Well thank you very much. It's an honor to have a friend of mine -- because we, we went through this together, and got along very well for my entire period of time. So I knew him as a very young man, now he's just a young man. He's done a fantastic job. Mr. President, it's an honor to have you.
Thank you.
You're doing incredibly for your country, and uh, we appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime and so do we and it's a very, very effective and I want to just say hello to the people of El Salvador and say, they have one hell of a president. I know him as a very young man, Marco, even younger than you.
He started pretty young.
I'll always be young.
Young at heart. But I want to thank you for the great job you're doing. I appreciate it very much.
It's an honor. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Well, it's an honor to be here in the Oval Office with the president and leader of the free world. We're very happy and we're very eager to -- and we're a small country, but if we can help, we will do it. And we actually -- that was the journalist call it, murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere -- if they saw the -- president, you have 350 million people to liberate.
But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. That's the way it works, right? You cannot just free the criminals and think crime's going to go down magically. You have to imprison them, so you can liberate 350 million Americans that are asking for the end of crime and the end of terrorism.
And it can be done. I mean, you're doing it already. And I'm sure that people have seen the change in the streets, a long way to go because you're just initiating your second term. But it's clear that with the numbers at the border, even in Democrat-run cities, they get help from the work you're doing. So I'm really happy to be here, honored, and eager to help.
Well, we had a terrible thing happen. We had an administration that allowed people to come in freely into our country, from not only South America but from all over the world, many from the Congo, in Africa, Asia, all over the world, Europe, rough parts of Europe. And they came from prisons and they came from mental institutions and they came from gangs, the gangs of Venezuela and other places.
And hundreds of thousands and even millions of them came. 21 million people all together, but many of the people that came just a tremendous percentage of them were criminals, in some cases, violent criminals. We had 11,088 known murderers. Half of them murdered more than one person. This was allowed by a man who, what he did to our country is just unbelievable, so we're straightening it out.
We're getting them out. But what they did and what that party did to our country open borders, anybody could come in. As soon as I heard that, I said every prison is going to be emptied out into our country. That's what happened and we're straightening it out. And we just had numbers. We had the highest recruiting numbers in the history of our country going into police departments.
And a year ago, we had the lowest numbers. You couldn't hire a police --
Biggest change. The lowest to the highest.
Nobody's ever seen -- and the military now, Marines, the Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, every slot is -- I mean, we have the best numbers we've ever had. We call it recruitment, recruitment numbers, and we've never had anything like it. We had records at every single level, but very important, the policemen.
The policemen are joining forces now that we really were having a hard time with policemen because we weren't protecting our police. And we cherish our police. The police are great and the firemen and everybody else. But we have the highest numbers that we've ever had, the most enthusiasm. We have great enthusiasm.
And on trade and other things, we're doing great. We're taking in billions and billions of dollars. We made -- two weeks ago, I gave him a little bit of a pause because you know you have to show a little flexibility, but we go back to what we have to do. The markets have been very strong once they got used to it, but we were losing $2 billion a day.
There's no company big like this.
No.
This is the biggest deal ever made. Now we're making $3 billion a day. We're a great country, but we had stupid people running this country and I can say it, but what they've done to us at the border should never and can never be forgotten. It's a sin, what they did. And you are helping us out and we appreciate it.
Thanks. Thank you. Actually, what you're doing with the border is remarkable. It has dropped, what, 95 percent? It's incredible.
As of this morning, 99 percent, 99.1 percent to be exact.
Why are those numbers not in the media?
Well, they get up with the fake news. You know, like CNN, CNN over here doesn't want to put them out because they don't like putting out good numbers. They only like putting out -- because I think they hate our country, actually. It's a shame. You're right. Isn't that a great question, why doesn't the media -- why don't they put out numbers?
Yeah, 99 percent, I mean, it's crazy, right? It's a crazy turnaround.
Kristi, could you maybe say a couple of words about the border, how we're doing?
