President Donald J. Trump signs executive orders while touting Freedom 250, a motor racing event (Aug 21–23) near D.C. landmarks with 100,000 attendees, citing economic gains like steel production surpassing Japan in 28 years and S&P 500 records at 7,000 points. He links historic low crime rates to border closures and deportations, dismissing Senator Tillis’s hold on Fed nominee Kevin Marsh as irrelevant. Trump also mentions a larger military flotilla near Iran and claims progress in U.S.-backed oil production in Venezuela, while denying civil war risks amid Minneapolis shootings and framing protests as paid insurrections. His signing underscores a presidency emphasizing speed, spectacle, and unyielding policy defense despite opposition. [Automatically generated summary]
I understand they've been here hundreds of times over the years trying to do it.
And they're going to give you a little bit of history.
Roger Penske, everybody knows, he's a legend in many different things, but certainly in racing.
He's won the Indianapolis 500 20 times.
On the 18th time, I said, and he's been a friend of mine for a long time, but on the 18th time, I said, I think I'm going to give her the Presidential Medal of Freedom because, you know, how do you do that?
Japan, Germany, Roger, right?
Everybody, they want to win the Indy 500.
They spend billions of dollars getting a car.
This guy wins it like every year.
He won it so many times that he ended up buying the track.
He's a genius and a real genius at cars and racing.
And they are going to put up something that's really amazing.
It's really having to do with our great 250th birthday where we're having so many wonderful things.
UFC is coming, as you know, in front of the White House with building literally a stadium.
We're going to have over 100,000 people.
And this is going to have a lot of people.
I won't even say how many people because I think it can set a record for racing.
It's going to be very, very important.
We're celebrating greatness with American Motor Racing.
That's going to be the name of the event.
It's going to take place on August 21st through the 23rd.
And it's going to be so exciting.
And I love the racing.
I don't have a lot of time to watch it, but I love the racing.
And just before we start, I will say numbers came out this morning.
They're phenomenal for the country.
So we announced yesterday that for the first time in, I think, 28 years, America made more steel than Japan.
Can you believe it?
Japan's a big steel country.
America made more steel than Japan.
The numbers are record-setting numbers.
Every one of our numbers are good.
We've never had anything like it.
We have over $18 trillion coming into our country.
We're building thousands of plants and all sorts of businesses all over the United States.
It's never been anything like it.
$18 trillion investment.
So we have over, fellas, we have over $18 trillion being invested in the United States of America.
The record was $3 trillion 10 years ago, not by us, by another country.
And we're going to do 18, and I think the 18 is going to go higher.
We're just looking at 11 months.
The 12th month hasn't come in yet, but it's going to bring us over 18, maybe even hit 20.
So you have 18 to 20 trillion dollars coming in, and we've never had anything like it.
We have a record we just set, as you know, the S ⁇ P 500 just set a new record, 7,000.
Nobody thought that was possible.
This is quicker time.
Thought maybe at the end of four years or five years or six years.
But we did it in the first year.
And we had 48 stock market highs, Roger.
So Roger's a big beneficiary because he has a lot of stock.
But anybody that has stock, including people with 401ks.
So the economy has never been like this.
It was just announced that crime is at an all-time low.
Lowest number, the best numbers on crime in the history, in the recorded history of our country, and the lowest numbers of murders in the history of our country that we have, recorded history.
It goes back 125 years.
That's not bad.
And a lot of that is because of the fact that we have a closed border.
We've taken out thousands and thousands of criminals and murderers and drug dealers and everything else.
And we've either brought them back to their country or in some cases we have to put them in our jails because we don't want to have them come back.
And so we don't want to just bring them back to their country and then they maybe come back despite our border.
They're pretty sneaky, pretty smart.
So we're doing things that nobody's ever seen before.
The country is really in great shape.
We have a large armada flotilla, you can call it whatever you want, heading toward Iran right now, even larger than what we had in Venezuela.
It's still in front of Venezuela.
The Venezuelan situation, the leadership is doing a very good job.
We're very happy and we're getting along very, very well.
And we're inviting countries of the world very shortly.
They're going to be starting to take the oil.
We're going to be heading that with the country.
And it's worked out really well.
We're now sending actually a larger number of ships to Iran.
And hopefully we'll make a deal.
If we do make a deal, that's good.
If we don't make a deal, we'll see what happens.
But this is going to be exciting.
So I'm going to ask, and he really is a legend.
He's a great man.
I've known him for a tremendously long time.
I refuse to say.
We were both young.
Now we're both a little older.
We refuse to say old, but we're a little older.
But Roger Penske is the chairman, as you know, of Penske Corporation.
He's got everything you can imagine, mostly, I think, to do with automotive.
And I'd like to ask him to say a few words about the event because this is going to be, they're putting everything behind it, and I think it's going to be really exciting.
Roger, please.
unidentified
Well, thank you, Mr. President.
This is a really amazing time for us as a company to support the 250th anniversary for the country.
