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Are you going to talk to Mueller? I am looking forward to it, actually. Do you have a date set? Do you have a date set, Mr. ENTITY? And I am looking forward to it. I do worry when I look at all of the things that you people do not report about, with what is happening. If you take a look at, you know, the five months' worth of missing texts that is a lot of missing texts. So you do sort of look at that and say, What is going on? You do look at certain texts where they talk about insurance policies or insurance where they say the kinds of things they are saying, you gotta be concerned. But I would love to do that, and I'd like to do it as soon as possible. When will you do it, Mr. ENTITY? Do you have a date set? Do you have a date set, Mr. ENTITY? I guess you are talking about two or three weeks, but I would love to do it. You know, again, it is I have to say subject to my lawyers and all of that but I would love to do it. Would you do it under oath, Mr. ENTITY? You mean like Hillary did it under who said that? I said that. Would you do it under oath? Oh you said it. You did say it. You say a lot. Did Hillary do it under oath? I have no idea, but I am not asking about I think you have an idea. Do not you have an idea? Do you not have an idea? Do you really not have an idea? I will give you an idea. She did not do it under oath. But I would do it under oath. Listen, but I would do it. And you know she did not do it under oath, right? She would do it under oath. If you did not know about Hillary, then you are not much of a ENTITY. ENTITY, you are going to do it under oath? To reach a higher standard, you would do it under oath? Oh, I would do it under oath. Do you trust the FBI? Well, what am I going to say? When you look at five months? This is a large-scale version of this. Well, McCabe got more than $500,000 from essentially Hillary Clinton. And is he investigating Hillary Clinton? Do you remember, did anybody hear many of my speeches when I talked about McCabe?

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He was the star of my speech. And I said a man who was more or less in charge of her the wife got $500,000 from Terry. Do you regret having him as your acting FBI director, then? You know what, I keep out of it. I keep out of it. It is one of those things. But he was the star of many of my speeches. Because he got from $500,000 to $700,000, whatever the number was. And, you know, in Virginia Did you ask him who he voted for? In Virginia, you do not have to spend the money. So I never checked as to whether or not they spent the money on the campaign. How much of the money did he spend on the campaign, do you know she how much was it? Wait, how much of the money was spent? Did you ask who he voted for? Did you ask McCabe who he voted for? Did you ask him that? I do not know what is the big deal with that. Because I would ask you, Who did you vote for? But I do not remember that. I saw that this morning. I do not remember asking him that question. I do not remember asking him the question. I think it is also a very unimportant question, but I do not remember asking him that. Hey, chief, would you do me a favor? When we come back, when we come back, I want you to have a deal, OK? See if you could have a deal. We can use all the audio? Nice and, not you do not repeat, and this and that, just one nice piece. Do you believe Robert Mueller will be fair to you? I only repeat for the purposes of making sure you understand. One more quick one do you think Robert Mueller will be fair to you in this larger investigation? Are you concerned about it? Because here is what we will say, and everybody says: No collusion. How do you define collusion? You are going to define it for me, OK? But I can tell you, there is no collusion. I could not have cared less about Russians having to do with my campaign. I was a much better candidate than her. I was one of the greatest candidates. Nobody else would have beaten the Clinton machine, as crooked as it was. Someday you are going to say that.

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ENTITY, it is nice to see you. It is nice to meet you. I welcome you here. And I thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about some of the decisions that I have made right here in this Oval Office. Actually, I want to tell the people of the Middle East that this is the place where big decisions are made. But here it comes to my mind that how hard it is on you, ENTITY, to take like-a big decision like war, for example-is it that easy to take a decision such like war-- And when I campaigned for office, I never really thought about the decision to put men and women in harm's way. Circumstances changed, of course, and I had to make some very difficult decisions about how to protect our homeland and take action necessary to- the actions that, I think, will yield the peace. And so whether it be in Afghanistan or Iraq, I was-I have made those decisions. And I will tell you, they are hard decisions, because I understand the consequences. One of the hardest things for me is to meet with a mother. I met with a mother yesterday in Pennsylvania who lost her son in combat. And you know, those can be very tearful and emotional moments, and I understand that. And my-the only thing I try to do is provide as much comfort as I can and to assure the mom, in this case, that I thought the decision was necessary for peace and necessary for our security, and that I valued the fact that her son would volunteer, and that I vowed to honor that sacrifice by achieving our objectives. Anyway, this is the room where I make the decisions. But would these moments-I mean, these emotional moments, would they make you reconsider or rethink about what is going on in our area now? As a matter of fact, I leave most of the meetings reassured that the loved one, in this case, fully understanding what we were doing. See, I believe that, one, it is noble to liberate 25 million people from a tyrant; two, that we cannot allow Iraq to be a safe haven for people who have sworn allegiance to those who have attacked us. In other words, I believe we must defeat the extremists there so we do not have to face them here at home. And three, I believe the spread of liberty will yield peace.

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And I believe the Middle East is plenty capable of being a part of the world where liberty flourishes. And so I leave those meetings saddened by the fact that a person has pain in her heart-and yesterday she had pain in her heart-but encouraged by the fact that her son died for a noble cause and a necessary cause. And that is exactly what she told me. Actually, I want to thank you again, ENTITY, for giving us the opportunity to talk for the first time to the Arab world, to address them with the big concerns. I know we have a great deal of questions. I know you have a very tight schedule-- I want to show you the Rose Garden, one of the most famous areas-- It is a great chance for me. I heard, ENTITY, also, that you are receiving an Iftaar-- in the White House, which is, of course, a Muslim ritual But I want to tell you- and I hope this does not bother you at all- that in the Islamic world, they think that ENTITY is an enemy of Islam-- that he wants to destroy their religion, what they believe in. Is that in any way true, ENTITY? One, that the radicals have done a good job of propagandizing. In other words, they have spread the word that this really is not peaceful people versus radical people or terrorists; this is really about the-America not liking Islam. Well, first of all, I believe in an almighty God, and I believe that all the world, whether they be Muslim, Christian, or any other religion, prays to the same God. That is what I believe. I believe that Islam is a great religion that preaches peace. And I believe people who murder the innocent to achieve political objectives are not religious people, whether they be a Christian who does that-we had a person blow up our-blow up a Federal building in Oklahoma City who professed to be a Christian. But that is not a Christian act, to kill innocent people. And I just simply do not subscribe to the idea that murdering innocent men, women, and children-particularly Muslim men, women, and children in the Middle East-is an act of somebody who is a religious person. We are having an Iftaar dinner tonight- I say, we -it is my wife and I. This is the seventh one in the 7 years I have been the President.

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It gives me a chance to say Ramadan Mubarak. The reason I do this is, I want people to understand about my country. In other words, I hope this message gets out of America. I want people to understand that one of the great freedoms in America is the right for people to worship any way they see fit. And the value-the most valuable thing I think about America is that-particularly if you are a religious person-you can be free to worship, and it is your choice to make. It is not the state's choice, and you should not be intimidated after you have made your choice. And that is a right that I jealously guard. Secondly, I want American citizens to see me hosting an Iftaar dinner. That is a strong message for the Americans. I want to remind your listeners that one of the first things I did after September the 11th is, I went to the local mosque. And I did because I wanted to send a message that those who came to kill Americans were young terrorists, and they do not reflect the views of the vast majority of peaceful people in the Middle East; and that our-precisely the message I was trying to send, the war is not a struggle against Muslims, the Muslim religion; it is a struggle of honorable, peaceful people throughout the world against the few who want to impose their vision. Actually, ENTITY, we are talking about these terrorists and what is going on in the world right now. Are you also a man of war, as some try to describe, ENTITY? I dream it will be- the last thing I want to be is a President during war. And I responded, after careful deliberation, in an attempt to make sure that-with a strategy of protecting ourselves. We cannot allow these people that attacked us to have safe haven. We must not give them an opportunity to strike us again. And therefore, it is important to keep the pressure on. On the other hand, the ultimate way for peace is for people to realize the great blessings of liberty. And what is interesting-and what has taken place ought to be hopeful to people in the Middle East- is that two young democracies have sprung up where people, when given a chance, voted. I believe the God that the Muslim prays to is the same God that I pray to. After all, we all came from Abraham. I believe in that universality.

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And I believe a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman, and child is freedom; I really do. And I think people, if given a chance, will seize freedom. And it is liberty and free societies, not-they do not have to look like America-an Iraqi democracy is going to be Iraqi; it is going to reflect Iraqi traditions and Iraqi history. One, people can vote; people can express their opinion; people can be in a free press; people ought to be allowed to go to the town square and protest against their government without fear of reprisal. And when given that opportunity, 12 million Iraqis went to the polls. So excuse me, ENTITY, what you are trying to say is, sometimes a decision of war-you have to take a decision of war in order to achieve peace. And that is what happened in Iraq. I was very concerned about the dictator in Iraq. He was an enemy of the United States of America. He had ties to terrorists-I am not saying those who attacked us on September the 11th, but I am saying ties to terrorists. He had a lot of money that he was willing to spend on weapons of mass destruction. We did not find the weapons, but he certainly had the knowledge. And in my judgment, over time, he would have been able to develop those weapons, and they would have been-one thing the Middle East does not need is a nuclear arms race. Yes, we are going to discuss this. Well, this guy does not - the man, Saddam Hussein, had capability; but remember, there is also a human condition. I believe in human rights. I believe every life has value, whether it be an American life or a life of a person in the Middle East. And this brutal guy killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. And he was unbelievably brutal to neighbors and, as well, to Iraqis. And there is -liberation is a powerful-to me, liberating people is a powerful step toward peace. I wish we did not have to do this militarily. I gave diplomacy a lot of chance to work. He had the choice as to whether or not this issue would be resolved peacefully. And so I do not regret the decision. As a matter of fact, I feel it was the right decision to this day. And now the question is, will America keep its commitment to the millions of Iraqis who want this society to work?

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And the answer to that is, yes, we will. And here, ENTITY, I would love to ask-I mean, for the Iraqis now, they know and they keep on listening to the news. Sometimes we tell them we want to withdraw the troops. And now we are talking about the partition of Iraq, which is very, very bad news for the Iraqis. I know you refused this. You want the unity of Iraq. But what if this Iraqi-what if, in the next administration, another President comes to the office and believes in the partition of Iraq? Well, first of all, an American President must understand that Iraq is a sovereign nation operating under its own Constitution. And I am very confident that the will of Iraq will prevail. And I know there is some noise out of here about partition. But most folks who follow this issue do not support partition, and they do not think it is a good idea. What Iraq is going to have to do is get the proper balance between the central Government and the Provinces, the very same thing we have been worried about here in America for years. What is the right road between the States and Washington? But that is what they are going to have to do in Iraq as well. And they are going to need the security situation such that they are able to have an honest political discourse. So our step one was to help them secure their neighborhoods-and it is working- and make sure these radicals, such as Al Qaida and some of these Shi'a groups, many of whom-which are criminal, are not able to have their way with this society. And now we will work toward helping these folks have the important discussion about what should be the role of Baghdad, or what should be the role of the Provincial governments. And when they get that right, when they get settled out, then I think you will see a much more unified country. And it is going to be very hard for an American President or any other outside country to dictate to the Iraqis, Here is what your government must look like, because the Iraqis will show over time that they are capable of making these decisions themselves, and they are making hard decisions right now, by the way. I know that your message, your deep message was-to the Arab world-was democracy, freedom, human rights.

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And you have said too many times that the first message is democracy, is that you have rights, you people of the Middle East, to be free. Because all we hear now in Iraq is, let us achieve security; let us achieve stability. Is democracy in the Middle East on hold now, waiting for security first? I strongly believe in the freedom movement. It is ingrained in my soul. It comes from my belief that freedom is universal. And I believe freedom is ingrained in everybody's soul, and if just given a chance, they will reach for it. Now, in Iraq, in order for the Government to have breathing space, to be able to do the hard work of reconciliation so that the dreams of the average citizen in Iraq can be realized-which is a free society-there is got to be security. And so security is really a step, an important step, in the freedom movement. You cannot make the decisions if you are worried about getting blown up. And what the enemy wants to do, the enemy of a free Iraq, they want to create enough chaos and confusion inside Iraq that causes people to doubt. And they want, by the way, to kill enough innocent people that causes the American people to lose their patience and determination to help freedom movements. Not every freedom movement requires military action. But freedom movement does require U.S. commitment to helping reformers and just the average citizen realize the blessings of a free society. And so the freedom movement is the front and center of our foreign policy because I understand that the peace that we want-listen, we all want peace, except for those who are trying-- ENTITY, we have moved from the Oval Office to the beautiful garden, and here I would like to ask you question that go through the minds of the Arab world. Our world is going through very difficult days. Let me start with what people expect of me, which is Iran. ENTITY, have you made the decision to strike Iran, as some are saying, or trying to say that you will not leave your administration and office before you strike Iran militarily? I have made the commitment that I would continue to work with the world to speak with one voice to the Iranians, to the Iranian Government, that we will work in ways that we can to make it clear to you that you should not have the know-how on how to make a weapon, because one of the great threats to peace and the world would be if Iranians showed up with a nuclear weapon.

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It would give them an opportunity to blackmail or threaten or possibly follow through with their stated objective, which is the destruction of Israel. I, of course, said all options are on the table, but I made a pledge to the American people, we will work diplomatically to solve the problem. And that is why you see us at the United Nations working with the EU countries and China and Russia to send that clear message, and that we are going to continue to impose sanctions and make it harder for the Iranian Government to operate in the world until they change their mind, until they come to a new way forward. I have said that if they suspend their nuclear program, we will be at the table. But they have so far refused to do that. I have also spoken to the Iranian people. And I want to make it clear to the people of Iran that the United States respects Iran, respects the people, respects the proud tradition, and that the Government of Iran has taken decisions that make it harder for them to live their lives. It is the decisions of the Government of Iran that have led to the isolation of the country. And that if this Government would only be responsible, would listen to the world, would not continue its weapons program-the idea of being able to have the capacity to make a weapon-then there is a better way forward for the Iranian people. But, ENTITY, is there a redline, either a timeline or redline- I hear from analysts that Iran wants today, or at least trying today to buy time in order for you to wait-to lose the time that you can make a big decision, such as going to war. Is there a ceiling that if negotiations would fail, a decision to go to war would be made? The Iranian regime must understand that I am dedicated to the proposition that they should not continue their desire to enrich, as will be people that follow me in office. This is not a party issue, an issue between one party or the other. When the Iranian President announces to the world that he is going to destroy an ally or announces to the world that he will end up defying the world-that-no matter who the President is, there is going to be a continued focus and effort to achieve this issue, to resolve this issue.

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This issue, before I move to Iraq, which also, a lot of Iraqis are waiting for this-is there-there are some leaking to the press, and particularly the Arabic press-is it true that you have issued orders, ENTITY, to your senior generals in the American military to prepare for a major and precise strike that could happen during the end of January or February? I would call that empty propaganda. Evidently, there is a lot of gossip in parts of the country-world that try to scare people about me, personally, or my country or what we stand for. It is gossip; it is baseless gossip. ENTITY, we have talked about Iraq. And you have tried to give us a message to assure the Iraqi people-when we were in the garden together-that you do not believe in the partition or the division of Iraq. And this is a very controversial issue in Iraq. And it is scary to even some of the leadership in Iraq. Just to continue and follow up with that issue, did we reach what we reached because of American mistakes or because of Iraqi mistakes and the Iraqi Government? I think, first of all, the successes in Iraq have been really quite extraordinary. One, the people of Iraq no longer have to live under a dictatorship, a brutal dictatorship. Secondly, the Iraqi people wrote and ratified a modern Constitution. Thirdly, there is a Government that is in place that is beginning to take on the responsibilities of governing. For example, quite a few billions have been spent in the Provinces by the central Government. That does not get any focus, but there is a functioning Government; there is revenue sharing; there is money to the Provinces. But the biggest problem facing Iraq was because killers, bombers decided to murder innocent people in order to stop progress. So what I tell people is, is that the reason why there has not been smooth progress-and by the way, it is hard to transition from a dictatorship to a Iraqi democracy-but the main problem has been not the Iraqis or not the United States, but it is been the fact that people have murdered. For example, what I find appalling is that Al Qaida bombed a holy site, a Muslim holy site; that there have been bombs in markets where innocent people are shopping and young children get destroyed by Muslim-people who profess to be Muslims. Their hearts are so hardened that they are willing to kill innocent people. And so the task is to deny these people their ability to blow up the innocent.

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And that is exactly what is happening because of Iraqi bravery and Iraqi forces and a commitment by the Government to deal with murderers. And the role of a state is to protect the innocent people from those murderers. And that is what you are seeing taking place in Iraq. But in the meantime, government is beginning to function better. First of all, the leaders never have had any practice with democracy, and they are learning to get along after years of tension and resentment. I support Prime Minister Maliki strongly, and I support the Presidency Council strongly. I just had President Talabani in to the Oval Office the other day. And the reason I do is because-I look for courage and commitment. And these leaders are courageous men, and they are committed to a free Iraq. But are things better-getting better over time? And what is important for the Iraqi people to know is that we are going to support them, is that they have got our help because we want them to succeed. We want them to realize their dreams. ENTITY, so the words that were said attributing to the White House or the American position about disappointment in Prime Minister Maliki is not true? You are not disappointed in Prime Minister Maliki and this Iraqi Government yet? I strongly support Prime Minister Maliki. One of the jobs that I have to continue to do is constantly repeat what-the position of my Government. And the position of my Government is that Prime Minister Maliki is a good man who is working hard, and we strongly support him. But it is not just Prime Minister Maliki that we support, we also support President Talabani or Vice President Al-Mahdi or Vice President Hashimi. We support those who are committed to peace and committed to the welfare of the Iraqi people. And we support those who are willing to take on these extremists, the few who are murdering innocent people in order to create chaos and confusion inside of Iraq. And I am proud of the courage of the Iraqi citizens. The Iraqis have been through a lot of bloodshed and violence, and yet they are still strong in their desire to achieve. ENTITY, let us move to Lebanon. And a lot of Lebanese are waiting. You have met with Mr. Sa'ad Hariri today, and they are all talking about the upcoming elections in Lebanon that could or could not happen. Does ENTITY have a specific, preferred candidate in Lebanon that you wanted to support for the Presidency of Lebanon?

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Is there going to be elections in Lebanon that will take place? No, I have no specific candidate, and I told that to Sa'ad Hariri. I have a deep desire to help the Lebanese democracy succeed. I am deeply concerned about foreign interference into the Presidential election. I am concerned that neighboring countries will try to create instability so that this democracy does not succeed, just like I am deeply concerned that there is been murder on the streets of Beirut, including Sa'ad Hariri's dad, and that the international community must follow through in an expeditious way-must follow through quickly in holding-in having an international tribunal, so that those who murdered-so that the facts come out and those who murdered would be held to account. There is just too many parliamentarians who are trying to work for a peaceful Lebanon being assassinated. And we need to know who is doing that assassinations. And when they are found out, they need to be held to account; there needs to be a consequence. Thirdly, I told Sa'ad Hariri that I sent one of our top military men into Lebanon to help them modernize their armed forces. And the reason I felt comfortable doing that is because Prime Minister Siniora showed courage and had-as did the Lebanese forces when they went out to rout out some extremists who were causing chaos or trying to cause chaos in Lebanon. And yet it became apparent to me that this military was full of courageous people but did not have the modern equipment necessary to defend the country from extremists and/or extremists who had been funded from outside influence. Sa'ad Hariri shared with me the strategy of the March 14th coalition, and I was more than willing to listen. I assured him and I assure the Lebanese people that we want to help you succeed. ENTITY, are we able to say today, for example, to the Lebanese people-and we know that the United States is the most powerful constituency in Lebanon-can we say to the Lebanese people that you, specifically, ENTITY, will prevent any foreign interference in Lebanon that could be imposed from the outside and have a President that is being promoted by outside force? I think maybe that is a promise that I am not sure I could keep, because the one thing that we did was, we worked with France to pass a U.N. resolution to get Syria, Syrian presence, visible presence, out of Lebanon.

