President Trump Gaggles on Air Force One, Apr 25, 2025

Hello, everybody. Mr. President, we have a long flight today, but we're going for a good reason. Have any questions?

What do you hope Steve Witkoff will get out of his meeting with Putin today?

He'll be calling me. They just left the meeting. I haven't been briefed yet, but he had it. I hear a pretty good meeting.

Mr. President, any update on Secretary Hegseth? Your confidence in him with signal. Having signal on his humper.

What do you think? I don't view sacred as important.

Big news. Really?

I don't view it as important.

You think you're going to be meeting with some leaders While you were in Rome attending the Pope's funeral, who were you attending?

Some people in Rome. Yes. Who were you meeting with? And a little bit quickly, and frankly, it's a little disrespectful to have meetings when you're at the funeral of a pope. Are you going to be meeting with. But I'll be talking to people. I'll be seeing a lot of people. Including the. Yes. Including the Prime Minister of Italy, former President Biden. Very, very good. Prime President Biden.

Any plans to talk with him? He's going to be there.

I didn't know that. I mean, it's not high on my list. It's really not.

Can I ask you about this judge in Wisconsin who was arrested because of immigration issues? What's going on with the case there? Can you tell us about it?

Terrible thing. The judge was arrested because he was housing a trend near Rockwah. Right. Is that the one you're talking about? It's pretty surprising. It's terrible.

You said that you've spoken to President Xi multiple times. Is that since taking office?

Sir, I don't want to discuss that, but I'm speaking to a lot of people from China, but I'm speaking to people from all over the world on the tariffs. And we're making very good deals. Very good deal. It's going to make our country rich. We're not going to be ripped off like we have been for the last literally 50 years. There was a car bomb in Moscow this morning that killed a Russian general. Do you have any reaction to that? And the impact will kill what? Well, no, I just heard you just tell me that for the first time. Where did this take place? It took place in Moscow. It was a Russian general who was sitting close to home. Right. That's a big one. I'll look at it. If I hear anything, I'll let you know.

So when you see these leaders in Rome, it's more like mix and mingle at the funeral. Right. Or you're having individual one on ones.

It's a little tough because we don't have much time and we're arriving at about 11:30 and we have some people meeting us already. And then I'm taking pictures with the military tonight while we get to the house at 12 o', clock, the embassy. And so we don't have really much time. And then, as you know, tomorrow morning we're sort of leaving early. I think that we're going to try and see a couple of people that are important to what we're doing.

Why did you feel it was important to go to the Pope's funeral?

I just thought it was out of respect. You know, I won the Catholic vote and I think it's the first time that ever happened where a Republican won the vote. But. And I won it by a lot. And you know, I have a great relationship to the Catholics. Very simple. What do you think of it? But I won the Catholic vote. We got 56% of the vote. I don't know why we didn't get more. Actually, I don't know how they got any. But we, we did well with the Catholic vote and my relationship is very good. So therefore, you know, I think, I think it's appropriate.

That Secretary Bessant said that, you know, you wouldn't drop tariffs on China unilaterally, that you would need to see some kind of movement. What do you want to see from China?

He's right about that. Well, I'm not going to drop them unless they give us something that's substantial. Otherwise I'm not going to drop them. It'll all work out. Those things always work out. You know, we're working on a lot of projects right now. The wall is solved. The border is the most secure it's ever been. We're having a very hard with judges because they don't want people to be moved out of the country. Shockingly, nobody's ever had this before. No other president. There's never been a time when this has ever become an issue where they talk about due process. When you have millions of people that you're moving out that are really bad people, very dangerous people, and you have a judge who wants every single one of them to have a trial. So they want us to have millions of trials, therefore. And how long does the trial take? Weeks. Trial can take weeks. That's not what it's about. That's not what our country's about. And that's not what I got elected on. And these are judges that just want to, you know, show how big and important they are. They're local federal judges, and they shouldn't be allowed to do it. You know, where we have hundreds of thousands of people that we want to get out of the country, and the courts are holding us back. Some judge that nobody ever heard of is holding us back. Dangerous for our country. I mean, you want to see a country that'll have crime, Let that happen, because it's really dangerous for our country. And I can't believe the Supreme Court would let that stand.

What kind of movement do you consider substantial from China?

Well, free up China. You know, let us go in and work China, because, frankly, that's what we wanted last time. We almost got it, and then they backed out of that deal. But we had it to go into China and to sell our product, sell our wares. In other words, it's called to open China. That would be great. That would be a big win. But I'm not even sure I'm going to ask for it, because they don't want it open. They don't want it open on the immigration front. Big thing with the tariffs, but because of tariffs, I could possibly get that. What do you think? Opening up China would be a big win, right? The problem is, no matter how big the win is, the press will not give me credit for it. If I got the greatest win in history, if I got. They'll pay us trillions and trillions of dollars. They'll give us anything we want. The press will say, Trump, he just had a terrible defeat. He suffered a terrible defeat. But the people know. No, I think we're going to have a lot of big wins. I don't know if it's going to be covered that way by the fake news, but the wins are going to be very substantial. You know, we're losing. We were losing with Bide. 5 billion a day. Think of that. 5 billion a day. I've got that number way down. And soon it's going to be very, very positive. We'll be making 5 billion a day. But we have a little ways to go yet.

Mr. President, can I ask you about the Texas Senate primary? The Texas Senate primary with John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. Are you going to get involved? Have you talked to the candidates?

