[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"transcript-d407c41f-08d1-4e51-b381-e8dd863659d0":3,"transcript-neighbors-d407c41f-08d1-4e51-b381-e8dd863659d0":16},{"id":4,"youtube_url":5,"transcript":6,"created_at":7,"folder_id":8,"name":9,"upload_date":10,"is_public":11,"is_premium":12,"speakers":8,"persona":13},"d407c41f-08d1-4e51-b381-e8dd863659d0","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.youtube.com\u002Fwatch?v=LseQ1ecp-ZM","[00:12] SPEAKER_00:\nLadies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.\n\n[00:45] Donald Trump:\nThank you very much. Please, Susie. No place like the White House, do we agree? Right, Mr. Kraft? No place like the White House. Thank you very much for being here. Appreciate it. And we'll maybe discuss a couple of general topics. This is a board meeting for the Trump Kennedy Center, but we'll go into a couple of other things that we have the media present. It's always present, unfortunately. Constantly. And I'll say a few words about what's happening in the Middle East and if you have a couple of questions we'll do that and then we'll get on with our board meeting. So, thank you very much for being here. We have a wonderful group of very, very smart, talented patriots at this table. Our powerful military campaign to end the threats posed by the Iranian regime continued in full force over the past few days. They have been literally obliterated. The Air Force is gone, the Navy is gone. Many, many ships have been sunk, their warfighting ships but I guess they didn't know how to use them. And anti-aircraft is decimated, their radar is gone, and their leaders are gone. Other than that, they're doing quite well. They've been a terror for 47 years. And now I guess the world through the United States with the help of Israel is doing what should have been done many years ago. Should have been done many years ago. Since the beginning of the conflict, we've struck more than 7,000 targets across Iran and these have been mostly commercial and military targets. We've achieved a 90% reduction in their ballistic missile launches and a 95% reduction in drone attacks. The missiles are trickling in now at very low levels because they don't have too many missiles left. We've also attacked the manufacturing plants, the places where they manufacture the missiles and the drones. And that's going on today, we just hit three of them today, and it's getting very hard for them to manufacture. More than 100 Iranian naval vessels have been sunk or destroyed over the last week and a half, that has to be some kind of a record. Additional strikes continue to launch from all directions every single hour. And as you know we attacked Carg Island and knocked it—literally destroyed everything on the island except for the area where the oil is, I call it the pipes, we left the pipes. We didn't want to do that, but that we will do that, we can do that on five minutes' notice, it'll be over. But for purposes of someday rebuilding that country, I guess we did the right thing. But it may not stay that way, just one simple word and the pipes will be gone too, but it'll take a long time to rebuild that. We are aggressively dismantling Iran's defense industrial base and ability to rebuild its missiles and drone capability is getting down to close to zero. And we're hammering their capacity to threaten commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz with more than 30 mine laying ships destroyed, we hit to the best of our knowledge all of their mine laying ships. Now they can put them on other types of ships, I guess, and drop them in, but we don't know that any have even been dropped in. We're not sure that any have been. That's a big negative for them if they do it, it's a form of suicide. But we don't know that they have dropped any in, but we've hit all 30 of their ships and destroyed them. They're all at the bottom of the sea. We strongly encourage other nations whose economies depend on the strait far more than ours, you know we get less than 1% of our oil from the strait. And some countries get much more, Japan gets 95%, China gets 90%, many of the Europeans get quite a bit, South Korea gets 35%. So we want them to come and help us with the strait. We have it in very good shape, the country as I said we've already taken care of Iran, but now because of the fact that literally a single terrorist can put something in the water or shoot something or shoot a missile, a small missile, and it's fairly close range because it is a tight area, and which is one of the reasons you know they've always used that as a weapon, Iran has always used that as an economic weapon. And it's not going to be able to be used for very long. Numerous countries have told me they're on the way, some are very enthusiastic about it and some aren't. Some are countries that we've helped for many, many years, we've protected them from horrible outside sources and they weren't that enthusiastic. And the level of enthusiasm matters to me. We have some countries where we have 45,000 soldiers, great soldiers, protecting them from harm's way, and we have done a great job. And when we want to know, do you have any minesweepers? Well, we'd rather not get involved, sir. I said, for 40 years we're protecting you and you don't want to get involved in something that is very minor, very few shots going to be taken because they don't have many shots left. But they said we'd rather not get involved. I just want the fake news media and everybody else to remember that that was said, because when—and I've been a big critic of all of the protecting of countries because I know that we'll protect them, and if ever needed, if we ever needed help, they won't be there for us. I've just known that for a long period of time, just like I knew about the strait, that it would be a weapon, which I predicted a long time ago. Predicted all of this stuff, you guys were very generous on that, I predicted all of it. I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center, I made that prediction a year before he did it. I said you better get him, he's a bad guy. I watched him be interviewed one time and I said, 'That's a bad guy, you better get him.' One year before, exactly, I wrote it in a book, you can even check, about a year before the World Trade Center came down. President Clinton actually had a shot at him and he didn't take it, unfortunately. I'm not blaming him for that, but he didn't take it. And he ended up knocking down the World Trade Center, but I predicted that too. We strongly encourage other nations whose economies depend on the strait for blood, I mean you know these people literally need it, 90, 95% of their energy or their oil comes out of the strait and they should be in here very happily helping us. And it's incredible. We have such great—we're number one in oil by double now, we drill baby drill. We're double any other nation and it's going to be soon triple any other nation. And that doesn't include Venezuela who's been great, by the way. The relationship with Venezuela's