Trump: Thank you very much. It’s a very important day for many reasons. We’ve had a lot of important days lately, but this is a meeting and a group of people that are doing an unbelievable job in a thing called crime—and in particular, violent crime.
Today, we’re going to be discussing it. And, uh, I watched as a very incompetent mayor from Chicago said, “Well, what do they know? They only arrested nine people.” I said, “Nine people? We didn’t arrest nine people. We actually arrested a total of well over a thousand people. We took hundreds of guns away from young kids that were throwing them around like it was candy. We apprehended scores of illegal aliens. We seized dozens of illegal firearms. There have been zero murders.”
It sounds sort of terrible to say. It’s embarrassing. I did this over the weekend. I’m making a speech, and I acted like I was so proud as I said, “We’ve had zero murders in the last week.” And some of these people were from foreign countries. They said, “That doesn’t sound so good.” And I said, “Well, it doesn’t sound good, but Washington was the most dangerous place in this country. And now, you know what? It’s probably the safest place in our country. Everyone’s starting to come here. The restaurants now—you can’t get in. Many of them closed because they couldn’t open with crime.”
Everybody before me is happy with what I’m doing. Most of you won’t say that because you’re radical left. The newspapers are so dishonest. The press is totally dishonest. But that’s all right. We’ve gotten used to it. And we won in a landslide. So, they obviously lost their power.
I mean, it’s impossible to imagine that when you get 97% negative stories—purposely negative stories—even though you’ve done 97% positive things, that you could win an election in a landslide, winning all seven. Think of it: all seven swing states, winning the popular vote by millions of votes. We had a fantastic—the best this year—out of 3,000 districts. I guess we won 3,500. We won 2,750, and they won 500.
And that’s, to me, the best of all. We had tremendous success in every way in the election. And it’s hard to believe you can do that when you have a corrupt media. But many of you are corrupt, and there’s nothing we can do about it. But we keep winning, and we’re going to keep winning.
So this whole story on crime is incredible—that the Democrats wouldn’t be with us. So, the mayor of Chicago, I watched him this morning. He said, “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He only apprehended nine people.”
Well, number one, that’s false. Literally, it’s thousands. We’ll get into that. But more importantly than anything, we took guns away. We have some of the worst career professionals out of the country already. They’ve been taken out of the country and some are in solid confinement because these were killers. We arrested some very bad people.
And in the last 11 days—again, I hate to say it because it sounds so ridiculous—but in the last 11 days, we’ve had no murders. And that’s the first time that’s taken place in years. Actually, years. We always have a murder a week. They call it a “murder a week.” You come here from Iowa, you come here from Indiana, you come here from Idaho—because you’re so proud of your country, you love your country—and then you get murdered. Your son gets murdered. Your daughter gets murdered. You get murdered.
See, the media—you get murdered. Many of you have been mugged in Washington; you just don’t want to talk about it. And I know that every time I do this with you, you almost… for everything. But every time I do this with you, you people are saying to yourselves, “He’s right. He’s right.” And then you write a negative story.
But we are doing an incredible job. The people behind me are amazing. We’re working very well with the Washington police. As you know, the D.C. National Guard is unbelievable. We’re also getting tremendous help from the Secret Service, and we are at a point where Washington is booming again.
People are pouring in like we haven’t seen for years. Nobody wanted to come here. They didn’t want to come here and get murdered.
I have a friend of mine who has a very successful son. And I said, “Where is your son going to be this weekend?” He said, “He’s going to Washington with his friends.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah. He’s wanted to do it for four years, but he couldn’t do it because it was so unsafe. And he’s a tough kid, too. It’s so unsafe.”
And he ended up staying three nights, going out to restaurants all three nights. He said it was so beautiful, so peaceful—because all the criminals are either arrested or they’re hiding. And we’re finding the ones that are hiding.
So, I want to thank Pam Bondi. I want to thank our Vice President. I want to thank everybody standing behind me because they are really… Gaddy, you’ve been unbelievable, by the way. They have done an unbelievable job. They’re working 24 hours a day. And Washington, D.C., is now in great shape.
I’m going to be working with Clark Construction—which is by far your biggest construction company—and we’re going to also beautify Washington. We’re going to rip down the broken medians, fix them. We’re going to put asphalt on the roads. We’re not ripping them apart like these stupid people do. They rip a road down to the dirt, and then they spend five years building the new one, and then it starts settling.
You know, the whole thing is so crazy. And they’ll spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a road. I’ll spend about $2 and it’ll look better. So, we’re going to be replacing medians. We’re going to be replacing much of the asphalt in the city, which is in bad shape. We have great stripers. We have great contractors. But we have to let them do the thing.
Congress had said that they’ll give us whatever money is needed to fix up the capital. This is the capital, and we’re not going to spend a lot. It’s going to go fast and it will be spotless. And we want it spotless for the World Cup and for the Olympics.
You saw the World Cup was here the other day and—come to think of it—there’s your trophy for the World Cup. In fact, it’s solid gold. That’s actually solid gold. So heavy that some of the people in this room wouldn’t be able to lift it up.
I think what I’m going to do is place it right above the angel, right over there. That’s solid gold too. We’re going to put it right up there. Look at that—there’s a solid gold trophy. They know how to get to me. You know, I like the angel better, to be honest with you.
So, we’re going to start signing and then we’ll take a few questions, and we’ll tell you how good a job we’re doing. We want to go from here to other places. But I was telling some of the people that in a certain way, you really want to be asked to go. You know, I hate to barge in on a city and then be treated horribly by corrupt politicians and bad politicians.
Like a guy like Pritzker—he has to spend more time in the gym. Actually, the guy is a disaster. Gavin Newsom’s a disaster. When we went, we saved Los Angeles. You wouldn’t have been able to have the Olympics in Los Angeles. You’re barely able to have it now.
They did lose 25,000 houses to a fire that should have never occurred—because they didn’t let the water come down from the Pacific Northwest, which you guys don’t want to write about. I had to break into the water supply to let the water down. And even now, we want more. We can have much more. It’s less than half of what should be coming in.
I don’t know. They have a political thing about it. It’s like the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. But I don’t like going to a town, city, place, a state, and then being criticized by some corrupt or incompetent governor where crime is rampant.
