President Trump: We’re Going to End Up with A Great Deal 4/21/26

What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Borsten hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Bring in show music, please. This is Squawk Pod, and I'm CNBC producer Cameron Costa. On today's episode... We're going to end up with a great deal. I think they have no choice. President Donald Trump on the war in Iran. I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed. I have all the time in the world. And Israel as an ally. Israel's been a great partner for us. They say we're the big brother, they're the small brother. An extended interview. You can have some extra time. You can even put Andrew on the phone. I don't mind if he's there. I like him. I respect him. He's just wrong on a lot of issues. Thank you. The president weighs in on his pick for new Fed chair just hours before Kevin Walsh's confirmation hearing. Will you be disappointed if your new Fed chair, if he gets approved, doesn't cut rates right away? I would. And where the president lands on airline consolidation. I don't mind mergers. I'd love somebody to buy Spirit. Well, it's complicated. The American is doing fine and United is doing very well. I don't like having them merge. That big interview. But first, the corporate headline of the day. Apple turnover. Tim Cook is set to step down as CEO come September. The AI piece of it is the one thing that can upend all of this. It's Tuesday, April 21st, and Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in 3, 2, 1, cue it please. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We are live from the NASDAQ market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick, along with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. And here we go, folks. The NASDAQ indicated up by about 95. This comes after the Nasdaq actually had its first negative session since all the way back to March 30th. The index's 13-day winning streak was its longest since 1992. And over that period of time, it gained close to 18 percent. So what a run it has been, 17.6 percent gain over that period of time. In fact, the rest of the averages haven't been all that shabby either. You have the S&P 500 coming just off its all-time closing high, too. Some modest pullbacks yesterday. We'll see what happens today. Treasuries are pretty close to where they were last Friday. Not much movement. What was the streak for the NASDAQ? It was the winning streak. So the Mets losing streak since being hugged by Mom Donnie. I think it's 11. It says 10. But maybe they had lost the game already. And then they met with him. And he hugged the mascots and everything. Now they've lost 10 straight. Yeah. Yeah. Well, winning streaks, losing streaks. If you do want to, you know, make everyone sort of equal in terms of how many wins, how many losses, and just make it nicer where, you know, you get a participation award for 10th place. Just because you're now going to have to pay the Pied or Terra tax. I understand. I don't have a place. I know. Can they get me down in Georgia? They can't, can they? Not yet. Meantime, our top corporate story this morning, it's a biggie. Apple announcing it's going to replace CEO Tim Cook earlier this year with the company's hardware chief. And Mackenzie Sigalos is here to tell us about everything. She's been working the phones all night. What's going on? I have. So, Andrew, this is Apple making its biggest leadership change in 15 years. Hardware engineering chief John Ternus succeeding Tim Cook as CEO on September 1st. Well, Cook moves into an executive chairman role and serves as a kind of chief diplomat as Apple manages its relationship with the White House. Now, the handoff comes after a remarkable run under Cook, during which time Apple's stock climbed nearly 2,000%. Its market value reached $4 trillion. Ternus, he's 50, a mechanical engineer by training, and has spent half his life at Apple. He's been the driving force behind the latest versions of the iPhone, Mac, and iPad, and he's reportedly been quietly building Apple's next act. AI-powered wearables, smart glasses, a camera pendant, and what could be the biggest iPhone overhaul in history, including a foldable model later this year. I spoke to a longtime Apple insider who worked with them. They described Ternus as even keeled, measured, more Tim Cook than Steve Jobs, really a steady hand. But Ternus has to do more than extend Apple's playbook of operational discipline, buybacks, and ecosystem monetization. He needs to pull off an AI reboot that is already late as they trail Google on software. Plus, he's got to find a new engine of product growth beyond the iPhone. So to me, the big question is, as a hardware guy, it seems to me that they've done great on hardware. And so maybe you lean into the thing that you are good at. The thing that they are not good at at the moment is actually the thing, the reason why I think you use this stuff, which is the software. But the AI piece of it is the one thing that can upend all of this. I don't know what you think, but I do think there's a possibility that a couple years from now, from an interface perspective, it's going to be a whole different world. And the question is, are we going to be on this? Or should, by the way, Google should win this game at this point? And we've thought that for a long time. So what is the view about him as it relates to software? Well, the thing about John Ternus is that he's really good about bridging the gap between the hardware and software teams. And typically at Apple, you see a lot of infighting there. But he's got a great relationship with the SVP of software, Craig Federighi. And so a lot of what we've seen in terms of hardware bridging the gap, the iPad OS, was a direct result of those two people working together better. But to your point, they fumbled the ball on AI. They're already a year late. At WWDC, their annual developers conference in 2024, they promise that by the following year, we're going to see a rebooted Siri powered by in-house LLMs. They missed that deadline. We're expecting it this June. And to your point, Google's been winning there. And so they've had this frenemy relationship with Google for years. But reportedly, well, we know that they're going to be licensing Google's tech. But reportedly, they're only paying a billion dollars a year to use their LLMs to reboot Siri. And the Apple bet is you don't have to be the best model maker. You just are going to win. They're going to win AI at the edge is what they would say. And is the concept, though, the deal with Google, is that just a short? Do you think that they think that's a short-term bridge to them actually figuring this out themselves, or do you think they've already thrown in the towel? Or thrown