Meet the Press interview

Good morning, Kristen. Thanks for having me.

Well, I do, Kristen. We're going to have to do a lot of work to make sure that it stays ended. But I also have to give your network a little bit of grief, Kristen, because last night I was watching NBC. They were covering this and they mentioned that during a rally last night in Israel, when Steve Witkoff, our great special envoy, mentioned Bibi Netanyahu the crowd booed. But the broadcast didn't mention that when Steve Witkoff mentioned President Trump, the crowd actually cheered. And why is that, Kristen? Why did the crowd cheer? Because this moment came from very, very deliberate and consequential diplomacy from the president and the entire administration. The reason why we are at this moment, Kristen, is because the president of the United States, he gave unusual authorities to people who had never been in diplomacy before. He actually broke the mold. Instead of doing diplomacy the same old way that it had failed for the past 30 or 40 years, he gave Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner a remarkable amount of authority to go and get a peace deal done. And he worked hard on everybody, from the Israelis to the Gulf Arab states to make this happen. This was very hard. This was a long time coming. It required a lot of work. But yes, I believe that we are on the cusp of peace in Gaza for the first time, not just in a couple of years, but really in a very long time because the president of the United States has done something that no other world leader has been able to do: unite the Israelis with the Gulf Arab states for a common objective and that is to bring the hostages home, to stop the war, and to build the kind of long-term settlement that we really do believe can lead to a lasting peace.

Well, it really should be any moment now, Kristen. The president of the United States is planning to travel to the Middle East to gulf – to greet the hostages Monday morning, Middle Eastern time, which should be late, you know, Sunday night or very early Monday morning here in the United States. So you can't say exactly the moment they will be released. But we have every expectation, that's why the president is going, that he will be greeting the hostages early next week. It's a monumental thing. It's great of course for their families. But I really do think that it shows what happens when you go outside the traditional failed diplomatic routes and actually try something new. It's kind of crazy to me, Kristen, that for our entire history, we've never had a president who's been willing to sit down both with the Gulf Arab states and the Israelis to try to tap some unconventional people to just get a deal done. And I think Americans should be proud of the entire administration. They should be proud of their country because we've worked so hard to make peace in the Middle East happen. And we are right on the cusp of bringing these hostages home. It'll be a great moment for our country, a great moment for the world. But I really do think the lesson here is that Donald Trump refused to go down the failed –

– traditional diplomatic pathway. He cut his own Trump diplomatic pathway. And because of that, it was successful.

Yes, Kristen, so that report actually missed something. We're not planning to put boots on the ground. What we already have is a U.S. Central Command. We already have people in that region of the world. They're going to monitor the terms of the cease fire. They're going to monitor, ensure that the humanitarian aid is flowing. They actually confirmed yesterday that Israel pulled back to the agreed-upon lines, which of course is the first condition. The second condition or the second term is for the hostages to be released. So we have people in that region of the world who are going to monitor parts of this peace proposal. But the president is not planning to put boots on the ground in Israel.

That's what I mean, Kristen. He is not planning to put boots on the ground in Gaza or Israel.

We do – we are going to have Central Command troops that are already there that are going to monitor this peace proposal. We’ve actually had, and this is one of the great successes of the president's diplomacy, from Indonesia to the Gulf Arab states –

– we've had a number of Muslim majority countries offer to step up and have them put troops on the ground to secure Gaza. It's not going to be necessary for American troops to be in Gaza.

Well, Kristen, I wouldn't focus on the political pressure to get a deal. We really don't care what the poll numbers say.

