Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
I'm your host, Will Walden, and if you're new here, this is a
show all about Elon Musk. It is groundbreaking work that
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It takes just a second for you, but it makes a huge difference
for the show Elon Musk News. Any topic any of you wish to
talk about? President Trump set the tone on
this approach immediately when he took more than 12 times the
questions in his first few hours in office, as Joe Biden did in
his entire first week. Yesterday, we hosted a local
media row here at the White House with television and radio
stations from across the country that that reached up to 60
million viewers and listeners in our ongoing pursuit of
transparency. On this one month celebration, I
am thrilled to bring three of my colleagues and our policy
experts here at the White House to further recap this incredible
first month of accomplishments in greater detail.
We have Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security
Advisor, Stephen Miller, the Director of the National
Economic Council, Kevin Hassett and our National Security
Advisor, Mike Waltz. I will hand it over to them.
They will deliver brief remarks on the accomplishments of this
administration in the first month and then we will open it
up to Q&A. When we open up the Q and A
portion. I do ask for the sake of
efficiency in this room that you direct your question to the
principal you he can answer from and I will call on you in this
room. But first I will let them roll
through their remarks. And 1st up, I'll turn it over to
Stephen Miller. Thank you.
It's great to be back. And I want to just thank you all
for joining today, our one month celebration of the most historic
opening to a presidency in American history.
No president comes close to what Donald Trump has achieved over
just the last 30 days. He has packed eight years of
transformative action, restoring this nation, restoring our laws,
restoring fairness, restoring economic opportunity, restoring
national security in just one month.
No one in this country has ever seen anything like it.
And when you look at the consequentiality and the
significance and the transformative nature of the
actions he's taking, it truly defies description.
For example, in just one area, this nation has been plagued and
crippled by illegal discrimination, diversity,
equity and inclusion policies. It strangled our economy.
It has undermined public safety. It has made every aspect of life
more difficult, more painful and less safe.
He has ended all DEI across the federal government.
He has terminated all federal workers involved in promulgating
these unlawful policies. He has ended diversity, equity,
and inclusion in all federal contracting.
He has restored merit as the cornerstone of all federal
policy, restored the full, fair, impartial enforcement of our
federal civil rights laws for the first time in generations.
And he has cracked down on individuals across this
government and nonprofits who have engaged in illegal racial
discrimination against the American people.
This includes making clear to every educational institution in
this country that ending diversity, equity and inclusion,
ending unlawful race discrimination is a precondition
of receiving federal funds. He has also saved women's sports
by ending the participation of men in women's sports.
He has ended radical gender ideology across the entire
federal government and he's pressured the private sector to
also end and combat radical gender ideology.
He's re established the scientific and biological truth
that there are only two sexes in this country, male and female,
that those are biologically based determinations.
They are not based and can never be based on gender identity.
That includes rooting out of the Department of Defense all DEI
policies, all critical race theory, all gender madness, and
once again, having a military that is focused solely and
exclusively on readiness, preparedness, and lethality.
As I'm sure Kevin will talk about more, of course, he has
undertaken a historic cost cutting effort across the
federal government, launching the first ever Department of
Government efficiency, uncovering corruption on a scale
that we never thought imaginable, terminating every
single federal worker that we are, that we have found to be
engaged in the corruption and theft and the waste of taxpayer
dollars. And already saving $50 billion
in a single year, which over a 10 year period would be 500
billion dollars. Just think about how vast and
enormous that sum is. Of course, as you all know, he
has renamed the Gulf of Mexico to his correct and proper name,
the Gulf of America. He is renamed Mount Denali into
Mount McKinley, part of a historic effort to restore
patriotism and national pride all across this land.
He has ended the weaponization of the federal government,
restored the Department of Justice to his true mission of
combating threats to this nation and keeping the American people
safe. He has ended all federal
censorship of free speech. This has been one of the
greatest crises that has plagued this nation years and years and
years. The federal government violating
the First Amendment to take away Americans right of free speech.
President Trump has ended that, and he has demanded that all
federal workers, all law enforcement, cease any effort to
intimidate the rights of Americans or to police their
speech. He has also restored the death
penalty at the Department of Justice, including for illegal
aliens who commit murder, including for those who murder
cops, and including for all of those who threaten Americans
with heinous acts of violence. The death penalty is back.
Law and order is back. The streets are being made safe
once again. On the public health front, he
has launched the nation's first ever Commission, the Maha
Commission Make America Healthy Again, following the historic
confirmation of RFK Junior. To finally uncover the true root
causes of the public health crisis in this country, the
childhood disease epidemic in this country, the spiraling
rates of pediatric cancer and devastating childhood sickness.
