Our everyday selves. Let us rededicated ourselves to the principles of peace and goodwill toward men. Welcome to christmas sunday. Its meet the press. From nbc news in washington, this is meet the press with chuck todd. Good sunday morning, and merry christmas. Happy first day of hanukkah, as well. Happy holidays to everyone. When donald trump rode down that escalator at trump tower on june 16th, 2015, its safe to say very few people predicted that a year and a half later we would be sitting here looking ahead to the trump presidency. Trumps victory was a triumph for people who had had it with the federal government. For people who felt overlooked by democrats, and for folks who felt dismissed by the scheduled elites. At the same time, his victory was a bitter disappointment for a plurality of voters, many of whom were disgusted by his campaign and uncomfortable with his unpredictability and his coziness with nativist language. As we look ahead to the trump presidency, we wanted back at the 18 times that donald trump appeared on meet the press during this campaign and discuss the candidate and the man with some of the journalists who have covered him so closely. Hugh hewitt, host on the salem radio network. Joy reid, holocaust of a. M. Joy onness m. Katy tur, our campaign at nbc news. And robert costa who broke a lot of stories on donald trump for the washington post. Welcome to you, and welcome to you. Happy holidays. Well show the meet the press interviews in three chunks, and one by one discuss each area. I want to begin with domestic policy covering areas from immigration to health care to companies that leave the United States. And well begin with the issue that has divided this country forecades abortion. Should some form of abortion always be legal . Well, to me, i have exceptions rape, incest, if the mother is going to die. An exceptions, and many republicans have those exceptions. I say rape you said life of the mother. What about health of the mother . I said actually if the mothers close to death. And im talking about death. You know, then you sort of say like, well, maybe shes not feeling so well what is the line, the constitutional right between between the mother and the unborn child . Whose Constitutional Rights matter more . My statement on that happens to be the you know, if the mother will die and youre going to know that. And the problem with the life if you say life, what does life mean . You have a cold and youre going to end up having an abortion . The one big thing thats going to jump out that people are upset about, you want to get rid of birth rights citizenship. You have to. Theyre having a baby. All of a sudden nobody knows you believe that you have no choice. For coming here you have no choice. We have good people, we have very good people here. We have a lot of really good people. Theyre illegal. You either have a country or not. We go ou the good ones, rapidly i understand that you know the word expedited . I do, yeah. Expedited. What do you do about the daka order where you had the grant for the dream act, however you refer to it . The executive order that the president , that is is the executive order gets rescinded. Youll rescind that one, too . One good thing youll rescind the dream act executive order we have to have a new set of standards youre going to split up families, deport children chuck, no, we have to keep the families together. We have to keep the families together. But they have to go. What if they have no place to go . We will work with them. They have to go. Chuck, we either have a country, or we wont doedont have a cou. Your tax plan, you said would be revenue neutral, raise taxes on the wealthy. Overall it cuts taxes on the wealthy when you throw in the estate tax and things like that. And its a big hole in the youre cutting. Okay. What are you cutting . You ready . Were cutting a lot. Were cutting taxes really for the middle income more than anything else everybodys taxes are going down, though . Everybodys taxes are going down. Some people wont pay tax. The reason theyre not going to pay i love the idea of having a little sort of fat in the game if we can. But the fact is these are people that will are doing poorly. Theyre making not a lot of money. And were saving a tremendous amount of administrative costs and other things by not making them pay. Under my plan, i think its a dynamic plan were going to grow the economy. If we do 6 or 7 under my plan, everybody benefits weve never had a year 6 or 7 we can. We can do that. We start cutting. The waste in this country is unbelievable. When you look at all of the youre going to get rid of entire departments . I would get rid of some. You look at as an example, department of education. Youd get rid of it . No. Not entirely. I would certainly get rid of a lot of it. Je im not. I want local education. We could save a fortune with Environmental Protection financially not a big department, though. Youre not going to get rid of a lot its a lot of money. What is another agency youll get rid of even in the military, im going to build a military much stronger than it is now. Its going to be so strong nobodys going to mess with us. We can do it for a lot less. Im coming back to the math here. Nobody can seem especially since you said youre taking Social Security and medicare off the table, not doing cuts at all. If you take that off the table its unfair to put it on the table. People have been paying in for years. All of a sudden youre not getting what they you wouldnt raise the rate, age of retirement . Im not going to do that. Im going to take in so much money from china and other places. Look, we have a trade deficit with china of almost 400 billion a year. 400 billion. I looked the other day and