this saturday the first 100 days of ulysses grant's presidency. he was a famous civil war general that won the white house in 1868. his campaign slogan was let us have peace. issues included reconstruction, the payment of civil war debt, civil rights and the fight against the kkk. watch first 100 days saturday at 7:00 p.m. eastern on american history tv on c-span2. >> in the oval office president donald trump signed two new executive orders. one stops federal funding to schools that have a covid vaccine mandate in place for students while the other creates the national energy dominance council which will be chaired by interior secretary doug burgum.

pres. trump: thank you very much for being here. we have largely an energy group today. we are looking to be energy dominant. before we do that we will be signing an executive order having to do with covid and schools. >> this first executive order prohibits federal funding for covid-19 vaccine mandates in schools. pres. trump: they want to clear that up, the discrepancy. >> any schools that require students to be vaccinated with a covid-19 shot, there is no more federal funding. pres. trump: ok.

ok. that solves that problem. >> will the department of education have to handle that? pres. trump: yes, it will go through the department of education. >> can i make one, mr. president? as a father of nine, thank you. we should have parental freedom to sign up for what vaccines our kids take as opposed to school systems and governors forcing them on the people who love these kids the most so thank you for signing that. pres. trump: thank you. people wanted that badly. >> here is an executive order establishing the national energy dominance counsel. that will be chaired by the secretary, mr. bergen, and the vice chair, chris right.

this will reduce costs in respect to energy, establish american independence with energy and unleash energy dominance. pres. trump: thank you. this is a big deal. we have more energy than any other country and that we are unleashing it, to put it nicely. i would like to ask doug, you will be heading it up, would you say a few words. >> good afternoon. president trump wisely understood that under the biden administration there was a war against american energy and today that war has officially ended. president trump on day 1 declared a national energy. . emergency under the biden administration it restricted the production of oil and gas. production is still coming. when you take 625 million acres of land out of production possibilities in an executive order you are restricting the balance sheet of america.

today this is unleashed. the national energy dominance counsel will be made up of the folks standing beside me here, other cabinet leaders and many more. they represent president trump's wise decision that we need a whole of government approach. the biden administration had a whole of government approach against and now we need to turn that 180 degrees. from the gulf of america up to alaska, we have amazing resources in this country and we have not gotten a return. many of these are on public lands. the interior has 500 million acres of substance. offshore close to 2 billion acres. that balance sheet is the biggest balance sheet in the world and it has been completely underutilized. everyone knows we have $36 trillion in debt as a country

but nobody knows how many hundreds of trillions of dollars of assets we have an president trump asked us to get a return on investment. we will have prosperity at home with lower prices. the wars we have been engaged in , our allies have been fighting have been funded by the oil sales of our adversaries. we have the opportunity. we are also in an ai arms race with china. the only way we win that is with more electricity. too much intermittent unreliable, not enough, shutting down the baseload we have. president trump will reverse that and that will allow us to win the ai arms race, which is the most important thing we have to do relative to our future. i want to say thank you to president trump and my fellow members. i will kick it over to the vice chair, the secretary of the department of energy. >> thank you. today is a great day for our country.

the secretary laid out so many of the problems the last four years. if you put barriers in front of energy, you make it more expensive, less reliable, harder to do business and harder for our consumers to pay their bills. with this action from our president we have authority across the government to lean in and fix these problems. this morning i signed our first lng export license, un-pausing the pause on the action. it will be on the gulf coast of louisiana and is now ready to go. it will be a large construction project for american workers and draw demand for more american energy production that will be shipped overseas to our allies. many more to come. we are working aggressively to roll back that have made appliances more expensive for americans. dishwashers that take two hours

long and do not get your dishes clean -- nobody likes that. that is about standing in the way. with president trump and our new energy dominance counsel there are so many things we can do to make american lives better, bring down costs and growth opportunities. i will kick it over to a fellow member of the council, the administrator of the epa. >> i am honored to be serving on the energy dominance counsel. epa is doing its part to power the great american comeback. president has been clear it wants epa to do its job. we are insisting and making america the ai capital of the world. we are pursuing permitting reform and helping to bring back american auto jobs. this is the mandate of the american public, the trump mandate. it was clear and the guidance from president trump when he

