FS24 WH VALDOSTA GA RALLY PATH 2 POOL 4 1815 FOX POOL *NOTE: MISSING 8 MINUTES AT TOP OF PRESIDENT TRUMP'S SPEECH DUE TO RECORDING ERROR* [7:30:21 pm] If we have courage and wisdom I think you know what the answer is going to be because you can't let people get away with what they got away with over -- think of it with over 74 million votes over think of that. More than I got more votes than any sitting president in history. 11 million more votes. [Applause] There we got in 2016. And we thought that if we could get 68 million, 67 million that would be the end all of our great brilliant geniuses say if you win if you get 68 and we got [7:31:23 pm] 74 million plus and that's trying to convince us that we lost we didn't lose. They found a lot of ballots to be nice about it they got rid of some too 74, 74 could have been even high or as great pollster John who is really a great pollster one of the most highly respected. He said there's no way this could have happened other than the obvious cheating or a rigged election. There's no way it could have happened. You know, it's interesting I wrote this -- and I had just a few of the fact which is I think because I want to get on to the presidentials -- I want to stay on presidential but I he to get to these two because they're great. But listen to this, these are the facts. And each fact is like irrefutable and it means win. President trump received one of the most brilliant political people president trump received more votes than any previous incumbent president in history. [7:32:23 pm] And we lost. And we lost. So we received more votes than anybody in history. Any incumbent in history and lost we didn't lose. We're going see that. No incumbent who is receives 75% of the total primary Vos lost reelection in history of our country president trump received 74%. Not 74 -- which is one of the highest in history. And, in fact, president trump is the only one of five incumbents since 1912 to receive more than 90% of the primary vote and again, anybody received over 75% they won. We won we got 94%. President trump set a record for the most primary votes ever received by an incumbent ever and nobody that's received all of the primary votes nobody has received at much lesser level than what they always won but we didn't according to what they say. It's rigged it is a fixed deal. [7:33:26 pm] Nationally, initial numbers show that 26% of president trump's voting share came from nonwhite voters. The highest percentage per GOP presidential candidates. [Applause] Since 1960 that's a long time ago. President trump think of this one. President trump won 18 of 19 belle weather counties you know that's a big deal. So I won 18 of 19 a record. Never happened. That between 1980 and 2016 voted for eventually present in every single election before that it was almost every election and we won a record 18 of 19 never lost. Nobody has ever lost with anything like that. Biden did not demonstrate coat tails for down ballot races had no coat tails shocked to hear that. , In fact, you've got 80 million [7:34:26 pm] votes but what he made a Thanksgiving day speech on the internet they say he had less than a thousand people how do you have 80 million votes and -- you have less than a thousand people? With Republicans maintaining control so here's what happened. So Biden didn't non strait coat tails and battle races but with Republicans maintaining control, first time this has ever happened. Control of the senate winning all 27 tossup races of the house. Kevin Mccarthy great job, great winning all 27 tossup races now think of it -- we didn't los the seat in the house think of this first time that anybody I think in history we didn't lose once you normally lose two, three, five we lost nobody sitting in congress I worked hard in the house. With Kevin Macarthur -- not losing a single legislative [7:35:26 pm] chamber making big gains at state level holding on to senate look at what's happened we better hold on to senate you two. And there's never been numbers like that where president even came close to losing but they say we lost only way is they stopped ballot boxes. President trump won. President trump won as we said both in Florida, and then Ohio -- and by the way, won by a lot. Remember you know? Remember -- remember the fake polls where they said he's down by 4. In Florida and won by a lot. He's down by 2 in Ohio and we won I think we've got 8, 9, something up but two very powerful big important states. 193602 And the beauty is that we also won Georgia, and that was good. [Cheering] And we won South Carolina and we won Iowa, remember? "We're not going to win in Iowa," they said. "We're not going to win." I think the farmers like Trump a lot, right? Well, we won in Iowa by a lot. 193617------- We won in Iowa by close to record numbers I think I have the record. And we won all over the place and many of these swing states you know it is very interesting statistics. President Obama beat Biden all over the country except in some of the swing states. Where Biden beat him badly. How does that work? They say it is statistically impossible -- he beat crooked Hillary think of this he beat crooked Hillary in swing states but beat him everywhere else. 193649 Let me tell you, this election was rigged and we can't let it happen to two of the greatest, most respected people in Washington. We can't let it happen again. [Cheering] [chanting "STOP THE STEAL"] Can't let it happen. Can't let it happen. ["STOP THE STEAL" chant cont.] 193717 Your governor could stop it very easily, if he knew what the hell he was doing. He could stop it very easily. 193725---------- Hundred of thousands of the legal votes were cast in each state. Far from, I mean, you look at this, hundreds of thousands more than we needed were casted every state we're talking about not only here but Michigan, Pennsylvania, how about Pennsylvania where they throw the poll watchers out? They threw them out they literally threw them out. And they did it here too by the way. But we caught him cold and numerous cases pending so far we haven't been able to find people with the courage to do the right thing. And that is true in Georgia certainly but we're going to hit those people and they're going to go down in history as great people. They're going to go down because everyone knows what took place but we're going to talk about the presidential election a little bit later because we have a big senate story race going on in Georgia and we are watching Democrats very, very closely and remember this -- we have this massive race all [7:38:30 pm] over the country. So they could cheat in Georgia and people aren't really watching like they should. And you know, again, all I can do is say I'm running. Win and then do a good job as president that's all I don't run the lexes I don't run to see if people are walking in suitcases and putting them under a table with a black robe around. I don't do that. That's up to your government here. And for whatever reason, your secretary of state and your governor are afraid of Stacey Abrams they're afraid of him. 193856 So we know the Democrats are planning to cheat, and we can't let them do it again. And we're going to pull ours, out one way or the other, but we have to be vigilant because I don't want these to do work like I -- you know, I thought we were going to easily win, and that may be for the first time in a long time, I'd go take a nice little vacation for about two days. 193918 And then, we go back. And instead, I probably worked harder in the last three weeks than I've ever worked in my life, doing this -- [cheers] And I've become friendly with legislators that I didn't know four weeks ago, and actually they're great people. In fact, in my pocket right here, we have a couple of them right in here. 193942------- Richard Jones, where's Richard? Burt you're a young guy I thought you were young but not that young Burt gongs I want to thank you Burt for being here you're friendly with man next to you here he's a man of courage I appreciate everything you're doing and so does this big crowd and there's a lot of people. Also Brandon beach Brandon thank you for everything we appreciate it. William. William where's William? Why are you so far away William from them? I like that group better actually. I agree. And Greg. Where's Greg? Greg -- [7:40:30 pm] thank you very much, Greg. We appreciate it. Really do. We appreciate it. Great people. 194028 And we said, "have this brought back into your legislature, Governor, have it brought back. Let these people make it. Keep it open, keep it transparent. And let us have a signature verification." What's wrong with that? [Cheering] They keep counting the same votes. I said, "Don't count votes. Look at the signature, you're going to find the signatures aren't what they were two years ago, four years ago, six years ago." 194053-------- But our two great senator opponents have these two people that fight and they're going to fight like -- I don't know if you know this, but one of the people that you're fighting I went against him ossoff four years ago against a very fine woman Karen who was a great woman, and he was leading by quite a bit and we ended up beating him. He didn't even live in the district. He was running for congress. He didn't even live in the district. So -- we're going to have the same [7:41:31 pm] thing. But ossoff Warnock pawns of crying chuck I see him cry when cameras are on. But he said he did say this. I'm hurting you -- he said this if we get in we're going to absolutely make Donald Trump's life miserable. Can you believe that? That's chuck Schumer he made the statement. We're going investigate him, investigations will go on and on. Well they've been investigating me since the day we came down on the escalator which what turned out to be our great first lady we came down the escalator, right? And they spied on our campaign and lots of other things. But Nancy Pelosi AOC -- [booing] Bernie Sanders, and lunatic radical left that's what you're going to have is chuck Schumer said rather infamously first we take Georgia then we take America. [7:42:31 pm] But they don't mean take America in a good sense but bring it over to things that people of Georgia don't want. You're not going to like it when they want to taken over your farm gee we own this farm too here we were here we own this farm here's exactly how they'll change America forever. Radical Democrats if they get power, they will immediately abolish senate filibuster, allowing them to pass any bill they want and giving them free reign to ramp through extreme left wing agenda ever conceived while at the same time destroying our military through a lack of funding. [Booing] 194303 And by the way, tell our senators, "end Section -- CROWD>> 230! TRUMP>> -- 230." End section 230. Put it in, we put it in. I want it in the Defense Bill. Put it in, because it is a national security problem. [cheers] It's a big national security, so hopefully Mitch and Senators will put it in, but it is the one chance we have to bring Big Tech who are vicious and violent and untruthful -- to bring Big Tech -- 194332 It's the only thing they fear is that we're going to end Section 230. So hopefully we will do it. 194337---------- It happens to be a politically very popular thing to do, by the way. If these people get control, draconian military cuts will devastate fort banning, Gordon and military families all across Georgia and we would also like to save the names of the forts if you don't mind, everybody they have the right you know they put in the Elizabeth pocahontas Warren, where they have the right to take all of the names of our past warriors hero and some cases many cases -- some turn out to be heros in disguise perhaps. But they wanted Toake names off and they have the right to desecrate to take down to destroy, to demolish -- places in our national parks that we don't want demolish but [7:44:34 pm] we have to be careful we can't let that happen. They want to put it in our military bill of all people. Elizabeth Warren puts that clause in the military bill. They will impose total open borders so that people can pour into our country and they will give them free health care, free welfare and the right to vote in your election you won't ever win. Another election -- as a Republican. They even want to take down the wall you know the wall we wanted wall and take down the wall I heard them say it other day. We will take down the wall we have strongest border we've ever had and almost finished with the wall strongest border right -- and we've built it despite it is incredible effect it's having. We built it despite rather everybody said no chance. I mean we had a whole very powerful Democrat party oppose me and yesterday I don't know if you saw it. The course just ruled that the money I took was taken illegally [7:45:35 pm] at least we have a legal wall. Appeals court. We took in and we built the wall and will be finished with it very soon but a tremendous impact on illegal immigrants coming into the country and by the way we want people to come into our country you see that by vote I got but we want people to come in legally and through merit. Through merit where they can help us. Radical Democrats will implement nationwide catch and release you know what that is you catch a killer rapist you say thank you very much please gives your name. Oh come back in three years we're going put you in trial oh, good. You never see them by the way remember I had that debate with Joe Biden he said no they come back yeah they don't come back. They don't come back no they don't come back. Like never -- maybe one percent but I doubt it. That's the end of them you let them loose in our country I got rid of it you think that was easy? And install sanctuary cities all across the country that's what they want. [7:46:36 pm] Green criminal alien ms-13 gang members most vicious people they don't like guns because it is not painful enough they like using knives. It's true they don't like guns rather cut somebody up. To wreak havoc and tear upon innocent families we've moved thousands and thousands of ms-13s the hell out of our country we've moved them back -- [applause] And some we put in prison because they're tooan dangerous to move back so try to figure a way they're not stiewpgd but vicious and not stiewpgd like the Democrats if you think about it -- so confiscate privately own firearms and share -- they will what they will do, they will share everything with themselves only dangerous equipment and they will totally cut up a thing called your second amement rights. They'll make Washington, D.C. A state and many other places guaranteeing two, four, six [7:47:36 pm] additional left wing senators they want to make numerous places states this while you have a lot more -- company in congress you'll have lots of -- another 30, 40 congressional people from places you've never even heard of lieu louie the great voting against virnia every time completely canceling out your voice and Washington forever like David perdue I'll never forget it got hit by a piece of a hurricane farmers got hit so hard and I went with sunny with David and other great people from Georgia. And since there a way we can pay these people they never ask for anything and orchards wiped out one of the men said this was going to be best crop I ever had I was a week and a half away from finally after ten, 12 years making some money. And a week and a half early he gets hit bit the remnants of that big hurricane from Florida. Great state, great place. [7:48:37 pm] But you've got hit. And David, we took 100% care of those people, right? We took 100% care yeah with help of sun Nebraska perdue secretary of agriculture. And I felt so good but I met you know I met them over 33 of them standing and they're all in a line what do you do in I had this, it was a tragic, it was nobody wanted anything. They didn't even want it they said we can borrow it the are incredible people they want a level playing field but we took care of them and they never forgot it either. It is very interesting I still hear from some of those people. Extreme left will pack the supreme court with 24 radical justices that's the last number I heard. I used to hear it was 16. Now it's up to 24. Pretty soon you'll have another congress -- [laughter] 24 radical justices instead of nine justices that weave right now. And they want them to revolve up and down court system so that [7:49:38 pm] supreme court justices can spend time in other locations. Down totem pole they want to hurt the supreme court and they want to hurt it badly and 194939 And if these two don't get in, or if I don't get in and these (?) don't, we gotta get -- the best would be all three. [cheers] Nothing will happen, all three. 194954 But they want to destroy the sanctity of the Supreme Court, the importance of the Supreme Court, the majesty of the Supreme Court. They'll terminate religious liberty, cancel free speech and force you to fund extreme, late term abortion. [boos] And there will be nothing to stop them. If they don't get in, there's going to be nothing to stop them. You have no idea how bad it will be. There will be nothing. 195021 I used to argue with certain people about the filibuster. I said, "Look, I don't like it either but I do it because I know they're going to do it." And everybody said, "Oh, they'll never do it." They'll never -- they're doing it! They've already announced they're going to do it. That means they can do anything they want. And you know, the Republicans, they play a different game. I don't know, maybe they love the country more. But they said "no, no they'll never do it." 195042---------- And I said Schumer he'll do the first day he gets in he'll do it and that's exactly what's happening and he'll do it and he will do that to the supreme court there's no question but they look forward to it because you know why? We put on three think of this -- three great justices and -- and we'll be over 300 federal judges in the United States which will be a record. 300. 300 -- and they don't want to wait they want to do it very quickly let's just vote and this will take years and years into slowly change the cord and perhaps I got a little bit lucky to get three a lot of presidents have had none they've never had and for a long time young when they [7:51:41 pm] go on and old when they come off. But the fact is, a lot of presidents good presidents great presidents say you can't be a great president unless you put in supreme court justices they say it is the single most important thing a president can do. And I'm not sure that's right I think military defense, military offense frankly is the most important thing. [Applause] 195153 But it's certainly one of the most important things you can do. And the fact that I have more than -- I will have by the end more than 300 -- first term, think of it -- and if we do a second term, which I hope we do, we could have close to 540. [Applause] 195213 But the fact that I had three Supreme Court justices in the first term is not making them feel too good. They will unilaterally surrender to China. They're already doing it, they're already doing it. And you know, Hunter made a lot of money in China. What's he going to do? Sending our factories and our jobs overseas, they will raise your taxes. We lowered your taxes. We gave you the greatest tax decrease, tax cut in the history of our country. [applause] 195242 And they want to get rid of that, and raise your taxes and raise your regulations. We cut more regulations than any president in the history of our country. That's one of the reasons our business came back. You know, with the pandemic -- as bad as it is, it's horrible. It should have never happened. China -- China allowed this to happen. It should have never happened but you know, we went down less. A lot of people don't like to talk -- our economy, we went down less and we went up more than any other country in the world. 195312-------- We went down less because we have a good foundation. [Applause] And yesterday again -- so now I thought it was 48 it is actually 128 times can you believe it we set a new stock market record but this one was great because parking the Dow Jones industrial average think of it over -- over 30,000 for the first time [7:53:42 pm] ever over the last couple of weeks. And yesterday with 30,200 can you believe this? And this is during hopefully what will be rounding the turn we're rounding corner on the pandemic, but in is during a pandemic. We broke 30,000. A number that was unthinkable when I first came when I first came in at around 16,000. Concept of hitting 30,000 Dow was not even possible. And we not only -- can you imagine if we didn't get hit by this -- this freak, this total freak that came into our country? Can you imagine if we didn't get hit? But you know in a way I thought of this before David in a way we did this sort of twice we took it from the time I came in until time we got hilt and nobody is blaming us but for every country got hit some were totally devastated I don't know if they ever recover but if you think about it we have two we did it [7:54:42 pm] the first time we went up where I took way up then down then had a second so we really had two now we're going get money because we want the money. First of all, these states and cities should open up. They should open up. [Applause] And we're working hard against the Democrats but we're working hard to get the money out to the people because they need it. Not their fault that they got hit with something from China. And you notice the way the Democrats like to say it came from Italy? No. It came from China. And that's okay to say it. They like say it came from Europe. No absolutely specifically it came from Italy Italy saying what did we do? Their wage war on American energy, absolutely decimating Georgia's middle class they will your bills will go up -- not a huge energy producer but Texas remember they said -- trump wl lose Texas by a lot. I said wait a minute -- I'm in favor of energy. [7:55:42 pm] I'm one that built we have the greatest energy we've had and all happened this piod of time -- so you're telling me you're telling me that I'm going to lose Texas to a guy that's against fracking against energy against religion you tell me that I end up winning Texas by so much. Somebody said we don't know how much and we knew that before but fake news they said Wisconsin -- a poll came out Washington post ABC, just before the election I'm going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points I said no I'm going to win Wisconsin. Well, actually I won Wisconsin. They're trying to say he's a little dn but I actually won. That calls suppression that's called a suppression call. That's a poll that's so devastating when I asked one of the pollsters I said where do they go so far? Why don't they say four or five because in four years they're going lose all respect they don't care they'll do anything to win and do anything to beat you they don't care these people are sick. 17 points and we actually won. 195635 Remember, so many of the states -- I won every one of them. Every one of these states -- and by the way, this swing states that we're all fighting over now, I won them all by a lot. I won them all by a lot. [cheers] And I have to say -- if I lost, I'd be a very gracious loser. If I lost, I would say "I lost," and I'd go to Florida and I'd take it easy and I'd go around and I'd say "I did a good job." 195704 But you can't ever accept when they steal and rig and rob. [cheers] You can't accept it. [CROWD CHANTS "STOP THE STEAL"] 195727------ Well, the Democrats did try to. His secretary of agriculture, sonny. He was a great governor for 8 years. You would have solved this problem in two hours. He would have said let the legislature be open. Let us be transparent on signatures. We are working hard to insure it doesn't. Now they are trying to steal these two important seats from Georgia. We have accomplished things no other president has accomplished. And I did it with these two people. I didn't know Kelly. When Kelly came in, I didn't know what to think. There was nobody who fought harder for me. David understands this, too. [7:58:52 pm] She fought. What a trouper. She was so tough and smart. And she even went against Mitt Romney. I won't say what she said. But it was tough. We call them kryptonite. Anything he touches they lose. David has been my friend for a long long time. There is nobody in Washington who is better respected than David perdue. 195917 If the other side manages to steal both elections, we'll have total one-party socialist control, and everything you care about will be gone. Your whole philosophy is gonna be gone. 195929 Joe Biden, Kamala -- Kamala Harris, [boos] Crying Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, they want to take away your guns. I never got it. I never got it. That's one of the reasons I knew. How can you win? No oil, no guns, no God. "Oh, they won." I don't think so. Okay, I don't think so. We knew that a long time ago. They want to take away your jobs, take away your borders, take away your freedom, take away your religion and they even want to take away your beautiful Christmas that we just got back. 200008----------- I have to be very careful when I imitate that. Remember I was saying suburban women, please love me, I have been so good to you. I got rid of the worst regulation in the history of suburbia. Now you can actually have a house without a building going up next to it that you are not going to be happy about. Without crime increasing by 10 fold. But suburban women please please loved me. CNN said Donald Trump is begging and crying for the vote of suburban women. [8:01:02 pm] Right? These people are sick. You have to be very careful when you are sarcastic. Sarcasm doesn't work. That is a big group O people back there. The fake news. That's a big group. That is a lot of fake news. Now we call it the fake news and suppression. Because now they have a new thing going. This happened since hunter. We were killing them on hunter. Stealing money from every country. He was a human vacuum clean and it was hurting them badly. So big tech along with their partner the Democrats and the fake news media, they decided under no circumstances will we ever talk about it again. So you have 5% of the made -- [8:02:03 pm] you have 95% of the media like Jesse James. And it's hard to have a scandal if you don't talk about it. Other than the "New York post" and Sean hannity, and Laura, and tucker. I like tucker lately. And our friends in the morning. We have some great new people. OAN. News max. And judge Jeanine is on tonight. And Jesse waters is great and Pete hegseth. I'm in trouble because I don't mention everybody. We have a great voice. But most of the press, it was suppressed so no matter what they wouldn't talk. And it was incredible. I have to give a lot of credit [8:03:03 pm] to Carl Allen and the "New York post" because they fought them hard. Oldest paper in America. Fourth or fifth biggest and they should be proud of themselves. These two incredible people are doing the same thing. We fight. 200308 If you don't get out and vote, they're going to win. Now, you know, a lot of people -- friends of mine -- say "Let's not vote. We're not going to vote because we're angry about the presidential election." And they're friends of mine. They're people that are great people, they're real friends. And more than just two, there are numerous people. And it's almost like a protest. But if you do that, the radical left wins. Okay? It was sort of an instinct of mine. 200332 You know, you're angry because so many votes were stolen. It was taken away. And you say, "Well, we're not gonna do it." We can't do that. We have to actually do just the opposite. We can't do that. We can't do that. We have to do just the opposite. [applause] If you don't vote, the socialists and the communists win. They win. 200350 Georgia patriots must show up and vote for these two incredible people. And I'm telling you, they're two of the finest people you'll ever meet. We can fight for the presidency and fight to elect our two great Senators. And we can do it at the same time. We'll do it at the same time. It's alright. The election is about David Perdue -- one of the greats -- Kelly Loeffler, a person who is just unbelievable, how she picked it up -- no, but you know, there's natural talent. 200418 I always say, as an athlete, I'd always say "would you rather practice or have natural talent?", I said, "the best is both." Right? But she has got a great natural talent, a great natural talent. Just very respected. But they believe, both of them, in America and they believe in our values and all that we stand for. And they understand your state, they love your state. I'll -- if they didn't, I wouldn't be here 'cause I love your state too, by the way. [cheers] 200444 This election is about the radical left movement that hates America and wants to erase our history and wipe away everything that we hold dear. They want to rip down our statues. You know, I signed a bill. I took an old bill 'cause we could never get it today in the House headed by Crazy Nancy. 200500------- I took an old bill that said 10 years in prison. They used the word prison, not jail. 10 years in prison if you take down a statue. I haven't seen it happen lately. Have you noticed in everyone said you can't use that. I will never forget. They did destruction around it. All the radical left democrat-run cities. And we are not supposed to go in. If I had it to do over again I think I would have sent the military in. They are supposed to be able to handle their own affairs. I don't know. They said you can't do this. I said they are going to tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, desecrate the most beautiful pieces of art. [8:06:04 pm] And they want to put it in. I told you we can't let it happen. Over the past four years David perdue has been one of the toughest fighterrers for our America first agenda in Washington. 200612 China doesn't like me too much. They pay us billions and billions. That never happened, billions of billions of dollars in tariffs. And they pay it. They devalued their currency. They paid a lot of money. They don't like me. The happiest people in the world right now are the leaders of China. The second happiest are the leaders of Iran. 200630 We would've -- what we would have done in the next four years, we would have been on a footing like nobody's ever -- and now, we are giving it all away. But China said "we will not deal with you unless you get rid of the America-first policy." And you know what the Democrats said? They said, "yes, we will do that." Can you believe this? [boos] And that's when I realized what a brilliant name that is. You know, we come up with some good ones, but that's a good one. 200658 We came up with plenty good ones, haven't we? Some of them I won't use because some of those people are now friends of mine, but we came up with some good ones. But America-First. And I looked at Melania a week ago and I said "can you believe it? They are saying that they don't agree with America-first. How do you say that?" I mean, how do you say it? "We don't agree with America first. We agree with China. Yes, we will get rid of America-first policy." 200724 I think David, you don't think you like that too much. Right? And if they are here, it won't happen. Because nothing's gonna be able to get passed that's not gonna be reasonable. He fought to pass the largest package -- David -- of tax cuts and reforms in American history. He helped lead the effort to repeal a record number of job killing regulations. the likes of which you have never seen, including the unfair Waters of the United States rule -- crippled work for our farmers and our builders. 200756 You know, it's such a beautiful name but it was destroying people. And I'll never -- "Waters of the United -- " How beautiful is that? "Waters of the United States." And I said "I gotta get rid of it. I gotta do it, but I'm going to get killed." 'Cause the only good thing about it was the title. "Waters --" "What are you doing today?" "I'm terminating Waters of the United States." [laughter] Well, it was a little bit like the Paris Environmental Accord. Right? The Paris Environmental Accord. [boos] 200822 I said, "I'm going to get killed on this one." But we would have paid trillions and trillions of dollars. Russia has a big advantage over us. They go back to old days when the air was very dirty, that was their standard. China doesn't kick in until 2030. We kick in immediately. And the money that would have cost us. And if we adhere to it, we would have had to close up 20% of our factories. And now, the first thing they want to do -- John Keurig, great negotiator -- the first thing they want to do -- number one, they want to bring back the Paris Accord, Environmental Accord, which will cost us -- [boos] that was designed to destroy the United States. 