Remarks transcript, Jun 4, 2026 (Donald Trump)

We'll maybe start where we left off yesterday, and we showed you this picture. And now it's opened, so this is now open. And that——

You see the size of that compared to some of the biggest buildings in the country—or, actually, the biggest.

Hi, Peter [Peter Doocy, Fox News].

Hey, President Trump.

And we have it finished. The water is pouring in as we speak, and maybe we'll show that—what it looks like, because I'm sure the fake news will be thrilled. [ Laughter ] Take a look.

This is from just a while ago. Nice, clean water.

So we're here to talk about clean, beautiful coal. That's clean, beautiful water. That's the longest pool anywhere in the world.

And here, you can tell they're not progressive because—this is not a progressive because progressives never wear or show an American flag. These are proud people from Oklahoma. They came from Oklahoma—a company from Oklahoma—to do it. But you notice the American flag. He's proudly showing off his work. You know he's not a liberal and/or a progressive.

It used to be a liberal, but they changed their name somewhere along the way because liberal wasn't working, but progressive doesn't work too, although "progressive" is a beautiful term. They're not progressive; they're degressive.

You've got that? What do you think? Huh?

I think it's good.

Daniel [Daniel Baldwin, One America News] is great.

Looks great, sir.

He's a great reporter.

And, again, we have a picture of a gentleman in a car.

Proudly—this is the head of construction for the job, so you can see it's just finished. This is just minutes before.

And there's a gentleman named Secretary Burgum from Interior, Doug, who's been doing an incredible job.

So, Doug, we had—we have 22 waterfalls; most of them haven't worked for over 50 years. As of this morning, they all work beautifully, and they're clean. The graffiti is gone. The broken marble is fixed. Well, there's a way of fixing it. You use a thing called silicone, and you fix them. And they look beautiful. All of the hate and everything is removed from them. Some of them are done through stupidity, actually, but hate.

But here's another picture. Now you can tell this is a proud American because he's got a flag.

Protesters never have—the bad protesters never have flags up. They somehow don't like the flag too much, but we do.

So that's great.

We put in today, as you know, about SAVE America—the SAVE America Act. I don't know, someday the Senate and the House will get it done. Although, I must tell you, the House has approved it about three times already.

The SAVE America Act, right here. We have——

Everybody can see that. And then we'll talk about clean, beautiful coal. You're not allowed to say "coal" within the Trump administration unless it's preceded by the words "clean, beautiful." Complicates our life, but it's good. Right, Chris? Wherever you may be. [ Laughter ] It is clean and beautiful.

Got your back, Mr. President.

I'll tell you, it's effective.

So the SAVE America Act is all voters must show photo ID. So you go to vote, and you show photo ID. Not complicated. Right? You know, who could oppose it? They say it's an 80/20. It's not. It's about 99/1, and we'll never find the one person, Andy.

Congratulations, Andy, on a big victory.

Thank you.

That's a great——

Thank you for your help, sir.

I appreciate it, but you're—you're very good at what you do, and I've been backing you right from the beginning for a long time, right?

Backing you too, sir.

For years. That's right, you have. Thank you. Congratulations. You won a big election.

So you have all voters must show photo ID—identification. All voters must show a little thing called proof of citizenship.

Would you say that's 99/1, Mr. Pennsylvania?

I would say that's maybe 100 to 0, sir. [ Laughter ]

I would think so. They say it's——

Or at least it should be.

No, but they say it's 80/20. It's not 80/20. It's 99, and we've never found the one person.

No.

There's another one.

Then you have no mail-in ballots, but we want to be liberal, as they say, or we'll say we want to be progressive. So it's no mail-in ballots.

You see that's—so what's happening in California, they're rigging the election. Now, maybe we caught them, and maybe they won't be able to get away with it. They tried with me, and they did it successfully the second time.

The third time we made it too big to rig. Too many votes; they couldn't do it. They can only go—they sort of gave up at about 9:07 when they got slaughtered with the votes that came in.

But no mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military, or travel. So we're being very progressive, and we just don't want cheating in our elections.

And you see it happening in California. Those numbers are coming down rapidly. They found a lot of mail-in ballots last night, shockingly. So we don't want that.

Then we added "best of." This is best of Trump: No men in women's sports, no transgender mutilization surgery for our children. I would say that's pretty close to 99 to 1 also.

No men in women's sports. I would say that's pretty good.

We had the quarterback, Jaxson—who was the quarterback—is the quarterback for the Giants. He's a big, strong guy. And I said, "How do you think you'd do in women's sports, Jaxson?" He said, "Pretty good, sir." [ Laughter ] He didn't know I was joking. [ Laughter ] He—was not worried. Let me put it that way. He would have been the greatest athlete in the history of women's sports. You got to see the size of this guy, like a male model, and he's going to be a great quarterback.