It's just been absolutely phenomenal, what a great leader can do, clear direction. Our laws matter. We should only have people in our country that love us and the Border Patrol and our ICE officers and law enforcement officers have done fantastic work. So, we're proud of them. Now we just need to get the criminals and murderers and rapists and dangerous gang members and terrorist organizations out of our country.
So, Mr. -- President Bukele, we thank you very much for your partnership. It has been wonderful for us to be able to have somewhere to send the worst of the worst and someone to partner with. And we'd like to continue that partnership because it's been a powerful message of consequences. Mr. President, you wanted people to know that there was consequences if you break our laws and harm our people and endanger families.
And this is a clear consequence for the worst of the worst that we have somewhere to put them.
Thank you very much. Yeah, we even had this gang member from Venezuela, one of the ones you sent, and we interviewed him just to get some information, etc., from them. And he said, oh, you know, I got arrested six times, but they released me there six times. So, I should be released again. And then I said, well, what's the last thing you do. And he said, well, I shot a cop in the leg, but I didn't kill him, I just shot him in the leg.
And we're like this guy was arrested six times, here in the United States six times, he was released six times and in the last -- no, he was released five times. And the last time he was sent to El Salvador, right, so he's not getting released. But the last thing, he shot a cop actually and he shot him in the leg.
So, these are --
[Crosstalk]
-- yeah, I mean, yeah, there's something broken.
The liberal establishment. But they're not running things anymore in this country. And we're run by -- and I don't say conservative, I don't say anything. We're run by people with great common sense.
Yeah, common sense.
Because it's all common sense, it's not liberal, conservative, it's common sense. And like do you allow men to play in women's sports? Do you allow men to box your women and box -- because I know you have a lot of boxers --
That's violence. That's abusive to women.
That's abusive --
[Crosstalk]
It's abusive [Inaudible]
Totally.
But we have people that fight to the death because they think men should be able to play in women's sports. And some of those sports it wouldn't matter much, but it still matters. But some of them are very dangerous for women.
Some years ago, I would say a decade ago or so, women's rights movements were pressuring so that we enacted specific laws to avoid men abusing women. And I think those laws were great because there were a lot of men abusing women. But now some of the same people are trying to backtrack on that and actually trying to make new laws allowing men to abuse women in sports.
So, actually that doesn't make sense.
You do it in sports.
It doesn't make sense. It's crazy.
You know they have weightlifting lifting records, right? A woman gets up, lifts weight, she's incredible, a guy gets up and beats her by 100 pounds. What are you going to do? A record that hadn't been broken in 18 years, they put on an ounce and an ounce, quarter of an ounce, eighth of an ounce for 18 years.
Now they have a guy come up, pint, the whole thing is crazy, but they continue to fight. And I don't like talking about it because I want to save it for just before the next election. I said to my people don't even talk about it because they'll change, and we'll have a -- But I watched this morning, there was a congressman fighting to the death for men to play against women in sports.
And you say to yourself, why? What are they doing, right? What are they doing? But your country is not too big in that.
No, of course not. We're big in protecting women.
Good, that's right. That's a very important form of protection too.
And as you can see, most of my cabinet are women, so --
That's impressive.
Yeah, yeah. They're not the [Inaudible] I hire for anything. They're just great at what they do, right?
That's right. This is very impressive. This is a first. We've had women, but we've never had three of them right here.
Four and three men.
Look who we have. You guys feel a little bit mistreated [Laughter]. That's good. I like it. I like it. Well, we've been advanced. I've been very advanced in that regard too. We have Pam, who's been so fantastic.
Yes, I know. Kristi and --
Kristi, and the most powerful woman they say.
I know, exactly.
They're all afraid of Susie Wells. They say, oh, she's tough. Most powerful woman in the world, according to magazines. What do I know? But I think she probably is -- she probably is.
Congratulations.
And you know Stephen who has done such a great job. We have just -- we have great people.
He's very famous, too [Laughter]
But we love working [Laughter] he really lets them have it, right?
Yeah, exactly.
There's no games.
