The White House Just Released an Off-The-Record Conversation Between POTUS and Reporters

The White House has realeased a partial transcript of a conversation President Donald Trump had with reporters aboard Air Force One. Have we ever seen this before? According to Politico, conversations with the press pool on the Air Force One are most commonly off-the-record, meaning they're never published. 

The conversation was a long one, but none of the reporters thought they could use any of it. Then this exchanged happened, according to Maggie Haberman from The New York Times: "POTUS asked your pooler why she didn't use what he has said last night. Your pooler reminded him last night was off the record. POTUS asked if I had heard him say it could be on-record; your pooler replied truthfully no (co-poolers also were not under impression it was on-record, since [White House deputy press secretary] Sarah Sanders had declared it off record).”

The White House then decided to release excerpts of the conversation, omitting parts that they felt just didn't need to be published. 

So, what did they even talk about? Here's some of the most interesting stuff, but the full transcript is available on the New York Times site. 

There isn't a lot we haven't heard before—President Trump is still trying to fix trade between the U.S. and China, which he calls "very none-reciprocal.""And I’ve been going a little bit easier," he added,  "because I’d like to have their help. It’s hard to go ***." No one, except those in the press pool, have any idea what he said where those asterisks are. 

The president was very candid about healthcare, though, saying how hard it is to have victories in that area. But he assured the press that "We’re going to find out over the next—you know, we just extended for two weeks. Which, that’s a big —." That dash? Another phrase (or maybe a paragraph?) omitted by the White House. 

The conversation about "the wall" was probably the most unnerving. Trump wants the wall to somehow be see-through, because "As horrible as it sounds, when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them—they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff? It’s over. As crazy as that sounds, you need transparency through that wall." 

Then he added that they don't actually have to build an entire wall! Most of it is already there and we only have to build about 700 to 900 miles of it. As for the wall that exists, "We’re fixing it. It’s already started. So we’ve actually, in the true sense—you know, there’s no reason to take it down or ***. So in a true sense, we’ve already started the wall." Take it down or ... what? 

These omissions are a bit disconcerting—dancing on the line between on or off-the-record is a dangerous game. Gregory Korte, a White House correspondent for USA Today tweeted this:

Chuck Todd, host of Meet The Press made a game-changing point.

Now, the public has to wait and see if the "secret" parts of the conversation are released by members of the pool. Hmm... if these Air Force One walls could talk.