And part of the reason that it is so important for us to reach out to the Latino community is the Latino community is the most likely to be uninsured. One out of four of the uninsured are Latino. Most of those people work very hard, but because maybe there is a low-wage job, they are in a job that does not provide health insurance, their families do not have any protection. So we want to make sure that everybody has the information, and you have to sign up by March 31 if, in fact, you are going to be able to get covered for this year. That was clear from the very beginning. But many of the family members are covered. This is the case, for example, of Guadalupe Stallone from California, she is undocumented. I have four sons, one daughter, three boys, actually, my youngest is a special case. I have been told that I have to register him so that they get benefits. Insurance, now I am afraid that I have to sign him up and fill in all these documents, I am afraid that they will be taken from me. From the moment we start providing your personal information, you start to feel the fear, that is the fear, that they are going to share it with immigration. Many people are in the same situation. They do not know that ENTITY is not going to hand them over to immigration, and they fear that the next day, they are going to hear someone knocking on their door, and it is going to be immigration to take them away. I would tell ENTITY I want to believe in you. I have kids. And, like Guadalupe's family, we have hundreds of thousands more with a mixed migration status. Fear and lack of trust have become one of the main obstacles for Latinos to register. ENTITY, from the time that you took office, there have been over 1,000 deportations per day in this country. You are looking at 2 million, in fact, this week, the leader of the Latino organization, the largest one, the National Council of La Raza, called your administration and you, sir, as Deporter-in-Chief. So while the question is can our people hear from you a pledge, a personal promise that the information provided in the registration process will not be used for deportation purposes? Let me break that question up because there are a bunch of different issues in there.


The first thing that everybody needs to know with respect to health care is if you are a U.S. citizen or you have a legal presence in this country, then you are eligible for this health care program. That is how the law was written, but if you are a U.S. citizen or you have a legal presence in this country, you are eligible. And none of the information that is provided in order for you to obtain health insurance is in any way transferred to immigration services. So that is something that we have been very clear about if you live in a mixed status family, then the son, who could potentially be eligible for the children's health insurance program or some other mechanism to get health insurance, he needs to be signed up. And the mother should not be fearful that in any way that is going to affec Since I ran for ENTITY, I have been pushing for comprehensive immigration reform and continue to push for comprehensive immigration reform. I am the Champion-in-Chief of comprehensive immigration reform. But what I have said in the past remains true, which is until Congress passes a new law, then I am constrained in terms of what I am able to do. What I have done is to use my prosecutorial discretion, because you cannot enforce the laws across the board for 11 or 12 million people, there are not the resources there. What we have said is focus on folks who are engaged in criminal activity, focus on people who are engaged in gang activity. Do not focus on young people, who we are calling dreamers, who are studying, grow up here, who through no fault of their own find themselves suddenly under the threat of deportation. That already stretched my administrative capacity very far. But at a certain point the reason that these deportations are taking place is, Congress said, you have to enforce these laws. They fund the hiring of officials at the department that is charged with enforcing. And I cannot ignore those laws anymore than I could ignore, you know, any of the other laws that are on the books. We already have seen bipartisan support in the Senate. Now we have the opportunity to get bipartisan in the House. I have spoken to the Speaker John Boehner, about this. I think he is sincere about this. I think he is sincere about wanting to do it.

Interview with Jose Diaz-Balert and Enrique Acevedo of Univision News


What I can tell you though, is while we are waiting to get comprehensive immigration reform done, I do not want a young person out there to get sick, could have had health insurance, and suddenly they are in a position where they may lose everything they have. Or not get the good treatment that they need, or not get preventive care that would allow them to find out whether or not they can be treated. So, for everybody out there that is in a mixed family, there is no sharing of the data from the healthcare plan into immigration services. You should feel confident that if somebody in your family is eligible, you should sign them up. Well, that is a particularly important point you touched on at the end, ENTITY. Because your administration does not have the best record with keeping your citizen's personal information and sharing among agencies. I could think of a few cases in the past. So you are entirely committed to refrain from sharing information of anybody who signs on to the insurance. Very well then, let us move on to the cost now. We have a great number of questions from the many social media platforms. We have been getting many questions about cost. This question here comes from a gentleman who says that he asked, he wanted ObamaCare for his family. He wanted Obamacare for a family of three. And he says, I make about $36,000 per year, and the minimum amount here is $315 per month. I think that is too much for me. That is a question from this gentleman here, as I was saying, a lot has been said about the cost. And for families that live from paycheck to paycheck, $316 might be a lot. Well yes, for example, ENTITY, the study from the California government shows that our people want medical insurance. They need insurance. They tried to register but when they go to register they cannot cover it. I think it is very important to understand a couple of things. Number one, that many people when they go on the website or they make a call or they go to the clinic, they may be eligible for Medicaid, they just do not know it. In which case, they may be able to get health insurance coverage for free or very low costs. The child who was in the video previously may qualify for the Children's Health Insurance Program. When it comes to somebody who is not qualified for Medicaid, we already have in place what is called a hardship exemption.


So that you are not required to get health insurance if you genuinely cannot afford it. And frankly, there are a few states like Texas or Florida, that have not expanded Medicaid the way the law allows. Those people should qualify for Medicaid under the federal rules, but the states have refused to expand it for political reasons. And so they may find themselves in a situation where they really cannot afford to pay more. They should be able to get health insurance. That is why we got to put pressure on those governors to expand Medicaid. But, for the majority of people when you sign up on this website, you will discover that because of the tax credits and subsidies that are available, that the vast majority of people will find a good option that is affordable for them. And as I said before, a large portion of people will be able to find health insurance for $100 or less. Now there may be some circumstances where somebody is making $40,000, $50,000 a year. They have got a health insurance option that, you know, cost $300 a month for their family. And they may say, you know, with all the bills that I have got that is too tight. I guess I would say is if you looked at that person's budget and you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, their cell phone bill, other things that they are spending on, it may turn out that it is just they have not prioritized to healthcare because right now everybody's healthy. Nobody actually wants to spend money on health insurance until they get sick. And then once they are sick, the costs of not having health insurance are a lot worse than the cost of having health insurance. I guarantee you if that gentleman who just wrote you that letter, and I do not know his particular circumstance and whether he actually has gotten all the information about the subsidies that might be available. But I guarantee you that even at $300 a month, if heaven forbid something happened to him or a family member where they got sick and really needed, let us say a week's worth of hospitalization, he will wish that he had paid that $300 a month. Because he stands potentially to get bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars for treatment and you cannot pay that without health insurance. You know, I get a pretty good salary as ENTITY.


But if I did not have health insurance and something happened to me, I am not sure I could pay out of pocket for the kinds of cost of care that are necessary. Your government, once again, extended the deadline for the policies that do not qualify to the new law. Now, these extensions you have granted, are they not a tacit recognition, in fact that this portion of the law is a mistake. Is that some people buy health insurance on the individual market. Yeah, they do not get health insurance for the job, but they know they should get health insurance and so they have gone out and they have purchased it on their own. Sometimes because they are healthy, they do not have a pre-existing condition, they are young, they can get a good deal. Because insurers are very good at figuring out, you know what, we bet we will not have to pay much on this person. And so we will offer them a good deal. And then there're some people who actually get very bad insurance, but they do not know it, because they have not seen the fine print. And so what we have said was, look, if you have health insurance you should be able to keep it. The way the law was drafted it did not cover everybody under that provision. Some people got cancellations, they did not want to see their insurance cancelled. They said, I thought you said, that we'd be able to keep it. And we said, you know what, you are right. You should be able to keep the health insurance that you have, even if it is not very good. Even if you could actually get better health insurance. Even if you are happy with it. Even if you could get better health insurance on healthcare.gov. You should be able to keep it. And that is the law that we have extended. And on a program like this that has so many people involved. And millions of people who are trying to find health insurance, or get better health insurance they are always going to be some smoothing out of the process that has to take place. But keep in mind that for the majority of people even if they have health insurance on the individual market, they should go to the website because they may qualify for tax credits. They may qualify for subsidies that give them better health insurance for less money. And keep in mind that we have already seen over 4 million people sign up.


