Remarks transcript, Jun 10, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Well, thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Anytime you're ready. Are you ready?

They're ready.

It's an honor to have these very distinguished people alongside of me—not behind me, alongside of me. I would never say "behind me," because they're not behind anybody. They're great.

This morning, I'm thrilled to sign the Secure America Act to immediately and fully fund the Department of Homeland Security through the end of my term. So we won't have that to be talking about anymore, Lisa, will we?

That's good. No, we will not, sir.

That's good.

We'll give the heroes of ICE and Border Patrol—and that's what they are, they're heroes for what they have to go through to keep us safe—the support and resources they need to defend our borders, protect our homeland, and to keep America safe.

I want to thank Speaker Mike Johnson. He's incredible. Where is Mike Johnson?

Right here.

Mike, you're doing an incredible job. And not a big majority.

Just enough.

Rather have 40 or 50. I don't think you'd know what to do if we had 40 or—

No. [ Laughter ] I—[ inaudible ].

He'd say, "What are we doing?"

He's willing to try.

That'd be no fun.

He's done an amazing job.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. And Todd is up, and I hear he's got tremendous support in the Senate, and he's got tremendous support everywhere, actually. He's doing a fantastic job. And Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne. Where's Markwayne?

Right here, sir.

He gave up his Senate seat. He had a guaranteed seat for the next 40 to 50 years. [ Laughter ] And he gave it up to be Homeland Security, because you just wanted to—

Wanted to serve and work in your administration.

Yes, you're amazing. Amazing.

As well as Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, who's here, I think.

Yes, sir. Right here.

Yes, sir, Mr. President.

And John is—you're incredible. From day one, we've got along, right?

Thank you, Mr. President. Absolutely.

From—first day I met him.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, one of the bravest people.

Yes.

And what he went through is incredible—incredible. And he's—I actually think he looks better now than he did—[ laughter ]—5 years ago.

We're going to win the game tonight, Mr. President.

Oh, is it tonight?

Tonight.

The baseball. I'll be watching that.

Seven-oh-five.

And House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, who is an unbelievable leader, actually. He's just so highly respected, and he's in Minnesota. And he's ripping them, because he knows what's going on. I mean, it's—you have your chance now, Tom, because people have really found out about it.

Yes. Thanks to you.

So I want to thank you for the work.

Thanks to you.

No, but he's working with our—with our people. They look like Eliot Ness. It looks like Eliot Ness and the gang up there, right? [ Laughter ] They're finding billions of dollars of fraud, and Tom Emmer's really helping us. Thanks, Tom.

Thank you.

And thanks as well to Senators Lindsey Graham—who had a big victory last night. He won by a lot, and no runoff, no nothing. They had a lot of very capable people running against him, and he just blew them away. So, Lindsey Graham, congratulations.

And Chuck Grassley. Rand Paul, who's here. Hi, Rand. Boy, oh boy. [ Laughter ] It's nice to have Rand here.

Great to be here. Great to be here.

It's a good thing to have Rand. He knows what's important.

Eric Schmitt has been an incredible Senator, wherever you may be, Eric.

Thank you, Mr. President.

He's tall enough. He's usually not too hard to find. [ Laughter ]

And Bernie Moreno. Is Bernie here?

Yes, sir.

Where's Bernie? Hi, Bernie. What a job, right?

Absolutely.

So how's the race going in Ohio?

You're very popular there, and you'll drag every Republican across the finish line.

I hope so. Well, I love Ohio. We won by a lot, but you ran an incredible race. It was——

Had a big assist.

They weren't giving him a big chance, and he ended up winning quite easily, right? So it was——

It's all thanks to you.

It was great.

We're also pleased to be joined by Representatives Lisa McClain, Jodey Arrington, and—Jodey. Where's Jodey?

Right over there.

Here, Mr. President.

You're doing a great job, Jodey.

Your favorite budget chairman. [ Laughter ]

Andrew Garbarino, Laurel Lee. Thank you. Riley Moore, a newcomer who's doing really well. Guy Reschenthaler, Derrick Van Orden, as well as "Angel" sister Chris Storie. You know that.

Yes.

Fantastic. And we appreciate it, Chris. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

For more than—thank you very much. Appreciate it, being here. Gone through a lot.

For more than 100 days, congressional "Dumocrats" tried to block all funding for the Department of Homeland Security in a reprehensible attempt to throw open the borders of the United States of America.

