Donald Trump (00:02):
Thank you very much. So this was really a historic day, to put it mildly. Wasn't it amazing? Look at that last meeting, when you see the heads of those countries, those are serious countries. I thought it was fantastic, I did. And seeing the so-called hostages with those kids come back home, the way their parents just went crazy. Your father would not be that way with you. He'd be okay, but he wouldn't be like that.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
I would get a hug.
Donald Trump (00:33):
A hug? A minor hug, okay. No, he would be, I'm only kidding. So how are you doing? Everybody okay? Are we good?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
How are you feeling?
Donald Trump (00:44):
I feel good. It's a long day, it's a long day, and we did a couple of big ones. That first one was… It's getting great reviews, I will tell you, there's a lot of meat in there. They're dissecting it and just playing it all night long. It's been very good. I think it's a very important day, because nobody thought this was possible, very good. And the press has been very respectful for a change, doesn't happen often. Go ahead, please, let's go.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
What does it tell you about the world, that it seems like you got a much better reception in Israel than you would get in New York City right now?
Donald Trump (01:27):
I think I get a great reception in New York City.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I'm not saying that you don't, but it was on another level today.
Donald Trump (01:33):
Well, yeah, you're right, it was incredible. But I went to the Bronx and we had 31,000 people in a park in the Bronx, in New York City, during the campaign, 31,000. Do you remember that? And it was the friendliest crowd you've ever seen, and very diverse, but it was [inaudible 00:01:49]. New York is good, it's good.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
New York City, bad example, but it was… I don't know if you can see-
Donald Trump (01:58):
Are you admitting you made a mistake? I don't believe it. This is breaking news. No, I'm kidding. Let's go, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
First rule of politics, never admit a mistake.
Donald Trump (02:04):
Never admit a mistake.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
But it was, in the motorcade, I don't know if you could see, there were people hanging out of every apartment, balconies, inside the Knesset.
Donald Trump (02:13):
Okay, so I've heard… They said if you did Russia or if you did lots of different combinations, they say the Middle East blows it away. I said, "Why [inaudible 00:02:25] it's just thousands of years, nothing's been done, it's the whole thing with the Arabs, Jewish people and everybody, it's just never been done before. And there's a certain mystery to the Middle East. Look, it's only because of the ratings, you're only as good as the ratings. If they weren't getting ratings, your people at Fox would… And by the way, Trey is excellent.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
He does a really good job.
Donald Trump (02:52):
He was really good. We did a very quick interview, I was running to the second one where we were pretty late.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Something that we heard from some of the Israelis on the ground, they want to know how the peace holds when you are not the president, so three years from now-
Donald Trump (03:08):
I can't answer it. I know this, and you are all witness, we go and I get 25,000, 35,000. If you look at a normal president will get 300 people, and that's not bad, they'll go to a ballroom, they'll get 300 people. We get 35… We had 117,000 people in New Jersey. And so, I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I'll be out there fighting for whoever it may be.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Did you tell Bibi beforehand that you were going to go off script and try to get [inaudible 00:03:41]-
Donald Trump (03:42):
No, I actually told him I didn't want to bring up the pardon, but it was just the perfect spot, it was good timing. When you said… Because he was getting a very good hand, and when they stopped, they said, "Why didn't he give this guy a pardon?" If he didn't get a good hand, they wouldn't have done that. But the timing was… What do you think, Katie, good timing for that one?
Katie (04:00):
I think people thought it was pretty funny, yes.
Donald Trump (04:03):
It worked out well. It was a little risque, bringing it up, pretty sore subject in Israel. But the people were fantastic.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Mr. President, you spoke to Egypt-
Donald Trump (04:15):
Oh, here we go. She can ask more questions this one. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
I have some good questions, I promise.
Donald Trump (04:15):
You do, you do. You were very nice today. Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
You talked to President El-Sisi-
Donald Trump (04:25):
I did.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
… and you spoke about, in that room, how Egypt has so little crime, and you said it's all about leadership. You talked about-
Donald Trump (04:35):
Well, they've very strong on crime.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
You talked about some of the governors-
Donald Trump (04:36):
You wouldn't believe how strong. But they are very strong, but they don't have the kind of crime… They may have other kinds of crime, but their violent crime, you can actually walk down a park and not get mugged or hit over there with a baseball bat.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Do you want to see some US governors be more like Egypt?