He is finally created a situation where the federal
health agencies in this country will be focused on preventing
disease, on keeping children from getting sick in the 1st
place, not sending them to a lifetime in and out of
hospitals, suffering needlessly. When we can find ways to prevent
this epidemic of illness, then of course, on Homeland Security,
today it is officially the law of the land.
At the conclusion of the Congressional notification
process, that's 6 Mexican cartels and two transnational
gangs, Trende Aragua, or TDA and Ms. 13.
So 8 organizations in total are now formally designated as
foreign terrorist organizations, which means that every single
member of those organizations who operates on US soil is now,
as a legal matter, a terrorist, and they will be treated as
terrorists. This is a sea change in U.S.
policy. And this means the Department of
Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, along with
the rest of U.S. law enforcement and the Department of Defense,
are now operating in a legal reality where these cartels are
recognized as terrorists. And there will be a whole of
government effort to remove these terrorists from our soil
and to degrade their ability to threaten or undermine any
American security or sovereignty interest.
Border crossings since the day he took office are down 95%.
I think it's almost impossible to even describe the scale and
scope of that achievement. President Trump, within days of
taking office, cut border crossings 95% and those few who
have dared to cross are being either prosecuted or deported.
They're either facing significant jail time for
trafficking, smuggling, harboring, aiding, impeding, or
they're being immediately removed from our soil.
Either way, at the end of the process, they are going home.
He's reimplement to remain in Mexico, and he has obtained
historic cooperation from foreign countries all around the
world in accepting their deportees back.
And he's used the United States military to fully seal the
southern border with a historic deployment of both active duty
and National Guard troops, resumed the building of
infrastructure. He has opened up Guantanamo Bay.
And he's using military aircraft to carry out deportations all
across this country. And ICE is joining with ATFDEA
and FBI to carry out the largest deportation operation in
American history. The criminals are going home.
The border is sealed shut. America is safe, sovereign,
proud and free. We are a nation that everyone in
the world understands all across this planet.
You do not come here illegally. You will not get in.
You will go to jail. You will go home.
You will not succeed. This is the biggest and most
successful change in any area of law enforcement that this nation
has ever seen. And he did it in under one
month. Thank you.
Thank. You, yes.
Well, thank you, Caroline. Thank you, Steven.
You know, one thing that President Trump cares most about
is job creation. And it was about seven years ago
I had the honor of joining you in this room for the first time.
And it looks like we've created a lot more jobs than the last
month. Look at how many people are
here, right? My estimate is about 180, but I
didn't count. So thank you.
It's really an honor to be back here.
I think that I just want to go over a few things and then hand
it off to Mike. The first thing is that the
president has told us to prioritize fighting inflation.
And he had to do that because, as you know, President Biden let
inflation get completely out of control and he did it with
policies that made no sense. They made no sense.
You know, a lot of times you people say to us, our friends
are journalists, why are you doing that?
But but, you know, I like to think, why did they do that?
Why did they spend so much money?
And then why did the Fed print so much money so that we had
inflation as high as we've ever seen since JB Carter.
So why did they do that? So we're addressing inflation.
We didn't have to address it in the first term because it was
always in the ones, almost always.
But we're going to get it back there.
And how are we doing it? Well, we're doing it with a plan
that President Trump and I and others have talked about in the
Oval that involves like every level of fighting inflation,
1st, the back or economic level. We're cutting spending.
We're cutting spending in negotiations with people on the
Hill. We're cutting spending with the
advice of our IT consultant, Elon Musk.
And then we're also looking into supply side things like
restoring Trump's tax cuts, maybe even expensing new
factories so that there is an explosion of supply.
If you have an explosion of supply and a reduction in
government demand, then inflation goes way down.
And then one of the things that you will want to say is, well,
what are you going to see it? Well, the first thing that
you'll see when the markets believe that we're going to get
inflation under control is that the 10 year Treasury rate goes
down because that's how they think about future expected
inflation. And so we're still going to see
some memory of Biden's inflation.
It's not going to go away in a month, but the 10 year Treasury
before the last consumer price index had dropped about 40 basis
points, 40 basis points because markets were optimistic about
our ability to fight inflation. 40 basis points is kind of not a
fun thing to say. I kind of just talk that way.
I apologize. But the way to think about it is
for a typical mortgage, if that affects the mortgage rate, then
it's going to save a typical family buying a house about 1000
bucks a year. And that's just at our first
month. OK.
The second thing we've done is we've had a lot of trade talks.
