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Be critical of the current president
For many parts of the world, it is hard to predict which
Donald Trump will enter the White House on January 20. Will it be the
Donald Trump who promised to decimate ISIS in 100 days, or the Donald
Trump who promised to avoid an Iraq-like quagmire? Will it be the Donald
Trump who campaigned on building up a decrepit U.S. military, or the
Donald Trump who said he would slash military spending
to balance the budget? Will it be a Donald Trump who is eager to
strong-arm China at the negotiating table, or the Donald Trump who
promised to discard the Trans-Pacific trade deal designed to increase
American leverage over the region?
While Trump continues to regularly contradict his own supposed views
on U.S. foreign policy, his approach to the U.S. southern border is
clear. He talked a lot about building a wall while running for
president. Since winning, he’s repeatedly emphasized the seriousness of
his promise.
“You think we are playing games,” Trump said earlier this month, at a rally in Wisconsin.
“We’re going to build the wall, okay? Believe me. We’re going to build
the wall. We have to. We have got to stop the drugs from coming in and
the wall is going to be a big, big factor.”
In the Trumpist view, the lack of a continuous border wall between
the U.S. and Mexico facilitates the flow of drugs, undermines U.S.
wages, and provides a potential gateway for terrorists trying to find
their way into the United States. The wall is a concrete way to address
fears among Trump’s base surrounding immigration, an issue that gives
concerns over jobs, wages, and terrorist attacks a common focal point
along the southern border. This worldview is so compelling as a
political vision that it has sometimes caused Trump’s national security
team to back it up with fabrications. Michael Flynn, Trump’s choice for
national security adviser, has wrongly claimed
that there are Arabic letters written on the backs of signs along the
Mexico border, intended to guide terrorists into the United States.
John Kelly, the retired Marine general who Trump has chosen to lead
the Department of Homeland Security, has his own pattern of exaggerating
the border threat. Between 2012 and his retirement in early 2016, Kelly
served as head of U.S. Southern Command. In this role, he coordinated
all U.S. forces in the Western Hemisphere south of Mexico, including the
Caribbean and Guantánamo, which is home to the hemisphere’s largest
overseas U.S. military base. As Obama trimmed the military’s budget with
the sequester, and prioritized Asia and the Middle East over the
relatively peaceful Western Hemisphere, Kelly complained that the budget cuts were undermining regional security.
In a 2014 interview,
he said that the flow of drugs and instability in Latin America posed
an “existential” threat to the United States. During a March 2015
hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Sen. Mike Lee.
R-Utah, asked him to explain why the southern border posed such a large
threat. Kelly responded with these words:
…there’s 40,000 Americans that die every year from the
drugs that move up through my part of the world, and into Bill’s [Adm.
William Gortney, who was then head of Northern Command], and into our
homeland — 40,000 people a year.
You know, since 9/11, there’s — half a million people have died from
narcoterrorism, as we call it in — down where I live — narcoterrorism.
Five hundred thousand Americans have died. Very few have died from, you
know, traditional terrorism, if you will, since 9/11. It costs our
country $200 billion a year to deal with the people that are into drugs
but are not, you know, dying. So I see that as a huge, huge, huge
threat.
Kelly’s first claim — drugs kill roughly 40,000
Americans each year — is accurate. It is also true that drugs have
killed more than half a million Americans in the 15 years since 9/11.
But Kelly’s second claim to the Senate committee, that 500,000
Americans “have died from narcoterrorism” since 9/11, is a significant
exaggeration. The real number of Americans who have died of post-9/11
terrorism in all its forms is well under 1,000, according to a 2014 study
that was supported by the Department of Homeland Security. And at least
one-third of the 40,000 killed by drugs annually do not die, as Kelly
claimed, from drugs coming into the U.S. across the southern border, but
from overdoses of legally prescribed opioids. Almost all of the profits
from those addicts flow not to drug cartels but to pharmaceutical
companies. Sales of legal opioids have quadrupled since 1999, particularly in those white, rural areas of the country where Trump’s support is strongest.
Kelly’s claim of 500,000 deaths doesn’t appear to be reflected in any
known official numbers. The RAND Corporation, for example, estimated
that less than 100 people in total died due to terrorism in the U.S. between 9/11 and 2009.
While it is true that drug-related violence poses an existential
threat to Mexico and Central America, Kelly was wrong to suggest that is
the case in the United States. The number of Americans killed each year
in drug-related homicides is around 1,000,
according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. That is one thousand too
many, but it does not add up to the half million post-9/11 U.S. victims
of narcoterrorism that Kelly claimed had lost their lives in his
testimony before the Senate committee.
“Prescription drugs make billions of dollars for Purdue and other
pharmaceutical companies,” said Kathleen Frydl, historian and author of
“The Drug Wars in America,” by email. “It may be preferable for John
Kelly to pretend that narcotrafficking, rather than homegrown greed,
lies at the heart of the opioid crisis.”
Kelly’s claim of 500,000 U.S. narcoterrorism deaths is more than a one-time slip of the tongue. He said the same thing later last year in a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
…our country is right at 40,000 dead a year, year after
year, from another kind of terrorism, narcoterrorism … the cocaine and
the drugs and the network it travels on, it moves anything. Guns, women,
other people, human beings. Uh, potentially terrorists. Potentially,
anything. All you have to do is pay the fare. But the network is very,
very well developed.
While the rhetorical link that Kelly makes between terrorism
and immigration is central to Trump’s pitch for sealing the U.S. border,
new walls are just one of many ways that Kelly will likely carry out
his agenda at the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is a very young,
very large, and very powerful federal agency created 11 days after the
September 11, 2001, attacks. It is roughly one-tenth the size of the
Pentagon in terms of budget ($52 billion vs. $524 billion) and personnel
(240,000 vs. 2.3 million), and oversees almost all of the federal
government’s operations relating to immigration.
If confirmed by the
Senate, Kelly will be responsible for a wide portfolio of security
measures inside of U.S. borders, including responding to natural
disasters, stockpiling vaccines, inspecting cargo, scanning luggage and
passengers at airports, passing federal intelligence on to state and
local police, and managing Secret Service protection for the president
and his family.
Trump said he will triple the number of federal officers working to deport immigrants, and immediately deport 2
million to 3 million people now living on U.S. soil. He has called for
the “extreme vetting” of Muslims trying to enter the U.S., and perhaps
banning entirely those seeking entry from certain countries, such as
Syria.
Kelly will be the first military officer to lead the agency, in a country with longstanding legal prohibitions
against military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Kelly, like
Flynn, another retired military officer, has frequently referred to the
possibility that Middle Eastern terrorist networks could link up with
human smugglers to move operatives or weapons of mass destruction across
U.S. borders, a persistent fear in government circles. It has never
been conclusively disproven as a possibility, nor has it ever
demonstrably taken place. Adam Isacson, who covers security for the
Washington Office on Latin America, said that Kelly perceives the region
“in terms of complex networks of criminals looking to do ill within the
United States.” The potential for cross-border terrorism threat should
not be completely discounted, he added. “You only have to be right
once,” he said.
The southern border narcoterrorism scenario was also graphically depicted in the 2012 film “Act of Valor,” produced with the help
of the Navy and active-duty Navy SEALS. Real-life investigations into
the drug-terror connection tend to turn up less spectacular results, as
recent investigations by Pro Publica and The Intercept have shown.
Russell Baer, a spokesperson for the Drug Enforcement Administration,
said there was no official tally kept of deaths caused by
narcoterrorism. “There’s no specific way to answer that question,” he
said, by email. “Narcoterrorism has more to do with using drug proceeds,
or drug money laundering services, to support a terroristic cause
throughout the world. We are all victims of narcoterrorism.”
Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request asking them to clarify or explain Kelly’s remarks.
After the infamous “grab her by the pussy”
Access Hollywood tape, many expected footage of Donald Trump’s hundreds
of hours in “The Apprentice” boardroom to yield something just as
incendiary. But outtakes from the show were never leaked. One of the
plausible reasons why this footage hasn’t seen the light of day is that,
simply put, many of the employees with access to the footage feared the
end of their careers.
It’s a concern that highlights the dangers of working in an industry without job security or union representation.
On a Seattle radio show this week, comedian Tom Arnold claimed the existence
of an old edited video of Trump “saying every dirty, offensive, racist
thing ever.” Explaining why “The Apprentice” staffers who made the reel
never tried to release it, Arnold said, “They were scared to death. They
were scared of (Trump’s) people. They’re scared they’ll never work
again.”