200901 The second thing they want to do is "let's give Iran billions of dollars." Oh, they are so happy. [boos] Iran would have been in my office in the first hour after we won the election to make a deal. But perhaps they still will. You said, "they still will." [cheers] After Hurricane Michael devastated our farmers in southwest Georgia, as I said, no one worked harder to get them relief than David Perdue. He would call me all the time. He actually called me more than Sonny, and Sonny is at Agriculture. What the hell is going on, Sonny? [laughter] 200931 Sonny! What happened to you, Sonny? It's true. David would call all the time. Remember? And remember how tough the Democrats made it? They didn't want to give them anything. But we got it. We got more 'em more than they even thought possible. Senator Perdue helped pass the unprecedented 2.5 trillion dollars investment in our United States military, delivering the largest pay raises in addition to everything else for our warriors in a decade. And we now have the greatest, most modern military in the history of our country. 201001 We have brand-new fighter jets, brand new bombers, brand new missiles and rockets. Hypersonic missiles -- we have hypersonic and hydrosonic. You know what hydrosonic is? Water. We have 'em all. We have missiles that go 7 times faster than any missile in the world. [Crowd chants "USA"] 201028 And when we took over, our military was decimated. Our military was tired, our military was in big trouble. And you remember and I've said it alot -- one of the world's most overrated generals came to see me. He said, "sir, we have no ammunition." We had a little problem with a certain country. And he said, "Sir, we have no ammunition." And I said "tell me you are not saying that." We didn't have ammunition. Think of it. We had very little ammunition. And I'll never forget that statement. I said, "that should never happen to a President of the United States again." 201058 Nor should being spied on ever happen to a President of the United States. Senator Perdue has been a tremendous leader on pro-American immigration reform, like nobody else. He voted very powerfully, when I was going through hell on the Wall. They would have given me anything. They gave me the money for the military. They just didn't want to give me money for the wall, so I took it out of the military. What the hell can I do? [laughter] That was rather good. 201123 It's good to be a developer every once in a while. That was the one where the judges ruled yesterday so -- They said it was fine 'cause I called it "national security." So we took it out of the military -- they didn't figure that one out. Now, they do. But you know what? They don't -- you have to be careful because it's turned out to be very popular and very successful. Shut down sanctuary cities, end chain migration and protect American jobs, David did. He voted to confirm nearly 300 of the judges that I talked about, the federal judges that interpret the constitution as written. 201156 And when the Democrat mob came for judge Kavanaugh, David Perdue stood strong. [Cheers and applause] And you know, they both stood strong when they impeached your president for making a perfect phone call too. I'm the only president ever -- well, never -- that got impeached for making a perfect phone call. But those two were among the best. Senator Perdue is an outsider, a businessman -- a great businessman -- and true American patriot. 201228 You need him fighting for you and your family, and your values because the United States Senate can't be the same without him. So that's why I'm here. You know, I don't do these things for other people. 201239--------- I didn't know if anyone was going to show up. I am doing it for other people. But this is a hell of a crowd as far as the eye can see. I don't like doing it for other people. I said David and Kelly, called and said will you do a rally? I said not really. [8:13:14 pm] I said -- when they asked -- I don't do it for other people. It's a lot of work to do a rally. People don't realize. I did five a day the last four or five days. One day I did six. And the smallest one had 25,000 people. Do you think that's fun? In some of them it's 75 degrees and in others it's 20 degrees below zero. How is the weather out there? Sir, it's 20 degrees below zero. Then the next stop, how are we doing, sir will be it's 82. Jon ossoff is a right-wing zeal ought. He supports defunding the police. And the green new deal. The green new deal is really a [8:14:18 pm] hundred trillion dollars. It's a hundred trillion is what they wanted. That's more money -- if our economy was going unbelievable gangbusters we couldn't come close to a hundred trillion. I like big beautiful windows. They want to build them without windows. He wants to do a takeover of healthcare that will destroy your doctors' offices. If you have a cold, go to the hospital and wait in line for three days and hope you get a decent doctor. Ossoff also supports a nationwide lockdown. He wants to you to lock your home nice and tight. And he let hardened criminals go free. He will be a tool for the people [8:15:22 pm] trying to buy Georgia seats. See the money these people raised? But I just raised $250 million -- I didn't raise it -- I said how are we doing on that front? You might not be happy in a few weeks. They were so happy. I said how is fundraising going. They said about $250 million. How the hell did that happen? Because people believe in what we are doing. That's why. But that's why ossoff's donations come from silicon valley, San Francisco, and the other liberal places. And they don't come from Georgia. I know you, you are with me, I am with you. We always had wins from primaries -- we won two [8:16:23 pm] elections, believe it or not. I think I won the second one by more tn the first one. I won the second one by more. On January 5 you also need to vote for your incredible Republican senator Kelly Loeffler. Kelly has been an exceptional champion for Georgia's workers and families. I know what they fight for. She fights for you every single day, loves your state. When your nation was hit with the China virus, senator Loeffler helped rescue the economy by voting to pass an historic $3 trillion bill, relief for American businesses and families. A lot of people were against it. They said it's too much. I said it's not their fault. I would like to get them more money now. I like the higher number better than the lower number. [8:17:25 pm] With her help we secured billions for Georgia small businesses and saved 1.5 million Georgia jobs. That was both of them. Kelly is as relentless advocate for Georgia farmers and fought tirelessly to get them relief in this pandemic. And her husband is a fine man who is one of the most respected men in the country. I want to tell you that. He's a great man, a great gentleman. If you are successful today it's suppose to be a bad thing. I think it means you are smart. At the urging of Kelly and David my administration took historic action to protect growers of blueberries, peppers, squash and cucumbers. I like cucumbers. When our law enforcement heroes were under attack, senator [8:18:27 pm] Loeffler stood up to the marxists and introduced legislation to protect our brave men and women in blue and she was threatened all over the place. That was a waste of time. She also introduced legislation to prevent Democrat gun grabbers like Beto O'rourke. He wants to take your guns away. By the way, trump is going to lose Texas but Beto O'rourke was a big factor in that. He was riding high. Then Ted Cruz did a great job. He beat Beto O'rourke. Remember he was on the cover of a bad magazine. It's failing. He was on the cover and said I was born to do this. I said anybody that says they were born to do this, they are [8:19:28 pm] going to be losing very quickly. Within about two months he was a stone cold loser. Weeks ago senator Loeffler cast her vote to confirm our newest supreme court justice Amy coney Barrett. They both did, by the way. They both did. I can't leave David out of that one. Kelly's opponent is a dangerous extremist who is radically opposed to your values. He says he believes quote that nobody can serve god and the military. Really? An appalling statement that dishonors the memory and generations of American heroes who fought for god and our country. Country. Rafael Warnock has a praised [8:20:30 pm] socialists all over the world. He likes Castro. He was a good guy, he said. He falsely slandered patriotic Americans as racist. He called police officers thugs and bullies. He fought cash bail. If you Kil somebody, don't worry about it. You are on the honor code. He declared quote, open up the jails, free the violent criminals and prey on Georgia, family, children. You can't do that. I'm telling you. It might be for some places. But this is not for Georgia. Raphael has to move to another state. He's anti-Israel. His writings made clear that he believes America is a sinister nation that has to be punished. Don't just take my word for [8:21:32 pm] this. We have a little video to play, please. >> Senator Warren and myself are all on the same team. To make sure overfunded police departments are defunded. >> There is no middle ground on the climate crisis. >> I don't think the green 234u deal goes far enough. Begun stredges straition, when want to track where the guns are. We need to cut the budget. >> Are you in favor of expanding the court instead of a lifetime appointment? >> I said everything is on the table. >> If we win the majority, everything is on the table. >> If we win Georgia, we change America. >> Documented and undocumented. [8:22:32 pm] >> We win these races in Georgia, we don't have to negotiate. >> That's their goal, total radical control to bring change to America. Only Georgia can stop them. Too nobody can serve god and the military. Police power, the kind of gangster and thug mentality. >> Warnock attacks our police. >> Somebody has to open up the jails. Warnock is dangerous. No wonder he testified this. >> Not god bless America. >> We'll pick up two more seats in the Georgia runoff and that will make our lives much easier. >> This kind of politics, you are not just going to be beaten. You are going to get beaten so [8:23:34 pm] bad you can no longer run or show your face. You are not just going to be beaten. You are going a get a beating so bad you can no longer run or show your face again in public. [Crowd boos] President trump: I just looked at that one scene. We had incredible crowds of people in Washington. They were angry as hell at the election. They showed up. It was incredible. Hundreds of thousands of people. Some said hundreds of people, no, tens of thousands of people. [8:24:35 pm] And antifa showed up. Not the right. But the left showed up. And they looked at some of these people and they wanted to attack the crowd. They looked and they said no, thank you, and they left. They looked at some of these people and said no, thank you. Then they broke up about 3:00. It was a beautiful day. And that night they came back. There were a few families that stayed around with young children and some elderly people having dinner in Washington. Very elderly people.

FS23 WH VALDOSTA RALLY HEAD ON POOL 3 1920 FOX POOL 191956 MELANIA TRUMP>> Hello, Georgia. [Cheering] [Chanting "USA"] It is wonderful to be here with you tonight. Thank you for coming out and supporting us. President Trump continues to fight for you every single day. [Cheering] 192033 Do not let your voices be silenced. We must keep our seats in the Senate. It is more important than ever that your exercise your right as an American citizen, and vote. Under my husband's leadership, our borders are safer. Global terrorists have been destroyed, and historic peace deals in the Middle East have been made. 192112 Our nation, it is -- is respected again, and our allies are now doing their fair share globally. President Trump has brought jobs back to the American people. [Cheering] And opportunities for women have expanded in our workforce. Our economy has soared and unemployment has shrunk. 192140 When a global pandemic hit the United States last January, my husband put the American people first. And now, under this administration and because of our amazing medical capabilities and resources, we are closer than ever to a vaccinate that will save millions of lives. [cheers] 192207 Let your voices be heard, Georgia. [Cheering] Get out and vote for Senator Loeffler and Senator Perdue. Thank you, and god bless you and your families. It is now my pleasure to welcome the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. [Applause] DONALD TRUMP 192244 [CROWD CHANTS "FOUR MORE YEARS" AND "WE LOVE YOU"] 192253 TRUMP>> Thank you. A very popular first lady, I have to tell you. [Applause] Thank you very much and thank you Melania. And I want to say, hello, Georgia. We did a great job. 192315 You know, we won Georgia, just so you understand. [cheers] And we won Florida. And we won a lot of places. [CROWD CHANTS "WE LOVE YOU"] 192326 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. [chanting cont.] Thank you. Well, thank you very much. 192342 Thank you. No, we won a lot of places. We won Florida. We won Ohio big, big. We won them big. Remember we were going to lose Florida, they said? We were five down in Florida. We won by a lot. We were way down in Ohio, and we won by a lot. I think they say that if you win Florida and if you win Ohio, in history, you've never lost an election. 192409 This has got to be a first time, but the truth is they were right. We've never lost an election. We're winning this election, and -- [applause] And I will say, we're fighting very hard for this state. When you look at all of the corruption and all of the problems having to do with this election, all I can do is campaign and then I wait for the numbers. 192431 But when the numbers come out of ceilings and come out of leather bags, you start to say "what's going on?" 192438 But I want to just tell you that I am -- I love this state. I love the people in this state, and I'm thrilled to be back in magnificent Georgia [cheers] with thousands of proud, hardworking American patriots. Let me begin by wishing you all a very merry Christmas. Remember the word. Remember? We started, five years ago, and I said "you're going to be saying Christmas again," and we say it proudly again. Although, they'll -- they'll be trying to take that word again out of the vocabulary. We're not gonna let them do that. 192510 I also want to express our profound condolences to the family of Harrison Deel, a young and brilliant campaign staffer for Senator Loeffler who tragedy died in a terrible car accident yesterday. You know about it. He was an incredible, magnificent young man. And I just want to say our prayers are with his friends and loved ones, and we will keep his memory in our hearts. And he's looking down right now, and he's very proud of Kelly and David. 192541 He's very proud of all of us. So I just want to express my best wishes, okay, to the family and everybody. Thank you. Thank you, Kelly. And let me also express our warmest, best wishes and love to all of those people and families suffering from the Covid pandemic. 192557 Vaccines are on their way at a level that nobody ever thought possible. It would have taken another administration five years, it took us seven months. And they're starting next week, and we're going to start vaccinating. And a lot of people already are vaccinated. It's called, you have -- "you caught it, and you're immuned." I hope it's true. 192620 You know, they say that -- before I had it, they said "if you catch it, you're immune for life." Once I got it, they said "if you catch it, you're immune for four months." Right? Do you know -- ? [Laughter] But they're on their way, the vaccines, and they're great vaccines and safe and brilliant, actually, to think of it -- what we've done in such a short period of time. 192640 Nobody thought -- they call it, even some of the enemies call it "a medical miracle," what we've done. And we also have great therapeutics, and they're already here. And I can testify to that fact. I'll tell you what, some incredible work has been done over the last seven months, and we should always get credit for that. Don't let anyone ever take it away from us. [Cheering] We're gathered here tonight to ensure -- a very important word, ensure -- because these are two great, great people that I know so well, and respected by everybody in Washington and beyond. 192717 That David perdue and Kelly Loeffler win the most important congressional runoff probably in American history. I really believe that. I think it is in American history. There's never been a time like this, where you have two at one time -- at least you have two beauties. And you know what? You also have two beauties run against them, but beauty in a different way. They're two beauties. 192740 But there's never been a case where a state has had this prominence on Senate races. Cause they're never together, and this is something that's very important. And you have to get out and you have to vote. You have to make sure you have every vote counted. Every vote has to count. [cheers] You gotta make sure they don't throw away any ballots. You gotta make sure that when they collect the ballots and they start bragging about how many ballots they already have, you gotta make sure your Secretary of State knows what the hell he's doing. [boos] 192813 And you've got to make sure your Governor gets a lot tougher than he's been. He's gotta get a lot tougher because at stake in this election is control of the U.S. Senate, and that really means control of this country. 192827 The voters of Georgia will determine which party runs every committee, writes every piece of legislation, controls every single taxpayer dollar. Very simply, you will decide whether your children will grow up in a socialist country or whether they will grow up in a free country. And I will tell you this -- socialist is just the beginning for these people. These people want to go further than socialism. They want to go into a communistic form of government, and I have no doubt about it. [Booing] 192900 Somehow that doesn't suit Georgia too well. That's not -- that doesn't work too well I think, Kelly, in Georgia. Does it, huh? David and Kelly are running against radical Jon Ossoff [boos] and Raphael Warnock. [boos] Ossoff and Warnock are the two most extreme, far left liberal Senate candidates in the history of our country. And you got them both at one time. How did that happen? I think you both got lucky, but we'll see. Right? We'll see. 192931---------- You must go vote and vote early starting December 14th you have to do it. They cheated and they rigged our presidential election. But we will still win it. We will still win it. We'll still win it. And they're going to try to rig this election too. [7:30:21 pm] No we continue to fight. We've had some great moments. Weust need somebody with courage to do what they have to do because everyone knows it is wrong we need somebody with courage somebody that makes decisions. And we'll be going up to the supreme court very shortly and we really if we have -- [applause] If we have courage and wisdom I think you know what the answer is going to be because you can't let people get away with what they got away with over -- think of it with over 74 million votes over think of that. More than I got more votes than any sitting president in history. 11 million more votes. [Applause] There we got in 2016. And we thought that if we could get 68 million, 67 million that would be the end all of our great brilliant geniuses say if you win if you get 68 and we got [7:31:23 pm] 74 million plus and that's trying to convince us that we lost we didn't lose. They found a lot of ballots to be nice about it they got rid of some too 74, 74 could have been even high or as great pollster John who is really a great pollster one of the most highly respected. He said there's no way this could have happened other than the obvious cheating or a rigged election. There's no way it could have happened. You know, it's interesting I wrote this -- and I had just a few of the fact which is I think because I want to get on to the presidentials -- I want to stay on presidential but I he to get to these two because they're great. But listen to this, these are the facts. And each fact is like irrefutable and it means win. President trump received one of the most brilliant political people president trump received more votes than any previous incumbent president in history. [7:32:23 pm] And we lost. And we lost. So we received more votes than anybody in history. Any incumbent in history and lost we didn't lose. We're going see that. No incumbent who is receives 75% of the total primary Vos lost reelection in history of our country president trump received 74%. Not 74 -- which is one of the highest in history. And, in fact, president trump is the only one of five incumbents since 1912 to receive more than 90% of the primary vote and again, anybody received over 75% they won. We won we got 94%. President trump set a record for the most primary votes ever received by an incumbent ever and nobody that's received all of the primary votes nobody has received at much lesser level than what they always won but we didn't according to what they say. It's rigged it is a fixed deal. [7:33:26 pm] Nationally, initial numbers show that 26% of president trump's voting share came from nonwhite voters. The highest percentage per GOP presidential candidates. [Applause] Since 1960 that's a long time ago. President trump think of this one. President trump won 18 of 19 belle weather counties you know that's a big deal. So I won 18 of 19 a record. Never happened. That between 1980 and 2016 voted for eventually present in every single election before that it was almost every election and we won a record 18 of 19 never lost. Nobody has ever lost with anything like that. Biden did not demonstrate coat tails for down ballot races had no coat tails shocked to hear that. , In fact, you've got 80 million [7:34:26 pm] votes but what he made a Thanksgiving day speech on the internet they say he had less than a thousand people how do you have 80 million votes and -- you have less than a thousand people? With Republicans maintaining control so here's what happened. So Biden didn't non strait coat tails and battle races but with Republicans maintaining control, first time this has ever happened. Control of the senate winning all 27 tossup races of the house. Kevin Mccarthy great job, great winning all 27 tossup races now think of it -- we didn't los the seat in the house think of this first time that anybody I think in history we didn't lose once you normally lose two, three, five we lost nobody sitting in congress I worked hard in the house. With Kevin Macarthur -- not losing a single legislative [7:35:26 pm] chamber making big gains at state level holding on to senate look at what's happened we better hold on to senate you two. And there's never been numbers like that where president even came close to losing but they say we lost only way is they stopped ballot boxes. President trump won. President trump won as we said both in Florida, and then Ohio -- and by the way, won by a lot. Remember you know? Remember -- remember the fake polls where they said he's down by 4. In Florida and won by a lot. He's down by 2 in Ohio and we won I think we've got 8, 9, something up but two very powerful big important states. 193602 And the beauty is that we also won Georgia, and that was good. [Cheering] And we won South Carolina and we won Iowa, remember? "We're not going to win in Iowa," they said. "We're not going to win." I think the farmers like Trump a lot, right? Well, we won in Iowa by a lot. 193617------- We won in Iowa by close to record numbers I think I have the record. And we won all over the place and many of these swing states you know it is very interesting statistics. President Obama beat Biden all over the country except in some of the swing states. Where Biden beat him badly. How does that work? They say it is statistically impossible -- he beat crooked Hillary think of this he beat crooked Hillary in swing states but beat him everywhere else. 193649 Let me tell you, this election was rigged and we can't let it happen to two of the greatest, most respected people in Washington. We can't let it happen again. [Cheering] [chanting "STOP THE STEAL"] Can't let it happen. Can't let it happen. ["STOP THE STEAL" chant cont.] 193717 Your governor could stop it very easily, if he knew what the hell he was doing. He could stop it very easily. 193725---------- Hundred of thousands of the legal votes were cast in each state. Far from, I mean, you look at this, hundreds of thousands more than we needed were casted every state we're talking about not only here but Michigan, Pennsylvania, how about Pennsylvania where they throw the poll watchers out? They threw them out they literally threw them out. And they did it here too by the way. But we caught him cold and numerous cases pending so far we haven't been able to find people with the courage to do the right thing. And that is true in Georgia certainly but we're going to hit those people and they're going to go down in history as great people. They're going to go down because everyone knows what took place but we're going to talk about the presidential election a little bit later because we have a big senate story race going on in Georgia and we are watching Democrats very, very closely and remember this -- we have this massive race all [7:38:30 pm] over the country. So they could cheat in Georgia and people aren't really watching like they should. And you know, again, all I can do is say I'm running. Win and then do a good job as president that's all I don't run the lexes I don't run to see if people are walking in suitcases and putting them under a table with a black robe around. I don't do that. That's up to your government here. And for whatever reason, your secretary of state and your governor are afraid of Stacey Abrams they're afraid of him. 193856 So we know the Democrats are planning to cheat, and we can't let them do it again. And we're going to pull ours, out one way or the other, but we have to be vigilant because I don't want these to do work like I -- you know, I thought we were going to easily win, and that may be for the first time in a long time, I'd go take a nice little vacation for about two days. 193918 And then, we go back. And instead, I probably worked harder in the last three weeks than I've ever worked in my life, doing this -- [cheers] And I've become friendly with legislators that I didn't know four weeks ago, and actually they're great people. In fact, in my pocket right here, we have a couple of them right in here. 193942------- Richard Jones, where's Richard? Burt you're a young guy I thought you were young but not that young Burt gongs I want to thank you Burt for being here you're friendly with man next to you here he's a man of courage I appreciate everything you're doing and so does this big crowd and there's a lot of people. Also Brandon beach Brandon thank you for everything we appreciate it. William. William where's William? Why are you so far away William from them? I like that group better actually. I agree. And Greg. Where's Greg? Greg -- [7:40:30 pm] thank you very much, Greg. We appreciate it. Really do. We appreciate it. Great people. 194028 And we said, "have this brought back into your legislature, Governor, have it brought back. Let these people make it. Keep it open, keep it transparent. And let us have a signature verification." What's wrong with that? [Cheering] They keep counting the same votes. I said, "Don't count votes. Look at the signature, you're going to find the signatures aren't what they were two years ago, four years ago, six years ago." 194053-------- But our two great senator opponents have these two people that fight and they're going to fight like -- I don't know if you know this, but one of the people that you're fighting I went against him ossoff four years ago against a very fine woman Karen who was a great woman, and he was leading by quite a bit and we ended up beating him. He didn't even live in the district. He was running for congress. He didn't even live in the district. So -- we're going to have the same [7:41:31 pm] thing. But ossoff Warnock pawns of crying chuck I see him cry when cameras are on. But he said he did say this. I'm hurting you -- he said this if we get in we're going to absolutely make Donald Trump's life miserable. Can you believe that? That's chuck Schumer he made the statement. We're going investigate him, investigations will go on and on. Well they've been investigating me since the day we came down on the escalator which what turned out to be our great first lady we came down the escalator, right? And they spied on our campaign and lots of other things. But Nancy Pelosi AOC -- [booing] Bernie Sanders, and lunatic radical left that's what you're going to have is chuck Schumer said rather infamously first we take Georgia then we take America. [7:42:31 pm] But they don't mean take America in a good sense but bring it over to things that people of Georgia don't want. You're not going to like it when they want to taken over your farm gee we own this farm too here we were here we own this farm here's exactly how they'll change America forever. Radical Democrats if they get power, they will immediately abolish senate filibuster, allowing them to pass any bill they want and giving them free reign to ramp through extreme left wing agenda ever conceived while at the same time destroying our military through a lack of funding. [Booing] 194303 And by the way, tell our senators, "end Section -- CROWD>> 230! TRUMP>> -- 230." End section 230. Put it in, we put it in. I want it in the Defense Bill. Put it in, because it is a national security problem. [cheers] It's a big national security, so hopefully Mitch and Senators will put it in, but it is the one chance we have to bring Big Tech who are vicious and violent and untruthful -- to bring Big Tech -- 194332 It's the only thing they fear is that we're going to end Section 230. So hopefully we will do it. 194337---------- It happens to be a politically very popular thing to do, by the way. If these people get control, draconian military cuts will devastate fort banning, Gordon and military families all across Georgia and we would also like to save the names of the forts if you don't mind, everybody they have the right you know they put in the Elizabeth pocahontas Warren, where they have the right to take all of the names of our past warriors hero and some cases many cases -- some turn out to be heros in disguise perhaps. But they wanted Toake names off and they have the right to desecrate to take down to destroy, to demolish -- places in our national parks that we don't want demolish but [7:44:34 pm] we have to be careful we can't let that happen. They want to put it in our military bill of all people. Elizabeth Warren puts that clause in the military bill. They will impose total open borders so that people can pour into our country and they will give them free health care, free welfare and the right to vote in your election you won't ever win. Another election -- as a Republican. They even want to take down the wall you know the wall we wanted wall and take down the wall I heard them say it other day. We will take down the wall we have strongest border we've ever had and almost finished with the wall strongest border right -- and we've built it despite it is incredible effect it's having. We built it despite rather everybody said no chance. I mean we had a whole very powerful Democrat party oppose me and yesterday I don't know if you saw it. The course just ruled that the money I took was taken illegally [7:45:35 pm] at least we have a legal wall. Appeals court. We took in and we built the wall and will be finished with it very soon but a tremendous impact on illegal immigrants coming into the country and by the way we want people to come into our country you see that by vote I got but we want people to come in legally and through merit. Through merit where they can help us. Radical Democrats will implement nationwide catch and release you know what that is you catch a killer rapist you say thank you very much please gives your name. Oh come back in three years we're going put you in trial oh, good. You never see them by the way remember I had that debate with Joe Biden he said no they come back yeah they don't come back. They don't come back no they don't come back. Like never -- maybe one percent but I doubt it. That's the end of them you let them loose in our country I got rid of it you think that was easy? And install sanctuary cities all across the country that's what they want. [7:46:36 pm] Green criminal alien ms-13 gang members most vicious people they don't like guns because it is not painful enough they like using knives. It's true they don't like guns rather cut somebody up. To wreak havoc and tear upon innocent families we've moved thousands and thousands of ms-13s the hell out of our country we've moved them back -- [applause] And some we put in prison because they're tooan dangerous to move back so try to figure a way they're not stiewpgd but vicious and not stiewpgd like the Democrats if you think about it -- so confiscate privately own firearms and share -- they will what they will do, they will share everything with themselves only dangerous equipment and they will totally cut up a thing called your second amement rights. They'll make Washington, D.C. A state and many other places guaranteeing two, four, six [7:47:36 pm] additional left wing senators they want to make numerous places states this while you have a lot more -- company in congress you'll have lots of -- another 30, 40 congressional people from places you've never even heard of lieu louie the great voting against virnia every time completely canceling out your voice and Washington forever like David perdue I'll never forget it got hit by a piece of a hurricane farmers got hit so hard and I went with sunny with David and other great people from Georgia. And since there a way we can pay these people they never ask for anything and orchards wiped out one of the men said this was going to be best crop I ever had I was a week and a half away from finally after ten, 12 years making some money. And a week and a half early he gets hit bit the remnants of that big hurricane from Florida. Great state, great place. [7:48:37 pm] But you've got hit. And David, we took 100% care of those people, right? We took 100% care yeah with help of sun Nebraska perdue secretary of agriculture. And I felt so good but I met you know I met them over 33 of them standing and they're all in a line what do you do in I had this, it was a tragic, it was nobody wanted anything. They didn't even want it they said we can borrow it the are incredible people they want a level playing field but we took care of them and they never forgot it either. It is very interesting I still hear from some of those people. Extreme left will pack the supreme court with 24 radical justices that's the last number I heard. I used to hear it was 16. Now it's up to 24. Pretty soon you'll have another congress -- [laughter] 24 radical justices instead of nine justices that weave right now. And they want them to revolve up and down court system so that [7:49:38 pm] supreme court justices can spend time in other locations. Down totem pole they want to hurt the supreme court and they want to hurt it badly and 194939 And if these two don't get in, or if I don't get in and these (?) don't, we gotta get -- the best would be all three. [cheers] Nothing will happen, all three. 