No, no, no, it's very good.
He knows. Do you have any questions, please? Let's not start with CNN because they're so -- they're just so wrong. Yeah, please.
Yeah, thank you. Mr. President, you repeatedly mentioned last night that Russia's attack on Ukraine was a mistake. What is the exact mistake? And have you given Putin a deadline to actually move toward a ceasefire?
Yeah. The mistake was letting the war happen. If Biden were competent. And if Zelenskyy were competent -- and I don't know that he is, we had a rough session with this guy over here. He just kept asking for more and more. That war should have never been allowed to happen. That war -- I went four years, and Putin wouldn't even bring it up. And as soon as the election was rigged, and I wasn't here, that war started.
There was no way that war should have been allowed to happen, and Biden should have stopped. And you take a look at Putin -- I'm not saying anybody's an angel, but I will tell you, I went four years, and it wasn't even a question. He would never -- and I told him don't do it. You're not going to do it. And it was the apple of his eye but there was no way that he would have done it. All you had to do is lower oil prices.
If you lowered oil prices -- Biden kept the prices so high because he made it impossible to get it. If you lowered oil prices, you would have never had the war, but you wouldn't have had it with me anyway. That war would have never happened. And I think it's a great abuse. So, now what do you? You get a country where 25 percent of its land is gone and the best locations where millions of people are killed.
You know, you haven't reported accurately the death, and this was Biden's war and I'm trying to stop it and I think we're going to do a good job. I hope we're going to do. They lose 2,500 young people a week on average. Now they're Russians and they're Ukrainians, but it's 2,000 -- we don't care, it's like whatever it is.
It's intolerable.
They're not from your country, they're not from mine, but I want to stop it. 2,500, it's a killing field, it's like the Civil War. You take a look -- I look at the satellite pictures. This should not be happening in our time. Of course, our time can be pretty violent, as we know, but that's a war that should have never been allowed to start.
And Biden could have stopped it, and Zelenskyy could have stopped it, and Putin should have never started it. Everybody's to blame.
Have you spoken to President Zelenskyy, sir, about his offer to purchase more Patriot missile batteries?
I don't know. He's always looking to purchase missiles. He's against -- listen, when you start a war, you've got to know that you can win the war, right? You don't start a war against somebody that's 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles. If we didn't give them what we gave -- remember, I gave them javelins, that's how they won their first big battle, with the tanks that got stuck in the mud and they took them out with javelins.
They have an expression that Obama at the time -- Obama gave them sheets and Trump gave them javelins. But just something that should have never happened. It's a really shame -- the towns are destroyed; towns and cities are largely destroyed. They have the spires; you know, the beautiful spires that go up. They say that were the most beautiful in the world in Ukraine for whatever reason.
But the most beautiful in the world, they're mostly lying on their side shattered and broken. And most importantly, you have millions of people dead. Millions of people dead because of three people, I would say three people. Let's say Putin number one, but let's say Biden who had no idea what the hell he was doing, number two; and Zelenskyy and all I can do is try and stop it. That's all I want to do. I want to stop the killing, and I think we're doing well in that regard.
It should -- I think you'll have some very good proposals very soon.
Last question, sir. Have you attributed a motive -- sir, have you attributed a motive for the FBI investigation behind the attack on Governor Josh Shapiro over the weekend?
No, I haven't. But the attacker was not a fan of Trump, I understand just from what I read and from what I've been told. The attacker basically wasn't a fan of anybody. He's probably just a whack job. And certainly, a thing like that cannot be allowed to happen.
[Crosstalk]
-- good relation with President Bukele the best guarantee that this time you won't terminate the temporary --
[Crosstalk]
I have a great relationship with this man. I have the best relationship with him. We've known each other -- I've known him since he was a very young man, as I said, very, very young and I was impressed. I said, look how this guy is. In fact, you sort of look like a teenager, he looked like a teenager. I said what kind of a country is this --
[Crosstalk]
[Laughter] He grew up -- he grew up well in the last five years.
