• 2 days ago
President Trump is asked for a message to Pentagon families after Elon Musk visited Friday.

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Transcript
00:00What do you say to American military families who are seeing Elon Musk at the Pentagon today,
00:06are hearing about defense department cuts, and their thoughts are immediately going to
00:11the safety of their loved ones who are currently employed?
00:13Well, we're making our country strong.
00:16And when they see a thing like that, and they hear that story about Elon in China, what
00:21they should do is realize that the New York Times is a corrupt institution, because I
00:26think they're the ones — they knew that story wasn't true.
00:28Nobody believed that story.
00:29People that — when I first got — they laughed when they heard this story.
00:33Nobody believed it.
00:34That the Pentagon was giving him a briefing on what war with China would look like?
00:40And he has business — no, they made that up because it's a good story to make up.
00:44They're very dishonest people.
00:46Look, I have it with the Times, and you'll see more and more of it.
00:51To me, it's a very, very — you know, a very dishonest organization.
00:56But a story like that is made up.
00:57It's total fiction.
01:00And I just wanted to make sure.
01:02I called up chief of staff, and I called up Pete, and I said, is there any truth to that?
01:08Absolutely not.
01:09He's there for Doge, not there for China.
01:12And if you ever mentioned China, I think he'd walk out of the room.
01:15He wouldn't — he wouldn't take it anyway.
01:17So it's just a made-up story.
01:20Nobody is taking better care of the military.
01:22One of the things that I know that Pete is doing is he's talking about a lot of the civilian
01:26staff, and we're going to get them other jobs.
01:30You know, we're going to have a lot of jobs in this country because — but we don't want
01:34to have wasteful jobs.
01:35We want to have meaningful jobs.
01:37And those were wasteful jobs.
01:38Those are jobs that not only military, but jobs where people don't show up.
01:43We had — you take a look at Department of Education.
01:46I've never seen so many buildings with the names on it.
01:48You go past one after another Department of Education, and they're empty.
01:53The people don't show up.
01:54You know why?
01:55Because they don't get better jobs, because they're playing golf or they're playing something.
01:59They're doing something.
02:01And we have a lot of great people, but we have to move that back to the States.
02:04We're going to make our country strong, and we're going to get people much better jobs
02:09because we have companies moving into our country the likes of which we've never seen
02:13before.
02:14Nothing like this has happened.
02:16And it's automatic.
02:18They don't want to pay the tariffs.
02:19How do you get — how do you avoid paying the tariffs?
02:23You build your plant in the United States, and it's going to be — it's a beautiful
02:27thing to see.
02:28I see it.
02:29So far, I would say $4 trillion.
02:32Nobody has ever heard a number — no country has ever heard of numbers like that.
02:35Four trillion dollars.
02:36And those are the best ones.
02:38The biggest, best chipmaker in the world.
02:41I don't — I'm not a fan of the CHIP Act, where you give billions away to — billions
02:45of dollars away to companies that don't need it.
02:48And it won't bring them here.
02:51I'm giving nothing away.
02:52All they're doing is coming here.
02:53They're building because they want to avoid.
02:55Remember this on the tariffs, too, because that's going to be — you know, Liberation
02:58Day, April 2nd.
03:01It's reciprocal.
03:03If they charge us, we charge them.
03:05So somebody will say, well, how much are the tariffs?
03:08Very fair.
03:09If — India, as an example, has been very bad to us on tariffs.
03:14They charge 100 percent, 200 percent.
03:18Whatever they charge.
03:19And Europe just announced they're lowering the tariffs on cars.
03:23You know, we charge, like a joke, 2.5 percent.
03:27That's what this country charges.
03:29Europe just announced that they're reducing their tariffs on cars to 2.5 percent.
03:34That's nice.
03:35But they also have non-monetary tariffs, where they make it impossible for the cars to get
03:39in, even without the dollars on them and the dollar signs.
03:43It's called a non-monetary tariff, where they put on controls where, no matter what happens
03:48— because they don't want cars.
03:49They don't want the American car in their market.
03:52And yet they send us millions of cars.
03:54They send us big agriculture.
03:55They don't want our agriculture.
03:56They don't want anything from us.
03:58European Union is very tough.
04:00But now it's fair.
04:02So whatever they do to us, we do to them.

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