Remarks on Coal and an Exchange With Reporters

We'll maybe start where we left off yesterday, and we showed you this picture. And now it's opened, so this is now open. And that——

You see the size of that compared to some of the biggest buildings in the country—or, actually, the biggest.

Hi, Peter [Peter Doocy, Fox News].

And we have it finished. The water is pouring in as we speak, and maybe we'll show that—what it looks like, because I'm sure the fake news will be thrilled.

Take a look.

This is from just a while ago. Nice, clean water.

So we're here to talk about clean, beautiful coal. That's clean, beautiful water. That's the longest pool anywhere in the world.

And here, you can tell they're not progressive because—this is not a progressive because progressives never wear or show an American flag. These are proud people from Oklahoma. They came from Oklahoma—a company from Oklahoma—to do it. But you notice the American flag. He's proudly showing off his work. You know he's not a liberal and/or a progressive.

It used to be a liberal, but they changed their name somewhere along the way because liberal wasn't working, but progressive doesn't work too, although "progressive" is a beautiful term.

They're not progressive; they're degressive.

You've got that? What do you think? Huh?

Daniel [Daniel Baldwin, One America News] is great.

He's a great reporter.

And, again, we have a picture of a gentleman in a car.

Proudly—this is the head of construction for the job, so you can see it's just finished. This is just minutes before.

And there's a gentleman named Secretary Burgum from Interior, Doug, who's been doing an incredible job.

So, Doug, we had—we have 22 waterfalls; most of them haven't worked for over 50 years. As of this morning, they all work beautifully, and they're clean. The graffiti is gone. The broken marble is fixed. Well, there's a way of fixing it. You use a thing called silicone, and you fix them. And they look beautiful. All of the hate and everything is removed from them. Some of them are done through stupidity, actually, but hate.

But here's another picture. Now you can tell this is a proud American because he's got a flag.

Protesters never have—the bad protesters never have flags up. They somehow don't like the flag too much, but we do.

So that's great.

We put in today, as you know, about SAVE America—the SAVE America Act. I don't know, someday the Senate and the House will get it done. Although, I must tell you, the House has approved it about three times already.

The SAVE America Act, right here. We have——[The President held up a printout of a Truth Social post.]

Everybody can see that. And then we'll talk about clean, beautiful coal. You're not allowed to say "coal" within the Trump administration unless it's preceded by the words "clean, beautiful." Complicates our life, but it's good. Right, Chris? Wherever you may be.

It is clean and beautiful.

I'll tell you, it's effective.

So the SAVE America Act is all voters must show photo ID. So you go to vote, and you show photo ID. Not complicated. Right? You know, who could oppose it? They say it's an 80/20. It's not. It's about 99/1, and we'll never find the one person, Andy.

Congratulations, Andy, on a big victory. Representative Garland H. "Andy" Barr IV. Thank you.

That's a great——

I appreciate it, but you're—you're very good at what you do, and I've been backing you right from the beginning for a long time, right?

For years. That's right, you have. Thank you. Congratulations. You won a big election.

So you have all voters must show photo ID—identification. All voters must show a little thing called proof of citizenship.

Would you say that's 99/1, Mr. Pennsylvania?

I would think so. They say it's——

No, but they say it's 80/20. It's not 80/20. It's 99, and we've never found the one person.

There's another one.

Then you have no mail-in ballots, but we want to be liberal, as they say, or we'll say we want to be progressive. So it's no mail-in ballots.

You see that's—so what's happening in California, they're rigging the election. Now, maybe we caught them, and maybe they won't be able to get away with it. They tried with me, and they did it successfully the second time.

The third time we made it too big to rig. Too many votes; they couldn't do it. They can only go—they sort of gave up at about 9:07 when they got slaughtered with the votes that came in.

But no mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military, or travel. So we're being very progressive, and we just don't want cheating in our elections.

And you see it happening in California. Those numbers are coming down rapidly. They found a lot of mail-in ballots last night, shockingly. So we don't want that.

Then we added "best of." This is best of Trump: No men in women's sports, no transgender mutilization surgery for our children. I would say that's pretty close to 99 to 1 also.

No men in women's sports. I would say that's pretty good.

We had the quarterback, Jaxson—who was the quarterback—is the quarterback for the Giants. He's a big, strong guy. And I said, "How do you think you'd do in women's sports, Jaxson?" He said, "Pretty good, sir."

He didn't know I was joking.

He—was not worried. Let me put it that way. He would have been the greatest athlete in the history of women's sports. You got to see the size of this guy, like a male model, and he's going to be a great quarterback.

So we talk about that, and so we just would like the Senate Democrats, Republicans to pass it.

Interestingly, Democratic people—Democrat people, not crooked politicians, because most of them are crooked, or they're sick, or they're Trump deranged. There is Trump derangement syndrome. But the people, it's 86, 87 percent. Democrats. I mean, Democrats are fine. I have a lot of Democrat friends, but they—I don't know, for some reason, when they go into politics, they get radical-left crazy, and they're trying to destroy our country. But we're not going to let that happen.

So today we're taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.

If you look at China, if you look at so many of the successful countries, they're using coal. If you look at some of the real great failures, countries, they're using wind. It just keeps blowing, blowing, blowing, and puts you right out of business. Very expensive. Most expensive energy there is.