They want to drag us straight back to chaos and crime of the crooked Joe Biden administration, one of the most corrupt administrations—probably the most corrupt ever. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And we're not going to let them do that.

I have to say that Washington just had some crime numbers out, and it's the lowest number—best crime numbers that we've had, they say, in 58 years. So we went from being a crime-ridden city—our Capital being a crime-ridden place, to being among the safest cities in the country. I'm so happy.

And you have—you're big beneficiaries, because most of you live here. You're here all the time—the press, the media. And even, actually, some of the media—a couple of people that I would not suspect—a couple of people, truly, who treat me unfairly, but they came up and they thanked me, because it's so much. We have a safe city now.

We also have a beautiful city. We had 22 fountains; every one of them didn't work. One of them—the—probably the best was one that hasn't worked for 50 years. That was about the best. They've all been out of commission for 50 years or more. Can you imagine that? And they were graffiti-strewn, grass-strewn—grass growing through the cracks, and they were in terrible shape. And all 22 have now been opened.

And the most magnificent, possibly of all, though—the one in front of Union Station is beautiful. You see that? It was all—graffiti all over the place. We—through a lot of work, we've got it looking maybe better than it was the day they put it in.

But the one that they're all talking about is the almost 2,500-foot-long—that's taller than any building in the world, actually. There's no building that's 2,500 feet tall, I don't think. But it's, like, twice the height of the Empire State Building, as an example, and much wider.

So we just got that opened last night. We wanted to do it before July 4, and it is incredible. It's called—it was originally called—1922 it was built—it was called the "reflecting pond," or the "reflecting lake," some people called it—but it was supposed to be a reflection. It never worked from 1922 because it was stone on the base, and no matter what, it always leaked, because you have stone and you have lots of crevices.

We have nice stone out there.

But if you go between the stone, it leaks. And so it never really worked very well, and it was a bad color. It was gray. It was concrete and stones, so it was gray. And I had the idea, along with some great people that worked for us—Doug Burgum, who's fantastic; his group; Greg—everybody. And we worked very hard. But it was going to cost $400 million, and we did it for about $10 million. It was going to take 4 years to build, and we did it in, like, a month, month and a half.

And we would have had a construction site out there for years, and it wouldn't have worked when they built it. So, when they told me what they were going to do, I said, "That's not a good idea." It's—I built many, many swimming pools as a builder. I built hundreds of them.

And I've got one of our contractors. I had him take a look, and he said: "Oh, we can do a great job if you could just give us a decent surface." The surface wasn't—so we sandblasted the surface. We fumigated it. We took out 11 dumpsters—big dumpsters—full of garbage. It was all garbage strewn. Some of the garbage was there for years. It was all disgusting, and it's—it smelled.

And, anyway, we took 11 dumpsters of garbage out—it's—with shovels. We had to shovel inside of what's called a "pool" or a "lake," and got it cleaned. We then fumigated it. We then sandblasted the entire thing. We washed it, cleaned it, scrubbed it, sandblasted it.

Then we gave it a test. Then we rinsed it out. And we gave them a beautiful surface. And then they put a swimming pool topping, but industrial strength. It's industrial strength. It's used for tanks and lots of other things to hold water.

And we worked out the ratios of expansion and contraction, because, you know, believe it or not, when you have something that's 2,500 feet long, there's tremendous expansion and can—who would think of this? Only a person that does it, like me. And they have a lot of expansion and contraction. So, when we're putting the surface down, we'd leave areas that can expand and contract a little bit, because it expands over a foot and a half. Can you believe it?

Wow.

So that would have ripped it apart. So we left areas of expansion and contraction. This—we were testing it for 3 weeks, 4 weeks. It works great, and we just opened it last night. And people are going wild over it.

So it was going to cost $400 million, and we did it for 10—probably 10, if you take away a couple of things. We did a much bigger job than originally planned, because once we put that in, it looked so good the sidewalks outside didn't look good anymore.

Yes.

You know, they looked like they were in good shape, but when you do something new—in this business, you do something new, the thing that you thought were good you'd save it. So we ended up sandblasting—steam cleaning and sandblasting the sidewalks around it. And we had a lot of areas that were in bad shape. We had to fix them. We patched them, and you can't even see the patch.

We have granite surrounding the pool. And the granite is great, but it was filthy, dirty, disgusting. And it was broken, in some cases. We were able to carve out pieces from other pieces that were identical and put them in, and you can't even see the seam. And it's like a beautiful—it's in better shape than it was when it was built.

