President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One, Oct. 19, 2025

Okay. We had a good weekend. We accomplished a lot. Really, very lot. You probably just saw the beats on Steve and Jared. It was very good. 60 Minutes, any questions? You want to give me a little room here?

Jeff, just following up on the 60 Minutes story. What's your reaction to Israel's strikes in Gaza today?

Well, we're going to have to see what's happening. We want to make sure that it's going to be very peaceful with Hamas. As you know, they've been quite rambunctious. They've been doing some shooting and I think maybe the leadership isn't involved in some rebels with it, but either way it's going to be, it's going to be handled properly. It's going to be handled toughly but properly.

Is the ceasefire still in place?

Yeah, it is, Mr. President.

On Colombia, Senator Graham, the country of Columbia. The country of Columbia. Senator Graham tweeted that you would be imposing tariffs on the country either today or tomorrow. Can you give any details as to how much the terrorist.

I read the statement of Sen. I was with him today. We were working today and I read his statement and it's all right, but.

How much the terror rate.

I'll let you know tomorrow. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Tomorrow it will be announced.

Yeah. Are you.

Jay Jones has repeatedly said that he went in Virginia, that he.

Who said what?

Jay Jones in Virginia.

J. Jones. You mean the one that wanted to kill somebody's children and kill somebody? You mean the animal that wanted to kill somebody who should not be allowed to be running for that office?

Yeah.

He said he can't wait to see you in court. I'm wondering if you'd respond and if you're considering getting involved in that race.

Well, what is he saying?

He said in the debate on Thursday night that he can't wait to sue your administration and see you in court.

No, he's a third rate intellect. He's a guy who I've never seen anybody say what he said, that he wanted to kill his opponent's children. He wanted to kill his opponent. Now, I can't imagine anybody voting for Jay Jones. Look, you would think he's totally discredited. I would think he wouldn't even be allowed to do that. Anybody would be put in prison for what he said so he can join a long list of attorney generals that have been suing and losing. But the people of this country want law. They want order. They want safety. They don't want to be mugged or raped or shot. And that's what we provide. We have tremendous numbers also. You see the crime numbers are coming way down, way down. Then you take a look at a place like Washington, D.C. which is now one of the safest cities in the country. It's one of the worst, is most dangerous. We moved out 1,700 career criminals and people that came here through Biden and his open border policy. And Washington D.C. is now one of the safest cities. And Memphis is doing fantastically also. We went in there a week ago and there's a bumpy flag. I better say that. Otherwise they'll say, what's wrong with the president? It's a bumpy flag. But Memphis is doing really well. I think that Chicago will do very well. We're going to go into San Francisco at some point in the not too distant future, make that a great city again. It can only be a great city if it doesn't have crime. If it has crime, it can't be a great city.

The question on Colombia, are you concerned that if aid is cut to Colombia, that would undermine Colombia's fight against drugs?

A lot usa, they don't have a fight against drugs. They make drugs. They refine drugs. They make cocaine. They have cocaine factories. They have no fight against drugs. And I'm stopping all payments to Colombia because they don't have anything to do with their fight against drugs. And in fact, even when they had better than they have right now, they were. That's how they're making a lot of money. Drugs. I used to complain about it when they had a very nice president, but he wasn't doing it. It was all talk. They are a drug manufacturing machine in Olympia and we're not going to be part of it. So we're going to drop all money that we're giving to them. It has nothing to do with them stopping drug production. And you look at the fields. The fields are loaded up with drugs and they refine the drugs and they make tremendous amount of cocaine and they send it all over the world and they destroy families. No. Colombia is out of control. And now they have the worst president they've ever had. He's a lunatic who's got a lot of problems, mental problems.

One more question on Colombia. The Colombian president says that the US Killed an innocent Colombian fisherman in one of the strikes.

They said that when we shot down a submarine that they were just fishing. This is a submarine. This was a submarine that was meant, by the way, this was a submarine that was meant for one reason and made for one reason to carry massive amounts of drugs. He agrees with that.

But that's not the right strike that he's talking about.

He's talking about previous strikes.

Mr. President, on the shutdown, do you want to see the premium tax credits extended if the Democrats vote to reopen the government?

Let me just tell you that there'll be no money given toward their crazy escalation of giving money to illegal aliens that came into the country totally illegally. I mean, they came in illegally. They want to spend 1.5 trillion with a T trillion dollars giving it to people that came into the country illegally. They shouldn't have come in. One of the reasons they came in was to get this money. And California is a big culprit. I mean, California, they're out of control. And we're not going to pay California all of that money that they're giving away illegally. That's another thing between California and Colombia. There's not that much difference. We're not going to be making those payments.

Just to follow up to that, sorry, a July survey.

Who are you with?

Was the Washington Post. A July survey by your pollster, Tony Fabrizio found that.

