Speaker. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
[Music: Lee Greenwood, "God Bless the U.S.A."]
[The President slowly descends stairs from Air Force One; cheers and applause.]
The President. There's a lot of people. That's great. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. That's a big group of people. This is on fast notice, too. Thank you.
Crowd. [chanting] USA! USA! USA! USA!
The President. Well, I just wanna say hello, Minnesota. We love you, Minnesota. You're great. Great, great state. We're gonna win Minnesota. We're gonna win Minnesota because they did nothing for Minnesota except close up that beautiful iron ore territory. They closed it up with a pen. Do you remember that one day? You didn't have your jobs. Then I came along, and I opened it up. So that's pretty good. [cheers and applause]
But I'm thrilled to be here with the beautiful, great, hardworking people of this incredible state. You're really hardworking American patriots. That's what you are, and a lot of people haven't been treated right until I came along. We've done a lot of work and a lot of good work, and you had your best year ever last year. The state had the best year you've ever had. [cheers and applause] Forty-six days from now, we're going to win Minnesota, and we're going to win four more years in the White House. [cheers and applause]
One of the most vital issues in this election is the subject of refugees. You know it. You know it perhaps better than almost anybody. Lots of luck. You're having a good time with the refugees. That's good. We wanna have Omar. He said Omar. That's a beauty. How the hell did she win the election? [booing] How did she win?
Crowd Member. She's an idiot! [shouting]
The President. It's unbelievable. Every family in Minnesota needs to know about Sleepy Joe Biden's extreme plan to flood your state with an influx of refugees from Somalia, from other places all over the planet. [booing] Well, that's what's happened.
Crowd Member. Yeah!
The President. And you like Omar a lot, don't you?
Crowd. No!
The President. Biden has promised a 700% increase in the manifesto with Bernie, right? A 700% increase in the importation of refugees from the most dangerous places in the world, including Yemen, Syria, and Somalia. Congratulations, Minnesota. A 700% increase. Good luck, Minnesota. Enjoy yourselves, because if I'm not here, if I don't win, I don't know where I'm gonna be. But maybe I'll come over to see Mike. [cheers and applause] I'll come and see Mike.
Your state will be overrun and destroyed if Biden and the radical left win. That's what's gonna happen. I've been watching it for years. They haven't treated you right. They have not treated Minnesota right.
Crowd. [chanting] Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
The President. Thank you. I'll tell you, these hangers are great. Remember this. It's a friendly protest, please remember, this is not a rally. [cheers and applause] You're not allowed to have political rallies of any kind. You're not allowed to go to church. You're not allowed to do anything. The only thing you're allowed to do is run wild through the streets, burn down storefronts, blow up stores, and kill people, because that's considered a protest, and that, they allow you to have. You don't have to wear masks at protests. So I said, you know, "We can't have a rally. The most we can have is ten people. But why don't we just call it a protest?" because this is a protest. [cheers and applause] It's a protest against stupidity. [laughter] [cheers and applause] And speaking about stupidity, Sleepy Joe will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp. Think of it. 700% increase. So you're not happy now? Look at that guy over there. He's not too thrilled when he hears this. 700% increase is what they have in the manifesto. Now, maybe they don't honor it, but I would say they'll go substantially higher than that number. Biden will overwhelm your children's schools, overcrowd their classrooms, and inundate your hospitals. That's what'll happen. Biden has even pledged to terminate our travel ban to jihadist regions, jihadist regions. They've already been doing that to you, haven't they? Opening the flood gates to radical Islamic terrorists. [booing]
My administration's keeping terrorists, extremists, and criminals the hell out of our country. We don't want them. [cheers and applause] We don't want them. We've got enough of them. We've got enough of them. Just today, we deported, as you know very well, dozens of Somali nationals charged or convicted with very grave crimes, including rape, assault, robbery, terrorism, and murder, of course. [shouting] These hardened criminals are back in their country, where they can do all the complaining they want—[cheers and applause]—and your children are much safer as a result. Thank you, President Trump. Thank you. [cheers and applause] If it were up to Biden, and it's not, it's the people that's around him. They are seriously radical left Democrats— and they're very dangerous. And the offenders are very dangerous, and they'd be running all over your state. Only by voting for me are you going to save—I hate to say this, I did it with your iron ore. I did it with some other things, and uh, I'll do it for you again. I'll do it for you again. But if you vote for me, I'm the difference, and I'm the wall. You know the wall that we're building on the southern border? [cheers and applause] I'm your wall—[cheers and applause]—between the American dream and chaos. Joe Biden is wholly owned and controlled by the left-wing mob. He has no clue where he is. This is not a sharp guy. [laughter]
Crowd Member. Sleepy Joe Biden!
The President. Years ago, I said to a certain senator who I was very friendly with, a Democrat, "Who's the dumbest senator? Who's the smartest senator?" He gave me a name for the smartest. I said, "Who's the dumbest?" "Oh, Joe Biden. You didn't know that?" That was 25 years ago. That was in prime time. This is no longer prime time for Sleepy Joe. [cheers and applause]
And they do disinformation, they make things up, and they make commercials. They make things up. I've never seen anything like it. Everything they make up. First of all, I'm the one protecting your Social Security.
Crowd Member. Yeah!
The President. They say, "Trump—" Remember four years ago, they used to say, "Oh, Trump will get rid of Social—" I have protected your Social Security. They're gonna destroy your Social Security.
Another thing, Big 10 football. Did I do a good job? [cheers and applause] Your team better do well. They're on the spot. They better do well. Are they gonna do well this year? I think so, right? [cheers and applause] But I brought it back. But I saw an ad. Do you know why I did it, actually? It sort of energized me. Sleepy Joe did an ad that I was against football, that I was against Big 10 football. Give me a break. I was against—When I saw the ad, I said, "What's the problem with Big 10 football?" They said, "They're not gonna open." "Why?" And they say, you know, some stupid reason. [laughter] I said, "These are strong young people. They're gonna do great. Let's get going." I called the commissioner, Kevin, good guy, and we sort of started something. We got it rolling. We had big opposition from a few of the Democrat states and governors, you know, but we rolled over the opposition, and you have Big 10 football. Congratulations. Congratulations. [cheers and applause]
When the far-left riders rampage across Minneapolis and they rampage across your state, how about your police department? Let's just run for your lives, and it's not their fault. They were told to do that. You have a good police department. You have good police, but they're not allowed to do their job. No, they're not allowed to do their job. [cheers and applause] Remember that? They were told to leave the precinct. Leave it, and then they knocked the hell out of that precinct, didn't they, huh? Had a great mayor. Great mayor. Really, he's a real powerhouse. [booing] Remember? Did you ever hear of a man, Fiorello La Guardia? Did you ever—? I don't think that happened with him. New York, I don't think it happened with Rudy Giuliani, did it, huh? What a great job Rudy did. You realize, you know, Rudy's just now really being appreciated. People forgot how good he was as a mayor. He was a great mayor.