been fantastic. Millions, literally millions of barrels of oil are being taken out and it's been a great help and it's been to their great benefit, the president has done a really good job. We get along with them real well. But we've taken out millions of barrels of oil and brought to Houston and other places for to the refineries. We have refineries set up specifically for that. And it's been a great—it's been a great relationship and more and more is happening, it's a tremendous oil source and we're stepping it up very rapidly. The big companies are going in and they will actually—numbers in a pretty short period of time, numbers that they've never been able to do, we'll be doing. There's a lot of oil under that land. We strongly encourage the other nations to get involved with us and get involved quickly and with great enthusiasm. I have that from a number of them and I'd like to say their names but frankly I don't know if they would want me to or not because maybe they don't want to be targeted. But I say wouldn't matter if you're targeted or not because this is a paper tiger that we're dealing with now. It wasn't a paper tiger two weeks ago, it's a paper tiger now. So now we're going to get down to the reason we—take a couple of questions in a moment but we're going to get down to the reason we're here today actually, this was set up a long time ago. It's the Trump Kennedy Center. Over the past year we've made incredible strides to restore the true purpose and prestige of this revered institution. Together we're going to ensure it remains the finest performing arts facility of its kind anywhere in the world. And I don't know that it ever really reached that stage, but it will over a period of time. We're rebuilding it, it's in very, very bad condition. It's been let—it's been let go to hell, that's what they've done. They did a poor job, they spent money in the wrong places, they built some theaters underneath that nobody uses, little ones, tiny theaters that cost 300 million dollars. And the money was spent incorrectly, wrong. We're dealing with some networks on the possibility of renting those little theaters, nobody's going to use them, they want the big halls. The halls are going to be incredible. They're in bad shape, but when they're completed the bones are potentially something that could be unbelievable. So I want to, before we begin, I want to thank Rick Grenell. He's been a friend of mine for a long time. He's been unbelievable. He went to the—he was the ambassador, as you know, to Germany. There was no happier woman in the world than Angela Merkel, Angela. She called me, 'Thank you sir, thank you.' Although she liked Rick a lot, there was nobody happier that he was no longer going to be the ambassador to Germany. He was difficult for them. He was not your typical ambassador, he was the opposite, he would do what was best for the United States, not for Germany. And I want to tell you he did a great job, so good that I put him in charge of a thing called intelligence. And something he didn't really want to do, but he did it and he did it incredibly well. There were a lot of leakers, he found out the leakers. And when he didn't find out who the leaker was in a certain area, he fired everybody. And he went into one room where there was leaks coming out, these are long-term problems that these various places have had. And he said, 'Who's the one that leaked this?' and they wouldn't admit it, so he fired the whole room and he did a good job. I'll tell you he was very good and during this transition period I asked Rick if he would run it because we wanted to see and if you remember when we first took it over, I didn't do it with enthusiasm, I did it because somebody had to do it, had to turn it around because it was failing. It would have closed and physically it would have almost fallen down, it was in very bad shape. The steel columns outside as an example were meant to be covered. You know, exposed steel is unusual to have in buildings. What I do best in life is build. I build buildings really well. And really and under budget and ahead of schedule, that's what I do. Unlike the Fed, the Fed building which is going to cost billions of dollars, it may never open. I mean right now they just you know, we have a wonderful Kevin, the wonderful new head of the Fed coming in, I don't know if he'll ever be able to occupy this complex, it was destroyed by Jerome 'Too Late' Powell. I call him 'Too Late' because he's always too late with interest, should cut interest rates, he should cut them right now, they should have a special meeting. What's a better time to cut interest rates than now? A third-grade student would know that. But that's a terrible thing. But what I do is build, I build great stuff. And what we're going to do is you know right outside, in fact if you look behind me, see the nice gold curtains? If you want to look into a nice foundation and you want to see a lot of work very deep, very, very deep for specific reasons, we have a magnificent ballroom being built because this is the biggest room and it holds like 98 people for dinner. But behind me you're going to have a ballroom that this building and the people occupying it in particular, every president for 150 years has clamored for a ballroom, a large beautiful room. This is a cocktail room. And this will actually be, this whole floor will end up being a cocktail room for the cocktail area pre-area for the ballroom before dinners. So we'll have heads of—we can't even do a heads of state dinner. Usually what they do is they would do them on the lawn with a tent. But when it rains the lawn is very low and you know the land in Washington, it was built on swampy wetlands. And when it rains and you have the King of Saudi Arabia, we have as an example the King of the UK, I would say King of England, who's a great guy, he's coming in very soon. And when it rains, you know what happened, the rain would go over their feet, it would be about four five inches over their shoes. This was not good. So, and it rained a lot. So we're building finally, because I do that. And by the way, no taxpayer money, I want to say zero. It's going to be on time, on budget, it'll be under budget, will literally, we're having it under budget other than we've upgraded it in terms of the marbles we're using, we're using onyx and stones that are incredible. But it'll be, it'll be something really spectacular. I'm looking at Mr. Steve Wynn who's over there. He built spectacular buildings and he knows Trump builds spectacular buildings. I build better buildings than him, I don't care what he says. But Steve is over here and he really with his incredible wife Andrea, and thank you both for being here, Andrea's on the board. And Steve is so in love with his wife, he asked whether or not he could come. And I can say the same thing for the great Bob Kraft. He's got a wife that's so wonderful, he said, 'Do you think I could come?' she didn't have to accept that you know, she could have said no. But Bob said, 'I'd like to come.' So Bob we won't—we won't let you vote although his vote would be a good vote, he would vote for the proper thing. But it's good to have you both here. These are two great couples that know a lot about the things I'm talking about like fixing whether it's building a stadium or building a building, we know they know how to do it. So thank you, thank you Steve very much. But we've made incredible strides over the past year. If you remember I said I want to run it for a year just to see, because the place was falling down, it's horrible. Air conditioning heaters going to be, heating is going to be ripped out in its entirety and you know needs new, it's old. How many years is it, Rick? What's the total?