Would the media like to hear Mick Mulvaneys report or would you find it extraordinarily boring and therefore not fit for camera . Yes, please. Would you like to hear it . Yes, please. Why dont we do this. Well say grace afterwards. We are actually going t use that as an opportunity to take a bit of a break here. President trump there, weekly cabinet meeting, calling on his Budget DirectorMick Mulvaney for a presentation. We will go back when the president starts to take some questions there from reporters who have assembled in the room. Craig melvin here once again from mcallen, texas. You heard President Trump there going on a bit about the economy, going on a bit about the bad hand he has been dealt with regards to iran, with regards to north korea as well, and, of course, with regards to mexico. All of this coming just less than a day really after President Trump did an aboutface on his Policy Of Separating children from their parents as they illegally try to
cross the border here in southern texas. Peter alexander has been standing by, hes been listening to all of this go down. What else to talk to you about what we heard from President Trump, but we should know the president did hit one of his familiar themes as well, the size of his crowd in minnesota at that ruckus rally. Yeah. What struck me is we heard the president , again, doubling down on this idea of illegal immigration, barely 24 hours after backing down as it related to this Family Separation Policy as we just played for those watching at home right now. The president speaking for more than 30 minutes, fiercely laying in to some of his familiar opponents, trying to frame this as the fault of the democrats as it relates to the arrival of undocumented immigrants in the United States being fiercely critical of mexico saying they do nothing for us, which ignores, among other things, the fact that mexico is the second largest recipient of exported
trip here. She touched down i would say maybe 30, 45 minutes ago. She is here to meet with folks who are in the center. She is here to meet the Migrant Children who are being held, to thank Law Enforcement and the social Services Workers who have been working with them. Mrs. Trump, she spoke out early about the separation of kids from their parents and today she is going to be seeing the conditions were told, seeing the conditions of the Detention Centers firsthand. Shes asking officials here on the ground what more she and the administration can do to help. Thank you so much for having me here today. Im glad im here and im looking forward to seeing and meeting children. But first of all, let me begin to recnize each of you and thank you for all what you do. For your heroic work that you do every day. What you do for those children. We all know theyre having theyre here without their families and i want to thank you for your hard work, your compassion, and your kindness. In this difficult time. Im here to learn about your facility and which i know you house children on a longterm basis. And i also like ask you how i can help, to these children, to reunite with their families as quickly as possible. So thank you again, for all that you do, and thank you as well, thank you all for what you do. Thank you very much. Melania trump there. She is actually at the Lutheran Social Services center. I was actually at that same Services Center yesterday interviewing one of the advocates who have been working
with Migrant Children here for a number of years, five, ten minutes from here, were told the first lady is going to be making several stops in and around mcallen, texas. Gabe gutierrez is also here in mcallen, over at the federal courthouse. Gabe, what can the first lady expect to see while shes here . Well, craig, as you mentioned shes touring the Childrens Center and also planning to tour a Processing Center with cbp. That trip was delayed a little bit because of the heavy rain that weve been seeing in this area. I can also tell you she is arriving to an area that has some skepticism about how the president s Executive Order is playing out. Ill tell you where i am, in front of the federal courthouse here in mcallen, where an Immigration Hearing is under way right now as it is every day and 60 defendants are here being charged with illegal entry. What is significant about today, craig, is that according to an Immigration Attorney present
earlier this morning, 17 deftsz who had been charged with illegal entry had the charges dismissed. Now that immigration Attorney Says these defendants had one thing in common, that those 17 defendants were all parents of children that they had been separated from those children earlier this week. They had been arrested as they crossed into the border into the u. S. Illegally, either on monday or tuesday before the president had signed that Executive Order. Now craig, why is that significant . It appears that were seeing the ramifications of the president s Executive Order play out in real time. Theres a lot of questions about how the Judicial System W handle this. Whether there will continue to be prosecutions of these adults who have children. Just a short time ago the Washington Post citing a senior u. S. Official, reported that the doj was suspending prosecutions of these adults until i. C. E. Could have more Resource Capacity to have to be able
