President Donald Trump stopped at a firehouse in West Palm Beach, Florida, for a post-Christmas visit Wednesday to thank the firefighters and other first responders stationed there, and also to tout his accomplishments, including the recently passed tax bill.
“These are great people, these are great people,” Trump said during the Wednesday afternoon. “I just want to thank everybody for the fantastic job you’ve done and are doing. What you do in terms of paramedics and firefighters and all of the other things you do that people don’t appreciate like they should, but we appreciate it and we are giving you a lot of equipment, we are giving you a lot of help. We hope it is enough. Again, thank you very much, fantastic job.”
Trump, who is spending the holiday week at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, then asked the firefighters to ask him questions, standing next to them and saying “this is real power right here,” to laughter.
GettyPresident Donald Trump speaks to first responders at West Palm Beach Fire Rescue in West Palm Beach, Florida on December 27, 2017.
He was then asked how things are going.
“I think our country is doing well. We’re setting records with stocks. How are your 401(k)s doing, pretty well?” Trump responded. “It’s doing well, right? They’re all doing well. The 401(k)s doing well, the stocks are doing well, a lot of companies coming back into this country. And they’re coming back into the country that we love, which is what we care about, and then even before the tax cut.”
Trump added, “And I tell you, that tax cut bill is something with what’s it’s kicking in. Literally we know when the big companies — AT&T, Comcast, so many others, Wells Fargo — they’re giving thousands of dollars to their employees. And nobody saw that happening right away, but that happened early. And now what’s happening is many other companies are following suit.”
Trump told the firefighters, “So the country is really — you have a big, big beautiful ship that we’re turning around. And a lot of good things are happening. You know with the military, we’re rebuilding our military. It was depleted. You guys were a little bit depleted too.”
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Trump then again thanked the first responders and said his administration is working to give them the resources they need.
“We’re giving you — and particularly the police, we’re giving them military equipment, which was taken away by the previous administration. You know all about that. And now you’re getting the military equipment. They didn’t want them to use the military equipment. Somebody will explain why. But now you have the best military equipment, and you’re able to use it for the police force,” Trump said.
Trump did falsely claim during his visit that he has signed more legislation than anyone else.
“You know, one of the things that people don’t understand, we have signed more legislation than anybody — we broke the record of Harry Truman. And they were saying, if we get this big tax break — because that’s the legislation of all legislation, that’s the biggest there is,” Trump told the crowd. “But we have a lot of things. But we had a lot of legislation passed. And here’s an example of something that soon will be passed and signed. So yeah, we’re going to take care of it. I know you folks have been fighting for that for a long time.”
According to CNN, that is not true.
Trump did not take any questions from the press pool and returned to Mar-a-Lago just before 5 p.m. Wednesday. The White House did not say how Trump spent the earlier part of the day Wednesday, but pool reports indicated he was golfing.
