Remarks by President Trump in Cabinet Meeting | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Now, if it doesn't get passed, because we do have the Democrats - because they're against almost everything. We'd love to do it in a bipartisan way. We'll make changes. We'll do what we have to do.

    But if it doesn't get passed, it's a campaign issue because we'll pass it if and when we win the Congress. We'll win the House and we should be able to keep the Senate, win the Senate, and maybe pick up some seats. And hopefully we're going to keep the presidency. That, I feel very comfortable - I feel very confident about. But I feel also very confident we have a very good chance at winning back the House. And it may very well be an election issue, because this plan is a plan like no other. This is the best of everything all over the world. And it's a very fair plan. We have to say that and stress it. Very, very fair plan. Very compassionate plan.

    So it could very well be something that gets done where everybody puts politics aside and they get it voted on. Or if it isn't - you know, the election is 15 months away. Very close. Who would have thought that? But it's very close.

    And we will put this as a major election issue. This is what people want. They want this kind of a plan. They want the compassion but they also want a merit-based plan where people come in and can help our country. So I appreciate you seeing that.

    I think what I'd like to do, if I could - ask our Secretary of State, who is doing a terrific job - Mike Pompeo - to give you a little update on Iran.

    I could possibly say a couple of things about North Korea. When I took over - when I became President, North Korea was ready to go to war. We were, I think, headed to a war. It would have been very quickly, too. It would have been a very bad war, a very rough war. But I believe we were headed in that one direction. There was no communication. There was no talk. There were nuclear weapons being - and nuclear everything being tested. Constantly, we'd be hearing about earthquakes. It wasn't earthquakes; it was nuclear testing. And we were heading in a bad direction.

    And you saw what happened a few weeks ago when we were in South Korea, and I said, the day before - there was no planning, no nothing - the day before, I said, "Hey, we're here. Let's say hello to Kim Jong Un."

    And nobody actually knew how to get in touch. Tough people to get in touch with. But I have a very good relationship with him. And I put it out on Twitter. "Hey, I'm in South Korea. You want to meet?" And we had a great meeting. It was pretty wild. Very good communication. We'll see what happens.

    But, in the meantime, as I say, we got our hostages back. We got the remains back, and they continue to come. We have the sanctions on in full. We're working with China. We're working with Russia on the border.


    And at some point - I'm in absolutely no hurry - but at some point, I think we can probably do something that would be very good for them and very good everybody and for the world.

    So we've met tremendous progress. People don't like saying that. The progress is great communication. Before, we had no communication. There was zero - zero communication. Nobody spoke to anybody. They wouldn't know who. I do believe they tried. I do believe it never happened. I think we tried very hard to speak to them, but they weren't interested in speaking. But now they're interested in speaking, and the relationship is very good. I think we've made tremendous progress on North Korea.

    And, again, time is not of the essence, but I think good things will ultimately happen.

    I'd like to ask Mike to say a few words about Iran and what that situation is. Please.

    SECRETARY POMPEO: Thank you, Mr. President. If I may just to - I'll try and do it briefly, but I might just take a minute. In the same way that - when this administration came in, broadly in the Middle East, you had ISIS with an enormous caliphate, Iran as the world's largest state sponsor of terror, with lots of wealth and the capacity to grow their terror campaign.

    What we've done in these two and a half years is we've built out a coalition of Gulf States, the Israelis. Each of them has been focused on taking these activities on. And we've taken down the caliphate nearly in its entirety.

    And, second, with respect to Iran, we've done three things. We've supported the Iranian people. The Iranian leadership is not doing what the Iranian people want it to do. We've made clear that we support the Iranian people.

    Second, we've continued to work with this coalition that all understands that the largest threat to Middle East security is, in fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

    And, third, we've imposed a series of sanctions on the Iranian regime. I remember, Mr. President, when we began, a lot of folks said that it wouldn't work; if it was just America alone, it wouldn't have any impact. We - as of June, we'd taken down 90 percent, maybe 95 percent, of all the crude oil that was being exported from Iran around the world is no longer shipping. You can see it. The Iranian regime is struggling to figure out what they're going to do with their economy because we have been terribly effective.

    And the result is that - is that, frankly, I think it was yesterday or maybe the day before - for the first time, the Iranians have said that they're prepared to negotiate about their missile program. So we will have this opportunity, I hope. If we continue to execute our strategy appropriately, we'll have this opportunity to negotiate a deal that will actually prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in the same way that the previous agreement had no chance of actually doing.


    THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. You know, a lot of progress has been made. And if they'd like to talk, then we'll see what happens. But a lot of progress has been made.

