Good to see you. So Mr. President, I will just say that uh, I'm in awe of these uh, hockey heroes and uh, as we as we move forward they changed the game of hockey. Uh, it was a powerful dominant uh, performance that this country needed. They beat the powerhouse Soviets and as you know, you're continuing to do that today. And uh, this was a great start of it. And for me, I'm very just privileged and proud to stand with these Olympic heroes that literally changed a nation and gave us the strength that we needed uh, at the time our nation needed it. And to know these men here, they're they're humble, their their humility is is through the roof. And I just want to thank you for signing this. This means a lot to me personally, but it means more to the team when I talked to them this afternoon. This was uh, as Mike just said, it's the cherry on top of what they did for this country. And thank you for signing it and I appreciate it. [21:26] Well we love it, and uh, he's he was a really great hockey player too. So let me ask you a question. Was your brother uh, in this category of hockey player or slightly less?
President Trump Participates in a Bill Signing Ceremony, Dec. 12, 2025
Want to answer that? He was smart. He was better than I. Robby was a goaltender in the National Hockey League as well.
Wow, that's pretty good. Well that's much better than him! That's a lot of good genetics in this whole thing. But you were a hell of a player too. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Pete. So, we're going to... Mr. President, we would like to do one more thing. Sure. Uh, take a photo with our hats on. Yes, okay, let's go. [22:04] Mike. Mike's from Minnesota, he's used to wearing hats. Okay. Straighten it out, guys. Take a good one. You have Dan? Let's go Dan, get with... get with it, Dan. Mine's good. Oh, there we go. Good photographer. You got us a little off-guard. Could you move the mics uh, a little bit please? Thank you. Give us all in on this side. A little bit more. All right, big hockey fan. Okay, here we go. One, two, and three. And one more. Okay, here we go. One, two, and three. [22:43] Okay. So we're going to finish up with Tom Emmer and he's been uh, just a fantastic uh, a fantastic Congressman leader, person from Minnesota. Loves that state, boy do you love that state and they love you equally as much. Please.
Thank you, Mr. President. First, I got to thank Pete Stauber. As he's talking about humility, Pete Stauber actually uh, was in the the White House uh, as a national championship captain of a national championship hockey team back in the 1980s. Not bad. This is uh, this runs in the blood in Minnesota. This runs in our blood in Minnesota, but it's not about Minnesota even though I will point out most of the guys are from Minnesota, but that's not the point. It doesn't matter if it's Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, wherever players came from back then, they were all Americans. That's what mattered, and they were an inspiration. And you know what it means to my state? It shows us that no matter how bad it gets, uh, there's always a way to succeed. I think Mike Eruzione said it earlier, if you think you're going to lose, you're probably not going to win. If you think you're going to compete and you're going to give it everything you've got, these men who are standing here and their colleagues who are not here, God bless them, those who couldn't be here and those who uh, have departed, they reached the ultimate peak. And when they did it, as Pete pointed out, they lifted an entire country out of the ditch and set us off to an amazing uh, several decades that followed. And it's not much unlike uh, the 47th President of the United States. So I think it's entirely appropriate that uh, you're doing this for these men, uh, you're really doing it for the country. And uh, God bless you because Minnesota I think is going to experience a comeback because of you.
Yeah, Minnesota's going to come back. Now I'm just so I'm so impressed that so many of these champions come from Minnesota, it's amazing. It's uh, it's a great place. Thank you very much. We engineered them. One of the best places. I think you're strong. I think it starts again. Well, thank you very much. Any questions for the... let's go to the players first, if we could.
Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, it's a great honor to be in the room with all of you. I remember this game and it made a big had a huge impact on me, you're heroes of mine and it's really an honor to be in this room. Uh, Mike Eruzione, I have to ask you a question. I realize it was the semi-final game, but what did it mean to you at the time to beat the Soviets, to beat the Soviet Union?
Well, at the time it gave us an opportunity to play for a gold medal. Um, you know, people always talk about the Soviet game and the Soviet game and I know how important the Soviet game was from a political standpoint, we didn't know it at the time, we knew it after. But if we don't beat Finland, we're not having this conversation today. We're not here. As great as the Soviet victory was, and it was an incredible victory, but if we lose to Finland, it would have been 'God if you only could have beat Finland.' What was the score? Uh, 4 to 2. We were losing 2 to 1 going into the third period. That would have been a downer. So you know, we're not having this conversation. You are not inviting us to the White House. We are not receiving this honor if we don't beat Finland. So, I think it speaks volumes of the team and the team that I played on to come back after such a great victory, we were ready to play Finland on Sunday. And and I think again that a tribute to the team and the type of players that we had. So, years later 45 years later, we realize how important that victory was against the Soviets, but I think a lot of us take great pride in knowing that we closed the deal by beating Finland.
But if you didn't win that final game, nobody would... we wouldn't be here. Nobody would... we wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be here, we wouldn't have invited you. That would be... gold medalists. Be kidding me. Yeah, what happened to Finland? Mike'd be driving an Uber.