194954 But they want to destroy the sanctity of the Supreme Court, the importance of the Supreme Court, the majesty of the Supreme Court. They'll terminate religious liberty, cancel free speech and force you to fund extreme, late term abortion. [boos] And there will be nothing to stop them. If they don't get in, there's going to be nothing to stop them. You have no idea how bad it will be. There will be nothing. 195021 I used to argue with certain people about the filibuster. I said, "Look, I don't like it either but I do it because I know they're going to do it." And everybody said, "Oh, they'll never do it." They'll never -- they're doing it! They've already announced they're going to do it. That means they can do anything they want. And you know, the Republicans, they play a different game. I don't know, maybe they love the country more. But they said "no, no they'll never do it." 195042---------- And I said Schumer he'll do the first day he gets in he'll do it and that's exactly what's happening and he'll do it and he will do that to the supreme court there's no question but they look forward to it because you know why? We put on three think of this -- three great justices and -- and we'll be over 300 federal judges in the United States which will be a record. 300. 300 -- and they don't want to wait they want to do it very quickly let's just vote and this will take years and years into slowly change the cord and perhaps I got a little bit lucky to get three a lot of presidents have had none they've never had and for a long time young when they [7:51:41 pm] go on and old when they come off. But the fact is, a lot of presidents good presidents great presidents say you can't be a great president unless you put in supreme court justices they say it is the single most important thing a president can do. And I'm not sure that's right I think military defense, military offense frankly is the most important thing. [Applause] 195153 But it's certainly one of the most important things you can do. And the fact that I have more than -- I will have by the end more than 300 -- first term, think of it -- and if we do a second term, which I hope we do, we could have close to 540. [Applause] 195213 But the fact that I had three Supreme Court justices in the first term is not making them feel too good. They will unilaterally surrender to China. They're already doing it, they're already doing it. And you know, Hunter made a lot of money in China. What's he going to do? Sending our factories and our jobs overseas, they will raise your taxes. We lowered your taxes. We gave you the greatest tax decrease, tax cut in the history of our country. [applause] 195242 And they want to get rid of that, and raise your taxes and raise your regulations. We cut more regulations than any president in the history of our country. That's one of the reasons our business came back. You know, with the pandemic -- as bad as it is, it's horrible. It should have never happened. China -- China allowed this to happen. It should have never happened but you know, we went down less. A lot of people don't like to talk -- our economy, we went down less and we went up more than any other country in the world. 195312-------- We went down less because we have a good foundation. [Applause] And yesterday again -- so now I thought it was 48 it is actually 128 times can you believe it we set a new stock market record but this one was great because parking the Dow Jones industrial average think of it over -- over 30,000 for the first time [7:53:42 pm] ever over the last couple of weeks. And yesterday with 30,200 can you believe this? And this is during hopefully what will be rounding the turn we're rounding corner on the pandemic, but in is during a pandemic. We broke 30,000. A number that was unthinkable when I first came when I first came in at around 16,000. Concept of hitting 30,000 Dow was not even possible. And we not only -- can you imagine if we didn't get hit by this -- this freak, this total freak that came into our country? Can you imagine if we didn't get hit? But you know in a way I thought of this before David in a way we did this sort of twice we took it from the time I came in until time we got hilt and nobody is blaming us but for every country got hit some were totally devastated I don't know if they ever recover but if you think about it we have two we did it [7:54:42 pm] the first time we went up where I took way up then down then had a second so we really had two now we're going get money because we want the money. First of all, these states and cities should open up. They should open up. [Applause] And we're working hard against the Democrats but we're working hard to get the money out to the people because they need it. Not their fault that they got hit with something from China. And you notice the way the Democrats like to say it came from Italy? No. It came from China. And that's okay to say it. They like say it came from Europe. No absolutely specifically it came from Italy Italy saying what did we do? Their wage war on American energy, absolutely decimating Georgia's middle class they will your bills will go up -- not a huge energy producer but Texas remember they said -- trump wl lose Texas by a lot. I said wait a minute -- I'm in favor of energy. [7:55:42 pm] I'm one that built we have the greatest energy we've had and all happened this piod of time -- so you're telling me you're telling me that I'm going to lose Texas to a guy that's against fracking against energy against religion you tell me that I end up winning Texas by so much. Somebody said we don't know how much and we knew that before but fake news they said Wisconsin -- a poll came out Washington post ABC, just before the election I'm going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points I said no I'm going to win Wisconsin. Well, actually I won Wisconsin. They're trying to say he's a little dn but I actually won. That calls suppression that's called a suppression call. That's a poll that's so devastating when I asked one of the pollsters I said where do they go so far? Why don't they say four or five because in four years they're going lose all respect they don't care they'll do anything to win and do anything to beat you they don't care these people are sick. 17 points and we actually won. 195635 Remember, so many of the states -- I won every one of them. Every one of these states -- and by the way, this swing states that we're all fighting over now, I won them all by a lot. I won them all by a lot. [cheers] And I have to say -- if I lost, I'd be a very gracious loser. If I lost, I would say "I lost," and I'd go to Florida and I'd take it easy and I'd go around and I'd say "I did a good job." 195704 But you can't ever accept when they steal and rig and rob. [cheers] You can't accept it. [CROWD CHANTS "STOP THE STEAL"] 195727------ Well, the Democrats did try to. His secretary of agriculture, sonny. He was a great governor for 8 years. You would have solved this problem in two hours. He would have said let the legislature be open. Let us be transparent on signatures. We are working hard to insure it doesn't. Now they are trying to steal these two important seats from Georgia. We have accomplished things no other president has accomplished. And I did it with these two people. I didn't know Kelly. When Kelly came in, I didn't know what to think. There was nobody who fought harder for me. David understands this, too. [7:58:52 pm] She fought. What a trouper. She was so tough and smart. And she even went against Mitt Romney. I won't say what she said. But it was tough. We call them kryptonite. Anything he touches they lose. David has been my friend for a long long time. There is nobody in Washington who is better respected than David perdue. 195917 If the other side manages to steal both elections, we'll have total one-party socialist control, and everything you care about will be gone. Your whole philosophy is gonna be gone. 195929 Joe Biden, Kamala -- Kamala Harris, [boos] Crying Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, they want to take away your guns. I never got it. I never got it. That's one of the reasons I knew. How can you win? No oil, no guns, no God. "Oh, they won." I don't think so. Okay, I don't think so. We knew that a long time ago. They want to take away your jobs, take away your borders, take away your freedom, take away your religion and they even want to take away your beautiful Christmas that we just got back. 200008----------- I have to be very careful when I imitate that. Remember I was saying suburban women, please love me, I have been so good to you. I got rid of the worst regulation in the history of suburbia. Now you can actually have a house without a building going up next to it that you are not going to be happy about. Without crime increasing by 10 fold. But suburban women please please loved me. CNN said Donald Trump is begging and crying for the vote of suburban women. [8:01:02 pm] Right? These people are sick. You have to be very careful when you are sarcastic. Sarcasm doesn't work. That is a big group O people back there. The fake news. That's a big group. That is a lot of fake news. Now we call it the fake news and suppression. Because now they have a new thing going. This happened since hunter. We were killing them on hunter. Stealing money from every country. He was a human vacuum clean and it was hurting them badly. So big tech along with their partner the Democrats and the fake news media, they decided under no circumstances will we ever talk about it again. So you have 5% of the made -- [8:02:03 pm] you have 95% of the media like Jesse James. And it's hard to have a scandal if you don't talk about it. Other than the "New York post" and Sean hannity, and Laura, and tucker. I like tucker lately. And our friends in the morning. We have some great new people. OAN. News max. And judge Jeanine is on tonight. And Jesse waters is great and Pete hegseth. I'm in trouble because I don't mention everybody. We have a great voice. But most of the press, it was suppressed so no matter what they wouldn't talk. And it was incredible. I have to give a lot of credit [8:03:03 pm] to Carl Allen and the "New York post" because they fought them hard. Oldest paper in America. Fourth or fifth biggest and they should be proud of themselves. These two incredible people are doing the same thing. We fight. 200308 If you don't get out and vote, they're going to win. Now, you know, a lot of people -- friends of mine -- say "Let's not vote. We're not going to vote because we're angry about the presidential election." And they're friends of mine. They're people that are great people, they're real friends. And more than just two, there are numerous people. And it's almost like a protest. But if you do that, the radical left wins. Okay? It was sort of an instinct of mine. 200332 You know, you're angry because so many votes were stolen. It was taken away. And you say, "Well, we're not gonna do it." We can't do that. We have to actually do just the opposite. We can't do that. We can't do that. We have to do just the opposite. [applause] If you don't vote, the socialists and the communists win. They win. 200350 Georgia patriots must show up and vote for these two incredible people. And I'm telling you, they're two of the finest people you'll ever meet. We can fight for the presidency and fight to elect our two great Senators. And we can do it at the same time. We'll do it at the same time. It's alright. The election is about David Perdue -- one of the greats -- Kelly Loeffler, a person who is just unbelievable, how she picked it up -- no, but you know, there's natural talent. 200418 I always say, as an athlete, I'd always say "would you rather practice or have natural talent?", I said, "the best is both." Right? But she has got a great natural talent, a great natural talent. Just very respected. But they believe, both of them, in America and they believe in our values and all that we stand for. And they understand your state, they love your state. I'll -- if they didn't, I wouldn't be here 'cause I love your state too, by the way. [cheers] 200444 This election is about the radical left movement that hates America and wants to erase our history and wipe away everything that we hold dear. They want to rip down our statues. You know, I signed a bill. I took an old bill 'cause we could never get it today in the House headed by Crazy Nancy. 200500------- I took an old bill that said 10 years in prison. They used the word prison, not jail. 10 years in prison if you take down a statue. I haven't seen it happen lately. Have you noticed in everyone said you can't use that. I will never forget. They did destruction around it. All the radical left democrat-run cities. And we are not supposed to go in. If I had it to do over again I think I would have sent the military in. They are supposed to be able to handle their own affairs. I don't know. They said you can't do this. I said they are going to tear down a statue of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, desecrate the most beautiful pieces of art. [8:06:04 pm] And they want to put it in. I told you we can't let it happen. Over the past four years David perdue has been one of the toughest fighterrers for our America first agenda in Washington. 200612 China doesn't like me too much. They pay us billions and billions. That never happened, billions of billions of dollars in tariffs. And they pay it. They devalued their currency. They paid a lot of money. They don't like me. The happiest people in the world right now are the leaders of China. The second happiest are the leaders of Iran. 200630 We would've -- what we would have done in the next four years, we would have been on a footing like nobody's ever -- and now, we are giving it all away. But China said "we will not deal with you unless you get rid of the America-first policy." And you know what the Democrats said? They said, "yes, we will do that." Can you believe this? [boos] And that's when I realized what a brilliant name that is. You know, we come up with some good ones, but that's a good one. 200658 We came up with plenty good ones, haven't we? Some of them I won't use because some of those people are now friends of mine, but we came up with some good ones. But America-First. And I looked at Melania a week ago and I said "can you believe it? They are saying that they don't agree with America-first. How do you say that?" I mean, how do you say it? "We don't agree with America first. We agree with China. Yes, we will get rid of America-first policy." 200724 I think David, you don't think you like that too much. Right? And if they are here, it won't happen. Because nothing's gonna be able to get passed that's not gonna be reasonable. He fought to pass the largest package -- David -- of tax cuts and reforms in American history. He helped lead the effort to repeal a record number of job killing regulations. the likes of which you have never seen, including the unfair Waters of the United States rule -- crippled work for our farmers and our builders. 200756 You know, it's such a beautiful name but it was destroying people. And I'll never -- "Waters of the United -- " How beautiful is that? "Waters of the United States." And I said "I gotta get rid of it. I gotta do it, but I'm going to get killed." 'Cause the only good thing about it was the title. "Waters --" "What are you doing today?" "I'm terminating Waters of the United States." [laughter] Well, it was a little bit like the Paris Environmental Accord. Right? The Paris Environmental Accord. [boos] 200822 I said, "I'm going to get killed on this one." But we would have paid trillions and trillions of dollars. Russia has a big advantage over us. They go back to old days when the air was very dirty, that was their standard. China doesn't kick in until 2030. We kick in immediately. And the money that would have cost us. And if we adhere to it, we would have had to close up 20% of our factories. And now, the first thing they want to do -- John Keurig, great negotiator -- the first thing they want to do -- number one, they want to bring back the Paris Accord, Environmental Accord, which will cost us -- [boos] that was designed to destroy the United States. 200901 The second thing they want to do is "let's give Iran billions of dollars." Oh, they are so happy. [boos] Iran would have been in my office in the first hour after we won the election to make a deal. But perhaps they still will. You said, "they still will." [cheers] After Hurricane Michael devastated our farmers in southwest Georgia, as I said, no one worked harder to get them relief than David Perdue. He would call me all the time. He actually called me more than Sonny, and Sonny is at Agriculture. What the hell is going on, Sonny? [laughter] 200931 Sonny! What happened to you, Sonny? It's true. David would call all the time. Remember? And remember how tough the Democrats made it? They didn't want to give them anything. But we got it. We got more 'em more than they even thought possible. Senator Perdue helped pass the unprecedented 2.5 trillion dollars investment in our United States military, delivering the largest pay raises in addition to everything else for our warriors in a decade. And we now have the greatest, most modern military in the history of our country. 201001 We have brand-new fighter jets, brand new bombers, brand new missiles and rockets. Hypersonic missiles -- we have hypersonic and hydrosonic. You know what hydrosonic is? Water. We have 'em all. We have missiles that go 7 times faster than any missile in the world. [Crowd chants "USA"] 201028 And when we took over, our military was decimated. Our military was tired, our military was in big trouble. And you remember and I've said it alot -- one of the world's most overrated generals came to see me. He said, "sir, we have no ammunition." We had a little problem with a certain country. And he said, "Sir, we have no ammunition." And I said "tell me you are not saying that." We didn't have ammunition. Think of it. We had very little ammunition. And I'll never forget that statement. I said, "that should never happen to a President of the United States again." 201058 Nor should being spied on ever happen to a President of the United States. Senator Perdue has been a tremendous leader on pro-American immigration reform, like nobody else. He voted very powerfully, when I was going through hell on the Wall. They would have given me anything. They gave me the money for the military. They just didn't want to give me money for the wall, so I took it out of the military. What the hell can I do? [laughter] That was rather good. 201123 It's good to be a developer every once in a while. That was the one where the judges ruled yesterday so -- They said it was fine 'cause I called it "national security." So we took it out of the military -- they didn't figure that one out. Now, they do. But you know what? They don't -- you have to be careful because it's turned out to be very popular and very successful. Shut down sanctuary cities, end chain migration and protect American jobs, David did. He voted to confirm nearly 300 of the judges that I talked about, the federal judges that interpret the constitution as written. 201156 And when the Democrat mob came for judge Kavanaugh, David Perdue stood strong. [Cheers and applause] And you know, they both stood strong when they impeached your president for making a perfect phone call too. I'm the only president ever -- well, never -- that got impeached for making a perfect phone call. But those two were among the best. Senator Perdue is an outsider, a businessman -- a great businessman -- and true American patriot. 201228 You need him fighting for you and your family, and your values because the United States Senate can't be the same without him. So that's why I'm here. You know, I don't do these things for other people. 201239--------- I didn't know if anyone was going to show up. I am doing it for other people. But this is a hell of a crowd as far as the eye can see. I don't like doing it for other people. I said David and Kelly, called and said will you do a rally? I said not really. [8:13:14 pm] I said -- when they asked -- I don't do it for other people. It's a lot of work to do a rally. People don't realize. I did five a day the last four or five days. One day I did six. And the smallest one had 25,000 people. Do you think that's fun? In some of them it's 75 degrees and in others it's 20 degrees below zero. How is the weather out there? Sir, it's 20 degrees below zero. Then the next stop, how are we doing, sir will be it's 82. Jon ossoff is a right-wing zeal ought. He supports defunding the police. And the green new deal. The green new deal is really a [8:14:18 pm] hundred trillion dollars. It's a hundred trillion is what they wanted. That's more money -- if our economy was going unbelievable gangbusters we couldn't come close to a hundred trillion. I like big beautiful windows. They want to build them without windows. He wants to do a takeover of healthcare that will destroy your doctors' offices. If you have a cold, go to the hospital and wait in line for three days and hope you get a decent doctor. Ossoff also supports a nationwide lockdown. He wants to you to lock your home nice and tight. And he let hardened criminals go free. He will be a tool for the people [8:15:22 pm] trying to buy Georgia seats. See the money these people raised? But I just raised $250 million -- I didn't raise it -- I said how are we doing on that front? You might not be happy in a few weeks. They were so happy. I said how is fundraising going. They said about $250 million. How the hell did that happen? Because people believe in what we are doing. That's why. But that's why ossoff's donations come from silicon valley, San Francisco, and the other liberal places. And they don't come from Georgia. I know you, you are with me, I am with you. We always had wins from primaries -- we won two [8:16:23 pm] elections, believe it or not. I think I won the second one by more tn the first one. I won the second one by more. On January 5 you also need to vote for your incredible Republican senator Kelly Loeffler. Kelly has been an exceptional champion for Georgia's workers and families. I know what they fight for. She fights for you every single day, loves your state. When your nation was hit with the China virus, senator Loeffler helped rescue the economy by voting to pass an historic $3 trillion bill, relief for American businesses and families. A lot of people were against it. They said it's too much. I said it's not their fault. I would like to get them more money now. I like the higher number better than the lower number. [8:17:25 pm] With her help we secured billions for Georgia small businesses and saved 1.5 million Georgia jobs. That was both of them. Kelly is as relentless advocate for Georgia farmers and fought tirelessly to get them relief in this pandemic. And her husband is a fine man who is one of the most respected men in the country. I want to tell you that. He's a great man, a great gentleman. If you are successful today it's suppose to be a bad thing. I think it means you are smart. At the urging of Kelly and David my administration took historic action to protect growers of blueberries, peppers, squash and cucumbers. I like cucumbers. When our law enforcement heroes were under attack, senator [8:18:27 pm] Loeffler stood up to the marxists and introduced legislation to protect our brave men and women in blue and she was threatened all over the place. That was a waste of time. She also introduced legislation to prevent Democrat gun grabbers like Beto O'rourke. He wants to take your guns away. By the way, trump is going to lose Texas but Beto O'rourke was a big factor in that. He was riding high. Then Ted Cruz did a great job. He beat Beto O'rourke. Remember he was on the cover of a bad magazine. It's failing. He was on the cover and said I was born to do this. I said anybody that says they were born to do this, they are [8:19:28 pm] going to be losing very quickly. Within about two months he was a stone cold loser. Weeks ago senator Loeffler cast her vote to confirm our newest supreme court justice Amy coney Barrett. They both did, by the way. They both did. I can't leave David out of that one. Kelly's opponent is a dangerous extremist who is radically opposed to your values. He says he believes quote that nobody can serve god and the military. Really? An appalling statement that dishonors the memory and generations of American heroes who fought for god and our country. Country. Rafael Warnock has a praised [8:20:30 pm] socialists all over the world. He likes Castro. He was a good guy, he said. He falsely slandered patriotic Americans as racist. He called police officers thugs and bullies. He fought cash bail. If you Kil somebody, don't worry about it. You are on the honor code. He declared quote, open up the jails, free the violent criminals and prey on Georgia, family, children. You can't do that. I'm telling you. It might be for some places. But this is not for Georgia. Raphael has to move to another state. He's anti-Israel. His writings made clear that he believes America is a sinister nation that has to be punished. Don't just take my word for [8:21:32 pm] this. We have a little video to play, please. >> Senator Warren and myself are all on the same team. To make sure overfunded police departments are defunded. >> There is no middle ground on the climate crisis. >> I don't think the green 234u deal goes far enough. Begun stredges straition, when want to track where the guns are. We need to cut the budget. >> Are you in favor of expanding the court instead of a lifetime appointment? >> I said everything is on the table. >> If we win the majority, everything is on the table. >> If we win Georgia, we change America. >> Documented and undocumented. [8:22:32 pm] >> We win these races in Georgia, we don't have to negotiate. >> That's their goal, total radical control to bring change to America. Only Georgia can stop them. Too nobody can serve god and the military. Police power, the kind of gangster and thug mentality. >> Warnock attacks our police. >> Somebody has to open up the jails. Warnock is dangerous. No wonder he testified this. >> Not god bless America. >> We'll pick up two more seats in the Georgia runoff and that will make our lives much easier. >> This kind of politics, you are not just going to be beaten. You are going to get beaten so [8:23:34 pm] bad you can no longer run or show your face. You are not just going to be beaten. You are going a get a beating so bad you can no longer run or show your face again in public. [Crowd boos] President trump: I just looked at that one scene. We had incredible crowds of people in Washington. They were angry as hell at the election. They showed up. It was incredible. Hundreds of thousands of people. Some said hundreds of people, no, tens of thousands of people. [8:24:35 pm] And antifa showed up. Not the right. But the left showed up. And they looked at some of these people and they wanted to attack the crowd. They looked and they said no, thank you, and they left. They looked at some of these people and said no, thank you. Then they broke up about 3:00. It was a beautiful day. And that night they came back. There were a few families that stayed around with young children and some elderly people having dinner in Washington. Very elderly people. And those people got attacked viciously by the scum from antifa. We can't let this happen. But what they didn't play, what the fake news didn't play is during the day they walked in and wanted to do some damage and they took a look and said no, thank you, we won't do it. We'll wait until we get the people with the children, we'll wait until we get the elderly people who want to stay in [8:25:37 pm] Washington. And really just have a good time. And it was disgusting to watch. January 5 you must defeat ossoff and Warnock and send David perdue and Kelly Loeffler back to the senate. I would like to ask David and Kelly to couple and say a few words -- to come up and say a few words, please. [Crowd chants "Stop the steal"] LOEFFLER>> Thank you, Georgia, thank you, Mr. President. You made America great again because you put America first. Thank you. [8:26:37 pm] President trump created the strongest economy because he put American workers first. He stood up. That's right. He stood up to the cancel culture, China, big tech, the fake news. We are standing strong for president trump because he fought for us every single day. Every day. Georgia. We need you to vote January 5. If you are our voice on January 5. We have to make sure that we keep America strong. You know what? My colleague David perdue, my good friend, wants to make sure you vote. If we don't vote, we'll lose the country. If we vote, we'll win. PERDUE>> I want to take one second to [8:27:38 pm] say something personal to president trump. Guys, I want to say something to president trump personally. I want to say something personal for president trump. We are going to fight and win those two seats and make sure you can get a fair square deal in the state of Georgia. God bless you, Mr. President. President trump: Thank you very much. [Fight for --] TRUMP>> Thank you, we are fighting, thank you. [8:28:39 pm] We can't let what happened three weeks he go. We can't let it happen. We can't let it happen. Somewhere there is going to be a champion. Somewhere there will be a champion who will do what's right. But never like it happened recently. They used the pandemic and the phoney fake mail-in ballot, they used that to sabotage the country. We'll not let it happen. As you know a major issue in this state is voter fraud. But never like this. We sent out tens of thousands, millions and millions of ballots. Nobody knew where they came from, where they are. People were getting two, three, four ballots. What a mess. And I said it. A year ago and I said it every month. And I said let's post point election. They said oh, he's not an America. They knew what they were doing. We are all deeply disturbed and [8:29:41 pm] upset by the lying, cheating, robbing that's gone on with our election. The Democrats want dead people voting. And you have got to watch it. Dead people. You wouldn't believe how many. Illegal aliens from out of the state. They will be filling out ballots for people who don't even exist. They put up names. They have people signing their own name over and over. They have people signing names with the same pen, with the same signature. They don't even change because they know once they get it in, it will never be looked at again because of people like your secretary of state and your governor. But we want signature verification. But the answer -- and we are going to be very careful. We'll watch every ballot, David, Kelly. We have more light shining here. [8:30:43 pm] Because of the fact it's pinpointed. The answer to the Democrat fraud is not to stay at Hom that's what Schumer and Nancy want you to do. Stay at home. If you want to do something to them, I don't want to use the word revenge. About it is a certain revenge. You show up and vote in record numbers. That's what you have to do. They can only win if they cheat. They can't win this state unless they cheat. And they cheat better than anybody. When you think of it, the Republicans are much nicer. They are not nearly as vicious. Maybe a few of us. Republicans are too nice, that right. Thank you very much. I like that. But they are. They are too nice. They don't go after these criminals. We are talking to people, go after them. They don't go after them. They are afraid they will hurt their reputation when they go [8:31:44 pm] out. But we are watching this so closely, we have everybody watching, you have got to get out and vote. Let them steam Georgia again. You will -- steam Georgia again. We have to hold the line and make sure you and everyone else snow you have to register before Monday, December 7. You have to register to vote. Of course, you will probably be allowed to if you are a Democrat. They don't have any time limit. Did you see where Stacy is allowed to harvest But other people can't harvest. How is that constitutional? Has anybody looked at that. Go to georgia.gov and register and request your absentee ballot before December 31 and return [8:32:46 pm] your ballots the same day you get it. Yo know what they did in one of the states in ballots were coming in late. So they backdated the ballots. We have all the information. We have so much evidence. Then he go to a court -- oh, they don't have enough evidence. We have thousands of affidavits. They say he doesn't have the evidence. We have so much evidence we don't kw what to do with it. If we put all this into a filing it's like wheelbarrows. Vote. 203315 I need each of one, every one of you, your friends, your family to go and vote. [cheers] And after we win, we need to pass landmark election reform including voter ID. Is that so bad? [cheers] Residency verification. Like, we live in the country, we live in the state. Citizenship confirmation, they want to say "Oh, he doesn't have to be a citizen." You gotta see what's voting -- these, they're not citizens. 