Donald J. Trump welcomes Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, touting bilateral ties while dismissing Ukraine’s Zelensky as a distraction, claiming his leadership would end the war. He boasts $700B in tariff revenue from China and $200B trade surplus with Canada, despite USMCA’s 10% baseline and 15% North American sourcing rules. Trump credits his advisor Mossad Boulos for brokering a Congo-Rwanda peace deal ending a 30-year conflict with 7M deaths, while African leaders praise his Nobel Peace Prize-worthy diplomacy. A secret White House meeting with Qatari envoys and Israeli officials may advance Gaza ceasefire talks, with Putin calling past U.S.-Russia negotiations "profound" amid shared WWII ties and trade growth. Both vow progress despite skepticism from NATO and unnamed critics. [Automatically generated summary]
Let's look forward and celebrate the joy and hope that Christmas brings.
From my family to yours.
To everyone in the United Kingdom.
I hope you all have a very happy Christmas.
Coming up, an all-day marathon featuring President Trump's meetings with foreign leaders during the first year of his second term.
First, President Trump's 2025 April meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Maloney.
The two leaders talked about tariffs and trade between the U.S. and Italy.
Then a meeting between President Trump and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose Liberal Party won on a platform that rejected the president's rhetoric to make Canada the 51st state.
That's followed by President Trump speaking at a state dinner held in his honor in Qatar by that country's royal family.
And a June trip to the NATO summit in the Netherlands, where the president met with the NATO Secretary General and Dutch Prime Minister.
This Friday, on a special edition of Ceasefire, host Dasha Burns features key moments from Ceasefire's inaugural season, highlighting moments of friendship and humor, respectful disagreement.
The thing that I appreciated about Rahm is while we differed, particularly after he led the charge for the Democrats to defeat the Republican majority in 2006, I always felt like...
We ought to just commit ourselves to love and justice, not hatred and revenge.
unidentified
One of the wonderful things that I've been able to experience with my very dear brother, Robert George, is that I love the brother when he's right.
I love him when he's wrong.
I love him when he's wrestling in his quest for truth.
Watch our special bipartisan moments from this season of Ceasefire, this Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, only on C-SPAN.
American History TV, Saturdays on C-SPAN 2, exploring the people and events that tell the American story.
This weekend, as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, join American History TV for our series, America 250, and discover the ideas and defining moments of the American story.
This week at 11 a.m. Eastern, a ceremony in Boston marking the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill held by the National Park Service and other groups.
And then at 2 p.m. Eastern, North Carolina high school teacher Valencia Abbott receives the 2025 History Teacher of the Year Award from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Historian Stacey Schiff headlines the award ceremony.
And at 5 p.m. Eastern, prepare to ring in the new year with addresses from Presidents Ronald Reagan in 1983 and Bill Clinton in 2000.
Exploring the American story, watch American History TV Saturdays on C-SPAN 2 and find the full schedule on your program guide or watch online anytime at c-span.org slash history.
Next, another highlight from President Trump's 2025 meetings with foreign leaders.
In this April meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney, the two leaders talked about tariffs, trade between the U.S. and Italy, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
This was the third of five visits Prime Minister Maloney made to the U.S. in 2025.
Thank you for this occasion, which is aimed to strengthen our relation, our friendship that comes from very far.
You know, today is April 17, and April 17 marks the anniversary of the agreement that allowed Cristoforo Colombo to make his trip.
And I say to remember our ancient are, our ties, but also to remind that we both share another fight, which is the fight against woke and ADI ideology that would like to erase our history.
And as I know that we share lots of things on tackling illegal migration, on fighting against synthetic drugs, you know, Italy has been one of the nations that made a plan against fentanyl, for example.
But we have been talking about many bilateral topics and things that we can do together about defense, about economic, about economy, about space, about energy.
Italy will have to increase its LNG imports and also nuclear that we are trying to develop.
I think there can be ways to work together.
And the Italian enterprises will invest as they've been doing for many years.
As you know, in the next years, I think around 10 billion.
That shows how interconnected our economies are.
And that's very important, Mr. President.
It's not only about Italy, it's about the entire Europe.
The exchange between us is a very big one.
Investments, trade, it's a topic that we are discussing in this week.
But at the end of the day, look, somebody calls me, I was saying it before, such a Western nationalism, I don't know if it is the right word, but I know that when I speak about West mainly, I don't speak about a geographical space.
I speak about a civilization.
And I want to make that civilization stronger.
So I think even if we have some problems, okay, between the two shores of the Atlantic, it is the time that we try to sit down and find solutions.
So I want to thank President Trump for having accepted an invitation to pay an official visit to Rome in the near future and consider the possibility in that occasion to meet.
Also with Europe, the goal for me is to make the West great again.
And I think we can do it together.
We can.
And we will keep on work on that.
I'm going to close.
I want to say only I'm proud of sitting here as Prime Minister of Italy that today has a very good situation despite the difficulties, a stable country, reliable country, one million more jobs in the last two years and a half.
Inflation is going down, so you forgive me if I promote a bit my country, but you're a businessman and you understand me.
So migration flows going down 60%.
So we are trying to do our best, but I think we can do it even better together.
Also in Ukraine, I will close.
Together we've been defending the freedom of Ukraine.
And I think we're doing well in that effort, but we want to get it done and we'll see if we can.
We want to save.
On average, think of it, every week 2,500 people are being killed, mostly soldiers, Russian, Ukrainian soldiers.
And if we can save those lives, that would be a very good thing.
And so we'll see what we can do.
And I think we're getting close, but we'll let you know very soon.
And you've been very helpful.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Any questions?
unidentified
Mr. President.
Russia, Mr. President, how much longer does Vladimir Putin have to respond to your ceasefire proposal before you put secondary terrorists or sanctions on Russia?
Mr. President, yesterday, Judge Boesberg, in a case against your administration, said the Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders.
Well, you're going to have to speak to the lawyers.
We have great lawyers.
I can tell you this.
We're doing a fantastic job of getting criminals out of this country who Biden allowed into the country.
Hundreds of thousands of criminals, murderers and drug dealers.
And I was elected because of the fact, I would say maybe that was the number one fact for a lot of reasons, the economy, a lot of things.
But one of the primary reasons I was elected is because I said, I'm going to get the criminals that he allowed to come into our country so stupidly through open borders.
I'm going to get them out.
And I got a lot of votes, record-setting numbers of votes, as you know.
We want everything, the popular vote, all seven swing states.
We want everything.
And that's what the public wanted.
That's what I'm doing.
But you have to speak to the lawyers because it's up to them.
unidentified
Mr. President, what do you think of the proposal from France?
What do you think of the proposal from France and UK of a peace mission in Ukraine with soldiers?
And do you think that Italy should take part into it?
I think Italy will have to make that determination, but peace missions are always good with me.
I'm okay with peace missions.
Yeah, please.
unidentified
Mr. President, have you discussed what areas of cooperation have you discussed with the Prime Minister, visiting Italy and the United States, and Europe and the United States?
So they've already seen it get much better because if you were truthful, which you're not, I know you very well, you have gasoline that hit $1.98 yesterday in a couple of states.
You have gasolines way down.
The price of oil has dropped substantially.
The price of groceries are substantially down.
The price of eggs, you know, when I came in, they hit me with eggs.
I just got there.
I was here for one week and they started screaming at me, eggs have gone through the roof.
I said, I just got here.
I was there for seven days and I hear that eggs have gone through the roof before I got there.
And they were screaming at me, the press, the fake news, like you, you're fake.
And the fake news is screaming at me like about eggs.
I said, I've only been here.
I just, this is my seventh day.
And they were right.
They went up 87% and you couldn't get them.
They said, you won't have eggs for Easter, which is coming up.
And our Commissioner of Agriculture, Brooke, has done a fantastic job.
They've really done a fantastic job.
So prices haven't gone up.
The only thing that's gone up actually is interest rates because we have a Federal Reserve Chairman that is playing politics, somebody that I've never been very fond of, actually.
But he's playing politics.
Interest rates should be down now.
They should be coming down.
In Europe, as you know, they reduced them, I guess, seven times.
It looks like they're going to reduce them again and again and again.
But our guy wants to play cute.
But interest rates are pretty much even.
Maybe they went up just a slight bit, but that's the only thing.
But that's because of the Federal Reserve, because they're not very smart people.
Look, in the first four years, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country.
The stock market went up 88 points.
I think he's terrible, but I can't complain because we had the most successful administration economically in the history of our country.
I think we're going to do even better this time because you will see that the numbers that we're taking in are astronomical.
We're taking in tremendous amounts of money with the tariffs.
We were treated very unfairly on trade.
And countries are having a hard time getting used to the fact that they can't do that to us anymore because we have a real president.
We have a president that understands what it's all about.
We had presidents that in some cases were smart, but they didn't understand business or they didn't like business or, you know, it wasn't like a priority.
And then you had like the last administration, the only thing they were good at was cheating in elections.
That's about all they could do.
