lieutenant governor and president trump supporter betsy mccaughey. us, sean vitka, demand his ess to talk about group's efforts to limit surveillance under the surveillance act. be sure to watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7 tuesday morning, join the discussion. >> attorney general jeff sessions testifies wednesday at hearing of the senate judiciary committee, live beginning at 10 a.m. eastern here on c-span. you can also watch online at c-span.org, or listen on the radio app. >> earlier today, president trump and senate majority leader held a press l conference in the white house rose garden, answered questions reform, health care, the opioid crisis and u.s. soldiers in niger.illed

this is 40 minutes. pres. trump: we just spent quite of time inside with the senate majority leader, mitch mcconnell, who has been a friend of mine for a long time, long politics. world of early into his world of politics, i think, but we've time.riends for a long we are probably now despite what think, probably now i at least as far as i'm concerned, closer than ever before and the relationship is good. we're fighting for the same thing, we're fighting for lower taxes, big tax cuts, biggest tax cuts in the history of our ation, we're fighting for tax reform as part of that. we are getting close to health care, we'll come up in the early to mid-part of next year, we'll vote, i think we have the votes, we feel confident we have the votes. we pretty much know what the is. i believe republicans and democrats are as we speak, orking together very hard,

right now, working together to to an intermediate plan, plan because obamacare is a disaster, the rates have gone up, premiums up, the deductibles have gone through the roof, it is terrible. deductibles, unless you really have a problem, you will not be able to use them. so we have, we have been working together long and hard, we think good shape for the budget, we hope and hope to be the largest with tax cuts ever passed in this country. it's going to spur business. you look at other countries, what they have done, we are competing with other countries. china is 15%, when i hear that ireland is going to be reducing down to 8% from 12, you have other countries, reducing. we can't be at 35% and think we will remain competitive in terms in terms of and jobs, so we worked on that. is was honored to see a man i

a lot of respect for, james lee witt of the clinton administration, head of fema, he a-plus, i just see it just came out. i've always had respect for him, he gave us, he's the fema director of the clinton us an a-plusn gave or how we responded to the hurricane aftermath, all of the hurricanes, and that includes puerto rico. so i just want to thank mr. witt, wherever you may be now, be listening, i really much appreciate it, that took it out of politics, out of of politics in that he was with the clinton i'm sure tion and remains loyal to the clinton hope he does., i to finish off, my relationship with this gentleman is utstanding, has been outstanding, we are working very hard to get the tax cuts, we hard to inue to work

get the health care completed. 'm going to be surprising some people with an economic twpment i haven't on, but told mitch, i want to focus on tax cuts and other things right now. unspoken elements we discussed at lunch and it is not talking about, yes, we got a great justice, justice gorsuch supreme united states court, he will be out standing for many, many years, but omething people aren't talking about is how many judges we've had approved whether the court circuit judges, whether it be district judges, tremendous under review, he democrats are holding them up beyond anything -- beyond comprehension, holding them up. terrible, terrible policy, terrible policy, and erhaps not even good politicians, but they are good at obstruction. of the numbers,

between the judges and i want to ay that we will set records in terms of the number of judges and if you read the "wall street to give them a little bit of a person, a names, i won't mention you can see who has really been person, wrote an article or wrote an editorial in sense, saying how well we're doing with judges and appointments. i think it is a big unsung thing administration. in addition to the fact we have had a lot of legislation passed v.a. and lots of other things, but the judge story is wants to story, nobody talk about it. when you think about it, mitch mcconnell and i were saying that consequences 40 years out, 40 age of the judge, but years out, numerous have been approved, many are in the pipeline, the level of quality

extraordinary and i just wanted to say that we're working very closely on that also and reviews eally great from those people in many cases from scholars that have been it.ying there has never been anything like what we've been able to do together with judges. that, i'd like to have mitch mcconnell say a few words, if you want to do question and do that also. thank you very much. thank you. thank you mr. president, i want to underscore what the president said, we have same agenda. we've been friends and acquaintances for a long time, we don't equently, give you a read-out every time we have a conversation, frequently we talk on the about issues before us. obviously passing the budget tax reform and tax eduction, comes next and then supplemental to take adequate care of those who have been by the natural disasters we've been afflicted with lately. of course, the senate's