And I get letters everyday from people who signed up, they say, you know, I did not agree with you on Obamacare, and I thought it was a terrible law. But then my cousin told me I should look on the website. And I am now saving $200 a month on my premiums for better health insurance. So the main message I have for everybody who is listening or watching is, look to see if in fact you can get a better deal. Even if you have got health insurance on the individual market you should see if in fact you are getting the best health insurance you can. I saw, I met a woman yesterday, I was in Connecticut. She drove up from Rhode Island to thank me, because even though she had health insurance, it turned out that she had not read the fine print and she had not been covered when she got leukemia. It was not going to cover all the costs. And she literally said to me, you saved my life, because we could not have afforded to get treatment. Fortunately, we were able to sign up for the Affordable Care Act and now the treatments that I have is covered. And I have been in remission now for a year. So as I said before, the problem with health insurance is, people do not necessarily want to pay for it until something goes wrong. And what we are trying to do is provide affordable options for all people. And if you go on the website, CuidadoDeSalud.gov , or make a phone call to the call centers that we have setup. Or visit some of the 8,000 clinics, community clinics that exist within the Latino community all across the country. You can get information and make your own decisions about whether in fact this is a good decision for you. ENTITY, the reason we are here, and we said this at the beginning is that the Latino community is key for the success of this healthcare reform. Now we have the very same deadline of March 31, we said this at the beginning. But now we have had access to information, different tools, and different platforms that did not operate the same way in English as they did in Spanish. Now taking this into account, why not consider extending the deadline that we are looking at? Well, first of all the website works really well now. So anybody who is watching, you still have a month to sign up. I was watching the introductory video and somebody was saying, oh it took me so long to get on.


That was in the first month, or the first month and a-half. If you call now, if you get on the website now it works, it provides you the information. You can potentially sign up very quickly to get coverage. And so there is really no reason why over the next four weeks, it is not as if the deadline is tomorrow. You guys are doing us a service by making sure that people know. Well, you have time now to sign up. And the reason that we do not want to extend the deadline forever, the way insurance works is, at some point the insurance companies have to make a decision about what is the pool? How many people are in this insurance pool that they have got to cover? They have got to start making decisions about prices for next year. They cannot make those decisions last minute, they have to be able to see who it is that they are insuring. That gives people enough time to be able to sign up. ENTITY, on the website in Spanish, it still has problems that were already solved in the English language. On the web page and when somebody calls on the phone, sometimes they have to go through two steps in English in order to get to Spanish. We still see problems that my friend, my colleague ENTITY had mentioned. But if we cannot prolong that deadline March 31, would you not at least consider not penalizing those who cannot meet the deadline? Well, keep in mind that what is going to happen is that again, if you cannot afford health insurance, you are going to be exempted. You are not going to be paying a penalty. And if in fact you want health insurance, then I am very confident that between now and March 31 you can get on the website, make a phone call. And we make sure that you get health insurance. And I would say ENTITY, that for people who let us say started to sign up in October, the website was terrible in October. It was, and it still was not very good in November. And so if you got discouraged initially, please go back and take a look, and see in fact is it working? And can you get the information that you need? Here is part of the concern that I have. Is that if everybody waits until the last minute, everybody waits until March 27 or 28, then in some ways it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.


Because if you have 5 million people all going on the website at the same time, even if it is a great website that is working well now, then yes, there are going to be delays. Because there are only so many people that any website can absorb at a single time. What we are trying to see is, the people to spread out their interests, start now, start today. You know, go to the website, get the information. If in fact there is a problem, call the call center number which will be on the screen, if that is a problem go to a community clinic and find out whether or not you can sign up. I would say that for the Spanish speaking website, CuidadoDeSalud.gov that 95 percent of the issues have been resolved. For the English speaking website I'd say 99 percent of the problems have been resolved. Some of the issues that were specific to the Spanish speaking website had to do with if somebody has a change in immigration status or you know, a very complex problem in terms of their family and then sometimes it takes a little bit longer. For if you are a young person, you know, you are 28, 29 years old you do not have a serious history of illness of any sort, or what have you, I promise if you go on the website you can sign up in pretty quick time. So just to make sure, you will enforce the deadline and penalties will be enforced? We are going to enforce the deadline. But we are confident that anybody out there who is interested in getting health insurance for their families they are going to be able to get that done before March 31. And penalties will be enforced after that time? If in fact you can afford health insurance and you have not purchased it, that is what the law says. And I want to be clear as to the reason for that. You know, you may get in an accident. If you do not have health insurance you then go to the emergency room. And we are going to provide you treatment, that is law, that somebody has to provide you initial treatment. And so it is not fair for others to essentially provide insurance for you. You need to take some responsibility if you can afford it. Well, now that we talked about penalties, people that get sick or have an accident and cannot pay, will they continue to be covered? Well, basically they will end up being in the same situation they are now, which is they used the emergency room.


The problem and this is true in the Latino community, is a lot of people use the emergency room as their doctor. But what that means is that first of all, you very rarely get regular checkups or preventive care. And oftentimes people wait until they are really sick before they go to the doctor. That means already, not only have they been going through pain, but they may have seen a disease advance. And they could have prevented many diseases. One of the things about getting health insurance and this is something that young people should know is, it means that, you know, you can get a regular mammogram. Or you can get, you know, other checkups that can monitor your health. And that is part of making sure that you are living a healthy lifestyle. ENTITY, this year if immigration is approved would you include the, but would you act unilaterally in that case so that the, now people on the path to citizenship would benefit from the healthcare reform. Well, we will have to see what the law looks like. And my suspicion is if we get that passed, then initially at least, the Republicans will insist that people are not eligible for various benefits, even if they have a legal status. But the good news is once somebody has a legal status, first of all, they are more likely to be able to get a job that provides health insurance. So they may not need the subsidies through the Affordable Care Act. Second of all, over time I think it becomes less of a political issue. You will recall that when I came into office the law on the Children's Health Insurance Program did not allow children who were legal permanent residents from taking advantage of the law. It did not make any sense if they are here legally then we should be able to make sure that those children have the healthcare that they need. But that is a discussion for a future date. I think the important thing for now is there are millions of people are definitely eligible who right now are not taking advantage of it. And what I need everybody to do is to talk to your friends, your neighbors, your family, your coworkers and just ask them, take a look. Does this make sense for you? Does it make sense for your family? Do you need the financial security? Do you want a healthier lifestyle? And if you can obtain that at a relatively modest cost.


In some cases as I said, for a lot of people it is going to be less than $100 a month, which people can afford. In some cases for young people it might be as little as $50, or $40 or $30 a month, if that makes sense to you, then take advantage of this now. Because if you do not take advantage of it by March 31st, then the next chance you may have will not be until November. And you know, I have seen too many stories of people who did not have health insurance and tragedy struck and they were unprepared. And part of what happens I think is when you have children, then you become much more aware of how you want to provide security for yourself and your family. I know you are often asked this. But do you believe that this will be the legacy of your administration? And do you feel comfortable with that legacy, if so? You know, I am very proud of this law. It is already helping millions of people. Keep in mind in addition to the over 4 million people who've signed up for the private health insurance, 3 million young people are staying on their parents' plan 'till the age of 26 because of the law. You have millions who are on Medicaid in the states that have expanded it because of the law. You have got seniors who are getting discounts on their prescription drugs and Medicare because of the law. You have got a patient's bill of rights for those who have health insurance through their jobs because of the law. So I am very proud of this. And I believe that once we get through the initial startup phases, which are always difficult. It was true for Social Security, and it was true for Medicare. Some of the same arguments were made against those programs when they first started off. And at that point the Republicans will not call it Obamacare anymore. Because one of the things the Republicans say is and this week they tried to do this 50 times, the lower house, they tried to change the law in its current form. Now this law is up and running since 2010. Now what changes, what specific changes would you make to this law from here on out? Well, you know, on a complicated program like this, and this is true of every social program.


And what I have said to the Republicans is if they have something specific that makes sense for families, makes healthcare more affordable, drives down costs, covers more people, we are happy to look at it. But there is a reason why they have never actually put forward a serious alternative. Did you notice for the last 5 years they have been saying, this is terrible, we have got a better way of doing it. And then we keep on waiting for their plan of a better way of doing it, and they do not produce it. Well, the reason is, is because actually we have taken the best ideas, conservative ideas, liberal ideas, and we have put them together and we are now implementing them. And what I can say is that if in fact people sign up and take advantage, if they go to the website, if they make the calls, they go to the community clinic, and they get the information, I am absolutely confident that you will see millions of people benefitting from this law. It does not mean that at some point there will not be some additional problems or improvements that we can make. Do you have anything in mind in the near future?  At this point I think actually it is working the way it should. But I, what we need to do is after the first year we will evaluate what the pool looks like. Can we make sure that we are keeping the premiums low? Are there more people that we could potentially cover through other mechanisms, reaching those who are still uninsured? The biggest improvement I'd like to see right now is for the Governors in states like Texas and Florida to expand Medicaid. Because a state like Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. Keep in mind, the state of Texas would not have to pay itself more money to cover these people. This is money that the federal law and the federal government would provide, all they have to do is to agree to accept these dollars to help their citizens, their residents to do the right thing. And the idea that you would not do that for political reasons I think is, that is something I'd like to see improved. But that does not have to do with making a change in the law. It means changing the attitudes of some of the politicians who've been blocking it. But ENTITY, without a doubt I guess you agree that your credibility has been somewhat tarnished with the Latino community, because of the immigration reform and deportations.


