President Trump SNAPS at Unbelievable Stupid Questions from Reporters in The Oval Office

Any questions, please? The President lifted sanctions on Iranian oil today, sir. Treasury lifted sanctions on Iranian oil today, sir. Well, we're going to have to find out exactly the status. If the sanctions go out, money is going to be put into this country. All that money is coming back in the form of purchases of food, which they desperately need. They have 91 million people. They can't feed them. So the money that we lift is going to go to our farmers, largely to our farmers. Can you assure that the Iranians won't use profits from oil sales to rebuild their military? Well, they're not supposed to be doing that, sir. They're supposed to use money to buy food for their people, because right now their people are very hungry. And they're buying it exclusively from us, corn, soybeans. There should be a lot of money. I hope it's a lot of money. If a war with Iran could cause a worldwide depression, as you noted, Mr. President, are you willing to risk economic catastrophe and strike Iran again? Well, not the way I'm doing it. It's not going to cause depression. Yes, but if they don't abide by the memorandum of understanding. Well, a nuclear weapon supersedes depression. Depression is real bad. A nuclear weapon will cause depression much more quickly. The way we're doing it, we have the opposite of a depression. We're doing really well. The numbers are incredible. The oil is at a level that nobody's ever seen before. Oil prices are way down. I think they're very comparable to what they were. Chris, I don't know, pretty comparable to what they were before we started. They've returned most of the way back down. So if Iran does not abide by the MOU, are you still willing for strikes? I said it could cause a depression. And I said that I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. That's a president I don't want to be because he was in charge during the Great Depression. And certainly a lot of bad things could happen. That would be one of the things. I don't think it would, but if it did. But no, if Iran doesn't live up to their agreement or if they're not behaving, I will do what I have to do. Does that give them leverage over you, Mr. President? Say it. Does that give them leverage, the Iranians' leverage over you? Oh, yes, it does. Their Navy is gone. Their Air Force is gone. Their leaders are all dead. Their whole country is a mess. Their economy is shot. You know, the Times, the fake New York Times said, Oh, it's about the same as it was four months ago. No, four months ago they had a Navy, 159 ships to be exact. It's gone. The whole Navy's gone. Their 250 airplanes, all gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone. Their radar is gone. These guys love radar. Their radar is gone. Everything's gone. Their leaders are gone. Their whole country is gone. And the Times said, Oh, they're about the same as they were four months ago. The reason the news is doing so badly, or let's put it another way, the reason that I won in a landslide, even though I got 92% negative press, all fake press, is because nobody believes the press anymore. And they have to start believing, you know. When the Times and a couple of others, they're grasping for strength. When they say that Iran is about the same as it was four months ago, they had a powerful Navy, they had a powerful Air Force. You know, most of their missiles are gone. Most of their launching pads are gone. Most of their manufacturing capacity for drones and missiles is gone. About 87% gone. And then I hear, Oh, they're in such great shape. No, they're gone. And their first level of leaders, gone. Their second level of leaders, gone. Their third level of leaders, you have to hear the conversations. Who wants to be president? Well, I don't want it. Nobody wants to be president. And then we have to read that they're doing well. They're doing so badly. In the meantime, we're setting records. We have the strongest economy we've ever had. We have $18 to $19 trillion being poured into our country. We're building factories all over the place. We have more people working today than at any time in the history of our country at higher salaries. So, when you ask a question like that, it's so stupid. Here's another beauty. Earlier today, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his forces are not leaving Lebanon. That is a sticking point in these conversations. He said it publicly in Israel. Well, we're going to take a look at it. Well, what would you do to make sure that he doesn't have a constant deal? I don't know what I'm going to do, but it's solved. I'm a problem solver. I can problem solve real fast, including with Bibi. Go ahead. Mr. President, thank you. What's the latest you've heard from the Vice President? Are you happy with his negotiations? And can you share a little bit about what Secretary Rubio will be doing in the Middle East this week? I think that they're doing a fantastic job. Our Secretary is fantastic. I think he's maybe going to go down as the best ever. And I thought J.D. Vest this morning was fantastic. I watched his news conference from Switzerland. He's a very smart guy. He did a great job. You know, when I