Remarks at a House Republican Conference Dinner in Miami, Florida

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

I want to thank you all and congratulate—I mean, just—this is a very big congratulations to our reelected House Republican majority on your largest popular vote—did you know that?—since 1928. That's a long time, Mike, right? That's a long time.

Speaker of the House of Representatives J. Michael Johnson. Long time. Yes.

The President. But I especially want to thank our outstanding leadership team. Speaker Mike Johnson, we all know so well. He's doing great.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise who's gone through so much. And he looks better today than he did 10 years ago. I don't know what's going on. [Laughter] Thank you very much, Steve. You look great. Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Tom, thank you. Great job. And House Conference Chair Lisa McClain. Lisa, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Great job.

Thanks, as well, to all of the incredible House Members and staff for your tireless work on behalf of our country, along with Congressional Institute CEO Kelle Strickland. Thank you very much. Thank you. Kelle, thank you very much.

So we have Kellyanne Conway. Nobody knows Kellyanne. Does anybody know—where is Kellyanne? She's around—she's so good. She's a good person too. She's a good person too.

And the mayor of Hialeah, I love this guy because he said, "Sir, we want to name a major boulevard after you," and he did it. Anybody that names a boulevard after me, I like; I like them a lot. [Laughter] Esteban Bovo and—Hialeah—mayor of Hialeah, thank you, wherever you may be. Esteban, where are you? Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. A great honor, actually. A lot of people come back from Hialeah; they say, "They just named a road after you." I said: "That's okay. It's a beginning, right? It's a start." [Laughter]

Speaker Johnson. It's a good start.

The President. With the help of everyone in this room, we have just won the most epic, consequential political victory in American history. According to a lot—one of the major fake newspapers—so, in this case, it's not fake news, let's say—but they said it's the most consequential election victory in the last 129 years. I'm trying to figure out what that means. It's 120—who was there 129 years ago?

But it is—it was a great one.

At the Presidential level, we won the popular vote for the first time of any Republican in decades. We swept all seven swing States—Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada—by very, very big margins—record-setting. And for the first time ever, all 50 States—did you know this?—shifted toward the Republican Party. We've never had that before—nobody has, actually. It's never happened before. That's pretty good. You must be doing a good job, fellas.

We won the largest number of African American voters in Republican history, including 39 percent of Black men, a record by a lot, so that's really nice. Thank you. And we won more Hispanic American votes than any Republican ever. It's never won any—not even close. Look at that—Hispanic American. We made historic strides with youth, men, women, urban, suburban, and rural voters.

And in a political earthquake——

[At this point, audience members sat down.]

Yes, sit down. Just enjoy it. What the hell; we're going to be here for a little while. [Laughter]

But in a political earthquake, we won a wave of support from labor unions, including massive numbers of autoworkers—which gave us Michigan, as an example. Think of that: We won Michigan easily, and we did tremendous with the autoworkers. And an overwhelming majority of the rank-and-file membership of the Teamsters—the Teamsters were great. They showed up in droves, and we won them by a lot.

Together, we're forging a new political majority that's shattering and replacing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, which dominated American politics for over a hundred years. That's what we're doing. And what Mike said before: common sense—it is a little bit of common sense. Maybe it's a lot of common sense.

Under our leadership, the Republican Party has become the proud voice of hard-working American citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed. We've become the party of the American dream and wealth creation for everyone, not just the rich.

If we do our job over the next 21 months, not only will House Republicans be reelected and expand our majority in 2026, we will cement a national governing coalition that will preserve American freedom for generations to come.

There has never been anything like what's happened in politics in the last few years—never been anything like it. Everybody—people of religion, everybody is—seems to be with us. I don't know how anybody could even vote for the other side. In many cases, they don't, but they do get credit for it. [Laughter] You'll have to think about that.

I've raised a lot of money for the next race that I assume I can't use for myself, but I'm not a hundred-percent sure, because—[laughter]—I don't know, I think I'm not allowed to run again. I'm not sure. Am I allowed to run again, Mike? I'd better not get you involved in that argument. [Laughter]

No, I—we raised a lot of money, a tremendous amount. And our tele-town halls are something that's very special that nobody else is able to even contemplate using. We've gotten a lot of people elected with those tele-town halls. We get on, we have 25-, 30,000 people on, just in a congressional area, and they win easy. It works for Elvis, the Beatles, and it doesn't work for anyone else. But it works for Trump. [Laughter] And we would have tremendous crowds on those calls, and I think we have—I'll bet we got 35, 40 people elected because of the tele-town halls.

But I did say to them—and I said, "This is the greatest"—the person that sort of has the rights to it, and he happens to be a great Republican. I said, "This is the greatest invention. This thing is going to make a fortune." He said, "No, it's not that good, actually, because it only works for you." He said, "Actually, sir, it only works for you, because somebody else, they're not picking up." So I'm honored to have that privilege, and I use it carefully.

But we've done a lot of the tele-town halls for people, and I think—I don't think we've ever lost one, right? It's hard to lose one, even if you only get 5- or 6,000 people on a congressional race. But we've done them for States, we've done them for Governors, and we've done them for Senators, and we did a couple countrywide. I did a couple for myself countrywide. They were absolutely amazing, and we got the message out through that and lots of other means.

We even got it out through TikTok. Has anyone ever heard of TikTok? [Laughter] I have a little bias toward TikTok right now, I have to tell you. So we won youth by the largest margin—no Republican—you know, we generally don't win youth. We won by 36 points. Can you imagine that? And I think TikTok had something to do—so pardon me if I'm a little bit—I became a little bit jaded toward TikTok. But we'll see what happens.

We're going to have a lot of people bidding on it, and if we can save all that voice and all the jobs and China won't be involved—you don't want China involved. But we'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.

But over the past 7 days, my administration has been moving with urgency and historic speed to reverse every single disaster of the Biden administration.

By the way, the guy was a disaster, okay? [Laughter] You know, we want to be nice, and he's probably not listening right now because it's a little late, but you know? [Laughter] I don't want him to listen. I don't want to say it. I feel badly.

I was, you know, making the Inauguration speech, and I'm saying all the bad things, and he's sitting, like, right here. You know, I'm saying: "They were a horrible administration. They didn't know what they were doing. They were grossly incompetent." I've got a guy sitting right next to me. [Laughter] That's not that easy to do, even though he didn't understand what I was saying. He really didn't. [Laughter]

And deliver on the mandate we have been given by the American people: In a single week, I have taken over 350 executive actions. We've signed three hundred and—whoever heard of that one?

