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The Situation Room

Trump Holds Cabinet Meeting at Camp David. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired July 31, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: -- rips a metal roof off a business. The EF-1 twister touched down for about 800 feet with peak winds of 100 miles per hour. Thankfully, thankfully, no injuries were reported.

And new this morning, as many Americans feel a strain on their paychecks, the president says he has succeeded in bringing down the price of eggs and all other prices. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: They say eggs. I remember eggs. Eggs were like four or five times higher than they were a few years ago. You couldn't get eggs. They wanted me to use plastic eggs for the Easter egg hunt because they were unable to get eggs. And I said, we'll take care of it. We got it taken care of quickly. Now, eggs are much lower than they were when we first started. And that's true with everything else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The price of eggs has come down, but his promise on making, quote, "everything else," end quote, more affordable, that's a very, very different story.

All right. This Cabinet meeting at Camp David, the president meeting with his Cabinet members, is just beginning. Let's listen in.

TRUMP: We are the party of transparency, and we believe in transparency. You're going to see certain aspects of Camp David. It's a very special place. But it was not -- I guess, the last visit was with Eisenhower, if you and now we're going to the actual campus. And it's a long time ago, but never into this room.

I want to thank all of you for being here. And again, this is a Cabinet meeting. It's open. I've done a lot of open Cabinet meetings. And I think it works out very well. Everybody can ask certain questions. We'll let you talk about certain things, certain things we can't answer because they're ongoing and very important. But this is one of the most talented teams ever to serve the United States and in the United States government. This is a talented group of people.

Let's see. I don't know. One after another. Yes, it's a couple of steps, but that's OK. That's it. It's an amazing group. And America is safer and stronger and far more successful than it was two years ago. And I think, frankly, than it ever was. I don't think it's ever been anything like this.

And we're building more factories and plants in this country than we've ever built before. And we're going to be, at some point, we'll be leaving this position and we're going to leave this country in very, very good shape, better shape than it's ever been.

When we took office, we inherited a total catastrophe. The last administration created the worst inflation in 48 years, the most dangerous and insecure border in history, and exploding trade deficits like we have never seen before, rampant crime, men and women's sports, transgender mutilation of your children, and chaos and bedlam all over the world. Other than that, they did quite a good job. In less than 18 months, we've turned around four years of disaster, and we now have the strongest border in American history.

We went from the worst border, I believe, of any country in history. 25 million people came through in four years. And these are people that, in many cases, you don't want. They were murderers. They were drug dealers. They were people that you do not want. But now, we have the strongest border in American history.

And for the last 15 months, the report just came out again. We've had no people coming in through our southern border, zero. And it's almost hard to say because you'd say, is that even possible to happen? 25 million people came in. We have no people coming in illegally through our southern border. And that's in history, so think of that zero, a big, beautiful zero.

The murder rate saw its single largest drop ever recorded, to the lowest in 125 years. That goes back to, think of it, it goes back to 1900, the lowest murder rate in the history of our country. So, that's something.

Today, I just want to mention that we heard in Minnesota there was a cyber-attack, and they blame it on Iran. I don't think so. I think I blame it on Minnesota because they're grossly incompetent. There was a cyber-attack of 30 water plants, and I would blame it on Minnesota and the governor, the corrupt governor of Minnesota. They like to say, oh, it was Iran. Iran should be so lucky. Iran's got bigger problems than worrying about Minnesota.

This month, it was announced that inflation is dropping at the fastest rate in more than six years. Walmart, Sam's Club, Giant Eagle, and others are slashing prices by hundreds of grocery stores and all of the stores. I mean, throughout the country, they're slashing prices, something that you haven't seen for a long time since my last administration.

The stock market has hit 73 all-time record highs since the election. That means all-time record highs, 73 days out of a very short period of time. And the typical 401(k) is up by more than $30,000.

[11:35:00]

And when you think of that, if you add another $1,000 to it, it will be -- we set the record in the last administration, a record still standing. This administration is going to blow my last administration away. When the factories that we're building at record -- and we're not building them. All over the world, they're building. They're coming from all over the world. They're coming from Germany with the cars. They're coming from Germany. They're coming from Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico. From all over the world, they're building auto plants here because otherwise they have to pay tariffs. The tariffs have made our country rich and successful.

And all of this -- I mean, I'd like to say it was the election. On November 5th, it was the election, and that's fine. But without the election, you wouldn't have what I've done economically.

