Prosecutors are putting bad guys in jail. It's also the law enforcement at every agency, FBI and DHS. And so we're already seeing results. We had a $1 billion fraud a conviction at trial last week out of Florida and this was an organization that was stealing from senior citizens in Florida, duping them. There were call centers set up in the Philippines and they were duping them to buy medical equipment that they didn't need, that they would never get and that the taxpayers paid for. And so so that's a that's a good win. We arrested 15 guys in Minnesota last week. The Vice President mentioned one of them. These are people that are not they are just stealing and many of them are here illegally. And so you have people who are in this country illegally who are then taking advantage and the Vice President said something a lot that resonates with me, the generosity of the American people, the generosity of everybody in this room, the leadership to to take care of the people in this country that deserve it the most, children who are supposed to get food at school, and you have men just stealing, taking that money. And so that's what we're focused on. We are standing up as you know, Mr. President, you allowed us to stand up a new division at the Department of Justice. It's our entire existence of that division is to combat what we're talking about and then every U.S. Attorney's office is now focused on it as well. So this is something that will result in a better place for every citizen of this country and save money, a lot of money and and also it's the right thing to do for our tax dollars, Mr. President.
President Trump Participates in a Cabinet Meeting, May 27, 2026 2026-05-27 16:18
And billions of dollars was given out just very quickly before Biden left office, billions and billions were given out. And I mean, I know of many cases, but one, I don't know what's happened with it, but I think you're looking at it. I know Lee was involved in it environmentally. Stacy Abrams was given $2 billion for an account that had $103 in it. Environmental fraud, I guess. And she had $103 in this newly opened account. And before leaving business, they put $2 billion into the account and they had no reason for existence. They were unable to say what they did with it. $2 billion. Lee, you want to just mention something about that?
Well, thanks for your leadership, Mr. President, that was cancelled and they no longer have access to that $2 billion.
They fought like hell. They wanted that money. Go ahead.
In fact, it was over $29 billion that have now it's now been canceled at EPA. You told us to make it a priority. Now, this happened as soon as you came in after the election, before your inauguration, they were caught on video saying that they were rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before your swearing-in because they were afraid that once you were sworn in, you were going to stop it. Well, that part they were right.
We did.
And no we're we're happy to to do it Mr. President and the Department of Justice under Todd Blanche's leadership, they just secured another big win in Appeals Court on some recently canceled grants for different agencies. So great attorneys making sure that this accountability is delivered over the finish line. It's been a big great team effort.
And we're building more importantly we're building more factories and plants in the United States now than at any time ever before. $18 trillion coming in, that's not including the 12th month, that's 11. And I say it often that the Biden administration had much less than $1 trillion and we have $18 trillion and when those numbers those final numbers come up, they'll be even higher than that. That's a record in the history of the world. No country's ever done that. And that money's going into plants and you are giving them very fast approvals, thorough and environmentally correct, but fast approvals and you're doing a fantastic job. Thank you very much. Another man doing a fantastic job, I think we all agree is Marco. You're all over the place, right? I watched you last night in three different locations. So tell us about Iran.
Well, first of all, the bottom line is Iran's never going to have a nuclear weapon. And if recent events have done anything is just remind us once again that they are the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. And they can never have a nuclear weapon. Now, the President's preference, Mr. President, your preference has told us repeatedly is always to negotiate these things and to figure out if you can have agreements. Diplomacy is always the first option. And we continue to work on that through your envoys at Mr. Witkoff and Kushner and others, the Vice President who have been very involved. And if if there's an agreement to be made, we want that to be made. I think there's been some progress and some interest and we'll see over the next few hours and days whether progress could be made. I just want to remind everybody, Mr. President, you know this well, you have other options available to you if that doesn't work. But the bottom line is that we prefer the negotiated diplomatic route and we're going to give it every chance to succeed. I know you're giving it every chance to succeed, Mr. President. But here's the bottom line because I keep getting asked what is this all about? It's very simple. Iran and these people in charge of Iran can never have a nuclear weapon and they will never have a nuclear weapon and they most certainly will not have one as long as you're President of the United States. On that point, it's very clear. Just two quick things I want to touch upon. One, you touched upon the border and security. Part of securing our border is dealing with the people that are in this country unlawfully, many of whom do not want to go back to the country that they originally came from for a variety of reasons. Either we can't send them there or some judge ties us up. And one of the key things we have achieved is now 20 countries have signed third-country national agreements, meaning these are safe countries where individuals who refuse to go back to their country of origin can be sent to that country instead. We've gotten 20 countries now around the world who have signed agreements that allow us to deport people to those places. What often happens when you go to the person who's here unlawfully and say, we're going to send you to this third country is all of a sudden they decide they'd rather go back to their home country instead. So it gives the ability to enforce all laws and we work very closely with the Department of Homeland Security on that front. Something else that I know is concerning people because it's in the news is Ebola. Our number one obligation, you know, we're involved in foreign policy, but even our foreign policy, the number one priority of our foreign policy is to protect the American people. We cannot and will not allow any cases of Ebola to enter the United States. And so we're very the State Department and other agencies represented here, the Centers for Disease Control, HHS, others are working very, very hard to contain this crisis to the countries where it's currently located, particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And so we've surged assistance to make sure that that is being contained there. And obviously multiple agencies involved here also very involved in tracking people just to make sure that nobody comes into this country that has Ebola and creates a problem for us and we feel like we've got good efforts in place to do that and Americans should feel assured that the President and his administration is doing everything we can to protect them on that front. My last point, you said I was all over the place. One of the places I stopped in last night was to initial the the Trump route for prosperity in Armenia. This is a key lynchpin of the peace deal that you were able to achieve between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And in addition to that, we also signed a critical minerals MOU with them and and a strategic engagement one as well. So just a reminder of another war you helped to settle, Mr. President, but from that has now we are seeing the emergence of of a great new relationship with Armenia that really had grown stagnant for a very long period of time. So we're doing well in that front as well. Thank you.
