Remarks transcript, Jun 3, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Hello, everybody.

Hi, Mr. President.

Kind of a big day today because this is——

——as you probably have been watching—so, from 1922 to present, it really never worked. It leaked, and it was bad, and it looked terrible. It was supposed to be beautiful.

It was opened in 1922, and it always leaked, and it was a problem. It's called the great Reflecting Pool between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial and—right in between. It's almost 2,500 feet long. I could show you—it would be like a—the tallest building in the world laid on its side, and the building wouldn't reach it.

And today, it gets completed—the pool gets completed at 4 o'clock, and the water will start to flow in. And it won't leak because it's done properly. And it's going to be beautiful. It's going to be "American Flag Blue." That's the color we picked. And I think it will be something amazing.

It's never worked. A great concept that never worked because it always leaked. They used stone originally, and the stone leaks because it's got a lot of crevices. And we have a very special material that we used, and we'll do this for a tiny fraction.

You remember President Obama tried to do it, and it failed miserably. They spent over $100 million. Between him and Biden, they spent much more than $100 million, and it never worked, and it was filthy dirty. We took out 12 truckloads of garbage out of this pool. It was just rotting and terrible. A terrible thing for the country.

So we have many monuments and fountains all over Washington, and we're just about completed with all of them. The fountains are all working now—28 fountains. And as of this moment, just about this moment, a couple are going to be a few days longer. And we went on a real kick. Some of the most beautiful fountains in the world, but they haven't worked in 30, 40 years, most of them.

As you know, you saw the one in front of the station, Union Station. It was horrible, and now it's beautiful. It was all covered in graffiti, but this would be the big one, because this is—again—could you give me that picture of the—how it compares in size to the biggest buildings anywhere in the world? It's sort of amazing.

So we're very proud of that. We're proud of a lot of things we've done, but this is something—so, Washington now, as you know, a very safe city. It's considered a very safe city. It was a very unsafe city 14 months ago; now it's a very safe city, so we're very proud of that.

But it's also become a beautiful city. The encampments, the homeless are no longer sitting in the middle of the park. The level of beauty of the city is incredible. We re-grassed many of the areas.

We're really doing a job at Lafayette Park, which is really the entrance to the White House, and that's going to be completed very shortly. And it will be incredible, as it was originally envisioned. Most of it we're doing as originally envisioned. And if you walk across the street to Lafayette Park, you'll see something that's incredible. It's going to be—we'll have it open before July 4. This, we wanted to get it open before July 4.

On the reflecting pond, or the Reflecting Pool, as some people call it, very important to us was the longevity, the—you know, having it so that it's not closed every day and all——

These are—I just had this done. You're getting a first glimpse, but that's your size compared. So those are compared to—those are among the tallest buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building, World Trade Center, Sears Tower—Chicago. So, if you lay it on its side, you'd take two or three of them to fill it in, because the width is very—almost 200 feet wide. And actually, much more than 2,000—close to—including everything, it's about 2,500 feet in length to the end. And it's going to be beautiful.

It was a great concept that never worked because they couldn't hold the water. Now they hold the water for a tiny fraction of the cost. I—we did a fantastic job, and Department of Interior was amazing. Doug Burgum, really, absolutely amazing.

And you're going to have something you're going to be very proud of it, and it will last for 50 to 100 years before you have to do anything with it. It's a very strong, powerful substance that we used, and we picked a color called "American Flag Blue." We had color choices. And before, it was just gray. It was the color of concrete and stone. So it's going to be really special. I thought you'd like to see it.

And the work ends on the pool. We also did a lot more than we anticipated there. We did all of the sidewalks outside of the pool, where people walk or they stand. That's where Martin Luther King made his great speech with a million people.

I had the same amount of people. Actually, I had a little bit tighter. It was a little bit tighter. They said he had a million people, and I had 25,000 people. And yet, if you look at the picture of comparison—the exact same location, the exact same pool, except now the pool is clean; it was filthy dirty then—but it was amazing, because that was my first glimpse into politics. I made a speech, and I had it—more people. In other words, you put the picture side by side, which we have, and they said I had 25,000; he had a million, but I had more people. They were tighter. My people were tighter. But these are minor details. That's what I said: "Well, wait a minute. There's something wrong."

