I want to do what I can to support Hillary I am thrilled and I am more than thrilled; I am just ecstatic that she won that Senate race, and I am happy for her and happy for the people of New York and help Chelsea as she works her way in her life. So I have some financial support responsibilities. But beyond that, I just want to try to imagine how I can be of the most service in the most effective but appropriate way. Just because I am working until the last day here, which I am definitely doing, does not mean that I do not understand that after noontime on January 20th I am not ENTITY anymore. And I know what I am supposed to do there, too, and I am going to go home to New York and get on with my life. But I do not know exactly how I am going to do it yet, but I have given quite a bit of thought to it. And when you said 4 years ago, as you were campaigning for reelection, that that was your last election ever unless you ran for school board, are you going to stick to that? Yes, I cannot imagine I would run for office again. And you know, if I am fortunate enough to live a long life and I stay healthy, maybe some day, somewhere down the road, somebody will say, Why do not you run for this, that, or the other thing, and I would think about it. I do believe I owe it to myself and to my country to continue to be a servant, a public servant. But I think there are a lot of ways you can do that as a private citizen. This country will never have a shortage of good, gifted people willing to serve in public life. And I think that is something I should leave to others. During your Presidency, sir, you have survived travails that would have sent other politicians either running for cover or killed them, and yet you have survived them. To what do you owe this ability to survive bad situations? Well, I'd say a couple of things. I think, first of all, I had an indomitable mother, and I was raised to believe that every person should live on Churchill's edict, Never quit. And I had a high pain threshold. I remember once I was in an accident in a car in high school, and my jaw hit the steering wheel real hard, and it was the steering wheel that broke, not my jaw. I have a high pain threshold.


And since modern American politics, certainly for the last 20 years, have been a pretty brutal contact sport, that is important. But I think by far the most important thing is what I talked about here today. I mean, I never thought the political office was primarily about personal attainment or ego or validation or even being thought well of. I always thought it was a job designed to achieve larger purposes for the people you were representing. And that is why I came to New Hampshire to give this speech. Apart from my sentimental attachment to the State, we proved here in '92 that if you have good ideas and they relate to people and their lives and their future, that you can survive personal adversity, because people understood this was about a common, larger endeavor. I never, in the darkest days, I never lost sight of the fact that however many days I had left as ENTITY, every one was a privilege and a pleasure, and I should be working for the people. And I think they sensed that. I think that, more than anything else, answers the question you asked. During your Presidency, sir, were there any security close calls that we did not know about? You remember when the guy shot up the White House with the assault weapon, although you guys were in more danger than me. The bullets were directed toward the press room, but he did not know that. There were periods when I had an unusually large number of threats, but the Secret Service handled them and did well. Are you going to do a farewell address? I am thinking about it. I have tried to as I mentioned today in my speech here, I tried to structure a series of speeches, in one of which I spoke to the larger world when I went to Great Britain and spoke at Warwick University after about the global challenge of the 21st century. Then I made many of the same points at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. And then I made the education speech in Chicago and this speech here today. And I am going home to Arkansas to speak to the Arkansas Legislature, where I spoke on my inaugural the five times I was Governor, and I will talk a little more about substantive domestic issues. So I will have laid out my case for what I hope America will do in the future pretty much by the end of my term in these last few weeks in these speeches. I may do another farewell address just so I can thank the country as a whole and say a few specific things.

Interview With Mark Knoller of CBS Radio in Dover, New Hampshire


But it will be if I do, it would be much briefer and less indepth on the policy stuff. Bum rap or not, sir, you, more than any other President, used polling data during your term in office to guide you. Roosevelt was the first President to be almost obsessive about polls. But I never was controlled by them because I always believed if you were right, you could find a way to change public opinion. Only a fool, I think, ignores research data on a constant basis. You look at research data. But I did I believe that you'd be hard pressed to find any President in the last several decades who is done a larger number of things which were not popular at the moment. And one of the things that I used polls for was to understand how aware the public was of given issues or, if they disagree with me on an issue, what was the most effective argument I could make to try to persuade them. But I did not especially on issues affecting America's future, I never let the polls control me. It passed by one vote, and I knew it was the right thing to do. The decision to help Mexico was opposed 81-15. And let me give you some other things. By contrast, if you took polls in the beginning, it would appear that the public overwhelmingly agreed with me on all the gun safety issues, but there is no question that one of the reasons we lost seats in the Congress in '94 was because of the efforts of the NRA. If you took polls on the health care issue in '94, they all looked to be popular, but it turned out not to be. And the reason for that is but I was not unaware of that; I knew that you have to understand how to read polls. I mean, you could be on a popular issue, but if the people who are against you are more intense than the people who are for you, it will still be a net loss at voting time. So I was never paralyzed by polls. I always saw polls as sort of snapshots of what the American people knew, what they were thinking. And I used them to try to figure out what the best possible arguments I could make were to move the country where I thought we ought to go.


So I would expect any politician to use polls, but anybody who is imprisoned by a poll will in the end be defeated, because they are not good guideposts; they are pictures of horse races that are in progress. I have got one last question that I think you will find irresistible. In recent days, I have noticed you have accused us in the media of treating you with increasing irrelevancy. I'd like to ask you as you near the end of your Presidency, sir, what do you think of the news media coverage that you have been subjected to? Well, first of all, that is also been in just a good-natured jest. It is true that I am on the way out. I mean, you cannot and so I have had a good time. But actually, you have given me unusually heavy coverage for this late in my term. But that is because we are continuing to do things; we are taking these actions like the environmental actions and the other things. I think, on balance, the coverage has been over an 8-year period, on balance has been intense and fair in the sense that I have always had the chance to put my side out. I think that there are unusual pressures on the media today because there are more competitive outlets, and I think that the net effect of that is that sometimes a herd mentality takes over, and one person gets the story wrong, then everybody gets it wrong. I think that the pressure for market share has aggravated the tendency which already exists, not only in our Capital but in every capital in the world, to elevate politics over policy and discord over working together. So I think that I also think that as the first post-baby-boomer President, and given the fact that I was involved in my youth in the controversies over Vietnam and a lot of other things, I think I became kind of a lightning rod and Hillary did for a lot of things that the system kind of had to work its way through. But I'd be at a poor position to have any profound complaints since I am leaving office with pretty good approval ratings from the American people, and none of that would be possible if it had not been for the media through which I communicated my views and my side of all the controversies.


But I think that I do think it is harder to get stories right, to avoid jumping the gun, to avoid kind of contributing to things that have a lot of heat and may not have much light, given the pressures that all of you are under today. The last point I'd like to make, and I am not pandering to you because you cannot cover me much longer, is but I believe this I think it is a real mistake for people to generalize about the media. Very often there will be a big story in the national news, and ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, and CNN will all cover it differently. So I think that you have to I always had the feeling that you were more interested in policy than a lot of the people that covered me, but I think it is more because you have been here so long. I mean, I think you could not have hung around the way you have and done this if you were not fascinated by politics. But in the end, you'd run dry if you did not also care about what the consequences to the country are. And like I said, you cannot cover me much longer, so I am not pandering to you, but I think on the other hand, if you were here now consider, suppose you were a 30-year-old, or however young you can be, 35-year-old television anchor, and you got the White House assignment, and you wanted to go further in life, and you were going to be judged partly by how hot you were on the screen and what your market share was, and you had to put this story together, and you had an hour to do it, you'd be under a whole different set of pressures, both in your work environment and in your head. So I think that I would that is one thing I would counsel any President to do, is not fight paranoia about the press, and do not generalize about it. I think both I and my wife's alleged aversion to the press has been way overblown. We have always been far more discriminating about the things with which we disagreed and the things with which we agreed.


I will tell you what. I was nostalgic enough, and then you had to stop at McDonald's on top of it? We did not get much sleep last night. The stage seemed more in the audience than the previous ones we have had, did not it? And they were up for it, that crowd last night. If I remember correctly, in '92 there was still some skepticism in that audience, when you gave your acceptance speech. But you know, the difference between then and now is pretty A lot of these people have been with me for 8 years now, you know. They have a lot of those delegates I have run into several people that tell me they were at the previous conventions, one or the other of them, going in You know, we just all I did in L.A. was run around and try to prepare for the speech. Except I did get to play golf one day, which was quite nice. I played a public course there. It is a public course right near Hillcrest that used to be the site of the L.A. Open. They were very proud of it. They mayor wanted to play on it. The bad thing about it was lots of folks out there. It took a good while to get around, but it was really nice.  There were some things we did not talk and I made a few notes. I do not think we said anything last time about foreign policy. I just thought you might have some questions you wanted to ask. I also thought we did not talk much about environmental policy. And I could not remember whether we talked about AmeriCorps. Did we talk about AmeriCorps? You know how important that is to me. Did you see what Bush said 2 days ago? What did he say? He said he was going to get rid of the 100,000 cops program, and he was going to take another look at AmeriCorps. But so many Republicans have turned around on that. I mean, I thought that the adjustment that you announced in Philadelphia at the voluntarism summit was just the icing on the cake for that program. I think the only reason he would get rid of it is just for personal Did you ever hear the story about John Kasich going to Jeff Canada's program in Harlem? And Kasich saying, God, you know, this is the kind of thing that AmeriCorps should be.

