| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| People as well as for the people of Ukraine, we'd have a vested interest in protecting it if it were to be challenged or threatened. | ||
| On your first point, when you enter the, this is an important point, and I'm glad you asked this question. | ||
| When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is, which is how this individual entered this country, as on a visitor's visa, you are here as a visitor. | ||
| We can deny you that visa. | ||
| We can deny you that if you tell us, when you apply, hi, I'm trying to get into the United States on a student visa. | ||
| I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages. | ||
| If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this, and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, anti-Semitic activities. | ||
| I intend to shut down your universities. | ||
| If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa. | ||
| I hope we would. | ||
| If you actually end up doing that once you're in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We take you over now to the White House, where President Trump has been meeting with the Prime Minister of Ireland in the Oval Office, speaking to reporters a short time ago. | |
| Ireland, it's a special place, and he's a very special guy. | ||
| He did it the hard way also. | ||
| He served, and then he took a little time off, and then he served again. | ||
| I've heard about that. | ||
| That happens on occasion. | ||
| And he's done very well. | ||
| And we knew each other from a long time ago. | ||
| But it's a great honor to have you in the Oval Office and have you at the White House. | ||
| We have tremendous business relationships with Ireland, and that will only get stronger. | ||
| The relationship we have personally and every other way is very, very strong and very, very good. | ||
| So I just want to welcome you to Washington, D.C. and to our country. | ||
| And thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
May I thank you, President. | |
| It's a great honor for me to be here to celebrate St. Patrick's with you. | ||
| And I thank you for your hospitality and the warmth of your reception. | ||
| And I commend you in terms of the work that you're doing, particularly in terms of the pursuit of peace, which we discussed earlier. | ||
| And I think that's going well. | ||
| And you really have, in the first sort of 100 years of this government, you've done some extraordinary things very quickly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Everybody's watching in that respect. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a pleasure to be here. | |
| It's an honor to be here. | ||
| Well, it's a great honor to have you. | ||
| Special people, very special people. | ||
| I know a lot of Irish. | ||
| And growing up in New York, I know a couple of your people that used to live in that beautiful Ireland. | ||
| And now they're here, but they love your country very much. | ||
| They have a great feeling toward your country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have, and they come back for holidays and stuff like that. | |
| They come. | ||
| Checking out their family ancestry and things like that. | ||
| Great, fantastic people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Some go to Dunebeck as well. | |
| We love Dunebeck. | ||
| I love that. | ||
| I don't know if I'll ever see it again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe I won't, but I think I will. | |
| We'll get there. | ||
| We're going to get there. | ||
| It's a beautiful place, wonderful place. | ||
| Any questions, Mr. Speaker? | ||
| Mr. President, how far tariffs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How far are you pleased? | |
| How worried are you about to counter tariffs from the EU, which were announced yesterday? | ||
| And also, how worried should I be, given the fact that it has a massive trade surplus with the U.S., over $50 billion? | ||
| Neil Martin might be quite nervous about what you wouldn't have to get. | ||
| Well, I don't think he looks nervous to me. | ||
| And if he was nervous, he wouldn't show it. | ||
| Now, we do have a massive deficit with Ireland, because Ireland was very smart. | ||
| They took our pharmaceutical companies away from presidents that didn't know what they were doing. | ||
| And, you know, it's too bad that happened. | ||
| It's a tremendous job. | ||
| I give, look, the Irish are smart. | ||
| Yes, smart people. | ||
| And you took our pharmaceutical companies and other companies, but through taxation and proper taxation, they made it very good for companies to move there. | ||
| And we had presidents and people that were involved in this that had no idea what they were doing, and they lost big segments of our economy. | ||
| The European Union treats us very badly. | ||
| They have for years. | ||
| I saw that. | ||
| I had it out with them in my first term. | ||
| Did well, but we had to solve other problems. | ||
| And we did. | ||
| But the European Union's been very tough. | ||
| And it's our turn too. | ||
| We get a turn at that also. | ||
| But they have not been fair. | ||
| They sue our companies and win massive amounts of money. | ||
| They sued Apple, won $17 billion. | ||
| And they use that for other reasons, I guess, or to run the European Union. | ||
| So I'm not knocking it. | ||
| They're doing what they should be doing, perhaps, for the European Union, but it does create ill will. | ||
| And as you know, we're going to be doing reciprocal tariffs. | ||
| So whatever they charge us, we're charging them. | ||
| Nobody can complain about that. | ||
| Whatever it is, it doesn't even matter what it is. | ||
| If they charge us, if they charge us 25 or 20 percent or 10 percent or 2 percent or 200 percent, then that's what we're charging them. | ||
| And so I don't know why people get upset about that because there's nothing more fair than that. | ||
| And we had a problem with Ontario, and they dropped that when I let them know what we were going to be doing. | ||
| They dropped it immediately, so I'm glad because electricity, you shouldn't be playing with electricity. | ||
| It affects people's lives. | ||
| Actually, their life. | ||
| I mean, it can affect, depending on whether it can affect their life. | ||
| So we can't do that. | ||
| And it doesn't make sense that our country allows electricity to be made in another country and sold into us. | ||
| Who did that deal for the United States? | ||
| Okay, I looked at that long ago, and I said that's not something that's very smart. | ||
| So we've had a lot of bad trade policies, and yet we're doing very well right now. | ||
| But we're doing well because I won the election. | ||
| If I didn't win the election, you would have had a very bad period. | ||
| I think a lot of the stock market going down was because of a really bad four years that we had. | ||
| When you look at inflation and all of the other problems that were, I mean, wars and inflation and so many other problems. | ||
| But we're going to have very good years. | ||
| We're going to have, we had, I don't know if you saw a little thing like the cost of eggs. | ||
| Little to you, but big to people out there, down almost 30 percent in the last few days. | ||
| We got it down. | ||
| We did a lot of things. | ||
| We have a great Secretary of Agriculture, and we did a lot of things that got the cost of eggs down very substantially and so many other things. | ||
| A very big thing that I'm very happy with is oil is down to $65 a barrel. | ||
| And that's faster than I would have. | ||
| We put on the gas, we stepped in the gas in order to get oil. | ||
| And that's what's happening. | ||
| So we're getting that down. | ||
| And when energy comes down, prices are going to be coming down with it. | ||
| So in a very short period of time, we've done a very good job. | ||
| And I think that the tariffs that we're talking about, and again, reciprocal. | ||
| I think that the tariffs, there are some cases where they're a little beyond reciprocal because we've been abused for a long time as a country. | ||
| We have been abused really for a long time. | ||
| And we will be abused no longer. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you going to retaliate to the EU retaliation? | |
| In private education, sir, would you describe for us as this meeting your vision by cutting about half the workforce, and what responsibility do you feel to the civil servants who have now lost their jobs? | ||
| Many of them worked at the Department of Education during their first term. | ||
| Sure, I do. | ||