\n\n[17:59] SPEAKER_01:\n50, almost yeah, over 50.\n\n[18:02] Donald Trump:\nAnd we have 50-year-old air conditioning, more than that actually. And it's in bad shape, everything's, everything's in bad shape, it's got to be redone. So I said let's run it for a year just to see how it works. It's better than you can't just go into something and try and figure it out. And we figured it out over the year and you have to close it. Putting new marbles in, beautiful, beautiful marbles, when you do marbles you can't have people walking over the marble every night as it's drying and setting and going to a play. So we thought the best way, I mean what I know best in the world is construction, the best way to do it is close it, do it properly, and reopen it, have a grand reopening. And when it's finished it's going to be far better than it was when it was originally built. When it was originally built it was good, it has one thing that's very good, it has great sound. I think there's a lot of luck in sound. You have some of the big opera houses, I don't want to get involved with saying which one, but in New York as an example, where the acoustics were never good. And they've ripped it apart four times and rebuilt it and it was never good. The good thing about the Kennedy Center, the acoustics are good. And they'll only be enhanced based on what we're doing. A lot of it has to do with the stones and the stones you use, the marbles you use etc. Over the past year we've made incredible strides to restore the true purpose and prestige that this building will soon gain, I think at a higher level than it had before. Together we're going to ensure it remains the finest and will become the finest performing arts facility anywhere in the world. It's got the location and it will have the building, it's got good bones, it's got good structure. Again, they wanted to originally cover the exposed steel, it was painted a cheap gold and we turned it into a very expensively painted white, very heavy coat of very, very powerful white paint meant for steel, exposed steel. Very different kind of paint, but it's almost like putting a stone over the top of it and the color is white, shiny white. And it looks—a lot of people have commented it looks so much better. Before they had the steel painted gold and the gold was very cheap. There's actually never been a paint that's made that will look like gold, Steve will tell you that, you can't, you either gold leaf it or use real gold bullion or you use a different color. Steve, nobody's able ever been able to make a gold paint that looks real. Little minor thing for the media, I'm sure you're thrilled with hearing that. But there's never been a paint, I said someday I'm going to discover a paint where you don't have to actually use gold leaf. Gold leaf is a very, very big and expensive process. But it's a beautiful thing but not when you use paint. So we got rid of the gold columns which looked always terrible, they looked cheap and they looked fake, very much like the media actually. And we took the columns and we painted them white. Before we painted them, Matt, very importantly we structuralized them, we replaced bad steel that was very badly rusting. I mean these are columns that are holding up a building and we had to replace areas of columns that were actually rusted out because it was in very bad shape. It's not even describable how bad this building was both inside and out. I want to thank Rick Grenell, but you really did a great job Rick on this and we appreciate it and I'm looking for the next, your next venture because he really was, you know there was a story he got fired, he didn't get fired, he was here for a short period of time for a year figuring it out with Matt and everybody else and Matt now is going to take over and he's a pro at construction, great at construction. And I think Matt would like to run the facility too, he's fallen in love with it and I think he'd do a good job. But if I don't think he'll do a good job I'll say 'Matt you're fired,' I'm getting somebody else. So you're under no pressure Matt, okay? It's like Bob Kraft, if a football player doesn't perform well typically you will fire him immediately, Bob. Do you ever let them stay around for four or five years if they're bad? Not too many times, right? So anyway, I learn from you. So I want to thank also Attorney General Pam Bondi who's been fantastic. Is Pam here some place? Oh hello Pam, good she's been great. And the Speaker of the House who's got the easiest job of anybody in government, he's got a majority of two, I don't like to say one because it varies, but between one two and three. And I think you're the only man that's ever lived that's able to be very happy about it. In fact, when we get up to three, you know every once in a while you get up to three, actually for a period of time we actually had it up to four and then we had a death. And death is very bad when you're the Speaker and you have a majority of two or three. But we had a death and then we had another death and we had some things and it's—but we're looking very strong. We had one man who was very ill, it looked like he wasn't going to make it, I don't I won't mention his name, should I? Do other people know his name? You want to mention it? He'll be proud. Go ahead, tell them the story.\n\n[23:51] Mike Johnson:\nOkay well, thank you Mr. President. Congressman Neal Dunn of Florida had had some real health challenges and it was very serious and had had a pretty grim diagnosis. And I mentioned it to the President and I said Congressman Dunn is a real champion and a patriot because he's still coming to work and if others got this diagnosis they would be apt to go home and retire and take care.\n\n[24:12] Donald Trump:\nWhat was the diagnosis?\n\n[24:14] Mike Johnson:\nIt was, I mean I think it was a terminal diagnosis.\n\n[24:17] Donald Trump:\nHe would be dead by June.\n\n[24:21] Mike Johnson:\nOkay that wasn't public but yeah, okay, that was—it was grim, that's what I was going to say.\n\n[24:25] Donald Trump:\nWith a heart problem by the way, this was a heart problem.