President Trump Hosts a Cabinet Meeting, Dec. 2, 2025

In most cases, the bad ones.

That's right. Pam makes sure she's fighting for us in court so that we can get up every day and be bold. We're going to have hired our 10,000th ICE officer will be on the job within 10 days. So we have hired 10,000, we've had hundreds of thousands of applications. We've got within the department TSA went through this government shutdown without any delays. They all showed up for their shifts and worked hard doing security. And they have been absolutely fantastic. Sir, you made it through hurricane season without a hurricane.

Yeah.

And so FEMA, even you kept the hurricanes away. So we appreciate that. And FEMA is deploying resources and dollars 150% faster than ever before. So if somebody does have something bad that happens to them, you were immediately there helping them and telling them they have the resources to get back up on their feet. So we have built and deployed hundreds of miles of border already. You have cut the fentanyl flow over the southern border by over 56%. You've saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you've blown up in the Caribbean. And, you know, you told me to look into Minnesota and their fraud on visas and their programs. 50% of them are fraudulent, which means that that wacko Governor Walz either is an idiot or he did it on purpose, and I think he's both, sir. He brought people in there illegally that never should have been in this country, said they were somebody that they're not. They said they were married to somebody who was their brother or somebody else. Fraudulent visa applications, signed up for government programs, took hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers, and we're going to remove them and we're going to get our money back and we're going to this next year make sure that we only put people in leadership positions in this country that love this country and have its back. So thank you for letting us get up every day and have a purpose. We appreciate you.

Thanks, Kristi. Appreciate it.

Mr. President, you're exactly right: we are saving this country. We're doing it one Main Street at a time, and we're doing it at record speed and at record levels. Under your leadership, Small Business Optimism according to the US Chamber index for small businesses has reached an all-time high in the history of that index. So on Main Street, the economy is coming back thanks to your leadership, thanks to getting Biden-inflation under control. Small business's number one concern right now is finding skilled labor and that's why Secretary Chavez-DeRemer and I have entered into an MOU to get to speed that workforce to small businesses that under this administration are now at record levels. 36 million small businesses have now taken on board for the first time in the SBA's history a hundred billion dollars. That's 45 billion dollars in small business lending at 85,000 small businesses, most of that under your term, and 52 billion out to small business investment companies. So we are running this agency like the best-run bank in the country. We are growing small businesses across Main Street and we're deregulating to the tune of a hundred billion dollars, working with all my fellow cabinet members. And thank you for putting together the best cabinet in history. Iron sharpens iron, and thank you for bringing such a strong leadership group together. And then finally, I've walked factory floors from Alaska to Maine and the workers, the small businesses—most manufacturers in this country are small businesses, 600,000 of them. They are so grateful to your fair trade, low inflation, deregulation agenda that is creating national security and economic security in this country like never before. And so I want to also finally thank you for bringing faith back to the White House, to this administration. I want to thank Brooke for hosting the cabinet Bible study and invite everyone tomorrow to Bible study. And making this country something that we can be so proud of under your leadership. And I am so blessed and honored to be part of this team. So thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your leadership. I am truly grateful to be a member of your team here at this table to help support you in delivering on the promises that you made to the American people. You came in with a very clear mandate of taking on the rampant weaponization, politicization of the intelligence community and federal law enforcement, experiencing yourself the deep state abusing their power as they have against you, your family, and so many of the American people. Bring out accountability truly for those who have abused their power. Making sure that the intelligence community is supporting your efforts in keeping the American people safe, secure and free. And being the president of peace. I'm grateful to be in this position as your Director of National Intelligence to support you in these efforts, and I'll cover very briefly what we've done over the last year under your leadership and what we look forward to continuing to focus on next year. First of all, under your leadership again, we've taken on a historic effort for transparency, declassification and exposing these abuses of power by these deep state actors. We've declassified over half a million documents, many of which had never been seen before by the American people, put them online to bring about this level of transparency. We formed a Weaponization Working Group, again, to be able to go after a lot of these abuses of power that have never seen the light of day to support the accountability that under Pam Bondi's leadership in the Department of Justice is coming about. Secondly, bring about reforms in the intelligence community to make sure that we have the most effective and efficient and focused workforce that's really working on bringing about the priorities you have laid out in ensuring our country's security. And lastly, Mr. President, working with many of our partners here around the table is going after these domestic threats. We have threats coming from Islamist ideology as well as Islamist terrorists, foreign terrorist organizations and those who seek to do harm to the American people, many of whom were let in across our borders under the previous administration. We are focused on these tasks and this imperative for the American people, and just appreciate your leadership, Mr. President, and empowering us to be able to conduct this service. And Merry Christmas.

