And it looks like the live stream just glitched on a little bit for Donald Trump.
I will note that this is Donald Trump's rumble account up here, okay?
Correct me if I'm wrong, the great ALX, but this is Donald Trump's personal Rumble account.
Donald Trump has one streaming account that he streams from, and it is on screen right now.
So that is why you see it sort of in a holding pattern.
This is Donald Trump's personal account.
So ladies and gentlemen, we have major updates for you tonight.
There are a lot of interesting things that are happening out there in the world, not the least of which is the Republican impeachment government oversight impeachment inquiry is dropping bombshell after bombshell after bombshell.
We're going to be covering it all tomorrow morning.
That impeachment inquiry starts at 10 a.m.
So get your caffeine.
We are ready to rock.
Now you will recall, you will recall, That last debate night was an absolute S show.
Try my hardest not to swear.
It gets harder and harder throughout the night.
Here we go.
Last debate night, Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump.
Room where we wanted to keep it small and outside we have thousands and thousands of people.
Have you seen what's going on out there?
But I'm thrilled to be back with the workers and UAW members and proud patriots of the great state of Michigan.
Great state.
Great people.
Here in Michigan and across the country tonight, there are countless thousands of autoworkers and skilled tradesmen worried about the future and what the future holds for themselves and for their incredible families.
I want to begin this evening by saluting these truly great Americans who do not get the credit they deserve.
You don't get the credit they deserve.
unidentified
Now they want to go all electric and put you all out of business.
To the welders, assembly line workers, machine operators, forklift drivers, pipe fitters, tool and die makers, mechanics, electricians, technicians, and journeymen.
unidentified
We love being with you, and we love being with you right in your environment.
You built this country, you love this country, and you are the ones that make our country run.
You know that, right?
Before I stepped into the political arena seven years ago, I spent my whole life working alongside of Americans just like you.
Spent a lot of time with you.
You just don't know that, but I spent a lot of time with you.
And people just like you now, I put everything on the line to fight for you.
I've risked it all to defend the working class from the corrupt political class that has spent decades sucking the life, wealth, and blood out of this country.
That's why I'm here tonight to lay out a vision for a revival of economic nationalism and our automobile manufacturing lifeblood, which they're sucking out of our country.
But he's surrounded with radical left Marxists and crazy people, fascists, bad people.
He's selling you out to China.
He's selling you out to the environmental extremists on the radical left.
People have no idea how bad this is going to be.
Also, for the environment, you know, those batteries, when they get rid of them and lots of bad things happen, and when they're digging it out of the ground to make those batteries, it's going to be very bad for the environment.
You can be loyal to American labor or you can be loyal to the environmental lunatics, but...
You can't really be loyal to both.
It's one or the other.
And they understand that the Democrat Party has no idea what they're doing right now.
They have no idea what to do.
Crooked Joe is siding with the left-wing crazies who will destroy automobile manufacturing and will destroy our country itself.
They're destroying our country.
You look at that at the border.
We had the safest border in history.
Now you look at what's happening.
It's just a horror show.
I side with the autoworkers of America and with those who want to make America great again, and I always will.
And I don't get one thing.
I don't get why Ford and GM, why these car makers aren't fighting for to make cars that are going to sell, to make cars that are going to be able to go on long distances.
They immediately give up.
I see it with the oil companies, too.
They're promoting windmills, which don't work, by the way.
They want windmills all over the place.
It's like they're told what to do, and that's what they go against their industry.
They're either stupid or they're gutless.
But why do they concede so fast this plant?
We just walked through this plant, and the electric vehicles are going to put them out of business.
They don't need any of this.
The things that you make in Michigan, they don't need any of it.
Why is it that these big, powerful...
Car companies with guys that are making $35 million a year immediately quit.
They say, you want electric vehicles?
We'll give it to you when the damn things don't go far enough and they're too expensive.
And I'm not in that business, but I know a lot about it.
They don't go far enough and they're too expensive.
A vote for Crooked Joe means the future of the auto industry will be made in China.
That's what it's going to be.
That's where they're made.
My pledge to every automaker is this, a vote for President Trump means the future of the automobile will be made in America.
But before we do talk about the current UAW strike that we've been hearing, and I see people really with mixed emotions because you're striking for wages, but you know you tell them for two years or three years if you're lucky.
How will we rescue the auto manufacturing in the United States?
Let's remember, we've got to remember decades and decades of this subject for the 12 years.
That was nuts a lot.
I had the easiest, nice, I would have had the nicest, softest life instead of have to beat these lunatics up all day long.
They were trying to protest for the news, so she actually changed her position during the campaign, but she would have changed her back, had that been a different result.
And this it wasn't, because we made things that happened.
And as the judges were reading, you could go back every single blood-sucking club was attacked, or U.S. federal workers, and you've been attacked for a long time, and we were supposed to attack all stuff for 40 years at the most, and they were getting so strong, and you were getting so strong, and they were building plants here again.
unidentified
Now the players are going back to Mexico, they're going back to China.
Because, you know, standard history for years and decades and years and years and years, they always endorse a Democrat.
It's almost like an automatic reflex, and there's no reason for it, but it's a habit.
It's a bad habit.
Hasn't worked.
Because, look, you've lost 38% of your industry over the period of 25 years.
Much of it's gone to Mexico.
We don't talk about Mexico.
Much of it's gone to Mexico.
They make plants in Mexico.
a friend of mine, a great supporter, but a great gentleman who builds plants.
That's what he builds, what are plants.
He said to me the other day, you got to see the plants we're building in Mexico.
I said, well, how do they compare to the U.S.?
He said, not even a contest.
And I said, isn't that a shame?
You remember what I did?
I said, you don't give us protection at our border.
I'm going to charge you a tariff for $25.
We won 28,000 soldiers on our border, and we had the safest border.
In the history of our country.
Now we have the worst border in the history of the world, by the way.
After NAFTA, the United States lost nearly 4 million manufacturing jobs and almost 1 in 3 auto jobs.
Joe Biden voted on that.
He gave you that.
Nearly a quarter of a million jobs were destroyed here in Michigan alone, including 40% of all auto jobs.
Think of that.
In fact, I had to check this number because it's inconceivable.
You would think factories.
60,000.
Factories closed and went to overseas.
Can you imagine?
60,000.
Who would think that?
When I first saw that number, I said, oh, somebody made a typographical error.
Maybe it was 600 factories.
Could have been 6,000, but that sounded too late.
60,000.
And the good news is, if the number is wrong, the fake news will be checking it out.
So I have to say, I mean, I have to give you the right numbers.
Otherwise, the fake news is out there.
Crooked Joe and his payday with the Biden family, they raked in millions and millions of dollars.
You see what's going on.
The news doesn't really report it.
Very little news reports.
But it was the men and women who got, every single day they got up and came back home with grease in their hands, and they were the ones that paid the price.
They paid a big, big price.
The only time Joe Biden has ever gotten his hands dirty is when he's taking cash from foreign countries, which is quite often, actually.
And I know how good the USMCA deal is because Canada, as you know, and Mexico are trying like hell to renegotiate it.
They want to renegotiate that deal.
But in less than two years, I got that done, the USMCA and many other deals.
I also renegotiated Obama's Korea trade deal to fully restore your protective tariff on foreign pickup trucks.
They wanted to change it.
The Democrats wanted it to expire.
And so did South Korea badly.
They didn't want it.
And without that, you wouldn't even have a truck industry.
Right now, it's probably the strongest part of your industry.
Without that, you wouldn't have an industry.
So it's something I was very proud to do.
It was not easy, but we got it done, and we got it done properly.
Michigan jobs would have been exported, while millions and millions of foreign cars would have flooded American streets.
That's what would have happened.
Obama and Biden didn't care one bit.
But I did, and I stopped it.
And I stopped it cold.
I took on communist China like no administration in history.
No administration in history did what I've done, bringing in hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into our treasury when no other president had gotten literally 10 cents.
And I also got $28 billion for our great farmers.
You know that, right?
Our farmers.
That's why I say, you think I'm going to...
unidentified
Roofers are furious about this new product that's going viral.
