Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
Thank you.
What's—okay. I see. I see. Okay.
You can stay here if you want.
What's that? They doing a colony though.
Yeah. So, I'm just going to sit here.
I'm going to come in front of you so I can catch a little bit of that. I'm going to come right here so I can catch a little bit of that.
Yeah, that's fine. And then will you back up when he gets that way?
Sure.
Or can I stay here if I'm out of your way?
What's that? Yeah, you're good there. You can see she'll be walking down here. Nice.
From back here.
What's that? Let's just try to—
No matter what, your damage—if you want to come up closer, they're going to be in your shot.
Everybody's in the shot.
Do you want to go over there?
Well, then I'll never get back here after that.
Yes. I mean, we would prefer to pick up—I'm going to pick it up right here.
Okay, that's fine. Yeah, let's back up.
And then you're going to back up.
I am. Okay, awesome. Thanks, bud.
Yes, there they are. Well, no. Oh, it was, but it's Caroline, I think.
Yeah. Here. There's no mall. It's a standard standard by that hole.
Yeah, he's going to walk down.
Yeah, right. Not me. Yeah.
Are you saying they're not going to stop?
They're probably not stopping here.
Hey, can you see? It's looking a little hot.
I got this.
Are they shot? Are they shot a little bit?
Guys, Jessica, she's in my shot. Jessica.
The Winfield County Republican Party stands with our American Congress. We'll be largely considering one such county.
Yeah, let's go.
You can take that. Then you're stuck there.
Thank you. That's what I do. Hello everybody.
Thank you very much.
Okay, guys. Let's go.
Just make sure you have to pass this out, guys. Pass it out. Pass it out. Please pass it out. Pass it out. See, all right now.
Do you stay here?
No, no.
Coming through. Also guys, the bridge and handing off to my colleague Michelle's daughter who—excuse me.
We've got a few minutes, so if everyone could move back in still.
Yeah. Guys, gather in there, everyone.
Okay guys. Careful, careful, careful.
He's a good guy. I'm giving you a big guy. Well, thank you very much, everybody. We have an extremely respected man in the Oval Office today and a friend of mine for a long time, a very good friend of mine. And I'm very proud of the job he's done. What he's done is incredible in terms of human rights and everything else. And he's the crown prince, the future king. And I just want to pay my greatest respect to your father, the king, who is an amazing man. I met him early on. He greeted me at the airport at an age that was pretty high up there, and it was about 117 degrees, and he was standing on the red carpet as I came out of the plane. And he's amazing. And when I met his brilliant son who was at the Oval Office shortly thereafter, you came in representing the country, and I called the father. I said, "This guy is fantastic."
And I don't know if that helped you or hurt you, but obviously it couldn't have hurt too much because here you are, right? But we had a great meeting, and the office has changed quite a bit, and we inherited a mess. You actually told me you thought the country was in big trouble. I'm not going to use the exact word that you used. I refuse to say that you thought our country was dead a year and a half, two years ago, but our country was in trouble, and now we have the hottest country in the world. You said that also. And we do. The United States is right now the hottest country in the world. And between the tariffs and the election, the November 5th election, we've done things that nobody can believe. $21 trillion will be the amount invested in the United States or committed to invest in one year. So I'm here nine months, we're up to almost $18 trillion. Biden, as an example, the Biden administration, if you call it that—it's not, to me it was the Biden lack of administration—they were less than 1 trillion for four years. We're going to be 21 trillion for one year. I think that's hard to believe. The biggest in history was a certain country, 3 trillion. We're going to be 21 trillion.
On top of that, prices are coming down. We inherited a mess with high prices, the worst inflation in the history of our country. We had inflation that was a single four years, the worst inflation in the history of the United States. Gas prices through the roof. And that's after destroying our petroleum reserve, which was meant for wars and big emergencies, not to try and win an election. They opened up the reserves so that people get $3 less in gasoline. And it didn't work. They got about 3 cents less because as big as those reserves are, they're peanuts when you're talking about that kind of traffic. And we're rebuilding the reserves. We're doing all of this and we've done a job. We're also bringing down prices very substantially, and we've already brought them down very, very substantially. Gasoline is way down. I think you'll be seeing $2 gasoline, but we're now at $2.50, $2.45. Some are lower than that. It was $4.50, $5, $6, $3.50, $3.75 under all different numbers, but way high. And we have energy way down.