Thank you very much. Merry Christmas. Lee.

Mr. President, your team at the Trump EPA has been crushing it all year to fix the big mess that we inherited and deliver amazing results for the American people. I've had the opportunity to visit all 50 states since confirmation earlier this year and to hear from real people where they meet, where they live, and to bring their great ideas and their asks back to us to be able to deliver for them. At the Trump EPA, we have proven that you can both protect the environment and grow the economy. On the environmental front, since you were sworn in earlier this year, we have averaged a big environmental accomplishment every single day. On the 100th day, the 200th day, the 300th day of your presidency, each time we released a list of our top 100 environmental accomplishments. That has included a historic LA wildfire cleanup that you ordered us to complete in record time, which we did, and the Army Corps under the leadership of our great Secretary of War did their part as well. The federal government completely did all of the work needed to allow these residents and businesses to be able to rebuild, but poor leadership at the local and state level unfortunately is still resulting in these property owners unable to rebuild and it's wrong. We also were able to reach an agreement with Mexico to be able to implement a plan to permanently end a decades-old raw sewage crisis on the southern border with Mexico. And Secretary Rubio and his team, Chris Landau, Ambassador Johnson, they've been amazing to get that done. On the regulatory front, we have proudly launched a massive blitz that amounts to the largest deregulatory effort by any agency in the history of the United States. To put some perspective on it, in one year at one agency, we will do more deregulation than entire presidencies have done across all agencies over, you know, four-year terms to eight-year terms. You've never seen this much deregulation, one agency one year. In fact, when finalized, the proposed rescission of the 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding amounts to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States of America. From fixing the agency's definition of Waters of the United States, which is important for our farmers, our ranchers and other landowners, to the effort to end electric vehicle mandates and promote consumer choice, eliminating regulations designed to eliminate entire sectors of our energy economy, we're thinking big and we're delivering big. We have reduced terrible deratements on diesel exhaust fluid systems. We're getting water moving faster, new pipelines and power plants built, and we're helping to unleash energy dominance. Mr. President, on the operational front, we have significantly reduced the size of the agency workforce and we are accomplishing more with less. It's all about priorities and our focus is on fulfilling our statutory obligations, helping to fast-track project approvals that were taking way too long, and closely following the law as well as key Supreme Court decisions like Loper Bright to overturn the Chevron deference. We inherited massive backlogs that we have been eliminating all year long. We've been implementing your executive order to end COVID-era remote work. We consolidated real estate, canceled expensive media subscriptions and closed the Biden EPA museum that none of you knew even existed, and I'm sure none of you actually visited. To put it another way, in 2024 the Biden EPA obligated and spent over 60 billion dollars in one year. An agency with an operational budget of about 10 billion dollars a year. In their own words, caught on camera, they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, wasting precious tax dollars to pay off well-connected Obama and Biden officials. And they were doing it without any apology or regret. The Biden EPA in fact was amending grant agreements just days before you came into office to reduce agency oversight. But this year, 2025 at the Trump EPA, similar theme that you'll hear from everyone around this table: with our actions canceling wasteful grants and implementing other measures just mentioned, we have saved 30 billion dollars. They spent over 60 billion, we have saved over 30 billion. The bottom line, by the way, is that the Green New Scam is dead. It's a new day at the EPA where we will protect the environment and grow the economy. We will deliver on the Trump mandate every day. And we will fight with just one constituency front of mind, and that is the American people. Thank you, Mr. President, for being willing to take a bullet for this country. And if you were to ask me what I'm grateful for, whether it's at Thanksgiving, it's a Christmas, a Hanukkah, a New Year's, anytime of year, the fact that this president, after four years serving in office, he could have just left it in the rearview mirror and gone on to really enjoy retirement, but he is willing to take a bullet for all of you tuning in at home because he believes in his flag, our freedom, our liberties and to save the greatest country in the history of the world. So I'm grateful this holiday season for you, Mr. President. You're willing to take a bullet for all of us, and by all of us it's the American public.

Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Linda.

