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Jan. 31, 2025 16:30-16:59 - CSPAN
28:46
President Trump Signs Executive Orders
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donald j trump
admin 21:30
Appearances
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akash chougule
00:50
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greta brawner
cspan 00:15
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Speaker Time Text
akash chougule
Bill or two.
We're optimistic about where the process is right now.
greta brawner
Narrow majority in the House.
Is it likely you think that Republicans will need some votes from Democrats to extend any tax cuts?
akash chougule
We would love to have a bipartisan tax cut bill.
Unfortunately, Greta, I don't think that's where today's Democratic Party is at.
They've made very clear their desire is to raise taxes on wealthy families, middle-class families, big businesses, small businesses.
They have any number of promises they've laid out that are frankly unaffordable for the American people.
And so while I unfortunately don't anticipate that, it would be very nice if they were to come on board with these tax cuts.
greta brawner
All right, Akash Toghole is our guest here this morning, George in Philadelphia.
Democratic caller, you're up first.
unidentified
Oh, why they can't cut or raise the taxes on the rich and the large business?
akash chougule
Yeah, so that's a good question and one that comes up a lot.
I think this conversation about sort of the rich paying their fair share, there's a lot of, I think, misconceptions, Greta, around this.
We never hear a definition of what the fair share actually is.
The top 1% in this country earn about 30%, almost 30% of income, and they pay more than half of all federal income tax or about half of all federal income.
unidentified
You can watch this online at c-span.org.
We leave it to bring you President Trump signing a new set of executive orders, which happened just a short time ago.
To forestall your implementation of tariffs tomorrow.
No, nothing.
donald j trump
Not right now.
No.
unidentified
Not a negotiating tool?
donald j trump
No, it's not.
No, it's pure economic.
We have big deficits with, as you know, with all three of them.
And in one case, they're sending massive amounts of fentanyl, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year with the fentanyl.
And in the other two cases, they're making it possible for this poison to get in, number one.
And number two, we have big deficits, and it's something we're doing.
And we'll possibly very substantially increase it.
We're not.
We'll see how it is.
But it's a lot of money coming to the United States.
As you know, we have about a $200 billion deficit with Canada getting close to $200 billion.
They've treated us very unfairly.
And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada?
It's wonderful.
I have so many friends in Canada.
It's a great place.
unidentified
Because there are concessions.
But no, we're not looking for a concession.
donald j trump
And we'll just see what happens.
We'll see what happens.
And with Mexico, it's the same thing.
We have a $250 billion deficit, and we have a lot of people coming into the border.
And now we've largely stopped that, but we've stopped that ourselves.
I think they've done a fantastic job.
You've seen the numbers.
They've dropped to almost zero.
But we've suffered under the past administration for years and years.
We've suffered with millions of criminals coming into our country.
Criminals, people from jails from all over the world.
They come through Mexico and they come through Canada too.
A lot of them come through Canada and a lot of fentanyl comes through Canada.
And China makes the fentanyl.
China makes the fentanyl, gives it to Mexico, puts it through Canada, puts it through different places, mostly Mexico, but also a lot through Canada.
And so all three haven't treated us very well.
unidentified
Sir, can I ask you about your meeting with NVIDIA?
What did you talk about?
And do you think you need to ban more of the chips that they're selling to China?
donald j trump
Well, he's a great gentleman, and I hadn't met him.
He's the biggest in the world in terms of chips.
And I can't say what's going to happen with it.
We had a meeting.
It was a good meeting.
But eventually we're going to put tariffs on chips.
We're going to put tariffs on oil and gas.
That'll happen fairly soon.
I think around the 18th of February.
And we're going to put a lot of tariffs on steel.
We already have tariffs on steel, and we've saved our steel industry, but that was relatively small compared to what it'll be.
But we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and aluminum and ultimately copper.
Copper will take a little bit longer, and that'll happen pretty quickly.
It'll mean it'll be a great boost for our steel industry.
