Trump takes questions on Russia and more

Mr. President, switching to Venezuela for a second. Have you checked back with President Maduro? I mean, is your pressure campaign working, and do you think-- how is he responding to your demand that he leave the country? You tell me. Is it working? It's not a pressure campaign. It's much beyond that, I think. But I spoke to him briefly. Just told him a couple of things. We'll see what happens with that. Venezuela sends us drugs, but Venezuela sends us people that they shouldn't be sending. They sent us-- they emptied their prisons into our country. They sent us killers, murderers. They sent us drug dealers at the highest level. They sent us gang members. They sent us people from their mental institutions. They emptied their mental institutions into our country, and so did other countries because we had stupid people running this country, really stupid people. And I think probably you had some stupid ones, and you had some smart ones, but they were bad people, too, because not all of them were stupid. You can't cheat on elections like they did and be stupid. [REPORTER CHATTER]

Did you talk to him a second time or just that one time? What's that?

Mr. Maduro, did you speak to him again? No, I didn't.

Mr. President, if you do find--

When you spoke with Mr. Witkoff and with Mr. Kushner-- Last night.

--last night, did they give you the sense that President Putin still wants to end the war, still wants to make peace? Yeah. He would like to end the war. That's what they-- that was their impression. Now, whether or not--

Do you believe him? That was their impression, yeah. Their impression was that they'd like to see-- he would like to see the war ended. I think he'd like to get back to dealing a more normal life. I think he'd like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he'd like to make a deal. We'll see what happens.

Mr. President, if the boat strikes-- if it is found that survivors were actually killed while clinging on to that boat, should Secretary Hegseth, Admiral Bradley, or others be punished? I think you're going to find that this is war, that these people were killing our people by the millions, actually, if you look over a few years. I think last year, we lost close to 300,000 people were killed. That's not mentioning all the families. Have you seen what happens with the families of not only the people killed, the people that are trying to get their son or their daughter off of this poison that they've been fed? I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats. And very soon, we're going to start doing it on land, too, because we know every route. We know every house. We know where they manufacture this crap. We know where they put it all together, and I think you're going to see it very soon on land also. Yeah, please.

So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the initial strike? No, I support the decision to knock out the boats. And whoever is piloting those boats-- most of them are gone, but whoever are piloting those boats, they're guilty of trying to kill people in our country. Yes, please. House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Jack Smith to ask about his investigation of you. I wondered for a deposition, I wondered if you'd prefer to see that as a hearing so that the American public can see the questions and the responses more easily? I'd rather see it probably at a hearing. Look, Jack Smith is a thug. He's a failed prosecutor. He's a bad man. He's a bad-- he's an evil man. He hurt a lot of people. Forget about me. I do this stuff, but I got indicted many times by a guy that they were dismissed. He's a bad guy. He's a sick man. There's something wrong with him, actually. I think Jack Smith is a sick man. There's something really wrong with him. I'd rather see him testify publicly because there's no way he can answer the questions. But Biden knew this was going on. Kamala knew it was going along. And there's a lot of things happening right now that they don't like. One of the things is the autopen. Everything he signed almost, with the exception of the pardon of his wonderful son, Hunter, just about everything he signed was not signed by him. He had no knowledge of it. He didn't know what it was. People sitting around the beautiful Resolute desk knew exactly what it was, and those people are guilty, in my opinion, of a major crime. Everything that was signed by that autopen, he-- the man operating the autopen-- and I'm sure there are more than one because I think some of the people can operate it themselves. Some of the high-level people operated themselves. They would just go in and sign his name with an autopen onto very important documents, not only pardons but policy. Maybe CAFE standards, as an example. Who signed CAFE? If you ask Biden, what's a CAFE standard, he would have absolutely no idea. He'd say, where is the cafe located? [LAUGHTER] The guy didn't know anything. Look, that just shows you what a rigged election can be. But you understand what I'm saying. Thank you. [REPORTER CHATTER]

You've had conversations. I did, with Jensen.

Right. So smart man. In your conversations with him, have you kind of given a sense of where you are with export controls and the types of chips that Nvidia can give to China? He knows. He knows very well. He's done an amazing job. Nvidia, very good. Yeah?

Mr. President, when do you expect for phase two of the Gaza peace plan to be implemented? Well, it's going along well. They had a problem today, I understand, with a bomb that went off. Hurt some people pretty badly. Probably killed some people. They're telling me it just happened. But it's going on very-- we have peace in the Middle East. People don't realize it. We have tremendous support, 59 countries. There's tremendous support. But we'll-- phase two is moving along, yeah. It's going to happen pretty soon.