In fact, I was just meeting a minister from Mexico with Howard
Lutnick just a couple of hours ago, and we're talking about
reciprocal trade, and we're also talking about the federal
crisis. And so reciprocal trade is about
our government treating other governments the way they treat
us. We want trade to be fair.
It turns out that Americans have been disadvantaged by foreign
governments over and over, and President Trump wants it to
stop. And the fact that struck me as
most noticeable when I started to look at what President Trump
was asking us to do is that last year, last year, we have data
U.S. companies paid $370 billion in taxes to foreign governments,
370 billion last year. Foreign multinationals paid US
$57 billion in taxes. We have 1/4 of world GDP.
They have 3/4 of world GDP and we're paying 370, they're paying
57. This is not reciprocal.
We're going to try or we're going to fix it.
The other thing that we've done is we've had an all of the above
energy approach that's led by Doug Brigham and Chris and a
really large team, EPA, and we've already made so many
actions that are going to affect the price of energy and lower
inflation. We've opened up 625,000,000
acres to energy exploration. We've cut 50 years of red tape
that makes it so you can't have permits.
And we've even made it so that when you go home, if you get a
new one, then you can take a shower or or flush a toilet or
read under a light bulb. We're doing that too.
So, so finally, let's just think about like the facts that we can
see right now that we think are awesome.
So guess what? Small business optimism is, has
gone up by the most ever since President Trump came in ISM,
which is the measure of what's going on in manufacturing.
It's expanding again for the first time in years.
CEO confidence is the highest it's been in years.
And the reason, the reason people are thinking this is that
our policies give people cause for optimism.
And then I want to reiterate what Stephen Miller said,
because it's so important and it's so important for financial
markets to start to digest this, that if say the Treasury
Secretary or the any Cabinet Secretary with Elon Musk is able
to find some savings, say $100 billion.
Well, in CBO land, that's actually like about 10 times
that or maybe 12 times that over a 10 year window.
And so when you're thinking about the negotiations right now
over reconciliation and thinking about, well, four trillion, 5
trillion, well, those numbers in terms of the savings are going
to end up being small because of all the waste that we're
finding. And so we're incredibly
optimistic about the future of inflation and the future of our
economy. And we're optimistic because
we're making so much progress so far.
We already see it in market prices.
And with that, I'll hand it off the mic.
Thanks. Well, good afternoon.
What a month and what a sea change in our in our foreign
policy, in addition to what we're doing on the border and
restoring American sovereignty, in addition to what we're doing
in our economy and the job creation and the inflation
reduction. We are bringing the world back
to where it was at the end of President Trump's first term,
which is a world of peace, prosperity, and, and looking
forward and getting us out of the chaos that we've just seen
over the last four years. So over the last month, just to
name a few, I had the honor of sitting in the Oval Office as
President Trump spoke with President Putin and then
immediately spoke with President Solinsky.
And both of them said only President Trump could bring both
sides of the table and only President Trump could stop the
horrific fighting that has been going on now for the better part
of four years and that only President Trump could drive the
world back to peace. Both of those leaders said that
in back-to-back calls. And of course, we just had our
historic talks mediated by our our good friends and partners.
Saudi Arabia, we give great thanks to Crown Prince Mohammed
bin Salman for hosting and sat down for the first time in years
with the Russians and talked about a path forward with peace
on top of that. And one of the things that led
to that was a tremendous confidence building measure that
we had with the release of Mark Fogle.
I'll remind everyone, the last time that we had an American
released from the Russians, either we gave up a deadly spy,
pressured our allies to give up a lethal killer, or we released
under the Biden administration the world's most notorious arms
dealer, Victor Boot, who by the way had one of his main clients
for arms, the cartels in in Mexico and Central America.
We gave up none of that. This was released as a
confidence building measure, working with our great Middle
East envoy Steve Witkoff and our Secretary of State as a first
step towards opening these talks and then moving forward towards
peace. On top of that, we've secured
just in a month the return of a dozen 12 American hostages from
Russia, from Bulgaria, from Venezuela, the Taliban and
Hamas, Excuse me, that's from Belarus, not Bulgaria.
We also had for the first time in quite some time, we took out
a senior leader of ISIS and international financier and
recruiter that the military had been trying to take out for
quite some time and and wasn't able to do so, frankly, because
of a bureaucratic approval process.
President Trump said take him out and that ISIS financier and
leader is no longer on this earth.
We've also taken action to eliminate other terrorist
organizations in the Middle East.
We drove before the president was even in office.
He started talking consequences for people that would hold
Americans heretofore. There's been nothing but upside.
You take an American, you get some better deal.
You take another one, maybe you get a better deal.
