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The Situation Room

Trump Addresses Senior Military Officials at Quantico. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 30, 2025 - 10:00   ET

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

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: -- they have some scammer reporter who started saying without any knowledge that he may not have hit the targets as well as they thought.

[10:00:09]

It may not been obliteration. He did hit the targets, and I got to give us a little credit, right? It was obliteration it turned out. The Atomic Energy Commission said it was obliterated. They had -- not only did they hit the target, they had these shoots. And think of this here, way up in the sky, there was no moon. It was dead dark, couldn't see a thing, you couldn't see them, but they had, I guess, a beam going right into these chutes. Every single one of those bombs went right down those chutes into a granite mountain.

I think it's the last time they're going to build air shoots. They had these air shoots that were nice, beautiful. They were meant for us, but it was total obliteration, and now they give us credit for that. But these people were phenomenal. I tell you, for the Air Force people here, you can be very proud. That B-2, we just ordered a lot of new ones, new ones and updated ones. But I'd take the other ones, let me tell you, they couldn't have worked any better.

So, they flew for 37 hours total back and forth, no stops, no nothing. We had 52 tankers loading them up. And that's a job I wouldn't necessarily want too much flying a tanker. Load it up with hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. I don't know if I'd do that job. I asked the question, what happens if it gets hit? Sir, you don't want to know about that, right? I don't want to know about that.

But those guys, they're just heroes. They're incredible. I had them all to the Oval Office. We had the B-2 pilots and a lot of the people, even the people that took care of them, the maintenance people, just as important, we had them all to the White House, gave them a big party on the lawn, brought some of them into the Oval Office.

But on top of all this, we'll deliver a hard earned pay raise of 3.8 percent to every soldier, sailor, airmen, coast, guardsmen, space guardsmen, and Marines, something you weren't getting from the past administration. They did not treat you with respect. They're Democrats. They never do.

Not only are we rebuilding our great strength, but for the first time in years, my administration is actually using that strength to defend the core and vital interests of America. And very simply, we are putting America first. And I have, since I've been elected, I've always put America first. It's sort of simple, you know, when you think it's -- my campaign was run on common sense and we did great.

We had the highest numbers ever received in terms of districts, you know, they have it broken up, 2,500 versus 525. We won every swing state. We won the popular vote, we won everything. We won everything. You have to take a look at the map. It's almost entirely red, except there's a little blue line on each coast and I think that's going to disappear too. We did really great and part of it is because of our success with the military, the rebuilding of the military, the vote that I got from the military.

And they were the vicious people, you know, that we have to fight just like you have to fight vicious people. Mine are different, a different kind of vicious. But they spread all these horrible, you know, they made up statements and said what I said about everything, but even about the military.

But, fortunately, the military didn't believe it. It's hard. You know, they make up a statement and they said, you say it. We had 25 people that said, he never said that, 25. We had 25 affidavits. And they said, well, we're going with it anyway. You know, they're sleazebags. You know, that's why the press is really losing all power because people aren't believing it.

We need an honest press. We need borders. We need borders, we need an honest press. We need fair elections. I mean, those three things, and we don't have an honest press. We have a really corrupt press, but we fight through the corrupt press. And the people understand you have to do this stuff a lot. You have to go on television a lot because you can't get a fair shake if you're going to rely on somebody else. It's -- they're just -- they don't understand. They've destroyed -- the image of media now is at the lowest point it's ever been. It's lower than Congress. Can you believe that? It's something.

But together with many of you in the room, we've brought back the fundamental principle that defending the homeland is the military's first and most important priority. That's what it is. Only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia while America is under invasion from within.

We're under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don't have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within. We're stopping it very quickly.

[10:05:00]

After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help, we're defending the borders of our country from now on. We're not going to let this happen. Biden let people come in from prisons, mental institutions, drug dealers, murderers. You know, we had 11,488 murders allowed into our country by this guy who had no clue. He had no clue. He shouldn't have been there in the first place, but he had no clue.

The people that ran the office, the White House, were people that surrounded him, radical left lunatics that are brilliant people, but dumb as hell when it came to policy and common sense. And they allowed people from all over the world, from the Congo, they opened up prisons in the Congo. They came into our country totally unmatched, unvetted, unchecked. And from all over South America -- not just South America.