| I feel very badly. | ||
| But many of them don't work at all. | ||
| Many of them never showed up to work. | ||
| Many of them, many of them never showed up to work, Kelly, unfortunately, and that's not good. | ||
| And when we cut, you know, we go, and that's what I had a number of meetings with a lot of people over the last couple of months. | ||
| When we cut, we want to cut, but we want to cut the people that aren't working or not doing a good job. | ||
| We're keeping the best people. | ||
| And Linda McMahon is a real professional, very, actually a very sophisticated business person. | ||
| She cut a large number, but she kept the best people. | ||
| And we'll see how it all works out. | ||
| But our country was run very badly. | ||
| I mean, whether it was that or contracts that were signed that was so bad, so obviously bad. | ||
| And I go through them in speeches. | ||
| I could go through them all day long. | ||
| I could read for billions and hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| And all of that fat and waste and fraud and abuse is being taken out. | ||
| But it's incredible what's happened. | ||
| Now, Department of Education, maybe more so than any other place, has a lot of people that can be cut. | ||
| They're number one, not showing up to work. | ||
| Number two, they're not doing a good job. | ||
| And if you take a look at our education process, and if you look at the charts, because they have numerous charts where they do the top 40, we're at number 37, 38, 39, and 40. | ||
| And recently they hit. | ||
| During Biden's last few days, they hit last. | ||
| So they were number 40, and yet we're number one in cost per pupil. | ||
| So it's pretty bad. | ||
| But we have a dream, and you know what the dream is? | ||
| We're going to move the Department of Education. | ||
| We're going to move education into the states so that the states, instead of bureaucrats working in Washington, so that the states can run education. | ||
| And you have Norway, you have Denmark, you have Sweden, you have various Finland, you have various countries that do very well. | ||
| You also have China that does very well in education, which is a pretty big tribute to China, I must say. | ||
| 1.4 billion, and they're in the top 10. | ||
| And it's pretty amazing. | ||
| So we can't blame size anymore. | ||
| You know, normally you'd blame size. | ||
| It's too big. | ||
| How can you do it? | ||
| But China does it. | ||
| So we think when you move it back to Iowa and Indiana and all the states that run so well, there's so many I could name 30, maybe almost 40. | ||
| Those will be as good as Denmark. | ||
| Those will be as good as Norway. | ||
| And they'll be as good as any of these. | ||
| I believe they'll be as good as any. | ||
| Now then you're going to have 10 that won't be so great. | ||
| You're going to have five that will not be good at all, but we'll work with them and we'll get them to be good. | ||
| But what we want to do is always school choice, but we're going to do school choice and we're doing it. | ||
| But we want education to be moved back where the states run education, where the parents of the children will be running education, where governors that are doing a very good job will be running education, not run. | ||
| I drive through the city and I see like so many buildings, Department of Education, Department of Big Buildings, the Department. | ||
| And by the way, they're empty. | ||
| Nobody shows up to work. | ||
| So I think Linda did a very good job. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you have a meeting with Labor Putin scheduled for a conversation? | |
| What would be your question? | ||
| I won't comment on that, but we had a great success yesterday. | ||
| We have a full ceasefire. | ||
| If it kicks in, we have to see. | ||
| It's up to Russia now. | ||
| But we've had a good relationship with both parties, actually. | ||
| And we'll see. | ||
| We'll be knowing people are going to Russia right now as we speak. | ||
| And hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia. | ||
| And if we do, I think that would be 80% of the way to getting this horrible bloodbath finished. | ||
| It's a bloodbath is taking place over there. | ||
| On average, 2,000 to 3,000 young people a week are being killed. | ||
| In that stupid war that would have never happened if I were president. | ||
| So we have people going over there, Mr. VP. | ||
| Do you have anything to say about it? | ||
| Because you're very much involved. | ||
| What's going to happen? | ||
| Well, we've got some conversations that are happening on the phone and in person with some of our representatives over the next couple of days. | ||
| As the President said, we think that we're in a very good place where the Ukrainians have agreed to a ceasefire, and we're now going to see whether we can get the Russians to agree to a ceasefire too. | ||
| And we'll certainly have news on that when we find out that news. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How do you know that people who will keep a ceasefire, considering that he's broken them in the past? | |
| We haven't spoken to him yet with substance because we just found out and we just were able to get Ukraine to agree. | ||
| So we're going to know very soon. | ||
| I've gotten some positive messages, but a positive message means nothing. | ||
| This is a very serious situation. | ||
| This is a situation that could lead to World War III. | ||
| And Biden should have never let it happen. | ||
| Incompetence allowed this to happen. | ||
| This shouldn't have happened. | ||
| October 7th in the Middle East should have never happened with Israel. | ||
| The horrible leaving, the way they left. | ||
| Afghanistan should have never happened. | ||
| Inflation should have never happened. | ||
| You know, we have great inflation numbers, by the way, just got released. | ||
| Inflation is way down. | ||
| And it's based on what we've done. | ||
| And we've done it in a very short period of time. | ||
| You know, we had virtually no inflation. | ||
| For four years, we had almost no inflation. | ||
| And when these characters took over, we went from no inflation to the worst inflation probably in the history of our country. | ||
| So it's very interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| And by the way, I have to speak of inflation. | ||
| I love these socks. | ||
| What's with these socks? | ||
| I'm trying to stay focused, but I'm very impressed with the VP socks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I would say to you that the United States is recognized as having such an important role in the peace process, and yet half the parties from the Northern Ireland government have decided not to come to some Happy State celebrations. | |
| They haven't come over. | ||
| They're boycotting the Sympathy State celebrations. | ||
| What are they boycotting? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They are talking about your position on Gaza as one of the most decided. | |
| Oh, I haven't heard that. | ||
| I really haven't heard that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look. | |
| Could I just say to pay tribute to the President on the peace initiatives? | ||
| The one thing we've learned in Ireland about the peace posit that you've just spoken about, and I recall back in the early 90s, when the first tentative steps to get peace in Ireland, people criticized people like John Hume or people like Albert Reynolds to then Taoiseach. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But they kept going. | |
| And when we got that ceasefire in 1993, okay, it took a number of years to get the comprehensive peace settlement. | ||
| But again, the guns more or less largely went silent. | ||
| The war in Ukraine is a devastating war on young people. | ||
| And I think that very simple, straightforward narrative is to be commended. | ||
| We all have children. | ||
| I mean, we are shocked at the prospect of young people losing their lives in that number. | ||
| Be they Ukrainian, be they Russian, whatever. | ||
| Anything we can do to stop the violence, I think is an extremely positive thing. | ||
| And there will be all sorts of people having qualifications on it, all the rest of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's our job then to work on it and to try and build it. | |
| Europe, U.S., and everything. | ||
| Mr. President, I will say, I will say, and thank you for that, but I will say, last week, 2,500 young people died while we sit here and talk. | ||
| And while they talk about peace, but they've been talking about peace, this should have never happened. | ||
