All Episodes
Aug. 11, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
01:57:42
Episode 4697: Trump Brings Law And Order To DC
Participants
Main voices
d
dave brat
11:18
d
donald j trump
01:00:32
s
steve bannon
20:45
Appearances
a
arlette saenz
01:24
d
doug burgum
01:41
j
jennifer welch
01:20
j
judge jeanine pirro
03:20
k
kash patel
02:31
m
mika brzezinski
01:57
p
pam bondi
02:53
p
pete hegseth
01:24
w
will scharf
01:11
Clips
b
bill maher
00:32
g
george will
00:47
j
john berman
00:31
j
john bolton
00:33
| Copy link to current segment

Speaker Time Text
steve bannon
Monday, 11 August in the year of our Lord 2025.
We are live at the White House press briefing room for historic press briefing.
I believe President of the United States is going to come down momentarily.
We're going to cut to that and we've got the ambient noise right there.
You can hear.
We're going to go and actually pick it up as soon as the president comes at the podium.
So here's what's going to happen today.
President Trump has already put out a series of tweets and talked to people and made this pronouncement over the weekend that because of increasing crime, homelessness, just general filth in an out-of-control District of Columbia, he's actually going to take charge of the District of Columbia today.
Actually, they had, I think, FBI agents and drug enforcement agents yesterday, even walking the mall.
But today we're going to get a much more formal declaration.
I think some city officials may be there.
Brian Glenn is in.
This is one of the most packed.
The briefing room is always packed.
Our own Brian Glenn sent a tweet just a few moments ago that showed how packed it was.
Let me bring in Dave Bratt.
Dave, you've been a member of Congress before.
You know how sensitive things are between the district, the House, and the executive branch.
But this city's so out of control right now.
And they talk about stats and crime stats are down.
That's because stuff's not reported.
I think it's pretty generally accepted by people that live in the district.
Of course, the war room's main studios and headquarters are right there near the Supreme Court.
Capitol Hill, everything about D.C. right now appears it's out of control.
Your thoughts, sir, before the president pops in.
pete hegseth
Good morning to you once again.
dave brat
Yeah, well, in Congress, you know, we lived under very lax times.
National Security for the White House was lax.
9-11, the tragedy woke everybody up.
But D.C. is on another level, right?
That's local government level, supposedly.
But there's a lot of responsibilities and a lot of important people there that need to be protected.
And then with the onset of the censorship regime under Biden, security was just a misnomer, right?
It was controlled by the left.
Fences were put up willy-nilly in support of political projects.
And so we need a return to just normalcy, the rule of law.
And I think that's what's going to happen here.
And, you know, the left will go, you know, crazy and their brains are going to explode and they're going to, you know, fascism, whatever.
They cannot give any examples of the rule of law being violated.
That's what they're always missing, right?
Even with Tulsi Gabbard and these major legal initiatives that are going over to the grand jury now under the Department of Justice, the mainstream media just yells and says, oh, my word, this guy, and they never note the thousands of pages of detail where the law has been violated.
So this is systematic.
It's not just D.C. The left has been against police and the sheriffs across the country under Soros initiatives.
And everybody knows this.
And so we're trying to frame it, but it's got to be framed, I think, more generally.
steve bannon
I think, look, and I think this is perfect.
I think the president's going to lay out today an entire program for the District of Columbia because you, the taxpayers, pay for the District of Columbia.
It's now time to install good order and discipline.
But I hope this is a template for Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
I'll tell you what we're going to do.
We're going to try to, we're going to attempt to put our cold open in right now.
As soon as any Caroline Levitt or the president comes in, we're going to cut, even though we have to cut out the cold open.
So let's go ahead.
We have a few minute cold open because there's so much going on over the weekend.
We want to get you up to speed and kind of kick off the news week here.
Let's go ahead and play the cold open.
Like I said, we'll come and cut in immediately if the president or Caroline or any official comes to the podium.
mika brzezinski
There's also big news overseas.
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet this Friday in Alaska to discuss Russia's war on Ukraine.
The president told reporters on Friday that a potential land swap could be part of a ceasefire deal, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded on Saturday saying Ukraine will, quote, not give their land to the occupier, adding that Russia cannot be rewarded for its actions.
It's still unclear if Zelensky will attend the Alaska meeting, but senior U.S. officials tell NBC News.
It is, quote, absolutely possible.
Meanwhile, President Trump's former national security advisor is criticizing the upcoming summit, calling it a win for Putin.
john bolton
It's very gracious of Putin to come to former Russian America for this summit.
This is not quite as bad as Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to talk about the peace negotiations in Afghanistan, but it certainly reminds one of that.
The only better place for Putin than Alaska would be if the summit were being held in Moscow.
So the initial setup, I think, is a great victory for Putin.
He's a rogue leader of a pariah state, and he's going to be welcomed into the United States.
arlette saenz
Does not appear to be a clear end in sight for this redistricting standoff that's going on in the state of Texas.
Now, Republicans will try to move forward on redistricting once again today when the Texas House reconvenes at 1 p.m. Central Time, but Democrats have shown no signs of backing down from their strategy as dozens of Democratic state lawmakers still remain out of the state in order to prevent a vote on redistricting from happening.
Now, there is a very real time crunch right now.
The current special session is set to end on August 19th.
So Democrats are trying to run out the clock.
But as you heard Texas Governor Greg Abbott there, he is intent on calling special session after special session until they can get this redistricting push across the finish line.
And at the same time, as Texas is waging this redistricting fight, we have blue states who are also talking about their own redistricting efforts.
A lot of eyes this week will be on the state of California as they are planning to unveil new maps this week that could potentially redraw up to five congressional districts to pick up more Democratic seats.
The California governor has said that he wants to see voters vote on that issue come November, but Texas Governor Greg Abbott has brushed off some of the concerns that some of those blue state efforts might lead to more Democratic and less Republican seats.
mika brzezinski
For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defending his decision to expand Israel's offensive into Gaza during a press conference yesterday.
Netanyahu said Israel, quote, has no choice but to finish the job and complete the defeat of Hamas and expects to complete the new offensive fairly quickly.
Netanyahu's office also released a statement saying that he spoke with President Trump yesterday.
The pair discussed Israel's plan to take over the remaining Hamas strongholds in Gaza, while Netanyahu thanked Trump for his steadfast support.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera claims Israel intentionally struck a tent housing journalists in Gaza City yesterday, killing five employees of the network.
Israel says one of those killed was a member of Hamas.
A claim Al Jazeera and the journalists themselves previously and strenuously denied.
Al Jazeera, which is funded by Qatar's government, said 10 of its staff have been killed by Israel since 2023.
jennifer welch
I've had it with white people that triple Trumped, that have the nerve and the audacity to walk into a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, go to perhaps their gay hairdresser.
I don't think you should be able to enjoy anything but Cracker Barrel.
And if you want to triple Trump and you want to browbeat DEI, you want to browbeat gay people and you want to browbeat black people as you've been doing for 400 years.
And you want to browbeat this generation of immigrants that come over here and open up businesses earnestly, pay their taxes.
You want to demonize them and call them rapists and felons and all the when the felon is the teeny weeny mushroom piece of cankles mctaco at the top of the ticket.
I have had it from time.
top to bottom white people that triple Trump should be banned boycotted from enjoying the best thing that America has to offer which is multiculturalism get your fat asses out of the Mexican restaurant get your fat asses over To Cracker Barrel because nobody wants to see your smug ass, teeny weeny pink arm, big gut around.
Nobody wants to see that.
No one.
john berman
From President Trump about his new plans for Washington, D.C., federal agencies posted on social media about patrolling the city under the hashtag, quote, make D.C. safe again.
Up to 130 FBI agents could join them.
The president's plan to make D.C., quote, more beautiful than ever involves getting rid of all homeless people.
He says the city is seeing a spike in crime, but really the numbers say otherwise.
Police statistics show a 26% drop in violent crime over the past 12 months.
steve bannon
Welcome back.
Like I said, we're going to cut right to the podium as soon as this historic press conference starts.
Brad, do you qualify as homeless when you come to D.C.?
Oh, no, that's right.
You used the carriage house at the embassy.
I guess that makes sure you're not homeless.
Dave, top secret.
Dave, walk us through the official kind of in D.C., what's the official structure of all this, what the president and his team are dealing with this morning as they announced they're essentially going to take over, federalize much of the district for safety concerns, sir.
dave brat
Yeah, well, first, I just have to do a quick reaction to that cold open.
The white piece is so overcooked, the overt racism coming from the hyper left.
It's just absurd.
But I was most offended at the assault upon people with big guts.
I work out so hard.
It's just, that's where she went over the line.
All of us, she's a little bit more.
steve bannon
Hold on, hold on, hang on, hold on.
If you're going to go there, if you're going to go there, I got a problem with her on Cracker Barrel.
Cracker Barrel has totally redone the interior of many.
They've ruined Cracker Barrel by getting away from the original Cracker Barrel country store with the lattice work and all the things people loved about it.
And they've gone to like an open, they've made it bullpen society, right?
The open bullpins that they have in these companies that they kind of ruin it.
No, she's a hater from Bravo, and everybody knows the politics of Bravo.
That's why many of these shows are being canceled.
Continue on, sir.
By the way, the cold open was there to make sure you got fired up on a Monday morning.
I cannot understand why they still bring in John Bolton, who's a disgraced, fired former national security advisor that has Trump derangement syndrome at the worst thing, because you're not getting an even-handed, you're not getting a smart analysis.
But we wanted to show you right there of what went down over the weekend on both Russia and Gaza.
And of course, President Trump, we're going to do kind of special reports every day in the run-up to this historic meeting in Alaska.
But continue on about D.C., because today President Trump is starting the week historically, essentially putting good order and discipline into the imperial capital.
And then he will finish the week in Alaska, cutting, I think, the beginning of a rapprochement with Russia.
dave brat
But Dave Brett, go ahead and continue about D.C. Yeah, well, you know, I let in with the assault on the rule of law in general.
And of course, you know, I didn't mention the key word.
It's the deep state.
And then you see that rant from the far left.
That's what you're dealing with when we're talking about the rule of law.
And so, yeah, I want to double down.
That person needs to be calmed down.
And we just need to have the rule of law in effect.
And the idea that we browbeat blacks and browns, that's the most absurd thing.
She is the one who's being racist and saying whites should not have equal treatment under the rule of law.
Everybody at Cracker Barrel I know is good Christian people out here in Lynchburg.
We believe every person on this planet is made in the image of God, but everybody has to follow the law from God in our city.
But let me get to the technical piece on D.C. And it's a unique thing.
Washington, D.C. is not part of the federal government, but serves as its seat.
It's a federal district distinct from any state created under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution to house the National government.
So there's kind of the unique status there.
Congress has ultimate authority over D.C. And while it has some local governance, like a mayor council, it lacks full statehood or voting representatives in Congress.
The federal government operates within D.C., but the district itself is a separate entity, not an official component of the government like a department or agency.
And so it's a little complex, but Trump's got the Justice Department, they got smart lawyers, and we'll get the story straight on what goes here, but it's out of control.
There's no debate on that part.