Similarly, a Vanity Fair article breaking down
the yearlong effort by the media and the Clinton campaign to
obtain “Apprentice” tapes claimed employees “feared reprisals, or simply
worried that blowing a whistle would prevent them from getting jobs on
the sets of other reality programs.” One industry employee told the
magazine, “They are all terrified of being sued. … Most of these people
are freelancers, and there is no one that is going to protect them.”
Unscripted television blossomed in part as a union-busting device.
During and after the 1988 television writers’ strike, networks developed
shows like Cops and Unsolved Mysteries to maintain
programming in the event of another walkout. These shows were cheaper to
produce because of the lack of union contracts (particularly because
they didn’t have to pay out residuals after the fact).
The rise of reality TV arguably prevented a 2001 writers walkout, and though a 2007 strike ended with the Writers Guild winning a decent contract, they did not organize reality shows to boost their bargaining power. This is beginning to change — editors on Burnett’s “Survivor” actually have a union contract — but the vast majority of the industry remains nonunion. And nearly half of all programming on broadcasting and cable is unscripted, moving Hollywood away from its labor roots.
Those producers, editors, and writers who transform thousands of
hours of footage into something coherent, if not watchable, are
typically contract employees who move from job to job, none lasting more
than a few months (this makes union organizing extremely difficult).
Independent production companies create and sell the shows to the
networks, and their profits increase with how much they can exploit their workers. Freelancers get no health care or pension benefits, vacation or sick days, and often no overtime, amid hazardous field conditions. Time sheet falsification and wage theft run rampant.
Perhaps most important, your future career depends on good working
relationships with production companies and supervisors. If Mark Burnett
threatens to prevent you from working again if you cross him, that’s a
credible threat, since employees find their next jobs through
recommendations and repeat business. Even though staffers could have
leaked material anonymously, the risk of ending their careers loomed
larger, because nobody in the industry is looking out for the individual
worker, who competes with hundreds of others to land a gig.
Blackballing in such an environment is simple.
Unions can protect workers from blackballing threats by raising
grievances. They can ensure the fairness of contracts like
confidentiality agreements. They can police industries on behalf of
workers. Their absence pushes all the power to producers like Burnett,
which can collude on wages and threaten workers to bring them to heel.
The lack of bargaining power for nonunion contract workers has become a hallmark of the U.S.
economy. New research
from Harvard’s Lawrence Katz and Princeton’s Alan Krueger finds that 94
percent of the 10 million jobs created in the Obama era were temporary,
part-time, or “gig economy” positions. This hands tremendous power to
employers to dictate terms of employment, and to even break the law,
without pushback. And blackballing threats are perhaps the
quintessential example.
Threats that “you’ll never work in this town again” should not have
been an impediment to anonymous leaking of material on Trump that
someone may have considered in the public interest.
The fact that it
was, that people didn’t think their identities would remain hidden and
that their career would end, speaks to the climate of fear that grips
the unscripted TV industry. And it increasingly characterizes the U.S.
workforce, where the boss has disproportionate power and control.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama
Weekly Address
December 24, 2016
THE PRESIDENT: Merry Christmas everybody! One of the best parts of the
holiday season is spending time with the special people in your life.
And for me, that means getting some help from my best friend for our
annual Christmas Weekly Address.
THE FIRST LADY: Given how our first Christmas Weekly Address went, I realized that Barack needed all the help he could get.
[PAUSE]
THE FIRST LADY: Celebrating the holidays in the White House over these
past eight years has been a true privilege. We’ve been able to welcome
over half a million guests… our outstanding pastry chefs have baked
200,000 holiday cookies… and Barack has treated the American people to
countless dad jokes.
THE PRESIDENT: Although a few got a…Frosty reception.
THE FIRST LADY: This year’s White House holiday theme is “The Gift of
the Holidays,” and our decorations reflect some of our greatest gifts as
a nation: from our incredible military families, to the life-changing
impact of a great education.
THE PRESIDENT: And the greatest gift that Michelle and I have received
over the last eight years has been the honor of serving as your
President and First Lady. Together, we fought our way back from the
worst recession in 80 years, and got unemployment to a nine-year low.
We secured health insurance for another twenty million Americans, and
new protections for folks who already had insurance. We made America
more respected around the world, took on the mantle of leadership in the
fight to protect this planet for our kids, and much, much more.
By so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than
it was when we first got here. And I’m hopeful we’ll build on the
progress we’ve made in the years to come.
Tomorrow, for the final time as the First Family, we will join our
fellow Christians around the world to rejoice in the birth of our
Savior. And as we retell His story from that Holy Night, we’ll also
remember His eternal message, one of boundless love, compassion and
hope.
THE FIRST LADY: The idea that we are our brother’s keeper and our
sister’s keeper. That we should treat others as we would want to be
treated. And that we care for the sick… feed the hungry… and welcome
the stranger… no matter where they come from, or how they practice their
faith.
THE PRESIDENT: Those are values that help guide not just my family’s
Christian faith, but that of Jewish Americans, and Muslim Americans;
nonbelievers and Americans of all backgrounds. And no one better
embodies that spirit of service than the men and women who wear our
country’s uniform and their families.
THE FIRST LADY: As always, many of our troops are far from home this
time of year, and their families are serving and sacrificing right along
with them. Their courage and dedication allow the rest of us to enjoy
this season. That’s why we’ve tried to serve them as well as they’ve
served this country. Go to JoiningForces.gov
to see how you can honor and support the service members, veterans and
military families in your community – not just during the holidays, but
all year round.
THE PRESIDENT: So as we look forward to the New Year, let’s resolve to
recommit ourselves to the values we share. And on behalf of the all the
Obamas – Michelle, Malia, Sasha, Bo, and that troublemaker Sunny –
Merry Christmas, everybody.
THE FIRST LADY: And we wish you and your family a happy and healthy 2017… thanks, and God bless.
By Philip Rucker and Karen Tumulty
Donald Trump believes that those who aspire to the most visible spots
in his administration should not just be able to do the job, but also
look the part.
Given Trump’s own background as a master brander
and showman who ran beauty pageants as a sideline, it was probably
inevitable that he would be looking beyond their résumés for a certain
aesthetic in his supporting players.
“Presentation is very
important because you’re representing America not only on the national
stage but also the international stage, depending on the position,” said
Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller.
To lead the Pentagon,
Trump chose a rugged combat general, whom he compares to a historic one.
At the United Nations, his ambassador will be a poised and elegant
Indian American with a compelling immigrant backstory. As secretary of
state, Trump tapped a neophyte to international diplomacy, but one whose
silvery hair and boardroom bearing project authority.
The parade
of potential job-seekers passing a bank of media cameras to board the
elevators at Trump Tower has the feel of a casting call. It is no
coincidence that a disproportionate share of the names most mentioned
for jobs at the upper echelon of the Trump administration are familiar
faces to obsessive viewers of cable news — of whom the president-elect
is one.
“He likes people who present themselves very well, and
he’s very impressed when somebody has a background of being good on
television because he thinks it’s a very important medium for public
policy,” said Chris Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media and a
longtime friend of Trump. “Don’t forget, he’s a showbiz guy. He was at
the pinnacle of showbiz, and he thinks about showbiz. He sees this as a
business that relates to the public.”
“The look might not
necessarily be somebody who should be on the cover of GQ magazine or
Vanity Fair,” Ruddy said. “It’s more about the look and the demeanor and
the swagger.”
As Trump formally announced his vice presidential
pick in July, he said that Mike Pence’s economic record as Indiana
governor was “the primary reason I wanted Mike, other than he looks very
good, other than he’s got an incredible family, incredible wife and
family.”
And in picking retired Marine Gen. James Mattis as his nominee for
defense, Trump lauded him as “the closest thing to General George Patton
that we have.”
Mattis has a passing physical resemblance to the
legendary World War II commander, as well as to the late actor George
C. Scott, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Patton in the
1970 biopic. Trump also seems particularly enamored with a nickname that
Mattis is said to privately dislike.
“You know he’s known as
‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, right? ‘Mad Dog’ for a reason,” Trump said in a recent
interview with the New York Times.
The president-elect, however, does not mention Mattis’ other sobriquet, which is “Warrior Monk.” Or his call sign: “Chaos.”
On
the other hand, in Trump’s book, not having the right kind of
appearance is tantamount to a disqualifier. During the presidential
campaign, he stirred a controversy when he pronounced that Democratic
nominee Hillary Clinton lacked “a presidential look, and you need a
presidential look.”
Battling through the GOP primary, Trump frequently made barbed comments about his opponents’ appearances.
Those
kind of skin-deep standards helped make Trump a success as a
reality-television star and international brand, but his critics say
they are worrisome in the Oval Office.
