President Trump and the Prime Minister of Israel Deliver Remarks

If you people could come in, come on over, fellas. We had a big meeting with a lot of people, a lot of talent from Israel and from the US, and I think we came to a lot of conclusion, a lot of conclusion and conclusions, and there’s very little difference in what we’re looking at and where we want to be, where we want to go. And so I just want to thank you for spending time. I know you’re going to be over here for a couple of days and maybe we’ll be surprising us on New Year’s Eve, that would be fun. And it’s wonderful seeing you and Sarah and your whole group, very talented group. We’ve done very good work together and it’ll continue. So thank you very much, Bibi.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. I have to say that, I have to say that in addition to what I said that we’ve never had a friend, even close a friend as President Trump in the White House, I think he’s been extraordinary in his friendship and his support for Israel, his principled positions, his willingness to just cut through and get to the essence of things. And I don’t say that as a compliment, I just mean it. People have heard me say that behind your back, Mr. President, many times. But I want to say something else. I think we have a partnership, if I can quote you, second to none. I think it’s allowed us to do enormous things. You know, people said there was a different conception at one time, which means that America can advance its interest in the Middle East if it opens a lot of daylight between it and Israel. And President Trump has done the exact opposite. He’s achieved remarkable things in the Middle East because we’ve worked together. We talk about our ideas. Sometimes we have different ideas, but we work it out. And most of the time we see eye-to-eye. But it’s been a remarkable experience and this was a very, very productive meeting. And may I say a very good lunch. Thank you. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you very much, Bibi. And thank you for your support. It’s been from the heart. Thank you.

You know as I said outside, he’s been a wartime Prime Minister and we were, well I guess I could say I was a wartime President in more places than just Israel, if you think about it. But Israel was a big factor and we’re with you and we’ll continue to be with you. And a lot of good things are happening in the Middle East. We have peace in the Middle East and we’re going to try and keep it that way. I think we will be very successful in keeping it that way. And you’ve been a great friend and I’ve been a great friend to you and to Israel and it’s been my honor. And the award that I was given was really surprising and very much appreciated.

Well, President Trump has broken so many conventions to the surprise of people and then they figure out, oh well maybe you know he was right after all. So we decided to break a convention too, or create a new one, and that is to award the Israel Prize, which in almost our 80 years, we’ve never awarded it to a non-Israeli. And we’re going to award it this year to President Trump. This was announced formally over lunch by our Minister of Education, who’s responsible for the Israel Prize. It’s going to be awarded to President Donald J. Trump for his tremendous contributions to Israel and the Jewish people. I think there’s... it’s such a fitting thing and it would honor us obviously, Mr. President, if you could visit Israel in that occasion, on our Independence Day. But I have to say that this reflects the overwhelming sentiment of Israelis across the spectrum. They appreciate what you’ve done to help Israel and to help our common battle against the terrorists and those who would destroy our civilization. So again, that’s an expression of thanks and appreciation.

Thank you Bibi very much. That really is a great honor. Any questions please? We'll go pretty quickly because pretty much we agree on most of the things and you would know what most of those things are. Please, go ahead.

Thank you Mr. President. I'd like to know if you and the Prime Minister talked about having Israel pull back its troops before Hamas fully disarms. I know that's been an issue. Did you push for that today?

Well we talked about Hamas and we talked about disarmament and they're going to be given a very short period of time to disarm and we’ll see how that works out. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be in charge of that from our side. But if they don’t disarm as as they agreed to do, they agreed to it, and then they’ll be hell to pay for them and we don’t want that, we’re not looking for that, but they have to disarm within a fairly short period of time.

Pulling back Israel's troops?

Well that's a separate subject. We'll talk about that.

Mr. President? Mr. Trump, Mr. President, did you have a message for the Prime Minister about the West Bank and are you at all concerned that settler violence, Israeli settler violence, could be undermining the peace plan?

Well, we have had a discussion, big discussion for a long time on the West Bank and I wouldn’t say we agree on the West Bank 100 percent, but we will come to a conclusion on the West Bank.

If I could ask, what is the dis...

Well, I don't want to do that. It'll be announced at an appropriate time. But he will do the right thing. I know that. I know him very well. He will do the right thing. Yes.

There is a growing fear of confrontation between Israel and Turkey. How are you going to ease this tension given the fact that Erdogan, President Erdogan, called Mr. Netanyahu Hitler and compared Israel to the Nazis?

