CEOInterviews.AITRUMP IRAN ANNOUNCEMENT LIVE | President Trump Makes Major Statement From The White House

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Donald Trump0:00

The rest is going to be a determination as to my attitude along with the people in the Trump administration what we want to do. Thank you.

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Reporter0:09

Can I ask you, you mentioned you were going to waive certain additional oil waivers or sanctions. Can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular keeping the oil prices down?

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Donald Trump0:18

We went artificially up because of this excursion into a very positive thing. I mean, this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done. I knew oil prices would go up if I did this and they've gone up probably less than I thought they'd go up, but I don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful. This was a military success the likes of which people haven't seen. We have the best military. We have the best equipment. We have, I believe, the best generals. We have the best. And this went very quickly. We talked about that with President Putin. He was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything quite like it. You know, Iran was a very powerful military country with all of the missiles. Now, you had the double attack. You had the original attack with us and Israel and that knocked them for a loop. Then you had the B2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press conference at all. But it's been amazing. The military success that we've had is truly unprecedented.

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Reporter1:42

You said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece of legislation until the Save America Act is passed. Does that include the confirmation of Senator Mullen as your next DHS secretary? Does that mean a DHS funding bill? And Senator Thun said today it's not a matter of whether or not your Republican colleagues agree with the policy. It's about changing the process. In other words, getting rid of the filibuster to get there.

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Donald Trump2:04

So in order to get it, you're going to need Democrat votes. And what we're saying is the Save America Act. The Save America Act. And that's voter ID. We want voter ID. When a voter, we want to be able to see a picture of the voter. We want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate. We want very importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the United States of America. And we want no mail-in ballot scams. So we have exceptions for the military, for sick, for disabled, and for people that are away, business trips or whatever. Even vacations will be very liberal in that. We've added two things to it. No men and women sports and no transgender mutilization of our children. We don't want the mutilization of our children and we don't want that. So we added those two things. That's the five points. We have five very good points. It polls at 86% with Democrats. Think of that. The overall vote is 86%. With Republicans, it's 98%. And the only one opposed to it is Democrat leadership because they cheat. They want to cheat. So, we added those two points. We're going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell. Now, certain things will happen. Certain things will take place. I'm here to do a great job for the country, but we don't have a country if we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over the last period of time. You know, as an example, virtually nobody has a system of mail-in ballots like we have. No other country in the world. France went away from it. They all went, you know why? Because it's corrupt. And Jimmy Carter, when he had a commission, frankly, I think it's probably the best thing Jimmy Carter did. He said, you can't have mail-in voting because it's inherently dishonest. And it's turned out to be totally dishonest. So, we're going to fight for it.

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Reporter4:22

So much for taking our questions. Has Iran activated any sleeper cells inside the US? There's reports that they have pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad.

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Donald Trump4:33

Well, they've been trying for a long time. We've been very much on top of it. One of the things we have to do is get the Democrats to stop the Democrat shutdown because, as you know, the apparatus that looks into that, Schumer and the Democrats have shut it down, which tells you they probably hate our country a lot. But the Democrats have to open that up. But we've got very, very good intelligence into that. We know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad. A lot of them came in during the Biden open border period, but we have them under control. We've got them. We're watching every single one of them. Yeah, we know a lot about them. The biggest problem we have is the Democrat shutdown. We know a lot about them, but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do.

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Reporter5:23

And this new leader, do you have to take him out? Does he have a target on his back?

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Donald Trump5:28

You mean the new Supreme Leader? You mean the son?

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Reporter5:30

How can there be an Iran?

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Donald Trump5:32

Well, I don't want to say that, but you know, I was disappointed because we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country. So, I was disappointed to see their choice.

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Reporter5:45

Thank you, sir. You've said you have someone in mind to be the new Iranian leadership, if not the Ayatollah's son. What are you looking for in that person? Are you looking at someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been...

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Donald Trump5:57

I like the idea of internal because it works well. I mean, I think we've proven that so far in Venezuela. We have a woman, Delcy, who has been president of the country, very respected, she's doing a great job and it's no disruption. We had, as you remember, Iraq where everybody got fired. The military got fired, the police got fired, the politicians got fired. There was nobody. And you know what? They turned into ISIS. And we don't want that. So, I would like to see people that are inside go now. They talk about the son of the Shah, they talk about other people, but, you know, hasn't been there in many, many years. We have a formula that's been very good so far and I think it'll continue to be good. The relationship is extraordinary with Venezuela. Smart country. We've taken out 100 million barrels of oil. It's right now in Houston being taken care of and made so beautiful. And you have to see this at work. It's brought to the refineries. It's being refined in Houston which is made exactly for that product and so far it's 100 million barrels of oil and now they have another 100 million barrels coming and it's like a partnership. We're getting along so well with them. It's great for Venezuela and it's great for the United States.

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Reporter7:41

Hi, Mr. President. You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?

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Donald Trump7:58

Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation. But Tomahawks are used by others as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.

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Reporter8:20

You said earlier that we've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. What do you consider enough? What's your baseline?

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Donald Trump8:27

Where they're not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration and say, 'All right, we're not going to do it.' They were not willing to say that. And when Steve called up and he said that to me, I said, 'Well, here we go. Let's do it the hard way.' But the hard way, I think, is probably the easy way. When basically I can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that can be used against the United States, Israel, or any of our allies. We have great allies in the Middle East, great countries that are allies, and they were staying out of it until they got hit. Someday they'll have to do a story. Why did he do that? Why did they do that? But they were going to hit them. If I didn't hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first. I believe upon information and belief, but I believe that they were going to take over the Middle East. They were looking to take over the Middle East. Now, had Operation Midnight Hammer not taken place, that was definite because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks. But that took place. That was a setback. But look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months. And those missiles were aimed at various countries. And when you look at over a thousand missiles shot at like UAE, they were looking to take over the Middle East. We got there first. We're lucky. I'll tell you what, the Middle East and those countries, very rich countries are very lucky that I was president instead of somebody else.

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Reporter10:16

Mr. President, are there any points of disagreement between yourself and your vice president when it comes to US action in Iran?

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Donald Trump10:23

I don't think so. No. No. We get along very well on this. He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but I felt it was something we had to do. I didn't feel we had a choice. If we didn't do it they would have done it to us. I felt based on the negotiations that were being had by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Marco and Pete and everybody was involved. I felt that they were looking to tap us along before they hit and I thought they were going to hit and if they hit us first that would have been a very bad thing.

