FULL: President Trump Urgent White House Remarks on Iran, Senate Clash & EPA Announcement | AC15

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Mr. President, with many Americans concerned about affordability ahead of the midterms, there is some backlash among Senate Republicans to some of the other priorities, uh the ballroom and the anti-weaponization fund. You clearly still have a stronghold in the Republican Party. Your candidates did very well this week during the primaries, but are you losing control >> My candidates did well. Not all candidates did But are you losing control of the Senate, sir?

[00:00:24]Are you losing control of the Senate, Senate Republican?

[00:00:26]>> I don't know. I really don't know. I can tell you I only do what's right. Uh I don't need money for the ballroom. You know, I'm making a gift of the ballroom.

[00:00:35]This is the biggest uh misreporting that I've ever seen. The ballroom is being built. It'll cost We've got It was going to be 200 million. I doubled the size of it cuz we needed and it's being done in conjunction with the military and with the uh very much in conjunction with the military and Secret Service.

[00:00:52]Uh we're on time, on budget. It's going beautifully. Uh I have all the money I need. Uh we're making a gift to the United States. It's uh they came along and they said, "We want to make it uh the house the White House overall more secure." And I understand that. Not for me because I'll be gone, you know, I'll be gone and you'll have somebody else in for uh hopefully hundreds of years. But that's what they're doing it for. Uh the ballroom is paid for. It's a gift. I mean, I I want to make it clear because so many people said, "I thought you were giving this away." And all of a sudden, the money that they're spending is for security having to do maybe around the ballroom and other parts of the house.

[00:01:31]But this is not for the ballroom. The ballroom is uh being a tremendous amount of what's being done with respect to the ballroom is for national security. Including, as an example, a drone port on top of which was top secret until litigation made it less than top secret. But we have a drone port. We had We have also We have the glass that's 4 in thick bulletproof glass. We have bulletproof walls. We have thick You need a place like this, but this is being made as a gift from me and other people that are great patriots and spend a lot of money. We're building what will be the finest ballroom anywhere in the world. Uh if they want to spend money on securing the White House, I think it would be very very much a good expenditure, but the ballroom is being built.

[00:02:20]>> But what if Congress doesn't sign off on the security money, sir?

[00:02:24]Uh then the White House won't be a very secure place. But and then regarding Cuba, there was an aircraft carrier that just arrived there um just uh this week.

[00:02:33]This limits aircraft carrier. Are you sending that there to intimidate the Cuban government?

[00:02:38]>> No, not at all. The Cuban Look, it's a failed country. Everybody knows it. They don't have electricity. They don't have money. They don't have really anything.

[00:02:46]They don't have food. And we're going to help them along and we're going to help them because the people because number one, I want to help them. You know, I want to on a humanitarian basis, but we have the Cuban American population, much of it living in Miami in Florida.

[00:03:00]That's a great group of people, amazing group of people, industrious. Uh just they're great Americans.

[00:03:07]Uh they've wanted this staff and they want to go back to their country. They want to help their country. I hope they're going to stay here, but they want to go back. They want to invest in their country and, you know, see if they can bring it back.

[00:03:17]Uh other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years doing something and uh it looks like I'll be the one that does it. So, I would be happy to do it.

[00:03:27]We want to open it up to Cuban Americans where they can go back and help. Mr. President, question.

[00:03:32]The DNC released a report this morning, their report on the last election on 111 and Democrats lost. One thing that they mentioned is how they failed to reach middle America, southern Americans. Do you think they've learned lessons from that election and have you seen that report? I think the elections are so rigged. Uh we have to do something about it and we're going to do something about it. But, we cannot continue to have and frankly, the Senate and the House, they ought to get together and they ought to pass the Save America Act so that you have a voter ID, and it's so important you have proof of citizenship. Little thing like proof of citizenship.

[00:04:07]And also, mail-in voting, which is so crooked. So, in Maryland, as you probably saw, they had 500 500,000 mail-in votes that were corrupt.

[00:04:17]They were corrupt. They said the printer made a mistake. Don't believe that.

