White House Cabinet Meeting 4/30/25

President Trump (00:00):

Not only at the border. The border was more obvious, but we took over his mess in so many different ways. Core GDP, removing distortions from imports, inventories, and government spending, was up plus-3% when you add it. We had numbers that despite what we were handed, we turned them around and we were getting them really turned around. Gross domestic investment was a whopping 22%.

(00:26)
Now, that is a number that people are coming in at numbers. For instance, I just walked in, I heard Samsung is now, because of the tariffs, they're going to build massive facilities in the United States. If we didn't do the tariffs, they wouldn't be doing that. So it takes a little while to get those facilities built, but they're coming in with big, big numbers. They're all coming in with big numbers.

(00:48)
We have more monies being spent than at any time in the history of our country. We're up to close to $8 trillion, I think I can say. And really, it's going to be a lot higher than that. Those are just the ones that we know about. Eight trillion. I'm not going to say it, but I'm not sure if Biden did a trillion for four years, one trillion, but we're at eight trillion for two months because let's give us a pass on the first month.

(01:16)
We were sort of getting a little bit used to things, right? But after two months, we have $8 trillion. There's never been a number like that. And that includes chip companies, car companies, every form of manufacturing, high-tech companies. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. So $8 trillion. I can talk about gross domestic product, gross domestic investment. I can talk about a lot of things, but to me, the biggest numbers.

(01:46)
And these people are coming in, our Secretary of Commerce spent the weekend. He went down to Arizona to see what was happening with the biggest chip company in the world, and Howard, you said you've never seen anything like it.

Howard (02:00):

Amazing.

President Trump (02:01):

Do you want to just describe what you saw?

Howard (02:03):

So they're investing $165 billion in 1100 acres in Arizona, and they're building the highest-tech chip manufacturing semiconductors, and 4000 employees, American tradecraft, right? Technicians doing every kind of work.

(02:22)
The classic foundation of America is building it. They have 14,000 people. They're expecting 40,000 people to build the rest of their plants and to employ 20,000 people for the rest of time. This is all driven.

President Trump (02:35):

You never saw a site like that.

Howard (02:36):

And this is all driven by your tariff policies. No chance this would be happening without them.

President Trump (02:42):

It's going to be about 40% of the chip market from that one section, and this is the biggest chip-maker. They have 99% of the market. They come from Taiwan. And unlike the CHIP Act, which was done by Biden, where they hand everybody billions of dollars, the thing they don't need is money. They got plenty of money. What they need is an incentive to come in, and they're building because of the tariffs.

(03:05)
And I like to say they're building because of November 5th, the election, and the tariffs, but I'm going to be a little more blunt. They're building because of the tariffs, and November 5th gave them the tariffs.

(03:16)
So it's amazing when you look, and these are not companies that go out and say, "Well, we're going to build. We have to go get our financing. Let's go." In New York, everybody would look, and you'd get a building site, and then you'd look around for money, you'd look around for financing for six months. You'd get your financing, you'd build your building, the market would be good, you'd make money. The market would be bad, it wouldn't be so pretty. You'd have to negotiate, blah, blah, blah. This is different. These people have so much money, they don't know what to do.

(03:48)
I asked Howard, did they finance it? No, they do it through cash. And they say that site, and they just started. They just announced it a month ago, and they've already started. He said, "I've never seen a site like it. It's so big." So you're talking about essentially a $50 billion building.

(04:05)
Now, if you build a warehouse for $50 million, that's a big warehouse, Scott, but a $50 billion building, that's a lot. They're building the electric, they've become a utility, and I've given them the right to become. They're going to build their own electric, they're going to build their own electricity, which they need tremendous amounts of electricity. They're going to build it themselves.

(04:26)
Anything they have left over, they'll hook that into the grid. But the grid is old, and they're unreliable, and bad things can happen to grids. I said, "If you want, you can hook into the grid, but that's a little bit risky, or you can build your own electricity and become your own utility." And they, I think in all cases, are deciding to do that. So it's very exciting, and we have a lot of things going.

(04:52)
We took over on January 20th. These are quarterly reports. We took over on January 20th. The tariffs haven't kicked in yet. I know that, and I don't want this to happen, but I know that China's doing very poorly right now. I just saw some reports coming out. And I don't want that to happen to China. I like the president a lot, President Xi, I don't want it to happen.

(05:14)
I was actually saddened to hear it, but they're getting absolutely hammered in China, and they're sending boats, the biggest boats in the world, carrying cargo like nobody's ever seen before. These are the biggest boats in the world, biggest cargo ships in the world, and they're coming and they're turning around in the Pacific Ocean. They're doing a big U-turn and going back because they don't want the goods because 145% tariff.

(05:41)
But at a certain point, I hope we're going to make a deal with China, we're talking to China, but their factories are closing all over China because we're not taking their product. We don't want their product unless they're going to be fair with us. And that includes intellectual property and other things. There are a lot of things far beyond just buy-sell. So we'll see what happens. Because somebody said, "Well, were you happy?" I said, "I am not happy. I want China to do well, I want every country to do well, but they have to treat us fairly also."

(06:10)
So with that, I think we're going to maybe go around, and we have some letters where the secretaries and people around the table are making statements about how they're doing and what's happening. And I could start with Pete on the left, because he's my least controversial person at the [inaudible 00:06:29]. They don't know how good he is.

Speaker 1 (06:29):

That's right.

President Trump (06:33):

So we'll go around the table, and you can hear it. And these are cabinet meetings where they're very open and transparent, and I can guarantee you Biden didn't do this. Yeah. He didn't do this. Go ahead, Pete.

Pete (06:43):

Well, Mr. President, I think we're controversial because we're over the target. And like so many things, Mr. President, you inherited a demoralized military, they couldn't recruit, it was perceived as week after what happened in Afghanistan and elsewhere because of Joe Biden.

(06:58)
And what we have seen since your election and the inauguration has been nothing short of a recruiting renaissance. It has been decades since we've seen this kind of recruiting in the army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Air Force. The men and women of America want to join the United States military led by President Donald Trump.

President Trump (07:18):

And the police, by the way.

Pete (07:19):

Absolutely.

President Trump (07:20):

And fire. I always mention the fire, but the police and fire. But the police and fire likewise, I mean, they have waiting lists now, and six months ago was a disaster.

Pete (07:30):

Truly historic. We can barely absorb the volume and retention as well. Men and women in the military who don't want to get out now that they have a real commander-in-chief.

(07:40)
We're reinforcing standards. We're going to be fit, not fat, in our formations. We welcome back all the COVID, the folks who were forced out because of the COVID mandate, rip wokeness out of the military, sir, DEI, trans. And it's Fort Benning and Fort Bragg again at the DOD. We're rebuilding the military, sir. The Golden Dome is well underway, F-47, reassuring allies and deterring enemies. We found nearly six billion in Doge savings that we're going to reinvest, including 50 billion from the Biden administration, focused on things like climate that have nothing to do with lethality and war fighting. And we will have, as you said, sir, the first trillion-dollar budget that we plan to spend wisely on behalf of our war fighters.

(08:25)
From day one, sir, we've helped get 100% operational control of the border, coming alongside DHS and CBP. We've got 11,000 troops on the border who now, because of the new national defense area, sir, can help detain illegals at the border and hand them over to CBP. It used to be if you saw camouflage on the border, they could hold binoculars, and that's it. And now, we can detain and assist, and we are. We're going to get 100% operational control of that border.

(08:53)
Our NATO allies know they have to step up. The Houthis in the Middle East are feeling the weight of American power, and we're deterring communist China. So because of your leadership, sir, I believe we're making the military great again. Thank you.

President Trump (09:06):

Thank you, [inaudible 00:09:07]. Thank you, Pete. Howard?

Howard (09:09):

So I have the pleasure of running the investment accelerator which gets to recruit these companies, and you've never seen anything like the companies committed to building in America. Technology companies have committed over $2.5 trillion to build in America based on your tariffs, right? Sovereign countries, all backing, the whole Middle East and all these countries backing their sovereign funds. They all want to invest in America, and they're coming in, again, over $3 trillion committed. So just those two topics, you're at $5.5 trillion.

(09:43)
And then you've got the whole pharma industry knows it's got to come home because America pays for all the drugs of the world, so the pharmaceuticals have to come home, right? Auto's coming home, industrial's coming home, so we've got to train. And your great Secretary of Labor together and Secretary of Education, together, we're going to train the workforce to build America. It's unbelievable.

(10:06)
We've got so much, as I travel around, the attention on the Trump Gold card. I mean, it makes me very popular. Last night, I was out to dinner, and someone came up and said, "Can I buy 10, and how do I buy 10?" And I'm like, "It's pretty good. It's $50 million for dinner, so it's paying for my dinner."

(10:25)
The external revenue service, right? You've got the tariffs, and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars coming in to build the external revenue service, that our objective of course is to replace the Internal Revenue Service and let those outside countries trading with us, let them pay their fair share to America.

(10:42)
And then, of course you got rid of minimis, and what happened is these foreign countries were sending in little packages for free and knocking out our mom-and-pop businesses across America. You put an end to it, and you're going to rebuild the mom-and-pop and the small business of America. You're their president, and I'm proud to support you.

President Trump (11:02):

It's very important. De minimis, it's a big deal. It's a big scam going on against our country, against really small businesses, and we've ended it. We put an end to it.

Sean (11:14):

Mr. President?

President Trump (11:15):

Please.

Sean (11:15):

So CAFE standards, we have fuel economy standards on vehicles that are going to go to 50 miles per gallon. We are going to rewrite those standards, bring it down to something that's far more reasonable. Elon's fine with that, I hope, but it's going to drive down the price of a car in America, making cars more affordable for families.

(11:40)
Also, Biden had the social cost of credit when we build infrastructure, roads, and bridges, adding 3 to 5% on infrastructure costs. We've gotten rid of the social cost of carbon, driving down the cost to build roads and bridges across the country.

(11:55)
We have what is called follow the law. So we have so many states and municipalities that don't follow the law, so whether it's DEI, discriminating against Americans, whether they give illegals driver's license or their sanctuary cities or states, if you don't follow the law, if you're giving license to illegals, if you're having DEI policies, we're not going to fund your projects. So you got to certify in your state or in your city to get road and bridge money or rail money that you're actually following the law, which includes executive orders from you, Mr. President.

(12:32)
We're cutting back funding. We send research money, Mr. President, to universities to do research on more equitable and sustainable transportation systems, projects that'll use data and public opinion to inform policy and infrastructure and technology, benefiting diverse communities including women and gender-nonconforming people. Just stupid wastes of money. We're pulling that money back from universities. We should do good research if we're doing research in universities.

(13:03)
And then one last thing, air traffic control. We don't have enough air traffic controllers. We're about 3000 short. We're working on an agreement with the union so when controllers become retirement-eligible, we're going to cut a deal to try to get them to stay longer, to stay in the tower.

(13:20)
And then we have a plan to put more butts in seats in Oklahoma City so we can get more students through the academy and in the towers as well. It's going to take us a while to do that, to train them up, but we're in the process. Before our four years are done, well before that, we're going to be at full capacity.

President Trump (13:37):

Sean, do you want to tell them about, I think we have to bring it up. We have very obsolete equipment for air traffic controllers. The equipment, the towers, have horrible equipment. It's been renovated for years. With the money they spent over the last four years, this Buttigieg did a horrible job. They wasted billions and billions of dollars, hooking up wire equipment to non-wire equipment to satellite equipment.

(14:01)
And a third-grade student would know it doesn't work, you can't work, and they wasted tens of billions of dollars. But we want to put a brand new air traffic control system in, and you might want to describe that, please?

Sean (14:15):

You and I have talked about this. It's a state-of-the-art system, envy of the world. And I mean, listen, our system is safe, but you would've hoped someone would've seen that there's a problem with fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters coming in at DCA. Someone should have seen that before we lost almost 70 lives.

