Trump speaks emotionally of the brother he lost to alcoholism as he and Melania declare opioid addiction a 'national public health emergency'

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President Donald  Trump proclaimed the opioid epidemic a 'national public health emergency' Thursday afternoon and made it personal by invoking his late brother Fred.

'We will defeat this opioid epidemic,' Trump declared. 'We are going to overcome addiction in America,' the president assured.

Trump made the crisis personal as he delivered remarks on the issue from the White House's East Room on Thursday with his wife Melania standing by. 

Reflecting on the affliction that snuffed out 64,000 American lives last year, Trump brought up his brother Fred, who died of alcoholism when he was 43.

'I learned myself, I had a brother Fred, great guy, best looking guy, best personality, much better than mine, but he had a problem,' Trump said, noting how his brother would tell him again and again to not touch alcohol. 

Trump said he listened to his brother's advice and suggested teaching kids when they're young not to do drugs could do the trick.

'To this day I haven't had a drink and I have no longing for it, I have no interest in it. And to this day I've never had a cigarette,' Trump said.  

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President Trump brought up the loss of his brother, Fred Trump, to alcoholism as he declared the opioid crisis a nationwide public health emergency on Thursday 

President Trump (left) embraces first lady Melania Trump (right) who introduced the president at the East Room ceremony 

President Trump signed the order alongside his wife, Melania, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has led the administration's task force

President Trump (right) brought up his older brother Fred (left) in the speech. Fred died of alcoholism at the age of 43 

Melania Trump introduced her husband at the event Thursday, talking about how she had become more involved in the issue as her time as first lady has gone on

President Trump (left) embraces first lady Melania Trump (right) after she introduced her husband at his speech on the opioid crisis from the White House on Thursday 

Melania Trump served as the opening act for her husband from the White House on Thursday, as the first lady has attended listening sessions on the opioid epidemic

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (left) greets first daughter and White House aide Ivanka Trump (right) at the White House for President Trump's speech on the opioid crisis

Attorney General Jeff Sessions was spotted in the audience of President Trump's opioid speech on Thursday 

President Trump spoke about addiction and the plague of the opioid epidemic from the White House on Thursday 

First lady Melania Trump was on hand to introduce her husband, having adopted the opioid crisis as one of her office's issues. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Ivanka Trump and members of the president's Cabinet were present in the audience. 

'This can happen to any of us, drug addiction can take your friends, neighbors and family. No state has been spared. And no demographic has been untouched,' the first lady said, 'which is why my husband and his administration has dedicated itself to combatting this health crisis by using every resource available.'

Melania singled out recovering addict Sabrah Jean Collar, standing on stage behind her on a set of risers, and congratulated her on her 10th year of sobriety. 

'We are so proud of you for all that you have overcome, Sabrah, and pray for you as you continue on this journey,' she said, turning to give the woman a hug and a peck on the cheek.

When the president took the podium he thanked his wife for her 'very deep devotion' and called the epidemic not just a national problem, but a global one.

'As you all know from personal experience, families, communities and citizens from across our country are currently dealing with the worst drug crisis in American history and even, if you really think about it, world history,' Trump said. 

Melania Trump took over the podium first to speak about some of the conversations she's had about the issue of opioid addiction 

He talked about the frequency of death from the drugs, citing the 64,000 deaths last year. 

'That's 175 lost American lives per day. That's seven lost lives per hour in our country,' Trump said. 'Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of unintentional death in the United States by far.' 

'More people are dying from drug overdoses today than gun homicides and motor vehicles combined,' the president practically marveled, remarking that prescription painkiller abuse and heroin use are driving up deaths.

He shed light on one of the most horrific parts of the scourge, babies born addicted to opioids, spending the first days of their lives going through detox.  

'Some of these children will likely lose one or both of their parents to drug addiction and overdose,' Trump noted. 'They will join the growing ranks of America's opioid orphans.'

'Such beautiful, beautiful babies,' Trump murmured.

Trump also linked the drug problem to his border wall, suggesting its construction could prevent more illegal opioids coming in.

'An astonishing 90 percent of the heroin in America comes from South of the border where we will be building a wall, which will greatly help with this problem,' Trump said. 

Trump signed a directive on opioid abuse from the stage using two pens. One he gave to a young boy, the other he gave to Christie, the head of his opioid abuse commission, welcoming him to the stage.

As Christie returned to his seat, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a state that's been especially affected by the plague of addiction, shook the Republican governor's hand and pulled him in for a hug. 

