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Dec. 16, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
59:52
Episode 4130: Runaway Debt Train Heading Towards Trump
Participants
Main voices
d
donald j trump
40:06
s
steve bannon
14:26
Appearances
Clips
j
jake tapper
00:08
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Speaker Time Text
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
unidentified
Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you've tried to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
It's going to happen.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼
And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
unidentified
MAGA Media.
jake tapper ▲ ● ▼
I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
unidentified
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
War Room.
unidentified
Here's your host, Stephen K. Vance.
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
It's Monday, 16 December, the year of our Lord, 2024.
We're going to go momentarily to Mar-a-Lago, where President Trump's about to make an announcement about some investments in the United States.
uh I think it's Matsusan.
They had a soft bank.
I think rumor has it there's been some tweets out that may be up to $100 billion in U.S. companies or investment in the United States, particularly in AI. I respectfully, I'm not a fan of any of this.
I want foreign capital out of the United States of America, not in.
I particularly don't want it owning our farmland.
I'm not really that excited about owning the companies, but President Trump has a huge task in front of me.
President Trump's got pretty broad shoulders, but this is going to be a tough one.
And I said that the fate of President Trump's second term is going to be decided in New York City, not Washington, D.C. It's going to be decided in New York City.
New York City, the global capital markets, are going to vote up or down on President Trump's plan.
Now, he's put together, I think, one of the smartest teams that's ever been put together in the American government with Scott Besson over at Treasury, expert in capital markets.
You've got Hassett, the former head of the CEA, which is the economist, the Council of Economic Advisers, and President Trump's first term.
He now runs NEC. And let me just explain the structure of that so everybody understands it.
In the White House, you have a number of big groups of people that perform tasks.
You have Office of Management and Budget, which is, I think, 600 or 700 people working nonstop.
And Russ Vogt, I think, brings in, I don't know, like 100 of those.
You've got a bunch of professionals that brings in 100 of those.
By the way, my producers will give me the heads up when we go to Mar-a-Lago live.
And let's blow the brakes if we go to Mar-a-Lago.
OMB, Office of Management Budget, Russ's vote, absolutely central with the Doge guys on managing the government, managing the flow of cash through the government, and also deconstructing the administrative state.
Then you have three big councils, and these councils are staffed with both people President Trump puts in there.
They don't have to get Senate confirmed.
Nobody in the White House has to have Senate confirmation.
So the big council are the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council, and the National Economic Council.
So you have three big groups.
And these really drive up the policy alternatives for the president, which he then, with the cabinet heads, in coordination with the cabinet heads, forces through the system.
And of course, you do an annual budget, and in that budget, you kind of agree a top line, and then you actually do the appropriations process.
And many of you, a couple of years ago, I guess it was last summer, maybe the summer beforehand, Saturday we did the appropriations, you know, meetings and debates all night long, all throughout the night, where every penny of that six and a half trillion dollars gets appropriated, gets debated, and it comes up, and this is why these bills are so big.
National Security Council obviously handles everything with national security, coordinates between the CIA, the DNI, Director of National Intelligence, and the Pentagon.
And some of the FBI also, and Justice Department, State Department.
So the National Security Council is that.
You have, and that's Congressman Mike Waltz.
A former Green Beret is running that.
You have Domestic Policy Council.
You have the Domestic Policy Council, in which I think Stephen Miller is both – Stephen Miller is the head of all domestic policy, and he's head of immigration and works directly with the Board of Law, sorry, Tom Homan.
Stephen is also the Deputy Chief of Staff for policy.
And then you've got the National Economic Council, which is HACET. We're good to go.
In a $6.5 trillion budget that we're trying to get down, you have in the government about 2.5 million people, roughly, of civilians.
You have about 2.5, 3 million militaries.
That comes to roughly 5 million.
Then you have contractors.
Nobody counts as the contractors.
You have contractors, I think, approximately, it's tough to tell precisely, but about 5 million contractors at the executive level.
So essentially 10 million people to run a government that has six and a half trillion dollars of cash coming through it and runs everything from the National Weapons Labs to like half of the West of the Department of Interior to the Defense Department, which takes almost a trillion dollars now.
But you go to any military base, you see the aircraft carriers, you go to Norfolk, you go to San Diego, you go to the Air Force bases, you go to the Army bases.
That's all comes through the federal budget and it's all kind of managed.
That entity is what is just too expensive right now.
unidentified
When I say too expensive, people say, well, Steve, how can you say that?
steve bannon ▲ ● ▼
How can you say it's too expensive?
How do you know it's just not perfect?
Well, we're not prepared to pay for it.
And we say, well, why are you not prepared to pay for it?
Well, I said, hey, just all cash coming in from tariffs and from fees and from taxes amount to about $4.5 trillion.
We spend six to six and a half.
So that gap every year, that one and a half to two trillion dollar gap, has to be financed somehow.
And how does it do it?
This goes to be part of the national debt.
And we either sell the bonds, either create bonds, government instruments.
We keep saying 10-year bonds, 30-year bonds, and you sell them to Japanese insurance companies or the Chinese government or the Saudi royal family or the Norway's wealth fund.
Anybody can buy these, and it's a big market.
And traditionally, the Japanese, the Chinese, and the Saudis have owned a pretty significant part of this.
Now, as you know, I'm not a huge believer in foreigners owning parts of the United States.
But listen, if you're going to finance this, you know, there's only so much money.
And so you go out to this market.
Now, if you don't, you kind of have to.
How do you do it?
Well, we can actually print it ourselves and buy it ourselves.
And you would go, well, isn't that kind of a scam?
Well, this is what being the prime reserve currency.
The greatest export of the United States is not our technology.
