President Trump Gaggles with the Press on Air Force One, Oct. 13, 2025

Thank you very much. So this was really historic day. Put it mildly. Wasn't it amazing? Even that last meeting, when you see the heads of those countries, those, those are serious countries. But it was, I thought it was fantastic. And seeing the, I mean, the so called hostages with those kids come back home, the way their parents just went, just went crazy. Your father would not be that way with you. He'd be okay, but he be like that.

I would get a hug.

A hug. Minor hug. Okay. So how are you doing? Everybody okay? Are we good?

How are you feeling?

I feel good. I mean, it's a long day, right? It's a long day. And we did a couple of big ones. That first one was. It's getting great reviews. There's a lot of meat in there. Dissecting it and just playing it all night long. It's been very good. I think it's a very. It's a very important day. Nobody thought this was possible. And the press has been very respectful for change doesn't happen often. Go ahead, Peter, let's go.

What does it tell you about the world? That it seems like you got a much better reception in Israel than you would get in, like New York City right now?

I think I got a great reception in New York City.

I'm not saying that you don't, but it was like it was on another level today.

You're right, it was incredible. But I went to the Bronx and we had 30, 31,000 people in a park in the Bronx in New York City during the campaign. 31,000, if you remember that. And it was the friendliest crowd you've ever seen and very diverse. But it was good.

New York City, bad example, but it was. I don't know if you can see.

Are you admitting you made a mistake? I don't believe it. This is breaking news.

First rule of politics, never admit a mistake.

Never admit.

But it was in the motorcade. I don't know if could see there were people hanging out of every apartment balcony inside the Knesset.

Okay, so I've heard, like they said if you did Russia or if you did, you know, lots of different combinations. They say the Middle east blows it away. And they said, well, I buy experts. It's just thousands of years, nothing's been done. It's the whole thing with the Arabs, Jewish people, this, that everybody. It's just, it's just never been done before. And there's a certain mystery to the middle. I mean, look, it's only because the ratings, you know, you're only as good as the ratings. Right. If they weren't getting ratings, your people are flopped. And by the way, Trey is excellent.

He does a really good job.

We did a very quick interview. I was running to the second one where we were pretty late.

Something that we heard from some Israelis on the ground. They want to know how the peace holds when you are not the president. So three years from now, I can't answer.

I know this. And you, you are all witness. We go and I get 25,000, 35,000. If you look at a normal president, we'll get 300 people. And that's not bad. They'll go to a ballroom, they'll get 300 people, we get 35. We had 117,000 people in New Jersey. And so I can't tell you what's going to happen, but I'll be out there fighting for whoever it may be.

Did you tell BB beforehand that you were going to go off script and.

No, I actually told him I didn't want to bring up the party, but it was just the perfect spot. It was good timing when you said, because he was getting a very good hand. And when they stopped, they said, why don't he give this guy a part? If he didn't get a good hand, they wouldn't have done that. But the timing was. What do you think, Katie? Good timing for that?

I think people thought it was pretty funny.

Yes, it worked out well. It's a little risque. Pretty sore subject in Israel, but the people were fantastic.

Mr. President, you.

You can ask more questions this morning. Go ahead. I have some good questions, I promise you do. You were very nice today. Go ahead.

You talked to President El Sisi and you spoke about in that room how Egypt has so little crime and you said it's all about leadership.

You talked about, well, they're very strong.

You talked about some of the governors.

You wouldn't believe how strong. But they are very strong. But they don't have the kind of crime, they don't have the violent. They may have other kinds of crime, but they're violent crime. You can actually walk down a park and not get mugged. You're hit over the head with a baseball.

Do you want to see some US Governors be more like Egypt?

No, I want them to be stronger and tougher and not allow us to have record breaking crime in Chicago and different places. I want them to admit they have crime. So there were 4,000 shootings in Chicago murders over a fairly short period of time, meaning like a year and a half. I think 4,000 murders many, many thousands of. You're hit by a bullet, but don't d. I want him to say, we have a problem. Could Trump bring in the troops and solve the problem like I did in D.C. like I'm doing in Memphis? Have you seen the crimes? Way down in Memphis, and we've only been there seven days. Way down.

The courts have been standing in their way here. The lower court said using the Insurrection Act.

The lower. Well, I could use it. If I wanted to, I could use it. Look, that's a very simple answer. I'm allowed to use the Insurrection Act. In fact, that was on Stephanopoulos, his Slavidopoulos show. They asked sloppy Chris Christie about the Insurrection Act. He said, well, if you're talking about the Insurrection act, he's got the absolute right to use that. And he said a couple of things. He said 50% of the presidents that served in office have used the Insurrection Act. And the Insurrection act, according to all of them, said it can't even be challenged. I'm not. I don't have to go there yet because I'm winning on appeal. You know, you're right. We're losing with radical left judges, generally radical left judges. And we're winning an appeal, so we'll see what happens.

I'll be speaking to Governor Jamie Pritzker tomorrow. Do you have any messages or questions for him?

Well, I think he should beg for help because he's running a bad operation. He's letting people be killed in his city because he doesn't want in Chicago. And I love Chicago. Chicago can be a great city again. And very quickly, I would have Chicago cleaned out, the criminals removed, and we would remove them. You know, in D.C. we took out 1700 career criminals, hard line criminals. That's why it's so good right now, D.C. setting records the other way. It's never been so safe. And the restaurants have never done better business. They're opening up new restaurants. They were closing restaurants. Now they're opening new restaurants. I can do the same thing on a larger scale in Chicago, and pritzkashen asked me to do it. But when you mentioned insurrection, I mean, you were the one that mentioned. One of you mentioned insurrection, acting. I could do that. And many presidents have. Do you have an update on 50%, Katie? 50% of the presidents have used the Insurrection because they don't want to go through this stuff where somebody said there's no crime and 4,000 people got shot, you know? Right.