| This war should have never happened. | ||
| It would have never happened if I was president. | ||
| That's what makes me more angry than anything else, because you've had far more people die than they report, than these people report for whatever reason. | ||
| But you had far more people. | ||
| The numbers are far more devastating. | ||
| You'll find that out someday. | ||
| And it doesn't affect you very much. | ||
| They're not Irish, and they're not from my country. | ||
| They're from Russia mostly, almost all from Russia and from Ukraine. | ||
| And people could say, why are you doing this? | ||
| Why are you involved in that? | ||
| Because 2,000 people a week are dying. | ||
| And they have families and they have mothers and their fathers and they have sisters and their brothers and friends. | ||
| And they're dying. | ||
| And I've seen the pictures, the satellite pictures that we see all the time. | ||
| And it looks like Gettysburg in its prime, because that was, they say, one of the most horrific battles ever. | ||
| You have kids lying all over these fields that are dead, because the weapons today are unbelievable between drones and various types of guns. | ||
| I'm not even talking about beyond that with the big babies. | ||
| You understand what I mean? | ||
| I hate to even mention the name, the nuclear name. | ||
| I hate to mention it. | ||
| But you have weapons today that are so powerful. | ||
| And I see kids every week. | ||
| I see pictures of kids laying all over the field, dead. | ||
| They're dead, beautiful kids. | ||
| They're dead. | ||
| And they're not from here and they're not from where you are, but he's working very hard. | ||
| We're all working hard to get this thing finished. | ||
| It's crazy over nothing. | ||
| And it's not going to go anywhere. | ||
| It's just a terrible situation. | ||
| And I think we have a chance to get it done. | ||
| So we've gotten half of it as a ceasefire. | ||
| And if we can get Russia to stop, then we have a full ceasefire. | ||
| And I think it'll never go back to war. | ||
| I think something was... | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's been a lot of talk recently. | |
| The government are looking to bring in what's called the Occupied Territories Bill, which would ban goods from occupied territories. | ||
| I know you met with Prime Minister Nyahanyah recently. | ||
| Did Arlit come up in that conversation? | ||
| Did he raise any concerns about the large number of people? | ||
| One thing I'll tell you, you're not from Israel, that's for sure. | ||
| She is definitely not from Israel. | ||
| It's an interesting question coming from you. | ||
| We talk about everything. | ||
| Israel has been under siege, as you can see, and they had to fight back. | ||
| October 7th was a terrible thing. | ||
| People don't like to mention it, but it was a terrible, terrible day in the life of the world. | ||
| And it's amazing the way people don't mention that. | ||
| But I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| Those are other clips I get to see. | ||
| You know, as president, you get to see clips that you'd rather not see. | ||
| But I see clips, and that was a terrible day for the world. | ||
| And we're working hard with Israel. | ||
| We're working hard to see if we can solve the problem. | ||
| I will say, I just saw 10 hostages, and they were treated really badly. | ||
| They were really treated badly. | ||
| I was shocked. | ||
| I asked him, was there any kindness shown? | ||
| They were in there. | ||
| One was in there for 500 days. | ||
| One was 323 days. | ||
| I said, was there any, 10 of them? | ||
| I said, was there any kindness despite? | ||
| Like, did they ever say, don't worry, you'll be okay, or give you a little wink or give you an extra slice of bread or something? | ||
| And everybody said, all of these people said zero. | ||
| It was hatred. | ||
| It was pure hatred. | ||
| So, I mean, that's a very deep-seated problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Could you give the Tao some advice? | |
| Could you give the T-shirt some advice? | ||
| Ireland is in the midst of a housing crisis now, and I know you have a lot of experience as a businessman. | ||
| How can the state build tens of thousands of houses up speed? | ||
| You know why they have a housing crisis? | ||
| Because they're doing so well. | ||
| They can't produce houses fast enough. | ||
| That's a good problem, not a bad answer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a pretty good answer, President. | |
| Will you put more tariffs on the EU? | ||
| Mr. President, will you get more than that? | ||
| Everybody should have that problem. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| Will you put more tariffs on the EU? | ||
| I know this gentleman. | ||
| He'll get it solved. | ||
| Will you put more tariffs on the EU? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Will you respond to their retaliation? | |
| Of course I'm going to respond. | ||
| You will retire. | ||
| The problem is our country didn't respond. | ||
| Look, the EU was set up in order to take advantage of the United States. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Including Ireland? | |
| Is Ireland taking advantage of the U.S.? | ||
| Of course they are. | ||
| I can't, you know, I have great respect for Ireland and what they did. | ||
| And they should have done just what they did. | ||
| But the United States shouldn't have let it happen. | ||
| We had stupid leaders. | ||
| We had leaders that didn't have a clue. | ||
| Or let's say they weren't business people, but they didn't have a clue what was happening. | ||
| And all of a sudden, Ireland has, you know, our pharmaceutical companies and other this beautiful island of its island of five million people has got the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry in its graphs. | ||
| And, you know, you mentioned housing and you mentioned other things. | ||
| I mean, I have property in Ireland, as you know, and I love it. | ||
| It does great. | ||
| But I'd like to see the United States not have been so stupid for so many years, not just with Ireland, with everybody. | ||
| You know, I looked at trade deals. | ||
| I was telling the group yesterday, I looked at trade deals in term one. | ||
| It's one of the reasons I decided I had to do this because somebody had to straighten it out and I didn't see anybody that was going to. | ||
| I looked at trade deals that were so bad, I'd actually say, how is it possible that this could have happened? | ||
| Who would have been so stupid to let these deals happen? | ||
| For instance, when the pharmaceutical company started to go to Ireland, I would have said, that's okay if you want to go to Ireland. | ||
| I think it's great. | ||
| But if you want to sell anything into the United States, I'm going to put a 200% tariff on you. | ||
| So you're never going to be able to sell anything into the United States. | ||
| You know what they would have done? | ||
| They would have stayed here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's so lucky that I wasn't going to be able to do it. | |
| Well, we are planning to lower taxes if the Democrats behave, but the Democrats have no clue. | ||
| You saw that the other night during the speech. | ||
| Two young women were slaughtered by illegal aliens. | ||
| One young man has very serious cancer and many other problems. | ||
| We look at the people up there. | ||
| They all had difficulty, very serious difficulty. | ||
| But when we're talking about two young girls, beautiful young girls, Lake and Riley, you know, you know the whole story that that evening was a disaster for the Democrats, in my opinion. | ||
| And I would mention, and I'd see two mothers that were inconsolable as they stood crying. | ||
| Their daughters have been absolutely just destroyed, killed, viciously killed. | ||
| And the young man who loves the police departments, he had cancer and has cancer, very bad cancer. | ||
| There wasn't a from people sitting there, Democrats, there wasn't a hand clap. | ||
| Nobody stood. | ||
| They were just stone-faced. | ||
| These people are sick. | ||
| There's something wrong with them. | ||
| There was no standing for anybody. | ||
| The only thing they liked is when they heard about the death taking place with Ukraine. | ||
| They were happy about that. | ||
| They were happy about that. | ||
| Well, Pocahontas was very happy. | ||
| She's the one that was clapped. | ||
| That's why I looked at her. | ||
| I said, oh, it's Pocahontas. | ||
| These people are sick. | ||
