Trump Talks Russia-Ukraine War, Gaza, Iran, DOGE, TikTok and Harvard in 2025 Interview

[00:00:00]
Reporter
Mr. President, On Russia. On Russia, Mr. President.

[00:00:05]
Reporter
Do you believe the Russians are being disrespectful when they say that your criticisms of Putin are simply an emotional response? And do you still believe that Putin actually wants to end the war?

[00:00:16]
Donald Trump
I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know in about two weeks, within two weeks. We're going to find out very soon. We're goingto find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not. And if he is, well... I'll respond a little bit differently, but it'll take about a week and a half, two weeks. We have Mr. Witkoff is here, who's doing a phenomenal job, is dealing with them very strongly right now. They seem to want to do something, but until the document is signed, I can't tell you. Nobody can. I can say this. I can say that I'm very disappointed at what happened A couple yesterday. of nights now where people were killed in the middle of what you would call a negotiation. I'm very disappointed by that. Very, very disappointed. Yeah, please.

[00:01:04]
Reporter
You've called for an end to the Gaza war. Given the growing humanitarian crisis and the decision of Prime Minister Netanyahu to expand the military operation, do you have any frustration with his handling of the situation of the war?

[00:01:18]
Donald Trump
No, we're dealing with the whole situation in Gaza. We're getting food to the people of Gaza. It's been a very nasty situation, very nasty fight. October 7th was a very nasty day, the worst that I think I've ever seen. It was a horrible day and people aren't going to forget that either. So we'll see how that all works out. And Steve, would you want to say a couple of words about Gaza, because you just have some information? Steve Witkoff, do you want to come up for a second? You might give them a little bit of information as to what's happening with Gaza and also Israel. We're having some very good talks with Iran. We'll find out whether that means anything, but we're having good talks.

[00:02:01]
Steve Witkoff
Well, hi, everybody. I think we are on the precipice of sending out a new term sheet that hopefully will be delivered later on today. The President is going to review it. And I have some very good feelings about getting to a long-term resolution, temporary ceasefire, and a long- term resolution, a peaceful resolution of that conflict.

[00:02:31]
Reporter
Mr. President, you said yesterday that Putin is playing with fire. What will be the consequences for Russia if he continues to, if Russia continues to attack?

[00:02:43]
Donald Trump
Well, I'm not going to tell you exactly, but the words speak pretty loud. We're not happy about that situation. I think we're doing very well with Iran. I think we'RE doing very well WITH GAZA. But we are doing very well with Iran, and I think we're going to see something very sensible, because there are only two outcomes. You know what the two outcomes is. A smart outcome and there's a violent outcome, and I don't think anybody wants to see the second. But I think we've made a lot of progress, and we'll see. You know, they still have to agree to the final stages of a document, but I think you could be very well surprised what happens there. And it would be a great thing for them. They could have a great country into the future. Yeah. 

[00:03:29]
Reporter
Mr. President, Elon Musk in a television interview criticized the one big, beautiful bill, saying he was disappointed it didn't cut enough, essentially, that it undercut the Doge efforts. What's your reaction to that?

[00:03:40]
Donald Trump
Well my reaction is a lot of things. Number one we have to get a lot of votes,. We can't be uh cutting you know we need we need to get a lot of support and we have a lot of support We had to get it through the House The House was uh we have no Democrats you know if it's up to the Democrats they'll take the 65% increase You know if that doesn't get approved this country is going to have a 65% increase in taxes and lots of other problems big problems almost bigger than that, But we'll have a 65% increase as opposed to the largest tax cut in the history of our country. Uh we will be negotiating that bill and uh I'm not happy about certain aspects of it but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it That's the way they go It's very big . It's the big beautiful bill 

[00:04:26]
Donald Trump
But the beautiful is because of all of the things we have. The biggest thing being, I would say, the level of tax cutting that we're going to be doing. We're going to make people really be able to, we'll have one of the, we'll have the lowest tax rate we've ever had in the history of our country. And tremendous amounts of benefit are going to the middle-income people of our country, low and middle-income. People of our country so we're going to see what happens because the Senate, as you know, is negotiating with us and they have to then go back to the House. And, you know, it's got a way to go. But I have to say Speaker Johnson and Thune have done an incredible job. John Thune has done a fantastic, Leader Thune, a fantastic job. And they're working together with me and others.

