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President Trump Making Speech At Boeing Facility In South Carolina; President Trump States They Are Now Working On Tax Reduction; Trump Pushes "America First" At Boeing Visit. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired February 17, 2017 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Would that appetizer may make that argument? It's almost like the appetizer was too big. Are we too full to eat for the meal?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Never.

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think the short term gain that he gets out of the adulation that he's going to get in Florida tomorrow where people shouting Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, in the long term is actually going to be bad for him.

What he did yesterday was reckless in how he delivered himself. It wasn't very presidential. It didn't rise to the level of the office. And yes, people do like it and they say that we're out of touch here. But at some point, the supporters that are backing Donald Trump right now are going to want to see him to deliver.

And if he's not able to deliver on key legislation, jobs -- I mean, this is kind of easy, right, for him to go to a plant that's in South Carolina that just voted down the right to unionize, right? I mean, the workers decided not to do that. But let's talk next year when there's no longer, you know, three or four months of executive orders this year, when he actually has to legislate with congress, when he has to get his agenda through. And when you see the tortured response that we just saw from Mitch McConnell about Donald Trump --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

PRESTON: -- I think that says a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Here we go. Panel, stick with me. Donald Trump speaking in North Charleston, South Carolina.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD: USA! USA! USA!

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: USA.

Thank you, Dennis. And I have to say, I love South Carolina, I love it. Remember we came down all together, we came down and this was going to be a place that was tough to win and we won in a landslide, this was a good one.

So I want to thank the people of South Carolina and your governor, tremendous guy. He supported us right from the beginning. So I'd like to thank Governor McMaster for the incredible job, he's right here someplace, thank you very much. You have been fantastic.

And I have to say also that is one beautiful airplane. Congratulations to the men and women here who have built it. What an amazing piece of art. What an amazing piece of work. Thank you Dennis for the invitation to be with you today. You know, in the old days when I made this speech, I got paid a lot of money, now I have to do it for nothing so.

Not a good deal but that's OK, we love it. It's wonderful to be back in South Carolina. Especially, with your new governor. Where is Henry? He's around here someplace. Where is he? Stand up, Henry. Proud of you. He helped us so much.

And I want to also thank your former governor, Nikki Haley, who is doing an awfully good job for us. She's representing America very well as our ambassador to the United Nations; she is doing a spectacular job. It's early but she has just been really great.

We're here today to celebrate American engineering and American manufacturing. We're also here today to celebrate jobs. Jobs. This plane as you know was built right here in the great state of South Carolina. Our goal as a nation must be to rely less on imports and more on products made here in the USA. Right here in the USA.

It's amazing to think that a little over 113 years ago, next door in North Carolina, Orville Wright was the first man to sail the skies in a very little airplane. The 1903 Wright flier was made of mostly wood and cloth. It was so small that Orville's brother, Wilbur, could not join him on the flight. He was always very upset about that.

The flight lasted all of 12 seconds but it was incredible. That flight was a testament to the American spirit. I see that same spirit everywhere I travel in the country. I saw that spirit all throughout the campaign. We have the greatest people anywhere in the world. We have the greatest spirit.

And you just look at what's going on today in our country, you look at what's happening with jobs, you look at what's happening with plants moving back into our country, all of a sudden, they're coming back. And they're going to be very happy about it, believe me. They're going to be very, very happy.

As your president, I'm going to do everything I can to unleash the power of the American spirit and to put our great people back to work. This is our mantra, buy American and hire American. We want products made in America, made by American hands. You probably saw the Keystone Pipeline I approved recently and the Dakota.

And I'm getting ready to sign the bill. I said where is the pipe made? And they told me not here. I said that's good, add a little sentence that you have to buy American steel. And you know what, that's the way it is. That's the way it's going to be.

We are going to fight for every last American job. We've come a long way since the Wright Brothers and their first flight more than a century ago. Your plane is made of carbon fiber. It seats 330 passengers. It's 18 feet longer than the previous version of the 787. And this airplane can fly for half a day before it touches the ground. The name says it all, Dreamliner, great name.