Joe Biden called them peaceful protestors. He said, "These are peaceful protestors," as opposed to sending in the National Guard. They didn't want the National Guard. Joe Biden said, "You shouldn't send the National Guard," and this went on day after day after day. I pushed, and I got it approved. The National Guard went in. It ended within, what would you say, a half hour? It was about a half an hour. You wouldn't have Minneapolis. You better remember this when you go and vote, and your voting starts today. Please. [cheers and applause] You'd be saying, "Do you remember when we had a city called Minneapolis? [laughter] If you remember, it used to be over there. It's all ashes now." That place was coming down. You didn't have anything, but wasn't that a beautiful sight? Look. All of a sudden, you saw one guy in a black uniform, then another, then another on the street. Remember that street loaded up with CNN reporters? Remember Ali Velshi, shaved head, nice hair, shaved head? Some people say I should do that. Shave the head. Just give it up.
Crowd. No!
The President. Can't do it. [shouting] No, we polled it. I'd go down about 22 points. [laughter] We polled it. They wanna poll everything nowadays. I don't believe in polls. They poll everything. But Ali Velshi, I don't know anything about the guy, but I, you know, I know he was standing there, "This is really quite a good scene. It's a friendly protest. [laughter] Everyone's acting—" and behind him, the entire city was burning. It was, like, block—It's one of the great pictures of all time. The entire city was burning down. That was your city, and it's a shame it took so long, but the governor finally did it at least. You know, if you take a look at Portland, the governor can't quite do it. She can't get there. I speak to her all the time. "Come on, Governor. I can straighten out Portland. Give me less than an hour. Just let us have it for—" You know, because we have to get—The state has to ask for it. They have to request. It's a shame. It's such a shame.
But in your case, we went, and all of a sudden, it was really—That was gonna be a bad night, too, right? Remember that, about seven o'clock? Then you see this guy walk out with about a 250,000-dollar outfit on. That's because it had more computers and this and that. Got the tear gas deal. He's got the whole deal, pepper spray, got everything, the finest outfit you can buy. Believe me. We just paid for them, and they were very expensive. So we see one, the helmet. How about the helmet with the goggles? You can see at night. You can see at day. You can see whenever the hell you want. [laughter] So there's one. I said, "Oh, that's only one guy." Then you see another three, then four. Then you see another ten. They were just getting out of the buses, coming from very friendly territory.
Then you have a line, and they were very tight together. There was no social distancing at all, which—[laughter]—we're gonna have to speak to them about that. No, they were touching. It's true. They were touching, right? So you had the first one. Then you had a second one. Then you had a third one. Then you had another one. Then they said, "March." I remember this guy, Velshi, he got hit on the knee with a canister of tear gas, and he went down. He didn't—He was down. "My knee, my knee." [laughter] Nobody cared. These guys didn't care. They moved him aside, and they just walked right through. It was the most beautiful thing.
No, because after we take all that crap for weeks and weeks, they would take this crap, and then you finally see men get up there and go right to—Didn't—Wasn't it really a beautiful sight? [cheers and applause] It's called law and order, law and order. Portland would be easier, because it's more confined. We'd just go "bing," and that would be it. But, you know, so they had four or five lines. Then they had lines of different—Everybody did the same thing. Did they ever even move one step back? I don't think so, right? It was just a slow walk right forward. Then they just started walking faster, faster, faster, put a lot of guys in jail, Tom, right? Put a lot of guys—Great congressman, by the way. Put a lot of guys in jail. Great. Not good. Great. [cheers and applause] They put a lot of guys in jail that night, Tom, and that was the end of it. I don't think he had any problem after that. If you had any flare-ups, we'll send them in again.
But that's all you do. These are Democrat-run disasters. Look at Chicago. Look at Portland. Look at you with Minneapolis. These are disasters. By the way, are they still trying to get rid of your police force in Minneapolis?
Crowd. Yeah.
The President. That's what I heard. See, they never learn. They never learn. They don't—Look at that, you've got a lot of people here. [cheers and applause] That's a lot of people. [cheers and applause] I actually like these. You know, we have the arenas. We've always filled them up. It's been great, and the arenas are good, but usually you have to travel 45 minutes. This thing, you have a hangar. The plane becomes your backstop, right? It's like your curtain, you know, it's a curtain. You get a free curtain. [laughter] We're outside, which actually makes people happy. It even makes the people that sometimes not everybody here likes, happy, because outside is better. It's better, and we're rounding the turn on COVID, by the way. Our vaccines are coming. A lot of things are happening. We're rounding the turn. We've done a great job. We've done a phenomenal job. We don't get credit for that, but we'll discuss that in a minute.
But when you look at it, when you look at it, our country is amazing. It's an amazing country. We love this country, and we're not gonna let—[cheers and applause]—we're not gonna let radical left socialists/communists take over our country. Okay? [cheers and applause] You know, they use the word "socialist," and socialists aren't great, but communists are a hell of a lot worse, and that's where we'd be headed. We're standing in the way of them, this group of people. But you have a lot of groups of people just like this, every place we go. Last night, you know where we were. You saw that, it was all over the place, right? That's a big state. That's a great state. And then I see the fake polls. You know, I just saw a poll here, Minnesota. I'm down nine. I don't think so. I mean, I just don't think so. [booing] No, they said—I don't think so, right? I don't think so. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. This is the craziest thing I've seen.
Crowd. [chanting] We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!
The President. President Trump is down nine in Minnesota.
