Remarks at a Republican Senate Conference in Palm Beach, Florida

The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much.

And it looks like they have a speech out here for me. Ooh, that's oh, that's so much easier. Let me start reading. Look, that's all I need to do is read you a speech. Oh, look: "Welcome to Mar-a-Lago. Congratulations." [Laughter]

I don't know. I don't think we'd better do this that stuff—right? [Laughter] Not with this group. They give it for Biden, but he doesn't get past the first page. [Laughter]

Well, it does help, though, because today I gave a press conference with the Prime Minister of Japan—nice guy. A tough guy—tough, tough, tough—but really a nice guy. And it was sort of amazing. The press—ooh, do we have some press back there? Is that press, Karoline?

Oh, how is Karoline doing? Is she doing a good job? She is doing a great job. Good.

Well, for the press, for the media, I just want to tell you that these are Senators and some of—funders are outside. They didn't get in, actually, which is amazing. What happens when you win, you forget them. Isn't it terrible? [Laughter]

But no, they—we have some great funders, and they were upstairs, and they're having a meeting of their own, just—they feel so good about this win that they actually got together. I said, "What are all you guys doing?" They're just people that gave money to the campaign, and they're here just to have fun together. There's about 30 of them. And I said, "Come outside, and see the people you got elected."

And some of them are tremendously successful people. WeatherTech, a company privately owned that only makes his product here. Doesn't want to go to other places to make the product. It's a great product. David and so many other people. And I said, "Come down." And some of you have probably said hello to them, but I guess they're up eating by this time.

But I just want to say that it's been amazing. It's been an amazing period of time. We've had some fantastic races. We have some people in this room who won races that were very difficult to win, Tim and—we have—oh, where's my friend from—where is Bernie? That was a tough race. I'll tell you, Bernie, they weren't giving you a big shot. I went up with Bernie, and I went up on a Friday night just before the primary, and I said, "This is the worst weather I've ever seen." It was the windiest day I've ever seen. The teleprompters blew off the stage. I actually got—before I even started. And it was a wind like a tropical wind in Ohio. And it was brutal, right?

Senator Bernie Moreno. Yes!

The President. Do you remember that? And I said, "Well, we're all by ourselves up here with about 50,000 people." But I said, "You're going to win that race." And he won the race, and he did great. He did a great job.

And David was great. How about that? From—that was—I don't know, where is David? Where is David? David, with his great wife, who was with me for a long time. But you know, that was a tough race. That was a—incredible. I thought, you know, maybe—I don't want to say it, but that might have been the toughest of all. You know, when you have a father that was there for 26 years and a son that's been there for 24 years or whatever it is, that's not easy. And you did it, and you did it under a lot of pressure too. You were under a lot of pressure.

He was actually in the field, in Butler, when he—Pennsylvania, when we had that terrible incident, and—and I saved his life, because I said: "David, come on up. No, you know what, David, stay there for a little while." [Laughter] And then I said, "Let me see the chart," and then I looked over to the right. If he would have come up, he would have been maybe not here. [Laughter] So I saved your life by saying, "Don't come up." I said: "Come up, later, David. We'll have you later."

That was a good—wasn't that a good moment? He looks back, he says, "That was a good moment."

But I just want to thank everybody. You've been incredible. You've done incredibly.

They've lost their minds. The Democrats have lost their minds, and they've lost their confidence. They have very little confidence. They are different people, and they look foolish. Today they tried to break into the Department of Education just because we want to go and check the books.

And Maxine Waters is a lunatic. [Laughter] And you know, they're all lunatics, frankly. They're so—it's so sad to see.

They should be happy. They shouldn't be sad still. [Laughter] You know, it's a funny thing. I went to a golf course that I own, and I was very angry. I had bankers. This was prior to being President, prior to even thinking about running for President. And it's—I was going crazy because I couldn't get onto the course. One—Palos Verde is in California, and beautiful—right on the Pacific. Every hole on the Pacific. And my ad is—I don't use it, because you can't get on the course. But my ad is, if I ever have to use it, "I have the ocean; Pebble Beach only has the bay." [Laughter] And I said, "I'm dying to use that ad, but you don't need it."