I told you, from 1922 it never worked because it always leaked, because it had a stone base. The water leaked through the stone. So we're very proud of it. It's going to be great.

Now we're doing a new surface on the World War II fountain because the surface is so bad, and that will be done during the next couple of—we're going to start it in a week or so and finish it very quickly.

But we've done a great job. And the city is—everyone's coming up to me saying, "The city is so beautiful."

Yes.

So we have 22 fountains that—none of them worked. The earliest—I'm telling you, it's 50 years—for 50 years. Some of them haven't worked for a hundred years. But we have fountains that were not working and were disgusting and dirty, and they're all beautiful now. Every one of them.

We also took care of a lot of the monuments—not fountains, but monuments—and they're all in good shape. Some of them are being finished up now, and it's incredible.

And my goal was to get it all done, along with Interior and others that worked with us—to get it done before the July 4 date. July 4 was a very important date, so that was our—that was the date we looked at, and we—we did a—we did a hell of a job.

But everybody's looking at that reflecting pool, and they can't believe it. It reflects. We used a dark blue. It's called "American Flag Blue." I wanted to go light, but they said: "Sir, light doesn't reflect, and light shows leaves and garbage." If you have garbage.

One man said: "Sir, when you leave, it will be strewn with garbage again, and you don't want that."

See, when I'm here, it will be perfect, but when I leave—[ laughter ]. I said: "You're right about that. You're probably right." Depending on who's President or who's running it.

But it's really beautiful. It's something for you to see. It's incredible. It's the largest—it's the longest pool in the world by three or four times. It's—you know, it's really pretty amazing.

That's where Martin Luther King made his great speech, and they say he had a million people. And I made a speech there for July 4 a few years ago, and they said—and I was packed. And they said I had 25,000 people. They said he had a million, but when you look at the picture—[ laughter ]—I said: "Well, wait, the people were even tighter at mine. I had more people than him." But they said I had 25,000 and he had a million, but I'm not going to argue with Martin Luther King because I'm—[ laughter ].

But the Secure America Act provides $38 billion to ICE, $26 billion to Border Patrol to ensure these critical law enforcement agencies have the necessary resources to do their jobs: protecting our borders and getting criminal aliens out of the country.

And starting on day one of my administration, we took the most dangerous, unsafe, violent, and open border—people out of this country. We got them out. I'll give you an example. In Washington, over five—I don't even know if you know this. It's not just policing. You have criminals. You have career criminals. There's nothing you can do to make them nice. They're tough people. They're bad people. Some of them had records—22, 23—one had 28 arrests, and rough arrests for murder.

And we've got—we took out almost 5,000 people out of Washington, DC. And if you remember—so 2 percent of the people create 91 percent of the crime. When you hear that number, it's great. I love that number because you could handle 2 percent.

That's right.

If it's 91 create 91, that's no good. Too many people. But 2 percent of the people, and we've got—we took 5,000—almost 5,000 people out of Washington, DC. They'll never come back.

In addition, the National Guard—and we worked with the police department. Law enforcement was great. And we have a very safe city. Everyone is going out to eat now. Restaurants were all closed. They were all closing. The few that were open were closing. And now you can't get a restaurant in Washington. Everyone wants to have a restaurant. It's a whole different—so it's very—something we're very proud of.

New Orleans—the same thing, by the way.

Yes.

It's a little earlier in the process.

Yes.

But if—I got a call from your Governor. I got a call from Steve.

Yes.

They called me together, actually, and they said—

Safest Mardi Gras ever.

They said we've never had a Mardi Gras like that. They had the lowest crime they've ever had in the history of the Mardi Gras, which has been going on for a long time.

A long time.

They usually—Steve said they usually have numerous numbers of murders. And they had none. But beyond murders, they—I heard it was the best—like, the best you've ever had. Right?

It really was. A great Super Bowl too. That you were at.

And Memphis—and that's going to be great for the Super Bowl——

Yes.

——because we'll keep it that way. I think you're bidding on the Super Bowl coming in a few years.

Twenty-thirty-one.

Yes. And it's going to be—now you can—you can really say it was a safe—a safe city. And the other one is Memphis. We—crime is down 77 percent. Can you believe it? People are calling me up—friends that were leaving Memphis. They were all leaving, and now they're staying. And the Governor's—everyone's thrilled. It's amazing.