And could I just ask you Cuba and Venezuela, what's going on there?
Well, interesting on Venezuela that process continues, that three-phase process, you know, of obviously stabilization, recovery and transition. I would just say since January 3rd of this year, okay, and I think this number's right, and Chris or Doug can can correct me on this, but I think over 10 million barrels of Venezuelan oil have been delivered to the United States since the 3rd of January. That industry's being professionalized for the first time ever. It's going to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. They are selling oil in the market at market rates. The money's going to a an account in the United States controlled and monitored by Treasury, audited by KPMG. And it's for the first time ever the money's not being stolen. It's going to the benefit of the Venezuelan people. Cuba's in a lot of trouble because unfortunately for them, it's run by a bunch of incompetent communists. And being communist is bad, being an incompetent communist is like the worst. And but the country's been taken over by this company called Gaesa that basically controls 70% of the economy. None of the money in that company goes to help the Cuban people, none of it. So we'll be talking to them, we'll be working on it. You know, we we want something good for the Cuban people. And hopefully, there'll be a good outcome there for them. There needs to be. It's 90 miles from our shores and having a failed state 90 miles from our shores is a threat to the national security of the United States.
So we're producing right now more oil by double than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined. It's never been anything like that. We have we don't need oil, we don't need the strait, we don't need anything. But we have more oil now being produced by double, by two times than Russia and Saudi Arabia combined. It's a great a great stat. You want to say something about that?
Well, I would, President Trump. Under your leadership, we've opened up lease sales on public land. This is land that was put away for the benefit and the use of the American people, like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. The Biden administration had illegally stopped holding lease sales during their administration. President Trump famously said drill baby drill, but before you can drill, you've got to open public lands. We between the lease sales that have happened in the Permian, in the Bakken and on the North Slope, just in just since January of this year, it's over $4 billion of revenue has come into the Treasury. That's 13 times more than the Biden administration brought in on lease sales in the entire four years they were in the office. Sir, your policies brought that in in five months. So with that, a lot of excitement, a lot of activity. We also inherited just in one district in Carlsbad, New Mexico, 5600 unprocessed applications to drill for oil and gas on public land. And when you're when we're drilling on public land, those companies pay a royalty and that money comes to all of our citizens and it goes to local school districts and it goes to states. It is the core of the economy in parts of our country. The team down there working for the Department of Interior Bureau of Land Management has dropped that by 91%. It's one of the reasons why they had a record lease sale is because now people go, I can bid on federal land and I'm going to get a permit to drill and it's not going to take me five years to get it, I'm going to get it in a month or less. And so it's just it's exciting to see your vision and of course with this energy dominance, us as you just noted, largest oil producer in the world, largest natural gas producer in the world, largest natural gas exporter. This is an opportunity for us to bring prosperity and affordability here at home but also brings peace abroad. So President Trump, your energy dominance strategy with Chris Wright, Lee Zeldin and all the people that are working on this, people around the room, you know, it's it's been really incredible. And of course, you mentioned Venezuela but all that flowing to our Gulf Coast refineries is also helping to keep the price of gas down at home. So again, it's a it's an amazing transformation. Bottom line is the center of geopolitics around energy has moved from other parts of the world to the Western Hemisphere in the last five months. You turned Venezuela from a sanctioned adversary into a into a strategic ally in 45 minutes, never happened in history before. And what's going on in Alaska, we're when I was there last week in Alaska and the North Slope, 80,000 barrels a day coming online at Pikka, that wouldn't have happened with you, it's by Willow on the North Slope. That's going into the into the Alaska pipeline. 20% increase just off that one field. So amazing work. Energy's a high-tech industry and and those guys are crushing it and they're loving loving the fact that they can provide affordable reliable secure energy for America.