\n\n[24:28] Mike Johnson:\nSo the long story short, the President called him to encourage him and thank him and they had a conversation and the President mentioned in the course of the conversation, 'You know I ought to get my doctors involved.' And they did and within a within a number of hours they took him to Walter Reed, emergency surgery, the man has a new lease on life. He acts like he's 30 years younger and he walked into the conference meeting and we thought we'd seen a ghost. And I spoke with him over the weekend and he's encouraged and thankful and he thanks the President for his leadership and intervention and thank you, thank you, it's amazing.\n\n[24:57] Donald Trump:\nHe actually called Mike, Mike called me and he said 'Sir, we're up by three but we're going to lose one by June.' I said who? Neal Dunn, he's a congressman, great congressman, incredible. He called to say that he was terminal, really bad heart, there's nothing they can do. I said that's bad. Number one, it was bad because I liked him, number two it was bad because I needed his vote. But he really said he said Mike, 'I'm going to last this out for the President and you and however long I live, I mean it looks like June is the time but however long I live I'm going to I'm going to be voting for you.' I mean how many people are going to say that? Most of them are going to say Mike, 'I'm retiring immediately, that's the end.'\n\n[25:42] Mike Johnson:\nHe's an extraordinary patriot.\n\n[25:44] Donald Trump:\nBut he didn't do that, it was really impressive. And then I realized I have doctors in the White House, the White House doctors are incredible. And they've helped me with other people, they're helping me with people right now, people that are very sick and they're like miracle workers. And I said I have to call them and I called the two doctors, they're both great. And they immediately went over to see the congressman and he was on the operating table like two hours later. It was a long operation, they gave him more stents and more everything that you could have, I think he's got everything that you could possibly have. And they called up they said sir, 'I think he'll be fine.' I said, 'You got to be kidding.' They said 'I think he'll be fine.' And Mike was telling me the story that the other day he came into a meeting for the first time in a long while, go ahead.\n\n[26:35] Mike Johnson:\nWell it was incredible, I mean just he has a new lease on life, he has more energy than a man half his age and he's been very encouraged and encouraged all of us. So again a testament to great leadership and intervention and he's my hat's off to Neal Dunn and his beautiful wife and family, he's an extraordinary individual.\n\n[26:52] Donald Trump:\nHe actually called, Mike called me and he said 'Sir, we're up by three but we're going to lose one by June.' I said who? Neal Dunn, he's a congressman, great congressman, incredible. He called to say that he was terminal, really bad heart, there's nothing they can do. I said that's bad. Number one, it was bad because I liked him, number two it was bad because I needed his vote. But he really said he said Mike, 'I'm going to last this out for the President and you and however long I live, I mean it looks like June is the time but however long I live I'm going to I'm going to be voting for you.' I mean how many people are going to say that? Most of them are going to say Mike, 'I'm retiring immediately, that's the end.' But he didn't do that, it was really impressive. And then I realized I have doctors in the White House, the White House doctors are incredible. And they've helped me with other people, they're helping me with people right now, people that are very sick and they're like miracle workers. And I said I have to call them and I called the two doctors, they're both great. And they immediately went over to see the congressman and he was on the operating table like two hours later. It was a long operation, they gave him more stents and more everything that you could have, I think he's got everything that you could possibly have. And they called up they said sir, 'I think he'll be fine.' I said, 'You got to be kidding.' They said 'I think he'll be fine.' And Mike was telling me the story that the other day he came into a meeting for the first time in a long while, go ahead. Well it was incredible, I mean just he has a new lease on life, he has more energy than a man half his age and he's been very encouraged and encouraged all of us. So again a testament to great leadership and intervention and he's my hat's off to Neal Dunn and his beautiful wife and family, he's an extraordinary individual. I did it for him first and for the vote second. But it was a close second, actually. But I did it for the vote second, all right? I want to also introduce Susie Wiles who's fantastic. She's our chief of staff. And she's an amazing person and amazing fighter and she announced a little a minor difficulty which will be in good shape, good shape for she'll be around for a long time. She has a she had a diagnosis you probably saw it and she's going to take care of it immediately as opposed to waiting. She said 'Let's do it now,' I said 'Do it immediately.' Because with that particular ailment, the faster the better, that's the only thing I know about it, the faster the better she's going to do it immediately so she just started actually and she's going to be in great shape the prognosis there is excellent beyond excellent. So but who needs it, right? Who needs it? So before we took over just a year ago the legendary this wonderful place was on the verge of literally on the verge of collapse both from a financial standpoint, maybe more from a financial standpoint, but also from a physical standpoint. Necessary maintenance had been ignored, the programming was very woke and out of touch with reality. We had an orchestra that lost like 18 million dollars a year. And they subsidized it every year. I said what kind of an orchestra loses 18 and I'm being nice when I say 18 was much more. And I started looking at the programming, they had tremendous union difficulties like 19 different unions and driving everybody crazy. And I think the unions are going to be great. I've always gotten along with unions as you know, I got great union support. But you had 19 unions every time somebody wanted to put on a play they had to deal with 19 different groups of people and they say it was like Broadway but worse. And you don't get worse than Broadway when it comes to the unions, I've watched that for many years. The programming was terrible and they had a budget deficit of about 26 million dollars minimum, owed a lot of money, were out borrowing money which is a lot of people don't understand. So under the leadership of this exceptionally talented and rich board, it's a very rich board, not everybody but most of you are loaded. Like Ike Perlmutter's got so much money, look at Ike Perlmutter, he ended up being the largest owner of Disney. Started with was it a hundred dollars or less? It was a little less, Ike right? He didn't speak English and he became the largest owner of Disney, right? But then they went woke and he sold his stock, he didn't like—he didn't like Mickey Mouse being woke, right Ike? But he's