So, we have the most successful environment that we've ever had. There's never been anything like it from the standpoint of investment into our country. It's five to six times higher than anybody has ever seen, than any other country, any other country, not just us, has ever had.

On July 4th, we launched Trump accounts to keep a vision of our great, big, beautiful bill. And these tax-free investment savings accounts have already been activated by over 7 million children. These are investments made in our future, which is our children. Our children are the most important aspect of our future, with more being added each day. So, it's a tremendous hit. Over 7 million, and really, it really just got going, I would say, Scott, about two weeks ago when it was -- we got the final approvals.

And we have over 7 million. Actually, there's never been anything quite like that. But millions of accounts are free-funded with $1,000 from the U.S. Treasury or generous gifts from private donors like Michael and Susan Dell and others who have given billions of dollars. Billions. People are putting up hundreds of millions and billions of dollars into it and buying, really, a great future for children. When they turn 18 or when they turn 21, instead of having no hope, no future, they will end up with hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe even more than that. So, it's going to be something to see.

With modest additional contributions, they'll grow by numbers that should be -- it could be over $200,000. We're looking at the timeline. We're looking -- I wish we had an economy like we have now with the stock markets going up, but they will benefit by our country being successful. We're going to give every child a head start on the American dream. So, go to trumpaccounts.gov. They're really something. The whole world is talking about it, and it's far ahead of schedule. Nobody thought it would be as successful as it's been, but it should be. It should be.

And we start them off with $1,000, and this was part of the great, big, beautiful bill. With my most favored nation policy, you could say this is even a bigger thing, if that's possible. On drug prices, we're achieving record discounts on prescription drugs. The prescription drugs were going through the roof for many years, and now we're getting record discounts with price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600 percent. Nobody's ever heard of a thing like that.

And what this is all about is that we were the highest -- we had the highest prices anywhere in the world by far. Most expensive drugs, prescription drugs, and others. The highest in the world. The whole world was laughing at us. We paid for the rest of the world. We subsidized the whole world. And I said, we're not going to do that. And I started it in the first administration. I took it up. Obviously, Biden wasn't able to do anything about it because you had to get the consent of the drug companies, and you had to get the consent.

More difficult would be the consent of other nations. The other nations had to agree, but they were paying a fraction, sometimes 10 percent, 20 percent, 40 percent, 70 percent less. So, I had to call them, and I had to get them on. And I said, if you don't do it, we're going to have to charge you tariffs. And they all said no at first, very politely. They said, sir, we can't do that. We're not going to double our prices.

They had to double their prices, and in some cases triple their price, and we would come down. So, a pill that sold for $10 in Germany would sell for $130 in New York. Same pill from the same company, the same factory, the same plant, the same laboratory, from $10, and we pay $130. I said, no, no.

Now, the world is a bigger place. So, it's not as bad as it sounds for them. So, they went up to $20, and we came down to $20. So, we now have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world. We're tied with the lowest, but we're basically its favorite nation. So, we have the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world from the highest drug prices anywhere in the world.

[11:40:00]

Now, what that does for your health care. I mean, I see these fake polls where the Democrats have wonderful numbers on this. They are horrible, what they've done. Obamacare is a total disaster. It's a costly wreck. It's unaffordable. We call it the Unaffordable Care Act. It's a disgrace. They never even thought of being able to do something like this. They didn't even try. They didn't even try.

So, I got the drug companies first, and then I got the countries. And the drug companies agreed because they knew the countries wouldn't agree. And when I called Germany, France, when I called the U.K., when I called all of these countries, I said, you got to do it. It's unfair. We're paying 10 times more than you're paying for the same drug. You can't do this.

And they said, well, we're not going to do that because we're going to have to double our price in order to make you happy. I said, no, maybe you're going to have to triple your price. They said, Well, we can't do it. I said, that's all right. If you can't do it, then I can't do something also. And I'm going to charge you very substantial tariffs, which are far more than we're talking about. And they all said, we'd love to do it. We'd love to do it. It would be our great honor to do it. So, nobody else would do this. This would have never happened. So, your drug prices have gone down by numbers not even think one.

My first term, I had the privilege of having lower drug prices from the beginning of the year till the end for the first time in 28 years. You remember. And I called a news conference to announce it. So, the year it ended and I was turned out one eighth of a percent. One eighth of a percent. Little tiny this much. It went down that much during one year. First time in 28 years it went down. It was always like this, just up more expensive.

