President Donald Trump shut down a reporter attempting to interrupt his response to a question about pardons for January 6 prisoners during an extended White House press conference on Tuesday evening. Following a series of executive orders and significant directives during the first 24 hours of his second term, Trump maintained his momentum on Tuesday by unveiling a major infrastructure initiative.
The president announced that OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle would collaborate on a project called Stargate, aimed at bolstering artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, along with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle joined with the president to announce “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history.”
Trump emphasized that the new project will generate billions in private sector investment for the American economy and help the nation retain its status as the global leader in AI research and development. “Together, these world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate. So put that name down in your books, because I think you’re going to hear a lot about it in the future,” Trump said.
“A new American company that will invest $500 billion at least in AI infrastructure in the United States and very, very quickly moving very rapidly, creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately,” he added before being peppered with questions from legacy media outlets that had nothing to do with the fantastic economic news Trump just announced.
At one point during the press conference, the president was asked about his decision to pardon January 6 prisoners who were accused of “assaulting officers.” The reporter tried to pit Trump against Vice President JD Vance by asking him why Vance was “wrong” about something that he said, per the video below.
As Trump started to answer the question, the reporter repeatedly interrupted him, leading Trump to snap back and the report to apologize. “Listen to me for a second. Stop interrupting,” the president scolded. “They served years in jail and if you look at the American public, the American public is tired of it. Take a look at the election. Just look at the numbers on the election,” he continued. “We won this election in a landslide because the American public is tired of people like you that are just one-sided, horrible people in terms of crime.”
Trump said that reporters like the one who repeatedly interrupted him “don’t talk about all the people that have been killed and what happens to those murderers. Murderers get no time. You take a look at some of these DAs, they go after political opponents, but they don’t go after people that shoot people in the street,” Trump said.
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