| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Pairing would effectively cancel out both votes without affecting the final vote result. | |
| In response, Democratic Congresswoman Brittany Petterson announced her intent to force a vote, allowing new parents to proxy vote. | ||
| Also, this week, members are scheduled to take up the revised 2025 Republican budget resolution approved last week by the Senate. | ||
| Negotiations continue off the floor on the budget plan. | ||
| Watch live coverage of the U.S. House when members return here on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including Mediacom. | ||
| Nearly 30 years ago, Mediacom was founded on a powerful idea. | ||
| Bring cutting-edge broadband to underserved communities. | ||
| From coast to coast, we connected 850,000 miles of fiber. | ||
| Our team broke speed barriers, delivered one gig speeds to every customer, has led the way in developing a 10G platform, and now with Mediacom Mobile, it's offering the fastest, most reliable network on the go. | ||
| MediaCom, decades of dedication, decades of delivery, decades ahead. | ||
| MediaCom supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy. | ||
| And to the National Building Museum now, where President Trump is speaking to the National Republican Congressional Committee. | ||
| We join this in progress live on C-SAP. | ||
| I again want to thank all of you that you have contributed. | ||
| You believe in us. | ||
| You've contributed your time and your resources to our cause. | ||
| And as the president says, the golden age of America has only just begun. | ||
| Our best days are still ahead of us. | ||
| And I am confident that our president, our party, and our people are excited for what comes next. | ||
| Thank you all, and enjoy your evening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage your Republican Majority Whip, Tom Emmer. | |
| Hello, fellow Republicans. | ||
| No, hello, fellow Republicans. | ||
| Where are you? | ||
| I know this is the cheap time. | ||
| You get to hear from me. | ||
| Then you're going to get energy out of Steve Scales. | ||
| And you're going to get some energy out of our speaker, Mike Johnson. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| The show is Donald J. Trump. | ||
| So get ready. | ||
| We're just a warm-up band, if you will. | ||
| Good evening, everyone. | ||
| I know we are all ready for an exciting night as we hear from our 45th and our 47th president, Donald J. Trump. | ||
| President Trump has been working at breakneck speed to undo the damage Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inflicted on our country over the past four years. | ||
| In less than 100 days, he has delivered win after win after win for the American people. | ||
| From stopping the invasion at our southern border to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, and so much more. | ||
| One thing is very clear: America is back. | ||
| Yeah, you should clap for that. | ||
| America is back. | ||
| The best part is, we're just getting started. | ||
| President Trump will renew the American dream and usher in our country's golden age, but he needs our help to make it happen. | ||
| On November 5th, on November 5th, President Trump earned over 77 million Americans vote. | ||
| And House Republicans, we earned over $74 million collectively. | ||
| So what does that mean? | ||
| That means there are over 2 million voters out there who are not Republican or Democrat voters. | ||
| They are Trump voters. | ||
| We have a historic opportunity over the next 18 months to bring them firmly into the Republican camp. | ||
| And we do that by delivering on President Trump's America First agenda that they voted for in Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That means continuing the president's wildly successful tax policy so we can unleash economic prosperity and prevent a $5 trillion tax hike. | |
| It means giving the administration the tools it needs to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history to ensure there are no more stories like Lake and Riley. | ||
| It means empowering energy producers to drill baby drill, lowering prices for American families in the process. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It means strengthening the world's greatest fighting force to uphold President Trump's policy of peace through strength. | ||
| This is how we will cement our majority's place in history and give us the message we need to take on the campaign trail next year. | ||
| It's going to take every person in this room to get the job done. | ||
| And I know that we will because failure is simply not an option. | ||
| President Trump is counting on us. | ||
| The American people are counting on us. | ||
| And our friends in this room and grassroots supporters across the country are counting on us. | ||
| As we look to the next election cycle, we have to keep our eye on the ball. | ||
| We cannot afford to be complacent. | ||
| We have to outwork and out-fundraise Democrats. | ||
| We are proud of the job Chairman Hudson did last cycle to protect our majority. | ||
| And we're ready to continue working with him to not only protect it this time, but to grow our majority next year. | ||
| Because President Trump must have a strong House Republican majority to work with for all four years of his term. | ||
| We have already seen the lengths Democrats are willing to go to try and stop the president when they hold an ounce of power in Washington. | ||
| We remember the sham impeachments and the investigations that started after 2018 midterms, and we know better than to ever let that happen again. | ||
| I'm proud to be a partner in this fight with all of you. | ||
| Now let's go get it done. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| God bless President Trump. | ||
| God bless America and God bless all of you. | ||
| Have a great night. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your leader of the House Republican majority, Steve Scalise. | ||
| All right, settle down, people. | ||
| Settle down. | ||
| We got a few things ahead of us. | ||
| Wait till President Trump comes out. | ||
| We've got the over-under. | ||
| You know, if you've got your bingo cards, it's going to be a fun night. | ||
| But look, the first thing I want to say is thank each and every one of you for what you did, number one, to help us keep the House majority and what you're doing to help us grow this majority next year. | ||
| Now, just think about it. | ||
| It's not even been three months since Donald Trump took the oath of office. | ||
| And what a difference three months makes. | ||
| Just three months ago, the lunatics on the left said to save the planet, you've got to buy a Tesla. | ||
| Today, the same lunatics on the left get a Moloteaf cocktail, light it on fire, and burn the Tesla. | ||
| I thought they cared about carbon emissions. | ||
| What about the carbon emissions? | ||
| You could drive a diesel truck for 30 years and not as much carbon as lighting a Tesla on fire. | ||
| These people have lost their mind. | ||
| Now, the press says a lot right now about how the Democrat Party doesn't have a leader. | ||
| Like most times, I beg to differ with the Washington press. | ||
| The Democrat Party has leaders. | ||
| Their names are AOC, Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett. | ||
| Have you seen them? | ||
| They are pushing the same Marxist ideology that brought people to the polls in record numbers to elect Donald Trump president. | ||
| Not just winning the Electoral College, 77 million votes to win the popular vote, to run the table in all seven swing states. | ||
| The Democrats still won't admit why they lost, but we know. | ||
| We ran on real issues. | ||
| We said we were going to go to work day one if we had the House, Senate, and White House working for those families who were struggling under Joe Biden's policies. | ||
| And what have we done? | ||
| In just three months, we have already started fighting for those families. | ||
| Border security was the number one issue in America, and look at what happened. | ||
| In less than three months, illegal crossings are down 95% because Donald Trump has done what he said he would do. | ||
| If you look at energy production, and we're working on this one big, beautiful bill, you're going to hear President Trump talk about that one big, beautiful bill. | ||
| This is the bill that will lock in tax rates so we don't have a massive tax hike, that will allow us to produce more energy, reversing all the crazy Biden far-left policies to shut down American energy. | ||
| When you think about border security, yes, the president has already taken major steps to secure the border, but we still need to build the wall, and we're going to fund that in this bill. | ||
| We're going to give our border patrol agents the tools they've been asking for for years. | ||
| Night vision goggles, drones, the things the drug cartels in Mexico have that we don't have. | ||
| Why should the Mexican drug cartels have better technology and tools than our Border Patrol agents? | ||
| That will change with House Republican leadership when we move this bill. | ||
| And on top of that, just look at Elon Musk. | ||
| I mean, the left wants to demonize Elon Musk. | ||
| All Elon Musk is doing and is identifying the waste, fraud, and abuse that we have all known has been out there in government. | ||
| Tens of billions of dollars in every agency being wasted, thrown away. | ||
| Stacey Abrams given $2 billion to do who knows what. | ||
| But that's all changing. | ||
| And what are the Democrats doing? | ||
| You would think they would say, you know what? | ||
| They got us on that one. | ||
| We'll work with Trump and Elon to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| No, they are fighting that. | ||
| There is a major party in America called the Democrat Party that is defending waste, fraud, and abuse in Washington. | ||
| You can't make this stuff up. | ||
| But it doesn't end there. | ||
| We identified before the election that about 75% of federal workers in Washington weren't even showing up for work. | ||
| You have to show up for work. | ||
| Our constituents have to show up for work. | ||
| Yet these bureaucrats were making over $100,000 a year, not showing up for their jobs, and the job wasn't getting done. | ||
| And President Trump, day one, said, You better show up for work. | ||
| Now, you don't have to, but if you don't, you lose your job. | ||
| Well, man, lo and behold, they all started finding their workplace. | ||
| Not to work, but to protest. | ||
| Look, what we have done with this majority in just three months is only the beginning. | ||
| When you see these policies start going into law, Trump's first week in office, we had the Lake and Riley bill on his desk. | ||
| We're putting two more on his desk this week to reverse some of the crazy financial regulations. | ||
| When we get this big bill on his desk to lock in tax rates, to produce more energy, to secure the border, to lock in Doge savings, and all the other things we're doing, including strengthening America's national defense, watch what happens to the economy and all the naysayers. | ||
| The press will never be on our side. | ||
| They'll never tout the wins. | ||
| But this president, Trump, has come here on a mission. | ||
| I got to work with President Trump in the first term, and everybody watching knows this. | ||
| They see a president more focused. | ||
| They see a president more resolved than ever before to fight for those families who worked hard, showed up at the polls, and said we want Republicans in the House, Senate, and White House to save this great nation. | ||
| We are just getting started. | ||
| You've been there every step of the way with us. | ||
| We're going to grow this majority. | ||
| We just, by the way, got two more House Republicans last week. | ||
| Two elections in Florida. | ||
| We won. | ||
| Randy Fine and Jimmy Petronas are probably here tonight. | ||
| Let's welcome our two new Republicans. | ||
| We doubled our House majority. | ||
| And think about this. | ||
| I'm going to leave you on this note. | ||
| Because a lot of you, when you're donating money, you wonder about your return on investment. | ||
| I want to just tell you our return on investment versus the Democrats. | ||
| Last week, the Democrats spent $22 million, $22 million to lose those two seats in Florida by double digits. | ||
| We spent less than $2 million to win those seats by double digits. | ||
| That's a return on investment. | ||
| That's why this is the best investment you can make in this House Republican majority. | ||
| Let's keep growing. | ||
| Let's keep winning. | ||
| And let's save the greatest country in the history of the world, the United States of America. | ||
| God bless you. | ||
| God bless our president. | ||
| We're going to have a great night. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in welcoming the 56th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. | |
| We all get a chance. | ||
| Everybody gets to dance. | ||
| Wow, thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| What a great crowd. | ||
| What an extraordinary setting. | ||
| I love this building. | ||
| It always reminds me of the sound of music. | ||
| You know, it feels like we're in Austria or something. | ||
| Really, really grateful to see all of you. | ||
| I want to thank Chairman Richard Hudson. | ||
| What a great leader he is for the NRCC and the entire team. | ||
| A lot of gratitude to hand out tonight. | ||
| I want to thank our entire House leadership team. | ||
| I want to thank our extraordinary members. | ||
| So many of them are joining us here tonight. | ||
| And of course, most importantly, we want to thank all of you for making this possible this evening. | ||
| This is a big one for us, and we shattered all the records. | ||
| And I promise you, we are going to be a good steward of those resources. | ||
| We have a big job ahead of us. | ||
| We truly have a lot to be grateful for tonight, a lot to celebrate, not the least of which is this fact. | ||
| I don't know if you've been following this, but we now officially have a seven-seat majority, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Yes, I know. | ||
| Do the math, okay? | ||
| It means that we can lose three votes now and still pass a bill. | ||
| It's an embarrassment of riches, I tell you. | ||
| This job is so easy. | ||
| This is our first week with our two newest members, and they were mentioned earlier, but Jimmy Petronas and Randy Fine of Florida have joined us. | ||
| Round of applause. | ||
| And with these two great new members, we have gained our number again. | ||
| We're back to 220 Republicans, and every single one of them are fired up to advance the people's business and to make America great again. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, we simply would not be able to do this if it were not for two things. | ||
| First, incredible support from leaders like all of you. | ||
| And second, our 45th and our 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. | ||
| That's a fact. | ||
| Now, you all rolled your sleeves up this last cycle, and we worked around the clock to ensure that we kept the House majority. | ||
| And because we all worked so hard, we secured a unified Republican trifecta in Washington. | ||
| Everybody said we couldn't do it. | ||
| My friends, I mean, up to the evening before the election, they were writing our epitaph. | ||
| They said that the Republican majority would go by the wayside. | ||
| They said there were too many Republicans in Democrat territory last cycle. | ||
| That the Democrats had too much money. | ||
| They did raise a lot. | ||
| They said the Democrats redistricting was too much for us to overcome. | ||
| But we didn't believe that. | ||
| The leadership team and every member went to work. | ||
| The NRCC refused to listen to all of that criticism. | ||
| We got to work. | ||
| We shored up our incumbents. | ||
| We recruited incredible workhorses from coast to coast. | ||
| Like so many of our members, I criss-crossed the country non-stop. | ||
| I mean, almost literally every day we were not in session. | ||
| I was on the road. | ||
| I did over 360 campaign events, 250 cities in 40 states. | ||
| I logged enough miles to circle the globe five and a half times. | ||
| That's a real statistic. | ||
| Some of y'all know I was four inches taller when I became Speaker of the House. | ||
| They beat me down mercilessly. | ||
| But we all did that. | ||
| All the members worked around the clock and overtime to get that done. | ||
| And along with our partners at CLF, the Congressional Leadership Fund, my team, we raised $332 million in 11 months to be able to do that. | ||
| And many of you wrote the checks to make that possible. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So here's what happened. | ||
| And you know, the reason we're here tonight, the reason we're celebrating what we have achieved and looking forward to the challenge ahead is because everybody got to work and made that happen. | ||
| Our House Republicans defended our majority. | ||
| We achieved the highest popular vote in history. | ||
| And we flipped seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Colorado, and Alaska. | ||
| And now we're enacting a bold America-first agenda to deliver on that mandate. | ||
| We hit the ground running since January 3rd. | ||
| We've been very busy. | ||
| You've been watching this day by day. | ||
| We've been defying the odds. | ||
| We've been making the critics be quiet. | ||
| Just a small sample of the legislation we passed includes the Lake and Riley Act, which is to save lives from the Biden border crisis. | ||