unique role that seems to me a forget, we're in the personnel business. there are 1200 of the nominations subject to confirmation in the senate. he house is not in the personnel business, we are. the single most significant tong this president has done change america is the appointment of neil gorsuch to court.reme but it is not just the supreme court, there are a lot of at the circuit and district court level, as the indicated, young conservative and when we say judge, whate about a we're talking about, the kind of people the president is appointing to the courts believe of the judge is to the o rule based upon what law says, not what they hope the be.ome would justice scalia used to say if a judge is occasionally not happy

conclusion he reach, he is not a very good judge. put it in my such state a couple weeks ago, judges wear wear red, they don't blue, they wear black and those are the kind of people the sending up to the senate to be confirmed. many of them, as he pointed out, younger, will be on the bench for a long time and have a great to do with what kind of country we're going to have far into the future. legislatively, obviously the top priority is tax reduction, and i president and i would both like to say to you some of ntrary to what you may have reported, we're ogether totally on this agenda to move america forward. [questions] pres. trump: john. >> mr. president -- with tax

reform. [indiscernible] -- [question inaudible] pres. trump: i would like to see it be done this year, john, we won't go a step further. achievement. it took years for the reagan dministration to get taxes done, i've been here a little more than nine months, same hing for health care, if you look at obama. first of all, look at clinton, they were not able to get it administrations, they weren't able to get it done. president obama, after a long to pushf time, was able it through, but pushed through something that has now failed, badly.g we are meeting democrat, republicans are meeting now and working on ey are something very special. i have to tell you, i really believe that we have a very good

think mitch feels the same way of getting the hopefully fairly long before the end of the year, like to hat we would see. go ahead. sen. mcconnell: let me add, the is to get it done this calendar year. bama signed obamacare in march of year two. obama signed dodd-frank in july year two. we will get this job done and the goal is to get it done by year.nd of the [questions] finish up, just to we're nine months, we could have go.ong way to yes. inaudible] -- and on health care, in a recent -- you the only problem i have with mitch mcconnell, after he ing repeal and replace, failed, that should never have happened. res. trump: let's go to the

second part of your question with mitch. we've been doing health care for really seven months and probably six months if you think about probably a ed in total of six months. others were 2-1/2 years and more, others eight years and passed.et it this man will get it done. okay. i think done long before anybody and it will be a great health care. was an s tom marino, he early supporter of mine, great state of pennsylvania. he's a great guy. report, we're going to look into the report, we will take it very seriously. major we will have a announcement, probably next eek, on the drug crisis and on the opioid massive problem and i want to get that absolutely right. this country, frankly the world, has a drug problem. the world has a drug problem, it and we're going to do something about it. 'll have a major announcement on that problem next week, we'll be looking into tom.

>> thank you mr. president. i'd like to ask you, do you by people who n really -- your administration, teve bannon primary republican candidates in 2018 election to -- do not support your agenda? good trump: we have a relationship, as you know with steve bannon. steve has been a friend for a lot. time, i like steve a steve is doing what steve thinks is the right thing. looking le he may be at, i will see if we talked him out of that. frankly they are great people. will tell mcconnell you, maybe with the exception of a few and that is a very small fantastic a relationship with the people in the senate and with the people i have our i mean, house of representatives, i have with t relationship political people. if you read the papers, you think i'm on one island and the other, that is not the way it is. we have a fantastic friends with i'm most of them. i can say, i don't think anybody percentage, igher

i'm friends with most of them, i like and respect most of them and they like and respect me. so you understand, the republican party is very, very unified. hen we get things approved, we have to go through hell because support, we emocrat have nobody. we don't have a vote from the democrats. tax cuts,ple, massive we may not get any democrat votes. four, but three or may get for massive tax cuts country in the world and yet we may get no that is pause t, obstructionist and they want us badly, that is not going to happen. yes, go ahead. [inaudible]

