June 25, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
57:56
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Monday and uh we call it the Twelve Day War. | ||
| Spoke to a few people. | ||
| I guess that just sounded like the right the right name. | ||
| It was a 12-day war. | ||
| And we think it's over. | ||
| I don't think they're going to be going back at each other. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| Not only have we dealt decisively with the critical threat of Iran's nuclear program, which was what I wanted, I said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| I've said that for 15 years, long before I decided to do the political thing. | ||
| But we've also reasserted the credibility of American deterrence, which is like no other. | ||
| The people at NATO said there's never been anything. | ||
| You know, I rebuilt the entire military during my first term. | ||
| And we have a great military. | ||
| We have great generals. | ||
| I got to know the good ones and the bad ones. | ||
| We kept the good ones. | ||
| Over the past two days, I was honored to participate in the NATO leaders' meeting and also had extremely good individual discussions with the King and the Queen, Secretary General Ruta and the Prime Minister. | ||
| Great discussions. | ||
| Very knowledgeable people. | ||
| Major focus of our conversations at the summit was the need for other NATO members to take up the burden of the defense of Europe, and that included the financial burden. | ||
| As you know, it was 2%, and we got it up to 5%. | ||
| And they said, a couple of them came up to me. | ||
| One in particular said, sir, we've been trying to get it up to 3% for 20 years, and we haven't been able, and you got it up to 5%. | ||
| So they're going to be, most of them, I guess almost all of them, are going to be contributing now, 5%, a number that people are surprised at. | ||
| But you need it today. | ||
| The United States accounts for two-thirds of all NATO defense spending. | ||
| And since I began pushing for additional commitments in 2017, believe it or not, our allies have increased spending by $700 billion. | ||
| I said to people, you don't have any money, and a lot of them weren't paying. | ||
| And so I started the process, and I picked it up as soon as I got back, which is six months ago. | ||
| And following my election last November, almost all have accelerated plans to reach the 2%, 3%, 4%, and then ultimately, very quickly, 5%. | ||
| And all of this is going to be done very quickly, almost immediately. | ||
| You probably know this as well as I do. | ||
| I'm sure they've been talking about it. | ||
| It's really been a big focus. | ||
| In a very historic milestone this week, the NATO allies committed to dramatically increase their defense spending to that 5% of GDP, something that no one really thought possible. | ||
| And they said, you did it, sir, you did it. | ||
| Well, I don't know if I did it, but I think I did. | ||
| This will be known as the Hague Defense Commitment, which is pretty good, pretty appropriate. | ||
| When the Allies reach this number, it will add more than $1 trillion a year. | ||
| Think of that, $1 trillion per year to our common defense, and this is a monument really to victory, but it's a monumental win for the United States because we were carrying much more than our fair share. | ||
| It was quite unfair, actually. | ||
| But this is a big win for Europe and for actually Western civilization. | ||
| For years, past administrations failed to get most allies to contribute even the 2%. | ||
| I remember when I came here, we had four countries that were up to 2%. | ||
| And I remember Poland was there. | ||
| A couple of them were there. | ||
| But most of them were. | ||
| We had 28 at the time. | ||
| As you know, it's increased a little bit. | ||
| And they've agreed now to more than double their budgets in all cases. | ||
| And Europe stepping up to take more responsibility for its security will help prevent future disasters like the horrible situation with Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| And hopefully we're going to get that solved. | ||
| Last week they lost 7,000 soldiers, mostly soldiers, but they're also getting hit in Kiev. | ||
| They're getting hit in some of the towns also. | ||
| And that means life. | ||
| Life is disappearing also in the cities and towns. | ||
| Should have never happened, would have never happened if I was president. | ||
| I said it a thousand times. | ||
| And it never did happen. | ||
| It's never even thought about. | ||
| But it's vital that this additional money be spent on very serious military hardware, not bureaucracy. | ||
| And hopefully that hardware is going to be made in America because we have the best hardware in the world. | ||
| You saw that where 14 missiles were shot at us the other day. | ||
| And they were very nice. | ||
| They gave us warning. | ||
| They said, we're going to shoot them. | ||
| Is 1 o'clock okay? | ||
| They said, it's fine. | ||
| And everybody was emptied off the base, so they couldn't get hurt except for the gunners. | ||
| They call them the gunners. | ||
| And out of 14 high-end missiles that were shot at the base in Qatar, all 14, as you know, were shot down by our equipment. | ||
| Amazing stuff. | ||
| Amazing that they can do. | ||
| It's like shooting a bullet with a bullet. | ||
| It's the same thing if you think about it. | ||
| 14 out of 14, and they weren't even that surprised. | ||
| I said, do you do that well often? | ||
| They say, we pretty much do, sir. | ||
| The Ukraine crisis has also highlighted the urgency of rebuilding our defense industrial base, both in the United States and among the allied nations. | ||
| We cannot afford to be dependent on foreign adversaries for critical minerals. | ||
| And as you know, we made a deal with Ukraine to take a vast amount of the land they have for minerals. | ||
| We need it. | ||
| And once again, I want to thank all of the people in the Netherlands, incredible people. | ||
| It's a great place. | ||
| And all of the NATO allies for the tremendous summit that we just had. | ||
| A letter just came in, and a statement came in from the Atomic Energy Commission of Israel. | ||
| And I just wanted to, this is an official letter, and they're very serious people, as you know. | ||
| The devastating U.S. strike on Fordo destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility totally inoperable. | ||
| It was devastated. | ||
| We assessed that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons for many years to come. | ||
| This achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material, which it won't. | ||
| It's so sad that that whole thing had to go. | ||
| But I just want to thank our pilots. | ||
| You know, they were maligned and treated very bad, demeaned by fake news, CNN, which is back there, believe it or not, wasting time, wasting it, nobody's watching them, so they just wasted a lot of time, wasting my time. | ||
| And the New York Times, they put out a story that, well, maybe they were hit, but it wasn't bad. | ||
| Well, it was so bad that they ended the war. | ||
| It ended the war. | ||
| Somebody said in a certain way, you know, that it was so devastating, actually. | ||
| If you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war too. | ||
| This ended a war in a different way, but it was so devastating. | ||
| Also, they have out of Dubai, just came, that Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, this is Iran's foreign ministry, says it's near its nuclear installations were very badly damaged by the American strike. | ||
| So what bothered me about these reports were the fake reports put out by the New York Times, failing, I call it the failing New York Times because it's doing terribly. | ||
| Without me, it would be doing no business at all. | ||
| And by fake news, CNN, and MSDNC, all of these terrible people, you know, they have no credibility. | ||
