The following is a lightly condensed transcript of Tuesday’s White House press gaggle, provided by the pool, in which a deputy press secretary spent nineteen minutes defending an announcement that a Strait of Hormuz deal “could be soon” and also “could be never.”
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REPORTER: Can you clarify the timeline?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: The timeline is soon. Or never. Both timelines are on the table. Frankly, both timelines are on the same table, sitting right next to each other, being very respectful of one another.
REPORTER: Those are the only two options? There’s nothing between soon and never?
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DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: There’s a lot between soon and never. That’s where most of history happens. We’re just not commenting on it.
REPORTER: Has a draft framework been shared with any party?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: I’d refer you to the statement.
REPORTER: The statement is nine words long.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: And every one of them is load-bearing.
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REPORTER: Brent crude moved four percent on this. Four percent on a sentence that cancels itself out.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: That’s a testament to the strength of American communication.
REPORTER: My outlet’s AI summary tool read the announcement and returned an empty box. Just a blinking cursor. It sat there for eleven seconds and then apologized.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: A lot of these models aren’t trained on nuance.
REPORTER: There’s a prediction market with sixty-one million dollars riding on whether a Strait of Hormuz deal happens by March. The contract price is currently fifty cents. It has been fifty cents for six weeks. Traders are describing it as “a coin that won’t land.”
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: Then the market is correctly priced and I’d say that’s a win for transparency.
REPORTER: A win for whom?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: Next question.
Definitional matters
REPORTER: Is there a working definition of “soon” that the administration is using internally?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: Soon means soon. Everybody knows what soon means. Your mother knows what soon means.
REPORTER: My mother is dead.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: Then she knows what never means, too, and she’d tell you the announcement covers it.
REPORTER: Jesus.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: Yes.
REPORTER: Has anyone from the administration been in a room with a counterpart?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: There have been rooms. I’m not going to characterize the occupancy of those rooms.
REPORTER: Were the rooms empty?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: An empty room is still a room where a deal could happen. Soon.
REPORTER: Or never.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: You’re getting it.
Follow-ups
REPORTER: The Pentagon has ships out there. Sailors are doing eight-month rotations on a maybe. There are twenty-two-year-olds sitting in a hundred-degree corridor refreshing a news app to find out whether they get to go home, and this is what they’re refreshing into.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: And they have my gratitude.
REPORTER: That’s not an answer.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: It’s soon-adjacent.
REPORTER: Let me try it this way. If, one year from today, no agreement of any kind exists, would you characterize this announcement as inaccurate?
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: I’d characterize it as the never leg performing exactly as designed.
REPORTER: There’s a leg.
DEPUTY PRESS SECRETARY: There are two legs. That’s how you stand up.
[The gaggle ended. Four cable networks carried the next eleven minutes of the empty podium live, on the theory that something could happen soon.]