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President Trump Addresses Military Officials. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired September 30, 2025 - 09:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: For so many years now. Here we are. Here we are. Come to the White House any time you'd like. Now they've given up. Bad -- a lot of bad people. But all over it's been so popular. It's been very popular. I really thought that we were going to have to sort of fight it through. There's been no fight. There's been no fight.

Like when I called the Gulf of America, the Gulf of America, because to me it was always the Gulf of America. I could never understand. We have 92 percent of the frontage. And for years, actually 350 years, they were there before us, it was called the Gulf of Mexico. I just had this idea. I'm looking at a map. I'm saying, we have most of the frontage. Why is it Gulf of Mexico? Why isn't it the Gulf of America? And I made the change and it went smoothly. I mean we had a couple of fake news outlets that refused to make the change. And then one of them, AP, took us to court, and we won. And the judge, who was a somewhat liberal judge, said, the name is the Gulf of America, because AP refused to call it the Gulf of America. They wrote -- they're not a good outfit, by the way. They called it the Gulf of Mexico. I said, no, the Gulf of America is the name. And the judge actually said that, in fact, you can't even go into the room because what you're doing is not appropriate. The name is the Gulf of America. Google Maps changed the name. Everybody did. But AP wouldn't. And then we won in court. How about that? Isn't that so cool?

As Secretary Hegseth said beautifully, described the name change reflects far more than the shift in branding. It's really an historic reassertion of our purpose and our identity and our pride. That's when we go with the word War. And, you know, we want war because we want to have no wars. But you have to be there. And, you know, sometimes you have to do it. I said, I have settled so many wars since we're here. We're here almost nine months, and I've settled seven. And yesterday we might have settled the biggest of them all, although I don't know, Pakistan- India was very big. Both nuclear powers. I settled that.

But yesterday could be the settlement in the Middle East. That hasn't happened for 3,000 years. I said, how long have you been fighting? Three thousand years, sir. That's a long time. But we got it, I think, settled. We'll see. Hamas has to agree. And if they don't, it's going to be very tough on them. But it is what it is. But all of the Arab nations, Muslim nations, have agreed. Israel has agreed. It's an amazing thing. It just came together. War is very strange, you know, you never know what's going to happen with war. The easiest one of them all is Putin. I said, number one, it's a war

that would have never happened if I were president, if the election weren't rigged. If I were president, that war would have never happened. Not even a little chance. And it didn't happen for four years. But I knew Putin very well, and I thought that would be easy because I know him so well. Well, that one's turn out to be the hardest of them all. We had some that were not sellable and they all got settled.

So, if this works out, that we did yesterday with the Middle East, then that's more than a war. That's lots of wars. That's all combined. That's a lot of wars. Many of you were over there many different capacities and many different countries. That was a -- that's a big -- that's a big part of the earth. But if that works out, it would be eight plus. How -- I could give myself two or three for that one. And then we just have the one to settle. An we have to settle it up with President Putin and Zelenskyy, going to get them together and get it done.

But the only way we can do that is through strength. I mean, if we were weak, they wouldn't even take my phone call. But we have extreme strength. We had the horror show in Afghanistan, which is really the reason, I think, that Putin went in. He saw that horror show by Biden and his team of incompetent people, and that showed -- I think it gave him a path in. I wasn't there any longer. I watched that. It was so, so horrible. I think it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country.

And now we're back. And that's it. We're not going to have any of that crap happen, I can tell you. That was terrible. So terrible.

Together we're reawakening the warrior spirit. And this is a spirit that won and built this nation and -- from the cavalry that tamed the great plains, to the ferocious, unyielding power of Patton, Bradley, the great General Douglas MacArthur. These are all great men.

In this effort, we're a team. And so, my message to you is very simple, I am with you. I support you. And as president, I have your backs 100 percent. You'll never see me even waver a little bit. That's the way it is.

[09:35:01]

And that includes our great police officers and firemen and all of these people that are doing so well.

Together over the next few years we're going to make our military stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer, and more powerful than it has ever been before. I rebuilt our nuclear, as you probably know, but we'll upgrade that also and just hope we never have to use it. We have to hope we never have to use it because the -- the power of that is so incredible. I see things. I don't think they'd show it to you. I really wouldn't (ph) want them to show it to you. But when you see the result of what's left, you never want to use that. Never. Never ever.