Crowd. [chanting] We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!
The President. No, I just saw another plane. See the plane? The good thing about these beautiful Air Force Ones, right? That's the smaller version of Air Force One. I think you had a little bit short runway. So they take the smaller to save about 12 dollars. [laughter] No, they took the smaller one. But the great thing about those beautiful planes, they have more televisions than any plane in history. We have televisions in the closet, on the ceilings, on the floors. I've never seen them on the—We have them all over the place, and I'm just coming out and they said, "There he is." They said, "It's a smattering of people." They called it a "smattering." [booing] They always do that.
Yet Biden with the circles, right? The little circles. He's got like four people in a circle. You know why he does the circles? Because he can't draw a crowd. So they put a circle, like he's supposed to—He's trying to be legitimate. But, you know, he's gonna go by the science. He always says, "the science." He doesn't know what the word "science" is. So to have these four or five circles, they put people, that way he doesn't have to be embarrassed when he goes to a high school gymnasium and he has 40, 50 people. [laughter]
They had one not so long ago, and you saw this. He couldn't draw a crowd. It was a big thing. It was his opening or something. Couldn't draw a crowd. So they made it a roundtable. So he went in. They only had like 32 people. They said, "This is very embarrassing," one of his people, and that's what they do. They're good. Some of the people surrounding him, they'll say anything and do anything. They said, "Let's not make it a speech. There's nobody here. Let's make it a roundtable." So these people are sitting at a table. They had no idea, and most of them didn't know anything about politics. They didn't even know why they were there. And now they're sitting on a round table, and they're on television. [laughter] But that's what it is. But they say we, "Had a smattering of people." Yes, smattering of about what? 15,000 people in about two days' notice. [cheers and applause]
And this doesn't include the 10,000 people, Mike, that they turned away. I hate that they turned them away. You know, you'd think with an airport, you wouldn't have to turn anybody away, but they have a certain amount. Then sometimes you have Democrats running an airport, and they don't like all these people here. That's true. They don't like it. But if it were up to Biden, your state would be in ruins. Just take a look at what they've done, and I'm gonna hit it hard. You know, they make phony commercials about me, and it gives me the right—Like, how about the worst one of all, the worst I've ever seen? Standing on a grave of a fallen soldier, and then they had some guy, "A source said—" There's no source. The source doesn't exist. They make it up, and then they take it. It's called disinformation. You're not supposed to do that.
And I'm not even sure if he knows. He's too weak to understand, and he's still weak to control his people. But it allows me to say whatever I want about this guy. And the truth is, he's not fit to be your president. He's not mentally fit. [cheers and applause] If Biden's elected, extremists, like Representative Ilhan Omar—[booing] Whatever happened to her? You had a great writer who has just made a living off writing about her. And she's done so many criminal acts. Isn't it damn disgraceful that she gets away with it? And I have to say to myself, I say, "How the hell did she get away with that? And if we do one—" Look at General Flynn. He didn't even lie. They said he didn't lie, right? And he's gone through hell. He's gone through hell. This guy wrote page after page of criminal acts. Well, let's see what happens. Who the hell knows? But between her, and how about AOC? AOC—[booing]
AOC is running a campaign against the guy that was supposed to be Speaker of the House, right? Joe Crowley. I knew him a little bit. I asked him once, I said, "Are you campaigning against this maniac?" He said, "No, she's just a young girl. No problem." I called him on election night. Nah, I was going to, I was gonna say, "How did that work out, Joe? [laughter] That didn't work."
He was gonna be Speaker of the House. She's got a certain talent. But, you know, all of a sudden—She had no money, nothing. And all of a sudden, she had two million dollars and she spent the two million dollars all over the place. Her and her boyfriend. Whatever happened to her? Can you imagine if I'd do that? She spent the two million dollars. You have to look at that. She spent the two million dollars, and, big story, but that was it. That's one quick story. Oh man. Probably the guy who wrote the story, lost his job at the New York Times, right? He's now unemployed, but there's a big story. She spent two million dollars on bullshit. Okay? [cheers and applause] And if a—If a Republican did that they'd be in jail. You know that. It's a different standard and it's a disgrace. And our guys better get on the ball.
Look, let me tell you, how about yesterday. They were talking about Russia, Russia, Russia. Again, here we go with the Russia. There's never been anybody so tough on Russia with the sanctions. Remember Obama would send pillows. I sent tank busters, right, to Ukraine. I'm the one that exposed the pipeline with Germany. Germany pays them billions and billions of dollars. And then we're supposed to protect Germany from Russia. I said, "How does that work? How does that work? You're spending billions of dollars for energy to Russia."
It's all okay. I'm the one that exposed it. What I've done—Hey, they don't want me to go. But if you look, they don't want me to win. Russia doesn't want—Maybe North Korea does because I actually have a very good relationship with him. And, you know, speaking of North Korea—And you know, it's okay to have really. You don't have to go to wars. We don't have to lose our great soldiers. We don't have to. [cheers and applause]
It's good. If I got along with Putin. Somebody said, "He gets along well with Putin." I'm saying to myself, "But isn't that sort of a good thing?"
Crowd. Yeah!
The President. "Is that bad?" "He gets along with Putin. That's a bad thing." But, you know, you saw the head of the FBI yesterday started going, "Russia, Russia's looking at our election. Russia." Here we go again. Russia, Russia, Russia. I said, "What about China? What about North Korea? What about Iran? What about—" They don't mention anybody else. The narrative seems to be Russia. Millions of phone calls made, not one to Russia. Millions of phone calls received, not one to Russia. Then he goes, "Russia, Russia." Then they asked him about Antifa. What do you think about Antifa? "Well, it's an ideology." I said, "No, it's not. It's a bunch of thugs and anarchists that are being funded by somebody and find out who the somebody is." [cheers and applause]
It's unbelievable. Unbelievable when you look at this stuff. But seriously, take a look at the AOC. I call it AOC plus three. You know, her three people that she tells what to do. And two million dollars. Dresses, rent, other things. You're not supposed to do that. Mr. Congressman, are you allowed to do that, sir? You don't do that. You don't buy dresses, do you? [laughter] If he does, that's the end of his career, right? [laughter]
No, but, it's terrible. Right, Tom? It's terrible. We'll prosecute him. I mean, yeah, why not? I don't understand it. I'll tell you what. You know, one friend of mine, very sophisticated guy, very successful guy, called me up. He says, "You know, from the day you came down the escalator with our great first lady, our future first lady—" He said, "From that day—" No, people love her. [cheers and applause] She gave a great speech at the Republican National Convention at the White House. She gave a great speech. [cheers and applause] But said, "From the day you came down the escalator with our first lady, from the single day you've been under investigation. You've been under investigation by sleazebags."
