Press Conference by President Trump | Eastern North Carolina Now

    These women said great things. Not only did they not say the bad stuff, they said great things about me. Front page. And those women - they're incredible women - they went on television - and they didn't want to, and I didn't ask them. And they said, "The New York Times made it up. They gave false quotes." And they went on a lot of shows. They were really incensed and they couldn't believe it.

    That's why people know that a lot of the news is fake. And a lot of the people sitting here are fake. But 20 percent of them are wonderful. Okay?

    Q If I could just actually ask my question, Mr. Trump. I - you didn't let me ask my question.

    THE PRESIDENT: You've been asking a question for 10 minutes, all right?

    Q No, you interrupted my question.

    THE PRESIDENT: Please sit down. Please.

    Q I'm asking you -

    THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead. Go ahead.

    Q - how did those impact your opinions on the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh?

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, it does impact my opinion. You know why? Because I've had a lot of false charges made against me. I'm a very famous person, unfortunately. I've been a famous person for a long time. But I've had a lot of false charges made against me - really false charges.

    I know friends that have had false charges. People want fame. They want money. They want whatever. So when I see it, I view it differently than somebody sitting home watching television, where they say, "Oh, Judge Kavanaugh..." this or that.

    It's happened to me many times. I've had many false charges; I had a woman sitting in an airplane and I attacked her while people were coming onto the plane. And I have a number-one bestseller out? I mean it was total phony story. There are many of them.

    So when you say, does it affect me in terms of my thinking with respect to Judge Kavanaugh? Absolutely. Because I've had it many times.

    And if the news would have reported these four people - I couldn't believe it. When I heard that they caught these four people, I said, "Wow. That's a big story." And it was - for Fox. Okay.

    Q Thank you, Mr. President. Earlier today and just now, you made a significant allegation against the Chinese government. You suggested that the Chinese -

    THE PRESIDENT: I did.

    Q - had meddled in or are meddling in -

    THE PRESIDENT: That's right. That's what I hear.

    Q - the 2018 midterm elections.

    THE PRESIDENT: That's what I hear.

    Q What evidence do you have of that, sir? Is there a national intelligence estimate, for example, that you're prepared to put forward?

    THE PRESIDENT: We have evidence. We have evidence. It'll come out. Yeah, I can't tell you now, but it came - it didn't come out of nowhere, that I can tell you.

    Now, if you - they've actually admitted that they're going after farmers. I mean, I think most of you can cover that.

    I like that you're shaking your head, "yes." I'm going to ask you the next question because of that. Okay? It's probably going to be the killer of all questions. (Laughter.) But let me just explain -

    Q But why make the charges now -

    THE PRESIDENT: No, no, no. Let me -

    Q - if you're not prepared to come forward with the evidence, sir?

    THE PRESIDENT: China, now, put on $250 billion, and they're paying 25 percent on that. They're paying billions and billions. This has never happened to China. And I like China. And I like President Xi a lot. I think he's a friend of mine. He may not be a friend of mine anymore, but he - I think he probably respects -

    From what I hear - if you look at Mr. Pillsbury, the leading authority on China - he was on a good show - I won't mention the name of the show - recently. And he was saying that China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump's very, very large brain. He said, "Donald. Donald Trump. They don't know what to do." It never happened.

    Well, one thing they are trying to do is they are trying to convince people to go against Donald Trump. Because a normal, regular, political person that has no concept of what the hell he's doing would let China continue to take $500 billion a year out of our country and rebuild their country.

    I mean, they were building 29 massive bridges like the George Washington Bridge. They're building things that we don't build anymore. But we're starting to build them again.

    And our economy now is hotter than it's ever been. I don't know you if you saw the confidence levels this morning that just came out. Fantastic.

    And in all fairness to the Fed raising rates, they're raising rates because we've never done like we're doing now. And one of the things that is nice about the rates - the people that were hurt the worst by these zero interest rates and, you know -

    When President Obama had an economy that was - it was the worst comeback since the Great Depression and all that - you've all heard that. But remember, he was playing with zero-interest money. He was playing with funny money. That's easy. I'm playing with fairly expensive money.

    So when he does that, the people that benefit are people that actually - in their whole life, they would save 10, 15, 20 percent of their salary and put it in the bank. Those people got killed because they put their money in the bank. They were going to live off the interest, and there was no interest.

    Now, those people are starting to get interest. And those are the people, frankly, that deserve to - you know, they did a great job. The people that did it right, the people that did the best job got hurt the most.

    So in one sense I like it, but basically I'm a low-interest-rate person. I hate to tell you.

    Yes. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Yes, go ahead.

    Q Mr. President, you have another meeting tomorrow with Rod Rosenstein.

    THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

    Q Are you planning to fire Rod Rosenstein?

    THE PRESIDENT: I'm talking to him. We've had a good talk. He said he never said it. He said he doesn't believe it. He said he has a lot of respect for me, and he was very nice and we'll see. And he's a member of the Trump administration, in that sense; it's the Justice Department.

    I would certainly prefer not doing that. There was no collusion. There was no obstruction - I mean, unless you call obstruction the fact that I fight back. I do fight back. I really fight back. I mean, if you call that obstruction, that's fine.