No more. There is now nothing but
downside for taking Americans illegally, either as hostages or
illegal detainees. And when President Trump sent a
very clear message across the Middle East, but particularly to
Hamas, that there would be all hell to pay, we suddenly saw a
breakthrough. And now we just saw the release
of yet another group of hostages.
There have been dozens now, including two Americans that
we've seen once again reunited with their families as part of
the talks with King Abdullah. He offered and and I think the
entire world is graciously accepted to take 2000 sick
children, cancer patients and others out of Gaza as a
humanitarian, as a humanitarian gesture. 2000 Gazans will come
out of that hellhole that it is that wasteland that Gaza is
right now, with unexploded ordnance, with debris
everywhere, with no sewage, with no water.
And, and President Trump has has put forward a plan to deal with
the practical reality that is 1.8 million Gazans now, now
truly suffering and then, you know, just to bring it back to
our own hemisphere. We've seen literally in the last
month, after years of national security experts, the generals
in charge, and others testifying and ringing the alarm bells
about about the Chinese Communist Party's presence in
our own hemisphere, particularly in the Panama Canal.
We're seeing the leadership of Panama step away from the Belt
and Road program, move away from China and back towards the
United States, and even enter into talks and and other
negotiations about addressing the ports on either side of the
canal. And then finally, last but not
least, we've had four world leaders in the White House, in
the Oval Office. We've had the Prime Minister of
Japan, the Prime Minister of India, the king of of Jordan,
and of course, the Prime Minister of Israel just in the
last four weeks. And next week, we'll have the
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and we'll have the
president of France, Mccrone. So President Trump is on what we
call Trump Warp speed. We are all, we are all honored
to be really serving under under his leadership and his vision.
And truly, you know, when we all say, and the president himself
says, says he is a president of peace.
He is a president focused on restoring stability.
I think the entire world saw what the world will look like
without strong American leadership in the last four
years. And it's truly been an honor to
get us back to where we were and back on track under President
Trump's leadership. Thank you, Mike.
Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
I'm sure you're very eager to ask questions of these very
smart people working very hard on behalf of the president.
We do have somebody in our new media seat today.
We have John Stoll, who is the head of news at X.
As you all know, you're all on. X is home to hundreds of
millions of users, a large contingent of independent
journalists and news organizations across geographies
and political spectrums. And at the same time, X remains
the go to platform for many legacy news outlets.
And I know as I mentioned, many of the reporters in this room
use X to attract eyeballs to your work.
Prior to joining X, John spent two decades in journalism,
including several years as an editor at The Wall Street
Journal. We are excited to have him in
the briefing room today. John, we'll let you kick it off.
And as I said at the top, please direct your question to the
individual up here who you'd like an answer from.
John, why don't you begin all? Right.
Thank you very much. I am sitting in for a thriving
ecosystem of journalists, independent and emerging news
organizations who do depend on X for publicity for a business
month. And so I look forward to seeing
many of them in the seat in months and years to come.
Also, thank you Caroline for opening the seat up to new media
It. It really is a testament not
only to your open mindedness, but also to innovation that
you'd actually think about, you know, folks that are not
traditionally potential to be in this room, to be in this room
and not only have a a question, but also to witness, you know,
this is a very important intersection of power and the
Free Press. And so just the ability to
witness this and and be part of it, it brings everybody's game
up. So thank you for that.
I think this is for Mike Waltz. My question is about Ukraine.
Sure. For about more than 10 years
I've been fascinated like all, like many with what's going on
was in Northern Europe working out of the Baltics when Crimea
was annexed and was a lot, a lot of this came on Twitter.
The platform used to be known as Twitter was a lot of European
leaders would, would, would talk about their disappointment and
and solidarity with Ukraine. But when it came to actually
doing something, it felt like they were passing a hot potato
and sent it over the Atlantic. I wonder how much of what we're
seeing right now out of the administration and President
Trump is a call to Europe and the European leaders and the
allies that we've traditionally had to pick up that hot potato
and, and, and start doing something a little bit more
concrete to win and preserve the peace in Ukraine.
The second question I have is it, it, it's related is there's
been some a lot of speculation in that President Trump in the
administration might be manipulated by by Vladimir
Putin. I wonder if you just talk a
little bit about the the administration's posture and
your confidence in the competence of this
administration to go toe to tail with both Vladimir Putin.
Well, if there's, and I'll take the second question first, if
there's anybody in this world that can go toe to toe with
Putin, that could go toe to toe with XI, that could go toe to
toe with Kim Jong Un and we could keep going down the list,
it's Donald J Trump. He is the deal maker in chief.
There is no question that he is the commander in chief.