Outside the White House Christie told reporters, 'I cannot tell you how important this will be to the millions of American families out there who have been affected by this epidemic, who have lost loved ones, who are struggling today to reclaim loved ones from this addiction to know that the President of the United States cares about this, talked about it as personally as he did today, with his own experience to these folks, this makes them know that he is one of them.' 

President Trump holds up his presidential memorandum after he delivered a lengthy talk on the opioid crisis 

President Trump signs the presidential memorandum declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency at the White House Thursday 

President Trump has a child hold one of his pens at the signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday 

Christie said that opioid abuse has been a concern of Trump's for the 15 years that he's known him.

'Listen, we talked about this issue when I was a prosecutor. And we became friends. We talked about it on a personal level, the experiences that we both have, inside our families and our friends,' Christie stated.

'So this is not some issue that the president came to know because he went on a campaign to New Hampshire and Iowa and all those places. This is something that the president knew well before, as did I, I've been working on this issue now for 23 years, and we both care deeply about it, and it's one of the things that I'm most proud of this president.

'He's willing to talk about those things that are personal because he wants the American people to know that he cares and that he's gonna solve the problem.'

Trump talked openly about the impression his brother's struggle with alcoholism left on him, saying that he does not drink or smoke because of Fred.

'Don't worry, those are only two of my good things. I don't want to tell you about the bad things. There's plenty of bad things too,' the president said in a lighter moment. 'But he really helped me. I had somebody that guided me, and he had a very, very, very tough life because of alcohol -- believe me, very, very tough, tough life. 

'He was a strong guy, but it was a tough, tough thing that he was going through. But I learned because of Fred. I learned,' Trump said.

Fred's advice had such a strong impact, Trump said, that he really believes that teaching young people not to take drugs - 'just not to take them - that the opioid epidemic can begin to be curbed. 

'When I see friends of mine that are having difficulty with not having that drink at dinner, where it's literally almost impossible for them to stop, I say to myself, I can't even understand it -- why would that be difficult? But we understand why it is difficult,' Trump said. 

President Donald Trump hands a pen to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie after signing a presidential memorandum to declare the opioid crisis a national public health emergency in the East Room of the White House

His remarks reminded of Nancy Reagan's 1986  'Just Say No' program for school children. The program has a mixed legacy. On the one hand, the campaign raised awareness of drug abuse. It did not reduce the rate of drug use, though, critics of the program have said.

Trump suggested Thursday that he wanted his administration to come up with a new national messaging campaign.

'The fact is, if we can teach young people -- and people, generally -- not to start, it's really, really easy not to take them. And I think that's going to end up being our most important thing. Really tough, really big, really great advertising, so we get to people before they start, so they don't have to go through the problems of what people are going through,' the president said.

The announcement comes without any new funding to combat the epidemic. 

Trump hopes that Congress will appropriate more money to the crisis later this year, but his administration has not put forward a specific recommendation and would not say Thursday how much it even wants.

Kellyanne Conway, counselor to Trump, suggested that the president would like Congress to approve the $45 billion that was in a failed GOP health care bill. She would not say when pressed is that's the amount the administration would formally request.

Christie said it's Congress' job to make appropriations when the subject came up during his White House news conference.

'It's now going to be incumbent upon Congress to work with the administration to put money in the Public Health Emergency Fund,' he said of the dwindling account.

The New Jersey Republican indicated that a dollar amount would be included in a report his commission is turning into Trump next week.

A White House official previewing the announcement on a Thursday morning call said the president would like Congress to put the money it an end-of-year budget deal but a formal request has not been presented.

The Trump administration acknowledged in the call that an 'ongoing discussion' would need to take place about an appropriation to the public health emergency account that routinely goes unfunded by Congress.

President Donald Trump listens before a meeting with administration officials and First Lady Melania Trump (R) on the opioid addiction crisis at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on August 8, 2017

The White House could have tapped into the Federal Emergency Management Administration's account but it opted not to. In formally declaring it a public health emergency instead of a national emergency, it blocked off access to those funds.

Critics of the president complained Thursday as he was set to make his speech that it was another broken promise.

Just yesterday, the president told reporters that he intended to have a 'big meeting' on opioids on Thursday and he'd be 'doing a very, very important meeting sometime in the very short -- the very near future on opioids, in terms of declaring a national emergency, which gives us power to do things that you can't do right now.' 