| They don't know what's happening in the real world. | ||
| The Democrats have to get their act together. | ||
| And if they don't vote, then what you're going to do is you're going to have taxes that are going to go through the roof. | ||
| You're going to have a very bad time. | ||
| You're going to have some very bad things happen. | ||
| And people are going to blame the Democrats. | ||
| And Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I'm concerned. | ||
| You know, he's become a Palestinian. | ||
| He used to be Jewish. | ||
| He's not Jewish anymore. | ||
| He's a Palestinian. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| There's been a lot of on and off, some inconsistency. | ||
| There's no inconsistency, only with NBC, which is one of the worst networks on television, by the way. | ||
| Let me just tell you the inconsistency. | ||
| I have the right, I have the right to adjust. | ||
| And I was called by the automakers as an example, General Motors, Ford, et cetera. | ||
| The big three, the big four. | ||
| And they asked me to do them a favor. | ||
| Could I delay it for a period of four weeks so that they're not driven into a little bit of a disaster for them? | ||
| They actually love what I'm doing, but they had a problem. | ||
| And I'm not like a block that just, I won't deliver. | ||
| I have, it's called flexibility. | ||
| It's not called inconsistency. | ||
| It's called flexibility. | ||
| And I think you want me to be flexible too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is flexibility going to be your ongoing view towards? | |
| Sure, I'll always have flexibility. | ||
| But there will be very little flexibility once we start. | ||
| April 2nd is going to be a very big day for the United States of America. | ||
| The United States of America is going to take back a lot of what was stolen from it by other countries and by frankly incompetent U.S. leadership, grossly incompetent. | ||
| I gave you an example of Ireland. | ||
| I would have never let that happen. | ||
| Impossible for that to have happened. | ||
| But we're going to take back our wealth and we're going to take back a lot of the companies that left are coming back. | ||
| If you haven't read, we have the biggest computer chip company ever, ever, has virtually all of the market. | ||
| I didn't call them, they called me. | ||
| And they called for two reasons. | ||
| Number one, we had a great election of somebody that they want running the country. | ||
| And we ran, we won in a big mandate. | ||
| We won every swing state. | ||
| We won by millions of votes. | ||
| We won by 2,750 districts to 500. | ||
| Think of that, 2,750 districts to 500. | ||
| That's why the map, when you looked at it, was entirely red, meaning Republican. | ||
| Not many communists. | ||
| So anyway, so look, this country needed somebody to defend it. | ||
| It's this big, beautiful place that was being ripped off by illegal immigrants coming in from prisons, coming in from mental institutions, gang members, gang leaders, drug dealers, pouring into our country with the open borders. | ||
| I am so angry at the last four years of what they've done to our country. | ||
| What they've done to this country between inflation, but maybe the most that bothers me is that they would allow millions of people to come into our country that are stone-cold, murderers, killers, drug dealers, the worst gang members, the worst people allowed into our country, and we're now getting them out. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're going to get them out. | |
| We're getting them out. | ||
| I want to thank Tom Holman, by the way, he's doing a great job. | ||
| And I want to thank Christy Noam, who's doing a fantastic job. | ||
| This is a job that's so unnecessary. | ||
| This should have never happened. | ||
| This should have never happened. | ||
| So we're bringing back our country in many ways, not only financially, and financially we'll be stronger than ever before. | ||
| I think the markets are going to soar when they see what's happening. | ||
| I'll tell you what, I'm called every day by numerous big, big companies. | ||
| I spoke at the business roundtable yesterday. | ||
| They had the largest attendance they've ever had. | ||
| And these are only the CEOs and chairmen, but mostly the people that run the boss, the people that run the top 150 companies. | ||
| 150 people showed up. | ||
| Every single company showed up. | ||
| First time it ever happened. | ||
| It's been around a long time. | ||
| The biggest business leaders. | ||
| We had a great discussion. | ||
| Went really well. | ||
| And I want to tell you there's tremendous optimism out there about our country in terms of regulations being cut, in terms of taxes being cut. | ||
| And it would be great if the Democrats would do what's right. | ||
| It would be great if the Democrats would do what's right for our country for a change, because they really are there. | ||
| They've lost their way. | ||
| They've lost their way. | ||
| They think that people pouring into our country from prisons, jails, murders. | ||
| We have 11,088 murderers that were allowed into, people that murdered people, half of which murdered more than one person. in our country. | ||
| We're getting them the hell out. | ||
| But who would run it? | ||
| Who would allow this to happen? | ||
| Who would allow men to play in women's sports? | ||
| And they're still fighting it. | ||
| It's got to be a 95% issue. | ||
| But they're on television this morning. | ||
| I see this person, a Democrat, say, we should have the right. | ||
| No, no, men should not be hurting women. | ||
| They're hurting women very badly. | ||
| They're hurting women. | ||
| And they're also demeaning women. | ||
| But who would want these things? | ||
| And everything's transgender. | ||
| Everybody transgendered. | ||
| That's all you hear about. | ||
| Now, that's why we won the election in record numbers. | ||
| But very importantly, now it is what it is. | ||
| The Democrats should get with us and come up with good tax policy so that Ireland and other countries can't take our businesses away from us. | ||
| And he understands exactly. | ||
| You guys did the right thing. | ||
| I'm not upset with you. | ||
| I think I respect what you've done. | ||
| You've done a great job. | ||
|
unidentified
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But our people, our people, our people did a very bad job. | |
| How advanced are your plans to try and bring some of those companies back to America? | ||
| Will you be brief? | ||
| Well, I'd love to have him back. | ||
| I mean, I'd love to have him back, but he'll be fighting me on. | ||
|
unidentified
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What I would say, President, if I could one second, just make the point. | |
| It's a two-way street, too. | ||
| We are investing a lot more in America now. | ||
| And people may not realize, but Ryaner, one of our biggest airlines, for example. | ||
| Altra. | ||
|
unidentified
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Air CAP? | |
| Altraid. | ||
|
unidentified
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They buy more. | |
| The two of them together buy more Boeing airplanes than anybody else outside of America. | ||
| That's a little known fact. | ||
| It doesn't turn up into statistics, but Reinair and AirCap, big aircraft leasing company, Irish company, have done great work with Boeing and huge investments over the last couple of years. | ||
|
unidentified
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And there's a lot of Irish companies here now, about 700 and Irish companies based in America. | |
| Glanbia, Smorford, Rock I was saying to you this morning, Vice Wisdom. | ||
| A lot of them creating thousands of jobs in America. | ||
|
unidentified
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And it's only fair. | |
| I mean, that's correct. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's the way it should happen. | ||
| And I think it's a very good relationship we have. | ||
| It's a historic one. | ||
| It's happened over time. | ||
| We've added value to American companies. | ||
| We've increased our value. | ||
| They've got access to the European market and they did all of that. | ||
| I understand where you're coming from, fully. | ||
| But I think it's a relationship that we can develop and that will endure into the future and will change it with a damage. | ||
|
unidentified
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And you're evolving and you're doing things. | |
| And they've done a very good job. | ||