| You know, when I started, they were at 94% credibility. | ||
| The media, now it's at 16%. | ||
| And I'm very proud of it because I've exposed it for what it is. | ||
| But when I saw them starting to question the caliber of the attack, was it bad? | ||
| Well, it was really bad. | ||
| It was devastating. | ||
| They were obliterated. | ||
| In fact, you can't get into the tunnels. | ||
| They just put that over. | ||
| That just came out. | ||
| There's no way you can even get down. | ||
| The whole thing is collapsed in a disaster. | ||
| And I think all of the nuclear stuff is down there because it's very hard to remove. | ||
| And we did it very quickly when they heard we were coming. | ||
| It was, you know, you can't move it. | ||
| It's very hard, very dangerous, actually, to move to. | ||
| And they also knew we were coming, so I don't think too many people want to be down there knowing we're coming with the bunker busters, as we call them. | ||
| We're the only ones that have them. | ||
| We have the best equipment, best nuclear equipment, and we have the best equipment in the world. | ||
| And by the way, we can't forget our submarine, which was out there, submarines, actually, but submarine was out there. | ||
| We shot 30 rockets into an area. | ||
| Every single one of them, I think it was almost 400 miles away, I think, Pete, right? | ||
| 400 and long. | ||
| It was in the ocean, long ways away. | ||
| And we shot a total of 30. Every single one of them hit within nine inches from where it was supposed to be. | ||
| It took out a lot. | ||
| Because we didn't do just four of them. | ||
| We did two others in addition, which hadn't been completely destroyed. | ||
| So we hit them with a submarine from hundreds of miles away. | ||
| Amazing, just amazing equipment. | ||
| Greatest submarines in the world. | ||
| Nobody's even close. | ||
| They're 20 years behind us when it comes to submarine technology. | ||
| So that's one. | ||
| And the other was from the Atomic Energy Commission. | ||
| And they have about three or four of them now coming in from Atomic Energy Commissions from various places. | ||
| But the one that we have that just came out, we released it a little while ago, was from the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. | ||
| But numerous of them are getting to see the site. | ||
| And the site has been demolished. | ||
| And again, we had these brave patriots, these incredible flyers, these people that can fly a plane better than anybody can fly a plane, going into very hostile territory, flying into the territory that has got more missiles and things pointed at it, but it was very stealth. | ||
| They didn't get to see it. | ||
| It was dark. | ||
| That's the amazing thing about the shots. | ||
| They hit the shots perfectly, and yet it was dead dark. | ||
| There was no moon. | ||
| There was no light. | ||
| It was virtually moonless. | ||
| It was very dark, and the shots were hit perfectly. | ||
| But when they get demeaned, and they were very upset about it because they knew how strong it would be back in Missouri, the pilots flew about 36 hours, two ways, far distance, and in those incredible B-2s. | ||
| And we then had the F-22s, or we had the F-35s, or we had other planes, and we had, I think, a total of 52 tankers. | ||
| That means the big tankers, because the refueling was a lot for all of the different planes that we sent. | ||
| Incredible operation. | ||
| And I have to say, General Raising was incredible. | ||
| That's why he beat ISIS. | ||
| We beat ISIS in a matter of weeks. | ||
| I was told it would take four to five years. | ||
| We did it in a few weeks. | ||
| And he was great. | ||
| That's why he's the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff right now, because I had a very good experience with him. | ||
| He knocked out ISIS in a period of literally a few weeks. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| And it was supposed to take a few years, five years to be exact. | ||
| So we had a great victory there, and we then came here, and I think we had a great victory here. | ||
| But this is an ongoing project. | ||
| This is the safety of Europe, the safety of the world. | ||
| And they've raised it from 2% to 5%, something which nobody, and you're talking about over a trillion dollars a year. | ||
| So we're talking about a lot of money from coming in from countries that were not paying nearly enough to be effective. | ||
| So I have, as you know, Marco Rubio with me and Pete Hagseth, Secretary of State and Secretary of War. | ||
| Should we say Secretary? | ||
| You know, it used to be called Secretary of War. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe for a couple of weeks we'll call it that because we feel like warriors. | |
| It used to be called Secretary of War. | ||
| In fact, if you look at the old building next to the White House, you can see where it used to be Secretary of War. | ||
| Then we became politically correct and they called it Secretary of Defense. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe we'll have to start thinking About changing it, but we feel that way. | ||
| Do we have any questions, please? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| That's a lot of questions. | ||
| Who's a nice person? | ||
| Oh, you're not a nice person, but I'll let you ask one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| What's he going to ask? | ||
| He is not nice at all. | ||
| I know him well. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for taking the time before flying home. | |
| You just said you believe the conflict between Israel and Iran is over. | ||
| What makes you so confident it is? | ||
| This is the war room, and we're going to play the President's press conference to its conclusion. | ||
| They were both tired, exhausted. | ||
| They fought very, very hard and very viciously, very violently, and they were both satisfied to go home and get out. | ||
| And can it start again? | ||
| I guess someday it can. | ||
| It could maybe start soon. | ||
| I think a big telltale sign was when, as you know, Iran somewhat, by not much, violated the ceasefire. | ||
| And Israel had the planes going out that morning, and there were a lot of them, 52 of them. | ||
| And I said, you got to get them back. | ||
| And they brought them back. | ||
| They didn't do anything. | ||
| They brought them back. | ||
| It was very good. | ||
| I thought it was amazing, actually. | ||
| They have fought a hell of a war. | ||
| They fought very hard. | ||
| I think the war ended, actually, when we hit the various nuclear sites with the planes. | ||
| And I just hope you people can give these pilots. | ||
| These are the best pilots in the world. | ||
| They're the best shots in the world. | ||
| They call them shots. | ||
| That's what they are. | ||
| And wait a minute. | ||
| And I just hope you can give them the respect they deserve because they came home to fake news and like, oh, gee, there was hardly any damage. | ||
| The things are decimated. | ||
| But I think, no, I think they're very much finished. | ||
| I think Israel is going to get back to doing what they do. | ||
| And I think that Iran's going to get back. | ||
| You know, Iran has a huge advantage. | ||
| They have great oil, and they can do things. | ||
| I don't see them getting back involved in the nuclear business anymore. | ||
| I think they've had it. | ||
| They've been at it for 20 years. | ||
| And I don't see that happening either. | ||
| Now, if it does, we're always there. | ||
| It won't be me. | ||
| It'll be somebody else. | ||
| But we're there. | ||
| We'll have to do something about it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Please, go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Oh, fake news, CNN? | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, here we go. | ||