So wind is not working very well, but they keep it going because people get subsidies by countries that are stupid.

And, Doug, I would say we haven't been long on wind. Do you agree with that? Do you, Doug—he understands numbers very well.

You know, Doug was very, very successful. Believe it or not, I used to think it was in energy, but he was successful in technology, and he sold his company to, I think, Microsoft, right? And for a lot of money. And he ran for politics. He ran for office, went to North Dakota, won immediately, won Governor. He was very successful for 8 years.

And I watched him during one of the performances of some very talented people, and I said, "We're going to get him to work for us." And then I said I was going to put him in charge of Energy, and he said, "Sir, there's a better man than me for that one." Not in all ways you feel that, but in one way—[laughter]—in energy, you do. And that was Chris, right?

Where is Chris? Where are you?

He's a hard one to find.

And Chris has done a fantastic job, and he's one of the reasons we're here today.

We have had—we're, right now, double Saudi Arabia and Russia. If you double them up, that's what we produce. More than anybody else times two. So think of that.

As a result of the $700 million investment that I'm announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coal mines—it's a tremendous number—and build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal because we're exporting coal.

Coal is a great business, really, a big business. And it's real power. I mean, it's—in terms of power, there's really nothing like it. You have so many different alternatives. They talk about some. But there's no—no real alternative.

China, by the way, last year, built 52 coal plants. They built about two—windmills. You know, the only time they build a windmill is when they're trying to sell them to stupid people from the United States that—the suckers. And by the way, and all over Europe.

They sell the windmills, but they don't use them. I wonder why. They use coal plants and other things.

These actions will support over 14,000 jobs and save the American people $50 billion in electricity costs.

We're pleased to be joined by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. And he has been great. I don't want to give him a big, swollen ego because then, all of a sudden, he'll leave me, and I won't be—[laughter]—and I'll be stuck with Interior. I don't want to be stuck.

But he's really done a great job.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who's fantastic.

And maybe our MVP—what do you think, Doug? You—it's close.

What do you think, MVP? Lee Zeldin. And the job he's done is great.

We had the auto industry in yesterday. They don't want people to fix their car. I said, "That's strange." I'd never heard of that. They have a thing to—nobody is allowed to fix their car. They gave a man 7 years in jail, actually, because he fixed his own car. So I thought we'd do something about that. But we'll get it all straightened away.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee M. Zeldin. Definitely.

Can you believe it? They want a bill that prohibits people from fixing. So, if you're mechanically inclined—you know, I grew up—I went to school with some guys. They were—in some cases, horrible students, but they could fix an engine blindfolded. They could take a car apart blindfolded. But they weren't too good at arithmetic and other things. But they were great. And so, there's a move on to stop people from fixing their car.

I—didn't understand it. But we had a great meeting yesterday with head of General Motors and Roger Penske; head of Ford. We had a great meeting, I think.

Thanks as well to West—a friend of mine, also, for a long time, West Virginia Governor, Patrick Morrisey.

I won by 45 points, Patrick.

I love those people.

And Wyoming, I think maybe even slightly more than West Virginia, right?

We did pretty—this is a—[laughter]—I— like this group of people.

But Wyoming Governor, Mark Gordon—a respected guy, great Governor. Both of them, really amazing. And Dan Meuser, Riley Moore, Derrick Van Orden, Juan Ciscomani, and Andy Barr.

So you have a lot of Representatives here that are fantastic.

Today we're officially invoking the Defense Production Act to save 13 coal plants in West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Wisconsin.

These were incredible plants—so productive, really producing a lot of the electricity, right?

The electricity, it's really the best at that.

You know, when they—find something better, Chris, I think we'll be all set for it, right? But they're a long ways from finding something better.

And so, when you look at that, those States—West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wisconsin—what do they all have in common?

Trump won them.

I won every one of them. By a lot, right?

I'm not even mentioning Pennsylvania, which we won also, right?

But we won them all. We won—probably, we won all 50, if we had an honest count, if you want to know the truth.

Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future; reinforce the reliability of our electric grid, which is really the biggest beneficiary; and most importantly, keep electricity prices very low for the American people.

This brings the total number of coal plants that we've saved during my administration—just like when we said we saved 25 water fountains. Think of this. These are fountains, beautiful fountains, that were so horrible to look at, with the graffiti. Over 40 years, many of them closed—over 40 to 50 years.

The big one, the reflective lake. In fact, some people call it a pond. Some people, it's like a lake. But the reflective lake was built in 1922. It never really worked, from the beginning, from 1922. That's a long ways.

So it's over a hundred years old, and it never really worked because they had the wrong base.

It was always leaking. They didn't have what we have today.

So it's pretty amazing what's happened. And you know, I hate to say it won't leak, but it won't leak, because we used a material that doesn't allow leaks. You know, it's like, a swimming pool doesn't leak. You use the right—this is—this is called swimming pool on steroids. So it's great stuff.

And today's actions, we're also supporting coal mines and coal miners in Wyoming and Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, and New Mexico. And they're going to—they're all going back to work.

