President Donald Trump joined reporters for a nearly two-hour press briefing on Tuesday at the White House, where he commemorated completing one year back in office and vented that voters are not appreciating his economic accomplishments.
The president spoke for just over one hour and 20 minutes before fielding questions from reporters.
The White House billed Tuesday’s event as a full-on press briefing, but much to the dismay of the sitting press corps, his nearly 90-minute topper largely mirrored his typical campaign-style stump speeches, including running down his economic accomplishments and taking credit for a growing list of foreign conflicts.
“What the hell even is this?” one White House correspondent, seated just a few positions over from the Washington Examiner, said in a text some 50 minutes into Trump’s comments. “Like a low-energy Trump rally.”
“I’m very glad I decided not to come in today,” another White House correspondent joked to the Washington Examiner.
Still, there were a few notable moments and themes that deviated from the Trump norm.
Here’s what you need to know.
1. Mugshots, printouts, and a ‘nasty’ binder clip
Immediately upon his entry to the briefing room, the president began leafing through a stack of mugshots that he claimed were among the “worst” criminal illegal immigrants that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had arrested on the streets of Minneapolis in recent weeks.
“You’re not getting bored with this, right? I hope you — but these are people that you have to see,” the president asked reporters roughly six minutes into the mugshot presentation.
Some five minutes later, Trump again broke from his flow and told reporters, “We have many stacks like this,” and claimed that he “could go 30 times what I’m showing you now.”
The president eventually tossed the stack of mugshots to the ground before lifting a 31-page printout off the lectern. Earlier in the day, White House aides had distributed the same “book,” touting 365 wins notched during his first 365 days in office, to reporters in the briefing room. However, Trump nearly injured his finger while opening up the jumbo-sized binder clip holding the documents.
“That would have done some damage, but you know what? I wouldn’t have shown the pain,” Trump joked, soliciting some laughs from the room. “That was nasty, but I would not have shown the pain.”
“I would have acted like nothing happened as my finger fell off,” he continued. Trump, thankfully, chose not to read out the documents and tossed the clip to the ground beside the mugshots before continuing his self-styled “weave.”
2. Bad public relations
As the president winds up his economic messaging machine ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, he has repeatedly sought to tamp down souring economic sentiment among voters on both sides of the aisle.
However, he offered a slightly amended approach Tuesday, putting some blame on administration officials, and even himself, for failing to break through to voters.
“Maybe I have the bad public relations people, but we’re not getting it across,” he said of his messaging efforts during the opening portion of Tuesday’s remarks. “I don’t like to do this, but I do it because I’ve got to get the word out.”
During the question-and-answer session, Trump expressed similar sentiments in multiple exchanges with reporters.
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“I think a lot of people are listening to the fake news a little bit,” Trump answered a question to clarify his earlier comments about his communications staff. “And I’m not blaming anybody. I think I blame ourselves. I think we’ve done a much better job than we’re able to promote. We’re not promoting. We’re doing a great job, and we’re sort of letting the promotion take care of itself.”
“One of the reasons I’m doing this news conference, I think it’s important we have taken a mess and made it really good,” he continued. “It’s going to get even better.”
Still, the president did accuse Democrats of trying to saddle his administration with the “affordability problem.”
3. Supreme Court and tariffs
The president expressed some concern that the Supreme Court could strike down the legality of his “Liberation Day” tariffs, telling reporters that “if we lose that case, it’s possible we’re going to have to do the best we can in paying it back.”
“I don’t know how that’s going to be done, very easily, without hurting a lot of people, but we’re waiting for that case anxiously,” he continued. “And we have tremendous national security because of tariffs and tremendous income.”
Trump also warned that without the tariffs, the United States could not compete with China on a global stage.
“We have now more car factories being built in the United States than ever before because of tariffs,” he said. “If they take those tariffs away, China will eat our lunch.”
If the high court does strike down the tariffs, the president said he would “have to use something else” as a threat against European nations backing Greenland’s resistance to becoming a U.S. territory.
“You know, take a look at the word license. Take a look at other things. I mean, we have other alternatives, but what we’re doing now is the best, the strongest, the fastest, the easiest, the least complicated,” Trump said after he imposed levies on European nations starting Feb. 1.
4. Trump is Green(land) with envy
Trump’s desire for Greenland has rattled NATO nations, bound by the alliance’s Article 5 security guarantee that an attack on one nation is an attack on all nations.
But when Trump was asked if he was willing to break up NATO to acquire Greenland, he dodged on a definitive answer.
“It’s very interesting,” he said. “So I think something’s going to happen that’s going to be very good for everybody. Nobody’s done more for NATO than I have, as I said before, in every way.”
He then bragged about pressuring NATO nations to increase their defense spending from 2% of GDP to 5%.
“I think that we will work something out where NATO is going to be very happy and where we’re going to be very happy,” Trump said. “But we need it for security purposes. We need it for national security and even world security. It’s very important.”
The president was also asked how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland, to which he teased back, “You’ll find out.”
5. ICE mistakes
As alluded to in his opening remarks, the president clearly tried to highlight ICE’s operations in Minneapolis during his Tuesday appearance.
However, while senior administration officials including Vice President JD Vance and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have repeatedly denied to reporters that ICE officers have engaged in any wrongdoing, despite dozens of documented incidents of misuse of force and improper arrests, Trump seemed to concede that ICE officers are making some mistakes.
The president noted that ICE is arresting “tens of thousands of illegal alien gang members, drug dealers, murderers, drug runners, human traffickers, fraudsters, and savage criminals.”
“They’re going to make mistakes,” he said. “Sometimes, ICE is going to be too rough for somebody. They’re going to make a mistake. Sometimes it can happen.”
Opposition to ICE operations in Minneapolis has only increased following the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer earlier this year.
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Trump additionally told reporters Tuesday that he felt “horribly” when he learned of the killing of Good.
“I learned her parents and her father was a tremendous Trump man,” he added.