Well I know President Erdogan very well and as you all know he’s a very good friend of mine and I believe that and I do respect him and Bibi respects him and they’re not going to have a problem. They’re not going to have a problem. I know them very well and you’ve seen me do things with President Erdogan and Turkey that nobody else could have done. We’re not going to have a problem. He’s he’s done a fantastic job. I’m with him all the way. I’m with Bibi all the way. Nothing’s going to happen. Yes.

Mr. President, are you concerned that Israel is not moving quickly enough to phase two of the peace plan?

Well, I’m not concerned about anything that Israel’s doing. I’m concerned about what other people are doing or maybe aren’t doing. But I’m not concerned. They’ve lived up to the plan. They’re strong, they’re solid and sometimes they don’t understand when somebody violates something that you want to give him a second chance. Well, we'll give him a couple of second chances. But no, Israel's lived up to the plan 100%. Don't forget, we made the plan possible by taking out Iran. And speaking of Iran, I hope they’re not trying to build up again because if they are, we’re going to have no choice but very quickly to eradicate that build-up. So I hope Iran is not trying to build up as I’ve been reading that they’re building up weapons and other things and if they are, they’re not... they’re not using the sites that we obliterated but they’re using possibly different sites. We know exactly where they’re going, what they’re doing and I hope they’re not doing it because we don’t want to waste the fuel on a B-2. It’s a 37-hour trip both ways. I don’t want to waste a lot of fuel. Okay?

Mr. President Trump, Mr. President, after your last remarks regarding the pardon request of Prime Minister Netanyahu, Herzog office told us that you have not talk after the official request of Prime Minister Netanyahu pardon. Can you clarify to us, did you talk about it?

Which request are you talking about?

With the President Herzog, the Israeli President Herzog. Did you talk with him directly?

President Erdogan?

Herzog, Herzog, the Israeli President.

Oh, you're talking about pardon?

Yes.

Oh, well, I think he’s going to be in great shape. He’s a wartime Prime Minister at the highest level. He’s achieved tremendous success and I’ll say it you know if you had eight out of ten Prime Ministers in his position right now or before right now maybe you wouldn’t have Israel any longer. Israel would not exist. I'd say two of them would and eight of them wouldn't, and those are not good odds. You needed a very special man to to really carry through and and really help Israel through this horrible jam. You know these are major factions and it started with our negotiation with Iran. I think it probably started with Soleimani. That was really where you mentioned that today, which started with Soleimani. Bad guy doing bad things, hurting a lot of people, killing American soldiers and other soldiers. But it started right there would probably be the starting point and then from that point forward but you would you have a wartime Prime Minister at the highest level. There could be other wartime Prime Ministers but they’d lose. He won and I think the people of Israel appreciate it. I think a lot of the people in the world appreciate it actually and because of that victory we were able to get peace in the Middle East. If you had a different kind of a personality, if you had a weak person or a stupid person and there are plenty of both of them, you would not have had success and you might not have Israel. And you report for Israel, I know you’re very proud of it and you do a great job, you might not have a job because there might not be an Israel right now if you had a different Prime Minister. That’s a big statement but to me it’s a very simple statement to make. I’m looking at Pete Hegseth and he’s sort of nodding. If they don’t have a strong Prime Minister, Pete, you might not have Israel today. I think he’ll go down in the record books and you know I was a big help. I’ll be honest with you, big big help. Somebody said in the room if you don’t have Trump, you needed a a proper combination of everything and if you didn’t have that combination which they had you would not have an existing Israel right now and the people of Israel know it. That’s why they like me and it’s why they really they actually like him. He’s got a little bit of a love-hate more than I do over there. But but you know what, even the haters have a lot of respect for him. There’s a lot of jealousy about him, a lot of jealousy. Jealousy’s a bad word. But I believe you would not have Israel right now. So it's a big deal. Yeah please.

Mr. President, a recent poll showed that as many as half of Gazans would be willing to leave the Gaza Strip if afforded the opportunity to do so. Back in February you said that all Gazans...

I heard that number today, half of Gaza would leave. I’ve always said it. I said if they were given the opportunity to live in a better climate they would move. They they’re there because they sort of have to be. I think it would be... I think it would be a great opportunity. But let’s see if that opportunity presents itself. But we’re helping the people of Gaza a lot. So is Israel by the way. So we’ll see what happens. But I saw that, it was a poll it was actually more than half the people would leave if they were given the opportunity and I’ve been saying that for a long time. To me it was common sense. So it’s interesting.