They couldn't do anything.
They were useless.
They were incompetent.
Worst administration in the history of our country.
Worse than Jimmy Carter.
Jimmy Carter died a happy man.
You know why?
Because he wasn't the worst president.
Joe Biden was.
So I think you're going to see some fantastic numbers when this all happens.
It's happening now.
I mean, everybody wants to make a deal.
And if they don't want to make a deal, we'll make the deal for them.
Because that's what's going to happen.
We'll just say this is what it is.
But we want to listen to everybody.
I think I can say for Scott and the other people that are working on it that we're listening and we're going to be very fair to people.
But, you know, we're the one that really sets the deal.
I'm not sure they do agree with you, but we are a serious nation, but we haven't talked about how much this percent will be increased, even if we are aware that the defense is a particularly important issue in this time.
For what about the war in Ukraine, I think that there is an invasion and that the invasor, from that point of view, was Putin.
and the Russia originally ripped it, the fact that in Siemens, we have the Barrett, but in Ukraine, a possibility that you had disposed of the European archaeology in our country.
Prime Minister Maloney was asked what she thinks about the fact that President Trump holds Zelensky responsible for the war in Ukraine.
And Prime Minister Maloney answered, Well, actually, we have no, and also if you talked about the military spending, how and the raising of the military spending.
And the first thing Prime Minister Moroney said is that no, actually, we didn't talk about the raise in military spending.
Of course, Italy will keep its commitment with 2%, and then we will see, because we are absolutely aware of the fact that it is very important to defense is there.
And I don't hold Zelensky responsible, but I'm not exactly thrilled with the fact that that war started.
That was a war that would have never started if I were president.
You'd have millions of people living right now that are dead.
You'd have cities that would be open and thriving and they'd have their beautiful turrets.
Those turrets are the most beautiful in the world, but they're not with us any longer.
They're smashed to smithereens, laying on the ground in a million pieces, getting hit by rockets, bombs, and bullets.
And so I'm not happy with him.
And I'm not happy with anybody involved.
I think it's a war.
I know it's a war.
It didn't happen for four years.
It was never close to happening.
It was never even a thought.
And I spoke to President Putin about it a lot.
Was the apple of his eye, but there's no way he would have ever gone in if I were president.
Now I'm trying to get him to stop because, as you know, Russia's a lot bigger.
It's a bigger military force and if you're smart, you don't go involved and get involved in wars that you can blame the man that was sitting in this seat, Biden.
He didn't know what the hell was going on, but I can guarantee you that, and everybody agrees to it, if I were president, that war would have never taken place.
I'm not blaming him, but what I am saying is that I wouldn't say he's done the greatest job.
Europe has gone through a lot of problems and a lot of it's having to do with immigration and I'm not a big fan of Europe and what they've done with immigration at all, and I think they've got to get smart because Europe is being very badly hurt by what they've done with immigration.
Now I'll say this, that the Prime Minister has taken a very tough stand on immigration and I commented to her before.
I said I wish more people would be like you having to do with that subject, but they're not.
Europe is very important to me.
Europe is very important to the world.
I want Europe to do very well.
unidentified
I think they have to get a lot smarter on immigration, but we are, we are beginning to do it, doing it.
You've seen, you've all seen how the policies of the European Union in the last, let's say, two and a half years have been changing.
Okay, at the beginning we were talking all only about how we were redistributing illegal migrants coming to Italy.
Now we are talking mainly about how to stop illegal migration, work with the countries of origin and transit and to return people.
The European Commission just did the new rules about repatriations and things like that, so things are changing, thanks also to the example that Italy brought in lowering the rates of illegal migration.
unidentified
they we are working now together so I'm optimistic on the the Google what What about Google business?
We've been discussing about defense space where we will work together also in the Mars missions.
So there are big, big things to do together, but we didn't discuss it.
unidentified
I don't know anything in your conversation with the Prime Minister that changed your mind potentially about tariffs and what you plan to do going forward.
Is there anything the Prime Minister said to you that changed your perspective?
We were losing a lot of money under Biden, trillions of dollars, trillions on trade.
And now that whole tide has turned.
We're making a lot of money.
We're taking in a lot of money.
Don't forget, we're taking in 25% on cars, 25% on steel, 25% on aluminum, 10% baseline.
We put penalties on China for sending us fentanyl.
We put penalties on Mexico and Canada, 25% for allowing fentanyl and allowing the borders to be weak.
No, we're taking in billions and billions of dollars while I sit here and talk to you.
And we didn't take in anything before other than the tariffs that I put on previous to Biden, which were the tariffs I put on China, where we took in, up until this point, probably $700 billion.
They were Trump tariffs.
He tried to weaken them.
He did everything he could.
You know, he got paid money by China, right?
The family got paid money, he did.
And so I don't know, maybe that was the reason or maybe it wasn't, but he tried to weaken them, but he couldn't because it was so much money that his budgets, you know, they couldn't stand not doing it.
But I took in the, up till this point, my tariffs on China, nobody ever took in 10 cents from China.
No other president took in 10 cents.
I took in more than $700 billion from China.
So we're doing very well.
I mean, our country is doing very well.
They had a bad report today from one of the health care companies that had an impact on the stock market.
But this isn't about that.
This is really, we're building a base.
We're building a country like no other.
And again, I had the strongest economy in the history of our country by far.
History of any country probably, but the history of our country in four years.
And I think this has a chance to be much better.
unidentified
You've got to sign.
Can you just clarify on the marrow field?
Will that be signed throughout the White House with Ukraine on Thursday?
The president's once needed to be coming here for that?
Only if the Prime Minister remains a Prime Minister can it be our best.
She's doing no, she's doing a great job.
And yeah, it's certainly one of our great allies, not just in Europe, anywhere.
She's a fantastic person and doing a great job.
And our relationship is great.
And we have a lot of Italians in this country, I tell you, and they like Trump, and they voted for Trump.
Thank you very much, everybody.
unidentified
Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Fred.
Thank you.
Thank you, guys.
Thanks, guys.
Let's go.
Thank you, Samuel.
Thank you, Press.
Up next, a May Oval Office meeting between President Trump and newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose Liberal Party won on a platform that rejected the President's rhetoric to make Canada the 51st state.
Among the topics discussed at this meeting were military relations and the ongoing trade and tariff dispute.
It marked Mr. Carney's first trip to another country as prime minister.
It's a great honor to have Prime Minister Mark Carney with us.
As you know, just a few days ago, he won a very big election in Canada.
And I think I was probably the greatest thing that happened to him, but I can't take full credit.
His party was losing by a lot, and he ended up winning.
So I really want to congratulate him.
was probably one of the greatest comebacks in the history of politics, maybe even greater than mine.
But I want to just congratulate you.
That was a great election, actually.
We were watching it with interest, and I think Canada chose a very talented person, a very good person, because we spoke before the election quite a few times.
And it's an honor to have you at the White House and the Oval Office.
And you see the new and improved Oval Office as it becomes more and more beautiful with love.
We handle it with great love and 24-karat gold.
That always helps too.
But it's been a lot of fun.
Going over some of the beautiful pictures that were stored in the vaults that were for many, many years, in some cases over 100 years.
They were stored in vaults of the great presidents who are almost great presidents, all having a reason for being up, every one of them.
So it's very interesting.
But I just want to congratulate you and ran a really great race.
I watched the debate and I thought you were excellent.
And I think we have a lot of things in common.
We have some tough points to go over, and that'll be fine.
We're going to also be discussing Ukraine-Russia, the war, because Mark wants it ended as quickly as I do.
I think it has to end.
We had some very good news last night.
The Houthis have announced that they are not, or they've announced to us at least, that they don't want to fight anymore.
But thank you for your hospitality and above all for your leadership.
You're a transformational president, focus on the economy with a relentless focus on the American worker, securing your borders, ending the scourge of fentanyl and other opioids, and securing the world.
And I've been elected with my colleagues here, with the help of my colleagues here.
I'm going to spread the credit to transform Canada with a similar focus on the economy, securing our borders, again on fentanyl, much greater focus on defense and security, securing the Arctic and developing the Arctic.
And the history of Canada and the U.S. is we're stronger when we work together and there's many opportunities to work together.
And I look forward to addressing some of those issues that we have, but also finding those areas of mutual cooperation so we can go forward.
I mean, I believe it would be a massive tax cut for the Canadian citizens.
You get free military, you get tremendous medical cares and other things.
There would be a lot of advantages, but it would be a massive tax cut.
And it's also a beautiful, you know, as a real estate developer.
You know, I'm a real estate developer at heart.
When you get rid of that artificially drawn line, somebody drew that line many years ago with like a ruler, just a straight line right across the top of the country.
When you look at that beautiful formation when it's together, I'm a very artistic person, but when I looked at that beautiful, I said that's the way it was meant to be.
But, you know, I do feel it's much better for Canada.
But we're not going to be discussing that unless somebody wants to discuss it.