The greatest export is not the personal computer or all the great things we did in aerospace or all the advances or the pharmaceuticals you take anywhere in this country that we're the leading industry.
That's not our top export.
What's the top export?
The United States dollar.
Because the world, because of global trade, since kind of the beginning of global trade, you know, sometime after Marco Polo, With really the Spanish and the Portuguese and the Italians, you know, Venice, everybody's wanted to convert and had to have kind of a common currency, some sort of currency they convert into.
And it turns out at that time, the dominant, the hegemon, or the dominant...
Trading partner empire at that time, whether it's the Spanish, whether it's the Dutch, whether it's the English, or whether it's the United States, kind of takes that role.
Now, it comes with tons of obligations, and we've never had a national debate about this.
This is why if you hear this concept of the, which I call kind of a fetish now, the post-war international rules-based order, the post-war international rules-based order, in the destruction of World War II... The British had finally run out of steam.
Between World War I losing all those men in France and World War II being crushed, they saved their liberty.
And for a while they saved their empire, but it wasn't for too long.
And Churchill had stood up to the Germans, but they were a shattered nation and no longer had kind of the depth.
The Bank of England, which is, you know, my dad said when he grew up as a kid back in the 1920s, you go and see the map in school and the British Empire was in pink.
And it almost looked like a tiny island in the entire world was controlled by the British, where the Bank of England, and solid as a pound, was really the currency that drove international commerce and drove when they were the world power in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
By the end of World War II, they were shattered.
They were broken.
They were broken on the battlefields of essentially Europe, just like the French before them in World War I had been broken, shattered.
This is what happens when you lose millions of men.
Millions of young men, quite frankly, your best and brightest, are churned up in war.
What's happening in Ukraine right now?
We're the best and the brightest in Ukraine have been churned up in what we call the churnal house, right, which Professor Mersheimer warned him about.
So in that post-war order, since we were kind of the last man standing, we had been the arsenal for democracy and the bravery and the courage of American troops, whether in the 8th Air Force over Europe or in Normandy or in North Africa or Sicily or at Guadalcanal in the South Pacific and the whole fighting up through the Philippines and eventually Saipan to get to Japan.
And, you know, the submarines and the destroyers, the Navy, all of it.
We had relatively few casualties, and our country really hadn't been hit in any meaningful way outside of Pearl Harbor and one or two other things on the West Coast had not really been in the story.
So we were there as kind of the American empire.
That's where it began.
And to be part of that empire, you had to have, they had a meeting at Bretton Woods, right?
And they came up with a way that the American dollar was now going to be the prime reserve currency.
So since that time, you've had two things.
You've had this kind of This metastasizing of the administrative state, the administrative state that was really born somewhat in the Civil War, but kind of died up, but really born in World War, a little bit with FDR's New Deal to save capitalism, right, or some form of capitalism to become kind of neoliberalism, but really the expansion of the administrative state during the war to manage a global conflict under General Marshall.
That entity Right?
They got us into Korea and got us into Vietnam and got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, all of it.
Is the price you pay for being the hegemon?
Price you pay...
Now, we weren't the hegemon, obviously, a big part of that.
They had the Soviet Union, although we found out when President Reagan came on that the CIA... Hello?
The CIA had radically miscalculated the size of the Soviet economy, had kind of, wait for it, lied to policymakers and lied to the American people about really the threat of the Russians.
Not that they didn't have a ton of nuclear weapons, but they didn't really have an economy.
Back in the 60s and early 70s, they were sitting there going, oh, command economy is the way of the future.
What the United States does is not the way of the future.
Turns out that was a bald-faced lie.
That economy was about, I don't know, One-sixth of the size that it really was when President Reagan got in there and Bill Casey actually did an analysis of the size of it.
This led to the takedown of the evil empire.
It was essentially an economic war.
Out to destroy the Bolsheviks, the Soviet Union.
And destroy it, we did.
In about ten years, eight years, the fall of the Berlin Wall because of President Reagan's focus.
But that system...
It's a system now that has a spread over Hell's Half Acre.
If you look the other day, the Secretary of the Army bragging, thinking it's a good thing, put out a tweet and said, we have 113,000 troops deployed in 140 countries.
They're like, this is a good thing, this is how we're ending the year.
I told Mo that when I did the changeover for the, kind of relieved the watch for when President Trump took over, When you add the Marines, you add the Air Force, you add the Navy, I don't know, you round up as about 150,000 troops, sailors, airmen, in about 150 countries.
You spread out all over Hell's Half Acre, and trust me, folks, that's expensive.
From the 25,000 troops we have in Korea to the 30,000 troops we have in Germany, I'm not arguing they've got to come home.
I'm arguing that we have to have a national debate.
A partner's discussion.
And it has to happen now.
With full disclosure, this debt and spending is a runaway train.
It's a runaway train that's going to run over Elon Musk.
It's a runaway train that's going to run over Vivek Ramaswamy.
It's a runaway train that could run over Donald John Trump.
It's a runaway train that's not just going to run over MAGA. It's going to run over the American people in this beloved republic.
It has to be.
This is the existential ticking time bomb that's before us.
And here's the thing.
In the long con that got us here, and it is a con, the smartest guys in the room, just like in the border, it's not chaos down there.
They know exactly what they're doing to get 15 million illegal aliens in here to drive down wages among blacks and Hispanics and to add to consumer spending.
The folks on Wall Street, the folks in corporate America, knew exactly what was going on here.
Their puppets, the political class, the order takers in Washington, D.C. knew exactly what the orders were.
And they executed on it.
It's the reason they hate Trump.
Because Trump has given the working man and woman a place in the room.
And not in the room, not in the deal with this crowd.