And as I said in my Inaugural Address, the American decline is over. It's over. The golden age of America has officially begun. And I think that's a good thing for us to talk about: the golden age and the American dream. I think it's a good thing because people haven't been talking that way for a long period of time.

On day one, I directed every member of my Cabinet to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and bring down the cost of daily life, and we're going to do that. You're going to see it starting to happen when we get going with the energy. The energy is going to—you know, it brought everything up, and it's going to bring everything down.

I imposed a Federal hiring freeze, a Federal regulation freeze, a foreign aid freeze. A foreign aid freeze, isn't that nice? We got tired of giving massive amounts of money to countries that hate us, don't we? And I created the new "Department of Government Efficiency," and I think it's going to be very meaningful.

I terminated the ridiculous and incredibly wasteful "green new scam," great—one of the great scams in history. Actually, isn't the 12 years up? They gave us 12 years to live, right? I think they—we passed it, right? We're still around. Can you believe it?

You know, the person that really came up with it is a person that never even took a course on the environment, was a poor student, not a good student, didn't understand a lot, and she came up with this idea, and everybody all of a sudden started going. And then mainstream, you know, important Democrat leaders were starting—you know, they got sucked into it. And we've spent trillions of dollars on just, like, throwing it out the window. You could throw it out the window; you would've been better off.

I withdrew from the one-sided Paris climate accord, and I canceled—it was so one-sided. You know, we had obligations, but Russia didn't, China didn't, other countries didn't. We paid every—we were going to lose a trillion dollars over a short period of time on that. And we had to do everything; they didn't have to do anything. It was ridiculous.

And I canceled the insane and very costly electric vehicle mandate, so you can buy a car of your choice. If you like gasoline, go—go have it, and if you like hybrids—hybrids are doing well—you can have it. Or you can buy an electric car. We like electric—we like everything, but you have to have a right to buy everything.

I withdrew from the World Health Organization, where we paid $500 million a year—and China paid just $39 million a year, despite a much larger population. How about that? So, we're paying $500 million a year; China is paying $39 million a year. They have 1.4 billion people; we have—nobody knows what we have. So many people came across the border. Nobody has any idea. I used to say, like, 325, but we really don't know. But we're going to know soon. We're going to know.

And I tell you, our people are doing a—Tom Homan and his staff are doing an incredible job getting the bad ones out.

I declared a national energy emergency to unlock the liquid gold that's right under our feet, because we will drill, baby, drill. We're going to drill, baby, drill. It's going to bring down prices, and your energy costs are going to go way down. And that'll happen, I think, relatively quickly.

I'm going to give fast environmental approval for anybody building a plant for electric generation, and anybody that invests more than $1 billion will get super-rapid approval—not that they have to wait for 9 years, 14 years like—I approved LNG plants in Louisiana. They were waiting for so many years. It wasn't Louisiana's fault. It was some people—they just wouldn't get them done. You've got a snail here, a tiny tree here. And I got it done in a matter of a few days. [Laughter] I actually got it done. It took them 14 years; I got it done in about 3 days.

The people, as we call them—I'll never forget, I called them, and I said: "Congratulations. You've got your permit." "What?" They were so—they were so shell-shocked. They didn't know what the hell was happening. They're going to spend—and they spent about $16 billion on each plant, and they've been roaring since then. But we got them done in a matter of a few days.

Over the past week, we have begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my first term. That was record-setting deregulation. And that was just as big as tax cuts, as far as business and jobs were concerned, I'll tell you.

I actually asked—you know, it's interesting, because I actually asked some of the biggest businessmen in the country—I said, "Let me ask you, would you—if you had the choice between the big tax cuts"—you know, we cut it from 40 percent to 21 percent; we're going to cut it further. But we cut it down to 20—everybody said that would be impossible. The people on the stage helped us with that one a lot.

But I said, "If you had your choice of that or the big deregulation cuts, what would you take?" These are the guys that run the big companies, the big oil companies, the big companies of every kind. I said, "Would you take the big tax cut or the big cut in regulations?" And they—every—I've never had anybody said they'll take the tax cut. They took the regulation cut. I must—I'll bet I asked that question a hundred times to a hundred of the biggest people. They always—Tom, they always said, "Sir, we'll take the regulation cut. We—you opened us up. You let us create all these jobs that we've all seen happen." So it was even bigger than the big tax cut.

I also signed an order to end the weaponization of our Government against the American people and investigate all abuses of power.

And I stopped Government censorship once and for all, and we brought back free speech to America. That's what happened, and we're going to—brought it back—because we didn't have free speech. We didn't have free speech.

I mean, I was investigated more than any human being in history. Alphonse Capone was a baby. Now, this was a serious killer, Scarface; you've all heard of Scarface. He had a scar for a reason. He didn't play games, but he was Scarface. Of course, nobody ever called him Scarface to his—to his face. They said, "Al, you look great today." [Laughter] Guy had a scar that was, like, 2 inches thick that ran from here to here, and they'd say, "Al, you look fantastic." [Laughter]

But Scarface was not investigated as much as your President was investigated. And it turned out to be a positive thing for me. [Laughter] Can you believe it? It turned out to be—we got a lot of votes. I think we got a lot of votes because—because they saw it was weaponization. It was a fight against a political opponent.

I ordered the end to all of the lawless diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense policies across the Government—and all across the private sector and the military. We got it—we're getting it out, and we've gotten it out, pretty much. We did that in one week, and it wasn't that easy. But everybody wanted it. People that were strongly in favor of it, I thought, called me and said: "Thank God you got rid of that. That was so bad. It was so bad. We hated it."

We abolished 60 years of prejudice and hatred with the signing of one order, all approved by the Supreme Court of the United States. It was a big thing, and the United States has become a meritocracy again. We are a country that's based now on merit for success—merit. If you're good at what you do, you're going to go places.

I made it the—and who would have thought that was going to happen? We didn't even talk about that one because I figured that one was going to be toughest to get. And so we are now—if you do a meritorious job, if you do something where you've done just—you're just outstanding, you—you advance. And that's what it's about. It's about competition, and it's about a lot of things.

And the other becomes a very dangerous—a very dangerous plateau, and we were on that plateau too long. And it's one of the reasons that you saw very bad things happening with our country.

I made it the official policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders: male and female. Gee, that was a tough one. That was a tough one. Some of these people said, like, seven genders. I'm trying to say, "Go and name them." [Laughter] They got some weird stuff going on. No, we have two genders.

I renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. And we are restoring the name of a great President, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley in Alaska, in honor of the incredible people of the State of Ohio, who love their Governor and loved the man that became President. He was the big "tariff sheriff," they used to call him, and he made a lot of money. Our country became very rich.