People that now we caught, cleaned up their phones. You're not allowed to do that, right, Mr. Congressman? My great hockey player. You're the greatest. Right? But you're not allowed to do that. You know? We want their phones. "Oh, here they are. Oh, by the way, they happen to be totally deleted." Like Hillary with the 33,000 emails she deleted.
Crowd Member. Lock her up! [booing]
The President. No, seriously, I think they should look at that. You know, even if they don't find them, and I do believe they're in the State Department. I do believe they're in the FBI. I do believe they're in the FBI. But even if you forget about it, forget—She said she had 33,000 emails, and the emails were for her yoga lessons. Look, you know, she's not big into yoga, I can tell. [laughter] If she is, she's not getting her money's worth. [laughter] Her yoga lessons—[cheers and applause]—and her daughter's wedding. Right? So it was about the wedding and the yoga lessons.
So I said, "Okay, let's give her five or six each." What do you think, Mike? Five or six each. Five for the wedding. Make it 30. Make it a hundred. Make it a thousand. A thousand for the wedding. And for the yoga, let's give her 200. [laughter] Okay? What about all those thousands and thousands of emails. Probably classified. So Congress—So forget about it. Let's assume they're gone because she deleted them and then she acid washed them. And then she hit her phones with a hammer.
I get rid of phones. I've never hit him with a hammer. Not even as president. I say, "Yeah. Throw the phone away." No, no. I've never hit a phone. Has anybody ever gotten rid of your phone and taken a hammer and wiped the hell out of it? I don't think so.
Crowd. No!
The President. So she gets a subpoena from the US Congress. Not in a lawsuit against some guy that hates you and you're fighting and you're fighting or something. By the way, you do that, you've got problems in court, big problems. But she gets a subpoena from Congress. US subpoena, the most important subpoena you can get. They get the subpoena. And after she gets the subpoena, by a few days, everything is deleted. Her phones are busted up and cleaned and wiped. And everything's gone.
And nothing happens to her. Forget about what was on. [shouting] No, think of how, how, how angry it makes me when I see it.
Crowd. [chanting] Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!
The President. No, how angry? Could you imagine if I'd do that, it's a whole different ball game. No, how angry it makes me when I see it.
And, you know, we have, we had an attorney general that didn't have a clue. That was my fault. I was loyal to somebody. Endorsed me early. You know why he endorsed me? Because I went to Mobile, Alabama. We had 55,000 people show up at a stadium. He said, "I'd like to endorse you." Then after we won, he said, "I'd love to be attorney general." And I said, "No, I don't think so, I mean—" But after four or five times asking, I'm a loyal person and I did it. The mistakes sometimes you make is because of loyalty, but that's okay.
But allowed her to get away with that, is a disgrace. It's a disgrace. Maybe there's something they can do. So forget about looking for the emails. And they are available. And I guarantee they're in the State Department. I guarantee you they're in the State Department and they ought to damn well find them. They're being protected in the State Department.
But forget about that. Almost as good is the fact that you're not allowed to do what she did and her lawyers should pay, Kendall should pay, equal consequence. Equal consequence. Equal. [cheers and applause] But that's the way it is, and—But we are making a lot of progress if you see what's going on. You know, I said to myself, "I'm going to stay uninvolved." I don't have to. Chief Law Enforcement Officer, can you believe it? But I think it's better if I stay uninvolved. And I have stayed uninvolved and we do have an excellent attorney general. Bill Barr. [cheers and applause] And I'll be honest, he's a smart guy. I think he's getting tougher and tougher and tougher every day. I think he's not gonna put up with this stuff. I don't think. And, you know, he's got a lot of people that are deep staters, whatever you want to call them. They fight him at every turn. They fight him, fight him, fight him. But he's getting tougher and tougher. I watched over the last three days, I'm saying, "Wow, that's sort of what we're all waiting for, right?"
Crowd Member. Yes we are!
The President. But she deletes her emails. AOC gets rid of two million dollars. Two million dollars, gets rid of it. Nothing happens. Nothing happens. And then she goes around and calls us all, like, what the hell are we? And she controls Nancy Pelosi. Actually, Nancy Pelosi would love to get rid of her, I think. You know, because—Pelosi. How about Pelosi? [booing] How about that? How about Pelosi? Pelosi goes out and says, "You know, I think I'll have my hair done." So she goes out and she goes into this beauty parlor. I told the story in Wisconsin last night.
By the way, we had that great crowd in Wisconsin. [cheers and applause] You know, you have a feeling about places. You know the problem with Minnesota is that, I think since 1972, this hasn't been won by a Republican. So, you know, you're a little behind the eight ball when you hear that. Right? [shouting] I mean, I can understand. And Wisconsin rarely, but I won Wisconsin, unlike Minnesota, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Tom. Thank you. [shouting] No, unlike Minnesota.
But it's my fault. So I had one speech left. It started at one in the morning. I went to Michigan, we won Michigan. That was another one. Great state. We brought back so many auto companies into Michigan. We brought them back. But I had one, they had one—It was already voting day. It was election day. Because by the time I got there it was just scheduled. Had I made that one damn stop to your state we would have won Minnesota. I lost by, what? A half a point? Half a point. [cheers and applause]
But I get off the plane and they said, "He's in Minnesota. He's down nine." The recent poll. Down nine. [booing] I believe it's a suppression poll. And you know, I'm good, I have an instinct about things pretty much. Somebody said, "Trump has the greatest political instincts of the last 100 years." One of my enemies said that. And I said, "No, I don't." I don't believe I do. I think I have lousy political instincts. But what am I gonna tell you? Let me just say, they said that, and I was very impressed by the statement.
