to trade in the United States of America. You're going to pay a 25 percent tariff or 20 percent or a 40 or 50 percent. I would rather do that. So, when I --
[Crosstalk]
-- extend the pause?
I don't think I will need to, because -- I could. There's no big deal. It's like TikTok. I'm extending that, you know? But no big deal. We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I will need probably China approval. I think President Xi will probably do it, you know?
Who's the buyer?
I will tell you in about two weeks.
A big technology company?
Yes, very, very wealthy people. It's a group of very wealthy people. But what I want to do is -- and what I will do, just some time prior to the 9th, is, we will send a letter to all these countries. There's 200 countries. You can't talk to all of them. No matter how many people you have, you can't talk to all of them.
We will send a letter and we will say we would consider it a great honor, and this is what you will have to do to shop in the United States. We're like a department store -- to shop in the United States, and you will pay a 25 percent tariff. And we wish you a lot of luck. And that's the end of the trade deal, because we have something that nobody has.
But if I didn't get elected, I'm telling you, we wouldn't have had a country left. You know that better than anybody. Nobody covers it better than you. If I didn't turn this thing around, this big ship around, we turned it around, just like those ships coming out of China that were coming and loaded and in the middle of the ocean.
They were forced to go back, because, at 145 percent tariff, Walmart, nobody wanted their product. And that caused a big problem for China. And then I helped China. I helped China by reducing it.
So, we still don't know. We don't have the clarity on what you're going to do with these expiration of these pauses. July 9?
[Crosstalk]
-- China.
No, I think -- I thought I just said it. I thought I just said it. You ready?
You're going to send the letters.
I'm going to send letters. That's the end of the trade deal. I could send one to Japan. Dear Mr. Japan, here's the story. You're going to pay a 25 percent tariff on your cars. So we give Japan no cars. They won't take our cars, right? And yet we take millions and millions of their cars into the United States.
It's not fair. And I explained that to Japan. And they understand it. And we have a big deficit with Japan. And they understand that too. Now, we have oil. They could take a lot of oil. They could take a lot of other things. But, basically -- and I'm for doing it right now -- we send letters out to all of the countries explaining to them a problem.
We will look at the deficit we have or whatever it is with a country. We will look at how a country treats us. Are they good? Are they not so good? Some countries, we don't care. We will just send a high number out. But we're going to be sending letters out starting pretty soon. No, we don't have to meet.
We understand. We have all the numbers. Listen, what we're going to do is, we're going to send, and we're going to say, congratulations. We're allowing you to shop in the United States of America. You're going to pay a 25 percent tariff or a 35 percent or a 50 percent or a 10 percent.
I will tell you what the U.S. automakers are worried about. They don't want Japan and Korea to have a lower tariff, if you do a deal with them, than the U.S. automakers are paying.
Well, the U.S. automakers are going to be so busy selling cars in the U.S., they're not going to even have to worry about it. But that won't happen.
Mr. President --
Because I set a tariff. Let's say I take a certain country, and I set a tariff at 25, and they're charging 35 or 40. I will raise the tariff to 35 or 40.
I want to ask you about --
And they will come down.
I want to ask you about A.I., because there are a couple of companies that are announcing layoffs. They're actually cutting people. Some companies -- companies are blaming tariffs. Some of these companies are buying -- blaming -- they're blaming a consumer slowdown. And other people are blaming A.I.
[Crosstalk]
OK, you have got Procter & Gamble.
By the way, tariffs is what's bringing the companies in. We have auto companies building plants where they wouldn't have built here in 100 years. We have more investment in the United States right now than we have ever had before. Think of it.
Yes.
We're up to almost $15 trillion. Look at this guy from last year, what kind of numbers they were doing. People were leaving. They weren't coming in. Now they're coming in.
Like you have said, you have brought wealth back to America.
[Crosstalk]
Wealth and spirit back. We have spirit. People respect our country again. It's very important. I'm a cheerleader also for the country, aside from everything else, like you are. We brought spirit back. We brought respect and dignity back. When I went to the European, I was in that beautiful place with the king and the queen.
And it's, like, beautiful. Everything is so nice. But when I went to the Netherlands, and I looked, everybody was coming up, Mr. President, Mr. President. They didn't do that a year ago or two years ago three years ago. These are the big countries. This is Germany and France and all of them, I mean, a big group of countries.
They respect America again. They laughed at us. They thought we were a joke. You had a president they kept falling downstairs and falling on stages and couldn't find an entrance to -- couldn't find a -- he makes a little speech that lasted year for about a half-a-minute. And he looks around. He's looking for stairs.
There's like six different stairs. And he can't figure out which stair. We were laughed at all over the world. More importantly than that are the - - what they did to the country. What they did to the country, with allowing 21 million people, is -- will never be forgotten. And I have to rectify that problem.
And we have done it. And we're getting all the criminals out.
Mr. President, I just want to ask you about the job cuts from these companies. Some of them are blaming A.I. And one CEO told me that A.I., artificial intelligence, allows engineers to be at least 25 percent more productive. It's helpful in contract management. It's helpful in repetitive jobs. It's helpful in data.
What can you do to offset the job cuts that will no doubt come as a result of A.I. efficiency?
One thing, very simple, bring more companies in, more jobs. The truth is, we don't have enough people to take care of these jobs. So it's, like, perfect timing. We don't have enough people. My biggest problem is, they're coming in and they have to hire thousands and thousands of workers. This is perfect timing.
We don't have enough people. If A.I. is so good, which I hear it is, and there's a lot of money being bet by very smart people -- I will tell you, we are dominating A.I. That's the other thing. And they all said, well, we'd have a problem because of electricity. We don't make enough electricity. We would have to double our electric power.