Now how can you ask the Latino community once again to trust and to sign on to this program and to follow your example. Well, I would challenge the premise of my credibility. Keep in mind that, you know, when you are ENTITY somebody's always going to be frustrated or unhappy about something you have done or have not done, or have not done fast enough. But if you look at my track record in terms of expanding, access to college for Latino students. If you look at my track record in terms of the number of Latino families we kept out of poverty during the Great Recession. If you look at my track record in terms of the number of Latino families who I helped make sure that they stayed in their homes through our various programs when the housing market crashed. If you look at the track record that I have had in expanding health insurance for legal residents' children. If you look at the track record that I have with respect to making sure that the Dreamers were not subject to deportation, despite the fact that, that required me to make some very difficult changes administratively in existing law. I think the community understands that I have got their back and I am fighting for them. Of course, but that is true for pretty much everybody in the population. If something's wrong then they are saying, why has not ENTITY done something about this. That does not , that is not just true of here in the United States. That is around the world. You know, you got people in Africa and Asia and Europe and China saying, why did not ENTITY do something about this, this is a terrible problem. And I understand that, that is part of the job. The main message I have for the community right now is, and Latin America. The main question that I have, or the main point that I have for everybody watching right now is you do not punish me by not signing up for healthcare. You are punishing yourself or your family if in fact there is affordable healthcare there to be had and subsidies and tax credits that allow you to have the peace of mind and security and regular checkups and preventive care that would keep you healthier. That is not a matter of trusting me, that is a matter of looking for yourself and seeing if you can get services. We will be back in just a moment. But ENTITY, we wanted to thank you for being here with us today. I enjoyed that very much. I enjoyed it.


ENTITY, as representative from the host country, it is been left to me to bowl the first ball. The London Economic Summit is taking place under a number of clouds. So far, Western creditor nations have dealt with this problem on a case-by-case basis. However, I'd like to ask you, in light of the growing hostility of debtor nations, first of all whether a coordinated long-term solution is now essential; and second, what the U.S.. can do to guarantee confidence of its banking system? Well, first of all, let me answer that by saying that I believe the five-point system-or program that we all agreed to at the summit meeting last year at Williamsburg has been working. And I am sure there is unhappiness here and there with some. But I believe that since it is working, and it is working on a case-by-case basis, that we should continue that, and that the greatest thing we can contribute now to helping them in their problems is to do everything we can to ensure and increase, if possible, the economic recovery that is presently taking place. We have had two banks recently to run into trouble as a result of problems with these debtor countries. Manufacturers Hanover. Well, that turned out to be quite a rumor that seemed to be believed only on Wall Street and the stock market for 24 hours and caused quite a panic, but developed that there was not the same kind of crisis involved there. ENTITY, in the last few days you have said that the world feels a little bit more secure because of the strengthening in the American strategic and conventional posture. As paradoxical as it may seem in considering the reported widespread violations of SALT II by the Soviet Union, do you feel that the world can continue to feel a little bit more secure for an extended period of time in the absence of an agreement with the Soviet Union limiting nuclear arms? Well, I think the ultimate of what we want, of course, is for them to come back to the table and join us in not a limitation, as SALT was, that was simply legalizing an arms race in that the limitation was only a limit on how many more you could continue to build-as a matter of fact, it is interesting to note that from the time of the signing by both parties to the SALT treaty, the Soviet Union added 3,950 more warheads.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


When I say more secure, I believe that the United States, basically, in recent decades, went all out in various efforts at detente and in which we unilaterally disarmed with the idea that maybe if we did this and showed our good faith, they would reciprocate by reducing their own. They have engaged in the most massive military buildup the world has ever seen. And therefore, the reason I believe that there is more security today is the redressing that we have done of our own military strength, the strength of the alliance, and the unity that we have. And the alliance resisted all that propaganda of the Soviets with regard to the intermediate-range placement, and their efforts to divide us failed. So I think-there is an article that I could call to your attention in The Economist, called May Hibernation. that they are not deviously planning something or having a great plan going forward . The author of this article said that they do not have any answers right now, so they have just hunkered down and they are hibernating, waiting until they have an answer. And all this talk about great strain in the relations-well, the unhappiness is because they are not having their way freely, as they did a short time ago. ENTITY, in the connection of this problem of the United States-Soviet relations, East-West relations, which my Italian colleague just mentioned, I'd like to ask this question. Many observers suggest that the United States and the Soviet Union have a common national interest in calming down the present gulf crisis-Persian Gulf crisis, the U.S.. and the Soviet Union have a common interest. Do you agree with this view? If so, would you consider taking this crisis as an opportunity to reopen the U.S.-Soviet dialog, which so many people are anxious to have . Well, I do not see that particular issue as one lending itself to that. We are not out of touch with the Soviet Union. We have continued to negotiate with them on other matters-other than the arms treaties-that were of concern to them. So, we have made it very plain that the door is open for negotiations. On the gulf, I think the idea-none of us want to see this spread into a major conflict.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


And I think the fact that the gulf nations themselves have not asked for help other than wanting more weaponry for their own defense here and there, and which we have provided, and I believe that that is the course to follow. If it ever goes beyond that, then I think that the major nations-it would begin with us and our allies getting together, because basically our allies, including your own country, have a greater stake in-if that energy supply was cut off. But, no, I do not believe that that really offers a kind of opening we are talking about. Yes, but you have direct talk with the Soviet Union on this? So then-this is a followup question-what initiative, if any, do you plan to take at the London summit on this gulf crisis, on this subject? Do you plan to take any- Oh, I am quite sure we will be discussing that. The summit meetings, I am proud and happy to say, since Williamsburg, are kind of planned at a more informal basis. They used to be very programmed and with subjects in advance determined on and so forth. And we did not think, when we had the Williamsburg summit, we did not think that that really opened the door to what everyone would like to talk about. So it is more or less an informal get-together, and whatever subject is on anyone's mind, they can bring up, that they think is of interest to it. And I am quite sure that we will be discussing that. Well, if I can come back to the economic problem, ENTITY, the latest figures on the U.S.. export performance- they paint a rather grim picture. It is understood that the U.S.. trade deficit-trade imbalance will reach a staggering $126 billion this year, compounding, it seems, the deficit problem that already exists. How can interest rates really come down under such auspices? And what will you tell your partners at London, who are worried stiff already about interest rates and about the high dollar that it is created and the capital that comes out of their economies into banks in this country? What are you going to tell your partners about this? Well, the trade imbalance-I do not think it has anything to do with the interest rates. The trade imbalance that you have mentioned there, as a matter of fact, is due to the value of the dollar in comparison to other currencies, and this is part of the worldwide recession that is been going on.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


But our imports are actually responsible for about a third of the recovery of our trading partners now. And there is another element that we do not consider in the balance of trade, but that is capital investment from outside the United States in our country. And yet, that is a kind of balance to this imbalance. We'd like very much to be exporting more than we are, but we realize that our recovery started earlier and has been faster than it has in the other countries. And the very fact, as I say, that we are continuing to import is helping that recovery. And I think that this will move to change that. Now, we get to the deficit, which is-every country has one right now-the spending over and above revenues in government functions. We have a program right now that is in conference committee before the House and Senate to work out the differences in their two versions of what I have called a down payment. And that is a 3-year program to-certain, some revenue increases-but both domestic spending and some reductions in defense spending that will not set us back too much in our program. But this down payment will amount to about $140 or $150 billion over the 3-year period in the reduction of our deficit. But that is only part of it. We recognize that we have a long way to go in reducing the share of the gross national product that the Government is taking in taxes and is spending. And we had a commission from the private sector-I asked a man named Peter Grace, a businessman, to form task forces and go into every agency and department of our government. I had done this in California when I was Governor, for the State, and it worked. And some 2,000 American leaders from the private sector spent several months doing this. And they have left us with 2,000-I think it is 478 specific recommendations as to how government can be made more efficient and more economical by simply implementing modern-day business practices. For example, when they could find that in one area of our government, it was costing us $4 and something every time we wrote a paycheck for an employee, and out in the business world that process takes less than a dollar-well, there is no reason why government should not take less than a dollar in processing a paycheck-well, this kind of thing. And we now have a task force that is working on those recommendations.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


