Pool Reports of May 28, 2025

In-town pool report #1

Morning

White House has called a lunch lid until 1145a ET

In town pool report 2 - gathering for Oval

[APP Note: No additional text was included in this report.]

In town pool report 3 - Trump Oval/Pirro remarks now

Pool entered the Oval at 1217p ET for Jeanine Porto’s swearing in as US Attny for DC

Some notables standing to the side the room as Trump speaks: AG Pam Bondi, Charlie Kirk, Margo Martin

Trump remarks are being streamed live

In town pool report 4 - Trump Oval Q&A part 1

Another notable in the room: Sergio Gor, head of White House PPO; Steve Witkoff, Trump special envoy

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Pirro was sworn in as USA-DC by AG Pam Bondi

Trump on Bondi: "Pam Bondi is doing an unbelievable job as our real leader, leader in the fight against crime. And Pam heard about this, and Pam said, I'll have to find time for Janine. She doesn't have time to do this, but for Janine, she did, and she's going to be doing the swearing in. So Pam, thank you very much for the great job you're doing and for swearing In our friend justice, Janine"

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Trump Q&A rush quotes - check stream for accuracy

Was Russia being disrespectful and does Putin want to end the war?

"I can't tell you that, but I'll let you know in about two weeks. Within two weeks, we're going to find out very soon. We're going to find out whether or not he's tapping us along or not, and if he is, we'll respond a little bit differently. But it'll take about a week and a half. Two weeks we have Mr. Widkoff is here, who's doing a phenomenal job. Is dealing with him very strongly right now, they seem to want to do something, but until the document is signed, I can't tell you. Nobody can."

Putin playing with fire?

"we're not, we're not happy about that situation. I think we're we're doing very well with Iran. We're doing very well with Gaza, but we are doing very well with Iran. And I think we're going to see some, some, something very sensible, because there are only two outcomes. You know, the two outcomes is a smart outcome, it is a violent outcome. And I don't think anybody wants to see the second but I think we're, we've made a lot of progress, and we'll see. You know, they still have to agree to the final stages of a document, but I think you could be very well surprised what happens there, and it'd be a great thing for them, and it can have a great country into the future."

Elon criticized Big Beautiful Bill?

"Well, the reactions a lot of things. Number one, we have to get a lot of votes. We can't be cutting, you know, we need, we need to get a lot of support, and we have a lot of support. We had to get it through the house. The house was, we have no Democrats. You know, if it's up to the Democrats, they'll take the 65% increase. Oh, that doesn't get approved, this country is going to have a 65% increase in taxes and lots of other problems, big problems, almost bigger than that, but we'll have a 65% increase, as opposed to the largest tax cut in the history of our country. 
We will be negotiating that bill, and I'm not happy about certain aspects of it, but I'm thrilled by other aspects of it. That's the way they go. It's very big. It's the big, beautiful bill. But the beautiful is because of all of the things we have, the biggest thing being, I would say, the the level of tax cutting that we're going to be doing, we're going to make people really be able to have one of the one of the lowest tax rate we've ever had in the history of our country, and tremendous amounts of benefit are going to the middle income people of our country, low and middle income people of our country. So we're going to see what happens, because the Senate, as you know, is negotiating with us, and they have to then go back to the house, and you know, it's got a way to go, but I have to say, Speaker Johnson and Thune has done an incredible job."

More to come

In town pool report 5 - Trump Oval Q&A part 2

Pool was ushered out of the Oval at 1247p ET

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More from Trump Q&A rush quotes, check against stream

TACO/Trump Always Chickens Out?