(14:34)
It's our job to look and see that we have an aging infrastructure around air traffic control, and so if we don't build a brand new system, there's going to be failures, and people will lose their lives. And so we need the help of Congress to help fund this, but it's going to be all brand new. And after you build a brand new system, we have the bedrock and the foundation to actually build on top of it.

(14:57)
But no one has done this, Mr. President. There's Band- Aid fixes that have happened over the course of 20 years. You can't have a Band-Aid fix. It doesn't get done. It has to be brand new. The technology, it looks like it's out of a 1980s movie: old computers, floppy disks. We're using copper wires, not fiber, so there are great solutions we have available.

(15:20)
By the way, everyone's sick of their delayed flights or their canceled flights. We have more capacity in the airspace, and if we rebuild, not rebuild, if we build this brand new system, what you'll have is more efficiency in the airspace, and it will be safer. So the economy will be stronger, we can have more flights and less delays, so I appreciate your support on that, Mr. President.

President Trump (15:40):

Rebuilding that is very important. You wouldn't have had the helicopter crashing into the plane at 400 feet up when it's supposed to be 200 feet. Bells and whistles would've gone over, and you would've heard the screaming equipment saying, "There's a problem coming up in 15 seconds. You got to do something about it right now." And it would've also sent the word right into the helicopter, because I guess you'll be doing the full report on that, but it was pretty obvious what happened.

(16:13)
And they were supposed to be a 200 feet, they were at 400 feet, and a terrible thing, and that wouldn't have happened if we had the right equipment. If we had the right equipment, you would've heard bells and whistles going off, and it would've alerted long before that would've happened. Two minutes before. It would've had a lot of time. So we have to do this, we have no choice, and we're going to do it, and we're going to be very proud of it.

(16:34)
They did old equipment and new equipment, and you can't hook in old equipment to new equipment because some is satellite and some is ground. And the satellite doesn't work. This man would know that better than anybody, but you can't hook up a satellite system to a ground-wired system, and if you do, you're wasting a lot of money.

(16:54)
They spent billions. This is Buttigieg. They spent billions and billions of dollars trying to patch a system together. They had hundreds of different contractors, and the contractors were all fighting with each other. We're going to have one great, big contractor, like the great big beautiful bill, which is going along very well.

(17:14)
I guess I like great, big, beautiful, but we're going to have one, great big beautiful contractor, whether it's maybe Raytheon, maybe IBM. Maybe it could be any one of four or five different groups. But you put one in charge. They're very big, very powerful monetarily, and they give you a guarantee, and they hook up everything. They do every single thing.

(17:35)
So they're responsible for the digging of the ditches and the fiber and every single element, and it's one system that's hooked in. It's not all these hodgepodge systems that don't work together, and it's just a shame. It's basic construction, but it's complex stuff, and there are a few companies that do it unbelievably well, and we're going to have that. So good job, John. I know that's your big project.

Sean (18:02):

And Mr. President, no one has done it because it is complex. It's hard to do because as you're building a brand-new system, you have planes taking off and landing. And so because it's complex, no one has done it, and you've given the directive and the support to make this happen, so thank you.

President Trump (18:14):

Well, ours is going to be an all-new system. It's going to all hook up. The same tower is going to have the same equipment, and all towers all over the country, all over the world, actually, mostly, are going to be hooked in together.

(18:27)
And when there's a problem, when planes are too close, you will hear a sound that's very ear-shattering, and I've heard it, and it's amazing. I mean, honestly, it's amazing. It's real genius stuff, and we didn't do that. What we did was just waste money. You could have just thrown it right out the window.

(18:46)
What they did in this last four years was disgraceful. Whether it was the border or this, you can name 100 different things. The worst administration ever. Okay.

Sean (19:01):

Thank you, Mr. President.

President Trump (19:01):

Thank you.

Secretary Doug Burgum (19:01):

And Mr. President?

President Trump (19:01):

Secretary?

Secretary Doug Burgum (19:02):

Yeah. Mr. President, thank you. And I think one of the things that I want people to understand about the VA is we're part of the national security interests you have, and you've laid the groundwork for that with leadership and making sure that, with the Secretary of Defense and myself, we take care of veterans on two ends. One when they come in and one when they've served and they've earned the benefits that we have.

(19:17)
And one of the things is if we're not doing our job on our end, then the recruitment and all goes down on the other end because we have a full spectrum. That's what leadership is about.

(19:25)
What we found, speaking in the last four years, is we found an administration that wanted to throw money and people at problems, but they didn't want to put leadership in. They just put money in people at it, and we saw wait times stay the same, we saw issues of suicide rates, death by suicide, not change. We saw our homelessness issue barely go down. We saw disability claims skyrocket. When you took place, over 250,000 back in this lot, which we're already bringing down to almost 40,000 so far just in the last couple of months.

(19:51)
But we've also put back what you, and I was in Congress when this happened, and I was glad to see that the MISSION Act is back front and center at the VA. We're actually doing community care. We're actually giving the veteran the choice that they've earned and they deserve, where they can get their VA care inside our facilities or in the community. It's their choice. It's VA care. We're going to give them the highest quality care wherever they want to go.

(20:11)
Also, we're expanding out options for treatments and others. For those that are new, we're experimenting and looking at new counseling ideas, all new drug techniques that we can help with PTSD, TBI, the things that are affecting our veterans right now.

(20:23)
But also, we've taken the leadership to take people and bring them back into work where they're actually communicating. They're back in our offices. We put thousands of people back in. We're processing more claims daily than we were in the last little bit. Hit a million before has ever happened, and we're actually bringing it down. And I've actually taken our deputy secretary, and he is actually handling a strike force now to bring down that disability claim, plus our regular work that we're having done.

(20:49)
We've also taken almost 300-plus million dollars and taken it out of contracts that we've all heard about so far. We were doing contracts for meeting notes and PowerPoints, and if our folks didn't know how to do meeting notes and PowerPoints, go online and learn yourself. We're not going to pay for it anymore. And we took $360 million and put it back into community care and also our health records management system that we have.

(21:08)
We've opened six new facilities just in the last little bit. First of all, the media who wants to talk about how we're hurting healthcare? We just opened six new facilities. By the way, thank you. You're welcome. As we go from that, that we've continued. We've also took 11.6 billion in ceiling values of contracts and terminated that we did not need, resulting in significant cost avoidance for the future, but also still maintaining the ability to take care of our patients and also our disability benefits.

(21:34)
We've also gotten unity again. We did away with $14 million in DEI spending. We've ended gender dysphoria treatments. We've phased that out. All directed, the savings from that go to paralyzed veterans and amputees. We've also continued to work toward in anti-Semitism and also anti-Christian bias that we saw.

(21:52)
The biggest thing though, Mr. President, I wanted to say, is you told me when you said for me to take this job, you said, "Take care of my veterans." Well, we've done something in taking that step forward. The veteran is back first at the VA. The VA is not about itself anymore. We're not a self-feeding animal. It's about a service organization that takes care of one of the best that we have, and that's our veterans. And that way, Mr. President, we're just getting started.

President Trump (22:13):

Thank you, Doug. How are you doing with the suicide rates?

Secretary Doug Burgum (22:17):

It's tough, Mr. President, and that's something that we're looking at. This is something that we've had $588 million that have been spent over the last especially four or five years to prevention, and yet the numbers stayed at 17 or 21, wherever you want to have it.

(22:29)
We're now opening that back up, taking in nonprofits. We're bringing in others who have things that are actually looking at it. I've worked with Secretary Kennedy and others on the idea of we're opening up the possibility of psychedelic treatment and others that give us an opportunity. We've got to research it, make sure it's good, but it's opening up that possibility.

(22:47)
And I think, again, veterans are understanding now that we're putting them first. When I go to these hospitals, they're actually coming up saying, "Thanks. We're back in where we need to be." And we're seeing a workforce develop.

(22:57)
So suicide is going to come down. It's also going to take some transition stuff that your Secretary of Defense has been very helpful on. We've got to transfer them out of the military so they come to us better, but we're working on that.

President Trump (23:06):

[inaudible 00:23:06]. Thank you. Jameson?

Jameson (23:10):

Mr. President, and it may come as a surprise, but this has been the busiest 100 days of history. In the history of the-

President Trump (23:17):

In history. You know, this is the biggest deal ever done. If you sold IBM, ExxonMobil, and five other companies together, it's peanuts compared to what we're doing. This is the biggest deal ever done financially in the history of the world, and I think we're doing great. You're going to see some big, big results. Go ahead.

Jameson (23:38):

And I'll just say something that Secretary Duffy said in his context, because it's complex, no one has done it. So this is something, a reordering of global trade, that hasn't happened since the end of World War II, and it's long overdue because we've seen manufacturing offshore under the old global trading system.

(23:55)
When the net result of the global trading system's that all the manufacturing goes to Asia and other places, that's a system you have to replace, and that's what you're doing. They said you wouldn't be able to do global tariffs. We did it. They said everyone would retaliate. No one retaliated outside of China. They said no one would come to negotiate. We're talking to dozens of countries. They said no one would have offers. We have dozens of written offers. We have lots of countries in this week. This is like a break for me to come-

President Trump (24:19):

We have a list [inaudible 00:24:20] with all the countries that want to negotiate. They all want to negotiate. They want to make a deal.

Jameson (24:28):

[inaudible 00:24:28] in on this. Yeah. This is like a tracker, right? We have all these columns of which countries have come in, when we started negotiations, with who gave us an offer, are we in technical talks, and when do we expect to have deals done? Those are some weeks out, but we're-

President Trump (24:41):

Yeah, it is.

Jameson (24:42):

… working very quickly on this. Thanks, chief.

President Trump (24:44):

Thank you, Jameson. You're going to have a lot of fun for the next three weeks.

Jameson (24:46):

Fun. It will be fun.

President Trump (24:46):

Michael, do you have anything?

Michael (24:51):

Mr. President, in the last four years, the world experienced a total lack of zero leadership under Biden, and then we've had 100 days of your leadership with respect, with strength, starting with, "They'll be all hell to pay if you don't let our people go."

(25:10)
Dozens, over 40 Americans, have come home under your leadership. Far more terrorists are no longer threatening the homeland under your leadership, pulling all of these agencies together, including the person, the evil individual, responsible for the Abbey Gate bombing. And to sit with the 13 gold star families, and you showing that follow-up and that justice has been incredible.

(25:43)
But pulling this great team together, Mr. President, everything from revitalizing shipyards, to cyber, to space, that takes this entire team working together. It's an honor to serve you in this administration, and I think the world is far better, far safer for it.

Howard (26:06):

Amen.

President Trump (26:06):

Thank you very much, [inaudible 00:26:06]. The Abbey Gate is really important. This was a horrible thing. It destroyed the image, frankly, of the Biden administration. What happened there was a disgrace. It should have never happened, and Pam is working very much on prosecuting that person.

Speaker 1 (26:20):

That's right.

President Trump (26:20):

We have the person, and you'll do well. I have no doubt about it. Thank you very much, Michael. So the CIA, I don't know, Ratcliffe, I don't know if he's going to say anything. He's probably the one person here that's not allowed to talk about the great job he's done, but go ahead anyway.

John Ratcliffe (26:37):

Mr. President, as you know, at your direction, the CIA has deployed our unique covert action authorities in various places and continents to successfully advance your national security and foreign policy priorities to advance peace, to end wars, to take terrorists off the battlefield, and to keep illicit drugs from coming into this country and harming Americans.

(27:04)
Unfortunately, as much as I would love to detail your accomplishments, in that regard, we can't do so in front this crowd. But you and I both know, Mr. President, that you have had a profound, positive impact on America's national security posture, and Americans are safer because of your leadership.

(27:23)
What I can talk about publicly, as has been mentioned, the CIA provided the intelligence that led to the apprehension of the Abbey Gate bomber, who is now being prosecuted by our great attorney general and providing a measure of justice for those 13 families that suffered as a result of that disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal during the last administration.

(27:46)
In addition, at your direction, Mr. President, the CIA has negotiated and secured the release of Americans like Marc Fogel and Ksenia Karelina who have been wrongfully detained, sending the message that you will forget about no Americans that are being held in other places unfairly and unjustly.