Interview With Joe Klein of the New Yorker


And Jeff said to him, Every one of those kids in there are AmeriCorps kids. Let me ask about let us go to foreign policy for a minute. In going through this thing, I have now written a mere 31,000 words. Every time you have to make a decision about global economic security during the last 8 years, you make it like that. Mexico, Asia, time and time again, you seem to have a really good sense of what global economic security is about. Well, if you look at it, for one thing, if it is a decision that involves the use of force, almost without exception Haiti being the exception, I guess we have particularly in the Balkans, we thought we had to have first a consensus within NATO and then, if possible, some sanction from the United Nations. It took us a long time to put together that consensus in Bosnia. It took a couple of years. You were saying last time that first, especially Somalia, you had not that you did not have the procedures in place that you later would. I do not feel that way about Bosnia. Bosnia was literally Christopher went to Europe early on. We tried to build a consensus. We finally got the country to, I think, eventually we are proud of what NATO did in Bosnia and proud of the peace process. And ironically, we did not have the kind of delay in Kosovo that I was afraid we'd have. So I think you are going to see this from time to time where, if there is a question on the use of force, whenever possible, the American people will want the United States to act with others. And whenever possible, it would be a good thing if we do and if it is sanctioned by the U.N. or at least if there is a darn good argument that it is covered by a U.N. resolution. And I hope that Somalia will never be used as an excuse for the United States not to be involved in United Nations missions. We are training those soldiers in West Africa now that are going to go into Sierra Leone, which I think is a very good thing. And we have been working, ironically, for several years on the Africa Crisis Response Initiative, trying to generally train soldiers in Africa to be ready to deal with the problems. But what happened in Somalia, as I say, was a special case because you had the Americans were there under U.N. command.


And I think we learned a lot from Somalia, but I think that we should not overlearn it. That is, we should not refuse to go into another situation with soldiers from other countries. It is just that I think, if it happened again, we would have a much clearer notion of the rules of combat. And before we would have an engagement that could literally have led to several hundred casualties on their side and 18 deaths on our side, we would have much greater involvement in the details of it. I talked to McCain about your foreign policy and other things. He was actually very supportive in a lot of other areas, especially high-tech areas. But the argument that he made on foreign policy is one that you hear from the foreign policy priesthood all the time about your foreign policy. They use words like ad hoc and untidy and that you move from issue to issue and there is not the kind of sustained interest in it. He uses an example they use the example of you calling China our strategic partner, and he says Japan's our strategic partner. What do you say to the critics who say that you have not had a sustained and coherent foreign policy? Well, I know they say it, but I disagree. A lot of those people did not want us to be involved in the Balkans. A lot of those people did not think we should have gone into Haiti. I think we have had a consistent policy toward China. We have had to do different things in response to developments there. I think we have had a consistent policy toward Russia, and I think that we have had basically if you go back to some of the foreign policy speeches we gave, I think it is obvious that we have tried to meet the new security threats of the 21st century. We have tried very hard to support a united Europe. We have tried very hard to support the development of democracy in Russia and the reduction of the nuclear threat and removal of nuclear weapons from the other states of the former Soviet Union. We have tried to engage with China. We have tried to contain or reverse the North Korean nuclear threat, and we have supported a dialog between the North and the South. And I think the things that we did and the things that we refused to do in North Korea have some bearing on the ultimate decision of Kim Chong-il to engage Kim Dae-jung. We had an unusual and systematic outreach to our neighbors south of our border.


And I regret that one of the few defeats of my administration legislative defeats that I really regret was the fast-track defeat which sort of slowed up our initiative in building a free-trade area in the Americas, because I think it is important. And the United States has actually paid a price for that as a lot of the South American nations have actually started doing much more business with Europe rather than the United States. But I just frankly do not agree with him. I think that what I think that if they are looking for some simple explanation of the world, a lot of them did not agree with my outreach to Africa. A lot of them did not agree with our designation of the global ENTITY crisis as a national security threat. But I think that I do not know if you were I gave a few remarks kind of ad hoc to the NDI luncheon yesterday. I think that we should see our foreign policy and national security in terms of the traditional alliances and challenges that we have that have not changed, even though the cold war is over, in terms of the new possibilities opened up either by the end of the cold war or the emergence of this sort of global information society and then the new security threats. And I think a lot of the security threats of the 21st century will come not from other nation-states but from the enemies of the nation-states. I think that you will see a convergence of terrorists, narcotraffickers, weapons merchants, and kind of religious and racial nationalists. I think you will see a lot of that. And then I think you will see a convergence of information technology in weaponry which will lead to the miniaturization of seriously dangerous weapons, both conventional and biological and chemical weapons. And I think the likelihood is that sometime in the next 10 years, people will come to think that there will be kind of cross-national threats which will threaten our security as much as one particular other nation. I understand why they are all saying that. But the truth is, a lot of them did not think I was right in Bosnia and Kosovo. They never disagree on the big picture stuff. I talked to Tony Lake, and I read the book that he has coming out in October. And one of the things he posits as a kind of a central principle of your years that was something different was the fact that we were more threatened by the weaknesses of other countries than their strengths. I think the United States can be threatened more by another nation's weakness than by its strength.


And I used to tell I do not know how many times I have said to our crowd over the last 8 years, when we are dealing with a country that has interests that are in conflict with ours, I would rather have a strong leader of that country than a weak leader, because a strong leader can make an agreement and keep it and is capable of kind of distancing himself from the more destructive elements in the relationship and within their societies. So I believe that. We want to preserve democracy in South America. But you still need to be strong to keep Colombia from collapsing, for example. There needs to be you have to have to have a certain amount of discipline and strength to do what Museveni did in Uganda and reverse the ENTITY rate the infection rate of ENTITY. There has to be a certain amount of strength in the state to rebuild the public health systems which are breaking down all over the world. Laurie Garrett, who wrote The Coming Plague do you remember that book? She is got a new book coming out I have just seen it in galleys about the breakdown of public health systems all over the world, in the states of the former Soviet Union, in developing countries, and speculating what it might mean for us. You have got to have a strong state with some fair measure of strength to deal with the challenges of climate change, for example, a lot of these big questions. So I absolutely agree with that. the continuing agony between India and Pakistan and the centrality of Kashmir to that conflict and that relationship, it would take a pretty strong Government in both countries to really come to grips with the compromises that would be required to make an agreement that would have any shot at all of putting an end to that problem and also putting an end to it as a potential trigger of nuclear exchanges. So, is the story of Camp David II the fact that one country was stronger than the other, and they were not able to make compromise? You do not have to answer it if it is undiplomatic. Well, I think we are using no, because I understand what you mean, but I do not mean it in the same sense you do. There, Israel has land and army coherence; the Palestinian state has existed in the minds of its adherents and implicit in these U.N. resolutions. So in that sense, that is a different kind of strong and weak.


That is, if you do not have land, an army, and everything, maybe you have to adhere to words and ideas more, and compromise is more difficult. I do not mean it like that. I meant actually but both Arafat and Barak are strong, even though Barak did not have a big margin in the Knesset. No, I was meaning it in the way that you were meaning it. I was wondering whether Arafat's coalition I mean, I have been over there, and I have seen all the various I know how good a politician he is had to be to, you know, to survive. My gut is that if the other three or four of those other people who will take whatever if we can affect a compromise on Jerusalem that other Arab leaders will take, he can make whatever other arrangements he wants to make. But that is different from whether the Colombians can physically recover 30 percent of their land now in the hands of narcotraffickers and terrorists or whether the Russians can actually rebuild their health care system. Whether the Chinese can collect taxes from Guangdong Province? Your fellow journalist Friedman, Tom Friedman, has written a lot of very interesting essays on this whole subject of the weakness of government as opposed to the strength of government threatening freedom and progress. You have written a lot of very interesting pieces on it. I just come in contact with it over and over and over again. So it is something that I am concerned about. He is spent a lot of time in Russia David Remnick. But this had nothing to do with that. It was something that you said in the very end when we were talking last time, when we started talking about the loss of mystery and the fact that the distance between the leader and the public has evaporated during your time as President. And I understand the point that you made. Do you remember that?  I would like to make two points. Number one, I think that it is a good thing if the American people, through television or through journalistic writings, have a better, deeper sense of what a person the Presidency, for example not only what we are doing but why we are doing it and how it fits into the larger scheme of things and how it fits into the pattern of our lives. And you can get enough I think what you get out of the greater exposure and a more consistent pattern of exposure is worth as what you give up in majesty. What you give up in majesty? So I approve of that.