Take a look at D.C. Crime was rampant. It was at the all-time worst. It got really bad during the Biden four years. And then I have a mayor stand up and say how crime has reached a 30-year low—30-year low! People are being killed left and right, and it’s not a 30-year low. Think of it.
So for 11 days, there have been no murders. The record goes back years where that’s happened. They haven’t seen that happen in years. And then people stand up and instead of thanking us—which they should do—and she’s not that bad, she’s better than most. But you have people… I watched in Illinois. Chicago—Illinois is a disaster.
I have property there. It’s a disaster. What’s going on in Chicago? And you get Pritzker. He’s violating our rights. I think this is another men-and-women’s-sports thing. I think this is one of those—you know, they call them 80-20 issues. I call them 97-3.
I think the Democrats better get smart. And politically, I hope they don’t. But actually, in terms of love for the country, I hope they do, because it would be good to work together.
So I’m thinking about… you know, when I have some slob like Pritzker criticizing us before we even go there—I made the statement that next should be Chicago. Because as you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now. And they don’t acknowledge it. And they say we don’t need him. “Freedom, freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator.”
A lot of people are saying, “Maybe we like a dictator.” I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense, and I’m a smart person. And when I see what’s happening to our cities, and then you send in troops, instead of being praised, they’re saying, “You’re trying to take over the republic.”
These people are sick. But I’m really saying—and I say this to all of you—in a certain way, we should wait to be asked. Because they have cities that are so out of control.
So we go in and fix it. They take the full credit for it, and they go out and say—I heard it this morning—they’re saying how well they’ve done over the last 10-day period, that they set record lows. They don’t say that we’re there with very tough people, by the way.
They have to pass a toughness test, otherwise they’re not working for us. And we’re allowed to do that now, according to the United States Supreme Court decision. Now, they have to pass a toughness test. If they’re not tough, we don’t want them for this job. They might be great for other jobs, but not for this job—because they’re respected.
You saw the gang of kids. They were all huddled up, and a group of soldiers walked up. They never even got over. Those kids ran back to their homes or wherever the hell they came from. They were gone.
This is one of the safest cities right now in the world—as crazy as that sounds. And it took seven days. Took really three days, but we’re now in our 11th day.
So I want to thank you.
So, we had all of these things: 439 illegal alien criminals have been removed. We have six known gang members—the worst leaders of gangs anywhere in the country, MS-13 and Tren—dealt with. Two missing children have been recovered. They thought they were gone. We brought them back to the family. The family started crying; they couldn’t believe that they saw their child again.
Forty-nine homeless encampments have been removed. Like, we have the head of South Korea coming in in a little while—the president. And he drives down the street. Already his people have told me, he said, “What happened? It’s so clean. We always came here; it was filthy, dirty, with homeless and papers all over the road.”
That’s the other thing: those roads are swept immaculate. But they’re going to be much better in a few months, when we put a topping on them. They’re going to look like they’re brand new. We’ll get rid of those rusty old medians that have been crashed into a thousand times. And they don’t fix them. They just lay them down on the road, and they sit there for months. But we don’t do that.
We don’t run things like that. We run things like we run this—we like clean, we like beautiful, we like safe. And that’s what we’re getting.
So, I’ll start signing the executive orders. To me, they’re a very, very big deal.
One of the executive orders has to do with cashless bail. That was when the big crime in this country started. And I can tell you who did it and when—but I don’t want to do that because others followed pretty quickly. But that was when it happened.
Somebody kills somebody, they go in. Don’t worry about it. No cash. Come back in a couple of months. We’ll give you a trial. You never see the person again. I mean, they kill people and they get out—cashless bail. They thought it was discriminatory to make people put up money, because they just killed three people lying on a street—any street, all over the country.
Cashless bail. We’re ending it. But we’re starting by ending it in D.C., and that we have the right to do through federalization.
Okay, let’s go. Could I ask you to say exactly what this is?
Official: Of course. So, as you’ve consistently identified, sir, cashless bail policies are a key driver of the disorder we see on city streets all over America. The catch-and-release system allows criminals to keep going back out onto the street and reoffending.
What this executive order does: it charges your Attorney General with identifying jurisdictions all over the country that have cashless bail policies. And then it withholds or revokes federal funds and grants that are flowing to those jurisdictions, to ensure that we’re only supporting the people who have reasonable, common-sense policies around crime.
Trump: So what area does it cover?
Official: Potentially anywhere that has a cashless bail policy. So, some of the largest cities, some of the most left-wing states in America. Right? Illinois would be a great example of that, sir.
Trump: Oh, they have a great cashless bail. You don’t even have to go to court sometimes. No, Illinois—I love that state. It’s a great state, but it’s run so badly by Pritzker. They threw him out of the family business and he becomes governor. Now he wants to run for president. I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Okay, we’ll sign right here. Right, sir. So important.
This isn’t Republican, Democrat. This is—and, by the way, most Democrats agree with this. But this is just—we’ve got to bring our country back. Okay, that’s a big one.
Official: Also, on the issue of cashless bail, sir, this is a D.C.-specific executive order. In addition to the measures that we’re taking that are quite similar to what we’re doing around the country, in D.C. in particular, the objective is holding as many criminal defendants in federal custody and subjecting them to federal charges as possible. That means that they’ll be held pre-trial in federal jail as opposed to just being cut back out on the streets due to a cashless bail policy.
Trump: Okay. Do we have the room? And by the way, the prison they have in D.C. is horrible. It’s horrible. People were subjected to live in that dog trap for so long, so unfairly. I have stories—you’ll be hearing about them. That prison is horrible.
Official: This is an executive order that contains a number of additional measures relating to crime and law enforcement in Washington, D.C. It charges, for example, your Secretary of Defense with establishing specialized units in both the D.C. National Guard and National Guard units around the country, specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues.
It charges all of your various federal law enforcement agencies with hiring additional personnel to allow them to surge personnel to Washington, D.C., to deal with the current emergency here. It does a number of other things in that space, and it also asks the Attorney General to look at D.C. Metropolitan Police general orders that have currently impeded law enforcement efforts in the city and to potentially look at unwinding those that are stopping the police from doing their job effectively.
