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Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Arrival at the White House, Sep. 23, 2026

September 23, 2026 · The White House · 0:03:14

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

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions from reporters on his arrival at the White House on September 23, 2026, landing on the new South Lawn helipad he praised as “the most beautiful helipad ever built” — no longer, he said, a landing in grass and a walk through mud. He said the day’s meetings with the Chinese delegation had been “a great little meeting… a great greeting,” and looked ahead to the next night’s state dinner for President Xi, saying the guest list drew “the entire tech world, the entire banking world, and a lot more.”

On the ballroom construction, he said the first column was set that day and the project is “very much ahead of schedule.” Asked about fentanyl — a reporter cited 488,000 American deaths over the past decade — the President said China “has been tariffed and really penalized very strongly for that.” Asked about his UN address the day before, he said the United States is now “the most respected country in the world… by far,” after being “laughed at” two years ago.

Why it matters

The gaggle is the President’s own eve-of-state-visit framing: the relationship’s tone, the fentanyl tariffs that sit inside the trade dispute, and the UN address the foreign-policy team under Secretary Rubio carries into the week’s diplomacy.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Arrival at the White House, Sep. 23, 2026” (official upload, embedded above; uploaded Sep. 24, 2026). Remarks as delivered at the event.