I do not believe that the kind of invasion into public figures' private lives for the stated purpose of exploring their character but for the real purpose of destroying them for some political end is a very good thing. But I think it is unlikely to occur to the extent to which you have seen it in the last 8 years again for a long time. You do not think the Presidency has just changed forever because of that? For one thing, the Democrats do not have anything like the infrastructure or the stomach or the desire to do that that the Republicans do. So there will have to be an actual abuse of power in office in some way that affects the public interest. We do not the guys that make money we have got a lot of rich people to support us. They would not do what Scaife did. They would not waste $7 million going on 15 wild goose chases to try to run somebody down. We are just not that kind of people. We are actually interested in government, and we care more about what we do with power than power. So I think that is part of it. And I think shutting the Independent Counsel law down was part of it. Finally, when it finally was hijacked as basically the private property of the party not in the executive branch, I think its legitimacy was destroyed. So I think, if there ever comes a time again when we really need one, we will get it, the same way we got it back in the seventies. The press and the public will say the only appropriate response is for the Attorney General to name someone or to ask the court to name someone that is clearly independent. Even short of those kind of spectacular, disgraceful, disgusting, awful kind of investigations, the Presidency after you the Presidency exists in people's kitchens. You have been living in our kitchens for the last 8 years. Part of that is television and part of that is my predisposition to work hard in an open fashion. So I do not as I said, I believe the ability to share with the public at large what you are trying to do and why and to take everybody along on the journey is worth the extra exposure in terms of the price you give up. Whatever the value of the mystery is, I think it is worth it.


And I think most future Presidents will attempt to establish a more I do not know; intimate may be the wrong word, but you know what I am trying to say a more sort of closer bond with the American people not just on an emotional level but actually in terms of having them understand what you are trying to do and why. And if you do lots of interviews, if you are real accessful, if you work crowds, if you do townhall meetings, all these things that I did, you run the risk of making mistakes and paying some price and also sort of being demystified. But I think the benefit you get from it, in terms of keeping the energy flowing through a democratic system, is quite great. If you think about it, after the Republicans won the Congress, a lot of people thought we'd never get anything done again. But we got a big bipartisan balanced budget. We got a big bipartisan welfare reform. We got a lot of bipartisan education reforms. An awful lot of public land. I mean, I have been through these budgets line by line over the last 3 or 4 months. I worked with Pete Domenici and I worked together to do this Baca Ranch deal in New Mexico. And we may actually get this whole CARA legislation through where we are really trying to make the right kind of compromises with the Republicans that would, in effect, take the royalties we get from offshore drilling and put it only into environmental preservation, buying land a small part of it for the Federal Government but a lot of it for States and then restoration of coastlines and all that kind of stuff. What do you think the odds are we can pass this CARA legislation? It is up against some tough rightwing filibusters. Is this last round of negotiations going to happen during the next 2 or 3 weeks? No, I mean the budget. Is that in the budget? No, it is a separate it is a stand-alone bill, because it takes a funding stream that is already there and directs it only to basically long-term land preservation and conservation work at the State and local level, primarily, and the Federal level. But the fact that some of these Republicans, including Don Young from Alaska, they are willing to work with us to institutionalize this sort of thing on a permanent basis is, I think, really encouraging. I still believe there is a lot to be said for showing up every day, and you just keep trying to push the rock up the hill.


Can I say something that might piss you off? And you can even turn that off if you want. You just do not have to answer it. When Lewinski happened, I was more pissed off at my colleagues and at the Republicans than I was at you. I am sitting there, writing this piece, and I go through this whole section of the trench warfare, line-by-line battles that you have won against the Republicans during those 3 or 4 years. And all of a sudden, I get to Lewinski, and I got to say, I got pissed off at you. It does not change the bottom line of the piece I was pissed off at me. I was surprised by my own reaction to that moment because the stuff you had done you did not get any credit for, you were not going to get any credit for. Unless a lot of people read this piece and it changes other people's minds, you would not get credit for it. But it was the stuff that you did for working people. You are probably the best President for the working people in the history of the country. Robert Pear actually wrote a good story the other day about what we had done for the working poor that nobody noticed over 8 years. But I think well, you know, for us to talk about that would require a longer conversation than we have. But I think the interesting thing was, I viewed the way they overreacted to it as sort of like the last as the second step of the kind of purging our national life of the hardcore, rightwing aspects of the Gingrich revolution, which was the Government shutdown. We rolled that back, and then we rolled this back, and then we had this unbelievable congressional election. And I think you see it in the tone and tenor of the Republican campaign this year. Although I told you before, I am not sure their policies have changed very much, but at least in the tone and tenor of it, I think you can see basically a decision within their camp that, Okay, that, you know, we do not have to get beat a third time over this.  that we have realized that my colleagues realize that we went way overboard in '98. But I think it was even before that. I do not think well, sometime we will have more time to talk about it.


But I hope that nobody will ever have to undergo what I did from 1991 through 1998 again, or at least, I hope that if it happens, the media will know that it is happened, instead of being so willing to be basically suborned by it and kind of enlisted and all these other things that happened. In fact, if that is one result of it and it changes our politics and makes it a little less hostile and personally destructive, even if the changes last for 10 or 15 years, that would be a very good thing. Let us end on an up. I do not want to end on that note. Well, it is very difficult to say because we did so many things, and one of the things that that I am sitting here with you now. We just left the handoff deal, and I am thinking what I mean, it seems like I just got inaugurated the first time. But I knew, when we won the economic plan, that it would turn the country around economically. I felt that when we passed AmeriCorps we had a chance to create a new citizen ethic in the country, which I thought was important. I loved going to Ireland when we made the peace there. I loved a lot of the things we did in the Middle East meant a lot to me. You know, when we just a lot of things. I feel very strongly that we did the right thing with welfare reform. I think I told you, when I was at the trial lawyers' meeting the other day and I was just shaking hands, I met two women. One had a master's degree, and one had a law degree. They told me they were on welfare when I became President. I went home I say I went home I went back to my political home in New Hampshire earlier this year on the eighth anniversary of my victory in the New Hampshire primary, and I met a woman in the crowd who was a nurse who had gotten some appointment from our administration and was on welfare when I got elected President. I suppose, in a funny way, those personal encounters are the biggest highs I get. There was a guy I do not know if you were out there when I spoke today and introduced Al and I started talking about the HOPE scholarship? There was a guy over to my left that said, Yeah, I got one of those here. He screamed out in the audience. Because I said it would pay for the community college there. I got one.


You know, I run into people all the time that have taken the family leave law. I met a woman the other day who told me that her sister had taken the family leave law to take care of their mother, and then she had gotten cancer and taken it and now had a clean bill of health. And I think that in some ways, even bigger than all the 100,000 people in the street in Dublin and all of the huge emotional crowd events, when you actually look at somebody who says, here is something you did, and my life is better because of it, that is probably the most rewarding thing of all. Well, it was 9 years ago just about now that it was just you and me and a State trooper in Maine. Maine?  We also got beat in Maine. Jerry Brown won in Maine. I was thinking about that out there today. I was just thinking about the first time I went out with you in Maine. And I remember we were stuck on the tarmac in Boston. You had to catch a plane to Chicago. And I looked at you, and I said, Do you realize a year from today you could be giving your acceptance speech, and you will have a fleet of cars and Secret Service and planes to take you anywhere you want to go? And you looked at me as if to say, you are out of your mind, boy. I have got to figure out after you write this, you ought to talk to me about what you think I ought to do next. I have a couple of ideas. I know a guy, the guy who runs the Ford Foundation in Asia is really interested in funding ways to move new technology and biotechnology to Third World areas. He would give you a bunch of money for your collaborating on that. Well, I am going to spend a lot of time working on that. My guess is that, just from hearing you talk, that is the kind of stuff that floats your boat these days. Yeah, I want to do stuff that keeps my juices running. I do not think you are going to have any problem with that. I am going to have a good time. But I have got to if my wife wins the Senate seat and my daughter stays in school, I have to make a sizeable income. But we have still got to play golf next year. You have got a deal. By the way, I broke 90 for the first time between last interview and this. That meant I screwed up some other holes.