And there's no better way for us to bring automotive and speed into the DC area and to have the opportunity to be able to compete here with our IndyCars.
As you know, we own the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
We are taking that history of over 100 years and the speed and what's taking place there with the different manufacturers and bringing it here to this race will be amazing.
Certainly the Freedom 250, when you think about it, it's just a byproduct of what the president has done during this year.
And this will be an event, obviously, in August, which will make a huge difference.
And we're excited.
It'll be areas for people to see.
Most of the grounds will be free.
So it's going to be an economic benefit to the area, to the city.
And obviously, with our Fox partner, Eric Shanks, will be our media partner.
And believe me, what they did for us at Indy this past year, they're going to take that and put it on steroids, really, and take it to the next level.
So thank you, Mr. President, for allowing us to come into your city.
We just don't come in and ask the president to sign.
There's a lot of work that goes into this.
As you can tell, Bud and my chief of staff, Pete, all had a lot of meetings on the Hill.
We couldn't be more excited about this.
Again, I'm going to repeat, this is free for the American people to come to your nation's capital and see a great road race, freedom, America, speed, and road racing.
It doesn't get more American now, Mr. President.
So thank you for signing this and thanks for all your support.
This birthday that's coming up, the 250th anniversary of America Freedom 250, is the most monumental birthday maybe of any country ever in the history of the world.
And President Trump, with his directive to celebrate this thing, we've got a, what's more American than race car driving?
What's more monumental than the Indy 500 as an icon of what's going on in our country?
And so merging the history and the tradition of our capital, Washington, D.C., with the speed and the innovation that goes on in the IndyCar series is incredible.
And it's a great metaphor because the speeds we're talking about is the speed of President Trump.
I want to reiterate, there weren't 81 meetings with the Trump administration.
One week we have a race as opposed to like four months of talking.
So I think there's also a metaphor here about President Trump, who's an incredible sportsman.
He's an athlete himself, but he loves sports.
And so whether it's soccer, UFC, the football draft, NFL football draft coming, IndyCar, and all the teams that he hosts here, I mean, to any American who loves sports, you've got to love this president because he's bringing professional sports to our capital.
And again, August 21st to 2030, you talk about the economic impact.
By the time all these reporters get done telling the story, there's not going to be a hotel room available in this city on that weekend because everybody's going to want to be here.
People that maybe have wanted to see an IndyCar race their whole life are now going to have an opportunity to come to their capital, celebrate 250, and see an IndyCar race for free.
And they're going to be able to see it on the national mall.
And wherever you put down your lawn chair and watch this race for free, you're going to be staring at the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial.
And I'm sure there's going to be fireworks this weekend too.
I'm sure of that.
And if you need a permit, you can get one from the charity shop.
So anyway, it's absolutely incredible.
And congratulations to Sean, the Penske organization, Fox Sports, everybody for putting together this is going to be a great celebration for America.
Don't go for second or third because there are a lot of different routes.
I said, pick, even if it's more difficult to get, to get approved.
Pick the absolute best site.
And they were actually looking at another site.
And when I said that, they said, well, the best site is this site, the site we're doing.
I said, let's take a look at it.
And we think it's the best site, too.
It's actually better than the original site they were looking at.
But if we're going to do it, we want to do it right.
So this is going to be something in terms of the road width, the crowds, and everything else that we can all, the best site, one of the best sites they've ever seen, actually.
And it'll be beautiful.
So I'm going to sign this.
And if you have any questions on this subject, that'd be great.
Well, he's got a building that, you know, I build buildings and I build them under budget ahead of schedule.
I build them, but they're within reason always.
And this is a small little complex that's costing billions of dollars, most expensive job per square foot ever built.
And it's a little complex.
It's a little Fed complex.
I built the hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and I built it for around $200 million.
And it's bigger than that.
They're spending many times that amount to do a renovation of a building.
I've heard numbers as high as $4 billion.
$4 billion to build a building.
I could have renovated that building and fixed it up, made it beautiful for $25 million.
They're going to spend close to $4 billion on it.
So it's either gross incompetence or it's theft.
Somebody's making money because you can't spend, it's more per square, and you have half a building there.
You know, you have the structure, you have the exterior skin that they're not changing much.
They're building a building and they're spending almost, I mean, I'm hearing numbers of between $3 and $4 billion.
It's the most expensive structure ever built per square foot.
So he's either incompetent or he or somebody is a crook.
And we'll find out.
unidentified
Mr. President, you've never seen Minneapolis.
On Minneapolis, Governor Tim Walz recently likened the conflict on the ground to Fort Sumter, sort of implying that this is the beginning of a civil war.
Do you agree with that characterization?
Do you feel like there's a civil war brewing in the New York Governor Design?
Does he know what Fort Sumter was, or do you think somebody wrote it out for him?
No, this is, I was elected on law and order.
I was elected on a strong border.
We had a border that allowed 25 million people to come in.
Many were murderers.
They murdered people.
We had 11,888 murderers.