We were a little bit threatened by Russia recently. And I sent a submarine. Nuclear submarine. The most lethal weapon ever made. Number one, you can't detect it. There's no way. We're 25 years ahead of Russia and China in submarines. Russia is actually second in submarines. China's third. But they're, you know, they're coming up. They're coming up. They're way lower in nuclear too. But in five years they'll be equal. They're coming up.

And you don't have to be that good with nuclear. You could have 1/20 what you have now and still do the damage. That would be, you know, that'd be so horrendous. But I announced that, you know, based on his mention of nuclear, and it was really a stupid person that works for him mentioned the word nuclear, I moved a submarine or two, I won't say about the two, over to the coast of Russia, just to be careful, because we can't let people throw around that word. I call it the "n" word. There are two "n" words, and you can't use either of them. You can't use either of them. And frankly, if it does get to use, we have more than anybody else. We have better. We have newer. But it's something we don't ever want to even have to think about. But when somebody mentions it, that submarine started immediately thereafter. And it's just lurking. But I'm sure we're not going to have to use it.

But it's an amazing -- its undetectable. Totally. Ours is. Theirs isn't. There's are totally detectable. We can detect them easily. We go right to the spot. But we have a genius apparatus that doesn't allow detection. It doesn't allow detection at all by anybody above water or below water. It's incredible. We're way ahead of everybody in that, and other things.

As a result of the exciting renewal of the spirit of our armed forces, and that's what it is, it's really reaching that spirit. Unprecedented heights. Over the past eight months, new enlistments -- I'm so proud of this -- have surged to record highs. The highest we've ever had. And we used to have recruiting shortages.

If you remember, about a year and a half ago, I was at the beginning stage of a campaign, and things came out that you couldn't get people to join the armed forces. And by the way, the police also, fire department. I always put the fire department in because they're great. They're great. And I got 95 percent of their vote. That helps. When you get 95 percent of their vote, you always have to mention them. But they're great. And they're brave. In our inner cities, which we're going to be talking about because it's such -- it's a big part of war now. It's a big part of war. But the firemen go up on ladders, and you have people shooting at them while they're up on ladders. I don't even know if anybody heard that, but -- and I said, don't talk about it much, but I think you have to.

Our firemen are incredible. They're up on one of these ladders that goes way up to the sky, rescuing people. And you have animals shooting at them. Shooting bullets at firemen that are way up in death territory. You fall off that ladder, it's over. It's over. They don't even have to inspect you when you hit the ground. And you have people shooting bullets at them in some of these inner cities. We're not going to let that happen.

So, I always mention the firemen because that's actually a big problem we have. They are unbelievable. Like you, they're unbelievable people. For the first time on record in 2025, the Navy, Air Force and Space

Force all met or surpassed their recruiting goals three months early. That never happened before. And the Army did even better. Congratulations, Army. They met everything. And these were the highest standards because we're making it larger. So, these were much higher standards than you had four years ago, three years ago, during the sleepy Joe Biden era.

[09:40:07]

And the Army did it four months early. And you remember a year and a half ago they said, the big stories that we're way behind with the Army, Air Force, the Navy, the Marines. We're way behind. Coast Guard. And even Space Force. I love Space Force, because that was my creation. You know, when you create something, I love it. And the people we put in there were good. I got that right. We put in great people initially, and we -- we've really dominated. We really dominated that sphere now.

We -- we're way behind China and Russia. And now we dominate. Space Force turned out to be a very important thing. I said from the beginning, you know, when Biden came into office, he wanted to terminate it. He said -- and this thing called Space Force, so we could get rid of that. And he got hammered by the people in this room for even suggesting it, because it's very important. One of the most important. And as time goes by, it will get more and more important.

But we're now at 106 percent of our recruiting targets for the year. And that's the best in far more than a generation. And for the Marines, morale is so strong that the Marine Corps will meet its 2026 retention targets before the end of October, which never happens. And that's the earliest it's ever happened in the history of our country.

And it makes you feel good, you know. I felt guilty. I'd go make a speech in front of -- never people like you. You are the -- you are the leaders. But people, soldiers. And I felt embarrassed because there'd be stories about, you know, you couldn't -- we couldn't fill up our Army, Navy, Air Force. We couldn't fill them up. And it was headlines. It was headlines. It was during Biden's four years, the autopen. I call him the autopen. It's -- how would you like to have your thing signed by an auto pen? You know, when I have a general and I have to sign for a general, because we have beautiful paper, they're gorgeous paper. I said, throw a little more gold on it. They deserve it. Give me -- I want the a paper, not the d paper. We used to sign a piece of garbage. I said, this man's going to be a general, right? Yes. I don't want to use this. I want to use the big, beautiful, firm paper. I want to use the real gold writing when you talk about the position. And they're beautiful.