And he not only puts you in the room...
He puts you at the head of the table.
So now it's on you.
You're the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
And now it's going to come a time for testing.
unidentified
next in the war room.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
So, it's an honor to be with you.
We'll discuss a couple of points.
We'll take some questions later if you'd like.
I'm sure you might have one or two.
I'd be shocked if you didn't.
I'd be very impressed.
But I'm honored to welcome one of the most accomplished business leaders of our time, the founder and CEO of SoftBank, everybody knows, Masa Yoshisan.
Masa runs one of the largest companies in Japan.
Among the most successful investment and technology companies anywhere in the world, one of the most successful investors in the world.
And we've just concluded a very productive meeting, and today I'm thrilled to announce that SoftBank will be investing One hundred billion dollars in America, creating one hundred thousand American jobs at a minimum.
And he's doing this because he feels very optimistic about our country since the election.
And many other people are also coming in with tremendous amounts of money.
You probably noticed that the A poll was just taken.
Business is literally, in 39 years, there's been nothing like it.
It's been the biggest increase.
Small business owners gave it a 41 percent jump.
It's the biggest jump that we've had in 39 years.
Nobody's ever seen anything like it, and it's just they're very optimistic.
This historic investment is a monumental demonstration of confidence in America's future, and it will help ensure that artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and other industries of tomorrow are built, created, and grown right here in the USA. One of the beautiful things about MASA is he's very much involved with emerging technology probably knows it maybe better than almost anybody so it's a great honor and some of you remember after the 2016 election also
SoftBank committed to invest 50 billion dollars in our country and they did And I'm very pleased to say that they kept that promise in every way, shape, and form, and now they're looking to do a hundred.
And I've looked at their books.
They do have the possibility of doing more.
I'm going to ask them to do a little bit more, but first I'm going to ask them to speak and just to say a few words.
Masa, please.
Thank you.
unidentified
Thank you.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
unidentified
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I'm very, very excited.
I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump.
And my confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory.
So because of that, I'm now excited to commit This $100 billion and 100,000 jobs into the United States.
This is double of last time, as President Trump said.
Because I say, oh, President Trump is a double-down president.
I'm going to have to double down, you know?
$100 billion and 100,000 jobs.
This is, you know, my confidence level, because that has doubled down.
So I am truly excited to make this happen.
And, of course, business is important.
Technology is important.
But one more thing I'm really hoping is that this President Trump would make the world, bring the world into peace again.
That's my additional hope.
And I think he will actually make it happen.
So, anyway, I'm excited to go, and we were discussing, and President Trump said, Maasa, you know, double dollar is not enough.
Maybe, you know, go for more, right?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
That's what I, I'm going to ask him right now.
Would you make it $200 billion instead of one?
unidentified
Believe it or not, he can actually afford to do that if he wants to.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Would you do that?
unidentified
Well, my promise is 100, but, you know, he's now asking to do more.
I think, you know, with your leadership, my partnership with you, with your support, I will try to make it happen.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Okay, that's good.
200. He'll make it happen.
unidentified
Okay.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
200 billion investments.
unidentified
He is a great negotiator.
He's a good man.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
He's a brilliant guy and did an unbelievable job.
And the people of Japan and all over the world are very proud of him.
They have tremendous respect for him.
So when he does what he just did, and I would be surprised if it didn't go to two.
When you say you'll try, Yeah, I know you'll do it.
unidentified
I will really try.
And I need your support, though.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
You'll have my support.
unidentified
All right.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
You'll have our country's support.
unidentified
Oh, fantastic.
Thank you, Master, very much.
Fantastic.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Appreciate it.
unidentified
Thank you.
Thank you.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
You want to say hello to the people of Japan who are all watching?
unidentified
Well, I'm sure our people in Japan are proud to make the partnership of U.S. and Japan be stronger.
And I'm very excited to make this happen.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Great job.
Thank you.
It's amazing.
It's a great gentleman, a great leader and a great investor.
So to have that offer made, and we have so many companies coming in now that will be announcing or that will announce themselves.
We don't have to be with them to do it, but they'll be announcing.
And as I said, small business optimism.
Took a 41-point jump.
41 points.
It went up 41 points.
That's unheard of.
And that's the biggest they think in recorded history, but they know at least a minimum of 39 years, so that's great.
But on behalf of the American people, I want to thank Masa for his faith in what's happening with our country and what's happening with the world.
There's a whole light over the entire world.
Many people, some reporters in the speaking room, they said, you know, it actually is true.
A couple of them are.
Not necessarily friends of mine, but they said it is actually true that there's a light shining over the world.
We're trying to help very strongly in getting the hostages back, as you know, with Israel and the Middle East.
We're working very much on that.
We're trying to get the war stopped, that horrible, horrible war that's going on in Ukraine, with Russia, Ukraine.
We're going to — we've got a little progress.
It's a tough one.
It's a nasty one.
It's nasty.
People are being killed at levels that Nobody's ever seen.
You know, it's very level fields, and the only thing that stops a bullet is a body, a human body.
And the number of soldiers that are being killed on both sides is astronomical.
I've never seen anything like that.
And rapidly, I get reports every week, and it's not even, you know, it's like just going down.
Nobody's seen anything like it.
It's a very flat surface, a very flat land.
That's why it's great farming land.
Let's see.
It's the breadbasket for the world, actually.
But it's very flat, and there's nothing to stop a bullet but a body.
There's no protection, no nothing.
And what's happening there is far worse than people are reporting for both sides.
So we're going to do our best that we've been doing our best, and we'll see what happens.
But since the election, I've been working every day to put The world at ease a little bit to get rid of the wars.