Trump: And are we going to ask this to be codified by Congress, all of these things?
Official: I think we could potentially. Yes, sir.
Trump: I think so. I think we should. I think we’ll get it. I think Democrats will vote. Well, it’s hard to believe that they might not, but I think Democrats will actually vote for this.
Trump: Lastly, sir, this is an executive order on flag burning. Would you listen to this? This is very important. Flag burning all over the country. They’re burning flags all over the world. They burn the American flag.
And, as you know, through a very sad court decision—I guess it was a five-to-four decision—they called it freedom of speech. But there’s another reason, which is perhaps much more important. It’s called death. Because what happens when you burn a flag is the area goes crazy.
If you have hundreds of people, they go crazy. You can do other things—you can burn this piece of paper, you can… But when you burn the American flag, it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before. People go crazy in a way—both ways. There are some that are going crazy for doing it. There are others that are angry, angry about them doing it.
Do you want to discuss that?
Official: Sure. What the executive order does, sir, it charges your Department of Justice with investigating instances of flag burning. And then, where there’s evidence of criminal activity—where prosecution wouldn’t fall afoul of the First Amendment—it instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute those who are engaged in these instances of flag burning.
Trump: And what the penalty is going to be—if you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail. If you burn a flag, you get… And what it does is incite to riot. I hope they use that language, by the way. Did they? “Incitement.” Incite to riot.
And you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. You don’t get ten years. You don’t get one month. You get one year in jail. And it goes on your record. And you will see flag burning stopping immediately.
Just like when I signed the statute and monument act—ten years in jail if you hurt any of our beautiful monuments—everybody left town. They were gone. Never had a problem after that. It’s pretty amazing. We stopped it.
But this is something that’s… I don’t know. In a certain way, it’s equally as important. Some people would say it’s more important, because the people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on by people that are, in many cases, paid agitators.
They’re paid by the radical left to do it. You talk to these people—they don’t even know. Half of them don’t even know what they’re doing. They say, “I don’t know. They gave me money to do this. I see the same things that you do. They’re bad people. They’re trying to destroy our nation.”
That’s not working—because I think our nation now is the most respected nation anywhere in the world by far.
You saw that with the European leaders on Friday. You saw that with NATO, where they agreed to go from 2%—no pay—to 5% fully paid up. Trillions of dollars paid. Where they respect your president to a level that they jokingly call me the President of Europe. They call me the President of Europe, which is an honor.
I like Europe, and I like those people. They’re good people. They’re great leaders. And we’ve never had a case where seven plus—really 28, essentially 35, 38 countries—were represented here the other day. Thirty-eight European and other countries were represented. And it was a great meeting.
But your country is respected again. I say it all the time: one year ago, our country was dead. Everybody said it. We had a dead country. We were not going to survive. Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
So it’s an honor to be involved. And this group has a lot to do with it, right behind me.
Does anybody behind me have anything? Pam, would you like to say something?
Pam Bondi: Sure, President. Thank you for keeping D.C. safe. You know, just a couple examples—a mother, a single mom, whose house was burglarized and the defendant got out on cashless bail. He went back the next night and burglarized her house again. That’s why this is so important.
A man got in a fight with another guy. He had a gun. He was let out. Next night, he got up, went back, and killed him. So that’s why it’s so important, President, what you’re doing. And thank you. And thank you for protecting the American flag. And we’ll do that without running afoul of the First Amendment as well.
Trump: And President, I think Terry Cole—excuse me, I think Gady Serralta—had something. He wanted to give you, on behalf of all the law enforcement who are out there every single day…
Gady Serralta: President, thank you for putting me in charge of this surge as the Director of the United States Marshals Service. It’s the oldest law enforcement agency. It was created in 1789. So, on behalf of all the federal law enforcement agencies that we’re working with, and those that have yet to join the team, we thought it was only appropriate to present you with an honorary United States Marshals Service badge.
And this badge comes with this little item right here, which is a handcuff key, Mr. President, because you continue through your policies and your efforts with your staff to un-handcuff law enforcement officers all over this nation. And I can tell you personally that they thank you for that.
Trump: Thank you. That’s beautiful. You can continue un-handcuffing law enforcement. That’s a very great honor. I’ll save that and put it someplace up, which is important. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Really nice. Thank you. That’s very nice. Thank you.
Well, we love those people. They’re brave and they love our country, and they don’t want to see it destroyed. Do you know how many people volunteered for this job?
Trump: And before I ask the VP to say a few words—because he feels very strongly about it—I think it’s very important, Pam, that when we do this, a state requires that they come and ask us. I mean, I see Pritzker saying, “We don’t want them.” In the meantime, the city is being shot to hell. And they do that politically.
If we didn’t go to Los Angeles, you would literally have had to call off the Olympics. It was so bad. And the sheriff and the law enforcement people—the sheriff said, and he came out very strongly, he said, “If we didn’t have these people, we were not able to control it.” Now, four days later, after we had it totally under control, he changes it a little bit. “Well, I think we could have done it.”
You know, they were dead if we didn’t send in the troops. Los Angeles was dead. The Olympics was gone. The World Cup was gone. Everything was gone. We did a great job. And Newsom—he’s an incompetent governor. But I think people should want us to be there, because otherwise all they’ll do is complain as we do our job.
So, we’ll have to think about that.
Okay. We go in—like in Washington—we go in, and the people that are here that have been doing… I don’t want to say terrible, because she’s a nice woman, I guess. I don’t care if she’s nice, you know. I really don’t care. I’d rather have her be horrible but do the job.
But we come into Washington, and we have the 11 best days they’ve had here in two centuries. I mean, they’ve never seen anything like it. Let’s go two decades. In over 20 years, they haven’t seen anything like what happened. And now they’re out there saying, “We don’t have crime in Washington.” Well, that’s true—for 11 days you don’t have crime. But before that, everybody was getting hit and mugged.
And you people could not walk to your office without security. That’s how unsafe it was.
So, I think we should really let them have their city—let their city go to hell—and when they come and beg us to help, we’ll decide. The only problem is, we want to save it for the people—because the people want us there. The people here, 95% of the people here want us. The real people. Not the people you find on… I don’t know where you find these people.
