Than ever before. The relationship is very good. We are fighting for the same thing. ,e are fighting for lower taxes the biggest tax cuts in the history of our nation. Tax reform is part of that. Were getting close to health care. It will come up in the early to mid part of next year. We think we arty have the votes. We pretty much know what the plan is. I believe republicans and democrats are as we speak working together very hard to do an intermediate plan, a shortterm plan because obamacare is a disaster. The rates have gone up. The premiums have gone up. The deductibles have gone through the roof. Its terrible. You look at the deductibles, unless you really have a problem, you are not going to be able to use them. We have been working together long and hard. We think we are good shape for the budget we hope. Be in good shape for the largest tax thats ever pass in this country. Its going to spur business. We are competing with other countries. China is at 50 . Ireland is going to be reducing their corporate rates down to 8 from 12. Other countries are reducing. We cant be at 35 and think we will remain competitive in terms of companies and in terms of jobs area we worked on that. I was honored to see james lee 10 Clinton Administration give us an a plus. Ive always had respect for him. He gave us, he is the fema director of the Clinton Administration, gave us an a plus for how we responded to the hurricane aftermath, all of the hurricanes, and that includes puerto rico. Wittt to thank mr. Wherever you may be. Politics. It out of clintonith the administration. To finish off, my relationship with this gentleman is outstanding. Has been outstanding. We will work hard to get the health care completed. I will be surprising some people with an Economic Development bill. What is the unspoken elements we , we gotd at lunch justice courses into the United States supreme court. He will be outstanding. Arent talking about is how many judges we have had approved. Whether the district judges, we have tremendous under review. The democrats are holding them up beyond comprehension. They are holding them up. Frankly, they have terrible, terrible policy. And perhaps they are not even good politicians for their good obstruction. I looked at some of these numbers. We will set records in terms of the number of judges. If you read the wall street journal, i have to give them a little bit, a person, a writer, who has really been a really fair person wrote an article or wrote an editorial in a sense saying how well we are doing with judges and appointments. The big ons one of somethings of this administration. In addition to the fact that we have had a lot of his legislation passed on the ba the a. A the ca the va. Pipeline, athe level of quality is extraordinary. We are working close young that also. Getting great reviews from those people. And scholars. Anything like we we of been able to get together with judges. Mitch say a to have few words and if you would like sen. Mcconnell thank you mr. President , i want to underscore what the president said, we have the same agenda. Weve been friends and acquaintances for a long time, we talk frequently, we dont give you a readout every time we have a conversation, frequently we talk on the weekends about issues before us. Obviously passing the budget enables tax reform and tax reduction, comes next and then supplemental to take adequate care of those who have been harmed by the natural disasters weve been afflicted with lately. And of course, the senates unique role that seems to me a lot of people forget, were in the personnel business. There are 1200 of the president s nominations subject to confirmation in the senate. The house is not in the personnel business, we are. The single most significant thing this president has done to change america is the appointment of neil gorsuch to the supreme court. But it is not just the supreme court, there are a lot of vacancies at the circuit and District Court level, as the president indicated, young conservative and when we say conservative about a judge, what were talking about, the kind of people the president is appointing to the courts believe that the role of the judge is to try to rule based upon what the law says, not what they hope the outcome would be. Justice scalia used to say if a judge is occasionally not happy with a conclusion he reach, he is not a very good judge. As Justice Gorsuch put it in my state a couple weeks ago, judges dont wear red, they dont wear blue, they wear black and those are the kind of people the president is sending up to the senate to be confirmed. Many of them, as he pointed out, younger, will be on the bench for a long time and have a great deal to do with what kind of country were going to have far into the future. Legislatively, obviously the top priority is tax reduction, and i think what the president and i would both like to say to you today, contrary to what some of you may have reported, were together totally on this agenda to move america forward. [questions] pres. Trump john. Mr. President with tax reform. [indiscernible] [question inaudible] pres. Trump i would like to see it be done this year, john, we wont go a step further. It is a great achievement. It took years for the Reagan Administration to get taxes done, ive been here a little more than nine months, same thing for health care, if you look at obama. First of all, look at clinton, they were not able to get it done, other administrations, they werent able to get it done. President obama, after a long period of time, was able to push it through, but pushed through something that has now failed, failing badly. We are meeting democrat, republicans are meeting now and right now they are working on something very special. I have to tell you, i really believe that we have a very good chance and i think mitch feels the same way of getting the taxes done, hopefully fairly long before the end of