US President Trump Clashes with Journalists During First White House Media Briefing
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00:00A nice country, by the way, comes in from Canada, and it comes all the way through California,
00:11and they're restricting it.
00:12You even have the half pipes, you know, the half pipes, the cut pipes, big ones, bigger
00:16than this room, and they go all the way down, and they're bone dry, and they could be loaded
00:22up with water.
00:23No, but isn't it incredible that they don't do it?
00:27It's to protect the Delta smelt.
00:29It's a fish that's doing poorly anyway, but I said, how are you protecting the Delta smelt
00:34by not giving it water?
00:35It's a fish.
00:36It needs water.
00:38Nobody can answer that question.
00:39Well, let me do this first.
00:43Are you open to Elon buying TikTok?
00:48I would be if he wanted to buy it, yeah.
00:51I'd like Larry to buy it, too.
00:53I have the right to make a deal.
00:56So the deal I'm thinking about, Larry, let's negotiate in front of the media.
01:00The deal, I think, is this, and I've met with owners of TikTok, the big owners.
01:07It's worthless if it doesn't get a permit.
01:10It's not like, you can take the US.
01:12The whole thing is worthless.
01:14With a permit, it's worth like a trillion dollars.
01:18So what I'm thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States
01:24of America, half, and we'll give you the permit.
01:26And they'll have a great partner, the United States, and they'll have something that's
01:30actually more valuable because they have the ultimate partner, and the United States will
01:35make it very worthwhile for them in terms of the permits and everything else.
01:39So think of it.
01:40You have an asset that has no value or has a trillion dollar value.
01:45It all depends on whether or not the United States gives the permit.
01:48So what I'm saying is, let the United States give the permit, and the United States should
01:53get half.
01:54It sounds reasonable.
01:56What do you think?
01:57Sounds like a good deal to me, Mr. President.
02:00He can afford it, too.
02:01Mr. President, you're a president who has long said that you back the blue, but aren't
02:06you sending the message that assaulting officers is okay with these permits?
02:12No, the opposite.
02:13In fact, I'm gonna be letting two officers from Washington Police, DC, I believe that
02:23they're from DC, but I just approved it.
02:26They were arrested, put in jail for five years because they went after an illegal, and I
02:32guess something happened where something went wrong, and they arrested the two officers
02:38to put them in jail for going after a criminal, a rough criminal, by the way.
02:42And I'm actually releasing, no, I am the friend of police more than any president that's ever
02:49been in this office.
02:50More than 400 of the people that you pardoned, though, assaulted officers.
02:53So I wanna ask you about the vice president, J.D. Vance, he said, if, this is a week ago,
02:58he said, if you committed violence on January 6th, obviously you should not be pardoned.
03:03Why is your vice president wrong?
03:04Well, only for one reason.
03:07They've served years in jail.
03:09They should not have served, excuse me, and they've served years in jail, and murderers
03:16don't even go to jail in this country.
03:18And we had 1,500, we have 16 under review, as you know, we commuted about 16 of them
03:24because it looks like they could've done things that were not acceptable for a full pardon.
03:31But these people have served years of jail, their lives have been ruined, and in many,
03:36listen to me for a second, stop interrupting.
03:39They've served years in jail, and if you look at the American public, the American public
03:45is tired of it.
03:46Take a look at the election, just look at the numbers on the election.
03:50We won this election in a landslide because the American public is tired of people like
03:55you that are just one-sided, horrible people in terms of crime.
04:00You don't talk about all the people that have been killed and what happens to those murderers.
04:07Murderers get no time.
04:08You take a look at some of these DAs, they go after political opponents, but they don't
04:12go after people that shoot people in the street.
04:16They're caught, they know where they're living, they know everything.
04:18They don't even go up to pick them up anymore.
04:20They just let them live there.
04:22They know all about it.
04:23They have their pictures.
04:24They have the tape of the shooting, and they don't even go up and you're talking about
04:28this.
04:29No, we pardoned people that were treated unbelievably poorly.
04:35In the history of our country, there's never been anything take place like this.
04:39They're still looking for them, but they're not looking for the murderers, the people
04:42that are killing everybody.
04:44We are, though, and we're getting them out of the country.
04:47We just started that.
