Trump and Elon Musk speak after president buys new Tesla

He's done an incredible job with Tesla and, I mean, nobody else. Has a car company started up in the last 30 years that's been successful? I don't think so. And not only successful, but super successful. Because he's able to find billions and billions and billions of dollars of fraud and waste and all of the things. I mean, our country is going to be very strong very soon because of a lot of the things that he's done and a lot of the things that I'm doing. And there's no better team, but there's no better for what we're doing. There's nobody like this and he shouldn't be penalized. And when I watched the other day, I said, I can't believe it. It should be the opposite. People should be going wild and they love the product, but because he's finding all sorts of terrible things that have taken place against our country, they want to penalize him in an economic sense. And I just think that's very unfair. So I just wanted to make a statement. I'm going to buy one. Now, here's the bad news. I'm not allowed to drive because I haven't driven a car in a long time. I love to drive cars, but I'm going to have it at the White House and I'm going to let my staff use it. I'm going to let people at the place use it. And they all are all excited about that. I'm not allowed to use it. Can you believe it? One of my great things in life is that I can, you know, I like to drive cars, but I'm not allowed to. And I will say, this one, the Cybertruck, I bought for a very special young woman, you know. I'm sure you've never heard of her, Kai. She's a great golfer and she puts the clubs in the back. And I guess it's a very safe deal. She loves it. And I actually bought one about a year ago and she loves it. And it's very safe. It's very strong, heavy. It's all steel, stainless steel. But the cars themselves. So what is this one? That's a Model Y. A Model Y. So I have a lot of information, including the price. Yeah. I want to make a good deal here. You know, I do notice this. They have one, which is $35,000, which is pretty low. What is that all about? Yeah. I guess we want to make a point that Tesla is a little expensive. You can get a Tesla for as little as $35,000. Yeah. And I just want to thank the President for his support. This means a lot. And also thank everyone out there who is supporting Tesla. It's really terrible that there's so much violence being created against people at Tesla, Tesla's quarters, Tesla owners, Tesla stores. These are innocent people who've done nothing wrong. So, you know. But nobody's been — I mean, it hasn't been — there's been some physical damage, a little damage. And we want to keep it that way because — I don't want to say this. It's just not the appropriate. But law enforcement is out there watching everybody. We don't want this to happen. And not to somebody that's been so good to our country. He didn't have to do this. He didn't have to go through this. And we can't let it happen. And aside from that, I happen to love the product. It's always — it's a lot nicer if you also happen to love the product. And he's done a really good job. Go ahead, Peter. Is there — I guess this is for Elon Musk. Is there a discount? President Trump wrote the art of the deal. Is there any kind of room for negotiating here? Let me answer that. I know he'd give me a discount, but honestly, I don't want to ask for one. You know, I'm President, so I want to pay full price. And what is your message, President Trump, buying a new car while there are some folks who will see this clip at home and they are struggling with their retirement accounts down at the moment, uncertainty about work ahead? Well, I think they're going to do great. Our country had to do this. We had to go and do this. They've taken away — other countries have taken away our business. They've taken away our jobs. I did it initially very strongly against, as you know, China and some others in the first term. And it was a very successful term. We had no inflation. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. And then we had COVID, which we had to straighten out. So I didn't want to be doing anything with respect to other countries at that time. And we did a great job with it. We handed the stock market over. It was higher than it ever was. And think of that — higher than it ever was to that point before. And nobody thought that was even possible. We did a great job. But we had the greatest economy in history. This economy, in my opinion, is going to blow it away. But what I have to do is I have to get the workers back. I have to get the factories open. We have — 90,000 factories and plants are closed from what you had just prior to NAFTA, which is not very long ago. Ninety thousand. Think of it. Ninety thousand factories and plants are closed from what it was. And it's just not right. So — and we gave it away. Presidents before me gave it away, and I could name every one of them. But they gave it away, and we're taking it back. We're taking our jobs back. And one of the things I'll say, by the way, speaking of Tesla, he manufactures more cars. I mean, he opened this incredible plant, one of the largest plants in the world, in Texas. Could you talk about that a little? Yeah, it's worth noting that the Tesla cars have the most U.S. content of any cars on the market. So they're the most American-made. We have the biggest