to handle these family units. However, doj spokesperson now says that that report is inaccurate, there has been no change to the president s Zero Tolerance policy. Bottom line, right now there are a lot of questions about how this Executive Order will play out. Overnight we had the conflicting statements from hhs at first saying there was no plan to reunify the families and a few hours later another official saying that the reunification of families was the ultimate goal and they were waiting further guidance on how to proceed. So craig, certainly a lot of questions playing out right now here on the ground in south texas and the Federal Building behind me, craig. All right. Gabe gutierrez, about ten minutes from where i am here. Inn mcallen, texas. We can tell you this is the video you saw there of the first lady, Melania Trump at the Lutheran Social Service facility, video taken moments ago. Mrs. Trump is on the move right now. She is in route to a location
we dont know precisely where shes headed but told when we get more images and pictures well bring those to you. She is expected to be spending the course of the day with social Services Workers, with Law Enforcement officials as well getting a firsthand look of the effort being made on the ground. It should be noted here, it was first lady Melania Trump a few days ago who surprised a lot of folks by saying through a spokesman, a very short statement, quote, mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their family and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform. She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart. President trump saying just a few moments ago there in the cabinet room announcing that his wife was making this surprise trip here to south texas. Once again indicating that she had been quite moved by the
images that had been coming out of south texas over the past few days. Peter, what more do we know about Melania Trumps influence on the president s Change Of Heart if you will . Well, i think we know that the president is driven by images, perhaps before anything else. He spends a lot of time speaking to friends and allies outside the white house, but he is certainly someone who consumes a ton of media. Reading newspapers, but most often watching cable tv and based on conversations ive had the Belief System is, that this president was in many ways motivated to make this decision based on what he was seeing on television. But its certain that part of what swayed his decision, was the guidance, privately of the first daughter, ivanka trump, and the first lady Melania Trump, according to sources familiar with the matter. The first lady youll remember, only a matter of weeks ago, announced her formal platform, be best, supposed to focus
specifically on children, which is why on this day, i think its notable that she is sort of the ambassador on behalf of this administration who is going down to visit with some of the children today. All right. Peter stand by. Lets go back to the cabinet room here. President trump taking questions. Nancy pelosi, they can come over, they can bring whoever they want. But the lawmakers have to sit down and have to do something because our country cannot continue to run like this. We cant have open borders. You have to have borders. You dont have a country without borders. They have to be enforced. It has to be a strict enforcement. At the same time we want people to come into our country, we need them. We have Many Companies right now moving back into the United States, they need workers. We have 3. 8 unemployment. They need workers. We have to have them come in. Im saying i want people to come in. They have to come in inn through a merit system. We can have a lot of people come into our system through the
merit system so they can help these companies that are looking so hard for people to make the company work. But the in a very simple way congress has to get together, get their act together. Democrats and republicans. They have to come up with a solution. I have ideas, they have ideas, we can put them together very easily. Theres so much hatred, theres so much i mean honestly im not saying this theres a lot of false reporting, misreporting, theres also a lot of great reporting. But congress has to come together and this is the best time to do it. Right now, i think is the best time ive seen for people that really are well meaning now, unfortunately we have an election coming up in a few months and, you know, i guess theyre looking at it and were looking at it and maybe we have to just sort of put on the blinders when it comes to doing that, but congress has to get together and we have to d something on immigration. Its very important. We have to change almost everything thats been done in the past. We are being laughed at as a country because of our bad immin policies. Were a young administration. This has been going on for 50 years, 60 years, 70 years. But its gotten worse over the last 20 because laws have been so complex and so ridiculous, we really dont have a law. We have laws that dont allow you to do what youre supposed to be doing. And we also to keep it in a very humane way. We want to take care of people. If we dont take them in we have to help. We need help from mexico. Mexico has not helped us, and we need help from mexico. Thats a long answer but i also appreciate the great job youve done. [ talking at the same time ] i cant hear you. Kids already separated from their parents . We want to put them together. We dont want to have children separated from their parents. You have to understand, you gave an example of 12,000 children. Of the 12,000 10,000 came up either alone, they werent necessarily young children, but either alone or came up with traffickers. And coyotes. These coyotes are bad dudes. But they came up with other people, brought them up, and they used them, they are using the children. 10,000 out of the 12,000. Of the 2,000 a lot of the people where they came in with their children, this is their third, fourth, fifth time trying to come into our country. So this is not a perfect situation. This is a very bad. Port of entry, if you go to a port of entry, it works out very nicely. Theyve been doing a very good job. They dont want to come in through the port of entry. Thatd doi it the legal way. Many of the people in the 2,000 category, youre talking about 2,000 children, those are people that have tried to come into our