So I get there with this group of big bankers and very important people, and I'm so angry. I'm just, like, furious because I can't get on the course. And I'm screaming, "I can never get on this course." It drives me crazy. And after about 20 minutes of that, my caddy comes over to me—it's a 70-year-old guy, really nice guy, very smart—"Sir, may I speak to you?" "Yes, yes. What do you want?" And he said: "Sir, other courses are all empty. You're packed. You have the best course in California. You're packed. It's always packed, sir. You can't get on the course." And he used an expression: "You should be happy. You shouldn't be sad."

And I felt like such a jerk, because he was right—[laughter]—because he was right. And, anyway—but we are happy as a group because we had—we had a tremendous—we had a tremendous run. And you know, we could have won a couple of more that I thought we were going to win. We won big in Michigan, and Michigan almost won. I don't know why he didn't win. He might be the one—we're talking to Michael and some of the others. He may be the one to run again, but—I think. I don't know, he seems to be. He did very well. I thought he won.

I thought we won Wisconsin, actually. I thought we could have—meaning the Senator, because I won Wisconsin by a lot. We won every race by a lot. We won every race by a lot, and I thought we carried some people.

Tim did so incredibly well. But—and sort of everyone did well. I mean, they worked hard. We did—we took in some great congressional people. We had a couple of issues that were tough issues, but they were—they were good issues. They were great issues, actually. And I think they ceased to be much of a problem. But we did the right thing. You know what I'm talking about, in particular—a certain issue. We did the right thing.

But we've been together; it's been amazing unity.

The only thing—I was a little worried. I was asked to do the prayer breakfast, and they said, "Oh, it's two prayer breakfasts." I said, "Why is it two?" "Because they're not getting along." And I'm talking about unity, so I had to do two prayer breakfasts—I said, "Wait a minute." [Laughter] Right?

I did the political prayer breakfast with the Senators and the Congressmen. And then I said, "So you mean I have to do another?" They used to have it together.

But I understand they'll—John, they'll be in good shape for next year. They're going to do one, right? And they said, "Well, you can do it by Skype." I said, "I don't want to do it by Skype." So I did one, and I ran to the other one, which was about 5 minutes away, and I did the other one. And I said, "What's going on?" "Well, there's a lack of unity." I said, "Let's get unified."

And everybody has agreed: Next year, we'll do one prayer breakfast, not two, and put it together.

And I don't know which speech was better. They were very different, I can tell you. [Laughter] One was in front of political people. The other one was in front of our people—right?—the people. And we had 7-, 8,000 people at that one. That was a big one.

Now, I heard that you didn't do it because I wasn't in office and I wasn't in Washington, and when they had the prayer breakfast in—the big one, the Hilton, which has—which is a, you know, very big room—you weren't getting a lot of people, and you didn't want to be associated with an empty room, because you're political people. I don't blame you, but we're going to—we had a big—packed it. We—they couldn't even get into the room. It was sort of a great morning. And next year, I know they're going to do it together.

But we're going to—we just have great unity. And the media, which I let in for a little while—but they can hear anything I have to say. I'm an open book. They can say anything—they can have anything.

We had a great news conference today with the President—the Prime Minister. Japan. They wanted to buy U.S. Steel. I said: "I can't let you buy it. I can't. I cannot." You know, other company, you want to buy it, it's okay. But U.S. Steel was one of the greatest companies in the world. For 17 years, it was the number-one company in the world—like 80 years ago. It was a long time ago, during the—a certain heyday.

I think we're in the heyday now. You want to know the truth? I think we're soon going to be in the heyday. We're going to be hotter than any period of time.

And I told them, 2 weeks ago, they came in to see me—the people from U.S. Steel, with some Japanese representatives. And I said: "I can't let you have U.S. Steel. You cannot buy it." We love Japan. We're not allowed—I'm just not going to let you buy it. It's U.S. Steel. This is one of the great companies of the world.

And you know—and that was real stuff. That was steel. That was guys with nice, big arms. They're taking that steel, and they're building buildings. [Laughter]

Today, we have Google and Facebook, and isn't that—that's fine too—[laughter]—but it's a little bit different. And they've become dear, dear friends.

You know, I say that. [Laughter] It's amazing how they've become—they spent $500 million on lock boxes. And the last one, they're sitting on the stage with me. That was a who's who of the world sitting on the stage. It's very different.