And I like to see Trump taking the initiative on these things where people want to live safely.
I went to high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Back when I was there, just completely normal.
Now it's been, it's overturned with just, I don't even know how to put it.
It's just been, it's not the old Minnesota I knew.
And it's a tragedy.
There's crime all over the place there.
All these new mayors, New York City, we got a full-fledged communist running.
The CIA, FBI, pieces taken on by Tulsi going over to justice are the tip of what's wrong, right?
These folks were leading and not prosecuting the law across the country in these cities.
They were letting it go under the Biden logic.
And so we need to turn that around and get back to making America great and lawful again.
steve bannon
Well, no, the sanctuary cities, I mean, they're up in your face.
And people that, you know, if we can pull, I'll tell my producer George Will on Bill Maher.
I've got it up on Getter, George Will and Bill Maher on Friday night said, oh, I hope he's a socialist and I hope he wins because he'll show people the failure of socialism.
What's happening in New York is not socialism.
This is very much what's in D.C., in Chicago, in Los Angeles.
You have a neo-Marxist or full Marxist, particularly in, if not so much in economics, cultural Marxism, coupled with radical jihad and trying to make, like, for instance, in DC in New York, trying to remake the police force into a Muslim police force.
This is what's happening.
If you think Zorhan and that crew, when they win, if you think they're going to give it up on any election, you're kidding yourselves.
It's going to have to be taken from them.
It's not going to be, it's not going to, once they're in, they're going to be like the Bolsheviks.
They're not going to give up.
People are, and particularly the donors, because I've spent time with these guys.
They have no clue of what they've created.
This is the thing about these situations in the United States right now.
The donor class, progressive and quote-unquote conservative, have created these situations.
And now, this is why President Trump, he's going to start in D.C. I hope this is a template for going around the country, and particularly these massive metropolitan areas like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.
You have three of the greatest cities in the world, three world cities that are essentially run by insurrectionists that fail to comply with any federal law whatsoever.
And it's only spinning out of control more, not less.
Yes, you had the bad ombres, and we've done a very good job of trying to get the criminals out, but that's only the surface of the problem.
That is not the problem itself.
Today in D.C., you're seeing this is why it's so historic.
This is why this briefing room is packed.
Also, remember, to a person in there, even as progressive as some of the Trump-hating derangement they have, every one of these reporters wants more safety in the streets of D.C. because they understand it's totally out of control.
Dave Brett, your thoughts, sir.
dave brat
Yeah, and I just want to extend it.
You know, for some reason, illegal immigration and the border invasion just doesn't grab the American people across the spectrum.
And that, you know, we need comms, right?
The other day we were showing, we're talking about, you know, Bobby Kennedy's great work, and there's not enough comms.
There's not enough comms on the assault.
Also, the Mexican cartel issue that Trump is going over.
This is not abstract.
Under the Biden regime, there's anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 missing children.
Half of these, maybe more, are young girls that are being trafficked and prostituted.
You know, you can't, the average American mind, the suburbs, they don't want to picture this.
Their minds cannot handle this.
But our Congress leaders and our Senate, where are they?
When you want tax cuts, which I'm in favor of, right?
You got to have the economy humming and the motor running.
So I'm not making a cut against it, but I'm just saying whenever you want tax cuts, boy, the TV cameras are lit.
We're on Fox News.
We're all over the country to get those tax cuts passed.
We got 300,000 missing young girls and boys, folks.
What in the world is going on in this country?
And Trump is standing between us and total chaos and barbarism, right?
And so the idea that he's a bad guy and a despot, you've got to be kidding.
He was voted in precisely for this reason, to end the border invasion, to end this chaos, to bring back the rule of law, which also is very good for business.
And these folks who say, you know, just we want cheap labor, you've got to be kidding me.
You're not looking out for the welfare of the country or its people.
unidentified
Well, I hope.
dave brat
So thank God Trump's taking a leave.
steve bannon
Yeah, I hope.
Well, I hope part of this basically taking control of the federal district.
I hope that the beginning of this is mass deportations, that from the schools and all of it and the businesses, right?
They should start the mass deportations.
You're going to have control of the imperial capital.
To me, one of the highest orders of magnitude things you can do right off the bat is mass deportations.
I want to thank.
dave brat
Yes.
steve bannon
Like I said, today is going to be a little choppy.
We're going to go live momentarily as soon as someone comes down.
Probably Caroline Lovett to tee it off.
The president is supposed to be part of this in a big way to really make this announcement today of how he's going to take this, at least starting with law enforcement, take active control of the District of Columbia.
And you can tell this is a pretty historic day.
That's why the briefing room is absolutely jam-packed.
Our own Brian Glenn happen is in there.
Of course, they've cut comms off for everybody.
I want to thank the team at Birch Gold.
I'll probably get Philip Patrick on tomorrow.
Gold's been bouncing around.
It's not the price of gold you need to understand.
It's the process of how you get to the price.
This is what we try to show you in the end of the dollar empire.
Go to birchgold.com.
Promo code Bannon, seven free installments.
We're working on the eighth and the ninth simultaneously that were released.
We also have got a bunch of events that we're going to be talking about after Labor Day.
We'll make those announcements.
We're working every day with the Birch Gold team.
So make sure you go to birchgold.com to understand the process of how do you get to the price of gold.
Also, Jim Rickerts, Jim will be with us this week as we do the run-up to this historic summit in Alaska to try to end, attempt to end the Ukraine war and begin a Russian rapprochement to take Russia out of the sphere of influence of the Chinese Communist Party and get it back aligned like we were in the Second World War and make sure that we can take on the Chinese Communist Party.
Jim Rickerts, Rickards Warroom, have a special landing page, RickardsWarroom.com.
You get strategic intelligence access to his newsletter that chairmen and CEOs all throughout the world read.
You get the same inside baseball they get, and he throws in a free book about artificial intelligence, money GPT, about the impact of artificial intelligence upon currency, particularly fiat currency.
So make sure you go check it out today.
The president is going to be arriving, I think, momentarily.
The reason, Dave, I think they chose the briefing room instead of having a press gaggle in the press gaggle in the oval, I believe I saw him handing out some handouts prior to this.
I think they may use the, I think they may use the monitors here to put up some audiovisual, maybe a couple of briefing points, a deck, maybe talk about some statistics to get to get everybody up to speed on exactly what he's doing.
Also, the technical aspects of it, I would assume that either the Attorney General will be here or somebody from Maine Justice, or maybe even the great Judge Janine Pirro, who has now been sworn in.
She's been confirmed as the U.S. Attorney.
Your thoughts, sir?
dave brat
Yeah, well, as you know, you had John Lott on the other day, and he's one of the best.
Everybody ought to look up his work on crime in the inner cities, who it hurts, who it helps, the causes of it.
And of course, it decimates the African-American neighborhoods, the Hispanic neighborhoods.
No one ever goes at it that way, right?
And then the left goes off and, you know, we don't need any guns.
You can't protect yourself under the Second Amendment.
And then the press is going to go off on the deportation aspect of it today.
So I'm glad they're getting into the statistics.
We need a good debate on what is causing this crime, where's it coming from, who's agitating for it, who's paying for it, right?
There are leftist forces, and we all know now, right?
After USAID spilt it on the deep state connections to NGOs.
And so we've seen the connections between the incentivizing of crime, not the reduction of crime.
And then when they go off on their moral high horse about deportations and how mean it is, the mean one, all political views are my own, was the Biden administration, right?
They're the ones that caused this, right?
It's like missing the Federal Reserve, causing all the problems because it's complex.
Who caused all of this?
It's the 20 million illegal that have caused this crisis.
And for the left to come about and say, if you want to fix the problem, you're guilty.
No, sorry, folks.
Why don't you go apologize to the 300,000 missing children in this country that are being trafficked and prostituted?
And can you imagine what their families are going through?
God help us all.
steve bannon
By the way, a good announcement.
Our own Colonel John Mills, you've known Colonel Mills over the years, these great briefings he would give us on Taiwan and cyber.
He was sworn in today as Assistant Secretary for International Cyberspace Security over at the State Department.
So another one place.
Colonel John Mills starts work today, sworn in, and he is in his office and hard at work.
I want to play.
So, and if the president comes in at any time we're playing the clip, we're going to immediately cut out of it.
Let's go and play the George Will on Bill Maher from Friday Night.
bill maher
This must be horrible for a guy like you, who you spent your whole life talking about how government tries to do too much, which it does and spends too much.
And here you have Trump, who is the Republican, who is aggrandizing more power than anybody, as we just talked about.
And on the other side, you have the guy running in New York, Mendami, right?
Okay, who's like a straight-up communist?
I mean, he is.
He talks about, you know, the things that communists say.
I mean, he wants free grocery stores, free buses.
george will
I want him to win.
bill maher
You want him to win.
george will
Yeah.
I think every 20 years or so.
unidentified
Wait.
george will
Every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again.
Socialist slogan used to be: workers of the world unite.
You have nothing to lose but your chains.
The new socialist slogan is: trust us, this time it won't be a mess.
So when the post-war labor government in Britain was about to get started, one of their leading lights was a socialist named Monurian Bevan.
He said, what could go wrong?
He said, we have a nation bedded on coal, surrounded by fish.
It would take an organizational genius to have a shortage of either.
In three years, they had a shortage of both.
That's socialism.
steve bannon
Okay.
Remember for years, Dave Brett, they would have ABC News and CBS and NBC when you had fewer and fewer options than you have today with cable and, of course, all the podcasting, would have the two House conservatives they would put up would be George Wool with his little bow tie, and then they would have David Brooks, right, with his bow tie.
Because they wanted America to think that conservatives are kind of these oddballs, right?
These Buckley-type intellectuals that were kind of a feat in their thinking so kind of counter to the lived experience of the American people, all this kind of theoretical conservatism.
And this is why the conservatives, the country's in the shape it's in, because the conservatives didn't fight for anything.
They kind of got tapped along and they were part of what we call controlled opposition.
You never really took a stand.
They really threw down hard until Trump came along and said, hey, this can't go on any longer.
And that's why today is so historic.
What's going to happen in the White House briefing room?
The President of the United States is going to come down.
And maybe with a couple of officials, I think probably Judge Janine, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, or maybe someone from Maine Justice, and lay out, make the case of why he's forced to do this, but he will clean D.C. up.
And I hope, and I believe part of that will be the beginning of mass deportations of illegal aliens, which are rife in the District of Columbia because no laws are enforced there.
But I hope it becomes a template for what can be done in Los Angeles and in Chicago and in New York.
And for George Will to sit there, he has no clue.
This is, remember, he had no clue about the rise of the populist nationalist movement or Trump.
He hated it from the beginning, hates President Trump, hates populist nationalism.
I mean, literally just hates it, but was clueless about the power of it.
The same thing about in New York.
He doesn't understand this is the Red-Green Alliance.
This is Marxism.
These Marxists tied in with radical jihad.
These are not socialists, right?
They're not people that just want to, oh, have, you know, have a couple of new free programs.
It's much deeper than that.
And it is going to be a massive, massive, massive problem.
You can tell by the feckless nature of people trying to stop his election of how clueless the people in New York City who brought this on brought this on themselves.
