White House: President Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Arrival at Joint Base Andrews, May 20, 2026

I was just watching. We have big news on Cuba as you know, with the indictment of Castro. So a lot of people have suffered very big, very, very. At levels that few people would understand. And I think the Cuban population of Miami and certainly beyond Miami, people that came there, that were decimated, whose families were ruined, appreciate what the attorney general just did today and was just doing now is just watching it.

So we have Cuba on our mind. Very important. It's been a lot of problem for a lot of years. And this was a big, I think it was a very big moment for people that, not only Cuban Americans, but people that came from Cuba that want to go back to Cuba, people that want to see their family in Cuba. I think this is a very big day, very important day.

They supported me to the nth degree. They supported me at levels that nobody has ever seen before. And so I think it's a very important moment. Cuba, Mr. President, say it. What's coming next for Cuba?

Well, we're going to see it's a failing nation. You see that it's falling apart. They have no oil. They have no. It's a failing nation.

So I just can't tell you that. But we're there to help. We're there to help the families, the people. And again, a lot of those people are related to me in the sense that I've had such a great relationship with Cuban Americans. They supported me at a 94% level.

That's a pretty good level. And, you know, their relatives are there. So we got to. On a humanitarian basis. We're there to help.

Mr. Spencer was there last week. Can you talk about that at all? Well, we have a lot of people there. We had CIA there. We have Marco is there.

Marco's parents, as you know, were from Cuba. So we have a lot of expertise in Cuba. And it's not going to be like the biggest thing we've ever done. But I will tell you, to a lot of people, it's going to be one of the most important. They've been looking for this moment for 65 years.

So we'll see what happens. But we're going to. In the meantime, we're going to have to help them out. They have no. No way of living.

They have no food. They have no electricity. They have no energy at all. But they do have great people. There are a lot of great people.

I mean, I have so many Cuban friends in Miami, mostly in Miami and Florida. And they're unbelievable people. They're unbelievable entrepreneurs, and they'd like to go back I think hopefully they're going to want to live here, but they want to go back. Maybe they'll invest. We'll see what happens.

But we're freeing up Cuba. Mr. President, how much longer do you. Anticipate the embargo having to be in place on Cuba? We'll see. We'll be announcing it pretty soon.

Mr. President, should we expect any escalation here or should they expect Cuba? Yes. No. No, you won't. There won't be escalation.

I don't think there needs to be. Look, the place is falling apart. It's a mess. And they've sort of lost control. They've really lost control of Cub.

I don't want to say that. Mr. President, Gavin Newsom is on Capitol Hill today. He says that he doesn't think J.D. Vance has what it takes to come after you. What's your response?

Who said that? Gavin Newsom,.

He said. Doesn't have what? Trump. The era of Trump ends with you. And that J.D.

Vance doesn't have what it takes to come after you. Well, look, we've done a lot, and JD Is very talented. He's a smart guy. He's. He'll do very well if it's JD we have a lot of very talented people.

So I think hopefully we're going to leave something that's going to be real easy to run. We're doing. We're doing a lot. We're doing a lot, and JD Is a very talented guy. To respond after you said yesterday you're about an hour away from making a decision.

Where does that stand today? Have you heard anything from them? Very. It's right on the borderline, Believe me. If we don't get the right answers, it goes very quickly.

We're all ready to go. We have to get the right answers. It would have to be a complete, 100% good answers. And if we do, we save a lot of time, energy and lives. Most importantly, how long will you wait?

Could go very quickly or a few days. It could be a few days, but it could go very quickly. Iran is a defeated nation. We're dealing with some people and we're dealing. Actually, I must tell you, we're dealing with some very good people.

We're dealing with people that are, I think, far more reasonable than the people that are really no longer with us. We're dealing with some people with talent, with good brain power, and we're pretty impressed by it. So hopefully those people will make a deal that's going to be great for everybody. Are you getting Tired of doing, but I don't know. I don't know.

I don't do. I get what I never. I never get tired. But what I like to do. If I can save war by waiting a couple of days, if I can save people being killed by waiting a couple of days, I think it's a great thing to do.

I'll have a message at a later date. Okay. The US Offer Iran oil station for heat during these talks, as Iranian TV recorded. No, I heard. I haven't heard that.

I'm not doing any relief until they sign an agreement. When they sign an agreement, we can get that place built up again and have something that's really a good country for the people. But no, we haven't offered anything.

The rise of AI. They're worried that their kids are not going to be able to have jobs someday. Because AI will tell you, AI has been amazing because right now we have more jobs, more people working right now in the United States by far, than we ever had before and outside of the war. And I assumed the economy was going to go down, the stock market would go down 20, 25%. It's actually up.

The stock market is higher now than it was before I started the Iran situation. And on the Iran, I had no choice because they were going to have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to give them a nuclear weapon. But that's going to end soon. One way or the other.

Oil is going to come tumbling down. There's so much oil. We have 1600 ships in the Strait that are loaded up with oil that are going to be coming out very soon. So we'll have to. But the military has been unbelievable.

The blockade has been infallible. Not one ship has gotten through the blockade. 37 Have tried. They all wish they didn't. Can you tell us about your call with Erdogan?

Yeah, I had a very good call with President Erdogan and pretty standard. We have a very good relationship. Isn't it nice that I have relationships with some very tough people? He's a tough guy and. But I have a relationship with him that, no, nobody else does.

He's actually done a good job. He's been, you know, I think very much of an ally. Some people would doubt that, but I think he's been a great ally. And his people respect him. His people respect him.

A lot of responsibility, people that are critical of your settlement over your IRS case about the tax, now that you can't be prosecuted for tax. Yeah, well, what happened is I was suing IRS For a lot of different reasons. One of the reasons is they released my tax returns, which they're not allowed to do now. They showed I pay a lot of tax. I may even release my current returns because they show I pay a lot of money.

But they're not supposed to do that. They were in lockboxes as president and they released them. And a certain firm released them, which was, I guess a private firm, but it released them to a lot of the fake news. And the fake news went, and you're just not allowed to do that. And many other things happened.

So I released them from the lawsuit and I guess they made a settlement of some kind. I wasn't involved in the settlement. I could have been involved, but I didn't choose to be. So they made a settlement. Also.

The anti weaponization of people, I mean, people were destroyed. They went to jail, their families were ruined. They committed suicide. You know, all the Biden administration and the Obama administration, both of them, I mean, the Obama administration started it. The Biden administration was horrible in terms of what they've done to people is incredible.

And we're getting, we're reimbursing those people for their legal fe, for their costs and for anybody involved. But they destroyed people. People committing, I read the other day a person committed suicide over it. They went, you know, it was the most violent thing I've ever seen in politics, what they did. And yet if I say, oh, let's look at this one or that one, they say weaponization, Weaponization.

What they did in terms of weaponization will never be allowed to happen in this country again. So we think that those people, we think that anybody involved in that process should partake. And you're talking about peanuts compared to the value. It destroyed the lives of many, many people. Thank you very much, everybody.