We had no wars when I left office, and now the whole world is blowing up.
But there's great optimism, and you saw that by SoftBank.
Starting on day one, we'll implement a rapid series of bold reforms to restore our nation to full prosperity.
We're going to go full prosperity and to build the greatest economy the world has ever seen, just as we had Just a short time ago, we had it in my time.
We had the greatest economy that the world had seen.
We were blowing away everybody.
Our country was doubling up on China, doubling up on everybody, and everybody knows it.
And then we had to slow it down with COVID, unfortunately, at the end.
But even then, I gave it back with a substantial increase of the stock market, bigger than it was pre-COVID, so it was pretty amazing.
Already, preparations are underway to slash massive numbers of job-killing regulations, eliminating 10 old regulations for every new one.
When you put a new regulation on, you have to get rid of 10. And we'll be able to do it.
And that was about the percentage we had.
We cut more regulations than any president has ever cut, by far, actually, by approximately five times.
Some of those regulations, unfortunately, were put back on, but we'll catch up very quickly.
We'll catch up with it.
One of the things I'd like to ask the Biden administration, as you probably heard, there are two events that took place.
We're talking about a Friendly takeover, a friendly transition, as they like to say.
This is a friendly transition, and it is.
But there are two events that took place that I think are very terrible.
One is that if people don't come back to work, come back into the office, they're going to be dismissed.
And somebody in the Biden administration gave a five-year waiver of that so that for five years, people don't have to come back into the office.
It involved 49,000 people.
For five years, they don't have to go.
They just signed this thing.
It's ridiculous.
So it was like a gift to a union.
And we're going to obviously be in court to stop.
But the other thing is really terrible.
We spent a tremendous amount of money on building the wall.
The wall was designed specifically by the Border Patrol because it's very hard to climb.
They need to have see-through.
They need it to be steel because you can't cut.
It's very powerful steel.
It's very hard steel.
It's a special type of steel, but very, very hard to cut.
Inside the steel, as you know, we pour concrete, and that's a grade 10 concrete, which is a very strong concrete, as though you were building about a 60-story building.
It's very powerful concrete.
They've made tremendous technology advances in the word concrete.
Who would think that?
But I know that from the construction industry.
Today, what you can do with concrete is incredible.
So we have a very strong concrete, and then we have A rebar.
We put rebar inside the concrete.
And the rebar, likewise, is very hard to cut.
So it's a very expensive process, very expensive wall.
And then we put an anti-climb plate on the top.
You saw that.
And I didn't like the look of it.
But then when I watched, we had people testing.
We had mountain climbers actually testing.
And they were not able to get over the anti-climb plate.
So I said, all right, I guess we're going to put it on that plate on top, which I I never loved the look of it, but it works so unbelievably well you have to do it.
So we spent a lot of money on building it, and we have hundreds of miles that we put up.
A lot of people don't realize, but we did 571 miles of wall.
That's why we had such good records, in addition to the fact that Mexico helped us with their military.
They kept people out.
And they were actually very good under the past leader.
But now we had — we ordered an additional 200 miles of wall.
It's very expensive.
And now it's about double the price of what it would have been six years ago.
The administration is trying to sell it for five cents on the dollar, knowing that we're getting ready to put it up.
And what they're doing is really an act.
It's almost a criminal act.
They know we're going to use it.
And if we don't have it, we're going to have to rebuild it.
And it'll cost double what it cost years ago, and that's hundreds of millions of dollars, because you're talking about a lot of wall.
I built much more than I said I was going to build, but then after it was built, I said, you know, we can do some more, because it's sort of like water.
People flow through, and that will pretty much really take care of it.
And what happened is they just, as you see, they're trying to sell it for five cents of the dollar.
And that's really...
That has nothing to do with a smooth transition.
That has to do with people really trying to stop our nation.
And all it means, really, is that we're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more, not even talking about the time.
Time would be pretty long.
But we'll spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall that we already have.
And people have already come back to us That have deals at five cents and four cents and one guy at three cents on the dollar.
And they offered to sell it back to us at more money than it costs us to build substantially.
Can you believe it?
So they make a deal with the United States to buy it for pennies.
And then they call us and they say, do you want to buy it back?
We'll sell it back to you for hundreds of dollars a foot.
Hundreds of dollars from pennies to hundreds of dollars a foot.
And we can't let this take place.
Now, we're going to go.
I spoke with the Attorney General of Texas.
I spoke to the senators of Texas.
I spoke to a lot of people.
And hopefully they'll be able to stop.
We're going to be having a restraining order.
But just think about how ridiculous it is.
And this is just people that don't want this country to succeed.
And this has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican.
This has to do with Common sense.
We won on common sense, and this is maybe one of the most egregious examples I've seen.
So, the people that are buying it, are trying to buy it, are trying to make a deal with us to sell it back at hundreds of times more, hundreds of times more, Then we paid.
And this is all because the Democrats.
So I'm asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall.
We're going to use that to create a strong barrier.
And it worked.
That's why our numbers were so good.
It really worked.
And it worked well.
And it's very expensive to do.
And I'm asking Joe Biden to stop his people from giving it away.
It's It's something that people can't even believe is happening, so hopefully Joe will be able to stop it.
We'll soon unleash American energy, and this will be done at levels not seen before, issuing quick approvals for pipelines, drilling, and other infrastructure.
It'll be clean energy, and we'll bring in the price of electricity, and we're going to bring it down fast.
We're also going to create clean coal.
Clean coal is Something that has really taken over.
We have coal that will last for over a thousand years.
We have so much coal.
And with the process, it becomes clean coal.
It's very powerful energy, unlike wind.
It's very, very powerful.
