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White House Press Pool Reports @WHPressPool - In-town pool report #5- quotes
Couldn’t hear all of the gaggle, but some quotes below. Thanks for the assist from Julian at the Boston Globe.
On criticism from the pope-
“Very important that the Pope understands very, very important… nice not to say it— Iran killed 42,000 people that were totally unarmed. They were protestors. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. If they did, every country, including Italy, where he’s stationed, every single country in the world would be in trouble. So we're doing very well with respect to that, having to do with the whole situation on Iran, the blockade is amazing. It's holding up very strong, very powerfully. And I think we're making a lot of progress in that. But the Pope has to understand Iran, very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The world would be in great danger.”
Would you meet with the pope to even out your differences? “I don’t think it’s necessary.”
Recent talk with Modi, he called it a “very good talk.” “He’s doing great.”
Are you considering extending the ceasefire with Iran?
“Maybe it'll happen before that. I'm not sure it needs to be extended.”
“Iran wants to make a deal, and we're dealing very nicely with them… and they're willing to do things today that they weren't willing to do two months ago.”
Confident Hezbollah can stick to the ceasefire?
“I think they will. I think it's going to be, actually, it's very exciting because it's 48 years. We're going to be meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, as you know, and the President of Lebanon. And I had a great talk with both of them today. They're going to be having a ceasefire, and that'll include Hezbollah. And I think, I think it could be number 10 for me.”
On Ukraine- “Ukraine is moving along. I wish they could get along, frankly, a lot of people are dying in Ukraine. We'll see what happens. There's things happening there. We're focused, we're focused so much right now on Iran.”
“The stock market is good. The oil prices are coming down, and it's looking very good that we're going to make a deal with Iran, and it's going to be a good deal. It's going to be a deal with no nuclear weapons.”
Next in person round of negotiations on the war?
“Probably, maybe over the weekend.”
“The blockade has been incredible. It’s held.”