Meet the Press NOW — September 5

Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Kristen Welker in Washington. We're any minute now we are expecting to hear from President Trump. For the first time since today's jobs report showed a dramatic slowdown in the labor market and potential warning signs for the president's economic agenda.

The August jobs report from the labor department showed just 22,000 new jobs created last month, much lower than economists were expecting. And the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3 percent. Even more problematic, the labor department also revised June and July's jobs numbers revealing that the U.S. economy actually lost jobs in June.

It's the first month of job losses since the pandemic. Notably, President Trump was already temporary expectations ahead of today's news. Here's what we had to say last night. The real numbers that I'm talking about are going to be whatever it is, but we'll be in a year from now when these monstrous, huge, beautiful places, the palaces of genius.

And when they start opening up, you're seeing, I think you'll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible. Right now it's a lot of construction numbers, but you're going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before. This is also the first jobs report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics since the president fired its commissioner, the BLS commissioner, in the wake of July's disappointing report, which the president basically claimed was being rigged. We've got capital spending up 9% over the first half of the year.

We've got the Atlanta Fedge GDP now saying 3%. And so when you see low jobs numbers like this, you kind of wonder what's going on. It's a little bit discordant with everything else that we see in the picture. Now, Goldman Sachs put out a report yesterday that I found kind of interesting.

It showed that the BLS has seasonal problems in August, and that they tend to revise the number for this August up over the last 15 years by almost 70,000 jobs. And so if that were to happen again, then sort of all the indicators would be accepted. So right now it does look like a weak number. Well, in 2024, BLS actually revise numbers lower to 78,000 from 142,000.

So it could go in the opposite direction as well. There's no guarantee, right? Except that the average over 15 years is way north of 60 up 60,000. And so it's one of those things, right?

When you're an economist and you watch people come and go, that because the school year starts, that when the school year starts could move from September to August and so on. It's a very, very difficult time for data people to adjust things for the seasonal hackers. Let me ask you about something that Mark Zandi of Moody's is saying he is saying that the economy is on the brink of a recession by the end of the year. Do you think that's accurate when you look at these numbers?

No, I absolutely do not. I have old friends with Mark Zandi, I have high regard for him, but I don't think that there's anything like a recession of the data. Again, the best measure of the overall economy is GDP. And the last number for GDP for the second quarter we got was revised up to 3.3%.

And the Atlanta Fed saying it's 3% now. A 3% growth number is so strong that you might recall that when I was back here in 2017 as Chairman of President Trump's Council on Economic Advisors, when we called for 3% growth, people call the Charlotte something like that, right? So 3% number is a very strong number. Right now the numbers that we can see are at 3%.

And so I don't see any sign of recession, but I do have to see that the jobs numbers are lower than make sense given everything else is going on. And the futures markets right now are expecting the federal reserve to cut rates. And I think that you know, if they had done that a little bit earlier, we'd probably be saying stronger jobs numbers right now. Well, let's talk about some of the other numbers that we're seeing.

President Trump's has argued his tariffs would create manufacturing jobs. But the data shows that the U.S. actually lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs last month, 33,000 manufacturing jobs since January. Why is the country shedding manufacturing jobs under President Trump on his watch?

Right. Well, what's happening, right, is that we're seeing a massive explosion in factory investment and in capital spending. And again, the jobs numbers right now are inconsistent with those. And we'll just have to see at the end, we're getting a really big benchmark revision of the jobs numbers next week.

And we really need to start to see the jobs numbers make more sense. That's the reason why we're looking for a new set of eyes that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because they keep revising things all over the place. As you might recall last year, they revised the number down by a million jobs over a year. And that kind of error is really unacceptable for policymakers.

If you're at the Fed, having a million fewer jobs would certainly have affected your policy. And if you're a fiscal policy person, if you're making errors that big, if you do think you had a million fewer jobs, you might have taken a different path with fiscal policy. So it is important to point out that this is not one person at BLS making a decision. People are pouring in the data.

They give the findings to the BLS commissioner. You take me to my next point, though, the president fired BLS commissioner hours after the agency put out the July jobs report that he called those numbers, of course, rigged. So I have to ask you, does the president have faith in these numbers, in this latest report? I think that the president has called a new management there to make sure the numbers do a better job.

Let's think about it this way, Christopher. When's the last time you got a survey in the mail? And then you took it out, you opened it up, and you filled it out, and then you brought it to the post office to return it. This is how these surveys, these old factual surveys, are still being done.

And there's a more modern online place called Home Base, which has the jobs number in August at 150,000. And so the point is that we've got to modernize the way we collect our data because it's so important that it be transparent and accurate. And these really, really basic revisions to the data are harmful to the American economy because people who steer the economy rely on those jobs to be true. And yeah, well, and yet when President Trump has liked the jobs numbers, he's touted them.

In March, he said the numbers were much better, as you know, than projected by the media. In April, he said, in three months, we've created 350,000 jobs. Think of that. In June, he said, a lot of jobs are being created.

That's what happened this morning. You saw the jobs. So does he only accepts the numbers when it's numbers that he likes? No, I think that everybody, increasingly, even market participants has become more aware of the design problem said to the LS right now.

