the president:good afternoon. this is the most wonderfulpress conference of the year. i've got a list of who'sbeen naughty and nice to call on. (laughter) but let me first make acouple of quick points, and then i'll takeyour questions. typically, i use thisyearend press conference to review how far we'vecome over the
course of the year. today, understandably, i'mgoing to talk a little bit about how far we've comeover the past eight years. as i was preparing to takeoffice, the unemployment rate was on itsway to 10 percent. today, it's at 4.6 percent-- the lowest in nearly a decade. we've seen the longeststreak of job growth on record, and wages havegrown faster over the past
few years than at anytime in the past 40. when i came into office,44 million people were uninsured. today, we've covered morethan 20 million of them. for the first time in ourhistory, more than 90 percent of americansare insured. in fact, yesterday wasthe biggest day ever for healthcare.gov. more than 670,000americans signed up to get
covered, and more aresigning up by the day. we've cut our dependenceon foreign oil by more than half, doubledproduction of renewable energy, enacted the mostsweeping reforms since fdr to protect consumers andprevent a crisis on wall street from punishingmain street ever again. none of these actionsstifled growth, as critics predicted. instead, the stock markethas nearly tripled.
since i signed obamacareinto law, our businesses have added more than15 million new jobs. and the economy isundoubtedly more durable than it was in the dayswhen we relied on oil from unstable nations and bankstook risky bets with your money. add it all up, and lastyear, the poverty rate fell at the fastest ratein almost 50 years, while the median householdincome grew at the
fastest rate on record. in fact, income gainswere actually larger for households at the bottomand the middle than for those at the top. and we've done all thiswhile cutting our deficits by nearly two-thirdsand protecting vital investments that growthe middle class. in foreign policy, when icame into office, we were in the midst of two wars.
now, nearly 180,000 troopsare down to 15,000. bin laden, rather thanbeing at large, has been taken off the battlefield,along with thousands of other terrorists. over the past eight years,no foreign terrorist organization hassuccessfully executed an attack on our homelandthat was directed from overseas. through diplomacy, we'veensured that iran cannot
obtain a nuclear weapon --without going to war with iran. we opened up a new chapterwith the people of cuba. and we brought nearly 200nations together around a climate agreement thatcould very well save this planet for our kids. and almost every countryon earth sees america as stronger and morerespected today than they did eight years ago.
in other words, by so manymeasures, our country is stronger and moreprosperous than it was when we started. that's a situation thati'm proud to leave for my successor. and it's thanks to theamerican people -- to the hard work that you've putin, the sacrifices you've made for your familiesand your communities, the businesses that youstarted or invested in,
the way you lookedout for one another. and i could not be prouderto be your president. of course, to tout thisprogress doesn't mean that we're not mindful of howmuch more there is to do. in this season inparticular, we're reminded that there are people whoare still hungry, people who are still homeless;people who still have trouble paying the billsor finding work after being laid off.
there are communities thatare still mourning those who have been stolenfrom us by senseless gun violence, and parents whostill are wondering how to protect their kids. and after i leave office,i intend to continue to work with organizationsand citizens doing good across the country onthese and other pressing issues to build on theprogress that we've made. around the world, as well,there are hotspots where
disputes have beenintractable, conflicts have flared up, and people-- innocent people are suffering as a result. and nowhere is this moreterribly true than in the city of aleppo. for years, we've workedto stop the civil war in syria and alleviatehuman suffering. it has been one of thehardest issues that i've faced as president.
the world, as we speak, isunited in horror at the savage assault by thesyrian regime and its russian and iranian allieson the city of aleppo. we have seen a deliberatestrategy of surrounding, besieging, and starvinginnocent civilians. we've seen relentlesstargeting of humanitarian workers and medicalpersonnel; entire neighborhoods reducedto rubble and dust. there are continuingreports of civilians
being executed. these are all horrificviolations of international law. responsibility for thisbrutality lies in one place alone -- with theassad regime and its allies russia and iran. and this blood and theseatrocities are on their hands. we all know whatneeds to happen. there needs to be animpartial international
observer force in aleppothat can help coordinate an orderly evacuationthrough safe corridors. there has to be fullaccess for humanitarian aid, even as the unitedstates continues to be the world's largest donor ofhumanitarian aid to the syrian people. and, beyond that, thereneeds to be a broader ceasefire that can serveas the basis for a political rather thana military solution.
that's what the unitedstates is going to continue to push for, bothwith our partners and through multilateralinstitutions like the u.n. regretfully, butunsurprisingly, russia has repeatedly blocked thesecurity council from taking actionon these issues. so we're going to keeppressing the security council to help improvethe delivery of humanitarian aid to thosewho are in such desperate
need, and to ensureaccountability, including continuing to monitor anypotential use of chemical weapons in syria. and we're going towork in the u.n. general assembly as well,both on accountability and to advance apolitical settlement. because it should be clearthat although you may achieve tacticalvictories, over the long term the assad regimecannot slaughter
its way to legitimacy. that's why we'll continueto press for a transition to a more representativegovernment. and that's why the worldmust not avert our eyes to the terrible eventsthat are unfolding. the syrian regime and itsrussian and iranian allies are trying toobfuscate the truth. the world shouldnot be fooled. and the worldwill not forget.
so even in a season wherethe incredible blessings that we know as americansare all around us, even as we enjoy family andfriends and are reminded of how lucky we are, weshould also be reminded that to be an americaninvolves bearing burdens and meetingobligations to others. american values andamerican ideals are what will lead the way to asafer and more prosperous 2017, both hereand abroad.