Donald Trump (04:51):
No, I want them to be stronger and tougher and not allow us to have record-breaking crime in Chicago and different places. I want them to admit they have crime. So there were 4,000 shootings in Chicago, murders, over a fairly short period of time, meaning like a year and a half, I think, 4,000 murders, many, many thousands of you're hit by a bullet but don't die. I want them to say, "We have a problem. Could Trump bring in the troops and solve the problem?" Like I did in D.C., like I'm doing in Memphis. If you see the crimes way down in Memphis, and we've only been there seven days, way down.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
The courts have been standing in your way here [inaudible 00:05:34]-
Donald Trump (05:35):
They have been. The lower courts have.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Are you using the Insurrection Act, where you-
Donald Trump (05:41):
The lower… Well, I could use it. If I wanted to, I could use it. Look, that's a very simple answer, I'm allowed to use the Insurrection Act. In fact, that was on Stephanopoulos today, his Slopodopoulos show. They asked sloppy Chris Christie about the Insurrection Act. He said, "Well, if you're talking about the Insurrection Act, he's got the absolute right to use that." And he said a couple of things, he said 50% of the presidents that served in office have used the Insurrection Act, and the Insurrection Act, according to all of them, said it can't even be challenged. I don't have to go there yet because I'm winning on appeal. You're right, we're losing with radical left judges, generally, radical left judges, and we're winning on appeal, so we'll see what happens.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
I'll be speaking to Governor JB Pritzker tomorrow. Do you have any messages or questions for him?
Donald Trump (06:30):
Well, I think he should beg for help, because he's running a bad operation and he's letting people be killed in his city because he doesn't want… In Chicago, and I love Chicago, Chicago can be a great city again. And very quickly, I would have Chicago cleaned out, the criminals removed, we would remove them. In D.C., we took out 1,700 career criminals, hard-line criminals, that's why it's so good right now. D.C. is setting records the other way, it's never been so safe, and the restaurants have never done better business. They were closing restaurants, now they're opening new restaurants. I can do the same thing on a larger scale in Chicago, and Pritzker should ask me to do it.
(07:12)
But when you mentioned Insurrection, you were the one that mentioned, one of you mentioned Insurrection, I could do that, and many presidents have.
Katie (07:22):
Do you have an update on-
Donald Trump (07:23):
50%, Katie, 50% of the presidents have used the Insurrection because they don't want to go through this stuff, where somebody said there's no crime and 4,000 people got shot.
Katie (07:35):
Maybe you'll have to use it.
Donald Trump (07:37):
You [inaudible 00:07:37] have to convince, because she tends to be on the conservative side.
Katie (07:40):
Do you have an update on the Schumer shutdown and Democrats still continuing to [inaudible 00:07:45]-
Donald Trump (07:44):
Well, here's the Schumer shutdown, it's… Look, they want to have healthcare for illegals that have come in, many of these people are criminals and they want to have healthcare. And what it also does is… We have nobody coming in now, we haven't really like that, if they start winning cases like this, we're going to have a rush on our border, because they're going to come up for healthcare and the other things that they give away. Look at some Newsom, education, healthcare, he gives everything away. People come up for that, people come from other countries for that, so we can't have it, we can't have that. We have people coming into our country, but they're coming in legally.
Katie (08:20):
Do you have any more meetings with leadership this week?
Donald Trump (08:20):
We have the strongest border we've ever had, but they are coming in, Katie, they're coming in legally through a process.
Katie (08:26):
Do you have any planned meetings with House and Senate leadership on the Republican side to figure out this week?
Donald Trump (08:31):
Yeah, I'm meeting with them, I talk to them all the time. John Thune's been great and Mike has been great, speaker, he's been great, those two guys have done a great job. But we're dealing with a bunch of radical left lunatics that have lost an election in a landslide. They don't even admit that. Think of it, they lost the election 2,700, in terms of counties, to 525, that's where the map is entirely. They lost all seven swing states, they lost the popular vote, and then they say, "Oh, the election was close." She says the election was a landslide. But they lie.
(09:12)
They can take any subject, like Newsome does, says, "Oh no, Los Angeles is doing great." If we didn't go into Los Angeles, they would've had to cancel the Olympics. And the head of law enforcement said, and he said it very strongly, "We could not have handled this if Trump didn't bring those people in." Two weeks later, he said, "Oh, we could have," because he was told to say that. But we did a great job in Los Angeles. First of all, you lost half of it with the fires, and I think this would've been maybe even worse. They had no control, when we went in, the police had totally lost control, and he admitted it, the head, whoever he is, whatever his name is, he admitted it very strongly.
