Press conference transcript, Jul 8, 2026 (Donald Trump)

And I've predicted everything. I've been right about everything, and I have been for a long time. That's how I got to be President three times. It's how I won three elections. I did very well in the second one—won it. It was a rigged election. But I've been right, and oil is coming down now.

Now, I got to—I have to make sure of one thing: that we don't have lunatics having control over nuclear weapons. So we have that now. There's no way they have a nuclear weapon.

We have cameras, as an example, on the site that those beautiful B–2s, at 1 o'clock in the morning, 10 months ago, blew up. They blew it up. We have cameras. That's called Space Force. They're in space. But we have cameras that can read the badge of the person going over to a site—"Mohammed Something" We say, "It's Mohammed Something—is there with shovels." Well, shovels won't get you there. The biggest machinery in the world probably won't get you there, if you want to know the truth. It's way, way below.

But we're watching that, and if anybody goes there, they get blown up. So nobody's going to touch that. Eventually, we'll take it. But what we do have is, we have that. That's gone. If we wouldn't have had that, they would have had a nuclear weapon, and they would have wiped out Israel. If I weren't President, Israel wouldn't exist.

Now, we did it two times. When the G—JCPOA, the Obama deal, when that was originally conceived, everything went to Iran—$1.7 billion in cash, hundreds of billions of dollars. They thought they could buy peace with these people. You can't do that.

So the big thing we have is—more important than anything we can talk about, is you can't let lunatics have nuclear weapons. And we've stopped that.

And that should have been stopped on a couple of other occasions too, with different countries, but they didn't do that.

Yes, please.

Thank you, President Trump. Steven Nelson from the New York Post. I'd like you to address speculation that you're leaving Ankara not in the new Air Force One because of security concerns involving Iran. You've spoken today twice about them possibly assassinating you and possibly being successful. Did that concern have something to do with—

Well, I speak about it a lot because, you know, the life of a President is very dangerous. It's 5.2 percent. You know what a race car driver is? One-tenth of 1 percent. A bull rider—that looks pretty dangerous to me—it's one-tenth of 1 percent. No, it's 5.2 percent is you don't make it.

You should have told me—you're an excellent reporter. You should have told me that years ago. Maybe I wouldn't have run. It's a very dangerous profession.

No, I'm number one on the kill list for Iran. They're lovely people. I'm number one.

So I don't know. I can't tell you that. But I don't really care, because I'm doing my job, and I'm doing it, I hope, better than anybody's ever done it, because we have a country that's hot and really, really successful.

But I mention it only because it's on the list, I mean, that came out. There was another list that came out yesterday, and I'm—number one on—I like being number one on TikTok better, but I'm number one on the list for—killing.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Hey. Shawn McCreesh, New York Times. But why aren't you flying the new plane home?

Say what?

Why aren't you flying on the new Air Force One home?

It's flying to Europe, to one of the big bases, two or three of the big bases, where we can show it to the people, and we'll be going home by normal methods. But we have it going to Europe to a couple of bases—actually, one in particular, but it's going to go to a couple of bases, stop so the soldiers can see it, because it's truly magnificent.

Yes, please. Go ahead. You want to go? Okay. Go ahead.

Mr. President, Harici Media, Tunç Akkoç, Türkiye. Mr. President, it seems that the war with Iran may start again. What do you expect from your European allies——

No, I—no, I don't think it's going to start again. I think it's going to go very quickly. They hit a couple of ships, and so we hit them much harder. When they hit, we hit 10 times harder. You know, we hit much harder than they do. We have a lot better equipment than they do. We may even—somebody asked before, "Do you think you'll hit them tonight?" I said: "We might. Yes, we might."

But when they hit, we hit. You know, it's what they—we use their language. We speak their language. No, I don't think so. I think that anything that happens is going to be over very quickly. And we'll only——

——and we'll only make it safer, including for oil. Oil is going to be very free, very easy, and it's going to happen very fast.

We have the Hormuz Strait. The boats have pulled out. I mean, there's a gusher of oil right now. We have a lot of oil.

