Jan. 24, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
01:32:53
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| I want to make a comment. | ||
| Wait for the president. | ||
| We're monitoring all the mainstream media here in the mobile war room. | ||
| MSNBC and NBC News is waiting at the briefing for where the roundtable is going to be, Brian Glenn. | ||
| You're there with the action right now about to get in the motorcade, and they put NBC News and MSNBC is waiting at the first briefing spot. | ||
| I think it's incredibly symbolic. | ||
| That the White House communications team has allowed the streaming services and the podcast to have kind of the front row seat today, Brian Glenn. | ||
| It is, and we'll see what their coverage is at these actual areas where you might hear more of the people on the ground talk about how they're still waiting for the government to help them. | ||
| So maybe they want... | ||
| Let's just let this play out. | ||
| President Trump and First Lady stepping off Air Force One. | ||
| Here in Asheville, North Carolina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let's listen in. Let's listen | |
| in. Let's listen in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I was just going to say... | ||
| Yeah, local officials. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| As he steps off, obviously, that's typically what he does. | ||
| He'll greet the ones here on the ground. | ||
| I would imagine these individuals will be meeting him at this first stop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Just only imagine that. | ||
| But this is typical, and we'll see if we get a little bit of reaction. | ||
| I want to observe... | ||
| I want to observe... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I want to observe that the First Lady is stylish as ever. | ||
| So stylish from the inauguration with the hat and just so elegant. | ||
| And then that night, the ball. | ||
| But look at this. | ||
| She's getting ready to go tour a disaster area with her Parker on, etc. | ||
| Once again, stealing the show, as she is wont to do. | ||
| The president there talking to the local officials, getting a quick brief. | ||
| Getting a quick brief. | ||
| Before he will get in the he'll get in the motorcade right there and they will go to this they will go to the first thing will be the roundtable correct Brian? | ||
| That is correct. | ||
| A roundtable of sorts. | ||
| I think they're going to meet with some local officials here in the area, probably hear from people who live here in this area as well. | ||
| But then he'll go over to actually see some of the devastation that we have seen play out across our TV screens after September 27th, when this storm just came through this area and dumped biblical proportions of rain and really washed away. | ||
| Literally wash away towns right in front of our eyes. | ||
| And Ben Borkholm has said earlier, you can still go to some of these places and have eight feet of mud inside a business, inside a home. | ||
| I don't know how they simply ever rebuild. | ||
| But this is the priority of this president right now. | ||
| It is helping. | ||
| The American people, it is listening to what they want and what they need at this desperate time. | ||
| And, of course, when he wraps it up here in North Carolina, he'll head over west to go to Pacific's Polisades and tour the disaster there. | ||
| We all know a lot of it has been through failed policies that have allowed these fires to burn like they have. | ||
| But look, all politics aside, this president is for the American people, and you're seeing it right now in display here in North Carolina, Steve. | ||
| I believe that's Governor Stein, the new governor of North Carolina, I think to the far right. | ||
| I think it's Governor Stein talking to the president right now. | ||
| The president will meet whoever the senior officials are. | ||
| Obviously this afternoon with Newsom, it's going to be a little controversial, but North Carolina is a Trump country. | ||
| Although President Trump won heartily, the rest of the ticket was run by Democrats, and Governor Stein is the new Democratic governor. | ||
| I believe that's Governor Stein right there talking to the president with other local officials. | ||
| The president always comes down and wants to get a quick brief, find out what's going on, let people speak their piece. | ||
| He'll view it. | ||
| Like I said, management by walking around, President Trump is a specialist in. | ||
| You see right there, kind of animated, talking about what's going on, hearing back. | ||
| He's going to be very engaged in all this. | ||
| He's hands-on. | ||
| He'll wander around that classic management by wandering around. | ||
| He looks like he's walking over here for a second. | ||
| Brian, turn it back over to you. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| All right, let's see if we can't get a few minutes with him. | ||
| I'll put the microphones out and let's listen in with President Trump. | ||
| Well, thank you very much. | ||
| Everybody thought I was going to California. | ||
| I said, no, no. | ||
| I'm stopping in North Carolina first because they've been abused. | ||
| By what's happened. | ||
| I mean, it's terrible. | ||
| It should have been done. | ||
| It should have been. | ||
| A lot of things should have happened that didn't happen. | ||
| So we're here. | ||
| We're going to fix it out. | ||
| We're working with the gentleman behind me. | ||
| And you know who they are. | ||
| And we're going to fix it. | ||
| And we're going to fix it as fast as you can. | ||
| It's a massive amount of damage. | ||
| FEMA has really let us down. | ||
| Let the country down. | ||
| And I don't know if that's Biden's fault or whose fault it is. | ||
| But we're going to take over it. | ||
| We're going to do a good job. | ||
| We're going to assign Mr. Watley, who's fantastic, frankly, and the governor and everybody else that's going to work. | ||
| We're going to supply the money, supply a lot of the money. | ||
| Maybe you have to chip in something. | ||
|
unidentified
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You'll chip in a little something, like maybe 25 percent or whatever. | |
| But we're going to get it done as quickly as we can. | ||
| And we want to take care of the people of North Carolina. | ||
| It's so interesting. | ||
| Everybody's talking about California, and that's a mess. | ||
| But I said, I'm not going to California until I stop in North Carolina. | ||
| So here we are. | ||
| We're going to go visit the site, and we're going to work with probably three of the congressmen, Republican congressmen, who have been fantastic, whose areas have been affected. | ||
| And with Michael Watley, the governor, and whoever else is You know, we decide to get involved. | ||
| Probably less FEMA, because FEMA just hasn't done the job. | ||
| And we're looking at the whole concept of FEMA. I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. | ||
| When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it, meaning the state takes care of it. | ||
| To have a group of people come in from an area that don't even know where they're going in order to solve immediately a problem is something that never worked for me. | ||
| But this is probably one of the best examples of it not working. | ||
| And there's been some others, like in Louisiana, etc. | ||
| So we're going to be doing something on FEMA that I think most people agree. | ||
| I'd like to see the states take care of disasters. | ||
| Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen. | ||
| And I think you're going to find it a lot less expensive. | ||
| You'll do it for less than half. | ||
| And you're going to get a lot quicker response. | ||
| So that seems to be the recommendation, but we'll be making that recommendation over the next couple of weeks. | ||
| We're going to go to the site now, and we're going to figure out a plan for really demolition and cleaning, because not a lot's been done. | ||
| And we're very disappointed in the Biden administration, but we're going to make up for lost time. | ||
| And I said I'd do that, and this is about the earliest we could possibly be here. | ||
| And we're honored to be here. | ||
| This has been a great state. | ||
| They're great people, and they've really been mishandled. | ||
| But it's all — this group is going to be great, and we're going to get it taken care of. | ||
| Any questions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you make those changes to FEMA, do you expect to ask Congress for additional aid for North Carolina and California? | |
| In other words, the aid will go through us. | ||
| So rather than going through FEMA, it will go through us. | ||
| And I think maybe this is a good place to start. | ||
| Because, and in all fairness to the governor and all fairness to everybody else, FEMA was not on the ball. | ||
| And we're going to turn it all around. | ||
| A lot of Americans think that this is symbolic of what your campaign was all about. | ||
| America first, putting your priorities. | ||
| To Americans. | ||
| Even going to California where their policies might have been one of the biggest reasons why they've had these problems. | ||
| But you're putting American people first. | ||
| Your thoughts on that? | ||
| We are. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I like that question. | ||
| Boy, I want more questions like that. | ||
| That's even a statement. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| He's a good man, that guy. | ||
| And he's also a very professional reporter, I have to say. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're putting America first. | ||
| We're putting, in this case... | ||
| North Carolina and California, we're going to do a good job in California. | ||
| That is a disaster like, I don't know if we've ever seen anything like it, frankly. | ||
| They say the biggest in the history of California, I think, has anything bigger than that happened in the whole country, ever. | ||
| It looks like, I don't want to say what it looks like, but you know what I'm going to say. | ||
| It looks like something hit it. | ||
| And we won't talk about what hit it, but it is a bad, bad situation. | ||
| And I guess I'm going to meet with some government officials. | ||
| But I mean, much more importantly. | ||
| And in California, just to revert to it for a second, millions of gallons of water are waiting to be poured down through already the half pipes that are already built. | ||
| I mean, they've been up for 40 years. | ||
| And about 20 years ago, they turned off the water. | ||
| And it's the water that comes from the Pacific Northwest. | ||
| Some of it comes out of Canada, and it flows there, and it probably has flowed there for a million years. | ||
| And they turned it off and they routed out to the Pacific. | ||
| And in the meantime, you don't have water in the hydrants. | ||
| You don't have water in the sprinkler systems. | ||
| It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. | ||
| And everyone's trying to figure out why aren't they turning it back. | ||
| They say it's the Delta smelt and say fish. | ||
| But I find that hard to believe. | ||
|
unidentified
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But we'll figure it out. | |
| And without doing that, you're going to continue to have problems. | ||
|
unidentified
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The Pressure President, what are you prepared to do, sir, if OPEC doesn't respond to your call to cut oil prices? | |
| Well, we want to see OPEC cut the price of oil, and that will automatically stop the tragedy that's taking place in Ukraine. | ||
| It's a butchering tragedy for both sides, by the way. | ||
| A tremendous number of Russian soldiers are dead, a tremendous number of Ukrainian soldiers, and a lot of people are dead from the bombing of the cities. | ||
| But right now, it's just bullets whacking and hitting men, mostly men, almost in all cases men. | ||
| And over a million men are killed. | ||
| And they're losing thousands of people a week. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's a crazy war. | ||
| And it never would have happened if I was president. | ||
| It would never have happened. | ||
| This is crazy that it happened. | ||
| But we want to stop it. | ||
| Now, one way to stop it quickly is for OPEC to stop making so much money and to drop the price of oil. | ||
| Because they have it nice and high. | ||
| And if you have it high, that war's not going to end so easily. | ||
| So OPEC ought to get on the ball, and they're going to drop the price of oil, and that war will stop right away. | ||
|
unidentified
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Is it possible funding to Los Angeles because of its sanctuary city policy? | |
| I want to see two things in Los Angeles. | ||