| The illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to defend Israel. | ||
| We passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| We passed the Violence Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, the HALT-Fentanyl Act, the Protecting American Energy Production Act, and our government funding bill that put the Democrats on record for supporting a government shutdown and actually ignited a civil war, a political civil war in their camp. | ||
| Through it all, Republicans in Congress have stayed laser-focused on advancing common sense pro-growth policies. | ||
| And the American people have taken note. | ||
| Our party right now, my friends, enjoys record high levels of approval. | ||
| And today, more Americans believe the country is on the right track than in any point in the last 20 years. | ||
| That's a big thing. | ||
| In the weeks ahead, we're going to continue to hammer out the Budget Reconciliation Bill, which will be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation that Congress has passed in decades and perhaps in the history of the Congress. | ||
| Republicans here are committed to delivering President Trump's full America First agenda with that one big beautiful bill. | ||
| I'm not going to do it in his voice, okay? | ||
| We're going to make good on our promises. | ||
| And what does that mean? | ||
| We're going to secure the border. | ||
| We're going to restore America's energy dominance. | ||
| We're going to dismantle the deep state. | ||
| We're going to grow our economy and reduce inflation. | ||
| And we're going to turn America to peace through strength. | ||
| House Republicans are moving full steam ahead to move the one big beautiful bill across the finish line and onto the president's desk as quickly as possible. | ||
| Through all this, we are also implementing our game plan for 2026. | ||
| And this is what's important to everybody here. | ||
| What you're investing in tonight is the plan that we're going to take into the field. | ||
| Our work over just the past months has broken the Democrat Party. | ||
| While we are at record high approval levels, they are at record lows. | ||
| They're negative 9% net approval in their own party right now, the Democrats in Congress. | ||
| Their ideas are radical. | ||
| Their agenda was rejected, and their chances at a majority in 2024 were soundly defeated. | ||
| Now they have no leader, no message. | ||
| They have no vision for the country other than to double down on their failed, terrible policies, and they're sending out their emerging new leaders like AOC and Bernie Sanders. | ||
| That's where they are, right? | ||
| But we know that they will stop at nothing to get back in the majority in 2026. | ||
| And if they were able to do that, my friends, heaven forbid, the president's agenda would come grinding to a halt after two years. | ||
| We would see the return to open borders policies. | ||
| We would see impeachments and corrupt lawfare resurrected. | ||
| And we would see the largest tax increase in American history. | ||
| We cannot allow that to happen. | ||
| And the American people agree. | ||
| And that's why tonight I have never been more confident and optimistic about the future of our party, our movement, and our country. | ||
| The media loves to underestimate us. | ||
| They love to be naysayers, but we have proven them wrong over and over again, and we will continue to do so. | ||
| I'm convinced that when we deliver on our agenda this Congress, we will not only defy expectations, but we'll defy history in 2026. | ||
| It won't be easy. | ||
| We're going to need every single one of you to get us over the finish line. | ||
| In the last election, we saw a once-in-a-generation demographic shift, and I believe we're going to hold those voters, those new people that came into the party. | ||
| And we now have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver on those promises. | ||
| I'll close with this. | ||
| All of this is not possible without the leadership of a great president. | ||
| President Trump once delivered the greatest economy in the world, and he will do it again with a little time and a Congress that helps him get there. | ||
| President Trump once delivered a secure border, and he has already delivered that again. | ||
| President Trump once restored peace through strength, and he is already doing that again by bringing hostages home, supporting our allies like Israel, and getting our adversaries to the negotiating table. | ||
| These are the reasons that we're so bullish about the historic moment that we are in right now. | ||
| We're all in this together, and President Donald J. Trump is leading the way. | ||
| So tonight, we want to thank you all again for your support and your trust in us. | ||
| I want to assure you that we will not let you down. | ||
| God bless you for standing with us. | ||
| We appreciate you so much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
See, she forgot all about the library like she told her old man now. | |
| And with the radio blast and goes cruising just as fast as she can now. | ||
| And she'll have fun, fun, fun, till her daddy takes it to the way. | ||
| Fun, fun, fun, tune, daddy, takes it to a place. | ||
| And C-SPAN is live here at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. | ||
| It's located between the U.S. Capitol and the White House. | ||
| The museum is the location for tonight's National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner. | ||
| The NRCC works to elect Republicans to the U.S. House of Representatives. | ||
| It was formed in 1866 when the Republican caucuses of the House and Senate formed a congressional committee. | ||
| Just waiting for the keynote speaker, President Donald Trump. | ||
| He's expected to begin his remarks shortly live here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Now you shouldn't alive. | ||
| And since he took your set of keys, you've been thinking that your fun is over. | ||
| You shouldn't alive, now you shouldn't alive. | ||
| But you can come along with me, cause we got a lot of things to do. | ||
| Now you shouldn't get loose. | ||
| Have fun, fun, fun, now the daddy took the tea. | ||
| Fun, fun, fun, now the daddy took the tiber. | ||
| Me not working hard. | ||
| Yeah, right, picture that with a Kodak. | ||
| But better yet, go to Times Square, take a picture of me with a Kodak. | ||
| Took my life from negative to positive. | ||
| I just want y'all to know that. | ||
| And tonight, let's enjoy life. | ||
| Pitbull, Naiya, Neo, that's right. | ||
| I'm on all of you tonight. | ||
| Give me everything tonight. | ||
| For all we know, we might not get tomorrow. | ||
| Let's do it tonight. | ||
| Let's do it tonight. | ||
| Grab somebody's sexy dumbhead. | ||
| And tonight's National Republican Congressional Committee dinner, awaiting the keynote speaker for the evening, President Donald Trump. | ||
| The NRCC supports the election of Republicans to the House through direct financial contributions to candidates and Republican Party organizations, technical and research assistance to Republican candidates and party organizations, voter registration, education and turnout programs, and other party-building activities. | ||
| Just waiting for the keynote speaker, President Trump. | ||
| He's expected to begin his remarks shortly, live here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Perkins, he serves as president of the Family Research Council, an organization whose mission is what, Mr. Perkins? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, John, our mission is to shape public policy and the culture from a biblical perspective. | |
| We're unapologetically Christian in our orientation. | ||
| We represent a large segment of the American population. | ||
| And we, you know, our voice is added into the mix. | ||
| And we arrive, hopefully, at consensus with policy that will move our nation forward. | ||
| So that's our goal. | ||
| How long you've been around? | ||
| How is the group funded? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Privately. | |
| No government funds, all privately funded through donations of folks who share the same vision for our country all across this country. | ||
| Your website describes you as a pro-family, pro-life. | ||
| What does pro-family mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pro-family means the structure of the family being really the building block of America. | |
| We can't have a strong society without strong families. | ||
| What does a strong family look like? | ||
| It looks like moms and dads raising kids, not outsourcing the education and the instruction of those children. | ||
| And that also includes a spiritual education and foundation. | ||
| So we see the family as you cannot have, and I've even challenged this administration on this from time to time. | ||
| To make America great again, it has to be good again. | ||
| And that goodness begins in the family. | ||
| It begins with teaching our children right from wrong. | ||
| It teaches them how to interact with people they disagree with, moving our nation back to a place of civility and conversation, even when we disagree with one another. | ||
| How do we do that on a national level? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's like we do it in the family. | |
| A family cannot survive if they can't talk with each other. | ||
| And if we can't have conversations in the home, and I've served as a pastor, John, and I've done marital counseling. | ||
| And when a couple gets to a place that they can't talk with each other, their future is very dim. | ||
| We have to break through and have those conversations to talk about our differences, even when they are passionate. | ||
| And America has passionate differences. | ||
| We always have. | ||
| I do think we're at a I don't want to say breaking point, but we're at a pretty significant point where we have some differences. | ||
| But I think part of that is that we're not talking. | ||
| We're not having those conversations. | ||
| The civility and the dialogue has broken down. | ||
| That's why I like to come on C-SPAN, because this is one of the last places where people are actually having conversations, even people who disagree. | ||
| How can we get members of Congress to do that besides coming on C-SPAN, which many of them do, some don't? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There is more of that going on then than people realize. | |
| I've been around here a long time. | ||
| I've served with a lot of members of Congress. | ||
| I've been in public office. | ||
| Behind the scenes, there's a lot of conversation that's taking place. | ||
| True, genuine relationships. | ||
| There's weekly, almost every day on the Capitol Hill, there's a Bible study of some sort that is bipartisan. | ||
| Here's the problem, is that in this age of social media where everybody's a commentator and everybody has their own source of outlet and 24-7 news cycle, which really was the precursor to all of this, is that when people are seen, when Republicans or Democrats are seen together, there are some on both sides who say, why are you talking to that person? | ||
| And they will bombard them and there becomes this kind of this stampede mentality that we can't even have conversations. | ||
| So how do you normalize being seen in public talking to each other? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's going to take work. | |
| It's going to take work. | ||
| It's going to take intentionality. | ||
| The speaker, Mike Johnson, very close friend of mine, a couple years ago, he launched an initiative in Congress, a civility project, and he continues to have those conversations among his own that, look, we've got to have decent conversations. | ||
| He and I were just talking about this last week, about even in the hearings, how we need to dial back the way some of the witnesses are treated by members of Congress on both sides. | ||
| Because it's in many times from some, and we've got to be careful, John, we don't paint everybody with a broad brush. | ||
| We can't have a, because there are people there who treat people with great respect, but there are others that play to the camera. | ||
| And that's a bad thing. | ||
| Well, you say play to the camera, that these conversations are happening behind closed doors. | ||
| Are the cameras the problem? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're certainly not helping. | |
| It's how what is on the camera is interpreted. | ||
| It can be a good thing. | ||
| But when we have two sides, a divided nation, and we have an element, not all, not all the people on the left are worked up and angry, and not all the people on the right are worked up and angry, but there are some. | ||
| And their voices are loud, and they tend to dominate. | ||
| On the pro-family, pro-life, the pro-life side of the tagline here, in a post-Roe era, what is the front line of the abortion fight? | ||
| Is it state abortion laws? | ||
| Is it more wins at the Supreme Court? | ||
| Is it a national abortion ban? | ||
| Where do you see this fight today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's a really good question. | |
| And I think many are searching for what is that? | ||
| What does that look like? | ||
| Here's what I think it looks like. | ||
| It looks like, and this is where I've had disagreements with early on. | ||
| Last time I was on C-SPAN was at the Republican convention and had disagreements with the Trump campaign that took out the pro-life language from the party. | ||
| The platform. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The platform, I'm sorry. | |
| From the platform, and other things as well. | ||
| So I think it is a state, I mean, it's always been fought at the state level, but there's been a recognition that there is a federal role and responsibility. | ||
| For instance, funding. | ||
| We see tremendous amounts of funding that aiding Planned Parenthood. | ||
| That has to stop. | ||
| But also a very real problem that this administration is facing when they say this is a state issue is the abortion pill that the FDA has given approval to be sold without medical interaction. | ||
| And that is being mailed across state lines because of a decision by the Department of Justice regarding the Comstock law. | ||
| And so that's an issue because states cannot protect life if abortion bills, pills, can be sent from New York, like into my home state of Louisiana, where we have a very strong pro-life law. | ||
| So there is a role for the federal government, but I believe the vast majority of activity is going to be at and has been at the state level. | ||
| Do you support a national abortion ban? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think we're there yet. | |
| I believe in working toward consensus, okay? | ||
| I would like to see this nation as a nation that embraces life at every stage, and we do have a country that no longer allows for abortion, but we're not there. | ||
| Look, I've been in the public policy process. | ||
| It is educational. | ||
| It's consensus. | ||
| We have moved the needle significantly. | ||
| But you can't have that type of change unless there is policy change, unless there's first a change of the culture. | ||
| You brought this up, so I want to read a headline on it. | ||
| Trump administration cuts tens of millions of dollars from Planned Parenthood. | ||
| The Title X funds, this is the subheadline, were earmarked for birth control and other non-abortion services. | ||
| What is a Title X fund? | ||
| What is this about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's the Title X funding for family planning. | |
| So here's the reality. | ||
| Money is fungible. | ||
| So here's an organization that received about $700 million from the federal government. | ||
| And they do abortions. | ||
| This goes back to when Ronald Reagan was president. | ||
| It was the co-location where you couldn't provide abortions and family planning in the same facility. | ||
| That's like a ping pong goes back and forth depending upon a Republican-Democratic administration. | ||
| But I think, look, we're at a place where the nation is divided over this issue. | ||
| I'll recognize that. | ||
| The nation is not 100% pro-life. | ||
| It's not 100% abortion either. | ||
| But we should not be propping up institutions that advance controversial actions that run counter to half the American population. | ||
| We're a Christian organization. | ||
| We advance policy based upon biblical principles. | ||
| I know not everyone agrees with us, but they're not paying for that. | ||
| They're not getting, the government is not directly funding us to do that. | ||
| So why should the government directly fund an organization that is operating contrary to half the view of the American people? | ||
| What's your view on separation of church and state? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I think the separation of church and state, go back to the origins of it with Thomas Jefferson, was to assure the church that the government was not going to pick sides in the faith in terms of denominations and who was elevated and who was not, and that the government was not going to dictate the activities of the church. | |
| That does not mean that the church and the church is individuals collectively coming together cannot speak into the public policy of our country. | ||
| That's long been the understanding that we can speak into this. | ||
| And so this idea that's been twisted of separation of church and state that somehow you have to check your faith at the door of government, of entering into public discourse, is nonsense. | ||