And -- but how would you like to have that where you -- some kid sitting in the back office is having it signed with an auto pen? I thought about it. And I thought about you people first. Admirals, generals. I said, somebody works his -- his whole life, he gets into maybe the academies or wherever, but he -- however you got there, and you go through years of work and now you become an admiral or a general or whatever. And when you do, the president of the United States signs your commission, as you know. And that commission is beautifully displayed. And I sign it. Actually, I love my signature. I really do. Everyone loves my signature. But I signed it very proudly. And I always think to myself, how can you have an autopen sign this? It's just so disrespectful. To me it's just totally disrespectful. And it turned out that almost everything he did was signed by -- by autopen, except for when he gave his son, Hunter, a pardon. He signed that one. And that's actually the worst signature I've ever seen. That was the bad. The autopen looks much better.

But as leaders, our commitment to every patriot who put on the uniform is to ensure that American military remains the most lethal and dominant on the planet, not merely for a few years, but for the decades and generations to come. For centuries.

We must be so strong that no nation will dare challenge us, so powerful that no enemy will dare threaten us, and so capable that no adversary can even think about beating us. And we've had it recently. I had India and Pakistan were going at it. And I called them both. And in this case I used trade. I'm not going to trade with you. You start -- to nuclear nations. Big nuclear. No, no, no, you cannot do that. I said, yes, I can. You go into this freaking war that I'm hearing about -- you know, actually, they just shot down seven planes. Seven planes. It was starting. There's a lot of bad blood.

And I said, you do this, there's not going to be any trade. And I stopped the war. It was -- it was going. It was raging for four days. But that was just the beginning. And we stopped it. It was a great thing.

And the prime minister of Pakistan was here, along with the field marshal, who's a very important guy in Pakistan. And he was here three days ago. And I didn't even realize it, as beautiful as he said it, but he said that -- to a group of people that were with us, two generals, but a group, he said, this man saved millions of lives because he saved the war from going on.

[09:45:10]

And that war was going to get very bad. Very, very bad. President Trump saved millions and millions of lives. That was a bad war. And I was very honored. I loved the way he said it. Susie Wiles was there. She said that was the most beautiful thing.

But we saved a lot of them. We saved a lot of them. Even in Africa we saved the Congo with Rwanda. They've been fighting for 31 years, 10 million people dead. I got that one done. And very proud of it.

So, if this works out, we'll have eight, eight in eight months. That's pretty good. Nobody's ever done that.

Will you get the Nobel Prize? Absolutely not. They'll give it -- they'll give it to some guy that didn't do a thing. They'll give it to a guy that wrote a book about the mind of Donald Trump and what it took to solve the wars. And he'll get -- the Nobel Prize will go to a writer. No, but we'll see what happens. But it's a -- it will be a big insult

to our country, I will tell you that. I don't want it. I want the country to get it. Should get it because there's never been anything like it. Think of it. So, if this happens, I think it will. I don't say that lightly because I know more about deals than anybody. This is what my whole life was based on. And they can change. And this can certainly change.

But we have just about everybody. We have one signature that we need, and that signature will pay in hell if they don't sign. I hope they sign for their own good and we create something really great. But to have done eight of them is just like such an honor.

And then we have Putin and Zelenskyy. The easiest one of them all. I said that one will get done. I thought that was going to be first. The others were much harder. Some of them. Azerbaijan was -- this was going on for 36 years. They said, it's not solvable, sir. You can't -- don't do it. I said, I will do it. I will do it. And I got on the phone with the two countries. They were great. They were great. I knew immediately -- I knew as soon as I started talking to him, we're going to solve that war. And we did. Now they're so happy. Now they're friends. One said, he's been president for 32 years, 22 years. He said, you know, for 22 years I did nothing but kill his people. They were in the room together at the Oval Office. And they started off spread like this at the beautiful Resolute Desk. And one was here, and one was here. You couldn't get further away. That's the furthest I've ever seen two people in front of me. And as the hour went by, they got closer, closer, closer. And at the end of the hour, we had it done. And they hugged and hugged and hugged. And I said, that's so nice. And you're going to remain friends.