And when he was assassinated, Teddy Roosevelt became President, and he spent all of that money that was made from tariffs. The money was so enormous, and they built the thing called the Panama Canal. You might have read about this lately. It's become a hot subject because China, essentially, has taken it over, and we're not going to let that happen. We're not going to let that happen.

It was the biggest investment, to this day, ever made by the country. In other words, if you bring it up to modern-day numbers, we spent money that—we've never spent anything so much. We've never had so many people die. Thirty-eight thousand people died building the Panama Canal 110 years ago, and they gave it away for $1.

It's also one of the most profitable things ever built. You know, these ships are lined up back to Florida trying to get through. We're going to—we're not going to let that happen. It wasn't the deal. We didn't give it to China. We gave it to Panama, sort of, I guess, but they haven't behaved properly.

Perhaps most importantly, I declared a national emergency to stop the invasion of our southern border. We're going to stop that invasion. We've already done it. And today in Tijuana, you probably saw the—I got a call from Tom Homan and some of the people. They said: "Sir, it's unbelievable. There is nobody"—you have this huge area. It's a gathering area. It's always been packed with these people. What they did to our country is so unbelievable—that they could do this to our country is so horrible.

But he said, "There's nobody there." And then they actually put it on television. I got to see it. And it was—there was literally not one person—this vast area where people stay there all day long or they just walk right into our country. They just—unchecked, no way—no checking for IDs. Like voter ID—they don't want voter ID because they want to cheat. They wanted these people to come in because they want to cheat too.

But who could allow this to happen? But there wasn't one person standing in this massive—an area that's like five football fields that was packed for years under these horrible people that wanted to kill our country.

We halted all illegal entry. We have successfully ended catch-and-release, and we're—deporting—we're deporting 100 percent of all new trespassers apprehended at the border. And nobody is coming in—and nobody is coming now because they know they're not going to be able to come in. So we really stopped something that was very, very serious.

But we have to get the bad ones out. We have many murderers—many very bad people in our country that they've allowed because of a ridiculous, actually stupid, open-border policy.

I've also deployed troops to the border, and, for the first time in history, we're locating and loading illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came.

And very importantly, America is respected again. We're respected again. Isn't that nice? You know, after years of laughing at us like we're stupid people.

And, as you saw yesterday, we've made it clear to every country that they will be taking back our people that we're sending out—the criminals that—the illegal aliens coming from their countries. We're taking them back, and they're going to take them back fast. And if they don't, they'll pay a very high economic price, and we're going to immediately install massive tariffs that will be placed on them and other sanctions. But the tariffs—I told you: most beautiful word in the dictionary.

I also told you that I said that the first time, and I got just absolutely decimated by the fake news. You know? I said, "It's the most beautiful word," and the fake news said, "What about 'religion'? What about 'God'? What about 'love'?" So now I say it's the fourth most favorite word"—[laughter]—"in the dictionary. It's God, love—it's all these other things. But I say number four—but God, love, religion—tariff, fourth. [Laughter]

Another couple of weeks, it will be, like, 10. Hopefully, it's going to—stay in the top 10. But the fake news went after me, Tom, because I didn't say in the first three, and now they're going to—now that I say it—immediately say it, I'm sure they're going to find some others.

Throughout the week, the heroes of ICE have been hunting down and arresting hundreds of illegal alien criminals per day, including those with charges and convictions for rape, child sexual assault, terrorism, and even murder. Many murderers in the crowd and many, many of these murderers have committed far more than one murder. This is not going to work out, and we're going to get them the hell out of here.

And members of the savage Venezuelan prison gang known as Tren de Aragua and MS-13, including 50 violent individuals who were rounded up in Aurora, Colorado, which the—the Venezuelan gang took over—the Governor, who's a radical-left Governor, was—he didn't know what to do. He said, "No, it's not that bad. They've only taken over a couple of apartment houses."

See, they went into the real estate business. They did it unconventionally. They did it with guns. [Laughter] We have to go out and borrow or use cash to buy. They just did it with guns. They took over. He said: "No, it's not that bad. They only took over a couple of buildings."

We're tracking down the illegal alien criminals. We're detaining them, and we are throwing them the hell out of our country. We have no apologies, and we're moving forward very fast. They're very dangerous people. They're very dangerous people. They're violent people.

I used to say these are more violent than our criminals. In fact, the best part about them is, they make our criminals look quite nice, actually, by comparison. They are very violent people.

We also have many violent criminals in our country, however, that did not necessarily come here illegally, but have been arrested 30 times, 35 times, 41, 42 times in couple of cases, 25 times, 18 times—many for murder and other heinous charges, such as pushing people into subways. As the train is coming along at 45 miles an hour, boom, you get pushed into the subway. They had it last week. Hitting them in the head with baseball bats while they not looking; punching old ladies in the face, knocking them unconscious, and stealing their purse. They even break into apartments and rape elderly women and beat up elderly men—beat them to hell.

And I don't want these violent repeat offenders in our country any more than I want illegal aliens from other countries who misbehave.

And I say—and this is subject to getting it approved, but if they've been arrested many, many times, they're repeat offenders by many numbers, I want them out of our country. I also will—will be seeking permission to do so. We're going to get approval, hopefully, to get them the hell out of our country, along with others. Let them be brought to a foreign land and maintained by others for a very small fee, as opposed to be maintained in our jails for massive amounts of money, including the private prison companies that charge us a fortune. No, let them be brought out of our country and let them live there for a while. Let's see how they like it.

You'll see crime all over the country dry up. Essentially, that's what Venezuela and other countries are doing. They're getting rid of their criminals and putting them into the United States of America, and their crime is down by almost 80 percent.

We're going to restore law and order in America, and we want to bring back the death penalty for these horrible people that kill people. They killed people. It's always a tough thing to say, because I don't like it; nobody likes it. But if you don't do it, we're just a—we're just looking for trouble.

I spent a lot of time with President Xi, and I'll never forget, in my first meeting, I said, "You have a drug problem." "No, no, no, we have no drug problem." "Why is that?" "A quick trial." "What is quick trial?" "Quick trial is that we try the piece—the person that sells the drugs immediately, and at the end of a day, we execute that person if that person is guilty. We have no drug problem whatsoever." And that's the most severe case, but wherever you have no drug problem, you have the death penalty.

So—and drugs causes a lot of the prime—a lot of the crime in our country is caused by drugs. It's a terrible situation. Comes through the southern border. Most of it is fentanyl coming in from China.