one of the most brilliant business people, thank you Ike, it's great. And Lori thank you very much for being here. So I think it's Lori that's on the board though right Lori? Yes. What's with these husbands? All the husbands are traveling. I think it's the White House. I got all the husbands with the wives, that's never happened. Boy oh boy what great relationships. My wife is going to have to speak to me, this is this is pretty good. The biggest guys in the country travel with their wives to come to a meeting. But it has something to do with the White House, right Ike? Right? You don't want to see me, you want to see the White House because it's a special building. But thank you and congratulations on an amazing career. Most people don't know Ike Perlmutter, Isadore Perlmutter, and started with nothing and built a vast fortune just by deal after deal. Did you ever have a bad deal Ike? Only one. Which was that? Don't tell. See how honest he is? Most people would say no. He says one and it couldn't have been very bad. Great to have you. So under the leadership of this board which is as you can see incredible, we're achieving a very dramatic and quick turnaround. We got rid of all of the DEI, I know some of the news media loves DEI but we got rid of it, maybe you're right, brought back patriotic and family-friendly programming and last year we raised over 130 million dollars to keep this place going. Otherwise it would have been it would have been closed. The building the let's call it the Kennedy Center from that time was losing so much money it could not have stayed alive if we didn't come in as a group of people and a lot of wealthy people that made a lot of contributions. So with the Trump Kennedy Center honors alone we raised this year a record 23 million dollars which was double what they had ever done before, record 23 million dollars. There's still much to do, the previous management left us a facility in very bad condition, abysmal is the word, and everything from bursting pipes and leaks to serious electrical and structural problems. And some of it we fixed but most of it we're saving for during the construction period because we'll do a much better job of it that way. Major renovations are required to keep the facility functional and that'll start right after July 4th. We're going to have a little bit of a celebration, not a big deal but a little bit of a celebration on July 4th. We'll have a little party and then after that we close or we start construction, we're fully financed. As I announced in February after a one-year review based on input from highly respected experts and subject to board approval today, we determined—it's a little late for the board because we've already announced it but these are minor, these are minor details but I think everybody agrees. But subject to board approval we determined that the fastest way to bring the Trump Kennedy Center to the highest level of success, beauty and grandeur is to cease the entertainment operations for a two-year period of time as we complete high-quality construction. And we've already purchased seating as an example, we've already purchased a lot of the marbles and some of the things that are hard to get, getting quality marble is very hard, law—takes a long time. It comes from areas where it takes a long time to mine and we're getting some of the best things you can, the marble is going to be incredible. The the seats that we have, the seating is the highest level, everything is the highest level. So this temporary closure will enable us to complete the work much faster and much of a much higher quality as an example it's hard to show Shakespeare when you don't have any seats, you know I mean you know as the seats are being changed it's not exactly a great experience for people. So the right way to do it is just close it and fix it and open it. We'll begin right after as I said July 4th celebration and thanks to the great big beautiful bill we are fully funded ready to go and we have tremendous amounts of money coming in from some people around the table but also from people that are not here but that have made very generous contributions toward the Trump Kennedy Center, people that have never given to it before and would never have given it except I asked them to give. So Rick, I thank you very much for the job that you've done and I'm delighted that you really are, you did a great job. It was a little rough with a couple of the people but that's okay, they've survived. Some of the artistic, the artists, a lot of they took a they took a pounding from Rick. It's almost like this guy right over here, Anthony. If you know, he knows what it is to pound people, right Ike? Anthony knows, Anthony knows, Anthony's another great you're not on the board either Anthony? You're here with your wife? What's going on here? The most successful people, they're all here with their wives. I'm looking around, all—wow, that's impressive. Anthony's another one, he started off with one truck, he had one truck 45 years ago, he ended up with 4,000 trucks and he sold his company for billions of dollars and you're here Anthony? He's a member of one of my clubs and all he has is cash, he said I have a big problem sir, what? I don't know how to invest my cash. Most people have a problem they don't have any cash, right? Anyway thank you Anthony, you're the greatest. So all of these people have done so much and they've done so much to help. And Matt, I just really I'm here to a certain extent to wish you good luck with everything and to introduce you to the board, many of the board know because Matt's been running a lot of the initial construction and planning and going to be assuming the role of Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director where he'll lead a construction crew for the next—a big crew by the way, because it needs a lot of work—for the next two years in preparation for the grand reopening and I think it's going to be something that's going to be very, very special. We're doing a lot of special things, we have a lot of things happening. We have in the front of the White House on June 14th you probably read, UFC is going to be here, Dana White the great Dana White he's building a literally a stadium, a 5,000 seat arena right outside the front door of the White House and they're going to have about a hundred thousand people on the in the park right across the street where he's building I believe eight massive screens for people to watch free, all free for people to watch. It's June 14th happens to be my birthday and that was only by happenstance it was not planned that way but it's a Sunday night which they never did, Sunday night's super prime time. It's going to be broadcast on CBS which is the Ellison family, two great people and great people it's a great family and it's going to be a tremendous event. And we have Roger Penske is going to have IndyCar here, we're going to have a race around the Capitol, that's going to be in August. So we have that and we have a tremendous number of