22nd. watch alaska weekend on c-span, c-span.org, and listen on the free c-span radio app. meeting,abinet president trump called on congress to pass the border security and immigration reform law. from the white house, this is happening our. -- half an hour. >> we have come up with a lot of solutions, but we have democrats that don't want to approve anything. there are a lot of people suffering, and that is

unfortunate. employment claims yesterday show we have the lowest level in nearly half a century. that is something that is an incredible statistic. half a century is a long time. the economy is doing really well. deals,negotiating trade looking at certain countries in a certain industries where at it hasn very unfair -- been very unfair to the united states. these countries are coming along that have not treated us well and they are negotiating vigorously. lots of good things are happening. they should have been taken care of a long time before my administration came into being.

years, no one would ever look at trade deals. it is out of control, how bad we are. countries wenty of are dealing with. administration is often -- also acting swiftly to address the legal -- illegal immigration crisis on the southern border. this is all supported by extremist, open border democrats. pelosi,ook at nancy they neededr, borders for security. a short while ago, a number of years ago, i see chuck schumer, we must have borders, hillary clinton, we must have borders. now, it is a whole big con. people are suffering because of

the democrats. we have created and they have created a massive child struggling index. traffickers, if you think about this, human traffickers are making a fortune. disgrace. these loopholes force the release of alien families and miners into the country -- min ors into the country. since 2014 alone, nearly 200,000 unaccompanied alien minors have been released into the united states as a result of democratic loopholes, including catch and release, which is one of the worst. we are stuck with. they are the worst immigration laws in the history of the world.

at the world is laughing united states, and they have been for years. thee aliens were sent all minors were sent all the way up to her, alone. you know what coyotes are, these are not good people. they were sent appear with human traffickers, because the democrats -- democrats supported policies that allowed this to and refused to find the resources we need to house the minors. they want us to take care of the fine, theythat is don't want to give us the money. the blue wave is turning out to be a red wave, if we look at the poll.s they want us to take care of bed space and resources and personnel.

look at the most luxurious hotel in the world for everybody, but they don't want to give us the money. you can ask them about that. we have to has these minors and house them safely -- house these minors and house them safely. we should be taking good care of them and return them back home. that is what we have to do. every time we ask for resources, the democrats say no. they say no to everything. i think it is bad, politically. court ordered loopholes prevent family detention and lead to family separation. i signed a good executive order, yesterday, but that is totally limited. i am directing dhs and doj to work together to keep the legal immigrant families together

during the immigration process and to reunite these previously separated groups. the only real solution is for congress to close the catch and release loopholes and fuel the child smuggling industry. the democrats are causing tremendous damage and destruction. they are not doing something about this. they know that better than anybody. there is still an amount of money and personnel to address the crisis. this is a very serious crisis. you look back at 2014, during the obama administration, they have pictures that were so bad that they had a judge that said it was inhumane, the way they were treating children. take a look at some of the court -- rulingstngs the

against the obama administration. have a situation, where, some of these places, they are really running them well, and i give a lot of credit to secretary nielsen. this is still something that shouldn't be taken place. lady is downfirst at the border, because it really bothered her to be looking at this as iteing bothered me, as it bothered everybody else. we are all bothered by it. we need two to tango. the senatevotes in and we need 60, unfortunately, because we have the ridiculous filibuster. we need 60.

we won by 25, 30 points, with mike. to six senators. that is 60. there's nothing you can do to get there. we have a majority by one in the senate, but we need 10 votes. we need 10 democrats. we are not going to get them. they are told by chuck schumer and nancy pelosi, don't do it. they don't care about the children, the injury, the problems, they don't care about anything. say abstract, and let's see how we do. they have no policies that are any good. they generally stick together. i respect him for that. their policy stink. -- policies stink.