[00:05:12]
Donald Trump
And I think we have an amazing, if we pull this off, remember, we have zero Democrat votes because they're bad people. There's something wrong with them. You know, they'll let people pour into our country. Single biggest problem is we had 21 million people pour into our county, probably higher than that. And they're people that weren't supposed to be here. And many of those people are bad, murderers, drug dealers, the mentally insane. They were closing mental institutions all over the world, not South America, all over the world. They're coming into our country, and we're getting them out. And we're having a hard time because some judges aren't making it very easy for us, and it's tough enough. They approved that. They allowed that to happen to our country. We don't have one Democrat vote. And if I were a Democrat, I'd be voting for this bill, and I'd get elected to any position I want as a Democrat.

[00:06:01]
Donald Trump
They're crazy. They're voting for a 65% tax increase And they're only doing it for hatred. They're not doing it for any reason. They know it's terrible. Terrible politics, in my opinion. But so we have no Democrat votes. That means we have to get almost all Republican votes. And I think we're very close to doing that. I think it'll be very successful. Yeah, please.

[00:06:21]
Reporter
Mr. President, Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the taco trade. They're saying Trump always chickens out on the tariff threats. And that's why markets are higher this week. What's your response to that?

[00:06:31]
Donald Trump
I kick out?

[00:06:32]
Reporter
Chicken out.

[00:06:34]
Donald Trump
Oh, isn't that a nice chicken out? I've never heard that. You mean because I reduced China from 145% that I set down to 100% and then down to another number? And I said, you have to open up your whole country. And because I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff, And they called up and they said, please, let's meet right now. Please, let's meet right now. And I said, okay, I'll give you till June 9. I actually asked them, I said, what's the date? Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we'll meet anytime you want. And we have an end date of July 9th. You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now invested. Committed to investing when Biden didn't have practically anything. Biden, this country was dying.

[00:07:26]
Donald Trump
You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia. The king told me. He said, you got the hottest country. We have the hottest company in the world right now. Six months ago, this country, this country was stone cold dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation. You set a number. And if you go down, you know, if I set a number at a ridiculous high number and I go down a little bit, you know a little bit. They want me to hold that number. One hundred and forty five percent tariff. Even I said, man, that really got up. You know how it got? Because of fentanyl and many other things, and you added it up.

[00:08:07]
Donald Trump
I said, where are we now? We're at 145%. I said, whoa, that's high, that's High. They were doing no business whatsoever and they were having a lot of problems. We were very nice to China. I don't know if they're gonna be nice to us, but we were very nice to China and in many ways I think we really helped China tremendously because you know they were having great difficulty because we were basically going cold turkey with China. We were doing no business because of the tariff because it was so high. But I knew that. But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. Go ahead. To me, that's the nastiest question. Wait, wait, wait. Go ahead, please.

[00:08:45]
Reporter
President Zelensky says he's ready to sit down with you and Vladimir Putin in Geneva. And it sounds like General Kellogg is working on preparations for that. Are you planning to sit down with the two of them? Well, I will if it's necessary.

[00:08:59]
Donald Trump
We have to, I think at this point, I wish it would have been that way a couple of months ago, but at this point we're working on President Putin. And we'll see where we are. I think we're doing fine, but we'll see. I don't like what's happening. That's one thing I'll say I don't. Like when I see rockets being shot into cities, that's no good. We're not going to allow it.

[00:09:20]
Reporter
You've always said that the war never would have started if you were president.

[00:09:23]
Donald Trump
Would have never happened, and it didn't happen.

[00:09:24]
Reporter
And he doesn't seem willing to do anything that you want him to do. Do you still believe that, that he wouldn't have launched the war?

[00:09:31]
Donald Trump
No, no, we would have never had a war We would have never had a war if I were president. If the election weren't rigged, you wouldn't have had the war. You wouldn't have the war, you wouldn'T have had inflation. You wouldn'T have October 7th. That would have never happened because Iran was stone-cold broke. They didn'T have any money to give to Hamas or Hezbollah. You wouldn'T Have had that Afghanistan most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. You wouldn'T HAVE had any of it. You wouldn'T of had inflation because energy costs. Look what happened. I brought inflation down to practically zero. And all of the groceries and all of the eggs and all of things that you've been hearing about, they're back down. They're way down from where they were. I did something in four months that nobody's seen.

[00:10:13]
Donald Trump
And I have to say, in four months, and I said it before, and everyone's talking about it all over the world, we've got the hottest country. Anywhere in the world right now. We're the only country anybody's even talking about. All right, please.

[00:10:26]
Reporter
What stopped you from imposing new sanctions on Russia?