Can you believe that? And you know what I did? I had an idea. I said, when you build your plant, spending billions, you're going to become a utility, an electric utility. You're going to also build a utility. You're not going to take it from an old grid that's been here for 100 years. You're going to take it right from a new facility.
And they said -- they actually looked at me and they said, you would do that? Of course I would. It's a national emergency. I'm going to approve everything. And you will have your approval in two weeks. And Lee Zeldin is doing an amazing job, the environmental commissioner. I said, Lee, you're going to approve this stuff fast.
Make sure it's safe. Make sure it's good. But you have to get it done fast. Because, in China, you know how long it takes? One day. It's called President Xi. Boom, it's OK. Over here, we're going to have almost the same thing. We're getting fast approvals. And you can do nuclear, because nuclear now is safe and good and inexpensive.
But you can do oil and gas. You can do coal. And the reason we do coal is because -- and I call it clean, beautiful coal. You can really do things with coal today that you couldn't have done. But the beautiful thing about the coal and the thing that I look at, you know who uses coal? China; 59 plants, they're opening this year, coal.
You know why? It's very powerful. It's very powerful. So we opened up coal. We were closing all our coal mines all over the country. And yet we still have a lot of coal. We use the generating plants of coal, because it's the strongest. And we're doing coal. So we have everything, every form. I don't want windmills destroying our place.
I don't want these solar things where they go for miles and they cover up a half a mountain that are ugly as hell. And, by the way, the panels are all made and the windmills -- they're all made in China, OK?
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What did you make of the New York Democrat primary, Mamdani?
He's a communist. I think it's very bad for New York. I don't know that he's going to get in. It's inconceivable that he's -- but he's a communist, and he's a pure communist. He -- I think he admits it, but I can't imagine it. But let's say this. If he does get in, I'm going to be president, and he's going to have to do the right thing, or they're not getting any money.
He's got to do the right thing. It's shocking, that I would have assumed that -- I never -- I used to say we will never have a socialist in this country. No, but we will have a communist. I mean, he's a communist and going to be mayor of New York. So I was very surprised when I saw it. I never heard of him.
I don't know who he is.
Well, he said he's going to fight ICE. He's not going to allow ICE to --
[Crosstalk]
-- unsuccessful.
And he said, if Benjamin Netanyahu comes to New York, he's going to have him arrested.
Well, he's a radical left lunatic.
Who would you be poised to support in New York? I know that you --
[Crosstalk]
Well, I don't want to say. I don't want to say that, because I have a lot of people, a lot of friends, and I have everybody, so I don't want to get into that. I can tell you this. Whoever's mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves, or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially.
You said you're stopping all trade discussions with Canada?
Until such time as they drop certain taxes, yes.
The digital service tax.
People don't realize Canada is very nasty to deal with. They have charged our farmers up to 400 percent, almost 400 percent on certain products and certain things where our farmers want to send it. They have to pay 200, 300, 400 percent. People don't know that. Canada is a very tough country to deal with.
I will say that.
But you --
[Crosstalk]
And I love Canada.
You have USMCA in play.
I know, but --
You will have to deal with --
But USMCA is no good if they cheat.
What does that mean?
Well, there's been things going on that we don't like and things going on where they took advantage. And, hopefully, we will be fine with Canada. I love Canada. Frankly, Canada should be the 51st state, OK? It really should, because Canada relies entirely on the United States. We don't rely on Canada.
Mr. President, tell me about the significance of the Supreme Court ruling on the nationwide injunctions. Will that help you?
It took -- it took the court system out of the presidency to a large extent. The courts were almost like being the president, and you can't have it. It was such a big decision. This is one of the biggest decisions where you would have a local federal judge who was radical left determining the policy for the whole nation, the whole nation, and now they can't do that anymore.
They can go locally, but they can't go all over. A judge from Massachusetts can't make the policy for Oklahoma and other places throughout the nation. So this was a massive decision.
Mr. President, have you spoken to Elon Musk? What happened there?
I think he's a wonderful guy. I haven't spoken to him much. But I think Elon is a wonderful guy. And I know he's going to do well always. He's a smart guy. And he was -- he actually went and campaigned with me, and this and that. But he got a little bit upset, and that wasn't appropriate.
Why did he get upset? He just wasn't getting what he wanted?
He -- look, the electric vehicle mandate, the E.V. mandate, is a tough thing for him, I would think. I'm -- I don't want everybody to have to have an electric car. I campaigned on, you have choice. If you want a gasoline-powered, if you want a hybrid, if you want a -- I love the electric car. I love his cars.
I think he's fantastic. But not everybody should have that. And not everybody wants that. And Biden, who's so stupid, he said everybody has to have an electric car by, what, 2030, OK? I think he said by 2030, which is in five years. Everybody -- people don't want that. And how do you do that when you don't have enough electricity?
You go to California, where they want everybody to have an electric car, and you -- they have their brownouts and blackouts every weekend.
Mr. President, let me end on the Big Beautiful Bill, because here we are right before July 4. Can you identify anything that you think are big numbers that you could actually cut out, so that you could placate or have Ron Johnson and the other senators who are upset about the price feel better about it?
We're cutting 1.7 -- let's see -- we're cutting, yes, $1.7 trillion. Think of it. I think I just saw the number a little while ago, $1.7 trillion. But we can grow our country so much more than that. And we're not going to have to do -- you also have to get elected. When you do cutting, you have to be a little bit careful, because people don't like necessarily cutting if they get used to something.
And what I want to do is do it through growth. We're going to have growth like we have never seen before.
Mr. President, thank you. And I appreciate you sitting down with us like this.
Thank you very much.