[0:00]the beautiful office, beautiful White House, it's a special place. Even from your standpoint, and you have some very special places too, and I look forward to being with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President, for having me here in this uh Oval office for the third time now. I'm really happy to have the opportunity to speak with you in these uh challenging times. Uh we are uh on the same page in terms of getting this terrible regime in Tehran, uh, um away. And uh we will talk about the day after, what will happen then, if they are out. Uh, we have to talk about our trade agreement, uh which I would like to be in place as soon as possible. Um, and uh we have to talk about Ukraine. There are too many bad guys in this uh world actually. And uh this is an issue we have to talk about uh because we all want to see this uh war coming to an end as soon as possible. But Ukraine has to preserve its territory and their security interests uh and well, we will talk about that. We will. Looking forward to that. We will. Thank you for being here. Thank you. That's an interesting. Thank you for letting me uh spending the night in your guest house. That's right. You like it, right? Absolutely. Yeah, great place. And a famous place. So many former presidents. Very famous place. Uh any questions, please? Mr. President, Mr. President, is real force your hand to launch these strikes against Iran taking out the United States into this war. No, I might have forced their hand. Uh you see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn't do it. They were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that and we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successfully. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. But Israel was ready and we were ready and we've we've had a very, very powerful impact because virtually everything they have has been knocked out now. Uh their missile count is going way down. Uh amazingly they're hitting countries that were, you know, let's call them neutral, right? They lived together for a long time. They I think they were surprised. I was surprised. I think it and now those countries are all fighting against them and fighting strongly against them. Someday they'll write a story and they'll say why they did that. But uh they hit countries that had nothing to do with what's going on. They were sort of leaving everything alone. All of a sudden they get they had missiles shot in which shows you the level of evil that we're dealing with. They'll hit people that were actually at least somewhat friendly uh and they had no problems with it. Also hitting only civilian places, hotels and apartment buildings. And we're hitting them where it is uh much more appropriate. We're hitting them very hard and uh the the big scale hitting goes now.
[3:26]They no longer have air protection. They no longer have any detection facilities at all left and uh so they're going to they're going to be in for a lot of hurt. These are bad people. These are people that killed I guess it's 35,000, it's coming out. 35,000 over the last three weeks, protesters, 35,000 violently killed. So these are uh bad people. And the leader of the pack is gone. And as you know, 49 people were taken out in the first hit and I guess there was another hit today on the new leadership and it looks like that was pretty substantial also.
[4:07]So they're getting hit very hard and we'll see what happens. A lot of people are coming forward. A lot of the people you would least suspect uh want to quit. They want to have immunity. They're asking for immunity. And probably at some point they'll be dropping as you would say laying down their guns, we'll see what happens. In the meantime, we're just continuing to go forward. Our military is the number one in the world by far. And uh we are uh this is everything's big. In my book, Venezuela was big, this is big. The original hit, Midnight Hammer was big. Everything you view is big. But uh it's it's not considered very big by uh some standards, by some of our standards.
[4:51]We have a military like no other military that's ever been built. So Mr. President, what's the worst case scenario that you have planned for in Iran? Well, I don't know if there's a worst case. We have them very much uh beaten militarily from the military standpoint. They're still lobbing some missiles. At some point they won't even be able to do that because we're hitting all of their carriers. We're hitting all of their missile stock. You know, they built up all these missiles over the last few years. They had a lot of them. They've shot a lot of them and we're knocking out a lot. Uh I guess the worst case would be we do this and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person, right? That could happen. Uh we don't want that to happen. That would probably be the worst. You go through this and then uh in five years you realize you put somebody in who was no better. So we'd like to see somebody in there that's going to uh bring it back for the people. And we'll see what happens with the people, you know, they have their chance and we've said, don't do it yet. If you're going to go out and protest, don't do it yet. It's very dangerous out there. A lot of bombs are being dropped. But I would say that would be about the worst. Do you have someone in mind right now, because you said all the people you did have in mind have been taken out. What are you going to do? Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is uh is dead. And now uh we have another group. They may be dead also based on reports. So I guess you'll have a third wave coming in. Pretty soon we're not going to know anybody. But uh we have uh I mean, Venezuela was so incredible because we did the attack. And we kept government totally intact. And we have Delcy, who's been very good. We have the whole chain of command and and they've been, you know, look, the relationships been great. We've taken out 100 million barrels of oil already. And uh a big part of that goes to them and a big part goes to us. And it's been great. You we paid for the war many times over. And we're going to be running the oil. And Venezuela is going to make more money than they ever made and that's great for the people. The relationship has been great. It's been seamless. Nobody's actually ever seen anything like it. If you look at Iraq, where very stupidly, everybody was fired, the generals were fired, the military was fired, the police were fired, the fire departments were fired. And uh all of the government workers were fired. So after, you know, people would call, they had no idea. And by the way, ISIS was formed. That's where ISIS came from. All of the fired people. We don't believe in that. So we'll see what happens. But uh first we have to finish off the military. What does that mean, sir? I mean, he's an option. Is he an option at all in your mind? I guess he is. Some people like him and we haven't been thinking about too much about that. It would seem to me that somebody from within might maybe would be more appropriate. I've said that. He looks like a very nice person. Uh but uh it would seem to me that somebody that's there that's currently popular if there's such a person. But we have people like that. We have people that were more moderate. You know, these were radical lunatics and you know what they get? They get nothing. All they do is kill people. What exactly was the intent? You asked, not your turn. Not your turn. Please. Mr. President, um you have you been the think that the heat of serve the President, did not put the heat on the allies to them, help you in this, and will be What does that mean? Well, you have to ask our group of people, he said not as part of NATO but to be helpful to you in this. Well, some of the European nations have been helpful and some haven't. And I'm, you know, it's very surprised.