The first one, I didn't have a lot of support, but I had a lot of people support, but, you know, we did great. Then we had the second one, where we did much better. We got 10 or 12 million more votes, and we did phenomenally on the second one. But then we said, "Look, we did great, but a lot of bad things happened, very serious—terrible things—terrible, terrible things." And look what happened to our country because of it.

But then I said, "We've got to do it again, but we're going to make it too big to rig." And if anybody here thinks they didn't try, they tried like you wouldn't believe, but it was just too big to rig. They walked away—9:02 in the evening, it—they knew it was over. It was—there nothing they could have done. And that's what we had. We had an election that was too big to rig.

And it was such an honor. We won every swing State. We had seven. And remember, John, they were talking about, "Well, maybe Trump could win three or four." We won all of them, and we won them by a lot. It wasn't close. None of them.

We had a lot of good things. No tax on tips—that helped me in Nevada quite a bit. [Laughter] I hope we're going to be able to get that. Okay? We've got to try and get it.

Very important are—some of the things that are very important, I think, is the—the 1-year deduction, you know, where you can do something and when you—I know we haven't—a lot of people haven't been talking about that. I can tell you, in the first one, that was so, so big. Where they go out and they invest, and they're allowed to do the 1-year deduction. That add—that really revved up.

And I've had so many people say: "Could you do that again? Could"—people were doing jobs that they didn't even want to do. Building jobs. They were creating jobs, the building jobs. And, Tommy, you know about that. That one-year deduction was such a big deal. So I hope you guys can start thinking about that and putting it in the bill.

But we had a great meeting the other day and yesterday in the Oval Office with about 22 House Members, and they were from all sides—super conservative and slightly on the progressive side. I use "progressive" because tonight I want to be nice, plus we got a lot of cameras rolling back there. [Laughter] I want to be nice. But they were very different.

And I said, "You know"—I heard them. I listened for a little while, and then I said: "You know, why don't we just balance the budget? Why don't we cut certain things and balance the budget? Don't touch Social Security. Don't touch Medicare, Medicaid. Just leave them alone." Now, there are people that are illegally in there because we have a lot of illegal immigrants that have found their way in, and we just can't do that. We just can't do it.

But just let's see if we can balance the budget. And they started, and they started screaming and shouting. And—and within about an hour, it was amazing what they—they found $750 billion in the green new scam and—commonly referred to as the Green New Deal, conceived of and dedicated by a young lady who never studied the environment, who knows nothing about the environment, who was a semi-poor student—not a good student—[laughter]—who's not particularly smart, but has some magic.

I actually said—I watched her campaigning when she campaigned the first time in Queens, because Queens is my territory. I grew up in Queens. And she was running against a friend of yours. Joe, right? You know Joe. And Joe was going to be the next Speaker, right? He was going to be the next Speaker.

It wasn't going to be Nancy Pelosi, who is probably one of the most dishonest people. You know, she became a rich person. She never was anything. She was a politician, and she's worth now $100 million, $125 million.

How about the one where she sold her stock, a couple of months ago, in a company that announced—everything—she had the company for years, and then she sold the stock, and the following day, they announced that that company is under major investigation, and the stock crashed. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. They're crooks.

So she was running, A.O.C.—I say, "A.O.C. plus three"—but she was running. And I watched her run, and I said: "Oh, she's pretty good. She's got a spark." And I called Joe, who I don't know too much. I said, "Are you running against her?" "Yes." "But are you not debating her?" "No, she's got no chance." And he's been in there for like 25, 26 years, unlike Tim Scott, who absolutely destroys his opponents all the time.

You really do too. And by the way, he was the greatest surrogate. He was the greatest surrogate. I said to him—he was brutal. He was very nice. You know, when he ran, he was nice. For himself, he was nice. He was such a gentleman. But unfortunately, that doesn't get elected all the time.

And I said, "How do you think Tim would be as a surrogate?" And I watched him the first time, and he destroyed everybody. And then he went again, and he said to me, "I never"—and I thought it was beautiful, actually, because it's like the opposite of me. [Laughter] He said, "I've never been able to speak well about myself, because I don't like bragging." And I said: "This—isn't that nice? What—isn't it nice that somebody is like that?" And it's true. He would—he was—he was always a great campaigner, but he was—it was a good campaign, but it wasn't a vicious, violent campaign, right?