things. We have the Olympics, we have the World Cup and we have the 250. And as you know I was responsible for getting the Olympics, actually Bob Kraft helped me and he helped me with the World Cup too, you were very good, you who could be better, right? But he helped with the Olympics and the World Cup but we have the Olympics coming, I was responsible for that, right Bob? We have the World Cup coming right now and I was responsible for that, then we had a rigged election and because of that I got I was always very upset when I got the Olympics, I said I won't be president because it was last term if I went by the normal progression. And then I said well let's see what happens and then they rig the election and I said let's do it again and we won in a landslide and I came back and I ended up with the Olympics and the World Cup, somebody said did you do that on purpose? So I claim the Olympics and I claim the World Cup because I did get both. And then I tried to claim 250th year celebration, I said I got that they said no you didn't, that one you didn't get. They're giving me no credit for that one, Mr. Speaker, I could—so I gave up on that one quickly. It wasn't—that wasn't working. It wasn't working. But I just want to thank everybody. This board has been incredible and it's really it's really nice what we're going to do is we're going to and we could take a few questions from the press and then after that we'll have our meeting and we have a little lunch for the for the board so we'll have a little bit of a lunch and it's an honor to have you all here. It's so many of you, Jimmy so many of you are friends, it's a great honor to have you here and we're going to do a great job with the Trump Kennedy Center. Okay yes please, CNN ay-ay-ay.\n\n[39:16] SPEAKER_03:\nThank you, Mr. President. I'm not CNN, I'm Daily Wire, but thank you for the question. Numerous countries have told me they are on their way, can you give us a hint what they are, what that entails, how soon they might be there?\n\n[39:27] Donald Trump:\nYou mean who are the countries? I'd rather not say yet but we'll be announcing. Marco Rubio and the various people that are doing that will be announcing. And we do, I have to tell you, we have some that are really enthusiastic, they're coming already, they've already started to get there. You know, it takes a little while to get there, it's like in some cases you have to travel an ocean. So doesn't go that fast, but it'll go fast. And we have some that are fairly local that are doing it. But we'll be—we'll give you a list. Some are very enthusiastic and some are less than enthusiastic. And I assume some will not do it. I think we have one or two that will not do it, that we've been protecting for about 40 years at you know tens of billions of dollars, Mr. Speaker. So I'll I'll be reporting that to you in the House and the Senate and I'll say, why are we protecting countries that don't protect us? And I've always felt that was a weakness of NATO, we were going to protect them, but I always said when in need they won't protect us. Now this is in need, need would be one of the big boys. But I will say that we built the greatest military in the world and we protect people, and if we need their mine boats or if we need anything, any piece of apparatus that they may have because of a situation that they have, they should be jumping to help us because we've helped them for years stay out of wars. Yeah please.\n\n[40:57] SPEAKER_04:\nThank you very much, Mr. President. Can you tell us if you've spoken with French President Macron about the coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz? Have you been speaking with the French president?\n\n[41:08] Donald Trump:\nWhat what does that mean?\n\n[41:09] SPEAKER_04:\nHave you been speaking with the French President Macron about the coalition to reopen the Strait of Hormuz?\n\n[41:14] Donald Trump:\nYeah, I have, I have spoken to him. He's been on a scale of zero to ten, I'd say he's been an eight. Not perfect, but it's France.\n\n[41:31] SPEAKER_04:\nAre you confident that France will help with the reopening of Strait of Hormuz?\n\n[41:37] Donald Trump:\nYeah, I mean sure, he's going to I think he's going to help. I mean I'll let you know, I spoke to him yesterday. I don't do a hard sell on them because my attitude is we don't need anybody. We're the strongest nation in the world, we have the strongest military by far in the world. We don't need them, but it's interesting, I'm almost doing it in some cases not because we need them but because I want to find out how they react. Because I've been saying for years that if we ever did need them they won't be there. Not all of them, but they won't be there. I was very surprised with the United Kingdom, because the United Kingdom two weeks ago I said why don't you send some ships over and he really didn't want to do it. I said you don't want to do it, we've been with you, you're our oldest ally and we spend a lot of money on you know NATO and all of these things to protect you. I mean we're protecting them, we're working with them on Ukraine, Ukraine's thousands of miles away separated by a vast ocean. We don't have to do that but we did it, well Biden did it, I mean I have to be honest with you it's Biden got taken to the cleaners. But we worked with them in Ukraine, we don't need to work with them in Ukraine. And then they tell us that we have a mine ship around and they don't want to do it. I I think it's I think it's terrible. No, I was I was very surprised, I told him you know he we requested two aircraft carriers which they have. And he didn't really want to do it, and then right after the war essentially ended, you know meaning they were obliterated, he said 'I would like to send the aircraft carriers.' I said 'I don't need them after the war is ended and won, I need it before the war.' So I was very upset with, not happy with the UK. I think they'll be involved yeah maybe. But they should be involved enthusiastically. We've been protecting these countries for years with NATO because NATO is us. You can ask Putin. Putin fears us. He doesn't fear—he has no fear of Europe whatsoever. He fears the United States of America and the military that was built by me in the first term. Yeah.\n\n[43:55] SPEAKER_05:\nMr. President, you mentioned the significant amount of oil that China derives from the Middle East. What is the status of your conversation with President Xi in terms of getting China to cooperate in terms of making the Strait of Hormuz safe for those oil tankers?