Despite colossal government subsidies, Ford alone is projecting to lose an astonishing...
$4.5 billion on electric vehicles.
Why are they agreeing to this?
That's what I don't understand.
Why are they agreeing to it?
Why does Ford and Jim, why are they all agreeing to this?
The cars aren't selling.
They got them all over the place.
You can buy them for peanuts.
Why are they not fighting and saying it doesn't work?
How about the trucks?
The trucks go for like one-fifth of a, you take a Power Belt or one of the good brands, they go for just a...
Small amount of time compared to a diesel-fired truck.
Diesel-fired.
You're not even allowed to say the word diesel-fired.
Oh, that's bad for the environment.
No, bad for the environment is having trucks all over the place that don't go.
But on the electric vehicles this year to comply with the mandate is 60,000 loss.
You're going to lose $60,000 for every car produced.
That sounds like a great deal.
But honestly, for UAW and for autoworkers and for everybody and for the country, it's not sustainable.
So they may try and do it, and I don't know, they're trying to do something for the environment.
By the way, that's worse for the environment than what we're talking about.
Much worse.
But think of it.
They're going to lose $60,000.
So when are they going to come to you and say, listen, we can't do this anymore?
I'm going to come to your head man, Sean.
I've been watching him in television.
He's a good man.
I think he's a good man.
But he's got a...
Actually, he's got to do it strong.
You know, the one thing I say about a politician, I've known politicians over my life, and then if you would have told me I was going to be a politician someday, I would have said, no way, I don't want to be a politician.
But the one thing I know is when you go out and you come out with an idea early, and then you're in an election and you sort of lose that idea, you always come back to that idea.
So these people are into the electric thing.
They may soften it up a little bit during the election.
They're coming back, and they're coming back stronger than ever.
It's like Ron DeSantimonious.
You know, he tried to destroy Social Security.
Now he's trying to backpedal it a little bit.
He wanted to bring the minimum age to 70. He wanted to destroy it.
He also put a heavy hit on Medicare.
What happens is now they back up a little bit, but they always go back to it as soon as the election's over.
So you can't go for that.
And in the case of Biden, he's coming back to electric vehicles.
And he hasn't even left yet.
So we're talking about, you know, but yeah, maybe someday soon he's going to leave because he wants to get more votes.
But just remember, he's coming back.
They always go back to their original thought.
That's where they are.
I don't know why, but that's where they are.
Biden's mandate isn't a government regulation.
It's a government assassination of your jobs and of your industry.
The auto industry is being assassinated.
And it makes no difference what you get.
I don't care what you get.
In the next two weeks or three weeks or five weeks, they're going to be closing up and they're going to be building those cars in China and other places.
It's a hit job on Michigan and on Detroit, and that's not sustainable.
These numbers are not sustainable.
No company can afford to lose $60,000 a car.
It's going to be more than that.
All of these cars will be manufactured in foreign lands that you couldn't care less about.
I want choice in schools.
And in the purchase of an automobile, an SUV or a truck.
I want choice for my automobile, for my truck, for my SUV.
And I also happen to want choice for schools.
Do we agree with that choice?
This is about autoworkers and automobiles and workers, period.
But I think we can say that everybody wants to see choice in schools also.
If you want to buy an electric car, that's absolutely fine.
I'm all for it.
But we should not be forcing consumers to buy electric vehicles.
They want to buy all trucks.
They want to make all trucks electric.
You know that, right?
They're going to destroy...
You talk about supply chain?
They're going to destroy the supply chain.
They're forcing the truckers to go all electric.
All electric trucks.
Now the trucks...
The trucks probably don't have the power.
They only go about 300 miles, whereas a diesel fuel truck goes 2,000 miles.
That's a big difference, would you say?
Also, the battery takes up so much room.
There's practically no room left for what you happen to be shipping.
The whole thing is crazy.
They want to do it with boats, too.
I was with a boating manufacturer in a great state, South Carolina, with a great governor, by the way, Henry McMaster.
And we were there two days ago.
I asked him that question.
I said, do they want?
He said, yeah, they want us to go all electric.
I said, how does that work for a boat?
He said, the entire boat would be like one big battery, would have no room for anything else.
He said, what happens if the boat has an accident and starts sinking?
Do you get electrocuted if the boat's sinking?
I said, you know, I've never thought of that, actually.
But I think I gave him an idea, actually.
Now, can you imagine the boat goes down and you're sitting on top of a battery?
In other words, you have to stop approximately for a truck six times for the same trip.
How are they going to stop six times?
And yet it's not stopping these lunatics in Washington.
These are lunatics.
These are deranged people.
And I'm not saying you can't buy an electric car.
If you want to buy an electric car or a hybrid or an all-gasoline car or a truck, that has to be your choice.
You should have that choice.
It's great.
Right?
I could see.
I could see electric cars working great for certain uses, short-term, short-distance uses.
We have unlimited gasoline.
Remember that we have unlimited.
China doesn't.
We have unlimited gasoline.
For 500 years, we have gasoline, more than any other country in the world.
Can you imagine?
A few years ago, we were energy independent.
Now we're begging countries to give us gasoline.
Can you imagine?
No, can you even imagine?
And we had the best, the lightest, the sweetest.
We have the best stuff.
Now we're getting it.
We're taking tar.
Tar.
You know what tar is?
It's like tar that they have to refine.
You know where they refine it?
In Houston, Texas, we take tar now from Venezuela!
Venezuela was supposed to be the bad guys.
Venezuela's getting rich.
We're refining their tar, and we're not taking our beautiful, beautiful stuff.
We have the best stuff, but we have the most.
We have more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia.
We were energy independent, and we were going to make our fortune, and we were going to sell it to Europe.
We were going to pay off our debt.
We were going to lower taxes still further.
It's amazing.
And then these people came in, and they had no clue, or they had a clue, which is even more dangerous in a certain way.
Right now, electric cars don't go far enough, and they're just far, far too expensive, and people aren't going to be able to afford them.
And the cost of operation is also much more.
This is their option, though, if they want them.
It's their option, and it's an option that some people will take, and I am all for them, but I will not allow, under any circumstances, the American automobile industry to die.
unidentified
I wanted to thrive and to thrive like Beverly Hills.
But we're here today at Drake Enterprises, a family-owned and operated Michigan auto parts supplier that has been manufacturing in America for over 70 years.
Drake was founded by a great man in 1952, Benny Stemple, right?
Benny?
We love Benny.
Your father, your grandfather.
An American man, the deceased American man with a big American dream.
He had a big, big, beautiful dream.
Benny started with just four people and soon came to dominate the production of gear shift levers for trucks.
Today the company produces transmission components, driveline components, engine components.
And car parts for every one of the Detroit Big Three.
So I won't tell them I've said bad things about them in your place, okay?
I just want them to fight for what's right.
It's common sense.
But tonight I was honored to meet Benny's son, Lee, and Lee's children, Nate and Heather.
Thank you very much.
That's great.
Beautiful family.
Nate and Heather say their vision for this company is to prove that the American dream is still alive for their employees like...
It was just for their granddad, who was so wonderful.
So Lee, Nate, and Heather, we're going to help you get that job done.
Today, nearly 100% of Drake's business is producing components that go into vehicles with internal combustion engines, the very product that Joe Biden and the radical left Democrats, fascists, Marxists, now they want to make them, for whatever reason, illegal.
Figure that one out.
And yes, it's true.
Today's radical Democrat Party wants to legalize drugs, shoplifting, and sexual mutilation of your children, but they want to allow your gas-powered Suburban Silverados and Ford F-150s to die.
They can die.
Under a Trump administration, gasoline engines will be allowed.
Because they're looking over the statistics now, they're saying, but the real number will be 100%.
Because under Biden's mandate, the entire car industry will be packed up and shipped to China, which controls over 80% of the supply chain for electric vehicle batteries.
They control the whole thing.
So they think close to 100% of the business will be gone.
Every time Joe Biden and the UAW's political leadership talk about a fair transition to all electric cars, American labor will be under siege.
It's not going to work for you.
It can't work.
And I learned a lot today with this great family.