all they can do is make it possible to take care of children and families and immigration. we should be able to make an immigration bill that can really solve the problem. this is one aspect of it. we should be able to do a bill. i would like them to come over to the white house anytime they want. after the cabinet meeting would be good. they are invited, officially. we have to do something about immigration in this country. for 50 years, it was a disaster. over the last 20, 25 years, it has gotten worse. we can solve this problem. we have hired thousands of judges. no country in the world is hiring judges like that. mexico by the way is doing nothing for us. they are the strongest immigration laws.

they can do whatever they want and keep people out of mexico. they walk through mexico's like it is walking through central park. -- mexico like it is walking through central park. when people say, why are you being so tough with nafta, m exico is making $100 billion off us and the horrible nafta deal. one of the reasons i am being tough is that they do nothing for us at the border. trafficking. human trafficking. coyotes. we are getting some real beauties. mexico is doing nothing for us but taking our money and sending us trucks. -- sending us drugs. they could solve this problem in

two minutes, but they don't do anything. we will see how that all comes out. it will be very interesting. a tremendous success in north korea. we continue to work on that. mike pompeo has been fantastic. john bolton, working together with mike, has been fantastic. he spent so much time in north korea. surprised to see you. i can speak for both of us and say it has been an incredible experience. the relationship is very good. we can stop the sending of missiles, including ballistic missiles, they are blowing up the site. they have already blown up one of their big test sites. is, it will be a total denuclearization, which is

already taking place. they are in the process of sending back the remains of our heroes who died in north korea during the war. that is already in the process of coming back. as you know very well, we got back our hostages. we are looking very happily with our families and we are very happy about that. we have made tremendous progress with respect to north korea, even sense i last spoke to you -- since i last spoke with you. anyone would have agreed to meet and it would not have been possible for past administrations to have met the way that we did. this was an incredible, important meeting all over asia. they are in love with united states because of what we have done. abe was soter

thrilled he does not have rockets going over japan. he is very thrilled not to see rockets going over japan. he said, i want to thank you. what you have done is incredible. things can change. first -- personalities can change. maybe you end up with conflict, maybe you don't. the relationship that mike pompeo has and i have with chairman kim and his group is a very good one. it is a strong one and i think it will be to tremendous success. to tremendous success. we will immediately begin total denuclearization of north korea. nobody thought that would be possible. if you remember a year and a half ago, when mike and i came into office, when this group came into

korea. during the obama years, that's all i heard, we will have war with north korea. you have thousands of massive -- they call them cannons. that's what they are. they are bigger than howitzers and they are all aimed at seoul. seoul has 28 million people. t would not a catastrophe of 100,000 people or 200,000, like i read. this could have been a catastrophe of 30 million, 40 million people. i think we're very close having that situation solved. we had some very good news, even over the last couple days. they want to get it done. we want to get it done. we're moving quickly. north korea has been an incredible experience for me. we are going to help them, also, get back on track. we think it has tremendous potential. chairman kim thinks it has tremendous potential. i want to also thank, as you know, prime minister abe. i want to thank president moon

from south korea. he's been terrific. he's been really moving it along and pushing as hard as they can. but without the united states, it had no chance whatsoever. i also want to thank president xi of china because the border was very strong during a very critical period. unfortunately, the border's getting a little bit weaker now but that's ok. that's ok. but we have to get him to keep it tough. but i do want to thank unfortunately, the border's getting a little bit weaker now president xi of china. so with all of that, we're having tremendous numbers, tremendous economic success. i think we're having the most successful period of time economically, perhaps, in our country's history. g.d.p. numbers have been great, but the ones that are coming out i'm really looking forward to seeing them. i think you're going to see numbers -- i see the activity, i see the business. yesterday and last evening was

really -- that was an incredible evening that we spent. that was to me just an incredible evening. a lot of you were there. i see a lot of the faces. a lot of you were there. at least 15,000 people couldn't get into the arena, and the arena was being held 9,000 eople. sadly 15,000 people couldn't get into the arena, but it was a very special evening. people had a good time but they also heard a lot. i want to thank everybody very much. mick mulvaney is going to be giving a little report. you can give it in front of the media. would the media like to hear mick mulvaney's report or would you find it extraordinarily boring and therefore not fit for camera? i don't know. you like to hear it? and why don't we do this? we'll say grace afterwards, mike, and we'll do mick and then we'll say grace. we don't have to necessarily do that in front of the cameras. ok.