in the towel. They just, like, they don't have the capex band to be able to train the models in-house. And then on top of that, Google might not be the ultimate winner. They might go with Claude one day or another one of the model makers. It doesn't matter. And that would be their argument. And they also, as part of this rebooted Siri, potentially a standalone app, potentially seeing, you know, a chatbot-like experience through the context of Siri. But what's also interesting is that they're looking at opening it up so you can port whatever chatbot you like to use. And your view is that Tim stays for how long? I think that in this chief diplomat role, at least a year or two, they're still navigating the $3.3 billion plus in tariffs that they've paid. They haven't sued the government yet to try to retrieve any of that, though. The thing that hit me, and I knew, I guess, but just spelling it out, he took it to $4 trillion, adding $3.7 trillion. Right. A lot of tripled revenue under that time. He built Apple Services, which on its own is a $100 billion business, which would qualify to be a Fortune 40 company on its own. And I always go back to $9 billion, because I remember when Apple had fallen after Steve Jobs left. At one point, it had gone under a what's-his-face. It looked like a gadget maker that was never going anywhere. And products in decline over that period. iPhones still half of revenue, but in terms of Macs, their share has gone from 15% of revenue down to 7%. And you've also seen the iPad drop from 20% to 6% of revenue under Jim Cook's. Do you remember when we had flip phones? Yes. They said Apple's coming out with an iPhone. And now there's no way I would part with my iPhone. Why would I get an iPhone if I have a Maxwell Smart flip phone? And now it's got all my photos. It's got my music. It's got everything else, that ecosystem that they built up. Tim Cook was so good at services. He built it up to $126 billion this fiscal year. Mackenzie, thank you. It's nice to see you this morning. By the way, just speaking about Tim Cook, we know we've heard from Warren Buffett in the past. This is Berkshire's largest shareholding is Apple. They're not the largest shareholder because I think Vanguard and BlackRock hold more shares of Apple. But if you take a look at what's happened with it, Buffett himself has said in the past that Tim Cook earned more money for Berkshire than Warren Buffett did. I spoke with Warren Buffett last night about this, and he had a lot of wonderful things to say about Tim Cook. He did say that Tim had called him earlier in the day. But here's what he had to say last night about it. He said Apple would not be the Apple of today without Steve Jobs. And Apple would not be the Apple of today without Tim Cook. What he has done with Apple could not be done by anybody I've ever known. and I've known Tom Murphy and Dan Burke and all kinds of great managers. He said covering the world and getting along with countries with all kinds of histories and doing right by the customer, people who work for him, certainly for the shareholders, which we were lucky enough to be one of. He is one of a kind. He went on to say that Tim Cook doesn't need to hire any press manager as long as I'm alive because he's going to keep saying wonderful things about him. President Trump posting on True Social a few minutes ago. I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook and likewise Steve Jobs. But if Steve was not taken from the planet Earth so young and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has done under Tim. For me, it began with a phone call from Tim at the beginning of my first term. He had a fairly large problem that only I as president could fix. And most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant who I probably would not have known, but who would have said that he knew me. Well, the fees would be paid, but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call, I said, wow, it's Tim Apple Cook calling. How big is that? I was very impressed with myself. They have the head of Apple calling to kiss my arse. Anyway, he explained his problem. A tough one it was. I felt he was right and got it taken care of quickly and effectively. That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship during my five years, as President Tim would call me. But never too much. And I would help him where I could. Years later, after three or four big helps, I started to say people, to anyone who would listen, that this guy is an amazing manager and leader. He makes these calls to me. I help him out, but not always, because he will on occasion be too aggressive in his ask. That's interesting. And he gets the job done quickly without a dime being given to those very expensive millions of dollars consultants around town who sometimes get it done and sometimes don't. Anyway, Tim Cook had an amazing career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy. In just a few hours, we will bring you live coverage of Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh's Senate confirmation hearings. Our senior economics reporter Steve Leisman joins us with a preview of what Warsh will say and the potential pushback from the committee. Steve, good morning. Good morning, Becky. Yeah, Fed Chair nominee Warsh faces senators today with his unique ideas about regime change at the central bank, which involved monetary policy and independence, and he's likely to face a barrage of questions from Democrats, especially about potential conflicts from his vast wealth. Warsh will say in his opening statement, quote, I am committed to ensuring that the conduct of monetary policy remains strictly independent. I am equally committed to working with the administration and Congress on non-monetary matters that are part of the Fed's remit. Well, Warsh has a lot of big ideas, but several of them need approval from his colleagues on the Fed, including lowering interest rates. You need the FOMC for that. Reducing the balance sheet, you need the FOMC. A Treasury-Fed accord about the balance sheet composition that Warsh has talked about, that needs the FOMC. And, of course, bank deregulation is a matter for the Board of Governors. Also, the question of how independently Warsh will steer Fed policy, having been appointed by a president who has demanded lower rates has sought to fire one Fed official and threatened to fire the chair himself, that is Fed Chair Powell. Former Fed General Counsel Scott Alvarez, I talked to him yesterday, he told me that independence is truly important and leads to the best policy outcomes But while the Federal Reserve Act offers protection for the Fed to act independently it not mandated While Democrats will make a big deal of Walsh's hundreds of millions of dollars of