And no, anything that happens is going to happen very fast. We're not—

We're not looking—we're not looking for long term.

Okay. Go ahead. Red.

Mr. President, you said today—Ines de La Cuetara with MS NOW. You said today that countries——

You're with who?

MS NOW. You——

MS NOW. What a—that's a failing network. Why would you want to work for them? [ Laughter ] MS NOW.

You——

Can you imagine? They wanted to get away. They took the name "NBC" because they were embarrassed by it. Go ahead. Let's go. Wait till——

You said today that——

Wait till you hear this question.

You said today that countries like Spain, Italy, and the U.K. were not there for the U.S. in its war with Iran. Should those countries be attacked, will the U.S. be there for them?

Well, I'll tell you what. Number one, Spain has been very bad, but, you know, the—Italy has been good. And almost all of the countries have been good. They just had a bad moment.

They didn't help us. We didn't need the help, but if we would have wanted the help—I said, "By the way, if I want help"—"Sir, we'd rather remain on the sidelines." And I didn't like that answer.

U.K. gave an answer that was sort of weirder than that. We—they went out—I said, "Would you like to help?" They said, "We do, but we want to wait until the war is over." This was not in the spirit of Winston Churchill.

So yes, I mean—I'll tell you what, I can only say if—there's one word that comes out of today, it's "unification." I've never seen anything like it. Every one of those countries, they love us, they love each other. That was tremendous unification. It was a nice thing to say. And it was a very fair question too.

Yes. Green. Green. Yes. You're wearing green, right? [ Laughter ]

Thank you, Mr. President. Eda Tuğrul from Haber Global TV, Türkiye. Mr. President, after your meeting with President Erdoğan, can you tell us whether you and President Erdoğan reach an understanding on Turkey's return to the F–35 program and the future of U.S.-Turkey defense cooperation?

And do you believe U.S.-Turkey relations are entering a new chapter right now?

Well, I had a great relationship in my first term. You remember Pastor Brunson. And he was put in jail for 35 years, and I called—he was an evangelical hero, actually. Very good man. And I called President Erdoğan, and he let him out.

I didn't pay anything, like Obama and Biden paid billions of dollars all the time. I didn't—I never paid any for anybody. I just tell them: "Let him out. Let him out!" But in this case, I didn't say it the second way, I said it the first way.

I said: "Look, he's been—he's a good man. He's highly respected, and the evangelical—and I'd like you to let him out." And he was in my office, in the Oval Office, the following day, Pastor Brunson.

I had a great relationship.

When Sleepy Joe Biden got in, bad things happened with a lot of things, between the border—everything was bad. We were laughed at all over the world, and we had a very bad relationship with a lot of countries. I think Turkey was one of those countries.

But that changed on November 5, when we had the election. And we've—I've—it—he's—it's one of our best relationships. We have a great relationship.

And they're talking about the F–35 airplane, and it's the best plane, and everybody wants it. And we have to make a decision who we give it to.

I mean, my inclination—because he—again, he stayed out of—he's not a huge fan of Bibi, and he's not a huge fan of Israel, but he stayed out of that war. He could have gone into that war very easily, and he didn't. At my request, he stayed out of that war. And he's been a very good ally. I mean, Marco could tell you. We have a very strong relationship with Turkey. You know, it's a very big country. It's a very powerful—militarily, it's a very—it's the second most powerful country in NATO. It's a NATO country.

So whether or not we do that—I haven't totally made up my mind, but my inclination is to say, "Look, he's done everything we were—he's helped us in so many different ways."

And you know who else has been good to us? China. China never came into the war. They get 50 percent of their oil from Hormuz Strait. They never came into the war. They never said, "I'm going to send a ship and five destroyers along each side of the ship." They never did. No, he was—he's been—President Xi has been great.

Everyone's been sort of great, to be honest. You know why? Because they respect our country again. They laughed at our country. They thought we were a bunch of fools. They saw a president that couldn't talk, he couldn't walk. He was a disaster. They lost respect for our country.

But now they have more respect for our country than they've ever had before.

Thank you all very much. We'll see you back. Thank you very much, everybody.