But this was a—this is a very famous place, and it should be treated properly. A person came to my office, a very substantial person from a foreign country—another country—and said: "The Washington Monument, the Lincoln—you know, you take a look at the Washington Monument, beautiful, the Lincoln Memorial," he said: "but the walking in between was disgusting. The thing was loaded up."

We took 11 or 12 dumpsters—trucks full of garbage out of there that they were shoveling, and it was there for—it was there for years under the Biden administration. Again, Biden and Obama, if you combine the money they spent, it was over a hundred and—I think $142 million, and they've got nothing, as usual.

So I'm very proud of it. Maybe I shouldn't say that before it opens because maybe I'll open it and it'll leak like a sieve, but it's not going to do. [ Laughter ]

I'm very good at building things and constructing things, so I hope you're going to go take a look at it. The sidewalks are being sandblasted. The granites on the outside—they're granite, and that lasts—a strong stone. And that's being sandblasted. It's going to look like really something beautiful. It's going to be brandnew. It's got a lot of life. So just enjoy it.

Rodney Scott is here, along with Peter Navarro. Peter has been with me for a long time. Knows more about China than any human being on Earth except for—I would say President Xi knows a lot more. [ Laughter ] But other than President Xi, Peter is probably in second place—and certainly having to do with trade. And—but they're here to talk about something else.

And, Rodney, if you would, please.

Sure. So we're talking about rolling out a customs EO. Why is that important? Basically, it's "America first" in the trade environment, like we've been doing on the border. People are used to the illegal immigration, the narcotics. We've locked that down. This is literally taking the same principles and applying them to trade to protect American industry.

Different countries and different people are undercutting the—our import-export rules, the tariffs to literally undermine American businesses, and we're going to put a stop to it in the same way. We are going to increase the amount of data we have so that we can actually make conscious decisions about who and what comes into this country. And we're going to start holding people accountable so there's a—we're literally going to use the rules that are in place, to a certain extent, and then make some recommendations for legislation going forward.

But we're going to start holding trade accountable, from bringing threatening things and threatening products into our country, just like we have on the rest of the border.

So Customs and Border Protection gets a lot of attention for the border wall, everything else. This is going to be basically the equivalent in the trade environment.

And, sir, you did a miracle when you came in: You shut that border down in a matter of days to what had been a flood of millions of illegal aliens. And a secure America is a safe America.

What we're going to do here, the EO you're going to sign, that's about a $20- to $30 billion a year EO you're going to get, because we are going to crack down with this detective border that CBP is putting in innovatively. We're going to crack down on the fentanyl. We're going to crack down on the health—unhealthy products, the counterfeits, and all the tariff evaders.

So this is a message to the world today when you sign this: There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and this is what Donald Trump does. He secures our borders, and not just physically, but in terms of trade. The new customs border is going to be awesome.

Thank you. Thank you, Peter.

You know, we had millions of people pouring through our border and—when I got here. And it happened twice, but the first time was a lot easier because it wasn't nearly as bad as this. But, in 2016, we had a bad border—really, a bad border. And pretty quickly, we made it very good. We started the wall. I built over a thousand miles of wall.

Without that, you could have never done it, no matter how you—good you do. The wall has been—remember the Democrats—the "Dumocrats," I call them. But the "Dumocrats" said the wall doesn't do anything. I said, "No, walls work."

Two things. Everything else is obsolete. It gets obsolete quickly. Two things: wheels and walls. They've been here for a long time. A wheel and a wall, you'll always have. Other things—your computer is going to be obsolete about 2 days after it's—after you buy it. [ Laughter ] But wheels and walls, they work.

And we built an incredible wall that stretches more than a thousand—think of it—a thousand miles. And without that, we would not be as successful. We're actually, we're building now additional areas, because we need some additional wall in certain areas.

But we had millions of people—25 million people. I think it's more than that, but 25 million people came in during the Biden years, the Biden disasters, and we stopped that. We stopped it down to zero. Hard to believe, but the numbers come out—every month, they come out zero, zero, zero. People don't come anymore, because they know they're not going to get through.

So we had caravans with 10-, 15-, 20-, 25,000 people coming up from countries. And remember, I know these people. I know the leaders of the countries. They're smart, and they're cunning, and they're street-wise. And they would put their people that were from prisons in there, and they would put their murderers in there, and they'd put a lot of bad people, and they'd also put people that just didn't work. They put all of their welfare recipients in there, and they'd send them into our country.