investments, Walsh himself has pledged to nearly totally divest all these financial assets. More importantly, while the hearing will be held tomorrow, or today that is, no vote is expected unless the Justice Department drops its criminal case against Fed Chair Powell. And that, Becky, of course, is because Senator Tom Tillis has pledged to keep the nomination going forward while the case still exists. And one more thing I want to show you, Becky, which is while the president wants lower rates, that is not true in the market. Take a look at what's happened to Fed futures. Before the war, there was a 75 percent probability that we'd be a 50 basis point rate cut. Now it's just around 40 percent for one rate cut. see that there. Yeah, interesting to see that. Steve, thank you. Coming up on Squawk Pod, an extended interview with President Donald Trump. We take it out there, leaders, frankly, which does complicate things in one way, but these leaders are much more rational. It is regime change, no matter what you want to call it. How those negotiations with Iran are going. 47 years other presidents wanted to do it. They never had the guts, the courage to do it. I said, we have to do it. And the White House's relationship with Anthropic, in use at government agencies, despite being blacklisted. I think they can be of great use. I like smart people. I like high IQ people. And they definitely have high IQs, you know. It's one of those things. And I think we'll get along with them just fine. All that and much more right after this break. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC changemakers and power players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC with Becky Quick, Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Here's Joe. Join us now on the Squawk Newsline. President Donald J. Trump, President Trump, welcome. Thanks for joining us this morning. Well, thank you very much, Joe. You are very welcome. Can you give us, I think it's on everyone's mind, the latest on where the Iran negotiations stand? We now know Tehran has publicly confirmed that it will send representatives to the meeting with Vice President Vance. What do you expect? What are you hearing at this point, sir? Well, as I said two days ago, when they said they won't send them, I said they'll be sending them. They have no choice but to send them. What I think is that we're going to end up with a great deal. I think it's got I think they have no choice. We've taken out their Navy. We've taken out their Air Force. We've taken out their leaders, frankly, which does complicate things in one way. But these leaders are much more rational. It's a it is regime change, no matter what you want to call it, which is not something I said I was going to do. But I've done it indirectly, maybe, but I've done it. And I think we're in a very strong negotiating position to do what other presidents should have done during a 47 year period. We have 47 years where these bloodthirsty people have been killing a lot of soldiers, a lot of our soldiers, and a lot of other people. They've killed 42,000 people over the last two months. And, you know, you get to a point where people don't want to mention that. They don't like mentioning that. 42,000 unarmed protesters, innocent unarmed protesters, many of them hung. So we're not dealing with the nicest group of people, but we're dealing with them very successfully. and the blockade has been a tremendous success. They said two days ago, we will open the strait. They said, no, we're not going to open the strait until we have a final deal. No, no, we want to open the strait. They said, we're not opening. We totally control the strait, just so you understand, for all the fake news out there. And, Mr. President, we've seen 100 days of the largest protests in Iran since the revolution in 1979. And I know how much you respect and admire and are concerned with with the Iranian people themselves. And this is, I think, a large degree, one of the reasons you decided to embark on this on this whole thing, maybe among other things. But the timing was right. If we get close in negotiations right now. But the deadline for the ceasefire is tomorrow. If it looks like things are progressing, will you not necessarily extend it to a definitive amount of time, but will you let it keep going if there's progress in the talks before taking? Well, I don't want to do that. We don't have that much time because by the time both parties get there, as you know, they just got the OK to go forward, which I do, they were going to do anyway. I mean, I don't think that ensures they have to negotiate. And, you know, the one thing I'll say is this. Iran can get themselves at a very good footing. if they make a deal. They can make themselves into a strong nation again, a wonderful nation again. They have incredible people. But they seem to be, you know, bloodthirsty. They're led by some very, very unfortunately tough people. And I don't mean tough in a good way. I think it's very negative for the country because we're much tougher than they are, like not even close. But they have to use reason and they have to use common sense and they can get themselves into a great position to make themselves into a great country, but a legitimate country, not a country based on death and aura. And I think regimes only respond to certain things. And I understand your threats to bomb the bridges in the electric grid. But I don't think the regime cares about the people of Iran. And if you did that, I'm sure it's the last thing you'd probably want to do. but it would hurt at least some of the people that we care about and why we embarked on this in the first place. So that would be, I'm sure, a last resort for you. It's not my choice, but it will also hurt them. It'll hurt them militarily. They use the bridges for their weapons, for their missile movements. They're trying to move the missiles because we've obliterated most of their missiles, and they're trying to move their missiles around, even during the ceasefire, which I think was a good thing because we're totally loaded up. We have so much ammo. We have so much of everything that we've like a much, much more powerful. There was four or five weeks ago. So we've used this to restock and they probably have done a little bit of restocking. We caught a ship yesterday that had some things on it, which wasn't very nice. A gift from China, perhaps. I don't know. But I was a little surprised. But because I have a very good relationship and I thought I had an understanding with President Xi. But that's all right. That's the way war goes. Right. But I will tell you that we have our military is incredible what we've done. I mean, think of it. In the first three days, we took out their entire Navy, 159 