I tell you, they said, you know, it just won't work.
They don't need anything that you have right here in Michigan, and they have beautiful product.
There's no such thing as a fair transition to the end of your way of life.
You're going to lose your beautiful way of life.
For auto workers, Biden's forced transition is a transition to hell.
It's a transition to hell.
It's a transition to unemployment and to inflation without end.
The inflation that you have now, we didn't have inflation.
We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.
You know that?
Because you went four years like you've never had in your history, in the history of Michigan.
To the striking workers, I support you and your goal of fair wages and greater stability, and I truly hope you get a fair deal for yourselves and your families.
If your union leaders will not demand that Crooked Joe repeal his electric vehicle mandate immediately, then it doesn't matter what hourly words you get.
It just doesn't make a damn bit of difference, because in two to three years, you will not have one job in this state.
And you've seen it happen before.
You've seen what happened, where massive percentages of your industry went to other countries like Mexico, like China, like South Korea, like Japan.
In other words, your current negotiations don't mean as much as you think.
I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets, but I don't think you're picketing for the right thing.
But if they endorse me, your leadership, you can tell them I said it, although I have a feeling they may be watching tonight.
Because, you know, when Biden came here yesterday, they only had 11 people.
I'll bet you we have 10,000 people standing outside.
unidentified
Right?
I think we do.
In fact, In fact, for a little while, we're driving through.
Joe Biden is surrendering our auto industry to China, just like he surrendered our borders to the cartels, and he surrendered Afghanistan in the most embarrassing week, day, time period in the history of our country.
He surrendered to the Taliban, took the military out first.
You don't take the military.
You take the military out last.
So tell your UAW leadership, no problems with them.
But they have to endorse Trump, because if they don't, all they're doing is committing suicide.
And honestly, you don't want that to happen, because they're committing suicide on the back of your jobs, and you can't let that happen.
The Democrats says they wave the white flag of surrender over your future to other foreign countries.
You can't have it then.
So if you could speak to Sean.
He's listening right now, I'm sure.
Sean.
unidentified
Endorse Trump and you can take a nice two-month vacation, come back.
So let me say to every UAW member and skilled workers all across our nation, Joe Biden, the Democrat Party, and their political cronies, cease to serve your interests a long time ago.
And that's because they didn't know we were coming.
They didn't even know we were coming.
They just found out.
In reality, they don't represent you.
They represent a deep state bureaucracy, a global financial class, and a political class that have taken control of this country for their own enrichment and self-purposes.
Stealing your wealth and stealing your labor while shipping off our best and brightest to die in expensive, exotic foreign wars in countries that you've never even heard of.
And just like you're fighting for your rights and your American dream, I'm fighting for my rights and fighting for my freedom against the coordinated, corrupt, very...
I've never seen anything like it.
It's weaponized justice.
We have a weaponized justice system.
I want to indict.
Think of this.
I want to indict my political opponent.
He's beating me.
We got to indict him.
I think, you know, that works two ways because when the next one gets in, let's hope that's me.
And I'm sure I'd never do a thing like that.
I would not.
You have an opponent and you say, let's indict him.
And because people know me so well, we know each other very well, my ratings and my approval numbers went up.
I'm the only person that ever got indicted when my numbers went up.
And what that does is it sets off a chain of events that's very dangerous in future years.
It could happen to them very easily.
The reason Crooked Joe and his thugs are trying so hard to stop me is that in my first term, I disrupted all of it.
Oh, did I disrupt?
That was called major disruption.
And in my second term, which was sort of having now, but I don't want the results, right?
I don't want the results of this second term.
This second term is a disaster for this country.
Worst president, think of it, there's never been a president like this.
I say that you could take the five worst presidents in history, add them up, and he's done a worse job, and all of them added up, but now I'm changing it.
I think I can make it to ten, because nobody, you look at our border, you look at everything, you look at our woke military.
I defeated ISIS.
Our military was so great.
I rebuilt it.
But you look at what's happening in this country.
It's horrible.
But in my second term, we'll finish the job and we'll get rid of the cheaters, the liars, the scammers and the criminals.
unidentified
They'll lose their grip on power once and for all.
So if you want to save your livelihoods and your way of life, then you need to send a message and join the ultimate strike against the globalist class by casting your vote for a gentleman known as Donald J. Trump.
In the most important election of our lifetime.
I believe this will be the most important election in our lifetime.
You know, I used to say that in 2016, and I totally meant it.
This blows it away.
We're going to lose our country.
We're going to lose.
We've got probably 15 to 18 million people, the real number, pouring into our country.
We have a disaster in Ukraine that would have never happened.
We have a potential disaster with Taiwan, China.
That would have never happened if it happens.
But boy, they are circling.
I'll tell you, they want it so badly.
And they saw what happened in Afghanistan.
They saw what happened with the Taliban.
And they say the people they have there now are grossly incompetent.
Putin would have never done it.
President Xi would have never done it with me.
We talk about things, a lot of things.
They would have never done it.
They wouldn't have done it for another reason also.
In the case of Russia.
The oil prices would have been so low that they wouldn't have been able to afford it because you would have had $40 a barrel oil.
And at $40, he could not have prosecuted the war.
But at $115, he made a fortune and mixed a fortune with the war.
It's up there again now.
I don't know if you've been watching.
It's getting up there again now.
So give me four more years and I will give you the end to this horrible globalism that's killing our country.
I'll give you the return of the United States of America as the greatest and strongest industrial nation in the history of the world.
Together, we will dismantle the corrupt power structure that has feasted on the suffering of the American autoworker and the workers of any kind, not just autoworkers, workers of any kind.
We will cast from power the financial forces that have turned American cities into ghost towns to build skyscrapers in Beijing, China.
We will wield every lever of government to defend you and to hold accountable those who have profited from the betrayal and suffering of the American factory workers.
So sad to see.
As your 47th President of the United States, I will be your protector.
I will be your advocate and I will be your greatest champion, the greatest champion that you've ever had.
From day one, I will terminate Joe Biden's electric vehicle mandate, and I will cancel every job-killing regulation that is crushing American autoworkers.
I will unleash a thing called American energy.
Stop the ban on the internal combustion engine.
And we will drill, baby drill, and we will make zero environmental difference.
It will have zero environmental difference.
Zero.
In fact, if anything, it's probably cleaner than what they're doing.
But it'll save your family a yearly fortune and give you a much better way of life.
You're losing your way of life.
I will then go to every foreign country where we're paying billions and billions of dollars for their military defense, as I was doing before, and tell them that if they do not massively increase their purchases of Ford, Chevys, GMs, and Jeeps, our troops are packing up, and we're coming home.
You've got to buy our products.
You've got to buy our products.
And that's going to be the least of them.
And if we can afford to send hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine, then we can afford to have an auto industry that pays our workers a good living wage and keeps our workers working.
Having a vibrant car industry is far more important than almost anything we can do for a very important thing called national security.
We need a rebirth of loyalty in this country to that end.
We will bring back a very beautiful word.
Protection.
Financial protection.
You're going to be protected financially while we still have the power to do it, you know?
If that happens, that's the worst thing to happen maybe in our country's history.
It'll put us in a much different position.
But take a look at what's happening.
Countries are leaving our standard.
In reality, protectionism never truly...
It went out of fashion.
Our corrupt politicians just stopped protecting American jobs and workers, and they started protecting the jobs and workers in China and Mexico, Germany, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam, many other countries too.
Under the Trump presidency, patriotic protectionism will be the new American way.
We want to be protected.
That's what we...
Have our government for we want protection in many ways and we're going to stop the crime in our cities and we're going to stop the crime in our country.
And we're not going to be nice about it.
We're not going to be nice about it.
That means protecting our workers, protecting our wages, protecting our jobs, protecting our industries, protecting our communities and protecting our Great.
Something you don't hear about very much anymore.
A great American dream.
We had an American dream.
You don't hear about that with this guy.
This guy walks up yesterday.
Looks like he's going to fall over standing in front of some people.
Looks like he's going to fall over.
This is not a leader.
The whole world is laughing at us.
They respected your leader.