You know, it's interesting with the mines, that famous scene of Hillary, where we went to West Virginia. And she had just left another State, and she was trying to convince everybody that they should go into technology, no longer be miners. And these guys in West Virginia, they didn't want to hear about it. They wanted to be—remember that scene around the table? They talked to this beautiful, big, strong miner, and they wanted him to make computer chips. She said, "We'll teach him how to make computer chips." His hands were so large, he couldn't hold a computer chip. He's looking at it, going—[laughter].

He had fingers that are, like, three inches around, and they're talking about making a computer chip. And he didn't like it, and he ended up being one of our best ads ever. She wasn't—and she did rather poorly. She lost—I think she lost by 77 points or something like that.

Pretty tough to go knock—you knock coal, and then you go 2 weeks later to West Virginia to try and win the State. It didn't work out well for her.

But the miners love us. What do you think we got with the coal miners? Would you say we got 90 percent, 100 percent? Where do you think we were on this?

Yes, pretty high.

Pretty high.

Yes, it can't be bad. Well, we did well with all the groups.

I'll tell you, the group that now likes us are the autoworkers, because we're building more auto plants now than at any time in the history of our country.

So it's very—it's great to watch and see what's going on with the U.S. We're the most respected country anywhere in the world, and we were a dead country a year and a half—we were a dead country. We were a laughed-at—we were a mocked, laughed-at country.

Starting this summer, the West Gateway project will break ground. And by summer 2028, over 12 million tons of clean, beautiful coal per year will be shipped to countries all around the world. And this project has been delayed over 10 years, and Biden ended it, and then Barack Hussein Obama—have you heard of him: Barack Hussein Obama? Another one. He's another beauty. But that delay is now over. And it's going to be very productive. It's going to fuel our electric plants in particular. It's going to be amazing.

Finally, we're taking nearly $200 million in that—to set aside for the "green new scam"—and it was set aside for the "green new scam," but the "green new scam" is history—and repurposing that money so that we start a coal plant in Maryland and help build two brand-new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia. And these are all built with new technology. It's very clean. It's amazing what—how that's come along. It's all very clean.

And the first new coal plants to open in our country since 2013—you couldn't open—you couldn't even think—they were only closing them. They were closing them, and you had brownouts all over the place. But you don't have that anymore, do you notice?

Under 4 years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the radical-left Democrats in Congress, not a single permit was approved for a new coalmining project. But in over 1 year of our administration, we've already approved 76 permits for clean, beautiful coal.

Last year, we prevented 17 gigawatts of coal-powered electricity from going off line, and that's enough power to—for about 13 million homes. Think of that: 13 million homes, at a very low price. It's the lowest price.

So now I'd like to ask Secretary Burgum to say a few words, followed by Secretary Wright, Administrator Lee Zeldin, and then Governor Mark Gordon and whoever else wants to say a few words, including my new friend—my new Governor friend.

So, Doug, go ahead.

Clean, beautiful coal.

I'm only kidding.

Well—and thank you, Doug. Perhaps slightly less importantly, but I think very important, the National Garden of American Heroes is going to be unbelievable. And I'd like to know how are you doing on that and how are you doing on the great triumphal arc.

So every city—just about every major city has a triumphal arc. This is an arc that's a real bow—a beautiful bow to your military and military victories. Nobody has had more military victories, including recently, than we have, and they never got the arc built. It's been—the Civil War stopped it. That circle has been sitting there for a long time, for many, many years.

And I guess you could go back to—in 1902 they tried it, and—but in 1860 and 1880 they just never got it done. The war—the Civil War stopped it the first time. That was a good reason. I think that's a—probably not a bad—that was a good excuse. But after that, it just never happened, and we're going to get it done.

And so, we're doing it with the Department of Interior, and we're also doing the National Garden of American Heroes, which is phenomenal.

And we're doing something that just came up. We'll have a little breaking news here, because nobody has heard of it. But, at the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back; the back was supposed to be the front. It never got built because they built two roadways behind it after it was built, and it shut off the gateway to the water. That was really going to be the main entry, and we're going to be doing that. We're going to—it's called the "promenade." It will be the promenade. They want to call it the "Trump Promenade," but I don't know if I want to do that, but it's going to be beautiful. It's a beautiful project.

And it's going to take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac, which it was always scheduled to do, but when they built the roads, that was the end of that. But we have a way of—beautifully going over those two roads—they're highways—very, very strong; very important roads, actually, as you know, from the bridge. But it's going to be great.

So can I ask, Doug, just—for just a couple of seconds to talk about those—those three great projects that we're just starting?

Thank you very much.

Great job, Doug. And, Secretary Chris Wright, please.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chris.

Good job.

Good.

And, Lee Zeldin, how about saying a few words?

Thank you, Lee. Great job too. Wyoming Governor, Mark Gordon. Thank you. Mark.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Mark, very much. Would you like to say something on behalf of West Virginia?

I love that place.

As an example, the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America. It bothered me for many years. We have 92 percent of the frontage, and we made that little change, and Mexico was thrilled. They were thrilled about it. But that was a good one, right? You were telling me before that was a good one.

And it's about the United States now for a little while, if it's okay. Would you have any questions, please?

Well, I don't know. I'm glad that they're maybe talking about meeting. I think we had a lot to do with it. I know exactly what you're doing.

