Steve Bannon and his allies at CPAC declare Iran decisively defeated after striking over 10,000 targets, including 154 ships, rendering the regime unable to negotiate without surrendering nuclear ambitions. They celebrate a $50,000 Dow, record tax refunds, and a $12 billion farmer payment while dismissing NATO failures and criticizing the Supreme Court and Justice Roberts. The discussion also covers alleged Chinese election interference, ICE removals of 11,888 individuals, and a proposed joint venture with Venezuela for 100 million barrels of oil, framing these actions as proof of American resurgence against global adversaries. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, listen, I think if you look at it, I think President Trump's right.
I mean, he took out the Ayatollah.
He's taken out all the way down, I think, to the brigade level on the Revolutionary Guard, right?
If he finds somebody to negotiate with, that to me, by definition, is the leadership.
If he finds somebody to negotiate with, he hasn't found it yet, right?
We have a path through the Pakistanis.
There's some other group that keeps giving negative feedback.
But once he finds that group, that Witkoff or the vice president or Jared Kushner, whoever's in the room with our people, I would say by definition, that's the leadership he's comfortable enough with.
So it's almost, you find out who you can negotiate with that can actually represent the country as shattered as it is, and then that to me is the leadership you deal with.
I think the Delsi Rodriguez thing, as you know, developed over time.
They actually had a side negotiation with her and cut her, which is very smart.
It's very tough, I think, to, I think a lot of those guys that they thought they had, a lot of those have been killed.
And so that's why you have different power centers over there, and that one power center that's being most aggressive against President Trump may actually be the leadership you end up dealing with.
But I'm sure President Trump and the intelligence services in joint command know they're looking for somebody that can actually, because remember, to make this deal, you have to live by the terms of it.
Just talking our global war coverage from our newsroom, a milestone in the air campaign against Iran.
U.S. Central Command tonight reports that American forces have now struck more than 10,000 military targets since the operation began.
This is one of them hit earlier today.
CENTCOM included no details, but CNN military analyst Edric Layden tells us it was a weapon storage facility.
Israeli forces were busy as well again today.
That is another Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon today, part of what Israel's defense minister says is the campaign to establish a security zone about 20 miles deep inside Lebanese territory.
Israeli forces today also struck in Gaza.
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Speaker Johnson today described the conflict as wrapping up, but the 82nd Airborne Division, they're typically deployed at the beginning of conflicts.
So does the White House consider this conflict as wrapping up or is it changing shape?
She also reiterated that the administration's timeline for the fighting is still, quote, approximately four to six weeks.
To that end, two senior administration officials tell us the White House is working to arrange a meeting in Pakistan this weekend to discuss what an off-ramp to the war might entail.
Look, bringing Congress and the allies on board doesn't give you an unlimited blank check, but it gives you a lot more than what we have now.
When you go to war without Congress, without the public, without allies, when your objectives constantly churn and change, you basically are going to war without a cushion.
And if and when things last longer or start to head south, who do you appeal to?
What do you say?
And I think this administration is paying a price for the lack of preparation in every sense of the word.
And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they're afraid to say it because they figure they'll be killed by their own people.
They're also afraid they'll be killed by us.
There's never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran.
Obviously, for weeks, there has been a lot of chatter about the possibility that the Trump administration might deploy troops to take Karg Island in an attempt to kind of coerce Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz because this island is such a key economic lifeline for the Iranians.
And the Iranians have taken notice and they have begun, according to our sources, reinforcing the island with additional air defenses, with additional personnel.
And they've also begun laying traps, booby traps around the island that include mines, including along the shore, where U.S. troops might make an amphibious landing if they were to move forward with a ground operation there.
Now, U.S. Central Command, they did decline to comment on the Iranian preparations for Karg, but U.S. officials and experts that we spoke to said the risks are extremely high, given all of that, given the preparations Iran is making, given the fact that this island is so close to the Iranian coastline, they will still be susceptible to Iranian drone and missile attacks.
And, you know, the Speaker of Iran's parliament on Wednesday actually said this openly, said that anyone who dares try to occupy these Iranian islands are going to be subject to relentless attack.
And he said that based on the intelligence the Iranians are receiving, they understand that with the support of one of the U.S.'s regional allies, the U.S. is preparing to occupy one of Iran's islands.
We know that Karg Island has been a fixation of President Trump's for quite some time now.
And he warned that all enemy movements are under the full surveillance of our armed forces.
So it's worth noting the U.S. does have the forces available to do this if it wants to, to Marine Expeditionary Units.
They are en route to the Middle East and they would specialize in this kind of operation.
But still, the risks and the casualty possibilities, the risks of really high U.S. casualties are there.
The Trump administration is taking note of that and weighing whether the risk is worth it.
It's one measure of success, and there's no doubt, in my view, that there's a degradation in the, if you go back, Anderson, the real reason we were all involved in this was to degrade, if not eliminate their capacity to ever get developed and basically produce a nuclear weapon.
But they've discovered in this process they got a nuclear option, and it's called the Strait of Hermus.
And so we may actually be effective in degrading, but they also now discovered something they thought they had, but they've now realized.
And that's the problem that we're now caught in our own country.
Anybody that's ever sat through this in the situation, it was always on the plans, but it was never actually ever realized.
And now they know it, and they have a veto, but they have what is a nuclear option.
They got the nuclear option.
And until we can figure out how to open it, or as Richard Haas, who you had here earlier, he has said, either it's open to everybody or it's closed to everybody.
And you got to do an absolute 180, either side of that post.
Obama gave them the absolute right title and interest, gave everything to Iran.
You remember that?
When Bibi Netanyahu came over and begged him not to do it, he gave Iran the right to have a nuclear weapon at the highest level within a very short period of time.
And I terminated that agreement as soon as I came to office.
And if I didn't terminate it, that weapon would have been used three years ago.
It would have been used a long time ago.
And then we stopped it a second time with those beautiful B-2 bombers.
They went in and they knocked the hell out of the nuclear potential.
And if they didn't do that attack, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks after the attack.
But we did attack and we obliterated the site.
And we saved it there, too.
We did many things.
Taking out Salome was very important.
He was an evil man.
But that was a big event we took out in my first term.
We took out Salome and they never had leadership that could compete with that.
He was an evil guy, but he was a real leader, and he was a very tough general.
Probably wouldn't have been quite as easy, I will tell you.
I don't think we would have taken us an extra day.
It's in fact quite clear, Anderson, because since the president began raising this prospect of negotiations with Iran earlier in the week, there have been two consistent points from Israeli officials.
One, that Israeli attacks on Iran will continue for now with full force.
And two, that Israeli officials remain skeptical that Iran is willing or able to negotiate in good faith or make any of the concessions that the U.S. wants.
I spoke a short time ago to the foreign policy advisor for the Israeli Prime Minister, Ophir, and this is what he had to say in quite strong terms about those talks.
We actually defined the birth of Western civilization by the Greeks beating the Persians in one battle.
By the way, side note, it's called like a marathon is a marathon because the guy that ran and gave the warning ran 26.1 miles to give the news, the Persians are coming, the Persians are coming.
And so that's how long their history is.
It goes back thousands of years.
It's not like Iraq where Churchill draws lines and creates a country, you know, 100 years ago.
And that's, there's a fabric woven in there.
I'm not saying they won't collapse.
I'm just saying Iran is not Iraq, so you can keep killing these leaders and don't expect everybody to surrender.