asked me, thankfully, for the opportunity for us to serve together in partnership to unleash energy dominance. this is a moment we must meet. to that end, it is important to note the prior biden-harris epa issued a waiver to california for tailpipe emissions. this was a rule that should have been submitted to congress. we will submit it to congress and congress will have the opportunity to make the waiver go away. we will do everything in our part to help the american people to make life in america more affordable. the golden age of american success is upon us. if you are excited about the last three weeks, that was just a taste of the main event, the entree to come, the next four years being the greatest term in the history of the american presidency. with that i would like to introduce sean duffy. >> thank you for the work on dishwashers. we use more water to wash our

dishes before we put them in the dishwasher. we are not saving water. i am joining the epa. we have introduced our rules to look at. we are looking at how much it costs for end-users when they put gas in their car. the biden standards are costing billions of dollars in taxes and carbon credits, which drive up the cost of vehicles. we will remedy that, rectify it and make sure we bring down the cost of a car. per your direction we will move forward with a permitting process for the texas deepwater port. making sure we can move energy in and out of the country. that was held up for five years. it was stonewalled. bureaucrats got in the way. we are now moving forward with

that. pres. trump: thank you. >> the nanny state, you are feeling the end of the nanny state. from straws made of paper to regulation endlessly harming americans and holding us back, it slows down our production and manufacturing, which we were talking about with the prime minister of india. it will go away. we will care about american spirit the trump administration and this president cares about americans and you will feel it change. you will feel the price of energy coming down. you will feel an explosion, the golden age of manufacturing of america has always been there, it has just been stifled by regulation at that time is over. >> mr. president i just want to

say you have built such an incredible team. as secretary and the chairman, they have been working on this their whole life. i expect you to see action as early as next week that will shock people how good it is for americans. pres. trump: thank you very much we are also working on a project that has been under wraps for 20 years. everyone wanted it, it has been held up by new york. it is a pipeline that will bring down the energy prices in new york and all of new england by 50%, 60 percent, 70%. it should have been done years ago. we will be speaking to new york. new york is the biggest beneficiary because their energy costs are very high. all of the governors want this to happen. i think it will happen. it is something we would rather

not have to go eminent domain, we will have to if we need to in new york. this will bring down energy prices in new england by numbers that no one can even believe, probably 50%, 60%, maybe more. it is a terrible situation. we will get this done and we will have it done. once we start construction we are looking anywhere from nine to 12 months. it will go very rapidly. the other thing i would like doug to mention, the 635 million acres biden so viciously took out of our net worth, if you look at it from the standpoint of a company, you talk about net worth -- they have destroyed our net worth. it will be back as of this afternoon. doug, did you mention all of the millions of acres he just handed back? >> the executive order by

president biden that wiped out these trillions from our balance sheet, president trump signed an executive order instructing me to un-ban the ban and that has been accomplished and those are back on the balance sheet. the 600 million acres that were banned. 625 million acres is 1/3 the size of the lower 48 that was taken off the balance sheet. it is back on now. president trump cares about the american people. these lands belong to the public, not washington bureaucrats. we will make sure to get a return on investment. pres. trump: the amount of money he took off our balance sheet was -- nobody has ever seen anything like it. . he did that in the last few days of the administration. he just wiped it out -- 635

million acres. if you sit down and look at is a major part of the ocean. he just gave it away and took it away. fortunately it was not done with an act of congress. we did it with a very abbreviated, quick and legal procedure. it is now back on our balance sheet and part of our country. what they did was so horrible. it was a terrible thing to do. unbelievable thing to do. they mention to dishwashers, sinks and showers, we are going to get rid of the restrictions. some places have so much water they do not know what to do with it. people buy a house on the turn on the sink and water barely comes out. they take a -- a shower and water barely comes up. everybody was happy and these people came in and restricted it again. we are going back and we will

get it approved by congress. for four years it is good but we will get it permanently taken care of. again, very environmentally friendly. when somebody turns on a sink to wash their hands or presses the button for a dishwasher and there is barely enough water -- i mean, there is no water. they press the button 10 times. they run it 10 times. it ends up costing a lot more. i know you are working with that. where are we on that? >> we are working closely with the department of energy. we are overhauling the water standards that are there to update them for the american people to bring down cost of living and combat inflation at just pursue common sense. pres. trump: good. we have more oil and gas than anywhere in the world. ronald reagan could not do it,

no president was able to do it, i got it. the first week in office the biden administration terminated it. probably bigger than saudi arabia. it is of that size or bigger. we hit gold. i call it liquid gold. we hit gold. for whatever reason they terminated it. we were ready to start utilizing it. this could take care of all of asia energy-wise. very close to japan. japan wants to be our partner with a pipeline going into the ships. they expressed tremendous interest. started prime minister modi of india. both prime minister modi and the prime minister of japan are both very good people. they said we could not make a deal, we conducted energy. you wanted what was going on with our country. they could not make a deal to get any energy from the biden administration.