Mr. President, good morning everyone. Well, in spite of the fact that your charge to me is to fire myself, we've—we've really been incredibly hard at work making sure that we can return education to the states. And as I sit and listen to all the emergencies that we are addressing in this country from—from the economy to our borders to everything that we're doing, I would say, sir, that if we do not fix education in our country with this hard reset that—that you are expecting, I think the greatest national emergency we could face is our education. Because if we are not going to educate our children, we're going to continue to fall behind the rest of the world. When there are only 30% of 12th graders, 8th graders and 4th graders that can read at proficiency level, that is an incredibly harsh statement to make about our country. And you told me when you first were elected president and you looked at, I think right after you took office the first NAEP scores, which is Nation's Report Card, came out and showed how far down we were in educational proficiency in our country, and not only the NAEP scores but the international scores as well showed us very about third from the bottom. You told me you were not only embarrassed, but you were angry about this and that we had to do something to change this in our country. And we took a hard look at it and you absolutely said the bureaucracy of education in Washington is keeping its thumb on preventing growth what we should have because it's best handled at the state level. Letting states put their programs in place. And some states are going to do it a lot better than others, but it's not going to happen from Washington, DC. And when I hear things like, well, with no disrespect to any other country in the world that have really great programs, Germany, Sweden, Norway, I hear about this all the time. Point of fact is they're this big, the United States is this big. We can't do it from Washington, DC. It has to be done at the state level. So what we've been doing, as Lori brought up, Secretary of Labor brought up, we have a great working relationship. We have already signed and implemented one MOU or interagency agreement to handle the WIOA program and the Perkins grants to make sure it works. I call these, you know, these are programs, pilot programs that we're putting out there. And if these are going to work, we will be able to permanently transfer these programs to other agencies. They're working like a charm. We've taken some of our best people in education, it still operates under the budget of the Department of Education and under the management of the Department of Education but working with Lori's personnel. And when I hear pushback on that to say, well, how can this possibly work to take education and put it at Labor? Let's be efficient. One example: in order to draw down on a lot of the grants that they are helping us with, we're using their grant system. The grant system at Department of Education is like held together with bubble gum and rubber bands, and it did not interact with any other agency. Now we have this really smooth operation already in Labor. So that has prompted us to sign also other interagency agreements: two more with Labor, one with HHS, one with Department of State, and we'll be moving other programs. But we—these are proof of concept: let's make sure they're working and working smoothly before we ask Congress to codify these permanent moves. So that's kind of in the world of—of K-through-12 what we're looking at right now. But in the world of higher education, as Attorney General Bondi mentioned, we've been working really very hard to make sure that we've got antisemitism and DEI out of their—out of our universities and put some pretty stiff fines on, worked some good deals. I've enjoyed working with Harmeet, who's just an incredible negotiator. So we're bringing all of that to bear as well. So I can say, sir, that we are moving to return education to the states and to bring the level of education back up, making sure our students can read, reintroducing the science of reading in schools. And going into next year, I can honestly say we've got a lean, mean machine operating at the Education—at the Department of Education was only half the workforce than when we started and we're more efficient and I think we're going to see better results as we move into next year. So thank you for this incredible opportunity.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President.