Mr. President, did you speak with House Republican leadership about your decision to pardon Congressman Henry Cuellar? And are you concerned that you made a vulnerable Democrat perhaps less vulnerable with that decision? It didn't matter. He's a respected person. He was treated very badly because he said that people should not be allowed to pour into our country, and he was right. He didn't like open borders. He was on the border. He represents-- a very respected man. He represents the people on the border, and he saw what was happening. And as soon as he made that statement, I then said, I'll bet he gets indicted, and that's what happened. I put out my Truth from that-- I did a Truth. Wonderful Truth. We love Truth. But what happened is he got indicted for speaking the truth, and his wife got indicted, Imelda. And that's sort of a first. Usually, they leave the wives alone, right? Don't they, congressman? Typically they indict somebody, put them in jail for the rest of his life, but the wife can just sit home and cry, or she'll find a new man. A lot of times, they find a new man. Makes them much happier. In fact, a lot of times they like that man better than the one that's in jail. Go ahead.

Mr. President, thank you. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, is saying that he's actually proud to have the largest Somali community in the country, and his police chief-- Well, he's a fool.

Well, his police chief is also saying-- I wouldn't be proud to have the largest Somalian-- look at their nation. Look how bad their nation is. It's not even a nation. It's just people walking around, killing each other. Look, these Somalians have taken billions of dollars out of our country. They've taken billions and billions of dollars. They have a representative, Ilhan Omar, who they say married her brother. It's a fraud. She tries to deny it now, but you can't really deny it because, yeah, it just happened. She shouldn't be allowed to be a congresswoman, and I'm sure people are looking at that, and she should be thrown the hell out of our country. And most of those people-- they have destroyed Minnesota. Minnesota, you have an incompetent governor. You have a crooked governor. He's crooked as hell, but he's incompetent. Walz, he should be ashamed. That beautiful land, that beautiful state, it's a hellhole right now. And the Somalians should be out of here. They've destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her. She's always talking about the Constitution provides me with-- go back to your own country and figure out your constitution. All she does is complain about this country. Without this country, she would not be in very good shape. She probably wouldn't be alive right now. So Somalia is considered by many to be the worst country on Earth. I don't know. I haven't been there. I won't be there anytime soon, I hope. But what Somalia and what the Somalian people have done to Minnesota is not even believable. It's not even believable. And a lot of it starts with the governor. A lot of it starts with Barack Hussein Obama because that's when people started coming in. And you have to have people come in that are going to love our country, cherish our country. They want to kiss our country good night. They talk about our country. We want them to pray for our country. This is not the people living in Minnesota. And she's a disaster. She should not be-- and her friends shouldn't be allowed-- frankly, they shouldn't even be allowed to be congresspeople, OK? They shouldn't even be allowed to be congresspeople because they don't represent the interests of our country. Anybody else? [REPORTER CHATTER]

The automakers spent billions on meeting the Biden EV rules. Should they be able to recoup that somehow, given the change? And there's a question about-- No, I'm not doing it. No. I'm not letting them recoup. They're going to do just fine. You know how they recoup? From this point forward, they'll do very well.

Can you also talk about the USMCA and what you're thinking about renegotiating that with the automakers? Well, that's just an ongoing thing. It expires in about a year, and we'll either let it expire, or we'll maybe work out another deal with Mexico and Canada. But look, Mexico, and Canada have taken advantage of the United States, like just about every other country, in all fairness. It's not them. I'm not blaming them. But every country-- because we had stupid people running our country. We had a lot of stupid people running. That's why we have $38 trillion in debt. But the beautiful thing about the tariffs is we'll start paying off that debt. The money coming in-- they're finding money in our country now that they never knew existed. The other day, $30 billion. Where did it come from? I said, why don't you check the tariff shelf? They said, sir, that tariff hasn't started yet. It doesn't start till January. I said, no, it started two months ago. They called back. Sir, you're right. It was from tariffs. No, we have a whole different country. I hope the Supreme Court-- I pray that the Supreme Court understands the importance of the sensible-- really, I mean, this would be country threatening if something happened with regard to that. The people that brought that case are bad people. They're very bad people. They hate our country. They represent foreign countries, including China, but they represent-- and China is paying us a lot of money now in tariffs. But they represent people that really don't like our country much. And I know some of them, and they're scum. In my opinion, they're scum. They're absolute scum. And they're not suing for any good reason. They're just suing to see if they could stop it because they make money if this country does badly. But we're taking in trillions of dollars. We're stopping wars. We have great national security because of tariffs. And then to think that we have to even go and justify this? The reason a lot of these people-- I can tell you this. Maybe we would have had the political people. We wouldn't have these people without tariffs. The people that are up here from Stellantis and Ford and General Motors, great companies, including this gentleman. They wouldn't be here today if we didn't have tariffs. They'd be building their plants in Mexico and other places. They're leaving Mexico, and they're leaving Canada. They're leaving because they ripped off our country. They took our businesses away from us. And now because of tariffs, they're all coming back. So it's a great thing. Thank you very much, everybody. [REPORTER CHATTER]