You have one person with a broken nose. “Where’d you get it?” Well, I was mugged. “Good. Do you want to see Trump here?” “No, I don’t want…” Woman has a broken nose, she got mugged, but she’s saying she doesn’t want any protection. It’s all made up. Fake news. It’s just fake news.
Anyway, would you say a couple of words, please? And then I’m going to ask JD to say something. You have done an unbelievable job in a short period of time.
Official: Thank you, Mr. President. Highly recommended by you-know-who, right?
Trump: Yes, sir. You want to say his name?
Official: Governor Youngkin. Yes, sir. We stole you from Governor Youngkin. He called me. He called me—Glenn Youngkin called—and he said, “I have somebody who’s really fantastic.” And based on that recommendation, here you are, and you’ve done a fantastic job. I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
Trump: JD, please.
JD Vance: Yes, sir. Well, thanks, Mr. President. Thanks to the incredible team here.
You know, I want to echo something the president said—where you say there haven’t been murders in a couple of weeks in D.C., and it doesn’t sound good. But then you talk to local law enforcement. And I didn’t realize this—that this town averaged one murder every other day for the last 20, 30 years. Which means that in two short weeks, the president and the team have saved six or seven lives.
People who would have been killed on the streets of D.C. are now living, breathing, spending time with their families—because the president had the willpower to say, “No more. We’re not going to give the streets of D.C. over to vagrants and robbers and murderers.”
And the last point I want to make, sir, to your point about wanting people to welcome us—to ask us—because look at Governor Pritzker in Illinois, or Governor Newsom in Los Angeles, or Governor Moore in Maryland. They are angrier about the fact that the president of the United States is offering to help them get their crime under control than they are about the fact that murderers are running roughshod over their cities—and have been for decades.
Why are Democrat governors angrier about federal law enforcement helping clean up their streets than they are about the fact that those streets need to be cleaned up to begin with? It shows a real sickness in the head.
And I agree with the president of the United States. I think most Democrats—rank-and-file—nobody likes crime. Republicans don’t like crime. Democrats don’t like crime. Independents don’t like crime. Why are Democratic governors doing everything in their power to make crime easier to do in their cities? It doesn’t make an ounce of sense to me.
But Mr. President, I appreciate you being willing to help. And I hope these governors take you up on the offer—because we should clean up all of America’s streets. It’s the right of every American to live in safety and comfort in their community.
Trump: And we’ve got the people to do it. They’re signing up like they’ve never signed up before. Our military—as you know during the campaign—nobody was signing up. We were way short of their goal. Short of their—we were understaffed. Nobody wanted to be in the military. Nobody wanted to be a policeman. Nobody wanted to be a fireman.
They didn’t want anything to do with the country. We had an incompetent—grossly incompetent—president who frankly should not have been there. He should have never been there. The damage he did to this country is incalculable.
So much of our effort is getting murderers and jailbirds and drug dealers out of this country. So much of the energy of people that he led was wasted. It was an unforced error—but I don’t think they think it was an error. It was the radical lunatics that surrounded this guy at this desk. Some of them were brilliant people, but with the wrong philosophy. Brilliant but evil people. And they’re going to be brought down, because they really hurt our country.
But we’re getting it back very quickly. And I’ll tell you something—our country now is stronger. I think we’re more respected than we’ve been respected in a hundred years. It’s a whole different ballgame.
Trump: JD, could I ask you—you gave a stat on murders here. What were the numbers? You said in a short period of time, how many people were murdered?
JD Vance: Local law enforcement told me, sir, that in the past 20 or 30 years, D.C. has averaged a murder every other day. That’s, you know, 200 murders a year—150, 250—but about every other day, a person has been killed on the streets of Washington, D.C.
We’ve been doing this for two weeks—zero people killed. That’s real lives saved that the media, and frankly the entire Democratic Party, should be saying, “Thank you for saving lives,” instead of attacking the president of the United States for doing so.
Trump: You know, when a person—unfortunately, it will probably happen at some point—when a person is murdered in D.C., it’s going to be the biggest story maybe in history. “Somebody was murdered in D.C. Trump is failing.”
No, we’re not failing. We have a safe city. This is maybe the safest city in America right now—that’s how good it is. And it would be nice to be appreciated. These people eventually—they’re going to have to be appreciated for what they’re doing.
Trump: Steve Miller, please say a few words.
Stephen Miller: Thank you, sir. First of all, to follow up on what the vice president said—no police officer working in the city can remember a time in their lives when there have been no murders. You can work at the police department for 20 years, 30 years, your whole life. We’ve checked the records—no one can even find a record of being murder-free for as long as we’ve been murder-free under President Trump’s leadership.
Additionally—and the president spoke about this before—we’ve uncovered, in the process of uncovering, a massive scandal in Washington, D.C., with the doctoring of crime stats. And the Department of Justice, under the Attorney General, is leading the effort to uncover this. When we ultimately share the results, it will stun you.
The extent to which—even though D.C. had the worst crime in America, honestly measured—it dramatically understated how bad it was. There are even accusations that murders and homicides were reported as accidents instead of murders. That’s how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in this city. And it will all be uncovered and brought to light.
I’ve had a chance to spend some time, as everyone here has, with the police officers in the city. Members of the public are going up to them and thanking them—just overflowing with gratitude. Because for the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets. People can walk freely at night without having to worry about being robbed or mugged.
They’re wearing their watches again. They’re wearing jewelry again. They’re carrying purses again. People had changed their whole lives in this city for fear of being murdered, mugged, and carjacked. It is a literal statement that President Trump has freed 700,000 people in this city who were living under the rule of criminals and thugs.
And the last thing I’ll say is that under the efforts of Terry to my left, and many here, what they found also is that the street criminals here in Washington, D.C., were doing business directly with the transnational criminal cartels and foreign terrorist organizations.
So not only was the city being run by these criminal thugs, but they were working with some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on the planet to traffic weapons and drugs into this city. And what we are uncovering every day is shocking to us, and we look forward to sharing all the results with you.