But for me, he was vicious and violent. You just destroy people. So I want to——

Senator Timothy E. Scott. Grrr! [Laughter]

The President. So I want to—so, I want to thank you. I just see you sitting with your new beautiful wife, and I just want to thank you. He's a great guy. Everybody in this room, as far as I'm concerned, every—

Look at Markwayne back there. Don't fight him. Just don't fight him. [Laughter] Remember, he almost got into a fight with a tough cookie. I know—I know that tough cookie—right?—head of the Teamsters. He's fantastic—he's a fantastic guy, Sean.

Senator Markwayne Mullin. Sean is a good guy.

The President. And he almost got—but he could have been in trouble with this one, though, but—Sean is pretty tough, but he would have been in trouble.

But I see everybody in this room, and, I mean, there's nobody—and if I didn't like somebody, I would tell you. [Laughter] I like them all. I really would. I really would.

You know what I like about Chuck Grassley? He was—he made Comey choke, because he's got this voice. And he wasn't meaning—but he said, "Did you lie?" [Laughter] And Comey was like—he—like, it was unbelievable, remember? And he said, "Yes, yes." [Laughter] I said, "He just admitted he lied." [Laughter] And he just said it like a—he's just got this way about him. You made him choke. That was good. He deserved to choke too.

But everybody in this room has been—it's been really amazing. It's been amazing. The relationships have been good. And we don't always agree on everything, but we get there. We get there.

We had a couple of people that had to get a little bit—they had to study a little bit further to get some of our nominees. I think you're going to find our nominees are very good. I think it's very important.

You know, when we talk Bobby Kennedy, I think he's up there having dinner tonight. It's very interesting. But he's a good person, and he's not a radical. He said, "You know, I'm getting sort of this reputation of being anti-vaccine and everything else." He said, "I'm not anti." And I understand, through the campaign, that he actually—his kids had vaccines and all. He said, "You know, I grew up in a slightly political family." Would you say that was the Kennedys? [Laughter] He said, "I grew up in a political family. I mean, I'm not a crazy person. I'm very moderate in a certain way." And I never forgot that, and I think it's true.

But I think we need somebody like this, and Dr. Oz working with him, because if you look at autism and you go back 20 years, it was—I think it was like 1 in 10,000 children. But actually, I think the number is even higher than that—1 in 10,000, 1 in 20,000 children had autism. And now it's 1 in 34. What's that all about? What's that all about? One in thirty-four.

And I think we've really got to get to the bottom of it. I really believe we're going to figure the reason. And I don't know, maybe it's pesticides or maybe it's something, but we're going to figure the reason. We spend more money on food, on cleaning it, on spraying it, on doing all this stuff, and we're going to find out what it is.

But I think we probably needed somebody that—you know, that's a little bit outside of the box. And he's also very popular. Outside of the party, I mean, if you look overall, I mean, very, very popular. And people gave him great support.

But I just appreciate the people that got there, and it showed great unity. And if you didn't get there, the press—these same people that have the cameras rolling, they would be—they'd be saying, "Trump has lost total control of the party."

Now I have somebody who's, I think, fantastic: Elon. And Elon was a recluse. You know, he was a very reclusive person, but I knew him. He's a brilliant guy, but he was reclusive. And I think we got him to be very unreclusive, right? [Laughter]

I said, "Man, has he changed." With the hat on—did you see the hat yesterday? But he's a great—he's a great guy, and he loves the country, and he's wanted to do this for a long time. If he could have done it himself, he would have done it himself.

And you know, he went into this group of people, and you see what they've been spending money on, the horrible USAID—the horrible things that they're spending money on. It's—it's got to be kickbacks. You know, they send the money to the guy, he takes the money, and he sends them back most of the money, and he keeps some for himself. In my opinion, I think that's because you can't send the money to this—these groups of people. It's a terrible thing, and I think it's like that and others too.

And I said: "Go to the next—go to the next one. I'd like you to look at Department of Education, and I think you're going to find it's very similar—different, but similar. And go into the military. Go into everything. I mean, I want you to go into everything."

But I said to the Congressmen yesterday that: "Why don't we balance the budget? Why don't we balance the budget? Why should we wait 10 or 15 or 20 years to balance it?" You know, they were talking about little cuts, right? We can have big cuts that don't affect anybody—waste, fraud, and abuse—and we're finding it now. That's one of the beauties of what Elon is doing.