They brought this on themselves.
And now they're sitting there, oh, these are socialists.
And if you see the big donors and the billionaires in New York and they're wandering all around, they have no earthy idea what's about to devour them.
Dave Brett, your thoughts, sir.
dave brat
Yeah, well, I think that's well put.
You know, I used to, George Will is a Princeton man, right?
I went to Princeton seminary, you know, 35 years ago or whatever it was now.
And him and Brooks and et cetera, it sounded like they had the right call for the day.
But upon inspection, you know, they write about federalism and the rule of law, et cetera, but they're tied into, right?
When he says, I want Mom Dami to win up in New York, a certified communist, what that means is he thinks he'll be safe in his Georgetown mansion, but while the rest of us suffer under this experiment for a few years, and then the legacy of that experiment.
So, no, I don't want him to win.
I want to defeat that set of ideas that has hurt people all through history.
You cannot allow, you know, that's the way the establishment views things.
And then, Will, you know, what you're saying, he knew it turns out, you know, about all of the deep state.
You know, he knows his connections and everybody he knows.
He knows all State Department, all USAID, all the CIA, all of FBI.
That's his network.
And if he was a total truth teller, and, you know, one of the things that, you know, I'd like George personally, but I would tell you, he's missing the faith dimension.
There's no fire in the belly for the terror that is taking place on these 300,000 missing young kids right now.
George, where are you on this?
This border invasion is causing massive human pain.
We're at wars across the board with massive government overreach being led by the CIA and the State Department and the deep state.
George knows all of it.
And so his moral silence here, George, you're complicit in this.
And Brooks, you know, you seem like a nice guy and all that kind of thing, but you know about all this.
And if you don't speak up in the face of what is clearly evil to try to correct it, and Trump, you can just be upset with him.
And he's not as sophisticated as the Princeton man and the Harvard man or whatever.
But he is putting his life at risk and has twice to get it right for the least amongst these.
And so as soon as you two step up, I wish we're all on the same team.
We should be.
If you're true conservatives, you'd be screaming and yelling for the guts of what the Christian heart cries out for, which is justice for God's least of these.
And you're missing it.
You're both missing it.
And so is the swamp and so is the deep state.
And religion, you don't want to overblow it because there's fakes all over religion as well.
But boy, if you'd put one, you know, truly religious, humble Person in each agency to call baloney on the rest of them.
President Trump, I think you'd be very well served.
If you look at the people who have turned on you, ask if the people who have turned on you are fully Christian or have some other set of grounding that they will not turn away from, right?
Is there some foundational aspect to the rule of law and human goodness that they will never sacrifice for money or power or whatever?
And if they're not of that standard, you got to get rid of them.
steve bannon
No, this is, you know, President Trump, we just went through the 200th, the commemoration of the 200th day in this second term on Friday.
And as we've been saying since the end of the first hundred days, the time of testing is now because this is the convergence of all these issues, right, from the invasion on the southern border to the Ukraine, you know, the beginning of the kinetic part of World War II, both in Gaza, you know, the Middle East and in Ukraine, the financial situation, all of it.
Just some updates.
We're going to get to Brian Harrison maybe in the second hour, but that might not be happening.
The press briefing, having been delayed already 30 minutes, will probably eat at least some time of the 11 o'clock hour.
Anyway, Brian Harrison, we will get to Texas on redistricting.
Long story short, there've been a lot of rhetoric over the weekend in the House, not much action.
They still have their parking spaces.
They still have their parking spaces.
You know, not much else has been done, but he'll give us an update.
I believe we're seeing some movement out of the Texas Senate.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has no, you know, he should call immediately a vote.
They've got a quorum.
They have all the issues sorted out.
They should call it, and let's at least pass the Texas in the Texas Senate.
This redistricting, you know, while we can, I believe this is the last week of the special session.
The governor has already said he's going to call another.
But for the governor and Patrick and the Speaker of the House, this has been a debacle of your own disorganization.
This could have been taken care of very if you move with alacrity.
The reason they didn't move with alacrity, they are not Trump people.
They don't want to support Trump.
And they don't believe in really the underlying tenet here of the demographic shift within the state of Texas.
And they don't understand the power of President Trump's movement, the power of this populist nationalist movement, particularly in places like the Rio Grande Valley, where they're going to redistrict two of the districts down.
This is five seats, a pickup in a redistricting.
And I believe in 2026, we're going to pick up many more seats just given the Trump program and the way people are embracing it.
But in the House, a total debacle.
Brian Harrison will give us an update, I believe, from the floor of the House.
Like I said, I believe the Senate may move this week because there's nothing stopping them.
And this is the last week of the special session.
Also, this week kicked off by this historic press briefing here in the White House about actually taking active control of the imperial capital.
You've got other issues too that are coming up and will be addressed.
I think you're going to see a lot more developments this week.
We talk about the mass deportations day, Brad.
It has been leaked already that the Defense Department and other agencies of the federal government are looking hard at something we've called for from the beginning, and that is a direct interdiction into the cartels in northern Mexico.
The cartels are still a big driver of not just the drug trafficking, but the human trafficking, although it's been cut virtually to zero, they're still using back channels.
You said you have hundreds of thousands of young children here that cannot be identified, or we don't know exactly where they are.
This all came during the Biden regime.
But war on the cartels for fentanyl, for their drug distribution, for human trafficking is clearly called for.
And the government in Mexico has really just given, listen, all the proclamations they put out, it's all just happy talk, right?
It's a government that's completely, totally controlled by the cartels.
And paramilitary and/or military interdiction to me is something that's much more vital to the national security of the United States than Ukraine or in Gaza, right, or in Persia, right?
This is vital to the security of the United States.
That, as you should understand, is being worked on, Dave.
At the same time, you had this massive summit, which they refused to call it in Alaska between Putin and President Trump to basically bring an end to the Ukraine war and to do it in a way that people lay down their guns now and kind of move on and figure out how they're going to rebuild that.
At the same time, you do not entice the, you start the rapprochement with the Russians and the Americans against the Chinese Communist Party and don't trigger an invasion of Taiwan by the CCP.
There's amazing footage.
Captain Finnell, who we'll get tomorrow, we're going to try to have him this morning near Scarborough Shoals in the South China Sea.
Incredible footage of a Chinese destroyer cutting off the front of a Chinese Coast Guard, a Coast Guard ship, as they were both trying to essentially get in the way of navigation of a Filipino, I believe, Coast Guard, a Philippine Navy Coast Guard vessel.
So there's a lot cooking up there.
Last but not least, you heard Netanyahu again came down hard on this Gaza occupation of Gaza.
The militants say they're going to take Gaza City first.
I just hope that someone in the President Trump's administration has at least looked at the plan because if you hear the IDF talk about it, Dave, it's an impossibility to actually occupy Gaza unless you draw the Americans in, first as logistics, right?
You get people got to be fed.
So you start all these food distribution centers, but then you're going to need personnel to defend them.
Next thing you know, you're going to have America in there as an occupation force, or at least a partial occupation force, exactly what happened in Baghdad.
And folks got to remember in the, here we go right here.
Here come people.
We're going to cut live to the briefing room.
the crew is up there and we'll let them take it from here.
unidentified
Thank you.
five Just keep that photo, that shot right there.
steve bannon
You got Pam Bondi's, who said being justice, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexeth, is there.
Looks like the Department of Interior is there.
Also, Judge Janine is being U.S. Attorney.
She's there.
So I imagine they're waiting.
There's Cash Patel of the FBI.
unidentified
I imagine they're waiting for the, here comes the President of the United States.
We'll turn it over now to the President of the United States.
donald j trump
Wow.
I've been up here a lot.
I've never seen a crowd like this.
I think we need a ballroom.
And that's happening.
It's going to be a beautiful ballroom.
This is really a lot of people, most I've ever seen in this room.
And we're here for a very serious purpose, very serious purpose.
Something's out of control, but we're going to put it in control very quickly, like we did on the southern border.
I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse.
This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back.
We're taking it back.
Under the authorities vested in me as the President of the United States, I'm officially invoking Section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act.
You know what that is?
And placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control, and you'll be meeting the people that will be directly involved with that.
Very good people, but they're tough and they know what's happening.
They've done it before.
In addition, I'm deploying the National Guard to help reestablish law, order, and public safety in Washington, D.C., and they're going to be allowed to do their job properly.
And you people are victims of it, too.
You know, you're reporters, and I understand a lot of you tend to be on the liberal side, but you don't want to get mugged and raped and shot and killed.
And you all know people and friends of yours that that happened.
And so you can be any anything you want, but you want to have safety in the streets.
You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something.
And you don't have that now.
The murder rate in Washington today is higher than that of Bogota, Colombia, Mexico City.
Some of the places that you hear about as being the worst places on Earth, much higher.
This is much higher.
The number of car thefts has doubled over the past five years.
years and the number of carjackings has more than tripled murders in 2023 reached the highest rate probably ever.
They say 25 years, but they don't know what that means because it just goes back 25 years.
Can't be worse.
Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged out maniacs and homeless people.
And we're not going to let it happen anymore.
We're not going to take it.
Just like we did on our southern border, nobody comes to our southern border anymore.
Three months in a row, we had zero.
I don't know if that's right, but the people that do the work, it's a very liberal group of people, actually, and they actually said zero for the last three months.
Nobody thought a thing like that was possible.
And, you know, when you take a look at numbers, I just saw some charts.
These are different cities throughout the world.
Red is okay.
The red is a place called Washington, D.C. Look at these.
Baghdad is, we doubled up on Baghdad.
Panama City, Brasilia, San Jose, Costa Rica, Bogota, Colombia, heavy drugs.
Mexico City, I mentioned, Lima, Peru.
All double and triple what they are.
So do you want to live in places like that?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
And I think the people in this room, if you wrote correctly, you'd see, look at the kind of numbers we have.
D.C., 41 per 100,000, number one that we can find anywhere in the world.
Other cities are pretty bad, but they're not as bad as that.
Is that where you want to live?
The reporters of the world.
Juvenile offenders and crimes against persons, as they say.
It's getting worse.
Not getting better.
It's getting worse.
And we had a recent indication.
There was a story about a man who was just left.
He quit because he was asked to do phony numbers on crime.
And we're going to look into that.
I think Pam is going to be looking into that.
But he was asked by the city, I guess.
We don't want to show the real numbers.
Let me do numbers so it looks like it's going down.
Not going down.
And under Biden, it was a disaster.
And nobody did anything about it.
We're going to do things about it like you wouldn't believe.
Every American has a constitutional right to be able to access and petition their government in safety.
And countless federal officials and employees likewise have the right to carry out their jobs in peace without being shot.
As you know, I lost a very good person a while ago, was shot, waiting for his wife.
He was in the car.
They robbed his car.
They shot him.
They killed him like there was nothing to it.
She was walking to the car.
She was, it's a horror show.
This issue directly impacts the functioning of the federal government and is a threat to America, really.
It's a threat to our country.
We have other cities also that are bad, very bad.
You look at Chicago, how bad it is.
You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is.
We have other cities that are very bad.
New York has a problem.
And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland.
We don't even mention that anymore.
