Thank you very much. I meant to go back and see you on the plane, but uh, some things came up having to do with the Hamas, et cetera, and, uh, we're working on a solution that maybe could be very good.
Can you tell us what that solution is?
No, but I -- you'll be hearing about it pretty soon. We're trying to get it ended, get the hostages back, get it ended. We got them all back but 20, and as you know, we have 20 plus. There are a lot of, unfortunately, dead bodies involved and they want them back. Their parents want them back. So, uh, we had some very good discussions.
Good things could happen.
Can you give us your reaction to South Korea's regret? They're calling it regrettable what happened with their workers at the Hyundai plant?
Well, I'll speak to them. You know, look, it's a battery factory in that case, as I'm told, and, you know, when they're building batteries, uh, if you don't have people in this country right now that know about batteries, maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train our people to do, you know, complex things, whether it's battery manufacturing or computer manufacturing or building ships.
So we're going to look at that whole situation. We have a lot of industries that we don't have anymore and we're gonna have to train people, and the way you train people is bring people in that know what they're doing and let them stay for a little while and help. So I'm gonna look at that. So it's a very interesting situation that took place, uh, in Georgia.
And, uh, we heard about it yesterday at the same thing -- time, ICE was doing, right, because they were here illegally. But we do have to work something out where we bring in experts so that our people can be trained so that they can do it themselves. Does that make sense? Right.
Is this straining your relationship with Korea at all?
No, we have a great relationship with South Korea, really good relationship. You know, we just made a trade deal, but I'm going to, uh, I'm going to look at it because I understand exactly what they'll say.
So [Inaudible] crowned you -- [Inaudible] crowned you the King of the U.S. Open. They put out all these old pictures --
[Laughs]
-- through the years of you at the U.S. Open.
Wow.
What does it mean for you to go back after going for so many decades growing up in Queens, now you're going back as the President in a different capacity?
Well, I loved it. First of all, the two players have unbelievable talent.
Right.
Uh, it just seemed that they hit the ball harder than I've ever seen before. Incredible talent. And I enjoyed it. And I -- I used to go all the time, but, you know, lately it's a little bit more difficult to go. I really enjoyed it. Uh, they were really nice. The fans were really nice. I didn't know what to expect.
Usually, you would say that would be a somewhat progressive, as they say nowadays, crowd. Sometimes some people would call it liberal. But we'll use the word they like to use, progressive. Uh, but they were -- they were great. The fans were great.
[Inaudible]
Mr. President, back on Russia. Um, Russia had a pretty big attack on Ukraine over the weekend.
Yeah. I know all about it.
You have always said how good your relationship is with President Putin.
Yeah.
But he's not really giving you anything that you want. Is that making you less trustful of him?
Well, nobody was tougher in Russia than me. That has to do with the pipeline as, you know, Nordstream Two and lots of other things. But I'm not happy. I'm not happy. I'm not happy about the whole situation. You know, it's interesting. It doesn't affect us because it's not our soldiers, but they're losing now, I used to tell you 5,000, they're losing 7,000, between Ukraine and Russia, 7,000 soldiers e- -- every single week.
Uh, it's such a horrible waste of humanity. So, no, I am not thrilled with what's happening there, I will tell you. I think it's gonna get settled. So I settled seven wars. This I would've said would've been maybe the easiest one to settle of all, but with war, you never know what you're getting. But we're gonna get it. I believe we're gonna get it settled.
But I am not happy with them. I'm not happy with anything having to do with that war. It's just such a waste of great humanity.
Right now, what do you think is the greatest obstacle to a peace deal in Ukraine?
Say it.
As of right now, what do you think is the greatest obstacle for a peace deal
Well, we're gonna see. I- -- I mean, we have some very, uh, interesting discussions. You know, Europe, certain European leaders, are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday and, uh, individually. And I think we're gonna get that settled. I think we're gonna get it settled.
[Inaudible]
We have to. You can't lose -- you know, when they're losing 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers a week for no reason, you have to get it settled. Of all of the wars, whether it's the Congo and Rwanda, they said it was impossible to settle. You look at every one of, I mean, every one of these wars were impossible.
I got every one of them settled, seven of them. Seven. This was the one I really thought would be the easiest, but it's not. But I think it's gonna get settled.
There was some reporting in Axios. But in the last three months of the Biden administration, they did about 4,000 pardons. His Chief of Staff's assistant was sending emails to pardon his own family member. Are you still interested in getting to the bottom of the autopen scandal?
Well, I think the autopen is one of the great scandals of our time. The autopen was our, uh, was our president. Or to put it a different way, whoever operated the autopen was our president.
If you pardon --
It's not allowed. It's just not allowed. And they gave a pardon to the Unselect Committee. After the Unselect Committee realized that that whole situation was a hoax and it was all their fault, including Nancy Pelosi turning down security and all, you know, turning down soldiers. It all came out bad for them.
They burned everything. They got rid of everything. There's absolutely nothing there. It's all gone. And that was based on an autopen, you know, they gave, they gave those members of Congress that were on the Unselect Committee, they gave them, pardons.
What do you think --
So I think that, I think it's a big, I think it's a tremendous scandal actually.
What do you think the media would say if you pardoned your kids the last day in office via autopen? Don't you think the media would go --
Well, I think it would've been a big story.
A big story.
Yeah. It would've been a, I like this guy.
[Inaudible] stabbed multiple times on a Charlotte subway. Have you seen this video, and do you have any reaction to it?
Yeah. And where was, the subway was where?
She was in Charlotte at a, on a light train and she stabbed multiple times by --
Horrible. No, I haven't heard.
Okay.
When did this happen?
It happened in August, but the video just came out.
Oh, I see. Yeah, I see the video. Uh, I'll know all about it by tomorrow morning. Okay? Thank you.