(28:04)
And finally, Mr. President, the CIA is being restructured at your direction to focus on our core mission and to eliminate the well-documented politicization that has taken place in the intelligence community from bad actors in the past to focus on our core mission and to make America safe again. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. President.

President Trump (28:26):

Good job. You're doing a great job. Thank you very much. Russell?

Russell (28:30):

We're obviously involved in a number of budget bills that are moving, trying to make sure all of your priorities are reflected in the reconciliation, working on our upcoming budget. Wonderful job by the entire cabinet on that front. Details soon on that front, sending out precision bills to Congress for things that Elon has found.

(28:49)
But the regulatory aspect is something we don't talk about enough, and right now, you've given us a goal of 10 for one. We are working right now with all of the agencies to rack up how big of a deregulatory agenda that we can have.

(29:02)
When you came into office, you basically stopped $200 billion in costs to American families just by stopping the Biden regulatory agenda. That's about 2000 per family. We think when we're going to hit these 10-for-one goals, that we could be in the neighborhood of about $900 billion in savings to American families. That would be substantially bigger than that $2000 number. And the point that I would make, in addition to just savings cheaper to the American people, there's an aspect of wisdom when you're enforcing these rules that comes into play.

(29:38)
And I'm your regulator for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and we found this small mortgage lender in Chicago. His name is Barry Sturner. He had a firm called Townstone. And CFPB had gone after him because he complained about crime in Chicago. Literally the same thing that the Democrat mayor had talked about, and they came after him for seven years on a redlining disparate impact claim and ruined his life. We overturned that, we apologized on your behalf to the individual, and we basically, without having to go through notice and comment, we ended the policy that set that in motion.

(30:21)
And so that's happening across these agencies with how they are using their enforcement discretion, and it will only continue based on the stonewall of backing that you've given us to make these hard calls. I don't think they're actually that hard, but no one's done it to this point, and we were able to go forward and do that with backing that you gave us.

President Trump (30:41):

So maybe the biggest thing we're working on, maybe bigger than tariffs in a certain sense, is we call it the one big beautiful bill, and that's wielding its way right now through the Senate. And John Thune has been actually amazing, and the speaker has been so great in Congress,

President Trump (31:00):

Mike Johnson has been. Really, two guys that they get along great and it's just been a beautiful unified attack really, because we have to attack because the Democrats are trying to stop it at every turn. It would mean a 58% tax hike if they were successful and lots of other bad things beyond the tax hike. But with us, it'll be the biggest tax cut in American history. How are we doing with the bill?

Russ Vought (31:28):

We're doing great. We're day in, day out, hour by hour negotiations to make sure your stuff is in there and to make sure we have the border resources, the defense resources, and to save the American people some tax money and make sure all those tax cuts that you ran on are in there that help get people back into the workforce. And I think we're making a ton of progress.

President Trump (31:53):

I think we're doing well. Like I said, the biggest tax cut in the history of our country and it would be the biggest tax increase if the Democrats are successful. They're the only people I've ever seen running for office where they want to increase taxes, but this would be a 58%, maybe a 60% tax increase. Unsustainable for the American people. Thank you very much. Great job. Susie, the most powerful woman in the world. [inaudible 00:32:19] I agree with that. I agree.

Susie Wiles (32:22):

I'll be brief so you can hear from these amazing people. Congratulations to everyone on 100 days. It's unparalleled in my memory and best I can tell ever. But it hasn't been busy for busy's sake. The President's promises made to the American people have been kept time and time and time again. You all have been out there spreading the word with community groups and states and media. It hasn't gone unnoticed. And let's work hard to the next 100 and have equally as much success then. Thank you.

President Trump (32:59):

And you're doing a great job, Susie. I think everybody agrees. Do we have anybody that disagrees, please? Media?

Susie Wiles (33:02):

I do.

President Trump (33:12):

Please raise your hand if you have the courage to do so. Anyway, go ahead.

Tim Scott (33:21):

Yes sir. Mr. President.

President Trump (33:22):

Thank you.

Tim Scott (33:23):

Thank you. And you made it very clear that you wanted to put America first and also from day one, you want to make housing affordable again because we do have a housing affordability crisis in our country and so at HUD, we've been cutting all the red tape and bureaucracy as it pertains to housing affordability and unleashing creativity of our builders and developers around our country and restoring local control. We took down the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, as you know, which was a zoning-

President Trump (33:56):

Big thing.

Tim Scott (33:57):

… tax from Washington. So no longer will Washington be picking winners and losers, but localities and elected officials in different states and cities will have that flexibility. Also, you alluded to securing the border and such a great job has been done with all of our partners at the table. And at HUD, we want to make sure that the resources that we have now, which is American taxpayer dollars. And the Biden administration, they prioritize illegal aliens over the American people. And so we signed an MOU with Secretary Noem at DHS to make sure that HUD funded housing only goes to American citizens and no longer will it go to illegal aliens coming across our border.

(34:40)
We have about nine million people living in subsidized housing in our country. 59% of illegal alien families use some sort of welfare program costing us $42 billion a year. And so we have prioritized American and American people only to live in HUD funded housing. And also to make housing affordable, we also signed a partnership with Secretary Burgum at DOI to use underutilized federal lands as you campaigned on and promised, to identify those lands to build affordable housing in our country so that people can realize the American dream.

(35:18)
We also restored biological truth as you did in sports. We have the equal access rule at HUD, which we took that rule down to ensure that at women shelters that those that enter those shelters would be of the same sex and that we would protect the ladies of our country. No longer will those that identify as women but are not women be able to enter our shelters so we can protect the ladies that we serve. Along with our Doge task force, we identified over $2 billion in savings and $260 million at HUB, reducing contracts $4 million with DEI and so we took those contracts down and de-obligated and sent back $1.9 billion back to the treasury for the American people. Again, we want to be good stewards over the American taxpayer dollars. And so Mr. President, thank you for your leadership in this and we have a tremendous team at HUD and I'm so grateful to be part of this team around this table to take care of the American people and I can say it's a honor and humble to do so.

President Trump (36:28):

Good job.

Tim Scott (36:29):

Yes, sir.

President Trump (36:30):

Thank you, sir. Appreciate it, Brooke.

Brooke Rollins (36:31):

Well, I'm not sure if anyone's heard, but the price of eggs is down. I know it's news. I know it's news. We start today, as we celebrate the 100th day, I think that it's just such a joy and an honor to continue to do this work, so thank you for that. We have been obviously very focused on the cost of groceries, specifically eggs led the way as you have so eloquently discussed over the last few months and we're holding tight on a very significant decrease, which is great and investing where we need to there.

(37:03)
As I mentioned before the press came in, we have had a massive issue with Mexico on water, getting water to our farmers along the border for decades. When I worked in Texas 25 years ago, we were fighting with the Mexican government over the water then. You got involved about two weeks ago. That evening I started conversations and as of just a few days ago, thanks to Secretary Rubio's great deputy secretary and I have been negotiating and we hit the best deal, I believe in history on behalf of our farmers and thanks to your leadership and your strength on that. And that's a really big deal long-term for those farmers in the southern part of the country.

(37:44)
On the energy side, I know we've got Secretary Burgum and his partner Secretary Wright, but we often forget that agriculture has a major piece of the energy dominance agenda. Not just timber, not just minerals, but biofuels. So we continue to support that great leadership coming from those agencies and doing hopefully our part as well. And they've been incredible in that. Our farmers have been hurting. Under the Joe Biden administration, there was a 30% increase in the cost of input. So the cost of doing business for these farmers over those four years. When we left the White House the first time four years ago, we had a $0 trade deficit with our agriculture products. After four years of Biden that hit $50 billion because they just didn't make an effort. And so obviously that's $50 billion less at a time of very thin profitability for our agriculture community.

(38:35)
So the Congress passed, because the last administration didn't get a farm bill done either the farmers were hurting there, so Congress stepped in. I say all that and basically said $10 billion to move out. USDA fastest in history. That money went out to those farmers that couldn't plant their crops. And so I'm really proud of that and you'll hear a lot of that from the farmers today, that this USDA is moving more quickly than any ever before and we're not organizing money based on the color of skin and other ways, which was how the last administration was moving out. We've canceled $6 billion in contracts thanks to our great friend Elon Musk and his Doge team. A lot of those were DEI gender studying transgender mice. Who knew? The racism and pest management, we've canceled all of it.

(39:24)
We're going through a major, major restructuring. USDA is one of the biggest agencies. It's sort of a catch- all and we're really, really downsizing and aligning around putting farmers first, which is really, really important. A big part of USDA is food stamps. It is perhaps one of the largest, if not the largest welfare program and it's a supplemental nutrition program. Secretary Kennedy and I have been working very closely. We were in Texas yesterday talking about nutrition and agriculture. You can't make America healthy again without your farmers and your ranchers as your partner. So ensuring that our food stamp program and those at the bottom end of the socioeconomic ladder really have access to nutritious foods as we're facing an obesity crisis and a chronic disease crisis, which I'm sure Secretary Kennedy will touch on.

(40:13)
And the final thing I'll say is this morning Secretary Noem and I together, and I brought a picture because I think this is important and it goes to why we're here. This is a South Dakota ranching family named the Maudes. They are a fifth generation ranching family. Charles Maude in his thirties bought the ranch from his granddad. I'm going to show the press when he was 17 years old, those beautiful children, Lyle and Kennedy, his wife Heather. Under the Biden administration, they had of their several hundred acre operation, they used about 20 acres and had a fence that had been there since 1910 when their family took over the ranching operation. There had never been really any problem that had been brought to their attention. Perhaps there was a minor dispute over again 20 acres.

(41:04)
This family was indicted, prosecuted, threatened with jail time, told to find guardians for their children over a fence line dispute that the Biden DOJ pushed forward. So this morning and the steps of the US Department of Agriculture with Secretary Noem who was their governor as the governor of South Dakota, which is where these great people are from, all charges, criminal charges were dropped and really appreciate the Department of Justice. It was a really big day as we sent the signal that the over-criminalization and using government, and you know this better than anyone because you were in the crosshairs for so long, that those days are over and the regulation through prosecution is no more. And so this family is one of many that we'll now be talking to ensure that never happens again.

President Trump (41:53):

Good. Thank you.

Brooke Rollins (41:54):

Thank you.

President Trump (41:54):

Real good job. Please, Scott.

Scott Bessent (41:58):

Sir, it is been a momentous 100 days with you at the helm. And I view this 100 days as setting the table for peace deals, trade deals, tax deals. So the next 100 days will be harvesting. You've created negotiating, leverage and leadership. They're going to yield remarkable results. Energy costs have plummeted, mortgage rates are down, food costs are moving lower, and American families are finding their financial footing again. I had a group in today, America under your leadership is on the verge of becoming an AI superpower that our economy had become barbelled. We had high tech and finance on one side, natural resources led by energy, which the previous administration tried to kill on the other. And you're filling in between with precision manufacturing that we're going to be bringing back through good trade policies, good tax policies.

(42:56)
Under the Doge at Treasury and the IRS, cost tech support efficiency have increased. We have the IRS revenues are up and thanks to the young man sent over by Doge, the IT update that began in 1990, which was begun before he was born is going to be finished during your term. You couldn't make it up. Trade taxes and deregulation, the one big beautiful bill under your leadership. Speaker Johnson and Leader Thune have done a great job. But they have you as the closer on many of their members. And I'll just close by saying economic security is national security. National security is economic security and it's never been better. We're rebuilding it. And as I said last week at the IMF and World Bank Conferences, America first does not mean America alone. Under President Trump, it means leadership.

Brooke Rollins (44:07):

Well said.

President Trump (44:07):

Thank you. Are you busy now? He's doing a great job. Thank you very much.