ships, 159 ships and wiped out their air force, wiped out their anti-aircraft craft. All of their anti-aircraft apparatus is all gone. All of their radar is gone. Their leaders are gone. You know, their leaders are gone. The whole thing is gone. And frankly, this should have been done a long time ago. It would have been a lot easier because they were a lot less lethal a long time ago. So to be clear, you're saying that you need at least the prospects for a signed deal today and tomorrow, or else you would resume bombing Iran. Well, I expect to be bombing because I think that's a better attitude to go in with. But we're ready to go. I mean, the military is raring to go. they are absolutely incredible you know i built the military my first term i'm using it now the military when i took it over from barack hussein obama they had just it was so depleted so sad and i built it in my first term you remember those big numbers you talked to me about it once that's a lot of money for military i built it we did a great job with our military and uh we're using it now and rebuilding it too we've done a lot of rebuilding also in my first year of the second term, but we have a tremendous, we have the most powerful military in the world. Everybody knows it. Since we're kind of tight on time, can we just talk about what something else happening today? And that is your pick for Fed Chair Kevin Warsh on Capitol Hill. We've had a couple of guests today say the best thing that we need now is for Jay Powell to leave in May, like he's supposed to, and to have Kevin Warsh in as Fed Chair for that next June meeting. But we still have this Justice Department probe hanging over. And I've seen things that you said in recent interviews, Mr. President. I want to ask you again if it would be possible for the banking committee to completely investigate all of your concerns about the cost overruns and the testimony of Jay Powell in front of Congress. If you could take that off ramp to get this moving and Jay Powell leaves, Kevin Warsh goes in. Is that something you'd consider dropping the DOJ probe to let the banking committee handle it? Well, I think it is from the same point, Joe, from the same point that we have to find out why a small building costs close to $4 billion. It's not finished, by the way. They have a long way to go. They rip down the most beautiful ceilings. They'll never build them again. The most beautiful, thick, foot-and-a-half-thick walls of solid masonry. They're never going to be built again. They put up six-inch sheet rock walls. And they say, sir, we have no insulation. It's not in the budget. I mean, they had the best. That building was so beautiful. I would have fixed that building. I would have had it brand new, beautiful for twenty five million dollars. And they're going to spend close to four billion dollars, maybe more than that. I don't know. It's not finished. In fact, I looked at it the other day. I'm afraid Kevin will have to have an office next to me in the White House because that building's not going to be done. He's not going to be able to use that building for a long time. And, you know, he had a complaint. He said, I didn't realize this. He said, the saddest thing is they ripped down the best building. He said there was a building that had beautiful boardrooms that he used many times when he was there, that beautiful boardrooms and meeting rooms. It was so beautiful. The nicest in Washington. And he said, they ripped it down. And maybe they did that to save money, like the Gavin Newsom, the railroad where they made it shorter in order to save money, but it's still 25 times over budget. But the worst I've ever heard is the railroad in California, and I think this might be worse. Think of it. I would have fixed that building beautiful, quickly. $25 million would have been like a brand-new building. I would have, all the ceilings would have been left, all those beautiful, thick walls with gorgeous moldings would have been left. You're going to get a sheetrock ceiling, a sheetrock wall without insulation. They said, sir, insulation's not in the budget. but installation costs you a hundred bucks a room. The whole thing is crazy. And they're at four. I think it's going to cost more than $4 billion when it's finished. But it would. No, but Joe, somehow we have to find out how this can happen. It's not the first time. How does this happen? Did the contractor make $3.5 billion? If the banking committee could take it over. I can't imagine that Tulade is taking money on construction. I can't. But it's possible. But we have to find out why is a job that should have cost $25 million costing billions and billions of dollars? You know, I built the hotel. It's now the Waldorf. I sold it to Waldorf, and it's now the Waldorf. I built it for $201 million. It's a bigger building than the federal, and it was hotel rooms with bathrooms and, you know, partitions. And it's much more expensive to build a hotel room than it is a nice empty office space, right? And I built that for $201 million. This now is eight years ago or so. But think of it. This building, you look at it, it's a little building. It's over. I think it's going to cost over $400 billion. And here's the thing. It's going to be nothing compared to what it was. This is they spent $4 billion and it's nothing compared to what it was. It was beautiful. It had beautiful ceilings. They were all destroyed. They took them down. I don't know why. If the DOJ, though, if this goes forward with the Department of Justice and it delays him being confirmed, Kevin Warsh, it's kind of counterproductive for what you're trying to do in terms of changing the M.O. of the Fed up to this point. So I'm just trying to look for an off ramp to get. Well, it is and it isn't, Joe. You have to find out why a thing like that could happen, because if you have hundreds of projects like that, you know, very few are like this. But if you had hundreds of projects like that, you have to find out why that happens. I mean, because we obviously don't do it right. But, you know, we have some really people. We have some great people in government that can do jobs. I built under budget, ahead of schedule. I doing a ballroom now It a much bigger job than that and it going to cost depending on finishes like 300 300 million dollars It a much bigger job than that It's ahead of schedule. And I have lawsuits every week from all these people, all the do-gooders that, you know, that stop progress in our country. But I'm going to give Becky a chance, Mr. President, to get you. And you can have some extra time. I know my people said 20 minutes, but you can have some extra time. Oh, that's good. You can even put Andrew on the phone. You know, you told me Andrew would not be there. And I said, I don't