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However, I suspect that there is still a lot of Syrian influence in Lebanon that is not helpful. And one way to make it clear to the Asad Government that we do not appreciate this is for the United States to-is to analyze the sanctions we have placed on the Government and think about other ways to continue to send a message and to work with our friends, particularly in Europe, to send the same message. The international community said we ought to have a tribunal. I am frustrated frankly by the pace at which the tribunal is lingering; it is not moving. There needs to be a definitive moment where the evidence is laid out, and if it is clear evidence-in other words, if somebody's guilty, they ought to be held to account so that murder is not-so that there is this clear signal that murder is not going to be accepted. The brave souls of Lebanon who are being killed-Sa'ad Hariri's dad was one, blown up, murdered. Because he supported democracy. Lebanese democracy is for freedom. And that ought to send a clear message to people throughout the world that it is so important for those of us who live in free societies to support brave people who are promoting liberty. This man wanted nothing more than the Lebanese mom to be able to raise her child in peace. And yet somebody ordered or somebody followed through with coldblooded murder to deny those dreams for the Lebanese people. And the same thing is happening in Iraq, and it is unacceptable behavior. And the United States is firm in its desire to help the average citizen in the Middle East live in peace. So we have common interests. And that is really what I want the people in the Middle East to hear, that each issue is an issue that is got difficult problems, but there is an interconnection. Extremists want to stop freedom, though. And we want you to live in peace. And we respect your religion, and we respect your humanity. And our desire for you is to realize your full potential, God-given potential. ENTITY, of course I cannot conclude this interview without asking the most important question, that is the issue of Palestine. Is ENTITY convinced, truly convinced inside, that it is possible yet to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine? Can we achieve the two states, living side by side, and not as two enemies but two friends?

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I believe in my soul, in my heart, that not only is it necessary that there be two states living side by side in order to achieve peace, but it is possible. I am very optimistic we can achieve a two-state solution. First, Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas are committed to a two-state solution and are making progress. We have done a lot of dialog between the two men, and they are making progress. And they are making progress that-I believe-where the average Palestinian and average Israeli will begin to see what a vision looks like; in other words, something to work for, something that is more tangible than just a Rose Garden speech by the President or hopeful comments by others-something real. Secondly, that-you know, we are hosting a international conference that will be attended by interested parties-the Arab League, you know, important Arab League group will be there; a committee will be there from the Arab League. And it is an opportunity for there to be a serious-substantive discussions about the way forward and a two-state solution. A lot of it is going to be empower both parties, give them confidence to follow through on the vision. I also want you to know that I fully understand the two-state solution is a part of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, and that our strategy is to get all concerned countries to the table; to get this comprehensive peace moving forward in a way that is tangible and real, so people can see it. In other words, I am not interested in just a photo opportunity, and I do not think anybody else is going to be interested in that. I really want to see if we can advance the progress. Step one was for there to be a commitment by Israel and the Palestinians to this peace. And step two is a commitment to the roadmap. In other words, nobody is going to want-have a state that becomes a launching pad for attack. The Palestinians-the average Palestinian does not want that, and surely the Abbas Government does not , and Israel cannot stand that. And so we have got-we got to work a lot with the Palestinians to help their security forces-and we are-and to help the President and the Prime Minister with economic aid, tangible economic aid so the average Palestinian can see a better life ahead, can realize there is something better than violence. And so I am very optimistic about it, about the prospects for peace. Steven told me that time is over, ENTITY.

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Could you just- a few seconds, if you allow me. And since I wanted to go ask you that question when we, after-20 days after commemorating September 11th, I said, when I meet ENTITY, I am going to ask him a question. This massacre that happened on 9/11, it is very difficult for any Arab who lives in the Arab world that can imagine what happened to innocent American people on that day. I would like to know what was your reaction the first time when you heard that 15 Saudi Muslims were among the hijackers who committed this crime and this terrorist act? How did that affect your relationship with the Kingdom-which plays a major role in the region-and particularly Crown Prince Abdallah-now King Abdallah-who is a personal friend of yours? King Abdallah is a personal friend of mine, and I respect him. You know, I have seen murder before in my own country. I have seen evil people take innocent life. And when that is happened, I have not condemned everybody else around. I will give you an interesting story. I was in a community yesterday-a gunman came and killed five young Amish girls- this is last year. The Amish community, which is a religious community here in America, went and reached out to the wife and children of the gunman in compassion and love. It was a great act of compassion. And the reason I tell you that is, my reaction on September the 11th was, I vowed to find the killers-those who ordered the killing-and bring them to justice. On the other hand, never did it enter my heart and my mind to be embittered toward a group of people, innocent people, who had nothing to do with the murderer. In other words, I was focused on the individuals and their commanders, not citizens in the Middle East, of any country, particularly Saudi Arabia. In other words, my first reaction was not, look, the Saudis are bad people. My first reaction was, evil people came and killed, and we will react to protect ourselves. And we will react to protect ourselves in two ways. One is to work with concerned governments, including Saudi Arabia, to find those few that are willing to murder us. And those same murderers that came to the United States would very much like to murder the leaders in Saudi Arabia. And the long term-these people believe something.

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There is an ideology behind their views, and the ideology basically is very different from one based upon freedom. Their ideology is, you cannot worship the way you see fit. And if you do not worship the way they want you to worship, you will be publicly beaten, or you will be killed, or you will be in prison. They do not believe, for example, young girls ought to be educated. I strongly disagree with that. I think one of the great potentials of the Middle East is women. And I certainly know, as a father, that I want my little girls to be-you know, have a good education, which they did. And I am confident other fathers want the same thing in the Middle East, even though we may not speak the same language or share the same religion. And so my reaction was-tough reaction to make sure we find those who ordered the killing and bring them to justice and to keep the pressure on them so they do not do it again-and I believe they want to do it again. But on the other hand, I have this sense of a possibility based upon something that is worked throughout the world, and that is, people being able to realize dreams through liberty. This is not the first time that societies have had to make choices. This is not the first time where people made the focused effort to become a free society. And it will not be the first time when a part of the world has gone from one that is been tense and full of unspeakable tragedy to one of peace. And that is where we are headed; we are headed to peace. And I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity to speak on a free channel to people throughout the Middle East. It is hard for me to believe that people cannot look at America and say, Wow, what a compassionate group of people -because we are. And yet I understand the images of my country have been distorted. And I understand people say things about me personally that simply are not true. And so I appreciate the chance to come and talk to you directly and to talk to your viewers directly about what is in my heart and about the fact that my country is a country of peace. ENTITY, on behalf of myself and Al Arabiya TV, I would like to thank you very much for this opportunity. You were very generous with us on time; I know you have a very hectic schedule.

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Before you ask questions, I just want to say that I really have appreciated the stories you have done, because I think it is so important that it is sort of a balance thing, but I want to raise public awareness of this and awareness also with people with influence who can influence decisionmaking without throwing people into an unnecessary panic. Sandy was making fun of me today before you came in Sandy Berger was. He said, When you started talking about this 6 years ago, nobody around here people just did not they had not thought about it. I have been asking them to think about this for a long, long time. And of course, we had it more or less in the context of terrorism because we had the World Trade Center and all the other things to worry about. But actually, one of my first questions because we have heard so many rumors about how you got interested, and none of what has happened would have happened without your interest. Well, it was first of all, I spend a lot of time thinking about 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now. I think that is one of the things that Presidents are supposed to do and especially when things are changing so much. But we had keep in mind, we had the World Trade Center issue; we had the CIA killer; and then later you had the incident in the Tokyo subway and then Oklahoma City. We have had a lot of terrorist incidents, culminating in the bombing of our Embassies in Africa and what happened in Khobar, other things. One of the things that I have worried about from the beginning, with the breakdown of the Soviet Union before my time here, was how to help them deal with the aftermath of the massive nuclear system they have, and starting with the Nunn-Lugar funds, going all the way up to our threat reduction proposals in this year's budget you know, we tried to hire keep the scientists and the labs working and do joint projects of all kinds that would be constructive. But it was pretty obvious to me that, given the size of the Soviet biological and chemical programs and the fact that we know a lot of other nations are trying to develop chemical capacity and some biological capacity, that we had not only nuclear problems but we have a chemical and biological problem. And of course, the Vice President and others sort of sensitized me to this whole computer problem. We had the incident with the defense computers just a few months ago.

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But before that, I kept reading about all these non in the line of national security all these computer hackers. I can do E-mail and a few other things, you know. But it struck me that we were going to have to find some way to try to deal with that, too, because of the defense implications, as well as the other possibilities. Hot Zone or Cobra Event ? Which one impressed you? Well, The Hot Zone was interesting to me because of the Ebola thing, because that was a fact book. But I thought The Cobra Event was interesting, especially when he said what his sources were, which seemed fairly credible to me. And then I read another book about a group of terrorists shutting down the telephone networks in the Northeast and the Midwest. I read so many things. But anyway, when I and a lot of times it is just for thrills, but a lot of times these people are not far off. You know, they sell books by imagining the future, and sometimes they are right; sometimes they are wrong. So I have gotten I do not want to sound I have gotten a lot of sort of solid, scientific input. I have also solicited opinions from people working on the genome project, for example, and about what the implications of that might be for dealing with biological warfare. And last year, we had a whole group of experts come in here and spend an extended amount of time with me and then follow up with the staff on biological issues in particular. So I have had a real interest in this, and I think we are about to get up to speed. But we just have to be prepared for it. I mean, it is if you look back through all of human history, people who are interested in gaining control or influence or advantage over others have brought to bear the force of arms. And what normally happens, from the beginning of history, is the arms work until a defense is erected, and then there is an equilibrium until there is a new offensive system developed, and then a defense comes up going all the way back to well, even before it, but castle moats which were overcome by catapults.

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And so, basically, I think what has concerned me is that we, because we are moving from one big issue will there be a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union to now a whole lot of proliferation of issues, dealing with smaller scale nuclear issues, chemical and biological issues, missile technology, and of course, the related computer cyber-crime issue is that I just do not want the lag time between offense and defense to be any longer than is absolutely necessary. That, I think, is the challenge for us, is to try to before anything really tragic happens not only in the United States but anywhere else. We have had enough warning signs out there now, enough concrete evidence, and we need to close the door of the gap between the offense and defense. How worried should we be, and how we do not want to panic people. And research has seen some of these warning signs, and readers call, and they want to know, is this how worried should we be? Is it going be more serious in the future? I would say that if the issue is how probable is it in the very near-term an American city or community would be affected, I'd say you probably should not be too worried. But if the issue is, is it a near certainty that at some time in the future there will be some group, probably a terrorist group, that attempts to bring to bear either the use or the threat of a chemical or biological operation, I would say that is highly likely to happen sometime in the next few years. And therefore, I would say the appropriate response is not worry or panic but taking this issue very seriously, expecting all elected officials with any responsibility in this area to know everything they can, and to do everything we can both to erect all possible defenses and then to try to make sure we are doing everything we can to stop this. Now, we know right now we know that a lot of what we have done already has delayed WMD programs, some of which I cannot talk about, but slowed the development of WMD programs, of missile technology development that might deliver such weapons and other things. And we are doing everything we can to stop or slow down the ability of others, insofar as we know about it and can do something about it. And meanwhile, we are doing everything we can both to develop defenses and emergency responses. But I think we have got an enormous amount of work out there ahead of us, an enormous amount of work.

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And a lot of this has to be done with great cooperation between the Federal Government we need cooperation of the private sector on the cyber issues, the computer issues. We need cooperation with local government on public health response issues, exposure if there appears to be an outbreak. We had all these sort of false alarms of anthrax in California how many? more than a dozen, I think, in the last month. So we need to be able to diagnose and to treat and also to manage those things. Does one of these threats worry you more than another, and does any one in particular keep you awake at night? Well, I have spent some late nights thinking a lot about this and reading a lot about it. I think in terms of offense versus defense, if you go back to where we started, the thing that I am most interested in and you will see we have allocated several hundred million dollars basically to research and to applied research the thing that I am most interested in is developing the ability to quickly contain biological agents. You know, it is just like for the people who went through Oklahoma City, nothing could be more horrible. The thing that bothers people about biological agents is that, unless they are properly diagnosed, contained, and treated, that it could spread. For example, we know that if all of us went to a rally on The Mall tomorrow with 10,000 people, and somebody flew a low-flying crop duster and sprayed us all with biological agents from, let us say 200 feet, that no matter how toxic it were, half of us would walk away, for reasons no one quite understands. You know, either we would not breathe it, or we'd have some miraculous resistance to it And the other half of us, somebody would have to diagnose in a hurry and then contain and treat. Otherwise, it would be kind of like the gift that keeps on giving, you know. And I do not mean that I am not trying to be macabre, but you asked me what keeps me awake at night, and that bothers me. And that is why the thing that I thought was most important about what we did last year, and what we learned a little bit from our defense scare even though it was on a computer issue, we had this defense issue, plus we were dealing with all this we'd studied for a year all this especially this biological issue is we had this work going on in 12 different places in the Government.

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So we had to organize our efforts so that we could be accessible to local governments, so we could work with them to set up their own preventive mechanisms. And I have to tell you, it may be we may have to await it is a note I made to myself that we may have to have a perfect defense, I mean, instantaneous. We may have to depend upon the genome project, interestingly enough, because once the human genes' secrets are unlocked, then if you and I think we have been infected, they could take a blood sample, and there would be a computer program which would show us if we had, let us say, we had a variant of anthrax. Let us suppose some terrorist hired a genius scientist and a laboratory to take basic anthrax and put some variant in it that would be resistant to all known anthrax antidotes. And what you would want is to be able to take a blood sample, do an analysis, put it through a software program that had already been developed, and say, Okay, here is this is how the genes are different. And then presumably, not too long after we have developed this, they will already know, well, therefore, this is how you should how you should change the vaccine. And we know now I know this is kind of bewildering, but keep in mind this is actually good news because, if there were no genome project, if there were no rapid way to do quick analysis that would go right to the tiniest variant, we would be in trouble. And now these scientists are working on this, and we are actually a little bit ahead of the original predicted timetable on unlocking the secrets of the gene. And when that happens, one of the side benefits, I think, will be to be able to tell these things much more quickly. But meanwhile, we have got this plan. We are stockpiling the vaccines, and we are doing all this research which the Government has to fund, because obviously there is no market for it, right? It is not like there is no market for it, and I hope there never will be any market for it. But we have to pay, the Government has to pay for this research to develop new vaccines and to manage it along. And I think we will do I think we have got a very good increase in the budget, and I really think it will have broad bipartisan support. And targeting.

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Yes, but I think to be fair, we are a good ways away from that. I think we need to worry far more about the fact that most of these groups we know, for example let us take something I can talk about because it is public record. We know Usama bin Ladin's network has made an effort to get chemical weapons. Well, we know they have made an effort to get chemical weapons; they may have made an effort to get biological weapons. We do not know that they have them. It is true if you take this thing out to sort of the science fiction conclusion, obviously the genome project itself carries the seeds of its own misuse. But right now I am absolutely convinced that the advantages dwarf the disadvantages in this area. Plus, which all the other advantages of it I mean, it is going to lead us to we will save countless lives because we will know in advance what predisposition people have, what problems they have the genome project would be the seminal event you know, when it is done, of the first part of the 21st century, there is no doubt about that. But to come back to your point, the only point I would make, whenever you ask me a question like that, I think it is best for you to remember the formulation that I started with, and it is interesting to think about the moat and the catapult, the spear and the shield anything. It is all a question of people who have money, organization, and an interest, whether it is political or financial or religious or whatever, in oppressing other people or holding them down, will always be looking for new offensive weapons. Our goal should always be, for the sake of the world as well as the security of the American people, to make sure not only that we can defend ourselves and counter-punch, if you will, but to develop with each new wave of technology to close the gap between offense and defense. And if we do that, I think that is the strategy that I hope will become at least an integral part of our national security strategy in the WMD area. ENTITY, in the interim we have a lot of Americans, more than 2 million Americans in uniform, being vaccinated against anthrax. The Secret Service told me I could not discuss that, and they have good reasons for not wanting me to do it.

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But let me say, I am convinced that like any other vaccination, there may be some small rejection, but I think on balance it is a safe procedure. I have looked at the reports, and I think on balance, given the fact that we send so many of our men and women in uniform into places where they could be exposed, I think that they are better off being vaccinated. I do not believe that the threat in the United States is sufficient that I could recommend that to people, to the public at large. What about first responders or people in hospitals who might be exposed to smallpox, anthrax, plague, and things like that? The real answer there is, we have not reached a conclusion, but we are considering that. Because we have to work with the first responders, we have got the public health people looking into this and other people, and I think that that is a judgment that ought to be made primarily by people who are in the best position to make a professional judgment about it. We have heard about something else that is being considered that I think Bill wants to ask you about. As you may be aware, Secretary Cohen and people at the Pentagon are talking about trying to create a new position of commander in chief for the continental United States because of the terror threat. And it is moving through the system, and at some point it is going to come to you, probably sometime this summer. Are you inclined to create that kind of position for the military? Let me say, I think that we need to have an organized response, if you will, to what you might call homeland defense on CBW and cyber or computer terrorism issues. And now we have established a national coordinator on these issues in the White House. We have got this national domestic preparation office at the Justice Department. We have got a National Infrastructure Protection Center. We have got a joint task force on cyber defense already at DOD in response to what they went through before. So I want them to look at where we are and make some recommendations to me. I am not sure that that is what they are going to recommend, and I think that I should not give an answer to the question you ask until I see what the range of options are and what the range of recommendations is. Do you have a leaning one way or another? No, just except to say that it is very important that we outline every single responsibility that we have as a nation at the national level and that someone be responsible for it.

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I want to know as I said, one of the things that we learned last year that I think was a legitimate criticism of what we have done in our administration is that we had 12 different places where these activities were going on, and they were not being properly coordinated and driven in the proper fashion. And we have tried to resolve this. And this is sort of the last big kind of organizational piece, as far as I know, that is yet to be resolved. Again, the American people this should not be a cause for alarm; this should be a cause for reassurance. They should want us to be wellorganized on these things because remember, for years and years, when I was a boy, we used to do all those they had all these fallout shelters, and every school had its drills and all that. I mean, I am older than you, so you would not remember this, but No, we did it. But you know, and we it was a sensible thing to do under the circumstances. Thank God we never experienced it. And so what I want us to do is everything, within reason, we can to minimize our exposure and risks here, and that is how I am going to evaluate this Pentagon recommendation. Secretary Cohen, I think, is also real focused on this now. I have been very pleased with the priority he is given it. And I think that all these guys know that after their experience with the computer issue that all this tomorrow's threats may be very different from yesterday's, and we have got to be ready. What do you say to people, to skeptics who say all this is just Pentagon maneuvering, creating new bogeymen to scare us so they can whip up new budget authority? Even though we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars and in the aggregate a few billion dollars, it is nowhere near as expensive as maintaining this sort of basic infrastructure of defense; the case of public health, the basic infrastructure of public health. I say to them, they should understand that we have intelligence and a lot of it is in the public arena, you all write about it about all the countries that are trying the countries and the groups that want chemical weapons, that want biological weapons, that are trying to get agents, precursor agents that you can use to develop chemicals or basic agents you can use to develop biological weapons.

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And everybody knows now the world is full of hackers that seek to intrude on networks, that seek to insert bogus codes into programs, and all this sort of stuff. And it would be completely irresponsible for us not to allocate a substantial investment in trying to protect America from threats that will be, in all probability, as likely or more likely in the future than the threats we think we face today. That is why we started this conversation by saying, I do not want to say anything that will overly alarm anybody. I am not trying to stir up a lot of false threats. But if you look at just what the UNSCOM people in Iraq they say that they do not believe that the reporting in Iraq is consistent with what they believe the chemical capacity there is. If you look at the fact with regard to chemicals, with the Chemical Weapons Convention, if we can get it properly implemented, at least we will be able to track probably, that plus intelligence, large volumes of chemical stocks. But with biological stocks, a very small laboratory with the right materials to work with, you could develop supplies that could kill a large number of people. It simply is irresponsible for us not to both do the best we can with public health protections, do the best research we can on vaccines, stockpile what we know works, and then get out there and try to build a defense and an ability to interrupt and stop, with export controls and any other way we can, these developments. And it costs money. But to me, it is money well spent. And if there is never an incident, nobody would be happier than me 20 years from now if the same critics would be able to say, Oh, see, Clinton was a kook; nothing happened. I would be the happiest man on Earth. I would be the happiest man on Earth. If they could say, He overexaggerated it; nothing happened; all he did was make a bunch of jobs for scientists and build the Pentagon budget, I would be elated 20 years from now to be subject to that criticism because it would mean that nothing happened, and in no small measure because of the efforts we have made. Since we have so little time left, ENTITY, Russia How can you be sure since they violated the treaty that they signed banning biological weapons for 20 years, does it make sense to work with them now on biological projects? Are you certain that they are not doing biological research?