And we're working very hard in California. You know, a lot of people don't know this but California has tremendous tremendous oil reserves. Used to be number three in the nation and the radical left has just wiped it out and we're working very hard to get that open again and get it so the people there, the gasoline prices, their lack of energy is just staggering. It's staggering. And we're actually making very good progress. Even people that were against that at one point, now they're saying, wow, that'd be great. But people don't realize it was one of the right, Chris? It was one of the top drilling states, one of the and I would say in terms of reserves, is among the top in the country. Nobody thinks of that with California. Everything was just closed down, really violently closed down and we're opening up some of it and we're being met with actually great spirit because they're paying so much for gasoline that they don't have to be doing that and they have very incompetent group of leaders, like grossly incompetent. So I think that's going to be something. On a slightly smaller subject, while Douglas might be in the Department of Interior, he and his people have done a fantastic job on DC. DC is looking beautiful. The fountains are almost all open. We had 28 of them and we have one in particular, a very long lake we call it, the reflecting lake between the Lincoln Monument, the I nobody's ever seen anything like it. The you take a look at between Lincoln and Washington, you have the longest like 2400 feet long. That's longer than the tallest building in the world if you set it on its side and it's almost 200 feet wide and for actually was built in 1922 and from 1922 on it really never worked. It always leaked and it was a problem and a lot of things. Hundreds of millions was spent, the Biden administration and the Obama administration spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to get it to work and they failed. And we'll be spending, you'll give me a number but I think it's a very low number, it's like in the number that we originally talked about where we cleaned it, we fumigated it, it at we had 10 10 major truck dumpsters of garbage taken out. Can you believe it? A friend of mine came in, a very substantial person from Germany, wanted to see the Washington Monument, wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial and he said I looked but that horrible reflecting pond is disgusting, it's filthy dirty and disgusting. I said really? I drove down, I said Secret Service let's take a drive, we went down, I said that's terrible. And for the most part it didn't work. I mean, they wouldn't even have water in there, but when they did it was just dirty filthy water that leaked out. And we got to work on it and it was supposed to cost almost $400 million because it's like putting the skin on a skyscraper but bigger, much bigger, many skyscrapers you could almost say other than for the world's tallest building. Think of it, the world's tallest skyscraper is shorter than 2400 feet. So we we went to work and over the years I built hundreds of pools, I build them every time I built a building. I always like to build Olympic-sized swimming pools and I was very aware of swimming pool what goes into making a swimming pool. It's not as simple as people think. You never want it to leak, you want a beautiful surface. I said you know, I have an idea, Doug. We sat down, I said let's take that long thing where we're going to fix it with concrete which leaks, concrete and all sorts of other materials that all leak and don't look good, they're gray. And you know, a swimming pool, I have a swimming pool right up the road, I built it 22 years ago, it's perfect. I said does it ever leak? No, it's perfect. Good contractors. I actually called in a couple of the contractors, got some ideas from them and I gave it to Doug and Doug's done an unbelievable job and so they were going to spend maybe $400 million. I don't know, you never know with cost overruns and everything but it it was going to take years to build, three years, four years. And we'll have it done before July 4th, substantially before July 4th. If we didn't have such bad weather the last four or five days, it could have been almost done. We have to you can't do the substance in the rain. And what they did is they cleaned it, they took out as I said more than 10 dumpsters of garbage with shovels, it was disgusting. Oh every corner of that every corner had massive amounts of, I guess that's the way the tide goes. But they had massive amounts of garbage. We then steam-cleaned it, we then sandblasted it and then we pebble-blasted it. It's a bigger version of sand we we made the surface as good as it can be and we're now covering it with the most beautiful blue very thick you think of it as a very sophisticated form of rubber, no leaks, no problem and it's beautiful. It's called American Flag Blue, that was the color we chose. And we are probably 70% finished with it. It's going to be finished, the hard part's done. And then we decided to do much more than we originally when I originally I thought I was just going to do the surface but we said the problem is the outer ring looks pretty bad too where you walk on. So we sandblasted that, this was all additional work we didn't want to do, you know, when you do something like this when you do the one you think the other looked okay but then when the other you see the the new surface, the old stuff that looked okay looks really bad. So we cleaned that, sandblasted it, the walkways, all a trem- a tremendous amount of area, you know, it's again it's it's thousands of feet long, very wide. This is where the people stand, not the water part, the dry part. And we had a combination of granite and stone and we're pointing it, fixing it, the joints were terrible, everything. The the whole place was a mess. And when it opens in a couple of weeks, long before July 4th, we want to have it for July 4th weekend but it'll be long before that. You will see something that's really going to be beautiful. And now we're looking at the World War II Fountain because that's also in pretty bad shape on the bottom. We're going to duplicate it I think with the maybe with a slightly different color actually, we'll go with a lighter color. But Doug and I have a lot of fun doing it, your staff is fantastic, they've really worked well. But the concepts, oh think of it, instead of spending $200, $300, $400 million and it will never work, we're going to