Our country is all about making dreams come true. Over the last number of years that hasn't been necessarily the case but we're going to make it the case again. That's what we do in America, we dream of things and then we build them. We turn vision into reality. And we will be doing a lot more of that, believe me, in the months and years to come.

I also want to say a word to all of the members of the armed forces who are here with us today in this record crowd. South Carolina has a long, very, very proud military tradition and history. We salute all South Carolina military families and we salute all the men and women who wear the uniform.

We are going to fully rebuild our military. By the way, do you care if we use the F-18 Super Hornets or do you only care about -- what do you think? Well, I thought that was a Super Hornet.

We are looking seriously at a big order. And we will see how that -- you know, the problem is that Dennis is a very, very tough negotiator. But I think we may get there. We're also working on the Air Force One project which was a difficult project for previous administrations but it looks like we're getting closer and closer.

And we're going to ensure that our great service members have the tools, equipment, training and resources they need to get the job done. As George Washington said, being prepared for war is the best way to prevent it. And that's really what it is. The best way to prevent war, being prepared. Peace through strength. We build a military might so great and we are going to do that, that none will dare to challenge it. None.

We will ensure our men and women in uniform have the latest, the most cutting-edge systems in their arsenal. Right now, it's not that way. It will be that way very, very soon, believe me. You will be an important player in this effort. Boeing has built many important aircraft, including, as I said, the F-18 Super Hornet, the F-15 Strike Eagle and the Apache helicopter, just to name a few.

And I'm being very, very serious, the new Air Force One -- that plane, as beautiful as it looks is 30 years old. Can you believe it? What can look so beautiful at 30? An airplane. I don't know, which one do we like better, folks? Tell me.

On every front, we are going to work for the American people. Nowhere in our focus is -- and I mean this so strongly -- and our focus has to be so strong. But my focus has been all about jobs. And jobs is one of the primary reasons I'm standing here today as your president and I will never ever disappoint you, believe me. I will not disappoint you.

I campaigned on the promise that I will do everything in my power to bring those jobs back into America. We wanted to make much easier -- it has to be much easier to manufacture in our country and much harder to leave. I don't want companies leaving our country, making their product, selling it back, no tax, no nothing, firing everybody in our country, we're not letting that happen anymore, folks, believe me.

There will be a very substantial penalty to be paid when they fire their people and move to another country, make the product and think that they're going to sell it back over what will soon be a very, very strong border, going to be a lot different. It's going to be a lot different.

Already American industry is roaring back and believe me, if we -- not me, I'm a messenger. If we didn't have this victory, we wouldn't be even talking about it. To achieve that goals, we're going to massively reduce job crushing regulations -- already started, you've seen that, that send our jobs to those other countries.

We are going to lower taxes on American business so it's cheaper and easier to produce product and beautiful things like airplanes right here in America. We are going to enforce, very strongly, enforce our trade rules and stop foreign cheating -- tremendous cheating. Tremendous cheating. We want products made by our workers in our factories stamped with those four magnificent words, Made in the USA.

CROWD: USA! USA! USA!

TRUMP: Since November, jobs have already begun to surge. We're seeing companies open up factories in America. We're seeing them keep jobs at home. Ford, General Motors, Fiat Chrysler just to name a very, very few. So many more already. They're keeping and bringing thousands of jobs back in our country because the business climate they know has already changed.

In Arizona, Intel announced it will open a new plant that will create 10,000 American jobs; they're spending billions of dollars.

We will see more and more of that across the country as we continue to work on reducing regulations, cutting taxes, including for the middle class, including for everyone and including for business and creating a level playing field for our workers.

When there is a level playing field and I've been saying this for a long time, American workers will always, always, always win. But we don't have a level playing field. Very shortly, you will have a level playing field again.

Because when American workers win, America as a country wins, big league wins. That's my message here today. America is going to start winning again, winning like never ever before. We're not going to let our country be taken advantage of anymore, in any way, shape or form.