and by the way, few embodythose values and ideals like our brave men andwomen in uniform and their families. so i just want to close bywishing all of them a very merry christmas anda happy new year. with that, i willtake some questions. and i'm going to startwith josh lederman, of ap. the press: thankyou, mr. president. there's a perception thatyou're letting president
putin get away withinterfering in the u.s. election, and that aresponse that nobody knows about or a lookbackreview just won't cut it. are you prepared to callout president putin by name for orderingthis hacking? and do you agree with whathillary clinton now says, that the hackingwas actually partly responsible for her loss? and is youradministration's open
quarreling with trump andhis team on this issue tarnishing the smoothtransition of power that you have promised? the president: well, firstof all, with respect to the transition, i thinkthey would be the first to acknowledge that we havedone everything we can to make sure that they aresuccessful as i promised. and that will continue. and it's just been a fewdays since i last talked
to the president-electabout a whole range of transition issues. that cooperation isgoing to continue. there hasn't been alot of squabbling. what we've simply said isthe facts, which are that, based on uniformintelligence assessments, the russians wereresponsible for hacking the dnc, and that, asa consequence, it is important for us to reviewall elements of that and
make sure that we arepreventing that kind of interference throughcyberattacks in the future. that should be abipartisan issue; that shouldn't be apartisan issue. and my hope is that thepresident-elect is going to similarly be concernedwith making sure that we don't have potentialforeign influence in our election process. i don't think anyamerican wants that.
and that shouldn't be asource of an argument. i think that part of thechallenge is that it gets caught up in the carryoverfrom election season. and i think it is veryimportant for us to distinguish between thepolitics of the election and the need for us, asa country, both from a national securityperspective but also in terms of the integrity ofour election system and our democracy, to makesure that we don't create
a political football here. now, with respect to howthis thing unfolded last year, let's just gothrough the facts pretty quickly. at the beginning of thesummer, we're alerted to the possibility that thednc has been hacked, and i immediately order lawenforcement as well as our intelligence teams to findout everything about it, investigate it thoroughly,to brief the potential
victims of this hacking,to brief on a bipartisan basis the leaders of boththe house and the senate and the relevantintelligence committees. and once we had clarityand certainty around what, in fact, had happened, wepublicly announced that, in fact, russia hadhacked into the dnc. and at that time, we didnot attribute motives or any interpretations ofwhy they had done so. we didn't discuss what theeffects of it might be.
we simply let people know-- the public know, just as we had let members ofcongress know -- that this had happened. and as a consequence, allof you wrote a lot of stories about both whathad happened, and then you interpreted why that mighthave happened and what effect it was going tohave on the election outcomes. we did not. and the reason we didnot was because in this
hyper-partisan atmosphere,at a time when my primary concern was making surethat the integrity of the election process was notin any way damaged, at a time when anything thatwas said by me or anybody in the white house wouldimmediately be seen through a partisan lens, iwanted to make sure that everybody understood wewere playing this thing straight -- that weweren't trying to advantage one side oranother, but what we were
trying to do was letpeople know that this had taken place, and so if youstarted seeing effects on the election, if you weretrying to measure why this was happening and howyou should consume the information that was beingleaked, that you might want to take thisinto account. and that's exactly how weshould have handled it. imagine if we haddone the opposite. it would have becomeimmediately just one
more political scrum. and part of the goal herewas to make sure that we did not do the work ofthe leakers for them by raising more and morequestions about the integrity of the electionright before the election was taking place -- at atime, by the way, when the president-elect himselfwas raising questions about the integrityof the election. and, finally, i think it'sworth pointing out that
the informationwas already out. it was in the hands ofwikileaks, so that was going to come outno matter what. what i was concernedabout, in particular, was making sure that thatwasn't compounded by potential hacking thatcould hamper vote counting, affect theactual election process itself. and so in early september,when i saw president putin
in china, i felt that themost effective way to ensure that that didn'thappen was to talk to him directly and tell him tocut it out, and there were going to be some seriousconsequences if he didn't. and, in fact, we did notsee further tampering of the election process. but the leaks throughwikileaks had already occurred. so when i look back interms of how we handled
it, i think we handled itthe way it should have been handled. we allowed law enforcementand the intelligence community to do itsjob without political influence. we briefed all relevantparties involved in terms of what was taking place. when we had a consensusaround what had happened, we announced it -- notthrough the white house,
not through me, but ratherthrough the intelligence communities that hadactually carried out these investigations. and then we allowed youand the american public to make an assessment as tohow to weigh that going into the election. and the truth is, is thatthere was nobody here who didn't have some sense ofwhat kind of effect it might have.
i'm finding it a littlecurious that everybody is suddenly acting surprisedthat this looked like it was disadvantaging hillaryclinton because you guys wrote about it every day. every single leak. about every little juicytidbit of political gossip -- including johnpodesta's risotto recipe. this was an obsessionthat dominated the news coverage.
so i do think it's worthus reflecting how it is that a presidentialelection of such importance, of suchmoment, with so many big issues at stake and sucha contrast between the candidates, came to bedominated by a bunch of these leaks. what is it about ourpolitical system that made us vulnerable to thesekinds of potential manipulations -- which, asi've said publicly before,
were not particularlysophisticated. this was not someelaborate, complicated espionage scheme. they hacked into somedemocratic party emails that contained prettyroutine stuff, some of it embarrassing oruncomfortable, because i suspect that if any ofus got our emails hacked into, there might be somethings that we wouldn't want suddenly appearingon the front page of a
newspaper or a telecast,even if there wasn't anything particularlyillegal or controversial about it. and then it just took off. and that concerns me. and it shouldconcern all of us. but the truth of thematter is, is that everybody hadthe information. it was out there.