John Ratcliffe (44:16):

Mr. President, thank you and thanks to the cabinet. So at the risk of insulting everybody else at the table, I believe that I'm the youngest member sitting at the table. And it occurred to me that from the time that I was born to the time that Donald J. Trump was inaugurated just a few months ago, again, 40 years, we went from the world's manufacturing superpower to one in which we depend on the People's Republic of China to make the things that we need. We went from the proudest military in the world to one in which we failed to meet our recruiting goals. And we went from one in which bipartisan border policy was the consensus of both Democrats and Republicans to one in which we allow 20 million people to run roughshod illegally over the countryside causing crime, causing the stress in the welfare system. And again, that happened over the lifetime of the youngest member of the cabinet.

(45:15)
And what has happened in 100 days is that we've started to reverse every single one of those negative trends. And I think what it shows to me is that the president, and you sit in the Oval Office and you see these portraits of presidents past, and let's be honest, most of them have been placeholders. They've been people who who've allowed their staff to sign executive orders with an auto pen instead of men of action. And the reason the media attacks this administration as chaotic is because the president is solving the problems the American people set about to solve. He's actually doing the things that he promised that he would do. And Mr. President, it's been an honor to be part of it for the past 100 days.

(45:56)
And let me just make one other observation because it's interesting. I've seen the data, I've monitored it, I've looked at it, but the most underreported fact of the first 100 days is that we came in with a massive recruitment shortfall and in 100 days of Secretary Hegseth and President Trump's leadership, we now have people breaking down the doors to join our military. To the media assembled here, it's a really interesting question. Why has that happened? Completely aside from the fact that I think it's a good thing or I think that President Trump deserves political credit for it. Why did we go from a military where people didn't want to serve to now all of a sudden they do want to serve?

(46:36)
That's a story you guys should cover, but compared to that, how much time have you instead focused on the fact that we deported an MS-13 gang member with a valid deportation order? And why is it that the press is so focused on the fake BS rather than what's really going on in the country? I think that what we've shown, sir, is that you can do a lot. You can do a lot in 100 days, but you've also unfortunately revealed that too much of the American media hasn't learned the lessons of the past 40 years. Thank you, sir.

President Trump (47:06):

Thank you. [inaudible 00:47:08] Pam.

Pam Bondi (47:10):

President. Your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you. Your directive to me was very simple, make America safe. And despite that, we've still been defending over 200 civil lawsuits filed against you on top of everything else. I think I'm representing every one of you in this room in some capacity. I know you will not be arrested by the US Marshals. Over 200 lawsuits, over 50 injunctions, and now we've got multiple cases in front of the Supreme Court and we will succeed. And we are doing great in front of the Supreme Court, president, and we'll continue on with that.

(47:53)
I was at DEA yesterday and they said to me you, Donald Trump, have taken the handcuffs off of DEA agents and as a result of since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl since your last 100 days. Which saved, are you ready for this media? 258 million lives. Kids are dying every day because they're taking this junk laced with something else. They don't know what they're taking. They think they're buying a Tylenol or an Adderall and a Xanax and it's laced with fentanyl and they're dropping dead and no longer because of you, what you've done. ATF, since you've been in office, President, along with DOJ agencies seized 14,500 guns off the streets. Why aren't people reporting that? 650,000 rounds of ammo. That's up 151% from 2024. That's keeping America safe.

(49:02)
We've rescinded death penalty. We are now seeking the death penalty on cases. I'm signing death warrants. We are going after terrorism. We are going after arsonists. Whether you're burning Teslas, we've arrested nine people so far in seven jurisdictions, no negotiations, 20 years in prison, or you're burning down the governor's mansion in Pennsylvania. We will be there to protect you. And I've been talking to Governor Shapiro and he greatly, I appreciated you reaching out as well. ISIS terrorist, we got one in New York. Right around the corner we got an ISIS terrorist in New York. We have an October 7th task force. We just broke up a huge human trafficking ring by the Sinaloa Cartel, 1,000 pounds of meth, meth, methamphetamine on our streets, ton of fentanyl, 20,000 Molly pills. Those are the drug of choice at clubs and bars for young kids. They were fake, but you know what they had in them? Fentanyl. That's 20,000 lives saved because of you right there.

(50:06)
We brought back 29 cartel members from Mexico at your direction and one killed, Kiki Camarena, a DEA agent in 1985. And many of us got to talk to his widow and his son, who is now a judge. And they started crying. They have tried to get that guy back forever. And thanks to so many of you in this room working together, they have justice. They were crying on the phone because of what you did, President Trump. Thank you. We're going after anti-Semitism. We're unleashing everything you told us. And no more DEI, no more weaponization. We have rescinded, as I said, 200 policies and I could go on all day long, but we are doing everything in our power to keep America safe at your direction.

President Trump (50:53):

Thank you, ma'am.

Pam Bondi (50:53):

Thank you, President.

President Trump (50:54):

You're really doing a great job. Thank you very much. Okay, let's go.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer (50:59):

Nice to see you, Mr. President. Well, first of all, I think what you've heard amongst this team is the leadership because it's given us the latitude really to collaborate amongst each other. Not only in this room, as Jamieson mentioned, we kind of get a break for a couple of hours here, but we stay in contact actually every other day that we're working for you. And I think what that says is I was speaking to, for instance, the Farm Bureau of Texas yesterday. I'm not the ag secretary, but it matters to the workforce. I'm working with the other secretaries, Lutnick and McMahon, on education and the workforce investments that you've asked me to do because as you've come in and negotiated these great repatriation of these companies and the investments, we're going to need that workforce to build back this economy.

(51:40)
And I couldn't see that more as I've kicked off my 50 state tour, we've been in five states so far. We'll finish all 50 states by the end of the year. And what we're talking to is the American workforce and these companies about what the market demand is. That's the difference that we finally have made that connection. What do they need? How quick do they need it and how fast can I get these either apprenticeships toward that million that we've put that lofty goal? We've already added 80,000 new apprenticeships already just since January. So at the Department of Labor, that tour has kicked off and I couldn't be more honored to be on the ground and see my colleagues that we're passing in the skies, but we're on the ground together because we're all collaborating together.

(52:20)
One of the things that we're talking about, illegal immigration, I have put states on notice. I warned all 50 governors that if they continue to reward illegal immigration by treating unemployment benefits as a handout, they're going to lose their federal funding as well. We can no longer continue to give unemployment insurance to illegal immigrants. And so I've let those governors and I sent out that letter last week. We also eliminated discriminatory DEI offices within the department, specifically the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Most of our federal contracts were really just a focus on DEI enforcement. We were really punishing a lot of these companies. If they weren't complying, they weren't going to have a federal content. We've let go of that program completely.

(53:02)
$4.4 billion in unspent covid funds came back to the treasury from the CARES Act and billions were collecting dust in these coffers, in the state coffers. We've asked for that money back to return to the Department of Treasury. We saved $250 million by canceling America last is what I call it, foreign handouts, including funding for things like transparency and accountability for Uzbekistan cotton industry. It doesn't make sense that we're funding these foreign and thank you to Doge and to the government efficiency of what we have found with the fraud that we're seeing.

Elon Musk (53:40):

Some of these things are so ridiculous, you can't believe it.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer (53:40):

I write them down and I read them more than once.

Elon Musk (53:44):

Uzbekistan cotton farmers. It sounds like a comedy sketch.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer (53:47):

And so again, with the executive order preparing Americans for high paying skilled trade jobs of the future, that's our goal. The trades is where we're being focused, but all companies and we want to make sure we're on hand for that. And what I want to say is thank you to government efficiency because you asked us, when this transitions out, will our departments and our agencies continue that government efficiency? And I think that we surpassed that in the Department of Labor. Out of our 14,000 federal employees, 3000 have taken the DRP and we offered it again. So over 21% have taken that offer and we'll keep our critical workforce MSHA, OSHA and wage and hour and make sure our workers stay safe. So with your leadership, Mr. President, I couldn't be more honored to serve. I know we were probably the last to know each other, but we're getting to know each other well and the team that you have assembled is really an honor to serve with. So thank you, Mr. President.

President Trump (54:45):

Great job. Thank you. You're doing great. Thank you very much. Chris, please.

Chris Wright (54:45):

Mr. President, you ran on unleashing American energy and 100 days have shown the tremendous impacts that can arise from the unleashing you have enabled. I'll just hit a few highlights. Number one, oil, gasoline and diesel prices are the lowest they've been in years. How does that happen in 100 days? That's a messaging. Your message that we're pro-energy, we're not against energy, we're for it. That sends a message to the marketplace that supply is easier to grow now and supply will be coming. And that's already led to tremendous savings for American consumers across the country. And we need not only more affordable energy, but we need a lot more energy. One highlight I think a couple of us have touched on is AI. This is a new emerging critical industry that's very energy intensive. It is not acceptable for the United States to not be the leader in AI. We must win the AI race and lead in that, and that's going to take a lot more energy. If you had not won election, we would not have won the AI race. Full stop. Energy would not have been there to enable us to win.

(55:57)
Reshoring of manufacturing. These trillions of dollars you led off with. It's going to come back to our country to make chips, to make steel, to make automobiles, to make artificial intelligence, to make all of these industries we've outsourced. That's only going to be possible with way more American energy, but we have that energy, we have those resources, we have those businesses, we have those capitalists. We just need to stop standing in the way of them and follow the lead you've set, which is to enable them, not to subsidize them, not to help them, to enable them to invest American money and create American jobs here. Regarding our balance of trade, the second largest export of the United States is liquefied natural gas. Second fastest. In the next few years, it'll be our largest export in our country, but yet 18 months ago, the Biden administration had said, "We're going to stop issuing permits for new LNG export terminals." That's just nuts. That's a great competitive advantage we have, huge balance of trade driver, a huge industry just coiled and ready to go. I just came back from Poland last night. They are thrilled that America's back in business again and that the rest of Europe can get off of Russian energy and can enable their own economic growth with secure, reliable, affordable energy from the United States. Also witnessed the signing ceremony for a deal between two large American businesses to build a huge nuclear power plant in Northeastern Poland, the first of this design built in Europe. It'll be the first of many. I spoke with many other nations over there. They want to buy more American gas, they want to get American technology. They want to have a partnership with us. And they shared the message I delivered to Europe in my keynote remarks is that unleashing energy is the way you make your society safer, more prosperous, more free, and that these sort of over-the-top climate alarmism doesn't do anything to help the environment of our world, but it does impoverish people. It does reduce the security of your nation and it makes you weaker. I think that's a constant message many of us around this table have brought to Europe. We want our friends in Europe standing up again and leaning in. A lot great is happening under your leadership. We're unleashing consumer products that Americans wanted to buy that Biden was making illegal. I'll be in Georgia on Friday at Rinnai's manufacturing plant, tankless natural gas water heaters. Incredibly popular product. They almost became illegal. The return of common sense is incredibly welcome across this country, across the world and back to Elon, that extra thing. We're going to deliver all of this with less people, less money, less burden on the US taxpayers, not smaller departments and smaller services, better, more thoughtful services done more efficiently and smarter. The way you'd have to run a business. We've got to get our fiscal house in order and you and the people around this table are making it happen. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm honored to be here.

President Trump (58:58):

Thank you. Great job. Thank you very much. Please.

Kristi Noem (59:00):

Yes, Mr. President, you are 100% correct. The border is 99.99% safe, under control. You have completely reversed the entire situation. In fact, the day before yesterday, I was down in El Paso and those border patrol agents are so impacted by how you have changed things in a year. They have put up huge pictures that say under the Biden administration, the mobs of people that were pushing through razor wire and trampling children and the chaos and the violence that was happening at that same location." They have a picture there that says, "This is what the Biden administration looks like, and this is what the Trump administration looks like." It's peaceful. People who do business between Mexico and America are coming through. They're doing it legally. They're following the law and it's all because of what you've done and what you've empowered them to do.

(59:53)
The recruitment for border patrol is through the roof. For ICE agents, they want to be a part of ICE because they recognize they actually get to do their jobs. I have the Coast Guard too. Coast Guard recruitment is up over 20% just in the last 60 days. Everybody wants to be a part of what the heritage is of this country. We've repositioned the entire Coast Guard fleet to focus on border and drug interdiction. As we've secured the border, the cartels have gone to the water and are going out in maritime waters to move their drugs into this country. The Coast Guard just in the last two months has taken into custody over 126 tons of cocaine, millions of doses of fentanyl. It's just amazing. And the aliens that they are deporting is incredible too. We've been working with all of them.

