Trump Iran Announcement LIVE: Donald Trump Delivers Major Statement From White House — Trump Live

[0:00] with that would be more helpful but we had a very good talk and he wants to be [0:04] very constructive yeah please yeah please thank you mr. president on Iran [0:11] you called it an excursion you said it would be over soon are you thinking this [0:15] week it will be over no days I think so okay and and with respect very soon look [0:20] everything they have is gone including their leadership in fact there are two [0:26] levels of leadership and even actually as it turns out more than that but two [0:29] levels of leadership are gone most people have never even heard about the [0:33] leaders that they're talking about so it's obviously been very very powerful [0:39] very effective Cuba you said that Cuba wants to make a deal yes what would the [0:45] United States get in return for that and why should Americans trust Marco Rubio [0:49] to negotiate it well Marco Rubio is doing a great job I think he's gonna go down as [0:54] the greatest Secretary of State in history look at what we've done as a as a [0:59] presidency look at what we've done as an administration they trust Marco and so [1:08] do the American people trust he's been successful no matter where he's been he [1:12] also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's dealing [1:17] and it may be a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't [1:22] matter because they're really in they're down to as they say fumes they have no [1:29] energy they have no money they're deep trouble on a humanitarian basis and we [1:39] don't want to see that but they were very very bad to a lot of people as you know [1:43] and a lot of people living are the Cuban American vote which I got at record [1:48] levels very important those people are very important to me I know I know what [1:53] they went through they went through hell some of them have gone on to be some of [1:56] the most successful people in the country Cuban American business people [2:01] some of them are like the most successful in the country and a lot of [2:05] them are friends of mine because I've been fighting this battle with them for a [2:08] long time the Castro regime was brutal but they lived off and as well and now [2:13] they don't live off and Venezuela sends them no energy no fuel no oil no money no [2:19] nothing they live without Venezuela they couldn't have made it and we cut them [2:23] off from everything else so yeah where they're gonna make either a deal or we'll [2:30] do it just as easy anyway yeah please go ahead [2:35] a tomahawk missile likely destroyed that Iranian girl school so will the Americans [2:46] will the u.s. accept any responsibility well I haven't seen it and I will say that [2:50] the tomahawk which is one of the most powerful weapons around is used by you know [2:55] sold and used by other countries you know that and whether it's Iran who also [3:01] has some tomahawks I wish they had more but whether it's Iran or somebody else the [3:07] fact that a tomahawk a tomahawk is very generic it's sold to other countries but [3:11] that's being investigated right now yeah please thank you mr. president you've [3:20] said the war is quote very complete but your defense secretary says this is just [3:24] the beginning so which is it and how long should Americans be well I think you [3:27] could say both the beginning it's the beginning of building a new country but [3:32] they certainly they have no Navy they have no Air Force they have no anti [3:36] aircraft equipment it's all been blown up they have no radar they have no [3:42] telecommunications and they have no leadership it's all gone so you know you [3:49] could look at that statement we could we could call it a tremendous success right [3:53] now as we leave here I could call it or we could go further and we're going to go [3:58] further but the big risk on that war has been over for three days we wiped them [4:07] out the first in the first two days when you think about it it's incredible we [4:13] wiped out a big Navy very powerful Navy you know these were ships these were [4:18] serious ships these were ships that you buy when you want to win battles they're [4:21] all they're all on the bottom floor the sailors are all running off the ships they [4:26] refuse to get on the ships the Air Force is gone everything's gone the missiles [4:32] are down to a trickle the drones are down to probably 25% and they'll be soon be [4:39] down to nothing we'll have the where they manufactured the drones are under fire [4:43] as we speak they're being hit so the rest is going to be determination as to my [4:51] attitude along with the people in the Trump administration what we want to do [4:54] thank you yeah please can I ask you you mentioned you're going to waive certain [5:01] additional oils waivers or sanctions can you talk a little bit more about that [5:05] and address in particular well we're looking at the oil prices down we went [5:09] artificially up because of this excursion into a very positive thing I mean this [5:15] was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done I knew oil prices would [5:19] go up if I did this and they've gone up probably less than I thought they'd go up but [5:25] I don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful this [5:28] was a military success the likes of which people haven't seen we have the [5:34] best military we have the best equipment we have I believe the best generals we [5:40] have the best and this went very quickly we talked about that with President [5:47] Putin he was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything [5:52] quite like it you know Iran was a very powerful military country of man with [5:57] all of the missiles now you had the double attack you had the original attack [6:01] with us in Israel and that knocked them for a loop then you had the B2 bombers [6:06] which took out their nuclear capability and they would have had a nuclear weapon [6:10] within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this [6:14] press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a [6:19] press conference at all but it's been amazing the the military success that [6:25] we've had is truly unprecedented you said you've told your congressional [6:33] colleagues that you will not sign any piece of legislation until the Save [6:36] America Act is passed does that include the confirmation of Senator Mullen is [6:40] your next DHS secretary does that mean a DHS funding bill and Senator Thune said [6:45] today it's not a matter of whether or not your Republican colleagues agree with the [6:49] policy it's about changing the process in other words getting rid of the [6:52] filibuster to get so in order to get it you're going to need Democrat votes and [6:55] what we're saying is the Save America not the Save Act which nobody knew what it [7:01] was the Save America Act the Save America Act and that's voter ID we want voter ID [7:08] when a voter we want to be able to see a picture of the voter we want to be able to [7:13] see that the voters legitimate we want very importantly confirmation that this [7:19] voter is a citizen of the United States of America and we want no in no mail-in [7:26] ballot scams so we have exceptions for the military for sick for disabled and for [7:33] people that are away business trips or whatever even vacations will be very [7:39] liberal that we've added two things to it no men and women's sports and no [7:43] transgender mutilization of our children we don't want our the it's [7:50] mutilization of our children and we don't want that so we added those two [7:54] things that's the five points we have five very good points it polls at 86% with [8:02] Democrats think of that the overall vote is 86% with Republicans it's 98% and the [8:11] only one opposed to it is a Democrat leadership because they cheat they want to [8:16] cheat so we added those two points we're going for the gold and we're gonna [8:21] have to fight like hell now certain things will happen certain things will [8:25] take place I'm here to do a great job for the country but we don't have a [8:29] country if we're gonna have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like [8:34] we've witnessed over the last period of time you know as an example few I mean [8:43] virtually nobody has like weed nobody has a system of mail-in ballots like we have [8:50] no other country in the world France went away from it they all went you know why [8:54] because it's corrupt and Jimmy Carter when he had a commission frankly I think [8:58] it's probably the best thing Jimmy Carter did he said you can't have mail-in [9:02] voting because it's inherently dishonest and it's turned out to be totally [9:07] dishonest so we're gonna fight for it yeah activated any sleeper cells inside the [9:16] US there's reports that they have press that trigger button to activate those [9:21] cells at least abroad well we've been we've been trying for a long time we've [9:24] been very much on top of it one of the things we have to do is get the Democrats [9:29] to stop the Democrat shutdown because as you know the apparatus that looks into [9:34] that humor and the Democrats have shut it down which tells you they probably hate [9:39] our country a lot but the Democrats have to open that up but we've got very [9:44] very good intelligence into that we know a lot of different things that have [9:48] happened that have been very bad a lot of them came in during the Biden open [9:52] border period but we have them under we we've got them we've we're watching every [10:00] single one of them yeah we know a lot about them with the biggest problem we [10:05] have is the Democrat shutdown we know a lot about them but the shutdown doesn't [10:10] allow us to do what we have to do do you have to take him out does he have a [10:16] target on his back you mean the new supreme leader you mean the Sun how [10:20] can there be an Iran well I don't want to I don't want to say that but you know I [10:23] was disappointed because we think it's going to lead to just more of the same [10:28] problem for the country so I was disappointed to see their choice you've [10:36] said you have someone in mind to be the new Iranian leadership if not the [10:39] Ayatollah Sun what are you looking for in that person are you looking at [10:43] someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been I like the [10:46] idea of you know internal and eternal come to think of it but I like the idea [10:52] of internal because it works well I mean I think we've proven that so far in [10:59] Venezuela we have a woman Delcy who has been you know president of the country [11:05] very respected very she's doing a great job and it's you know no disruption we had [11:11] as you remember Iraq where everybody got fired the military got fired the [11:17] police got fired the politicians got fired there was nobody and you know what [11:22] they turned into Isis and we don't want that we don't want that so I would like to [11:29] see people that are inside go now they talk about the son of the Shah they talk [11:34] about other people but you know hasn't been there in many many years we have a [11:40] formula that's been very good so far and I think it'll continue to be good the [11:45] relationship is extraordinary with Venezuela smart country we've taken out a [11:51] hundred million barrels of oil it's right now in Houston being being taken [11:58] care of and made so beautiful and you have to see this at work they have it's [12:04] it's brought to the refineries it's being refined in Houston which is made [12:09] exactly for that product and so far but it's a hundred million barrels of oil and [12:16] now they have another hundred million barrels coming and it's like a [12:20] partnership we're getting along so well with them it's great for Venezuela and [12:25] it's great for the United States yeah please go ahead mr. president you just [12:32] suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own [12:36] elementary school on the first day of the war but you're the only person in your [12:39] government saying this even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was [12:42] asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday why are you the [12:46] only person saying this because I just don't know enough about it I think it's [12:49] something that I was told is under investigation but tomahawks are are used [12:55] by others as you know numerous other nations have tomahawks they buy them from [13:00] us but I will certainly whatever the report shows I'm willing to live with that [13:05] report yeah please you said earlier that we've already won in many ways but we [13:12] haven't won enough what do you consider enough what's your baseline where they're [13:17] not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where [13:23] they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration and say [13:27] all right we're not gonna do it they were not willing to say that and when Steve [13:32] called up and he said that to me I said well here we go let's do it the hard way but the [13:38] hard way I think is probably the easy way when basically I can see that they [13:43] will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of [13:47] time of developing weaponry that could be used against the United States Israel or [13:55] any of our allies we have great allies in the Middle East great countries that [13:59] are allies and they were staying out of it until they got hit someday they'll have [14:04] to do a story why did he do that why did they do that but they were going to hit [14:09] them if I didn't hit them first they were going to hit our allies first I believe upon [14:15] information and belief but I believe that he was going to he was they were going to [14:22] take over the Middle East they were looking to take over the Middle East now had operation [14:27] midnight hammer not taken place that was definite because they would have had a [14:34] nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks but that took place that was a setback but look at the [14:40] number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months and [14:46] those missiles were aimed at various countries and when you look at a thousand over a thousand [14:51] missiles shot at like UAE they were looking to take over the Middle East we got there first lucky I'll [14:58] tell you what the Middle East and those countries very rich countries are very lucky that I was [15:01] president instead of somebody else vice president when it comes to US action in Iran I don't think [15:12] so no no we get along very well on on this he was I would say philosophically a little bit different [15:19] than me I think he was maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but I felt it was [15:32] something we had to do I didn't feel we had a choice if we didn't do it they would have done [15:36] it to us I felt based on the negotiations that were being had by Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner [15:43] and Marco and Pete and everybody was involved I felt that they were gonna that they were looking to tap [15:50] us along before they hit and I thought they were gonna hit and if they hit us first that would have [15:54] been a very bad thing uh in the back place in the back about the straight you mean yeah well I'm I [16:09] want to keep it open I want to keep it good you know it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to [16:14] China what a very good evening and over the weekend the United States military and the Israeli Defense [16:21] Forces continued Operation Epic Fury very successfully over the past nine days we've carried out some of [16:28] the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen now you add that [16:35] up to all of the other things midnight hammer getting rid of the nuclear threat from Iran which was a big [16:43] moment in history in my opinion and the great success we've had in Venezuela and all other places every [16:51] place we've gone we've had tremendous success but while we're doing all of these things we're achieving [16:58] major strides toward completing our military objective and some people could say they're pretty well [17:06] complete we've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely most of Iran's naval power power has [17:16] 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 [17:25] know they had that many didn't last very long and these are fighting vessels they're meant to fight [17:33] but they're not meant to fight against us we continue to target Iran's drone and missile capabilities their [17:39] drones are way down their drone manufacturing has been hit starting today we know all of the places they [17:47] manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after another their missile capability is down to about [17:55] 10% maybe less we're also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles we've struck over [18:03] 5000 targets to date some of them very major targets and we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we [18:10] need to do it if we hit them it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt uh having to do with electricity [18:19] production and many other things so we're not looking to do that if we don't have to but they're the kind of things that are very [18:26] easy to hit but very devastating if they are hit uh we are waiting to see what happens before we hit them we could take [18:34] them all out in one day but it's all resulting in a 90 percent decline and uh various things but in particular [18:43] Iranian missile launches and uh 83 drop in drone launches as you know the drone launches are are pretty well shot but we're at over 90 [18:55] percent decline in the Iranian missile launchers which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get [19:02] and uh usually what we were able to do through great uh equipment a lot of smart people as soon as they sent a [19:12] missile up from a launcher we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less [19:18] accurately right on the noggin so now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating Iranian drones [19:27] and our b2 bombers recently dropped dozens of 2 000 pound bombs to destroy missile launchers [19:34] all over iran and very deep under Iranian soil in many cases the soil was no match and we're also [19:43] annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that [19:50] nobody thought was possible we're knocking them out we know where they all are we're knocking them out [19:55] very quickly we're ahead of our initial timeline by a lot i would say that we probably would not have [20:02] thought after a month we'd be here in addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership [20:07] uh twice and maybe three times and uh we as you know we want to be involved we don't want another [20:17] president that maybe wouldn't be willing to do what i'm willing to do for the good of the world for [20:21] good of our nation to be stuck with the situation in five years or ten years from now so we think [20:27] they should put a president in or the head of the country in that's going to be able to do something [20:33] peacefully for a change they've been doing this for 47 years killing people for 47 years whether it's the [20:40] barracks or even the ss coal where they were involved very strongly they always denied it but where they [20:47] were very strongly involved and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are [20:53] right now walking around with no legs no arms a face that's been so badly damaged the iranian regime [21:01] has been attacking americans and spreading terror for 47 years and despite these countless opportunities [21:08] to renounce their nuclear ambitions which they had just a short while ago they told mr whitkoff who [21:15] is standing right over here they said they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real [21:23] nutshell we want to continue to build nuclear weapons if we didn't knock out midnight hammer if we didn't [21:30] knock out their iranian potential if we didn't do that with midnight hammer they would have had a [21:36] nuclear weapon they would have used it long before now and at a minimum israel would have been annihilated [21:42] it was very lucky that we had the courage to do that that we had the talented pilots and the great equipment [21:50] the b2 bombers are unbelievable we ordered 25 more by the way the newer better version it's uh we have the greatest [22:01] military in the world we have the greatest equipment in the world by far you see that no matter where we go you still [22:07] need the people though to operate it and to use it and those are the people that we cherish even after [22:14] we obliterated their key nuclear sites in operation midnight hammer they never negotiated in good faith [22:21] they still continued to say we want to build nuclear we want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable [22:27] and they even turned down an offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes we had [22:35] people offering them free nuclear fuel they weren't interested in that because they wanted to build [22:42] a nuclear weapon so instead the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different [22:49] site they couldn't go back to where they were the three sites that we obliterated but they were starting [22:56] work at another site a different site different kind of a site and that was protected by granite they [23:03] wanted it protected granite's pretty good but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper they wanted [23:10] to go a lot deeper and they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles [23:17] they were going to do it all at the same time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have [23:22] reached even our homeland the regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile [23:29] threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon [23:34] so as you probably saw they had a tremendous number of missiles most of which are now being used or [23:42] destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all [23:49] down what incredible technology the patriots have been unbelievable and other things and the laser [23:57] technology that we have now is incredible it's coming