President Trump details Operation Epic Fury and Midnight Hammer, claiming the destruction of 51 Iranian vessels and a 90% reduction in missile capabilities while striking over 5,000 targets to halt nuclear progress. He asserts Iran's leadership is decapitated, neighbors have turned against Tehran, and Russia remains positive on Ukraine despite the conflict. Addressing domestic policy, he promotes the Save America Act with voter ID and transgender bans, citing 86% support, while noting eight military fatalities. Trump concludes that ending major risks marks the start of nation-building, emphasizing oil price stability via Strait of Hormuz access and a future China trip. [Automatically generated summary]
But we shouldn't have to win an election that way.
You could have a hard time winning elections that way.
So you've got to get that passed.
And if we fight, fight, fight, we will win, win, win, and we will make our country safer and stronger and richer and greater than it ever has been before.
And I want to say, very importantly, because they would like you not to say this, because this is a terrible thing, in their opinion, to say: God bless you and God bless America.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you very much.
unidentified
President Trump provided an update on military operations in Iran while speaking to reporters following his meeting with House Republicans at their annual policy retreat.
And we'll be heading back to Washington, D.C. right after this.
And I'd like to wish everyone a very good evening.
And over the weekend, the United States military and the Israeli Defense Forces continued Operation Epic Fury very successfully.
Over the past nine days, we've carried out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen.
Now, you add that up to all of the other things: Midnight Hammer, getting rid of the nuclear threat from Iran, which was a big moment in history, in my opinion, and the great success we've had in Venezuela and all other places.
Every place we've gone, we've had tremendous success.
But while we're doing all of these things, we're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective.
And some people could say they're pretty well complete.
We've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely.
Most of Iran's naval power has been sunk.
It's on the bottom of the sea.
It's almost 50 ships.
I was just notified it's 51 ships.
I didn't know they had that many.
Didn't last very long.
And these are fighting vessels.
They're meant to fight, but they're not meant to fight against us.
We continue to target Iran's drone and missile capabilities.
Their drones are way down.
Their drone manufacturing has been hit starting today.
We know all of the places they manufacture the drones, and they're being hit one after another.
Their missile capability is down to about 10 percent, maybe less.
We are also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles.
We have struck over 5,000 targets to date, some of them very major targets, and we have left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it.
If we hit them, it is going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things.
So we are not looking to do that if we don't have to.
But they are the kind of things that are very easy to hit, but very devastating if they are hit.
We are waiting to see what happens before we hit them.
We could take them all out in one day, but it is all resulting in a 90 percent decline in various things, but in particular, Iranian missile launchers and 83 percent drop in drone launchers, as you know.
The drone launchers are pretty well shot, but we are at over 90 percent decline in the Iranian missile launchers, which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get.
And usually what we were able to do through great equipment, a lot of smart people, as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher, we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less, accurately right on the noggin.
So now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones, and our B-2 bombers recently dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over Iran and buried deep under Iranian soil in many cases.
The soil was no match.
And we are also annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible.
We are knocking them out.
We know where they all are.
We are knocking them out very quickly.
We are ahead of our initial timeline by a lot.
I would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we would be here.
In addition to the fact that we have taken out the leadership twice and maybe three times.
And we, as you know, we want to be involved.
We don't want another President that maybe wouldn't be willing to do what I am willing to do for the good of the world, for the good of our Nation, to be stuck with the situation in five years or ten years from now.
So we think they should put a President in or the head of the country in that is going to be able to do something peacefully for a change.
They have been doing this for 47 years, killing people for 47 years.
Whether it is the barracks or even the SS Cole where they were involved, very strongly, they always denied it.
But they were very strongly involved.
And all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no legs, no arms, a face that's been so badly damaged.
The Iranian regime has been attacking Americans and spreading terror for 47 years.
And despite these countless opportunities to renounce their nuclear ambitions, which they had just a short while ago, they told Mr. Witkoff, who is standing right over here, they said they actually said we want to keep building.
Essentially, in a real nutshell, we want to continue to build nuclear weapons.
If we didn't knock out Midnight Hammer, if we didn't knock out their Iranian potential, if we didn't do that with Midnight Hammer, they would have had a nuclear weapon.
They would have used it long before now.
And at a minimum, Israel would have been annihilated.
It was very lucky that we had the courage to do that, that we had the talented pilots and the great equipment.
The B-2 bombers are unbelievable.
We ordered 25 more, by the way.
The newer, better version.