Whether you like your leader or not, they respected your leader.
They said, we're not going to mess.
We're not going to mess.
Upon taking office, I will impose an across-the-board tariff on foreign-made goods.
I will also pass the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act.
If China or any other country makes us pay a 100% or 200% or 300% tariff or tax, we will make them pay a reciprocal tariff of 100%, 200%, or 300%.
Can you believe they have a most favored nation status?
Because they say we are a developing nation.
Well, we're a developing nation, too.
When you look at our cities, we're developing.
We're developing in the wrong way.
They are doing the worst job.
Democrat mayors, Democrat governors.
And we will impose stiff penalties on China and other trade abusers.
Foreign auto parts manufacturing will be among our first targets.
We're going to bring it home from China and other foreign countries on a very grand scale.
That's you, McGee.
All right?
That's you.
And because we want all Americans to win and win big from these policies, we will insist that as tariffs on foreign countries go up, because they tariff us crazily, and then we have these stupid people.
Some congressmen, some senators that say, no, sir, we shouldn't tariff them, but they're tariffing us.
Does it matter, sir?
It's free trade.
I say, is this guy okay?
But when those foreign countries tariff us, taxes on American workers, which is really what it is, small businesses and middle-class families, we will be doing the same to them, and you will watch things happen that you won't even believe.
For one thing, you're going to bring back jobs at levels.
You know, China, They put a big tax on us when we sell a car, a truck, or anything.
And they say to the American companies, we don't want your trucks from America.
Come over and build a plant over here.
So they're building plants all over China.
How stupid is it?
We should do the same thing.
And we started doing the same thing, and we were doing the same thing.
I gave you the largest tax cut in the history of our country, larger than the Reagan tax cut.
And we'll do it again.
We'll deliver tax cuts the likes of which you've never seen before.
You will do better, make more money, and have a more secure job than you've ever had before.
Best of all, they will be fully paid for by outsourcers and farm producers who will be paying trillions and trillions of dollars into our treasury for the privilege of doing business in the United States of America.
Isn't that nice?
unidentified
We're going to get rid of a big portion of our deficit, too.
For years, foreign nations have looted and plundered your hopes, your dreams, and your heritage.
And now, they're going to pay for what they have stolen and what they have done to you, my friends.
We're going to do it together.
We're going to take their money.
We're going to take their factories.
We're going to rebuild the industrial bedrock of this country like it used to be many, many decades ago.
By the time this battle is over, the rusted-out factories will not be here in Michigan.
They'll be in Beijing, Shanghai, and other parts of the world.
Taking it back.
We're taking it back.
And it won't be hard.
The gleaming new buildings and roaring production lines will be built in Lansing and Flint and Sterling Heights and Grand Rapids and Atiak, Dearborn and Detroit.
Ladies and gentlemen, I've been preparing my entire life for this battle.
We did such a great job four years ago.
We were unfairly interrupted.
Let's be nice about it.
We were very unfairly interrupted.
But in many ways, this is better because we've seen what a bad job they have shown us.
What a horrible job they do.
And we'll be able to do things that nobody would have thought possible.
And people won't be complaining even a little bit.
Because between crime and all of the jobs that have been stolen from us and all of the factories that have been closing, all of the bad things that have been happening with Afghanistan and with Ukraine and with everything, people will say, wow, we want these changes to be made.
We want these changes to be made very, very quickly.
Just three years ago, we had a great economy and the strongest borders in our country's history.
We had the best, strongest in our history.
We were energy independent, soon to be dominant.
We had no inflation.
We had a rebuild.
I rebuilt the entire military, United States military.
We gave $80 billion.
Think of it, brand new tanks and planes and goggles and 700,000 guns and rifles, 70,000.
You make cars.
Who has a used car lot with 70,000?
And these are nobody.
If you have 500 cars, they tell me that's a lot.
You have 70,000.
And these are armor-plated in many cases.
These cost millions of dollars apiece.
Many cases.
We gave them 70,000.
Do you know that Afghanistan is one of the largest sellers of weapons in the world right now?
Can you believe it?
unidentified
They're selling all of this stuff that these guys just gave them.
We were going to keep Bagram, the airbase, because it's right next to where China, forget about Afghanistan, where China makes their missiles, nuclear missiles.
It's one hour away.
We're going to keep that.
They ran from it.
They ran from it.
They left it.
They left the lights on.
They left the dogs, by the way, for those people that like the dogs.
It's a big question.
They left the dogs.
But we were going to keep that.
We were going to do a job.
And we were going to be out.
We were getting out with real dignity and strength.
We weren't going to lose those 13 incredible souls that I met the parents and family the other night.
They're incredible people.
They're so devastated.
They don't talk about the 38 people that were literally no arms, no legs.
The faces blown to pieces.
And the hundreds of other people that died.
All unnecessarily wouldn't have happened.
You know, I spoke to Abdul, the head of the Taliban.
I made a rough conversation.
I said, listen, Abdul.
Don't kill any of our people anymore.
You kill any of our people, we're going to hit you harder than anybody's ever been hit.
And he said, but why, but why do you send me a picture of my home?
I said, you'll have to figure that out.
You'll have to figure that one out.
You'll have to figure that one out.
But you know what?
After that, for 18 months, not one soldier was killed in our country.
They were sniping him and killing him.
And he's still there.
He's in charge.
Can you imagine the feeling when they said, Abdul, Abdul, the Americans have left.
The soldiers are gone.
He said, no, no, no, they would never do that.
Only stupid people would do that.
No, no, the soldiers have gone.
Before we took our people out, we have hundreds of people, maybe thousands, but we have hundreds of people that are American citizens that are still there.
We took the soldiers out first.
That was the problem.
And they should have used Bagram as their place because you had a tremendous area.
It would have been that disaster that you witnessed with the planes going up.
Remember when Biden said, we'll never have a Vietnam with the helicopters going up?
Well, this was worse.
This was a plane going up with people hanging all over the plane and falling from 3,000 feet in the sky.
That's three times the height of the Empire State Building, by the way.
Russia was not going into Ukraine.
China was not going into Taiwan.
We had our enemies in full retreat.
They respected us all over the world.
We were respected.
Now we're left out as a country.
And now we're coming back to do it all over again.
And I promise you this, with me as your president, our opponents will lose and our American workers will be the biggest winner of them all.
Secure the Border00:14:57
unidentified
So with your help and with your vote, we will expel the globalists from our government.
And we will do something that's very, very special that I've been saying for a long time, and we had it going at a level that nobody ever thought possible.
A president who acts like I did as governor, enforce the law.
First and foremost, and that means what I'll do on day one is sign an executive order to send the National Guard to partner with Customs and Border Patrol to make sure that we stop the flow of fentanyl over the border, but also to make sure that we send a much different message.
We want you here in this country to fill the six million vacant jobs we have, but only if you come here to follow the law and only if you come here legally.
If you come here illegally, we will apprehend you and we will send you back across the border from which...
You came.
And the fact is that until we set a law and order agenda in this country, not only now, but in the future, we won't be able to continue this.
And I'll tell you this.
Donald Trump failed on this as well.
He said he was going to build a wall across the whole border.
He built 52 miles of wall that said Mexico would pay for it.
Guess what?
I think if Mexico knew that he was only going to build 52 miles, they might have paid for the 52 miles.
And the reason why we're in this mess is because elites in D.C. for far too long have chosen surrender over strength when it comes to the CCP.
Some people in our country got rich, our industrial base got hollowed out, and they have been able to build the second most powerful military in the entire world.
We need a totally new approach to China.
We are going to have real hard power in the Indo-Pacific, like Reagan, to deter their ambitions.
We're going to have economic independence from China, or we're decoupling our economy.
And we are going to go after the cultural power they have in this country.
As governor of Florida, I ban the CCP from buying land in our state.
We should do that all across these United States.
We shouldn't have them in our universities.
We shouldn't have Confucius Institutes.
So you see a country in decline.
Our power's in decline.
China's going to surpass us this decade.
And if they do that, that's going to affect every single American household.
As your president, I am not going to let that happen.