Why wouldn't countries accept them?

Look, let's not talk about because we don't want the controversy. Right now we're helping Gaza. But if they were given the opportunity I think even higher than that. The person, the group that did the poll is usually I call them negative pollsters, you have a lot of them, and yet this poll was I think very accurate other than it would be more than half the people if given the opportunity. But they haven't been given that opportunity. So we’ll see what happens.

Mr. President Trump, reached a point of understanding regarding Syria?

We do have an understanding regarding Syria. Now with Syria, you know the your new president I respect him, he’s a very strong guy and that’s what you need in Syria. You can’t put a a choir boy, you can't put you know somebody that’s a perfect person, everything’s nice, no problems in life, you have the opposite there. He’s a strong guy. We get along with him great. I can’t ask for any more. He’s he’s been with us all the way. We had that mishap with ISIS and he was with us all the way. He was fighting, you know he was fighting them. So I hope Israel... I'm sure that Israel and him will get along. I will try and make it so that they do get along. I think they will. Bibi do you have anything to say about that?

Yeah, well, our interest is to have a peaceful border with Syria. Our interest is to have and we openly say it, we want to make sure that the border area right next to our border is safe. We don’t have terrorists, we don’t have attacks. And we also want to secure our Druze friends. And by the way I think not only the Druze but other minorities especially the Christians should be protected as well in Syria and throughout the Middle East. And in Nigeria in your efforts we back completely because Christian communities are beleaguered around the world and especially in the Middle East but in parts of Africa too. And we stand for the same thing.

And and don’t forget it was President Erdogan that helped very much get rid of a very bad ruler of Syria. That was President Erdogan and he never wanted the credit for it but he he really gets a lot of credit. Bibi agrees with that, I agree with I mean I know it. And President Erdogan should get a lot of good credit for what he did. He got rid of some very bad people and you know they’ve been wanting to do that for a thousand years with different names but for a thousand years in Syria President Erdogan did it and we give him a lot of credit. I give him a lot of credit. But I think it’s going to work out well between Syria and Israel.

Mr. President, about Lebanon?

Yeah, go ahead please. The Lebanese government says Hezbollah is not meeting the terms of the ceasefire agreement, has failed to disarm Hezbollah actually. In your view should Israel strike the terrorist organization again? Well, we're going to see about that. We'll see about it. The Lebanese government is at a little bit of a disadvantage if you think of it with Hezbollah but Hezbollah’s been behaving badly. So we’ll see what happens.

Mr. President, are you going to move to another operation of Israel in Iran? You said before the meeting with Netanyahu that you are in support of Israel if the ballistic missile project will take on and also the nuclear weapon. But after the meeting, after what you know from the intelligence, how close are we to another war with Iran?

Well, I don't want to say that, but Iran may be behaving badly. It hasn’t been confirmed but if it’s confirmed look they know the consequence consequences will be very powerful, maybe more powerful than the last time. Yeah. And Iran should have made a deal the last time. I gave them the option. I said you can make a deal. Do it. I told them do it and they didn’t believe me. Now they believe me.

Do you see the evidence that Iran is behaving badly and what do you mean by?

This is just what we hear but usually where there’s smoke there’s fire. Have you heard the expression?

What do you mean related to the nuclear?

Well no I’m hearing that they’re not nuclear yet but maybe nuclear too. The sites were obliterated but they’re looking at other sites. That’s what I’ve heard. They’re looking at other sites.

Is it from intelligence?

So it’ll take a long time. They’re not going to go back to where they were but the they have other places they can go and if they’re doing that they’re making a big mistake. Yeah please. There’s no reason for them to do it.

Mr. President, Mr. President is the United States currently open to engaging in bilateral discussions with Tehran? We're hearing reports from numerous countries that there may be some discussions. Is that something you would support or something that is happening?

Yeah i would. Sure i would. I would support that right now. I have been by the way, before the war I would support that. I said to them Bibi I said let's negotiate and they didn't believe what was going to happen would happen. Yes ma'am.

On China, so China has been doing naval exercises basically to test encircling Taiwan. Can you explain to us what your knowledge is of that, what do you think about that, have you had any discussions with China about that?

Well, I have a great relationship with President Xi and he hasn’t told me anything about it. I certainly have seen it but he hasn’t told me anything about it and I don’t believe he’s going to be doing it.

Does it worry you?

No, nothing worries me. Nothing.

But you said where there's smoke there's fire, right? So if you're encircling, if you're doing naval exercises and air exercises...