that we seize it. my presidency is entering the fourth quarter. interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter. and i m looking forward to it. going into the fourth quarter, you usually get a time-out. i m now looking forward to a quiet time-out. christmas with my family. i want to wish everybody a measure wrimerry christmas, a happy hanukkah, a happy new year. i hope that all of you get time to spend with your families as well because one thing that we share is that we re away too much from them. and now, josh has given me the who s been naughty and who s been nice list and i m going to take some questions. reporter: thank you, mr. president. starting with north korea since
that seems to be the biggest topic today, what does a proportional response look like to the sony hack? and did sony make the right decision in pulling the movie or does that set a dangerous precedent? let me address the second question first. sony is a corporation. it suffered significant damage. there wer
reporter: certainly. that will be a challenge for some of them especially in districts where the president is very popular. if members did not side with him on this. i think the big question right now is will it get to the floor? that s a decision that doesn t reside in the white house. it s really a decision for the majority leaders of the republicans, kevin mccarthy a long with the speaker, they run the floor. if they believe it is sort of a doomed bill, they ve got to make a calculation about tip typically you could see them not put it on the floor with that political exposure for each and every member to be recorded on something that went nowhere. that s typically how this goes. we saw the president saying he wanted a vote. that was a point of leverage. in the time we ve been talking about this and when we ve been updating our own whip counts and describing the mood and the atmosphere, i can assure you, if there were people in leadership who thought we had that wrong, they wo
the speaker warned him off of that. made very clear that the individuals that would be voting for this bill were many of the individuals that helped republicans secure and maintain the majority, told them it wasn t the best idea. that said, there was still a house freedom caucus meeting that was scheduled with tom price and nick mulvaney. they allowed that to happen after it was clear after the meeting there would be no movement with the conservatives, the house freedom caucus members. the call was made. president trump called the speaker and told him clearly it was time to pull the bill and that is exactly what happened and the ramifications of that aren t just micro, not just this week or this bill. they are health care, period. obamacare stands not just for now, not just for the next couple months butter for the foreseeable future. a lot of republicans talked about if this goes down maybe kind of go piecemeal, piece by piece, try to do this in smaller chunks than all at once but
President is still the sta standard bearer of the republican party. obviously, you are part of the republican party that has principles and, you know, adheres to basic facts and truth. um, but that s not i mean, you could not could you win today, running in that republican party without supporting the former president? i think you could. and you can look at youngkin, who stayed away from being from trying to be tied to the president. he actually didn t run, um, with the president and he ran on issues that were importantly to the to his to the state and to, um, the areas that he is going to represent. so, i think that there is a path forward, and we can see that, again, with the dropping numbers of support that the president is having. and i know that there are members of congress that are actually going, and they are trying to run, um, still supporting the president. and i think those i think
You to prevent this from happening again. but the former president is still the standard bearer of the republican party. obviously, you are part of the republican party not mine. that has principals and adheres to basic facts and truth, but that s not i mean, could you win today running in that republican party without supporting the former president? i think you could. and you could look at youngkin who stayed away from being from trying to be tied to the president. he actually didn t run with the president, and he ran on issues that were important to the to his to the state and to the areas that he is going to represent. so i think that there is a path forward and we can see that, again, with the dropping numbers of support that the president is having. and i know there are members of congress that are actually going and they re trying to run still supporting the president. and i think those i think