Pool report 8: More from Oval — Quotes!

These are from Otter — PLEASE check against transcript and from playback.

POTUS opening meeting:

"It's a great honor to have Prime Minister Starmer the Oval Office. Very special place, and he's a special man. And the United Kingdom is a is a wonderful this is a wonderful country that I know very well, and there a lot and are we going? Are we going there? And we expect to see each other near future, we'll be announcing it, but we're going to be discussing many things today. We'll be discussing Russia, Ukraine. We'll be discussing trade and lots of other items, and I think we can say that we're going to be getting along on every one of them. We've had a tremendous relationship. And frankly, the Prime Minister and I have met twice before, and we get along very famously, as you would say. And I look forward to it very much. We look forward to the day and the meeting. We'll be having a luncheon after this, and then another work session, and I believe we're going to have a press conference at the end, so I look forward to it."

Starmer on US-UK relations:

"Our countries have been bound together for a very long time now, the closest Alliance I think, of any two countries when it comes to prosperity and security, and I know that together, we will strengthen that even further on issues like Ukraine. Thank you for changing the conversation to bring about the possibility that now we can have a peace deal. And we want to work with you to make sure that peace deal is enduring, that it lasts, that it's a deal that goes down to historic deal that nobody reaches. And we'll work with you to make sure that that absolutely happens."

POTUS on Zelensky:

"So President Zelensky is coming to see me on Friday, Friday morning, and we're going to be signing really a very important agreement for both sides, because it's really going to get us into that country. We'll be working there. We'll have a lot of people working and so in that sense, it's very good. It's a backstop. You could say, I don't think anybody's going to play around if we're there with a lot of workers and having to do with rare earths and other things which we need for our country. And we appreciate it very much, and I look forward to seeing him. We'll be talking about it, and we'll also be talking about that today with the Prime Minister."

POTUS on whether UK must choose between US and EU:

"I think we have just a great relationship. We actually had a good relationship before. We've met a couple of times, and I'm very impressed with him, very impressed with his wife, I must say, she's a beautiful, great woman. And he's very lucky."

POTUS on Chagos deal / Diego Garcia base:

"We're going to have some discussions about that very soon, and I have a feeling it's going to work out very well. They're talking about a very long term, powerful lease, a very strong lease, about 140 years. Actually, that's a long time, and I think we'll be inclined to go along with your country. We have to be given the details, but it doesn't sound bad."

POTUS on Putin:

"I've spoken to him. I've known him for a long time now, we had, we had to go through the Russian hoax together. That was not a good thing. It's not fair. That was a rigged deal and had nothing to do with Russia. It was a rigged deal ... and they had to put up with that too."

"I don't believe he's going to violate his word. I don't think he'll be back when we make a deal. I think the deal is going to hold now. They're going to have security."

Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

The Independent

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