| Wait till you hear this question. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You should really say how great our soldiers and our warriors are. | ||
| I think everyone appreciates our soldiers and our warriors. | ||
| I do have two questions for you, Mr. President. | ||
| You just cited Israeli intelligence on these attacks. | ||
| Earlier, you said U.S. intelligence was inconclusive. | ||
| Are you relying on Israeli intelligence for your assessment of the impact of the strikes? | ||
| No, this is also, Iran made the statement. | ||
| And it's also, if you read the document that was given that Pete can talk about if you'd like, the document said it could be very severe damage, but they didn't take that. | ||
| They said it could be limited or it could be very severe. | ||
| They really didn't know other than to say it could be limited or it could be very, very severe. | ||
| And you didn't choose to put that because it was very early after. | ||
| Since then, we've collected additional intelligence. | ||
| We've also spoken to people who have seen the site, and the site is obliterated. | ||
| And we think everything nuclear is down there. | ||
| They didn't take it out. | ||
| Okay, question? | ||
| Please, go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Blue dress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much, Mr. President. | |
| Yesterday, you said China can now continue to purchase oil from Iran. | ||
| Are you giving up on your maximum pressure campaign? | ||
| Because there are sanctions right now. | ||
| With who? | ||
|
unidentified
|
On Iran? | |
| No, look, they just had a war. | ||
| The war was fought. | ||
| They fought it bravely. | ||
| I'm not giving up. | ||
| They're in the oil business. | ||
| I mean, I could stop it if I wanted. | ||
| I could sell China the oil myself. | ||
| I don't want to do that. | ||
| They're going to need money to put that country back into shape. | ||
| We want to see that happen. | ||
| No, if they're going to sell oil, they're going to sell oil. | ||
| We're not taking over the oil. | ||
| We could have, you know. | ||
| I used to say with Iraq, keep the oil. | ||
| I could say it here, too. | ||
| We could have kept the oil. | ||
| No, China is going to want to buy oil. | ||
| They can buy it from us. | ||
| They can buy it from other people. | ||
| But you're going to have to put that country back into shape. | ||
| It desperately needs money. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| I'm picking the beauties today. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, Secretary General Ruta has described President Putin as an adversary, a threat, an enemy. | |
| Do you view him the same way? | ||
| And in addition to that, you mentioned General Kaine, your chief of staff, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. | ||
| General Kane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| He has said that Mr. Putin has territorial ambitions beyond Ukraine. | ||
| Do you view that in the same way? | ||
| It's possible. | ||
| I mean, it's possible. | ||
| I know one thing, he'd like to settle. | ||
| He'd like to get out of this thing. | ||
| It's a mess for him. | ||
| He called the other day. | ||
| He said, can I help you with Iran? | ||
| I said, no, you can help me with Russia. | ||
| Because, you know, in the last few weeks, we took care of India and Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia. | ||
| I think on Friday we have coming in the Congo is coming in and Rwanda is coming in. | ||
| That was a vicious war that went on, a machete war, heads chopped off all over Africa. | ||
| They're coming in. | ||
| We did two others. | ||
| In addition to that, nobody's ever done anything like this. | ||
| No, I consider him a person that's, I think, been misguided. | ||
| I'm very surprised, actually. | ||
| I thought we would have had that settled easy. | ||
| I've settled four of them in the meantime. | ||
| But he did call up, and he said, you know, he's close to Iran. | ||
| He'd like to help us get a settlement. | ||
| I said, no, no. | ||
| You help me get a settlement with you, with Russia. | ||
| And I think we're going to be doing that, too. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
| Go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| You've made clear your position on what impact the strikes had. | ||
| I wanted to ask you what is next with Iran. | ||
| For instance, is there any indication from U.S. intelligence that Iran was able to move any material? | ||
| No, just the opposite. | ||
| We think we hit them so hard and So fast, they didn't get to move. | ||
| And if you knew about that material, it's very hard and very dangerous to move. | ||
| It's called, in many people, they call it dust, but it's very, very heavy. | ||
| It's very, very hard to move. | ||
| And they were way down, you know, they're 30 stories down. | ||
| They're literally 30, 35 stories down underground. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You think we got it all? | |
| Oh, yeah, we think we got it. | ||
| We think it's covered with granite, concrete, and steel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can I ask you, are you interested in restarting negotiations with Iran? | |
| And if so, have they received that? | ||
| So our people, Marco could answer, but our people are not, I'm not. | ||
| The way I look at it, they fought, the war is done, and I could get a statement that they're not going to go nuclear. | ||
| We're probably going to ask for that, but they're not going to be doing it. | ||
| But they're not going to be doing it anyway. | ||
| They've had it. | ||
| They've had it. | ||
| Now, maybe someday in the future we'll want that. | ||
| But I've asked Marco, do you want to draw, I just asked him the question as we were walking on the stage, do you want to draw up a little agreement for them to sign? | ||
| Because I think we can get them to sign it. | ||
| I don't think it's necessary. | ||
| Marco, do you want to talk about that, please? | ||
| Well, Mr. President, I think President Trump has shown a willingness to meet and talk to anybody in the world who's interested in peace. | ||
| I don't know of any president that's been as willing as he has to meet with anyone and talk about peace. | ||
| We'd love to have peaceful relations with any country in the world. | ||
| And so obviously that will depend on Iran's willingness not just to engage in peace, but to negotiate directly with the United States, not through some third country or fourth country process. | ||
| But I know of no president probably in our modern history that's sought peace more than President Trump has. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sounds like the door is open, but you're in no rush. | |
| Is that right? | ||
| Sounds like the door is open. | ||
| I'll tell you what. | ||
| Look, we're going to talk to them next week with Iran. | ||
| We may sign an agreement. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| To me, I don't think it's that necessary. | ||
| I mean, they had a war, they fought, now they're going back to their world. | ||
| I don't care if I have an agreement or not. | ||
| The only thing we'd be asking for is what we were asking for before about we want no nuclear, but we destroyed the nuclear. | ||
| In other words, it's destroyed. | ||
| I said, Iran will not have nuclear. | ||
| Well, we blew it up. | ||
| It's blown up to kingdom come. | ||
| And so I don't feel very strongly about it. | ||
| If we got a document, it wouldn't be bad. | ||
| We're going to meet with them, actually. | ||
| We're going to meet with them. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead, please. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, Netherlands, TV, thank you for visiting our country. | |
| As you understood. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Of course, I'd like to know how you slept last night at the House of the Kids. | ||
| Probably more serious question. | ||