| Can a or should a pastor, preacher, priest from the pulpit advocate a political party or political candidate from the pulpit? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think they should be free to do so if they so choose because when you look at the candidates or the parties, you're talking about the policies. | |
| You cannot separate the parties from the policies. | ||
| And so yes, I think they should be free to do so. | ||
| That's why we have advocated for a long time the removal of what's called the Johnson Amendment from the IRS code, which goes back to 1954 when Lyndon B. Johnson was a senator. | ||
| He was opposed by some nonprofits, wasn't actually churches of nonprofit organizations, that opposed his reelection. | ||
| So he inserted something into the tax code that prohibited 501c3 organizations from engaging in any type of political activity. | ||
| Now, John, that said, I do not think that nonprofit organizations, churches, should be able to use funds to fund political campaigns. | ||
| And there's actually legislation that was just introduced last week. | ||
| Meaning giving money to a candidate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I do not think they should be. | ||
| But they can speak in support of that candidate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think, look, a pastor should be free to use his First Amendment right from the pulpit to teach and educate his people. | |
| Look, it's a free speech issue, but it's also one of stewardship as a pastor. | ||
| There was a time in this country when before 24-7 cable television, people looked to the church. | ||
| Many people looked to the pastors to understand the times and what these events meant in the bigger scope of things. | ||
| And so I think pastors should be free to give instruction, spiritual instruction, because so much of what is done today in the political realm has roots in biblical teaching. | ||
| And so we need to be free to speak to those issues. | ||
| Tony Perkins, free to speak with you, our viewers, this morning on the Washington Journal with us for the next half hour until the House comes in. | ||
| It's 10 a.m. Eastern when the House is scheduled to be in. | ||
| That's where we're going to go when our program ends. | ||
| Phone lines, as usual, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. | ||
| As folks are calling in, you mentioned that you and Speaker Johnson go back a long ways. | ||
| How long have you known the Speaker? | ||
| How, in what capacity do you know him? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I've known the Speaker since he was in law school and back when I was in public office in Louisiana. | |
| So we've known each other for almost 30 years. | ||
| And what did you think of him then when he was in law school? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've always known Mike to be a very sharp individual. | |
| We've worked together on a number of projects. | ||
| He was a young attorney. | ||
| I was in the Louisiana legislature. | ||
| We worked on some initiatives together. | ||
| We've kind of traveled the same course. | ||
| And I would tell you, he is a very bright, very smart lawyer, a constitutional lawyer, but he's also a man of deep conviction and shares a biblical worldview. | ||
| And he's not hiding that. | ||
| That's one thing. | ||
| We're not hiding who we are. | ||
| We're very transparent. | ||
| And you can gauge how he's going to react to something. | ||
| And I also, one of the things you see about him that people say even his opponents, those who would disagree with him on the issues, is how he treats people. | ||
| He treats people very fairly. | ||
| You talk about people who disagree with him or not hiding it. | ||
| What does the term Christian nationalism mean to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I'm still trying to figure that one out because I see it used. | |
| To me, it is a pejorative where the previous terms of evangelical that were Christian right didn't really stick. | ||
| Now we've got this new term Christian nationalist because it sounds pretty foreboding. | ||
| It sounds pretty bad. | ||
| But if it is believing the Bible and loving your country, then you know what? | ||
| I guess that's what I am. | ||
| But from the standpoint, I think how it's being used, you know, I think it's just designed to scare people. | ||
| I'll get you some calls. | ||
| This is Susan Upfirst out of the Hoosier State Republican. | ||
| You are on with Tony Perkins of Family Research Council. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for your time. | |
| I wanted to mention one thing, and I so hope you can get this to people that can help get it done. | ||
| On our ballots, when we go to elections, if there would be a barcode on the piece of paper or on the computer for our ballot, so they can only be run through the system one time and be counted rather than being put through again and again and again. | ||
| And I know Democrats will tell you they don't do that, but you can physically watch them do that when you watch some of these videos. | ||
| But if there would be a barcode or a number, I know in Indiana here, when you go and vote, you get a receipt and it tells you who you voted, how you voted. | ||
| And I think that's wonderful. | ||
| But I think that would be a really good idea. | ||
| The other thing I wanted to mention is there was just a poll done, and the Democrats said that about 38% of them said that it was okay to assassinate people like Musk and Drump. | ||
| And this to me is so scary from the very people who tell us it's always the Republicans that are the violent ones. | ||
| I have yet to see that. | ||
| And I really wish on your computer there, when you do some stories, there are sites like Lucyanne.com, freerepublic.com, which will, they are stories put in by the people, and you can read different views from the different stories. | ||
| And it just gives you a wider breadth of news. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Got your point. | ||
| That's Susan. | ||
| Election integrity and political violence were two of the big issues she brings up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, I think, and it's reflective of both sides. | |
| I don't think that's just a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. | ||
| I think people are concerned. | ||
| And I do think election integrity is an issue. | ||
| You know, when you see third world countries able to do elections in a day, and yet it takes us sometimes months to count some of these congressional races. | ||
| You know, I think something we have to address. | ||
| And I do think the administration has put forward some proposals. | ||
| The Congress is working on some things. | ||
| But on the issue of the violence, John, as we were talking about it, it comes back to civility. | ||
| And I think we need to elevate those voices who are advocating for conversations, passionate conversations, but not advocating for violence. | ||
| There's no place. | ||
| Look, if we want a healthy republic that has staying power, violence has no place in it. | ||
| To the Cornhusker State, this is Karen in Omaha. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
| You're on with Tony Perkins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, this is Karen. | |
| I am just calling in to make aware of people out here. | ||
| I have a household. | ||
| I have an 87-year-old mother that's on oxygen. | ||
| I have a brother that has lung cancer and schizophrenia. | ||
| And another brother that is onset of Parkinson's. | ||
| We're all in one home. | ||
| My younger brother and I take care of all of them. | ||
| They're on Social Security and Medicare. | ||
| We have people going in and out of here, nurses who set for my brother off and on all through the day. | ||
| What happens when this stops? | ||
| Who do we talk to? | ||
| Who do we appeal to? | ||
| How do we get things done? | ||
| My brother can't wait to have help. | ||
| The other brother gets so sick, he can't hardly walk. | ||
| And then they're threatening to take our Social Security away and our Medicaid away. | ||
| I just want to know what these men plan on doing. | ||
| This is a big burden. | ||
| He says a little pain, but this isn't a little pain to us. | ||
| This is life-ending for some of my family. | ||
| Karen, thanks for sharing your story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, first, I would say to Karen and her brother who are taking care of her rest of her family, that's modeling family. | |
| When you talk about pro-family, it's taking care of our family. | ||
| But I want to put her at ease that there's no effort to take away the Medicaid from those, Medicare, from those who are in need of that. | ||
| And I've talked to the House Speaker. | ||
| I've talked to those in the administration. | ||
| That is not on the agenda. | ||
| Social Security, that's not on the agenda. | ||
| When we're talking about the cuts, it's the fraud, the waste, and the abuse, and the unnecessary programs, not those that people are depending on for life. | ||
| Is there fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There is. | |
| There are cases of fraud and abuse, and they have been uncovering some of that. | ||
| But it's not affecting people. | ||
| It's not going to affect those who are legitimately on it. | ||
| When I'm talking about fraud and abuse, there's some people that have been, and this is a failure of the government, by the way, of not having sufficient tracking. | ||
| And it's amazing to me some of the stories I've heard about the lack of ability to even track a Social Security number where you may have 50 people using the same Social Security number to draw from. | ||
| Are you confident that the government can find and cut waste, fraud, and abuse from Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without catching legitimate people up in that net? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Now, anytime you do something, there may be a case or two that people get caught up in that, and that can be addressed, and it will be addressed. | ||
| Look, I've talked a lot with the Speaker about this, and they are committed not in any form or fashion to harm those who are legitimately on these government programs that provide basically life and death, especially when you look at Social Security. | ||
| I mean, this was a promise that was made. | ||
| Now, I think there are better ways to do it, but they're not going to change it. | ||
| Those who are on Social Security, Social Security is not going to be effective. | ||
| Better ways to do it. | ||
| How? | ||
| Are we talking about changing the age, changing the formulas? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I just think, I think encouraging more, especially among younger people, I think we need to have this conversation. | |
| Do you really want to rely on the government in your latter years? | ||
| I think there are better ways to encourage people to save themselves and to prepare for the future. | ||
| Michael, Denver, Colorado Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, thank you so much for taking my call. | |
| And Mr. Perkins, it's really an honor to speak with you. | ||
| Thank you for your thoughtful assessment as well today. | ||
| And I just had a quick kind of comment and question. | ||
| So talking about this new bill that you've recently come out in support of the Free Speech Fairness Act, you know, you said you wholeheartedly support this. | ||
| And recently there was a story of a church in Florida who endorsed a political candidate and openly called for prayer for them during a church service. | ||
| There was an investigation by the IRS that was later dropped. | ||
| But when I think when we talk about this bill, I think there should be parameters described as to what in regards to endorsing a candidate during a church service, what lengths that can go to. | ||
| But you know, also the focal point of this bill, I think, is the issue of churches retaining that tax-exempt status when endorsing a political candidate. | ||
| So when you talk about the issue of free speech, I think that's one thing. | ||
| But when you bring in the issue of a church having tax-exempt status in spite of endorsing a political candidate, I think that brings in another element. | ||
| And I think that's what this bill, in essence, is changing for churches to be allowed to have tax-exempt status in spite of endorsing a political candidate. | ||
| So my question kind of surrounding this is, how do you justify churches retaining that tax-exempt status if they're going to be endorsing the candidate from the pulpit, essentially? | ||
| Michael, thanks for the call. | ||
| It's H.R. 2501 in this Congress, the Free Speech Fairness Act. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good question. | |
| That's why the parameters here are we're talking about speech. | ||
| We're not talking about funding. | ||
| We're not talking about churches being able to use financial resources that they would have to support a candidate. | ||
| And that's really what goes back to Johnson in 1954: nonprofits were actually using their resources to oppose him. | ||
| So I think this is an issue dealing with speech. | ||
| It's not dealing with the funds of a church. | ||
| And by the way, churches actually do not need there. | ||
| There is kind of a debate internally among churches whether or not they actually need that tax-exempt status because they have a constitutional right. | ||
| Donald J. Trump. | ||
| And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free. | ||
| And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me. | ||
| And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land. | |
| From the lake to the hill, Tennessee, free American. | ||
| And it's time we stand and say that I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free, And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me, And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today, Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land. | ||
| God bless the USA. | ||
| And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free, And I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me, And I gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today, Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land. | ||
| Well, thank you very much. | ||
| This is a great room. | ||
| And, you know, we've done very well in this room before, but right now we broke every record. | ||
| I just heard from Mike Johnson. | ||
| He said, we broke every record, sir. | ||
| There is over $35 million. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's not bad for an evening. | |
| For an evening, that's not bad. | ||
| I wonder if you ever turned the room this way. | ||
| You know, it's interesting because I love real estate. | ||
| I love ballrooms. | ||
| I have nice ballrooms, a lot of them. | ||
| I wonder if they ever turned it this way instead. | ||
| So it might be interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This way I'm not talking to a wall. | |
| They think they get a better view, but actually, I'm not sure. | ||
| But next time, maybe we'll have to worry about that next year. | ||
| Well, we'll do 45 or 50 million, right? | ||
| I mean, a lot of people, you broke your record attendance, and you broke your money record, and that's a great tribute to the Republicans and the party and everything it stands for. | ||
| It's wonderful. | ||
| And I want to thank especially Speaker Mike Johnson because he's been incredible. | ||
| And we have some unbelievable supporters of our House Republican majority with us, as you know. | ||
| And with the help of everyone in this room, the next year's Republican Party is going to defy history. | ||
| We're going to really defy it. | ||
| And we already are. | ||
| We're getting things done. | ||
| It's going to be very interesting to see. | ||
| This is going to be a very interesting year. | ||
| We have an interesting time. | ||
| We're making a fortune with tariffs. | ||
| $2 billion a day. | ||
| Do you believe it? | ||
| I was told $2 billion a day. | ||
| You know, I get hit by the press about tariffs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're making $2 billion. | |
| This isn't $35 million. | ||
| That's peanuts. | ||
| $2 billion a day. | ||
| And then they say, gee, they don't know. | ||
| You know, this is only the enemy can be talking this way. | ||
| In addition, we have a lot of countries coming to see us. | ||
| They want to make a deal. | ||
| And we're doing things that nobody's ever even thought about doing. | ||
| And we're going to defeat the radical left Democrats who are out there complaining about everything. | ||
| All they do is complain. | ||
| And then they want to put men in women's sports and things like that. | ||
| They want men and women's sports. | ||
| They're still fighting for that. | ||
| I saw this poor guy. | ||
| You all know him. | ||
| I won't mention his name. | ||
| He's sort of a nice guy. | ||
| He's a loser. | ||
| He's a Democrat, but he's a loser. | ||
| And he was fighting on a big show this morning. | ||
| We've got to have that. | ||
| It's not fair that, essentially, that men aren't allowed to compete against women. | ||
| Can you believe this guy? | ||
| But let them do it. | ||
| I say we shouldn't be fighting a lot of these things. | ||
| Just let them go. | ||
| And then just before the next election, we'll unleash on them. | ||
| Because it would be very sad if they actually changed their policies. | ||
| We don't want that to happen. | ||
