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Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, Apr. 11, 2026

April 11, 2026 · The White House · 0:03:21

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 on April 11, 2026, while his negotiating team met Iran’s in Islamabad. Asked whether he was pleased with the talks: “I’m getting a lot of reports. They’ve been meeting for many hours, as you probably have noticed. We’ll see what happens. Look, regardless, we win. Regardless what happens, we win. We’ve totally defeated that country, and so let’s see what happens. Maybe they make a deal, maybe they don’t.”

He described tanker traffic rerouting to the United States — “boats are sailing up and heading out to our country. Big beautiful tankers, and we’re loading them up with oil and gas” — and restated the military tally as he states it: “We’ve defeated their navy. We defeated their air force. We defeated their anti-aircraft. We defeated their radar. We defeated their leaders. Their leaders are all dead.” Of the strait: “Now all we do is we’ll open up the strait, even though we don’t use it, because we have a lot of other countries in the world that do use it that are either afraid or weak or cheap… We were not helped by NATO. That I can tell you.” He put media credibility “down to 13%,” said of Iran’s mine force that all 28 minelayers are sunk with “a couple of mines in the water” and sweepers working the strait, and warned on reported Chinese assistance: “If China does that, China’s going to have big problems.”

Why it matters

The April 11 gaggle is the President’s public frame while his team negotiated out of sight: the outcome declared won in advance, the deal reduced to a preference rather than a need. It is recorded on the Foreign Policy & Defense hub between the April 8 ceasefire briefing and the April 12 Islamabad result.

Scoreboard watch

The “we win regardless” framing and the 158-ships / 28-minelayers tally, as stated by the President, are recorded here against the Islamabad outcome announced the next day.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press Before Departing the White House, Apr. 11, 2026,” The White House, April 11, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President at the gaggle.