immigration reform and gun control . You said in your speech in Las Vegas the time is now. Gabby Giffords in a very emotional plea in the Senate hearing today on gun control said now is the time. Can Congress tackle both issues at the same time? And which one will have priority? Well, there is no doubt that Congress can tackle both. We have to get comprehensive immigration reform. It is been too long since we reformed the system. And we are starting to see a bipartisan consensus built around this. So we need to take the opportunity and we need to do it fast. As the Senators do their work, start identifying where there is some differences. We can provide some technical assistance. Will one be easier than the other? Well, my suspicion is we are seeing more bipartisan discussion on the immigration issue, than on the gun issue. But I also think that on the gun issue you are starting to see the gun owners, people who traditionally opposed gun control saying you know what, when 20 of our children are shot by somebody whose disturbed, and when it is that easy to get these high clip magazines that can fire off hundreds of shots in a few minutes, that it is time for us to do a better job on background checks. Both will end up generating some opposition and some strong opposition. But I am generally encouraged that the Senate seems to be having a serious conversation about these issues. You said in your speech that if Congress does not work in a timely manner on immigration reform you will send your own bill. And you will ask them to, in your own words, to vote on it right away. What to you is a timely manner? The Senate is supposed to introduce legislation by March. Well, you know if they can get a piece of legislation debated on the floor by March I think that is a good timeline. Keep in mind that most of these issues we have done work on already. We have a pretty good sense of the work we have already done on border security. We already know what would be required to earn a legal status and citizenship in terms of paying a fine and learning English. And going through background checks and paying back taxes. So a lot of this work has been done. So we have already drafted a bill. How much time do you have your own timeline as to how much you would give them, before you intervene with your own bill?

Interview with Maria Elena Salinas of Univision News


Yeah, as I said, if they are on a path as they have already said where they want to get a bill done by March, then I think that is a reasonable timeline. I am not going to lay down a particular date because I want to give them a little bit of room to debate. Will we have immigration reform by the end of this year? You can tell our audience si se puede! But I want to remind the audience, because Maria Elena we have had this conversation for many, many years. The only way this is going to get done is if the Republicans continue to work with Democrats in Congress in both chambers in order to get a bill to my desk. I was very pleased to see the Senators from both the Democratic side and the Republican side come together and put forth principles. Now they have got to fill in the details. Look, it is not that we do not know how to do this. It is not that we got technical problems. This is a matter of, as I said in my speech yesterday, us recognizing that comprehensive immigration reform will make our economy stronger. It is true to our traditions. It speaks to our future. It makes sure that young people who are here like the DREAMERs who want to contribute and want to join our military, want to start a business, that they have opportunities. And, you know, if we keep that positive mindset understanding that that is a strength of America that we attract talent from all around the world, then I am confident that we can get it done. Most people believe that the biggest hurdle will be the path to citizenship. You have clearly said that it mustn't be included from the outset. Senator Marco Rubio says that he will not support a bill that does not put border security ahead of citizenship. Is this going to end up being a battle between you and Marco Rubio? Look, we put border security ahead of pathway to citizenship. We have done more on border security in the last four years than we have done in the previous 20. We have seen a drop in terms of illegal crossings of about 80 percent since 2000. We have made enormous strides, put resources in, we have actually done almost everything that Republicans asked to be done several years ago as a condition to move forward on comprehensive immigration reform. Given that that is the case, it is not as if we have not been attentive to border security and we will continue to be attentive to border security.


What we do not want to do is to create some vague prospect in the future that somehow comprehensive immigration reform that includes a pathway to citizenship will happen, you know, maana. We want to make sure that we are very clear that this legislation provides a real pathway. Now that pathway will take some time. That even under our proposal, this is not a situation where overnight suddenly people all find themselves as citizens. They are going to have to earn their way to it. And they are going to have to go to the back of the line. We are going to have to clear out the, you know, existing lines, the backlog that we have in terms of legal immigrants. Because they did it the right way. We should not punish them for not breaking the law. So all those things are going to have to be put in place. But we have to put that in the place at the outset and make sure that people are clear that this pathway is real and not just a fantasy for the future. As you could imagine there are hundreds of questions. The questions that I have gotten on social media since I announced that I would be doing this interview. Millions of people are desperate to hear from you. They want answers. People who voted for you and people who are confident that this year, this time around you will definitely keep your promise. But the most commonly asked question is, for example, one from Jonathan made on Facebook. Under your plan what would happen to those who already have deportation letters. Also, would parents of U.S. born children who have been deported be able to come back under your plan? Well, what I am going to do is allow the Senate to work on these details. I do not want to, you know, fill in all the blanks. Because otherwise I would have gone ahead and put a bill forward. And then sometimes that creates a dynamic in Congress where if I am for it, then maybe some people have to be against it. I think that over the next several weeks, these next several months what we will see is many of these issues will be debated. But the basic principle would be, from my perspective, that somebody who has lived here has been overall a good neighbor has been somebody who is been law abiding other than the fact that they came here illegally. That have put roots down here. That they should have the capacity to earn citizenship. And we will have to make a whole range of decisions about individual cases.


And we will have to create a structure to make sure that that works. And as I said, we have got to make sure that we streamline the process for legal immigration because so much of the illegal immigration process has resulted because it is so difficult for many people to reunify with their families, and so forth. Now I know that you have reduced, this is another concern on Twitter, the number of deportations of non-criminals. However, in 2012 more than 184,000 non-criminals were deported. In the spirit of your push for immigration reform, would you consider a moratorium on deportations of non-criminals? This is not about policy. It is about people. Well, I think it is important to remind everybody that, as I said I think previously, and I am not a king. I am the head of the executive branch of government. I am required to follow the law. And that is what we have done. But what I have also said is, let us make sure that we are applying the law in a way that takes into account people's humanity. That is the reason that we moved forward on deferred action. Within the confines of the law we said, we have some discretion in terms of how we apply this law. The same is true with respect to the kinds of the length of time that people have to spend outside of the country when their spouses are already here for example. So we are making some changes there. With respect to deportations until we get comprehensive immigration reform. That is one of the reasons I think it is so important for us to go ahead and get this action done. And keep in mind that if we are able to say, at the end of this year, or maybe even before the end of the summer, that we have gotten comprehensive immigration reform done, then that then empowers me to deal with many of these issues in a way that I think, to allow the more specific issues that a lot of people I think would like to see resolved. If you had to choose, what would be the concessions that you would be willing to make on immigration reform? And what would be completely unacceptable to you? I think comprehensive immigration reform has to continue and build on the work we have done to strengthen border security. It has to have provisions to strengthen the legal immigration system. And streamline it and make it easier and faster and fairer for people. And it has to have a pathway to citizenship that is real.


And that people can say alright, I now know that if I take these steps I have a chance to stay here with my family, do the right thing, and over time, maybe down the road, be able to earn my right to take that oath and make that pledge as an American citizen. And I think, there are going to be a whole range of other issues involved in this. There are going to be some who are arguing for guest worker programs. There are going to be some issues around agricultural jobs that are very important. There are issues surrounding how do we make sure that employers are, you know, have the data that they need to check to see if somebody has a legal employment status. So there are going to be a whole range of issues and people are going to be on various sides of those issues. Let us let these Senators who have taken it upon themselves to negotiate. We will be in consultation with them. If I see something that I think is wrong, I will let them know. But I do not want to prejudge it, since I have not seen any details from their legislations. Before we run out of time. I have two short questions for you. In putting together your second term in the Cabinet, we noticed that there is less Latinos. Well, first of all, we have not completed the formation of my Cabinet. So I will let people judge it after all my appointments have been made whether or not we have made progress. One of my highest priorities as an administration, particularly in my second term, because now I am thinking about legacy, is to make sure that we are identifying talent from every walk of life, from every ethnic group, so that the next President will see how big a pool there is of talent out there, that can serve and wants to serve in a Presidential administration. So we are going to redouble our efforts to recruit talented and gifted Latinos that come from every walk of life. It comes from academia, it comes from elected officials. It comes from foundations and non-for profits. Maybe some will come from the media. And we want to identify as much talent as possible. And you know, obviously the Latino community is growing faster than just about any other community. And that means that we have got to prepare leadership for the future, not just for today. You mentioned legacy and I will close with this question. You do not have to worry about reelection anymore now. The only thing at stake is your legacy.


