In-town pool report #8: quotes from press conference

Here are more quotes from President Trump's press conference, which was livestreamed. Standing with the President by a podium were FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Also in the Oval Office: Stephen Miller, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista (who was recently confirmed as U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein), U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor, and others.

On Venezuela: Trump said that his administration is considering strikes on land amid his crackdown on drug cartels. "Well, I don’t want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now because we’ve got the sea very well under control."

Asked about why he doesn’t use the Coast Guard to stop drug boats, Trump said: “Because we’ve been doing that for thirty years and it’s been totally ineffective. They have faster boats. Some of these boats, seriously, they’re world class speed boats, but they’re not faster than missiles. But we’ve been trying to do that for years.”

Trump: “And so much of the drugs— 25, 30 percent would come in through the seas. Right now would have, I would say, none coming in through the seas. In fact, I don’t know about the fishing industry, if you want to go fishing, but a lot of people aren’t deciding to go even go fishing. We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now we’ll stop it by land."

Asked why he authorized the CIA to go into Venezuela, Trump said in part: "They have emptied their prisons into the US. Prisoners from mental institutions, insane asylums ..."

On his meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky on Friday: "I'll be talking about the war with him... They want to go offensive. I'll make a determination on that."

On China, asked if we're in for a sustained trade war if he doesn't reach a deal with President Xi at their meeting in a few weeks, Trump says: "Well, you're in one now.. We have 100% tariffs... If we didn't have tariffs, we would have no defense. They've used tariffs on us."

On DOJ: Trump called Jack Smith a "deranged criminal" and said he hopes Andrew Weissmann, Lisa Monaco, and Adam Schiff get looked into. "I think it was the worst weaponization of a political opponent in the history of the world ... Deranged Jack Smith in my opinion is a criminal. I hope they're gonna look into Weissmann too ... Lisa Monaco should be looked at very strongly... I hope they're looking at Schifty Schiff. I hope they're looking at all these people. And I'm allowed to find out. I'm in theory the chief law enforcement officer."

On government shutdown: "We have the people that we want paid, paid. We want the FBI paid...We're getting rid of programs that we didn't like...They're going to be terminated on a permanent basis, and it's thousands of people...tremendous numbers of Democrat projects... Russell Vought is really terminating tremendous numbers of Democrat projects. Not only jobs. I mean the project in Manhattan... The project in New York. It’s billions and billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. It’s terminated."

On No Kings: "They have their day coming up. I hear very few people are gonna be there, by the way. But they have their day coming up and they want to have their day in the sun."

On tariffs: "We're allowed to do whatever we want. We just had presidents that didn't want to do it for whatever reason. Of the eight wars, tariffs are directly responsible for me ending 6 of them. 5 or 6." He said the lawyers challenging his power to impose tariffs are "aligned with foreign nations" and that he plans to go to the Supreme Court to watch the arguments of the tariffs case.

Threatening to move FIFA games out of Boston: "Somebody said, 'would we think about taking the World Cup away from Boston if they don't straighten it out?' The answer is yes. We have the right to do that with FIFA. So if we think that LA is gonna be bad, or that applies a little bit to the Olympics too."

https://time.com Nik Popli

Politics Reporter

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