| But we're going to win the midterm elections, and we're going to have a tremendous thundering landslide. | ||
| really believe that and it's so important that we pass the big beautiful bill because that's going to be and i really think and i really think we're helped a lot by the tariff situation that's going on which is a good situation not a bad It's great. | ||
| It's going to be legendary. | ||
| You watch legendary in a positive way, I have to say. | ||
| It's going to be legendary. | ||
| But I really think it actually puts pressure on those few Republicans that just can't get there. | ||
| You know what the alternative is? | ||
| A Democrat bill or a chapter for the country. | ||
| You know, we have the debt continuation. | ||
| And they have to do this. | ||
| They have to get there. | ||
| And I think we are there. | ||
| We had a great meeting today. | ||
| I think we are there. | ||
| But just in case there are a couple of Republicans out there, you just got to get there. | ||
| Close your eyes and get there. | ||
| It's a phenomenal bill. | ||
| Stop grandstanding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just stop grandstanding. | |
| Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. | ||
| You know, their policy of the Democrats is horrible. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| Think of it, open borders, just all of the horrible, stupid things they have. | ||
| You don't have energy, you don't have anything, they've lost their confidence, everything is bad. | ||
| But the one thing, they always vote in unison. | ||
| You don't see somebody that's holding up, we're going to hold up. | ||
| And the alternative is hell. | ||
| You know, the alternative is hell. | ||
| So the Republicans just have one little thing the Republican Party has to do is get together and damn vote. | ||
| If you're a single guy or a second guy, and you fight like hell for what you get, and then in the end, you have to vote because the policy is phenomenal. | ||
| You know, they don't get every little ounce. | ||
| It doesn't work that way. | ||
| And this bill that we're working on now is the best I think we've ever passed. | ||
| Mike, wherever you may be, I think it's the best thing we've got it passed. | ||
| But I think it's going to be the most important thing we've ever passed. | ||
| It's the best thing we've ever passed. | ||
| And I do think that the war with the world, which is not a war at all, because they're all coming here. | ||
| Japan is coming here as we speak. | ||
| They're in a plane flying, lots of them, all tough negotiators. | ||
| But things that people wouldn't have given us two years ago, wouldn't have even thought of it two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, seven, they're giving us everything. | ||
| They don't want tariffs on themselves. | ||
| And it's very simple. | ||
| We're making deals, and people are paying tariffs. | ||
| Countries are paying tariffs. | ||
| Right now, China is paying a 104% tariff. | ||
| Think of it, 104%. | ||
| Now, it sounds ridiculous, but they charged us for many items 100%, 125%. | ||
| Many countries have. | ||
| They've ripped us off left and right. | ||
| But now it's our turn to do the ripping. | ||
| That's okay. | ||
| We're going to make our country even stronger, stronger than it ever was. | ||
| And 20, 26 Republicans will fight for every state, every seat, and every single vote. | ||
| We're going to fight like hell. | ||
| I intend to personally campaign for candidates all across the country. | ||
| And we just won't. | ||
| You're right about that. | ||
| We won't just keep our majorities. | ||
| We want to expand our majorities by a lot. | ||
| You know, there's this thing about midterm elections that you have a president and the president. | ||
| They never seem to win. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| They never seem to win the midterm elections. | ||
| And I have no idea why. | ||
| You know, we're not going to let that be a self-fulfilling prophecy. | ||
| I have no idea why. | ||
| We're setting records right now. | ||
| We're getting more things approved than any president has ever done in the first hundred days. | ||
| It's not even close. | ||
| I had somebody say the most successful month, first month in the history. | ||
| Now they said the most successful 100 days in the history of our country. | ||
| And I believe that's right. | ||
| And we're going to continue that way, if not more so. | ||
| And we're going to do tremendously in midterms. | ||
| There's no reason we should do great in the midterms. | ||
| There's this thing that, for some reason, the president, whoever the president is, the midterms are tough. | ||
| Why would they be tough? | ||
| If we're doing great, they should be easy. | ||
| And I'm telling you, we've got to win a lot more. | ||
| But as Mike said before, I happened to listen to him. | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| I was listening as I was putting on the tie. | ||
| How does it look? | ||
| He was on C-SPAN 1, and they were talking about that. | ||
| And I thought to myself, because people love him and they love your leaders. | ||
| They love, really, the party is just doing well. | ||
| A couple we could do without, to be honest with you. | ||
| But the party is doing well. | ||
| And there's no reason we shouldn't just get together and win these midterms and win them by a lot because seven that I heard Mike talking about before, seven is not really enough. | ||
| But we lived for one for a period of time. | ||
| You know, the only thing good about seven, when you have one, and now all of a sudden you have seven, it sounds like it's like a landslide. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| It's like the most amazing thing, seven sounds so good when I hear that. | ||
| It sounds like we can't be beaten. | ||
| And we should be 50, 60 up. | ||
| Honestly, we should be 100 up because based on policy, these people have the worst policy that anybody's ever seen. | ||
| There's something wrong with them. | ||
| Honestly, there's something wrong with them, all this crap. | ||
| 13 House Democrats currently represent districts that voted for Trump and voted for Trump big. | ||
| And in 2026, we're going to tell them, all 13, that you're fired. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| Out. | ||
| Get out. | ||
| No reason for that. | ||
| 13, but 13 is a small number compared to some of these stats. | ||
| We are going to work very hard. | ||
| I'm going to do tele rallies. | ||
| You know, tele rallies. | ||
| I'll do rallies for a lot of you, but I'll do tele rallies at a minimum. | ||
| And we just had two great elections, by the way, and I heard everybody is introducing our two new Congress. | ||
| Where are they, please? | ||
| Stand up. | ||
| I want to look you in the eye. | ||
| I want to look you in the eye, Randy. | ||
| Look at two of them. | ||
| Where's what a job you did, man? | ||
| You were never in doubt. | ||
| Where the hell, where is our second person here? | ||
| I know he's, oh, there he is. | ||
| Boy, they gave him a lousy seat. | ||
| He's behind. | ||
| Good, great job. | ||
| We're proud of you, man. | ||
| Great job. | ||
| Great job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And, you know, those both elections, they were saying, it's going to be close. | ||
| It's going to be close. | ||
| And I was listening. | ||
| And they won by like, you won by what, 17 points, 18 points. | ||
| I don't think that's close. | ||
| I don't think it's close. | ||
| So we won by 15 and 18 points. | ||
| And they're saying, it was a terrible evening for Trump. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| Terrible evening. | ||
| They only won by 18 points and 15 points. | ||
| Anyway, good job, both of you. | ||
| Good job. | ||
| But in addition to our fantastic House Speaker, we're pleased to be joined by majority leader Steve Skilles. | ||
| And I watched you too, Steve. | ||
| I watched you on C-SPAN 1. | ||
| And Steve has suffered greatly. | ||
| I mean, I was there the night that it looked like he wasn't going to make it. | ||
| He's very brave. | ||
| He suffered greatly. | ||
| And I tell the story about the baseball game where, I mean, he was really, the doctor told me, sir, I've never had anybody lose so much blood. | ||
| It's not looking good. | ||
| And his wife loved him. | ||
| She was such a disaster that night. | ||
| She was crying. | ||
| She was crying. | ||
| Because I've been with people that were in serious trouble and the wives couldn't care. | ||
| They couldn't care less. | ||
| In fact, after they recovered, I said, do yourself a favor, get rid of the wife. | ||
| She could. | ||
| No, I'm only kidding, of course. | ||
| I'm only kidding. | ||
| I like to say I'm only kidding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That way, that cleans it up a little bit for the press. | |
| I say I was only kidding. | ||
| No, I've seen some wives that were truly not bothered too much. | ||
| I had one where the dog died and the husband died on the same day. | ||
| And I said, it's too bad about Harry. | ||
| No, no, but Lucy died, Lucy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, my God. | |
| Harry didn't mean, he left her a fortune, too. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| Harry didn't matter. | ||
| The dog mattered a lot. | ||
| But I was with Stephen, and he was really, you know, that was a tough thing. | ||
| And then, amazingly, he was like a year later, he was in the baseball game against the Democrats, and he's playing second base. | ||
| And he was having a hard time. | ||
| You know, it's a hard time getting around. | ||
| And with his luck, a shot was hit to him on the ground, a ground ball, and he got down, and that ball was no way that ball was, it was right at him, but really, it was whacked. | ||
| I don't know who the hell hit it. | ||
| It looked like a major league ground ball. | ||
| And Steve went down and blocked that sucker and got on his knees and threw it to first base. | ||
| It was the most unbelievable thing that it could happen. | ||
| This was God watching a game, I'm telling you. | ||
| Does everybody remember that? | ||
| He blocked it, knocked the hell out of his foot. | ||
| Not his glove, it was his foot. | ||
| And he got down and grabbed the ball, threw it out, and got the runner by quite a bit. | ||
| And they then took him out of the game. | ||
| And I said, what a great move. | ||
| That was a good manager. | ||
| They took him out of the game because you can't improve on that, let me tell you. | ||
| But he had great courage and amazing how he's done. | ||
| And he's been very special, and all of us know it. | ||
| He's really done great. | ||
| Another man I've really gotten to know a lot, and I think he's fantastic, is Tom Emmer, majority whip. | ||
| I think he's fantastic. | ||
| Where's Tom? | ||
| Where's Tom? | ||
| Where is our Tom? | ||
| Because I want to see his wife. | ||
| You know, his wife is better than him. | ||
| He admits it. | ||
| Oh, that's good. | ||
| Hi, Tom. | ||
| So where is she, Tom? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| She's home. | ||
| She's watching C-SPAN. | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| Thank you, Tom. | ||
| Great job you do. | ||
| And Lisa, you were up talking about Donald Trump tonight. | ||
| And Lisa McLean, conference chair, she was talking about Trump. | ||
| And I appreciate it, Lisa. | ||
| Lisa, where are you, Lisa? | ||
| She's like a roast. | ||
| Thank you, darling. | ||
| I saw your whole speech. | ||
| I watched you and Steve and Mike. | ||
| I watched the whole thing. | ||
| Then they said, sir, we have to leave. | ||
| You're going to be late. | ||
| I said, I don't want to watch your speeches. | ||
| And we have Richard Hudson, the NRCC chairman, who set the record tonight. | ||
| Richard, great going. | ||
| That's a great, that's a great job. | ||
| And Brian Jack, who was with me from day one of my political career, he was so fantastic. | ||
| He was so fantastic. | ||
| And he came to me, said, do you think it would be okay? | ||
| He wanted to run for Congress. | ||
| He always wanted to run for Congress. | ||
| It was the most important thing. | ||
| But he was with me, knows so much about politics and boxing. | ||
| He knows a lot about boxing, too, but he loves politics. | ||
| But he really just wanted to run. | ||
| I think his ambition was to be a congressman. | ||
| And the seat came due. | ||
| A good member of Congress actually retired and Brian in Georgia. | ||
| And Brian said, what do you think, sir? | ||
| I said, well, you got my endorsement. | ||
| And he won by a lot. | ||
| And he's never looked back. | ||
| He's a fantastic guy and a great political leader, a great politician. | ||
| Brian Jack. | ||
| Where are you, Brian? | ||
| Where are you, Brian? | ||
| Hi, Brian. | ||
| Great job. | ||
| Proud of you, Brian. | ||
| And more than 160 members of Congress. | ||
| And I'd like to really, you've done incredibly well. | ||
| They're really looking back. | ||
| And you know, I said before, the Democrats have taken a lot of beatings. | ||
| They have lost their confidence. | ||
| They've gone crazy. | ||
| They've gone crazy. | ||
| How about this new one they have? | ||
| Their new star, Crockett. | ||
| How about her? | ||
| Is she, is that real? | ||
| Are they serious about that? | ||
| That's their new star? | ||
| If that's their new star, they're in serious trouble. | ||
| I mean, this is Crockett. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| But we've done a job, but they've totally lost their confidence. | ||
| And it's a hard thing when you lose your confidence. | ||
| But they have. | ||
| They've taken a lot of beatings. | ||
| And now they're going to rely on Crockett to bring them back. | ||
| Crockett's going to bring them back. | ||
| You ever watch this? | ||
| Last November, all the leaders here tonight were given a mandate from the American people. | ||
| And at the presidential level, we won, think of this, all seven swing states. | ||
| We won the Electoral College 312 to 226. | ||
| That's not bad. | ||
| Remember? | ||
| The fake news was saying it's going to be tough because people like Trump, but he should be able to get 270. | ||
| I actually went to Nebraska and campaigned for one vote. | ||
| I went to New Hampshire. | ||
| I campaigned because they said that it could be worth 270, 269. | ||
| So I'm going to all the places and I'm trying to get one. | ||
| We won Nebraska big, but there was one area. | ||
| And I went there. | ||
| I went all over the place campaigning, and then we get 312. | ||
| But we won in a landslide, too, because we won the popular vote for the first time of a Republican in decades. | ||
| And now I think that's going to be done routinely. | ||
| We won 85% of all counties in America, 525 for them and 2,725 for us. | ||
| That's that map that you see. | ||
| It's all red except for the two corners. | ||
| They have a little blue, a little line of blue. | ||
| For the first time in history, all 50 states shifted toward the Republican Party. | ||
| First time in history, it's never happened. | ||
| It's a shift. | ||
| It shifted Republican. | ||
| And today there are more registered Republicans at any time in the history of our country. | ||
| How good? | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Meanwhile, approval ratings for the Democrat Party have plunged to the lowest level ever recorded. | ||
| They're at 26%. | ||
| So you tell me about the midterms, right? | ||
| 26%, the lowest level ever for either party. | ||
| The Republican Party is a much bigger party now than it was ever before. | ||
| And I must say that it's the biggest now since you heard the name Donald J. Trump running as a politician. | ||
| You heard the name before, but not as a politician. | ||
| I said to my wife, you know, I think I'm going to do this thing. | ||
| Do I have your approval? | ||
| Yes, darling, I think you'll win. | ||
| See, she's a supportive First Lady. | ||
| I don't know if she believed it or not, but she said it. | ||
| She said, yes, darling, I think you'll win. | ||
| How do you think I'll do? | ||
| Oh, darling, you'll win very easily, even though I've never done it before. | ||
| I said, I have one problem. | ||
| I've never done it before. | ||
| She said, that doesn't matter. | ||
| You're so talented. | ||
| I said, thank you very much. | ||
| She says, why? | ||
| We get along. | ||
| It's easy to get along like that. | ||
| But we have far more people and far more enthusiasm than the party's ever had. | ||
| I think I could almost say than any party's ever had. | ||
| I don't think any party's ever had more enthusiasm than us and spirit. | ||
| A lot of that's our leadership. | ||
| The Democrats are a broken party with bad policy. | ||
| They've lost so much, and both as politicians and as people, they've lost. | ||
| The stage is set for a monumental victory for the Republicans in the midterms. | ||
| And many of you, I guess most of you, and so many great congressmen and women here, you got some senators here also, but many of you are, all of you are up. | ||
| We've got to win. | ||
| We've got to work really hard or we've got to win because there's no way they should be winning based on policy and it's ultimately about policy. | ||
| We simply have to keep our promises to the people and we have to very simply put America first. | ||
| Put America first. | ||
| And I said I ran on common sense. | ||
| You know, I ran in. | ||
| It sounds like a phrase that would have been used. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Nobody tells me it was used in politics before. | ||
| Now everybody's using it. | ||