I have been incommunicado- or perhaps some people would say excommunicado for so long I do not know what has happened; maybe you can give me the news President, would you care to give us a reminiscent thought on eight years ago today? You could say that I, personally, do not feel any different than I have at any time during the eight years. We have a different kind of crisis, a world crisis instead of a domestic crisis, eight years later. In some ways, on a comparable basis for the future of the country, it is probably more serious than the one eight years ago. I think we might let it go at that. President, do you see any cause for concern in the labor situation as affecting the defense projects? Of course that is a question that would take half an hour to answer the kind of question that cannot be answered. It is a little like saying, Have you stopped beating your wife? I got a letter oh, yesterday or the day before from a very worthy citizen in Florida who was frightfully upset because of what he had read. Where he had read it, I am not saying; but anyway it was because of what he had read. We are all horrified by the complete breakdown of defense production because of strikes. In other words, he got it into his head that there was a breakdown in production because of strikes. Now, of course there are a certain number of strikes; and I would hate to give you this as the definitive figure, but I think it is approximately correct that about a quarter of one percent of production has been affected by strikes at any given time A quarter of one percent is what?- one four-hundredth; so you see the gentleman had got an erroneous impression from what he had read, according to his own statement. In other words, somebody had written something I am not saying where that had caused a perfectly worthy citizen to get a false impression, and that is a great pity for our defense effort President, do you think it is justified for the labor unions to charge fees on construction projects on all men, whether or not they are members of unions, for a job? I cannot talk to a general question; give me some specific instances, cases, places; then I will look it up and find out whether the facts are in accordance with the statements; then I will give you an answer after that. Do you want this in a memo? In other words, I cannot talk glittering generalities.

Excerpts from the Press Conference


What did you buy at the Peasant's Museum? I bought just a representative sample of the things that were there. What did you think of the reception? I cannot imagine how many people were there, because there were people, when I drove up, in blocks that had been blocked off by the police, who were way back, were not even visible from the stage. Were you surprised by the warmth? Well, I was surprised by the size and intensity of the crowd. I knew that the Romanian people my friend Mr. Moses here keeps me updated, and I knew that they were very friendly toward America. And keep in mind, they really did suffer more in the recent past than any other people under any of the other Communist governments I mean, what they went through here to gain their liberty. You saw behind the stage today the President and I were before the cross there, and that cross marks the place where people were actually killed when they threw off the previous government. So I think that the price they paid is very fresh in their minds. And I do believe if they keep going, they will make it, just like I said. They have just begun in the last year or so, and they have an enormous undertaking with their economy. But if you look at the rich resources and the fact that the people here are very well educated, I'd say they have an excellent chance, a really good chance. Did they express disappointment? Oh, I think of course they were disappointed. But I think they also the leaders have managed this very well, and they talked very frankly to the people and said well, you heard what the President said today. NATO is a part of their larger strategy. And as long as they see that we are all still on the same page with the larger strategy, that we want them integrated into the West, we want their democracy to flourish, we want their economy to do well, and that if they keep going the way they are going, they will certainly be qualified for NATO membership. And everybody 100 percent of us in Madrid agreed that one of the things that we wanted was to have some more membership from the southern flank, because of the problems that are likely to develop in this region in the years ahead. By NATO's test, where is their area needing greatest improvement, the economy? Well, I think for one thing, when a country assumes the responsibilities of membership, you want to be hopefully, would even be helpful because of the extra psychological boost it gives.

Exchange With Reporters in Bucharest


ENTITY, do you understand and accept the reasons and explanations that two Baltic Presidents are not attending the celebrations in Moscow, 9th May? First of all, I can understand the decision by your . These are difficult decisions because they reflect the difficult times. And I honor those decisions. There is a lot of Americans who came- whose families were in the Baltics. And this is a bittersweet moment for them when you think about it. On the one hand, our country helped defeat fascism, and upon the defeat of fascism, they saw their homelands be taken over by a repressive ideology. And so I fully understand and, matter of fact, understood it to the point where I brought it up to President Putin when I saw him in Slovakia and just said, You have got to understand this is going to create some sensitivities among our friends, among America's friends, Estonia and Lithuania and Latvia. The war is over for 60 years, and it is not still over. No, I appreciate that. Look, I think it is time to move beyond fault and focus on the future. Now, that is easy for me to say because I did not have any family members that were repressed or families divided. I did not have to live under the yoke of communism. But I do believe that time will help heal the wounds. People are able to express themselves in the public square. Independent media can come and interview the President in the White House. But I readily understand why it takes time to heal the wounds of the past. Democracy and the human rights situation in Russia is quite worrying. Are you going to discuss this item during your visit to Moscow? First of all, I have got a relationship with that enables me to be able to have a frank discussion. He gave an interesting speech the other day. The press tend to focus on a comment about the Soviet times, and of course, that obviously riled emotions in the Baltics. I understand that. But he also went on to talk about democracy. I thought it was interesting that he spent a lot of time on his big speech to the nation on democracy. I believe Russia's interest lie to her west. I believe that Russia, by embracing the values that we share, will be able to deal with the many problems that she has. Russia has got enormous problems. And I will do so in a cooperative way, in a cooperative spirit.

Interview With Estonian Television


I think you would want your friend the United States to be in a position where I can go in and have a constructive, direct dialog. And I think one people have learned about me is I am a pretty direct person. I say what is on my mind; I try to do so diplomatically. And I do so for the interests of the United States and for our friends and for the world. ENTITY, I cannot let you go from here without a question of terrorism. Latest surveys show that the numbers of terrorism are increasing, not decreasing. You have made a lot of efforts. If we were not trying to find the enemy and bring them to justice, the world would look relatively peaceful. But we are on the offense. And so when you engage the enemy, when you try to bring them to justice, they do not like to be brought to justice. I have always told the American people here, It is best to find them where they try to hide so that we do not have to deal with them here at home. And so part of the reasons why there is -activity is up is because we are chasing them down. As a matter of fact, today a big news report came out that I would say one of the top Al Qaida leaders, a person very close to , was brought to justice in Pakistan by the Pak Government, with our help, but nevertheless, the Pak Government did the hard work. That is a very important part of defeating the Al Qaida. But no, we will stay on the offense. The best way to defeat terrorism in the long run, though, is by spreading freedom, is by giving people a chance to live in a free society. How long it takes to curb, finally? I cannot give you a timetable. But whatever it takes, so long as I am the President and there is a threat to the United States of America and to our people-you see, a lot of people in Europe, for them, September the 11th was a date, a passing moment. No question they expressed deep sympathy, for which the United States is grateful. But for us, it was a change of attitude. It was a change of foreign policy. And I told the people when I ran for office the second time, I said, If you put me in office, every day I am in office, I will be relentless in chasing down the enemy. And so, for however long it takes. It takes a while for freedom to take hold. I know that.

Interview With Estonian Television


everything from making sure that we are dismantling ISIL, and not only stabilizing the situation in Iraq, but addressing the foreign fighter issue and countering the narrative of violent extremism that has been turbocharged through the Internet . We had a chance to talk about situations like Ukraine. We also had an opportunity to talk about how we maintain the strongest and most effective military in the world and how we keep faith with our outstanding men and women in uniform. I could not be more confident that Ash Carter is going to do an outstanding job as Secretary of Defense. And he is hitting the ground running, having already spent a lot of time in this administration and in the Pentagon. So I want to thank the Senate for confirming him almost unanimously. And I look forward to working with him in the years to come. I think America will be well served by Mr. Ash Carter. I disagree with the Texas judge's ruling, and the Justice Department will appeal. This is not the first time where a lower court judge has blocked something or attempted to block something that ultimately was shown to be lawful. And I am confident that it is well within my authority and the tradition of the executive branch's prosecutorial discretion to execute this policy, which will help us make our borders safer, will help us go after criminals and those that we do not want in this country, will help people get on the right side of the law and get out of the shadows. And keep in mind that this is something that we necessarily have to make choices about because we have got 11 million people here who we are not all going to deport. Many of them are our neighbors. Many of them are working in our communities. Many of their children are U.S. citizens. And as we saw with the executive action that I took for DREAMers-people who have come here as young children and are American by any other name except for their legal papers, who want to serve this country, oftentimes want to go into the military or start businesses or in other ways contribute-I think the American people overwhelmingly recognize that to pretend like we are going to ship them off is unrealistic and not who we are. So I have also said throughout this process that the only way we are going to get a broken immigration system fully fixed is by Congress acting. And we know that there has been bipartisan support in the past for comprehensive immigration reform. I held off taking these executive actions until we had exhausted all possibilities of getting congressional action done.

Remarks Following a Meeting With Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter and an Exchange With Reporters


With a new Congress, my hope has been that they now get serious in solving the problem. Instead, what we have had is a series of votes to kick out young people who have grown up here and everybody recognizes are part of our community and threats to defund the Department of Homeland Security, which would make it even harder for us to protect our borders and to keep our people safe. So my strong advice right now to Congress is, if they are seriously concerned about immigration, about our borders, about being able to keep criminals out of this country, then what they should be doing is working together and working with this administration for a comprehensive immigration policy that allows us to continue to be both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. And certainly they need to start funding the Department of Homeland Security so that they can go forward with all the functions that Republicans say they want carried out, including strong border security functions. But with respect to the ruling, we-I disagree with it. I think the law is on our side and history is on our side. And we are going to appeal it. For those who are now wondering whether or not they should apply, we are going to refer those questions to the Department of Homeland Security that is already begun the planning process. And we will be prepared to implement this fully as soon as the legal issues get resolved. Why not wait until the higher court rules on your programs before implementing them? Well, keep in mind, we are not going to disregard this Federal court ruling. The law is the law in this country, and we take things a step at a time. So we are not going to be actually taking applications in until this case is settled. But we are doing the preparatory work because this is a big piece of business and it is important for us to do in order for us to actually secure our borders effectively and allocate limited resources to the most important tasks and functions that the Department of Homeland Security has. We should not be tearing some mom away from her child when the child has been born here and that mom has been living here for the last 10 years, minding her own business and being a important part of the community. We should be focusing on stopping people at the borders, reinforcing our effectiveness there, going after criminals and felons who are in our midst who we can deport, strengthening our systems for legal immigration.