But President Trump, your leadership has uncovered some of the greatest public safety scandals of our lifetime. And now, because of you, people are safe and free for the first time ever in the city.
Trump: Thank you very much, Steve. You know, in Los Angeles—Beverly Hills is a great place. I have a house there. I had a house there. I used to spend a lot of time there. Great place.
Do you know that I have friends—they leave their trunk open on their car because they know they’re going to be vandalized. They don’t want the trunk ripped off in order for criminals to steal what’s in the back. They leave the doors open so, when they go in to steal the radio or whatever, they don’t rip off the door.
They leave the doors totally open so the criminals, when they go and open the door, don’t have to break the windows and destroy the car in order to steal whatever they’re looking for. That’s at a level nobody’s ever seen before. Nobody lives like that.
I have another friend—he has a garage, and in order to save his garage door, he leaves it open so people can just walk into his garage, take whatever they want, and leave.
But all the cars—so many cars. I’ve been told this by many people—stars, big people. They leave their doors open so the doors aren’t destroyed by these criminals all over Los Angeles. This is taking place. And you know that. I mean, you’ve heard that.
Trump: Kristi, could you say a few words, please?
Kristi Noem: Sure. Well, Mr. President, I think one of the most impactful statistics that you used today was of the thousand arrests that have happened already so far, 439 of them were illegal criminals—which means they never should have been in this country to begin with.
They were in this country because they invaded over our southern border, or our northern border, or maritime seas—and then they committed crimes against the American people. So by getting those individuals incarcerated, we’ve stopped those violent crimes from happening here in this city.
And sir, exactly like Stephen was talking about, they have ties to cartels, they have networks across this country and other cities. So what you’re doing here is going to have a ripple effect in Miami, in Chicago, in other cities—because you’re grabbing those networks and giving us targeting information to go and get more criminals across this country.
So thank you for the work that you’re doing.
We have ICE, CBP, Federal Protective Services, Secret Service, HSI—all of our officers are working with all the other agencies every day here in D.C., and they’re so proud to have this kind of partnership. They’re so glad that you’re letting them do their jobs again.
And I don’t know if you’ve heard, sir, but the recruitment campaign for ICE—when we were going to hire 10,000 new officers—we got over 130,000 people that applied. They raised their hands and said they want to work with ICE. So no matter what the fake news says, or what the media says about ICE not having support—they’ve got incredible support from the American people. People want to join them and help them do what they’re doing to make America safe again.
Trump: I was going to say that. Our recruitment drive—it was dead during the campaign. They couldn’t get anyone. Every story was, “The Army can’t fill up, the Marines can’t fill up.” None of them could fill up. They were way behind.
We couldn’t get anybody to go into the military. Couldn’t get any police. And now, we have just set records. Everybody wants to be in. Everybody wants to go in. And we’re taking incredible people. The level of—because of the Supreme Court—it’s based on merit. It’s all based on merit now.
It’s not based on anything else. You need strong people, you’ve got to get strong people. It’s all based on merit. But we’re setting records in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the Coast Guard—and one of my favorites, because I created it: Space Force. We’re very proud of Space Force. It’s amazing what it’s doing.
We’re leading in space now. China was killing us. Russia was beating us. China was killing us. We are now leading in space by a lot—because of Space Force. So we’re very proud.
Trump: You’re doing a good job. Thank you, sir. You’re stopping a lot of wars—just the presence, we’re stopping them. We’ve stopped seven wars. And really, the number is actually ten. We’re not including a couple. And we’re not including what we did with Iran, stopping their nuclear play.
They would have had—within a month or two—they would have had a nice, big nuclear weapon to use. That’s not going to happen. That won’t happen.
Pete Hegseth: Yes, sir. Well, Mr. President, thank you very much for your leadership. And the Defense Department is proud to be a part of this task force—just like we have been down at the southwest border, where crossings are at zero.
We’ve got national defense areas where we’re working with Border Patrol to secure the southern border for the American people. Just like Los Angeles—where ICE officers deserve to do their job without being attacked—we’re really proud to be a part of defending the nation’s capital and ensuring it is safe and beautiful, working with law enforcement.
And Mr. President, let me tell you, the morale of the troops—getting out there, talking to them—they love this mission. They’re grateful to be doing it. Whether they’re D.C. National Guard or other state National Guards, and at your direction, sir.
It’s just common sense to make sure they’re armed as well. So we’re rolling out, ensuring they’re armed and capable of defending themselves and others if need be, supporting law enforcement. And we’re proud to be there, sir.
Trump: Well, look at the mission you just accomplished with Iran. Thirty-six hours back and forth—flawless. Every bomb hit its target. They went right down those chutes. Dark at night. No moon, no nothing. Every target, every bomb went right down.
They had a chute that goes deep into the mountain. They shouldn’t have put ventilation in—I can tell you, because we used that to our advantage.
We had the pilots, and even the people that took care of the planes. We had a whole group of people at the White House a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t realize this, but they said—we gave them beautiful medals. I’ll show you the medal. Gave them a medal just like this. See? Just like that. They were so happy.
It was an incredible job.
You know, we had 52 tankers. People don’t realize that—so they could refuel. We had many fighter jets—F-22s and F-35s. We had many. It was an amazing operation. Flawless.
Compare that to the operation when they went in with the helicopters crashing and everyone running around the desert, and the prisoners being taken. That was Jimmy Carter—and what a horrible thing. This was the exact opposite. The Taliban runs a tough operation in Afghanistan. And I think it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country—that was Biden.
I was leaving, and we would have left through strength—tremendous strength. We would have kept Bagram, which is the air base. One of the largest runways in the world. One of the most powerful. You can land anything on it. Many feet thick. You don’t build them that way anymore. You can’t.
But we left it. And now China is occupying that air base. This was the most incompetent administration in history—the Biden administration. And you’re just lucky that they lost. Because if they had won, you wouldn’t have a country anymore.
And so, Pete, you started off by saying “the Department of Defense.” And somehow it didn’t sound good to me. You know, it didn’t sound good. Defense. What are we defending? Why are we defense?
It used to be called the Department of War. And it had a stronger sound. And as you know, we won World War I. We won World War II. We won everything. Now we have a Department of Defense—with defenders.