And if they would call me for Chicago, we'd straighten out Chicago so fast. We'd straighten out New York fast. We'd straighten out Los Angeles fast. We do it really well, and part of it is you have to get the really bad ones. You have to get the career criminals out because they will—they will hit you hard.

And they ought to get rid of, by the way, cashless bail. You ought to do that as soon as possible, where they—Markwayne.

That's right.

Where they walk in, they commit a crime, they go out, and they—in the afternoon, they commit another crime, and sometimes those crimes are murder.

Yes.

Right back on the street. That's right.

Yes.

Cashless—I'll tell you what, cashless bail was a tremendous help to criminals. It's one of the greatest thing that ever happened to a criminal, and they ought to end it. In every city, they ought to end it. Chicago, New York, L.A.—they ought to end it.

Starting on day one of my administration, we took the most dangerous, unsafe, violent, open border in the world—we had the most unsafe border, I believe, anywhere in the world. And you—numbers came out 2 days ago that for 11 months, not one person came into our country illegally through the southern border. We had 25 million people come in over a 4-year period. We have it good, and nobody tries to come in.

All the caravans—I came up with the name "caravan." It was a—you'd have 25-, 30,000 people coming up, and they'd pour through the border. You've seen the scenes where they're knocking over the fences. A very, very bad, a very dangerous situation. We don't have them anymore because they know they can't get through. So, when they know they can't get through, they don't come, and a lot of lives are saved.

Women were being raped on the journey up. They were being raped in numbers—25, 30 percent were being raped coming up. You don't have that anymore, because they don't come up in caravans anymore, because they know they're not going to get through.

So, starting on day one, we took the most dangerous and unsafe, violent, open border in the world, and we created the most secure border anywhere in our country, probably one of the most in the world. I believe it was the most insecure and unsecure border anywhere in the world, because there's no country—even a third-world country—that has a situation like that, where you'd have criminals just walk across totally unchecked.

They had a—the Biden. It wasn't Biden. He didn't know what the hell was going on. It was—it was people that are radical-left lunatics who were very smart, very violent, very vicious—politically vicious—and they allowed this open-border policy where millions of people came into our country, unchecked, unvetted, people from jails, people—drug dealers, people from mental institutions. Jails and mental institutions from all over the world were emptied out into our country. And we've got a lot of them out. We have a ways to go.

It's very tough with the courts, because every—these—the judges have been very terrible. They've been terrible. Very sad. But we're doing—we're fighting our way through it. We have made this a much—in fact, we made it a country that, as you saw last month, they said we had the lowest murder rate that we've had in 125 years. Think of that. And that's despite the fact—because we've got a lot out. But we do have more.

We had 11,888 people come into our country who murdered—committed a murder. Fifty percent—more than fifty percent created more than one murder. Think of that. So, you had people coming—one, I think seven—seven murders. We allowed them into the country. We've got most of them out.

In the last 12 months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States. We cut the flow of fentanyl across our border by almost 60 percent. Think of that. And by the way, coming in by sea: 97 percent. And we're looking for the 3 percent—[ laughter ]—because we think they're among the bravest people. [ Laughter ] That's—but we cut them down, right, Mark?

Yes.

We cut it down 97 percent.

Under your leadership.

And now I—you know, I hate to tell this to Mexico, but we're now focused on coming in by land, because the sea was tougher. A lot was coming in by sea. A much bigger percentage than anyone would know. It was safer for them. They—it used to be safe. Not safe anymore. [ Laughter ]

But we're 97 percent down coming in by sea, by ocean, by water. And you see what happens to them, and they don't do it a second time. They used to have—they were totally unchecked. When they did capture somebody, they'd bring them in, they'd book them, then they'd let them go. And they'd go, and they'd be back on their boat the following night. So we're doing a great job.

In the last 12 months, the numbers have changed in this country like nobody's ever seen before. But zero illegal aliens have been admitted. And that's made by largely Democrat people, those lists are made. And I find it hard to believe when I say zero. I say, "There must have been some." But they say zero. And it's very close to zero. It's hard to believe.

You look—you know, they used to have that—certain areas on the other side of the wall. I built over a thousand miles of wall. Without the wall, you couldn't do it. But I built over a thousand miles of wall. We're building more now in certain areas where you need it.

But nobody's ever seen anything like this. They had plazas, where you'd have thousands of people standing in those plazas. They were built—they actually made them out of concrete because the land was so disgusting and dirty, and it was so muddy and horrible.