Pool Reports of January 31, 2025

In-town Pool Report #1

Two minute warning for press briefing at 1:03

In-town Pool Report #2

The press briefing started at 1:04 and concluded at 1:43 after 20 reporters were called on and asked 40 questions.

In-town Pool Report #3

Pool is waiting  go in oval 

In-town Pool Report #4

The president took almost 25 minutes of questions inthe Oval Office after signing Doug Burgum's commission. Much talk about tariffs. He said his impending tariffs against Canada  and Mexico  are not negotiating ploys. He said tariffs are in store on chips, pharmaceuticals, medicine,  steel aluminum  and copper as well as against the European Union.
He said he expects Jordan and Egypt to take people from Gaza. 
He also defended his comments on the crash. 

Quotes and transcript on way.

In-town Pool Report #5

Pool is gathered on south lawn, delaying getting the quotes out. Waiting for departure.

In-town Pool Report #6

The president fielded questions from the pool after signing the document commissioning Doug Burgum as Secretary of the Interior. The new secretary and his wife stood by his side when he signed. He then praised Burgum and invited questions.
This is a Rev transcript of the first half, which was dominated by talk of tariffs. Remember to check the quotes against the official transcript.

The president:

No, not right there. Not a negotiating tool. No, it's not pure economic. We have big deficits with, as you know, all three of 'em. And in one case, they're sending massive allowances of fentanyl, killing hundreds of thousands of people a year with the fentanyl. And in the other two cases they're making it possible for this poison to get in, number one. And number two, we have big deficits and it's something we're doing we'll, possibly very substantially increase it or not. We'll see how it is, but it's a lot of money coming to the United States. As you know, we have about a $200 billion deficit with a Canada getting close to $200 billion. They've treated us very unfairly. And I say, why should we be subsidizing Canada? It's wonderful. I have so many friends in Canada. It's a great place.

No, we're not looking for a concession. We'll just see what happens. We'll see what happens. So with Mexico, it's the same thing. We have 250 billion deficit and we have a lot of people coming into the border. And now we've largely stopped that, but we've stopped that ourselves. I think they've done a fantastic job. You've seen the numbers have dropped to almost zero, but we've suffered under the past administration for years and years, we've suffered with millions of criminals coming into a country. Criminals, people from jails from all over the world. They come through Mexico and they come through Canada too. A lot of 'em come through Canada and a lot of fentanyl comes through Canada and China makes the fentanyl, China makes the fentanyl, gives it to Mexico, puts it through Canada, puts it through different places. Mostly Mexico, but also a lot through Canada. And so all three haven't treated us very well.

Sir, can I ask you about your meeting with Nvidia? What did you talk about and do you think you need to ban more of the chips that they're selling to China?

Well, he's a great gentleman and I haven't met him. He's the biggest in the world in terms of chips and I can't say what's going to happen, whether we had a meeting, good meeting, but eventually we're going to put tariffs on chips. We're going to put tariffs on oil and gas. That'll happen fairly soon. Think around the 18th of February. And we're going to put a lot of tariffs on steel. We already have tariffs on steel and we've saved our steel industry, but that was relatively small compared to what it'll be. But we're going to be putting tariffs on steel in a little bit. And ultimately copper. Copper will take a little bit longer, and that'll happen pretty quickly. It mean it'll be a great boost for our steel industry. It'll make our steel industry very strong. If I didn't put the tariffs on years ago on steel, which actually Biden left because there was so much money that they couldn't do anything about it, we would've lost.

We wouldn't have one steel mill in this country if I didn't do it. We saved the steel industry. So it was an honor to do it. And I think the people that love me most in the whole world, the people that make steel, but we're going to be putting sometime this month, next month, we're going to be putting tariffs on steel and aluminum. And we'll give you an announcement as to what the exact date is, but it'll be a tremendous amount of money for our country. Tremendous amount. These are big numbers. And in addition to that, and you see the power of the tariff. I mean the tariff is, and nobody can compete with us because we have by far the biggest piggyback. And so that'll take place very quickly. But also we'll be doing pharmaceuticals to bring our industry back. We want to bring pharmaceuticals back to the country.