In fact, I went to my wife I said, "You know, they say I have the greatest political instincts in over a hundred years."
Crowd Member. Yeah!
The President. And I said, "But I don't believe it. I don't." I don't wanna be Beto. Remember Beto? "I was born to run for president." That was the end of his career. [laughter] Beto O'Rourke, who's in charge of guns. By the way, he's gonna take your guns away. You know that, right? Biden. Sleepy Joe. [booing] Sleepy Joe's gonna take your guns away. Remember Beto on the cover of a really crummy magazine, I won't mention the name. They've got a lot of bad magazines out there. The good news is, most of them are dying. [cheers and applause] If not all of them.
But Beto O'Rourke, he did the story and, you know, he was going to defeat Ted Cruz. He was going to do all these things. Ted beat him. And I helped a lot too. I was with Ted all the way. And I think Ted's appreciated it. But I even said, "I'm putting Ted Cruz as one of the people for the Supreme Court." Right?
And you know why I did it? [cheers and applause] You know why I did it? Because I wanted to make sure that I had somebody on a list we had about 45 unbelievable people, unbelievable. The smartest, the best. The absolute creme de la creme, right? The best minds in the country. Conservative. They believe in the Constitution. Okay? You know little things. Little things like that. But I said, "You know, I have to have somebody that we're gonna make sure we get approved." And the only one I could think of is Ted, because he's gonna get 50 Republican votes and he's gonna get 50 Democrat votes. They'll do anything to get him out of the Senate. [laughter]
But I joke when I say that to Ted. But I say it all the time. Ted's the only man I know could get a hundred votes from the Senate. Every single senator's gonna vote for him. But he's a great guy. And he's a brilliant guy. And he's been great. He's been really great. I kid when I say that. But one of the things we've done that's so good is the Supreme Court. We have two Supreme Court justices. We will have at the end of my term, approximately 300 federal judges, including court of appeals. Right? [cheers and applause]
So anyway, but just to finish, there's no way that I'm nine points down. I look at a crowd. So they say instinct, right? So I look at a crowd and, whether I have good instinct or not, this is not the crowd of somebody that's gonna finish second in the state to a Sleepy Joe. [cheers and applause] Finish second to a guy that cannot put two sentences together. Now it is an ideology. It doesn't matter. I could put that broken piece of wood right there. I could put that out. And it's the same thing as Joe. It's just an ideology. It's just an idea.
Now, historically, we have the biggest gap in enthusiasm of any campaign that they've ever polled. You heard that. Like 36 points. In other words, they've got no enthusiasm for him. I have tremendous enthusiasm, as we can tell. But—[cheers and applause]—but he does have enthusiasm to beat Trump. His only enthusiasm is put anybody in there. Right? Put anybody in there. He does have enthusiasm to beat Trump. Nothing for him, but to beat Trump. Okay.
But historically that never wins. When somebody has to rely on winning because of somebody as opposed to winning because people love you, people respect you—And Sean Hannity did something the other night. He said, "Would you have—" This man, "If you owned a McDonald's hamburger stand in a reasonably busy area, would you have Joe Biden running that stand?" The answer is no. He doesn't have the energy. He doesn't. So he can't run the country.
No, seriously. I thought it was good. I never thought of it. You wouldn't have him running your business. You wouldn't have him running a McDonald's. I have to say, or a Wendy's. I have a friend he owns Wendy's. He always gets up, "Can you ever mention Wendy's?" Okay. [laughter] But, you know, you wouldn't do it because he couldn't do it. And yet he's running for the presidency. He's got no energy.
I made a comment that somebody had low energy. That was the end of his political career. [laughter] But Joe's energy is far lower. It's far lower. No, it's far lower than Jeb. Jeb was on the low side. But Joe is like, he's off the scale, right? [laughter] Joe's got nothing going. Today Biden delivered remarks, barely, to a union—[laughter]—after spending 47 years giving their jobs to China and foreign countries in exchange for campaign cash. How about his statement?
Hey, we talk about AOC being crooked. She's a hundred percent crooked, okay? But were talking about that. Look at Omar. She came in here. Did she marry her brother? Where's that writer? That writer—[booing]—that writer should be given the Pulitzer Prize. He never will be. He should be though.
You know the amazing thing, all of these writers, New York Times, Washington Post, right? Russia, Russia, Russia. Trump. Russia, Russia, Russia. I had 19 people. All brilliant. All radical left. All Hillary Clinton people, actually, not even a never-Trumper from Bush. Okay. All Hillary Clinton peoples mostly, almost everyone. They were all Democrats. How about this? You're being investigated by 19 Democrats that are smart people. Okay? Smart people.
So my friend says, "You know, you are the most honest person in the world. And you've taken three years of total investigation." You don't think they've gone over my taxes. They went over—At the biggest tax firm in the country. The most prestigious. They went over everything. They spent 48 million as it comes out now. It's about 48 million dollars investigating me before I won and after I won. And we caught them spying on my campaign. That's what they were really doing.
Crowd Member. Criminals! [booing]
The President. And now with the phones, I think there's like 22 or 24 people. You heard this one? They said, "No, no, no. We made a mistake when we deleted our phone." You know what they had to do to make that mistake? Like 19 different formulas. Right? I don't even know how you delete a phone. I didn't know you could do it. But they all made the exact same mistake. That's not good. [laughter] That's not good. So let's see what happens to them. It's a criminal act, you know that, right? It's a criminal act. It's criminal.
Weissman's a bad guy. Put a lot of people in jail that shouldn't be in jail, Weissman. He's a bad guy. He's on CNN all the time or MSNBC, which is, I call it MSDNC. Because it's the same thing. Owned by a company called Concast. Did anyone ever hear—With an N, not an M. Con like a con job. Concast.
Crowd Member. Yeah, they are!
The President. They spend a fortune on public relations. "Comcast has delivered you the news, all the news." [laughter] And they spend a fortune on—And then I go up and make one speech and I call them Concast and that's the end of the PR for the year. [laughter]
They are a bad group of people. They're sick. I mean, they're sick people. They're sick and evil people, but—And they want bad things for our country and they don't report the news. You know, in the old days, when you used public airways free, you had to get a license. I keep saying, "If they're reporting fake news, how come they can keep getting a license?" Whether it's ABC, whether it's NBC, CBS, or, of course, CNN. Which is, I mean, it's one of the great jokes of all time, CNN. [booing] Or MSDNC. But they're cable so I guess there's a different standard.
