In-town report 17: Additional Oval quotes and full Otter link

Trump spoke for about an hour in the Oval. In addition to holding the World Cup trophy, Trump was given the "first ticket" to the final to be held in Jersey at MetLife Stadium.

More detailed quotes and the full Otter below.

Re: CBO report on Trump tariffs reducing the deficit by $4T

"I was very happy today that the group that does this, a government group, radical left group, announced that Trump was right about something. $4 trillion worth of tariffs."

Re: Chicago being the next city to send national guard

"After we do this, we'll go to another location. We'll make it safe, we're going to make our cities very, very safe. Chicago is a mess. You have an imcompetent mayor, grossly incompetent, we're going to straighten that out. Probably that'll be our next one after this, and it won't even be tough. And the people in Chicago, Mr Vice President, they are screaming for us. They're wearing red hats."

Re: Russia/Ukraine

“I’m not happy about anything about that war. Nothing. not happy at all. We’ll see what happens. I think over the next two weeks we’re gonna find out which way it’s gonna go. And I better be very happy.”

“A couple of weeks” on how long he’ll give Putin. “It takes two to tango you understand that.” “We’ll see what happens. I think in two weeks we’ll know which way I’m going because I’m gonna go one way or the other and they’ll learn which way I’m going.”

“I think I’ll know the attitude of Russia and frankly of Ukraine, it takes two.”

“Well then I’m going to make a decisions as to what we do. It’s going to be a very important decision. And that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both. Or do we do nothing and say it’s your fight.”

“I’ll see whose fault it is. If there’s reasons why I’ll understand that, I know exactly what I’m doing. We're going to see whether or not they have a meeting that will be interesting to see and if they don't why didn’t they have a meeting because I told him to have a meeting, but I'll know in two weeks what what I'm going to do”

Re: morning raid on John Bolton's home

“I haven’t spoken to Pam and the group yet but I will be. I saw that just like everybody else. I try and stay out of that stuff, I'm allowed to be and I'm chief law enforcement officer, believe it or not, you know I don't like to go around saying that but I am that's a position, but I purposely don't want to really get involved in it. I'm not a fan of John Bolton I thought he was sleaze bag actually. And he's suffers major Trump derangement syndrome, but so do a lot of people and they're not being affected by anything we do.”

Re: Canada removing retaliatory tariffs

“Which I though was nice and we’re going to have another call soon." “We want to be very good to Canada. I like Carney a lot. I think he’s a good, good person and we had a very good talk yesterday”

Re: Epstein files being sent to House oversight committee

“People shouldn’t be hurt but I’m in support of keeping it totally open. I couldn't care less. You got a lot of people that could be mentioned in those files that don't deserve to be people because he knew everybody in Palm Beach. I don't know anything about that but I have said to Pam and everybody else give them everything you can give them because it's a it's a Democrat hoax it’s just a hoax.

Full Otter link: https://statics.teams.cdn.office.net/evergreen-assets/safelinks/2/atp-safelinks.html

And h/t to the inimitable Rob Crilly for pointing out Trump has been involved in a soccer draw previously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzO8SKEC-no

Liam Quinn

Editor at Large, Bloomberg Government