| I see the Democrats, some Democrat guy who's a real sleazeball, got up. | ||
| He said, yeah, I ran on common sense. | ||
| That's what I did. | ||
| Common sense, yeah. | ||
| And I said, gee, the problem in politics, you come up with a little slogan and they copy it. | ||
| But you know, they copied no tax on tips. | ||
| Remember, I said no tax on tips. | ||
| Nevada hadn't been won for many years by a Republican. | ||
| And state of Nevada. | ||
| And don't ever call it Nevada. | ||
| You'll lose 25%. | ||
| Call it Nevada. | ||
| It's true. | ||
| It seems almost nicer the other way. | ||
| Nevada sounds like Brooklyn. | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| I come from Nevada, but don't ever call it Nevada. | ||
| Call it Nevada. | ||
| But as you know, the corrupt globalist establishment that ruled our country for decades is now complaining that I'm doing exactly what I pledged to do in the campaign. | ||
| All of these things, tariffs, the men and women sports, everything. | ||
| The borders, strong borders. | ||
| We have the strongest border we've ever had today. | ||
| It was just announced. | ||
| Strongest border. | ||
| They don't want to write that. | ||
| You know, they forget. | ||
| They forget. | ||
| Eggs. | ||
| I came in eggs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not a very glamorous thing to talk about, but eggs. | |
| I was in for one week and they said, egg prices are soaring. | ||
| I said, I've just been here. | ||
| I didn't know this. | ||
| Please. | ||
| I didn't know it. | ||
| The fake news. | ||
| They're going, egg prices are soaring. | ||
| I said, man, I just got here. | ||
| You know, let me know about it. | ||
| What's going on with eggs? | ||
| Tell me. | ||
| So they gave me a little bit of a thing, and it's true. | ||
| Under Biden, they soared like double, triple, quadruple. | ||
| You couldn't even get them. | ||
| They were not available. | ||
| They said, don't use eggs for Easter. | ||
| Use the plastic alternative plastic. | ||
| We got, at Mar-a-Lago, we got plastic eggs all over the place. | ||
| They said, don't use it for Easter. | ||
| If you're doing an Easter egg hunt, do not use eggs. | ||
| Well, we have a wonderful Secretary of Agriculture, as you know, Brooke Rollins. | ||
| She's here someplace, I think. | ||
| And she got, she went after it when she goes after something. | ||
| We don't play games, right, Brooke? | ||
| And egg prices are down now 87%, and you have all the eggs you want. | ||
| 87%. | ||
| And they didn't write about it. | ||
| They don't talk about it. | ||
| I go up, I make speeches about eggs all the time. | ||
| I never get a reporter writing about it because we were successful. | ||
| If you're a Republican, when you're successful in something, you have to toot your own horn. | ||
| Talk about it because you're the only one that's going to. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a pretty rough, it's a rough business, I will tell you. | |
| But the shrill voices that you're hearing this week about tariffs are the same scoundrels and frauds who never thought twice about when the United States lost 90,000 factories and plants. | ||
| Think of that. | ||
| 90,000. | ||
| How do you do 90? | ||
| If you had a map, a big map the size of that wall and you had a pin for each factory, you wouldn't have enough room. | ||
| You think of it, 90,000 factories since NAFTA, the worst trade deal in history, by the way. | ||
| And we had it terminated. | ||
| Everybody said you'd never be able to, it had to be terminated by Congress, and it was not easy. | ||
| It was so bad. | ||
| You know, the people have a lot of, it's very interesting, they have a lot of power, they have a lot of political power. | ||
| It's hard to get even a bad deal terminated, but we did do it. | ||
| And we got USMCA, and that's been really great. | ||
| But when they cheat, it's not so good. | ||
| And they cheat. | ||
| They do cheat. | ||
| You know, I respect Mexico. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I respect Canada, but they cheat like hell. | |
| You know, Canada charges for our dairy products 270%. | ||
| Nobody knows that. | ||
| They charge you 2% for the first two cartons of milk. | ||
| And after that, you go up to 270. | ||
| And the press says they've only charged 2%. | ||
| No, that's for the first two cartons. | ||
| So it's, you know, we can't have that. | ||
| And we have to be wise to it and get along with everybody, but we have to call people out. | ||
| Six million manufacturing jobs were lost since NAFTA when 21 million illegal aliens brought across our borders. | ||
| Think of that, many of whom were violent criminals, murderers, drug lords, and the mentally insane. | ||
| Insane asylums were closed. | ||
| They used to go crazy when I talked about Hannibal Lecter, the late great Hannibal Lecter, right? | ||
| Silence of the Lambs. | ||
| The fake news would say, why does he talk about that? | ||
| He's a fictional character. | ||
| He's actually not. | ||
| We have many of them that came across the board. | ||
| It's actually not. | ||
| But when the people went to the voting booth, then we understood why he talked about that, because they voted for us. | ||
| They said, we don't want Hannibal Lecter in our country. | ||
| The great Hannibal Lecter, he was a very important force. | ||
| But the press would go absolutely crazy if I mentioned Hannibal Lecter's name because they said he's a fictional character. | ||
| No, but it was making a point. | ||
| And the point is they're emptying mental institutions and insane asylums. | ||
| Not anymore, they're not. | ||
| Insane asylums into our country. | ||
| We had numbers, the likes of which nobody's ever seen anything like it. | ||
| Other countries, I deal with other countries all the time. | ||
| I am right now on tariffs where they want to make a deal with us. | ||
| We don't necessarily want to make a deal with them. | ||
| We're happy the way we are, taking our $2 billion a day. | ||
| But they want to make a deal with us, and they talk about it. | ||
| And they say, we cannot believe that they had open borders. | ||
| These are countries, you know, they have borders, and they don't let people into their country. | ||
| They can't understand how. | ||
| They did it because they're sick or they're crazy. | ||
| There's something really wrong with these people. | ||
| But the same people now telling me about how to deal with China are the ones who sold out America for decades to China. | ||
| For decades, they gave up to China. | ||
| I'm the only one that, you know how much? | ||
| China's paid almost $700 billion in tariffs under me. | ||
| And then they say, Donald Trump hasn't been tough on China. | ||
| They say Trump hasn't been tough on Russia. | ||
| Okay, here's the story. | ||
| Nordstream 2. | ||
| Did anybody ever hear of it? | ||
| It's the biggest pipeline in the world. | ||
| I closed it. | ||
| Russia had it. | ||
| I closed it. | ||
| Putin told me that's the worst thing. | ||
| You're supposed to be friendly with me. | ||
| I'd hate to see you as my enemy. | ||
| I closed Nord Stream 2. | ||
| When Biden got in, he opened it up immediately. | ||
| It serviced all of Europe, going to Germany. | ||
| It serviced all of Europe. | ||
| We closed it, and they say, oh, he wasn't tough on Russia. | ||
| I was very tough with the sanctions and everything else. | ||
| And by the way, just for your information, we're trying like hell to get the fighting stopped between Russia and Ukraine. | ||
| A thing that never would have happened if the election wasn't rigged. | ||
| We had a rigged election, and we can say it and say it loud and say it proud because the election was rigged and we can't let that stuff happen anymore. | ||
| Go to paper ballots, go to same-day voting, go to voter ID, go to citizenship. | ||
| You have to prove your citizenship, a little piece of paper, and you won't have it. | ||
| Sort of disappointing because a lot of Republican governors, they could do that. | ||
| Same-day voting, paper ballots, very sophisticated paper, actually. | ||
| It's all watermarked. | ||
| You can't cheat. | ||
| Very hard to cheat. | ||
| France went that way. | ||
| They were like us, and they were having very bad elections, very crooked elections. | ||
| They had 37 million people. | ||
| They voted. | ||
| They had a winner. | ||
| They had a loser. | ||
| They went home. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| 10 o'clock in the evening was over. | ||
| With us, you ever see? | ||
| We have these machines that cost a fortune. | ||
| And they say, we think we're going to have the final vote tally in two and a half weeks. | ||
| And wait a minute, this is Election Day. | ||
| You ever see where in California, they were counting votes four weeks later? | ||
| And then they say, and by the way, all paper costs 8% of the machines. | ||
| Why is it that Republican governors aren't going to it, okay? | ||
| What's going on with our Republican governors? | ||
| If nothing else, you say, even if it was just the same, and it's not, it's, you know, nothing's foolproof when it comes to voting, but it's pretty close. | ||
| But it costs 8%. | ||
| In other words, you can have your election, 8% the cost of the machines, and you get an accurate count. | ||
| So it's pretty amazing. | ||
| They gave us NAFTA, mass illegal immigration the Democrats did, the fake Paris Climate Accord, and the China's entry into the World Trade Organization. | ||
| That was a wonderful day for us. | ||
| China entered the world trade. | ||
| They've done pretty good. | ||
| And, you know, they didn't do things exactly by the books. | ||
| And they were a developing nation. | ||
| They still are. | ||
| They say, we are a developing nation. | ||
| We should be entitled to more. | ||
| And our people say, oh, that's right. | ||
| They're developing. | ||
| They're not developing. | ||
| We're developing. | ||
| Look at some of our inner cities. | ||
| We've got to develop them. | ||
| But we can't let the Democrats get away with this stuff. | ||
| But we're developing more than they are. | ||
| The globalists have been wrong about everything. | ||
| And so I wear their attack on me because nobody has ever been attacked like a man named Donald J. Trump. | ||
| In the history of our country, nobody's ever, but I wear it as a badge of honor. | ||
| Nobody has ever been attacked. | ||
| I was under more investigations than the late great Al Capone. | ||
| He was the most violent criminal. | ||
| He was the most violent mob boss in history. | ||
| And I was under investigation far more than him. | ||
| It wasn't even close. | ||
| Our opponents are not afraid that our America first policies will fail. | ||
| They're terrified that our strategy will succeed and we're going to get bigger and stronger and better as a party. | ||
| And that's what's happening. | ||
| And that is what's happening. | ||
| It's going to be something. | ||
| And I'm actually looking forward to the midterms. | ||
| I really are. | ||
| We're going to prove that all of their treasonous years of betrayal will not be forgotten because it's treason. | ||
| What they did is treason. | ||
| When they allowed millions of people to pour in through open borders from all over the world, they came. | ||
| To me, that's treason. | ||
| What they've done to our country is unthinkable. | ||
| The money we have to spend to take people out. | ||
| And then we have judges that say, no, let Trende Araqua come back into our country. | ||
| They want him to come back in. | ||
| Killers, they cut off a man's fingers because he, did you cut off, did you, sir, make a phone call to the police in Colorado? | ||
| Yes, I did. | ||
| I did. | ||
| You've attacked us and you've taken over our building. | ||
| They took over real estate all over Colorado. | ||
| You did, right? | ||
| Give me your hand. | ||
| Put the hand down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boom. | |
| Cuts off his fingers. | ||
| And they want him back. | ||
| And how about the mix-up with the MS-13, where it wasn't a trend ragua? | ||
| It was an MS-13 killer. | ||
| And they said, oh, they got to mix up. | ||
| Let's get them back into our country. | ||
| No, we need people that are going to love our country. | ||
| I'm proud to be the president for the workers, not the outsourcers, the president who stands up for Main Street, not Wall Street, who protects the middle class, not the political class, and who defends America, not trade cheaters all over the globe. | ||
| They're trade cheaters. | ||
| They cheated on us. | ||
| They cheated with tariffs on us. | ||
| They stole our money. | ||
| They stole our jobs. | ||
| And now people are going around saying, oh, we're not treating them right now. | ||
| We're treating them very good, actually. | ||
| They're lucky we're treating them so good. | ||
| And you know, when I have tariffs and I say, well, we're going to charge what they did. | ||
| We're going to charge what they did. | ||
| And then I say, I'm going to charge much less than they did. | ||
| Believe me, we're actually being nice about it. | ||
| But we're doing very well, better than we've ever done before. | ||
| My job is not to maximize the profits of outsources and foreign cars. | ||
| I mean, these foreign corporations are horrible. | ||
| It's horrible what they're doing, but we're catching them. | ||
| We're catching them by the dozens. | ||
| My job is to defend the, I have to defend the American dream, and I have to defend the American citizens. | ||
| That's my job. | ||
| I have to defend that. | ||
| The American dream is never mentioned. | ||
| It was mentioned for four years, and now it's being mentioned again, but it was never mentioned when we had Sleepy Joe in office. | ||
| I used to have a big, the hardest thing I had to do with Joe Biden is the nickname. | ||
| Do I call him Sleepy Joe or Crooked Joe? | ||
| Could we take a vote, please? | ||
| Who wants to call him Crooked Joe? | ||
| Who wants to call him Sleepy Joe? | ||
| That's my problem. | ||
| It's like the same. | ||
| They both work. | ||
| They both work beautifully. | ||
| Joe had one ability that I didn't have. | ||
| You know, he said he was a good golfer. | ||
| He's terrible. | ||
| Somebody said the only time I got angry during our debate when he said he was a six-handicap, he's not a six-he's not a 36, okay? | ||
| But he had one ability that I don't have. | ||
| He was able to go to a beach, bathing suit in tow, because it looked like it was actually falling off. | ||
| But he'd go, had a hard time walking through the sand because, you know, sand is heavy on your feet. | ||
| Carrying one of those six-ounce chairs that are made out of aluminum that if you weigh a little bit too much, it just cracks in the middle when you sit down. | ||
| And he could sit down in a beach with photographers on the beach. | ||
| You know, he's the president, so he had a minimum of photographers, but he still had photographers. | ||
| And he could fall asleep. | ||
| Who the hell could do that? | ||
| Who could fall asleep? | ||
| And he'd turn around, and Druel would be coming out. | ||
| He didn't care. | ||
| His wife didn't care. | ||
| It's an ability that I could never fall asleep under those circumstances. | ||
| I'd be very conscious of my body and what we look like. | ||
| I'd be sitting up like this. | ||
| And I'd say, darling, it's time to go. | ||
| Let's get out of here. | ||
| Well, wouldn't most people? | ||
| I mean, this guy could go to the beach, and he was out in seconds. | ||
| Guys are shooting him. | ||
| He'd be in the papers the next day, eyes closed, mouth open. | ||
| The United States has been getting ripped off for 50 years, and we're simply not going to take it anymore, and that's what's happening right now. | ||
| In 1950, the United States dominated global auto production, producing more than 75% of all of the cars on Earth. | ||
| Think of that, 75% and even higher before that. | ||
| Today we produce 11%, while China produces three times more than we do. | ||
| Let me tell you something. | ||
| With the tariffs that we're doing, as you know, we have tariffs on automobiles, aluminum, steel, separate from the other tariffs, the baseline we call it. | ||
| Companies are pouring back into our country with plants. | ||
| There's a run on sites. | ||
| There's a run on old plants. | ||
| Most of them are being ripped down for new plants. | ||
| They've stopped building in Mexico, four or five plants, and they're all coming into the United States. | ||
| I know what the hell I'm doing. | ||
| I know what I'm doing. | ||
| And you know what I'm doing, too. | ||
| That's why you vote for me. | ||
| And the chipmakers are coming in. | ||
| They're all coming in. | ||
| We've never had anything like this. | ||
| We have investment, they think, of about seven, think of this, seven trillion dollars. | ||
| And that's been in a month and a half. | ||
| Think of that. | ||
| For the first, like, you got to give me a little time to get warmed up with that. | ||
| So let's take the first couple of weeks off. | ||
| For about a month and a half, we got seven, almost seven trillion dollars spoken for. | ||
| Trillion. | ||
| We've never had that. | ||
| I don't know if we've ever had it anytime, but if you go back and look at Biden and these other campaigns, any of them, they didn't have those numbers for the year. | ||
| These are the biggest chip makers in the world, the biggest auto manufacturers in the world. | ||
| Seven trillion dollars of investment, and that means jobs. | ||
| I look at differently, not investment. | ||
| I look at it as jobs. | ||
| And they're coming in at levels that we've never seen before. | ||