factory and the most advanced automotive factory in Texas that we've opened and continue to expand. And so this is very much a — these are great products. A Model S is one. Best car ever. You know, so all these cars have won incredible awards. So they're great cars, and they're American-made. And I think, you know, try it. You'll like it. And I'm just saying, beyond the cars, they're great. But we have to celebrate somebody that has the courage to do this. He could have said, I'm not doing anything. I'm not going to get involved. Let the country go to hell. He didn't want to do that. And remember, he's going to find — and we're up to almost $500 billion worth of waste and fraud. And if he has $500 billion, we give him $2 billion here, $2 billion there. Not millions. If it was a million dollars or $2 million, that's a lot of money. But we're talking about billions of dollars being given to defunct, you know, scams. Given to people with nothing. They have nothing going. They open up a subchapter-esque corporation, and they put $2 billion into it from nowhere. And we've caught a lot of them. I wish we could catch all of them, but we've caught a lot of them. And he's been largely responsible. So we have to celebrate him. And it's not that he's conservative. I don't even know if he's conservative. I will tell you this. I've been doing this for — I've known him for a pretty long time. He endorsed me. I didn't know him that well when he endorsed me. But in the time I've known him, he has never asked me for a favor. He didn't ask me for this. I said, you know, Elon, I don't like what's happening to you. And Tesla is a great company. I don't like what's happening. It's, from our standpoint, American cars, American-made. He employs thousands of people. He's got — at the same time, he has the most modern plants in the world. I said, I don't like what's happening to you. I'm going to do it. I didn't even know he was going to come. He's never asked me for anything. He endorsed me, and he never asked me. I didn't even know he was going to endorse me. The guy has never asked me. He's not saying — in fact, I go, boy, I know other people. They have three, four — they love him. They love him. And some people like to guess him, and they should have their options. I'm all about options. But I'm telling you, I ended the electric mandate, and I was waiting for a call. I said, did Elon call yet? They said, no, sir. The next day. What about Elon? Did he call? He never even mentioned it to me, never complained. Until this moment, I'm just bringing it up. Who would do that? He has never asked me for a thing. And he's built this great company. And he shouldn't be penalized because he's a patriot. He's an incredible patriot. And I don't even know if he's a Republican. I really don't. Mr. President, what are your reactions to the stock market drop today? I'm not sure if it was. Are you still stock-adopted? We're going to have drops. And markets are going to go up, and they're going to go down. But you know what? We have to rebuild our country. Our country has been stripped of its jobs, of its factories. And I'm tired of seeing where they build apartments, cheap apartments, in an old, broken-down factory. But you have factories all over the place that are empty from many decades ago. And we're going to change it around. And it's all taxing policy. You know, it's really a policy because we have great workers, great people. It's really a policy of taxing and incentives. And I'm bringing the incentives back. And I'll tell you what. Numerous plants, and I don't want to mention specifically, but I'll mention this one. Numerous plants in Mexico and other places that were under construction or soon to be under construction are now coming here, and they dropped that because it was unfair what was happening. Mexico, they were building cars. They were selling them into the United States with no tax, no nothing. And in the United States, we were allowing them to take our jobs and take our factories, and we don't do that anymore. Now, from a president, it would be a lot easier if I just coasted for another four years. I would have been an eight-year president. I had the best economy in history in my first four years. I would have done very well with this one. And I had a decision to make. Do I want to do this or do I not? Do I want to do it right? The right thing to do is what we're doing. We're going to get our jobs back, and we're not going to be laughed at. Now, I will say this, that already Canada, and I respect very much. As you know, there's a very strong man in Canada who said he was going to charge a surcharge or a tariff on electricity coming into our country. He has called, and he said he's not going to do that. He's not going to do that. It would have been a very bad thing if he did. And he's not going to do that, so I respect that. But we were just informed that he's not going to do that. We've been treated very unfairly by Canada. We've been treated very unfairly by Mexico. We've been treated very unfairly by every country all over the world. The European Union is horrible, horrible. And we're going to get it back. I have a choice. I could just post, and eventually there'd be a blow-up. It's down the road, maybe a long way. But we owe $36 trillion, and we're going to get it back We're the biggest, we're the best, and I'm very optimistic. I have to tell you, I'm