What we care about --

– is what's good for the American people --

Well, Kristen, the president was talking back then when Barack Obama was president about the political realities. We are focused now on the governing realities because we're in power. And we're trying to make the American people's government work for the American people despite the fact that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have shut down the government. We have to step back and remember, Kristen, that there is a clean bill to open the United States government. The majority – I’m sorry, the vast majority of Republicans and even a few moderate Democrats voted to open the government. But it's Chuck Schumer and the far left of Senate Democrats who have prevented this government from reopening. Now, you talk about negotiation. We're happy to negotiate about any matter. We're happy to talk about health care policy, but not while the government is being held hostage, Kristen. This is not abstract. This is not something that's pie in the sky. There are low-income women and children who will not get the food benefits they need to feed their families unless we reopen the government. We're trying to figure out how to pay our troops in the midst of this shutdown to keep our country safe –

– and to make sure that our troops get their payments. We have got to reopen the government and the president is committed to this. In fact, we've got a bill in the House that already passed the House. We want to make sure that that bill passes the Senate, but not so long as Chuck Schumer allows the entire country to be hijacked by a few far left senators.

Well, I just think it shows the different priorities of Democrats and Republicans in the midst of these shutdowns. You really have to ask yourself, "Who do we care more about? Federal bureaucrats in Washington D.C. or low-income women getting the food benefits they deserve, our troops getting the payment they need, flood insurance across the Southeast in the midst of hurricane season?"

We are going to have to --

– lay off some federal workers. Kristen, if you would let me finish. We have to lay off some federal workers in the midst of this shutdown to preserve the essential benefits for the American people that the government does provide. So we don't want to be in this situation. We don't want to be laying off federal workers. But the Democrats have shut down the government. They have forced us to choose between American citizens and federal bureaucrats. We're choosing the benefits, the critical services that benefit our American citizens.

Well, the president's looking at all of his options. Right now, he hasn't felt he needed to. But we have to remember why are we talking about this, Kristen? Because crime has gotten out of control in our cities. Because our ICE agents, the people who are enforcing our immigration laws, have faced a 1,000% increase in violent attacks against them. We have people right now who are going out there who are doing the job the president asked them to do, who are enforcing our immigration laws. They're being assaulted. They're being beaten. They're being shot at. The problem here is not the Insurrection Act or whether we actually invoke it or not. The problem is the fact that the entire media in this country, cheered on by a few far left lunatics, have made it okay to tee off on American law enforcement. We cannot accept that in the United States of America. We want everybody, black or white, rich or poor, to be safe in the United States of America.

But to do that, we have to empower our law enforcement agents to keep --

– us safe. That's what we're talking about doing.

Go ahead, Kristen --

Kristen, crime is down in Chicago and Portland often because they're so overwhelmed at the local level, they're not even keeping the statistics properly. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had an ICE office get shot at by a far left assassin who was trying to kill our law enforcement officers. He fortunately didn't kill law enforcement officers. He did kill some other innocent people in the process. We cannot allow the far left in this country to tee off on our law enforcement officers.

We've got to do something about it. And that's all the president's talking about. I mean there are places in Chicago, Kristen, where people are afraid to take their children. They're afraid to go out of their houses for fear of gun violence, for fear of gang drive-by shootings. That's not okay in the United States of America. The president just wants people to be kept safe. And we're exploring everything that we can do to make sure that the American people are safe in their own country.

No, we're driven by the law and the facts of the case. I think if you look at the case, the facts that a far left grand jury in a far left area indicted Letitia James and James Comey. If you look at the fact that James Comey obviously lied under oath. Letitia James obviously committed mortgage fraud. What we're doing is letting the law drive the prosecution's decisions in the Department of Justice. You know who we haven't prosecuted? Joe Biden --

– or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Unlike the Biden Department of Justice, Kristen --

– which actually went after Donald Trump in the midst of an election, we are not doing that. We are letting the law drive these decisions. That's exactly as it should be.

No, Kristen, I think that we continue to allow the law to drive these decisions. If the law didn't necessitate an investigation and a prosecution in this case, it wouldn't happen. Of course, the president is allowed to have opinions about the law enforcement of the federal government. He is the chief executive officer of the federal government. Him having opinions doesn't mean that we prosecute people unless we have the legal justification to do so. That is the guiding light of the Trump administration's Department of Justice. Did somebody break the law? If so, we're going to prosecute them.

Thanks, Kristen. Take care.