President Donald Trump teased a "very big announcement" as he met at the White House with newly elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney Tuesday.
The U.S. president told reporters in the Oval Office that Houthi rebels had agreed to stop fighting, a day after Israel struck targets in Yemen for the first time in months in response to a ballistic missile attack on an airport in Tel Aviv.
But he said even bigger news was about to be announced — but refused to give details.
"We had some very good news last night," Trump said. "The Houthis have announced that they are not, or they've announced to us, at least, that they don't want to fight anymore. They just don't want to fight, and we will honor that, and we will. We will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated, but more importantly, we will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that's what the purpose of what we were doing. So that's just news, we just found out about that, so I think that's very, very positive."
"They were they were knocking out a lot of ships going, as you know, sailing beautifully down the various seas," he added. "It it wasn't just the canal, it was a lot of other places, and I will accept their word and we are going to stop the bombing of the Houthis, effective immediately."
Trump turned to Secretary of State Marco Rubio for additional comment, and he agreed it was an important development to protect freedom of navigation, and then the president previewed another development.
"We're going to, as you know, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, we're going to UAE and Qatar, and that will be, I guess, Monday night," Trump said. "Some of you are coming with us, I think.
"Before then, we're going to have a very, very big announcement to make, like as big as it gets, and I won't tell you on what, but it's very positive, and also I'd tell you if it was negative or positive, I can't keep that up. It is really, really positive, and that announcement will be made either Thursday or Friday or Monday before we leave. But it will be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject, very important subject."
Trump returned to the topic about 10 minutes later and clarified that the announcement might have nothing to do with his trade wars.
"We're going to have a great announcement," he said, "and I'm not necessarily saying it's on trade, going to the beginning. We're going to have a great announcement over the next few days, announcement that will be so, so incredible, so positive, and I'm not saying I don't want you to think it's necessarily on trade just to finish."
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