very optimistic about the country. Much more optimistic this way than if I did it the easy way. I could have done it the easy way. I could have coasted. Biden left us a mess. He left us tremendous inflation, tremendously high costs of products. He left us a mess, but he also left us a mess with millions of people that poured into our country that are criminals. Millions of those people happen to be criminals. And we're looking for them all over the place. We're looking for them. And Homan and Christie are doing an incredible job. But he left us a horrible situation, and we're changing it. But one of the things we're changing is we're going to make our country really wealthy again. We're going to bring our jobs back. Right now, we're like a chicken that's being plucked at from all over the world. We're not going to let that happen anymore. Very importantly, and I said it, Ukraine. Ceasefire. Ukraine. Ceasefire. Just agreed to a little while ago. Now we have to go to Russia, and hopefully President Putin will agree to that also. And we can get this show on the road. We can get this horrible war. We're 2,000, 3,000 soldiers a week. Every week, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 sometimes. I get the reports. And they're not American soldiers. They're Ukrainian and they're Russian. But people are being killed outside of that. People are being killed in the cities as things explode throughout the cities. And we want to get that war over with. So I think it's a very big – I think it's a big difference between the last visit you saw at the Oval Office and this. So that's a total ceasefire. Ukraine has agreed to it, and hopefully Russia will agree to it. We're going to meet with them later on today and tomorrow, and hopefully we'll be able to wipe out a deal. But I think the ceasefire is very important. If we can get Russia to do it, that'll be great. If we can't, we just keep going on and people are going to get killed. Lots of people. Is Valensky invited back to the White House? Sure. No, I think Biden gave us a horrible economy. He gave us horrible inflation. And I think the market was going to go very, very bad. If anything, I have a lot of very smart people, friends of mine and great businessmen. They're now investing because of what I'm doing. Because long term, what I'm doing is making our country strong again. Financially strong, militarily strong, and strong – and we want to get away – remember this, we have wars. When I left, we had no wars. We didn't have Ukraine and Russia. We didn't have October 7th. We didn't have that disaster that took place with the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And you look at what's happened there. We caught the major terrorist, which Biden would have caught. Why didn't he catch him? I caught him. Five weeks into the presidency, I caught the man responsible for Abigail. And he's going to pay hell right now. He's a bad dude. He's a bad guy. But we didn't have these problems. I had no inflation. I had a great economy. He gave you high prices. You couldn't buy bacon. You couldn't buy anything. And also, I inherited a situation with eggs. The price of eggs was through the roof. Well, now the price of eggs has come down a lot. Interest rates have come down. Gasoline prices have come down. It's all coming down. It's all a beautiful thing. I can do it the right way or the wrong way. We're doing it the right way. And I have tremendous confidence in this country and the people of this country – tremendous I want to look at cars. I want to say, as a function of the great policies of President Trump and his administration, and as an act of faith in America, Tesla is going to double vehicle output in the United States within the next two years. Double. That's a big deal. That's good. Thank you. And by the way, he makes one car. This one I don't understand. This one I don't want, but that's okay. Without a steering wheel. It comes out next year. Explain that, please. Well, the CyberCab starts production in Texas next year. And it's self-driving. We have so much confidence in the self-driving nature of it that it will actually not have a steering wheel. It will not have pedals. It will either self-drive or not drive at all. But it will self-drive. And I'm going to pass on that. Before this event today, when's the last time you bought a new car? Well, I buy a lot through my children because they run the company now. I used to buy a lot. I haven't bought a new car in a long time. What was your first car? The only thing I know. The only thing I know is the Beast. I got a big car with very thick windows and thick side panels. Is that going electric? We buy a lot of cars. Actually, I bought this one for Kai. Do you remember your first car? Will you make a different decision now about the tariffs on Canada? Will you reduce it? He was a gentleman. Look, I said it before. We give Canada $200 billion a year. We subsidize Canada. Between all of the things we give them and trade, we don't have to have cars made in Canada. We don't have to have lumber from Canada. Tremendous lumber. We have tremendous trees. All I have to do is unfreeze them from some of the restrictions that we're put on. I can do that with an example. We don't need energy. We have more energy than anybody else in the world. So we spend $200 billion a year subsidizing Canada. We don't have to do that. And frankly, the way