I'm going to reverse this country's decline.
We are going to choose strength, not surrender, when it comes to the CCP.
So the first thing I want to say is I agree with everything.
The Republicans on this stage are on the right side of this issue.
Militarize the southern border, stop funding sanctuary cities, and end foreign aid to Mexico and Central America to end the incentives to come across.
But I do go a step further.
You're right about that, Ilya.
I favor ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants in this country.
Now the left will howl about the Constitution and the 14th Amendment.
The difference between me and them is I've actually read the 14th Amendment.
What it says is that all persons born or naturalized in the United States...
And, subject to the laws and jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.
So nobody believes that the kid of a Mexican diplomat in this country enjoys birthright citizenship.
Not a judge or legal scholar in this country will disagree with me on that.
Well, if the kid of a Mexican diplomat doesn't enjoy birthright citizenship, then neither does the kid of an illegal migrant who broke the law to come here.
And as the father of two sons, it is hard for me to look them in the eye and say, you have to follow the law.
Our own government fails to follow its own laws.
That's how we really go the distance and solve this problem and restore the rule of law in the United States of America, because that is part of what it even means to be an American.
unidentified
Senator Scott, you oppose ending birthright citizenship.
That when you think of the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, it was certainly written as it relates to slavery, not as it relates to illegal immigration.
It's been applied to illegal immigration.
So the challenge that we face is, in fact, one that has to do with whether or not the people that come here are under the jurisdiction of our laws.
And frankly, if you come here illegally, you are not.
Now, surviving a Supreme Court argument is something I can't tell you.
But from a perspective of the Constitution, I think it's simple.
that clearly it was designed for slavery and not for illegal immigration.
I'll go one step further though.
When we have a conversation about the things that are happening on this stage, we think about the fact that Vivek just said we were all good people, and I appreciate that because last debate he said we were all good.
When every other CEO expanded into the Chinese market, you know what I did with my first company?
We opened a subsidiary in China.
I know.
But you know what I did that was different than every other company?
We got the hell out of there.
And when I started my next company, Strive, right when I started my next company, Strive, to compete against BlackRock, excuse me, to compete against BlackRock, I made a commitment that we would never do business in China.
In honor of Ronald Reagan's library, if I may admit, from one admirer of Ronald Reagan to another, from one admirer of Reagan to another, we cannot see if it's not violating Reagan's commandment.
Well, let me tell you, I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer.
But, you know, something I've done with everybody on this stage is I've actually secured reform in Congress.
You know, Ron, you talk a really good game about cutting spending, but you've increased spending in Florida by 30%.
When I was a member of Congress in 2006, right after Hurricane Katrina – Dana, you remember it – we stood our ground.
I led House conservatives.
We cut $100 billion out of the federal budget.
It can be done, but as I said in the last debate, I'll say again, this is no time for on-the-job training.
I'm going to be ready on day one to get Congress to step up, secure the southern border of the United States, build a military fitted to our times, and we're going to get spending in Washington, D.C. under control once and for all.
You know, what we knew in South Carolina was you take care of those who take care of you.
We have to start taking care of law enforcement.
But it's not just taking care of them with words.
It's making sure that you also follow through on what they do.
Right now, we have a lot of stolen guns on the street.
Well, these law enforcement officers, they arrest these people, and then they go and they're let out the very next day.
So law enforcement feels like they don't know what has their back.
We have to start prosecuting according to the law.
We have to make sure we have the backs of law enforcement, and we have to make sure that we're a country of law and order.
But I want to go back to China because I don't think we spent enough time.
Right now, we have to look at what government's doing to hurt us against China, too.
You have a company, U.S. Antibiotics, that produces amoxicillin, the number one antibiotic that we need.
And right now, there is a company in Bristol, Tennessee, that produces that.
Yet our federal government only gets it from China.
We need to be focusing on companies that produce in America and supporting those companies that produce in America, not companies that are helping China.
unidentified
Governor, we will be talking foreign policy later.
Thank you, Stuart.
We're going to stay on the topic of crime because it affects all of us.
Governor Burgum, for the first time ever, the Univision poll found that mass shootings and gun safety are one of the most important issues for Latino voters.
Mental health concerns are not unique to the United States, but gun violence is.
The first we need to understand is I think that the liberal left seems to be just completely bent on prosecuting law-abiding citizens that are gun owners, because every solution they have to this is take away the Second Amendment rights of Americans, and somehow that's going to solve the problem.
But all these cities that we're talking about that showed the videos of tonight, they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country.
So we know that that's not what's working.
What we have to do is get back to the core issues about the family.
We have to get back to...
We've got to get back to actually enforcing the law, as these people talked about, and like we've done in North Dakota, where we've got the goal and we're on the track to be in the most military-friendly state in the nation.
We've got the most military and the most support of what we're doing in terms of law enforcement because the morale is down because we've been defunding the police, because they've been attacked in the press.
The police have become the bad guys when they're the one.
There's all these jobs available in America.
Why would you be a policeman if people only respect them?
Every time I see a policeman, the first thing I...
There's two sides to this, and we have to be very honest about it.
One is we do have to seal that southern border.
Building the wall is not enough.
They're building cartel-financed tunnels underneath that wall.
Semi-trucks can drive through them.
We have to use our own military to seal the Swiss cheese of a southern border.
But we also have to be honest.
There's a demand-side problem in this country, too.
A mental health epidemic.
I met family in Iowa.
Two parents, Kathy and Derek.
They lost their son, Sebastian, 17 years old.
He bought Percocet on Snapchat, and then he died.
Why did he die?
Because it was laced with fentanyl.
That is closer to bioterrorism, not a drug overdose.
That is poisoning.
So it is our job to make sure that never happens.
But it's also our job to make sure that 17-year-olds don't turn to Percocet via Snapchat.
We have to bring back mental health care in this country, not with pumping pharmaceuticals, but with faith-based approaches that restore purpose and meaning in the next generation of Americans.
Many of them are getting it through social media.
and this isn't a Republican point or a Democrat point, but if you're 16 years old or under, you should not be using an addictive social media product, period.
This is something that we can both agree on and we can revive both the mental health of this country while stopping the fentanyl epidemic that will kill more people this year than who died on 9/11 and I refuse to be a passive bystander sitting in the White House like the hollowed out husk of a current president we have.
We will step up and address this problem to stand for Americans and our children.
I'm going to use the U.S. military to go after the Mexican drug cartels.
They are killing our people.
And the stories that I've seen in Florida, we had an infant, 18 months, parents rented an Airbnb.
And apparently the people that had rented it before were using drugs, the infant was crawling, the toddler was crawling on the carpet and ingested fentanyl residue and died.
Are we just going to sit here and let this happen, this carnage happen in our country?
I am not going to do that.
So I guarantee you on day one, this border is going to be a day one issue for me as president.
We're going to declare it a national march.
Yes, we'll build the wall.
We'll do remain in Mexico.
But those Mexican drug cartels are going to be treated like the foreign terrorist organizations that they are.
And as a father of three, as a grandfather of three beautiful little girls, I am sick and tired.
of these mass shootings happening in the United States of America.
If I'm president of the United States, I'm going to go to the Congress of the United States, and we're going to pass a federal expedited death penalty for anyone involved in a mass shooting so that they can meet their fate in months, not years.
It is unconscionable that the Parkland shooter, Ron...
Is actually going to spend the rest of his life behind bars in Florida.
That's not justice.
We have to mete out justice and send a message to these would-be killers that you are not going to live out your days behind bars.
Well, thank you for reiterating the question because I'd love to answer it.
Look, I think it's one of the choices here.
You know, my former running mate, Donald Trump.
Actually has a plan to start to consolidate more power in Washington, D.C., consolidate more power in the executive branch.
If I'm president of the United States, it's my intention to make the federal government smaller by returning to the states those resources and programs that are rightfully theirs under the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.
That means all Obamacare funding, all housing funding, all HHS funding.
All of it goes back to the states.
We'll shut down the Federal Department of Education.
We'll allow states to innovate.
We're going to revive federalism in America, and states are going to help bring America back.
unidentified
May I remind everyone to keep within their time frame so that we can get as many questions in as possible.
