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Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, July 11, 2025

July 11, 2025 · The White House · 0:03:55

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions from the press before departing the White House for Texas on July 11, 2025, carried on the White House channel, ahead of the Kerrville flood roundtable paged separately from the same trip. Of the devastation he was traveling to see, he said: “It’s a horrible thing. Nobody can even believe it. Such a thing. That much water that fast.”

Asked about Brazil’s former President Bolsonaro, the President said he was being treated “very unfairly”: “He’s a good man. You know, I know him well. I negotiated with him. He was a very tough negotiator and I can tell you he was a very honest man and he loved the people of Brazil.” On immigration, he said the prior administration “allowed 25 million people to come in totally unchecked, unvetted,” cited “11,888 murderers,” and said of children reported missing under the prior administration: “300,000 under Biden. We’ve already gotten back 10,000 of those children… as of this morning over 10,000 we’ve gotten back,” as he stated the figures. His advice to countries facing the tariff deadline: “just keep working hard… we’ve been taken advantage of for many, many years by countries both friend and foe.”

Why it matters

This short departure gaggle is the President’s on-record defense of Bolsonaro on the day of the Texas trip, and his July 11 statement of the recovered-children figure — a checkable administration claim stated by the President himself.

Scoreboard watch

This gaggle is a scoreboard reference point: the President’s July 11, 2025 statement that more than 10,000 of the 300,000 children he described as missing under the prior administration had been recovered, as stated by the President, to be checked against the HHS/DHS record.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, July 11, 2025” (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President.