Very rich people coming into the country. One of them came in with 57 children. Okay? 57 children. They're using the system, and it's usually people that hate our country, if you want to know the truth. Birthright citizenship is done by no other country, no other country in the world, the way we're doing it. It's—we're a laughingstock. And if the Supreme Court approved that decision, they have done a great disservice to the United States of America, just like they did a great disservice by costing us $149 billion on tariffs by saying, 'Do it a different way. Get the same result, do it a different way.' We should have won that decision. We had a very strong, very powerful dissent. We had three dissents. So it wasn't like a unanimous decision by any means. We had very powerful dissents. When you read that dissent, people that read that dissent say, 'You really should have won this case.' We should have won that case on tariffs. That case cost our country $149 million. It goes to people that hate our country. So now we have another one coming up: birthright citizenship. It would be a disgrace, it would be a disgrace if the Supreme Court of the United States allows that to happen. Remember what I said, 20% to 25% of the people coming into our country will come in through birthright citizenship. They'll become citizens through birthright citizenship, and it'll cost us numbers that are—I don't even think they're doable. And it's all up to a couple of people, and I hope they do what's right. Birthright citizenship is a disgrace, the fact that—look at the people that are bringing this suit. Study the people that are bringing this suit. These are not people that love our country, I can tell you that.
President Trump Participates in an Announcement with the Administrator of the EPA 2026-05-21 16:18
Mr. President, your march on today's executive order on AI been postponed?
Because I didn't like certain aspects of it, I postponed it. I think it gets in the way of—you know, we're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead. We have a very substantial—on AI, it's causing—it's causing tremendous good, and it's also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs. Again, we have more people working right now than we've ever had. I really thought that could have been a blocker, and I want to make sure that it's not.
Mr. President, with President Xi last week, did you discuss AI safeguards?
I did. I did discuss it. And he acknowledges how well we're doing. We're doing well. He's doing—it's the two of us, the two countries are fighting for it. Other countries are way behind, way, way behind. They're fighting for it, they want it, everybody wants it, but they're way behind. But I didn't want to do—I postponed that meeting, it was a press conference—it was a signing actually, because I didn't like what I was seeing.
Mr. President, a few moments ago, the Commission of Fine Arts approved your design, the design for your arch. Do you think you need Congressional approval?
Well, that includes—finally some good news from them. What was the vote? Do you know what the vote was? What was the vote?
I'm just seeing the headline here. I don't have the exact vote.
So we're building what's called the Triumphal Arch, right opposite the Arlington Memorial Bridge, right by Arlington Cemetery. It's beautiful. It's—the Arc de Triomphe would be the one that you would probably know in Paris. It's a very similar size, slightly larger. We're doing—we have to do slightly larger. It doesn't have to be a lot larger. Otherwise, you'd all be disappointed in me. But it's even far more beautiful, and I think that the Arc de Triomphe is beautiful. It's, you know, couple of hundred years old, but I think it's beautiful. And some arches go back over a thousand years. And it's called a Triumphal Arch. It's usually done for victories in war and things. There are 59 of them in the world, and some are really beautiful. And we're the only major—Washington, D.C., which should be number one, we're the only important and major city that doesn't have one. We don't have a Triumphal Arch. So it was meant to be built for many years, the circle going up to the bridge, that was—people pass that circle, they say, 'Why isn't something built here?' And so, that's very good we just got approval from Fine Arts. That's fantastic.
But do you need Congress to sign off on it?
No, we don't. No, no. We're doing it, it's—the land is owned by secretary—by the Interior Department. We don't need anything from Congress.
Are you going to be at your son's wedding this weekend, by the way?
He'd like me to go, but it's going to be just a small little private affair, and I'm going to try and make it. I'm in the midst—I said, 'You know, this is not good timing for me.' I have a thing called Iran and other things. That's one I can't win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about. No, but he's got a very—a person who I've known for a long time, and hopefully they're going to have a great marriage.
Mr. President, actually to add to the art, I just actually passed by on my way here, saw the—the pink flags and there's just geese that are there all the time. So it's perfect. How long will that take? And also I have to say, I have to pass along something from my mother, she drove in with me. She was amazed by all the people she was seeing on the streets here in D.C. She doesn't get in here as much, but she was noticing how clean and beautiful it was, so I'm passing that along.
