It's an honor to have Micheál Martin, Taoiseach of Ireland. It's a special place and he's a very special guy. He did it the hard way also — he served and then he took a little time off and then he served again. I've heard about that, that happens on occasion, and he's done very well. And we knew each other from a long time ago, but it's a great honor to have you in the Oval Office and have you at the White House. We have tremendous business relationships with Ireland and that will only get stronger. The relationship we have personally and every other way is very, very strong and very, very good. So I just want to welcome you to Washington, D.C. and to our country, and thank you very much.
May I thank you, President. It's a great honor for me to be here to celebrate St. Patrick's with you, and I thank you for your hospitality and the warmth of your reception. And I commend you in terms of the work that you're doing, particularly in terms of the pursuit of peace, which we discussed earlier. And I think that's going well. And you really have the first sort of 100 days of this new government — you've done some extraordinary things very quickly. Everybody's watching in that respect. So thank you. Pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be here.
Well, it's a great honor to have you, and special people — very special people. I know a lot of Irish, and growing up in New York, I know a couple of your people that used to live in that beautiful Ireland and now they're here, but they love your country very much. You know, they have a great feeling toward your country. They have, and a lot come back for holidays and stuff like that, and checking out their family ancestry and things like that. Great, fantastic people.
Some go to Dunbrody as well.
Yeah, and we love Dunbrody. I love them. I don't know if I'll ever see it again — maybe I won't, but I think I will. We'll get there. We're going to get there. It's a beautiful place, wonderful place. Any questions?
How worried are you about tariffs from the EU, which were announced yesterday, and also how worried are you, given the fact that it has a massive trade surplus with the US — 50 billion? Is Martin quite nervous about what you'll tell him?
Well, I don't think he looks nervous to me, and if he was nervous he wouldn't show it. No, we do have a massive deficit with Ireland because Ireland was very smart — they took our pharmaceutical companies away from presidents that didn't know what they were doing. And you know, it's too bad that happened. It's a tremendous job. I give — look, the Irish are smart, they're smart people, and you took our pharmaceutical companies and other companies. But you know, through taxation and proper taxation, they made it very, very good for companies to move over there. And we had presidents and people that were involved in this that had no idea what they were doing, and they lost big segments of our economy.
The European Union treats us very badly. They have for years. I saw that. I had it out with them in my first term. Did well, but we had to solve other problems, and we did. But the European Union's been very tough, and it's our turn too. You know, we get a turn at that also. But they have not been fair. They sue our companies and win massive amounts of money. They sued Apple, won $17 billion, and they use that for other reasons, I guess, or to run the European Union. So I'm not knocking it — they're doing what they should be doing, perhaps for the European Union. But it does create ill will. And as you know, we're going to be doing reciprocal tariffs. So whatever they charge us, we're charging them. Nobody can complain about that. Whatever it is, it doesn't even matter what it is. If they charge us — if they charge just 25% or 20% or 10% or 2% or 200%, then that's what we're charging them. And so I don't know why people get upset about that, because there's nothing more fair than that.
And we had a problem with Ontario, and they dropped that. When I let them know what we were going to be doing, they dropped it immediately. So I'm glad, because electricity — you shouldn't be playing with electricity. It affects people's lives. They're actually — their life. I mean, it can affect, depending on weather, it can affect their life. So we can't do that. And it doesn't make sense that our country allows electricity to be made in another country and sold into us. Who did that deal for the United States? Okay, I looked at that long ago and I said that's not something that's very smart. So we've had a lot of bad trade policies, and yet we're doing very well right now. But we're doing well because I won the election. If I didn't win the election, you would have had a very bad period. I think a lot of the stock market going down was because of a really bad four years that we had, when you look at inflation and all of the other problems — I mean, wars and inflation and so many other problems. But we're going to have very good years.
We had — I don't know if you saw a little thing like the cost of eggs — little to you, but big to people out there — down almost 30% in the last few days. We got — we did a lot of things. We have a great Secretary of Agriculture, and we did a lot of things that got the cost of eggs down very substantially, and so many other things. A very big thing that I'm very happy with is oil is down to $65 a barrel, and that's faster than I would have anticipated. We put on the gas, we stepped in the gas in order to get oil, and what's happening. So we're getting that down, and when energy comes down, prices are going to be coming down with it. So in a very short period of time, we've done a very good job. And I think that the tariffs that we're talking about — again, reciprocal — I think that the tariffs, there are some cases where they're a little beyond reciprocal, because you know we've been abused for a long time as a country. We have been abused really for a long time, and we will be abused no longer.