[00:04:21]And they got caught with 500,000 mail-in ballots that were corrupt. We're going to stop it. We have a a country that has a very corrupt We have more corrupt elections than third-world countries have.

[00:04:34]And we ought to get smart. Pass the Save America Act.

[00:04:37]That'll be a long way. You have voter ID, voter identification.

[00:04:41]The Democrats don't want to pass. Now, I'll tell what, the Democrat voters do want to pass, 87%.

[00:04:47]But, the Democrat politicians don't want to pass. And the reason is they'd never be elected again. Because with their policy of open borders, transgender for everyone, I call it transgender mutilization of your children for everybody, uh men playing in women's sports, all of the the stuff that they do, high taxes. They want to tax high. They voted in favor of high taxes. They voted against a tax cut.

[00:05:13]They voted in favor of men playing in women's sports.

[00:05:17]I don't know what these people are thinking. The only way they can win is to cheat, and that's what they want to do. And we ought to pass the Save America Act. Yeah, please. Yes, Mr. President. I have two questions for you.

[00:05:26]One of which you love. Uh first about the the ballroom and the second Iran.

[00:05:31]Um first, I'm curious, what is the stone that you're going to be using? And I ask that for a reason, cuz I live in Stafford County, and you know a lot about history and stuff like that. So, you know that the stone that was quarried for the capital and the White House is from Stafford County. They still have quarries. So, hint hint. Uh down there. I'm just curious.

[00:05:48]Okay. Mostly marbles, right? All right, excellent. And then my second question is the Vice President mentioned the other day there will be a accommodation they were willing to make accommodations with the Iranian deal.

[00:05:58]Could you kind of expand on those possible accommodations? Does Does that include What do you say combination of what?

[00:06:04]>> Accommodations. He's talking about accommodations as far as making the deal making a deal going. Is that Would [clears throat] that include the proxies?

[00:06:10]>> Right now we're negotiating and we'll see. But either we're going to get it one way or the other. They're not going to have a nuclear weapon. You know, when people hear it cuz often times they won't put up the second part of the session sentence having to do with I'll say this is more important than anything that we have to talk about. And usually they'll cut it off the fake news.

[00:06:30]I say because this is the nuclearization of a country that some people would say is somewhat crazy.

[00:06:39]And we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all there is. We can't let it. You will have a nuclear war in the Middle East and that war will come here. That war will go to Europe. We cannot let that happen and it won't happen. It's not going to happen. That's more important than anything else that we can't I can think of nothing that's more important than the fact that we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon and and we won't. Yeah, Jeff. Following up on that sir, Iran is negotiating with Oman to set up a formalization of charging tolls in the Strait of Hormuz.

[00:07:11]Is that acceptable to you? Well, we're looking at it. We hear it. But they've negotiated. They've had a relationship with them before.

[00:07:18]And we'll see.

[00:07:20]We have total control of the Strait of Hormuz as you know with our blockade.

[00:07:26]The blockade's been 100% effective.

[00:07:27]Nobody's been able to get through. It's like a steel wall. It's our navy.

[00:07:31]We have the greatest military anywhere in the world. We wiped out their navy.

[00:07:35]We not wiped out their air I think they're down to about I would say we knocked out 85% of their missile capacity.

[00:07:43]It's very hard for them now to build missiles, to build drones. We have great drone technology, anti-drone technology now that frankly we didn't have even 2 months ago. We have unbelievable drone technology both both for making them and also for knocking them down.

[00:08:02]Uh but look, we're going to either make sure they don't have a nuclear weapon or we're going to have to do something very drastic and uh the people of the country I believe when it's put to the people of our country they will all agree that we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.

[00:08:17]Yes. And just let me just just one follow up on that. How do you want things to end up with the Strait of Hormuz though? Would you like them to have a nuclear weapon? We want it free.

[00:08:26]We don't want tolls.