And all of that stopped. And many of those people are now brought back—many of the murderers—11,888 were murderers. I say it all the time. Fifty percent of them were—they murdered more than one person—two, three, four, which—one, seven people murdered—into our country. They let them into our country. It's a sin that should never be forgotten.

So it's a much different country right now. We're respected by everybody. Everybody in the world respects. We just got back from China, as you know. Some of you were with us. And President Xi was great. And he said: "You're a respected country, respected all over the world." He was—he said, "You did it so fast." We did. We did it in a very short period of time.

This country was a laughingstock all over the world. For 4 years, we were a laughingstock. And now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're the most successful country in the world. So this is very important, what you're doing, and I'd like to have Will just say a few words about it specifically, please.

Yes, sir. As Rodney and Counselor Navarro said, this is an Executive order on strengthening customs enforcement using new technologies and new approaches. The idea here is to ensure that importers of record, other people moving goods across our border are accurately reporting what they're bringing in; that contraband, that illegal goods aren't being brought across the border; and that goods being brought in are being accurately accounted for, for purposes of duties and tariffs and all the other things we require of importers of record.

But this Executive order will launch a series of bold, new steps that I think we, as an administration, believe will result in the tightest, most controlled border in American history, following on, obviously, your success in closing the southern border and stopping the scourge of illegal immigration into the country as well, sir.

So, Peter, what kind of money do you think this involves, in terms of savings to our country?

I will guarantee you the first year will be at least $15 billion, the next year 25. And out there, there's $80- to $100 billion that the tariff evaders are doing. Plus, sir, we're going to stop more of the fentanyl coming in, and we're going to crack down on counterfeits. This is good for America. This is good for the people that elected you. It's good for the country.

And we have fentanyl coming in 59 percent less. Cut it by a number that nobody thought was even possible. We're going to get it a lot lower than that. But we have it—and we did this in a very short period of time.

This is going to be a great one, sir.

You didn't have the same problem.

It's a moneymaker for us. And CBP has been doing a really great job——

Yes.

——innovating on this, sir.

You've done a fantastic job. Thank you.

Appreciate it, sir.

Okay. We'll sign one.

Oh, that's a good one. That's a nice one. [ Laughter ] Okay. What else do you have?

This is another Executive order on reforms to the Federal workforce, sir. Currently, with respect to many policymaking positions in the departments and agencies across Government, we lack the ability, because of existing personnel rules, to effectively discipline or promote people who are in policymaking roles.

This Executive order follows on a number of previous Executive orders. The end goal is making the Federal workforce more accountable and ensuring that people, particularly in policymaking roles, aren't unaccountable to the wishes of the administration.

And the reason for this was what? Whose idea was that?

James Sherk, who's here from Domestic Policy Council, can speak to that a bit more, sir.

Would you like to say something? Come on. [ Laughter ] You did a great job on this. Go ahead.

Thank you, sir.

It's been a longstanding problem that it's almost impossible to fire a Federal employee, even in cases of serious misconduct. And as a result, if you have employees who are trying to undermine the wishes of the American people by pushing their own agenda or are just incompetent at what they're doing, agencies have a longstanding difficult time getting rid of them. And that's a particular problem if you're in a senior policy influencing role, where you're controlling the policies of the entire agency.

What this does is basically treats those employees like private sector workers. They could be hired on the basis of merit and confidence, but if they're messing up, then they can be removed quickly, rather than taking a year or longer to get rid of them.

That's great. That's great. And you were very much involved in it?

I was, sir.

Is this guy central casting?

This is his baby, sir. [ Laughter ]

I'm telling you, he's, like, perfectly cast if I'm casting a movie here. [ Laughter ] You couldn't have done that any better. Were you nervous?

Uh, a little.

Huh? [ Laughter ] Good job.

Thank you, sir.

Would anybody else like to say anything? Want to—about either one? What about you? Come on over here. [ Laughter ] Come on. Did—can you top him? [ Laughter ] You don't have to.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you very much. Great job. Go ahead, please.

Yes, this customs reform EO is a long time coming for us, helps us solve problems that have plagued the customs system for many years. We've had a system where people have basically been able to hide behind shell companies. They move from one to the next, and then we can't go after them. This EO really enables us to crack down, hold people accountable.

It's amazing. It's so important. I know you—you took it so seriously.

See how serious they are? I mean, there's a love of the country. This isn't, like, normal stuff. These are the smartest people in the world. They can do anything they want. They can have any job. And they love this country. They just want to be here. And they hate what you saw, and you fixed it.