Well, that's the way we do, clean. Take a look outside. We had a broken—we had a broken path, it was so terrible coming into the White House. It was slate. Slate's a roofing material, it's not a walking material, but the slate was all broken and chipped and terrible, and I put down a new granite floor and paid for it myself, by the way. But I put down a nice new granite floor, looks beautiful. It's actually getting rave reviews. It's beautiful. It's—terrible having people walking up to the White House and they're walking over broken tiles and broken floors. So now we just—finished it. It's going to be finished when the moldings are put on, but we just—you might take a look at it, I don't know if you've seen it, but it's beautiful. Other things we're doing while you're at it, we've fixed—we have 31 fountains in Washington. Of the 31, not one worked. Now we have 21 working, and the others are going to be fixed, and people are calling and saying, 'It's amazing what's happened, the fountains.' And they're working top-level. And my most exciting is the reflecting pool between the Washington Monument and the—the—the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial. It's 2,500 feet long by almost 200 feet wide. It's a massive structure, if you think of it. It's taller than the tallest building in the world. If you sat the building down, the tallest building in the world would not reach the end of it. It's a very big thing. It hasn't worked properly since it was built in 1922. President Obama and Biden spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to fix it. They didn't—of course, they couldn't do that. They didn't fix it. It was a mess, so mostly they turned it off, collecting garbage. It looked horrible. And we are very close to getting it finished, and when it's finished it'll be beautiful. It'll be blue water, dark blue—we call it American flag blue because that's the name of the color that we chose: American flag blue. Can't do better than that. It's a rich, dark blue, and it'll be, I think, very reflective, very, very good. Big project. I decided to do a much bigger job—I was going to just get it open, but I said, 'Let's do it right. Let's get it open and let's have it be good.' Because President Obama, President Biden spent hundreds of millions of dollars—much more than a hundred million, but hundreds of millions, it never worked. In fact, when they finished it, it was much worse than it was before. It leaked at a higher level. They would have to fill it up every single day with water. The whole thing was ridiculous. So they ended up turning it off, and it became like a garbage dump. Well, it's pretty close to finished. So they were going to—they had estimates of $350 million to fix it. I'll be doing it for a tiny fraction of that. A bigger job than I—I originally thought I'd do it for $2 or $3 million, just do a base. But now we're fixing up the exterior of it, we're doing—so we'll probably be in there for less than $20 million. And the estimate was going to be, using a different method, $350 million. It was going to take four years, $350 million. I'll be doing it in basically a couple of months for less than $20 million. That includes all of the exterior base, which I never included in my original numbers. When I went there last week, I saw the exterior was in very bad shape, as well as the interior, so I said we're going to fix that too, the stone. It's going to be beautiful. When that's done, you might see it. It's probably three-quarters done. We have rain delays, we get a lot of delays, but—that will be—that will be something special, the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln and Washington Monuments. I think it's going to be incredible. It's largely done if you want to go see it. You can see it before we put the water in. The key is to have it done before July 4th. We want to see if we can have it done before July 4th. But we have—about 20 or 21 of the water—water features in Washington open. And I can say, top-top of the line, they are—they look better than they did the day they were built. Some of them had been closed for 25, 30 years. There's been no water for 25 or 30 years, and they're really beautiful. Some of the fountains are as beautiful as I've ever seen, and you probably see them. And in addition to that, you brought up something—Washington, D.C. is now a safe city. We had a city that was—at one of the most unsafe cities anywhere in the country, and now it's considered a very safe city. Restaurants are opening, restaurants were closing. You couldn't—you couldn't go to a restaurant, the restaurants were closing all over because of the danger during the Biden administration. Now you have restaurants opening, it's thriving, and it was very nice that you said that. I like this reporter, I have to say. No, it's nice. It's—we have a vibrant city again. People are going out. I have a lot of people in the White House. Every time I see somebody, they thank me, and I know immediately what. They thank me for making the city safe. They walk to work now. Before that, they would—they'd take Uber or something, and they were—they felt unsafe even in Uber. You know, we moved over 5,000 people out of the city, career criminals that came in through the open borders and other reasons. And we moved over 5,000, and an interesting statistic is that 2% of the population creates 91% of the crime. And the reason I like that is that you can handle 2% of the population. Mr. Kroger, I see—do you have stores in Washington? Do you see a big difference?
We do.
Well, you said the right thing. That would have been the end of Kroger! All right. Okay, we'll do—we'll do one or two more.
