President Trump Gaggles with Press at Joint Base Andrews, Sep. 7, 2025

Thank you very much. I meant to go back and see you on the plane, but some things came up having to do with Hamas, etc. And we're working on a solution that maybe could be very good.

Can you tell us about that?

No, but you'll be hearing about it pretty soon. We're trying to get it ended, get the hostages back, get it ended. We got them all back, but 20. And as you know, we have plenty. Plus, there are a lot of, unfortunately dead bodies involved. And they want them back. The parents want them back. So we had some very big discretions. Good things could happen.

Your reaction to South Korea's regrets are calling it regrettable. What happened with their workers at the Hyundai plant?

Well, I'll speak to them. You know, look, it's a battery factory, in that case, as I'm told. And, you know, when they're building batteries, if you don't have people in this country right now that know about batteries, maybe we should help them along and let some people come in and train our people to do, you know, complex things, whether it's battery manufacturing or computer manufacturing or building ships. So we're going to look at that whole situation. We have a lot of industries that we don't have anymore, and we're going to have to train people. And the way you train people is bring people in that know what they're doing and let them stay for a little while and help. So I'm going to look at that. This is a very interesting situation that took place in Georgia, and we heard about it yesterday at the same time ICE was doing. Right. Because they were here illegally. But we do have to work something out where we bring in experts so that our people can be trained, so that they can do it themselves. Does that make sense?

Right. Is it training the relationship with Korea?

No, we have a great relationship with South Korea, really good relationship. You know, we just made a trade deal. But I'm going to. I'm going to look at it because I understand exactly what they're saying.

Page Six crowns you. Page Six crowns you the King of the US Open. They put out all these old pictures through the years of you at the US Open. What does it mean for you to go back after going for so many decades, growing up in Queens, now you're going back as the president.

Well, I loved it. First of all, the two players have unbelievable talent. It just seemed that they hit the ball harder than I've ever seen before. Incredible talent. And I enjoyed it. And I used to go all the time. But you Know, lately it's a little bit more difficult to go. I really enjoyed it. They were really nice. The fans were really nice. I didn't know what to expect. Usually you would say that would be a somewhat progressivist, they say nowadays sometimes some people would call it liberal, but we'll use the word they like to use progressive. But they were. They were great. The bands were great.

Mr. President, back on Russia. Russia had a pretty big attack on Ukraine over the weekend. You have always said how good your relationship is with President Putin, but he's not really giving you anything that you want. Is that making you less trustful of him?

Well, nobody was tougher in Russia than me. That had to do with the pipeline, as you know, Nord Stream 2 and lots of other things. But I'm not happy. I'm not happy. I'm not happy about the whole situation. You know, it's interesting. It doesn't affect us because it's not our soldiers. But they're losing now. I used to tell you 5000, they're losing 7000 between Ukraine and Russia, 7000 soldiers every single week. It's such a horrible waste of humanity. So, no, I am not thrilled with what's happening there. I will tell you, I think it's going to get settled. So I settled seven wars. This, I would have said, would have been maybe the easiest one to settle of all. But with war, you never know what you're getting. But we're going to get it. I believe we're going to get it settled. But I am not happy with them. I'm not happy with anything having to do with that war. It's just such a waste of great humanity.

To a peace deal in Ukraine.

As of right now, what do you.

Think is the greatest obstacle to a peace deal?

Well, we're going to see. I mean, we have some very interesting discussions. You know, Europe, certain European leaders are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday, and individually, and I think we're going to get that settled. I think we're going to get it settled. We have to. You can't lose, you know, when they're losing five to 7,000 soldiers a week for no reason, you have to get it settled. Of all of the wars, whether it's the Congo and Rwanda, said it was impossible to settle. You look at every one of. I mean, every one of these words were impossible. I got every one of them settled. Seven of them. Seven. This was the one I really thought would be the easiest, but it's not. But I think it's going to get settled.

But there was a reporting in Axios that In the last three months of the Biden administration, they did about 4,000 pardons. The chief of staff's assistant was sending emails to pardon his own family members. Are you still interested in getting to the bottom of the auto pin scandal?

Well, I think the autopen is one of the great scandals of our time. The auto pen was our. Was our president, or to put it a different way, whoever operated the auto pen was our president. It's not allowed. It's just not allowed. And they gave a pardon to the unselect committee. After the UN Select Committee realized that that whole situation was a hoax and it was all their fault, including Nancy Pelosi turning down security and all, you know, turning down soldiers. It all came out for them. They burned everything. They got rid of everything. There's absolutely nothing there. It's all gone. And that was based on an auto pen. You know, they gave. They gave those members of Congress that were on the UN Select Committee, they gave them pardons. What do you think? So I think that. I think it's a big. I think it's a tremendous scandal.

What do you think the media would say if you pardoned your kids your last day in office via an auto pin? Don't you think the media would go ahead?

Well, I think it would have been a big story. Would have been like this guy.

With that.

Multiple times on a subway. Yeah. And where was the subway? Was where. Multiple times by. No, I haven't heard. Okay. When did this happen?

