A terrible thing for the country. So, we have many monuments and fountains all over Washington and we're just about completed with all of them. The fountains are all working now. 28 fountains. And as of this moment, just about this moment. A couple are going to be a few days longer. And we went on a real kick. Some of the most beautiful fountains in the world, but they haven't worked in 30, 40 years. Most of them, as you know, you saw the one in front of the station. Union Station was horrible and now it's beautiful. It was all covered in graffiti. But this would be the big one because this is again, could you get me that picture of how it compares in size to the biggest buildings anywhere in the world? It's sort of amazing.
So we're very proud of that. We're proud of a lot of things we've done, but this is something. So Washington now, as you know, a very safe city. It's considered a very safe city. It was a very unsafe city 14 months ago. Now it's a very safe city. So, we're very proud of that. But it's also become a beautiful city. The encampments, the homeless are no longer sitting in the middle of the park. The level of beauty of the city is incredible. We regrassed many of the areas. We're really doing a job at Lafayette Park, which is really the entrance to the White House, and that's going to be completed very shortly, and it'll be incredible. As it was originally envisioned, most of it we're doing as originally envisioned, and if you walk across the street to Lafayette Park, you'll see something that's incredible. It's going to be, we'll have it open before July 4th. This we wanted to get it open before July 4th on the reflecting pond or the reflecting pool as some people call it. Very important to us was the longevity, you know, having it so that it's not closed every day and all these are, they just had this done we're getting a first glimpse but that's your size compared so those are compared to those are among the tallest buildings in the world including the Empire State Building, World Trade Center, Sears Tower, Chicago. So if you lay it on its side, you take two or three of them to fill it in because the width is very almost 200 feet wide and actually much more than 2,000 close to including everything. It's about 2,500 ft in length to the end. And it's going to be beautiful. It was a great concept that never worked because they couldn't hold the water. Now they hold the water for a tiny fraction of the cost. We did a fantastic job and Department of Interior was amazing. Doug Burgum really absolutely amazing and you're going to have something you're going to be very proud of and it'll last for 50 to 100 years before you have to do anything with it. Very strong, powerful substance that we use. And we picked a color called American flag blue. We had color choices and before it was just gray. It was a color of concrete and stone. So, it's going to be really special. I thought you'd like to see it. And the work ends on the pool. We also did a lot more than we anticipated doing. We did all of the sidewalks outside of the pool where people walk or they stand. And that's where Martin Luther King made his great speech with a million people. I had the same amount of people. Actually, I had a little bit tighter. It was a little bit tighter. They said he had a million people and I had 25,000 people. And yet, if you look at the picture of comparison, the exact same location, the exact same pool, except now the pool's clean. It was filthy dirty then. But it was amazing because that was my first glimpse into politics. I made a speech and I had more people. In other words, you put the picture side by side, which we have, and they said, 'I had 25,000. He had a million, but I had more people. They were tighter. My people were tighter.' But these are minor details. That's what I said. Well, wait a minute. There's something wrong.
Washington Monument, the Lincoln, you know, you take a look at the Washington Monument, beautiful Lincoln Memorial, you said. But the walk-in in between was disgusting. The thing was loaded up. We took 11 or 12 dumpsters, trucks full of garbage out of there that they were shoveling and it was there for years under the Biden administration. Again, Biden and Obama, if you combine the money they spent, it was over, I think $142 million and they got nothing as usual. So, I'm very proud of it. Maybe I shouldn't say that before it opens. Maybe I'll open it. It'll look like a civ, but it's not going to leave. I'm very good at building things and constructing things. So, I hope you're going to go take a look at it. The sidewalks are being sandblasted. The granite's on the outside, they're granite, and that lasts on a strong stone. And that's being sandblasted. It's going to look like really something beautiful. It's going to be brand new. It's got a lot of life. So, just enjoy it. Rodney Scott is here along with Peter Navarro. Peter's been with me for a long time. Knows more about China than any human being on Earth so far. I would say President Xi knows a lot more other than President Xi Peter is probably in second place and certainly having to do with trade and but they're here to talk about something else and Rodney if you would please.
Sure. So we're talking about rolling out a customs EO. Why is that important? Basically it's America first in the trade environment like we've been doing on the border. People are used to the illegal immigration, the narcotics. We've locked that down. This is literally taking the same principles and applying them to trade to protect American industry. Different countries and different people are undercutting our import export rules, the tariffs to literally undermine American businesses. And we're going to put a stop to it. In the same way, we are going to increase the amount of data we have so that we can actually make conscious decisions about who and what comes into this country. And we're going to start holding people accountable. So there's a, we're literally going to use the rules that are in place to a certain extent and then make some recommendations for legislation going forward. We're going to start holding trade accountable for bringing threatening things and threatening products into our country just like we have on the rest of the border. So Customs and Border Protection gets a lot of attention for the border wall, everything else. This is going to be basically the equivalent in the trade environment.
And sir, you did a miracle when you came in. You shut that border down in a matter of days to what had been a flood of millions of illegal aliens. And a secure America is a safe America. What we're going to do here with the EO you're going to sign that's about a 20 to 30 billion dollar a year EO you're going to get because we are going to crack down with this detective border that CBP is putting in innovatively. We're going to crack down on the fentanyl. We're going to crack down on the unhealthy products, the counterfeits, and all the tariff evaders. So, this is a message to the world today. When you sign this, there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. And this is what Donald Trump does. He secures our borders and not just physically, but in terms of trade, new customs border is going to be awesome.