spend like $10 million maybe, $12 million. Instead of spending four years, we're going to spend like if you added it all up, like a couple of months. And instead of going through four 4th of Julys as a horrible construction site, we're going to have it open before the 4th of July. And the difference is it's better. Somebody said oh well but it's not the same, you know, some of the fake news would say oh well but it's not. No, it's like the pen, sir. The pen is better at $2 than it was at $2,000. This is the same thing. This is far better. Won't leak, it'll last for 50 years, maybe 100 years. They they didn't even know. I said how long will this last? Oh, I think you'll get 50 years out of it. We did the swimming pool treatment but they said sir for a little more money we can get industrial strength. I said that sounds good to me. Same color, same everything, same stuff, but it's much it's actually much stronger. It's used for industrial. I said I love that. So we're going to have that open, it's going to be really really beautiful. And it's a very important thing, you know, we can't have people looking at the Washington Monument go and the memorial, the Washington if you take a look, the Lincoln Memorial, it it was built, I guess, a little after the Lincoln. It's embarrassing it was so horrible. I never saw anything like it. It was filthy dirty. That was Biden. And they spent between the two of them, they spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix this thing. Now, when Biden when Obama did it, he spent way over $100 million and they had a great idea, let's use the water from the Potomac. Because environmentally, they like that, somebody said that was good. But the water from the Potomac was not suitable for this to put it mildly, it was disgusting what happened. And so they spent hundreds of millions over $100 million and they immediately closed it. It was closed for many months and nobody did anything. It was closed, it's basically been closed, but go back to 1922. It was always sort of people think of it as beautiful but it was always a mess. It's going to be unbelievable. It will be unbelievable. It's actually exciting. I want to ride over there today if I can, you know, always have a problem, Secret Service isn't in love with my walking along checking checking the sidewalk, the new sidewalk, to see whether or not they pointed it correctly. But they do. We have great contractors doing the job but we'll spend a very tiny amount of money and it'll be better than it ever was when it was built in 1922. It's very exciting actually to me, I love construction, it's very exciting. And we do many things, we did 28 or 29 fountains. I made a contribution to redoing Lafayette Park, that's the entrance to the White House and it was an embarrassment, the floors were broken, the they had brick, the bricks, some of the bricks were missing, you know where they're missing? They took them out to throw at people. We're going with a it's going to be a world-class park. It'll be open pretty soon, they're doing a lot of work over there. That was a contribution that I made with some other people and it's going to be really beautiful. That was really the front door to the White House, but you couldn't even use it it was so terrible. People would come to the White House and it was so terrible. So with that, I'm going to ask Pete to talk about some of our great success, including Venezuela you might talk.
Absolutely, sir. I think actually your efforts on the reflecting pool are actually a great segue. If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people. And when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged war against us and our people, there's only one man over the course of both presidency who has stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon as Marco said. So whether it was Qasem Soleimani, whether it was scrapping the Obama deal that was going to give them a weapon, whether it was the 12-day war or Operation Midnight Hammer, you created the conditions to ensure the American people and the world are safeguarded from this generational threat. And so when you authorized Operation Epic Fury, just like you talked about with the reflecting pool, we didn't do the same old thing the way we'd done in the past after, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan, the way we waged wars. Instead, you said we're going to do this smart, we're going to do it overwhelming, we're going to use maximum lethality and we're going to bring them to their knees. And so whether it's their Navy that's at the bottom of the Persian Gulf, their Air Force, their air defenses or their defense industrial base, they may have missiles but they can't build more right now. And they can't build more drones right now. And they can't build more ships. And so they came and cried uncle to talk, which Steve and Jared and the Vice President and others are doing so ably. And in the during that time, we put in a world-class blockade. And they haven't been able to bring anything in or anything out from Iranian ports and we know from the intel that they are their their economy is hurting big time because that is their lifeblood. And again, bringing them to the table. So whether it is through the efforts of your negotiators that they ensure that they never have a nuclear weapon or we have to go back to the War Department to finish the job that way, we're prepared to do that. And I think even our reach on the dark fleet of Iranian tankers, no Iranian tanker around the globe is safe and we've seen seizures all around the globe, again, choking off their economic lifeblood. But all of this is possible, Mr. President, thanks to the investments that you've made in this department, firing on all cylinders. For the second year in a row, we're at historic historic recruitment rates. Last year, we said that here, this year we beat it even faster. The American people are excited about what you're bringing to our department. Our defense industrial base, $50 billion in private investments in because of your the meetings you've held. Defense manufacturers are investing in new plants and new manufacturing, new production lines so that we're getting weapons faster than ever. And then the 1.5 trillion that you've committed to the department going forward, that's a million American jobs, one million American manufacturing jobs. That's Golden Dome for America. That's F-47. That's B-21. That's 50 billion in drones we're going to lead the lead the