and we handled it theway we should have. now, moving forward, ithink there are a couple of issues thatthis raises. number one is just theconstant challenge that we are going to have withcybersecurity throughout our economy andthroughout our society. we are a digitalizedculture, and there is hacking going onevery single day. there's not a company,there's not a major
organization, there's nota financial institution, there's not a branch ofour government where somebody is not going tobe phishing for something or trying to penetrate, orput in a virus or malware. and this is why for thelast eight years, i've been obsessed with how dowe continually upgrade our cybersecurity systems. and this particularconcern around russian hacking is part of abroader set of concerns
about how do we deal withcyber issues being used in ways that can affect ourinfrastructure, affect the stability of our financialsystems, and affect the integrity of ourinstitutions, like i just received a coupleweeks back -- it wasn't widely reported on-- a report from our cybersecurity commissionthat outlines a whole range of strategies todo a better job on this. but it's difficult,because it's not all
housed -- the target ofcyberattacks is not one entity but it's widelydispersed, and a lot of it is private, like the dnc. it's not a branchof government. we can't tellpeople what to do. what we can do is informthem, get best practices. what we can also do is to,on a bilateral basis, warn other countries againstthese kinds of attacks. and we've donethat in the past.
so just as i told russiato stop it, and indicated there will be consequenceswhen they do it, the chinese have, in the past,engaged in cyberattacks directed at our companiesto steal trade secrets and proprietary technology. and i had to have the sameconversation with prime minister -- or withpresident xi, and what we've seen is someevidence that they have reduced -- but notcompletely eliminated --
these activities, partlybecause they can use cutouts. one of the problems withthe internet and cyber issues is that there's notalways a return address, and by the time you catchup to it, attributing what happened to a particulargovernment can be difficult, not alwaysprovable in court even though our intelligencecommunities can make an assessment. what we've also tried todo is to start creating
some international normsabout this to prevent some sort of cyber arms race,because we obviously have offensive capabilitiesas well as defensive capabilities. and my approach is nota situation in which everybody is worseoff because folks are constantly attacking eachother back and forth, but putting some guardrailsaround the behavior of nation-states, includingour adversaries, just so
that they understand thatwhatever they do to us we can potentiallydo to them. we do have some specialchallenges, because oftentimes our economy ismore digitalized, it is more vulnerable, partlybecause we're a wealthier nation and we're morewired than some of these other countries. and we have a more opensociety, and engage in less control andcensorship over what
happens over the internet,which is also part of what makes us special. last point -- and thereason i'm going on here is because i know thatyou guys have a lot of questions about this, andi haven't addressed all of you directly about it. with respect to response,my principal goal leading up to the election wasmaking sure that the election itself went offwithout a hitch, that it
was not tarnished, andthat it did not feed any sense in the public thatsomehow tampering had taken place with theactual process of voting. and we accomplished that. that does not mean that weare not going to respond. it simply meant that wehad a set of priorities leading up to the electionthat were of the utmost importance. our goal continues to beto send a clear message to
russia or others not to dothis to us, because we can do stuff to you. but it is also importantfor us to do that in a thoughtful,methodical way. some of it we do publicly. some of it we will do ina way that they know, but not everybody will. and i know that there havebeen folks out there who suggest somehow that if wewent out there and made
big announcements, andthumped our chests about a bunch of stuff, thatsomehow that would potentially spookthe russians. but keep in mind that wealready have enormous numbers of sanctionsagainst the russians. the relationship betweenus and russia has deteriorated, sadly,significantly over the last several years. and so how we approach anappropriate response that
increases costs for themfor behavior like this in the future, but does notcreate problems for us, is something that's worthtaking the time to think through and figure out. and that's exactlywhat we've done. so at a point in timewhere we've taken certain actions that we candivulge publically, we will do so. there are times where themessage will go -- will be
directly received bythe russians and not publicized. and i should point out, bythe way, part of why the russians have beeneffective on this is because they don't goaround announcing what they're doing. it's not like putin isgoing around the world publically saying, lookwhat we did, wasn't that clever?
he denies it. so the idea that somehowpublic shaming is going to be effective i thinkdoesn't read the thought process inrussia very well. okay? the press: did clintonlose because of the hacking? the president: i'm goingto let all the political pundits in this town havea long discussion about what happenedin the election.
it was a fascinatingelection, so i'm sure there are going to be alot of books written about it. i've said what i thinkis important for the democratic party goingforward rather than try to parse every aspectof the election. and i've said before, icouldn't be prouder of secretary clinton, heroutstanding service. i thinks she's workedtirelessly on behalf of the american people, andi don't think she was
treated fairlyduring the election. i think the coverage ofher and the issues was troubling. but having said that, whati've been most focused on -- appropriate for thefact that i'm not going to be a politician in about,what is it, 32 days? 31? the press: thirty-four. the president:thirty four?
but what i've said is, isthat i can maybe give some counsel and advice tothe democratic party. and i think that that thething we have to spend the most time on -- becauseit's the thing we have the most control over -- ishow do we make sure that we are showing up inplaces where i think democratic policies areneeded, where they are helping, where they aremaking a difference, but where people feel as ifthey're not being heard
and where democrats arecharacterized as coastal, liberal, latte-sipping,politically-correct, out-of-touch folks. we have to be inthose communities. and i've seen that when weare in those communities, it makes a difference. that's how ibecame president. i became a u.s. senator not just becausei had a strong base in
chicago, but because i wasdriving around downstate illinois and going to fishfrys and sitting in vfw halls and talkingto farmers. and i didn't win every oneof their votes, but they got a sense of what i wastalking about, what i cared about, that i wasfor working people, that i was for the middle class,that the reason i was interested instrengthening unions, and raising the minimumwage, and rebuilding our
infrastructure, and makingsure that parents had decent childcare andfamily leave was because my own family's historywasn't that different from theirs, even if i lookeda little bit different. same thing in iowa. and so the question is,how do we rebuild that party as a whole so thatthere's not a county in any state -- i don't carehow red -- that we don't have a presence and we'renot making the argument.