(01:00:40)
The one thing that I want to point out is the fake news has been saying that Biden deported more people than you, and it's an absolute lie and they're letting the Biden administration get away with manipulating and cooking the books. What they're counting for the Biden administration is every single person that came to that border that they processed and let into this country. They're allowing Biden to say that was a deportation just by processing somebody and letting them come into the country. It's absolutely false. It's not true at all. You have deported over 250 known terrorists. You've deported thousands of foreign terrorist organization members and gang members, hundreds of thousands of people that were in this country illegally. We've collected $30 billion worth of tariffs through CBP, and we've also collected millions and millions, hundreds of millions of fines and penalties from people that have overstayed here in this country.

(01:01:34)
So I just want to thank you. You've been a game changer. I want to thank Pete for his leadership at DOD and what they've done. I want to thank Marco for his diplomacy and getting us travel documents into these countries. Mexico has finally come to the table and now is going to take a lot more people that we're able to send back to that country. And the president of Mexico told me, sir, she turned around over a half a million people in Mexico before they ever reached

Kristi Noem (01:02:00):

… reached our border. We should be counting those as deportations because they never even made it to the border because she turned them around because you forced her to. So those are all people that never even came here because they got the message because you were so aggressive. So thank you for what you're doing. Every day we get to get up and do jobs that matter, and we appreciate that.

President Trump (01:02:19):

And Tom Homan's doing a great job.

Kristi Noem (01:02:20):

Oh, yeah, Tom's a great messenger for us. He just-

President Trump (01:02:23):

Great.

Kristi Noem (01:02:23):

Yeah, he's hardcore.

President Trump (01:02:25):

Thank you. Great job.

Kristi Noem (01:02:27):

Yeah, thank you.

President Trump (01:02:30):

Thank you. Really appreciate it. He is hardcore.

Kristi Noem (01:02:30):

Yeah, he is.

President Trump (01:02:30):

Kelly?

Kelly (01:02:30):

Mr. President, it's such an honor to serve in this administration, and on behalf of Main Street America, for our 34 million small businesses that make up 99% of all businesses in this great nation, I have to tell you, under your leadership, Main Street is open for business again. They're thriving and they're investing, and the data that we have at the Small Business Administration, the loans that we're putting out, a record 26,000 loans in your first hundred days means that 2,000 small businesses each week are receiving that funding, that investment in the future. Small businesses create two out of every three new jobs in this country, and we've already seen under your leadership the jobs economy is back. Manufacturing jobs are back. We've seen a 38% increase in manufacturing loans. We put out 1,500 manufacturing loans in your first hundred days. We saw startups increase by 54%, and we saw businesses under five people increase by 95%.

(01:03:29)
So your leadership on the economy matters to every region of this great nation. I'll tell you on the manufacturing front, I'm out on a national manufacturing tour. We've met with 250 manufacturers, and as I walk through the factory floors, they all ask me to thank you for fighting for their jobs, for these industries, and for the people who are creating things from pharmaceuticals, to aerospace, to food, and all these essentials that this nation needs to be independent and strong.

(01:03:59)
And to that end, I'm working with Congress. We'll be announcing tomorrow an upsizing of our manufacturing loans to make sure that that economic engine… Because 98% of all manufacturers are small businesses. It's incredible to walk through these factories that are really creating what you had in your first administration, the blue collar boom. It's now a new collar boom because it's the intersection of technology and manufacturing and what they can create for our war fighters, for our aerospace, for pharmaceuticals with less than 3 to 500 employees, sometimes a hundred employees. I was at a factory in Georgia on Monday that is creating machines to help with the Iron Dome in Israel. Less than 50 employees. This is the engine of our economy. It's the heartbeat of our communities. It's the small businesses that help elect you because they needed your economic agenda. So thank you, Mr. President. It's such an honor. And congratulations on an epic hundred days.

(01:04:57)
I do have to thank Elon. I do want to note we just cut $3 billion in contracts because of DOGE's work. That's $3 billion that hardworking families that won't have to work until April 15th to pay for the waste, fraud, and abuse that we continue to find in this government on behalf of taxpayers. So again, thank you, Elon.

Elon Musk (01:05:16):

Thanks again.

Kelly (01:05:16):

Thank you.

President Trump (01:05:18):

Great job, Kelly. Thank you very much. Elon, I love the double hat, by the way. He's the only one that can do that and get away with it.

Elon Musk (01:05:26):

Well, Mr. President, they say I wear a lot of hats. It's true. Even my hat has a hat.

(01:05:38)
So the American people voted for secure borders, safe cities, and sensible spending, and that's what they've gotten. A tremendous amount has been accomplished in the first hundred days. As everyone has said, it's more than has been accomplished in any administration before ever, period. So this portends very well for what will happen for the rest of the administration. I think this could be the greatest administration since the founding of the country.

President Trump (01:06:12):

Well, we all want to thank you for your help, too, Elon. You really have sacrificed a lot, been treated very unfairly.

Elon Musk (01:06:19):

Well, they do like to burn my cars, which is not great, you know? So could be better.

President Trump (01:06:26):

But you have been treated unfairly, but the vast majority of people in this country really respect and appreciate you, and this whole room can say that very strongly. You've really been a tremendous help. He opened up a lot of eyes as to what could be done, and we just want to thank you very much. And you're invited to stay as long as you want. At some point, I guess he wants to get back home to his cars and his…

(01:06:51)
[inaudible 01:06:51] a really great job. You've done an incredible job. $150 billion. Look at this.

Elon Musk (01:06:51):

Yeah. It's 160 now, yeah.

President Trump (01:06:51):

Yeah, 160.

Elon Musk (01:06:51):

Who's counting?

President Trump (01:06:51):

They said, "Oh, it could have been more." And a lot of stuff is being worked on. That number could be doubled and even tripled. A lot of things are being worked on that we don't count yet because it's not quite there. But you've done a fantastic job, and we appreciate it very much, Elon.

Elon Musk (01:07:22):

In fairness, it's also an honor to work with your incredible cabinet. Actually, say thank you everyone. It's great to work with you.

President Trump (01:07:27):

Thank you very much. Thank you.

(01:07:27)
Tulsi?

Tulsi (01:07:31):

Mr. President, congratulations on this truly historic first hundred days of your administration, really only made possible by your focus leadership on delivering the mandate the American people gave you. You have empowered all of us to deliver that mandate, and I'm grateful to have the privilege of leading the intelligence community towards ending the weaponization, politicization of the intelligence community that's gone on for far long and building out what is truly a lean and agile and effective intelligence community that is helping you deliver that promise to the American people of safety, security, and freedom. So Mr. President, I'd like to highlight just three of the areas where we are helping to support your leadership and your work in making America safe again and bringing about these changes.

(01:08:20)
First of all, because of your designation of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, I took immediate action with our National Counterterrorism Center to prioritize their focus on those terrorists and gang members who are trying to enter our country through legal or illegal means and to seek out those who already are here in our country because of the Biden administration's four years of open borders. We've been working very closely with your great attorney general's team at the DEA to get these known cartels into our systems to be able to stop them at the border and turning over names to Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to be able to find those who are already here in our country. Just the other day we found 700 alien terrorists who have ties to MS-13, Tren de Aragua, and the Sinaloa Cartel. Just yesterday our NCTC identified almost 600 individuals with ties to other terrorists who came through our borders illegally, claimed asylum, and under the Biden administration were paroled here within our borders.

(01:09:27)
Secondly, Mr. President, like too many organizations in the federal government, the ODNI has become very bloated with too much waste and abuse going on within the organization. We've done a few immediate steps. We are doing more. The ODNI is 25% smaller and more lean today than it was when I walked in the door and when you took office.

(01:09:51)
Secondly, we have just this morning actually shut down a human capital office. As soon as you issued the executive order to stop all DEI activities, we did that, shut down the DEI office. We discovered this Human Capital Office that was essentially a slush fund for DEI initiatives hidden under the guise of human capital that closed down this morning, saving taxpayers $150 million. We'll soon be announcing an additional $2.6 billion in savings with other programs and contracts that do nothing to ensure our national security interests.

(01:10:27)
And lastly, we're working every day to hold the deep state accountable to end the politicization, weaponization of the intelligence community. This past week I sent three criminal referrals for illegal and unauthorized leaks to the media of classified intelligence for prosecution. We have 11 more that are under investigation. We've revoked at your direction 67 security clearances, and we continue the work of declassifying documents, as we have already around JFK assassination. We have more coming for the assassination of Bobby's father, Senator Kennedy, and MLK assassination, and we continue our extensive investigations around exposing the very serious issues we have related to election integrity, illegal abuses of FISA, Crossfire Hurricane, and others. Mr. President, under your leadership, we are working every day to bring about that transparency and accountability that the American people deserve. So thank you for the opportunity.

President Trump (01:11:29):

Thank you, Tulsi. Great job. Thank you very much.

(01:11:30)
Lee?

Lee Zeldin (01:11:32):

Mr. President, at the Biden EPA, the Green New Deal was raging. At the Biden EPA, we saw billions of tax dollars burning. At the Biden EPA, we saw industries suffocating. But at the Trump EPA, the Green New Deal is debt. At the Trump EPA, we know that we can both protect the environment and grow the economy. I have 13 pages of accomplishments from our first 100 days in here, and in it, part of it is a hundred environmental accomplishments at the Trump EPA. You don't have to take my word for it. We released it to the media this morning. Every single day that President Trump is in this office, there will be a major environmental accomplishment, every single day of the Trump administration.

(01:12:29)
At the Trump EPA, we're also launching what is the largest deregulatory action in the history of the country. We're going to be giving our director of the OMB a whole lot of work because we inherited a big mess from the Biden EPA. And working with Elon and DOGE, I've canceled now $22 billion worth of grants.

(01:12:53)
Now, today is a special day for many reasons. The biggest reason why we're here is that this is the 100th day of the most consequential, historic first 100 days in the history of this country. Today while we're here, the House of Representatives is voting on Congressional Review Act bills considering the EPA waivers that were given to California's tailpipe emissions where California set their own standards. But there should be one national standard, and right now Congress on the House side is going to be voting on that today.

(01:13:29)
On a personal note, while this is a bit outside of the EPA jurisdiction, today is my last day serving in the United States Army. And I first signed up towards the end of the '90s, and I've had a chance to see a lot of national security teams over the course of the last 27 years. There has never been a national security team ever assembled that had the backs of our warriors like this national security team right now, and we have never had a president so deeply committed towards ending foreign wars instead of starting new ones. There's a reason, Mr. Vice President, why everyone is racing to join our Department of Defense. We have a Secretary of Defense who, with all due respect to our great president, will probably rather be swimming with Navy SEALs right now, be running somewhere in the Middle East with our service members.

(01:14:25)
And from our Secretary of Defense to our Secretary of State, our Vice President and more, I just want to say thank you as a veteran of our military for assembling what is the greatest national security team that I have ever seen in my 27 years associated with the United States Army.

Speaker 4 (01:14:41):

Has Pete signed off on this retirement, Lee? Is that…

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):

Welcome to the [inaudible 01:14:47].

Speaker 4 (01:14:56):

Thank you for your service, Lee.

Speaker 5 (01:14:56):

Yeah, thank you. You're doing great. Absolutely.

President Trump (01:14:59):

You're doing a fantastic job. We appreciate it very much.

(01:15:02)
So?

Linda (01:15:03):

Well, Mr. President, I don't think I have ever worked so hard to try to fire myself. We're certainly making great strides in that. We've reduced the folks over at the Department of Education by about 50% now through our RIF program. And so we've closed a lot of the district offices consolidating, so there are a lot fewer people working a lot more efficiently in the Department of Education.