| Voter ID, so that the people have a chance to vote. | ||
| And I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state. | ||
| Those are the two things. | ||
| After that, I will be The greatest president that California has ever seen. | ||
| I want the water to come down and come down to Los Angeles and also go out to all the farmland that's barren and dry. | ||
| You know, they have land that they say is the equivalent of the land in Iowa, which is... | ||
| About as good as there is anywhere on Earth. | ||
| The problem is it's artificial because they artificially stop the water from going onto the land. | ||
| So I want two things. | ||
| I want voter ID for the people of California. | ||
| They all want it. | ||
| Right now you don't have voter ID. People want to have voter identification. | ||
| You want to have proof of citizenship. | ||
| Ideally, you have one-day voting, but I just want voter ideas to start, and I want the water to be released, and they're going to get a lot of help from the U.S. Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. President. | ||
| I'll see you at the site. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| See you at the site. | ||
|
unidentified
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Tell us more about the deportation flights. | |
| Where are they going from? | ||
| Where are they? | ||
| Well, deportation's going very well. | ||
| We're getting the bad, hard criminals out. | ||
| These are murderers. | ||
| These are people that have been, as bad as you get, as bad as anybody you've seen, we're taking them out first. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you, press. | |
| Move through the grass. | ||
| Steve, we're going to transition over to the grass to get in our press van. | ||
| So bear with us. | ||
| You might have a little bit of a... | ||
| A shaky camera. | ||
| The President, you know, taking some questions as we thought he would take. | ||
| A wide variety of topics, Steve. | ||
| Everything from what's going on here in North Carolina to what's happening in California. | ||
| Obviously a little bit about the immigration as well. | ||
| OPEC making its top. | ||
| We're going to run a little bit, Steve. | ||
| We've been told to pick up the pace here. | ||
| But this is happening live. | ||
| This is what it is, Steve. | ||
| This is what it's like to be on the ground. | ||
| And this is something that, like we said earlier, unprecedented coverage. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay, Brian, we're going to come right back to you in the motorcade. | |
| If we can get an overall shot of just where President Trump is in the motorcade, can we take the feed from that? | ||
| If not, that's fine. | ||
| Real America's Voice live coverage. | ||
| We're going to be in the press pool with our own camera, not taking a press feed. | ||
| They're going to be in the motorcade, and then Brian will be actually with the president. | ||
| I gotta tell you, Brian asked a fantastic question. | ||
| It was just absolutely right on dead spot. | ||
| Here's what I love about the president. | ||
| These are called press avails. | ||
| When the president would just come up and there's nothing been pre-said. | ||
| It's not a press conference. | ||
| Let's go back and get that footage. | ||
| Let's get the footage from Brian if we just cut in. | ||
| There we go right there. | ||
| Brian Glenn and the press getting ready to jump in into the motorcade, follow the president. | ||
| And like I said, there's restrictions on what you... | ||
| Once you're in the motorcade, they don't want you putting the camera out, and it's normally straight ahead. | ||
| Down back where they came from, you can see right there, the plane, that's Air Force One. | ||
| That's the motorcade president's just gotten in. | ||
| Looked like the Governor Stein, Michael Watley's head of the RNC. Michael Watley was head of the North Carolina GOP. That's what Michael's... | ||
| He knows this area cold. | ||
| They're going to be congressmen, local Republican congressmen when the president gets there. | ||
| Press avails. | ||
| Let's talk about it. | ||
| The president did too. | ||
| Walked out this morning out of the White House, answers a bunch of questions on all topics. | ||
| He'll take all comers right there. | ||
| Took questions on OPEC, which is tied to this, the price of gold is tied to his strategy for getting out of Ukraine. | ||
| Talked about the deportations. | ||
| President taking a question, I think, Brian Glenn's question. | ||
| Greatly appreciated by the president because it, you know, it's not, he's not trying to be snarky. | ||
| As President Trump said, a wise guy. | ||
| You have a lot of these press folks just want to be wise guys. | ||
| They want to ask an edgy, cheap-shot question and try to get some reaction out of the president or try to get something they can put in a clip and have 30 seconds on Rachel Maddow. | ||
| The president will take any question you've got, and he'll give you a well-thought-through answer. | ||
| But he does not appreciate wise guys, and you can see them all the time. | ||
| The questions are all snarky and all trying to put... | ||
| Somebody on their back heel. | ||
| It's very tough to put President Trump on his back heel. | ||
| Okay, motorcade is leaving. | ||
| Right there you see the main part of it. | ||
| That is what we call the beast. | ||
| And those are all heavily armored SUVs or equipment, what we call it. | ||
| Now you see the antennas up on some of those SUVs. | ||
| That's because they have special anti-drone technology associated with it. | ||
| And this is the... | ||
| This is the press right there. | ||
| Brian Glenn will be getting into a moment. | ||
| His mic will be cut back on. | ||
| Okay, here's what we know. | ||
| The President of the United States has landed. | ||
| The President of the United States has landed in Western North Carolina at Asheville, North Carolina. | ||
| He is currently, after making a statement and taking a few questions on this trip today to put America first and show America's citizens that they are first, most importantly, the forgotten men and women. | ||
| And here's what's interesting. | ||
| The failure of FEMA under the Biden regime has been felt... | ||
| By hardworking American citizens in Appalachia, that part of Georgia, Western North Carolina, East Tennessee, and Virginia, that's one of the backbones and real heartlands of this country. | ||
| It cannot be anything but done on purpose. | ||
| Even FEMA's not that uncommon. | ||
| But the president's come up as the motorcade starts to leave and goes to the first. | ||
| It will be a roundtable where he'll actually meet officials, maybe some local folks, have a chance to ask some questions. | ||
| He's very upset, obviously, with FEMA, the structure of FEMA. He said right there he would rather have the money go directly to governors, give it right to the governor of North Carolina to handle this situation. | ||
| That'd be Governor Stein, a Democrat who just won an election, or give it to Governor DeSantis if it's a hurricane in Florida, but just kind of cut out the middleman, really what's the function of FEMA. In addition, I think he compared and contrast really yesterday's Davos to coming here and he said his first trip he wanted to go and make sure he emphasized that it's America first. | ||
| Here's the president again. | ||
| Let's go right to it. | ||
| Steve, let's just go. | ||
| We're just going to listen in on this. | ||
| Just listen in. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're here to get a hurricane mess all set, okay? | |
| It should have been done a long time ago. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for solving that problem. | |
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
| Melania, you look beautiful. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're a beautiful first lady. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| We appreciate you. | ||
| I'm shaking. | ||
| Did you shake hands with him? | ||
| I wish I could have recorded it. | ||
| You guys should have got pictures for me. | ||
| You shook Trump's hand. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| He did too much. | ||
| President Trump, having a moment with a couple fans here. | ||
| I just saw a mom and her young son have a nice moment because he shook hands with the president and he obviously was very excited about that. | ||
| And just a moment and just the admiration, Steve, that people have for First Lady Melania. | ||
| Just how graceful she is. | ||
| How beautiful and poised she is. | ||
| What a classy woman. | ||
| And a lot of fans here for First Lady Melania as well, obviously, with President Trump. | ||
| But just a special moment. | ||
| Let's see if we can get the audio feed. | ||
| Secret Service Haces. | ||
| This is called the Rope Line. | ||
| This will be local supporters. | ||
| Look how deep it is. | ||
| They will let people there. | ||
| All pre-screened. | ||
| Secret Service normally wants to go to the event. | ||
| President Trump traditionally says stop. | ||
| I want to go and see my people. | ||
| That's what he's doing right now. | ||
| He's meeting and agreeing. | ||
| These are average Americans. | ||
| This is the common man and woman that is the backbone of the MAGA movement. | ||
| This is you, this audience, and that crowd right there. | ||
| Let's try to listen to President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can we hear it? | |
| He's a little ways from us, Steve. | ||
| I don't think I have any audio in that direction. | ||
| But as he walks back over here, maybe we will. | ||
| But right now, he's just a little too far from our microphones right now. | ||
| So the Secret Service traditionally, they're not fans. | ||
| Even though these people have been screened beforehand, the Secret Service doesn't like these impromptu. | ||
| You know, in the moment kind of walk around. | ||
| So the president traditionally, if he sees a group of his supporters that have been brought out to the tarmac, he will traditionally say, hey guys, pull over. | ||
| I want to go over and see my people. | ||
| And this is where Trump's the best, right here. | ||
| Yeah, this is his element. | ||
| You know, this is what he thrives in. | ||
| You know, this is why he won. | ||
| To be honest with you, he connected with the American people, not only on a policy level, but on a personal level. | ||
| And he can identify with everyone. | ||
| He's having a moment right now with a gentleman. | ||
| I can't hear from this distance. | ||
| They're probably about 15 yards away from us at this point. | ||
| But this is why he won. | ||
| And, you know, obviously he is going to meet just about every single person here he is saying hi to for the most part. | ||
| And just a beautiful moment here. | ||
| Played out on the runway. | ||
| Cars have already left. | ||
| So just really the few heavily armored secure cars that President Trump will get into are here. | ||
| So he's just going to step in these two vehicles. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| But here's the key. | ||
| Yeah, but here's the key. | ||
| Brian, here's the key that he'll just tell the secret. | ||
| So he'll just tell the driver, hey, I want to pull over and let's just head left. | ||
| Of course, Cassie Hutchinson accused him of grabbing the wheel. | ||
| And like he says, it's armored. | ||
| There's glass between it. | ||
| It's ridiculous. | ||
| It's absurd. | ||
| But President Trump will tell the Secret Service, hey guys, I want to go over and see my people. | ||
| And the main car and a couple of other support cars will pull over and Trump will be in the crowd. | ||
| Now, this drives the Secret Service crazy. | ||
| They don't like this. | ||
| Even though these people have been pre-screened and obviously gone through. | ||
| But it's an impromptu, non-scheduled event. | ||
| And obviously, also... | ||
| For the timing of the day, remember, he's still got to get to Los Angeles, and he wanted to do that during as much daylight hours as possible. | ||
| So for the staff, I can tell you, people right now are working their phones, telling people in L.A., hey, look, this is going to take a little longer. | ||
| I know the president is going to ask a bunch of questions. | ||
| So he's on the tarmac with his fans. | ||
| He's going to go to a roundtable where he has some officials, maybe some other people. | ||
| Then he'll actually go to one of the sites. | ||
| And it's already, you know, it's already 11.30 a.m. | ||
| Eastern Standard Time. | ||
| That's 8.30 on the Pacific Coast. | ||
| President Trump will be here at least another hour or two. | ||
| Real America's Voice coverage is going to go right to the Charlie Kirk show, Jack Posobiec, all of it. | ||
| And because this is, you know, this is important. | ||
