Remarks transcript, Jun 22, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Well, I didn't say——

and does that give them leverage?

——it would cause a depression. I said it could cause a depression, right? And I said that I don't want to be Herbert Hoover. That's a President I don't want to be, because he—you know, he was in charge during the Great Depression.

And certainly, a lot of bad things could happen. That would be one of the things. I don't think it would, but if it did. But no, if—Iran doesn't live up to their agreement or if they're not behaving, I will—do what I have to do. I'll call—that guy right there.

Does that give them leverage over you, Mr. President?

Say it?

Does that give them leverage—the Iranians leverage over you?

Oh, you're so—"leverage."

You know, their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their leaders are all dead. Their whole country is a mess. Their economy is shot. The—you know, the Times, the fake New York Times said, "Oh, it's about the same as it was 4 months ago." No, 4 months ago they had a navy—159 ships, to be exact. It's gone. The whole navy is gone. Their 250 airplanes, all gone. Their every—their anti-aircraft is gone. Their radar is gone.

These guys love radar.

Their radar is gone. Everything is gone. Their leaders are gone. Their whole country is gone.

And the Times said, "Oh, they're about the same as they were 4 months ago." The reason the news is doing so badly—or let's put it another way: The reason that I won in a landslide, even though I got 92-percent negative press—all fake press—is because nobody believes the press anymore. And they have to start believing.

You know, when the Times and a couple of others—they just—they're grasping for straws. When they say that Iran is about the same as it was 4 months—4 months ago, they had a powerful navy; they had a powerful air force. You know, most of their missiles are gone, most of their launching pads are gone, most of their manufacturing capacity for drones and missiles is gone—about 87-percent gone. And then I hear, "Oh, they're in such great shape." No, they're gone.

And their first level of leaders: gone. Their second level of leaders: gone. Their third level of leaders—you have to hear the conversations. "Who wants to be President?" "I don't want it." Nobody wants to be President.

And then we have to read that they're doing well. They're doing so badly.

In the meantime, we're setting records. We have the strongest economy we've ever had. We have $18- to $19 trillion being poured into our country. We're building factories all over the place. We have more people working today than at any time in the history of our country, at higher salaries.

So when you ask a question like that, it's so stupid.

Here's—hey, here's another beauty. Watch this one.

Well——

He's a real beauty. Go ahead.

earlier today, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said his forces are not leaving Lebanon. That is a sticking point in his conversations.

Who did he tell that to? You?

He said it publicly in Israel today.

Well, we're going to take a look at it.

Well, what would you do to make sure that he doesn't sabotage the deal?

Well, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to do, but it gets solved. I'm a problem-solver. I get problems solved real fast, including with Bibi.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. What's the latest you've heard from the Vice President? Are you happy with his negotiations?

Yes.

And can you share a little bit about what Secretary Rubio will be doing in the Middle East this week?

I think that they're doing a fantastic job. Our Secretary is fantastic. I think he's maybe going to go down as the best ever.

And I thought J.D. Vance this morning was fantastic. I watched his news conference and—from Switzerland. He's a very smart guy. Did a great job.

You know, when I look at the Democrats—I call them the "Dumocrats." They're dumb. The "Dumocrats." When I watched that, where one of them thought it was World War 11—she said, "World War 11." She meant World War II. You know about that, right? This is one of their potential leaders, Ilhan Omar, who married her brother to get into the country, by the way, illegally. [ Laughter ]

But when I watch A.O.C. have no idea on a simple question, what happened when she was over in Switzerland, which she probably never went there before. But she was—and then I watch somebody like J.D. or Marco, what a—I said, "What a difference." What a difference. What a difference a brain makes.

Mr. President, the candidate that you endorsed in Colombia for the——

Sir, you've been—sir, you've been quite critical of Prime Minister Starmer, and he's now resigned. Your thoughts? And who would you like to see as the next prime minister of the U.K?

Yes, I—was critical only from the standpoint—because I think he's a lovely man, but I said, "You're doing—you're really messing up energy. You have windmills all over the place." In the meantime, you have the North Sea oil, and they won't let anybody drill. It's one of the great fields in the world, and they—they haven't even found most.

You know that the U.K. buys much of its energy—you know where? Norway. You know where they get their oil? The North Sea. The U.K. has a much better portion of the North Sea. They don't want to do it for environmental purposes. Okay?

And I told him—he's a very nice man. I mean, sort of a friend of mine. I mean, he was not good to us with NATO, Pete, right? He said we can't use the island to land. That was a first. For a couple of weeks. He said, "Well, but, ultimately, I gave it to you." No. That was a bad move. That hurt him badly.

But, I mean, I wish him well, but he's got two problems: energy and immigration and crime. But energy and immigration. And he's—you know, he's really hurt himself very, very badly.

Please, go ahead.