We had prisons, including Venezuela, but Venezuela opened its prisons.
So did the Congo.
The Congo in Africa opened its prisons and dumped people into our country.
Many countries did that.
I would have done that if I were leading a country.
I would have dumped the prisoners into our country.
We had opened borders.
We had all these things.
I was elected on law and order.
I was elected on the economy.
I was elected on a lot of reasons.
Because when I took over, we inherited a mess.
Prices were too high.
Inflation was the highest it was in 48 years.
I say ever, but the media always corrects me by saying it's only 48 years.
I think 48 years almost sounds worse.
But when I was elected, I was elected to do a job.
And one of the big things I was elected to do is law and order.
We now have the lowest crime rate in the history of our country.
We have the lowest murder rate in the history of our country.
We have Washington, D.C., which was a dangerous place to walk, is now a totally safe city.
You can walk with your husband or your wife.
You can walk with your children right down the middle of the city.
Nothing's going to happen.
We did a great job.
We had the National Guard, we have soldiers, we have people that nobody's going to mess with.
And we've taken out, remember, it's not just that.
In Washington, we've removed over 2,000 criminals.
And you know, if you look at the numbers, a very small percentage of your population, 2%, 3% of your population, causes 90% of the crime.
So when you move a small, it's amazing how that works.
But the criminals go over and over and over again.
So 2% to 3% of your population can cause over 90% of your crime.
So it's not that complex.
We moved 2,000 people out of Washington.
We brought them back to their countries where they came from.
They came through open borders by sleepy Joe Biden.
And I will tell you, Washington is safe.
If you look at New Orleans, as you know, we went there about four weeks ago.
I was with the mayor of New Orleans last night.
He was at the premiere.
And she was at the premiere.
She was great.
I believe she's a Democrat.
She came over.
She thanked me so much.
She said crime is down more than 50% in just a few weeks.
And you couldn't even walk down the street in New Orleans.
It's so bad.
And now they let us in there.
And she is thanking me so much, so profusely.
She was great last night.
I'd do that.
If I were a Democrat, I'd say call Trump in, let them do what they do.
But we remove people, criminals, from the cities, and they become safe cities.
If you look at Minnesota, Minneapolis, we have crime down there because we took out thousands of people, despite all the mess and everything else.
But do these people really want to have rapists?
Do they really want to have drug dealers and people from prisons and murderers?
Do they really want to have them in the community?
You know, it's really insurrectionists and agitators, and they're paid.
And you can tell a lot of reasons.
Number one, they're professionals, you know, with their mouth.
But they're also, you look at the signs, the signs are all professionally made.
They have signs that are gorgeous.
In fact, I want to get the sign because I'm a big, I need a lot of signs for different things, and I want to find out whoever does their signs.
They do a beautiful job.
You know, everybody has this beautiful sign with brand new wood.
It's like leather panels.
They have a leather handle on the bottom.
These are not people.
These are people that are handed signs.
And we know pretty much, we're getting very close to it, but we know pretty much who's funding this stuff.
These are paid insurrectionists, paid troublemakers.
But I was elected by a landslide.
I won every swing state.
I won the popular vote by a lot.
I won everything.
I won everything.
And I was elected by a landslide on law and order and on strong borders.
We had a border that was so bad, so open, where 25 million people came in over a period of four years, and now nobody comes in.
Nobody even tries to come in.
And I can only say, I think, we'll say it very plainly, elections have consequences.
The people want law and order.
And we have a silent majority.
You know, we have a silent majority of people.
They don't go and riot and everything else, but they like what we're doing.
They like having a safe city.
I get calls every single day.
Every person I see working in the White House, people I don't know, many people work here, and they say, I'd like to thank you, sir, why you've made Washington so great.
We walk to work.
They walk to work.
You people know it very well.
You walk to work now.
You used to take an Uber or a taxi or something, and you even felt like in danger there.
Every person in this building, I mean, virtually every time I see somebody, they thank me.
Because a year and a half ago they lived in hell and now they can walk to work and they're totally safe.
And if anything did happen, the person that did it would be living in hell for a long period of time.
unidentified
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
You guys keep moving out. Thank you very much.
Thank you, friends.
Thank you, friends.
Thank you.
Happy movie, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you, guys.
Thank you guys for moving.
Thanks.
Today, our coverage of the U.S. Conference of Mayors winds down with its closing plenary lunch, featuring a panel of mayors from the cities of Albuquerque, Bend, Oregon, Farmington Hills, Michigan, and Durham, North Carolina.
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Houston, F2, 1-160th second, for shadow photography on the sequence camera.
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Fatal Shootings Debate00:00:25
unidentified
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro took questions from reporters at a forum hosted by the Christian Science Monitor in Washington, D.C.
He weighed in on current events, including immigration enforcement actions and the fatal shootings of Renee Goode and Alex Predi by federal agents in Minneapolis.
Governor Shapiro said Pennsylvania would be prepared if the Trump administration deployed federal agents to the state.