| It's the president's first trip. | ||
| He's sending a statement by being here. | ||
| He's saying, hey, I didn't go to Davos. | ||
| I phoned it in. | ||
| I gave him video. | ||
| Because I read them the riot act, and they can just take my words as they take them, but I want to spend my time with my people. | ||
| And he's going to North Carolina, and I think he's extraordinary. | ||
| The heart-rendering stories, Brian, that Ben Berquam and the team last week, or 10 days ago, got were heart-wrenching. | ||
| Right, absolutely heart-wrenching. | ||
| And you see the connection President Trump has. | ||
| I mean, how many politicians have we ever had in the history of this country that have such a direct and powerful connection to the American people? | ||
| Right there, that's the little guy. | ||
| There are no swells in that crowd. | ||
| That's not people that can pay for the big tables or write big checks. | ||
| These are people, this is the war room posse right there, Brian Glenn. | ||
| Yeah, these are the small donors. | ||
| These are the millions of small donors that sent that $25 donation into the president. | ||
| Here we are. | ||
| Listen, he's starting to make his way back this way. | ||
| But these are the grassroots. | ||
| This is the war room posse. | ||
| This is the people that said, we've had enough of what's going on in this country and we want you in office. | ||
| And he still, every time you think he's going to walk this way, he stops Steve and talks to somebody else. | ||
| And that's just who he is. | ||
| He is not going to leave this area without making everyone here feel extra special and that he took the time to say hello. | ||
| And that's why his favorability, First Lady, is waving to him. | ||
| As much as he loves the rallies, he loves this even more. | ||
| He's in direct contact with his greatest supporters, right? | ||
| This is not the Tech Billionaires. | ||
| This is not the Wall Street guys. | ||
| This is not... | ||
| There he is right there. | ||
| Let's try listening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Okay. | ||
| We've been told we've got a break. | ||
| We're going to run a little bit, Steve. | ||
| We've got to run to one of the press vans here. | ||
| Like I said, if you can still hear me audio right now, we're going to have a taillight shot for a while, and then we're going to break it down, and we'll pop back up whenever we get to the first location. | ||
| Just so you know, we'll be back live on the ground here in North Carolina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Steve. | |
| Okay, Brian, get in the vehicle and get set up. | ||
| Now you see one of the many reasons I'm not in the field today. | ||
| I don't know if I could make that sprint. | ||
| My producer, Harry, might be able to make it, but I don't know if I could. | ||
| Harry could be carrying that camera right next to him. | ||
| I might be a little winded. | ||
| Okay, we are in western North Carolina. | ||
| The president of the United States, on his first trip, has gone to see his people. | ||
| He is in western North Carolina. | ||
| He's lying at the Asheville Airport. | ||
| A few comments. | ||
| They met officials, the governor and Michael Watley, the head of the RNC. Looked like another local official, I'm sure, tied to the disaster relief. | ||
| Governor Stein looked like he was there. | ||
| First ladies with the president, they came and asked a few questions and came to the tarmac once again and took questions from the press, as he did at the White House today. | ||
| And these questions go everywhere from the Ukraine war and OPEC prices. | ||
| It might be pretty interesting. | ||
| The Financial Times of London had that as their lead today that President Trump demands that... | ||
| That OPEC cut oil prices as part of his grand strategy to end the Ukraine war. | ||
| And also that the Federal Reserve and central banks cut their interest rates. | ||
| Why is he on OPEC to cut prices? | ||
| He's on OPEC to cut prices. | ||
| This is how we brought down the Soviet Union. | ||
| In the Cold War, President Reagan basically put pressure on the Saudis to cut dramatically, to increase production and dramatically cut prices because the cash flow to the Soviet Union, the cash flow to the KGB that runs Russia today is tied to natural gas and oil. | ||
| So that will put tremendous pressure on Putin to actually come to the negotiating table and let President Trump get the deal that he feels he needs to get done. | ||
| He reiterated again on the tarmac. | ||
| of the violence and bloodshed in Ukraine. | ||
| And he reiterated, if he had been president of the 2020 election had not been stolen, none of this would have happened. | ||
| Impromptu press conference took a couple of questions. | ||
| Then as he's heading to the roundtable, where he's going to go out into the kind of area where the most damage is, and they'll normally have like a high school, you know, where you can go to a conference room or some local building you get in. | ||
| And normally it's some sort of roundtable. | ||
| You meet local officials, you get more detailed, intimate feedback. | ||
| And normally they also have some people there. | ||
| They'll be able to give their personal experiences before he then goes and does a walk around to actually see it. | ||
| Management by wandering around, the Tom Peters theory of the late 80s when President Trump was really coming into his own as a real estate developer. | ||
| He's always believed and kind of embodied. | ||
| He loves going around and just getting, I think our shot here is where the round table is going to be right now. | ||
| You're forcing me to put my glasses on. | ||
| Okay, right there. | ||
| It's another look, the more studious look. | ||
| Right there is the round table. | ||
| That's where President Trump is heading to. | ||
| He's a few minutes out. | ||
| President Trump, in leaving the tarmac, does what he often does. | ||
| He'll tell the Secret Service, he goes, hey guys, I see the line over there that's usually a little off from where you actually come down the steps of Air Force One. | ||
| It's off the tarmac a little bit. | ||
| Traditionally, he will say, hey, just pull over there. | ||
| I want to see my people. | ||
| And you saw right there, he'll jump right into the crowd. | ||
| Secret Service hates that. | ||
| Although, as I said, the people are pre-screened. | ||
| Not just pre-screened with your history and your biography and your... | ||
| Checked out. | ||
| You're also screened that day. | ||
| Obviously come through the magnometer and other things, but the Secret Service hates it. | ||
| They hate that impromptu. | ||
| Right there, this is a classic roundtable. | ||
| The president will come down. | ||
| He'll be briefed by officials, local officials on either side. | ||
| Looks like that's outside in a tarmac. | ||
| Am I looking at that correctly? | ||
| I think it is. | ||
| Looks like very impromptu. | ||
| The president's going to be there in a few minutes for a few minutes. | ||
| They want to keep to the closest schedule as possible. | ||
| The president over here, he'll ask a bunch of questions. | ||
| President Trump has this saying, no games. | ||
| He cannot stand it when people are trying to either hold information or trying to play games with him. | ||
| He's very direct. | ||
| He's very straightforward. | ||
| The best thing to do is just give him a straightforward answer. | ||
| Keep it brief. | ||
| If he's got interest, he'll ask you a following question. | ||
| That's kind of what we tell people. | ||
| Just make sure you give him as much information as possible. | ||
| He feeds off information. | ||
| President Trump also, the way his management style is, in a meeting, he does not, you know, people say he talks all the time. | ||
| In a meeting, he says very little. | ||
| He wants the participants, particularly if it's about decisions, he wants the participants to make their case, to put up facts, to back up their assertions with data and information. | ||
| He'll let the sides fight it out. | ||
| He will let people go at it, obviously professionally, but he'll let both sides, and he'll listen. | ||
| He'll listen, he'll ask follow-on questions, and he'll think about it. | ||
| That's the way he processes information. | ||
| I found it very powerful. | ||
| Different chairmen and different CEOs have different styles. | ||
| President Trump is not a briefing book guy. | ||
| I mean, you're not going to sit there with a 100-page briefing book. | ||
| He wants to cut to the chase. | ||
| Tell me what the situation is. | ||
| He wants to see how you formulate and marshal the facts to basically make your case of what the action plan should be amongst a range of alternatives. | ||
| What he really likes to hear from... | ||
| Is not staffers. | ||
| What he really wants to hear from is people in the field, whether it's a cabinet official, somebody working for the cabinet official, National Security Council, or here, a classic example. | ||
| He shows up in North Carolina, and what do you have, and by the way, when Brian's ready with audio, we'll jump back to Brian. | ||
| What you'll see is that he'll meet with the officials at the plane, he'll ask questions. | ||
| I mean, he's there for a reason. | ||
| What's the reason he's there? | ||
| This happened four months ago. | ||
| You know, it was a biblical, you know, in the hills and hollows of Appalachia. | ||
| These rains that came from the hurricane did horrific damage, kind of biblical-type damage. | ||
| They had a situation like this in my youth in the Commonwealth of Virginia. | ||
| My dad is a phone company guy. | ||
| He was very tied up. | ||
| It was called Torn Land, where the hurricane came in, the rains came in, went into the Blue Ridge Mountains. | ||
| It caused massive devastation. | ||
| This is what's happened here in Appalachia. | ||
| I think with the president here today, he's quite upset, and he's going to get answers. | ||
| He wants to know why this is four months. | ||
| You know, Los Angeles just happened. | ||
| There's a different set of questions there of how if policies and things are like, there's the president right there. | ||
| Let's cut and pick this up live. | ||
| Let's pick up the audio. | ||
|
unidentified
|
OK, can we pick up the audio? | |
| Let's go ahead and pick it up. | ||
| One of the things that are very important to me and one of the reasons I'm happy that we won so convincingly is to help North Carolina get fixed up. | ||
| They supported us in record numbers. | ||
| And they had me set. | ||
| I wanted to go to Los Angeles and see what was going on with California, why they aren't releasing the water. | ||
| Millions and millions of gallons of water. | ||
| They're sending it out to the Pacific. | ||
| Someday somebody's going to explain that one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the meantime, they have no water in Los Angeles where they had the problems. | |
| So we're going there, but I said, well, what about North Carolina? | ||
| Well, you can do that. | ||
| No, I can't. | ||
| I said, we're stopping in North Carolina first, and then we're going to Los Angeles. | ||
| And we just appreciate the outpouring of love that we've had here. | ||
| Law was, as you know, very instrumental in the campaign. | ||
| And she lived here and is loved, and we appreciate it. | ||
| And Michael Watley has been incredible, wherever Michael is. | ||
| Hello, Michael. | ||
| Michael Watley has been great, and your congressmen have been great. | ||
| And what we thought we'd do is take a quick look around. | ||
| First, we want to do this. | ||
| I want to say that we're very disappointed. | ||
| In FEMA, your new governor, it's not his fault. | ||
| He's brand new to the whole situation. | ||
| But we're going to work together with the governor, we're going to work together with the senators, but really we're going to work a lot with your congressmen, especially the three that are in the area, and Michael Watley. | ||
| And I'd like to put Michael in charge of making sure everything goes well. | ||
| And Franklin Graham has been unbelievable. | ||
| We've made a big contribution to Franklin. | ||
| And we'll continue to do so. | ||
| But I've been hearing nothing but praise for the job that Samaritan's Purse has done with Franklin. | ||
| And we appreciate it. | ||
| Where is Franklin? | ||
| He's around here someplace. | ||
| And a good-looking guy. | ||
| He's always been a good-looking guy. | ||
| His father was a good-looking guy, too, I'll tell you. | ||
| We loved his father, right? | ||
| I saw his father in the latter years. | ||
| And I said, well... | ||
| He doesn't have long to go. | ||
| He was having a hard time, and he lived about three or four years after that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They say it was good stock. | |
