Trump Maintains '35' F-35s Flew over Japan Undetected: Time Transcript

choi

Zeke Miller, Read Donald Trump's Interview With TIME on Being President. Time (magazine), May 11, 2017.
http://time.com/4775040/donald-t ... ew-being-president/
("President Trump hosted correspondents from TIME for a nearly 100-minute wide-ranging discussion on Monday, May 8 over a four-course dinner in the Blue Room of the White House. Joined by Vice President Mike Pence and two senior Administration officials, Trump * * * ")

three consecutive paragraphs (starting with sectional heading; brackets original):

"On negotiating with defense contractors

"When [Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō] Abe came from Japan, first thing he said to me when I first met him. He walked out. 'Thank you, thank you.' I said, 'For what?' F-35. You bought, you saved us one hundred million dollars. Because they’re part of the group that buy the ninety planes. It's a lot. We get, they get, different allies.

"But I saved Japan a hundred million bucks. Took me probably an hour if I added up all the time. But I will be saving, when we put that out over two, the two thousand five hundred planes, billions of dollars. Nobody ever wrote a story about that.

"But they said the F-35 program is now straightened out and the costs are way down. They’re down because of me. Then Boeing when the F-18, I mean I must have got thirty-five million of each plane off. . . . You know they had the F-35s, they had thirty-five of them fly over Japan when [Defense Secretary] General [James] Mattis was there, and they were not detected by the radar. They flew over and everyone said where the hell did they come from? That’s stealth. It’s pretty cool, right. Thirty-five of them flying at a high speed, low, and they were not detected. They flew right over the top of the deal, nobody knew they were coming. Pretty cool, right?

Note: Mr Mattis spent Feb 2, 2017 in Korea, and Feb 3-4 in Japan.