You have just returned from an unprecedented preelection whirlwind Middle Eastern trip in the name of peace. Following the trip, polls shows your popularity up. Skeptics would say the trip was planned to boost not only popularity but know-how in the area of foreign policy. Well, we worked for 2 years, very hard, on peace in the Middle East. I had no control over the timing of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty. Obviously, they made their own decision about when to sign. They asked me to come and witness it, because of the role the United States and our administration played in that. When I was there, I went to visit our troops in the Persian Gulf. I sent them there to counter Saddam Hussein's latest aggression. Clearly, I had no control over that. The American people know it. But the benefits that are coming in foreign policy, the nuclear agreement with North Korea, the work in the Middle East, the success in Haiti, they are the result of 2 years of hard work that happened to coalesce at this time. ENTITY, here in Connecticut and across the country, Republicans are trying to make you the symbol of all that is wrong with Government. The pictures of you appear in many GOP television ads. Do you think this midterm election is really a referendum on you? No, but I think that it is the culmination of 2 years of irresponsible conduct on their part, where they did their best to derail the Government, to put the brakes on everything, to oppose deficit reduction, to oppose our plans for economic recovery, to oppose our plans for things like family and medical leave and the crime bill. As a party, they did their best to wreck everything and then to blame us. But the American people are beginning to see through it. After all, let me put it to you this way. If I were a Republican President and I had followed policies which reduced the deficit, shrunk the Federal Government to its smallest size since President Kennedy was in office, increased the economic prosperity of the country, reduced the nuclear threat, expanded trade, and passed the toughest crime bill in a generation, they would be running me for sainthood. But because I am a Democrat, they are engaged in a great disinformation campaign.

Interview With John Crane and Ann Nyberg of WTNH Television, New Haven, Connecticut


And they have signed this contract to take this country back to the trickledown economics of the eighties, a decade which, I might add, was pretty rough on the State of Connecticut, along toward the end, with all the exploding deficits and other problems. So, I believe the American people will see through that. I have got a lot of faith in the people of this country to be positive, to be forward looking. And my job is simply to get out and give them the facts, and then they will make the decision. President Clinton, we want to go to the viewers now. As you can imagine, we asked them to give us questions for you; we were having a chance to talk to the President. The first question is from Andrea Wilson of Norwalk. Andrea wants to know, ENTITY, what you are going to do to make deadbeat moms and dads accountable and responsible for supporting their children. I sent in the springtime a welfare reform bill to Congress which, among other things, has a much tougher mechanism of child support enforcement. I think we have to have more automatic requirements, more wage withholding, more respect for these child support orders across State lines. It has simply got to be easy to get the child support payments out there. We have got billions and billions of dollars of unpaid child support. And if we had it paid by people who can afford to pay it, the welfare problem would be much smaller, and it would be a lot easier for people who are struggling to raise their children in dignity, to do it. It comes from a woman named Eva Nay, who wants to know why, if you made jobs one of your administration's top priorities, there are still layoffs and little in the way of job creation in Connecticut? I have got some figures right here; I will check it. The national economy, since I became President, has produced 4.6 million new jobs. Now, the Government did not do all that; most of these jobs are in the private sector. But we created the environment in which the jobs could be created by bringing the deficit down, by expanding trade, by investing more in new technologies. Not every American who wants a job has one, and of course, there is nothing the National Government can do to stop some companies from laying off. What our job is is to create more jobs than are lost, and we are doing that. The unemployment rate in Connecticut has dropped more than one percentage point.


Looking back over the past year, what do you think you did wrong, and what would you have done differently? Well, I think there are always things that you will think you did wrong. But I think, basically, we have continued on the path that we set in 1981. The progress that we have made economically is apparent. It is the first time in many years that we have had a recovery from a recession in which not only is industrial well, let us say just productivity increasing, personal earnings increasing, inflation and unemployment both going down all of these things happening at the same time. This has not happened in a recovery for many, many years, which makes me believe we are on a firm footing and have laid a foundation for a solid recovery. There are things if you say what should we have done differently? In trying to negotiate bipartisan agreements on some of these, you look back and think, well, maybe if we'd worked harder in one direction or another we might have gotten more cooperation in our need to reduce government spending. On the international scene, I think that our continued buildup of our strength has changed international relations a great deal. I do not think without that we would have had the beginning negotiations that we have had with regard to reduction of nuclear weapons, both the INF and the START talks. I think it is due to that. I think we have got a finer relationship than we have had for a long time with our own friends and allies. This is particularly true in the efforts that we have made in Asia, as well as our longtime friends in Europe. But it is a foundation laid for more progress. If I could just but surely was there anything you went back at the end of the day and said, Oh, darn, I really you know that did not work right, we should have done it. Is there any one thing that you can pick out? Oh, well, I probably could get incensed about but this was before 1983, earlier than that going for the tax bill on the assumption that we'd been promised about $3 in reductions in spending for every dollar of tax revenue, and we have never seen the $3 in reduced spending. ENTITY, do you think the new rapprochement between Arafat and Mubarak now opens the way as a breakthrough for the possibility of your peace plan getting moving and Hussein taking part?

Interview With Reporters on Domestic and Foreign Policy Issues


We are optimistic about this because if you look at the relationship there and the two countries or the two peoples that were involved, Mubarak is the head of state of the one country in the Arab world that has gone forward and has a peace treaty with Israel. We are hopeful that the peace process will bring about more Arab nations making their peace with Israel. Obviously, a part of that process depends on a fair and just settlement of the Palestinian question. And Arafat has, in the past, has been one who has refused to recognize Israel's right to exist as a nation. But the fact that earlier, and before this split in the PLO ranks, he had begun to discuss with King Hussein negotiations and participating in those negotiations on behalf of the Palestinians-then that broke down with the split in the Palestinian movement. Now I think that what President Mubarak is doing is talking to him about returning to where he was earlier, making contact with King Hussein, and getting those peace negotiations, our peace proposal, underway again. I really do, because we had believed that a settlement in Lebanon had to precede going further with that. I think enough progress has been made there that we can go forward with the peace movement. Israel has denounced the talks between Arafat and President Mubarak, saying it was a pure violation of the Camp David agreements. Would you respond to that? I can understand their feelings in view of the recent tragedy in Jerusalem, and the group taking credit for that claimed to be a PLO group and all. But at the same time, I think as they look at this a little more clearly, they will see that Mubarak, based on the experience of Egypt and its willingness to go forward for peace, is simply trying to persuade others to change their thinking. There was one point not too long before the peace treaty with Egypt, in which Egypt was as violent in its hostility as perhaps today the elements of the PLO are. So, who is better able to try and bring in another person into the peace process than someone who has made the change that Egypt has made? Do you think Mr. Arafat is still a popular leader among the Palestinians themselves? Well, this is what we need to find out. I cannot believe that that radical group that, under the influence of the Syrians, created all this tragedy around Tripoli and the innocent people that were killed because of the violence of that battle I cannot believe that the millions of Palestinians are going to choose that leadership.


ENTITY, on a slightly different subject, you mentioned that due to our arms buildup, that brought the Soviets to the negotiating table. And now we have had a breakdown in the arms talks, and there seems to be an increased level of tension. Do you think we are at a confrontation state with the Soviets? And what do you see as the chance of an arms accord in 1984? Well, we are going to keep on with that. They said they would not set a date yet for the resumption of these talks. On INF they just walked out. On the INF talks they just walked out. Yes, but since then there have been statements to the fact that they just are not ready and that they are unwilling at this point to set a date. I believe they will be back, and I believe we are further from a confrontation possibility because of the deterrent capability of the United States and our allies at this point. I think there was a far more unstable condition when we had let our own strength deteriorate to the point that there was a window of vulnerability. And I would like to call your attention to one thing. The SALT talks, actually, were not arms reductions; they were supposed to be setting a ceiling on how many more weapons would be built. But in these negotiations, even though the Soviets were not as forthcoming as we would like to have had them be, they still did make a couple of offers to reduce the number of their weapons. Now, that is the first time they have ever done that in any negotiations, in all these previous 19 attempts. And I think that now that they see that we are determined to maintain our own ability to defend ourselves, and our allies with us are included in that, I think that they have to see that these negotiations are in their interest as well as ours. Do you have any signals that they are actually planning to come back? Or are you just looking at it from your what you see as common sense? I think the things that we have heard. I think that this is, you might say, almost a part of the negotiating process. Their whole principal move over this last year or so has been an effort to stop the deployment of the intermediate-range weapons that were asked for by NATO. And the fact that we are going ahead, this, maybe, could be tied to that as still, you might say, an element of negotiating. But we are going to proceed with the installation of those weapons.