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Reporter11:06

In the back, please. Sir, you said considering the Strait. Is there a timeline for that?

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Donald Trump11:16

About the Strait, you mean? Yeah. Well, I want to keep it open. I want to keep it good. You know, it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to China. We're really helping China here and other countries because they get a lot of their energy from the straits. But hey, look, we have a good relationship with China. It's my honor to do it. Yeah.

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Reporter11:40

New Supreme Leader, you have called him an unacceptable choice. So, does he have a target on his back? And how can you say...

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Donald Trump11:47

I don't want to say whether or not he does because that would be inappropriate. But hey, look, I had a target on my back because as you people wrote pretty well, they caught the assassin that was after me. So, we just got them first. But they caught the assassin. They have him now in custody that was after me. So, you know, but people don't like to mention that, but they did catch him. And I'd like to congratulate our military, Secret Service, FBI, all of the people that worked on that. But they did. Yeah. Please.

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Reporter12:17

The war is almost over though.

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Donald Trump12:19

Go ahead. No, go ahead. Please.

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Reporter12:21

Thank you, Mr. President. You promised the Iranian people you would help them, but it sounds like you're willing to end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up. Isn't that a betrayal?

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Donald Trump12:30

Will I help them? I'd like to if they can behave, but they've been very menacing. You know, they're great people. They have an amazing population. It's amazing. Smart, brilliant, energetic. They have a great point. I'd love to help them, but they have to be in a system that allows them to be helped. And right now, they're in a system that only allows failure. And I don't want that. And I want a system that's not going to be attacking us. We want a system that can lead to many years of peace. And if we can't have that, we might as well get it over with right now. Yeah. Please.

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Reporter13:07

Thank you, Mr. President. As of today, there have been eight US military fatalities associated with the war in Iran. How many American deaths are you willing to have in this war?

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Donald Trump13:17

Well, as I said before, when you have conflict, it's been a very big two days, I have to say, and we'll be heading back to Washington DC right after this. And I'd like to wish everyone a very good evening. And over the weekend, the United States military and the Israeli Defense Forces continued Operation Epic Fury very successfully. Over the past nine days, we've carried out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen. Now, you add that up to all of the other things. Midnight Hammer, getting rid of the nuclear threat from Iran, which was a big moment in history in my opinion, and the great success we've had in Venezuela and all other places. Every place we've gone, we've had tremendous success. But while we're doing all of these things, we're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective. And some people could say they're pretty well complete. We've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely. Most of Iran's naval power has been sunk. It's on the bottom of the sea. It's almost 50 ships. I was just notified it's 51 ships. I didn't know they had that many. Didn't last very long. And these are fighting vessels. They're meant to fight, but they're not meant to fight against us. We continue to target Iran's drone and missile capabilities. Their drones are way down. Their drone manufacturing's been hit starting today. We know all of the places they manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after another. Their missile capability is down to about 10% maybe less. We're also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles. We've struck over 5,000 targets to date. Some of them very major targets. And we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it. If we hit them, it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things. So, we're not looking to do that if we don't have to. But they're the kind of things that are very easy to hit, but very devastating if they are hit. We are waiting to see what happens before we hit them. We could take them all out in one day, but it's all resulting in a 90% decline in various things, but in particular Iranian missile launchers and 83% drop in drone launchers. As you know, the drone launchers are pretty well shot, but we're at over 90% decline in the Iranian missile launchers, which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get. And usually what we were able to do through great equipment and a lot of smart people, as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher, we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less. Accurately right on the noggin. So now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones. And our B2 bombers recently dropped dozens of 2,000 lb bombs to destroy missile launchers all over Iran and buried deep under Iranian soil. In many cases, the soil was no match. And we're also annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible. We're knocking them out. We know where they all are. We're knocking them out very quickly. We're ahead of our initial timeline by a lot. I would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be here. In addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership twice and maybe three times. And we, as you know, we want to be involved. We don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing to do what I'm willing to do for the good of the world for the good of our nation to be stuck with the situation in five years or 10 years from now. So, we think they should put a president in or the head of the country in that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a change. They've been doing this for 47 years, killing people for 47 years, whether it's the barracks or even the USS Cole where they were involved very strongly. They always denied it, but they were very strongly involved. And all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no legs, no arms, a face that's been so badly damaged. The Iranian regime has been attacking Americans and spreading terror for 47 years. And despite these countless opportunities to renounce their nuclear ambitions, which they had just a short while ago, they told Mr. Witkoff who is standing right over here. They actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real nutshell. We want to continue to build nuclear weapons. If we didn't knock out Midnight Hammer, if we didn't knock out their Iranian potential, if we didn't do that with Midnight Hammer, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have used it long before now. And at a minimum, Israel would have been annihilated. I was very lucky that we had the courage to do that, that we had the talented pilots and the great equipment. The B2 bombers are unbelievable. We ordered 25 more, by the way. The newer, better version. We have the greatest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world by far. You see that no matter where we go, you still need the people though to operate it and to use it. And those are the people that we cherish. Even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites in Operation Midnight Hammer, they never negotiated in good faith. They still continue to say, 'We want to build nuclear. We want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable.' And they even turned down an offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes. We had people offering them free nuclear fuel. They weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon. So instead, the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site. They couldn't go back to where they were, the three sites that we obliterated, but they were starting work at another site, a different site, different kind of a site. And that was protected by granite. They wanted it protected. Granite's pretty good, but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper. They wanted to go a lot deeper, and they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles. They were going to do it all at the same time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland. The regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon. So, as you probably saw, they had a tremendous number of missiles, most of which have now been used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all down. What incredible technology the Patriots have been. Unbelievable. And other things. And the laser technology that we have now is incredible. It's coming out pretty soon. We're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost do the work of what the Patriots are doing or what other things are doing. The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the United States found it intolerable in my opinion based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me. Marco so involved that I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would if we didn't do this at the time we did it. I think they had in mind to attack us. And if you notice they did something which was very foolish, very stupid. I would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors were largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the reverse effect. The neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully. If you look at Saudi Arabia, you look at UAE, Qatar and others, but they were strong and they were smart, but they got attacked. Nobody, when I first heard it, I said, 'No, somebody made a mistake.' There was no mistake. UAE had over a thousand missiles shot at it, knocked them almost all down. On the very first day I came down the escalator in 2015, I said, quote, 'I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and all I'm doing is keeping my promise.' Think of that. That was in 2015. I said it. It was a threat then and a much bigger threat now, but no longer a threat. Not for a long time anyway. We want to keep it that way. As we continue Operation Epic Fury, we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world. And I will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply. And if Iran does anything to do that, they'll get hit at a much, much harder level. I will take out those targets that were easy and that I mentioned just before, we'll take them out so quickly. They'll never be able to recover ever. If they want to play that game, they better not play that game. In the long run, oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of Iranian ships, drones, missiles, nuclear menace, or anything. So, the Strait of Hormuz is going to remain safe. We have a lot of Navy ships there. We have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines. Again, most of their ships are down at the bottom of the sea, but we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world if they do anything. In recent years, the regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial vessels. We're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all. And the result will be lower oil prices, oil and gas prices for American families. We've done that. We've done it. We brought it very low. This was just an excursion into something that had to be done. We're getting very close to finishing that, too. In the meantime, during this brief disruption, the United States is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating in the Gulf. So, we're putting up risk insurance. We'll perhaps go alongside of them for protection. We don't think it'll be necessary if it is. And if they do anything, the price will be incalculable. It will be so great that they will have wished they never did it because you have to keep the straits flowing. With all of that, it affects other countries much more than it does the United States. Doesn't really affect us. We have so much oil. We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need. We have Venezuela now as our new partner, great partner. They've worked out so wonderful. We're working with the administration, the president, and it's a massive source of oil, gas, everything. But, we're in a very good position, but very unfair to other parts of the world, like China as an example. I mean, we're doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China. They get a lot of their oil through the straits. So, we're doing this. We have a very good relationship with President Xi and China. I'm going there in a short period of time, and we're protecting the world from what these lunatics are trying to do. And very successfully, I might add. We're also waiving certain oil-related sanctions to reduce prices. So we have sanctions on some countries. We're going to take those sanctions off till this straightens out. Then who knows, maybe we won't have to put them on. There'll be so much peace. But when the time comes, the US Navy and its partners will escort tankers through the strait. If needed, I hope it's not going to be needed, but if it's needed, we'll escort them right through. And we have the greatest mine sweeping ability. We have the greatest ships and we know exactly where they're placed. We'll get them out of there very fast. But we hope we don't have any of that. And again, if they do that, if they play that game, we're going to hit them at a level that they have not seen before. So, we're winning very decisively. We're way ahead of schedule. Our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest equipment and the greatest people in the world. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Iran's a very powerful country. They were going to take over the Middle East. If we did not hit them, they were going to take over the Middle East. They had thousands and thousands since their last hit. They had thousands and thousands of missiles and everything else. Most are now destroyed. But they were going to take over the Middle East. Those weapons were aimed at Middle Eastern countries that had nothing to do with this. They were going to take over the Middle East and they were going to try and destroy Israel. So, we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in this and it's going to be ended soon and if it starts up again, they'll be hit even harder. Thank you very much for being here. Go ahead. Any questions?