-- pres. trump: we'll look at that closely. question] ble pres. trump: he's a good man, i have not spoken to him. and make ak to him that determination, if i think it is 1% negative to doing what e want to do, i will make a change, yes. second, yes. one >> national emergency for the -- talk about -- we're going to be doing that next week. by the way, you know that is a step. by the way, people have no understanding of what you just said. that is a very, very big important stepry and to get to that step, a lot of work has to be done and it is work, we'll be doing it next week. okay. >> mr. president, do you -- to comments steve bannon made this weekend and

hat do you make of those comments -- sen. mcconnell: the goal here is elections in november. 2012, we 010 and nominated several candidates, o'donnell, angle, todd aegen, murdoch, they are not in the senate. the reason for that was they a e not able to appeal to be broader electorate in the general election. leader of the reason party on the senate is to keep us in the majority. that is not o complicated. you have to nominate people who winnersally win because make policy and losers go home. we changed the business model in 2014, we nominated people who ould win everywhere, took majority in the senate, had one squirmish in 2016, kept majority in the senate. operating approach will be

incumbents and in open seats, to seek to help can actuallyle who win in november. that is my approach and that is you keep a governing majority. > mr. president -- >> mr. president, sir -- sir, sir.esident, >> earlier today you criticized companies and insurance saying drug companies are starting -- prices too high and insurance companies were money. government pres. trump: exactly right. >> what would you like to see? pres. trump: insurance companies have made a fortune with obamacare, absolute fortune. as you know, what i did with the cuts at the end, which were going, hundreds of millions of ollars going into the pockets of the insurance companies, and i'm very happy with what i did are ecause of that, people talking now, democrats are talking to the republicans, for taking care deal, of what we will call health care

o that people can have good health care without big spikes, you would have had massive spikes, you already have, every massive spikes to obamacare ridiculous and i didn't speak to mitch about this is the cost ofty prescription drugs, we'll get the costs way down, way down. drug companies, you have insurance companies, ones case and the other case, with both, you have the drug companies, they contribute assive amounts of money to political people. i don't know, mitch, maybe to they have to tell you contribute massive amounts of money. me? i'm not interested in their don't need their money. i will tell you, you have rescription drugs you go to england, various places, canada, many, many countries and the pill from the same company, the same box, same everything is tiny fraction of the united s in states. we are going to get drug prices,

way ription drug prices down because the world is taking dvantage of us, the world is taking advantage of us when that happens. that is very important. president, sir -- >> health care, about 6 million that get subsidies to comepay for obamacare, 70% from states you won in november. now you cut off the payments, to ensure those people -- insurance? what we're that is looking to do, we want to get it down so people have affordable care.h 116% up. in alaska 200% up. 50%, 70% up, es some states that are doing better. bamacare is a wreck, a mess, destroying lives, we want to get states ise states, the did so well in, but also in states that i didn't win. get health care that's

much more affordable and much better health care and that is we're doing. >> mr. president -- >> let me ask about -- go . trump: tax reform, ahead. tax reform. you said there were some adjustments being made, kerry cohen said there would be something negotiable. what in your eyes is to go your topnd you said priority is tax reduction, you did not say tax reform. president trump: we are doing minor adjustments. we want to make sure the middle class is the biggest beneficiary. of the tax cut and the tax reform. i'm sure that's what mitch meant also. people get it confused. we are doing massive tax guts and simplification -- cuts and reform. we are doing major simplification.

we are bringing categories down. if you include zero, from 8-4. that is a big supplication. we are doing massive cots. wherever i have been, this has been popular with the people. now we have to get additional people to raise their hands. sen. mcconnell: i agree with the president. it is about reduction and reform. it has been 30 years since this effort was undertaken. we are going to succeed this time. the bills will be written by the ways and means and finance committees. after we approve the budget. budget opens the path to tax reform but it is about both perform and reduction.