| He had the ultimate good stock. | ||
| But I want to thank you, frankly. | ||
| You've been fantastic here. | ||
| And everywhere he goes, he's always the first one I see. | ||
| People don't realize how good it is. | ||
| A lot of people think, oh, well, maybe it's for the people that he's got. | ||
| And you guys know because you're here, but the people that he's got have done amazing work. | ||
| So I just want to thank everybody. | ||
| We're going to get over and take a look. | ||
| We'll say a few words. | ||
| I do want to introduce some of the people that we have. | ||
| Our First Lady. | ||
| We'll start with our First Lady. | ||
| She wanted to be here because of North Carolina. | ||
| I said, well, you can do that, but you'd have to come to California, too. | ||
| And she said, that's okay. | ||
| And we've got to fix that one up, too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you ever see anything like that one? | |
| Who would have thought that could have happened? | ||
| So, Governor Josh Stein, thank you very much. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| And we're going to have a very long and good relationship. | ||
| Representatives... | ||
| Maybe stand up, if you would, so the press can see. | ||
| Representatives Chuck Edwards. | ||
| Chuck, thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Chuck. | ||
| Tim Moore. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Virginia. | |
| You know Virginia Fox, a legend. | ||
| She is such a powerful woman. | ||
| Pat Harrigan. | ||
| Pat, thank you very much. | ||
| Your Agriculture Commissioner, who I hear is excellent, Steve Troxler. | ||
| Steve, thank you very much. | ||
| Good job, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You've got plenty to do, right? | |
| More than you ever thought. | ||
| North Carolina Speaker Dustin Hall. | ||
| Thank you, Dustin. | ||
| Thanks, Dustin. | ||
| Very good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
House Majority Leader Brendan Jones. | |
| Brendan, thank you very much. | ||
| We're making progress, Brendan. | ||
| State Representatives Dudley Green, Carl Gillespie. | ||
| Thank you very much, fellas. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Good. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| State Senators Kevin Corbin, Warren Daniel. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much, Kevin, Warren. | ||
| And County Commissioner Jennifer Best. | ||
| Thank you, Jennifer. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So Hurricane Helene was one of the worst natural disasters in American history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was far worse than it was even built. | |
| I have never seen such water damage. | ||
| It was largely water damage, wind damage, but water damage nobody's ever seen. | ||
| I've been here. | ||
| As you know, numerous times, but now I'm here in a position where we can do something, meaning I've been in office for four days, and I wanted to come sooner, but actually they had a little problem with getting logistically in here, but I would have been here even sooner. | ||
| 104 North Carolinians have at least have lost their lives. | ||
| Is that now? | ||
| A fairly firm number, or are they still finding people? | ||
| You know? | ||
| What do you think? | ||
| They're still finding people? | ||
| Pretty much okay? | ||
| It's a lot of people. | ||
| 104 people lost their lives. | ||
| 73,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed. | ||
| And I'll tell you, I've been to a lot of them, and this was like lots of hurricanes. | ||
| I've never seen such damage done by water. | ||
| And the water came, it was violent, and it left, and there was like nothing left. | ||
| It's really pretty amazing. | ||
| At one point, half of the emergency calls to FEMA went unanswered. | ||
| That's real bad. | ||
| FEMA was not doing their job. | ||
| The city of Asheville went without running water for two months. | ||
| A whistleblower testified that some FEMA employees refused to help people who display Trump signs on their property. | ||
| I think that's true, isn't it? | ||
| I read that. | ||
| It's not nice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not too nice, is it? | |
| But whoever those property people were, thank you very much. | ||
| Michael, is that true? | ||
| That's not good, huh? | ||
| About the property owners, you put a Trump sign on and they wouldn't help. | ||
| FEMA. Earlier this year, FEMA kicked 2,000 North Carolinians out of their temporary housing into below freezing temperatures. | ||
| What was that all about? | ||
| Is that... | ||
| You know about that? | ||
| What happened? | ||
| Tell me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We had an incompetent administration under Biden, and we had a disaster, and then we call it the disaster after the disaster. | |
| That was the FEMA response. | ||
| You've had nothing but disaster since then. | ||
| It doesn't matter at this point. | ||
| Biden did a bad job. | ||
| Some residents still don't have hot water, drinking water, or anything else, and many of them don't have quarters. | ||
| They don't have anything. | ||
| They got a stipend for what they lost, and we're going to take care of it. | ||
| Totally unacceptable. | ||
| And I'll be taking strong action to get North Carolina the support that you need to quickly recover and rebuild. | ||
| We're working on it very hard. | ||
| And I think if Michael Watley does half as good a job for North Carolina as he did for my campaign, we'll be very happy. | ||
| Him and Laura were a very powerful team. | ||
| So you think you can handle it, Michael? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I'm not sure, Michael. | ||
| I think this is... | ||
| Maybe in many ways easier, okay? | ||
| Maybe easier. | ||
| But you're going to lead the team. | ||
| Do you want to say who the congressmen are that you want to appoint? | ||
| Do you want to introduce them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
And they are the districts that were most severely impacted, right? | |
| You were affected then, Virginia? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I'll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA is not good. | ||
| I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go and whether it's a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA. And then FEMA gets here and they don't know the area. | ||
| They've never been to the area. | ||
| They want to give you rules that you've never heard about. | ||
| They want to bring people that aren't as good as the people you already have. | ||
| And FEMA's turned out to be a disaster. | ||
| And you could go back a long way. | ||
| You could go back to Louisiana. | ||
| You could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. | ||
| It turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. | ||
| It just complicates it. | ||
| I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away. | ||
| And we pay directly. | ||
| We pay a percentage to the state. | ||
| But the state should fix this. | ||
| Did this from the beginning, it would have been a lot better situation. | ||
| I think you guys agree with that, right? | ||
| So I just want to say that Asheville, I know it well, it's a great place, so we're going to have it be a great place again. | ||
| That was the one that was most severely affected. | ||
| But North Carolina is going to come back bigger, better, stronger than ever before. | ||
| And you're going to be very thankful. | ||
| And you've already seen, I know that... | ||
| It really began four days ago, but you've already seen more action than you have in the last three months. | ||
| And we're going to get it together. | ||
| We're informing the Army Corps of Engineers to get going, because you have a lot of river breaks and a lot of areas that you're going to need some pretty big work. | ||
| And on their way, they're going to be working much harder than they've been working in the past, and we're going to take care of it. | ||
| Any questions from the press? | ||
| Congressman, Governor, anybody? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, are you going to sign a executive order on FEMA and get rid of it? | |
| Can you say more about signing a executive order to get rid of FEMA, please? | ||
| FEMA has been a very big disappointment. | ||
| They cost a tremendous amount of money. | ||
| It's very bureaucratic. | ||
| And it's very slow. | ||
| Other than that, we're very happy with them. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| And I think it's... | ||
| I think when there's a problem... | ||
| With the state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. | ||
| That's what we have states for. | ||
| They take care of problems. | ||
| And a governor can handle something very quickly. | ||
| You know, one of the things I've noticed, because I've been doing this for a while, and we had a pretty good FEMA, but I also noticed that when they come, they end up in arguments, and they're fighting all the time over who does what. | ||
| It's just not a good... | ||
| When there's a problem with a state, I think that that problem should be taken care of by the state. | ||
| That's what we have states for. | ||
| They take care of problems. | ||
| And a governor can handle something very quickly. | ||
| You know, one of the things I've noticed, because I've been doing this for a while, and we had a pretty good FEMA, but I also noticed that when they come, they end up in arguments, they're fighting all the time over who does what. | ||
| It's just not a good system. | ||
| This system is so beautifully designed over 250 years, approximately, you know, and we'll soon be celebrating the 250th year. | ||
| It's going to be a very big celebration. | ||
| But it's been designed very well, and we're going to leave it that way. | ||
| When North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, when everybody knows the governor of Tennessee, I think, everybody. | ||
| Do you know everybody here, pretty much? | ||
| I never thought of it, but you're right over the ridge. | ||
| So you're here to help. | ||
| That's great. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The people in this region, including Tennessee, the people of Appalachia, are grateful that you are here and that you haven't forgotten it. | |
| There are other disasters, but this one was enormous for both North Carolina and Tennessee, so thank you. | ||
| You know, I've seen a lot of disasters. | ||
| I came here right after, the day after. | ||
| And when I came here, I couldn't believe it, actually. | ||
| I couldn't believe the damage. | ||
| And I've seen a lot of them. | ||
| This was more like a tornado than it was what we witnessed. | ||
| So we're going to get it very much taken care of. | ||
| Good job. | ||
| That's nice that you came. | ||
| And so you call it, you're right over the ridge, right, Tennessee? | ||
| I like Tennessee, too. | ||
| Let's see, where did I get more votes, Tennessee or North Carolina? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I hate you. | |
| I hate to tell you, North Carolina, it was Tennessee. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's one of the counties in this disaster that had 88 percent for you. | |
| Eighty-eight percent, yeah. | ||
| The people are just incredible people. | ||
| So, do you have any questions, Press? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Mr. President. | |
| You talked about conditions being placed on aid in California, motoriety and the like. | ||
| Are there any conditions that you're going to put on aid to North Carolina? | ||
| We're going to do a lot for North Carolina. | ||
| They've been very slow. | ||
| I don't know why it's been so bad. | ||
| This has been one of the worst I've seen. | ||
| Katrina, of course, you know, was something that obviously that was a long time ago that was not good. | ||
| But this has been very slow. | ||
| I don't know if that was for political reasons because they lost the state. | ||
| You know, Biden lost the state. | ||
| Maybe he felt he doesn't care. | ||
| Maybe there were other reasons. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But this has been very slow. | ||
| By any standard, this has been very slow. | ||
| And we're going to make up for lost time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No conditions, you're going to push for A. It's a different thing. | |
| You got hit by a storm. | ||
| The people are incredible. | ||
| They worked really well. | ||
| Franklin was fantastic. | ||
| And other groups, by the way, other groups came in that were also fantastic. | ||
| And other states came in, Tennessee, and a couple of others came in, and they really helped. | ||
| That's the way it's supposed to be. | ||