So we talk about that, and so we just would like the Senate Democrats, Republicans to pass it.

Interestingly, Democratic people—Democrat people, not crooked politicians, because most of them are crooked, or they're sick, or they're Trump deranged. There is Trump derangement syndrome. But the people, it's 86, 87 percent. Democrats. I mean, Democrats are fine. I have a lot of Democrat friends, but they—I don't know, for some reason, when they go into politics, they get radical-left crazy, and they're trying to destroy our country. But we're not going to let that happen.

So today we're taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal.

If you look at China, if you look at so many of the successful countries, they're using coal. If you look at some of the real great failures, countries, they're using wind. It just keeps blowing, blowing, blowing, and puts you right out of business. Very expensive. Most expensive energy there is.

So wind is not working very well, but they keep it going because people get subsidies by countries that are stupid.

And, Doug, I would say we haven't been long on wind. Do you agree with that? Do you, Doug—he understands numbers very well.

You know, Doug was very, very successful. Believe it or not, I used to think it was in energy, but he was successful in technology, and he sold his company to, I think, Microsoft, right? And for a lot of money. And he ran for politics. He ran for office, went to North Dakota, won immediately, won Governor. He was very successful for 8 years.

And I watched him during one of the performances of some very talented people, and I said, "We're going to get him to work for us." And then I said I was going to put him in charge of Energy, and he said, "Sir, there's a better man than me for that one." Not in all ways you feel that, but in one way—[ laughter ]—in energy, you do. And that was Chris, right?

Yes.

Where is Chris? Where are you?

Right here.

Right behind you. [ Laughter ]

He's a hard one to find.

And Chris has done a fantastic job, and he's one of the reasons we're here today.

We have had—we're, right now, double Saudi Arabia and Russia. If you double them up, that's what we produce. More than anybody else times two. So think of that.

As a result of the $700 million investment that I'm announcing today, we will protect 14 coal plants and 42 coal mines—it's a tremendous number—and build two new coal plants and one massive new export terminal because we're exporting coal.

Coal is a great business, really, a big business. And it's real power. I mean, it's—in terms of power, there's really nothing like it. You have so many different alternatives. They talk about some. But there's no—no real alternative.

China, by the way, last year, built 52 coal plants. They built about two—windmills. You know, the only time they build a windmill is when they're trying to sell them to stupid people from the United States that—the suckers. And by the way, and all over Europe.

They sell the windmills, but they don't use them. I wonder why. They use coal plants and other things.

These actions will support over 14,000 jobs and save the American people $50 billion in electricity costs.

We're pleased to be joined by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. And he has been great.

I don't want to give him a big, swollen ego because then, all of a sudden, he'll leave me, and I won't be—[ laughter ]—and I'll be stuck with Interior. I don't want to be stuck.

But he's really done a great job.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who's fantastic.

And maybe our MVP—what do you think, Doug? You—it's close.

Yes. Yes, right here.

What do you think, MVP? Lee Zeldin. And the job he's done is great.

We had the auto industry in yesterday. They don't want people to fix their car. I said, "That's strange." I'd never heard of that. They have a thing to—nobody is allowed to fix their car. They gave a man 7 years in jail, actually, because he fixed his own car. So I thought we'd do something about that. But we'll get it all straightened away.

Definitely.

Can you believe it? They want a bill that prohibits people from fixing. So, if you're mechanically inclined—you know, I grew up—I went to school with some guys. They were—in some cases, horrible students, but they could fix an engine blindfolded. They could take a car apart blindfolded. But they weren't too good at arithmetic and other things. But they were great. And so, there's a move on to stop people from fixing their car.

I—didn't understand it. But we had a great meeting yesterday with head of General Motors and Roger Penske; head of Ford. We had a great meeting, I think.

Thanks as well to West—a friend of mine, also, for a long time, West Virginia Governor, Patrick Morrisey.

I won by 45 points, Patrick.

It's not enough. [ Laughter ]

I love those people.

And Wyoming, I think maybe even slightly more than West Virginia, right?

Just a little more.

We did pretty—this is a—[ laughter ]—I— like this group of people. [ Laughter ]

But Wyoming Governor, Mark Gordon—a respected guy, great Governor. Both of them, really amazing. And Dan Meuser, Riley Moore, Derrick Van Orden, Juan Ciscomani, and Andy Barr.

So you have a lot of Representatives here that are fantastic.

Today we're officially invoking the Defense Production Act to save 13 coal plants in West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and Wisconsin.