Many of them will require legislation by the Congress; some of them only require Executive order by me. And we have already in our planning, right now, and in this down payment, we have already included some of their recommendations and are going forward with them. So, we think that actually the interest rates, however, that-I am dealing with the deficit part now-are not that closely linked to the deficit. As a matter of fact, the deficit of some of our allies as a proportion of gross national product is not too out of line as a percentage of GNP any more than ours is. But what I stand on as evidence that it is not the deficit that is causing the interest rates, the high interest rates, is the fact that we brought those high interest rates down from 21.5 percent down to a little more than half that at the same time that our deficit was increasing vastly over what it had been. We think that out there in the money market in our own country, after nearly half a century of deficit spending in this country and a growing inflation that has been worldwide for a longer period than ever in the world's history, that the money market is not yet convinced that we have control of inflation. And every move by the Federal Reserve System-they always look to see, well, does this mean that suddenly inflation is going to start? Remember that in '79 and '80, before we came here, inflation in this country went up to double digits, and for 2 years in a row it was at double digits. One time, it was running at 17 percent. And since we have been here, it has come down to where for the last 2 years inflation has been less than 4 percent. But I believe we are sound in thinking that it is just the lack of confidence. Now, if we pass-if the Senate and the House come together and this down payment is made, and then, as we begin to put together the 1985 budget, which we will shortly be doing, and we begin to show in that budget the effect of the Grace commission reports and so forth, I think we will see a little more confidence out there in the business community, and I think we will see interest rates come down a little further. ENTITY, first of all, let me say I am disappointed you have not offered us any of those jellybeans.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


Our Prime Minister, Mr. Trudeau, set out on a personal disarmament quest last year, based on the assumption that the superpowers were deadlocked, that the world was becoming more dangerous, and that smaller powers might help to break that deadlock-and got the support and endorsement of the Commonwealth. Now, we came to see you in December. You cooled them out with a noncommittal good will. You thanked them for suggestions, you wished them Godspeed, as I recall.-- and, in effect, you trivialized his whole undertaking. So, my question is, why did you not pick up on this initiative and give it momentum as a new run for arms control? Well, I suppose because we were convinced that it has to be the Warsaw Pact and the NATO-I will not just say the United States and the Soviet Union. Here is where the issue lies, here is where the threat, if there is one to the world, comes from. And we were busily trying to show the Soviet Union that we had not made any demands in which we said, It is this or nothing. We tried to show them our flexibility. For example, my first proposal about the intermediate-range weapons was why not 0-0? Well, the Soviets refused to discuss that. All right, then, whatever figure you have in mind, or whatever we have in mind, let us sit down then and see how much we can reduce the numbers of weapons. And we told them, frankly, we would always keep in mind that someday we'd still like to have 0-0, but we were willing to talk a lesser number. Now, they walked away on the-the line that it was the-that when deployment started. You are reviewing disarmament, but this is not-as far as I can tell-nothing to do with the peace initiative. Well, I was asking about Prime Minister Trudeau's peace initiative to try and break the deadlock that the two superpowers were in. We encouraged him and gave him our blessing to go forward with that. I think that it is awfully easy for us in our relations with the Soviet Union to be the kiss of death, sometimes, to these things. The Prime Minister came here-I am sorry, I misunderstood what you are asking. I think the world pretty generally, with just a few exceptions, is ready for world peace.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


But I do not believe that you can really-that it is really on a sound basis unless it is accompanied by a reduction, particularly in the strategic nuclear weapons. This is the threat that we cannot-the world cannot go on living under that threat. Our country presented that at a time when we were the only ones who had them-1946. And we suggested an international commission to be given total control over all nuclear material. Now, we knew they were trying to have such a weapon, and eventually did, but at that time they-all they had to do was give in, and there would not be any. ENTITY, during his visit to Washington, President Duarte of Salvador declared that he would never ask American troops to fight in his country. And last week you have stated yourself that you had never had any thought of sending American soldiers to Central America. And what would be your reaction if next fall, for example, the Government of Salvador Was seriously threatened? I mean, with collapse, by guerrilla offensive? The-and again, I have problems with those of you who are further out there. This domed room has terrible acoustics here. I think you are asking about El Salvador and Nicaragua, threatening, and threatening with collapse the Government of Salvador, what would be your reaction? Military-will you send military forces there? Well, it would not be military forces because El Salvador has not only not asked for them, but President Duarte on his visit here recently said, no, they were not wanted or needed. They will do this with their own forces but frankly admit they must have our help with regard to equipment and supplies and the help that we have been to them in training. You know, a great many of the Central American countries, their militaries over the years have been kind of garrison troops-more concerned with internal problems than in fighting a war. And so they have been most open in their request of training. And before we got here-the previous, under the previous administration-some of their training consisted of bringing El Salvadoran troops up here and training them at our own bases with our own men. Well, then, as the war heated up, they could not afford to have the men gone for that long a time. So we have 55 trainers working with their entire army. And the guerrillas, of course, are being supplied by way of Nicaragua-through Nicaragua by Cuba and the Soviet Union-not only with weapons, but with replacements, with personnel.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


And now the guerrillas are resorting to kidnapping. They are rounding up-going into villages and rounding up even just youngsters off the streets and simply taking them, forcing them to be guerrillas. And as would happen-the law of averages-every once in a while some of those youngsters escape and get away, and so we know that this is the practice and what they are doing. But, no, if this fall offensive comes, I believe we have confidence in the El Salvadoran ENTITY. We think that the guerrillas could make things very unpleasant, and we think that they are building up the possibility of such a thing. But now the election has taken place, the election of the President, and Duarte is very definitely dedicated to continuing to move toward democracy in El Salvador; certainly has the support of the people. And I am optimistic that we are on the right path. And our Congress has voted now to give us the appropriation we asked for further aid to El Salvador. ENTITY, I want to ask a specifically Irish question, as you are going to be-the first country you are going to touch down in. And I am familiar with what you said about Irish unity and the question-your not becoming involved, as between Ireland and England. But are there any circumstances which might change that? If, for instance, Ireland were to join NATO or such a question were muted, would that make it more attractive, for instance, for America to support the idea of Irish unity? I really believe that that is an internal problem to be worked out, first of all because there are two governments involved, and the other government is already a member of NATO. I have been impressed with the Forum and some of its recommendations, and the-as Prime Minister, your Prime Minister said, the recent finding of the Forum of recommendations certainly provided an agenda for serious thinking. If there is any way in which, without being an interferer in things going on there, but in which the people of Ireland felt that we could in any way be helpful with anything that we might do, we'd be very pleased to do it. I believe I am in order in asking a supplementary. On the question of these unprecedented protests, which are unheard of in terms of an American President visiting Ireland, one of the factors in this is that there is a certain alienation between the Irish at home and the Irish here, because the quota of immigration has cut down the numbers of Irish with a day-to-day knowledge of America.

Interview With Foreign Journalists


The ENTITY joins me live on WBZ News Radio. If we could get right to the questions, we'd appreciate it. It is nice to hear your voice. The man who allegedly shot at the White House was in court today, as you know. He may soon be indicted on charges that he tried to kill you. I'd like to know, how do you talk to your daughter about that? Well, I think my daughter is well aware of the requirements of the office and that a lot of it involves the Secret Service. But I have to tell you, I think they do a good job. I was not in any danger, and I think this matter is being handled in the appropriate way. We are talking live to ENTITY on WBZ News Radio 1030. ENTITY, as a parent, I am concerned about what seems to be a moral decline in this country. Do you share those concerns? I am especially concerned that so many of our young children are being raised, in effect, in a vacuum where they are so vulnerable to gangs and guns and violence and drugs and where they do not have enough people to look up to and enough people to follow. And they are not being taught right from wrong on a daily basis. I think we have to work on all those things. One of the things that I have tried hard to do as ENTITY is to emphasize the importance of parents and churches and community groups taking responsibility for these children again. And one of the things that I liked about our crime bill was that we enabled church groups and others to apply for assistance to reach out to more of these young people. You know, every child is going to have somebody that he or she looks up to. It needs to be the right person; it needs to be somebody who has a sustained and caring relationship with the child over a long period of time. That is the only way to turn this around. ENTITY, if we could get on to the campaign trail, campaign '94, as you know, you are not welcomed by some Democrats campaigning for election this year. Well, most elections are decided on the merits within each State. You know, when I was a Governor, I never had the President come and campaign for me, even when the President was a member of my own party and was popular, because I thought that the voters were discriminating about that. But I do think there are some national elements to this election.