[00:10:29]
Donald Trump
Only the fact that if I think I'm close to getting a deal, I don't want to screw it up by doing that. Let me tell you, I'm a lot tougher than the people you're talking about. But you have to know when to use that. If I think it's going to hurt a deal. This isn't my war. This is Biden's war, Zelensky's war, and Putin's war. This isn't Trump's war. I'm only here for one thing, to see if I can end it, to save 5,000 lives a week and a lot of money, the money being much less important, because I made that money. I went to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE, and we brought back $5.1 trillion. So I made that money in about two hours, the money that we're talking about, but it's still 3, think of it, $300 billion we've spent.

[00:11:16]
Donald Trump
With no checks, no balances, they just send cash. You can imagine what's happened to that money. I never saw anything like it in my life. But I'm more interested because I picked up $5.1 trillion. And by the way, got a beautiful, big, magnificent, free airplane for the United States Air Force, okay? Very proud of that, too. They tried to say, oh, it's Trump's airplane. Oh, yeah, sure. It's too big. It's frankly, it's too big, much too big.

[00:11:45]
Reporter
When can we expect that to be the Air Force one?

[00:11:48]
Donald Trump
Well, it's here already. Yeah. It's in the country. It's being refitted for military standard.

[00:11:53]
Reporter
How much will it cost to refit it? Oh,

[00:11:55]
Donald Trump
I don't know. Whatever it is, a hell of a lot less than building a new one. We're waiting too long from Boeing. Boeing has got to get its act together. Yeah.

[00:12:03]
Reporter
So this arrangement that was just announced share, is that an arrangement you would consider for TikTok as well?

[00:12:10]
Donald Trump
Nothing to do with TikTok. Totally different kind of a deal. We'll have to get, you know, to do it properly, we'll probably have to get China's approval. China's never easy. China's never easily. But I think, yeah, I think we'll be able to save TikTok. I'd like to save TikTok I mean, TikTok was very good to me. I won the young people by 37%. No Republicans ever won, and I won by 37%. And Charlie Kirk will tell you TikTok helped. But Charlie Kirk helped also. Oh, he just happens to be here. Look at him. He loves that we mentioned that name, right, Charlie? He's done great. And I appreciate all the help. But with young people, we won by 37%, Charlie. And you helped, but TikTok was amazing. And he was the first one. He said, get on TikTok. So I have a little bit of a warm spot.

[00:12:58]
Donald Trump
I know I shouldn't. They'll say, quid pro quo. Put him in jail for the rest of his life. Quid pro quo? No, TikTok was very good to me. I won young people. I don't know if it was because of TikTok, but it was, something happened. No Republican has ever won, they call them young people. Young people, you can define it a lot of different ways, but I won every age group in young people. And it never happened, and won by 37%. That's a lot. Yeah.

[00:13:28]
Reporter
Back on Iran, did you warn Prime Minister Netanyahu against taking some sort of action so they could disrupt the talks there? In a phone call last week.

[00:13:37]
Donald Trump
Well, I'd like to be honest. Yes, I did. Next question, please. I did. Yeah. It's not a warning. I said, I don't think it's appropriate.

[00:13:50]
Reporter
What exactly did you tell him?

[00:13:52]
Donald Trump
I just said, I do not think it's appropriate. We're talking. We're having very good discussions with him. And I said, I do not know. I do think it's appropriate right now. Because if we can settle it with a very strong document, very strong. with inspections and no trust. I don't trust anybody. I don't trust anybody. So no trust. I want it very strong where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody's going to be in the lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up, right? Two ways of doing it. Yeah, I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we're very close to a solution. Now, that could change at any moment. It could change with a phone call.

[00:14:37]
Donald Trump
But right now, I think they want to make a deal, and if we can make a deal and save a lot of lives.

[00:14:42]
Reporter
Mr. President, I'm so pleased and inspired to... When do you think a deal could happen on Iran?

[00:14:48]
Donald Trump
On which?

[00:14:49]
Reporter
A deal with Iran could happen.

[00:14:51]
Donald Trump
Oh, I don't know.I think over the next couple of weeks if it happens. Yeah?

[00:14:55]
Reporter
When could the administration resume the interviews for foreign students visa? When do you see your administration could resume these interviews?

[00:15:04]
Donald Trump
On what?

[00:15:05]
Reporter
For the foreign student visa. Yesterday, there was a...

[00:15:08]
Donald Trump
For the French visa? For the foreign. French, too, but all the foreign students.

[00:15:12]
Donald Trump
Oh, for the foreign visas? What are you referring? Foreign visas for what? Are you talking about for colleges?