They're so far gone.
We're not going to let it happen.
We're not going to lose our cities over this.
And this will go further.
We're starting very strongly with D.C., and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly, as they say.
Days ago, a former member of the Doge staff was savagely beaten by a band of roving thugs after defending a young woman from an attempted carjacking.
He was left dripping in blood.
He thought He was dead with a broken nose and concussion.
Can't believe that he's alive.
He can't believe it.
In June, a 21-year-old congressional intern was tragically killed after being hit by a stray bullet in a drive-by shooting.
A former Trump administration official named Mike Gill, fantastic person, was murdered last year in cold blood in a carjacking blocks away from the White House.
We all knew him.
Great person, waiting for his wife as she was walking to the car.
A Democrat congressman was also carjacked at gunpoint not far from the Capitol.
And in 2023, an aide to Senator Rand Paul was stabbed in the chest and head by a demented lunatic as he walked down the street just absolutely for no reason.
Horrifically, last July 4th weekend, a three-year-old girl was shot in the head and killed while sitting in a car near the Capitol.
It's becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness.
And we're getting rid of the slums too.
We have slums here.
We're getting rid of them.
I know it's not politically correct.
You'll say, oh, so terrible.
No, we're getting rid of the slums where they live.
Caravans of mass youth rampage through city streets at all times of the day.
There are ATVs, motorbikes.
They travel pretty well.
Entire neighborhoods are now under emergency curfews.
Just this past weekend, gunfire went through, and you saw that the Navy Yard.
I saw it this morning.
They saw that they fought back against law.
See, they fight back until you knock the hell out of them because it's the only language they understand.
But they fought back against law enforcement last night.
And they're not going to be fighting back long because I've instructed them and told them whatever happens, you know, they love to spit in the face of the police as the police are standing up there in uniform.
They're standing and they're screaming at them an inch away from their face.
And then they start spitting in their face.
And I said, you tell them, you spit, and we hit.
And they get hit real hard.
It's a disgusting thing.
I've watched that for years, for three, four years.
I've watched them.
The police are standing, and they're told, don't do anything under any such.
And you can see they want to get at it.
And they're standing there and people are spitting in their face and they're not allowed to do anything.
But now they are allowed to do whatever the hell they want.
This dire public safety crisis stems directly from the abject failures of the city's local leadership.
The radical left city council adopted no cash bail.
By the way, every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster.
That's what started the problem in New York and they don't change it.
They don't want to change it.
That's what started it in Chicago.
I mean, bad politicians started it.
Bad leadership started it.
But that was the one thing that's central, no cash bail.
Somebody murders somebody and they're out on no cash bail before the day is out.
We're going to end that in Chicago.
We're going to change the statute.
I spoke with Pam and Todd and everybody.
We're going to change the statue and I'm going to have to get the Republicans to vote because the Democrats are weak on crime.
Totally weak on crime.
They don't know why.
They want to stop because they get mugged too.
But we're going to change no cash bail.
We're going to change the statute and get rid of some of the other things.
And we'll count on the Republicans in Congress and Senate to vote.
We have the majority, so we'll vote.
We don't have a big majority, but we've gotten everything, including the great, big, beautiful bill.
Got that done, and that's one of the greatest things that's ever happened to people in this country.
They're starting to figure it out, how good it is.
Biggest tax cut in history.
So many things.
But we'll be able to get that done.
So, Todd, if you and Pam can draw up things working with the people, we will, I'll get it passed.
We'll get it passed with the Republicans.
We probably won't get, think of this.
Probably won't get one Democrat vote because they have no idea what they're doing.
That's why they want men playing in women's sports.
That's why they want transgender for everybody, everybody transgender.
And they just got walloped in an election in a landslide, and they haven't changed one thing.
I saw the other day that a certain gentleman who was a very well-known politician, Democrat, was fighting like hell that men should be allowed to play in women's sport.
They just don't get it.
They said it's an 80-20 issue, and I think it's a 97-3 issue.
And I don't know who the three are.
I've never heard anybody come, nobody's ever come up to me, sir, you have to let men play in women's sports.
You have to do it, sir.
Nobody's ever approached me.
I don't know where this issue even comes from.
Never seen anything like it.
But they turned our nation's capital into a sanctuary jurisdiction.
That's the other thing.
We have to get rid of sanctuary cities as quickly as possible.
We're going to do it, too.
We have to.
Because it's sanctuary for criminals.
Releasing illegal alien gang members onto the streets in 2022, nearly 70% of criminals arrested in Washington went unprosecuted.
That's not going to happen with the group we have standing aside and standing behind me.
And at the Metropolitan Police Department, it's now reached a small number relatively compared to what it was, but it's thousands of people.
You know, we have thousands of police.
I was told today, sir, they want more police.
I heard a number, 3,500 police.
That's a lot of police.
3,500.
I thought they're going to say we only have 30 policemen or women.
He said, we have 3,500.
We need more.
You don't need more.
That's so many.
I never heard.
That's like an army.
How could you need more than 3,000?
It just happened two minutes ago.
Sir, they've requested more police.
Oh, what do they have?
About 3,500.
I said, 3,500?
This is not a big area.
It's ridiculous.
What you need is rules and regulations, and you need the right people to implement them.
And we have the right people here, that I can tell you.
Look at the border.
Biden said there's nothing you can do.
Kamala was the border czar.
She never called one of the border patrol agents who are great.
ISIS great.
Never spoke to anybody.
Never went there.
But she was the border czar.
And everybody said it was impossible to fix.
I fixed it in three months.
No, really.
I fixed it the first week, but really fixed it over the last couple of months.
And I mean, literally to a point where, as I said, zero illegals entering our country in the last 90 days.
Pretty amazing.
It's time for dramatic action.
We're going to do the same thing over here.
It's going to be a very safe city very soon.
We're not looking to just take years because a lot of people die in years.
And we've got incredible people in this country, except we have to allow them to do their job.
And that we will deliver like nobody's ever delivered before.
I actually think it's easy.
You know, if you're competent, it's easy.
If you're incompetent, it's impossible.
But I'm very competent.
Last week, my administration surged 500 federal agents into the district, including from the FBI, ATF, DEA, Park Police, the U.S. Marshal Service, the Secret Service, and the Department of Homeland Security.
You know, a lot of nations, they don't have anything like that.
unidentified
They got some police.
donald j trump
And they're rough police.
They don't have a DEA, ATF, FBI, Park Police, U.S. Marshal Service, Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security.
unidentified
They got some police.
donald j trump
But they're rough police.
And they do their job.
They don't have crime.
We're not going to have crime either.
They made dozens of arrests.
And that's what starts to happen.
Again, cashless bail.
Watch what we do with that.
Today we're formally declaring a public safety emergency.
This is an emergency.
This is a tragic emergency.
And it's embarrassing for me to be up here.
You know, I'm going to see Putin.
I'm going to Russia on Friday.
I don't like being up here talking about how unsafe and how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was with graffiti all over the walls.
It's another part of it, by the way.
Because we're talking about safety, but we're also talking about beautification.
We have the most beautiful, potentially capital in the world.
We always had.
But people come from Iowa, they come from Indiana, they come and then they get mugged.
Not going to happen.
Keep coming because within, by the time you get your trip set, it's going to be safe again, and it's going to be clean very quickly.
We're going to replace the medians that are falling down all over the roads.
We're going to replace the potholes.
We're going to put a nice new coat of asphalt over the top.
Knowing we don't have to rip the road out and spend seven years building a new road because they cut everything.
Because some designer said, well, we need a quarter of an inch more turn for safety reasons.
No, we're going to do it right.
We're going to get it done quickly.
So today we're declaring public safety emergency in the District of Columbia.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who's fantastic, is taking command of the Metropolitan Police Department as of this moment.
And I'll be making the appropriate notifications to Congress and to the mayor, our new DEA administrator, who's one of the top in the country.
He better be Terry if you're not.
I'm going to get rid of you so fast.
Terry Cole.
Terry, thanks.
Very good.
We just got him, most highly recommended person.
And you'll be designated as the interim federal commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Okay?
And you run them tough.
You have a lot of good people.
You have people that shouldn't be there.
You also have people that shouldn't be there.
They got in there because of woke.
But you have a lot of great police.
And those people are the ones that want to help you.
This city will no longer be a sanctuary for illegal alien criminals.
We will have full, seamless, integrated cooperation at all levels of law enforcement.
And we'll deploy officers across the district with an overwhelming presence.
You'll have more police, and you'll be so happy.
Because you'll be safe.
When you walk down the street, you're going to see police, or you're going to see FBI agents.
We're going to have a lot of agents on the streets.
And you're going to have a lot of, essentially, military.
And we will bring in the military if it's needed, by the way.
We're going to have National Guard.
But Pete Hagseth will tell you about it.
We will bring in the military if needed.
People say, oh, that's so terrible.
He's going to bring in.
It's been used many times over the years.
I don't think we'll need it.
I think we've got so many great people, including the people that are in the police department with proper leadership.
They'll immediately begin massive enforcement operations targeting known gangs, drug dealers, and criminal networks to get them the hell off the street, maybe get them out of the country, because a lot of them came into our country illegally.
They shouldn't have been allowed in.
They come from Venezuela.
They come from all over the world.
We're going to get them the hell out.
They won't be here long.
But some of these people, a lot of them, are homegrown criminals.
And these are bad people.
These are rough people.
And this is just a list of some of the people that were given to me today that were criminals removed from the DC streets this weekend.
They were rough.
Rough and tough.
But we're rougher and tougher.
Look at these people here.
Nothing, you know.
They're not going to be your local school teacher.
Look at this guy.
He has killed people numerous times.
They're not going to be an asset.
They will never be an asset to society.
I don't care.
I know we all want to say, oh, they're going to be rehabbed.
It's not going to be rehabbed.
I'm going to ask Doug Bergham to come up and say a couple of words because he's in charge, as you know.
He's interior, but he's in charge of the U.S. Park Police.
And I've heard so many great things about the Park Police.
They're proud of it.
They've been there for a long time.
Their families oftentimes grow into the roles.
They love the country.
They love this area.
So, Doug, could you say a few words, please?
doug burgum
Thank you, Mr. President.
On behalf of the U.S. Park Police, this is the oldest federal police force in the nation.
They were formed in 1791 by none other than President George Washington.
They've got the awesome responsibility of protecting our nation's most sacred monuments.
The National Mall, Washington Monument, Jefferson Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Statue of Liberty, and out west, the Presidio and the Golden Gate area.
These folks have tens of millions of visitors a year, the kind of people that President Trump's talking about that come from around the country and around the world to see our sacred and learn about our history and our sacred monuments.
They've been doing a fantastic job, but they are so pleased the rank and file that President Trump is now allowing them to enforce the law.
As those of you that live in the city may know that the circles and the triangle parks that are spread throughout D.C. are actually federal park property.
So the U.S. Park Police also have responsibility for that.
These became littered with homeless camps under the Biden administration.
All of you saw that since President Trump's executive order on March 27th, making D.C. safe and beautiful again.
The U.S. Park Police have removed over 70 homeless camps.
And President Trump also talked about beautification.