And you do not think it is 3 minutes to 12, the doomsday clock? Well, maybe the scientists know more about science. And from the standpoint of the power of the weapons, yes, they are more powerful; they are more destructive on both sides than they were before. And maybe looking at it from a scientist's viewpoint, that moves up their doomsday clock. But they are not involved in the diplomatic and political end of this as we are. But, sir, you only have 3 really, 3 minutes now to make a decision on war and peace according to the nuclear scientists. Well, now, Helen, in the Bible were not we told that a long period of time was only a moment or even a second to God? I do not know what their 3 minutes refers to. I know it does not refer to 3 minutes. On their doomsday clock, each minute on that clock is that weeks? But, no, I believe that actually and I can understand their feeling all that they hear and, forgive me, but a lot of the editorial content is that, Oh, there are great tensions. There has been, let us say, more heat in rhetoric. At the time that the rhetoric was being used from both sides, our negotiators were sitting there at the table negotiating. ENTITY, can I come back on the prospects of these talks, these arms talks? There is a lot of concern, especially in Europe, that with the lack of dialog between West and the East, especially as the U.S. is entering an election year if you run for reelection that the Soviets are not likely to help you. How do you see the prospects for some kind of an agreement before the elections? Well, I would hope that the Soviet Union would remember their failure in trying to influence the German election and decide not to go down that road again. But as far as I am concerned, whoever our candidate may be, I do not think any decisions on a subject of this kind should be made on our part, on our side, on the basis of as I said the other night political considerations. We are going to continue to do everything we can to resume and achieve arms reductions, as sizable as we can make them, and ultimately I would hope total elimination of nuclear weapons. They have no real place in a civilized world.


And I have been a little disturbed by the tendency of so many in this country who seem to feel that somehow we are at fault, when they are the ones who left the table without setting a date for return. So, you are not going to make any proposal before Oh, we are in communication. We have not broken off communications. We are not, as we have been portrayed, that the two superpowers are here separated with no contact at all. No, we are in communication with them. And we want to continue these policies that would lead toward reduction of arms and that would lead toward peace. I am prepared to say if the Soviet Government wants peace, there will be no war, because I know for a fact that no other country wants war with the Soviet Union. The ball is really in their court. If they want peace, they can have it. I think the deterrent capability, yes. See, we have a weapon here in the world today, the nuclear weapon, that for the first time in the history of all man's weapons has never resulted in a defensive weapon being created against it. The only thing we have is the knowledge that on both sides the punishment would be more than any nation could afford. If they started it, they would have to be prepared to accept virtually as much punishment as they were administering. And this has kept the peace. I have had some meetings with young people who brought this very subject up, and they are greatly concerned. And I have asked them a question, and I must say they come up with a pretty sound answer. I have said, We are the only ones that have ever used a nuclear weapon in Japan in World War II. Would we have used that weapon if we knew they also had that weapon and could use it back against us? And without fail, every group I have ever said this to has decided that, no, we would never have used the weapon. So, that is the real deterrent to war. Do you think these are sincere moves, or are they propaganda ploys, and do you intend any response to them? I think the situation with them right now is covered by the words of Demosthenes in the Athenian marketplace 2,000 years ago when he said, What man would let another man's words, rather then his deeds, tell him who is at peace and who is at war with him? So, you do not think too much of these gestures then?


And Ambassador Stone has made it plain to them that all they have to do is reinstitute the principles of their own revolution the things that they promised the people they were going to bring about if their revolution succeeded. And they have not done that. They betrayed their own revolution and created a totalitarian state. Well, if you turn Demosthenes around, might the people in Managua not say, We want to see some deeds from the United States. Well, what hostile deeds have they seen? Well, they think of Grenada, for one.  But those rebel forces are part of their own original revolution the people that, once they succeeded, were ousted because they wanted to institute the democratic policies. But they are being armed by us. Well, we set out after the revolution succeeded and prior to my administration, the previous administration immediately started to come to the financial aid, economic aid, to the Sandinista government until it found out that the Sandinista government was not keeping the promise of its revolution. Now, to invoke Grenada, here again I think the words of the Grenadian people themselves, the Governor General, the people of Grenada, our own people who were there and were rescued have revealed this was not an invasion. This was something in the nature of a commando operation, and it was a rescue mission. And the people of Grenada have made it very plain that they feel they, too, were rescued. And the fact that we have withdrawn our combat troops so precipitously, that some of the Grenadians are a little alarmed that they do not think we should have left yet. ENTITY, have you seen the Pentagon report yet, or do you know anything about it? It has not reached me as yet. Well, I am not going to comment until I see it. Do you have any you do not really have any idea what is in it? No more than I read in the papers. Do you think that a lot of people are going to suffer from it? I just Helen, I just cannot comment until I see it. We have all heard that it in some way criticizes everyone in the chain of command. Do you philosophically, or in any way, feel that that chain of command is-you are at the top of it in this case and you bear some of that responsibility? As Commander in Chief, the operation could not have gone forward without my approval. And so, in that sense, I think the investigation was being very thorough.


ENTITY, in Lebanon, ENTITY Pertini of Italy today called for a withdrawal of the Italian contingent of the multinational force. Apparently there have been 15 countries who were asked to join that force and who have refused. Are you not concerned that the United States, by siding with Israel, is going to end up alone in Lebanon? I think that there was a not completely thorough statement of our meeting with Prime Minister Shamir. It was portrayed, and many people saw it, as somehow arriving at some new coalition with them, and even the word conspiracy was used by some in there. But, no, there was a reaffirmation by us of what our relationship with Israel has been since 1948. And we discussed this not from any standpoint of Israel and its relationship with Arab countries, in the sense of taking their part in anything of that kind. We are dedicated to the idea of trying, if we can, to act as a friend to both the Arab States and Israel in settling those longtime disputes and bringing about the kind of peace that we find between Egypt and Israel now. I would have wished from the very first for a U.N. force. But what has prevented it? If you look at the UNIFIL force that is presently in the south of Lebanon, it is so bound by restrictions that were imposed in order to get the Soviet Union vote that it literally is helpless to do anything. Well, I could still hope that the Soviet Union now would recognize the value of having a U.N. force in there. And as I say, we would have preferred this from the very first, but it was something that could not be obtained. I was asking, are not you concerned of the growing reluctance of your allies to assume part of the burden in Lebanon? Well, we have been in communication. And I think that they understand better now, because we were just as forthright in talking to Prime Minister Shamir about our intentions in our dealings with the Arab States and the things that we were going to do in linkage with them. All of this aimed at being able if a mediator can be of use in that peace process that we proposed to ensure a fair solution to the problems. We have no plan that we are going to impose. That would be wrong of us to go in and say, Here is the peace plan. And someplace there has to be a balance in there in which one is traded for the other. But that is up to them to negotiate.


ENTITY, I think it would be helpful to establish some of the facts, I have a couple broader questions for you. So, number one, yes or no, did the President direct Rod Rosenstein to write this memo on James Comey? No, the President had lost -- again, like I said, he'd lost confidence in Director Comey, and, frankly, he'd been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected. But he did have a conversation with the Deputy Attorney General on Monday, where they had come to him to express their concerns. The President asked they put those concerns and their recommendation in writing, which is the letter that you guys have received. So it is the White House's assertion that Rod Rosenstein decided on his own, after being confirmed, to review Comey's performance? And I think most of America had decided on their own that Director Comey was not the person that should be leading the FBI, as evidenced by the numerous comments that we have seen from Democrat members in the House and Senate, Republican members, members of the FBI, and people across the board. Since we are establishing the facts -- Senator Dianne Feinstein said she was told something different directly from the President. The President said he asked Rosenstein and Sessions to review this. He asked them for their recommendation, based on the conversation that they had on Monday. He asked them to put that recommendation in writing. But they came to him on his own. And again, the President had lost confidence in Comey from the day he was elected. On May 3rd, Sean came out and said that the President had full confidence in his FBI Director? Why did he say that? Look, I think -- again, he is questioned Director Comey's reason for needing to stay at the FBI. He had countless conversations with members from within the FBI. Then why did the President -- -- and that is simply not allowed. And somebody like the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein -- who everybody across the board has unequivocally said, this guy is a man of upstanding character and essentially the gold standard at the Department of Justice -- when you take an action like that, when you go around the chain of command in the Department of Justice, then you have to make steps and take action to make a recommendation to the President. And that is what he did. Does it have to do with the investigation into Russia?