world in drones, shaving years off of production of all of those, everything under budget and ahead of schedule, which is what the warfighter deserves. And we saw it, you mentioned Venezuela, Mr. President, you saw it on display there. Think of the fact that our Southcom commander just landed via helicopter at our embassy peacefully at the welcome of the Venezuelans because we're now partnering with them hopefully, even on the counter-cartel mission as we secure our hemisphere. So we've secured that Southwest border, we're going to war with the cartels through the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition. Venezuela's a big part of securing our energy future and defending the homeland. And then I just want to note one more thing to give you a sense of how committed this President is. Maybe a year ago, he heard the call of Nigerian Christians who were being targeted and killed by ISIS in Nigeria. And he said, Pete, I want the War Department to focus on ensuring that we do everything we can to protect those Christians. Partnerships like that can take time behind the scenes, but he never wavered on it. And we got the assets there and over the last month and there hasn't been much coverage of this, we killed ISIS number two in Nigeria who's most responsible for killing Christians and trying to target the U.S. homeland and have since because of the intel we gathered, killed hundreds of ISIS members who were targeting and killing Christians in Nigeria, creating a whole new opportunity there. So there's a lot of things we do that the media pays attention to and a lot of the things the the President empowers the department to do on behalf of the American people that he deserves great credit for.
Great job. You've done a great job. I I just want to say on recruitment, we're very proud of the fact that for the previous four years, previous administration, they had I mean, they couldn't recruit people. And that included, by the way, police and firemen and others, they were not proud of our country and they couldn't recruit anybody with a uniform and was having a hard time recruiting and they set record low numbers. They were way way behind. And literally from November 5th it started. It started even before we got going. But from the time we won the election to now we've had numbers of recruitment the likes of which we've never had, record recruitment in every single branch and that includes police and firemen, record recruitment. So we're very proud of that. Thank you, great job. Kelly, please.
Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. And you're leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known. And I see that every week as I travel this country Main Streets across dozens of states, from Alaska to Maine, been in many of those states two or three times. I hear it everywhere I go. Please thank the President for putting us back on track. They thank you, they love you, they want more of what we're doing. Tax cuts, deregulation, fair trade, energy dominance. Small businesses are spring-loaded and we see that in the jobs numbers. In the last two months alone, we've created over 300,000 private sector jobs in this country. Most jobs are created by small businesses, two out of three and small businesses, as you know, make up 99% of all businesses in this country and account for half of our GDP. So when that part of the economy is finally working again, they've gotten out from under $5 trillion of regulation that the Biden administration put on hardworking small businesses. They penalized growth, investment, hardworking and success but thanks to the working family tax cuts that every single Democrat voted against, hardworking families, the welders, the waitresses that I meet on factory floors across this country from Pennsylvania to New Mexico where I'll be tomorrow. Brook and I are going to Arizona tonight. So we see this everywhere we go. It's one of the most underreported stories in the media. Main Street is back and that's because of America First. I'll tell you the other thing about fraud, small businesses are particularly hurt by the fraud because they're some of our biggest taxpayers in the country. And they show up every day, they work hard to provide for their employees, to build their businesses. They're working hard they're doing it the honest way. And they see fraudsters taking from the American people. It's taxpayer money. And so you think about at the SBA, we found $200 billion in fraudulent PPP loans that the Biden administration tried to hide and forgive and sweep under the rug. We've turned the first $22 billion of that over to Treasury for collections and to DOJ for prosecution. Our Inspector General is already announcing that people are going to jail, there are jail sentences now being served. We've announced that 140,000 people have been barred from ever getting SBA loans again for defrauding the government for about $9 billion. So we are going to continue our work under the great leadership of Vice President Vance and appreciate the partnership because it's really accelerated our ability to get the job done. But then just back to small businesses. We have record business formation in this country. That's another story the media won't tell you. Over half a million businesses on average a month this year. So it's not just record people working, strong job creation, business formation at all-time records in this country. But we have manufacturing expansion, four consecutive months. That means that's a leading indicator meaning that we have expansion coming. Another story the media won't tell you, 98% of all manufacturers are small businesses. They 75% of our defense industrial base is small business. They're our main exporter. And so America First, free trade, fair fair trade, deregulation, tax cut and energy dominance is helping workers on Main Street and that's why they tell you to tell me to tell you, Mr. President, thank you and they love you.
Well, thank you very much. Great job. Thank you, Kelly. And I just say, you know, we went to China last week, we had an amazing meeting with President Xi, the relationships very good. We're doing a lot of business with China now, but it's it's not where they were ripping us off for years and years they ripped us off like nobody ever got ripped off as now it's very profitable business that we do with China and they respect our country again. We have the strongest military in the world by far and they respect our country again. Scott, please.
