Well, thank you very much everybody. We have a meeting with a man who's become a friend of mine, and we've known each other for a little while in some very interesting times. And we get along. Our countries get along very well. We have a great affinity for each other. And the Chancellor has been very well received in Germany. A very successful man, became the Chancellor of Germany, which is a big deal. And he's doing a very good job, my opinion, a really great job, very popular. And the relationship that we have in trade and everything else has been very strong. We've been able to do our deals and it's been very strong. We'll obviously be talking a little bit about Iran today, and he's been helping us out, doing, he's been very nice actually. And that is coming along as you see very well. They have no navy, it's been knocked out. They have no air force, it's been knocked out. They have no air detection, that's been knocked out. Their radar has been knocked out. And just about everything's been knocked out. So we'll see how we do, but we're doing, we're doing very well. We have a great military and they're doing a fantastic job. So we'll be talking about that. And we're talking about some very big trade deals. And those I know will work out too. So I just want to say it's a great honor to have you at the Oval Office, the beautiful Oval Office, beautiful White House. It's a special place, even from your standpoint, and you have some very special places too. And I look forward to being with you. Thank you.
President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting, Mar. 3, 2026
Thank you, Mr. President, for having me here in this Oval Office for the third time now. Yeah. Really happy to have the opportunity to speak with you in these challenging times. We are on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Tehran away. And we will talk about the day after, what will happen then if they are out. We have to talk about our trade agreement, which I would like to be in place as soon as possible. And we have to talk about Ukraine. There are too many bad guys in this world actually. And this is an issue we have to talk about because we all want to see this war coming to an end as soon as possible. But Ukraine has to preserve its territory and their security interests and, well, we will talk about that. Looking forward to that.
Well, thank you for being here.
Thank you for your hospitality. Thank you for letting me spending the night in your guest house.
That's right. Very, very comfortable. Glad you liked it, right?
Absolutely. Yeah, great place. And a famous place.
That's right. Very famous. So many former presidents.
That's right. Very famous place.
Any questions?
Mr. President, did Israel force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran? Did Netanyahu pull the United States into this war?
No, I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. And we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successfully. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. But Israel was ready and we were ready and we've had a very, very powerful impact because virtually everything they have has been knocked out now. Their missile count is going way down. Amazingly, they're hitting countries that were, you know, let's call them neutral, right? They lived together for a long time. They, I think they were surprised. I was surprised. I think it, and now those countries are all fighting against them and fighting strongly against them. Someday they'll write a story and they'll say why they did that. But they hit countries that had nothing to do with what's going on. They were sort of leaving everything alone. All of a sudden they get, they had missiles shot in, which shows you the level of evil that we're dealing with. They'll hit people that were actually at least somewhat friendly and they had no problems with it. Also hitting only civilian places, hotels and apartment buildings. And we're hitting them where it is much more appropriate. We're hitting them very hard. And the big scale hitting goes now. They no longer have air protection. They no longer have any detection facilities at all left. And so they're going to, they're going to be in for a lot of hurt. These are bad people. These are people that killed, I guess it's 35,000, it's coming out, 35,000 over the last three weeks, protesters. 35,000 violently killed. So these are bad people. And the leader of the pack is gone. And as you know, 49 people were taken out in the first hit. And I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership and it looks like that was pretty substantial also. So they're getting hit very hard and we'll see what happens. A lot of people are coming forward. A lot of the people you would at least suspect want to quit. They want to have immunity. They're asking for immunity. And probably at some point they'll be dropping, as you would say, laying down their guns. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, we just continue to go forward. Our military is the number one in the world by far. And we are, this is everything's big in my book. Venezuela was big, this is big, the original hit Midnight Hammer was big. Everything you view is big. But it's not considered very big by some standards, by some of our standards. We have a military like no other military that's ever been built.
Mr. President, what's the worst case scenario that you have planned for in Iran?
Well, I don't know if there's a worst case. We have them very much beaten militarily from the military standpoint. They're still lobbing some missiles. At some point they won't even be able to do that because we're hitting all of their carriers. We're hitting all of their missile stock. You know, they built up all these missiles over the last few years. They had a lot of them. They've shot a lot of them. And we're knocking out a lot. I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. We don't want that to happen. That would probably be the worst. You go through this and then in five years you realize you put somebody in who was no better. So we'd like to see somebody in there that's going to bring it back for the people. And we'll see what happens with the people. You know, they have their chance and we've said don't do it yet. If you're going to go out and protest, don't do it yet. It's very dangerous out there. A lot of bombs are being dropped. But I would say that would be about the worst.
Do you have someone in mind right now? Because you've said all the people you did have in mind have been taken out. What do you think?
Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is, is dead. And now we have another group, they may be dead also based on reports. So I guess you'll have a third wave coming in. Pretty soon we're not going to know anybody. But we have, I mean, Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack and we kept the government totally intact. And we have Delcy, who's been very good. We have the whole chain of command and they've been, you know, the relationship's been great. We've taken out a hundred million barrels of oil already. And a big part of that goes to them and a big part goes to us. And it's been great. We paid for the war many times over. And we're going to be running the oil. And Venezuela is going to make more money than they ever made and that's great for the people. The relationship has been great. It's been seamless. Nobody's actually ever seen anything like it. If you look at Iraq, where very stupidly everybody was fired, the generals were fired, the military was fired, the police were fired, the fire departments were fired, and all of the government workers were fired. So after people would call, they had no idea. And by the way, ISIS was formed. That's where ISIS came from, all of the fired people. We don't believe in that. So we'll see what happens. But first we have to finish off the military.