>> why haven't we heard anything about the soldier killed in niger? pres. trump: i have written personal letters. they have been sent or will be tonight. i will at some point during the time call the parents and the families. i have done that traditionally. i felt badly about that. it is the toughest calls i have to make, where this happens. soldiers are killed. it is a difficult thing. it gets to a point where you make four or five of them in one day. that is the toughest. the traditional way, if you look at president obama and other presidents most of them did not make calls. i like to call when it is appropriate, when i am able to. they have made the ultimate

sacrifice. generally i would say i like to call. i want a little time to pass. i have since i have been president. i actually wrote letters individually to the soldiers and they are going out today or tomorrow. >> general kelly said cuba could stop the attacks against america. president trump: i believe that. i believe cuba is responsible. it is a very unusual attack. i believe cuba is responsible. >> roy moore in alabama has said he believes homosexuality should be illegal and muslims should be barred from serving in the u.s.? what makes you comfortable with

someone with a those beliefs serving in the u.s. senate? pres. trump: i'm going to be meeting with him next week and we will talk about a lot of different things. he ran a strong race. the people of alabama, they like roy and we will be talking to him. i will be talking to you then. >> this is a question for you and mr. mcconnell. one of the issues is the judiciary committee. [inaudible] sen. mcconnell: -- the blue slip, for those of you not familiar with it, is a custom.

determined by the chairman of the judiciary committee. senator grassley can give you is -- his view. my view is that a blue slip on a circuit judge is simply a notification of how you are going to vote. to conclude otherwise would have left us in the following position at the beginning of this senate. 48 democratic senators would have been able to black ball the 62% of the circuit judge nominees. that is not a tenable place to land in a senate that now deals with judges with a simple majority. my personal view is that a below -- blue slip on a circuit judge should simply be a notification of how you intend to vote. we could talk blue slips, but my attitude is i want

really capable people going to the courts. >> in 2012 you tweeted obama complaints about republicans stopping on his agenda are bs, in your words. you said he can never take responsibility. today, what you said about the challenges, i'm not going to blame myself. they are not getting the job done. what is different then than now? pres. trump: let me explain what is different. we have nominations pending now, and 182 approved. the number he had approved was 65%. they are holding up every nomination. schumer and the group are holding up every single nomination. they are obstructing. they are not good politicians but they are good at obstruction. they are holding up every single nomination. i tell you, it is not right.

unfair.y are doing is you look at bush, clinton, obama, bush original, you look at clinton, 357 versus 182. these are nominations approved and what they are doing to us. we have unbelievable people waiting to be approved. i think mitch is going to start pushing them hard. he also wants to get the judicial nominations through fast. >> could i follow on that? you seem to have a spirit of cooperation with the senate minority leader and the house minority leader.

when it came to the budget and this idea of finding a fix for sincebut every proposal then they have critically rejected, where is this relationship? pres. trump: i hope to have a relationship. if we don't, we don't. we have races coming up. i think we are going to do well. if we get taxes approved, we will do unbelievably well. winningthe senators are and states that i won by massive amounts. i would like to give you that answer seven years from now. i hope to be able to. i like the concept of bipartisan. right now they are doing nothing but obstructing.

if you think about it they are against major tax guts that is going to make the country stronger. that is a hard thing to win an election on. some democrats are going to vote for us when it comes to tax cuts. >> what about the economic development bill? pres. trump: i will be deposed -- proposing an economic development bill in the not too distant future. i think health care somewhere in between or shortly thereafter i am going to be developing an economic development bill that will put us so far ahead of other countries you will not even believe it. that will be important. >> thank you, mr. president. last week your administration made two major announcements on rolling back and getting rid of the cautionary reductions as part of obamacare. a lot of criticism has been leveled saying all you are doing