care if he's there. That was last week. That was last week. You could even put Andrew on. Thank you, Mr. President. Joe made a comment to me. When he tried to get me on, he said, I promise I'll have Andrew Ross talking. He will not be there. He is there. And you can put him on. It's okay. I didn't say I had him. I said he's not in last week. But then you can't because you were on the West Coast. Thank you, Mr. President. Joe said you wouldn't be there. He's going to be so... But I don't mind if he's there. I like him. I respect him. He's just wrong on a lot of issues. There you go. Mr. President, thank you. Let's talk a little bit about what you. Hi, sir. Let's talk a little bit about what you expect from your next Fed president. There had been a lot of expectations. You've been very clear about wanting lower rates. But with the situation in Iran right now with higher oil prices, most people tell us that that's going to have to wait. The market itself is not anticipating lower rates or any rate cuts until at least the second half of this year. There's only a 41 percent chance or something of that, according to the market itself. Will you be disappointed if your new Fed chair, if he gets approved, doesn't cut rates right away? I would. But let's talk about Iran first. Iran, if you I'm looking at your numbers now as I speak, I mean, the market's up. We're going to be at 50,000. That's where we were just a little while ago when it started. And when I hit 50,000 on the Dow and 7,000 on the S&P, I said, well, I hate to do this to everybody, but I'm going to have to journey down to a place called Iran and not make sure they don't have a nuclear weapon because they will blow up the world. You want to see a bad stock market? Try blowing up the Middle East and then Europe, and then they come for us, right? And we're not going to let that happen. So I said to the people, I said to my people, they were all gathered, all these wonderful guys, Scott Bassett, the whole group, Howard, they were all doing a good job. I said, fellas, I got a little bad news for you. I'm going to put a little wrinkle in your numbers. Why, sir? We're going down to a place called Iran, and we're going to make sure that they never have a nuclear weapon because they'll use it to blow up. Because they're religious fanatics, and they will use that weapon to blow up the world, but they'll start with Israel in the Middle East, and we're not going to let that happen. And they said, wow, that's going to be bad. I said, yeah, it's going to hurt the market, and it's going to drive up the price of oil and whatever it is. But that's peanuts compared to what would happen if we let this happen. And I told them 47 years other presidents wanted to do it. They never had the guts, the courage to do it. I said, we have to do it. And they understood that very professional. They're great guys, great people. Jameson's doing such a great job, all of them. And so I said, we're going down and we're going to we're going to do our little thing. And we did. And we've, you know, knocked out. We've totally won the war. You know, if you read The New York Times, you think, oh, gee, what are we surrendering? We have totally beat them militarily and otherwise. I mean, I wish you could hear the conversations we have with them. We are victorious. If we left right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild. And they can't get the nuclear dust because it was obliterated by the B-2 bombers that went in. They never got the credit they should get. They've tried to get down there. You know, we have cameras from Space Force on it all the time. They've tried to get down. They can't get down. that place was obliterated. They did such a good job. The left tries to make it, you know, tries to demean all the time, like, oh, well, maybe it wasn't totally obliterated. It was, and they can't get it, or they would have tried to get it. But the fact is that we took this little journey. And if you would have told me that the Dow is almost, I'm looking at your thing, I mean, literally we're at 50,000. And if you would have told me that oil is at 90, as opposed to 200, I would be frankly surprised. And you know what is happening? Boats are finding other sources. They're going up to Texas and Louisiana. They're going to Alaska. They're going to other places. It's an amazing phenomenon. You know, when there are problems, people find out how to take care of things. And the straight's very important, but people have found out. I mean, you're taking a look. Look at your numbers right now. I'm looking at where the stock market's up, where it's, you know, look at that S&P. The numbers are what they were when we started this whole thing. I thought they'd be down 20% or down a very substantial amount. Even when it was down more a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised. I thought it would be down much more, and I thought the oil would be much higher. And I'm very happy to say that it wasn't. And when it's over, and it will end, when it's over, you know, they want it to be over immediately. And I just looked at a little chart. World War I, four years and three months. World War II, six years. Korean War, three years. Vietnam, 19 years. Iraq, eight years. I'm five months, okay? Five months. I would have won Vietnam very quickly. I would have, if I were president, I would have won Iraq in the same amount of time that we won, because essentially we've won here, okay? I mean, people can play games. The Democrats can say, well, we should have done better. no matter what if i did it in one week they should have said that they'd say we should have done better look at that as well i took it over in 45 minutes it was basically a 45 minute and by the way a very strong military country and we took it over in a day but let's be nice but we basically took it over in 45 minutes we took it over during the attack in 45 minutes uh... and they would say i'm surprised i haven't said it that you should have done it in 30 minutes it took too long you know So it's stuff. But we can't let traders, we can't let traders like Schumer put pressure on you where they say, we want out. Think how bad that is. I'm negotiating with these people. And they're telling us, we have to get out now, we have to get out now, we have to get out. And they were in a war for 18 years. They were in a war for, think of that, Vietnam, 19 years, Iraq, eight years. So I want to make a good deal. I'm not going to be rushed. I have all the time in the world. I want to make it not a good deal. I want to make a great deal. I don't want to do this, go through this. And, you know, we have I mean, if you look at this, what we've suffered in terms of losses, we lost 13 men. And that's terrible. I wish we didn't lose one. But