out pretty soon we're literally lasers will do the [24:03] work of at a lot less cost do the work of what the patriots are doing or what other things are doing [24:10] the situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the united states found it intolerable [24:18] in my opinion based on what steve and jared and pete and others were telling me marco so involved [24:26] that i thought that they were going to attack us i thought they would if we didn't do this [24:30] at the time we did it i think they had in mind to attack us and if you notice they did something [24:35] which was very foolish very stupid i would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors were [24:42] largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the [24:50] reverse effect the neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully [24:58] if you look at saudi arabia you look at uae qatar and others but they were strong and they were smart [25:07] but they got attacked nobody when i first heard it i said no somebody made a mistake there was no mistake [25:14] uae had over a thousand missiles shot at it knocked them almost all down on the very first day i came down [25:22] the escalator in 2015 i said quote i will stop iran from getting nuclear weapons and all i'm doing is [25:30] keeping my promise think of that that was in 2015 i said it it was a threat then and a much bigger threat [25:38] now but no longer a threat not for a long time anyway we want to keep it that way as we continue [25:44] operation epic fury we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world and i will not allow [25:53] a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply and if iran [25:58] does anything to do that they'll get hit at a much much harder level i will take out those targets [26:05] that were easy and that i mentioned just before we'll take them out so quickly they'll never be able [26:10] to recover ever if they want to play that game they better not play that game in the long run oil [26:16] supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of iranian ships drones missiles nuclear [26:23] menace or anything so the strait of hormuz is going to remain safe we have a lot of navy ships there we [26:33] have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines again most of their ships are down at the [26:40] bottom of the sea but we will uh we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or [26:47] anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world they do anything in recent years the [26:54] regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial vessels we're putting [27:01] an end to all of this threat once and for all and the result will be lower oil prices oil and gas prices [27:08] for american families we've done that we've done it we brought it very low this was just an excursion [27:14] into something that had to be done we're getting very close to finishing that too in the meantime during [27:20] this brief disruption the united states is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating [27:26] in the gulf so we're putting up uh risk insurance we'll uh perhaps go alongside of them for protection [27:35] we don't think it'll be necessary if it is and if they do anything the price will be incalculable [27:44] it will be so great that they will have wished they never did it because you have to keep the [27:49] straits flowing with all of that it affects other countries much more than it does the united states [27:56] doesn't really affect us we have so much oil we have tremendous oil and gas much more than we need [28:02] we have venezuela now is our new partner great partner they've worked out so wonderful we're working [28:08] with the administration the president and it's a massive source of oil gas everything but uh we're in a [28:20] very good position but very unfair to other parts of the world like china as an example i mean we're [28:26] doing this for the other parts of the world including countries like china they get a lot of their [28:32] oil through the straits so we're doing this we have a very good relationship with president chi and china [28:38] i'm going there in a short period of time and we're protecting the the world from what these [28:45] lunatics are trying to do and very successfully i might add we're also waiving certain oil related [28:53] sanctions to reduce prices so we have sanctions on some countries we're going to take those sanctions [28:59] off till this straightens out then who knows maybe we won't have to put them on there'll be so much peace [29:04] but when the time comes the u.s navy and his partners will escort tankers through the strait if needed [29:10] i hope it's not going to be needed but if it's needed we'll escort them right through and we have the [29:16] greatest mind sweeping ability we have the greatest ships and all of the we know exactly where their [29:22] place will get them out of there very fast but we hope we don't have any of that and again if they do [29:26] that if they play that game we're going to hit them at a level that that they have not seen before [29:32] so we're winning very decisively we're way ahead of schedule uh it's our military is the greatest in [29:41] the world with the greatest equipment and the greatest people in the world is nobody's ever seen anything [29:46] like it iran's a very powerful country they were going to take over the middle east if we did not [29:52] hit them they were going to take over the middle east they had thousands and thousands since their [29:57] last hit they had thousands and thousands of missiles and everything else most are now destroyed [30:04] but they were going to take over the middle east those weapons were aimed at middle eastern countries [30:11] that had nothing to do with this they were going to take over the middle east and they were going to [30:15] try and destroy israel so we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in this [30:23] and it's going to be ended soon and if it starts up again they'll be they'll be hit even harder [30:31] thank you very much for being here go ahead any questions thank you so much do you approve of [30:39] iran's new supreme leader and secondly can you tell us more about your call with russian [30:45] president vladimir putin today what did you discuss yes i had a very good call with president [30:51] putin we had a lot of people on the line from our side from his side we were talking about ukraine [30:56] which is just a never-ending fight and when look there's tremendous hatred between president putin [31:05] and president zelinski they can't seem to get it together but i think it was a positive call on [31:11] that subject and we obviously talked then about the middle east and he wants to be helpful i said [31:19] you could be more helpful by getting the ukraine russia war over with that would be more helpful [31:24] but we had a very good talk and he wants to be very constructive yeah please yeah please thank you mr [31:33] president on iran you called it an excursion you said it would be over soon are you thinking this [31:38] week it will be over no but soon days i think so okay and and with respect very soon look everything [31:45] they have is gone including their leadership in fact there are two levels of leadership and even [31:51] actually as it turns out more than that but two levels of leadership are gone most people have never [31:56] even heard about the leaders that they're talking about so uh it's obviously been very very powerful [32:02] very effective to cuba you said that cuba wants to make a deal yes what would the united states get in [32:09] return for that and why should americans trust marco rubio to negotiate it well marco rubio is doing [32:16] a great job i think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history look at what [32:21] we've done as a as a presidency look at what we've done as an administration uh they trust marco uh and so [32:31] do the american people trust he's been successful no matter where he's been he also speaks the language [32:37] which is always nice and always helpful but he's dealing and it may be a friendly takeover it may [32:43] not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because they're really in they're down to uh as [32:50] they say fumes they have no energy they have no uh money they're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis [33:00] and uh we don't want to see that but they were very very bad to a lot of people as you know and a lot of [33:06] people living on the cuban american vote which i got at record levels uh very important those people [33:14] are very important to me i know i know what they went through they went through hell some of them [33:18] have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the country cuban american business [33:24] people some of them are like the most successful in the country and a lot of them are friends of mine [33:30] because i've been fighting this battle with them for a long time the castro regime was brutal but [33:35] they lived off and as well and now they don't live off and venezuela sends them no energy no fuel no [33:41] oil no money no nothing they lived without venezuela they couldn't have made it and we cut them off from [33:47] everything else so uh yeah we're they're gonna make either a deal or we'll do it just as easy anyway [33:55] yeah please go ahead a tomahawk missile likely destroyed that iranian girl school so will the americans [34:09] will the u.s accept any responsibility well i haven't seen it and i will say that the tomahawk which [34:14] is one of the most powerful weapons around is used by you know is sold and used by other countries you [34:21] know that and whether it's iran who also has some tomahawks i wish they had more but uh whether it's iran [34:29] or somebody else the fact that a tomahawk a tomahawk is very generic it's sold to other countries [34:34] but that's being investigated right now yeah please thank you uh mr president you've said [34:43] the war is quote very complete but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning so [34:48] which is it and how long should americans be well i think you could say both the beginning it's the [34:53] beginning of building a new country but they certainly they have no navy they have no air force [34:59] they have no anti-aircraft equipment it's all been blown up they have no radar they have no [35:06] telecommunications and they have no leadership it's all gone so you know you could look at that [35:13] statement we could we could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here i could call it [35:19] or we could go further and we're going to go further but uh the big risk on that war [35:28] has been over for three days we wiped them out the first in the first two days when you think about [35:34] it it's incredible we wiped out a big navy very powerful navy you know these were ships these were [35:41] serious ships these were ships that you buy when you want to win battles they're all they're all on [35:47] the bottom floor the sailors are all running off the ships they refuse to get on the ships [35:52] the air force is gone everything's gone the missiles are down to a trickle the drones are down to [35:59] probably 25 percent and they'll be soon be down to nothing we'll have the where they manufactured [36:04] the drones are under fire as we speak they're being hit so the rest is going to be determination as to [36:14] my attitude along with the people in the trump administration what we want to do thank you [36:18] yeah please can i ask you you mentioned you were going to waive certain additional oil [36:26] waivers or sanctions can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular well we're [36:30] looking to keep the oil prices down we went artificially up because of this excursion into [36:36] a very positive thing i mean this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done [36:41] i knew oil prices would go up if i did this and they've gone up probably less than i thought they'd go [36:47] up but i don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful this was a military [36:53] success the likes of which uh people haven't seen we have the best military we have the best equipment [37:00] we have i believe the best generals we have the best and this went very quickly uh we talked about [37:09] that with president putin he was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything [37:15] quite like it you know iran was a very powerful uh military country a man with all of the missiles now [37:21] you had the double attack you had the original attack with us and israel and that knocked them [37:27] for a loop then you had the b2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they would have [37:32] had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this [37:37] press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press conference at [37:43] all uh but it's been amazing the the military success that we've had is truly unprecedented [37:51] uh you said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece [37:58] of legislation until the save america act is passed does that include the confirmation of senator mullen [38:03] as your next dhs secretary does that mean a dhs funding bill and senator thune said today it's not [38:09] a matter of whether or not your republican colleagues agree with the policy it's about changing the process [38:14] in other words getting rid of the filibuster to get so in order to get it you're going to need democrat [38:18] votes and what we're saying is the save america not the save act which nobody knew what it was the [38:24] save america act the save america act and that's voter id we want voter id when a voter we want to be [38:33] able to see a picture of the voter we want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate we want very [38:40] importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the united states of america and we want no in [38:48] no mail-in ballot scams so we have exceptions for the military for sick for disabled and for people [38:56] that are away business trips or whatever even vacations will be very liberal that we've added [39:04] two things to it no men and women sports and no trans gender mutualization of our children we don't want [39:11] our the the it's mutualization of our children and we don't want that so we added those two things [39:18] that's the five points we have five very good points uh it polls at 86 percent with democrats [39:27] think of that the overall vote is 86 percent with republicans it's 98 percent and the only one [39:35] opposed to it is a democrat leadership because they cheat they want to cheat so we added those two points [39:41] we're going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell now certain things will happen [39:47] certain things will take place i'm here to do a great job for the country but we don't have a [39:52] country if we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over [39:59] the last period of time you know as an example few i mean virtually nobody has like weed nobody has a [40:11] system of mail-in ballots like we have no other country in the world france went away from it [40:16] they all went you know why because it's corrupt and jimmy carter when he had a commission frankly [40:21] i think it's probably the best thing jimmy carter did he said you can't have mail-in voting because [40:27] it's inherently dishonest and it's turned out to be totally dishonest so we're going to fight for it [40:33] yeah activated any sleeper cells inside the u.s there's reports that they have [40:41] pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad well we've been they've been [40:46] trying for a long time we've been very much on top of it uh one of the things we have to do is get [40:51] the democrats to stop the democrats shutdown because as you know the apparatus that looks into that [40:58] schumer and the democrats have shut it down which tells you they probably hate our country a lot but [41:03] the democrats have to open that up but we've got very very good intelligence into that we know a lot of [41:10] different things that have happened that have been very bad a lot of them came in during the biden [41:15] open border period but we have them under uh we we've got them we've we're watching every single [41:24] one of them yeah we know a lot about them the biggest problem we have is the democrat shutdown [41:30] we know a lot about them but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do do you have to take [41:38] him out does he have a target on his back you mean the new supreme leader you mean the sun how can [41:43] there be an iran well i don't want to i don't want to say that but you know i was disappointed because [41:49] we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country so i was disappointed [41:53] to see their choice thank you sir you've said you have someone in mind to be the new iranian leadership [42:02] if not the ayatollah's son what are you looking for in that person are you looking at someone internal [42:07] given that you just said that their leadership has been i like the idea of you know internal and eternal [42:13] come to think of it but i like the idea of internal because it works well i mean i think we've proven [42:21] that so far in venezuela we have a woman delcy who has been you know president of the country very [42:29] respected very she's doing a great job and it's you know no disruption we had as you remember iraq [42:36] everybody got fired the military got fired the police got fired the politicians got fired there [42:43] was nobody and you know what they turned into isis and we don't want that we don't want that so [42:51] uh i would like to see people that are inside go now they talk about the son of the shah they talk [42:58] about other people but you know hasn't been there in many many years uh we have a formula that's been [43:05] very good so far and i think it'll continue to be good the relationship is extraordinary with venezuela [43:11] smart country we've taken out a hundred million barrels of oil it's right now in houston being uh [43:21] being taken care of and made so beautiful and you have to see this at work they have uh it's it's [43:28] brought to the refineries it's being refined in houston which is made exactly for that product [43:35] and so far but it's a hundred million barrels of oil and now they have another hundred million barrels [43:41] coming and it's like a partnership we're getting along so well with them it's great for venezuela [43:48] and it's great for the united states yeah please go ahead hi mr president you just suggested that iran [43:56] somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war [44:01] but you're the only person in your government saying this even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he [44:05] was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on saturday why are you the only person saying this [44:10] because i just don't know enough about it i think it's something that i was told is under investigation [44:16] but tomahawks are are used by others as you know numerous other nations have tomahawks they buy them [44:23] from us but i will certainly whatever the report shows i'm willing to live with that report yeah please [44:31] um you said earlier that we've already won in many ways but we haven't won enough what do you consider [44:38] enough what's your baseline where they're not going to be starting the following day to develop [44:44] a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration and [44:50] say all right we're not going to do it they were not willing to say that and when steve called up and [44:56] 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 [45:02] probably the easy way when basically i can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever [45:09] for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that could be used against the united states [45:17] israel or any of our allies we have great allies in the middle east great countries that are allies and [45:24] they were staying out of it until they got hit someday they'll have to do a story why did he [45:29] do that why did they do that but they were going to hit them if i didn't hit them first they were [45:34] going to hit our allies first i believe upon information and belief but i believe that he was [45:42] going to uh he was they were going to take over the middle east they were looking to take over the [45:47] middle east now had operation midnight hammer not taken place that was definite because they would [45:57] have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks but that took place that was a setback but look at [46:03] the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months and those missiles were [46:10] aimed at various countries and when you look at a thousand over a thousand missiles shot at like uae [46:17] they were looking to take over the middle east we got there first lucky i'll tell you what the [46:21] middle east and those countries very rich countries are very lucky that i was president instead of somebody [46:26] else your vice president when it comes to u.s action in iran i don't think so no no we get along [46:37] very well on on this he was uh i would say philosophically a little bit different uh than me [46:45] i think he was uh maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but uh i felt it was [46:56] something we had to do i didn't feel we had a choice if we didn't do it they would have done it to us [47:00] i felt based on the negotiations that were being had by steve whitkoff and jared kushner and marco and [47:08] pete and everybody was involved i felt that they were gonna that they were looking to tap us along [47:14] before they hit and i thought they were gonna hit and if they hit us first that would have been a very [47:17] bad thing uh in the back place in the back about the straight you mean yeah well i'm i want to keep [47:32] it open i want to keep it good you know it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to china we're on a [47:38] very good evening and over the weekend the united states military and the israeli defense forces [47:44] continued operation epic fury very successfully over the past nine days we've carried out some of the [47:51] most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen now you add that [47:59] up to all of the other things midnight hammer getting rid of the nuclear threat from iran which [48:06] was a big moment in history in my opinion and the great success we've had in venezuela and all other [48:13] places every place we've gone we've had tremendous success but while we're doing all of these things we're [48:21] achieving major strides toward completing our military objective and some people could say [48:28] they're pretty well complete we've wiped every single force in iran out very completely most of iran's [48:37] naval power power has been sunk it's on the bottom of the sea it's almost 50 ships i was just notified [48:46] it's 51 ships i didn't know they had that many didn't last very long and these are fighting [48:53] vessels they're they're meant to fight but they're not meant to fight against us we continue to target [49:00] iran's drone and missile capabilities their drones are way down their drone manufacturing has been hit [49:07] starting today we know all of the places they manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after [49:13] another their missile capability is down to about 10 percent maybe less we're also hitting where they make [49:22] missiles and where they deliver missiles we've struck over 5 000 targets to date some of them very major targets [49:30] and we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it [49:35] if we hit them it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt having to do with electricity [49:42] production and many other things so we're not looking to do that if we don't have to but they're the kind of things [49:49] that are very easy to hit but very devastating if they are hit we are waiting to see what happens [49:55] before we hit them we could take them all out in one day but it's all resulting in a 90 percent decline in [50:04] various things but in particular iranian missile launchers and 83 drop in drone launchers as you know [50:13] the drone launchers are are pretty well shot but we're at over 90 percent decline in the iranian [50:21] missile launchers which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get and usually what we were able [50:28] to do through great uh equipment a lot of smart people as soon as they sent a missile up from a [50:37] launcher we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less accurately right [50:44] on the noggin so now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating iranian drones and our b2 [50:51] bombers recently dropped dozens of two thousand pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over iran [50:59] and buried deep under iranian soil in many cases the soil was no match and we're also annihilating the [51:08] manufacturing base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was [51:14] possible we're knocking them out we know where they all are we're knocking them out very quickly [51:20] we're ahead of our initial timeline by a lot i would say that we probably would not have thought after a [51:26] month we'd be here in addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership uh twice and maybe [51:34] three times and uh we as you know we want to be involved we don't want another president that maybe [51:41] wouldn't be willing to do what i'm willing to do for the good of the world for the good of our nation [51:46] to be stuck with the situation in five years or ten years from now so we think they should put a [51:52] president in or the head of the country in that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a [51:57] change they've been doing this for 47 years killing people for 47 years whether it's the barracks or [52:04] even the ss coal where they were involved very strongly they always denied it but where they were [52:11] very strongly involved and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right [52:17] now walking around with no legs no arms a face that's been so badly damaged the iranian regime has [52:24] been attacking americans and spreading terror for 47 years and despite these countless opportunities to [52:31] renounce their nuclear ambitions which they had just a short while ago they told mr whitkoff who is [52:39] standing right over here they said uh they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real [52:46] nutshell we want to continue to build nuclear weapons if we didn't knock out midnight hammer if we didn't [52:54] knock out their iranian potential if we didn't do that with midnight hammer they would have had a nuclear [53:00] weapon they would have used it long before now and at a minimum israel would have been annihilated [53:06] it was very lucky that we had the courage to do that that we had the talented pilots and the great [53:13] equipment the b2 bombers are unbelievable we ordered 25 more by the way the newer better version it's uh [53:23] we have the greatest military in the world we have the greatest equipment in the world by far [53:28] you see that no matter where we go you still need the people though to operate it and to use it [53:34] and those are the people that we cherish even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites [53:40] in operation midnight hammer they never negotiated in good faith they still continued to say we want to [53:46] build nuclear we want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable and they even turned down an offer [53:53] for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes we had people offering them free nuclear [54:02] fuel they weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon so instead the [54:08] regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site they couldn't go back to where [54:15] they were the three sites that we obliterated but they were starting work at another site a different [54:21] site different kind of a site and that was protected by granite they wanted it protected granite's pretty good [54:29] but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper they wanted to go a lot deeper and they started the [54:35] process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles they were going to do it all at the same [54:41] time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland the regime's [54:49] intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to [54:55] prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon so as you probably saw they had a tremendous number of [55:02] missiles most of which are now being used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have [55:10] been able for the most part to shoot them all down what incredible technology the patriots have been [55:16] unbelievable and other things and the laser technology that we have now is incredible it's coming out [55:23] pretty soon we're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost do the work of what the patriots [55:31] are doing or what other things are doing the situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return [55:38] and the united states found it intolerable in my opinion based on what steve and jared and pete and others [55:46] were telling me marco so involved that i thought that they were going to attack us i thought they would if we [55:52] 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 [55:58] something which was very foolish very stupid i would say they attacked their neighbors and their [56:03] neighbors were largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it [56:13] had the reverse effect the neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite [56:20] successfully if you look at saudi arabia you look at uae qatar and others but they were strong and they [56:30] were smart but they got attacked nobody when i first heard it i said no somebody made a mistake there was [56:36] no mistake uae had over a thousand missiles shot at it knocked them almost all down on the very first day [56:45] i came down the escalator in 2015 i said quote i will stop iran from getting nuclear weapons and all [56:53] 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 [57:00] bigger threat now but no longer a threat not for a long time anyway we want to keep it that way as we [57:07] continue operation epic fury we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world and i will [57:15] not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply [57:21] and if iran does anything to do that they'll get hit at a much much harder level i will take out those [57:28] targets that were easy and that i mentioned just before we'll take them out so quickly [57:33] they'll never be able to recover ever if they want to play that game they better not play that game in [57:39] the long run oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of iranian ships drones [57:45] missiles nuclear menace or anything so the strait of hormuz is going to remain safe we have a lot [57:55] of navy ships there we have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines again most of their [58:03] ships are down at the bottom of the sea but we will uh we will hit them so hard that it will not be [58:10] possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world they do anything [58:17] in recent years the regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial [58:23] vessels we're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all and the result will be lower oil [58:29] prices oil and gas prices for american families we've done that we've done it we brought it very low this [58:36] was just an excursion into something that had to be done we're getting very close to finishing that too in [58:43] the meantime during this brief disruption the united states is offering political risk insurance to [58:48] any tankers operating in the gulf so we're putting up uh risk insurance we'll uh perhaps go alongside of [58:57] them for protection we don't think it'll be necessary if it is and if they do anything the price will be [59:05] incalculable it will be so great that they will have wished they never did it [59:11] because you have to keep the straits flowing with all of that it affects other countries [59:17] much more than it does the united states doesn't really affect us we have so much oil [59:21] we have tremendous oil and gas much more than we need we have venezuela now is our new partner [59:28] great partner they've worked out so wonderful we're working with the administration the president [59:34] and it's a massive source of oil gas everything but uh we're in a very good position but very unfair to [59:47] other parts of the world like china as an example i mean we're doing this for the other parts of the [59:51] world including countries like china they get a lot of their oil through the straits so we're doing [59:58] this we have a very good relationship with president xi and china i'm going there in a short period of time [1:00:04] and we're protecting the the world from what these lunatics are trying to do and very successfully [1:00:13] i might add we're also waving certain oil related sanctions to reduce prices so we have sanctions [1:00:19] on some countries we're going to take those sanctions off till this straightens out then who [1:00:25] knows maybe we won't have to put them on there'll be so much peace but when the time comes the u.s navy [1:00:30] and his partners will escort tankers through the straight if needed i hope it's not going to be [1:00:35] needed but if it's needed we'll escort them right through and we have the greatest mind sweeping ability [1:00:41] we have the greatest ships and all of the we know exactly where their place will get them out of there [1:00:46] very fast but we hope we don't have any of that and again if they do that if they play that game we're [1:00:52] going to hit them at a level that that they have not seen before so we're winning very decisively [1:00:59] we're way ahead of schedule uh it's our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest [1:01:06] equipment and the greatest people in the world there's nobody's ever seen anything like it iran [1:01:11] is a very powerful country they were going to take over the middle east if we did not hit them they [1:01:16] were going to take over the middle east they had thousands and thousands since their last hit [1:01:22] they had thousands and thousands of missiles and everything else most are now destroyed but they [1:01:28] were going to take over the middle east those weapons were aimed at middle eastern countries [1:01:34] that had nothing to do with this they were going to take over the middle east and they were going [1:01:38] to try and destroy israel so we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in [1:01:46] this and it's going to be ended soon and if it starts up again they'll be they'll be hit even harder [1:01:55] thank you very much for being here go ahead any questions thank you so much do you approve of [1:02:03] iran's new supreme leader and secondly can you tell us more about your call with russian president [1:02:08] vladimir putin today what did you discuss yes i had a very good call with president putin we had a lot [1:02:15] of people on the line from our side from his side we were talking about ukraine which is just a never [1:02:21] ending fight and when look there's tremendous hatred between president putin and president zelinski they [1:02:29] can't seem to get it together but i think it was a positive call on that subject and we obviously [1:02:35] talked then about the middle east and he wants to be helpful i said you could be more helpful by [1:02:44] getting the ukraine russia war over with that would be more helpful but we had a very good talk and he [1:02:50] wants to be very constructive yeah please yeah please thank you mr president on iran you called it an [1:02:58] excursion you said it would be over soon are you thinking this week it will be over no but soon days [1:03:04] i think so okay and and with respect very soon look everything they have is gone including their [1:03:10] leadership in fact there are two levels of leadership and even actually as it turns out more than that [1:03:16] but two levels of leadership are gone most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're [1:03:21] talking about so uh it's obviously been very very powerful very effective cuba you said that cuba wants to [1:03:30] make a deal what would the united states get in return for that and why should americans trust marco rubio [1:03:36] to negotiate it well marco rubio is doing a great job i think he's going to go down as the greatest [1:03:41] secretary of state in history look at what we've done as a as a presidency look at what we've done as an [1:03:48] administration uh they trust marco uh and so do the american people trust he's been successful no [1:03:57] matter where he's been he also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's [1:04:03] dealing and it may be a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because [1:04:09] they're really in they're down to uh as they say fumes they have no energy they have no money they're deep [1:04:21] trouble on a humanitarian basis and uh we don't want to see that but they were very very bad to a lot of [1:04:28] people as you know and a lot of people living are the cuban american vote which i got at record levels [1:04:35] uh very important those people are very important to me i know i know what they went through they [1:04:40] went through hell some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the country [1:04:45] cuban american business people some of them are like the most successful in the country and a lot [1:04:52] of them are friends of mine because i've been fighting this battle with them for a long time [1:04:56] the castro regime was brutal but they lived off and as well and now they don't live off in [1:05:01] venezuela sends them no energy no fuel no oil no money no nothing they lived without venezuela [1:05:08] they couldn't have made it and we cut them off from everything else so uh yeah we're they're going to [1:05:13] make either a deal or we'll do it just as easy anyway yeah please go ahead a tomahawk missile likely [1:05:29] destroy that iranian girl school so will the americans will the u.s accept any responsibility [1:05:34] well i haven't seen it and i will say that the tomahawk which is one of the most powerful weapons [1:05:40] around is used by you know is sold and used by other countries you know that and whether it's iran [1:05:47] who also has some tomahawks i wish they had more but uh whether it's iran or somebody else the fact [1:05:53] that a tomahawk a tomahawk is very generic it's sold to other countries but uh that's being [1:05:59] investigated right now yeah please thank you uh mr president you've said the war is quote very [1:06:08] complete but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning so which is it and how long [1:06:13] should americans be well i think you can say both the beginning it's the beginning of building a new [1:06:17] country but they certainly they have no navy they have no air force they have no anti-aircraft [1:06:24] uh equipment it's all been blown up they have no radar they have no telecommunications and they [1:06:31] have no leadership it's all gone so you know you could look at that statement we could we could call [1:06:38] it a tremendous success right now as we leave here i could call it or we could go further and we're going [1:06:45] to go further but uh the big risk on that war has been over for three days we wiped them out the first [1:06:55] in the first two days when you think about it it's incredible we wiped out a big navy very powerful [1:07:02] navy you know these were ships these were serious ships these were ships that you buy when you want [1:07:07] to win battles they're all they're all on the bottom floor the sailors are all running off their [1:07:12] ships they refuse to get on the ships uh the air force is gone everything's gone the missiles are down [1:07:19] to a trickle the drones are down to probably 25 percent and they'll be soon be down to nothing we'll [1:07:26] have the where they manufactured the drones are under fire as we speak they're being hit so [1:07:34] the rest is going to be a determination as to my attitude along with the people in the trump [1:07:40] administration what we want to do thank you yeah please can i ask you you mentioned you're going to [1:07:47] waive certain additional oil waivers or sanctions can you talk a little bit more about that and address [1:07:52] in particular well we're looking to keep the oil prices down we went artificially up because of this [1:07:58] excursion into a very positive thing i mean this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have [1:08:03] done i knew oil prices would go up if i did this and they've gone up probably less than i thought [1:08:10] they'd go up but i don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful this was [1:08:15] a military success the likes of which uh people haven't seen we have the best military we have the best [1:08:22] equipment we have i believe the best generals we have the best and this went very quickly uh we talked [1:08:32] about that with president putin he was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything [1:08:39] quite like it you know iran was a very powerful uh military country a man with all of the missiles now [1:08:45] you had the double attack you had the original attack with us and israel and that knocked him for a [1:08:50] loop then you had the b2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they would have had [1:08:55] a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this press [1:09:01] conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press conference at all [1:09:08] but it's been amazing the the military success that we've had is truly unprecedented you said you've [1:09:18] told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece of legislation until the save [1:09:23] america act is passed does that include the confirmation of senator mullen is your next dhs [1:09:28] secretary does that mean a dhs funding bill and senator thune said today it's not a matter of whether or not [1:09:34] your republican colleagues agree with the policy it's about changing the process in other words [1:09:38] getting rid of the filibuster to get so in order to get it you're going to need democrat votes and [1:09:42] what we're saying is the save america not the save act which nobody knew what it was the save [1:09:48] america act the save america act and that's voter id we want voter id when a voter we want to be able [1:09:57] to see a picture of the voter we want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate we want very [1:10:03] importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the united states of america and we want no in [1:10:12] no mail-in ballot scams so we have exceptions for the military for sick for disabled and for people [1:10:20] that are away business trips or whatever even vacations will be very liberal that we've added [1:10:27] two things to it no men and women's sports and no trans gender mutualization of our children we don't [1:10:34] want our the the it's mutualization of our children and we don't want that so we added those two things [1:10:41] that's the five points we have five very good points uh it polls at 86 percent with democrats think of [1:10:51] that the overall vote is 86 with republicans it's 98 and the only one opposed to it is a democrat [1:11:00] leadership because they cheat they want to cheat so we added those two points we're going for the gold [1:11:07] and we're going to have to fight like hell now certain things will happen certain things will take [1:11:12] place i'm here to do a great job for the country but we don't have a country if we're going to have [1:11:17] elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over the last period of time [1:11:25] you know as an example few i mean virtually nobody has like we nobody has a system of mail-in ballots [1:11:36] like we have no other country in the world france went away from it they all went you know why because [1:11:41] it's corrupt and jimmy carter when he had a commission frankly i think it's probably the best [1:11:45] thing jimmy carter did he said you can't have mail-in voting because it's inherently dishonest and it's [1:11:52] turned out to be totally dishonest so we're going to