And I spoke to them -- one of them the other day. He said, no, he's now my friend. But for 22 years he's been the head of Azerbaijan for 22 years. And the other guy, great guy, too, seven. And you know that war, that was a war that was not solvable. He said, for seven years, the other one said for 22 years, all I did was kill his people. That's all I've done. I said, well, we're going to put a stop to that. So, we solved that.

So, it's a great thing. It's a great feeling. You know, you're saving Kosovo and Serbia. You're saving so many lives doing this if you can do it. But our people deserve nothing less than the very best. And we're never going to let them down. And if we can solve wars, instead of you having to fight wars, wouldn't that be wonderful, right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

That's why one of the first executive orders I signed upon taking office was to restore the principle of merit. That's the most important word. Other than the word tariff. I love tariffs. Most beautiful word. But I'm not allowed to say that anymore. I said, tariff is my favorite word. I love the word tariff. You know, we're becoming rich as hell. We have a big case in front of the Supreme Court, but I -- I can't imagine, because this is what other nations have done to us. And we have, you know, great legal grounds and all, but you still have a case would be very bad. Something happened. But I said, my favorite word in the English dictionary is the word

tariff. And people thought that was strange. And the fake news came over and they really hit me hard on it. They said, what about love? What about religion? What about God? What about wife, family? I got killed when I said tariff is my favorite word. So, I changed it. It's now my fifth favorite word. And I'm OK with that. I'm OK with that. But they hit me hard.

But it is. I mean, when you look at -- we've taken in trillions of dollars.

[09:50:03]

We're rich. Rich again. And they'll never be, when we finish this out,, there will never be any wealth like what we have. Other countries were taking advantage of us for years and years. You know that better than anybody. And now we're treating them fairly. But the money coming in is -- we've never seen anything like it.

The other day they had 31 billion that they found. $31 billion. Sir, we found $31 billion. And we're not sure from where it came. A gentleman came in. A financial guy. I said, well, what does that mean? He said, we don't know where it came. I said, check the tariff shelf. No, sir, the tariffs haven't started in that sector yet. I said, yes, they have. They started seven weeks ago. Check it. Comes back 20 minutes later. Sir, you're right, it came from tariffs. $31 billion. That's enough to buy a lot of battleships, admiral, to use an old term. Well, I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way. You know, we have a secretary of the Navy. He came to me, because I look at the Iowa out in California, and I look at different ships in the old pictures. I used to watch "Victory at Sea." I love "Victory at Sea." Look at these admirals. It's got to be your all-time favorite. Black and white. And I look at those ships. They came with the destroyers alongside of them. And, man, nothing was going to stop. They were 20 deep and they were in a straight line, and there was nothing going to stop them.

And we actually talk about, you know, those ships. Some people would say, no, that's old technology. I don't know, I don't think it's old technology when you look at those guns. But it's something we're actually considering the concept of battleship. Nice six-inch size solid steel, not aluminum. Aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. It starts melting as the missile's about two miles away.

No, those ships, they don't make them that way anymore. But you look at it and your secretary likes it. And I'm sort of open to it. And bullets are a lot less expensive than missiles. A lot of -- a lot of reasons. I should take a vote, but I'm afraid to take that vote because I may get voted out on that one. But I tell you, it's something we're seriously considering. There -- they were powers. They were big powers. They were just about as mean and scary as you could be. And so we're looking at that.

One of the biggest cases that we won was the decision of the United States Supreme Court to allow us to proceed on the word merit. Merit. So, those two words are right up there. So, this is, I would say, the opposite of you ask for a definition, the opposite of political correctness. We went through political correct where you had to have people that were totally unfit to be doing what you're doing for many reasons. I won't get into them. But for many reasons they were unfit.

Now, it's all based on merit. That was such an unbelievable decision. I didn't expect we were going to win that one. We went in, we said we need it. We went in for colleges. You know, where kids with a c average are getting into the best colleges and the kids with a averages won't get in and kids with the highest boards and the highest marks or the best marks couldn't get into the best schools and people that had not good boards and not very good marks, I mean, OK, but nothing special, they were getting into our best colleges. I said, this is just crazy. We can't run -- you can't run a country like this.

And it was lingering for years. And it got to the Supreme Court, and we won that decision. Merit. Everything's based on merit. You're all based on merit. We're not going to have somebody taking your place for political reasons because they are politically correct and you're not. We take the people that are going to do the best job. That's all. It's very simple.

