Remarks transcript, Aug 17, 2026 (Donald Trump)

I'd like to put my weight behind it. So let's take a look at it. Very important.

And on Iran, Mr. President——

Yes, I like the idea.

Yes. Thank you—thank you for that.

Why do you ask that question? I mean, is this something that's been discussed very much?

Members of Congress have been talking about it in the wake of this rescue, so yes.

Well, I think in the wake of what happened here, there's a possibility something like that would happen.

And, Mr. President, your memorandum of understanding with Iran expires today. Are you any closer to reaching a final deal on ending Iran's nuclear program——

Let's finish up——

today than you were 60 days ago?

Let's finish up with Ryder, and then when we're done, we'll answer a couple of those questions.

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. President, again. So, for the young man and for those who trained him here. So, as a parent, I'm very concerned when I see moments like those. What's your message to parents across the country who want to really improve their children's safety, especially when they're younger like this?

Well, I think you have to be going to the right beach, number one, and I think you have to have lifeguards around, right? Because you could go to that water. That—it looked so beautiful—the day. It was such a beautiful day, everything nice. The water didn't look that bad, and then, all of a sudden, you see these violent waves come in. That's what amazed me so much.

I was—I studied it. I said, "This is incredible." I've never seen that kind of roughness in water. I've seen unbelievably—I've seen tragic things happen, but I've never seen water that looked so calm and then, every 15 seconds, you know, the violence comes back in.

I think, really, you probably have areas—I'll bet you have areas that you think should have, as you call them, guards that don't have. Do you think—do you—can you imagine having more guards along the coast, parts of the coast that aren't guarded where people die?

Yes, certainly. The National Water Safety Action Plan and the California State Action Plan both call for more supervision, and by supervision, we mean—we mean lifeguards.

Do we lose a lot of people due to lack of, you know, covering an area?

It can be challenging in some of those spots because of the economy to live there is expensive.

Right.

It's a coastal beach community, and there's million-dollar homes on the beach, and our lifeguards are making a little more than minimum wage. But it can be challenging to live in those spaces, so it's hard to retain employees in those areas.

As the lifeguards grow older and they want to make that a profession, which is a noble profession, they make much higher salaries, right?

Yes. Yes. If they become a——

I mean, they make a good living?

If they become a full-time lifeguard, which in our department requires you to become a peace officer.

I see. Okay. Well, that helps per that other question.

It does. They—that's a livable wage, and, you know, they can become members of the community and live where they're working and give back.

So will you be doing it? You helped so much with Ryder. Will you be doing it as a profession, or will you be doing other things later?

So I'm actually a full-time firefighter-paramedic with a fire department in California, and I have stayed on the books with State Parks because I owe this program a lot and it's done a lot for me.

Oh, that's great.

And I love being here, helping train people like Ryder. So, plan on staying around for a long time.

That's great. Good job. That's fantastic.

Yes, please.

A policy question, Mr. President.

Go ahead.

There's a lot of debate right now about these license plate scanners that are going up across the country. They're called Flock cameras. People are worried that the police might misuse them. Have you heard of them?

Yes.

Are—what's your stance?

Well, it's being studied right now. You know, you have pros and cons, right? It's being studied right now. We'll have an answer sort of as to our views on it over the next couple of weeks.

Mr. President, yesterday Jon Ossoff said that you'd rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as President. What is your response?

Who said that?

Jon Ossoff.

You mean Pee-wee Herman? Pee-wee Herman look-alike.

No, I would much rather do other things. It's a—we're building a great facility here. We're fixing a White House that hasn't been taken care of.

You can look at this. This room was a disgraceful situation—the Oval Office. And it was let go. The whole building, the White House, was let go. The exteriors were falling apart. The columns were falling apart. The whole place was a mess.

In addition, they've been trying to get a ballroom for the last 150 years. And when I said I was going to build a ballroom, the military asked if they could see me. And they say: "Sir, we have an opportunity to go down deep into the ground and build a military facility to go to the White House and to go with all of Washington, DC, which would be so valuable." And then they came up with the drone port on top, which would be a major drone port to protect the White House and all of DC.

And all of those things added up, and it became much more than just a ballroom. And I said to myself, "Wow, what an opportunity." I mean, if I was just going to build a ballroom, I could have had it built very quickly because I do these—I build very well and very quickly.

We went five stories down into the ground. We did a lot of tremendous things for the military, things that they could never get. They said: "This is an opportunity that we have, because you're building the ballroom, that if you would be willing to spend more time, we would love to be able—we've been trying to do this at the White House for many, many years." And they've been trying to have a ballroom at the White House for many, many years.

Now, what happened is, we used to use tents, and the tents are usually made of either plastic, a plastic material, or canvas, and they wouldn't stop a .22 caliber. They wouldn't stop anything in terms of safety. It'd be very dangerous.