the year, that is what we would like to see. Go ahead. Sen. Mcconnell let me add, the goal is to get it done this calendar year. Obama signed obamacare in march of year two. Obama signed doddfrank in july of year two. We will get this job done and the goal is to get it done by the end of the year. [questions] pres. Trump just to finish up, were nine months, we could have a long way to go. Yes. [question inaudible] and on health care, in a recent you said the only problem i have with Mitch Mcconnell, after hearing repeal and replace, he failed, that should never have happened. Pres. Trump lets go to the second part of your question with mitch. Weve been doing health care for really seven months and probably six months if you think about it, we started in probably a total of six months. Others were 21 2 years and more, others eight years and didnt get it passed. This man will get it done. Okay. I think done long before anybody else and it will be a great health care. As far as tom marino, he was an early supporter of mine, great state of pennsylvania. Hes a great guy. I did see the report, were going to look into the report, we will take it very seriously. Because we will have a major announcement, probably next week, on the drug crisis and on the opioid massive problem and i want to get that absolutely right. This country, frankly the world, has a drug problem. The world has a drug problem, but we have it and were going to do something about it. Ill have a major announcement on that problem next week, well be looking into tom. Thank you mr. President. Id like to ask you, do you support the plan by people who really your administration, steve bannon primary republican candidates in 2018 election to do not support your agenda . Pres. Trump we have a good relationship, as you know with steve bannon. Steve has been a friend for a long time, i like steve a lot. Steve is doing what steve thinks is the right thing. Some people he may be looking at, i will see if we talked him out of that. Frankly they are great people. What Mitch Mcconnell will tell you, maybe with the exception of a few and that is a very small few, i have a fantastic relationship with the people in the senate and with the people in congress, i mean, i have our house of representatives, i have a great relationship with political people. If you read the papers, you think im on one island and theyre on the other, that is not the way it is. We have a fantastic relationship, im friends with most of them. I can say, i dont think anybody could have higher percentage, im friends with most of them, i like and respect most of them and they like and respect me. Just so you understand, the Republican Party is very, very unified. When we get things approved, we have to go through hell because we have no democrat support, we have nobody. We dont have a vote from the democrats. As an example, massive tax cuts, we may not get any democrat votes. We may get three or four, but may get for massive tax cuts with highest tax country in the world and yet we may get no democrat support, that is pause obstructionist and they want us to to badly, that is not going to happen. Yes, go ahead. [inaudible] pres. Trump well look at that very closely. [inaudible question] pres. Trump hes a good man, i have not spoken to him. I will speak to him and make that determination, if i think it is 1 negative to doing what we want to do, i will make a change, yes. Pres. Trump one second, yes. National emergency for the talk about pres. Trump were going to be doing that next week. By the way, you know that is a big step. By the way, people have no understanding of what you just said. That is a very, very big statement, a very important step and to get to that step, a lot of work has to be done and it is time consuming work, well be doing it next week. Okay. Mr. President , do you to discuss the comments steve bannon made this weekend and what do you make of those comments sen. Mcconnell the goal here is to win elections in november. Back in 2010 and 2012, we nominated several candidates, odonnell, angle, todd aegen, richard murdoch, they are not in the senate. The reason for that was they were not able to appeal to be a broader electorate in the general election. My goal as leader of the reason party on the senate is to keep us in the majority. The way you do that is not complicated. You have to nominate people who can actually win because winners make policy and losers go home. We changed the Business Model in 2014, we nominated people who could win everywhere, took majority in the senate, had one skirmish in 2016, kept majority in the senate. Our operating approach will be to support our incumbents and in open seats, to seek to help nominate people who can actually win in november. That is my approach and that is the way you keep a governing majority. Mr. President mr. President , sir mr. President , sir, sir. Earlier today you criticized companies and Insurance Companies saying Drug Companies are starting prices too high and Insurance Companies were taking government money. Pres. Trump exactly right. What would you like to see . Pres. Trump Insurance Companies have made a fortune with obamacare, absolute fortune. As you know, what i did with the cuts at the end, which were going, hundreds of millions of dollars going into the pockets of the Insurance Companies, and im very happy with what i did and because of that, people are talking now, democrats are talking to the republicans, for a shortterm deal, taking care of what we will Call Health Care so that people can have Good Health Care without big spikes, you would have had massive spikes, you already have, every year massive spikes to obamacare have been ridiculous and i didnt speak to mitch about this today, a priority is the cost of Prescription Drugs, well get the costs way down, way down. And those Drug Companies, you have Insurance Companies, ones case and the other case, with regard