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Trump Takes Questions From Reporters in the Oval Office; Blanche Rescinds Trump's $1.8 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund; Max Miller Denies Abuse Allegations. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 03, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I got calls from numerous people. Not -- I don't want to use the word begging, but some were -- in particular, Iran did not want to be hit. And they said, we want to talk. We want to talk about the Strait.

But more importantly, from my standpoint, we want to talk about the denuclearization of Iran because it's what it's all about. This is why I'm doing this. And it should have been done. It's now 50 years. We keep saying 47 years, but three years have gone by. But it's for 50 years that other presidents should have been doing what I -- or other countries, didn't have to be us, but other countries.

And nobody did it. And it was time. And we hit them hard with the B-2s more than a year ago now. And that knocked out their capability, their potential capability. And we've done a great job. But when we talk, we say we're talking. If we're not talking, when you ask me, no, we're not talking, I'll say it. But we are talking. Right now, we're talking. And we're talking at the request of Iran, backed by Saudi Arabia, backed by UAE, and backed by Qatar in particular. But others also, many -- many countries called -- many -- the leaders of many, I'm friendly with a lot of them, almost all of them, one way or the other.

And they all wanted to give this a last chance. This is the last chance. This is not something that if it doesn't happen, this is a last chance for them to sign a good document.

Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, New York City Mayor, Zohran Mamdani is requiring an I.D. to access his government-run grocery stores. What then is your message to Democrats who do not want to pass the SAVE America Act and ensure I.D. at the ballot box?

TRUMP: Well, this was just announced. I heard about it. Yeah. Well, I wish they'd have an I.D. to access the voting booth. You know, they don't want to access the voting booth with any identification. We want voter I.D. and we want proof of citizenship.

Well, he also had a thing where you had to have two different IDs to shovel snow during the winter. Right? So that's a very friendly question. I like her. Who are you with?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: One American News, sir.

TRUMP: Very good. All right. Good question. Very good. A good group, too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are almost 20 GOP Senators who have pledged to stay in D.C. to pass the SAVE America Act. So what's your message to the rest of the Senators who are still on their summer recess?

TRUMP: I think there's nothing more important than the SAVE America Act. I think they should stay. They do what they want, but I think they should stay. (Inaudible) I think it's so important to get it passed.

Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, where are the Iran talks and what are your requirements for that now?

TRUMP: Well, you'll find out today or tomorrow. I mean, they're going to go quickly, one way or the other. It's not very complex. We're talking about the Strait, the opening of the Strait, having it open literally by tomorrow, completely open. And that's phase one.

And phase two is we then will talk about the nuclear capacity, the nuclear what, you know, as we've been mentioning. Basically, it's I think most -- the denuclearization of Iran has to happen, has to happen. And that'll be the second phase.

But the first phase is the opening of the Straits. The second phase will be the denuclearization. And that'll take a little while. But we are very strong on it. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. And I've never changed.

Yeah, please, in the back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said that if Democrats get back into power, what is happening in Spain awaits America. What should voters in other countries with elections coming up soon take away from what's going on with Spain?

TRUMP: Well, you have to be very careful with the whole socialist thing. I think in many cases, it's much more than socialist. They skipped socialism. They went directly to communism. But when I saw what happened in Spain, I said, you know, we had a version of that.

You could say much worse. We allowed 25 million people under Joe Biden, the Democrats. We had open borders. And countries all over the world, almost all of them, sent people that they don't want into our country. And we've gotten a lot of them out, and we're getting more, including murderers. And I always say, 11,888, that was the number of murders. Many of them committed more than one murder. And we're going to be just like that if you put these lunatics in that I see running for office.

They had -- we had an open border a year and a half ago. We had the worst border in the history of our country. Now we have the best border. We haven't had one person come in. And this is done by the Democrats, by left leaning people. They do charts. And they have in 15 months, not one person has come in through our southern border illegally. Now, that's pretty amazing.

I'd say maybe 10, maybe 15. They say none. And believe me, if they did, they'd love to report it. But you could go outside in those vast plazas where hundreds of thousands of people gathered when they stormed our country, just like they did, in my opinion, worse, just like they did to Spain.