During this holiday season for empowering us at HHS, me, Dr. McCary, Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Oz to change the trajectory of this agency towards public health and away from the tradition of serving the mercantile interests of the medical-industrial complex and the big pharmaceutical companies. Two weeks ago, we ended under your leadership a 20-year war on women by removing the black box warnings from hormone replacement therapy. The medical cartel was telling women that hormone replacement therapy during menopause was dangerous for them. In fact, here's what the science said: it ends—it—it diminishes the risk of fatal heart attacks by 25%, cardiac disease by 50%, Alzheimer's by 35%, bone fractures by 50 to 60%. It improves appetite, it improves sleep, it improves energy, it improves happiness. We are now—there are tens of millions of women in this country who've been deprived of that therapy because of this scientific malpractice by the medical cartel. We are now remedying that and this remedy will now be available to all women who want it during one of the most difficult transitions of their lives. And MFN is one of our greatest accomplishments. It wouldn't have happened without you. You were the only person who believed in it, you drove us to get it done. We've now made agreements with the five biggest pharmaceutical companies. We have 12 more in the lineup to make agreements. By the time this administration leaves office, 95% of the drugs in this country will be—we will have the lowest price of any nation in the developed world. Americans are already getting the benefit from these, these companies are already lowering these prices dramatically, as you've noticed. And then this week, Howard at Department of Commerce and Jameson at the US Trade Representative made a bargain with Great Britain to raise their drug prices in conformance with your promise that the Europeans would raise theirs to counter-balance us lowering ours and therefore we would keep intact the—the ecosystem of innovation and protect innovation. So congratulations on that, Mr. President. When I first—when you first asked me to take this job, one of the first contacts we made was with a leading economics professor, health economics professor at Harvard. And we asked him what's the one innovation that we could do that would most dramatically improve the healthcare experience for the average American. And he said there is no contest, it's to change—to get rid of prior authorization. And thanks to your leadership, we were able to convene the largest insurance companies in this country and do something that every administration, every Congress has promised for the past 30 years. We actually got it done. We convened the insurance companies representing 280 million Americans and got them to agree, most of them by January of 2026, for two months from now, to remove prior authorization for most of their procedures, for all the procedures we want them removed from. And that means that American patients at the point of care will be able to get an answer immediately. If your doctor says you need knee surgery, you will know before you leave that doctor's office whether your insurance company will pay for it or not. Similarly, healthcare records. The—the tech industry has refused to share healthcare records. You asked us to change that. We convened up to 60 biggest tech companies at a—at a conference that you presided over about two months ago. We now did a secondary conference with 400 leading companies, all of whom have come in and agreed to remove any kind of blockages where individual Americans can get their own healthcare. Americans own their healthcare records, yet they were not able to access them. And if you lived in New Jersey and you moved to Oregon and you got injured, you went to a hospital, you would have to spend maybe 45 minutes filling out forms on a clipboard because your doctors there could not get your healthcare records. They couldn't get your blood type, your allergies, all the things that they ought to know immediately so they can save your life. Now that is all changed and Amer—all these companies now have agreed to remove all the blocks on sharing healthcare records. Every American will have their healthcare records available on their cell phones. And it's already happening. In the last six months, there have been over a hundred times the number of healthcare records shared by hospitals than during the entire previous administration. On deregulation, HHS proudly is now leading the pack and you know thank you for your help on that Russ. But today we announce the retraction, the revocation of the nursing home rule which was over-burdening rural areas across this country, Indian reservations with regulations that were going to destroy the nursing home industry in those communities and that—that is going to be a 25 billion dollar savings. Those are some of the things that we're doing because of your leadership, President Trump. Thank you so much and Merry Christmas to you.

Thank you, Bobby. Very much. Great job. Doug.

Well, Mr. President, you've assembled an incredibly talented group here. If you took a look at this group compared to any Fortune 500 leadership team, any group of startup folks, I mean this is an amazing group and the breadth of what's being accomplished. And the timing couldn't be better because with your leadership and vision, you've set us up for this age of abundance. As we head into next year, the 250th anniversary of this country, and what are we heading into that year? As we've talked around the table, you've heard about massively lower taxes, massively lower regulation, abundant energy, record capital investment coming in, job growth. I mean, we're set up to really have something to celebrate next year. And I just again want to say thank you to everybody around the table. You gave us one big assignment in Interior. Of course, Interior largest balance sheet in the world in the Department of Interior. If it was a standalone company, 500 million acres of surface, 700 million acres of subsurface, over three billion of offshore from Guam to the Virgin Islands. And you said we ought to take care of that balance sheet, we got to develop those resources and what have we done across that? Producing record amounts of oil, record amounts of gas, and again, we set out with a goal: energy diplomacy. Sell energy to our friends and allies. We're exporting a record amount of energy to all of our friends and allies around the world. That's helping do that and you're giving a gift to America as we head into this: you're giving us peace abroad and you're giving us prosperity at home. That bodes so well for our country. One small little gift that we're giving to all Americans from one teeny part of Interior, which is the National Parks, is that not only are we keeping prices low for all American citizens, we're offering 10 free days for our National Parks next year to coincide with our holidays but also a hundred dollar surcharge for non-residents. That's going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for our—for all of for helping restore and preserve all of our best parks. So as we close out with that, I want to also say a big celebration going on here in Washington, DC. We've been thrilled to be part, the National Park Service, the US Park Police part of this great effort across a number of us on making DC safe and beautiful. This will be the safest and most beautiful capital in the world. We are doing so many things, whether it's hundreds of homeless camps, thousands of graffiti sites, cleaning up ponds and fountains, preparing this thing. The United States is never going to be performing better economically, it's never going to be looking better, just like the White House has never looked better, all because of your vision leadership. So again, thank you, sir. You've given an incredible Christmas gift to Americans by setting us up for an incredible 250th anniversary.

That's very nice. Thank you, Doug. Very much. Marco.