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Reporter27:54

Thank you. Thank you so much. Do you approve of Iran's new supreme leader? And secondly, can you tell us more about your call with Russian President Vladimir Putin today. What did you discuss?

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Donald Trump28:06

Yes, I had a very good call with President Putin. We had a lot of people on the line from our side, from his side. We were talking about Ukraine, which is just a never-ending fight. And look, there's tremendous hatred between President Putin and President Zelensky. They can't seem to get it together. But I think it was a positive call on that subject. And we obviously talked then about the Middle East and he wants to be helpful. I said you could be more helpful by getting the Ukraine-Russia war over with. That would be more helpful. But we had a very good talk and he wants to be very constructive. Yeah. Please.

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Reporter28:51

Thank you, Mr. President. On Iran, you called it an excursion. You said it would be over soon. Are you thinking this week it will be over? Are you talking about days?

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Donald Trump28:59

I think so. Very soon. Look, everything they have is gone, including their leadership. In fact, there are two levels of leadership and even actually, as it turns out, more than that, but two levels of leadership are gone. Most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're talking about. So, it's obviously been very, very powerful, very effective.

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Reporter29:23

Back to Cuba. You said that Cuba wants to make a deal. What would the United States get in return for that? And why should Americans trust Marco Rubio to negotiate it?

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Donald Trump29:32

Well, Marco Rubio is doing a great job. I think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history. Look at what we've done as a presidency. Look at what we've done as an administration. They trust Marco. And so do the American people trust. He's been successful no matter where he's been. He also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful. But he's dealing and it may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn't matter because they're really down to, as they say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis. And we don't want to see that. But they were very, very bad to a lot of people as you know and a lot of people living here, the Cuban-American vote which I got at record levels, very important. Those people are very important to me. I know what they went through. They went through hell. Some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the country. Cuban-American business people. Some of them are like the most successful in the country. And a lot of them are friends of mine because I've been fighting this battle with them for a long time. The Castro regime was brutal, but they lived off Venezuela. Now they don't live off Venezuela. Sends them no energy, no fuel, no oil, no money, no nothing. They lived without Venezuela. They couldn't have made it. And we cut them off from everything else. So, yeah, they're going to make either a deal or we'll do it just as easy anyway. Yeah. Please go ahead.

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Reporter31:17

There's footage that shows that an American missile strike, a Tomahawk missile, likely destroyed that Iranian girl's school. So will the Americans, will the US accept any responsibility?

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Donald Trump31:30

Well, I haven't seen it and I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is sold and used by other countries. You know that. And whether it's Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, they wish they had more, but whether it's Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk is very generic. It's sold to other countries, but that's being investigated right now.

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Reporter31:58

Thank you. Mr. President, you've said the war is quote very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be...

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Donald Trump32:09

Well, I think he could say it both. It's the beginning of building a new country, but they certainly, they have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. It's all been blown up. They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It's all gone. So, you know, you could look at that statement. We could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here. I could call it or we could go further and we're going to go further. But the big risk on that war has been over for three days. We wiped them out in the first two days. When you think about it, it's incredible. We wiped out a big navy, very powerful navy. You know, these were ships. These were serious ships. These were ships that you buy when you want to win battles. They're all on the bottom floor. The sailors are all running off the ships. They refuse to get on the ships. The air force is gone. Everything's gone. The missiles are down to a trickle. The drones are down to probably 25% and they'll soon be down to nothing. We'll have the where they manufacture the drones are under fire as we speak. They're being hit. So the rest is going to be a determination as to my attitude along with the people in the Trump administration what we want to do. Thank you.