    But there's no obstruction. There's no collusion. I'm going to meet with him tomorrow. I may call Rod tonight or tomorrow and ask for a little bit of a delay to the meeting, because I don't want to do anything that gets in the way of this very important Supreme Court pick. So I don't want it competing and hurting the decision - one way or the other decision. Again, I want to hear what she has to say.

    But I want to do - so I may delay that. I'm going to see. I don't want to do anything that's going to conflict with that. But my preference would be to keep him, and to let him finish up.

    You know, I call it a "witch hunt." And it is a witch hunt. If you look at the FBI statements with Strzok and his lover Lisa Page. If you look at all of the things that have gone on in the FBI. If you look at McCabe taking $700,000 from a Hillary Clinton-PAC essentially run by Terry McAuliffe, who's her best friend in the world, and he gives them hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he's in charge of her campaign, and his wife is getting all of this money to run - she lost - to run. I mean, what's going on?

    If you look at the horrible statements, like "Way to go, Page. Great story you put into a newspaper." Essentially, now we'll go and investigate that group. It's terrible. We have caught people doing things that are terrible.

    I would much prefer keeping Rod Rosenstein. Much prefer. Many people say I have the right to absolutely fire him. He said he did not say it. He said he does not believe that. And nobody in this room believes it.

    By the way, I deal with the people in this room. I was with Mike Pompeo before, and we were dealing, at a very high level, with Japan. And I was saying things that nobody in the room even understood. And I said them a long time ago, and I was right. He said, "That's not the 25th Amendment that I'm looking at." I think I can say that from Mike.

    Q So you don't think anyone in your administration has ever discussed using the 25th Amendment against you?

    THE PRESIDENT: I don't think so. Well, yeah - enemies, sure. You use anything you can.

    Q Was it in your administration or your Cabinet?

    THE PRESIDENT: Hey, you use anything they can. They're not in love with me. They're not going to beat me in the election; they know that. They're not going to beat me. The people that I'm looking at are total lightweights. I dream of running against those people.

    Q But within your administration?

    THE PRESIDENT: Maybe they'll come up with somebody that's not - they're not going to beat me. I'm against what they want to do. I'm in favor of law enforcement. I'm in favor of safety and security, and low taxes. I want low taxes.

    I want borders. We're getting another $1.6 billion in borders. I want borders. We've spent $3.2 [billion] and we're getting another $1.6 [billion]. And then eventually, we're getting the whole thing and we'll complete the wall.

    They don't want that. They don't want that. They don't want the things that I have.

    Now, I must say, I know many of the Democrats. They'll say things and then wink at me. And again, it's the same old story. They'll say things; they don't mean it. Its politics. The reason they don't want me is because they want to run the show. They want it. It's power. It's whatever you want to call it. But what they've done here is a disgrace. A total disgrace.

    And what they do - I know, it's sort of interesting - in one case, they say, "He's a fascist. He's taking over the government. He's the most powerful President ever. He's a horrible human being. He wants to take over the entire government, and he's going to do it. We can't stop him." That didn't work.

    The next week, he said, "Uh, he's incompetent." I said, "Well, wait a minute." In one case, I'm taking over the world. And in the other case, "He's incompetent." They tried that for a week. That didn't work.

    Look, these are very dishonest people. These are con artists. And the press knows it, but the press doesn't write it.

    Wow. That's a lot of hands. That's a lot of - oh, Steve, go ahead. He is a very high quality person, this man. But he'll probably hit me with a bad one. (Laughter.)

    Q Thank you, Mr. President. Why -

    THE PRESIDENT: Go ahead. Give it to me. Give it to me, Steve. Reuters.

    Q You're getting letters from Chairman Kim. Why do you need a second summit with the North Korean leader so soon? And what do you -

    THE PRESIDENT: Because he'd like it.

    Q What would it be for?

    THE PRESIDENT: So I've received two letters from Chairman Kim. At some point, I'll, you know, give these letters - they're incredible letters. They're letters that are magnificent in the sense of his feeling for wanting to get this done. I really believe he wants to get it done. I may be wrong.

    I heard somebody on a certain network last night - I won't mention which one - say, "Why has President Trump given so much to North Korea?" I said, "Wait a minute." I asked Sarah Huckabee, "Please call this person." I gave nothing - other than I met. What did I give them?

    I didn't do what Obama did: Give them $1.8 billion in cash to get back four hostages. I got back our hostages; I never paid them anything. I haven't paid them 10 cents.

    But he wants to make a deal and I'd like to make a deal. We actually have a very good relationship together - a lot different than the last time I was at the United Nations. That was a little bit rough.

    Don't forget, that time, they said, "Oh, Trump is saying these horrible things. He's going to get us into a war." You were going to have a war. If I wasn't elected, you'd be in war. And President Obama essentially said the same thing. He was ready to go to war.

    You would have had a war, and you would have lost millions, not thousands. You would have lost millions of people. Seoul has 30 million people - 40 miles and 30 miles from this very dangerous border. If I wasn't elected, you would have had a war.

    President Obama thought you had to go to war. You know how close he was to pressing the trigger for war? Millions of people. With me, nobody is talking about that. Nobody is talking about that.