| And it is true that Mexico, they've stopped building plants, and those plants are now going to be built in the United States of America. | ||
| So it's pretty exciting. | ||
| All because of two things. | ||
| They say, they want to be nice to me. | ||
| They say, sir, because of November 5th, the election, and because of tariffs. | ||
| I said, in that order? | ||
| And the smart one said, yes, sir. | ||
| First was that you got elected, and second was tariffs. | ||
| And I'll accept that, you know. | ||
| But I will tell you, because of tariffs. | ||
| But I'm the only one that would have done the tariffs because everybody was afraid. | ||
| They were afraid of being criticized because the globalists will go after you. | ||
| For seven decades, American ships have patrolled the seas. | ||
| American troops have kept the pace and peace. | ||
| And American wealth has enriched the globe. | ||
| But despite all we have given to them, you will not find an American car in Berlin, in Tokyo, in Seoul, in Shanghai, not a car. | ||
| I used to say to Angela Merkel, Angela, how many Chevrolets do we have in Berlin? | ||
| Why, none, Donald. | ||
| None. | ||
| That's right, Angela, you got it. | ||
| How many Chevrolets do you think we have in Munich, Angela? | ||
| None, Donald. | ||
| I said, you sent us seven million cars last year. | ||
| So we're going to start buying American-made cars or cars that are manufactured in America. | ||
| And if you can do it, not part of what I was going to say, but one of the best things that I think I've come up with is interest deductions. | ||
| If you buy a car that's made in America, you get an interest deduction on the money you borrow. | ||
| And I love it. | ||
| I hope you can do it, Mike. | ||
| I hope you can do it because I haven't bugged you about that. | ||
| I've been talking about no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. | ||
| And I haven't really been as strong on this one, but it's only because it gets a little bit long, you know. | ||
| But if you think of it, you buy a car, you borrow money, and you get a deduction on that money if the car is made in America. | ||
| That will not cost you 10 cents. | ||
| You'll make money with that one. | ||
| I think you make money actually in a certain way with the other three also. | ||
| I think they're very important. | ||
| And they were part of our campaign. | ||
| I was going to say before that in Nevada, that when I came up with the no tax on tips, I think that's why we won by a massive amount. | ||
| And interestingly, they came up about a month and a half later. | ||
| She was making one of her few speeches. | ||
| She didn't speak too much for a reason, good reason. | ||
| She's making a speech. | ||
| And in the middle, she said, oh, and by the way, we will have, everyone's falling asleep, we will have no tax on tips. | ||
| The place booed the hell out of it. | ||
| They said, you're a little late on that one, because I was worried they'd copy me. | ||
| You know, it was so good. | ||
| You know how it actually happened? | ||
| Maybe I should tell the story quickly. | ||
| I was in my building in Las Vegas. | ||
| We have a great restaurant there. | ||
| And this young, beautiful waitress, and you're not allowed to say beautiful because that's the end of your political career. | ||
| If you call a young woman beautiful, that's the end of your career. | ||
| But what the hell? | ||
| She was beautiful. | ||
| So she came up to me. | ||
| And she said, hello, sir. | ||
| It's so nice to have you at the hotel. | ||
| I said, thank you. | ||
| I had a group of people, some political people, actually. | ||
| It's very interesting. | ||
| And I said, how's everything going? | ||
| She said, oh, it's so tough. | ||
| They're after my tips. | ||
| Who's after? | ||
| The government. | ||
| They're after my tips, constantly after my tips. | ||
| They're after all of us for the tips. | ||
| She said, sir, we should have no tax on tips. | ||
| I said, say it again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| We should have no tax. | ||
| She said it. | ||
| This was my consultant, a waitress from my hotel. | ||
| Most people go out and spend millions of dollars to come up with an idea. | ||
| I said, she just said, no tax on tips. | ||
| That's the coolest thing I've ever heard. | ||
| So I went outside. | ||
| There were a lot of, we finished our wonderful meal, steak, went outside, and there were a lot of cameras, as there always are, unfortunately. | ||
| I say, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to have a new policy all over the country, but specifically in Nevada. | ||
| There will be no tax on tips. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And the cameras went wild. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Click, And we won the state by a lot. | |
| So I don't know. | ||
| So I have to find that waitress and thank her. | ||
| She was my consultant. | ||
| Except I didn't pay her $2 million like the other consultants that we all get screwed by. | ||
| Even worse than the tariffs other countries impose are the non-monetary barriers. | ||
| That's a non-monetary. | ||
| These are not financial. | ||
| These are other things, what they do so that you can't get your product in that country. | ||
| And China, as you know, is one of the bigger offenders. | ||
| And it's not all China. | ||
| Look, I get along with President Xi. | ||
| I have over the years, but, you know, you just, when COVID came, that was the end. | ||
| That was it. | ||
| That was called the bridge too far. | ||
| But I've always had a good relationship with a very smart guy, loves his country. | ||
| I love our country. | ||
| So, you know, we love our country. | ||
| He loves his. | ||
| I tell that to other leaders: you got to fight for your country. | ||
| You're not going to fight for us. | ||
| But we can't fight for you. | ||
| We're fighting for other countries. | ||
| We're trying to make them great without making us great. | ||
| But those days are over. | ||
| They steal our intellectual property. | ||
| They rob our trade secrets. | ||
| They manipulate their currency to levels that have never been seen before. | ||
| Today it was announced that China is reducing its currency. | ||
| Did you see that? | ||
| Big, big. | ||
| In other words, they're going to make up for it. | ||
| They got every trick in the book. | ||
| I'll tell you, they are great. | ||
| You got to hand it to them. | ||
| You got to hand it to them. | ||
| They're manipulating their currency today as an offset against the tariffs. | ||
| That's supposed to do that. | ||
| The game isn't supposed to be played that way. | ||
| It makes it very hard for us. | ||
| But in the end, it's not good because they have to buy oil. | ||
| See, we don't need oil. | ||
| We don't need oil and gas. | ||
| We have more than any other country. | ||
| They have to buy it. | ||
| That's where it hurts them when they do that. | ||
| It costs them twice as much. | ||
| And they ship their products through every one of our trading partners, running up our deficits with these countries. | ||
| They sell a lot. | ||
| You know, when you put a tariff on them, they sell it like with steel. | ||
| They were dumping tremendous amounts of steel into our country during my term. | ||
| I saved every steel mill. | ||
| We only have steel mills because of what I did. | ||
| I put a high tariff on them, 25 and then 50 percent, and it stopped. | ||
| It stopped. | ||
| They were dumping so much steel, we would have lost every single steel mill. | ||
| The people that like me best are the people in the steel business, but I think the auto business is going to be right there. | ||
| I think chips are going to be there. | ||
| I think pharmaceuticals are going to be there because, you know, we don't make our own pharmaceuticals, drugs, and other things to get better. | ||
| They're made in other countries. | ||
| And you pay a number, I mean, the same package in our country compared to like London and other places is sometimes 10 times more. | ||
| 10 times more. | ||
| Something that sells for $88 in London, sells for $1,300 here, made in the same factory by the same company. | ||
| And that's over. | ||
| I told them all that's over. | ||
| They put all of their research and development, they put everything. | ||
| But what they don't tell you is that these other countries are smart. | ||
| They say you can't charge more than $88, otherwise you can't sell your product. | ||
| And the drug companies listen to them. | ||
| But we're going to do something that we have to do. | ||
| We're going to tariff our pharmaceuticals. | ||
| And once we do that, they're going to come rushing back into our country because we're the big market. | ||
| The advantage we have over everybody is that we're the big market. | ||
| So we're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals. | ||
| And when they hear that, they will leave China. | ||
| They will leave other places because they have to sell. | ||
| Most of their product is sold here. | ||
| And they're going to be opening up their plants all over the place in our country. | ||
| We're going to be announcing that. | ||
| So that's breaking news. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, we have breaking news. | ||
| That's what's going to happen. | ||
| What other presidents allow China to get away with is absolutely criminal, but I'm not like the other presidents. | ||
| And it's not going to happen under President Trump. | ||
| It's just not going to happen. | ||
| After all of the abuses they've perpetrated, China's attempting to impose additional unjustified tariffs. | ||
| Just so you understand, they all got rich because of tariffs. | ||
| Now when we do it, oh, it's so terrible what Trump is doing. | ||
| It's so terrible. | ||
| They got rich. | ||
| And not only China, many countries. | ||
| I mean, you look at Vietnam, you look at so many. | ||
| I could name 50 right now. | ||
| Biden couldn't do that. | ||
| He couldn't name any. | ||
| Name one country. | ||
| Name any country. | ||
| What's the name of our country? | ||
| He doesn't know. | ||
| That's why additional tariffs on Chinese goods are in place effective midnight tonight at 104%. | ||
| Until they make a deal with us, that's what it's going to be. | ||
| I think they'll make a deal at some point. | ||
| China will, they want to make a deal. | ||
| They really do. | ||
| They want to make a deal. | ||
| They just don't know how to get it started because they're proud people. | ||
| China will now pay a big number to our Treasury. | ||
| This is all taxes. | ||
| And don't let them keep telling you that this is a tax on our people. | ||
| I hate that. | ||
| You know, they say it's a tax. | ||
| No, often much of it is paid. | ||
| And hey, look what happened during my first term. | ||
| We had no inflation. | ||
| And yet I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs and taxes from China. | ||
| No other president got 10 cents in tariffs or taxes from China. | ||
| I got hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| Hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| And I still got along with them. | ||
| Because they understood what they were doing was wrong. | ||
| They understood it. | ||
| When you explain it, they say, I've had numerous leaders tell me, you're right, sir. | ||
| I was waiting for you to bring this up. | ||
| Because some of the trade deals that were made by predecessors as president were so bad you almost wonder who did these deals. | ||
| They were either crooked or stupid. | ||
| They could be nothing else. | ||
| They were either stupid or crooked. | ||
| It's terrible, but it's all being changed. | ||
| I changed a lot of it in the first four years, but it's all being changed. | ||
| You know, in the first four years, we had the most successful country in history in terms of economics. | ||
| We had 88% increase in the stock markets. | ||
| We had an 88% increase. | ||
| There's never been any president that had an 88% increase. | ||
| We had 88%. | ||
| And there are a lot of happy people. | ||
| And I think we're going to do much better than that this time, because this time I'm doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs. | ||
| I think we're going to do much better. | ||
| And just remember the numbers. | ||
| When you get up to $2 billion a day, $2 billion a day, they're saying, sir, can't be that, can it? | ||
| I said, yeah, it can. | ||
| It's the biggest transaction ever made. | ||
| This is bigger than any deal. | ||
| You guys, some of you work for companies. | ||
| Your companies are peanuts. | ||
| I don't care how big they are. | ||
| This is the largest transaction in the history of our country. | ||
| And don't let some of these politicians go around and say, you know, because I'm telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. | ||
| They are. | ||
| They are dying to make a deal. | ||
| Please, please, sir, make a deal. | ||
| I'll do anything. | ||
| I'll do anything, sir. | ||
| And then I'll see some rebel Republican, you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, say, I think the Congress should take over negotiations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me tell you, you don't negotiate like I negotiate. | |
| Congress takes over negotiating, sell America fast because you're going to go busted. | ||
| You don't, I just saw it today. | ||
| A couple of your congressmen said, I think we should get involved in the negotiation of the tariffs. | ||
| Oh, that's what I need. | ||
| I need some guy telling me how to negotiate. | ||
| I tell you, the happiest people in the world would be China. | ||
| They wouldn't be paying 104%. | ||
| They'd be paying no percent. | ||
| We'd be paying them 104%. | ||
| That's the beauty: these guys, we've got to be careful. | ||
| And even the concept of it hurts your negotiation. | ||
| When they see a little story like that, the other side, you know, it hurts your negotiation. | ||
| And then the fake news wants to build it up, and it has no chance anyway. | ||
| But we have to remain united. | ||
| As I defend workers from unfair trade, House Republicans have a chance this week to bring trillions and trillions of dollars pouring back into America by pushing forward with the largest tax cuts in American history, which is what you're working on right now. | ||
| The largest in American history. | ||
| And you know, the reason we had, because we had a great first term and amazing first term, but I saw that the other day that we had the most successful, I mean, I knew it anyway, but I saw that we had 88% increase. | ||
| That's a tremendous increase. | ||
| Think of that. | ||
| And that's with all of the difficulties and all of the fake investigations and the Adam shifty shifts. | ||
| Can you believe this guy? | ||
| He's got the smallest neck I've ever seen. | ||
| And the biggest head. | ||
| We call him watermelon head. | ||
| I'd say, how could that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? | ||
| How can it? | ||
| It was the weirdest thing. | ||
| It's a mystery. | ||
| Nobody can understand it. | ||
| But he's one of the most dishonest human beings I've ever seen. | ||
| And, you know, how we can allow people like that to run in office is a shame, but we did. | ||
| He was in charge of the witch hunt. | ||
| You know, he was in charge of the fake witch hunt with Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| It was a made-up story. | ||
| Made up. | ||
| Think of it. | ||
| They make up a story. | ||
| They know it's made up. | ||
| It's gone on for a year and a half, two years. | ||
| Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| I knew nothing about it. | ||
| The only thing I knew was that I taxed the pipeline that I told you about, that I put all sorts of sanctions and everything else. | ||
| They never had a problem like they had with me. | ||
| But it was Russia, Russia, Russia, constant, as a method of. | ||
| What they did is that was the complaint about why she lost an election, because crooked Hillary was expected to win the election. | ||
| But they didn't see what we saw. | ||
| We saw the biggest crowds in history gathering, only superseded by the crowds we just had. | ||
| But here's a guy that goes out and he goes to an intelligence hearing or whatever you might call it, and it's supposed to be secret. | ||
| He'd walk out. | ||
| He'd either make a call off the record, off the record, just a crooked Adam shift, shifty shift. | ||
| He's a shifty Adam. | ||
| Or he'd just go out blatantly and have a news conference. | ||
| And because it had to do with me and my family, he'd go out and have a news conference, and he said, now you've got to remember, he knows it's a hoax because he made it up with Crooked Hillary. | ||
| So he knows it's a hoax because we're dealing with human beings on the other side. | ||
| He'd say, Donald Trump Jr., the son of the President of the United States, will spend many years in prison. | ||
| Because of what he's done with Russia. | ||
| Now, think of that statement on a human basis. | ||
| I have a son, a young son, who is being told that he's going for prison on something he has, he doesn't even know what they're talking about. | ||
| He said, Dad, I don't know what's going on. | ||
| They keep talking about I'm involved with Russia. | ||
| I don't know anything about Russia, I swear to you, Dad. | ||
| And yet, Adam Schiff goes out and makes a statement about a hoax that he made up that he knows is false. | ||
| How bad a human being do you have to be? | ||
| They put my son and my family through that kind of trauma. | ||
| These are bad people. | ||
| These are sick degenerates. | ||