They're stopping and enforcing the laws against graffiti on our monuments.
They've removed over 80 specific attacks against our history with graffiti on our monuments.
So they continue to do a great job, whether it's in their vehicles, on foot, or on the mounted police that you see around the National Mall.
And President Trump, they thank you.
The rank and file is so happy to be enforcing the law again.
Thank you for your leadership.
And they're excited about the announcement you're making today.
unidentified
Thank you.
Very good.
donald j trump
Great job, you did.
Thank you very much.
Pete, could you say something about the military if you want?
pete hegseth
Well, Mr. President, it's an honor to be here.
And at your direction, this morning, we've mobilized the D.C. National Guard.
It'll be operationalized by the Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, through the D.C. Guard.
You will see them flowing into the streets of Washington in the coming week.
At your direction as well, sir, there are other units we are prepared to bring in.
Other National Guard units, other specialized units.
They will be strong, they will be tough, and they will stand with their law enforcement partners.
This is nothing new for DOD.
As the President noted, at the border, we've got 10,000 troops down there who've been operating in defense cooperation areas, defense zones, where there's zero, zero illegal crossings because of troops on strikers scanning the border.
We've been protecting other people's borders for 20 years.
It's about time we protect our own.
And we're working with ICE and CBP.
In Los Angeles, we did the same thing, working with the California National Guard, working with ICE officers.
ICE officers deserve to do their job and not be attacked.
We will work alongside all D.C. police and federal law enforcement to ensure this city is safe.
This city is beautiful.
And as I always say about President Trump to the troops, he has their back.
And my message to the National Guard and federal law enforcement in Washington is we have your back as well.
Be tough, be strong.
We're right behind you.
Thank you, Mr. President.
donald j trump
I'm going to ask Pam because she's now, as you heard me say, she's really in charge of a lot of what we're talking about.
She's done an incredible job.
People are going to start to see the fruits of her labor.
And Pam, maybe you could say a few words about what we're talking about here.
pam bondi
Sure, President.
Let me be crystal clear.
Crime in D.C. is ending and ending today.
We are going to use every power we have to fight criminals here.
President, thank you for caring about our capital.
Families come here every summer.
Our museums are free.
We have the National Zoo.
We have the National Gallery.
D.C. should be a place where everyone can come and feel safe.
Behind me and to my side, we have some of the best career law enforcement and prosecutors in the country who are ready to take this on.
As the President said, Terry Cole is going to be supervising the Metro Police Department.
Gaddy Seralta, our U.S. Marshal, is going to be supervising command and control the entire operation.
Our Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and I will be working with them closely along With our great FBI director, Cash Battelle.
Cash is going to talk to you in a minute about what we did in Virginia recently with Governor Yunkin.
Many of you covered that, and it was tremendously successful.
Not only that, our secret weapon here in D.C. is U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro, one of the toughest prosecutors and a former judge.
And she is going to be talking about juvenile crime, how it's out of control here, and what she's going to do to fight back.
No more, no more crime rampant in our beautiful capital.
No more teenage girls beating a disabled man to death.
No more of that.
No more drive-bys.
We're going to do everything we can.
And working with the ATF, ATF Director Driscoll, and commander of the Army, we're going to all work together.
That's what we all do in this room.
We work together.
We fight.
Do not underestimate one person in this room.
We're going to make D.C. beautiful.
We're going to make D.C. safe again.
One other thing, just at the wharf a few days ago, the area of the wharf, Terry Cole reached out to me, not even nightfall on the weekend, where so many families in Turusco.
A guy's overdosing from fentanyl on a park bench in the middle of families around.
They administer Narcan and saved his life.
No more of that.
The President of the United States is going to clean up D.C. and we're going to be there to help him and we're going to be successful.
Thank you.
donald j trump
Thank you, Pat.
Cash, talk about Northern Virginia if you were.
Northern Virginia, we had a big success.
kash patel
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Attorney General Bondi, for your leadership, Deputy Attorney General, the rest of our interagency partners.
Mr. President, the following is what happens when you let good cops be cops.
And I just want to highlight that before I get into Northern Virginia.
This year alone, under President Trump's administration, we've had over 4,000 child victims identified and found.
That's a 33% increase from the same time period last year.
33% increase.
We've had a seizure of 1,500 kilograms of fentanyl up to this date.
That is a 25% increase since the same time period last year.
And just to put it in perspective, 1,500 kilograms of fentanyl is enough to kill 115 million Americans, 115 million Americans.
Cops are getting after it.
The FBI has arrested 19,000 people this year alone.
Thanks to President Trump's administration, that's double than where we were this time last year.
And we have also arrested 1,600 people who have committed violent acts against children.
Children.
270 of them are human traffickers of children.
Mr. President, this is what happens when you have great leadership at the Attorney General with Pam Bondi, your administration's priority of protecting the homeland and protecting American citizens and protecting our children.
And the murder rates are plummeting.
We are now able to report that the murder rate is on track to be the lowest in U.S. history, in modern recorded U.S. history, thanks to this team behind me and President Trump's priorities.
And how do we do it?
And what are we going to bring to D.C.?
What we did in Northern Virginia, thanks to Terry Cole and Governor Yunkin and the team, we stood up a task force out in my Northern Virginia field office and we said, let's let good cops be cops.
Let's get them the intelligence and what they need and let's get the red tape out of their way and let's get DOJ partnered up with us to bring great prosecutions.
And that's exactly what we did.
In one month, we arrested 545 violent felons, 545 in the state of Virginia, thanks to Governor Yunkin's partnership.
And that simplicity in law enforcement is what's coming to Washington, D.C. When you let good cops be cops, when you give them the intel they need, when you work with our Homeland Security Task Force, when you work with Terry and Gaddy and I go way back to Miami, these guys are great leaders of the respective departments and law enforcement capacities.
And when you have the DOJ and President Trump driving behind this mission, we are going to clean up Washington, D.C. And we're going to do it the right way, the lawful way, and we're going to make sure Washington, D.C. is safe again.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you, Attorney General.
donald j trump
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Kish.
So the process begins right now.
It actually started over the weekend.
We confronted a lot of very bad people.
But it's going to be something that will be pretty amazing to you as you watch it.
And I think most of you say it's a beautiful thing to do it right.
We're going to be removing homeless encampments from all over our parks, our beautiful, beautiful parks, which now a lot of people can't walk on.
They'd be very, they're very dirty, very got a lot of problems.
But we've already started that.
We're moving the encampments away, trying to take care of people.
Some of those people, we don't know how they even got there.
Some of those people are from different countries, different parts of the world.
Nobody knows who they are.
They have no idea, but they're there.
Getting rid of the people from underpasses and public spaces from all over the city.
There are many places that they can go, and we're going to help them as much as you can help.
But they'll not be allowed to turn our capital into a wasteland for the world to see.
The Metropolitan Police Department and the federal authorities will be supported in the effort, a really big effort, the 800 DC National Guardsmen that we'll put on and much more if necessary, much more.
You remember I said, I offered 10,000 once.
Remember, I said to a certain person, a person who I thought always was highly overrated, not very competent.
But I said, if you need them, we'll give you 10,000 of the military or the National Guard.
They turned me down.
But if necessary, we're going to move service members directly to joining the Guardsmen.
And that'll take place very rapidly, and that'll be done in conjunction with Pam and with Pete and everybody else.
Washington, D.C. should be one of the safest, cleanest, and most beautiful cities anywhere in the world.
And we're going to make it that.
We're going to make it safe.
We're going to make it smart.
We're going to make it beautiful.
So beautiful.
Some of the buildings, we're going to add to it.
You see what we've done at the White House is the White House is a whole different building.
I do that in my part-time because it's a natural instinct as a real estate person.
I was very good at that.
And I was very good at fixing things up.
I like fixing things up.
You see what's happening.
The marble floors are being reinstalled, renovated, fixed.
The whole place is becoming very beautiful.
We're going to be adding a magnificent ballroom, most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere.
We need it.
I would have certainly loved to have had it today.
I think we would have filled it up.
A lot of you are standing outside, can't get in this room.
I have never seen the room like this, which tells me that you want to talk about, I mean, this was a D.C. news conference.
It tells me that you want to talk about crime in D.C. and beautification of D.C., but I'm going to put that, that's easy.
And I think, frankly, fixing the crime with the pros, fixing the crime is easy too.
A person who I've known for a long time, and she's been incredible, she was a fantastic, one of the best ever district attorneys in New York.
She was in Westchester, and she became a judge, very successful judge.
And then she went into Shopiz because she was such a good DA and such a good judge, tough judge, but fair, always fair.
Nobody ever complained about that, but she was tough.
And because of that and her reputation, she went into showbiz.
So a lot of people don't, you know, they think of Janine as Shopus.
Actually, Shopiz was not her thing.
And she did great.
She was on, along with a couple of other of my friends, on the number one show.
And she did great.
But this is what she loves doing.
This is really her baby.
What she's going to do is going to be incredible.
And I'd like to introduce to speak for just a few seconds on what she has in mind, what she wants to do.
We're going to be appointing some judges.
You know, we have some open spots and we're going to take people because the judges are letting killers out.
They just say, go, that's okay.
Don't worry about it.
So we're putting some, Pam recommended, Todd recommended, some judges that are great Janine recommended.
Janine's given me three great candidates already.
We have about 10 open spots, so we could probably create some more.
We need them.
Janine, would you say a few words, please?
judge jeanine pirro
Thank you very much, Mr. President, and thank you, Madam Attorney General, and to all my partners here.
We all want the same thing.
We all want a safe city.
We want a Safe capital.
We want to be able to bring our families here.
We want to be able to come and enjoy the history that makes this place great.
And unfortunately, we are not in that position right now.
And, Mr. President, I want to thank you for taking the step that we need right now to make criminals understand that they are not going to get away with it anymore.
And I'm not going to stand here and go over and over the cases.
But what I can tell you is this: I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the hell out of you or anyone else.
They don't care where they are.
They can be in DuPont Circle, but they know that we can't touch them.
Why?
Because the laws are weak.
I can't touch you if you're 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, and you have a gun.
I convict someone of shooting another person with an illegal gun on a public bus in the chest.
Intent to kill.
I convict him.
And you know what the judge gives him?
Probation.
Says you should go to college.
We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws.
We need to get rid of this concept of, you know, a no-cash bail.
We need to recognize that the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens.
And it starts today.
But it's not going to end today because the president is going to do everything we need to do to make sure that these emboldened criminals understand we see you, we're watching you, and we're going to change the law to catch you.
And my final note is this: these kids understand that the jurisdiction is through the state attorney general, Brian Schwab.
I did a poster of the young man from Doge who was beaten bloody with a severe concussion, a broken nose.
And then I did a poster of what happens to those kids because I can't arrest them.
I can't prosecute them.
They go to family court and they get to do yoga and arts and crafts.
Enough.
It changes today.
Thank you, Mr. President.
You're welcome.
donald j trump
Great job.
Thank you.
If I could, I just signed some executive orders.
I'd like to have Will please come up and we'll let the people know what we signed.
