Remarks transcript, Aug 19, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Hi, everybody.

Good morning, sir.

I thought I'd give you a little extra business today. This was not called for, but we wanted to get you another Pulitzer Prize.

Excellent. Let's do it.

All right?

And this will start—as you know, we're doing a fixup of the White House. It hasn't been touched—it was built in 1792, and basically, since that time, nothing was done, especially to the exteriors, but interiors also. The floors were in bad shape. They had Home Depot tiles that were very broken and very inappropriate in areas where you see the white marble. I think everybody sees the marble.

And we have to bring the White House up to—like I'm fixing the country, we're fixing the White House too. It's the "people's house."

One of the things we're doing—and this was always asphalt, which is very basic. Not appropriate for a great house or a great place like the White House, which is, to me, now again one of the most beautiful buildings anywhere in the world.

As you know, we stripped the paint off. That's many, many years of paint, and we stripped it and we brought it down to its natural. We're doing the same thing on the other side. It's in the process. If you want, you can go over and look at it. But I think you see it. But we stripped it.

We got rid of the asphalt here, and this is granite. And if you notice, it's radial. "Radial," meaning it's cut about 2 degrees. Every stone is 2 degrees rounded so that it put a—instead of putting straight pieces down, we have—the stone is absolutely perfectly rounded.

If you look at it, it's sort of amazing because you can barely see it, but it's just a slight radial cut, and it's a perfect job. It's a white granite. It's a flaw—it's called a flawless granite. It's—we get the best stuff.

One thing I know how to do is build. And so we put a brandnew face on the front of the White House on the ground. The cars will pull up, and this is what should have, as opposed to the asphalt, which was—literally, they had potholes in it.

It's ridiculous what—the way this place was taken care of. Nobody, including other Presidents—they didn't see it. But I see it because I was very good at real estate, like maybe the best in a lot of ways. And I love construction. I love seeing things properly taken care of.

As you know, we've redone the Colonnade going to the Oval Office. We put the black granite down, and now we're out here.

So, for 50 years—more than that—they've wanted to have a heliport, but nobody knew how to go about it. And we are building a great heliport. It's donated by Sikorsky, by the helicopter company, because we have helicopters that can't even land here.

They have brandnew helicopters that were bought a long time ago, manufactured and recently arrived, and they couldn't land on the grass because the power is so great of the engines that the grass would get ripped up. They tried it, and the grass was literally scattered all over the place.

And I don't mean it was burned a little bit on top. I mean it was—it was dirt, and the grass was all over the place.

So they've been trying to build a heliport, meaning a pad, for more than 50 years. And we had it designed. Again, we had it—it was paid for by the company that manufactures the helicopters. We didn't pay any money for it.

This is different. This is the road for the White House, and that was done through donations, including donations from me. And you can see the kind of granite this is.

This granite has a million-year life. It's a very strong stone. It will never break. It will never leak. It will never do anything—this is the highest quality stone you can get and especially for something like this. It's got—it's rated a-million-year-plus. That means it has a million-year life. Can you imagine that?

It's 35,000 pounds per square inch. If you look at hard concrete, hard concrete is 5,000 pounds. This is 35,000. So nature is stronger than what the human can produce. It's really pretty amazing.

It comes from California—from a quarry in California, and it's a very special stone. This is also used—this carries on out into the helipad. The pad is out there now. It's very close to being finished. The hard work is done. The beautiful work is finished. That's—they're putting the granite top on, and the granite top says, "The Seal of the United States of America." That's the exact term.

If you look at the Seals of the Presidents, "the Seal of the President of the United States of America," meaning the President is in the White House. This is for many Presidents. This isn't for this me. This is for many Presidents. They will have it for a long time.

The other thing we could do—if you notice, we took it up and redid some—one aspect because we had a lot of slope on it, and I felt it was too much slope. It's a slope for the rain, but I felt it was too much slope.

So, rather than doing it and not really having it the way it should be—because that will be used for other things: greeting visitors and lots of other things when helicopters aren't landing. It's now dead flat. We actually put a one-half-of-1-degree slope so the rain gets off. But I didn't want to have the slope that they had.

They had a slope that would have been like for a waterfall, not for rain. And so, we—before we put the letters down, we lifted it and made it dead flat. Sort of reminded me of the Wollman Rink in Central Park.