that gets solved is Canada should honestly become our 51st state. We wouldn't have a northern border problem. We wouldn't have a tariff problem. They don't have much. They spend very little, as you know, the least of almost anybody on military. And we spend the most of anybody on military. We have a great military. I rebuilt the military during my first term. We're going to have to rebuild it a little bit again. Not that much. A little bit again. But Canada would be great as our cherished 51st state. You wouldn't have to worry about borders. You wouldn't have to worry about anything. And by the way, Canada is very highly taxed, and we're very low taxed. We're considered a low-taxed nation because of me, because I cut the taxes so low. So the people of Canada would pay much less tax. It makes a lot of sense. And by the way, when you take away that artificial line that looks like it was done with a ruler — and that's what it was. Some guy sat there years ago, and they said, rah. But when you take away that and you look at that beautiful formation of Canada and the United States, there is no place anywhere in the world that looks like that. It is most beautiful. And then if you add Greenland, that's even more beautiful. Okay? I'm going to look at this. I'm going to make a decision. Do you want to hear what my decision is? Okay. What's your best of these cars? What do you think? Well, the car that I drive is the Model S Class C. Which is that one? That red one in the middle. I like that. It's zero to 60 miles an hour in two seconds. My people can handle it. They're going to — Jeff, they're going to be using it more. I'm not allowed to use it. That's a fast one. Just to be clear, sir, the 50 percent, is that going to go into effect on Canada or not? Which one? The 50 percent tariffs? I'll let you know about it. Okay. I'll let you know. But I appreciated his call. I thought it was nice. Whoa. Can I get in? Get in. Let me get in for a second. Do you want my notes? Yeah. They gave me notes. They said, I'm not Biden. I don't need those. I'll get one. I can take it. I'm going to do this. I'll watch Secret Service go crazy. How many of you actually drove it around? Oh, beautiful. This is a different panel than I've had. Everything's computer. That's beautiful. Can you start it? Let's hear the engine. Are you going to get it wrapped in gold? No. You don't want me to drive it, do you? I saw Mike do a test move here once. Step by. That's the one that saw it. Really amazing. Is the President going to get it wrapped in gold? Do you think Biden can get into that car? No. That's beautiful. Mr. President, you talked about some of the violence that you've had. Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists. I will do that. I'll do it. I'm going to stop. But we catch anybody doing it because they're harming a great American company. You know, I've stuck up for the NFL. I've stuck up for a lot of American companies. Not other companies, but American companies. A very big favorite for the NFL. I do favorites for all of them. Especially a company like this supplies so many jobs that others are unable to do. When you do that, those people are going to go through a big problem when we catch them. We have a lot of cameras out. We already know who some of them are. We're going to catch them. And they're bad guys. They're the same guys that screw around with our schools and universities. The same garbage. And, no, we're going to catch them. And let me tell you, you do it to Tesla and you do it to any company, we're going to catch you and you're going to go through hell. A roundtable to make in a little while. I just considered this much more important because I want to buy one of these. My whole staff is so excited because I told them they're going to safely use them. And they can't believe it. So, Margo, wherever you are, Margo, she's going to use it. They're all going to be using it. And they're going to have a good time using it. Oh, there you are, Margo. Look at Margo. What are you, a member of the press now? I think she's become a member of the press. Takes great pictures. What do you think of it, Margo? Do you like the idea? I love it. Commerce Secretary said there wouldn't be one. Just so you know. Specifically on the recession. Do you think there will be a recession? I don't see it at all. I think this country is going to boom. But as I said, I can do it the easy way or the hard way. The hard way to do it is exactly what I'm doing. But the results are going to be 20 times greater. Look at what I've said over the last 10 years. Trump has been right all the time. This is the way to do it. We're going to make America great again. You know, to make it great, you have to have jobs. You have to have factories. I look at some of the things like this last administration. He was the worst president in the history of our country. Nothing was happening. Nothing. He had no idea what was going on. And then to allow millions of people to come in that are prisoners and mental institutions, patients, all of the things. Gang members, drug lords. We're searching them all down now, trying to get them out of our country. And we're going to do that. But on the financial end and the economic end, what we're doing is, to me, it's the most exciting. Our country will be greater than ever before. And it won't take too long. In terms of imagination, I think I have a great