Do you support the extension for nationals of El Salvador and their --
[Crosstalk]
I support him.
Do you plan to --
I support him. Go ahead. Let's hear the question from this very low-rated anchor at CNN, low-rated.
Thank you, President Trump. Do you plan to ask President [Inaudible] to help return the man who your administration says was mistakenly deported?
Which one is that?
The man who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.
Well, let me ask, Pam, would you answer that question?
Sir, President. First and foremost, he was illegally in our country. He had been illegally in our country. And in 2019, two courts, an immigration court and an appellate immigration court ruled that he was a member of MS-13 and he was illegally in our country. Right now, it was a paperwork. It was additional paperwork that needed to be done.
That's up to El Salvador, if they want to return him. That's not up to us. The Supreme Court ruled, President, that if as El Salvador wants to return him, this is international matters, foreign affairs. If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.
So will you return him?
You are doing a great job. Thank you, Pam.
Thank you.
Stephen Miller. Wait a minute. Could you just also respond to that question, because it's asked by CNN and they always ask it with a slant, because they're totally slanted because they don't know what's happening. That's why nobody's watching them. But would you answer that question also, please?
Yes, gladly. So as Pam mentioned, there's an illegal alien from El Salvador. So with respect to you, he's a citizen of El Salvador. So it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador how to handle their own citizens, as a starting point. As to immigration courts found that he was a member of MS-13, when President Trump declared MS-13 to be a foreign terrorist organization that meant that he was no longer eligible -- under federal law, which I'm sure you know.
You're very familiar with the INA, that he was no longer eligible for any form of immigration relief in the United States. So he had a deportation order that was valid, which meant that under our law, he's not even allowed to be present in the United States and had to be returned because of the foreign terrorist designation.
This issue was then, by a district court judge, completely inverted. And a district court judge tried to tell the administration that they had to kidnap a citizen of El Salvador and fly him back here. That issue was raised to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said the district court order was unlawful and its main components were reversed, nine-zero, unanimously, stating clearly that neither secretary of state nor the president could be compelled by anybody to forcibly retrieve a citizen of El Salvador from El Salvador, who again, is a member of MS-13, which as I'm sure you understand, rapes little girls, murders women, murders children, is engaged in the most barbaric activities in the world.
And I can promise you, if he was your neighbor, you would move right away.
So you don't plan to [Inaudible]
And what was the ruling in the Supreme Court, Steve, was it nine to nothing?
Yes, it was a nine to zero.
In our favor?
In our favor, against the district court ruling, saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States. As Pam said, the ruling solely stated that if this individual at El Salvador's sole discretion was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time.
No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador. That is the president of El Salvador. Your questions about it for the court can only be directed to him.
I ask the president on this -- can President Bukele weigh in on this? Do you plan to return him?
Well, I'm [Inaudible] not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States, right? I mean, how can I smuggle -- how can I return him to the United States, like, I smuggle him into the United States, or what do I do? Of course, I'm not going to do it. It's like -- I mean, the question is preposterous.
How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don't have the power to return him to the United States.
But you could release him inside El Salvador.
Yeah, but I'm not releasing. I mean, we're not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere. And you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world, no, that's not going to happen.
Well, they'd love to have a criminal released into our country.
Yeah. I mean, there's a fascination --
They would love it.
Yeah.
These are sick people. Marco, do you have something to say about?
Yeah. I mean, Stephen outlined it. I don't understand what the confusion is. This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country. That's where you deport people, back to their country of origin, except for Venezuela that was refusing to take people back, or places like that.
I can tell you this, Mr. President, the foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the president of the United States, not by a court. And no court in the United States has a right to conduct the foreign policy of the United States. It's that simple, end of story.
But more specifically --
And that's what the Supreme Court held, by the way, to Marco's point. The Supreme Court said exactly what Marco said, that no court has the authority to compel the foreign policy of the United States. We won a case nine-zero, and people like CNN are portraying it as a loss as usual, because they want foreign terrorists in the country who kidnap women and children.