This question for Governor DeSantis.
Over 26 million Americans don't have insurance coverage.
I think this is a symptom of our overall economic decline.
Everything has gotten more expensive.
You see insurance rates are going through the roof.
People that are going to get groceries.
I spoke with a woman in Iowa, and she said, you know, for the first time in my life, I'm having to take things out of my grocery cart when I get to the checkout line because the total goes up so quickly.
So this is very real, and people are hurting out there.
So we've got to address the underlying problem with Bidenomics, the overspending, taking all Biden's rules and regulations.
I'm going to throw them in the trash can on day one.
You're not going to have to worry about that.
We're going to open up all of our energy.
We need to tackle that and have more power for the people and the doctor-patient relationship.
unidentified
General, why is your record in Florida on insurance worse than the national average?
We also don't have a lot of welfare benefits in Florida.
You know, we're basically saying this is a field of dreams.
You can do well in the state, but we're not going to be like California and have massive numbers of people on government programs without work requirements.
We believe you work, and you've got to do that, and so that goes for all the welfare benefits.
And you know what that's done, Stuart?
Our unemployment rate is the lowest amongst any big state.
We have the highest GDP growth amongst any big state, and even CNBC.
No fan of mine ranked Florida the number one economy in America.
First of all, how can we be the best country in the world and have the most expensive health care in the world?
We have an issue.
My mom was in the hospital.
And when she was in the hospital, they tried to bring her a couple of Tylenol.
And she said, I don't need it.
And they said, honey, go ahead and take it because you're paying for it anyway.
Why is it that when we got the bill, the insurance company in the hospital negotiated the bill for her without her having anything to do with it?
When I am president, we will break all of it.
from the insurance company to the hospitals, to the doctor's offices, to the PBMs, to the pharmaceutical companies.
We will make it all transparent because when you do that, you will realize that's what the problem is.
Second thing is you've got to deal with tort law.
The doctors don't give you the 10 tests because they want to.
It's because of the 90% chance they'll get sued.
We have to put the patient in the driver's seat.
They've been in the back seat for way too long.
and once we give the patient the ability to decide their health care deciding which plan they want that is when we will see magic happen but we're going to have to make every part of the industry open up and show us where their warts are because they all have them and we need to fix this on behalf of the american Gross.
They said, we're going to subsidize a particular kind of software back in 2008 under Obama.
And they said, hey, we're going to do this.
It's going to make everybody more productive.
All of you that are watching have been to a doctor's office and the doctors got his back to you and their hands on a keyboard.
The only industry in the world that's ever absorbed $1 trillion of IT and became less productive.
They saw less patients per day as U.S. health care because they were subsidizing a certain kind of technology.
It wasn't about improving health care.
It was about picking winners and losers.
Every time the federal government's involved, whether it's higher education, healthcare, or now the auto industry, things get more expensive and less competitive.
unidentified
That was a great transition because we are going to move on to future education Did you see his weird smile?
Well, and school choice isn't the only answer, but I'll tell you it's not out of a lack of trying that we didn't try and get school choice in South Carolina.
What I'll tell you, first of all, is we have to acknowledge the fact that 67% of our eighth graders are not proficient in reading or math.
Over 80% of our eighth graders aren't proficient in history or civics.
And recently they came out and said our 12- and 13-year-olds are scoring at the lowest levels they've been scoring in reading and math in decades.
So the first thing we've got to do is we've got to make sure we catch our kids back up.
We have to make sure they can read.
A child that can't read by third grade is four times less likely to graduate high school.
We need to do reading remediation.
We need complete transparency in the classroom.
No parent should ever wonder what's being said or taught to their child in the classroom.
We need to make sure that we have school choice so that there's competition.
We need to move all the programs from the federal government down to the states and let states decide what education looks like in their states.
And we need to start building things in America again.
Let's put vocational classes back in our high schools and let's get our kids building the things that we know that we can make.
When we start to focus on that and really We've got to quit spending time on this DEI and CRT and instead focus on financial literacy, on digital literacy, and on making sure that our kids know what they need to do to have the jobs of the next generation.
unidentified
On the subject of education, a question for Governor Christie.
Students in your state are getting high marks on their report cards, but minorities are not doing well with math and reading.
Black and Hispanic students averaging 29 points lower than white students in New Jersey.
And look, in our state, Stuart, frankly, before I was governor, that gap was close to 50%.
And what we did was institute more charter schools and more Renaissance schools and more public school choice in New Jersey with innovative solutions in cities like Camden, where now we took what was the worst school district in America during my time.
We have now increased that by nearly 40% in terms of efficiency.
It can be done when you give people choice.
But let's tell the truth to everybody about what this is.
This public school system is no longer run by the public.
It is run by the teachers unions in this country.
Randy Weingarten and her crew are...
Absolutely strangling.
They're taking the worst of their members and defending them rather than advocating for our kids.
And when you have the President of the United States sleeping with a member of the Teachers Union, there is no chance that you could take the stranglehold away from the Teachers Union every day.
They have an advocate inside the White House every day for the worst of their teachers, not for our students to be the best they can be.
A President of the United States is to take on the Teachers Union.
I did it in New Jersey.
I will do it as President of the United States.
unidentified
Governor DeSantis, I have a question for you.
Governor DeSantis, I have a question for you.
Florida's new black history curriculum says slaves develop skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.
You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it.
So, first of all, that's a hoax that was perpetrated by Kamala Harris.
We are not going to be doing that.
Second of all, that was written by descendants of slaves.
These are great black history scholars, so we need to stop playing these games.
Here's the deal.
Our country's education system is in decline because it's focused on indoctrination, denying parents' rights.
Florida represents the revival of American education.
We're ranked number one in the nation in education by U.S. News& World Report.
My wife and I, we have a 6 '5".
This is personal to us.
We didn't just talk about universal school choice.
We enacted universal school choice.
We didn't just talk about Parents' Bill of Rights.
We enacted the Parents' Bill of Rights.
We eliminated critical race theory, and we now have American civics and the Constitution in our schools in a really big way, just like President Reagan asked for in his farewell address back in 1989.
Florida is showing how it's done.
We're standing with parents and our kids are benefiting.
He and Kamala should have just taken the one sentence out.
America has suffered because of slavery.
But we've overcome that.
We are the greatest nation on earth because we faced our demons in the mirror and made a decision.
So often we think that all the issues, you talk about crime and education and healthcare, we always think that those issues go back to slavery.
Here's the challenge though.
Black families survive slavery.
We survive poll taxes and literacy tests.
We survive discrimination being woven into the laws of our country.
What was hard to survive was Johnson's Great Society where they decided to put money...
Where they decided to take the black father out of the household to get a check in the mail, and you can now measure that in unemployment, in crime, in devastation.
If you want to restore hope, you've got to restore the family, restore capitalism, and put Americans back at work together as one American family.
Our nation continues to go in the right direction.
It's why I can say I have been discriminated against, but America...
Asia is not a racist country.
Never, ever doubt who we are.
We are the greatest country on God's green earth.
unidentified
And frankly, the city on the hill needs a brand new leader.
Even New Hampshire failed to actually pass a piece of legislation here.
The very people who say that this increases the risk of suicide are also the ones saying that parents don't have the right to know about that increased risk of suicide.
I think this is a state's issue, but I do want to say something because all night long we've been talking about issues about how it's broken in Washington and I respect all of the people on the stage here for their hundred plus years of public service.
Thank you.
But the reason why we're not talking about education or health care or safety being a problem in North Dakota is because we have a business leader.
I've got more experience as a business leader than I think this whole group combined.
I know I've created more jobs than everybody else on stage.
Thousands of high-paying jobs that have real meaning.
So as a business leader, you come in and you treat the taxpayer like a customer.
So in North Dakota, instead of fighting with the teachers' unions, we actually created a K-12 coordinating council.
Everybody gets in the room and the customer is the student.
But you do understand that this is an issue that many people in America really are concerned about, worried about, about parents and notification in schools.
And that's why we have 50 platforms of innovation.
That's why we have states.