And that's the way our country was built. We were built on merit. We've gotten away from it for a long time. And everyone understands it. And it was done. It was approved. I give great credit to the Supreme Court because I thought they had tremendous courage. I didn't think they'd do that. That was tremendous. I give them, maybe for that decision, almost more than anything, because it's a hard decision to make. It's really hard.

The apparatus of our country was not set up for merit. It was set up for political correctness. And you can never be great if you're going to do that. And we're going to be greater than we ever were before.

We're bringing back a focus on fitness, ability, character and strength. And that's because the purposes of the American military is not to protect anyone's feelings, it's to protect our republic. And it's the republic that we dearly love. It's to protect our country.

[09:55:06]

We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom. And we will be a fighting and winning machine. We want to fight. We want to win. And we want to fight as little as possible. You have to count on people like me to keep you out of wars, because we don't want to go into wars.

Many of the wars that I just told you about, we could have entered those wars and settled them in a different way, lose a lot of our troops. And we're going to settle them, I guess, differently. Maybe not, actually, be -- actually, you might not have been able to settle them. We just would have been in the middle of a lot of -- a lot of firepower. But -- but when we do need it, you're going to be so ready. And you know it. But very importantly, with that goal in mind, I've committed to spending over $1 trillion on our military in 2026, and that's the most in the history of our country, $1 trillion. That's a lot of money. I hope you like that, ma'ams and sirs, I hope you like it. Thats a hell of a lot of money. We have the best of everything.

Every branch you're seeing major investments. And as I announced in the Oval Office in March, we are rapidly moving forward with the first ever sixth generation fighter jet. I didn't name it. I did not name it. Boeing came in and they said, sir, this is our submittal. It's the greatest fighter jet ever done. And, you know, they're testing all these planes. All the companies are testing. I think this one tested like through the roof. And they said, we'd like to name it the F-47. I said, let me think about it. Then after thinking for about two seconds, I said, OK. You know what that means, 47. I'm 47. So, I'm 45, 46 and 47, you know, if you think about it. I just don't want the credit for 46. I don't want to have their open borders and people coming in from all over the world, including jails and mental institutions. I don't want that on my record. But I like -- I like having it.

We're investing tens of billions of dollars in modernizing our nuclear deterrence capabilities like never before. And we've begun construction on what we call the golden dome missile defense shield. It will be the most sophisticated in the world. You watched it do well until they had some problems at the end with a little bit of a lack of ammunition, defensive ammunition. But they've got that taken care of.

But I tell you, it's -- what we're doing is so good. And we deserve it. You know, we help other countries with it. We don't have it ourselves. And Canada called me a couple of weeks ago. They want to be part of it. To which I said, well, why don't you just join our country? You become 51. Become the 51st state, and you get it for free. So, I don't know if that made a big impact, but it does make a lot of sense. It actually makes -- because they're having a hard time up there in Canada now because, as you know, with tariffs, everyone's coming into our country. We have more investment than we've ever had before. $17 trillion coming in.

As an example, in four years, Biden didn't have 1 trillion. We have 17 trillion more than that in eight months coming in. And they're coming in from Canada, Mexico, from Europe, from all over. A.I., auto plants, everybody's coming back to the United States. Under my budget, we will be expanding the U.S. Navy by at least 19 ships next year, including submarines, destroyers, assault ships and more. And it's going to be much more than that as we go along because we basically don't build ships anymore. We do build submarines, but we don't build ships.

Do know in the Second World War, there were freighters and different types, but we were doing a ship a day. And now we don't do ships. And I'm not a fan of some of the ships you do. I'm a very esthetic person. I don't like some of the ships you're doing esthetically. They say, oh, its stealth. I say, that's not stealth. An ugly ship is not necessary in order to say you're stealth.

By the way, the B-2 bombers were incredible. That is stealth. They went into that. I was with General Caine, and every -- and Pete were in the -- we call it the War Room, but we're watching them go in and they were totally untouched. They were not seen. They were literally not seen. They dropped their bombs. They hit -- every single one of them hit its target. It was total obliteration. CNN, when we came back, fake news, CNN, oh their camera just went off.

You know their camera -- every time I mention they turn the camera off because it's never good. They say this is a problem. But I don't blame them. You're better off keeping it off.

[09:59:59]

But they have some scammer reporter who started saying, without any knowledge, that he may not have hit the targets as well as they thought.