And I, for one, and I think all Americans and around the world
should have no doubt about his ability to not only handle
Putin, but to handle the complexity of driving this war
to an end. And then on your first piece on
Europe, I'll take you back to 2014.
You're right. There was a lot of hand wringing
in Europe and not a lot of action.
There's also a lot of hand wringing here in Washington
under the Obama administration and not a lot of action.
They literally threw blankets at the problem.
And so I'll remind everyone that Putin had, you know, some type
of conflict, invasion or issue with their neighbor under
President Bush, with Georgia, under President Obama, with
Ukraine 2014, not under President Trump 45, and again
with President Biden in 2022. The war should have been
deterred. The war should have never
happened. And I have no doubt it would not
have happened under President Trump and will stop under
President, President Trump again.
But I just want to push back on this notion of our European
allies not being consulted as we've entered into this process.
I already mentioned the immediate phone call President
Trump made to President Solinsky.
He has talked to President Mccrone of France repeatedly.
Last week, President Mccrone convened European leaders and
then is coming here on Monday. Prime Minister Starmer is coming
next Thursday. We've also, I've talked to every
one of my national security, national security advisor
counterparts across, across the spectrum in Europe.
I've talked to Secretary General Ruta, the the leader of NATO,
the secretary general of NATO. We have repeatedly, oh, by the
way, we had half our cabinet, 7 cabinet officials, including the
vice president at the Munich Security Conference, all
engaging, all listening, and all making sure our allies are
heard. However, we've also made it
clear for years, decades even, that it is unacceptable that the
United States and the United States taxpayer continues to
bear the burden not only of the cost of the war in Ukraine, but
of the defensive of Europe. We fully support our NATO
allies. We fully support the Article 5
commitment, but it's time for our European allies to step up.
And one of the things that Secretary General Ruta said on
our call was this last couple of weeks have been a real wake up
call. And I asked them, what have you
been missing the last couple of years?
The fact that we are going to enter into a NATO summit this
June with a third of our NATO allies still not meeting the 2%
minimum, a commitment they made a decade ago, literally a decade
ago, with a war on their doorstep, the largest war that
they're all extremely concerned about, but yet it's, well,
somebody else needs to pay. We've got other domestic
priorities. It's unacceptable.
President Trump's made that clear.
And the minimum needs to be met. We need to be at 100% in this
June of the NATO summit. And then let's talk about
exceeding it, which what is what President Trump has been talking
about With 5% of GDP, Europe needs to step up for their own
defense as a partner. And we can be friends and allies
and have those tough conversations.
Peter. Thank you Caroline, I have a
Ukraine one and a Doge one. Who can talk Doge?
All of us. Well, so, so Steven, we're
hearing about. These dodge dividend checks that
would be 20% back to taxpayers, 20% to pay down the debt, 60% is
left. Who gets that?
Well, the way that it works is when you achieve savings, you
can either return to the taxpayers, you can return it to
our debtors, or it can be cycled into next year's budget and then
it just lowers the overall baseline for next year.
So in other words, you can just transfer into the next fiscal
window and then lower the overall spending level.
And that means that you can achieve a permanent savings that
way and that reduces the deficit.
And when is it that people might see those checks?
What is it all going to be worked on through the
reconciliation process with Congress that's going underway
right now? As you've seen, the Senate's
moving a bill. The House is moving a bill.
The president has great confidence in both chambers to
deliver on his priorities. Now, just take this opportunity
to note that President Trump has made a historic commitment to
the working class of this country to fight for a major tax
relief and major price relief and cutting spending, as
Dozier's doing. And cutting taxes is the key to
delivering on both of those promises.
And President Trump is resolutely committed to doing
both. Thank you.
And on Ukraine, I guess this is for Mike.
Sure, after the president's post on Truth Social yesterday, need
to know who does he think is more responsible for the Russian
invasion of Ukraine? Who Or Solinsky?
Well, look, his his goal here is to bring this war to an end
period. And there has been ongoing
fighting on both sides. It is World War One style trench
warfare. His frustration with President
Solinsky is that you heard is multifold.
One, there needs to be a deep appreciation for what the
American people, what the American taxpayer, what
President Trump did in, in his first term and what we've done
since. So some of the rhetoric coming
out of Kiev, frankly, and, and, and insults to President Trump
were unacceptable #1 #2 our own Secretary of Treasury personally
made the trip to offer the Ukrainians what is can only be
described as a historic opportunity that is for America
to Co invest with Ukraine in their minerals, in their
resources to truly grow the pie. So case in point, there's a
foundry that processes aluminum in Ukraine.