203350 "You a citizen?" "No, I'm not a citizen." "Do you speak English?" "No, no. No English. Speak no English" "Oh, you're voting." Yeah, what -- why not? This is the craziest thing. You know, the Democrat National Committee had their convention, and they had a picture. You couldn't get in unless you had a picture, you had a photo ID. But when it comes to the most important thing, voting, they don't wanna do it. 203410 And they know. They know exactly. We just can't let that happen. I have only been doing this for a short time. Believe me, this is something we're gonna do. Because we can't allow it to happen. And complete overhaul of our election security systems because right now, Dominion is a joke. Okay? [boos] Not a very funny joke. It's a disgrace that, in 2020, no state in America even makes any real attempt to verify that those who cast ballots by mail are eligible and lawfully registered voters. 203445-------- The evidence of fraud is overwhelming. Look up at that very powerful and expensive screen. Let's go. >> We certainly want transparency. What he saw is what we revealed to you on this program. What appears to be Atlanta Georgia ballot counters being told to leave the counting room with no observers and no media, hidden cases of possible ballots rolled out from under a table. Four people under a cloud of suspicion begin what looks an awful lot like ballot stuffing. >> The media did pack up and leave at 11:15. But there weren't observers there at that time. There was no announcement made for anyone to leave. >> Wait a second here. [8:35:51 pm] That is dishevelled Fulton county elections she Richard Barron. But he's not right. At 10:40 the media is pack up. A half-hour before he thinks they leave. By 10:56, they are long gone. And the trump team has sworn witness testimony claiming an announcement was most certainly made. Even CNN reported the counting was being shut down due to a water main break that even election administrators acknowledge was a leaky toilet. Someone had to tell those people to leave. If you look at this table, there are ballots in boxes open and ready for counting. Watch as they get packed up. Why would you need to secure them and the ultimately take out the mysterious ballots from under the able to start [8:36:51 pm] counting? It just doesn't add up. Election board member Kathleen Ruth shows her scepticism in that zoom call with the elections chief. >> It's interesting that these ballots were under a table versus being in the open. >> I think there is -- I don't know that -- I think those ballot boxes get heavy. I don't think they want to be lifting those things up and putting them back down. >> It makes no sense. He's scratching his head. He looks nervous. That does not inspire confidence. There were already ballots out. 24 hours since I posted what would be quote smoking gun videoed of election fraud, a video with 2.5 million views as of right now on my Twitter feed, the head of elections whose [8:37:53 pm] ballot counters are being accused of ballot stuffing declares this. >> I will have to tree view -- I need to review the video. I have not seen the video. >> He hasn't watched the video that could up-end the presidential election and the guy in charge of the very people in the room admits he didn't watch the video before updating board members this morning? That's insanity. Yet Fulton county still certified the election. But you know who did watch our video? Our viewers. One directed me to this moment in the video. The woman in purple after putting ballots in to be scanned, it appears to take the same batch of ballots out, straighten them and then look what she does with them, she reinserts them back into the ballot counting machine again. [8:38:55 pm] The same set of ballots. There may or may not be an explanation for this. But certainly it needs to be investigated by law enforcement. It's the greatest political heist in election history may have just been caught on camera. >> Evidence of election fraud mounts as the mainstream media and Democrats insist Joe Biden is the 2020 winner. But whistleblowers are coming forward saying hundreds of thousands of votes for president trump disappeared on election night. A postal worker said his truck disappeared after he dropped them off. He said he was carrying 288,000 completed mail-in ballots. Phil Klein the leader of the [8:39:59 pm] Thomas more society. It's already uncovered serious examples of voting regularities. Backing up president trump's warnings. He explained the post office was rife with fraud and many postal workers were taking part in widespread illegal efforts to undermine the election. While the missing ballots in the truck is bad enough. Other said they have drove ballots overstate lines which is a federal crime. A postal worker said he was told by two separate postal workers that they collected and backdated 100,000 ballots on the morning after the election. Unsurprisingly others claim the integrity of the dominion voting machine has been compromised and can't be trusted. The project explained election officials in blue jurisdiction failed to maintain the ballot [8:41:00 pm] chain of custody. The project sai it has photographic evidence of people improperly accessing voting machines and how the steal of ballot hard drives. There are 100,000 in Arizona, 548 in Michigan. And 121,000 in Pennsylvania. Based on this evidence, the FBI has reportedly requested to look at the project data on voting integrity and potential election fraud. Pearson sharp, one America news. President trump: If you just take the crime of what those Democrat workersere doing -- by the way, there was no water main break -- that's 10 times more than I need to win this state. 10 times more. It's 10 times more than that. [8:42:01 pm] But 10 times more because we lost by a very close number. The alleged Biden margin of victory is accounted for by extraordinarily large midnight vote dumps. You saw that. All extremely skewed to Biden. Biden would get 10,000 votes and trump would get three in a trump area. At 6:31:00 A.M. In Michigan reported 141,238 votes for Joe Biden and 5,900 votes for Donald Trump. 96% for Biden and 4% for trump where I should be doing quite well. They actually had more people if you look at the ballots, they had more ballots than they had [8:43:03 pm] people Ving. They had people and they are voting. The two of canvassers were very brave, they didn't vote, they got the hell knocked out of them, then they raised their hands. But more ballots than voters. A similar vote dump occurred in Wisconsin at 3:42 A.M. When I went to bed that night, ebb was calling, congratulations, you are you have 600,000 votes in Pennsylvania there were impossiblably low rejection rates drastically less than the historic norms. In Georgia, .04% were rejected. That's a difference of 11 times more. [8:44:03 pm] It's hundreds of thousands of votes. In pennsylvania.04% were rejected. This issue alone is enough to change the election result in many states. Whistleblowers -- that's the maulest of the issues. D that's the smallest of the issues. Postal workers and election workers illegally backdating thousands of ballots fixing ballots, filling out false birthdays, registering ineligible voters. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of votes in each state. In Arizona a sample of 100 ballots found that a small percentage of these ballots, very small, but when you look at it turned out to be very large it was tens of thousands [8:45:03 pm] of votes. More than we would have needed to win Arizona. We should have won very easily. We have a similar type of governor, I think. I'll let you know in a week. When Laura Ingraham interviewed your governor, he said he was an offensive lineman. In one Michigan county 6,000 votes were discovered that were wrongly switched from trump to bind. They called it a glitch. Numerous times we had glitches. Every single time the glitch went 100 to bind and no percent to trump. The left lies, they cheat and they steal. They are ruthless and hell bent on getting power and control by any means possible. They investigate you and they prosecute you. The moment you question them, [8:46:04 pm] they try and intimidate you. They call you a poor American. You are not a good American. You don't love our country. They don't love our country. They beat you down, shut you up and make you retreat. That's what they have done to your governor. Your governor should be ashamed of himself. That's what they want to do right here in Georgia. They want you to be quiet. They want you to go away. But we don't go away. It's the biggest open secret in America. The Democrats cheat in elections. This year by sending out 65 million mail-in ballots they perpetrated the largest fraud in the history our our country. Democrat officials and politicians in every swing state systematically weakened every measure to combat election fraud. They made sure there were no [8:47:07 pm] identity checks or signature checks. No eligibility checks. No nothing. He single one of you know that if these ballots are properly audited. If the signatures and envelopes were examined. If the envelopes were correlated to the votes because you will find there are far more ballots than envelopes. All you have to do is count them up. How many ballots do you have? How many envelopes. If the voter rolls are studies, check the signature. Miss Smith. It's a didn't sitting from two years ago, 10 years ago. We'll find hundreds of thousands of ballots were illegally cast in your state and all over the country. More than enough to give us a total historic victory. This is our country. [8:48:09 pm] You know this and you see it. They are trying to take it from us through rigging, fraud, deception and deceit. That's what we saw in the election. That's what's going on and it's happening right now in our country and we'll do something about it, and we are going to do something about it quickly, and we'll be watching on January 5. We'll be watching every element of what they do, the fraud they perpetrated on our country. We'll be watching it more closely than any election has ever been watched. Hopefully our legislatures and the uned states supreme court will step forward and save our country. I used to say without borders we don't have a country. I can say without an honest voting system, without an electoral process that works and is honest and fair, we don't have a country either. We need to check every single [8:49:11 pm] signature of the elections. 204859 And right now, we have to get out to vote for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler to show the radical Left that we will never surrender. We will only win. We're gonna win. We always win. Somehow, we find a way to win. Now is not the time to retreat. Now is the time to fight harder than ever before. So don't listen to my friends. Just go out, just go out. 204925 And you know what they are saying? They are saying "we want you to fix the system." We're gonna fix the system, but the system will be fixed when these people get in. They will get in, and we'll fix the system. 204936 'Cause we're all -- we're all victims. Everybody here, all these thousands of people here tonight, they are all victims. Every one of you. The next great victory for our movement begins right here on January 5th. And then, we are going to win back the White House. We're going to win it back. [cheers] And we are going to take back the House in 2022. 205004 And then in 2024, and hopefully I won't have to be a candidate, we're gonna win back the White House again. [cheers] A friend of mine said, "Oh. Don't worry about it, sir. You're way up in the polls. You'll win in 2024." I said, "I don't want to wait til 2024. I want to go back three weeks." [cheers] 205025-------- We are joined by representative Doug Collins. He's fantastic. I have got to tell you, as you know -- he and Kelly had a strong primary. And he's one of the greatest advocates I have ever had in Washington. I want to thank Doug Collins. What a job he does. Thank you. 205101 Doug, you want to run for Governor in two years, buddy(?)? [cheers] 205112 You'd be a good looking governor. A friend of mine, one of the toughest guys you will ever see, Louie Gohmert of Texas. Louie! [applause] Thank you, Louie. Thank you, Louie. And a young up-and-comer who has taken Washington by storm, Dan Crenshaw. Where is Dan? Where is Dan? Where is Dan? I didn't see you, Dan. It's the first time that's ever happened to me, huh, because you do stand out in many ways. Thank you very much, Dan. [laughter] 205145----------- The next senator from Tennessee just got elected. Did my endorsement help? You better believe it. We love Tennessee. Bill Haggerty. He will be a great senator for a long time. Your former governor only left because of a thing called term limits. If I had known I would have tried to end those term limits. [8:52:22 pm] But he went to the department of agriculture. He has done a tremendous job. We hand out $28 billion to farmers. I said how badly have we been targeted by China? Sonny perdue said 28 billion. I put the tariffs on China and gave it to the farmers. And we had money left over and put it into the U.S. Treasury. State representative, a friend of mine, a great gentleman. He saw what was happening -- he happens to be a Democrat, but we love them. I am trying to talk him into joining our party. Vernon Jones. Thank you, Vernon. What a great guy. Agriculture commissioner Gary black. Gary? Good job you are doing. What a good reputation, thank you very much, your public [8:53:24 pm] service commissioners, Trisha, Jason a great, great man who is also on the ballot. Bubba McDonald? I like that name. Great, great job. Thanks so much. I introduce you to Burt Jones. Burt will be an important man with William and Brennan. I appreciate it. Very important. Georgia Republican party chairman David Schaeffer. David. Hi, David. How are we doing, David? We'll fire you so fast if we don't -- no, David has done a great, great job. And he works closely with RNC chairwoman. That's how we won a great state known as Michigan when she was there. I said let's bring her to [8:54:26 pm] Washington. Ronna Mcdaniel. Thank you. Thank you, Ronna. Over the last four years we built the greatest political movement in the history of our country. We achieved more than anyone thought possible, and we are just getting started. We don't want other people to rip it apart. We must re-elect Kelly and David to keep it going for decades. We have spent trillions of dollars are rebuilding other foreign nations and fighting foreign wars and defending foreign borders. We want to defend our own border. And we are now protect our nation, rebuilding our cities and bringing our jobs, our factories and our troops back home to the usa where they belong, thank you. Bringing them home. Not easy to bring them home. I bring them home and they say, sir, we have got to keep them [8:55:28 pm] there, sir. We have got to keep giving money to these countries that can't stand us that nobody ever heard of. Everything we do we are putting America first. We ended the war on American energy and the United States is the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere on Earth. We achieved the most secure border in U.S. History and built our wall. Very important for you because you are a big military between the equipment we build and va choice and va accountability. Ever notice that we used to always have on television, you would have the fake news -- in that case it wasn't fake. But for years it would be vets and how badly treated they were. I shouldn't say this, you don't see that anymore. You don't see the stories on the evening news about vets being [8:56:29 pm] treated horribly. And accountability was a big factor. We fired 9,000 horrible people that took advantage of our vets, and they are gone. Now if our vets don't get good service, they go out, they see a doctor, they pay the bill. We destroyed 100% of the ISIS caliphate in Iraq and Syria. We killed the leader of ISIS, al-baghdadi and eliminated the world's top terrorist. Soleimani is dead. 205655 I withdrew from the last administration's disastrous Iran Nuclear Deal. And I think they want to start it up again. Can you believe this? [boos] I wonder if they'll give them $150 billion. No, they'll give them 250. They were ready to rock. They were ready to do whatever we wanted. Now, they're gonna -- they're salivating. 205715--------- I recognize the true capital of Israel and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem. And also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan heights. Instead of endless war we are forging peace all over the world. We have the greatest military ever. We have the greatest equipment all made in the usa. A lot of it made in Georgia. I'm the only one in many, many decades that hasn't started a war. Everyone thought with my personality I would be at war the first week. They were all saying war. And we developed relationships. Let's see how he would do with Kim Jong-un. What happened to that? Remember I came in and it was going to be war with north Korea. We built the greatest military in the world. And the better it is the less likely it is we'll have to use it. 205812 But everything that we've achieved together is on the line, on June 5th. 205817 In this election, you can send a message to the fake news media -- and there's a lot of them right back there -- [boos] and they will find something wrong with this evening. I don't know what it is, but they'll find something wrong. Maybe, it was the person that shouted "love." They'll say, "it was a horrible protester." They will find something, Kelly and David. They're gonna find something. They're looking, they're having a hard time. It's been a love-fest. This is a love-fest for these two people. [Cheers and applause] 205848 But they all want the Silicon Valley censors and the corrupt Democrat political machine -- they're partners. You must vote for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Go out and vote. With your help, we're going to continue our mission to save America. We will defend the right to life, religious liberty, free speech and the right to keep and bear arms. They're gonna take your guns away. [cheers] 205916 We will always support the heroes of law enforcement. We will maintain America's unrivaled military might, and we will preserve peace through strength. [cheers] We'll protect social security and Medicare, and we'll always protect patients with preexisting conditions. Right? We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students and children, and restore patriotic education to our schools. 205947 We will teach our children to love our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag. And we'll live by the words of our national motto, "In God we trust." [cheers] From Atlanta to Augusta, from Savannah to Columbus. And from Athens to right here. Right here, this is a nice place. This is a nice place, Valdosta. 210020 We inherit the legacy of generations of American patriots who gave their blood, sweat and tears to defend our country and our freedom. We stand on the shoulders of heroes who crossed the oceans, settled a continent, tamed the wilderness, laid down the railroads, raised up the great skyscrapers, won two World Wars, defeated fascism and communism, and made America into the single greatest nation in the history of the world. 210051 And if they get in, and add me into the group, if you don't mind -- we will be greater than ever before, without question. [cheers] The best is yet to come. Proud citizens like you helped build this country and together, we are taking back our country. Our fight to drain the Washington swamp and reclaim America's destiny has just begun. We'll not bend, we'll not break, we'll not yield. 210122 We will never give in, we will never give up, and we will never back down. We will never, ever surrender. [Cheers and applause] Because we are Americans and our hearts bleed red, white and blue. [Cheers and applause] [Crowd chants "USA"] 210158 We are one movement, one people, one family and one glorious nation under god. And together, with the incredible people of Georgia, we have made America powerful again. They've done it. We have made America wealthy again. We have made America strong again. 210225 We have made America proud again. We have made America safe again. And we will make America great again. Thank you, Georgia. Get out and vote. Get out and vote. [END]

White House Briefing with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs & Vice President Joe Biden STIX White House Briefing with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs & Vice President Joe Biden STIX RS37 / 85 SLUGGED: 1400 WH BRIEF STIX RS37 85 DISC # 947 & 910 AR: 16X9 **** FED TO NY ON RS 5114 **** MR. GIBBS: Good afternoon, folks. Is this working? (Referring to the microphone.) All right. You recognize our special guest. I want to turn this over to Vice President Biden. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: You act surprised! (Laughs.) (Off-mike comments from the press corps.) VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: (Laughs.) Well, I'm glad to see the reverence for the vice presidency still exists. (Laughter.) 14:12:18 Hey, folks, I'm here to talk about the recovery act. And I'm sure that was the first thing on your mind this morning. But very seriously, I think most of the skeptics have come around to the point that all the talk about the recovery act being dead on arrival and how it was going to be this great boondoggle and all the fraud and abuse that was going to occur and it wasn't going to have much impact, well, the fact is the recovery act is working. We've gone from hemorrhaging over 700,000 jobs a month, the first several months we got here and turned on the lights in the West Wing here, to adding more -- several hundred thousand jobs a month the last several months. We've gone from a GDP that was shrinking at 6.4 percent the first quarter we came into office, to a GDP that grew 3 percent last quarter and averaged 4 percent over the last three quarters. And we believe, and so does most of the blue chip consensus reports out there, that this growth is going to be sustained at that 3-percent-plus range for the indefinite future. And so, again, from the intense skepticism and the doubt of many, I think, expressed 14 months ago -- particularly some of the folks who didn't want to vote for this legislation -- I think it's fair to say there's general consensus among most economists that a significant portion of the growth in the GDP, as well as the job growth, is attributable to the recovery act. Thus far, we have allocated over $620 billion of the act. And as a result, the recovery act is responsible for somewhere between 2.3 (million) and 2.8 million jobs that were either saved or created. 14:14:07 So, folks, the act is working. And because the recovery act is working and has done all of these things, there's a lot of folks, including some on Capitol Hill, who are of the view somehow that it's over; it worked, and must be finished. The point of my talking to you today is that, although more people are going to be put to work this summer, the pace on the ball I talked about early on -- the pace on the ball continues to increase, not decrease, as the act rolls out in the final -- this final summer. Last summer, we had 1,000 -- and these slides, I don't know if you can read them -- they're awfully small -- behind me. But these slides show that we had 1,750 highway projects that were under way. It's called shovel-ready. When the governors finally let the contracts, and did it by the numbers, there were 1,750 projects under way. This summer, we'll be starting 10,000 projects that will be under way in the states. And as of Labor Day, of those 10,000 projects under way, 3,500 will be projects that are open to traffic, although not totally completed, and 500 will be totally completed; with 6,000 continuing to be completed, and employing people, through the fall. Last summer, we started improving just shy of 10,000 miles of highway in this country. This summer, we'll start and ultimately improve 30,000 additional miles. 14:15:43 Last summer, we started over 100 clean-water and drinking-water projects nationwide. This summer, we will have under way 3,000 additional clean-water projects. And that means tens of thousands of more families in America will be able to be assured that their drinking water is safe when these projects are finished. Last summer, we weatherized, under the weatherization program, in the act, 3,000 American homes. By the end of this summer, we'll have weatherized 82,000 additional homes. And that translates into significant savings. That means 82,000 families out there will be saving an average 400 bucks a year on their energy bills that they would not have other -- otherwise been able to save. And it means jobs. It means jobs, the people doing the weatherization. It means jobs that accrue from the additional $400 savings that now goes back into the economy, keeping open the neighborhood lunch counter as well as the movie theater and the hardware store. And that means that this summer, a lot more people are going to be working on highways, building clean-water projects, weatherizing homes. And they'll be drawing paychecks and -- that they wouldn't have otherwise drawn. And that means a lot more money, again, into the local economies. 14:17:03 Economists tend to measure these things in terms of the actual job that is, in fact, created. But the truth is, that job created means money spent in the community, means someone stays employed, someone out there is actually working. And it means a lot more lunch breaks at the local diner, because there weren't any lunch breaks; there weren't the jobs that existed; and a lot more trips to the barbershop, to the movies, to the department store and helping those businesses they go to maintain their employment base and increase their employment base. So the ripple effects are -- have been felt thus far since the recovery act passed. But my point is this summer, you're going to see even more ripple effect out there. This is -- the act is now -- as I said, the pace of the ball is moving into its highest gear here, in terms of direct investment in projects. So again don't take my word for it. I mean, private companies across the country are hiring people. You can go to recovery.gov, which I know many of you have, and you probably do that in your leisure time, wondering what's going on, right? But you've gone to second-guess, which you should, whether or not what we're asserting is correct, look at the filings. Well, you know, recovery.gov -- check it out for yourself. The illustration behind me just takes four of the 10,000 recovery act reports on specific projects. It's an illustration. But there are 10,000 ones just like -- 10,000 reports just like the one behind me. And these reports will tell you two things: how much money the outfit got, what they spent it on, and how many people they hired to get the project done. And so folks, these reports show that in just a three-month period -- January, February and March of this year -- approximately 680 -- slightly under 680,000 jobs you can count, put a name to, look at who it was, where it was, what they did -- 600 -- roughly 680,000 jobs were created. And the other point I keep making to my colleagues in running this recovery operation is that much of what we're doing here, much of what the recovery act is doing, we should be doing if we were growing at 10 percent, if we had full employment. 14:19:21 The infrastructure in this country needs help. It increases productivity, increases safety. It increases the safety from on the highway to the drinking water to providing access for a lot of people to a lot of other means. So another important point I'd like to make here is that we're going to reach some fairly important milestones this summer in terms of goals that we set. The president tomorrow's going to travel out to Columbus, Ohio for the groundbreaking of the -- of the 10,000th recovery act road project -- the 10,000th road project. And, you know, again, I've been around a long time in public life. I was a senator for six full terms. And I tell you, people back home know whether or not the guys in the corner with the hard hat on, putting in a crosswalk or building a four-lane highway, whether or not they're working. They understand there's activity. 