Travel pool note #22 // Q&A on Iran, communism

Again, please triple check quotes against audio. Presser wrapped at 7:45 p.m.

POTUS was asked about why he has been unable to end the Iran war, and gives his usual standard answer on Iran, reiterating some of what he said earlier today: "I was there for one reason, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon ... Look, they have no military left. Their air force is gone, as I said. Their ships are gone, 159 ships are gone. They're at the bottom of the sea. Their radar is gone. Everything is gone. So, when you say not a success, it's a tremendous success.”

On the dangers of communism, and the message he’d give to people living under communism, or don’t realize the dangers of communism: “Communism is easy to sell. I would be the greatest communist ... right up there with Lenin … It's a very dangerous term, so I do talk about it, and I talk about it on TikTok, and I talk about it, and we were talking about it here, and you run it has to come into nationally, it's never worked, and it's not going to work.” He says he thinks the country is in more danger from communism than it was during WWI and WWII.

On what changed re: his rhetoric w/ Iran: "When you say rational, I think they're much more rational than level one — level two — level one is done, level two is done. This is level three. I think they are more rational, but based on their actions over the last week or two,

they're not doing a service to the people ... I'm not sure I want to make a deal with them, we can play games, but I'm not I'm not sure I want to make it — let's just finish the job.”

POTUS, asked about why he is leaving Ankara on the old AF1 / security concerns in light of past assassination attempts: "Well, I speak about it a lot, because you know the life of a president is very dangerous ... You should have told me that years ago, everybody wouldn't have run, it's a very dangerous profession, no, I'm number one on the kill list for Iran, they're lovely people.”

He added that the plane is going to Europe "where we can show it to the people, and we'll be going home by normal methods, but we have it going to Europe to a couple of bases, actually one in particular, but it's going to go to a couple of bases, so the soldiers can see it."

On countries that didn’t help the U.S. with Iran: "Number one, Spain has been very bad, but you know, the Italy has been good, and almost all of the countries have been good. They just had a bad moment. They didn't help us.”

On whether POTUS/Erdogan reached an agreement on Turkey’s return to the F-35 program: “They're talking about the F-35 airplane, and it's the best plane, and everybody wants it, and we have to make a decision who we give it to. I mean, my inclination, because he, again, he stayed out of, he's not a huge fan of Bibi, and he's not a huge fan of Israel, but he stayed out of that war, he could have gone into that war very easily, he did at my request, he stayed out of that war … so whether or not we do that … my inclination is to say, look, he's everything, he's helped us in so many different ways."

Megan Messerly

White House reporter

POLITICO