He's got—he started with a group of 25 supergeniuses. They wear undershirts. They wear—they look like—I mean, I look at them, and I said—[laughter]—but then I realize he's got 182 IQ. That's what we need. And they go in, and they'll ask people that aren't nearly as smart as them: "Why is it that you made this ridiculous payment? Why is it?" And the guy gets all tongue-tied. He can't talk because he's against somebody that's much smarter.

And it's amazing, actually, what they've exposed, and to a level where they cut 97 percent of the people out. The whole thing is a scam. And you look at some of the people working there: They're very political people, they're relatives, and it's just terrible.

But you're going to find that elsewhere, and then I think we're going to see something tremendous with respect to the tariffs, because, you know, other countries tariff us, and we don't tariff them.

And with Lindsey—I don't know if you remember the conversation, Lindsey, but I had a conversation with Lindsey, who's so talented on so many things. But I would say, finance, he's less interested. [Laughter] No, no, he's very—look, he—he gets it——

Audience member. [Inaudible]

The President. ——but he's—he's less interested. And I said to him: "You know, certain countries, they charge us a tariff, and I want to charge them the same thing. And I like that, and I want to charge them the same thing." I said: "So let's get this straight. They charge us like a hundred percent. We charge them nothing." I said, "That's right." He said, "So you want to charge them 100 percent?" I said, "I want to charge them whatever—if it's 80 percent or if it's 25 percent, I want to"—Lindsey looked at me. He goes, "You've got my vote." [Laughter] And it was very simple.

And he's a great guy, and he's running for office. And I'm going to endorse him, and he's going to do very well. I think he's going to do very well.

Senator Lindsey O. Graham. [Inaudible]

The President. Well, we're batting—I think, we're 299 and 0 in the Republican. But you know what? We're 355—Brian Jack—where's the—the great Brian Jack? Three fifty-five—out of three hundred and fifty of general elections, we won, I think, 234. That's not bad either. But with the Republicans, it's been almost flawless.

So I think we—let's not congratulate Lindsey yet, but I think—I think you're in good shape. Okay? He's been—actually, he's been a fantastic—in my opinion, a fantastic Senator, and he's a nice guy. He's a little more left than I am—[laughter]—a little more left than you are, but he is a great guy, and he's going to have no problem.

So I appreciate all of the unity. I appreciate this tremendous support. There's Doug Burgum, as an example. What a great—he was fantastic. And Kathryn—thank you, Kathryn. And he was a big part of today's event, because he and Chris Wright—you know, Chris Wright—I don't know if Chris is here, but Chris Wright is the number-one guy in the world in oil and gas.

And I'll never forget, I had a meeting here with a lot of the oil companies and Doug and some senators, a lot of people. And I said, "Doug, I really want you to be Department of Energy." And he looked, and he said: "Look, there's a man in this room right now who's so much better than me. He's the most talented oil guy in the whole country." I said, "Who the hell is that?"

Because he's done—you know, he made a lot of money with the internet stuff and, you know, different things—not oil. I thought it was an oil—he was an oil and gas guy. He wasn't. He sold his company to Microsoft for a tremendous amount of money—very successful; became the governor of North Dakota; and ran a great State. And he became an expert on energy, because they have energy—on fracking, in particular.

But I said, "I want you to be the—if I win this, I"—this was even before I won, but I thought we were going to win. Early on, I said, "I want you to be the head of Energy." He said, "Look, there's a man in this room right now who's better than anybody in the world: Chris Wright." And he was sitting there. And I said, "This man over here?" "Yes, that man. He's better than me. He's better than anybody for what we want: getting the oil out of the ground properly." And I said, "Well, let's talk."

And so I talked to Chris, and I was impressed by him, but more importantly, he was impressed by him. And it was interesting. So he became the Secretary of the Interior, and it's interesting for a different reason, because Chris is Energy, but there is no energy. He's the department—there's some nuclear, but there's no energy. He is Interior; he's got all the energy. [Laughter] So I said, "Why don't you merge together and work together?" And they've essentially done that.

Doug and Chris, they're working together, because he's got more energy than any country anywhere in the world under his auspices, but he's not Department of Energy, so he can't drill. But now he's got a man that he knows very well that's, I assume, a friend of his or whatever, but he got the job because of you. And he didn't need a job. He was doing very well. This guy didn't need a job. He's the top guy in the whole world.

