President Donald Trump borrowed several binders of permit paperwork from a transportation official and threw them on the floor at a Friday morning event to shine a spotlight on the government's complex regulation process.

Trump said he saw the binders laying out plans for an 18-mile road at a round table with transportation leaders and asked their owner, a gentleman from Maryland, if he could use them in a demonstration.

'They spent $29 million dollars for an environmental report weighing 70 pounds and costing $24,000 per page,' Trump said from the podium.

Walking to his left, Trump skimmed the binders and made jokes about their content as he threw two of them on the floor.

He joked after, as he made his way back to the microphone, that he needed to be careful on his way out, so he did not trip and generate an embarrassing story.

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YUGE BINDERS: President Donald Trump borrowed several binders of permit paperwork from a transportation official and threw them on the floor at a Friday morning event to shine a spotlight on the government's complex regulation process

'Phase one,' Trump said, holding the first of the books up associated with the project. He flipped through the binder and tossed it on the floor, emphasizing how heavy it was with hand gestures that drew laughter from attendees

'OK,' he said as he moved on to the next one. 'Phase two.' 'Look!' he exclaimed. 'Nobody's gonna read it'

The binders laid out plans for the Intercounty connector (ICC) running between I-270 to US 1 in Maryland

Trump had been opining about the high way approval process that requires 16 different permissions from three different federal agencies and is governed by 26 different statues.

He explained that he'd just held a round table conversation with state and local transportation officials, where he first found out about the clunky books.

'And I said, do me a favor, I'm going to make a speech in a little while. Do you mind if I take that and show it?'

Trump told his audience of lawmakers, transportation community representatives and Transportation staff, 'So I'm gonna show it.'

The president approached a table that had three binders stacked on it. They laid out plans for the Intercounty connector (ICC) running between I-270 to US 1 and detailed the controversial environmental impact study he spoke of.

A part of the 'Outer Beltway' of Washington, the road opened in 2014 after decades of pushing that stretched across Republican and Democratic administrations in Maryland.

'Phase one,' Trump said, holding the first of the books up associated with the project.

He flipped through the binder and tossed it on the floor, emphasizing how heavy it was with hand gestures that drew laughter from attendees.

'OK,' he said as he moved on to the next one. 'Phase two.'

'Look!' he exclaimed. 'Nobody's gonna read it.'

Closing the second binder, Trump said a consultant made a 'fortune' off of it. 'They fight us all the way,' he said of regulators who demanded the forms in the first place

Closing the binder, Trump said a consultant made a 'fortune' off of it.

'They fight us all the way,' he said of regulators who demanded the forms in the first place.

Trump tossed that binder on the floor, too.

'Here's another one. They don't even know what this is,' he said of the environmental impact survey.

On his way back to the podium, Trump told the crowd, 'Better make sure I move it, I don't want to trip on the way out. That would be a big story. Especially to trip over that.'

'So they spend, millions and millions of dollars,' he said, getting back on track. 'When I said, how long is this short road way been talked about, the gentleman said, "Well, if you say 20 years, you're safe."

Gesturing in the direction of the press, Trump says he told the man, ' "Yeah, don't say any more, because I have to be, you know, I have to be exactly accurate with those people back there, I was off like two months, its a major front page story." '

DON'T FALL! Trump told the crowd, 'Better make sure I move it, I don't want to trip on the way out. That would be a big story. Especially to trip over that.' He glanced at the floor on the way out to make sure he didn't

The president used the binders as a bridge to his next point - reforming costly government regulations that make transportation and infrastructure projects more expensive and time consuming to complete they could be for US businesses.

'These binders on the stage could be replaced by just a few simple pages, and it would be just as good, it would actually be much better, because these binders also make you do unnecessary things that cost billions and billions of dollars, and they actually make it worse,' Trump said.

On his way out of the event, Trump briefly looked down at the floor to check the binders' position.

He did not trip.