And, you know, it's very interesting, China—when I was with President Xi, I had a deal worked out with him that they were going to give their maximum punishment, which is the death penalty, to anybody making fentanyl and sending it into the United States. Then we had a very unusual result in an election. We had a rigged election. We had a very unusual result, and that went nowhere. It was all set to be—he would have absolutely done it. He was ready. We shook hands on it.

And then Biden, of course, didn't follow it up. He didn't follow anything up.

But if that would have happened, you would have had a lot less fentanyl deaths. I can tell you, you would have had very little fentanyl coming into the southern border.

Last week, I also signed an order that will designate a—the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. That's a very big designation.

And, as we are fighting hard to get birthright citizenship, or automatic citizenship for the children of illegal aliens—that's another way; it's automatic citizenship for children of illegal aliens—that's the other term that they use, which is actually more accurate, more understandable. And it's ridiculous. We're the only country that has it and certainly the only country that has it to that extent.

And it wasn't meant—if you look, it was really meant for children of slaves. This is when it happened—the children of slaves. It was not meant for everyone to come into our country by airplane or charging across the borders from all over the world and think they're going to become citizens. It's not meant for that. It wasn't meant for that. And hopefully, at some point, the courts will understand that without having to go through a whole big deal. This was meant for the children of slaves, and look at the timing of it, and you'll see. And I hope judges will understand that.

And it has to stop, because it's just—it's really hurting our country very badly.

In the coming weeks, I'm looking forward to working with Congress on a reconciliation bill that financially takes care of our plans to totally and permanently restore the sovereign borders of the United States once and for all. This should include full funding for a record increase in border security personnel and retention bonuses for ICE and Border Patrol.

These people are incredible people. I got to know them so well. I was on the phone with them all the time when I was President. When she was the border czar, she never called them. Remember, we went, like, 4 years, and they started asking her, "Did you ever speak to anybody?" "No." "We asked the Border Patrol, 'Did you ever speak to the'"—the head of the Border Patrol, "Did you ever speak to the Vice President, who was your border czar?" "No, I never got to speak to her."

This was a terrible thing that was going on. This was a con job.

We also need a massive increase in the number of detention beds and funding for all border security infrastructure and barriers, including the completion of the border wall. We did 500 miles of wall, and that's one of the reasons we had the lowest number.

You remember the famous chart that I looked to my right—"bring down the chart," and I looked to my right, and something went right by——

[The President pointed to his ear.]

Heee. And—but that chart—I don't know if they have it now. Frankly, I didn't tell them to bring it. But they're very competent people; they might have—if you have the chart, put it up. If you don't, that's okay too.

But that chart showed that we had the lowest number of illegals coming into our country in history. And it was—I love the chart. Even if it didn't show that, I would have loved that chart, because that chart—I wouldn't be here right now without that particular chart.

But it was pretty amazing. It was pretty—really amazing. And we did a great job. We had the lowest—the week I left office, we had the lowest number of illegal immigrants coming into our country that we ever had.

Simultaneously, we must make a record investment in interior enforcement, including deportation flights and aircraft, as well as funding for our new Task Force to eradicate the presence of foreign gangs—we have some of the worst foreign gangs; it's not even believable—and criminal networks that have brought devastating crime to American soil. We're getting them all out. We're getting them all out.

I won on that, you know. It's like some of—some people explain it very well. They say, "Gee-whiz." You know, they look at the people—as you know, in Colombia, they agreed with us almost immediately after I got involved. And Marco Rubio and I worked together—he did a great job—and we really did—and Mike Waltz. We have a great group of people.

But we—we were being scolded because we had them in shackles in an airplane. And he said, "This is no way to treat people." Now, you've got to understand, these are murderers, drug lords, gang members, just the toughest people you've ever met or seen. How would you like to be the pilot of a plane—you've got two pilots up there and you've got 300 people sitting on a plane, every one of them either a murderer, a drug lord, a kingpin of some kind, a head of the mob, or a gang member, and you're flying that plane? It's not going to end well.

You ever see the movie "Con Air"? [Laughter] That's what—yes. Except here's the difference: The people in "Con Air" were actors. They weren't nearly as tough as these guys. I would say that that plane would be gone before it ever left the—those pilots would be gone before it ever left.

So, they don't want us to shackle them. I don't want to be in that plane.

I want to thank every Republican House Member for voting to pass the Laken Riley Act, the first enforcement-only bill that's been passed in three decades. I met the parents of Laken, and they were incredible people. They were just so devastated. I mean, can't even explain to you. You can't say somebody's life is over, but essentially, their life is so different, and it can never be the same.

She was beautiful. She was a great, great person. But to have a bill of such importance named after her is a great, great tribute.

But what these parents and—and, you know, you have so many of them, where they've lost a loved one to crime, but to this new form of crime—criminal illegal aliens, it's—it's massive. The numbers are massive. And you add that to the crime we already had.

This shows the potential for additional enforcement bills that will help us crack down on criminal aliens and totally restore the rule of law in our country.

I'm also eager to get to work with Congress on the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history. We've got to get that done. And we don't want to get hung up on the budget process. We just want—whether it's one bill, two bills, I don't care. Let these guys—they're going to work it out. They're going to work it out one way or the other.

But the bottom line, the end result is going to be the same: We want to have all of those benefits, and we want to keep people's taxes low and actually make them lower. And that's not just rich people; that's everybody. It's, frankly, proportionately, the lower scale much more so than a higher scale.

Not only must we permanently extend the Trump tax cuts—you know, if we don't, you're going to have about a 60-percent tax increase—but I also intend to keep my promises, starting with no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, and no tax on overtime. We're working very hard to get them done, and we are.

I went to Nevada just this last couple of days. I started off in North Carolina, because I didn't want to forget—the people of North Carolina were treated so badly by FEMA. And they came to me, and they said, "Sir, you're going to California tomorrow." I said, "Well, what about North Carolina?" "Well, we'll do that another time." And I said: "No, we won't. I'm stopping in North Carolina first." And we stopped there.

We met great people. Franklin Graham has done a fantastic job. He's done a great job. But others also. And I met people that were devastated. The Democrat Party with FEMA—their FEMA did absolutely nothing, and we have it worked out.

Your Congressmen are helping very much there. Your three Congresspeople are—are working very hard on that whole thing, along with Michael Whatley, and Lara wants to be involved too—Lara Trump. She's doing great jobs. She's done a great—Michael and—and Lara have been unbelievable as the head of the RNC. They've been unbelievable. Unbelievable.

You know why I picked Michael? I said, "Who ran North Carolina? Tell me." Because in the 2016 election, we did so—we did so well. And then, in 2020, we did great in North Carolina. But others, we watched——

[The President made arm motions.]