And that's why we brought new people in to make sure that we fixed the problem, that the numbers are more trustworthy for everybody. People left, the people on the right. Let me ask you about something you said this morning. You said the President Trump's policies will actually make sure that Americans have more money in their pockets so that, quote, whatever happens with inflation, you have more money.

Are you basically bracing people for the possibility that there could be an increase in inflation? No, no. The issue is just that we have really hard numbers that the typical American family has seen their wage for about $500 already this year. And the real wage has gone up by a little bit less than two percentage point.

The real wage, again, is the increase in wage by the increase in inflation. And so what I'm saying is that we're outperforming inflation by a lot. And that means that people have more money in their pockets and more stuff that they can put in the grocery bag when they get to the grocery store because wages are going up faster than inflation. Well, and yeah, companies like Walmart, John Deere are saying that prices are going up or that tariffs are costing them so much money.

They're laying off employees. Obviously, the President campaigned on a promise to lower prices. What is your response to Americans who hear that and say, Hey, wait a minute, that's a campaign promise that's being broken? Well, but it's not being broken.

The inflation rate was almost double what it is right now. It's averaging 1.9% for the year. It was weighed or like 3.8% when President Trump took office and inflation is coming down because of all of the efforts that we've taken to increase aggregate supply through the tax bill, to cut government spending, wasteful government spending, with the doge efforts and other entity regulated. So that's where inflation, how inflation goes down.

And the proof is really in the pudding in one way. If you look at what futures markets expect, I'm not telling what I expect, but futures markets expect now that the federal reserve is going to cut rates two or maybe even three times this year because inflation is so out of control. All right, let me ask you, I'm getting a wrap. I got to ask you a couple more here.

I want to ask you about tariffs. All right, I want to ask you about tariffs. Of course, last week an appeals court ruled that tariffs were illegal because only Congress has the ability to impose a tax saying that they amount to taxes. He's appealed that, willing to the Supreme Court.

What is the administration's plan if the Supreme Court does strike down President Trump's tariffs? Well, I'm not going to go into like the counterfactual because the Supreme Court is going to look at the idea of powers that are very, very clearly spelled out in the idea law that the president has the authority to regulate trade. And that's what, you know, how do you regulate trade is with the levers that move trade, including tariffs. And so the president and the team are highly competent for confidence that this is going to work out.

And of course, there's a big question about who will replace Fed Chairman Powell when he does step down in several months. You're one of the names who has been floated. I've spoken to you about this before. Have you been in touch with the committee that's making this final decision?

Have you had an interview? You know, I'm not going to talk about my discussions with Secretary of the President Trump right now, but there's a thorough process. Secretary of the President has put together a list of really, really talented people, many of them, my friends. And we look forward to the president making a decision that's going to make America great again by getting the Fed to be independent and great again.

When do you think we might get that decision? I don't have an idea right now. I'm not sure. But it would have to come before the term is up, which is early next year.

All right, Kevin has it. Thank you so much for stopping by saying really. Great to be here. Joining me now is NBC News Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander, an NBC News Senior Business correspondent Christine Romans.

To both of you, as we start this conversation, once the president starts talking, we will dip into his remarks. But Peter, as we await the president, let me turn to you, what are your sources telling you about the reaction to this latest jobs report from inside the West Wing? Well, Chris, you played that sound by the president last night as he was hosting those major tech executives at the White House. And, you know, when you're president Trump, you don't sort of tease out that the numbers won't be all that good ahead unless you have a good sense that the trajectory isn't going the direction you want it to go.

So instead, as you've heard from him, I'm hearing from others really the spin, as it were from inside the White House is that this may be short term numbers you're looking at. But in the long term, a year from now with all those tens, hundreds of billions of dollars of investments by some of these companies from Apple to Meta and beyond, that is going to help the job outlook going forward. But there's a couple of things that I think you really have to keep an eye on right now, broadly speaking, costlier foreign products right now. That's a function of the tariffs right now.

There was obviously uncertainty earlier this spring into the summer about what impact it would have. A lot of companies, employers were sitting there trying to determine exactly what the president would do before they would make any conclusive decisions in terms of what they would do. So there's the uncertainty there. And then separately, there has been a sort of diminished labor force right now in this country amid the immigration crackdown as well.

So those are all sort of the context in which we're seeing that. But I think the number that's most striking and we'll hit a lot of Americans as they notice this is that when they revise the numbers, they have the updated figures. We acknowledge sometimes the numbers on perfect the moment they reveal them. In June, the numbers went down.

That was the end of a 53 month streak where employment numbers were going up where more people were being hired that changed for the first time since the pandemic. Peter, it's such an important point. And Christine, let me have you pick up exactly where Peter left off. The fact that June saw those figures revise down for the first time since the pandemic.

Can you put this broader jobs report into context for us? What are economists saying? You have Marx and Andy saying this could be a sign that we're headed towards a recession. Yeah, they're calling it a turning point.

They're saying it's a stall, you know, some like Marx and Andy are saying it could be the first move for a recession. Others are saying, though, that if the president is promising this transformative, these transformative policies, you're going to have to look beyond one or two months and look further out into next year. Those are the economists who sort of align with the president. Look at the last four months, though, it's four months in a row of sub 100,000 net new jobs gains.