| Now, I just will say this, but with all that we've said, we can talk about Ryanair. | ||
| There's a massive deficit. | ||
| I don't mean by a little bit. | ||
| I mean, there's a massive deficit that we have with Ireland and with other countries too. | ||
| And we want to sort of even that out as nicely as we can. | ||
| And we'll work together. | ||
| We're going to work together, great. | ||
| But the deficit is massive. | ||
| Will you hear this one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You said earlier that it was now up to Russia in terms of the ceasefire. | |
| Is there anything you can do in terms of pressuring Russia or in terms of sanctions? | ||
| Or what can you do? | ||
| We can, but I hope it's not going to be necessary. | ||
| Sure, we can pressure. | ||
| We can do that with Russia. | ||
| Remember this? | ||
| Russia took Georgia from Bush, right? | ||
| They took Crimea from a man named Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, right? | ||
| They tried to take the whole thing from Biden. | ||
| They're going for the whole ball of wax. | ||
| Who is the only one that never took anything from Trump? | ||
| And in fact, I'm the one that stopped Nord Stream 2, the pipeline, the biggest pipeline anywhere in the world. | ||
| I stopped it. | ||
| It was dead. | ||
| And then Biden got in and he approved it. | ||
| Nobody mentions that. | ||
| What I did to Russia was very tough. | ||
| I was the toughest ever. | ||
| But they never took anything from me. | ||
| They took them from Obama and Bush, and they took it from Sleepy Joe Biden. | ||
| With Biden, they wanted to take the whole country, but I think I've stopped that, but we'll see. | ||
| But yeah, there are things you could do that wouldn't be pleasant in a financial sense. | ||
| I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. | ||
| I don't want to do that because I want to get peace. | ||
| I want to see peace, and we'll see. | ||
| But in a financial sense, yeah, we could do things very bad for Russia. | ||
| It would be devastating for Russia, but I don't want to do that because I want to see peace. | ||
| And we're getting close to maybe getting something done. | ||
| We've got Ukraine done. | ||
| And as you know, I've always said that Ukraine might have been the more difficult party. | ||
| You saw you were here a week ago when some interesting things happened. | ||
| I had somebody that didn't seem to want peace. | ||
| Now he's agreed to peace. | ||
| So we'll see what happens. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, thanks. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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First, we'll congratulate you on your lower inflation poor rates. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Gas prices going down, airline prices going down. | |
| This is for the Irish gentleman here, if I can see him real quickly. | ||
| Welcome, United States. | ||
| You look great. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Nice to see you. | ||
| Maybe you feel good. | ||
|
unidentified
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What's coming next? | |
| Make America Great Again. | ||
| If you could run on MIGA, Make Ireland Great Again, what would your number one issue be for people in Ireland right now to make your country stronger? | ||
| And I've got a two-part question to that as well. | ||
| The number one issue in Ireland is housing, to be honest, and I think it was correctly pointed out. | ||
|
unidentified
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We've got to build more houses. | |
| We've got to build them faster to give the young people of Ireland an opportunity to afford to buy a house or to afford to rent a house. | ||
| We have a lot of other good things happening. | ||
| That's my number one priority. | ||
| Are you trying to question this? | ||
| Ireland is known for very happy, fun-loving people. | ||
| Great attitude, many in this room right now that I've met. | ||
| Why in the world would you let Rosie O'Donnell move to Ireland? | ||
| I think she's going to lower your happiness level. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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I like that question. | |
| Do you know you have Rosie O'Donnell? | ||
|
unidentified
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Do you know who she is? | |
| Do you know who she is? | ||
| You're better off not knowing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you expecting to inform the President your views on Gaza, considering that you have diametrically opposed positions, so to speak, of Palestine? | |
| Your country is one of three in Europe that recognizes the state of Palestine. | ||
| Are you expecting to discuss this with the President? | ||
| Are you expecting to inform him? | ||
| I don't have to inform the President. | ||
| He's very well clued into the whole situation. | ||
| We shared the President's, again, unrelenting focus on peace. | ||
| And his envoy, the President himself, as soon as he came into office, went to get a ceasefire. | ||
|
unidentified
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We've been calling for a ceasefire for a long time. | |
| We want to consolidate the peace. | ||
| That is our fundamental. | ||
| We want the hostages out. | ||
| I've been saying it from day one. | ||
| It's a horrific thing to do to take someone as a hostage. | ||
| And I went to kibbutz very after October the 7th in solidarity with Israel and that gets forgotten. | ||
|
unidentified
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And I went a week or two afterwards. | |
| I saw the kibbutz. | ||
| It was a shocking thing to see, even though it was a week or two after the horror. | ||
| It was a village. | ||
| You could see life going on prior to the attack. | ||
| It was something that will not leave me. | ||
| And I've been interested in the Middle East for a long, long time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's complex, and it's all of that. | |
| But we do desperately need the hostages out, all of them. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's far too long. | |
| Let me finish with you. | ||
| And then we need a ceasefire. | ||
| We need to consolidate that. | ||
| We need a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza. | ||
| Because again, there's too many children and too many people starting and so on. | ||
| And it's that humanitarian impulse is what motivates the Irish in respect of its views. | ||
| And I've always been of the view, it's been our view, that a two-state solution would be ideal. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's become much more challenging and difficult as time has moved on. | |
| But that has always been our position. | ||
| But it's genuinely to have people, because we've gone through this. | ||
| We discussed this prior to you coming in. | ||
| We've been through some of this. | ||
| People hating each other, terrible acts of violence carried out on each other. | ||
| We came through it. | ||
| It's our earnest hope that Arab and Jewish people can live side by side. | ||
| And I've met with people, parents of children who were killed on both sides, called Parent Circle in Israel. | ||
|
unidentified
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And they work to try and bring people together. | |
| It's difficult work. | ||
| What about the president's plans to expel Palestinians out of Gaza? | ||
| Are you discussing that with him and giving him your... | ||
| Nobody's expelling any Palestinians out of Gaza. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Who are you with? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm in Boys of America. | |
| Oh, no wonder. | ||
| Okay, voice of the country. | ||
|
unidentified
|
How he feels about the president just saying that he would like to take back U.S. companies, pharma companies based in Ireland. | |
| Well, I think the pharmaceutical companies in Ireland are doing very well, as the President has liked. | ||
| And, you know, again, I think it's about that two-way partnership. | ||
|
unidentified
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I understand fully where the President is coming from. | |
| I think there's actually room. | ||
| We can discuss all this. | ||
| I think there's room for those companies to grow in America. | ||
| And many of them, by the way, have already announced fairly significant manufacturing investments now. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Just recently. | ||
| Like people like Ela Lilly, for example, who have been a long-standing presence in Ireland since the 1970s. | ||