Waa-ping, waa-ping. "What the hell is going on?"

But with North Carolina, it—when he had 600 lawyers—601 lawyers working for him, and they didn't play games in North Carolina, I said, "That's the guy I want to run it." And Michael Whatley has done an unbelievable job, and he worked with Lara so well. She comes from that State, from North Carolina. They've done such an incredible job.

So thank you very much. I want to just thank you in front of leadership. Incredible.

And I really don't want to give another job, to be honest. That's the most important job. He said, "Sir, I'll go anywhere." I said: "I don't want you to go anywhere. I want you to stay where you are. We'll give you plenty of money to get the job done right, but we don't want to—we don't want to lose you." I mean, he's really a—he could do anything, actually, but he's a very talented person.

There's nothing more important, because we have to win in 2 years, and we have to win in 4 years. There's nobody better to head it up. So thank you very much, Michael, on, really—stand up though—on—just an incredible job. Really amazing.

I wanted to save that for leadership. Because I say it all the time, people don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but leadership knows what I'm talking about. And it's really incredible. The two of you, as a team, were unbelievable.

Our administration will also be working to implement the "Make it in America" plan that I outlined very successfully in my campaign. You know, I think my campaign—I really focused on the border more than anything else. A lot of people said the biggest thing was inflation and the economy, and then maybe the border was third.

I always felt the border was first, because I felt that people could really understand that you can't have people pouring in from the prisons all over the world and from mental institutions all over the world, then dumped into our country. So I talked about that much more so than I did inflation.

I mean, inflation was terrible. It was the worst—I think it was the worst in the history of our country. But you can only talk about it so long. You know, the price of apples doubled, the price of bacon has quadrupled, the price—well, everything is a disaster. And you say it, and then what do you do? With this, I could give examples of what they're doing to destroy our country. And I felt it was the strongest thing.

You know, it's funny, in 2016, I won on the border. In 2020, we did so well, I couldn't talk about the border. My people would say: "Sir, don't bring up the border. Nobody wants to hear it." I said, "No, I did a great job." It was a horrible border in 2016, and then—but that border was beautiful compared to what we have now.

So I didn't talk about it, and we did great. I mean, look, we got—I got millions of more votes in 2020 than I got in 2016. Nobody ever got—I got the most votes of any Republican in history in 2020.

But this time I said: "Let's make it too big to rig. We're going to make it too big to rig." And that's what happened, and they couldn't—they tried. They tried, these cheating guys—these cheating people. But they tried. But they gave up.

I brought taxes down from 40 percent to 21 percent, which everybody said was impossible, and I did it with these people up here and a lot of the people there—great Congressmen. I want to name every one of them, but I'd be naming them all night. I'm looking at them. Look at all these people—they're great. They're so great: Russell and you and every single—Virginia—look at Virginia. She's a killer. Nobody would know she's a killer. [Laughter]

But I got all these Congressmen—I want to name every one of them, but I got a—like, a hundred-and-something thing. And then people would say: "Let's get the hell out of here. This is getting very boring," right?

But I will tell you, as a group and—and individually, they're incredible people. The—every one of them, I like. Although, every once in a while, if somebody votes against me, I don't like them for a little while. But we like every one of them.

And this guy has the ability to get along with everybody, which he has to when you have a majority of, really, five. You know, they say one, but it will be. But right now it's one. I want to make him sound a little—but he has an ability to get along with people, and—and he's very smart, very tough. But he—everyone likes him because he's a high-quality person—a very religious person, and he's a high-quality person.

You know, we have other guys here, and I—I know that everybody likes them, but they're—they're about—they're like—one of them in particular, I love this guy so much. I won't name him because I don't want to embarrass him, but I don't know if he'd be happy or not happy. But he's very, very strong; very, very popular. But he has 36 people that won't vote for him—just 36. That's not a lot. That's a small percentage.

Tom is incredible, but Tom has a couple of people that probably have been beaten badly and beaten up—if you beat up some people badly—and it's a little tougher.

And—but it—he's done an unbelievable job. I've become friendly with him. I just——I didn't really know him, and over the last year or so, I've become friendly. He's incredible. He's an incredible leader. You really are, but you have a couple of people that may be—more than one, let me put it that way. But——

Representative Thomas E. Emmer, Jr. They say they all love—[inaudible].

The President. They all love him. Your wife loves you, that I can tell you. He's got a great—where are you? Where are you? Stand up, please. Just stand up. Come on. What a great wife and family. It's true. Thank you.

She is a great—look at her. She's very popular, isn't she? Huh? She's——

Rep. Emmer. A lot more than me.

The President. She's great. More than you? You're very popular.

And now I'm bringing them down. I'm bringing the taxes down from 21 to 15 percent, but only if they make their product in America. So, if they make their product in America, we're bringing it down. So, if you think of it, we took it down from 40 to 15 percent, but, again, you—you—21, but you go down to 15 if you make your product here. We are going to have so many business moving back into our country.

And remember, again, the word tariff. We're going to protect our people and our businesses, and we're going to protect our country with tariffs, and you got a little indication of that yesterday with what happened with a very strong country.

Colombia is traditionally a very, very strong-willed country. If they don't make their product in America, then, very simply, they should have to pay a tariff, which will bring in trillions of dollars into our treasury from countries that never paid us 10 cents. We're not going to let that happen. We're not going to let them destroy our country.

In the words of President McKinley, who was the tariff king, the protective system invokes the highest law of nature that a self-preservation—and that is self-preservation—there is every reason founded in justice why the American producer should in every way be favored against a foreign producer whose products compete with his.

This is our natural market. We have made it. We have made it at enormous cost, capital, and exertion.

And think of this—and we did that through exertion and brain and muscle and guts and stamina. We preserved it against foreign wars and domestic conflicts, at great sacrifice of men and women. The foreign producer has contributed nothing to the growth or development of this country.

So, if you want to share with the citizens of the United States, our home market, then you must pay for the privilege of doing it. In other words, you have to pay for the privilege of coming into our country, taking our jobs, taking our product, destroying our country's—we mentioned North Carolina—the furniture business—what they've done to these great artisans. I used to go down to North Carolina all the time to buy furniture for hotels that I was building, and they had the most incredible artisans. That whole thing was wiped out by China, mostly, but others, and just wiped out.

But it's going to come back. It's going to come roaring back. It's all going to come roaring back. We're going to put tariffs on outside countries and outside people that really mean us harm.

They want—well, they mean us harm, but they basically want to make their country good.

Look at what others do. China is a tremendous tariff maker—and India and Brazil and so many—so many countries. And so we're not going to let that happen any longer, because we're going to put America first. Always, put America first. That's what's going to happen.