What about Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi? Is he an option at all in your mind?
I guess he is. Some people like him. And we haven't been thinking about too much about that. It would seem to me that somebody from within might be more appropriate. I've said that. He looks like a very nice person. But it would seem to me that somebody that's there that's currently popular, if there is such a person. But we have people like that. We have people that were more moderate. You know, these were radical lunatics. And you know what they get? They get nothing. All they do is kill people.
What exactly was the imminent threat, Mr. President?
Not your turn. Not your turn. Please.
Mr. President, how have you been taking the heat off the Europeans to potentially help Mark Rutte hold on to the Chagos Islands? Have you asked your allies to also help you?
What does that mean?
Well, you have to ask Mark Rutte. He said not as part of NATO, but to be helpful to you in this. And will you help him?
Well, some of the European nations have been helpful and some haven't. And I'm, you know, very surprised that Germany's been great. He's been terrific. Others have been very good, terrific. I think that the head of NATO, Mark, is fantastic, okay? Mark Rutte. I think he's fantastic. But some of the European, like Spain, has been terrible. In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. Spain, first of all, it started when every European nation, at my request, paid 5%, which they should be doing. And everybody was enthusiastic about it, Germany, everybody. And Spain didn't do it. And now Spain actually said that we can't use their bases. And that's all right. We don't need, we could use their base if we want, we could just fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us not to use it. But we don't have to. But they were unfriendly. And so I told him that we don't want, Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people. But they don't have great leadership. And as you know, they were the only country that in NATO would not agree to go up to 5%. I don't think they went agree to go up to anything. They wanted to keep it at 2% and they don't pay the 2%. So we're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain. And I'm not, by the way, I'm not happy with the UK either. That island that you read about, the lease, okay, he made for whatever reason, he made a lease of the island. Somebody came and took it away from them. And it's taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there. It would have been much more convenient landing there as opposed to flying many extra hours. So we are very surprised. This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with.
Mr. President, what's your expectations towards Germany? What can Germany do and what should Germany do to help you in this conflict?
Well, I think they're doing it. I mean, they're letting us land in certain areas and that's, we appreciate it. And they're just making it comfortable. We're not asking them to put boots on the ground or anything. I mean, we're just, they're a respected country. We have a very good relationship with the country. We have in particular now with this leader, with this new leader. I think he's an excellent leader. I had my differences with Angela. I said you're hurting your country with immigration and you're hurting your country with energy. And we have a man sitting on my right that is, I think pretty much the opposite of her on energy and the opposite on immigration. And I think he's doing very well.
Mr. President, commercial air travel right now is severely restricted in the Middle East, and thousands of Americans are stranded. Why hasn't there been an evacuation plan and will you send planes to get people out?
Well, because it happened all very quickly. We thought and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You're seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting and those are stationary, those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries. So I think I was right about that. We attacked first. And if we didn't, it could have been, you know, look, we're really decimating them. They're being decimated. And if we didn't, if we didn't hit and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end, a lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden very stupidly for free. And I'm all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot. As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union's paying for it, then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let's say to Ukraine, and that's okay. But we gave away a lot of high end, but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we're using in this war. And we have an really an unlimited supply. We also have a lot of the very high end stored in different countries throughout the world where they're we're literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military in my first term. The military's great. A lot of a lot unbelievable amount of of ammunition or munitions, as they say, were given away to you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East, not to the Middle East, was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East. Middle East would buy a lot. And some of the nations because they're rich, they have a lot. But it was given away to Ukraine. And it just should have been done. Look, it's a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened. But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff.
Mr. President, a question to both of you. How worried are you that the rising prices for gas and oil are damaging the American economy and also, Mr. Chancellor, German?
Yeah, do you want me to go ahead? Sure. This is of course damaging our economies. This is true for the oil prices and this is true for the gas prices as well. So that's the reason why we all hope that this war will come to an end as soon as possible. And we are hoping that the Israeli and the American army are doing the right things to bring this to an end and to have really a new government in place who is coming back to peace and freedom.
