In town pool report 5 - Trump Oval Q&A part 2

Pool was ushered out of the Oval at 1247p ET

++

More from Trump Q&A rush quotes, check against stream

TACO/Trump Always Chickens Out?

“…because I reduced China from 145% that I set down to 100 and then down to another number. And I said, you have to open up your whole country. And because I I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff. And they called up and they said, Please, let's meet right now. Please, let's meet right now. And I said, Okay, I'll give you till July. I actually asked them. I said, What's the date? Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we'll meet anytime you want, and we have an end date of July 9. You call that chickening out, because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing when Biden didn't have practically anything. Biden, this country was dying. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia. The king told me, he said, You got the hottest we have the hottest country in the world right now. Six months ago, this country was stone cold, dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was

going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation. You set a number. If you go down, you know, if I set a number, a ridiculous high number, I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit. They want me to hold that number. 145% tariff. Even. I said, Man, that really got up. You know how it got because of fentanyl and many other things, and you added it up. I said, Where are we now? We're 145% I said, move. That's high. That's high. They were doing no business whatsoever. They were having a lot of problems. We were very nice to China. I don't know if they're going to be nice to us, but we're very nice to China. And in many ways, I think we really helped China tremendously because, you know, they were having great difficulty because we were basically going cold turkey with China. We were doing no business because of the tariff, because we're so high. But I knew that. But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question.”

Will you sit with Zelenskyy and Putin in Geneva?

“I think at this point, I wish it would have been that way a couple of months ago, but at this point, we're working on President Putin, and we'll see where we are. I think we're doing fine, but we'll see I don't like what's happening. That's one thing. I'll say. I don't like when I see rockets being shot into cities. That's no good. We're not going to allow it. You've always said that the war never would have started if you were president, and yet he doesn't seem willing to do anything that you want him to do.”

What’s stopping you from sanctions on Putin?

“Only the fact that if I think I'm close to getting a deal, I don't want to screw it up by doing that. Let me tell you, I'm a lot tougher than the people you're talking about, but you have to know when to use that if I think it's going to hurt a deal. This isn't my war. This is Biden's war, Zelensky his war and Putin's war. This isn't Trump's war. I'm only here for one thing to see if I can end it to save 5000 lives a week and a lot of money. The money being much less important, because I made that money. I went to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE, and we brought back $5.1 trillion so I made that money in about two hours. The money that we're talking about, but it's still three. Think of it, $300 billion we've spent with no checks, no balances. They just send cash. You can imagine what's happened to that money. I never saw anything like it in my life. But I'm more interested because I picked up $5.1 trillion and, by the way, got a beautiful, big, magnificent, free airplane for the United States

Air Force.”

How quickly will it be operational?

“Well, it's here already. Yeah, it's in the country. It's being refitted for military standard.”

Harvard & foreign student visa interviews?

“Okay, Harvard has to show us their lists. They have foreign students. About 31% of their students are foreign based. Almost 31%. we want to know where those students come. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come and we're not going to if somebody is coming from a certain country and they're 100% fine, which I hope most of them are, but many of them won't be you're going to see some very radical people. They're taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized, and we don't want them making trouble in our country. So what kind of trouble in the middle? In the middle of the UK, there was a nice young man. He wants to go back to school in Harvard. He looked good to me, but I want to check his past. But we want to be able to see why. You know, these countries are helping us. They're not investing in Harvard and all of our we are. So why would 31% Why would a number so big? I think number one, I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15% not 31% we have people

want to go to Harvard and other schools they can't get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don't want to see shopping centers exploding. We don't want to see the kind of riots that you had. And I'll tell you what, many of those students didn't go anywhere. Many of those students were troublemakers close by, the radical left lunatics of this country.”

How will Harvard standoff end?

“Harvard has got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they're doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper. They've got to behave themselves. You know, I'm looking I'm looking out for the country and for Harvard. I want Harvard to do well. I want Harvard to be great again, probably because, how can it be great? How can it be great when you have Harvard announced two weeks ago that they are going to teach remedial mathematics, remedial meaning. They're going to teach low grade mathematics, like two plus two is four. How did these people get into Harvard? If they can't, if they can't do basic mathematics, how did they do it? I mean, people with 1600 of their boards don't get in, and they're getting they're letting people in, and they're bragging about how they're teaching them basic mathematics. Where did these people come from? So we have to look at the list, and Harvard has to understand. The last thing I want to do is hurt them. They're

hurting themselves. They're fighting. You know, Columbia has been really very, very bad. What they've done, they're very anti semitic and lots of other things, but they're working with us on finding a solution.”

++

—

Hugo Lowell

White House Correspondent

The Guardian

Washington DC Bureau

XXX-XXX-XXXX

---

This e-mail and all attachments are confidential and may also be privileged. If you are not the named recipient, please notify the sender and delete the e-mail and all attachments immediately. Do not disclose the contents to another person. You may not use the information for any purpose, or store, or copy, it in any way. Guardian News & Media Limited is not liable for any computer viruses or other material transmitted with or as part of this e-mail. You should employ virus checking software.

Guardian News & Media Limited is a member of Guardian Media Group plc. Registered Office: PO Box 68164, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1P 2AP. Registered in England Number 908396