| I think you just had a meeting with President Zelensky. | ||
| Did you discuss any ceasefire in this Russo-Ukrainian meeting? | ||
| No, no, I just wanted to know how he's doing. | ||
| He was very nice, actually. | ||
| We had a little rough times. | ||
| Couldn't have been nicer. | ||
| I think he'd like to see an end to this, I do. | ||
| I think what I took from the meeting couldn't have been nicer, actually, but I took from the meeting that he'd like to see it end. | ||
| I think it's a great time to end it. | ||
| I'm going to speak to Vladimir Putin, see if we can get it ended. | ||
| But look, these are brave people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're fighting these wars all over the place. | |
| You know, last week they had, I guess, close, I told you, close to 7,000 young soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian soldiers were killed, 7,000 in one week. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| So I'll be speaking to Putin. | ||
| Now, I had a good meeting with Zelensky, and I had a lot of good meetings. | ||
| We had a lot of good meetings with a lot of people, a lot of great leaders. | ||
| But he's fighting a brave battle. | ||
| It's a tough battle. | ||
| Go ahead, white dress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Ida Halikanen from Finland, Ilde Senemat. | ||
| You have played golf with President Alexander Stub. | ||
| How do you see Finland as a NATO ally and partner, and how would you describe your relationship with our president? | ||
| Well, he's a very good golfer. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| In fact, he was on his college golf team. | ||
| He went to a good college in the South, as you know, a very good college, and he was a good golfer. | ||
| We had a good time. | ||
| I think my relationship's great. | ||
| I want to buy icebreakers. | ||
| You know, you're very good at icebreakers. | ||
| And I actually made him an offer. | ||
| I didn't go to Congress. | ||
| They'll try and impeach me for this. | ||
| But there's an old, it's not old, it's fairly new, but it's used, icebreaker. | ||
| And I offered him about one-third of what he asked for. | ||
| But we're negotiating. | ||
| We need icebreakers in the U.S. And if we can get some inexpensively, I'd like to do that. | ||
| Actually, they'll fix it up, make it good. | ||
| Also, we may buy some icebreakers. | ||
| You know, you're the king of icebreakers, that particular country. | ||
| They make them good. | ||
| They make them really good, and they know what they're doing. | ||
| And so we're negotiating with them for about 15 different icebreakers. | ||
| But one of them is available now. | ||
| It's old, and it's old. | ||
| It's like five, six years old. | ||
| And we're trying to buy it. | ||
| I'm trying to make a good deal. | ||
| It's all I do my whole life. | ||
| My whole life, that's all I do is make deals. | ||
| Yeah, please. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Sir, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, a question for NewsHour, Dutch TV. | |
| First of all, on Article 5, on your way here, you spoke about the commitment of the U.S. to Article 5, saying I'll give you my definition once we're here. | ||
| What is your definition and may the U.S. commitment to Article 5 change in case some of the NATO members do not reach the threshold that was discussed today? | ||
| My second question is following up on a colleague on Iran. | ||
| What Intel reports do say that everything over there was obliterated? | ||
| Yeah, well, there are numerous of those reports, and they're coming out fast and furious. | ||
| But the most respected ones we've already seen. | ||
| And I will say that on a very confidential basis, they're looking at the reports like numerous reports, including people going to the site and checking the site. | ||
| And they're going to be having, I guess you're going to be having over the next couple of days a full, you're going to encapsulate it. | ||
| But no, the site was obliterated just like I said it was and just like the pilots should be given credit for. | ||
| As far as Article 5, look, when I came here, I came here because it was something I'm supposed to be doing, but I left here a little bit different, differently. | ||
| I said, I watched the heads of these countries get up, and the love and the passion that they showed for their country was unbelievable. | ||
| I've never seen quite anything like it. | ||
| They want to protect their country, and they need the United States, and without the United States, it's not going to be the same. | ||
| And you can ask Mark, or you can ask any of the people that were there. | ||
| It was really moving to see it. | ||
| They love their country. | ||
| They were so respectful of me because I'm the head of the United States. | ||
| And I made, you know, the king of Saudi Arabia, when I was in the Middle East, so I was in Qatar for a different reason, not a reason to get shot at. | ||
| We were in there for economic development reasons, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. | ||
| All three leaders of those countries, and we took back $5.1 trillion into the United States. | ||
| All three leaders said, you know, you're presiding over the hottest country in the world. | ||
| The United States right now is the hottest country. | ||
| Everybody wants to be there. | ||
| Everybody wants a piece of it. | ||
| He said, a year ago, your country was dead. | ||
| You had a deadhead running it. | ||
| You had a country that was dead, and it was dead. | ||
| You had people pouring through the borders. | ||
| It had inflation. | ||
| You had everything. | ||
| He said, you've made it in five months at that time. | ||
| You've made it the hottest country. | ||
| This is the hottest country in the world. | ||
| The United States right now is the hottest country in the world. | ||
| And when I was around that table, it was a nice group of people, many of whom I knew from previous. | ||
| When I saw the passion they had for the country, almost everyone, and you probably have the tapes, it was very public, but almost every one of them said, thank God for the United States. | ||
| Without the United States, they couldn't really have NATO. | ||
| It wouldn't work. | ||
| It wouldn't work. | ||
| It will in the future because now they're paying much more money, but it wouldn't work. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| And I left here differently. | ||
| I left here saying that these people really love their countries. | ||
| It's not a ripoff. | ||
| And we're here to help them protect their country. | ||
| Okay, we'll do one or two more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. President. | |
| A question on Spain. | ||
| Are you satisfied with today's? | ||
| Oh, I think Spain's terrible what they've done. | ||
| No, I do. | ||
| They're the only country that won't pay the full up. | ||
| They want to stay at 2%. | ||
| I think it's terrible. | ||
| And you know, they're doing very well. | ||
| The economy is very well. | ||
| And that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening. | ||
| You know, Spain is the only country that Good, congratulations. | ||
| You're the only country that is not paying. | ||
| I don't know what the problem is. | ||
| I think it's too bad. | ||
| So we'll make it up. | ||
| You know what we're going to do? | ||
| We're negotiating with Spain on a trade deal. | ||
| We're going to make them pay twice as much. | ||
| And I'm actually serious about that. | ||
| We're going to make Spain. | ||
| I like Spain. | ||
| I have so many people from Spain that it's in a great place and they're great people. | ||
| But Spain is the only country out of all of the countries that refuses to pay. | ||
| And, you know, so they want a little bit of a free ride. | ||
| But they'll have to pay it back to us on trade because I'm not going to let that happen. | ||
| It's unfair. | ||
| It's unfair to net. | ||