That's something we haven't seen since the pandemic. And inside these numbers, there are these warning signs. You've done employment at 10 and a half percent. This is, you know, the first kind of job, hiring job that a company does, entry-level workers are just not hiring there.

And black unemployment also rising. All right, Christine, Peter, stand by. We're going to go to the White House and listen to the price of the truck. Sir, this is an HR 2808.

This is the home buyer's privacy protection act. The congressman here was the lead sponsors. I think maybe John has to say more about it than I can. Well, it's difficult for Americans to buy home, particularly after the last four years.

Sir, but with the president's signature today, we're going to make it easy for people to buy home without getting hassle. For years, their private personal information has been bought and sold in the open market, resulting in them getting innumerable phone calls and text messages. But with your signature today, we're going to put an end to that so that when Americans try to realize the American dream of owning a home, they're able to do so without being harassed. Good job.

Good. It's a great honor, John. Okay, there it is. And that's going to help a lot of the homeowners of our great country.

John, want to hold that? Sure. Thank you, John, very much. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Okay, well, you go ahead. I'm happy to leave you with this dinner. I could use that at night.

It's an American plant. That's very nice. I like it. Thank you, Mr.

President. That's very nice. We have a number of executive orders for your attention, sir. Okay.

From 1789 until 1947, our nation won some of its greatest military victories under the direction of a Secretary of War operating within the Department of War. Today, with this executive order, you will authorize the current Secretary of Defense and the current Department of Defense to once again embrace this great lineage and once again be named the Secretary of War and the Department of War. So this is something we thought long and hard about. We've been talking about it for months.

Pete and I, and Dan came into the fall, by the way, a great general. He headed up the, I wouldn't call it an attack. I'd almost call that one, maybe even more than an attack. What he did with Iran, you saw the success of that operation.

It was perfect. In fact, this was said to me by the great company that makes that particular beat to bomber. And it was flawless. It was actually flawless.

They flew for 37 hours back and forth. And there wasn't a bolt that was out of condition. There wasn't an engine failure. There was no problem.

It was a perfect attack. And it knocked out any possible nuclear capability for Iran, which nobody wanted to see that we weren't going to put up with. So great job, Dan. And we've been talking about this Department of War.

So we won the first world war. We won the second world war. We won everything before that. And in between, and then we decided to go, well, could we change an empty Department of Defense?

So we're going to Department of War. And I'd like to ask our Secretary of War to say a few words. Pete Hicks said, I think it's a much more appropriate name, especially in light of where the world is right now. We have the strongest military in the world.

We have the greatest equipment in the world. We have the greatest manufacturers of equipment by far. There's nobody to even compete. And you see that with this and so many other things.

The Patriots are the best. Every element of the military, we make the best by far. So Pete, I'd like to ask you and maybe Dan, Dan, raise in game to say a few words, please. Mr.

President, thank you. After winning a war for Independence in 1789, George Washington established the War Department. And Henry Knox was his first Secretary of War. And this country won every major war after that to include World War I and World War II.

Total victory, Mr. President, as you said. Then 150 years after that, we changed the name after World War II from the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947. And as you pointed out, Mr.

President, we haven't won a major war since. And that's not to disparage our warfighters, whether it's the Korean War, Vietnam War, or our generation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That's to recognize that this name change is not just about renaming. It's about restoring.

Words matter. It's restoring, as you've gotten a student president, restoring the warrior ethos, restoring victory and clarity as an end state, restoring intentionality to the use of force. So that your direction, Mr. President, the War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts.

It's going to fight to win, not not to lose. We're going to go on offense, not just on defense, maximum lethality, not tepid legality, violent effect, not politically correct. We're going to raise up warriors, not just defenders. So this War Department, Mr.

President, just like America is back. Thank you for your leadership and your clarity. We're going to set the tone for this country. America first, peace through strength, brought to you by the War Department.

We're back. Thank you very well stated and really doesn't do with winning. We should have won everywhere. We could have won everywhere, but we really chose to be very politically correct or wokie.

And we just fight forever. And then we win. We wouldn't lose. We just fight to sort of tie.

We never wanted to win wars that every one of them would have won easily with just a couple of little changes or a couple of little e-nicks. You know, I was told that Isis would take five years to win. And Dan Kane, when I told him how long would it take, he said, I think about four weeks here. I said, what do you mean, four weeks?

I was told five years by the people in Washington, you know, who they were five years. I said, you can't do it in four weeks. I actually flew to Iraq to meet with him. And I met him at a big air base.

And remember that famous day, right? It turned out to be a famous day for our country because you're now the joint, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which is the biggest deal. And he is because he did things that everybody said couldn't do. So they said it was going to be five years and he knocked him out in about four weeks total, 100%.

We took over and Isis was gone. And it pretty amazing. But we never fought to win. And now we if we have to find it all, you know, we solve seven wars.

We have the one that I thought was going to be probably one of the easier ones. And that's with President Putin and Ukraine. And that turned out to be one that's a little bit more difficult, but the seven are done. They were supposed to be much more difficult to solve, I solved every one of them.