But I think it would be great if they met. They should and get it done.

Well, I think I probably, even if—

.

I have actually seen something just about 2 days ago. I know it's been pushed by a lot of our supporters, and I'm honored that they're doing it, but we'll see how that all works out. But I have heard about it, and there is a group of people—they really like the job we're doing. You know, so that's a great honor.

Yes, please.

Well, he's very smart. He's a person who's got high integrity. He's done a phenomenal job at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. You know, you probably have a trillion dollars in value there. When he took over, it was much less.

And I guess I'm responsible for that too, because everybody wanted me to sell it in my first term for 10 percent of what it's worth right now. If I would have sold it, we would have lost $900 billion. We would have lost—I mean, think of it: It's probably worth a trillion dollars.

And I was offered every—people wanted me to sell it at $100 billion, a very small percentage of what it's worth now. So—and he built it up a lot, did a great job. And it's an acting position. It's not a permanent—he's not going to be permanent, because, you know, I don't think he'd want to be permanent.

But he's a very smart guy, and he may find out some things about the rigged elections, et cetera, et cetera. I think he'd like to do it. I'd like to—I think he wants to do it very much. Got a lot of energy. But he'll be very good.

Again, it's not a permanent position.

We're looking at—we're interviewing people right now. But it's somebody just to take it over for a little while.

Well, I do, and I think he does, actually, because he's smart, because a lot of national security—I—look, I wasn't greatly experienced in national security, and I think I've done a really great job with it. A lot of people would say that.

I've ended eight wars and soon to be a ninth. I hope that works out too. You know, frankly, it's—but probably—and there's another one also that could be 10.

No President—I don't think a President has ended one war having to do with outside of this country. So, you know, we've done a good job.

I would say that Bill is a guy that will be able to figure it out very quickly. Again, it's short term, but he may be very effective for a short period of time.

Yes, please.

Yes.

Well, the answer is, we are. But, Chris, do you want to answer that?

Thank you.

Yes.

Well, I'd rather not say, because Peter asked me, and I think it was meant as a little wise-guy question, but I'm not sure. But I'm very responsible when that happens. It's going to happen.

They're going to make—both make compromises. I suggested those compromises. And you know, we've had a lot to do with it. We'd love to see—they're two very good people. They're two very, I mean, incredible countries, beautiful countries. They've got to stop.

Last month, they had 25,000 people killed—soldiers—mostly soldiers—some people, but mostly soldiers. And it's been averaging probably almost 25,000 people every month of soldiers killed. And I've been very strong on the fact that they've got to get that over with.

So—but they—they do. I want them each to make certain compromises. I think they're going to do that.

Yes, Daniel.

Yes.

Well, we were destroying our grid because we're relying on wind and other things that don't have the power, they don't have the strength, they're very expensive. Wind is the most expensive form of energy. It sounds good. Wind, beautiful wind. But you know, it's very intermittent. But those windmills cost a fortune. They break. They kill the birds. They're bad for the environment. Nobody wants to be near them. The houses—I don't know how they got popular. They got—they're not popular with the people. They're popular with investors because they get subsidy.

But we pretty much cut that subsidy out, I think, Doug, right?

Good.

You're supposed to be making money with—you know, with that, with energy. And here, wind, it needs subsidy.

Energy shouldn't need subsidy. We have so much—so many different forms of energy. But you know, I've talked about it for years. Wind is the most expensive. It's the worst. It causes tremendous problems. And it does: It kills millions and millions of birds a year. Nobody mentions that.

You'd think if that were the—anything else, they'd be—everybody would be sued.

You know, if you kill a bald eagle, they put you in jail for, like, 4 years or something. And yet windmills knock them out of the air all the time. Nothing happens. It's a—disgraceful.

So we're into energy that really works and works powerfully. Yes, go ahead.

Yes.

It's incredible.

We put it up in 5 days. It's incredible. And I told yesterday the story of the Eiffel Tower. It was 1889, it was put up. It was going to be brought down right after the World's Fair ended. It was up for a short while, and they said, "Well, let's leave it a little bit longer." Then they said, "Let's leave it a little longer." It never came down. That was 18—I think 1889, the World's Fair in Paris. So I jokingly said, "You know, let me tell you a story about the Eiffel Tower."

No, no, it will come down after the fight.

There were actually some people who said, "He wants to leave it up."

Yes, please.

Yes.

Thank you.

Participant. Amazing.

Well, it means Italian people love Trump.

Because, you know, that was controversial. People wanted to rip it down. You see how beautiful it is. And we don't—didn't only not rip it down, but Doug and his group, and all of us together, we—beautified it. It's—I didn't know the marble was going to be so beautiful. When we—once we cleaned it up, you wouldn't believe it. When you saw that thing was loaded for 50 years with filth and graffiti and everything else. It's amazing. It's amazing how good—they did a really great job.

Well, we don't need their help.

Yes.

We're the most powerful military in the world. We gave them a chance to help, but they chose not to—NATO. We went to the NATO countries; we went to others too, in all fairness to NATO. And I wouldn't say I gave them a hard sell, but I said, "Hey, if you'd like to help, it'd be wonderful." And they all turned us down, and, you know, it's going to be an expensive proposition for them because they shouldn't have done that. They should have helped.