These were incredible plants—so productive, really producing a lot of the electricity, right? The electricity, it's really the best at that.

You know, when they—find something better, Chris, I think we'll be all set for it, right? But they're a long ways from finding something better.

Coal is critical.

And so, when you look at that, those States—West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arizona, Arkansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Wisconsin—what do they all have in common?

Well, Wisconsin——

Trump won them. [ Laughter ]

Wisconsin—[ inaudible ].

I won every one of them. By a lot, right?

Yes.

Pennsylvania too.

I'm not even mentioning Pennsylvania, which we won also, right?

Yes.

But we won them all. We won—probably, we won all 50, if we had an honest count, if you want to know the truth.

Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future; reinforce the reliability of our electric grid, which is really the biggest beneficiary; and most importantly, keep electricity prices very low for the American people.

This brings the total number of coal plants that we've saved during my administration—just like when we said we saved 25 water fountains. Think of this. These are fountains, beautiful fountains, that were so horrible to look at, with the graffiti. Over 40 years, many of them closed—over 40 to 50 years.

The big one, the reflective lake. In fact, some people call it a pond. Some people, it's like a lake. But the reflective lake was built in 1922. It never really worked, from the beginning, from 1922. That's a long ways.

So it's over a hundred years old, and it never really worked because they had the wrong base. It was always leaking. They didn't have what we have today.

So it's pretty amazing what's happened. And you know, I hate to say it won't leak, but it won't leak, because we used a material that doesn't allow leaks. You know, it's like, a swimming pool doesn't leak. You use the right—this is—this is called swimming pool on steroids. So it's great stuff.

And today's actions, we're also supporting coal mines and coal miners in Wyoming and Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, and New Mexico. And they're going to—they're all going back to work.

You know, it's interesting with the mines, that famous scene of Hillary, where we went to West Virginia. And she had just left another State, and she was trying to convince everybody that they should go into technology, no longer be miners. And these guys in West Virginia, they didn't want to hear about it. They wanted to be—remember that scene around the table? They talked to this beautiful, big, strong miner, and they wanted him to make computer chips. She said, "We'll teach him how to make computer chips." His hands were so large, he couldn't hold a computer chip. He's looking at it, going—[ laughter ].

He had fingers that are, like, three inches around, and they're talking about making a computer chip. And he didn't like it, and he ended up being one of our best ads ever. She wasn't—and she did rather poorly. She lost—I think she lost by 77 points or something like that.

Pretty tough to go knock—you knock coal, and then you go 2 weeks later to West Virginia to try and win the State. It didn't work out well for her.

But the miners love us. What do you think we got with the coal miners? Would you say we got 90 percent, 100 percent? Where do you think we were on this?

It's pretty high.

Yes, pretty high.

Probably higher than any group in the country.

Pretty high.

More than 90 percent.

Yes, it can't be bad. Well, we did well with all the groups.

I'll tell you, the group that now likes us are the autoworkers, because we're building more auto plants now than at any time in the history of our country.

So it's very—it's great to watch and see what's going on with the U.S. We're the most respected country anywhere in the world, and we were a dead country a year and a half—we were a dead country. We were a laughed-at—we were a mocked, laughed-at country.

Starting this summer, the West Gateway project will break ground. And by summer 2028, over 12 million tons of clean, beautiful coal per year will be shipped to countries all around the world. And this project has been delayed over 10 years, and Biden ended it, and then Barack Hussein Obama—have you heard of him: Barack Hussein Obama? Another one. He's another beauty. But that delay is now over. And it's going to be very productive. It's going to fuel our electric plants in particular. It's going to be amazing.

Finally, we're taking nearly $200 million in that—to set aside for the "green new scam"—and it was set aside for the "green new scam," but the "green new scam" is history—and repurposing that money so that we start a coal plant in Maryland and help build two brand-new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia. And these are all built with new technology. It's very clean. It's amazing what—how that's come along. It's all very clean.

And the first new coal plants to open in our country since 2013—you couldn't open—you couldn't even think—they were only closing them. They were closing them, and you had brownouts all over the place. But you don't have that anymore, do you notice?

Under 4 years of Sleepy Joe Biden and the radical-left Democrats in Congress, not a single permit was approved for a new coalmining project. But in over 1 year of our administration, we've already approved 76 permits for clean, beautiful coal.

Last year, we prevented 17 gigawatts of coal-powered electricity from going off line, and that's enough power to—for about 13 million homes. Think of that: 13 million homes, at a very low price. It's the lowest price.

