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mahatmakanejeeves

(56,874 posts)
Tue Sep 17, 2019, 03:13 PM Sep 2019

Trump's Remarks Before Bilateral Meeting; September 16, 2019

REMARKS

Remarks by President Trump and Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain Before Bilateral Meeting
FOREIGN POLICY

Issued on: September 16, 2019

Oval Office

3:18 P.M. EDT

{snip}

Q And how concerned are you about the risk of an all-out war in the Middle East?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I’m not concerned at all.

Q You don’t think that we’re a step closer to that, given what Iran just did?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: No. I’m not. Personally, I’m not concerned at all. We have military power the likes of which the world has never seen. I’m not concerned at all. I’d like to avoid it.

You know, when I came here three years ago almost, General Mattis told me, “Sir, we’re very low on ammunition.” I said, “That’s a horrible thing to say.” I’m not blaming him; I’m not blaming anybody. But that’s what he told me. Because we were at a position where, with a certain country — I won’t say which one — we may have had conflict. And he said to me, “Sir, if you could, delay it, because we’re very low on ammunition.” And I said, “You know what, General? I never want to hear that again from another general.” No President should ever, ever hear that statement, “We’re low on ammunition.”

And we now have more ammunition, more missiles, more rockets, more tanks, more — we have more of everything than we’ve ever had before. More jet fighters. When I came here, 50 percent of our jet fighters didn’t fly. You know that. And they were in bad shape. And now we have the best fighters in the world. Everybody wants to buy them. Are you buying our jet fighters?

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: We are, sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Which one?

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: The F-16.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s great.

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: Signed it here.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You have good taste. (Laughter.)

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: Thank you, sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s a great one.

So, we are very high on ammunition now. That’s a story I’ve never told before. Breaking news. But we have — we were very low. I could even say it stronger. I don’t want to say, “No ammunition,” but that gets a lot closer.

I said, “I never want to hear that again. And I never want another President of the United States to hear that again.” Could you imagine, as President, when they say, “We’re very low on ammunition?” By the way, stronger than that, but I’m not going to go there. That was what I was told. And I said, “I never want to be in a position like that again.” And he said, “Could you delay if we do something, sir? Could you delay it as we fill up?” And that is what I inherited from the past administration. And, in all fairness, to President Obama, to administrations before President Obama. That’s what I got stuck with. And we fixed it, and we fixed it good.

The Crown Prince understands $700 billion; the next year, $718 billion; and the next year, which is right now, we just got approved, $738 billion. And that’s a lot of money even for Bahrain. Right?

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: It’s a lot of money, sir.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: It’s a lot even for Bahrain.

CROWN PRINCE SALMAN: It’s a lot of money.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: And Bahrain has a lot of money. Okay?
....

Q Mr. President, can you, kind of, elaborate a little bit on why the decision was taken yesterday to release the Strategic Reserves? Why did you decide right away to do that?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, just in case we ran a little bit low on oil. We have so much with the Strategic Reserves. Plus, being the number one producer, we can fill them up very quickly. Very, very quickly.

And one of the things I’m doing also is I’m approving the pipelines in Texas. We have a tremendous pipeline system that’s being held up by various agencies for a very good reason, for it — going through the normal process.

And we’re going to have to avoid the normal process, because if we do that — Texas is a massive distributor, a massive producer of oil, far bigger than anybody would have even thought five years ago. So what I’m going to do is expedite the pipeline approvals. That will get us another 25 percent energy — additional energy.

I know this is exactly the opposite of the Democrats. They want to have wind, solar, and, I guess, make-believe would be the third alternative, right?

No, this is something we have to do. We have the greatest wealth in the world, and we want to be able to capitalize on it, especially when it comes to safety. Okay?

Thank you all very much. Thank you.

Q Just for one more second. You talked about an urban agenda when you ran for President the first time. You went to Baltimore last week. What are your plans for Baltimore and cities like Baltimore? Instead of pointing fingers, what are you trying to do to help the city rise up from the “rodent-infested place” that you say it is?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I think what I’ve done for the inner cities is more than any President has done for a long time. We’ve created Opportunity Zones. In fact, I did that with Tim Scott, who you know very well, who is, I think, a tremendous guy. It was his initiative. And he came to see me.

They’re having a tremendously positive impact on the inner cities, including Baltimore, including a lot of other cities that you wouldn’t necessarily think. Oakland, California, is an example. We’re having tremendous success in the inner cities because of the Opportunity Zones.

Criminal justice reform — I was the one that got it. Nobody else. I mean, we had people that helped, but a group of extremely liberal Democrats came to the office and they said, “We cannot get it.” President Obama was unable to get it, as you know. President Bush — they were all unable to get it, and I got it.

And I got it with some very conservative senators and people that wanted it to happen. And nobody else could have done it. And it’s sort of interesting, because they don’t like mentioning my name, although, I guess now people are understanding.

But we got it. We got it done. We formed a coalition with some very conservative people, as you know, and some people that are very far left. And we did a thing called, “criminal justice reform,” something that nobody thought. The Crown Prince has seen this. Nobody thought this could possibly happen. And I’m very proud of criminal justice reform. So, we did that. We did the Opportunity Zones and a lot of other things.
....

END

3:42 P.M. EDT
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Trump's Remarks Before Bilateral Meeting; September 16, 2019 (Original Post) mahatmakanejeeves Sep 2019 OP
Wow. Word salad. Blue_playwright Sep 2019 #1

Blue_playwright

(1,568 posts)
1. Wow. Word salad.
Tue Sep 17, 2019, 06:23 PM
Sep 2019

I feel sorry for the journalists who have to read and summarize that shit while looking for a salvageable quote to mix in. 🙄

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