We're going to establish a very fair—a very fair—system where money is going to come into our coffers and America is going to be very rich again. And it's going to happen very quickly.

It's time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before. Do you know, the United States in 1870 to 1913, all tariffs—and that was the richest period in the history of the United States, relatively speaking. In other words, relatively. And we—they set up the great Tariff Commission of 1887, and this commission had one function: What to do with all the money that we took in. It was so enormous that they had no idea—it was a blue-ribbon committee. It was set up—1887, and what to do with all of the money that we had.

And, again, Teddy Roosevelt was a beneficiary, because when McKinley was killed, he took over this vast sum of money, and he did all of those national parks and all of the other things. And I'm not knocking him, but he was given a vast amount of money, and that was all made through tariffs, as they—we had no income tax. The income tax came in in 1913.

As I said in my speech last week, instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens. Does that make sense? Right?

Under the "American first" economic model, as tariffs on other countries go up, taxes on American workers and businesses will come down, and massive numbers of jobs and factories will come home. The job creation will be enormous.

In particular, if you look at the automobile sector, I mean, we're just being wiped out. You just take a look at what's happen- —what's happened to that over the years.

And the autoworkers voted for me. I have an obligation to do what's right, and I'm going to do that.

Do you know, in Mexico, they were going to build the largest auto plant anywhere in the world? And it was during the campaign—my campaign—my most recent campaign, and a very great gentleman—all he does is build—he builds auto plants. He was building this factory, and I said, "How's it going?" I said, "I want to go around and take a look at one of your factories that you're building." One of the big ones, one of the good ones. I said, "Okay, are you ready?" "Yes." "When are you going to do it?" This is 8 months ago, 9 months ago. He said, "You'll have to go to Mexico." I said, "What about the United States?" He said, "We're putting up a couple, but they're small." He's the biggest guy at doing it. He said, "In Mexico, they're building massive automobile factories." I said: "You mean they're doing it? And who's the owner of the factories?" He said, "Mostly China." One in particular is massive, and it's built fairly close to the border.

So they were going to build cars and send them into the United States for no tax or very little tax and destroy Detroit—just destroy the rest of it—what's left of it, because they've already taken—Mexico has taken 32 percent of our business over years—over 30 years.

And the other one is Canada. Canada has taken massive amounts of—you know, they—they send us millions of cars. We don't need them for that. We don't need—we want to have the cars made in Detroit or South Carolina or many other locations, whether it's union or not union.

But we—I said to him—I said, "So, when is this plant going to open?" He said: "Well, we're going to start it in a couple of months, and it will be open in about a year and a half. It's the largest plant in the world." I said, "I'm not happy with that." And I said in my next speech that I am going to charge them. If it takes 100 percent or 200 percent, no car is coming in from Mexico into the United States without a massive tariff, and I said it three or four times.

And what happened is, about 2 months later, I see that same gentleman—he was in the audience—and I said, "I want to see him backstage after I'm finished with the speech." And I met him backstage. I said: "John, let me ask you, what happened with that plant? Where is it now?" He said, "Sir, China has canceled it." "Why?" "Because they think you're going to be elected, and they thought you were going to charge big tariffs on the cars coming in, and it doesn't work if you're going to charge." So they canceled the plant, and Detroit now will breathe.

And we're going to do just the opposite. We're going to have these companies come in, and they can build that plant if they want, but they have to build it across the line. They have to build it in the United States. Amazing. Amazing.

We did so many things, and we weren't even elected yet. That would have been a disaster. If that—if that plant were built, it would have been a disaster. That would have wiped out—that was bigger than most of the factories put together—the auto plants put together.

In particular, in a very near future, we're going to be placing tariffs on foreign production of computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States of America.

They left us, and they went to Taiwan, where—which is about 98 percent of the chip business, by the way—and we want them to come back. And we don't want to give them billions of dollars, like this ridiculous program that Biden has: Give everybody billions of dollars. They already have billions of dollars. They've got nothing but money, Joe; they didn't need money. They needed an incentive, and the incentive is going to be they're not going to want to pay a 25-, 50-, or even 100-percent tax. They're going to build their factory with their own money. We don't have to give them money. They're going to come in because it's good for them to come in.

They're giving them money. They don't even know what they're going to do with it. I had people tell me: "We have no idea. We didn't need money." They don't know if they're even—they're probably going to use the money to build in other places, other countries. It's a ridiculous plan—very expensive and ridiculous.

The only way you'll get out of this is to build your plant—if you want to stop paying the taxes or the tariffs, you have to build your plant right here in America. That's what's going to happen at record levels. We're going to have more plants built in the next short period of time than anybody ever envisioned before, because the incentive is going to be there because they have no tariff whatsoever. In fact, they have help from us if they build their plant in America.

And we're going to look at pharmaceuticals, drugs. We're going to look at chips, semiconductors. And we're going to look at steel and some other industries, and you're going to see things happening.

If I didn't put on the massive steel tariffs, you wouldn't have one steel plant right now in the United States. If I didn't put on the tariffs on washing machines, dryers, and the like, you wouldn't—in Ohio, you would have lost all of those companies that made washing machines and dryers.

Jim Jordan is the one that got me start—was Jim here, by any chance? Is Jim here? Where is Jim? Where's Jim? Oh, look at him. Wow, that's not a great seat for a man of such power. [Laughter]

Do you know that Jim has a couple of—he's a great wrestler. He was All-American wrestler three times; 128 and 1. That's not a bad record, and that's the way he fights too. But he has a better record: undefeated as a wrestler in high school. And I say, "How can you do that?" Because a freshman can't beat a senior. But he figured out how to beat seniors.

So I—stand up again, Jim. Let's give you a hand for—as a wrestler. As a wrestler, big hand. As a politician, very good.

But—but, Jim, is it true that we saved—we went up there—remember, we had 25,000 people standing in the streets in this little, beautiful town, with Whirlpool, right? And they were going to close up their factories because they were—South Korea was dumping washing machines and other things like that. And they were dumping. And we put a 50-percent tariff and then 75, even 100 percent, and now they're thriving, right? Without Trump, they wouldn't—they would have been closed up, but Jim was the one that got me involved.

Are you guys all happy with Jim? Do you like him? Because I like him. I like him, right? We like Jim. What's not to like? He gets on television, he's like a wrestler. He's got this boom, boom, boom, boom. It's very impressive, Jim. Anyway, it's good to see you. I like that guy a lot.

I like a lot of the people in the audience a lot. I like the people in this room. We have the same basic philosophy. We have the same thoughts. What's not to like?