I don’t know—if you people standing behind me take a little vote—if you want to change it back to what it was when we used to win wars all the time, that’s okay with me.
All right, that’s common. You go—you let me know if you want to do it. I think Department of War—it just sounded better. He said, “Sir, on behalf of the Department of Defense…” Defense. I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too.
So you’ll make a decision. But you know, as Department of War, we won everything. And I think we’re going to have to go back to that.
Trump: In the meantime, I’ve stopped all of these wars. I’ve stopped them. The big one would have been India and Pakistan. But we stopped them all. We stopped three wars—go to Africa.
They like to say, “Oh, you know, let me tell you, I love Black people.” And I did great with the vote with Black people. But they say, “He’s a racist. He’s a racist.” I said, “Really?”
For 35 years, a war raged between Rwanda and the Republic of the Congo. It was a vicious war. Nine million people were killed—largely with machetes, hatchets, machetes. That went on for 30, more than 30 years—34, 35 years. And I stopped it.
In fact, the presidents are coming in a week or two to sign—we have the foreign ministers, it’s all signed. The war stopped. I got it stopped. Saved a lot of lives.
The Congo. That’s deep into deepest, darkest Africa. I got that war stopped. Nobody else could have done that.
We did a lot of jobs. We stopped a lot of wars that nobody thought could even be possible.
Trump: And I’ll tell you what—the war with India and Pakistan, that was the next level. That was going to be a nuclear war. They already shot down seven jets. That was raging.
And I said, “You guys want to do trade? We’re not doing any trade. You’ve got 24 hours to settle it.”
They said, “Well, there’s no more war going.”
And I used that on numerous occasions. Trade. I used trade. I used whatever you had to use. But we got seven of them stopped. And the one I thought would be easiest, frankly, was going to be Russia and Ukraine. But that turns out to be some big personality conflicts. It’s one of those things.
But we’re going to get that stopped eventually. We’re going to get that stopped too.
Seven thousand soldiers died last week—think of that. Seven thousand. I usually say five thousand, but 7,221 soldiers died last week in the fighting between Ukraine and Russia.
And they’re not our soldiers, but they’re souls. They’re living souls. They leave their homes, they wave to their parents, and their parents are so proud. They leave in a beautiful uniform, and a week later they get their head blown off by a drone.
New form of military. It’s a whole new form of fighting.
So, I would just like to thank the people that are behind me. Thank you very much. You’ve done a fantastic job. I appreciate it very much.
We’re doing a real job. And I’m so proud of D.C. We’re doing a real job, and I’m so proud of D.C. I looked—I passed it two days ago—and all the garbage is off the streets.
It was terrible. I came in a month and a half ago, driving down, and I saw garbage all over the place. The streets were a pigsty—like I won’t use the city names, but you know what I’m talking about. There are plenty of them outside this country and inside this country.
Baltimore is a horrible, horrible deathbed. It’s a deathbed.
I know Governor Moore said, “Oh, he wants to take a walk with me.” He meant it in a derogatory tone. And I said, “No, no. I’m the President of the United States. Clean up your crime, and I’ll walk with you.”
But there’s tremendous crime. He was trying to be derogatory. He doesn’t have what it takes. But I met him at the Army–Navy game. They said, “Oh, there’s Governor Moore. He’d love to see you.” He came over to me, hugged me, shook my hand—you were there.
He said, “Sir, you’re the greatest president of my lifetime.” I said, “It’s really nice that you say that. I’d love you to say it publicly, but I don’t think you can do that, so it’s okay.”
But no—he said, “Sir, you’re doing a fantastic job. I want to just shake your hand. Thank you very much, Governor.”
That was it. And then every time I see him on television, he’s knocking the hell out of me. But that’s all right—that’s called politics.
But Governor Moore is doing a bad job. Newsom’s doing a bad job. All of their potential candidates are doing a bad job. I can’t imagine Pritzker being even a candidate—but somebody said he is. He can’t do the work. He can’t do the job. He’s not temperamentally suited.
So, I just want to thank you all for being here. Do you have some questions?
Reporter: Is the Pentagon—and maybe the Secretary of Defense can weigh in—preparing for military deployment to Chicago? And with what you said there, are you waiting for the government?
Trump: We’re ready to go anywhere. We have a full complement of great human beings. We’re full. Our military is full. We were way empty one year ago. Now we’re full. So we can go anywhere on less than 24 hours’ notice.
And we’re doing a lot to interdict—to stop drugs from coming in too. We have ships out on sea. We have nobody coming through our border anymore. Nobody.
How doesn’t that feel—to know that you don’t have prisoners coming in, and killers, murderers?
We had 11,888 murderers come in—let in by the Biden administration. Many of them have been captured, but we still have a couple thousand out there. Some of them—50% of them—killed more than one person.
A lot of them have been captured. But what they’ve done to our country—the people that circled this desk—what they’ve done to our country is unthinkable. So much of our time is devoted to correcting a problem that all they had to do was say, “Close the borders.”
Remember when Biden said, “Well, I have no power to close the border. I have to go back and get an act from Congress.”
I didn’t get an act from Congress. I came in and said, “Close the borders.” And Tom Homan—who’s not here—fantastic man, respected by everybody—he closed the borders. Christie closed the borders. The borders were closed.
And in the last three months—hard to believe this one too—we’ve had zero people come into our country illegally through the southern border. Nobody would have said that’s possible.
Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President. Today MS-13 gang member and human trafficker Kilmargo Garcia turned himself into ICE in Baltimore. Do you have any comment on this? And why are Democrats so emotionally attached to this man, who beats his wife and is part of a terrorist organization?
Trump: Because they think he’s going to be good for votes. And I think he’s very bad for votes. These people are deranged. He’s not good for votes.
He beat the hell out of his wife. His wife is afraid to even talk about him. She’s been mauled by this animal. And you know, through a system of liberal courts, he’s doing things—but no, we have that under control. Pam’s got that very much under control.
Pam Bondi: No, no—we’ve got him under control. He will no longer terrorize our country. He’s currently charged with human smuggling, including children. The guy needs to be in prison. He doesn’t need to be on the streets like all these liberals want him to be.