| All right, sir, please. | ||
| Go ahead, right in the back. | ||
| Yeah, you, tall one. | ||
| The tall man. | ||
| Mr. President, Johannes Petra from Austrian National Television, you once said that you would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours. | ||
| You later said you said that sarcastically. | ||
| Of course it was sarcastic. | ||
| But you've now been in office for five months and five days. | ||
| Why have you not been able to end the Ukraine war? | ||
| Because it's more difficult than people would have any idea. | ||
| Vladimir Putin has been more difficult. | ||
| Frankly, I had some problems with Zelensky. | ||
| You may have read about him. | ||
| And it's been more difficult than other wars. | ||
| I mean, look, we just ended a war in 12 days that was simmering for 30 years, frankly. | ||
| We ended Rwanda and the Congo. | ||
| It's coming to sign the documents. | ||
| We've already signed basic documents, but they're coming, I think, to the White House on Friday. | ||
| We ended Serbia was going to go at it. | ||
| But maybe the most important of all, India and Pakistan. | ||
| And that wasn't whether or not they may someday have nukes like we're talking about in the Middle East, like we're talking about with Israel and Iran. | ||
| This is the half-nuclear weapons. | ||
| I ended that with a series of phone calls on trade. | ||
| I said, look, if you're going to go fighting each other, it was getting very bad. | ||
| You know how bad that last attack was. | ||
| It was really bad. | ||
| If you're going to go fighting each other, we're not doing any trade deal. | ||
| No, no, no, you have to do a trade deal. | ||
| I said, we're not doing any trade deal. | ||
| And in fact, I had the general, who was very impressive. | ||
| The general from Pakistan was in my office last week. | ||
| You know, Prime Minister Modi is a great friend of mine. | ||
| He's a great gentleman. | ||
| He's a great man. | ||
| And I got them to reason. | ||
| I said, we're not doing a trade deal. | ||
| If you're going to fight, and if you're going to fight each other, we're not doing a trade deal. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| They said, no, I want to do the trade deal. | ||
| We stopped the nuclear war. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Go ahead, Jeff. | ||
| Here's another beauty, Jeff. | ||
| He's a beauty, all right. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, a follow-up on Ukraine. | |
| Will the United States contribute any more money to Ukraine's defense this year, to the $5 billion that Allies are giving? | ||
| And one question, you had another meeting with the Dutch opposition leader, Mr. Willers. | ||
| Can you tell us about that meeting? | ||
| And are you upset about his anti-Muslim stance? | ||
| I'm not upset about it. | ||
| It's just his view. | ||
| He's unhappy with the way things are going in this country, in various countries. | ||
| He was an opposition leader, and I was asked to meet with the opposition leader by the people that are running. | ||
| I think they have some deal where if you have a meeting, you're supposed to meet with an opposition leader. | ||
| I said, that's strange. | ||
| We don't do that. | ||
| But I met with the, I didn't know him. | ||
| He seemed like a very nice guy, but he's in opposition to the current people, and that was set up by the current people. | ||
| So I assume when I met with the prime minister, you're supposed to meet with the opposition. | ||
| We'll have to try that sometime in our country. | ||
| Let's not do it. | ||
| But he was, he was, I thought he was very good. | ||
| As far as money going, we'll see what happens. | ||
| There's a lot of spirit. | ||
| Look, Vladimir Putin really has to end that war. | ||
| People are dying at levels that people haven't seen before for a long time. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| White shirt. | ||
| Oh, she's all excited. | ||
| So, BBC News, Ukrainian. | ||
| Where are you from? | ||
| I'm from Ukraine. | ||
| So my question to you is whether or not the U.S. is ready to sell anti-air missile systems patriot to Ukraine. | ||
| We know that Russia has been pounding Ukraine really heavily right now. | ||
| Are you living yourself now in Ukraine? | ||
| My husband is there. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I can see you're very, you know, it's amazing. | ||
| And me with the kids, I'm in Warsaw, actually, because he wanted me to. | ||
| Is your husband a soldier now? | ||
| He's. | ||
| He's there now? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| That's rough stuff, right? | ||
| That's tough. | ||
| And you're living here? | ||
| In Warsaw. | ||
| And you're a reporter? | ||
| I am. | ||
| Good. | ||
| So let me just tell you, they do want to have the anti-missile missiles, okay, as they call them, the Patriots. | ||
| And we're going to see if we can make some available, you know? | ||
| They're very hard to get. | ||
| We need them too. | ||
| We were supplying them to Israel, and they're very effective, 100% effective. | ||
| Hard to believe how effective. | ||
| And they do want that more than any other thing, as you probably know. | ||
| That's a very good question. | ||
| And I wish you a lot of luck. | ||
| I mean, I can see it's very upsetting to you. | ||
| Say hello to your husband, okay? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were criticizing Bloomberg News. | |
| Oh, Bloomberg. | ||
| Wonderful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You were criticizing the Federal Reserve Chair before coming to this summit. | |
| I think he's terrible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was wondering if you've begun interviewing different candidates for the Fed pick. | |
| Yeah, I know within three or four people who are all going to pick. | ||
| I mean, he goes out pretty soon, fortunately, because I think he's terrible. | ||
| We have no inflation. | ||
| We have a tremendous economy. | ||
| Hundreds of billions of dollars of tariff money is pouring in. | ||
| Factories are being built because they don't want to pay the tariffs, so they're building them all over the country. | ||
| I think we're close to $15 trillion. | ||
| I told you $5.1 trillion from the Middle East alone, but of investment money coming in. | ||
| There's never been anything like that in the history of our country. | ||
| But we have no inflation. | ||
| And we have borrowing, because Biden, stupidly, they did short-term debt. | ||
| So we have borrowing coming up. | ||
| And, you know, we'll go 10 years, maybe longer, maybe shorter, but we'll go A long period of time when we do the debt, and because of him, because of this guy, we will have to pay for years. | ||
| We'll be paying for him. | ||
| And I said to him, Listen, there's no inflation. | ||
| He says, But maybe there'll be some. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| I said, If there is some, what you do is raise the rate. | ||
| I'm okay with that. | ||
| You raise the rate in two years from now or in a year from now. | ||
| But because the rate's high, we have to pay more for debt. | ||
| It's pretty equal. | ||
| In other words, if it's 4%, it's 4%. | ||
| If you drop it a point, you'll pay 3%. | ||
| So it's fairly equal, not necessarily, but fairly equal. | ||
| So we're going to end up paying maybe two points or three points more. | ||
| Three points would be about $900 billion a year because of this very average mentally person. | ||
| He's an average mentally person. | ||
| I'd say low in terms of what he does, low, low IQ for what he does, okay? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So instead of paying $900 billion, we don't want to pay $900 just because he doesn't want to lower the rate. | ||
| I said, if there's inflation in two years or three years or one year from now, you raise the rate, you take care of the inflation, among other things. | ||