14:20:13 They know whether or not it's real. And there's a lot of real, positive things happening in people's communities that are improving their quality of life. And these road projects are among them. On June 30th, we will have built, expanded or renovated 1,100 community health-care centers. Now, I know some of you have traveled with me and with others. Go into these communities, rural or in the municipal areas, and you'll find that they are gems. The public -- the people in those neighborhoods desperately need them and rely on them. And the bottom line here is, there are 2.5 million people who weren't having access to regular health care that are -- have access to it now as a consequence of those investments in over 1,100 rural and urban community health centers. In August, there will be an additional 100 -- excuse me, 1 million homes that will have smart meters attached to them. Now, you know, when you say "smart meter" to the average person, they go, "What -- what -- what are you talking about?" A smart meter just lets you be able to know and regulate the consumption of your energy, so on balance it's considerably cheaper. It will tell you how much energy you are using, when you're using your dishwasher, when you're using your -- you know, your hot-water heater, when you're kicking it up. So there -- these are real savings, real long-term investments. And we are on path to meet our goal of making sure that in the United States of America, we end up with over -- I believe the number is close to 18,000 -- 18 million smart-meter -- excuse me, I misspoke. Yeah, no, that's right, 18 million smart meters by 2014. And this has -- this has multiple consequences, not just in saving money but it also has consequences in terms of reducing energy consumption, dealing with the environment, importation of foreign oil, et cetera. In August of this year, because of the weatherization projects that are under way, there will be more than 200,000 homeowners -- 200,000 new homeowners that will be saving $400 a year on average in their energy bill. And to real people, that's real money. That matters. And the last slide I have behind me here shows that the recovery act is already responsible for up to 2,800,000 jobs. The low was 2002 in the estimates, but somewhere if you average it out to be -- just take the average of about 2.5 million jobs saved or created. Or put it another way: 2.5 million people who would not be working today but for the existence of the recovery act. 14:23:08 And so we're on track, as the graph shows, to meeting the commitment I made when we announced this of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. 14:23:20 And so we know there's a lot more work to be done. The economic crisis that we inherited, and it's our responsibility. It's not, we inherit it, therefore it's the other -- we inherited an economic crisis. But it turned out to be deeper than we knew or most of the econometric models showed, most of the blue chip estimates. It was deeper and it was more profound than we thought. As a matter of fact -- and the president would kid early on. He said we bought in too high. You know, if we had -- if we had been sworn in on March the 20th like the old days back in the '30s, it would have been clearer just how bad this was before we took over. 14:24:02 But the truth of the matter is, that while there was a consensus among the experts that we're now in a recovery or recovering, we don't measure success by the growth in the GDP. That is necessary, but not sufficient. We set out -- when we ran together for these jobs, we said we're going to measure success based upon whether or not there's growth in the middle class, those people aspiring to the middle class have a fighting chance to get there and those who get there have a fighting chance to stay there. We're a long way from that yet -- we're a long way. But the assertion I'm making today is, there is no doubt that the economic policy we put in place in this recovery act is helping us move in that direction. 14:24:47 And that means that though -- but in the meantime we can't let up. We have to continue to invest in job creation, continue to support small business, which is the engine of job creation, and continue to help states and localities, who remain under extreme, difficult constraints. I, as most of you know -- you (got/get ?) bored to death having to watch me do this initially -- but I'm on the phone every week with somewhere between four and seven governors, depending on -- both parties. I've now spoken to every governor, 14:25:11 I think -- probably there's going to be some exception -- every governor at least twice so far, going into great detail about their use of this money, how they're using it, are they using it wisely, what do they need, and responding to them. I've spoken to well over 140 mayors and county execs. I do this once a week for a couple hours a (day ?) -- or an hour each with them. And privately, every single one of them have thanked me for the act. But one of the things they've all said, every one of them: You think my situation is bad in 2010, Mr. Vice President; it's worse in 2011. So when we talk about total government investment in the economy -- total government, state, local and federal - 14:25:59 there is a real shortfall that's going to exist among the states and municipalities this year. So that's why -- a lot of folks ask why do we think we need to continue to have some countercyclical help for the states and localities. Because essential services -- teachers, cops, firefighters -- they're going to be laying an awful lot of those folks off. It not only has an economic impact on the community, it has a societal impact in terms of the public safety and the attitude about -- that community about themselves, when you lay that many people off. So the recovery act is working, but -- and it's going to continue to work. It's not over. A lot's going to happen this summer. And even after the summer, there's more to come with the act, which I'll talk about another time, because as we continue to lay down the building blocks for a new economy, the thesis we've operated on is not going to be sufficient to lead the world in the 21st century by rebuilding the 14:27:00 We need to invest in new platforms to maintain our economic superiority. And that's why we continue to invest in these broadband projects, bringing us in line with more -- you think we're the most advanced nation in the world, yet we're way behind an awful lot of other countries. That goes to productivity, it goes to job creation. We also are going to continue to invest in solar and wind projects of consequence; new battery and electric-vehicle plants, expanding operations and rolling new products off their lines; and new organizations set up to transition all those paper records in your doctors' offices to computerized records, saving lives, saving money, creating jobs and impacting on reducing the long-term debt. And so -- and this is just the tip of it. These projects continue to happen across the United States, across all industries. And they're going to continue to put Americans back to work and help us move to a new and stronger future. And with that, I will, as they say, yield the floor, in the old Senate parlance, and take some questions. Q If this is working, sir, why is unemployment at 9.7 percent, when you predicted it would be 7.5 (percent) right now? 14:28:12 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, because every other major econometric model predicted the same thing; that we thought that unemployment wouldn't go much above 8 percent. My point in my statement was this recession was so much deeper, so much more profound than anyone -- most people thought it was. The bottom line is, you can look at it two ways. It's the old half-empty, half-full. The fact of the matter is, unemployment is unacceptably high. We knew that the hole dug by the recession that was created by the policies of the last administration resulted in a loss, a real loss, of somewhere between 2 (trillion dollars) and $3 trillion in the economy. We never thought that $787 billion is going to fill those hole -- that hole. The purpose of it was to keep people from falling into the abyss, keep us from sliding into a literal depression, and begin to build a ladder to climb out of that hole. But ultimately, it's to stimulate economic growth, because the only engine that's going to bring us back to total health is the free- enterprise system and the American -- free-enterprise system and the business community. And what we're doing here is we're building circumstances where their confidence -- increasing their ability to continue to borrow, make money, expand as able. And ultimately this is going to catch on; we're going to fill that hole only after the free-enterprise system is able to kick in because of the corrections we've made. I'll let you recognize -- MR. GIBBS: (Off mike.) Q Al Tidwell (ph), Reuters. Mr. Vice President, the May jobs report was very disappointing for private-sector job creation. Now, the recovery act's all about encouraging the private sector to boost hiring. Do you see any evidence in June that the private sector is doing better? 14:30:06 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, I think the private sector -- if we -- there is a tendency when we're in a circumstance where the unemployment is so unacceptably high, when so many people are out of work -- my grandpop used to have an expression. He said -- there's a suburb of Scranton, Pennsylvania called Dalton. He said, when the guy up in Dalton's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression. It's still a depression for millions of Americans, there's still a depression. And -- but what is clear is -- and when you're in that sort of circumstance, you tend to look at every -- it's like taking your blood pressure every hour. It's looking at every single, solitary little change that takes place. You've got to look at it over a longer term. In the first five months of last year, we lost 3 million jobs. The first five months of this year, we've created almost 500,000 jobs. I've said before and I say it again, we're going to continue to create jobs on a monthly basis. It will be up and down, but the path is going to continue to be strong, sustaining a growth rate, as predicted, of over 3 percent. That's the consensus. And we're going to continue to push until we get to the point where the economic recovery really takes hold because business and the free-enterprise system has decided that it's ready to really invest again. Q If I could just follow on that, do you still think that the recovery act was responsible for 90 percent -- that 90 percent of the jobs will be private-sector end hiring, or will you revise that in light of recent jobs numbers? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I think that it will be perilously close to 90 percent, the vast bulk. Look, last -- last -- Q Look at last month's job report, where it was -- VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: No, that's it. That's who you're talking about. MR. GIBBS: Just remember too, the census isn't part of -- the census is a mandated 10-year project. The census, which was responsible for a number of the government jobs that are created on a monthly basis in order to take that census, was not part of the recovery. Q We're now 62 million (dollars) into spending this, and you guys are nowhere near 90 percent in terms of jobs being created in the private sector. I'm just wondering, if you're -- if you're sticking with it -- you're -- I mean, you're sticking with it. I just want an -- 14:32:19 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, the vast majority of those 2.2 (million) to 2.8 million jobs have not been census jobs. Some of them have been jobs that saved teachers' jobs and cops'. So you argue -- you can argue they are not, you know, private-sector jobs. Q Yeah. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: So the truth of the matter is that jobs that are private-sector jobs are going to make up the vast bulk of the jobs created by this act. But a significant portion of the jobs also are saving those jobs that otherwise would have caused chaos in communities, had they been lost -- teachers, cops and firefighters. It does both. Q Mr. Vice President -- VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes. Q -- on February 25th of 2009, right after the recovery act was passed, you said this literally drop-kicks us out of the recession. By that definition, by those words you said right after it passed, has this worked? Are -- have we been drop-kicked out of a recession? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes, we have. Now look, I'm not going to get into the technical argument of economists of when a session of -- the recession officially ends or will end. But I can tell you that -- what I meant then, and I'll say it now. We have turned this economy around. Instead of falling off the abyss, it is on firm ground. It is heading in the right direction. And every aspect of the economy is growing. Is it growing as fast as we want it to grow? No. Has it -- is it able to wipe out 8 million jobs lost as a consequence of the recession, which we inherited? No. But it has turned the country around. We're moving in the right direction. And this is the basis upon which this fuller recovery over time is going to occur. (Cross talk.) Q Mr. Vice President, thank you. Thank you for being here. But you say that economists -- there's a general consensus -- mayors, governors, all the people you talk to, there's a consensus. But is there a disconnect with the American people? And I know polls are not the be-all and end-all, but four times in our CBS/New York Times poll, we've asked people if the stimulus has created a substantial number of jobs. We haven't done it for a few months, but I don't think it's changed dramatically since then. The number saying, yes, substantial number of jobs has been 4 percent, 7 percent, 6 percent, 6 percent. That is just appallingly low. Why is that? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: True, but it's also totally understandable. It's totally, completely understandable. 14:34:39 Look, the kitchen table where I grew up in Claymont, Delaware, no one sat around and was able to make a distinction between -- if that existed at the time -- between bailing out the banks, TARP, between a funding program that was designed called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. All they knew is whether or not there were more people being hired at Works Steel. All they knew is whether they were going to build a new Food Fair across from Holy Rosary School and it was going to create jobs. Well, guess what? In Claymont, Delaware -- and the Claymont, Delawares, of the country -- it's starting to happen. At Claymont, Delaware -- in Claymont, Delawares, of America, they're no longer laying off in big numbers. It's stabilized. The bottom has hit. They're hearing, people are going back. They hired back some folks at; the General Motors plant has now been bought by; it's now producing more cars. The following -- that's how people measure what's going to happen in their lives. Again, I may have sat at a different kind of kitchen table than y'all did. I never heard anybody in my family -- and there were family members worried about losing jobs -- "You know, the GDP was up by" -- or, "You know, you only created public sector jobs." It's real simple. The measurement is, is it feeling better? Am I more confident? Can I go -- instead of getting my hair cut every seven weeks, can I go back to getting it done once a week, or I mean once a month or once every three weeks? Can I take a vacation? Am I going to buy this car? Do I feel better I'm going to be able to make my mortgage payment? That's what's happening in America. And they do not associate that with -- nor would I expect them to, nor would I -- that was the recovery act who created those jobs. Now, I hate to say this, but there was another, a competing network's poll that I saw -- which I think a single poll makes no sense at all, by the way. I'm not making -- but if you have dueling polls -- showing that something -- only 25 percent of the American people, roughly, thought the American recovery act was not working; a slightly larger number thought it was working, and the rest didn't know. 14:36:48 I mean, look, folks -- that old expression -- the proof of the pudding's going to be in the eating. It's real simple, man. It really is basic. And what's gong to happen, we're going to find out every month whether the American people feel better about their circumstance, feel more secure in the job they have, feel more hopeful about getting a job, and are able to continue to send their kids back to college in September, be able to make sure they can pay their bills. That's the measure. MR. GIBBS: Laura. Q If you don't mind a question on another important topic: Given your knowledge of the Senate, what do you think the outlook is for a comprehensive energy bill, and particularly for a cap-and-trade -- (word inaudible)? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Excellent. (Scattered laughter.) MR. GIBBS: April? (Laughter.) (Cross talk.) 14:37:32 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, look, there's only one thing I learned after 36 years in the United States Senate: Anybody who thinks they can predict what's going to happen the next week in the United States Senate probably never served in the United States Senate. Look, I think we're going to get an energy bill. I think we're going to get an energy bill that's real. It's going to be difficult. It's going to be hard. The House has already passed a really good bill. And I think that this is one of those -- and, you know, I used to joke when I was a senator -- and some of you who covered the Senate remember these kinds of phrases -- I used to say -- they said -- well, you know, I say, it's going to happen; this is going to pass. "Well, how do you know?" And I said, I don't know, but I'll tell (when the ?) horses smell the water. I mean, there's a clear consensus out there, guys, that something has to be done on the energy side. There's a clear knowledge and understanding on the part of all the folks up there in the Hill that they've got to do something to deal with the amount of carbon that we emit into the air and the amount of oil we consume from aboard. And so, based on the fact the House has already acted, and there are serious people like John Kerry and others working on coming up with a Senate bill, I believe that there is a clear possibility we'll get a solid bill. But beyond putting odds on it, it's just -- it's just very hard to do that now. MR. GIBBS: April Q Vice President Biden. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes. Q You said this is pretty much basic, and you said there's still millions of Americans who believe that they're in a depression still. Do you -- with that, do you believe there should be targeted approaches for minorities, particularly African-Americans, as well as Hispanics and even teens when it comes to the unemployment rate? And also, on another subject, what are you thoughts about Mr. Barton's comments this morning? 14:39:23 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, since you know I never say what's on my mind -- (laughter) -- I probably shouldn't comment on Mr. Barton's comment. Q Oh, come on! Q Come on! Q Awww -- Q Come on! (Cross talk.) Q Is it that bad -- (off mike)? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: You're encouraging me. Q Yeah! VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: What can I say? (Laughter.) Q Well, okay -- you should -- VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look -- look -- (laughter) -- Q How big of a deal was it? (Laughter.) VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Thank God, my mother wasn't around. (Laughter.) Look, guys, I -- I find it incredibly insensitive, incredibly out of touch. The reason why I got involved in politics, the reason why the president and I ran, the president got involved, is: the one primary role for government is to protect people who are being taken advantage of, protect people who are in extreme straits and not able to take care of the circumstances themselves. I have been down in the Bayou area off and on for the last 36 years. My daughter went down to Tulane. I was worried she was not going to come home. I think I know the area relatively well, as an outsider. There's an entire way of life in jeopardy. This is just not about jobs. This is just not about whether or not the waterfowl is polluted and you can't fish. This is an entire way of life that's in jeopardy. And to sit there and say that we're being, in effect, as I understood the statement -- that he was ashamed we're being tough on an oil company, who caused the problem, I mean, I -- I -- I -- look, 14:41:15 I just think that it's pretty important to the people of Louisiana, all the way through Florida, and even in his home state of Texas, that people disassociate themselves from that. That's not the role. There's no shakedown. It's insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused. And I find it outrageous to suggest that if, in fact, we insisted that BP demonstrate their preparedness to put aside billions of dollars -- in this case 20 billion (dollars) -- to take care of the immediate needs of people who are drowning. These guys don't have deep pockets, the guy who runs the local marina, the guy who has one -- one shrimping boat, the guy who has one small business. He can't afford to lose $10(,000), 12(,000), 15(,000), 30,000 a month. And so the thing the president did -- and I was so proud of him -- is when we had the meeting with BP -- and they were cooperative in the meeting. They were cooperative. He said, look, what I want you to do is take care of those people now who, if they don't get help now, are going to be under. Gone. Gone. And I might add, this fund is not a ceiling. And people can go back to it as many times as they can prove they have been damaged and they need help. And the cleanup costs are all BP's costs, separate, apart, and above that $20 billion. What is wrong with that? How is that a -- that a shakedown? I mean, I -- I just -- I -- I -- I don't know. I -- I -- I find it pretty astounding, the comment. Q And also on targeted approaches, sir. I'm sorry. The first part of my question. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Oh. Look, a lot of this -- what we've already done has had a targeted approach. You start off and take a look at what we've done with focusing on unemployment, COBRA; what we've done in terms of FMAP -- excuse me. I'm starting to sound like a wonk up in this -- FMAP meaning, you know, be able to help states and communities keep available Medicaid for people. The bulk of these -- a significant portion of these construction jobs, a (contingent ?) portion of the weatherization programs (and/in ?) public housing, an awful lot of this is in fact benefitting the people who you describe. The people hurt most in the construction industry have been Hispanics. And this is -- this is -- a big chunk of this is in the Hispanic -- in effect, is construction and rehiring an awful lot of those people. But the truth of the matter is, there continues to be a real disparity between the unemployment rate before this happened and subsequent to it happening, between minorities and the rest of the country. And I might add -- you're going to think this is totally unrelated, but I don't think it is -- that's why we invested over a hundred billion dollars of the recovery act in education -- early education, in Race to the Top, in improving the quality of education -- because that's an investment that has to be made. Let me conclude by saying, look, I -- I mean this sincerely -- I don't know anybody -- I don't think the average American is prepared to settle for this country being second in anything. And they know, in order for us to the economic engine of the world and to lead the world again, we have to make a fundamental change in our education policy, our health-care policy and our energy policy. There is no way out, there is no way we can lead the world without those changes. And part of this act, which I'll be coming back and talking to you about later, lays down the building blocks for a new energy policy, for a new education policy as well as for a new health-care policy or the completion of the health-care policy. And if you don't call on her, I'm going to be in trouble. I'll take one more. MR. GIBBS: (Off mike.) Q I just had a question about the unemployment measure in the Senate that's being stuck, because people are worried about the deficit. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yeah. Q Do you think if it doesn't pass, it could actually stall the recovery? And what do you do to convince people that the deficit shouldn't be first and foremost in people's minds right now? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I'd make two points as briefly as I can. One, this is not a time to take -- to use the metaphor, take our foot off the accelerator here. We still need to continue to create jobs and spur job growth now. We are in consultation, we've met with Chairman Baucus now, as to what kind of compromise we can put together in what was roughly a $140-billion bill and with about 55 billion (dollars) in pay-fors. We're in the process now of trying to negotiate a compromise together. We've got 52 votes. But as you know, a majority no longer rules in the United States Senate, so you need 60. In the old days, that would have been enough, you know, 52. So we think we can put together a compromise that will continue -- won't be all we ask for but will continue to spur job growth. On the larger question, and maybe this is the best way for me to close -- on the larger question of deficits versus job creation and stimulus, it's kind of an important point that is -- that is understandably -- I'm not being a wise guy when I say this -- understandably difficult to sort of -- it's not intuitively arrived at. The American recovery act, which is over $780 billion, added less than one-half of 1 percent -- less than one-half of 1 percent of deficit- to-GDP by the year 2012. These one-off projects, the one-time projects of short-term deficit spending have virtually no impact on what we really have to attend to: the long-term debt, the accumulated debt. And so it's understandable why people say, look, we want you to spend, (at ?) emergency spending, 50 (billion dollars) or $60 billion to continue to spur growth, and don't worry about that having much of an impact on long-term debt. And that is an economic fact of life, but is a politically difficult issue. And that's what leadership is about. Leadership is about making the right decisions based on what the facts are, even at the time when their viewed to be unpopular. And so my hope is that my colleagues will make those distinctions. That's a very different thing than saying, by the way, we're going to increase -- or we're going to initiate a new entitlement program and not pay for it, or we're going to, you know, raise everyone's salary 5 percent and forever. I mean, they do have gigantic impacts on the long-term debt. So that's the deal. Anyway, thank you for having me. And -- (Cross talk.) Q Thank you. Q How's your son doing, sir? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: He's doing great. He goes back to work the end of the month. And he is -- he's in great shape. (Applause.) He's -- I'm really excited. Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: Yes, ma'am. Q One thing about yesterday. The -- in the meeting, did BP ask for the president to make the kind of comments that he did about the importance of a strong and viable BP? Was that a request from the company? MR. GIBBS: I was not in there the whole time. Not that I'm aware of. Obviously, I think everybody -- as the president said, everybody in the country, everybody in the Gulf has an 14:49:59 interest in a company that's able to uphold its responsibilities, particularly the ones that they outlined yesterday. Q So you don't know if the company -- saying "This would be important for us"? MR. GIBBS: Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Q And then the -- going back to the speech Tuesday night, when the president talked about a Gulf Coast restoration plan, he didn't really explain what that would mean. Is this a government program? How much money are we talking about? What kinds of -- what sort of scope does this have? MR. GIBBS: Well, as you know, Governor Mabus, the secretary of the Navy -- former Governor Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, is here and will see the president -- may have already seen him, I think. The president has tasked the secretary to develop and devise a process for a long-term Gulf restoration plan that includes all of the stakeholders: states, local communities, Gulf Coast residents, a whole host of those that have significant equities in the environment and the ecosystem. One of the things that is not covered in economic claims are the natural-resource damage assessments that will be done on the Gulf environment. And BP is liable for those damage assessments. And I believe that will be the basis for a lot of the restoration that we've seen. Q That would be -- (off mike). MR. GIBBS: Well, again, those are -- I wouldn't close off anything. Obviously, it's the beginning of a process that will take some time. And I think it's safe to assume and safe to say that the recovery for the Gulf will take years. But the basis for -- the basis for that will be those NRDAs. Q But I think when people in the region heard him talk about that, they took it to mean something bigger than just let's think about it. MR. GIBBS: Well, and I don't -- Q It's a topic that people have talked about down there for a long time. MR. GIBBS: I don't foreclose that that's -- that will be part of it. 14:52:07 I wouldn't get into what we would fund, based on the fact that there is a process right now going forward to create that -- Q So he -- (off mike) -- parameters, in other words. 