But President Trump, his policy is foreign terrorists that are here illegally get expelled from the country, which by the way, is a 90-10 issue.
Well, Mr. President, you said that if the Supreme Court said someone needed to be returned, that you would abide by that. You said that on Air Force One just a few days ago.
How long do we have to answer this question from you? Why don't you just say, isn't it wonderful that we're keeping criminals out of our country? Why can't you just say that? Why do you go over and over? And that's why nobody watches you anymore. You have no credibility. Please, go ahead.
President Trump, thank you so much. How many illegal criminals are you planning on exporting to El Salvador? And President Bukele, how many are you willing to take from US?
As many as possible. And I just asked the president, it's this massive complex that he built jail complex, I said, can you build some more of them, please? As many as we can get out of our country that were allowed in here by incompetent Joe Biden through open borders, open borders. You probably hear open borders and you can't even understand it because nobody can understand.
Nobody smart or with common sense can understand it. So we have millions of people that should not be in this country, that are dangerous, not just people, because we have people. But we have millions of people that are murderers, drug dealers. They've been allowed to come into our country by other countries that were very smart.
When they heard that this very low IQ president, and by the way, I took my cognitive exam as part of my physical exam and I got the highest mark. And one of the doctors said, sir, I've never seen anybody get that kind of -- that was the highest mark. I hope you're happy with that, although they haven't been bugging me too much to take a cognitive.
But I did do my physical and it was released. I hope you're all happy with it. I noticed there's no questions, so probably you are. But the cognitive, they said to me, sir, would you like to take a cognitive test? I said, did Biden take one? No. Did anybody take one? No, not too many people took them. I said, what about Obama, did he take one?
No, he didn't take one either. I said, let me be the only one to take one. But I've actually taken them three times already. I like taking them because they're not too tough for me to take. But we had a great physical exam, so I know you're going to ask that. And the doctors who are total professionals, Walter Reed Medical Center, they're great, great people.
And I visited a soldier that was badly wounded, incredible soldier, lost his leg. And we spent a lot of time with him. I mean, great with his mother, and it was really a very great thing. They do a phenomenal job. I just want to say, Walter Reed, I was there for, what, five or six hours You were there with me. But I took a full physical and it came out perfecto, so that's good.
That means you've got me for a little longer.
Would the United States be willing to pay for those facilities to be open if [Inaudible]
I'd do something. We'd help them out. Yeah, we'd help them out. They're great facilities, very strong facilities and they don't play games. I'd like to go a step further. I mean, I said it to Pam. I don't know what the laws are. We always have to obey the laws, but we also have homegrown criminals that push people into subways, that hit elderly ladies on the back of the head with a baseball bat when they're not looking, that are absolute monsters.
I'd like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you'll have to be looking at the laws on that, Steve, OK?
[Inaudible] and do you think more presidents should follow suit like you guys, as far as taking a hard stance on crime here in the United States?
Well, I do. I think everybody has to. I mean, the president said it better than anybody. He said, you have liberty and you have to have liberty, but to have liberty, not everybody is going to be good. And some are bad because they're sick, they're mentally deranged, they're bad. And you have to take them -- if you're going to have a country, you're going to have to take those people out, and we've been doing that.
But this was an unforced error, they would call it, where we had people that may hate our country or maybe they're just stupid people. I think they're probably stupid people, more so. A lot of people said they did it for the vote, but I did better with Hispanic people than they did because they always used Hispanic.
I did better. Your people love me. I saw my poll numbers in your country. I'm through the roof, right, 91 percent. No, no, they, they -- some people think they do it for the vote, but they don't have to do it for the vote. They cheat. You know, they're professional cheaters. That's about the only thing they do well.
So, we just have had a great relationship, and it's become bigger because of a strange thing that happened. I came back; we had no war in Ukraine. We had no war with -- we had no October 7th, Middle East problem. We had nothing. We had no inflation. We didn't have the Afghanistan most embarrassing moment in the history of our country.
