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White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - In-Town Note 5: Bukele shout-out
POTUS noted the presence of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele at the event, calling him "one of my favorite people" and "a great ally" of the U.S.
"Some of you have seen…he operates rather large prisons…they do a very humane job, but they're very strong prisons. And we present a lot of the people that we capture, the murderers, the drug dealers, the people that came into our country illegally and have already committed massive crimes," he said.
POTUS then turned to bashing former president Obama for the IOC not awarding Chicago the 2016 Olympics, boasted of having helped get the 2028 games set for Los Angeles, falsely claiming the 2020 election was "rigged," and after joking about getting "back on the teleprompter" he appears to be wrapping his remarks.
Andrew Feinberg
The Independent
Thu. Feb 5, 9:27 AM
https://x.com/WHPressPool/status/2019419551503413564
White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - In-town note 7: Lemon/Minn. church protest comments
POTUS weighed in on the Minneapolis church protest incident which has led to charges against Don Lemon and other journalists and protesters.
"The Department of Justice recently charged nine individuals from for storming a church in Minnesota during a worship service and trampling on Americans first amendment rights. I watched that tape, and you know, that was violent…people screaming 'our parents are Nazis, your parents are Nazis.' The people are sitting…and I thought the minister was great. he was so calm and goodness, screaming at him, terrible, right in the middle of a church service, it's got to be illegal," he said.
"I'm not doing it, but Pam is doing it. And I'll tell you, people are happy with the job that's taking place because they're bad people. They're bad people. You have one, one Trump hater in particular that just I watched his performance, it was terrible. They tried to use freedom of press and all this to get out of a criminal event, but they were that was a horrible thing to witness. And if we allowed that to go and you wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to have a church, no everybody would be afraid to go to church, and that we are not going to allow, are we?"
Andrew Feinberg
The Independent
Thu. Feb 5, 9:59 AM
https://x.com/WHPressPool/status/2019427020849992092
White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - In-Town Note 6; Bashing Walz/Frey, Johnson amendment / indictment talk
POTUS was making his way through some off-prompter musings about alleged crime reductions and claimed crime is down 25 percent in Minnesota while bashing Governor Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Frey "this horrible governor and this horrible fake mayor" and accusing them of not cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.
The comments appear to contradict what Border Czar Tom Homan said at his press conference yesterday when he cited cooperation from state/local authorities as a reason for drawing down several hundred federal personnel from Minneapolis.
POTUS also claimed to have "gotten rid of" the Johnson Amendment prohibiting tax exempt nonprofits from endorsing candidates (it remains on the books and has been since 1954) and boasted of having won the 2024 election after being indicted several times while suggesting that his wife did not know what an indictment was.
He also suggested that he would "have a right" to use the Justice Department for "revenge" while denying doing so.
He is now rattling off a list of religion-related and religious-adjacent accomplishments. Remarks are ongoing and being broadcast/live-streamed.
Andrew Feinberg
The Independent
Thu. Feb 5, 9:54 AM
https://x.com/WHPressPool/status/2019427810348011636
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