Donald J. Trump Press Briefing by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders


How do you respond to those criticisms? We will come back to that, I am sure. Until you said from the podium just now that the President lost confidence in him over the last weeks and months, we had thought that this was all Rosenstein's doing. When was it that the President lost confidence in James Comey? I think it is been an erosion of confidence. I think that Director Comey has shown over the last several months and, frankly, the last year, a lot of missteps and mistakes. And certainly I think that, as you have seen from many of the comments from Democrat members, including Senator Schumer, they did not think he should be there, they thought he should be gone. Frankly, I think it is startling that Democrats are not celebrating this since they have been calling for it for so long. Do not forget, and I have another one I need to ask you, too. To follow on that, you said that he made a lot of missteps and mistakes. Back at the end of October, this President was applauding the FBI Director when he reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. So he seemed quite happy with him at that point. Well, I think the President's position. One he was a candidate for President, not the President. Once you take over leading the Department of Justice that is very different than being a candidate in a campaign. As you guys all know, there is a very clear distinction between those two things. I think also having a letter like the one that he received and having that conversation that outlined the basic just atrocities in circumventing the chain of command in the Department of Justice. Any person of legal mind in authority knows what a big deal that is, particularly in the Department of Justice, particularly for somebody like the Deputy Attorney General, who has been part of the Justice Department for 30 years and is such a respected person -- when he saw that, he had to speak up on that action, and I think that was the final catalyst. The President is accused by Democrats of trying to circumvent the Russia investigation by firing Comey; he meets with the Russian Foreign Minister and the Russian Ambassador to the United States. He is accused of being Nixonian; he meets with Richard Nixon's Secretary of State. The timing of all of this, is it just ironic or is this the President poking a finger in his critic's eye?


Look, these were meetings that have been on the books for a while. I think, frankly, the saddest thing is that the Democrats are trying to politicize and take away from something that the President should be doing. He should be meeting with the Foreign Minister. He should be meeting with people like Kissinger. And for them to try to attack him for doing his job, -- maybe they should spent a little more time doing their jobs, and we would not have all the problems that we do. ENTITY, is not it true that the President had already decided to fire James Comey, and he asked the Justice Department to put together the rationale for that firing? When did he make the decision? He made the decision for -- the final decision to move forward with it was yesterday. But I know that he is been contemplating it for a while. But how do you explain what Dianne Feinstein says, that the President told her that he was concerned with the mess at the FBI and asked the Justice Department to look into it? I cannot speak for Senator Feinstein, but I did speak directly to the President and heard directly from him that he, again, had been considering letting Director Comey go pretty much since the day he took office, but that there was no request by him to have a review at the Department of Justice. But was the reason for the firing what was written by the Deputy Attorney General? Is that why he did it? That was, I think, the final piece that moved the President to make that quick and decisive action yesterday. What did he mean in the letter that he wrote informing Comey that he was being fired -- he said, on three separate occasions Comey had told him that I am not under investigation. What were those three occasions that the FBI Director told the President that he was not under investigation? I am not going to get into the specifics of their conversations, but I can tell you that Director Comey relayed that information to the President. Following up on that, ENTITY, did the President ask Direct Comey whether he was under investigation when they were -- when they had these meetings? Again, I am not going to go into the specifics of their conversations. Is the White House concerned that -- he obviously made a decision to stick that in the letter and to make that public. Are there any concerns that it was inappropriate that they had that type of a conversation?


How important was the FBI Director's failure to stop the leaks coming out of the FBI to the President? I think that is probably one of the many factors. You cannot deny somebody -- that that was not a problem. And so I think that was just another one of the many reasons that he no longer had the confidence of the President or the rest of the FBI. Can we expect more firings from the Justice Department? Going forward, does the President want the Department of Justice to shut down what he is called a taxpayer-funded charade investigation? He wants them to continue with whatever they see appropriate and sees fit, just the same as he is encouraged the House and Senate committees to continue any ongoing investigations. Look, the bottom line is any investigation that was happening on Monday is still happening today. And, in fact, we encourage them to complete this investigation so we can put it behind us and we can continue to see exactly what we have been saying for nearly a year, there is no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. And we'd love for that to be completed so that we can all move on and focus on the things that, frankly, I think most of Americans are concerned with. Even if they keep on wasting taxpayer money, he wants it to continue? Look, nobody wants to waste taxpayer money. I think the President has made a priority of this. That is another reason we'd love for it to come to completion. But at the same time, I know that you all will not let this go until it does. Let us put it behind us. Let us move on, and let us focus on what we need to do to turn our country around. One, was the White House aware at the time of this decision and announcement that grand jury subpoenas in the case of Michael Flynn had just gone out? Do you know anything about that process? I'd have to refer you to -- And does the White House believe that if these FBI investigations are going to proceed in these allegations of Russian interference, do you support continued funding, and support who to lead that investigation? Who is going to be running that right now? Right now I believe that would fall to the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein. And we are incredibly confident in his abilities, as I believe you can tell by the rest of the Senate, including many Democrats, are as well.


Given the fact that he was confirmed 94 to 6 and had overwhelming praise from both sides of the aisle, I think there is complete confidence in him. And another reason, frankly, for Director Comey to be out of the way so that they can have somebody leading this effort that everybody across the board has respect and confidence in. Nobody wants this to be finished and completed more than us so that we can focus on what we need to do here. ENTITY, the President said -- or excuse me -- Sean Spicer said just a week ago today the President has confidence in the Director. So, again, I am sorry for not understanding this, but what has happened in the last seven days to shake the confidence? Was Sean lying at that point? Or did something happen in the last seven days? Of course, you'd love to add that in. Again, I think one of the big things that took place was the process in the hearing on Wednesday where, again -- not to sound like a broken record, but since you guys keep asking the same questions, I guess it is only fair that I keep giving the same answers -- but you have somebody, the Director of the FBI, who reports to the Deputy Attorney General, going around the chain of command. That is not something that is allowed in the justice system, nor should it be. That, along with the corrections that had to take place over the last, I believe, 48 hours, those are all big problems and another, I think, kind of final piece that pushed the President to make the decision that he did. Does he regret not doing it earlier, like on January 20th or January 21st? No, I believe the President wanted to give Director Comey a chance, but he feels that he made the right decision, certainly. Why did he do as he did it, if I could ask? Why did he have one of his long-time security advisors hand-deliver a letter to the FBI when the FBI Director was, in fact, in Los Angeles? Did not he deserve a phone call or a face-to-face conversation? Why did he decide to do it like that? He followed the proper protocol in that process, which is a handwritten notification. And at the same time, no matter how you fire someone, it is never an easy process, and so he felt like following protocol was the best thing to do. Does he plan to speak to him? I am not aware of that conversation.


Was the President aware that James Comey asked for more resources in the Russia investigation? And did that factor into his decision to get rid of Mr. Comey, the Director? Not that I am aware of, and I think that would be a better question for the Department of Justice. Can I ask a follow-up? On the campaign trail, President Trump frequently said lock her up, and he criticized the Department of Justice for not being harsh enough on Hillary Clinton. He actually praised Director Comey in October for having the guts to reopen the investigation. Why was he moved by a letter that said that Director Comey was, if anything, too harsh on Hillary Clinton? Why does that move the President to fire him? Again, I think you are looking at two very different positions. The President was wearing a different hat at that time. And again, when you go around the chain of command in the Department of Justice, when you, like I said before, throw a stick of dynamite into the Department of Justice, that is a big problem and it is one that cannot be ignored. But he already knew that, did not he, ENTITY? He already knew what Mr. Comey had done. I think that this was -- my understanding is Wednesday was the first time the Director had openly and publicly made that statement and made that clear. The statement today on the President's meeting with Foreign Minister Lavrov did not include anything on the reported incidents of violence in Chechnya against people in the LGBT community. Is the reason why that was not included in the readout is because the President is not informed on the issue? Is the reason why that was not included in the readout is because the President is not informed about the reports of anti-gay violence in Chechnya? Look, I mean a lot of times there are parts of the conversation that are not specifically included in a readout. But I am not aware -- I have not had that conversation, so I do not know. I was not part of that meeting, so I cannot speak to every detail. And I'd have to refer you to the readout on the specifics of what I know was discussed. Has the President been briefed on this issue generally? Has the President been briefed on this issue generally? That is something I will have to get back to you on. You said you want the Russia investigation to continue at DOJ.