It'll make our steel industry very strong.
If I didn't put the tariffs on years ago on steel, which actually Biden left because there was so much money that they couldn't do anything about it, we would have lost.
We wouldn't have one steel mill in this country if I didn't do that.
We saved the steel industry, so it was an honor to do it.
And I think the people that love me most in the whole world are people that make steel.
But we're going to be putting sometime this month, next month, we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and aluminum.
And we'll give you an announcement as to what the exact date is.
But it'll be a tremendous amount of money for our country, a tremendous amount.
These are big numbers.
And in addition to that, and you see the power of the tariff.
I mean, the tariff is good.
And nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggy bank.
And so that'll take place very quickly.
But also, we'll be doing pharmaceuticals to bring our industry back.
We want to bring pharmaceuticals back to the country.
And the way you bring it back to the country is by putting up a wall, and the wall is a tariff wall.
We were the richest country in the world.
We were at our riches from 1870 to 1913.
That's when we had a tariff country.
And then they went to an income tax concept.
And, you know, how did that work out?
It's fine.
I mean, it's okay, but it would have been very much better.
So we'll be doing pharmaceuticals, importantly, and drugs, medicines, et cetera, all forms of medicine and pharmaceuticals.
And we'll be doing very importantly steel.
And we'll also be doing chips and things associated with chips.
unidentified
And sir, what do you plan on talking with the Japanese Prime Minister about next Friday when you all meet?
Well, he's coming in next week.
I don't know.
donald j trump
He asked for a meeting, and I have great respect for Japan.
I like Japan.
Prime Minister Abbey was a very close friend of mine.
What happened to him was so sad, one of the saddest days.
But they're coming in to speak to me, and I look forward to it.
unidentified
Mr. President, on the crash, do you have any concerns that your commentary about things you have described as common sense or your observations could in any way interfere with a thorough investigation of the crash?
donald j trump
No, I think they'll do an investigation.
It'll probably come out the way I said it.
I like to put it up front.
I'm so tired of listening to things happen to our country, and then people say we'll do an investigation, and three years later they come out with a report that nobody looks at.
Especially, not in all cases can you do that, but in this case, you know, you had a helicopter that was, the Black Hawk was too high.
It was above the 200 limit by double.
Shouldn't have been there.
And there were some other mistakes made too, and I pointed them out also, and I was right on all of it.
But they'll still do an investigation just to check it out.
But I think that's what you.
unidentified
Are you at all concerned about opining about the Army and conduct of that aircraft when you are commander-in-chief and these are the people who report it?
No, no.
There's an investigation on it.
donald j trump
And this was all caused by bad rules, regulations, and other things by Biden, the Biden administration.
And when you look at the way they ran things, in fact, if you look, we hired one of the first things I told them to do, I said, get talented people in those beautiful towers overlooking runways.
You better get them in there fast because we don't have people there that are qualified.
And you knew that because planes were landing very, very late.
They were circling all over the place.
We had people that didn't know what the hell they were doing.
unidentified
And if you look at everywhere, and there are other people.
donald j trump
Excuse me.
unidentified
Excuse me.
donald j trump
We have to have the best people, the smartest people, the sharpest people, as control tower experts.
And that's what they have to be.
They have to be experts and they have to be very smart.
And we didn't have our best.
And if you read the quote that I read yesterday at the news conference, it talked about people that were psychologically injured were okay and people that had lots of problems were okay.
I'd read it again if you'd like me to, but I don't think I have to waste your time.
unidentified
Are you concerned, though, sir, with planes in the air all around the country, people relying on that as safety?
Are you suggesting there's an ongoing risk?
donald j trump
No, I think there's very little risk, but I think that we have to make sure that this never happens again.
Very, very little risk.
And we're taking actions that this can't happen again.
The helicopter, as you know, was out of its zone.
It shouldn't have been out of its zone.
It was at the same height as the airplane.
Now, the airplane was coming down on its track.