You know, we don't need it. We have our own—we have much more than we need in terms of oil and energy, generally. But—European countries and other countries, they need it tremendously—some of the European countries need it really big. And they should have said, "We'd love to help." But they didn't.

Well, I would have asked them—I mean, there's not much—look, we want—they have—there's no navy. There's no air force. We've wiped them out. We've wiped out their leadership and—almost all of it. We've wiped out all their military leaders. They're down on the third.

Now, maybe they're very good. I don't know; I can't tell you that. But certainly the first ones didn't do very good because they weren't—they were literally—after 3 days, almost the entire military was wiped out. They had to get new generals. And then, after that, they had to get more new generals.

And we knocked out their anti-aircraft, their air force, just about everything you can knock out. So—and then you read in the fake news that they're doing really well in the war. I mean, it's unbelievable. We knocked out everything there is to knock out, and you'd pick up the fake news, and they say how well they've done. They're doing brilliantly. They have no air force.

You know they had exactly—we knew that—159 ships. Andy, out of 159 ships, all 159 lie beautifully at the bottom of the ocean. We actually took pictures of them down there. And then you read the fake news. They say, "Well, their navy is really great."

You know what they have now?

Little runabouts with a machinegun on the front.

It's a—the ships don't even really deal with them, but it's just—they're like a gnat. You know, like, "Get off." That's all they have. It's crazy.

You know, this country needs a fair press, and one thing I think that's done is expose how corrupt our media is. And I really do—while we're here, I hope the media looks at this election that's taking place in California, where they think it'll take seven or eight days to count the votes. Can you believe this?

I mean, we're supposed—they spend all that money on the machines, the big voting machines. They think it's going to be 7 or 8 days before we know who won the election.

But the numbers are looking strange, because without any vote counting, the numbers dropped very precipitously for two Republicans that are doing well—that had been doing well.

And I hope you're all watching it because I'm watching it very closely.

No, no, we're in a better—we had a great meeting with China. And, you know, they do things to us, and we do things to them. I say it all the time. They say, "Oh, it's—are you worried about China tapping your phones?" I said, "Well, you know, they're worried about the same thing."

No, we're very highly sophisticated—we've become very highly sophisticated. We had 4 years. I rebuilt the military. We had a military that was not good, and we rebuilt it. And I didn't know I'd use it quite as much, but we used it.

Ukraine has been given a tremendous amount of our military—without our military and our equipment, Ukraine wouldn't be alive to fight today, you know, I mean, just in terms of the question. We gave them hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of equipment and the best equipment in the—we make the best equipment anywhere in the world, but they wouldn't have—they wouldn't have lasted one or 2 days. They wouldn't have been able to do it.

Remember the antitank missiles—remember that, right?—when the tanks got stuck in the mud, and then they went around and boom, boom, boom. And those were given by yours truly. They said Obama gave sheets and Trump gave the antitank—the—one of the most devastating weapons.

But you check that out.

But we have the greatest military. We have the greatest military equipment anybody has ever seen before.

Look at Venezuela. We went in there; it was over after about 48 minutes, and, you know, they have a strong military—a different kind of a military, but a lot of soldiers.

And you look at Iran, where we essentially wiped out their military. No, there's some missiles left, but very few compared to what they had.

If they killed——

What does that mean?

Well, I—it would be a good reason. I'll be honest with you: Yes, if they killed U.S. troops, I think I would do that very quickly. Yes, that's a very interesting question.

Well, you don't know. What does "reject"——

Yes.

Yes, what does "reject" mean? They didn't reject. Look——

They're looking. I think Hizballah—I will tell you, they called us and they said, "How about stopping?" And I think you see things happen over there.

That's been, like, a little bit of a different world, but it's interconnected with Iran, and it would be really nice if Lebanon could have some peace. Lebanon has been under attack for so many years and always like an underdog. And it would be really nice if it could end.

And I spoke to Bibi Netanyahu about that, and I speak to them about it, and I actually spoke to Hizballah about it, and I think progress is made. That's been going on for a long time. You know, when you look at that, for years and years—48 years. I say, "Well, let's get this settled.

How long has it been going on?" "Forty-eight years." I said, "That's a long time."

Not that easy.

But go ahead.

No. I have—I just do what's right.

No, I—mean, look, it was like Venezuela was very unpopular, then we won, and my numbers went through the roof. I have very high poll numbers. They went through the roof.

It was very unpopular when I went to Venezuela. They said, "Oh, we don't want"—well, first of all, that one is relatively close. It's sort of a semineighbor, right? And the relationship with Venezuela is incredible. We've taken out millions and millions of barrels of oil out of Venezuela. It's very oil-prone, I guess, Chris. One of the most, right?

And we've taken out—you're sort of leading it. But do you want to just tell them real fast about the relationship we have with Venezuela, Chris?

And remember this: We're—if you want to call it a war or if you want to call it a military operation, you cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, and everybody agrees to that, no matter—almost everybody.

But wait a minute. Our gasoline prices are lower than they were with Biden without that.

And he would have let them have—in fact, he inspired them to have, frankly, a nuclear weapon—him and Obama. Obama picked the wrong country. You know that.