But I'll also be placing tariffs on steel, aluminum, and copper and things that we need for our military. Things—we have to bring production back to our country.

Do you know, there was a time when we made one ship a day? And now we can't build a ship. We don't know what the hell we're doing. It's all gone to other locations and other lands.

And to further return production to the United States, we're going to environmentally free up our rare earth minerals. We have some unbelievable sites. We have some of the best rare earth anywhere in the world, but we're not allowed to use it because the environmentalists got there first. They said, "You cannot touch that land." I look at the land; looks like every other piece of land. What is it? "Well, this is very protected."

They have no idea what they're doing to our country. They use the environment to stop progress, and we're not going to let that happen.

And we have Lee Zeldin. I don't know if Lee is here today, but Lee Zeldin is going to be fantastic. He's going to head up the whole environmental. And I said, "Lee, if we have a—we put in for a power plant, and if we don't get the approval, like, that you can start within 12 days—1 day would be even better—but 12 days, 14 days. See what you can do."

And Lee is great. Lee knows what's good, and he knows what's bad. And he'll be very fair, but we have to get it moving, because some of these jobs, like the ones in Louisiana—they were 14, 15 years they couldn't get their approvals. We can't let that happen.

When people come here with massive amounts of money, they want to start. They want to go. And we'll—we know what's good and we know what's bad too. And Lee Zeldin is going to do a great job environmentally.

As we fix our tax system, we can also cut colossal amounts of Government waste, fraud, and abuse, of which there's a lot.

But tonight I restate my pledge from the campaign: I will not sign any bill that cuts even a single penny from Medicare or Social Security for our great seniors. We don't have to do that. We don't have to do that. We'll not touch those benefits in any way, shape, or form.

I want to use that because during the campaign they—they had these fake ads that "Trump is going to cut Social Security." No, they're the ones that are going to cut it, because the—the country is going to go bankrupt under them, and that's why it's going to cut because they're not going to have a choice. Not that they're saying "we're going to cut it," but the country was—our country was heading for absolute bankruptcy.

Using reconciliation, I also look forward to working with you to make our energy policies permanent and making our historic deregulation efforts a fixture of U.S. law so that no future President—like they did with ANWR. I got ANWR approved—nobody could do it, including Ronald Reagan—in Alaska. It's the largest site—potentially the largest site in the world—larger than Saudi Arabia. And I got it done. Ronald Reagan couldn't get it; nobody could get it done. They tried, but they couldn't get it done. I got it done.

And the first thing they did was end ANWR in Alaska. The biggest, most powerful site maybe anywhere in the world, and we got it done, and we're going to get it done again very quickly.

Now, I think we—I think I do it with an Executive order, because they didn't go through Congress. I got it approved through Congress. So I think we get it done fast, but it's going to be—that can supply all of Asia with its location. All of Asia can be supplied by ANWR.

So there's so many things, but we don't want to have any future President ever sabotage our economy with out-of-control regulations, as the last two Democrat Presidents have done. They went crazy.

Last week, I signed an order revoking Joe Biden's destructive artificial intelligence regulations so that AI companies can once again focus on being the best, not just being the most woken.

Today, and over the last couple of days, I've been reading about China, and some of the companies in China—one in particular—coming up with a faster method of AI and much less expensive method. And that's good, because you don't have to spend as much money. I view that as a positive, as an asset.

So I really think—if it's fact and if it's true—and nobody really knows if it is—but I view that as a positive, because you'll be doing that too, so you won't be spending as much and you'll get the same result, hopefully.

The release of DeepSeek AI from a Chinese company should be a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win, because we have the greatest scientists in the world. Even Chinese leadership told me that. They said, "You have the most brilliant scientists in the world in Seattle and various places." But Silicon Valley, they said, "There's nobody like those people."

This is very unusual when you hear a DeepSeek, when you hear somebody come up with something. We always have the ideas. We're always first.

So I would say that's a positive. That could be very much a positive development. So, instead of spending billions and billions, you'll spend less, and you'll come up with, hopefully, the same solution.

Under the Trump administration, we're going to unleash our tech companies, and we're going to dominate the future like never before.

And finally, we need to work together on a defense bill that once again fully rebuilds our military for our great warriors. We have to have a strong, strong defense.

And in a little while, I'll be signing four new Executive orders.

First is that I'm directing our new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth—who is going to be great, by the way. Thank you for the support. Thank you very much for the support. You really did support him greatly. I think he's going to be a fantastic—I know him very well. I think he's going to be fantastic. He's what we need.

To immediately begin the construction of a state-of-the-art Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be able to protect Americans. You know, we protect other countries, but we don't protect ourself.

And when Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many years ago—luckily, we didn't. We didn't have the technology then. It was a concept, but we didn't—and now we have phenomenal technology.

You see that with Israel, where out of 319 rockets they knocked down just about every one of them. So I think the United States is entitled to that, and everything will be made right here in the U.S.A., 100 percent.

And next, to ensure that we have the most lethal fighting force in the world, we will get transgender ideology the hell out of our military. It's going to be gone.

In addition, we will stop our servicemembers from being indoctrinated with radical-left ideologies, such as critical race theory. We're going to stop it. It's already been stopped. It's already been halted—totally halted.

And finally, we will offer a full reinstatement to any servicemember who was expelled from the armed forces due to the COVID vaccine mandate—and we will restore them to their former rank with full pay. And I think we're going to have a lot of people that join.

And one thing I'll say, if you looked at our recruitment over the last week or so, 2 weeks, it's through the roof. You know, we were having a lot of—a lot of people weren't signing. We were having a hard time recruiting people, because they were looking at it these people that they were supposed to be their leaders, and they weren't happy. They didn't like people that fall going up stairs. If you're going to fall, at least go down stairs from the plane.

That triple fall. I—I used that thing in more ads—[laughter]—I didn't—I didn't have an ad where I didn't put that in. Just a little quick one, two, three.

It reminded me of Joe Frazier when he went down—right?—George Foreman-Joe Frazier—three falls in a matter of seconds. I said: "Can you speed it up a little bit? People are getting tired of it."

But no, they—we have, now, the best recruitment we've seen in a long time. There's tremendous number of people wanting to sign up.

January 20, 2025, was a turning point in American history. Starting last week, we're ending years of incompetence, radicalism, and betrayal, and we're ushering in the most exhilarating year of reform and renewal in the 250-year history of our country.

And just in conclusion, I just want to say that this has been a very exciting and will be a very exciting new chapter. There's nothing we cannot achieve, as long as the Republican Party remains united. I hope you can remain united.