because i think we havethe better argument. but that requiresa lot of work. it's been something thati've been able to do successfully inmy own campaigns. it is not something i'vebeen able to transfer to candidates in midterms andsort of build a sustaining organization around. that's something that iwould have liked to have done more of, but it'skind of hard to do when
you're also dealing with awhole bunch of issues here in the white house. and that doesn't mean,though, that it can't be done. and i think there aregoing to be a lot of talented folks out there,a lot of progressives who share my values who aregoing to be leading the charge in theyears to come. michelle kosinski of cnn. the press: thank you.
so this week we heardhillary clinton talk about how she thinks that thefbi director's most recent announcement made adifference in the outcome of the election. and we also just heardin an op-ed her campaign chairman talk aboutsomething being deeply broken within the fbi. he talked about thinkingthat the investigation early on was lackadaisicalin his words.
so what do you thinkabout those comments? do you think there'sany truth to them? do you think there's adanger there that they're calling into question theintegrity of institutions in a similar way thatdonald trump's team has done? and the second part tothat is that donald trump's team repeatedly-- i guess, giving the indication that theinvestigation of the russian hack, as well asthe retaliation, might not
be such a priority oncehe's in office, so what do you think therisk is there? and are you going to talkto him directly about some of those comments he made? the president: well, onthe latter point, as i said before, thetransition from election season to governanceseason is not always smooth. it's bumpy. there are still feelingsthat are raw out there.
there are people who arestill thinking about how things unfolded. and i get all that. but when donald trumptakes the oath of office and is sworn as the 45thpresident of the united states, then he's gota different set of responsibilitiesand considerations. and i've said this before:i think there is a sobering process when youwalk into the oval office.
and i haven't sharedpreviously private conversations i've hadwith the president-elect. i will say that they havebeen cordial and, in some cases, have involvedme making some pretty specific suggestionsabout how to ensure that regardless of our obviousdeep disagreements about policy, maybe i cantransmit some thoughts about maintaining theeffectiveness, integrity, cohesion of the office,of various
democratic institutions. and he has listened. i can't say that he willend up implementing, but the conversationsthemselves have been cordial as opposed todefensive in any way. and i will always makemyself available to him, just as previouspresidents have made themselves available tome as issues come up. with respect to the fbi, iwill tell you, i've had a
chance to know a lotof fbi agents, i know director comey, and theytake their job seriously, they work really hard,they help keep us safe and save a lot of lives. and it is always achallenge for law enforcement when there'san intersection between the work that they aredoing and the political system. it's one of thedifficulties of
democracy, generally. we have a system where wewant our law enforcement investigators and ourprosecutors to be free from politics, to beindependent, to play it straight, but sometimesthat involves investigations thattouch on politics. and particularly in thishyper-partisan environment that we've been in,everything is suspect, everything you doone way or the other.
one thing that i have doneis to be pretty scrupulous about not wading intoinvestigation decisions or prosecution decisions,or decisions not to prosecute. i have tried to be reallystrict in my own behavior about preserving theindependence of law enforcement, free frommy own judgments and political assessments,in some cases. and i don't know whyit would stop now. mike dorning of bloomberg.
on aleppo, your views thatwhat happens there is the responsibility of therussian government, the iranian government, theassad regime are pretty well aired. but do you, as presidentof the united states, leader of the free world,feel any personal moral responsibility now at theend of your presidency for the carnage that we're allwatching in aleppo, which i'm sure disturbs you --which you said disturbs you?
and, secondly, also onaleppo, you've again made clear your practicaldisagreements with the idea of safe zones. and president-elect trumphas, throughout his campaign, and he saidagain last night that he wants to createsafe zones in syria. do you feel like, in thistransition, you need to help him towardimplementing that? or was that not somethingthat you should be doing?
the president: mike, ialways feel responsible. i felt responsible whenkids were being shot by snipers. i felt responsible whenmillions of people had been displaced. i feel responsible formurder and slaughter that's taken place insouth sudan that's not being reported on partlybecause there's not as much social media beinggenerated from there.
there are places aroundthe world where horrible things are happening, andbecause of my office, because i'm president ofthe united states, i feel responsible. i ask myself every singleday, is there something i could do that wouldsave lives and make a difference and spare somechild who doesn't deserve to suffer. so that's astarting point.
there's not a momentduring the course of this presidency where i haven'tfelt some responsibility. that's true, by the way,for our own country. when i came into officeand people were losing their jobs and losingtheir homes and losing their pensions, i feltresponsible, and i would go home at night and iwould ask myself, was there something betterthat i could do or smarter that i could be that wouldmake a difference in their
lives, that would relievetheir suffering and relieve their hardship. so with respect to syria,what i have consistently done is taken the bestcourse that i can to try to end the civil war whilehaving also to take into account the long-termnational security interests of theunited states. and throughout thisprocess, based on hours of meetings, if you talliedit up, days or weeks of
meetings where we wentthrough every option in painful detail, with maps,and we had our military, and we had our aidagencies, and we had our diplomatic teams, andsometimes we'd bring in outsiders who were criticsof ours -- whenever we went through it, thechallenge was that, short of putting largenumbers of u.s. troops on the ground,uninvited, without any international law mandate,without sufficient support
from congress, at a timewhen we still had troops in afghanistan and westill had troops in iraq, and we had just gonethrough over a decade of war and spent trillionsof dollars, and when the opposition on the groundwas not cohesive enough to necessarily govern acountry, and you had a military superpower inrussia prepared to do whatever it took to keepsits client-state involved, and you had a regionalmilitary power in iran
that saw their own vitalstrategic interests at stake and were willing tosend in as many of their people or proxies tosupport the regime -- that in that circumstance,unless we were all in and willing to take oversyria, we were going to have problems, and thateverything else was tempting because we wantedto do something and it sounded like the rightthing to do, but it was going to be impossibleto do this on the cheap.