And as part of this operation here in D.C., we’ve also taken off MS-13 members. Just last night, we got a TDA guy off our streets—right here, right around from where we all work. Another TDA member gone because of this project. So we’re going to keep America safe from all of these foreign terrorist organizations, including Abrao Garcia.
Reporter: Mr. President, if we could get your reaction — the Israelis bombed a hospital in Gaza, killed 20 people including five journalists.
Trump: When did this happen?
Reporter: This happened overnight, today.
Trump: I didn’t know. Any reaction to this?
Well, I’m not happy about it. I don’t want to see it. At the same time, we have to end that whole nightmare. I’m the one that got the hostages out. I got them out — all of them. Steve Witco has been amazing, he’s done a great job. But I’m the one that got them all out through my people and through me.
Now we’re left with probably a little bit less than 20 — because I think one or two are gone. And I said a long time ago, I’m going to get them out. But when we get down to that final 10 or 20, these people aren’t going to release them, because they’re dead after they release them.
So it’s a nasty situation. Very nasty, horrible thing.
Reporter: Mr. President, could you please elaborate on your post on South Korea? What were you referring to?
Trump: Well, I heard that there were raids on churches over the last few days — very vicious raids on churches by the new government in South Korea. That they even went into our military base and got information they probably shouldn’t have done.
But I heard bad things. I don’t know if it’s true or not. I’ll be finding out. As you know, their new president’s coming in just a couple of hours, here. I look forward to meeting him. But we won’t stand for that. We just won’t stand for that.
Reporter: Are you prepared to order National Guard troops into American cities if those governors don’t request federal deployment?
Trump: I am. But I also think that — look, Chicago, everybody knows how bad it is. Everybody standing there knows. We know. You don’t have to be doing any studies.
They should be saying, “Please come in.” Pritzker should be saying that.
You know, I did a favor for Christie Whitmer — with the fish, the China carp. Did you ever hear of it? China carp. It’s taken over your Great Lakes. You know about that, right? It’s invasive. It’s horrible what’s happened.
And she came, and she wanted to know if it was possible for us to do something about it. And I said, “Well, I’ll do it, but I think it’s appropriate that the governor of Illinois also asks.” Because Illinois is affected maybe more than anybody else.
It’s a tremendously expensive project, actually. But we can do it. GSA can do it. Various people can do it. But we’re going to have to see what happens.
The governor of Michigan came, was very respectful, asked for it. She’s done a good job. I opened the Air Force base, kept it open for F-35s and F-22s at her request. And also at our congressmen’s request — and we have unbelievable pro-Michigan congressmen up there.
But I didn’t get a request from Illinois. And until I get that request from that guy, I’m not going to do anything about it.
And I feel the same way about crime. We go in, we will solve Chicago within one week. Maybe less. But within one week, we will have no crime in Chicago. Just like we have no crime in D.C.
But I don’t like to go in and do it, and then have somebody stand up and say, “What a great job he’s doing on crime, but we don’t want the military in our state.” Do you understand? These governors will say that.
So we’re going to have a little meeting. We’ll see. But Chicago desperately needs help. We may wait. We may or may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do.
The problem is it’s not nice when you go in and do it, and somebody else is standing there saying, as we give great results, “Well, we don’t want the military in.”
They need help badly. Chicago desperately needs help. Just look at the crime statistics. Look at the statistics JD said. Even I didn’t know it was that bad.
But all I know is—we’re being celebrated. We went an entire week—now it’s 11 days. We went an entire week without a murder. And I said, “Boy, that sounds terrible. I didn’t know how to say it.” Because it’s a great number, but it sounds so bad.
Suppose you’re from a foreign country, properly run, and they don’t have murders. And you have somebody saying, “I’m proud to announce that nobody was murdered in the capital of the United States this week.” It sounds terrible.
Reporter: Mr. President, Gavin Newsom — you’ve mentioned him on crime. Is there a federal mechanism you’re hoping to use to fight back against his redistricting constitutional amendment?
Trump: Well, I think I’m going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon, and I think we’re going to be very successful in it. We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping.
You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney. They have a gentleman’s agreement, about a hundred years old, where if you have a Republican president and a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney.
That’s unconstitutional. It’s not based on law. It’s based on custom. I’ll probably be filing suit on that soon.
Now Jay Clayton was just approved in the Southern District. But he was so good—top schools, Sullivan & Cromwell, head of the SEC. Ran it for four years during my first term. Beautiful job.
He was approved by the court system in New York—not the senators. Democrat judges voted that he could. And that was a big victory.
I also saved myself $500 million in New York, with a corrupt attorney general and a corrupt judge. The appellate division vacated all that. You can’t have a corrupt court system. You can’t have that.
Reporter: During the campaign you called Kamala Harris a communist. But the Biden–Harris administration never called for nationalizing a private company like you’re proposing with Intel. Isn’t this hypocritical?
Trump: Sure it is. I want to try and get as much as I can. People come in and they need something.
Intel came in. I met with the CEO. I had respect for him. He came in under a cloud, but I thought he was good. I said, “I’d like you to give 10% of Intel to the United States of America. Not to me — to the United States.”
And he thought about it, and he said, “I like that idea very much. We have a deal.”
So I just made $10 or $11 billion for the United States of America.
And yeah, if I have that opportunity again, I’d do it. That’s called business. If somebody’s willing to give you 10% of a company, and you’re not paying for it, why wouldn’t you?
Isn’t that what tariffs are too? Tariffs weren’t normal. But tariffs are good. The stock market went up a thousand points on Friday because CBO said Trump’s tariffs will reduce the trade deficit by $4 trillion.
I stopped four wars with tariffs. I told countries: “If you want to fight, fine, but I’ll charge you 100% tariff on trade with us.” They all gave up.
We were subsidizing the world with income taxes instead of tariffs. Not anymore. We’re taking in trillions, and we’re stopping wars.
Reporter: Mr. President, you ruled out boots on the ground in Ukraine. But how would air support as part of a security guarantee be any different? Wouldn’t those U.S. airmen also be at risk?
Trump: Well, you don’t know what a security guarantee is because we haven’t even discussed the specifics of it. And we’ll see.
