In-town pool #11

A million thanks to Haley Bull, Emily Goodin and Steve Nelson:
Russia-Ukraine war

“All I want for Russia and Ukraine is for them to stop the stupid war. Anything I can do to end the war whether somebody's there or not, whatever I can do to end the war. I will have done the world a big, big favor. If he (Zelensky) would have listened to me he would have made a much better deal a long time ago and have a million people living from his side. I think there's time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine.”

Guarantee Putin willing to strike a bargain?

“Well you'll see soon enough because I'm trying to get a hostage that the countries have been after for a long time, and before my time, and let's see what happens. That'll be that'll be soon. We also have a very good situation with respect to Iran. He’s laying off Iran. It's nice because we're hitting Iran very hard, as you know, economically as well as militarily. And Russia has done nothing there that we can see, and I think that's a very positive. And of course, we're negotiating with him on Ukraine, so I'm not looking to break up negotiations right in the middle. And by the way, I have the right to do that at any time, immediately. So if things don't work out, I can always do it.”

What do you say to republicans speaking out against the diesel deal?

“Well, I think when they find out what the deal is, they I've had four of them call up because they only put out word last night. I'm in the midst of negotiating a deal. When you're negotiating a deal, you don't do that to them when you're negotiating, and the deal is Ukraine deal. Also, I'm negotiating with them on Iran because they've been very well behaved on Iran. Also, I'm negotiating with them on hostages, and I'm also negotiating on diesel. So when you when you, look, that's my business. When you're negotiating, you don't do that. I tell that to Republicans to who speak out, and there aren't many of them because they have confidence in me. I'm the one that got them there. I'm the one that's winning. I'm the one that's doing the rallies. It's taking people into a winning position. When you look at what's happened, if you take a look at what's happened since I've been doing these massive, totally sold-out rallies, nobody's ever seen anything like it. As an example, we're up in Texas.

We weren't. We're up in Alaska. We weren't. We're up. Everybody, every place that I've gone to, we're up.”

Have you agreed to a trilateral meeting with Putin and Xi to talk about Ukraine?

“No but I would, I would do it. Not so much for Ukraine because Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine; they haven't been doing much. And the same thing with China. We would have it to talk about nuclear weapons and denuclearization.”

“We would schedule a meeting based on the denuclearization, and that's a very positive thing for the world. So I would do it if if they want to have a, I just heard about it, If they'd like to have it. I think it would be held in China.”

Investigated who interrupted Starlink?

“I don’t know who it was but I’d like to find out”

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
White House Correspondent
USA TODAY