The Afghanistan -- not withdrawing because I would have been out, you know, I had it all set to bring people out with dignity and pride. That was the worst most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, Afghanistan. We didn't have any of that. You wouldn't have had the war with Russia-Ukraine, you wouldn't have had the Middle East problem because Iran was broke.
They had no money because we had secondary sanctions on and lots of other sanctions. And now every single thing -- got a problem with Iran, but I'll solve that problem. That's almost an easy one. We've got to solve a war that should have never started, Ukraine and Russia, and we'll get that solved. And we have to solve problems, and we already solved inflation.
If you look at the numbers, the numbers are incredible actually. Stock market's up and we're not letting other countries take advantage of this country like they have for the last 40 years. So, thank you very much. Do you have a question, please?
Mr. President, thank you so much. You scored another major investment win this morning. Nvidia pledged to build its AI supercomputer for the first time ever right here in the United States.
That's a question I like. That's true.
What is your reaction to this announcement, sir? And how will this positively benefit Americans across the country?
Well, it's one of the biggest announcements you'll ever hear because Nvidia, as you know, controls that -- almost the entire sector, which is one of the most important sectors in the world, between chips and semiconductors and everything else. And they're the biggest and the other biggest we already have coming in and spending $300 billion, as you know, they announced two weeks ago.
But Nvidia is so highly respected, and this was an announcement that a lot of people -- I knew it was going to happen, but not to the extent that it happened, it's big. And the reason they did it is because of the election on November 5th. And because of a thing called tariffs, as I say, the most beautiful word in the dictionary -- after love, God, relationship, the press actually hit me. I said tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.
What about family, love, God, I got hit even on that. Do you understand? I said, OK, so now I say it's my fifth most favorite word because they get you on anything. But no, Nvidia, it's one of the great companies of the world, modern, super modern companies, controls segments that nobody -- sort of controls the world in a sense.
And they're coming in here in the biggest way with hundreds of billions of dollars, not like millions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. And I'm honored by it. And I want to thank Jensen and all of the people that we deal with, they're great people, they're brilliant people. And without tariffs, they wouldn't be doing it. Thank you very much.
Yeah, please, go ahead.
President Trump, are you considering additional sanctions against Russia after their latest attack? And do you have an update on the rate and when you might announce them? Well, I already have sanctions on Russia, I put them there. If you remember, Nord Stream 2, that's the big pipeline that goes through Europe.
I stopped it. That's Russia's pipeline, the largest pipeline, I think, in the world goes to Germany and I stopped it. And when Biden came in, he approved it and then they say, oh, I'm friendly with Russia. No, no. Putin said, you know, if you're my friend, I'd hate to see you when you're my enemy. I stopped the biggest -- the biggest economic job they ever had, I stopped it cold, right?
It was dead, you know that, right. And Biden came in and he immediately approved it. What was that --
[Crosstalk]
-- all about? And it's a pipeline that takes care of a lot of the needs. Now, you know, it was a very controversial thing, but I stopped it, and Biden approved it. Question. No, not you again, not you again.
Go ahead, go ahead.
[Crosstalk]
-- compete with pharmaceuticals -- semiconductor tariffs and [Inaudible] pharmaceuticals?
Pharmaceuticals we're going to do. We have -- we don't make our own drugs, our own pharmaceuticals. We don't make our own drugs anymore. The drug companies are in Ireland and they're in lots of other places, China. And all I have to do is impose a tariff. The more, the faster they move in. \The higher the tariff -- it's very [Inaudible], it's inversely proportional.
The higher the tariff, the faster they come. And, yeah, we're going to be doing that. That's going to be like we have on cars. We have, as you know, a 25 percent tariff on cars. We have a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum and that's what that category fits right now.
Do you have a percentage in mind and a timeline?
I have a timeline. Yeah, not too distant future. And we're doing it because we want to make our own drugs. We're doing it because we want to make our own steel and aluminum, lumber, other things. And they're all coming in. We have record numbers, $7 trillion since I announced like a month and a half ago -- since I came -- basically since I came in, we have over $7 trillion being invested in the country.