But the biggest thing to me, because I know what it means in jobs, is the fact that we're at over $17 trillion, Scott, and we expect to be around 20, 21 trillion in one year. And that's many times bigger than in history. The highest number was $3 trillion, and we're going to be at 21 trillion. That means new plants, new AI, new auto plants. We have auto plants coming in from Canada, from Mexico, from Germany, from Japan. Toyota just agreed to invest $10 billion on new auto plants, all American workers. We've never been in a position like this. You can go back to the beginning. Our country has never been in a position like this. And it really is because of the fact that we use tariffs to bring all this money in. And you're going to see the results in a year when these plants start to open up. We have more plants under construction now than at any time in the history of our country. And these are big plants. These are the biggest plants anywhere in the world.
And I want to thank you because you've agreed to invest $600 billion into the United States. And because he's my friend, he might make it a trillion, but I'm going to have to work on him. But it's 600. We can count on 600 billion, but that number could go up a little bit higher. Yes, sir. I don't know. We'll see. But we appreciate it very much. So, Saudi is going to be investing at least $600 billion. And that means investments in plants, in companies, money on Wall Street, and what it really means for everybody that really counts is jobs—a lot of jobs. We have a lot of jobs. So, I just want to thank you. We've been really good friends for a long period of time. We've always been on the same side of every issue.
I think we've done a great job in wiping out the nuclear capacity of Iran. Nobody else could have done that. No other president would have done it. We had the pilots in the Oval Office right here. We were celebrating a very successful attack. So I had them in with that beautiful B-2 bomber that's over there. And they said, "Sir, for 22 years we practiced this attack. Our predecessors—" these were very young guys, so 22 years—they said, "Our predecessors and us practiced the attack on Iran, but no president ever gave us the go-ahead." Three times a year they went out and they practiced the attack. Nobody let us do it until you came along, and I let them do it because it was the right thing to do. You can't have a nuclear Iran. And so we put you in a very good position. But I just want to say it's an honor to be your friend, and it's an honor that you're here. And if you'd like to say a few words, but thank you very much.
Well, thank you, Mr. President. This relation has been for about nine decades, and we've been working together for a long time. But today is a very important time in our history because there's also a lot of things that we are working on in the future. We believe in the future of America. We believe in what you're doing, Mr. President, really creating a lot of good things and good foundations to create more economic growth, more business in America, and also your work for world peace. I believe, Mr. President, today and tomorrow we're going to announce that we are going to increase that $600 billion to almost $1 trillion of investment, real investment and real opportunity by details in many areas. And the agreement that we are signing today in many areas—in technology, in AI, in earth materials, magnets, etc.—that will create a lot of investment opportunities.
So you are doing that now? You're saying to me now that the 600 billion will be 1 trillion?
Definitely, because what we are signing will facilitate that.
And I like that. You work hard. No, that's great. I appreciate that. That's great. No, we're doing numbers that nobody's ever done. And in all fairness, if you didn't see potential in the US, you wouldn't be doing that. You don't want to lose money.
As you said, Mr. President, it's the hottest country on the planet. But what you're creating is not about opportunity today. It's about also long-term opportunity in America that will affect the American economy positively in the next coming decades, preparing the right foundation of emerging technologies. That's a game-changer for America in a good way, and we want to be part of it.
Yeah, we're doing really well. And you don't see what we're doing so much because we have—although the construction industry sees it. If you look at Caterpillar, who's been incredible, the tractors, everything else, the numbers that we're doing in construction are unbelievable. You know, some of the plants that we're building, AI, and they're building their own electric with the plant. I gave them the right to build their own electric with the plant because no country, frankly, will have this. China's working very hard to produce enough electric, but we're beating China substantially at AI, which is a big thing. And we had a great meeting two weeks ago with President Xi. But on AI, we're doing well. And I have a man, David Romel.
