[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] The horrible situation they had with Florence two weeks ago. But they're incredible people and they know how to do it. They've done it before and they'll do it again, but they know how to do it. So we've had great reports in everything, the only the big problem with this hurricane was the tremendous power. Unfortunately it was very fast, it went through Florida very, very quickly. It didn't linger didn't come back as we had in Texas where it actually came back a second time and then a third time. It went out, filled up, came back. This one went very quickly but its tremendous destruction in the areas where it as the path that it it shows is incredible. That kind of destruction we've not seen destruction like that in a long time. But it's the rebuilding I could actually say the rebuilding process and the survivor looking process, we don't have too much of that. The area most affected was hopefully 100 percent evacuated, but there's always somebody that stays, and in this case they would have been in big trouble. But so far, the reports, as you know, are very good. So I want to thank you for that and I don't know if you have any questions on the hurricane, does anybody have any questions? John?
[Unidentified Male:] Do you have do you have enough time to focus on hurricane [inaudible] today at the White House
[Trump:] Yes, I do, I have a very busy day today. We're doing as you know, we're going having to do with copyright music, we're doing right now the Save Our Seas Act of 2018, which is a very important thing. But I and yesterday I had a tremendous rally in Pennsylvania, and we had thousands of people lined up and I just couldn't you couldn't tell those people and they were there for a day and a half before. And I couldn't tell people that have been standing in line for a day and a half wanting to get into the arena that I'm not going. I went there, we had great control over what we were doing both in Air Force One at the White House and in Florida. And I think you're seeing we're getting tremendous marks for the job that we did, and I wasn't going to disappoint thousands and thousands of people who have been standing on line for in some cases a day and a half. I wasn't going to do that. But I think I think we've I think we've really, really done a good job. This is a particularly busy day because we're signing a number of bills, very different kinds of bills, so you'll be seeing me a little while later I think with a couple of the senators standing behind me right now. And you'll be seeing me and us in a little while. And we're having lunch with Jim Brown, one of the great football players of all time and a great guy, and Kanye West, he's coming they're coming in for lunch. And after that we're doing some additional interesting things. But we have a busy day, but I always have a busy day and the economy is doing really well and the jobs are looking we think jobs are going to be better than ever. We think records are broken already but we're going to continue to break the records. So let's talk about the Save Our Seas Act if we could, and again thank you all for being here. I want to thank also the members of Congress that are with us. That's Senator Dan Sullivan who's been absolutely terrific, worked with along with Sheldon Whitehouse and these two have been spearheading something that's very important and we want to thank you both. Sheldon, thank you, Dan
[Unidentified Male:] Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
[Trump:] We appreciate it, really do. I know you worked very hard on that.
[Unidentified Male:] Worked well together [inaudible].
[Trump:] And Mr. Sullivan, thank you very much for being here, we appreciate it very much. We have Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross who worked along with the senators and acting NOAA Administrator Admiral Time Gallaudet. You're here and thank you for being here, Tim. Thank you very much. Great job you're doing. Every year over 8 million tons of garbage is dumped into our beautiful oceans by many countries of the world. Now that includes China, that includes Japan, that includes many, many countries. This waste, trash and debris harms not only marine life, but also fisherman, coastal economies along America's vast [inaudible]. The bad news is it floats toward us. I've seen pictures recently and you've some some of you have seen them where this vast, tremendous, unthinkable amount of garbage is floating right into our coast. In particular, along the West Coast, and we're charged with removing it, which is a very unfair situation. It comes from other countries very far away, takes six months and a year to float over, but it gets here and it's a very unfair situation. It's also unbelievably bad for the oceans. Every year, over 8 million tons of garbage is dumped into our beautiful oceans, and when you think of that number, I mean, to think 8 millions and I would say it's probably, senators, I think it's probably more than that based on what I've seen and based on the kind of work that I've seen being done. This dumping has happened for years and even for decades. Previous administrations did absolutely nothing to take on the foreign countries responsible. We've already notified most of them and we've notified them very strongly. The Save Our Seas Act will help address this problem by extending the marine debris program for five additional years. We also are strengthening that up to improve waste management overseas and clean up our nation's water. We will boost the federal government's response to oceans waste by authorizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to declare severe marine debris events, which happen all the time. It's incredible, it's incredible. When you look at it, people don't realize it, but all the time we're being inundated by debris from other countries. This legislation will release funds to states for clean up and for response efforts, and we will be responding and very strongly. The legislation also encourages the executive branch to engage with those nations responsible for dumping garbage into our oceans. My administration is doing exactly that. For example, the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement is the first U.S. trade agreement ever to include commitments by the parties to cooperate
[John King, Anchor, Cnn:] Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS, I'm John King. You're listening to the president of the United States there in the Oval Office, discussing a number of issues, signing some legislation today, talking about the economy, talking principally so far also about what he believes is a very good federal and state response to the devastation of Hurricane Michael. This is tape coming in from the White House, later on the president takes questions on other issues. We'll take you back in there when he discusses for example the current stand off with Saudi Arabia and other issues though. But for a moment with me in studio to share their reporting and their insights, Eliana Johnson with Politico, Michael Shear with the New York Times, Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur, and CNN Military and Diplomatic Analyst, the retired Rear Admiral John Kirby. Now let's start with the hurricane and president saying obviously the Carolinas are still getting soaked two weeks after Florence. The current death toll is two, that's tragic, but if you look at the pictures from what we've seen from Hurricane Michael, in some ways it's also a miracle when you look at pictures like this. And that number's likely to go up some in the hours and days ahead as they try to account for missing people. But the president saying we're on top of this, there was a bit of a controversy last night. The president decided to go to Erie, Pennsylvania for a political rally. And he said hey, you know, my I knew my team was doing a good job, those people have been waiting, off we go.
