White House press briefing transcript, Jan 20, 2026 (Trump)

Go ahead. Go ahead. I'll take your question.

Thank you—thank you, President——

Go ahead. Right here.

The President's Foreign Policy

Thank you, Mr. President. You promised during your second Inaugural to always put America first. I'm curious: How would you winning the Nobel Peace Prize improve the lives of average, everyday Americans? Why is this prize so important?

It wouldn't improve the lives of any—what would improve the lives of people are people that are living. I saved probably tens of millions of lives in the wars. You know, if you add up the numbers—just if you look at—if you look at any one of those wars, you're talking about millions of people. You multiply it times eight.

But when you look at India and Pakistan, that could have been 10, 15, 20 million people. Could have been more than that. So I saved millions of people. So that, to me, is the big thing.

What?

National Economy

A moment ago—thanks, sir. You suggested a moment ago that perhaps the reason why a positive story about the economy isn't getting through is because of, you know, bad communications people. But are average Americans wrong to still feel high prices? And how much longer does the White House hope that they will stay patient?

So I think a lot of people—a lot of people are listening to the fake news a little bit, and I'm not blaming anybody. I think—I blame ourselves. I think we've done a much better job than we're able to promote. We're not promoting. We're doing a great job, and we're sort of letting the promotion take care of itself.

One of the reasons I'm doing this news conference: I think it's important. We have taken a mess and made it really good. It's going to get even better. But if you look at prices from a year or a year and a half ago, you look at the Biden prices, they were way up through the sky.

And you know, they use the word "affordability." They just say "affordability," and they don't talk about it. They created the affordability problem, and we have—we are solving it. We have solved a lot of it.

Again, everybody agrees in this room, I think, gasoline prices have come—per gallon—way down. When that happens, everything else comes down. But they've come down way down. Many of the groceries have come way down. It's all happening, and it's happening strong.

But if you go back a year, a year and a half, 2 years, take a look at those prices, and look at the prices now.

Go ahead.

Mr. President, on Venezuela. You made—you made a condition that was——

Where are you from?

I'm from Spain.

Nice place.

Venezuela/Status of Political Prisoners

Thank you. You made a condition that the political prisoners should be freed. It seems that they are not being as fast as they promised in the beginning. Would that be an issue for the current government?

Yes, they've agreed that they're going to let, I guess, most of them out, all of them out. Depends on what they did. But they have released a lot of—they have a lot—released a lot of political prisoners in Venezuela.

Please.

Panama Canal

Mr. President, earlier on last year, you had mentioned—you had indicated that you want to take back the Panama Canal. I know we've heard a lot about Greenland. Is that still on the table?

I don't want to tell you that. Sort of. I must say, sort of. That's sort of on the table.

Okay, one more. Yes. Blonde. Blue.

Yes, go ahead. Ma'am, go ahead. With the blue, holding the computer.

Greenland/North Atlantic Treaty Organization

If a consequence of your determination to take control of Greenland is the ultimate breakup of the NATO alliance, is that a price you're willing to pay?

You mean the breakup of——

Of the NATO alliance.

It's very interesting question. So I think something is going to happen that's going to be very good for everybody. Nobody has done more for NATO than I have, as I said before, in every way. Getting them to go up to 5 percent of GDP was something that nobody thought was possible—and pay. At 2 percent, they weren't paying. At 5 percent, they are paying.

And they're buying a lot of things from us, and they're giving them, I guess, to Ukraine. That's up to them, but they're giving them to whoever they're giving them to. But they're buying a lot.

I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy and where we're going to be very happy. But we need it for security purposes. We need it for national security and even world security. It's very important.

How about in the front?

The President's Accomplishments/Border Security

Thank you very much. First of all, last year, you told me that you believe that the reason you won election is because God put you in this place so you—that you could save the world. Looking back one year, do you feel like God is proud of the effort that you've played?

I do. Actually, I think God is very proud of the job I've done, and that includes for religion. You know, we're protecting a lot of people that are being killed—Christians and Jewish people and—lots of people are being protected by me that wouldn't be protected by another type of President.

No, I think a lot of people are very proud of the job we've done. We've had an amazing year. This has been one of the greatest years. Even some people that wouldn't necessarily love me instinctively, they're saying this was an incredible year. We've had an incredible year economically.

Look at our border. Our border was a disaster. People poured—millions—it was an invasion into our country of a lot of very bad people. Good people too, but a lot of very bad. People from prisons and drug dealers and gangs and horrible people. Murderers. Thousands and thousands of murderers allowed into our country.

And we now have the strongest border of any country. There's probably not a country—I guess North Korea has a pretty strong border, by the way. But there's not a country in the world that has a border like we do. And we took it from the worst border. We had the worst border in the world. Now we have one of the strongest borders in the world.

All right. One more—one more question.

Greenland

Thank you, Mr. President. You said you're confident something is going to get worked out in Greenland, but Greenlanders have made it clear they don't want to be part of the U.S.

Well, I haven't—I haven't——

What gives the U.S. the right to take away that self-determination?

I haven't spoken to—when I speak to them, I'm sure they'll be thrilled.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Mr. President, are you committed to keeping the U.S. in NATO?

I've had such a good relationship. I've made it so much better, so much stronger. It's so good now. NATO is so much stronger now.

I don't agree with a lot of the things they've done, but that was done before I got there. I think NATO has been good. Sometimes it's overrated, sometimes it's not. But we have a strong NATO.

When I came here, we had a weak NATO. We had a NATO at 2 percent and they weren't paying. You had a nothing NATO. NATO is—whether you like it or not, it's only as good as we are. If NATO doesn't have us, NATO is not very strong.

Yes. No, behind you, please.

Thank you, President Trump.

Yes, go ahead.

The President's Favorite Accomplishments

Really appreciate it, sir. We've heard a long list of accomplishments from the last year. Could you cherry-pick the top three? And then looking forward, what are your three most important priorities in 2026?

So I think the building of a really powerful military has been a great achievement. And that would include the Venezuela thing. That would include the attack on Iran and the wiping out of the nuclear threat. I think that's been really amazing, what we've done militarily.

I think what we've done in business has been incredible. We have $18 trillion coming in. Plants are being built all over the—thousands of plants are being built all over the country. Eighteen trillion is a record. No country has ever come anywhere even close to that. I think that's a record.

And I think that most favored nations for drugs is something that nobody thought they'd be able to get. Tariffs helped me there, because the nations would have never gone along with it if I wasn't able to say, "If you don't go along with it, we're going to put a 10- or a 15- or a 20-percent tariff on your nation." And they went along, and our drug prices are going to come down at numbers never even seen before—never even thought possible before. So, those would be three things.

Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.