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, proper taxation, they made it very good for companies to move over 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 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 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, 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, 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?
Would you describe for us is 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.
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, 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 Landmark Putin scheduled for a conversation?
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 about that people who will keep the ceasefire, considering that he's broken them in the past?
I'm trying to stay focused, but I'm very impressed with the VP's socket.
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 Stay celebrations.
They haven't come over.
They're boycotting the Some Happy Stay celebrations.
Can I just say to pay tribute to the President on the peace initiatives?
The one thing we've learned in Ireland about the peace process 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, who then taught.
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 and all the rest of it.
It's our job then to work on it and to try and build it.
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.
unidentified
They're not Irish, and they're not from my country.
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 grasp.
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.
He's so lucky that I wasn't.
unidentified
Are you planning to lower corporate taxes to match Ireland's?
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 flapped.
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.
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.
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.
It doesn't turn up in the 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.
And there's a lot of Irish companies here now, about 700 and odd Irish companies based in America.
Glanbia, Smorford, Rock I was saying to you this morning, Vice Minister.
A lot of them creating thousands of jobs in America.
And it's only fair.
I mean, that's correct.
That's the way it should happen.
And I think it's a very good relationship we have.
It's a historic one, and 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 deficit.
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.
They've had a great relationship.
They've had a great relationship.
And the local people, my local councillor, 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.