It was perfect.
It was in perfect shape, coming down, and something was in its way.
You can't let that happen.
And it won't be happening again.
And this was all because of weak rules in the Biden administration.
And we're just not going to let that kind of thing happen again.
And again, I could wait, and I could give a report in two years, like they always do.
Sometimes it's obvious.
In this case, to me, it was very obvious.
And I think I've been proven to be very correct.
Yeah.
unidentified
Mr. Law, what do you expect from your meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu next week?
donald j trump
I expect a lot of good things.
From all meetings, I expect good things.
Marco Rubio, as you know, is going to make a tour of various countries in South America.
He's going to be meeting in Panama, where Panama has treated us very badly.
They gave him, rather, them, rather foolishly, a thing called the Panama Canal, the most expensive project we ever built, if you look at today's numbers.
Most expensive ever built.
We lost 38,000 men.
In that case, all men, just about all men.
38,000 to the mosquito, to malaria and various other problems that you get from jungles.
It was a tremendously costly event.
We built the Panama Canal 110 years ago.
Think of it, the most expensive development we ever did.
And really one of the wonders of the world, one of the great wonders of the world.
We didn't give it to China.
We gave it to Panama.
And Panama has been ripping down all the China language signs.
They've been working like mad to try, but about 70% of the signs were up and they were written in Chinese.
And that's not the deal.
So we're going to take it back.
They've already offered to do many things, but we think it's appropriate that we take it back.
They've totally violated the agreement.
We have an agreement.
They violated the agreement.
And Marco Rubio is going over there to talk to the gentleman that's in charge.
unidentified
Mr. President Gueta, do you still think it's a good idea for Jordan and Egypt to be taking in Palestinians when they reject the idea and the Palestinians who are living now in Egypt?
I think Jordan will take people, people from Gaza.
donald j trump
And I think Egypt will take them also.
I mean, I heard somebody said they're not going to, but I think they will.
I feel confident they will.
unidentified
Mr. President, will tomorrow's tariffs include oil?
Will tomorrow's tariffs be inclusive of Canadian crude?
donald j trump
I'm probably going to reduce the tariff a little bit on that.
We think we're going to bring it down to 10% on the oil.
So it's 25% on the Canada side.
unidentified
Mr. President, are these tariffs stacking on top of already existing tariffs?
donald j trump
On top of whatever may be existing.
unidentified
Mr. President, ask a question about Ms. Rick Curnell was seen on state TV shaking hands with President Maduro.
Is there any concern that that may lend legitimacy to the Madaro administration?
donald j trump
No, we want to do something with Venezuela.
I've been a very big opponent of Venezuela and Maduro.
They've treated us not so good, but they've treated more importantly the Venezuelan people very badly.
We have tremendous Venezuelan population.
I got 92% of the vote, the Venezuelan vote.
Now we want to see what we can do to get people back in their homeland safe and free.
He's meeting with a lot of different people.
But we are for the people of Venezuela.
We're for the Venezuelan Americans.
If you look at it, we have them all in Florida right around the Doral area.
That's really, they call it little Venezuela, right?
And they voted for me close to 100%.
So we'll see what we can do to straighten out the situation in Venezuela.
Venezuela has been very unfortunate.
I was very surprised when I saw that Biden agreed to buy a lot of oil from Venezuela, because Venezuela was just about finished, the dictator.
And when that happened, it brought him back to life.
You know, Biden went out and they buy millions of barrels of oil.
I say, what's that all about?
So we're not going to let that stupid stuff happen.
So we'll see what happens.
We're not happy with Venezuela.
We don't like the way they've treated the Venezuelans at all.
unidentified
Mr. President, there is some warnings or messages that government websites will be shut down this evening to scrub them of DEI content.
Can you confirm what that's happening?
Absolutely shut down.
Government websites will be shut down this evening to scrub them of DEI content.
Can you confirm whether that's accurate and there are any concerns?