if somebody would have said we've done this and obliterated that country, obliterated it and we lost 13 men, people would have said that's not possible to have done that. It's not possible. So we've done a great job. And I don't want to be rushed by people that are really treasonous, as far as I'm concerned. And it's just, you know, I watch this low IQ guy, Hakeem Jeffries, is a totally low IQ person. And he's always ranting and raving, oh, this war is so terrible. They shouldn't be saying that when we're in the midst of a negotiation, because it does hurt us somewhat. It gives the other side some hope. And I don't want them to have hope. Mr. President, I wanted to ask you about Anthropic, if I could, for a second, because this is a company that your administration has declared a supply chain risk. And I want to understand the determination for that. There's a view by some that it's political. But more importantly, at the same time that this is happening, reportedly, the NSA and other parts of the government are using Claude, which, of course, is the large language model of Anthropic. And how do you square that? Well, Anthropic is a group of very smart people, but they started telling our military how to operate, and we didn't want that. And they tend to be on the left, radical left, but we get along with them. In fact, they came to the office. They came to the White House a few days ago, and we had some very good talks with them. And I think they're shaping up. They're very smart, and I think they can be of great use. I like smart people. I like high IQ people, and they definitely have high IQs. You know, it's one of those things. And I think we'll get along with them just fine. So do you think a deal will be made so that Anthropoc will be allowed to be used inside the Defense Department in the future? We want the smartest people. Now, in the meantime, we replaced Anthropoc with somebody else. You know who they are. And they're very, very smart people. Sam Altman, the very, very smart group. We have a lot of smart groups. We have some brilliant people. We have the most brilliant people in the world. President Xi told me that. He said Silicon Valley. He called it Silicon Valley. during a conversation, have a great relationship with him. He said, you have the smartest people in the world. And we do. You take a look at what's happening with Jensen and all of these people. And it's a great honor to be working. I think Tim Cook, you know, I see he's retiring. I wrote a piece about him today and got to know him very well. He's a fantastic person, did an unbelievable job. And I say it respectfully, but if Steve Jobs had lived and ran the company, it might have done good, but it wouldn't have done, I think, nearly as good as the job Tim has done. And I got to work with him, so I really know it. I know what I'm talking about. He's a very unusual guy. He gets things done. Mr. President, yeah, we did read your entire true social post. I just want to return for one second and make an analogy here. You saw what inflation did to the Biden legacy and administration. So 22 percent price increases. By the time he was by the time he was leaving, it was down to about where it is now, about three percent. But not a single. It was down to five percent. It wasn't down. But but but not a single reason it was down was because I had won the election and it started falling after I won the election. And I started getting prices down from right after November 5th. If you needed to to prevent that from happening, let's say Chair Wuerstatt, for whatever reason, there's some type of energy shock. Who knows with the blockade? Let's say that things got too hot at that point. Just to make sure there was no inflation, would you allow him to raise rates or not cut rates? Would there ever be a period where you could see that that was something that a Fed chair needed to do? And if he said he might have an office right near you, he might not want an office right next to yours, sir. I don't know. After what happened to Jay Powell, you might want to be across in those new digs, maybe. Maybe I'd like him next to me. Actually, it's not a bad idea. Maybe Jay Powell did us a big service. I call him too late. He's just too late. He's always too late, except what it came to before the election. But that didn't quite work out well for him. So the answer is I want Kevin. I think Kevin's great. He's really central casting in a true sense. I think he's going to do a great job. I've been in favor of interest rate rises to stop inflation. I think it sort of is effective. But there's one thing, and nobody ever talks about it but me, unfortunately, so I'm sure it's not correct, but I think it is. We should have the lowest interest rate in the world. When I was a young guy growing up, we always had the lowest interest rate worldwide. We always did. And then 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it started where Switzerland and other people had lower rates than us. And I just had a thing with if you take a look at some of the, you know, let's call them like elite countries. They're only elite because we allow them to walk away with 30 billion and 40 billion dollars a year. But I don't do that so much anymore. I sort of put a clamp on that with the tariffs and charges that we charge them because they were elite because they're making billions and billions of dollars from the United States, larger and other reasons. And they run a good operation, but it's easy to run it good when you make that much money. Well, we have these massive deficits with you take a look at some of the countries. But Switzerland is one. They talk. Oh, yes, we are a small and brilliant. Well, they're brilliant because they pay us almost nothing. Now they pay a little bit. They should pay much more. We'll get that up a little bit. But if you take a look at Denmark, you take a look at all these countries, you think of them so good. They pay such a low interest rate. Well, if we charge them, and what happened with me is I charged some of them, and they squawked like you wouldn't believe it. They called them. We are a small country. All of a sudden I realized they're not elite. We're elite. We're being sucked dry. And we can't do that. And you'll see that. You know, we had a little setback with the Supreme Court. They said I can charge tariffs, but I have to do it a different way. And because of what they did, we have to pay back $160 billion. All they had to do was add one sentence, just one sentence. And that's you don't have to pay anything taken in thus far back. But because they didn't add, and by the way, it was a close call, too. There were justices that were powerful that I was right on the tariffs. but because we lost by just two votes, you know, just little vote, two votes, we have to pay back 165 billion. They could have with a little one sentence, you don't have to pay back tariffs that have already been received. You start from this point and you do it a different way. So we're doing it a different way. We gonna end up with the same actually we end up with bigger numbers actually but it a little more unwieldy unwieldy but it the way it been done uh but it so sad that the supreme court didn want to save our country with one sentence a hundred and sixty five billion dollars and we're giving a lot of that money back the people that hate our country so i'm not happy with the supreme court i'll be honest with you okay mr president on that topic there's a whole number of very large companies including apple and amazon and others that have not sought reimbursements yet for the tariffs. I mean, they haven't tried to collect refunds. And from what I understand, part of the reason that they have waited is because there is a worry about, frankly, offending you. Would you find it offensive for them to try to collect a refund? I think it's brilliant if they don't do that. I actually think if they don't do that, they got to know me very well. I'm very honored by what you just said. If they don't do that, I'll remember them. I will tell you that because I'm looking to make this country strong. Supreme Court could have helped us. Now they have birthright citizenship. They'll probably rule against us. No country in the world has it. It's horrible for our country. And I just see it. You know, I see some of these Republicans that are nominated by me asking real bad questions. And looks like maybe we're going to lose that one, too. Look what happened with NIL. They destroyed college sports, the court system, destroyed. So hard to put that one back, Humpty Dumpty. So hard to put that one back together. You know, we had 150 years of rulings and everything else, and they had such a great system. It was a scholarship system. You get free college if you're a good athlete. You get this, you get that. And it took care of every sport, fencing, not only football. Now it's all football, and the football is bringing down colleges because they're losing. Did you see Penn State lost $500 million last year? Florida State lost $450 million last year. They can't lose that kind of money. They don't make that kind of money. And the court system, a person that never had anything to do with sports, a very liberal-leaning Democrat, liberal, she decided that the sports system that was in place for 150 years is no good she never went to a game before it is no good and she said it's unconstitutional and unfortunately ncaa didn't even appeal it you know i've won a lot of cases on appeal to be honest with you we got some really bad judges but i've won a lot of cases on appeal some great people some we have fortunately some great people in the appellate courts and uh i've won cases they didn't appeal it and because of that college sports is a disaster right now. You have many people staying in college because they're going to make more money than they would if they went into baseball, Major League Baseball, or the NFL. They can make more money, you know, a seven-year freshman. We have a seven-year freshman. It's crazy what they've done. And this is a person that never went to a game, acknowledged, not familiar with sports, but she overruled everything. She said, it's all unconstitutional. Start all over again. And thank goodness we have people like Randy Levine and others that Coach Saban, who's so great. And we have a lot of people got together. But it's very hard to put that one together, I will tell you right now. It's a tough one, but they're going to do the best. But if the courts had common sense, they would have done something that could have been very easy to do and made everybody happy. If they had common sense, we would not be paying back almost $200 billion in tariffs so stupidly. In many cases, the enemy, the enemy is getting this money. The people that have hated the United States, we're giving them checks for billions of dollars. It's so sad to see. And it would be nice if the court system and the Supreme Court could have done things a little bit differently. Very sad. Actually, it's very sad. It's called no common sense. And look at the rulings we're getting on illegal immigrants. I mean, they're coming in murderers and everything else. We have a murder, many-time murder. It's really hard to get them out of our country. But we don't stop. Mr. President, just in terms of putting things together, there's a story earlier this week about United potentially wanting to buy American. Senators from both sides of the aisle have warned that that is a step too far. You should not be putting these two large airlines together. Have you thought about that proposition? I just heard it two days ago, and I know them both very well. I don't like it. No, I don't mind mergers. I think I'd love somebody to buy Spirit, as an example. You know, Spirit's in trouble. And I'd love somebody to buy Spirit. It's 14,000 jobs. And maybe the federal government should help that one out. You know, I tell my people. But with American, it's doing fine. And United's doing very well. I know the United people. They're doing very well. I don't like having them merge. It's just like all of these aerospace companies, defense companies and aerospace. companies. We used to have hundreds of them, and now we have like a very small number, and you get one bid, and it makes them lazy. And I came down very hard on them two, three months ago because it takes too long. We have the best equipment in the world. We have the best, you know, the Patriot systems, the Tomahawk systems. We have the best stuff in the world by far. You know, the other day during this crazy war, we had 111. There's a dispute as to 111 and 101. one, I want to be exactly accurate with you people, because otherwise you'll write stories that I exaggerated. We had 101 or 111. Nobody's able to get it right. But the result was the same missile shot at one of our great assets out in that area, a ship. And out of the 111 missile shot, every single one of them were shot down, going at 3000 miles an hour. Right. You know, Not easy. It's like a needle in a haste. They used to call it impossible to do. So they go 3,000 miles an hour. Every single one of them was shot down, mostly by patriots. But every one of them was shot down. Think of it. 111 missiles coming at you. And every one of those missiles is now lying at the bottom of the sea, like the Navy, like the Iran's Navy is lying at the bottom of the sea. It's amazing. But we got to make it faster. So I have a push. You know, Raytheon took billions of dollars, billions, many. I don't even want to tell you how