But when you're using the public airwaves, free, okay, free. Aren't you supposed to get a license? So I asked my people that. I ask a couple of guys, and I never really get an answer. I just wanna know a simple question. Do you have to report the truth when you using free airwaves and making a fortune with commercials and everything else? And I never get the right answer because there are people down deep. It's crazy. But we're getting down to all of it.
A lot of progress has been made. I think you're starting to see it. We're trying to beat a terrible group of deep state people. You know, I came to Washington—think of it, think of it. I came to Washington and I had 24 years of people putting people in office. And then you can probably add another four to that. And another four to that. I had many, many years, decades of people putting—So I came. Been, to Washington, I guess, 17 times I never stayed over. Right? Never slept over. I was there 17 times.
I tell the story. I was in Washington in my entire life, DC, 17 times. Never slept over, ever, not once. And, all of a sudden, I'm riding down Pennsylvania Avenue and I'm with a beautiful woman on my right, named Melania. [cheers and applause] Think of it. And I had about 400 motorcycles in front of me.
Crowd Member. Yeah!
The President. And we're in a cavalcade of about 128 cars. Most of them having about 15 sub-machine guns inside. [cheers and applause] There's more firepower, those guys—But we're riding down the beautiful Pennsylvania Avenue. And I look outside at those police. I love our police. We've gotta treat our police better. [cheers and applause] But I had everything. I had police. I had military. I had soldiers. I had everything you could possibly had. You never saw so much how power and strength and beauty—the beauty. And they were so proud. They're all saluting, they're so proud. They're happy to have gotten rid of that crowd that was there before us. They're proud. They're great. The police. You know, every single police force, I think, endorsed me. I got the one yesterday from Chicago. That's not easy. Chicago endorsed me. New York's finest endorsed me. [cheers and applause] Florida. Ohio. Every—I mean, everybody—I don't know that he's gotten one vote. Then he says he's— He can't mention the words law and order.
But I'm driving down the street. And I look at my wife, I say, "Do you believe it? I'm the President of the United States? [cheers and applause] That's the good thing. Can you believe it?" [cheers and applause] And then I get to the most beautiful house in the world. I can have Mar-a-Largo and all of them. But I'll tell you, the White House is still the White House, no matter how you do it.
And I get to this gorgeous, beautiful place. And I'm up at the incredible suite level and there's Abraham Lincoln's suite. It's called the Lincoln bedroom. Remember Clinton used to lease it out to people for money. [laughter] They never change, do they? Remember when Barbara Streisand—She's another beauty, by the way. But remember Barbara Streisand used to stay in that suite? But—Which was the only problem I had with it. But tell me—No, but I do like her voice. I do. I really do. Some of them I don't like even their voices. [laughter] But she used to stay there.
And I'm standing in the Lincoln bedroom. The history of the whole thing. The bed, the desk, the Gettysburg Address, the beautiful "four score and seven years ago." This beautiful Gettysburg Address. He wrote it there. And also on his carriage ride up to Gettysburg. He delivered the Gettysburg Address and they say the only one that got worse press than I did was Abraham Lincoln. Did anyone ever hear that? And I said, "No way that got worse. Maybe he got bad. But no way he gets worse." [laughter]
Now people are starting to say, "You know, it's probably true. I think you've got the worst." Now they used to say, "No, no." Newt Gingrich, great guy. He said, "Nope, Abraham Lincoln got the worst press. They were worse to him than anybody. He was a very depressed person. His wife was very depressed." It was a depressed kind of a thing, you know, he's in a war, he's in a revolution. And he was getting beaten a lot by Robert E. Lee. They wanna rip his statue down all over the place. But Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Lee was a—Whether you like him or not, whether you like statues or not, you know, they don't rip statues down anymore. I signed a law. [cheers and applause] Ten years in jail if they rip them down.
But Robert E. Lee won many, many battles in a row and it was supposed to be over in one day. You know, it was supposed to end immediately because the North was too powerful for the South. But it just shows when you have leaders, when you have a great general. And Robert E. Lee, he would have won except for Gettysburg. And that was because his general was killed who's going to lead Gettysburg. "Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill." He heard they were going uphill. "Stop them, stop them." But we had no cell phones in that day, right, congressmen? No cell phones.
So they sent the horses to stop them, stop them, but it was too late. They fought uphill and they got slaughtered. That's what happened. But Robert E. Lee, these were incredible things. But I hope you, I hope you appreciate that we had a period of time when they were ripping down all of the statues and monuments. And I said to my people four months ago, I said, "This is crazy. These people."
And they don't even know. You know, they started ripping down Abraham Lincoln. When they hit Lincoln I said, "Wait a minute. This is the man. And you can't do—" Then they hit George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. They hit everybody. They even hit Gandhi. All Gandhi wanted was one thing. Peace. "May we have peace." Ripped down the statue, "We don't like it." I don't think they have any idea what they're doing. I think they're just a bunch of thugs. Okay? You wanna know the truth? I think they are a bunch of thugs. [cheers and applause]
But they were gonna march on Washington and they were gonna rip down a statue of Abraham Lincoln. You know the exact statue. Its up very nicely. Up now. And by the way, they can take them down legally. They go through Congress as a way of doing it. But, you know, they didn't want to do it that way. And they were marching on Washington. And I said, "Do we have any laws about this?" They said, "No, sir."
Now in Congress, the way it is now, you can—You know, the most you get is about a 10-dollar fine. You rip down a five-million-dollar statue and you get a 10-dollar fine. Right? It's different world. That's when it was strong and they had laws. But we told and found this old act. And the old act said, if you rip down a monument or a statue, you get 10 years in prison. They call it prison, not jail, which sounds even worse. [cheers and applause] I said, "Bring that sucker up immediately to the Oval Office because there are a lot of people coming to Washington."
They were gonna March on the Jefferson Memorial. Do you believe that? The Jefferson Memorial. We grow up—The Jefferson Memorial. They were going to march on the Jefferson Memorial. They were gonna do damage to our beautiful Jefferson Memorial after Thomas Jefferson.