| But he's probably a very political guy, I guess. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think he's a very stupid person, actually. | ||
| All right, one more. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's go. | |
| How about you? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| She looks so happy and everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| So I picked up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm from Spain too. | |
| I'm Anna Book from La Vanguardia. | ||
| I wanted to know if you... | ||
| Spain, too. | ||
| I wanted to know if you want to. | ||
| That's the Spain corner right there. | ||
| Shouldn't have said that. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| I do like Spain, by the way. | ||
| I think it's unfair that they're not paying, but go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you going to negotiate directly with Spain about? | |
| I'm going to negotiate directly with Spain. | ||
| I'm going to do it myself. | ||
| They're going to pay. | ||
| They'll pay more money this way. | ||
| You should tell them to go back and pay. | ||
| You're a reporter? | ||
| Tell them to go back. | ||
| They ought to join all of those countries that are paying 5%. | ||
| Spain's going to be just about the only one that's not. | ||
| They were the most hostile toward doing it. | ||
| It just doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, Kelly, go ahead. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| There's another one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, sir. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| We got them all today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So, Mr. President, you talked about expecting some on-the-ground assessments at Fordo and other sites. | ||
| Is that Israel and U.S.? | ||
| It's been obliterated, Kelly. | ||
| It's been obliterated. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What is your message then, sir, to the intelligence community when they present reports? | |
| You're not disputing the DIA report. | ||
| We're talking about something that took place three days ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I understand. | |
| That's our data. | ||
| The report was done three days ago. | ||
| Wait a minute. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| They didn't see it. | ||
| All they can do is take a guess. | ||
| Now, if you take a look at the pictures, if you take a look how it's all blackened, you know the fire in brimstone is all underground because it's granite and it's all underground. | ||
| You don't show it. | ||
| But even there, with all of that being said, the whole area for 75 yards around the hole where it hit is black with fire. | ||
| The group that's run by this gentleman, in fact, you may want to talk about it for a second because we're going to issue a report. | ||
| And I think it's not even a very exciting report at this point. | ||
| It's been obliterated, totally obliterated. | ||
| And they did a report, but it was like, if you look at the dates, it's just a few days after it's not. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Understood, sir. | |
| So they didn't see it. | ||
| They said it may be very severe. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Understood. | |
| Do you have a message for the intelligence community, though, in terms of unvarnished information getting to you? | ||
| I would say issue the report when you know what happened. | ||
| I wouldn't say that it could be severe or maybe not. | ||
| They use the word severe. | ||
| It could be severe or maybe it's not. | ||
| So people like you picked up and said, oh, it's not severe. | ||
| No. | ||
| The report was not a complete report. | ||
| Yeah, the message was probably wait till you know the answer before you do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And sir, would you not have a public component to your Zelensky meeting for a tactical reason with President Putin? | |
| Let him answer this question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Mr. Secretary. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| There's a reason the President calls out fake news for what it is. | ||
| These pilots, these refuelers, these fighters, these air defenders, the skill and the courage it took to go into enemy territory flying 36 hours on behalf of the American people and the world to take out a nuclear program is beyond what anyone in this audience can fathom. | ||
| And then the instinct, the instinct of CNN, the instinct of the New York Times is to try to find a way to spin it for their own political reasons to try to hurt President Trump or our country. | ||
| They don't care what the troops think. | ||
| They don't care what the world thinks. | ||
| They want to spin it to try to make him look bad based on a leak. | ||
| Of course, we've all seen plenty of leakers. | ||
| And what do leakers do? | ||
| They have agendas. | ||
| And what do they do? | ||
| Do they share the whole information or just the part that they want to introduce? | ||
| And when they introduce that preliminary report that's deemed to be a low assessment, you know what a low assessment means? | ||
| Low confidence in the data in that report. | ||
| And why is there low confidence? | ||
| Because all of the evidence of what was just bombed by 12 30,000 pound bombs is buried under a mountain, devastated and obliterated. | ||
| So if you want to make an assessment of what happened at Ford, you better get a big shovel and go really deep because Iran's nuclear program is obliterated. | ||
| And somebody somewhere is trying to leak something to say, oh, with low confidence, we think maybe it's moderate. | ||
| Those that dropped the bombs precisely in the right place know exactly what happened when that exploded. | ||
| And you know who else knows? | ||
| Iran. | ||
| That's why they came to the table right away because their nuclear capabilities have been set back beyond what they thought were possible because of the courage of a commander-in-chief who led our troops despite what the fake news wants to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But you're not disputing the report said what it said even though it was initial. | |
| The report said what it said and it was fine. | ||
| It was severe, they think, but they had no idea. | ||
| They shouldn't have issued a report until they did. | ||
| But we've gotten the information. | ||
| I think Pete said it better than you can say it. | ||
| And you know, You should be proud, you, especially you, should be proud of those pilots, and you shouldn't be trying to demean them. | ||
| Those pilots flew at great risk, a big chance that they'd never come back home and see their husbands or their wives. | ||
| Let me just tell you, you and NBC, fake news, which is one of the worst, and CNN, New York Times, they're all bad. | ||
| They're sick. | ||
| There's something wrong with them. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| You should be praising those people instead of trying to find some. | ||
| By getting me, by trying to go and get me, you're hurting those people. | ||
| They were devastated. | ||
| You know, I got a call from Missouri, great state, that I won three times by a lot. | ||
| And I got a call that the pilots and the people on the plane were devastated because they were trying to minimize the attack. | ||
| And they all said it was hit. | ||
| But oh, but we don't think it was really maybe hit that badly. | ||
| And they were devastated. | ||
| They put their lives on the line. | ||
| And then they have, and I'm not referring to you, but real scum, real scum come out and write reports that are as negative as they could possibly be. | ||
| It should be the opposite. | ||
| You should make them heroes and heroines. | ||
| You should make them really people that, they were so devastated when they heard this news. | ||
| And you know what they said? | ||