That is President Trump taking questions from reporters from the Oval Office following announcement about plans to roll back fuel-economy standards. He covered a number of topics, including negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, strikes on suspected drug boats out of Venezuela, the use of the autopen, and pardoning representative Henry Cuellar, along with Somalian immigrants from Minnesota. So I want to bring in CBS News Senior White House and Political Correspondent Ed O'Keefe. Lots of different topics were covered here, Ed. What stood out to you in regards to talking about the strikes on drug boats or suspected drug boats in Venezuela? Two things. Before we joined, he was asked whether the Pentagon would be willing to release the classified video of those strikes that should be in existence because, of course, the president has posted video clips of some of these attacks himself. And he says, whatever we have, we'd certainly release. He was also asked whether he stood by the defense secretary and Admiral Frank Bradley, the commander of Special Operations Command, who have been called out in recent-- singled out in recent days for their leadership and oversight of at least one specific attack in September. And he said, I support the decision to knock out those boats and said nothing about, perhaps, not supporting the defense secretary or the admiral, suggesting that those operations will continue and should continue, in his view, because of the millions of Americans, in his view, who have been killed by the illegal drugs that those people were allegedly carrying towards the United States on those vessels. He called out the fact that, based on what he's been told so far, they had a reasonably good meeting with President Putin. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner did yesterday. And that, while the Ukrainians may be on board, it sounded like the president doesn't yet know all the details of Russia's position but that they're not necessarily coming along as quickly as the Ukrainians. And as you said, this was an event designed to announce that the Trump administration wants to roll back fuel standards for vehicles much lower than the aggressive standards that had been set in the coming years by the Biden administration. You saw there a handful of lawmakers who supported his decision to do this, a handful of auto executives as well who agree that, ultimately, this will drive down the cost for the American consumer, for businesses who are making vehicle purchases, and that the regulations that have been put in place by the Biden administration were too burdensome. One topic that, surprisingly, was not covered in that Q&A there with the president in the Oval Office was this report, set to be released tomorrow, from a watchdog group about use of the Signal app, that that report said that that use and allowing a reporter to be in on that chat, quote, "put American lives at risk." Have we heard anything from the White House about that report yet? I know it's not officially released. We have, and let me just pull it up again here for me. The White House essentially standing by, again, the secretary of defense, saying that this review "affirms what the administration has said from the beginning. No classified information was leaked, and operational security was not compromised, as demonstrated by the success of Operation Midnight Hammer and President Trump's numerous foreign-policy accomplishments this term. The president's entire national security team is doing great work advancing American interests while protecting sensitive information" Among other revelations in this report-- which is set to be officially released tomorrow but that details of which have been shared with CBS News and others. The inspector general report concludes that Secretary Hegseth jeopardized sensitive military information and could have endangered American service members when he shared those details in that Signal chat with a handful of senior administration officials and one journalist, of course, with TheAtlanticmagazine. The other thing that this report reveals, among other things, is that the secretary himself was not terribly cooperative, only shared a handful of his Signal messages with the inspector general, and, otherwise, they had to basically copy and paste the ones that TheAtlantic magazine had published itself as evidence. And that won't sit well with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have also struggled to get information out of the secretary and the Pentagon since he took over. Won't be pleased with the findings suggesting that, indeed, troops could have been put at risk with the information he was sharing. But as the report points out and as is true, if the secretary himself decides to, in essence, declassify this kind of information and share it, he has the right to do so. The issue is the way he was sharing it and with whom he was sharing it, that if it had gotten into the wrong hands, it could have put those troops at risk. And that's the finding that Hegseth's critics will seize on in the coming hours and days. Ed O'Keefe, thank you so much.