"…because I reduced China from 145% that I set down to 100 and then down to another number. And I said, you have to open up your whole country. And because I I gave the European Union a 50% tax tariff. And they called up and they said, Please, let's meet right now. Please, let's meet right now. And I said, Okay, I'll give you till July. I actually asked them. I said, What's the date? Because they weren't willing to meet. And after I did what I did, they said, we'll meet anytime you want, and we have an end date of July 9. You call that chickening out, because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing when Biden didn't have practically anything. Biden, this country was dying. You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia. The king told me, he said, You got the hottest we have the hottest country in the world right now. Six months ago, this country was stone cold, dead. We had a dead country. We had a country people didn't think it was going to survive. And you ask a nasty question like that. It's called negotiation. You set a number. If you go down, you know, if I set a number, a ridiculous high number, I go down a little bit, you know, a little bit. They want me to hold that number. 145% tariff. Even. I said, Man, that really got up. You know how it got because of fentanyl and many other things, and you added it up. I said, Where are we now? We're 145% I said, move. That's high. That's high. They were doing no business whatsoever. They were having a lot of problems. We were very nice to China. I don't know if they're going to be nice to us, but we're very nice to China. And in many ways, I think we really helped China tremendously because, you know, they were having great difficulty because we were basically going cold turkey with China. We were doing no business because of the tariff, because we're so high. But I knew that. But don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question."

Will you sit with Zelenskyy and Putin in Geneva?

"I think at this point, I wish it would have been that way a couple of months ago, but at this point, we're working on President Putin, and we'll see where we are. I think we're doing fine, but we'll see I don't like what's happening. That's one thing. I'll say. I don't like when I see rockets being shot into cities. That's no good. We're not going to allow it. You've always said that the war never would have started if you were president, and yet he doesn't seem willing to do anything that you want him to do."

What's stopping you from sanctions on Putin?

"Only the fact that if I think I'm close to getting a deal, I don't want to screw it up by doing that. Let me tell you, I'm a lot tougher than the people you're talking about, but you have to know when to use that if I think it's going to hurt a deal. This isn't my war. This is Biden's war, Zelensky his war and Putin's war. This isn't Trump's war. I'm only here for one thing to see if I can end it to save 5000 lives a week and a lot of money. The money being much less important, because I made that money. I went to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE, and we brought back $5.1 trillion so I made that money in about two hours. The money that we're talking about, but it's still three. Think of it, $300 billion we've spent with no checks, no balances. They just send cash. You can imagine what's happened to that money. I never saw anything like it in my life. But I'm more interested because I picked up $5.1 trillion and, by the way, got a beautiful, big, magnificent, free airplane for the United States Air Force."

How quickly will it be operational?

"Well, it's here already. Yeah, it's in the country. It's being refitted for military standard."

Harvard & foreign student visa interviews?

"Okay, Harvard has to show us their lists. They have foreign students. About 31% of their students are foreign based. Almost 31%. we want to know where those students come. Are they troublemakers? What countries do they come and we're not going to if somebody is coming from a certain country and they're 100% fine, which I hope most of them are, but many of them won't be you're going to see some very radical people. They're taking people from areas of the world that are very radicalized, and we don't want them making trouble in our country. So what kind of trouble in the middle? In the middle of the UK, there was a nice young man. He wants to go back to school in Harvard. He looked good to me, but I want to check his past. But we want to be able to see why. You know, these countries are helping us. They're not investing in Harvard and all of our we are. So why would 31% Why would a number so big? I think number one, I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15% not 31% we have people want to go to Harvard and other schools they can't get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don't want to see shopping centers exploding. We don't want to see the kind of riots that you had. And I'll tell you what, many of those students didn't go anywhere. Many of those students were troublemakers close by, the radical left lunatics of this country."

How will Harvard standoff end?

"Harvard has got to behave themselves. Harvard is treating our country with great disrespect, and all they're doing is getting in deeper and deeper and deeper. They've got to behave themselves. You know, I'm looking I'm looking out for the country and for Harvard. I want Harvard to do well. I want Harvard to be great again, probably because, how can it be great? How can it be great when you have Harvard announced two weeks ago that they are going to teach remedial mathematics, remedial meaning. They're going to teach low grade mathematics, like two plus two is four. How did these people get into Harvard? If they can't, if they can't do basic mathematics, how did they do it? I mean, people with 1600 of their boards don't get in, and they're getting they're letting people in, and they're bragging about how they're teaching them basic mathematics. Where did these people come from? So we have to look at the list, and Harvard has to understand. The last thing I want to do is hurt them. They're hurting themselves. They're fighting. You know, Columbia has been really very, very bad. What they've done, they're very anti semitic and lots of other things, but they're working with us on finding a solution."

In town pool report 6 - Lid

The White House called a travel/photo lid at 6p ET

Have a good evening