said i cant believe it. In that first speech to congress, youre going to lay out the first 100 dayss agenda. What are the issues . Im going to number one. I want to take care of our veterans. Take care of them. Theyre being taken care of horribly. I want to fix our health care system. I want to create borders so that we have a country. Right now we dont have a country. We have borders where people walk across and do whatever they want to do. Then they have babies, and the babies become citizens, and we have to take care of them. Were going to do many things and make America Great again. Thats what i want to do. You want some government system on health care. Yeah. You dont like the system thats in there now. That i understand. Right. Not single payer. Describe the system that you want. Okay. Let me explain. Okay. First of all, what i do i have a massive company, thousands and thousands of companies in different states. You have artificial lines around each state. The Insurance Company takes care of the politicians so they dont want to get rid of the lines. If you get rid of of the lines you would have great private insurance and take care of most people. It would be unbelievable. In addition, you can have a savings do the savings situation where you would have Health Care Savings accounts, and theres so many things you could do. The problem is the Insurance Companies dont want to do these things, and they dont want to specifically get rid of the lines because theyd rather have a monopoly in new york as an example than let 50 Companies Come in and bid. Companies from i what, companies from new hampshire. Youre going to have to structure a Government Program to deal with this. No, no. No. Heres what you do youre going to have a great system. There will be people left who dont have any money. What i said last night is i dont want people dying in the street. Its not going to happen if im president , okay. This isnt single payer. This is using our hospitals to take care of people. You work them out, reimburse the hospital. Because you would expand medicaid . You can do it through medicaid. You can do it through some other way. Im saying this has nothing to do with single this has to do with humanity, with having a heart. You defended the other work planned parenthood does, now you said you would dund it. I from planned parenthood does not go to abortions. The money to planned parenthood goes to other Womens Health issues including mammograms and things like that. If you knew the government money were only going that, would you support funding planned parenthood . Yeah. If it didnt have to do with abortions look, i understand and have many, many friends or women who understand planned parenthood better than you or i will ever understand it. And they do some very good work. Cervical cancer, lots of womens issue, Womens Health issues are taken care of. I know one of the candidates i wont mention names said were not going to spend that kind of money on Womens Health issues. I am. Planned parenthood does a lot of good really good job in a lot of different areas. But not on abortion. Im not going to fund it if its doing the abortion. I am not going to fund it. You said there would be consequences for any company that tried to move a factory absolutely whats the consequence . Start with use bring up carrier a lot. If you were president , carrier an explain. They announce theyre going to mexico and fire their people in indiana. They say, hi, mexico, enjoy your plant and your life, and you hire people from mexico, okay. Now they make their product and put it into the United States where we will have a strong border, by the way. They put it into the United States, and we dont charge them tax. There will be a tax to be paid. If theyre going to fire their people, move their flooplant to mexico, build air conditioners and think theyll sell to the United States, theres going to be a tax. What kind of tax . 25 , could be 35 , could be 15 . I havent determined. And it could be different for different companies. Some of these things arent going to get through the world trade organization. A lot of doesnt matter. Well renegotiate or pull out. These trade deelts aals are a disaster, chuck. There it is. Part one, donald trump domestic issues. Donald trump at home. Lets dive in. Katy, we like to highlight the inconsistencies sometimes. There was plenty consistencies in different ways he talked about issues. The first 100 days, the first items were expanding the military, dealing with immigration, and dealing with obamacare. Talked about that throughout the campaign. Yeah. He did have consistency in some idealistic ways. You could tell he didnt have a lot of policy depth in what he was saying. While he would talk about Something Like medicare or would talk about Something Like health care reform, he wouldnt realize what he was describing. Thats what got him into trouble especially with the republicans. He was often going against the longestablished republican talking points and platforms. Thats where the inconsistencies rose. When he would try and dial it back and say thats not what i believe, its oftentimes what he said in the aftermath of the comments that made it a little murkiers than it may have seem initially. Robert, its trump priorities versus republican priorities, right. I think it was funny, katy, that you said trump heard himself through the republicans, not the publican leaders. Thats going to happen in this first 100 days. I think health care and medicare is where we may see the most. 2016 was the year of Donald Trumps victory. It was also the year of the shattering of the ideological consensus within the Republican Party. Interview after interview, were watching donald trump go against the mainstream