President Trump held a press conference at the White House as polls show his approval rating has risen to 55%. After the presser the media goes ballistic, the people yawn.

Here are some notable policy comments by President Trump:

• I’m here today to update the American people on the incredible progress that has been made in the last four weeks since my inauguration.
• A new Rasmussen poll, in fact, because the people get it, much of the media doesn’t get it, they actually get it but they don’t write it, let’s put it that way, but a new Rasmussen poll came out a short while ago, and it has our approval rating at 55 percent and going up.
• The stock market has hit record numbers, as you know, and there’s been a tremendous surge of optimism in the business world, which means something different than it used to. Now it means it’s good for jobs.
• Plants and factories are already starting to move back into the United States, big league, Ford, General Motors.
• As you know, our administration inherited many problems across government and across the economy. To be honest, I inherited a mess. A mess. At home, and abroad. A mess. Jobs are pouring out of the country. You see what’s going on with all of the companies leaving our country, going to Mexico and other places. Low pay, low wages.
• Mass instability overseas, no matter where you look. The Middle East, a disaster. North Korea, we’ll take care of it, folks. We’re going to take care of it all. I just want to let you know. I inherited a mess.
• Beginning on day one, our administration went to work to tackle these challenges. On foreign affairs, we’ve begun enormously productive talks with foreign leaders, much of which you’ve covered, to move forward to security, stability and peace in the most troubled regions of the world, which there are many.
• We’ve had great conversations with the United Kingdom and meetings, Israel, Mexico, Japan, China and Canada. Really, really productive conversations. I would say far more productive than you would understand. We’ve even developed a new council with Canada to promote women’s business leaders and entrepreneurs.
• Another mess I inherited. We have imposed new sanctions on the nation of Iran, who has totally taken advantage of our previous administration. And they are the world’s top sponsor of terrorism. And we’re not going to stop until that problem is properly solved, and it’s not now. It’s one of the worst agreements I’ve ever seen drawn by anybody.
• I’ve ordered plans to begin for the massive rebuilding of the United States military.
• At home, we have begun the monumental task of returning the government to the people to a scale not seen in many, many years. In each of these actions, I’m keeping my promises to the American people.
• I’m here following through on what I pledged to do. That’s all I’m doing.
• This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine.
• We have withdrawn from the job killing disaster known as Trans-Pacific Partnership. We’re going to have trade deals but we’re going to have one-on-one deals, bilateral. One-on-one deals.
• We directed the elimination of regulations that undermine manufacturing and called for expedited approval of the permits needed for America and American infrastructure, meaning plants, equipment, roads, bridges, factories.
• We’ve imposed a hiring freeze on nonessential federal workers.
• We’ve imposed a temporary moratorium and new federal regulations. We issued a game-changing new rule that says for each one new regulation, two old regulations must be eliminated.
• We’ve stood up for the men and women of law enforcement, directing federal agencies to ensure they are protected from crimes of violence.
• We’ve directed the creation of a task force for reducing violent crime in America, including the horrendous situation — take a look at Chicago and others — taking place right now in our inner cities.
• We’ve ordered the Department of Homeland Security and Justice to coordinate on a plan to destroy criminal cartels coming into the United States with drugs.
• We’ve undertaken the most substantial border security measures in a generation to keep our nation and our tax dollars safe and are now in the process of beginning to build a promised wall on the southern border.
• We’ve begun a nationwide effort to remove criminal aliens, gang members, drug dealers, and others who pose a threat to public safety. We are saving American lives every single day.
• And we’ve even created a new office in Homeland Security dedicated to the forgotten American victims of illegal immigrant violence, which there are many.
• We’ve taken decisive action to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country.
• I got elected on defending our country. I keep my campaign promises, and our citizens will be very happy when they see the result, they already are.
• We’re issuing a new executive action next week that will comprehensively protect our country, so we’ll be going along the one path and hopefully winning that. At the same time we will be issuing a new and very comprehensive order to protect our people and that’ll be done sometime next week in the beginning or middle at the latest part.
• We’ve also taken steps to begin construction of the Keystone pipeline and Dakota Access pipelines, thousands and thousands of jobs, and put new buy American measures in place to require American steel for American pipelines.
• To drain the swamp of corruption in Washington D.C., I’ve started by imposing a five-year lobbying ban on White House officials, and a lifetime ban on lobbying for a foreign government.
• We’ve begun preparing to repeal and replace Obamacare.
• I have kept my promise to the American people by nominating a justice of the United States Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, from my list of 20, and who will be a true defender of our laws and our constitution.

President Trump’s comments about the press and media:

• I’m making this presentation directly to the American people with the media present, which, it’s an honor to have you this morning because many of our nation’s reporters and folks will not tell you the truth and will not treat the wonderful people of our country with the respect that they deserve.
• Unfortunately, much of the media in Washington, D.C., along with New York, Los Angeles, in particular, speaks not for the people, but for the special interests and for those profiting off a very, very obviously broken system.
• The press has become so dishonest that if we don’t talk about it, we are doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. Tremendous disservice. We have to talk about it. We have to find out what’s going on because the press, honestly, is out of control. The level of dishonesty is out of control.

Go here to read the full transcript of President Trump’s February 16, 2017 press conference.

The full video of the press conference is courtesy of the White House:

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of NBC News.