President Trump: 'We are not going into Syria'

By Jordyn Phelps
Apr 11, 2017, 7:44 PM ET

President Trump said the United States is "not going into Syria" and that he believes the situation would be better in the country had Obama taken action, in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Despite his own tweets in 2013 when he urged Obama to stay out of Syria, Trump told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo he believes conditions there would not be as bad if Obama had responded earlier.

"When I see people using horrible, horrible chemical weapons, which they agreed not to use under the Obama administration, but they violated it," he said, "what I did should have been done by the Obama administration a long time before I did it. And I think Syria would be a lot better off than it has been."

The full interview, which was taped today, will air tomorrow morning on Fox Business between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. ET.

The president would not talk about what the U.S. is considering in regards to North Korea, but said that Kim Jong Un is "doing the wrong thing."

When asked about what the U.S. plans to do regarding North Korea, Trump said, "You never know, do you? You never know."

"I don’t talk about the military," he went on to say. "We are sending an armada, very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful. Far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you. And we have the best military people. And I will say this: He is doing the wrong thing."

Bartiromo asked Trump what he thinks about Kim Jong Un's state of mind.

"Do you think he is mentally fit?" she said.

"I don't know, I don't know," Trump replied. "I don't know him. But he’s doing the wrong thing."

The president told Bartiromo that he remains focused on tackling healthcare before he moves on to tax reform.

"We're going to have a phenomenal tax reform," Trump said. "But I have to do healthcare first. I want to do it first to really do it right."

Explaining the logic of moving on healthcare first, the president says he will be able to save a lot of money that will then be beneficial to taxes.

"Obamacare is a total mess," Trump said. "So we're saving tremendous amounts of money on healthcare when we get this done. Number one. And most importantly, actually, we're going to have great healthcare. All of that saving goes into the tax. If you don't do that, you can't put the savings in the tax cuts."

He would not put a deadline on when the agenda items will be accomplished but said he’ll move onto tax reform if healthcare doesn’t happen quickly enough.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/presi...ry?id=46739220