His personnel choices
show signs of being “cast for the TV show of his administration,” said
Bob Killian, founder of a branding agency based in Chicago. “They are
all perfectly coifed people who look like they belong on a set.”
But
Trump spokesman Miller insisted that some qualifications do not lend
themselves to lines on a résumé: “People who are being selected for
these key positions need to be able to hold their own, need to be doers
and not wallflowers, and need to convey a clear sense of purpose and
commitment.”
All of which has led him to some unconventional picks. If confirmed
by the Senate, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson will become the
first secretary of state in modern history to come to the job with no
experience in government. Then again, Trump himself has none.
South
Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) has little obvious foreign policy
experience to qualify her for United Nations ambassador, but she is a
rising political star who brings diversity to Trump’s largely white and
male picks for top jobs. Given how she and the president-elect had
clashed during the 2016 campaign, Haley’s selection also suggests that
Trump is willing to bring adversaries into the fold when they suit his
needs.
In hiring, Trump has long trusted his own impressions, at times more than a candidate’s expertise or experience.
In
1981, he saw a security guard at the U.S. Open tennis championships
masterfully eject some hecklers. Trump asked Barbara Res, one of his top
construction executives, to hire the man.
“But you’ve never even met him!” she protested. Trump said he liked how the man looked when he handled the situation.
That
security guard, Matthew Calamari, has worked for Trump for 35 years and
is now chief operating officer of Trump Properties. His son, Matthew
Calamari Jr., started with Trump five years ago as a security guard and
is now the Trump Organization’s director of surveillance.
Trump’s
closest aides have come to accept that he is likely to rule out
candidates if they are not attractive or not do not match his image of
the type of person who should hold a certain job.
“That’s the
language he speaks. He’s very aesthetic,” said one person familiar with
the transition team’s internal deliberations who spoke on the condition
of anonymity. “You can come with somebody who is very much qualified for
the job, but if they don’t look the part, they’re not going anywhere.”
everal of Trump’s associates said they thought that John R. Bolton’s
brush-like mustache was one of the factors that handicapped the
bombastic former United Nations ambassador in the sweepstakes for
secretary of state.
“Donald was not going to like that mustache,”
said one associate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak
frankly. “I can’t think of anyone that’s really close to Donald that has
a beard that he likes.”
Trump was drawn to Tillerson and 2012
GOP nominee Mitt Romney for secretary of state because of their presence
and the way they command a room when they walk in.
The president-elect considered Romney despite the former
Massachusetts governor’s scathing criticism of him during the
presidential campaign. Several Trump associates say he was drawn to
Romney, and later to Tillerson, by their “central casting” quality, a
phrase the president-elect uses frequently in his private deliberations.
People
close to Trump said he has been eager to appoint a telegenic woman as
press secretary or in some other public-facing role in his White House —
both because he thinks it would attract viewers and would help
inoculate him from the charges of sexism that trailed his presidential
campaign.
His first choice was his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, who has
resisted the offer. Others under consideration included Laura Ingraham,
Kimberly Guilfoyle and Monica Crowley, all of whom are conservative
pundits familiar to the viewers of Fox News Channel.
The current
favorite for press secretary is Republican National Committee chief
strategist and communications director Sean Spicer, who has impressed
Trump with his tough and unyielding defenses of the incoming
administration in hostile interviews on cable news networks.
Crowley, meanwhile, has been picked to become communications chief
for Trump’s National Security Council, where the deputy director will be
K.T. McFarland, another longtime denizen of the Fox green room.
Trump
is also said to be considering CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow for head
of his Council of Economic Advisers. That is normally an
all-but-invisible spot given to a prestigious economist, but Kudlow has
neither an undergraduate nor graduate degree in the subject.
Kudlow
is, however, known for his ardent advocacy of tax cuts, which are also a
top priority for the incoming president. In Trump’s administration, the
job description may be to formulate his policies — and also help sell
them on TV.
By overwhelming majorities, Americans would prefer to elect the president by direct popular vote, not filtered through the antiquated mechanism
of the Electoral College. They understand, on a gut level, the basic
fairness of awarding the nation’s highest office on the same basis as
every other elected office — to the person who gets the most votes.
And
so for the second time in 16 years, the candidate who lost the popular
vote has won the presidency. Unlike 2000, it wasn’t even close. Hillary
Clinton beat Mr. Trump by more than 2.8 million votes, or 2.1 percent of
the electorate. That’s a wider margin than 10 winning candidates
enjoyed and the biggest deficit for an incoming president since the 19th century.
Yes,
Mr. Trump won under the rules, but the rules should change so that a
presidential election reflects the will of Americans and promotes a more
participatory democracy.
The Electoral College, which is written into the Constitution, is more than just a vestige of the founding era; it is a living symbol
of America’s original sin. When slavery was the law of the land, a
direct popular vote would have disadvantaged the Southern states, with
their large disenfranchised populations. Counting those men and women as
three-fifths of a white person, as the Constitution originally did, gave the slave states more electoral votes.
Today
the college, which allocates electors based on each state’s
representation in Congress, tips the scales in favor of smaller states; a
Wyoming resident’s vote counts 3.6 times as much as
a Californian’s. And because almost all states use a winner-take-all
system, the election ends up being fought in just a dozen or so
“battleground” states, leaving tens of millions of Americans on the
sidelines.
There
is an elegant solution: The Constitution establishes the existence of
electors, but leaves it up to states to tell them how to vote. Eleven
states and the District of Columbia, representing 165 electoral votes,
have already passed legislation to have their electors vote for the
winner of the national popular vote. The agreement, known as the National Popular Vote interstate compact,
would take effect once states representing a majority of electoral
votes, currently 270, signed on. This would ensure that the national
popular-vote winner would become president.
Conservative opponents of a direct vote say
it would give an unfair edge to large, heavily Democratic cities and
states. But why should the votes of Americans in California or New York
count for less than those in Idaho or Texas? A direct popular vote would
treat all Americans equally, no matter where they live — including, by
the way, Republicans in San Francisco and Democrats in Corpus Christi,
whose votes are currently worthless. The system as it now operates does a
terrible job of representing the nation’s demographic and geographic
diversity. Almost 138 million Americans went to the polls this year, but
Mr. Trump secured his Electoral College victory thanks to fewer than 80,000 votes across three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
This page has opposed the Electoral College for at least 80 years, and it has regardless of the outcome
of any given election. (In 2004, President George W. Bush won the
popular vote by more than three million, but he could have lost the
Electoral College with a switch of fewer than 60,000 votes in Ohio.)
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. This is the most wonderful press
conference of the year. I've got a list of who’s been naughty and nice
to call on. (Laughter.) But let me first make a couple of quick
points, and then I’ll take your questions.
Typically, I use this yearend press conference to review how far we’ve
come over the course of the year. Today, understandably, I'm going to
talk a little bit about how far we’ve come over the past eight years.
As I was preparing to take office, the unemployment rate was on its way
to 10 percent. Today, it’s at 4.6 percent -- the lowest in nearly a
decade. We’ve seen the longest streak of job growth on record, and
wages have grown faster over the past few years than at any time in the
past 40.
When I came into office, 44 million people were uninsured. Today,
we’ve covered more than 20 million of them. For the first time in our
history, more than 90 percent of Americans are insured. In fact,
yesterday was the biggest day ever for HealthCare.gov. More than
670,000 Americans signed up to get covered, and more are signing up by
the day.
We’ve cut our dependence on foreign oil by more than half, doubled
production of renewable energy, enacted the most sweeping reforms since
FDR to protect consumers and prevent a crisis on Wall Street from
punishing Main Street ever again. None of these actions stifled growth,
as critics predicted. Instead, the stock market has nearly tripled.
Since I signed Obamacare into law, our businesses have added more than
15 million new jobs. And the economy is undoubtedly more durable than
it was in the days when we relied on oil from unstable nations and banks
took risky bets with your money.
Add it all up, and last year, the poverty rate fell at the fastest rate
in almost 50 years, while the median household income grew at the
fastest rate on record. In fact, income gains were actually larger for
households at the bottom and the middle than for those at the top. And
we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by nearly two-thirds and
protecting vital investments that grow the middle class.
In foreign policy, when I came into office, we were in the midst of two
wars. Now, nearly 180,000 troops are down to 15,000. Bin Laden,
rather than being at large, has been taken off the battlefield, along
with thousands of other terrorists. Over the past eight years, no
foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed an attack on
our homeland that was directed from overseas.