Sir, on the economy, two words: resilience and prosperity. The continued resilience of the economy speaks for itself, even during the Iran the conflict, and it speaks to the strength of your leadership. Pro-growth policies are creating the conditions for American families and businesses to prosper, re-entering the second half of our 250th anniversary year with renewed optimism and momentum. It has never been a better time to be an American and as you said earlier, we have a record number of Americans working. The economy that you are building is not only strong but secure and resilient and better positioned to compete globally. Real GDP has risen 2.7% over the past four quarters, something that many economists said couldn't be done. In the first quarter of 2026, despite Iran conflict, GDP grew at a 2% annual rate. The Atlanta Fed GDP Now is predicting 4.3% for this quarter. In terms of prices, I believe the prices are transitory. Oil will be lower than pre-conflict levels when this ends. Natural gas is already down. As you mentioned, drug and pharmaceutical prices, they are plummeting and rent is down. We are more resilient to energy price fluctuations due to your energy dominance agenda, regulatory efforts and we have never sold so much energy to the rest of the world. Business investment rose at a 10.4% annual rate in the first quarter. Capital expenditures and business equipment rose more than 17% and that is the as a result of the tax bill and tariffs. Jobs related to commercial construction, factory construction are up 90,000 since your inauguration. In the past two months, the private sector as Kelly said, has added 313,000 new jobs and those are private sector jobs, sir, including 13,000 manufacturing jobs. We have construction jobs, we're building the factories and those will turn into manufacturing jobs. The stock market has hit new highs. The stock market lives in the future, it is seeing the the other side of this conflict, it is a strong symbol of optimism for the future. Corporate earnings are high and wages are doing well. For the tax season, we had the best tax filing season in history, which is a victory for Main Street. The average refund was nearly $3,300, 11% increase from last tax filing season. And importantly, 62 million returns had one of your four signature policies: no tax and tips, no tax on overtime, the reduced taxes, 85% of our seniors paid no taxes on Social Security and the deductibility of auto loans for American-made cars. For the what I believe is the most important government benefit for young people since the GI Bill, the Trump Accounts, the App will be available on all major platforms tomorrow morning. And it will place the American dreams into the palms of the hands of parents and children. Nearly 6 million kids have been signed up for Trump Accounts and they will launch on July 4th and it will be a great symbol of the 250th anniversary. Main Street prosperity workers have seen positive wage gains, the unemployment rate remains low at 4.3% and private sector job growth is strong. So sir, just to reiterate, resilience and prosperity have been the marks of your second term.
Well done. It's been amazing. Any questions?
Thank you, Mr. President. Iris Tao with NTD sister media with the Epoch Times. You've done a lot to clean up DC and fight crime here. And as a lot of Americans and people from all around the world are coming to the nation's capital ahead of the major 250th birthday of the events here, how important is it for you to really keep delivering on these results, but also what does it mean for America's identity on the national and international stage?
So I'm very proud of DC because when we came here a little more than a year ago, it was very dangerous place. And now it's a very safe place. It's been incredible what's happened as you if you see the crime numbers. We had restaurants closing up and nobody wanted to go to a restaurant, they were afraid to walk to work. It was very very dangerous place, very unsafe. And now it's a very safe place. We brought in the National Guard, we worked with Case and the FBI and Janine is doing fantastically and Todd and everybody. And it's now a very safe city and people are pouring in and you see the grass is all beautiful. We put a lot of new grass in because you know, like like people, grass has a life too. And this grass had been up a long time. But we the waterfalls we talked about and the fountains are the most of them are in the final stages or fixed. People are writing me letters, people are talking about it, they're all we have some of the most beautiful fountains in the world and there wasn't one, not one that worked. We had 29, out of the 29 not one was working, in addition to the reflecting pool, which is even, you know, that was the big one of all of them, but that was a disaster. So with all of that and this place is looking beautiful. I rode through it yesterday, the fences are down, the homeless aren't staying here any longer. We have we're helping them out, but we're not, you know, we just can't have them in the nation's capital. And when foreign dignitaries come in they're saying the first thing they say to me, this place has really changed. They they saw the it was going down our whole country was going down just like DC was going down. And as you know, the restaurants were closing up, there weren't very many restaurants and now they're opening up, you can't get a space and everyone's going out to dinner and they're safe. We had the national security and we have the National Guard and and we're going to keep them. You know, I want to by the way just in case I mentioned, keep them. And don't lower the number either. Somebody said oh are there less? I said I hope not, but don't lower the number if you don't mind, okay? We're going to surge this summer too. They look great. You know what they give people? We have we took out 5,000 criminals, hardcore criminals. By the way, 90% of the crime is calculated, they calc- 2% of the people do 90% of the crime. That's a great number. Because when you get rid of 2%, 2% you can get rid of, 90% you can't get rid of, 2%. So 2% create 90% of the crime, 91% actually to be exact. And we have really we moved 5,000 people Todd out of here. We these are career criminals, many of them came over from the last administration through the open border, the ridiculous open border. No vetting, nobody knew who they were, they came out of prisons, they came out of they're drug dealers, they were people from mental institutions. And Washington DC is now a safe and beautiful place and it's only going to get more beautiful. Yeah, please.