[14:05:00]

They stormed our country. And those borders are -- those big plazas that were built, they put concrete down and now you look at them and there's grass growing in the cracks. Nobody comes up because they know they're not going to get through and if they do get through, they're going to be taken out, brought back to their country. So we've done a fantastic job.

You know, somebody said you did it too fast. I did it in 30 days, my first 30 days. Biden couldn't do it. He couldn't get it done. He tried it at the end. He tried to do something because it was so overwhelming or so bad politically, but we did it in 30 days.

Somebody said you should have taken a year and a half or two years, completed, because everyone forgets. Even my speechwriters, they say, sir, nobody wants to hear about the border anymore. You've done it. It's an incredible job you've done, but nobody wants to hear about it. And I should have taken a couple of years to do it because -- and actually, the public has about a two year. People do. They have a two- year memory for certain things. They have a two-week memory.

I may have gotten elected, that's certainly partially on the border. And because we did such a great job, it was a long time ago. I did it twice. I did it in 2016 when it was bad, but I did it this last time when it was really bad. It was, Steve, I would say many, many times worse than it was in 2016. 2016 was bad.

But what we just had a year and a half ago, that was the worst border maybe in world history. There's not a third world country that would have allowed that to happen with people coming in from prisons and people coming in from mental institutions and people forced in by government. Because these are the people that those governments, those countries, I know them all, they didn't want.

And they walked into a country totally unvetted, totally unchecked. Not anymore. Nobody comes in except if they come in legally. Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Who do you work with? UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm at the Washington Examiner, sir.

TRUMP: Good. They're doing good. They've been very nice to me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You were asked yesterday whether Representative Max Miller should resign from Congress over the allegations. And you said, you haven't (ph) look at it.

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Have you thought about that? And also --

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: It's a very sad thing. I know Max. He's a good person. I mean, I always thought he was a very good person. And I'm going to let the families figure that out. You know, those families, I know they're working on it.

It's a very sad thing, especially when you know somebody so well to be going through that. But it's accusations, and I'm going to let them figure that out. Yeah, please.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President, did you sign off on Todd Blanche who was rescinding the anti-weaponization fund? And also there are Democrats right now who say there's essentially two tax codes. There's the Trump family tax code and a normal people tax code. Why do you think that your family deserves some level of special attention when it comes to auditing your taxes?

TRUMP: Well, I'll go into that. First of all, I had a 10-year case that was settled until I announced I was running for office. It was a settled deal like I've been doing all my life. I've been audited every year for my entire life, which I have a lot of wealthy friends who were never audited. To this day, they were never audited. I was audited and my deal was settled in writing. It was settled, subject to final approval.

Then I announced I was running for president, and all they did was haunt me with it. They ended the settlement, and they went after -- and they went after me illegally, and they did a lot of bad things to me like they did to other people. And I was treated very unfairly by the IRS.

I was -- it was weaponized against me. Think of it, and a case from -- this a 10-year-old case, and it was settled. It was done. The case was over. I announced I'm running for president, and they terminated the settlement in Washington, and they went after me. And what they did here was very frankly, if you talk about reparations or if you talk about payment, what they did to me, I had a very good case against him.

So this was a case that was settled that when I decided to run for ,president right at the beginning, it is a long time -- it's been going on for a long time. They terminated the settlement, which is something that never happened before. We have letters from the biggest law firms in Washington saying that this case is nonsense, just like the Russia, Russia. Russia was nonsense, they weaponized government. And so that's that.

And most people understand that. On the other, on the fund, these were people that were treated -- unbelievable, 22 suicides, more than that I think. Look at Ashley, look at so many other things that happened. These people were treated horribly, and this fund could have given them some solace. But, you know, it happens to be very popular among many quarters, and I don't participate in that fund.

[14:10:00]

I was certainly treated badly. I don't participate, but I thought it would be very fair for people that spent years in prison, people that were treated so badly for, in many cases, people that did absolutely nothing wrong. So I view that fund as a positive and a lot of Republicans do, too, not so many Democrats. And it's not only for that. It's for other things too.