So it starts here, and this goes into the entrance of the White House, and this is pure white granite, very high quality and—the highest quality. And, again, when you hear that—35,000 pounds per square inch—that's really powerful stone.

That's stone that if you took a hammer and you started hammering right now, all day long, you would not see where you hammered. I don't care how strong you are. You wouldn't see a mark on it, literally. That's the kind of power it is.

So it's the kind of thing that should have been done. It's also 4 inches thick. Normally, you'd get an inch or an inch and a half. It's 4 inches thick. It makes it much more powerful, because it's the White House. And this comes through contributions, donations from numerous people, including me.

And now we're going to walk over, and we're going to see—this goes equidistant on the other side. And right over there, if you notice, is where the ballroom and military complex will be.

And the military complex is going to have a drone-proofed roof, and you're going to have—on top of the roof, you're going to have drones—many drones, which will protect Washington, DC, and will protect the White House. Very important.

So let's take a look at the helipad, and we'll walk together, if you'd like.

The cutouts here are meant for stanchions. It's stainless steel. So they take that piece up and they put a stanchion right here. Because a lot of people, they have events. And over the years, they've just put stanchions here. They never had any place to put it. And so what you do is, you take that in and you put a stainless steel pole, and you have a stanchion. You have a rope line or whatever you might call it.

And we picked—we picked the exact location where they've had it, but they were never able to do much with it because they weren't able to secure it. We put the stainless steel pieces in. They take it off. They put in a stainless steel rod, and they put the rope.

I think, before we go in, you might take a look at the facade of the White House. The facade was in very bad shape. It had never been touched before, other than some paint slopped on it. And we took it down to the basic. We took it down to the base. And, again, we're talking about 1792. Much of this is up from 1792. There haven't been that many additions.

And we—if you take a look at the stone, look how perfect the stone is. If you would have looked at it—if you notice. Some people notice. I noticed it every time I walked in. I noticed it 15 years ago when I came to the White House. I said, "Boy, the face of the building is in very, very bad shape." Big chips out of it, broken stone. It was in very bad shape.

And you can see it now. That's just a temporary cover for shade for the workers because it's so hot. But the canopy will go back on.

So you look at the stone, look at the columns, how perfect they are. They were so bad that when you looked up, you'd say, "Boy, those things are in bad shape." They had literally chunks of stone out of them, missing, and now they're really in flawless condition. So it's very good. Very proud to do it. Enjoy it, and very proud to do it.

Again, you have the facade, and this goes down here. The facade of the building connects in here. And the helipad, I think, you'll be very excited to see. It's really something very, very special. Come on over here.

This is a path leading with the same exact granite. Very strong granite. You'll never see a crack in this granite. I will go on the line. So, in 10 years, if you see a crack, you'll say, "Well, Trump just said you'll never see a crack." You'll never see a crack on this granite. This is very—I guess nothing's indestructible, but it's pretty close. It's really high-quality.

Again, this was all black asphalt that was in terrible shape, and asphalt only lasts for a season. It doesn't last very long, especially when it gets this kind of use. And so we'd have literally potholes and cracks all over it. Not appropriate for the White House.

Come on over here.

So this is all brandnew grass. The grass was in terrible shape. And we have a great man that works here for 54 years—Dale—and he said, "You know, it'd be nice to be able to change the grass." You know, grass has a life like humans have a life, and this is all going to be—right now it's put in. If you come back in 2 weeks, 3 weeks, it's in shock. But you come back in 2 or 3 weeks.

This has all been redone. It's all been topsoiled. In other words, we put topsoil—brandnew earth on top. Very—you know, very—lot of good ingredients in that earth for grass. If you're grass, you're very happy. And this grass will look so beautiful.

If you remember, it had big sunken areas in here, and it was pretty bad. It was in bad shape. But this grass is the highest quality. It was given free of charge by Scotts Miracle-Gro. Scotts. And Scotts is a great—a great company. They actually contributed to my campaign, I must be honest. You'll figure that one out. And they said to me, "Sir, we'd like to replace the grass at the White House with the highest quality grass and do a real job."

So Scotts—I want to thank Scotts Miracle-Gro. It's a very—I think the biggest grass company in the world, somebody said. But it's very big and very good, and the owners are fantastic people. And I want to thank them.