| No, this is a different kind of a thing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mr. President, have you decided how much something you could allocate for Trump? | |
| About what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have you decided how much? | |
| I have to see what it is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are you disappointed that Senator Schiff hasn't joined you on this trip? | |
| It was reported you invited Senator Schiff to join you on this trip and he was too busy. | ||
| Are you disappointed? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I was told that Schiff was going to travel with us to California. | ||
| I wasn't thrilled, to be honest with you. | ||
| And I saw him last night on television. | ||
| It looks like he got hit with a baseball bat or something. | ||
| What happened to him? | ||
| Something happened to him. | ||
| It looked like he got hit. | ||
| It looked like he got beat around. | ||
| But I'll ask Caroline to find out what happened to him. | ||
| No, if he wanted to come out, I would have done that. | ||
| But I don't know. | ||
| Somebody said that he wanted to come on the plane, but I think he's staying back for the votes. | ||
| There's some pretty good votes going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Mr. President, what is your timeline for getting rid of FEMA? For this one? | ||
| For this one? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Getting rid of FEMA. What timeline are you looking at, and how would you do that? | |
| Well... | ||
| Well, we're looking here. | ||
| Here, you're talking about. | ||
| To start, we're going to start immediately, timeline. | ||
| And to finish, it's going to be a period of time. | ||
| You know, people are also rebuilding their houses. | ||
| How long does it take to build a house, right? | ||
| It takes the time. | ||
| And I want them to build houses bigger, better, nicer than they had before, so they can have, at least they get something out of this disaster. | ||
| This was a real disaster. | ||
| No, timeline will be fast. | ||
| In terms of infrastructure, I think very fast. | ||
| I want to thank Elon, because Elon was able to get us communication systems, as you know, Starlink. | ||
| We had no communication. | ||
| The first day I got here, I was asked by one of the people, one of the really great representatives, professionals, is there any way you could get Starlink here? | ||
| Because they had no communication whatsoever. | ||
| And I called up Elon Musk, and he had hundreds of units brought here. | ||
| Like, brought immediately. | ||
| And it's hard to get. | ||
| They couldn't get them before. | ||
| And that made a lot of difference. | ||
| I think it saved a lot of lives, actually. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Infrastructure-wise, we'll do it quickly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, can you just talk about how long you think it might take to get rid of FEMA with the timeline on that? | |
| If you're going to roll it back? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would say, look, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not really thinking about FEMA right now. | ||
| Here, I'm thinking about Michael Watley. | ||
| And I'm thinking about... | ||
| The three congresspeople that you just heard from, and also the other people in Congress, and they'll be working with the governor. | ||
| They'll be working with the governor. | ||
| So that's what I see. | ||
| Change the subject real quickly. | ||
| The Lake and Riley Act was signed by Mike Speaker Johnson yesterday. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When do you anticipate to sign that note? | ||
| Well, we're honored by that. | ||
| Lake and Riley, I was there at the time, and we had a... | ||
| Big meeting with the parents right after that horrible thing took place. | ||
| And we have an act. | ||
| You all know what that act represents. | ||
| And it was a bipartisan bill. | ||
| Many Democrats signed onto it. | ||
| That's something that is a tribute to Lakin, a beautiful young lady who was killed viciously by an illegal alien. | ||
| And we passed a very powerful bill. | ||
| And it was just approved. | ||
| And we'll have a ceremony sometime very shortly. | ||
| I'll be signing it. | ||
| In other words, if you're asking, I will definitely be signing it. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Yeah? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The security detail for Anthony Crouch was terminated last night, and I'm wondering if you have any comment. | |
| About what? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The security detail for Anthony Crouch was terminated last night, sir. | |
| Do you have a comment? | ||
| No, I think, you know, when you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off. | ||
| And, you know, you can't have them forever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So... | |
| I think it's very standard. | ||
| If it would be for somebody else, it wouldn't be asking the question. | ||
| The question is very fair. | ||
| But, you know, you work for government. | ||
| We took some off other people, too. | ||
| But you can't have a security detail for the rest of your life because you work for government. | ||
| We'll see what happens. | ||
| No. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| You know, they all made a lot of money. | ||
| They can hire their own security, too. | ||
| All the people you're talking about, they can go out. | ||
| I can give them some good numbers of very good security people. | ||
| They can hire their own security. | ||
| They all made a lot of money. | ||
| Fauci made a lot of money. | ||
| They all did. | ||
| So if they felt that strongly, I think that certainly I would not take responsibility. | ||
|
unidentified
|
North Carolina is a state that relies on trade and manufacturing. | |
| Are you going to have an announcement on new tariffs coming soon? | ||
| Is there a timeline now? | ||
| Yeah, the tariffs are going to make our country rich. | ||
| It's going to be a rich, rich country very soon. | ||
| Tariffs are going to make it rich in competence. | ||
| We have common sense competence and tariffs. | ||
| The word tariff is one of the most beautiful words in the dictionary. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary of the United Kingdom, said that there's an even trade between the U.S. and the U.K., so they shouldn't have tariffs. | |
| Does trade imbalances or a balanced trade affect tariffs in your decision? | ||
| Yeah, unbalance and balance and also deficits. | ||
| Like with Canada, we lose $200 billion a year with Canada. | ||
| That's because we allow them to make cars. | ||
| We allow them to take lumber. | ||
| We don't need their cars. | ||
| We don't need their lumber. | ||
| We don't need their food products because we make the same products right on the other side of the border. | ||
| It's sort of crazy. | ||
| So we've just allowed that, you know, bad management has allowed it over the last four years in particular to become very imbalanced. | ||
| And I said to, I call him Governor Trudeau, but he's Prime Minister Trudeau when he was Prime Minister. | ||
| I asked him, why would we do that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| And he was unable to give me an answer. | ||
| He said, I don't know. | ||
| And I said, do you think it's fair that we're paying $200 billion to keep Canada going? | ||
| And what would happen, I said, I asked him, what would happen if we didn't do that, if we didn't subsidize Canada? | ||
| He said, we'd be a failed nation. | ||
| And I said, then you should be a state. | ||
| Because why are we paying all of that money to Canada when, you know... | ||
| We could use it ourselves, right? | ||
| So we take care of their military. | ||
| You know, we're going to order about 40 Coast Guard big icebreakers, big ones. | ||
| And all of a sudden, Canada wants a piece of the deal. | ||
| They say, why are we doing that? | ||
| I mean, I like doing that if they're a state, but I don't like doing that if they're a nation. | ||
| Also, they've been very nasty to us on trade. | ||
| Historically, Canada has been very, very bad to us, very unfair to us on trade. | ||
| So we'll see how it all works out. | ||
| I would love to see Canada be the 51st state. | ||
| The Canadian citizens, if that happened, would get a very big tax cut, tremendous tax cut, because they're very highly taxed. | ||
| And you wouldn't have to worry about military. | ||
| You wouldn't have to worry about many of the things. | ||
| You'd have better health coverage. | ||
| You'd have much better health coverage. | ||
| So I think the people of Canada would like it, you know, if it's explained. | ||
| But just to start off, they'd have a massive tax cut. | ||
| And they'd have a lot more business, because then we'd let business go to Canada routinely, and there'd be no tariffs. | ||
| You know, if we did that, there'd be no tariffs. | ||
| Reverend Franklin Graham has been a great asset to the state. | ||
| Talk a little bit about the way Samaritan Purse has helped North Carolina. | ||
| Yes, once again, the first one. | ||
| Reverend Franklin Graham has been a big part of Samaritan Purse and their aid to North Carolina. | ||
| Well, Franklin Graham has been a big asset to the state. | ||
| His father was a big asset to the state, to the country, both of them. | ||
| I just think this. | ||
| I think Franklin and other people that are doing what Franklin have done. | ||
| I've known Franklin so long. | ||
| He was at the inauguration. | ||
| He made a speech, beautiful speech, beautiful prayer. | ||
| He does a great job. | ||
| We made a big donation. | ||
| It was it was money well spent. | ||
| Sometimes you make donations. | ||
| It's not well spent. | ||
| He's done a great job here. | ||
| He's done a really great job. | ||
| So I want to thank you. | ||
| We're going to the site now and one of the sites and rules. | ||
| I think you'll for those that haven't seen it, you won't even believe it. | ||
| But not enough work was done. | ||
| We'll get it done fast. | ||
| And I can speak for the Republican congressman. | ||
| We're going to knock it out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We're going to knock it out. | ||
| And I think we take it very personally because. | ||
| It was... | ||
| North Carolina was very unfairly treated. | ||
| Very, very unfairly treated. | ||
| And it was obvious. | ||
| It was too obvious. | ||
| And we're going to make up for lost time. | ||
| So thank you to the people of North Carolina. | ||
| Thank you, everybody. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Am I on? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| That is the president right there with Franklin Graham from Samaritan's Purse. | ||
| Billy Graham's son runs this big charitable organization. | ||
| It's really taken care of. | ||
| You saw last week, 10 days ago when we were there, it was at the forefront of the relief work, which really is private relief work, present in that Q&A. He signed an executive order to get rid of FEMA, and man, he's hell-bent for leather from doing this. | ||
| Do I have... | ||
| Is Brian... | ||
| Are you with me? | ||
| Brian Glenn? | ||
| I know Brian's right there. | ||
| Brian asked a couple of great questions. | ||
| I think his audio may be turned off. | ||
| He's going to get back in the pool. | ||
| That's our own live shot from Real America's Voice. | ||
| The First Lady... | ||
| The First Lady and... | ||
| And the president there with Franklin Graham. | ||
| He's got Michael Watley, the head of the RNC. Michael Watley is from North Carolina. | ||
| Beloved North Carolina. | ||
| Let's go back to that shot, please. | ||
| You don't need me in a full shot. | ||
| Let's think these shots through, gentlemen. | ||
| Oh, they're going to take it down? | ||
| Okay, can we go to the pool feed? | ||
| Let's go to the pool feed. | ||
| Brian Glenn's going to take his thing. | ||
| Let's see if we can go to the pool feed. | ||
| The president's there with the first lady. | ||
| He answered questions. | ||
| We've got Brian. | ||
| Hey, Brian, what do you got for us? | ||
| Hey, Steve. | ||
| Yes, he just wrapped up here shortly talking to the members that he recognized earlier. | ||
| From this point, we will get in the motorcade and follow President Trump to a disaster area. | ||
| He would tour that area, take some questions, I would imagine, and talk to the local homeowners in that area. | ||
| But really, kind of going over the magnitude of this area, and I would think the demand for... | ||
| Let's listen in real quickly, if he might come over here. | ||
| He looks like he's posing for a couple... | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Posing with First Lady. | ||
| Okay, so we've got to take direction from the press lead right now, Steve, so we do have to kind of hustle into a different area as we transition into location number two, Steve. | ||