Interview With Diane Stern of WBZ Radio, Boston, Massachusetts


And particularly in a lot of these races for Congress and Senate, I am pleased to go where I have been asked to go-I have been asked to go more places than I can-to try to say what the stakes are in this election. You know, the fact is that in the last 21 months, while we have not solved all the problems in the country and while a lot of ordinary Americans still have difficulties, the country is in better shape than it was. We have got more jobs. We are doing more for families and children. We are moving in the right direction at home and abroad. And the voters need to go forward, not back to the easy promises of the eighties. You know, I knew when I took this job, if I really tried to change things I'd have to shake some things up; I would not always be popular. I would not always be popular everywhere in the country and certainly not when people did not know what had been done. So my job is simply to go out in this last week and tell people what is been done, what the stakes are, what the challenges are ahead and let them make up their own minds. ENTITY-we are talking live with the President on WBZ News Radio- what is your take on last week's endorsement of Mario Cuomo by New York GOP Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and could you see yourself ever going out on a limb like that, backing a Republican? Well, I think he did it as an act of statesmanship. I think that Mayor Giuliani saw himself as an American first, a representative of the people of New York, and then a Republican. And he thought that Governor Cuomo would be better for the people of New York City than the policies advocated by Mr. Pataki and his sponsor, Senator D'Amato. I really respect what he did. I think it had to do with what was best for ordinary New Yorkers. I think that is the reason that the mayor of Los Angeles endorsed a Democratic Senator, Senator Feinstein. I think you are seeing a lot of that around the country today as people get worried about the extreme nature of a lot of the Republican campaigns and how divorced they are from the real concerns of ordinary Americans. So obviously I liked it, but I also believe it was an act of statesmanship. Could you envision yourself ever backing a Republican, especially considering the remarks today to Black Entertainment Television calling them far rightwingers, extreme?


I said their congressional leadership had advocated principles that were extreme rightwing, and they have. Oh sure, under the right circumstances, if I were President and we had the equivalent of Oliver North running in the Democratic Party against a responsible Republican alternative, I believe I would do just what President Reagan and Mrs. Reagan have done in Virginia. I certainly do believe that. I know we are running short on time, but Newsweek magazine, you may have seen, gathered a focus group of voters who, rather than being angry with your administration, say they are disappointed. Now, how might you change your agenda the next 2 years, based on what you have and have not accomplished so far? Well, I am going to try to do what we have not done yet. I am going to try to get the Congress to pass welfare reform. I am going to take another run at health care. We have got to find a way to protect the health insurance of people; a million more Americans lost it last year. I am going to take another run at campaign finance reform and at lobbying reform and at some of the environmental measures that we need so badly. But the most important thing I have got to do is to figure out a way to communicate with the American people better. I mean, all the evidence is that the American people basically do not know, for example, that the last 2 years our administration was only the third one since World War II in which Congress approved more than 80 percent of the measures that I recommended, that it included family and medical leave for working families and tax credits for working families with children who are just above the poverty line and immunization of all children under 2 by 1996 and an expansion of Head Start and a big expansion of more affordable college loans for middle class families; that if they did know these things they would have a totally different attitude. So, I really liked the Newsweek poll-focus group-because it showed what I think, which is that the American people, I think, if they knew what I had done and if they knew what we have achieved and if they knew where we were going, I think they'd feel better. I have to do a better job of finding a way to communicate directly with people in an atmosphere which is overwhelmingly dominated by controversy, conflict, failure, combative communication, and just talk straight to the folks. I have given a lot of thought to it; it is a great challenge.


Let us bring the former president of the United States. What went into it? Well, we had a great years and I have been watching what is happening and a lot of people, they were remorseful and they were like, Can we do something? And it is really pictures of a lot of great things with the military, with so many of the things we have done. We bring in some negativity what is happening now, but frankly, it is really a happy book and it is a book largely of beautiful pictures, of events that took place, and some of the things we have done. And we are going to talk more about the book a little later on, by the way you pre order right now at 45books.com. Our white house correspondent asked Jen Psaki about something that Joe Biden said about you during the campaign and during one of the debates and she turned it around. Anyway, it is a great question and listen to the answer as well. Here is yesterday at the White House. In 2020, when roughly 220,000 Americans had already died of ENTITY, Joe Biden said about ENTITY, Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America. Now that more Americans have died under President Biden than ENTITY. And the former president was people inject bleach. He apparently reportedly did not even share with people, he was going to interact with, that he had tested positive for ENTITY himself. He continued to provide a forum for misinformation. He is relied on the advice of his health and medical experts, and he is trying to be a part of solving crisis, getting the pandemic under control. And I think there is a pretty stark difference between their approaches. So ENTITY, when Joe Biden said, during the debate with you, that 220,000 Americans had died on your watch, you should not be president the United States. Well, he is done a terrible job, just like he did with the H1N1. He is done just an absolutely terrible job, getting it out and getting people to take it. People just do not want to take it. And the vaccines, I have to be very proud of the vaccines. We did it in less than nine months. People said it to take five years to 12 years and probably would not work.

Donald Trump Fox and Friends Interview Transcript December 2021


Some people do not want to take them and that is their freedom and that is what we have to do, but people do not want to take them because they do not trust Biden, they do not trust the administration. We had none of that. Everybody was fighting to take them and we were doing great. We were doing really great on distribution. We also bought billions of dollars worth before we knew it was going to be successful, which saved us one year. So many things we did right, and what they are doing is very sad when you look at what is happening. But more people died during year than last year by a very substantial margin, and sadly, this year is not up. Well, ENTITY, why would not people trust the vaccines? They were developed during your administration. Number one, they did a pause on Johnson & Johnson, which really sent shocks through, over six people that did not die by the way, but six people, and for that millions and millions of shots given, and they did the pause with Johnson & Johnson, that was very bad. And they just have not been able to sell it. People are not trusting this administration. And if you remember when during the debate, I think she said, and he said, Oh, if it is ENTITY, I will not take the vaccine. I will not take the vaccine. And then as soon as he got elected, he tried to claim that he did it, but he forgot that he got a shot during my administration, he got a shot. But there was just a great distrust of what they were saying and what they were doing, and I think that is the problem. And that is why they are trying to set up mandates and really hurting things with the economy, with the mandates, in addition to other things. Well, Fauci kept changing what we were supposed to be doing. And then when you look at Afghanistan, you talk to military families and they say, We do not trust this administration. We put our kids lives in the president's hand and look what he did. He pulled out and left so many Americans behind enemy lines. Many of them are still there. When you look at the border, people do not trust what he is doing down there, because you will hear Dr. Fauci saying, You need to wear your mask. But yet they are letting so many people flow over the Southern border and ENTITY, he had a busy day yesterday.


He was also at the press conference with Dr. Fauci, and he pressed him on that issue. Fauci, as you advise the president about the possibility of new testing requirements for people coming into this country, does that include everybody? The answer is yes, and everybody who is coming into the country needs to get a test with in 24 hours of getting on the plane to come here. Well, what about people who do not take a plane and just these border crossers coming in in huge numbers? You do not have the capability, as you know of somebody getting on a plane, getting checked, looking at a passport, we do not have that there. There is testing at the border under certain circumstances, as you know. We have millions of people flowing across, and we are not only talking about the China virus or ENTITY, whatever you want to call it. We are talking about many other diseases coming over the border that are far worse, coming over the border. Prisons of other countries are being dumped into our country. We are like a dumping ground. We had the strongest border in the history of our country. The wall was largely built, it could have been finished in three weeks and they decided not to finish the openings, it is just some openings. We did an incredible job, 500 miles of wall. And this is why that, coupled with other things gave us the greatest numbers we have ever had, the most successful it is ever been. We take people in, but take them in legally. Now, one other thing that is pouring in right now that nobody even mentioned are drugs. Drugs are coming in at a rate of seven times greater than when I was doing it, and our numbers were going way down. We were having the lowest drug numbers, and if you look at the numbers of people that are coming in now, we are millions and millions of people every couple of months, we are look at a 12, 13, 14, maybe even 15 million people a year, and none of those people are tested. So it seems to me that the Remain in Mexico program that was widely ridiculed by the current president of the United States, now according to the courts, has to be reimplemented and officially goes back into production, Remain in Mexico starts again. What is your reaction to that? Well, they should have never ended it.


If Joe Biden would've come in and just gone to the beach, he would've been successful in many ways, because all of this stuff, the border was the best that ever was and getting better, drugs coming in was getting at a level that we have never seen before, meaning- Is there a sense of gratification for you personally, that a policy that he ridiculed, the courts are making input back in? No, because I want to see good for the country, ENTITY. It is so important to me, I want to see good for the country. What they are doing is destroying our country. Our country is being destroyed before your very eyes, and I have never seen anything like it. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, I got us there. We were down to 2,500 troops, the Taliban respected us. Abdul, I dealt with him a lot, he respected us. We were going to take the people out. We were going to take some Afghans out, we were going to take our equipment out. We left $85 billion worth of equipment, it is unthinkable, and they had a parade last week showing off all the equipment they took. It was like a surrender. And do not think that China and Russia and North Korea and Iran were not watching, because that was the greatest embarrassment in the history of our country, in my opinion. If you are just joining us- If you are just joining us, we are speaking to ENTITY, former president of the United States, about news of the day. We are going to talk about his new book that comes out in a couple of days in a moment. ENTITY, we all know that there is a supply chain bottleneck and Joe Biden yesterday essentially said, does not matter if you are naughty or nice this year, there are going to be problems, but he did say one person and only one person can promise whether or not you are going to get your stuff. If you watch the news recently, you might think the shelves in all our stores are empty across the country. for the vast majority of the country, that is not what is happening. I have also spoken with the CEOs of UPS and FedEx, which are on track to deliver more packages than ever. Now, I cannot promise that every person will get every gift they want on time, only Santa Claus can keep that promise. Okay, so he makes a joke out of it at the end, but it is a real crisis.