Well, thank you, Mr. President. First of all, this is a very talented team as you've seen and as you know because you picked every single one that's on you deserve tremendous credit for doing that. It's an honor to be in this role. It's also an honor to be involved in and to be a witness to what I believe is the most transformational year in American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War, at least. And it's transformational because for the first time in a long time, we have a president who basically puts America at the forefront of every decision we make in our relations with the world. And that may sound weird to people, like of course you always do this—no, that hasn't always been the case until about a year ago. And I think we've all witnessed in our own respective spaces how in every interaction the president has with the world, the goal he has in mind is very simple: does what you want us to do or what we're going to or is it going to make us stronger, is it going to make us richer, is it going to make us safer? If it is, he's for it. If it's not, he's against it. If something's going to make America weaker or poorer or less safe, the president's going to be against it. And every single thing he has done in our foreign policy has been driven by the American people in mind. And I can go down the list. Why has he focused on mass migration? It's very simple: because no country is safe if you can just walk in without us knowing who you are into your country. We've seen the destruction that that's wreaking, not just in our own country, but the impact that it's having in Europe and in many other parts of the world. You talk about trade deals and the trade situation involved in. People, you know all this reporting on it, it's very simple: the president views the last 40 years as an era of which American and American workers and American farmers have been ripped off. They've been ripped off and what he's saying is we want to have trade with the world, but it has to be a trade in which American businesses and American workers and the products they make and what American farmers grow and produce has a fair shot to be sold around the world. On issue after issue, that's been the case. You talk about foreign aid reforms. This is not our money, this is taxpayer money. And what the president has said is we're going to do foreign aid, but we're going to do foreign aid for countries that are aligned with the United States and in a way that doesn't waste the taxpayer's money. Mr. President, you deserve tremendous credit for that. Many of us—the Vice President by the way I want to acknowledge has played an extraordinary role in our foreign policy and he too has been a witness to all of this as it's been occurring and he's been a big part of it as well. You talk about NATO. President's not against NATO. He went to NATO and basically said, 'Look, you guys, we're paying all the money,' and he got them to do the 5% commitment, which everybody said was never going to happen and it was impossible. Everything this president does is driven by the American people, whether you—you don't have to agree with the actual move, but understand the motivation. The motivation is always you, the American people and what's good for you, for your family, for the country and for our economy. But the president is also committed to peace in a way that all of us have seen. He achieved in Gaza, and he does it by the way, not just because he hates war and he thinks wars are a waste of money and lives, but because he's the only leader in the world that can. No other leader in the world could have pulled off what happened in Gaza, and I can tell you, I can't get into the details—the Vice President knows what I'm talking about—that deal doesn't happen without the president's direct interaction with the leaders that were involved in this decision-making. And everyone said that deal couldn't hold and then the president shepherded through the United Nations of all places to get a global coalition of countries to line up behind the peace deal, behind the board of peace. And it's still an ongoing every day is a challenge, but it's been driven personally by the president. It's the reason why we're involved in this whole Ukraine-Russia conflict. That's not our war, it's not the president's war, this war started—it never would have happened if you'd been president. But this war is going on and the president is trying to end it not because, listen, we got a million things to focus on in the world as a country, but he's the only leader in the world that can help end it. And that's why even as we speak to you now, Steve Witkoff is in Moscow trying to find a way to end this war to save lives of 8, 9,000 people, Mr. President as you well know are dying every week. More people are dying a week in that war than have died in the entirety of the US's involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq. Just think about that, how bloody and destructive it is. The president's taken on this issue of Sudan personally, not sending out deputies to do it. Again, far away from the United States, but because he's the only leader in the world that can bring it to an end, not to mention all the other peace deals very dangerous ones like India and Pakistan or Cambodia and Thailand and—so on all these things, Mr. President, I think you deserve tremendous credit for the transformational aspect of our foreign policy. For the first time in probably four decades, the American foreign policy is driven by what is good for America and Americans, whether it makes us safer and stronger and more prosperous. If it is, he's for it, if it doesn't, he's against it, and that sort of clarity is transformational. I close with this. And I know I'm last so I wanted to be fast, but there was a lot to cover. I do want to say this is the most wonderful and magical time of the year. By that, of course, I'm referring to the college football playoffs. And I just want to say this as a point of personal privilege: if—and I'm a Florida Gator, but if the University of Miami gets screwed out of the college football playoffs after going 10 and 2 and beating Notre Dame, the whole thing should be scrapped and you're going to have to take over it next year, Mr. President. Thank you.