And we're going to be doing a lot of clean coal for the people of West Virginia and others.
Wyoming, so many states.
We have great states.
And they'll be happy to hear it.
But we're going to be Very much into clean coal.
I don't ever use the word coal.
I use the word clean coal.
And I'll keep my promise to pass historic tax cuts for American families, workers, and businesses that create jobs in America.
As you know, we're giving tax cuts if they do it here.
We brought it down from 44 percent, 42 percent.
In some cases, it was 39. We brought it all the way down to 21%, and now we're bringing it down to 15%, but only if they make their product, their car, or whatever they're doing in the United States, in the U.S. And people are thrilled.
I've had the smartest people on Wall Street call me.
They said, where'd you get that idea?
And it doesn't seem that complicated, right?
But it's like the paperclip.
Nobody ever thought of it.
One guy thought of it.
Everybody looked at it.
They said, wow.
That was a good idea.
Why didn't I think of it?
But we're bringing it down six more points, and that will put us really at the best level we've ever had for bringing in business.
We've never been down to that level.
We'll be among the lowest taxed States and a lot of businesses are going to come in.
Between that and our taxing and tariff policies, we're going to have business like nobody's ever seen in this country before.
That's why we're having a 41-year record in optimism from small businesses and big businesses.
And I'll keep my promise to pass historic tax cuts for families, workers, and businesses that create jobs in America.
Any business that invests $1 billion or more in the United States will be eligible for fully expedited permits and approvals, including environmental approvals from the federal government.
When companies come in, if they're going to invest a billion dollars or more, there'll be many of them, and they'll go into Detroit, and they'll go into a lot of places where we want them.
You saw how well I did with the autoworkers.
We did unbelievably.
You saw how well we did with the Teamsters, and also the nonunion.
Record 98%, 97%.
Nobody's ever got numbers like that because we're bringing business back, and they're all coming back.
We lost them over years of stupidity, I call it.
I call it the years of stupidity, the decades of stupidity.
Through the Department of Government Deficiency, Elon Musk has been working very hard with various people, including Vivek.
We're going to eliminate hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud, and I can only tell you, I'll give you a little early report, they're finding things that you wouldn't even believe.
So we're looking to save maybe two trillion dollars, and it'll have no impact.
Actually, it'll make life better, but it'll have no impact on people.
It's not like we will never cut Social Security, things like that.
It's just waste, fraud, and abuse.
And we'll immediately restore the sovereign borders of the United States and stop illegal immigration, which is costing us, I believe, trillions of dollars a year.
I think it's a cost that nobody's ever seen anything like it.
I don't know.
How can you be satisfied?
You're releasing prisoners into the United States.
Think of this.
You're releasing prisoners from jails all over the world, not just in South America.
From the Congo, I would talk about it all the time.
They're a very big sender of people.
But from all over the world, they're sending prisoners out of their jails.
Some of their jails are empty, and they will be empty soon if this ever continued.
I spoke with the President of Mexico, and as you know, I spoke with Justin Trudeau of Canada.
And we told them it's not fair, not right, you can't let these people come into our country.
And they understand they're very much on notice and they're going to have to stop this from happening.
They're going to have to stop it.
We lose a lot of money to Mexico.
We lose a lot of money to Canada.
Tremendous money.
We're subsidizing Canada.
We're subsidizing Mexico.
That can't go on.
And I get along with the people of Mexico and Canada very well, but we can't let that happen.
Why are we supporting and giving other countries hundreds of billions of dollars It's not fair.
It's not right.
And the people of Mexico and Canada fully understand that.
We've talked about it before, but now we're doing something about it.
We started, and then we had to fix the COVID situation, and that's what we did.
But now we're doing it.
We're doing it from the beginning.
Howard will be largely in charge.
We'll be working on it together.
Howard's terrific.
He's done a fantastic job, and he's really helped us a lot with transition.
I think we have fantastic people coming in.
So all of these policies will help us rapidly defeat inflation, create millions of new jobs, and put money in the pockets of the hard-working families of our country, pay off debt.
We're going to be paying off a tremendous amount of debt.
We're $36 trillion.
You don't want to be there.
And we're going to be using a lot of the money that we make.
We're going to be opening up a lot of businesses that are going to be pouring in because of our tax policy.
And we're going to use the money that we made to pay off debt and to reduce taxes.
We're going to further reduce taxes.
If you remember when we reduced them last time, that brought a tremendous amount.
We brought it down to 21 percent, and that was the biggest tax cut in the history of our country.
And nobody Ever thought this would happen, but this is what's supposed to happen.
We actually ended up taking in more revenue at 21 than we did at 40%, which was pretty amazing.
But this will be the most exciting and successful period of reform and renewal in all of American history, maybe of global history.
The golden age of America, I call it.
It's begun.
So it's the golden age of America, and that's what it's going to be.
And we hope we don't have any intervening problems, because things happen, like out of nowhere came the China virus, out of nowhere came other things.
We don't want to have, you know, when I left we had no wars, we had no problems, the Middle East was good, we did the Abraham Accords, we did things that nobody thought were even possible.
But think of it, four years ago we had no wars.
You didn't have Russia going into Ukraine, they wouldn't have done it, they weren't even thinking about it.
When they saw what happened in Afghanistan, I think they gave them an idea.
But they wouldn't have done it.
They would have never gone.
President Putin would have never gone in.
And now you look at all those people are dead.
All those cities are destroyed.
You know, it's nice to say they want their land back, but the cities are largely destroyed.
They've left Kiev because probably maybe they want to use it or occupy it, but they haven't done it.
They've done a lot of damage, but relatively compared to the other cities, very little.
But many of those cities are gone.
