Subject: WH travel pool report #2—arrival
We are wheels down at sunny Tampa International Airport at 3:59 pm EST. Uneventful flight, with no remarks by POTUS or other officials to traveling press.
A crowd behind barricades was waiting on the tarmac twenty yards From AF1 for POTUS. “Live and Let Die” blasted over the sound system, among other tunes.
POTUS emerged clapping to Lee Greenwood song and was met with five unidentified greeters wearing masks. He didn’t shake hands. He made his way to the crowd. A line of twenty or so uniformed law enforcement officers stood in front of the barricade.
He’s addressing the crowd now.
President is met by:
State Senator Wilton Simpson
President of the Florida Senate and State Senator from Florida’s 10^th Senate District
State Representative Josie Tomkow
State Representative from Florida’s 39^th House District
State Representative Daniel Perez
State Representative from Florida’s 166^th House District
State Representative Lawrence McClure
State Representative from Florida’s 58^th House District
Danny Burgess
Former Executive Direct of the Florida Department of Veteran Affairs and Candidate for Florida State Senate
Subject: In Town Pool Report #10 - Full South Lawn Comments
By popular demand and thanks to our TV colleagues sharing clean audio, here is a full report of the president’s remarks prior to the Marine One departure. This is the best audio there is but this is not entirely complete due to helicopter noise and the fact the president moved all over the line. Will send this in two parts so everyone can have what they need ASAP.
Here’s part one:
Trump was asked for his “reaction to” President Obama saying he is “targeting minorities” and “attacking voting rights.”
“Well, he did a bad job for minorities. I did much more for minorities than he did. And if you look at our numbers prior to the plague coming in – and those numbers will soon be back – you’ll see I did a much better job than Obama did by far for African Americans, for Asian Americans, for women, for any group you look at, far better than Obama did,” Trump said.
Trump clearly ignored a question on why he wasn’t at John Lewis’ funeral. The next question was inaudible on the audio your pooler has, but it apparently dealt with immigration.
“We don’t want that to happen, but people have to come in to our country legally. Right now we have 267 miles of wall. We’re doing very well at keeping the drugs out and keeping people out that aren’t supposed to be here, but people have to come into our country legally,” Trump said.
Your pooler also could not hear the next question.
“We’re working with representatives of DACA and we’re also working on a big immigration bill, which is merit-based and something that people are going to be very happy with. We’re doing a very big immigration bill and we’re doing a very big healthcare bill. The other thing we’re working on very strongly and is very important is prescription drug prices,” Trump said. “The drug companies are not exactly happy. In fact, I am sure they’ll be taking ads, but we’re doing a drug prescription bill, in a sense – we’ve already signed it for the most part. One goes into effect very soon that’s going to get us to be tied with or lower than the lowest drug prices anywhere in the world.”
The president continued.
“Right now, the United States, because of what has happened over years, we have the highest prescription drug prices in the world. We will soon have the lowest,” he said.
Trump was asked if he will have “a TikTok decision today.”
“We’re looking at Tiktok. We may be banning TikTok. We may be doing some other things. There are a couple of options, but a lot of things are happening. So, we’ll see what happens, but we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to Tiktok,” said Trump.