And I called the news conference. I was so proud of myself. And I said, ladies and gentlemen, first time in 28 years, drug prices have gone down from January till the end of December. And I want to just congratulate everybody for being a part of this wonderful experiment. And one eighth of a point. Now, we're talking about 400, 500, 600 percent. We pay the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world from the highest.

So, you know, and I'll say it again and again because the press doesn't want to report it. The fake news doesn't want to report it. They don't want to talk about it. What that does for health care, Bobby, is unbelievable because medicine is a big part of health care.

So, I wish that people would understand that. And I hope they're going to vote for us in the midterms because you'll see some stuff that will be horrible because they can blow it very fast if they don't know what they're doing. So, your drug prices are great.

You know, I saw Spain yesterday and I watched the catastrophe that took place. It was it looks like an invasion of a country by hundreds of thousands of people. And that same thing is going to happen to us if the Republicans don't get elected. Except worse, much bigger, much easier to get into. Despite the fact that we have built thousands of miles of wall, which I said we were going to do. But we didn't have that. Forget it.

But we have the safest border in the world. If we're not in office, our country will be invaded at levels that made Spain look small time. And when I watched it, I said, boy, I said, I'm going to say it because I knew you're going to be at Camp David. And I say, that's going to be a talking point for the midterms. Because when you look at what happened to Spain, they don't know what to do.

And it's happening again today. They're coming in by the thousands, tens of thousands. It just is just invading the country. And what that is, is weak law, bad management, but very liberal law. They passed a couple of laws and people read, you know, people are smart. They read from other countries and they swam that three-mile swim or however they got in. But nobody's seen anything like it.

That will look good compared to what's going to happen to the United States. The biggest thing, the worst thing that Biden did is allowing 25 million people into our country because many of those people are criminals. They're murderers. A lot of 11,888. A lot of them are gone now. We got them out. But they allowed people to come into this country that you can't allow to come into a country.

We're also making an unprecedented investment in the United States Armed Forces where we're doing great. And we rebuilt the armed forces. We rebuilt our military in my first term. But we are doing great with our military. They spent a lot of money in our military. They gave away $300 billion worth of ammo and everything else in the -- in Biden's term. But we're building it up fast and we have -- we're we just have a great military. That's all there is to it.

But we rebuilt it in the in my first term. And we're using it in my second term with Venezuela and other places. And Iran now Iran is doing very poorly. Just in case you read incorrect stories, they're doing very, very poorly. They're having a hard time. They've been very dishonest. They've been very dishonest. They've been very dishonorable to deal with. But that makes no difference. They're doing very, very poorly.

[11:45:00]

We're also making that investment and looking forward to getting $1.5 trillion next year. People see now how important it is. We want to keep a safe country. We have to keep a safe country. And the good news is all of that equipment is made in the USA. So, we're making it here. It's jobs.

And each one of our defense groups are building literally at least four new massive plants as we speak, because we want them to do -- we want them to move faster. We have the best equipment in the world, but we want them to move faster. We don't want to wait a year or a year and a half. We want to wait a week, maybe. So, that's happening. And I think the results are very good. They're all -- they're building at levels that nobody's ever seen before. And we've had tremendous success. Our military was just proud of it.

Again, Venezuela was a one-day war. And we have a great relationship with Venezuela. We're working with partners with Venezuela now taking out tens of millions of barrels of oil and going to Houston, going to Alaska, going to Louisiana, going to different places for refinement, refineries. And it's been very much amazing.

The administration has done more in 18 months than most administrations have done in eight years. If you had a two term, we've done more in 18 months than anyone's ever seen before. Nobody's ever seen. This is the golden age of America. And we have a war that's going on. I guess you call it a war. Maybe I call it a military operation because they have no Navy. It's been obliterated. Their air force has been obliterated. They have no planes. Their missiles have been largely they have some left, have some, but they have far fewer than they had four or five months ago.

They their manufacturing capacity is almost gone. The drone capacity is almost gone. They're very few, but they have some. They have one. That's too many as far as I'm concerned. But we've done an amazing job with Venezuela. We've done an amazing job here. We're in there for five months. And I know people like to say because we did a much bigger job, much more important job than we originally anticipated. So, we're in there for five months.