[00:15:18]
Reporter
Okay, so you're off of Israel. Now you're talking about colleges, right? Well, we're going to see. Look, Harvard has been a disaster. They've taken five plus, by the way, five billion dollars plus. Five billion. Nobody knew that they were making this cut. If we didn't do this, nobody would have. We would have never found this out, Pam. They're taking $5 billion. And I'd rather see that money go to trade schools. And by the way, they're totally anti-Semitic at Harvard, as you know, and some other colleges too, in all fairness to them. And it's been exposed, very exposed. And I think they're dealing very badly. Every time they fight, they lose another $250 million. Yesterday, we found another $100 million. And they have, you know, they have a fund, 52, an endowment, $52 billion. All right, they get a lot of that from the United States and I think it's ridiculous.

[00:16:14]
Donald Trump
I think this everyone's Coming up to me saying we love the idea of trade schools with that kind of money and money from others, but money from them. You can have the best trade schools anywhere in the world. You give them to Iowa, Indiana, lots of good states, well-run states, and you give them the money. They can only be used for trade schools and they'll teach people how to build motors and cars and AI. You know, the AI, we're building plants. We're building hundreds of billions of dollars worth of AI plants, already started many of them. We've never had a boom like we're having now. You're gonna see it. There's never been anything like it. So we're up to about $14 trillion in investments. There's never been anything even close. You look at Biden, this guy, they had people leaving as opposed to investing.

[00:17:06]
Donald Trump
And they're doing it because of November, really November 5th, and they're doing het because of the tariffs. The tariffs have been tremendous. Well, I can promise you, and I have great respect for the people at the European Union, they wouldn't be over here today negotiating if I didn't put a 50 percent tariff on. The sad thing is now when I make a deal with them, it's something much more reasonable. They'll say, oh, he was chicken. He was chicken. That's so unbelievable.

[00:17:38]
Donald Trump
I usually have the opposite problem. They say you're too tough.

[00:17:42]
Reporter
Mr. President, on Harvard, there were some Jewish students protesting on campus yesterday. They said they don't want you making these huge cuts, cutting off student visas to Harvard in their name.

[00:17:55]
Donald Trump
Well, Harvard has to show us their lists. They have foreign students. About 31 percent of their students are foreign-based, almost 31%. We want to know where those students come. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come? And we're not going to, if somebody is coming from a certain country and they're 100% fine, which I hope most of them are, but many of them won't be, you're going to see some very radical people. They're taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized, and we don't want them making trouble in our country. So I saw yesterday that in the middle of the UK, there was a nice young man. He wants to go back to school at Harvard. And he looked good to me, but I want to check his past. But we want to be able to see why these countries aren't helping us.

[00:18:46]
Donald Trump
They're not investing in Harvard and all of our... We are. So why would 31%, why would a number so big? I think, number one, I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15%, not 31%. We have people want to go to Harvard and other schools. They can't get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don't want to see shopping centers exploding. We don't wanna see the kind of riots that you had. And I'll tell you what, many of those students didn't go anywhere. Many of those students were troublemakers caused by the radical left lunatics in this country. All right, one more question

[00:19:23]
Reporter
will you pardon the people who are accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gresham Whitmer?

[00:00:00]
Donald Trump

[00:19:30]
Donald Trump
The I'm gonna look at it. I will take a look at it, it's been brought to my attention. I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job. I'll be honest with you. It looked to be like some people said some stupid things, you know, they were drinking and I think they said stupid things. But I'll take a look at that. And a lot of people are asking me that question from both sides. Actually, a lot of People think they got railroaded. A lot of people think they got railroaded. And probably some people don't. One more. Go ahead. Yeah.

[00:20:01]
Reporter
How will the confrontation with Harvard end?

[00:20:04]
Donald Trump
I don't know. I don't I don't. Harvard's got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect and all they're doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper. They've got to behave themselves. You know, I'm looking I'm looking out for the country and for Harvard. I want Harvard to do well. I want Harvard be great again, probably, because how could it be great? How could it be good when you have Harvard announce two weeks ago that they are going to teach remedial mathematics, remedial meaning they're going to teach low-grade mathematics, like two plus two is four. How did these people get into Harvard if they can't do basic mathematics? How did they do it? I mean, people with 1,600 in their boards don't get in, and they're letting people in, and they're bragging about how they're teaching them basic mathematics. Where did these people come from?

[00:20:56]
Donald Trump
So we have to look at the list, and Harvard has to understand. The last thing I want to do is hurt them. They're hurting themselves. They're fighting. You know, Colombia has been really... They were very, very bad, what they've done. They're very anti-Semitic and lots of other things. But they're working with us on finding a solution. And, you know, they're taking off that hot seat. But Harvard wants to fight. They want to show how smart they are. And they're getting their ass kicked. Thank you very much, everybody.

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