I think that there are tremendous benefits to the Canadian citizens, tremendously lower taxes, free military, which honestly we give you essentially anyway because we're protecting Canada if you ever had a problem.
But I think it would really be a wonderful marriage because it's two places that get along very well.
I must say Canada is stepping up the military participation because Mark knew they were low and now they're stepping it up and that's a very important thing.
But never say never.
Ever say never.
unidentified
What would it take to get the terrorist off of Canada?
You know, we want to protect our automobile business and so does Mark.
But we want to protect, we want to make the automobiles and we want to, you know, we have a tremendous abundance of energy more than any country.
We have, just in Alaska alone, Anwar has been reopened now.
Anwhar is probably the largest find anywhere in the world.
They say it's larger than Saudi Arabia.
I don't know, but it's a lot.
But we have tremendous amounts of energy.
Other countries don't.
We're both lucky in that way.
They have energy.
We have energy.
We have more than we can ever use and more than we could ever sell, actually.
And you have the same thing.
So we're two countries that are very lucky.
If you look at China, they don't have that.
You know, it's a big disadvantage.
Other countries, most countries don't have it.
You know, most countries don't have that.
So Canada and us, we have a lot of advantages over other places.
unidentified
Mr. President, do you have to ready?
Mr. President, when you consider what Mr. Carney just said, that Canada is not for sale, does this make the discussion a little more difficult to start on?
You would know if I met, I'd tell you, they want to meet.
But, you know, we are right now.
Look, they're suffering greatly.
Their economy is suffering greatly because they're not doing trade with the U.S.
And they made most of their money off the U.S. Don't kid yourself.
They don't make the money off other countries like this.
And they were making, we had a trade imbalance.
We had a deficit or they had a surplus, another way of saying it, of more than a trillion dollars.
Think of it, more than a trillion dollars.
And because of 145%, that's the only reason, but because they have now 145% tariff, there's no trading.
You can't trade with 145%.
We are, therefore, making, in a certain way, I guess, $1.1 trillion.
In other words, we're not losing $1.1 trillion.
Our deficit is much better.
When I started, I say we were losing billions of dollars a day on trade.
That's rapidly turning around.
We looked at numbers this morning.
So we were losing, the United States during Biden was losing more than, I won't even give you numbers because they're so embarrassing, but billions of dollars a day on trade.
Those numbers are rapidly turning.
Between the tariffs, don't forget, we're now getting 25% on cars, 25% on aluminum, 25% on steel, and maybe more importantly, massive numbers of companies are moving into the United States.
Honda, we have tremendous, the car companies that are moving in at levels we've never seen before.
The biggest investment ever made in the United States is being made right now.
Trillions of dollars.
I would say we could be at nine, nine trillion dollars.
You could go back to other presidents.
They haven't had one trillion dollars for their entire term.
Look at Biden.
He had bad numbers.
People leaving.
They weren't coming in.
They were leaving with Biden.
And he didn't know the difference.
The only thing he knew is people coming in.
You know who they were?
Illegal immigrants.
Okay, from prisons, from mental institutions, from all sorts of places that weren't good, from gangs from Venezuela.
They were coming in, and there were criminals and murderers, 11,888 people that murdered, and at least half of them murdered more than one person.
This is what Biden led into our country.
I'm bringing in big companies.
We have Apple is investing $500 billion.
We have Jensen, as you know, is going to be 500 biggest chip maker, or chip thinker, I call him.
He's really a thinker more than a maker.
But we also have the maker, Mr. Way.
I get to know him all in the last, it was a cram course.
But they're all moving into America because of the tariffs.
And I don't think people have appreciated it.
Some people do.
Some of the smart people do.
So we have more money coming in.
It's really an amazing thing.
We have more money being invested in the United States now than at any time ever before in our history, and it's not even close.
And I think the real number could be 9 or 10 trillion.
We don't know everybody that's doing it.
We have many.
I just heard about a plant that's being built right now, a very, very top-of-the-line company.
And they didn't come to the White House.
They're just doing it because they're making it, because if they build here, there are no tariffs.
And this is the big market.
This is the market.
That sets us apart from it.
This is the market where everyone wants to be.
Now, if I didn't come here and do this, all of a sudden we wouldn't be the market where everyone wants to be.
So we're able to do it in time.
But we're going to have a great announcement.
And I'm not necessarily saying it's on trade.
Going to the beginning.
We're going to have a great announcement over the next few days, an announcement that will be so incredible, so positive.
And I'm not saying, I don't want you to think it's necessarily on trade.
Just to finish, we also have a situation because everyone says, when, when, when are you going to sign deals?
We don't have to sign deals.
We could sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we wanted.
We don't have to sign deals.
They have to sign deals with us.
They want a piece of our market.
We don't want a piece of their market.
We don't care about their market.
They want a piece of our market.
So we can just sit down, and I'll do this at some point over the next two weeks, and I'll sit with Howard and Scott and with our great vice president who has done a really good job.
We have some good news to report on a lot of fronts.
But JD will be there and Marco, and we're going to sit down and we're going to put very fair numbers down and we're going to say, here's what this country, what we want, and congratulations, we have a deal.
And they'll either say, great, and they'll start shopping, or they'll say, not good.
We're not going to do it.
And I said, that's okay.
You don't have to shop.
Now, we may think, well, they have a right, you know, that maybe we were a little bit wrong.
So we'll adjust it.
And then you people will say, oh, it's so chaotic.
No, we're flexible.
But we'll sit down and we'll at some point, in some cases, we'll sign some deals.
It's much less important than what I'm talking about.
For the most part, we're just going to put down a number and say, this is what you're going to pay to shop.
And it's going to be a very fair number.
It'll be a low number.
We're not looking to hurt countries.
We want to help countries.
We want to be friendly with countries.
But you keep writing about deals, deals.
When are we going to sign?
It's very simple.
We're going to say, in some cases, we want you to open up your country.
In some cases, we want you to drop your tariffs.
I mean, India, as an example, has one of the highest tariffs in the world.
We're not going to put up with that.
And they've agreed already to drop it.
They'll drop it to nothing.
They've already agreed.
They would have never done that for anybody else but me.
So we're going to put down some numbers and we're going to say our country is open for business.
And they're going to come in and they're going to pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America.
It's very simple.
It's very simple.
So I wish they'd keep, you know, stop asking, how many deals are you signing this week?
Because one day we'll come and we'll give you 100 deals.
And they don't have to sign.
All they have to do is say, oh, we'll start sending our ships right now to pick up whatever we want or to bring whatever we want.
It's very, very simple.
And I think my people haven't made it clear.
We will sign some deals.
But much bigger than that is we're going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States.
Think of us as a super luxury store, a store that has the goods.
You're going to come and you're going to pay a price, and we're going to give you a very good price.
We're going to make very good deals.
And in some cases, we'll adjust.
But that's where it is.
And we've been ripped off by everybody for 50 years, for 50 years.
And we're just not going to do that anymore.
We can't do that.
And we can't let any country do that to us.
We're just not going to do it anymore.
unidentified
Can you tell us a bit more about the deal that you've reached with the Houthis?
You know, in real estate, you get a site, then you have to look for financing.
You have to get your zoning.
You know, five years later, you start building, you get a bank, then the bank's no good.
These people have massive amounts of cash.
The CHIPS Act was a ridiculous thing because that doesn't get them to build.
All we did is hand very wealthy companies money, the CHIPS Act that was done by Biden.
Billions, we give them billions of dollars.
They don't even have to do anything with it.
And then if you weren't, if you didn't have, and I don't want to be a wise guy, but if you didn't go with the DEI, if you didn't go with all of the different things, woke, if you weren't woke, you couldn't even use the money.
You had to have a certain percentage of this and that and that and that.
It's impossible, impossible to have.
The people, the companies actually complain to me.
They say they gave me all this money, but nobody can get these people to do anything.
I mean, look, President Obama, and if he wanted help, I'd give him help because I'm a really good builder and I build on time on budget.
He's building his library in Chicago.
It's a disaster.
And he said something to the effect, I only want DEI, I only want woke.
He wants woke people to build it.
Well, he got woke people, and they have massive cost overruns.
And I don't like that happening because I think it's bad for the presidency that a thing like that should happen.
He's got a library that's a disaster.
And he wanted to be very politically correct.
And he didn't use good, hard, tough, mean construction workers that I love, Marco.
I love those construction workers.
But he didn't want construction workers.
He wanted people that never did it before.
He's got a disaster in his hands.
Like millions of dollars, many, many, I mean, really, many millions of dollars over budget.
And I would love to help him with it.
Or somebody else.
I could recommend professionals.
But it was not built in a professional manner.
By the way, nor was in California a little train going from San Francisco to Los Angeles that's being run by Gavin Newscomb, the governor of California.
Did you ever hear of Gavin Newscomb?
He has got, that train is the worst cost overrun I've ever seen.
It's like totally out of control.
So then they said, all right, we won't go into San Francisco.
We'll stop 25 miles short.
And we won't go into Los Angeles.