It happened in August, but the video just came.

Oh, I see. Yeah, I see the video. I'll know all about it by tomorrow morning.

Thanks. Do you have plans for Chicago this week?

No, not really. Not really. We're going to go someplace, but we're thinking, look, D.C. now is 100%. I don't want to say 100, but it's pretty close to 100%. Healthy, happy, thriving. It's a crime free zone. You know that. You know, you could go out to dinner tonight, Jeff. You could go out to dinner and you most likely will not be harmed. You know that you won't be beaten to hell.

There's still some crime.

Huh?

There's still some crime.

Very little. And within a. Within a week, there will be nothing. Do you agree with me?

I feel much safer walking around. I can't fight, though.

It's a safe place now.

But we've been talking a lot about Chicago and there was no.

Chicago's been talking about. So Chicago last week lost nine people were killed and 28 people were shot. The week before it was seven people were killed and 37 people were shot. The week before that it was the same kind of number. Chicago is a very dangerous place and we have a governor that doesn't care, care about crime. I guess we could solve Chicago very quickly, but we're going to make a decision as to where we go over the next day or two. When you look at what happened to D.C. in a short period of time, honestly, it's amazing. Over a period of 12 days, in other words, on the 12th day we had the crime just about solved. And right now people are walking out. They're going out right now to restaurants all over D.C. whereas if you go back a year ago or six months ago, no, nobody was going out. Nobody. We did it in 12 days. Now it's better than it was in 12 days. We'll make it even better. And then we're also going to clean it up. We're going to clean up the city. We're going to make some great improvements to the roads, to the medians, you know, to all of the signs. You got signs that have been up for 30, 40 years. They're worn out, they look like hell. We're going to redo the signs, we're going to put up new signs. Going to look beautiful in within a six month period, it'll look really beautiful. But you have essentially a crime free. So I mean, here we are on a nice Sunday evening. If you'd like. It feels like Saturday actually. If you like, you could go out and you could have dinner on me, but you wouldn't do that. But you could have dinner on me if you'd like. Go ahead, what else?

When do you plan to speak to President Putin next? And what my second.

Look, we're going to get it done. The Russia, Ukraine situation, we're going to get it done. I have confidence we're going to get it done. Think of it. I got seven done, all of which were impossible to do. If you look at any one of the seven, you know them, I don't have to go through them. Many of them were impossible. One was 31 years, 10 million people killed. One was 34 years with 8 million people killed. How about the Congo? They lost 9 million people and it went on for years with Rwanda all settled, everybody happy. The one that I thought would have been for me, the easiest because of Putin, I thought that would have been. It's not, it's not turned out that way, but we're going to get it settled.

To discuss Gaza issue up big beat.

What.

What's some of the advice it's been into? Why did you bring it back in with the work?

I think. I think we're going to have a deal on Gaza very soon. It's a hell of a problem. What gives you again? It's a problem we want to solve for the Middle east, for Israel, for everybody, but it's. It's a problem we're going to get done. So they have hostages. It could be a little bit less than 20 because some, you know, they tend to die, right? They tend to die. Even though they're young people, largely, they're dying. Young people don't die. Young people stay alive. But with this whole thing, they tend to die. But we have, let's say, 20 people and we have about 38 bodies. Bodies, meaning bodies.

Are you confident you get them all?

Yeah, I think so. I think we're going to get them all.

Did you see the turnover of the Japanese Prime Minister stepping down? Do you have any reaction to that?

No. I was surprised because I knew him, I liked him, and he's just now stepping down a little bit. Surprised. I found him to be a very nice man, actually. We dealt very well together.

Mr. President, the price of beef continues.

To rise and other items keep going up.

Is there any way to address the cost of beef?

You know, once it kicks in, once our policies kick in, the price of beef will be going down. Just like the price of eggs went down and the price of a lot of other grocery items went down. Beef will go down. It'll all go down. Energy has gone way down. The price of gasoline has gone really. I mean, I think you'll be hitting two dollars very soon, and it was four and a half dollars a little while ago. So energy has gone way down. That brings everything else with it. But beef has gone, as you know, for other reasons. The price of beef has gone up a little bit.

It'll be coming down to Alaska. In the Oval Office, you said that the first expressed she wasn't too enamored with Putin. You said you came home, you said you spoke to Putin. She said, well, I heard he just blew up a village today. Has she expressed anything since you've come.

Back from the last lady actually got along great with Putin, as I did. But, you know, we're disappointed, both of us are disappointed that this ridiculous war continues.

Are you proud to see her sending the letter that she sent you?

She's felt very strongly about the children. Yeah. Feels very badly about it. Thank you.

Everybody plans to go to Japan and South Korea this fall.

What does that mean?

Or do you have plans to go to South Korea?

Maybe. I mean, we'll see. But it's going to be very interesting what comes out. I think we may have learned something, because when they come here and there's nobody that can do what they're supposed to be doing, and they bring people, those people can also teach our people. You know, it's complicated stuff, and something very interesting could come out of that. Thank you, everybody.