That's great. Amen. Well, thank you all very much. That was terrific. I hope it wasn't too long, but it was very concise and we've done a lot. This group has done a lot, amazing, everyone. Everybody at this table has done a fantastic job. And Susie, thank you for doing a great job as our chief of staff. First female chief of staff in the history of our country, which is pretty amazing when you think of it, right? And she's the best. Thank you very much, great job.

[Clapping]

So after that, do you want to ask any questions?

Mr. President, thank you so much. Mr. President, you said in the last few days there's been speculation about who the next Fed chairman could possibly be. You said you have somebody in mind. How many names were you given on the final list and does that person currently work on the board at the Federal Reserve?

Well, I'd say that we probably looked at ten. And Scott interviewed some people that I didn't know, and—but he knew. And a lot of people were involved in the process, actually. Howard was involved. But I think we probably looked at ten and—and we have it down to one.

Mr. President, I want to ask you about Elon Musk, if I could. You talked about Elon Musk, you had him for dinner here in the White House. Is he now back in your circle of friends?

Well, I really don't know. I mean, I think I like Elon a lot. He was a very—he really helped during the election with his endorsement and he felt strongly. Look, we had one problem, you know, I didn't want to have everybody have to have an electric car. And he makes electric cars and—yeah, I think we get—I think we get along well.

Mr. President, on affordability, if I could just ask, going forward, do the American people, do you believe, are getting impatient with the reforms that you're making? They've talked about affordability, you've talked about it, it's about—

Well, I think they're getting fake news from guys like you. Look, affordability is a hoax that was started by Democrats who caused the problem of pricing. And they didn't end it when—look, they lost in a landslide. We won every swing state, we won the popular vote, we won everything. You take a look at districts, it was 2,750 to 500 or 525. Because that was an affordability problem. We brought it down. Look at energy, look at—look at the gasoline price. That's like the simplest and it's the biggest. Because if energy comes down, everything comes down. That's the way it works. We are going to be at $2.50. You said $1.99 in some places of the country, right Chris? You said it, I didn't say it. And they won't check you, they'll check me. So you know, I'd like to use your—your number: $1.99 a gallon. Unthinkable if you go back a year and a half ago, it's unthinkable. So no, we're bringing the prices down, way down. Beef is coming down now. We've done certain magic and beef is coming down. But we inherited horrible prices. We inherited really the worst, again, the worst inflation in history. We inherited that. When I came in, that's what he had. And we fixed inflation and we fixed almost everything if you want to know the truth, including eight wars. We got one to go. But including eight wars. But when they always say—I watched today where they have a race going on right now in Tennessee and this woman goes, 'affordability, affordability.' They're the ones who caused the problem. The prices were way high, we're bringing the prices down. But they're like scam artists, you know. They con—I call them con men and women. They come out and they say affordability like, 'oh, oh, I see prices.' We're going to get prices down still further, but we brought them down from the prices they caused. The reason that they had the highest inflation in the history of our country is because they had the highest prices. But we brought them down and now we have normal inflation. Yeah, please.

Mr. President, thank you so much for taking questions with your assembled cabinet. I wanted to clarify something that you had said on Sunday regarding the boat strikes in Venezuela. You had said that you didn't know if the second strike on that one boat had happened but you wouldn't have wanted it. Now that your administration has acknowledged that it had happened, do you support that second strike? And Mr. Secretary, I want to clarify something you had said in an interview back in September on Fox News: you said that you would watch that strike live on television in real time. Did you know that there were survivors after the initial strike?

Well look, all I know is this: every boat that you see get blown up, we save 25,000 on average lives. 25,000 lives. They've been sending enough of—of this horrible fentanyl and and other things like cocaine and other things, but fentanyl right now is the leader of the pack to kill our entire nation. Because a little speck on the head of a pin can kill somebody. It's very dangerous stuff. I know so many people where their sons were drug addicts, they had one little sample and they died. They died. They—they couldn't believe it. As far as the attack is concerned, I didn't, you know, I still haven't gotten a lot of information because I rely on Pete, but to me it was an attack. It wasn't one strike, two strikes, three strikes. Somebody asked me a question about the second strike. I didn't know anything about the second strike, I didn't know anything about people, I wasn't involved in it. I knew they took out a boat. But I would say this: they had a strike, I hear the gentleman that was in charge of that is extraordinary. He's an extraordinary person, let Pete speak about him. But Pete was satisfied. Pete didn't know about second attack having to do with two people. And—I guess Pete would have to speak to it. I can say this: I want those boats taken out, and if we have to we'll attack on land also just like we attack on sea. And there is very little coming in by sea. I think we've knocked out over 90% of it. There's very little. And I understand that. We're saving hundreds of thousands of lives with those pinpoint attacks. It's an amazing thing when you see a boat going along and, you know, a lot of the press would like to say they're not—you see the boat. They're not maybe drugs. You see these boats. First of all, who has five engines on the back of a boat going in weird directions and loaded up with lots of white containers? They're all—they're bags of things. No, they've done an amazing job. And Pete has done an amazing job, but Pete you could probably better answer the question.

