Fox Business News’ Edward Lawrence yesterday in the White House: “The Treasury Secretary this morning said there were defections among Iranian leadership. Are you aware of that? And is there anybody the U.S. can work with as a leader going forward?”
President Trump: “Well, we have a man named the Treasury secretary here, so maybe, maybe he wants to discuss it. Does anybody know? Do you know who he is? Central casting.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: “Yeah, Ed, we are seeing the defections at all levels as they’re starting to sense what’s going on with the regime. It doesn’t get reported here in the U.S. very well, but we are tracking them from the air. And the regime will probably collapse within itself. At Treasury, we’ve seen where they’ve wired their money out of the country. We’re coming for that. We’re going to get it back to the Iranian people.”
Lawrence: “Mr. President —”
Trump: “You’re seeing defections.”
Lawrence: “— on Israel —”
Trump: “There’s a lot of military defections, also. You have a lot of military defections in Iran. I don’t — hey, I don’t blame them.”
Lawrence: “Thank you, Mr. President. You talked to Prime Minister Netanyahu about attacking the oil and gas fields.”
Trump: “Yeah, I did, I did. I told him, don’t do that and he won’t do that. We didn’t discuss — you know, we do — we’re independent. We get along great. It’s coordinated. But on occasion, he’ll do something, and if I don’t like it, and so, we’re not doing that anymore.”
Lawrence: “And the last one, if I could, the Fed chairman told me yesterday that he plans to stay until the new Fed chairman is confirmed. And he also planned to stay on the board until the investigation of the Federal Reserve is done.”
Trump: “Well, he’s under investigation because he’s building a building for hundreds of billions of dollars more than it’s supposed to cost. The building you see over there is under budget and ahead of schedule. That’s the ballroom. The ballroom is a much bigger building. It’s a much more complex building than what he’s doing, and it’s at a fraction of the cost. Something is going on, whether it’s contractors. That’s what I do best in the world. I build. I build great buildings, I’ve always done it and I build them under budget and ahead of schedule. They could have four billion. This is a renovation job for $4 billion. And if you look at the building, it’s not even I don’t know if Kevin Warsh is ever going to be able to move into it. It’s been under construction for years. It’s the most expensive building ever built. Now, I know it’s gross incompetence because I happen to think he’s grossly incompetent today. Certainly, he should be lowering interest rates. All right. Certainly. Who would not lower them? But he’s stubborn and he’s got Trump derangement syndrome. But a lot of people have that. You know, it’s not a curable disease. But — but he’s also building — he should be lowering rates immediately. But he won’t do that because he’s he’s a stubborn, incompetent person, and that’s a bad thing. You know, when you’re stubborn and incompetent. I think it’s the worst combination. And he’s also not a smart person, but he’s building a complex over there that’s under his jurisdiction. He started it and it’s out of control. It’s billions of dollars for a little building. I could have done that building and made it beautiful for $25 million. 25 million. And it would have been beautiful. Look what I’ve done at the White House fixing it up. And I mean, the place was in bad shape. You see the floors and everything. It was in bad shape. I could have — I could have made that building beautiful for $25 million. They’re spending $4 billion. All right. So, it’s — there is criminality. Maybe it’s with the contractor, but — because I know more about contractors than any human being maybe that’s ever lived. But that contractor is a very rich man, whoever the contractor is. And we know, but whoever the contractor is, is an extremely rich man. He’s going to make. I mean, he could make billions of dollars. I don’t — I’m hearing numbers from three to $4 billion. That would make it the most expensive building on a square foot basis ever built in history. And you’re not even building a building. It’s a renovation. The exterior skin is staying. The steel is staying. The structure. So, all I want to do is bring out to the public that this guy is an incompetent — he’s a very incompetent guy and he may be a dishonest guy, but somebody dishonest because there’s no way that building can be three to $4 billion.”
Maybe his funniest line yet!
Q: "Why didn't you tell U.S. allies…about the war before attacking Iran?"
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 19, 2026
President Trump: "We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?" pic.twitter.com/esV9iyvMiV