Trump Marks 1 Year in Office at Briefing: 'An Amazing Period of Time'

President Donald Trump paid a visit to the White House daily press briefing Tuesday to mark the first anniversary of his second inauguration.

"It's been an amazing period of time," Trump told the briefing, which aired in full on Newsmax and the free Newsmax2 streaming platform.

"We have a book that I'm not going to read to you, but these are the accomplishments of what we've produced, all page after page after page, individual things.

"I could stand here and read it for a week and we wouldn't be finished, but we've done more than any other administration has done by far in terms of military, in terms of ending wars, in terms of completing wars, nobody's really seen very much like it."

After talking briefly about the "book" stack of accomplishments, Trump flipped through single-page posters of the "worst of the worst" criminals arrested by his year-one deportation force.

"The border is now secure," he said. "First time. Biden said you couldn't do it. You need legislation. I had no legislation. I said, 'Close the border.' Within one month, we had almost nobody coming in. Now, for the last eight months, nobody came into our country illegally.

"We have a lot of heart for people. They came in illegally, but they're good people and they're working now on farms and they're working in luncheonettes and hotels and all.

"We're looking to get the criminals out right now. And I think it's very important. I mean, every once in a while you see a story. We take somebody who should be out because they came in illegally. So in theory, they should be.

"But we're focused on the murderers,the drug dealers, the mentally insane."

Trump also hailed his administration's effort in slashing regulations and the government workforce, as well as his use of tariffs to reduce the trade deficit.

"We cut a record number of regulations," he said. "I promised to eliminate 10 old regulations for every one new regulation.

"Instead, we cut 129 regulations for each one added. We have so much wasted regulation, stupid regulations, regulations where they go by California, which is a disaster state with the governor [Democrat Gavin Newsom] that truly is doing a bad job.

"It's killing that state. If he ever ran the country, this country would be Venezuela very quickly."

He said more than 270,000 "bureaucrats" were removed from the federal payroll.

"We've slashed tremendous numbers of people off the federal payroll," he said. "Now, if you want to see some good numbers, I'll hire a million people.

"We cut millions of people off the federal payroll. I don't like doing that. But the good news [is], I don't feel badly because they're getting private-sector jobs and they're getting sometimes twice as much money, three times as much money.

"They're getting factory jobs, they're getting much better jobs and much higher pay. But all I have to do is say, like, you know what the Democrats do all the time, they hire a million people, and then they hire another million, another million.

"They load it up and it says, Oh, they only have a 3% unemployment rate. It's a fake rate. So with us, we're proud of the fact that we cut so many because, again, I don't want to cut people, but when you cut them and they go out and get a better job, I like to cut them."

Trump hailed the use of tariffs in slashing the U.S. trade deficit by 77% and said U.S. exports are up by more than $150 billion.

"The trade deficit is down," he said. "And that doesn't include the last month, where we had our best month. We slashed the trade deficit by an incredible 77% in one year with no inflation, something that everyone said could not be done.

"If you slashed it by 1%, that was good. Again, we did that with tariffs. ... We secured historic trade deals to reduce barriers on U.S. exports.

"American exports are up by more than $150 billion this year. People said, Oh, we're not exporting. All we do is buy. If you keep buying, you're not going to have a country for very long. So we increased exports by more than $150 billion."

He also credited his use of the National Guard to reduce crime in Washington, D.C.

"We have virtually no crime in D.C. anymore," he said. "We could do the same thing with Chicago. You know, we brought Chicago down 25%, even though we just had a minimal crew there.

"We brought Wisconsin down. We brought Minnesota down, way down, even though everything's a fight."

He announced that "the largest reduction" nationwide "in violent crime on record" occurred during the first year of his second term.

"So, this just came out," he said. "Nationwide, over the last 11 months, achieved the largest reduction in violent crime on record, including the largest one-year drop in murders ever recorded. Almost 2,000 lives were saved.

"That's despite the fact that we took in criminals under the leadership of the Democrats and Joe Biden.

"Motor vehicle theft is down by 100,000 vehicles nationwide. That's another nationwide motor vehicle theft is was out of control, and now it's very much in control."