There are certain things the federal government is supposed to do.
It's not the Department of Education.
That needs to be assembled.
We've got to move it back to states.
Do what we did in North Dakota.
Instead of, like, oh, here's a choice school and here's an old school the old way where the teachers are in and the kids are trapped, we made every school in North Dakota an innovation school.
Every school got out from under the red tape.
and the things that help teach the values that we're trying to get, like 4-H, like FFA, like They can get credit for all of that.
And by the way, North Dakota is now at the top of the median SAT scores in the country, right now.
unidentified
My President Pence, the Department of Homeland Security warns that violence against He didn't answer the question.
And when I was governor of the state of Indiana, we doubled it.
And as to your question, Dana, let's be very, very clear.
When the Linmar Community Schools in Iowa had a policy where you could, you had to have a permission slip from your parents to get a Tylenol, but you could get a gender transition plan without notifying your parents.
I weighed in with a foundation.
We're going to stand up for the rights of parents, and we're going to pass a federal ban on transgender chemical or surgical surgery anywhere in the country.
We've got to protect our kids from this radical gender ideology agenda, and we've got to empower parents at the state level.
With the ability to choose where the kids go to school, whether it's public, private, parochial, or homeschool, you empower parents, and our schools will straighten up and reflect our values and focus on the basics faster than you could possibly imagine.
unidentified
Next subject.
China is investing heavily in their tech companies.
$280 billion every year on semiconductor research and development.
That is one CHIPS Act per year.
Governor DeSantis, you Why is a British guy asking questions in American debate?
It is an extraordinary opportunity to expand well beyond the productivity that we have now and to have Americans be able to be involved in that revolution, Dana.
You know, each time we have shown incredible innovation and progress in this country.
What we've done with it is to expand all kinds of new, even unthought of opportunities for folks.
Yes, we have to do retraining for folks who lose some of their jobs, and we should be doing that.
And we should have more training available both at the county college level and the local level for people to be able to access it.
So yes, I would be in favor of that.
But this is a much bigger issue than that.
We can't be afraid of innovation.
America has been the great innovator of this world over the last 250 years.
A technological innovator, a manufacturing innovator, and a freedom and governmental innovator.
And that's why America has to continue to stand strong in the world, pro-innovation, pro-progress.
And I will tell you this.
As President of the United States, what I will do is to make sure that every innovator in this country gets the government the hell off its back and out of its pocket so that it can innovate and bring great new inventions to our country that will make everybody's lives better.
So the answer is I have a radical idea for the Republican Party.
Jake Pohl!
...and part of how we win elections is reaching the next generation of young Americans where they are.
So when I get into office, I've been very clear.
Kids under the age of social, under the age of 16, should not be using addictive social media.
We're only going to ever get to declaring independence from China, which I favor, if we actually win.
So while the Democrats are running rampant, reaching the next generation three to one, there's exactly one person in the Republican Party which talks a big game about reaching young people, and that's me.
And let me level with all of you.
I'm the new guy here, and so I know I have to earn your trust.
What do you see?
You see a young man who's in a bit of a hurry, maybe a little ambitious.
Bit of a know-it-all, it seems, at times.
I'm here to tell you, no, I don't know it all.
I will listen.
I will have the best people, the best and brightest in this country, whatever age they are, advising me.
We will be probably many of the people on this stage included.
That's how I built my companies.
I want to be challenged.
I want people who disagree with me.
That's what makes America great, because we're not a perfect nation.
That means they can get your contacts, they can get your financial information, they can get your emails, they can get your text messages, they can get all of these things.
This is very important to our party.
unidentified
This is very important to our party, and I'm going to say we should stop.
I think we would be better served as a Republican Party if we're not sitting here hurling personal insults and actually have a legitimate debate about policy following Reagan's 11th Amendment.
And the answer is, that is what actually makes our country strong.
And I believe in these people.
These are good people on the stage.
Russian Invasion Claims00:15:39
unidentified
They disagree, but let's have a legitimate disagreement.
Experts say President Putin has ordered assassinations across Europe, cheated on arms control treaties with the U.S., and seeks to work with China to force our decline.
The Chinese are paying for the Russian war in Ukraine.
The Iranians are supplying more sophisticated weapons.
And so are the North Koreans now as well, with the encouragement of the Chinese.
The naivety on this stage from some of these folks is extraordinary.
Look, I understand people want to talk to Putin.
Guess what?
So did George W. Bush.
So did Barack Obama.
So did Donald Trump.
And so did Joe Biden when he said a small invasion wouldn't be so bad.
Every one of them has been wrong.
And the fact of the matter is, we need to say right now that the Chinese-Russian alliance is something we have to fight against, and we are not going to solve it by going over and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin.
Look, Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin was brilliant.
And a great leader.
This is the person who is murdering people in his own country and now not having enough blood, he's now going to Ukraine to murder innocent civilians and kidnap 20,000 children.
And let me tell you, if you think that's where it's going to stop.
If we give them any of Ukraine, next will be Poland.
This is a guy who said, wait one second, this is a guy in 1991 who said that was the darkest moment in world's history when the Soviet Union fell.
Listen, everybody, he wants to put the old band back together and only America can stop it.
Well, first of all, we've got the best farmers and ranchers in the world right here in America.
If they have a level playing field, they can outcompete anyone in the world.
But this is part of the larger issue that we're talking about here, which is we're in a Cold War with China.
The Biden administration won't admit that.
But we're also in an economic war through what we're doing with agriculture and energy.
And we're also in a war with them relative to cyber war.
We get attacked every day in North Dakota, every state, every school district, our tribes, all being attacked every day by either China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
We've got a Biden administration whose whole policy is appeasement.
They're out there creating the world, making it less safe.
$6 billion they traded for five people.
They just now set a price on anyone's head who's a tourist from America, who's a student from America, for kidnapping.
If you want more kidnapping, put a price on it.
And they're also helping Iran get to have more closer to nuclear weapons, which pushes all of the Middle East closer to China and Russia.
The whole thing is absurd.
And then, of course, we're going to give Ukraine to Russia, and then we're going to give Taiwan to China, and think that's a foreign policy.
That will make our nation less successful, make us more poor, This is probably the one guy who would lose to Joe Biden in a debate.
The first one to go to each of those countries was Kerry to talk about the folly of the climate.
And what you need to do is understand that Mexico's not being a good partner if we lost 75,000 Americans last year.
Mexico's not being a good partner if they're letting the cartels get away with what they're getting away with.
What we will do is we will make sure that we send in our special operations and we will take out the cartels, we'll take out their operations, we'll take out anything that's doing it.
But we're going to go after China because China is the one sending the fentanyl in the first place.
We will end all normal trade relations until China stops sending fentanyl.
And then we'll do the special operations and we'll get it from both sides.
This is where President Trump went wrong.
He focused on trade with China.
He didn't focus on the fact that they were buying up our farmland.
He didn't focus on the fact that they were killing Americans.
He didn't focus on the fact that they were stealing $600 billion in intellectual property.
He didn't focus on the fact that they put a spy base off our shores in Cuba.
They didn't focus enough on the fact that all of our law enforcement drones in America are Chinese, and we've got all these little surveillance cells.
We need to start focusing on what keeps Americans safe.
That hasn't happened in a long time.
As your president, I will make sure every American is safe, and we'll do whatever it takes to make that happen.
And I stand before you today as a candidate for president because I think this country's in a lot of trouble.
You hear the fire on the stage tonight.
You hear the fire in all of our voices.
And it's because Joe Biden is weak in this country, at home and abroad.
This is a time for those of us that have the experience.
The tested experience and a commitment to the conservative agenda that Ronald Reagan brought forward in this party of a strong national defense, standing with our allies, standing up to our enemies, supporting limited government and traditional values, need to step forward because, frankly, our party does face a time for choosing, as they said at the top of this debate, whether we're going to stand on the foundation of that conservative agenda that Ronald Reagan poured or whether we're going to follow the siren song of populism on more.
unidentified
This is the second time that he's sent the Ronald Reagan line.
We're pretty close with Vivek's team, and he's asking me if, like, turning point people want to, like, if, like, various individuals want to come to, like, other debates.