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And what do you do? Let me say this. I think that the more we work with them and the more their scientists are working with us and the more successful we are in building a common endeavor, the more it will be in their interest to comply. The real danger in Russia, I think dangers are two. One is I will take one that is outside the CBW area so it does not look like I am waving the red flag here. When we started the space station you know, John Glenn went up and then we sent the first two components of the space station up it had been months since a lot of those Russian scientists had been paid. That is why it is very, very important, I think, to say we value this enormous infrastructure of scientific expertise they have in the space area, in the CBW area, and we want to work with them. This budget of mine would enable us to do joint work with 8,000 Russian scientists. That bothers me. The second thing that concerns me is that when Russia shed communism, they adopted a strategy which was widely lauded at the time in the United States and elsewhere, but they were actually when I went to Russia, and you remember right after my mother died I got on the plane, and I went to the Czech Republic and Russia that was, what, January of '94. Actually, at that time the Czech Republic was doing very well and was sort of the poster child of the new economy in the former Communist countries. But when I was there, Russia had actually privatized more property than the Czech Republic had. And this relates partly to the economic crisis, but when they did it, they did it without having had the benefit of an effective central bank, a securities and exchange commission, all these other things, so that you had money coming in and money flying out now. And one of the problems they have now is that it is not a totalitarian Government anymore; there are a lot of private companies all the private companies there by definition used to be part of the state, unless they are new businesses. And so one of the problems we are having is, even when they are trying to help us, is keeping up with what all these companies and their subsidiaries do. And that is been the tension that you have written a lot about and there is been a lot in the press about was there missile cooperation with Iran or not, and does that violate our understanding, and does that call for some action visa-vis Russia?

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And part of the problem is just keeping up with this proliferation of companies and people that used to have some connection to the Soviet State, some connection to the defense apparatus. It is not a simple process, and it is not a perfect process, but I am absolutely convinced that this threat reduction initiative we have got can kind of intensify our efforts to work with them, as well as to really implement the Chemical Weapons Treaty and get some teeth in the Biological Weapons Convention. It may not be perfect, but it is better than the alternative. What do you do if the nightmare comes to pass, and some country hits us, hits us hard, with a biological weapon? What kind of response would you do? Well, first of all, if some country were thinking about doing that, I would certainly hope that they would not have the capacity to do it before we could stop them or interrupt them, if it was a that is, if you are talking about somebody lobbing a missile over here or something like that. I think if it happened, it would be an act of war, and there would be a very strong response. But I think we have demonstrated that. But I think the far more likely thing is somebody representing some interest maybe it could be a rogue state; maybe it could be a terrorist network walking around a city with a briefcase full of vials or in spray cans, you know. So what we have to do any country with any sense, if they wanted to attack us, would try to do it through a terrorist network, because if they did it with a missile we'd know who did it, and then they'd be sunk. Would you respond with nuclear weapons to a biological attack? Well, I never discuss the nuclear issue. But I think that we would have at least a proportionate, if not a disproportionate, response if someone committed an act of war against the United States. That is what we would do. And if somebody willfully murdered a lot of our civilians, there would be a very heavy price to pay. ENTITY, you have time for one more Did you have a chance to watch any of Senator Bumpers' presentation today? I watched that. He said he criticized the House managers for lacking compassion for your family. He described your family as a family that has been about as decimated as a family can get. The relationship between husband and wife, father and child, has been incredibly strained if not destroyed.

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The first time it was about 35 degrees with a whipping wind, and the second time, I had a very good second nine holes. We were talking about your sleep or lack of same over in the Oval Office. You mentioned something about a nap. If I can take a nap, even 15 or 20 minutes in the middle of the day, it is really invigorating to me. On the days when I am a little short of sleep, I try to work it out so that I can sneak off and just lie down for 15 minutes, a half an hour, and it really makes all the difference in the world. We are in the Library now, where President Roosevelt made his fireside chats. Is this among your favorite rooms? I love this room. People who work around here can come in here and check out these books just like any other library. It is also a public room that is open to everyone who comes in the White House on a tour. So people get to see this wonderful library of America, great old portrait of George Washington, and as I was telling you a moment ago, the little-known anonymous design for the White House by Thomas Jefferson. He tried to become the architect of the White House anonymously, and his design was rejected in favor of this one. You were mentioning that certain Presidents dominate this house, as opposed to how they may be viewed in history. What did you mean by that? What I meant was most of the Presidents who are dominant here were very important Presidents, or all of them. a bedroom named for him, the room where he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, his statues and portraits everywhere. He put both of the round porches on the White House and changed the front to the back of the White House and the back to the front. Theodore Roosevelt built both the wings, and his portraits are everywhere and his vigor and youth. Franklin Roosevelt lived here longer than everyone else, but he has just a couple of portraits here in the house and a very modest presence, considering the fact that he was plainly the dominant personality in terms of the length of time that he dominated here. So it is just sort of interesting who dominates, because of the contributions they made to the house itself, I think. What are the chances that Bill Clinton can be one of those dominant Presidents in this house? I think this house is in good shape; I do not know that I can do anything to it that would improve it.

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I imagine that I will enjoy living here and that I will revere the responsibility about as much as anybody who is ever been here. How hard it is to do everything I want to do as quickly as I want to do it, that the pace of change, although they say we are keeping quite a brisk pace-the House of Representatives adopted the budget resolution and my jobs stimulus package last week in record time-but I still get frustrated. I have a hard time keeping up with everything and keeping it going forward. I am an impatient person by nature, and I want to do things. We have had a minimum so far of the kind of backbiting and factionalism and all that you hear about. What would you count as your biggest success so far? I think moving the economic program as quickly as possible and developing a big consensus for the idea that we need to make a serious attempt to both reduce the deficit and increase investments in jobs and education and technology. We have got to do both at the same time. I have been very worried that I would not be able to convince the American people or the Congress to do both at the same time because we have never done it before in the history of the country. But the competition we are in in the world and the problems we have had for the last 12 years absolutely require us to invest in our people and their jobs and to reduce the deficit at the same time, I believe. Now, it is my information, I want to check it with yours, that what you call the job stimulus part of your economic plan is in trouble in the Senate. One, you may not have the votes. Senator Byrd said this afternoon that he saw trouble on the horizon. Does that match your information? We plainly got the votes to pass it as it is or with very minor modifications. What most Americans do not know is that of the 100 Members of the Senate, if you have one more than 40 you can shut everything down. And you know, there is been some discussion that the Republicans may try to filibuster the stimulus program and may try to stop us from trying to create any new jobs. They have 43 Republican Senators, and they may be able to hold 41 of them. And if they do, you know, they can indefinitely postpone a vote. I would hate to see that happen, and I think it would not serve them well.

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The American people did not elect any of us to perpetuate the kind of partisan gridlock we have had for the last several years, and particularly to have a minority of one House do that. I do hear that. You know there is some argument around the edges among the more pro-deficit reduction Democrats that we should make some minor changes in the jobs stimulus program, but they are not great, I do not think. Two things strike me, not just about what you said but the way you said it. Correct me if I am wrong, it sounds to me like you are really worried about the possibility that it will be slowed if not stopped, the stimulus part. I think in the end we will pass it because, first of all, I think the public would just be outraged at the thought that we have a chance here to create haft a million new jobs and to do things that are good that need to be done and that it would be slowed up. I am just pointing out that if the minority in the Senate can get 40 votes plus one, they can stop anything from happening. And that is what happened when they tried to gut the motor voter bill last week. That would have really been a big-it is a major piece of political reform, makes it easier for all kinds of people to register and vote. And they were willing to pass the motor voter bill, which allowed people to register when they license their car but not allow people, low-income people, to register when they pick up their Medicaid or Social Security benefits or something else. I have seen it. I hope it will not , and we will do our best to avert it. ENTITY, let me come to what I and, I think, a lot of Americans perceive to be the gut of this. Do we really need this, what you call stimulus package now? Does not it or does it present a real threat to inflation and increasing the deficit? Why not either reduce it or call it off since the economy seems to be moving? Because we are not producing jobs and because it does not present a threat to inflation, nor does it present a threat to the deficit. I agreed over the next 5 years to reduce the deficit by 4 times as much as the stimulus package over and above the deficit reduction that I have proposed, $500 billion of deficit reduction. So, we have blown away the amount of the stimulus package over the next 4 years in extra deficit reduction. So, we are not adding to the deficit.

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Secondly, the financial markets have already discounted the prospects of this being inflationary. Third, and most important of all, unemployment in America is too high. Unemployment in all the rich countries except Japan is too high. We have to prove that we can generate jobs in America again. And there is no indication that we are doing that. Now, last month we had a lot of new jobs, but way, way over half of them were part-time jobs with no health care benefits and no security of lasting. So, we need this to create jobs. This program invests in community, invests in people and their education. ENTITY, I want to talk to you about Russia. Time for us to take a break. We will continue with conversation about Russia in just a moment. ENTITY, just right off the top of your head, what percentage of this day have you spent dealing with the problems in Russia? And let me ask a specific question. If I am a trying-to-do-right American, lost my job, trying to support my wife and kids, tell me why I should pay for spending foreign aid to help the Russians? Because it is in your interest. And let me tell you why it is in your interest. For one thing, America needs good customers for its products. And Russia, a free Russia with a free economy, would prefer to do business with America over any other country. And they prefer to buy our farm products and other products, and we have to look ahead. Every year we have to be looking ahead to find more and more markets for our products because as we get drawn into the global economy, we have got to sell more to other people to keep our incomes high. Secondly, we have a real interest in keeping Russia democratic and keeping them committed to reducing their nuclear arsenals. Because otherwise we have to turn right around and rebuild our defenses at very high levels, spend huge amounts of taxpayers' money on nuclear arsenals, raise our children in a more dangerous world, and divert needed resources which ought to be spent on education and training and investment here at home. So a safe, a democratic, a free market-oriented Russia is in the immediate economic interest of every working American and very much in the interest of those folks and their children over the long run. If we let Russia revert to a country which will never be able to do business with us, that is bad business.

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If it reverts to a nationalist, even if not a Communist, a highly nationalist nuclear power that forces us to spend more of our money keeping our guard higher, then that is money that will be diverted from the future of the working families and their children. What about the theory that whatever money we try to give to the Russians, it would be money down a black hole, just disappear because chaos and pandemonium axe hour by hour? First of all, we do not have enough money to, on our own, affect the course of events. Ultimately the Russian people will have to work out their own future. But there are some specific things we can do which will not hurt us; in fact, will help us, and which will send a clear signal to the forces of freedom and democracy and market economies in Russia that we and the rest of the West will help them. You know, for example, if we provide more food aid, that helps our farmers, and we can do it at relatively low cost to ourselves. If we can find a way to help to privatize more businesses and to make those work, that helps us. If we can find a way to help them run their energy business better so they do not lose as much of their oil or their gas in the pipeline, that helps them without hurting us. It gives us a market for our pipeline products. If we can find a way to help them convert their nuclear power plants that are built on the Chernobyl model to a different energy source, that could put a lot of our folks to work, put a lot of their people to work, and make them safer environmentally and economically. Now, over the long rim, they are going to have to do some things for themselves. They are going to have to get control of their rampant inflation. They are going to have to make sure that they can get out of the bureaucracies that do not work anymore, that clog up all reforms. They are going to have to make a lot of decisions themselves. But there axe some targeted, limited commitments we can make that, no matter what happens, will not hurt us very much and carry the potential of helping us a great deal while helping to keep good things alive in Russia. Now you have met with the Russian Foreign Minister this afternoon. Did you come out of that with increased confidence that Boris Yeltsin will survive? He is like all of us in public life; he is not perfect.

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I am not perfect; we all have our problems. But he is a genuinely courageous man, genuinely committed to freedom and democracy, genuinely committed to reform. And I think now he is more open perhaps than in the past at trying to work out some kind of accommodation with others who would negotiate with him to keep reform going, even though they may have some different ideas. Well, that is what I have to do here. I have to work with the Senate and the House, the Democrats and the Republicans. I think he is got to work on all that. But I think he is got a fair chance to survive. And I think not only the United States but I think the major Western countries ought to do what they can to be supportive of his elected Presidency now because he represents the ideals and the interests of our Nation and our way of life. ENTITY, correct me if I am wrong, but you have said a couple of times, I think, recently that Boris Yeltsin is the only democratically elected leader in Russia. I just want to go over that. If Boris Yeltsin is impeached because he is tried to suspend the constitution and Aleksandr Rutskoy, who has now broken with Yeltsin and is also committed to democratic reform, comes into power, would you, would the United States Government consider him a democratically elected leader and swing in behind him? First of all, it is true that he was elected on the ticket with Yeltsin. But when Yeltsin was elected, he won an overwhelming popular victory. If you go back and look at the distribution of votes, there is no question that that is what happened. I do not want to get into what might happen or what-if questions. The constitution under which these proceedings might take place was one that came in 1978 under the Communist government. Yeltsin and Rutskoy were elected together on a ticket. I think in the end the Russian people will resolve this one way or the other by what they do or do not do in the referendum in April. ENTITY, I would love to spend hours talking foreign policy. We have such a short time here. Let me try to do something reasonably brief, and that is mention some countries and potential problems out on the horizon and just have you respond briefly. Particularly if it is proven that Iranian-sponsored terrorists had anything to do with the World Trade Center bombing, would you be prepared to retaliate?

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First, let us note that even as we speak, we were just given notice that another major arrest was made and someone brought to the United States from Egypt where the apprehension was made. I do not want to speculate about who was behind it until I know. Let me say that I am more concerned about the Iranian government maintaining its militance, perhaps supporting, in general, terrorists organizations or engaging in unsafe proliferation of weapons of mass destruction for its own use or for the benefit of others. I wish Iran would come into the family of nations. They could have an enormous positive impact on the future of the Middle East in ways that would benefit the economy and the future of the people of Iran. I am very troubled that instead of trying to contribute to alleviating a lot of the problems of the Islamic people to the region, they are seeming to take advantage of them. I hope that they will moderate their course. I asked the question, should it be proven they had anything to do with the World Trade, would you be prepared to retaliate? So far, you are on the record as not answering. I want to be on the record as not answering. I want to maintain all options in dealing with terrorists, but I want to be on the record as not answering because I do not want the inference to be there that I am accusing them of something that I have no earthly idea whether they did or not. Just before you came into office, you were quoted as saying words to the effect, well, if Saddam Hussein goes a certain way, I, Bill Clinton, could see relations getting better. Do you regret having said that, or is that a fair quotation? What I said was, I cannot conceive of the United States ever having any kind of normal relationship with Iraq as long as Saddam Hussein is there. I cannot conceive it. What I said was that I did not wish to demonize him; I want to judge him based on his conduct. And in that context, I will be very firm, and the United States will remain very tough on the proposition that he must fully comply with the United Nations requirements, which he has still not done, in order for us to favor any kind of relaxation of the restrictions now on him through the U.N. What used to be called the Balkans, what once was Yugoslavia,

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is now referred to in shorthand as Bosnia You seem-and I say this respectfully, but I want to say it directly-you seem to have been all over the place in terms of policy toward Bosnia. One, tell us exactly what U.S. policy toward Bosnia is at the moment and what we can expect in the future. Well, first, let me respond to your general comment. And like most Americans, I am appalled by what has happened there; I am saddened; I am sickened. And I know that our ability to do anything about it is somewhat limited. I am convinced that anything we do would have to be done through the United Nations or through NATO or through some other collective action of nations. And I am limited also not only by what I think the United States can do or should do but by what our allies are willing to do. Now, against that background, we have done a number of things. We have been instrumental in tightening the embargo against Serbia. It is much tighter than it was when I took office. We have pushed for enforcement of the no-fly zone against the Serbians. I think we will get that in the United Nations sometime in the next couple of weeks. We have begun the airlift operation, which was initially criticized and is now universally recognized as having done an awful lot to alleviate severe human suffering and to meet profound needs. We have determined that we should support the Vance-Owen peace process to try to bring an end to hostilities there. But we have also been very clear that if the Bosnians will sign off under the Vance-Owen plan and the Croatians sign off on it, and the Serbs do not , that we think that we are going to have to look at some actions to try to give the Bosnians a means to at least defend themselves. I am very concerned about this. If the parties will good-faith agree to a peace process, then I would be willing to have the United States participate with other nations in trying to keep the peace in Bosnia. ENTITY, before I get away from foreign policy, very quickly-North Korea, nuclear proliferation: one of those things people's eyes glaze over. Important, of course, hut is it something that consumes a lot of your time? Well, it is caused me a lot of concern in the last few days.

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Just for the benefit of our viewers, the North Koreans have refused to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency's inspectors to look into sites where they might be illegally producing nuclear weapons under the nonproliferation regime. And because they would not allow our inspectors in and because the United Nations continued to insist that they do so, the North Koreans have now given us notice that they are going to withdraw, which means they are going to put themselves outside the family of nations seeking to contain nuclear weapons. That would be a great mistake, and I hope they do not do it. It is deeply troubling to us and to the South Koreans. You know, Seoul, which is now a teeming city of well over 8 million people, is very close to the 38th parallel, very close to North Korea. And over the last few years, relations between those two nations have been warming, and people began to dream of reunification in the same way that it happened in Germany. I do not want to overreact to it. The North Koreans still have a couple of months to change their mind, and I hope and pray that they will change their mind and return to the family of nations committed to restraining nuclear proliferations. There is no easy transition to make to health care, but we need to move on. As I understand it-correct me if I am wrong-you are telling the American people that their health care coverage will be increased, that the deficit at the same time will be cut. The translation of that is that there is going to be yet another significant increase in taxes, is not it? And we are looking at the options to do it. If I might, let me try to describe the problem. And I know we do not have a lot of time, but let me be as brief as I can. The average person who has health insurance is pretty satisfied with the quality of health care, but terrified of losing the health care coverage. They are just afraid that either through higher deductibles, higher co-pay, or just outright loss of the insurance, or they had to change jobs but they have had somebody in their family that is sick, they will not be able to keep their health insurance. The average business is terrified about the cost of health care. We are spending 30 percent more than any other country and getting less for it. So more and more people lose their health insurance every year. And then there are a lot of people who do not even have access to health care.

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They never see doctors or dentists or go to a medical clinic. So we have got the most expensive health care system in the world. For the people that can afford it and stay with it, you get to choose your doctor, choose your providers of all kinds, and it is good stuff. But millions of people live with insecurity, and the cost of it is really breaking the economy. In order to this cost problem and the security problem, you know, to tell people you can still choose your doctor but you are never going to have to worry about losing your health insurance, you have to find a way to pay, to cover everybody who does not now have health insurance, and to stop the loss of coverage for people that have it. That costs money. But if you do it, that permits you to cut out literally tens of billions of dollars of excess paperwork and administrative cost, stop a lot of other things that are driving up costs in the system. And you literally save, between now and the end of this decade, hundreds of billions of dollars, of both private dollars and taxpayer dollars. So the issue is, how do we make people secure so you can still pick your doctor; you are never going to lose your health insurance, you are always going to have it, no matter whether you change jobs or lose your job; you are always going to have access to health care. How do we do that? Bring the cost down, and do it within a time that is acceptable. How are you going to pay for that? We are looking for a lot of different options, but the last thing I think we ought to do, the last place we ought to look, is to ask the employers and the employees of America who are paying too much for their health care right now to pay more to solve this short-term problem. But the dilemma is this, quite simply-100 percent of the people who studied this problem say this-you may have to pay some more in the short run or find some more money in the short run, but over the long run it is going to save a massive amount of money. I can do more to save money on the Government deficit and to free up money in the private sector by bringing health costs in line with inflation and solving this problem than any other single thing I do.

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What we are trying to find a way to do is to cover all the people who do not have coverage and to guarantee the security to the working people who are afraid of losing it without raising their taxes. And we are looking for ways to do it. We have got 400 people, including doctors, nurses, health economists, experts from all over America working on this, and they have done good work. I think we have got a chance. And I have got another month to do it. ENTITY, at your news conference yesterday, correct me if I am wrong, but I thought you got a little testy when you were asked about gays in the military, respect for you in the military. Am I wrong about that? I thought it was an unusually worded question, but that is all part of it. No, I do not mind talking about it. Let me say, I talk on a regular basis with General Powell. I have met with the Joint Chiefs. I have a whole schedule of things that I am working through now to continue to work with the military. This is a very difficult time for them. Well, is it correct that you have reversed your position? Nothing I said yesterday is in any way inconsistent with anything I have ever said before about this. First, let us review this issue. The Joint Chiefs agree that they should stop asking enlistees whether or not they are gay. So they have already said, we will not ask you to lie, and we will not use your forms against you. I agree and everybody else agrees that any kind of improper sexual conduct should be grounds for dismissal or other appropriate discipline. There is a very limited argument here, which is if you do not do anything wrong but you do acknowledge that you are gay, should you be able to stay in the military and, if so, should you be able to do anything anyone else can do? Would you consider any restrictions on duty assignments? And the answer is, I am waiting for the report of the Secretary of Defense made in conjunction with the Joint Chiefs. I think they are divided among themselves on this issue. Other nations which admit gays into the military, some of them have no differences in duty assignments, and some do. What I said was, if they made a recommendation to me, would I review it and consider it? I mean, I asked them to study this. I cannot refuse then to get the results of the study and act like my mind's made up.

