From: Niall Stanage
Date: December 25, 2018 at 11:13:47 AM EST
Subject: In-Town pool report 5: Final Q&A quotes — Shutdown, Comey, "no collusion"
The second and final part of POTUS's Oval Office Q&A with reporters. I've checked pretty closely from my own recording but as always...check against transcript.
On whether he has a message for federal workers
“Well, I think they understand what’s happening. They want border security. The people of this country want border security. It’s not a question of me. I’d rather not be doing shutdowns…
“I love the White House, but I wasn’t able to be with my family. It thought it would be wrong for me to be with my family. My family’s in Florida — Palm Beach. And I just didn’t want to go down and be there when other people are hurting. But it’s gonna all work out."
POTUS said many workers have “said to me and communicated, ‘Stay out until you get the funding for the wall.’ These federal workers want the wall. The only one that doesn’t want the wall are the Democrats, because they don’t mind open borders.”
A segue to James Comey
POTUS asserted that many Democrats had at one time wanted a physical barrier on the border:
“The only time they went against it, there was only one time: when Donald Trump said, 'We want to build the wall.' As soon as I said, I want to build the wall, they were all against it. It’s like, take another example: Take Comey. Everybody hated Comey, they thought he did a horrible job The Democrats hated him, they were calling for his resignation, they were calling for his firing — including Schumer, including Nancy Pelosi — until I fired him. And once I fired him, everybody said, ‘Oh, why did you fire him? Why did you fire him?’ Take a look at some of these people…Literally the day before I fired him, they were saying he should be fired. As soon as I fired him, they said, ‘Oh, what did you fire him for, that was a terrible thing to do.'”
"It’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country. But other than that, I wish everybody a very Merry Christmas.”
On what happens when Dem take control of the House. [Also 'no collusion' except by Dems.]
"Then there’s probably presidential harassment and we know how to handle that. …[But] there’s been no collusion. After two years, no collusion. There has been collusion but it’s been by the Democrats….You’re talking about millions and millions and millions of dollars of wasted money. There’s been absolutely no collusion. But there has been a lot of collusion by the Democrats with Russia and with a lot of other people that maybe they shouldn’t have been dealing with. Including very dishonest people.”
--
Niall Stanage
White House Columnist
office: 202-xxx-xxxx
cell: 202-xxx-xxxx
The Hill
1625 K Street NW, Suite 900
Washington, D.C., 20006
ᐧ
============================================================
Public Pool is an automated feed of White House press pool reports. For live updates, follow @WHPublicPool on Twitter.