Thank you very much, all of you.

Thank you, sir.

Anybody else? Anybody? Only if you want. I'm not going to call on anybody. [ Laughter ] Anybody? You don't have to.

They covered you well, right? I don't know if you could do any better. Thank you very much. That's a great job, fellas.

Thank you, sir.

It's a big one. Okay. Thank you.

Pulitzer Prize winner over there. I got the great Pulitzer Prize winner. [ Laughter ] Okay. Thank you very much. That's great.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Do you have any questions on this?

Thank you, Peter.

Yes.

Mr. President, given Iran's attacks on Kuwait—this latest attack on Kuwait—is the cease-fire with Iran still on?

Well, you know, there's a reason for everything, and we hit them pretty hard the night before and, actually, last night. And when it was explained to me, I said, "All right, so we'll do that." But we've been hitting them pretty hard, a little bit.

So there is a reason for certain things, and there's usually a reason that sometimes makes sense, some—but they did something very—not a big deal. We've got it. We nipped it in the bud very quickly, as we do. We have the greatest military in the world. But you—some people would say they were slightly provoked because we took a strong action for a different reason, so they were reciprocating.

Yes, please.

Mr. President, can you explain why——

I hear the negotiation itself is going very well, actually. Very well.

It could happen—I mean, if it happens—and it might not happen, you know? Who knows? But if it happens, it could happen, like, over the weekend.

Mr. President, yesterday——

How do you define cease-fire, Mr. President?

Say it?

How do you define cease-fire?

Pretty much the way it is. That's a different part of the world. You know, I'd say in that part of the world, cease-fire is when you're shooting in a more moderate manner. [ Laughter ]

Mr. President, yesterday you signed——

Well, it's not bad. [ Laughter ] But it's true. I mean, it's—a cease-fire there is much different than a cease-fire in other parts of the world.

Yes.

Mr. President, can you explain why you decided to drop the anti-weaponization fund?

So I love it. I think it's so important. People were—this is a victim right here, but not only a victim. He was also a student of it. What happened to great people—great American people, the way they were victimized, the way they were savaged. You have suicides. They killed themselves. They went bankrupt.

They were weaponized by the Biden administration, by a bunch of thugs, including Obama people, and like nobody has probably ever been. I mean, I can think of maybe two instances in this country where they've had it to somewhere that extent. I'm not even sure if it was so much.

They were put in jail for long periods of time. They were accused of things that never happened. They had prosecutors that were radical lunatics. And their lives were destroyed. And frankly, we had a lawsuit that—against us on the—you know, on the weaponization, where the judge—a radical-left judge ruled against it. And we'll see how that all works out, but a radical-left judge ruled against it.

But these people—their lives have been destroyed. Their families have been destroyed, many of them. Not just—I'm not just talking about a few people. Many of them.

I'm one of them. I—look, I—they raided my house, Mar-a-Lago. Never happened. Nobody ever thought of a thing like that. It's turned out that it was a total fake. Everything about it was fake and corrupt. We have all the information here. The good advantage to sitting here is, we can get information that you wouldn't get by—so what we have and what we are going to be showing over the coming weeks and months, you're not even going to believe.

Some of you will believe it. Like, CNN will believe it because they knew what was going on. They're crooked as hell. CNN is a very corrupt organization, but with a corrupt reporter standing right there. Never smiles. You never see—she's a young, beautiful woman. Never smiles. I never see a smile off her face. I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes, like she has hatred because we have borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted.

And then we win our election in a massive landslide. We win 87 percent of the counties in this country. Nobody has ever heard of a thing like that, and that's because we're doing the right job. And we took a detour down to Iran because we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. Under any circumstances, we can't let that happen.

So the reporters should be happy. They shouldn't be unhappy. They should be very happy, because you know what we're doing? We're saving our country.

Yes.

Yes, two questions. One on Iran and then one on your birthday——

Okay.

——which you will like. The first one is: Are you concerned at all that the IRGC could sabotage any potential deal? And then the second one is——

Sure.

——you have a birthday coming up. I won't say which number, but it's a big birthday. So, you're going to blow out a candle—you're going to blow out a—you're going to blow out some candles on a cake, hopefully. What are your wishes that you'd like to see accomplish over the next year for the——

Yes.

——United States and your Presidency?

