Trump Holds International Ass Kissing Competition

Leaders From Six African Nations Lay It On Thick For Dear Leader

After viewing today’s multilateral lunch held at the White House with the leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal, I would have to agree with comedian Paula Poundstone:

I don’t blame them. After the caustic meetings with Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy in February, and South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa made international headlines, these small (and in some cases poor) nations are hardly in the position to cake up Trump’s makeup, which was extra orangey today. (TRIGGER WARNING AHEAD!)

Each leader delivered their own profuse praise worthy of Trump’s own cabinet of suckups, as well as offering up their opinions that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. I guess that’s what gets you through the door nowadays, as Bibi Netanyahu did the same thing on Monday. The entire affair was not worth the time and effort of getting it on video. No new information was provided, no new deals were discussed, and basically, it was a waste of my time watching it, as well as anyone else who happened to have that amount of time (and a masochistic attitude) to tune in.

Of course, he answered questions from the press in his inimitable narcissistic style. I figured I would at least fact-check his responses, because many of them are DOOZIES. Here goes (My notes are italicized in bold):

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Q: President Trump, James Comey and John Brennan are now under criminal investigation related to the Trump–Russia probe. Do you want to see these two guys behind bars?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I know nothing about it other than what I read today. But I will tell you: I think they're very dishonest people. I think they're crooked as hell, and maybe they have to pay a price for that. I believe they are truly bad people—dishonest people. So, whatever happens, happens.

Q: And now, a few weeks after the strikes you ordered on nuclear facilities in Iran, there is an Iranian official who says you, President Trump, have done something that he can no longer sunbathe in Mar-a-Lago as you lie there with your stomach to the sun. A small drone might hit you in the navel. It's very simple. Do you think that's a real threat? And when is the last time you went sunbathing, anyway?

TRUMP: It's been a long time. It's been a long time. I don't know—maybe I was around seven or so. I'm not too big into it. Yeah, I guess it's a threat. I'm not sure it's a threat, actually. But perhaps it is.

The very thought of Trump sunbathing:

Q: On another subject—two Democratic Senators, Cory Booker and Alex Padilla, have a new bill. They want to require CBP and ICE officers to have legible IDs, and they don’t want CBP or ICE officers covering their faces. Would you ever sign that?

TRUMP: Well, they wouldn't be saying that if they didn't hate our country—and they obviously do. I'm surprised they would do it, knowing a little bit about them. I don't know them well, but these officers are doing a tremendous job. They're great patriots.

If you expose them—because of, you know, statements that have been made by Democrats and others on the left (mostly, I think, probably exclusively)—you put them in tremendous danger. And it’s sort of funny when people picket in front of Columbia, in front of Harvard, and they have masks on—more than masks. I mean, you can’t see anything. Nobody complains about that. But when a patriot who works for ICE or Border Patrol puts a mask on so that they won’t be recognized, so their family can lead a bit of a normal life after working so hard and so dangerously, there’s a problem with that.
Funny that no other LEOs, including city and state patrolmen/women, FBI, or anyone else law enforcement-related, have to cover their faces. Only ICE. He loves the idea of terrorizing immigrants for the fear factor, and nothing else.

This is the problem with the Democrats. They have a lot of bad things going on in their heads. They've really lost their confidence, number one, and they’ve become somewhat deranged. I want to do whatever’s necessary to protect our great law enforcement people—and they are right at the top of the list.

Q: Your Agriculture Department announced this week that it is going to start limiting Chinese ownership of American farmland. Why do you think the Chinese have been buying up all this farmland in our country, so close to military installations?

TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to get into that. I have a very good relationship with President Xi. We’re going to see. They’re going to be making a recommendation to me. But we have a very good relationship. As you know, they’re paying a lot of tariffs to the United States now. So I’m not going to get into that right now.
Translation: I don’t know what the f*ck you’re talking about!

Q: Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House was weighing whether to send another Patriot air defense system to Ukraine. Can you confirm that?