We'll stop 25 miles short.
It's hundreds of billions of dollars for this stupid project that should have never been built.
And then they realized that it would have been a lot less costly if we just gave limousine service back and forth and gave it free.
They would have saved hundreds of billions of dollars.
They have airplanes that go there for 1 100th the cost.
And they have cars.
They have a thing called the highway that goes back and forth.
It's not fully utilized.
And they got involved with this project.
And Gavin, you know, I always liked Gavin.
I had a good relationship with him.
I just got him a lot of water.
You know, I sent in people to open up that water because he refused to do it.
And we just got him a lot of water.
If they would have had that water, if they would have done what I said to do, they wouldn't have had the fires in Los Angeles.
Those fires would have been put out very quickly.
But if you think about it, and you've got to take a look at this project, it's the worst cost overrun I've ever seen.
I've watched a lot of stupid people build a lot of stupid things, but that's the worst cost overrun I've ever seen.
What's happening between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
And you ought to ask about that because this government is not going to pay.
I told our very great new Secretary of Transportation, he's doing a good job, Sean Duffy, I said, we're not going to pay for that thing.
They are just, it's out of control.
This is something that you don't have things like this.
It's not even conceivable.
Like 30 times over budget, 30 times, it's the craziest thing.
And now it's hundreds of, it was supposed to be a simple train.
And I think the media should take a look at it.
And I'd love him to run for president on the other side.
I'd love to see that.
But I don't think he's going to be running because that one project alone, well, that and the fires and a lot of other things pretty much put him out of the race.
unidentified
Mr. President, what changes would you like to see to the USMCA?
So we've made an arrangement with the car companies that 15% of their A USMCA parts are included, and then 15% of foreign parts from the manufactured suggested retail price are not tariffed to help domestic manufacturing really thrive.
So it gave them a chance to be able to build their car parts factories.
A lot of these companies already have factories, and what they have to do is just fill them out, but they're able to build them in the United States, so we gave them a pretty substantial period of time.
unidentified
Is there anything the Prime Minister can say to you today to change your mind on tariffing Canada?
He said, do you mind if I invite just a few guests?
And do you mind shaking hands with them just before dinner?
I said, sure.
I didn't know you were going to have 400 people.
Now, it's an honor, so I know so many of you, so many great people.
I want to thank His Highness Sheikh Tamim and First Lady, thank you very much.
Really a great honor for the beautiful welcoming.
And this is a home.
This is a serious home, I will tell you that.
There is nothing like it.
So it's just a perfect evening.
Got to meet so many people that I didn't know, got to say hello to so many people that I did know.
And it's a true privilege to visit your country, special country, and gather as friends at this majestic palace, palace indeed, which must be among the most elegant anywhere in the world.
I don't think I've seen anything like it.
I thought I saw them all.
I want to recognize the Prime Minister who's done a fantastic job, His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed, whom I was honored to host at the White House for dinner last month.
Tonight, Qatar, has returned the favor with unbelievable splendor and warmth.
And I'm honored to be the first American president ever to officially visit your great country.
It's a great honor for me, especially since I've known the incredible gentleman on my left for a long time, a lot longer than I've been in politics.
I knew him then, and I said, this guy's going to make it someday.
And I guess I was right, but I've known him a long time.
He's been my friend for a long time, and it's a real honor.
I didn't know that I was going to be president, and I didn't know how successful he'd be.
I mean, what he's done with his incredible piece of land, this beautiful piece of land, what he's done is incredible, unthinkable.
So we were both in a much different position long ago.
And it's been a lot of fun for me to see him rise.
I also thank the many other Qatari government leaders who have joined us.
And let me say to my chief of staff, a very, very special person.
She is considered the most powerful woman on earth.
As I said in my address to the region last night in Saudi Arabia, the transformation that has taken place here in the Gulf with Gulf nations has been extraordinary.
Nothing less than extraordinary.
As Qatar's development has been among the greatest of them all.
Nobody's seen anything like it.
Your country now stands as a hub of global commerce, acts as a key diplomatic force on the world stage, and has even hosted the World Cup.
People said, oh, the World Cup is going, and by the way, Johnny's here someplace.
Where's Johnny?
Congratulations, Johnny, because you're going to be with us next.
He's coming to the United States, actually.
Thank you.
Great job you do, Johnny.
The Emir is building a stunning legacy of economic progress, engineering marvels.
What I've seen is incredible.
And cultural attainment that should make this entire nation so very, very proud.
They are proud.
A lot of friends that live here, they're so proud.
You only have to look at the shimmering skyline of Doha or the beautiful waterfront promenade, which I just looked at a little while ago.
There wasn't a tree out of place.
Everything's perfect.
To understand Qatar's amazing path to modernization and prosperity.
And you've done it all while honoring your heritage.
You've always stayed with your heritage.
You haven't given it up, maintaining your culture and embracing your national traditions.
To the Emir, to the royal family, and to this entire nation, congratulations on a spectacular job.
As you can see from the extraordinary range of leaders and pioneers in this room, the biggest people on earth, most successful people, the most powerful people, everyone wants to come and witness what is happening right here.
As President, I'm proud that our growing friendship is blossoming into a full-fledged economic and security partnership, as we've seen clearly on this trip.
Because we're setting records on this trip, we're bringing a lot of investment back into the United States of America.
It's coming back at levels never seen before.
We'd never see anything like it.
In two months, we've done more than anybody.
I don't think there's anything.
I don't think there's ever been anything close.
And that means into any country.
In addition to our agreement that will lead to the $1.2 trillion in economic activity before we even start about the big Boeing deal and all of the other deals that we talked about today, we're pleased to supply your military with billions and billions of dollars in brand new equipment.
And we're going to get a glimpse of some of it tomorrow morning at your military base, which is incredible, by the way.
Earlier today, we were honored by the escort of eight F-15s from your Air Force.
And I will say that I asked the pilot of Air Force One, do we need them?
And he gave me a bad answer.
He said, well, I'd rather have them.
That wasn't really the answer I was looking for, to be honest.
I thought he said, no, we don't.
This is just fun.
This is just fun in games.
He didn't say that.
But here we are.
But they were something.
We're looking out the window.
Everybody was amazed.
It's a little disconcerting when you see a plane that goes 2,000 miles an hour when actually going 500 miles an hour is a strain on the plane.
But you look out and you can read the pilot's name on his helmet.
And it's pretty close.
But they were great.
They were great pilots, too.
And it's fitting that you have chosen the mighty falcon as a symbol of your nation representing dignity and strength.
That's what the falcon represents.
Our Qatari partners showed that spirit last weekend when you helped negotiate the release of the last living American hostage in Gaza, Edan Alexander.
Hopefully this is a stepping stone toward getting the rest of the hostages back.
But that was something, and you really did help us a lot.
And Steve Witkoff and Marco Rubio are here.
I want to thank you, Steve, Marco, and Scott, Howard.
Everybody was involved.
Put a lot of hostages back.
They've all been involved.
You're also working with us very closely with respect to negotiating a deal with Iran, which is the far-friendlier course that you would see.
I hope the Iranian leaders understand that what you're doing and really what you're doing for them is a big favor.
Your Prime Minister and your great leader, right here on my left, has been helping so much, and they respect them, and they're listening to them.
But they have to get moving, and we both understand that.
They have to make that decision.
It's their decision.
Because we want to see Iran do well, thrive, and be successful, and everybody be happy.
I know many Iranians.
I know many Iranians living in New York and Washington, D.C., and they're great people.
And we want to have this end peacefully, not horribly.
So I just want to thank Your Highness for that act of help.
But we're really helping the region.
We're helping the world.
We're helping your country.
And we'll try and get it done if we can.
We're going to try and get it done.
They have to move quickly.
And I just hope Iran realizes what a good friend they have right here.
And in a certain sense, I guess I'm a good friend, because a lot of people would rather have me take a much more harsh road.
But I know that if we can avoid that road, that would be a great thing.
And I'd like to do that.
This is an exciting time in America.
As you know, it's really exciting.
As you're hearing and seeing after years of recruiting shortfalls into the military enlistment has now reached the highest point in probably history, but definitely 30 years, including for police and firefighters.
But our military, we have the highest recruitment we've ever had.
And just about a year ago, you read headlines that people weren't joining the military.
We had a lot of empty spaces that we had to fill and we weren't able to fill them.
And it's a pretty great thing when just in a short period of time, just a little short period of time, we went from not having people wanting to serve in our military, Army, Air Force.
Just think the Army and the Air Force in particular.
I don't know what was going on, but Navy, Marines, how about Space Force, Coast Guard, all great, but we couldn't get them, and now we have waiting lists to get in.
So something happened.
And I'll tell you what happened.
It was called November 5th, where I won on behalf of everyone.
I won on behalf of the people with common sense, the people that want to have a great country, the people with strength and intelligence.
I won all seven swing states.
The popular vote by millions and millions of votes.
The Electoral College, 312 to 226.