Those beautiful towers, those beautiful buildings that they had are now laying on their sides, destroyed, totally destroyed.
The turrets and all of the magnificent 1,000-year-old, 2,000-year-old structures that were very strong are blown to smithereens.
You look at some of those cities and not one building standing.
So, you know, when you say...
Take over the country.
Take over what?
Take over what?
That's a hundred-year rebuild.
Take a hundred years to rebuild it, and you can never have it the way it was.
What a shame.
It should have never happened.
It would have never happened.
If I were president, that war would have never happened.
Nor would Israel have happened with the attack on Israel.
So we're inheriting Big challenges at home and all over the world.
Again, we had no wars.
We had no problems.
We had no inflation.
We had no inflation.
We had it less than 1%.
A perfect number.
And then we had inflation, the likes of which I say I don't believe the country's ever seen inflation like that.
They say 38 years.
I don't know.
I think it's probably ever.
But we're going to take care of all of it.
We're going to get the prices down by Energy.
The energy is going to come in.
We have more energy than anybody else.
We're going to use it.
We don't have to buy energy from Venezuela when we have 50 times more than they do.
It's just insane what we're doing.
So we will not rest until America is richer, safer, and stronger than it has ever been before.
And we have a big head start.
Last time, we didn't.
And last time, we didn't know the people.
We didn't know a lot of things.
But by the time we got it up and going, it was incredible.
Again, we built the greatest economy in history for that period of time.
And we'll do it again.
I believe substantially more so.
Because we understand, number one, the people of Washington.
I know them.
I didn't know any of them virtually.
I relied on other people for recommendations.
Some were very good recommendations.
We had some great people.
Bob Lighthizer I thought was great.
We had a lot of great people.
But we had some people that I wouldn't have used in retrospect, and now I know I know them better than anybody, better than they know themselves.
So once again, I'd like to thank Masa for what he's done with that investment, which will end up being $200 billion, I believe.
But I just want to thank him.
He's just an outstanding man.
When you have that kind of brainpower, wanting to invest in this country, And that's money that he can't invest elsewhere.
So that's a big investment, but makes me feel very good.
Makes me feel that we're absolutely on the right track.
So thank you, Tomasa.
And we'll take a couple of questions.
Yeah, please.
unidentified
Jeff.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Well, I'm not going to comment on the Putin question, but I will comment on On BB, we had a very good talk.
We discussed what is going to happen, and I'll be very available on January 20th, and we'll see.
As you know, I gave warning that if these hostages aren't back home by that date, all hell's going to break out, and very strong.
But we generally just discussed — I asked him, where are things?
Mike Waltz, they're doing a great job, by the way.
Everybody is very happy.
I think he's doing a fantastic job.
But he was very much involved in the call.
But it was a recap call more than anything else.
unidentified
Who?
How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok next month?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
We'll take a look at TikTok.
You know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok because I won youth by 34 points.
And there are those that say that TikTok has something to do with that.
Now, Joe Rogan did, and some of the other people that were recommended by my son Baranin, whoever, he knew names.
I said, who is that?
Tell me, who's that?
Dad, you got to be kidding.
I can't believe you don't know.
And I did those interviews, and it was actually sort of cute.
Do you want to know the truth?
But we did them, and that had an impact.
But TikTok had an impact, and So we're taking a look at it.
But, you know, we won youth.
Republicans are always 30 points down in youth.
I don't know why, but we ended up finishing.
We were—there was one poll that showed us down about 30. We were 35 or 36 points up with young people.
So I have a little bit of a warm spot in my heart, I'll be honest.
Yes, please.
unidentified
Are you entertaining the idea of preemptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Against who?
unidentified
Against Iran's nuclear facilities.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Well, I can't tell you that.
I mean, it's a wonderful question, but how am I going to do preemptive strikes?
Why would I say that?
Can you imagine if I said yes or no?
You'd say, that was strange that he answered that question.
Am I going to do preemptive strikes on Iran?
Is that a serious question?
How could I answer a question like that?
Say it.
unidentified
Would you be in support of Israeli strikes on Iran's...
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
How could I tell you a thing like that now?
It's just so...
You don't talk about that before something may or may not happen.
You know, just...
I don't want to...
I don't want to insult you.
I just think it's just not something that I would ever answer having to do with there or any other place in the world.
unidentified
Just clearly, do you believe there's a connection between vaccines and autism?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Well, I don't.
Look, right now, you have some very brilliant people looking at it.
I had dinner the other night with the head of Pfizer, the head of Eli Lilly, and RFK, as you know, and Oz.
And we had, and other people within the administration that are involved, the medical.
And we're looking to find out.
You know, if you look at autism...
So 30 years ago, I've heard numbers of like 1 in 200,000, 1 in 100,000.
And now I'm hearing numbers of 1 in 100. So something's wrong.
There's something wrong.
And we're going to find out about it.
unidentified
What about the President?
Go ahead, please.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
NBC.
unidentified
Can I follow up on Robert Kennedy?
He's on the Hill today.
He's meeting with senators.
What do you say to people who are worried that his views on vaccines will translate into policies that will make their kids less safe?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
No, I think he's going to be much less radical than you would think.
I think he's got a very open mind.
Or I wouldn't have put him there.
He's going to be very much less radical.
But there are problems.
I mean, we don't do as well as a lot of other nations, and those nations use nothing.
We're going to find out what those problems are.
And another thing that came up, the dinner was fascinating because I had Bobby and I had, again, the head of Pfizer, you know who that is.
He's a highly respected man who has run an incredible company, likewise with Lilly, the top two people.
And we had the head of the industry also.
So all companies were represented.
And I said, let's have it out now a little bit.