So this side, they just started putting it down. If you can see, this will be happening over here too.

As you remember, I donated the flagpoles, one on each side, because there's—the White House didn't really have an appropriate American flag. It had a small one on top. We left that. But it didn't have an appropriate American flag. And this is a great pole. This is the top of the line. It's tapered. This isn't a straight up-and-down job, which looks terrible, frankly. That's a tapered pole. Great—I'm very good at flagpoles.

So we have the flagpole. We have the grass. We have the entrance. And, again, this is mostly going to be for helicopters. A lot of use. You know, when they landed a helicopter, every time they landed it, people would have to go outside with steel pads, put them down, that were very—they were just the size of one of these slabs, and put them down and hope the helicopter was able to land them.

The good thing about Marine One is—Marine One is the helicopter division of the White House, essentially. The good thing is the pilots are the best pilots in the world. We have the best plane pilots, and we have the best helicopter—in the world. They take them from the various services—the Army; they take them from the Air Force, the Marines—the best pilots. So they never had a problem landing them, but they—it was not a good situation.

And with the bigger helicopters, the more powerful helicopters, literally this grass would be ripped out by its roof—by its roots. And, in one landing, the entire grass was gone.

So what they did is, when a President would be flown to the White House, they used different helicopters. I said, "That's a pretty expensive way of doing it." So, now with the helipad, we won't have any problem with the grass.

Yes, please.

Mr. President, you're talking about all the construction out here——

Right.

and certainly the ballroom project. What is your plan if the Supreme Court rules against that this week?

Well, we hope that doesn't happen. I can't imagine it happening. The lawsuit had—the person had no standing. It was a person said she walked along and she didn't like the view, even though anything—nothing was built. A person that didn't like it and never even saw a rendering of it. We've gotten tremendous architectural reviews. It's beautiful.

The woman has absolutely no standing, according to virtually every—according to every analyst that I've seen—legal analyst. And it's a lawsuit that should have never been even allowed to be brought.

But hopefully, we'll do very well with it. We had a great ruling from a very highly respected judge, as you know. And hopefully, the Supreme Court will agree with that ruling.

And when do you expect the helipad to be finished?

This will be open within——

Are you hoping to finish this by the Xi visit?

Could be—yes, would be good if it was. I took an extra week to lift it. Again, what it was is it sloped very—you know, quite substantially this way.

Because, what we'll have here is, people will get out, they'll have, when it's good weather, they'll—in addition to helicopters—you'll see the surface is incredible.

All of these letters are hand-carved and put into the black stone, which is also about 35,000 pounds per square inch. You'll see the quality of the work. You have to look. When you get up there, look at the quality of the letters and the quality of the cut. How it's one-tenth of an inch around the entire—it's really—these are done—these people are brilliant artists, really.

Can you still do a state arrival ceremony——

Oh, yes.

with the fife and drum corps and all that?

Now you can do a much better state. This will be much better for state arrival. And in fact, instead of being on grass, now they'll be using that almost like a table. They can have events on it. They can have people go there for cocktails and then walk to the ballroom, after that's finished. We can have really incredible—this is unbelievable for state without even having to go into the White House.

They get out of the car on the—you know, beautiful new roadway. They get out of the car, and they walk down this path onto that. And they can have cocktails and everything outside of the White House, and then they go into the ballroom.

Even the military, they can use it like that. And we have—the ballroom is so much a military component, with the drones and the bomb shelters and everything else that we have in there. So, it's really—you know, that started off as a ballroom, and before we started work, the military came to see me, and they say: "Sir, we have an opportunity to do something incredible here. And we've been trying to do it for a hundred years, but we've never had an opportunity like that." So I had to make that decision. And I said, "Look, go ahead. Design what you want." And that goes down five stories. You know, it goes down almost 65 feet.

What's in that—those five stories under?

Well, I'm not allowed to discuss that, but a lot of very detailed stuff. That's why bringing the lawsuit was very unfortunate, because most people didn't know that. Now they do know that. They shouldn't have known that. And I told that to the National—it's called the National Trust for Historic Preservation of the United States. It's not associated with the United States. The United States doesn't even donate to it, because they don't agree with it, because they made fools out of themselves over the years.

