@POTUS · 21 Feb 2026 · 09:00
I don't rule things out. That's the whole job.
The Phase III staging report — amphibious readiness, sealift convoy assembly, minefield interdiction, and the lodgment timetable — is due at 18:00 on 24 February. It has not been written. The record ends here.
reporter: will you rule out invading britain
president: i don't rule things out
reporter:
president:
reporter:
president: that's the whole job
sir that is not the whole job. that is not any part of the job. genuinely which part of the job did you think that was
"I don't rule things out. That's the whole job."
Sir. My son is nineteen. He is at Bragg. XVIII Airborne Corps is in that plan and so is he.
Rule it out. That is also the job. That is the part of the job where you tell a mother in Indiana that her boy is not going to be in the first wave onto a beach in a country we were allied with at Christmas.
Rule it out.
Tanya, I am 74 and I have nothing useful to offer you except that I am thinking about your boy tonight, and I will again tomorrow.
That is not much. I am sending it anyway.
Every serving person I know is reading that gaggle tonight and doing the same thing: working out whether their unit is in the troop list.
Mine is out. My daughter's godfather's is in.
Sir, you have about four days. Rule it out. Not for us — I know how that goes — for the nineteen year olds who cannot say anything and will go anyway.