If you were present of the United States, and clearly the administration did not plan adequately as the demand returned after ENTITY and the pandemic, and we are creeping back toward normal times. But ENTITY, what would you do to fix the supply chain crisis? Well, first of all, it would've never happened. Nobody ever mentioned those words, supply chains, they were never brought up. We had perfect supply chains. We had the greatest economy in history. We then had the China virus, we fixed it, we did a great job with it. And between not only that, the ventilators, all of the different things that we did, stocking up all of the states, which by the way, all of the cupboards were bare, and that includes the United States government . There was nothing there, we did a hell of a job. We have got no credit for it, but maybe someday we will. But we would've never had a supply chain problem, but one of the causes is the mandates because a lot of people are not working because of forced mandates. That is one of the very big causes. We did not need ships all over the place, clogging up the waters coming in from Saudi Arabia, Russia and other places. We were the biggest in the world. We went to the biggest in the world. Within one year, we would've been bigger than Saudi Arabia and Russia combined with real energy, and it is called liquid gold under our feet. We have an advantage that other countries like China do not have. So many different things, but the mandates had a lot to do with the supply chain problem. Something that is also frustrating for Americans is the amount of crime that has gone up in our country and the way that our men and women in blue are being treated. The Fraternal Order of Police, they have had enough. They tweeted this out yesterday. More officers have been shot and killed this year than any other year. And there is one more month left, 314 officers shot 58 officers killed by gunfire, ambush attacks on officers up 126% from 2020. ENTITY, this does not include the Utah officer that was killed that we are all praying for, and another officer that was shot and is trying to recover right now. What is your reaction into that tweet?


Well, when you look at San Francisco and you look at 100 kids or people running into a store together, and the cops are standing out there, not allowed to do their job, they are not allowed to do their job. And you allow a thing like that to happen. We have a country has no law enforcement, has no law and order. Our police are great, they are not allowed to do their job. They go and shoot police, they do not respect them. The people of our country love our police and they do respect them, but they are not allowed to do their job. If you allowed them to do their job, that would stop and crime would stop, but they are not allowed. You look at what is going on in New York, you look at what is going on in Chicago and look at what is happening in San Francisco. And it is happening in many other cities that they do not want to report about. The media outside of you people and a few others, the media is not reporting this problem. But where you have hoarded of people running in, kids mostly, running in and stealing, robbing stores where drug chains are closing all their stores in different cities because they cannot keep them open. We just do not have law enforcement. We are not allowed to have law enforcement. I will tell you what, our country is being destroyed. The police have to be given their power back. They have to stop the crime. They can do it and they want to do it, but they are not allowed to do it. President, you referenced this a little bit earlier, and that is China. We know that they launched this virus unintentionally, perhaps, who knows. They will not tell us. This killed 750,000 Americans and millions around the globe. We know they just disappeared their leading tennis player because she accused a former official of sexual assault. The WTA is pulling out all the tournaments there. There is a growing push to boycott the China Olympics, who by the way, also have rounded up their Muslims into concentration camps and are torturing them as well as harvesting their organs, while doing the over fights in Taiwan, threatening their neighbors. Is this the time to say we are not going to go to the winter Olympics? And by the way, before I answer that, none of this happened with us. They did not send bombers over the middle of Taiwan. He knew not to do that. He knew very well, you cannot send bombers over Taiwan.


None of that stuff happened. And they will wait until after the Olympics and they will do something with Taiwan. They no longer respect us. They watched Afghanistan. They watched our generals not knowing what they were doing. They saw all of that and they are watching very closely. They will be doing things, Russia will be doing things, and maybe even North Korea will be doing things, because they are watching our country I built a great military . We had jet fighters that were 40 and 50 years old. We have knew everything, we are in such great shape, but you still have to have the brain power to know how to use it. And they watched that withdrawal, and by the way, the withdrawal, get out. 21 years, but you get out with dignity and strength. And we were going to get out with dignity and strength. What they did, these countries see that. And I will tell you what, we are in a much different position. With that being said, you hurt the athletes, you hurt a lot of people. I would not do it. Jimmy Carter tried it, it did not work. I would not do it. I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs from China. We never got 25 cents for 40 years, they never paid us anything. Hundreds of billions of dollars and businesses were starting to come back to us. China respected our country. Russia respected our country. I stopped the pipeline going to Europe, Biden approved it. But of course, he stopped the Keystone pipeline in our country, and others, he is trying to stop. Now, we have a group of people, I do not know if it is Biden, it might not be, but we have a group of people that are destroying our country and perhaps knowingly, destroying our country. But he does not want us to rely on fossil fuels. Do you think he is doing this on purpose so that we buy electric cars? It is our advantage, and it also can fire up those big factories and those big plants. You look at what they are doing into our landscape, they are destroying our landscape, our birds, they are destroying with wind. And by the way, those turbines are all made in Germany and they are made in China. And if you talk about emissions, the making of those turbines, if you really go with the emissions theory, the making is so onerous to the environment that nothing they can do will ever or save anything.


And as far as cars, in order to make the batteries of those cars, the electric cars, and now you are not going to have a choice because they want to go all electric. They are taking our greatest asset, it is right under our feet. We are blessed as a country with tremendous energy reserves under our feet, and they do not want us to use them. ENTITY, you were on social media and you said a lot of people were saying, You got to cool it on social media. Now that you are off social media, even despite January 6th and the investigation, everything that happened since, the impeachment that followed, your ratings, according to some friendly polling for you are higher than they have been. Did you overrate the impact of social media? And in retrospect, will you need it if you want to run again? I think that people are seeing the great job that we did. Again, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We rebuilt our military, we had great military support. You look at the Hispanic support we have had, we had the best Hispanic support. I just think that people are missing us. Did it hurt you more than help you? And now that you are off it, and you see that nothing's really changed with your numbers except actually going up, do you think that you'd ever you overemphasized social media? I think that is because maybe they look at the opponent and they look at what is happening to our country. I think we have some very bad people. I think a lot of illegal things were done with social media, you understand when they can do 417 million. If you spend more than $5,600, they put you in jail. And yet here is the guy spend $417 million and nothing happens to him . And I think we are going to have a platform that is going to be incredible and that is what is being developed right now. Will you change your approach? A country was in bad shape, I had to move fast. Some of the niceties like, let us sit down and let us talk very calm. China was ripping us off $500 billion a year. Europe, they sound nice, but they rip us. They are almost as bad as China. We made a new deal with Mexico. We made a new deal with Canada. We made a new deal with Japan.


We were doing a lot of things and you had to move fast, and sometimes in order to do that, you cannot I can be as nice as anybody, I think I am a nice person, but we had to move quickly. And sometimes you have to break the eggs a little bit. So ENTITY, during your four years as President of the United States, you had at least one or two official White House photographers with you at every event. Every time you were out in public, they were snapping pictures. You have sifted through all of those. And you have put together the first book of your post presidency, it is called Our Journey Together. It is got 300 pictures in it. I understand you wrote all of the caption. Out of the millions, how did you figure out which pictures went in and which ones did not? Well, it is a great question, frankly, and it is somebody who also has had some very successful books. But we wanted to do it quickly because we wanted to give people hope. Our country is just now, there is so many people they are down, and we wanted to give, we wanted to show it. Nobody was ever attacked and hit like I was, but I understood that, and I got it, and I think we also gave it back to them. But we had to do something and you are right, we have millions and millions of pictures, but we picked pictures that we thought really represented the time. Even the rallies, we have pictures of these massive rallies that we have. And the rallies right now are bigger now than even before the election, which is shocking. We had in Alabama, 69,000 people. As an example, we had four rallies that I think were the biggest that we have ever had. We had a tremendous rally in Georgia. We had a tremendous rally in Iowa, unbelievable rally in Iowa, but the numbers are so big and it is really, people want hope. And that is a little bit, and maybe a lot of the reason that I did this book. I think it gives people some hope and to look into a very beautiful time. ENTITY came along and we had a fix it, and then we got it going again. So we really did it twice, and now our country's being destroyed. Does it make you want to get another four years and be the 47th president?