People that have been treated unfairly, that have been weaponized by a corrupt government that we had with Obama and that we had with Biden. You had a corrupt government with both of them.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, did you sign off on Todd Blanche rescinding that?

TRUMP: I didn't look at it. All I know is that Todd Blanche is great. He's going to do a great job. Everybody knows it. And I understand there's been a sign-off, but I don't know what they agreed. I think Todd Blanche agreed to reconfirm things that he's already said, and what he said was -- OK.

Please, go ahead.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are there other avenues that you have -- other avenues you have supporters get paid, potentially, if it's not the anti-weaponization fund? Is there another way?

TRUMP: Who are you with?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm with MS NOW, sir.

TRUMP: You who?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: MS NOW.

TRUMP: MS NOW?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, sir.

TRUMP: What a terrible show that is. They have the worst people on that show. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are there other avenues that you want to see people --

TRUMP: OK. No, there's no other avenues that I know about. Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, on the Iran talks --

TRUMP: MS NOW. That's the failed MS DNC, right?

(LAUGH)

TRUMP: They failed. They gave it a new name. You know why? Because nobody watched it. Go ahead. And fewer people are watching it now.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: On the Iran talks, is there discussion that Iran is moving to return to a full free navigation of the Strait? Is that on the table?

TRUMP: Say it again differently.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would Iran be willing to return to fully free navigation of the Strait?

TRUMP: Has to be. I'm not going to let them charge.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would you -- would you --

TRUMP: If anybody is going to charge, we'll charge. We're the one that has total control. We have total control. You know, we have a thing called a blockade with his navy and that navy is -- they call it a wall of steel, the United States wall of steel. And no, there's not going to be charging. We're not talking about charging at all. There won't be charging.

Yeah, please at the back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President, you said last week (inaudible).

TRUMP: Who are you with?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: GBS (ph). You said that (inaudible). Now that (inaudible) has proposed the use of the Royal Navy to combat all boats crossing the Channel. Do you think that European nations, including the U.K., should be using their military to stop illegal immigration?

TRUMP: Look, you have to stop illegal immigration in Europe. I know Europe better than anybody, better than the people that run it. And I have great relationships here. Two things are killing Europe. Number one is immigration. Number two is energy.

Like the U.K., when you look at the U.K., they have one of the best energy fields in the world, North Sea Oil. Now, I think your new prime minister is going to actually open up the, from what I hear. I spoke to him, and he sounded terrific on this subject.

But you open it up, you'll be a wealthy country. You keep it closed, you're going to be a bankrupt country, which is what you are now. Essentially, you're a bankrupt country.

You have one of the greatest energy from the North Sea Oil, one of the greatest deals in the world. You know, the U.K. buys its energy from Norway who gets the energy from the North Sea, from not as vibrant a part of the North Sea Oil was. You're sitting on top of gold, better than gold. And you don't do anything with it. It doesn't work. You don't allow the oil companies in, and it doesn't work.

And I spoke with your new prime minister. I was very impressed. And he sort of indicated to me, I said, look, you can be a wealthy country or a bankrupt country. You have your choice. Not every country has that choice. Almost no country has that choice.

But in the case of the U.K., Scotland, I'm talking about Scotland, right off the shore in Aberdeen, Scotland. Aberdeen was the oil capital of Europe for years. And then one day, the liberals got in and they closed it. And your energy rates have quadrupled. You have among the highest energy prices in the world. You could cut them in half.

You could give away free energy if you'd open up the North Sea. And it's good for another 500 years, maybe more, probably a thousand years.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has our new prime minister restored your faith in the leadership of Britain? (inaudible).

TRUMP: Look, I think we're going to have a very good relationship. We'll see. I'm not going to tell him how to run his country. But I can tell you, immigration is an incredible problem for Europe. You're allowing people in that in many cases are not going to help you. I'm going to be nice. They're not going to help you.

And the people that are there, people from your country, people from other countries that have been there for a long time and did a great job, beautiful place. Look, I love it.

[14:15:00]

You know, my parents both came from Europe indirectly. So a German, Scott. And, you know, it's like one of those things. It's very sad. When I see what's happening to Europe, it's very sad to me. But they have a problem with immigration. They have a problem with energy.