to both, you have the Drug Companies, they contribute massive amounts of money to political people. I dont know, mitch, maybe to you, i have to tell you they contribute massive amounts of money. Me . Im not interested in their money, i dont need their money. I will tell you, you have Prescription Drugs you go to england, various places, canada, many, many countries and the same exact pill from the same company, the same box, same everything is tiny fraction of what it costs in the United States. We are going to get drug prices, Prescription Drug prices way down because the world is taking advantage of us, the world is taking advantage of us when that happens. That is very important. Sir, mr. President , sir health care, about 6 Million People that get subsidies to help pay for obamacare, 70 come from states you won in november. Now you cut off the payments, are you going to ensure those People Insurance . Pres. Trump that is what were looking to do, we want to get it down so people have Affordable Health care. 116 up. In alaska 200 up. In other states 50 , 70 up, some states that are doing better. Obamacare is a wreck, a mess, destroying lives, we want to get it in those states, the states i did so well in, but also in states that i didnt win. I want to get health care thats much more affordable and much Better Health care and that is what were doing. Mr. President let me ask about pres. Trump tax reform, go ahead. You said the other day they were going to jump being made. There would be something that are negotiable. For the leader, you said top priority is tax reduction, you did not say tax reform in 2017. Pres. Trump we are doing minor adjustments, we want to make sure the middle class is the biggest beneficiary of the tax cuts and tax reform and im sure that is what mitch meant also, doing massive tax cuts and simplification and reform. Simplification, we if we can do it on one page. In some cases, it may be two pages. We are bringing the categories down. If you included zero because there are zero, we bring it from eight to four. We are doing the massive cuts. I will say this. Wherever i have been. This has been so popular with the people. Now we have to get a couple of additional people to raise their hands. Leader mcconnell i agree with the president. It is about both reduction and reform. It has been 30 years since this kind of effort was undertaken successfully. We are going to succeed this time. The bills, the details of them, will be written by the ways and means after we approve a budget. And obviously the budget opens the path to tax reform. It is about both. About reform and production. And reduction. Reporter why havent we heard anything [indiscernible] pres. Trump i have written them personal letters. They have been sent or they are going out tomorrow tonight. I will at some point during the period of time called the parents and families. I have done that, traditionally. I felt very, very badly about that. It is the toughest calls i have to make are the calls where this happens. Soldiers are killed. It is a very difficult thing. It gets to a point where you make four or five of them in a one in one day, that is by far the toughest. The traditional way, if you look at president obama and other president s, most of them did not make calls. A lot of them did not make calls. I like to call when it is appropriate. When i am able to do it. They have made the ultimate sacrifice. Generally, i would say i like to call. I going to be calling them. I want time to pass. I am going to be calling them. I have, since i have been president. In addition, i wrote letters individually to the soldiers we are talking about. They will be going at today or tomorrow. Reporter thank you, mr. President. Reporter general kelly said last week you believe cuba couldnt stop the attacks against americans. Do you believe that . Pres. Trump i do believe cuba is responsible. I do believe that. It is an unusual attack. I do believe cuba is responsible. Reporter roy and alabama has said he believes it should be illegal and that muslims should be barred from serving in the u. S. Congress. What makes you comfortable with someone with those beliefs serving in the u. S. Senate and the same question to you, mr. Leader . Pres. Trump i will be meeting with roy sometime next week. We will talk to him about a lot of different things. I will be meeting with him. He ran a very strong race. The people of alabama, who i like very much. Who i like her much, and they like me, and they like roy. I will report to you then. Reporter [indiscernible] following up on your travels [indiscernible] leader mcconnell i can give you my position. The blue slip for those of you who are not familiar with it is a custom determined by the chairman of the judiciary committee. It grassley can give you his view of how he views it. I will give you my view. My view is a blue slip on a circuit judge isnt simply a notification of how you are going to vote. To conclude otherwise would have left us in the following position at the beginning of this senate. 