| So I'll come back to you when we have a steady shot and we're in place. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Maybe keep that shot. | ||
| Just get the mic off. | ||
| Okay, this is what's called a press gaggle. | ||
| Let's get that shot back up there if we can. | ||
| Got enough of me. | ||
| Let's get that shot back up. | ||
| It's okay to see the unsteadiness. | ||
| It's going to be fine. | ||
| Let's double box it. | ||
| I got to anchor this and produce it and direct it at the same time. | ||
| Just teasing the team. | ||
| I want people to see it. | ||
| This is called a press gaggle. | ||
| You know, a gaggle is when you have all these press. | ||
| This is the pool that's with the president the entire time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now, did we see the... | |
| Now you're going to go out. | ||
| When you're on the White House staff, you have what's called wranglers. | ||
| You have press wranglers. | ||
| There's our own Brian Glenn right there. | ||
| You have press wranglers. | ||
| And the press wranglers' job is to keep this unruly element. | ||
| Keep those great shots. | ||
| It's fantastic. | ||
| You're seeing the sausage being made, folks. | ||
| Right there, and I want to join. | ||
| I think we're getting ready to go to the Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Yeah, in fact, we're into the Charlie Kirk show now. | ||
| I want to welcome the Charlie Kirk audience. | ||
| Just to do a reset, we are live from Asheville, North Carolina. | ||
| Our own Brian Glenn has been invited to have our own camera today, not taking a press feed, but our own camera is there with the president's motorcade. | ||
| The president landed at about 1030, 1040. Eastern Standard Time, he did a short meeting with officials on the tarmac. | ||
| He then had a press availability, answered a few questions, then he went over, got his Secret Service vehicles out of the line, and actually went to go see his people. | ||
| War Room Posse and MAGA members on kind of a rope line. | ||
| He did a meet and greet there, shook hands, had people really saying, Mr. President, we love you. | ||
| Then he went for what we call roundtable. | ||
| These are very traditional when a president goes to a local area, either even for a factory opening or to see people, but particularly when you go to these disaster areas. | ||
| The theme of the day is President Trump is getting direct briefings from people who are there. | ||
| Franklin Graham, Samaritan's Purse. | ||
| I can't tell you how important Samaritan's Purse has been. | ||
| Ten days ago when Ben Berkholm was there for two days, all we heard was Samaritan's Purse. | ||
| Samaritan's Purse, they've been out in western North Carolina and east Tennessee bringing kind of, you know, philanthropic and charitable relief that the federal government had. | ||
| One of the major questions, and I was actually impressed with the press not asking wise guy questions. | ||
| I think you see a very big difference in President Trump's first term and second term. | ||
| You don't see the snarky questions that the press asks every day, some snarky question about Russiagate. | ||
| These so far have been, I think, pretty good, pretty thoughtful questions, although a lot of them are from the liberal media. | ||
| Right there you're seeing a shot inside the press van. | ||
| We're there with our own camera, not taking the pool feed, which is pretty extraordinary. | ||
| Now, the Secret Service requires you, as you're going to see, Brian doesn't have his audio. | ||
| That's cut off for scary reasons. | ||
| And they tell you to put the camera straight forward in what's called a taillight shot. | ||
| The president went to a briefing over of what they called traditionally these roundtables, where local officials, people, you know, ask questions, who are going to introduce local dignitaries, in this case, local congressmen who had been there for North Carolina. | ||
| Then the president gives his comments. | ||
| Once again, the president, the most available president, I think, in the history of this republic to the press. | ||
| He took questions from the media. | ||
| And most of these questions really revolved around disaster relief, what's going to be coming up in California, and particularly FEMA. He did sign an executive order that really looks to a pretty substantial restructuring or elimination of FEMA. The president gave you what he intends to do, do and what he intends to do is to look at local authorities and kind of the FEMA's the emergency groups in each state and just give this money for support | ||
| give the money to the governor give the money to the states and let the states deal with it and really cut out the middleman which is FEMA and I think part of that is because of the politicization of FEMA and the other part is just because the incompetence of FEMA remember this is part of the deconstruction administrative state | ||
| Particularly in the alphabet agencies, there's a lot of folks, including myself, that think these alphabet agencies have just grown and grown and grown with very little regulation or supervision from Congress, and that that has led them to be not just overly bureaucratic, but also incredibly and highly inefficient and too politicized, too able to be weaponized. | ||
| One of the things the president is there today in Western North Carolina is to get the answer to the questions. | ||
| Why are we in the fourth month of this? | ||
| And you're going to see things today, and I'm sure the president's going to see things that are going to shock him. | ||
| When Ben Berquan was there 10 days ago, I was quite frankly stunned. | ||
| My kid brother had worked in western North Carolina and actually lived in Nashville for a couple of years. | ||
| And it is, in fact, my college roommate and other people I'm very close to are down in Nashville, one of the most beautiful parts of the country. | ||
| And just a magnificent location. | ||
| It's become a big retirement area over the last decade or two. | ||
| Florida is a little too much for them as far as no change of seasons. | ||
| And maybe up north is a little too cold. | ||
| So the environment in western North Carolina is perfect. | ||
| So Asheville has been a tremendous and really had explosive growth. | ||
| Talk about this cold winter. | ||
| It's been kind of a bitterly, brutally cold winter with this kind of Arctic, you know, air, Arctic weather coming down. | ||
| But really, since right after Thanksgiving, it has been pretty cold. | ||
| I think we're three or four months into this. | ||
| What the president's most upset about, and he wants us to get answers from, is why is he coming out? | ||
| To North Carolina to visit with and hear from the forgotten man and woman when this should have been taken care of months and months ago. | ||
| Is this just bureaucratic inefficiency? | ||
| Is this just incompetence? | ||
| Are they not going to work because they're still heaving to on COVID so they're working from home? | ||
| Or was this political? | ||
| And I've advocated from the beginning that you have to have a thorough investigation of this to find out what happened. | ||
| California is very different. | ||
| California is about policies that have been decades in the making. | ||
| Josh Pettit, who's a golf course architect, and we normally have him on here talking about, for the major championships, about the golf course. | ||
| He walked through the kind of, how the radical part of the environmental community has a structural, has structurally do commissions, committees, you know, coastal committees have put a stranglehold. | ||
| On really common sense and environmental policies, along with radically left Democrats, to kind of be the predicate for this disaster that happened. | ||
| The president's going to want discussions about that, because in Los Angeles, you could be talking about, in the great L.A. area, $200 billion of destruction. | ||
| I can tell you, having very close knowledge of home ownership in Pacific Palisades, one of the most remarkable little villages. | ||
| In all of America, and particularly in Southern California, it's where Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan lived for many, many decades. | ||
| A very understated elegance of just really this very nice village, completely gone. | ||
| Worse than Dresden in 1945, it's like the Tokyo fire bombings in March of 1945. President's going to want answers for that today. | ||
| Shifty Shift was supposed to be with him, but Shifty Shift made a big deal about not going. | ||
| Really, that's tied to these votes. | ||
| In the Senate right now, you're in the motor pool right here. | ||
| You're in what's called a press van. | ||
| You can put the camera straight forward. | ||
| That's called a taillight shot if you're watching it right there. | ||
| I want to thank the Charlie Kirk audience for joining us. | ||
| We're hearing Real America's Voice. | ||
| This is live uninterrupted coverage. | ||
| We're blowing all the commercial breaks so that we can do the coverage since we've been invited by the comms staff to be there. | ||
| Kind of a hat tip to the new rising power of the podcast and particularly the rising power of these streaming services getting away from mainstream media. | ||
| We've got Ben Burquam in Chicago and Brian Glenn. | ||
| Ben, who was out there 10 days ago, Brian Glenn, is with the president today. | ||
| Brian Glenn has asked three great questions. | ||
| I mean, really appreciated by the president. | ||
| The president gave him kind of a thumbs up, and hey, thank you on the way up, Brian Glenn. | ||
| A total of professionals now with Right Side Broadcasting for years, doing the coverage of all the events, and is now with Israel America's Voice. | ||
| He'll be doing both the White House and Capitol Hill. | ||
| The reason Schiff is really not out there is Schiff, there's major votes. | ||
| So we talked about the actions the president has to take. | ||
| We also talked about the resistance. | ||
| You've got Democrats have gone to court on the deportations. | ||
| They're in court on the 14th Amendment. | ||
| They're in court on many, many things. | ||
| I'm sure they're going to try to go to court on FEMA. Anything to do with deconstruct the administrative state that they're going to stop. | ||
| But particularly in the Senate, there's been kind of a brutal fight. | ||
| Schumer, who is having these press... | ||
| I heard one last night. | ||
| I listened to it for about... | ||
| 30 or 40 minutes, Schumer and other Democrats are saying how terrible Russ Vogt was, how Russ Vogt was the godfather of Project 2025, how Russ Vogt was absolutely terrible. | ||
| Now, MSNBC is all over President Trump, taking down FEMA. Their coverage is hysterical on everything that President Trump does. | ||
| Their hair's on fire on all of it. | ||
| Let's go back to the Senate. | ||
| So remember, we have John Ratcliffe has just been confirmed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. | ||
| Senator Marco Rubio is now Secretary of State. | ||
| President Trump, four days into his administration, only has two approved cabinet members. | ||
| Everything else is on the interim that are really not his people. | ||
| And this is after flooding the zone last week. | ||
| Go back and think about it. | ||
| Spectacular performance of his nominees. | ||
| With no real Democratic pushback on the ideas or the representations. | ||
| Just one more to reset. | ||
| You're in a press van. | ||
| That's Brian Glenn and his cameraman, our team. | ||
| Now we're going to go to a disaster site outside of Asheville, North Carolina. | ||
| President Trump will walk around him, meet some local folks, meet the forgotten man and woman, have some interchange. | ||
| We will cover this live. | ||
| I'm going to remain here for this coverage until the end. | ||
| President Trump will then return to the airport. | ||
| I'm sure he's going to say a few words on the tarmac. | ||
| Then he and the First Lady will enter the Air Force One. | ||
| And I think it's scheduled to end about 1 p.m. | ||
| Eastern Standard Time, although I believe he's going to run a little late here. | ||
| He's then going to take off for Los Angeles. | ||
| He arrived out in Los Angeles, I think, early afternoon local time, and then he will have a, once again, meet some officials. | ||
| He will have a roundtable where he'll meet a bigger group of officials, and then I'm sure he's going to tour the area. | ||
| I will tell you, President Trump knows Los Angeles. | ||
| He owns a house in Beverly Hills. | ||
| He hasn't spent as much time in L.A. as obviously in other parts of the country. | ||
| Really not a California guy, though he loves California. | ||
| I know he loves this house he's had in Beverly Hills. | ||