Well, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his public comment, says, in effect, they want to change the situation in Lebanon for good.
And when you listen to the Israeli Defense Minister as well, they're talking about destroying all connections, all bridges between Lebanon and the southern part of the country below the Latani River to prepare the way for what seems to be a long-term Israeli military operation, perhaps even occupation there.
So that is a further expansion of what is another front of this war, right?
You know, Israel has been striking targets in Lebanon for some time since the start of this war with Iran, as they have in months and years prior, but they are stepping up that activity.
And it appears that what they're laying the groundwork for, Anderson, is a long-term Israeli military presence in southern Lebanon.
And you know well, having covered this region for many years, that the history of long-term Israeli occupations in Lebanon has not been a good one.
It's often been bloody for both sides, but that does appear to be at least Israeli intentions in Lebanon.
This week, on Tuesday, the House Intelligence Committee took all of its transcript of all of its conversations with John Brennan and sent them to the grand jury in Miami.
The Senate has been asked to do the same thing.
And I think the fact that Congress is now officially transmitting evidence to a prosecutor and to a grand jury tells you that they're getting very close to making that decision.
The charges that the prosecutors are considering, lying to Congress, that's the 2023 testimony you gave saying I didn't rely, I didn't want the steel dossier in my bogus assessment, but obstruction of Congress, which is a heavier charge.
And then right soon after that, there's a very active investigation right now, looking at the FBI agents and federal prosecutors who went after Kash Patel's phone records, Susie Weil's phone records, on the allegation that they opened an investigation without a predicate, meaning it was a fake predicate.
Yesterday, before we get to the war, a couple of things in your breaking story.
Yesterday, also big Tish James re-indicted on something that we had Mike Davis, Tom Fitt, and yourself come on originally and say, why isn't insurance fraud included in this, right?
The head of the Federal Housing Finance Administration, Bill Pultey, sent two criminal referrals, one to Chicago and one to Miami.
Those are the two insurance companies that Tish James put her homeowner's insurance in.
It allows the prosecutors to bring the charges in Illinois.
And people say, well, Illinois is a blue state.
Should I be worried?
Illinois convicts Democrats all day long.
If you know, they just got Madigan, their speaker.
They've sent three governors to prison in the last two decades.
They don't like political corruption, even though they're a blue state.
She's going to face jeopardy there.
And then the very same prosecutor that currently is looking at the weaponization, he gets the second case against Letitia James because she used the Florida insurance company.
The evidence is very strong.
It includes evidence she submitted in her first indictment that got dismissed.
They're now using that evidence against her to bring this case.
So the National Security Agency, which sits on all foreign countries and listens in all day long, they intercepted a series of communications, I believe they're emails, where the Ukrainian senior government officials and the senior officials in the Ukrainian government were working with our USAID workers in our Kiev embassy.
So you have Americans working with a foreign power, and they concoct a plot to move hundreds of millions of dollars in a clean energy grant in late 2022, early 23.
So this is the 2024 election.
It's Joe Biden's reelection.
They're going to move the money to Ukraine.
Ukraine's going to move it to subcontractors.
The subcontractors are going to move it to American companies, and then they're going to launder it into Joe Biden's 2024 campaign.
If you remember when this is going on, this is right as the Jack Smith investigation is targeting Donald Trump.
Joe Biden's not very popular.
Afghanistan, his own mental facilities in the open border are dragging him down.
He's having a hard time raising money, even though he's the incumbent president.
And this plot is intercepted by the NSA.
The director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, has asked the USAID to open an investigation, see if these grants actually occurred, and then if it did, to make a referral to the FBI and the Justice Department.
This is real-time information recorded: names, details, name of grant.
They've got everything in the classified setting.
I got a declassified version of the intercept, but this is a big deal.
Keep an eye on Tulsi Gabbert's social media.
I think she's going to make a statement today or tomorrow, but this is going to start rumbling down the hill.
This is, have we ever gotten an audit on the Ukraine funding?
I mean, didn't we ask for this forever?
And this is one of the reasons.
So, for this audience, the hardcore of the hardcore, both on taking down the deep state and the weaponization of the government against MAGA, against President Trump, against Republicans and conservatives, are we now, because everybody's sitting there going, you know, what is happening?
I can tell you in the chats, every time we talk about it, they go, we're the purpose, we're in the indictments.
They weren't shy about doing it to Trump's people over and over again.
Is this between Tish James, the Ukrainian story you're breaking, what the grand jury is working on down in South Florida, are we really seeing movement on both taking down the deep state that tried to go after President Trump all the way from 2015 or early 16 and the weaponization against people like Letitia James and others to de-weaponize and defang the federal government?
I'm going to add one else because I think the new element, what we're seeing right now, is for the first time, there's evidence that the Democratic Party might have been working with foreign powers to have them intervene in our elections.
There are two things that we broke in the last month that point in this direction.
We know that China gained access to our voter registration databases.
After they did that, they sent 20,000-plus driver's licenses to Chicago here airport.
The FBI and the Customs and Border Protection Agency intercepted those.
The FBI's informant inside China told the Chris Ray FBI that the goal of those driver's licenses was to get them to voter mills, get fake names to register and vote during the COVID pandemic election to help Joe Biden win.
All right, that's the first piece of evidence.
It's new.
Now you have a second piece of evidence where USAID workers aligned with Joe Biden's campaign in Joe Biden's administration is working with Ukraine to route hundreds of millions of dollars of your money.
By the way, USAID is your money, taxpayer money, and then launder it into Joe Biden's campaign.
If these two things are corroborated, you now have a weaponization program that used prosecution to harm Donald Trump and possibly use foreign powers to aid Joe Biden.
I think that's where this case is going.
The answer is the train is definitely picking up speed down the tracks.
The only question is, do we have the right people who can close prosecutions and get us convictions?
I've gotten to know the team down in Miami.
They seem very impressive.
They're grizzled career prosecutors.
They seem very dedicated to getting to the truth and putting bad guys in jail.
If we don't see indictments between mid-May and mid-June, I think a lot of people are going to lose faith.
If we see some early indictments end, I think the train gets grown.
I think that Ben Berquam, I think the audience is saying, hey, it sounds great.
we're here in progress but we haven't seen a perp walk we haven't seen what would would john brennan being perp walked would that change your attitude let me ask you Let me ask the crowd here.
You look at what they did to President Trump, to the J Sixers, to everybody, to our own Steve Bannon.
What is it going to take to get faith back in our Justice Department?
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I think it's actually too much.
I think that the Deep State has completely won over America.
The last time I was on Bannon, actually, he asked me the question, are you willing to go to jail for America?
And since that, the day after I went on his show, I actually, a warrant was filed in Palm Beach County, the same county where Elijah Schaefer is being.
If we don't take on the deep state now and have things, as soon as President Trump's out of office, there's no doubt they're coming after President Trump and everybody.
They are thinning out the Iranian military's leadership, their capabilities.
We're now in close air support, meaning that we have such supremacy in the skies, we can bring in black and warthogs and other things and take out mobile missile launchers, armored vehicles, and things like that.
We are in total control of the military dynamic there.
The question for the president is: at what point does Iran say I've had enough and we're willing to negotiate a real deal?
They're not in the mood to negotiate a real deal right now.
Nothing's real yet.
I think the pain will continue to go, and pretty soon there won't be anyone left in the regime to negotiate, and you'll go down to the civilian.