fight for it yeah activated any sleeper cells inside [1:12:02] the u.s there's reports that they have pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least [1:12:08] abroad well we've been they've been trying for a long time we've been very much on top of it uh one of [1:12:13] the things we have to do is get the democrats to stop the democrat shutdown because as you know the [1:12:19] apparatus that looks into that schumer and the democrats have shut it down which tells you they [1:12:25] probably hate our country a lot but the democrats have to open that up but we've got very very good [1:12:31] intelligence into that we know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad [1:12:36] a lot of them came in during the biden open border period but we have them under uh we we've got them [1:12:44] we've we're watching every single one of them yeah we know a lot about them the biggest problem we have [1:12:52] is the democrat shutdown we know a lot about them but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have [1:12:58] to do you have to take him out does he have a target on his back you mean the new supreme leader you mean [1:13:05] the sun how can there be an iran well i don't want to i don't want to say that but you know i was [1:13:10] disappointed because we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country so i was [1:13:16] disappointed to see their choice thank you thank you sir you've said you have someone in mind to be [1:13:24] the new iranian leadership if not the ayatollah's son what are you looking for in that person are you [1:13:29] looking at someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been i like the idea [1:13:34] you know internal and eternal come to think of it but i like the idea of internal because it works [1:13:42] well i mean i think we've proven that so far in venezuela we have a woman delcy who has been [1:13:50] you know president of the country very respected very she's doing a great job and it's you know no [1:13:56] disruption we had as you remember iraq where everybody got fired the military got fired the police got [1:14:04] fired the politicians got fired there was nobody and you know what they turned into isis and we don't [1:14:12] want that we don't want that so uh i would like to see people that are inside go now they talk about [1:14:19] the son of the shah they talk about other people but you know hasn't been there in many many years [1:14:26] we have a formula that's been very good so far and i think it'll continue to be good the relationship [1:14:33] is extraordinary with venezuela smart country and we've taken out a hundred million barrels of oil it's [1:14:40] right now in houston being uh being taken care of and made so beautiful and you have to see this at [1:14:48] work they have uh it's it's brought to the refineries it's being refined in houston which is made exactly [1:14:56] for that product and so far but it's a hundred million barrels of oil and now they have another [1:15:03] hundred million barrels coming and it's like a partnership we're getting along so well with them [1:15:10] it's great for venezuela and it's great for the united states yeah please go ahead hi mr president [1:15:18] you just suggested that iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on [1:15:23] the first day of the war but you're the only person in your government saying this even your defense [1:15:27] secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on saturday [1:15:32] why are you the only person saying this because i just don't know enough about it i think it's [1:15:36] something that i was told is under investigation but tomahawks are are used by others as you know [1:15:44] numerous other nations have tomahawks they buy them from us but i will certainly whatever the [1:15:50] report shows i'm willing to live with that report yeah please um you said earlier that we've already [1:15:58] won in many ways but we haven't won enough what do you consider enough what's your baseline where they're [1:16:03] not going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at [1:16:10] that man and some other people from the administration and say all right we're not going to do it they [1:16:16] were not willing to say that and when steve called up and he said that to me i said well here we go [1:16:23] let's do it the hard way but the hard way i think is probably the easy way when basically i can see that [1:16:29] that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of [1:16:36] developing weaponry that could be used against the united states israel or any of our allies we have [1:16:43] great allies in the middle east great countries that are allies and they were staying out of it until [1:16:49] they got hit someday they'll have to do a story why did he do that why did they do that but they were [1:16:55] going to hit them if i didn't hit them first they were going to hit our allies first i believe [1:17:01] upon information and belief but i believe that he was going to uh he was they were going to take [1:17:09] over the middle east they were looking to take over the middle east now had operation midnight hammer [1:17:16] not taken place that was definite because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of [1:17:22] weeks but that took place that was a setback but look at the number of missiles they were able to buy [1:17:29] and make over the last six months and those missiles were aimed at various countries and when you look [1:17:36] at a thousand over a thousand missiles shot at like uae they were looking to take over the middle east we [1:17:42] got there first lucky i'll tell you what the middle east and those countries very rich countries are very [1:17:47] lucky that i was president instead of somebody else your vice president when it comes to u.s action in iran [1:17:59] i don't think so no no we get along very well on on this he was uh i would say philosophically a little [1:18:05] bit different uh than me i think he was uh maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was [1:18:15] quite enthusiastic but uh i felt it was something we had to do i didn't feel we had a choice if we [1:18:22] didn't do it they would have done it to us i felt based on the negotiations that were being had by [1:18:27] steve whitkoff and jared kushner and marco and pete and everybody was involved i felt that they were [1:18:35] gonna that they were looking to tap us along before they hit and i thought they were gonna hit and if [1:18:39] they hit us first that would have been a very bad thing uh in the back place in the back about the [1:18:52] straight you mean yeah well i'm i want to keep it open i want to keep it good you know it doesn't [1:18:58] pertain to us so much as it does to china a very good evening and over the weekend the united states [1:19:05] military and the israeli defense forces continued operation epic fury very successfully over the [1:19:12] past nine days we've carried out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers [1:19:19] the world has ever seen now you add that up to all of the other things midnight hammer getting rid of [1:19:26] the nuclear threat from iran which was a big moment in history in my opinion and uh the great success [1:19:35] in venezuela and all other places every place we've gone we've had tremendous success but while we're [1:19:43] doing all of these things we're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective [1:19:50] and some people could say they're pretty well complete we've wiped every single force [1:19:55] in iran out very completely most of iran's naval power power has been sunk it's on the bottom of the [1:20:05] 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 [1:20:14] very long and these are fighting vessels they're they're meant to fight but they're not meant to fight [1:20:21] against us we continue to target iran's drone and missile capabilities their drones are way down [1:20:28] their drone manufacturing has been hit starting today we know all of the places they manufacture [1:20:35] the drones and they're being hit one after another their missile capability is down to about 10 percent [1:20:42] maybe less we're also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles we've struck [1:20:49] over 5 000 targets to date some of them very major targets and we've left some of the most important [1:20:55] targets for later in case we need to do it if we hit them it's going to take many years for them to be [1:21:01] rebuilt uh having to do with electricity production and many other things so we're not looking to do that [1:21:09] if we don't have to but they're the kind of things that are very easy to hit but very devastating if [1:21:15] they are hit we are waiting to see what happens before we hit them we could take them all out in [1:21:21] one day but it's all resulting in a 90 percent decline in various things but in particular iranian [1:21:31] missile launchers and 83 drop in drone launchers as you know the drone launchers are are pretty well [1:21:40] shot but we're at over 90 percent decline in the iranian missile launchers which is very hard to [1:21:47] reproduce and very hard to get and usually what we were able to do through great uh equipment a lot [1:21:56] of smart people as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher we were able to knock out that [1:22:02] launcher within a period of five minutes or less accurately right on the noggin so now we have low [1:22:10] cost interceptors effectively combating iranian drones and our b2 bombers recently dropped dozens of 2 000 [1:22:17] pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over iran and buried deep under iranian soil in many cases [1:22:27] the soil was no match and we're also annihilating the manufacturing base that the regime uses to build [1:22:34] drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible we're knocking them out we know where [1:22:40] they all are we're knocking them out very quickly we're ahead of our initial timeline by a lot i would [1:22:46] say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be here in addition to the fact that [1:22:52] we've taken out the leadership uh twice and maybe three times and we as you know we want to be involved [1:23:02] we don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing to do what i'm willing to do for the good [1:23:07] of the world for the good of our nation to be stuck with the situation in five years or 10 years from now [1:23:13] so we think they should put a president in or the head of the country in that's going to be able to [1:23:19] do something peacefully for a change they've been doing this for 47 years killing people for 47 years [1:23:26] whether it's the barracks or even the ss coal where they were involved very strongly they always denied it [1:23:33] but where they were very strongly involved and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs [1:23:39] died and are right now walking around with no legs no arms a face that's been so badly damaged the [1:23:46] iranian regime has been attacking americans and spreading terror for 47 years and despite these [1:23:53] countless opportunities to renounce their nuclear ambitions which they had just a short while ago they [1:24:00] told mr whitkoff who is standing right over here they said uh they actually said we want to keep building [1:24:09] essentially in a real nutshell we want to continue to build nuclear weapons if we didn't knock out [1:24:16] midnight hammer if we didn't knock out their iranian potential if we didn't do that with midnight hammer [1:24:22] they would have had a nuclear weapon they would have used it long before now and at a minimum israel [1:24:27] would have been annihilated i was very lucky that we had the courage to do that that we had the talented [1:24:35] pilots and the great equipment the b2 bombers are unbelievable we ordered 25 more by the way the [1:24:42] newer better version it's uh we have the greatest military in the world we have the greatest equipment [1:24:50] in the world by far you see that no matter where we go you still need the people though to operate it [1:24:56] and to use it and those are the people that we cherish even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites [1:25:03] in operation midnight hammer they never negotiated into good faith they still continued to say we [1:25:09] want to build nuclear we want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable and they even turned down an [1:25:16] offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes we had people offering them free [1:25:25] nuclear fuel they weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon [1:25:30] so instead the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site they [1:25:37] couldn't go back to where they were the three sites that we obliterated but they were starting work at [1:25:43] another site a different site different kind of a site and that was protected by granite they wanted [1:25:50] it protected granite's pretty good but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper they wanted to go a lot [1:25:57] deeper and they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles they were [1:26:04] going to do it all at the same time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even [1:26:09] our homeland the regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to [1:26:16] make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon so as you probably saw they [1:26:23] had a tremendous number of missiles most of which are now being used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully [1:26:32] used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all down what incredible technology [1:26:38] the patriots have been unbelievable and other things and the laser technology that we have now is [1:26:45] incredible it's coming out pretty soon we're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost do [1:26:52] the work of what the patriots are doing or what other things are doing the situation was very quickly [1:26:59] approaching the point of no return and the united states found it intolerable in my opinion based on [1:27:06] what steve and jared and pete and others were telling me marco so involved that i thought that they [1:27:14] were going to attack us i thought they would if we didn't do this at the time we did it i think they [1:27:18] had in mind to attack us and if you notice they did something which was very foolish very stupid [1:27:23] i would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors were largely neutral or at least [1:27:32] weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the reverse effect the neighbors came [1:27:39] onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully if you look at saudi arabia [1:27:47] you look at uae qatar and others but they were strong and they were smart but they got attacked [1:27:56] nobody when i first heard it i said no somebody made a mistake there was no mistake uae had over a [1:28:02] thousand missiles shot at it knocked them almost all down on the very first day i came down the escalator [1:28:09] in 2015 i said quote i will stop iran from getting nuclear weapons and all i'm doing is keeping my [1:28:18] promise think of that that was in 2015 i said it it was a threat then and a much bigger threat now but no [1:28:25] longer a threat not for a long time anyway we want to keep it that way as we continue operation epic [1:28:32] fury we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world and i will not allow a terrorist [1:28:40] regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply and if iran does anything to [1:28:46] do that they'll get hit at a much much harder level i will take out those targets that were easy [1:28:52] and that i mentioned just before we'll take them out so quickly they'll never be able to recover [1:28:58] ever if they want to play that game they better not play that game in the long run oil supplies will [1:29:03] be dramatically more secure without the threat of iranian ships drones missiles nuclear menace or [1:29:12] anything so the strait of hormuz is going to remain safe we have a lot of navy ships there we have [1:29:20] the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines uh again most of their ships are down at the bottom [1:29:27] of the sea but we will uh we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else [1:29:35] helping them to ever recover that section of the world they do anything in recent years the regime and [1:29:42] its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial vessels we're putting an end to all of [1:29:49] this threat once and for all and the result will be lower oil prices oil and gas prices for american [1:29:57] families we've done that we've done it we brought it very low this was just an excursion into something [1:30:03] that had to be done we're getting very close to finishing that too in the meantime during this brief [1:30:08] disruption the united states is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating in the gulf so [1:30:14] we're putting up uh risk insurance we'll uh perhaps go alongside of them for protection we don't think [1:30:22] it'll be necessary if it is and if they do anything the price will be incalculable it will be so great [1:30:32] that they will have wished they never did it because you have to keep the straits flowing with all of [1:30:39] that it affects other countries much more than it does the united states doesn't really affect us we have [1:30:43] we have so much oil we have tremendous oil and gas much more than we need we have venezuela now is our [1:30:50] new partner great partner they've worked out so wonderful we're working with the administration [1:30:57] the president and it's a massive source of oil gas everything but uh we're in a very good position [1:31:09] but very unfair to other parts of the world like china is an example i mean we're doing this [1:31:13] for the other parts of the world including countries like china they get a lot of their [1:31:19] oil through the straits so we're doing this we have a very good relationship with president chi and [1:31:24] china i'm going there in a short period of time and we're protecting the the world from what these [1:31:32] lunatics are trying to do and very successfully i might add we're also waiving certain oil related [1:31:40] sanctions to reduce prices so we have sanctions on some countries we're going to take those sanctions [1:31:46] off till this straightens out then who knows maybe we won't have to put them on there'll be so much [1:31:50] peace but when the time comes the u.s navy and his partners will escort tankers through the straight if [1:31:56] needed i hope it's not going to be needed but if it's needed we'll escort them right through and we [1:32:02] have the greatest mind sweeping ability we have the greatest ships and all of the we know exactly where [1:32:08] their place will get them out of there very fast but we hope we don't have any of that and again if [1:32:13] they do that if they play that game we're going to hit them at a level that that they have not seen [1:32:17] before so we're winning very decisively we're way ahead of schedule uh it's our military is the [1:32:27] greatest in the world with the greatest equipment and the greatest people in the world is nobody's ever [1:32:32] seen anything like it iran's a very powerful country they were going to take over the middle east [1:32:38] if we did not hit them they were going to take over the middle east they had thousands and thousands [1:32:43] since their last hit they had thousands and thousands of missiles and everything else most [1:32:49] are now destroyed but they were going to take over the middle east those weapons were aimed at [1:32:56] middle eastern countries that had nothing to do with this they were going to take over the middle [1:33:01] east and they were going to try and destroy israel so we stopped it with good timing and we're very [1:33:08] proud to be involved in this and it's going to be ended soon and if it starts up again they'll be [1:33:15] they'll be hit even harder uh thank you very much for being here go ahead any questions thank you so [1:33:24] much do you approve of iran's new supreme leader and secondly can you tell us more about your call with [1:33:31] russian president vladimir putin today what did you discuss yes i had a very good call with president [1:33:37] putin we had a lot of people on the line from our side from his side we were talking about ukraine [1:33:43] which is just a never-ending fight and uh when look there's tremendous hatred between president [1:33:51] putin and president zelinski they can't seem to get it together but i think it was a positive call [1:33:57] on that subject and we obviously talked then about the middle east and he wants to be helpful [1:34:04] i said you could be more helpful by getting the ukraine russia war over with that would be more [1:34:10] helpful but we had a very good talk and he wants to be very constructive yeah please yeah please thank [1:34:19] you mr president on iran you called it an excursion you said it would be over soon are you thinking this [1:34:25] week it will be over no but soon days i think so okay and and with respect very soon look everything [1:34:32] they have is gone including their leadership in fact there are two levels of leadership and even actually [1:34:38] as it turns out more than that but two levels of leadership are gone most people have never even [1:34:42] heard about the leaders that they're talking about so uh it's obviously been very very powerful very [1:34:49] effective cuba you said that cuba wants to make a deal yes what would the united states get in return [1:34:57] for that and why should americans trust marco rubio to negotiate it well marco rubio is doing a [1:35:02] great job i think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history [1:35:07] look at what we've done as a as a presidency look at what we've done as an administration [1:35:14] they trust marco and so do the american people trust he's been successful no matter where he's been [1:35:22] he also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's dealing and it may be [1:35:29] a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because they're really in [1:35:33] they're down to uh as they say fumes they have no energy they have no