And you know what came out of that meeting is that we're paying far too much because we're paying much more than other countries.
And we have...
Laws that make it impossible to reduce.
And we have a thing called the middleman.
You know the middleman, right?
The horrible middleman that makes more money, frankly, than the drug companies.
And they don't do anything except they're a middleman.
We're going to knock out the middleman.
I'm going to be very unpopular after that statement.
I don't know who these middlemen are, but they are rich as hell.
We're going to knock out the middlemen.
We're going to get drug costs down at levels that nobody has ever seen before.
And that really, I tell you, we spent more time talking about that with Bobby and with the executives and Oz, all of them.
We spent more time talking about that than anything else.
unidentified
Thanks, President Trump.
What about the polio vaccine?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Well, I'm a big believer in it, and I think everything should be looked at, but I'm a big believer in the polio vaccine, the Salk vaccine.
unidentified
Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
I don't like mandates.
I'm not a big mandate person.
So, you know, I was against mandates.
Mostly Democrat governors did the mandates, and they did a very poor thing.
You know, in retrospect, they made a big mistake having to do with the education of children.
You know, they lost like a year, two years of their lives.
The mandate was a bad thing.
I was against the mandate.
Yes, please.
unidentified
Do you expect Ron DeSantis to appoint Laura Trump to Senator Marco Rubio's seat?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
No, I don't.
I probably don't, but I don't know.
Ron's doing a good job.
That's his choice.
Nothing to do with me.
Laura's unbelievable.
I mean, she was incredible.
The job she did at the RNC as chairman, along with Michael Watley, the combination.
But I can just speak for Laura.
She is so highly respected by women.
I mean, even her workout routines are through the roof.
She lifts 150 pounds.
I don't know how to hell she does it.
She's a bad example for men and women sports because I wouldn't be able to beat her, I don't believe.
I'd try like hell.
But, no, she's an incredible woman.
And, you know, it's funny.
People oftentimes talk about nepotism.
I never had...
When I put her there, people said, how did you get her to do it?
You know, she could have run for the Senate in North Carolina.
Ted Budd would be the first to say.
And he wouldn't have run.
Nobody would have run.
And she just said, no, I want to really focus on my children.
When the election...
And my family.
She has a great family.
When the election...
I started getting closer.
I asked her would she go to Washington and work as chairman of the committee, along with Michael Watley.
And they did such an unbelievable job, especially on cheating.
They stopped it.
Or at least they stymied it.
Too big to rig.
And we won in a landslide.
You know, we won tremendously.
She did an amazing job.
Now, Ron is going to have to make, because Marco has been really a star already.
And we haven't started, but, you know, we see signs of, from some people very early, we see signs of stardom.
And Marco has done incredibly.
He's sort of born for it.
It was such an easy decision.
The Marco decision was such an easy.
But he leaves a vacancy in Florida.
And Ron's going to have to make that decision.
And he'll make the right decision.
I also know that Laura's got so many other things.
I mean, she's got so many other things.
People want her to be on television.
They want to give her contracts.
You know, her predominant thought is our country and her family.
Those are her thoughts.
But she's got so many other things that she's talking about.
He'll make the right decision.
unidentified
Senators who oppose your nominees, your cabinet nominees, should they be primary?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
If they are unreasonable, I'll give you a different answer, an answer that you'll be shocked to hear.
If they're unreasonable, if they're opposing somebody for political reasons or stupid reasons, I would say it has nothing to do with me.
I would say they probably would be primary.
But if they're reasonable, fair, and really disagree with something or somebody, I can see that happening.
But I do believe that if they're unreasonable—I think we have great people.
I think we have a great— A great group of people.
Pam has been unbelievably received.
You take a look, Pam Bondi.
So many have been just unbelievably received.
I think Pete Hegseth is making tremendous strides over the last week.
He's going to be great.
Look, he went to Princeton.
He went to Harvard.
He was a great student there.
But he really was from the first day I met him, all he wanted to talk about was military.
He's just a military guy.
I think it's a natural.
This was my idea.
And you know, Pete Hegseth gave up a lot because he was going big places in Fox, big, big places, a lot of money.
And he didn't even hesitate when I said, do you want to do this?
He said, absolutely.
I said, you know, if it doesn't work out, you'll never have the opportunity that you have right now in terms of The world of entertainment or business, whatever you want to call it, you'll never have that opportunity again.
In fact, it could be just the opposite, because it's nasty out there.
He said, I don't care.
I have to do it for my country.
He gave up a tremendous amount.
If this didn't work, it would be a tragedy.
But that's what he loves.
He loves the military.
I never talked to him about anything else.
He'd talk about the military.
He'd come to see me about a soldier that was unfairly treated, and could I help?
That's the only thing I virtually ever talked to him about.
And I always remembered it.
I've seen him many times, and I don't think I've ever had a subject on anything other than military with him.
That's where his love is.
And he didn't say, well, I'd like to think about it.
I'd like to talk to my family.
He said, not even a contest.
And, you know, he was going through the roof over there.
He was doing great.
They have the number one show that Saturday and Sunday with Will and Rachel.
That was great chemistry.
And if this didn't work out for him, it would be actually sort of tragic.
Yeah.
unidentified
Would you consider harming Eric Adams?
Yeah, I would.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Yeah.
I think that he was treated pretty unfairly.
Now, I haven't seen the gravity of it all, but it seems, you know, like being upgraded in an airplane many years ago.
I know probably everybody here has been upgraded.
They see you're all stars and they say, I want to upgrade that person from NBC. I'm going to upgrade him.
And that would mean you'll spend the rest of your life in prison.
I don't know.
Somehow I would.