And I think that's why the thinning out of the ranks has to continue.
They're hitting the Revolutionary Guard very hard.
They're dropping these bunker buster bombs on these underground things and they're collapsing them in on them.
I've heard from people that we've taken out maybe 10,000 to 15,000 of their 40,000 component.
That's a big degradation.
But I think you're going to see another two weeks of destruction until the Iranian regime is so humble that someone comes out and said, enough's enough.
So this massive, so this massive, this massive, this massive fight they're going to have, the massive thing President Trump is talking about that will happen in the next 48 hours, 72 hours?
You have an amazing family that were here yesterday in the Ovo this morning.
His family is amazing.
So thank you very much.
We're now on day 41 of the disgraceful Democrat shutdown of Mark Wayne's department.
Congratulations.
He came into a department that's shut down.
Shut down by the radical Democrats.
But Democrats are really punishing the American people.
I saw it today on one of the shows where they were interviewing people at the airport and they're all angry at the Democrats.
They're saying they're actually angry at Schumer.
I didn't think anyone knew his name.
One woman said that Schumer is disgraceful.
He's a disgrace to our country.
But they're angry at the Democrats.
They know what's happening.
But they're punishing the American people, including travelers at airports, all in the quest to return to open borders and give amnesty to illegal alien criminals.
They want to give amnesty to some of the criminals that came into our country.
Just about all of them, actually, if you look at it, they love sanctuary cities, which is a sanctuary for criminals.
They want to make sure they're taken care of.
That's what we're fighting about.
That's really what they're fighting.
They don't talk about that, but that's what they're fighting about.
They want to protect criminals.
In many cases, 11,888 murders.
Many of them, I will say, are gone now because of us.
We got them out.
still have some left.
Should have never happened, should have never been allowed to come into our country.
But we're not going to let it happen.
We're not going to let the Democrats get away with this stuff, and people are wise to them.
So they need to end the shutdown immediately or we'll have to take some very drastic measures.
This morning I want to give an update on the Operation Epic Fury, which is an appropriate name because we are absolutely obliterating them.
Over the past three weeks, we've been hitting Iran's military capabilities at a level that few people have ever seen before.
People never knew there was such a capability.
We have the strongest military anywhere in the world by far.
I built it during my first administration, and I used it during my second administration.
Unfortunately, because I'd rather not have to use it.
But it's a display of force and precision and skill like nothing the world has really witnessed, although you get a pretty good witnessing of it in Venezuela also.
That was a smaller version of what we're doing now.
We're crushing their missiles and drone stockpiles, destroying their defense industrial base.
We've wiped out their Navy completely, their Air Force completely.
We've wiped out a large percentage of their missiles.
And the missile launchers, without the launchers, you can't, the missiles don't do any good.
And we've knocked out probably close to 90% of the launchers, probably more than 90% of the missiles themselves, between some they fired, and more than they fired, we knocked out.
We've also destroyed a lot of the factories.
We're continuing to do that, but a lot of the factories where they manufacture the drones and the missiles.
The drones too are way down.
But the reason they're down is they go one way, they don't come back, because for the most part we're shooting them down.
But we also are able to, we've really done tremendous damage to the places where they make them.
And just so we set the record straight, because I've been watching the Wall Street Journal's fake news and all these stories that get printed like, oh, I want to make a deal.
They are begging to make a deal, not me.
They're begging to make a deal.
And anybody that saw what was happening over there would understand why they want to make a deal.
But they say, oh, we're not talking to them.
Anybody would know they're talking.
Only a total fool.
And they're not fools.
They're very smart, actually, in a certain way.
And they're great negotiators.
I say they're lousy fighters, but they're great negotiators.
And they are begging to work out a deal.
I don't know if we'll be able to do that.
I don't know if we're willing to do that.
They should have done that four weeks ago.
They should have done it two years ago.
Or they should have done it when we first came into office because two years ago they had free reign under Biden, Sleepy Joe, worst president in the history of our country.
What he allowed to happen to our country at the borders.
And even with a thing like this.
But not just him.
Every president for 47 years, every president should have done this.
They should have done it a long time ago because you cannot give lunatics a nuclear weapon and they would have had a big one.
It stopped really when we did the B-2, but even before that the Barack Hussein Obama, what he did where he gave them the Iran nuclear deal, gave them free will toward a nuclear weapon.
Basically, he chose Iran over Israel and others that didn't want him to do it.
But I terminated that deal.
Had I not terminated that deal, you would have had a nuclear weapon years ago and it would have been used, guaranteed.
And one of the reasons you know about the guarantee is because their neighbors were sort of like bystanders.
They weren't involved very much.
They didn't choose heavy size.
They didn't want to because people were concerned with Iran.
There was a big black cloud over the Middle East.
They were concerned.
But all of a sudden, the world starts and they start shooting at these five, in particular five countries.
They start shooting at Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Oman.
And some of those missiles that were shot at them were locked long before we even started this process.
They were locked and loaded and aimed at those countries.
They wanted to take over the Middle East.
But we happened to come along, so it wasn't so easy.
So right now their Navy is sunk in the largest elimination of a foreign navy that has taken place.
Maybe ever, but certainly since World War II.
Their Air Force is gone.
Their anti-aircraft and communications capabilities are totally dismantled.
And one of the problems they do have when they deal with us is we deal with people and the people aren't able to communicate with anybody else.
You know, because all of their leadership has been gone.
The first level is gone and they met to pick a new level and they're gone.
They're all gone because they didn't make a deal and because they're sick people.
They're really sick.
They're really sinister sick people.
And if anybody thinks it was okay to have a group of people like this to have nuclear capability, nuclear weapons, and if we didn't attack with the B-2 bombers, they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks of that, maybe four weeks.
But between two and four weeks, they were planning to have a nuclear weapon.
If we didn't hit them at that time with the B-2 bombers in one of the great air raids in history, maybe the greatest, dark at night, no moon, no light.
Every single bomb hit its mark and just obliterated that place.
So it's now buried deep under earth.
And it was an amazing thing.
But they would have a nuclear, and they would have used it without question.
And you know that, because why did they shoot all these countries that weren't even really involved with them?
They weren't involved.
They had no big problems.
Because they're sick.
Because they want to take over the Middle East, not just Israel.
Certainly Israel would have been the first on their list.
They would have used nuclear weapons, a nuclear.
You don't need too many of them.
But they would have used a nuclear weapon on Israel and they would have used it on the other neighbors.
And then they would have come after us.
And if we had a weak president, they would have done great damage.
But fortunately, you don't have a weak president.
I knew what was happening.
And I think we've been proven right.
You know, they took one missile, it went 2,500 miles.
They supposedly didn't have a missile like that.
They had no missile with that capability.
But they shot the now famous Ireland, the island that the UK was very afraid to give us, because they didn't want to get dragged in.
But we don't want to get dragged into their wars either.
One thing we're very disappointed, I'll say it publicly, we're very disappointed with NATO, because NATO has done absolutely nothing.
And I've always said 25 years ago, I mean, I was somebody that wasn't a politician, but I was always involved in politics and I understood politics.
I said 25 years ago that NATO's a paper tiger, but more importantly, that we'll come to their rescue, but they will never come to ours.
And I want you to remember that we said this.
They didn't come to our rescue.
Now they all want to help.
When they're annihilated, the other side is annihilated.
They said, we'd love to send ships.