|
unidentified
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I spoke to the CEO recently. | |
| He's great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great guy. | |
| And he's announced, I think, about a 50 billion investment in America. | ||
| But there's big investment. | ||
| They've had big investment in Ireland. | ||
| Ireland has served them well too. | ||
| The workforce is very strong. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's an educated workforce. | |
| They delivered well. | ||
| During COVID-19, a number of CEOs said to me, a lot of the plants in Ireland were the only plants that never closed for a single day during COVID. | ||
|
unidentified
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Not a single day. | |
| Productivity is good and so on like that. | ||
| Mr. President, thank you so much. | ||
| You spoke to Robin Bikuti for quite a while almost. | ||
| So I would want to know your assessment. | ||
| When you take this deal to him, how do you assess the chances of doing this? | ||
| I have no assessment, and I don't go by chances. | ||
| I think it makes sense for Russia. | ||
| A lot of downside for Russia, too. | ||
| And we have a very complex situation solved on one side, pretty much solved. | ||
| We've also discussed land and other things that go with it. | ||
| We're not just doing it and saying ceasefire. | ||
| We don't know what's happening. | ||
| We know the areas of land we're talking about, whether it's pullback or not pullback. | ||
| We've discussed a lot of the details of what has to go because we don't want to be wasting time. | ||
| We don't want to be wasting time while people are dying. | ||
| I mean, as we're sitting here, you probably had two people die on that very open field. | ||
| You know, it's dead flat. | ||
| It's great farmland and it's dead flat. | ||
| There's no protection. | ||
| The only thing that stops a bullet is a human body. | ||
| And these are bodies that are young people and they're stopping a lot of bullets because a lot of bullets are flying across those level fields. | ||
| Dead flat, no protection whatsoever. | ||
| It is a disaster. | ||
| And so I hope he's going to have a ceasefire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You are using the American leverage to get a lot of political issues that you can do. | |
| Well, I don't want to get into that, but if I had to, I'm the only one that's dealt with them successfully. | ||
| Everyone else, I went through it. | ||
| Bush didn't deal with them successfully, dealt with them terribly, got ripped off. | ||
| And Obama was a disaster. | ||
| You know, they have with Obama, he gave them sheets, and I gave them anti-tank missiles. | ||
| You know that, right? | ||
| It's called javelin. | ||
| You know the javelin? | ||
| I'm the one that gave them the javelins. | ||
| People don't say that. | ||
| And then they say, oh, Trump has a great relationship with Russia. | ||
| I'm the one that gave him the javelins. | ||
| Obama gave him sheets. | ||
| That's an expression. | ||
| He gave sheets, I gave javelins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, how worried to the undocumented Irish? | |
| How worried to the undocumented Irishman about your administration that you don't run the boat and send them all again? | ||
| Oh, I think the Irish love Trump. | ||
| We won the Irish with a tremendous amount of vote. | ||
| I want to thank you very much. | ||
| We won in the 80s with Irish. | ||
| I got the Irish vote. | ||
| I think I have it locked up pretty good unless I did something very stupid, like drained your company, your wonderful place of all of its companies. | ||
| If I drained Ireland of all of the companies, maybe I'd lose the Irish vote. | ||
| I don't know, but right now, no, I love your, I love it. | ||
| I've been there many times, as you know. | ||
| And we don't want to do anything to hurt Ireland. | ||
| But we do want fairness, and he understands that. | ||
| Oh, no, that's enough, Kelly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks. | |
| Was there anything that the teacher could say to you today that would dissuade you from an Irish and funding? | ||
| Mr. President, is Irish American appreciation among you? | ||
| You've made it there. | ||
| Who's your favorite Irish person? | ||
| Oh, there's so many. | ||
| Are you kidding me? | ||
| Well, I do happen to like your fighter. | ||
| He's got the best tattoos I've ever seen. | ||
| I don't know if I'm a big one. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm not sure if I can do it. | |
| I'm not sure if I'm color. | ||
| Well, you have, you have, well, Connor's great, right? | ||
| You know, talking about Connor. | ||
| But you have a lot of great Irish fighters, actually. | ||
| Great fighters. | ||
| I don't know what that is, but Ireland's always had a lot of good fighters. | ||
| You know why? | ||
| Because they're tough people. | ||
| They're smart people and they're passionate people. | ||
| And they really have been over the years so many. | ||
| I think your father was a great fighter, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was, you did. | |
| Wow. | ||
| And yet, look at you. | ||
| You're so smooth and so. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was a very good defensive boxer. | |
| He was a really good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He was a good boxer, yeah. | |
| Yeah, he was. | ||
| Fought for Ireland. | ||
| Box for Ireland. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That means you're genetically, I'm not going to mess around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve and Irish organizations. | |
| Okay, let's. | ||
| A couple of more from somebody that didn't ask you. | ||
| Yeah, please go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, should Apple go back to the U.S. for Ireland? | |
| Who? | ||
| Apple. | ||
| Oh, Apple's been treated very badly. | ||
| Look, Apple had tremendously bad luck. | ||
| I thought they had a very good lawsuit, but they lost $16 billion. | ||
| $16 billion. | ||
| And they were after a lot of our American companies. | ||
| See, that's what's unfair. | ||
| It's a European Union. | ||
| I'm not blaming you. | ||
| I'm blaming the European Union. | ||
| The European Union's gone after our companies. | ||
| And Apple's a great company, and they have to give $16 bill, $17 billion on a lawsuit that I didn't think was a good lawsuit. | ||
| No, that's not. | ||
| No, the European Union. | ||
| We have a problem with the European Union. | ||
| They don't take our farm products. | ||
| They don't take our cars. | ||
| We take millions of cars, BMWs and Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagens and everything. | ||
| We take millions of cars. | ||
| I said to Angela Merkel at the time, I said, Angela, how many Chevrolets do we have in the middle of Munich? | ||
| Why, none. | ||
| I said, you're right. | ||
| We have none. | ||
| That's the way it is. | ||
| We have none. | ||
| No, I'm not happy with the European Union, I want to tell you. | ||
| And we're going to win that. | ||
| We're going to win that financial battle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Financial European cars, Mr. President? | |
| Tariffs on European cars? | ||
| Is that something you're going to consider? | ||
| Oh, absolutely. | ||
| I will do that. | ||
| Think of it. | ||
| They have millions of cars coming in, millions and millions of cars, one of probably the largest. | ||
| Japan's very big too. | ||
| And they don't accept our cars. | ||
| We make great cars. | ||
| They don't have our cars, but we have their cars. | ||
| They don't have our farm products. | ||
| We have the greatest farmers in the world. | ||
| They don't accept our farm products, and we accept theirs. | ||
| So, you know, things are going to change unless they do what they have to do. | ||
| And they know what they have to do. | ||
| This is not going to be a tough battle. | ||
| In my opinion, not going to be tough. | ||
| Just like when Ontario charged us, everybody said, oh, they just charged. | ||
| I said, this will be one in one hour. | ||
| And they announced what we were going to do. | ||
| And they withdrew their little threat. | ||
| And what they don't say in Canada is that 270%, have you ever heard that? | ||
| We have tariffs on dairy products from Canada, 270%, going up to 400%. | ||
| You never hear that. | ||
| Canada's absolutely one of the worst. | ||
| And when I say worst, worst in terms of charging tariffs, their dairy products, they charge our farmers 240, 250, 270, and 400%. | ||