We love America and we are going to protect America. We love our workers and we are going to protect our workers. We are going to fight for our jobs, we are going to fight for our jobs, we are going to fight for our families and we are going to fight to get more jobs and better paying jobs for the loyal citizens of our country. Believe me.

You've heard me say it before, and I will say it again, from now on it's going to be America first. Working together as a unit, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. No task too large. No dream too great. No goal beyond our reach. Just like you built this incredible airplane behind me, both of them when you think about it, we are going to rebuild this country and ensure that every forgotten community has the bright future it deserves. And by the way, those communities are forgotten no longer. The election took care of that.

And we will pass on to our children the freedom and prosperity that is their American birth right. Our children will inherit from us a nation that is strong, that is proud and that is totally free. And each of you will be part of creating that new American future.

I want to thank you, South Carolina, I want to thank the great people of South Carolina. God bless you. May god bless the United States of America and god bless Boeing.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donald Trump finishing up his remarks there in North Charleston, South Carolina. We are going to with our panel assess some of what he said there. And he at one point was talking about something and he sort of pivoted back to jobs. He's trying to keep focused on this today. What did you think?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: You know, I thought it was a pretty good speech. In some ways it reminded me of his inaugural address without the American carnage part. He talked about, you know, with the new American future, America is going to start winning again. A lot of his campaign themes obviously wrapped in there. I thought if you took out the Boeing stuff, this was an address that was pretty hopeful in terms of optimism and could have been his inaugural.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does he need to get out of town more?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. I was sitting here watching this, I said I don't know why the White House does not have him out somewhere in a factory like this or out in the country three times a week. He's clearly unbelievably comfortable and happy in this venue, he feeds off the crowd. That is much better for him than sitting in the oval office for photo ops with executive orders. Just from an optics standpoint.

But I agree. Hitting the military themes in South Carolina, the tax cuts for middle class, for everyone, for businesses, the job growth. That is just some core messaging from the campaign that worked so well for him and this was as clean and distraction-free of a President Trump appearance I've seen in some time. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's making a lot of promises. The proof is going to be can he deliver on it? And one of the things he specifically, Mark, that he said was we need to rely on things that are made in America, less on imports. That was immediately getting slammed by conservatives who feel like that is going to spell economic demise if you really carry that out as he's suggesting.

PRESTON: Yes, creating a trade war is basically what -- even like that airplane, I believe, we talked about this last hour, a lot of those parts were made overseas. So, are you talking about taxing those parts that are coming in? Is it going to make that airplane even cost more to build here? So, it's not as easy as saying we're building an airplane here in South Carolina.

There are a lot of components and parts that are not actually made here in America they're made elsewhere that need to come in. He talked a lot about tone yesterday. We heard him talked about tones. Specifically, how bad our tone is necessarily? Not his tone, probably my tone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did he talk about the media?

PRESTON: No. But you know what's interesting though? And Jackie and I were kind of like looked at each other. He did begin the address like this was a campaign rally. And then he said what I'm really here for is to talk about the airplane. Well, if you're really here to talk about the airplane, then let's move beyond the election of 2016.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Talking about how he did in the primaries.

PRESTON: How I did -- thank you to South Carolina. People didn't think I was going to win. This is why I won it's because of you. By the way, I won. And if anybody wasn't sure of anything, I won. We get it. You won. You won. But how he said that to David's point too is one of the most error-free addresses we've seen him give and was very presidential. And I would see him kind of boring in a sense in many ways.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As boring as Donald Trump can be, I guess. He is making promises. And I guess my question, Jackie is, is he -- he's making difficult promises. And he's saying believe me. Is believe me going potentially if he does not deliver on some of these things, which are really difficult to do, is he in danger of that becoming read my lips?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I wonder if believe me says "blame congress" later. He needs congress a lot to execute on these things. Some of these issues, particularly taxes, are not something republicans even agree on, as you mentioned.