They actually made a statement, a couple of them, that we want to get involved when the war is over.
No, it's supposed to get involved with the war's beginning or even before it begins.
We had the UK say that we'll send, this is three weeks ago, we'll send our aircraft carriers, which aren't the best aircraft carriers, by the way.
They're toys compared to what we have.
But we'll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over.
I said, oh, that's wonderful.
Thank you very much.
Don't bother.
We don't need it.
And we don't need it.
We don't need them.
We estimated it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission.
And we're way ahead of schedule.
If you look at what we've done in terms of the destruction of that country, I mean, we're way ahead.
Think of it.
They have no navy.
And they had good ships.
154 ships have been shot down and are resting very nicely at the bottom of the sea.
And we did that in a matter of less than a week.
Because we have the greatest military in the world by far, nobody even close.
So we estimate it would take approximately four to six weeks to achieve our mission, 26 days in.
We're extremely a lot ahead of schedule.
The Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated.
They're saying to people, this is a disaster.
They know it.
That's why they're talking to us.
They wouldn't talk otherwise.
But they're talking to us because they've got a disaster in their hands.
They're defeated.
They can't make a comeback.
We're free to roam over their cities and towns and destroy all of their crazy nuclear weapons and missiles and drones that they're building.
And we're doing that.
They now have a chance to make a deal, but that's up to them.
And they'll tell you, we're not negotiating.
We will not negotiate.
Of course they're negotiating.
They've been obliterated.
Who wouldn't negotiate?
They are begging to make a deal.
We'll see if we can make the right deal.
And they make the right deal.
Then the strait will open up.
Hormuz Strait will open up.
And even now, we don't know if there are any mines.
You know, they have 22 mine, they call them mine droppers.
Think of it, who would have 22 mine droppers?
It's a boat that drops mines.
Who has 22 mine droppers?
Except for people with very evil intention.
So every one of those mine droppers has been struck with the same weapon we used to stop drugs from coming into the United States of America.
When we hit those boats, it's the exact same weapon, extremely effective.
We have unlimited supplies and extremely effective.
But they have no more mine droppers.
By the way, speaking of drugs, we're 98% down drugs coming in by water, by the ocean, by the sea.
98%.
And we're trying to find out who are the 2% because we think they're the bravest men anywhere in the world.
Maybe women.
But whoever's on those boats is very brave or doesn't watch television.
But where drugs coming in by sea, coming in by water, are 98% down.
And now we'll stop the drugs coming in by land.
The land is the easy one.
You had to stop the water.
A lot of it came into the water.
Now it's all pinched.
And these people are trying to come in by land.
And we will, that's the easy one.
But we had to take care of the water first.
Nobody's coming.
Virtually nothing is coming in anymore.
It was hundreds of millions of dollars a week were coming in by water.
But they now have the chance, that is Iran, to permanently abandon their nuclear ambitions and to chart a new path forward.
We'll see if they want to do it.
If they don't, we're their worst nightmare.
In the meantime, we'll just keep blowing them away, unimpeded, unstopped.
There's not a thing they can do about it.
They can't do anything about it, you know.
I tell you, if they could, if they could, you'd be hearing about it.
You'd be hearing about it.
You don't hear anything about it.
They can't shoot our jets.
We have the best military equipment in the world.
Not even a contest.
You see that with Venezuela?
They had other equipment.
They didn't have ours.
It didn't work.
Didn't work.
Think of it.
We did the situation in Venezuela.
It was a great military operation, getting a very, very dangerous man who's killed a lot of people, forced people into our country.
Incredible.
He emptied his prisons in Venezuela, empties his prisons into our country.
And I hope that charge will be brought at some point, because that was a big charge that hasn't been brought yet.
It should be brought.
He emptied his prisons into our country and was a major purveyor of drugs coming into our country.
And he's now been captured and he'll, you know, I guess be given a fair trial.
But I would imagine there are other trials coming because they have just, they've really sued him just at a fraction of the kind of things that he's done.
Other cases are going to be brought, as you probably know.
In the meantime, with Iran, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing.
And nobody's a match for the United States, but they're not a match for the United States.
It's small potatoes.
That's why I'm so disappointed in NATO, because this was a test for NATO.
This was a test.
You can help us.
You don't have to.
But if you don't have, you know, if you don't do that, we're going to remember.
Just remember.
Remember this in a number of months from now.
Remember my statements.
They have an expression, a great expression.
Never forget.
Never forget.
So as we end threats to America abroad, we're focused here at home on building the greatest economy in the history of the world.
Now, before this started, the Dow hit 50,000.
The S ⁇ P hit 7,000.
Both of those achievements were not achievable.
Every one of you, most of you, I guess, said you'll never hit 50,000 during a four-year period because it was too high a number.
Well, we hit it in our first year.
And I said, well, now we have to take an excursion to Iran and we have to stop this maniac who's no longer with us.
The supreme leader wasn't so supreme, no longer with us.
But we have to stop him from blowing up the world, blowing up the Middle East and blowing up our country.
And we did that.
And I thought, frankly, I thought the oil prices would go up more and I thought the stock market would go down more.
It hasn't been nearly as severe as I thought.
I think they have confidence in maybe the American president and maybe the people sitting around this table.
But Americans, finally, their taxes this year are receiving record-setting refunds.
It's been a very big story.
Well, it should be a big story.
I don't think you write about it that much, but I speak about it.
You know, I speak about it.
Because if I speak about it, at least people here, you don't write about it.
You don't write about the drug prices going down.
It'll be going down 30, 40, 50, 60%, 70%.
Favored nations.
called most favored nations, we're going to be paying the lowest price anywhere in the world before we paid the highest price in the world, Bobby, right?
And now we're going to pay the lowest price in the world.
That's quite a difference.
It's a difference of from 40 to 70 and 80 and even 90 percent.
That's a pretty big difference.
But we're slashing regulations and investment is pouring in from all over the world.
We have the most investment of any country in history has been put into our country in the last year.
And again, we had to take a little detour.
Won't be long.
Going to end soon.
We had to take a little detour, go to Iran, and we had to put out a fire.
Very dangerous fire that could have blown up big portions of the world, if not the whole thing.
So tomorrow we'll be announcing a variety of actions that we're taking to support American farmers who we never forget.
We love the farmers.
We gave them $12 billion out of tariff money.
We had a tremendous amount of tariff money come in.
And we continue to have, we've gone, as you know, the Supreme Court gave us a very unfortunate, foolish ruling, a ruling that gives the people that have ripped off our country for many years, gives them some money back.
It's one of those things.
It's a terrible, terrible, horrible mistake they made, but it's okay because we have another method that's just as good.
We'll use the other method.
But because the tariff money has been so substantial, we gave our farmers who have been mistreated by some countries.
We gave them $12 billion.
And they're extremely happy.
And they deserve it.
They've been great.
They never complain.
They just go out and they farm.
And they wouldn't do anything different.
They wouldn't trade jobs with any of you, except maybe some of the fake media.
So in just a few moments, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant will discuss the actions that we're taking to address energy prices, which have not gone up as much as I thought, Scott, to be honest with you.
And, you know, it's not over, so maybe it'll go up a little bit more.
It's all going to come back down to where it was and probably lower.
Proud to be part of this team, proud to be serving the president of the country.
Let me just say a couple things.
So first of all, is the president summarized this very ably.
But look, the Iranian conventional military is effectively destroyed.