Through diplomacy, we’ve ensured that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear
weapon -- without going to war with Iran. We opened up a new chapter
with the people of Cuba. And we brought nearly 200 nations together
around a climate agreement that could very well save this planet for our
kids. And almost every country on Earth sees America as stronger and
more respected today than they did eight years ago.
In other words, by so many measures, our country is stronger and more
prosperous than it was when we started. That's a situation that I’m
proud to leave for my successor. And it’s thanks to the American people
-- to the hard work that you’ve put in, the sacrifices you’ve made for
your families and your communities, the businesses that you started or
invested in, the way you looked out for one another. And I could not be
prouder to be your President.
Of course, to tout this progress doesn’t mean that we’re not mindful of
how much more there is to do. In this season in particular, we’re
reminded that there are people who are still hungry, people who are
still homeless; people who still have trouble paying the bills or
finding work after being laid off.
There are communities that are still
mourning those who have been stolen from us by senseless gun violence,
and parents who still are wondering how to protect their kids. And
after I leave office, I intend to continue to work with organizations
and citizens doing good across the country on these and other pressing
issues to build on the progress that we’ve made.
Around the world, as well, there are hotspots where disputes have been
intractable, conflicts have flared up, and people -- innocent people are
suffering as a result. And nowhere is this more terribly true than in
the city of Aleppo. For years, we’ve worked to stop the civil war in
Syria and alleviate human suffering. It has been one of the hardest
issues that I've faced as President.
The world, as we speak, is united in horror at the savage assault by
the Syrian regime and its Russian and Iranian allies on the city of
Aleppo. We have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging,
and starving innocent civilians. We've seen relentless targeting of
humanitarian workers and medical personnel; entire neighborhoods reduced
to rubble and dust. There are continuing reports of civilians being
executed. These are all horrific violations of international law.
Responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone -- with the
Assad regime and its allies Russia and Iran. And this blood and these
atrocities are on their hands.
We all know what needs to happen. There needs to be an impartial
international observer force in Aleppo that can help coordinate an
orderly evacuation through safe corridors. There has to be full access
for humanitarian aid, even as the United States continues to be the
world’s largest donor of humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. And,
beyond that, there needs to be a broader ceasefire that can serve as the
basis for a political rather than a military solution.
That’s what the United States is going to continue to push for, both
with our partners and through multilateral institutions like the U.N.
Regretfully, but unsurprisingly, Russia has repeatedly blocked the
Security Council from taking action on these issues. So we’re going to
keep pressing the Security Council to help improve the delivery of
humanitarian aid to those who are in such desperate need, and to ensure
accountability, including continuing to monitor any potential use of
chemical weapons in Syria. And we’re going to work in the U.N. General
Assembly as well, both on accountability and to advance a political
settlement. Because it should be clear that although you may achieve
tactical victories, over the long term the Assad regime cannot slaughter
its way to legitimacy.
That’s why we'll continue to press for a transition to a more
representative government. And that’s why the world must not avert our
eyes to the terrible events that are unfolding. The Syrian regime and
its Russian and Iranian allies are trying to obfuscate the truth. The
world should not be fooled.
And the world will not forget.
So even in a season where the incredible blessings that we know as
Americans are all around us, even as we enjoy family and friends and are
reminded of how lucky we are, we should also be reminded that to be an
American involves bearing burdens and meeting obligations to others.
American values and American ideals are what will lead the way to a
safer and more prosperous 2017, both here and abroad.
And by the way, few embody those values and ideals like our brave men
and women in uniform and their families. So I just want to close by
wishing all of them a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
With that, I will take some questions. And I'm going to start with Josh Lederman, of AP.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. There’s a perception that you're
letting President Putin get away with interfering in the U.S. election,
and that a response that nobody knows about or a lookback review just
won’t cut it. Are you prepared to call out President Putin by name for
ordering this hacking?
And do you agree with what Hillary Clinton now
says, that the hacking was actually partly responsible for her loss?
And is your administration’s open quarreling with Trump and his team on
this issue tarnishing the smooth transition of power that you have
promised?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, with respect to the transition, I
think they would be the first to acknowledge that we have done
everything we can to make sure that they are successful as I promised.
And that will continue. And it’s just been a few days since I last
talked to the President-elect about a whole range of transition issues.
That cooperation is going to continue.
There hasn’t been a lot of squabbling. What we’ve simply said is the
facts, which are that, based on uniform intelligence assessments, the
Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC, and that, as a
consequence, it is important for us to review all elements of that and
make sure that we are preventing that kind of interference through
cyberattacks in the future.
That should be a bipartisan issue; that shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
And my hope is that the President-elect is going to similarly be
concerned with making sure that we don’t have potential foreign
influence in our election process. I don’t think any American wants
that. And that shouldn’t be a source of an argument.
I think that part of the challenge is that it gets caught up in the
carryover from election season. And I think it is very important for us
to distinguish between the politics of the election and the need for
us, as a country, both from a national security perspective but also in
terms of the integrity of our election system and our democracy, to make
sure that we don’t create a political football here.
Now, with respect to how this thing unfolded last year, let’s just go
through the facts pretty quickly. At the beginning of the summer, we’re
alerted to the possibility that the DNC has been hacked, and I
immediately order law enforcement as well as our intelligence teams to
find out everything about it, investigate it thoroughly, to brief the
potential victims of this hacking, to brief on a bipartisan basis the
leaders of both the House and the Senate and the relevant intelligence
committees. And once we had clarity and certainty around what, in fact,
had happened, we publicly announced that, in fact, Russia had hacked
into the DNC.
And at that time, we did not attribute motives or any interpretations
of why they had done so. We didn’t discuss what the effects of it might
be. We simply let people know -- the public know, just as we had let
members of Congress know -- that this had happened.
And as a consequence, all of you wrote a lot of stories about both what
had happened, and then you interpreted why that might have happened and
what effect it was going to have on the election outcomes. We did not.
And the reason we did not was because in this hyper-partisan
atmosphere, at a time when my primary concern was making sure that the
integrity of the election process was not in any way damaged, at a time
when anything that was said by me or anybody in the White House would
immediately be seen through a partisan lens, I wanted to make sure that
everybody understood we were playing this thing straight -- that we
weren’t trying to advantage one side or another, but what we were trying
to do was let people know that this had taken place, and so if you
started seeing effects on the election, if you were trying to measure
why this was happening and how you should consume the information that
was being leaked, that you might want to take this into account.
And that's exactly how we should have handled it. Imagine if we had
done the opposite. It would have become immediately just one more
political scrum. And part of the goal here was to make sure that we did
not do the work of the leakers for them by raising more and more
questions about the integrity of the election right before the election
was taking place -- at a time, by the way, when the President-elect
himself was raising questions about the integrity of the election.
And, finally, I think it's worth pointing out that the information was
already out. It was in the hands of WikiLeaks, so that was going to
come out no matter what. What I was concerned about, in particular, was
making sure that that wasn’t compounded by potential hacking that could
hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself.
And so in early September, when I saw President Putin in China, I felt
that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to
talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, and there were going to
be some serious consequences if he didn’t. And, in fact, we did not
see further tampering of the election process. But the leaks through
WikiLeaks had already occurred.
So when I look back in terms of how we handled it, I think we handled
it the way it should have been handled. We allowed law enforcement and
the intelligence community to do its job without political influence.
We briefed all relevant parties involved in terms of what was taking
place. When we had a consensus around what had happened, we announced
it -- not through the White House, not through me, but rather through
the intelligence communities that had actually carried out these
investigations. And then we allowed you and the American public to make
an assessment as to how to weigh that going into the election.
And the truth is, is that there was nobody here who didn’t have some
sense of what kind of effect it might have. I'm finding it a little
curious that everybody is suddenly acting surprised that this looked
like it was disadvantaging Hillary Clinton because you guys wrote about
it every day. Every single leak. About every little juicy tidbit of
political gossip -- including John Podesta's risotto recipe. This was
an obsession that dominated the news coverage.
So I do think it's worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential
election of such importance, of such moment, with so many big issues at
stake and such a contrast between the candidates, came to be dominated
by a bunch of these leaks. What is it about our political system that
made us vulnerable to these kinds of potential manipulations -- which,
as I've said publicly before, were not particularly sophisticated.
This was not some elaborate, complicated espionage scheme. They hacked
into some Democratic Party emails that contained pretty routine stuff,
some of it embarrassing or uncomfortable, because I suspect that if any
of us got our emails hacked into, there might be some things that we
wouldn’t want suddenly appearing on the front page of a newspaper or a
telecast, even if there wasn’t anything particularly illegal or
controversial about it. And then it just took off.
And that concerns me. And it should concern all of us. But the truth
of the matter is, is that everybody had the information. It was out
there. And we handled it the way we should have.