You know, you think South America? No, but from all over. A lot came in from Venezuela. Venezuela emptied its prison population into our country. That's why they have Tren de Aragua, one of the worst gangs ever. But we took care of them. We took good, strong care of them.

And I just want to thank the National Guard in Washington, D.C. It's embarrassing to say this now, I can't say it because we solved it, but Washington, D.C., was the most unsafe, most dangerous city in the United States of America, and to a large extent, beyond and beyond that. Go to some -- you go to Afghanistan, they didn't have anything like that. You go to countries that you would think there's problems, they have that.

And now Washington, D.C., after 12 days of serious, serious intensity, we took out 1,700 career criminals. If you have five career criminals, they can make your numbers look very bad because they'll commit many crimes a day, but we took out 1,700 and they took them out. There was no doubt who the boss was. They did an unbelievable job.

Then they started even cleaning. I said, I don't want them doing that, sir. They wanted it. They were cleaning it up. I drove through it two days ago. It was beautiful. People are walking down the street, holding hands, man and wife coming from Iowa, they're not worried about being shot. Washington, D.C., is now a safe city. In fact, I went out to dinner with my crew. And I haven't done that. In theory, I wouldn't do it. And I felt totally safe. And nobody's been attacked, nobody's been hurt.

Washington, D.C., went from our most unsafe city to just about our safest city in a period of a month. We had it under control in 12 days. But give us another 15, 16 days. It's perfect. And people, other than politicians that look bad, do they think, you know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape.

We have many cities in great shape too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places, and we're going to straighten them out one by one.

And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war too. It's a war from within controlling the physical territory of our borders essential to national security. We can't let these people in. You know, we had no people enter in the last four months, zero.

Even I can't believe that. You know, we had millions coming in pouring, 25 million, we're told. And of those 25 million, many of them should never be in our country. They would take their worst people and their people from prisons in jail and they'd put them in a caravan and they'd walk up. CNN was interviewing one person, oh, why are you coming? I want freedom. Good. Were you in jail? Yes. For what? Murder. He said, you were -- you had to see this anchor, a young woman. She's like, I couldn't believe it. She'll probably lose her job, but because the left doesn't want to hear that. But we're running it based on common sense and based on love of our country.

But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It's really a very important mission. And I told Pete we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military, because we're going into Chicago. That's a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor, stupid. They threw him out of his family business. He was so stupid. I know the family. He becomes governor. He's got money, not money that he made, but he ran for governor. He won, and now he criticizes us all the time.

And last week they had 11 people murdered, 44 people shot.

[10:10:03]

The week before that, they'd had five people murdered, 28 people shot. Every weekend, they lose five, six. If they lose five, they're considering a great week. They shouldn't lose any. You shouldn't lose any. This is civilization. And he's always up there saying we're in a very good shape. We don't need the military. No, they need the military desperately.

How about Portland, Portland, Oregon, where it looks like a war zone? And I get a call from the liberal governor, sir, please don't come in. We don't need you. I said, well, unless they're playing false tapes, this look like World War II. You place is burning down. I mean, you must be kidding. Sir, we have it under control. I said, you don't have it under control, Governor, but I'll check it. And I called you back. I called you back. I said you -- this place is a nightmare.

Probably, it's certainly not the biggest, but it's one of the worst. It's brutal. They go after our ICE people who are great patriots and tough job too. But they love it. They love it because they're cleaning up our country.

And so, you look at some of the things where they took over parts of Seattle. They actually took over a big percentage of Seattle. Think of that. You remember that? That was a while ago. And I sent in the troops and they were gone. As soon as I sent them in, oh, well, we sent in the troops. If you have a real leader that says you got to do what you have to do, I put that out the other day, you got to do what you got to do because we don't want our people hurt as they stand by.

I was watching during Biden, they had troops standing up like this, brave, standing up in attention the way I should stand all the time. And I went like this, and people are standing in their mouth is this far away from their mouth and they're spitting at them, and they're screaming at them, and that soldier's standing there. He wants to knock the hell out of the person, but he's not allowed to do anything. So, they just stand there and they get abused.

And a woman was this far away from his face and she starts spitting in his face and he's not allowed to do anything. If it's okay with you, generals and admirals, I've taken that off. I say, they spit, we hit. Is that okay? I think so. They spit -- it's a new thing. They spit, we hit.