I mean, I'd have to see it because I don't know the facts.
I think he was treated.
You know, it's very interesting.
When he essentially went against what was happening with the migrants coming in, and, you know, he made some pretty strong statements like, this is not sustainable.
I said, you know what, he'll be indicted soon.
And I said it, not as a prediction, a little bit lightheartedly, but I said it.
I said, he's going to be indicted.
And a few months later, he got indicted.
So, yeah, I would certainly look at it.
Yes.
unidentified
What will you do with 900 troops in Syria?
Are you planning on pulling them when you get into office, or will you make sense?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Well, you know, we have 5,000 troops along the border.
And I asked a couple of generals, so we have an army of 250,000 in Syria, and you had an army of 400,000.
They have many more people than that.
Turkey is a major force, by the way.
Erdogan is somebody I got along with great, but he has a major military force, and his has not been worn out with war.
It hasn't been worn out with all of the other things.
I mean, he's built a very strong, powerful army.
And so we have 5,000 soldiers in between a 5 million person army and a 250,000 person army.
And I asked the general, What do you think of that situation?
He said, they'll be wiped out immediately.
And I moved them out.
And I took a lot of heat.
And you know what happened?
Nothing.
Nothing.
I saved a lot of lives.
Now we have 900. They put some back.
But 900, if you're talking about two, now one of the sides has been essentially wiped out, but nobody knows who the other side is.
But I do.
You know who it is?
Turkey.
Okay?
Turkey's the one behind it.
He's a very smart guy.
They've wanted it for thousands of years.
And he got it.
And those people that went in are controlled by Turkey.
And that's okay.
It's another way to fight.
But no, I don't think that I want to have our soldiers killed.
But I don't think that will happen now anyway, because the one side's been decimated.
Well, nobody knows what the final outcome is going to be in the region.
You know, nobody knows who really the final.
I believe it's Turkey.
And I think Turkey is very smart.
He's a very smart guy and he's very tough.
But Turkey did an unfriendly takeover.
Without a lot of lives being lost.
I can say that Assad was a butcher here, what he did to children.
You remember, I attacked him with the 58 missiles.
Unbelievable.
Missiles coming from ships 700 miles away, and every one of them hit their target.
But I did that.
That was the red line in the sand.
Obama drew it, and then he refused to honor what he did.
He said, if anybody goes across the red line, and Assad killed many more children after that, and Obama did nothing, but I did.
I hit him with a lot of missiles.
In fact, President Xi was sitting here the night He was in that dining room having chocolate cake.
Remember?
The famous chocolate cake.
And that's when I explained what we were doing as the missiles were shot.
And it was amazing as to precision because every one of those missiles hit its target from a long distance away.
Had President Obama Drawing the line where it meant something, you wouldn't have even had Russia there.
But in the end, I never understood why Russia went there.
They were not getting very much out of it.
But now their time has taken up with Ukraine, and we'd like to get them to stop on Ukraine, and Ukraine stop also.
As you know, when I went to the cathedral, which was fantastic, the job that they've done in France, and the job that Macron, you know, Emmanuel did a phenomenal job on the rebuilding of that cathedral.
It's magnificent.
And they did a great thing.
And they had great respect for our country.
They treated me, meaning I'm the country.
I'm the representative of our country.
And we were treated with great respect.
And one of the people that came to pay his respects is, as you know, Ukraine, Zelenskyy.
And he would like to have peace.
He wants peace.
Everyone's being killed.
It's the worst carnage that this world has seen since World War II. I've had pictures of fields where bodies are lying on top of bodies.
Looks like the old pictures of the Civil War, where just bodies are all over.
If you saw those pictures, you'd feel more strongly about it.
It's got to stop.
And we're trying to get it to stop.
Well, we're going to see.
We'll be talking to President Putin, and we'll be talking to the representatives, Zelensky, and representatives from Ukraine.
We've got to stop it.
It's carnage.
unidentified
First of all, good to see you.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
Thank you.
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
unidentified
Can you comment on the drones that are flying around New Jersey and the ports?
It seems like the American people have a big disconnect.
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
The government knows what is happening.
Look, our military knows where they took off from.
If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage.
They know where it came from and where it went.
And for some reason, they don't want to comment.
And I think they'd be better off saying what it is our military knows and our president knows.
And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.
I can't imagine it's the enemy, because if it was the enemy, they'd blast it out.
Even if they were late, they'd blast it.
Something strange is going on.
For some reason, they don't want to tell the people.
And they should, because the people are really...
I mean, they happen to be over Bedminster.
Want to know the truth?
They're very close to Bedminster.
I think maybe I won't spend the weekend in Bedminster.
I've decided to cancel my trip.
I don't want to comment on that.
unidentified
Two quick questions.
First, on vaccines, do you want RFK Jr. to revoke any vaccines?
donald j trump ▲ ● ▼
No, I want him to come back with a report as to what he thinks.
We're going to find out a lot.
We're doing two things.
We're going to have tremendous cost savings that will come out of this.
That's a minimum.
And we're also going to have, and I think, very serious discussions about certain things, whether it's pesticides.
You know, Europe doesn't use pesticides.
And yet they have a better mortality rate than we do.
They don't use pesticides.
In fact, they use it as an excuse not to take our farm product.
We spend billions and billions of dollars on pesticides.
And something bad's happening.
Again, you take a look at autism today versus 20, 25 years ago.
It's like not even believable.
So we're going to have reports.
No, nothing's going to happen very quickly.
I think you're going to find Bobby is a very rational guy.
I found him to be very rational.
You're not going to lose the polio vaccine.
That's not going to happen.
I saw what happened with the polio.
I have friends that were very much affected by that.
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