Politics

Trump Reveals What Surprised Him Most About Being President [VIDEO]

Screenshot

Daily Caller News Foundation logo
Katie Frates Editor-in-chief of The Daily Walkthrough
Font Size:

The biggest thing Donald Trump was surprised by when he became president was how much money he could save for the country, he told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly during part three of a multi-part interview on “The O’Reilly Factor” Tuesday night.

“What is the most surprising thing for you about this job you have,” host Bill O’Reilly asked. “You come from the private sector, no political office, now you’re the president of the United States. What surprised you?”

WATCH:

“I think the size, the magnitude of everything,” Trump said. “Here, you look at an airplane contract where you can save $600 million dollars on 90 planes. I saved, I saved more than $600 million dollars. I got involved in negotiations.” (RELATED: Trump: Obama ‘Likes Me,’ He Just Won’t Admit It)

Trump attacked Lockheed Martin in a tweet Dec. 22 for the “tremendous cost” of the F-35. The company later agreed to sell 90 F-35 planes to the Department of Defense for $8.5 million; that price saved the government hundreds of millions.

“President Trump’s personal involvement in the F-35 program accelerated the negotiations and sharpened our focus on driving down the price,” Lockheed said in a statement, though Fortune contends that, “The price per jet has been steadily declining as production ramps up, and defense analysts have said the discount hailed by Trump was in line with what had been flagged by Lockheed and Pentagon officials for months.”

Trump then told O’Reilly the next industry he’s going to target to save American taxpayers money: pharmaceuticals.

“The magnitude of, you can do that at every level of government. My new thing is going to be pharma, because we pay too much. We’re the largest drug purchaser in the world and they don’t negotiate.”

Pharmaceutical companies made monstrous profits off of former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Obamacare allowed the industry to rake in tens of billions of dollars, according to Forbes. “Overall, the ACA will leave the industry with anywhere between $10 and 35 billion in additional profits over the next decade, which is a significant boon at a time when patent expiries are heavily undermining the efforts of the pharma industry,” research firm GlobalData’s Joshua Owide said in 2013.

The ACA — a law then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said had to be passed before it was understood — has no provisions to stop the pharmaceutical industry from ballooning costs, according to Politico. It doesn’t allow for the government to negotiate drug prices or “reimportation of medicines” from countries that sell them cheaply. Prescription drug spending increased from $367 billion in 2012 to $457 billion in 2015, according to TIME, due in part to Obamacare’s higher deductibles forcing people to pay more out of pocket.

Trump has said before he intends to work with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce prices.

Follow Katie on Twitter and Facebook

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel