President Trump Gaggles with the Press on Air Force One, June 6, 2025

A lot of people back here. It's a lot of people. So we visited the military course just to see if we could fix it up and make it nice. The budgetary situation takes some years to get something approved, so we're gonna take a look at that. It's two courses. Very nice. But they need a lot of work. A lot of work. And we can fix them up. They're military. They're for the military. We can fix them up. We're gonna.

Mr. President, did you speak with Bukele directly to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia?

I don't want to say that, but he's returned.

Did you have any conversations with.

He should have never. He should have never had to be returned. I mean, you take a look at what's happened with him. You take a look at what they found in the grand jury and everywhere else. I thought Pam Bondi did a great job today.

Was this your call to bring him back to the United States?

I don't want to say that, Mr. President.

You posted. Yes, by the way.

Either way, it's a disaster. He's a whole disaster. Look at him with his. With his antics. Not good. And for the Democrats who have backed him, this was not the man from Maryland, this wonderful father from Maryland. This is a pretty. Pretty bad guy.

Mr. President, you posted yesterday that a good way to save money would be to cancel some of Musk's contracts. How seriously are you considering that?

We'll take a look at everything. I look at everything. He's got a lot of money. He gets a lot of subsidy, so we'll take a look at that. Only if it's fair. Only if it's fair for him and for the country. I would certainly think about it. Yeah, but it has to be fair.

Would you consider opening reopening investigations into his companies? There are a bunch of investigations.

I didn't know that they had any, but you know they had them. I would just let them speak for themselves. I had no idea. Excuse me. I have no idea whether or not they had investigations.

What's your view on Elon Musk as of today? I mean, have you heard from him at all?

As your team, I've been so busy working on China, working on Russia, working on Iran, working on so many. I'm not thinking about Elon, you know. I just wish him well.

Chinatown, Sir.

You have yet?

There's a meeting coming up with Secretary Besson. Secretary London.

What do you hope.

What do you hope to see from those talks in London?

Sir, we're very Far advanced on the China deal. We wanted clarification. We had to have clarification. Little bumpy up here. We had to have. We had to have clarification. And that's what we're really having the meeting about. We had a very good talk. I talked to President Xi for, I guess, more than two hours. We had a very good talk. Complicated deal, but it's a deal that's, you know, bring us a lot of money and a lot of everything else, and we get along very well with President Xi and with China.

Mr. President, when you talk about contracts, do you feel like the US can survive without them? Obviously, you can trip a lot when it comes to defense and space, and that relationship has been important for quite some time.

The US can survive without almost anybody except me.

Did you have any concerns about his drug use when he was working for you?

I don't want to comment on his drug use. I don't know. I don't know what his status is. I read an article in the New York Times. I thought it was. Frankly, it sounded very unfair to me.

You said earlier today that Mr. Musk had a problem. What did you mean by that? And did you misjudge him by bringing.

I don't want to talk about problems. I think that my. I think the United States had problems. And if you look at the numbers today, the numbers were unbelievable. The numbers were incredible. The numbers that came up today, the stock market went way up. The country's doing really well, almost. I think in a very short period of time, you're going to be saying, doing better than it's ever done before. We have hundreds of plants coming in. Plants. A lot of jobs are being created. That's what happened this morning. You saw them. Jobs. And the nice part, they're not government jobs. They're jobs of people coming in and doing other things, including the leisure hotel and leisure. Good stuff. A lot of good things are happening with our country. We're taking in billions of dollars of tariff money. The money is pouring in, and it hasn't started yet, really, relatively, we're going to have a very successful country very soon. And the stock market is saying that. We have. And I've been saying it, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. The hottest country. And if you think about it, six months ago, we had the coldest country. We had a country that was a disaster, and we've done it very quickly. Okay, go ahead, Mr. President, on the.

One big beautiful bill. So your critics, often your critics.

I don't have too many Critics, because, you know, honestly, I don't know of any that's going to vote against it. Maybe Rand Paul or somebody, but you know, they always vote against. But I actually think that over the last 24 hours it's even solidified. We have tremendous support.

So just a quick step, want to talk about the bill. They fail to often fail to mention that your tariffs are actually offsetting a lot, you know, the debt. I believe The CBO said 2.8 trillion over the next 10 years. So what do you have to say?

Tremendous reviews and CBO who never gives good basically to Democrats group. And we're getting tremendous reviews on the bill. We cut 1.6 trillion, trillion, not billion, trillion out of the budget and yet we haven't affected anybody. We're going to save and totally cherish Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The Democrats are going to destroy it. They'll destroy it. We're going to save it and make it stronger than ever before. So Medicare, Medicaid, they just make statements, oh, he's going to talk. We're not touching it. Other than waste, fraud and abuse.

That was my next question on Russia, Ukraine, did the Ukraine drone strikes against the bombers inside Russia, the airfields, did that change your view at all of what Zelensky, the cards he has?

Well, they gave Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of him last night. That's the thing I didn't like about it when I saw it. I said, here we go. Now it's going to be a strike. You know, I did something that people don't talk about and I don't talk about very much, but we solved a big problem, a nuclear problem, potentially with India and with Pakistan. And I spoke to Pakistan, I spoke to India. They have really great leaders, but they were going at it and they could have gone at it. Nuclear. Both nuclear countries, strong nuclear countries. And I talked about trade and I said we're not doing trade if you guys are going to be throwing bombs at each other. And they both stopped and I stopped that war immediately. That was going as you know, that was going much further and hopefully not to nuclear, but it might have gone to nuclear. In fact, it might have gone to nuclear in the next round, but we stopped it. And I'd like to comment the leaders of both countries between Pakistan and India.

Are you worried that there might be a nuclear breakout with Russia, Ukraine? Are you worried that that could.

I don't. I hope not. I hope not. I think it's a war that would have never happened if I were president, that wouldn't have happened. I certainly hope not.

Mr. President.

Senator Hawley said he had spoken with you about potentially removing cuts that were in the House pass bill to Medicaid that would hurt Trump voters in rural areas. What are your thoughts about that?

Well, I did speak about that. We're really talking about waste, fraud and abuse. And Senator Hawley, he's a great senator, good guy, and I did speak to him and we want to make sure that doesn't hurt anybody, you know, because it is, it is about waste, fraud and abuse. That's the only thing and everybody wants that.

On Russia, Ukraine, where are you at today with the Senate sanction bills? There's been some reporting that the White House is, you know, the bill to see.

I mean, if we're, if I think there's, if I think Russia will not be making a deal or stopping the bloodshed. Five and six even, I've been saying five and six and now it's more thousand a week, soldiers being killed and people being killed. Not just soldiers, people being killed, but largely soldiers being killed. Yeah, I use it if it's necessary and they really give me that option.

Are you trying to get the Senate to water it down, though, from its current version?

I haven't spoken about it. They have a bill. It's going to be up to me. It's my option. They've made it that way and it would save a lot of time if that happened. So I'm okay with it. I haven't decided to use it. It's a very strong bill.

Mr. President, you gave Elon Mus, when he left the White House a key symbolically to the White House, to the administration at large. I think that's what would you like him to give that back?

What about the Tesla?

I gave him a key. He tried very hard. The Tesla, I haven't thought of it.

On his work then, as of this point for the administration, how do you think his doge did at the end of the day with the savings that.

Oh, I think it helped us a lot. I think it helped, I think, and it's not finished at all. We, we are taking, we've basically taken it over and we're doing a job. Many of those people remain with us and they're going to remain with us. They're very, it's terrific. We saved hundreds of billions of dollars. It's terrific. And it's going further. I mean, I'd give you the answer actually at the end of two years because a lot of it is out into the future. But it was a big saving and a good mindset.

And what are you doing about the Tesla? Are you going to keep it or are you going to.

I haven't thought about it.

Do you have any plans to contact.

I hope he does well with Tesla.

Do you have any plans to speak with Mr. Musk? This was one of your closest advisors.

For what? I don't have any plans. Somebody made a mistake. A lot of reporters have been call. I didn't call any reporter. A lot of reporters, they asked me the same question. No, I don't, I'm not even thinking about that.

There apparently were these efforts, this is what I read, to bring you guys, you and Elon back together. So those, those efforts are. Where are they?

Well, there are efforts. I mean I've been asked about it, but I'm not really interested in that. I'm really interested in the country and solving problems, including war problems in very far away lands. A lot of people being killed. You know, when I left, we had no problem. We didn't have wars. We defeated ISIS 100, Iran was broke. There was no Hamas problem, there was no Hezbollah problem. Israel wouldn't have happened. In other words, Russia, Ukraine wouldn't have happened. We had no inflation. And by the way, we have no inflation now. And if we had a good Fed chairman, you would lower rates. And you know what, if inflation happened in a year from now or two years, let them raise rates. But we're going out for long term debt or short term debt. We have a lot of debt coming due because Biden had all short term debt mostly and we would get a lower rate at a lower interest rate. If this guy would lower rate, we get a lower interest rate. It's unbelievable. And he's worried about inflation. If he worries about inflation any longer, all he has to do is get the lower rate. Let us go out borrow at a much lower rate. Much lower. You could go down a point or two. We'll go out borrow. And if in two years inflation comes back, he raises rates but he keeps them the same. It's just, it's insane.

What your ex Fed share. Are you already thinking about who your next Fed chair would be? I know it's 2026 when his term expires. So you're already thinking about it.

It's coming out very soon. I could tell you, but I don't think.

What do you make?

I have a pretty good idea.

What do you make of the ayatollah saying that they, they have to enrich, they have to be able to.

They won't be enriching. If they enrich, then we're going to have to do it the other way. And I don't really want to do it the other way, but we're going to have no choice. What's your latest? It's not going to be just one.

More on a Garcia, sir, because this is a big news for today. Just months ago, it seemed like from El Salvador to even your administration that there was no chances that he would be returned. So can you just explain to the American what sort of happened to facilitate his return in Alaska?

DOJ made a decision. I think their decisions have been very, very good. And maybe they just said, look, all of these people, these judges, they want to try and run the country. The judges are trying to. A local judge trying to run the country. The man has a horrible past. And I could see a decision being made. Bring him back. Show everybody how horrible this guy is. And frankly, we have to do something because the judges are trying to take the place of a president that won in a landsl and that's not supposed to be the way it is. And so I could see bringing him back. I could see it either way. Bringing him back or not bringing him back. But by bringing him back, you show how bad he is. He's a bad guy.

Mr. President Xi to restore.

We're landing right now. I'm sorry? We're landing right now. Say it. What?

Did President Xi agree to restart the flow of rare earth minerals and maggots?

Yes, he did. Thank you very much, everybody.

Thank you for coming back.