So now I'd like to ask Secretary Burgum to say a few words, followed by Secretary Wright, Administrator Lee Zeldin, and then Governor Mark Gordon and whoever else wants to say a few words, including my new friend—my new Governor friend.

So, Doug, go ahead.

Well, thank you, President Trump. With these announcements today and everything that your administration has accomplished so far since you've taken office, this administration has done more to save, protect, and expand coal in our country than any administration, perhaps ever.

Clean, beautiful coal.

Clean, beautiful coal, absolutely. And on——

[ Laughter ] I'm only kidding.

That's okay.

We—with the—when you took office, the first thing you did was declare an energy emergency. Some people questioned that, but the prior administration under Biden had gone so far down the path of pursuing the highly subsidized, intermittent, weather-dependent sources of electricity that our grid was at risk. You understood that, and you understood that key—how key coal is. It's the backbone of having affordable, reliable, and secure American energy to power our country, power our electric grid, power our competitiveness in AI, and power all the manufacturing that's coming back.

As you mentioned, with those record coal leases—this is where we take Federal public land, lease it to the private sector. They write a check. That comes into the Treasury. They create jobs, help support local communities.

So there was zero coal leases held in 4 years under the Biden administration, and you heard the President talk about 76 here. We've slashed red tape. Those took years to get. Some of these projects for coal mining, we've approved in less than one month under the emergency procedures.

And we also have opened up for leasing another 13.1 million acres that people can bid on in our country on public land. And this is land that was set aside. This is not national parks. It's not wilderness area. It's not our wildlife refuges. This is public land that was set aside for the benefit and use of the American people, including energy development and making sure that we've got affordable, reliable energy. So using those public lands is what we're doing.

And then the last thing within Interior, I would say we did strategically designate—through the U.S. Geologic Survey, which is part of Interior—designate metallurgical coal as a critical mineral so it's on the list, and that opens up a number of opportunities.

But without metallurgical coal, we don't have coke, we don't have the steel industry. The Biden administration was indiscriminate, trying to shut down our metallurgical coal, as well as our thermal coal.

So—and then last thing, you mentioned the coal export facility. Again, working through all the permitting to drive towards that so that we can be selling clean, reliable energy to our allies in the Pacific who want to do more trade with us.

And lastly, again, thank you for creating the National Energy Dominance Council. Our Executive Director, Jarrod Agen, is here today. But Chris, Lee, and I all have details on that team, and that's operated right out of the White House, and that's why President Trump is able to get so much done so quickly, is this is the first time ever we had a President with a White House Council specifically focused on energy. And what an impact it's having.

Well—and thank you, Doug. Perhaps slightly less importantly, but I think very important, the National Garden of American Heroes is going to be unbelievable. And I'd like to know how are you doing on that and how are you doing on the great triumphal arc.

So every city—just about every major city has a triumphal arc. This is an arc that's a real bow—a beautiful bow to your military and military victories. Nobody has had more military victories, including recently, than we have, and they never got the arc built. It's been—the Civil War stopped it. That circle has been sitting there for a long time, for many, many years.

And I guess you could go back to—in 1902 they tried it, and—but in 1860 and 1880 they just never got it done. The war—the Civil War stopped it the first time. That was a good reason. I think that's a—probably not a bad—that was a good excuse. But after that, it just never happened, and we're going to get it done.

And so, we're doing it with the Department of Interior, and we're also doing the National Garden of American Heroes, which is phenomenal.

And we're doing something that just came up. We'll have a little breaking news here, because nobody has heard of it. But, at the Lincoln Memorial, the front was supposed to be the back; the back was supposed to be the front. It never got built because they built two roadways behind it after it was built, and it shut off the gateway to the water. That was really going to be the main entry, and we're going to be doing that. We're going to—it's called the "promenade." It will be the promenade. They want to call it the "Trump Promenade," but I don't know if I want to do that, but it's going to be beautiful. It's a beautiful project.

And it's going to take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac, which it was always scheduled to do, but when they built the roads, that was the end of that. But we have a way of— beautifully going over those two roads—they're highways—very, very strong; very important roads, actually, as you know, from the bridge. But it's going to be great.

So can I ask, Doug, just—for just a couple of seconds to talk about those—those three great projects that we're just starting?

Well, I'd say that the—it's important for everyone to know that, as you described, these are plans and ideas that have existed almost since the end of the Civil War. But the McMillan Plan, which is the one that designed the National Mall as we see it today, that was in the early part of the 1900s, envisioned this connection that you would have a—the Memorial Bridge between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. At the halfway point, there's a very large circle; it was designed to hold a monument. The arc that would go there is a fantastic complement in completion of this plan—that's over 120 years ago—President Trump's vision of how to build that.