And we're going to get the other one done too. But it turned out to be a little bit more difficult than I thought. And to get done, there'll be hell to pay. But because you're losing six to seven, it used to be five.

I used to tell you five, now it's almost seven, I guess 7,000 people last week, 7,813 people, young soldiers died. Russian and Ukrainian, not American soldiers. But it's a shame. It's just, you know, the human lives.

And I want to see it stop. But General Kane's done a fantastic job. And again, defeated Isis, which they said would take a long time. And it didn't take a long time at all.

And did other things that people said really couldn't happen. We have the greatest equipment in the world. We have the greatest soldiers in the world. Dan, see a few words.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. It's a true honor for me today to represent the incredible men and women of America's joint force.

Today and every day, the 2.8 million service men and women stand ready to fulfill our sacred duty to protect America at home and abroad. As the President said, America's military is the single most powerful fighting force in the world. The mission you and the Secretary have given us is clear and unambiguous to deliver peace through overwhelming strength. And I remind everyone that the US military can reach any adversary at the time and place of our choosing.

Service to this nation is an incredible gift and more grateful and honored every day to do so. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.

And it's an honor to sign this. And we will do that right now. I think that's a big one. I'll be honest.

That's a big one. Do you have any questions on this subject? We're going to be discussing the G 20 in a couple of minutes. But yes, please.

This is a random question for you in the newly minted Secretary of War. What message does this send to our enemies, to our allies, to the American people? And again, what gave you the idea for this rebrand at this moment? I think it sends a message of victory.

I think it sends a really a message of strength very strong, much stronger than anyone would really understand. And again, you know, having having the great equipment, we have just so much better. You look at all of the, just any of it, submarines as an example, which 20 years ahead of anyone else, nobody even compares. And I let a lot of this happen in my first term.

You know, we totally rebuilt our military. Then of course you had the catastrophe in Afghanistan, where they gave up a lot of the equipment, but a relatively small amount, but a lot. It was a lot in Afghanistan. I think it was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country, the way that happened, the way they went to the wrong airport.

They should have gone to Bagram, not the local little airport, with no security, with tight quarters, et cetera. You know what happened. I think it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, frankly. That was under the Biden administration.

That was terrible. And we were going to be leaving, but we were leaving with strength and dignity. We were going to keep Bagram, because Bagram is one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. We're going to have that all to ourselves, a big beautiful place built many years ago from money that today would be the equivalent of, you know, many, many billions of dollars.

You couldn't build it. The longest runways, the most powerful runways in terms of load capacity. And we just walked away from it. So stupid.

And there were fools. The people were fools. No, we're the strongest military. And I think that indicates we have the strongest military.

And, you know, we had it. And we won World War I. We won World War II. We won everything before.

And as I said, we won everything in between. And we were very strong, but we never fought to win. We just didn't fight to win. We didn't lose anything, but we didn't fight to win.

We could have won every one of those wars quickly. But they went around that I think was probably politically correct, but not correct for our nation. So I think the Department of War sends a signal. Yeah, please.

Well, I think I've gotten peace because of the fact that we're strong. If we weren't strong, those seven deals I told you about, the seven wars, a majority of them wouldn't have happened. They happened for two reasons trade and our strength. Those are the two reasons.

And probably strength may be more important than trade. So if we, I was very proud of all those, those wars, it could not be settled. And I settled all of them. And we'll get the other one settled also.

That'll get settled. But without the strength, we wouldn't have settled any of them. Yeah, please. Your expectation that Congress will clarify this thing, James, in the law?

I don't know, but we're going to find out. But I'm not sure they have to. We're signing an executive order today. But we're going to find out.

I'm going to see if they do. We're going with it. And we're going with it very strongly. There's a question as to whether or not they have to.

But we'll put it before Congress. Do you know how much this rebrand will actually cost? And are there any concerns about, you know, the Pentagon's mission of actually cutting back on sending? Yeah, but not a lot.

You know, we know how to rebrand it without having to go crazy. We don't have to re-carve them out or anything. We're going to be doing it not in the most changing the stationary, as it comes to, and lots of things like that. We're not going to be doing things like have been done in the past when they changed the name of Fort Stitchin have been changed.

Those names of the Fort should not have been changed, at least for the most part. And as you know, many of them have been changed back already. At the request of the communities, every one of those communities said, we want our name back, like Fort Bragg as an example. The people in that community wanted that name back.

They refused to call it anything else but Fort Bragg. So we're not going to be spending very much money on that. Yes, sir. When you spoke with the Europeans, it's a lengthy earlier this week.

Did you preview this for them? Did you say what security guarantees they might be involved? This is nothing to do with anybody but the United States of America. The people of America, this is so I talk to about changing.

And it's a very important change because it's an attitude. And we know how to win. We've been winning and we're going to win like you've never seen. When these factories start to open up that are being built all over the country, you're going to see things happen in this country that nobody expects.

We have over 17 trillion dollars in investment coming into the country. We never did anything even remotely close to that. We've never, no other country has either, by the way. So you're going to see things that are pretty amazing.

But it's really about winning. What about the security guarantees aspect? We'll help them. We want to save a lot of lives and we'll do something with it.