And the Obama deal—I terminated that, or they would have had a nuclear—that was a road to a nuclear weapon.

Our deal, if we make that deal—and it's going well, but who knows—if we make that deal, it's the exact opposite. They will not have—they will never have a nuclear weapon.

I'm not going to let them have a nuclear weapon, no.

With Obama, it was a road—you know that. It was a road to a nuclear weapon. That was a short-term agreement, and at the end of which they would have a nuclear weapon. So, they would have had it 4 years ago.

Then we attacked with this beautiful plane right here, the B–2 bomber. We attacked—10 months ago, we attacked their nuclear sites, and they were obliterated. It turned out that, you know, CNN was wrong. They said, "Well, maybe they weren't hit that hard." They were hit so hard nobody knows if you can even get it out.

But the only ones that have the capability of getting out is us and China. We're the only ones with that kind of equipment that's powerful enough to go down that deep into a mountain.

But that mountain crushed it. That mountain literally collapsed on top of it. Those pilots did one hell of a job.

And now the Atomic Energy, as you know, has backed us up on that. They think it's a very, very hard thing to get it, but we'll get it anyway.

But we're the only one—and China. I believe China too, but we're the only two that have the capability of getting it.

Former President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

No, not really. He was the same guy I've been watching for a long time. I mean, you can go back 40 years. I watched him 40 years ago, 30 years ago. He was never the sharpest guy. You do know that, right? It wasn't like he was sharp as a tack. But no, it was the same guy.

He actually invited me here before the election, which was strange. You know, we went here before, but then I met also—as you know, we did the ritual. And, I mean, he was fine, as far as I was concerned.

I don't know. Something happened to him during the debate. It could have been me. You know, I thought I had a very good debate. Nobody ever says that. They say that Biden did badly. What about me? Did I do well? You know, there's a reason he did badly. And so, the question is: Did he do badly because he choked or because he didn't have it?

But he didn't have a good—I would say this: He did not have a good night.

No, he spoke softly.

Very softly. And as we started to speak, he—you know, I mention this to people: He spoke very, very softly. Very low. Very low. And as we talked, we got along really well, and I thought he was fine. I thought he was fine.

When I say "fine," I mean was he, like, talking to Doug Burgum?

Was he, like, talking to Chris? Was he, like, talking to any of these monsters up here, all these tremendous politicians and environmental geniuses? Was he, like, talking to Andy Barr? No. He was fine.

Well, you would think that, you know, past has something to do with winning an election, and I would say his past is not the greatest. "Where's Hunter?" Remember my "Where's Hunter?" It became the number-one shirt anywhere in the world for about 3 weeks.

I'm not going to say bad. I'm sure—you know, hey, if the guy from Maine can do well—[laughter]—I guess Hunter could do well too.

Because the guy from Maine is a basket case, and I would say worse than him is the one from Texas that looks like Alfred E. Neuman.

I would say that if he can do well, maybe Hunter can do well. I'm not sure. It would be pretty close, as far as I'm concerned.

Right. Yes.

No.

I was——

Yes, but I didn't want to be Jimmy Carter. You know, I didn't feel like being Jimmy Carter.

We did—well, we thought about it right at the very beginning, before you saw, before we did what we did, where—before we destroyed their entire military. We thought about it, and I didn't want to be in a position where you had to be—you know, to get there, it's not like—it's not like Venezuela, like you go in, you're there for a matter of minutes, and you're out and everybody is waving goodbye as you, you know, take off, and you've brought the cargo back.

This is different. You'd have to be there for 2 weeks. You'd need massive equipment. You'd have to airlift the equipment in. You know, you're in a war zone.

And there was a time at the very beginning when we thought about doing that because they would have not been watching, but they would have found out. I mean, during a period of a week to 2 weeks, you know, that's—you would have had a major construction operation, because that plane and, more importantly, those people that operate those planes, including the mechanics—you know, they flew for 37 hours round trip. Think of that. And the tankers that refilled them four times, and—what an operation it was. Amazing.

And—but we would have been—Peter, we would have been there for a period from a week to 2 weeks. We would have gotten it, but I said, "I don't like the idea of that." All of a sudden, they, you know, pinpoint—they still had missiles left. That means they would pinpoint you and just keep lobbing them in until one gets through, and people would have gotten killed. So I didn't like it.

We could get it right now. I don't think they could stop us if we wanted, but there's no reason to. It's entombed. You used a good word. It's entombed.

We also have cameras on it through Space Force. We have very powerful cameras. Every door—there's a door. You know, the—you know where the doors go? They go to bad places.

But every single place on that—on those mountains—there's three—basically three, because we also hit it with Tomahawks after. You know, after that, we hit it with Tomahawks.

Every inch of that land has cameras on it. We have about nine of them, and they're on it. We cover it. So, if anybody even got near it, we would know what we had to do.

I don't want to meet, but if—if I did meet, I'd be honored to meet him. I'd like to see if we make a deal. But if we make a deal, it's possible that I would meet him. I'd be okay with that.

Oh, I don't know, Peter. I haven't really heard too much about it. It's not—I—didn't suggest it, but some people have suggested it. If it happened, it would be—happen. I'd be be respectful.

