President Trump signs an executive order for a high-speed IndyCar race (190 mph) down Pennsylvania Avenue in August, touting Penske Corporation’s 24 wins—including two at the Indianapolis 500 after acquiring the track—and economic booms like U.S. steel production surpassing Japan’s in 28 years. He nominates Kevin Warsh, a Fed veteran and youngest-ever board member, while attacking Jay Powell over a $3B–$4B building project, calling it wasteful. Trump dismisses Minneapolis unrest as a "civil war" narrative, blaming crime on open borders under Biden, and claims his policies—like deportations and border closures—delivered record-low murder rates (125-year low). He hints at Iran military pressure, defends U.S. defense spending with plans for 25 battleships, and insists Ukraine’s losses (29K+ soldiers in a month) prove his tough stance on foreign conflicts. The episode underscores Trump’s signature mix of economic nationalism, border rhetoric, and military posturing as defining his presidency’s approach to governance and global influence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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18 Trillion Reasons To Celebrate00:06:27
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C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
President Trump signed an executive order to bring the IndyCar race to Washington, D.C. this year.
The race would be part of America 250 celebrations.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Interior Secretary Doug Bergham, and Penske Corporation CEO Roger Penske were at the Oval Office for the announcement.
The president also answered reporters' questions on several topics, including his nomination of Kevin Warsh to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve.
So I have some incredible people, and this is a very exciting thing that we're doing.
And it was fast.
They've wanted to do it.
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, 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 him 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.
So now he owns a track, he owns the race, it says pretty good.
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.
The area 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 service.
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 than that, 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 were 81 meetings with the Trump administration.
I think it was they called President Trump.
He got Sean and I going.
And was it, that was like from Saturday till now, we have a race.
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 ought to love this president because he's bringing professional sports to our capital.
And again, August 21st to 23rd, 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 Chariot 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'll 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 extra 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, do you know what I'm saying?
So 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 Minneapolis?
We had prisons, including Venezuela, but Venezuela opened its prisons.
So did the Congo.
The Congo in Africa opens 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 open 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.
Some of them, 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 side 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.
Nothing's going to happen.
And if anything did happen, the person that did it would be living in hell for a long period of time.
Thank you very much, everybody.
unidentified
Have a great friend.
You are lost.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, friends.
Thank you, friends.
Thank you.
Keep moving, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you guys.
You guys keep moving.
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