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Trump Speaks to the Press on One-year Anniversary of His Second Inauguration. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 20, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'm just looking at these charges. It's just pretty incredible. Many murderers. Many, many murderers, people that murdered.

So what ICE does -- and Border Patrol is incredible, too. I mean, they're -- Paul Perez and that group is incredible. Mostly Hispanic, by the way. They're like 60 percent Hispanic. You know, they talk about Hispanic. They're mostly Hispanic, right? And they're unbelievable people.

And then they say, oh, we discriminate against -- I love Hispanic. They are unbelievable, entrepreneurial. They have everything. I did great. I did the highest. Nobody ever got numbers like I got from the standpoint of being a Republican. But even the -- if you look at Texas, I won the entire border along Texas, between Texas and Mexico. It never happened before.

Nobody has ever done that before. I did it. As a Republican, I did it. I love the Hispanic. And they accuse us of all sorts of things. Sixty percent of the people we're talking about, they're the best people we have, and they're Hispanic.

The Border Patrol is largely Hispanic. ICE is largely Hispanic. They're unbelievable people. I don't know how they can take the abuse. They're taking rough -- they're taking rough people like this. Like all of them.

We have -- so we have 10,000 at least. I could have done 10,000 of them. You're lucky I only did, like, 100. And this is just -- this isn't even the worst of the group. They have murderers. They have some people we can't use their picture for legal reasons, but they're up for murder in their own country.

And we jeopardize their case, when we send them back, we send them back and we coordinate with other countries. It's a tremendous amount of work. All allowed in here by an open-border policy of the worst president in the history of our country. A man that didn't win the election, by the way, got -- it was a rigged election. Everybody knows that now.

And by the way, numbers are coming out that show it even more plainly. We caught him. We caught him. So I just want you to know that it's a terrible -- it's a terrible thing. Here's the book on accomplishments. And this is something -- oh, I'm glad my finger wasn't in that [expletive]. They could have done some damage, but you know what? I wouldn't have shown the pain. I would have gone back. Wait, did you hear that? That was nasty.

But I would not have shown the pain. I would have acted like nothing happened as my finger fell off. That was nasty. I think somebody did that. I think some -- it was him. It was my man.

How are you? You didn't do it. I know you didn't. I know you didn't.

So -- but here is the -- here's the book. These are all things we have. I'm going to read a few of the samples. But look at this. These are all -- each line is something that we did. Nobody did that before. And it's big stuff, too. Look, we have the hottest country in the world. So I will read you a few.

We ended Biden's stagflation. We were in stagflation. That's a disaster that's far worse than inflation. As you know, he had the biggest inflation in the history of our country, they say, 48 years. Pick your choice. But they had the biggest inflation in the history of our country. We have it right down to a normal number now. We're going to get it even a little bit lower.

Created super high -- what we've done with growth is incredible. We created super-high economic growth. And America is booming. It's booming. There are thousands of businesses right now that are being built. Many of the biggest factories in the world are being built right in our country. They're not going to other countries. They're leaving other countries.

Fourth quarter GDP is on track to pass, perhaps, much more than five percent growth. And that's despite the fact that we had a Democrat shutdown. They shut down our country, and we had five percent. Nobody in this room has ever heard about five percent. I think it could be 20 percent if we do it right. If we don't -- every time we have good numbers, they raise interest rates. He shouldn't do it.

In the old days, if you had good numbers, they'd lower interest rates or they wouldn't do anything. Here, they try and kill it. They always try and kill success. Over the last 20, 25 years, that's the way. In the old days, if you had good numbers, the market would go through the roof. Today, if you have good numbers, the market goes down.

But, by the way, we've had the best stock market in history, the best 401(k)s in history. And we inherited a mess. The numbers that we inherited are way -- were way up, and now we brought them -- almost all of them way down. We brought them way down. I mean, I'm not getting -- maybe I have the bad public relations people, but we're not getting it across.

[14:05:00]

We inherited high numbers, and we brought them way down.

And look at gasoline. They have places in the country now $1.99 a gallon. $1.99, $2.30, $2.50. I guess the average now they're saying is $2.31. I mean, he was at $4.50 and $5 for periods of time. And he went back to the Trump formula, but he didn't do it properly, and he really went back to parts of it because they were -- you would have had $8 gasoline if they didn't. But he didn't do it properly. He had people that didn't know what they were doing.