We have the greatest military in the world.
We have the greatest equipment in the world by far.
You see that no matter where we go.
You still need the people, though, to operate it and to use it.
And those are the people that we cherish.
Even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites in operation, Midnight Hammer, they never negotiated in good faith.
They still continued to say we want to build nuclear, we want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable.
And they even turned down an offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes.
We had people offering them free nuclear fuel.
They weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon.
So instead, the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site.
They couldn't go back to where they were, the three sites that we obliterated.
But they were starting work at another site, a different site, different kind of a site.
And that was protected by granite.
They wanted it protected.
Granite's pretty good, but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper.
They wanted to go a lot deeper.
And they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles.
They were going to do it all at the same time.
It threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland.
The regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
So as you probably saw, they had a tremendous number of missiles, most of which have now been used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all down.
What incredible technology.
The Patriots have been unbelievable and other things.
And the laser technology that we have now is incredible.
It's coming out pretty soon.
We're literally lasers.
We'll do the work of at a lot less cost, do the work of what the Patriots are doing or what other things are doing.
The situation was very quickly approaching.
The point of no return and the United States found it intolerable, in my opinion, based on what Steve and Jared and Pete and others were telling me, Marco, so involved, that I thought that they were going to attack us.
I thought they would, if we didn't do this at the time we did it, I think they had in mind to attack us.
And if you notice, they did something which was very foolish, very stupid, I would say.
They attacked their neighbors.
And their neighbors were largely neutral, or at least weren't going to be involved.
And they got attacked.
And it had the reverse effect.
The neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully.
If you look at Saudi Arabia, you look at UAE, Qatar, and others.
But they were strong and they were smart.
But they got attacked.
Nobody, when I first heard it, I said, no, somebody made a mistake.
There was no mistake.
UAE had over 1,000 missiles shot at it, knocked them almost all down.
On the very first day I came down the escalator in 2015, I said, quote, I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
And all I'm doing is keeping my promise.
Think of that.
That was in 2015.
I said it.
It was a threat then and a much bigger threat now, but no longer a threat, not for a long time anyway.
We want to keep it that way.
As we continue Operation Epic Fury, we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world.
And I will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply.
And if Iran does anything to do that, they'll get hit at a much, much harder level.
I will take out those targets that were easy and that I mentioned just before.
We'll take them out so quickly they'll never be able to recover, ever.
If they want to play that game, they better not play that game.
In the long run, oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of Iranian ships, drones, missiles, nuclear menace, or anything.
So the Strait of Hormuz is going to remain safe.
We have a lot of Navy ships there.
We have the best equipment in the world, inspecting for mines.
Again, most of their ships are down at the bottom of the sea.
But we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world.
They do anything.
In recent years, the regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial vessels.
We are putting an end to all of this threat once and for all, and the result will be lower oil prices, oil and gas prices for American families.
We have done that.
We have done it.
We brought it very low.
This was just an excursion into something that had to be done.
We are getting very close to finishing that, too.
In the meantime, during this brief disruption, the United States is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating in the Gulf, so we are putting up risk insurance.
We will perhaps go alongside of them for protection.
We don't think it will be necessary if it is.
And if they do anything, the price will be incalculable.
It will be so great that they will have wished they never did it, because you have to keep the straits flowing.
With all of that, it affects other countries much more than it does the United States.
It doesn't really affect us.
We have so much oil.
We have tremendous oil and gas, much more than we need.
We have Venezuela now as our new partner, great partner.
It worked out so wonderful.
We are working with the administration, the president, and it is a massive source of oil, gas, everything.
But we are in a very good position, but very unfair to other parts of the world, like China as an example.
I mean, we are doing this for the other parts of the world, including countries like China.
They get a lot of their oil through the straits.
So we are doing this.
We have a very good relationship with President Qi and China.
I'm going there in a short period of time.
And we're protecting the world from what these lunatics are trying to do.
And very successfully, I might add.
We are also waiving certain oil-related sanctions to reduce prices.
So we have sanctions on some countries.
We are going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out.
Then who knows, maybe we won't have to put them on.
There will be so much peace.
But when the time comes, the U.S. Navy and its partners will escort tankers through the strait if needed.
I hope it is not going to be needed, but if it is needed, we will escort them right through.
And we have the greatest mine-sweeping ability.
We have the greatest ships.
We know exactly where they are placed.
We will get them out of there very fast.
But we hope we don't have any of that.
And again, if they do that, if they play that game, we are going to hit them at a level that they have not seen before.