(01:15:31)
The commissioners of education in every state, and I was at a meeting with them not too long ago for not only our states but our territories, they are thrilled with the opportunity now to be able to have more control over the education in their states, to get rid of a lot of the red tape and regulation that's kept them from doing what they're doing. So we're seeing, I think, great improvements. We'll see test scores, I believe, it'll take a bit for them to be able to go up, but I think now that they're going to have the opportunity to put in their own programs, we'll see that grow.

(01:16:04)
At the same time we've been focused on higher education. For our universities, we've returned proper enforcement of Title IX protections to schools. We have stopped funding to Columbia for instance and some other schools for not only Title IX but Title VI infractions. And those are moving along. I think we've brought people to the table. They know that you are serious. You meant what you said, you're going to make changes. They're making their campuses safer again. Anti-Semitism was just out of control in many of our universities, and so some tried to, in fact, target this suit and they're saying that it's First Amendment infraction. No, this is civil rights safety on our campuses for young students who are there, and with Pam's help with the task force that we formed with HHS, with GSA, with other agencies, we're going to make sure that our campuses are safe.

(01:17:02)
And so there's a lot of good work going on. I think one of the biggest things, you'll be very happy to hear this, Mr. Vought, that we are putting back into place collecting on our student loans that have been delinquent since March of 2020, been no effort to recollect from this loan. So as of May 5th, the letter goes out that the loan recollection is beginning again, so for those people who have borrowed money and who have not been paid, that's just not to be punitive. There are many ways that they can go online to understand how they can get back into the right payment structure, because when they're in default, they can't buy a house, they can't buy a car because their credit scores are down, so it's helpful to them as well as to get this money back into the country. I mean, $60 billion of increased student loan debt since 2020, and in total we've got almost $1.7 trillion in student debt. So we're going to start getting it back. And Scott, his team have been incredibly helpful. We appreciate that so very, very much.

(01:18:08)
And so a lot's going on at this department, and what I would really like, as I'm firing myself, I'd like for you to be known as the education president because of the best-in-practice systems that we want to put in every state, to incorporate AI so that we are training these new entrepreneurs and business leaders in our country. We can't do it with the infrastructure we have in place today. So you have to be working on that at the same time. So we're going to be doing that. So thank you for your charge to elevate education so that we are providing for every student access to excellent education. Thank you, sir.

President Trump (01:18:51):

Thank you very much, Linda. And what's going on with Harvard and some of these colleges that are taking vast amounts of money who also have vast amounts? They've got $52 billion and really scamming the public and hiring people like de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot, who are certainly two of the worst mayors in the history of our country, paying them a fortune of salary and having them teach our children how to manage cities and how to manage government. What's the word as of this morning on, let's say, Harvard?

Linda (01:19:27):

Well, we're negotiating with them. When we went back to them to say we'd welcome them back to the negotiating table, their response was a lawsuit. So Pam and her team are helping work with that. And I am enjoying the fact not only am I firing myself, but I'm now being sued fairly regularly by different departments of education, but we're staying tough with them.

(01:19:49)
The other thing that we're looking at also are the 117 violations of these big universities like Harvard and others who are not reporting, as they're required to do by the law, foreign money that comes in and how much that is and where it comes from. And so that is a very-

President Trump (01:20:07):

And students.

Linda (01:20:07):

Yeah, it's very serious.

President Trump (01:20:07):

Where are these people coming from?

Linda (01:20:07):

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:20:11):

Yeah, sir, we pulled back their grants because Harvard isn't responding to us criminal activity by their students, and until they give us that list, they're not getting any more grants from Homeland Security.

President Trump (01:20:21):

Good. I think we should pull it back.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):

Yep. We did.

President Trump (01:20:22):

The students they have, the professors they have, the attitude they have is not American, and I think you should… A grant is a grant. We don't have to give grants.

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):

Exactly right.

President Trump (01:20:32):

So we'll pull back the grant. All right. Very good. Thank you very much, Linda.

Linda (01:20:36):

Thank you.

President Trump (01:20:38):

Bobby?

Bobby (01:20:38):

Mr. President, thank you for your extraordinary leadership. Over the past hundred days, we are already making America healthy again. We announced last week the ban on the nine petroleum-based synthetic dyes, food dyes. Within two months we're going to ban the worst two of them. I am working with Secretary Rollins on dietary guidelines, the dietary guidelines that President Biden's administration gave us 453 pages. They're basically unreadable, and they are the product of the same kind of politicized science that drove Froot Loops to the top of the food pyramid. And we're going to do real science, gold standard science. We're going to develop within, we have till December to do it, but we are working very, very fast together. We're going to get it done by the end of the summer in time to drive major dramatic changes in the school foods, school lunch programs over the next school year.

(01:21:48)
I'm working also with Secretary Rollins on the SNAP program to get sodas and candy off of the food stamp program. 10% of food stamps go to SNAP. And I want to thank you for your courage. You're a business-friendly president, probably the most business-friendly in our history, but you're also willing to stand up to very, very powerful businesses, and you've shown that again and again. Secretary Rollins had the soda industry come and knock on her door very much, very loudly, and they said to her, "Well, the SNAP program is not supposed to be about nutrition." She pointed out to them that there is no nutrition in a soda. And they said, "Well, it's not supposed to be about nutrition," and she said to them, "The name of the program is Supplemental Nutrition. It is about nutrition." And we have 38% of our kids are diabetic or pre-diabetic, and we are paying at both ends. We're paying for the food, the food-like substances that make them diabetic, and then we're being bankrupt. We're paying a trillion dollars a year on metabolic dysfunction. It's existential and it's not sustainable.

(01:23:11)
I visited Arizona, West Virginia, Utah, and Indiana in the last two weeks, who have all applied for SNAP waivers. We're encouraging, thanks to Brooke Rollins's leadership, all the states to apply for those waivers. I also visited Utah, which is this first state to ban supplemental fluoride. Florida yesterday passed a bill to ban supplemental fluoride. I'm confident Governor DeSantis is going to sign that. We are working, Lee Zeldin and I are working together to change the federal fluoride regulations, to change the recommendations, and we're looking at the science now. One about went out in August, the National Toxicology Program, which was an arm of the NIH, in a meta-review of all the science on fluoride and found that there's a direct inverse correlation between fluoride exposure and low IQ in children. So the more you get, the stupider you are. And we need smart kids in this country, and we need healthy kids, and thank you for your leadership, we're going to get there.

(01:24:22)
We're reviewing the GRAS standards now, revamping them to get 10,000 ingredients that are in our foods. The Europeans only have 400 ingredients. We have 10,000 chemicals we know nothing about, and we are going to stop that process and then we're going to go back and look at these chemicals and make the companies either get rid of them or to label them.

(01:24:45)
We've launched Operation Stork Speed. We're going full speed ahead to make sure that we have good, high-quality milk for children.

(01:24:54)
We have launched the autism study at your direction. By September, we'll have some of the first answers. Within six months of that, we will have definitive answers, not only for autism but for the etiology of a whole range of autoimmune diseases that have become epidemic in our children.

(01:25:14)
We have ended HHS as the role, as the vector, the principal vector in this country for child trafficking. And during the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking and for sex and for slavery, and we have ended that and we're very aggressively going out and trying to find these children, 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.

(01:25:44)
And we have ended funding for gender mutilation surgeries and other kind of gender dysphoria practices, and thanks to Elon, we have saved $67 billion at our agency without compromising any of our critical programs.

(01:26:06)
Mr. President, I want to thank you for your vision, for your leadership, for giving me the hundred busiest days of my life, and most exciting and most rewarding, and over the next hundred days, we're going to do much, much more.

President Trump (01:26:21):

That's great. Thank you very much, Bobby.

Speaker 5 (01:26:27):

Well said.

President Trump (01:26:28):

Very good, very important. Thank you.

(01:26:28)
Doug, please.

Doug (01:26:28):

Well, President Trump, on your first day at office, you wisely declared a national energy emergency, and this was essential because it was the signal that we're going to go 180 degrees from the disastrous and dangerous Biden policies that were based on a climate ideology that was the root cause of the inflation in this country. It was the root cause wars abroad, it was the root cause of manufacturing disappearing from our country. Without energy security, we can't have national security, and you understood that. But now with everything that's flowed from that, dozens of other EOs that you've done, America is back in the energy business. As Chris said, there's been a signal that's sent around the world. Capital is flowing, coming back in, the smart money is coming to this country, and now you've given us a chance to win the AI arms race against China.

(01:27:25)
We know we're up against a formidable competitor. China opened up 94 gigawatts of coal in the last year. That's more than all of California and all of New York combined in the last year. We've had presidents in the past, Biden administration, that were running away again under this climate ideology. You've embraced baseload power in this country. I'll never forget standing in the East Room with you surrounded by the coal miners from around this country where you said, "Hey, big beautiful coal." As we work to try to identify the balance sheet of America, our earliest estimate is that the coal resources in America just on public lands could be worth $8 trillion, with a T. That was all going to be taken off our balance sheet if we weren't going to touch it.

(01:28:11)
But now we're back in the business. I was 1,800 feet underground in a coal mine in Alabama a couple of weeks ago. They do metallurgical coal. Without metallurgical coal, we can't produce steel. This is a plant that would've been and a mining operation that would've been shut down under the Biden administration. What we're doing here back in the business, we're doing leasing. We're leasing for oil and gas, we're leasing for timber with Brooke Rollins, we're leasing for grazing, we're leasing for critical minerals, which is key. And when we lease the public lands appropriately and by the law to do that, we're bringing in revenue, we're bringing in jobs, we're helping strengthen America.

(01:28:49)
And so we're treating our natural resources like the American balance sheet they are, and America's resources, the 700 million acres of surface that's public, the 700 million of subsurface, the 2.5 billion offshore, all contain what we need to have self-sufficient supply chains. And so in this, we're focused deeply on critical minerals. The Biden administration put us in a real predicament right now, the whole trade team, the whole cabinet. Suzie's jumping in leadership across everybody in the National Energy Dominance Council. But of the top 20 critical and rare earth minerals that we need for defense, that we need for industry, China's controlling 85% of the refining for that. So we are running at warp speed seven days a week to try to put ourselves back at business in that way.

(01:29:41)
And I want to just close out by saying a couple other things. One is the border. Few people realize that 41% of the southern border is in Department of Interior. Then we've got a few more percent that come with Brooke and with the Forest Service. But that's been a risk area. Part of the reason everyone's pouring into our country, Biden wasn't enforcing the border laws. They definitely weren't enforcing it on public lands.

(01:30:06)
And so again, tying two presidents that had great propensity for action, Theodore Roosevelt, in 1907, created what was called the Roosevelt Reservation, 60-foot strip that go from Texas all the way to the Pacific Ocean, because he was worried in some future state there might be smuggling. I don't think he was anticipating human smuggling and fentanyl trafficking, but that has been largely unused. He gave us the authority to transfer that. And so working with Kristi and working with Pete, we've transferred that to the DOD, so transferring land from the other agencies like Interior to the Department of Defense, then as Pete said, they can do the detain and assist with the military.

(01:30:51)
And having been down at the border multiple times in recent week, I can confirm everything Kristi said. The enthusiasm, the morale of that group is exactly a hundred percent opposite of when Kristi and I were down there as governors. I had Border Patrol people say that they were multi-generational service in that law enforcement that said, "My wife and I are telling our children never to go into this thing, to go into Border Patrol." People this time were saying, "I got a 17-year-old. As soon as they turn 18-year-old, they're signing up. My wife is thrilled. They're going into law enforcement. They're so proud to be serving with you." Everybody I've met, whether it's in a coal mine or at the border, law enforcement, the one thing they say on those trips is, "Please thank President Trump from all of us the change that you're making."

(01:31:38)
And I want to say especially this became very dear when we last week renamed a US wildlife refuge in honor of Jocelyn Nungaray. Jocelyn Nungaray, of course, lost her life tragically to illegal Venezuelan gang members in this country in a horrific way. But her mother, Alexis, was at that ceremony, her grandmother was there, and Jocelyn's great-grandmother was there. Three other generations of that family were there. They all wanted to pass on their thank you to you too, and we've secured her name forever as a sanctuary and really is saying that every child, every twelve-year-old, every child in America should be safe in their own communities, and you've dedicated a beautiful piece on the coast in honor of her.