I don't know.
donald j trump
It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me.
DEI would have ruined our country, and now it's dead.
I think DEI is dead, so if they want to scrub the websites, that's okay with me.
But I can't tell you.
I guess probably certain people handle it certain ways.
But I'll tell you who's very happy about it.
The military.
The real leaders, the real generals in the military, they're very happy about it.
Doug is very happy about it.
He's got a big, big group of people that are going to be working for him, really starting right now.
He just got signed up, and they're very happy about it.
He had a lot of DEI.
Everybody did, but he has not been a fan.
It would have really, it was really hurting our country badly.
It was costing a lot of money, too.
Do you see the kind of money we're talking about?
Hundreds of millions of dollars for nonsense.
Now, we have our country back now.
Our country is back.
It's a nice thing to say.
I've never seen such love.
I've never had anything like it.
I've never seen anything like it.
People are coming up, sir.
Thank you for bringing our country back.
We were losing our country.
And I think we're stronger now than we've been in many, many decades.
unidentified
How should I say on your call with Vladimir Putin?
donald j trump
Well, we'll be speaking.
We'll be speaking, and I think we'll perhaps do something that will be significant.
We want to end that war.
That war would have never started if I was president.
And we want to end that war.
That war is a horrible war.
Millions of young people are being killed, mostly on the lines now, mostly soldiers.
But the cities have been largely destroyed, many of them.
They're like demolition sites.
But the soldiers are just shooting at each other.
You know, it's a very flat land.
I said this the last time.
Very, very flat land.
The only place that a bullet stops is when it hits a person.
And they're hitting a lot of people.
They're hitting a lot of soldiers on both sides.
You know, I think Russia would probably say close to 800,000.
And Ukraine, 600 or 700,000.
And it's just a senseless situation, and it's got to stop.
So whatever I can do to stop it, and we are having discussions, yes.
unidentified
Ongoing?
Already scheduled?
And ongoing?
Already talking, yes.
donald j trump
I don't want to say that, but we are having very serious discussions about we are.
I just don't want to say that.
We're having very serious discussions about that war, trying to get it ended.
unidentified
With Russia.
donald j trump
With Russia, yeah.
unidentified
At the Department of Justice and the FBI, there are a number of high-level people who are being asked to resign or are being told they are going to be fired.
Did you specifically request any actions at the Bureau or DOJ with respect to those employees?
donald j trump
No, but we have some very bad people over there.
It was weaponized at a level that nobody's ever seen before.
They came after a lot of people, like me, but they came after a lot of people.
No, I wasn't involved in it.
I'll have to see what is exactly going on after this is finished.
But if they fired some people over there, that's a good thing because they were very bad.
They were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.
They used the Justice Department to go after their political opponent, which in itself is illegal.
And obviously it didn't work.
unidentified
Are you going to impose tariff on the European Union?
donald j trump
What does that mean?
unidentified
Are you going to impose tariffs too on the European Union, like you are going to do from Executive Canada?
donald j trump
Well, you're asking me a question.
Because I'm sure you didn't hear, am I going to impose tariffs on the European Union?
Do you want the truthful answer, or should I give you a political answer?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
The European Union has treated us so terribly.
unidentified
You promised Americans to try to reduce costs, and so many of the products would be tariffed when they come into the country.
The outgoing country is not paying the tariff.
The buyers in the United States pay that, and then that's passed on to consumers in most instances.
donald j trump
Sometimes.
unidentified
How would you expect to have prices come down if you have such a broad plan for tariffs?
And what do you say to the voters who want to see you reduce everyday costs?
donald j trump
Well, let me just tell you that I got elected for a lot of reasons.
Number one was the border.
Number two was inflation, because I had almost no inflation.
And yet I charged hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs to countries.
And think of it.
I had almost no inflation and took in $600 billion of money from other countries.
And tariffs don't cause inflation.
They cause success.
They cause big success.
So we're going to have great success.