But I see that so often. So many people, they want to be a part of this. They want to do what you're doing, John. They want to do what all of you Senators are doing. I mean, you don't make money like they make. You could, if you did it. Many of you are so talented, you could do whatever you want to do. But they want to do what you're doing. It's very interesting.

And you don't want to do what they're doing. You'd rather be a senator. It's crazy. In other words, you like power. [Laughter] And that's okay too. But—and that's what you have. You have a tremendous amount of power.

But—so Chris and John—Chris and Doug have gotten together, and, essentially, they're, like, unbelievable, and what you're going to be doing is unbelievable. And we have a lot of confidence in you.

And if we bring the energy prices down, everything is going to follow. That's what got it up. We had a great energy policy. We did great. We had oil at—we had gasoline at $1.84. We actually had it much lower than that for a little period of time, but we had it at $1.84. And then they took my policy, and they really messed it up. And then they went back to my policy.

You know, they always said, "Well, we were drilling just as much." What they don't say is if I were there, we would have been double or triple that number.

But they basically took my policy—because it was going through the roof. They said, "We're really in trouble." So they went back to my policy as much as they could, but not all the way back.

And the energy is what caused us the problem. They went up at the beginning, if you remember. Then they—they went back to try and bring it down. They had to harness that horse. But they went back, and it went up, and it went up really dramatically, and that caused everything else to go up. And energy goes up, and energy—when it comes down, we're going to bring a lot of things.

So we're counting on you guys to—supply and demand—to bring that cost of energy down. You bring that down, and everything else is going to follow, all of the—the cost of food.

I hear so much about the word "groceries." I used to use "groceries" a lot on the trail—a word that's, like, sort of an old-fashioned word—"groceries." But groceries is the word that's the most accurate word. And the price of groceries went through the roof. Bacon was levels like nobody has ever seen. You take a look at eggs today. I mean, the eggs are double, triple, quadruple—they're going through the roof. Now, there's some problems that may—you know, a little outside problem with eggs, maybe.

But you know, we inherited a mess. We inherited a country that's a mess. There was no reason to allow millions of criminals into our country—millions. People that were—I'd say 3 million, 4 million—21 million people, all told. But 3 million, 4 million criminals. Many, many thousands and thousands of murderers. People that murdered people. Killers—people that murdered two people, three people, and even four people from in jail, in solitary confinement. They let them out of jails from all over the country but really from all over the world.

Venezuela let out so many people. You know, their crime rate is down 78 percent. I can't believe they haven't allowed every single—some of these countries allowed every single prisoner, and they put them on busses, and they bus them in, or they put them on planes, because these are countries—also from Africa, from Asia—not just South America. A lot of—a lot from South America, but not even the most. I mean, we have them coming from all over the world, and we're letting them in.

They let them in from the Congo. For whatever reason, the Congo is prime territory to come into our southern border. They get them up to the border, and they let them in with this stupid open borders policy.

So this would have never happened if the election were proper. In other words, if the election weren't rigged, which it was. And it would have never happened.

But I will say this. It's much bigger—historically, this is much bigger. It showed what—this ideology that some people are facing throughout the world—it showed how bad this ideology is, how incompetent the people are, but how bad the ideology is—the ultraleft stupid policy. And I don't think they can get elected for a long time.

They're still—you know, they just suffered a big election defeat. They're very depressed, and they're using the same things. I—we just signed a bill yesterday—it was so incredible—that no more men playing in women's sports, right? Right? And—stand up, big boy. Stand up. The—how about this guy? [Laughter]

[At this point, Wesley Britt, husband of Senator Katie Boyd Britt, stood up.]

Okay. Now—now, I'm using him as—he was a great player. He played on the Jets for—what?—10 years? Ohio said—"Is he going to play in sports with his wife?" You know, wouldn't that be lovely? [Laughter] She's the size of his leg—[laughter]—maybe—maybe somewhat smaller. The whole thing was ridiculous—you saw I was reading off some of the stats yesterday in the room. And I said—there was a long-distance race. They had the best female racers and the best male racers—long-distance running race.