Well, I would say I'm not his favorite person. But with that being said, he's probably a—I don't know him. He's probably a professional. In some circles, he has a very good reputation, actually. You know, sometimes some people say bad, but a lot of people say bad about me. It's totally false, of course.

Please.

Yes.

Well, we're doing very well with the Black jobs, African American jobs.

We're doing—I saw some numbers that we're doing really well.

But where we're really going to do well is when all these plants are open. You know, we're building many car plants. We're bringing cars back from Germany. We're bringing—you know, we lost the car industry years ago. Fifty-four percent of the industry went to Germany, Japan, Canada, Mexico. It's all coming back. It's amazing.

And where your Black worker is really going to do well is when those factories open. So, I think they're going to be great.

Yes, we've—been doing very well. It's been a big focus for me.

Yes, please.

So we're really lowering costs. You know, when I came into this job, we had the highest inflation in the history of our country. Forty-eight years, they say, but I—think the history of our country, whether it's 48 years or more. But we had tremendous inflation with Biden. During the Biden—they had the highest—they had one of the highest ever, and I inherited that.

The costs were very, very high. And at my first news conference, Peter and others were screaming at me about eggs. Remember, Peter? "Eggs! What about eggs?" Maybe it wasn't you.

I know, but I wanted to inject Peter into it. But he was screaming to me on eggs, and I said: "What? Tell me about eggs." This is 2 days in. They said eggs had quadrupled. I said, "Well, they didn't quadruple under me. They"—and they didn't want me to order eggs for the Easter egg hunt that was going to take place in a few months, right?

And I said: "Nope. We're not going to"—they wanted me to order plastic eggs, and I said, "Nope."

And we got eggs down to lower than what it was long prior to when I took over, and eggs today are about 15 percent lower.

What we had is a bunch of con artists, the Democrats—the "Dumocrats." And what they did is they said—they left. They gave the highest prices that we've ever had for all products—groceries, everything—and they started saying, "Affordability." They'd say, "This is about affordability." It's a con job.

I inherited their high prices. We brought those prices way down. And when the—and if you go back 3 months ago—if you go back before the—war started, think of it: 3 months.

So, with Vietnam, we were there for 19 years. With Iraq, it was about 9 years. With another one, it was about 12 years. And with another one—we had all these wars that lasted for 9, 10, 12—19 years for Vietnam. Think of it.

And they said: "You're in there for 3 months. This is a terrible thing."

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed in these other wars. We lost not one soldier in Venezuela. We didn't lose one soldier. And we lost a total of 13, which is 13 too many, but when you look at hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed in these various wars. They lasted many, many years. We're in there for a few months, and what we've done is amazing. They won't have a nuclear weapon.

And we did—it was tough because we just got—Doug and everybody came in to see me. We just got the best numbers. Well, today, again, the New York Stock Exchange and every other exchange just hit a new alltime high. That's 73 days out of my short term we've hit brand-new highs. Every 401(k) is setting records.

And 401(k)s, a lot of people have. You probably all have 401(k)s. Every—I'll tell—look at your 401(k). You're happy about your 401(k)? You know, the nice reporters are smiling at me, and the stupid reporters are like that.

But their 401(k)s are setting records. They should be happy. They shouldn't be angry; they should be very happy.

But 401(k)s are setting records. They've never had anything like it. So, you know, we've done a good job.

As far as Iran is concerned, you're going to find out what the deal is, but the main parts of the deal is, they can't have a nuclear weapon. The Strait will open immediately. You know, it's going to open immediately.

And we've largely swept for mines. We have the most sophisticated minesweepers—they're underwater minesweepers. I actually said to somebody, one of the generals, "Why underwater?" He said, "Because usually it's hostile." You know, when you're looking for mines, typically it's not in a good neighborhood, right? So underwater made a lot of sense, when you—it didn't take long to figure that one out.

So I think we're doing very well, but we're going to see. If—we're going to win one way or the other. We're going to win on paper or we're going to win military. One way or the other, it's going to be militarily or on paper.

Yes.

Very critical. Without it, you can't win.

As an example, AI is a big deal. Whether we like it, not like it, it's going to be amazing in many ways. It's going to be—I think, for medical, it'll be amazing. But without massive amounts of energy, you can't even play the game.

And we're leading China by a lot in AI. I was talking to President Xi about it. But if we didn't do—Lee Zeldin has done so great because, number one, fast approvals from professionals. You know, you have the best firms in the world submitting papers to him, and we didn't keep them waiting for 10 years and then vote against them after 10 years. That was your—guys would file with the environmental for a plant of some kind. After 15 years, they would be rejected. It was terrible.

Now we have great professionals there, and we accept—we only accept plans from great professionals, but we give them fast turnaround, and it's been really amazing.

I think the biggest thing we've done, Lee, is we let these geniuses with all this money build their own electric plant. We don't take it from our grid; we let them build their own plant. They become a utility. So they're building a plant, and at the same time, they're building electricity, because if we didn't do that, you couldn't have anything. You couldn't have—and we're letting that happen too with car plants and other plants, if they want to build their own electric.

But with the AI, you know, when you hear so much about it—but one of the biggest things, they build their own. And then excess energy that they create will go back into the grid.

Yes, please.

Wait a minute. Just let him have one.

That's right.