They don't have a navy.
They don't have the ability to hit us like they could have even a few weeks ago.
And what that does is that gives us options, Mr. President.
Now, there's been a lot of reporting about diplomatic options, about negotiations.
There's, of course, Pete and his team.
There are further military options.
But what we have now that we didn't have when the president took over just a little over a year ago is the ability to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon.
Because when I say options, I think it's important the American people know options for what?
And it's options to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.
You talk about people who walk into a crowded supermarket and have a vest on, and they blow up the vest, and a couple of people get killed, and that's a terrible tragedy.
What happens when what's on the vest is not something that can kill a couple of people, but can kill many, many tens of thousands of people.
That is the most important American national security objective that exists for any administration at any time is you don't want the worst people in the world to have a nuclear weapon.
That's why the president is doing this.
That's why the president cares so much about this particular issue.
I'll let Steve talk a little bit about the details of the negotiation.
But the last thing I'll say before I turn it over to Marco is I'm very mindful, of course, that we have a lot of folks overseas fighting very ably for the United States of America.
I know Pete and the whole team, we're very proud of them, but they're fighting at a time where we are about to enter as Christians the most important week of the Christian calendar, the holy week that celebrates the return of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem.
And so I want to say to all of my fellow American Christians, but particularly those serving in the Gulf, that I wish you all a very blessed Easter, a very blessed holy week, and we continue to stand behind you and continue to support you every step of the way.
The most important job any president has is to keep the American people safe.
And every president says it, but we have a president that means it and does something about it.
As the president outlined very clearly to the world on the night this operation began, Iran has been at war with the United States for 47 years.
For 47 years, Iran has been killing Americans and attacking Americans across this planet.
And other presidents had an opportunity to do something about it.
And they all warned about how Iran was dangerous, but they refused to act.
And this president's not someone that's going to refuse to act.
He's not going to leave a danger like this in place.
He's going to address it, and that is what he is doing.
From the very first night of this operation, the president made it very clear.
People like this, and now what I'm talking about is not the people of Iran.
The people that run this country are radical Shia clerics.
These are religious fanatics.
Look what they are doing now at their weakest point.
This is the weakest Iran has ever been.
And look at what they're doing.
They're attacking embassies.
They're embassies.
They're attacking hotels.
Imagine what these people would do if they had a nuclear weapon.
That is an unacceptable risk for the world.
By the way, the president's not just doing a favor to the United States and to our people.
This is for the world.
He defined very clearly on the first night of this operation what the goal was.
We were going to destroy Iran's Navy, and that is happening.
We were going to, if it hasn't already happened, I'll let Pete speak to the specifics of it.
We were going to destroy their missile launching capabilities.
We're well on our way to achieving that goal.
We were going to destroy the factories so they couldn't make more missiles and more drones.
And that is moving forward.
Every single objective the president clearly laid out on the first night of this operation is being effectuated.
Again, Pete will speak to the specifics of it.
This has been an incredibly successful operation.
Every day, it may not get covered because, you know, unlike them, we're not bombing embassies and hotels.
We're hitting military targets.
But every day, the Department of War lets the drummer get wicked over every portion of Iran that has these military capabilities, and the results are going to bear fruit for the world.
The world is going to be a safer and a better place when President Trump's mission here is achieved.
And frankly, I think countries around the world, even those that are out there complaining about this a little bit, should actually be grateful that the United States has a president that's willing to confront a threat like this and not allow it to continue to persist.
Because these people will kill as many Americans as they have a chance to do.
And if they have a nuclear weapon, as the Vice President pointed out, they could kill millions of Americans in the future.
And that is a risk that was not going to continue to exist as long as we had this president.
Mr. President, it is my distinct honor to be a member of your cabinet and to report to you and your team on our negotiations with Iran.
Mr. President, you directed Jared and I to pursue a diplomatic resolution with Iran prior to Operation Epic Fury, which we did.
However, it became quite clear during these meetings with the Iranian negotiating team that we could not make a deal that fulfilled your objectives of the following: no enrichment whatsoever, no chance of weaponizing whatsoever.
Decommissioning of Fordeau, the Times, and Esfahan, which you destroyed in Operation Midnight Hammer.
No stockpiling of any material, which they flagrantly violated.
Turning all enriched material over to us, and a cutback in Iran's missile inventory and range capability of those same missiles.
Throughout our meetings with the Iranians, we heard the following from them: The Iranians have the inalienable right to enrich.
Then we heard they possessed enough 60% enriched material, 460 kilograms, to make 11 atomic bombs.
Finally, we heard the following statement: they would not give up diplomatically what we could not win militarily.
In other words, they were again miscalculating the success of Midnight Hammer, which was a total success.
These are incontrovertible signs, among many other signs, sir, that their regime had not given their negotiating team authority to make a deal required by you.
We conferred with you and all the other members of your foreign policy team: Susie Wiles, Pete Hegseth, the chairman, Marco Rubio, JD, Scott Besant, Chris Wright, John Radcliffe, throughout all of these negotiations, and we were repeatedly rebuffed on everything we asked for.
I have no doubt that we exhausted all efforts on behalf of a peaceful resolution, as you directed.
Jared and I both agreed that the Iranians were there to buy time until a weaker president arrived.
This was a flawed strategy, as your clear direction was to never allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon today or any time in the future.
Against that backdrop and our compelling military successes in Epic Fury, we have had multiple reach outs from the region and others who want to play a role in ending this conflict peacefully.
I can report to you today that we have, along with your foreign policy team, presented a 15-point action list that forms the framework for a peace deal.
This has been circulated through the Pakistani government, acting as the mediator.
And this has resulted in strong and positive messaging and talks, as you just indicated to the press.
But these are sensitive diplomatic discussions, and you have directed us to maintain confidentiality on the specific terms and not negotiate through the news media as others do.
I can say this.
We will see where things lead and if we can convince Iran that this is the inflection point with no good alternatives for them other than more death and destruction.
We have strong signs that this is a possibility and if the deal happens, it will be great for the country of Iran, for the entire region and the world at large.
Your policy of peace through strength is the most effective tool for a diplomatic resolution here, just as this policy was an effective tool in each and every one of all of the other conflicts you settled in your first year.
Iran is looking for an off ramp following your powerful threat on Saturday.
Your indications that you are willing to listen to peace proposals have been well received.
You have instructed us that your preference is always peace and that we should make that our priority.
We have delivered that message, sir, along with the 15 points for peace.
Never in recorded history has a nation's military been so quickly and effectively neutralized.
Operation Epic Fury is not an endless war.
It's a decisive campaign with clear objectives to destroy Iran's offensive military capabilities and ensure they never obtain a nuclear weapon.
This is stuff for the history books.
This is stuff for legacy.
Mr. President, you are acting now to ensure future generations do not have to live under the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.
However, you wouldn't know it if you listened to the dishonest hate Trump media as you referenced.
The folks here in the room, these cameras, they have a choice.
You're either informing the American people of the truth or you're not.
Because I hear it from my people every day.
Behind every headline you write, there's a helicopter crew in the air.
And behind every news banner you write, there's a battalion on the move.
And behind every fake news story, there's an F-35 pilot executing a dangerous mission.
My message to the media is get it right.
This actually isn't something new to me.
I may be a young guy, Mr. President, but I'm not a rookie in this realm.
In 2007, I helped lead the surge, the public fight for the Iraq surge.