04:48We're getting them out of the country, and they're gonna be gotten out of the country
04:51first.
04:52They came in illegally, from jails and from prisons.
04:54They killed many people.
04:56Some of them killed many people.
04:58About 50% of them killed more than one person.
05:01They were released into our country.
05:04That's what we're focused on, not the kind of nonsense you're talking about.
05:07You've called for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
05:10If Vladimir Putin doesn't come to the table to negotiate with you, will you put additional
05:15sanctions on Russia?
05:16Sounds likely.
05:17And do you think that the war should be frozen currently along with-
05:21The war should have never started.
05:22If you had a competent president, which you didn't, the war wouldn't have happened.
05:26The war in Ukraine would have never happened if I were president.
05:30But that couldn't happen because the election was rigged.
05:32Yeah, go ahead.
05:33Mr. President, there's been some debate within your orbit over whether or not to keep or
05:37eliminate H-1B visas.
05:39What's your position on that?
05:40Do you want to keep H-1Bs or do you want to get rid of them?
05:43I like both sides of the argument, but I also like very competent people coming into our
05:48country, even if that involves them training and helping other people that may not have
05:53the qualifications they do.
05:55But I don't want to stop.
05:56And I'm not just talking about engineers.
05:58I'm talking about people at all levels.
06:00We want competent people coming into our country.
06:03And HB1, I know the program very well.
06:05I use the program.
06:07Matridees, wine experts, even waiters, high quality waiters.
06:16You got to get the best people.
06:18Now then you go into people like Larry and he needs engineers and Masa needs and this
06:23gentleman needs engineers like nobody's ever needed engineers, right?
06:27So we have to have the quality people coming in.
06:29Now by doing that, we're expanding businesses and that takes care of everybody.
06:36So I'm sort of on both sides of the argument, but what I really do feel is that we have
06:39to let really competent people, great people come into our country and we do that through
06:45the H-1 program.
06:46Mr. President, are you going to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico in an effort to force
06:51negotiations sooner on USMCA?
06:53No, it's really not on USMCA, it has nothing to do with that.
07:00They've allowed, both of them, Canada very much so.
07:04They've allowed millions and millions of people to come into our country that shouldn't
07:07be here.
07:08They could have stopped them and they didn't and they've killed 300,000 people last year,
07:14my opinion, have been destroyed by drugs, by fentanyl.
07:20The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive.
07:23The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive and people are getting killed and families
07:29are being destroyed.
07:30I mean, the son gets killed and the family is a basket case for the rest of their lives.
07:35I mean, I've seen mothers that thought they'd heal.
07:39They never heal.
07:40They say it gets worse with time, it gets worse with time.
07:43They lose their boy, they lose their baby, they lose their young daughter to fentanyl
07:48poisoning.
07:50And I had that talk with President Xi the other day too of China, I said, we don't want
07:54that crap in our country.
07:56We gotta stop it.
07:57I would have stopped it.
07:58I had a deal with him where he was going to give the maximum penalty, which in China is
08:05the death penalty for drug dealing.
08:08And he was all set.
08:09He was gonna give the maximum penalty to fentanyl dealers.
08:12If they send to the United States, they were gonna get the death penalty.
08:16And of course, Biden didn't pick that up.
08:17I had that deal all done.
08:19It was all wrapped up.
08:20We're gonna have it done.
08:22And then the election went, let's put it nicely, didn't go the proper way.
08:29I'm trying to be nice about it.
08:30It was rigged.
08:31And we had an incompetent president elected, and he never followed up on that deal.
08:35But he should have followed up, because if they got the death penalty, they wouldn't
08:39be sending fentanyl to Mexico, Canada, and other places.
08:42We're thinking about that too.
08:46We're talking about a tariff of 10% on China based on the fact that they're sending fentanyl
08:51to Mexico and Canada.
08:53How soon on those tariffs?
08:58Probably February 1st is the date we're looking at.
09:02For Mexico and China, we're talking about approximately 25%.
09:07Do you have an update on the Gaza ceasefire, and are you planning to travel to the Middle
09:12East soon?
09:13We're thinking about going to the Middle East, not yet.
09:16We have a thing called the hostages are coming back going on right now, and they are coming
09:21back.