country many times the same way. They dont want to go into the port of entry. Usually thats for a very bad reason. Why dont they want to go in legally . You have to ask yourself that question. So you have a situation that is right for congress get together and examine up with a solution. And i am ready willing and able to help, ready, willing and able to take this pen right here and sign very quickly. [ inaudible ] tolerance to the system . If we took zertolerance away, you would be overrun as a country. You would have millions of people pouring through our border. If you took Zero Tolerance away, everybody would come right now. There would be they would be getting their little belongings, unfortunately, and they would be heading up. You would be you would have a run on this country the likes of which nobody has ever seen. So we have to have strong
borders. Frankly, the wall in terms of drugs, in terms of keeping certain people out that we dont want in this country, the wall is imperative. We have to have the wall. Weve started the wall. We have 1. 6 billion. Were fixing tremendous amounts of wall where its been overrun. But we have to come up with a solution. I would consider it, whether its north korea, whether its so many other things, we have a lot of things. Look, ive been given a very tough hand because i came up here, we had an economy that was going down, we had an iran problem, we had a middle east problem, take a look at what was going on in the middle east. Its a lot better now. A lot smoother right now than anything you heard over the last eight years. But we were given a lot of bad cards. One of the bad cards, we were given this immigration mess. And it was made worse by all of
the different contradting laws that have been passed. So were going to work very hard with mike pence and with everybody else in this room, were going to work hard to see if we can solve the immigration problem. But we need democrats to be able to do it. If theyre going to obstruct it cant be done because the republicans dont have the votes. Now, i think were going to win Additional Senate seats. That will help us a lot. But unless we get Additional Senate seats, and unless we keep the house more or less like it is right now, youre not going to be able. Unless the democrats are serious and they want to come along and ey want to get immigration work done. We can do something thats going to be historic. We can do something that will be historic. And we can get it done. I am ready. Im here. All of these people, these are very talented people, were all ready, were all here. We need votes from the democrats or nothing can pass. Thank you all very mh. All right. President trump in, weekly cabinet meeting. Taking a few questions from a handful of the assembled reporters. Let me go back to Peter Alexander for a moment here, peter, the question that i did not hear asked and i havent heard i havent heard an explanation yet, correct me if im wrong, but the administration has yet to explain how it is that the president was able to sign an Executive Order reversing Essentialla Policy Decision that was announced by his Attorney General just a few months ago, how is he able to sign that order when for the better part of the past week, hes said several times that he couldnt do it by Executive Order, his Homeland Security secretary said essentially the
same thing. Has anyone in the administration explained how they were able to do something that for days, they were insistent upon they couldnt do it . I dont think they have. Certainly not very well, craig. Lets be clear, this administration, this president , his advisors and aides, including the secretary of Homeland Security, kirstjen nielsen, for days, repeatedly and wrongly insisted that their hands were tied. Effectively saying only congress could do something about this, the president could not resolve this by Executive Order. What is evidenced by what he did yesterday the president was able to at least suspend the separation of these young, Undocumented Immigrants Fm their families by signing that order. Now none of this resolves what is the current problem which is trying to reunite those young immigrants with their families more than 2,000 of them now spread in many cases around the United States. The process of trying to reunite
them with families is going to be a challenging one, one for which there has been limited, if any, clarity from the administration. Kirstjen nielsen earlier today telling reporters they have a plan, but a spokesperson for her department earlier said that they basically havent received any further guidance on that matter to this point. At the end of the day what the president has been trying to do here as evidenced by his remarks yesterday where he used the word strong seven times, is to try to cast himself as the strong guy, the tough guy, when it comes to illegal immigr