of his party, conservative orthodoxy. I remember being on the plane with him in august of 2015. I said, are you a populist . How do you define yourself ideologically . He said, costa, im common sense. He made news for breaking away from the gop. People in the party privately say hes probably the First Independent president of the United States because hes not really a republican at his core. Hugh, is he . I think he is. I think he will become one. I can binge watch those clips forever. I mean, i love watching donald trump use things like if it funds the abortion, the abortion like the nuclear. I was standing next to him, next to the articles. I was next to katy on floor of cleveland when he brought up the speech perks the Supreme Court. The biggest applause line. The biggest Christmas Present that the unify the conservatives and republicans will be his Supreme Court appointment. I think hes going deliver. I think hes becoming a conservative. He isnt one, but hes becoming one because theres a lot of payoff there. Is it a conservative of convenience, though, joy . Its interesting i think the scalia pick is an easy one for him. Conservative for conservative. Sure. Yeah. Its something that he can give the party. Right. Mike pence was part of coopting the religious right. What does he do if theres a second opening that would actually change it . He might not be where everybody thinks he is. I mean, im not so sure that donald trump is that doctrinaire on any conservative orthodoxy. What robert said is true, this year the Republican Party found that all of these ideological firments of the party only existed with elites. At the base of the party, the reason they like donald trump is he talks the way they talk around the dinner party. Probably to include the articles that youre throwing in. Talking about the abortion. He talks about it free of any of any deep thought or any ideological background. He just says i think for a lot of republicans, republican elites thought that the base of the party wanted tax cuts for the very rich, wanted Corporate Tax rate to be at 15 , wanted certain ideological things. That isnt what they wanted. They want the end of trade agreement, reduction in immigration, and a lot of things that were anathema to the elites of the party probably for years. Lets see how much donald trump cares about these issues when he is in office and how much he delegates to the people under him who have shown themselves so far to be quite conservative members of the Republican Party. So how much is it going to be donald trump leading policy, and how much is it going to be his cabinet officials . I have to say, i was at dinner last night this was a shocking moment. We had two wall street bankers sitting next to me. They were thrilled at Donald Trumps presidency. They said they didnt know how he would do necessarily, but they were thrilled because they didnt believe he was going to have his hands in anything. They believed that commerce was going to take over. They believed that tillerson was rise. They believe that they were going to make a ton of money off this, and they were toasting this big irony. The mistake, though, people make is assuming some stereotypes of trump. Trump, if he doesnt care about an issue, they may be right. When he cares about an issue, robert, he cares about an issue. Trump won the election. When im at the capitol these past few days, a lot of congressional republicans, members of the house and senate, feel like they won the election, too. Trump didnt run on trimming medicare spending or says. He didnt run as a deficit hawk. He ran as a populist. Yet many conservatives in washington believe they can enact their own agenda. If you look at history, bill clintons first term, even president obamas first term. When you have majorities and youre in your first term, you think you can roll through policy after policy. Trump didnt have the planet in his campaign for mandate in his campaign for the policies being advocated by the leadership. Thats the irony, that donald trump runs this campaign aimed at the heart of blue collar, white america. Now together, its his cabinet together, its a feast for wall street. A series of executives. When its menuchen, a foreclosure king. Hes stacking the elite, the party the base of the party despise. Let me close with this domestically whats one issue promise that he made that if he doesnt keep it, he hes got to worry about his own political standing with his base . He has to build the wall. He has to build the wall. He has to an actual wall or virtual an actual 700 miles you believe that . I really believe that. If theres not the visible expression of the invisible commitment to sovereignty i dont believe that. I talk to people on the campaign trail. I asked them. They didnt seem to care. Its jobs. Hes got to create jobs. And off of that, infrastructure. He is a builder. If the highways dont start getting built in the rust belt again and factories dont come back, if theres not the infrastructure there. When we were in ohio talking to Steel Workers who vote for obama twice and who seemed to be interested in donald trump, they re it will create jobs, and immigration. If he doesnt do substantive reductions in immigration and i mean, people want him to pull out of nafta. That isnt going to happen. Thats what they think is going to happen. That year two when he has to deal with trade deals. I dont think he touches them in year one anyway. Great conversation. When we come back, well hear from candidate donald trump on all Things National security. So you welcome putins involvement . I like that putin is bombing the hell out of isis. Theres a. And now with victoza® a better moment of proof. 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