We didn't have $1 trillion; we didn't have $0.5 trillion with some of these guys. They didn't know what the hell they were doing. So, we have the largest investment that we've ever heard of and we're only two months in. And that will continue at levels that you've never seen before. That's what's going to happen.
And even the stock market's up today. We also had, you know -- a lot of people didn't say it the way it was. We had the largest gain in the stock market in history on every single category last week. That was a nice game because we got a little hit because people didn't understand the power of our economic -- our country economically if you use it right.
Do you have something to say on that, J.D.?
Yes, sir. I mean, look, for 40 years, we have lost manufacturing capacity. Workers have seen their wages stagnate. And some of the most critical things that we need from the pharmaceuticals, the drugs that we give to our children, the antibiotics that we give to our kids to the weapons that we actually need to fight a war, if, God forbid, we had to fight a War. We don't make enough of that stuff.
And so, President Trump ran explicitly on changing that. Yes, as the president mentioned, it caused a little bit of disruption in the market. But I actually think over the long term, workers are going to benefit, stocks are going to go up, American businesses are going to benefit as we reinvest and reindustrialize our country.
And the auto workers and the Teamsters and all of the unions, not traditionally republican, but I'm winning those unions by -- we're up 40, 50 points on the democrats. They're losing everything. They're losing everything because they just have policies that are not believable. They fight for policies that are 5 percent popular, and nobody knows who the 5 percent are.
I mean, nobody can find the 5 percent. But if you go back to Ohio -- and by the way, we have the great championship team from Ohio coming in today, right?
Very big day.
And that's going to be a little bit later, but -- and that'll be -- if you want to stick around, I'll introduce you to some nice people. You'll see some very large people, right? You'll see some people that -- even you have not seen the people like this. These are big, these are six foot, seven, 380 pounds with no fat.
Okay, that's pretty good, but the team, the national championship team is being honored today at the White House. So that'll be exciting. If you're around, want to stay around, I'll have you up there. You can tell them all about your prison, how you have to behave when you go to prison [Laughter]. OK, any -- who else is there?
Go ahead, please, behind you?
You said yesterday that you're making a decision on Iran very quickly. What do you mean by that? Is that --
[Crosstalk]
Well, they have to solve their problem very quickly. Iran wants to deal with us, but they don't know how. They really don't know how. We had a meeting with them on Saturday. We have another meeting scheduled next Saturday. I said that's a long time -- you know, that's a long time, so I think that might be tapping us along.
But Iran has to get rid of the concept of a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. He can't have a nuclear weapon. Nobody can have -- we can't have anybody have any nuclear weapons. You can't have nuclear weapons. And I think they're tapping us along because they were so used to dealing with stupid people in this country.
And I had Iran perfect, you had no attacks, you would have never had October 7th in Israel, the attack by Hamas, because Iran was broke. They were stone cold broke when I was president. And I don't want to do it. I want them to be a rich, great nation. The only thing is -- one thing, simple, it's really simple -- they can't have a nuclear weapon.
And they've got to go fast because they're fairly close to having one. And they're not going to have one. And if we have to do something very harsh, we'll do it. And I'm not doing it for us, I'm doing it for the world and these are radicalized people, and they cannot have a nuclear weapon.
Does that include a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities?
Of course it does.
And just a follow up question, a clarification. You mentioned that you're open to deporting individuals that aren't foreign aliens, or criminals to El Salvador.
Love it.
Does that include potentially US citizens, fully naturalized Americans?
If they're criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over their head, that happened to be 90 years old. And if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them. Why, do you think they're a special category of person? They're as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones too.
And I'm all for it, because we can do things with the president for less money and have great security. And we have a huge prison population. We have a huge number of prisons and then we have the private prisons and some are operated well, I guess, and some aren't. But he does a great job with that. We have others that we're negotiating with too, but no, if it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem.