uh money they're in deep trouble [1:35:45] on a humanitarian basis and uh we don't want to see that but they were very very bad to a lot of [1:35:52] people as you know and a lot of people living are the cuban-american vote which i got at record [1:35:58] levels uh very important those people are very important to me i know i know what they went through [1:36:03] they went through hell some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the [1:36:08] country cuban-american business people some of them are like the most successful in the country [1:36:15] and a lot of them are friends of mine because i've been fighting this battle with them for a long time [1:36:19] the castro regime was brutal but they lived off and as well and now they don't live off and [1:36:24] venezuela sends them no energy no fuel no oil no money no nothing they lived without venezuela they [1:36:31] couldn't have made it and we cut them off from everything else so uh yeah we're they're gonna [1:36:37] make either a deal or we'll do it just as easy anyway yeah please go ahead a tomahawk missile likely [1:36:52] destroyed that iranian girl school so will the americans will the u.s accept any responsibility well [1:36:58] i haven't seen it and i will say that the tomahawk which is one of the most powerful weapons around is [1:37:04] used by you know is sold and used by other countries you know that and whether it's iran [1:37:11] who also has some tomahawks they wish they had more but uh whether it's iran or somebody else the [1:37:16] fact that a tomahawk a tomahawk is very generic it's sold to other countries but that's being [1:37:22] investigated right now yeah please thank you uh mr president you've said the war is quote very complete [1:37:31] but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning so which is it and how long should americans be [1:37:37] well i think you could say both the beginning it's the beginning of building a new country [1:37:42] but they certainly they have no navy they have no air force they have no anti-aircraft equipment [1:37:49] it's all been blown up they have no radar they have no telecommunications and they have no leadership [1:37:56] it's all gone so you know you could look at that statement we could we could call it a tremendous [1:38:03] success right now as we leave here i could call it or we could go further and we're going to go further [1:38:09] but uh the big risk on that war has been over for three days we wiped them out the first in the first [1:38:19] two days when you think about it it's incredible we wiped out a big navy very powerful navy you know [1:38:27] these were ships these were serious ships these were ships that you buy when you want to win battles [1:38:31] are all they're all on the bottom floor the sailors are all running off the ships they refuse to get [1:38:37] on the ships uh the air force is gone everything's gone the missiles are down to a trickle the drones [1:38:44] are down to probably 25 percent and they'll be soon be down to nothing we'll have the where they [1:38:50] manufactured the drones are under fire as we speak they're being hit so the rest is going to be a [1:38:58] determination as to my attitude along with the people in the trump administration what we want [1:39:04] to do thank you yeah please can i ask you you mentioned you're going to waive certain additional [1:39:12] oil waivers or sanctions can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular well [1:39:17] we're looking to keep the oil prices down we went artificially up because of this excursion into [1:39:23] a very positive thing i mean this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done [1:39:27] i knew oil prices would go up if i did this and they've gone up probably less than i thought they'd [1:39:33] go up but i don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful this was [1:39:39] a military success the likes of which uh people haven't seen we have the best military we have the [1:39:45] best equipment we have i believe the best generals we have the best and this went very quickly uh [1:39:55] we talked about that with president putin he was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's [1:40:01] ever seen anything quite like it you know iran was a very powerful uh military country a man with all [1:40:07] of the missiles now you had the double attack you had the original attack with us and israel and that [1:40:13] knocked them for a loop then you had the b2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they [1:40:18] would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before [1:40:24] this press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press [1:40:29] conference at all uh but it's been amazing the the military success that we've had is truly unprecedented [1:40:41] you said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece of legislation [1:40:45] until the save america act is passed does that include the confirmation of senator mullen is your next [1:40:50] dhs secretary does that mean a dhs funding bill and senator thune said today it's not a matter of [1:40:56] whether or not your republican colleagues agree with the policy it's about changing the process [1:41:01] in other words getting rid of the filibuster to get so in order to get it you're going to need [1:41:04] democrat votes and what we're saying is the save america not the save act which nobody knew what it [1:41:11] was the save america act the save america act and that's voter id we want voter id when a voter [1:41:19] we want to be able to see a picture of the voter we want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate [1:41:24] we want very importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the united states of america [1:41:34] and we want no in no mail-in ballot scams so we have exceptions for the military for sick for disabled [1:41:43] and for people that are away business trips or whatever even vacations will be very liberal that [1:41:50] we've added two things to it no men and women's sports and no trans gender mutualization of our [1:41:57] children we don't want our the the it's mutualization of our children and we don't want that so we added [1:42:04] those two things that's the five points we have five very good points uh it polls at 86 percent with [1:42:12] democrats think of that the overall vote is 86 percent with republicans it's 98 percent and the only one [1:42:21] opposed to it is a democrat leadership because they cheat they want to cheat so we added those two [1:42:27] points we're going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell now certain things will [1:42:34] happen certain things will take place i'm here to do a great job for the country but we don't have a [1:42:39] country if we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over [1:42:46] the last period of time you know as an example few i mean virtually nobody has like we nobody has a [1:42:57] system of mail-in ballots like we have no other country in the world france went away from it [1:43:03] they all went you know why because it's corrupt and jimmy carter when he had a commission frankly i [1:43:08] think it's probably the best thing jimmy carter did he said you can't have mail-in voting because it's [1:43:14] inherently dishonest and it's turned out to be totally dishonest so we're going to fight for it [1:43:20] yeah activated any sleeper cells inside the u.s there's reports that they have [1:43:28] pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad well we've been they've been trying [1:43:33] for a long time we've been very much on top of it uh one of the things we have to do is get the [1:43:38] democrats to stop the democrats shutdown because as you know the apparatus that looks into that [1:43:45] schumer and the democrats have shut it down which tells you they probably hate our country a lot but [1:43:50] the democrats have to open that up but we've got very very good uh intelligence into that we know a [1:43:56] lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad a lot of them came in during the [1:44:01] biden open border period but we have them under uh we we've got them we've we're watching every single [1:44:10] one of them yeah we know a lot about them the biggest problem we have is the democrat shutdown [1:44:17] we know a lot about them but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do do you have to [1:44:24] take him out does he have a target on his back you mean the new supreme leader you mean the sun how can [1:44:30] there be an iran well i don't want to i don't want to say that but you know i was disappointed because [1:44:36] we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country so i was disappointed to [1:44:40] see their choice thank you thank you sir you've said you have someone in mind to be the new iranian [1:44:48] leadership if not the ayatollah's son what are you looking for in that person are you looking at [1:44:52] someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been i like the idea of you know [1:44:58] internal and eternal come to think of it but i like the idea of internal because it works well i mean [1:45:07] i think we've proven that so far in venezuela we have a woman delcy who has been you know president [1:45:15] of the country very respected very she's doing a great job and it's you know no disruption we had [1:45:21] as you remember iraq everybody got fired the military got fired the police got fired the politicians [1:45:29] got fired there was nobody and you know what they turned into isis and we don't want that we don't want [1:45:36] that so uh i would like to see people that are inside go now they talk about the son of the shah [1:45:44] they talk about other people but you know hasn't been there in many many years uh we have a formula [1:45:51] that's been very good so far and i think it'll continue to be good the relationship is extraordinary [1:45:57] with venezuela smart country and we've taken out a hundred million barrels of oil it's right now [1:46:05] in houston being uh being taken care of and made so beautiful and you have to see this at work [1:46:12] they have uh it's it's brought to the refineries it's being refined in houston which is made exactly [1:46:20] for that product and so far but it's a hundred million barrels of oil and now they have another [1:46:26] hundred million barrels coming and it's like a partnership we're getting along so well with them [1:46:33] it's great for venezuela and it's great for the united states yeah please go ahead hi mr president [1:46:41] you just suggested that iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on [1:46:47] the first day of the war but you're the only person in your government saying this even your defense [1:46:50] secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on saturday [1:46:55] why are you the only person saying this because i just don't know enough about it i think it's [1:47:00] something that i was told is under investigation but tomahawks are are used by others as you know [1:47:07] numerous other nations have tomahawks they buy them from us [1:47:11] but i will certainly whatever the report shows i'm willing to live with that report [1:47:16] yeah please um you said earlier that we've already won in many ways but we haven't won enough [1:47:24] what do you consider enough what's your baseline where they're not going to be starting the following day to [1:47:30] develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and some other people from the administration [1:47:36] and say all right we're not going to do it they were not willing to say that and when steve called [1:47:42] 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 [1:47:48] is probably the easy way when basically i can see that they will no longer have any capacity whatsoever [1:47:55] for a very a very long period of time of developing weaponry that could be used against the united [1:48:03] states israel or any of our allies we have great allies in the middle east great countries that are [1:48:09] allies and they were staying out of it until they got hit someday they'll have to do a story why did he [1:48:15] do that why did they do that but they were going to hit them if i didn't hit them first they were going [1:48:21] to hit our allies first i believe upon information and belief but i believe that he was going to uh [1:48:31] he was they were going to take over the middle east they were looking to take over the middle east [1:48:35] now had operation midnight hammer not taken place that was definite because they would have had a [1:48:44] nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks but that took place that was a setback but look at the number of [1:48:50] missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months and those missiles were aimed at [1:48:57] various countries and when you look at a thousand over a thousand missiles shot at like uae they were [1:49:04] looking to take over the middle east we got there first lucky i'll tell you what the middle east in [1:49:09] those countries very rich countries are very lucky that i was president instead of somebody else vice [1:49:19] president when it comes to u.s action in iran i don't think so no no we get along very well on on this [1:49:26] he was uh i would say philosophically a little bit different uh than me i think he was uh maybe less [1:49:36] enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but uh i felt it was something [1:49:43] we had to do i didn't feel we had a choice if we didn't do it they would have done it to us i felt [1:49:48] based on the negotiations that were being had by steve whitkoff and jared kushner and marco and [1:49:54] pete and everybody was involved i felt that they were gonna that they were looking to tap us along [1:50:00] before they hit and i thought they were gonna hit and if they hit us first that would have been a very [1:50:04] bad thing uh in the back please in the back about the straight you mean yeah well i'm i want to keep [1:50:19] it open i want to keep it good you know it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to china we're on a very [1:50:25] good evening and over the weekend the united states military and the israeli defense forces continued [1:50:32] operation epic fury very successfully over the past nine days we've carried out some of the most [1:50:38] powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen now you add that up to all [1:50:46] of the other things midnight hammer getting rid of the nuclear threat from iran which was a big moment in [1:50:54] history in my opinion and uh the great success we've had in venezuela and all other places every [1:51:01] place we've gone we've had tremendous success but while we're doing all of these things we're achieving [1:51:09] major strides toward completing our military objective and some people could say they're pretty [1:51:16] well complete we've wiped every single force in iran out very completely most of iran's naval power [1:51:25] power power has been sunk it's on the bottom of the sea it's almost 50 ships i was just notified it's 51 [1:51:34] ships i didn't know they had that many didn't last very long and these are fighting vessels they're [1:51:41] they're meant to fight but they're not meant to fight against us we continue to target iran's drone and [1:51:47] missile capabilities their drones are way down their drone manufacturing has been hit starting today [1:51:55] we know all of the places they manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after another [1:52:01] their missile capability is down to about 10 percent maybe less we're also hitting where they make [1:52:08] missiles and where they deliver missiles we've struck over 5 000 targets to date some of them very major [1:52:16] targets and we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it if we hit [1:52:22] them it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt uh having to do with electricity production [1:52:29] and many other things so we're not looking to do that if we don't have to but they're the kind of [1:52:35] things that are very easy to hit but very devastating if they are hit we are waiting to see what happens [1:52:42] before we hit them we could take them all out in one day but it's all resulting in a 90 percent decline and [1:52:50] uh various things but in particular iranian missile launchers and uh 83 drop in drone launchers as you [1:52:59] know the drone launches are are pretty well shot but we're at over 90 percent decline in the iranian [1:53:08] missile launchers which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get and usually what we were able to [1:53:15] do through great uh equipment a lot of smart people as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher we [1:53:24] were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less accurately right on the [1:53:31] noggin so now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating iranian drones and our b2 bombers [1:53:38] recently dropped dozens of 2 000 pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over iran and buried deep [1:53:47] under iranian soil in many cases the soil was no match and we're also annihilating the manufacturing [1:53:55] base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible [1:54:01] we're knocking them out we know where they all are we're knocking them out very quickly we're ahead of [1:54:07] our initial timeline by a lot i would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be [1:54:13] here in addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership uh twice and maybe three times and [1:54:23] we as you know we want to be involved we don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing [1:54:28] to do what i'm willing to do for the good of the world for the good of our nation to be stuck with the [1:54:33] situation in five years or ten years from now so we think they should put a president in or the head of [1:54:40] the country and that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a change they've been [1:54:45] doing this for 47 years killing people for 47 years whether it's the barracks or even the ss coal [1:54:52] where they were involved very strongly they always denied it but where they were very strongly involved [1:54:58] and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no [1:55:05] legs no arms a face that's been so badly damaged the iranian regime has been attacking america [1:55:12] and spreading terror for 47 years and despite these countless opportunities to renounce their [1:55:19] nuclear ambitions which they had just a short while ago they told mr whitkoff who is standing right over [1:55:27] here they said uh they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real nutshell we want to [1:55:35] continue to build nuclear weapons if we didn't knock out midnight hammer if we didn't knock out their iranian [1:55:42] potential if we didn't do that with midnight hammer they would have had a nuclear weapon they would have [1:55:47] used it long before now and at a minimum israel would have been annihilated i was very lucky that we had [1:55:55] the courage to do that that we had the talented pilots and the great equipment the b2 bombers are [1:56:01] unbelievable we ordered 25 more by the way the newer better version it's uh we have the greatest military in the [1:56:12] world we have the greatest equipment in the world by far you see that no matter where we go you still [1:56:17] need the people though to operate it and to use it and those are the people that we cherish even after we [1:56:24] obliterated their key nuclear sites in operation midnight hammer they never negotiated into good [1:56:31] faith they still continued to say we want to build nuclear we want enrichment at levels that were [1:56:37] unacceptable and they even turned down an offer for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian [1:56:44] purposes we had people offering them free nuclear fuel they weren't interested in that because they [1:56:51] wanted to build a nuclear weapon so instead the regime was trying to reconstitute its weapons program [1:56:59] at a different site they couldn't go back to where they were the three sites that we obliterated but [1:57:05] they were starting work at another site a different site different kind of a site and that was protected [1:57:12] by granite they wanted it protected granite's pretty good but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper [1:57:20] they wanted to go a lot deeper and they started the process while rapidly building conventional ballistic [1:57:26] missiles they were going to do it all at the same time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have [1:57:32] reached even our homeland the regime's intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile [1:57:39] threat to make it virtually impossible to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon so as you [1:57:45] probably saw they had a tremendous number of missiles most of which have now been used or destroyed [1:57:54] and very unsuccessfully used because we have been able for the most part to shoot them all down [1:58:00] what incredible technology the patriots have been unbelievable and other things and the laser technology [1:58:07] that we have now is incredible it's coming out pretty soon we're literally lasers will do the work of [1:58:14] at a lot less cost do the work of what the patriots are doing or what other things are doing the situation [1:58:21] was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the united states found it intolerable in my opinion [1:58:29] based on what steve and jared and pete and others were telling me marco so involved that i thought [1:58:37] that they were going to attack us i thought they would if we didn't do this at the time we did it i [1:58:42] think they had in mind to attack us and if you notice they did something which was very foolish very [1:58:46] stupid i would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors were largely neutral or at least [1:58:55] weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the reverse effect the neighbors [1:59:03] came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite successfully if you look at saudi arabia [1:59:11] you look at uae qatar and others but they were strong and they were smart but they got attacked [1:59:19] nobody when i first heard it i said