48 Democratic Senators would have been able to blackball, 62 of the circuit judge nominees. That is not a tenable place to land in a senate that deals with the judges with a simple majority. My own personal view is that a blue slip on a circuit judge should simply be a notification of how you intend to vote. Pres. Trump we could talk blue slips. My attitude is i want capable people going to the courts. Reporter in 2012, you tweeted obamas complaints about republicans agendas are bs, and your words, because he had a full control. You wrote you can never take responsibility. Today he set about the challenges and congress and in washington, i will not blame myself, they are not getting the job done. What is different than van now then than now . Pres. Trump we have nominations pending. We have 180 two approved. If you look at this, the number that he had approved was a 65 and 70 . We have 39 . They are holding up every single nomination. Schumer and the group are holding up every single nomination. They are obstructing. They they are not good politicians. But they are good at obstruction. They are holding up every single nomination. I will tell you, it is not right. They will bring it right out to the end. What they are doing is unfair. You look at bush, you look at obama, clinton, you look at bush original, you have 389 versus 182. These are approval. Clinton, 357 versus 182. You look at president obama, 364 versus 182. These are nominations approved. What they are doing to us. We have unbelievable people in there waiting to be approved. I do believe that mitch is going to start pushing them hard. He can do that. He wants to do that. He also wants to get the judicial nominations through. He wants to get them through fast, too. Reporter could i follow on that . You seem to have a spirit of cooperation with the Senate Minority leader and the House Minority leader. When it came to this idea for a fix of daca. Every proposal you have put forth and spend a have rejected. Where is this relationship . Pres. Trump i hope to have a relationship. If we dont, we dont. We have races coming up. I think we will probably do very well. If we get taxes approved, we will do unbelievably well. Many of the senators are running in states i won by massive amounts. Over 20 , sometimes 30 . By over 40 over the democrat in some cases. We will let you know that i would like to give you that answer in seven years from now. I hope to be able to. Because i like the concept of a bipartisan. Right now, they are doing nothing but obstructing. Really, if you think about it, they are against major tax cuts that will make our country stronger and more competitive. That is a hard thing to win an election on or do i believe some democrats will be voting for us when it comes to the tax cuts. Reporter what about the Economic Development . Pres. Trump i will be proposing an Economic Development bill in the nottoodistant future. Maybe even health care. I think somewhere between or shortly thereafter, i am going to be developing an Economic Development bill that will put us so far ahead of other countries, you will not believe it. Reporter thank you, mr. President. Last week your administrated Administration Made announcements on the ran deal and getting rid of the kind reductions as part of obama care. And a lot of criticism has been leveled at your administration saying all you are doing pres. Trump and a lot of praise. Reporter fair enough. What youre doing is rolling back everything your predecessor accomplished. Is there a single policy of your predecessor that you specifically do not want to touch . Pres. Trump we are very opposite in terms of incentives and incentives for jobs. If you look at what has happened, we have hit a new high in the stock market. We have picked up 5. 2 trillion in stock market value. We have the lowest Unemployment Rate in i believe almost 17 years. We are doing well. We are going to be doing immigration work that will be outstanding. We are going to have people coming into our country based on a merit system, not just coming in randomly. They will becoming in based on a merit system where they can help us. I have Companies Moving into this country. Quayside happen with of the Auto Industry with five major plants. We have companies pouring back into this country for the first time in anybodys memory. We are actually going to be at a point where we need workers. Our country is going to do so well. The tax cuts are going to be a major part of it. Reporter is there a policy you want to keep in place . Pres. Trump not too many. It is the opposite side of the spectrum. Reporter earlier you said president obama never called families of fallen stories. How can you make that claim . Pres. Trump i dont know that. I was told he did not. A lot of president s dont. They write letters. I do a combination of both. Sometimes, it is a difficult thing to do. I do a combination of both. President obama, i think, probably did sometimes. Maybe sometimes he didnt. I dont know. That is what i was told. All i can do is ask my generals. Other president s did not call. They would write letters. Some president s did not do anything. I like the accommodation when i can, i like the combination of a call and a letter. Reporter if it would help special Counsel Robert Mueller get to the end of the russia investigation pres. Trump i would like to see it end. The russia thing was an excuse. Excuse me. The russian thing was an excuse for the democrats losing an election. It turned out to be one excuse. Today, hillary blamed nigel farage. That was an excuse for the democrats losing an election that frankly they have a big advantage in the electoral college. They should always be able to win in the electoral college. There has been absolutely no collusion. It has been stated they have no collusion. They ought to get to the end of it because the American Public is sick of it. Reporter do you believe your comments affected the ability to receive a fair trial . Can you response pres. Trump i cannot comment on him because i guess he is doing something today. He is also they are setting up sentencing. Im not going to comment on him. I think people have heard the comments in the past. Reporter when you laid out the deadline for Daca Recipients [indiscernible] pres. Trump they should be able to do something. We need Strong Border security. We want the wall. Reporter [indiscernible] pres. Trump we had a great conversation. We have fema there. As you know, James Lee Witt gave us an a plus an a . We have fema there, military there. We have First Responders there. It is a tragic situation. We are working closely with the representatives from california and we are doing a good job. Reporter [indiscernible] pres. Trump all i can say is it is totally fake news. Just fake. It is made