Do you want to put them down?
will scharf
Yes, sir.
donald j trump
Go ahead.
will scharf
A short while ago in the Oval Office, President Trump signed two crucial executive actions to deal with the emergency crime conditions we currently face in the District of Columbia.
The first of these was an executive order, as President Trump said before, invoking his powers under Section 40 of the Home Rule Act to take federal control of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
Along with that executive order, President Trump signed the statutorily required notification letters to Mayor Bowser and to the relevant House and Senate committee leaders.
The second major executive action that President Trump signed was a presidential memorandum directing the Secretary of Defense to utilize the National Guard to address the conditions we see on our streets here in D.C. It also authorized the Secretary of Defense to work with state governors to utilize their National Guard units if necessary as well.
These are bold, decisive steps intended to combat the out-of-control crime conditions we've seen on D.C. streets for far too long.
And I, for one, am deeply proud to be part of an administration that's finally coming to terms with these issues, sir.
donald j trump
Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you.
So just to conclude, Washington, D.C. should be one of the safest, cleanest, most beautiful places anywhere in the world.
It was years ago.
We had one problem that was a pretty big problem.
The radical left got out of control and they started trying to rip down statues.
And I said, let's go pass a law real fast.
We're going to do it real fast.
But we were blocked by the Democrats who do not want safety.
Nobody gets it.
I don't get it.
They don't get it because they can't get votes.
I don't know how they can win an election with this, but they don't want safety.
And I found an old statute, very old, early 1900s that said, if you so much as touch or even think about destroying a statue or a monument in Washington, D.C., you go to jail for 10 years with no probation, no anything.
In other words, slightly different than we have today.
Today we have cashless bail.
Today you get jailed 10 years.
No curtailed sentence, 10 years.
And we took it out.
Nobody used it.
It was never used because, you know, it was harsh.
And you remember they started to rip down a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
I said, that's a tough one to rip down.
He was pretty good, Pam.
I think he was pretty good.
When the ropes started going around Abraham Lincoln to pull him down, Andrew Jackson, others.
And they were heading to the Jefferson Memorial, Thomas Jefferson.
They're going to do a big number there.
I said, it's time.
And I signed that statute immediately.
We had it updated.
We made it use the same language, all passed by Congress.
And I announced it's 10 years in jail, no probation, no anything, 10 years, no curtail sentence if you touch, so much as touch a statue in Washington, D.C. And it was an amazing sight, beautiful sight.
Everybody just left.
The ropes were hanging around Andrew Jackson.
There were two ropes around Abraham Lincoln.
They left the rope, but everybody just left.
And that was the last problem we ever had.
You know, that was the last problem that we ever had with the statues.
They were going wild.
And somebody came to me and said, sir, in 1910, I don't want to give you an exact, because you'll say, Donald Trump gave us wrong days around like early on.
You know, if I'm slightly off, they make you sound a little bad.
So I won't put myself in that position.
I won't put you in that position, because I think everybody agrees with what we're doing today.
But when I signed that thing, it was like a miracle.
Everybody left.
They were gone.
They were starting to march down.
They started the march toward Thomas Jefferson.
And I figured he was always going to be safe.
But they found something with him, and they found something with Abraham Lincoln.
And even in the name George Washington in California, numerous places changed the name of George Washington High School and various other places.
They took George Washington's name.
This was a sick, woke culture that I think we've largely ended.
And a lot of those people that were woke are now turning out to be the opposite.
I won't go so far as to say MAGA.
It's a very special category.
But they've gotten out of that.
But we have people that love this country and they love this really beautiful capital.
It is.
I flew over it the other day and I said, what a beautiful place.
But if there's crime all over the streets, when you get there, it doesn't look so beautiful.
But we're going to make it beautiful again.
We're going to fix it with crime and we're going to also, as we're doing that, we're going to start doing things that we know how to do that I know how to do better than anybody, I guess, because of my experience from previous life.
But not only are we stopping the crime, we're going to clean up the trash and the graffiti and the grime and the dirt and the broken marble panels and all of the things they've done to hurt this city.
And we're going to restore the city back to the gleaming capital that everybody wants it to be.
It's going to be something very special.
All of these people are really tough.
Could I shake your hand, Getty, please?
You're going to be so important to you.
You're going to be I hope I don't have to fire him in two weeks because he's too soft.
I don't think he's too soft.
If I do, I will, though.
Is it okay?
If you're soft, weak, and pathetic like so many people, I will fire you so fast.
You're not going to have to worry about that.
No, I think you're going to do a fantastic job.
And everybody in this room, they may not express it, but they all want that to happen.
You know, they want to be safe and they have families too.
So it's an honor to have such a large group.
I've done This for years now, hard to believe.
I've never seen this room so packed.
In fact, I'm sure it's a violation of every fire code.
But we'll let you stay anyway.
You take it a chance.
And with that, we'll say, maybe if you could, oh, wow.
unidentified
We could be here all day long.
donald j trump
If you could, if we could keep the first questions perhaps to this subject and then we'll go on to a few other questions.
Please.
unidentified
Mr. President, thank you so much.
Can you talk about how personal of an issue this is?
You talked about flying over the Washington Monument and seeing the pride of what DC is.
And do you believe that the status of the city, the cleanliness, the way that crime is low, is a direct reflection on how the country is run as a city?
donald j trump
Yeah, I do.
I think the capital, look, everyone comes here.
They're all coming.
All the leaders, they're all wanting to come.
And I say it, I've said it again, but I'm really just quoting other leaders from NATO, from the Middle East, King of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE.
I was over there.
We brought back $5.1 trillion of investment into our country.
But I was a month and a half ago, I was at NATO.
We had a great thing.
They agreed to put up 5% instead of 2%.
2% they didn't pay, 5% is already paid.
We had a great meeting, and they all said the same thing.
They said, our country was dead.
They thought our country was gone.
One year ago, they said your country was dead.
And now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
We do.
We're the hottest country in the world right now.
The tariffs have helped.
It's given us not only the money, it's billions, trillions of dollars of money, but it gives us great power over enemies.
We solved five wars with Pakistan and India, we just solved one.
Azure, Bajan, and as you know, and Armenia.
A war was raging for 37 years, and the two leaders got up and they said, We never thought this would be solved.
Russia tried to solve it.
They all tried to solve it.
It was a very tough situation, but we got it done and got it done.
And I said to the two men, I said, Are you guys friends?
And they had a hard time.
They've been killing each other for 37 years, right?
One was there five years, one was there for 22 years.
He said, My whole life I've been fighting this war, and you got it solved.
But we did many of those.
We did in the Congo and Rwanda.
That's been going on for 30 years.
Eight to nine million people killed that they know of, but it was raging, and we got that solved.
We got a lot of them done.
It's a great honor.
But you want to have, when they come, the leaders come to our country to sign documents that the war is over or whatever, or for other reasons.
They come for trade.
And you want them to come through so beautifully.
You ride down those roads.
Everything should be perfect.
You shouldn't have medians falling down into the roadway, median, you know, the metal things that are always.
Somebody had a great, a great lobbyist because I've never seen them look good.
I've been looking at those things with the little, right?
They're always broken and bad.
But here they're really bad.
And we're going to either put new or fix it.
And it's not expensive.
It's not really expensive.
We're going to fix our roads a little bit.
We're going to clean up our sidewalks.
You have countries where every Saturday the people go out and they wash their sidewalks in front of their stores or their houses.
They scrub.
They scrub their sidewalks.
So we aren't quite at that level yet.
I don't think, Gaddy, we're not quite there yet, but maybe we will.
They go out and they scrub.
I think it's so beautiful to hear that and to see those stories.
But we're going to make it clean.
But just to finish with your question, it's a very, very strong reflection of our country.
And when they see a bad city, you know, my father always used to tell me, I had a wonderful father, very smart.
And he used to say, son, when you walk into a restaurant and you see a dirty front door, don't go in.
Because if the front door is dirty, the kitchen's dirty also.
Same thing with the capital.
If our capital's dirty, our whole country is dirty and they Don't respect us.
So it's a very good question.
unidentified
Mr. President.
Question for you on the specific issue.
Do you expect more cities to follow DC's path if this goes through?
So the idea is that Chicago, LA, San Francisco, would they expect similar action what we've seen in DC?
Any other questions, sir?
There is reporting that the administration is going to reclassify marijuana.
Would that send mixed messages that marijuana is okay, some drugs are okay, but we're trying to clean up crime.
donald j trump
How do they go hand in hand?
We're only looking at that.
That's early.
But somebody reported it, which is fine.
We're looking at it.
Some people like it.
Some people hate it.
Some people hate the whole concept of marijuana because if it does bad for the children, it does bad for people that are older than children.
But we're looking at reclassification, and we'll make a determination over the next, I would say, over the next few weeks.
And that determination hopefully will be the right one.
It's a very complicated subject, the subject of marijuana.
I've heard great things having to do with medical, and I've had bad things having to do with just about everything else.
But medical and, you know, for pain and various things, I've heard some pretty good things, but for other things, I've heard some pretty bad things.
The other part of your question, I mean, we're just going to see what happens with it all.
We're going to have a tremendous success in what we're doing.
Other cities are hopefully watching this.
They're all watching, just like everyone's watching here.
They're all watching.
And maybe they'll self-clean up and maybe they'll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all of the things that caused the problem.
I mean, if you go back, this whole thing with cashless bail is a disaster.
So many problems came that we never had before.
So they're watching us today.
And if they don't learn their lesson, if they haven't studied us properly, because we're going to be very successful, I have zero doubt about that.
It's going to be a question of will it be really fast, like the border.
You know, everyone said, they used to say, Biden used to say, I need legislation.
I need, you didn't need, I didn't get any legislation.
I called up our people, and we did a great job.
Tom Holman was great.
As you know, our secretary did a great job.
They did a great job.
There's no games.
They didn't play games.
And we're going to have the same thing here.
But then I'm going to look at New York in a little while.
Let's do this.
Let's do this together.
Let's see.
It's going to go pretty quickly.
And if we need to, we're going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster.
We have a mayor there who's totally incompetent.
He's an incompetent man.
And we have an incompetent governor there.
Pritzker's an incompetent.
His family threw him out of the business and he ran for governor.
And now I understand he wants to be president.
But I noticed he lost a little weight, so maybe he has a chance.
You know, you never know what happens.
But Pritzker's a gross incompetent guy, thrown out of the family business.
But when I look at Chicago and I look at LA, if we didn't go to LA three months ago, LA would be burning like the part that didn't burn.
If he would have allowed the water to come down, which I told him about in my first term, I said, you're going to have problems.
Let it come down.
We actually sent in our military to have the water come down into LA.
They still didn't want it to come down after the fires.
But that was it.
We have it coming down.
But hopefully LA is watching.
That mayor also.
The city's burning.
They lost like 25,000 homes.
I went there the day after the fire.
You were there.
And I saw people standing in front of a burned-down home.
Their homes were incinerated.
They weren't like, even the steel was literally, it was all warped and literally disintegrated because of the winds and the flame and the whole thing.
It was like a blowtorch.
They were standing on this beautiful day, maybe a couple of days after.
We gave it a little time because what they had suffered, almost 25,000 homes.
And you see what's happening now?
