President Trump Participates in a Swearing-in Ceremony for the Ambassador to the Republic of India

Thank you very much, everybody. It's an honor to be here for our friend, Sergio. Sergio Gor. Today we're thrilled to be in a swearing-in for the next Ambassador to India and special envoy to South and Central Asia, which is a big deal and Sergio will handle it better than anybody could handle it. So I just want to congratulate Sergio. [00:52] So we are honored to be joined this afternoon by our great Vice President, J.D. Vance. Thank you, J.D. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Secretary Scott Bessent, who's doing a great job. Attorney General Pam Bondi. And U.S. Attorney Janine Pirro. Janine, D.C. is a very safe place, Janine. A very safe place so we got to keep it that way.

I hope so. Yes.

Along with Senators Lindsey Graham, Jim Risch, Tommy Tuberville, and Katie Britt. And I will give you an exemption because you know they're supposed to be right now in the Senate and if you guys want to sneak out, nobody will see you leaving. Do you want to do that, Lindsey, or do you want to stay? You'll be in trouble. Okay, you sneak out anytime you want. We don't want to screw up any votes, do we? Amen. Okay, thank you. Thank you for being here. [02:00] But we're also very honored to be joined by Mrs., a very special woman who I unfortunately have seen a lot of lately on television for the wrong reasons, a woman who is great, who Charlie said is the greatest of anybody he knew, best friends and best everything, Erica Kirk. So thank you very much, Erica. [02:31] And as Erica knows, another special woman, Laura Ingraham. Where's Laura? She's here someplace. Thank you, Laura. And many other true American patriots, great people. One year ago, Sergio played a key role in helping us secure the most consequential presidential election victory in the history of our country. And from the day we won, he immediately began working to staff our new administration with the most talented team of any president. And we have had a great team. A couple of mistakes, Sergio, but we won't mention that. They're gone. We got rid of them pretty quick. We found a couple we weren't thrilled with, we got them out of here. [03:37] But as my Director of Office and Presidential Personnel from the early days of transition, Sergio's leadership was essential to fulfilling the historic mandate entrusted to us by the American people. And that's what we've done with the help here at the White House. We set new benchmarks for presidential staffing. Nobody's done it, I think hopefully better, but certainly quicker. But I don't think anybody's done it better. We have great people. Surrounded by the people that I really do love and like and respect. But we hired 4,000 appointees across every federal department in record time, including over 1,000 appointments on day one. So before we even got started, we had over a thousand people working for us. Under Sergio's leadership, federal agencies and departments reached staffing levels of 95% and that's faster than any administration in modern day history. [04:15] And prior to his work on behalf of my 2024 campaign, Sergio had tremendous success as an entrepreneur in the publishing world. He even published my book which went to number one. I was very happy because if it didn't, I wouldn't probably, he wouldn't be here today. But now I'm trusting Sergio to help strengthen one of our country's most important international relationships, and that's the strategic partnership with the Republic of India. [05:05] It's a big deal. India is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations, the largest country in the world, actually. And it's got over 1.5 billion people. And we have a fantastic relationship with the Prime Minister Modi. And Sergio's only enhanced that because he's become already friendly with the Prime Minister. Knowing that Sergio was going to be the Ambassador, they would call constantly to say, let's get to know this man and they like what they see. So I know you're going to have a great success over there. It's a very important relationship. But it's also the fastest growing middle class and it's an important economic and strategic security partner in the Indo-Pacific region. [05:33] It's an amazing country, actually. 1.5 billion people. China has 1.4 billion. Those are two big countries. As Ambassador, Sergio will work to fortify our country's bond, promote investments in key U.S. industries and technologies, increase American energy exports, and expand our security cooperation. And you know, we're making a deal with India, a much different deal than we had in the past. So right now they don't love me but they'll love us again. We're getting a fair deal, just a fair trade deal. We had pretty unfair trade deals. They're very good negotiators, Sergio, so you have to take a look at that if you would, please. [06:00] But we're getting close, Scott. I think we're pretty close to doing a deal that's good for everybody, right? In the old days, do you think Biden would ask that question? I don't think so. He would say, how are we doing with India? He didn't know about India. He didn't know a damn thing. But that's okay. We had him. [06:14] Likewise, in Sergio's role as special envoy to South and Central Asia, he'll be a key emissary to a very important group of nations at the crossroads between East and West. And last week, I was honored to host the leaders of five Central Asian countries here in the White House. And Sergio will be helping with all of that. We had an amazing meeting the other night at the White House and I'm confident that Sergio will do an outstanding job and make our country and all of his friends very proud. But I'm very proud of Sergio. I've known him for a long time. And he's a great guy and most people love him. Some people don't like him so much, I'll be honest with you, Sergio. I've seen some people when they don't like Sergio, they don't like him. But when they like him, they like him more than anybody. But most of them really are in the like category. And I just want to say that I think he's going to be an outstanding representative for the United States of America. And it's a big deal. Being the Ambassador to India is a big deal. So Sergio, congratulations. I know you're going to do a fantastic job. Thank you very much. [07:12] And now, Mr. Vice President, for the swearing-in.

