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

September 11, 2025 · The White House · 0:10:23

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

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions on September 11, 2025, before departing the White House, in a gaggle dominated by the assassination of Charlie Kirk the day before, carried on the White House channel. Asked whether he was concerned for his own safety, he answered: “Not really. I’m really concerned for our country. We have a great country. We have [a] radical left group of lunatics out there. Just absolute lunatics. And we’re going to get that problem solved. I’m only concerned for the country.” Asked how his supporters should respond, he said Kirk “was an advocate of nonviolence. That’s the way I’d like to see people respond.”

The President said he had spoken with Kirk’s widow: “I did. I spoke to Erika, his wife, and we had a long talk, and she’s devastated. She is absolutely devastated, as you can imagine.” On the manhunt, he said he heard investigators were “making big progress,” that he had “an indication” of the shooter’s motivation that he would share later, and of the suspect: “He’s an animal, total animal. And hopefully they’ll have him and they’ll get him. What he did is disgraceful.”

The gaggle ranged abroad: the presidents of Congo and Rwanda, he said, are “coming soon” to Washington; on Brazil, he called former President Bolsonaro “a good president of Brazil” and said the guilty verdict against him was “very surprising” and “very much like they tried to do with me”; and he fielded questions on Israel’s strike in Doha and its effect on a hostage deal, and on meeting Central Asian presidents around the UN General Assembly, which he said he would do.

Why it matters

This is the President’s first extended on-camera reaction the day after the Kirk assassination — the nonviolence appeal to his own supporters, the account of his call with Erika Kirk, and the first indication claim about the shooter’s motive all enter the record here, a day before the suspect’s custody was announced.

Scoreboard watch

This gaggle is a scoreboard reference point: the President’s September 11, 2025 statements that investigators were making progress toward the Kirk suspect and that he held an indication of motive, each as stated by the President, to be checked against the investigation’s public record.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, Sep. 11, 2025” (official upload, embedded above; the upload’s description places the event at the White House). All characterizations as stated by the President in the gaggle.