[00:08:28]Uh it's international. It's an international waterway. They're not charging tolls. Uh right now they are losing $500 million a day is what is projected. I don't know. It sounds like a lot of money, but whether it's 500 or 200 or 300, they're losing a lot of money.

[00:08:43]Uh there hasn't been a ship that's been able to get through without our approval.

[00:08:47]And uh the Navy has done an amazing job and uh no ship is going to Iran, as you know. No ship is going to or out of Iran without our approval. Can they keep their highly enriched uranium? No. No.

[00:09:01]We get the highly enriched We will get it. Uh we don't need it. We don't want it. We'll probably destroy it after we get it, but we're not going to let them have it. Okay? Mr. President, two questions. First on deregulation and second on the Supreme Court. You, coming from business, you've seen the effects of what unnecessary red tape can do business. Do you believe that given the amount of deregulatory actions you've taken along with this, going back to the endangerment finding, the cafe standards, with your tax cuts and tariffs, do you believe that you've made the United States the most pro-business, pro-investment country in the world?

[00:09:35]Yeah. Thank you very much for that question because we are we are for every one new regulation that we had we're getting rid of 20 to 30 to 40 and now it's actually at even a number. In my first term uh for every regulation that was added we got rid of a minimum of 10.

[00:09:52]And I understandably that it was up it's up to 43 or 44 right now. So, if we add a regulation we get rid of 43 44. We're making it a much more uh pro-business pro-people. Uh you know, regulations are very costly for the people. They're bad for everybody. They're bad for jobs, bad for every and we have as of today we have more people working in the United States than at any time in the history of our country. It's a to me it's one of my favorite stats. But we have more people today working in the United States than at any time in the history and this is with the Iran conflict. That'll end soon, very soon. And when it ends your gasoline prices will go down lower than they were before. You know, I left Iowa a few months ago and gasoline was at $1.85 a gallon.

[00:10:40]>> That's right. Uh and we'll be hitting numbers like that again. Mr. President, But we'll be hitting them in a much nicer way by the way, we'll uh we will be hitting them and we will have a country that will not have a nuclear weapon. Yeah, that is So, why is today So, why is today's exactly On the Supreme Court, sir, we're still waiting for the decision on birth rights decision. You attended the oral arguments of that. Can you just explain what's at stake with that decision, sir?

[00:11:04]It's a big decision that we're waiting for from the Supreme Court. Uh we had a terrible tariff decision. They cost they cost our country a fortune.

[00:11:13]They should do it a different way. We're doing it a different way, but uh we're going to have most likely have to pay back $149 billion. All they had to do is put a little sentence in there, half a sentence saying that any money's paid don't have to be paid back. You know, you're talking about the people in many cases that hate our country.

[00:11:32]Give them back money. It was a terrible decision and uh it's not going to affect because we do the tariffs a different way. The tariffs are are what's bringing in all of this money.

[00:11:42]It's it's really made our country rich, modernly rich. Uh now we have another one coming up which is uh birthright citizenship and we're the only country in the world that has it.

[00:11:54]You step into our country and you're all of a sudden a citizen. You come in a certain way. This was not meant for Chinese billionaires to have their children become citizens of our country.

[00:12:06]This was meant for other rich people, poor people. This was meant for the babies of slaves. This was signed during right after the Civil War.

[00:12:16]You look at the dates. The dates alone immediately after This was having to do with the babies of slaves.

[00:12:24]And people have used it and if this is allowed to stand, it will be a disaster economically for our country and you'll have 25% of the people coming into our country coming in through birthright citizenship and we won't have any control. This decision by the Supreme Court is a very big one. They'll probably rule against me because they seem to like doing that. Uh you know, frankly uh uh I'm not happy with some of the decisions. Look at NIL. Look what they've done. Look what Look what the courts have done to college sports.

[00:12:59]They're destroying college sports.

[00:13:01]They're destroying universities.

[00:13:03]But birthright citizenship's a big deal and uh literally, if that's allowed to stand and again, this was a civil war. This was right after the Civil War and it has to do with the babies of slaves. It doesn't have to do with the babies of very rich people coming into the country.