They didn't give their permits.
I went to a town hall meeting.
I said, we're going to get you the federal permits, which are much harder.
Almost immediately.
Lee's Eldon is a star.
He did an incredible job.
They have all their federal permits.
They don't have their city permits.
And the mayor said to me, we think we could have them in two years.
I was walking down the street, and I met with firemen And police.
And I was saying hello to many people that were standing in front of their homes with yellow tape.
You can't go in.
You can't go onto the lot.
And those people wanted to start rebuilding the homes then and there.
And the mayor said we should be able to get them the permits within two years.
I said, that's a shame.
Two years.
Are you kidding?
I'm going to get them the federal permit, like almost immediately, two years.
And she rule it back.
Well, maybe one year.
The place was booing her out of the place.
They don't have their permits to build their homes.
And now they're talking about putting this is among the most beautiful areas in the country.
Now they're talking about putting low-income housing there.
Can you believe this?
I love low-income housing.
I made money with low-income housing.
I built low-income housing.
I know more about low-income housing and luxury housing.
I know about everything real estate.
They want to replace some of those homes with low-income housing.
They haven't gotten their permits yet.
We've gotten all the federal permits, which are much tougher to get.
And it was done almost immediately through Lee Zeldon and Federal Environmental.
And I watched the other day, those people are angry.
And now, you know, they had tremendous, they love that area.
They loved a whole big area, different places, but they loved it.
It was all luxury stuff and beautiful stuff.
And some wasn't that luxury, but the level of love for that neighborhood, their neighbors, was incredible.
And you know what?
I watched people on television, they want to go, they want to leave.
They've lost their spirit, they've lost their heart because the mayor's incompetent.
And Gavin Newscomb is incompetent.
He's got a good line of bullshit, but that's about it.
He's incompetent.
And you have Los Angeles is, you know, it's amazing.
You know, I called the first thing I did, I got the Olympics to go there.
I was the one that got it.
And by a rare thing that happened, I'll be the president.
I was very upset because I got the Olympics there and I said, I won't be president when it comes.
But bad things happened and illegal things happened, really illegal things happened.
Now it turns out one good thing was I'm going to be the president for the Olympics for 2050, for 250, which is going to be fantastic, and also for the World Cup.
So we have a lot of good things.
And I hope 250 is going to be the 250th anniversary is going to be the best.
But when I looked at those people and I saw last night on television that they still don't have their permits, it's a disgrace what's happened in Los Angeles.
unidentified
Thank you.
The China tariff deadline is tonight, but do you plan to extend that?
donald j trump
We'll see what happens.
China's been, we've been dealing very nicely with China, as you probably have heard.
They have tremendous tariffs that they're paying to the United States of America.
And we'll see what happens.
They've been dealing quite nicely.
The relationship is very good with President Xi and myself.
unidentified
You mentioned your upcoming with President Putin.
Tell us what you hope to get out of that and whether you consider inviting President Zelensky to join.
donald j trump
So you have to understand, this is a war that should have never happened.
This is a war that wouldn't have happened if I were president.
It would have never happened.
It was the apple of his eye.
I got along very well with President Putin.
But if you look, under President Bush, they took a lot of territory.
Under President Obama, they took a lot of territory.
Under Biden, they essentially took the whole thing.
You know, it's just a question of time.
Under Trump, you know what they took?
Nothing, nothing.
I was the one that said you can't build your pipeline that was half-built.
I came in, I stopped the pipeline.
It's called Nord Stream 2.
Nobody knows that.
Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2.
You might have not even heard it.
Biggest pipeline in the world.
I stopped it.
I was not a friend of Russia, but I got along well with Putin.
It's always good to get along with other countries if possible.
But that doesn't mean you roll over like Biden did.
Biden came in and he immediately approved the pipeline.
I couldn't believe it.
Then they say Trump wasn't tough on Russia.
I wasn't tough.
I was the toughest.
Putin said, if you're not tough, I would hate like hell to see you.
I stopped the biggest economic development job, the biggest job that Russia had ever built.
I stopped it.
It was dead.
And this low IQ president came in and he let them build the pipeline and supply oil and gas all over Europe, you know.
So this is really a feel-out meeting a little bit.
And President Putin invited me to get involved.
He wants to get involved.
I think, I believe he wants to get it over with.
Now, I've said that a few times, and I've been disappointed because I'd have like a great call with him, and then missiles would be lobbed into Kiev or some other place, and you'd have 60 people laying on a road dying.
I said, that's cold.
That's cold.
But it's a violent war.
Five to seven thousand people a week are dying.
And you know, there's nobody from here.
They're all Russian and Ukrainian people and some people from the cities, much smaller number, but still, those missiles do damage and they kill a lot of people, but mostly soldiers.
And they're young soldiers, although in the case of Ukraine, they're getting much older.
They're drafting 60-year-olds now.
It's a terrible thing to witness.
And I think I have an obligation.
Look, this is Joe Biden's war.
This is not my war.
I made a deal with NATO a month ago.
You covered it very accurately, actually.
We don't pay anything anymore.
You know, we're not paying anything.
They are buying things from us, and NATO is paying us.
I got it raised from 2% of GDP to 5%.
And they're paying us for everything that we send.
We're not paying.
But Biden approved $350 billion.
Europe has spent $100 billion.
The money that's been spent and the death is incredible.
It's the worst thing that's happened, by far the worst that's happened since World War II.
So I'm going in to speak to Vladimir Putin.
And I'm going to be telling him, you've got to end this war, you've got to end it.
And he wasn't going to mess with me.
This war would have never happened.
You know, we had a discussion about it one time, and we never had that discussion again.
It would have never happened.
And when the election was rigged, and then Biden took office, which barely took office, the Otto Penn took office, bad things started happening.
Bad things, stupid things were said.
And it ended up in a war.
And you know, the big, and I don't believe this will happen anymore because I have that pretty well covered.
This could end up in a third world war.
This could have been a third world war.
I don't think that's going to happen now.
But I thought it was very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country as opposed to us going to his country or even a third third-party place.
But I think we'll have constructive conversations.
Then after that meeting, immediately, maybe as I'm flying out, maybe as I'm leaving the room, I'll be calling the European leaders who I get along with very well.
And, you know, I have a great relationship, I think, with all of them.
And I get along with Zelensky, but, you know, I disagree with what he's done.
Very, very severely disagree.
This is a war that should have never happened, wouldn't have happened.
But I'll be speaking to Zelensky.
The next meeting will be with Zelensky and Putin, or Zelensky and Putin and me.
I'll be there if they need.
But I want to have a meeting set up between the two leaders.
I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelensky was saying, well, I have to get constitutional approval.
I mean, he's got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap because there'll be some land swapping going on.
I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody to the good, for the good of Ukraine.
Good stuff, not bad stuff.
Also, some bad stuff for both.
So there's good and there's bad.
But it's very complex because you have lines that are very uneven.
And there'll be some swapping.
There'll be some changes in land.
And the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes.
We're going to change the lines, the battle lines.
Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine.
They've occupied some very prime territory.
We're going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.
But they've taken some very prime territory.
They've taken largely ocean, you know, in real estate, we call it ocean front property.
That's always the most valuable property.
If you're in a lake, a river, or an ocean, it's always the best property.
Well, Ukraine, a lot of people don't know that.
Ukraine was largely a thousand miles of ocean.
That's gone.
Other than one small area, Odessa, it's a small area.
There's just a little bit Of water left.
So I'm going to go and see the parameters.
Now I may leave and say good luck, and that'll be the end.
I may say this is not going to be settled.
I mean, there are those that believe that Putin wanted all of Ukraine.
I happen to be one of them, by the way.
I think if it weren't for me, he would not be even talking to anybody else right now.
But I'm going to meet with him.
We're going to see what the parameters are.
I'm then going to call up President Zelensky and the European leaders right after the meeting, yeah.
And I'm going to tell them what kind of a deal.
I'm not going to make a deal.
It's not up to me to make a deal.
I think a deal should be made for both.
I think Russia has to get back into building their country.
It's a massive country.
I think they have 11 time zones, if you can believe it.
It's a massive, it's by far, from the standpoint of land, it's by far the largest.
They have tremendous potential in Russia to do well.
They're not doing well.
Their economy is not doing well right now because it's been very well disturbed by this.
It doesn't help when the President of the United States tells their largest or second largest oil buyer that we're putting a 50% tariff on you if you buy oil from Russia.
That was a big blow.
And then they say, gee, he wasn't so tough.
Nobody else would have done that.
And I haven't stopped there.
I mean, look, I was all set to do things far bigger than that.
But I got a call that they'd like to meet, and I'm going to see what they want to meet about.
I'd like to see a ceasefire.
I'd like to see the best deal that could be made for both parties.
You know, it takes two to tango, right?
So ultimately, I'll have a meeting next week.
I had a great relationship with him, considering the fact that, you know, I was not nice to him because of the pipeline.
I ended the pipeline.
I also gave the javelins.
Do you ever hear of a javelin?
Javelin is called a tank buster.
They say that Obama gave them sheets and I gave them javelins.
If it weren't for me, all those tanks that were destroyed at the first days of the war because the tanks got stuck in the mud, some commander made a better state.
You know, they would have been in Kiev in four hours going down the highway.
But a Russian general made a brilliant decision to go through the farmland instead.
And they just had torrential rains, and the rains were so bad, and it was mud, and those tanks got stuck in the mud.
I don't know who that general is, but knowing Vladimir, he's probably not around any longer because all those tanks were stuck in the mud and they went along with the javelins.
I gave him the javelins.
You know that, right?
I gave him javelins.
They gave him sheets.
But I'm going to meet with President Putin and we're going to see what he has in mind.
And if it's a fair deal, I'll reveal it to the European Union leaders and to the NATO leaders and also to President Zelensky.
I think out of respect, I'll call him first.
And then I'll call them after.
And I may say, lots of luck, keep fighting, or I may say we can make a deal.
I will tell you this: I've seen a poll coming out of Ukraine.
88% of the people would like to see a deal made.
And if you go back three years, everybody was gung-ho for war.
You know, everybody's gung-ho for war until you have it.
It's an amazing thing.
I had it with a couple of countries where I couldn't get a deal done with one particular country.
And I just couldn't.
The guy's great.
He's a friend of mine.
Great.
Good leader.
Tough as hell.
I couldn't get the deal done.
And then he went into war for a short period of time.
You know where I'm talking about.
First term.
And it was nasty, guys being killed all over the place.
And he went through one week of war, and I was able to get the deal done.
He said, this is nasty.
Yes, please.
unidentified
Just to follow up on what you were saying there.
First of all, Vladimir Zelensky is not invited on Friday.
donald j trump
He wasn't a part of it?
I would say he could go, but he's gone to a lot of meetings.
You know, he's been there for three and a half years.
Nothing happened.
unidentified
What is the definition?
donald j trump
I mean, do you want somebody that's been doing this for three and a half years?
What's the definition of a good deal?
I'll tell you after I hear what the deal is.
I was going to ask you.
Because there could be many definitions.
You know, you're talking about a very large and complex situation.