mick, go ahead. mr. mulvaney: i will find it hard not to make this boring, mr. president. president, a lot of folks have worked a long time, almost since you took over, to show you what -- to get you where you are today at this evening. i call this the drain the swamp cabinet meeting. i know we talked it during the campaign. you talked about it. today we're introducing the actual action that follow up on those words, to show people what we meant when we said drain the swamp. later after the press leaves, you'll hear from administrator mcmahon on the executive order dealing with civil service eform. what i want to talk about is the government reorganization. very, very briefly. when we got into this, one of the things we learned is it's been almost 100 years since anybody really reorganized the government at this type of scale. it's been since f.d.r. and his new deal when he changed how government works and we haven't changed it since then. we're almost 20% into the 21st

century but we're still dealing with a government that's from the early 19th century. this leads, mr. president, to some bizarre results. in fact, the stories, you don't know where to start. right now, because of the byzantine nature of the way we regulate in this country, if you have a cheese pizza, you make a cheese pizza, that's governed by the united states department of agriculture. the other way around. i always get this backwards. if you make a cheese pizza, it's administered by the food and drug administration. if you put a pepperoni on it it's governed by the usda. if you get a chicken, it's administered by the usda. if you get an egg, it's by the f.d.a. if you have an open faced roast beef sandwich, you put the bread on top of it, it's another one. hotdog, the meat is governed by one. you put it in bread, it's governed by another. my favorite, if you have a saltwater fish, salmon, it's governed by the department of

commerce. up river it's commerce. and to get the fish, it's overned by the u.s. army corps of engineers. incredible. of engineers. this is stupid. this makes no sense. resident trump: that was [laughter] president trump: i think you should put that on television. mr. mulvaney: and linda's job, [laughter] dealing with small businesses. long time ago i worked in a freezer for a guy that made frozen pizzas. one day he's making cheese pizzas and the afternoon he will make pepperoni. he has an entirely different agency to deal with. it simply doesn't make sense. we will try to fix it. i want to go through a couple of examples today. step aside to go over just one or two -- a couple of them made the press. we talk about this later about the department of education and the department of labor being

merged. we think that makes tremendous sense. what are they both doing? they're doing the same thing, get people ready for the work force. sometimes it's education, vocational training. we're doing the same thing. this goes back to the work i think ivanka i think did very early on job training when we learned we had -- in fact, we don't even know how many job training programs we have. some people think it's 40. some people think it's 46, 47. we get it down to 16 and put it all in one place so that if you're not happy or the next president is not happy the way it's going -- right now it's 16 different people around this table have work force training programs in their agency. if something is going wrong, you're going to come to me and say, mick, why aren't you doing hat? i say, no, that's scott pruitt's fault or betsy devos' fault. we're putting ed and labor together. examples how we think we can mprove things. everybody, democrats, republicans, local government,

state government, you, me, from the private sector -- i have horror stories about the army corps of engineers. over the course of the last entury, their role has continued to creep and creep and creep. we can do better. so the proposal today you'll continued to creep and creep see makes important change to the corps of engineers. the stuff is really defense and there are still -- army corps does that's defense. they stay there. and they should. the things the army corps doesn't help to defend the nation will stay where they belong which is at the department of defense. environment, what they do deals with the environment, they deal with environmental mitigation, so forth, that goes over to the department of the interior. y'all are really good at that. similarly, ports, deep water ports, our lock system, that's not -- it used to be a military thing 100 years ago. now it's department of transportation because it's a transportation item. we think it's a much more efficient layout. it ties in what you talked