Stood and watched people stand in the Senate and declare the war is lost before it even started.
Who was that?
It was Harry Reid.
That was the Democrats and the media working hand in glove.
Back then it was three years into a war.
Now we're three weeks into an operation.
But see, unlike Iraq, this isn't a tie.
This is not parody.
This is not chaos.
This is success, pure American success on plan and as the President said, ahead of pace.
Over 10,000 enemy targets destroyed.
Over 140, I think now you're right, Mr. President, over 150 naval vessels sunk, underground facilities destroyed, their defense industrial base in shambles.
And overnight, not only do they not have a Navy, Mr. President, they no longer have a Navy commander.
IRGC's Navy commander was killed overnight in operation.
So no Navy, no Navy leader.
Now that he's, here's the thing about the media though.
If President Trump had not acted, you'd be screaming, why not?
And now that he has taken decisive action, you're asking, well, why did you?
It's the same old tired playbook, TDS in your DNA.
But the hardworking, God-fearing, patriotic Americans out there know better.
And you alluded to this, President Obama, Mr. President.
Here's a fact that you don't hear on your networks, but we know.
Many of the Iranian military factories and bases that we're systematically destroying were paid for by the pallets of American cash that Barack Obama flew into Tehran under the Iran deal.
You might call it an inconvenient truth.
Iran took our money and turned it into weapons and bunkers and ammo.
And now we're destroying those weapons and we're writing, you're writing, Mr. President, that grievous wrong.
And make no mistake, we had to act.
And our objectives are clear.
No nukes, no Navy, and a complete dismantling of their missile program and defense industrial base.
And as Marco pointed out, that mission, and the VP as well, has not changed since day one.
Yet, two days ago, they shot two failed missiles on a target 4,000 kilometers away.
For years, they told the world that their missiles could only range two kilometers.
And to the world, I say London is 4,000 kilometers from Iran.
Washington, D.C. is 3,300 kilometers from Venezuela, another country President Trump did something about that partnered for a long time with Iran.
So you're telling us that Iran is not a threat to the world or to the U.S., President Trump knows better.
And here's what success actually looks like right now.
You mentioned it, Mr. President.
A-10 Warthogs, if you know them, you love them, and Apache helicopter gunships are flying strike missions inside Iranian airspace and throughout the Strait of Hormuz at will.
See, you only send these slow, low-flying, close air support platforms when the enemy has no meaningful air defenses left.
Their presence is proof that Iran's air defenses are gone.
Their command and control is shattered, their top leaders hiding in underground bunkers, while their mid-level commanders are being crushed in the field, the morale of their fighters plummeting.
We see that disconnect daily.
They're privately admitting, as you said, Mr. President, very heavy losses.
We know that.
President Trump has given us a clear mission.
Our capabilities are only going up, and Iran's are plummeting.
I think before I ask Scott to say a couple of words, it would be great if people like the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois would say, please come in and stop the crime.
A beautiful young lady was killed the other day.
And the father was a very good friend of Dan Scavino.
And he took it very hard.
Dan took it very hard, like the father, friends.
They grew up together.
And it's a young lady whose life would be saved if we had, if we did what we did.
As an example, in Washington, D.C., which is now a safe city.
All the time people come up to me in the building.
People that work here, they say, thank you so much.
I know immediately what they're talking about.
They're able to walk to work.
They walk to work.
You all walk to work.
Some of you were mugged.
I know, you told me stories.
Some of you were mugged.
One person in particular was viciously mugged in the group right here.
It's not happening anymore.
You have a safe city.
Louisiana, the governor of Louisiana called me, can you help me?
With New Orleans, they just had the money grow.
He said it was the safest money grow we've ever had.
Sounds terrible to say.
No murders.
You know, it sounds like who would say this?
No murders, but they always had murders.
They had a lot of crime during Moneygrow.
He said virtually no crime.
We had the troops down there.
Memphis, Tennessee, I just got back.
We were there.
Crime is down 75% in a short period of time with their five months.
We could do that for Chicago.
We could do that for New York.
We could do that for LA.
And we could do that for, frankly, San Francisco.
I know they have a mayor who's trying very hard.
He's a Democrat, but he's trying very hard.
But we could do it much more effectively because he can't do what we do.
He can't take people out from the city and bring them back to the country from where they came, where they were in prisons.
They were allowed to go in prisons.
There were drug dealers, the highest level drug deals, murderers, 11,888 murders.
We do things that they can't do.
I had friends calling me up from San Francisco.
Could you give him a chance?
I said, absolutely.
If you want, we'll give him a chance.
And he's trying.
He's doing okay, but we could do much better.
We could make it a lot safer than it is.
San Francisco, a great city, was a great city, could quickly become a great city again.
But, you know, they're going very slowly.
I tell my friends, they're very substantial people.
They're in a certain business where people have made a lot of money.
I don't hope that lasts.
But they have a tremendous potential.
It was one of the greatest cities in the world.
Now it's got a lot of crime.
And the mayor is really trying.
Again, a Democrat trying.
And I spoke to him.
He just wants to have a chance.
And I said, we'll give you a chance.
But we can solve it very quickly.
This young lady would be around today if we were around because we have nobody coming through our border.
I mean, literally for nine months at zero.
It's hard to believe that that number could be possible because millions of people came in through Biden.
But nobody even tries.
We don't have the caravans of thousands, 25,000, 30,000 people pouring into our border.
They come up in caravans.
We don't have caravans anymore.
There's no such thing anymore.
It's a name that I think I developed, but somebody developed it, but I think it was me.
I thought it was an appropriate name.
Thousands of people would come up and just barge into our country, totally unchecked, totally unventered.
And this man came in, Dan, right?
And he came in through the ridiculous open border of Biden.
If we were there, the election was rigged.
What are you going to do?
Came back, big comeback.
But if we were there, we wouldn't have had people coming through.
It's amazing.
You know, it's so easy now because everyone knows they're not getting through.
We don't have any caravans.
Once they know that, when it was easy to come through, when I heard that they had an open border policy, I said, boy, this is going to be, I couldn't believe it.
But when it was actually, you know, it dawned on me because I had built a thousand miles of wall and we were finishing up some and he didn't want to finish it up.
Biden, I said, they really do want to have an open border.
And we got it finished.
But that young lady would be alive today.
And she'd be alive for another reason because we would have the National Guard in Chicago and in New York and in other places.
And they love doing it.
It's like training, to be honest.
It's actually training.
I never want to take them out of D.C.
I mean, maybe somebody later on will do it, but I never want to take it.
You know, the people, they look, they say, we feel so good, we feel so safe.
We see these beautiful, strong people, and they're so nice.
They help, they open the doors for people.
They carry bags.
They pick up paper when they see paper in the ground.
I looked at D.C. last night.
I drove to make a speech, and I drove through and I said, take me this way, take me that way.
The city's clean, the fences are down.
You don't have homeless all over your parks.
I mean, we had parks.
There was no room for anything else other than homeless.
It's all clean and nice.
And it'll be even more beautiful in a year from now.
This ballroom is going to be something that's so beautiful for the city, so desperately needed by presidents.
I mean, now it's no secret.
The military wanted it more than anybody.
It was supposed to be secret, but it became unsecret because of people that are really unpatriotic saying things.
But doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
It's going to be great.
We're building an arc, a triumphal arc, which will be incredible for the city.
We're fixing up what was the Kennedy Center.