imagination. Who else but this guy would design this? And everybody on the road is looking at it. It's amazing, actually. As soon as I saw it, I said, that is the coolest design. Do you agree with that, Brian? I do. It's amazing. Very cool. You've got to give him credit. We want the future to look like the future. And it's kind of, what kind of truck would Blade Runner drive? That was the design idea. It's really amazing. Yeah. Your thoughts on the market? What do you have now? The CyberCab coming out next year. The one with no steering. Are you going to buy one of those? No, sir. We'll pass. We're too old for this shit. So, Mr. President, when you look at the market selling off, that didn't concern you? No. That doesn't concern me. I think some people are going to make great deals by buying stocks and bonds and all the things they're buying. I think we're going to have an economy that's a real economy, not a fake economy. It's a fake economy. They were putting in all government jobs. You see what happened last week, last month? We had more real jobs, and government jobs are way down. That's going to continue. Those are real jobs. Those are jobs that keep the country going. You can't have all government jobs. You have no income to pay the workers. And a lot of those workers didn't show up to work. That was the other problem. And, President Trump, there's this protest leader from Columbia University that the administration is moving to deport. He said that his arrest is going to be the first of many. How many? I think we ought to get them all out of the country. They're troublemakers. They're agitators. They don't love our country. We ought to get them the hell out. I think that guy, we ought to get him. I heard his statements, too. They were plenty bad. And I think we ought to get him the hell out of the country. I watched him. I watched tapes. Specifically, I watched tapes. And you can have him, okay? You can have him. And you can have the rest of him. Go to school, let them learn. Columbia used to be a good school. Now it's been overrun because of bad leadership. That's what happens. It happens to countries and it happens to universities and it happens to companies. And I don't want it to happen to a guy that did nothing right. He did everything right because he did a great company. But what he did by coming into government to help government from years of abuse, from decades of abuse. And you see that when you look at Social Security, where you have 200-year-old people on the rules of society. That's just, he uses the word care. People don't care. Everyone knows it. But it's also, I believe it's also large broad. I think it's that. But I think it's also large broad. I'm just telling people, this man is a great patriot and you should cherish him. You should cherish him. You know, I have a little statement. We have to take care of our high IQ people because we don't have too many of them. And we got to take care of them. As you guys look at the Social Security Administration and you guys are looking for fraud and waste and abuse, can you guarantee people who are concerned about an interruption to benefits that there will not be? Yes, we're going to be very careful with any interruption to benefits. In fact, only by tackling the waste and fraud in entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, can we actually preserve those programs for the future. Because with unchecked fraud and waste, we won't be able to afford them. The President is very dedicated to solving the budget deficit, which if we don't solve the budget deficit, we're going to go bankrupt as a country. If we go bankrupt as a country, there's no Social Security, there's no Medicare, there's no nothing. And to sort of echo what the President was saying, what really matters is moving people from jobs that are relatively low productivity in government to high productivity in the private sector, increasing the true output of products and services. That's the real economy. That's what actually enables Americans to have a higher standard of living. And that's what's happening. And that's, I think, you'll see the truth of that in the months to come. And we're going to make it really much stronger by taking people that don't exist or taking people that shouldn't be there out, by taking illegal aliens that are on Social Security or on Medicaid and Medicare, by taking them out, we'll make it much stronger. The country will be much stronger, but it's going to really be stronger economically. And when you look at what we're doing, I've been called by so many companies. Yesterday, as you know, I had a meeting with some of the biggest tech companies in the world. And all they're talking about, they can't- IBM was there, we had a lot of them. Michael Dell was there. We had a lot of great companies. Hewlett-Packard. And all they're talking about is investing in this country. They want to be sure, don't forget, they're looking down the road 10 years and 15 years. They want to make sure we have a strong country. They're all coming in. As you know, Apple. Tim Cook, he said that he's going to invest $500 billion in the United States. He never did that before. He invested in China. He's got his plants in China. And now he's got them, going to be building them in the United States. And if I didn't have victory in that election, he wouldn't be doing it. And if I didn't say what I'm