Thank you. Thank you, Peter. You know, we had millions of people pouring through our border. And when I got here, and it happened twice, but the first time was a lot easier because it wasn't nearly as bad as this. But in 2016, we had a bad water, really a bad water. And pretty quickly we made it very good. We started the wall. I built over a thousand miles of wall. Without that, you could have never done it. No matter how good you do, the wall has been, you remember the Democrats? The Democrats I call them. But the Democrats said, 'The wall doesn't do anything.' I said, 'No, walls work.' Two things. Everything else is obsolete. It gets obsolete quickly. Two things, wheels and walls. They've been here for a long time. A wheel and a wall. You'll always have other things. Your computer's going to be obsolete about two days after you buy it. But, wheels and walls, they work. And we built an incredible wall that stretches more than a thousand, think of it, a thousand miles. And without that, we would not be as successful. We're actually building now additional areas because we need some additional wall certain areas. But we had millions of people, 25 million people. I think it's more than that, but 25 million people came in during the Biden years, the Biden disasters, and we stopped that. We stopped it down to zero. Hard to believe, but the numbers come out every month. They come out zero zero. People don't come anymore because they know they're not going to get through. So, we had caravans with 10, 15, 20, 25,000 people coming up from countries. And remember, I know these people. I know the leaders of the countries. They're smart and they're cunning and they're street wise. And they would put their people that were from prisons in there. They would put their murderers in there. And they'd put a lot of bad people. And they'd also put people that just didn't work. They put all of their welfare recipients in there. They'd send them into our country and all of that stopped. And many of those people are now brought back. Many of the murderers, 11,888 were murderers. I say it all the time. 50% of them murdered more than one person. Two, three, four. It's when seven people murdered into our country. They let him into our country. It's a sin that should never be forgotten. So, it's a much different country right now. We're respected by everybody. Everybody in the world respects. We just got back from China, as you know. Some of you were with us and President Xi was great. And now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're the most successful country in the world. So, this is very important what you're doing. And I'd like to have Will just say a few words about it specifically, please.
Yes, sir. As Rodney and Counselor Navarro said, this is an executive order on strengthening customs enforcement using new technologies and new approaches. The idea here is to ensure that importers of record, other people moving goods across our border are accurately reporting what they're bringing in. That contraband, that illegal goods aren't being brought across the border. And that goods being brought in are being accurately accounted for for purposes of duties and tariffs and all of the other things we require of importers of record. But this executive order will launch a series of bold new steps that I think we as an administration believe will result in the tightest most controlled border in American history. Following on obviously your success in closing the southern border and stopping the scourge of illegal immigration into the country as well, sir.
So Peter, what kind of money do you think this involves in terms of savings to our country?
I will guarantee you the first year be at least 15 billion. Next year 25 and out there there's 80 to 100 billion that the tariff evaders are doing. Plus, sir, we're going to stop more of the fentanyl coming in and we're going to crack down on counterfeits. This is good for America. This is good for the people that elected you. It's good for the country.
And we have fentanyl coming in 59% less. Cut it by a number that nobody thought was even possible. We're going to get it a lot lower than that. But we have it and we did this in a very short period of time.
This is going to be a great one, sir. You didn't have the same money maker for us and CBP has been doing a really great job innovating on this, sir.
You've done a fantastic job. Thank you.
Okay, we'll start one.
Oh, that's a good one. That's a nice one. Okay. What else you have?
This is another executive order on reforms to the federal workforce. Sir, currently with respect to many policymaking positions in the departments and agencies across government, we lack the ability because of existing personnel rules to effectively discipline or promote people who are in policymaking roles. This executive order follows on a number of previous executive orders. The end goal is making the federal workforce more accountable and ensuring that people particularly in policymaking roles aren't unaccountable to the wishes of the administration.
And the reasoning for this was what? Whose idea was that?
James Sherk who's here from domestic policy council, come on you did a great job of this.
Thank you, sir. It's been a long-standing problem that is almost impossible to fire a federal employee even in cases of serious misconduct. And as a result, if you have employees who are trying to undermine the wishes of the American people by pushing their own agenda or just incompetent in what they're doing, agencies have a long-standing difficult time getting rid of them. And that's a particular problem if you're in a senior policy influencing role where you're controlling the policies of the entire agency. What this does is basically treats those employees like private sector workers. They're going to be hired on the basis of merit and competence, but if they're messing up, then they can be removed quickly rather than taking a year or longer to get rid of them.
That's great. And you were very much involved in it.
He's like perfectly cast if I'm, you couldn't have done that any better. Were you nervous?
Thank you, sir. Would anybody else like to say anything about either one?
What about you? Come on over here. Come on. Can you dive in? You don't have to. Thank you very much. Great job. Go ahead, please.
Yeah, this customs reform is a long time coming for us. Helps us solve problems that have plagued the customs system for many years. We've had a system where people have basically been able to hide behind shell companies. They move from one to the next and then we can't go after them. The CEO really enables us to crack down, hold people accountable.
It's so important. I know you took it so seriously. See how serious they are. I mean, there's a love of the country. This isn't like normal stuff. These are the smartest people in the world. They can do anything they want. They can have any job. And they love this country. They just want to be here and they hate what you saw. And you fixed it. Thank you very much. All of you. Anybody else? Anybody? Only if you want. I'm not going to call anybody. You don't have to. They covered you well, right? I don't know if you could do any better. Thank you very much. That's a great job.
It's a big one. Okay. Thank you. Pullet surprise winner over there. I got the great bullet surprise winner. Okay. Thank you very much. That's great.
Thank you, Mr. President.
