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Trump Gaggles with Press at Lehigh Valley International Airport, Aug. 3, 2025

August 3, 2025 · The White House · 0:12:06

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

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions from the press at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on August 3, 2025, carried on the White House channel in a video published the following morning. On the economy, he said the administration would announce “a new statistician sometime over the next three, four days,” repeating his charge that the jobs numbers had been wrong before the election and corrected afterward: “it’s a scam in my opinion.”

Asked whether the nuclear submarines he had ordered toward Russia had been deployed, the President answered: “I’ve already put out a statement and the answer is they are in the region. Yeah. Where they have to be.” Asked what Russia could do to avoid sanctions, he said: “Get a deal where people stop getting killed.” He recited the administration’s peace record as he stated it — India and Pakistan, Cambodia and Thailand, the Congo and Rwanda (“going on for 31 years… 8 million people dead at least”), and Serbia and Kosovo — and said of Ukraine: “we’re going to get that one stopped too.” On Gaza, he said the United States wants the people fed and is putting up the money to do it.

Why it matters

This gaggle is the President’s first on-camera confirmation that the submarines were in place — the deterrent signal of that week stated in his own words at a Pennsylvania airport — alongside the statistician promise that the August 7 economic announcement then followed up.

Scoreboard watch

This gaggle is a scoreboard reference point: the President’s August 3, 2025 confirmation that U.S. nuclear submarines were deployed in the region facing Russia, and his stated timeline of three to four days for naming a new statistician, each as stated by the President, to be checked against the appointment and deployment record.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press at Lehigh Valley International Airport, Aug. 3, 2025” (official upload, embedded above; the upload’s description places the gaggle in Allentown, PA). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President.