14:52:14 MR. GIBBS: Well, I think the parameters that he roughly laid out in the speech was to leave the Gulf in a place that was better than it was prior to this accident. Q Okay. And then just really quickly: You just mentioned about the natural resource degradation being a separate liability for BP. MR. GIBBS: Yes. Q There was some confusion about this yesterday because both in the fact sheet from here and the statements that BP was putting out, it looked like the fund was supposed to be paying for that stuff as well. MR. GIBBS: The fund can -- let me -- I'll try to -- because I think I know where you were going. There's 20 billion (dollars) that's set aside at a minimum for economic claims. As we said yesterday, and you heard the vice president reiterate, that's not a cap. So if the economic damages are more, then BP is liable for that amount. Let's say, for instance, those economic damages were 15. That 5 (billion dollars) left over could go to -- could go for the natural resources assessments if all the economic claims are covered. But it is -- it's not -- it is not two pots of money that compete against each other. The prioritization in the escrow fund are for the economic losses -- loss of income, loss of jobs -- for individuals and small businesses. Yes, sir. Q I'd like to come back to the remarks on the Hill, the "shakedown." I mean, do you think and does the White House think there's any risk of alienating businesses, by dragging BP up here or hauling them over the coals? And also the Congressman's remarks sort of raised the question of the legality. I mean, could you have stepped over a constitutional boundary? MR. GIBBS: No. They're responsible for -- let me be clear. They're responsible for the economic loss that happened in the gulf. That's what they agreed to pay into. There's no constitutional problem. I don't have a lot to add to what the vice president said. I think he was very clear on this. I think Republicans are going to have to ask themselves whether Congressman Barton 14:54:35 should be the ranking member of a committee that's doing what it's doing today, given the fact that he believes we owe an apology to BP rather than BP owing an apology to the gulf. Q (Off mike) -- for him to resign, step down? MR. GIBBS: Well, I will -- I will let Republicans make that decision. Q You usually don't comment on things like that though, Robert? Why take this particular -- MR. GIBBS: Because this is a fairly pointed comment about the notion of whether or not BP is going to be responsible for the damage that they've caused. The president and the vice president believe so. I think the people in the gulf believe so. Congressman Barton -- who, let's understand, is the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee -- apparently believes and did so by apologizing to BP. I don't -- I -- it -- Q (Off mike) -- in your mind, in the White House's mind? MR. GIBBS: As somebody who's going to oversee as we look into what the company is doing, to begin by apologizing to the company, I think it's an interesting way to start. Q Can I follow that? Congressman Barton seemed to raise a question about the propriety of having the attorney general in the room yesterday. MR. GIBBS: Well -- Q Just on that narrow point, are you concerned -- MR. GIBBS: Not at all. Not at all. But let's understand that there were -- the president and the vice president and the relevant Cabinet agencies -- the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior -- I'm trying to go around the room -- the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice -- I'm going to miss some -- Commerce was there. They're relevant agencies that have purview over what's going on in the Gulf. And as I think we said pretty clearly yesterday, this wasn't a -- there weren't -- there were -- this was not a discussion about what happened that night on the rig, 14:56:26 whether or not they cut corners, took shortcuts, tried to take the cheap way out. That -- none of that was discussed. And those Cabinet members were in there only for the first 20 minutes (with/was ?) what the president -- Q But the secretary of Commerce does not have an open criminal investigation of this company. The question was -- MR. GIBBS: No, the secretary -- Q The question was, do they have that hanging over their head -- (off mike) -- having the attorney general -- MR. GIBBS: No, the secretary of -- Commerce has within it the -- NOAA, which closes the Gulf to fishing and affects those that earn their living. Q (Off mike) -- open criminal investigation. He's sitting across the table from them. Doesn't that make them more likely to be willing to write a $20 billion check? MR. GIBBS: No. Q Okay. On containment, on Tuesday morning I think you said on "Good Morning America" that more than 90 percent of the oil would be contained by the end of June. MR. GIBBS: No, I said -- I think I said in the coming weeks but -- or end of June, right. Q I think it was in response to a question that said end of June. Do you still stand behind that? Because how do we really know how much oil is in the Gulf when the numbers keep changing about how much is spewing into the Gulf? It's 90 percent of what? MR. GIBBS: Well, 90 percent of what's coming out right now. That's what we -- our containment strategy is based on what's coming out of the leaking well as you and I speak, Ed. Let's understand that the -- Q So is this 90 percent of, say, 60,000 barrels, if that's what's coming out per day -- MR. GIBBS: Well, it's up to 60,000 barrels. We -- the flow rate group, using new information and pressure readings -- Secretary Chu asked and directed BP to take a -- take pressure monitor readings from inside their two top vents inside the top cap itself. He knows what the pressure is outside of that. By measuring the pressure inside of that, you get a far better scientific conclusion as to the amount that's coming out. We know what's coming to the top -- from the top cap, and that allows you to make as best a scientific assessment as you can, understanding, as we've always said, that we are estimating a flow rate for something we cannot see or touch. In terms of containment, right now we -- the top cap is drawing oil and gas to the surface to -- from the LMR -- the lower marine riser cap to the Enterprise. The Q4000 came on line yesterday, and I should have an estimate -- we'll have an estimate later in the day about the rate at which, going through the choke and kill line and off of a device that was set up for the top kill procedure -- using those lines to direct oil to the surface, that adds an additional approximately 5(,000) to 10,000 barrels to our containment strategy. By the end of June -- and again, I think you guys have seen all of our correspondence with BP directing them to move forward more quickly with a containment strategy. There is a riser that's being fabricated now that will be hooked to another vessel that will increase, by the end of June, 40 to 53 -- 40(,000) to 53,000 barrels per day. And there are additional containment strategies by the middle of July that would take that figure to the capacity of 60(,000) to 80,000 barrels a day. Q Last thing. Secretary Mabus. Is he planning to step down as secretary of the Navy? MR. GIBBS: No. Q Is this -- wouldn't this be a full-time job, the Gulf recovery? MR. GIBBS: I -- the president talked to the governor about this, and they both agreed that he had the ability to do both. Yes, ma'am. Q Robert, I know there was some review early on with the EPA regarding the dispersant. I just wonder, at this point, is the administration comfortable with the amount of dispersant that is being released into the Gulf? And are you comfortable with the substance itself? Because a lot of marine biologists that we've talked to say that this is a very toxic chemical, that this could actually be more harmful to wildlife in the Gulf than the oil itself. 15:00:31 MR. GIBBS: Well, that -- I don't know what the -- I wouldn't know what the scientific basis for that is. I think far and away the most harmful substance that is being emitted into the environment in the Gulf is the oil. That's why to clean the beaches you've got to wear a hazardous materials suit. The EPA early on -- and I think you probably have a copy of the directive -- I think the number was to reduce by 75 percent the amount of both surface and subsea dispersants that were being used. NOAA continues -- as does EPA -- continues to do water sampling of -- in and around the areas of the Gulf to ensure that we're accurately monitoring the health and safety of the Gulf and anybody involved in working. We were concerned about and remain concerned about the sheer amount of dispersants that have had to be used. And that's why the EPA came through with a directive to significantly reduce the amount that we emit into the environment. Q So do you think at the current quantity it's safe to release that dispersant into the water? MR. GIBBS: Well, again, that -- yes, we believe that the dispersant that's being used at the amount that it's being used at now is safe, yes. Q This particular chemical, this COREXIT, as it's called, because it's patented, scientists are not able to see the actual formula of what this is, so it's difficult to know what's in it. Is there any move to try to -- MR. GIBBS: Well, how does the marine biologist say, then, it's more toxic? Q Well, given the studies that they've done based on what's happened in Alaska, they say -- they call it COREXIT in Alaska, but they also call it "Hides-It" because it essentially hides it from the surface of the water and pushes all the chemicals underneath. MR. GIBBS: Well, but again, that's the purpose of the -- a dispersant -- Q It is the purpose, but it keeps it in the water. MR. GIBBS: If you've got something we can put in the water that takes the oil out, come see me and Bill right after this, because we should sign you up. You add this -- we're doing this for the first time at a subsea level. And April asked a question of Admiral Allen about this yesterday. The point is not to have it accumulate on the surface and allow it to spread either onto beaches or into marshes. At that depth, it can biodegrade more quickly, which is exactly what you want the oil to do. Chip? Q On the $20 billion not being a cap, what's to stop BP four years from now, after they've contributed the full $20 billion, from saying, "That's it. Tat's all we're giving. If you want more, take us to court." MR. GIBBS: Well, we certainly would retain the right to do something like that. We -- Q But it's up to them whether it's a cap, right? And they could declare at any point it's a cap. MR. GIBBS: Well, I will say this, Chip. One of the things that we need Congress to do -- and Senator Menendez from New Jersey tried today again to get consent for the Senate to move forward on 15:19:42 lifting the liability cap that's in the Oil Pollution Act. Right now we know it's 75 million (dollars). Obviously what BP has pledged greatly exceeds the 75 million (dollars). But we need -- we need that -- for our own purposes, we need that cap to be lifted. We will continue to monitor the claims process and direct BP with whatever they need to do. Obviously we have -- as part of the deal, we have some collateral. Q On the oil rig workers, you've stated very clearly and I think other administration officials have too that the administration believed that BP was legally responsible for compensating the oil rig workers who are out of work because of the moratorium. Yesterday, Carol Browner said, well, there are legal issues here. MR. GIBBS: Right, and we're -- Q And where does this stand now? Are you backing off your position? And is that because BP said you're wrong? MR. GIBBS: No, we're -- well, we're looking into the legal issues. I think one of the things that is tremendously important out of yesterday was $100-million commitment for those rig workers. Q Right, but that was not a legal obligation. That was a goodwill gesture. MR. GIBBS: Yes, it was. And it's -- it was one that was part of what we worked out yesterday. Q Well, are the comments you've made in this room before -- saying that BP is legally responsible -- is that null and void at this point? MR. GIBBS: As I said, we're looking into any of the legal issues. Q So you're backing off the affirmative statement that you made. MR. GIBBS: I would just say we're looking into the legal -- Q Have you been in the president's presence when he either heard about or responded to the Joe Barton comments? And what did he say? MR. GIBBS: I briefed him on them earlier. And he shook his head and couldn't understand why anybody would say something like that. Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: Well, he said, I can't understand why anybody would say that. Yeah. Q Shakedowns aside, isn't it true that BP essentially didn't fight the $20-billion fund? MR. GIBBS: I don't -- I -- let me -- I want to disassociate the premise of your question from the beginning. Q Yeah, the -- MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Look, I don't want to characterize how they came to -- how they came to the meeting yesterday. They have said, and we have put into place an assurance, that the economic damages that have been caused will be compensated. Q But BP essentially has laid down many of its legal rights voluntarily. MR. GIBBS: Yes. I mean, they -- there's no doubt that they -- yes, they -- the -- again, the cap that I spoke about with Chip a minute ago I think would be exceeded -- well, they've given states money to advertise for tourism in the four affected states that exceeds the $75 million cap in and of itself. Q Just, bottom line, they're not really fighting. MR. GIBBS: Again, I don't want to be a BP spokesperson. I think it is -- I -- there's no doubt that -- I will -- let me characterize it this way. We did not -- we did not give up the ability to do the natural-resource damage assessments and give them the bill. Nobody gave up anything in terms of them paying for the cleanup costs that they're liable for. There was no discussion about anything involving -- and they'll get a bill for this -- the penalty for the pollution that's been emitted into the Gulf. And all we did for claimants was add to their ability to appeal. Q You've said that it's in, certainly, BP's interest, but also the government's interest, for BP to stay solvent and no -- not go into bankruptcy -- MR. GIBBS: Right. Q -- as that would imperil the ability of the victims to get their recovery. So -- MR. GIBBS: It would, but I would say this. The important -- one of the important parts of the -- what was worked out yesterday was -- I mean, obviously BP is a company that possesses tremendous assets. If I'm not mistaken, I think they have the largest-producing oil well in the world -- obviously, a number of assets, in order to take something like that and make it the largest-producing well in the world. We have that collateral as they pay into the fund, to ensure and to make sure that nothing risks the amount that they've put in there. Q They -- I mean, they're giving it over four years. But setting that aside, I just -- given the federal government's interest in BP staying solvent, didn't the government, the administration, exacerbate BP's financial position last week by taking such an aggressive view of liability -- Salazar, you at this podium -- about the oil-rig workers, a position it now disavows, as Chip says, Carol Browner saying -- MR. GIBBS: No, I don't -- Q Let me just finish the thought. MR. GIBBS: Go ahead. Q Carol Browner said there are very significant legal questions about their liability; every lawyer will tell you that's true. BP's stock dove 16 percent on the day that Ken Salazar made those comments. MR. GIBBS: No, I was -- 15:08:37 MR. GIBBS: Well, let's understand. Understand that the amount that, even if you fully compensated rig workers -- right? -- you're not even -- you're not even close to a billion; let alone 20 billion (dollars). Right? So let's understand that what put the -- what might imperil the company financially is not paying for the sidelined rig workers at 33 drilling points in the Gulf of Mexico. What it -- hold on, let me finish my thought. What it -- what they're responsible for, and what I think has caused -- I don't want to get into commenting about their stock. But I think what has caused -- well, I -- let me not get into commenting about their stock. I think that they are responsible for the nation's greatest environmental disaster. And they are going to have to pay to compensate those that were impacted economically. They'll pay the government the damages for what it's done to the environment, they'll pay the clean-up costs and they'll be fined. And that's their price for doing business in a way that caused this damage. Q I guess it's a bottom line with a bow on it. Does the administration recognize that it has a special responsibility to not take a very aggressive and legally flawed position that could exacerbate an already precarious financial position? MR. GIBBS: I don't think we've done that. I don't think we've done that in any way. (Name inaudible.) Q Yesterday, did the president spend any time alone with Mr. Hayward? Or was it only with the chairman? MR. GIBBS: No, he spoke for -- the first 20 minutes was with all of the six -- I think it was six -- BP representatives and their outside counsel, and then 25 minutes with the chair. Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Q Good? Good? Okay. A couple of things. The fund -- (laughter) -- the fund doesn't exist, right? MR. GIBBS: You didn't think Major was (going to pass ?)? Q Who? MR. GIBBS: Go ahead. Q The fund doesn't exist. The negotiations, according to the people I've talked to at Justice today, are going on about the contours of it. Is that your understanding? MR. GIBBS: Of? Q The fund (so far ?). MR. GIBBS: Yes. Yes. Q Okay. MR. GIBBS: Well, understanding, the framework agreement that was -- that was -- that was laid out; the appeals process, that has been laid out; the payments in the collateral -- Q Those things have been locked down. MR. GIBBS: Yes. Obviously, we are working through the setup of the independent -- the independent claims process that would be overseen by Ken Feinberg. Q Right -- and the three-member panel. MR. GIBBS: And the three-member panel that allows the claimant to -- Q Do you have a timeline for that, agreed upon with BP, that the American public can evaluate as far as how's it going and when they should be ready to see this, and the folks in (the Gulf ?)? MR. GIBBS: Well, we've told -- I believe, in the negotiations, we told them and expect that Mr. Feinberg will set this up as quickly as possible. He obviously -- one of the reasons that -- he's selected as somebody who has expertise and experience in this type of work. The claims process that we have now continues as we transition to an independent body and that anybody that's involved in the claims process now -- say you filed -- Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: -- right -- say you filed a claim two days ago. You still have the 90 days to get our claim processed. And if -- as I understand it, if you don't like the outcome of what BP says, you can enter the appeals process in the new system. Q Right. And for the -- I heard this commented by folks in the Gulf now -- they're sort of wondering -- all right, there are these places; there are these numbers; there's a process that we've somewhat grown accustomed to. Will all of those portals, if you will, to this claims process remain, or will they be replaced? 15:12:29 MR. GIBBS: I don't -- my guess is that they will remain, Major. The -- what we envision is a fairly seamless process, because -- and I forget the number that Admiral Allen read yesterday about the -- Q (Off mike) -- dollars, yeah. MR. GIBBS: -- yeah, the number of -- the number of claims that are in the process, the number of claims that are being adjudicated. I think we believe it's important -- and certainly did yesterday in the agreement -- believe it's important to get an independent process to evaluate those claims. Q One other thing. Technically, on the agreement, will that be released in written form for the public to view at any point? MR. GIBBS: I can check on that. I wouldn't see why not. Q One thing. On Svanberg's comments yesterday, did the president see them? Did he, in his meeting with Svanberg, detect any of the clumsy language that he used in reference to "small people"? Did the president think that was an accident on his part? x x part? And does he have any -- (off mike)? MR. GIBBS: I have not -- I have not talked to the president specifically about that. I don't -- the president did not -- I talked to him about the meeting, and the president did not mention anything about this. Q To shift gears a little, the -- does the administration have any comments about Israel's decision to allow, I guess, construction materials in by land but leaving the blockade in place? MR. GIBBS: Look, I think that we welcome the principles that were -- were announced by the Israeli government today. They're a step in the right direction. We will continue to work in the coming days with our Israeli friends to continue to improve a humanitarian situation in Gaza that the president has said is unsustainable. Q For the deepwater rigs that are under inspection now, how is that going? Have -- have you -- have they had a chance to look at it? Will any of those open up again? MR. GIBBS: Well, the -- the commission that is in the process -- the commission -- that will be part of the commission's work, to -- Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: -- to discuss the regulatory framework around their operation. And I will say this. As I said -- as I've said and as the president said in his speech, that's something that doesn't have to wait for a six-month deadline. It can be something that he would encourage that they do quickly. Q Is there any indication that any of the companies are either pulling out, stopping, taking wells that were due to be built, or planned, at least, for the Gulf and moving into other countries? MR. GIBBS: You mean the -- the MODU -- the mobile drilling units? Q No. That exploration that was going to be American- produced oil now going to other oil-producing countries (because of this ?). MR. GIBBS: Again, I think we're probably saying the same thing, largely, because -- I don't know the answer if anybody has. You've obviously got -- what -- you remember what the Deepwater Horizon looked like. I do not know if those drilling units -- if any of those drilling units have left for other places. Q Let me just frame it this way, then. Does the president fear that the government response to this will drive away what would have been American-produced oil and then now make the country more dependent on foreign oil? MR. GIBBS: Well, what would make us completely dependent on foreign oil is if this happened again. Right? So the president believed that, in weighing all of the economic and environmental concerns and all the safety concerns, especially given that we did not have -- and still don't know exactly what happened, that continuing drilling on those 33 -- on those 33 sites was not -- was not what should be done. Q Robert, just one question? Just one? MR. GIBBS: Let me go -- let me go right in front of you, and then I'll -- don't worry, Lester, I'll -- Q Thank you very much. MR. GIBBS: Sure. Q (Declining to be questioned ?). Q Question on the stimulus. There have been repeated attempts to try and cut it and use some of that money to pay for other emergency spending, like unemployment benefits, all of which have failed. But in the last few weeks, Majority Leader Hoyer and Chairman Obey have both said they're open to the idea of redirecting stimulus funds to pay for other jobs proposals. Are you guys open to that idea as well, or? MR. GIBBS: Look, I know that we've got a plan. You heard the vice president talk about, that, we believe, is helping what was a very fragile economy become more stable, that we need to continue to implement the plan that we have and not take away particularly, for instance, money away from very important projects like education right now. Q Thank you, Robert. MR. GIBBS: Karin (sp). Q Thanks, Robert. I want to quickly clarify the answer to Major. In terms of the framework that was agreed to yesterday, is anything at this point actually signed? And will it ever actually be signed between the BP and the administration, or is it more of just an agreement? MR. GIBBS: I can -- I can find out if there's a piece of paper. I mean, I -- I don't know, beyond the fact sheet. Let me check and see. Q And prior to their voluntary agreement yesterday, it's been the administration's position that you had the legal authority -- MR. GIBBS: Yes. Q -- to compel them to do this -- MR. GIBBS: Yes. Q -- if they didn't do it on their own. Can you provide us -- it doesn't have to be at this exact moment -- but what the actual code, the actual statutory -- MR. GIBBS: Yeah, it's within the -- I -- let me see if -- Q It's all within the Oil Pollution Act? MR. GIBBS: Yes. Yes. Q It's not in any other place? MR. GIBBS: It's in the Oil Pollution Act. Q Okay. I wanted to be sure and get that one in. MR. GIBBS: Okay. Q Okay, thanks. MR. GIBBS: Glenn. Q Robert, again referring to the Oil Pollution Act, the threshold for the liability cap being lifted in that law, as I understand, is a threshold of gross negligence. You guys have said -- used various terms to describe BP's behavior in the Gulf; "recklessness" is one of them. MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Q Do you think at this point in time that that gross negligence bar has been reached? 15:18:36 MR. GIBBS: Well, let me be careful not to get into the Department of Justice's investigation. And they'll come to that determination. As you mentioned, Glenn, gross negligence is one of the automatic ways that that cap is lifted. I don't think -- it's our view that we should not wait for that investigation as hundreds of thousands have been impacted and are -- continue to be surprised that people object to lifting a 20-year-old number for a disaster in a far different place that we all know is greatly going to exceed that amount of money. Q Robert -- Q Just one -- just one second. One quick follow on that. MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Q The bill that's proceeding, the energy bill that will emerge from the Senate, will almost certainly include a liability cap -- the liability cap being lifted. Would you accept that alone without comprehensive energy reform? Does -- would that cap be -- MR. GIBBS: No, no, I don't -- I don't think this is part of comprehensive energy reform. I think this is -- lifting the liability cap shouldn't have -- should not be impacted -- should not impact the debate about our energy policy for the future. This should be -- Q So it would be a separate piece of legislation? MR. GIBBS: Yes. And I think what Senator Menendez was trying to do was get them to act on that separate piece of legislation today. David. Q Robert. Thanks -- MR. GIBBS: Hold on. (Don't worry ?). Q Thanks, Robert. Other than what -- MR. GIBBS: It's not like you're going to go anywhere. But yeah, go ahead. (Soft laughter.) Q Other than what Representative Barton said this morning, other Republicans and conservatives have said similar things. MR. GIBBS: (Chuckles.) Q Well -- Q They're not interested. Q No, I am. I'm sorry. MR. GIBBS: Go. (Laughs.) Q (I have duties ?). Q Michele -- Michele -- MR. GIBBS: You hung her out, Savannah. Go ahead. Q Michele Bachmann called the fund just a "redistribution of wealth fund." On Fox they're calling it Chavez-like, as in Venezuela's Chavez. MR. GIBBS: Not the boxer? Q Not the boxer. MR. GIBBS: (Chuckles.) Q Can you speak to the larger theme here of Republican and conservative opposition to this as yet another Obama socialistic big- government initiative? I mean -- MR. GIBBS: I don't -- it's hard to tell what planet these people live on. It's hard to -- it's hard to understand -- it's hard to understand their viewpoint, but it may explain their votes on financial regulation. It explains how they view whether or not the banks ought to be able to write their own rules and play the game the way they played it in -- several years ago that caused our economy to crash. It's understanding how we got an MMS that was handing out 15:21:18 drugs in favor of drilling permits. I don't think that's the type of regulatory structure we ought to have. And it certainly sends an awful message to any company around the world, particularly one as large as BP, that they can come here, do what they've done to our economy, the environment and, as the vice president so eloquently said, a way of life for so many. And if you listen to Congressman Barton, Congressman Bachmann, Congressman Price, you'd think -- you'd think somehow BP was owed a handkerchief and a crying shoulder. And I think, as -- Q What have your impressions been -- Q The VP was what? MR. GIBBS: The VP was so eloquent in talking about how much it threatened a way of life. It's a delusional thing. And again, I think the Republican party is going to have to, on Capitol Hill, look at whether or not somebody that has the viewpoint that Joe Barton has, if he should sit on -- not just sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee but be the ranking member as we look into, and as that committee looks into actively, what happened on the Deepwater Horizon if his opening bid is an "I'm sorry" to BP. I -- maybe Congressman Barton should drive to the Gulf Coast of Texas or to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, and ask the people down there whether his opening bid should have been an apology to BP. Sam, and then I'll go to Lester. Q All right. Two questions. One is, what have your impressions been of Tony Hayward's testimony so far? He's been criticized by some on -- MR. GIBBS: The truth is, I've been -- I have not watched -- I watched a very little bit of the opening statements, in where -- which I saw Congressman Barton, but I have not -- I have not seen much of what's happened. Q Okay. And then the second question is, Secretary Clinton was speaking to Ecuadorian television just today, and she said that Department of Justice, quote, "will be bringing a lawsuit against" the Arizona immigration act. Do you have any understanding of where that process stands? MR. GIBBS: I would point you to DOJ to discuss what -- how they're looking into the law. Lester. Q Thank you very much, Robert. The Washington Post reports that South Carolina's one-time chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Donald Fowler, thinks that the state's U.S. Senate Democrat nominee, Alvin Greene, is a Republican plant, even though he got 100,000 votes. How -- and my question: How does the president react to this? And will he support nominee Greene? MR. GIBBS: I think the South Carolina party is rightly looking into the circumstances of that nomination. Q You're not going tell us what the president's going to do? MR. GIBBS: Well, I don't know that the South Carolina Democratic Party has settled on him as a nominee. Thank you. END. Cuts 15:25:54 ws gibbs at poidum