Okay. Okay. Swear him in here. Left hand on the Bible. Right hand up. All right. Thank you, Judge. I appreciate the assistance. We have such a crowd here, you'd think we're swearing in a Vice President. Okay. Please repeat after me. I, Sergio Gor,

I, Sergio Gor,

do solemnly swear

do solemnly swear

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States

against all enemies, foreign and domestic;

against all enemies, foreign and domestic;

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same;

that I take this obligation freely,

that I take this obligation freely,

without any mental reservation

without any mental reservation

or purpose of evasion;

or purpose of evasion;

and that I will well and faithfully

and that I will well and faithfully

discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

of the office of which I'm about to enter.

So help me God.

So help me God.

Congratulations, Mr. Ambassador.

Mr. President, this is an honor of a lifetime. I want to thank first you, what you have done for this country before you came back in, the trouble that this country was facing. I mean, frankly, we were screwed. What you have achieved in 10 months has been historic, has surpassed any other presidency, and I fully believe what you will achieve in the next three years will never be beaten. So it has been an honor to serve you. I've been at your side for many years. I will continue to be there. And it's just an incredible honor. And I look forward to enhancing the relationship between our two nations. But again, thank you for entrusting me with this position. And I look forward to doing a great job for you. Thank you very much, sir.

Well, thank you, sir. First of all, congratulations Sergio. You're going to be a great Ambassador, a great representative to the country of India, which the President and I both love. As a lot of you know, Sergio was a critical piece of what made the first 10 months such a great success. Obviously, the President's leadership is the most important thing, but you can't do a whole lot unless you've got good people around you. And Sergio did as much as anybody to ensure that the White House was staffed with the very best people, people who were loyal to the President, loyal to the country, and loyal to the agenda that we're trying to implement. So thank you all for being here. I think it's a great testament to you, Sergio, that you got multiple cabinet secretaries, Erica Kirk, the President of the United States. This crowd would not turn out for just anybody, but it turned out for Sergio Gor. You're going to do a great job, man. Congratulations.

Well, just to echo what Sergio said, Mr. President, you've done a lot for this country more than any other President has in such a short period of time. And part of that is putting together a phenomenal team and I know Sergio was instrumental in helping you achieve that. And so we think he'll do a great job. This is a very impressive collection of people. There are almost 1.5 billion people in the Oval Office right now, but Sergio's going to do a phenomenal job. Those of us who've known him, so many of his friends that are here and family as well, they know how hard he works, 24 hours, seven days a week. And that's what it takes to work in this administration because of how much you're pushing our country forward around the world and here at home. And we know Sergio will do a great job. So congratulations, Sergio. You're going to do a phenomenal job.

