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White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - In-Town Pool #6 - Opening remarks
Trump is seated with Merz, joined by VP Vance, Secretary Rubio, and Secretary Hegseth on sofa.
POTUS said Merz is “very popular” and doing a “great job.”
He said they will discuss trade, Iran operations, which is said is going “very well.”
“We have a great military and they’re doing very well.”
The two leaders shook hands.
Merz now speaking.
Gerren Keith Gaynor
thegrio | Allen Media Group LLC
Tue. Mar. 3, 11:52 AM https://x.com/WHPressPool/status/2028887939233534225
White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - In-Town Pool #5 - Pool enters Oval
Pool entered the Oval at 11:48am.
This is being live-streamed:
https://www.youtube.com/live/ocFJL5jRLXM?si=WSU5jLz98uzrsuL7
Gerren Keith Gaynor
https://thegrio.com/ | Allen Media Group LLC
Tue. Mar. 3, 11:49 AM https://x.com/WHPressPool/status/2028887583149724118
White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - Foreign Press Report #4
Trump on NATO: Well, some of the European nations have been helpful and some haven't. And I'm very surprised. Germany's been great. He's been terrific. Others have been very good, terrific. I think that the head of NATO, Mark, is fantastic. Mark Rutte. I think he's fantastic. But some of the European, like Spain, has been terrible. In fact, I told Scott to cut off all dealings with Spain. Spain, first of all, it started when every European nation, at my request, made five percent, which they should be doing. And everybody was enthusiastic about it. Germany, everybody. And Spain didn't do it. And now Spain actually said that we can't use their bases. And that's all right. We could use their base if we want. We could just fly in and use it. Nobody's going to tell us not to use it. But we don't have to. But they were unfriendly. And so I told him, we don't want to. Spain has absolutely nothing that we need other than great people. They have great people. But they don't have great leadership.
And as you know, they were the only country that in NATO would not agree to go up to five percent. I don't think they would have agreed to go up to anything. They wanted to keep it at two percent and they don't pay the two percent. So we're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain.
Trump on whether Israel forced his hand: You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack if we didn't do it. They were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that. And we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully and have done it all their lives very successfully. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first, and I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand, but Israel was ready and we were ready, and we've had a very, very powerful impact because virtually everything they have has been knocked out now, and their missile count is going way down.
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