-- at your administration saying -- pres. trump: and a lot of praise. >> fair enough. criticism saying all you are doing is rolling back everything your predecessor accomplished. is there a single policy of your predecessor that you do not want to touch? pres. trump: we are very opposite in terms of incentives and incentives for jobs and other things. we just hit a new high today in up asock market, picked of this moment $5.2 trillion in stock market value. we have the lowest unemployment rate in 17 years. we are doing well. we are going to do immigration work. we are going to have people coming into our country based on a merit system, not just randomly. where they can help us. i have companies moving into this country. you saw the automobile industry last week. we have companies pouring in for the first time in anybody's

memory. we are actually going to be fairly certain at the point -- fairly soon at a point where we will need workers. the tax cuts are going to be a major part of it. >> is there a policy you would like to keep in place? pres. trump: not too many. it is the opposite side of the spectrum. peter, go ahead. >> earlier you said that president obama never called families. of fallen soldiers. how can you make that claim? not too often. i was told that he didn't often. a lot of presidents write letters. i do a combination of both. sometimes it is a difficult thing to do. president obama i think probably did sometimes. maybe sometimes he did not. i don't know. that is what i was told. all i can do is ask my generals.

other presidents did not call. they would write letters. some presidents did not do anything. i like the combination. i like the combination of a call and a letter. president, if it would help special counselor robert mueller get to the end of the russia investigation -- pres. trump: i would like to see it end. the russia thing was an excuse for the democrats losing the election. it turns at the be just one excuse. today hillary blamed nigel farage. that one came out of nowhere. that was an excuse for the democrats losing an election. they have a big advantage in electoral college. they should always be able to win, but they were unable to do it. there has been absolutely no collusion. it has been stated they have no collusion. they ought to get to the end of

it. i think the american public is sick of it. >> mr. president, do you believe your comments affected bowe bergdahl's ability to receive a fair trial? pres. trump: i can't comment. he is doing something today and they are setting up sentencing. i'm not going to comment on him. people have heard my comments in the past. go ahead. >> will you extend the deadline for daca recipients if congress cannot pass a bill by march? pres. trump: they should be able to do something but we need strong border security and we want the wall. >> [inaudible] pres. trump: i spoke to governor brown. we had a great conversation. we have fema there.

james lee witt gave us an a+. i think if he didn't include the fires he would have included the fires also. we have first responders there. we are working closely with representatives from california and we are doing a good job. [inaudible] pres. trump: all i can say is it is totally fake news. just fake. it is made up stuff. it is disgraceful. that happens in the world of politics. john? the wall, are you going to insist you must have wall fending -- funding? pres. trump: our country needs a wall. you see what happened with one of their big political leaders.

in mexico. mexico is not doing particularly well in the kinds of things we have interest in. we need a wall in this country, you know it, i know it, everybody knows it. we have to have a wall. that will be part of it. >> mr. president [inaudible] >> the puerto rico situation is so -- >> [inaudible] pres. trump: that is according to the clinton administration's head of fema it has been outstanding. puerto rico is tough because it is an island. it is also tough because it was in very poor shape before the hurricane hit. their electrical grid was destroyed before the hurricanes got there. it was in bankruptcy. it owed $9 billion. on top of that the hurricane came. you're going to have to build a whole new electrical plant system.

we are not talking about generators. puerto rico has more generators than anyplace in the world. their electrical system was in horrible shape and even worse shape after. we are working now, relief funds were just approved by congress. that includes texas, florida and puerto rico, u.s. virgin islands. but it was in bad shape before. we have done, i will say this -- >> people don't have drinking water. pres. trump: we have delivered tremendous amounts of water. we have to have distribution. we have massive amounts of water. massive amounts of food. they have to distribute the food

to the people of the island. what we have done is we have military distributing food, something that they should not have to be doing. if you look at the governor of puerto rico, he himself has said we have done an outstanding job. the puerto rico is a tough one. [inaudible] pres. trump: i will let mitch talk about that. sen. mcconnell: was the question about the 20 week? it is supported by all of my members. we expect to have a vote on it at some point. [inaudible]