Are you going to retaliate? Mr. President, would you describe for us, as you're meeting, your vision by cutting about half the workforce, and what responsibility do you feel to the civil servants who have now lost their jobs, many of them worked at the Department of Education during the first term?
Sure, I do. I feel very badly. But many of them don't work at all. Many of them never showed up to work. Many of them — many of them never showed up to work, Kelly. And unfortunately, that's not good. And when we cut — you know, we go — and that's what I had a number of meetings with a lot of people over the last couple of months. When we cut, we want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren't working or are not doing a good job. We're keeping the best people. And Linda McMahon is a real professional, very actually a very sophisticated business person, and she cut a large number, but she kept the best people. And we'll see how it all works out. But our country was run very badly. I mean, whether it was that or contracts that were signed that were so bad, so obviously bad — and I go through them in speeches. I could go through them all day long. I could read for billions and hundreds of billions of dollars, and all of that fat and waste and fraud and abuse is being taken out. But it's incredible what's happened.
Now, the Department of Education may be more so than any other place has a lot of people that can be cut. They're number one, not showing up to work. Number two, they're not doing a good job. And if you take a look at our education process, and if you look at the charts — because they have numerous charts where they do the top 40 — we're at number 37, 38, 39, and 40. And recently they hit, during Biden's last few days, they hit last. So they were number 40, and yet we're number one in cost per pupil. So it's pretty bad. But we have a dream, and you know what the dream is: we're going to move the Department of Education, we're going to move education into the states, so that the states — instead of bureaucrats working in Washington — so that the states can run education. And you have Norway, you have Denmark, you have Sweden, you have various — Finland, you have various countries that do very well. You also have China that does very well in education, which is a pretty big tribute to China, I must say. 1.4 billion, and they're in the top 10, and it's pretty amazing. So we can't blame size anymore. You know, normally you'd blame size — it's too big, how can you do it? But China does it. So we think when you move it back to Iowa and Indiana and all the states that run so well — there's so many, I could name 30, maybe almost 40 — those will be as good as Denmark, those will be as good as Norway, and they'll be as good as any of these. I believe they'll be as good as any. Now then you're going to have 10 that won't be so great. You're going to have five that will not be good at all. But we'll work with them and we'll get them to be good. But what we want to do is always school choice, but we're going to do school choice and we're doing it. But we want education to be moved back where the states run education, where the parents of the children will be running education, where governors that are doing a very good job will be running education — not run. I drive through the city and I see like so many buildings, Department of Education, Department of — big buildings in the department, and by the way, they're empty. Nobody shows up to work. So I think Linda did a very good job.
Mr. President, do you have a meeting with Vladimir Putin scheduled, or a conversation? What would be your —
I won't comment on that. But we had a great success yesterday. We have a full ceasefire when it — if it kicks in. We have to see. It's up to Russia now. But we've had a good relationship with both parties, actually, and we'll see. We'll be knowing — people are going to Russia right now as we speak, and hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia. And if we do, I think that would be 80% of the way to getting this horrible bloodbath finished. It's a bloodbath that's taking place over there. On average, 2 to 3,000 young people a week are being killed in that stupid war that would never have happened if I were president. So we have people going over there. Mr. VP, do you have anything to say about it, because you're very much involved. What's going to happen?
Well, we've got some conversations that are happening on the phone and in person with some of our representatives over the next couple of days. As the president said, we think that we're in a very good place where the Ukrainians have agreed to a ceasefire, and we're now going to see whether we can get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire too. And we'll certainly have news on that when we find out that news.
Do you think Putin will keep the ceasefire, considering that he's broken them in the past?
We haven't spoken to him yet with substance, because we just found out and we just were able to get Ukraine to agree. So we're going to know very soon. I've gotten some positive messages, but a positive message means nothing. This is a very serious situation. This is a situation that could lead to World War III. And Biden should have never let it happen. Incompetence allowed this to happen. This shouldn't have happened. October 7th in the Middle East should never have happened with Israel. The horrible leaving the way they left Afghanistan should never have happened. Inflation should never have happened. You know, we have great inflation numbers, by the way, just got released. Inflation is way down, and it's based on what we've done, and we've done it in a very short period of time. You know, we had virtually no inflation for four years. We had almost no inflation, and when these characters took over, we went from no inflation to the worst inflation probably in the history of our country. So it's very interesting. Go ahead.