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Reporter33:40

Can I ask you, you mentioned you were going to waive certain additional oil waivers or sanctions. Can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular keeping the oil prices down?

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Donald Trump33:49

We went artificially up because of this excursion into a very positive thing. I mean, this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done. I knew oil prices would go up if I did this, and they've gone up probably less than I thought they'd go up, but I don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful. This was a military success the likes of which people haven't seen. We have the best military. We have the best equipment. We have, I believe, the best generals. We have the best. And this went very quickly. We talked about that with President Putin. He was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything quite like it. You know, Iran was a very powerful military country with all of the missiles. Now, you had the double attack. You had the original attack with us and Israel and that knocked them for a loop. Then you had the B2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press conference at all. But it's been amazing. The military success that we've had is truly unprecedented.

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Reporter35:12

You said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece of legislation until the Save America Act is passed. Does that include the confirmation of Senator Mullen as your next DHS secretary? Does that mean a DHS funding bill? And Senator Thun said today it's not a matter of whether or not your Republican colleagues agree with the policy. It's about changing the process. In other words, getting rid of the filibuster to get there.

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Donald Trump35:35

So in order to get it, you're going to need Democrat votes. And what we're saying is the Save America Act. The Save America Act. And that's voter ID. We want voter ID. When a voter, we want to be able to see a picture of the voter. We want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate. We want very importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the United States of America. And we want no mail-in ballot scams. So we have exceptions for the military, for sick, for disabled, and for people that are away, business trips or whatever. Even vacations will be very liberal in that. We've added two things to it. No men and women sports and no transgender mutilization of our children. We don't want the mutilization of our children and we don't want that. So we added those two things. That's the five points. We have five very good points. It polls at 86% with Democrats. Think of that. The overall vote is 86%. With Republicans, it's 98%. And the only one opposed to it is Democrat leadership because they cheat. They want to cheat. So, we added those two points. We're going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell. Now, certain things will happen. Certain things will take place. I'm here to do a great job for the country, but we don't have a country if we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over the last period of time. You know, as an example, virtually nobody has a system of mail-in ballots like we have. No other country in the world. France went away from it. They all went, you know why? Because it's corrupt. And Jimmy Carter, when he had a commission, frankly, I think it's probably the best thing Jimmy Carter did. He said, you can't have mail-in voting because it's inherently dishonest. And it's turned out to be totally dishonest. But we're going to fight for it.

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Reporter37:52

So much for taking our questions. Has Iran activated any sleeper cells inside the US? There's reports that they have pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad.

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Donald Trump38:04

Well, they've been trying for a long time. We've been very much on top of it. One of the things we have to do is get the Democrats to stop the Democrat shutdown because, as you know, the apparatus that looks into that, Schumer and the Democrats have shut it down, which tells you they probably hate our country a lot, but the Democrats have to open that up. But we've got very, very good intelligence into that. We know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad. A lot of them came in during the Biden open border period, but we have them under control. We've got them. We're watching every single one of them. Yeah, we know a lot about them. The biggest problem we have is the Democrat shutdown. We know a lot about them, but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do.

R

Reporter38:54

And this new leader, do you have to take him out? Does he have a target on his back?

D

Donald Trump38:58

You mean the new supreme leader? You mean the son?

R

Reporter39:01

How can there be an Iran?

D

Donald Trump39:02

Well, I don't want to say that, but you know, I was disappointed because we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country. So, I was disappointed to see their choice.

R

Reporter39:16

Thank you, sir. You've said you have someone in mind to be the new Iranian leadership, if not the Ayatollah's son. What are you looking for in that person? Are you looking at someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been...

D

Donald Trump39:28

I like the idea of internal because it works well. I mean, I think we've proven that so far in Venezuela. We have a woman, Delcy, who has been president of the country, very respected, she's doing a great job and it's no disruption. We had, as you remember, Iraq where everybody got fired. The military got fired, the police got fired, the politicians got fired. There was nobody. And you know what? They turned into ISIS. And we don't want that. So, I would like to see people that are inside go now. They talk about the son of the Shah, they talk about other people, but, you know, hasn't been there in many, many years. We have a formula that's been very good so far and I think it'll continue to be good. The relationship is extraordinary with Venezuela. Smart country. We've taken out 100 million barrels of oil. It's right now in Houston being taken care of and made so beautiful. And you have to see this at work. It's brought to the refineries. It's being refined in Houston which is made exactly for that product and so far it's 100 million barrels of oil and now they have another 100 million barrels coming and it's like a partnership. We're getting along so well with them. It's great for Venezuela and it's great for the United States.

R

Reporter41:12

Hi, Mr. President. You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?

D

Donald Trump41:29

Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are used by others as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us. But I will certainly, whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.

R

Reporter41:51

You said earlier that we've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. What do you consider enough? What's your baseline?

D

Donald Trump41:58

Where they're not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration and say, 'All right, we're not going to do it.' They were not willing to say that. And when Steve called up and he said that to me, I said, 'Well, here we go. Let's do it the hard way.' But the hard way, I think, is probably the easy way. When basically I can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that can be used against the United States, Israel, or any of our allies. We have great allies in the Middle East, great countries that are allies, and they were staying out of it until they got hit. Someday they'll have to do a story. Why did he do that? Why did they do that? But they were going to hit them. If I didn't hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first. I believe upon information and belief, but I believe that they were going to take over the Middle East. They were looking to take over the Middle East. Now, had Operation Midnight Hammer not taken place, that was definite because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks. But that took place. That was a setback. But look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months. And those missiles were aimed at various countries. And when you look at over a thousand missiles shot at like UAE, they were looking to take over the Middle East. We got there first. Lucky. I'll tell you what, the Middle East and those countries, very rich countries are very lucky that I was president instead of somebody else.

R

Reporter43:47

Mr. President, are there any points of disagreement between yourself and your vice president when it comes to US action in Iran?

D

Donald Trump43:54

I don't think so. No. No. We get along very well on this. He was, I would say, philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but I felt it was something we had to do. I didn't feel we had a choice. If we didn't do it they would have done it to us. I felt based on the negotiations that were being had by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Marco and Pete and everybody was involved. I felt that they were looking to tap us along before they hit and I thought they were going to hit. And if they hit us first, that would have been a very bad thing.

R

Reporter44:37

In the back, please. Sir, you said considering the Strait. Is there a timeline for that?

