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Trump Gaggles with Press at Joint Base Andrews, Oct. 25, 2026

October 25, 2026 · The White House · 0:05:57

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

What happened

President Donald Trump took questions from reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on October 25, 2026, saying he was traveling to Michigan. He endorsed Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race — “Mike Rogers is apple pie. He’s a perfect guy for our country” — and attacked the Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, in the strongest terms, calling him a “jihadist,” saying he is “at least very, very supportive” of the Muslim Brotherhood, and claiming El-Sayed was practicing medicine illegally — all as stated by the President.

Asked what he is hearing from midterm voters, the President said the rallies had turned the cycle around: “Presidents don’t win almost never the midterms. And I think we’ve really turned it around,” citing Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska as states where his party’s Senate candidates were now in strong shape, as he stated it. On Alaska, he called it “very unfair” and “outright cheating” that another man named Daniel Sullivan appears on the ballot against Senator Dan Sullivan, said the matter was before a court, and renewed his attack on ranked-choice voting: “We shouldn’t have ranked choice voting,” as he put it.

On Iran, the President said he holds “two very different sets” of intelligence reports — “Some has been declassified, and some hasn’t” — and described them as “very advanced sets of intelligence on Iran,” adding that the United States is “doing very well with Iran, as you know.” On Russia and Ukraine, he said his envoy’s Moscow trip covered the Ukraine war and the return of a long-held American prisoner, whom he said he got back by asking President Putin, giving “nothing in return because Putin thought it was a reasonable request,” as he stated it. He said prospective Alaska gas and Lukoil arrangements “will happen at some point” but that the United States would not be held “hostage with the oil industry” over the war, which he repeated should never have started.

Why it matters

The gaggle is the President’s midterm case in miniature a little over a week before the election: a Senate endorsement delivered on the tarmac, a ballot-access fight in Alaska that his side has taken to court, and his standing claim that the rally circuit has reversed the usual midterm pattern — filed alongside his latest on-record framing of the Iran intelligence picture and the prisoner return he credits to his direct request to Putin. This chronicle files it on the Elections & Governance hub with every claim attributed to the President.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the President’s dated claims as stated in this gaggle — that Senate races in Ohio, Texas, and Nebraska have turned in his party’s favor, that the Alaska Sullivan ballot dispute is before a court, and that the prisoner return was obtained with nothing given in return — are checkable markers against the November results, the court record, and the release reporting. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Gaggles with Press at Joint Base Andrews, Oct. 25, 2026,” Joint Base Andrews, MD, October 25, 2026 (official upload, embedded above; published October 26, 2026). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President in the gaggle.