The president discussed the violent protests on Tuesday after giving two earlier statements, the second of which called out racist groups. Trump now says, “There’s blame on both sides.”
President Trump shifted his tone again on the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., while answering questions from reporters on Tuesday.
He said “there’s blame on both sides, ” referring to the rally-goers — including neo-Nazis and members of the KKK — and the counterprotesters. In clashes on Saturday at least 19 people were injured and a counterprotester was killed.
Trump had said initially on Saturday there was violence “on many sides.” After much criticism for not specifically calling out white nationalists, Trump named neo-Nazis, the KKK and white supremacists in a prepared statement delivered at the White House. At Tuesday’s press conference in Trump Tower in New York, he shifted his rhetoric again.
Below, read a transcript of the president’s remarks and questions from reporters.
TRUMP: Hello everybody. Great to be back in New York with all of our friends and some great friends outside the building, I must tell you. I want to thank all of our distinguished guests who are with us today, including members of our cabinet, treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, OMB director Mick Mulvaney and of course our transportation secretary, who is doing a fabulous, job Elaine Chao. Thank you all for doing a really incredible and creative job on what we’re going to be discussing today, which is infrastructure.
We’ve just had a great set of briefings upstairs on our infrastructure agenda. My administration is working every day to deliver the world class infrastructure that our people deserve and frankly, that our country deserves.
That’s why I just signed a new executive order to dramatically reform the nation’s badly broken infrastructure permitting process. Just blocks away is the Empire State Building. It took 11 months to build the Empire State Building. But today it could take as long as a decade and much more than that. Many many stores where it takes 20 and 25 years just to get approvals to start construction of a fairly routine highway. Highway builders must get up to 16 different approvals involving nine different federal agencies, governed by 29 different statutes. One agency alone can stall a project for many years and even decades. Not only does this cost economy billions of dollars but it also denies our citizens the safe and modern infrastructure they deserve. This overregulated permitting process is a massive self-inflicted wound on our country.
It’s disgraceful. Denying our people much needed investments in their community and I just want to show you this, because it was just shown [to] me and I [said] , I think I’m going to show it to the media, both real and fake media. by the way. This is what it takes to get something approved today. Elaine, you see that? So this is what it takes — permitting process flowchart. That’s a flowchart.
So that can go out to 20 years, this shows about 10. But that could go out to about 20 years to get something approved. This is for a highway. I’ve seen a highway recently in a certain state, I won’t mention its name, it’s 17 years. I could have built it for four or five million dollars without the permitting process. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars but it took 17 years to get it approved.
And many pages of environmental impact studies.
This is what we will bring it down to. This is less than two years. This is going to happen quickly. That’s what I’m signing today. This will be less than two years for a highway. So it’s going to be quick. It’s going to be a very streamlined process. And by the way, if it doesn’t meet environmental safeguards, we’re not going to approve it. Very simple.
We’re not going to approve it. So maybe this one will say… let’s throw the other one away. Would anybody like it from the media? Would anybody like that long beautiful chart? You can have it.
So my executive order also requires agencies to work together efficiently by requiring one lead agency for each major infrastructure project. It also holds agencies accountable if they fail to streamline their review process. So each agency is accountable. We’re going to get infrastructure built quickly, inexpensively, relatively speaking, and the permitting process will go very quickly.
No longer will we tolerate one job killing delay after another. No longer will we accept a broken system that benefits consultants and lobbyists at the expense of hardworking Americans.
Now I knew the process very well, probably better than anybody. I had to get permits for this building and many of the buildings I built — all of the buildings I built in Manhattan and many other places.
And I will tell you that the consultants are rich people.
They go around making it very difficult. They lobby Congress, they lobby state governments, city governments, to make it very difficult so that you have to hire consultants and that you have to take years and pay them a fortune.
So we’re streamlining the process had we won’t be having so much of that anymore. No longer will we allow the infrastructure of our magnificent country to crumble and decay. While protecting the environment, we will build gleaming new roads, bridges, railways, waterways, tunnels and highways.