I was honored when the board changed the name a little bit.
Actually, it shows that the Republican and the Democrats work together.
It's really something we work together.
I think it's a great symbol, actually.
But we're doing a lot of work.
That building's ready to fall down.
It's in terrible shape.
We're closing it.
We're going to open it with a bang in less than two years.
It'll come in under budget ahead of schedule.
That's what I do.
It won't be like the Federal Reserve that's costing $4 billion or something thereabouts.
Think of it.
$4 billion.
You know, it's amazing.
I said to the group before, I said, everything I do, I get sued.
I build under budget ahead of schedule.
I get sued over a ballroom that's going to be the most beautiful ballroom in the country, so desperately needed.
You won't have to have tents sitting on the wet White House lawn.
If it rains, you get wiped out to honor the president of China or the president of France or the president of somewhere.
We get sued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
They don't know what they're doing.
Then I just found out we got sued by that group and another group, I guess, on the fixing up of, again, I'll use the old name, Kennedy Center, because they're not fixing up Trump can what it's going to be beautiful when you add the name Trump.
But we got sued.
And all I'm doing is fixing it up.
We're fixing broken marble.
We're putting on a roof because it leaks like a sieve.
We're fixing steel that's broken.
It's the same building, same exact building.
We're fixing it.
It's going to be beautiful.
It's going to be so beautiful.
And safe.
It's actually unsafe.
You had some of those columns on the outside that were painted of fake gold.
Now we painted them a beautiful white color.
Beautiful cream white.
It's beautiful.
Everyone says it's so much more beautiful now.
Instead of a cheap, you can't imitate gold.
See, I'm a gold person.
It's all real stuff.
You can't imitate it.
Someday they'll discover a paint that will look like gold, and the guy's going to be the richest man in the world.
But we can't imitate real gold.
It just doesn't, it's 24 karat, which is what this building deserves.
But think of it.
I get sued because I'm fixing up the Trump Kennedy Center.
We're going to make it gorgeous and safe.
We're fixing new windows, new this, but just all fix up.
I got sued by preservationists.
But you know who they didn't sue?
The man that took this beautiful Federal Reserve building.
That's small, much smaller than the hotel I built.
I built the Waldorf Astoria Hotel down the road.
And it was a beautiful job for $200 million, $201 million.
It's bigger, I think, than the Federal Reserve Building.
And it's got rooms and bathrooms, and it's not like just an open office space, which is much cheaper to build.
Think of this.
I hear he's going to be over $4 billion for a little building.
He doesn't get sued by anybody but me.
I sue because it's either somebody's very crooked, which has to be, because what happened to all that money?
You can't sue.
I would have done that building for $25 million.
It's going to cost maybe $4 billion.
And we have a great new person coming in to take over the Fed.
And Kevin may not ever have an office.
Because I don't know.
They're going to be able to build.
I passed that building the other day.
It's a see-through.
You know what see-through means?
There's no walls up.
And they're going to spend.
But the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is a joke, by the way, they didn't sue that building.
They didn't sue anybody.
But they sue me and I build.
And by the way, my building is, it's all donations.
Rich people and people are putting up the money.
Zero taxpayer dollars.
Is that right, Scott?
Zero taxpayer dollars.
Stuff is all done for free, and I get sued.
This could only happen to Trump.
But they don't sue the guy whose interest rates are too high.
That's why we call him too late.
His name is Jerome Powell.
We call him Jerome Too Late Powell.
And done a terrible job.
He suffers from Trump derangement syndrome, as he probably should, because I hit him pretty hard, but so I don't, I don't blame him.
But They don't sue a man who has taken this gorgeous building, ripped it down from the inside, taking ceilings that are as beautiful as you've ever seen, taking the ceilings down instead of leaving them, taking walls down that were two feet thick of solid concrete and plaster, replacing them with six-inch walls with no insulation.
I said, let me ask you, are you going to put insulation in?
No, it's not in the budget.
Insulation costs $5.
Now you're going to hear the guy next door.
If he's next door to me, I'll be able to hear his military plan.
I'll know exactly.
If Lutnik is in there, I'll say, oh, I know exactly what Lutnik's got planned.
It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.
They've ripped this gorgeous building apart, and you can never build it again.
I could, but it costs a lot of money.
But a normal person can never build.
So you're going to have crummy little walls, a flat little ceiling, eventually, but right now you don't have anything.
And nobody sues this guy.
And then when Janine Pirro, working with Pam and others, has the courage to sue to find out what happened to maybe $4 billion at a building that may never be occupied by Kevin Wars.
He may never get there.
We're going to have to find him some space in the White House.
We'll put him in the basement of the ballroom.
But when, now think of it, when Janine Pirro and Pam and the group, when they bring a suit, it's like, oh, this terrible thing.
It's a very sad thing that's happened with the Fed.
And then just one other thing, very quickly, you have Gavin News come in California railroad.
That's 100 times over budget.
It's out of control.
It was supposed to go from the middle of San Francisco to the middle of LA.
Well, now it stops way short of both.
It now goes into areas that nobody ever heard of.
It's billions and billions of dollars over budget, years and years, maybe decades late.
And that's why we have a country that has a lot of problems.
We have incompetent people.
It's all people.
Think of this.
Federal Reserve.
I would have had that building done for $25 million.
If I did it, somebody else would have done it for more.
So maybe $50.
But you could have done that building if it was properly done and planned.
You would have done that building for, I would have done it, for $25 million and it would be better.
It would be better.
See, this pen right here, this pen is an interesting example.
It's the same thing.
So this pen is very inexpensive.
But it writes well.
I like it.
But I can't have the pen the way it was.
You know what it is.
I don't want to give them too much publicity, but they do treat me well, Sharpie.
So I came here, they have $1,000 pens.
And you know, you hand pens out, you're signing, and you're handing them out, you're handing them with all these people.
Sometimes you have 30, 40 people.
And they were $1,000 a piece.
Beautiful pen, ballpoint.
$1,000.
It was gold, silver, gorgeous.
But I'm handing out to kids that don't even know what they are.
What is this, mommy?
It's kids.
They're getting a pen for $1,000.
They have no idea what it is.
And I feel guilty because I'm like, you know, I'm by nature.
I don't, you know, it's the government.
I love the government.
Like, I love myself economically.
I want to save money.
So I'm saying, this is crazy.
And it had another problem.
They didn't write well.
So I take it out.
And I saw it and there's no ink.
And I got all you people looking.
And you say, there must be something wrong with Trump.
And I sign it.
And there's no ink in the pen, and it costs $1,000.
This one, I called a guy.
I said, I'd like to use your pen, but I can't have a gray thing with a big S on it.
Saying Sharpie.
As I'm signing a trillion-dollar airplane contract to buy brand new fighter jets, brand new B2 bombers, of which we just ordered plenty.
I can't do that with the press.
Use your pen, but I like the pen the best, but I'll sign it.
I could do like Biden did, you know?
Give it to somebody else to sign, or an auto pen, or maybe sign it separately in another room, but I can't use your pen.
He said, well, I can make it nicer.
I said, what can you do?
He said, I'll paint it black.
I said, that's nice.
And I can even paint the White House on it, sir, if you like, in gold.
Almost real gold, not bad.
And I could even do your signature, sir.
And by the way, this was not staged.
I just saw the pen sitting there and I thought that this is an example of how $25 million spent by me at the Federal Reserve Building would be a better job than $4 billion that they're spending.