And it's one thing I give the Democrats a lot of credit for, because, you know, they have lousy policy. I think, frankly, half of them are totally crazy. But they do stick together. They stick together on stuff that nobody can—I mean, how can you want prisons emptied out into our country? They stick together. They stick together on everything.

Impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two—they stick together. Although, I must tell you, you gave me great support during that—those two problems—those two fake witch hunts, which have now turned out to be totally fake and disgusting, but you gave me tremendous support.

But the Republican Party has to stick together. We just can't have people going, you know, one, two, three votes. And we don't have that luxury. It would be different if we had a 20-point, 30-point, 30-person majority, but we don't. We have to help leadership.

And, you know, you can be assured that you have certain philosophies, that if you're going to have most of the people, almost all of them, voting for something, you really—you're going to be okay. It's not going to be bad. You have to stick together. It's the one thing that I would say we don't get very high marks. Everything is so hard. We always have two or three or five or something people that just don't want to do it, and you've just got to do it. You've just got to do it. Make life easy. Just got to do it.

So right now we have a very special period, because we have the House, we have the Senate, and we have the White House. And we're a team, and we're a really good team.

And I appreciate so many times and—like even with Mike, I called three or four people and they said: "Okay, sir, I'll do it. I'm going to vote—I'm going to vote positively." And they're very happy they did now.

But when I called, we've gotten such a great response. We just had that happen with Pete Hegseth, and we have it happening with others. But we really appreciate it with the House. The House has been—you know, it's a very difficult situation when you have that small a majority, but in a certain way, it brings you together. It actually can unify more than anybody would ever know. And a victory is sweeter, as they say, because of it.

And I think we're going to have a lot of victories, but we have to stick together. We have to work together. We have to fight together. We're going to win together. We're going to win like never before.

We have a chance to win like never before. As long as we stay united, the 119th Congress will be remembered as the most successful and accomplished Republican majority in American history. I believe that. I think we have a chance of doing it. [Applause] Right?

And in January 2027, we will have a larger Republican House, a larger Republican Senate, and our country will be richer, safer, stronger, prouder, greater, freer, and—ever before. I really think that we're going to have some big victories coming up, and I'm going to be helping every single one of you.

I'm raising a lot of money, and I want to use it for the House, and I want to use it for the Senate. I've raised a lot of money. And, you know, I told my people: We raised $1.7 billion; they raised $2.6 billion. They have the unions with, you know, checkoffs, which is always tough: $10 a month times millions and millions of people.

And then we won, and we won by a lot. And they wanted to go out—and they still haven't raised it. They're trying to raise $28 million; they cannot raise 10 cents. It's good to win, I will tell you. It's really good to win. But they can't raise money.

But I told my people the morning after—now, normally, because we have so many donors here and so many people that I love and respect, a lot of great friends of mine—but I told my people, Meredith and Susie—and, by the way, how good is Susie, the "ice maiden"? Where is the ice maiden—she is so great. She is so good. Stand up, Susie. The ice maiden, ladies and gentlemen.

Wow, look at that. Most powerful woman in the world, they say. Most powerful woman in the world. She's made of ice. [Laughter] She's great.

No, you know, when I came to Florida, Florida was a Democrat State; had a Democrat Governor. They had one Democrat Senator. They—it was a Democrat—largely a Democrat State. And through various reasons, I ended up with Susie running the campaign, and she was unbelievable. We won it in a landslide.

And then the second time, we won it in an even bigger landslide. And when it came time to choosing somebody to run the campaign—the whole campaign, I said, "What about Susie from Florida?" She'd never lost. I won every primary. I won every—every—I didn't lose anything.

And it—again, it was a Democrat State. I—and it was a landslide both times.

And all of the Republican stuff was almost like it didn't even exist. It was amazing. I said, "What about Susie?" "Well, sir, you know, a woman has never been in this position before." I said, "Really?"

Oh, by the way, we have Kellyanne Conway. She didn't do too badly either, right? She did a great job, 2016.

And when—when it came time to chief of staff—do you know that there has never been a woman chief of staff? But there is now. There is now, right? I didn't know that. I'm so surprised. I didn't—I'm very surprised.

But it came time to running the campaign, and I said, "Well, I've never had a loss with Susie." She comes from great stock, you know. Pat Summerall is her father. Pat Summerall was a football player—great football player and—but a really great announcer, a really—the voice of the NFL for 27 years or something. He was great, and a leader.

He worked with John Madden, and he was able to get John Madden to do things that nobody else could do. [Laughter] They'd call him, and they'd say, "Pat, John is really difficult." Now, you know, John was a difficult guy, but he got big ratings, and he was good. And Pat would go up, "Come on, John, let's get this done. Come on. I know you don't like the heads of the company, just—that's—they're paying you a lot of money. Come on, John. Let's get it done." And he'd go and do it. And this went on for, what, 27 years, right?

But he was a leader, her father. And, you know, this is somebody that has the gene. I'll tell you, she's great, and she's done a fantastic job.

So she was so good with the campaign. I said, "Let's let her do the campaign," and it was flawless. And again, I said before, it—we had her win a lot of votes, because it's crooked as hell.

And I hope you can go to voter ID and same-day voting and paper ballots and all of those things, because, ultimately, we'll never lose a race if you do that. I'm telling you, you'll never lose a race, and I hope you can get that. And that's said to the Governors, mostly. But the—you know, you people have a lot of power over it.

But Susie ran the race, and we did phenomenally, and then we just made her the chief of staff, and she's doing great. They say it was the greatest week—opening week in Presidential history. And I think, you know, couldn't be a hell of a lot better. Even CNN is saying, "This guy is amazing." I couldn't believe it. I said, "Did CNN really say that?" Because nobody watches, so nobody was able to confirm it. [Laughter] But it was pretty amazing.

Oh, their camera just went off. These—[laughter]. It's always tough. Usually, you get them by surprise.

But I just want to thank everybody. We're going to make this tremendously successful. We're going to have—I believe we're going to have one of the greatest 4 years in the history of our country. We're going to turn it around quickly, and then we're going to go on and we're going to progress like nobody ever thought possible.

And I want to thank these great four people, because they really are leaders, and they're phenomenal people. And I want to thank all of my friends in the audience, many of whom are Congressmen and Congresswomen and people that have just tremendous talent, every single one of you. I know every one of you, and you have tremendous talent.

And if we stick and if we fight together, there's nobody can stop us. We're going to have—because they have bad policy. Their policy is so bad nobody could win with this policy—nobody. And we have the best policy.

And again, as they say and we say and I've been saying for a long time: We're the party of common sense. And we're the party that's going to have the best four years ever.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.