Ahead of his trip to Pope Francis’ funeral, President Trump dodged questions from reporters about reaching a tariff deal with China.
The president has previously said he is speaking with Chinese President Xi on making a deal. The Chinese Communist Party claims they are not in talks with the Trump administration.
“You said that you have spoken to President Xi. When did that happen? China says it hasn't happened,” one reporter asked.
“I spoke to him numerous times. So we're leaving and going to Rome, where we'll be attending the funeral of Pope Francis.” Trump added, “It's going to be very interesting. We're going to meet with a lot of the foreign leaders. They want to meet. Trade deals are going very well.”
He went on to speak about other agenda items, “I think Russia and Ukraine, I think they're coming along, we hope [but the negotiations are] very fragile. Iran I think, is going very well. We'll see what happens. We're working on plenty of things that shouldn't be worked on, because none of this stuff should have happened. This should have been taken care of by Biden. It should have been fixed by Biden but he couldn't do it. Nor could he come close to doing so. Anyway, we're going to Rome to pay our respects, and we'll be leaving that same day. We'll be coming back home tomorrow night, and I'll see some of you over there. Otherwise, I'll see you on television.”
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Reporters then began yelling out questions. “You said you spoke with President Xi. Have you spoken to him since the tariffs? When did you last [speak],” one reporter asked.
“I don't want to comment on that, but I've spoken to him many times,” Trump replied.
The president was then asked and answered a series of questions about which world leaders he would be meeting with while overseas. Then he was asked, “How are you and the first lady going to remember Pope Francis, sir?”
“Very well,” Trump said. “[He was a] good man. He loved the world, actually. And he was just a good man. I met him twice. I thought he was a fantastic kind of a guy.”
“Time magazine wrote that President Xi called you. When did that happen? And what did you discuss?” yelled out another reporter.
“I'll let you know at the appropriate time,” Trump commented, as he dodged another China-Tariff question. “Let's see if we can make a deal.”
The president was then asked about forging a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.
He replied in part, “I think we're pretty close [to a deal].”
Several other reporters yelled out questions before he answered one about his tariff plan.
“I think the tariff plan is doing very well. We're resetting the table. We're going to make our country very rich. Very, very rich, it's already happening,” he said before walking onto Marine One.
Watch the full interaction with reporters below or click here.
- YouTubeyoutu.be