There could be some temporary short-term disruption, and people will understand that.
I had that when I negotiated some of the good deals for the farmers.
And unfortunately, those deals have been led astray by Biden and his people because they didn't enforce the deals.
We have a deal with China, which is phenomenal for the farmers, but there was nobody to enforce it.
In the Biden administration, they let them get away with murder.
So that's another thing we're going to be bringing.
They committed to buying $50 billion worth of farm product, and they did it when I was president.
As soon as I left, they stopped doing it because there was nobody in Biden to enforce it.
But the tariffs are going to make us very rich and very strong, and we're going to treat other countries very fairly.
But if you think about it, other countries charge us tariffs.
We don't charge them tariffs, and it's about time that that changes.
unidentified
Sir, are you concerned about the market reaction around tariffs?
donald j trump
No, no.
Tariffs, the word tariff is a very misunderstood word.
You've heard me say, I say it kiddingly, but It's one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary, really is.
And we've been taken advantage of because others have charged us VATs.
As an example, the European Union charges us 20% plus plus plus a VAT tax called a VAT tax, very similar.
And it costs us an absolute fortune.
We are treated so badly.
They don't take our cars.
They don't take our farm products essentially.
They don't take almost anything.
And we have a tremendous deficit with the European Union.
So we'll be doing something very substantial with the European Union.
We're going to bring the level up to where it should be.
And if you think of the European Union, then you go to NATO.
It's largely the same group of countries.
Until I came along, I mean, we were paying almost 100% of NATO only to get bad trade deals.
And now it's been evened out, but very unfair having to do.
It was evened out pretty good.
Actually, I did a good job.
They paid $440 billion if you look at the Secretary General's report.
And he was here recently and he said that.
He said, one of the most amazing things I've ever seen is what President Trump was able to do with these countries of Europe, of which he was in charge of them, but he couldn't get them to pay.
I went over, I said, you've got to pay, and if you don't pay, we're not going to protect you.
It's very simple.
But very unfair is with Ukraine because we're in for $300 billion plus, and they're in probably for $100 billion.
There's a $200 billion difference, and they need it more than we do.
We have an ocean in between.
They don't.
unidentified
And so they're going to have to step it up a little bit.
With efforts to reduce the federal workforce, whether it's offering what we call the buyout package or other efforts, do you have any concerns that there will be employees broadly across the federal government who might take that up?
And there are part of the many different ways that agencies protect the public, from food inspections, water safety, to...
Sure, sure.
donald j trump
I know, but everybody's replaceable, and we'll get very good people to replace them if it turns out to be more than we thought.
It could be a lot, it could be a little, we don't know, but we'd love to have them leave.
We're trying to remember this.
We want them to go into the private sector.
It's our dream to have everybody almost working in the private sector, not in the public sector.
We have many people.
Very few people came to work.
It started more or less with COVID, but actually even before COVID.
But it started with the COVID.
They didn't come back.
And then Biden let them get away with murder.
And we had a federal workforce, like 4% coming into the office.
And that just doesn't work.
People can say it does, but it doesn't work.
You have to be unified in a group in the office.
It was crazy.
You don't know what they're doing.
And then at some point, we may ask them to certify that they didn't have two jobs, meaning were they really getting a check from us, the government, and then were they also working in a second job and a third job and on government time.
And many of them will say that they did, which is not legal, but it's a problem.
It's a problem.
No, we want to get that out.
We want to clean it out.
People have been trying to reduce federal government now for 40 years, 45 years, and they haven't been able to do it.
And this is a way of doing it, I think, very nicely.
It's sort of a buyout, too.
I think we're treating people very good.
But people don't come to the office.
They won't have a job starting on that very special date.
So we'll see how that works out.
I mean, nobody knows how that's going to turn out.
Everybody might show up to the office and maybe a large number won't show up.
But if they don't show up, we've accomplished a very serious goal.