David, could you say a few words about what you're seeing on the job front and all of some of the assets, and also how we've been helped by the Saudis in terms of the kind of investment they've made? Please.
Yeah, most certainly. Thank you for the opportunity. I am a facility leader for GE Vernova. And if you look at the landscape for GE Vernova investment, over $750 million in the US focused on true manufacturing jobs here stateside. We're looking at tripling the output of our Greenville, South Carolina facility where we make the gas turbines that are supporting US needs as well as the Saudi Arabia needs. Real jobs: $300 million in gas investment resulting in over 500 pieces of new equipment being installed in the Greenville, South Carolina facility. That translates into roughly 1,800 jobs across the board for GE Vernova as we try to scale capacity to be able to meet this demand. Along with that, we're partnering with local communities to build the skill set that's required to meet these capacity needs. So that talent pipeline is incredibly important. So it's real jobs in the manufacturing space.
Well, you've been great and thank you very much. And we love that state. I won that state by record numbers. I won a lot of states by records. Texas, a lot of them. Indiana—we're working with Indiana on something right now. We won that. We won a lot of them by records, but that was one of them. I want to thank you very much. Say hello to everybody. Great job. You're doing a great job. Thank you. So just in wrapping up, we'll take a couple of questions, but I want to just tell you what an honor it is to be your friend, and I very much appreciate the investment of now $1 trillion.
I'm glad you got that out. I didn't want to be the one to tell him, but that's great news.
You keep increasing, Mr. President.
You know, each time the opportunities are just increasing more and more.
Well, the opportunities, right? We're doing better. Even if you look back six months ago, I mean, now all of a sudden you feel even better. So, and I think we're only going to go in one way. Does anybody have any questions?
Mr. President, have you approved the export licenses for advanced chips to Saudi Arabia?
The export licenses—we are working on that. We're negotiating that right now. Marco, do you want to talk about that or Scott?
Well, I mean, that's part of what we may have announcements on later today. But that's what we've been working on is the mechanics by which something like that could be achieved. It's part of the broader process, part of this broader engagement and cooperation between our two countries.
Certain levels of chips, yeah.
For the crown prince, you're talking about a trillion dollars of investment. Could the kingdom continue to do that with oil prices in the mid-60s?
We are not creating fake opportunities to, you know, please America, please Trump. It's real opportunities. For example, when you ask about AI and the chips, Saudi Arabia has a huge demand and a huge need for computing power. And we are going to spend in the short term around $50 billion by consuming those semiconductors for our needs in Saudi Arabia. And with the agreement that we're going to have with America, that will allow us to focus that consuming power in the short term by $50 billion from America and long term with hundreds of billions of dollars. So there's a lot of real opportunities that fit our needs in Saudi Arabia and fit our investment strategy.
Mr. President, is it appropriate for your family to be doing business in Saudi Arabia while you're president? Is that a conflict of interest? And Your Royal Highness, US intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9/11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you?
And the same to you, Mr. President.
Fake news. ABC fake news. One of the worst, one of the worst in the business. But I'll answer your question. I have nothing to do with the family business. I have left and I've devoted 100% of my energy. What my family does is fine. They do business all over. They've done very little with Saudi Arabia. Actually, I'm sure they could do a lot. And anything they've done has been very good. That's what we've done. We've built a tremendous business for a long time. I've been very successful. I decided to leave that success behind and make America very successful. And I've made America more successful by far than it ever was and that it ever could have been no matter who was president. There would be nobody bringing in $21 trillion, that I can tell you right now.
As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal job. You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about. Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen. But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.
Mr. President, you allow me to answer. You know, I feel painful about the families of 9/11 in America. But you know, we have to focus on reality. The reality, based on CIA documents and based on all documents, is that Osama bin Laden used Saudi people in that event for one main purpose: to destroy this relation, to destroy the American-Saudi relation. That's the purpose of 9/11. So whoever buys that, that means they are helping Osama bin Laden's purpose of destroying this relation. He knew that a strong relation between America and Saudi Arabia is bad for extremism, it's bad for terrorism. And we have to prove him wrong and to build our relation, to continue developing our relation. It's critical for the safety of the world. It's critical against extremism and terrorism.