there was nobody to deal with, they did not know how to go about it and they are happy we are here. we will benefit our taxpayers and our country. i want to thank everybody for coming. this is a big bill. this will be energy dominant. we will be energy dominant like nobody else. this is not even discuss all of the electricity we will be producing for all of the ai plants. they need double the electricity at least. you take all of our electricity that we have all over the country, just for ai to do it right and win that war, which we are leading by a lot because of what we have done over the last few weeks, if you take all of it, we have to double our electricity needs just for the ai. that is not a the other technologies. it is a real honor to sign this bill. we will also work on cafe standards. we will make that whole

situation back into reality very quickly, having to do with cars. thank you very much. in two weeks we will have another one. yesterday was very big. reciprocal tariffs, very big. i explained it to the prime minister of india, prime minister modi, very good man, india's tariffs are among the highest. i said we were the lowest. just about the highest. there are others as high but not much higher. i said from now on what we do is when you charge us, we charge you. it is very simple. you can go as high as you want. whatever you charge us, we charge you. i would not say they were thrilled to hear that but that is the way it is. tariffs is a beautiful word. fourth most beautiful.

>> not undermining the dollar. pres. trump: the brick stations. i think that is breaking up rapidly. we said if they will do anything to undermine the dollar -- that includes china. i do not even know if they are a member of bricks. they had a few nations get together to play cute and i said we will put a 100% tariff on each of those nations. the near thought of saying that, i think it is broken up. that would be a terrible thing for our country and would be bad for the world. they wanted to undermine the dollar. six nations got together and wanted to undermine the dollar. that did not work out too well. it will not happen. we are getting along with a lot of nations. there is a lot of respect for the united states. we gained the respect we should have but we have also done things to deserve it. we freed up our country.

this is basically energy dominance. it will be environmentally clean , environmentally wonderful. taxes will be very reasonable. we will make more money than anybody has ever made with energy. we have more energy than anyone else and it is clean energy -- clean and beautiful energy. we are lucky. i call it liquid gold under our feet and we will utilize it. this is a very big bill. i have a talented group of people behind me. this gentleman was the number 1 man in the whole oil industry. there is nobody like him. chris wright. doug made a tremendous fortune in technology and said i will run for the governorship. he loves the state of north dakota. he did and he made it so energy powerful -- i think you are more proficient at energy than

technology but what do i know -- this guy, everybody knows him. sean has been a fast study on transportation. he has learned a lot over the last few months. he has really been great. howard, one of the great companies, it was completely wiped out other than a few people left and he rebuilt the company into a bigger, better company. cantor fitzgerald is one of the top companies on wall street. he literally watched the plane go into the world trade center. amazing story. that alone was an amazing story. he was delayed because his wife insisted that he finally after years take his child to school. he took his child to school that one day -- normally he would be in the building at 6:00 in the morning -- you owe your wife and child a lot.

his wife insisted he take his child to school. for five years he did not do it, he was horrible, what kind of a father was e? ok, i will do it. he was driving down at 8:43 or whatever the time was and he saw the plane go into the side of the building. he occupied the top three floors of the world trade center. you know what happened. he lost 100% -- his whole company was there. he rebuilt his company, step-by-step, over eight years and became bigger and stronger and he gave a tremendous amount of profit to the families of the people who died, which he did not have to do. now he is working with us. he did an incredible job. anyone in that world, they know howard very well. i'm honored to have him running commerce.