You have windmills all over the place. Windmills, you lose your shirt. Any country with windmills is a loser. OK? You just have to look. If they have windmills, they're a loser. Because you lose money with windmills.

Yeah, please, go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mr. President.

TRUMP: Go ahead. Who are you with?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Fredericks Media.

TRUMP: Yeah, that's right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Original name.

TRUMP: What was your name before?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Fredericks.

(LAUGH)

TRUMP: Go ahead, John.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two domestic questions, sir. The first one is Exxon and Chevron integrated all U.S. just announced record profits second year.

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unbelievable. For Exxon, for instance, $14 billion (inaudible) they've done it over a decade. For Chevron, for the quarter, highest in history.

TRUMP: By 12 times.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: On the back.

TRUMP: You saw that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. I mean, it's unbelievable, on the backs --

TRUMP: I don't like it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- workers paying higher debts.

TRUMP: Yeah.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is our --

TRUMP: They're making too much money, OK? Based on a shortage, they're making too much money. I don't like it. And I should be the last one to say, because I'm a big free enterprise guy, nobody bigger. And you know, we're going to see oil -- when we're finished with Iran, you're going to see the prices drop through the floor. But they made too much money, too much money.

Chevron, too much money. Exxon Mobil, too much, too much money. When you look at one company where they made 12 times what they made the year before, they're going to give some of that back to the public. And they better cut the retail price, the consumer price. Too much money. You're surprised I'm saying it. I'll say it loud and clear. I'm not happy about it. Go ahead.

Go ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just one, for those of us here that live in Washington, D.C., with our families like I do, the renaissance of the city that you've been able to do in 18 months is incredible. TRUMP: I hope you heard that. Did you hear that, everybody? The renaissance of Washington, D.C. in 15, 16 months is incredible. And it is. It's clean. It's safe. And you haven't seen anything yet. We're replacing all of the grass that hasn't been replaced in the fields, all the beautiful fields where the grass is. You know, grass is like humans. It has a life. This grass hasn't been changed in 100 years.

We're doing all the fields. We're doing all the good, most of the graffiti as well. But the most important thing is it's been beautified. We did 78 monuments and fountains and waterfalls. And they went from being horrible, mostly graffiti, most of them for 25 years never worked. They haven't worked. And it's a renaissance like -- you used the word renaissance. But it's a renaissance. But the biggest thing is we have very little crime now.

This was the crime capital, frankly, of the world. It was the most unsafe capital of any country in the world. Now it's one of the safest and it's one of the safest places in the United States. And people are coming down. You see it. The tourism in Washington, everyone's safe now. Nobody is getting mugged, shot. We used to lose three people a week. Death, that's the least -- I mean, it's three people in terms of death. 150 people a year were killed. They come down from Iowa. They come from Indiana. Mom, I'm looking at the Washington Monument. I'm looking at -- and they end up getting killed. You call their parents, I'm sorry. Doesn't happen anymore. We don't have that anymore.

We play rough -- we're rough, but we don't have that anymore. Our military has been unbelievable and they work very well with the D.C. police. But our military came in, the general, people that we know so well, general, right? They don't play games. And we got the gangs. We removed almost 5,000 people who were career criminals, who came in with Biden with the open borders, a lot of them. And they're no longer here. We sent them back to their countries.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: You've got to say, have you ever seen such a transformation?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's unbelievable if you live here. It's just -- you don't want to go back.

TRUMP: And now, you can walk to work. You can walk to the White House. The people in the White House, they work. They tell me, sir, thank you. They're thanking me all the time. They used to have to take Uber and the Uber would be robbed. OK? They weren't even safe. They'd go to a restaurant and they'd feel safe at a restaurant. And then the restaurant would be robbed.

Do you know the restaurants were all closing? And now you can't -- if you're a restaurateur, you can't get a restaurant.

[14:20:00]

You -- I mean, you literally can't. The restaurants are booming. Crime is down 92 percent, maybe more. I want it to get down 100 percent. You know, the greatest statistic, Bill, that you have is that two percent of the people create 91 percent of the crime. You can really handle that. And we moved almost 5,000 people out. They're criminals, career criminals.