| Think of that for dairy product. | ||
| And we charge them like peanuts. | ||
| You know why? | ||
| Because we've been improperly run for so many years. | ||
| I had that all settled in my first term. | ||
| But then, of course, Biden, you know, he let everything go to hell. | ||
| One of the things we did is we took from China hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| And I have great respect for President Xi. | ||
| But he understood that. | ||
| He understood it was a one-way street. | ||
| And you can't have a one-way street. | ||
| One more question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you say which benefits you might target in your next travel ban? | |
| Say it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you say which countries you might target in your next travel ban? | |
| Wouldn't that be a stupid thing for me to say? | ||
| He said, which countries am I going to target for the next travel ban? | ||
| Can you believe somebody would ask that question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's part of the entire specific pay that you're going to put on Ireland. | |
| Well, we're going to talk. | ||
| We're going to be talking really to the European Union. | ||
| You know, I will tell you this. | ||
| One little, we'll end it with this. | ||
| So I have a property, a big property in Ireland that you know well. | ||
| It's one of the most highly rated hotels in all of Europe. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| Dunebank. | ||
| It's a beautiful 600 acres on the ocean, and everybody knows it. | ||
| And we have a beautiful hotel. | ||
| And I was going to do a project there, a big expansion of the place. | ||
| This was when I was a civilian, before the presidency, before I even thought about the presidency. | ||
| But I was going to do a really beautiful expansion of the, because it does very well. | ||
| And I got the approvals from Ireland so quickly. | ||
| They were so professional. | ||
| They wanted it. | ||
| You know, it's economic development, it's jobs, it's construction jobs, a big expansion, beautiful expansion. | ||
| But I was told something that bothered me. | ||
| They said, sir, you also have to get approved by the European Union. | ||
| I said, why do I have to go to the European Union to expand a hotel that's in Ireland? | ||
| They said, well, that's the way it is. | ||
| I say, well, shouldn't that go fast? | ||
| They said, no, it'll take at least seven years. | ||
| You gave me the approval in about four weeks. | ||
| It was a beautiful professional. | ||
| If you took four years, you wouldn't have done a better job. | ||
| You know, everything was done environmentally every day. | ||
| There's no reason to take very long. | ||
| I had everything from Ireland in four weeks. | ||
| And then I hired somebody. | ||
| He said the process will be from five to seven years. | ||
| And I said, oh, really? | ||
| And then I found out that they weren't playing games. | ||
| Now, think about how bad that is for your country. | ||
| So that was my first experience with the European Union. | ||
| And I dropped the project. | ||
| I just said, I'm not going to do that. | ||
| I'm not going to go seven years to expand something. | ||
| But I'll hand it to Ireland. | ||
| He was so professional, so good. | ||
| But I don't know why. | ||
| European Union had to approve it. | ||
| And with them, it was dealing. | ||
| And that's the European Union. | ||
| So it was a very bad experience I had. | ||
| Just say, President, you have the distinction of being, I think, the only president that has physically invested in Ireland. | ||
| Well, that's true. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sure you're doing better. | |
| And it's been a good investment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And for anybody, you should go there. | |
| It's just stunning. | ||
| I love this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Even if you don't play golf, I mean, it is a stunning landscape. | |
| Your people have restored it very well, and our people are going to continue to work with you on that piece to do it all sort of effectively and so on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They've had a great relationship. | |
| And the local people, my local counselor, Rita McInerney, texted me last week to say, tell President Trump to thank his family for the way they've worked with the local community and for the work that they've done. | ||
| Why is Rory McEnroy? | ||
| I love Rory. | ||
| I think Rory's great. | ||
| He's a great golfer. | ||
| He just won two weeks ago. | ||
| He's a great guy. | ||
| I played golf with him three weeks ago. | ||
| And he's really a fantastic player. | ||
| He's in good form, too. | ||
| When he played with me, he played very well, I can tell you. | ||
| No, Rory certainly is one of the favorites. | ||
| He's always going to be one of the favorites. | ||
| He's a very talented guy. | ||
| He's a very good person, too. | ||
|
unidentified
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Are you planning to be the Dube as a president? | |
| I will. | ||
| I'll get there sometime. | ||
| I hope soon. | ||
| In fact, if we meet, we'll meet at Dunbeck. | ||
| But I hope to be able to. | ||
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unidentified
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Mr. President, does America have a future in NATO? | |
| What's it? | ||
| Does America have a future in NATO? | ||
| Well, NATO has to treat us fairly. | ||
| If they pay their bills and if they do what they're supposed to do, when I first got involved with NATO, as you know, they weren't paying their bills. | ||
| There were 28 countries, and most of them were in pain. | ||
| And I got them to pay. | ||
| And they paid billions and billions of dollars. | ||
| I made a certain statement that I'm not going to be involved with NATO unless you're going to pay your bills. | ||
| And I was asked the question. | ||
| If we don't pay, are you going to help us? | ||
| I said, no. | ||
| If you don't pay, you're saying you're delinquent, a real estate term. | ||
| You're delinquent. | ||
| You're not paying your rent. | ||
| You're not paying your bills. | ||
| If you're not paying your bills, I'm not going to help. | ||
| And everybody we took in, your Secretary General will tell you, he was very generous to me. | ||
| He said, I've never seen anything like it. | ||
| Money came in by the billions and billions and billions of dollars, and NATO became much stronger. | ||
| Now, NATO has expended a lot of that money in fighting this horrible war. | ||
| It's too bad they had to do that. | ||
| But they had the money from me. | ||
| I was the one that got people to pay. | ||
| The countries, most of the countries were not paying, or they were paying a very small amount. | ||
| So we'll see. | ||
| But NATO can be a force for the good, absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
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Would you like to see Ireland join NATO, Mr. President? | |
| That's up to Ireland. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, do you think Ireland and the EU are too close? | |
| Do you think that perhaps, like you said? | ||
| We are very close. | ||
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unidentified
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No, Ireland and the EU. | |
| Do you think there's too close relationships there? | ||
| Do you think there needs to be a separation? | ||
| Like you said, if you can't get county permission, when you can get it in Ireland, but you can't get it to the EU. | ||
| Well, look, I can just tell you about my personal experience that Ireland treated me very well and the EU was terrible. | ||
| And they stopped really a magnificent addition. | ||
| It wasn't a big deal from the standpoint of the world. | ||
| It wasn't like the things we're talking about now, but it would have been a very beautiful addition. | ||
| And they stopped it, which is bad for Ireland. | ||
| I don't know why. | ||
| I don't know why it would take five to seven years to get something approved, but that's what it was. | ||
| Thank you all very much. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you, Congress. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We're headed out. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, headed out. | ||
| Vice President Vance hosted Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin and other Irish officials for a breakfast at the Vice President's residence in Washington, D.C. | ||
| This is about 10 minutes. | ||