I think people expect it. We'll help them. Europe will be first in by far. And they want to be first in.

They want to see it end. Europe wants to see it end. And it'll end. It'll end.

All of a sudden it's going to come together. You watch. Do you want something right behind you, please? Yes.

Bold, decisive, offensive action to protect American values, strikes in Iran, strikes as fast as Tuesday and the positive behind you. Trende, Iraq. Marco Terras, is that going to be a critical function? It depends on the individual instance.

We don't want drugs coming in from Venezuela or anybody else, or anyplace else. We'll be tough on that. We don't want human trafficking. We don't want to see people coming in where they opened their prisons from all over the world.

And they dumped their prisoners into our country, which is what they did in the Biden administration, where they took insane asylums and places that held people that were seriously mentally ill, mentally incompetent, mentally dangerous. And they dumped those people into our country. And we're trying to get them out now. What they've done, what the Democrats and Biden have done to this country will go down in infamy, what they have done to our country.

And especially that, they created the worst inflation we've ever had. That's nothing compared to what they did with the people in our country right now. And we're getting them out. And it's not easy when you have the liberal judges destroying our country.

But we've won it all, we've won it all, ultimately won it all, heart process. It should be easier. We know who it is. We know exactly who we're looking for.

We had 11,000 murderers dropped into our country. We've gotten a lot of them out. Or in some cases, they're so dangerous, we're afraid to get them out because they come back in. But for the last 120 days, zero people came in.

Can you imagine? This is me speaking, but these are figures developed by, they say, a pretty liberal group of people. They admit that zero people came into our country. Think of that.

A year ago, it was millions of people were coming in, millions that were coming in. You could look at them and you could say big trouble. And that's what we have in our country. But we're getting them out.

And despite that, we're doing really well. Yeah, please, Brian. Well, the recruitment is the most exciting thing. So when I was campaigning for the office, numbers were coming out that the recruitment numbers generally, you could speak to it better than anybody.

The recruitment into the military, all branches of the military and police, environment and everything else. Anything having to do with like a public service, the numbers were horrible, record setting bad. And now they're record setting good. We're setting every record every month for recruitment.

We're packed in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, my beautiful air. I love Space Command. I see Space Command, Space Force has been, we've got a waiting list of people wanting to go in a year ago, especially a year and a half ago. You know, when I took the lead in the polls, which was very early, it really helped with the recruiting.

And when I won from November 5th on, it's been amazing. And over the last four or five months, it's been, we're just back. It was very hard to get police officers. Now the departments are loaded up.

Everyone wants to be a policeman or woman. So it's been a great thing. Jerry, you want to talk about that? Sure.

As you said, serving our nation is an incredible gift that we give. And the reward on that gift pays back exponentially year over year. And I think the young people of America are seeing the importance of service. And whether it's in any of our armed services or in local police, fire or rescue, service is an important thing that I personally encourage.

And I know everyone else in government service sees that same reward. And Peter, recruitment? I was down at Fort Benning, the newly properly renamed Fort Benning yesterday watching Army basic training. And they're so full, they can't barely handle the throughput.

It is truly historic across all the services. As you said, it's been a surge into the, I was going to say, the Defense Department, but I will say the War Department. And you might almost call it a five shift, an attitude shift, a feeling that the country is back, that service is back. And there were military families last year, Mr.

President, that said, I don't know if I can recommend, I mean, I wrote a book on this. I don't know if I can recommend service to my son or daughter given what's been done to our military. You heard it over and over and over again. And I hear from those same military families right now, sir, and they're saying, I recommend to my kids that they go into this, this department, this Pentagon, under this commander-in-chief, who they know you'll have their back and they want to serve.

So it is historic, and it's the biggest reflection of how motivated Americans are about your leadership, sir. You know, really, it's nothing more than spirit, love for the country. I guess the esprit de corps, as I say, you have more of that than we've had, maybe ever, frankly. But to see a turn, over a period of less than a year, I would say, but to see a turn, nobody wanted to go into the military.

Now, everybody wants to go into the military. Jennifer, you want to? Yeah, there's some new reporting on North Korea and this Navy SEAL incident in 2019. Can you say the administration has engaged with North Korea on that incident since it happened recently and that can you share?

I don't know anything about it. I'd have to. I could look, but I know nothing about it. Can you confirm that it happened?

I don't know anything about it. I'm hearing it now for the first time. Okay, and then on the Hyundai incident in Georgia with the arrest of some workers and structural workers at the plant, have you heard any feedback from Hyundai? I just heard about that a little while before the news conference, and I would say that they were illegal aliens, and ISIS was just doing its job.

But I know nothing about the incidents that happened a little while ago. There have been some pushback on that, though, from South Korea already, and of course, you know, they pledged to invest $150 billion in the U.S. and they were here last week. Well, they have the right to sell cars and things in our country.

You know, it's not like a one-sided idea. Are you concerned at all about, you know, your immigration agenda of country clashing with these economic goals? Well, we want to get along with other countries, and we want to have a great stable workforce. And we had, as I understand it, a lot of illegal aliens, some, not the best of people, but we had a lot of illegal aliens working there.