no somebody made a mistake there was no mistake uae had [1:59:25] over a thousand missiles shot at it knocked them almost all down on the very first day i came [1:59:32] down the escalator in 2015 i said quote i will stop iran from getting nuclear weapons and all i'm doing [1:59:40] is keeping my promise think of that that was in 2015 i said it it was a threat then and a much bigger [1:59:47] threat now but no longer a threat not for a long time anyway we want to keep it that way as we continue [1:59:54] operation epic fury we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the world and i will [2:00:02] not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply [2:00:08] and if iran does anything to do that they'll get hit at a much much harder level i will take out those [2:00:14] targets that were easy and that i mentioned just before we'll take them out so quickly they'll never be [2:00:20] able to recover ever if they want to play that game they better not play that game in the long run [2:00:26] oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of iranian ships drones missiles nuclear [2:00:33] menace or anything so the strait of hormuz is going to remain safe we have a lot of navy ships there we [2:00:43] have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines again most of their ships are down at the bottom [2:00:51] of the sea but we will uh we will hit them so hard that it will not be possible for them or anybody else [2:00:58] helping them to ever recover that section of the world they do anything in recent years the regime [2:01:05] and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of commercial vessels we're putting an [2:01:11] end to all of this threat once and for all and the result will be lower oil prices oil and gas prices [2:01:18] for american families we've done that we've done it we brought it very low this was just an excursion [2:01:24] into something that had to be done we're getting very close to finishing that too in the meantime during [2:01:30] this brief disruption the united states is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating in [2:01:36] the gulf so we're putting up uh risk insurance we'll uh perhaps go alongside of them for protection we [2:01:45] don't think it'll be necessary if it is and if they do anything the price will be incalculable it will [2:01:54] be so great that they will have wished they never did it because you have to keep the straits flowing [2:02:02] with all of that it affects other countries much more than it does the united states doesn't really [2:02:06] affect us we have so much oil we have tremendous oil and gas much more than we need we have venezuela now [2:02:14] as our new partner great partner they've worked out so wonderful we're working with the administration [2:02:20] the president and it's a massive source of oil gas everything but uh we're in a very good position [2:02:32] but very unfair to other parts of the world like china is an example i mean we're doing this [2:02:37] for the other parts of the world including countries like china they get a lot of their [2:02:42] oil through the straits so we're doing this we have a very good relationship with president [2:02:47] xi and china i'm going there in a short period of time and we're protecting the the world from [2:02:55] what these lunatics are trying to do and very successfully i might add we're also waiving certain [2:03:02] oil related sanctions to reduce prices so we have sanctions on some countries we're going to [2:03:08] take those sanctions off until this straightens out then who knows maybe we won't have to put [2:03:13] them on there'll be so much peace but when the time comes the u.s navy and his partners will escort [2:03:18] tankers through the straight if needed i hope it's not going to be needed but if it's needed we'll escort [2:03:23] them right through and we have the greatest mind sweeping ability we have the greatest ships and all of [2:03:30] the we know exactly where their place will get them out of there very fast but we hope we don't have any [2:03:35] of that and again if they do that if they play that game we're going to hit them at a level that [2:03:40] that they have not seen before so we're winning very decisively we're way ahead of schedule [2:03:49] it's our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest equipment and the greatest people [2:03:54] in the world there's nobody's ever seen anything like it iran's a very powerful country they were [2:03:59] going to take over the middle east if we did not hit them they were going to take over the middle [2:04:04] east they had thousands and thousands since their last hit they had thousands and thousands of [2:04:10] missiles and everything else most are now destroyed but they were going to take over the middle east [2:04:17] those weapons were aimed at middle eastern countries that had nothing to do with this [2:04:23] they were going to take over the middle east and they were going to try and destroy israel [2:04:27] so we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in this and it's going to be [2:04:34] ended soon and if it starts up again they'll be they'll be hit even harder uh thank you very much [2:04:42] for being here go ahead any questions thank you so much do you approve of iran's new supreme leader [2:04:51] and secondly can you tell us more about your call with russian president vladimir putin today what did [2:04:57] you discuss yes i had a very good call with president putin we had a lot of people on the line from our [2:05:03] side from his side we were talking about ukraine which is just a never-ending fight and when look [2:05:12] there's tremendous hatred between president putin and president zelinski they can't seem to [2:05:17] get it together but i think it was a positive call on that subject and we obviously talked then about [2:05:23] the middle east and he wants to be helpful i said you could be more helpful by getting the ukraine [2:05:32] russia war over with that would be more helpful but we had a very good talk and he wants to be [2:05:37] very constructive yeah please yeah please thank you mr president on iran you called it an excursion [2:05:46] you said it would be over soon are you thinking this week it will be over no but soon days i think so [2:05:51] okay and and with respect very soon look everything they have is gone including their leadership in fact [2:05:58] there are two levels of leadership and even actually as it turns out more than that but two levels of [2:06:03] leadership are gone most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're talking about [2:06:08] so uh it's obviously been very very powerful very effective to cuba you said that cuba wants to make [2:06:17] a deal yes what would the united states get in return for that and why should americans trust marco rubio [2:06:23] to negotiate it well marco rubio is doing a great job i think he's going to go down as the greatest [2:06:28] secretary of state in history look at what we've done as a as a presidency look at what we've done as in [2:06:35] administration uh they trust marco uh and so do the american people trust he's been successful no [2:06:44] matter where he's been he also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's [2:06:50] dealing and it may be a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because [2:06:56] they're really in they're down to uh as they say fumes they have no energy they have no uh money [2:07:06] they're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis and uh we don't want to see that but they were very [2:07:14] very bad to a lot of people as you know and a lot of people living are the cuban american vote which i got [2:07:20] at record levels uh very important those people are very important to me i know i know what they went [2:07:26] through they went through hell some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people [2:07:31] in the country cuban american business people some of them are like the most successful in the country [2:07:38] and a lot of them are friends of mine because i've been fighting this battle with them for a long time [2:07:42] the castro regime was brutal but they lived off and as well and now they don't live off in [2:07:47] venezuela sends them no energy no fuel no oil no money no nothing they lived without venezuela [2:07:54] they couldn't have made it and we cut them off from everything else so uh yeah we're they're going [2:08:00] to make either a deal or we'll do it just as easy anyway yeah please go ahead striking a tomahawk [2:08:14] missile likely destroyed that iranian girl school so will the americans will the u.s accept any [2:08:20] responsibility well i haven't seen it and i will say that the tomahawk which is one of the most [2:08:26] powerful weapons around is used by you know is sold and used by other countries you know that [2:08:32] and whether it's iran who also has some tomahawks they wish they had more but uh whether it's iran or [2:08:39] somebody else the fact that a tomahawk a tomahawk is very generic it's sold to other countries [2:08:44] but that's being investigated right now yeah please thank you uh mr president you've said the war is quote [2:08:54] very complete but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning so which is it and how long [2:08:59] should americans be well i think you could say both the beginning it's the beginning of building a new [2:09:04] country but they certainly they have no navy they have no air force they have no anti-aircraft equipment [2:09:13] it's all been blown up they have no radar they have no telecommunications and they have no leadership [2:09:19] it's all gone so you know you could look at that statement we could we could call it a tremendous [2:09:26] success right now as we leave here i could call it or we could go further and we're going to go further [2:09:33] but uh the big risk on that war has been over for three days we wiped them out the first in the first two [2:09:43] days when you think about it it's incredible we wiped out a big navy very powerful navy you know these [2:09:50] were ships these were serious ships these were ships that you buy when you want to win battles [2:09:55] they're all they're all on the bottom floor the sailors are all running off the ships they refuse to [2:10:00] get on the ships uh the air force is gone everything's gone the missiles are down to a trickle the drones [2:10:07] are down to probably 25 percent and they'll be soon be down to nothing we'll have the where they [2:10:14] manufacture the drones are under fire as we speak they're being hit so the rest is going to be [2:10:21] a determination as to my attitude along with the people in the trump administration what we want [2:10:27] to do thank you yeah please can i ask you you mentioned you were going to waive certain additional [2:10:35] oil waivers or sanctions can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular well [2:10:40] we're looking to keep the oil prices down we went artificially up because of this excursion into [2:10:46] a very positive thing i mean this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done [2:10:51] i knew oil prices would go up if i did this and they've gone up probably less than i thought they'd [2:10:57] go up but i don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful this was [2:11:02] a military success the likes of which uh people haven't seen we have the best military we have the [2:11:09] best equipment we have i believe the best generals we have the best and this went very quickly [2:11:17] uh we talked about that with president putin he was very impressed with what he saw because [2:11:24] nobody's ever seen anything quite like it you know iran was a very powerful uh military country [2:11:30] with all of the missiles now you had the double attack you had the original attack with us and [2:11:35] israel and that knocked him for a loop then you had the b2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability [2:11:41] and they would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it [2:11:46] long before this press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we [2:11:52] had a press conference at all uh but it's been amazing the the military success that we've had [2:11:59] is truly unprecedented you said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign [2:12:08] any piece of legislation until the save america act is passed does that include the confirmation of [2:12:13] senator mullen is your next dhs secretary does that mean a dhs funding bill and senator thune said today [2:12:18] it's not a matter of whether or not your republican colleagues agree with the policy it's about [2:12:23] changing the process in other words getting rid of the filibuster to get so in order to get it you're [2:12:27] going to need democrat votes and what we're saying is the save america not the save act which nobody knew [2:12:34] what it was the save america act the save america act and that's voter id we want voter id when a voter [2:12:43] we want to be able to see a picture of the voter we want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate [2:12:49] we want very importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the united states of america [2:12:57] and we want no in no mail-in ballot scams so we have exceptions for the military for sick for disabled [2:13:06] and for people that are away business trips or whatever even vacations will be very liberal now [2:13:14] we've added two things to it no men and women sports and no trans gender mutilization of our [2:13:20] children we don't want our the it's mutilization of our children and we don't want that so we added [2:13:27] those two things that's the five points we have five very good points uh it polls at 86 percent with [2:13:35] democrats think of that the overall vote is 86 percent with republicans it's 98 percent and the only one [2:13:45] opposed to it is a democrat leadership because they cheat they want to cheat so we added those two points [2:13:51] we're going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell now certain things will happen [2:13:57] certain things will take place i'm here to do a great job for the country but we don't have a [2:14:02] country if we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over [2:14:09] the last period of time you know as an example few i mean virtually nobody has like we nobody has a [2:14:21] system of mail-in ballots like we have no other country in the world france went away from it [2:14:26] they all went you know why because it's corrupt and jimmy carter when he had a commission frankly [2:14:31] i think it's probably the best thing jimmy carter did he said you can't have mail-in voting because [2:14:37] it's inherently dishonest and it's turned out to be totally dishonest so we're going to fight for it [2:14:43] yeah activated any sleeper cells inside the u.s there's reports that they have [2:14:51] pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad well we've been you've been trying [2:14:56] for a long time we've been very much on top of it uh one of the things we have to do is get the [2:15:01] democrats to stop the democrat shutdown because as you know the apparatus that looks into that [2:15:08] schumer and the democrats have shut it down which tells you they probably hate our country a lot [2:15:13] but the democrats have to open that up but we've got very very good intelligence into that we know a [2:15:20] lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad a lot of them came in during the [2:15:25] biden open border period but we have them under uh we we've got them we've we're watching every single [2:15:34] one of them yeah we know a lot about them the biggest problem we have is the democrat shutdown [2:15:40] we know a lot about them but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do do you have to [2:15:48] take him out does he have a target on his back you mean the new supreme leader you mean the sun how can [2:15:53] there be an iran well i don't want to i don't want to say that but you know i was disappointed because [2:15:59] we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country so i was disappointed to [2:16:04] see their choice thank you sir you've said you have someone in mind to be the new iranian leadership [2:16:12] if not the ayatollah's son what are you looking for in that person are you looking at someone internal [2:16:17] given that you just said that their leadership has been i like the idea of you know internal and eternal [2:16:23] come to think of it but i like the idea of internal because it works well i mean i think we've proven that [2:16:31] so far in venezuela we have a woman delcy who has been you know president of the country very respected [2:16:39] very she's doing a great job and it's you know no disruption we had as you remember iraq everybody [2:16:48] got fired the military got fired the police got fired the politicians got fired there was nobody [2:16:55] and you know what they turned into isis and we don't want that we don't want that so uh i would [2:17:02] like to see people that are inside go now they talk about the son of the shah they talk about other [2:17:08] people but you know hasn't been there in many many years uh we have a formula that's been very good [2:17:16] so far and i think it'll continue to be good the relationship is extraordinary with venezuela [2:17:21] smart country and we've taken out a hundred million barrels of oil it's right now in houston being [2:17:29] uh being taken care of and made so beautiful and you have to see this at work they have uh it's [2:17:37] it's brought to the refineries it's being refined in houston which is made exactly for that product [2:17:45] and so far but it's a hundred million barrels of oil and now they have another hundred million [2:17:51] barrels coming and it's like a partnership we're getting along so well with them [2:17:56] it's great for venezuela and it's great for the united states yeah please go ahead hi mr president [2:18:05] you just suggested that iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on [2:18:10] the first day of the war but you're the only person in your government saying this even your defense [2:18:14] secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on saturday [2:18:18] why are you the only person saying this because i just don't know enough about it i think it's [2:18:23] something that i was told is under investigation but tomahawks are are used by others as you know [2:18:31] numerous other nations have tomahawks they buy them from us but i will certainly whatever the [2:18:37] report shows i'm willing to live with that report yeah please um you said earlier that we've already [2:18:44] won in many ways but we haven't won enough what do you consider enough what's your baseline where they're not [2:18:50] going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and [2:18:57] some other people from the administration and say all right we're not going to do it they were not [2:19:03] 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 [2:19:10] the hard way but the hard way i think is probably the easy way when basically i can see that they will [2:19:16] no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that [2:19:24] could be used against the united states israel or any of our allies we have great allies in the middle [2:19:31] east great countries that are allies and they were staying out of it until they got hit someday they'll [2:19:37] 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 [2:19:43] hit them first they were going to hit our allies first i believe upon information and belief but i [2:19:51] believe that he was going to uh he was they were going to take over the middle east they were looking [2:19:57] to take over the middle east now had operation midnight hammer not taken place that was definite [2:20:06] because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks but that took place that was a [2:20:11] setback but look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months [2:20:19] and those missiles were aimed at various countries and when you look at a thousand over a thousand [2:20:25] missiles shot at like uae they were looking to take over the middle east we got there first lucky i'll [2:20:31] tell you what the middle east and those countries very rich countries are very lucky that i was president [2:20:35] instead of somebody else your vice president when it comes to u.s action in iran i don't think so no [2:20:47] no we get along very well on on this he was uh i would say philosophically a little bit different [2:20:54] than me i think he was uh maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but uh i [2:21:05] felt it was something we had to do i didn't feel we had a choice if we didn't do it they would have [2:21:09] done it to us i felt based on the negotiations that were being had by steve whitkoff and jared kushner [2:21:17] and marco and pete and everybody was involved i felt that they were gonna that they were looking [2:21:23] to tap us along before they hit and i thought they were gonna hit and if they hit us first that would [2:21:27] have been a very bad thing uh in the back please in the back about the straight you mean yeah well i'm [2:21:42] i want to keep it open i want to keep it good you know it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to [2:21:47] china a very good evening and over the weekend the united states military and the israeli defense [2:21:54] forces continued operation epic fury very successfully over the past nine days we've carried [2:22:00] out some of the most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen now [2:22:08] you add that up to all of the other things midnight hammer getting rid of the nuclear threat from iran which [2:22:16] was a big moment in history in my opinion and uh the great success we've had in venezuela and all [2:22:23] other places every place we've gone we've had tremendous success but while we're doing all of [2:22:30] these things we're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective and some people [2:22:38] could say they're pretty well complete we've wiped every single force in iran out very completely [2:22:46] most of iran's naval power power has been sunk it's on the bottom of the sea it's almost 50 ships [2:22:55] i was just notified it's 51 ships i didn't