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Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Departure from the White House, Oct. 6, 2026

October 6, 2026 · The White House · 0:05:24

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

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions from reporters as he departed the White House on October 6, 2026, en route to open a shipyard — the Baltimore appearance paged elsewhere in this series. “We’re opening a big shipyard today,” he said. “We’re opening really a lot of shipyards over the next year. Our military is building like we’ve never built before. We have 17 different factories being built and munitions factories.”

On Iran, he said its economy was “gone,” put its inflation at “almost 300%,” said its oil minister had quit, and said oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz in the previous days had reached levels “now even and sometimes exceeding prior to the war.” Asked whether the federal gas tax should be suspended after the previous day’s diesel announcement, he said “we’re thinking about that.” He described a meeting with Gold Star families that same day — “that was the most beautiful meeting” — and said he had invited them to see the new helipad, ballroom, and helicopter. He also discussed the strong dollar, the reflecting pool refill scheduled that week, and reacted to the Supreme Court allowing the Paramount–Warner merger: “I’m happy about it. It’s going to be a great company.”

Why it matters

The defense-industrial build-out — shipyards and munitions factories — is a central claim of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s tenure, and this gaggle is its companion piece to the President’s Baltimore shipyard remarks of the same day. The Hormuz throughput figures are checkable claims the scoreboard tracks against shipping data as it publishes.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press Upon Departure from the White House, Oct. 6, 2026” (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President in the gaggle.