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Sent: Monday April 21, 2025, 12:05 PM
To: DL WHO Wranglers
Subject: WH in town note 6/ POTUS on Pope and Pete Hegseth
POTUS held gaggles at two separate press risers during the White House Easter Egg Roll. Your pooler was at the second one. Here is a first round of quotations from that:
Q: How are tariff negotiations going?
POTUS: "I think they're going very well. We're going to make a lot of money. We're already 25% on cars and aluminum and steel. Taking in a lot of money, more money than this country's seen. And that's just the beginning."
Q: Are you going to go to the Pope's funeral?
POTUS: "I don't know yet. We're going to be briefed on it right now."
Q: Would you like to go?
POTUS: "I don't know, I just have to look at the timing. We just lowered the flags throughout the country."
Q: Is there a proposal from the United States that Ukraine recognise Crimea as part of Russia?
POTUS: "So I will be giving you a full detail over the next three days. But we had very good meetings on Ukraine, Russia. We had very good meetings, actually, on Iran too. We'll see how that works."
Q: What's the next step there?
POTUS: "The next step is we need a little time but we had very good meetings on Iran and the tariffs are going very well. Everybody wants to negotiate."
Q: How are you going to remember Pope Francis's legacy?
POTUS: "He's a very good man who loved the world and he especially loved people that were having a hard time and that's good with me."
Q: He preached tolerance for migrants. Do you agree with that?
POTUS: "Yeah, I do, I do."
Q: Pete Hegseth. Do you still have confidence?
POTUS: "Here we go again. Just a waste of time. He is doing a great job."
Q: Why do you still have confidence?
POTUS: "Because he's doing a great job. Ask the Houthis how he's doing."
Q: There's a hearing today on the Alien Enemies Act in the DC District Court.
POTUS: "I was elected to clean up the mess in this country. We had millions and millions of people come in who are criminals, who are murderers, who are everything you can imagine. Drug lords, drug dealers. They came in from prisons and from mental institutions. And I was elected to move them out, among many other things. And that's what we're doing."
More to follow.
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