[00:13:23]One of them came in with 57 children.

[00:13:25]Okay, 57 children.

[00:13:27]Uh they're using the system and it's usually people that hate our country if you want to know the truth. Birthright citizen is done by no other country, no other country in the world the way we're doing it. It's It's we're a laughingstock.

[00:13:46]And if the Supreme Court approves that decision, they've done a great disservice to the United States of America, just like they did a great disservice by costing us 149 billion dollars on tariffs by saying do it a different way. Get the same result, do it a different way.

[00:14:04]We should have won that decision. We had a very strong, very powerful descent. We had three dissents. So, it wasn't like a unanimous decision by any means. We had very powerful dissents. When you read that dissent, people that read that dissent say, "You really should have won this case." We should have won that case on tariffs. That case cost our country 149 million dollars. It goes to people that hate our country.

[00:14:26]So, now we have another one coming up, birthright citizenship. It would be a disgrace.

[00:14:33]It would be a disgrace if the Supreme Court of the United States allows that to happen.

[00:14:40]Remember what I said, 20 to 25% of the people coming into our country will come in through birthright citizenship. They'll become citizens through birthright citizenship and it'll cost us numbers that are >> [clears throat] >> I don't even think they're doable.

[00:14:59]And it's all up to a couple of people.

[00:15:02]And I hope they do what's right.

[00:15:03]Birthright citizenship is a disgrace.

[00:15:07]The fact that Look at the people that are bringing the suit.

[00:15:10]Study the people that are bringing the suit. These are not people that love our country. I can tell you that. Mr. President, why is today's executive order on AI being postponed? Because I didn't like certain aspects of it. I postponed it. I think it gets in the way of you know, we're leading China, we're leading everybody and I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead. We have a very substantial on AI. It's causing It's causing tremendous good and it's also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs. Again, we have more people working right now than we've ever had. I I really thought that could have been a blocker and I want to make sure that it's not. Mr. President, Mr. President, Mr. President, with President Xi last week, did you discuss AI AI safeguards?

[00:15:56]Who what? Uh in China last week with President Xi, did you discuss um AI >> I did discuss it.

[00:16:03]And he acknowledges how well we're doing. We're doing well. He's doing It was the two of us the two countries are fighting for it. Other countries are way behind, way way behind. They're fighting for it. They want to Everybody wants it, but they're way behind. But I didn't want to do it. I I postponed that meeting. It was a press conference. It was a signing, actually.

[00:16:23]Uh because I didn't like what I was seeing. Mr. President, a few moments ago the Commission of Fine Arts approved your redesign redesign for your arch. Do you think you need congressional approval?

[00:16:32]>> Well, let's see if I finally get good news.

[00:16:34]>> [laughter] >> Do you think you What was the vote? Do you know what the vote was?

[00:16:38]What was the vote?

[00:16:39]I I'm just seeing the headline here. I don't have the exact vote, but So, we're building what's called the Triumphal Arch right opposite the Arlington opposite the Arlington Memorial Bridge right by Arlington Cemetery. It's beautiful. It's the Arc de Triomphe would be the one that you would probably know in Paris. It's one of the most beautiful. It's a very similar size, slightly larger. We're doing We have to do slightly larger. It doesn't have to be a lot larger.

[00:17:04]Otherwise, your dog would be disappointed in me.

[00:17:06]But it's even far more beautiful and I think that the Arc de Triomphe is beautiful. It's, you know, a couple of hundred years old, but I think it's beautiful. And some arcs go back over a thousand years.

[00:17:18]And it's called a triumphal arc. It's usually done for victories in war and things. There's 59 of them in the world.

[00:17:27]And some are really beautiful. And we're the only major Washington, D.C., which should be number one, we're the only important and major city that doesn't have one. We don't have a triumphal arc. So, it was meant to be built for many years.

[00:17:42]The circle going up to the bridge it was People pass that circle they say, "Why isn't something built here?"

[00:17:48]And so, that's very good. We just got approval from fine arts. That's fantastic.