Do you have plans for Chicago this week?
No, not really. Not really. We, we're gonna go someplace, but we're thinking, look, D.C. now is 100%, I, I don't wanna say a 100, but it's pretty close to 100% uh, healthy, happy, thriving. It's a crime-free zone. You know that, you know, you can go out to dinner tonight, Jeff. You can go out to dinner, and you most likely will not be harmed.
You know that.
There's still --
You won't be beat to hell.
There's still some crime.
Huh?
There's still some crime.
Very, very little. And within a week, within a week, there will be nothing. Do you agree with me?
I feel much safer walking around.
Yeah.
I can't fight though.
No. It's a safe place now.
But you've been talking a lot about Chicago and there was --
No, no, Chicago's been talking a lot. So Chicago, last week, lost, nine people were killed, and 28 people were shot. The week before was seven people were killed and 37 people were shot. The week before that it was the same kind of numbers. Chicago is a very dangerous place. And we have a governor that doesn't care about crime, I guess.
We could solve Chicago very quickly, but we're gonna make a decision as to where we go over the next day or two. When you look at what happened to D.C. in a short period of time, honestly it's amazing. Over a period of 12 days. In other words, on the 12th day we had the crime just about solved. And right now people are walking around, they're going out right now to restaurants all over in D.C. Whereas, if you go back a year ago or six months ago, nobody was going out.
Nobody. We did it in 12 days. Now it's better than it was in 12 days. We'll make it even better. And then we're also gonna clean it up. We're gonna clean up the city. We're gonna make some great improvements to the roads, to the media, you know, to all of the, cause, a sign, you got signs that have been up for 30, 40 years, they're worn out.
They look like hell. We're gonna redo the signs. We're gonna put up new signs, it's gonna look beautiful. In, uh, within a six-month period it'll look really beautiful. But you have essentially a crime-free zone. I mean, here we are on a nice Sunday evening, if you'd like, it feels like Saturday actually, if you like, you could go out and you could, uh, have dinner on me. But you wouldn't do that.
But you could have dinner on me if you'd like. Go ahead. What else?
Sir, when do you plan to speak to President Putin next, and what --
Very soon, over the next couple of days. Look, I, we're gonna get it done. The Russia-Ukraine situation, we're gonna get it done. I have confidence we're gonna get it done. Look, I -- We're gonna get it done. The Russia-Ukraine situation, we're gonna get it done. I have confidence we're gonna get it done. Think of it. I got seven done, all of which were impossible to do. Uh, if you look at any one of the seven, you know them. I don't have to go through them.
Many of them were impossi- -- they w- -- one was 31 years, 10 million people killed. One was 34 years with eight million people killed. How about the Congo? They lost 9 million people and it went on for years with Rwanda. All settled, everybody happy. The one that I thought would've been for me the easiest because of Putin.
I thought that would've been -- It's not, it's not turned out that way, but we're gonna get it settled.
[Inaudible] Jared Kushner. You brought him in to, to discuss the Gaza issue and help make peace in Gaza. What's kind of -- What's some of the advice he's giving to you and why did you bring him back in to, to work on this deal?
I think, I think we're gonna have a deal on Gaza very soon. It's a hell of a problem.
What [Inaudible] --
Again, it's a problem we wanna solve for the Middle East, for Israel, for, for everybody. But it's, uh -- It's a problem we're gonna get done. So they have hostages. It could be a little bit less than 20 'cause some -- You know they tend to die, right? They tend to die. Even though they're young people largely, they're dying.
Young people don't die. Young people stay alive. But with this whole thing, they tend to die. But we have, let's say, 20 people, and we have about 38 bodies. Bodies, meaning bodies.
Are you confident you can get them all released?
I think so. I think we're gonna get them all.
Did you see the turnover of the Japanese Prime Minister stepping down? Do you have any reaction to that?
Oh, I was surprised because I knew him. I liked him and, uh, he is just now stepping down. A little bit surprised. I found him to be a very nice man, actually. We dealt very well together.
Mr. President, the, the price of beef continues to rise and, and other items keep going up. Is there any way to address the cost of beef?
Yeah, once it kicks in -- Once our, uh, policies kick in, the price of beef will be going down just like the price of eggs went down and the price of a lot of other grocery items went down. Beef will go down. It'll all go down.
[Inaudible]
Uh, energy has gone way down. The price of gasoline has gone really -- I mean, I think it'll be hitting $2 very soon and it was four and a half dollars a little while ago. So, uh, energy's gone way down. That brings everything else with it, but beef has gone -- As you know, for other reasons the price of beef has gone up a little bit.
It'll be coming down.
Before you went to Alaska in the Oval Office, you said that the First Lady expressed she wasn't too enamored with Putin. You said you came home. You said you spoke to Putin. She said, well, I heard he just blew up a [Inaudible] today. Has she expressed anything since you've come back --
No, the First --
-- from Alaska?
-- Lady actually got along great with Putin --
Right.
-- as I did. But, you know, we're disappointed w- -- Both of us are disappointed that this ridiculous war continues.
Right. Are you proud to see her sending the letter that she sent [Inaudible] --
Yeah, she is and she's -- uh, felt very strongly about -- Yeah, the children. Yeah. Feels very badly about it. Thank you everybody.
Thank you. Do you have plans to go to Japan and South Korea this fall?
What is that, May?
Uh, do you have plan to go to South Korea --
Maybe.
-- and Japan?
I mean, we'll see. But it's gonna be very interesting what comes out. I think we may have learned something because when they come here and there's nobody that can do what they're supposed to be doing, and they bring people, those people can also teach our people. You know, it's complicated stuff and, uh, something very interesting could come out of that.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you. Thank you so much.