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Donald Trump on Technology2016 Republican nominee for President; 2000 Reform Primary Challenger for President |
Together, we can reclaim our building heritage. We will build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways, and waterways across our land. And we will do it with American heart, American hands, and American grit.
I am asking both parties to come together to give us the safe, fast, reliable, and modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve.
Any bill must also streamline the permitting and approval process--getting it down to no more than two years, and perhaps even one.
The bill uses a little-known tool called the Congressional Review Act (CRA) that allows the president to overturn recently passed agency regulations. Before Trump took office, the CRA had only been successfully passed once, under Pres. Bush in 2001. Trump has signed 10 bills overturning Obama-era regulations, including the internet privacy rule.
The bill caused an uproar when it passed the House and Senate last month, with critics accusing Republicans of selling their constituents' privacy.
It's been a little over a month since my inauguration, and I want to take this moment to update the Nation on the progress I've made in keeping those promises. America must put its own citizens first .
Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our beautiful land. Our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and ultimately, stop. And our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety, and opportunity. Above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.
America has spent approximately $6 trillion in the Middle East, all this while our infrastructure at home is crumbling. With this $6 trillion we could have rebuilt our country--twice. And maybe even three times if we had people who had the ability to negotiate.
The order directs the Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), within 30 days of a request, to determine a project's environmental impact and decide whether it is "high priority." Project review deadlines are to be put in place by the CEQ's chairman.
The order is widely believed to have been issued in response to the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, [an incomplete project for shale oil which many protest on environmental grounds].
We will build new roads, and highways, and bridges, and airports, and tunnels, and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work--rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor.
TRUMP: Space exploration has given so much to America, including tremendous pride in our scientific and engineering prowess. A strong space program will encourage our children to seek STEM educational outcomes and will bring millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in investment to this country. The cascading effects of a vibrant space program are legion and can have a positive, constructive impact on the pride and direction of this country. Observation from space and exploring beyond our own space neighborhood should be priorities. We should also seek global partners, because space is not the sole property of America. All humankind benefits from reaching into the stars.
JILL STEIN: We recognize the inspiration provided by space exploration and so we support the peaceful exploration of space; space-based systems to monitor environmental conditions; and measures to ensure that space technology benefits all the people of Earth.
TRUMP: This may be the most important issue we face as a nation for the next generation. Therefore, we must make the investment in our fresh water infrastructure to ensure access to affordable fresh water solutions for everyone. We must explore all options to include making desalinization more affordable and working to build the distribution infrastructure to bring this scarce resource to where it is needed for our citizens and those who produce the food of the world. This must be a top priority for my administration.
CLINTON: Chronic underinvestment in our nation's drinking and wastewater systems poses health risks to humans and wildlife, disrupts ecosystems, and disproportionately impacts communities of color.
JILL STEIN: Clean water is a human right.
TRUMP: The United States government should not spy on its own citizens. That will not happen in a Trump administration. As for protecting the Internet, any attack on the Internet should be considered a provocative act that requires the utmost in protection and, at a minimum, a proportional response that identifies and then eliminates threats to our Internet infrastructure.
CLINTON: I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses and we will invest in protecting our governmental networks and national infrastructure.
JILL STEIN: Negotiate international treaty banning cyberwarfare; create a new UN agency tasked with identifying the sources of cyber attacks.
TRUMP: Innovation has always been one of the great by-products of free market systems. The federal government should encourage innovation in the areas of space exploration and investment in research and development across the broad landscape of academia.
Q: Many scientific advances require long-term investment to fund research over a period of longer than the two year terms that govern political cycles. How will you balance long-term funding?
TRUMP: The premise of this question is exactly correct--scientific advances do require long term investment. This is why we must have programs such as a viable space program and institutional research that serve as incubators to innovation and the advancement of science and engineering in a number of fields. We should also bring together stakeholders and examine what the priorities ought to be for the nation.