09:23Some of them have been very damaged.
09:25You look at the young lady with her hand practically blown off.
09:31You know how that happened, right?
09:32Did you know how that happened?
09:33When you find out, you're not gonna be too happy, because it was terrible.
09:38But the hostages are starting to come back.
09:41If I weren't here, they wouldn't be back ever.
09:46They would have never come back.
09:47They would have all died.
09:48If this were done a year earlier, if Biden would have done this deal a year and a half,
09:53two years ago, or frankly, it should have never happened.
09:57October 7th should have never happened.
09:59Nobody should be dead.
10:01But through weakness, they allowed it to happen, and then it was a disaster from them.
10:05But you go back just six months ago, many of these young people were living.
10:10Young people don't die like that.
10:12They're just dying.
10:13And young people aren't dying at 22 and 23 years old.
10:17They don't die.
10:19But now they're dying, and you wonder why they're dying.
10:21They're being killed, and they have been killed.
10:25But they say six months ago, you would have had 11 more living hostages.
10:30Think of that, six months ago.
10:32But Biden couldn't get it done, and it was only the imposition that I put on as a deadline
10:39that got it done.
10:40But it's a very sad situation.
10:43It should have never happened.
10:44I'll tell you, two things should have never happened.
10:46Three things.
10:48It should have never happened.
10:49It would have never happened except for what they did to energy and their crazy spending.
10:53And Ukraine would have never happened, never.
10:57By the way, Russia never would have gone into Ukraine.
11:00I had a very strong understanding with Putin that it would have never, ever happened.
11:05He disrespected Biden, very simple.
11:08He disrespects people.
11:09He's smart, he understands, he disrespected Biden.
11:14And also, the Middle East would have never happened because Iran was broke.
11:18They had no money.
11:19They had no money for Hamas.
11:21They had no money for Hezbollah.
11:23It would have never happened.
11:24October 7th would have never happened.
11:26But it did happen.
11:27So this is the cards I've been given.
11:30And we're getting the hostages back.
11:31That would have never happened under Biden.
11:33They would have never come back.
11:34They were just dying, not that slowly.
11:37They were dying or being killed.
11:40But that was what was happening.
11:42Are you going to keep sending weapons to Ukraine, or are you going to turn off the tap soon?
11:47Well, we'll look into that.
11:49We're talking to Zelensky.
11:51We're going to be talking with President Putin very soon.
11:54And we'll see how it all happens.
11:56We're going to look at it very soon.
11:57One thing I do feel, the European Union should be paying a lot more than they're paying.
12:02Because under Biden, I mean, we're in there for $200 billion more.
12:06Now it affects them more than it affects us.
12:08We have an ocean in between, right?
12:10There's a little thing called an ocean.
12:12The European Union should equalize.
12:15We're in there for $200 billion more than the European Union.
12:19I mean, what are we, stupid?
12:21I guess the answer is yes, because they must think so.
12:25But the European Union takes advantage of us tremendously on trade.
12:30And they now take advantage of, and always have.
12:32If I didn't get involved years ago, my first term, one of the first things I noticed was
12:38that they're not paying enough.
12:41And a lot of those countries weren't even paying, the NATO countries, they weren't paying.
12:44Only seven out of 28 were paying.
12:47We were one of them.
12:49And Poland was one.
12:50And they had a few of them that were paying, and some were paying very proudly.
12:54Usually the closer to the borderline of Russia they were, the faster they paid, okay?
13:01The ones that were further away tended not to pay so fast.
13:04And one thing on that, I think they should lift their number not to 2%, but to 5%.
13:09NATO should be at 5%, not at 2%.
13:122% is ridiculous.
13:13Yeah.
13:14You asked President Xi in your conversation about Ukraine, you asked him to get involved
13:19in helping settle that.
13:20Can you tell us about that?
13:21I did, yeah.
13:22I said, you ought to get it settled, because he's not done very much on that.
13:26He's got a lot of power, like we have a lot of power.
13:30I said, you ought to get it settled.
13:31We did discuss it.
13:32Yeah?
13:33Mr. President, you launched your crypto coin the other day.
13:34Do you intend to continue selling products that benefit yourself personally while you're
13:40Well, I don't know if it benefited.