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This is not an area where I have expertise. I have to listen to what people say. I will consider the arguments. I have a presumption against any discrimination based on status alone, but I will listen to any report filed. ENTITY, time is running out on us here. I want to give you an opportunity on this program before this tremendous audience to indicate who your choice on the Supreme Court is going to be. This is a great opportunity for you to do it. I want to give you an opportunity. I must tell you I have not reached a final decision. The problems in Russia and just the stuff I have been doing on the economy have kept me from spending quite as much time on it as I would have. But Justice White, to his everlasting credit, gave me his letter now for his resignation in June, and his successor cannot take office until October, so he gave us some time. I love the Constitution of the United States, and I believe in the Supreme Court as an institution. I used to teach constitutional law. There will be few things that I will do in this job that I will take more seriously, few responsibilities I will cherish more. And I will try to appoint someone that I think has the potential of being a magnificent Justice, someone who will be a defender of the Constitution, but someone who has good values and common sense and who understands the real life experiences of Americans as well as the law. Let us talk about this for a moment. That is right. If you think about it, it is been a long time. President Johnson put Thurgood Marshall on the Court, and I just went to his funeral. If you are not going to reveal who it is going to be-I will give you another opportunity to do that-tell us in what directions you hope to take the Court? I mean, you make an appointee hoping that he will at least bump the Court in some other direction. Let us talk philosophically about the Court. Well, there was a lot of talk, as you know, during the last 12 years when the Republicans held The White House, about trying to move the Court in a sort of a rightward direction. Indeed, the political platforms of the Republicans were repeatedly filled with litmus tests and specific requirements and everything, and pushing the Court to the right. In fact, as has always been the experience with Presidents, some of the appointees did, in fact, move to the right. You know, they had different views.

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I would like to put someone on the Court who would make sure that there was a certain balance in the debate, that there was a real feeling for the rights of ordinary Americans under the Constitution, but that also someone who was hard-headed, who understood that the criminal law had to be enforced, that you did not want to over-legalize the country. I'd also like to put someone on there who was a very cogent and powerful arguer and who could show respect for the other Justices, who could be a good colleague, and who could engage people in honest dialog. I mean, I think the Supreme Court is no different, really, in that sense from a lot of other units. I cannot help but believe that when they are all talking together and working together and honestly trying to pick each other's brains, that they are not only free to act on their own convictions but they will learn from one another and maybe make better decisions. During the campaign, you campaigned as one who would be a President tough on crime. You talked about wanting to appoint a Justice with a big heart. What do you mean big heart ? Does that mean trouble for prosecutors and law enforcement officers? As a matter of fact, I think-there may be differences about capital punishment, for example. I have supported capital punishment, and I still do. And I would not necessarily make that a litmus test, because there is a big majority on the Supreme Court that support capital punishment. So whatever my appointee turns out to do on that, it will not change the majority. The majority agree with me on that issue. I mean, we need an administration that takes an aggressive approach to the crime issue. But we need to be smarter about it. I mean, we cannot talk tough on crime and make sentences tougher and refuse to pass the Brady bill and make people wait 7 days before criminals can buy handguns. We ought to take automatic weapons out of the hands of kids in the streets of our cities. If we are really going to be tough on crime, we ought to be not only tough in the traditional ways but also to change the environment some. ENTITY, it is my unfortunate duty now to ask the tough questions you do not want to hear. Number one, do you have a favorite in the Oscar race for the Academy Awards? Have you seen these movies? Which one do you favor? I have not seen them all, so I cannot say. The ones I have seen I enjoyed.

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Let me begin by saying it is a great pleasure to welcome President Park and our friends from the Republic of Korea. Madam President, we are greatly honored that you have chosen the United States as your first foreign visit. This, of course, reflects the deep friendship between our peoples and the great alliance between our nations, which is marking another milestone. I am told that in Korea, a 60th birthday is a special celebration of life and longevity, a hwangab. Well, this year, we are marking the 60th anniversary of the defense treaty between our nations. Yesterday President Park visited Arlington National Cemetery and our memorial to our Korean war veterans. Tonight she is hosting a dinner to pay tribute to the generation of American veterans who have served in the defense of South Korea. And tomorrow she will address a joint session of Congress, an honor that is reserved for our closest of friends. from the ashes of war to one of the world's largest economies, from a recipient of foreign aid to a donor that now helps other nations develop. And of course, around the world, people are being swept up by Korean culture, the Korean Wave. And as I mentioned to President Park, my daughters have taught me a pretty good Gangnam style. President Park, in your first months in office, South Korea has faced threats and provocations that would test any nation. Yet you have displayed calm and steady resolve that has defined your life. Like people around the world, those of us in the United States have also been inspired by your example as the first female President of South Korea. your focus and discipline and straightforwardness. And I very much thank you for the progress that we have already made together. Today we agreed to continue the implementation of our historic trade agreement, which is already yielding benefits for both our countries. more manufactured goods, more services, more agricultural products. Even as we have a long way to go, our automobile exports are up nearly 50 percent, and our Big Three Ford, Chrysler, and GM are selling more cars in Korea. And as President Park and I agreed to make sure that we continue to fully implement this agreement, we believe that it is going to make both of our economies more competitive. It will boost U.S. exports by some $10 billion in support of tens of thousands of American jobs. And obviously, it will be creating jobs in Korea as they are able to continue to do extraordinary work in expanding their economy and moving it further and further up the value chain.

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We agreed to continue the clean energy partnerships that help us to enhance our energy security and address climate change. Given the importance of a peaceful nuclear energy industry to South Korea, we recently agreed to extend the existing civilian nuclear agreement between our two countries, but we also emphasized in our discussions the need to continue to work diligently towards a new agreement. As I told the President, I believe that we can find a way to support South Korea's energy and commercial needs even as we uphold our mutual commitments to prevent nuclear proliferation. We agreed to continuing modernizing our security alliance. Guided by our joint vision, we are investing in the shared capabilities and technologies and missile defenses that allow our forces to operate and succeed together. We are on track for South Korea to assume operational control for the alliance in 2015. And we are determined to be fully prepared for any challenge or threat to our security. And obviously, that includes the threat from North Korea. If Pyongyang thought its recent threats would drive a wedge between South Korea and the United States or somehow garner the North international respect, today is further evidence that North Korea has failed again. President Park and South Koreans have stood firm, with confidence and resolve. The United States and the Republic of Korea are as united as ever. And faced with new international sanctions, North Korea is more isolated than ever. In short, the days when North Korea could create a crisis and elicit concessions, those days are over. Our two nations are prepared to engage with North Korea diplomatically and, over time, build trust. But as always and as President Park has made clear the burden is on Pyongyang to take meaningful steps to abide by its commitments and obligations, particularly the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And we discussed that Pyongyang should take notice of events in countries like Burma, which, as it reforms, is seeing more trade and investment and diplomatic ties with the world, including the United States and South Korea. For our part, we will continue to coordinate closely with South Korea and with Japan. The United States is fully prepared and capable of defending ourselves and our allies with the full range of capabilities available, including the deterrence provided by our conventional and nuclear forces. As I said in Seoul last year, the commitment of the United States to the security of the Republic of Korea will never waver. More broadly, we agreed to continue expanding our cooperation globally.

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In Afghanistan where our troops serve together and where South Korea is a major donor of development assistance we are on track to complete the transition to Afghan-led operations by the end of next year. We discussed Syria, where both our nations are working to strengthen the opposition and plan for a Syria without Bashar Asad. And I am pleased that our two nations and our Peace Corps have agreed to expand our efforts to promote development around the world. Finally, we are expanding the already strong ties between our young people. As an engineer by training, President Park knows the importance of education. Madam President, you have said and I am quoting you We live in an age where a single individual can raise the value of an entire nation. So I am pleased that we are renewing exchange programs that bring our students together. And as we pursue commonsense immigration reform here in the United States, we want to make it easier for foreign entrepreneurs and foreign graduate students from countries like Korea to stay and contribute to our country, just as so many Korean Americans already do. So again, thank you, President Park, for making the United States your first foreign trip. In your Inaugural Address, you celebrated the can-do spirit of the Korean people. That is a spirit that we share. And after our meeting today, I am confident that if our two nations continue to stand together, there is nothing we cannot do together. Let me start by thanking ENTITY for his invitation and his gracious hospitality. During my meeting with the President today, I was able to have a heart-to-heart talk with him on a wide range of common interests. I found that the two us of have a broad common view about the vision and roles that should guide the Korea-U.S. alliance as it moves forward, and I was delighted to see this. First of all, the President and I shared the view that the Korea-U.S. alliance has been faithfully carrying out its role as a bulwark of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and that the alliance should continue to serve as a linchpin for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in Asia. In this regard, I believe it is significant that the joint declaration on the 60th anniversary of our alliance we adopted spells out the direction that our comprehensive strategic alliance should take.

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Next, the President and I reaffirmed that we will by no means tolerate North Korea's threats and provocations, which have recently been escalating further, and that such actions would only deepen North Korea's isolation. The President and I noted that it is important that we continue to strengthen our deterrence against North Korea's nuclear and conventional weapons threat and shared the view that in this respect, the transition of wartime operational control should also proceed in a way that strengthens our combined defense capabilities and preparations being made toward that way as well. We also shared the view that realizing ENTITY's vision of a world without nuclear weapons should start on the Korean Peninsula, and we stated that we would continue to strongly urge North Korea in close concert with the other members of the six-party talks and the international community to faithfully abide by its international obligations under the September 19 joint statements and the relevant Security Council resolutions. Korea and the U.S. will work jointly to induce North Korea to make the right choice through multifaceted efforts, including the implementation of the Korean Peninsula trust-building process that I had spelled out. North Korea will not be able to survive if it only clings to developing its nuclear weapons at the expense of its people's happiness. This is the shared view of the other members of the six-party talks and the international community. However, should North Korea choose the path to becoming a responsible member of the community of nations, we are willing to provide assistance, together with the international community. We also had meaningful discussions on the economy and ways to engage in substantive cooperation. The President and I welcome the fact that the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect 1 year ago, is contributing to our shared prosperity. We also said we will make efforts to enable our people to better feel the benefits of our free trade agreement for them. I highlighted the importance of securing high-skilled U.S. work visas for Korean citizens and asked for executive branch support, to the extent possible, to see to it that the relevant legislation is passed in the U.S. Congress. Moreover, we arrived at the view that the Korea-U.S. civil nuclear energy cooperation agreement should be revised into an advanced and mutually beneficial successor agreement. We said we would do our best to conclude our negotiations as soon as possible. The President and I also had in-depth discussions on ways to enhance our global partnership.

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First, we noted together that Northeast Asia needs to move beyond conflict and divisions and open a new era of peace and cooperation and that there would be synergy between President's Obama's policy of rebalancing to Asia and my initiative for peace and cooperation in Northeast Asia as we pursue peace and development in the region. We shared the view about playing the role of coarchitects to flesh out this vision. Furthermore, we decided that the Korea-U.S. alliance should deal not just with challenges relating to the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia, but confronting the broader international community. I am very delighted that I was able to build personal trust with ENTITY through our summit meeting today and to have laid a framework for cooperation. All right, we have got a couple of questions from each side, so we will start with Stephen Collinson of AFP. Does the United States have a core national security interest in stopping the slaughter in Syria or merely a strong moral desire to see the violence end? And at what point does the cost of not intervening in a more direct way than you have done so far outweigh the cost of doing so? And if I may ask, President Park, ENTITY's critics have warned that failing to act on perceived violations of U.S. red lines in Syria could embolden U.S. enemies elsewhere, including in North Korea. Are you convinced that Kim Jong Un has taken the U.S. and South Korean warnings seriously, and do you see the withdrawal of two missiles from a test site as a sign that he is willing to deescalate the situation? Well, Stephen, I think that we have both a moral obligation and a national security interest in, A, ending the slaughter in Syria, but, B, also ensuring that we have got a stable Syria that is representative of all the Syrian people and is not creating chaos for its neighbors. And that is why for the last 2 years, we have been active in trying to ensure that Bashar Asad exits the stage and that we can begin a political transition process. That is the reason why we have invested so much in humanitarian aid. That is the reason why we are so invested in helping the opposition and why we have mobilized the international community to isolate Syria. That is why we are now providing nonlethal assistance to the opposition, and that is why we are going to continue to do the work that we need to do.

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And in terms of the costs and the benefits, I think there'd be severe costs in doing nothing. That is why we are not doing nothing. That is why we are actively invested in the process. If what you are asking is, are there continuing reevaluations about what we do, what actions we take in conjunction with other international partners to optimize the day when or to hasten the day when we can see a better situation in Syria, we have been doing that all along and we will continue to do that. I think that, understandably, there is a desire for easy answers. And my job is to constantly measure our very real and legitimate humanitarian and national security interests in Syria, but measuring those against my bottom line, which is what is in the best interest of America's security and making sure that I am making decisions not based on a hope and a prayer, but on hard-headed analysis in terms of what will actually make us safer and stabilize the region. I would note not to answer the question that you lobbed over to President Park that you suggested even in your question a perceived crossing of a red line. And what I have said is that we have evidence that there has been the use of chemical weapons inside of Syria, but I do not make decisions based on perceived. And I cannot organize international coalitions around perceived. We have tried that in the past, by the way, and it did not work out well. So we want to make sure that we have the best analysis possible. But I would just point out that there have been several instances during the course of my Presidency where I said I was going to do something, and it ended up getting done. And there were times when there were folks on the sidelines wondering why has not it happened yet and what is going on and why did not it go on tomorrow? But in the end, whether it is bin Laden or Qaddafi, if we say we are taking a position, I would think at this point the international community has a pretty good sense that we typically follow through on our commitments. With regard to actions towards Syria, what kind of message would that communicate to North Korea? And recently, North Korea seems to be deescalating its threats and provocations. What seems to be behind that? You asked these two questions. In fact, North Korea is isolated at the moment, so it is hard to find anyone that could really accurately fathom the situation in North Korea.

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Hence, whether the Syrian situation would have an impact is hard to say for sure. Why is North Korea appearing to deescalate its threats and provocations? But what is clear and what I believe for sure is that the international community with regard to North Korea's bad behavior, its provocations, must speak with one voice, a firm message, and consistently send a firm message that they will not stand and that North Korea's actions in breach of international norms will be met with so-and-so sanctions and measures by the international community. At the same time, if it goes along the right way, there will be so-and-so reward. So if we consistently send that message to North Korea, I feel that North Korea will be left with no choice but to change. And instead of just hoping to see North Korea change, the international community must also consistently send that message with one voice to tell them and communicate to them that they have no choice but to change and to shape an environment where they are left with no choice but to make the strategic decision to change. My question goes to ENTITY. You just mentioned that North Korea in order to induce North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons, what is most important is the concerted actions of the international community. With regard to this, during your meeting with ENTITY today, I would like to ask what was said and the views that you shared. And with regard to this, what Russia and China the role that they are playing in terms of inducing North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons, how do you feel about that? My next question is to ENTITY Regarding the young leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, I would appreciate your views about the leader of North Korea. And if you were to send a message to him today, what kind of message would you send to him? With regard to the North Korea issue, Korea and the United States, as well as the international community, the ultimate objective that all of us should be adopting is for North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons and to induce it to become a responsible member of the international community. This serves the interest of peace on the Korean Peninsula and the world, and it also serves the interest of North Korea's own development as well. And so in order to encourage North Korea to walk that path and change its perceptions, we have to work in concert.

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And in this regard, China's role, China's influence can be extensive, so if so China taking part in these endeavors is important. And we shared views on that. With regard to China and Russia's stance, I believe that China and Russia not to mention the international community, of course share the need for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and are cooperating closely to induce North Korea to take the right path. In the case of China, with regard to North Korea's missile fire and nuclear testing, China has taken an active part in adopting U.N. Security Council resolutions and is faithfully implementing those resolutions. And with regard to Russia, Russia is also firmly committed to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And with regard to the adoption of U.N. Security Council resolutions on North Korea, it has been very active in supporting them. And they have also sent a very and they have also worked very hard to include a stern message to North Korea in the joint statement of the G-8 Foreign Ministers meeting. Such constructive efforts on the part of China and Russia are vital to sending a unified message to North Korea that their nuclear weapons will not stand, and encouraging and urging North Korea to make the right decision. Obviously, I do not know Kim Jong Un personally. I have not had a conversation with him, cannot really give you an opinion about his personal characteristics. What we do know is the actions that he is taken that have been provocative and seem to pursue a dead end. And I want to emphasize, President Park and myself very much share the view that we are going to maintain a strong deterrent capability, that we are not going to reward provocative behavior. But we remain open to the prospect of North Korea taking a peaceful path of denuclearization, abiding by international commitments, rejoining the international community, and seeing a gradual progression in which both security and prosperity for the people of North Korea can be achieved. If what North Korea has been doing has not resulted in a strong, prosperous nation, then now is a good time for Kim Jong Un to evaluate that history and take a different path. And I think that, should he choose to take a different path, not only President Park and myself would welcome it, but the international community as a whole would welcome it. And I think that China and Russia and Japan and other key players that have been participants in six-party talks have made that clear.

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Do not worry about what I say; watch what I do. And we are so far at least, we have not seen actions on the part of the North Koreans that would indicate they are prepared to move in a different direction. The Pentagon said today that there may be as many as 70 sexual assaults a day in the military up by 35 percent during your term in office and also that many sexual assaults may not be reported, in fact. Given what we know about an Air Force officer in charge of preventing sexual assault recently being charged with sexual assault and also the recent cases of a couple of Air Force generals who've set aside convictions of instances of sexual assault, can you speak to the culture in the U.S. military that may be at play here and talk about your response to that and what you can do going forward to improve things? And if I may, President Park, I would ask you, yesterday you said that if North Korea does not change its behavior, we will make them pay. I wondered if you could elaborate on that comment a little bit. Well, let us start with the principle that sexual assault is an outrage; it is a crime. That is true for society at large. And if it is happening inside our military, then whoever carries it out is betraying the uniform that they are wearing. And they may consider themselves patriots, but when you engage in this kind of behavior, that is not patriotic, it is a crime. And we have to do everything we can to root this out. One of the things that we have been trying to do is create a structure in which we are starting to get accurate reporting. And up and down the chain, we are seeing a process, a system of accountability and transparency so that we can root this out completely. And this is a discussion that I had with Secretary Panetta. He had begun the process of moving this forward. But I have directly spoken to Secretary Hagel already today and indicating to him that we are going to have to not just step up our game, we have to exponentially step up our game, to go at this thing hard. And for those who are in uniform who have experienced sexual assault, I want them to hear directly from their Commander in Chief that I have got their backs. I will support them. And we are not going to tolerate this stuff, and there will be accountability. If people have engaged in this behavior, they should be prosecuted.

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And anybody in the military who has knowledge of this stuff should understand this is not who we are. This is not what the U.S. military is about. And it dishonors the vast majority of men and women in uniform who carry out their responsibilities and obligations with honor and dignity and incredible courage every single day. So bottom line is, I have no tolerance for this. I have communicated this to the Secretary of Defense. We are going to communicate this again to folks up and down the chain in areas of authority, and I expect consequences. So I do not want just more speeches or awareness programs or training, but ultimately, folks look the other way. prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. Regarding North Korea's provocations and bad behavior, we will make them pay. With regard to that, for instance, what I meant was that if they engage in military provocations and harm the lives of our people and the safety of our people, then naturally, as a President who gives the top priority to ensuring the safety of our people, it is something that we cannot just pass over. So if North Korea engages in provocations, I will fully trust the judgment of our military. So if our military makes a judgment which they feel is the right thing, then they should act accordingly. And this is the instruction that I had made. And North Korea has to pay a price when it comes not only with regard to provocations, but also with regard to the recent Kaesong industrial complex issue, where, based on agreements between the two sides, companies had believed in the agreement that was made and actually went to invest in the Kaesong industrial complex, but they suddenly completely dismiss and disregard this agreement overnight and deny various medical supplies and food supplies to Korean citizens left in that industrial complex, refusing to accept our request to allow in those supplies, which is what prompted us to withdraw all of our citizens from that park. This situation unfolded in the full view of the international community. So who would invest, not to mention Korean companies, but also companies of other countries, who would invest in North Korea in a place that shows such flagrant disregard for agreements, and how could they, under those circumstances, actually pull off economic achievement? So I think, in this regard, they are actually paying the price for their own misdeeds. I am from Seoul newspaper. My question goes to ENTITY.