And if you look at Vietnam, they were in there for 20 years. You look at Afghanistan, they were there for many years. You look at any one of the wars, Korea, any one of them. They're in there for many years. We're in for five months and we have obliterated their military capacity again. They've got some left, but soon they won't have some left.

So, I just want to thank everybody around this table. You've been very special. I want to thank a lot of the media people because many of you have been very, very fair. Very. That's one of the reasons you're here, frankly. But you've been very fair. You've covered me this time much more fairly, I think, than the first term. The first term was a great success. We had the greatest economy in history in the first term. And this term is going to blow it away. I think this term is going to actually blow it away.

So, it's an honor to have you. And I'd like to ask our great vice president, J.D. Vance, to say a few words, followed by Marco and Pete and Scott and Bobby Kennedy. OK? Thank you very much, everybody. Please.

JD VANCE, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Great. Thanks, Mr. President. First of all, thanks for having us at this historical and beautiful place. And it's an honor to be on the team, an honor to be able to work on fraud, which is what I'm going to talk about today. I know we have a lot of things going on.

This has been an amazing team from Kelly Loeffler at SBA to Doug at the VA to Todd and Bobby Kennedy. This really has required a whole administration approach to try to tackle fraud. There are a few things that I want to talk about and celebrate.

The first is that just since the beginning of the Fraud Task Force that I started under the president's leadership and direction, we have identified $230 billion of fraud that's being perpetrated against the American people. And we have halted already $56 billion of that. It's sometimes hard. Once the money has already gone out the door, it's hard to get it back. But stopping it from going out the door is how we save the American people. $56 billion. And of course, we're going to keep on working on that.

Just today, Mr. President, we will announce 17 new anti-fraud actions that will total about a third of a billion dollars. And that's added to the $230 billion that we've already uncovered. And I want to just talk for the benefit of the American people about why do we care so much about this? Because what I always try to remind people is that fraud has two victims. So --

BLITZER: All right. We're going to continue to monitor this Cabinet meeting up at Camp David in Maryland. The vice president, J.D. Vance, is speaking right now. Other Cabinet secretaries will be speaking.

[11:50:00]

But I want to get some analysis from our CNN global affairs commentator, Sabrina Singh, who's been listening very closely. We heard the president once again say that the U.S. has done an amazing job in Iran. The war has only been going on, he says, for five months. And we've obliterated, he used that word again, their military capability. What was your reaction, Sabrina, when you heard that?

SABRINA SINGH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR AND FORMER DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Yes, it's not a surprise that the president is yet again trying to take a victory lap for some of the military successes that have unfolded over the last five months. I mean, yes, he is right. We have degraded Iran's military. But Iran still retains capabilities that are very capable of reaching U.S. bases in the region. And I think he's really trying to downplay the impacts and the far-reaching impacts of their ballistic missile program and their drones.

I mean, at the end of the day, and I think the American people know this, every single time that they drive by the gas pump, they're seeing higher prices. And that is because the Strait of Hormuz, which was open before this war started, is now closed. So, even though the president wants to say that Iran has no Navy, no Air Force, they're degraded, the reality is that they still have capabilities that have closed the Strait. There's still a threat to our allies in the region, to U.S. military personnel in the region.

And, unfortunately, the president is now in this between a rock and a hard place of how do you end this war, how do you get out of this war, potentially with the Strait of Hormuz never reopening to what it was before the war started.

BLITZER: And what do you make, if anything, Sabrina, about the fact the president keeps referring to this as a military operation, a military operation with Iran, and he still refuses to use the word war?

SINGH: Yes, I think that's just convenient language parsing. You know, this is a war -- he has actually used that and I think in even some of his Truth Social posts, he says, you know, we're at war, we're going to obliterate Iran. So, there's no couching this as anything else other than a war. And I think that, of course, he doesn't want to call it a war because it has congressional implications for the notification to Congress, which did not happen when the war started.

But, again, this is you know, we have our military personnel that are there implementing a naval blockade in the Strait. We have ballistic missiles that we're shooting down on almost a nightly basis. This is a full-scale war that has actually turned into a larger regional war with drones even reaching Egypt. So, this is something that I think the president and this administration did not account for when they started this war, which they said would only last four to six weeks. And here we are talking about it five months later.