[00:17:53]>> Mr. President, do you need Congress to sign off on it?

[00:17:55]>> No, we don't. No. No, we're doing it.

[00:17:57]It's The land is owned by secretary by the interior department.

[00:18:01]We don't need anything from Congress.

[00:18:03]Are you attending your son's wedding this weekend, by the way? Are you attending your son's wedding this weekend, by the way? Uh he'd like me to go, but it's going to be just a small little private affair. And I'm going to try and make it. I'm I'm in the midst I said, "You know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called the Radd and other things." Uh that's one I can't win on.

[00:18:24]If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about. No, but he's uh got a very uh person who I've known for a long time.

[00:18:37]And hopefully they're going to have a great marriage. Mr. President, actually to add to that the arc, I just actually passed by it on my way here. I saw the the pink flags and there's just geese there at all times. So, it's perfect.

[00:18:48]How long will that take? And also, I have to say I have to pass along something for my mother cuz she drove in with me. She was amazed by all the people uh she was seeing on the streets here in D.C. She doesn't get out here that much.

[00:18:59]>> D.C. is hot again.

[00:19:00]>> She was noticing how clean and beautiful >> It's clean.

[00:19:03]That's right. Well, that's the way I do.

[00:19:04]Clean. You take a look outside. We had a broken uh we had broken path. It was so terrible coming into the White House. It was slate.

[00:19:13]Slate's a roofing material. It's not a walking material, but the slate was all broken and chipped and terrible. And I put down a new granite floor and paid for it myself, by the way. But I put down a nice new granite floor. It looks beautiful. It's actually getting rave reviews. It's beautiful. It's a a terrible having people walking up to the White House and they're walking over broken tiles and broken floors.

[00:19:34]So now we just finished. It's going to be finished when the moldings are put on, but we just You might take a look at it. I don't know if you've seen it, but it's beautiful.

[00:19:43]Uh of other things we're doing while you're at it, uh we fixed we have 31 fountains in Washington. Of the 31, not one worked.

[00:19:55]Now we have 21 working and the others are going to be fixed and people are calling and saying, "It's amazing what's happened to the fountains." And they're working top-level. And my most exciting is the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the uh the the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial.

[00:20:14]It's a it's 200 2,500 ft long by almost 200 ft wide. It's a massive structure, if you think of it. It's taller than the tallest building in the world. If you sat the building down, the tallest building in the world would not reach the end of it. It's a very big thing. It hasn't worked properly since it was built in 1922.

[00:20:36]Uh President Obama and Biden spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix it.

[00:20:41]They didn't Of course they couldn't do that. They didn't fix it. It was a mess.

[00:20:44]And so mostly they turned it off.

[00:20:47]Uh collecting garbage. It looked horrible.

[00:20:49]And we are very close to getting it finished. And when it's finished, it'll be beautiful. It'll be blue water.

[00:20:55]Dark blue. We call it American flag blue because that's the name of the color that we chose. American flag blue.

[00:21:02]Can't do better than that.

[00:21:04]It's a rich dark blue.

[00:21:06]And it'll be I think very reflective, very very good. Uh big project. Uh I decided to do a much bigger job. I was going to just get it open, but I said let's do it right. Let's get it open and let's have it be good cuz uh President Obama, President Biden spent hundreds of millions of dollars, much more than a hundred million, but hundreds of millions, it never worked.

[00:21:29]Uh in fact, when they finished it, it was much worse than it was before. It leaked at a higher level. They would have to fill it up every single day with water. We The whole thing was ridiculous. So, they ended up turning it off and it became like a garbage dump.

[00:21:44]Well, it's uh pretty close to finished. So, they were going to They had estimates of $350 million to fix it. I'll be doing it for a tiny fraction of that.

[00:21:58]Uh a bigger job than I've I originally thought I'd do it for two or three million dollars, just do a base, but now we're fixing up the exterior of it.

[00:22:05]We're doing So, we'll probably be there for less than $20 million. Uh And uh the estimate was going to be using a different method, 350 It was going to take uh 4 years, 350 million. I'll be doing it in basically a couple of months for less than $20 million.