About the journalist, it's really painful to hear anyone who has lost his life for no real purpose or not in a legal way, and it's been painful for us in Saudi Arabia. We've done all the right steps of investigation, etc., in Saudi Arabia, and we've improved our system to be sure that nothing happens like that. And it's painful, and it's a huge mistake, and we are doing our best that this doesn't happen again.
Thank you, Mr. President. The crown prince has been instrumental in helping lift the sanctions on Syria. Will there be any joint investment between the US and Syria? And will you visit Damascus?
No, but where are you from?
Oh, making a lot of progress, huh? Very good. They like me. The Palestinians like me. The Palestinians are doing very well. Actually, I think we're working very closely with a lot of people that make everybody happy, including Israel, the Palestinians, and everybody. It's very interesting. No, I will tell you, the crown prince called me and he specifically asked me if I would lift the sanctions on Syria because he wants to see Syria make it. As you know, the leader of Syria was just here. We had a great meeting, and he's a strong guy, and I guess you need a strong person to run it. And I think Syria's made tremendous progress. And we did lift the sanctions at the request of the crown prince. Also, the president of Turkey, Erdogan, called me specifically. He said, "You know, if you don't lift the sanctions, Syria doesn't have a chance. If you do, they have a very good chance." And between the two of them and some others, I lifted the sanctions, and the results so far are doing pretty good.
Can I ask you a question about the F-35s that are being sold to Saudi Arabia? Are these the same ones that are being used by the Israeli military? And if so, how does that allow for the qualitative military edge for Israel? And then I want to ask you, because you brought up the plight of the Palestinians, are you aware of relocation flights to South Africa that are taking place right now?
They're relocation flights that are taking place. Some Palestinians are being charged up to $2,000.
I'm not going to South Africa for the G20 because I think their policies on the extermination of people are unacceptable. So I'm not going, so I won't refer to anything having to do with South Africa. South Africa has behaved extremely badly. But I will say that when you look at the F-35 and you're asking me, is it the same? I think it's going to be pretty similar, yeah. Saudi Arabia is a great ally and Israel is a great ally. And I know they'd like you to get planes of reduced caliber. I don't think that makes you too happy. They've been a great ally, Israel's been a great ally, and we're looking at that exactly right now. But as far as I'm concerned, I think they are both at a level where they should get top-of-the-line. Yes, please, direct.
Have you reached an agreement on a US-Saudi defense treaty today? And are you going to bring up the Abraham Accords in your discussion?
I already brought them up.
I think I got a positive response. Would you like to respond?
Yeah. Definitely, we believe having a good relation with all the Middle Eastern countries is a good thing. And we want to be part of the Abraham Accords, but we want also to be sure that we secure a clear path to a two-state solution. And today we have a healthy discussion with Mr. President that we're going to work on that to be sure that we can prepare the right situation as soon as possible to have that.
I think I don't want to use the word commitment, but we've had a very good talk on the Abraham Accords. We talked about one state, two states. We talked about a lot of things in a short period of time. We'll be discussing it further, too. But I think you have a very good feeling toward the Abraham Accords.
Yes, definitely, Mr. President. We want peace for the Israelis, we want peace for the Palestinians, we want them to coexist peacefully in the region, and we will do our best to reach that.
And defense agreement—have we reached agreement on that? We very much have.
Mr. President, for the crown prince, if I could just finish.
We have reached agreement on that. Okay.
I wanted to ask you about the direct talks between the United States and Iran. Have you been fully briefed on that, and are you concerned at all about how this might impact Saudi security interests?
Well, we are close allies. We'll be working closely together on that issue, and we will do our best to help to reach a deal between America and Iran. And we believe it's good for Iran's future to have a good deal that satisfies the region, the world, and America. So we will do our best to see that that happens.
And by the way, Iran does want to make a deal. I think they very badly want to make a deal. I am totally open to it, and we're talking to them and we've started a process. But it would be a nice thing to have a deal with Iran. And we could have done it before the war, but that didn't work out. And something will happen there, I think. They would very much like—I mean, they may say something else, but they would very much like to have a deal.
