Remarks by President Trump in Cabinet Meeting | Eastern North Carolina Now

    You know, when you have record low - in the history of our country - unemployment for African Americans, or for Asians, or for Hispanics, that's tough to beat. That's tough to beat. So we're doing very well.

    The world isn't doing so well, unfortunately. The world, you know, does have an impact on us. China has gotten hit hard, and other places have been hit hard. Europe is not doing too well, but they'll come back. We have to do what we have to do. But we are doing well. We are doing very well.

    So I want to thank everybody very much. I want to thank the Cabinet. We'll stay around for a little while and talk about some other issues. Great job. Thank you very much to everybody.

    And thank you to the media. Thank you very much. I was lonely over the weekend, and over the last - I was in Washington hoping that we'd see - hoping that we'd see a little action. I'd get a call and say, "Let's get together and let's work hard." But they chose Hawaii over Washington.

    And we're going to see - I really believe that they want to do something. And what Mike said is true. There's been a lot of good discussions going on. Jared has been working very hard. And some of the talent we have around this table has been - even though they're not on that issue, they've been working hard. They have a lot of friends in Congress - on both sides of Congress. And we actually have a lot of good discussions going on.

    I think that the Democrats want to see something happen, and I can tell you I know that the Republicans want to see happen. But you can't have border security without the wall. You can't have border security without a very strong barrier. Call it anything you want. That doesn't matter. But it's got to be very powerful; it's got to be very strong - something that people cannot just walk through.


    You have that - many of the problems that we've spoken about today will totally disappear. Even some of the laws that we have to have changed. We have to have changed right now because they come into the country, and we have to have laws once they enter. And nobody is going to be able to enter when we do it the way we're doing it.

    So we've made a lot of progress on the wall, a lot of progress on the renovations. Much of that is finished. And we just gave out a large - Secretary Nielsen, we just gave out. And we're in the process of giving out additional large contracts for many miles - 115 miles of wall - in a very important area, as I said to you over the weekend.

    And I just appreciate everybody coming. It's a - our country had a lot of problems when I was elected, and we have a lot less problems now. And I think a lot of the big ones, we're in the process of getting them solved. The southern border would be one, but we have a lot of others, too. And we're in the process of solving problems that a lot of people thought were not solvable.

    And the easiest way, when you don't have a problem that you think is not solvable, don't do anything: Just sit back and enjoy the presidency. But I can't do that. I want to get it solved for the country because we have a long way to go. This country has a great future with tremendous potential. We have a long way to go, and we want to solve the problems, not just sit back and enjoy the presidency.

    So thank you all very much for coming. We appreciate it. Thank you.

    Q May I ask you - thank you, Mr. President, and Happy New Year. I want to ask you a few questions. Most notably, is there a number below $5 billion that you might be willing to accept in order to reopen the government and get this thing moving forward?

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'd rather not say it. Could we do it for a little bit less? It's so insignificant compared to what we're talking about. You know, I've heard numbers as high as $275 billion we lose on illegal immigration. And here you have a wall where you're talking about, to complete - because again, a lot has already been done. You know, we've been getting money in. Somebody said that we didn't spend the money. Well, we have spent it, but we don't pay contractors before they finish the job. That's one of the other things that Pat and I sort of instituted. We like to have people do the work.

    So if we're building a wall, we're paying as they build it. We pay it when it's finished so they do a good job. This way, if they don't do a good job, we don't pay them. So not all of the money has been paid, but the money has been used. So maybe you guys can remember that when you say that I haven't spent the money. We've spent the money. We want to finish it up.

    The $5 billion - $5.6 billion approved by the House - is such a small amount compared to the level of the problem. When you see that the Democrats want to give away $12 billion extra, and we're giving away $54 billion in foreign aid. So we give money to countries, but we don't give money to our own country, which is another thing that I've been complaining about. And we're cutting that back. It's very unfair when we give money to Guatemala and to Honduras, and to El Salvador, and they do nothing for us. When we give money to Pakistan - $1.3 billion. I ended that - a lot of people don't know it - because they haven't been fair to us. We want to have a great relationship with Pakistan, but they house the enemy; they take care of the enemy. We just can't do that.

    So I look forward to meeting with the folks from - and the new leadership in Pakistan. We'll be doing that in the not-too- distant future. But I ended the $1.3 billion that we paid like it was water. We'd just pay it to Pakistan. So I ended that. And we ended a lot of other money that's being sent out on a monthly basis and a yearly basis to countries that don't even vote for us in the United Nations. We give them billions of dollars; they don't even vote for us in the United Nations.

    When we want something to help certain countries - and, you know, it's not all about the rich countries, because the rich countries really do take advantage of us because they pay a very small percentage of their military, and they cheat on trade. They take advantage of us on trade. Other than that, they're wonderful. Okay?

    But there are countries that are poor, that we will - we don't want anything from them. We want to help them. There are some horrible things going on in the world, and we want to help those people. We don't want money from them. We don't want that. We're not looking for that. But when you have massively wealthy countries that have very little military costs because the United States subsidizes them, so they take advantage of us on military. They could easily pay us the full amounts. And they also take advantage of us on trade.

    So when I speak up - I mean, that's why I got elected. Issues like that. Issues like the border. And it would be so easy not to do anything. When they say I'm not popular in Europe, I shouldn't be popular in Europe. If I was popular in Europe, I wouldn't be doing my job. Because I want Europe to pay. Germany pays 1 percent. They should be paying 4 percent. They pay 1 percent; they should be paying even more than that. Other countries pay a small percentage of what they should be paying.