So we're winning very decisively.
We're way ahead of schedule.
Our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest equipment and the greatest people in the world.
And I will say that the tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries, you know that.
And whether it's Iran, who also has some tomahawks, they wish they had more, but whether it's Iran or somebody else, the fact that a tomahawk, a tomahawk is very generic.
It's sold to other countries.
But that's being investigated right now.
unidentified
Yeah, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Mr. President, you've said the war is, quote, very complete, but your Defense Secretary says this is just the beginning.
So which is it, and how long should Americans begin to go to the United States?
So in order to get it, you're going to need Democrat votes.
And what we are saying is the Save America, not the Save Act, which nobody knew what it was, the Save America Act, the Save America Act.
And that's voter ID.
We want voter ID.
We want to be able to see a picture of the voter.
We want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate.
We want, very importantly, confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the United States of America.
And we want no mail-in ballot scams.
So we have exceptions for the military, for sick, for disabled, and for people that are away, business trips or whatever.
Even vacations will be very liberal in that.
We've added two things to it: no men and women's sports and no transgender mutilization of our children.
We don't want our mutilization of our children, and we don't want that.
So we added those two things.
That's the five points.
We have five very good points.
It polls at 86 percent with Democrats.
Think of that.
The overall vote is 86 percent.
With Republicans, it's 98 percent.
And the only one opposed to it is Democrat leadership because they cheat.
They want to cheat.
So we added those two points.
We are going for the gold, and we are going to have to fight like hell.
Now, certain things will happen, certain things will take place.
I am here to do a great job for the country.
But we don't have a country if we are going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we have witnessed over the last period of time.
You know, as an example, few, I mean, virtually, nobody has like we, nobody has a system of mail-in ballots like we have.
No other country in the world.
France went away from it.
They all went, you know why?
Because it's corrupt.
And Jimmy Carter, when he had a commission, frankly, I think it's probably the best thing Jimmy Carter did.
He said, you can't have mail-in voting because it's inherently dishonest.
One of the things we have to do is get the Democrats to stop the Democrat shutdown, because as you know, the apparatus that looks into that, Schumer and the Democrats have shut it down, which tells you they probably hate our country a lot, but the Democrats have to open that up.
But we've got very, very good intelligence into that.
We know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad.
A lot of them came in during the Biden open border period, but we have them under we've got them, we're watching every single one of them.
Yeah, we know a lot about them.
The biggest problem we have is the Democrat shutdown.
We know a lot about them, but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do.
Where they're not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon, where they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration and say, all right, we're not going to do it.
They were not willing to say that.
And when Steve called up and he said that to me, I said, well, here we go.
Let's do it the hard way.
But the hard way, I think, is probably the easy way.
When basically I can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that could be used against the United States, Israel, or any of our allies.
We have great allies in the Middle East, great countries that are allies.
And they were staying out of it until they got hit.
Someday they'll have to do a story, why did he do that?
Why did they do that?
But they were going to hit them.
If I didn't hit them first, they were going to hit our allies first.
I believe upon information and belief, but I believe that he was going to take over the Middle East.
They were looking to take over the Middle East.
Now, had Operation Midnight Hammer not taken place, that was definite, because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks.
But that took place.
That was a setback.
But look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months.
And those missiles were aimed at various countries.
And when you look at a thousand over a thousand missiles shot at like UAE, they were looking to take over the Middle East.
You promised the Iranian people you would help them, but it sounds like you're willing to end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up.
I met the parents, and they were unbelievable people.
They were unbelievable people, but they all had one thing in common.
They said to me one thing, every single one, finish the job, sir.
Please finish the job.
And I'll leave you at that.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you.
unidentified
Tuesday, a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee will hold a hearing on birthright citizenship for children of illegal migrants and tourists.
This as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral argument in a case challenging President Trump's executive order denying automatic citizenship to infants born in the U.S. if their parents are living here illegally or temporarily.
Watch that hearing live at 2.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, and online at c-SPAN.org.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up Tuesday morning, Vote Vet Senior Advisor and former Representative Max Rose will talk about Congress's role in military operations and the need for a war powers resolution.
And then Washington Post reporter Olivia George on the long-delayed installation over the weekend of a plaque honoring law enforcement's response to the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Also, author Peter Schweitzer will talk about his book, The Invisible Coup.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Tuesday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org.
And now to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the military held the dignified transfer of the remains of a U.S. service member killed during joint military operations