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President Park has been talking about the Korean Peninsula trust-building process as a way to promote peace on Korean Peninsula. I wonder what you feel about this trust-building process on the Korean Peninsula? Well, as I indicated before, President Park's approach is very compatible with my approach and the approach that we have been taking together for several years now. And as I understand it, the key is that we will be prepared for a deterrence that we will respond to aggression, that we will not reward provocative actions, but that we will maintain an openness to an engagement process when we see North Korea taking steps that would indicate that it is following a different path. All of us would benefit from a North Korea that transformed itself. Certainly, the people of North Korea would benefit. South Korea would be even stronger in a less tense environment on the Peninsula. All the surrounding neighbors would welcome such a transition, such a transformation. But I do not think either President Park or I are naive about the difficulties of that taking place. And we have got to see action before we can have confidence that that, in fact, is the path that North Korea intends to take. But the one thing I want to emphasize just based on the excellent meetings and consultation that we had today, as well as watching President Park over the last several months dealing with the provocative escalations that have been taking place in North Korea, what I am very confident about is, President Park is tough. I think she has a very clear, realistic view of the situation, but she also has the wisdom to believe that conflict is not inevitable and is not preferable. And that is true on the Korean Peninsula. That is true around the world. And we very much appreciate her visit and look forward to excellent cooperation not only on this issue, but on the more positive issues of economic and commercial ties between our two countries, educational exchanges, work on energy, climate change, helping other countries develop. I have had a wonderful time every time I have visited the Republic of Korea. And what is clear is that the Republic of Korea is one of the great success stories of our lifetime. And the Republic of Korea's leadership around the globe will be increasingly important. And what underpins that in part has been the extraordinary history of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea. And we want to make sure that that remains a strong foundation for progress in the future.

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You have been told, I think, that we are doing a documentary. We went across a good part of the country to places where you have given speeches over the years to just talk with people about how their lives have changed. I am going to listen to this one. I appreciate that. And that is the beginning of our discussion here, although we will range a little bit farther. This caused me to go back and look at some of your speeches. And there was one in St. Charles, Mo., in 2010, in which you said, Let us face it, people have lost faith in government, that it started before you were ENTITY and it is getting worse. Do the events of this year suggest that it is getting even worse? I think that there has been a steady growth in people's cynicism about institutions generally, and government in particular. And some of it is justified because we have got a Congress that is been dysfunctional now for quite some time and cannot seem to organize itself to solve problems. You now have a Republican Congress, they control both chambers and they cannot even pass their own agenda, much less pass something that has bipartisan support. And at a time when there are a lot of big issues out there, people feel as if things are not working the way they should. Having said that, not all the cynicism is justified. Even without Congress cooperating, we have been able to make progress on a whole range of issues. And I think people are seeing that when government makes smart decisions, it actually has a significant impact. And part of my hope during the course of this election is that it is clarifying that people say, all right, here is what each party stands for, here is what each presidential candidate and various congressional candidates stand for. If we are going to move forward in a democracy then the ultimate arbiter of making things work is the voter, and putting people in charge who are serious about America's business as opposed to just playing to various narrow constituency groups. If some of the cynicism is not justified, are you concerned that voters this year will go too far in overturning things? You know, ultimately I have confidence in our voters.

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If you look at American history, there have been times where we have taken some tough turns, primarily fed by fear and disruptions and dislocations, but with a very substantial exception of the Civil War, generally speaking, the democratic process muddled through and we emerged better and stronger than we were before. And I have no doubt that the same thing will happen this time. But I do think that part of what has changed - during the course of my presidency, I have seen it - is the splintering of media. The power of social media and the Internet has turbocharged what previously might have been marginal views or marginal groups, has made it harder to generate consensus because people are not looking at the same set of facts. I have said this before. If you are watching Fox News, you have a different set of facts than if you are reading the New York Times editorial page. And that, I think, has led - or increased the polarization, and that makes it harder for people to sort through who is telling the truth and how we actually get stuff done. Let me ask though, ENTITY, you have still got the biggest megaphone. People can even see you on Fox News. If you have been ENTITY for almost 7 1/2 years and people have still no faith in government, are you accountable for that? Well, look, as a general proposition, I do not spend a lot of time looking at polls. Well, right now I think the majority of the American people think that I am doing a good job. That does not necessarily give me a lot of comfort if I cannot move this Congress forward. And the question then becomes - and I have heard some people in the Republican Party suggest that in some fashion I am responsible for what is happened to them, and the rise of Trump and the dysfunction that you see in their party generally. What I would say is that I came into office wanting to work on a bipartisan basis, and if you have looked at my old speeches you would see that. made a determination that it was good politics to oppose everything that I did. The problem was that by opposing everything I did, even things that previously they had been for, it pushed their party further and further to the right. When we talk about dysfunction in government, it is not as if both parties are equally dysfunctional. The Democrats have a pretty well thought through agenda. When we were governing in the first two years of my administration, we got a lot done.

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We were probably as productive as any Congress in 20, 30, 40 years. You have a particular problem in the Republican Party right now that needs to get sorted through. Now, that is not unique in the annals of American history. There have been times when the Democrats were wrapped around the axle, and extreme wings were setting the agenda. And I think the Republicans will get out of this. But right now, at least, partly in reaction to my presidency and the political decisions that they made, they find themselves having created an atmosphere in which even somebody like Paul Ryan is viewed as not sufficiently conservative, or if he does just some of the basic work of governance that somehow he has betrayed the base and is decried as a Republican in name only. And when you have that kind of environment, it is very hard to get the kind of cooperation that is necessary for us to solve problems that people are concerned about and that I am assuming that during the course of your conversations they have raised repeatedly. Let me ask one of those concerns. In Kansas, we spoke with a woman named Heather Gray, who said, 16 years ago I was making $10 an hour. Today, she said, I make $10 an hour. The problem of stagnant wages, of course, did not start with your presidency, but it has not improved much. Well, we have got some long-term trends that we have to battle, and when I came into office we were in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We have successfully dug ourselves out of that hole. The country has, but wages have not improved for average people ... I am going to answer your question. So we had unemployment at 10 percent. It is now below 5. We had a housing market that had completely collapsed. We had a situation in which people had lost trillions of dollars in wealth in their 401's and they have recovered it. In fact, Americans have gotten back about $30 trillion of wealth since I came into office. So by every measure, the economy has improved. But the long-term trends that had occurred before I took office and have continued is a combination of globalization and automation, leading to more downward pressure on wages because you need fewer workers to make a certain amount of stuff; and entire job sectors being shrunk or eliminated; more and more people going into the service sector, and in the service sector, historically wages have been lower.

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And that is all been compounded by some very specific policies both at the federal and the state level that is made it harder for workers to organize and get more leverage to get higher wages. This is why we fought for higher minimum wages. This is why, I think, it is so important that as we move forward, if we are going to benefit from all the huge productivity increases and efficiencies that arise out of the global supply chain and automated everything, then we are going to have to redesign that social compact to make sure that everybody is getting a decent wage. It is not as if we need a radical restructuring of the economy. If we had a minimum wage that required everybody to get - be above poverty if they are working full time, that would go a long way towards alleviating some of the trends that we talked about. And in fact, we have seen wage growth now begin to occur over the last couple of years, but it is not happening as fast as it should. There is a writer for the Financial Times, Philip Stephens, who wrote something interesting after Britain voted to leave the European Union last week. He wrote in a column, globalization is not working, that it may make countries richer, but the majority of people are not benefiting. He was writing about Britain, but you mentioned globalization in the context of the United States. I think he is right that what you are seeing across the advanced economies is that when you have globalization and suddenly there is competition from everywhere, that empowers people who have a lot of skills, can use the Internet. Suddenly they have access to all the markets. And what that means is, if you are very good at something, if you are LeBron James or you are Seinfeld or you are ENTITY Jobs, then suddenly you can leverage your skills in ways that you could never do before. If you are a manual worker, and are doing work that can be replaced not just by a lower-wage worker somewhere else but more frequently by a machine, then you are in a tougher spot because you now are competing against the entire world instead of just the people who live around you. And that is why it is so important for us to think about how do we make sure that everybody is participating in that global economy.

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If you continue on the current trends, then what you are going to see is a continuing increase in inequality, and that is not going to be economically sustainable because it turns out that the economy works best when everybody has a stake in it and workers have money in their pockets and are spending it, and that is good for business. And I think you see that somewhat in the Brexit vote. You see some of it in both the Sanders campaign and the Trump campaign, people feeling as if we are potentially being left behind. Or what is the cure to this whole thing? And the notion is that, from my perspective, we are not going to suddenly eliminate the global supply chain. We are not going to disentangle the world economy. It is just too integrated now by virtue of technology and the Internet. And so what we have to do is to make sure that wages around the world are beginning to rise, that environmental standards around the world are beginning to rise, that within our own countries we are providing the education that people need to compete in this global economy, with new skills for the new industries that are out there, that we invest more in things like infrastructure that make us competitive, and also, by the way, cannot be shipped away. I actually think that, over time, it can raise everybody's living standards and create a more peaceful world. But if you do it in a way where the benefits of globalization are only for the elites who are flying around from capital to capital and looking at their investment portfolios on a laptop or a computer screen, and they are not worrying, they feel disengaged from their national economies and their national workers and their national communities, then you are going to see a reaction to it. Donald Trump talked about global elites after the vote in Britain. Is Trump right that there are big parallels between what motivated the British vote and what people are feeling and thinking about in the election this year in the United States? Well, first of all, I think it is important to remember that Mr. Trump embodies global elites and has taken full advantage of it his entire life. So he is hardly a spokesperson for - a legitimate spokesperson for a populist surge from working-class people, on either side of the Atlantic. I think that some of the concerns around immigration, some of the concerns around a loss of control or a loss of national identity, those are similar.

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I think there is a xenophobia, an anti-immigrant sentiment that is flashing up not just in Great Britain but throughout Europe, that has some parallels with what Mr. Trump has been trying to stir up here. Having said all that, the U.S. economy has not only recovered but we are about 10 percent larger than we were pre-crisis, when I came into office. You have had a decade of stagnation there, partly because of austerity measures that we did not duplicate. The Republicans attempted to impose those kinds of strategies here and I resisted them, and I would argue that that is part of the reason why we did a lot better. We reformed our banking system a lot faster. And so overall, I think that the differences are greater than the similarities. But what is absolutely true is that the ability to tap into a fear that people may have about losing control, and to offer some sort of vague, nostalgic feelings about how, you know, we will make Britain great again or we will make America great again. And the subtext for that is somehow that a bunch of foreigners and funny-looking people are coming in here and changing the basic character of the nation. I think that some of that is out there, both in Europe and the United States. And again, that is not unique to England. You have seen it in the Le Pen Party in France. You see it in some of the far-right parties in other parts of Europe as well. You mentioned people fearful of change. The way that voters express that when we talk with them is that they are concerned about changing the traditions, values or institutions of this country that have made the country great over time. Immigrants do bring new ideas, new cultures, different religions, other things. Does it matter particularly if they do change the country? Well, I think that there are some bedrock values that should not change, and in fact, have not changed. The values of our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the values of free speech, the values of religious tolerance, the values of pluralism, the values of us being a nation of immigrants that can absorb people from every corner of the world and yet at the end of the day, because we all pledge allegiance to a flag and a creed, we become one.

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I think, ironically, that if you look at the values that immigrants bring when they come here - whether they are coming from Poland, or Italy, or now Vietnam, or South Korea or India - the values they bring are quintessentially American values. They are striver's values; they are the values that say we are going to make something of ourselves, regardless of the station in which we were born. When you look at second-generation immigrants, or third-generation immigrants, they are as American as any kid here. That is part of what separates us from the United Kingdom or Europe, is we have had that tradition of being a nation of immigrants. And so, you know, when people are concerned about some of the changes that immigrants may bring, you know, they need to go back and read what people were saying about their grandparents or great-grandparents when they came. You read about the description of Irish who arrived, and the language that is being used is identical to the language that Mr. Trump uses about Mexicans. You know, when Southern Europeans were coming instead of Northern Europeans, there was absolute certainty that America was going down the tubes because these swarthy, you know, folks were coming here and they had different attitudes. And Catholics were coming, which meant that the pope was going to control us. And - this kind of xenophobia is part of the American tradition, and the good news is that, you know, after these spasms of it, it typically fades away, because the immigrants who come here, in fact, are coming here precisely to embrace the opportunities of being American. Is there a danger that Europe, after this Brexit vote, will turn inward, focus increasingly on its own problems and its own turmoil, and be less active in the world? Well, I think that the best way to think about this is a pause button has been pressed on the project of full European integration. I would not overstate it. There has been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if, somehow, NATO's gone and the trans-Atlantic alliance is dissolving and every country is rushing off to its own corner. What is happening is that you had a European project that was probably moving faster and without as much consensus as it should have.

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You have a monetary union - although England was not a part of that - that was always going to be difficult to manage, because the economy in Germany is very different than the economy in Italy or Greece. And you have a European Union government in Brussels that, because it needs consensus from, you know, more than a - more than a couple of dozen countries, oftentimes seems overly bureaucratic and deadlocked. And I think this will be a moment in which all of Europe says, all right, let us take a breath, and let us figure out how do we maintain some of our national identities, how do we preserve the benefits of integration and how do we deal with some of the frustrations that our own voters are feeling. But the basic core values of Europe, the tenets of liberal, market-based democracies, those are not changing. The interests that we have in common with Europe remain the same. They are going to have to worry about working with us on the Middle East; they are going to have to worry about us working together to deal with an aggressive Russia. They are going to have to deal with us, with respect to how do we continue to uphold international rules and norms around the world that have served both the U.S. and Europe very well. And so, I do not anticipate that there is going to be major cataclysmic changes as a consequence of this. Keep in mind that Norway is not a member of the European Union, but Norway is one of our closest allies. They align themselves on almost every issue with Europe and us. They are a place that is continually supporting the kinds of initiatives internationally that we support. And if over the course of what is going to be at least a two-year negotiation between England and Europe, Great Britain ends up being affiliated to Europe like Norway is, the average person is not to notice a big change. I think that is entirely up to them. On this side of the Atlantic, we heard from a number of people about immigration when we traveled across the country. One of them was a man named Jose Luis Valdez. He is a business owner, a restaurant owner in Kansas City, Kan. So, he is getting ready to vote for the first time, but he has followed politics for a long time. He knows that you won the Latino vote very heavily in both your elections. And speaking about the failure to pass immigration reform, he said of you, he used us. He used our votes.

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Felt you should have done it when you had a chance when you had a Democratic Congress, you should have done more. What would you say to him? Well, what I would say to him is his restaurant might not be doing so well if I had not focused my first two years on saving the economy. So, it is not as if I did not have anything else to do. And I think it would be pretty hard to argue that I have not put everything I have had into getting this done. But, you know, one of the things that I have learned in this presidency is that until you get something done, people are going to be frustrated. You think of the incredible progress we have made during the course of my presidency with respect to LGBT rights - the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgender - the historic speed with which we consolidated equal treatment for that population And you know, these days, if I go before an LGBT crowd, you know, people are cheering and saying I have been one of their greatest champions. But it was only about three or four years ago when, you know, I would get heckled in some LGBT events because, you know, marriage equality had not gotten done yet. And it did not matter how many times I told them, look, you know, it is - it is going to get done. It is just - it turns out that the wheels in democracy do not always move as quickly as you'd hope. And I cannot just do these things with a stroke of the pen. You know, that is - that is sort of the nature of all social change here. And so, if you - if you were interviewing one of the DREAM Act kids, who over the last several years have been able to get a driver's license, a permit to work or to school, have joined our military, they - they would not say that they have been used. They would say, thank you. And I think that is the reason the vast majority of Latino voters continue to support me, because they see the effort that has been put in. Now, one last point I will make, because I - right after this most recent Supreme ruling, or lack of ruling came down ... I said to them, look, everything is teed up.

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And instead of despairing, you just need to understand we have got four months, five months, and you have got a very clear choice between two candidates - one of whom not only supports all the initiatives that I have put forward, but is going to be in a position if I do not get a ninth Supreme Court justice to break that tie. And to - one way or another, by next year, we are going to have either my administrative solution to immigration reform done, it will be in train, because it will have been decided on and - and will no longer be blocked. Or, alternatively, you know, Mr. Trump will win, in which case, you know, we will have a whole bunch of other problems on our hands with respect to immigration. So, in some ways, this is how the democratic process works. And I am constantly reminding young people, who are full of passion, that I want them to keep their passion, but they have got to gird for the fact that it takes a long time to get stuff done in this democracy. It is not as convenient as, you know, people would always like, but this is a big country with a lot of diverse views. Let me ask about a passionate young person that we met along the way. He is an activist now in Baltimore. He was active in the protests after the death of Freddie Gray ... who was in a police van, and died later, as you know. And he was unhappy with a statement that you made at the time, when you were supportive of peaceful protests but also criticized what you called criminals and thugs who had looted stores. He felt that you were being too harsh and went on to say in our interview that you were speaking from a position of privilege, his suggestion being that maybe you did not quite get what was going on in the streets. What would you say to him? Well, obviously, I do not know him personally, so we would have to have a longer conversation. What I would say is that the Black Lives Matter movement has been hugely important in getting all of America to - to see the challenges in the criminal justice system differently. And I could not be prouder of the activism that has been involved. And it is making a difference. You are seeing it at state and local levels, and the task force that we pulled together in the wake of Ferguson has put forward recommendations that were shaped both by the people who organized the Ferguson protests as well as police officers.

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And it turns out that there is common ground there, in terms of how we can be smart about crime, smart about policing, respectful to all communities and try to wring some of the racial bias that exists in the criminal justice system out of it. What I would also say, though, is that if somebody is looting, they are looting. And the notion that they are making a political statement is not always the case because these are businesses oftentimes owned by African-Americans. You have situations in which suddenly - friends of mine in Baltimore, their mothers who are elderly have to now travel across town to get their medicines because the local drugstore got torn up. And making excuses for them I think is a mistake. There are ways of bringing about social change that are powerful and that have the ability to pull the country together and maintain the moral high ground and there are approaches where I may understand the frustrations, but they are counterproductive. If I were to summarize what else this young man said, I might say that he feels that he is trying to overturn what he sees is a racist or corrupt system and that you have become part of it. Yeah, look, ENTITY, I think that you can always find folks who are going to feel as if change has not happened fast enough. That is the nature of these issues and by virtue of being ENTITY of the United States, if there is a problem out there then I am the ultimate public official that people know. And if it has not gotten fixed in a couple of weeks, people are going to say, why did not you fix it? I think it'd be - I think people would be pretty hard-pressed to not see the efforts that we put in around criminal justice reform where we are supporting it fully. The initiatives that we have made with local mayors and state officials around the country to reform the criminal justice system, the fact that as ENTITY, I have been the first ever to even visit a federal prison, that the positions I have taken on criminal justice issues are unprecedented by any president. The work we are doing with commutations is unprecedented and I have now commuted more sentences for nonviolent drug offenses than the last seven or eight presidents combined. 22 in this case. 22-year-old kid on the streets of Baltimore who is still feeling frustrated, then I am not going to be surprised if that frustration's expressed.

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As part of this project, we also had a look at your 2008 campaign speech in Philadelphia about race in which you talked in one passage about anger in the black community, which you said is sometimes counterproductive but it is real and there are reasons it. There is another passage which I had not even noticed before, in which you say there is a similar anger among some in the white community who do not feel particularly privileged by their race and do feel frustrated that they are losing jobs, losing pensions, feel like they are losing ground. Looking back, were you describing there the same force that is driving much of our election discussion here in 2016? Well, not only the election and discussion driving 2016; this has been an ongoing theme in American history. You can go back and during Jim Crow and segregation and you have got black sharecroppers who have nothing and alongside them, poor white farmers who do not have that much more except for the fact that they are white. And the degree to which a lot of politics in the South were specifically designed to make sure that that sharecropper and that white farmer did not get together to question how the economy was structured and how they both could benefit, that is - that is one of the oldest stories in American politics. So - so it is not surprising that what I said in 2008 still holds true today. It was true for a long time. The nature of racial bias in this country is unique and the challenges that African-Americans have faced are incomparable. Native Americans in this country, you know, were burdened by extraordinary bias and cruelty, as well. And it is probably not useful to sort of catalog every possible group's grievances. What is true, though, is that as I travel around the country, what a black, working-class person has in common with a white, working-class person is significant. And what prevents them from voting along the same lines or working together on the same projects to do with a whole range of cultural and identity issues which, you know, they obviously feel are important and valid. But what I have tried to do throughout my presidency is get - try to get people to recognize themselves in each other, and that is probably partly related to my own upbringing.