up stuff. It is disgraceful what happens. That happens in the world of politics. Reporter on the wall [indiscernible] pres. Trump our country needs a wall. Mexico, you see what is happening there. You see what just happened yesterday with one of their big political leaders. Mexico is not doing particularly well, when it comes to the thing we have great interest in. Drugs are pouring across our border. We are stopping it. We need a ball a wall to stop it. You know it, i know it, Everybody Knows it. We have to have a wall. That is going to be part of it. Reporter [indiscernible] pres. Trump the puerto rico situation reporter [indiscernible] pres. Trump that is according to the Clinton Administration. Puerto rico is very tough because of the fact it is an island. It is also tough because, as you know, it was in poor shape before the hurricanes hit. There is electrical grid was destroyed before the hurricanes got there. It was not working. It was in bankruptcy. It owed 9 billion. On top of that, the hurricane came. You will have to build a whole new electrical plant system. We are not talking about generators. Puerto rico has more generators, i believe, than any place in the world. There are generators all over the place. The fact is there electrical system was in horrible shape before. It even worse shape after. We are working right now, as you know, relief funds were approved by congress. That includes texas, by the way, that includes florida and it also includes puerto rico, the u. S. Virgin islands, etc. But it was in bad shape before. We have done i will say this, we have done we have delivered tremendous amounts of water. What you have to do is you have to have distribution of the water. We have massive amounts of water. We have massive massive amounts of food. They have to distribute the food. They have to do this. They have to distribute the food to the people of the island. What we have done is we have military distributing food. Something that they should not have to be doing. If you look at the governor who is a good man, if you look at the governor of puerto rico, he has said we have done an outstanding job. Most people have said that. Puerto rico is a tough one. Reporter how important [indiscernible] pres. Trump i will let mitch the want to talk about that . Leader mcconnell was the question about the 20 week yeah. It is appointed by all our members. We expect to have a vote on it on some point at some point. Reporter there are those believe who will we believe how do you view what the time is to accomplish [indiscernible] pres. Trump i will be going to south korea, to china, to japan, vietnam, for the summit. We have a big economic summit there. I may be going to the philippines, also. We have been invited to the philippines. Look forward to all of them. We have not set the details as of this moment. Reporter [indiscernible] pres. Trump we will take a look that a look at that. Reporter quick thing on an earlier question are you considering firing Robert Mueller . Pres. Trump no, not at all. Reporter iraqi forces were clashing in northern iraq. Are you concerned about a larger [indiscernible] while u. S. Forces are on the ground . Pres. Trump we do not like the fact that they are clashing. We are not taking sides. But we do not like the fact that they are clashing. We have had good relationships with the kurds. We have also been on the inside of iraq, even though we should never have been there in the first place. We are not taking sides in that battle. Reporter in an interview, Hillary Clinton said she did not believe players kneeling in the nfl was about disrespecting the flag. You fired back [indiscernible] pres. Trump i hope hillary runs. Issue going to run . Hillary, please run again go ahead. Reporter is she right or issue wrong . Pres. Trump there is plenty of time to do knees and lots of other things. When you take any that is why she lost the election. Honestly, it is that thinking. That is the reason she lost the election. When you go down and take a me take a knee, you are sitting for our national anthem. Your disrespecting our flag and you are disrespecting our country. The nfl should have suspended some of these players for one game. Not fire them. Suspended them for one game. If they did it again, it could have been two games, free games, and then for the season. You would not have people disrespecting our country now. If Hillary Clinton made this statement that sitting down during the playing of our Great National anthem is not disrespectful, then i fully understand why should not why she did not win. There are a lot of reasons she did not win, including the fact that she was not good at what she did. That is something i had just heard about. I think her statement in itself is very disrespectful to our country. Thank you, everybody. It is very disrespectful to our country when they take a me take a knee. It is very disrespectful to our country when they take a knee during the national anthem. Number two, the people of our country are angry at the nfl. All you have to do is look at their ratings in stadiums. You see empty seats where you never saw them before. A lot of people are angry. It is highly disrespectful. Thank you very everybody. Thank you. Announcer tuesday, President Trump highlights his tax reform policy at the heritage foundations annual president clubs meeting. Coverage at 7 30 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. From chris for the nomination for the general of the cia. We will have live coverage of his confirmation hearing at 2 30 p. M. Eastern here on cspan. Tomorrow, live in jefferson city, missouri for the next stop on the 50 capital tour. Starting at 8 00 eastern. Next, a look at the iran nuclear deal. A former Obama Administration official helped negotiate the deal, took part in this event hosted by the National IranianAmerican Council this is one hour and 10 minutes. Everybody in hello, everybody