And is it true that the first lady Melania Trump, the former first lady has told you, I am not going back if you run again. She did a great job. She loves the people, they love her. I see how they love her. But no, I will say this. We have to fix our country. We are not going to have a country any longer if we keep doing this. When we allow other countries to empty their prisons into our country- Do you think you are the only one to bring it back as the 47th president? Well, if you look at the poll numbers, I am, because the poll numbers are 95% and 96% approval rating now in the Republican party, nobody's ever had that. So, I am not going by polls. I am just saying I did it before and really did it twice. We had it at a level that has never been seen before, and then we brought it back to a level that was really good despite the China virus. We did a good job. As we were just a moment ago, looking at those many images from the four years of your administration, and you had to struggle to find the photographs for this particular book. Well, we had so much success. Narrow it down to one, if you could, because we- ENTITY If you look at right to try Okay, we got the biggest tax cuts in the history of our country. We got the biggest regulation cuts, that was a great number of days. We did Right to Try. So Right to Try, they have been trying to get it for 47 years and I got it. That is where you can use medicine to take people that are terminally ill and allow them to see if this medicine works, and it is been incredibly successful. That would not sound as big as some of the other things we have done, but that was a very big thing. Supreme Court justice as well, they are going to be making a very important ruling soon. But I had three, it is very unusual to have three and I got three and they are very good and let us see how that all works out because right now, they are going to be making one of their biggest decisions. And putting in almost 300 judges throughout the United States, it is almost 30% of the judges in the country. So we had a lot of big moments and I could just go on and on, but we had a lot of big moments.


We'd like to talk to you about Texas politics. But if I could just ask you one sort of Texas news-of-the-day question, Mr. Morales is in some hot water over remarks he made a couple days ago. What is your assessment of that? Mike put out a statement, and that is what I agree with. I think that he said something he regretted and he apologized for it, and I think that is a good thing. You know, if you stay in this business long enough, the closer you get to the campaigns, the more you are working, the less you are sleeping, the more you are under pressure, you are going to every now and then people say something that they wish they had not said. And I think the thing to do is just simply say that you wish you had not said it. And that is what he did. So that is what I think about it. Why do you think you can carry Texas? The State of Texas has done well under our policies, both our general economic policies and the specific things I supported, like the space station and the V-22, which is made in Fort Worth, for example. Number two, my plans for the future would be better for the State of Texas than Senator Dole's program. And number three, Bill White and Garry Mauro and all these grassroots Democrats have worked hard to kind of rebuild the party at the grassroots level. And I have worked hard to try to change the relationship of the national Democratic Party, of Texas. For too long, the Democrats just sort of gave up on Texas. So they'd come to Texas and raise money and turn around and leave, and I thought that was wrong. And we have worked out an agreement it is been in place now for some time, you know sending a lot of the money that we raised back to Texas, try to help build the party. And I guess, finally, because I think that last time when I ran I did not really get a clear shot at the voters, even though I did campaign here a couple days. And I was from Arkansas and I had two opponents from Texas, and I think it sort of put me in a hole that and then some of the things that happened early in my term. And I think that, you know, obviously now people are beginning to look at what my record is, what we have done, my ideas about the future as compared with my opponent's.

Interview With Kathy Lewis of the Dallas Morning News and Nancy Mathis of the Houston Chronicle in Longview


And I just think that for all those reasons we have a chance to win. If we can get people to look at the evidence, as opposed to kind of the accumulated rhetoric of the last 20 years, I think I have got an excellent chance to win. Does your financial commitment here depend on Senator Dole pulling out of California? Because he is not running any ads here right now. No, I think that they probably think that they cannot lose Texas, you know, because Kansas is close and there is you know, a lot of the State officials, major State officials, the two Senators, the Governor are Republicans, and they probably think that they cannot lose. But my commitment here a lot of what I try to do is to help them build the grassroots strength again, to go back into communities. When Bill White left our administration, left the Energy Department and came home here, he really wanted to build kind of a mainstream, progressive Democratic Party in Texas again at the grassroots. And I have tried to support that. And we made an agreement then he and Truman Arnold, some others if I raised any funds in Texas, we'd kick back a certain percentage to Texas. And I also told them I'd you know, I was not interested in coming to Texas anymore just for fundraising; I did not believe in that. I wanted to see the people. And that is why we are here in Longview, we are going to Fort Worth, and we are going to be overnight in Houston when I go to do our event there. You know, in the last 40 days we are going to have pretty well, for a while at least, just kind of play it by ear in terms of what else what we do in terms of television ads because of the we had run some, you know, in Texas already. We did some in east Texas earlier. But what we do, it depends in part on what the other competing considerations are. I do not know whether you know, you told me something I do not know. I thought the Dole campaign was still running ads in California. No, I meant in Texas. They are not running in Texas. I guess the point I was getting at, in '92 you came within 2 or 3 percentage points of President Bush, even though your campaign spent very little money here although you spent quite a bit of time here. And Bush spent a lot of money here and time as well.


I was just wondering if you were going to make a financial commitment as well as a commitment of your time. Well, let me just say, those are not decisions, believe it or not, that I am personally reviewing here every day. So I cannot answer that specifically. But we plan to make a major effort here. And I hope it will be helpful to the others who are running, because I think the more we get the message out, the more we get the record out, the more we get the contrast out, the more likely we are to do well here. You look at a place like Longview and all these places all through east Texas, it is pretty much like the economy of Arkansas, which also has a 15- or 20-year low in unemployment rates. And I am doing well there because they know me and I was their Governor and they trust me. But we have not done as well here because the Republicans have had a big leg up and they did a pretty good job of kind of characterizing me in a way that would not be acceptable to a lot of Texas voters. And I have been trying to climb out of that for 3 or 4 years, and I think the sheer weight of the evidence is finally beginning to be felt. And I have a certain affinity for this State. I spent a lot of time here ever since the last nearly 40 years, I have been coming to Texas in one way or another. And so I just think I ought to make an effort here, and I intend to do it. I also think it is a mistake for anybody who wants to lead the country to not make an effort in the second biggest State in America. The future of the United States is in no small part going to be the future of the State of Texas. The attitudes of the people here about immigration, about trade, about education, about health care policy, about economic policy, about what is the best way to reduce crime and welfare, all this what happens here will have a big impact on how the rest of the country goes. And I just think it is not responsible for any President just to not be engaged in it. Will you sign the immigration bill if it passes Congress as it is written now, or will you press for the Members to change the provisions dealing with public benefits and legal immigrants? I do not want to dodge this question, but I have to because it is the subject of negotiations, even as we are talking here.


We are trying to work out a set of agreements with congressional leadership, the Republican leadership and the Democrat leadership, on a set of continuing resolutions on the unresolved budget matters that we can put into one big bill that will enable them to go home they read them this morning go home and at least have a month to campaign. And I understand that. So we were successful in getting the Gallegly amendment out, which I strongly opposed. I believe Governor Bush came out against it, and I appreciate that. And there are still some things in that bill that I do not like. I think they are unfair to legal immigrants. So I would hope that we could secure some improvements. But the less I say, the better now, while they are talking it through. You know, we were so close on all the bills but one. Once we got an agreedupon education funding level, we were so close I was hoping maybe we could do it. ENTITY, this must seem very different to you today than '94. I mean, you basically did not come to Texas in '94, and the general feeling was candidates did not welcome your presence then. Do you agree with my assessment? I do agree with that. What caused you to be in such bad shape then and Well, for one thing, I think that two of the things I mentioned in my speech. I think that the things that candidates all over the country and Members of Congress are trumpeting, the people supporting me today, were directly out of decisions that were made in '93 and '94 that were unpopular then that have been proved right now. And the two that I mentioned specifically are the economic program and the crime bill. You heard me say, I remember very well when Senator Gramm said, If you pass this economic program, it is just going to be a terrible thing. It is going to have a big recession, and everybody's income will go down. And of course the results are just the opposite. But I think that they were effective in attacking that. I think the second thing is, in the crime bill, they in a lot of rural places that had a lot of Democratic voters but were real conservative voters, like east Texas, there was an effective attack on the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban that, you know, this was somehow going to lead to the impairment of hunters' and sports men and women's rights.


And of course, now we know it did not do it, but it did help to lower the crime rate. Then, of course, we were just in the teeth just in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the health care bill, where a vast amount of money had been spent to try to convince people that the Government was trying to take over health care. And I think now, when we went back to a step-by-step reform process, taking various elements that were in our original bill like the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill that says you cannot lose your health insurance if you change jobs or someone in your family gets sick, or the bill I signed yesterday, no more driveby deliveries and a partial mental health insurance coverage included, and then the spina bifida benefits to Vietnam veterans with children those things, they show that we are making progress on health care. Another very important provision we passed that was a part of our original bill was increasing the deductibility, tax deductibility of health insurance premiums that self-employed people have to buy. So I think now when people see we are making progress in health care, we are going to do it step by step instead of trying to do it all at one time, so everyone can see that the Government's not trying to take over health care, we are just trying to create the conditions in which we can, if you will, enable the American people to fill in the blanks, to take these gaps, these terrible gaps and problems out of our system. A lot of those decisions look better in retrospect than they did in '94 because they have brought good results. And I also think that the things we have been doing in the last 2 years to build on that, to show how this country can meet its challenges and protect its values, have been very helpful as well. But it was not good here in '94. I think it is better here in '96. And the only thing I can ask the people of Texas to do is to look at the evidence, look at the record, listen to the alternatives, and make up their own mind. The CNN poll shows the race narrowing to 10 points now. Do you think Senator Dole's charges of being a liberal and the drug issue, is that having an impact or is this a natural narrowing or do you trust that poll? You know, we probably have to let it simmer out another couple of days.