D

Donald Trump44:47

About the Strait, you mean? Yeah. Well, I want to keep it open. I want to keep it good. You know, it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to China. We're really helping China here and other countries because they get a lot of their energy from the straits. But hey, look, we have a good relationship with China. It's my honor to do it. Yeah.

R

Reporter45:11

New Supreme Leader. You have called him an unacceptable choice. So, does he have a target on his back? And how can you say...

D

Donald Trump45:18

I don't want to say whether or not he does because that would be inappropriate. But hey, look, I had a target on my back because as you people wrote pretty well, they caught the assassin that was after me. So, we just got them first. But they caught the assassin. They have him now in custody that was after me. So, you know, but people don't like to mention that, but they did catch him. And I'd like to congratulate our military, Secret Service, FBI, all of the people that worked on that. But they did. Yeah. Please.

R

Reporter45:48

The war is almost over though.

D

Donald Trump45:50

Go ahead. No, go ahead. Please.

R

Reporter45:52

Thank you, Mr. President. You promised the Iranian people you would help them, but it sounds like you're willing to end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up. Isn't that a betrayal?

D

Donald Trump46:00

Will I help them? I'd like to if they can behave, but they've been very menacing. You know, they're great people. They have an amazing population. It's amazing. Smart, brilliant, energetic. They have a great point. I'd love to help them, but they have to be in a system that allows them to be helped. And right now, they're in a system that only allows failure. And I don't want that. And I want a system that's not going to be attacking us. We want a system that can lead to many years of peace. And if we can't have that, we might as well get it over with right now. Yeah, please.

R

Reporter46:37

Thank you, Mr. President. As of today, there have been eight US military fatalities associated with the war in Iran. How many American deaths are you willing to have in this war?

D

Donald Trump46:48

Well, as I said before, when you have conflict, it's been a very big two days, I have to say, and we'll be heading back to Washington DC right after this. And I'd like to wish everyone a very good evening.

Good evening. And over the weekend, the United States military and the Israeli Defense Forces continued Operation Epic Fury very successfully. Over the past nine days, we've carried out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen. Now, you add that up to all of the other things, Midnight Hammer, getting rid of the nuclear threat from Iran, which was a big moment in history in my opinion, and the great success we've had in Venezuela and all other places. Every place we've gone, we've had tremendous success.

But while we're doing all of these things, we're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective. And some people could say they're pretty well complete. We've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely. Most of Iran's naval power has been sunk. It's on the bottom of the sea. It's almost 50 ships. I was just notified it's 51 ships. I didn't know they had that many. Didn't last very long. And these are fighting vessels. They're meant to fight, but they're not meant to fight against us.

We continue to target Iran's drone and missile capabilities. Their drones are way down. Their drone manufacturing's been hit starting today. We know all of the places they manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after another. Their missile capability is down to about 10%, maybe less. We're also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles.

We've struck over 5,000 targets to date, some of them very major targets. And we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it. If we hit them, it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things. So, we're not looking to do that if we don't have to. But they're the kind of things that are very easy to hit, but very devastating if they are hit. We are waiting to see what happens before we hit them. We could take them all out in one day.

But it's all resulting in a 90% decline in various things, but in particular, Iranian missile launchers and 83% drop in drone launchers. As you know, the drone launchers are pretty well shot, but we're at over 90% decline in the Iranian missile launchers, which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get. And usually what we were able to do through great equipment and a lot of smart people, as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher, we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less, accurately right on the noggin.

So now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones and our B2 bombers recently dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over Iran and buried deep under Iranian soil in many cases. The soil was no match. And we're also annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible. We're knocking them out. We know where they all are. We're knocking them out very quickly. We're ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.

I would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be here. In addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership twice and maybe three times.

And we, as you know, we want to be involved. We don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing to do what I'm willing to do for the good of the world, for the good of our nation, to be stuck with the situation in five years or 10 years from now. So, we think they should put a president in or the head of the country in that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a change. They've been doing this for 47 years, killing people for 47 years, whether it's the barracks or even the USS Cole where they were involved very strongly. They always denied it, but where they were very strongly involved. And all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no legs, no arms, a face that's been so badly damaged.

The Iranian regime has been attacking Americans and spreading terror for 47 years. And despite these countless opportunities to renounce their nuclear ambitions, which they had just a short while ago, they told Mr. Witkoff who is standing right over here. They said they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real nutshell. We want to continue to build nuclear weapons. If we didn't knock out Midnight Hammer, if we didn't knock out their Iranian potential, if we didn't do that with Midnight Hammer, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have used it long before now. And at a minimum, Israel would have been annihilated.

I was very lucky that we had the courage to do that, that we had the talented pilots and the great equipment. The B2 bombers are unbelievable. We ordered 25 more, by the way. The newer, better version. We have the greatest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world by far. You see that no matter where we go, you still need the people though to operate it and to use it. And those are the people that we cherish.

Even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites in Operation Midnight Hammer, they never negotiated in good faith. They still continue to say, 'We want to build nuclear. We want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable.' And they even turned down an offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes. We had people offering them free nuclear fuel. They weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon.

So instead, the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site. They couldn't go back to where they were, the three sites that we obliterated, but they were starting work at another site, a different site, different kind of a site. And that was protected by granite. They wanted it protected. Granite's pretty good, but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper. They wanted to go a lot deeper. And they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles. They were going to do it all at the same time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland.

The regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon. So, as you probably saw, they had a tremendous number of missiles, most of which have now been used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all down. What incredible technology the Patriots have been. Unbelievable. And other things. And the laser technology that we have now is incredible. It's coming out pretty soon. We're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost, do the work of what the Patriots are doing or what other things are doing.

The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the United States found it intolerable in my opinion based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me. Marco so involved that I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would if we didn't do this at the time we did it. I think they had in mind to attack us. And if you notice they did something which was very foolish, very stupid. I would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors were largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the reverse effect. The neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully. If you look at Saudi Arabia, you look at UAE, Qatar and others, but they were strong and they were smart. But they got attacked. Nobody, when I first heard it, I said, 'No, somebody made a mistake.' There was no mistake. UAE had over a thousand missiles shot at it, knocked them almost all down.

On the very first day I came down the escalator in 2015, I said, quote, 'I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and all I'm doing is keeping my promise.' Think of that. That was in 2015. I said it. It was a threat then and a much bigger threat now, but no longer a threat. Not for a long time anyway. We want to keep it that way.

As we continue Operation Epic Fury, we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world. And I will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply. And if Iran does anything to do that, they'll get hit at a much, much harder level. I will take out those targets that were easy and that I mentioned just before, we'll take them out so quickly. They'll never be able to recover ever. If they want to play that game, they better not play that game.