president trump: i will go to south korea, to china, to japan for the summit. we have a big economic summit there. i may be going to the philippines. we have been invited. i look forward to them. we have not sent the details as of this moment. we will take a look at that. i did not hear in terms of provoking. >> you discussed the special counsel and the investigation, are you considering firing -- robert mueller? pres. trump: no, not at all. >> [inaudible] are you concerned about a larger conflict in the region while u.s. forces are advising on the ground? pres. trump: don't like the fact

they are clashing. we are not taking sides. we have had a good relationship with the kurds. we should have never been there in the first place. but we are not taking sides in that battle. >> hillary clinton says she did not believe the players in the nfl were about disrespecting the flag. pres. trump: i hope hillary runs. please run again. odds with you about whether or not this is disrespectful. is she right or wrong? >> ivan she is wrong. the response you time to do knees and body of other things. that is why she lost the election. it is that thinking.

when you go down and take a knee or any other way, you are sitting, for our great national anthem. you are disrespecting our flag and our country. the nfl should have suspended some of these players for one game. if they did it again it could've been two games and then for the season. you would not have people disrespecting our country now. if hillary clinton made the statement that sitting down during the playing of our great national anthem is not disrespectful, i fully understand why she did not win. there are a lot of reasons including the fact that she was not good at what she did. that is something that i just heard about. i think her statement in itself is disrespectful to our country.

thank you very much. >> >> as it relates to the nfl -- that is what players are saying is the crux -- the police -involved shooting issue. pres. trump: it is disrespectful to our country. it is very disrespectful to our country when they take a knee during the national anthem. just hear it. it is very disrespectful to our country when they take a knee during the national anthem. the people of our country are very angry at the nfl. look at their ratings in their stadiums. you see empty seats. a lot of people are very angry at it. it is highly disrespectful. they shouldn't do it. thank you very much, everybody. >> [inaudible]

>> "tonight on "the communicators," we interviewed four cyber researchers taking the latest techniques on artificial intelligence at the black hat conference. >> is a bit unique even from other embedded devices like phones because they are typically used autonomously can mother is not human interaction with your thermostat or an industrial controller. we have seen some attacks where they are able to exploit webcams. >> traditionally it was more run building and making stuff. more recently society has seen it as people breaking into systems in a defensive manner. approachingy, it is problems in solving problems in

various different ways. >> now is an exciting time to start packing. the wealth of information is unbelievable. -- 20ve youtube send years ago there wasn't much. exciting time.y >> this is taking it one step further. as humans, we don't have to intervene anymore. people call it run data, think of any type of data source, pass it over to the machine, and magically on it's on the machine learns how to make useful productions. >> tonight on "the communicators." >> here is a look at our primetime schedule. starting at 8:00 p.m. eastern,

live on c-span, a discussion on how president trump views freedom of the press, at a: 30 p.m. on c-span two, a look at national security issues and the foreign-policy initiatives of the trump administration. c-span3,.m. eastern on remarks from the spanish ambassador to the u.s. about spain and the catalan independence movement. c-span as a question to general live every day with news and policy issues that impact you, to say morning we are live in jefferson city, missouri for the next stop on the c-span bus 50 capital store with j ashcroft talking about his decision to turn over state voter information to the voter commission as well as the new voter id law and the future of the affordable care act with former new york the tenant governor and president trump supporter betsy mccoy. with the us is shone

plot -- sean vitka. be sure to watch "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. et. join the discussion. >> in about 35 minutes we will have live coverage of a discussion on how president trump used freedom of the press. included on that panel will be marvin kalb previously worked as a news reporter for cbs and nbc. he joined us unwashed journal -- on washington journal to discuss his book about russia. this is 35 minutes. as peter the great." we want to talk about the book but let's talk about russia today and vladimir putin. him based on your experiences,