Mr. President, can you tell us about your meeting with the defense contractors on Wednesday and what you plan to tell them?

The meeting coming up? Because I've met with them before.

We're building plants all over the country. They are not allowed to take any more stock buybacks.

Do you do stock buybacks, by any chance? Not too much, right? No, because you want to invest in product. It's just an artificial way of raising a price if you're running a bad company.

So they spent $51 billion on star—you know, on—on stock buybacks instead of spending them on plants. Now they're spending—they can't do that anymore. Now they are spending a lot of money.

We're building many plants throughout the country. They're dealing with General Motors. They're dealing with Ford. But I know General Motors is all excited about building weapons now. They have some plants, which they're going to switch over, and we're going to build weapons, including the Patriot, including the Tomahawk and lots of other things, and we're in a big—we're really in a big, strong economic push to do the weapons.

And some of the car companies, if they have any excess capacity, they're making a deal to by—build missiles and the Patriot in particular. We have—quite a few of them, but we want to make sure we have always a lot of them.

Mr. President, on Colombia, the candidate—the candidate that you endorsed——

Mr. President——

Please.

Thank you, Mr. President. Congratulations on the quantum physics EO to all of you.

Thank you.

Vice President Vance said that there are mechanisms in place to make sure that there's not escalations with the Strait of Hormuz and with Israel and Lebanon. Can you talk about what those mechanisms are? And are you in direct talks with the Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei?

Well, yes, look, here's the thing: As long as they respect us—I don't want to use the word "fear," because that's an inappropriate word—but as long as they respect us, we're not going to have any trouble. We have total control of the Strait.

So the mechanism is respect?

You know, we have a navy that had a blockade. I think the blockade was more impactful than dropping bombs, if you want to know the truth. It was—like I said, they call it the "steel wall." Nobody got through. Not one ship got through able to go to Iran. They got through if we wanted them to go through.

And we could set that up again in about 15 minutes—I would say, Pete, one phone call would—how long would it take? Maybe half hour? Twenty minutes?

They're ready to go right now, if you need to. Yes, sir. [ Laughter ]

Good. It will be—before we finish the meeting.

No, we have—as long as they respect us, we're going to be fine. If they don't respect us, things wouldn't be good. But they have a lot of respect.

Don't forget, we had Presidents that should have done this for 47 years. Nobody did it.

Obama gave them a road to a nuclear weapon. I gave them a wall against a—they'll—they can never—under this agreement, they'll never even think about building a nuclear weapon.

Mr. President, on Colombia. The candidate that——

Oh, El Tigre.

Yes, El Tigre.

Oh.

Yes, Abelardo de la Espriella.

El Tigre.

We know that you had a phone——

I endorsed him. He was in 10th place. I endorsed him, and he won the election.

Yes.

A surprise.

We know that you had—you had a phone——

No different than this country, right? [ Laughter ]

You had a phone conversation with Abelardo de la Espriella——

I did. I had a great call.

in the last hours. What can you tell us about that phone conversation? And what do you see——

Yes.

what do you anticipate in terms——

You're from Colombia, I assume?

Yes, sir, I'm from Colombia.

So he called——

Cartagena, a great city.

He called me last night, and he thanked me for the endorsement. He won. He won the election. It wasn't—he wasn't anticipated to win, but he won and he won handily.

It's just an honor. He was just a—a good man. I'd watch him, a little bit, speak, and he always spake—you know, when people like me, I like them. It's very simple. [ Laughter ] It's a very simple formula. And I liked him.

He said really nice things about me and the job we've done in the United States and very, very powerful. And he won an election in Colombia that—I don't know, some people were surprised because he was a little bit further down the pack, but he won easily last night.

He won by—called me at 8:30 in the evening just to thank me very much. And Isaid, "You ran a great campaign." He's El Tigre, right? [ Laughter ]

Yes. And what do you anticipate for the relation with Colombia? Colombia is such an important——

Good. Much better. It'll be better. He's going to be a great President.

Mr. President, are the contractors who did the initial work for the Reflecting Pool, are they to blame for the current condition, or is it the vandals——

No, no. We have vandalism.

that you mentioned in Truth Social?

No, vandals. It was all—you know, we have a hundred and—we have a, I think, 290-, 300-foot slit right through it, probably a box cutter or a knife of some kind. We had people lifting up the basic—some of the—it's not a lot of damage, but it's—we'll probably have to let the water out and refix it. They went in there with a knife.

I was just told by the—people over at Parks, they have—five people are arrested and five people are under investigation right now, and it's a sad thing.

In addition to that, they—you know, we put brandnew beautiful grass all around. They put these massive letters on the grass. You probably know about that, right? And they said, "86 47." They probably got that from the dirty cop, Comey.

You know he's a dirty cop, don't you? Dirty cop. He's a crooked guy.

They destroyed the grass, so that's a big thing. But we're going to get it back very soon.