And core inflation for the last three months is 1.6 percent -- 1.6. Annual (ph) core inflation was so high that nobody could even calculate it. Under Biden, real incomes declined $3,000. Think of that, $3,000. That's a year. In 12 months, Trump real incomes went up by $2,000 and $3,000, and even, in some cases, $5,000. It's a tremendous difference.

Stock market has set 52 all-time record highs during the course of the -- actually, the 11 months, because this was done on 11 months. Now we're -- now we are actually officially 12 months, as of today. 52 all-time record highs. That means 401(k)s did great. I have -- people see me all the time -- policemen that guard us really well and got to know them a little bit.

And they said, sir, you're making me look so good. My 401(k) is through the roof. My wife thinks I'm the greatest genius, that I'm a financial genius, like Warren Buffett. He told me that. He said, I think they have better returns than Warren Buffett right now.

But he said, all my life, my wife has been criticizing me for not being smart financially. Now, all of a sudden, she's -- she loves me more. But we added $9 trillion in value to retirement accounts, saving -- saving many people. I mean, they were going out of business. Think of it, we added $9 trillion of value to retirement accounts, savings accounts and 401(k)s.

That's during a course of 12 months. And I think it's probably 11 months because I don't think they have it for the 12. They have it for the 11. Added $9 trillion of value.

Lifted more than 1.2 million Americans off food stamps in one year. They would have had another 1.2 million. We would have had -- welfare would have gone up. And instead of investing $18 trillion in our country -- now it's probably more than that -- but $18 trillion and having thousands of plants being built all over the country.

You would have had thousands of plants closing all over the country. And you would have had disinvestment. And you would have had welfare going way up. You know, if you look at SNAP -- take a look at SNAP, what happened with that? It was at $7 billion, and it came out to over $51 billion.

Nobody has ever seen anything like it. The past administration had no clue. Or they were really bad, but they basically had no clue. But they did have a concept. I mean, they're still trying to sell the idea of men playing in women's sports. You saw that in the Supreme Court.

I mean, some of those justices were fighting for them, too. They were fighting for them. But you saw that just the other day in the Supreme Court. Men playing in women's sports. It doesn't work. Secured a record-breaking $18 trillion in commitments for new investments. Apple, Nvidia, SoftBank, Oracle, TSMC, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly & Company, Micron, AstraZeneca, General Motors, Hyundai, Ford, Honda, GE Aerospace, many, many others. I left a Ford plant a week ago in Michigan that they were going to close two years ago. And now, they just announced that they're going 24 hours around the clock making cars.

Tariffs did it. I don't know what the Supreme Court is going to do. I think, to me, it reads so plainly. It couldn't be plainer. You're allowed to do a license. Tariff is probably less severe than what a license could be. But think of it. You're allowed to do a license. And then they have a clause at the end, something to the effect, or what is necessary, something to that effect. And what is necessary was tariffs. I don't know where there's a case even there, but we've taken in hundreds of billions of dollars.

And if we lose that case, it's possible we're going to have to do the best we can in paying it back. I don't know how that's going to be done very easily without hurting a lot of people. But we're waiting for that case anxiously. We have tremendous national security because of tariffs and tremendous income.

[14:10:00]

We have, and by the way, no inflation. So everyone said, oh, tariffs will cause inflation. We have no inflation. We have very little inflation. Biden had inflation and he didn't do tariffs. We had a huge problem. We had -- we have a 62 percent reduction in our trade deficit. So if you had a one percent reduction, a normal president would have a one percent, two percent reduction. Everybody would be high-fiving. I had a 62 percent reduction. Next year, we won't have a trade deficit.

We secured Most Favored Nations agreements to slash drug prices by as much. To me, I think this might be the biggest thing of all. We get zero talk about it.

The New York Times had a story way in the back of the paper, a little story about it. I think it's the biggest thing there is when you talk about healthcare. Drug prices will go down more than ever before for any country because we were priced at such a level that we were subsidizing the entire world.

Big place in the world. We were paying 10, 12, 13 times more than other countries. 13 times more, not 13 percent, 13 times more. A pill that was selling in London for $10 would sell in New York for $130. That's 13 times. More than that even.

But we secured Most Favored Nations agreements to slash drug prices by as much as 300, 400, 500, and even 600 percent, including with Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Nova Nordisk, Gilead Sciences, EMD Sereno, and many others. If you look at some of the prices that are coming down, where a price would come down $1,300, coming down to $87. Think of it.

