Trump touts administration's accomplishments, talks about North Korea in Cabinet meeting
President Trump spent much of his first official Cabinet meeting of 2018 touting his administration's "tremendous" achievements in 2017. He claimed that "no administration has done what we've done or accomplished in its first year."
Mr Trump highlighted his administration's efforts including overhauling the nation's tax code which he said was the "largest tax cut and reform in American history."
The Cabinet meeting came a day after he allowed cameras to document nearly an hour of talks with Republican and Democratic lawmakers over immigration reform, a moment Mr. Trump referred to as a "good performance" on his part.
"I consider it work. It got great reviews by everybody other than two networks," he added in a jab at the media present in the Cabinet room.
The president reiterated on Wednesday that "we want to see something with DACA."
But the White House was dealt a blow when a federal judge Tuesday night temporarily blocked the administration's decision to end DACA. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders says the president is "committed to the rule of law and will work with members of both parties to reach a permanent solution that corrects the unconstitutional actions taken by the last administration."
Mr. Trump said he received "letters of congratulations" from television network anchors "saying that was one of the greatest meetings they've ever witnessed."
"I'm sure their ratings were fantastic; they always are -- which is why I think the media will ultimately support Trump in the end, because they're going to say, if Trump doesn't win in three years, they're all out of business."
Meanwhile, the president also addressed his latest call with South Korean President Moon Jae-In, who Mr. Trump says, was thankful for the role the U.S. played in the talks between North Korea and South Korea this week over the North's participation in the Winter Olympics.
A White House readout released shortly before the Cabinet meeting said the president had told Moon he was open to talks with North Korea "at the appropriate time, under the right circumstances."
"Hopefully," Mr. Trump said, " it will lead to success for the world -- not just for our country, but for the world. And we'll be seeing over the next number of weeks and months what happens."
Before the press was led out of the room, the president concluded by saying the administration would be looking into the country's libel laws, pushing for "meaningful recourse" in the courts for those who've been "abused."
"We are going to take a strong look at our country's libel laws, so that when somebody says something that is false and defamatory about someone, that person will have meaningful recourse in our courts," the president said. "If somebody says something that's totally false and knowingly false, that the person that has been abused, defamed, libeled will have meaningful recourse."
He called the country's current laws "a sham and a disgrace," claiming that they "don't represent American values or American fairness."
