[The Dad Fisherman]

Text of Press Conference


TRUMP: Great to be back in New York with all of our friends and some great friends outside the building, I must tell you.

I want to thank all of our distinguished guests who are with us today, including members of our cabinet: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, O.M.B. Director Mick Mulvaney, and of course our transportation secretary, who’s doing a fabulous job, Elaine Chao. Thank you all for doing a really incredible and creative job on what we are going to be discussing today, which is infrastructure. We’ve just had a great set of briefings upstairs on our infrastructure agenda.





My administration is working every day to deliver the world-class infrastructure that our people deserve, and that frankly our country deserves. That’s why I just signed a new executive order to dramatically reform the nation’s badly broken infrastructure permitting process.
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Just blocks away is the Empire State Building. It took 11 months to build the Empire State Building. But today it can take as long as a decade, and much more than that. Many, many stories where it takes 20 and 25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway. Highway builders must get up to 16 different approvals involving nine different federal agencies governed by 29 different statutes. One agency alone can stall a project for many, many years and even decades. Not only does this cost our economy billions of dollars, but it also denies our citizens the safe and modern infrastructure they deserve.

This overregulated permitting process is a massive, self-inflicted wound on our country. It’s disgraceful. Denying our people much needed investments in their community. And I just want to show you this, because it was just shown to me. I think I’m going to show it to the media, both real and fake media, by the way. This is what it takes to get something approved today.

Elaine, you see that. So this is what it takes, permitting process flow chart. That’s a flowchart. So that can go out to 20 years. This shows about 10. But that can go out to about 20 years to get something approved. This is for a highway. I have seen a highway recently in a certain state. I won’t mention its name. It is 17 years. I could have built it for $4 or $5 million without the permitting process. It costs hundreds of millions of dollars, but it took 17 years to get it approved and many, many, many, many pages of environmental impact studies. This what we will bring it down to. This is less than two years. This is going to happen quickly. That’s what I’m signing today. This will be less than two years for a highway. So it’s going to be quick. It’s going to be a very streamlined process. And by the way, if it doesn’t meet environmental safeguards, we are not going to approve it. Very simple. We are not going to approve it. Maybe this one will say, let’s throw the other one away. Would anybody like it from the media? Would anybody like that long, beautiful chart? You can have it. So my executive order also requires agencies to work together efficiently by requiring one lead agency for each major infrastructure project. It also holds agencies accountable if they fail to streamline their review process.

So each agency is accountable. We’re going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively, relatively speaking. And the permitting process will go very, very quickly. No longer will we tolerate one job killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hard-working Americans.

Now I knew the process very well, probably better than anybody. I had to get permits for this building and many of the buildings I built, all of the buildings I built in Manhattan and many other places. And I will tell you that the consultants are rich people. They go around making it very difficult. They lobby Congress. They lobby state government, city governments to make it very difficult so that you have to hire consultants and that you have to take years and pay them a fortune. So we are streamlining the process, and we won’t be having so much of that anymore. No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay. While protecting the environment, we will build gleaming new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels and highways. We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true. Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world. And today, we are like a third-world country. We are literally like a third-world country. Our infrastructure will again be the best. And we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation. And all over the United States will be proud again.

So I want to thank everybody for being here. God bless you. God bless the United States. And if you have any questions, we have Mick. You could come up here, please. Come on up. Mick Mulvaney.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

REPORTER: Why do you think these C.E.O.’s are leaving your manufacturing council?





TRUMP: Because they’re not taking their jobs seriously as it pertains to this country. But we want jobs, manufacturing in this country. If you look at some of those people that you are talking about, they are outside of the country. They are having a lot of their product made outside. If you look at Merck as an example, take a look — excuse me, excuse me — take a look at where their product is made. It’s made outside of our country. We want products made in the country. Now I have to tell you, some of the folks that will leave, they’re leaving out of embarrassment, because they make their products outside. And I have been lecturing them, including the gentleman that you are referring to, about you have to bring it back to this country. You can’t do it necessarily in Ireland and all of these other places. You have to bring this work back to this country. That’s what I want. I want manufacturing to be back into the United States so that American workers can benefit.

REPORTER: Why did you wait so long — [cross talk]

TRUMP: I didn’t wait long. I didn’t wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct, not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement but you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don’t know the facts. It is a very, very important process to me. It is a very important statement. So I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts. If you go back to my statement, I brought it. I brought it.

[cross talk]

As I said, remember, Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America. And then I went on from there. Here is the thing. Excuse me. Take it nice and easy. Here is the thing. When I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. In fact, a lot of the event didn’t happen yet as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need the facts. So I don’t want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent. In fact, the young woman, who I hear is a fantastic young woman, and it was on NBC, her mother wrote me and said through I guess Twitter, social media, the nicest things. And I very much appreciated that. I hear she was a fine, really actually, an incredible young woman. Her mother, on Twitter, thanked me for what I said. And honestly, if the press were not fake and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice. But unlike you … [cross talk]... and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.

[cross talk]

How about a couple of infrastructure questions.

REPORTER: The C.E.O. of Walmart said you missed a critical opportunity to help bring the country together. Did you?

TRUMP: Not at all. I think the country — look, you take a look. I’ve created over a million jobs since I’m president. The country is booming. The stock market is setting records. We have the highest employment numbers we have ever had in the history of our country. We are doing record business. We have the highest levels of enthusiasm, so the head of Walmart, who I know, who’s a very nice guy, was making a political statement.

[cross talk]

I would do it the same way, because I want to make sure when I make a statement that the statement is correct. And there was no way of making a correct statement that early. I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of reporters. [cross talk] I didn’t know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts. And the facts, as they started coming out, were very well-stated. In fact, everybody said his statement was beautiful. If he would have made it sooner, that would have been good. I couldn’t have made it sooner, because I didn’t know all of the facts. Frankly, people still don’t know all of the facts. It was very important — [cross talk] excuse me, excuse me. It was very important to me to get the facts out and correctly. Because if I would have made a fast statement — and the first statement was made without knowing much other than what we were seeing. The second statement was made with knowledge, with great knowledge. There are still things — [cross talk] excuse me. There are still things that people don’t know. I want to make a statement with knowledge. I wanted to know the facts.

REPORTER: Two questions: Was this terrorism? And can you tell us how you are feeling about your chief strategist Steve Bannon?

TRUMP: Well I think the driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and this country. You can call it terrorism. You can call it murder. You can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. There is a question. Is it murder? Is it terrorism? Then you get into legal semantics. The driver of the car is a murderer. What he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.





REPORTER: Can you tell us how you are feeling about your chief strategist, Mr. Bannon?

TRUMP: Go ahead.