Now, moving forward, I think there are a couple of issues that this
raises. Number one is just the constant challenge that we are going to
have with cybersecurity throughout our economy and throughout our
society. We are a digitalized culture, and there is hacking going on
every single day. There’s not a company, there’s not a major
organization, there’s not a financial institution, there’s not a branch
of our government where somebody is not going to be phishing for
something or trying to penetrate, or put in a virus or malware. And
this is why for the last eight years, I’ve been obsessed with how do we
continually upgrade our cybersecurity systems.
And this particular concern around Russian hacking is part of a broader
set of concerns about how do we deal with cyber issues being used in
ways that can affect our infrastructure, affect the stability of our
financial systems, and affect the integrity of our institutions, like
our election process.
I just received a couple weeks back -- it wasn’t widely reported on -- a
report from our cybersecurity commission that outlines a whole range of
strategies to do a better job on this. But it’s difficult, because
it’s not all housed -- the target of cyberattacks is not one entity but
it’s widely dispersed, and a lot of it is private, like the DNC. It’s
not a branch of government. We can’t tell people what to do. What we
can do is inform them, get best practices.
What we can also do is to, on a bilateral basis, warn other countries
against these kinds of attacks. And we’ve done that in the past. So
just as I told Russia to stop it, and indicated there will be
consequences when they do it, the Chinese have, in the past, engaged in
cyberattacks directed at our companies to steal trade secrets and
proprietary technology. And I had to have the same conversation with
Prime Minister -- or with President Xi, and what we’ve seen is some
evidence that they have reduced -- but not completely eliminated --
these activities, partly because they can use cutouts.
One of the problems with the Internet and cyber issues is that there’s
not always a return address, and by the time you catch up to it,
attributing what happened to a particular government can be difficult,
not always provable in court even though our intelligence communities
can make an assessment.
What we’ve also tried to do is to start creating some international
norms about this to prevent some sort of cyber arms race, because we
obviously have offensive capabilities as well as defensive capabilities.
And my approach is not a situation in which everybody is worse off
because folks are constantly attacking each other back and forth, but
putting some guardrails around the behavior of nation-states, including
our adversaries, just so that they understand that whatever they do to
us we can potentially do to them.
We do have some special challenges, because oftentimes our economy is
more digitalized, it is more vulnerable, partly because we’re a
wealthier nation and we’re more wired than some of these other
countries. And we have a more open society, and engage in less control
and censorship over what happens over the Internet, which is also part
of what makes us special.
Last point -- and the reason I’m going on here is because I know that
you guys have a lot of questions about this, and I haven't addressed all
of you directly about it. With respect to response, my principal goal
leading up to the election was making sure that the election itself went
off without a hitch, that it was not tarnished, and that it did not
feed any sense in the public that somehow tampering had taken place with
the actual process of voting. And we accomplished that.
That does not mean that we are not going to respond. It simply meant
that we had a set of priorities leading up to the election that were of
the utmost importance. Our goal continues to be to send a clear message
to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to
you.
But it is also important for us to do that in a thoughtful, methodical
way. Some of it we do publicly. Some of it we will do in a way that
they know, but not everybody will. And I know that there have been
folks out there who suggest somehow that if we went out there and made
big announcements, and thumped our chests about a bunch of stuff, that
somehow that would potentially spook the Russians. But keep in mind
that we already have enormous numbers of sanctions against the Russians.
The relationship between us and Russia has deteriorated, sadly,
significantly over the last several years. And so how we approach an
appropriate response that increases costs for them for behavior like
this in the future, but does not create problems for us, is something
that’s worth taking the time to think through and figure out. And
that’s exactly what we’ve done.
So at a point in time where we’ve taken certain actions that we can
divulge publically, we will do so. There are times where the message
will go -- will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized.
And I should point out, by the way, part of why the Russians have been
effective on this is because they don't go around announcing what
they're doing. It's not like Putin is going around the world publically
saying, look what we did, wasn't that clever? He denies it. So the
idea that somehow public shaming is going to be effective I think
doesn't read the thought process in Russia very well.
Okay?
Q Did Clinton lose because of the hacking?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm going to let all the political pundits in this town
have a long discussion about what happened in the election. It was a
fascinating election, so I'm sure there are going to be a lot of books
written about it.
I've said what I think is important for the Democratic Party going
forward rather than try to parse every aspect of the election. And I've
said before, I couldn't be prouder of Secretary Clinton, her
outstanding service. I thinks she's worked tirelessly on behalf of the
American people, and I don't think she was treated fairly during the
election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling.
But having said that, what I've been most focused on -- appropriate for
the fact that I'm not going to be a politician in about, what is it, 32
days? 31?
Q Thirty-four.
THE PRESIDENT: Thirty four? (Laughter.) But what I've said is, is
that I can maybe give some counsel and advice to the Democratic Party.
And I think that that the thing we have to spend the most time on --
because it's the thing we have the most control over -- is how do we
make sure that we are showing up in places where I think Democratic
policies are needed, where they are helping, where they are making a
difference, but where people feel as if they're not being heard and
where Democrats are characterized as coastal, liberal, latte-sipping,
politically-correct, out-of-touch folks. We have to be in those
communities. And I've seen that when we are in those communities, it
makes a difference.
That's how I became President. I became a U.S. senator not just
because I had a strong base in Chicago, but because I was driving around
downstate Illinois and going to fish frys and sitting in VFW halls and
talking to farmers. And I didn't win every one of their votes, but they
got a sense of what I was talking about, what I cared about, that I was
for working people, that I was for the middle class, that the reason I
was interested in strengthening unions, and raising the minimum wage,
and rebuilding our infrastructure, and making sure that parents had
decent childcare and family leave was because my own family's history
wasn't that different from theirs, even if I looked a little bit
different. Same thing in Iowa.
And so the question is, how do we rebuild that party as a whole so that
there's not a county in any state -- I don't care how red -- that we
don't have a presence and we're not making the argument. Because I
think we have the better argument. But that requires a lot of work.
It's been something that I've been able to do successfully in my own
campaigns. It is not something I've been able to transfer to candidates
in midterms and sort of build a sustaining organization around. That's
something that I would have liked to have done more of, but it's kind
of hard to do when you're also dealing with a whole bunch of issues here
in the White House.
And that doesn't mean, though, that it can't be done. And I think
there are going to be a lot of talented folks out there, a lot of
progressives who share my values who are going to be leading the charge
in the years to come.
Michelle Kosinski of CNN.
Q Thank you. So this week we heard Hillary Clinton talk about how
she thinks that the FBI Director's most recent announcement made a
difference in the outcome of the election. And we also just heard in an
op-ed her campaign chairman talk about something being deeply broken
within the FBI. He talked about thinking that the investigation early
on was lackadaisical in his words. So what do you think about those
comments? Do you think there's any truth to them? Do you think there's
a danger there that they're calling into question the integrity of
institutions in a similar way that Donald Trump's team has done?
And the second part to that is that Donald Trump's team repeatedly -- I
guess, giving the indication that the investigation of the Russian
hack, as well as the retaliation, might not be such a priority once he's
in office, so what do you think the risk is there? And are you going
to talk to him directly about some of those comments he made?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, on the latter point, as I said before, the
transition from election season to governance season is not always
smooth. It's bumpy. There are still feelings that are raw out there.
There are people who are still thinking about how things unfolded. And
I get all that. But when Donald Trump takes the Oath of Office and is
sworn as the 45th President of the United States, then he's got a
different set of responsibilities and considerations.
And I've said this before: I think there is a sobering process when
you walk into the Oval Office. And I haven’t shared previously private
conversations I've had with the President-elect. I will say that they
have been cordial and, in some cases, have involved me making some
pretty specific suggestions about how to ensure that regardless of our
obvious deep disagreements about policy, maybe I can transmit some
thoughts about maintaining the effectiveness, integrity, cohesion of the
office, of various democratic institutions. And he has listened. I
can't say that he will end up implementing, but the conversations
themselves have been cordial as opposed to defensive in any way. And I
will always make myself available to him, just as previous Presidents
have made themselves available to me as issues come up.
With respect to the FBI, I will tell you, I've had a chance to know a
lot of FBI agents, I know Director Comey, and they take their job
seriously, they work really hard, they help keep us safe and save a lot
of lives. And it is always a challenge for law enforcement when there's
an intersection between the work that they are doing and the political
system. It's one of the difficulties of democracy, generally. We have a
system where we want our law enforcement investigators and our
prosecutors to be free from politics, to be independent, to play it
straight, but sometimes that involves investigations that touch on
politics. And particularly in this hyper-partisan environment that
we've been in, everything is suspect, everything you do one way or the
other.