[00:22:26]That includes all of the exterior base so which I never included in my original numbers.

[00:22:31]Uh when I went there last week, I saw the exterior was in very bad shape as well as the interior. So, I said we're going to fix that, too. The stone.

[00:22:40]It's going to be beautiful. When that's done, you might see it. It's probably uh three quarters done. We have rain delays, we have a lot of delays, but uh it That will be That will be something special. The reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln and Washington uh Uh I think it's going to be incredible.

[00:22:59]Uh it's largely done. If you want to go see it, you can see it before we put the water in. We'll The key is to have it done before July 4th. We want to see if we can have it done before July 4th. But we have uh uh about 20 or 21 uh of the water water features in Washington open. And I can say we top top of the line. They are They look better than they did the day they were built. Some of them have been closed for 25, 30 years. There's been no water for 25 or 30 years.

[00:23:29]And they're really beautiful. Some of the fountains are as beautiful as I've ever seen. And you probably see them. And in addition to that, you brought up something.

[00:23:39]Washington, D.C. is now a safe city. We had a city that was at one of the most unsafe cities anywhere in the country.

[00:23:48]And now it's considered a very safe city. Restaurants are opening. Uh restaurants were closing. You couldn't You couldn't go to a restaurant. The restaurants were closing all over because of the danger from during the Biden administration. Uh now you have restaurants opening. It's thriving. And it was very nice that you said that. I like this reporter. I have a Uh uh No, it's nice. It's We have a vibrant city again. People are going out. I have a lot of people in the White House.

[00:24:16]Every time I see somebody, they thank me. And I know immediately what. They thank me for making the city safe. They walk to work now. Before that, they would they'd take Uber or something. And they were They felt unsafe even in Uber.

[00:24:29]You know, we moved over 5,000 people out of the city. Career criminals that came in through the open borders and other reasons.

[00:24:37]And uh we moved over 5,000. And An interesting statistic is that 2% of the population creates 91% of the crime.

[00:24:50]And the reason I like that is that you can handle 2% of the population. Mr. Crooked, I see Do you Do you have stores in Washington? You see a big difference?

[00:24:59]We do. Well, you said the right thing.

[00:25:01]Thank [laughter] you.

[00:25:03]That would have been the end of Cruz.

[00:25:05]All right, okay. We'll do We'll do one or two more. Please. Go back. Yeah. Do you think Democrats are genuine in their focus on affordability, especially after they delivered 40-year high inflation last time they were in power? And then, um or do you think they're using it uh or focusing on it as a means to try and win midterms and begin the impeachment >> Yeah, the second. Look, the Democrats had the highest inflation in the history of our country. 48 years, they say, but the history of our country.

[00:25:32]Uh they had the highest inflation that we've ever had.

[00:25:35]Uh when I inherited it, I inherited very high prices.

[00:25:40]And from day one, they said, "Affordability.

[00:25:43]Affordability is the word." Cuz they're good at that. They're good at words, but I'm good at words, too.

[00:25:49]But they hit me with affordability. I just got there. They hit me with eggs.

[00:25:53]Uh we had a news conference on my my third day, and they said, uh "Egg prices are through the roof." I said, "I just got here. Tell me about eggs." And we got the prices down, way down. Actually, lower than it was 4 years before.

[00:26:07]But we've gotten everything. The thing that we have now, the only thing that's really of great concern, two things.

[00:26:14]Beef is coming down, and the reason is they put restrictions on beef under the Biden administration, and it takes a while to settle that, but prices are down. But the big thing is uh of course, energy. We had the energy way down, but I had to do a journey to Iran. I had to say, you know, we just hit the best markets.

[00:26:33]By the way, the stock market today is at the highest it's ever been.

[00:26:37]And we've had 59 of them, 59 days out of a very short period of time, where the stock market hit all-time highs. So, we have a whole all-time high stock market.

[00:26:47]We have all-time high job numbers. We have