Mr. President, but you did... but you did win. What's the lesson for Ukraine from this win from 45 years ago when you defeated uh, Russian team against all odds?
Well, it's a similar situation, isn't it? Let's see what happens. Well we're working on seeing if we can make a deal right now, we're going to we're going to see, we'll soon know I guess. We're going to we're going to see a lot of death. Last month, fellas, 45,000 soldiers were killed in Ukraine and Russia. 45,000. Can you imagine that? It's ridiculous. Maybe we should send our team.
Mr. President, Mike Eruzione, if I could. Um, you guys were a team of amateurs. What do you think about the NIL, the deals that are being made with with players and and they're hopping around schools? What do you think about that? I'll get your thoughts like.
My thoughts are I don't like it. Um, I don't like the NIL, I don't like the uh the portal, but that's the state of college sports today, uh, and we have no control over that. I don't like it and a lot of people that I've spoken to don't like it either. But we we have no say.
Well, I think we maybe do have a say. I think that it's a disaster for college sports. I think it's a disaster for the Olympics, because you know we're losing a lot of teams, the colleges are cutting a lot of their... they would call them uh, sort of the lesser sports and they're losing them like at numbers nobody can believe. And they were really training grounds, beautiful training grounds, hard-working wonderful young people. They were training grounds for the Olympics. And a lot of these sports that were training so well would win gold medals because of it. Uh, those sports don't exist because they're putting all their money into football and, by the way, they're putting too much money into football because colleges don't make even the most successful universities don't make that much money. And you can't pay a quarterback 14 million dollars to come out of uh high school. They don't even know if he's going to be a very good player, I mean they've tried a couple of times. 14 and 12 million dollars and a couple of deals like that and the most successful colleges are losing money. And I think the NIL is a disaster for sports. It's horrible for the Olympics, and it's I think it's actually horrible for the players. And you're losing all of these great sports. They're not college football. Well even basketball is being affected. Basketball second, but even basketball's being affected. They're putting all of their money in and I know some about it. They will not be able to stop. You're going to have a college president, I'm telling you sir, if we give a guard 7 million dollars we're going to win the national championship and they'll give him 7 and they won't win it. And even if they do win it, colleges cannot afford to be paying the kind of salaries that you're hearing about. And frankly, if you didn't have a very strong salary cap in in sports and even then in professional sports it would they'd all be out of business, every one. You're going to have these colleges wipe themselves out. And something ought to be done and I'm willing to put the federal government behind it, but if it's not done fast, you're going to wipe out colleges. They're going to get wiped out, including ones that do well in football. They can't pay 12 million, 14 million, 10 million, 6 million for players. They won't be able to stop. There'll always be that one player, they only have that player they're going to win the national championship and they'll have 100 colleges thinking the same thing. Uh, colleges cannot afford to play this game, and it's a very bad thing that's happening right now.
Mr. President, you talked about the Soviet Union and I also want to ask you about another country that you're targeting, which of course is Venezuela. Do you intend on seizing more oil assets from Venezuela?
Well I wouldn't tell you that, I mean we it wouldn't be very smart for me to tell you that, you know? We're supposed to be a little bit secretive, you're a you're a very big time reporter, and I don't think I want to tell a big time reporter or a small time reporter that, but uh, we are uh knocking out drugs at levels that nobody's ever seen before. We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water. And uh, nobody can figure out who the 4%... I wouldn't want to be the 4% either, but 96% of the drugs coming in by water. Every one of those boats you see get shot down, you just saved 25,000 American lives. But we knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water and now we're starting by land, and by land is a lot easier. And that's going to start happening, and we're not going to have people destroying our youth, destroying our families. Forget about youth, everybody. You ever see a family with the fentanyl or or cocaine? Colombia has has at least three cocaine factories. That's a different country. We're not happy about it, but we're stopping it and we've stopped it now on water. You don't even find boats on water. You don't even see fishing boats on water. You want to go fishing in that area? You don't want to go... does anybody want to go fishing in that area? I don't think so. So I just want to say this, uh, we have now a strong border. A year and a half ago we had millions of people pouring through, now we have nobody coming in through our border and we have a strong country, we have a country that's respected again. We're going to keep it that way and we're not going to let people kill 300,000 people a year with drugs.
Mr. President, Mr. President, follow-up question. Mr. President, earlier the fraud that you've been pointing out talking about in Minnesota specifically, there have been some reports resurfacing and circulating even by your own administration alleging Ilhan Omar's marriage to her brother and this would be a fraudulent situation if there in fact is found to be fraud in a situation like that, would you like to see her denaturalized or others who have similarly committed fraud?