Remember, they were saying, well, he might get to 270.
Well, we got to 270 by, we got to 312, actually.
We had a great day and a great evening.
But very importantly, we won the counties throughout the United States, 2,660 to 451.
That's why when you see the maps, they're all bright red.
Red meaning Republican.
So that was really something.
There's a spirit going on in our country that we haven't seen in many, many years.
But from that moment on, our country is taking in commitments.
We think it's probably Scott is here and Howard's here.
Commerce.
The Secretary of Treasury Scott has been great.
Howard's been great.
But I think these numbers are maybe looking, making them look better than they're supposed to be looking.
Where are they?
Howard, where are you?
And there's Howard.
Stand up, Howard.
And where's Scott?
Boy, this is, oh, well, you're not too far away.
He's become a big star.
You know, every time he goes on television, everything goes up.
And sometimes they say it more forcefully, but he shouldn't do what I'm telling him.
Because every time he goes, he's really considered one of the great gurus, one of the great geniuses of markets and understanding markets.
And he does understand the market.
And he also understands that we took on a terrible situation that was left to us by a prior administration.
And within a short period of time, I think we're in great shape.
unidentified
I think we're one of the most, maybe the most talked about.
But you know you can count on us and you know that it's going to be a great investment for you.
And it's been a great investment over the years.
So tonight let us give thanks for the blessings of this friendship.
We have a great friendship, our country and your country, added to by our friendship.
And in keeping with the title of your national anthem, I want to wish peace to the Emir and to all Qatars working together to help the entire region unlock its potential.
unidentified
You have unbelievable potential here.
Such great, such rich lands, such beautiful, magnificent.
And in turn, we'll do things for you that I think you'd be very, very happy about.
And that's more important than anything else, leading a great and safe and prosperous life in a fantastic country.
Thank you very much, everybody.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
unidentified
Next, our look at President Trump's most important 2025 meetings with foreign leaders continues with his June trip to the NATO summit in the Netherlands.
There, the NATO Secretary General and Dutch Prime Minister delivered remarks that focused on NATO's role in supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia.
Good morning to you all and welcome to this leader session of the North Atlantic Council.
We meet at a dangerous moment for our one billion citizens.
Russia's war against Ukraine rages on.
An assertive grouping of adversaries seeks to divide and challenge us.
There's war in the Middle East.
Terrorism poses a persistent threat.
And new technologies bring opportunities, but also many serious security challenges.
In the face of this, we stand together, united in NATO, the most powerful defensive alliance in world history.
History has shown that North America and Europe working together is a winning combination.
Our adversaries know this.
Our enduring commitment to Article 5 that an attack on one is an attack on all sends a powerful message.
In this meeting, we will take historic, transformational decisions to make our people safer through a stronger, fairer, and more lethal NATO.
To make NATO stronger, we have a concrete plan for all allies to spend 5% of GDP on defense.
It will go towards core defense as well as defense and security-related investments.
This decision is deeply rooted in our core mission and is required to resource our plans and readiness.
This will also make NATO fairer to ensure anyone and everyone contributes their fair share for our security.
For too long, one ally, the United States, carried too much of the burden of that commitment.
And that changes today.
President Trump, dear Donald, you made this change possible.
Your leadership on this has already produced $1 trillion in extra spending from European allies since 2016.
And the decisions today will produce trillions more for our common defence to make us stronger and fairer by equalizing spending between America and America's allies.
Allies will also agree to further increase defence production so that our armed forces have everything they need.
That means a huge expansion of our defence industrial base on both sides of the Atlantic.
That's good for our security, it's good for our economies and good for our jobs.
Our decisions include continuing our support to Ukraine while also pushing for a just and lasting peace.
We all want the bloodshed to stop.
We call on Russia to end its aggression against Ukraine.
Let me now turn to the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Dikshrof, whose government and people are graciously hosting us here.
Thank you to the media for joining us.
We will continue our discussions in just a moment.
But first, amidst the media here, please, Dix Groff, your introductory remarks.
unidentified
Thank you, Mark.
Colleagues, friends, allies, on behalf of the Dutch Government, welcome to The Hague.
This is the NATO summit, the first NATO summit ever to be held in the Netherlands.
And we are honored to have you here in this city that has been speaking in the language of peace and justice ever since the first Hague Peace Conference was held in 1899.
I'm convinced that after today, The Hague will also be known as a city of collective purpose, unity, and resolve.
After all, we are about to write history.
We are about to make decisions leading to an unprecedented increase in our collective defence spending and a new financial balance in our alliance.
Both are urgent, both are necessary, and both will help make our transatlantic bond even stronger.
So we can do justice to our founding principles of democracy, liberty, and the rule of law, as laid down in the Washington Treaty.
The last NATO event held in The Hague was a Foreign Minister meeting in 1989, just as the Iron Curtain was beginning to break apart on the eve of the Cold War's end.
And for a period, we hoped and believed that relations with Russia would continue to thaw.
But the end of history turned out to be an illusion.
An illusion that was shattered for good when Russia brutally invaded Ukraine.
So today, there is a renewed awareness in our ranks that peace cannot be taken for granted, that it must be protected constantly and with conviction.
And yes, peace comes at a cost.
We must act on this swiftly and decisively.
So let's stand united and embrace the Hague Defence Investment Plan.
thank you so uh thank you for the media for joining us but in the spirit of democracy i have to ask you to leave the room now Thank you.
unidentified
Coming up next, we're taking a look back at President Trump's meetings with foreign leaders in 2025.
Up next, a July meeting between President Trump and African leaders at the White House.
The meeting came after his administration's decision to fold USAID into the State Department and pivot from traditional aid to a business-driven approach.
Then, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a pivotal summit in Alaska to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
That's followed by another meeting on the Russia-Ukraine war that included leaders of many European nations.
Then, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump attended an official state dinner in their honor at Windsor Castle.
More of President Trump's 2025 meetings with foreign leaders on the way here on C-SPAN.
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Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series.
This Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner, Stacey Schiff, author of biographies, including Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Cleopatra.
She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein.
So, writing a second book on Franklin, you must admire him.
I feel as if he is in always admirable in so many ways.
Just the essential DNA of America.
His voice is the voice of America, literally.
unidentified
Watch America's Book Club with Stacey Schiff.
Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN.
Next, a July meeting between President Trump and African leaders at the White House.
This meeting came after his administration's decision to fold USAID into the State Department and pivot from traditional aid to a business-driven approach.
The leaders also thanked Trump for helping broker a peace deal between Congo and Rwanda and voiced their support for him winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
Well, thank you very much, everybody, for being with us today.
And I want to thank you, all of these great leaders, for joining us as we welcome to the White House the presidents and prime ministers and various other forms of dignitary to this wonderful place.
It's nothing like the White House to me.
We're represented today, and your continent is represented by Gabon, Guinea, Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal.
All very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, great oil deposits, and wonderful people.
Last month, the U.S. Africa Business Summit had recorded an attendance, an attendance record, actually, and generated $2.5 billion in new economic deals for the United States.
On June 27th, the foreign ministers of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda visited the White House to sign a historic peace agreement that we worked out.
They've been fighting for 30 years.
7 million are dead.
And they think the number is actually quite a bit higher than that.
It's been a long and vicious fight.
And I just wanted to say that the countries represented were very happy that we were able to solve that problem.
I think over the next couple of weeks, the leaders of both countries will come to sign the final agreement.
As you know, we had foreign ministers last week, but we're going to be signing an end to the horrible 30-year war.
It's been going on for a long time.
I've been reading about it, hearing about it, and it was a vicious war.
It was a terrible war.
I want to thank our outstanding senior advisor for Africa, Mossad Boulos, for helping to mediate this breakthrough.
He was very much involved in that settlement.
Most people thought it couldn't be done.
But there's still much more to be done, and we're going to be facilitating peace also in places like Sudan, where they have a lot of problems.
Libya and others, there's a lot of anger on your continent, and we've been able to solve a lot of it.
My administration is committed to strengthening our friendships in Africa through economic development efforts that benefit both the United States and our partners.
And we're shifting from AID to trade.
We had AID, or aid as we sometimes call it, right to trade, and trade seems to be a foundation that I've been able to settle a lot of these disputes, like as an example, India and Pakistan, Kosovo, Serbia.
I said, you guys are going to fight, we're not going to trade.
And we seem to be quite successful in doing that.
To that end, we have closed the USAID group to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, which was tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse.
And we're working tirelessly to forge new economic opportunities involving both the United States and many African nations.
There's great economic potential in Africa, like few other places in many ways.
And the long run, this will be far more effective and sustainable and beneficial than anything else that we could be doing together.
I'm eager to work with each of you on your vital issues and also to discuss security.
We've encouraged our staff at the White House to work along with these nations.
There's such tremendous wealth there and potential there.
We encourage the countries here today to make greater investments in defense, hopefully, of course, buying our equipment, because we do make the best defense equipment.
I guess we proved that about two weeks ago in Iran, but we make the best equipment, best military equipment anywhere in the world by far.