Well, I'm very proud to be here with Sergio. My friend has been my friend for many years. He is someone who is loyal, he is trustworthy, and he works as hard as anyone I know. And Mr. President, there is in this room a group of people who love you, who believe in you, and who are so proud to be in this Oval Office and to be part of this amazing day because you have changed the course of America. You, and thank you Sergio for what you've done. God bless you both.

Well, Sergio is also very good friends with a guy named Charlie. We just know him as Charlie and his wife, who we love so much, is here with us. And maybe, you know how close they were together, maybe Erica, you could say a couple of words, please.

It would be an honor to, sir. Charlie loved you. It's hard not to get emotional because I know that he would have been the first phone call when he found out that you were going to be taking this position. And the way that I was able to witness the two of you work together for years and to champion and support the President was absolutely humbling to witness and I am so proud of you. And Charlie is going to be with you every single day in spirit and I will be praying for you every day because I know that this is just the beginning of an incredible opportunity for you. And sir, thank you for allowing Sergio to have this beautiful moment. Thank you very much, sir.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Charlie. [12:57] And that means watching over us right now, right? Okay. Any questions?

On the Senators, sir. Mr. President, do you personally approve of the deal that's happening right now on Capitol Hill to end the government shutdown?

Well, I don't know what deal we're talking about, but if it's a deal I heard about, that's certainly, you know, they want to change the deal a little bit, but I would say so. I think based on everything I'm hearing, they haven't changed anything and we have support from enough Democrats and we're going to be opening up our country. Too bad it was closed, but we'll be opening up our country very quickly.

Mr. President, that deal does reverse the mass firings your administration put through during the shutdown. Did you sign off on that and will you abide by that if this passes?

Well, I will be abiding by the deal. The deal is very good. We're not going to be giving one and a half trillion dollars to people that came in from jails and from, you know, the gangs and drug dealers and all of these others that they wanted to be given health care, which would have hurt our health care system. I hope that we're going to be able to have a health care where Lindsey and I were discussing it, Jim and I were discussing it, and Katie, we discussed it. We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies and I tell you, we're going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time where the people get the money. We're talking about trillions and trillions of dollars where the people get the money.

Yes, please. Mr. President, the Syria President, sir. Could you update us on your meeting? Did you come to any agreements?

Say it? Well, I had an agreement with him. He's a very strong leader. He comes from a very tough place and he's a tough guy. I liked him. I get along with him, the President, the new President of Syria. And we'll do everything we can to make Syria successful because that's part of the Middle East. We have peace now in the Middle East for the first time that anyone can remember that ever happening. And as you know, Syria is a very big, a very big part of the Middle East. Very important part. If you look back at Syria for years, they had the doctors, the lawyers, they had so many of the great intellectuals. It was, it's an amazing place with great people and we want to see Syria be successful along with the rest of the Middle East. So I have confidence that he'll be able to do the job, absolutely.

Mr. President, how close are you to a deal on a trade deal with India? Are you willing to consider lowering the current tariff rate?

Well, right now the tariffs are very high on India because of the Russian oil and they've stopped doing the Russian oil. It's, it's been reduced very substantially. Yeah, we're going to be bringing the tariffs down. I mean at some point, no, at some point we're going to be bringing them down. Without tariffs, we would be, this country would be in such trouble as they were for many years. That's why we owe 38 trillion dollars. And one of the things we're going to do, we're going to issue a dividend to our middle income people and lower income people of about two thousand dollars and we're going to use the remaining tariffs to lower our debt. We're going to be lowering our debt, which is a national security thing. [16:07] So we are doing a lot of good work. The numbers were reported so incorrectly. The real numbers are trillions of dollars have been taken in or gotten in terms of investment from the tariffs. And so if that were ever reversed, it would be a disaster. It would frankly be a national security problem for our country. And nobody thinks it's going to be reversed. I think we had a very good court case. As you know, it's before the Supreme Court right now. But if that were ever reversed, you know, the people were saying, oh it's a billion dollars. Some people said, oh it's two billion. Well, that obviously we can handle very easily. But this is trillions of dollars we're talking about in terms of the tariff income and all the investment income that's come into our country. [17:15] You know, we have more than, I would say right now more than 18 trillion dollars. The biggest number ever is a tiny fraction of that for any country. China, the United States, the biggest number ever. If you look at the past administration, Biden, he did less than a trillion in four years. We're over 18 trillion. By the time my first year ends, we're going to have over 20 trillion dollars of investment coming into the United States. It's unheard of. We have AI factories, we're leading China by a lot. We have cars and you know, car plants coming in by more than we've ever had built before. All of that would go away if we lose the tariff case. So all of that would go away. So they're not giving the right numbers. It would be an economic disaster. It would be a national security disaster if we lost the case in the Supreme Court.