| One of them, I spoke to one of them, he said, sir, we hit the site. | ||
| It was perfect. | ||
| It was dead on because they don't understand fake news because they have a normal life except they have to fly very big, very fast planes. | ||
| But it's a shame. | ||
| You should be making them heroes. | ||
| All right, in the back. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Back, white, yeah. | ||
| White jacket, yeah. | ||
| Go ahead, give my mic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| Deborah Haynes from Sky News. | ||
| Mark Ritter, the NATO chief who is your friend, he called you Daddy earlier. | ||
| Do you regard your NATO allies as kind of children? | ||
| No, he likes me. | ||
| I think he likes me. | ||
| If he doesn't, I'll let you know. | ||
| I'll come back and I'll hit him hard, okay? | ||
| He did it very affectionately, Daddy. | ||
| You're my daddy. | ||
| Do you regard your NATO allies, though, as kind of like children? | ||
| And they're obviously listening to you and they're spending more. | ||
| And you're obviously appreciative of that. | ||
| But do you hope that actually they're going to be able to defend themselves, defend Europe on their own? | ||
| I think they need help a little bit at the beginning, and I think they'll be able to, and I think they're going to remember this day. | ||
| And this was a big day, Fernero. | ||
| You know, this was a very big day. | ||
| They took it. | ||
| One of the gentlemen said, you know what? | ||
| We've been trying to raise money for, raise the rate for 30 years, he said, 20 years, from almost the beginning. | ||
| And he's been there for a long time. | ||
| He said, until you came along, it never happened. | ||
| What you did is amazing. | ||
| It's been sort of an amazing day for a lot of reasons, but also for that. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead. | ||
| Do you think they can do it without you, though, in the future? | ||
| Can they do it without you? | ||
| Well, ask Mark. | ||
| I mean, you have to ask Mark. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| So we're heading back. | ||
| We're heading back. | ||
| I want to thank these two gentlemen behind me. | ||
| They're incredible people, both of them. | ||
| They've done a fantastic job. | ||
| And Susie's in the front, and she's done great. | ||
| And Monica, thank you very much. | ||
| That was quite an exciting time. | ||
| And we're going to be heading back. | ||
| We'll be back sooner. | ||
| We'll see you in Washington, D.C. Remember this. | ||
| We have the hottest country anywhere in the world. | ||
| Thank you very much, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Welcome to the war room. | ||
| President Trump wrapping up a Netherlands, his final talk, short talk, and comments, and then a press conference. | ||
| Folks, just enjoy it. | ||
| This is why I'm Trump 28. That was amazing. | ||
| In a time of war, and this was Tata's the most serious and important NATO conference since the end of the Cold War, President Trump not only answers the questions and deals with ending a war, the 12-day war, substantial policy about Ukraine, but does it with a sense of humanity and humor. | ||
| Particularly, do I have Raheem and I have Ben Harnwell? | ||
| Jackson will join us. | ||
| Just Raheem? | ||
| Ben Harnwell's not up yet. | ||
| Still sleeping over there. | ||
| Late afternoon shift in Rome. | ||
| Raheem, just President Trump to put in the humor and the humanity in answering these questions. | ||
| I mean, that press conference, I mean, I don't know why we're doing the war room. | ||
| I could play the rerun of the first hour, and it'd be incredibly enjoyable. | ||
| Particularly, he calls on the toughest reporters. | ||
| You should know this. | ||
| He prides himself in doing it. | ||
| And today, Rahim, he actually said, I'm calling on all the beauties. | ||
| He gets O'Donnell. | ||
| He gets Caitlin Collins from CNN. | ||
| He literally goes and tries to get the hardest questions. | ||
| Your thought overall of the press conference, we're going to get in the substance in a moment, but your thoughts overall on the press conference. | ||
| Yeah, well, listen, Steve, thanks for having me. | ||
| President Trump understands in that moment that in order to stop further negative press, fake news, things from flowing downhill, he has to engage with the biggest liars and the biggest phonies in that room to shut their narratives down before they get any traction to them. | ||
| It doesn't flow the other way in rooms like that. | ||
| I've been in plenty of rooms like that. | ||
| I've been in press conferences like that. | ||
| And I know exactly how that thing operates. | ||
| I was in Panama with the Secretary of Defense just over a month ago in his very similar situation. | ||
| That situation, I kind of had to jostle my way to the front to get my question in. | ||
| And even when I had got it in, the Panamanian reporter sitting next to me had got in a version just before me that was, you know, he got an answer to it. | ||
| And it's like in that moment, as you know, this back and forth that you have in moments like that, let me just tell the audience here how hard it is to do what President Trump just did. | ||
| Now, listen, he makes it look easy, but how hard it really is to do in those moments. | ||
| I mean, that's really extraordinary. | ||
| You remember the first administration and all they would do is shout at him And they were fighting with interns in the White House over the microphone and things like that. | ||
| You can see from even the reporters who really, really dislike President Trump and the MAGA movement in that room that they now have this deference towards him. | ||
| He's been through everything they said he couldn't get through. | ||
| He's standing on stage in front of them yet again. | ||
| And they have this deference. | ||
| The lady from Ukraine, she approached that question with deference. | ||
| The young lady at the end who asked him the question about Mark Rutter calling him daddy. | ||
| I mean, that is a softball differential question to see there. | ||
| So it's so interesting how their mannerisms have changed. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| I mean, I could watch that three, four times today. | ||
| So entertaining and so informative, too. | ||
| It's a masterclass, but like you just said, you can't coach that. | ||
| You know, you would teach that for aspiring politicians or public speakers, but you just have that natural ability to respond in a humorous manner. | ||
| And also the humanity he showed today, which is the folks that know him, that is the Trump you see all the time. | ||
| I mean, that was extraordinary today. | ||
| Go ahead, Rahim. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| He talks about lady about the Ukraine situation and her husband, right? | ||
| He talks about the humanity of the pilots and how the pilots felt, you know, hearing the media trying to dump on their achievements over the last couple of days. | ||
| It's so amazing to watch this man work in real time because, yeah, does he like credit for things? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He's the commander-in-chief who doesn't like credit for things at the top level, right? | ||
| But at the same time, he spreads the love around. | ||
| And I think you're absolutely right. | ||
| And this might be an age thing as well. | ||
| I think he's let, and it might be a post-assassination attempt thing, too. | ||
| I think he's letting his humane side show a little more lately. | ||
| And I think that really works. | ||
| And here's the biggest part. | ||
| Ukraine and the pilots was extraordinary. | ||
| To me, the most extraordinary, because remember, in the first term, we fought these guys every day to get to the 2%. | ||
| And you remember the 2% because you reported it back in 2014 when NATO and the EU really forced the color revolution in the United States, right? | ||