And they haven't used the tent for years. They haven't had any big—like we have President Xi coming on September 24 or so. I think it's September 24. And we'd love to have 2,000 people coming to dinner and celebrating a nice evening, et cetera, et cetera. But we only have a room that's going to hold 89 people, and 89 people is not appropriate.

So, maybe more importantly, it's totally secure with bulletproof windows, bulletproof sides. It's drone-proof. It's missile—every—at the top of the line. And we need it. And especially with what's happened, unfortunately, to the world, you could say.

Yes, please.

On Iran, this morning—this morning you said you would "bomb the 's'" out of Oman if they got in the way of reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Would you say you're out of patience with Oman, a strategic partner? Is there room to negotiate?

No, I don't think they've behaved very well, but we'd handle them very easily, just like we do other things.

Mr. President, I have, actually, two questions.

Go ahead.

There's a report by Center Square that nearly two dozen Democratic attorney generals, months before your reelection, were basically planning already lawsuits against you. And wanted to see what your comment is on that.

Second question is——

Well, I heard about that. I'm not surprised, because they've weaponized this country like never before. The Democrats—or the "Dumocrats," as I call them—they've weaponized the country like never—nobody's ever seen anything like it.

When you see the reports that are coming out now—that you would have never seen if I had not won the election in a landslide. But you would have never seen it if I didn't win the election, but the reports that you see coming out now and the kind of illegal activity that they used on the 2020 election and beyond is earth-shattering. These are very dishonest people. So I wouldn't be surprised to hear that.

Can I ask a follow-up question, sir? Sorry. This is on DC. You have mentioned before, if the Democrats get in again, that they may eliminate the filibuster next time and make DC a State. A while back, Senator Mike Lee had floated an idea——

It wouldn't be a State. It wouldn't be—I mean, we're—if we're talking about us, we have, as you know, a very radically left person elected Mayor, who I haven't met. I'm sure she's very nice, but very, very radical left. And we would have to federalize DC.

You know, we've made DC great. When I got here, it was a very dangerous Capital. I would have said to Ryder, "Don't come. It's too dangerous." [ Laughter ] Now I can say you can walk down the street, you can grab Nathaniel and all your friends, you can walk in—you're going to be very safe. But if you were here a year and a half ago, the numbers were horrible.

The crime stats, the murders, the death, the drug dealing—everything was up. We have one of the safest—we've taken it from one of the most unsafe cities in the country to as safe a city as there is. Amazing what's happened to Washington—and it's our Capital. We have to have a safe Capital.

And we did it through a lot of different reasons, but we also put the National Guard here.

But in addition to that, the cleanliness, the new grass, the graffiti's all gone. We fixed up 82 monuments, fountains, and other things. The places—and when you see it in 6 months from now, it's going to be even beyond that. We're proud of our Capital.

I think these things are important. Whether you build—whether you do something to fix the White House, where—you know, now they've never had a real estate developer, a good one—a real good one—here before, and they might not ever have one again. But you know, fixing up our great Capital is a very important thing. I think it's very important psychologically. It's very important from the standpoint of people being able to come to the country and not get murdered in the Capital.

People would come here. We had one of the worst, one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now we have one of the safest.

Just to finish, we have—we had a real problem with restaurants. Nobody wanted to have restaurants—entrepreneurs, restaurant entrepreneurs. Now you can't get space. Every restaurant is packed. The place is booming.

People aren't going to get mugged and raped and beat to hell and shot and killed in Washington, DC. One of the safest places. Crime is down 84 percent, and that—I did that in a short period of time.

It's also down in Memphis, where we went specifically, and it's also down in New Orleans. I was asked by the Governor could I do something, because they were having Mardi Gras. It was very bad. And they had the best Mardi Gras they've ever had, the safest Mardi Gras that they've ever had.

And we could do it in New York. We could do it in California. We could do it in Chicago if we were asked to do it. But the crime stats in the whole country we have down 15, 16, 17 percent. A record.

Sir, why hasn't—why hasn't Kim Jong Un responded to your request to have a conversation with him?

How do you know he hasn't responded?

Has he?

Um. Yes, he has.

Did you speak to him recently?

Where—where are you in conversation with him?

It's very positive.

Well, just so you understand with South Korea—look, South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years, and during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection because we don't—you know, they essentially weren't paying. And I asked them to do that. At my request, I said not right—they weren't happy about it, but they agreed. I asked for $10 billion, and they were very unhappy.

But we agreed for a short term that it would be $3 billion, and the next year it would go up, and the next year it would go up so they start paying for their protection.

When the election was rigged and I ended up watching for 4 years and then coming back, I watched Biden rescind that $3 billion a year, for whatever reason.

When I called recently the President of South Korea—who I like; I think he's very nice, actually. But I called him, I said: "Would you like to give us a little hand? We don't need help with Iran, but if you'd like, give us a hand with Iran." He said, "No, thanks." And I said: "Wait a minute. We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor, and you're not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That's strange." "No, no, we'd rather not get involved." "I see. Well, why are we involved in helping you?"