One thing that I have done is to be pretty scrupulous about not wading
into investigation decisions or prosecution decisions, or decisions not
to prosecute. I have tried to be really strict in my own behavior about
preserving the independence of law enforcement, free from my own
judgments and political assessments, in some cases. And I don’t know
why it would stop now.
Mike Dorning of Bloomberg.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. On Aleppo, your views that what happens
there is the responsibility of the Russian government, the Iranian
government, the Assad regime are pretty well aired. But do you, as
President of the United States, leader of the free world, feel any
personal moral responsibility now at the end of your presidency for the
carnage that we’re all watching in Aleppo, which I’m sure disturbs you
-- which you said disturbs you?
And, secondly, also on Aleppo, you’ve again made clear your practical
disagreements with the idea of safe zones. And President-elect Trump
has, throughout his campaign, and he said again last night that he wants
to create safe zones in Syria. Do you feel like, in this transition,
you need to help him toward implementing that? Or was that not
something that you should be doing?
THE PRESIDENT: Mike, I always feel responsible. I felt responsible
when kids were being shot by snipers. I felt responsible when millions
of people had been displaced. I feel responsible for murder and
slaughter that’s taken place in South Sudan that’s not being reported on
partly because there’s not as much social media being generated from
there.
There are places around the world where horrible things are happening,
and because of my office, because I’m President of the United States, I
feel responsible. I ask myself every single day, is there something I
could do that would save lives and make a difference and spare some
child who doesn’t deserve to suffer.
So that’s a starting point. There’s not a moment during the course of
this presidency where I haven’t felt some responsibility. That’s true,
by the way, for our own country. When I came into office and people
were losing their jobs and losing their homes and losing their pensions,
I felt responsible, and I would go home at night and I would ask
myself, was there something better that I could do or smarter that I
could be that would make a difference in their lives, that would relieve
their suffering and relieve their hardship.
So with respect to Syria, what I have consistently done is taken the
best course that I can to try to end the civil war while having also to
take into account the long-term national security interests of the
United States.
And throughout this process, based on hours of meetings, if you tallied
it up, days or weeks of meetings where we went through every option in
painful detail, with maps, and we had our military, and we had our aid
agencies, and we had our diplomatic teams, and sometimes we’d bring in
outsiders who were critics of ours -- whenever we went through it, the
challenge was that, short of putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the
ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without
sufficient support from Congress, at a time when we still had troops in
Afghanistan and we still had troops in Iraq, and we had just gone
through over a decade of war and spent trillions of dollars, and when
the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough to necessarily
govern a country, and you had a military superpower in Russia prepared
to do whatever it took to keeps its client-state involved, and you had a
regional military power in Iran that saw their own vital strategic
interests at stake and were willing to send in as many of their people
or proxies to support the regime -- that in that circumstance, unless we
were all in and willing to take over Syria, we were going to have
problems, and that everything else was tempting because we wanted to do
something and it sounded like the right thing to do, but it was going to
be impossible to do this on the cheap.
And in that circumstance, I have to make a decision as President of the
United States as to what is best -- I’m sorry, what’s going on?
Somebody’s not feeling good? All right. Why don’t we have -- we’ve
got -- we can get our doctors back there to help out. Does somebody
want to go to my doctor’s office and just have them -- all right --
where was I?
Q Doing it on the cheap.
THE PRESIDENT: So we couldn’t do it on the cheap. Now, it may be --
Can somebody help out please and get Doc Jackson in here? Is somebody grabbing our doctor?
Q Thank you, Mr. President, for stopping.
THE PRESIDENT: Of course. In the meantime, just give her a little
room. The doctor will be here in a second. You guys know where the
doctor’s office is? Just go through the Palm doors. It’s right next to
the Map Room. There he is. All right, there’s Doc Jackson. He’s all
right. Okay. The doctor is in the house.
Q You were saying you couldn’t do it on the cheap.
THE PRESIDENT: And I don’t mean that -- I mean that with all
sincerity. I understand the impulse to want to do something. But
ultimately, what I’ve had to do is to think about what can we sustain,
what is realistic. And my first priority has to be what’s the right
thing to do for America.
And it has been our view that the best thing to do has been to provide
some support to the moderate opposition so that they could sustain
themselves, and that we wouldn’t see anti-Assad regime sentiments just
pouring into al Nusra and al Qaeda or ISIL; that we engaged our
international partners in order to put pressure on all the parties
involved, and to try to resolve this through diplomatic and political
means.
I cannot claim that we’ve been successful. And so that’s something
that, as is true with a lot of issues and problems around the world, I
have to go to bed with every night. But I continue to believe that it
was the right approach, given what realistically we could get done
absent a decision, as I said, to go in a much more significant way. And
that, I think, would not have been sustainable or good for the American
people because we had a whole host of other obligations that we also
had to meet, wars we had already started and that were not yet finished.
With respect to the issue of safe zones, it is a continued problem. A
continued challenge with safe zones is if you’re setting up those zones
on Syrian territory, then that requires some force that is willing to
maintain that territory in the absence of consent from the Syrian
government and, now, the Russians or the Iranians. So it may be that
with Aleppo’s tragic situation unfolding, that in the short term, if we
can get more of the tens of thousands who are still trapped there out,
that so long as the world’s eyes are on them and they are feeling
pressure, the regime and Russia concludes that they are willing to find
some arrangement, perhaps in coordination with Turkey, whereby those
people can be safe. Even that will probably be temporary, but at least
it solves a short-term issue that’s going to arise.
Unfortunately, we’re not even there yet, because right now we have
Russians and Assad claiming that basically all the innocent civilians
who were trapped in Aleppo are out when international organizations,
humanitarian organizations who know better and who are on the ground
have said unequivocally that there are still tens of thousands who are
trapped and prepared to leave under pretty much any conditions. And so
right now, our biggest priority is to continue to put pressure wherever
we can to try to get them out.
Q Notwithstanding --
THE PRESIDENT: I can’t have too much --
Q On the second question, your intentions are well aired, but do you
feel responsibility notwithstanding a move in that direction or help
President-elect Trump move in that direction?
THE PRESIDENT: I will help President Trump -- President-elect Trump
with any advice, counsel, information that we can provide so that he,
once he’s sworn in, can make a decision. Between now and then, these
are decisions that I have to make based on the consultations I have with
our military and the people who have been working this every single
day.
Peter Alexander.
Q Mr. President, thank you very much. Can you, given all the
intelligence that we have now heard, assure the public that this was,
once and for all, a free and fair election? And specifically on Russia,
do you feel any obligation now, as they’ve been insisting that this
isn’t the case, to show the proof, as it were -- they say put your money
where your mouth is and declassify some of the intelligence, some of
the evidence that exists? And more broadly, as it relates to Donald
Trump on this very topic, are you concerned about his relationship with
Vladimir Putin, especially given some of the recent Cabinet picks,
including his selection for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who
toasted Putin with champagne over oil deals together? Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: I may be getting older, because these multipart questions, I start losing track. (Laughter.)
I can assure the public that there was not the kind of tampering with
the voting process that was of concern and will continue to be of
concern going forward; that the votes that were cast were counted, they
were counted appropriately. We have not seen evidence of machines being
tampered with. So that assurance I can provide.
That doesn’t mean that we find every single potential probe of every
single voting machine all across the country, but we paid a lot of
attention to it. We worked with state officials, et cetera, and we feel
confident that that didn’t occur and that the votes were cast and they
were counted.
So that’s on that point. What was the second one?
Q The second one was about declassification.
THE PRESIDENT: Declassification. Look, we will provide evidence that
we can safely provide that does not compromise sources and methods. But
I’ll be honest with you, when you’re talking about cybersecurity, a lot
of it is classified. And we’re not going to provide it because the way
we catch folks is by knowing certain things about them that they may
not want us to know, and if we’re going to monitor this stuff
effectively going forward, we don’t want them to know that we know.
So this is one of those situations where unless the American people
genuinely think that the professionals in the CIA, the FBI, our entire
intelligence infrastructure -- many of whom, by the way, served in
previous administrations and who are Republicans -- are less trustworthy
than the Russians, then people should pay attention to what our
intelligence agencies have to say.
This is part of what I meant when I said that we’ve got to think about
what’s happening to our political culture here. The Russians can’t
change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country. They
are a weaker country. Their economy doesn’t produce anything that
anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and arms. They don’t innovate.
But they can impact us if we lose track of who we are. They can impact
us if we abandon our values. Mr. Putin can weaken us, just like he’s
trying to weaken Europe, if we start buying into notions that it’s okay
to intimidate the press, or lock up dissidents, or discriminate against
people because of their faith or what they look like.