So something that was costing $1,300 is now costing $87. And the fake news doesn't want to write about it. That's why I do this. I don't like to do this, to be honest with you. But I do it because I got to get the word out.

We signed One Big, Beautiful Bill. I call it the great, big, beautiful bill, delivering the largest tax cuts in history. No tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. We made interest on car loans tax-deductible for U.S.-built automobiles only. So if you build the -- if you buy an automobile built in the United States -- we're not doing it for Germany and Canada and different places. We're doing it only if it's built here. We want them to be built here.

A lot of the Canadian auto plants are closing and they're moving into the United States. Same thing with Mexico. Same thing with Germany. And same thing with Japan and other countries. They're moving into the United States because of tariffs. Because they don't want to pay the tariffs. It's too much. They can't pay the tariffs. So they're coming here.

Nothing different than what other smart countries did. But it works better for us. Under my leadership, it's not done properly, but it's done properly. We have, again, more plants being built than at any time in the history of our country.

Passed the largest spending cuts in American history. And that was true in my first -- you know, we had a tremendous first term also. We rebuilt our military. We had one of the best -- we had the best economy in the history of our country. But we're blowing it away now.

This -- when this stuff starts opening up, you're not going to see anything like it probably ever again. We slashed the federal budget deficit by 27 percent in a single year. Think of that, 27.

You know, you could do it two percent, one percent, a half a percent -- 27 percent. And that's with all of the things we have to do, all of the people we have to put on the payroll to get rid of people that are murderers.

Again, when you see people in Minnesota that are murderers, these people are fighting to keep them there. And I say to Kristi and to Tom Homan, great people, they're working so hard. Look at the border. The border is now secure. First time -- you know, Biden said you couldn't do it. You need legislation. I had no legislation.

I said, close the border. Within one month, we had almost nobody coming in. Now, for the last eight months, nobody came into our country illegally. And I find that hard to believe because you'd think somebody -- because it used to be millions of people just poured into our country. And the people that do that are Democrat, sort of aligned. So, I mean, they're not doing me any favors.

We had nobody come in. We have a very strong border. We have very few people coming up. They're not going to make the trek because they know they probably won't be coming in.

[14:15:00] So it's not as hard as you think. But I didn't have to go back. Remember, they said, we need legislation to close the border. They had millions of people coming in a month. We have nobody coming in.

And we're getting the murderers out. Murderers, people from prisons and jails. Many countries opened up their prisons and dropped them into the United States. Those are the people we're getting out. And we have a lot of heart. And I said, you've got to lighten up on this.

We have a lot of heart for people. They came in illegally, but they're good people and they're working now on farms, and they're working in luncheonettes and hotels. And we're not looking --- we're looking to get the criminals out right now, the criminals. And I think it's very important.

I mean, every once in a while you see a story, we take somebody. He should be out because they came in illegally. So in theory, they should be. But we're focused on the murderers, the drug dealers, the mentally insane. We have a lot of mentally insane killers. I mean, you can't even talk to them. It'd be nice if you could have a little reason, but you can't even reason. These are seriously ill people.

You have a couple of countries where they were loaded up, their mental institutions and insane asylums were loaded to the gills. They couldn't get -- they're empty now, but they're filling up because we're bringing them all back. We know where they came from. And every country accepts them. You know, under Biden, they wouldn't say -- they had so little respect that they'd bring them there and they wouldn't take them.

They say, get the hell out of here. They would be bringing a plane in to land in a country and they'd put five planes on the runway so you couldn't land the plane. So they'd come back with the people that they were bringing back. They don't do that with me. They do that with me, they have problems.

They don't do it. They accept them back. They're not happy about it, but they accept them back.

Cut a record number of regulations. I promised to eliminate 10 old regulations for every one new regulation. Instead, we cut 129 old regulations for each one added. Think of that. I wanted to do 10. Last -- my first four years, I did -- when we put on a new regulation, you had to cut eight. This year, I said, you have to cut 10. Instead, we cut 129.

So every time, so far, can't remain like that. I don't imagine, I hope I can, because we have so much wasted regulation, stupid regulations. Regulations where they go by California, which is a disaster state, with a governor that truly is doing a bad job. He's killing that state. If he ever ran the country, this country would be Venezuela very quickly.