he will be incredible. he loves the country. lee was a great lawyer, great congressman, very successful person as a lawyer. and congressman. he knows a lot about the environment and cares about the environment. very happy that you joined. he was with me from the beginning. i have always been with him. kevin, everybody knows kevin. he is fantastic. you and lindsay, you and your team of incredible. the job you have done brian, do you have a question? >> growing up on the texas gulf coast, the elegy that you mentioned, what is the potential for jobs or growth in that area? that part of the country, southwest louisiana, texas. >> potentially simply

tremendous. 12 years ago united states was the biggest importer of natural gas in the world, and we had natural gas prices two or three times higher than they are today, but with entrepreneurs across texas and across our great country, we are now today the largest net exporter of natural gas in the world, and so much of the world is depending upon -- natural gas is the fastest growing energy source. it has been for 50 years. we were the driver of that, and that we paused. we stopped our ability to grow natural gas exports. the japanese and indian government expressed distress about that. i think they are thrilled to see the actions of this president. saying america is open for business. we have the energy, we have the huge investment opportunities

and job opportunities. all of those surrounding communities lifted up by that war production here, and as we produce more production at scale, that not only allows us to export, but it becomes more efficient and allows us to drive down the cost for domestic consumers as well. pres. trump: i will say this, that this all started eight years ago when i got elected. we were doing this, not to the extent that we were doing it now, but we were doing this that we became number one in oil and gas by far, and we were number three, even-numbered four. and then they pulled way back in the price is starting going through the roof, and then they went back to my plan, and by that time the prices had already gone up, so they really disrupted it, but now we will take it to a new level. it will be amazing. also, it is very powerful. clean coal.

we have more coal than everybody. we have beautiful, clean coal. china is opening up a call plan every month. germany is opening up a call plan every two months. it is probably the most powerful form of energy in terms of generation of electricity, and we will utilize our good, clean, beautiful coal and oil and gas. we have more than everybody of everything, and we will take advantage of it, and i appreciate everybody being here. >> can i ask you about what is happening in an. senator wicker shepherded secretary hegseth through nomination. he said it was a rookie mistake for secretary hegseth to outline what would or would not happen with ukraine's membership. pres. trump: roger is a very good friend of mine and pete has been doing a great job.

you are telling me something i have not heard about. >> were you aware of what secretary hegseth was going to say in his speech at nato? pres. trump: generally speaking, yes. i will speak to roger and pete and find out. >> for all forms of energy? pres. trump: for all forms of energy. >> and the pipeline. the constitutional pipeline in new york? pres. trump: yes. they were trying to get it for 20 years. what it means for upstate new york and everywhere in new york and also other states, but in particular new england. new england will cut the energy prices and big cuts in new york, too. but cut the energy prices literally in half. we have the permits and just about everything we need for a new york permit.

the energy prices would come down so far. and it is a lot of jobs for new york. a great thing new york. everybody wants it. we will be meeting with the various governors of new york and the other governors, too. we can have it built in nine months. it is all set. we have almost all of the permits. almost all of the permits. >> you are prioritizing energy dominance. you have also prioritized trade balance. the oil industry is worried about the steel tariffs. how will you balance that? pres. trump: are you talking about steel or aluminum? i saved the steel industry with tariffs because china was dumping massive amounts of steel , others also, but he china. we took in $600 billion worth of tariffs. no other president has literally gotten $.10 from china.

hundreds of billions of dollars came in from china. and they understood it. they understood what i did. the dumping stopped. had i not done that you would have not one steel mill operating in this country. and we need steel. there are some things you have to have and steel is one of them, for military, etc. i think steel will be very strong. it will go back to being really powerful. we saved it. we were talking about u.s. steel last week. u.s. steel would have been totally closed. we saved it. i think it will become very profitable. the tariffs will save a lot of industries. >> if the japanese company that is interested in u.s. steel wants to take a minority stake -- pres. trump: minority stake i would not mind greatly.

but what they are doing right now is they will be investing in debt and other things. we did not want to let u.s. steel go to a foreign country. u.s. steel was the greatest company in the world for a period of 15 years. it was the big deal 80 years ago. psychologically we cannot think about letting that happen. but what is going to happen, you see it in the stock price, with the tariffs, u.s. steel will be a real powerhouse again. >> vice president vance's speech to the conference has ruffled quite a few feathers in europe. pres. trump: what did he say to ruffle them? >> statements about migration in europe. do you believe european leaders have a fundamentally different view of the world? pres. trump: i heard his speech, you are talking about jd's speech. >> yes, sir. pres. trump: i heard his speech

and he talked about freedom of speech and it is true in europe. it is losing. they are losing their wonderful right of freedom of speech. i see it. i thought he made a very good speech, a brilliant speech. europe has to be careful. he talked about immigration. europe has a big immigration problem. take a look at what has happened with crime and what is happening in various parts of europe. i thought his speech was well received. i have heard very good remarks. >> yesterday you mentioned you thought ukraine's aspirations were one of the reasons the war broke out. who do you blame for the war? ukraine or russia? pres. trump: there are a lot of people to blame. all i can say very simply if i were president that war would never have happened. you know what else would not have happened? the middle east would not have been blown up and october 7 would not have happened. those two areas, you would not have inflation, october 7, you would not have russia and ukraine fighting, none of those

