in-town pool report #5

POTUS spoke for about 68 minutes, highlighting policies that he said have benefitted small businesses, including tariffs and no tax on tips, but mostly veering to other topics.

Some excerpts:

He celebrated stock market highs “even with this military operation, call it what you want. We can’t let Iran get a nuclear weapon.”

He said he was thinking about changing the name of the Small Business Administration, but did not indicate to what.

He joked about leaving office in “8 or 9 years,” to laughter and applause from the audience.

He said his administration is getting rid of “129 nonsense regulations” for every one they pass.

He claimed the Biden administration swelled the ranks of the federal government to make its unemployment figures look better. “I feel sorry for everyone. It’s a hard thing to do,” he said of DOGE job cuts, but added a lot of those people are grateful to him now because they got higher-paying private sector jobs instead.

He repeatedly brought up his victory in the 2024 presidential election, including as proof that the polls showing the American public overwhelmingly disapproves of the war in Iran are fake.

He spoke at length about taking three cognitive tests and acing all of them. He said Biden would not have been able to get even one question correct and expressed doubt that Obama would do well either.

He briefly handed over the mic to several other speakers throughout his remarks, including Rick Harrison of TV’s “Pawn Stars,” who called him maybe the greatest president in history, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who praised POTUS for bringing investment back to Venezuela.

He complained about having to pay back emergency tariffs after they were struck down by the Supreme Court.

He told a very lengthy anecdote about refurbishing and repainting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool. He said he wanted to make it more like a swimming pool. “It was gray. Not a good-looking color,” he said. “How can you have a greater color than American flag blue?”

He gave an award to Mark Lamoncha, owner of Humtown Products, an Ohio company that makes 3D-printed molds.

Alexei Koseff

San Francisco Chronicle

XXX-XXX-XXXX

[EMAIL ADDRESS]