Thank you, Mr. President, for having us in here today. What are your thoughts, why do you think Joe Biden is trying to sue the Department of Justice, former President Joe Biden, to have his tapes that he did in a news on blocked from the American people hearing them? Do you think that he's trying to hide something and maybe Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche could comment on if they will countersue and release those tapes to the American people?
Are you talking about with respect to his book? Well, I'd like to see it. I don't know, maybe there's some constitutional reason, I don't know, I'd like to I would like to see what he has to say because we can never allow what happened to this country to happen. The man was grossly incompetent and the Democrats, I call them the Democrats because the policy is so bad, but they they came very close to destroying our country. We can never let it happen again and I hope that you're able to produce that. I think it would be very interesting reading for people.
Mr. President, Iran wants control of the straight moves. Would you accept a short-term deal that allows Iran and Oman to control the straight and would they have to open it immediately or would you be open to that happening over a period of time?
Yeah. No, the straight's going to be open to everybody. It's it's-
And who would control it?
It's international waters. Nobody's going to control it. We're going to watch over it, we'll watch over it, but nobody's going to control it. That's part of the negotiation that we have. They would like to control it. Nobody's going to control it. It's international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else or we'll have to blow them up. They understand that, they'll be fine.
Mr. President, how much economic pressure do you feel to get the straight and four moves open?
Well, you have to understand, the United States has so much oil that we are an exporter of oil. So we have plenty of oil, we're very lucky, we're blessed with the greatest piece of land in the world from that standpoint and we have more than anybody else and now when you add Venezuela to it, we have I think 64% of the world's oil. And we're getting along very well with Venezuela by the way. It's being run really beautifully. The big companies are moving in, you know, going to be it's going to be amazing because it's also like us, a very they're very blessed in that sense. But we have natural energy that no other country has. We have more than anybody else. So it's really a world problem because most of the world doesn't have that. And we're making it available. During the the closing, I don't know if you've seen some of the satellite pictures, boats, hundreds of boats lined up. It looks like I used to say the Long Island Expressway with cars. They're lined up and they're coming to Texas, Louisiana, they're coming to Alaska to fill up their boat. Their big boat, some of them are really big, you know, 2 billion gallons, even bigger than that now as they make them, they make them up to four, Chris, I hear. Now they make them up to four, the fours are now the big ones. It used to be the ones, now it's 4 million barrels of think of that, 4 million barrels of oil in one boat. But they're lined up and they're right now heading to Texas and they've already filled up and they've gone back. In addition to that, you have a lot of boats, about 14, 1500 boats in the straight wanting to get out and at the right time we'll release them.
But the American people, sir, are seeing higher gas prices. It's come down a little bit but it's still $4.45.
No, it's come down. Oh, it'll come down a lot. It'll it'll come down to where it was before. We had it when I was in Iowa, we had we were driving by and we saw gas stations $1.90 a gallon, $1.85, $1.87 were the three that we saw. We had it down in some places below. Now, we can't help a California where they charge so much tax that, you know, you lower it and they charge tax. They've got to straighten the act out in California, but we had oil we had gasoline down to a very low number. I think we'll be hitting that number shortly after that whole excursion ends. But regardless of anything, regardless of anything, as Marco said better than anybody can say it, you can't let them have a nuclear weapon. They would use it instantly, they wouldn't think about it, they would use it instantly. I've gotten to know them, they would use it instantly.
Does that give you more urgency, Mr. President? You've said that you're in no rush to make a deal, but with gas prices that are still high across the country, people are paying more for travel. Does that give you more urgency to make a deal? Why doesn't it?
Well, I'll tell you the primary urgency I have, I've said this it wasn't covered properly, but the primary urgency is that we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. But at the same time, we have a tremendous amount of oil, gas, coal, we have a tremendous amount of energy. We're blessed with something very special. Those prices are going to come down, they're going to come down fast. I think I think that you'll see, actually, Todd, I think you're going to see lower prices that we had even before we did this. Now, I knew there'd be an increase. I said we have a choice. We don't have to do anything and in two years or one year or two months because Iran would have had a if we didn't hit them with the B-2 bombers, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon within two weeks from that date because they were ready to go. And if they had a new weapon a nuclear weapon, it would have been used already. It also would have been used had I not terminated the Obama deal, the Iran nuclear deal as we call it, that was in my first term. Had I not terminated that, they would have had a nuclear weapon a long time ago. I would say it was a guarantee that it would have been used and it would have blown up Israel, it would have blown up the entire Middle East. And that's never going to happen. Yeah, please.