Number one, Europe is going to give them significant security guarantees — and they should, because they’re right there. But we’ll be involved from the standpoint of backup. We’re going to help them.
And I think if we get a deal — and I think we will — you’re not going to have much of a problem. But we’ll back it up, because I want to stop seeing people being killed. You know, when Biden was here, he gave $350 billion to Ukraine.
I said Zelensky is the greatest salesman I’ve ever met — better than P.T. Barnum. He’d walk out of the White House with $50 billion every time. One time he came, he walked out with $100 billion.
We were up to $350 billion. I got a trillion dollars’ worth of rare earths in return, because I felt bad for the taxpayer.
But I did something else at NATO. They’re wealthy countries, but they weren’t paying.
And we don’t pay money to Ukraine anymore. In fact, it’s the opposite. NATO requests missiles. They want Patriots. We give the missiles to NATO. NATO pays us in full. They can do what they want with them.
So we don’t deal directly with Ukraine anymore. We deal with NATO. And NATO pays.
Before me, they were all deadbeats. They weren’t paying. I got them to go from 2% to 5% of GDP. They’re all paid up now. Trillions of dollars.
So now we make money. But I don’t want to make money on Ukraine. I want the war to end. I gave the Javelins. Remember? They say, “Obama gave sheets, Trump gave Javelins.”
Very effective against tanks. But the war never would have started if I were president. Never.
Reporter: Mr. President, historic summit here with Ukrainian President Zelensky and European leaders all met here with you at the White House. You said you wanted to get this done bilateral as soon as possible. Have you spoken to Putin since last Monday?
Trump: Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation. And then unfortunately a bomb is loaded into Kyiv or someplace, and I get very angry about it.
I think we’re going to get the war done. It’s tough. I thought that would be the easiest of the seven I settled. But war is strange. Strange things happen.
The fact that he went to Alaska, our country, I think was a big statement that he wants to get it done. That was not easy for him to go to Alaska.
We were talking about missiles, nuclear weapons, limiting nukes. We want to get China in too — we have the most, Russia has second, China third. China’s behind but they’ll catch up in five years.
We’d like to denuclearize. Too much power. And that’s part of it.
Reporter: On Baltimore, you said that you are going to have to reconsider bridge funding. Is that contingent on Governor Moore cleaning up the streets?
Trump: No. We were very generous to him on a bridge. You know, a boat ran into a bridge and the bridge came down like I’ve never seen anything.
The boat just shows you the mass, the power of that boat. People were up on the bridge — painters — they were painting the bridge and they were watching it happen. They thought they were safe. They all died.
But a police officer called in and said, “Close the bridge.” He got everybody off. That guy should get a medal. He stopped the bridge from having many more casualties.
Most people wouldn’t have said that. He realized it could be a catastrophe. The thing just came down. Incredible. Let’s get that man a medal.
Reporter: Do you plan to investigate Chris Christie?
Trump: Look, Chris is a slob. Everybody knows it. I know Chris better than anybody in the room. I always felt he was guilty.
He took the George Washington Bridge — very serious — and closed it down. Medical people, ambulances caught up. And obviously he knew about it. He blamed a young woman who worked for him and another person. They went through hell. One man went to jail. She was exonerated later, but she went through hell.
Chris got off. He knew all about it. So when I hear him speak with such hate, I say, “What about the George Washington Bridge?” He got away with murder. Not for me to decide, but that’s the truth.
Reporter: An endorsement in the Texas Senate race between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn?
Trump: I’ll make up my mind. I like them both. The worst situation is when I have two people I get along with well.
Almost 100% of the people I endorse win. It’s a great honor. I got the largest vote in Texas history, by far. Nobody’s ever gotten more votes. People are waiting for me.
But I’d rather not comment right now. I like both guys. They’re very different, but I like them both.
Reporter: There’s some talk among congressional Republicans about another reconciliation bill. Where do you fall on that, and what would you like to prioritize?
Trump: Well, I don’t want to do cutting. I want to save things that matter. I’ll cut unnecessary waste.
But one thing I promised: we’re not going to hurt anyone on Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. In fact, Social Security is doing great. We found 300,000 illegals on Social Security and got them out. That makes the system very strong.
So no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security.
We do have something coming up — “favored nations” — reducing drug prices by 1,000%. Where a pill in Germany is $10 and $150 here, we’ll stop that.
We were subsidizing the entire world. Not anymore. If they don’t go along, I’ll tariff their countries. But prices here are coming down.
And if I pull that off, no Republican will ever lose an election.
Reporter: Why do you think President Putin is so reluctant to meet with President Zelensky?
Trump: Because he doesn’t like him. He doesn’t like him. You know, they don’t like each other.
I have people I don’t like. Sometimes I meet with them, sometimes I don’t. They don’t like each other, really.
And if we had a real president — instead of a guy who got in there with a fraudulent election — that war would have never happened.
Putin himself said it: “If Trump were president, it wouldn’t have happened.”
It happened for a lot of reasons. Afghanistan was a disaster. When Putin saw how incompetent Milley was, and all these guys, he said, “Wow.” That was the apple of his eye. That war never would have happened if I were president.
Reporter: Mr. President, you’ve built relationships with Russian leaders and also North Korean leaders, as they are getting closer. How would that affect your diplomacy?
Trump: Well, I have very good relationships with Kim Jong-un. A lot of people say, “Oh, that’s terrible.” No, it’s good.
Someday I’ll see him again. I look forward to it. He was very good with me. We had two summits. We got along great.
I know him better than anyone except maybe his sister. His sister knows him pretty well. But I know him very well. And we had no problem.
If Hillary Clinton had won, you would have had a nuclear war. With me, we had peace. We’re not going to have a nuclear war.
Kim Jong-un has great capability, but with me, no problem.
And the thing we’re here today to talk about is crime — specifically in D.C.
I am so proud of what these people, every one of them, has done in D.C. To literally stop crime on a button.
Friends of mine are going out to dinner now — they haven’t gone out in four years. They were afraid. Half the restaurants closed.
Now those restaurants are open. New restaurants are opening. It’s like a boomtown. It’s a great thing to see.
And I’m very proud of the people behind me.
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you, guys.