TRUMP: They would like it. They’ve asked for it. They’re very rare, you know, because a lot of systems have already been sent to Ukraine. But they’ve made the request. We’re going to take a look at it. Very expensive—very expensive system. It’s a shame we have to spend so much money on a war that would never have happened if I were president. That’s a terrible, terrible war over there. Truly a shame. It’s very sad.
Again with the “if I were president” chestnut!

When you talk about a system like that—highly sophisticated, tremendous amount of money—and they’re doing it because they want to prevent death. They’re getting hit hard. Very hard. So we’re looking at it.

Q: Also on Russia—yesterday, Ukraine was hit by over 700 drones sent by Russia last night. What’s your response to that attack?

TRUMP: Well, I’ve been sort of letting people know I’m not happy about what’s going on. It’s a war that should’ve never happened. It should not be happening now. They’re losing. Now it’s up—I was saying 5,000, now it’s up to 7,000. Think of it—7,000 people a week on both sides. 7,000 people. Young, mostly military people—young souls—are dead. And dying. And it should be stopped. It should be stopped. Very sad to see what’s happening.
Kind of sort of letting people know he’s not happy, but not being so hard-lined that it will disrupt his future patchup with current ex-boyfriend Putin.

Q: Sir, can you explain how you calculated your latest round of tariffs? Was there a formula that was used? And do you expect any of these countries to face tariffs as well?

TRUMP: The formula was a formula based on common sense—based on deficits, based on how we’ve been treated over the years, and based on raw numbers. And we’re going to have a couple more coming out today. Brazil, as an example, has been not good to us. Not good at all. We’re going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think later this afternoon or tomorrow morning.
Translation: I picked the numbers out of a hat and also based them on whether I like the country or not.

But they’re based on very substantial facts, and also past history. You look at the past history—we never had anybody in the White House that understood the numbers or was into it like I have. You know, we’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs. Hundreds of billions. And we haven’t even started yet. And it’s going to be a great thing for our country. I think it’s going to be a fair thing for the world.
The U.S. has taken in $98.6 billion, up 110% from last year. Although federal income taxes brought in $2.4 trillion in 2024. Source.

And we really haven’t had too many complaints because I’m keeping them at a very low number—a very conservative, as you would say, number. And we haven’t had—I’m sure they will be complaining at certain points—but we haven’t had complaints. We’ve been treated very unfairly by both friend and foe. And friend has treated us very badly. It’s not even believable that for so many years...

You know, I was using tariffs in my first administration. We had the most successful financial administration that there’s ever been. This is going to be much better. But we got cut short with the co—because I didn’t think it was appropriate when, you know, Italy, Spain—you saw the horror show that a lot of those countries went through. So I cut it a little bit short.
Except for that whole wrecked economy due to his COVID response thing.

But we took in hundreds of billions of dollars, and we had the most successful term ever from a president—financially. But this is going to be much more successful.

Q: Do you expect any of the countries here to face tariffs as well?

TRUMP: I haven’t thought of it. But maybe. I don’t know. Let’s see. I like him, him, him, him, and him. No, I don’t think so. Not too much. He’s very good. These are friends of mine now.
Who TF are you talking about?

Q: Thank you for taking our questions, Mr. President. You talked about the amount of external revenue the country has brought in thanks to your tariffs. Can you talk about how these hundreds of billions of dollars are helping grow the country? What do you hope to put it toward?

TRUMP: Well, bigger than the tariffs, actually, is the fact that when you charge the tariffs, at a certain point they say, “Well, we can’t pay those tariffs. It doesn’t make economic sense.” These are wealthy countries, and they—or their companies—will come into our country and build. And that’s what’s actually happening.

If you had a very low tariff, there’d be no incentive to do that. If you have no tariff—like we used to have, which is so stupid it’s not even believable—then obviously they make the product in their country. They have the jobs, they have the income, they have the taxes, they have everything. And they just send it into us. And it’s jobs that we wouldn’t get.

