President Donald Trump couldn’t say whether the 60-day-old war he launched against Iran in February would end before the four-year-old Russian war against Ukraine and confused the two countries as he turned an Oval Office meeting to honor the Artemis II lunar mission crew into a wide-ranging media session with reporters.
After four minutes of remarks to honor the NASA crew that traveled to the Moon for the first time since the Nixon administration, the president immediately launched into a question-and-answer session in which he told reporters a recent conversation with Russian president Vladimir Putin had focused on the Ukraine and Iran wars.
“I talked about Ukraine, and I talked a little bit about Iran. I talked about few different subjects, mostly about Ukraine, and we had a very good conversation. I think we’re going to come up with a solution relatively quickly,” he said Wednesday.
Trump said Putin would “like to be involved” with resolving Iran’s possession of enriched uranium — something the United States opposes — and remarked that he’d told Putin in turn that he’d prefer he be “involved with ending the war with Ukraine.”
“He doesn’t want to see them have a nuclear weapon either. But I had a long talk with President Putin. I suggested a little bit of a ceasefire. And I think he might do that. He might announce something having to do with that,” Trump said.
But when pressed further on which of the two wars under discussion would end first, the president said he did not know but called the question “interesting.”
“Which war would end first? I don’t know. Maybe they’re on a similar timetable,” he said just before confusing Ukraine with Iran as he repeated his oft-used comments that Tehran is “defeated.”
The president also weighed in on the active criminal case against ex-FBI director James Comey, who turned himself in to authorities earlier in the day after a North Carolina grand jury indicted him for allegedly threatening Trump’s life by posting a photo of seashells that spelled out “86 47” to Instagram last year.
The numerical phrase is commonly used in the restaurant industry to indicate that a dish is no longer available or that an intoxicated customer should not be served more alcohol, and Comey has said he meant to indicate that the president should be removed from office.
But the Justice Department alleges that Comey meant it to be an imminent threat against the president’s life, though legal experts have said the charges are unlikely to survive a motion to dismiss because the department’s allegations don’t meet the threshold the Supreme Court has set to bring charges for a threat against the president.
Asked if he believes Comey was truly endangering him, Trump suggested that the term “86” had origins in Italian organized crime as a shorthand for murder.
“You know, you ever see the movies … the mobster says to one of his wonderful associates, ‘86 him’ — that means, kill him. I think of it as a mob term. I don’t know. People think of it as something having to do with disappearing, but the mob uses that term to say, when they want to kill somebody, they say ‘86 the son of a gun,’” he said.
The president also responded to a reporter question about King Charles III’s remarks to Congress where the royal gave a strong defense of the NATO alliance that Trump has repeatedly denigrated.
Asked if Charles’ speech changed his thinking on the alliance, Trump said he was “very disappointed” because NATO members — including the U.K. — did not join the U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran when it began in February.
But Trump also praised the King as “fantastic” and said he enjoyed his visit with the British monarch.
“We spent a lot of time together. We had a lot of talk … and he loves his country, and he’s a great king, and he’s a great friend of mine,” he said.
Trump added that Charles is a “phenomenal representative for his country” of whom the British people “should be proud” and said he “loved” the King’s remarks to Congress — and his subsequent toast at Tuesday night’s White House state dinner.
“I loved his speech yesterday. I watched it. I loved the speech last night. I don’t know about my speech. I thought my speech was okay, too, but I thought he was I think he’s an unbelievable King, and, by the way, an unbelievable queen,” he said.
The president’s Oval Office appearance was ostensibly to honor the Artemis II crew that circumnavigated the Moon earlier this month.
At the outset of the roughly 20-minute Oval Office appearance, he congratulated them for executing the lunar flyby that was the first trip humans have made there in 53 years while traveling the farthest distance anyone has traveled from Earth.
“I don’t know how they do it. I wouldn’t want to do it — they have unbelievable courage,” he said as NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, NASA astronauts Christina Koch, Victor Glover, Reid Wiseman and the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen looked on from behind the Resolute desk. The astronauts remained expressionless as Trump answered the various political questions put to him.
The president also joked that he had the chops to become a NASA astronaut himself because one has “to do a lot of things physically good,” which would have given him “no trouble making it.”
Koch and Glover became the first woman and first Black man to reach the moon during their flight earlier this month, which launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 1 aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System rocket before splashing down in the Pacific off the coast of Southern California on April 10.
During their 10-day journey, they performed science experiments and observed parts of the moon that have never been seen before. The crew even got to name some areas, including a crater they named “Carroll,” as a tribute to Wiseman’s late wife. Carroll Wiseman died from cancer in 2020.
The astronauts are now helping NASA to understand the data they collected on the trip and test out next-generation technology, including improved spacesuits.NASA is working toward launching the next phase of its ambitious Artemis lunar program next year.
During that mission, known as Artemis III, astronauts will test docking capabilities with the spacecraft needed to land on the moon. After that, the space agency is aiming to land astronauts on the lunar surface. The astronauts will explore the moon’s South Pole region. So will NASA drones.
The target date is early 2028 and Trump said he believes NASA has a “good shot.”NASA hopes to eventually set up a permanent base of operations on the moon, including nuclear reactors. From there, the agency will shift its focus to Mars.