Well, they're both friends of mine. I like them both. In a way, I wish they weren't running against each other. But I like Paxton. I like Corny. They're both good people. So I'll. I'll make a decision somewhere along the line. But you have two very good men.

On your immigration agenda. Yesterday a judge in San Francisco put a nationwide injunction on you guys taking money away from sanctuary cities. Your reaction to that? Then? I have a question about the markets.

When you hear a judge in San Francisco or judge in San Diego, does nationwide injunctions having to do with the whole country sitting behind a bench, a local bench, even though in some cases, in many cases they're a federal judge, but a judge can close down. We should close down sanctuary cities. We shouldn't have sanctuary cities. And we'll see how that turns out. Sanctuary cities are sanctuary for criminals. That's what they are. They're sanctuary for criminals. They protect criminals. And we should close them down. We want a safe country. You have to get rid of sanctuary cities and Pakistan, Their intentions after the attack in Kashmir. You got any message for them? Are you going to be talking to their leaders? India and I'm very close to Pakistan, as you know, and they've had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir. Kashmir has been going on for a thousand years, probably longer than that. And it was a bad one yesterday, though. That was a bad one. Over 30 people. Are you concerned that there's now tensions on the border between them? Are you concerned about how are you concerned? Are you about that tension on that border for 1,500 years? So, you know, the same as it's been, but they'll get it figured out one way or the other. I'm sure that. I know both leaders. There's great tension between Pakistan and India, but there always has been.

So you've done the one 90 day pause on some of the tariffs. Is it possible you'll have to do another 90 day or another extension?

I think I know pretty much. And again, and you know, we'll have deals made, but we'll also make deals. In other words, we just set the tariff and we'll be reasonable, very reasonable, and that'll be the end. It's the deal. We set the price. They want to come in now. They set the price for their country, but everybody wants to come into ours. They don't want to come into. Most people don't want to come into theirs.

Do you think the markets are adjusting to your tariff policy?

So when you look at what's happening, I think so. You know, I said there'd be a transition. People haven't understood it. Now they're starting to understand it. You know, look, think of it this way. We've lost billions of dollars a Day for years on trade. Billions. Not going to happen. We're going to make millions of dollars a day. Is that sustainable?

Can you admit that nobody on your financial team was giving any type of tips to Wall street executives about deals with India? There was some reporting yesterday that people had heads up on Wall street possibly to make money. Can you commit that?

For myself, that's all I can commit. You know, I have thousands of people that work for me, but I can't imagine anybody doing that. I have very honorable people that I can say so. I can't even imagine it. But no, I haven't. I haven't even heard that actually.

So there have been some concerns about access to food, medicine coming into Gaza. When you spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu the other day, did that come up at all about access to humanitarian aid going into the Strip?

Gaza came up and I said we've got to be good to Gaza. Those people are suffering. We got to be good to Gaza. We're going to take care of that. There's a very big need for medicine, food and medicine and we're taking care of it.

In terms of like opening up more access points or pushing the Israelis.

We are.

To open up more access points, food.

And medicine into Gaza.

How did the prime minister respond to that?

Well, felt well about it.

Got these Iran tanks, technical talks tomorrow in Oban. What do you think?

The Iran situation's coming out very well. We've had a lot of talks with them and I think we're going to have a deal. I'd much rather have a deal than the other alternative that would be good for humanity.

Start with an interim deal of some sort or how's it going?

I think it's going to be pretty much we're not looking to do lots of long term. It's a very simple deal. One thing, they just can't have a nuclear weapon. I'm saving them a lot of money just on that. Having a nuclear weapon is really expensive, but it's also very dangerous and they can't have a nuclear weapon and just that I'm saving them billions and billions of dollars because that's what it would cost. Now with that being said, the Iran deal is coming along very well. We're dealing at the highest levels of Iran and I think they want to make a deal and we want to make a deal. There are some people that want to make a different kind of a deal, a much nastier deal and I don't want that to happen to Iran if we can avoid. Thank you very Much. Everybody.

What's on tap for Melania's birthday?

Oh, she's gonna have a great birthday. She's got a working birthday. She's up front. I should send her back. You want to have somebody answer question? I'll send her back into the lion's pit. Susie, let's send Melania back to the lion's pit. That's funny.

Are you taking her to dinner, by the way?

They would love that, wouldn't I? Put her in. She'll be so innocent.

Let me see your. Your office up time this weekend?

Yeah, you can come up. We'll. We'll let them come up a little bit later.

Okay, we'll do.

Are you taking. Are you taking Mrs. Trump to dinner, or have you had time to get her a present? You've been very busy.

I'll take her for dinner on the. On the Boeing. I'll take her for dinner on Air Force One. There you go. I haven't had much time to buy presents now. We've been 11. We've been pretty busy. But it's working out. Things are working out very well. And people are starting to understand how good tariffs are for us. And, you know, tariffs have been used against us for 50 years now. I never understood it as a private person, why we allowed that to happen. You know, it goes back a long time, but I never understood it. Why did we allow that to happen?

Where?

We couldn't go into China, but they could come here. We couldn't go into Europe, but they could come here. So many every place. We couldn't go into India, they could come here. I never understood why they allowed that. And I don't blame the countries, I blame the presidents for allowing it to happen. But you have a different kind of a president now, so thank you very much.

Thank you.