I think it is I think if you look on the drug issue, if you look at our record, if you look at the fact that I have not only as President but as Governor consistently opposed any legalization of drugs; consistently increased enforcement; that I passed a crime bill over the opposition of Senator Dole that had 60 death penalties in it, including capital punishment for drug kingpins; that I appointed, first, a former police chief of Houston, Lee Brown, and then the most at the time he retired from the ENTITY, the most decorated veteran in the American military, General Barry McCaffrey, to be our drug czar, so it is obviously important to me; and that I fought for programs that will help communities keep kids off drugs, like the safe and drug-free schools program, again over the opposition of Senator Dole and Mr. Gingrich I think that, again, once people hear both sides of the argument, then they will know that he can take one comment out of context and maybe make a television ad out of it. But the record shows a very different picture. Now, I say that all of us should be concerned about the fact that in 4 years, when cocaine use dropped by a third in America, it increased among teenagers. That should concern everybody. And everybody, including me, should be willing to assume some responsibility for that. I am not trying to disclaim all. You know, if the efforts we are making to have good results should be credited, then we have problems; I have to take some responsibility for that. For example, there is a lot of evidence that in Canada, for example, tobacco and drug use among juveniles is up. In some European countries it is. And it appears that there was a beginning of a shift in attitudes about 1990 about how dangerous this is and that we, the adults of this country, and in other countries as well, have not succeeded in changing those attitudes back. But I do not think his attack on me is very persuasive once you look at the facts. And the liberal issue I just think, you know, it falls of its own weight. I do believe that there are differences between us. He was against the student loan program, and I improved it. He was against the family and medical leave, and I supported it and got it through. He was for the Gingrich-Dole budget, and I opposed it.


On taxes, the President outlined this accelerated negotiation process to come up with some sensible common ground, as he called it. Did he suggest at all that he would be open to a temporary extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy? Did he lay any markers down at all? No, the -- I think both sides started and discussed where each had been on -- that our priority was ensuring that, as you heard the President say in his statement, that we make permanent tax cuts for the middle class that are set to expire at the end of this year, and to reiterate our concern for borrowing $700 billion over the next 10 years in making tax cuts for those in excess of $250,000 permanent. I think the Republicans restated their notion of making the wealthy tax cuts permanent. So the President wanted to -- as, again, you heard him say -- get to the process of having some of those discussions by asking Secretary Geithner and OMB Director Jack Lew to sit down with four members or senators appointed by -- one each -- by Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, Speaker Pelosi and Representative Boehner. And I anticipate that those conversations could happen as early as later today -- or start as early as today. But you had -- it sounds like you started -- I am sorry, it sounds like you ended where you started with these broad philosophical differences about those tax cuts for the wealthy. So what gives the President confidence that this negotiation process is going to be productive? What I think was the foundation for this -- for, quite frankly, the whole meeting was we have to do -- we have to do things that ensure continued economic strengthening and job creation. We have to deal with our long-term -- with our short-term deficits and our long-term debt. And we have to ensure the safety and the security of the American people. So Secretary Geithner and NEC Director Summers both said -- both gave very quick descriptions of sort of where we thought the economy was. And everybody, I think, as the President said, in the room agreed that this was an issue that we needed to get finished by the end of the year, before the tax cuts expired. And that is the charge that he gave to Tim and to Jack. Senator McConnell said that his caucus was united on doing the tax issues and the appropriations issues in lame duck first, and then if there is time left getting to some of the other pressing matters.

Barack Obama Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs


The President brought up START in his own description but did not seem to acknowledge any forward progress. Is the White House willing to take up that issue in January if need be? I think there was a robust discussion about how that could be done in a lame duck. I think you have heard senators even today discuss the likelihood of being able to get that done. Look, the tax issue may take a little bit. And, finally, on the broader issue of cooperation, I heard Representative Boehner and Cantor say, in their words, that the President -- I am paraphrasing -- the President acknowledged he had not reached out enough to them. I think the President acknowledged that he needed to do better and acknowledged that -- rightly that he would do his part. I think there was a -- there was common ground reached in the notion, again, as you heard the President say in his statement, that the American people did not vote for gridlock. They did not vote for the continual games that we see played in Washington. They voted for two parties working together to get something done. That is going to take -- it is going to take just that, bipartisanship. And that is the only way we are going to make progress. And I think this meeting, which we -- which we set up, is the beginning of that. To come back to this idea of common ground on the tax cuts, specifically, what would the White House be willing to compromise on? For instance, would the President favor extending -- I was in the meeting, but the President did not tap me to be one of those negotiators. So I am going to let Jack and Tim get into that as soon as we have the appointment of those members and senators from the designated leaders. And, again, I anticipate that they will begin talking as early as today. But does the President favor extending all the tax cuts for two or three years? Well, again, the President's most urgent desire is to see that taxes do not go up on the middle class. The President mentioned a possible meeting out at Camp David. And also a sense of who you'd invite -- would it just be restricted to lawmakers? Or could it be extended to the business community, for example?


Well, I think that the meeting that the President talked about with -- and I should -- just for a second, let me step back and talk about a little bit of the structure of the meeting because I am going to speak about this, but I was not in this part of the meeting. The meeting lasted approximately two hours -- probably a little less than two hours. The last 35 minutes was the President and the Vice President and the members of the House and the Senate, without staff, without Secretary Geithner, without OMB Director Lew in the private dining room right off of the Oval Office. So in that 35 minutes, the President -- that is where the President brought up the idea -- and they talked about it throughout the meeting, the idea of continuing these conversations, and threw out the hope that -- and I think it was agreed -- loosely agreed upon that sometime in the beginning of next year, they would continue this meeting at Camp David. Why did the President ask the staff to leave? Was it that they were no longer needed at that point? Did he want to have a more intimate conversation? I think to have a little bit more intimate conversation. And when you talked about the President telling Republicans, as they describe, that he had not done enough to reach out to them, did he offer an apology at all? No, he said that -- he took responsibility for that. And as I said, in order to have bipartisanship, we have to do this both ways. And the President is ready to do his part. I am still a bit confused about the divide that still exists on these tax cuts. And I know you do not want to negotiate this now, but it seems like the divide is so wide. Look, I am not going to enumerate -- I would not enumerate all the property lines, but I think it is safe to say that -- I think it is safe to say, the President reiterated, that the notion of a -- the notion of a permanent -- the notion of making permanent tax cuts for those on the upper end of our income scale, the predominance of which go to millionaires and billionaires, is not something that -- not something that making permanent would -- he does not believe would make sense. It is a $700 billion expenditure over -- because we do these in a 10-year budget window.


So I think that is -- I think as he did in his statement -- enumerated where he is on that. The President is scheduled to leave for Hawaii December 18th. Given this very lengthy agenda, what are the odds that he is going to have to delay -- Jake, I think it is largely unknowable, but the President will be here for as long as he needs to be here to get progress on and to make progress on the issues that are -- that he outlined in the meeting. You said the President in a way apologized or expressed regret for not reaching out enough. Did Republicans offer any sort of apology? Not that I have in my notes. Does the President sense that there is compromise possible on these issues that Republicans are willing to give? I think there was -- I think there was a sense in the room in discussing a whole host of issues the understanding on both sides -- let us take taxes -- that we -- there was an economic imperative to provide certainty before the end of the year when these cuts are scheduled to expire. The President also mentioned, as you heard him say in his statement, there are things like AMT, the college tax credit and other issues that are set to expire and will impact those at all income levels. So I think an agreement that we needed to get this solved by the end of the year, and an agreement that we all have a responsibility to work together to make progress and that in order to do so we are going to be required to sit in the same room, have conversations and discussions like this and come to some common ground and agreement. And I think the President believes and I think -- without speaking for them but having read some of their comments after the meeting -- I think everyone thought it was a productive beginning in hopes of finding some of that common ground. Republicans have expressed concern about the fact that Majority Leader Reid has discussed bringing up the DREAM Act and do not ask, do not tell repeal that might eat up a lot of time that could be spent on the tax cuts or START. Does the President share their concern? Well, the President shares Senator Reid's concern -- or I should say the President shares Senator Reid's -- believes that it is also -- those are also issues that are important to the American people.