On the shooting with Iran, would you be comfortable with Russia or China taking their stockpile of highly enriched uranium and have they offered to do that?
No, I wouldn't be comfortable.
No, that would not make me comfortable. Is the US considering easing sanctions on Iran to allow Iran to sell oil at market?
No, we're not talking about any easing of sanctions or giving money. No sanctions, no money, no nothing.
We have control of money that they claim is theirs. We'll keep control of that money. When they behave properly and when they do what's right, we'll let them have their money. But right now we're not doing that and it's not one thing is not contingent on the other. Mr. President, on the shooting last weekend, it came barely a month after the third assassination attempt against you during the White House Correspondents' Dinner. What was your reaction when you first heard about the latest shooting and what keeps you encouraged to really keep doing your job effectively without thinking about these threats every day?
Well, I can't think about it because if I thought about it a lot, you know, I wouldn't be a very good President. I wouldn't be here.
Probably I'd be up in some room with a locked door and say just leave me alone. So I can't really think about it. It's it's just something that it's a sad part of life. It's a dangerous business what I'm doing is a dangerous business and they say and look, we have been maybe the most consequential, but we certainly have been one of the most consequential, this group of has been a very consequential administration. And they say if you're not consequential, you don't have so much problem. If you are consequential, you do. So you have to look at that. But but it's a shame, it's a sad, it's a shame, it's a very sad fact of life. Look, anybody in office, not only in this country, in other countries too, but when you are a consequential President, your life is in grave danger. I knew that.
Yeah, sir.
Mr. President, how would you characterize the current state of the talks with Iran? I guess if it were a football field, what yard line would you be on?
Well, I think we're doing very well. They are starting to give us the things that they have to give us and if they do, that's great. And if they won't, then the man on my left is going to finish them off.
Is there a time frame in your mind?
I mean, it happens quickly. The problem is every time I mention a time frame, for instance, I see, you know, we've been doing this for a few months. Vietnam lasted 19 years. Korea lasted 8 years. Afghanistan lasted many years. They were all many many years and we're into it for a few months and I read about you people like you, what's taking so long? But we're in it. You know, we lost between two wars, two big wars, Venezuela and Iran, we lost 13 souls, 13 great people, met the parents, great people. And it's a terrible thing but 13. If you look at the war casualties and the deaths in wars for Vietnam and all that, they lost hundreds of thousands of people in numerous of these wars. We want we're very cognizant of that. We want to lose very few, we want very few to be injured. We're very we're very careful. But war is war, war is dangerous. But we've lost 13. I saw the Democrats took an ad putting in the 13 people that were lost and when you look at hundreds of thousands of people that were lost in the Middle East, Iraq, all the different wars we were in. We have done an amazing job. With that being said, I hate to lose 13, I hate to lose one, but we've been very we've been very capable. I mean, when you think of it, we took over Venezuela in one day. We have done a similar job but we said, well, give them a little chance at the request of somebody that we greatly respect from Pakistan, the Field Marshal and the Prime Minister, they've been great. They asked us would we pause the war for a little while because they'd like to negotiate so we will do that. But we had them beat, you know, no better now, we could we could close that out very quickly. If we can do it in a different way, that would be good. If we get everything we we want. But we could close that out very very quickly and we may have to. I don't think so, but we may have to.
About the World Cup if I could. US spent a lot of money getting the World Cup here and in increasing infrastructure. Does the economic benefit outweigh the cost?
No, the World Cup is great. It's the most successful they've ever had ticket-wise. It's they've never had anything that sold so quickly. It's amazing because it's the United States. You don't think of we I call it soccer, you know, it's just it's easier to do because we have football and they have two footballs, right? They call it football. But I never most people never thought they'd see anything like that. The World Cup, it's turned out to be the most successful World Cup from the standpoint of what's happening than they've ever had. Yeah, please.
One more question. Thank you so much. Robin Ortiz with Turning Point USA. I have one question for you and one question for Vice President JD Vance on fraud. What's your message to the New Jersey leaders pushing back against ICE operations at Delaney Hall?
About ICE? Or about nice, as I call it ice? The nice facility. I'd love to change the name, call it nice. They do a great job and it's all paid-for protesters. You know, you can see by the signs, the signs are all made by the same beautiful factory. It's a printing plant. In fact, I'm thinking about using it, they do such a nice job. These aren't protesters. These people are fake, they're all paid for. And I will tell you, Tom Homan and that whole group and now Mark Wayne, who's so incredible. Mark Wayne, you want to just respond to that? We run the finest facilities anywhere in the world of their type. But we have some horrible killers. We have killers, we have guys that have murdered numerous people in there and these are the people they're trying to protect. There's nobody that runs a facility like we do. Mark Wayne, please.