No, spot on, sir. I think you got to start with the baseline, which Marco laid out, everybody's laid out. You've got 20 million people invading our country over four years, we don't know where they're coming from. That includes Tren de Aragua and cartels and violent criminals. They bring drugs and you mentioned it, Mr. President: poisoning, an intentional poisoning of the American people, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. So the president had the courage to designate these cartels as designated terrorist organizations. A number of us here served in the military and spent 20 years fighting terrorists like Al-Qaeda and ISIS on the other side of the world. How do you treat Al-Qaeda and ISIS? Do you arrest them and treat them and pat them on the head and say, 'Don't do that again'? Or do you end the problem directly by taking a lethal, kinetic approach? And that's the way President Trump has authorized the War Department to look at these cartels. And I wish everybody could be in the room watching our professionals. Our professionals like Mitch Bradley, Admiral Mitch Bradley and others at JSOC and SOCOM and other commanders. The deliberative process, the detail, the rigorous, the intel, the legal, the evidence-based way that we're able to with sources and methods that we can't reveal here that make sure that every one of those drug boats is tied to a designated terrorist organization. We know who's on it, what they're doing, what what they're carrying. All these white bales are not Christmas gifts from Santa. This is drugs running on four-motor fast boats or submarines that we've also struck. No one's fishing on a submarine. And I have empowered them to make that call. Now, the first couple of strikes as you would as any leader would want, you want to own that responsibility. So I said I'm going to be the one to make the call after getting all the information and make sure it's the right strike. That was September 2nd. There's a lot of intelligence that goes into that building that case and understanding that, a lot of people providing information. I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours or whatever where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs. So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the call, which he had the complete authority to do, and by the way Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat, sunk the boat and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back and the American people are safer because narco-terrorists know you can't bring drugs through the water and eventually on land if necessary to the American people. We will eliminate that threat and we're proud to do it.

So you didn't see any survivors, to be clear, after that first strike, you personally?

I did not personally see survivors, but I stand—because the thing was on fire, it was exploded in fire and smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital there. This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don't understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about 'kill everybody' phrases on anonymous sources, not based in anything. Not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made. I wrote a whole—I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to warfighters. President Trump has empowered commanders. Commanders to do what is necessary, which is dark and difficult things in the dead of night on behalf of the American people. We support them and we will stop the poisoning of the American people.

And Mr. Secretary, on the second strike, you said it happened more than an hour after the first strike. The minutes—sir, you left the room, the transition—

I couldn't tell you the exact amount of time.

But the minutes, sir, you left the room, the transition—

I already stated my answer quite clearly.

we lost last year, I think it was more than that, but you know, people don't like saying it because they always said a hundred thousand, 115,000, numbers we've been hearing for years. So we lost last year more than 200,000 people, dead people. Ruined families, beyond the 200,000, and those 200,000, that family will never be the same. But these people have killed over 200,000 people, actually killed over 200,000 people last year and those numbers are down. Those numbers are down, they're way down, and they're down because we're doing these strikes and we're going to start doing those strikes on land too. You know the land is much easier, it's much easier, and we know the routes they take, we know everything about them. We know where they live. We know where the bad ones live and we're going to start that very soon too. And you know what? When we start that, we're going to drive those numbers down so low and then you're going to have families be able to live without the fear of their son or daughter just having a pill to have a little fun and ending up dying within a period of 60 seconds. Right? No, we're not going to let that happen, we're not going to let it continue to happen. What Biden did to this country by allowing all these people—and I call them animals in many cases, I think they're animals—to come into our country and destroy our country and let all those drugs pour in. Let people just walk across the border like it was nothing. You look at—a lot of the, you know, they say, 'Oh, let's not discriminate.' I'm not talking about color, I'm just talking about you look into the eyes of some of these people, we're smart. And you see a killer. Come on in, just come on in. 11,888 murderers. Many of them committed more than one murder. He allowed them into our country. Totally unvetted, totally unchecked. But he also allowed drugs to come in at record numbers and hundreds of thousands of people a year died and we're taking those son of a bitches out, yeah.