\n\n[44:13] Donald Trump:\nYeah, so China's a great example, they get 91% of their oil from the Hormuz straits. Which we protected for years. And it always bothered me that we have these countries, Japan gets 95% of its from the straits, the Hormuz straits. And it always bothered me that we're protecting we don't need them, we didn't need them before we started dig we must, I dig me must that's the Trump policy of lots of oil. And we didn't use them very much, it used to be a 10%, now it's at almost zero. We don't need, you know we don't need oil. We have all the oil we need for ourselves. It's one of the great assets that we have. We have double, more than double what anybody else in terms of oil production. We're at more than double any other country. So we don't need it but but we did it. It's almost you could say we did it out of habit, which is not a good thing to do. But we did it because we have some good allies there, we have some great Middle Eastern countries there, Israel there. So we did it for a lot of reasons. But it always amazed me that we did it, we never asked for reimbursement, and it was really there to serve other countries, not us. And by the way, we have the Sugar King, same story. Look at that, Alfy Fanjul, Alfy thank you both very much. Pepe. That's Pepe, yeah, Pepe. Hi Pepe, how are you? How are you? Is Alfy in the backstage? No, no, no. Is he sitting back there waiting for you, no? You doing all right? Pepe is a great friend of all of ours I think in the room, tremendous, and we appreciate you being here. Great, great to have you. Thank you.\n\n[46:09] SPEAKER_05:\nMr. President, you've said that Iran does want to make a deal. Now into the third week of this bombing campaign, what would that deal look like, what are the the asks that you're making of the government?\n\n[46:22] Donald Trump:\nThey want to make a deal, they're talking to our people. I don't know if they say that to you, maybe they do, maybe they don't. Don't forget they are a country that for years I didn't know this until recently, they're a country based on disinformation. And now they're using disinformation plus AI, and that's a terrible situation, that's a terrible situation. They showed all sorts of things happening in the last two weeks that never happened. Between their kamikaze boats that don't exist, between blowing up the aircraft carrier, one of the great ships in the world, the Abraham Lincoln on fire. They showed it on fire. I called the general, I say 'General, what's with the Abraham Lincoln? Looks like it's burning down.' 'No, it's not burning down, not a bullet was ever fired at it, sir.' They they know better. I said this is my first glimpse of AI and what they've done with it. They showed buildings in Tel Aviv burning to the ground, high-rises burning. They showed buildings in Qatar, they showed buildings in Saudi Arabia burning and they weren't burning, they weren't hit. It was all AI, AI-based, it's terrible, it's terrible. And that's their only that's their only I think that's the only thing they do well. They're negotiating and we always talk, we're you know somebody said well would you talk, why would you even talk to them? I talk to everybody because sometimes good things come out of it. But I don't know if they're ready yet, they've taken a pounding, I don't know if they're ready yet. And we don't even know their leaders, look, all of their leaders are dead, as far as we know, but they're all dead. We don't know who we're dealing with. We knocked out the first group, then the second group met, 88 met to pick the leader because the first group was all dead, and the second group got knocked out, they're all dead, then a third group met, I would think they're a little nervous about meeting, I don't know if they're nervous. Maybe they're not, maybe they're crazy, if they're not nervous then they're crazy. But we met with the next group and but we don't know who their leader is, we have people wanting to negotiate, we have no idea who they are. Yeah please, Peter.\n\n[48:53] SPEAKER_05:\nThanks President Trump. What are your advisors telling you about the Ayatollah's son, the news supreme leader? What are they telling you about?\n\n[49:02] Donald Trump:\nWell it's not only them, it's you people. I mean a lot of people are saying that he's badly disfigured, they're saying that he lost his leg, the one leg, and he's you know been hurt very badly. Other people are saying he's dead, nobody's saying he's 100% healthy. And he hasn't, you know he hasn't spoken because the Ayatollah would sit and he'd spew hate from a form of a throne. Not as nice as a throne, I like the English throne much better. But it was a it was a fancy chair, but he'd spew hate from his chair, but you'd see him a lot, right? This one we haven't seen at all. So that could be for a lot of different reasons. We don't know, Peter, if he's dead or not. Nobody I will say this, nobody's seen him, which is unusual.\n\n[49:58] SPEAKER_05:\nSomething else. Now that you've announced that the US has destroyed all of Iran's mine laying ships, why can't the US just immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz?\n\n[50:09] Donald Trump:\nWell we could, but it takes two to tango, we have to get people to take their billion dollar ship and and you know drive it up. If when Pepe has his big sugar ships coming around and they cost a billion dollars and we say 'I think it's okay now, Pepe, take your ship, drive it through the Strait of Hormuz,' he may say 'Let me wait a little while.' Because it takes it takes ship owners and the pe—you know these ships are very expensive, they can cost up to two billion dollars. So they don't want to take a chance that gee, I think we I think you'll be okay. They gotta know it. So they don't have to set, you know we don't know if they even set any mines. But the thought that they may have is enough to keep people from saying we don't need it. Now we are pounding that area, that coast as you know, left side, we're pounding it, like really pounding it hard. And again, they may have no mines set. We hit every one of their mine droppers, they call them the mine layers right, the ships. They're pretty sophisticated ships, every one of them is gone. But it only takes one. So it's a little unfair. You know you you win a war but they they have no right to be doing what they're doing. But we're hitting them very hard and today is a big day, we're pounding a certain area that has very much to do with the strait and I think we'll get it going very soon. In addition, we do have other nations coming in, you need people to watch and people to see, we have other nations coming in. Yes please.\n\n[51:59] SPEAKER_06:\nThanks President Trump. If the United States is working to secure the Strait of Hormuz for the benefit of other countries like China and our allies aren't yet stepping up to your standard, is the United States getting back to being the world's policeman?\n\n[52:13] Donald Trump:\nLook, the United States should not be very much involved, they can on a on a certain basis, they've been doing it for a long time. But I've always said I said if you look back years ago, I said why aren't we being reimbursed? You know these are the richest countries in the world, why aren't we being reimbursed for maintaining the the Hormuz Strait and why aren't we being reimbursed for that? I've said that for years. You can look go back they reported on it yesterday. I've been saying I've been saying a lot of things about the straits. Number one I said it's the one advantage they have, but that's a suicidal advantage because they kill themselves more than they kill the rest of the world. And there are things you can do with time, there are other things you can do. But I think that I think we're going to have the situation straightened out pretty quickly. And I think we're going to have some great help. And I think we're going to be disappointed in some nations too. And I'll let you know who those nations are.