    Remember one thing: An agreement was made with Secretary Kerry, at the time, and with President Obama. That agreement was a disaster. They spent $150 billion; $1.8 billion was given in cash - cash like cash from your pocket. $1.8 billion given in cash. And we had an agreement that, number one, didn't give us good inspection rights. We were - the places we most would want to inspect we weren't allowed to inspect. We were allowed to inspect places that didn't mean anything. Number one.

    And I think, very importantly, and maybe most importantly, the agreement was short term. You know, for a country, 10 years and 15 years is short term. If you sign a lease, you can a sign a 10-year lease. But for a country, that's a speck of time. And there's only a few years left now. Very short number of years left. And you're not going to go up and make a deal. This was a path for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. They can't have a nuclear weapon.

    We want to help them. We'll be good to them. We'll work with them. We'll help them in any way we can, but they can't have a nuclear weapon. We're not looking, by the way, for regime change, because some people say we're looking for regime change. We're not looking for regime change.

    I've watched President Obama and many other Presidents try that. It doesn't work out too well. We're not looking for that at all. They can't have a nuclear weapon. They can't be testing ballistic missiles, which, right now, under that agreement, if they had the agreement - which we are out of - they'd be able to do. They can't do that.

    And we want them to get out of Yemen. I asked Secretary Kerry, through people, "Why didn't you get them out of Yemen when you gave them $150 billion?" He said it was too complicated. Oh, great. So we want them to get out of Yemen. Syria is a different kind of a situation, but it's all working out.

    We did a great job. As Mike said, we did a great job with the caliphate. We have 100 percent of the caliphate, and we're rapidly pulling out of Syria. We'll be out of there pretty soon. And let them handle their own problems. Syria can handle their own problems - along with Iran, along with Russia, along with Iraq, along with Turkey. We're 7,000 miles away.

    But we did a hell of a job with the caliphate. Nobody thought that was possible. When I came in, my own generals told me it would take two years. And I said, "Really?" But then I met another general. He said, "Sir, we can do it in a month." I said, "I like you. I like you. I like you much better than some other people." And he did an unbelievable job. They were incredible, the job they did. And we got 100 percent of the caliphate.


    We now have 2,000 prisoners - ISIS prisoners. And we're telling Europe, "Look, they were going to Europe." They weren't coming here; they were going to Europe. "You've got to take them." Europe doesn't want to take them because, you know, why should they? They - American patsies. We were patsies for so many years, but they don't want to take them. You got to take them. They were going to you. We helped you out. We did a big thing. We can't be responsible for these people for 50 years or whatever it may be, or more.

    And so we're negotiating with Europe, and we're negotiating with Iraq and lots of other peoples. Somebody has got to do - we have a lot of war; bad people, in many cases. Bad people, possibly in all cases. But we have about 2,000 of them, and we're negotiating right now with Europe. We say, "We don't want them." "Oh, you don't want them? You would've had them if we didn't come along. You would've had them in a way that you don't want to have them." And everyone knows what I mean.

    So, we weren't treated very fairly by the world for the last 20, 25 years, whether it's trade or the military. We protect so many countries. Some countries are unbelievably rich. They don't pay us. They never paid us. Now they're starting to pay and they're paying. Importantly, they're paying a lot, and they're appreciative of us. I actually think they like us better now than they did before because they have respect for us again.

    So, I want to thank Jared. And I want to thank Ben. And I want to thank Scott, Mike, everybody. You've been doing a fantastic job.

    I think I'm going to finish just by asking Alex to say a few word about - words about what we're doing with prescription drug prices because it's really exciting. I'd also like you to discuss - because most people have no idea that we're so close - what's happening with respect to the eradication of AIDS, which nobody would've thought of two years ago. And now we're really at a point where we can eradicate AIDS from the United States within 10 years. So, if you could discuss those two subjects, I would appreciate it.

    SECRETARY AZAR: Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. Absolutely.

    So, new data in for June that shows that, again, prescription drug prices are going down. The Department of Labor's inflation measure for prescription drug prices, it continues to go down this time for the first time in 50 years. The biggest decrease in over 50 years.

    So we're getting prices down by increasing competition. Historic levels of approving generic drugs. Historic levels of approving new branded drugs that can compete with other branded drugs. And the President has made it really clear that we're open for business for an importation regime to let cheaper drugs come into this country as long as it can be done safely, and as long as it can be done in a way that brings savings to the American people. And so we're working on that very aggressively.

    He's also made it very clear that America is tired of subsidizing the socialist healthcare systems in the rest of the world. America's seniors have been overpaying for their drugs, propping up socialist systems abroad, and that's going to end. And he's working on that with us right now.