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I was raised by a white mom and white grandparents who, you know, never suffered the kinds of discrimination that their black cohorts might have experienced but who had their own struggles, who went through a Great Depression, who - a grandmother who had to work her way up without ever a college education, starting in the steno pool or as a secretary to be - and experienced her own discrimination because of being a woman. And so I have seen the degree to which their struggles are not that different from Michelle's parents' struggles, at least in terms of how they think about it, and the similar values of hoping that their kids are going to do better and that education is the key. And that, you know, everybody's got to work hard and take responsibility but that they'd like a government that was more responsive to clear out some of the barriers for their advancement. And I believe that our politics - when our politics are at our best - is not based on identity politics, but it is based on a sense that everybody should have a fair shot and everybody should get a fair shake. Everybody should be responsible for doing their fair share, and you know, that theme you will see in every speech that I have given since I was running for the state Senate, and it has not changed much now that I am nearing the end of my political career. Somebody following this year's election might say, well, that debate's worse, it is gotten worse. Do you see any sign that that debate is any better, that it is moved in some direction? You see it in the younger generation. If you look at the 18-to-30 cohort, or the 18-to-40 cohort, they have a very different set of attitudes about all these issues. It is true, by the way, around the world. we were talking about Brexit, you know. The younger voter was not fearful of global interdependence. They embrace it. They see themselves as being able to navigate through all these different worlds. You see it when I visit Vietnam, or countries in Africa or Latin America at - the new generation is much more comfortable with diversity, with connectivity, with the fact that change is constant, that they are not going to be working at one job for 30 years. And you know, they want to make sure that they can get the skills, they can get the access. But they see a bright future for themselves.

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Here in the United States, you talk to young people, it does not matter where, it does not matter whether they are black, white, Latino. They are not afraid of the future. And so when you look at the - the frustrations and the fear that a Trump tapping into, you know, that is an earlier generation that feels unsettled. And I think we can be sympathetic and understanding of the fact that they feel unsettled, but - but also recognize that, you know, if we get the decisions that need to be made right, then 10 years from now, 20 years from now, we may look back at something like the Trump campaign as the last vestige of - a kind of politics of us versus them that really does not apply to - to today. And one last thing I'd say about this, because you will - you will hear sometimes people suggest that, well, if Democrats and Republicans had been paying attention to white, working-class voters, then something like Trump would not have happened. Well, the fact is, is that my administration, for example, when we promote a higher minimum wage or stronger union laws or health care, for that matter, that is helping that cohort. That is designed to make sure that they get a better deal in this economy. And, you know, one of the things that you have seen during the course of my presidency is the ability, the power of a certain slice of the media to emphasize to white, working-class voters somehow that these things are not good for you, that this is ENTITY and his socialist friends who are trying to take money from you to give to an undeserving, you know, Mexican immigrant or black welfare mom and - and tapping into - sort of an identity politics that, you know, is powerful and oftentimes can work, but it is actually counterproductive, and it certainly does not reflect what we have been trying to do. What is true and what is - what is been interesting to see during this election cycle is that the Republican Party that has opposed minimum wages or union laws or what have you, they have a populist insurgency on their hands. And Mr. Trump, I think, has, at times, exploited this - this gap between what, you know, the Republican business community has promoted and - and what their constituencies are actually looking for. We ran across a statement of yours from 2008 about changing the trajectory of the country.

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You said that Ronald Reagan had changed the trajectory of the country, partly because the country was ready for it. That John F. Kennedy had done the same thing, because it was the right moment. The country was going in a certain direction. You wanted to see such a moment. You believed there was such a moment for you in 2008. Is there a risk that Donald Trump could say the same thing in 2016, that he could be the man to change the trajectory of the country now? Well, if he won, he could say that. I mean to say, you think the country might be ready for that? And I think that will be tested over the next four months. But I think it is pretty hard to argue that somebody who almost three-quarters of the country think is unqualified to be ENTITY and has a negative opinion about it is tapping into the zeitgeist of the country, or is speaking for a broad base of the country. Look, that is what elections are for, and that - I think it is important for Democrats, progressives, moderates, people who care about our traditions, who care about pluralism, who care about tolerance, who care about facts, who think climate change is real, who think that we have to reform our immigration system in an intelligent way, who believe ... in women's equality and equality for the LGBT community. I think it is important for those of us not to be complacent, not to be smug. And you know, the one thing I have tried to do during the course of my presidency is to take seriously the objections and the criticisms and the concerns of people who did not vote for me. I said on election night back in Grant Park, I am ENTITY of everybody. I have got a particular point of view. I have - I do not make any apologies for it. I believe that, if you go back and read my speeches dating back to 2004, where I first came to national prominence, that there has been a consistency there, that I have done or tried to do exactly what I said. And the core of that message is e pluribus unum, out of many, one, that - that we are better when we are together, that I do not believe in tribalism. I do not believe in stoking divisions and scapegoating. I think that people have common hopes and common dreams. And I think that America is at its best when we are unified and working together.

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And during the course of my presidency, you have seen polarization and division and all kinds of consternation and frustration. But what you have also seen quietly is a country that yanked itself out of a Great Recession and recovered as well as any country ever has from such a massive financial breakdown. You have seen 20 million people have health insurance that did not have it before and health care inflation actually going down so that, you know, we have saved trillions of dollars in cost relative to what we are expected to be paying over the course of programs like Medicare and Medicaid. What we have seen is a financial system that is a lot sounder. We see an LGBT community that is - is recognized as equal in ways that they were not before. You have seen an entire generation grow up, I think, feeling as if the old divisions do not make sense. And you know, I feel pretty confident that as long as we do the work over the next several months and then continue that work over the next several years, that we will have emerged from this era stronger, more prosperous, more secure and adhering more closely to the values and ideals that make America exceptional. We have gone across the country, we have gone across the country asking people how their lives have changed in the last eight years. How has your life changed in the last eight years? Well, everybody's teased me about how gray I am and that is OK. That picture of you and Derek Jeter, that was something. My - my daughters have grown up and I think for any father out there, seeing your kids come into office - when I came in office, they were so much younger than I realized at the time, I think. And for them to be these amazing young women now, that changes your life more than just about anything. It is interesting, though, that my fundamental belief in public service, my fundamental belief in the capacity of politics to - to solve problems, my belief in this country is stronger, not weaker. I have been frustrated by some things that I did not complete, that I could not wrap and mail and ship before I got out of here. Getting infrastructure done, you know, we got $2 trillion worth of infrastructure. If we got working on that now, we'd be growing a lot faster, the unemployment rate would be even lower, wages would be higher. You look at Syria being the most prominent example, where you have got a heartbreaking situation and not a lot of good choices.

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Having said all that, if you had told me at the beginning of my presidency that we could begin the process of making sure everybody has health insurance in this country; that we could recover fully from a terrible economic crisis; that, you know, we could make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon without having to launch a war; that we could restore diplomatic relations with Cuba in a way that did not just transform our relationship with Cuba, but has put our relationship with all of Latin America on its strongest footing, maybe in history. If you told me that we could, you know, extend democracy to a place like Burma, one of the worst, you know, military dictatorships in the world and that I could visit there and you'd see millions of people lining the streets. If you told me that - that you could have gay and lesbian men and women proudly serving in our military without having to hide who they were, or that you could have a bipartisan effort to actually reduce sentences for nonviolent drug offenses have a credible chance of getting through Congress. You'd tally it up, it is not bad for 7 1/2 years' worth of work. Climate change, with the Paris Agreement, 200 countries signed on - is a classic example of how I think about my work, but also the possibilities of government and politics. We have not solved climate change because of that agreement, but we have now built an architecture that allows us, gives us a change to, over time collectively, in an unprecedented way, curb the pollution that contributes to climate change. But have we now given the next president, the next Congress, the next generation a chance to solve it? I think of myself as a relay runner. I take the baton. Sometimes, you take the baton and you are behind in the race, and you have got to run a little bit harder to catch up. Hopefully, by the time you pass on the baton, you are a little bit better positioned in the race. And I think there is a humility that comes out of this office, because you feel that no matter how much you have done, there is more work to do. But I think that there is a confidence that well-meaning people working together can - can change the country for the better.

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I am excited, I am honored to introduce my first guest, the 44th President of the United States, please welcome ENTITY. It is good to see you and . Let me just say, I think Kevin looks good in a suit. He looks a little like Secret Service. And you are the only guy who can get him to wear it. Now, you know, it is funny, because the last time you were here, you walked in, you had your jacket on your finger, and you had the two guys with you You know, the I was mentioning earlier, we landed yesterday, and then this is an example of life in the bubble we landed at the fairground down in Costa Mesa, and I see the fairground where I think we are having this town hall, and I said, Well, why do not we walk over there? Now, they let me walk on the way back, but, you know, the doctor is behind me with the defibrillator. Michelle jokes about how our motorcade you know, we have got the ambulance and then the caboose and then the dog sledthere's the submarine. Well, look, we are going through a difficult time. I welcome the challenge. You know, I ran for President because I thought we needed big changes. And I do think in Washington it is a little bit like American Idol, except everybody is Simon Cowell. Everybody's got an opinion. But that is part of what makes for our democracy. And I do think, though, that the American people are all in a place where they understand it took us a while to get into this mess, it is going to take a while for us to get out of it. And if they have confidence that I am making steps to deal with issues like health care and energy and education, that matter deeply to their daily lives, then I think they are going to give us some time. Let me ask you about this. I know you are angry, because, you know, doing what I do, you kind of study body language a little bit. And you looked very angry about these bonuses; actually, stunned. Tell people what happened. You have got a company, AIG, which used to be just a regular old insurance company; then they insured a whole bunch of stuff, and they were very profitable, and it was a good, solid company.

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Then they decided some smart person decided, let us put a hedge fund on top of the insurance company and let us sell these derivative products to banks all around the world, which are basically guarantees or insurance policies on all these subprime mortgages. And this smart person said, you know, none of these things are going to go bust; this subprime thing, it is a great deal; you can make a lot of profit. So they sold a whole bunch of them billions and billions of dollars. And what happened is, is that when people started going bust on subprime mortgages, you had $30 worth of debt on every dollar worth of mortgage, and the whole house of cards just started falling down. So the problem with AIG was that it owed so much and was tangled up with so many banks and institutions that if you had allowed it to just liquidate, to go into bankruptcy, it could have brought the whole financial system down. So it was the right thing to do to intervene in AIG. Now, the question is, who in their right mind, when your company is going bust, decides we are going to be paying a whole bunch of bonuses to people? And that, I think, speaks to a broader culture that existed on Wall Street, where I think people just had this general attitude of entitlement, where, we must be the best and the brightest; we deserve $10 million or $50 million or $100 million dollar payouts. And, you know, the immediate bonuses that went to AIG are a problem. But the larger problem is we have got to get back to an attitude where people know enough is enough, and people have a sense of responsibility, and they understand that their actions are going to have an impact on everybody. And if we can get back to those values that built America, then I think we are going to be okay. Well, you know, it is interesting, when you said it is like, I had to laugh the other day when the CEO of AIG said, okay, I have asked them to give half the bonuses back. Now, if you rob a bank and you go into court and you go, Your Honor, I am going to give you half the money back. And they seem stunned that we are not jumping at this wonderful offer. Well, you know, the only place I think that might work is in Hollywood. Let me ask you this.

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Now, they I heard them say, well, one of the problems is it is contractual, and if we do not pay these bonuses, well, they can sue us. All the time people say, so sue me. I mean, the Federal Government is in debt a trillion dollars. We are broke sue us. In fairness, I think that part of the calculation they were making was the way the contracts were written said, if you do not pay us immediately, then we can claim three times as much as we were owed under the bonuses. And so they were making a legal calculation, and their legal judgment was not necessarily wrong. The main thing we are going to do everything we can to see if we can get these bonuses back. But I think the most important thing that we can do is make sure that we put in a bunch of financial regulatory mechanisms to prevent companies like an AIG holding the rest of us hostage. The problem is not just what is happened over the last 6 months. The problem is what was happening for years, where people were able to take huge, excessive risks with other people's money, putting the entire financial system at risk, and there were no checks, there were no balances, there was nobody overseeing the process. And so what we are going to be moving very aggressively on, even as we try to fix the current mess, is make sure that before somebody makes a bad bet you say, hold on, you cannot do that. Well, here is something that kind of scared me. Today they passed this thing that says we are going to tax 90 percent of these bonuses. And the part that scares me is, I mean, you are a good guy if the government decides they do not like a guy, all of a sudden, hey, we are going to tax you and then, boom, and it passes. I mean, that seems a little scary as a taxpayer, they can just decide you want to take a break and answer that when we come back? I have got a good answer too. We are talking with ENTITY. Before the break, I mentioned that they had just passed this new bill which will tax them 90 percent, and I said it was frightening to me as an American that Congress, whoever, could decide, I do not like that group, let us pass a law and tax them at 90 percent. Well, look, I understand Congress's frustrations, and they are responding to, I think, everybody's anger.

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But I think that the best way to handle this is to make sure that you have closed the door before the horse gets out of the barn. And what happened here was the money has already gone out and people are scrambling to try to find ways to get back at them. The change I'd like to see in terms of tax policy is that we have a system, going back to where we were back in the 1990s, where you and I who are doing pretty well pay a little bit more to pay for health care, to pay for energy, to make sure that kids can go to college who are not as fortunate as our as my kids might be. Those are the kinds of measured steps that we can take. But the important thing over the next several months is making sure that we do not lurch from thing to thing, but we try to make steady progress, build a foundation for long-term economic growth. I just read today about Merrill Lynch. They handed out 3.6 billion. It is not even million anymore, it is billions in bonuses. I know it would make me feel good should not somebody go to jail? I say that because I watch those people in New York, even people who had lost everything when Bernard Madoff went to jail, at least they felt they got something. They got some satisfaction. Most of the stuff that got us into trouble was perfectly legal. And that is a sign of how much we have got to change our laws, right? We were talking earlier about credit cards, and it is legal to charge somebody 30 percent on their credit card and charge fees and so forth that people do not always know what they are getting into. So the answer is to deal with those laws in a way that gives the average consumer a break. When you buy a toaster, if it explodes in your face there is a law that says your toasters need to be safe. But when you get a credit card, or you get a mortgage, there is no law on the books that says if that explodes in your face financially, somehow you are going to be protected. So this is the need for getting back to some commonsense regulations there is nothing wrong with innovation in the financial markets. We want people to be successful; we want people to be able to make a profit. Banks are critical to our economy.

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And we want credit to flow again, but we just want to make sure that there is enough regulatory common sense in place that ordinary Americans are not taken advantage of, and taxpayers, after the fact, are not taken advantage of. Yes because when I was a kid, we would banks or credit cards would lend you money so you would pay it back. Now they lend you money so you cannot pay it back. It is like we were talking before, I mentioned we all saw A Wonderful Life Mr. Potter, the meanest man, remember he owned the whole town? You know what he charged on a mortgage? He is like Mother Teresa now. Well, and part of what happened over the last 15, 20 years is that so much money was made in finance that about 40 percent, I think, of our overall growth, our overall economic growth, was in the financial sector. Well, now what we are finding out is a lot of that growth was not real. It was paper money, paper profits on the books, but it could be easily wiped out. And what we need is steady growth; we need young people, instead of a smart kid coming out of school, instead of wanting to be an investment banker, we need them to decide they want to be an engineer, they want to be a scientist, they want to be a doctor or a teacher. And if we are rewarding those kinds of things that actually contribute to making things and making people's lives better, that is going to put our economy on solid footing. We will not have this kind of bubble-and-bust economy that we have gotten so caught up in for the last several years. Now, Treasury Secretary Geithner, he seems to be taking a little bit of heat here. How is he holding up with this? He seems like a smart guy. I do not think people fully appreciate the plate that was handed him. This guy has not just a banking crisis, he is got the worst recession since the Great Depression, he is got an auto industry on that has been on the verge of collapse. We have got to figure out how to coordinate with other countries internationally. He is got to deal with me; he is got to deal with Congress. And he is doing it with grace and good humor. And he understands that he is on the hot seat, but I actually think that he is taking the right steps, and we are going to have our economy back on the move.

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Now, it is , Hey, you got this, you got that; hey, good luck. No, no, but this is the point that I made, I think, 2 days ago, when somebody asked, Well, do you have confidence in Tim Geithner? If I am not giving him the tools that he needs to make sure that we are moving things forward, then people need to look at me. On the AIG thing, all these contracts were written well before I took office, but ultimately I am now the guy who is responsible to fix it. And one of the things that I am trying to break is a pattern in Washington where everybody is always looking for somebody else to blame. And I think Geithner is doing an outstanding job. I think that we have a big mess on our hands. And the key thing is for everybody just to stay focused on doing the job instead of trying to figure out who you can pass blame on to. Well, when will the money this money was given out to the banks, I would have thought by this time it would have sort of trickled down to Main Street, to people wanting to get loans. Well, what is happening is a lot of these banks are keeping it in the bank because their balance sheets had gotten so bad that they decided, you know what, for us to stay solvent we need to maintain certain capital ratios; we have got to have a certain amount of capital in the bank. And they have not started lending it yet. And that is why what we have got to do right now what we are doing is essentially doing a diagnostic test trying to use some auto language here so you . We are doing a diagnostic on each of the banks, figuring out what are their capital levels, can they sustain lending. And then I think we are going to separate out those banks that are in good shape, we are going to say to them, all right, you are on your own; go start lending again. Those banks that still have problems, we will do a little more intervention to try to clean some of those toxic assets off their books. But I actually have confidence that we will get that done. In the meantime, we are taking a lot of steps to, for example, opening up open up separate credit lines outside of banks for small businesses so that they can get credit, because there are a lot of small businesses out here who are just barely hanging on.

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We are trying to set up a securitized market for student loans and auto loans outside of the banking system. But that is why we have got to solve the banking problem, and we have got to solve issues like health care, energy, and education that will put us on a pathway for long-term economic growth. We are going to take a break. When we come back I want to ask you what we can do all right, we will take a break. More with the President, we will be right back. So I was going to ask you before we went to the break so you have obviously, we have a lot of people with a few dollars couple of hundred, couple of thousand but there is millions of them. What should they do? Should they be spending money? Should they hide it under their mattress? Look, first of all, everybody should have complete confidence in the banks. They should not be putting it in their mattresses. I will leave it up to others to provide individual, personal financial advice. But I will say this, that if you are working right now, obviously, you have got to be prudent and you have got to recognize that the economy has been in a tough way. But, you know, we have still got kids who are going to need a coat for winter or a computer for school. You know, that young family is still going to at some point need to buy a house. And right now cars, for example, we know that typically you need about 14 million cars for this population, and right now only 9 million are being sold every year. So at some point those inventories are going to run down and people are going to start buying cars again. So you know, what people should not do is forget that what has built America has always been a faith and a confidence in the future. And our future is bright if we take some smart steps right now. And that is what we are working on in Washington. And I think, if everybody stays focused on getting through these tough times, the future is going to be very bright for all of us. Now, you mentioned cars a minute ago. You went to the electric car you went to look at some batteries today. It is spectacular what is being down now with plug-in hybrids, where not only are you getting the hybrid technology, but now you can plug it in at home in your garage. And potentially, we could see cars getting 150 miles to a gallon of gas.