Thank you so much, Mr. President, for picking up a question. This is the most transparent administration I've ever seen, you know.

I'm impressed by these people that—I'll tell you how strong they are: you've been holding that for two hours. You know, there are very few physically—there are very few people could do—I'm very proud of you. What is it? I have no idea who you are, but you're small but you're strong. Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, last week, militia groups in Iraq attacked the Kurdistan region's gas field, the largest gas field which even the US companies invested in the energy sector in the Kurdistan region. And the Kurdistan Prime Minister requested the United States to providing them some sorts of defense systems and defending their civilian infrastructure and US investment in the Kurdistan region. Are you willing to providing them this support? And in fact, that's part—tomorrow the United States is going to open an energy—

Will you speak louder?

Yeah, of course. Is it possible—?

Boy, you have the most gentle, beautiful voice. But you're a very gentle person. Go ahead. Just take fewer words and louder.

Yeah, sure. I'll repeat my first question. Last week, the Iraqi militia groups attacked one of the largest gas fields in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, which even the US companies have invested in these gas fields. And then—are you from Iraq? [128:55] I'm from Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan. Yeah, I'm working for Rudaw Media Network. And the Kurdistan region Prime Minister, he requested the United States to providing them some sorts of defense system to defending these gas fields and US investment in the Kurdistan region. Are you willing to helping them?

Well, we'll look at it. I heard about it, and—I'm hearing about it more now, frankly. It wasn't at the top of my list. It's a very unusual question, I think, but I assume you're from the area and to you it's a very important question, and to me it is also because people are being killed. I will say this: Iraq has been much different in terms of us than they were prior to us taking out the nuclear capability of Iran. You know, Iran has gone down many, many steps in terms of its fear factor. They were the bully of the Middle East, and they're really not the bully of the Middle East anymore. And Iraq was being bullied by Iran. You know, we had a president that thought it was brilliant to blow them up, and they blew them up, and all of a sudden, instead of having a power that was basically equal to Iran, they had Iran ruling the Middle East for a long period of time. But Iraq from the day we hit them with those B2 bombers and knocked out and obliterated—because CNN said, 'Well, maybe it wasn't total obliteration.' Well, it turned out it was total obliteration. It was every single one of those missiles hit its target. It was actually amazing. But it was wiped out, totally wiped out. I will tell you Iraq has been a much friendlier place, they talk to us. The Prime Minister actually nominated me along with about 78 other countries for the Nobel Prize. I'm the only one that was nominated by almost a hundred countries that didn't get it. But that's okay. But I saved a lot of lives, I saved a lot of lives. But Iraq nominated us for the Nobel Prize and that was a great honor. You know, we didn't expect that from Iraq. But Iraq has been a much different place since the taking out of Iran, the nuclear capability. Yeah, let's get to another question.

Thank you, Mr. President. Secretary Rubio mentioned the meetings ongoing in Russia today. Do you have any update from Mr. Witkoff or Mr. Kushner on that and what you begin—

No, no update, because I've been spending too much time with you. I mean, we're spending a lot of time in here. We wanted to do this in very—you talk about being open and transparent, this has to be the most transparent administration in history. You know, we've spent a lot of time answering your questions and giving you a lot of good, you know, good results. I mean, I think everybody here gave you good results. But no, I don't. I will have after I leave here.

But do you hope for a breakthrough or is it not quite at that stage?

I don't know, look, I don't know. All I can tell you is that we're trying very hard to get to save 25 to 30,000 people, mostly men, mostly soldiers every month. 25,000 to 30,000 soldiers. It's impossible. That's half a stadium. Take a big football stadium, that's take half of those people in a stadium and they're wiped out, they're killed every month. It's crazy. That war is crazy and would never have happened with me, and it would—and it didn't happen for four years. You just mentioned about potential land strikes. Can you elaborate anything on that or you talking about potential Venezuela—? I'll elaborate: if they come into a certain country or any country, or if we think they're building mills for whether it's fentanyl or cocaine. I hear Colombia, the country of Colombia is making cocaine, they have cocaine manufacturing plants, okay? And then they sell us their cocaine. We appreciate that very much, but yeah, anybody that's doing that and selling it into our country is subject to attack.

And Mr. President, not necessarily just Venezuela?