In the long run, oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of Iranian ships, drones, missiles, nuclear menace, or anything. So, the Strait of Hormuz is going to remain safe. We have a lot of Navy ships there. We have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines. Again, most of their ships are down at the bottom of the sea, but we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world if they do anything.

In recent years, the regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial vessels. We're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all. And the result will be lower oil prices, oil and gas prices for American families. We've done that. We've done it. We brought it very low. This was just an excursion into something that had to be done. We're getting very close to finishing that, too.

In the meantime, during this brief disruption, the United States is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating in the Gulf. So, we're putting up risk insurance. Will perhaps go alongside of them for protection. We don't think it'll be necessary. If it is, and if they do anything, the price will be incalculable. It will be so great that they will have wished they never did it because you have to keep the straits flowing.

With all of that, it affects other countries much more than it does the United States. Doesn't really affect us. We have so much oil. We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need. We have Venezuela now as our new partner, great partner. They've worked out so wonderful. We're working with the administration, the president, and it's a massive source of oil, gas, everything. But we're in a very good position, but very unfair to other parts of the world, like China as an example. I mean, we're doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China. They get a lot of their oil through the straits. So, we're doing this. We have a very good relationship with President Xi in China. I'm going there in a short period of time, and we're protecting the world from what these lunatics are trying to do. And very successfully, I might add.

We're also waiving certain oil-related sanctions to reduce prices. So we have sanctions on some countries. We're going to take those sanctions off till this straightens out. Then who knows, maybe we won't have to put them on. There'll be so much peace. But when the time comes, the US Navy and its partners will escort tankers through the strait. If needed, I hope it's not going to be needed, but if it's needed, we'll escort them right through. And we have the greatest mine sweeping ability. We have the greatest ships and all of the we know exactly where they're placed. We'll get them out of there very fast. But we hope we don't have any of that. And again, if they do that, if they play that game, we're going to hit them at a level that they have not seen before. So, we're winning very decisively.

We're way ahead of schedule. Our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest equipment and the greatest people in the world. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. Iran's a very powerful country. They were going to take over the Middle East. If we did not hit them, they were going to take over the Middle East. They had thousands and thousands since their last hit. They had thousands and thousands of missiles and everything else. Most are now destroyed. But they were going to take over the Middle East. Those weapons were aimed at Middle Eastern countries that had nothing to do with this. They were going to take over the Middle East and they were going to try and destroy Israel. So, we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in this and it's going to be ended soon and if it starts up again, they'll be hit even harder. Thank you very much for being here. Go ahead. Any questions?

R

Reporter1:01:25

Thank you. Thank you so much. Do you approve of Iran's new Supreme Leader? And secondly, can you tell us more about your call with Russian President Vladimir Putin today? What did you discuss?

D

Donald Trump1:01:37

Yes, I had a very good call with President Putin. We had a lot of people on the line from our side, from his side. We were talking about Ukraine, which is just the never-ending fight. And look, there's tremendous hatred between President Putin and President Zelensky. They can't seem to get it together. But I think it was a positive call on that subject. And we obviously talked then about the Middle East and he wants to be helpful. I said you could be more helpful by getting the Ukraine-Russia war over with. That would be more helpful. But we had a very good talk and he wants to be very constructive. Yeah.

Please.

R

Reporter1:02:22

Thank you, Mr. President. On Iran, you called it an excursion. You said it would be over soon. Are you thinking this week it will be over? Are you talking about days?

D

Donald Trump1:02:30

I think so soon. Very soon. Look, everything they have is gone including their leadership. In fact, there are two levels of leadership and even actually as it turns out more than that, but two levels of leadership are gone. Most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're talking about. So it's obviously been very, very powerful, very effective.

R

Reporter1:02:54

Back to Cuba. You said that Cuba wants to make a deal. What would the United States get in return for that? And why should Americans trust Marco Rubio to negotiate it?

D

Donald Trump1:03:03

Well, Marco Rubio is doing a great job. I think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history. Look at what we've done as a presidency. Look at what we've done as an administration. They trust Marco. And so do the American people trust. He's been successful no matter where he's been. He also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful. But he's dealing and it may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn't matter because they're really down to, as they say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis. And we don't want to see that. But they were very, very bad to a lot of people as you know and a lot of people living our the Cuban-American vote which I got at record levels, very important. Those people are very important to me. I know what they went through. They went through hell. Some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the country. Cuban-American business people. Some of them are like the most successful in the country. And a lot of them are friends of mine because I've been fighting this battle with them for a long time. The Castro regime was brutal, but they lived off Venezuela. Now they don't live off Venezuela. Sends them no energy, no fuel, no oil, no money, no nothing. They lived without Venezuela. They couldn't have made it. And we cut them off from everything else. So, yeah, they're going to make either a deal or we'll do it just as easy anyway. Yeah.

Please go ahead.

R

Reporter1:04:48

There's footage that shows that an American missile strike and a Tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girl school. So will the Americans, will the US accept any responsibility?

D

Donald Trump1:05:00

Well, I haven't seen it and I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries. You know that. And whether it's Iran, who also has some Tomahawks, they wish they had more, but whether it's Iran or somebody else, the fact that a Tomahawk, a Tomahawk is very generic. It's sold to other countries, but that's being investigated right now.

Yeah, please.

R

Reporter1:05:31

Thank you. Mr. President, you've said the war is quote very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be?

D

Donald Trump1:05:39

I think it could say both. The beginning, it's the beginning of building a new country, but they certainly they have no navy. They have no air force. They have no anti-aircraft equipment. It's all been blown up. They have no radar. They have no telecommunications. And they have no leadership. It's all gone. So, you know, you could look at that statement. We could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here. I could call it or we could go further and we're going to go further. But the big risk on that war has been over for three days. We wiped them out in the first two days. When you think about it, it's incredible. We wiped out a big navy, very powerful navy. You know, these were ships. These were serious ships. These were ships that you buy when you want to win battles. They're all on the bottom floor. The sailors are all running off the ships. They refuse to get on the ships. The air force is gone. Everything's gone. The missiles are down to a trickle. The drones are down to probably 25% and they'll soon be down to nothing. We'll have the where they manufacture the drones are under fire as we speak. They're being hit. So the rest is going to be a determination as to my attitude along with the people in the Trump administration what we want to do. Thank you.

Yeah, please.