    So, you know, when I say, "I'm sorry, folks, you have pay up" - I shouldn't be popular in Europe. They do a poll - I was at 88 percent, and now I'm at, you know, very low number - in Europe. I don't care about Europe. I'm not elected by Europeans; I'm elected by Americans, and by American taxpayers, frankly.


    So, you know, I think my relationship, I will tell you, with the leaders of Europe is very good. A lot of them don't even understand how they got away with it for so many years. I'll say to Angela, and I'll say to many of the other leaders - I'm friends with all of them - I'll say, "How did this ever happen?" And they sort of go like, "I can't believe it either." They can't believe it. You know why? Because they had presidents and other people within administrations in the past that allowed them to get away. Like some of them would say, "Well, no one ever asked us to pay."

    We have negotiations going on with numerous countries right now to pay a lot of money to the United States for what we're doing for them. I wouldn't say they're thrilled. Because they've had many, many years where they didn't have to pay. So now they're going to have to pay. And if that makes me unpopular in those countries, that's okay. But we're doing tremendous service to those countries, and they should at least respect us. They didn't respect us, and that was the problem.

    Go ahead.

    Q Thank you. I'd like to -

    THE PRESIDENT: You treat me so nicely, I have to give him a second question.

    Q No, I appreciate it, Mr. President. I want to follow up. Maybe the military has an angle here, or a possible -

    THE PRESIDENT: They have no angle.

    Q They have no angle?

    THE PRESIDENT: I know the angles. I know every angle. No, they have no angle.

    They - the military, under past leadership, including for many years, was taken advantage of by other countries - allies and not allies. They were taken advantage of. And our country has to be respected. We're not respected when we do that, when we're taking - when horrible things are happening on trade, where we have barriers put up, where we have tariffs put on, and we open our country up, we just opened it up; where cars are sent into our country with virtually no tax, no nothing, and yet they won't accept our cars. When cars are sent in and they pay no tax, but we're expected to pay 25, 40, 50 percent, and we they pay nothing? I'll be honest with you, it's just not in my DNA. I don't know how people allowed that in my position - allowed these things to happen.

    And we're not allowing it to happen anymore. I could be the most popular person in Europe. I could be - I could run for any office if I wanted to, but I don't want to. I want people to treat us fairly. And they're not.

    And it's not - there's no angles. There's no angles. There's nothing to - you know, when a country sends us 200 soldiers to Iraq, or sends us 100 soldiers from a big country to Syria or to Afghanistan, and then they tell me a hundred times, "Oh, we sent you soldiers. We sent you soldiers," and that's one one-hundredth of the money that they're taking advantage of, they're just doing that to make me happy, or to make past presidents happy.

    I've heard past presidents, "Well, they're involved in the Afghanistan war because they sent us 100 soldiers." And yet, it's costing us billions and billions of dollars. I mean, I could give you an example where I get along very well with India and Prime Minister Modi. But he's constantly telling me he built a library in Afghanistan. Okay, a library. That's like - you know what that is? That's like 5 hours of what we've spent. And he tells it. And he's very smart. And we're supposed to say, "Oh, thank you for the library." I don't know who's using it in Afghanistan. But one of those things.

    But I don't like being taken advantage of. What other countries have done for the last long period of time is give us some soldiers and then talk about it like it's the end of the world, and we're subsidizing their militaries by billions and billions and billions of dollars. Many, many, many times what those soldiers cost that country.

    Q Did you hear about the Mitt Romney op-ed? What's your reaction to it if you heard about it? He wrote an op-ed about your character.

    THE PRESIDENT: Well, I wish Mitt could be more of a team player. You know, I'm surprised he did it this quickly. I was expecting something, but I was surprised he did it this quickly. And, you know, look, I endorsed him. He thanked me very profusely. He was very nice. But I am surprised because we've done a lot. And he actually says it. I read his op-ed. He said it. You know, he agrees.

    And I don't think he would be - I don't think anybody would have been able to do the tax cuts like I did. We got the greatest tax cuts ever. We got ANWR approved in the tax cuts. We got rid of the individual mandate, which essentially is repeal and replace of Obamacare, because that case from Texas should win in the Supreme Court.

    I mean, it only - it only was kept, Obamacare - it was only kept because of the individual mandate. Now that that's gone, I don't know how you can possibly keep it. So that's repeal and replace.

    John McCain voted against it. You know, after campaigning for many years, John McCain voted against it. He went thumbs down, and that was the end of that. After - for many years, it was "repeal and replace." And then at two o'clock in the morning, he went thumbs down.


    So, I'm a great flexible guy. We were part of that lawsuit, as you know. And a great judge, highly respected from Texas, said the individual mandate is out. That means that we should win at the Supreme Court, where this case will go.

    Now, when we do, we will sit down with the Democrats and we will come up with great healthcare. Far better. Far better. We'll have everything included. We'll have everything included. Far better. Because Obamacare is too expensive, the premiums are way too high, and the deductibles don't exist. I mean, the deductibles, you can't even use it. The deductible is so high. Unless you get hit by a tractor, you can't even use it. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. The deductibles are so high.

    Obamacare is a tremendous failure. But now that we won the individual mandate, and that's - which, by the way, was by far the most unpopular. It was by far the most unpopular thing in Obamacare.

    So with Mitt Romney, I'd love him to be a team player. Possibly he won't be. I'm surprised he acted so quickly. I gave him an endorsement. I was happy that he won in Utah. I have great popularity in Utah. I love the people of Utah. I did something for them that nobody else would've done that has to do with their parks, as you know. That was a big day - a big thing. And we did that for a very special person, who is now going to be retiring after 42 years. You know who I'm talking about. Our great friend, our great senator, who is really a spectacular man. And also for Mike Lee, who really pressed it very hard. So Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee.