is far more important than what they were going to use it for. I said, “What were you going to use it for?” And I won’t go into details, but it didn’t sound too important to me.
Plus, if you think, I’ve gotten $700 billion for the military in year one, and then last year, $716 billion. And we’re rebuilding our military, but we have a lot. And under the previous administration, our military was depleted — badly depleted. And they weren’t spending — I mean, they had a much less — they had a much smaller amount of money.
So when I got $700 billion, and then $716 billion — and this year, it’s going to be pretty big too, because there’s few things more important than our military. You know, I’m a big deficit believer and all of that, but before we really start focusing on certain things, we have to build up our military. It was very badly depleted. And we’re buying all new jetfighters, all new missiles, all new defensive equipment. We have — we'll soon have a military like we’ve never had before.
But when you think about the kind of numbers you’re talking about — so you have $700 billion, $716 billion — when I need $2 billion, $3 billion of out that for a wall — which is a very important instrument, very important for the military because of the drugs that pour in. And as you know, we have specific rules and regulations where they have drugs, and what you can do in order to stop drugs. And that’s part of it, too.
We’re taking a lot of money from that realm also. But when you have that kind of money going into the military, this is a very, very small amount that we’re asking for.
Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. ABC. Not NBC. I like ABC a little bit more — not much. Come on, ABC. Not much. Pretty close.
Q Mr. President, what do you say to those, including some of your Republican allies, who say that you are violating the Constitution with this move and setting a bad precedent that will be abused by possibly Democratic Presidents in the future? Marco Rubio has made this point.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, not too many people. Yeah. Not too many people have said that. But the courts will determine that.
Look, I expect to be sued. I shouldn’t be sued. Very rarely do you get sued when you do national emergency. And then other people say, “Oh, if you use it for this, now what are we using it for?” We