R

Reporter1:07:12

Can I ask you, you mentioned you were going to waive certain additional oil waivers or sanctions. Can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular keeping the oil prices down?

D

Donald Trump1:07:20

We went artificially up because of this excursion into a very positive thing. I mean, this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done. I knew oil prices would go up if I did this, and they've gone up probably less than I thought they'd go up, but I don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful. This was a military success the likes of which people haven't seen. We have the best military. We have the best equipment. We have, I believe, the best generals. We have the best. And this went very quickly. We talked about that with President Putin. He was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything quite like it. You know, Iran was a very powerful military country with all of the missiles. Now, you had the double attack. You had the original attack with us and Israel and that knocked them for a loop. Then you had the B2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press conference at all. But it's been amazing. The military success that we've had is truly unprecedented.

R

Reporter1:08:43

You said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece of legislation until the Save America Act is passed. Does that include the confirmation of Senator Mullen as your next DHS secretary? Does that mean a DHS funding bill? And Senator Thune said today it's not a matter of whether or not your Republican colleagues agree with the policy. It's about changing the process. In other words, getting rid of the filibuster to get there.

D

Donald Trump1:09:05

So in order to get it, you're going to need Democrat votes. And what we're saying is the Save America Act. The Save America Act. And that's voter ID. We want voter ID. When a voter, we want to be able to see a picture of the voter. We want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate. We want very importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the United States of America. And we want no mail-in ballot scams. So we have exceptions for the military, for sick, for disabled, and for people that are away, business trips or whatever. Even vacations will be very liberal in that. We've added two things to it. No men and women sports and no transgender mutilization of our children. We don't want our the mutilization of our children and we don't want that. So we added those two things. That's the five points. We have five very good points. It polls at 86% with Democrats. Think of that. The overall vote is 86%. With Republicans it's 98%. And the only one opposed to it is Democrat leadership because they cheat. They want to cheat. So, we added those two points. We're going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell. Now, certain things will happen. Certain things will take place. I'm here to do a great job for the country, but we don't have a country if we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over the last period of time. You know, as an example, virtually nobody has a system of mail-in ballots like we have. No other country in the world. France went away from it. They all went, you know why? Because it's corrupt. And Jimmy Carter, when he had a commission, frankly, I think it's probably the best thing Jimmy Carter did. He said, you can't have mail-in voting because it's inherently dishonest. And it's turned out to be totally dishonest. But we're going to fight for it.

Yeah.

R

Reporter1:11:23

So much for taking our questions. Has Iran activated any sleeper cells inside the US? There's reports that they have pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad.

D

Donald Trump1:11:34

Well, they've been trying for a long time. We've been very much on top of it. One of the things we have to do is get the Democrats to stop the Democrat shutdown because, as you know, the apparatus that looks into that, Schumer and the Democrats have shut it down, which tells you they probably hate our country a lot, but the Democrats have to open that up. But we've got very, very good intelligence into that. We know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad. A lot of them came in during the Biden open border period, but we have them under we've got them we're watching every single one of them. Yeah, we know a lot about them. The biggest problem we have is the Democrat shutdown. We know a lot about them, but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do.

R

Reporter1:12:24

And this new leader, do you have to take him out? Does he have a target on his back?

D

Donald Trump1:12:29

You mean the new supreme leader? You mean the son?

R

Reporter1:12:32

How can there be an Iran?

D

Donald Trump1:12:33

Well, I don't want to say that, but you know, I was disappointed because we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country. So, I was disappointed to see their choice.

R

Reporter1:12:46

Thank you. Thank you, sir. You've said you have someone in mind to be the new Iranian leadership, if not the Ayatollah's son. What are you looking for in that person? Are you looking at someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been...

D

Donald Trump1:12:58

I like the idea of, you know, internal and eternal come to think of it, but I like the idea of internal because it works well. I mean, I think we've proven that so far in Venezuela. We have a woman, Delcy, who has been, you know, president of the country, very respected, very she's doing a great job and it's, you know, no disruption. We had as you remember Iraq where everybody got fired. The military got fired, the police got fired, the politicians got fired. There was nobody. And you know what? They turned into ISIS. And we don't want that. We don't want that. So, I would like to see people that are inside go now. They talk about the son of the Shah, they talk about other people, but you know, hasn't been there in many, many years. We have a formula that's been very good so far and I think it'll continue to be good. The relationship is extraordinary with Venezuela. Smart country. We've taken out 100 million barrels of oil. It's right now in Houston being taken care of and made so beautiful. And you have to see this at work. It's brought to the refineries. It's being refined in Houston which is made exactly for that product and so far but it's 100 million barrels of oil and now they have another 100 million barrels coming and it's like a partnership. We're getting along so well with them. It's great for Venezuela and it's great for the United States.

Yeah, please go ahead.

R

Reporter1:14:43

Hi, Mr. President. You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?

D

Donald Trump1:14:59

Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are used by others as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us. But I will certainly whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.

Yeah, please.

R

Reporter1:15:21

You said earlier that we've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. What do you consider enough? What's your baseline?

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Donald Trump1:15:29

Where they're not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration and say, 'All right, we're not going to do it.' They were not willing to say that. And when Steve called up and he said that to me, I said, 'Well, here we go. Let's do it the hard way.' But the hard way, I think, is probably the easy way. When basically I can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that can be used against the United States, Israel, or any of our allies. We have great allies in the Middle East. Great countries that are allies and they were staying out of it until they got hit. Someday they'll have to do a story. Why did he do that? Why did they do that? But they were going to hit them. If I didn't hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first. I believe upon information and belief, but I believe that they were going to take over the Middle East. They were looking to take over the Middle East. Now, had Operation Midnight Hammer not taken place, that was definite because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks. But that took place. That was a setback. But look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months. And those missiles were aimed at various countries. And when you look at a thousand over a thousand missiles shot at like UAE, they were looking to take over the Middle East. We got there first. Lucky. I'll tell you what, the Middle East and those countries, very rich countries are very lucky that I was president instead of somebody else.

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Reporter1:17:18

Mr. President, are there any points of disagreement between yourself and your vice president when it comes to US action in Iran?

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Donald Trump1:17:25

I don't think so. No. No. We get along very well on this. He was I would say philosophically a little bit different than me. I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but I felt it was something we had to do. I didn't feel we had a choice. If we didn't do it they would have done it to us. I felt based on the negotiations that were being had by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and Marco and Pete and everybody was involved. I felt that they were going to that they were looking to tap us along before they hit and I thought they were going to hit and if they hit us first that would have been a very bad thing.