[Michael Shear, White House Correspondent, The New York Times:] I mean look, I think in some ways the president has learned the lesson of these disasters, which is to say that he you need to set expectations, you need to describe the fact that the government is acting and is acting quickly. All presidents, once they go through a couple of these natural disasters, they sort of realize what you have to do on the front end. I think the real question that all presidents also deal with, and it's not clear to me that this one has, is that there's follow through afterwards. After you see the pictures of that kind of devastation, you know, what do you do? And obviously with Puerto Rico, he confronted the problem of, you know, not having done enough, not having, you know, followed through on the rebuilding and on and on helping the people that have been so devastated get back to get back to their houses and their lives. And that I think is the real test, not do you hold a couple of sort of photo ops and express your your, you know, desire to [inaudible].
[King:] To that to that point, if you all hang in for a minute, sorry for the patience, let's bring in Jeff Byard. He's FEMA's associate administrator for response and recovery. He's at FEMA headquarters right now. Jeff, thanks for taking the time on what is obviously a very busy day. You heard the president there I hope at the top of the program talking about how and these are heroes, electrical companies from all around the country send people in after this. Now they have to get [inaudible]. Take us where are we right now? When you look at your list of challenges that priority one today is what?
[Jeffrey Byard, Associate Administrator, Fema:] Priority one today is continuing our search and rescue efforts. The state of Florida's doing an outstanding job. We hope to have our initial search done which is a very wide area within the next 72 hours or so. But we're actually earlier reports we're beating that timeline and I can't commend the work that Florida's doing, their National Guard, their first responders, we're supporting their efforts all along the coast. Very important to also know that the president did approve the declaration, the governor's declaration for individual assistance, specifically I'm going to read them so I don't miss them. Bay Franklin, Gulf, Taylor and Wakulla counties in Florida. We encourage those survivors to go to disasterassistance.gov and begin that process. And John, we also understand that there's power out, so we will have additional FEMA teams in tomorrow to start peppering those counties so that we can get the needed assistance to those survivors. But our primary efforts are going to be on search and rescue for the next couple of days. We also are looking at the Health and Medical Lifeline. We know we have some hospitals down in Bay County that we've got disaster medical assistance teams throughout Florida agency and health and human services that's assisting the efforts there in Florida. So, the next few days definitely focused on search and rescue, meeting the immediate needs of the survivors. And then also as we're planning of a very long-term recovery efforts in Florida, Georgia and other states, in concurrence with that, getting the power back on as rapidly as we possibly can.
[King:] When you talk about the search and rescue efforts, it may too soon and I'm sorry is this a premature question, but do you have any idea is there a number of people who were unaccounted for? Or is it just too early for that.
[Byard:] I think it's too earl for that, John. As the day goes on, as the days go on, we'll have a clear picture obviously. We want to get to those survivors and unfortunately, you look at the devastation and the strength of the storm and some of the evacuation rates, they were not realized. Those fatalities may very well be realized. But what a job search and rescue does. At all levels, it's a tough job and right now we want to get to as many survivors as we possibly can.
[King:] Amen to those who are both the volunteers and the first responders at the state and national level. When you look at these pictures, especially when you look at these pictures from that areal view of Mexico Beach, you see the houses devastated. Do you have any problems in terms of infrastructure? Any roads cut off, any other vital pathways in to try to do search and rescue, to try to get emergency supplies, anything like that?
[Byard:] We have definitely our infrastructure; our road network is very heavily impacted. Most of the major arteries are open and the system that we have in place that Florida's put in place is we actually have teams that can cut their way in and then there're multiple muli-tools, kind of like a Swiss Army knife. They have an element of law enforcement, element of search and rescue, the power cruisers coming in behind them. So, it's really a multi disciplined effort when we get in there. We also have airframes, air assets that obviously are flying over our coast guards, doing a wonderful job. The Florida National Guard's also doing a great job. So, it's a team effort. And we want to get there by any means necessary.
[King:] Jeff, again, probably unfair on this first day but I think you just set a benchmark for us. Any what's the route number at the moment for people who are out of power? And your best guess for how long some of them are going to be waiting.
[Byard:] Right now, our numbers are in between 300,000 and 400,000 in Florida alone, very similar numbers in Georgia. Those numbers also in Alabama, they're not quite as extensive obviously. So, we've got just under a million, a million or so without power. A lot of those areas will come on pretty rapidly. But as you get down in to the coastal areas as we have massive amounts of debris, it's going to take us some time. We have a plan in place, the state of Florida, the state of Georgia and Alabama. We've got commodities on hand. We will be dispersing the emergency food and water. But that's just a small token, that's one of the definite lessons learned as we move through hurricanes. A majority and a large of amount of food is provided by our private nonprofits, our [inaudible], our [inaudible] communities which are already in the area. And so we support the Red Cross, we support that with both food and we have no limited factors as it comes to the amount of food. We want to make sure that we have good distribution plans in place and we're working that as we speak.
[King:] Jeff Byard, appreciate your time on this busy day at FEMA. Please keep if there's anything we can do to help spread the word, let us know and we'll keep in touch over the next several days and weeks as we go through the recovery effort again. Jeff Byard-
[Byard:] Yes.
[King:] We appreciate your time today. Thank you very much. Up next-
[Byard:] Thanks.
[King:] For us, our missing journalist and how his disappearance could rip a part a vital U.S. alliance.