There's nobody close.
And keep pursuing the fight against terrorism, which is a big problem in Africa.
Immigration will also be on the agenda, and I hope we can bring down the high rates of people, overstaying visas, and also make progress on the safe third country agreements.
And once again, I want to thank you all for being here.
And it's an honor for me.
Some of you I've met and some of you I just got to meet.
And I think it would be nice if you said a few words to the press, which is right back here.
Do we have a camera over here?
It would be nice if you could.
Oh, there it is.
You can speak to them.
You don't want to turn your head so much.
I do it a lot.
It's not pleasant.
But perhaps we could start with you, please.
Thank you very much.
Great gentleman, by the way.
unidentified
Thank you for giving me the floor, Mr. President.
First of all, I would like to thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President Trump, for inviting us to come here today.
I'm President Ghazwani, President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.
Thank you, Mr. President, for this invitation and the invitation you sent to the other colleagues present here today.
This is a very strong message from you, and we are receiving this message very well.
This is a message of interest that you're sending to us, and it's a message that you're sending to the whole of Africa.
All of this is generous on your part.
We are receiving this and we accept this message from you.
Before I talk about my country, I would like to let you know that we are delighted to see President Trump's commitment to our continent.
Mr. President, in the short time you've been back in office, the last few months, you came to the rescue for peace.
You did it in Asia with Pakistan and India.
The war sort of started, and if it had gone on, the consequences could have been a real disaster.
Since the beginning, you've been doing a great deal of work on the war in Europe, that is the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
You rushed to Africa to resolve a long-standing problem.
Lots of efforts had been made by many heads of states, but your will made it possible for this agreement to be signed.
And now this conflict is behind us.
You are currently working with a great deal of enthusiasm.
And you're also working on the Middle East.
You're paying a great deal of attention to the Middle East.
We all know how far back this conflict goes.
It is a conflict that is about 80 years old, 70 years, but it is also a war that has been raging for a year and a half.
And you've also talked about the human toll.
Many people have died in this conflict.
Of course, you also stopped the war between Iran and Israel.
That could have been a real disaster for the region.
It's a sensitive region to start with.
Your work in favor of peace has been tremendous.
And we are also very interested in supporting peace in the same way.
When there's no peace, like you said earlier today, When there is no peace, a lot of other things are lacking.
When there is no peace, it is difficult to have prosperity.
It is difficult to have calm, to have a sense of quietness.
It's hard to sleep.
It's hard to go about your business every day.
You understand that well, Mr. President, and you're working on this.
So thank you.
I am the president of Mauritania.
Mauritania is a small country, depending on the criteria you apply.
If you look at the number of people who live in Mauritania, it's a small country because we have about 5 million people in Mauritania.
We might just be a little bit over 5 million.
It's a small country also in the sense that what influence it has throughout the world.
It's not like the U.S., Mr. President.
Internationally, we understand that our weight, our influence is not that great, and we have no complex about this.
It's also a small country because of our level of prosperity.
We're not a very prosperous country.
We have many problems related to the well-being of our population.
But it is also a great country, a big country in other ways.
Mauritania is a great country in the sense of its strategic position.
It is on the Atlantic coast, which makes it a neighbor to the U.S.
It is what unites North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, or what links the two.
That is its strategic position, but also in terms of resources.
We have a great deal of resources, many, many resources, and we have a lot of opportunities to offer in terms of investment.
We have minerals, rare earths, rare minerals.
We have manganese.
We have uranium.
And we have a good inclination that we have lithium and other minerals.
We're the second largest producer for the last 60 years in Africa of iron, iron ore.
We produce a lot.
And we have a lot of resources in our sea waters, so lots of fishing and whatnot.
Maybe we're going to have to go a little bit quicker than this because we have a whole schedule.
If I could just add your name and your country would be great.
Thank you, please.
unidentified
Thank you, Mr. President.
And for welcome, everything.
For us, the second time here to come as a guest, the first time we had that meeting in Guinea-Dessal.
But I will not talk so much.
But Kinneg Bissau is a peaceful country and we are a small country, but we are a great state.
Not a great state like the United States.
But we are a great country as well.
And to end, we are following your dynamics and the war with Russia and Ukraine.
And you can count on Guinea-Bissau.
Thank you very much.
The recent celebration of your 249th anniversary, we did a library at your embassy.
Mr. President, we thank you for this opportunity to be here.
Liberia is a long-time friend of the United States and we believe in your policy of making America great again and we also go a long way with you with your in your diplomacy that has to do with economic development and commercial friendship.
Liberia has a lot of minerals and one of the things we ask as good friends for a long time is the opportunity to do a survey of our minerals.
And also we are committed to peace and we've been very lucky within our region.
We are the country that have had series of democratic elections and our country has been cooling down and also we want to encourage American involvement in the investment in Liberia.
We like to see that happen.
We want to work with the United States in peace and security within the region because we are committed to that.
And we just want to thank you so much for this opportunity.
I would like to commend you, Mr. President, for the success you had in reaching a peace agreement between Rwanda and the DRC.
Africa is a vast continent that has many problems, and we truly count on you for your assistance in Sudan and in the Sahel because no investment can be made when there is a war.
For investment, you need peace.
The other heads of state who are here with me represent countries that are at peace, and that has been the case for some time.
We also have raw materials, minerals, rare earths.
We are not poor countries.
We are rich countries when it comes to raw materials, but we need partners to support us and help us develop those resources with win-win partnerships.
That is our wish.
I often listen to your remarks and speeches, Mr. President.
We also want our raw materials to be processed locally in our country so that we can create value and to create jobs for youth so that they stop dying.
They are crossing the sea, the ocean, to go to other countries.
That is what we want to have, local processing of raw materials.
Gabon is a rich country.
We have over 2 million inhabitants and a great deal of diversity, raw materials, oil and gas reserves.
And we would like those resources to be tapped using an economic model that fits since our liberation.
We have changed how we do trade.
We have focused on transparency and bids for anyone who wants to come invest in our country.
If you follow the news, we have also worked on agreements with the European Union, and we wanted to review those because we didn't think that those were win-win opportunities.
So our market is open.
We want to process manganese locally, which you purchase through a company called Aramet.
And I'm sure that it's more expensive compared to when you can come and buy it directly from us.
In order to do this local processing, we need eight to ten gigawatts of electricity.
Again, this is an open bid.
Any American company that wants to invest in electricity in Gabon is welcome to take advantage of that opportunity.
Now, looking at defense, the Gulf of Guinea is an issue.
There is maritime piracy in that area, and we want to work together to stabilize it.
You said you had the best equipment, the best military equipment, and that's what we'd like to have, so that we can stop maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
We can't do it alone.
We need a reliable and strong partner that is committed and that takes real steps, real action.
We also need to be pragmatic.
And that's what you are.
And I'm a general, and I am too.
I'm pragmatic.
I like it when things move quickly.
Our country is free, open to one and all.
You are welcome to come and invest.
Otherwise, other countries might come instead of you.
It is an honor for us to be here at the White House and to have this opportunity to speak with you about the new partnership that you are putting in place with Africa, particularly for investment.
I also wanted to commend you for your commitment to peace throughout the world and the incredible diplomatic success that you had with the DRC, as my colleagues mentioned.
You said that this put an end to a long war that claimed many lives, and thankfully, you were here to put an end to this 30-year war.
I also wanted to express that Africa supports all efforts to bring back peace to Sudan, Libya, and in the Sahel.
Mr. President, as you've seen, you can only do business when there is peace and security, and you build peace everywhere in the world so that there can be better investments.
The entire world is grateful to you for this.
Now, with respect to my country, Senegal, I've been president for some 15, 16 months now.
And I want to reassure all American investors about our country's political stability and our favorable regulatory environment, which we are continuously improving upon in order to attract more investment.
I wanted to speak about two projects that I think are an exceptional opportunity.
I will speak about the U.S. Ecological Survey, which can help assess the potential of the minerals in our country.
And thanks to American companies, we've been able to discover oil and gas.
Some 950 billion cubic meters of gas that we can tap into in order to support our economy.
And again, here we were able to do this with an American company.
Another project I'd like to mention, and again, I would like to invite American investors to take part in this.
It's for a digital city.
We identified a space within the city of Dakar.
It has a view of the sea.
It's on some 40 hectares.
And this is a great opportunity for American tech companies to come in and make Dakar a tech city open to Africa.
I was wondering what your secret was for resolving all these complex crises, and I know you are a tremendous golf player.
Golf requires concentration and precision, qualities that also make for a great leader.
Senegal has exceptional opportunities to offer, including in the area of tourism.
So perhaps an investment could be made in a golf course in Senegal.
It would just be six hours by flight from New York, from Miami, from Europe, or from the Gulf, and that would be an opportunity for you to show off your skills on the golf course, too.
I have one question for the African president and one question for President Trump.