And I did predict that. A friend of mine said, "You know, two years ago you said, next will be Robert E. Lee and then comes Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln. They'd never stop." The only thing they understand is strength. Remember that. They don't understand weakness. There's nothing you can do. [cheers and applause] These really stupid heads of these corporations that give hundreds of millions of dollars. It's like blackmail money, right? But these stupid people that run, they get 40 million dollars a year and they're weak. Okay? They're weak. But these people, they're anarchists and the only thing they understand is strength.
So I said, "Let me see this document." I said, "Wow, this is a very strong document." And we have, Derek is here. One of my attorneys, he did a great job. I don't know where the hell Derek is. He's around here. [laughter] Actually he's heard this before, though not quite.
You're getting a very unique speech tonight. You know? [cheers and applause] I mean, unlike Joe, I haven't even looked at the teleprompter. This guy—[laughter]—"Move it up. Move it up. I can't see. Move it up." [cheers and applause] I haven't looked at it. The poor teleprompter guy, he's sitting there "What do we do? We're on line two of the teleprompter." He said, "What do we do?" No, unlike Joe, I have not looked at the teleprompter.
Oh, that poor Joe. You know what's the worst part about him looking at the teleprompter? The worst part is that means that the fake news media is giving him the questions. [booing] Right? [booing] Like Donna Brazil, who was brilliantly hired by Fox. Fox has changed a little bit. Ladies and gentlemen, Donna Brazil, who was fired by CNN because she cheated and she gave Crooked Hillary the questions to the debate.
How would you like to be me? They give her questions to the debate. And I still won the debate and she had all the questions. Think of it. [cheers and applause] How do you do that? Donna Brazil is, ladies and gentlemen, she's going to work for Fox. Oh, that's great. That's big difference. Big difference between four years ago and now. A lot of things have changed.
But I'll tell you what's changed is the fact that we have more enthusiasm now than we did four years ago. It's amazing, right? Right? [cheers and applause] But just to get back to the others. So I signed that wonderful executive order instituting this really tough law. And it says 10 years. It doesn't say, you know, you get 10 years, but you can take it down to three weeks. It says 10 years.
So these guys had just gotten there. I had a news conference because I had to let them know about it. Right? We've got many people in jail right now that—From before. Nobody even talked about taking statues down. No, but I looked at the Andrew Jackson, right? With the ropes. And I'll tell you, the police did a great job. And Mark Meadows did a great job. He said, "Charge." They charged.
And they took these guys out and they were fairly tough. But the police were much tougher. DC police. They did a great job. They were watching and they weren't able to do anything. Mark Meadows said "Charge." It was like, it was like from 200 years ago it was crazy. They charged and they beat the hell out of these guys. [cheers and applause] Or you wouldn't have, or you wouldn't have that great statue on the horse of a great general. He was a great general. And he was a very good president. At least, at least a good president. But he was a great general. The battle of New Orleans. Right?
And they had this incredible picture. Andrew Jackson. And they were gonna rip it down. Remember the ropes wrapped around the horse and the guy standing up there just—He went to jail two days—We had all the evidence we needed. Thank you for that. I wanna thank you, fake news. Look. [cheers and applause] We called the fake news. We said "Can we just have that please?" When they said "No," we just said, "We'll take it off TiVo. That's okay. Don't worry about it." [laughter] One of the greatest inventions in history, TiVo. Better than television because television is useless without it.
So, so, we signed it. And all of a sudden, these same guys who were watching it, they left. Nobody showed up the next day. They were gonna have 25,000 people. They had 24 people, five of them were brought to prison. Okay. And the next day they said, "Well, we—We're gonna save it for Saturday night." And Saturday night nobody showed up. And nobody has showed up in four months to take down a statue, because they're—It's true. [cheers and applause]
Because you know why? They look and they say, "I wanna take down that statue. I'm gonna take down that statue. That statue's coming down." And then somebody says, "You know, it's 10 years in jail." They go, "That's too much. I'm getting out of here." [laughter] It's true. Ten years is not acceptable, Mike. Right? Ten years is a lot to rip down a statue, have a little fun, especially when they have no idea what they're ripping down. But we have an idea what they're ripping down. They're ripping down, in many cases, greatness. They're ripping down our past. They're ripping down our history.
And that's where these guys begin. They take away your history. You look at the Middle East, you look all over. Look what ISIS did. Look what all of them do. They go down and they rip. They go into museums and they break everything and they rip everything. They want to take away your past. They're not taking away the past of the United States of America. Not as long as I'm here. [cheers and applause]
Crowd. [chanting] USA! USA! USA! USA!
The President. What do you want? Do you want me to go back on teleprompter anybody?
Crowd. No!
The President. Okay. Here's the question. My poor guy must be having a fit. He's over there. He's so good at this stuff. [laughter] He's on line three. [laughter] He's saying, "Sir, should I just turn the sucker off?" Would you rather go teleprompter or freelance?
Crowd. Freelance!
The President. Isn't it nice when you have the option because you have this and you have the option to go either? [cheers and applause] See, Joe doesn't have the option. He doesn't have the option.
Crowd Member. We love you!
The President. But if Biden wins, China wins, and it's very simple. It's very simple. By contrast, I rescued the Minnesota Iron Range, you know, I did that. Just so you know—[cheers and applause]—O'Biden, I call them O'Biden, it's too long to say "Obama and Biden," so I just call them O'Biden, because I don't care about—Everyone said, "Oh no, he's in trouble. Obama's now campaigning." Hey, he campaigned last time harder than Hillary. I said, "No, I want him to campaign because he brings out the base." He brings out our base. And I'm only here because of him and Joe.
If they were a good president and vice president, I wouldn't be here. I had a very good life before. I'm doing this, I'm doing this because they did such a crummy job. [cheers and applause] I'm only here because of him. I could right now be having a very beautiful life of luxury, and here I am at the hangar in Minnesota with 15 or 20 or 25,000 people. [cheers and applause] And thousands of people that couldn't get in, and I'm working my ass off. I could be at home having a good time, wonderful time. [cheers and applause] But the one thing I say this—
Crowd. [chanting] We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump!