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And when you get home you could potentially sell the energy in your car back into the grid, back to your utility, and get money. So we are going to be investing billions of dollars in research and development around these technologies. I have got the GM hydrogen car. That is a whole new level of technology. That is what is going to create the auto industry of the future. That is where we are going to win back manufacturing. These batteries are being made in Japan, just like wind power is being made in Europe. We need to bring that here, and that is part of what my budget and part of what our Recovery Act is all about. Let me ask you some personal things. Now, how cool is it to fly in Air Force One? Now, let me tell you, I personally think it is pretty cool. Especially because they give you, you know, the jacket with the seal on it. See, I still get the little wings when I fly. So you have the jacket. I will tell you, though, Malia and Sasha, my daughters, they are just not as impressed. The first time we went on Marine One right, you have got the marines in front and they are saluting you, and we go up, and we are passing the Washington Monument, circling around on the way to Camp David, and Sasha looks over and she says, Are those Starbursts? That is Can we have some? So they are splitting up the Starbursts, and we are flying over the Lincoln Memorial. And that so they got a whole 'nother level of cool. Now, are they going to put a basketball I imagine the bowling alley has been just burned and closed down. I have been practicing bowling. I bowled a 129. No, listen, I am making progress on the bowling, yes. And how about, are you going to put in a basketball court? Well, we have a basketball court already at Camp David. We just had a little rim that was inadequate at the White House now. But there are tennis courts, so we are going to just get those you know, those rims that you can roll in and out. And then we will just put them on either end. Let me ask you, when people ENTITY, would you like to play? Do they throw the game? I do not see why they would throw the game, except for all those Secret Service guys with guns around.

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It is nice to see you all. You just got the readout of the President's meeting with the Amir of Qatar. They had an opportunity to speak for themselves to readout that meeting. Other than noting that, I do not have anything at the top here so we can go straight to questions. First of all, the Keystone bill is arriving at the White House today, or already has. That is what I hear. Can you tell us when the President intends to veto it, as he promised? Well, as I mentioned yesterday, the President does intend to veto this piece of legislation and we intend to do it without any drama or fanfare or delay. So I would anticipate that we will have an update on this later on today. So you expect it today? We can expect it today? Yes, you can count on that today. We will have a statement through the usual channels. It is in the pipeline. You physically have the bill now? It is my understanding that Congress did send the text of the bill to the White House this morning. On DHS funding, as you know, the Senate Majority Leader has offered to split the bill so that there is a separate vote on the immigration policies of the President and another one on the funding itself. Senator Reid has objected to the sequencing of that. He wants to vote on the clean funding bill first before you go on to immigration. Does the President have a preference on that? Does the President want to at least just get this issue off the table and it does not matter on sequencing? The official White House position is that the President served in the United States Senate for a period between 2004 and 2008, in which he readily weighed in on legislative maneuvers and strategies related to the complicated procedures that essentially guide the legislative process. At this point, it is the responsibility of Congress to figure out how to perform among their most basic functions, which is to ensure that the budget for the Department of Homeland Security gets passed in a timely fashion. But, ENTITY, this is his party and it could essentially end up closing one of his executive agencies. The President has -- well, Republicans spent a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of effort going around the country about making the case why they should be put in charge of the United States Congress. They succeeded in that effort, and they persuaded the American people to hand them the responsibility of the majority of both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

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And the question now facing Republicans is how they are going to use that authority and whether or not they are going to do it responsibly, in a way that is in the best interest of the country and whether or not it is in the best interest of our national security. And the fact of the matter is I cannot find anybody who thinks it is a good idea to shut down the Department of Homeland Security, which means that congressional Republicans should simply do their job. And they should pass legislation that would fully fund the Department of Homeland Security for the remainder of this year. And Senator McConnell is offering a clean bill like you demanded, so why not get behind this bill? Well, I have not seen the particulars in terms of exactly what he is put forward, but ultimately it will be up to the individual members of Congress to make their own decision. But, again, congressional Republicans are in charge. They are in the majority. And this is something that they sought, and these are exactly the kinds of problems that they hoped to have the opportunity to solve, and we look forward to them doing it. The contours of the deal that are being discussed would allow Iran to potentially consider moving toward a nuclear device after 10 years. And I am wondering if that is a period of time -- I know that parts of the discussion have been about a 20-year period before -- that seems to be the compromise number. Is that a number that we can trust the Iranians to stick by and not to begin producing a nuclear device after that? Well, Jim, I am loathe to get into the negotiating details of the position that is adopted by the United States and our international partners when they are sitting across the table from the Iranians. However, I will say that there was a report today indicating that we were negotiating for essentially a 10-year deal. That does not reflect the accurate negotiating position of the United States and our international partners. But the second part of your question is important as well. It goes to whether or not the United States and the international community is prepared to start trusting the Iranians. I think the point, Jim, of these negotiations is to not just reach an agreement with the Iranians, but reach an agreement with the Iranians that we can verify on a continuing, ongoing basis; that there is ample reason for the international community to not put a lot of faith in the claims of the Iranians when it comes to their nuclear program.

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It was just a few years ago that there was this covert nuclear facility in Iran that had previously been undeclared that did yield some evidence indicating that Iran was trying to secretly develop a nuclear weapon. So what we need is a clear agreement from the international community and the Iranians and an agreement that is verifiable. And any part of an agreement will include ready access by the international community to ensure that Iran is living up to their end of the bargain. But you are saying that reports that the deal would clamp down on Tehran's nuclear activities for at least 10 years and then slowly ease those restrictions, that is not correct? Well, again, I am not willing to get into the specific details of our negotiating position. But there are some who are making the case publicly that we are in favor of a deal that would just be 10 years in duration, and that is not accurate. On Keystone, the veto is one thing, but I am wondering, how long is it going to take the administration to finish its review of whether the project is in the national interest? This is a review that is being conducted by the State Department, and so you can contact the State Department for an update on the timing of that review. The President is not going to announce something on that as well today? Again, the review is being conducted by the State Department, so you can get an update from them about their timing. Secondly, there are reports that the DOJ is not going to press charges against George Zimmerman for the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Can you confirm that? I cannot confirm that. So you should check with the Department of Justice about any announcement they may or may not be planning to make at this point. Lastly, on Ukraine, Prime Minister David Cameron said he would deploy military personnel in the next month to Ukraine to help with training, and I am wondering if that is something that the U.S. is considering -- any measures to help Ukraine with military training? Well, let me say a couple things about this. The first is that the United States continues to be concerned by ongoing violations of the Minsk Implementation Plan by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. We have seen repeatedly that these Russian-backed separatists have continued to violate the terms of the agreement despite the fact that they made firm commitments in the context of an immediate and comprehensive cease-fire.

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In addition to that, we have seen Russian military vehicles -- I am sorry -- we have seen Russian military personnel have participated in the recent attacks on Vuhlehirsk and Debaltseve. And the Russian military has put in place a robust command structure in eastern Ukraine. We know this because separatist fighters have also previously acknowledged that they are operating under instructions from Moscow. Russia and the separatists it backs have acted in direct contravention of the Minsk Implementation Plan that they agreed to. And we continue to call on all signatories to carry out the commitments undertaken in the plan in the September Minsk Agreements fully and without delay. The other thing that we are concerned about is that there are reports that Russian-backed separatists have prevented members of the OSCE special monitoring mission from getting full access to the conflict areas. There are even some reports that indicate that those separatists have made grave threats against members of the OSCE monitoring team. So we have seen continued behavior that is in direct violation of the agreement that Russia and the other parties signed just a couple of weeks ago. So we continue to be concerned about the situation in Ukraine. I do not have any updates in terms of assistance that we will provide to the Ukrainians at this point other than to remind you that we have already provided substantial assistance to the Ukrainian military and we have already provided substantial economic assistance to the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. And there was additional assistance the administration believes we should provide and that is why we have called on the United States Congress to pass legislation that would offer additional loan guarantees to the Ukrainians to strengthen their economy while they try to deal with this continuing instability in the eastern part of the nation. Back on DHS, if I may. Senator McConnell is apparently shopping a compromise on the Hill right now to try to move forward on that. Is the White House looking to find a compromise, or are you still certain you have got to have a clean bill? Well, ENTITY, the administration has been clear that we stand ready to compromise with members of Congress, including Republicans, when it comes to trying to address the many problems caused by our broken immigration system. In fact, we spent a lot of time over the last couple of years trying to reach that compromise, and in the United States Senate, we succeeded in doing so, that we got more than a dozen Republican senators to sign on to a compromise bipartisan immigration reform proposal.

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That was a proposal that was blocked by House Republicans, even though we knew that had the House Republican leadership allowed it to come to the floor, it would have passed with bipartisan support. So we do stand ready to have those kinds of conversations with members of Congress. But we should not compromise our homeland security just because Republicans want to pick a political fight. It is not consistent with the Senate Majority Leader's aspirations to send a signal to the American people that Republican leadership should not be scary -- that is his word, not mine. So we are hopeful that Republicans will do the responsible thing, that they will join with Democrats to support a full-year extension of funding for the Department of Homeland Security prior to the deadline. And then if there are Republicans that want to have a legitimate conversation with the administration about how to solve the problems that are created by our broken immigration system, then we stand ready to do that. We'd even host those meetings right here at the White House if they would like. As far as the meeting today with the leader of Qatar, there are reports that Qatar has lent support to Hamas in the past. Do you think there is an issue with the President meeting with the leader of Qatar while not meeting with the leader of Israel? Well, ENTITY, I can tell you that -- let me say a couple things about that. As it relates to Prime Minister Netanyahu, as we have said this many times, there is no foreign leader with whom the President has spent more time than Prime Minister Netanyahu. And that is a testament to the deep and ongoing security relationship that exists between the United States and Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu himself has said that the level of security coordination between the United States and Israel under the leadership of President Obama is unprecedented, and we certainly would share that assessment. As it relates to the leader of Qatar, I can tell you that there are a number of important interests that we share with Qatar. Like all partnerships, especially in this region of the world, the United States does not necessarily agree with the Qatari government on every issue, but we have the kind of relationship that allows us to be frank and open about where we disagree and why. But the bottom line is that our interests with Qatar converge somewhat more often than they actually diverge; that Qatar has been a significant help on a range of regional issues, including Afghanistan, Iran. As you know, the Qataris have even agreed to host a regional training site for the moderate Syrian opposition.

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So we certainly welcome the efforts of the Qataris to participate in this broad international coalition to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL. We also know that the Qataris have indicated a willingness to work closely with us in other aspects of our strategy against ISIL, too, particularly as it relates to terror financing. And this is a focal point of the administration's efforts to shut down terrorism across the globe, but it certainly is an important part of our strategy for degrading and ultimately destroying ISIL -- that if we can shut off the financing of their operations, we are going to add even further strain to their ability to carry out the terrible things that we have seen them do. So we are working closely with the Qataris on that aspect of our strategy, too. And I think that is precisely why the President convened the meeting with him in the Oval Office today. On the same subject, do you acknowledge that Qatar has been a significant source of especially private donations to ISIS and other terrorist groups? Well, ENTITY, what we acknowledge is that there are areas where we disagree with the Qataris, but more often we find that our interests overlap, that our interests with the Qataris are consistent. And whether it is our work with the international community to try to ease the international community's concerns about Iran's nuclear program, to dealing with the situation in Afghanistan, or even the ongoing campaign against ISIL, that there are a variety of ways in which the United States has been able to work effectively with the Qataris to protect and advance our national security interests in the region and around the globe. And for a long time, the Qataris have been accused of trying to play it both ways -- of welcoming hate preachers, as we might call them, to their biggest mosque, of continuing the financing, and only really trying to stop it when pressure is put on. So can you say whether pressure is on them now to stop that financing and whether there has been any progress either in that area or with supporting these people that come in and preach against Jews and other faiths? Well, ENTITY, I can tell you that the administration does continue to work closely with the Qataris to try to improve our efforts to shut down the financing for terror operations. And the Qataris have been an effective partner in that endeavor so far, but we do believe that there is more that they can do and more that we can do together to shut down the financing of terror operations around the globe.

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And was that made clear today to them, that they can do more? Well, I do not have a detailed readout of the meeting. But you can check with my NSC colleagues to see if you can get a better sense of how this issue was discussed in the meeting. And shortly after the video came out of the burning of the Jordanian pilot, it was said that this could be a way to bring in more of the Arab participation. Because really it is only been about 3 percent of the airstrikes have come from Arab partners and other countries. It just seems like it has not changed for the duration of this. Well, ENTITY, I think there are a lot of different ways to evaluate this, and certainly the easiest way to evaluate this is to take a close look at the way in which Arab countries have participated in our military operations against ISIL. And as we pointed out on a number of occasions, there are important Arab partners who are taking action alongside American military pilots to strike ISIL targets in Syria. And we certainly welcome that contribution and it is making a tangible contribution to our ongoing effort and to our broader strategy. There also was an important role for them, for our partners in the region, to play when it comes to shutting down ISIL financing; that there is a lot of money that is moving through that region -- whether it is the black market for oil to other sources of illicit financing for their operations. We are also working with the Qataris and other regional partners to combat ISIL's efforts to move foreign fighters into that region. You will recall that the President convened a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss this important issue last fall. We continue to work with our partners around the globe and in the region on those efforts. And we also work with Muslim leaders in the region to try to counter the extremist ideology that ISIL propagated on social media; that there is an important role for more moderate voices in the Muslim world to stand up and to use their influence to try to counter that messaging. And we certainly welcome the influence of political leaders in that effort as well. And really quickly, on Bob McDonald misstating his past service -- does that bother the President or the administration? Well, ENTITY, I can tell you that, obviously, as you know, Secretary McDonald went to West Point. He served in the 82nd Airborne. He is somebody who, when he was in the military, completed jungle, arctic, and desert warfare training.

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So he is somebody who understands firsthand the sacrifice that our men and women in uniform make on a regular basis. He is also somebody who understands firsthand about why what he said about his service was wrong, and that certainly is why it was appropriate for him to apologize. But there is no reason to think that the mistake that he made should interfere with his ability to continue to lead the fight for our veterans and to continue to implement the kinds of reforms at the VA that are so critical to making sure that our veterans are getting the benefits that they deserve. First, yesterday I asked you about whether or not the President would be calling congressional leaders to the White House to try to work out some agreement to prevent the Homeland Security shutdown from happening. I do not know of any meeting like that that is planned at this point. But like I said, I believe that members of Congress are still returning from their week-long recess last week and once they are all back in town, if it is necessary for the President to bring some of them down to the White House and have a conversation about this, then we will do that. Do you think it would be productive given what you just said about how the President has been out of the Senate for a number of years, does not want to get engaged in these questions of procedural -- I think the point is that it is their responsibility to work this through. And again, Republicans spent a lot of time trying to persuade the American people that they should be entrusted with the reins of the United States Congress and be entrusted with the power of the purse. And we need to see if they are going to step up and assume responsibility. Again, there are probably going to be some times over the course of this year where Republicans in Congress are going to have to make some really tough decisions and take some really difficult votes. I am not really sure why funding the Department of Homeland Security and making sure that that funding does not lapse is considered a difficult task. But again, this is a challenge for Republican leaders to decide if they can demonstrate to the American public that they are going to continue to act in the country's best interests. On the Iran nuclear talks, you said that the White House is not negotiating for a 10-year sunset, basically, a 10-year -- a point where Iran would be able to become effectively a nuclear power. Is the administration, is the White House, the President opposed to a timeline that is so short?

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You said you are not pushing for it, you are not arguing for it, you are not negotiating for it. Well, again, ENTITY, I have used this analogy on other occasions, or on other topics. It is not something that you and I can negotiate from here, that ultimately we are going to have a conversation with the Iranians about the way that they can resolve the international community's concerns with their nuclear program. At this point, there is not more detail that I can share about the negotiating position of the United States other than to say that those reports from earlier today were not accurate and did not accurately reflect our negotiating. I understand why you would not want to negotiate it here, obviously, but this seems to be a pretty fundamental question. The report that you now said was inaccurate, but I am trying to get how much of -- I do not want to use the word red line, but how much of an absolute non-starter that is. The report suggested a deal taking place with the Iranians after a period of just 10 years, where it would basically have no restrictions on their ability to enrich uranium. Well, what is unacceptable is the idea that Iran would obtain a nuclear weapon. And that has been our policy for quite some time. And the whole purpose of these negotiations is to make sure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. And the reason for that is that it would be terribly destabilizing for the region. It could precipitate, and I think we could even say is likely to precipitate a nuclear arms race in what is already a very volatile region of the world. That would not be in the best interests of American national security, and it certainly would not be in the best interest of our closest ally in the region, Israel. So that is why we are engaged in these negotiations. And once we have -- the President has indicated that the time for conducting these kinds of negotiations is running short, and so once we have sort of reached the other end of these things, we can have a more detailed conversation about what that deal is. And can you confirm --there was some confusion about the deadline. Is the deadline for these talks March 24th, as White House officials have suggested in the past, or is it March 31st? You mean March 24th or 31st? I know that it is -- I have always heard people say it is the end of the month.

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So let me see if I can get back to you with a specific -- if there is a date certain. The Republican leaders have said that the President vetoing Keystone would be a political move to please environmental extremists. What is your response to that? Well, the reason the President will veto this legislation that has passed the Congress is that it circumvents a longstanding administrative process for evaluating whether or not infrastructure projects like this are in the best interest of the country. And it does not represent a specific position on the pipeline itself. It just merely says that the benefits, the consequences of building that pipeline should be thoroughly evaluated by experts and through this administrative process that has existed for decades and has been used by previous Presidents of both parties to evaluate similar infrastructure projects. And that is the proper path moving forward, but does not represent a final disposition of the Keystone project. I know the Vice President and the Secretary of State will be out of town next week during the start of -- actually during the whole AIPAC conference. Will an administration official be addressing the AIPAC conference at all? We will have more information on that soon. Obviously we have received an invitation from AIPAC and we will get back to them. So we should expect just a name -- it is not whether you are going to have an administration official attend the conference. It is just a matter of figuring out which administration official actually addresses AIPAC? Well, again, I think -- we have received the invitation from AIPAC. We are considering the invitation. And once we have made a decision we will get back to AIPAC about who the speakers will be, and then we will be in a position to talk about it. The President has expressed more optimism about bipartisan -- Who is been invited and what the President's hopes are for that legislation? ENTITY, I would anticipate that we will have a list of lawmakers who participate in that meeting. Both Democrats and Republicans were invited, and I would anticipate that there will be a bipartisan group of members at the meeting.

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The President, as you point out, does view this as an opportunity for us to find some common ground to move the country forward; that there are some Republicans who have raised similar concerns that the President himself has discussed about our criminal justice system, about reforms that could make our system more consistent with our values of fairness and justice and equality that certainly the President believes are really important, and I know that many of the members -- that all the members who are participating in the meeting also believe are important. So this is an area that is worthy of careful consideration and consultation because there might be an opportunity for Congress to act in bipartisan fashion with the strong support of the President to put in place reforms to our system that would make our nation more just. So the President is looking forward to that discussion. I would anticipate that we will have, like I said, a list of the members who participate and at least a general overview of that meeting once it concludes. ENTITY, yesterday, Governor Fallin, after she met with the National Governors Association, with the President, reported that the President said he was open to crude exports from the U.S. Is that an accurate characterization of what the President told the governors? And is that sort of a shift in position from what he has previously said? I was not in the room when that exchange occurred, so it is hard for me to accurately reflect the way the question was asked and the way it was answered. What I can do, though, is assure you that the policy of the administration has not changed, that crude oil export regulations are administered by the Department of Commerce. That is where these kinds of regulations are considered. And I do not have sort of change to announce at this point. Following up on Iran, is it the administration's position that you would want a permanent agreement, one that has no timeline whatsoever, to meet the goal that you said repeatedly, which is to ensure there is never a development of a nuclear weapon? Well, I think what we want is we want an agreement that is verifiable and we certainly want one that all parties live up to. And again, in terms of what kind of time constraints are placed in the context of the negotiations and how long people would be signing up, that is not something I am going to prejudge or be in a position to talk about from here. answer suggests that the administration is open to a timeline of some kind. I recognize that.

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I guess what I am trying to say is I am just not going to be in a position to talk about the details of our negotiating position with the Iranians. And the reason for that is simply that we have agreed on the front end with our international partners who are joining us at the table and with the Iranians that we can have an open, candid dialogue in the context of these negotiations with the goal of trying to reach an agreement. And attempts to try to influence those negotiations by talking about them outside of the context of the negotiations are not going to be helpful to that process. But my point is, we will have an opportunity at some point, -- on or around the end of March, we will have an opportunity to discuss either the framework for an agreement that is been reached, or we will be able to discuss why we were not able to reach an agreement despite the common-sense, reasonable proposal that is been put forward by the international community. And your interest in understanding exactly what was put forward is a reasonable one, but one that I cannot discuss right now. Have you reconciled in your own mind how you could describe to the country an agreement that had a timeline that also met the standard of Iran never obtaining a nuclear weapon? whether or not Iran can obtain a nuclear weapon. and whether or not it will resolve the international community's concerns about their efforts to obtain a nuclear weapon. So that is the focal point of these negotiations. And again, once we are in a position to evaluate either an agreement that has been reached, or an offer that was made an then rejected by the Iranians, we can talk in more detail about the negotiating position that was assumed by the United States and our international partners, and how it was possible to reconcile that with the policy goals that we have stated, the most important of which you have reiterated here, which is to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. On Secretary McDonald -- a couple of veterans groups have said they accept his apology, but said it raises questions in their minds about his trustworthiness. And they do not talk just about this, but they have also made mention of misstatements that the Secretary may have intentionally or unintentionally made about how many people have been fired and held accountable in some of the implementation of reforms. Is the President satisfied that Secretary McDonald is trustworthy and is, in fact, implementing all of the reforms and legislation he recently signed?