(01:32:19)
So President Trump, in your first term, when I had a chance to work with you as governor, you were courageous. The thing that's empowering this amazing group of people around this table, and you've probably assembled the greatest cabinet ever, is that this time you're not just courageous, you're actually fearless, and it's your fearlessness to take on the issues that other presidents would not touch, whether it's the work that we're doing with successfully streamlining and right-sizing government, or whether it's taking on the issues at the border, or whether it's embracing the power we need to win the AI arms race, you're fearlessly doing that, and that creates a… Just all of us can sprint because you're running ahead, so thank you.

President Trump (01:32:58):

Thank you, Doug, and you are

President Trump (01:33:00):

… doing a great job. And with Chris, that's a pretty much unbeatable combination, I have to tell you. So thank you both very much. Thank you, Doug. This is great. Marco?

Marco Rubio (01:33:10):

Well, it's not easy to go last after all these reports that have come here. First of all, it's just -

President Trump (01:33:14):

It's true.

Marco Rubio (01:33:15):

So it better be good and I'll be short as well. A couple things, Mr. President, I think you deserve a lot of credit for two things. The first is assembling this great team of people, some of whom I've known for a long time, others who I've gotten to know during this period of time. But putting together a team, not just of talented individuals, but that work well together is something never going to be reported on in the media or fully seen, but it happens every single day. For the most part, I interact with almost everyone around this table at some level. And because of Secretary Kennedy, I'm afraid to eat anything.

Speaker 8 (01:33:43):

At least in front of him.

Marco Rubio (01:33:44):

In front of him.

Speaker 8 (01:33:44):

At least in front of him.

Marco Rubio (01:33:48):

He said Tootsie rolls are okay in moderation. But it's a great team. And here's the second, and I tell this to people all the time, this is incredibly rewarding service and you hear it in everyone's voices. Traditionally in the past, and it's one of the problems we got in as a country, is presidents would say, okay, let's go do something, and then they would have to do a study and then a study on the study and then a long internal deliberative process. And by the time you got to it was too late or somebody had forgotten it.

(01:34:14)
In this administration, it's moving … you know the direction because you know why you were elected, the American people elected you very clearly. And basically it's measured … I used to say by days and weeks, now it's measured by hours and minutes. But action is happening. And that's what people want to see.

(01:34:29)
And let me talk about foreign policy in particular, because I want to make sure this is fully appreciated. We have … this president inherited 30-years of foreign policy that was built around what was good for the world. In essence, the decisions we made as a government, in trade and foreign policy was basically, is it good for the world? Is it good for the global community? And under President Trump, we're making a foreign policy now that's, was it good for America? I was appointed by you and confirmed by the Senate to be the head of the United States Department of State, not the World Department of State, not the Global Department of State, the United States Department of State.

(01:35:04)
And what that means is our foreign policy is guided by three things. Does it make America stronger? Does it make America safer? And does it make America richer? If something doesn't do one of those three things, and hopefully all three of those things, we're not doing it. Now, we went out and hired a consulting firm to help us organize ourselves. Luckily they were free. They're called the Department of Government Efficiency, and they helped us do a couple things. Number one is our foreign aid. We were funding some crazy stuff.

Speaker 7 (01:35:29):

Crazy stuff.

Marco Rubio (01:35:31):

Crazy stuff. You tell me, how does a puppet show in some country around the world make us stronger, safer and more prosperous? So we got rid of puppet shows and a bunch of other things. I'm sure they were very good puppet shows and I am sure that a bunch of charities in the world can go pay for it, but the American taxpayers should not.

(01:35:47)
We've also, by the way, Mr. President, under your direction, reorganized the Department of State. We had offices within offices within offices that didn't even know they existed themselves, not to mention the rest of them. And so we've begun to reorganize that as a way to be able to empower our embassies and our ambassadors and our regional bureaus to do what many of them signed up to do. And we have a great team of ambassadors you've appointed. They're coming online every single day. Very talented people. Very talented people that are involved.

(01:36:14)
Something else we got out of the business of … it wasn't widely reported, or maybe it was, we had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans. And by the way, I'm not going to say who it is, I'll leave it up to them, there's at least one person at this table today who had a dossier in that building of social media posts to identify them as purveyors of disinformation. We have these dossiers. We are going to be turning those over to these individuals.

Speaker 7 (01:36:39):

Was it me or Elon? We can follow up with the media as well.

Marco Rubio (01:36:45):

Well, we are going to turn over these dossiers to the individuals and they'll decide whether they want to disclose it or not. But just think about it, the Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens to identify them as vectors of disinformation. When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency.

(01:37:06)
And so that's what we're going to be in the business of doing. We're not going to have an office that does that. Beyond that, Mr. President, and this … I'll move quickly, because this has been a team effort. We have gone to countries all over the world and said, "Hey, you want good relations with the United States? You need to take back your people that are here illegally."

(01:37:19)
And we've had historic cooperation. Beyond that, and I say this unapologetically, we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries. So we are actively … not just El Salvador, we are working with other countries to say, we want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries. Will you do that as a favor to us? And the further away from America, the better. So they can't come back across the border. I'm not apologetic about it. We are doing that. The president was elected to keep America safe and to get rid of a bunch of perverts and pedophiles and child rapists out of our country.

(01:37:50)
Here's something else we've done. We stopped giving student visas to people who are coming here to burn down our universities and take over libraries and harass people. Why are we giving student visas to people who are coming here to create disruption? And we've taken away the student visas of people that have come here to do that. It's simple. If you're coming to America to start riots, we're not going to give you … we're going to take away your student visa. And by the way, every country in the world that I traveled, 14 countries in 14 weeks, you know what they all say to me? Yes, that's what we would do too. So the only people who seem to disagree with us are a handful of federal judges and a bunch of crazy people who get paid to write and report. So anyway, we're getting rid of that.

(01:38:29)
The last … but now here's some good news. We're going to have the World Cup, the FIFA World Cup, the FIFA Club Cup, and then we're going to have the Olympics. So we have to have a consular affairs bureau. We have very good talented people there, but we are going to infuse technology, again, working with our consultants to be able to grant … millions of people are coming into this country for this. But I also, we've done it to improve customer service. For some of us who served in Congress, recognize that about a year and a half ago we had a meltdown under Biden. You couldn't get a passport. You have people calling, I have a cruise on Friday, my passport expired. In the month of March, we processed 2.78 million Americans, their passports. That is the historic … never in any … it's the largest single month processing of passports ever. And we think it's a good way to build the momentum to be able to do the visas.

(01:39:19)
Two last points I want to make. We have a great team that you've built. I want to especially acknowledge Steve Witkoff. This is a person that doesn't have to be doing what he's doing. He has a very good life in Miami, my hometown as well. He has worked incredibly hard, has done it without any agenda, and I do … we need to acknowledge him. I want to acknowledge Mr. Boulos as well, who did something really great last week. They told us this war between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda is intractable, it can never happen, it will never happen. I sent Mr. Boulos, your envoy. A week later, I look on my schedule, the signing of a declaration of peace between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. We signed it at the State Department last week. We hope it will lead now to a lasting permanent peace that we hope to invite them back to Washington to sign.

(01:40:05)
So two great … and we have a lot of good people working on our teams as well, but these are two great people. Mike Waltz alluded to this earlier, and this is the last point. In the first 100 days of the 47th presidency, 47 wrongfully detained Americans have been returned to the United States, thanks to your leadership and the diplomacy that was exercised to make that happen. 47 for the 47th president, in the first 100 days. And that's all credit to you Mr. President. Thank you for the honor to be able to serve alongside you, for you, and alongside all these excellent people.

President Trump (01:40:37):

Thank you very much, Marco.

Speaker 8 (01:40:38):

Well said.

President Trump (01:40:41):

Really great job. So I've been involved in a lot of groups of people over the years. Good groups, bad groups, all types of groups. But I have been involved in some incredible groups, but I've never been more proud and impressed, frankly. Impressed is maybe even more important. But I've never been more proud or impressed than I am with this group. This is an amazing group of people and I hope some of those television cameras were blazing and it was on so people could watch this, because frankly, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, this is an impressive group of people.

(01:41:18)
I sat around being somewhat competitive. I said, well, let's see who did the best job? Who did the worst job? I determined that everybody is like the same and there was no worst job. Everybody was outstanding. Everybody did a job. You couldn't pick a winner. The only thing you can say is nobody did a bad job or even a fair job. You're outstanding. And so I want to just congratulate you all. This is really something. And we have a job to do. We've done a lot of work in this 100 days.

(01:41:49)
We've established things that are going to start taking place in the next 100 days. I want to see what it's going to be like. I think we're going to have to do this in 100 days, Susie, and we're going to see some very big results from the things that we've done. I just want to thank everybody. This is really very impressive and I hope the people at home got to see some of it. Nobody's ever done public cabinet meetings. They were quiet for a reason, because they weren't impressive. And especially in the last administration, they were not impressive. But I just want to say that we're very proud of you and I am in particular. Thank you all very much. Great job. And I think we're going to have some tremendous success for our country.

(01:42:31)
And I don't know, it doesn't seem like a time to be asking questions. That was so impressive, that to be taking questions, "Why did you do this? Why did you do that?" It just doesn't seem to be appropriate. I guess we'd probably have to take a couple because that was the purpose. But if you'd like to ask some, I think they should be very respectful questions at this point. This was an amazing meeting and so if you'd like to ask a couple. If you'd like to pinpoint them to some of the secretaries, et cetera.

Speaker 9 (01:43:03):

Yes.

President Trump (01:43:03):

Would be fine. Yes.

Speaker 9 (01:43:04):

Secretary Rubio, can I ask you a question? You brought up El Salvador in your remarks, have you been in touch with El Salvador about returning Abrego Garcia? Has a formal request from this administration been made?

Marco Rubio (01:43:15):

Well, I would never tell you that. And you know who else I'll never tell? A judge. Because the conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the President of the United States and the executive branch, not some judge. So we will conduct foreign policy appropriately, if we need to, but I'll never discuss it. And no one will ever make us discuss it because that's how foreign policy works.

Speaker 9 (01:43:32):

Mr. President-

Speaker 10 (01:43:35):

Mr. President, yesterday you told ABC News, Mr. President, you told ABC News yesterday that you could get Abrego Garcia back if you wanted to. Do you think President Bukele would turn you down if you made that request?

President Trump (01:43:44):

I really don't know. I know that he's been a great friend of our country. He's gotten a lot less money than this would take from us if we were going to build these jails and do what he's doing. And they run a very professional operation. I don't know. I haven't spoken to him. I really leave that to the lawyers and I take my advice from Pam and everybody that is very much involved. They know the laws and we follow the laws exactly.

Speaker 6 (01:44:09):

Mr. President, [inaudible 01:44:12] transition, sir. You frequently took credit for the stock market highs. You said it was a reflection of how well you were doing in the polls and then after you were elected, you said the stock market highs were a reflection of how well the transition is going and the American people's confidence in your incoming administration. Now, the stock market is not doing so well and you're saying that's the Biden stock market, yet you are the president. Can you explain that?

President Trump (01:44:37):

Yeah. I'm not taking credit or discredit for the stock market. I'm just saying that we inherited a mess, both at the borders … you could look at every single one of the people here and no matter who it is, they're doing better and they are far superior to what took place for four years before us. When you look at prisoners being allowed to come into our country at will, just, at will, people from mental institutions, gang members, drug dealers. When you look at that, what they've done to our country, and also having to do with finance. Look at what happened with inflation.

(01:45:13)
We had the worst inflation, probably in the history of our country, they say 48 years. But I would say in the history of our country. It ate away at people. And even though you saw a stock market going up somewhat, because in my case I had the biggest stock market increase, 88% in the last term … in my last term. But I don't view the stock market as the end all. It's an indicator. But what the stock market really tells you, and when you look at the stock market in this case, is it says how bad a situation we inherited. I took place … this is a quarter that we looked at today, and we took … all of us together, we came in on January 20th.

