At a press briefing in the Oval Office, President Trump praised Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) after pulling her nomination for UN Ambassador.
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NewsTranscript
00:00the country.
00:01Okay, please.
00:02Mr. President, Mr. President, yesterday you asked Representative Stefanik to stay in
00:06her seat.
00:07Can you explain your reason for that?
00:08And did it have anything to do with the tight polling in the Florida district that former
00:14Representative Waltz held?
00:15Well, I think we're doing — yeah, I think we had — as you know, we have a few elections
00:19going on.
00:21And she is phenomenal, number one.
00:23She's a friend of mine, and she was going to go to the United Nations.
00:26And I said, look, there's a lot of room for doing that or something else.
00:31But she's very popular in her district, and I didn't want to take a chance.
00:34I don't even know who else is running.
00:36I assume somebody else would have been running.
00:38But if she runs, she can't be — you never want to say can't be beaten, but I think can't
00:43be beaten.
00:44She's very, very well-liked and very smart.
00:48And I said, Lise, would you do me a favor?
00:51We can — we cannot take a chance.
00:53We have a slim margin.
00:55We don't want to take any chances.
00:56We don't want to experiment.
00:58And she polls like I do.
01:00I won her district, as you know, by a lot of points.
01:04And she also does very well there.
01:05When it comes to Florida, you have two races, and they seem to be good.
01:11It's a Trump-plus-32 area.
01:14The one thing is they're spending like $12 million, and our candidate doesn't have that
01:18kind of money.
01:19Spending much less than that, like maybe one-twelfth — about a million dollars, a little bit
01:25more than a million dollars.
01:26So the airwaves are blanketed.
01:29And you never know what happens in a case like that.
01:31I won it by 32 points, and it's very, very strong.
01:35I used to be Democrat, but when I came along, they liked me for whatever reason.
01:40You'll have to explain that.
01:41But they liked me.
01:42And we're way up.
01:43But you don't know what happens in the second district, who seems to be in pretty good shape.
01:49But likewise, he's being outspent about five to one.
01:53So we don't want to take any chances.
01:55So I went to Elise and I said, Elise, do you mind — very highly rated person, you know.
02:01She was a real leader.
02:03And she will be again.
02:04I spoke with Mike Johnson.
02:05They're going to put her in a high leadership position.
02:07But will you mind staying in Congress?
02:10Because we don't want to take any chances.
02:12And it's as simple as that.
02:13It's basic politics.
02:15It's politics 101.
02:16She's very popular.
02:17She's going to win.
02:18And somebody else will probably win too, because we did very well there.
02:21I did very well there.
02:22But the word probably is no good.
02:25So I really appreciate her doing it.
02:28She's doing me a big favor when she does it, because she was all set to go to the United
02:33Nations, and she would have dealt with Putin and Zelensky and everybody else, and she would
02:38have been very effective.
02:39But we really want to — we don't want to take any chances, because it is tight.