saying, and I'm being very honest, and it's much more difficult than just sitting around and having a great time. It's a very glamorous position if you want to do that. We could have kept it, but eventually bad things would have happened. This way, good things. I'm very optimistic about the country. I think we're going to have the greatest markets we've ever had. And it's going to be really fueled by what we're doing. You had to see these companies yesterday. They're investing billions and trillions. They're investing trillions of dollars here. They wouldn't have invested 10 cents. Mr. President, will you talk to Vladimir Putin about this ceasefire deal? Do you think you need to have a conversation with him to get the Russians to agree? Yeah, I'll talk to Vladimir Putin. When will you talk to him? Look, that's the other. It takes two to tango, as they say, right? So hopefully he'll also agree. And I really think that would be 75% of the way. The rest is getting it documented and negotiating land positions, et cetera. So you'll talk to him this week about the deal? I think so, yeah. So you have a ceasefire in place on the Ukrainian side. How close do you think that you are to a total ceasefire? Well, I hope it'll be over the next few days. I'd like to see. I know we have a big meeting with Russia tomorrow and some great conversations hopefully will ensue. The people have done a great job. Marco Rubio has been great. Steve Whitkoff's been great. Michael Waltz. They're all — every one of them, they've really stepped up. They are into it. They want to see — they want to see two things. By far, number one is death. The people that aren't citizens of our country, but they're people, just like you. They're people. And we want to stop. And we also don't want to give billions and hundreds of billions of dollars away. We're there for $350 billion. And there was no reason this war would have never happened if I was President. So it's a very sad thing. Thank you all very much. I love Tesla. Which one did you buy? Hey, Mr. President. Which one did you buy? Which car are you going to buy? The one I like is that one. And how does this work? And I want that same color. Are you going to put down a credit card? Elon, would you take a personal check from the President? I do it the old fashion. I give checks. I like checks. I think it's bad. It's good. You know, I like a check better than this modern system of all of a sudden there's money in your account and nobody knows. I like signing a check. You sort of — but we're going to — we're going to — and I don't want a discount. He would give me a discount. But if I do a discount, they're going to say, oh, he got better. I don't want any discounts. What about a vanity plate? Yeah, let's see. Truth. All right. TRUTH. He downloads the playlist. He wants — that one got you a recipe. The playlist gets downloaded as well. You can pump the music. You can do that. I just looked at that. I looked at that dashboard. You can do anything. Mr. President, do you think you buying a Tesla will boost Tesla sales and boost our stock? Well, I hope it does. Look, look. Is that your goal? I care about one thing. When somebody's a great patriot, they shouldn't be hurt. He's a great patriot. He didn't know me from Adam until we met a little bit when I was in my first term. But he came out. He endorsed me very strongly. And I admired that. I respected that. And I respected him for years. I respected him. And when there was a chance to help our government — you know, you're not going to use an average person. Some people would say, well, let's use somebody that failed in business for his whole life. This guy has been amazing. And the kind of thinking is from a different age. It's really from a different age. When we said, let's cut 2 percent, he said, let's cut 60 percent. And he turned out to be right. And a lot of people are just not here. They don't work for us. They're getting checks, and they don't work. And you know, Peter, we've been — look, we have so many different stats and so many different figures. And it's so embarrassing to us as a country. No, we're going to have a streamlined country with good people. And one of the reasons — and I called for the — it wasn't a Cabinet meeting. It was just a meeting of some Cabinet members and Elon. The one thing — and I think he agrees with me 100 percent. It's one thing to cut, but we want to cut the wrong people, meaning we want to cut people that aren't doing the job. We want to keep the right people. And I said, I don't want to just say we're going to cut 50 percent. I want to cut the people that aren't doing the job, the people that aren't there, the people that are scamming the system. And he agrees with that 100 percent. Are you sure you don't want to take a test drive? I'd love to do it. Maybe I'll do it some other time. Do you want to keep working if you try your first term? I mean, is there going to be an end date for the two of you working together? I don't know. You know, I was thinking about that the other day. I think he'll know when it's time. Well, he doesn't want to stay, right? He doesn't. Although I think he does like it. There's no place like the White House. Elon, would you want to stay? I don't think that — I think he wants to get the job then get back to his business. That's what I think. I'll stay as long as it's useful and productive. Thank you, everybody.