(01:45:54)
So this is Biden. And you could even say the next quarter is sort of Biden, because it doesn't just happen on a daily or an hourly basis, but we're turning it around. It's a big ship to turn around and we're going to have the greatest country financially in the history of the world, I believe. I think we're going to do things … and we had to do it. We reset the table. We were being ripped off by every single country, with just about without exception. I'd have to really think hard for who hasn't taken advantage. And I don't even blame those countries. I blame the person that was sitting right here where I am, for allowing it to happen, where our country was ripped off on trade, hundreds of billions of dollars, and now we're doing better than we've done in a long time.

(01:46:38)
We were losing four to five to even six billion dollars a day on trade with Biden. And now we have it down to a very manageable number, and the tariffs, for the most part, haven't even kicked in yet. So that's the way … stock markets to me are an indication, but the big indication is what's happening, and the people around the table know what's happening.

Speaker 11 (01:47:04):

Mr. President, is it true that the Ukraine minerals deal is set to be signed in 24-hours or so?

President Trump (01:47:08):

What sale?

Speaker 11 (01:47:09):

Is it true that the Ukraine minerals deal is about to be signed in the next 24-hours or so? There's some reports saying that. And if it's true, has the deal changed at all from the last time we heard about it?

President Trump (01:47:18):

Well, I'll ask Scott to answer the question because he's responsible for it.

Scott Bessent (01:47:21):

Yeah, our side's ready to sign. The Ukrainians decided last night to make some last-minute changes. Well, we're sure that they will reconsider that and we are ready to sign this afternoon, if they are.

Speaker 11 (01:47:32):

Can you talk about those last-minute changes? What was removed or put in its place?

Scott Bessent (01:47:36):

Nothing's been removed. It's the same agreement that we agreed to on the weekend. No changes on our side.

President Trump (01:47:41):

Just to put that in perspective though, when I came here, I said, "How much money have we given to Ukraine?" The real number is about $350 billion. It's unthinkable. And we had no security. We had no nothing. We were just pouring money there, unsecured money. Putting it in banks and anybody could have taken it out, anybody over there. It was their decision. I've never seen anything like it.

(01:48:09)
Europe on the other hand, which it's obviously that whole situation is much more important to Europe, because we have an ocean in between, but Europe gave about $100 billion dollars. It's a lot of money. It's a big sacrifice they made also, but they gave much less than we did, and their money is secured, totally secured by deposits in banks. The deposits are largely Russian deposits. That's what Europe did. But their money is secured. So they gave $100 billion totally secured. We gave money like it's throwing it out the window, and it was done by Biden, and this is Biden's war. This isn't Trump's war.

(01:48:48)
I'm trying to get out. More than the money, they're losing about 5,000 young Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week. Mostly. There's some people also being killed in towns where missiles should not have been shot. Small cities and towns. But we are trying to save the lives of about 5,000 young, mostly soldiers, that are losing their lives a week. I see satellite photos probably off one of his satellites, come to think of it, but I see satellite photos every week of fields with arms and heads and legs scattered all over. It's a violent, violent, horrible situation. And more important than the money, I want to save the lives of people from other countries that are dying so stupidly, so needlessly, and they're dying. But I said, "What are we doing? How did we get into this war?" Would have never happened if I were president. Everybody knows. And it didn't happen for four years. Wasn't even thought of. I discussed it with President Putin a lot, Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye, but there was no way he was going to do anything, zero chance. And I said, " You know, we feel foolish. The Europeans are putting up money. It's totally secure. They get the money back. We're putting up much more money. We have absolutely nothing."

(01:50:11)
And I didn't want to make a complicated deal. I didn't want to make a deal that couldn't be made, because Ukraine doesn't have very much money. They're going through a very bad period of time. It's been brutal. But I felt very foolish, being a judge, so I said, well, we want something for our efforts beyond what you would think would be acceptable. And we said, rare earth. They're very good rare Earth. As you know, we're looking for rare earth all the time. Rare earth is called rare for a reason, and they have a lot. And we made a deal where our money is secure, where we can start digging, and doing what we have to do.

(01:50:55)
It's also good for them, because you'll have an American presence at the site, Chris. And the American presence will, I think, keep a lot of bad actors out of the country, or certainly out of the area where we're doing the digging. So we made a deal and I assume they're going to honor the deal. And I put Scott in charge, and Scott said it beautifully, but we haven't really seen the fruits of that deal yet. I suspect we will. I suspect we will.

Speaker 12 (01:51:22):

Mr. President [inaudible 01:51:24] progress.

Speaker 13 (01:51:26):

Mr. President, you had set a 90-day deadline through an executive order for Secretaries Hegseth and Noem to review whether to recommend to you, whether to invoke The Insurrection Act to send troops to the southern border. Is that something you're still considering?

President Trump (01:51:42):

Well, I'm talking to them and it's not hard and fast, but I'm talking to them, and I will tell you that the border is the most secure it's ever been. We have never had anything like it.

(01:51:54)
And when you said, Kristi, before, it's 99.999, and I guess that means one person maybe or two people.

Kristi Noem (01:52:03):

Yeah.

President Trump (01:52:03):

It's actually turned out to be three people came across the border versus hundreds of thousands of people under Biden. And we're talking about people coming … Look, people, they have souls, they have hearts, many of them are good, but we have a country that's under siege. We have a country that really is under … I think it's under attack. In many ways, worse than under attack, because there are no uniforms. You don't know who the attacker is, so you really don't … it's not like you're fighting an army. You're fighting people. You don't even know who they are.

(01:52:34)
But 11,888 murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, are roaming. Now, some of them have already been caught, a lot of them have already been caught, taken out. But we're being impeded by judges from doing our job. And hopefully that situation is going to be solved, because I think nobody wants to have murderers and people from jail … and I mean for serious serious crime.

(01:53:02)
I remember the Biden people used to say, "No, these are aliens that came into our country and they don't commit crime." I said, "They don't commit crime?" They commit worse crime. They make our criminals, some of these people that they've allowed in through open border policies, the dumbest thing I've ever seen. You can look at some of these people and you say, this is not going to end well. But the people that they've allowed into our country are making our criminals look like the nicest people on earth.

(01:53:31)
I will tell you, these are serious criminals. These are violent criminals. These are people that would kill you and wouldn't lose an ounce of sleep. And they wake up the next morning and they don't even remember it. This is a rough rough, tough group of people, and we've got to get them out of our country. And the law says … I believe, I hope, and I think Pam will be very successful in proving it, but we've run into, I would call them, rogue judges. Somebody could criticize me for that. These are rogue judges. These are radical left generally, radical left, horrible judges.

(01:54:05)
And we didn't lose all of these people. We've lost a lot of people to death and to rape, all sorts of crimes committed by the people that poured into our country. And they came in totally unimpeded, just come on in. And you see it … every night you'd see, thousands of tens of thousands of people pouring into our country. We have no idea who they are. And to this day, we're looking for people. We have no idea. We hear that we have terrorists in our country that are so bad they couldn't stay in any other country, but we're getting them out.

(01:54:43)
And the group between Pete and Kristi and Tom Holman and everybody working together, the people that you would least suspect are reporting them, getting … and the public is reporting them. The public is saying … the public is calling and they're saying, "I live in a house and next to me moved in a group of people and they are very violent."

(01:55:04)
And we'd go and we'd find out and we'd say, "Yeah, you're right. They were really violent." And we have information on most of them. So I just think it's incredible what's taking place. But we right now have a very, very secure border. Right now, we have the most secure border in the history of our country. So I don't think we have to worry about your question too much.

Speaker 14 (01:55:23):

Mr. President, the Prime Minister of Canada ran not only against the Conservatives, but also against you.

President Trump (01:55:30):

Well they both did. Both parties.

Speaker 14 (01:55:32):

Yeah. And yesterday he spoke about American betrayal. Are you interested in rebuilding relations with Canada? And if so, how?

President Trump (01:55:42):

No. Well, I think we're going to have a great relationship. He called me up yesterday. He said, "Let's make a deal." He was running for office. They were both … they both hated Trump, and it was the one that hated Trump, I think the least, that won. I actually think the conservative hated me much more than the so-called liberal. He's a pretty liberal guy.

(01:56:02)
But no, I spoke to him yesterday. He couldn't have been nicer. And I congratulated him. It was a very mixed signal because it's almost even, which makes it very complicated for the country. It was a pretty tight race. But he's a very nice gentleman and he's going to come to the White House very shortly. Within the next week or less.

Speaker 15 (01:56:25):

Mr. President, when will you speak to President Xi of China?

President Trump (01:56:29):

That'll happen. Look right now, and I told you before, they're having tremendous difficulty, because their factories are not doing business. They made a trillion dollars with Biden, a trillion dollars, even a trillion one with Biden selling this stuff. Much of it we don't need.

(01:56:48)
Somebody said, "Oh, the shelves are going to be open." Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally. But we're not talking about something that we have to go out of our way. They have ships that are loaded up with stuff, much of which, not all of it, but much of which we don't need. And we have to make a fair deal. We've been ripped off by every country in the world, but China, I would say is the leading one, the leading candidate for the Chief Ripper-Offer.

(01:57:25)
There has never been a country that's been ripped off more than the United States of America under some of the dumbest leadership. And it usually starts with the President. And you can go back, and I'm not just talking about Biden, it's been the worst. I mean, the trade deficits and everything else, he's been the worst. But he had no idea what he was doing. And I think somebody ought to look at the auto-pen to find out who was really running this country, because it wasn't Biden. Because nobody could agree to what he agreed to.

(01:57:58)
Wait a minute. He put our country at risk, at tremendous risk, and fiscal risk, financial risk. So I think we have it very much … I really believe that the next 100 days is going to be even better than this. Look, I read an editorial yesterday from a group that normally wouldn't write a good … that this is the most consequential presidency in history, in the history of our country. This is not a particular group that would write that kind of an editorial. But they see what we're doing and what we had to do.

(01:58:32)
And I believe that this group, not just me, if this group wasn't here, I think our country was going to be in … if it was lucky, just serious trouble, but a lot worse than that. I think our country could have been a total disaster. Bad things were happening with our country and we've stemmed the tide. We've turned it around. But we're going to really turn it around over the next three years, three and a half years. We're going to turn it around. And then hopefully it'll be in such great shape. That's my goal, to put it in such great condition that it can't be destroyed.

(01:59:04)
[inaudible 01:59:10] please.

Speaker 16 (01:59:10):

You mentioned this last night in your speech in Macomb, that we're facing an unprecedented situation where there's a lot of abuses of nationwide injunctions, sort of seemingly designed to curtail your power, specifically when it comes to deporting these illegal violent aliens that came in out of the previous administration. Have you spoken to your team about ways to mitigate this and continue to deliver for the American people on that aspect?

President Trump (01:59:33):

Yeah, there are a lot of ways to mitigate it, and there's some very strong ways. There's one way that's been used by three very highly respected presidents, but we hope we don't have to go that route. But there is one way that has been used very successfully by three presidents, all highly respected, and hopefully we don't have to go that way, but there are ways of mitigating that.

(01:59:54)
I want to thank you all very much. I thought this was an incredible cabinet meeting. I think there's probably has never been a cabinet meeting like this and you've never seen it on tape. That I can tell you. And I want to just congratulate everybody at the table, but we have a lot of work to do. But we're off to a great start. Thank you very much, everybody.

Speaker 17 (02:00:10):

Mr. President [inaudible 02:00:15] second time?

Speaker 18 (02:00:15):

Thank you everybody. Thank you everybody.

President Trump (02:00:19):

I'm working hard. I like my life. I'm working hard. But I like it because we're doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Thank you very much.

Speaker 18 (02:00:24):

Thank you, press.

President Trump (02:00:24):

Thank you everybody.

Speaker 19 (02:00:24):

Thank you, sir.