wouldn t help get it across the finish line, including with republican votes. the president also said that he spoke to the turkish president erdogan, just elected to a third term. the president just at the ending there asked a question whether the former president should be pardoned by any future president. the president laughed off that question and there is his plane heading off to delaware. we ll keep you up to date. boris, over to you. a big smile from the president as he was teasing the press. he was also asked about ukraine. ukraine is now vowing swift retaliation after russia launched some rare daytime attacks on the capital of kyiv. we re going to take you live to the front lines for the very latest from that. plus a mystery in venice. italian authorities collecting water samples, scanning cc tv footage and interviewing gondola drivers trying to figure out this, why the grand canal suddenly turned fluorescent green.
give us an update on the debt ceiling deal. are you confident it will pass congress? look, you know i never say i m confident with what the congress is going to do, but i feel very good about it. i ve spoken to a number of members. i spoke to mcconnell. i spoke to a whole bunch of people. it feels good. we ll see when the vote starts. look, one of the things that i hear some of you guys saying is why doesn t biden say what a good deal it is? why would he say what a good deal it is before the vote. do you think that s going to help me get it passed? no. that s why you don t bargain very well. so that s number one. number two, i spoke to erdogan and congratulated erdogan. he still wants to work on something on the f-15s. i told him we wanted a deal with sweden to get that done and so we ll be back in touch with one
that? it s not unexpected. it s just pure it s not unexpected. that s why we ve got to continue to give ukraine all that it needs. is there any movement on sweden s membership in nato on erdogan s part? i raised that issue with him and we re going to talk more about it next week. what about ukraine. that s still in play. some republicans are saying that this deal does not raise the does not give the pentagon enough money. can you guarantee that america s fighting force is going to have what it needs for the next couple of years? whatever the fighting force needs, if there s another first of all, they passed my budget, what i asked for in defense. they passed that.
their own reasons, turkey is blocking it, whether it s the connections to putin. but this is president erdogan. u.s. officials have been saying, senator, that they think this is just turkey using its leverage. that s what the ambassador told us yesterday. is this going to be an obstacle? i think it s a little too early to tell. i met with the swedish defense minister this week. overwhelming bipartisan support for sweden and finland to come into nato. they bring great military. sweden in particular has deep resources in their air force and their submarine fleet. they both not only have good armed forces, they have great intel communities. i think overwhelming majority will support this. on erdogan, i don t think we should be totally surprised. if you look back historically when other nations, when the baltic nations joined nato, president erdogan extracted a
on capitol hill, the fda commissioner pushing back. he was taken to task about whether the fda didn t move quickly enough. the united states was facing a supply chain stress before the recall that began in february. the pandemic, war in ukraine and labor supply issues have all had an impact. the fact is, food safety is not a priority. whomever looked at that report felt there was no need to respond at all from october to february, until there was a recall. that is a dereliction of duty in my view. before heading on his trip to asia, the president hosting leaders of finland and sweden at the white house as he backs their bid to join nato in defiance of vladimir putin and opposition from nato member turkey s president erdogan.