Fabrizio.

Fabrizio found that 72% of voters across political parties like the ACA tax credits. Are you worried that you might get blamed if you don't help get those through?

Well, we want to have great health care, so we'll do whatever we can do to have great health care. But the Democrats want to destroy all healthcare because they want to give $1.5 trillion of this money and they want additional money to go to people that came into our country illegally. Many of them are from prisons and mental institutions. And we're not going to destroy our health care for the Democrats.

Mr. President, there were reports and, you know, you even mentioned that in a recent phone call, Prime Minister Modi and that Modi had said his country would stop purchasing of Russian oil.

Yeah, he's going to stop.

India said that they were not aware.

Well, then they're going to just keep paying a lot of tariffs if they said that. But I don't believe they said that. No. I spoke with Prime Minister Modi of India and he said he's not going to be doing the Russian oil thing. So that's.

But why would they say. Why would India say that they're not going to.

I don't know. But if they want to say that, then they'll just continue to make massive tariffs and they don't want to do that.

Coming up on Friday, you said you had a cordial meeting with President Zelensky, during that, during that meeting, did you tell him he needed to cede all of the Donbass region to Russia?

No, we never discussed it. We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are on the battle lines. You have a battle line right now. The rest is very tough to negotiate. If you're going to say, you take this, we take that. You know, there's so many different permutations. So what I say is they should stop right now at the battle lines, go home, stop killing people, and be done.

Thinks that happened with the Donbas region.

Let it be cut the way it is. It's cut up right now. I think 78% of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now, they can. They can negotiate something later on down the line. But I said cut and stop at the battle. I go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.

What do you think of Mandami's photo with the 93 World Trade center bombing?

Yeah, it's a shame. Look, the Mandami thing is, it's a disaster waiting to happen. We can't have a Communist in charge of a great, supposedly free enterprise, kind of a representative city. So I think it's. If you have a Communist mayor, I think it's going to be very tough for him and for the city.

Do you think he should have posted something like this so close to the election?

Oh, I think it's a shame that that particular man is endorsing him and very friendly with him. You can see it as a relationship. He blew up the World Trade center.

Right.

And Mr. President, didn't the man you're talking about blow up the World Trade Cent? And he's friends with Mr. President and.

Sticking with New York City. You've talked about the Hudson River Tunnel, the infrastructure project. So you said that the funding has been terminated, but, you know, folks in New York have said that it's not terminating. So where does that start?

Well, as of now, it's terminated, and that's up to me. And as of now, it's terminated. And it's terminated because the Democrats are so foolish, what they've done to the country. I mean, we have the hottest country in the world. There's no country of it most. And they just want to do this, you know, there's nothing for them to do. All they have to do is just say, let everything continue. And I will say a lot of Democrats want this to get over.

So the administration right now is not.

Seeing funding right now. There is no funding because it's up to me.

What is your response to the protests?

Who are you with? With ap.

What's your response to the protest over the weekend, the no case protest on Saturday?

I think it's a joke. I looked at the people, they're not representative of this country. And I looked at all the brand new signs. Paid for, I guess it was paid for by Soros and other radical left lunatics. It looks like it. Checking it out. The demonstrations were very small, very ineffective and the people were whacked out. When you look at those people, those are not representative of the people of our country.

Mr. President, besides San Francisco.

And by the way, I'm not a king. I'm not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great. That's all it is. I'm not a king at all.

Besides San Francisco, are there other cities you're actively looking at for the National Guard right now?

Yeah, what about it?

I'm just wondering if you care to comment on that.

Well, we've used the National Guard to be very successful in Memphis. You can see the numbers that are falling like rocks. Washington D.C. chicago is getting better. Even though we're going through a lot and you know, we're trying to do it in a very nice way. I'm allowed as you know, as president, like 50% of the presidents have used the Insurrection Act. We use that and everybody agrees you're allowed to use that. And there's no more court cases, there's no more anything. We're trying to do it in a nicer manner. But we can always use the Insurrection act if we want. I mean you take a look in the past, some one in particular president used it 28 times during the course of a presidency. So we're allowed to do that. We thought we could do it in a very nice way. All we want to do is have safe cities. We're not looking for anything that would be spectacular other than crime free become spectacular. We want to have great crime free cities. So I'd be allowed to use if I wanted the Insurrection act and then all of this nonsense would go away. You have the absolute right. It's the strongest power a president has and you have the absolute right, right to do it. We wanted to go this route, but we get sued every time you look at somebody. You look at somebody the wrong way and you end up getting sued. We just want no crime. We want to have crime free cities. That's not a big, I mean it's pretty common sense. I Think. But that's all I want is crime free cities. I campaigned on it. It's become, I think even more successful than we thought because of the tremendous success that we had literally in 12 days in Washington D.C. and it continues. But Washington D.C. was so pro out of it. People are eating in their restaurants, restaurants are opening. All the stores and restaurants were closing. You couldn't walk down the street without being mugged or worse. And now it's a safe city. I mean it's considered a very safe city. And it's safe because we took 1700 people out of there and brought them back to where they came from. Yeah.