In some cases, they're in jail. In some cases, they were so bad, they came in through Biden. They're so bad, we don't want to move them out. We want to put them in jails because we're afraid they're going to come back in somehow. So I appreciate you saying that.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you consider going to Congress if they come in and try to roll it back, the new Democratic mayor?

TRUMP: Well, you had a mayor who's, I guess she's a communist. I mean, she says she's a socialist, but I guess she's a communist, basically what she says. But I have not met her yet. I look forward to meeting her.

Would I federalize? Basically, you're saying federalize D.C.?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

TRUMP: Well, I'm allowed to do that. Would I do it? If they want to -- we took something that was in deep trouble. It was a graffiti- filled, crime-filled mess. We turned it into Shangri-La. We turned it into a great place. Look outside. Look what's happening. Look at the beautiful ballroom and military center. It's a military center, much more than -- we have a drone port on top.

Look at the grass in front of the White House being all replaced with the top stuff. The parks are all being replaced. It starts very soon, actually. We'll do one at a time. It's about 700 acres of parks.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": President Trump focusing a lot of energy on the improvement projects in Washington, D.C., as he is here for this executive order-signing ceremony that has to do with a military family commission that they are taking on, that is to be led by Pete Hegseth's wife, Jennifer.

He took questions there about the Iran War. We should also note that he pre-screened, as he does, it was very notable today, these questions, before he really answers them. He's not really taking questions straightforwardly from news outlets that he doesn't like. He really only engages in the Q&A with the outlets that he does like.

But when asked about Iran, he really lambasted Iran, as we saw him do on social media today, for not admitting that they're engaging with the U.S. He said, when they're talking, they don't like saying it. He said they deny it, even though they're spending hours talking.

And that's really clearly bugging him, because he feels that, you know, he wants, obviously, to be at the table with Iran. He says that they're doing phase one, talking about opening the Strait by tomorrow, he said, which is huge. Phase two being nuclear capacity.

But clearly frustrated. BRIAN ABEL, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And I'm not going to

let them charge was one of the big takeaways from there, too.

KEILAR: That's right.

ABEL: And it seemed he almost repeated his social media posts verbatim during this, when he was responding there. Also, the anti weaponization fund was brought up. We're going to dig into all of it after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:55]

KEILAR: All right. We are just following now some comments from President Trump. Let's go to Kristen Holmes at the White House. Kristen, we just heard the president address a number of issues there. But one of them was this weaponization fund.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's right. He denied that he had any direct input on Todd Blanche's decision to sign and rescind this $1.8 billion fund. This is not what we have been hearing from sources for really the last week. Just the idea that President Trump was kind of sitting on the sidelines, which is what he made it out to sound like when he was in the Oval Office now, saying that essentially he hasn't seen any kind of deal, but that he believes that Blanche just signed off on things that he had already said during his testimony.

Now, we do know that Blanche has been in direct conversation with multiple people at the White House over how this was going to unfold. The idea that he would go rogue and make any kind of full-throated rescinding of this fund without letting President Trump or his top advisers know is really just at this point laughable given how much President Trump has been involved with this.

But of course, as we've heard, President Trump himself wants to have no say in this being rescinded in this fund and that's what he said as well in the Oval Office, went on to say how he believes in this fund. He thinks a lot of Republicans believe in it, that it's very popular But we do know one thing that the White House was fully behind getting Todd Blanche over the finish line when it came to actually getting him confirmed as officially Attorney General, not just Acting.

And I do want to point out one other thing because we've been following this very closely, the Republican Congressman in Ohio, Max Miller, who was being accused of domestic violence. Obviously, the Senator in Ohio. It's his daughter that was previously married to Max Miller, coming out and saying he shouldn't be in the race and President Trump was kind of wishy-washy about this yesterday when asked, saying he's going to look into it, that they were just accusations.

He made it fairly clear that he does not want to be involved in anything going on with these accusations against Miller or anything between Marino and Miller. Just take a listen to what he said here. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's a very sad thing. I know Max --