So, you know, look, they're doing their job. That's what they have to do. These are people that came through with Biden. They came through illegally.

They came into our country. So we have to do our job. So now we have wars involved in the crime cleanup in D.C. You've tasked Congress with proposing and passing a crime bill.

What are some things that you would really like to see codified in that bill? Well, I think one of the things is the cashless bail is killing it. When that came out, originally when that came out the first time, that's when you saw the real big crime start to happen. Cashless bail, what a disaster that is.

You murder somebody. You don't have to put up bail. And you go out on the street and you murder somebody else. That's what's happened.

It happens so often. And that's one of the things. And other of the things you're reading about, you know, it's a standard, but just a certain toughness. I have to say, one of the elements of fascination for people over the last period of time has been what's happened to D.C.

So we've gone from a, one of the most dangerous cities in our country to a, what they call a safe city. It's a totally safe city. In fact, I set up dinner in Washington D.C. next week.

I wouldn't have done that to be honest. I would have had an obligation not to do it before I came into office or even at the very beginning when things were so corrupt and so dangerous out on the streets. So Washington D.C. has had virtually no crime.

We even have a mayor that's admitting to it and she's a liberal Democrat, no fairness. She's a person that hasn't gotten exactly along with Republicans over the years. And she said she's never seen anything like it. So Washington D.C.

is a totally safe city. We have virtually no crime. It's gone from the most unsafe city in the United States, almost just about to one of the safest cities, maybe the safest city in the United States. That's a tremendous compliment to our military, what we did, the National Guard's done a fantastic job.

Yeah. I didn't, we didn't talk about that, but he's done a fantastic job. He's respected all over the country really. He's a leader and he's done a just a fantastic job.

We didn't discuss any thing having to do with this future. I'm sure it'd be very good at that. I think they've done a fantastic job in building it, the governor and everybody else that's been involved. It's an incredible facility.

It's housing people for usually a very short period of time before they get right back to their countries. As you know, we focus on criminals before we focus on anybody else and we're taking thousands and thousands of criminals out every month out of our country. Some of them murders and I think Florida's done a great job by building it and whether it's alligator alcatraz or anything else you want to call it. I was there, I visited with the governor with other people.

I guess Nicky was there. Tom Holman's been there. A lot, a lot of people have been there from, it's an amazing facility for what it is. It's not a hotel.

It's not supposed to be a hotel, but they've done a great job with it. I'm very happy with the judges' decision. You also mentioned that as well, I thought it was more involved in that. On the U.S.

strike note, I'm going to draw a cartel. The Maduro regime is pushing back today. I can say the U.S.C. regime changed through military threat, your reactions, and also would you like to see regime change?

Well, we're not talking about that, but we are talking about the fact that you had an election, which was a very strange election, to put it mildly, very nice when I say that. I can only say that billions of dollars of drugs are pouring into our country from Venezuela. The prisons of Venezuela have been opened up to our country. They've taken their prisoners, the worst prisoners, murderers, trend de aragua.

The worst prisoners that you can ever imagine are now happily living in the United States of America. Now, many of them we've gotten out. Not easy to get them out because of the liberal system that we're working with in many cases, not in all cases, but millions and millions of dollars and billions of dollars of drugs are pouring out of Venezuela. And other countries, look, China, what they're doing with fentanyl is a terrible thing.

It comes through Canada, and it comes through Mexico, but a lot of it's coming through Venezuela. Venezuela has been a very bad actor, and we understand that. And when you look at that boat, you look at that, you see the bags of whatever it is there, those bags, you know, those bags represent hundreds of thousands of dead people in the United States. That's what they represent.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to talk about that in a minute. We have our great people here, so I'll talk that in a minute. Let's talk about this.

We'll give a couple of them because these two people want to get to work on the Department of War. So let's keep them towards them. The new day is reportedly considering a ban on transgender people quoting guns after the monopolist shooting. Are we talking in the military?

Okay, I thought you were talking about it in the military. I'll refer to that then, because it's not a military question. I'll be able to pass on that very nicely unless you'd like to talk about it. Pete doesn't want any part of that question.

Yes, please. Mr. President, who do you blame for using India to China? Are you supposed to put it in one of you to put that out?

I don't think we have. I've been very disappointed that India would be buying so much oil, as you know, from Russia. And I let them know that. We put a very big tariff on India, 50 percent tariff, very high tariff.

I get along very well with Modi, as you know. He was here a couple of months ago. In fact, we went to the Rose Garden and the grass was so soaking wet. It was so such a terrible place to have a news conference.

I said, well, let's use a beautiful white stone emblematic of the White House, okay? And it's been very well received. But we had a news conference in the, in the, on the grass. It was my last news conference I had in the grass because everybody's sunk in.

You probably sunk in. Every reporter out there, they ruined their shoes. We made that change. It's been a really well received change.

Yeah, please go ahead. I'm good as well. You said, after 25,000 of a quarter, you said they were vessels in the Caribbean. You're concerned about drug, drug being legally said in the United States.

How do you describe this bill that this situation? Well, I just think it's strong. We're strong in drugs. We don't want drugs killing our people.