and in that circumstance,i have to make a decision as president of the unitedstates as to what is best -- i'm sorry,what's going on? somebody's notfeeling good? all right. why don't we have -- we'vegot -- we can get our doctors backthere to help out. does somebody want to goto my doctor's office and just have them -- allright -- where was i?
the press: doingit on the cheap. the president: so wecouldn't do it on the cheap. now, it may be -- can somebody help outplease and get doc jackson in here? is somebodygrabbing our doctor? the press: thank you,mr. president, for stopping. the president: of course. in the meantime, justgive her a little room.
the doctor will behere in a second. you guys know where thedoctor's office is? just go throughthe palm doors. it's right nextto the map room. there he is. all right, there'sdoc jackson. he's all right. okay. the doctor isin the house.
the press: you were sayingyou couldn't do it on the cheap. the president: and i don'tmean that -- i mean that with all sincerity. i understand the impulseto want to do something. but ultimately, what i'vehad to do is to think about what can we sustain,what is realistic. and my first priority hasto be what's the right thing to do for america.
and it has been our viewthat the best thing to do has been to provide somesupport to the moderate opposition so that theycould sustain themselves, and that we wouldn'tsee anti-assad regime sentiments just pouringinto al nusra and al qaeda or isil; that we engagedour international partners in order to put pressureon all the parties involved, and to try toresolve this through diplomatic andpolitical means.
i cannot claim thatwe've been successful. and so that's somethingthat, as is true with a lot of issues and problemsaround the world, i have to go to bedwith every night. but i continue to believethat it was the right approach, given whatrealistically we could get done absent a decision, asi said, to go in a much more significant way. and that, i think, wouldnot have been sustainable
or good for the americanpeople because we had a whole host of otherobligations that we also had to meet, wars we hadalready started and that were not yet finished. with respect to the issueof safe zones, it is a continued problem. a continued challenge withsafe zones is if you're setting up those zones onsyrian territory, then that requires some forcethat is willing to
maintain that territoryin the absence of consent from the syrian governmentand, now, the russians or the iranians. so it may be that withaleppo's tragic situation unfolding, that in theshort term, if we can get more of the tens ofthousands who are still trapped there out, that solong as the world's eyes are on them and they arefeeling pressure, the regime and russiaconcludes that they are
willing to find somearrangement, perhaps in coordination with turkey,whereby those people can be safe. even that will probably betemporary, but at least it solves a short-term issuethat's going to arise. unfortunately, we're noteven there yet, because right now we have russiansand assad claiming that basically all the innocentcivilians who were trapped in aleppo are outwhen international
organizations,humanitarian organizations who know better and whoare on the ground have said unequivocally thatthere are still tens of thousands who are trappedand prepared to leave under pretty muchany conditions. and so right now, ourbiggest priority is to continue to put pressurewherever we can to try to get them out. the press:notwithstanding --
the president: i can'thave too much -- the press: on the secondquestion, your intentions are well aired, but doyou feel responsibility notwithstanding a move inthat direction or help president-elect trumpmove in that direction? the president: i willhelp president trump -- president-elect trumpwith any advice, counsel, information that we canprovide so that he, once he's sworn in, canmake a decision.
between now and then,these are decisions that i have to make based on theconsultations i have with our military and thepeople who have been working thisevery single day. peter alexander. the press: mr. president,thank you very much. can you, given all theintelligence that we have now heard, assure thepublic that this was, once and for all, a freeand fair election?
and specifically onrussia, do you feel any obligation now, as they'vebeen insisting that this isn't the case, to showthe proof, as it were -- they say put your moneywhere your mouth is and declassify some of theintelligence, some of the evidence that exists? and more broadly, as itrelates to donald trump on this very topic, areyou concerned about his relationship with vladimirputin, especially given
some of the recent cabinetpicks, including his selection for secretary ofstate, rex tillerson, who toasted putin withchampagne over oil deals together? thank you. the president: i may begetting older, because these multipart questions,i start losing track. i can assure the publicthat there was not the kind of tampering with thevoting process that was of
concern and will continueto be of concern going forward; that the votesthat were cast were counted, they werecounted appropriately. we have not seen evidenceof machines being tampered with. so that assurancei can provide. that doesn't mean thatwe find every single potential probe of everysingle voting machine all across the country, but wepaid a lot of attention to it.
we worked with stateofficials, et cetera, and we feel confident thatthat didn't occur and that the votes were castand they were counted. so that's on that point. what was the second one? the press: thesecond one was about declassification. the president:declassification. look, we will provideevidence that we can
safely provide that doesnot compromise sources and methods. but i'll be honest withyou, when you're talking about cybersecurity, alot of it is classified. and we're not going toprovide it because the way we catch folks is byknowing certain things about them that they maynot want us to know, and if we're going to monitorthis stuff effectively going forward, we don'twant them to
know that we know. so this is one of thosesituations where unless the american peoplegenuinely think that the professionals in thecia, the fbi, our entire intelligenceinfrastructure -- many of whom, by the way,served in previous administrations and whoare republicans -- are less trustworthy than therussians, then people should pay attention towhat our intelligence
agencies have to say. this is part of what imeant when i said that we've got to think aboutwhat's happening to our political culture here. the russians can't changeus or significantly weaken us. they are asmaller country. they are a weaker country. their economy doesn'tproduce anything that anybody wants to buy,except oil and gas and arms.