So—and I want to help them, but you know, when you ask somebody, "Would you like to give us a hand?" and they say, "No, thanks," and then we're guarding them from a country and paying, ourselves, billions of dollars—it's costing us billions and billions of dollars to protect not only them but other countries.

Look at NATO. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars protecting Europe from Russia, hundreds of billions—mostly from Russia, but from other things too—and then they say, well, they don't want to get involved with getting—you know, guarding the Strait where they get most of their oil—they get 50 percent of their oil. And they don't want to get involved. Why are we doing it?

So all I want is fairness. And South Korea, I get along with them very well. But they were paying $3 billion a year, and then they convinced Biden that I was probably a bad person, and they shouldn't, and he immediately rescinded that order.

So we were getting paid. We would have get—been getting paid a lot more. But we can't go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they're not there to help us.

On the expiration of the memorandum of understanding, are you any closer today to reaching a final deal to end Iran's nuclear program——

Well, they want to make——

than you were 60 days ago?

——a deal, but they're not going to make the kind of a deal that I feel is necessary.

Look, we're in there for one reason: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. You understand that. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, and they won't have a nuclear weapon.

And right now, them building one after what we did previously with the B–2 bombers, going to be—going to be a long time—[ inaudible ].

But Iran cannot have—it's very simple: They can't have a nuclear weapon.

On the situation with South Korea, how do you respond to folks who say that you are prioritizing the interest of adversaries in North Korea over our longtime partners by scaling back——

No, just the opposite.

these military exercises?

No, I'm making it much safer. You see, I'm actually making it much safer.

Kim Jong Un has always treated me with great respect, and we've met on numerous occasions, actually—two primary occasions—spoken and spent time. I understand him; he understands me. You're doing war games.

I get along with him. You know, he didn't like Biden. He didn't like Obama. He didn't like anybody. But I get along with him very well.

No, what I'm doing is making things safer. Just the opposite.

Did he—did he ask you—did you ask you, Mr. President, to——

Quiet. Quiet.

scale back on those?

Quiet. Quiet. You're very disrespectful in front of this young man. Okay?

Don't you find her disrespectful? [ Laughter ] He understands.

Quiet. Who are you with?

I'm with CNN.

Fake news.

I just wanted to follow up on——

You're fake news.

the South Korea question.

You're a loud—you're a loud, boisterous person. You're fake news. Be quiet.

I was trying to find out if——

Be quiet.

you had been talking to——

Be quiet.

Kim Jong Un, if he had asked you——

You're a fake reporter——

to scale back on——

——and you report fake news.

those military exercises?

Go ahead.

Mr. President, is there enough—is there enough food on the USS Lincoln ?

Yes, there is. That was a—that was a CNN fake report. The Lincoln has been out there for a period of time—good period of time. But, over the years, we've had them out there much longer.

I was at a group meeting, and an admiral came up to see me over the weekend. And it was at a—big group, and he happened to be an admiral, retired. He said: "I've been on ships that are out there much longer than that, sir. And I know people on the Lincoln . They say it's beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of."

And other people went out, and they found out to be true. It was fake news reporting from CNN.

Go ahead.

There was a report—Mr. President, there was a report that a senior intelligence official with the CCP just bought a historical building overlooking the White House. Have you heard about this? Do you have a reaction to that?

No, I haven't heard about it. [ Inaudible ]

Yes, go ahead. Behind you. Behind you, please.

Okay.

The British Prime Minister recently reportedly sent texts to someone impersonating Susie Wiles. Are you concerned about his judgment or the state of communications between the two countries?

No, but who—who happened? What happened? They sent texts?

Apparently, the Prime Minister sent texts to somebody impersonating Susie Wiles, and it was a concern of the people in the——

No, I'm sure that—I'm sure that he had a miscommunication.

He's the Prime Minister. You know, I spoke to him. We had a good conversation, a couple of them. We had a good conversation. One of the things he is going to do—I think, he's going to open up the North Sea. That will make—that will make U.K. pretty rich, I'll tell you. That—if he——

If he opened up the North Sea—now, he's got an immigration problem, and he has an energy problem. He would have solved one of his problems.

That would be a big thing. That would make U.K. rich, if you open up the North Sea. It's one of the great finds anywhere in the world. And if they would open up the North Sea, U.K. would be rich again.

Yes, Mr. President, have the people—the people who are opposing——

Don't you find them nice? [ Laughter ] Huh? Nice people, right?

Look at him. He's saying, "What"—he's saying, "Where do people like this come from?"

We're not all sharks. We're not all sharks.

Your son is saying, "Where do people like this come from?"

Go ahead.

The people who are opposing——

Especially her. [ Laughter ]

The people who are opposing the ballroom and challenging it, have they offered any sort of solution or sort of compromise, or do they just say there should be a hole there?

So——

What is the solution?