Subject: In-town Pool Report No. 1
Good morning from the White House, where all is quiet ahead of President Trump’s 12:15pm departure for Iowa.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders gaggled on the driveway earlier this morning. She hit back at former Vice President Joe Biden in anticipation of a speech he is set to deliver in Iowa this afternoon and also talked about the president’s get-well call to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler last month.
Nadler was mentioned in one of the president’s many tweets this morning.
Subject: In-town Pool Report No. 3 — Departure/gaggle
POTUS exited the Oval alone at 12:34pm. He is still taking questions from pool.
Highlights so far below. Fuller transcript TK.
On Biden: “I heard Biden was a loser. I mean look, Joe never got more than 1%. It looks like he’s failing, it looks like his friends from the left are going to overtake him very soon.”
“When a man has to mention my name 76 times in his speech, that means he’s in trouble. He’s a different guy. He acts different than he used to. He looks different than he used to.”
“I’d rather run against, I think, Biden than anybody. I think he’s the weakest mentally and I think Joe is weak mentally. The others have much more energy.”
“I call him 1% Joe because until Obama came along he didn’t do very well.”
On North Korea: “I think North Korea under [Kim’s] leadership has tremendous potential.”
Potus said he received a “beautiful” “very warm” letter from Kim Jong Un.
“We have a very good relationship together... I think they something will happen, but in the meantime we have our hostages back. The remains lee coming back. We have a very good relationship.”
He said a meeting could happen again soon, but “In the meantime he’s kept his word... that’s very important to me.”
On Mexico: Potus took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and said it’s his deal with Mexico. He declined to show it to us, but said it will go into effect when Mexico tells him it’s okay to release it.
“That’s the agreement that everybody says I don’t have. I’m going to let mexico do the announcement at the right time.”
“This is one page of a very long and very good agreement from Mexico and the United States. Wthout the tariffs, we would have had nothing.”
“For a long time, for many years, people tried to get what we got in a period of many days. They’re moving right now 6,000 soldiers to their southern border. You think they had that two weeks ago? Two weeks ago, I’ll tell you what we had: we had nothing.”