they don't innovate. but they can impact us ifwe lose track of who we are. they can impact us ifwe abandon our values. mr. putin can weaken us,just like he's trying to weaken europe, if we startbuying into notions that it's okay to intimidatethe press, or lock up dissidents, ordiscriminate against people because of theirfaith or what they look like. and what i worry aboutmore than anything is the
degree to which, becauseof the fierceness of the partisan battle, you startto see certain folks in the republican party andrepublican voters suddenly finding a government andindividuals who stand contrary to everythingthat we stand for as being okay because that's howmuch we dislike democrats. i mean, think about it. some of the people whohistorically have been very critical of me forengaging with the russians
and having conversationswith them also endorsed the president-elect, evenas he was saying that we should stop sanctioningrussia and being tough on them, and work togetherwith them against our common enemies. he was very complimentaryof mr. putin personally. that wasn't news. the president-elect duringthe campaign said so. and some folks who hadmade a career out of being
anti-russian didn'tsay anything about it. and then after theelection, suddenly they're asking, well, why didn'tyou tell us that maybe the russians were tryingto help our candidate? well, come on. there was a survey, someof you saw, where -- now, this is just one poll, buta pretty credible source -- 37 percent ofrepublican voters approve of putin.
over a third of republicanvoters approve of vladimir putin, the formerhead of the kgb. ronald reagan wouldroll over in his grave. and how did that happen? it happened in partbecause, for too long, everything that happensin this town, everything that's said is seenthrough the lens of "does this help or hurt usrelative to democrats, or relative topresident obama?"
and unless that changes,we're going to continue to be vulnerable to foreigninfluence, because we've lost track of what it isthat we're about and what we stand for. with respect to thepresident-elect's appointments, it is hisprerogative, as i've always said, for him toappoint who he thinks can best carry out his foreignpolicy or his domestic policy. it is up to the senateto advise and consent.
there will be plenty oftime for members of the senate to go throughthe record of all his appointees and determinewhether or not they're appropriate for the job. martha raddatz. the press: mr. president,i want to talk about vladimir putin again. just to be clear, do youbelieve vladimir putin himself authorizedthe hack?
and do you believe heauthorized that to help donald trump? and on the intelligence,one of the things donald trump cites is saddamhussein and the weapons of mass destruction, and thatthey were never found. can you say,unequivocally, that this was not china, that thiswas not a 400-pound guy sitting on his bed,as donald trump says? and do these types oftweets and kinds of
statements from donaldtrump embolden the russians? the president: when thereport comes out, before i leave office, that willhave drawn together all the threads. and so i don't want tostep on their work ahead of time. what i can tell you isthat the intelligence that i have seen gives megreat confidence in their assessment that therussians carried
out this hack. the press: which hack? the president: the hack ofthe dnc and the hack of john podesta. now, the -- but again, ithink this is exactly why i want the report out, sothat everybody can review it. and this has been briefed,and the evidence in closed session has been providedon a bipartisan basis --
not just to me, it's beenprovided to the leaders of the house and the senate,and the chairman and ranking members of therelevant committees. and i think that whatyou've already seen is, at least some of the folkswho have seen the evidence don't dispute, i think,the basic assessment that the russianscarried this out. the press: butspecifically, can you not say that --
the president: well,martha, i think what i want to make sure ofis that i give the intelligence community thechance to gather all the information. but i'd make a largerpoint, which is, not much happens in russiawithout vladimir putin. this is a prettyhierarchical operation. last i checked, there'snot a lot of debate and democratic deliberation,particularly when it comes
to policies directedat the united states. we have said, and iwill confirm, that this happened at the highestlevels of the russian government. and i will let you makethat determination as to whether there arehigh-level russian officials who go off rogueand decide to tamper with the u.s. election process withoutvladimir putin
knowing about it. the press: so i wouldn'tbe wrong in saying the president thinks vladimirputin authorized the hack? the president: martha,i've given you what i'm going to give you. what was yoursecond question? the press: do the tweetsand do the statements by donald trumpembolden russia? the president: as i saidbefore, i think that the
president-elect is stillin transition mode from campaign to governance. i think he hasn't gottenhis whole team together yet. he still has campaignspokespersons sort of filling in and appearingon cable shows. and there's just a wholedifferent attitude and vibe when you're not inpower as when you're in power. so rather than me sortof characterize the appropriateness orinappropriateness of what
he's doing at the moment,i think what we have to see is how will thepresident-elect operate, and how will his teamoperate, when they've been fully briefed on all theseissues, they have their hands on all the levers ofgovernment, and they've got to startmaking decisions. one way i do believe thatthe president-elect can approach this that wouldbe unifying is to say that we welcome a bipartisan,independent process that
gives the american peoplean assurance not only that votes are countedproperly, that the elections are fair andfree, but that we have learned lessons about howinternet propaganda from foreign countries canbe released into the political bloodstream andthat we've got strategies to deal with itfor the future. the more this can benonpartisan, the better served the american peopleare going to be, which is
why i made the pointearlier -- and i'm going to keep on repeating thispoint: our vulnerability to russia or any otherforeign power is directly related to how divided,partisan, dysfunctional our political process is. that's the thing thatmakes us vulnerable. if fake news that's beingreleased by some foreign government is almostidentical to reports that are being issued throughpartisan news venues, then
it's not surprising thatthat foreign propaganda will have a greatereffect, because it doesn't seem that far-fetchedcompared to some of the other stuff that folksare hearing from domestic propagandists. to the extent that ourpolitical dialogue is such where everything is undersuspicion, everybody is corrupt and everybody isdoing things for partisan reasons, and all of ourinstitutions are full of
malevolent actors -- ifthat's the storyline that's being put out thereby whatever party is out of power, then whena foreign government introduces that sameargument with facts that are made up, voters whohave been listening to that stuff for years, whohave been getting that stuff every day from talkradio or other venues, they're goingto believe it. so if we want to reallyreduce foreign influence
on our elections, then webetter think about how to make sure that ourpolitical process, our political dialogue isstronger than it's been. mark landler. i wonder whether i canmove you from russia to china for a moment. the president: absolutely. the press: your successorspoke by phone with the president of taiwan theother day and declared
subsequently that hewasn't sure why the united states needed to be boundby the one-china policy. he suggested it could beused as a bargaining chip perhaps to get betterterms on a trade deal or more cooperationon north korea. there's already evidencethat tensions between the two sides have increased abit, and just today, the chinese have evidentlyseized an underwater drone in the south china sea.