I believe we lost 300,000. You know, they always say 9500,000. I believe they've been saying that for 20 years. I believe we lost 300,000 people last year.

I know families that lost their son. Those families will never be the same. I know family lost the daughter, beautiful daughter. In fact, it was like she took something that she thought was like a minor deal and it turned out to be riddled out with fentanyl.

The size of the head of a pin and you're dead. And no, we're stopping the drugs. We're going to save a lot of people. Look, whether it's 100,000, but it's not.

It's 350,000 people died last year from drugs. And we're not going to let that happen to this country. Think of that. Think if you're in a war and you lose 300,000, we'll lose 600,000 in the pretty much between Gettysburg and all of that.

In the Civil War, we lost what? 600,000. So we're losing half of that every year to drugs. We're not going to do it.

We're not going to allow it to happen. You think of the wars. If we lost 600,000 people in a war, but we lose that every two years, more than that. So it's 300,000 to 350,000 people.

And when I see boats coming in, like loaded up the other day with all sorts of drugs, probably fented almost, but all sorts of drugs, we're going to take them out. And if people want to have fun going on the high seas or the low seas, they're going to be in trouble. I will tell you, boat traffic is substantially down in the area that happened. And they called it the runway.

It's a runway to the United States. And boat traffic is very substantially down on the runway. You can imagine why I think anybody that saw that is going to say, I'll take a pass. I don't even know about fishermen.

They may say, I'm not getting on the boat. I'm not going to take a chance. Well, I would say they're going to be in trouble and we'll let them know about that. We heard that happened, but it wasn't really over, not like they described.

But I would say, General, if they do that, you have a choice of doing anything you want. If they fly in a dangerous position, I would say that you can, you or your captains can make the decision as to what they want to do. I want to talk about that. But if they do put us in a dangerous position, they'll be shut down.

Thank you very much, everybody. So we're going to now cover the G20, and I'm going to let these people go back to the Department of War and figure out how to maintain peace. Okay, thanks very much. Great job, sir.

Just before G20, we do have one more EO for you today. And I should also say that the Department of War EO that you signed was actually your 200 EO since you came back into office on January 20th. That's more than Joe Biden did in his entire German office, more than Obama did in either of his two terms in office. So it's a momentous accomplishment and congratulations.

But I never signed one. No, you've done pretty well. So we really beat it by much more than you think. The 200 first executive order, sir, this relates to hostages and wrongfully detained Americans.

This provides a new legal mechanism to declare foreign countries to be countries that engage in those sorts of practices and gives your administration powerful tools to get American hostages out. This has been a focus of your administration this time around, Adam Bowler's here, and he's done incredible work already. This will give him even more. I think it's going to Adam is amazing.

So Adam, you want to describe how many hostages we've got now together, you and I and you and a couple of other people that we know and me and a couple of other people that you don't know, but we've got a lot of hostages. You want to describe it? Mr. President, you brought back 72 hostages since her term.

If we compare that to President Biden, he has gotten 20 taken. So he is negative 20 taken. They don't take our people so often. So Mr.

President, when we spoke, you said that that was a primary focus, and I'll tell you the job is easy because of you. And we paid nothing to we paid nothing. They paid six billion. They always paid six billion for five people, six billion.

It was just a number I kept hearing. Not only that six billion plus, we'd get like one person and then get six. They got one, the Prince of Doom, they called him. He was the number one arms merchant anywhere in the world ever.

And they got him out. And on top of that, we paid money. So no, we don't do that. You know, once you pay money, then a lot of people start disappearing.

They start grabbing reporters still. They think the reporter is going to get a lot of money. And to me, they would you would be well taken. I better stress that because otherwise we have headlines.

He said this, so he said that. No, I'm not smiling about it. But they wouldn't. They'd be grabbing reporters, they'd be grabbing everybody.

And especially when you pay the kind of money that Biden and Obama, they used to pay money that was crazy. We don't pay. And if you don't pay, they find it to be not a lucrative business anymore. That's fantastic.

Would you like to say something? So it's really to be hard, Special Envoy Bola. It's Rick Renal. It's Steve Whitcalfe who brought Americans home.

And you've been listening to President Trump there in the Oval Office, signing a series of executive orders. The first, he says aimed at making housing more affordable. The second one, renaming the Department of Defense, the Department of War, taking a range of different questions about his decision to do that. Only taking really one question about today's jobs numbers, though, with that, I want to bring in Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander who's been watching along with us.

Peter, what was notable, I think, about this appearance by the president is not what was said, but what wasn't said there weren't a whole lot of questions about the big news of the day, which are these job numbers, which came in below expectations. And then those revised June jobs numbers, which was the first time that we saw the jobs numbers decrease since the pandemic. What were your big takeaways? Chris, and you're right.

That's why they call it the bully pulpit. The president, you know, tried to set the agenda for this conversation, focusing on all topics, but jobs, he said he would talk about it. We're more than 40 minutes in and obviously affects more Americans than any other of these issues right now with the unemployment numbers ticking up to the highest they have been since the pandemic. Just to go through some of the things we did here as it relates to the Department of War, of course, it's not an actual renaming, but a rebranding only Congress can do the renaming, but the president does with all things, make America healthy again, make America great again, like to create a mantra.