Well, I think she's very bad for our country. All she does is complain, complain, complain. She comes out of a country where they have no government, they have no military, they have no police, they got no nothing. They don't have a country. And uh, they run around killing each other and then she comes over here she tells the United States of America how it should be run. We don't want to hear from her. I don't want to hear from her. I don't want to speak for Emmer, but I don't think Emmer particularly wants to hear but don't say it because I don't want to get you in trouble, okay? Just be nice and easy, all right? I'll do it for you, but that part I'll do. But I just want to say that there's nothing worse than a person that comes in and does nothing but bitch and comes from a place where she shouldn't be telling us what to do, she shouldn't be telling us and everybody agrees with me. And what's happening in Minnesota with Somalia where billions of dollars is being stolen right like like candy from a baby, we're not going to let that go on. And it's too great a state to have that happening and guys like Tom Emmer and others, Pete Stauber, guys like them, they're going to stop it and they're going to be given the authority to stop it, because this country's not going to put up with it.
Mr. President, Mr. President, you talked about land strikes happening soon. Is there anything at this point that can prevent that and is the objective if you make that decision to overthrow the regime?
Well I don't want to say that, but it's not only land strikes on Venezuela, it's land strikes on horrible people that are bringing in drugs and killing our people. You know, if we were in a war and we lost 300,000 people in a year, because that's what the real number is, it's not 100, you know you keep hearing 100 and it's a lot worse than that because the families are devastated when they lose their child. If we were in a war and we lost two or three hundred thousand, but I think it's more than 300,000, that's a war that's like a war that would be unparalleled, there's nobody's ever seen anything like that, and that's what's happening. So, uh, it doesn't necessarily have to be in Venezuela, it's people that are bringing in drugs to our country are targets.
Mr. President, at the end of this year those extended Obamacare subsidies expire. What's your message to those 24 million Americans who will see their insurance premiums go up?
Well don't make it sound so bad because you know obviously you're a you know sycophant for Democrats, you're obviously a provider of bad news for Republicans. Let me just say something. The Republicans, I think I can speak for Tom and most other people, I think what most Republicans want to see is what I want to see and I leave it to them and hopefully they're going to put great legislation on this desk right here. We want to see all of the money that's been squandered and given to insurance companies because Obamacare is horrible health insurance, it's far too expensive and it always has been. But what it really is is a way of making insurance companies rich. We want the money not to be paid at all to insurance companies. You know insurance companies have gone up 1700% over a short... meaning the stock. 1700% over a short period of time and they've taken in hundreds of billions and even trillions of dollars. And we want the money to go to the people. They'll go in the form of a uh insurance account, healthcare account, or any other form that we can create we have a lot of different forms. We want to give the money to the people and let the people buy their own great healthcare and they'll save a lot of money and it'll be great. Now the problem we have is that the Republicans are not at all uh controlled by the insurance companies, but you know as the Democrats. The Democrats have received hundreds of millions of dollars, they're totally controlled by the insurance companies so we might not get too many of their votes, but I actually think we get some Democrat votes. So I don't know how you feel about it, Tom, but uh everybody wants to see this happen, everybody. You know I put it out and all of a sudden we've taken over in a positive way. The Republicans have taken over healthcare in a positive way. I want to see the billions of dollars go to the people, not to the insurance companies. And I want to see the people go out and buy themselves great healthcare. Much better healthcare at very little cost. That's what I want and it's so simple.
Mr. President, follow-up upon that. Many congressional Republicans have said they won't vote for an Obamacare extension deal if it includes funding for abortion. Would you assure those Republicans that you will not propose...
Well we're going to look into it, we're going to look into a lot of things. That's one of many factors. But what we do want to see is we want to see the money go to the people, not to the insurance companies.
Mr. President, Mr. President, wait, wait, wait you have to be nice and easy, nice and easy. She's very aggressive.
Okay, please. Thanks, President. Can you tell us how this free economic zone would work in the Donbas and land that the Russians took by force?
Well I don't want to do that now, it's very complex situation, but it it would work and a lot of people want to see it work and we're going to all I want to do is I want to stop the death of 25,000 people a month. Go ahead.
Thank you, Mr. President. There there were new Epstein photos released today showing you and also Bill Clinton, Steve Bannon... What was your reaction to those new photos that were released? Well I haven't seen it, but I mean everybody knew this Bannon was all over Palm Beach, his photos were with everybody. I mean almost uh there are hundreds and hundreds of people that have photos with him, so that's no big deal. I know nothing about it. What kind of a role do you want to personally play in the decision by the Fed on interest rates?
Well, you know, I've made a lot of money. I've been very successful and I think my role should be at least that of recommending. They don't have to follow what I say, but we're going to be choosing a new Fed person in the pretty near future. Uh, but uh they went out you know they went out with 71 different people, all economists, and Trump. I was 71. And of the 71 people I got it right and one other person I think from the Wharton School of Finance, my alma mater, got it right. There were two people that got it right out of 71 but I was one of them. So I think I certainly should have a role in talking to whoever the head of the Fed is or the Fed. I don't think the you know in the old days that used to happen, nowadays it's sort of they think it shouldn't happen, but I've done great, I've made a lot of money, I've been very successful. I think my voice should be heard. But uh, I'm I'm not going to make the decision based on that. I'll be making a decision over the next few weeks. Thank you all very much.