Speaking to reporters yesterday, President Trump was asked for his response to stock market turbulence.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Mr. President, is Elon Musk rubbing off on you?
00:05Is electric, then, the way to go?
00:07It's not that — I'm not — this isn't for electric or gas, because people have their
00:11choices.
00:12I'm just saying that I know people that have these cars.
00:15I know one man — we see him all the time.
00:17He's constantly — he has five of them.
00:20He thinks it's a great — and he was a big guy for Ferraris and other things.
00:24And he says, man, this — it blows him away.
00:27I know other people.
00:28They have three, four.
00:29They love them.
00:30They love them.
00:31And some people like the gas — and they should have their options.
00:33I'm all about options.
00:35But I'm telling you, I ended the electric mandate, and I was waiting for a call.
00:41I said, did Elon call yet?
00:43They said, no, sir.
00:45The next day, what about Elon?
00:46Did he call?
00:47He never even mentioned it to me, never complained.
00:49Until this moment, I'm just bringing it up.
00:52Who would do that?
00:53He has never asked me for a thing.
00:56And he's built this great company, and he shouldn't be penalized because he's a patriot.
01:00He's an incredible patriot.
01:01And I don't even know if he's a Republican.
01:03What's your reaction to the stock market drop today?
01:08I'm not sure if he was.
01:09Are you —
01:10Tesla stock is also —
01:11You're going to have drops, and markets are going to go up, and they're going to go down.
01:14But you know what?
01:15We have to rebuild our country.
01:16Our country has been stripped of its jobs, of its factories.
01:20And I'm tired of seeing where they build apartments — cheap apartments in an old,
01:24broken-down factory.
01:26But you have factories all over the place that are empty, from many decades ago.
01:30And we're going to change it around.
01:31And it's all taxing policy.
01:33You know, it's really a policy — because we have great workers, great people — it's
01:37really a policy of taxing and incentives.
01:42And I'm bringing the incentives back.
01:44And I'll tell you what, numerous plants — and I don't want to mention specifically, but
01:48I'll mention this one — numerous plants in Mexico and other places that were under
01:53construction or soon to be under construction are now coming here, and they've dropped that
01:59because it was unfair what was happening.
02:01Mexico, they were building cars.
02:03They were selling them into the United States with no tax, no nothing.
02:07And in the United States, we were allowing them to take our jobs and take our factories.
02:11And we don't do that anymore.
02:13Now, from a President, it would be a lot easier if I just coasted for another four years.
02:18I would have been an eight-year President.
02:20I had the best economy in history in my first four years.
02:23I would have done very well with this one.
02:26And I had a decision to make.
02:27Do I want to do this or do I not?
02:29Do I want to do it right?
02:31The right thing to do is what we're doing.
02:33We're going to get our jobs back, and we're not going to be laughed at.
02:36Now, I will say this, that already Canada — and I respect very much — as you know,
02:42there's a very strong man in Canada who said he was going to charge a surcharge or a tariff
02:47on electricity coming into our country.
02:51He has called, and he said he's not going to do that.
02:53Okay?
02:54He's not going to do that.
02:55And it would have been a very bad thing if he did.
02:58And he's not going to do that.
02:59So I respect that.
03:00But we were just informed that he's not going to do that.
03:03We've been treated very unfairly by Canada.
03:07We've been treated very unfairly by Mexico.
03:10But we've been treated very unfairly by every country all over the world.
03:13The European Union is horrible, horrible.
03:17And we're going to get it back.
03:19And I have a choice.
03:21We could just coast.
03:22And eventually, there'd be a blow-up down the road, maybe a long way.
03:25But we owe $36 trillion, and we're going to get it back.
03:31We're the biggest.
03:32We're the best.
03:33And I'm very optimistic.
03:34I have to tell you, I'm very optimistic about the country.
03:38Much more optimistic this way than if I did it the easy way.
03:41I could have done it the easy way.
03:43I could have coasted.
03:44Biden left us a mess.
03:46He left us tremendous inflation, tremendously high costs of products.
03:51He left us a mess.
03:52But he also left us a mess with millions of people that poured into our country that are
03:56criminals.
03:57Millions of those people happen to be criminals.
04:00And we're looking for them all over the place.
04:01We're looking for them.
04:02And Homan and Christie are doing an incredible job.
04:06But he left us a horrible situation.
04:09And we're changing it.
04:10But one of the things we're changing is we're going to make our country really wealthy again.
04:14We're going to bring our jobs back.
04:16Right now, we're like a chicken that's being plucked at from all over the world.
04:20We're not going to let that happen anymore.
04:21But very importantly, and I said it, Ukraine, ceasefire, Ukraine, ceasefire.
04:30Just agreed to a little while ago.
04:31Now we have to go to Russia and hope President — hopefully, President Putin will agree
04:35to that also.
04:36And we can get this show on the road.
04:38We can get — we can get this horrible war where 2,000, 3,000 soldiers a week — every
04:43week, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 sometimes.
04:46I get the reports.
04:47And they're not American soldiers.
04:49They're Ukrainian and they're Russian.
04:52But people are being killed outside of that.
04:54People are being killed in the cities as things explode throughout the cities.
04:59And we want to get that war over with.
05:01So I think it's a very big — I think it's a big difference between the last visit you
05:07saw at the Oval Office and this.
05:09So that's a total ceasefire.
05:12Ukraine has agreed to it.
05:13And hopefully, Russia will agree to it.
05:16We're going to meet with them later on today and tomorrow.
05:19And hopefully, we'll be able to wipe out a deal.
05:22But I think the ceasefire is very important.
05:23If we can get Russia to do it, that'll be great.
05:26If we can't, we just keep going on and people are going to get killed.
05:29Lots of people.
05:30Mr. President —
05:31Is Zelensky invited back to the White House?
05:32Sure.
05:33Absolutely.