look at the Democrats, I call them the Democrats, the Democrats. When I watched that, one of them thought it was World War XI. She said World War XI. She read World War II. You know about that, right? This is one of their potential leaders, Ilhan Omar, who married her brother to get into the country, by the way, illegally. But when I watch AOC, I have no idea. What a simple question. What happened when she was over in Switzerland, which probably never went there before. And then I watched somebody like J.D. or Marco. I said, what a difference. What a difference. What a difference a brain makes. Sir, you've been quite critical of Prime Minister Starmer, and he's now resigned. What are some of your thoughts, and who would you like to see as the next prime minister of the UK? I was critical only because I think he's a lovely man, but I said, you're really messing up energy. You have windmills all over the place. In the meantime, you have the North Sea oil, and they won't let anybody drill. It's one of the great fields in the world. They haven't even found one. You know that the UK buys much of its energy. You know where? Norway. You know where they get their oil? The North Sea. The UK has a much better portion of the North Sea. They don't want to do it for environmental purposes, okay? And I told him, he's a very nice man. I mean, sort of a friend of mine. I mean, he was not good to us with NATO, Pete, right? He said, we can't use the island to land. That was a first for a couple of weeks. He said, well, but ultimately I gave it to you now. That was a bad move. That hurt him badly. But I mean, I wish him well, but he's got two problems, energy and immigration. And crime. But energy and immigration. You know, he's really hurt himself very, very badly. Please. Can you tell us about your meeting with the defense contractors on Wednesday and what you plan to tell them? The meeting coming up, because I've met with them before. We're building plants all over the country. They are not allowed to take any more stock buybacks. Do you do stock buybacks? Not too much, because you want to invest in product. It's just an artificial way of raising a price if you're running a bad company. So they spent $51 billion on stock buybacks instead of spending them on plants. Now they're spending, they can't do that anymore. Now they are spending a lot of money. We're building many plants throughout the country. They're dealing with General Motors. They're dealing with Ford. But I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons now. They have some plants which they're going to switch over and we're going to build weapons, including the Patriot, including the Tomahawk and lots of other things. And we're in a big, we're in a big, strong economic push to do the weapons. And some of the car companies, if they have any excess capacity, they're making a deal to build missiles. And the Patriot in particular, we have quite a few of them, but we want to make sure we have always a lot of them. Mr. President, congratulations on the quantum physics CEO to all of you. Vice President Vance said that there are mechanisms in place to make sure that there's not escalations with the Strait of Hormuz and with Israel and Lebanon. Can you talk about what those mechanisms are and are you in direct talks with the Strait of Hormuz? Look, here's the thing. As long as they respect us, I don't want to use the word fear because that's an inappropriate word, but as long as they respect us, we're not going to have any trouble. We have total control of the Strait. You know, we have a Navy that had a blockade. I think the blockade was more impactful than dropping bombs, if you want to know the truth. It was like I said, they call it the steel wall. Nobody got through. Not one ship got through able to go to Iran. They got through. We wanted them to go through, and we could set that up again in about 15 minutes. I would say, Pete, one phone call. How long would it take? Maybe a half hour? They're ready to go right now if you need to. It'll be before we finish the meeting. Now, we have, as long as they respect us, we're going to be fine. If they don't respect us, things wouldn't be good, but they have a lot of respect. Don't forget, we had presidents that should have done this for 47 years. Nobody did it. Obama gave them a road to a nuclear weapon. I gave them a wall against a nuclear weapon. They can never, under this agreement, they'll never even think about building a nuclear weapon. Mr. President, on Colombia, the candidate. Oh, El Tigre. El Tigre, yeah. We know that you had a phone call. I endorsed him. He was in 10th place. I endorsed him, and he won the election. Yeah, I'm surprised. You had no difference in this country. You had a phone conversation with Abelardo. What can you tell us about that phone conversation, and what do you see, what do you anticipate? You're from Colombia? Yes, sir, I'm from Colombia. So he called me last night, and he thanked me for the endorsement. He won. He won the election. He wasn't anticipated to win, but he won, and he won handily. It's just an honor. He was just a good man. I'd watch him a little bit speak, and he always spoke. You know, when people like me, I like them. It's very simple. It's