Well, we have it. And you know, look, India, for years, has—and I don't blame them; I blame us, because we had stupid people here. India, for years, really took advantage of the United States. You know that.

Are you from India, by any chance? Huh?

I thought you were from Germany.

I'm only kidding. You're central casting, okay? And that's a very good thing.

India, for years, took advantage of this country. They charged us tremendous tariffs, and they paid nothing. They wouldn't let Harley—as an example, in the past, they wouldn't let Harley Davidson sell its motor. They would charge 200-percent tariff, so Harley Davidson was precluded. They ended up going to India and building their own plants, which is unfortunate that that happened, but it happens. That was before me.

But they charged tremendous amounts of tariffs to our—and—we didn't charge them anything. You know, they sell—sold motorbikes here too. You know what we charged them? Nothing. And now it's the exact reverse.

And we're making a lot of money with India, but we'll get to a deal because I like—you know, I like your Prime Minister a lot. He's a good friend of mine. Get along great. And we're going to make a deal. We get—we have a very good relationship.

No. It's just—we just want them to be a nicely run country that can feed its people.

Look, it's a failed nation. Without Venezuela—you know, Venezuela, because it has such wealth in the ground—mostly in the ground—but Venezuela took care of them for years, and they took care of Venezuela. They were like the bodyguards. When we went in and burst into their country, the Venezuelans were guarding Maduro and everybody else. It was mostly—I mean, the soldiers were—in that case, we were a lot—we had a lot of Cubans were guarding. The Cubans were the guards. And they're good soldiers.

But the country is starving, and it's got no energy, it's got no oil, it's got no money, it's got nothing. It's got a beautiful piece of land. You could have beautiful resorts. Doesn't have oil, but Venezuela was giving them the money to survive. And now, you know, the money is—I guess you could say it's coming to us and is going to Venezuela.

Venezuela has been an amazing thing because we've paid for the cost of the attack many, many times over, and it's been a long time since you've heard of it.

It's sort of collapsed, and we're going to handle that as soon as we've—I like to do one thing at a time. And we'll take care of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And as soon as that's done, on our way back we'll just make a little brief stopover.

We'll take care of it. We want to help them out.

Look, we have a lot of people that voted for Trump. Whether they did or not, it didn't matter, but I had 95 percent of the Cubans voted for me. They're unbelievable people. They're energetic. They're entrepreneurial. You know, some of the richest people in Miami are Cuban. They're unbelievable. And I'm going to take good care of them. I'm going to let them go back to their land. They want to be back with family. You know, they have a lot of family over there. They've been treated very badly by Cuba.

But we're going to treat Cuba well, and we're going to let our people go back and let them invest in Cuba if they'd like. So we have some very good plans for Cuba. I think, you know, we have to get rid of the—the regime was—very tough, very nasty. The difference is now they don't have money coming in.

They had a lot of money coming in from Venezuela. They don't have any money coming. They had oil coming in. They had money coming in. But we're going to take care of Cuba. And they—you know what? They want us to. The people want us there so badly.

Yes, go ahead.

Yes.

Well, I've been a Knick fan for a long time, and I'm also a Jim Dolan fan.

He's a nice guy. Okay? He's been a long time wanting to win, and he's a competitive guy, and he's got a team that's amazing. You know, they—I don't think they've lost a playoff game.

Can you imagine that? And it was not looking good. I saw the beginning of the game, and it wasn't looking good. I missed the middle——

——because I talk to generals all night long now. But I watched that end of the game, and they were dominant. Really amazing. And Wemby is a great player. He's going to be a great player, and he is already a great player. I say: "How do you guard this guy? He's 7-foot-5, and he's got a great shot." Right? But they find a way to do it. They're really great. They're a great team.

And I'm happy for Jim because Jim has really been fighting hard to, you know, produce such a team. So you never know.

The answer is yes. He's invited me, and I'm going. I'll be——

Say it?

It could be Monday. Yes, Monday.

Maybe I'll do both.

I did. We—had a great meeting with the auto. I mean, most of them were here. They were really talking about the fix-your-own-car kind of a thing, right? But they're doing very well since I'm in office, because I got rid of a lot of environmental restrictions that—In fact, you might just tell them a little bit about that, Lee. We made it so much easier for them to build a car. They can build a less expensive car that's much better. And they were so choked up with environmental nonsense that in order to save four ounces of gasoline, you had to spend thousands and thousands of dollars.

Lee, do you want to go into that, please?

No, they didn't do that.

They're making so much money now because—you know, I did something else that, I don't know, doesn't—because we have no tax on tips and no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, right? So that's really been big. That's turned out to be much bigger than anyone knew. If you look at the people, they're saving from $5- to $7-, $8,000 even on average because of that. So it's been good.

But I did something else that nobody talks about. If you buy a car and you borrow money, you're allowed to deduct the interest for income tax purposes. Never happened before. And deductions were always meant for rich people. They weren't meant for middle class people or other people wanting to buy a car. So now you're allowed to get a deduction of your interest payment.

That's a tremendous thing. I mean, it's a trade—but what's the key? Only if the car is made in America.

Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

It's great. Todd is great.

Todd is great. It's moving—very well. Todd is very popular. He's doing great.

Soon. They're doing the paperwork.