| The President of the United States knows Pacific Palisades. | ||
| He will be absolutely floored. | ||
| The people I know that live out there, I have many, many friends. | ||
| I lived in California for 20 years. | ||
| I spent time all over the world and in New York a lot, but had a home base there. | ||
| People are, you can't believe what's happened to the Palisades, what's happened to Altadena, which is out by Pasadena. | ||
| What's happened to these towns is really just unbelievable. | ||
| It's military-level devastation. | ||
| That it's all gone, and what is standing has been condemned. | ||
| So once again, we're in the press pool right there. | ||
| We've got our own camera. | ||
| We're not taking this off the press feed. | ||
| That's Real America's Voice. | ||
| Real America's Voice was invited, and here's why. | ||
| Back in 2021, when the president left the White House, the president, Trump, back in Mar-a-Lago, was cut off from any access. | ||
| I don't believe mainstream media covered him live until the midterm election of 2022. Even Fox News, I think, blocked him for a year and a half. | ||
| Rupert Murdoch went out and said they were going to make him a non-person. | ||
| He was covered live non-stop by Real America's Voice, Right Side Broadcasting. | ||
| Brian Glenn was one of the chief anchors over at Right Side of the Town. | ||
| We knew the Right Side guys. | ||
| Very close to him. | ||
| Great team over there. | ||
| They were covered non-stop. | ||
| Remember, all the rallies. | ||
| Real America's Voice would be there. | ||
| We would do coverage. | ||
| We'd toss our teams. | ||
| He covered President Trump live. | ||
| He covered MAGA. Remember the days Ben Burkwam would be out there hours and hours in advance. | ||
| On Saturday, we'd have Ben on the Saturday morning show with War Room Posse members that were already there five, six, seven hours before the event started. | ||
| The White House staff and Caroline Leavitt. | ||
| You remember Caroline? | ||
| Caroline, as a young woman, ran for the House a couple of years ago. | ||
| And we did a lot of coverage of her in the primary. | ||
| She was an engaging personality. | ||
| She was a young woman. | ||
| She's an absolute firebrand. | ||
| She would not back down. | ||
| And Caroline Levitt became beloved by the War Room audience and really embraced. | ||
| Caroline Levitt is now the Press Secretary of the President of the United States. | ||
| I think one of the things I've had the most fun in the show is to see the people that have been contributors or been part of it, the Jason Millers, the Boris Epsteins, the Caroline Levitts, the Liz Harringtons, the Natalie Winters. | ||
| We got now, we have Scott Bessent, Russ Vogt, our own Peter Navarro. | ||
| Peter's actually in the White House as the As the senior advisor on trade and manufacturing, that's obviously going to be very important. | ||
| You heard President Trump today talking about Canada. | ||
| Of all the talk on Canada, it's probably the most blunt talk. | ||
| I mean, he made a proposal. | ||
| He said, hey, look. | ||
| You know, you can cut out a lot of costs of your defense. | ||
| A lot of things going on. | ||
| We'd love for you to be the 51st state. | ||
| We can make you a deal. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Maybe you cut out two states. | ||
| Maybe it makes two states. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| I know the western part of Canada. | ||
| I spent a lot of time with people from western Canada over the weekend. | ||
| They're very different in their philosophy from Quebec and where Toronto is, the eastern part where, you know, 80% of the population lives. | ||
| But the western part of Canada is saying, hey. | ||
| We don't speak for all of Canada, but they think people would love some sort of closer association. | ||
| They're kind of loggerheads with the Trudeau administration. | ||
| Once again, you're in a press van. | ||
| That is a shot from our own camera, not a press feed. | ||
| If you notice why we're not looking at the side and some of the Trump supporters over there, is that the Secret Service, when you have a camera and it's on, it's called a taillight shot. | ||
| They don't want it going to and fro for security reasons. | ||
| Brian Glenn is in there. | ||
| The audio is always cut off for security reasons. | ||
| Brian is going with the rest of the press, with our own camera, not a pool feed. | ||
| We're going now to the actual site of some of the devastation. | ||
| So here's what will happen is the... | ||
| The advance team will work through with local officials, and they'll figure out, hey, particularly in a devastated area that's this huge, I mean, this is all the way from northwest Georgia up through the Appalachians to western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and all the way up to Virginia. | ||
| You know, people, historically, a lot of this, it was, part of this at least, was part of that we're General Sherman right there. | ||
| We just lost the feed entirely. | ||
| Back here. | ||
| We'll get to that in a second. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Maybe take a pull. | |
| President of the United States is heading to the site of the devastation. | ||
| He'll get a walk around. | ||
| The advance team will work with local officials and say, hey, look. | ||
| Right there, we got our feedback. | ||
| He'll say, hey, look. | ||
| We want some areas the president can get a real feel for what's going on. | ||
| He wants to meet people there. | ||
| He wants to meet things. | ||
| So that will become his understanding. | ||
| The president already committed on the tarmac, and he said again at the roundtable, he says, hey, we're going to take care of this problem. | ||
| And this is what, if you go back 10 days and remember our coverage, people are saying, you know, Ben Burquam, Mr. Bannon, you know, any way you can get to the president and make sure the president comes here, we've basically left to fend for ourselves with no money, no resources, no assistance on this biblical-level flood that's devastated so much of the area. | ||
| They've just been, you know, cut off. | ||
| And look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I don't believe in coincidences. | ||
| The pattern recognition here is this is part of the strongest part of support for President Trump. | ||
| They just said in the meeting right there at the roundtable, one of the individuals said off camera, hey, there's a county here that gave you 88% support. | ||
| 88% support. | ||
| It's left a bad taste in people's mouths that the Biden regime somehow, this was some sort of political payback. | ||
| There was just a lack of urgency all around there. | ||
| It's one of the reasons President Trump is not enthusiastic about FEMA. What professional organization would allow that to happen? | ||
| What professional organization would not be down here taking care of this basic destruction? | ||
| Of one of the most beautiful areas of the United States, but particularly where American citizens are living in tents. | ||
| The night after we were there, I think it was six degrees in the mountains of western North Carolina. | ||
| Some of those mountains got real altitude. | ||
| When you're in Asheville, you know you're in the mountains of western, you know you're in the mountains, and it's cold at night. | ||
| And people, the FEMA vans hadn't been brought up. | ||
| FEMA trucks hadn't been brought up. | ||
| People were left, by and large, to fend for themselves. | ||
| This is why Samaritan's Purse was so amazing. | ||
| All the local charities people were giving as the American people are wont to do. | ||
| The most charitable people in the history of the earth. | ||
| The most giving nation in the history of the earth. | ||
| But this is not... | ||
| It shouldn't be upon local charity to pay for this. | ||
| Samaritan's Purse has obligations all over the world as they have a huge, you know, evangelical mission that is their task and purpose. | ||
| Every dollar they have and every dollar they raise has to be used for the task and purpose. | ||
| And when they're in western North Carolina, they're doing it because it's Billy Graham and Franklin, you know, Billy Graham's legacy, Franklin Graham, and just the giving nature of this organization and many, many, many others. | ||
| But it's all coming from private charity. | ||
| Well, one of the reasons you pay your taxes is that in those extraordinary instances, like massive hurricanes, massive flooding, like you see on something that was biblical that came off of Hurricane Helene that left, you know, a trillion gallons of water into the hills and hollows of Appalachia and wiped out so much. | ||
| You anticipate and expect in kind of the compact you make with your government, you know, for its sovereignty is that in these situations. | ||
| It's extraordinary situations. | ||
| They step up. | ||
| You know, people are just not prepared. | ||
| It's no hit on people. | ||
| You're just not prepared. | ||
| No one's prepared. | ||
| Here in Western North Carolina, you have folks that are, you know, making the average wages of citizens in the United States. | ||
| Many people working two, three jobs, working overtime. | ||
| In Pacific Palisades, it's a very different group. | ||
| That's to the, you know, you're getting close to the top 1% there, definitely the top 3% of wage earners. | ||
| And it's, whereas Appalachia is kind of, you know, good old-fashioned conservative right-wing populism and traditionally conservative Republicans, Pacific Palisades, the exact opposite. | ||
| I would not be surprised if 88% of Palisades had voted for Kamala Harris. | ||
| It's one of the biggest areas for fundraising, whereas Southern California and Northern California, Silicon Valley, and the Hollywood area are... | ||
| Really cash machines for the Democrat Party. | ||
| I think one time I heard a statistic, 50% of all money for Democrats comes out of California for the entire nation. | ||
| That shows you how big it is. | ||
| So their political philosophy is very different. | ||
| It's not that President Trump's the president for everybody. | ||
| He's been very adamant about that. | ||
| But it's a different set of questions. | ||
| In North Carolina is why was the aid—why is we four months into this? | ||
| And President Trump's not going to Davos because he knows he's obligated and has a commitment to the American people and a love for the American people. | ||
| So he is where the forgotten man and woman is. | ||
| Why is it four months into this? | ||
| Why was this not taken care of? | ||
| This is going to be tough to do. | ||
| You've got a lot of reclamation to do, but it's doable. | ||
| We've done it before. | ||
| There's organizations and institutions that have the organizational wherewithal and capacity to do it. | ||
| Why was it not done? | ||
| California is a very different situation. | ||
| California is a situation that is a little bit like the Maui situation. | ||
| How did this happen? | ||
| You've really got to get down to California of, you know, was this a loaded cannon of kind of environmental decisions that have been made and those sparks that kind of flew from these fires and or the power lines that ignited? | ||
| And where were the firemen? | ||
| Where was the water? | ||
| What shocks me is how this ember is spread from house to house to house and it looks like nobody defended it. | ||
| I mean, the questions are not answered in the Palisades. | ||
| And we say strings attached. | ||
| Well... | ||
| You've got to come in and get answers first. | ||
| You have to get answers, and you have to understand if you're going to put the money in, and particularly the federal government is going to put the money in to reclaim this and reorganize it, that it has to be at a situation that it can't happen again. | ||
| We can't have the same type of decision-making. | ||
| We can't have the same type of interconnections of these radical environmental groups coupled with, let's be blunt, radical politicians that created a witch's brew. | ||
| That allowed this devastation that was every bit as bad as the firebombing of Tokyo in March of 1945. How did that happen? | ||
| What were the policies of this? | ||
| And people say, well, it's contingent. | ||
| It's contingent upon what President Trump summed up yesterday in Davos. | ||
| What was his opening statement? | ||
| A revolution of common sense. | ||
| He re-edited it right today. | ||
| He says, hey, we have, you know, he was talking about the economic model for Canada to think about. | ||
| He says it's a combination of common sense, tariffs, and competence. | ||
| And that's, I think, based upon his economic model. | ||
| If you remember yesterday in Davos, the opening shot from President Trump, President Trump with all, you know, Klaus Schwab had just groveled to him on the global stage. | ||
