In-town pool 6: Oval Gaggle

Pool left the Oval at 5:49 p.m. The video is available, so this is just a quick summary of highlights. A lot of ground covered.

--Trump said Russia sanctions involved "two big oil companies." On Putin "Everytime I speak with Vladimir I have good conversations and then they don't go anywhere. They just don't go anywhere."

--Trump had a model of the new ballroom on the coffee table. He also showed a number of print outs of what the ballroom will look like, a lot of gold and white, like in Mar-a-Lago. He was excited to share, and angrily rejected the idea that he had not been transparent about their plans.

--Trump said the strikes of alleged drug boats had reduced the number of boats on the water. "So now they will come in by land to a lesser extent and they will be hit on land also." Asked if he had the legal authority to strike drug traffickers in U.S. with the military, he suggested he did, then added, "If we do by land we may go back to Congress." "We will hit them very hard if they come in by land... we will probably go back to congress and explain what we are doing when we come to the land. we don't have to do that, but I think marco we would like to do that." When asked if he could do a military strike inside the U.S. on drug traffickers, Rubio said, "You are talking about a law enforcement matter. In this particular case there are people travelling in international waters heading towards the United States with hostilities in mind."

--Trump called the Fed chair "terrible" and "a fool"

--He expressed optimism about striking a deal with Xi and China. "I think we will make a deal," he said. And suggested that rare earths are less leverage than U.S. tariffs. "There is a lot of rare earth around." He blamed Biden for making Russia and China closer and praised Modi in India for agreeing to wind down oil imports from Russia.

--He said that he had spoken with Putin about nuclear deescalation, and suggested that he would try to involve China in those conversations.

--On Tomahawks for Ukraine, he said the problem was that it would take months to train Ukrainians to operate them, and the U.S. would not be involved in operating them against Russia. Rutte said he had no opinion on whether the U.S. should send tomahawks.

--He said he would like to attend Supreme Court arguments on the case over whether he has unilateral tariff power. He said the U.S. would become a "third-world country" if the court ruled against him.

--On Colombia's president, he said, "He's a thug and he's a bad guy." He also said, "He better watch it or we will take very serious action against him and his country."

--Asked about the possibility that rhetoric from the governor of California and other Democrats might play a role in creating public resistance to ICE enforcement, Trump said "Gavin has to be careful."

There is of course more so would suggest watching the whole thing. Trump wore what looked like diamond cuff links with an emerald-green stone in the center.

There are unconfirmed rumors of Rutte coming out to driveway after meeting. So may be more to come.

Michael Scherer

Staff Writer

The Atlantic

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