Oval Office Tour with President Trump

This room needs no introduction. We're in the Oval Office and we're here to speak with President Trump about all the changes and improvements he's made to the White House. If you look at before and after photos, which I'm sure we'll put on the screen, the Oval looked kind of drab before President Trump gave it a little bit of a makeover here. And we'll talk to him about all the changes he's made, some of these paintings he's added, the artwork. And then we'll go out and you're going to see the Rose Garden patio as well. I'm doing all of it. All right, besties, I think that was another epic discussion. People loved the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your questions, I mean it. We are giving people ground-truth data to underwrite your own opinion. What do you guys think? That was fun. That was great. I'm doing all of it. This is the Oval Office for everybody and I said I'd do this for David and the group. This is three outstanding people that really understand, I guess you could say, the world of Silicon Valley and beyond, way beyond. And we're very proud of what's happened. And David said to me, would you mind giving a little tour of the Oval Office? Because it is the most important office, I would say, anywhere in the world. People come, kings and queens and the biggest business people in the world, most important people in the world. And they look at this and they say, wow, that's the Oval Office. They want time to digest it. And this is the new and improved Oval Office because I had a little time and we did a lot of things that were good. It had very few pictures. Now it has a lot of pictures. And they came from the vault. The vault's downstairs where they have thousands, actually, of pictures, beautiful paintings. Some of them in the vault for over a hundred years. And we searched out and we got a lot. That's an original George Washington. Another George Washington is Abraham Lincoln, the original. And that's Ulysses S. Grant, his favorite general. And I would say a great general and an okay president. He gets higher marks as general. But these are all originals. That's an original George Washington also. We've modernized it a little bit with FDR. That's a very important painting, FDR. Yeah, did you pick these yourself? I picked them all, yeah. I picked them all. They were in the vaults for, in some cases, I mean not in the case of FDR, but in the case of many of them, they were in the vaults for many, over a hundred years. Thomas Jefferson, as you see. You look, we put a couple of non-presidents. Ben Franklin, I think, qualified, right? Yeah, absolutely. He was in your world a little bit. He was Treasury Secretary, too. But he was also a pretty good inventor, right? He was a lot of things. So he certainly qualified. We have over here, we have Ronald Reagan. We took from actually the lobby of the building, put him up here. David Sachs has that same portrait. It's a good, it's a good portrait. He's a great guy. This is Monroe of the Monroe Doctrine in the middle. And you have Andrew Jackson on the right and Thomas Jefferson on the left. And all great, great paintings, all originals. Over here, you have one of three. This is our big, I guess it's sort of the star. It's been in the vault for close to a hundred years. This is... It's incredible nobody wanted to put it up before. Well, they wanted to and the people, they weren't able to do it, actually. Because, you know, the curators here have a lot of power. And they can tell you no without saying no. And some of the, I can tell you, two of the presidents, I know, wanted it up and it never got up. But I think they liked me better. And part of it is, it's very delicate, the paper. Right. And they, you know, the paper with the light and everything else. But you protect it with the curtains. What we do is, if you pull that curtain, you'll see what happens. We just, go ahead, pull it if you'd like. Because the paper is very delicate. And that was the problem with getting it up. So we did that. We devised that. And, but the curators, yeah, you can open it up again, I guess. But the curators made it difficult for a couple of people to get it up. I don't think they were going to let it come up. So they liked me better. You know, I take good, good care of things. But this is a very famous bust of Lincoln. There's George Washington. It's an incredible place. Now, many of these things, this, this, I moved them here. You have Winston Churchill over here, Eisenhower. It's been an amazing place to work with. But what really is something very special is when you have people, the biggest in the world, they walk into this office and they just want to look. And we added a lot of 24 karat gold, and it's very expensive. And I think very beautiful. You know, when you look at the fireplace, when you have a leader sitting on the one side and the other side, and you look at what's behind with the lights beaming, and that's all 24 karat gold. And that's why it just beams. Was it not gold before? No, it wasn't. They didn't have really any gold. They didn't have gold. And they do now. There was actually a flat piece of marble there for a long time, but a flat piece of marble. And I just felt it was important for this office to take on a look that's appropriate. It was, the walls were painted, but it was still the Oval Office, by the way. But the walls were painted. Now the walls are much more than painted. So people