And in fact, that's what the Department of War is referring to as Secretary of Defense as the Secretary of War now on the topic of Venezuela, given the recent strike on what the president has effectively called narco terrorists on that boat, 11 individuals who the White House, the president says were members of the violent gang, Trende Aragua, who were killed earlier this week. The president basically gave the green light to his Defense Department War Department, as he would like to say, to target any Venezuelan operations that they see taking place going forward. He said it was an effort to crack down on fentanyl. You and I both know the fact check on that, which is that fentanyl is almost entirely produced or comes from Mexico.

There's almost no evidence in any of its coming from Venezuela right now, which is not to suggest that Venezuela doesn't have problems. It certainly does, but certainly not on the topic, broadly speaking as it relates to fentanyl. But to go back to the question at hand here, which is the issue of jobs right now, you know, it's right by a couple of things black women are among those who are seeing the unemployment rate tick up 6.7% now compare that to the national average at 4.3% young Americans right now also seeing their numbers tick up topping 10% right now in terms of unemployment, as we said before this conversation, the president's Q&A session. But again, we spoke to one individual today who had been looking for jobs for several years since he graduated from college in computer science, says this is the most demoralizing experience he's had right now while the president is sort of trying to kick the can down the road and effect saying that things will get better in a year from now.

He often says wait for two weeks, wait for several months on this topic. He's saying wait for a year with hundreds of billions of dollars being invested by major companies like Apple and Meta. There are some real challenges as the White House heads out of this summer into fall. The Fed may be more inclined to lower interest rates, but there is a real stall in the eyes of a lot of economists in terms of the economy right now, Kristin.

Peter Alexander, thank you for unpacking all of that with us and watching along with us and for all of those facts, we really appreciate it. Joining me now is Democratic Congressman from Washington and Smith. He's also the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Congressman, thank you so much for joining us here.

It's great to see you as well. Thanks for being here in person. I want to start by asking you about something we didn't hear a whole lot about just then, which is the economy. These jobs numbers, they were revised down in June, the first time the economy lost jobs since the pandemic.

And of course, a weaker than expected jobs reported 22,000 jobs added. What do you make of this? Well, look, Trump is doing incredible damage to our country right now in policy after policy with the tariff policy, with the immigration policy of seeing that with the economy. Inflation is coming back up, jobs are disappearing, that the estimates for the economy going forward have gone down.

He has had a disastrous first eight months in terms of the economy. And then he's placing us in danger by bombing Iran, bombing people in Venezuela. He ran for office saying he's going to get us out of wars. Now, he seems to be determined to get us into them.

And his solution to all of this is to lie on an almost epic level, listening to that press conference lie after lie after lie. Now, to be fair, not everything he said was a lie, but a staggering number of it was. He didn't end seven wars. And I'm pretty sure that when we changed the name from the Department of War to the Department of Defense in 1947, it wasn't because of wokeness.

I mean, just the lies pouring out his mouth. Well, meanwhile, we've got real problems that the truth could help address like no jobs, increasing inflation, downgrading of the economy, conflicts that continue in Ukraine in Gaza. Remember, this is the same guy who said that he would end the war in Ukraine on day one. The lies never stop and the American people keep paying the price for the reality that he is creating.

Let me ask you about his decision to rebrand effectively the Department of Defense to the Department of War. He basically said this is to send a strong signal in this moment. What do you make of the decision? What signal do you think it sends?

Particularly, we just saw those stunning images, the leaders of China, North Korea and Russia, all clasping hands. It was a clear signal that they were trying to send to the West. What do you make of it? Congress, of course, has to do the official hard to adequately plumb the depths of the stupidity of everything that goes into this.

Changing the word defense to war, what signal does it send? Absolutely fricking nothing. It makes literally no difference. Now, what signal do you send when you slap a 50% tariff on India?

A crucial nation that we're trying to make our ally in the fight against China and against Russia. The signal that that sends is to just go join our adversaries. Don't join us. All right.

The reality of what he's doing has an impact. And he honestly goes to press conference and wastes all that time signing up. Oh, I have changed the name of the Department of Defense and the Department of War. This is going to solve all the world's problems.

What world are we living in? That this is our president? This is what he thinks is important while Chi and Putin and Kim Jong Un and Modi are meeting in China and plotting against this. This is his answer to that.

What do you think the president's response should be to that show of force, particularly, as you say, at a time when he has vowed to end the war in Ukraine, we have yet to see sanctions against Russia. It seems as though a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, not on the table, not in the near future. Do you think it's time for sanctions? Do you think there's a sense the sanctions bill can happen?

A couple of simple things to do here. One, build partnerships and alliances, which we had done effectively under the Biden administration. The August agreement between UK, Australia, and the US, strengthen us. The Quad between India, Japan, Australia, and the US, had strengthened us.

We strengthen relationships with Japan and South Korea. China was really on their backfoot because everybody in their neighborhood was with us trying to contain what China was doing. And now he's shoving them all away. And I saw a little bit of your story about reading the, I forget it was a Hyundai plant, which is going to alienate the hell out of South Korea.