\n\n[53:13] SPEAKER_06:\nOne of your advisors David Sacks said the other week that the US should quote 'declare victory' and get out of the Iran war. He also warned that if the conflict escalates, Israel may contemplate the use of a nuclear weapon, has he shared that assessment with you?\n\n[53:27] Donald Trump:\nNo, he hasn't, Israel would never use a nuclear weapon. Israel would never do that and uh yeah there's no there's a theory you've pounded them to hell and you could just leave now and it'll take 10 years for them to build back not nearly what they have right now. And I guess that's another theory, but we want to have it ended so that another president doesn't have—look, for 47 years no president was willing to do what I'm doing and they should have done it a long time ago, it would have been a lot easier. There's no president that wanted to do it and yet every president knew. I've spoken to a certain president who I like actually, a past president, former president. He said 'I wish I did it. I wish I did it,' but they didn't do it. I'm doing it. Yeah, please. I can't I can't tell you, I don't want to embarrass him. It would be very bad for his career even though he's got no career left. Go ahead. Thank you sir. Mr. President, you mentioned that you're not entirely sure who you're dealing with, who the leadership is in Iran. Do you see a viable opposition movement still in that country following all of the protests that we had seen before the airstrikes and in kind of an opposition movement that could become a viable leader in Iran? Well, the biggest problem and you know we have brave people in this room but the biggest problem that I see is that you know they put out a warning and we have the warning we get everything they get. And it said any protester that goes onto the street will be immediately shot and killed. That's this is a little tougher than the American way. This is this is not quite as tough as nobody can believe it. So I can't imagine they don't have guns and the other ones have guns. Highly sophisticated machine guns and AK-47s and other kinds of guns. And they did that with the women. So the women had 250,000 even 500 people protesting a year ago and they shot women right through the middle of the forehead with snipers. And they didn't have to do many, about 10 went down bleeding profusely and 250 to 500,000 women went running in the other direction because they can be brave but they they're not stupid. And they have no gun and you have snipers in buildings specifically for this reason. So a woman goes down falling bleeding from the head and it doesn't take long for that to spread. And when that spreads, that crowd dispenses and nobody else has been able to do that to the extent that these people—these people are violent. They killed a minimum two weeks ago 32,000 people. So and they put out actually a notice two days ago if you protest if you protest you will be shot and killed. So I don't know, I would say Mike Johnson's the only person I know who's the courage to go out in that kind of an atmosphere. I don't think so, I don't think so, right? Yeah. Mr. President, have your advisors told you anything in terms of how long we can expect gas prices as high as they are right now? I don't need advisors to tell me that. I know I know what it is. You know the Prime Minister of UK, United Kingdom yesterday told me 'I'm meeting with my team to make a determination.' I said 'You don't need to meet with the team, you're the Prime Minister, you can make your own. Why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you're going to send some minesweepers to us or to send some boats?' I said you don't have to meet with your team. It's the same thing here. I can tell you that when this is over, oil prices are going to go down very, very rapidly. So is inflation, so is everything else. But frankly, much more important than short-term even long-term oil prices, you can't let the most violent vicious country in the last 50 years have a nuclear weapon because the Middle East will be gone, Israel will go first without question, and they'll certainly take a shot at us before we get our act together and say we got to take them out. You can't let Iran, who's truly the a nation of great terror and and power, look look what happened in the last two weeks, they weren't supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked and the other one, you know they fought back, they could have yielded. But think of it, if we weren't around, they have tremendous—they had tremendous power, they had thousands of missiles most of which we've terminated. They had thousands of drones, they were making drones and missiles all over the place, we've knocked out most of those factories. I mean now they're sending out two or three missiles, now you know they've still got some, they might have 8% left. But mostly they've been eliminated, they've been terminated by what we did and what Israel did too. Yeah please. Israel is expected to expand its ground offensive in southern Lebanon to go after Hezbollah, have you discussed that with Israeli leaders and does the United States support a potential Israeli invasion of Lebanon? Yeah, no I did and and I know the—look Hezbollah's a problem, it's been a problem for a long time, not just now. And it's a certain area because I was with the other night a person whose parents live in Lebanon. This is a very substantial person, wealthy person, whose parents live in Lebanon. I said 'Really, how do you live in Lebanon? Your parents are living—' 'Oh yeah, they live there.' And over the years they've gotten used to the fact that it is being bombed, but they explained to me that it's really a different section of Lebanon, it's the section where Hezbollah is and they get used to it I guess. I don't know. I mean people live in Ukraine, you would think they wouldn't live in Ukraine but they live in Ukraine. I don't know that I'd do that, but they live in Ukraine, they live in Lebanon. Hezbollah's a big problem and they're rapidly being eliminated. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it.","2026-09-04T15:17:52.483673+00:00",null,"President Trump Participates in a Lunch with the Trump Kennedy Center Board Members","20260316",true,false,{"name":14,"slug":15,"image_url":8},"Donald Trump","donald-trump",{"prev":17,"next":20},{"id":18,"name":19},"79fab2f8-b325-463d-bcd9-8d7149392a86","President Trump Participates in the Friends of Ireland Luncheon",{"id":21,"name":22},"93f03325-3404-4ba6-a75c-9485dc74618a","President Trump and Vice President JD Vance Participate in Signing Time, Mar. 16, 2026"]