have loved it. The leaders of other countries have loved it when they come in. And it's, you know, more representative of what it should be. And we're doing fix-ups in the White House too, importantly. We have some floors that were very bad. We put in new slabs. I do this stuff. I like it because I basically, I like real estate, and I like building. But we've, if you would do it, you could look up, but we put some marble floors over there that are incredible. What we can do today, the workmanship, did you notice the floor as you walked by? It's a beautiful floor. That was, that had little one-by-one tiles in it, and now it has big slabs of white marble. It's, it's really beautiful. And as you know, we're going to be building a ballroom. For 150 years, they wanted a ballroom at the White House. When a dignitary, a big dignitary, the head of China, the head of any country your name, would come over, they would build a tent in the lawn. And if it rained, it was a big problem. It was a big problem. But they just put a big tent on the lawn. Now we're gonna have a world-class ballroom, beautiful ballroom, which is built right on the other side by the East Room. So I think we've done a real job, and most importantly, we have a great economy. We have a lot of people working, and we have an industry that you guys are very much leading. The job you have is very important, but you're leading it, and I think it's gonna be maybe, maybe the most important industry of them all. What do you think about that? Absolutely, yeah. I think so, right? Yeah, absolutely. And we're very honored for the tech industry to be the first one that you've brought to do a Rose Garden dinner. That's right. That's the first one. That's right. We're doing a Rose Garden dinner. I think what we'll do is, we might move because it's a little rainy. Of course. And actually, it's a little bit easier to talk inside also, so we're gonna have a good group. But it's your Rose Garden. So the Rose Garden, we, as you know, had grass, and you couldn't have anything, you couldn't do anything, you couldn't do press conferences, all of the things that you'd like to do, you couldn't do it. And we put beautiful stone, white stone down, and now we can have all sorts of things, including they can have dinners at the Rose Garden, etc., etc. So senators, congressmen, and women can come over. Was there pushback? There was a little bit of pushback. You know what? Very little, I tell you. I thought there'd be a lot. Very little. It's done, and it's complete, and people love it. You know they love the look of it. It looks good. It looks actually, I think, better. Problem with the grass, you couldn't do anything with it. You'd have a press conference. I know Prime Minister Modi was here from India recently, and he was trying to give a press conference. Everyone was, the women with their high heels were, it was not a pretty picture. The chairs were all uneven on the ground. It wasn't functional at all. It was a little bit tough. Did you find a crack, sir? Was it you that found the crack? Yeah. It was incredible. We had, we had, but look, it was, it was beautiful, but I think it's more beautiful now, and you can, we can use it. What was the motivation for the ballroom, Mr. President? Well, they just wanted a ballroom, and I know for a fact because, you know, I've been here now a long time, and when you have a big dinner, you can't really have a dinner here without putting up a tent, and a tent is not appropriate for what we do, even from a security standpoint. So I said in the first term, I'd love to have a shot because I'm going to get them a beautiful ballroom. That's what we've done, but you really want it so that you have a lot of big events. You have a lot of events that aren't necessarily for the heads of state. They're just big events for AI or for something, and you want to have a lot more seats than they have. You just didn't have, we have beautiful rooms, so we don't have big rooms in the White House. So now we're gonna have a big room. We're gonna have a beautiful ballroom. How long till it's done? A couple of years. It'll take a couple of, starting in about two weeks. Oh wow, breaking down two weeks. It's gonna be, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be beautiful, top of the line. I heard you had the plans on your desk. Is that true? I do. I just took them off because, in tribute to you guys, I don't want to look a little messy, but I know I've had the plans, and it's a great, it's right facing the Treasury Building and facing the Washington Monument. You have a view of everything. You have a view of the White House. We have views on all four sides. It's beautiful. It's gonna be great. What do you call the new Rose Garden? Is it still called the Rose Garden? Well, they're calling it the Rose Garden Club, but it's just a place where people can have dinner now, which you couldn't have done before. We have beautiful kitchens, and the White House will use them, but I think senators, congressmen, congresswomen, they're gonna come over, and they're gonna enjoy it, and maybe we'll let Democrats come too, because, you know, it might bring people together. That'd be nice, if it brought people together, that would be nice. So, but it's great to have you at the White House. It's great to have you in the Oval Office, and have a good show. Keep your show going. Thank you, sir, and you know, I thought it'd be more interesting for our audience to see