| Well, good morning, everybody. | ||
| I don't think I need the microphone, but I guess I'm glad I have it. | ||
| And we're thrilled, that's it, to welcome Taoiseach Martin, the leader of Ireland, and of course his lovely wife. | ||
| And thank you both for being here. | ||
| We're thrilled to be able to celebrate this moment of friendship between the United States and Ireland and really cement what is, I think, one of the great alliances and the great friendships between nations in the world. | ||
| As I was telling the Taoiseach back in the library earlier, Usha and I actually took a trip to Ireland in October of 2023, a bit on a lark, actually. | ||
| Susan Collins, my dear friend from Maine, from the United States Senate, may remember that we were supposed to have a government shutdown. | ||
| We didn't have a government shutdown, and so Usha and I actually had a week where we could go anywhere and we decided to go to Ireland. | ||
| And I just say it's such a remarkable combination of an incredible community, as we were talking about earlier, of beautiful landscape, but also a lot of interesting technological growth. | ||
| And I think that one of the more robust areas for us to work on with our Irish friends in the years to come is going to be technology and particularly artificial intelligence as we really take the next stage in an important level of technological progress. | ||
| Now, I want to give some acknowledgement of all the honored guests here. | ||
| I can, of course, call everybody out. | ||
| I have to say thank you to Ashley and Brett Kavanaugh, Justice of the Supreme Court and his wife, for being here. | ||
| Thank you to Mrs. Roberts for being here, Senator Sheehi, and of course the ambassador from Ireland, who I've met with before but in a previous job. | ||
| And let me just say before I introduce the Taoiseach that one of the things that we try to do with this breakfast is just remind people of the important bonds of friendship between the United States and Ireland. | ||
| And I think it's a great opportunity to do that. | ||
| It's also a really great opportunity for Usha to wear her pair of green pants. | ||
| She's had these in the closet for years and finally gets to break them out. | ||
| Perhaps the most honored guest, of course, except for the Taoiseach and his wife, is my dear friend from the United States Marine Corps Colin Tiernan. | ||
| He brought his brother, Joe. | ||
| Good to see you, man. | ||
| And here's the thing that Cullen taught me when I was in the United States Senate. | ||
| He taught me about sock diplomacy, about the importance of gifting socks to my fellow senators. | ||
| Something that had, you know, I give Massachusetts socks to our friends from Massachusetts and Utah socks to our friend from Utah. | ||
| So, Cullen, in your honor, I've worn these shamrocks. | ||
| And I will say when we meet later in the Oval Office to the Taoiseach, the President is a very big fan of conservative dress. | ||
| And so if he notices these socks, you have to defend me and the Oval Office will say this is an important part of cementing the Irish-American relationship. | ||
| And that's the only reason I'm wearing these socks. | ||
| But we're thrilled to have you. | ||
| Thank you, and God bless you. | ||
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unidentified
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Mr. Vice President, second lady, honored guest, let me again begin by expressing my sincere thanks to President Trump and to you, Mr. Vice President. | |
| for continuing the time-honored tradition of celebrating St. Patrick's Day in Washington and D.C. | ||
| And thank you, Madam Second Lady, and thank you, Usha, for hosting this St. Patrick's Day breakfast in your residence. | ||
| Mary and I greatly appreciate your warm welcome and hospitality. | ||
| And I've learned something new this morning, the use of socks. | ||
| I have to adjust very rapidly, given my conservative kind of dress sense. | ||
| My wife Mary can test a kind of two. | ||
| And to some, it may seem strange that I, as Tishu, choose to spend, of course, our National Day here in the United States. | ||
| But as you may know, Mr. Vice President, St. Patrick's Day, as it is celebrated today with great fanfare and flourish, began here in the United States. | ||
| In times long past, Irish emigrants far from hearth and home marked a day in memory of the families that they had left behind. | ||
| And over time, the celebrations grew in strength and number. | ||
| And today, we are deeply proud that March 17th is a day to showcase our rich culture and great friendship from across the world. | ||
| The United States has been a steadfast friend of Ireland for centuries. | ||
| Indeed, the United States was the first country to recognise our long-sought independence. | ||
| Last year, we marked 100 years of Irish-US diplomatic relations. | ||
| Together, we have built deep and enduring political, cultural, and economic bonds, greatly enriching our two nations in the process. | ||
| First and foremost, our kinship was built upon the ties between our people, especially the generations of Irish who made their homes here. | ||
| Scots-Irish immigrants, among them your forebears, Mr. Vice President, played a key role in shaping this great country and Appalachia in particular. | ||
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unidentified
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Many helped to build the railroads and contributed greatly to America's prosperity. | |
| Others brought the fiddle to meet the African banjo, blending the traditions of the immigrant communities who lived there to create something new, fresh and exciting. | ||
| I was fascinated to learn that in recent years, geologists discovered that the Appalachian Trail does not begin and end in North America. | ||
| Part of it is in Ireland and Britain, split millions of years ago by the movement of tectonic plates. | ||
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It is not so surprising then that Irish and Scottish emigrants upon arrival in the United States chose a familiar landscape on which to found their new lives. | |
| Irish Americans continue to make their mark on America, from politics to the arts to business, and they have helped to sustain our people-to-people ties and make a crucial contribution to our economic relationship. | ||
| Ireland is now in the top ten as a source of foreign direct investment into the United States, supporting many, many jobs across the country. | ||
| And nowhere is the strength of the US-Irish relationship more in evidence than in our own peace process. | ||
| And 44 years ago, President Reagan called for a just and peaceful solution to the conflict that has for so long devastated lives on our island. | ||
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unidentified
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Politicians from both sides of the aisle rose to the occasion. | |
| And the lasting peace we enjoy today on our island is a signature achievement of US foreign policy. | ||
| And this story of peace is one that we both wrote together. | ||
| And we know that building peace is a difficult and painstaking task. | ||
| And we are ready to play our part in supporting work to end conflict and to secure peace in the Ukraine or in the Middle East or wherever. | ||
| And we welcome very much the unrelenting focus and effort that President Trump and his administration have brought to the task, to this task, from his very first days in office. | ||
| And we welcome the progress that is clearly being made. | ||
| And as it has always been, the United States remains an indispensable partner and global actor. | ||
| Mr. Vice President, I know that we care deeply about the world our children and our children's children inherit. | ||
| And I know that the US and Ireland will continue to stand together, working tirelessly to secure a future that offers the promise of peace and prosperity. | ||
| Mr. Vice President, as I wrap up, allow me to thank you and Usha once again for opening your home to us and through us to the people of Ireland. | ||
| You have made us feel right at home in this splendid house on our first St Patrick's Day together. | ||
| And I hope that you will allow us to return the honour. | ||
| I've been told that our small island holds a special place in your shared memories, as you said to me earlier, that you enjoyed a road trip to Ireland. | ||
| The Vice President did say the road trip could be somewhat difficult next time round. | ||
| A number of vehicles that might have to be attached. |