It's, it's been damaged. It's not at its current
capacity. If that is restored, it would
account for America's entire imports of aluminum for an
entire year, that one foundry. There are tremendous resources
there. Not only is that long term
security for Ukraine, not only do we help them grow the pie
with investments, but you know, we do have an obligation to the
American taxpayer and helping them recoup the hundreds of
billions that that have occurred.
So, you know, rather than enter, enter into some constructive
conversations about what that deal should be going forward, We
got a lot of rhetoric in the media that was that was
incredibly unfortunate. And I could just tell you,
Peter, you know, as a veteran, as somebody who's been in
combat, this war is horrific. And I think we've lost sight of
that, of the literally thousands of people that are dying a day,
families that are going without the next generation.
And I find it kind of, you know, frankly ridiculous.
So many people in Washington that were just demanding,
pounding the table for a ceasefire in Gaza are suddenly
aghast that the president would demand one and both sides come
to the table when it talks to when when it comes to Ukraine, a
war that has been arguably far greater in in in, in scope and
scale and far more dangerous in terms of global escalation to US
security. And I do have one for Caroline.
Does President Trump have a bet with Trudeau about this USA
Canada hockey game tonight? And when there is a big hockey
game on, is the president watching for the goals or for
the fights? Probably both.
I think he's watching for the United States to win tonight.
I know he talked to the USA Hockey team this morning.
He talked to the players after their morning practice around
10:00. And I also spoke to some folks
from that team after they were jubilant over President Trump's
comments to the team. I believe they're going to put
out a video of that call. So he looks forward to watching
the game tonight. And we look forward to the
United States feeding our soon to be 51st state Canada.
Bloomberg, go ahead. My question is for Mike Waltz.
Can you give us a readout of the Pella's meeting with Williams,
who had just wrapped up? And in particular, is Williams
the opportunity to rejected this deal about the rare earth
minerals? Where?
Where does that stand? Well, we're going to continue to
have. He needs to come back to the
table and we're going to continue to have discussions
about where that deal is going. Again, we have an obligation,
the taxpayer. I think this is an opportunity.
The president thinks this is an opportunity for Ukraine going
forward. There can be, in my view,
nothing better for Ukraine future and for their security
than than to have the United States invested in their
prosperity long term. And then a key piece of this is
also been security guarantees. Look, the the reality that we're
talking about here is, is it in Ukraine's interest?
Is it in Europe's interest? It certainly isn't in Russia's
interest or in the American people's interest for this war
to grind on forever and ever and ever.
So a key part of his conversation was helping
President Zelensky understand this war needs to come to an
end. This kind of open-ended mantra
that we had under the Biden administration, that's over.
And I think a lot of people are having a hard time accepting
that. And then the other piece is
there's been discussions from Prime Minister Starmer and also
President Mccrone about European LED security guarantees.
We welcome that. We've been asking Europe to step
up and secure its own prosperity, safety and security.
So we certainly welcome that and we certainly welcome more
European assistance, as I told my counterparts, come to the
table with more if if you want a bigger seat at the table.
And we've been asking for that for quite some time.
Sanctions in your talks with them and if you consulted with
international partners and allies about essentially rolling
back sanctions in these negotiations to end the.
Those the talks with, with our Russian counterparts, both with
my counterpart, the national Security Advisor, Secretary
Rubio's counterpart, the foreign minister, Foreign Minister
Lavrov, you know, it, it really were was quite broad focused on
what is the goals for our broader relationship, but very
clear that the fighting has to stop to get to any of those
brighter goals. And as a first step, we're just
going to do some common sense things like restore the, the
ability of both of our embassies to function.
And again, you know, this is this was common sense in in
foreign policy world, they call it shuttle diplomacy.
We have to talk to both sides in order to get to both sides to
the table. And both sides have said only
President Trump could do that. Deanna, thank you.
My question is for Mike Waltz. The president has called
Zelensky a dictator. Does he view Putin as a
dictator? And does he want Zelensky out of
power? I know he's called for
elections. And then thirdly, the head of
the defense committee in Ukraine's parliament just has
claimed that the US has stopped selling weapons to Ukraine.
Is that true? Well, most of our weapons that
have gone to Ukraine have been part of a drawdown authority
where we've literally taken them out of our stocks and then
eventually through appropriations started buying
them again to refill our stocks. I'll, you know, just state that
there has been a lag and a lot of that process.
So many of our stocks, as we look at our operations around
the world are becoming more depleted.
That's one of the reasons many people have had a lot of concern
about when does this end? How much is it going to take?
How many lives will be lost? How much will we be?
How much will we spend as a member of Congress?
We repeatedly asked the Biden administration those questions
and we never got a satisfactory answer.