Now, I tell you, the war that I just settled with Azerbaijan and with, as you know, in Armenia, was almost as complex as this one, having to do with routes.
Well, we're going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin, and at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.
Because that's what I do.
unidentified
I make deals.
donald j trump
Please, guys.
unidentified
Thank you, Mr. President.
I'm going to ask you two questions: one about China, one about Russia.
If I could.
On China, your administration agreed to send the most advanced or advanced NVIDIA and AMD chips.
donald j trump
No, obsolete.
unidentified
No.
Obsolete chip.
And then 15% of the problems.
donald j trump
I mean, the 20s.
No, no.
This is an old chip that China already has.
And I deal with Jensen, who's a great guy, and NVIDIA.
The chip that we're talking about, the H-20, it's an old chip.
China already has it in a different form, different name, but they have it.
Or they have a combination of two will make up for it, and even then some.
Now, Jensen also has, Jensen's a very brilliant guy, and Jensen also has a new chip, the Blackwell.
Do you know what the Blackwell is?
The Blackwell is super duper advanced.
I wouldn't make a deal with that, although it's possible I'd make a deal a somewhat enhanced in a negative way Blackwell.
In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it.
But that's the latest of the greatest in the world.
Nobody has it.
They won't have it for five years.
But the H-20 is obsolete.
You know, it's one of those things.
But it still has a market.
So I said, listen, I want 20% if I'm going to prove this for you, for the country, for our country, for the U.S. I don't want it myself.
You know, every time I say like, like 747, I want, I want, yeah, for the Air Force.
So I just wanted, so when I say I want 20%, I want for the country.
I only care about the country.
I don't care about myself.
And he said, would you make it 15?
So we negotiate a little deal.
So he's selling an essentially old chip that Huawei has a similar chip, a chip that does the same thing.
And I said, good, if I'm going to give it to you, because they have a, you know, they have a stopper, what we call a stopper, not allowed to do it.
It's really known as a restrictive covenant.
And I said, if I'm going to do that, I want you to pay us as a country something, because I'm giving you a release.
I release them only from the H-20.
Now, on the Blackwell, I think he's coming to see me again about that.
But that will be an unenhanced version of the big one.
Like, I don't know if you know it, we will sometimes sell fighter jets to a country and we'll give them 20% less than we have.
Do you know what I mean, right?
unidentified
That's all in Russia.
That's the same.
Do you see a time, Mr. President, when there could be normal trade between the U.S. and Russia?
Should the meeting go well?
Should there be peace?
donald j trump
I do.
Russia has a very valuable piece of land.
If Vladimir Putin would go toward business instead of toward war, you know, it's a warring nation.
That's what they do.
They fight a lot of wars.
A friend of mine said Russia's tough because they just keep on fighting.
They beat Hitler, so did we.
And they beat Napoleon.
You know, they've been doing this for a long time.
I asked a question to a very, very smart man that some people like and some people don't like.
Viktor Orban, right, from Hungary, the head of Hungary.
And he's in that same area and knows the two countries very well.
I said, this was before Biden didn't do anything to get us out of it.
He could have gotten efforts out of that.
It would have never happened.
I said, so can Russia be beaten by Ukraine?
He looked at me like, what a stupid question.
He said, Russia's a massive country, and they win their country, and they win their life through wars.
They fight wars.
That's what they do.
He said, China beat you with trade.
Russia beats you with war.
That was a very interesting statement.
China's not beating us with trade.
Not when I'm in charge.
But they were beating Biden with trade, but they never beat us with trade.
Don't forget, China had to pay $400 billion worth of tariffs when I was last time.
That was last time.
And if we didn't have COVID, all of this stuff would already be loaded.
You know, we're finding hundreds of billions of dollars of cash is pouring into our country now because of tariffs.
And all we're doing is we're doing what they do to us.
It's so beautiful to see it.
They found last month, as you saw, $25 billion of excess cash flow.
They say, where did it come from?
I said, I'll tell you where it came from.
It came from a place called Tariffs.
And we're doing very well.
We're really doing well.
But I expect to have a meeting with Putin.
I think it'll be good, but it might be bad.
And I have, hey, I'm here for one reason to get rid of a war that somebody else started.
Should have never happened.
And if I could end it, great.
Complex war, a lot of bad blood, a lot of bad blood.
But Zelensky's been there for three and a half years.
So if you put him in a room, now I will say this: ultimately, I'm going to put the two of them in a room.
I'll be there or I won't be there.
And I think it'll get solved.
Yeah, please.
Excuse me, I'm going to suggest because could you do you have any other questions on DC?
unidentified
Because I don't want them, I don't want them to be.
donald j trump
Wait, wait, wait.
These are incredible people.
I don't want them to be standing up here on subjects.
Does anybody have a question of them?
unidentified
And then you guys can leave.
donald j trump
Okay, a question, Brian.
unidentified
Go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. President.
All right.
donald j trump
And by the way, this is only on DC, and then they're going to leave because it's unfair to have them stand up here all day long.
unidentified
Brian.
I've got two questions for you.
First, about D.C. This is personal for me as well.
Last year, I was robbed on the streets by one of these teenage thugs, had a gun, got away with it.
Let's talk about the effort that between law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges, because it's a recycling belt.
These kids go, they don't fear the police.
They know it.
If you talk about how we've got to get these judges and put these kids behind bars, adult crimes deserve adult penalties.
And my second question, after you answer that, please.
judge jeanine pirro
Do you want me to answer?
unidentified
Whoever it was in the chat.
judge jeanine pirro
Okay, okay.
It's real.
Do you want me to answer it?
Here's the problem.
Assuming that they're 17 years, older than 17 years old, I can get the case.
If they're under 18 years of age, I can only get the case if it's murder, rob one, rape, or even if they shoot a gun but don't kill you.
I can't get it.
So the law has to be changed.
As the president said, counsel is bail.
That has to be changed.
All right, then, even assuming I get the case, I get jurisdiction, I get a conviction, the DC council has given the judges the ability to give probation on shootings.
And so then it's up to them.
All of these things, the Youth Rehabilitation Incarceration Reduction Act, and now they want to seal records.
So if we work hard, we get a conviction, they want to wipe it out.
So that needs all to be changed.
unidentified
Okay, Mr. Corsair.
donald j trump
Pam, would you answer that also?
pam bondi
Yeah, and just back to back to that topic.
Let's be clear, though.
We're going to charge them, and we're going to track every single thing they do throughout every step of the court process and report back to you and let all of you know what's happening to them.
Because the people who are prosecuting them, the judges who are trying them, they also need to be held accountable.
unidentified
Mr. President, these are the most people we've ever seen in this briefing.
donald j trump
I've never seen anything.
unidentified
Ever, right?
donald j trump
I've never seen anyone.
Where's Caroline?
Where's my superstar?
Carolina.
unidentified
Is Caroline back?
donald j trump
Where's Caroline?
Come here, Caroline.
Come here, Caroline.
Come here.
Is she doing a good job, by the way?
Come here, Carol.
Is this the largest crowd that you've ever seen?
unidentified
This is definitely the most packed briefing, and I think all of you would agree.
I think it's why we need to build a ballroom.
Yes!
Listen, I have a better idea.
No seats.
donald j trump
All right, so let's take a look at Brian Guy.
unidentified
The question is this: you're building the big, beautiful ballroom.
Could we build a big, beautiful briefing room of gas technology?
More seats.
donald j trump
I don't want to do that.
I don't want you to be comfortable.
So, no, I don't want to make life comfortable.
unidentified
So, look, look, look, let's just do this.
donald j trump
Let's do this.
It's going to be a big thing.
We're going to Russia.
That's going to be a big deal.
What happens happens?
I'll let you know what happens.
You'll be the first to know.
I'll be calling the European leaders.
I'm going with totally, I mean, we have a lot of talks.
They're great people.
They're great leaders, actually, and they want to get back.
Honestly, as one of them said, I've OD'd on trying to settle Ukraine.
They've OD'd, meaning they've overdosed on the settlement of Ukraine.
Not a nice expression, but boy, is it accurate.
They're tired of it.
They want to get back to spending money on their countries.
You know, they're in.
Biden gave them $350 billion.
Europe gave $100 billion.
It should be much more than that.
Shouldn't have been that kind of, they should have had equalization, but they didn't.
But you know what?
Still a lot of money.
They want to get back to building their own countries.
They really want it resolved.
My relationship with the European leaders, as you saw, is extremely good.
Like it's perfect.
It's beautiful.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
And we're going to try.
I'll be in touch with them.
I have five of them call me.
You think it's easy?
A lot of European leaders, but they rely on me, very much rely on me.
If it wasn't for me, this thing would never get solved until the last person breathing is dead.
unidentified
Would you talk to them before?
donald j trump
I'm talking to them right now.
So I'm talking to the European leaders.
I'll be talking to President Zelensky.
I'm going to get everybody's ideas.
I go into that thing fully loaded right up there, and we're going to see what happens.
Now, I think one of two things is going to happen.
It's going to be a good meeting, and we'll go a step further.
We'll get it done.
I'd like to see a ceasefire very, very quickly.
Very quick.
I'd like to see it immediately, but I'd like to see it very quickly.
And we're going to be dealing with the European leaders, and we're going to be dealing with President Zelensky.
And hopefully, we're going to have a great success.
As far as this, what we did today, and I think you were here for D.C. more so than even Russia, because Russia will be, you know, we have a couple of days to go.
But the Russia is going to be very interesting.
But to me, what is very exciting, we're going to take back our capital.
We're going to make it beautiful again, but we're going to make it, more importantly, safe again.
It's going to be so safe.
It's going to be a model.
And then we'll look at other cities also.
But other cities are studying what we're doing.
And you have some capable people in other cities.
They can do it too.
But we have a great group of professionals.
We're going to have a safe, beautiful capital, and it's going to happen very quickly.
Thank you all.
Thank you all.
unidentified
Madam Attorney General of the Justice Department appearing at Steam decision today, Mr. President.
How long will the takeover of DC police go out?
We'll see you guys tomorrow.
We'll have another question.
steve bannon
Okay, welcome back.
I got to tell you, we could play that in its entirety again, and it'd be absolutely incredible.
I think that's what we all voted for.
President of the United States announcing they're taking direct control of the nation's capital.
They're going to be National Guard, maybe some Army units.
And as I said at the beginning, it's a template for going forward for other cities.
So we're going to turn it over here in a moment to Charlie Kirk.
Dave, we've got about 30 seconds day, Brad, for your observations, sir.
Amazing press conference by the President.
dave brat
Yeah, just across the board.
I mean, he just took it all on.
The major theme I took was instability.
If you just look at the local DC level, The wars, the deep state, it's instability.
Trump is bringing stability and all power to him.
He's doing great.
steve bannon
Absolutely unbelievable.
What a way to kick off a week.
This is going to be an incredibly historic week.
President Trump's going to Alaska to try to bring peace to Ukraine in the world.
Today, a monumental press conference about bringing law and order to the nation's capital and beauty back to the nation's capital.
Stability.
Charlie Kirk's going to take it from here.
We're going to be back at 5 p.m.
We've got a special at 6.
I'm going to be hosting on Donald Trump in the rule of law.
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