How about the cars, where the cars are coming out? They get brand new cars, Border Patrol, ICE, beautiful, nice new cars, and they're driving along and they have to go through a gauntlet of rocks being thrown at the car. So, here's this beautiful brand new car. By the time it goes a hundred yards, it's destroyed. These guys have pretty good arms, some of them, and they're throwing bricks at full force into the window and into the car. It looks like it's a war zone.

And I said, never let that happen again. From now on, if that ever happens, and I say it here, you get out of that car and you can do whatever the hell you want to do. Because those people are -- you know, you can die from that. As bricks go through the windows, you can die. They'd like it to. They'd like it to go through the window. But this was a couple of months ago, they just kept driving and bricks are hitting the car. And I said, why aren't they stopping? Because they were under orders from the past administration, never stop. But that's different with us. We stop.

And since I gave that order, we haven't had that problem. It's very interesting. It's amazing. It's just like in Venezuela. You've seen the boats going. We can't find any more boats. They're carrying drugs, massive -- every boat kills about 25,000 people. That's what they have. They had fentanyl mostly, and a lot of other drugs. And we take them out and we've taken out four. So -- and it's on air. Everybody gets to see it. Not that we like to do that, but every boat kills 25,000 on average, 20,000. There's some people say more. You know, you see these boats, they're stacked up with bags of white powder. It's mostly fentanyl and other drugs too. And now we have a problem.

(Inaudible), sir, there are no boats out there. Not even fishing boats. They don't want to go fishing. I don't blame them. There'll be no fishing today, you know, but it's amazing what strength will do because all we want to do is stop drugs from flowing into our country. It's destroying -- we lost -- 300,000 people died last year. Everybody knows friends, many friends probably that you lost a child or adults too, but you lost a son or daughter because of what's coming into our border. And we're making it very hard.

Oh, and we haven't even started yet. Last month I signed an executive order to provide training for quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances.

[10:15:06]

And this is going to be a big thing for the people in this room because it's the enemy from within and we have to handle it before it gets out of control. It won't get out of control once, once you are involved at all. They all joke. They say, oh, this is not good. You saw it in Washington. We had gangs of Tren de Aragua with the 10, 12, 15 kids. And these military guys walk up to them and they treat them with disrespect, and they just got pounded. They just got pounded, the gang just pounded, then thrown into paddy wagons and taken back to their country.

Some are so dangerous, we don't want to even do that because we don't want to -- some of are stone cold murders, we don't have the confidence, even though they're not coming back very easily. We don't have the confidence. We put them in jails.

But these service members are following in a great and storied military tradition from protecting frontier communities to chasing outlaws and bandits in the Wild West. And our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic. You know that phrase very well. That's what the oath says, foreign and domestic. Well, we also have domestic.

George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover, Cleveland, George Bush and others all use the Armed Forces to keep domestic order in peace. Many of our leaders used the military to keep peace. Now, they like to say, oh, you're not allowed to use the military. And you know what the people say? The people in those cities where they're being raped and shot and beat up, you know what they say? We love the military.

You ever see where they interview the people on the street? I've never seen somebody say they don't, unless they're radical and paid off because a lot of these insurrectionists are paid by whether it's Soros or other people, but they're paid by the radical left.

So, today, I want to thank every service member from general to private who has bravely helped us secure the nation's capital and make America safe for the American people. It's amazing. The whole world is watching. Everybody in the White House, they come up to me, young women, sir, thank you. I know immediately what they're thinking. They don't have to say it. They walk to work now to the White House. We haven't had a crime in Washington in so long because we got the careers. We call them the careers. We got these lunatics out and there'll never be any good.

You know, I hate to tell this to the liberal media. You could spend time with them, you could do whatever you want, you could send them to the finer schools, which they couldn't get into anyway, mentally, they couldn't get in, but no matter what you do, they'll never be good. They're bad. They're career criminals. I don't know, maybe they were born that way. Some people don't like me to say that, but maybe they were, certainly somewhat.