And the way you bring it back to the country is by putting up a wall. And the wall is a tariff wall. We were the richest country in the world. We were at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That's when we had, we were a tariff country. And then they went to an income tax concept. And how did that work out? It's fine. I mean it's okay, but it would've been very much better. So we'll be doing pharmaceuticals, hopefully in drugs, medicines, et cetera, all forms of medicine and pharmaceuticals. And we'll be doing very importantly, steel. And we'll also be doing chips and things associated with chips on talking with the Japanese about next Friday when you meet. Well, he's coming in next week. I don't know. He has for a meeting. And I have great respect for Japan. I liked Japan. Prime minister Robbie was a very close friend of mine. What I've been to him was so sad, one of the saddest days. But they're coming in to speak to me and I look forward to it.

Mr. President on the crash, do you have any concerns that your commentary about things you have described as common sense for your observations could in any way interfere with the thorough investigation of the crash?

No, I think they'll do an investigation. It'll probably come out the way I said it. I like to put it up front. I'm so tired of listening to things happen to our country. And then people say, we'll do an investigation, and three years later they come out with a report that nobody looks at, especially not in all cases can you do that. But in this case, you had a helicopter that Blackhawk was too high. It was above the 200 limit by double, shouldn't have been there. And there were some other mistakes made too. And I pointed them out also. I was right on all of it, but they'll still do an investigation just to check it out. But I think that's

As Commander in chief,are you at all concerned opinion about the army and the conduct of that aircraft. When you are commander chief, and these are the people,  

No. Investigation, this was all caused by bad rules, regulations, and other things by Biden, the Biden administration. And when you look at the way they ran things, in fact, if you look, we hired, one of the first things I told 'em to do, I said, get talented people in those beautiful towers overlooking runways. You better get 'em in there fast because we don't have people there that are qualified. And you knew that because planes were landing very, very late. They were circling all over the place. We had people that didn't know what the hell they were doing and excuse everywhere. And there are other, excuse me, excuse me. We have to have the best people, the smartest people, the sharpest people as control tower experts. And that's what they have to be. They have to be experts and they have to be very smart. And we didn't have our best. And if you read the quote that I read yesterday at the news conference, it talked about people that were psychologically injured were okay, and people that had lots of problems were okay. I'd read it again if you'd like me to, but I don't think I have to

Waste your time. Serve those, sir, with planes in the air all around the country, people relying on that as safety. Are you suggesting there's an ongoing risk?

No, I think there's very little risk, but I think that we have to make sure that this never happens again. Very, very little risk. And we're taking actions that this can't happen again. The helicopters was out of its zone, shouldn't have been out of its zone. It was at the same height as the airplane now. The airplane was coming down on its track. It was perfect. It was in perfect shape coming down and something was in its way. You can't let that happen and it won't be happening again. And the was all because of weak and we're just not going to let that kind of thing happen again. Again, I can wait and I can just give a report in two years like they always do. Sometimes it's obvious in this case to where, do you want me to put the camera? Oh, just, I expect a lot of good things from all meetings.

I expect good things. Marco Rubio, as you know, is going to make a tour of various countries in South America. He's going to be meeting in Panama where Panama's treated us very badly. They gave him rather them rather foolishly a thing called the Panama Canal, the most expensive project we ever built. Look at today's numbers, most expensive ever built. We lost 38,000 men in that case. All men. Just about all men. 38,000 to the mosquito, to malaria and various other problems that you get from jungles. It was a tremendously costly event. We built the Panama now 110 years ago. Think of it, the most expensive development we ever did. And really one of the wonders of the world, one of the great wonders of the world. We didn't give it to China, we gave it to Panama. And Panama has been ripping down all the China language signs. They've been working mad to try, but about 70% of the signs were up and they were written in Chinese. And that's not the deal. So we're going to take it back. They've already offered to do many things, but we think it's appropriate that we take it back. They've totally violated the agreement. We have an agreement, they violated the agreement. And Marco Rubio is going over there to talk to the gentleman that's in charge.