this, the side of you, because I've talked to some of the tour guys of the White House, and they're always saying that you walk around, and you give notes to the landscapers, the gardeners, to fix things, and you pick out all the paintings yourself, and I don't know if people know how conscientious you are about the White House, how much you care about the White House, how much you care about the history, and you want to make it as beautiful as possible, and you've made it even more incredible than it already was, like no other president. There's an incredible video clip, sir. It's like the day after you were reelected, maybe like a few days after, and you were in Mar-a-Lago, and you were walking with the groundsperson with a notepad, and you were pointing to the all of these little things, and it was like the most incredible thing, because it's like this attention to detail is wonderful. Well, we've done a lot. The White House was, it needed some love. You think it got it with Biden? I don't think so. You think he does this? Do you think he says that marble's not looking good? We have to replace that marble? No, he doesn't do that, but we have a great administration going. We have a great administration, and you're a big part of it, but we have a great administration. We have a country that's doing really well, and leading in AI is an honor, and then we're going to keep leading, too. We're going to be doing something that I'm proud of. I said, you know, you need massive amounts of electricity, as you people know better than anybody, and I'm allowing the people that are building to build their own electric plants, which nobody thought would happen, and I sort of think that was my idea. You can't go into the old grid, so they can build the most magnificent electric-producing plants, almost becoming a utility, and if they build more than they need, they can sell it back into the grid, put it back into the grid, which is good. So you're going to see some tremendous plants going up. They've already started, as you know, but they're building with that. They're building electric-producing facilities, so it's going to be great. I think that made a big difference, don't you think? If we didn't do that, they couldn't hook it to an old grid. Absolutely. I don't know if anybody has told you, but we had dinner with Senator Crapo yesterday. He said this incredible thing. When the CBO originally priced the big, beautiful bill, they thought it was minus three trillion. They just updated it because they have to, and it's actually a surplus. It's like 300 billion. It's an incredible thing. Well, we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs. The money is coming in at levels that nobody ever thought possible. You know, they gave us no credit for that because it was never done before, and now the numbers are much higher than anybody ever thought. 600 billion from Japan, 90 percent to America of the profit. 950 billion from the European Union, 350 billion from South Korea. No, the numbers are incredible, and frankly, I could have done more. I wanted to take it nice and easy. You did a great deal with Intel recently, so you're putting the balance sheet to work, which I think is really good. The balance sheet is going to be great. The country is, we're really doing well. We have to maintain it. We have to be smart. AI is a big factor, but we have all the car companies coming back in with their plans. You know, we lost almost 60 percent of our car producing if you go back 40 years. We made all the cars, and now we don't make close to all, and we may be at a higher level than we were 40 years ago by the time. The car companies, just like AI, the car companies are coming back. Factories are coming back because they don't want to pay tariffs. You know, they like me, but they don't want to pay tariffs, and so we put together an amazing thing. They're leaving from all other countries. They're coming here. They're building massive plans, plans the likes of which we've never seen, the auto plans, and the union, the auto union, they love Trump. They got it right at the beginning, and they voted for me, but their vote is now well justified, but the auto companies are building unbelievable numbers of plants and big ones. And one thing I want to add on AI, sir, is that this investment that you're basically triggering is going to benefit all Americans, not just Silicon Valley companies. When we were in Pennsylvania, and you announced 92 billion dollars of investment, they had people from the trades there, construction, electricians, carpenters, the fracking industry, coal, nuclear, everybody, so this is gonna be a broad-based boom with AI. It's not just gonna benefit a handful of tech companies, and that's thanks to your leadership, stimulating all that investment. You got TSMC to invest hundreds of billions in the U.S. That's really important. We're gonna bring chip manufacturing back to the U.S., thanks to that. It should have never left. If you had a president that knew business or understood what they were doing, you just never really did. Yeah. You never, no matter who, we all like certain presidents, but they never understood. You wouldn't have Taiwan right now. They would have said, no, you want to build in Taiwan, you're gonna have to pay a 200% tariff, and nobody would have left, and you would have had Intel and the ones that were doing so well originally. They would have, you know, they would have been supreme right