know they had that many didn't last very long and these [2:23:02] are fighting vessels they're they're meant to fight but they're not meant to fight against us [2:23:09] we continue to target iran's drone and missile capabilities their drones are way down [2:23:14] their drone manufacturing has been hit starting today we know all of the places they manufacture [2:23:21] the drones and they're being hit one after another their missile capability is down to about 10 percent [2:23:29] maybe less we're also hitting where they make missiles and where they deliver missiles we've struck [2:23:36] over 5 000 targets to date some of them very major targets and we've left some of the most important [2:23:42] targets for later in case we need to do it if we hit them it's going to take many years for them to be [2:23:47] rebuilt having to do with electricity production and many other things so we're not looking to do that [2:23:56] if we don't have to but they're the kind of things that are very easy to hit but very devastating if they [2:24:01] are hit we are waiting to see what happens before we hit them we could take them all out in one day but [2:24:10] it's all resulting in a 90 percent decline in uh various things but in particular iranian missile [2:24:18] launchers and uh 83 percent drop in drone launchers as you know the drone launches are are pretty well [2:24:27] shot but we're at over 90 percent decline in the iranian missile launchers which is very hard to [2:24:34] reproduce and very hard to get and uh usually what we were able to do through great uh equipment [2:24:42] a lot of smart people as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher we were able to knock [2:24:48] out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less accurately right on the noggin so now we [2:24:56] have low-cost interceptors effectively combating iranian drones and our b2 bombers recently dropped [2:25:03] dozens of 2 000 pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over iran and buried deep under [2:25:12] iranian soil in many cases the soil was no match and we're also annihilating the manufacturing base [2:25:19] that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible we're [2:25:24] knocking them out we know where they all are we're knocking them out very quickly we're ahead of our [2:25:30] initial timeline by a lot i would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be here [2:25:38] in addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership uh twice and maybe three times and [2:25:46] we as you know we want to be involved we don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing [2:25:52] to do what i'm willing to do for the good of the world for the good of our nation to be stuck with the [2:25:57] situation in five years or ten years from now so we think they should put a president in or the head of [2:26:03] the country and that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a change they've been [2:26:08] doing this for 47 years killing people for 47 years whether it's the barracks or even the ss coal [2:26:15] where they were involved very strongly they always denied it but where they were very strongly involved [2:26:22] and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no [2:26:28] legs no arms a face that's been so badly damaged the iranian regime has been attacking americans and [2:26:36] spreading terror for 47 years and despite these countless opportunities to renounce their nuclear [2:26:43] ambitions which they had just a short while ago they told mr whitkoff who is standing right over here [2:26:51] they said uh they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real nutshell [2:26:58] we want to continue to build nuclear weapons if we didn't knock out midnight hammer if we didn't [2:27:04] knock out their iranian potential if we didn't do that with midnight hammer they would have had [2:27:09] a nuclear weapon they would have used it long before now and at a minimum israel would have been [2:27:15] annihilated i was very lucky that we had the courage to do that that we had the talented pilots and [2:27:22] the great equipment the b2 bombers are unbelievable we ordered 25 more by the way the newer [2:27:30] better version it's uh we have the greatest military in the world we have the greatest equipment in the [2:27:37] world by far you see that no matter where we go you still need the people though to operate it and to [2:27:43] use it and those are the people that we cherish even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites [2:27:50] in operation midnight hammer they never negotiated into good faith they still continued to say we want to [2:27:56] build nuclear we want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable and they even turned down an offer [2:28:03] for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes we had people offering them free nuclear [2:28:12] fuel they weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon so instead the regime [2:28:18] was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site they couldn't go back to where they [2:28:24] they were the three sites that we obliterated but they were starting work at another site a different [2:28:30] site different kind of a site and that was protected by granite they wanted it protected granite's pretty [2:28:38] good but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper they wanted to go a lot deeper and they started the [2:28:45] process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles they were going to do it all at the same [2:28:51] time that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland the regime's [2:28:59] intention was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible [2:29:05] to prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon so as you probably saw they had a tremendous number of [2:29:12] missiles most of which have now been used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have [2:29:20] been able for the most part to shoot them all down what incredible technology the patriots have been [2:29:26] unbelievable and other things and the laser technology that we have now is incredible it's coming out [2:29:33] pretty soon we're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost do the work of what the patriots [2:29:41] are doing or what other things are doing the situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return [2:29:48] and the united states found it intolerable in my opinion based on what steve and jared and pete and [2:29:56] others were telling me marco so involved that i thought that they were going to attack us i thought they [2:30:02] 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 [2:30:08] they did something which was very foolish very stupid i would say they attacked their neighbors and their [2:30:13] neighbors were largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it [2:30:23] had the reverse effect the neighbors came onto our side and started attacking them and actually quite [2:30:30] successfully if you look at saudi arabia you look at uae qatar and others but they were strong and they [2:30:40] were smart but they got attacked nobody when i first heard it i said no somebody made a mistake there [2:30:46] was no mistake uae had over a thousand missiles shot at it knocked them almost all down on the very [2:30:54] first day i came down the escalator in 2015 i said quote i will stop iran from getting nuclear weapons [2:31:02] and all i'm doing is keeping my promise think of that that was in 2015 i said it it was a threat then [2:31:09] and a much bigger threat now but no longer a threat not for a long time anyway we want to keep it that [2:31:16] way as we continue operation epic fury we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flowing to the [2:31:24] world and i will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's [2:31:30] oil supply and if iran does anything to do that they'll get hit at a much much harder level i will [2:31:37] take out those targets that were easy and that i mentioned just before we'll take them out so quickly [2:31:43] they'll never be able to recover ever if they want to play that game they better not play that game [2:31:48] in the long run oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of iranian ships [2:31:54] drones missiles nuclear menace or anything so the strait of hormuz is going to remain safe we have a lot [2:32:05] of navy ships there we have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines again most of their [2:32:13] ships are down at the bottom of the sea but we will uh we will hit them so hard that it will not be [2:32:20] possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of the world they do [2:32:25] anything in recent years the regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on hundreds of [2:32:32] commercial vessels we're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all and the result will be [2:32:38] lower oil prices oil and gas prices for american families we've done that we've done it we brought [2:32:45] it very low this was just an excursion into something that had to be done we're getting very close to [2:32:52] finishing that too in the meantime during this brief disruption the united states is offering political [2:32:57] risk insurance to any tankers operating in the gulf so we're putting up risk insurance we'll [2:33:03] uh perhaps go alongside of them for protection we don't think it'll be necessary if it is and if they [2:33:12] do anything the price will be incalculable it will be so great that they will have wished they never did [2:33:21] it because you have to keep the straits flowing with all of that it affects other countries much more [2:33:28] than it does the united states doesn't really affect us we have so much oil we have tremendous oil and gas [2:33:33] much more than we need we have venezuela now as our new partner great partner they've worked out so [2:33:41] wonderful we're working with the administration the president and it's a massive source of oil gas [2:33:50] everything but uh we're in a very good position but very unfair to other parts of the world like china [2:33:58] is an example i mean we're doing this for the other parts of the world including countries like china [2:34:03] they get a lot of their oil through the straits so we're doing this we have a very good relationship [2:34:10] with president xi and china i'm going there in a short period of time and we're protecting the the [2:34:16] world from what these lunatics are trying to do and very successfully i might add we're also [2:34:24] waving certain oil related sanctions to reduce prices so we have sanctions on some countries we're [2:34:30] going to take those sanctions off till this straightens out then who knows maybe we won't [2:34:35] have to put them on there'll be so much peace but when the time comes the u.s navy and its partners [2:34:41] will escort tankers through the straight if needed i hope it's not going to be needed but if it's needed [2:34:46] we'll escort them right through and we have the greatest mind sweeping ability we have the greatest [2:34:52] ships and all of the we know exactly where their place will get them out of there very fast but [2:34:57] we hope we don't have any of that and again if they do that if they play that game we're going [2:35:02] to hit them at a level that that they have not seen before so we're winning very decisively we're [2:35:09] way ahead of schedule uh it's our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest equipment [2:35:16] and the greatest people in the world is nobody's ever seen anything like it iran's a very powerful [2:35:22] country they were going to take over the middle east if we did not hit them they were going to take [2:35:27] over the middle east they had thousands and thousands since their last hit they had thousands [2:35:33] and thousands of missiles and everything else most are now destroyed but they were going to take over [2:35:39] the middle east those weapons were aimed at middle eastern countries that had nothing to do with this [2:35:46] they were going to take over the middle east and they were going to try and destroy israel [2:35:51] so we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in this and it's going to be [2:35:57] ended soon and if it starts up again they'll be they'll be hit even harder uh thank you very much [2:36:05] for being here go ahead any questions thank you so much do you approve of iran's new supreme leader [2:36:14] and secondly can you tell us more about your call with russian president vladimir putin today what did [2:36:20] you discuss yes i had a very good call with president putin we had a lot of people on the line from our [2:36:26] side from his side we were talking about ukraine which is just a never-ending fight and when look [2:36:35] there's tremendous hatred between president putin and president zelinski they can't seem to get it [2:36:41] together but i think it was a positive call on that subject and we obviously talked then about the middle [2:36:46] east and he wants to be helpful i said you could be more helpful by getting the ukraine russia war over [2:36:56] with that would be more helpful but we had a very good talk and he wants to be very constructive [2:37:01] yeah please yeah please thank you mr president on iran you called it an excursion you said it would be [2:37:10] over soon are you thinking this week it will be over no but soon days i think so okay and and with respect [2:37:15] very soon look everything they have is gone including their leadership in fact there are two levels of [2:37:23] leadership and even actually as it turns out more than that but two levels of leadership are gone [2:37:28] most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're talking about so uh it's obviously [2:37:34] been very very powerful very effective cuba you said that cuba wants to make a deal what would the united [2:37:42] states get in return for that and why should americans trust marco rubio to negotiate it well marco rubio [2:37:48] is doing a great job i think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in history [2:37:54] look at what we've done as a as a presidency look at what we've done as an administration uh they trust [2:38:02] marco uh and so do the american people trust he's been successful no matter where he's been [2:38:09] he also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's dealing and it may be [2:38:15] a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because they're really in [2:38:20] they're down to uh as they say fumes they have no energy they have no uh money they're deep trouble on [2:38:31] a humanitarian basis and uh we don't want to see that but they were very very bad to a lot of people [2:38:39] as you know and a lot of people living are the cuban american vote which i got at record levels [2:38:45] uh very important those people are very important to me i know i know what they went through they [2:38:50] went through hell some of them have gone on to be some of the most successful people in the country [2:38:55] cuban american business people some of them are like the most successful in the country and a lot of [2:39:02] them are friends of mine because i've been fighting this battle with them for a long time the castro [2:39:06] regime was brutal but they lived off and as well and now they don't live off and venezuela sends [2:39:12] them no energy no fuel no oil no money no nothing they lived without venezuela they couldn't have made [2:39:18] it and we cut them off from everything else so uh yeah we're they're going to make either a deal or [2:39:26] we'll do it just as easy anyway yeah please go ahead a tomahawk missile likely [2:39:39] destroy that iranian girl school so will the americans will the us accept any responsibility [2:39:44] well i haven't seen it and i will say that the tomahawk which is one of the most powerful weapons [2:39:50] around is used by you know is sold and used by other countries you know that and whether it's iran [2:39:57] who also has some tomahawks i wish they had more but uh whether it's iran or somebody else the fact that [2:40:03] a tomahawk a tomahawk is very generic it's sold to other countries but that's being investigated right [2:40:10] now yeah please thank you uh mr president you've said the war is quote very complete but your defense [2:40:19] secretary says this is just the beginning so which is it and how long should americans be well i think [2:40:24] you could say both the beginning it's the beginning of building a new country but they certainly they have [2:40:30] no navy they have no air force they have no anti-aircraft uh equipment it's all been blown up [2:40:37] they have no radar they have no telecommunications and they have no leadership it's all gone so you [2:40:45] know you could look at that statement we could we could call it a tremendous success right now as we [2:40:51] leave here i could call it or we could go further and we're going to go further but uh the big risk on [2:41:01] that war has been over for three days we wiped them out the first in the first two days when you [2:41:07] think about it it's incredible we wiped out a big navy very powerful navy you know these were ships these [2:41:14] were serious ships these were ships that you buy when you want to win battles they're all they're all [2:41:20] on the bottom floor the sailors are all running off their ships they refuse to get on the ships [2:41:26] the air force is gone everything's gone the missiles are down to a trickle the drones are down to [2:41:32] probably 25 percent and they'll be soon be down to nothing we'll have the where they manufactured [2:41:38] the drones are under fire as we speak they're being hit so the rest is going to be determination as to [2:41:47] my attitude along with the people in the trump administration what we want to do thank you [2:41:52] yeah please can i ask you you mentioned you're going to waive certain additional oil [2:41:59] waivers or sanctions can you talk a little bit more about that and address in particular well we're [2:42:03] looking to keep the oil prices down we went artificially up because of this excursion into [2:42:10] a very positive thing i mean this was an excursion that a lot of people wouldn't have done [2:42:14] i knew oil prices would go up if i did this and they've gone up probably less than i thought they'd [2:42:20] go up but i don't think anybody thought we were going to be this quickly successful this was a military [2:42:26] success the likes of which uh people haven't seen we have the best military we have the best equipment [2:42:33] we have i believe the best generals we have the best and this went very quickly uh we talked about [2:42:43] that with president putin he was very impressed with what he saw because nobody's ever seen anything [2:42:49] quite like it you know iran was a very powerful uh military country a man with all of the missiles now [2:42:55] you had the double attack you had the original attack with us and israel and that knocked them [2:43:00] for a loop then you had the b2 bombers which took out their nuclear capability and they would have [2:43:05] had a nuclear weapon within two weeks to four weeks and they would have used it long before this [2:43:10] press conference and we might have had a much different press conference if we had a press conference [2:43:16] at all uh but it's been amazing the the military success that we've had is truly unprecedented [2:43:24] uh you said you've told your congressional colleagues that you will not sign any piece [2:43:31] of legislation until the save america act is passed does that include the confirmation of senator mullen [2:43:37] as your next dhs secretary does that mean a dhs funding bill and senator thune said today it's not a [2:43:42] matter of whether or not your republican colleagues agree with the policy it's about changing the process [2:43:48] in other words getting rid of the filibuster to get so in order to get it you're going to need democrat [2:43:51] votes and what we're saying is the save america not the save act which nobody knew what it was the [2:43:58] save america act the save america act and that's voter id we want voter id when a voter we want to be [2:44:07] able to see a picture of the voter we want to be able to see that the voter is legitimate [2:44:12] we want very importantly confirmation that this voter is a citizen of the united states of america [2:44:20] and we want no in no mail-in ballot scams so we have exceptions for the military for sick for disabled [2:44:29] and for people that are away business trips or whatever even vacations will be very liberal that [2:44:37] we've added two things to it no men and women sports and no trans gender mutilation of our children we [2:44:44] don't want our the the it's mutilation of our children and we don't want that so we added those two [2:44:51] things that's the five points we have five very good points uh it polls at 86 percent with democrats [2:45:01] think of that the overall vote is 86 percent with republicans it's 98 percent and the only one opposed [2:45:08] to it is a democrat leadership because they cheat they want to cheat so we added those two points we're [2:45:15] going for the gold and we're going to have to fight like hell now certain things will happen certain [2:45:21] things will take place i'm here to do a great job for the country but we don't have a country if [2:45:26] we're going to have elections that are so corrupt and so dishonest like we've witnessed over the last [2:45:34] period of time you know as an example few i mean virtually nobody has like we nobody has a system [2:45:45] of mail-in ballots like we have no other country in the world france went away from it [2:45:50] they all went you know why because it's corrupt and jimmy carter when he had a commission frankly [2:45:54] i think it's probably the best thing jimmy carter did he said you can't have mail-in voting because [2:46:00] it's inherently dishonest and it's turned out to be totally dishonest so we're going to fight for it [2:46:07] yeah activated any sleeper cells inside the u.s there's reports that they have [2:46:15] pressed that trigger button to activate those cells at least abroad well we've been [2:46:19] they've been trying for a long time we've been very much on top of it uh one of the things we have [2:46:24] to do is get the democrats to stop the democrat shutdown because as you know the apparatus that [2:46:30] looks into that schumer and the democrats have shut it down which tells you they probably hate our [2:46:36] country a lot but the democrats have to open that up but we've got very very good uh intelligence into [2:46:42] that we know a lot of different things that have happened that have been very bad a lot of them came in [2:46:47] during the biden open border period but we have them under uh we we've got them we've we're watching [2:46:56] every single one of them yeah we know a lot about them the biggest problem we have is the democrat [2:47:03] shutdown we know a lot about them but the shutdown doesn't allow us to do what we have to do you have [2:47:11] to take him out does he have a target on his back you mean the new supreme leader you mean the sun how can [2:47:16] there be an iran well i don't want to i don't want to say that but you know i was disappointed because [2:47:22] we think it's going to lead to just more of the same problem for the country so i was disappointed [2:47:27] to see their choice thank you thank you sir you've said you have someone in mind to be the new iranian [2:47:35] leadership if not the ayatollah's son what are you looking for in that person are you looking at [2:47:39] someone internal given that you just said that their leadership has been i like the idea of you know [2:47:45] internal internal and eternal come to think of it but i like the idea of internal because it works [2:47:53] well i mean i think we've proven that so far in venezuela we have a woman delcy who has been you know [2:48:01] president of the country very respected very she's doing a great job and it's you know no disruption [2:48:07] we had as you remember iraq where everybody got fired the military got fired the police got fired [2:48:14] the politicians got fired there was nobody and you know what they turned into isis and we don't want [2:48:22] that we don't want that so uh i would like to see people that are inside go now they talk about the [2:48:29] son of the shah they talk about other people but you know hasn't been there in many many years [2:48:36] we have a formula that's been very good so far and i think it'll continue to be good the relationship [2:48:42] is extraordinary with venezuela smart country we've taken out a hundred million barrels of oil it's [2:48:50] right now in houston being uh being taken care of and made so beautiful and you have to see this at work [2:48:59] they have uh it's it's brought to the refineries it's being refined in houston which is made exactly [2:49:06] for that product and so far but it's a hundred million barrels of oil and now they have another [2:49:13] hundred million barrels coming and it's like a partnership we're getting along so well with them [2:49:20] it's great for venezuela and it's great for the united states yeah please go ahead mr president [2:49:28] you just suggested that iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on [2:49:33] the first day of the war but you're the only person in your government saying this even your defense [2:49:37] secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked standing over your shoulder on your plane on [2:49:41] saturday why are you the only person saying this because i just don't know enough about it i think [2:49:46] it's something that i was told is under investigation but tomahawks are are used by others as you know [2:49:54] numerous other nations have tomahawks they buy them from us but i will certainly whatever the report [2:50:00] shows i'm willing to live with that report yeah please um you said earlier that we've already won in many [2:50:08] ways but we haven't won enough what do you consider enough what's your baseline where they're not [2:50:13] going to be starting the following day to develop a nuclear weapon where they'll look at that man and [2:50:21] some other people from the administration and say all right we're not going to do it they were not [2:50:26] 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 [2:50:33] the hard way but the hard way i think is probably the easy way when basically i can see that they [2:50:40] will no longer have any capacity whatsoever for a very long period of time of developing weaponry that [2:50:48] could be used against the united states israel or any of our allies we have great allies in the middle [2:50:54] east great countries that are allies and they were staying out of it until they got hit someday they'll [2:51:01] 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 [2:51:06] hit them first they were going to hit our allies first i believe upon information and belief but i [2:51:14] believe that he was going to uh he was they were going to take over the middle east they were looking [2:51:20] to take over the middle east now had operation midnight hammer not taken place that was definite [2:51:30] because they would have had a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks but that took place that was a [2:51:34] setback but look at the number of missiles they were able to buy and make over the last six months [2:51:42] and those missiles were aimed at various countries and when you look at a thousand over a thousand [2:51:48] missiles shot at like uae they were looking to take over the middle east we got there first lucky i'll [2:51:54] tell you what the middle east in those countries very rich countries are very lucky that i was president [2:51:59] instead of somebody else your vice president when it comes to u.s action in iran i don't think so no [2:52:10] no we get along very well on on this he was uh i would say philosophically a little bit different [2:52:17] than me i think he was uh maybe less enthusiastic about going but he was quite enthusiastic but uh i felt [2:52:29] it was something we had to do i didn't feel we had a choice if we didn't do it they would have done it to [2:52:33] us i felt based on the negotiations that were being had by steve woodcoff and jared kushner and marco and [2:52:42] pete and everybody was involved i felt that they were gonna that they were looking to tap us along [2:52:47] before they hit and i thought they were gonna hit and if they hit us first that would have been a very [2:52:51] bad thing uh in the back place in the back about the straight you mean yeah well i'm i want to keep it [2:53:06] open i want to keep it good you know it doesn't pertain to us so much as it does to china what a [2:53:11] very good evening and over the weekend the united states military and the israeli defense forces [2:53:18] continued operation epic fury very successfully over the past nine days we've carried out some of the [2:53:25] most powerful and complex military strikes and maneuvers the world has ever seen now you add that up to [2:53:33] all of the other things midnight hammer getting rid of the nuclear threat from iran which was a big [2:53:40] moment in history in my opinion and the great success we've had in venezuela and all other places [2:53:47] every place we've gone we've had tremendous success but while we're doing all of these things we're [2:53:54] achieving major strides toward completing our military objective and some people could say they're [2:54:02] pretty well complete we've wiped every single force in iran out very completely most of iran's [2:54:10] naval power power has been sunk it's on the bottom of the sea it's almost 50 ships i was just notified [2:54:19] it's 51 ships i didn't know they had that many didn't last very long and these are fighting vessels [2:54:28] they're meant to fight but they're not meant to fight against us we continued to target iran's drone [2:54:34] and missile capabilities their drones are way down their drone manufacturing has been hit starting [2:54:41] today we know all of the places they manufacture the drones and they're being hit one after another [2:54:48] their missile capability is down to about 10 percent maybe less we're also hitting where they make [2:54:55] missiles and where they deliver missiles we've struck over 5 000 targets to date some of them very major [2:55:03] targets and we've left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it if we [2:55:08] hit them it's going to take many years for them to be rebuilt having to do with electricity production and [2:55:17] many other things so we're not looking to do that if we don't have to but they're the kind of things that [2:55:22] are very easy to hit but very devastating if they are hit we are waiting to see what happens before we hit [2:55:29] them we could take them all out in one day but it's all resulting in a 90 percent decline and [2:55:38] various things but in particular iranian missile launchers and 83 percent drop in drone launchers as [2:55:46] you know the drone launches are are pretty well shot but we're at over 90 percent decline in the iranian [2:55:54] missile launchers which is very hard to reproduce and very hard to get and usually what we were able to do [2:56:02] through great uh equipment a lot of smart people as soon as they sent a missile up from a launcher [2:56:10] we were able to knock out that launcher within a period of five minutes or less accurately right on [2:56:17] the noggin so now we have low-cost interceptors effectively combating iranian drones and our b2 [2:56:25] bombers recently dropped dozens of 2 000 pound bombs to destroy missile launchers all over iran and buried deep [2:56:34] under iranian soil in many cases the soil was no match and we're also annihilating the manufacturing [2:56:42] base that the regime uses to build drones and missiles at a rate that nobody thought was possible [2:56:48] we're knocking them out we know where they all are we're knocking them out very quickly we're ahead of [2:56:54] our initial timeline by a lot i would say that we probably would not have thought after a month we'd be [2:57:00] here in addition to the fact that we've taken out the leadership uh twice and maybe three times and [2:57:10] we as you know we want to be involved we don't want another president that maybe wouldn't be willing [2:57:15] to do what i'm willing to do for the good of the world for the good of our nation to be stuck with the [2:57:20] situation in five years or ten years from now so we think they should put a president in or the head [2:57:27] of the country and that's going to be able to do something peacefully for a change they've been [2:57:31] doing this for 47 years killing people for 47 years whether it's the barracks or even the ss coal [2:57:39] where they were involved very strongly they always denied it but where they were very strongly involved [2:57:45] and all of the people that died through the roadside bombs died and are right now walking around with no [2:57:51] legs no arms a face that's been so badly damaged the iranian regime has been attacking [2:57:59] americans and spreading terror for 47 years and despite these countless opportunities to renounce [2:58:05] their nuclear ambitions which they had just a short while ago they told mr whitkoff who is standing right [2:58:13] over here they said uh they actually said we want to keep building essentially in a real nutshell [2:58:21] we want to continue to build nuclear weapons if we didn't knock out midnight hammer if we didn't knock [2:58:27] out their iranian potential if we didn't do that with midnight hammer they would have had a nuclear [2:58:33] weapon they would have used it long before now and at a minimum israel would have been annihilated [2:58:39] i was very lucky that we had the courage to do that that we had the talented pilots and the great [2:58:46] equipment the b2 bombers are unbelievable we ordered 25 more by the way the newer better version [2:58:54] it's uh we have the greatest military in the world we have the greatest equipment in the world by far [2:59:01] you see that no matter where we go you still need the people though to operate it and to use it [2:59:07] and those are the people that we cherish even after we obliterated their key nuclear sites [2:59:13] in operation midnight hammer they never negotiated in good faith they still continued to say we want to [2:59:20] build nuclear we want enrichment at levels that were unacceptable and they even turned down an offer [2:59:27] for unlimited free nuclear fuel forever for civilian purposes we had people offering them free nuclear [2:59:36] fuel they weren't interested in that because they wanted to build a nuclear weapon so instead the regime [2:59:42] was trying to reconstitute its weapons program at a different site they couldn't go back to where they [2:59:49] were the three sites that we obliterated but they were starting work at another site a different [2:59:54] site different kind of a site and that was protected by granite they wanted it protected granite's pretty [3:00:02] good but they wanted it protected by a lot deeper they wanted to go a lot deeper and they started the [3:00:09] process while rapidly building conventional ballistic missiles they were going to do it all at the same time [3:00:15] that threatened our overseas bases and soon could have reached even our homeland the regime's intention [3:00:23] was to use this exponentially growing ballistic missile threat to make it virtually impossible to [3:00:28] prevent them from obtaining a nuclear weapon so as you probably saw they had a tremendous number of [3:00:35] missiles most of which have now been used or destroyed and very unsuccessfully used because we have [3:00:44] been able for the most part to shoot them all down what incredible technology the patriots have been [3:00:50] unbelievable and other things and the laser technology that we have now is incredible it's coming out [3:00:56] pretty soon we're literally lasers will do the work of at a lot less cost do the work of what the patriots [3:01:04] are doing or what other things are doing the situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and [3:01:11] the united states found it intolerable in my opinion based on what steve and jared and pete and others [3:01:20] were telling me marco so involved that i thought that they were going to attack us i thought they would [3:01:25] 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 [3:01:31] something which was very foolish very stupid i would say they attacked their neighbors and their neighbors [3:01:37] were largely neutral or at least weren't going to be involved and they got attacked and it had the [3:01:47] reverse effect the neighbors came on to our side and started attacking them and actually quite [3:01:54] successfully if you look at saudi arabia you look at uae qatar and others but they were strong and they [3:02:03] were smart but they got attacked nobody when i first heard it i said no somebody made a mistake [3:02:09] there was no mistake uae had over a thousand missiles shot at it knocked them almost all down [3:02:16] on the very first day i came down the escalator in 2015 i said quote i will stop iran from getting [3:02:24] nuclear weapons and all i'm doing is keeping my promise think of that that was in 2015 i said it [3:02:32] it was a threat then and a much bigger threat now but no longer a threat not for a long time anyway we [3:02:39] want to keep it that way as we continue operation epic fury we're also focused on keeping energy and [3:02:46] oil flowing to the world and i will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and [3:02:52] attempt to stop the globe's oil supply and if iran does anything to do that they'll get hit at a much [3:02:58] much harder level i will take out those targets that were easy and that i mentioned just before we'll [3:03:05] take them out so quickly they'll never be able to recover ever if they want to play that game [3:03:10] they better not play that game in the long run oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without [3:03:16] the threat of iranian ships drones missiles nuclear menace or anything so the strait of hormuz is going to [3:03:27] remain safe we have a lot of navy ships there we have the best equipment in the world inspecting for mines [3:03:34] uh again most of their ships are down at the bottom of the sea but we will uh we will hit them so hard [3:03:42] that it will not be possible for them or anybody else helping them to ever recover that section of [3:03:48] the world they do anything in recent years the regime and its terror proxies have launched attacks on [3:03:55] hundreds of commercial vessels we're putting an end to all of this threat once and for all and [3:04:01] the result will be lower oil prices oil and gas prices for american families we've done that we've [3:04:08] done it we brought it very low this was just an excursion into something that had to be done we're [3:04:14] getting very close to finishing that too in the meantime during this brief disruption the united [3:04:19] states is offering political risk insurance to any tankers operating in the gulf so we're putting up [3:04:24] uh risk insurance will uh perhaps go alongside of them for protection we don't think it'll be necessary [3:04:34] if it is and if they do anything the price will be incalculable it will be so great that they will [3:04:43] have wished they never did it because you have to keep the straits flowing with all of that it affects [3:04:50] other countries much more than it does the united states doesn't really affect us we have so much oil [3:04:54] we have tremendous oil and gas much more than we need we have venezuela now as our new partner great [3:05:02] partner they've worked out so wonderful we're working with the administration the president [3:05:08] and it's a massive source of oil gas everything but uh we're in a very good position but very unfair to [3:05:20] other parts of the world like china is an example i mean we're doing this for the other parts of [3:05:25] the world including countries like china they get a lot of their oil through the straits so we're [3:05:31] doing this we have a very good relationship with president xi and china i'm going there in a short period [3:05:36] of time and we're protecting the the world from what these lunatics are trying to do and very successfully [3:05:46] i might add we're also waving certain oil related sanctions to reduce prices so we have sanctions on some [3:05:53] countries we're going to take those sanctions off until this straightens out then who knows maybe [3:05:59] we won't have to put them on there'll be so much peace but when the time comes the u.s navy and its [3:06:04] partners will escort tankers through the straight if needed i hope it's not going to be needed but if [3:06:09] it's needed we'll escort them right through and we have the greatest mind sweeping ability we have the [3:06:15] greatest ships and all of the we know exactly where their place will get them out of there very fast but [3:06:21] we hope we don't have any of that and again if they do that if they play that game we're going to [3:06:25] hit them at a level that that they have not seen before so we're winning very decisively we're way [3:06:33] ahead of schedule uh it's our military is the greatest in the world with the greatest equipment [3:06:39] and the greatest people in the world there's nobody's ever seen anything like it iran's a very [3:06:45] powerful country they were going to take over the middle east if we did not hit them they were going to [3:06:50] take over the middle east they had thousands and thousands since their last hit they had thousands [3:06:56] and thousands of missiles and everything else most are now destroyed but they were going to take over [3:07:02] the middle east those weapons were aimed at middle eastern countries that had nothing to do with this [3:07:10] they were going to take over the middle east and they were going to try and destroy israel [3:07:14] so we stopped it with good timing and we're very proud to be involved in this and it's going to be [3:07:21] ended soon and if it starts up again they'll be they'll be hit even harder uh thank you very much [3:07:29] for being here go ahead any questions thank you so much do you approve of iran's new supreme leader [3:07:38] and secondly can you tell us more about your call with russian president vladimir putin today what [3:07:43] did you discuss yes i had a very good call with president putin we had a lot of people on the line [3:07:49] from our side from his side we were talking about ukraine which is just a never-ending fight and [3:07:57] when look there's tremendous hatred between president putin and president zelinski they can't seem to [3:08:04] get it together but i think it was a positive call on that subject and we obviously talked then about the [3:08:10] middle east and he wants to be helpful i said you could be more helpful by getting the ukraine russia war [3:08:19] over with that would be more helpful but we had a very good talk and he wants to be very constructive [3:08:25] yeah please yeah please thank you mr president on iran you called it an excursion you said it would be [3:08:33] over soon are you thinking this week it will be over no days i think so okay and and with respect very [3:08:39] soon look everything they have is gone including their leadership in fact there are two levels of [3:08:46] leadership and even actually as it turns out more than that but two levels of leadership are gone [3:08:51] most people have never even heard about the leaders that they're talking about so uh it's obviously [3:08:57] been very very powerful very effective with cuba you said that cuba wants to make a deal yes what would [3:09:05] the united states get in return for that and why should americans trust marco rubio to negotiate it [3:09:11] well marco rubio is doing a great job i think he's going to go down as the greatest secretary of state in [3:09:16] history look at what we've done as a as a presidency look at what we've done as an administration [3:09:23] uh they trust marco uh and so do the american people trust he's been successful no matter where [3:09:31] he's been he also speaks the language which is always nice and always helpful but he's dealing and [3:09:37] it may be a friendly takeover it may not be a friendly takeover it wouldn't matter because they're [3:09:42] really in they're down to uh as they say fumes they have no energy they have no uh money they're in deep [3:09:54] trouble on a humanitarian basis and uh we don't want to see that