South Lawn

November 2, 2019

6:58 P.M. EDT

Q Mr. President, tell us about your trip to New York, sir. What do you have planned tonight, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, we’re going to New York. We’ll stay in New York tonight. We’re going to go see the UFC fight. It’s the championship fight. A lot of great people there. And it will be very interesting.

I think you saw the numbers on the economy. It’s one of the greatest economies we’ve ever had in the history of our country. Tremendous job numbers and tremendous numbers, generally. Our country is doing really well, military — militarily. What we’ve done is incredible. We’ve built our military to a level that it’s never seen before.

Q Sir, can you block White House officials from testifying next week in the impeachment inquiry?

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know. You have to speak with the lawyers. You know, Nancy Pelosi has become unhinged. There’s something wrong with her. If you look at what’s happening, if you look at the poll numbers, if you look at the poll numbers in the swing states, they’re saying, “Don’t do this. Don’t do it.”

I’m fine with it; we did absolutely nothing wrong. We had a totally appropriate — I even say “perfect” conversation with the President of Ukraine. Everybody knows it. The Republicans have never been this unified. I’m at the highest level I’ve ever been at. But the Republicans have never been this unified. And this whole impeachment scam — that’s exactly what it is; it’s a scam. It’s a hoax. The Democrats are using it for political purposes to try and win an election that they’re not going to win.

Q (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: Say it.

Q (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT: I don’t know — I don’t what their testimony (inaudible). I know that the testimony has been extremely good for us, but they have to release the testimony. (Inaudible.)

Q Mr. President, do you regret calling Lieutenant Colonel Vindman a “Never Trumper” as Commander-in-Chief?

THE PRESIDENT: Do I re- — what? Say it again.

Q Do you regret calling Lieutenant Colonel Vindman a “Never Trumper”?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, you’ll be seeing very soon what comes out. And then you — then you can ask the question in a different way.

Q You’ve said multiple times, sir — you’ve said multiple times that the call was “perfect” with President Zelensky. Will you invite him to the White House? Will he come to the White House? What’s the hold up?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think he’ll probably come. But I would certainly say I’d invite him. He’s a nice man. I spoke to him twice. I think I spoke to him two times. I would love to have him come to the White House if he’d like to come, and I think he’d like to come. I think he’d be here very quickly.

He’s a good man. He was elected on the basis of corruption. Corruption is incredible in Ukraine, which bothered me a lot. And it also bothered me very, very much that Germany, France, and all of these other countries aren’t putting up money, but we’re always the sucker that does it. And that bothered me. And that’s — and you can go back. You can look a long way back in history. For many different reasons, it’s always the United States. One of the reasons I got elected is just that. We don’t want to be the sucker anymore.

Q Mr. President, are you concerned that people are able to cut through the new border wall?

THE PRESIDENT: I haven’t heard that. We have a very powerful wall. But no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything, in all fairness. But we have a lot of people watching. You know, cutting — cutting is one thing, but it’s easily fixed. One of the reasons we did it the way we did it — it’s very easily fixed to put the (inaudible) back in. But we have a very powerful wall. But you can cut through any wall. (Inaudible.)

Thank you very much.

END

7:02 P.M. EDT