Now, the wheel has turned. And what we’re doing is—we’re... I mean, more importantly—we’re taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. Money that we’ve never seen before. But more important than that, we have a lot of people who would rather not have to pay that. So they’re coming in, and they’re building plants.

AI—I mean, we’re leading everybody, including China, by a lot with AI. They’re building their own plant. You heard me say yesterday—they’re building their own electric generating plants to go along with the factories, or plants, that they’re building if they want to do that.

We’re getting them fast approvals. Very fast turnarounds. They’re using mostly natural gas to start off, but they’re using coal. They have the right to use coal. They have the right to use nuclear. Nuclear’s come a long way in the last five years.

So we’re getting them very fast approvals. We have factories and plants being built at a level that we’ve never had in this country before.
AI figures are based on 2024 models and have nothing whatsoever to do with the tariffs. Also, he didn’t actually answer the question. Surprise, surprise!

Q: And secondly, a study from the Council of Economic Advisers—you put it on Truth Social yesterday—it showed that your assessment that tariffs would slow inflation was accurate, and that the prices of imported goods since February have fallen. That your assessment was right, the critics were wrong. Why do so-called experts continually misread your economic policy, sir?

TRUMP: Well, it’s not the experts. It’s the fake news—and a combination of that and the Democrats. I saw an ad on television today—on Fox. And it was some ad about, oh, “Trump has raised costs.” It’s the opposite.

I actually put out a statement—I brought down costs. I brought down the cost of groceries. I brought down the cost of energy. Tremendously. Energy, tremendously. Groceries—if you remember my first week in office, the press was screaming at me about the cost of eggs. They were four times higher than they were just a short time ago. That was caused by Biden and stupid policies. And we got that down—and by Easter, it was normalized. And now it’s actually even at a lower price.

So when I see an ad like that, it’s always good to respond. I feel you have to respond. It was an ad that said things are more costly. No, they’re much less costly.

Yesterday, $1.99 a gallon. Two states—three states—were selling gasoline at $1.99. You haven’t seen that for a long time.
The lowest gas prices found so far are around $2.71 in Mississippi. Nice try, Donald!

And I brought costs way down. Just about every cost. I can’t think of a cost that went up—but just about every cost.

So what they do is—they lie. I mean, they take ads... you’d almost think that the advertising station would stop it, because they know it’s wrong. It’s such a lie. All you can do is say it’s a lie and explain it. I guess I have the ability to explain it at conferences like this, so I like to take advantage of it and do it.

But costs are substantially down under the Trump administration. And, as you know, Biden had the highest inflation—I believe—in the history of our country. They say 48 years, but regardless, I think it was really the highest in the history of our country. They were up to numbers that nobody ever saw before.
Jimmy Carter presided over the highest interest rates, actually. Followed by Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. All had higher year-over-year inflation rates than Joe Biden. Source

And we have inflation now totally under control. We have a Fed chairman that—if he was doing his job properly—would lower interest rates. But we’re bullying through even that. We’re doing so well it’s not having that kind of impact on us.

But if you want to see a rocket ship—we should have the lowest interest rates. Because without us, there’s nothing. And we have a strong country now. And we’re taking in a lot of money. And other countries aren’t even complaining. They got away with murder.

They took advantage of a lot of very stupid people that sat in the seat. Very stupid people. Or people who didn’t understand business—or something was going on. But it’s hard to believe they got away with it for so many years.

But now, I’m treating them very fairly again. We have countries with tremendous deficits with us—where we essentially lose a lot of money. And we are changing that around very rapidly. And I think it’s about time somebody did it.

Q: Sir, yesterday you said that you were not sure who ordered the munitions halted to Ukraine. Have you since been able to figure that out?

TRUMP: Well, I haven’t thought about it—because we’re looking at Ukraine right now and munitions—but no, I have not gone into it.
Translation: I have no f*cking clue!