We will rebuild our country with American workers, American iron, American aluminum, American steel. We will create millions of new jobs and make millions of American dreams come true. Our infrastructure will again be the best in the world. We used to have the greatest infrastructure anywhere in the world. And today we’re like a third world country. We are literally like a third world country.
Our infrastructure will again be the best and we will restore the pride in our communities, our nation, and all over the United States we’ll be proud again. So I want to thank everybody for being here. God bless you. God bless the United States.
And if you have any questions, we have — Mick, you could come up here please. Come on up. Mick Mulvaney. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
REPORTER: Why do you think these CEOs are leaving your manufacturing council?
TRUMP: Because they’re not taking their job seriously as it pertains to this country. We want jobs, manufacturing in this country. If you look at some of those people that you’re talking about, they’re outside of the country, they’re having a lot of their product made outside. If you look at Merck as an example, take a look where, excuse me. Excuse me. Take a look at where their product is made. It’s made outside of our country. We want products made in the country.
Now I have to tell you, some of the folks that will leave, they’re leaving out of embarrassment because they make their products outside. And I’ve been lecturing them, including the gentleman that you’re referring to, about you have to bring it back to this country. You can’t do it necessarily in Ireland and all of these other places, you have to bring this work back to this country. That’s what I want. I want manufacturing to be back into the United States so that American workers can benefit.
REPORTER: Why did you wait so long to blast Neo Nazis?
TRUMP: I didn’t wait long. I didn’t wait long. I didn’t wait long. I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct. Not make a quick statement. The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement. But you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the fact. It takes a little while to get the facts. You still don’t know the facts. And it’s a very, very important process to me. And it’s a very important statement. So I don’t want to go quickly and just make a statement for the sake of making a political statement. I want to know the facts —
If you go back to my… in fact, I brought it. I brought it.
[cross-talk]
As I said on, remember this, on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms, this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence. It has no place in America. And then I went on from there. Now here’s the thing —
[cross-talk]
Excuse me. Excuse me. Take it nice and easy. Here’s the thing. When I make a statement, I like to be correct. I want the facts. This event just happened. In fact, a lot of the event didn’t even happen yet, as we were speaking. This event just happened. Before I make a statement, I need the facts. So I don’t want to rush into a statement. So making the statement when I made it was excellent.
In fact, the young woman, who I hear is a fantastic young woman, and it was on NBC, her mother wrote me and said through, I guess Twitter, social media, the nicest things. And I very much appreciated that. I hear she was a fine, really actually an incredible, young woman. But her mother on Twitter thanked me for what I said.
And honestly, if the press were not fake, and if it was honest, the press would have said what I said was very nice. But unlike you —
[cross-talk]
But unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.
[cross-talk]
REPORTER: The CEO of Wal Mart said you missed a critical opportunity to help bring the country together. Did you?
TRUMP: Not at all. I think the country, look, you take a look, I’ve created over a million jobs since I’m president, the country is booming, the stock market is setting records, we have the highest employment numbers we’ve ever had in the history of our country, we’re doing record business. We have the highest levels of enthusiasm. So the head of Wal Mart — who I know, who is very nice guy – was making a political statement.
[cross-talk]
… I want to make sure, when I make a statement, that the statement is correct. And there was no way, there was no way of making a correct statement that early. I had to see the facts, unlike a lot of REPORTERs. Unlike a lot of REPORTERs —
[cross-talk]
I didn’t know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts. And the facts as they started coming out were very well stated. In fact, everybody said, his statement was beautiful, if he would have made it sooner, that would have been good. I couldn’t have made it sooner because I didn’t know all of the facts. Frankly, people still don’t know all of the facts.
[cross-talk]
Excuse me. Excuse me. It was very important to me to get the facts out and correctly. Because if I would have made a fast statement, and the first statement was made without knowing much other than what we were seeing. The second statement was made after, with knowledge, with great knowledge. There’s still things. Excuse me. There’s still things that people don’t know. I want to make a statement with knowledge. I wanted to know the states.
REPORTER: Was this terrorism?
TRUMP: The driver of the car is a disgrace to himself, his family and this country. And that is, you can call it terrorism, you can call it murder, you can call it whatever you want. I would just call it as the fastest one to come up with a good verdict. That’s what I’d call it.
