In-town pool report #9 Fuller quotes from Q&A
- From
- Swapna Venugopal
- Sent
- Thursday, October 16, 2025, 5:38 PM
Q: Do you have a timeline or date set for meeting with Putin in Hungary?
“Yeah, I would say within two weeks or so. Pretty quick. Marco Rubio's going to be meeting with his counterpart as you know. And they'll be meeting pretty soon. They're going to set up a, a time and a place very shortly, maybe. It's already set up. They've already spoken. And I thought it was a very good phone call.”
“I thought it was very productive. But I'll be meeting with President Putin and uh, we'll make a determination. Tomorrow I'm meeting with President Zelensky and I'll be telling him about the call.”
“I thought this would be quick (ending Russian war on Ukraine) because of my relationship with President Putin. I thought this would be very quick. Who would think I did Middle East before I did this. We did a total of eight (ending wars). And, we're going to make this number nine.”
Q: What did you tell him about the Tomahawks?
Well, we talked about it a little bit. Didn't say much, but I do say to you, you know, we need Tomahawks for the United States of America, too. A lot of them. But we need them. I mean, we can't deplete for our country. So, you know, they're very vital. They're very powerful. They're very accurate. They're very good. But we need them, too. So I don't know what we can do about that.
Q: Did President Putin try to dissuade you from selling Tomahawk missiles?
I did actually say, would you mind if I gave a couple of thousand Tomahawks to your opposition? I did say that.
Q What was your response?
He didn't like the idea. He didn’t like that. No, I said it. But that way, you have to be a little bit lighthearted sometimes, but, he doesn't want to. Tomahawk is a vicious weapon. It's a vicious offensive, incredibly destructive weapon. Nobody wants Tomahawks.
Q: Senate Majority Leader John Thune today said he'd like to proceed with the bill, which would put sanctions on Russia. What's your thought on that?
Well, we're going to see. He doesn't know about the call yet. I'm going to speak to him later. And it was subject to what I wanted to do. And so we'll see what happens. We want to get peace. We want to stop the killing 7,000 people a week. Can you believe it? We want to stop the killing. So, uh, I'm going to speak to him and the speaker Mike Johnson. I'll speak to them a little bit later and I'll tell them about this and we'll make the right determination. I'm not against anything.”
Q: On John Bolton indictment:
I didn't know that you told me for the first time, but I think he's a bad person. I think he's a bad guy.
Q: Have you reviewed the case against him?
No, I haven't
Recording sent in earlier report
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
White House Correspondent
USA TODAY
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