But I said to them: "You know, if you do this, you'll file it in court, and people will see what we're doing, and the enemy shouldn't be allowed to see it." They didn't care about that because they don't care about the country.

Okay. Come on over here.

Nice job, fellas.

Does anybody know the word "media"? [ Laughter ] This is serious media.

And you guys are doing a great job. Sorry to take an extra week and a half, but lifting it up was one of the best things we've ever done, right?

Yes, sir.

Lifting it up. Right?

Yes, sir.

Thank you, Jared. I knew you didn't like that. [ Laughter ] But—and it still drains.

I watched it—I watch it. There's enough drain. It's fine. But the lifting it up was a big element, because we're going to use this for a lot of different things.

So this is a helipad at the highest level. It can land any helicopter in the world, no matter how big, no matter how powerful, no matter how strong. It would—I was explaining—for the construction people, I was explaining how, when the big—the new big Sikorskys landed, the grass was completely wiped out.

Yes, come on over here, fellas.

The grass was—fellas, come on over here. Come on. And I just want to say they've done a fantastic job.

So, if you look at—if you take a look, from the media standpoint, you look at the lettering and you look at the joints—they're, like, flawless. The exact—a very—like, one-tenth of an inch. And it's the exact same size. Right? These are real artists.

Where's Brett? Come here. I don't want to give him too much credit, and I don't want a lot of people using him, so I'm not going to even mention his name. I'll just say his name is Brett—[ laughter ]—because I don't want other people, because we've got a lot of work to do, and I want you to stay here.

Yes, sir.

I'm not looking for you to go to other jobs. Okay?

But the job he's done—he's an artist, Brett Rugo. He's an artist.

And when you see—in the middle, they're doing the eagle—the eagle of the United States of America. That's what's in the process. And I guess that's what I'm signing right here.

Yes, sir. That's the head.

So they're doing—this is the head of the eagle. And we're—that will be flipped over, and it will be—it will be amazing.

Sir, we have a—[ inaudible ].

Oh, good.

Well, there it is.

That was just sent yesterday.

Oh, that's great. Yes. Wow. This is going to look incredible from the air and from every place else.

And, again, this is going to be used for a lot of different celebrations, a lot of different big meetings, where—as an example, President Xi is coming in a little while—a couple of weeks.

And we didn't plan to have this done, but it's gone so well. I delayed them a week with the lift, but that's okay. That was a good delay. That was a very good delay. [ Laughter ]

But President Xi is coming. Other heads of state will come, and we can do this all outside. Nice weather like today.

And this was not a scheduled press conference, but I thought it was so—it's so good what we're doing, people should see, because the White House was in terrible condition.

Some of these men worked on the facade of the White House along with the Department of Interior—Doug Burgum, who's been fantastic—but they worked on the facade of the White House.

And if you look at it now—if you would have looked at it 6, 7 months ago, you would have been embarrassed, if you looked at it like I do.

I look at it—everything. You know, I'm a real estate—I'm a real good developer, and, frankly, I used to—it used to make me sick to look at how horrible the condition was, where the stone was broken, the columns were—had big chips in them a foot long. And it was terrible.

And now it's perfect. It's perfection. And I think you can see that pretty much right—even from this distance, you can see it.

We made life much more comfortable for the people upstairs too. Equipment is all modern and the top of the line. You know who I'm talking about. So it's great.

But this was very exciting. And interestingly, I received zero criticism. It was shocking, because I'm used to criticism. But then, after we open, I always get praise. A lot of times I get criticism, and then, when they see the final product, they say, "That was great."

This will be the greatest military complex-slash-ballroom anywhere in the world. There won't be anything like it.

You know, when I was in China, they have the "Great Room." They have a room that's phenomenal. And I'm not going to get into arguments with anybody, but this beats everything. There's nothing like this anywhere in the world.

And they've wanted the ballroom aspect of it for 150 years. They've wanted the military aspect—I would say it started about 75 years ago. And you can't go under this building because it's fragile. But you can go under new construction. That's when the generals came to see me. And the military's been incredible.

And we hated to have to reveal some of the things that we revealed, but I said to this fake National Trust—it's a fake deal. But I said to them, "If you sue, they're going to learn things about that building that, frankly, they shouldn't know." But they sued anyway because they don't give a damn about the country. And that's going to be one of the greatest structures.