As you can see, Mr. President Trump, all the African presidents are very happy with your efforts to bring peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
My question to you is today you are making history by receiving five African presidents and showing the interest of the United States to collaborate and to work close with the African nations.
African continent is watching.
African youth is watching.
And this new approach that your administration is taking to deal with African nations, not only based on help, but in doing business that everybody can win, is really much appreciated for all the Africans.
My question is, are you planning, Mr. President, in the future to travel to Africa to see firsthand all those countries in Africa, all those potential that those countries have?
And for the African leaders, my question is, as you can see, President Trump is working to bring peace not only in Africa but also in the world.
Are you all considering to nominate President Trump for a Nobel Prize piece?
Thank you, Mr. President, and thank you for your question.
Very important question indeed.
Forgive me for saying this, but unfortunately, I don't really understand.
I don't know how things work when it comes to Nobel Prizes.
But I can guarantee you that Mauritania would never be opposed to President Trump receiving a Nobel Peace Prize because he's already working very hard in favor of peace throughout the world with no distinction, no regard to what continent it's on.
And he's working on areas where there are tensions everywhere.
And he's committed towards peace.
And our world needs more peace.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.
The jury will decide.
It's not a matter of voting amongst our countries, but what is for sure is that the results and the work has been done in such a short amount of time show that you would be a good recipient.
And I'm sure that the jury sees that in the rest of the world, sees it as well and understands it.
When the time comes, I think everyone will see that it is a deserved prize.
Congratulations on what you've done so far.
If we took a poll, I think you would be very far ahead in those polls.
And now, a few weeks after the strikes that you ordered on the nuclear facilities in Iran, there is an Iranian official who says you, President Trump, have done something that he can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago as you lie there with your stomach to the sun.
A small drone might hit you in the navel.
It's very simple.
Do you think that's a real threat?
And when is the last time you went sunbathing anyway?
Well, they wouldn't be saying that if they didn't hate our country, and they obviously do, I'm surprised that they would do it.
Knowing a little bit about them, I don't know them well.
But these officers are doing a tremendous job.
They're great patriots.
If you expose them because of statements like have been made by Democrats and others on the left, usually, mostly, I think probably exclusively, you put them in great danger, tremendous danger.
And it's sort of funny when people pick it in front of Columbia, in front of Harvard, and they have masks on, more than masks.
I mean, you can't see anything.
Nobody complains about that.
But when a patriot who works for ICE or Border Patrol puts a mask on so that they won't recognize him and his family, so they can lead a little bit of a normal life after having worked so hard and so dangerously, there's a problem with that.
So they have their, this is why, this is the problem with the Democrats.
They have a lot of bad things going on in their heads.
They've really become very, they've lost their confidence, number one, and they're really, they've become somewhat deranged.
I want to do whatever's necessary to protect our great law enforcement people, and they are right at the top of the list.
They're very rare indeed, you know, because a lot of systems have been sent to Ukraine.
But they would like to, I know they made the request.
We're going to have to take a look at it.
Very expensive, very expensive system.
It's a shame that we have to spend so much money on a war that would have never happened if I were president.
That's a terrible, terrible war over there.
And totally a shame.
It's very sad, you know, when you talk about a system like that, highly sophisticated, tremendous amount of money, and they're doing it because they want to prevent death.
They're getting hit hard, very hard.
So we're looking at it.
unidentified
Also on Russia.
Yesterday, sir, as well, Ukraine was hit by over 700 drones sent by Russia last night.
The formula was a formula based on common sense, based on deficits, based on how we've been treated over the years, and based on raw numbers.
And we're going to have a couple of more coming out today.
Brazil, as an example, has been not good to us, not good at all.
We're going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think, later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
But they're based on very substantial facts and also past history.
You look at the past history.
We never had anybody in the White House that understood the numbers or were into it like I have.
You know, we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, hundreds of billions.
And we haven't even started yet.
And it's going to be a great thing for our country.
I think it's going to be a fair thing for the world.
And we really haven't had too many complaints because I'm keeping them at a very low number, very conservative, as you would say, number.
And we haven't had, I'm sure they will be complaining at certain points, but we haven't had compliance.
We've been treated very unfairly by both friend and foe.
And friend has treated us very badly.
It's not even believable that for so many years, you know, I was using tariffs in my first administration.
We had the most successful financially administration that there's ever been.
This is going to be much better.
But we got cut short with the COVID because I didn't think it was appropriate when Italy, Spain, the horror show that a lot of the countries went through.
So I cut it a little bit short.
But we took in hundreds of billions of dollars, and we had the most successful term ever from a president financially.
But this is going to be much more successful.
Yes, please.
unidentified
Do you expect any of the countries here to face tariffs as well?
I haven't thought of it, but maybe, I don't know, let's say I like him, him, him, him, and him.
Thank you for taking our questions, Mr. President.
You talked about the amount of external revenue the country has brought in thanks to your tariffs.
Can you talk about how these hundreds of billions of dollars that are getting brought in will help grow the country, and what do you hope to put it towards?
Well, bigger than the tariffs, actually, are the fact that when you charge the tariffs at a certain point, they say, well, we can't pay those tariffs.
It doesn't make economic sense.
These are wealthy countries, and they or their companies will come into our country and build, and that's what's actually happening.
If you had a very low tariff, there'd be no incentive to do that.
If you have no tariff, like we used to have, which is so stupid it's not even believable, but then obviously they make their product, the product in their country.
They have the jobs, they have the income, they have the taxes, they have everything, and they just send it into us, and it's jobs that we wouldn't get.
Now the wheel is turned, and what we're doing is we're, I mean, more important, we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars, money that we've never seen before.
But more important than that, we have a lot of people that would rather not have to pay that.
So they're coming in and they're building plants.
AI, I mean, we're leading everybody, including China, by a lot with AI.
They're building their own plant.
You heard me say yesterday, they're building their own electric generating plants to go along with the factories or plants that they're building.
If they want to do that, we're getting them fast approvals, very fast turnarounds.
They're using mostly natural gas to start off, but they're using coal.
They have the right to use coal.
They have the right to use nuclear.
Nuclear has come a long way in the last five years.
So we're getting them very fast approvals.
We have factories and plants building at a level that we've never had in this country before.
unidentified
And secondly, a study from the Council of Economic Advisors.
You put it on Truth Social yesterday.
It showed that your assessment that tariffs would slow inflation was accurate and that the prices of imported goods since February has fallen.
That your assessment was right, the critics were wrong.
Why do so-called experts continually misread your economic policy, sir?
It's the fake news and a combination of that and the Democrats.
I saw an ad on television today on Fox, and it was some ad about, oh, Trump has raised costs.
It's the opposite.
I actually put out a statement.
I brought down costs.
I brought down the cost of groceries.
I brought down the cost of energy, tremendously energy, tremendously groceries.
If you remember my first week in office, the press was screaming at me about the cost of eggs.
They were four times higher than they were just a short time ago.
That was caused by Biden and stupid policies, and we got that down.
And by Easter, it was normalized, and now it's actually even at a lower price.
So when I see an ad like that, it's always good to respond.
I feel, I feel you have to respond.
It was an ad that things are more costly.
No, they're much less costly.
Yesterday, $1.99 a gallon is two states, three states, were selling gasoline.
At $1.99, you haven't seen that for a long time.
And I brought costs way down, just about every cost.
I can't think of a cost that went up, but just about every cost.
So what they do is they lie.
I mean, they take ads.
You'd almost think that the advertising station would stop it because they know it's wrong.
It's such a lie.
All you can do is say it's a lie and explain it.
I guess I have the ability to explain it at conferences like this, so I like to take advantage of it and do it.
But costs are substantially down under the Trump administration.
And as you know, Biden had the highest inflation, I believe, in the history of our country.
They say 48 years, but regardless, I think it was really the highest in the history of our country.
And they were up to numbers that nobody ever saw before.
And we have inflation now totally under control.
We have a Fed chairman that if he was doing his job properly with lower interest rates, but we're bullying through even that.
We're doing so well it's not having that kind of an impact on us.
But you want to see a rocket ship?
We should have the lowest interest rates because without us there there's nothing.
And we have a strong country now and we're taking in a lot of money.
And other countries aren't even complaining.
They got away with murder.
They took advantage of a lot of very stupid people that sat in the seat, very stupid people, or people that didn't understand business or something or something was going on.
But hard to believe that they got away with it for so many years.
But now, and I'm treating them very fairly.
Again, we have countries with tremendous deficits with us where we have, you know, where we essentially lose a lot of money.
There's nothing definite about war and Gaza and all of the other places that we all deal with so much.
But there's a very good chance that we'll have a settlement, an agreement of some kind this week, and maybe next week if not.
unidentified
On Africa as well, sir.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act, which has been central to many sub-Saharan countries having access to the U.S. market, that's due to expire in September.
President Trump, in Alvarado, Texas, a few days ago, 10 people wearing all black allegedly set off fireworks outside an ICE office to lure the officers out so they could ambush them, shoot at them.
They had guns and vests and two-way radios.