We're trying to reduce government.
unidentified
Does Mr. Musk or any of those associated with your Doge have any direct access through the government systems to how money is dispersed?
donald j trump
No, nothing.
No, they are, this has nothing to do also with the federal cutting, you know, with this federal cutting.
This is very separate.
This is if you don't show up, you don't get paid.
But Doge, I think great progress has been made.
We're talking about cutting over a trillion dollars of waste.
We're talking about waste.
We're not talking about we're going to love and cherish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid.
We're not going to do anything with that other than if we can find some abuse or waste, we'll do something, but the people won't be affected.
unidentified
It'll only be more effective and better.
donald j trump
And our country, as our country gets richer, the people on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, those people are going to be more secure.
If Biden had gotten elected, Social Security was going to fail because the country was failing.
It was going to fail.
The country was going to fail.
And therefore, the Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all of the other things that you may get would not be able to be paid.
Our country is getting very strong, and you see it.
I think more progress has been made in the last two or three weeks than has been made in the last four years.
I think not only has more progress been made, in the last four years, I'll call it deep progress.
We went way backward as a country in so many different ways, from woke to all of the other things that took place that were so bad.
You look at Afghanistan, how embarrassing that was.
I think Afghanistan really started the problem with Russia and Ukraine.
When Putin looked over and he saw how incompetently that was handled, I was getting out, but I was going to keep Bagram.
Right now, China has Bagram.
I was going to keep one of the biggest air bases in the world.
They left it.
But I was, other than Bagram, I was going to get out.
And I wasn't keeping Bagram for Afghanistan.
I was keeping it for China because it's one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.
And we were keeping it.
So we have a lot of great things happening in our country, and we appreciate that you're here.
And I'm really thrilled about Doug, and I'm really thrilled about his friend, Chris Wright, who's a legend in the oil business, right?
They keep telling me, Catherine, he's like a legend, and he's a legend too, in a lot of businesses.
And we have an amazing group of people working with us.
There's a man behind me who became a tremendous success.
He was not a wealthy man.
He didn't start off a wealthy man and he ended up a wealthy man.
And, you know, that's a great talent.
And he's willing to sacrifice so much and to put it to work for our country.
Watch the job he does on the interior, but in particular, on really making our country very, very wealthy by utilizing it properly.
And at the same time, environmentally, he does it very, he's very much an environmentalist.
He's going to do it very carefully and very painstakingly good.
But you just watch what happens.
And working with the Department of Energy, where his compatriot, his friend, and also considered the most talented man in the oil business, is the head of the Department of Energy and they work together.
It's almost like a partnership.
It really is a partnership.
And watch what that does for our country.
It'll be a fantastic thing to see.
Thank you very much, everybody.
unidentified
Thank you, friends.
Thank you, friends.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Freddy.
Let's go.
This afternoon, the National Transportation Safety Board will give an update on the investigation into Wednesday's mid-air collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet just outside of Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. We'll have that update live on C-SPAN.
You can also watch on the C-SPAN Now video app or online at C-SPAN.org.
American History TV, Saturday, is on C-SPAN too.
Exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend at 3 p.m. Eastern, we'll bring you the military commissioning ceremony for Harriet Tubman, given posthumously by the Maryland National Guard.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore also spoke at the event.
At 5.30 p.m. Eastern, Michael Tackett looks back on the career and legacy of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who stepped down as Senate Republican leader at the end of the 118th Congress.
Mr. Tackett is the Deputy Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Associated Press and author of a new biography on Senator McConnell titled The Price of Power.
And at 7 p.m. Eastern, American History TV begins a new series looking at the first 100 days of past presidential terms.
This week, we focus on the early months of President George Washington's first term in 1789, including the establishment of the Office of the President, the formation of a cabinet, and the first judicial appointments.
Then at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lectures in History, College of William and Mary lecturer Amy Stallings discusses the history of the 1607 Jamestown settlement in Virginia and efforts over the four centuries to preserve and remember the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
Exploring the American story.
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