BLITZER: All right. Stand by, Sabrina, I'm going to get back to you. But I want to bring in our senior reporter, Daniel Dale, right now. He's checking -- he does fact checking for us. So, Daniel, what have you heard at least so far from the president that deserves a fact check?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: So, first of all, the president, Wolf, said that he doesn't think Iran was responsible for cyber- attacks targeting water infrastructure, such as attacks in Minnesota. And he said he blames the, quote, "corrupt governor" of Minnesota, Governor Tim Walz. First of all, not only has he not presented evidence that Walz is corrupt, there is no evidence that Walz is responsible for anything to do with these attacks. The FBI said that there have been similar attacks in seven states. President Trump notably did not blame the governors of the six others.

In addition, President Trump repeated a number of previously debunked false claims about the economy and immigration. For example, he said that 25 million people came across the border under former President Joe Biden. That's a gross overstatement. There were fewer than 11 million so-called border encounters under Biden, including millions rapidly expelled from the country. He spoke of 11,888 murderers entering the country over Biden. In fact, that's a number that refers to people who entered the country over about four decades, including during President Trump's first administration.

On the economy, he said we inherited a disaster, the worst inflation in 48 years. There was the worst inflation in about 40 years under Biden, but that was in June 2022. It was 9.1 percent. By the time President Trump came back to office about two and a half years later, it was down to 3 percent. That's better than it is now. It's about 3.5 percent.

He also said inflation is dropping at the fastest rate in more than six years. That is true, Wolf, but that was last month and overwhelmingly because gas prices plummeted amid the then ceasefire with Iran. They've bounced back strongly, gotten higher this month, so that improvement may prove to be short-lived.

And he also said, Wolf, that more plants, more factories are being built today than ever before. The data does not show that. The data on manufacturing construction spending shows that the peak was actually under Biden in late 2024 and that it has steadily declined month after month under Trump. So, the claim we're experiencing an unprecedented boom during this Trump term, just not borne out by the official figures.

BLITZER: All right. Standby. I want to bring in CNN political commentator Michael Smerconish. He's the host of CNN Smerconish, also the Michael Smerconish program on SiriusXM. So, what jumps out at you, Michael, when you've been listening to the president?

[11:55:00]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST, SMERCONISH AND HOST, "MICHAEL SMERCONISH PROGRAM" ON SIRIUSXM: It's an exhibition of the bully pulpit. He's the president of the United States. He's gathered the entire cabinet at Camp David. Consequently, the cameras are there and everybody wants to hear what he has to say. It affords him the opportunity to rattle off, from his perspective, a greatest hits reel, a State of the Union address condensed into a 15-minute address to the country. And, of course, we pay attention.

I don't think there was anything new that was offered, with the exception of tying the migrant issue in Spain to the midterm election and trying to return to what was his strongest issue, at least in my view, in the 2024 campaign, which was border control and, I think, an achievement on his part to have been able to slow the issue that we faced at the border. So, that was what was new to me. He's now trying to say, well, you all saw on television what just happened in Spain. We could be living that again if Republicans don't do well in the midterm elections.

BLITZER: Yes, it's a lot of campaign material clearly in this cabinet meeting right now. And, Michael, what did you think about the fact that this water supply situation in Minnesota and some other Midwestern states right now, cybersecurity issue that has developed, there's been some suspicion that Iran might have been behind all of this. The president rejected that and he blamed what he called the incompetent governor of Minnesota. What did you think of that?

SMERCONISH: I'm not aware of any justification for him making that claim. It just heightens my concern about our electric grid, our water system, our infrastructure. I think that we're vulnerable to attack in ways that we don't always think about. And I hope that there will be a renewed awareness of making sure that we're protecting ourselves, whatever that cause may have been.

BLITZER: All right. We'll continue to monitor this cabinet meeting up at Camp David, Maryland. Michael Smerconish, thank you very, very much.

And to our viewers, thanks very much for joining me this morning. You can always keep up with us on social media @wolfblitzer and @pamelabrowncnn. We'll see you back here Monday morning, every weekday morning, 10:00 a.m. Eastern for two hours. Inside Politics with our friend and colleague Dana Bash starts right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, President Trump is holding a cabinet meeting at Camp David. And you see it's happening as we speak, and we're going to take it back to you live when he starts taking questions from reporters.

But before we do that, I just want to point out what you see there. Sitting directly across from the president, at the back of --

[12:00:00]