In the back please, in the back.

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Reporter1:18:11

Securing the strait. Is there a timeline for that?

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Donald Trump1:18:18

About the strait you mean? Yeah. Well, I want to keep it open. I want to keep it good. You know, it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to China. We're really helping China here and other countries because they get a lot of their energy from the straits. But hey, look, we have a good relationship with China. It's my honor to do it. Yeah.

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Reporter1:18:42

New Supreme Leader. You have called him an unacceptable choice. So, does he have a target on his back? And how can you say...

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Donald Trump1:18:48

I don't want to say whether or not he does because that would be inappropriate. But hey, look, I had a target on my back because as you people wrote pretty well, they caught the assassin that was after me. So, we just got them first, but they caught the assassin. They have him now in custody that was after me. So, you know, but people don't like to mention that, but they did catch him. And I'd like to congratulate our military, Secret Service, FBI, all of the people that worked on that. But they did. Yeah. Please.

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Reporter1:19:19

The war is almost over though.

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Donald Trump1:19:21

Go ahead. No, go ahead, please.

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Reporter1:19:22

Thank you, Mr. President. You promised the Iranian people you would help them, but it sounds like you're willing to end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up. Isn't that a betrayal of...

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Donald Trump1:19:31

Will I help them? I'd like to if they can behave, but they've been very menacing. You know, they're great people. They have an amazing population. It's amazing. Smart, brilliant, energetic. They have a great I'd love to help them, but they have to be in a system that allows them to be helped. And right now, they're in a system that only allows failure. And I don't want that. And I want a system that's not going to be attacking us. We want a system that can lead to many years of peace. And if we can't have that, we might as well get it over with right now. Yeah, please.

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Reporter1:20:08

Thank you, Mr. President. As of today, there have been eight US military fatalities associated with the war in Iran. How many American deaths are you willing to have in this war?

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Donald Trump1:20:19

Well, as I said before, when you have conflict, it's been a very big two days, I have to say, and we'll be heading back to Washington DC right after this. And I'd like to wish everyone a very good evening. And over the weekend, the United States military and the Israeli Defense Forces continued Operation Epic Fury very successfully. Over the past nine days, we've carried out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen. Now, you add that up to all of the other things, Midnight Hammer, getting rid of the nuclear threat from Iran, which was a big moment in history in my opinion, and the great success we've had in Venezuela and all other places. Every place we've gone, we've had tremendous success.

But while we're doing all of these things, we're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective. And some people could say they're pretty well complete. We've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely. Most of Iran's naval power has been sunk. It's on the bottom of the sea. It's almost 50 ships. I was just notified it's 51 ships. I didn't know they had that many. Didn't last very long. And these are fighting vessels. They're meant to fight, but they're not meant to fight against us. We continue to target Iran's drone and missile capabilities. Their drones are way down. Their drone manufacturing's been hit starting today. We know all of the places they manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after another. Their missile capability is down to about 10%, maybe less. We're also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles.

We've struck over 5,000 targets to date. Some of them very major targets. And we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it. If we hit them, it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things. So, we're not looking to do that if we don't have to, but they're the kind of things that are very easy to hit, but very devastating if they are hit. We are waiting to see what happens before we hit them. We could take them all out in one day, but it's all resulting in a 90% decline in various things, but in particular, Iranian missile launchers and 83% drop in drone launchers. As you know, the drone launchers are pretty well shot, but we're at over 90% decline in the Iranian missile launchers, which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get. And usually what we were able to do through great equipment and a lot of smart people. As soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher, we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less, accurately right on the noggin.

So now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones. And our B2 bombers recently dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over Iran and buried deep under Iranian soil. In many cases, the soil was no match. And we're also annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible. We're knocking them out. We know where they all are. We're knocking them out very quickly. We're ahead of our initial timeline by a lot. I would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be here. In addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership twice and maybe three times.

And we, as you know, we want to be involved. We don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing to do what I'm willing to do for the good of the world, for the good of our nation, to be stuck with the situation in five years or 10 years from now. So, we think they should put a president in or the head of the country in that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a change. They've been doing this for 47 years, killing people for 47 years, whether it's the barracks or even the USS Cole where they were involved very strongly. They always denied it, but where they were very strongly involved. And all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no legs, no arms, a face that's been so badly damaged.

The Iranian regime has been attacking Americans and spreading terror for 47 years. And despite these countless opportunities to renounce their nuclear ambitions, which they had just a short while ago, they told Mr. Witkoff who is standing right over here. They said they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real nutshell we want to continue to build nuclear weapons. If we didn't knock out Midnight Hammer, if we didn't knock out their Iranian potential, if we didn't do that with Midnight Hammer, they would have had a nuclear weapon. They would have used it long before now. And at a minimum, Israel would have been annihilated.

I was very lucky that we had the courage to do that, that we had the talented pilots and the great equipment. The B2 bombers are unbelievable. We ordered 25 more, by the way. The newer, better version. We have the greatest military in the world. We have the greatest equipment in the world by far. You see that no matter where we go, you still need the people though to operate it and to use it. And those are the people that we cherish.

Even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites in Operation Midnight Hammer, they never negotiated in good faith. They still continue to say, 'We want to build nuclear. We want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable.' And they even turned down an offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes. We had people offering them free nuclear fuel. They weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon.

So instead, the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site. They couldn't go back to where they were, the three sites that we obliterated, but they were starting work at another site, a different site, different kind of a site. And that was protected by granite. They wanted it protected. Granite's pretty good, but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper. They wanted to go a lot deeper. And they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles. They were going to do it all at the same time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland.

The regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon. So, as you probably saw, they had a tremendous number of missiles, most of which have now been used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all down. What incredible technology the Patriots have been. Unbelievable. And other things. And the laser technology that we have now is incredible. It's coming out pretty soon. We're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost do the work of what the Patriots are doing or what other things are doing.

The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the United States found it intolerable in my opinion based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me. Marco so involved that I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would if we didn't do this at the time we did it. I think they had in mind to attack us. And if you notice they did something which was very foolish, very stupid. I would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors were largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the reverse effect. The neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully. If you look at Saudi Arabia, you look at UAE, Qatar and others, but they were strong and they were smart. But they got attacked. Nobody, when I first heard it, I said, 'No, somebody made a mistake.' There was no mistake. UAE had over a thousand missiles shot at it. Knocked them almost all down.