Now, we're studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do that, that's good. And I'm talking about violent people. I'm talking about really bad people, really bad people, every bit as bad as the ones coming in. And I made the statement when I heard about this a long time ago now, four years ago.
When I heard that this guy was having open borders, I said, every single criminal from all over the world is going to be dumped into our country and that's what happened, jails. The jails of the Congo were emptied out. The jails of Venezuela were emptied out and you know what happened? Their crime went way down.
But now Venezuela has other problems. You know what the problem is? They have no money.
Yeah.
Because I shut off their oil and we put secondary tariffs, because they're not doing what's right over there. They know what to do. We spoke to them. I spoke to them. They know what to do, but they have no money. Venezuela has no money. But Iran had no money and Iran behaved so beautifully. And then Biden took all those secondary tariffs and tariffs on. I told China, you can't buy oil.
If you buy oil from Iran, China, I told it to President Xi, that we no longer want you to do business with the United States of America. And those ships disappeared from that harbor so quickly. China. Get along great with China.
Are the talks with Iran productive? Do you want to continue that?
What?
The talks with Iran, do you believe those are productive? Do you want to continue that?
I think Iran could be a great country as long as it doesn't have nuclear weapons. If they have nuclear weapons, they'll never get a chance to be a great country. They will never get a chance. It won't even come close.
Sir, on tarrifs?
Yeah.
Yeah, thank you. Yesterday, you mentioned short-lived product exemptions. Which specific products are you considering and how long is short-lived, weeks, months?
I'm looking at something to help some of the car companies, where they're switching to parts that were made in Canada, Mexico and other places. And they need a little bit of time because they're going to make them here, but they need a little bit of time. So I'm talking about things like that.
What about any Apple products, other cell phones?
Look, I'm a very flexible person. I don't change my mind, but I'm flexible and you have to be. You just can't have a wall and you'll only go -- no, sometimes you have to go around it under it or above it. There'll be maybe things coming up. I speak to Tim Cook. I helped Tim Cook recently, and that whole business.
I don't want to hurt anybody, but the end result is we're going to get to the position of greatness for our country. We're the greatest economic power in the world if we're smart. If we're not smart, we're going to hurt our country very badly. We lost with China over the Biden years, trillions of dollars on trade, trillions of dollars.
And he let them fleece us and we can't do that anymore. And you know what, I don't blame China at all. I don't blame President Xi. I like him. He likes me. I mean, I think, who knows, who the hell cares? But you know what -- what?
Do you have any updates with talks with China?
No, let me just tell you this. I don't blame China. I don't blame Vietnam. I see they're meeting today, is that wonderful? That's a lovely meeting. They're meeting, like, trying to figure out, how do we screw the United States of America? Don't forget, the European Union was formed to do just that. The European Union was formed to hurt the United States on trade.
And they get us on NATO because they don't pay their bills. But now since I got involved, they have been paying their bills. I took in over $600 billion for NATO. Nobody took in anything. I mean, they were all delinquent. They had eight nations out of 28 paid their bills. The rest of them were way delinquent.
And I said, if you don't pay your bills, we're not going to protect you anymore, and the money poured in, over 600 -- the secretary general last week made that statement. He said, I've never seen anything like it. We couldn't get anybody to pay because the United States was footing the bill for NATO. Well, we got hurt there and we got hurt on trade, likewise, European Union.
And they've got to come to the table, and they're trying to. They're trying to. But the European Union has taken terrible advantage. They don't take our food products. They don't take our cars. We have millions of their cars, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, many others. They come in by the millions. They don't take.
There are no Chevrolets in Munich, I can tell you that. I said to Angela Merkel when she was there, as she was letting millions of people infiltrate Germany, which was not so good from -- we would call them illegal immigrants, but she made them legal. But I said to her, and I got along with her very well, I said, how many Chevrolets do we have in Munich or Frankfurt?
Why, none, Donald, none. I said, you're right, and yet we take in millions and millions of cars. No, those days are over. OK. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you, Press. Thank you, Press. Head out the door. Thank you, guys.