[8:50]A Germany's been great. He's been terrific. Uh others have been very good, terrific. I think the head of NATO, Mark is fantastic. Yeah. Mark Rutte. I think he's fantastic. Uh but some of the European like Spain has been terrible. In fact, I told uh Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. Spain, first of all, it started when every every European nation, at my request, paid 5%, which they should be doing. And everybody was enthusiastic about it, Germany, everybody. And Spain didn't do it. And now Spain uh actually said that we can't use their bases. And that's all right. We don't want to we could use their bases if we want, we could just fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us not to use it. But we don't have to. But they were unfriendly. And uh so I told him, we don't want to Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people. But they don't have great leadership. And as you know, they were the only country that in NATO would not agree to go up to 5%. I don't think they went agree to go up to anything. They wanted to keep it at 2% and they don't pay the 2%. So we we're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain.
[10:11]And I'm not by the way, I'm not happy with the UK either. Uh that island that you read about, the lease, okay, he made it for whatever reason, he made a lease of the island. Somebody came and took it away from him. And it's taken three, four days for us to work out where we can land there. It would have been much more convenient landing there as opposed to flying many extra hours. So we are very surprised. This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with.
[10:43]Sir, what's your expectations towards Germany? What can Germany do and what should Germany do to help you in this regard? Well, I think they're doing it. I mean, they're letting us land in certain areas and and that's we appreciate it and they're they're just making it comfortable. We're not asking them to put boots on the ground or anything. I mean, we're we're just uh they're a respected country. We I have a very good relationship with the country, we have in particular now, with this leader, with this new leader. I think he's an excellent leader. I had my differences with Angela. I said, you're hurting your country with immigration and you're hurting your country with energy. And we have a man sitting on my right that is, I think pretty much the opposite of her on energy and the opposite on immigration. And uh I think he's doing very well. And uh Mr. President, uh about the commercial air travel right now, is securely changed between the United States? Thousands of Americans are stranded. Why wasn't there an evacuation plan and will you send planes to get people out? Well, because it it happened all very quickly. We thought, and I thought, maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others. You're seeing that right now. And a lot of those missiles that are hitting in, those are stationary, those were aimed there for a long period of time at these other countries. So I think I was right about that. We attacked first. And if we didn't, it could have been, you know, look, we're really uh decimating them. They're being decimated. And if we didn't if we didn't and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition. We have the high end, a lot of it was given away stupidly by by first stupidly for free. And I'm all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot. Uh as you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it. The European Union is paying for it, then they can do what they want with it. But they are giving it, let's say to Ukraine and it's okay. But uh we gave away a lot of high end, but we have plenty. But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we're using in this war. And we have uh an un really an unlimited supply. We also have a lot of the very high end stored in different countries throughout the world, where they're literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term. I rebuilt the military in my first term. The military is great. Uh a lot of a lot unbelievable amount of of uh ammunition or munitions as they say, we've given away to uh you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that it was given away to the Middle East. Not to the Middle East. It was given away to Ukraine. Very little was given to the Middle East. Middle East would buy a lot and some of the nations because they're rich they have a lot. But it was given away to Ukraine and uh it just should have been done. Look, it's a war that should have never happened. If I were president, that war would have never happened. But we have a a tremendous amount of uh munitions, ammunition uh at the upper upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful stuff. Okay. One more. Go ahead. Please. Chancellor, you just told that the President is thinking about punishing Spain. What I have told from industry on this, and what can you do, Chancellor?
[14:31]Yeah. Um uh we the answer on that is quite simple. We are trying to convince Spain to catch up with the 3% at or 3.5% uh um which we agreed on in NATO. And uh as the president said, it's it's correct, Spain is the only one who is not willing to accept that and we are trying to convince them that this is a part of our common security, that we all have to comply with these uh numbers and this is 3.5 for military and another 1.5 for our military infrastructure. So, Spain has to comply with that. They've been they've been very Spain has been very, very uncooperative and so has UK.