They were saying there's more rebar in that building than in the stadium that I think you guys are already building. Is that right?

There's an extreme amount of rebar in this. More than we would need for a lot of things.

Yes. Well, it's for strength.

Exactly.

It's never too much.

Yes, sir.

It can take about anything in terms of the power and the strength.

I was explaining about the stone outside, 25- to 35,000 pounds per square inch. And there's no concrete you could—no matter what. Concrete—you get a really powerful concrete, it's just a tiny fraction of that in terms of strength.

So this is the real deal. They finally have the heliport. I guess it started about 50 years ago. They've been trying to get a heliport built. And I said, "We've got to do it." That's what I do good. That's what you guys do well.

Jared is the head of Clark, and he has done a fantastic job. Thank you on both projects. We appreciate it. Your people are fantastic.

So we're ahead of schedule on this. We're ahead of schedule on that. And we're ahead of schedule in just fixing the building. The building is—it's unbelievable what's taken place in a short period of time. This building was falling apart. It's falling apart.

Like, buying a building in New York City that's in bad shape and putting it back together, that's what I used to do. I did it better than anybody, I think. But that's what I did.

You see the Palm Court [Palm Room; White House correction]. That was done by Jackie O., and it has tiles—one-by-one tiles that were very old, but not that old. They were like 20 years old. They weren't all the way back. She put a better floor, but it broke. And we put in the finest marble that you can get. It's called statuario. It's beautiful. The white with the black, and it's book-matched. And everybody walks into that room, they say, "Wow, that's something." That's some difference—right, Steve [Steve A. Holland, Reuters]?—between what you had there.

You had one-by-one tiles from a box. You buy it from any store, and they flipped them in, and they were all broken.

And I—even in my first term, I noticed. I said, "You know, it's embarrassing when people come through that room and then go to the Oval Office."

But we also fixed the Oval Office. The Oval Office was in very bad shape, so—in many ways.

So thank you all for being here. So I'm going to be signing this. Where do you want me to sign it? Over there? You tell me what to do.

Okay.

Good.

Wow.

What is this you're signing?

So this is the back piece. This won't be revealed. This is the back of the eagle's head. This is the eagle—exact of the—you look how fine—how fine that's cut. When you see it, you won't even believe it. And from the air, it looks so beautiful. But this is the back of the piece. And they flip it, and they put it down.

So nobody will see that, unless in 400, 500 years, they start taking it apart. So, probably nobody will see it, I guess. Actually, I hope nobody ever sees it because there's only one reason they'd see it. [ Laughter ]

But I think I'd like to sign it, and I'd like to have some of the main construction guys, like yourselves and some of your top guys, sign it. We can sign this whole piece. Then we're going to put the coins—these are special coins we have. And we're going to put coins along with it.

We may put a couple facing up in some area where you have concrete that's wet. I don't know if you have any of those areas. I'm not sure that you do.

We have some right there for you, sir.

But you could put one of these into the concrete facing up, so people see it because——

Yes, sir.

——you're not going to find nicer. So they're going to take some of these coins, which are somewhat different. These are coins that—like I gave to the young man who—the lifeguard who saved the young boy, because he was truly a hero. And these will go like that.

These are three different coins. All different. Like that and like that. They're going to be flipped. But I think they're so beautiful that if we find a place on this whole big pad, we can put a few of them facing upward. Right?

Yes, sir.

It will be pretty cool, right?

Okay. I'm going to ask some of my people to sign this also. I know I'm supposed to sign it, but they've done such a good job. It's such an exciting project.

You know, it's a no-story building, but it's as exciting as if you're—you're building a building.

And, again, they've wanted this for many, many years. The happiest people are the pilots. As great as they are, they say it's great not to be landing on wood or on a piece of steel that they put out for 10 minutes. They literally put it out and then take it away as soon—and it was very heavy, and they'd take it away. They don't have to do that anymore.

Okay. I hope this is a good one. This had better be a good one. Even though, in theory, I don't think—I don't know if anyone's ever going to see it again. But that's a beautiful cut.

Hey, maybe we should reverse it. Let it stay up. [ Laughter ] I like it better than what's on the other.