The second half is from your pooler's notes:

He expressed confidence Egypt and Jordan will take Palestinians. "I think they'll take people from Gaza." He aid the tariffs on oil will probably be reduced from the other tariffs. He clarified that the new tariffs he imposes will be on top of existing tariffs. He said Maduro has treated his people "terribly" and spoke about how well he did with Venezuelan American voters. "I got 92 percent of the Venezuela vote," he said, saying many of them live near Doral. Asked about reports that government websites are being shut down to eliminate all DEI mentions, he said he didn't know anything about it but endorsed the idea. "DEI is dead. If they want to scrub the websites, it's fine with me." He said his campaign has worked to eliminate it. "WE have the country back. I've never seen so much love." He said people are coming up to him and saying, "Sir, thank you." He said he has not talked with putin but that discussions are underway to set that up and end the Ukraine war. "We are having very serious discussions with Russia."

Asked if he had ordered the firings of FBI agents, he said, "No, but we have some very bad people there… I wasn't involved in that. But if they want to fire some people, it is fine with me." On the EU, he was asked if he was going to impose tariffs on them. "Do you want the truthful answer or the political answer?" He said yes, there would be tariffs. "TheEuropean Union has treated us so badly."

He acknowledged that his tariffs could cause "short term disruption" but he said "people will understand.. The tariffs are going to make us very rich." He said he is not worried about the market.

On the federal workplace, he said, "everybody is replaceable." He added, "We'd love to have them leave. It's our dream to have everyone work in the private sector… Biden let them get away with murder." He said he has made great progress in the last week and contrasted that with what he called "de-progress" under Biden.

AT 4:16, after 29 minutes in the Oval Office, pool was ushered out.

At 5:17, the president walked out of the residence. He told the pool he is "going to the Winter White House" and "will be working all weekend." He got on Marine One at 5:18. Lift off was at 5:22

Final note: There was a typo in an earlier pool report. At the briefing, 25 reporters were called on.

Handing off to travel pool.

Out of town pool report #1: JBA

Hello from Joint Base Andrews. I'll be your pooler for President Trump's weekend trip to Florida.

Marine One set down here at 5:30 p.m. The President made his way over to Air Force One and stopped to shake hands and chat briefly with director Michael Bay, who was waiting on the tarmac.

He boarded at 5:34 after giving a wave to the pool without stopping for questions. Pool spotted Steven Cheung and a handful of other White House aides following POTUS onto the plane.

We will be wheels up for Palm Beach momentarily.

Out of town pool report #2: Palm Beach arrival

Air Force One landed at Palm Beach International Airport at 7:36 p.m. 

White House communications director Steven Cheung briefly came back to the press cabin to say hello during the flight.

Fox News played on the TVs throughout the flight. About 45 minutes before landing, the network broke into coverage of an aircraft reportedly crashing into a mall in Philadelphia.

Out of town pool report #3: OPM memo and rolling

President Trump deplaned at 7:50. He acknowledged the pool but did not respond to shouted questions about hostages freed from Venezuela or the incident in Philadelphia.

Motorcade is rolling to Mar-a-Lago at 7:52 p.m.

ALSO sharing the following memo provided by the White House from the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, which outlines steps agencies should be taking to comply with President Trump's executive order on "defending women."
https://www.opm.gov/media/yvlh1r3i/opm-memo-initial-guidance-regarding-trump-executive-order-defending-women-1-29-2025-final.pdf

Here is a statement from OPM communications director McLaurine Pinover:

"OPM sent guidance to agencies to remove gender ideology-related content from their websites by 5 pm today as part of the efforts to defend women and uphold the truth of biological sex against the radical claims of gender activists. This may have been misinterpreted to mean we would shut down government websites who weren’t able to  comply but that is not the plan for continuing to implement this important effort."

Out of town pool report #4: MAL drop off

Motorcade arrived at Mar-a-Lago at 8:03 p.m. after an uneventful drive. The route was dotted with Trump supporters waving flags and holding up their phones, including a few dozen who lined the street leading up to the entrance to the property.

Out of town pool report #5: Lid

White House called a travel/photo lid at 8:14 p.m. Have a great evening.