| And I used to be much nicer to them. | ||
| I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but I've just seen too much. | ||
| They make up a story about Russia. | ||
| It's a hoax. | ||
| And eventually, now they've all admitted it was a hoax. | ||
| On to the next one. | ||
| It's Russia, Russia, Russia. | ||
| But they know it's a hoax. | ||
| And they say about a young man that he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison because of what he's done with Russia. | ||
| He knows it's a hoax. | ||
| How bad do you have to be to have that happen to your son? | ||
| And, you know, it has a bad effect on a family, a bad effect. | ||
| You know, are you okay, Don? | ||
| I am, dead, but I don't understand. | ||
| They keep tying me to Russia. | ||
| I don't know anything about Russia. | ||
| He didn't know a damn thing about Russia. | ||
| It's a disgraceful situation. | ||
| That's why we've got to kick their asses in the midterms. | ||
| So we've got to kick their asses again in four years. | ||
| If we slash taxes on American workers and producers, our economy will soar, jobs will surge, manufacturing will boom, and our country will prosper like never, ever before. | ||
| We've got to get this big, beautiful deal done. | ||
| We've got to get it done. | ||
| And get it done now. | ||
| Don't wait two weeks. | ||
| Don't wait two weeks. | ||
| See, bad things happen. | ||
| Crazy things happen in politics. | ||
| Just get the damn thing done and stop showboating. | ||
| A couple of people want to, sure, we've got to get a little bit more, a little bit more, you know what you're going to get? | ||
| You end up getting nothing. | ||
| You end up getting a Democrat bill or worse. | ||
| In the past 11 weeks, we've already created 350,000 jobs. | ||
| It's unprecedented, including 10,000 manufacturing jobs. | ||
| We haven't even started yet. | ||
| Gas prices, you know, when I came in, they said he campaigned on prices coming down and prices going up. | ||
| They're not going up. | ||
| They're going down. | ||
| Gas prices are way down. | ||
| In fact, they had something, $2.50 a gallon. | ||
| I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | ||
| I saw that the prices are down to $250, $260, $275. | ||
| When I came in office, it was $3.50, $375. | ||
| But prices are coming down. | ||
| Prices on groceries are coming down. | ||
| Prices of eggs are down like 87%. | ||
| 87%. | ||
| You know, they got me with that. | ||
| I told you. | ||
| Before I even got in office, they would tell me about it. | ||
| They're down close to 87%. | ||
| And core inflation has dropped to the lowest levels in four years. | ||
| And as I said, we had no inflation in four years, despite the fact that I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs. | ||
| So we hadn't even started yet. | ||
| Nearly $6 trillion of new investment, and that number is now revised up to about seven. | ||
| Apple, great company, is spending $500 billion because of tariffs. | ||
| $500 billion. | ||
| Not $500 million. | ||
| That's a lot. | ||
| $500 million. | ||
| You know, when I first heard the number, I said, you mean $500 million? | ||
| You can build a lot of plants. | ||
| No, sir, $500 billion. | ||
| $500 billion? | ||
| TSMC, the biggest, most powerful chip maker in the world. | ||
| This is without that stupid CHIP Act where they say, here's billions of dollars to a company that doesn't need it. | ||
| These chip companies are loaded. | ||
| They give these companies billions of dollars to build a plant in the United States. | ||
| They don't build them in the United States. | ||
| They keep the money. | ||
| It looks good. | ||
| They give them billions. | ||
| No. | ||
| TSMC, I gave them no money. | ||
| Great company. | ||
| Most powerful in the world, biggest chip company in the world. | ||
| They're spending $200 billion in Arizona building one of the biggest plants in the world. | ||
| And that's without money. | ||
| All I did is say, if you build, if you don't build your plant here, you're going to pay a big tax. | ||
| 25, maybe 50, maybe 75, maybe 100%. | ||
| NVIDIA is investing hundreds of billions of dollars. | ||
| Johnson Johnson is investing $55 billion. | ||
| Eli Lilly is investing $27 billion. | ||
| DeMac is investing $20 billion. | ||
| We have billions and billions being invested by Merck, Clarios, Stellantis, General Motors, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai. | ||
| All are putting in billions and billions and billions of dollars. | ||
| They're buying sites all over their building because they don't want to have to pay 25 and 50 percent tariffs. | ||
| They're all doing it. | ||
| And I think they also have confidence in the country. | ||
| They have a president that they have confidence in. | ||
| I know many of them. | ||
| With the help of people in this room, we are one big, beautiful bill signing away from the greatest economy in the history of the world. | ||
| And it's an overhang. | ||
| You know, this bill's an overhang because if it doesn't get signed, we will have imposed the biggest tax on the people of this country in our country's history by 40%. | ||
| Biggest tax because we gave you the biggest tax cut in history. | ||
| Now we're giving you another, which is one of the reasons, there are many reasons why we were so successful. | ||
| That's one of the big ones. | ||
| The other one is that one-year deduction, all-in one-year deduction, so big, and I know they're working on that, the big deduction. | ||
| It makes people invest. | ||
| But now we're working on something that's going to, I think, blow it away. | ||
| This bill is unbelievable. | ||
| It's going to bring a lot of money back into our country. | ||
| But if we don't do it, it's going to be a disaster. | ||
| And you just better hope that people believe that it was the Democrats' fault because, you know, they're very good at saying it was our fault. | ||
| It'll be the biggest tax increase in history. | ||
| And all my life, as I watched politicians, I wasn't a politician, but I watched them and I contributed to them a lot, contributed a lot of money over the years, but I watched it. | ||
| But all my life I hear politicians saying, we are going to give you a tax cut. | ||
| I will cut your taxes. | ||
| We will cut your taxes. | ||
| I never heard. | ||
| They're the only party that says, we are going to increase your taxes. | ||
| Vote for me. | ||
| Who the hell ever heard this? | ||
| Only these people. | ||
| We're at a strange time. | ||
| These lunatics go out and they tell everybody how you're going to have a big tax increase. | ||
| So maybe they want the bill to fail so that we can have a tax. | ||
| Maybe they'll take credit for it. | ||
| But I've never heard that said. | ||
| I've watched politics all my life. | ||
| I've never seen politicians campaign on we're going to increase your taxes, except these crazy Democrats. | ||
| As part of this legislation, I am committed to spending cuts and I will fight hard to include the elimination of hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse in the bill. | ||
| We've already found hundreds of billions of dollars through Doge and Elon has been terrific. | ||
| He's been really terrific. | ||
| But we've found hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and abuse. | ||
| But now we need to get the budget resolution and we have to get it passed. | ||
| The Senate, we have to bring it through the House. | ||
| It's going to pass in both. | ||
| One thing I'll say is that Thun has been great. | ||
| John Thun has been great. | ||
| And he's worked with your great leader hand in hand. | ||
| Those two bills are coming up together and they're very similar. | ||
| And I didn't know if that would happen because you have a lot of different rules, procedures, complicated stuff. | ||
| But Mike has been amazing. | ||
| And John Thun, and they've worked like amazingly well because they've just been going on at the same time. | ||
| And we're ready to get this thing done and beyond and get rid of the debt hangover ceiling that's a disaster for our country and for everybody and to give people the biggest tax cuts they've ever had because we're going to add them both up together. | ||
| It'll be the biggest tax cuts. | ||
| It'll blow away the tax cuts that we got them four years ago. | ||
| If we follow through on this agenda, we will be rewarded with a phenomenal economy and a massive victory at the ballot box in 2026 because we will have a record of triumph like no president has ever had, like no Congress has ever had. | ||
| They will not be able to even touch your seat. | ||
| Your seat is secure and will pick up 40, 50, or even 60 seats. | ||
| And we'll have something that's going to be smooth sailing for years to come. | ||
| If we don't get it done because of stupidity or a couple of people that want to show how great they are, you just have to laugh at them or smile at them or cry right in their face. | ||
| In less than three months, our new administration has already accomplished more than most administrations achieve in four years or eight years and everybody says it. | ||
| And we have to have this stuff documented and approved. | ||
| In a matter of weeks, we've achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings in American history and history. | ||
| They have a plaza in front in Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico. | ||
| I wouldn't advise going there on a trip, but nevertheless, they have a plaza, a big plaza, held hundreds of thousands of people. | ||
| Yesterday morning, there were none. | ||
| There was a man sweeping this massive plate of concrete, massive. | ||
| And he was sweeping the concrete, and there was nobody there. | ||
| During the same period last year, Joe Biden released more than 184,000 illegal aliens into our country. | ||
| Think of it. | ||
| Many of these people were from jails and mental institutions, as I said. | ||
| Since my inauguration, we've released a grand total of nine, nine, nine. | ||
| And they were all, in all cases, medical emergencies. | ||
| We did that for medical emergency reasons. | ||
| Last month, we officially designated Trendi Aragua, MS-13, and the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. | ||
| And thanks to the Supreme Court yesterday, and today we had a big ruling too. | ||
| We had a very big ruling today. | ||
| But we will continue to deport these monsters under the Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| Think of that, Alien Enemies Act. | ||
| Can you believe it? | ||
| All things we wouldn't have had to do if the election weren't rigged. | ||
| Now in reconciliation, we need Republicans in Congress to give us the full funding to permanently secure the border and to carry out. | ||
| That's part of what we're asking for. | ||
| Who could fight that? | ||
| We want to permanently secure, without a border or without fair elections, and without a good press, you don't have a country. | ||
| Well, we have a lousy press. | ||
| We now have a good border, and we're going to get good elections pretty soon. | ||
| There's a lot of clamor for it. | ||
| I think it's something that you should work on. | ||
| You should go out and put a bill in demanding, you demand, you know, because the states are just an agent of the federal government of you. | ||
| You had to demand paper ballots. | ||
| You had to demand one-day elections. | ||
| You know what they do when it's longer than one day? | ||
| All of a sudden, well, we're fixing the room up. | ||
| Move those boxes. | ||
| We're putting an air conditioner. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| We'll move the boxes back in a few days. | ||
| Well, we're painting the room. | ||
| Please move the boxes. | ||
| And you notice the boxes go out and then they move back in about half the number. | ||
| Oh, it's so sick. | ||
| One-day election. | ||
| You don't need any more than that. | ||
| One-day election, paper ballots. | ||
| I think you should put a bill in. | ||
| I mean, I don't know. | ||
| Who's in favor of a bill? | ||
| Who could not want it? | ||
| Who could not want it? | ||
| But I think you should do a bill in that. | ||
| I think it would be so popular. | ||
| And more importantly than popular, it's so necessary. | ||
| You have to have great elections. | ||
| You have to have fair and free elections, and you've got to have borders. | ||
| Otherwise, you don't have a country. | ||
| To quickly bring down the cost of energy and lower the price of everything on day one, I declared a national energy emergency to drill, baby drill. | ||
| We're drilling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, we're drilling. | |
| I withdrew from the unbelievably expensive for us, Parrot, the Paris Climate Accord. | ||
| So we were paying, it would have cost us a trillion dollars, a trillion. | ||
| China doesn't come into it till like 2035. | ||
| Russia is based on a 1992 standard when the air was dirty. | ||
| Everybody was, India was based on a very low standard, except the United States. | ||
| We had to pay immediately. | ||
| We would have spent trillions of dollars on that scam. | ||
| And it sounds so nice. | ||
| The Paris Climate Accord, what a beautiful name. | ||
| Isn't it beautiful? | ||
| It was a ripoff of the United States. | ||
| Well, don't forget, you know, I mean, I'm negotiating with these people, but if you really look, the European Union, why was that set up? | ||
| It was set up to screw the United States of America. | ||
| They formed a group of countries, got together, and let's make life miserable for the United States of America on trade and other things. | ||
| And they have done that. | ||
| They've done that. | ||
| They've treated us very badly. | ||
| We don't sell cars into the European Union. | ||
| We don't sell, they won't take our agriculture. | ||
| They want their own, but we take their agriculture. | ||
| We take their cars by the millions. | ||
| I terminated the Green News scam, one of the great scams, one of the great hoaxes in the history of our country, only superseded by Russia-Russia-Russia hoax. | ||
| I canceled Joe Biden's insane electric vehicle mandate where everybody had to have an electric vehicle in a very short period of time. | ||
| Everybody was forced to have an electric vehicle. | ||
| You know, they built some power stations in the Midwest. | ||
| They look like gas pumps with electricity, right? | ||
| They spent $8 billion, and four of the nine of them don't work. | ||
| Four of nine, they built nine or eight, but half of them don't work. | ||
| They spent $8 billion bringing the cables, bringing the wires. | ||
| What a great investment that was. | ||
| Billions of dollars they spent. | ||
| Now people can go out and buy a gasoline-powered car, a hybrid. | ||
| They can buy whatever they want. | ||
| We don't want hydrogen because they have some big problems. | ||
| They blow up and you never see who was driving the car. | ||
| You'd not recognize them. | ||
| That's a big problem. | ||
| They would tell me about, sir, I'm really liking hydrogen cars. | ||
| I said, but isn't there a problem? | ||
| Yes, they tend to blow up on occasion. | ||
| I said, how bad is it? | ||
| Well, we found body parts 250 yards away from the car. | ||
| We think it was Mr. Jones, but we're going to go to see his dentist and see if we can. | ||
| So if you have one of those incidents, let's forget it, right? | ||
| It's a bomb. | ||
| It's a bomb. | ||
| I don't want them to work. | ||
| I actually said, don't work on it. | ||
| Between that and windmills, you can have windmills too. | ||
| Most expensive form of energy ever. | ||
| Anybody have a windmill by your house? | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| You'll never sell your house. | ||
| And today I signed historic executive orders to unleash coal production to the highest levels ever. | ||
| Because, you know, coal is the most powerful thing. | ||
| We have more of it than any. | ||
| We have more liquid gold under our feet, oil and gas, and we have more coal than any other country. | ||
| No other country has as much as we have. | ||
| All different forms of coal. | ||
| And take a look at China. | ||
| They're building two coal plants a week. | ||
| Think of that. | ||
| Two a week. | ||
| We are screwing around with wind. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, wind. | |
| These people are crazy. | ||
| They say, oh, it's great for the environment. | ||
| It kills all your birds. | ||
| You want to see a bird cemetery walk under a windmill sometime. | ||
| Got birds all over the place. | ||
| They're screaming for help. | ||
| They got whacked. | ||
| The environmentalists, it's an environmental dream. | ||
| You know why? | ||
| Because you're never going to have energy. | ||
| They're the most expensive form of energy there is. | ||
| Ten times more expensive than clean natural gas, ten times much more expensive than coal, and not very unreliable. | ||
| Like if they wanted to watch us tonight on television, Alice, Alice, I want to watch the president tonight. | ||
| I'm sorry, darling, but the windmills aren't blowing. | ||
| We're going to give them confidence to do what they have to do long into the future because coal is going to be a big factor in our country now. | ||
| You know, it does give us our electricity because there's nothing like coal in terms of power, but it's going to be clean, beautiful coal, like our bill. | ||
| It's going to be clean and beautiful. | ||
| Coal miners, and by the way, they've made tremendous progress with also coal in terms of clean coal. | ||
| But the coal miners standing alongside of me this afternoon in the White House, they were incredible. | ||