Together with the leaders here today, we're also restoring a needed focus on defeating threats in the Western Hemisphere throughout this region. Cartel terrorists have been allowed to wage a relentless campaign of death and destruction on our country, all because we had weak leadership on top. And we did a great job with it first term. But this is something else what we're doing now. We're taking it to the next level, probably the next level times three. But we had COVID come up and we had to take care of that. We did a great job with COVID. We had the therapeutics. It was just Regeneron, so many things we did for COVID. But we had a focus on that. And every other country in the world was being decimated by COVID. So, we had to change gear a little bit to take care of that.

But under our leadership, the military is now the knife's edge and combating the sinister enemy. We have to put the traffickers and cartels on notice, and we've done that. And we put them -- a lot of them, we've called them a terrorist organization, which is actually a big thing to do. Nobody's done it, but I've done it with a lot of them. It gives you a tremendous advantage. If you try to poison our people, we will blow you out of existence, because that's the only language they really understand. That's why you don't see any more boats on the ocean. You don't see any boats around Venezuela. There's nothing.

As president, I will never hesitate to defend our people from threats of violence, from the horrible plague that's taking place from within. The Iran nuclear power, the Iran -- all of the great power that we thought existed, we blew it out to kingdom. We took advantage of it and we just really took advantage of it and it was a beautiful thing to see.

[10:20:08]

And that's what military power can achieve. That's why I chose Razin Caine. He's fantastic, by the way. I hope you all agree. If anybody disagrees, could I please have your hand? Who disagrees that Razin Caine is no good? Just raise your hand. I don't see any hands raised. All right, that means you're okay. That means that he's okay now. But I saw his results. You know, he took out ISIS. I was told it was going to take four years. It took four weeks. I went to see him and he took him out in four weeks, knocked him out and knocked him to hell.

And I was told by military people it was going to take four to five years to do it. And I don't even know if we'll have it then, sir. These were the Washington generals. I call them the television generals. But Razin Caine did it in four weeks, took out 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate. As a result of these actions and many others since my inauguration, we're witnessing the triumphant return of peace through strength. We have great peace through strength. America's respected again as a country. We were not respected with Biden. They looked at him falling downstairs every day. Every day, the guy's falling downstairs. I said, it's not our president. We can't have it.

I'm very careful. You know, when I walk downstairs for like, I'm on stairs, like these stairs, I'm very -- I walk very slowly. Nobody has to set a record. Just try not to fall because it doesn't work out well. A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy. We don't want that. You walk nice and easy. You don't have to set any record. Be cool. Be cool when you walk down, but don't bop down the stairs.

So, one thing with Obama, I had zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs I've never seen -- he'd go down the stairs, wouldn't hold on. I said, it's great. I don't want to do it. I guess I could do it. But, eventually, bad things are going to happen and it only takes once. But he did a lousy job as president.

A year ago, we were a dead country. We were dead. This country was going to hell. We were dead in everywhere from immigration to military. We didn't have the weapons. We were giving everything to -- we were giving everything to Ukraine. We had nothing. And, by the way, I have to tell you, now, as you know, I went over and I met with NATO, and NATO raised from 2 to 5, whichever one said, 5 percent of GDP, millions, and now trillions of dollars are pouring in. They didn't pay the 2 percent because they know we were there to pay it, and now they paid the 5 percent. That's trillions of dollars.

And we're not spending any money on that war, not 10 cents. We sell our equipment to NATO. NATO pays us for the equipment, and they give it to Ukraine or whoever they give it to, but they can keep it. But we're not involved. We have no money going out. Biden gave $350 billion, not sustainable, $350 billion. And we have a war that should have never started, but we're not doing that anymore. So, I just want you to know we're selling equipment. Our people are buying equipment. They're buying the equipment at full price, a fair price.

So, I don't want to say we're making money because I don't want to say I don't want to be making money on war. It's too many people dying. They're losing 7,000 soldiers a week. A lot of them are Russian soldiers, but between the two countries, mostly soldiers, by the way. Sometimes, you know, in Kyiv, they'll lob a missile or some drones and kill some people, but mostly it's soldiers. Russia and Ukraine are losing 7,000 souls.

And, you know, they're not they're not American. They're not us. They're not you or have a special obligation. But they're soldiers. They're young people. They leave their parents, they wave goodbye. And then two days later, they're blown up so unnecessarily. And so that's the primary reason I want to get it done. We got to get it done. It's crazy what's going on. That's the worst war that there's been since World War II. The number of soldiers that are being killed there it's just crazy. From 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers die a week, think of that.