13:41I don't know where it is.
13:42I don't know much about it, other than I launched it, I heard it was very successful.
13:46I haven't checked it.
13:47Where is it today?
13:48You made a lot of money, sir.
13:51How much?
13:52I mean, several billion dollars, it seems like, in the last several days.
13:57Several billion?
13:58That's peanuts for these guys.
13:59So are you talking about the letter from President Biden?
14:00Can you give us some sense, broadly speaking?
14:01Yeah, he wrote me a nice letter.
14:02I mean, I did open it last night.
14:08And I didn't know Peter said, did you get the letter?
14:12I said, wait a minute, let's see the letter.
14:13It's sort of a tradition.
14:14You put it in the drawer, especially of the beautiful Resolute Desk, right?
14:19And I opened the drawer and there it was, it said to number 47.
14:24And it was a very nice letter.
14:25I mean, I could show it because I think it was a nice letter.
14:27Maybe I will.
14:28I think it's just basically, it was a little bit of an inspirational type letter, you know,
14:39do a good job, important, very important, how important the job is.
14:43But I may, I think it was a nice letter.
14:46I think I should let people see it because it was a positive for him in writing it.
14:51I appreciated the letter.
14:52Mr. President, were security concerns at all a factor when deciding to move your inauguration
14:53into Lourdes?
14:54No, not at all.
14:55No, not at all.
14:56It was just cold.
14:57Look, if we would have, you know, I just went out to the helicopter, right, to, to, you
14:59said goodbye.
15:00That's a tradition.
15:01As long as helicopter, before it used to be a stagecoach and then helicopters came along,
15:02but that's been a tradition.
15:03You go out and you do that.
15:04And we stood there for 10 minutes and I'll tell you what, people would not have been
15:05able to get through that day.
15:06That was cold.
15:07It was sort of interesting.
15:08Don't let the sun fool you.
15:09Don't let the sun fool you.
15:10Don't let the sun fool you.
15:11Don't let the sun fool you.
15:12Don't let the sun fool you.
15:13Don't let the sun fool you.
15:14Don't let the sun fool you.
15:15Don't let the sun fool you.
15:16Don't let the sun fool you.
15:17Don't let the sun fool you.
15:18Don't let the sun fool you.
15:19Don't let the sun fool you.
15:20Don't let the sun fool you.
15:21Don't let the sun fool you.
15:22Don't let the sun fool you.
15:23Don't let the sun fool you.
15:24Don't let the sun fool you.
15:25Don't let the sun fool you.
15:26Don't let the sun fool you.
15:27Don't let the sun fool you.
15:28Don't let the sun fool you.
15:29Don't let the sun fool you.
15:30Don't let the sun fool you.
15:31Don't let the sun fool you.
15:32Don't let the sun fool you.
15:33Don't let the sun fool you.
15:34Don't let the sun fool you.
15:35Don't let the sun fool you.
15:36Don't let the sun fool you.
15:37Don't let the sun fool you.
15:38Don't let the sun fool you.
15:39Don't let the sun fool you.
15:40Don't let the sun fool you.
15:41Don't let the sun fool you.
15:42The rotunda was beautiful, 72 degrees, unbelievable sound.
15:51It's like being in an opera house.
15:55I could see people wanting to do it there rather than outside.
15:58Why did you remove John Bolton's security clearance, sir?
16:03I think there was enough time.
16:06We take a job.
16:08You take a job, you want to do a job, we're not going to have security on people for the
16:11rest of their lives.
16:13Why should we?
16:14I thought he was a very dumb person, but I used him well because every time people saw
16:19me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me, they thought that he'd attack them
16:25because he was a warmonger.
16:28He's the one that got us involved along with Cheney and a couple of others, convinced Bush,
16:32which was a terrible decision, to blow up the Middle East.
16:35We blew up the Middle East and we left.
16:39We got nothing out of it except a lot of death.
16:41We killed a lot of people.
16:44And John Bolton was one of those guys, a stupid guy.
16:47But no, you can't have that for life.
16:49You shouldn't expect it for life.
16:51Will that take place here and when and where will you meet with President Zelensky?
16:57I don't know.
16:58I mean, look, President Zelensky would like to have peace.