Q: What does it say that such a big decision could be made inside your government without you knowing?

TRUMP: Uh, I would know if a decision was made. I will know. I’ll be the first to know. In fact, most likely, I’d give the order. But I haven’t done that yet.
But, but, your Defense Secretary did in fact halt munitions to Ukraine. Who’s in charge here?

Q: Sir, can I ask how your meeting with Netanyahu went over the last couple of days? And how realistic do you think a ceasefire is this week?

TRUMP: Well, we’re talking about Gaza, for the most part. I think we have a chance this week or next week—not definite. There’s nothing, you know, definite about war and Gaza and all of the other places that we all deal with so much. But there’s a very good chance that we’ll have a settlement—an agreement of some kind—this week, and maybe next week.

Q: If not on Africa as well, sir—the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which has been central to many sub-Saharan countries having access to the U.S. market, that’s due to expire in September. Are you hoping to extend that beyond it?

TRUMP: Well, we’ll take a look at that.
Translation: I don’t understand the question. HELP!

Q (off-camera): That’s up to Congress to take a first crack at. We know that program has been in place for about 20 years. And at the end result of that, we see a lot of other countries operating in Africa. We still see a lot of tariff and non-tariff barriers in Africa. So I think any discussion about that act would also have to think about how we address those kinds of barriers.

Q: Yeah. Peter. President Trump, in Alvarado, Texas a few days ago, ten people wearing all black allegedly set off fireworks outside an ICE office to lure the officers out so they could ambush them—shoot at them. They had guns and vests and two-way radios. Do you think this was an isolated incident, or do you think there’s a national threat of a left-wing militia targeting ICE and CBP?

TRUMP: Well, I think you have some very stupid people on the left who have some money that they’re making available to these people. Because you look at the guns they had—they were brand new. You look at even the clothing they were wearing—it looked like it just came out of some military shop.

So you have some very stupid people that—if anything ever happened—they’d be the first to go. They don’t understand that. They’d be the first to go. They’d be the first ones hit.

But there is money being put behind people. When you look at the weapons they have—the newness of the weapons—rifles that just came out, and they have the latest model. So there’s something going on. And we’ll get to the bottom of it.
There’s no evidence of “money being put behind people.” Surprisingly, the rest of his statement is mostly true. Even a blind squirrel finds nuts on occasion.

Q: What do you think the penalty should be for these people—if they are found guilty—people who shoot at ICE officers?

TRUMP: Very, very stiff. Very stiff. A long time in jail. A long time.

And one got hit yesterday in the neck. Fortunately, he’s going to be okay. But he got hit yesterday in the neck. No good.

Q: What would you think if I read you a quote from a lawmaker who says about ICE: “To abolish it, to treat them as criminals or anything—that is inappropriate and outrageous.” And I told you that was Democrat John Fetterman?

TRUMP: Well, it’s—by the way, I assume when you read that—because you paused in the middle—you’re going to have to read that again without the pause. Could you read that again, please?
Translation: If you stop, I lose interest. I have a very short attention span…SQUIRREL!

Q: “To abolish it, to treat them as criminals or anything—that’s inappropriate and outrageous.”

TRUMP: So he’s saying that to treat the people that did the shooting as ICE officers?

Q: No, he's saying it's outrageous to treat ICE officers as criminals.

TRUMP: Oh, okay. Good. Because the way you read it, it really was the opposite. But that’s okay. That’s all right. I think—I think that’s what he meant.

No, the new John Fetterman is exactly what you said. He’s right. He’s right. And we have to protect our police officers, and we will. And we have been.

If you saw the stats released by the FBI the other day, the murder rate is way down. The lowest it’s been in a long time. And that took place over the last six months. For the last six months—murder—it’s a hell of a subject to have to talk about, but murder is way down, and almost getting to be modern-day records.
Yes, the murder rate IS down, but it’s been trending downward for the past few years. There is no hard evidence that Trump’s policies have lowered crime.

