President Donald Trump held a nearly two-hour-long White House press briefing on Tuesday, the one-year anniversary of his second inauguration.
Trump started the briefing at 1:48 p.m. Eastern and left the podium at 3:33 p.m. at the culmination of the one hour and forty-five-minute engagement with reporters in a jam-packed James S. Brady Press Briefing Room.
Near the top of the briefing, Trump touted arrests his administration is making in Minnesota, including “apprehending murderers, drug dealers, and a lot of bad people.” Trump displayed flyers featuring pictures of those who have been taken into custody, along with graphics reading “Minnesota Worst of Worst.”
“In California, it’s worse. In other states, it’s worse,” he said. “Now, Minnesota, the crime is incredible. The financial crimes are incredible.”
Trump touted the accomplishments of his first year back in office, after zoning in on Minnesota. Ending “Biden stagflation” and growing gross domestic product at warp speed were two areas of accomplishment the president highlighted during his marathon briefing.
“What we’ve done with growth is incredible. We created super-high economic growth, and America is booming. It’s booming,” he said.
The Atlanta Fed forecasts GDP to grow 5.3 percent in the fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, after a strong third quarter when the economy grew 4.3 percent.
“Fourth quarter, GDP is on track to pass, perhaps much more than 5 percent growth, and that’s despite the fact that we had a Democrat shutdown,” the president remarked.
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett predicted in November that the Democrat government shutdown would knock 1 percent to 1.5 percent off fourth-quarter GDP, as it was costing the U.S. an average of $15 billion per week. If the shutdown had not occurred, the growth would likely be even more robust in Q4.
Trump also spotlighted “$18 trillion” in investment commitments he has secured for the United States since his inauguration and noted how his tariff policies helped save a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, which he visited last Tuesday.
Tariffs also helped the president and his administration broker most-favored nation prescription drug deals, which he noted are slashing “drug prices by as much as 300, 400, 500, and even 600 percent.”
“To me, I think this might be the biggest thing of all,” Trump told reporters. “The fake news doesn’t want to write about it.”
After underscoring countless other achievements for more than an hour, Trump opened up for questions from reporters.
One reporter asked Trump how far he is “willing to go to acquire Greenland.”
“You’ll find out,” the president responded.
Trump shared early Tuesday morning a message he received from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who told Trump, “I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland.”
Trump sets out later Tuesday for Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum.
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