| The State Department. | ||
| Newland in that crowd. | ||
| The color revolution, when Ukraine cut loose and they had the color revolution, NATO realized they had a problem. | ||
| That's when they went to the 2%, but they never met it. | ||
| And in the first term, President Trump, I mean, every time they come in, I'd get assigned to these guys, and President Trump was adamant, you got to get to 2%. | ||
| In fact, he wanted to start to have, he talked to Merkel about it's cumulative, right? | ||
| Every year you've missed, you've got to pay up, and they almost choked. | ||
| Over that time, and this is why it was providential that the election was stolen in 2020. | ||
| In those four years of President Trump thinking about it, Raheem, did you ever think it was a world that President Trump would come to a NATO summit and they would be all in agreement except for Spain to go to 5% of GDP for defense? | ||
| And think about the humanity talk. | ||
| He says, look, I sat with these guys, men and women for a couple of days. | ||
| Their love for their countries, their concern for the defense of their countries. | ||
| That is all Donald Trump. | ||
| That is what Donald Trump has brought to NATO and brought to Europe is a new sense of purpose, is a new sense of people could actually say now, we actually do have an alliance, right? | ||
| This actually is an alliance. | ||
| Unlike before when it was all kind of broken up and everybody was, nobody was paying their fair share, there were no military operations. | ||
| What Trump has done is rejuvenated NATO. | ||
| And in that moment where he said, hey, I saw a great love as I run around the table. | ||
| Each person had a great love for their country and a great love for the defense of their country. | ||
| And that's why they came to the 5%. | ||
| Raheem Kassam. | ||
| Yeah, look, to answer your question, the answer is no. | ||
| I did not see a world like that. | ||
| I mean, it's extraordinary. | ||
| I think he really has held up a mirror to them over the last, well, many years, but really the last six months, and whether it's negotiating on tariffs, talking defense and defense movements specifically, all of these things have played into this wider piece that makes the Europeans realize, like the, like, by the way, the question at the end, it started silly, right, with the daddy stuff. | ||
| It was a little funny, a little differential. | ||
| But actually the thrust of it was interesting. | ||
| It's like, you know, do you see these as your children? | ||
| And do you want them to grow up and stand on their own feet someday? | ||
| And that's it, right? | ||
| The guy, no, the guy had, you know, these guys in the low country, they're not exactly emotive, right? | ||
| Root had a real moment there about going, Daddy. | ||
| That was a very serious question because to a degree, Trump does feel very paternal. | ||
| You saw the paternal Trump day. | ||
| This is what I'm saying. | ||
| You don't see that often. | ||
| If you see him every day and how he is, that's him. | ||
| He does not show that publicly very often. | ||
| And the reason I think he showed it, I think he was very moved over the last couple of days because this is his doing. | ||
| He said, remember, he said at the top, the defense of Western civilization to go back to the Warsaw speech, which I think is one of the most powerful speeches he's ever given, right? | ||
| But today, I think at the culmination of this, because remember, he was only going to go for one day in and out. | ||
| But then came the 12-day war. | ||
| He stopped the 12-day war and he went on for two days. | ||
| But Rahim, I think that was very powerful. | ||
| I think to a degree he feels quite paternal about this, sir. | ||
| Yeah, no, I think that's right. | ||
| And look, that is kind of a way he's been dealing with a lot of these things now. | ||
| It's interesting to watch Donald Trump kind of turning into the elder statesman in a public sense, right? | ||
| Because as you say, he is very paternal behind the scenes. | ||
| It's always been that way. | ||
| I was looking very recently, actually. | ||
| There was a profile about Eric Trump somewhere, I forget, some magazine or something like that. | ||
| And his father, you know, Eric Trump is a grown man now. | ||
| His father still took the time to read the article, sign it, and said, this is big stuff. | ||
| And to hear that from your dad, it's the same thing as the people at NATO today are hearing from President Trump. | ||
| When he gives you a physical pat on the back, by the way, you feel it. | ||
| When he gives you a rhetorical pat on the back and say, good job, getting to this 5%, you feel it. | ||
| Just unbelievable. | ||
| A huge policy. | ||
| I'm going to go to break here in a minute. | ||
| A second hour because we had a lot to talk about. | ||
| We're talking about, excuse me. | ||
| Raheem, the biggest, so three big takeaways, I think, on policy side. | ||
| The 12-day war, right? | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Obviously, the end, the negotiations to end the Ukraine war and discussions with Ukraine, some policy bombshells there. | ||
| And then Article 5 and what happened in NATO. | ||
| And big things happened all three. | ||
| President Trump, and this should be seen as a victory for the MAGA movement. | ||
| President Trump, the 12-day war is over. | ||
| He couldn't be more adamant. | ||
| 12-day war is over. | ||
| The United States, President Trump, did what he felt he had to do by doing the bombing. | ||
| The place is obliterated. | ||
| You're now getting multiple intelligence reports. | ||
| Even the leaked intelligence report says severely damaged. | ||
| Others coming out saying it's obliterated. | ||
| They're going to be more of that later. | ||
| But regardless, he's done. | ||
| I mean, Ayatollah is even not doing secondary sanctions. | ||
| He said he don't even know if they're going to get him to sign a piece of paper. | ||
| I mean, your thoughts about the 12-day war before you go to break? | ||
| Well, look, you mentioned a lot of things there, and none of them really pertain to national domestic policy in the U.S. So my takeaway from all of this, and I'm certainly you share this view with me, is that once this trip is over, there must be a pivot back to domestic issues. | ||
| And there are so many things that are going on in this country right now that need addressing. | ||
| So he's shown that he can deal with all of these different crises all around the world and the things that actually do need perhaps a nudge or a knock or a bunker buster bomb along the way. | ||
| But now we need to pivot back. | ||
| Perfect. | ||
| Raheem, can you hang? | ||
| Because I know a big bombshell in New York last night. | ||
| So here's what we're going to do, folks. | ||
| We're going to kind of reorient the show. | ||
| We have Raheem here because Raheem's been warning about this for, I don't know, decades, about what happened in New York last night. | ||
| Jack Basovic, Sam Fadis, Derek Harvey, bombshell report out in the Washington Post. | ||
| We're going to go through all that. | ||
|
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The big takeaway, the 12-day war is over. | |
| The United States has done its duty. | ||
| It is now time to move on. | ||
| He couldn't have been more adamant about that. | ||
| No regime change in Tehran. | ||
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If somebody wants to do it, like the Persian people have at it. | |
| But the United States is, President Trump's getting on the plane, coming back here to the United States of America. | ||
| There are plenty of domestic issues for him to solve. | ||
| Like he helped solve the problems in Europe and in the Middle East. | ||
| Now President Trump returning with a magnificent closing statement, talk, and taking questions from the beauties of the mainstream media. |
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