So that’s despite the fact that we have a lot of people who came into the country who shouldn’t be here.

Q: Mr. President? Mr. President?

Q: Yes, please—two questions. One on tariffs, the other on the IRS.

On tariffs—China is reportedly softening their impact on U.S. tariffs in Africa, announcing last month that they would halt charges on imports for nearly all of its African partners. Does this move by China influence your thinking—your approach to tariffs on the continent?

TRUMP: Well, we treat Africa great in many different ways, including with tariffs. But you know, parts of Africa charge us tremendous tariffs, as you know. And they’re going to be dropping those tariffs. They’ve already informed me they’re going to be dropping those tariffs.
The nation of Lesotho (Exports clothing and diamonds) charges a 99% tariff on exports, Madagascar 93% (Exports mostly vanilla, some precious stones/metals), and Mauritius 80% (Textiles and apparel).

But we treat Africa far better than China, or anybody else, anyplace else.

Q: And on the IRS—The IRS says that churches can now endorse political candidates. What’s your reaction to this? And how do you expect this to influence some of the work that’s afoot on the continent? There are a lot of American churches doing missionary work in Africa. Do you support that?

TRUMP: I love the fact that churches can endorse a political candidate. I think so, because we have a lot of respect for the people that lead the church—for the pastors, and the ministers, and the rabbis, and all different leaders of all different religions. And people respect those people.

And I think there’s nothing wrong—you know, it was a very big penalty if that took place just a little while ago. They had a thing called the Johnson Act. And it was a very big penalty.

I think it’s great if a pastor, minister, priest, rabbi—and we could very much go into your religion, by the way, which is something that people are having great respect for throughout the world—if somebody of faith wants to endorse, I think it’s something that I’d like to hear.

And I can guarantee you—the people that they’re with every Saturday or Sunday or whatever it is—they want to hear from these people. And it was a very severe penalty. Those people were not allowed to speak up. Now they’re allowed to speak up. No, I think it’s terrific.

Q: Mr. President, your administration took new actions against Harvard University today. Are you still optimistic about reaching a deal with the university?

TRUMP: Oh, yeah. I think so. Harvard’s been very bad—totally anti-Semitic. And yeah, they’ll absolutely reach a deal.

Q (Peter): I just got a text from our colleague John Roberts. He says that we are now reporting the guy who was arrested in the Alvarado, Texas incident—for tampering with the evidence—was a green card recipient under the Biden administration, and a prior DACA recipient. What do you think of that?

TRUMP: It’s very sad. It’s very bad. A lot of them are here. We came in and—21 million—I think it’s higher than that, by the way. But they say 21 million people came in. Many of them are criminals. Many of them are murderers.
Immigration officials encountered immigrants illegally crossing the US border about 10.4 million times from February 2021, Biden’s first full month in office, to January 2025, his last. 4.5 million of those encounters led to expulsions from the U.S. Source

11,888 is what they say are murderers. And they came in through open border policies. No checking, no vetting, no nothing. And we have a lot of that.
Completely made up!

And despite that, we have crime down—which is pretty amazing. And this is a long—

Say hello to John. Say hello to John Roberts.

Q: Well, I’m sure he’s watching this right now. A lot of news has broken since we’ve been in here. Axios says a secret White House meeting between Steve Witkoff, Ron Dermer, and a Qatari envoy on Tuesday led to significant progress in the negotiations over the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal. What can you tell us about this secret?

TRUMP: Very possible. I will tell you—we’re getting very close to a deal. I don’t know if it’s secret or not secret, but it doesn’t matter to me. Secret’s fine if it gets us to where we want to be.
Translation: I don’t know what my cabinet is doing.

We want to have a ceasefire. We want to have peace. We want to get the hostages back. And I think we’re close to doing it.

TRUMP (closing): Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Translation: Get the f*ck out!

Here’s the entire meeting if you wish to indulge. But I don’t blame you if you don’t!