And what I worry about more than anything is the degree to which,
because of the fierceness of the partisan battle, you start to see
certain folks in the Republican Party and Republican voters suddenly
finding a government and individuals who stand contrary to everything
that we stand for as being okay because that’s how much we dislike
Democrats.
I mean, think about it. Some of the people who historically have been
very critical of me for engaging with the Russians and having
conversations with them also endorsed the President-elect, even as he
was saying that we should stop sanctioning Russia and being tough on
them, and work together with them against our common enemies. He was
very complimentary of Mr. Putin personally.
That wasn’t news. The President-elect during the campaign said so.
And some folks who had made a career out of being anti-Russian didn’t
say anything about it. And then after the election, suddenly they’re
asking, well, why didn’t you tell us that maybe the Russians were trying
to help our candidate? Well, come on. There was a survey, some of you
saw, where -- now, this is just one poll, but a pretty credible source
-- 37 percent of Republican voters approve of Putin. Over a third of
Republican voters approve of Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB.
Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave.
And how did that happen? It happened in part because, for too long,
everything that happens in this town, everything that’s said is seen
through the lens of "does this help or hurt us relative to Democrats, or
relative to President Obama?" And unless that changes, we’re going to
continue to be vulnerable to foreign influence, because we’ve lost track
of what it is that we’re about and what we stand for.
With respect to the President-elect’s appointments, it is his
prerogative, as I’ve always said, for him to appoint who he thinks can
best carry out his foreign policy or his domestic policy. It is up to
the Senate to advise and consent. There will be plenty of time for
members of the Senate to go through the record of all his appointees and
determine whether or not they’re appropriate for the job.
Martha Raddatz.
Q Mr. President, I want to talk about Vladimir Putin again. Just to
be clear, do you believe Vladimir Putin himself authorized the hack?
And do you believe he authorized that to help Donald Trump? And on the
intelligence, one of the things Donald Trump cites is Saddam Hussein
and the weapons of mass destruction, and that they were never found.
Can you say, unequivocally, that this was not China, that this was not a
400-pound guy sitting on his bed, as Donald Trump says? And do these
types of tweets and kinds of statements from Donald Trump embolden the
Russians?
THE PRESIDENT: When the report comes out, before I leave office, that
will have drawn together all the threads. And so I don’t want to step
on their work ahead of time.
What I can tell you is that the intelligence that I have seen gives me
great confidence in their assessment that the Russians carried out this
hack.
Q Which hack?
THE PRESIDENT: The hack of the DNC and the hack of John Podesta.
Now, the -- but again, I think this is exactly why I want the report
out, so that everybody can review it. And this has been briefed, and
the evidence in closed session has been provided on a bipartisan basis
-- not just to me, it’s been provided to the leaders of the House and
the Senate, and the chairman and ranking members of the relevant
committees. And I think that what you’ve already seen is, at least some
of the folks who have seen the evidence don’t dispute, I think, the
basic assessment that the Russians carried this out.
Q But specifically, can you not say that --
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Martha, I think what I want to make sure of is
that I give the intelligence community the chance to gather all the
information. But I’d make a larger point, which is, not much happens in
Russia without Vladimir Putin. This is a pretty hierarchical
operation. Last I checked, there’s not a lot of debate and democratic
deliberation, particularly when it comes to policies directed at the
United States.
We have said, and I will confirm, that this happened at the highest
levels of the Russian government. And I will let you make that
determination as to whether there are high-level Russian officials who
go off rogue and decide to tamper with the U.S. election process without
Vladimir Putin knowing about it.
Q So I wouldn’t be wrong in saying the President thinks Vladimir Putin authorized the hack?
THE PRESIDENT: Martha, I’ve given you what I’m going to give you.
What was your second question?
Q Do the tweets and do the statements by Donald Trump embolden Russia?
THE PRESIDENT: As I said before, I think that the President-elect is
still in transition mode from campaign to governance. I think he hasn’t
gotten his whole team together yet. He still has campaign
spokespersons sort of filling in and appearing on cable shows. And
there’s just a whole different attitude and vibe when you’re not in
power as when you’re in power.
So rather than me sort of characterize the appropriateness or
inappropriateness of what he’s doing at the moment, I think what we have
to see is how will the President-elect operate, and how will his team
operate, when they’ve been fully briefed on all these issues, they have
their hands on all the levers of government, and they’ve got to start
making decisions.
One way I do believe that the President-elect can approach this that
would be unifying is to say that we welcome a bipartisan, independent
process that gives the American people an assurance not only that votes
are counted properly, that the elections are fair and free, but that we
have learned lessons about how Internet propaganda from foreign
countries can be released into the political bloodstream and that we’ve
got strategies to deal with it for the future.
The more this can be nonpartisan, the better served the American people
are going to be, which is why I made the point earlier -- and I’m going
to keep on repeating this point: Our vulnerability to Russia or any
other foreign power is directly related to how divided, partisan,
dysfunctional our political process is. That’s the thing that makes us
vulnerable.
If fake news that’s being released by some foreign government is almost
identical to reports that are being issued through partisan news
venues, then it’s not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a
greater effect, because it doesn’t seem that far-fetched compared to
some of the other stuff that folks are hearing from domestic
propagandists.
To the extent that our political dialogue is such where everything is
under suspicion, everybody is corrupt and everybody is doing things for
partisan reasons, and all of our institutions are full of malevolent
actors -- if that’s the storyline that’s being put out there by whatever
party is out of power, then when a foreign government introduces that
same argument with facts that are made up, voters who have been
listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff
every day from talk radio or other venues, they’re going to believe it.
So if we want to really reduce foreign influence on our elections, then
we better think about how to make sure that our political process, our
political dialogue is stronger than it’s been.
Mark Landler.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wonder whether I can move you from Russia to China for a moment.
THE PRESIDENT: Absolutely.
Q Your successor spoke by phone with the President of Taiwan the
other day and declared subsequently that he wasn’t sure why the United
States needed to be bound by the one-China policy. He suggested it
could be used as a bargaining chip perhaps to get better terms on a
trade deal or more cooperation on North Korea. There’s already evidence
that tensions between the two sides have increased a bit, and just
today, the Chinese have evidently seized an underwater drone in the
South China Sea. Do you agree, as some do, that our China policy could
use a fresh set of eyes? And what’s the big deal about having a short
phone call with the President of Taiwan? Or do you worry that these
types of unorthodox approaches are setting us on a collision course with
perhaps our biggest geopolitical adversary?
THE PRESIDENT: That’s a great question. I’m somewhere in between. I
think all of our foreign policy should be subject to fresh eyes. I
think one of the -- I’ve said this before -- I am very proud of the work
I’ve done. I think I’m a better President now than when I started.
But if you’re here for eight years, in the bubble, you start seeing
things a certain way and you benefit from -- the democracy benefits,
America benefits from some new perspectives.
And I think it should be not just the prerogative but the obligation of
a new President to examine everything that’s been done and see what
makes sense and what doesn’t. That’s what I did when I came in, and I’m
assuming any new President is going to undertake those same exercises.
And given the importance of the relationship between the United States
and China, given how much is at stake in terms of the world economy,
national security, our presence in the Asia Pacific, China’s increasing
role in international affairs -- there’s probably no bilateral
relationship that carries more significance and where there’s also the
potential if that relationship breaks down or goes into a full-conflict
mode, that everybody is worse off. So I think it’s fine for him to take
a look at it.
What I’ve advised the President-elect is that across the board on
foreign policy, you want to make sure that you’re doing it in a
systematic, deliberate, intentional way. And since there’s only one
President at a time, my advice to him has been that before he starts
having a lot of interactions with foreign governments other than the
usual courtesy calls, that he should want to have his full team in
place, that he should want his team to be fully briefed on what’s gone
on in the past and where the potential pitfalls may be, where the
opportunities are, what we’ve learned from eight years of experience, so
that as he’s then maybe taking foreign policy in a new direction, he’s
got all the information to make good decisions and, by the way, that all
of government is moving at the same time and singing from the same
hymnal.
And with respect to China -- and let’s just take the example of Taiwan
-- there has been a longstanding agreement, essentially, between China,
the United States, and, to some degree, the Taiwanese, which is to not
change the status quo. Taiwan operates differently than mainland China
does. China views Taiwan as part of China, but recognizes that it has
to approach Taiwan as an entity that has its own ways of doing things.
The Taiwanese have agreed that as long as they’re able to continue to
function with some degree of autonomy, that they won’t charge forward
and declare independence.