now. They would have been at a level like you've never seen, and that's what's happening. I mean, they're all coming back. You see that? Yeah. They're coming back from all over the world, for chips, and for cars, and for everything, every aspect. And if you get rates down, which I think it'll start too late, as you'll... Too late is not too good. Too late doesn't know what the hell he's doing. We talked about that a lot last week. Oh, he's so bad, so pathetic, but anyway, he's too late. That's, I mean, he was always too late. He was always too late. But rates are coming down anyway. I mean, this is bigger than him, as crazy as it sounds. It's bigger than him, and bigger than a stupid person running the Fed. Yeah. It's so big that, in fact, you see, actually, interest rates are starting to go down on, of their own volition. But if we would have had a little help from the Fed, the one thing that was, is slowed down because of him, is housing. Yeah. And that'll catch up very quickly, because it's the least of it. But this is just much bigger than really the Fed, in the sense of having somebody that's incompetent running it. Well, you mentioned, I remember this, I think it was like two months ago, we had dinner, and you said, very, you're very sensitive to the exchange rate. And it turns out that what you said actually happened, which is the exchange rate has completely stabilized. Despite all these other fluctuations, the dollar has held up. The dollar's held up. The dollar's held up, and honestly, everything's held up. It's really worth it. No inflation. They said, oh, tariffs will cause inflation. They were, they've been wrong about everything. And these guys, and for the most part, they've admitted, they said, you know, Trump was right, because we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars, at levels that nobody's ever seen taken in. Yeah. And so we've taken in all this money, and there's been no inflation. It's just been hard, I think, for them to admit it, because it's not that you were right, you were very right. That's the, you know what I mean? Right after Liberation Day, remember, they tried to create this panic in the market. The market went down, because they created so much fear. You called a panic, and you were right. It all bounced back. No, you called, there's a tweet. You called the absolute bottom. You posted on Truth Social, this is a great day. It was literally the bottom. And it's gone straight, it's up 35%. That's right. I said start, this is a great day to invest. Exactly. I hope a lot of people followed it. A lot of people did, I guess, because, you know, you see what's happening in the market. No, it's been, it's been a great thing to watch. They had 71 economists, and they put me in that group, and I just, myself, and one other person were right. Everyone else was wrong. But it's, it's even more, more than anyone ever thought. When you posted that, were you thinking something, or were you seeing something? No, I just felt it was low. I just felt it was low. I mean, it's more instinct, I think, than maybe anything else. Certain amount of brainpower, but instinct maybe is more important in some cases. But I've had an instinct, and my instinct has been for a long time, this is what the country has to do. You know, this is what happened to us. Other countries were doing this to us, but we are in a position where we can do it better, much better. Nobody is able to do what I'm doing now with this. So the tariffs are a big part. I think the spirit's a big part. We have great spirit. You look at what we did in Iran. You look at that beautiful B-2, right? That beautiful plane. I have it around here someplace. Look at this, this thing, what, what that did, how that flew in there, dropped those bombs, everyone hit perfectly, and then they said, skedaddle, get out of here. And they got out. No, it's great. We just ordered a lot of the brand-new model of that. Just ordered quite a few of them. How do you feel about the government waste, fraud, abuse, the spending, and the outlook for fixing the spending problem? Well, we're going to do that. I mean, that's going to be next, but you know, we're fixing another problem where the numbers are going very high. The numbers, you're going to see some numbers that are going to be astronomical. When these plants start opening, you know, we have a lot of construction jobs building, but when these plants that you guys are so in love with, they start opening, nobody's ever seen plants like this. Nobody's ever seen, when you hear about a 50 billion dollar plant, 50 billion, 50 million is a big plant by the old standard, right? Now you're talking about 50 billion. When they open and they're all chock-full of jobs and everything else, you're going to see things that are really amazing. And the tax cuts haven't even gone to effect yet. A number of them. For the tech industry, the R&D treatment, where you could depreciate R&D now in the same year instead of spreading it out over 30 years. Including structures, and that's a big one. It's going to have a huge impact. But no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, so the workers want to work overtime, they don't get the tax that they would normally have to get, and that sort of stops it from happening. Now, we have a tremendous thing going, and it's an honor to have you with us. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm honored to be here, as always. Thank you very much.