things would have happened if i was president. >> you mentioned auto tariffs the other day. when did you plan to unroll them? pres. trump: sometime around april 2. i would have done them on april 1, believe it or not. [laughter] i am a little superstitious. literally, we had a plan for april 1 and i said let's make it april 2. do you know how much money that costs? that costs a lot of money that day. we will do it on april 2. is that right. >> that is right. >> the lead prosecutor in eric adams' case resigned today. saying anyone who did not press for would be a coward. what is your reaction to that end indication politics were in play? pres. trump: i am not involved in that but i would say if they had a problem -- these are mostly people from the previous administration so they were not going to be there anyway. they would have been gone or dismissed. they know on tuesday they are

all being -- the whole country is doing. what you do is you come in and you put new people in. when you say resigned, they would be gone anyway. i know nothing about the individual case. they did not feel it was much of a case. they also felt it was unfair with the election. i would know that better than anybody. i was weaponized more than any human being in the history of the world and i won the election in a landslide, all seven swing states, winning the popular vote. the people got it. it was weaponized. i was weaponized literally weeks before the election. but i think there is also something to be said -- i read that -- something to be said for what they were doing. it looked to me to be political. but why didn't they bring this up 4, 5, 6 weeks ago? whenever it happened. they just sat around and did not complain and then all of a seven day complained.

they know they are being dismissed, anyway. that is called politics, i guess. >> earlier this week you predicted that all hell would break loose if hamas did not release more hostages. what do you expect to happen tomorrow? pres. trump: i do not know what would happen tomorrow at 12:00. if it was up to me i would take a hard stance. i do not know what israel will do. i watched the last people come out. and i looked at it before and after. one guy was big, strong and healthy. he was a little bit overweight. he is not overweight anymore. he looks like he came out of the holocaust. he looks like a holocaust picture. they have been treated badly. a young lady, her head was blown off. she put up her hand and it wiped out her fingers and a lot of her hand. now i would take a different

stance. but it depends on what bibi is going to do. it depends on what israel will do. and now i understand hamas has totally changed. they want to release hostages again. this started by them saying they will not release the hostages. i said good. you have until 12:00 on saturday to do it. we did not hear anything. then all of the sudden, two days ago they said they decided they would release the hostages. i think they should release all of the hostages. remember, they are probably as bad as they looked -- i do not like to say that but they looked real bad four days ago, five days ago -- the young ladies of -- that came out were treated

very badly. you do not know what happened but i do. they were treated very badly. as bad as they looked to the ones who fall that will look a lot worse -- the ones who follow will look a lot worse. they probably did not want to release. obviously they changed their mind. 12:00 tomorrow and then yesterday they said they are going back to releasing. this all started by them saying they would not release anymore hostages and then yesterday they said they will release hostages. but i think they should release all of the hostages. >> 75,000 workers took this deferred resignation. it is a little bit short of the 5%-10% goal. will you have to make up for the rest of that number? pres. trump: that is 75,000 more than we would have had. a lot of people got used to staying home and working. i wonder if they had other jobs or other things. they have a lot of problems. 75,000 is a lot of people, and

we paid them well. we gave them a lot of months of severance pay, if you call it that. i think you will probably have some more. it is a tremendous saving for our government. we want to downsize government and make it better. >> i understand you had a phone call with keir starmer. pres. trump: i did. i just signed a letter to him. he asked for a meeting and i agreed to a meeting. we have a lot of things going on. i just accepted his asking. i think he wants to come next week or the week after. it was his request. not mine. i met him twice already. we get along very well. thank you very much, everybody. thank you very much. appreciate it. >> thank you, press.

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now app. announcer: book tv every sunday on c-span two features leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books. at 12:20 p.m. author of "from these roots" traces are bloodline to an enslaved man who is in one of the first ever photos of enslaved people from africa. she also talks about reclaiming a daguerreotype of him. in honor of presidents' day weekend we will look back at presidents as authors. jimmy carter, george w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush, and barack obama. i did :00 p.m. bill gates discusses his life and career and early influences inis memoir. at 10:00 p.m. eastern on "after words