Yeah, something had to be done. And it's been 47 years they've been killing people all over the world for a long time. They were the the kings and fathers of the roadside bomb. Soleimani, we killed him last term. If we didn't, I think it might be a different story today. They would have been much stronger and smarter than they are. But they did the roadside bombs, 95% of the people lost their legs, arms, had their face wiped out, just wiped out. I've seen some young people that it's so sad to watch and that was all almost or 95% comes from Iran and with Soleimani. Soleimani loved, it was his favorite weapon, he loved the roadside bomb. And when you see people walking around with no legs and no arms and a face that's been blown to hell, these people what they have to go and the way they have to live, this is this is Iran. When you look at the barracks, the famous barracks, when you look at the hostages, when you look at a lot of hostages, when you look at all of the problems, they were really a purveyor of terror all over the world for many, many years. And it's something that had to be done. Something and I I believe that if we didn't, because I see where Congress, you know, if I didn't do this, guys like Shomer who are losers, the Democrats are losers, that's why they're not here. Guys like Shomer would say, well, you should have done this. In other words, if I did it, it's no good. If I didn't do it, they would have said the opposite that you should have done this. But most people feel I tell you what, I have never had more compliments on something I did. People felt it's something that had to be done. So if we have a little high oil prices for a little while, but as soon as this ends, those prices are going to drop, I believe, lower than even before.
Mr. President, could you please clarify on what exactly was the imminent threat?
Go ahead, please.
Mr. President, how do you want to solve the conflict on tariffs between you and US in this?
Between who?
Between you and US, how do you want to solve between and US and who? EU. European Union.
Well, we we we won on tariffs actually. Somebody said you actually won the case. We won on tariffs. We had a decision that was wrong, was a very bad decision from certain standpoints. From other standpoints, a very powerful decision because it reaffirmed all the fact that we have these all these various forms of tariffs that we felt right. But it totally reaffirmed it. Said you can use all of these tariffs. So we have all these vast menus of tariffs. And tariffs have made our country very rich. We have to charge tariffs to nations who play with their money, you know, they move their money up and down like like a yo-yo. We have to we have to take care of nations that that have been good to us and fair to us and we're going to take care of them. Other nations they haven't and we haven't let them take advantage of us. But the whole thing with tariffs is we had a decision that like as an example, we have a license situation and the license is something that allows us to immediately stop all business with nobody even know knew we had this power. But we we do now because of the decision. We have the right to stop all business having to do with a certain country. If a certain country's not treating us well, the president without going to Congress, without has the right to stop sort of interesting. Have the right to stop but under that one law I didn't have the right to charge them. So I have the right to license them but I don't have the right to charge, which is frankly ridiculous. But the right was given to us by the Supreme Court and we have the right as an example we talked about Spain. I could tomorrow stop or today even better stop everything having to do with Spain. All business having to do with Spain. Have the right to stop it. Embargoes, do anything I want with it. And we may do that with Spain. What do you think?
Well, Sarah, we're going to talk about it with you. I know that you have strong power. We want to clarify, we know you can use it, and if you need to use it to ensure national and economic security, we'll do it.
Scott, do you have an an opinion?
Sir, I I agree. The Supreme Court reaffirmed your ability to implement an embargo. And as we've talked, the from your first term, the section 301s and the 232s have withheld more than 4,000 lawsuits and USTR and Commerce are going to instigate or going to begin investigations and we'll move forward with those.
And we've instituted a 15% tariff on everybody as you know. And just used a I tell you we had a couple of of paragraphs written in that in that opinion that were really incredible. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a fantastic dissent. But in his dissent, he he said what we should do. And and we knew that too. We just wanted to simplify it. And for some reason I think, you know, very very foolishly the the courts decided no. But they said you can do it many other ways and that's what we're doing. And what we've done is we we've gone to a very simple straight 15% tariff. It's taken in we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in our country because of tariffs. So we've taken in all of this money hundreds of billions of dollars and honestly it's made us very rich as a country. Right? So it's been doing good. When will you have the full plan implemented? We have a five month period up to five months where we can go at 15%. And while we're doing that as you know we're doing the various studies and things and we'll be coming out with tariffs different tariffs on different countries. Do you want to talk about that?
Yes, sir, by the by the time the five month period has elapsed, we'll have completed investigations under section 301 that Secretary Bascom talked about. We know there are countries out there with deals who are very interested in keeping the deals. We need to go through and investigate all these unfair trading practices, the kinds of things you talked about, and make sure that we're protecting US economic security.
How are we going to treat Germany?
Well, I think you should hit them very, very hard. Genius right there, right? So we work with them. They want to they have expressed an interest. Germany's been quite constructive and wanting to move forward and and be helpful, you know, the rest of the EU you will talk to them as well.
I will say every country, every single country wants to make the deal they already have. In other words, a deal that we have using the other authority they want to make the same deal. And and we like to see actually we're going to adjust it somewhat upward actually. But they would they all want to stay in the deal. And so we'll probably be able to do that pretty easily.
Mr. President, for Ukraine after all, Iran won't be able to deliver drones to Russia anymore. So what does this war mean to Ukraine? And having Chancellor Martz sitting next to you, whom would you call if you want to talk to Europe? And Chancellor Martz, you've just been in China...
Who you what country are you from?
I'm from Germany.
Okay. I thought so. I could tell.
So, Mr. Chancellor, you have been in China and the president is interested in China. Will you be talking about China as well during this visit?
We'll be talking about China, yeah. Thank you. Every count I'll be going to China in a little while. Every every time you meet you talk about China. We respect China. I do. We both do, I think. But it's always a topic of conversation. We've had a very good relationship with China. We used to lose a tremendous amount of money with China and that's no longer the case. We have a a very, very good relationship with China. And we have a very good relationship with Germany. All right.