17:01He's told me that very strongly, he'd like to have peace, but it takes two to tango.
17:05We'll see what happens.
17:06When will you meet with President Putin?
17:07Anytime they want, I'll meet.
17:09I'd like to see that end.
17:10Millions of people are being killed and they're being killed.
17:13It's a vicious situation and they're now largely soldiers.
17:17A lot of people have been killed in the cities.
17:20They look like demolition sites, buildings, massive buildings bombed and coming down.
17:26The thing with Ukraine is that many more people died than you're reporting.
17:29You're not reporting the real numbers and I'm not blaming you for that.
17:33I'm blaming maybe our government for not wanting to release those numbers.
17:37Many more people died than what you know about.
17:41When those big buildings come down and they say two people were injured, no, no.
17:45Many people, thousands of people are being killed.
17:47But the people, the real killing now is on the war front.
17:51It's a very flat land.
17:52And the only thing that stops a bullet is somebody's body.
17:56And you have young soldiers, so Russia's lost about 800,000 soldiers now.
18:01Ukraine's lost about 600 or 700,000.
18:04I think the numbers are low that they're giving out.
18:07But they've lost massive numbers of young soldiers.
18:13And that war should stop.
18:15It's very flat.
18:16You know, it's beautiful farmland and it's flat and really beautiful in a different kind
18:22of way, but they don't have any protection.
18:24The only thing that stops a bullet is a body.
18:27And those bodies are stopping a lot of bullets and they're getting, they're being decimated,
18:31both sides.
18:33Your conversation with President Xi, what did you tell him in terms of when to expect
18:37tariffs?
18:38And what can he do to avoid?
18:40About which one?
18:41Tariffs.
18:42About tariffs?
18:43We didn't talk too much about tariffs, other than he knows where I stand.
18:46Look, I put large tariffs on China.
18:48I've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars.
18:52Until I was president, China never paid not 10 cents to the United States.
18:59With me, they paid hundreds of $600 billion or so or more, more than that even, of tariffs.
19:07And if I didn't do that, you wouldn't have a steel mill open in the United States right
19:12now.
19:13You wouldn't have one steel mill open in the United States.
19:16So what I did is I saved the steel industry.
19:18I saved other industries too with other tariffs.
19:25Other countries are big abusers also.
19:27You know, it's not just China.
19:29China's an abuser, but the European Union is very, very bad to us.
19:35They treat us very, very badly.
19:37They don't take our cars.
19:39They don't take our cars at all.
19:40They don't take our farm products, essentially.
19:43They don't take very much.
19:44We have a $350 billion deficit with the European Union.
19:48They treat us very, very badly.
19:50So they're going to be in for tariffs.
19:52It's the only way you're going to get back.
19:56It's the only way you're going to get fairness.
19:59You can't get fairness unless you do that.
20:01But the European Union's treated us very badly.
20:03But essentially, everybody treats us badly.
20:07Everybody treats us badly.
20:08Yes, go ahead.
20:10Because we allow them to.
20:12Because we've had stupid people doing this and we can't have, I'd like to have these
20:16three people negotiate for us.
20:19Just for one week, and we'd be a rich country again.
20:21But we'll be rich.
20:22Mr. President, on AI data centers, will you rescind President Biden's executive order
20:28that opens up federal lands?
20:29On which centers?
20:30On data centers.
20:31Will you rescind President Biden's executive order that opens up federal lands for data
20:36centers and energy production?
20:38No, I wouldn't do that.
20:39That sounds to me like it's something that I would like.
20:41I'd like to see federal lands opened up for data centers.
20:43I think they're going to be very important.
20:45Again, we have a lot of competition for that.
20:47So it's an honor to have these three great people, great, great CEOs and great geniuses,
20:54all three.
20:55It's an honor that they want to come to our country, but we're going to make it as easy
20:59as we can for them because other countries want them to.
21:02I'm going to have to go now.
21:03Thank you all very much.
21:05Do you have TikTok on your phone?
21:06No, but I think I might put it there.
21:07I think I'll get it right now.
21:08By the way, again, we won the young vote.
21:09I think I won it through TikTok.
21:10So I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, okay?
21:19Thank you, Mr. President.