Like, candidates can give out tickets.
You know?
He's like, who should we give our batch of tickets to?
Can we get a bunch of young people there to cheer for the TikTok answer or something like that?
Well, look, I think that we do have to run through the courts and get through that administrative state to make sure we're using the natural resources here at home.
And here's the other thing that we can do that's easy.
And it addresses the national debt as well as brings down prices.
Put people back.
We are using taxpayer money to pay people more to stay at home than to go to work.
That is wrong.
That contributes to our supply chain crisis.
It contributes to inflation.
That's the easiest way to unlock this economy.
Here's the other thing.
We have to put the Federal Reserve back in its place.
This is an agency that has gone rogue.
So in January 2026, when I have the opportunity as our next commander-in-chief...
We will have a new chairman of the Federal Reserve who places priority on dollar stability and then most importantly, send packing 75% of the administrative state.
Reduce the federal employee headcount by 75%.
Rescind 50% of unconstitutional federal regulations that are shackling businesses both large and small.
I've offered a very clear, practical plan to do it.
That's how we unleash the economy.
That's how we revive the integrity of a three-branch constitutional republic rather than this technocracy and aristocracy.
I think one of the signature accomplishments of our administration was in just a few short years.
energy independence.
We became a next exporter of energy for the first time in 75 years.
But on day one, Joe Biden declared a war on energy, which was no surprise because when Joe Biden ran for president, he said he was going to end fossil fuels.
And they've been working overtime to do that ever since.
If I'm president of the United States, we're going to open up federal lands.
We're going to unleash American energy.
We're going to have an all-of-the-above energy strategy.
And I have a plan that actually would not only reclaim energy independence, but in 2006, America lost our position as the leading energy producer on Earth.
I believe in the next 10 years, with the right policies and experienced leadership in the White House, we can reclaim our role as the leading energy producer on Earth.
And that will grow the American economy for generations to come.
They're going to focus on the things that really matter.
They're going to make different choices.
They're going to try to graduate people in four years.
I also just want to come back to something Dana asked last segment about 9-11, because I was just at the 9-11 memorial with the families my wife and I were, but it's very touching to be there.
And it affected my life because I ended up joining the military as a result of that.
I've been a blue-collar kid, minimum wage in Dunnein, Florida.
I end up getting through.
I went to Yale and Harvard Law School and somehow came out more conservative than when I went in.
And that is not easy to do.
Had a lot of opportunities to make money, but I wanted to serve.
And I'll never forget coming back on the plane from Iraq, landing in Coronado, California, North Island, and feeling that breeze off the Pacific Ocean and say, you know what?
I am lucky to have been born in America.
And I think being able to serve, and I'll be the first president elected since 1988 who's actually served overseas in a war, I think that's going to help me as commander-in-chief.
To know how you see these issues and understand that there are real lives at stake for people that wear the uniform.
One of the things I'd say is if you look at our national debt of $33 trillion, I would love to have an opportunity to have this country pass.
A balanced budget amendment.
That would constrain the spending in Washington in the same fashion that it does in every state in our nation.
Number one.
Number two.
If you want to actually reduce our national debt, you have to grow our economy.
In order to grow our economy, you need to create about 10 million jobs to grow our economy at 5%.
You can do that in three specific sectors.
Number one, the energy sector.
We could create between three and three and a half million jobs if we unleashed all of our energy resources.
America is the most...
We're the richest country.
If you combine coal, gas, and oil, why not unleash all of our resources?
Number two, we've lost 100,000 factories, 100,000 factories in the last 25 years.
If we continued on my Made in America plan, we could bring jobs back to America in a similar fashion that we did when I wrote the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
We actually lowered the corporate tax from 35% to 21%, reshored or repatriated $1.7 trillion.
We brought the unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanics and Asians to the lowest level in the history of the country and a 70-year low for women.
Well, first of all, I think, look, I appreciate, Tim, we've known each other a long time, but he's been there 12 years, and he hasn't done any of that.
He hasn't.
They've only given four budgets on time in 40 years.
Big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida.
And that's what it's all about.
You can always talk, but when it gets hot in there, when they're shooting arrows at you, are you going to stand up for parents' rights, keep the state free?
Are you going to be able to do all those things?
And in the state of Florida, because of our success, the Democratic Party lies in ruins.
But I'm just going to say right now, when you say nobody else has done it, the energy plans that have all been announced in the last month by these other folks on stage, we're already doing it in North Dakota.
The border plans I already talked about, we've got troops down at the border flying helicopter missions from North Dakota, from San Diego to the Gulf Coast, trying to stop transnational criminal organizations from inflicting the invasion.
We won the battle to get—the Biden administration was ignoring the law.
They were the first administration since Truman that wasn't holding the quarterly required lease sales, and we've won that in federal court.
We've won that in federal court.
We're fighting the Biden administration on 20 fronts.
To say that no one's fighting the big fights, just look at the record of what we're doing right now.
Energy, economy, national security have been talking about it since day one, and now finally good.
We're having a conversation about it, but we've got the answer.
unidentified
Governor Burgum, let's talk big government.
This question's for you.
Big government keeps getting bigger.
One-fifth of all new jobs this year have been created by the government.
Governor Burgum, you say you want to shrink the size of government, but it has been a century since any president has done that.
We shrunk the state budget general fund by 27% in the first four months I was office, and all the trains kept running on time.
Why?
Because you had a business leader that was actually there.
Inside of every government job, there's 10 or 20% of mind-numbing, soul-sucking work that even the state and federal employees don't want to do, and you could engineer that work out of the job.
That would free up right there, 20% of 2 million civilian employees.
And by the way, we've got 10 million jobs open.
They'd have plenty to do, and they could be generating taxes.
This is totally possible to do it if you have somebody that understands.
Having worked in technology for 30 years, everything we had to do was to be better, faster and cheaper the next day.
We won the greatest Republican victory in a governor's race in the history of the state, over 1.5 million votes.
We were winning places like Miami-Dade County, Palm Beach that nobody thought was possible because we were leading with purpose and conviction.
I reject this idea that pro-lifers are to blame for midterm defeats.
I think there's other reasons for that.
The former president, you know, he's missing in action tonight.
He's had a lot to say about that.
He should be here explaining his comments.
To try to say that pro-life protections are somehow a terrible thing.
I want him to look into the eyes and tell people who've been fighting this fight for a long time.
I was at, my wife and I earlier today were at the gravesite of President and Mrs. Reagan, and I noticed that there was a quote where it says, every single person has purpose and worth.
We're better off when everybody counts.
And I think we should stand for what we believe in.
I think we should hold the Democrats accountable for their...
Super extremism supporting abortion all the way up until the moment of birth.
Well, because they don't have leaders in those states who are leading the fight the way it should be led.
And the fact is, look, I was a governor here of the only blue state that's represented up here.
This is where the fight is really tough for Republicans, and those are the states that we're going to have to try to win if we're going to win the White House back.
And what we did is 14 times, Dana, in eight years, I vetoed Planned Parenthood funding.
14 times.
No one else gets it that much.
The Democrats just kept sending it to me, and I kept saying no because I believe in life, but I also believe in states' rights.
And I think we fought hard against Roe v.
Wade for decades to say that states should make these decisions.
So we're going to have those fights in the states.
What we need is a leader who can talk to people and make them understand that if you're pro-life, you have to be pro-life for the entire life, not just the nine months in the womb.
And we talked a lot about fentanyl tonight, and we haven't spoken one moment about treatment.
But we need to make sure that for the drug-addicted 16-year-old before the county lockup, her life is precious, too.
And we need to be providing treatment to cure this as a disease that it is.
If you're pro-life, you've got to be pro-life for the entire life.
We start talking like that, they're going to do what I did in the blue state, which was get re-elected with 61% of the vote and won 70% of independents and 51% of Latinos because I told them the truth from my heart.
The latest Univision poll found that 73% of Latino voters think the Republican Party doesn't care about or is being hostile toward them, the Hispanic community.
Only Governor DeSantis has translated his campaign into Spanish.