You said you're going to South Korea.

That's to meet with China. I am.

Can you tell us more about your goals for your trip to Asia, where else you may be going?

I have a very good relationship with President Xi of China. We're having disputes on things and they're paying us a lot of money, tremendous amount of money in tariffs and they'd probably like to have it be less and we'll work on that. But they have to give us some things to do. Right now China is paying a tremendous amount of money in tariffs like they've never paid before. You know, they paid a lot during my first administration, my first term. Now they're paying an unbelievable amount of money to the United States. They probably can't pay that much and I'm okay with that. We can lower that, but they have to do things for us too. It's no longer a one way street.

What would you lower it to, Ethan?

Depends. I mean we'll have to see what they want. One of the penalties. We have it because they're sending in fentanyl. We have a 20% as you know, a 20% tariff on that. But they'd be paying about 157% tariff which is, you know, record setting time tariff. I don't want them to do that. I want to help China. I want to. I'm not going to hurt you. But they have to give us things.

Soybeans. Are you confident that you'll.

I want them to buy soybeans. One of the things I want is China is going to buy soybeans. I want China to stop with the fentanyl, very, you know, normal things. I don't want them to play the rare earth game with us.

But you want them to. But do you think they will make a deal in swaby?

I do believe, yeah, because otherwise I'm not going to make a deal. No, I want them to Buy. Our farmers have been boycotted by China as a negotiating point. I don't want that. Our farmers are great, and in particular our soybean farmers. And I want them to start buying soybeans at least in the amount that they were buying before. And I believe they'll be able to do that.

But sticking with soybeans in Argentina, you're looking to do that deal with.

With respect to beef, are we expecting them? I assume you're talking about beef to get beef prices down. The only price we have that's high is beef, and we'll get that down. And one of the things we're thinking about doing is beef from Argentina.

But my question is, what do you have to say to us farmers who feel that the deal is benefiting Argentina more than it is them as they are a top.

Argentina's fighting for its life, young lady. You don't know anything about it. They're fighting for their life. Nothing's benefiting Argentina. They're fighting for their life. You understand what that means? They have no money. They have no anything. They're fighting so hard to survive. If I can help them survive in a free world. I happen to like the president of Argentina. I think he's trying to do the best he can. But don't make it sound like they're doing great. They are dying. All right? They're dying.

What do you mean by a beef deal, sir?

We would buy some beef from Argentina. If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down because our groceries are down, our energy prices are down. I think we're going to have $2 gasoline pretty soon. We' close and everything's down. The one thing that's kept up is beef. And if we buy some beef now, I'm not talking about that much from Argentina, it would help Argentina, which we consider a very good country, a very good ally in a place. Although I must tell you, if you take a look now, South America is turning this. South American countries are starting to turn very much toward us. They're getting away from socialism and you can go right down the pack. But they are. They are starting to turn. It's pretty amazing.

May I ask you about Israel again? Feel that Israel was justified with striking what it did.

Striking where?

In Gaza today and overnight.

I'd have to get back to you on that. I'd have to get back.

What is the next.

Because we're going to be determined. You know, all of that speech is under consideration right now. It's under review. Who are you with?

I'm with the Washington Post. That's what I feel on Harvard. You said the other week that you had reached a deal, but we haven't heard anything.

What's the hold up?

Well, we reached a concept of a deal, but it's pretty complicated because under this deal will be $500 billion. They're going to open up trade schools. And I love the idea, trade and trade schools like Harvard. So, you know, they get into like a vocational type school. And the one problem with it, it's very complicated. You know, when do they start? How do they start? Who do they use? You know, there's a thousand different things and we may just charge them a fine, big fine, $500 million fine, Mr. President, and they won't do it again. And if they do, want to, just charge them another fine.

You haven't weighed in on the Virginia gubernatorial race. That's in a few weeks. Do you plan to endorse?

Well, I think the Republican candidate is, and I think she should win because the Democrat candidate is a disaster. So I haven't been too much involved in Virginia. I love the state. I did very well in the state. But I will tell you, I think the Republican candidate is excellent and I think the Democrat candidate is a disaster. I mean, I watched her in the debate. She couldn't answer the most basic question. And you know, a big thing with that race and also the race in New Jersey is going to be energy. Both of the Democrats are going to drive the energy prices through the roof. Through your energy is going to double and triple. If the Republican gets elected, your energy is going to be coming down by 70, 80%. Thank you very much. Everybody vote Republican.