Maybe you'll have to use it.

You. I don't have to Convince, because she tends to be on the conservative side.

Do you have an update on the Schumer shutdown and Democrats still continuing to.

Well, it is a Schumer shutdown for the. Look, they want to have health care for illegals that have come in. Many of these people are criminals and they want to have health care. And what it also does is, you know, we have nobody coming in now really like them. If they start winning cases like this, we're going to have a rush on our border because they're going to come up for health care and the other things that they give away. Look at nusa, education, health care, it gives everything away. People come up for that. People come from other countries for that. So we can't have it. We have people coming into our country, but they're coming in legally.

Do you have any more meetings?

We have the strongest border we've ever had, but they are coming in, Katie. They're coming in legally through a process.

Do you have any planned meetings with House and Senate leadership on the Republican side?

I talk to him all the time. John Doon's been great, and Mike has been great Speaker. He's been great. Those two guys have done a great job. But we're dealing with a bunch of radical left lunatics that have lost an election in a landslide. They don't even admit that. I mean, think of it. They lost the election 2,700 in terms of counties to 525. That's where the map is entirely right. They lost all seven swing states, the popular vote. And then they say, oh, the election was close. She says the election was a landslide. But they lied. You know, they can take any subject like Newsom does. He says, oh, no, Los Angeles is doing great. If we didn't go into Los Angeles, you would have had to. They would have had to cancel the Olympics. And the head of law enforcement said, and he said it very strongly, we could not have handled this if Trump didn't bring those people in. Two weeks later, he said, oh, we could have, because he was told to say that. But we did a great job in Los Angeles. You wouldn't have. First of all, you lost half of it with the fires. And this would have been. I think this would have been maybe even worse. They had no control when we went in. They had. The police had totally lost control. And he admitted it. The head, whoever he is, whatever his name is, he admitted it very strongly.

What's your reaction to President Bill Clinton giving him credit for ending the war?

I've always gotten along with him. He used to be a friend of mine. Came to my wedding, you know, so did she. A lot of people don't know that. But now he's. I've always liked it. I thought it was very nice, actually. And what is he doing? He's telling the truth because nobody else has been able to do it. Talking about the Middle East.

Yes, Mr. President. I wanted to ask you about your conversations with world leaders today. You said that everybody is unified over your land. But we heard from President Sisi calling for a two state solution in independent Palestinians.

You're talking about a different planet. I'm talking about something very much different. We're talking about rebuilding Gaza. I'm not talking about single state or double state or two state. We're talking about the rebuilding of Gaza.

What's the road ahead for governing Gaza?

We'll have to see. I mean, a lot of people like the one state solution. Some people like the two state solutions. We'll have to see. I haven't, I haven't commented on that.

How do you see bridging that gap? Because you have the Arab countries.

At some point I'll decide what I think is right, but I'd be in coordination with other states and other, other countries and it is satisfied.

I mean, some people might say feels premature declaring peace for the whole Middle east, you know, 3,000 years premature.

You want more people to be killed? What do you want? Another 3, 400,000 people to be killed? Is that what you're looking for?

But in terms of the risks in Gaza.

Risk, Risk. So you mean let them fight on for another couple of years, Let some more buildings fall down on top of people and keep it going? No, no, we did it the right way. We did it. I think our timing was perfect. You don't really mean that. You mean you want them to fight on.

I'm just asking about the phase two of the negotiations and how confident you are that those can get on the.

You know, we have a lot of power. That was a power room. Those people, those are the richest countries, I think now with tariffs. I think we're the richest country in the world. Actually the United States, we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. But those are, you know, really seriously rich countries and they can handle it.

Some of those players are particularly Erdog. Can he also help in the war between Russia and Ukraine?

Yeah, everyone can. He's respected by Russia, Ukraine, I can't tell you about, but he is respected by Putin and he's a friend of mine. You know, you can see why. I get along with the tough ones. I don't get along with the weak ones. I get along with the tough ones. I don't know what that is, but Erdogan's been great with me. You know, when NATO has a problem with Erdogan, which they often do, they call me to talk to them. And I never failed at working it out, like, immediately. Is that right? How's Caroline doing? Is she doing good? Should Caroline be replaced? No.

That's up to you, sir.

It'll never happen.

Nobody wants.

I said she does a great job.

Thank you.

Do you want to elaborate on the.

Skating and those lips, they move like a machine gun. Right.

Do you want to elaborate on the countries you consider weak?

They really are. Okay.

What do you want to comment on the leaders you consider weak who are in that room?

No, I won't comment on that. But, you know, probably who they are.

Just with I.

Before we. I don't know if that really. Yeah, there were a couple in the room. Overall. Overall, I thought that was an amazing group of people. I don't think they've ever seen it so much like that. Between power, money, you know, central, et cetera, there's never been anything. But you know what? I have to, because the plane is going to take off.

Are you posting Zelensky at the White House on Friday?

I think so, yes. Bye, everybody.

Thanks, President Trump.

Have a good time. Thank you, everybody.