Look, President Trump is obviously very frustrated right
now with President Zelensky. The fact that that he hasn't
come to the table, that he hasn't been willing to take this
opportunity that we have offered, I think he eventually
will get to that point, and I hope so very quickly.
But President Trump is, as we made clear to our Russian
counterparts, and I want to make clear today, he's focused on
stopping the fighting and moving forward.
And we can argue all day long about what's happened in the
past. Reagan Yeah.
Wait, what about? What about?
Excuse me. I just called on Reagan.
Reagan, go ahead. I have a question for Stephen
and a question for Mike. Steve, Max Review.
There have been reports that Trump is unhappy with the rate
of deportations and he wants them to be hired.
Is the president happy with the rate of deportations?
And are there any plans to speed up the process?
Well, first of all, we all appreciate the encouragement
from the media to deport as many illegal aliens as humanly
possible. So thank you.
And I will promise you that the full might of the Department of
Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the
Department of Defense, and every element and instrument of
national power will be used to remove with speed all criminal
illegals from the soil of the United States of America, to
enforce final removal orders and to ensure that this country is
for American citizens and those who legally belong in this
country. We inherited an ICE that was
completely shuttered. We inherited the Department of
Homeland Security, whose sole mission was to resettle illegal
aliens within the United States of America in 30 days.
The President sealed the border shut, declared the cartels to be
terrorist organizations, has increased ICE deportations to
levels not seen in decades, and we are shortly on the verge of
achieving a pace and speed of deportations this country has
never before seen. Thank you, Mike.
There have been reports that there's some underground
opposition to Trump's pick for Under Secretary of Defense and
Policy, Elbridge Colby. Have you or anyone from the
administration been personally lobbying senators to support
Elbridge Colby? Look, I've worked with Bridge Co
Colby in the past. He has the president's full
support to be the Under Secretary of Policy, which will
be a critical policy arm for Secretary Hagseth going forward
that will implement a lot of these policies.
And, and really that's, that's been to the extent of it.
I think there's been a lot of kind of, you know, breathless, I
don't know, back and forth in the in the press, but we're full
speed ahead to get the president's.
Team in place so we can implement as America First
policy. Thank.
You, Mike, has spoken pretty extensively.
Does anybody have questions for Stephen or for Mr. Hassett?
Nobody wants to talk about the economy.
Yeah, sure. IRS OK, so this would be for
either one of you. So we reported several other
outlets have reported that about 3500 people are due to be lose
their jobs at the IRS by the end of the week.
If the goal of these spending cuts across the federal
government has been to reduce the debt, why impose some of the
deepest cuts we've seen so far at the agency responsible for
raising? Revenue for the federal
government. I think our objective is to make
sure that the employees that we pay are being productive and
effective. And there are many, many more
than 100,000 people working to collect taxes and not all of
them are fully occupied. And the Treasury Secretary is
cutting the matter and feels like 3500 is a small number and
probably you can get bigger, especially as we improve the IT
at the IRS. And so, so I think that it's
absolutely something that is on the table for good reasons.
And the point is that don't just talk about the IRS, talk about
all of government that there are so many places I live in DC,
you've maybe live in DC where you never there.
Nobody, nobody's going to the buildings.
People aren't commuting because nobody's doing their job.
We look back and we see that there are all these people doing
2 jobs while getting a government payroll on the
payroll. So the point is we're fixing
that and the IRS is a small part of that picture.
So you're saying that everybody who's being let go was doing a
bad job? I'm saying that we're studying
every agency and deciding who to let go and why, and we're doing
so very rationally with a lot of support from analysis.
Because we're being told by a lot of people who have been let
go at other agencies that they were told they were being
dismissed because of poor performance, when in some cases
they haven't even had a performance review yet because
they've only been on the job a couple of.
Months. Yeah, I've never seen a person
who was laid off for poor performance to say that they
were performing poorly. OK.
Good point. Sure.
Caitlin, I have a question. I'll start with you.
Kevin has it. Thank you for being here.
And I've got a question for Mr. Waltz on these potential checks
that you might send out from Dodge.
Is there a concern as you're thinking through this that they
could be inflationary? Oh, absolutely not.
Because imagine if we don't spend government money and we
give it back to people, then the, you know, if they spend it
all, then you're even, but they're probably going to save a
lot of it, in which case you're reducing inflation.
And also with the government spends a lot, that's what
creates inflation. We learn that from Joe Biden.
And so if we reduce government spending, then that's, you know,
reduces inflation. And if you give people money,
then they're going to save much of it.