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The President believes that Secretary McDonald has a very difficult task in front of him to try to bring much-needed reforms to the VA. And this is a task that generations of VA secretaries have tried to accomplish. Many of them have made progress, and the President is pleased with the progress that Secretary McDonald has made so far. And the reason that Secretary McDonald has been successful so far is that not only does he bring with him some private sector management experience that I do think is useful when trying to get his arms around a large government agency like this and manage it efficiently, or at least as efficiently as possible, this task also reflects his own personal commitment to these issues that starts with his own military service to our country. But even after he left military service, Secretary McDonald was committed, even using his free time, to try to support military families, our veterans and their families. And that is a testament to his character. It is a testament to what drives him, and it is why he is well suited for this job. But I do not think there is anybody who sits around -- who wakes up in the morning thinking, boy, my job is really hard today, I wish I could just go walk in Bob McDonald's shoes because that sure would be a weight off my shoulders. I think everybody recognizes that he is a got a very difficult task in front of him. And that is why his skill and personal commitment to these issues are so important to his success. When the VA was in a lot of trouble, the President tasked Rob Nabors to go over and assist. Is he still working in carrying out essentially a conduit role from the White House to the VA, and serving as that sort of presidential intermediary or liaison with this new Secretary? Rob is still working at the VA and is still providing the Secretary and other members of the senior leadership at the VA the kind of advice and expertise that they continue to benefit from. So we certainly are pleased to have Rob still serving his country and our veterans over at the VA. Senator McCain raised his concerns about the Choice Card, which is part of the legislation the President signed. We had a couple of questions at the budget briefing, but it does not appear that every member of Congress is satisfied that this Choice Card is going to be implemented in the budget and the financial flexibility is going to be there for veterans to obtain care outside of the system if they meet the criteria.

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Can you assure veterans, from this podium, that, in fact, financing will be there and the Choice Card will be implemented fully as written by Congress? Well, I am not intimately familiar with this issue, so let me take this question for the VA and see if we can provide you some data to help you understand our position on this. I want to take you back to Keystone for a moment. Is there any way in your mind, if the process plays out -- you have made the point that this has sort of circumvented longstanding processes -- if they were to play out, in your mind, is there any way the President signs off on the Keystone XL? This is an ongoing review that is being conducted by the State Department. They are going to evaluate the impact that this project would have on the country. They are going to have the opportunity to evaluate the impact that this project would have on contributing to climate change. And it certainly is possible; the President will keep an open mind as the State Department considers the wide range of impacts that this pipeline could have on the country, both positive and negative. And so we will see what happens once the State Department has completed their - what is called the national interest determination - what essentially is a report evaluating whether or not the completion of this infrastructure project would be in the best interest of the United States of America. You said as far as Israel was concerned there is a deep, longstanding security relationship between our country and theirs. I am curious, as it relates to the Iranian talks, is it fair to characterize a level of frustration on behalf of the administration to this notion that some people are cherry-picking bits and pieces and maybe as an outside actor attempting to influence the negotiations? Well, ENTITY, I think you asked about this last week, I believe, where I did express some frustration that we have seen some people take information that they had obtained about the U.S. negotiating position and cherry-pick information to try to distort the public impression of exactly what that negotiating position was. So that is why, at least, even in the context of the questions that I have taken today, that I have been loathe to get into the details of the U.S. negotiating position. Everybody will have an opportunity to evaluate that soon enough.

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But as the details come out, albeit you are saying they are not accurate, you can understand why many perhaps in Israel might say, you see, this is exactly what we were talking about to begin with. Well, I think what people around the globe can be confident of is that the United States is negotiating with one clear goal in mind, which is to make sure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. And we are working closely with the international community to achieve that goal. That was the goal of the sanctions regime that Congress passed and this administration implemented in close coordination with our allies around the globe, to compel the Iranians to come to the negotiating table and try to resolve the international community's concerns with their nuclear program. And those talks are underway, and we certainly would not want anything that I say from here or any other efforts to try to distort our negotiating position to negatively impact our ability to try to bring those negotiations to conclusion in a way that yields a strong and verifiable agreement that is clearly in the best interest of not just the United States and not just Israel and not just our international negotiating partners, but is clearly in the best interest of the whole country -- or of the whole globe. As far as AIPAC is concerned, there is zero chance that someone will not be going to AIPAC, right? Well, again, they have extended an invitation to the administration; once we have decided how we are going to respond to the invitation, we will let them know. And then once we let them know, we will let all of you know. But you will accept it, someone is going, right? I hear you. It does seem just as a matter of common courtesy, it seems like we should respond to their invitation first and then we can talk about it publicly. I certainly did not come close to saying that. I want to ask a question a different way. Given the President is going to make obviously the final call on XL, is there no communication between the White House and State Department about when you might expect their report? Well, I do not know -- I cannot account for every single conversation that occurs between the White House and the State Department. I think it is certainly possible that somebody in the White House has gotten an update in terms of how much longer it would take the State Department to compete their review, but I am not aware of those conversations.

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But even if I were, I am not sure I'd be in a position to announce for the State Department what their timeline is going to be. If they are prepared to announce a timeline then they will announce it. As you know, there are a lot of people anxious about this. They waited six years and there are others who are concerned about a political implication for 2016 depending on when the President does make his decision. Is the expectation that once the State Department report comes out, the President will make a decision fairly quickly? Does he feel like he needs to do that quickly? Well, I would not want to prejudge the outcome here, but I would anticipate that once the review has been completed that there would not be a significant delay in announcing the results of that review and ultimately making a decision on this project. But on DHS, as you know, there are critics who have suggested that the White House has overstated the potential impact if there is a delay in funding, saying that because everyone who is essential will still be working that it will not make a significant difference to national security. And we heard from some people, including the FEMA Director yesterday, about what that would be. So given that, what kind of preparations are underway for a possible shutdown? Well, Chris, I can tell you that it is not just the administration who is making the case that shutting down the Department of Homeland Security would have a bad impact on national security. I know that Congressman Peter King was on television today making exactly that case. So he does not often agree with the administration, but at least in this case he is making the same case that we are. He is not the only one who is making that case. I do know that the Department of Homeland Security has been engaged in a planning process to ensure they are prepared and can take the steps necessary to try to mitigate the impact of a shutdown of that department. But as I have mentioned before, the impact of that shutdown will include tens of thousands of Homeland Security personnel being furloughed. It will include many Homeland Security officers showing up for work to protect their country but not getting a paycheck on time. And that does not seem particularly fair, and I am not sure why anybody thinks that would be a good outcome for the country.

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But DHS is doing the responsible thing, which is, even as they try to talk to members of Congress and encourage them to fulfill their responsibility and pass a budget, they are also engaged in the planning to try to mitigate the potential impact of shutting down their agency. Can you give us a sense of what is involved in that planning? A few days ago, a Mexican citizen was killed by two police officers in Pasco, Washington. Is the President aware of the incident? What is his reaction to that? Can you say it one more time? A Mexican citizen was killed in Pasco, Washington, the state of Washington. My question was, was the President aware of the incident, or the White House, and what is the reaction to that? I have certainly seen the news reports. I have not talked to the President about it. I do not know if he is aware, although knowing he is an avid consumer of news, I assume that he is. But I do not know a lot of the details of the case beyond what I have read in news reports. So for questions about sort of where that investigation stands, I'd refer you to the local authorities there. I have a question about Ukraine. You said earlier that you continue to be concerned by these violations. And the President said when Merkel was visiting that if Russia continued to do this he would seriously consider sending arms to the Ukrainian government and also possibly increasing the sanctions. So you are seeing these violations. Now what are you going to do? Well, what we are doing right now is we are continuing to support the ongoing efforts to try to implement this agreement. And I know that there was a call that was scheduled among the foreign ministerial level of the four groups that have been involved in these negotiations -- the Russians, the Ukrainians, the French and the Germans -- I believe that was yesterday -- I do not know if it was yesterday or today, but I know that those efforts are ongoing and we continue to support them. And the consequences that you cited of failing to live up to those kinds of commitments continue to be on the table. So we are going to continue to closely watch the situation with the President, the Vice President, and other senior members of the team, continue to be in close touch with our partners who are working this situation and we are going to monitor it closely. Look, right now they are violating it. How long will they go on violating it until you do something?

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I am just wondering, how long do you give this process? I mean, they are not living up to it now. You are monitoring it. How long are you going to monitor the violations before you do something? We will we are going to continue to try to work diplomatically to resolve this situation. And that has been our approach from the beginning, which is that it is our view that the only way we are going to resolve this is not with a military solution but with a diplomatic solution. And that is why we are continuing to press that option. But, you are right, at some point you have to start considering some other alternatives, which is why the United States has already provided substantial military assistance to the Ukrainian military. It is why we have already worked with our partners in Europe to put in place a sanctions regime and isolate President Putin and -- or Russian political leadership. And that was a response to their earlier violations of generally accepted international norms. But, yes, the potential of increasing our assistance to Ukraine and increasing the costs that are sustained by Russia has the potential to be implemented. But we are going to continue to watch this and make decisions accordingly. Well, is it also possible that these violations could continue and you decide to do nothing else? Well, I think our level of pessimism is not quite that high, but we will -- You say there is the potential that you might do something else. I am just wondering, if the violations continue, might you also decide that it is not worth doing anything else on sanctions? Based on our past response to Russia's provocations and failure to live up to generally accepted international principles, I think you could rightly conclude that it is unlikely that that is the outcome. But as we see Russia continue to destabilize eastern Ukraine and continue to take steps that are clearly in violation of agreements that they have signed, that the risk of further sanctions only increases. ENTITY, I want to come back to Iran one more time. I just want to be clear about what you are denying. You are denying that the United States has proposed a 10-year agreement, is that right? My understanding of the reports -- that I will confess that I have not seen firsthand -- but my understanding of the reports indicate that -- they wrongly indicate that the agreement that is being negotiated right now will be 10 years in length, and that is not our negotiating position at all.

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But you are not denying that there is some substantially longer agreement of which there is a 10-year opening phase to it, right? Well, what I am reluctant to do is to sort of wade in on a detailed assessment of where the negotiations currently stand. I am not asking for details. Just are you denying something longer? But again, we will have an opportunity in the coming weeks to consider either to evaluate an agreement that is been reached, or to evaluate an agreement that the Iranians walked away from. But suffice it to say the United States continues to negotiate from the position that there should be an opportunity for the Iranians to ease the international community's concerns about their nuclear program to, in a verifiable way, make clear to the international community that they will not acquire a nuclear weapon. The Iranians have said many times that that is consistent with their view and with their national policy. It is the view of the international community that they just need to be able to verify that for the international community. And ultimately, if we can come to an agreement around those outlines that would be a good outcome for not just the United States and Israel, but it would be good for the world. Can we follow on this? At this point, would you still call on Prime Minister Netanyahu to cancel the speech before the Congress? And if so, would the President meet with Netanyahu? Connie, we have not called on Prime Minister Netanyahu to cancel his speech. And we have indicated the reason that the President will not meet with him during this visit to the United States is that it comes just two weeks before his election. And in order to avoid even the appearance of interfering with a democratic election in another country, the President will not meet with the Prime Minister. But I would anticipate that at some point after the elections, regardless of who wins, that the President will convene a meeting with the leader of Israel and will continue the very close coordination on security issues that has characterized his relationship thus far with Prime Minister Netanyahu. As the United States and her allies try to come to an agreement with Iran about its nuclear ambitions, what is this administration doing -- how is it engaged to reduce nuclear weapons in nations that actually do have these weapons, like China and North Korea, Russia, Pakistan, et cetera? Well, ENTITY, the President -- I think each of those situations is a little bit different.

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But we certainly have even worked closely with Russia to reduce our nuclear stockpile, and this is something that the President did early in his tenure. And that, he believes, is in the best interest of not just U.S. national security, but also the safety of citizens and people around the globe. But, certainly, we continue to be focused on these issues. Last Friday, a federal judge appointed by President Obama issued an injunction on a separate immigration executive action, specifically stopping the detention of migrants coming across the border in Texas. Is the Department of Justice going to seek a stay of this injunction in the same way they are seeking a stay -- I'd encourage you to check with DOJ about sort of the next step in that legal process. I do know that the issue in question in that legal proceeding was related to our efforts to address what at the time was a rather urgent situation that we saw a substantial number of unaccompanied minors at the southern border attempting to illegally enter the United States of America. And one of our efforts to try to respond to that situation was to detain recent border-crossers near the border, and to try to find an environment in which families could be detained together, and to try to make sure that we are doing that in the most humane way possible. So I know that there are some who raised concerns about that policy, but that is what the administration believed was an appropriate way to respond to that urgent situation. Since that time, we have seen the numbers of undocumented immigrants, particularly unaccompanied minors, in that sector of the border decline substantially. And that is thanks to the comprehensive strategy that this administration has put in place, working with Central American countries, working with our partners in Mexico, and stepping up some of our law enforcement capabilities on the border to try to address the situation. And that situation has -- or at least the urgency of the situation down there has subsided dramatically. your administration argued that this detention served as a deterrent to make sure that was not another ongoing flood of migrants. That is part of the comprehensive strategy you just mentioned. Is the administration at all concerned now that this deterrent is gone, that you will see another wave of migrants?

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I think the most effective deterrent that we have is to have the President of the United States making very clear that people in Central America should not send their kids on this very dangerous journey; that too often, we saw reports of kids who did not complete the journey safely, that they were killed. In some cases, we saw the kids were actually funneled into human trafficking rings. So we have continued to make the case very clearly and very publicly that parents should not even contemplate to putting their kids in the hands of human traffickers in trying to move them into the United States illegally. So we have been really clear about that, and that is probably the most effective deterrent that we have. But to the extent that other things can also deter and reinforce that message, we obviously want to support them. The Congressional Budget Office sent a letter to Thad Cochran, scoring the President's executive actions for DACA and DAPA, and it found that his executive actions would actually increase budget deficits by $8.8 billion over the next 10 years. I was wondering if you could square that CBO finding with the President's budget, which claims immigration reform and executive actions would reduce the budget. We may have to follow up with you on this, because my reading of that report was actually that removing the executive actions would actually add $8 billion to the deficit. Off-budget, you are right. That is if we do not consider -- that is if the payroll taxes from the DAPA and DACA recipients did not go to the Social Security trust fund. But if the Social Security trust fund exists, if those payroll taxes are going to the Social Security trust fund, then that CBO letter found that the immigration actions do add to the deficit by $8.8 billion over the next 10 years. Well, I may have somebody who is more steeped in the budgetary details. My understanding is that this would have a positive impact on our deficit precisely because for the first time what we'd be doing is we'd be bringing people out of the shadows and actually making them pay taxes. That would be a good thing for the life of Social Security. It would be a good thing for our economy. And ultimately, it would be a good thing for the deficit. But we can have somebody follow up with you on your -- on what may be a more detailed question.

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ENTITY, back on Keystone, does President Obama believe that 2,300 days is a reasonable length of time for the State Department to conduct an evaluation? Well, I think it is certainly fair to suggest that the State Department is conducting an in-depth review. The other thing that is also true is that there have been some legal proceedings that have interfered with the completion of this review. And that certainly did impact the State Department's ability to evaluate the route of the pipeline since it was not finalized and was subject to this ultimate court ruling. But within just the last few weeks the Nebraska court has issued a decision that has finalized the proposal, and now that final proposal can be evaluated by the State Department. That is what they are doing right now. Can you imagine what he would say if he gave you an assignment and you said, I will get back to you in 2,300 days? I will give you the last one, ENTITY. One, when last year Prime Minister Modi came to the United States, late last year -- and including at the United Nations and at the White House, at the U.N. he announced that India should be a member of the U.N. Security Council, and which President in India also announced and endorsed. What is happening with that membership? And also Prime Minister Modi addressed in Washington the U.S.-India Business Council and calling on the Fortune 500 companies make in India, which will create thousands of jobs in the U.S. and thousands of jobs in India. So what is happening with that issue? And the two leaders also set up a hotline. The two have spoken ever since his visit to the White House? ENTITY, I can tell you as it relates to India's membership on the Security Council, I know the President endorsed them acceding to the Security Council in the context of a variety of other important reforms to the operations of the United Nations. I do not have an update for you on the status of those ongoing reforms, or at least efforts to try to bring about some of those reforms. But I am sure my colleagues in Ambassador Power's office can give you some additional information on this. ENTITY, the President often discusses his view that we need to have more products that are stamped with Made in America and that that would be good for the U.S. economy. It would be good for job creation.

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The President also does believe that, as Indian consumers have the opportunity to buy American goods, that it could be good for the Indian economy, as well. So the President did have the opportunity to discuss some of these economic issues and our trade relationship with India. In the context of his visit to India just last month, the President spent a lot of time with Prime Minister Modi and they spent a lot of time talking about some of these economic issues. You will recall that there was a CEO summit in the context of those meeting, and that there were American and Indian business leaders that spent some time talking through some of these issues. And the President himself had the opportunity to sit down at a roundtable with a couple dozen of them and talk about some of the challenges that they face as they try to do more business together in a way that benefits the economies and job creation in both countries. So there is an opportunity for us to try to advance the interests of both our countries by working together and by coordinating our efforts. And the President is certainly committed to that, again, in part, because the substantial economic benefits that could be enjoyed by the American people. I know that Prime Minister Modi has a similar interest. And I do not know of any recent conversations that they have had, but that continues to be a priority of both the President and his administration. Second, ENTITY, as far as the immigration is concerned, when President issued executive order millions of people were happy in that they will come out of the shadow. What message you think President has for them? They are waiting to come out of the shadow and apply for their status. Well, ENTITY, this is something that we are concerned about. The President does believe and we have said on many occasions that we believe that there is a very clear precedent for the executive actions the President announced at the end of last year; that taking executive action to try to address some elements of our broken immigration system is consistent with the way that Presidents of both parties for several decades have used their executive authority. And there is no doubt that these kinds of changes would be good for our economy, would be good for job creation, and would be good for bringing about greater accountability to our immigration system.

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I am in Bangkok, and one of the reasons I have come is not only to pay my respects to the Government and the people of Thailand, but also to be in a position to speak about freedom in Burma. I just had lunch with some people that are deeply concerned about the future of Burma, people that were involved in the student marches of '88, people involved with humanitarian assistance. I was regretful that my wife could not join us, because she is an articulate spokesman for the people of Burma; but she is on the border on this mission of saying to the Burmese people, you have friends, and you are not alone, and the United States cares about you. So I want to thank you for giving me the chance to answer your questions, and I will be glad to do so now. Why do not we just go around the table? ENTITY, it is an honor to be with you, and many thanks, giving a chance to-this roundtable discussion. My name is ENTITY, from Voice of America; Toe Zaw Latt from Democratic Voice of Burma; and Soe Win Than from BBC. We have one lady here from Radio Free Asia, May Pyone Aung. I would like to start a couple questions about the relief aid policy of United States. Recent relief operation, the Burmese regime did not allow the U.S. Navy ship aid through the Pacific come, and international community, the U.S., obviously, was really frustrated. I would like to know, if Burma faced another catastrophe or disaster, are you going to try to help, or are you going to--Burmese regime again? But first of all, we care about the human condition, human suffering. I can remember the day it hit. I was told that this was going to be a major disaster for the people, and so I ordered our Navy ships in the area to be prepared to sail toward the Burmese area to provide aid and logistics and management. We are very good about dealing with major emergencies. And interestingly enough, we were involved with a military mission in the area, so we were prepared to send a robust package in. No telling how many lives could have been saved or how much human suffering could have been dealt with more effectively had there not been the slow response of the military dictator. But now our aid, along with other people-other countries' aid, is beginning to move. In answer to your question, yes, our Government will respond if there is another catastrophe.

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