Shortly before 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, President Donald Trump hosted Sebastian Kurz, Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, for a meeting in the Oval Office.
Shortly before 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday, President Donald Trump hosted Sebastian Kurz, Federal Chancellor of the Republic of Austria, for a meeting in the Oval Office. After each delivered some brief opening remarks on, per Trump, their “very good relationship on” trade and other agenda items, President Trump took several questions from the pool of assembled U.S. and Austrian press.
The president reminded the pool that auto tariffs are certainly “something we think about” that could be in the administration’s arsenal if “we don’t make the deal” he wants with the European Union. He praised his new Attorney General William Barr, and said that any release of the Mueller report would be “totally up to the attorney general.” He talked about his conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that occurred earlier on Wednesday, by remarking for instance that “we compared notes” and that “it was a good meeting.” President Trump, reliably, pushed back on reporter’s characterization that the North Korean regime appears “reluctant” to actually denuclearize, and stated he was optimistic about the upcoming summit.
At the end of the press availability, President Trump, responding to a final question, chided Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who is currently on an anti-Trump media and book tour, for seeming like a “poor man’s J. Edgar Hoover,” and added that “I’m very proud to say that we caught him” and fired him.
Senior administration officials in the Oval at the time included John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Bill Shine, and Hogan Gidley.