| I mean, groveled. | ||
| And we had Graham Allison in that clip beforehand that played the day before. | ||
| Graham Allison said, hey, look, this guy was politically dead and he's been resurrected. | ||
| He resurrected himself with his populist base. | ||
| And he's back. | ||
| And Graham Allison said, remember, three and four years ago we wrote this guy off and we would laugh at him. | ||
| Well, they ain't laughing now. | ||
| They're groveling. | ||
| And yesterday, he sat up there and said, part of these radical policies that you see in Los Angeles, he said point blank, he says, hey, we've had a revolution of common sense in the United States of America, a revolution of common sense, and we're not doing the same war. | ||
| And he says, let me tell you what action I'm taking immediately. | ||
| I'm pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. | ||
| The Paris Climate Accord, boom, out. | ||
| We tried to do that seven, eight years ago. | ||
| It's been blocked. | ||
| It was blocked by the administrative and deep state constantly. | ||
| And, of course, all the traitor politicians come to President Trump and say, oh, you can't do that. | ||
| You're going to get a bad story. | ||
| President Trump knew it was a scam for the beginning. | ||
| In the interim, when President Trump pulled it the first time, you had the yellow vest. | ||
| Remember, what, gilet jaune? | ||
| In the yellow vest, representing the rural part of France, they put the diesel tax, Macron and these elitists in Paris put the diesel tax right on them, and the people revolted. | ||
| They burned down, you know, the big parts of Paris in protest, saying, hey, you're putting the burden... | ||
| Of the Paris climate change that's really underwriting Chinese pollution and Chinese industrialization at the expense of the West, and we're not going to tolerate it. | ||
| President Trump said, hey, number one, we're getting out of the Paris Climate Accord. | ||
| Ba-boom. | ||
| Said, number two, I'm reversing everything from the Green News scam. | ||
| And last night I was doing this rush, going over Russ's vote, his testimony we had done. | ||
| President Trump said, additionally, I am stopping anymore. | ||
| Right there, the headline yesterday, Trump stalls $300 billion of infrastructure funds as Biden climate agenda is ditched. | ||
| He told him right there, the entire, if the camera can just get this for a second. | ||
| Can we cut back to this for a second? | ||
| Can you cut back to this? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| And then we cut back. | ||
| Right there, they said, on this climate. | ||
| President Trump, this is impoundment. | ||
| Okay, we go back to the feed. | ||
| This is called impoundment. | ||
| Remember, we've talked about this. | ||
| Take your number two pencil out. | ||
| It's a piece of nomenclature you're going to want to keep. | ||
| Impoundment. | ||
| They've been banging on Russ' vote on this. | ||
| This is a theory, right, put into practice that the money that's appropriated in the appropriations bill is a ceiling. | ||
| That the president can come in and impound unspent funds and either use it for different purposes or just kick it back to the Treasury. | ||
| The president has gone into the Green New Deal fiasco giveaway of Biden, which caused so much inflation. | ||
| He said, hey, there's $300 billion there. | ||
| All engines stop. | ||
| I'm impounding that immediately. | ||
| I'm going to use that and divert it to other things that can be done right away or just put it back to the Treasury so it doesn't add to the deficit. | ||
| And they're going absolutely crazy. | ||
| The Democrats are addicted. | ||
| As bad as the Republicans are, the Democrats are addicted, addicted, addicted to vast spending. | ||
| I think we're coming up now. | ||
| We're seeing about three minutes out. | ||
| The president's going to do a walk around. | ||
| He's going to get to really see and meet some of the folks, the local officials. | ||
| We're going to see they've got the split screen off to the right. | ||
| There is where the president will be coming in a second. | ||
| He's three minutes out. | ||
| The press pool with Brian Glenn, and we'll get Brian back up in a second, is to our left. | ||
| I'm going to hang for the coverage the entire time. | ||
| We're in the Charlie Kirkshire. | ||
| I know it goes out nationwide on radio. | ||
| I want to thank everybody. | ||
| We're doing very special coverage today. | ||
| We've been invited to kind of be the lead sled dog on coverage by the White House Communications team. | ||
| I want to thank Taylor Botowich, Stephen Chung. | ||
| And, of course, Caroline Levitt for thinking of Real America's Voice. | ||
| I think they're looking for alternative sources now besides the mainstream media. | ||
| Their audience is so pathetic and they're still snarky. | ||
| It looks like the van's getting close to coming to a stop there. | ||
| Brown will be jumping out and see to the right. | ||
| Let's do the split screen again, if we can. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| That's Swannanoa, North Carolina. | ||
| That's where I think Ben Burkham was the other day. | ||
| Part of the trip was to Swannanoa. | ||
| Let's do the split screen. | ||
| I'm going to direct here. | ||
| If you make a split, there we go. | ||
| There we go. | ||
| That's okay, Wendell. | ||
| I'll just take control of this and get back to my old directing days. | ||
| You think I'm obnoxious behind a microphone. | ||
| You ought to see when I'm directing something. | ||
| I really turn it up. | ||
| Harry over there is Gimme Stink Eye already, my producer. | ||
| So you see a split screen right there. | ||
| On the right, Swannanoa, North Carolina. | ||
| And that is where the president will be in a moment. | ||
| That's going to be a walk around to actually see some of the devastation. | ||
| It's breathtaking. | ||
| Ben Burkholm was there a couple weeks ago. | ||
| And the left is the press van that is our own... | ||
| Brian Glenn is right now with his cameraman. | ||
| We're not taking a feed. | ||
| The feed is to the right. | ||
| So we'll be there momentarily. | ||
| The president didn't go to Davos because he wanted and needed to go. | ||
| To both Los Angeles, but he wanted to see, he made it out of me. | ||
| He says, I'm stopping in North Carolina first. | ||
| This is not acceptable. | ||
| This really played into what the president's been very concerned about FEMA, played into his fears about FEMA. He finally said, I've had enough about it. | ||
| Now, this is of the 200... | ||
| EO's, executive orders, and or executive action has taken place the last couple of days. | ||
| Everything from using military transport command to ferry illegal aliens out of here into other locations, principally their home countries, all the way to changing the names of migrants and all the official. | ||
| Reporting an official proclamation for the White House to illegal aliens as they are is a term of art and a term of law in the American system. | ||
| The president's done so much on the economy with tariffs, trade, also the deportations underway. | ||
| Our own Ben Berquam is in Chicago. | ||
| He's out with raids today. | ||
| He started off, Ben, who had just gotten back from Western North Carolina. | ||
| Ben was at a hotel, a Holiday Inn. | ||
| They've been totally refurbished and sold out with illegal aliens. | ||
| They're three hots a day in a clean... | ||
| Let's go ahead. | ||
| Vance pulling up. | ||
| Let's go ahead and do the big... | ||
| Can we do the... | ||
| You got the establishing shot there? | ||
| You want to take the full screen on that? | ||
| While Ben and those guys... | ||
| While Brian and those guys get positioned. | ||
| No, let's go to... | ||
| You want to go to the feed for a second? | ||
| Yeah, let's go to the podium. | ||
| President's going to step up in a moment. | ||
| Brian will be coming up. | ||
| Brian's right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Okay. | ||
| There we go right there. | ||
| You've got the podium. | ||
| President will be coming to a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's some local dignitaries, people. | |
| Ben Burkham was there last week. | ||
| The devastation is horrific. | ||
| It's an outdoor facility. | ||
| I mean, outdoor. | ||
| The president's going to actually go and do a walk and talk where he'll walk around with local officials. | ||
| This always normally takes place after a roundtable where the president gets briefed. | ||
| They'll also put somebody normally in the car with the president, a couple of the local officials, and they'll be giving him an update on what's going on. | ||
| So when he's out, he's pretty fully briefed. | ||
| Having been briefed the night before at the White House, briefed at the White House in the morning before he goes, normally in the residence. | ||
| Then when he comes out, goes to Marine One. | ||
| Gets on Air Force One. | ||
| He'll be further briefed on Air Force One. | ||
| So he's got a lot of backup material. | ||
| He'll be pretty far up the speed. | ||
| The President's a very quick study. | ||
| Not just his experience in business and capital markets over 30, 40, 50 years. | ||
| His time, first term as President. | ||
| And can really absorb tremendous amount of information. | ||
| If you have to think what this guy manages every day and keeps the air, you know, juggles the balls, everything from the economy and these major geoeconomic decisions he's making about changing. | ||
| of the model of the economic model of the United States and how it's financed, everything to geostrategic model, where he's looking really, I think, to expand the Monroe Doctrine, and I call it Fortress America, that he's going to secure the Western Hemisphere and eventually put an iron dome over the United States so he will leave his term of office, whether it's this term that started in 24 or one that starts in 28. Our own Andy Ogles, a congressman from Tennessee, has put that in as a bill. | ||
| To start moving forward, changing the Constitution. | ||
| Okay, here we've got one of the staff is there to make sure the mics work. | ||
| Brian Glenn is coming up with the camera crew right now. | ||
| Brian Glenn will be here in a moment. | ||
| The president will arrive in a moment. | ||
| Maybe we can do a split shot with Brian Glenn at this time and maybe see what we got. | ||
| Right there, we're going to... | ||
| Okay, here we're doing a walk right now. | ||
| We'll do a split... | ||
| There we go. | ||
| We've got Brian Glenn on the left. | ||
| He's going to go with the... | ||
| Is that up with the president right now? | ||
| Do we have any audio? | ||
| As soon as we get audio of Brian, let's go to Brian's audio. | ||
| I'm not saying I'm talked out. | ||
| I could do this forever. | ||
| This is a lot easier than interviewing people. | ||
| This is just giving you a stream of customer. | ||
| We're doing it. | ||
| We've got Brian. | ||
| Is that Brian Glenn? | ||
| Hey, can you hear me all right? | ||
| Yes, Steve, I can hear you. | ||
| Put us in. | ||
| Where are we? | ||
| Yeah, get us up to speed. | ||
| Well, it looks like we're at what was at one point a family's home that obviously has been damaged for the hurricane. | ||
| We're sitting up here. | ||
| We just got to the site. | ||
| You saw what the road looked like. | ||
| And obviously about the 100-yard or so dash that we had to make. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, flip this camera around because he's coming from here. | |
| He's going to come around from this way. | ||
| We're just waiting for the president. | ||
| To get out of his vehicle. | ||
| Walk over here. | ||
| And I'm trying to look around and see if we just ran and got to this location. | ||
| So let me just kind of eyeball it. | ||
| It looks like we do have a family. | ||
| And let's... | ||
| President Trump, First Lady, stepping out of the vehicle right now. | ||
| Let's listen in to what it's like here on the ground in Asheville. | ||
| Steve, let's just listen in. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| The president speaking with Reverend Graham and I think the Smith family, from what I call it. | ||
| but let's see if we can listen in a little bit more, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'm just trying to hear Steve. | ||
| At this point, we don't have any idea. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm just trying to hear Steve. | ||
| At this point, we don't have any idea. | ||
| What's been said, obviously, the president is listening to this family, and they, I would imagine, talking about some of the grief and the struggles that they've been going through since the hurricane hit this area on September 27th. |
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