White House Briefing with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs & Vice President Joe Biden STIX White House Briefing with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs & Vice President Joe Biden STIX RS37 / 85 SLUGGED: 1400 WH BRIEF STIX RS37 85 DISC # 947 & 910 AR: 16X9 **** FED TO NY ON RS 5114 **** MR. GIBBS: Good afternoon, folks. Is this working? (Referring to the microphone.) All right. You recognize our special guest. I want to turn this over to Vice President Biden. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: You act surprised! (Laughs.) (Off-mike comments from the press corps.) VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: (Laughs.) Well, I'm glad to see the reverence for the vice presidency still exists. (Laughter.) 14:12:18 Hey, folks, I'm here to talk about the recovery act. And I'm sure that was the first thing on your mind this morning. But very seriously, I think most of the skeptics have come around to the point that all the talk about the recovery act being dead on arrival and how it was going to be this great boondoggle and all the fraud and abuse that was going to occur and it wasn't going to have much impact, well, the fact is the recovery act is working. We've gone from hemorrhaging over 700,000 jobs a month, the first several months we got here and turned on the lights in the West Wing here, to adding more -- several hundred thousand jobs a month the last several months. We've gone from a GDP that was shrinking at 6.4 percent the first quarter we came into office, to a GDP that grew 3 percent last quarter and averaged 4 percent over the last three quarters. And we believe, and so does most of the blue chip consensus reports out there, that this growth is going to be sustained at that 3-percent-plus range for the indefinite future. And so, again, from the intense skepticism and the doubt of many, I think, expressed 14 months ago -- particularly some of the folks who didn't want to vote for this legislation -- I think it's fair to say there's general consensus among most economists that a significant portion of the growth in the GDP, as well as the job growth, is attributable to the recovery act. Thus far, we have allocated over $620 billion of the act. And as a result, the recovery act is responsible for somewhere between 2.3 (million) and 2.8 million jobs that were either saved or created. 14:14:07 So, folks, the act is working. And because the recovery act is working and has done all of these things, there's a lot of folks, including some on Capitol Hill, who are of the view somehow that it's over; it worked, and must be finished. The point of my talking to you today is that, although more people are going to be put to work this summer, the pace on the ball I talked about early on -- the pace on the ball continues to increase, not decrease, as the act rolls out in the final -- this final summer. Last summer, we had 1,000 -- and these slides, I don't know if you can read them -- they're awfully small -- behind me. But these slides show that we had 1,750 highway projects that were under way. It's called shovel-ready. When the governors finally let the contracts, and did it by the numbers, there were 1,750 projects under way. This summer, we'll be starting 10,000 projects that will be under way in the states. And as of Labor Day, of those 10,000 projects under way, 3,500 will be projects that are open to traffic, although not totally completed, and 500 will be totally completed; with 6,000 continuing to be completed, and employing people, through the fall. Last summer, we started improving just shy of 10,000 miles of highway in this country. This summer, we'll start and ultimately improve 30,000 additional miles. 14:15:43 Last summer, we started over 100 clean-water and drinking-water projects nationwide. This summer, we will have under way 3,000 additional clean-water projects. And that means tens of thousands of more families in America will be able to be assured that their drinking water is safe when these projects are finished. Last summer, we weatherized, under the weatherization program, in the act, 3,000 American homes. By the end of this summer, we'll have weatherized 82,000 additional homes. And that translates into significant savings. That means 82,000 families out there will be saving an average 400 bucks a year on their energy bills that they would not have other -- otherwise been able to save. And it means jobs. It means jobs, the people doing the weatherization. It means jobs that accrue from the additional $400 savings that now goes back into the economy, keeping open the neighborhood lunch counter as well as the movie theater and the hardware store. And that means that this summer, a lot more people are going to be working on highways, building clean-water projects, weatherizing homes. And they'll be drawing paychecks and -- that they wouldn't have otherwise drawn. And that means a lot more money, again, into the local economies. 14:17:03 Economists tend to measure these things in terms of the actual job that is, in fact, created. But the truth is, that job created means money spent in the community, means someone stays employed, someone out there is actually working. And it means a lot more lunch breaks at the local diner, because there weren't any lunch breaks; there weren't the jobs that existed; and a lot more trips to the barbershop, to the movies, to the department store and helping those businesses they go to maintain their employment base and increase their employment base. So the ripple effects are -- have been felt thus far since the recovery act passed. But my point is this summer, you're going to see even more ripple effect out there. This is -- the act is now -- as I said, the pace of the ball is moving into its highest gear here, in terms of direct investment in projects. So again don't take my word for it. I mean, private companies across the country are hiring people. You can go to recovery.gov, which I know many of you have, and you probably do that in your leisure time, wondering what's going on, right? But you've gone to second-guess, which you should, whether or not what we're asserting is correct, look at the filings. Well, you know, recovery.gov -- check it out for yourself. The illustration behind me just takes four of the 10,000 recovery act reports on specific projects. It's an illustration. But there are 10,000 ones just like -- 10,000 reports just like the one behind me. And these reports will tell you two things: how much money the outfit got, what they spent it on, and how many people they hired to get the project done. And so folks, these reports show that in just a three-month period -- January, February and March of this year -- approximately 680 -- slightly under 680,000 jobs you can count, put a name to, look at who it was, where it was, what they did -- 600 -- roughly 680,000 jobs were created. And the other point I keep making to my colleagues in running this recovery operation is that much of what we're doing here, much of what the recovery act is doing, we should be doing if we were growing at 10 percent, if we had full employment. 14:19:21 The infrastructure in this country needs help. It increases productivity, increases safety. It increases the safety from on the highway to the drinking water to providing access for a lot of people to a lot of other means. So another important point I'd like to make here is that we're going to reach some fairly important milestones this summer in terms of goals that we set. The president tomorrow's going to travel out to Columbus, Ohio for the groundbreaking of the -- of the 10,000th recovery act road project -- the 10,000th road project. And, you know, again, I've been around a long time in public life. I was a senator for six full terms. And I tell you, people back home know whether or not the guys in the corner with the hard hat on, putting in a crosswalk or building a four-lane highway, whether or not they're working. They understand there's activity. 14:20:13 They know whether or not it's real. And there's a lot of real, positive things happening in people's communities that are improving their quality of life. And these road projects are among them. On June 30th, we will have built, expanded or renovated 1,100 community health-care centers. Now, I know some of you have traveled with me and with others. Go into these communities, rural or in the municipal areas, and you'll find that they are gems. The public -- the people in those neighborhoods desperately need them and rely on them. And the bottom line here is, there are 2.5 million people who weren't having access to regular health care that are -- have access to it now as a consequence of those investments in over 1,100 rural and urban community health centers. In August, there will be an additional 100 -- excuse me, 1 million homes that will have smart meters attached to them. Now, you know, when you say "smart meter" to the average person, they go, "What -- what -- what are you talking about?" A smart meter just lets you be able to know and regulate the consumption of your energy, so on balance it's considerably cheaper. It will tell you how much energy you are using, when you're using your dishwasher, when you're using your -- you know, your hot-water heater, when you're kicking it up. So there -- these are real savings, real long-term investments. And we are on path to meet our goal of making sure that in the United States of America, we end up with over -- I believe the number is close to 18,000 -- 18 million smart-meter -- excuse me, I misspoke. Yeah, no, that's right, 18 million smart meters by 2014. And this has -- this has multiple consequences, not just in saving money but it also has consequences in terms of reducing energy consumption, dealing with the environment, importation of foreign oil, et cetera. In August of this year, because of the weatherization projects that are under way, there will be more than 200,000 homeowners -- 200,000 new homeowners that will be saving $400 a year on average in their energy bill. And to real people, that's real money. That matters. And the last slide I have behind me here shows that the recovery act is already responsible for up to 2,800,000 jobs. The low was 2002 in the estimates, but somewhere if you average it out to be -- just take the average of about 2.5 million jobs saved or created. Or put it another way: 2.5 million people who would not be working today but for the existence of the recovery act. 14:23:08 And so we're on track, as the graph shows, to meeting the commitment I made when we announced this of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs by the end of this year. 14:23:20 And so we know there's a lot more work to be done. The economic crisis that we inherited, and it's our responsibility. It's not, we inherit it, therefore it's the other -- we inherited an economic crisis. But it turned out to be deeper than we knew or most of the econometric models showed, most of the blue chip estimates. It was deeper and it was more profound than we thought. As a matter of fact -- and the president would kid early on. He said we bought in too high. You know, if we had -- if we had been sworn in on March the 20th like the old days back in the '30s, it would have been clearer just how bad this was before we took over. 14:24:02 But the truth of the matter is, that while there was a consensus among the experts that we're now in a recovery or recovering, we don't measure success by the growth in the GDP. That is necessary, but not sufficient. We set out -- when we ran together for these jobs, we said we're going to measure success based upon whether or not there's growth in the middle class, those people aspiring to the middle class have a fighting chance to get there and those who get there have a fighting chance to stay there. We're a long way from that yet -- we're a long way. But the assertion I'm making today is, there is no doubt that the economic policy we put in place in this recovery act is helping us move in that direction. 14:24:47 And that means that though -- but in the meantime we can't let up. We have to continue to invest in job creation, continue to support small business, which is the engine of job creation, and continue to help states and localities, who remain under extreme, difficult constraints. I, as most of you know -- you (got/get ?) bored to death having to watch me do this initially -- but I'm on the phone every week with somewhere between four and seven governors, depending on -- both parties. I've now spoken to every governor, 14:25:11 I think -- probably there's going to be some exception -- every governor at least twice so far, going into great detail about their use of this money, how they're using it, are they using it wisely, what do they need, and responding to them. I've spoken to well over 140 mayors and county execs. I do this once a week for a couple hours a (day ?) -- or an hour each with them. And privately, every single one of them have thanked me for the act. But one of the things they've all said, every one of them: You think my situation is bad in 2010, Mr. Vice President; it's worse in 2011. So when we talk about total government investment in the economy -- total government, state, local and federal - 14:25:59 there is a real shortfall that's going to exist among the states and municipalities this year. So that's why -- a lot of folks ask why do we think we need to continue to have some countercyclical help for the states and localities. Because essential services -- teachers, cops, firefighters -- they're going to be laying an awful lot of those folks off. It not only has an economic impact on the community, it has a societal impact in terms of the public safety and the attitude about -- that community about themselves, when you lay that many people off. So the recovery act is working, but -- and it's going to continue to work. It's not over. A lot's going to happen this summer. And even after the summer, there's more to come with the act, which I'll talk about another time, because as we continue to lay down the building blocks for a new economy, the thesis we've operated on is not going to be sufficient to lead the world in the 21st century by rebuilding the 14:27:00 We need to invest in new platforms to maintain our economic superiority. And that's why we continue to invest in these broadband projects, bringing us in line with more -- you think we're the most advanced nation in the world, yet we're way behind an awful lot of other countries. That goes to productivity, it goes to job creation. We also are going to continue to invest in solar and wind projects of consequence; new battery and electric-vehicle plants, expanding operations and rolling new products off their lines; and new organizations set up to transition all those paper records in your doctors' offices to computerized records, saving lives, saving money, creating jobs and impacting on reducing the long-term debt. And so -- and this is just the tip of it. These projects continue to happen across the United States, across all industries. And they're going to continue to put Americans back to work and help us move to a new and stronger future. And with that, I will, as they say, yield the floor, in the old Senate parlance, and take some questions. Q If this is working, sir, why is unemployment at 9.7 percent, when you predicted it would be 7.5 (percent) right now? 14:28:12 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, because every other major econometric model predicted the same thing; that we thought that unemployment wouldn't go much above 8 percent. My point in my statement was this recession was so much deeper, so much more profound than anyone -- most people thought it was. The bottom line is, you can look at it two ways. It's the old half-empty, half-full. The fact of the matter is, unemployment is unacceptably high. We knew that the hole dug by the recession that was created by the policies of the last administration resulted in a loss, a real loss, of somewhere between 2 (trillion dollars) and $3 trillion in the economy. We never thought that $787 billion is going to fill those hole -- that hole. The purpose of it was to keep people from falling into the abyss, keep us from sliding into a literal depression, and begin to build a ladder to climb out of that hole. But ultimately, it's to stimulate economic growth, because the only engine that's going to bring us back to total health is the free- enterprise system and the American -- free-enterprise system and the business community. And what we're doing here is we're building circumstances where their confidence -- increasing their ability to continue to borrow, make money, expand as able. And ultimately this is going to catch on; we're going to fill that hole only after the free-enterprise system is able to kick in because of the corrections we've made. I'll let you recognize -- MR. GIBBS: (Off mike.) Q Al Tidwell (ph), Reuters. Mr. Vice President, the May jobs report was very disappointing for private-sector job creation. Now, the recovery act's all about encouraging the private sector to boost hiring. Do you see any evidence in June that the private sector is doing better? 14:30:06 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, I think the private sector -- if we -- there is a tendency when we're in a circumstance where the unemployment is so unacceptably high, when so many people are out of work -- my grandpop used to have an expression. He said -- there's a suburb of Scranton, Pennsylvania called Dalton. He said, when the guy up in Dalton's out of work, it's an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law's out of work, it's a recession. When you're out of work, it's a depression. It's still a depression for millions of Americans, there's still a depression. And -- but what is clear is -- and when you're in that sort of circumstance, you tend to look at every -- it's like taking your blood pressure every hour. It's looking at every single, solitary little change that takes place. You've got to look at it over a longer term. In the first five months of last year, we lost 3 million jobs. The first five months of this year, we've created almost 500,000 jobs. I've said before and I say it again, we're going to continue to create jobs on a monthly basis. It will be up and down, but the path is going to continue to be strong, sustaining a growth rate, as predicted, of over 3 percent. That's the consensus. And we're going to continue to push until we get to the point where the economic recovery really takes hold because business and the free-enterprise system has decided that it's ready to really invest again. Q If I could just follow on that, do you still think that the recovery act was responsible for 90 percent -- that 90 percent of the jobs will be private-sector end hiring, or will you revise that in light of recent jobs numbers? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I think that it will be perilously close to 90 percent, the vast bulk. Look, last -- last -- Q Look at last month's job report, where it was -- VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: No, that's it. That's who you're talking about. MR. GIBBS: Just remember too, the census isn't part of -- the census is a mandated 10-year project. The census, which was responsible for a number of the government jobs that are created on a monthly basis in order to take that census, was not part of the recovery. Q We're now 62 million (dollars) into spending this, and you guys are nowhere near 90 percent in terms of jobs being created in the private sector. I'm just wondering, if you're -- if you're sticking with it -- you're -- I mean, you're sticking with it. I just want an -- 14:32:19 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, the vast majority of those 2.2 (million) to 2.8 million jobs have not been census jobs. Some of them have been jobs that saved teachers' jobs and cops'. So you argue -- you can argue they are not, you know, private-sector jobs. Q Yeah. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: So the truth of the matter is that jobs that are private-sector jobs are going to make up the vast bulk of the jobs created by this act. But a significant portion of the jobs also are saving those jobs that otherwise would have caused chaos in communities, had they been lost -- teachers, cops and firefighters. It does both. Q Mr. Vice President -- VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes. Q -- on February 25th of 2009, right after the recovery act was passed, you said this literally drop-kicks us out of the recession. By that definition, by those words you said right after it passed, has this worked? Are -- have we been drop-kicked out of a recession? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes, we have. Now look, I'm not going to get into the technical argument of economists of when a session of -- the recession officially ends or will end. But I can tell you that -- what I meant then, and I'll say it now. We have turned this economy around. Instead of falling off the abyss, it is on firm ground. It is heading in the right direction. And every aspect of the economy is growing. Is it growing as fast as we want it to grow? No. Has it -- is it able to wipe out 8 million jobs lost as a consequence of the recession, which we inherited? No. But it has turned the country around. We're moving in the right direction. And this is the basis upon which this fuller recovery over time is going to occur. (Cross talk.) Q Mr. Vice President, thank you. Thank you for being here. But you say that economists -- there's a general consensus -- mayors, governors, all the people you talk to, there's a consensus. But is there a disconnect with the American people? And I know polls are not the be-all and end-all, but four times in our CBS/New York Times poll, we've asked people if the stimulus has created a substantial number of jobs. We haven't done it for a few months, but I don't think it's changed dramatically since then. The number saying, yes, substantial number of jobs has been 4 percent, 7 percent, 6 percent, 6 percent. That is just appallingly low. Why is that? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: True, but it's also totally understandable. It's totally, completely understandable. 14:34:39 Look, the kitchen table where I grew up in Claymont, Delaware, no one sat around and was able to make a distinction between -- if that existed at the time -- between bailing out the banks, TARP, between a funding program that was designed called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. All they knew is whether or not there were more people being hired at Works Steel. All they knew is whether they were going to build a new Food Fair across from Holy Rosary School and it was going to create jobs. Well, guess what? In Claymont, Delaware -- and the Claymont, Delawares, of the country -- it's starting to happen. At Claymont, Delaware -- in Claymont, Delawares, of America, they're no longer laying off in big numbers. It's stabilized. The bottom has hit. They're hearing, people are going back. They hired back some folks at; the General Motors plant has now been bought by; it's now producing more cars. The following -- that's how people measure what's going to happen in their lives. Again, I may have sat at a different kind of kitchen table than y'all did. I never heard anybody in my family -- and there were family members worried about losing jobs -- "You know, the GDP was up by" -- or, "You know, you only created public sector jobs." It's real simple. The measurement is, is it feeling better? Am I more confident? Can I go -- instead of getting my hair cut every seven weeks, can I go back to getting it done once a week, or I mean once a month or once every three weeks? Can I take a vacation? Am I going to buy this car? Do I feel better I'm going to be able to make my mortgage payment? That's what's happening in America. And they do not associate that with -- nor would I expect them to, nor would I -- that was the recovery act who created those jobs. Now, I hate to say this, but there was another, a competing network's poll that I saw -- which I think a single poll makes no sense at all, by the way. I'm not making -- but if you have dueling polls -- showing that something -- only 25 percent of the American people, roughly, thought the American recovery act was not working; a slightly larger number thought it was working, and the rest didn't know. 14:36:48 I mean, look, folks -- that old expression -- the proof of the pudding's going to be in the eating. It's real simple, man. It really is basic. And what's gong to happen, we're going to find out every month whether the American people feel better about their circumstance, feel more secure in the job they have, feel more hopeful about getting a job, and are able to continue to send their kids back to college in September, be able to make sure they can pay their bills. That's the measure. MR. GIBBS: Laura. Q If you don't mind a question on another important topic: Given your knowledge of the Senate, what do you think the outlook is for a comprehensive energy bill, and particularly for a cap-and-trade -- (word inaudible)? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Excellent. (Scattered laughter.) MR. GIBBS: April? (Laughter.) (Cross talk.) 14:37:32 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look, look, there's only one thing I learned after 36 years in the United States Senate: Anybody who thinks they can predict what's going to happen the next week in the United States Senate probably never served in the United States Senate. Look, I think we're going to get an energy bill. I think we're going to get an energy bill that's real. It's going to be difficult. It's going to be hard. The House has already passed a really good bill. And I think that this is one of those -- and, you know, I used to joke when I was a senator -- and some of you who covered the Senate remember these kinds of phrases -- I used to say -- they said -- well, you know, I say, it's going to happen; this is going to pass. "Well, how do you know?" And I said, I don't know, but I'll tell (when the ?) horses smell the water. I mean, there's a clear consensus out there, guys, that something has to be done on the energy side. There's a clear knowledge and understanding on the part of all the folks up there in the Hill that they've got to do something to deal with the amount of carbon that we emit into the air and the amount of oil we consume from aboard. And so, based on the fact the House has already acted, and there are serious people like John Kerry and others working on coming up with a Senate bill, I believe that there is a clear possibility we'll get a solid bill. But beyond putting odds on it, it's just -- it's just very hard to do that now. MR. GIBBS: April Q Vice President Biden. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yes. Q You said this is pretty much basic, and you said there's still millions of Americans who believe that they're in a depression still. Do you -- with that, do you believe there should be targeted approaches for minorities, particularly African-Americans, as well as Hispanics and even teens when it comes to the unemployment rate? And also, on another subject, what are you thoughts about Mr. Barton's comments this morning? 14:39:23 VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, since you know I never say what's on my mind -- (laughter) -- I probably shouldn't comment on Mr. Barton's comment. Q Oh, come on! Q Come on! Q Awww -- Q Come on! (Cross talk.) Q Is it that bad -- (off mike)? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: You're encouraging me. Q Yeah! VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: What can I say? (Laughter.) Q Well, okay -- you should -- VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Look -- look -- (laughter) -- Q How big of a deal was it? (Laughter.) VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Thank God, my mother wasn't around. (Laughter.) Look, guys, I -- I find it incredibly insensitive, incredibly out of touch. The reason why I got involved in politics, the reason why the president and I ran, the president got involved, is: the one primary role for government is to protect people who are being taken advantage of, protect people who are in extreme straits and not able to take care of the circumstances themselves. I have been down in the Bayou area off and on for the last 36 years. My daughter went down to Tulane. I was worried she was not going to come home. I think I know the area relatively well, as an outsider. There's an entire way of life in jeopardy. This is just not about jobs. This is just not about whether or not the waterfowl is polluted and you can't fish. This is an entire way of life that's in jeopardy. And to sit there and say that we're being, in effect, as I understood the statement -- that he was ashamed we're being tough on an oil company, who caused the problem, I mean, I -- I -- I -- look, 14:41:15 I just think that it's pretty important to the people of Louisiana, all the way through Florida, and even in his home state of Texas, that people disassociate themselves from that. That's not the role. There's no shakedown. It's insisting on responsible conduct and a responsible response to something they caused. And I find it outrageous to suggest that if, in fact, we insisted that BP demonstrate their preparedness to put aside billions of dollars -- in this case 20 billion (dollars) -- to take care of the immediate needs of people who are drowning. These guys don't have deep pockets, the guy who runs the local marina, the guy who has one -- one shrimping boat, the guy who has one small business. He can't afford to lose $10(,000), 12(,000), 15(,000), 30,000 a month. And so the thing the president did -- and I was so proud of him -- is when we had the meeting with BP -- and they were cooperative in the meeting. They were cooperative. He said, look, what I want you to do is take care of those people now who, if they don't get help now, are going to be under. Gone. Gone. And I might add, this fund is not a ceiling. And people can go back to it as many times as they can prove they have been damaged and they need help. And the cleanup costs are all BP's costs, separate, apart, and above that $20 billion. What is wrong with that? How is that a -- that a shakedown? I mean, I -- I just -- I -- I -- I don't know. I -- I -- I find it pretty astounding, the comment. Q And also on targeted approaches, sir. I'm sorry. The first part of my question. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Oh. Look, a lot of this -- what we've already done has had a targeted approach. You start off and take a look at what we've done with focusing on unemployment, COBRA; what we've done in terms of FMAP -- excuse me. I'm starting to sound like a wonk up in this -- FMAP meaning, you know, be able to help states and communities keep available Medicaid for people. The bulk of these -- a significant portion of these construction jobs, a (contingent ?) portion of the weatherization programs (and/in ?) public housing, an awful lot of this is in fact benefitting the people who you describe. The people hurt most in the construction industry have been Hispanics. And this is -- this is -- a big chunk of this is in the Hispanic -- in effect, is construction and rehiring an awful lot of those people. But the truth of the matter is, there continues to be a real disparity between the unemployment rate before this happened and subsequent to it happening, between minorities and the rest of the country. And I might add -- you're going to think this is totally unrelated, but I don't think it is -- that's why we invested over a hundred billion dollars of the recovery act in education -- early education, in Race to the Top, in improving the quality of education -- because that's an investment that has to be made. Let me conclude by saying, look, I -- I mean this sincerely -- I don't know anybody -- I don't think the average American is prepared to settle for this country being second in anything. And they know, in order for us to the economic engine of the world and to lead the world again, we have to make a fundamental change in our education policy, our health-care policy and our energy policy. There is no way out, there is no way we can lead the world without those changes. And part of this act, which I'll be coming back and talking to you about later, lays down the building blocks for a new energy policy, for a new education policy as well as for a new health-care policy or the completion of the health-care policy. And if you don't call on her, I'm going to be in trouble. I'll take one more. MR. GIBBS: (Off mike.) Q I just had a question about the unemployment measure in the Senate that's being stuck, because people are worried about the deficit. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Yeah. Q Do you think if it doesn't pass, it could actually stall the recovery? And what do you do to convince people that the deficit shouldn't be first and foremost in people's minds right now? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I'd make two points as briefly as I can. One, this is not a time to take -- to use the metaphor, take our foot off the accelerator here. We still need to continue to create jobs and spur job growth now. We are in consultation, we've met with Chairman Baucus now, as to what kind of compromise we can put together in what was roughly a $140-billion bill and with about 55 billion (dollars) in pay-fors. We're in the process now of trying to negotiate a compromise together. We've got 52 votes. But as you know, a majority no longer rules in the United States Senate, so you need 60. In the old days, that would have been enough, you know, 52. So we think we can put together a compromise that will continue -- won't be all we ask for but will continue to spur job growth. On the larger question, and maybe this is the best way for me to close -- on the larger question of deficits versus job creation and stimulus, it's kind of an important point that is -- that is understandably -- I'm not being a wise guy when I say this -- understandably difficult to sort of -- it's not intuitively arrived at. The American recovery act, which is over $780 billion, added less than one-half of 1 percent -- less than one-half of 1 percent of deficit- to-GDP by the year 2012. These one-off projects, the one-time projects of short-term deficit spending have virtually no impact on what we really have to attend to: the long-term debt, the accumulated debt. And so it's understandable why people say, look, we want you to spend, (at ?) emergency spending, 50 (billion dollars) or $60 billion to continue to spur growth, and don't worry about that having much of an impact on long-term debt. And that is an economic fact of life, but is a politically difficult issue. And that's what leadership is about. Leadership is about making the right decisions based on what the facts are, even at the time when their viewed to be unpopular. And so my hope is that my colleagues will make those distinctions. That's a very different thing than saying, by the way, we're going to increase -- or we're going to initiate a new entitlement program and not pay for it, or we're going to, you know, raise everyone's salary 5 percent and forever. I mean, they do have gigantic impacts on the long-term debt. So that's the deal. Anyway, thank you for having me. And -- (Cross talk.) Q Thank you. Q How's your son doing, sir? VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: He's doing great. He goes back to work the end of the month. And he is -- he's in great shape. (Applause.) He's -- I'm really excited. Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: Yes, ma'am. Q One thing about yesterday. The -- in the meeting, did BP ask for the president to make the kind of comments that he did about the importance of a strong and viable BP? Was that a request from the company? MR. GIBBS: I was not in there the whole time. Not that I'm aware of. Obviously, I think everybody -- as the president said, everybody in the country, everybody in the Gulf has an 14:49:59 interest in a company that's able to uphold its responsibilities, particularly the ones that they outlined yesterday. Q So you don't know if the company -- saying "This would be important for us"? MR. GIBBS: Not that I'm aware of. Not that I'm aware of. Q And then the -- going back to the speech Tuesday night, when the president talked about a Gulf Coast restoration plan, he didn't really explain what that would mean. Is this a government program? How much money are we talking about? What kinds of -- what sort of scope does this have? MR. GIBBS: Well, as you know, Governor Mabus, the secretary of the Navy -- former Governor Mabus, the secretary of the Navy, is here and will see the president -- may have already seen him, I think. The president has tasked the secretary to develop and devise a process for a long-term Gulf restoration plan that includes all of the stakeholders: states, local communities, Gulf Coast residents, a whole host of those that have significant equities in the environment and the ecosystem. One of the things that is not covered in economic claims are the natural-resource damage assessments that will be done on the Gulf environment. And BP is liable for those damage assessments. And I believe that will be the basis for a lot of the restoration that we've seen. Q That would be -- (off mike). MR. GIBBS: Well, again, those are -- I wouldn't close off anything. Obviously, it's the beginning of a process that will take some time. And I think it's safe to assume and safe to say that the recovery for the Gulf will take years. But the basis for -- the basis for that will be those NRDAs. Q But I think when people in the region heard him talk about that, they took it to mean something bigger than just let's think about it. MR. GIBBS: Well, and I don't -- Q It's a topic that people have talked about down there for a long time. MR. GIBBS: I don't foreclose that that's -- that will be part of it. 14:52:07 I wouldn't get into what we would fund, based on the fact that there is a process right now going forward to create that -- Q So he -- (off mike) -- parameters, in other words. 14:52:14 MR. GIBBS: Well, I think the parameters that he roughly laid out in the speech was to leave the Gulf in a place that was better than it was prior to this accident. Q Okay. And then just really quickly: You just mentioned about the natural resource degradation being a separate liability for BP. MR. GIBBS: Yes. Q There was some confusion about this yesterday because both in the fact sheet from here and the statements that BP was putting out, it looked like the fund was supposed to be paying for that stuff as well. MR. GIBBS: The fund can -- let me -- I'll try to -- because I think I know where you were going. There's 20 billion (dollars) that's set aside at a minimum for economic claims. As we said yesterday, and you heard the vice president reiterate, that's not a cap. So if the economic damages are more, then BP is liable for that amount. Let's say, for instance, those economic damages were 15. That 5 (billion dollars) left over could go to -- could go for the natural resources assessments if all the economic claims are covered. But it is -- it's not -- it is not two pots of money that compete against each other. The prioritization in the escrow fund are for the economic losses -- loss of income, loss of jobs -- for individuals and small businesses. Yes, sir. Q I'd like to come back to the remarks on the Hill, the "shakedown." I mean, do you think and does the White House think there's any risk of alienating businesses, by dragging BP up here or hauling them over the coals? And also the Congressman's remarks sort of raised the question of the legality. I mean, could you have stepped over a constitutional boundary? MR. GIBBS: No. They're responsible for -- let me be clear. They're responsible for the economic loss that happened in the gulf. That's what they agreed to pay into. There's no constitutional problem. I don't have a lot to add to what the vice president said. I think he was very clear on this. I think Republicans are going to have to ask themselves whether Congressman Barton 14:54:35 should be the ranking member of a committee that's doing what it's doing today, given the fact that he believes we owe an apology to BP rather than BP owing an apology to the gulf. Q (Off mike) -- for him to resign, step down? MR. GIBBS: Well, I will -- I will let Republicans make that decision. Q You usually don't comment on things like that though, Robert? Why take this particular -- MR. GIBBS: Because this is a fairly pointed comment about the notion of whether or not BP is going to be responsible for the damage that they've caused. The president and the vice president believe so. I think the people in the gulf believe so. Congressman Barton -- who, let's understand, is the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee -- apparently believes and did so by apologizing to BP. I don't -- I -- it -- Q (Off mike) -- in your mind, in the White House's mind? MR. GIBBS: As somebody who's going to oversee as we look into what the company is doing, to begin by apologizing to the company, I think it's an interesting way to start. Q Can I follow that? Congressman Barton seemed to raise a question about the propriety of having the attorney general in the room yesterday. MR. GIBBS: Well -- Q Just on that narrow point, are you concerned -- MR. GIBBS: Not at all. Not at all. But let's understand that there were -- the president and the vice president and the relevant Cabinet agencies -- the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior -- I'm trying to go around the room -- the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice -- I'm going to miss some -- Commerce was there. They're relevant agencies that have purview over what's going on in the Gulf. And as I think we said pretty clearly yesterday, this wasn't a -- there weren't -- there were -- this was not a discussion about what happened that night on the rig, 14:56:26 whether or not they cut corners, took shortcuts, tried to take the cheap way out. That -- none of that was discussed. And those Cabinet members were in there only for the first 20 minutes (with/was ?) what the president -- Q But the secretary of Commerce does not have an open criminal investigation of this company. The question was -- MR. GIBBS: No, the secretary -- Q The question was, do they have that hanging over their head -- (off mike) -- having the attorney general -- MR. GIBBS: No, the secretary of -- Commerce has within it the -- NOAA, which closes the Gulf to fishing and affects those that earn their living. Q (Off mike) -- open criminal investigation. He's sitting across the table from them. Doesn't that make them more likely to be willing to write a $20 billion check? MR. GIBBS: No. Q Okay. On containment, on Tuesday morning I think you said on "Good Morning America" that more than 90 percent of the oil would be contained by the end of June. MR. GIBBS: No, I said -- I think I said in the coming weeks but -- or end of June, right. Q I think it was in response to a question that said end of June. Do you still stand behind that? Because how do we really know how much oil is in the Gulf when the numbers keep changing about how much is spewing into the Gulf? It's 90 percent of what? MR. GIBBS: Well, 90 percent of what's coming out right now. That's what we -- our containment strategy is based on what's coming out of the leaking well as you and I speak, Ed. Let's understand that the -- Q So is this 90 percent of, say, 60,000 barrels, if that's what's coming out per day -- MR. GIBBS: Well, it's up to 60,000 barrels. We -- the flow rate group, using new information and pressure readings -- Secretary Chu asked and directed BP to take a -- take pressure monitor readings from inside their two top vents inside the top cap itself. He knows what the pressure is outside of that. By measuring the pressure inside of that, you get a far better scientific conclusion as to the amount that's coming out. We know what's coming to the top -- from the top cap, and that allows you to make as best a scientific assessment as you can, understanding, as we've always said, that we are estimating a flow rate for something we cannot see or touch. In terms of containment, right now we -- the top cap is drawing oil and gas to the surface to -- from the LMR -- the lower marine riser cap to the Enterprise. The Q4000 came on line yesterday, and I should have an estimate -- we'll have an estimate later in the day about the rate at which, going through the choke and kill line and off of a device that was set up for the top kill procedure -- using those lines to direct oil to the surface, that adds an additional approximately 5(,000) to 10,000 barrels to our containment strategy. By the end of June -- and again, I think you guys have seen all of our correspondence with BP directing them to move forward more quickly with a containment strategy. There is a riser that's being fabricated now that will be hooked to another vessel that will increase, by the end of June, 40 to 53 -- 40(,000) to 53,000 barrels per day. And there are additional containment strategies by the middle of July that would take that figure to the capacity of 60(,000) to 80,000 barrels a day. Q Last thing. Secretary Mabus. Is he planning to step down as secretary of the Navy? MR. GIBBS: No. Q Is this -- wouldn't this be a full-time job, the Gulf recovery? MR. GIBBS: I -- the president talked to the governor about this, and they both agreed that he had the ability to do both. Yes, ma'am. Q Robert, I know there was some review early on with the EPA regarding the dispersant. I just wonder, at this point, is the administration comfortable with the amount of dispersant that is being released into the Gulf? And are you comfortable with the substance itself? Because a lot of marine biologists that we've talked to say that this is a very toxic chemical, that this could actually be more harmful to wildlife in the Gulf than the oil itself. 15:00:31 MR. GIBBS: Well, that -- I don't know what the -- I wouldn't know what the scientific basis for that is. I think far and away the most harmful substance that is being emitted into the environment in the Gulf is the oil. That's why to clean the beaches you've got to wear a hazardous materials suit. The EPA early on -- and I think you probably have a copy of the directive -- I think the number was to reduce by 75 percent the amount of both surface and subsea dispersants that were being used. NOAA continues -- as does EPA -- continues to do water sampling of -- in and around the areas of the Gulf to ensure that we're accurately monitoring the health and safety of the Gulf and anybody involved in working. We were concerned about and remain concerned about the sheer amount of dispersants that have had to be used. And that's why the EPA came through with a directive to significantly reduce the amount that we emit into the environment. Q So do you think at the current quantity it's safe to release that dispersant into the water? MR. GIBBS: Well, again, that -- yes, we believe that the dispersant that's being used at the amount that it's being used at now is safe, yes. Q This particular chemical, this COREXIT, as it's called, because it's patented, scientists are not able to see the actual formula of what this is, so it's difficult to know what's in it. Is there any move to try to -- MR. GIBBS: Well, how does the marine biologist say, then, it's more toxic? Q Well, given the studies that they've done based on what's happened in Alaska, they say -- they call it COREXIT in Alaska, but they also call it "Hides-It" because it essentially hides it from the surface of the water and pushes all the chemicals underneath. MR. GIBBS: Well, but again, that's the purpose of the -- a dispersant -- Q It is the purpose, but it keeps it in the water. MR. GIBBS: If you've got something we can put in the water that takes the oil out, come see me and Bill right after this, because we should sign you up. You add this -- we're doing this for the first time at a subsea level. And April asked a question of Admiral Allen about this yesterday. The point is not to have it accumulate on the surface and allow it to spread either onto beaches or into marshes. At that depth, it can biodegrade more quickly, which is exactly what you want the oil to do. Chip? Q On the $20 billion not being a cap, what's to stop BP four years from now, after they've contributed the full $20 billion, from saying, "That's it. Tat's all we're giving. If you want more, take us to court." MR. GIBBS: Well, we certainly would retain the right to do something like that. We -- Q But it's up to them whether it's a cap, right? And they could declare at any point it's a cap. MR. GIBBS: Well, I will say this, Chip. One of the things that we need Congress to do -- and Senator Menendez from New Jersey tried today again to get consent for the Senate to move forward on 15:19:42 lifting the liability cap that's in the Oil Pollution Act. Right now we know it's 75 million (dollars). Obviously what BP has pledged greatly exceeds the 75 million (dollars). But we need -- we need that -- for our own purposes, we need that cap to be lifted. We will continue to monitor the claims process and direct BP with whatever they need to do. Obviously we have -- as part of the deal, we have some collateral. Q On the oil rig workers, you've stated very clearly and I think other administration officials have too that the administration believed that BP was legally responsible for compensating the oil rig workers who are out of work because of the moratorium. Yesterday, Carol Browner said, well, there are legal issues here. MR. GIBBS: Right, and we're -- Q And where does this stand now? Are you backing off your position? And is that because BP said you're wrong? MR. GIBBS: No, we're -- well, we're looking into the legal issues. I think one of the things that is tremendously important out of yesterday was $100-million commitment for those rig workers. Q Right, but that was not a legal obligation. That was a goodwill gesture. MR. GIBBS: Yes, it was. And it's -- it was one that was part of what we worked out yesterday. Q Well, are the comments you've made in this room before -- saying that BP is legally responsible -- is that null and void at this point? MR. GIBBS: As I said, we're looking into any of the legal issues. Q So you're backing off the affirmative statement that you made. MR. GIBBS: I would just say we're looking into the legal -- Q Have you been in the president's presence when he either heard about or responded to the Joe Barton comments? And what did he say? MR. GIBBS: I briefed him on them earlier. And he shook his head and couldn't understand why anybody would say something like that. Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: Well, he said, I can't understand why anybody would say that. Yeah. Q Shakedowns aside, isn't it true that BP essentially didn't fight the $20-billion fund? MR. GIBBS: I don't -- I -- let me -- I want to disassociate the premise of your question from the beginning. Q Yeah, the -- MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Look, I don't want to characterize how they came to -- how they came to the meeting yesterday. They have said, and we have put into place an assurance, that the economic damages that have been caused will be compensated. Q But BP essentially has laid down many of its legal rights voluntarily. MR. GIBBS: Yes. I mean, they -- there's no doubt that they -- yes, they -- the -- again, the cap that I spoke about with Chip a minute ago I think would be exceeded -- well, they've given states money to advertise for tourism in the four affected states that exceeds the $75 million cap in and of itself. Q Just, bottom line, they're not really fighting. MR. GIBBS: Again, I don't want to be a BP spokesperson. I think it is -- I -- there's no doubt that -- I will -- let me characterize it this way. We did not -- we did not give up the ability to do the natural-resource damage assessments and give them the bill. Nobody gave up anything in terms of them paying for the cleanup costs that they're liable for. There was no discussion about anything involving -- and they'll get a bill for this -- the penalty for the pollution that's been emitted into the Gulf. And all we did for claimants was add to their ability to appeal. Q You've said that it's in, certainly, BP's interest, but also the government's interest, for BP to stay solvent and no -- not go into bankruptcy -- MR. GIBBS: Right. Q -- as that would imperil the ability of the victims to get their recovery. So -- MR. GIBBS: It would, but I would say this. The important -- one of the important parts of the -- what was worked out yesterday was -- I mean, obviously BP is a company that possesses tremendous assets. If I'm not mistaken, I think they have the largest-producing oil well in the world -- obviously, a number of assets, in order to take something like that and make it the largest-producing well in the world. We have that collateral as they pay into the fund, to ensure and to make sure that nothing risks the amount that they've put in there. Q They -- I mean, they're giving it over four years. But setting that aside, I just -- given the federal government's interest in BP staying solvent, didn't the government, the administration, exacerbate BP's financial position last week by taking such an aggressive view of liability -- Salazar, you at this podium -- about the oil-rig workers, a position it now disavows, as Chip says, Carol Browner saying -- MR. GIBBS: No, I don't -- Q Let me just finish the thought. MR. GIBBS: Go ahead. Q Carol Browner said there are very significant legal questions about their liability; every lawyer will tell you that's true. BP's stock dove 16 percent on the day that Ken Salazar made those comments. MR. GIBBS: No, I was -- 15:08:37 MR. GIBBS: Well, let's understand. Understand that the amount that, even if you fully compensated rig workers -- right? -- you're not even -- you're not even close to a billion; let alone 20 billion (dollars). Right? So let's understand that what put the -- what might imperil the company financially is not paying for the sidelined rig workers at 33 drilling points in the Gulf of Mexico. What it -- hold on, let me finish my thought. What it -- what they're responsible for, and what I think has caused -- I don't want to get into commenting about their stock. But I think what has caused -- well, I -- let me not get into commenting about their stock. I think that they are responsible for the nation's greatest environmental disaster. And they are going to have to pay to compensate those that were impacted economically. They'll pay the government the damages for what it's done to the environment, they'll pay the clean-up costs and they'll be fined. And that's their price for doing business in a way that caused this damage. Q I guess it's a bottom line with a bow on it. Does the administration recognize that it has a special responsibility to not take a very aggressive and legally flawed position that could exacerbate an already precarious financial position? MR. GIBBS: I don't think we've done that. I don't think we've done that in any way. (Name inaudible.) Q Yesterday, did the president spend any time alone with Mr. Hayward? Or was it only with the chairman? MR. GIBBS: No, he spoke for -- the first 20 minutes was with all of the six -- I think it was six -- BP representatives and their outside counsel, and then 25 minutes with the chair. Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Q Good? Good? Okay. A couple of things. The fund -- (laughter) -- the fund doesn't exist, right? MR. GIBBS: You didn't think Major was (going to pass ?)? Q Who? MR. GIBBS: Go ahead. Q The fund doesn't exist. The negotiations, according to the people I've talked to at Justice today, are going on about the contours of it. Is that your understanding? MR. GIBBS: Of? Q The fund (so far ?). MR. GIBBS: Yes. Yes. Q Okay. MR. GIBBS: Well, understanding, the framework agreement that was -- that was -- that was laid out; the appeals process, that has been laid out; the payments in the collateral -- Q Those things have been locked down. MR. GIBBS: Yes. Obviously, we are working through the setup of the independent -- the independent claims process that would be overseen by Ken Feinberg. Q Right -- and the three-member panel. MR. GIBBS: And the three-member panel that allows the claimant to -- Q Do you have a timeline for that, agreed upon with BP, that the American public can evaluate as far as how's it going and when they should be ready to see this, and the folks in (the Gulf ?)? MR. GIBBS: Well, we've told -- I believe, in the negotiations, we told them and expect that Mr. Feinberg will set this up as quickly as possible. He obviously -- one of the reasons that -- he's selected as somebody who has expertise and experience in this type of work. The claims process that we have now continues as we transition to an independent body and that anybody that's involved in the claims process now -- say you filed -- Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: -- right -- say you filed a claim two days ago. You still have the 90 days to get our claim processed. And if -- as I understand it, if you don't like the outcome of what BP says, you can enter the appeals process in the new system. Q Right. And for the -- I heard this commented by folks in the Gulf now -- they're sort of wondering -- all right, there are these places; there are these numbers; there's a process that we've somewhat grown accustomed to. Will all of those portals, if you will, to this claims process remain, or will they be replaced? 15:12:29 MR. GIBBS: I don't -- my guess is that they will remain, Major. The -- what we envision is a fairly seamless process, because -- and I forget the number that Admiral Allen read yesterday about the -- Q (Off mike) -- dollars, yeah. MR. GIBBS: -- yeah, the number of -- the number of claims that are in the process, the number of claims that are being adjudicated. I think we believe it's important -- and certainly did yesterday in the agreement -- believe it's important to get an independent process to evaluate those claims. Q One other thing. Technically, on the agreement, will that be released in written form for the public to view at any point? MR. GIBBS: I can check on that. I wouldn't see why not. Q One thing. On Svanberg's comments yesterday, did the president see them? Did he, in his meeting with Svanberg, detect any of the clumsy language that he used in reference to "small people"? Did the president think that was an accident on his part? x x part? And does he have any -- (off mike)? MR. GIBBS: I have not -- I have not talked to the president specifically about that. I don't -- the president did not -- I talked to him about the meeting, and the president did not mention anything about this. Q To shift gears a little, the -- does the administration have any comments about Israel's decision to allow, I guess, construction materials in by land but leaving the blockade in place? MR. GIBBS: Look, I think that we welcome the principles that were -- were announced by the Israeli government today. They're a step in the right direction. We will continue to work in the coming days with our Israeli friends to continue to improve a humanitarian situation in Gaza that the president has said is unsustainable. Q For the deepwater rigs that are under inspection now, how is that going? Have -- have you -- have they had a chance to look at it? Will any of those open up again? MR. GIBBS: Well, the -- the commission that is in the process -- the commission -- that will be part of the commission's work, to -- Q (Off mike.) MR. GIBBS: -- to discuss the regulatory framework around their operation. And I will say this. As I said -- as I've said and as the president said in his speech, that's something that doesn't have to wait for a six-month deadline. It can be something that he would encourage that they do quickly. Q Is there any indication that any of the companies are either pulling out, stopping, taking wells that were due to be built, or planned, at least, for the Gulf and moving into other countries? MR. GIBBS: You mean the -- the MODU -- the mobile drilling units? Q No. That exploration that was going to be American- produced oil now going to other oil-producing countries (because of this ?). MR. GIBBS: Again, I think we're probably saying the same thing, largely, because -- I don't know the answer if anybody has. You've obviously got -- what -- you remember what the Deepwater Horizon looked like. I do not know if those drilling units -- if any of those drilling units have left for other places. Q Let me just frame it this way, then. Does the president fear that the government response to this will drive away what would have been American-produced oil and then now make the country more dependent on foreign oil? MR. GIBBS: Well, what would make us completely dependent on foreign oil is if this happened again. Right? So the president believed that, in weighing all of the economic and environmental concerns and all the safety concerns, especially given that we did not have -- and still don't know exactly what happened, that continuing drilling on those 33 -- on those 33 sites was not -- was not what should be done. Q Robert, just one question? Just one? MR. GIBBS: Let me go -- let me go right in front of you, and then I'll -- don't worry, Lester, I'll -- Q Thank you very much. MR. GIBBS: Sure. Q (Declining to be questioned ?). Q Question on the stimulus. There have been repeated attempts to try and cut it and use some of that money to pay for other emergency spending, like unemployment benefits, all of which have failed. But in the last few weeks, Majority Leader Hoyer and Chairman Obey have both said they're open to the idea of redirecting stimulus funds to pay for other jobs proposals. Are you guys open to that idea as well, or? MR. GIBBS: Look, I know that we've got a plan. You heard the vice president talk about, that, we believe, is helping what was a very fragile economy become more stable, that we need to continue to implement the plan that we have and not take away particularly, for instance, money away from very important projects like education right now. Q Thank you, Robert. MR. GIBBS: Karin (sp). Q Thanks, Robert. I want to quickly clarify the answer to Major. In terms of the framework that was agreed to yesterday, is anything at this point actually signed? And will it ever actually be signed between the BP and the administration, or is it more of just an agreement? MR. GIBBS: I can -- I can find out if there's a piece of paper. I mean, I -- I don't know, beyond the fact sheet. Let me check and see. Q And prior to their voluntary agreement yesterday, it's been the administration's position that you had the legal authority -- MR. GIBBS: Yes. Q -- to compel them to do this -- MR. GIBBS: Yes. Q -- if they didn't do it on their own. Can you provide us -- it doesn't have to be at this exact moment -- but what the actual code, the actual statutory -- MR. GIBBS: Yeah, it's within the -- I -- let me see if -- Q It's all within the Oil Pollution Act? MR. GIBBS: Yes. Yes. Q It's not in any other place? MR. GIBBS: It's in the Oil Pollution Act. Q Okay. I wanted to be sure and get that one in. MR. GIBBS: Okay. Q Okay, thanks. MR. GIBBS: Glenn. Q Robert, again referring to the Oil Pollution Act, the threshold for the liability cap being lifted in that law, as I understand, is a threshold of gross negligence. You guys have said -- used various terms to describe BP's behavior in the Gulf; "recklessness" is one of them. MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Q Do you think at this point in time that that gross negligence bar has been reached? 15:18:36 MR. GIBBS: Well, let me be careful not to get into the Department of Justice's investigation. And they'll come to that determination. As you mentioned, Glenn, gross negligence is one of the automatic ways that that cap is lifted. I don't think -- it's our view that we should not wait for that investigation as hundreds of thousands have been impacted and are -- continue to be surprised that people object to lifting a 20-year-old number for a disaster in a far different place that we all know is greatly going to exceed that amount of money. Q Robert -- Q Just one -- just one second. One quick follow on that. MR. GIBBS: Yeah. Q The bill that's proceeding, the energy bill that will emerge from the Senate, will almost certainly include a liability cap -- the liability cap being lifted. Would you accept that alone without comprehensive energy reform? Does -- would that cap be -- MR. GIBBS: No, no, I don't -- I don't think this is part of comprehensive energy reform. I think this is -- lifting the liability cap shouldn't have -- should not be impacted -- should not impact the debate about our energy policy for the future. This should be -- Q So it would be a separate piece of legislation? MR. GIBBS: Yes. And I think what Senator Menendez was trying to do was get them to act on that separate piece of legislation today. David. Q Robert. Thanks -- MR. GIBBS: Hold on. (Don't worry ?). Q Thanks, Robert. Other than what -- MR. GIBBS: It's not like you're going to go anywhere. But yeah, go ahead. (Soft laughter.) Q Other than what Representative Barton said this morning, other Republicans and conservatives have said similar things. MR. GIBBS: (Chuckles.) Q Well -- Q They're not interested. Q No, I am. I'm sorry. MR. GIBBS: Go. (Laughs.) Q (I have duties ?). Q Michele -- Michele -- MR. GIBBS: You hung her out, Savannah. Go ahead. Q Michele Bachmann called the fund just a "redistribution of wealth fund." On Fox they're calling it Chavez-like, as in Venezuela's Chavez. MR. GIBBS: Not the boxer? Q Not the boxer. MR. GIBBS: (Chuckles.) Q Can you speak to the larger theme here of Republican and conservative opposition to this as yet another Obama socialistic big- government initiative? I mean -- MR. GIBBS: I don't -- it's hard to tell what planet these people live on. It's hard to -- it's hard to understand -- it's hard to understand their viewpoint, but it may explain their votes on financial regulation. It explains how they view whether or not the banks ought to be able to write their own rules and play the game the way they played it in -- several years ago that caused our economy to crash. It's understanding how we got an MMS that was handing out 15:21:18 drugs in favor of drilling permits. I don't think that's the type of regulatory structure we ought to have. And it certainly sends an awful message to any company around the world, particularly one as large as BP, that they can come here, do what they've done to our economy, the environment and, as the vice president so eloquently said, a way of life for so many. And if you listen to Congressman Barton, Congressman Bachmann, Congressman Price, you'd think -- you'd think somehow BP was owed a handkerchief and a crying shoulder. And I think, as -- Q What have your impressions been -- Q The VP was what? MR. GIBBS: The VP was so eloquent in talking about how much it threatened a way of life. It's a delusional thing. And again, I think the Republican party is going to have to, on Capitol Hill, look at whether or not somebody that has the viewpoint that Joe Barton has, if he should sit on -- not just sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee but be the ranking member as we look into, and as that committee looks into actively, what happened on the Deepwater Horizon if his opening bid is an "I'm sorry" to BP. I -- maybe Congressman Barton should drive to the Gulf Coast of Texas or to the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, and ask the people down there whether his opening bid should have been an apology to BP. Sam, and then I'll go to Lester. Q All right. Two questions. One is, what have your impressions been of Tony Hayward's testimony so far? He's been criticized by some on -- MR. GIBBS: The truth is, I've been -- I have not watched -- I watched a very little bit of the opening statements, in where -- which I saw Congressman Barton, but I have not -- I have not seen much of what's happened. Q Okay. And then the second question is, Secretary Clinton was speaking to Ecuadorian television just today, and she said that Department of Justice, quote, "will be bringing a lawsuit against" the Arizona immigration act. Do you have any understanding of where that process stands? MR. GIBBS: I would point you to DOJ to discuss what -- how they're looking into the law. Lester. Q Thank you very much, Robert. The Washington Post reports that South Carolina's one-time chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Donald Fowler, thinks that the state's U.S. Senate Democrat nominee, Alvin Greene, is a Republican plant, even though he got 100,000 votes. How -- and my question: How does the president react to this? And will he support nominee Greene? MR. GIBBS: I think the South Carolina party is rightly looking into the circumstances of that nomination. Q You're not going tell us what the president's going to do? MR. GIBBS: Well, I don't know that the South Carolina Democratic Party has settled on him as a nominee. Thank you. END. Cuts 15:25:54 ws gibbs at poidum