And you know one of the things that Kevin Wars showed me?
He said they ripped down the nicest building.
I don't know what building they're talking about.
They ripped down a building, Scott, right?
Kevin Warsh said it's the most beautiful building in Washington.
Well, sir, as always, you're a tough act to follow, but that is very illustrative.
Your economic leadership has made our military mission possible.
Mr. President, national security, as you always say, is economic security.
Your leadership has shown the American people that there is no prosperity without security.
That our mighty military on one side, but the U.S. economic strength is fighting off this evil regime.
The Iranians believe they are fighting a two-front war.
It is the military war that our great warriors are prosecuting.
But on the other side, they are trying to take control of the global economy through a choke point that we believe does not exist and that we will overcome.
Your historic operation at Epic Fury seized a generational opportunity to demolish a regime that has coordinated over four decades of global terror and claimed thousands of American lives.
Many people, especially the Democrats, underestimate the will of the American people for short-term volatility for 50 years of safety that we are going to have on the other side of this.
And I believe energy prices will be lower, inflation will be lower.
Before, we had the appearance of security, which is not real security.
Now, the American people and the world will have absolute security.
Through your maximum pressure campaign, Treasury has worked to uncover all financial lifelines through the regime and cut them off.
You gave that order last March.
This was not something that happened overnight.
This is something that has been contemplated for almost a year.
The Iranian financial system collapsed in December.
We have systematically weakened Iran's ability to fund operations and procure weapons, and that required months of preparations.
Threats to American national security have no place in the global economic system.
The oil market is well supplied.
We have taken actions to ensure oil supplies stranded at sea are made available to the global market.
Your bold actions, like the Development Finance Corporation's Maritime Reinsurance Program, in conjunction with Central Command, will soon provide shippers through the Gulf region with a level of security we have never seen before.
Mr. President, we are starting to see more and more movement in and out of the Gulf today, and this is more than yesterday, and this is the beginning.
I am confident that shipping traffic will continue to increase on a daily basis, even before we secure the Straits.
Turning to the home front, the U.S. economy remains strong.
We had a strong economy thanks to you.
We are the best insulated in the world thanks to your energy efforts in term one and term two.
The U.S. is an energy superpower.
American workers' purchasing power is finally being restored.
The latest figures indicate robust real compensation increases.
We are starting to see the working family tax cuts benefits bearing fruit this tax season.
44% of tax returns have claimed at least one of your signature policies, no tax and tips, no tax and overtime, no tax on Social Security, deductibility of ALTO loans.
The average tax refund is up more than 10% for working Americans.
The economy you vitalize through your pro-growth policies is well positioned to withstand these temporary disruptions.
The United States dollar has reasserted itself as a safe haven asset.
The U.S. dollar has appreciated since the hostilities began because everyone knows, thanks to your efforts, the U.S. economy is the best position in the world and capital is flowing in.
Efforts to reprioritize economic security are ensuring the United States remains secure, resilient, and prepared for the challenges ahead.
As we approach the 250th anniversary, America will never be safer and more secure militarily and economically.
31,000 soldiers, both Russian and Ukraine, died two months ago.
25,000 last month.
And if I can solve that, it would be a great honor to do it.
I wish it could have gone faster.
You know, I solved other ones in one day that had been going for 32 years.
We solved, we stopped one that was starting, it was already started.
India and Pakistan, and the Prime Minister of Pakistan, a very fine gentleman, said President Trump solved something that was going to cost 10 million lives.
That was going to cost a lot of lives, two nuclear nations.
And those were complicated, but we got them done quickly.
This one is a shame.
And the only reason I'm doing it, frankly, is because I want to stop death.
I want to stop the death from happening.
I think I'll get to go with a man that I've missed, Brian.
As an example, in California, every time prices go down, his prices go up because they think, you know, the gas tax is bigger than the tax itself, bigger than the product itself.
It hasn't, I mean, we've thought about it, I guess.
But honestly, when I did this, I knew it was going to be a little bit net.
We had the greatest economy ever.
We had the greatest stock market in history.
I said, we're going to take a little bit of a hit, a short-term hit.
It's going to end up going much higher than it was, in my opinion.
I said we're going to have a great stock market.
Nobody thought we could get to 50,000 or 7,000 in the respective indices.
Nobody thought that that was going to happen.
But it did in the first year.
They said it couldn't happen in four years.
That you wouldn't hit 50 in four years, but you could maybe get close.
We hit it in the first year.
And I said, this is a good time to solve a problem that you had to solve.
And that's what I did.
But the gas tax, you know, people have talked about it.
It's something we have in our pocket if we think it's necessary.
The problem is that our states are the ones that issue these licenses.
So, with commercial driver's licenses, we do have some federal control.
But again, we have thousands of people who can't speak the language, long-standing rule, and it's a safety issue.
If you can't understand road signs, if you can't communicate with law enforcement when you're pulled over and communicate what's on your rig, huge problem.
But the last administration, Mr. President, they let truck driving schools self-certify that they were qualified to train truck drivers.
And so, this is like the Learing Center.
So you pay $800 and you get a certificate that you passed a CDL driving school and they have no skills.
They don't have the knowledge and they don't have the skills.
They haven't gone through any of the testing.
And then they get licenses and they're killing Americans on our roads.
So it's remarkable, the rot that the last administration allowed to take place.
We are ending that and I need partnership with our states.
Yeah, it's interesting because I just saw something that the nursing home business and the daycare centers in particular, they went out and inspected them in Minnesota and they didn't exist.
They said to show you the fact that we're real and solid and we're there, we're going to let you have eight boats of oil, eight boats, eight big boats of oil.
This was two days ago.
And they'll sail up tomorrow.
That was three days ago.
And I didn't think much about it.
And then I watched the news and they said, a very good anchor, actually.
Happen to be Fox.
But I watched it and they said, something's unusual happening.
There are eight boats that are going right up the middle of the Hormo Strait.
Eight big tankers are going loaded up with oil right through.
And I said, well, I guess they were right and they were real.
And I think they were Pakistani flagged.
And I said, well, I guess we deal with the right people.
And actually, they then apologized for something they said and they said, we're going to send two more boats.
And it ended up being ten boats.
I hope I haven't screwed up your negotiations.
I thought it was appropriate to say, because I did taunt you the other day by saying they're going to give us a present.
So what happens is by putting them at the airport, and I just say, do me a favor, take off your masks.
And they did.
For that.
Not for when they're looking for some, you know, cold-blooded killers and they're in the net, but for that.
And they did.
They took them off.
And the passengers, I see the interviews of people.
They're saying, these are nice people.
One person said, he's a very strong man, but he's a nice guy.
He grabbed my bag.
He helped a woman with a bag that she couldn't lift.
And I'll tell you, I don't want to use the word rehab because there was nothing to rehab, but rehab from the press, you know, because the press is so tough on them.
And because of the fact that I'm President of the United States, I did a mail-in ballot for elections that took place in Florida because I felt I should be here instead of being in the beautiful sunshine taking.
Mr. President, you're right, we have so heavily degraded their coastal defense capabilities and their naval capabilities that any strategic or operational attempts to do those types of things are extremely limited.
And we continue to move over the top of that.
Now, whether Iran makes a wise choice or not to try to execute that is part of how this deal comes together, but with every passing day, the military pressure that we're putting on them lessens their ability to really hold that militarily at issue.