Mr. President, do you think Democrats are genuine in their focus on affordability, especially after they delivered 40-year high inflation last time they were in power? And then, or do you think they're using it—their focus on it as a means to try and win midterms and begin the impeachment process?
Yeah, look, the Democrats had the highest inflation in the history of our country—48 years they say, but the history of our country. They had the highest inflation that we've ever had. When I inherited it, I inherited very high prices. And from day one, they said 'affordability, affordability' is the word, because they're good at that. They're good at words, but I'm good at words too. But they hit me with 'affordability.' I had just gotten there. They hit me with eggs. We had a news conference on my third day, and they said, 'Egg prices are through the roof.' I said, 'I just got here, tell me about eggs.' And we got the prices down, way down. Actually lower than it was four years before. But we've gotten everything—the thing that we have now, the only thing that's really of great concern, two things: beef is coming down, and the reason is they put restrictions on beef under the Biden administration, and it takes a while to settle that, but prices are down. But the big thing is, of course, energy. We had the energy way down, but I had to do a journey to Iran, I had to say—you know, we just hit the best markets. By the way, the stock market today is at the highest it's ever been. And we've had 59 of them, 59 days out of a very short period of time where the stock market hit all-time highs. So we have an all-time high stock market. We have all-time high job numbers. We have 401ks just hit the highest number they've ever been, so many of you have 401ks, you're—that means you're richer than you've ever been. And we're doing really well. But the—they came up with this word 'affordability.' But it's them that caused the problem, and they use that word—Senator-Senator, they use that word right from the beginning. I was in one day, and I heard somebody on television say 'affordability.' And I inherited this mess from them. But we've got it—in great shape. The country is doing well. We're respected all over the world. This country is respected. We're the hottest country. We were a dead country two years ago, and now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. So I think most of you appreciate that, some of you don't. Yeah, please.
Herbert Pickett, Washington Times. If the Supreme Court doesn't rule in your favor on birthright citizenship, are there any other avenues that your administration could explore to remedy this? And did you talk with President Xi about Chinese foreign nationals taking advantage of birth tourism here in this country, and how many have been caught?
Well, it's a great question. No, if the Supreme Court hurts our country by ruling against us on birthright citizenship—that would be just—between that and tariffs, what damage they've done, what damage they've done. Again, they could have said—which they said, 'Do the tariffs a different way,' but they could have said, 'Any money taken in thus far'—because they agree you could do it a different way—'any money—this is a better way.' But the other way is the very secure way and maybe in many ways it's a stronger way. They could have said any money taken in thus far does not have to be paid back. To, in many cases, the enemy, people that don't like our country. It was a half a sentence. The Supreme Court could have saved us $149 billion with a half a sentence, but they chose not to do that. Now they have a ruling which is a much bigger ruling, actually: birthright citizenship. The cost—forgetting about the fact that it's wrong—the cost of birthright citizenship is barely not affordable by our country. It's going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and it's in their hands. What can I tell you? It's a common-sense ruling, it's common sense. It was about—it was exact timing, and it's about the babies of slaves. Thank you for that question.
Mr. President, so do you think if Democrats were to take control of Congress again, they would immediately begin the impeachment process?
I think if Democrats took control of the Congress, I think that—and let's say took control of the country, I think that this country's finished. These people are sick. They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, but really they—they have bad policy. They have horrible policy. They cheat on elections, they get elected by cheating on elections. But you would have two states added: they'll terminate the filibuster immediately. Republicans should do that. They'll terminate the filibuster. You'll have Washington, D.C. and you'll have Puerto Rico as a state, which will be a disaster—which would be four Senate seats. Tremendous numbers of electoral college votes. You will have—you will have the de—that's—that's really bad. But you will have the destruction of our country. They want to go to 21 Supreme Court judges. That's their perfect number. They talk about 13, but they want to go to 21. 21 Supreme Court judges. If they get in power, I think this country would be maybe finished. If I didn't win the election—I'll say this—we've become the hottest country anywhere in the world. We were a dead country two years ago. If I didn't win this election, we would have been a country that was essentially—would have been—I don't even know that we would have been a country any longer. They were destroying our country. They were letting hundreds of thousands, millions of people pour through our southern border. Criminals, people from jails, people from mental institutions, drug dealers and drug addicts. They were sending everybody. Countries were sending everybody that they didn't want by the millions—25 million people. If I didn't win this election, I believe our country would have been finished. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.