about. streamline our permitting process and goes along with what mr. zinke is doing at the d.o.i. to try to centralize so there's ne point of contact. you want a permit, go to one federal agency. down here, we talked about that one food safety thing. right now it's f.d.a., usda, couple of places. we move all that into the usda. why? because they are really good at it. it's not to say f.d.a. isn't. wouldn't it be good for people to go to one area? in all fairness, secretary purdue will tell you, there's things usda does that others can't do well. housing component, why shouldn't we go to housing and urban development? we propose to move it to h.u.d. housing component, why

they handled the food stamps, snap program, that makes no sense at all. h.h.s. is uniquely handled. we move that to h.h.s. have it centralized so we can deal with it. no one has ever tried at this scale, mr. president. president clinton tried it a ittle bit. a couple of us tried it. no one has done it at this scale. importantly, no one's ever followed through on it. no one's ever given the time commitment these people around the table they have given. no one has -- the stuff president clinton came up are peanuts compared to this. every time someone comes to me and says, this will doesn't have a chance. a couple different things. one of the biggest ideas, department of education and labor mergers actually doesn't get involved in jurisdictional battles on the hill. one committee on the hill handles those things now. congress is ahead of us which is difficult to say. there is a chance we can get that done. even if we don't get it done now. this is the general rational kind of stuff that i think you

asked us to do when you came to office. when ronald reagan said government wasn't the solution, it was the problem, it took 15 years after that for bill clinton to go on tv and say the age of big government is dead. this is a generational thing. this is going to happen overnight? no. some of the stuff we can do by ourselves on a regulatory fashion through the administrative process. other stuff will take longer. this is the stuff that's worth fighting for and won't get done unless somebody takes the first steps which is what we're doing today. thanks for -- thanks not only for giving us time to do this but the encouragement to do this. it helped to go back and say, look, push harder. push harder. this is important to the president. this is what he said drain the swamp and show people that voted for you and even people that didn't vote for you that you care about good government and we are going to make things a lot better. that's all i got. president trump: thank you very much. i think really tariff actually. i want you to write down that one little -- i think that's really good actually. i want you to write that one

down. i want to ask the secretary of state, who has been incredible, mike pompeo, who will give us an update on north korea. so important. mr. pompeo: since june 12 now, a week and a day, we made significant progress. importantly, not only are allies must directly affected by the japanese, chinese, roader circle. i talked to the brits, australians, talked with other europeans, each of them understands that we have fundamentally set a course that has the opportunity to change humanity. and they are all on board. they are all working, supportive of our theory of continuing the sanctions until we're complete. and so we have got a unified world to join chairman kim. i was there. i was there when he said it. he made a personal commitment. he has his reputation on the line. same way we do. that says we are going to create a brighter future for north korea and denuclearize just as quickly as we can achieve that.

i'm working hard, mr. president. i am sure there will be bumps along the way. i'm confident that we can get the world to unite behind this incredibly important mission. president trump: you did a hell of a job, i tell you. he's been in a lot of -- he's logged a lot of hours in airplanes going over 22, 3-hour flight. spent a lot of time. we're very proud of you. thank you very much, mike. thank you all, very much. [talking at the same time] eporter: [inaudible] president trump: the got to get together. what is my message to lawmakers have to due with immigration? they have got to do something. they have to sit down. i'll be certainly -- i'm willing to do it.