And that status quo, although not completely satisfactory to any of the
parties involved, has kept the peace and allowed the Taiwanese to be a
pretty successful economy and a people who have a high degree of
self-determination. But understand, for China, the issue of Taiwan is
as important as anything on their docket. The idea of one China is at
the heart of their conception as a nation.
And so if you are going to upend this understanding, you have to have
thought through what the consequences are, because the Chinese will not
treat that the way they’ll treat some other issues.
They won’t even
treat it the way they treat issues around the South China Sea, where
we’ve had a lot of tensions. This goes to the core of how they see
themselves. And their reaction on this issue could end up being very
significant.
That doesn’t mean that you have to adhere to everything that’s been
done in the past. It does mean that you’ve got to think it through and
have planned for potential reactions that they may engage in.
All right. Isaac Dovere of Politico.
Q Thank you, Mr. President. Two questions on where this all leaves us.
THE PRESIDENT: What leaves us? Where my presidency leaves us?
Q The election --
THE PRESIDENT: It leaves us in a really good spot -- (laughter) -- if we make some good decisions going forward.
Q Well, what do you say to the electors who are going to meet on
Monday and are thinking of changing their votes? Do you think that they
should be given an intelligence briefing about the Russian activity?
Or should they bear in mind everything you’ve said and is out already?
Should they -- should votes be bound by the state votes as they’ve
gone? And long term, do you think that there is a need for Electoral
College reform that would tie it to the popular vote?
THE PRESIDENT: It sounded like two, but that was all one. (Laughter.)
Q It was all one. (Laughter.) You know the way this goes around here.
THE PRESIDENT: I love how these -- I got two questions, each one has four parts. (Laughter.)
Q On the Democratic Party, your Labor Secretary is running to be the
Chair of the Democratic National Committee. Is the vision that you’ve
seen him putting forward what you think the party needs to be focused
on? And what do you say to some of the complaints that say the future
of the Democratic Party shouldn’t be a continuation of some of your
political approach? Part of that is complaints that decisions that
you’ve made as President, as the leader of the party, have structurally
weakened the DNC and the Democratic Party, and they think that that has
led to -- or has helped lead to some losses in elections around the
country. Do you regret any of those decisions?
THE PRESIDENT: Okay.
Q Those are my two. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Good. I’ll take the second one first and say that Tom
Perez has been, I believe, one of the best secretaries of labor in our
history. He is tireless. He is wicked smart. He has been able to work
across the spectrum of labor, business, activists. He’s produced. I
mean, if you look at his body of work on behalf of working people, what
he’s pushed for in terms of making sure that workers get a fair deal,
decent wages, better benefits, that their safety is protected on the job
-- he has been extraordinary.
Now, others who have declared are also my friends and are fine people,
as well. And the great thing is, I don’t have a vote in this, so we’ll
let the process unfold. I don’t think it’s going to happen anytime
soon. I described to you earlier what I think needs to happen, which is
that the Democratic Party, whether that’s entirely through the DNC or
through a rebuilding of state parties or some other arrangement, has to
work at the grassroots level, has to be present in all 50 states, has to
have a presence in counties, has to think about message and how are we
speaking directly to voters.
I will say this -- and I’m not going to engage in too much punditry --
but that I could not be prouder of the coalition that I put together in
each of my campaigns because it was inclusive, and it drew in people who
normally weren’t interested in politics and didn’t participate. But
I’d like to think -- I think I can show that in those elections, I
always cast a broad net. I always said, first and foremost we’re
Americans, that we have a common creed, that there’s more that we share
than divides us, and I want to talk to everybody and get a chance to get
everybody’s vote.
I still believe what I said in 2004, which is this red state/blue thing
is a construct. Now, it is a construct that has gotten more and more
powerful for a whole lot of reasons, from gerrymandering to big money,
to the way that media has splintered. And so people are just watching
what reinforces their existing biases as opposed to have to listen to
different points of view. So there are all kinds of reasons for it.
But outside of the realm of electoral politics, I still see people the
way I saw them when I made that speech -- full of contradictions, and
there are some regional differences, but basically folks care about
their families, they care about having meaningful work, they care about
making sure their kids have more opportunity than they did. They want
to be safe, they want to feel like things are fair. And whoever leads
the DNC and any candidate with the Democratic brand going forward, I
want them to feel as if they can reach out and find that common ground
-- speak to all of America. And that requires some organization.
And you’re right that -- and I said this in my earlier remarks -- that
what I was able to do during my campaigns, I wasn’t able to do during
midterms. It’s not that we didn’t put in time and effort into it. I
spent time and effort into it, but the coalition I put together didn’t
always turn out to be transferable. And the challenge is that -- you
know, some of that just has to do with the fact that when you’re in the
party in power and people are going through hard times like they were in
2010, they’re going to punish, to some degree, the President’s party
regardless of what organizational work is done.
Some of it has to do with just some deep-standing traditional
challenges for Democrats, like during off-year election, the electorate
is older and we do better with a younger electorate. But we know those
things are true, and I didn’t crack the code on that. And if other
people have ideas about how to do that even better, I’m all for it.
So with respect to the electors, I’m not going to wade into that issue
because, again, it’s the American people’s job, and now the electors'
job to decide my successor. It is not my job to decide my successor.
And I have provided people with a lot of information about what
happened during the course of the election. But more importantly, the
candidates themselves, I think, talked about their beliefs and their
vision for America. The President-elect, I think, has been very
explicit about what he cares about and what he believes in. So it’s not
in my hands now; it’s up to them.
Q What about long-term about the Electoral College?
THE PRESIDENT: Long-term with a respect to the Electoral College --
the Electoral College is a vestige, it’s a carryover from an earlier
vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of
premium on states, and it used to be that the Senate was not elected
directly, it was through state legislatures. And it’s the same type of
thinking that gives Wyoming two senators with about half a million
people, and California with 33 million get the same two.
So there are some structures in our political system, as envisioned by
the Founders, that sometimes are going to disadvantage Democrats. But
the truth of the matter is, is that, if we have a strong message, if
we’re speaking to what the American people care about, typically the
popular vote and the Electoral College vote will align.
And I guess part of my overall message here as I leave for the holidays
is that if we look for one explanation or one silver bullet or one easy
fix for our politics, then we’re probably going to be disappointed.
There are just a lot of factors in what’s happened not just over the
last few months, but over the last decade that has made both politics
and governance more challenging. And I think everybody has raised
legitimate questions and legitimate concerns.
I do hope that we all just take some time, take a breath -- this is
certainly what I’m going to advise Democrats -- to just reflect a little
bit more about how can we get to a place where people are focused on
working together based on at least some common set of facts. How can we
have a conversation about policy that doesn’t demonize each other. How
can we channel what I think is the basic decency and goodness of the
American people so it reflects itself in our politics, as opposed to it
being so polarized and so nasty that, in some cases, you have voters and
elected officials who have more confidence and faith in a foreign
adversary than they have in their neighbors.
And those go to some bigger issues. How is it that we have some voters
or some elected officials who think that Michelle Obama’s healthy
eating initiative and school nutrition program is a great threat to
democracy than our government going after the press if they’re issuing a
story they don’t like? I mean, that’s an issue that I think we’ve got
to wrestle with -- and we will.
People have asked me how do you feel after the election and so forth,
and I say, well, look, this is a clarifying moment. It’s a useful
reminder that voting counts, politics counts. What the President-elect
is going to be doing is going to be very different than what I was
doing, and I think people will be able to compare and contrast and make
judgments about what worked for the American people.
And I hope that, building off the progress we’ve made, that what the
President-elect is proposing works. What I can say with confidence is
that what we’ve done works. That I can prove. I can show you where we
were in 2008 and I can show you where we are now, and you can’t argue
that we’re not better off. We are. And for that, I thank the American
people and, more importantly, I thank -- well, not more importantly --
as importantly -- I was going to say Josh Earnest for doing such a great
job. (Laughter.) For that, I thank the American people. I thank the
men and women in uniform who serve. I haven’t gotten to the point yet
where I’ve been overly sentimental.
I will tell you, when I was doing my last Christmas party photoline --
many of you have participated in these; they’re pretty long -- right at
the end of the line, the President’s Marine Corps Band comes in, those
who had been performing, and I take a picture when them, and it was the
last time that I was going to take a picture with my Marine Corps Band
after an event, and I got a little choked up. Now, I was in front of
Marines, so I had to, like, tamp it down.
But it was just one small example of all the people who have
contributed to our success. I’m responsible for where we’ve screwed up.
The successes are widely shared with all the amazing people who have
been part of this administration.