Using tariffs slashed the U.S. trade deficit by an incredible 77 percent. The trade deficit is down, and that doesn't include the last month where we had our best month. We slashed the trade deficit by an incredible 77 percent in one year with no inflation, something that everyone said could not be done. So we had essentially no inflation.

In fact, the last month, we had almost no inflation. But we slashed the trade deficit by 77 percent. If you slashed it by one percent, that was good. Again, we did that with tariffs and intelligence. We did that with November 5th, great election.

We secured historic trade deals to reduce barriers on U.S. exports with countries covering 40 percent of all U.S. trade, think of that. American exports are up by more than $150 billion this year. People said, oh, we're not in exporting, all we do is buy.

If you keep buying, you're not going to have a country for very long. So we increased exports by more than $150 billion. Investment in American factories is up 41 percent. That's a record. Nobody goes 41 percent up. You go two percent up, one percent up. You go down by three percent. If Kamala got elected, the 41 percent up would be 41 percent down.

We removed over 270,000 bureaucrats from the federal payroll. That's another thing. So we have -- you know, we announced our unemployment numbers. Call it unemployment or employment., and they were very good. But we could make them great. But we've slashed tremendous numbers of people off the federal payroll.

Because ultimately, if you're on the federal payroll -- I mean, we have jobs where they had 10 people for every job. So we cut. Now, if you want to see some good numbers, I'll hire a million people.

We cut millions of people off the federal payroll. I don't like doing that. But the good news -- I don't feel badly because they're getting private sector jobs and they're getting sometimes twice as much money -- three times as much money.

[14:20:00]

They're getting factory jobs. They're getting much better jobs and much higher pay. But all I have to do is say, like, you know, what the Democrats do all the time. They hire a million people, and then they hire another million, another million. They load it up, and it says, oh, they only have a three percent unemployment rate. It's a fake rate.

So with us, we're proud of the fact that we cut so many because, again, I don't want to cut people. But when you cut them and they go out and get a better job, I like to cut them. And sometimes they have to be forced to do that because, you know, it's like they want to stay where they are. They don't know. And then, all of a sudden, they end up -- we have many cases, Karoline, where people were devastated. They hated Trump.

I got caught from my very boring federal job where they had, again, sometimes 10 people to do one job. And they were very upset. And now, they ended up with a job where they get paid three times more money. They're ending up buying houses. It's like crazy. So they went from not liking me to liking me a lot because they're -- it's hard to get -- we need people.

We need people. It's one of the reasons -- I mean, I want to -- when you have good people on the farm or good people in hotels and everything else, we want to work with them as much as we can. Under Biden, one out of four jobs added was a government job. Think of that. So 25 percent of the jobs added. That's -- when you -- when you know that, that's 25 percent of the jobs aren't real jobs.

But again, I could do that. I could add -- two million jobs right now would have an unemployed -- I could say, just hire some more people. I'd do the opposite.

I'd say, get rid of everybody that's unnecessary, because that's the way you Make America Great Again. When you have, you know, all these jobs where people are sitting around doing nothing and they get a lot of money by the government, it's no good. But that's what the Democrats do.

They show, oh, we were at four percent unemployment. That's a good number. But they just add jobs, or they wouldn't cut -- they would never cut jobs.

Under Trump, 100 percent of all new jobs created have been in the private sector. Think of that. Now, one percent has gone to federal. So under Biden, one out of four was a government job. Under Trump, 100 percent of the new jobs created, 100 percent came from the private sector. That's how you make your country wealthy and strong and good.

We inherited the worst border in history and turned it into the strongest border in history. Illegal crossings have plummeted to the lowest level ever recorded, down 99.999 percent. That means down 100 percent.

99.999 -- I want to find out who that one person is. For eight months in a row, zero -- and these are government numbers. These are not my numbers. For eight months in a row, zero illegal aliens were admitted to our country, zero. Nobody came in, unless they came in legally. We have a big process for having people come in legally, by the way. A lot of people are coming in legally.

They have to prove they love our country. They have to prove that they're not going to need welfare. A lot of things they have to prove.

For the first time in 50 years, we are now seeing reverse migration, where we're getting -- because we're getting all of these illegal people out. People that came in illegally. In many cases, they're criminals -- in many, many cases.

Remember when they used to say that the people that come into our country as immigrants are very nice people, they're wonderful people, they don't commit crime. No, they make our criminals look like babies. They make our hells angels look like the sweetest people on Earth.