And the man won by 5 hours and 24 minutes. [Laughter] I mean, that's not—the greatest, though, are the weightlifting records, where they break the record—a record that stood for 18 years. And they'd go, and they'd put a quarter of an ounce here, a quarter of an ounce—and they'd go, and they couldn't quite get it up. And this guy came in, and he was a poor man weightlifter—not a good one. He was at the lower realm of weightlifting. He goes up—boom. Like—and he ends up, like, 127 pounds more. [Laughter] He was a bad—he was one of the worst. That's—I don't know, maybe that's why he decided to transition, as the expression goes. [Laughter]

I've gotten very good at that. I have to, because if I make a mistake, these guys are going to get me in big trouble. [Laughter] We're perfect. Susie will get very upset with me if I make a mistake. [Laughter]

And by the way, Susie deserves a great round of applause. The Ice Maiden. We call her the Ice Maiden. You know, she's the daughter of Pat Summerall, who was a smart guy, and he was a very good football player, but a great announcer for 27 years for the NFL. And he worked with John Madden.

And John was a difficult guy, but he had, you know, great—he'd just, "Come on, John, you got to like these executives." You know, he'd talk a little rough to the executives at CBS. They weren't in love with him, actually. But: "Come on, John. John, you've got to be nice to them. I'm paying you a lot of money."

And he did this for 27 years. He was the only one that could deal with John Madden. He dealt with him very easily, right? Isn't that true? So, he was great.

But Susie is like that. I mean, she's amazing. She's respected by everybody. Democrats too, by the way—a lot of Democrats. In fact, that bothers me a little bit, John, but—[laughter]. But the Democrats—the Democrats respect her, and they like her. But we all like her.

But we call her the Ice Maiden, because she's very nice until she decides not to be. Then she's brutal. [Laughter] She can be—she can be brutal.

But you know, we ran a perfect campaign. We did that final 3 months—90 days. I didn't sleep. We did speeches every day. We did rallies. We did three or four rallies a day, and sometimes—that last few days, we did more rallies than anybody could believe. And they were packed to the—we went up to Milwaukee. We had 28,000 people in that beautiful new basketball arena. We'd use the basketball arenas, but they were way too small. We went to Madison Square Garden. We could have sold it out 10 times. The people went all the way back to Fifth Avenue and all the way down to the river, which is five blocks down. And I don't mean a line; I mean just massive crowds.

The owner of the Garden, Jim, he told me he's never had anything—he's never seen anything like that. With all the big sporting events and championships and everything else, they never had anything like it.

So I just want to thank everybody. It's been an amazing run. We did a good job for you, and you did a good job for me. And we have some incredible, talented new people in the party, and we're going to work with you. We've raised a lot of money that we're going to be using on midterms. And we've raised a lot of money.

I did something that I don't think anyone's ever done before. I said, "Listen, we just won"—and, see, the good thing about not having done this so long, John, is that I come up with ideas that nobody else has thought of. [Laughter] Usually, when you win, you let your people rest, your donors rest, and you let them rest for 2 or 3 years, and then you're going to run again. If it's a congressional race, you let them rest for at least a year, year and a half.

So we won, and everybody was euphoric. Everybody—they were so happy. And I called up Meredith—where's Meredith? I said, "Meredith"—where are you, Meredith? She's incredible—thank you. And I called up Meredith. I said, "Meredith"—the morning—this is the morning after the win, so everyone is so—I said, "Call the donors and ask if they'd like to make a major contribution." "Sir, the election, it's like—just, like, 8 hours old." [Laughter] I said, "That's all right."

And we raised over $500 million very quickly, right? Five hundred million.

And the people were so happy. They were happy to do it. You know, we could have waited two years, but you know, the press will beat us up for two years. And you don't know. Maybe they wouldn't have been as happy. But I think they're going to be happy, because we—we're dealing—because we've become the party of common sense. And when you have common sense and when you are the party of common sense, we're going to do well for a long time. We're not going to do badly in midterm.

A lot of people say, "Oh, they—you always will do badly in the midterm." I don't think there's any reason for that.

These people were fighting when I did the thing with the men playing in women's sports. I watched today Democrats fighting me on this. They don't learn. And I hope they don't learn, because—you know, they're still with the open borders. "We want open borders." Open borders are never going to sell. Men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody, it's never going to sell.

And their—they haven't changed. They haven't learned. And frankly, I hope they don't play this, because—I hope they don't learn, because we have to beat them, and we're going to beat them.

And I just want to thank everybody in the room. Everybody in this room has been special.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.