NEED TO KNOW
- Donald Trump wore a lapel pin resembling a miniature, cartoon version of himself while meeting with oil and gas executives at the White House on Jan. 9
- The president told reporters that the gifted accessory is called “happy Trump,” even though he is “never happy” and “never satisfied”
- Trump made headlines during the same meeting for reading a private note from Marco Rubio aloud
Donald Trump wore an accessory resembling a miniature version of himself during a recent press conference.
Trump, 79, was meeting with oil and gas executives in the White House’s East Room on Friday, Jan. 9, when Fox News’ Peter Doocy noticed that he was wearing a previously unseen lapel pin, and sidetracked the conversation briefly to ask the president what it resembled.
After the White House correspondent raised a question about the pin, which Trump wore underneath his usual American flag lapel pin, the president revealed that it was a gift.
“Someone gave me this,” he said of the accessory, holding it up for visibility in the room of oil execs. “That’s called a ‘happy Trump.’ ”
Trump added, however, “I’m never happy, I’m never satisfied,” adding, “I will never be satisfied until we make America great again, but we are getting pretty close. This is called a ‘happy Trump.’ Someone gave it to me, and I put it on.”
Trump’s pin features a cartoon version of himself with his mouth open, brows furrowed and fists balled at his sides.
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During the Jan. 9 meeting with oil execs, the president was seated between Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. A different moment from the meeting made headlines, after Trump appeared to embarrass Rubio, 54, by reading a private note from him aloud.
After Trump called on Ryan Lance of ConocoPhillips to speak, Rubio could be seen passing a handwritten note to Trump while Vance, 41, seemed to look on with confusion.
“Marco just gave me a note,” Trump said, before Rubio capped his pen and glanced down.
But as the president began reading the note aloud, he immediately looked at him. “Go back to Chevron,” Trump read from Rubio’s note. “They want to discuss something. Go back to Chevron.”
As the president spoke, Vance was clearly amused, laughing on one side of him as Rubio smiled in apparent discomfort on the other.
“Go ahead, I’m going back to Chevron,” Trump said as he placed the note back down on the table and patted Rubio on the back, adding, “Thank you, Marco.”
The Jan. 9 meeting came less than a week after the United States’ capture of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.
Following the capture in the early hours of Saturday, Jan. 3, Trump told reporters that the United States is now going to “run” Venezuela.
“No nation in the world could achieve what America achieved, successfully capturing Maduro in the dead of night,” Trump said. “We’re going to get the oil flowing the way it should be…we’re gonna run it properly. We’re gonna make sure the people of Venezuela are taken care of.”
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