Yes, Daniel. Mr. President, can we expect a carefree date? This is an idea you've been talking about for months. This is going to directly, positively impact millions of Americans. Why was this important for you to do and when can Americans expect that?

So I've been talking about it for a long time. The dividend to people that, you know, have suffered under the Biden administration. So Biden had the highest inflation in history and we now are at a very low point. We're going to be hitting one and a half percent pretty soon. So we're at a low point and he was a high point. We did that. Food prices are way down. It's all coming down. And the biggest decrease of course is energy and you know, as goes energy, goes everything else. Because when energy comes down, the oil, the electric, but we are, I think you're going to see two dollar gasoline or something very close to that. In fact, we're already in the twos, but I think you're going to be seeing very soon two dollar gasoline. That's like the equivalent of a massive tax cut. [18:36] But in addition to that, the Great Big Beautiful Bill gives you a very, very big tax cut. And then you have no tax on tips, no tax on social security, and no tax on overtime for the middle income and for even frankly anybody. But you have no tax and a no tax on tips has turned out to be a tremendous thing. But when you think no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on social security for our seniors, it's the Great Big Beautiful Bill which has been mischaracterized. But now people even they don't want to talk about it because it's so good, the enemy, because it's so good for everybody. It's the greatest piece of legislation ever passed in the history of our country in terms of size and hence its called, they call it the big beautiful bill or the one big beautiful, I call it the Great Big Beautiful Bill. [19:28] It's an amazing bill for the middle class, it's an amazing bill for jobs. We've never passed anything like it. And in my first administration, so we had the greatest economy, we had everything was good. But we're really outdoing it this time because we have investments coming in largely because of tariffs and I think because of November 5th the election result. But we have investments coming in like we've never had before.

The deal on the shutdown, Mr. President. On Syria, can we expect an announcement on a pact between Syria and Israel or an announcement on them joining the anti-ISIS coalition?

Yeah, you can expect some announcements on Syria. We want to see Syria become a country that's very successful and I think this leader can do it. I really do. I think this leader can do it. And people said he's had a rough past. We've all had rough pasts. But he has had a rough past and I think frankly if you didn't have a rough past, you wouldn't have a chance. He gets along very well with Turkey, with President Erdogan who's a great leader. Erdogan's a great leader and very much in favor of what's happening in Syria. We have to make Syria work. Syria is a big part of the Middle East. And I will tell you, I think it is working and really well. We're working also with Israel on, you know, getting along with Syria, getting along with everybody. And that's working amazingly. As you know, Hamas has given us back numerous bodies. It sounds pretty gruesome, but it's something the parents want more than if their son had been living. Hard to believe. I've seen all of the parents, so many of the parents. And getting back the body of their son, their dead son, is as vital to them, as important to them as if the boy was, generally the boy, the boy was alive. And as you know over the last four, five days, we've gotten a lot of the additional bodies that they said they were going to, they've worked very hard to do that. So we have peace in the Middle East. It's a great thing and nobody's ever seen anything quite like it.

How close are you to a deal? Mr. President, last week about your talks with Switzerland, we're reporting that you're near a deal that would lower their rate to 10 percent?