So that -- he's going to have to -- and this is why Mike Pence is so important. He's been one of the people who are meeting with congressional leaders, regularly. It feels like every day sometimes about issues like this, about health care, about a range of things that the administration has promised. So those details are going to have to be worked out. But you wonder, you know, I promised you this. I want to deliver and they aren't helping me and how much pressure is going to shift to congress once these things start getting tied up in the legislative process.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want to bring in Rana Foroohar. She's the CNN global economic analyst. And you have some really interesting reporting. It speaks to something Mark Preston was just talking about, which is sort of the global enterprise that it is to put together an airplane as Donald Trump stands in front of it talking about made in America. We're going to rely less on imports.

RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Yes. It's interesting. I actually wrote about the Dreamliner in my book "Makers and Takers. And this is an example of one of the most complex global supply chains certainly ever known in aviation. Over 100 different countries were involved in the supply chain. Different parts coming in and out of various countries.

In fact, it's funny because the first iteration of this airplane couldn't even take off. It was so heavy because all of these different countries and suppliers were working sort of siloed from each other. So it is ironic that this is being used as a sort of made in America example here.

But I want to say one other thing, which is Donald trump is being very, very politically savvy about writing a trend of a resurgence in U.S. manufacturing but what's already happening since 2010. There has been a bit of a shift, not replacing all of the jobs that we saw lost for the last several decades. But there has been a significant shift of localization back to the U.S. and that's for a variety of reasons.

Political risk. The fact that consumers want products faster, made closer to them. There are a lot of trends driving this. But he's being very politically savvy about exploiting something that was already out there in the economy.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That happens as we know sometimes, for instance, President Obama was able to talk about how certain fossil fuels were being increased under his administration. And really it was had to do with this development on private land, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If it happens while you're president, even if it's a plant that someone planted eight years ago, you get the credit.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we saw the same thing with the jobs, the Intel jobs in Arizona. Those jobs were in the pipeline for a while. They had made that announcement. And listen, he's lucky. He's lucky to come after Obama in the sense that 4.7 percent unemployment rate and the trends that Rana's talking about in terms of manufacturing.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He is talking about we're going to get rid of job crushing regulations that send jobs to other countries. And yet we know that most of these manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the U.S. have been lost because of automation.

CHALIAN: Which he doesn't talk about at all.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not at all.

CHALIAN: It is an amazing thing, because there is a piece of this where you feel like he has this golden opportunity that the president have to really prepare the nation for the next generation of jobs. Automation is not going away, obviously. And he does not address that when he deals with this jobless issue.

PRESTON: Right. And we saw what he did yesterday with an executive order, which didn't get a whole lot of news because he decided to do a news conference that was off the rails. In a kind of way.

But he rolled back regulations that the coal industry wanted. And quite frankly, democratic and republican senators along the Appalachia wanted to see as well. Because he said if we didn't roll these regulations back, and we're going to lose jobs overseas.

KUCINICH: And that's where he's making himself in trouble. He's not talking about automation. That means he won't be able to explain if the promises that he has made aren't kept. That's one of those details that's extremely important that could help explain why maybe it's not as big as he has promised. A lot of these people who voted for him because he said he would bring their jobs back.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And in a way, if he is successful -- this is the point you're making, right? Bringing some of those jobs that we're talking about, 13 percent of jobs is a very small piece of the pie. Even if he is successful, he can't bring all those jobs back.

KUCINICH: Right. He risks dulling his own impact. Maybe he has done a lot of work to bring back the jobs he could. But he overpromise. You kind of want to under-promise and over-perform.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was going to say expectations and management maybe was not the thing he was doing in his speech.

Thank you guys so much. Nia, Mark, David, Jackie. Really appreciate it. And that is it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 Eastern on The Situation Room. The news continues right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: You're watching CNN on this Friday. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me. One day after the president's comprehensive, rant, diatribe, restart, you know, you name it. And now a news conference that hit many of the controversies he's currently facing. President Trump is now focusing on what many say is the reason he won, the economy and --