many because I'm embarrassed for stock buybacks instead of buying plants. So I made it illegal for them to do that. No defense company. They have to build new plants. So we have plants. Raytheon now is building five. They're all building Lockheed's building three or four. They're all building plants because we need speed. We don't want, you know, you order a Patriot and they say, We'll have it to you, sir, in three and a half years. We want it in a week. And that's where we are now. They're building plants all over the country. And they're going to do well for doing it. We appreciate all your time. If you have time, I want to ask you one more question. Go ahead. And, you know, we have allies now in the Middle East. Maybe some are we can maybe count on more than allies in other parts of the world. That's true. They're much better allies than NATO, that I can tell you. The UAE asking the U.S. for some type of financial life. I don't know if it's a solvency problem. It's more of a liquidity problem. And I know we did, Secretary Besant did something with Argentina that worked out. Is there some type of swap possible, currency swap with the UAE to help if they need it? And do you think there would be backlash because it's such a wealth or perceived to be such a wealthy country? Is that under consideration? It is, but it's been a good country. It's been a good ally of ours. And, you know, these are unusual times. They were, more than anybody else, I mean, it was shocking because we thought that they'd shoot missiles at Israel, but not every other country in the area. And, you know, UAE got hit with 1,400 missiles. Now, fortunately, they had the Patriots, and they had a great defense, and they were able to shoot down most of them. But they did get hit hard. They were hit the hardest of the group, actually. and they're really led by incredible people. And yeah, I mean, I'm surprised because they are really rich. You know, they invested a year ago. I went there and I got them to invest $1 trillion in the United States. They're building a tremendous plant in a great state called Oklahoma, aluminum plant, melting plant, beautiful, incredible, top of the, it'll be the best anywhere in the world. You know, they're very good for this country. So yeah, if I could help them, I would. I mean, we're helping them much more with what we're doing with the war because, you know, the bully of the Middle East was Iran. Iran was a bully and bullied all of these countries around, and they threatened them all the time. And they threatened about the Hormuz Strait. They threatened sometimes. Some people call it the Strait of Hormuz, which is actually a more beautiful wording. But they threatened them all the time. And so we're really doing a big job there. Those five countries have been great, and Israel's been great. Israel's been a great partner for us. It's like they say we're the big brother, they're the small brother, but the small brother's been very helpful to us. You know, they've displayed great courage. If the UAE had a problem, I find it hard to believe, but if they had a problem, we would be there for them. Are the Saudis impatient now, or are they on the other side? Well, he's another great guy. You know, he gave me the famous line that I used a little bit. He said, a year and a half ago, sir, you were a dead country. Now you're the hottest country anywhere in the world. He said that to me, and it's true. We were a dead country. We had a guy that wasn't respected. We had a country that was laughed at. He couldn't walk up a flight of stairs. He could get about down. He couldn't walk up a flight. But he was falling all over the place. I have to be careful because if I do trip or fall, it's got to be the biggest. That's why when I get out of those planes, I walk nice and slowly. I'm not looking to set any speed records. But we had an embarrassing country. We had a country that was going to fail. This country would have failed if I didn't win this election. I've had many people tell me that. Many people that aren't necessarily of the Republican persuasion or MAGA. But we've had many people say that this country would have failed if I didn't win this election. You people wouldn't be looking at the numbers you're looking at right now. So the Saudis are not, are they taking it economically on the chin to the point where they want you to end this? Or are they saying finish the job? I think they're doing great. I spoke to him yesterday. He wasn't asking for anything. He wants to, they're fighting. You know, they're helping us. They're helping us on the straight. They're helping us all over. The ones that aren't helping are NATO. You know, NATO said to me, no, we'll send somebody as soon as it's over. I said, that's not really, you know, we don't need them. We'll never need them, actually. They'll need us. They need us desperately because they're a paper tiger. But I've said that. By the way, I've said that for a long time. Before I was in politics, I used to say it. I was not in politics, but I sort of enjoyed it, and I liked watching things. So I always said they were a paper tiger. And Europe has to straighten themselves out. Between energy and immigration, they have to straighten themselves out, or they're not going to have a Europe anymore. We could talk NATO, but I know you've obviously got a lot to do. We will be watching for any true social posts about the negotiations, whether you hear what's happening. But thanks for all your time this morning, Mr. President. We greatly appreciate it. Well, thank you. And, Becky, thank you. And, Andrew, I'm glad you were on the phone. I'm really glad. Even though Joe totally misrepresented, I don't mind that at all. Okay? Thank you, Mr. President. We'll talk soon. Good to hear your voice. He's a kidder. Kidders like the kid. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll talk to you, too. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts. That's Squawk Pod for today. Thank you for listening. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin weekday mornings on CNBC, starting at 6 Eastern and going all the way until 9. To get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears, Follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear. Thanks, guys. What made you confident that you could do something that hadn't been done before? I have no fear of failure. Trailblazing women changing the game. One of my favorite pieces of advice, think about what your boss's boss needs. Leadership can look in many, many different forms. It really does come down to just trusting yourself. Life is short and you just got to think big to accomplish big things. Julia Boorstin hosts CNBC Changemakers and Power Players. New episodes every Tuesday, wherever you get your podcasts.