And and when they save it, then that also reduces demand,
reduces inflation. OK, so you're not worried about
it? And Mr. Bolt, to follow up on
Peter's question, you wrote in an op-ed in the fall of 2023
that, quote, Putin is to blame, certainly like Al Qaeda was to
blame for 911. Do you still feel that way now
or do you share the president's assessment as he says Ukraine is
to blame for the start of this war?
Well, it shouldn't surprise you that I share the president's
assessment on all kinds of issues.
What I wrote as a member of Congress's was, was as a former
member of Congress, Look, what I share the president's assessment
on is that the war has to end. And what comes with that, what
comes with that should be at some point, elections.
What comes with that should be peace.
What comes with that is prosperity that we've just
offered in this natural resources and economic
partnership arrangement, an end to the killing and European
security and security for the world.
The president's not only determined to do that in Europe,
he's determined to do it in the Middle East.
And just a few months ago, we had an administration that had
tried for 15 months, week after week, sitting with you here and
couldn't get us to a ceasefire, couldn't get our hostages out.
Now we're at that point, we're back to the maximum pressure on
Iran and we will, we have just begun and we will drive towards
a ceasefire and all of those other steps.
I'm not going to pre negotiate or get ahead of the sequencing
of all of that. It's a very delicate situation.
But this is a president of peace and who here would argue against
peace? OK, so.
You do share that assessment. And can I follow up in 2017 then
Jordan and Trump go ahead, I just told.
You. You just.
Want 2 questions? Kate Jordan.
Go ahead. Mr. Mr. Hassett, you were
speaking about about the tariff revenue and you also addressed a
question about the IRS. President Trump has spoken about
replacing income tax with tariff revenue, especially with all
this waste ground abuse that we're seeing cut.
Is that a possibility? Absolutely.
And in fact, if you think about the China tariff revenue that
we're estimating is coming in from the 10% that we just added,
plus the de minimis thing that it's between 500 billion and a
trillion dollars over 10 years is our estimate.
And that's something that is outside of the reductions that
markets are seeing through the negotiations up on the Hill.
And so we expect that the tariff revenue is actually going to
make it much easier for Republicans to pass a bill, and
that was the President's plan all along.
Excuse me, alert about Doge. So you, you spoke about DOGE.
You said roughly $50 billion is set to be cut in a year of
waste, fraud and abuse by unelected bureaucrats.
We're hearing this. Ironic narrative from the
president's critics and the left wing media that Elon Musk is an
unelected bureaucrat and he's doing all this terrible stuff.
Isn't 1 of Doge's objectives to get get rid of the federal
bureaucracy the the deep state? And also who was running the
White House when Joe Biden was in office?
Because I don't know a single person who believes it was Joe
Biden. You're, you're tempting me to
say the very harsh things about some of our media friends.
The yes, it is true that many of the people in this room for four
years failed to cover the fact that Joe Biden was mentally
incompetent and was not running the country.
It is also true that many people in this room who have used this
talking point that Elon is not elected fail to understand how
government works. So I'm glad for the opportunity
for a brief civics lesson. A president is elected by the
whole American people. He's the only official in the
entire government that is elected by the entire nation,
right? Judges are appointed, members of
Congress are elected at the district or state level, just
one man and the Constitution. Article 2 has a clause known as
the vesting clause, and it says the executive power shall be
vested in a president singular. The whole will of democracy is
imbued into the elected president.
That president then appoints staff to then impose that
democratic will onto the government.
The threat to democracy, indeed the existential threat to
democracy is the unelected bureaucracy of lifetime tenured
civil servants who believe they answer to no one, who believe
they can do whatever they want without consequence, who believe
they can set their own agenda no matter what Americans vote for.
So Americans vote for radical FBI reform, and FBI agents say
they don't want to change. Or Americans vote for radical
reform under energy policies, but EPA bureaucrats say they
don't want to change. Or Americans vote to end DEI,
racist DEI policies and lawyers, the Department of Justice say
they don't want to change. What President Trump is doing is
he is removing federal bureaucrats who are defying
democracy by failing to implement his lawful orders,
which are the will of the whole American people.
Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody.
I'm looking at the clock. We've almost had an hour of
time. I know a couple of these
individuals have a meeting to get to at 2:00 PM.
So you're welcome to follow up with my team for further
questions. And we're going to let these
guys get back to running the United States government.
And we will see you all later. President Trump will be speaking
at 3:00 at the Black History Month reception.
So thank you. Just good to see you.
We'll see you in a bit. Even on the pause, should we
expect indictments or the invitements coming for the
problem we found? Let's love to pull up with you
just. Instead of.
Thank you. Hey, thank you so much for
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