do you agree, as some do,that our china policy could use a freshset of eyes? and what's the big dealabout having a short phone call with thepresident of taiwan? or do you worry thatthese types of unorthodox approaches are setting uson a collision course with perhaps our biggestgeopolitical adversary? the president: that'sa great question. i'm somewhere in between.
i think all of our foreignpolicy should be subject to fresh eyes. i think one of the -- i'vesaid this before -- i am very proud of thework i've done. i think i'm a betterpresident now than when i started. but if you're here foreight years, in the bubble, you start seeingthings a certain way and you benefit from -- thedemocracy benefits,
america benefits fromsome new perspectives. and i think it should benot just the prerogative but the obligation of anew president to examine everything that's beendone and see what makes sense and what doesn't. that's what i did when icame in, and i'm assuming any new president is goingto undertake those same exercises. and given the importanceof the relationship
between the united statesand china, given how much is at stake in termsof the world economy, national security, ourpresence in the asia pacific, china'sincreasing role in international affairs-- there's probably no bilateral relationshipthat carries more significance and wherethere's also the potential if that relationshipbreaks down or goes into a full-conflict mode, thateverybody is worse off.
so i think it's fine forhim to take a look at it. what i've advised thepresident-elect is that across the board onforeign policy, you want to make sure that you'redoing it in a systematic, deliberate,intentional way. and since there's only onepresident at a time, my advice to him has beenthat before he starts having a lot ofinteractions with foreign governments other than theusual courtesy calls, that
he should want to have hisfull team in place, that he should want his team tobe fully briefed on what's gone on in the past andwhere the potential pitfalls may be, where theopportunities are, what we've learned from eightyears of experience, so that as he's then maybetaking foreign policy in a new direction, he's gotall the information to make good decisions and,by the way, that all of government is moving atthe same time and singing
from the same hymnal. and with respect to china-- and let's just take the example of taiwan -- therehas been a longstanding agreement, essentially,between china, the united states, and, to somedegree, the taiwanese, which is to notchange the status quo. taiwan operatesdifferently than mainland china does. china views taiwan as partof china, but recognizes
that it has to approachtaiwan as an entity that has its own waysof doing things. the taiwanese have agreedthat as long as they're able to continue tofunction with some degree of autonomy, that theywon't charge forward and declare independence. and that status quo,although not completely satisfactory to any of theparties involved, has kept the peace and allowed thetaiwanese to be a pretty
successful economy and apeople who have a high degree ofself-determination. but understand, for china,the issue of taiwan is as important as anythingon their docket. the idea of one china isat the heart of their conception as a nation. and so if you are going toupend this understanding, you have to have thoughtthrough what the consequences are, becausethe chinese will not treat
that the way they'lltreat some other issues. they won't even treat itthe way they treat issues around the south chinasea, where we've had a lot of tensions. this goes to the core ofhow they see themselves. and their reaction on thisissue could end up being very significant. that doesn't mean thatyou have to adhere to everything that's beendone in the past.
it does mean that you'vegot to think it through and have planned forpotential reactions that they may engage in. isaac dovere of politico. two questions on wherethis all leaves us. the president:what leaves us? where my presidencyleaves us? the press: the election -- the president: it leavesus in a really good spot --
-- if we make some gooddecisions going forward. the press: well, what doyou say to the electors who are going to meet onmonday and are thinking of changing their votes? do you think that theyshould be given an intelligence briefingabout the russian activity? or should they bear inmind everything you've said and is out already? should they -- shouldvotes be bound by the
state votes asthey've gone? and long term, do youthink that there is a need for electoral collegereform that would tie it to the popular vote? the president: it soundedlike two, but that was all one. the press: it was all one. you know the way thisgoes around here. the president: i lovehow these -- i got two
questions, eachone has four parts. the press: on thedemocratic party, your labor secretary is runningto be the chair of the democratic nationalcommittee. is the vision that you'veseen him putting forward what you think the partyneeds to be focused on? and what do you say tosome of the complaints that say the future of thedemocratic party shouldn't be a continuation ofsome of your
political approach? part of that is complaintsthat decisions that you've made as president, as theleader of the party, have structurally weakened thednc and the democratic party, and they think thatthat has led to -- or has helped lead to some lossesin elections around the country. do you regret anyof those decisions? the president: okay.
the press: thoseare my two. the president: good. i'll take the second onefirst and say that tom perez has been, ibelieve, one of the best secretaries of laborin our history. he is tireless. he is wicked smart. he has been able to workacross the spectrum of labor, business,activists.
he's produced. i mean, if you look at hisbody of work on behalf of working people, what he'spushed for in terms of making sure that workersget a fair deal, decent wages, better benefits,that their safety is protected on the job -- hehas been extraordinary. now, others who havedeclared are also my friends and are finepeople, as well. and the great thing is, idon't have a vote in this,
so we'll let theprocess unfold. i don't think it's goingto happen anytime soon. i described to you earlierwhat i think needs to happen, which is that thedemocratic party, whether that's entirely throughthe dnc or through a rebuilding of stateparties or some other arrangement, has to workat the grassroots level, has to be present in all50 states, has to have a presence in counties, hasto think about message and
how are we speakingdirectly to voters. i will say this -- and i'mnot going to engage in too much punditry -- but thati could not be prouder of the coalition that i puttogether in each of my campaigns because it wasinclusive, and it drew in people who normallyweren't interested in politics and didn'tparticipate. but i'd like to think -- ithink i can show that in those elections, ialways cast a broad net.