The hells angels are now considered a nice, high quality person. I like the hells angels. They voted for me. They protected me, actually, believe it or not. But they make our criminals look like babies. These are some of the most vicious people anywhere in the world.

They came from the Congo. The prisons -- I know the Congo because I ended the war with the Congo and Rwanda. Tough group. Very tough group. They came from prisons in the Congo. Some of the toughest, meanest people you'll ever meet. Thank you very much. They allowed them to come into America.

These are tough people. Before my election, 100 percent of net job creation was going to foreign migrants. Since my inauguration, 100 percent of the net jobs created have gone to American-born citizens. That's a big thing. In other words, we're now taking care of our people. One hundred percent of net jobs created have gone to the American-born people. Before that, we didn't care.

[14:25:00]

Designated Tren de Aragua, MS-13, and the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And we've hit them hard. You've seen what we've done on the water. We're starting to do that on land. The land is much easier, actually. Water is incredible.

We did that on the water so that when you do it on the land, they don't go to the water. Nobody is going into the boat business right now, I can tell you. Ninety-seven percent down, drugs coming in by water -- 97 percent. Nobody ever heard of that before, 90. They heard two percent, one percent. It went up two percent. 97 and we're looking for the three percent. Who the hell of the three percent? They're crazy.

But we've taken out almost 100 percent of the drugs coming in by water. Now, we're going to be very shortly starting drugs coming in by land. We know exactly where they're coming from.

Removed tens of thousands of illegal alien gang members, drug dealers, murderers, child predators, human traffickers, fraudsters, savage criminals, and others. We removed them from our country. They're out. They're gone. In some cases, they're so dangerous that we put them in jail because we don't want to give them to their country. Their country doesn't do anything, and they end up coming back.

We have some that we're just -- they're so bad that we don't want to really release them. We want to put them in a jail where we know they're properly ensconced. Think of that.

Removed tens of thousands of illegal alien gang members, drug dealers, murderers, child predators, human traffickers, fraudsters, and savage criminals. Why wouldn't you want them removed? The reason is because these are insurrectionists that are doing this work.

And, you know, they're going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or -- you know, they're dealing with rough people. They are going to make a mistake, sometimes it can happen. We feel terribly.

I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was -- had the tragedy. It's a tragedy. It's a horrible thing. Everybody would say -- ICE would say the same thing. But when I learned her -- her parents, and her father in particular, is like -- I hope he still is, but I don't know -- was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump, loved Trump.

And, you know, it's terrible. I was told that by a lot of people. They said, oh, he loves you. He was a -- I hope he still feels that way. I don't know. It's a hard, hard situation. But her father was a tremendous -- and parents were tremendous Trump fans. That's so sad. It just happens. It's terrible.

Halted all refugee admissions to the United States, including from Somalia, which is a terrible, terrible place, and other dangerous places. And we also stopped the pirates because they get the same treatment as the drug boats.

So, in Somalia, the Somalians -- you know what they're good at? That's about the only thing they're good at, is they're good at pirating ships at sea, big ships. So you have a huge oil tanker with millions of gallons, millions of barrels of oil. And if it gets hit by a big weapon, the whole thing blows up. And they don't want to fight because if they do -- they're told by their insurance companies, do not hand over the ship. And they're not allowed to have any guns on the ship.

They're literally -- you have these massive ships being taken over by a Somalian small boat with a big weapon because if they hit the side of the ship, the ship can blow up to -- I mean, you talk about a blow- up -- bad. We've seen -- we've seen some bad things happen.

And the insurance companies -- some of these ships cost more than $1 billion to build. And the insurance companies say, look, we'd rather give them money than take a chance on $1 billion insurance policy. But they don't have to worry about it because we hit them the same way we hit the people with the drugs in their boat.

They don't know what the hell happened. But all of a sudden, there are no pirates at sea. Do you notice? We haven't had a boat taken in a little while. Came out of Somalia, a really corrupt place. It's not a country. They don't have government. They don't have anything. I always hate to see this.

Ilhan Omar, she comes from Somalia, a backward country, probably the worst country. They say it's the worst country in the world, if it's a country. I don't even think it's a country. There's no organization on it. They don't have police. They don't have military. They don't have anything.

They just have people running around, killing each other, and trying to pirate ships. But she'll come here. She comes --