Well, I'll go in your order. [ Laughter ]

Anything can happen, you know, when you're dealing with Iran. But when you're dealing with other countries—but that's a very volatile part of the world, probably the most volatile part of the world. It's very—the people are volatile. The leadership, you see what's going on.

We've gone through three teams of leadership. It's been a—you know, our military, there's no—never been a military like what we have. We could go another 2, 3 weeks and just wipe everybody out. We'd—I'd rather not do that. Very easy to do. They're ready to do—they want to do it. They want to do it.

But if we can get something down in writing which will accomplish the same thing without killing everybody, I'd like to do that. Most of my people, I think, would like to do that. Some people wouldn't, but most of them would.

But we had to take a detour. As far as wishes for—and I'm very proud of that detour, you know. That—by the way, just to finish off on that, we had the strongest stock market in history, and I said: "We have no choice. We have to do it."

I knew it would affect it, but I was very happily surprised when I saw that today we hit another stock market high. I mean, we have the highest stock market in history, with a military conflict going on—or a war. Some people call it war. Some people call it a military—it's not a big thing for us. We have a great military. It's not a big thing for us.

But if I didn't do that—I spoke to people like Peter, great financial people, Scott and Howard, and lots of others.

I said: "You know, we just hit the greatest stock market in history. Everyone's 401(k)s are the highest they've ever been. Everybody is making a lot of money. Costs are coming down." You know, we took over the highest costs and the highest inflation in the history of our country. "Costs are coming down. Everything is good. And I hate to tell you this, but we've got to take a little detour and go down to a place called the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we're going to have to stop them from having a nuclear weapon." That's what we've done.

And they've agreed to that. By the way, they—I mean, if they sign the agreement, they will have agreed to: "We will not have a nuclear weapon or bomb. We will not develop one. We will not buy one." You know, originally, it was, "We will not develop." I said, "What about if they buy it?" That went into a 2-week negotiation. But in the end, we got that.

Now, we've got it if they sign the paper. In theory, they're pretty close to signing a paper. We've actually gotten along with them very well. And you know, what you saw for the last few nights, it takes two to tango. You understand that. We hit them very hard on something else, unrelated, and so they were responding. But—and not—you know, not very strongly.

As far as birthday, as far as wishes, I want to just—you know, we have a phrase, I think it's—it goes down, I would think, in the history of our country, maybe the history of the world as the greatest slogan or phrase ever: "Make America Great Again." That's all I want. I want to make America great again. I think we've come a long way. I think we're the most respected country in the world right now—by far the most respected.

President Xi told me—I was talking about—he's a friend of mine. He's a good man. I hate to say it, because the press goes and they say, "Oh, he called him a good man." He is a good—he's—he's for China. I'm for the U.S.A. You know, it's like one of those things.

But we do very well now with China. When I came here, we didn't—were not doing well with China. My first term, when I inherited that, it was like—what China was doing to us was incredible. I don't blame China. They took advantage of stupid people—really stupid people. So, we're doing great.

But the phrase "Make America Great Again," that's all I want. A very simple phrase to think of, and I think it's the greatest in the history—I would say that's probably the greatest phrase in the history of the world. Not only here, there's never been anything like it: "Make America Great Again." That's what I've done, and we've made it great.

In fact, in a way, I want to use it because I would never give it up. MAGA is too good. It's too good. It's—it really is the Republican Party. That's why we're doing so well. That's why we—you know, if you look at the Republican Party from before I came until now, this is a much different party. It's a much bigger party. We have many, many more people, and I think the thought, the mind, the thought is much different than it was 10 years ago.

You know, it's been—it's amazing. A much more powerful party, a much different party, and a much more impactful party. Thank you very much.

Two questions on Iran, sir.

Go ahead.

First, you said last week that the U.S. would go in and dig out the buried nuclear material in coordination——

Yes. Yes, with them.

——with them.

Right.

Did Iran——

It's possible.

——actually agree to that?

Well, it depends on what day you're talking about. They did agree, and then——

You put that out on Friday.

——sometimes they did—they agreed—well, that's what I'm saying. That's one of the things we talk about.

It's very overrated. I'm the one that overrated it. I thought—to me, it was important. To other people, it's not important, because those beautiful B–2—right here—the B–2 bombers—they obliterated—you know, when CNN said, "Maybe it wasn't obliteration," they knew—I mean, before the pilots even came back home, before anybody saw the site. But then the Atomic Energy Commission went. They said it was obliterated.