i always said, first andforemost we're americans, that we have a commoncreed, that there's more that we share than dividesus, and i want to talk to everybody and get a chanceto get everybody's vote. i still believe what isaid in 2004, which is this red state/bluething is a construct. now, it is a constructthat has gotten more and more powerful for a wholelot of reasons, from gerrymandering to bigmoney, to the way that
media has splintered. and so people are justwatching what reinforces their existing biases asopposed to have to listen to differentpoints of view. so there are all kindsof reasons for it. but outside of the realmof electoral politics, i still see people the way isaw them when i made that speech -- full ofcontradictions, and there are some regionaldifferences, but basically
folks care about theirfamilies, they care about having meaningful work,they care about making sure their kids have moreopportunity than they did. they want to be safe, theywant to feel like things are fair. and whoever leads the dncand any candidate with the democratic brand goingforward, i want them to feel as if they can reachout and find that common ground -- speakto all of america.
and that requiressome organization. and you're right that --and i said this in my earlier remarks -- thatwhat i was able to do during my campaigns, iwasn't able to do during midterms. it's not that we didn'tput in time and effort into it. i spent time and effortinto it, but the coalition i put together didn'talways turn out
to be transferable. and the challenge is that-- you know, some of that just has to do with thefact that when you're in the party in power andpeople are going through hard times like they werein 2010, they're going to punish, to some degree,the president's party regardless of whatorganizational work is done. some of it has to do withjust some deep-standing traditional challenges fordemocrats, like during
off-year election, theelectorate is older and we do better with ayounger electorate. but we know those thingsare true, and i didn't crack the code on that. and if other people haveideas about how to do that even better,i'm all for it. so with respect to theelectors, i'm not going to wade into that issuebecause, again, it's the american people's job, andnow the electors' job to
decide my successor. it is not my job todecide my successor. and i have provided peoplewith a lot of information about what happenedduring the course but more importantly, thecandidates themselves, i think, talked about theirbeliefs and their vision for america. the president-elect, ithink, has been very explicit about what hecares about and
what he believes in. so it's not in my handsnow; it's up to them. the press: what aboutlong-term about the electoral college? the president: long-termwith a respect to the electoral college -- theelectoral college is a vestige, it's a carryoverfrom an earlier vision of how our federal governmentwas going to work that put a lot of premium onstates, and it used to be
that the senate was notelected directly, it was through statelegislatures. and it's the same typeof thinking that gives wyoming two senators withabout half a million people, and californiawith 33 million get the same two. so there are somestructures in our political system, asenvisioned by the founders, that sometimesare going to
disadvantage democrats. but the truth of thematter is, is that, if we have a strong message, ifwe're speaking to what the american people careabout, typically the popular vote and theelectoral college vote will align. and i guess part of myoverall message here as i leave for the holidays isthat if we look for one explanation or one silverbullet or one easy fix for
our politics, then we'reprobably going to be disappointed. there are just a lot offactors in what's happened not just over the last fewmonths, but over the last decade that has made bothpolitics and governance more challenging. and i think everybodyhas raised legitimate questions andlegitimate concerns. i do hope that we all justtake some time, take a
breath -- this iscertainly what i'm going to advise democrats -- tojust reflect a little bit more about how can we getto a place where people are focused on workingtogether based on at least some common set of facts. how can we have aconversation about policy that doesn'tdemonize each other. how can we channel what ithink is the basic decency and goodness of theamerican people so it
reflects itself in ourpolitics, as opposed to it being so polarized and sonasty that, in some cases, you have voters andelected officials who have more confidence and faithin a foreign adversary than they have intheir neighbors. and those go tosome bigger issues. how is it that we havesome voters or some elected officials whothink that michelle obama's healthy eatinginitiative and school
nutrition program is agreat threat to democracy than our government goingafter the press if they're issuing a storythey don't like? i mean, that's an issuethat i think we've got to wrestle with-- and we will. people have asked me howdo you feel after the election and so forth, andi say, well, look, this is a clarifying moment. it's a useful reminderthat voting counts,
politics counts. what the president-electis going to be doing is going to be very differentthan what i was doing, and i think people will beable to compare and contrast and makejudgments about what worked for theamerican people. and i hope that, buildingoff the progress we've made, that what thepresident-elect is proposing works.
what i can say withconfidence is that what we've done works. that i can prove. i can show you where wewere in 2008 and i can show you where we are now,and you can't argue that we're not better off. we are. and for that, i thank theamerican people and, more importantly, i thank --well, not more importantly
-- as importantly -- i wasgoing to say josh earnest for doing sucha great job. for that, i thankthe american people. i thank the men and womenin uniform who serve. i haven't gotten to thepoint yet where i've been overly sentimental. i will tell you, wheni was doing my last christmas party photoline-- many of you have participated in these;they're pretty long --
right at the end of theline, the president's marine corps band comesin, those who had been performing, and i take apicture when them, and it was the last time thati was going to take a picture with my marinecorps band after an event, and i got alittle choked up. now, i was in front ofmarines, so i had to, like, tamp it down. but it was just one smallexample of all the people
who have contributedto our success. i'm responsible forwhere we've screwed up. the successes are widelyshared with all the amazing people whohave been part of this administration. thank you, everybody. mele kalikimaka.
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