So, I think we'll get that done, but that's turned out to be the toughest one. I'm so disappointed in President Putin. I thought he would get this thing over with. He should have had that war done in a week. And I said to him, you know, you don't look good. You're four years fighting a war that should have taken a week. Are you a paper tiger? And it's a shame, but I think eventually we'll get that one done just like we -- in theory, I want to knock on wood because you never know.

[10:25:02]

It's like we're going to have the Middle East done, which is actually a much harder thing to do, I mean, thousands of years. But we have to get that war done. So, now we're -- just think of it, we were a dead country.

I was with the king of Saudi Arabia, great guy. I was with the Emir of Qatar. I was with the great leadership of UAE. I was over there. We brought back $2 trillion and more. They ordered 200 planes, Boeings. They ordered so much and they were great. But they all said essentially the same thing. They said, one year ago, you were a dead country and now you're the hottest country anywhere in the world.

We're the hottest country in the world right now, the absolute hottest country in the world we have. There's nobody even close. Putin said that to me. We met in Alaska, had a good meeting. Then he went back and started sending drones into Kyiv. I said, I thought we had a good meeting, but it's one of those things.

But we were dead country a year ago, and now we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. Think of that. You could be proud of it and you must have felt like hell when you have a wife or a husband at home and you used to read the numbers that we can't get people to join the Army, Navy. Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. You must have felt like, you know, I have a job that nobody wants. That doesn't feel good. Well, now you have a job that is brimming over with people wanting it. They want it. And you're able to get a much higher quality because now you have your choice. You know, you want so many, and we're going to have many, many people that aren't going to be able to join because of the fact that we don't -- you know, we don't need them at this moment.

But think of it how, what a difference that is from. I could just imagine two years ago, you're reading front page articles in The New York Times, of course, and Wall Street Journal, they always give us unfair stories, but they played it so big. They were playing it so big. Nobody wants to join the Army, the Marines, the Air Force, they don't want to join. They don't want to join the Coast Guard at all. Nobody wants to join. Nobody wants to join. Our police forces also, it's almost went hand in hand.

And I used to say, boy, you know, I'm speaking in front of the military today, and it's embarrassing because I'm speaking in front of people who have a job that other people don't want. But now you have a job that everybody wants. So, I think that has to make you feel good. It's one of the reasons I love being here today, because I wanted to say that. I have to say that. Everybody wants to be in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. If you think the Coast Guard and Space Force, our beautiful Space Force, it's a whole different world. And now they're signing up.

By the way, seriously, big numbers for the police. Dangerous job, isn't it? Fire department. But that's the paving the way for progress once thought almost impossible. I mean, a year ago you wouldn't have thought that was possible. A year ago, they were talking about making the military smaller because they can't get the people to join. We're thinking about making it larger because we have so many people.

And it's nice to be able to cut people because of merit that aren't really qualified for any reason, a physical reason, a mental reason. You don't have to take him anymore because you have the pick of the litter. And they all want to be with you. They all want your job. They want to be with you. They want to work with you.

They'll even take your job, you know? You got to be a little bit sharp. You got to watch it. But everybody wants to be doing what you're doing now. What a difference when I speak to you, and I can say that, as opposed to a couple of years ago when I was talking to rooms where they were desperate to get people and they couldn't get them. What a difference a presidential election can make. That's all it is. It's just a presidential election.

Yesterday at the White House, we put forward a plan for peace in Gaza. We announced it. And we're going to create something that was my idea, but unfortunately I got drafted. It's going to be called the Board of Peace and it's going to reign over that territory and we're going to get that done.

And they asked if I'd be the chairman of the Board of Peace. I wasn't counting on that. I had the idea for the Board of Peace. But I said yes. And I guess because of that, every leader, everybody wants to be on the Board of Peace, and we're going to watch over that very volatile part of the world and keep it non-volatile so you don't have to get involved. We want to save you for other things or save you for nothing from that standpoint. We don't want you fighting wars. But if you have to, you're going to be -- you're the most lethal fighting force in the world.

[10:30:02]

And I would say that even two, three years ago. But now I say it with great enthusiasm. It's so true.

And we're striving --