With Switzerland? We're working on a deal to get their tariffs a little bit lower because, ten percent is what we're hearing. No, I haven't said any number, but we're going to be working on something to help Switzerland out. We hit Switzerland very hard. We want Switzerland to remain successful and you know, we're a part of Switzerland in the sense that they've been a very good ally. Yeah, we're working on them and some others and we're working on others to increase them a little bit too. [22:07] How close is it? What, do you have something to do with Switzerland? No, I'm just curious. He wants to buy a watch. He wants to buy a watch. He's a cheese. He wants to buy a nice Rolex. We'll give Rolex a bit of publicity because Rolex has been, they've been very nice, you know. Now look, it's, it's a beautiful country. It's, it's a small country but economically very big. So we're working on something. Caitlin.

Mr. President, earlier today Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a big ally of yours, said that she would rather see you focused on non-stop domestic policy meetings here at the White House instead of non-stop foreign policy meetings. What's your response to her saying that and also saying that grocery prices are up and not down as you've said?

Yeah, so I don't know what happened to Marjorie. She's a nice woman, but I don't know what happened, she's lost her way, I think. But I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally. I mean we could have a world that's on fire where wars come to our shores very easily if you had a bad president. We had a horrible president and we ended up with Russia-Ukraine and we ended up with other disasters too. Don't forget, I put out eight wars, nine to come, and I'll go get the other one taken care of. But I put out eight wars. And look at the damage that Russia-Ukraine has done to us as a country. I mean they, we spent 350 billion. We're not spending any money anymore, now they pay us through NATO. You know, I got NATO to go from 2% to 5%. Well, that's very important. When you're President, you really sort of have to watch over the world because you're going to be dragged into it otherwise, you're going to be dragged into a World War. [23:44] I think if I weren't President, if first of all, that war would have never happened if I was President. And if I weren't President, that war could have led to World War III. It won't, it's not going to anymore. But when I first got in, I said, wow, this situation could lead to World War III. And I got NATO together, I got everybody together. But with all of that, I passed the Great Big Beautiful Bill, which is the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country. So when somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's now catering to the other side, I don't know what, you know, I guess she's, you know, got some kind of an act going, but I'm surprised at her. But when somebody like Marjorie goes over and starts making statements like that, it shows she doesn't know. I don't devote a lot of my time, let me give you another example, China. China was going to hit us with rare earth. Now everybody says, oh what does that mean? Magnets. If China refused to give magnets because they have a monopoly on magnets because they were allowed to happen over a 32-year period, there wouldn't be a car made in the entire world. There wouldn't be a radio, there wouldn't be a television, there wouldn't be internet, there wouldn't be anything because magnets are such a part. [24:51] Now, nobody knows what magnets are and not overly sophisticated, but to build a magnet system would take two years. So if I weren't able to say to China, look, if you're going to do that to us, we're going to charge you 158% tariff. It was 100% on top of 58%. And China called up immediately said, we will make peace. And we made peace, we made a great deal. We made an unbelievable deal. China's paying tariffs to the United States, not the United States paying tariffs to China, which has always been the way it was. Nobody can believe these deals. But so when somebody makes a statement about he's devoting time to the world, well the world is the United States because if the world's in trouble or if the world is ripping us off, you know, the world was ripping us off before I came here. Europe was getting massive tariffs, they were sending us 9, 10 million cars a year, we were sending them none. They were not taking our, our agriculture, we were taking massive amounts of their, it was so unfair. Now we have a deal where 950 billion dollars is coming into the United States because of me and because of tariffs. So if I don't do all these things, our country's doing very poorly. So you know, it's easy to say, oh don't worry about the world. But the world is turning out to be our biggest customer. The world is, the world was on fire and we could have been in that fire very easily if you didn't have a President that knew what he was doing.

Mr. President, can you guarantee to Americans that travel is going to go back to normal once the government reopens? All the air travel?