Katie (09:57):
What's your reaction to President Bill Clinton giving you credit for ending the war in Gaza, and others [inaudible 00:10:01].
Donald Trump (10:00):
I've always liked Bill Clinton, I've always got along with him. He used to be a friend of mine, he came to my wedding. So did she, a lot of people don't know that. But I've always liked him. I thought it was very nice, actually.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
Mr. President-
Donald Trump (10:17):
And what is he doing? He's telling the truth, because nobody else has been able to deal with talking about the Middle East. Yes?
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about your conversations with world leaders today. You said that everybody is unifying over your plan, but we heard from President Sisi calling for a two-state solution, an independent Palestinian state.
Donald Trump (10:37):
You're talking about a different plan. I'm talking about something very much different. We're talking about rebuilding Gaza. I'm not talking about single-state or double-state or two-state, we're talking about the rebuilding of Gaza.
Speaker 5 (10:51):
What's the road ahead for governing Gaza?
Donald Trump (10:54):
Well, we'll have to see. A lot of people like the one-state solution, some people like the two-state solution, so we'll have to see. I haven't commented on that.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
How do you see bridging that gap? Because the Arab countries [inaudible 00:11:05]-
Donald Trump (11:04):
At some point, I'll decide what I think is right, but I'd be in coordination with other states and other countries.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
And are you satisfied, some people might say it feels premature declaring peace for the whole Middle East, 3,000 years [inaudible 00:11:19].
Donald Trump (11:19):
Premature, why? You want more people to be killed? What do you want, another 300,000, 400,000 people to be killed, is that what you're looking for?
Speaker 5 (11:25):
But in terms of the risks in Gaza, in an already [inaudible 00:11:29]-
Donald Trump (11:30):
Risk? Risk? So you mean let them fight on for another couple of years and let some more buildings fall down on top of people and keep it going on? No, we did it the right way. We did it… I think our timing was perfect, actually.
Speaker 5 (11:41):
And in terms of-
Donald Trump (11:42):
You don't really mean that. You mean you want them to fight on, right?
Speaker 5 (11:45):
I'm just asking about the phase two of the negotiations and how confident you are that those can get underway.
Donald Trump (11:51):
We have a lot of power. That was a power room. Those people, those are the richest countries. I think now with tariffs, I think we're the richest country in the world, actually, the United States, we're taking in hundreds of millions of dollars. But those are really seriously rich countries, and they can handle it.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Some of those players, or particularly Erdogan, could they also help in the war between Russia and Ukraine?
Donald Trump (12:17):
Yeah, Erdogan can, he's respected by Russia. Ukraine, I can't tell you about. But he is respected by Putin, and he's a friend of mine, you can see. I get along with the tough ones. I don't get along with the weak ones, I get along with the tough ones, I don't know what that is. But Erdogan's been great with me. When NATO has a problem with Erdogan, which they often do, they call me to talk to him, and I've never failed at working it out immediately. Is that right? How's Karoline doing? Is she doing good? Should Karoline be replaced?
Katie (12:48):
No. She's great.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
That's up to you, sir.
Donald Trump (12:54):
It'll never happen.
Karoline (12:54):
Nobody wants to say-
Katie (12:54):
I said she does a great job.
Karoline (12:54):
Thank you.
Katie (12:56):
Do you want to elaborate on the-
Donald Trump (12:58):
Those lips, they move like a machine gun, right?
Katie (13:00):
Do you want to elaborate on the countries you consider weak?
Donald Trump (13:04):
They really are… Okay, what?
Katie (13:06):
Do you want to comment on the leaders you consider weak who are in that room?
Donald Trump (13:09):
No, I won't comment on that, but you know probably who they are.
Katie (13:14):
I have an idea.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
Before we-
Donald Trump (13:14):
I don't know that really… Yeah, there were a couple in the room.
Katie (13:16):
You mean their countries?
Donald Trump (13:18):
But overall, I thought that was an amazing group of people. I don't think they've ever seen a sandwich like that, between power, money, et cetera, there's never been anything like that.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
On the way here, you said-
Donald Trump (13:31):
But you know what? I have to… Because the plane is going to take off.
Speaker 7 (13:33):
Are you hosting Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday?
Donald Trump (13:34):
I think so.
Speaker 7 (13:35):
Yes.
Donald Trump (13:36):
Bye everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Thanks, President Trump.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Thank you.
Donald Trump (13:38):
Have a good time. Thank you everybody.