Are you going to retaliate against —
And by the way, I have to speak of inflation. I love these subs. What's with these subs? I'm trying to stay focused, but I'm very impressed with the VP's remarks.
Mr. President, would you say to you that the United States has recognized having such an important role in the peace process, and yet half of them have not come? They haven't come over. What are they boycotting? They are talking about your position.
Oh, I haven't heard that. I really haven't heard that.
Look, can I just say, I've got to pay tribute to the president on the peace initiatives. The one thing we've learned in Ireland about the peace process that you've just spoken about — and I recall back in the early 90s when the first tentative steps to get peace in Ireland, people criticized people like John Hume or people like Albert Reynolds, the then Taoiseach. But they kept going. And when we got that ceasefire in 1993 — okay, it took a number of years to get the comprehensive peace settlement — but again, the guns more or less largely went silent. The war on Ukraine is a devastating war on young people, and I think that very simple, straightforward narrative is to be commended. We all have children. I mean, we would be shocked at the prospect of young people losing their lives in that number, be they Ukrainian, be they Russian, whatever. Anything we can do to stop the violence, I think, is an extremely positive day. And there will be all sorts of people having qualifications on it and all the rest of it. It's our job then to work on it and to try and build it — Europe, US, and everything.
I will say, and thank you for that, but I will say, last week 2,500 young people died while we sit here and talk. Yeah. And while they talk about peace. But they've been talking about peace. This should never have happened. This war should never have happened. It would never have happened if I was president. That's what makes me more angry than anything else, because you've had far more people die than they report, than these people report, for whatever reason. But you had far more people — the numbers are far more devastating. You'll find that out someday. And it doesn't affect you very much. They're not Irish and they're not from my country. They're from Russia mostly, almost all from Russia and from Ukraine. And people could say, why are you doing this? Why are you involved in that? Because 2,000 people a week are dying, and they have family, and they have mothers, and they have fathers, and they have sisters, and they have brothers, and friends, and they're dying. And I've seen the pictures, the satellite pictures that we see all the time, and it looks like Gettysburg in its prime, because that was, they say, one of the most horrific battles ever. You have kids lying all over these fields that are dead, because the weapons today are unbelievable — between drones and various types of guns. I'm not even talking about beyond that, with the big babies. You understand what I mean. I hate to even mention the name, the nuclear name. I hate to mention it. But you have weapons today that are so powerful, and I see kids every week. I see pictures of kids laying all over the field dead. They're dead. Beautiful kids. They're dead. And they're not from here, and they're not from where you are. But he's working very hard. We're all working very hard to get this thing finished. It's crazy over nothing, and not going to go anywhere. It's just a terrible situation. And I think we have a chance to get it done. So we've gotten half of it as a ceasefire, and if we can get Russia to stop, then we have a full ceasefire. And I think it'll never go back to war. I think.
Mr. President, can I ask you about your relationship with Israel? There's been a lot of talk recently. The government are looking to bring in what's called the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban goods from occupied territories. I know you met with Prime Minister Netanyahu recently. Did Ireland come up in that conversation? Did he raise any concerns about the Irish one?
One thing I'll tell you, you're not from Israel, that's for sure. She is definitely not from Israel. It's an interesting question coming from you. We talk about everything. Israel has been under siege, as you can see, and they had to fight back. October 7th was a terrible thing. People don't like to mention it, but it was a terrible, terrible day in the life of the world. And it's amazing the way people don't mention that. But it was — I've never seen anything like it. Those are other clips I get to see. You know, as president, you get to see clips that you'd rather not see. But I see clips, and that was a terrible day for the world. And we're working hard with Israel. We're working hard to see if we can solve the problem. I will say, I just saw 10 hostages, and they were treated really badly. They were really treated terribly badly. I was shocked. I asked them, was there any kindness shown? They were in there — one was in there for 500 days, one was 323 days. I said, was there any — 10 of them. I said, was there any kindness displayed? Like, did they ever say, don't worry, you'll be okay, or give you a little wink, or give you like an extra slice of bread or something? And everybody said — all of these people said zero. It was hatred. It was pure hatred. So I mean, that's a very deep-seated problem.