a very simple formula, and I like it. He said really nice things about me and the job we've done in the United States, and very, very powerful. And he won an election in Colombia that, I don't know, some people were surprised because he was a little bit further down the pack, but he won easily last night. He called me at 830 in the evening just to thank me very much, and I said, You ran a great campaign. He said, I'll take a break, right? Yeah, yeah. And what do you anticipate for the relation with Colombia? Much better. It'll be better. He's going to be a great president. Mr. President. Are the contractors who did the initial work with the reflecting pool, are they to blame for the current condition, or is it the vandals that you mentioned? Vandals. You know, we have a hundred and we have a, I think, 290, 300-foot slit right through it, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. We had people lifting up the basic, some of the base. It's not a lot of damage, but we'll probably have to let the water out and refix it. They went in there with a knife. I was just told by the people over at Parks, they have five people are arrested and five people are under investigation right now, and it's a sad thing. In addition to that, they, you know, we put brand new beautiful grass all around. They put these massive letters on the grass. You probably know about that, right? And they said 86-47. They probably got that from the dirty cop. You know he's a dirty cop, don't you? Dirty cop. He's a crooked guy. They destroyed the grass. So that's a big thing, but we're going to get it back very soon. National Guard and police have been all over the mall. How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that? I mean, we didn't have a lot of them then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it? Do you have proof of that? Do you have photos or video? Well, let's put it this way. When you have a 350, I think it's 350, not 250, a 350-foot slit from one end to the other, you think that's proof? Reports have been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned, and there's no evidence of it. All you have to do is see the Parks Department. They'll show it to you. See the secretary. But I saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor. They cut it. And then they lifted it. They pulled it. And that's what it is. And we've done over 50 monuments. Number one, we start with this is now a safe city. It's as safe a city as you're going to get in the country. And when I came here, it was a very dangerous city. And number two, what we did is the beautification with the parks and the grass and the removal of all the tents. And this is like a different place. One of the things we did is over 50 fountains and statues, most of which were in horrible shape. All of them were bad, but some were just absolutely horrible. Graffiti, you couldn't even see the stone. They've all been fixed. We also fixed the reflecting pool. In fact, if you go over there right now, it looks very good. It's up. They put, somebody said, fertilizer in the water. If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae. But somebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae. But that doesn't matter because that's been purified. It's dead. Laying at the bottom, they're taking it out. They vacuum it out. They vacuum it very carefully out. And it'll be back to health pretty soon. We're going to have to let the water out to fix the one little, these two little areas, very little areas where they were cut. And we'll fix that. But it's not leaking or anything. It's got a base underneath. Part of what's curious about this situation is we stood here with you in April when you first revealed the plans. I said what? In April, when you showed us pictures of what you were going to do at the pool, and you said you had a guy who was going to do it in a week for about $1 million. It's been two months since $16.5 million. Okay, ready? Barack Hussein Obama, have you ever heard of him? Yeah. He spent two years and over $100 million on trying to fix it. You know what happened to it? Never even opened. Correct. He took the water for the river. You know about that, right? It turned out to be putrid, and it destroyed the whole thing. Spent over $100 million. Him and Biden together spent $147 million. You know what happened? Never opened. You don't mention that, right? We spent about ten. Much of the money we spent are park workers. They're there whether they do this or not, as you know. They work in the park, and they're very good workers. They did a great job. So they were going to spend $300 million to $400 million. You know that. And it was going to take four years. I spent about six, seven weeks, and I spent probably in terms of outside, probably $10 million, around $10 million. They say $16 million, but a lot of them are workers that work for the same thing. So they were going to spend $400 million. I spent $10 million. They were going to spend four years. I spent two months, maybe less, and I have a better product. Now, I can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up. And we also have pictures of it. Can you release the photos? We've been asking for them. You'll see it in court. But all you