Transcript of a White House press gaggle (Sept 30, 2025) in which President Trump discusses potential federal worker layoffs linked to Democratic immigration policy, a proposed ceasefire deal with Hamas (giving Hamas “about three or four days” to respond), expectations for immediate hostage return and “good behavior,” and his stated backing for Israel if Hamas rejects the deal. Remarks include criticism of Democrats on immigration and references to Middle Eastern countries’ participation in the proposal.
Questions this video answers
"About three or four days."
How many federal workers do you plan to lay off?
Well, we may do a lot, and that's only because of the Democrats. And as you know, they want to be able to take care of people that have come into our country illegally. And no system can handle that. And so we're totally opposed on that. But we can't take care. We just can't do it. I'd love to do everybody, I'd love to do the whole world, but our country can't handle people that come into our country illegally and they want to give them full health care benefits. They want to open the wall again. Can you believe it? I can't even believe it. They want to open the wall. They haven't taken away boys playing in women's sports. They haven't done that. Men playing in women's sports. It's like they don't change. They lost an election in a landslide and they don't change.
How long do you plan to give Hamas to respond to the ceasefire proposal?
Well, we're going to do about three or four days. We'll see how it is. All of the Arab countries are signed up, the musl countries all signed up. Israel's all signed up. We're just waiting for Hamas. And Hamas is either going to be doing it or not. And if it's not, it's going to be a very sad end.
And is there to negotiate, Mr. President? Is there room to negotiate or is this to take it or mean a deal? Is there room to negotiate with Hamas.
Or is it not much? You know, with Hamas, we want very simple. We want the hostages back immediately and we want some good behavior. And, you know, it's pretty, pretty simple. You know, get similar. Think of it. We've signed every country in the Middle East. This is like an impossible thing. It's never been done before. This is more than Gaza. Gaza was big stuff, but this is. Gaza is a piece of it.
And if they reject the deal, you said that Israel has your backing to do whatever they need to do. What do you envision?
I will let them go and do what they have to do. They can do it pretty easily. I would let them go and do what they have to do. You know, we've killed about 25,000 Hamas, so certainly they paid a big price for AQA October 7th. And this is a whole new group. You know, they come in and they come in, they keep coming, but this is a whole different group and their leadership has been killed three different times. So they paid a big price. We hope that they're going to have a nice, calm life. Maybe it won't happen, but if it does, it will be one of the greatest things ever to happen. We'll have actual peace in the Middle East. Are you preparing to take strikes against drug gangs in Venezuela, sir? And we'll see what happens with Venezuela. Venezuela has been very dangerous with drugs and with other things. And they've been very, very dangerous. So we'll see what happens with Venezuela. We had a lot of drugs coming in through water. We call it water drugs, just a simple term. We don't have any boats on the water. There are no boats. There are no fishing boats. There are no anything. So we hit a number of boats. You probably saw that. And since we did that, we have absolutely no drugs coming into our country via because it was lethal. And now we'll look at cartels. We're going to look very seriously at cartels coming by land. What are you planning about the Department of War in this address? Why gather all the generals in one place for a speech? Well, this is only an esprit accord. You know what esprit accord is? This is only a spirit. We're going to be talking to him. Pete Hegseth is talking right now. I'm going to have to leave because I have to talk to him. But these are our generals, our admirals, our leaders. And it's a good thing. A thing like this has never been done before because they came from all over the world and there's a little bit of expense. Not much, but there's a little expense to that. We don't like to waste it. We'd rather spend it on bullets and rockets, frankly. But this was the one time we had to do a great spiritizing. It's going to be great. I've seen it already. We have every general, every admiral. We have great people. We have our real warriors over there. And when they're not good, when we don't think they're our warriors, you know what happened? We say, you're fired. Get out. We had some real bad ones last night. You know, I rebuilt the military. Military, the entire military. But I had a couple. And I had unbelievable people to do that. You have to. But I had unbelievable people in there. But I also had some bad ones at the top, like Lily and Mattis. Jesper, I told him too. Always too late. Jesper. He was horrible. So. But I learned because, you know, that was. I was just in there and I put these people in. They were recommended by Rhinos and others. And they're not good. What we have now is the best. But even despite that, I rebuilt the military in my first term. We had a great first time. We had the greatest economy ever. And it's being beaten by a lot this time. So I'm going over. I'm going to be meeting. I'm going to be meeting with generals and with admirals and with leaders, and if I don't like somebody, I'm going to fire them right on the spot.