i just told you i'll invite senator schumer and nancy pelosi. they can come over. they can bring whoever they want. but the lawmakers have to sit down and they have to do something because our country cannot continue to run like his. we can't have open borders. you have to have borders. you don't have a country without borders. they have to be enforced. it has to be a strict enforcement. at the same time we want people to come into our country. we need them. we have many companies right now moving back into the united states. they need workers. we have 3.8% unemployment. they need workers. we have to have them come in. i'm saying, i want people to come in. they have to come in through a merit system, but we can have a lot of people come into our country through the merit system so they can help these companies that are looking so hard for people to make the company work. but the -- in a very, very simple way congress has to get together, get their act ogether, democrats and

republicans, they have to come up with a solution. i have ideas. they have ideas. we can put them together very easily. there's so much hatred. there's so much -- i mean, honestly -- there's a lot of false reporting. a lot of misreporting. there's also a lot of great reporting. but congress has to come ogether and this is the best time to do it. right now i think is the best time i've seen for people that really are well-meaning. unfortunately, we have an election coming up in a few months. i guess they're looking at it and we're looking at it and maybe we have to just sort of put on the blinders when it comes to doing that. but congress has to get together and we have to do something on immigration. it's very important. we have to change almost everything that's been done in the past. it's ridiculous. we are being laughed at as a

country because of our bad mmigration policies. you know, we're a young administration. this has been begun on for 50 years, 60 years, 70 years, but it's gotten worse over the last 20 because laws have been so complex and so ridiculous. we really don't have a law. we have laws that don't allow you to do what you're supposed to be doing. we also want to keep it in a very humane way. we want to take care of people. if we don't take them in we have to help. we also need help from mexico. mexico has not help us and we need help from mexico. so it's a long answer. but i also appreciate the great job you've done. reporter: [inaudible] president trump: i can't hear you. we want to put them together. we don't want to have people, we don't want to have children separated from their parents. you have to understand, you gave an example yesterday of 12,000 children. of the 12,000, 10,000 came up either alone. they weren't necessarily young children. either alone or came up with traffickers and coyotes.

and these coyotes are bad dudes, but they came up with other people, brought them up, and they are using these children. that's 10,000 out of the 12,000. of the 2,000, a lot of the people when they came with their children, this is their third, fourth, fifth time trying to come into our country. so this is not a perfect situation. this is very bad. now, port of entry, if you go to perfect situation. if you go to a port of entry. it works out very nicely. they don't want to go through the port of entry. many of the people in the 2000 category, 2,000 children they have tried to come into our country many times the same way and don't want to go through our port of entry and usually that is a bad reason. why don't they want to go in legally. so you have a situation that is ripe for congress to get together and come up with a

solution. and i am ready, willing and able to help and ready, willing and able to take this pen right ere and sign very quickly. reporter: [inaudible] president trump: if we took zero tolerance away, you would be overrun. you would have millions of people coming through our border. everybody would come right now and getting their little belongings unfortunately and would be heading up. you would have a run in this country the likes of nobody has ever seen. so we have to have strong borders. frankly, the wall in terms of drugs, in terms of keeping certain people out that we don't want in this country, the wall is imperative. we have to have the wall.

we started the wall, $1.6 billion and fixing tremendous amounts of wall that has been jeefer run. but we have to come with a solution. i would consider it whether it's north korea or so many other things. look, i have been given a very tough hand because i came up here, we had an economy that was going down, we had an iran problem, a middle east problem. take a look at what was going on in the middle east. a lot smoother right now than anything you have heard over the last eight years. we were given a lot of bad cards. one of the bad cards we were given this immigration mess and made worse by all of the different contradicted laws that have been passed. so we are going to work very hard with mike pence and everybody else in this room to see if we can solve the immigration problem. but we need democrats. if they are going to obstruct,

it can't be done because the republicans don't have the votes. i think we will win additional senate seats. that will help us a lot. unless we keep the house more or less like it is right now -- unless the democrats are serious and want to come along and get immigration work done. we can do something that's going to be historic. we can do something that can be historic and can get it done. i'm ready and i'm here. these are very talented people. we are all here. we need votes from the democrats or else can pass. thank you very much. >> thank you all. indiscernible] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org

>> on thursday, the first lady and health and human services secretary alex azar visited a children's shelter in texas. this is 15 minutes.