A fact sheet provided to reporters on Thursday morning defined it as a 'Nationwide Public Health Emergency,' instead.

The alteration first appeared in USA Today. 

As the newspaper noted, public health emergencies and national emergencies are not the same from a legal standpoint. For Trump to formally declare the opioid epidemic a national emergency, he'd have to make use of the Stafford Act.

The distinction is an important one. Trump's administration would have even more power to marshal government resources if he made use of the disaster relief designation.

Trump instead directed the Department of Labor to issue dislocated worker grants to people who have been affected by the opioid crisis. He gave the Department of Health and Human Services permission to cut through red tape to immediately hire opioid abuse specialists.

The president also made substance abuse treatment help available to people with HIV/AIDS, acknowledging the link between drug use and transmission.

President Trump labeled the epidemic a 'national emergency' on August 10 at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey - a recommendation of his opioid commission but not his HHS secretary.

The administration has spent the time since then putting together a national action plan.  

First lady Melania Trump has since added the issue to her portfolio, visiting a West Virginia drug a treatment center two weeks ago in support of parents working to overcome addiction. 

Opioid addiction was also the topic of Mrs. Trump's first solo policy event since becoming first lady.

She held a roundtable at the White House on the national crisis at the end of September.

'The well-being of children is of the utmost importance to me and I plan to use my platform as first lady to help as many kids as I can,' she said then.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a quarter of drug overdose deaths were caused by heroin in 2015, a 19 percent jump since 1999, CNN has reported.  

As a debate erupted in Washington over whether Trump was fulfilling his emergency declaration promise, Christie claimed Thursday that Trump was declaring the crisis a national emergency for all intents and purposes.

He highlighted a section of the Commission on Combatting Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis' interim report that urged Trump to declare the drug crisis a 'national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act.'

'By using the Public Health Service Act, as we recommended, the President is showing an unprecedented commitment to fighting this epidemic and placing the weight of the Presidency behind saving lives across the country,' Christie said.  

A public health emergency initially lasts 90 days. It can be renewed in perpetuity.

A Washington Post report in August said that a national emergency designation would have provided states in opioid hot spots with the opportunity to request and receive federal funds they can put toward to opioid abuse drug treatment efforts.

'First, it lets states and localities that are designated disaster zones to access money in the federal Disaster Relief Fund, just like they could if they had a tornado or hurricane,' Stanford University drug addition specialist Keith Humphreys said then.  

First Lady Melania Trump has added the issue to her portfolio, visiting a West Virginia drug a treatment center two weeks ago in support of parents working to overcome addiction

 Humphreys said Trump could also issue temporary rule changes to allow the expansion of federal treatment programs and reimbursements through the use of waivers.

A White House official told reporters Thursday that the administration opted not to go that route because those rules were intended for natural disasters. The Public Health Service Act is a better vehicle for this particular crisis, the official contended. 

Former HHS secretary Tom Price said after the president's August briefing that he did not think the opioid abuse constituted a national emergency, only to have the boss seemingly contradict him two days later.

'The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency,' Trump said.

His statement led reporters to believe that he intended to tap the Stafford Act or even the National Emergencies Act for a formal declaration, although the White House contended Thursday that was never what Trump meant. 

Liberal opposition research and rapid response group American Bridge hit him for going back on his promise, anyway.

'The President has made it to the golf course nearly every weekend during those 77 days' since the statement, the group's vice president, Shripal Shah, said, 'but hasn't found time to deliver on his promise to mobilize resources at the state and federal level to prevent further deaths.'

'Ten months in, Trump's administration is a disgraceful series of broken promises on nearly every topic,' Shah stated.

Trump came under scrutiny earlier this year for referring to New Hampshire, a state that he won, as 'a drug-infested den.' He blamed the problem on Mexico in a leaked call with that country's president.

He made reference to the 'drugs pouring into the country' as he spoke about the issue to Lou Dobbs in an interview on Wednesday. He said the border wall he's been plugging 'will greatly help in this problem' in remarks on Thursday.

Trump has taken slaps at his predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, before for allowing the crisis to balloon on his watch.

'At the end of 2016, there were 23 percent fewer federal prosecutions than in 2011. So they looked at this surge and they let it go by,' Trump said in August.

'We're not letting it go by. The average sentence for a drug offender decreased 20 percent from 2009 to 2016,' the Republican president added.

He assessed that 'the best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place. If they don't start, they won't have a problem. If they do start, it's awfully tough to get off.'