A: We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we're not. I don't think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She's saying "Russia, Russia, Russia," but I don't. Maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? We came up with the Internet, and Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they're beating us at our own game. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is a huge problem. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it's hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that's true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better and certainly cyber is one of them.
TRUMP: ISIS is recruiting through the Internet. ISIS is using the Internet better than we are using the Internet, and it was our idea. I want to get our brilliant people from Silicon Valley and other places and figure out a way that ISIS cannot do what they're doing. You talk freedom of speech. I don't want them using our Internet to take our young, impressionable youth. We should be using our most brilliant minds to figure a way that ISIS cannot use the Internet. And then we should be able to penetrate the Internet and find out exactly where ISIS is and everything about ISIS. And we can do that if we use our good people.
Q: So, are you open to closing parts of the Internet?
TRUMP: I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I don't want to let people that want to kill us \use our Internet.
Our infrastructure is terrible, and it's only getting worse and more expensive to fix. It's already costing the American people and estimated $200 billion a year in reduced productivity. That number is increasing annually. Instead of being at the office or in the factory getting work done, Americans waste countless hours every day sitting in traffic jams or waiting for stalled trains. We depend on our truckers to deliver the goods we need, and they end up wasting an unbelievable amount of time because our highway system is falling apart.
I wonder, why can't we get these problems fixed? The answer is that the people we put in charge don't know how to fix them.
Given Trump's current war with Fox News, he may be reconsidering his defense of conservative media. But in any case, the defense is ill-placed: The Fairness Doctrine--an FCC policy from the late '40s that said broadcasters must present issues in an honest, equitable, and balanced way--was eliminated in 1987. It has nothing to do with Net neutrality.
As one pundit noted, "How keeping the Internet accessible to everyone is somehow a power grab, or how it will somehow oppress conservatives, is beyond us. The Fairness Doctrine required equal time for opposing views; Net neutrality allows any idiot to use the Internet however he so chooses, without having to pay extra fees in order for people to actually see it.."
On Aug. 25, Trump said, "Our bridges, 59% of our bridges are in trouble. Think--whoever heard of that? I mean, in trouble. Serious trouble." Whoever heard of that? Not the FHWA. The agency annually produces a report on the state of the nation's bridges. The FHWA's most recent report found 61,365 bridges were "structurally deficient" and 84,525 were "functionally obsolete" in 2014. That's a total of 24%
Functionally obsolete doesn't mean the bridge is unsafe: it may be the source of traffic jams or may not have a high enough clearance to allow an oversized vehicle.
We don't mean to minimize the number of bridges in need of attention, but the number is simply not as high as Trump says. Where did he get the figure 59%? We don't know. His campaign did not respond to our questions.
I look at the roads being built all over the country, and I say I can build those things for one-third. What they do is unbelievable, how bad.
We have to rebuild our infrastructure, our bridges, our roadways, our airports. You come into La Guardia Airport, it's like we're in a third world country. You look at the patches and the 40-year-old floor. They throw down asphalt. And I come in from China and I come in from Qatar and I come in from different places, and they have the most incredible airports in the world. You come to back to this country and you have LAX, disaster. You have all of these disastrous airports. We have to rebuild our infrastructure.
In 2007, Trump received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and he is among the highest paid public speakers in the world. The Apprentice has raised over $15 million for charity.
What China is doing on the cyber warfare front is equally alarming. Cyber spying can isolate network weaknesses and allow the Chinese to steal valuable intelligence.
China presents three big threats to the United States in its outrageous currency manipulation, its systematic attempt to destroy our manufacturing base, and its industrial espionage and cyber warfare against America. The Chinese have been running roughshod over us for years. Obama claims we can't do what's in our interests because it might spark a "trade war"--as if we're not in one now.
One of the worst fears we can have is the fear to attempt something. I wasn't sure I'd be a success on the radio, but I went for it and my program on Clear Channel was a big hit. But I had to take the chance first to find out.