have to do is call the Parks Department. Call the Department of Interior, and I don't know if their lawyers will allow you to speak to them because, you know, you write fake news. But call the Interior Department. And I understand they've arrested five people, and they have another five people that are under investigation. Here's the bottom line. We've made so much progress in this city, people don't even recognize it. By the way, Memphis, Tennessee, crime is down 78% in a matter of months. It was a hellhole. New Orleans, crime is down 79%. And they had Mardi Gras. It was the safest Mardi Gras they've had in 50 years, the governor called me. Governor Landry called me. Safest Mardi Gras they've had in— and by the way, Chicago, which is a shooting field right now, if the governor would call me, Governor Pritzker would call me, I would solve the Chicago problem. In three, four months, you'd have virtually a crime-free city. We'll remove all of the bad ones. You have criminals, you have career criminals that came in through the border because of Sleepy Joe Biden. You ever hear of Sleepy Joe Biden? Do you ever hear of him? He let people come into this country, and we can never forget that that happened. Guys like you should never forget that that happened. They were murderers, drug dealers, mental patients. They took them out of prisons. They took them out of mental institutions. You should never forget that that happened. Mr. President, you're meeting— Let's leave on a nicer note. You're meeting with NATO's Mark Rutte on Wednesday. You've had Secretary Hegseth review U.S. presence in NATO countries. Talk to us about that conversation. Are you planning on drawing down U.S. troops? It's NATO, basically, the question. So we have been a great member of NATO. In many ways, certainly the predominant member. We paid trillions of dollars over the years. Not billions, trillions over the years to protect Europe. When we wanted to know— We didn't need any help at all. I was more curious than anything else. So I said to Pete, let's see if they'd actually come. So we asked them to come, and they weren't there for us. So we spent—it was stupid that they weren't. By the way, Stalmer wasn't there. And you know what? The people of the U.K. did not like it that he wasn't there. Stalmer said no. Stalmer said worse than no. He said, we'll be there as soon as you win. I said, we don't need you as soon as we win. Before I went in, we called him. He said, oh, wow. We'll be there. This was not Winston Churchill. That I can tell you. But Stalmer said, we'll be there, right, Pete? As soon as we win. As soon as we win, they're going to come and help us. But you know what? Italy was very bad. And other countries—oh, Germany was very bad. So we spent all of this money, probably $600— I think we spent $600 million a year, right? I would say that. I think the real number—think of that. The numbers that we spent are so crazy for NATO, and they weren't there for us. So I say to Pete, and I say to everybody else, if we're spending all of this money, hundreds, just hundreds of millions of dollars to protect them from Russia, mostly. Okay, so we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year. You know, the case could be made that we spent all of the money over the years before me. I cut it back. But listen, we spent all of this money, and then when we want to maybe have help on small stuff, this is small time. This is not the big one. This is small potatoes. They say, no, we'd rather not help. Stupid thing to say, because we can say that to them if we want, and we might. Mr. President, it's the one-year anniversary of Operation Midnight Hammer. If you could go back in time, is there anything you would do differently? Nothing at all? It was the most successful attack that anyone's ever seen with a bomber that totally wiped out their nuclear potential. If we didn't do that, you'd have no Israel right now. Israel would not exist, and most of the Middle East would not exist. They were two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. If we wouldn't have done that, Pete, they would have had a nuclear weapon. You want to say something about that? Yes, sir. I wasn't aware it was one year, but you don't have the situation we have now, a position of strength where Iran's going to give up their nuclear program without Midnight Hammer, which no other country on planet Earth could remotely conceivably pull off that from start to finish, 37 hours back and forth. Iran never saw it, and every precision munition that only we make hit exactly where we wanted it to. And they knew we were coming, and they could do nothing about it. They could do nothing about it with their air defenses, which are even further now degraded. And that's what everyone misses in the press, and the President's right to call it fake news, because the overwhelming military victory that has been had over Iran is what has set the conditions for them to be at the table with our negotiators. And we will ensure, whether it's through a deal or through the War Department, that they never get a nuclear weapon because of this President right here. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Russ. Thank you very much. Thank you, guys. Thank you.