| They were a beautiful sight to behold. | ||
| These are really great American patriots, beautiful guys. | ||
| I didn't want to have any arm wrestling contests with any of them, I can tell you that. | ||
| They're good, strong guys. | ||
| That's what they want to do. | ||
| They love to dig coal. | ||
| That's what they want to do. | ||
| They don't want to do gidgets and widgets and wadgets. | ||
| They don't want to build cell phones with their hands. | ||
| They're big, strong hands doing a little thing. | ||
| Remember when Hillary Clinton went to West Virginia? | ||
| And she had decimated them three weeks before in like some state where they make little tiny circuit boards. | ||
| And she said, we're going to teach the miners in West Virginia how to make a circuit board with little tiny things. | ||
| He said, we're going to teach them. | ||
| And then she went to West Virginia. | ||
| She was in the campaign. | ||
| And she had to go there. | ||
| Do you remember that stop? | ||
| It was memorable. | ||
| It was one of the worst. | ||
| Did they go after her? | ||
| And one of the miners said, I don't want to do anything else but dig coal. | ||
| I want to dig coal. | ||
| They said it today. | ||
| That's what they love. | ||
| They love doing it. | ||
| It's like that in a lot of industries. | ||
| People love doing what they're doing. | ||
| They want to dig coal. | ||
| That's what they want. | ||
| They don't mind going deep in earth. | ||
| They feel comfortable there. | ||
| Me, I could do without it. | ||
| But they feel comfortable. | ||
| They're incredible people, actually, hardworking, incredible people. | ||
| And we're giving them their lives back. | ||
| We've also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history. | ||
| For every one new regulation, I have directed that 10 old regulations must be eliminated before the first one can go into effect. | ||
| And we're working tirelessly to restore peace through strength and bring back the hostages held captive abroad. | ||
| We've brought a lot of them back already, but what a sad situation that is. | ||
| What a sad situation that is. | ||
| That would have never happened of our president. | ||
| October 7th would have never happened. | ||
| And I said Russia-Ukraine would have never happened. | ||
| All this stuff, inflation would have never happened. | ||
| Afghanistan disaster would have never happened. | ||
| Most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. | ||
| Not leaving. | ||
| I was going to leave. | ||
| I'm the one that got them to a point where they could leave, but I was going to keep Bagram, the air base, the biggest, one of the biggest in the world. | ||
| I was going to keep it, not for Afghanistan, because it's one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. | ||
| Wouldn't it be nice to have it? | ||
| You know who occupies it now? | ||
| China occupies it now. | ||
| Can you believe how stupid this guy was? | ||
| On top of that, they get blown up at the airport, leaving the wrong airport. | ||
| They didn't leave from Bagram. | ||
| They left from a local little airport which was crowded like crazy with the people from the towns and cities. | ||
| And the bomb went off and decimated hundreds of people, killed hundreds. | ||
| We lost 13 soldiers. | ||
| But we also had 42 or 48 horribly injured. | ||
| Arms, legs, face, horribly injured. | ||
| All because we had a stupid leader. | ||
| Should have never happened. | ||
| Should have never been involved in that. | ||
| We're also joined tonight by a number of brave souls who recently released from, they were recently released from Hamas captivity. | ||
| Hamas is just a disaster, the level of hatred. | ||
| Where are the people? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hamas. | |
| They understand what that's all about. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where are you? | |
| That's great. | ||
| How does it feel to be out? | ||
|
unidentified
|
How does that feel to be out, huh? | |
| You want to come up here for a second? | ||
| Come on up here. | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Come on up. | ||
| Yeah, let them up, please. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| I'll tell you these people what they had to go through. | ||
| I had 10 hostages in my office two weeks ago. | ||
| What they had to go through is just horrible. | ||
| Come on up. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| That is so nice to see you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That is so nice. Thank you. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| President Trump. | ||
| I'm here and I'm alive. | ||
| President Trump, you saved my life. | ||
| You saved the life of 33 hostages. | ||
| That because of your efforts and you're setting the hostage crisis at the high priority of what you are doing among all of the enormous issues and things that you're dealing with since you came into your position as President of the United States. | ||
| You set the hostage crisis at the highest priority. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You got 33 of us home alive. | |
| We all owe our lives to you. | ||
| Thank you, thank you, thank you. | ||
| And please, please continue your tremendous efforts and your tremendous actions and your tremendous accomplishments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Continue, and we will get, with your help, all of the remaining 59 hostages still in Gaza back home. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, President Trump, for bringing my kids home. | ||
| Keith's grandchildren are the happiest. | ||
| Keith's children are the happiest. | ||
| Keith's family is the happiest. | ||
| But I am the most happiest. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| We need you. | ||
| We need you to bring all the hostages home. | ||
| There's 24 that are alive and 59 to come home to their families, just like I received Keith. | ||
| They needed to. | ||
| We have Yair standing here with us, and Eitan, his brother, is underneath the ground now, begging to get out. | ||
| So I'm begging you all to help us. | ||
| We need your help. | ||
| Thank you. So, my name is Yair. | ||
| I've been in hell for 498 days. | ||
| have been held in hell with Hamas terrorists when we didn't see the light but we feel when we heard President Trump get elected we knew | ||
| we knew there is now someone who makes the things happen. | ||
| We needed. | ||
| I'm sorry about my English. | ||
| I am half-Argentinian, half-Israelian. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| We knew we need someone who does the things. | ||
| That's President Trump. | ||
| We are here because of President Trump. | ||
| Thank you. Thank you for your efforts. | ||
| It's really surreal to be here. | ||
| You know, I'm a simple man. | ||
| I'm running the bar in the keywoods in Nidos, where I was lived. | ||
| And now I'm here with President Trump, who's running the world. | ||
| We are thankful. | ||
| We are really thankful, but humbly we ask. | ||
| We ask for more. | ||
| The last push, the last 59 people, the last 59 hostages, among them my brother, Eitan, and what is Liran brothers, Zivi, Angali, and Eviatar. | ||
| All the brothers, all the families. | ||
| In a few days we mark the Passover, right? | ||
| Presach. | ||
| It's a family, family time. | ||
| So I expect that in the next cedar, when my mother made the Kneidalach, the Matzibols, that my brother Eitan, my little brother, who I call little, but he's 38, but it's my little brother. | ||
| I hope he can sit with us in the cedar of Passover. | ||
| And wow, it's overwhelming. | ||
| I just want to tell you again, thank you. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I just want to say, | ||
| I said, of the 59 people that you want to bring home, how are they and how are they doing? | ||
| Do you have any idea? | ||
| Because they left that whole scene not long ago. | ||
| And they said, well, of the 59, 24 are living, the rest are dead. | ||
| I just heard that. | ||
| And I was told that before by somebody else. | ||
| But 24 are living, the rest are dead. | ||
| These are young people, largely young people. | ||
| Young people don't die. | ||
| Young people are killed. | ||
| They don't die. | ||
| But the conditions were so horrible. | ||
| But think of that. | ||
| So of the 59. | ||
| And I've had Israeli parents tell me that my son is dead, but please bring him home. | ||
| As though he were alive, she wanted him brought home more than, it just seemed almost more than if her child was living. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| She just, they wanted the mother and father. | ||
| In three other cases, they wanted to have them brought home. | ||
| I said, how is he doing? | ||
| He's dead. | ||
| It's only his body, but we want him home. | ||
| So there's an amazing thing. | ||
| But the 59 that you mentioned, you said that 24 were alive and the rest are dead. | ||
| This is a terrible thing that's going on with Hamas. | ||
| Terrible. | ||
| The hatred is so incredible. | ||
| It's unbelievable. | ||
| And the way they were made to live was not even understandable, I think, by anybody in this audience. | ||
| And you have great people in this audience that love you, and they're going to fight for you. | ||
| And I just want to thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. Take care of yourself. Thank you very much. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| We're going back. | ||
| It's incredible what they've been forced to live with for 450, 500 days. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
| Nobody in this room could really understand it. | ||
| I found it hard to understand. | ||
| But we'll not rest until your loved ones have been returned home. | ||
| And hopefully we can do it the right way. | ||
| We want to get those 24 out really fast. | ||
| And we're working on it very hard. | ||
| There was no chance before. | ||
| This is something that should have been done right at the beginning during the past administration. | ||
| On day one, we ended the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies across the entire federal government, the private sector, and it's just not even allowed. | ||
| I also signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female. | ||
| We want to keep it simple. | ||
| As you know, in a very important executive order, I banned men from competing in women's sports. | ||
| That was done, and I hope all of these executive orders can be codified, can be voted on by Congress. | ||
| I can't imagine any Republican that's not going to vote for them. | ||
| Many, many of them, over 100. | ||
| And I think every single one of them is just common sense, good. | ||
| It's good politics, but the word politics doesn't matter to me so much. | ||
| It's good for our country. | ||
| If Democrats retake the House next year, they will try to reverse all of the progress that we've made, which is record-setting progress. | ||
| Instead of House committees run by Mike Johnson, Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, James Comer, Ronnie Jackson, and so many other of our friends in this audience, the House will be run by the same band of radicals and lunatics you saw at my address to Congress, including Hakeem Jeffries, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Nancy Crazy Pelosi, and weird Al Green. | ||
| He's a weird dude. | ||
| He should have been treated very badly for the way he behaved that night. | ||
| Think of it, they didn't stand up. | ||
| They didn't pay respect to anybody, including, think of it, you take a look at Lake and Riley. | ||
| You take a look at any of the people there. | ||
| The parents of these incredible people, the young boy with cancer, serious cancer, want to be in a police department, would give anything to be a policeman someday. | ||
| They refuse to even applaud or acknowledge them. | ||
| They're sick. | ||
| There's something wrong with them. | ||
| They sat as the stories were explained. | ||
| Two young ladies killed by, killed, savagely killed by illegal aliens. | ||
| They came into our country and they killed these two young ladies and the Democrats sat there. | ||
| They didn't smile. | ||
| They didn't clap. | ||
| They didn't do anything. | ||
| I think you frankly win the midterms. | ||
| Just all you have to do is show a picture of these grieving parents, uncontrollably grieving. | ||
| And they didn't get one clap out of the whole group of them. | ||
| They just sat there like stoic and disgraceful. | ||
| And you show that in your commercials that you're going to be putting on, and you'll win every race that we have in this room. | ||
| That was a bad night for them, and now they know it. | ||
| They're trying to make up for it. | ||
| But they're just, I don't know, something wrong with them. | ||
| That's why every day from now until November of 2026, we're going to fight, fight, fight to elect and expand the Republican majority of the House and save our country from these radical left lunatics. | ||
| We will not be deterred. | ||
| We will not stop. | ||
| We will not yield and we will never ever back down. | ||
| We're not going to back down. | ||
| They would lose respect if you back down. | ||
| They're the ones that back down. | ||
| They're the ones that have lost their confidence. | ||
| They're no good anymore. | ||
| I saw politicians that were good politicians four years ago. | ||
| They're not good politicians anymore. | ||
| They've lost their confidence. | ||
| They've totally lost their confidence. | ||
| But they can get their confidence back, so you can't rely on that too much, I guess. | ||
| Together we're liberating our country, reclaiming our wealth, unleashing our energy, protecting our children, rebuilding our military, repelling the invaders, deporting the criminals, destroying the gangs, and unlocking what history will know as the golden age of America. | ||
| This is going to be the golden age of America. | ||
| With your support, your commitment, and your help to elect more Republicans, we will finish the job that we have really brilliantly started. | ||
| It's been a brilliant period of years. | ||
| And we go back to 2016. | ||
| It was brilliant. | ||
| Then they stole it from us by illegally rigging the election. | ||
| And we did great in that election. | ||
| But we had to write it off, and we all went through hell. | ||
| I went through hell in particular. | ||
| Indictments. | ||
| What we had to go through is hard to believe. | ||
| Impeachments, two impeachments over nothing over a phone call that was perfect. | ||
| They knew it was perfect. | ||
| And they found out after they realized that the calls were essentially taped by the government because you were talking to a foreign leader. | ||
| And when that was played back, they didn't know what the hell to do. | ||
| But they went forward with it anyway because they're sick people. | ||
| The American dream will come roaring back in our country together. | ||
| We're going to make America greater than it's ever been before. | ||
| And I just want to thank you and congratulations on your record evening. | ||
| And I'm with you all the way. | ||
| And I'm going to be campaigning with you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we're going to win, win, win like we've never won before. | |
| And thank you to your leadership and Mike. | ||
| Great job. | ||
| You're doing a fantastic job. | ||
| Thank you all very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Young man, there's a place you can go. | |
| I say to young man, when you're short on your dough, you can't stay there. | ||
| And I'm sure you will find many ways to have a good time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's fun to stay at the YMCA. | |
| It's fun to stay at the YMCA. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country. | ||
| Coming up Wednesday morning, South Carolina Republican Congressman Ralph Norman, a member of the House Freedom Caucus and budget committees, talks about the budget and House GOP strategy to advance President Trump's legislative agenda. | ||
| And then economist and former White House Associate Budget Director Vance Ginn on the impact of President Trump's tariffs and how to address economic uncertainty. | ||
| Followed by Washington State Democratic Congresswoman Kim Schreier, a pediatrician and member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, on President Trump's tariffs and cuts to health care. | ||
| Also, bipartisan Policy Center Senior Vice President Bill Hoagland will discuss Republican efforts to pass a budget blueprint to advance the White House's legislative agenda. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern Wednesday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Jamison Greer is on Capitol Hill for a second day to testify on President Trump's trade and tariff policies before the House Ways and Means Committee. | ||
| Watch the hearing live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| C-SPAN's Student Cam competition challenged middle and high school students nationwide to create documentaries with messages to the new president. | ||
| Our panel of judges evaluated over 1,700 thought-provoking student films on their use of multiple perspectives. | ||
| C-SPAN awarded $100,000 in total cash prizes, and our grand prize of $5,000 goes to Dermot Foley, a 10th grader from Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. | ||
| Congratulations to all our winners. | ||
| The top 21 winning entries will air on C-SPAN this month. | ||
| You can also watch all the award-winning documentaries anytime at studentcam.org. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. |