Do you think that this was an isolated incident, or do you think there's a national threat of a left-wing militia that is targeting ICE and CBP?
Well, I think you have some very stupid people in the left who have some money that are making it available to these people because you look at the guns they had.
They were brand new.
You look at even the clothing they were wearing.
It looked like it just came out of some military shop.
So you have some very stupid people that if anything ever happened, they'd be the first to go.
They don't understand that.
They'd be the first to go.
They'd be the first ones hit.
But there is money being put behind people.
When you look at the weapons they have, the newness of the weapons, rifles that just came out and they have the latest model.
So there's something going on and we'll get to the bottom of it.
And what would you think if I read you a quote from a lawmaker who says about ICE, to abolish it, to treat them as criminals, or anything that is inappropriate and outrageous?
And I told you that that was Democrat John Fetterman.
So two questions, one on tariffs, the other on the IRS.
On tariffs, China is reportedly softening their impact on U.S. tariffs in Africa, announcing last month that they would halt charges on imports for nearly all of its African partners.
Good.
Does this move by China influence your thinking, your approach to tariffs on the continent?
I love the fact that churches can endorse a political candidate.
I think so, because we have a lot of respect for the people that lead the church, for the pastors and the ministers and the rabbis and the all different leaders, all different religions, and people respect those people.
And I think there's nothing wrong.
You know, it was a very big penalty if that took place just a little while ago.
They had a thing called the Johnson Act, and it was a very big penalty.
I think it's great if a pastor, minister, priest, rabbi, and we could very much go into your religion, by the way, which is something that people are having great respect for throughout the world.
If somebody of faith wants to endorse, I think it's something that I'd like to hear.
And I'd also, I can guarantee you, the people that they're with every Saturday or Sunday, or whenever it is they're with, they want to hear from these people.
And it was a very severe penalty.
Those people were not allowed to speak up.
Now they're allowed to speak up.
No, I think it's terrific.
unidentified
Mr. President, your administration took new actions against Harvard University today.
Are you still optimistic about reaching a deal with the university?
I just got a text from our colleague John Roberts.
He says that we are now reporting the guy who was arrested in the Alvarado, Texas incident for tampering with the evidence was a green card recipient under the Biden administration and a prior DACA recipient.
A lot of news has broken since we've been in here.
Axio says a secret White House meeting between Steve Witkoff, Ron Dermer, and a Qatari envoy on Tuesday led to significant progress in the negotiations over the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
In August 2025, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a pivotal summit in Alaska.
Their meeting to discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine was Putin's first trip to a Western nation since that 2022 invasion, and his first visit to the U.S. since 2015 when he attended a session of the United Nations General Assembly.
This news conference in Anchorage, Alaska, was held after their private meeting on the Russia-Ukraine war.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States of America and the President of the Russian Federation.
It's also important that Alaska has to do with our common history between Russia and the U.S. and many positive events have to do with that territory.
Still, there is tremendous cultural heritage back from the Russian America.
For example, Orthodox churches and a lot of more than 700 geographical names of Russian origin during the Second World War, it was here in Alaska that was the origin of the legendary air bridge for the supply of military aircraft and other equipment under the land lease program.
There was a dangerous and treacherous route over the vast emptiness of ice.
However, the pilots of both countries did everything to bring closer the victory.
They risked their lives and they gave it all for the common victory.
I was just in the city of Magadan in Russia and there is a memorial there dedicated to the Russian and the U.S. pilots.
And there are two flags, the U.S. flag and the Russian flag.
And I know that here as well there is such a memorial.
There is a military burial place several kilometers away from here.
The Soviet pilots that buried there died during that dangerous mission.
We're thankful to the citizens and the government of the U.S. for carefully taking care of their memory.
I think that's very worthy and noble.
We'll always remember other historical examples.
We know our countries defeated common enemies together in the spirit of battle camaraderie and allieship that supported each other and facilitated each other.
I'm sure that this heritage will help us rebuild and foster mutually beneficial and equal ties at this new stage, even during the hardest conditions.
We know that there have been no summits between Russia and the U.S. for four years and a long time.
This time was very hard for bilateral relations, and let's be frank, they're falling to the lowest point since the Cold War.
I think that's not benefiting our countries and the world as a whole.
It is apparent that sooner or later we had to amend the situation to move on from the confrontation to dialogue.
And in this case, a personal meeting between the heads of state has been long naturally under the condition of serious and painstaking work.
unidentified
This work has been done in general.
Me and President Trump have very good direct contact.
We've spoken multiple times, we spoke frankly on the phone and our special envoy of the President has traveled now to Russia several times advisors and heads of foreign ministries kept in touch all the time.
And we know fully well that one of the central issues was the situation around Ukraine.
We see the strive of the administration and President Trump personally to help facilitate the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict.
And he strived to get to the crux of the matter to understand oppression as I've said the situation in Ukraine has to do with fundamental threats to our security.
Moreover, we are always considered and the Ukrainian nation, and I've said it multiple times, a brotherly nation, however strange it may sound these conditions.
We have the same roots and everything that's happening is a tragedy for us, terrible wound.
For the country sincerely interested in putting an end to it at the same time settlement in the long term, we need to eliminate all the primary primary causes of that conflict.
We've said it multiple times to consider the concerns of Russia and to reinstate a just balance in Europe and the world on the whole.
But I agree with President Trump, as he has said today, that naturally the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well.
Naturally, we are prepared to work to hope that the agreement that we put together will help us bring closer that goal and will pave.
We expect that Tiev and the European capitalist will perceive that constructively and that they won't throw a ranch and will not make any attempts to use some backroom dealings to conduct propositions to torpedo the nascent progress.
Incidentally, when the new administration came to power, bilateral trade started to grow.
It's still very symbolic.
Still, we have growth of 20%.
unidentified
As I've said, we have a lot of dimensions for joint work.
It is clear that the U.S. and Russian investment and business – and cooperation has tremendous potential Russia and the US can each so much in trade, digital, high-tech, and in space.
Cooperation is also very possible in international contexts, for example, between the forest of Russia and the west coast of the U.S.
It's very important for our countries to turn the page to go back to conflict that not far away from here and what is Russia and the US and the so-called international dateline.
I think you can scan over literally from yesterday into tomorrow.
And I hope that we'll succeed in that in political public.
unidentified
I would like to thank President Trump for our joint for the well-wishing and trustworthy tone of our conversation.
It's important that both sides are oriented and see that the President of the U.S. has a very clear idea of what he would like to achieve.
He sincerely cares about the prosperity of his nation and understands that Russia has its own nationality.
But today's agreement will be not only for the social but also will help us push back business-like and pragmatic relations between Russia and the US.
And in the end, I would like to add one more thing.
I would like to remind you that in 2022, during the last contact with the previous administration, I tried to convince my previous American colleague the situation should not be of no return when it would come to hostilities.
And I said it quite directly back then.
That is a big mistake.
Today, when President Trump is saying that he was present back then, there will be quite sure that it would indeed be so.
And I can confirm that.
I think that overall me and President Trump have built a very business-like and trustworthy contact to believe that moving down this path we can come to the end of the conflict in Ukraine.
Was very profound, and I will say that I believe we had a very productive meeting.
There were many, many points that we agreed on, most of them I would say, a couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there, but we've made some headway.
I will call up the various people that I think are appropriate.
And I'll, of course, call up President Zelensky and tell him about today's meeting.
It's ultimately up to them.
They're going to have to agree with what Marco and Steve and some of the great people from the Trump administration who've come here, Scott and John Radcliffe, thank you very much.
But we have some of our really great leaders.
They've been doing a phenomenal job.
We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here.
And I think everybody wants to deal with us.
We've become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time.
And we look forward to that.
We look forward to dealing.
We're going to try and get this over with.
We really made some great progress today.
I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir.
We had many, many tough meetings, good meetings.
We were interfered with by the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax.
It made it a little bit tougher to deal with, but he understood it.
I think he's probably seen things like that during the course of his career.
He's seen it all.
But we had to put up with the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax.
He knew it was a hoax, and I knew it was a hoax.
But what was done was very criminal.
But it made it harder for us to deal as a country in terms of the business and all of the things that we'd like to have dealt with.
But we'll have a good chance when this is over.
So just to put it very quickly, I'm going to start making a few phone calls and tell them what happened.
But we had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to.
There are just a very few that are left.
Some are not that significant.
One is probably the most significant.
But we have a very good chance of getting there.
We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.
I would like to thank President Putin and his entire team, whose faces, who I know in many cases, otherwise, other than that, whose faces I get to see all the time in the newspapers.
You're almost as famous as the boss, but especially this one right over here.
But we had some good meetings over the years, right?
Good productive meetings over the years, and we hope to have that in the future.
But let's do the most productive one right now.
We're going to stop really five, six, seven thousand, thousands of people a week from being killed.
And President Putin wants to see that as much as I do.
So again, Mr. President, I'd like to thank you very much.
And we'll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.