certain death if they had stayed behind. so is the picy put in place working? if you look at the numbers, this policy just came into place last month and we don t have the numbers quite yet for may, just from what i ve heard from sources, they are not very low. they are still looking at pretty high numbers, much higher than where we were the year before because people are fleeing violence. it s obvious julia, i m sorry to interrupt. we made it this far but sarah huckabee sanders is now taking questions. entire season knelt for the national anthem? the president s position on not just the anthem has been clear but let s not forget this isn t there were 80 members of the eagles organization that rsvps and committed to attend this event as recently as friday as well as over 1,000 fans of the eagles organization. change the commitment ones that
rll t president has been very clear what his position is in regards to the national anthem. we ve never waivered on that. the president thinks that people should stand for t national anthem. particularly when it comes to nfl, it s not about a particular team. it s about having pride in our country sean about being respectful to the men and women who have fought and died to preserve our country in terms of this, the eagles are the ones that changed the commitment. and the president felt it was appropriate to change the event to be a ceremony to celebrate our country. the statement that you made, you refer them to the outside counsel on the don jr. statement that the president was involved in. the outside counsel did weigh in saying that yes the president did dictate the statement, rudy giuliani was on cnn saying it was a mistake to say that the president didn t dictate it. so do you want to correct the record on your statement from august when you said he
at the 11th hour and the president frankly thinks the fans deserve better than that and therefore we changed the ceremony to be a focus on celebrating our great country. any concern that we heard from steph curry and lebron james, whoever winds the nba championship, is this about something more than the national anthem, something otherthe national anthem? look, if this wasn t a political stunt by the eagles fran choice, then they wouldn t planned to have attend the event and backed out at the last minute. if it wasn t a political stunt, they wouldn t have attempted to reschedule the visit when they knew that the president was going to be overseas and this wasn t a political stunt they wouldn t have waited until monday, well after 1,000 of their fans had traveled and taken time out of their schedules to offer a tiny handful of representatives to attend the event. this isn t about the national anthem, it s about
and the eagles made the commitment to come and be part of that event well after the president established his feeling in regards to the national anthem and once again, they made that change consisten viewpoint whent comes to this. steve? sarah, the president last year broke with recent tradition and did not post an if card dinner. dinnerhis year andf so can you tell us how the invitees were selected? he is hosting a dinner tomorrow evening. there will be roughly, i believe, about 30 to 40 fferent attendees. i would be happy to provide you with more specifics, but i believe it takes around 8:45 tomorrow evening. blake? sarah, let me ask you about two possible trade deals, one involving the chinese, in which it would be $70 billion of buying american products. the united states would back off its threat of terrorists. is that somethingt president trump would support? we re in the negotiation
does he think it s inappropriate to encourage the inspector general to release based on his time line rather than his own. the president wants full transparency in the process but wants it toob expedited and completed quickly on all fronts. andr andrew? to follow-up on josh s and sar sarah s question, for the larger sense, the president, whether it s on twitter account or otherwise, keeps saying things not born out by the facts, about the national anthem, or we got $6 million for opioids and discouraged taking over our country and numbers are way down. so the president saying things that aren t true and this thing with the detain what s the question? sorry. if you can get there.