National Guard and police have been all over the Mall. How would these vandals have gotten so close to do something like that?

Do you have any proof of the slit?

It's easy. I mean, we didn't have—we didn't have a lot of them then. Who would think that somebody would go into a pool and take a knife and start cutting it?

Suspected Vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool/District of Columbia Beautification and Law Enforcement Improvements

But do you have proof of that, that they used a knife?

Yes, yes, they have proof.

Do you have photos or video?

Well, let's put it this way: When you have a 350—I think it's 350, not 250—a 350-foot slit from one end to the other, you think that's proof? You think that's proof?

But they—reporters have been down there today looking for that slit that you mentioned, and there's no evidence of it.

Well, it's—all you'd have to do is see the Parks Department. They'll show it to you. See the Secretary. But I saw it. They cut it. They cut it very violently. The same thing with the floor: They cut it. And then they lifted it, they pulled it, and that's what it is.

And you know, we've done over 50 monuments.

Number one, we start with this is now a safe city. It's the safest—as safe a city as you're going to get in the country. And when I came here, it was a very dangerous city.

And, number two, what we did is the beautification with the parks and the grass and everything—removal of all the tents. And this is like a different place.

One of the things we did is over 50 fountains and statues, most of which were in horrible shape. All of them were bad, but some were just absolutely horrible. Graffiti—you couldn't even see the stone. They've all been fixed.

We also fixed the Reflecting Pool. In fact, if you go over there right now, it looks very good. It's up—they put, somebody said, fertilizer in the water. If you put fertilizer in the water, you get algae. But somebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae.

But that doesn't matter because that's been purified. It's dead, laying at the bottom. They're taking it out. They vacuum it out. They vacuum it very carefully out, and it will be back to health pretty soon.

We're going to have to let the water out to fix the one little—there's two little areas—very little areas where they were cut, and we'll fix that. But it's not leaking or anything. It's got a base underneath.

Part of what's—part of what's curious about this situation is we stood here with you in April when you first revealed the plans.

I said what?

You—in April, you showed us pictures——

Yes.

of what you were going to do at the pool.

Yes.

And you said you had a guy who was going to do it in a week for about a million dollars.

Well, it's—[ inaudible ]——

It's been 2 months and $16.5 million.

Yes, okay. Ready? Barack Hussein Obama, have you ever heard of him?

Yes.

He spent 2 years and over $100 million on trying to fix it. You know what happened to it? Never even opened.

Right.

He took the water from the river. You know about that, right? It turned out to be putrid, and it destroyed the whole thing. Spent over $100 million.

Him and Biden together spent $147 million. You know what happened? Never opened.

You don't mention that, right?

But to Philip's [Philip Wegmann, Wall Street Journal] question——

I spent—we spent about ten—many of the—much of the money we spent are park workers. They're there whether they do this or not, as you know. They work in the park, and they're very good workers. They did a great job.

So they were going to spend $3- to $400 million—you know that—and it was going to take four years. I spent——

And you went over a million and——

I spent about 6, 7 weeks, and I spent probably, in terms of outside—probably $10 million. Around $10 million. They say 16, but a lot of that is workers that work for the same thing.

So they were going to spend $400 million. I spent 10. They were going to spend 4 years. I spent 2 months, maybe. Less. And I have a better product.

Now, I can't help it if somebody goes in with a knife and starts hacking it up.

And we also have pictures of it. You know, we have pictures.

Can you release the photos? Because we've been asking for that.

Yes, at the right time, you'll see it. You'll see it in court. You'll see it in court.

But all you have to do is call the Parks Department. Call the Department of Interior. And I don't know if their lawyers will allow you to speak to them because, you know, you write fake—you write fake news. But call the Interior Department.

And I understand they've arrested five people, and they have another five people that are under investigation.

Here's the bottom line: We made so much progress in this city, people don't even recognize it.

By the way, Memphis, Tennessee: Crime is down 78 percent in a matter of months. It was a hellhole.

New Orleans: Crime is down 79 percent. And they had Mardi Gras—it was the safest Mardi Gras they've had in 50 years. The Governor called me. Governor Landry called me. Safest Mardi Gras they've had in—and by the way, Chicago, which is a shooting field right now, if the Governor would call me—Governor Pritzker would call me, I would solve the Chicago problem. In 3, 4 months, you'd have virtually a crime-free city. We'll remove all of the bad ones. You have criminals—you have career criminals that came in through the border because of Sleepy Joe Biden.

You ever hear of Sleepy Joe Biden? Do you ever hear of him? He let people come into this country, and we can never forget that that happened. Guys like you should never forget that that happened.

They were murderers, drug dealers, mental patients. They took them out of prisons. They took them out of mental institutions. You should never forget that that happened.

Mr. President, you're meeting——

Let's leave on a nicer note. [ Laughter ]