The President. But I say this, I say this—Look, I could be home. So home was New York. I had to bail out because it was too crazy, everything has fallen apart. But home, it's so sad what the Democrats have done to our great New York. Between a governor and a mayor, the crime is through the roof, the corruption is incredible, it's a sad thing that's happened to New York. Hopefully it'll come back by somebody. Somebody will go in there and do like a Rudy.
You know, when Rudy took over, it was so bad and they were looking for somebody and they thought he was the guy because he was a tough guy. But somebody has to go in and clean it up. Somebody has to. You know, this mayor, he let go of a billion dollars' worth of police. He let go. He actually believed the nonsense about defunding the police. And they're all gonna do it. They're all gonna do it. And your people are gonna do it, and you really—I'm being totally serious now. You've gotta go out and you've gotta vote for Trump. You gotta break this spell from 1972. [cheers and applause]
I mean, you saw Kenosha. We—What we did in—What we did for other places, you saw the Kenosha, and that was gone. That was all gone. That place was gone. We sent in the troops, it was incredible what we did, and they did it on day three. Day three is better than two weeks later, like in Minneapolis, right?
Crowd. Yeah. [shouting]
The President. But they did it, and we've done a great job and the people of that great state, they understand it, and I just hope the people of your state of Minnesota understand it because we don't have too many more chances with this stuff. We really don't. We don't have the luxury of sitting back and saying, "Let's have four years of this maniac, vice president that he picked who treated him worse than any other person."
That's why I say the one person that he won't pick—My great instincts, right? "The one person he won't pick is Kamala—[laughter]—because she called him a racist, she tried to Me Too him." He was Me Too'd. "I've just been Me Too'd, darling, what does that mean?" [laughter] But they tried to Me Too him. And she was the one that brought it up.
Remember Tara? She was the one that brought it up, and then he goes, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to pick—Wait a minute, let me get her name here. [laughter] How do you pronounce it? It's with a comma, like a comma, right? Like a comma." Remember he couldn't pronounce her name? He was saying her name wrong, and she had to interrupt him, "No, my name is Kamala. Like comma." I remember that. Like a comma. H1N1, that's right, Joe. Remember that Joe, H1N1. [laughter]
And how bad did he do in that, though? How about that? How bad did he do? So—No, but think of it, he's out there now today. It was pathetic. By the way, did you see the Anderson Cooper thing last night? You have to watch. I don't wanna watch, but I have an obligation. I'm competing against somebody. You don't wanna compete and say, "I'm not gonna watch my competition." Who wouldn't? It's boring, but I gotta watch.
And he got through it. He met a couple of really—The chicken thing was bad. You know, he said "chicken" many, many times, and it was a little strange that I thought it was over and he pulled it back. He was able to pull it back. But Anderson is a—And he interviewed me, he's tough. You know, he can be tough, nothing against him. He could be very tough, but last night he was in rare form. He was, "Thank you very much for being here, Mr. Vice President, are you enjoying the run?"
And compare that with my shot, where they asked me about doing ABC with George Stephanopoulos. I mean, I think it was great. I think it worked out great. I call it—You know what I call it? Debate prep. I call that free debate prep. But you know, it's nasty, it's a little nasty that people—And I didn't say, "No, you gotta change the rules. No, give me the questions. I wanna use a teleprompter to answer." How about that though? "Mr. Vice President, I'd like to know your feeling on nuclear warfare and how does that relate to China and Russia and where are they in the race?" Right?
"Uh—Well—" [laughter] You can't have this as your president. I don't care. Forget about me. You can't do this. The power, the importance and the power of this position are too great. You can't do it. You know, I've learned a lot as president. But one thing I learned is that President Xi of China is sharp. You ever see him standing with the two million men walking in front, everybody's the same height, they're wearing hats, they're all—It's like a pool table, right? Bop, bop, bop. [laughter]
And he's standing there by himself, and he's looking like he's not playing games, right? There's no games, he's sharp as you can be. And I had a great relationship, but now I feel differently. You know, we made a great trade deal, and now I feel differently. But he's as sharp as you can be. Putin. As sharp as you can be. Kim Jong-Un, we would have been in a war with North Korea, 100%.
I asked Obama, "Did you ever call him?" He said, he said that was the toughest problem we had. And we get along. Remember about a month ago, two months ago, they broke into the demilitarized zone and they said, "Oh, he's gonna attack." I said, "No, he's not. Don't worry about it." I got to know him very well. We have a good relationship. People said, "He has a good relationship with Kim Jong-Un, that's terrible." I said, "No, that's good." [laughter]
But you remember it was gonna be a nuclear war, and I got along with him. Then they said, "Trump made a terrible deal. He's given so much to North Korea." What did I give? I was at like a semi-debate with this idiot, a reporter. "He's given a lot to North Korea." "What did I give?" "I don't know." [laughter] "Sanctions, sanctions. You, you took away—" "No, I didn't. Actually, I increased the sanctions very substantially. What did you give? What did I give? Tell me." "Uh—" Okay, so after about four days they couldn't ask because I gave nothing except I gave heart because I don't wanna see people killed on their side either. I don't wanna see people killed. [cheers and applause]
We'd win that. We'd win them all. We have the greatest weapons right now ever conceived by man. We've rebuilt our military to a level that nobody ever thought possible. [cheers and applause] Okay? Nobody ever thought possible. And then the fake news—and I said that a couple of weeks ago, remember I said, "We have created the most powerful weapons known to man." It's true. We have weapons that are so advanced that President Xi, Putin, everybody—We're the envy of the world.
But they don't know quite what we have, but they know we have stuff that they never even heard of before. And some schmuck back there said, "I think he's given away classified information." [laughter] No, all I'm doing is telling the world we have the most powerful weapons in the world. I'm not even saying what kind. You don't even wanna know about it. And I never—God help us if we ever have to use them. But we have the most powerful weapons ever conceived by man. You know, they have the missile, the super-duper, hydrosonic, [sic] I call it the super-duper, it goes five times faster than a normal missile, right?
We have one goes much faster than that. But Russia got that information from the Obama administration. Russia stole that information. You knew that. You knew that. [booing] Russia got the information and they built it. But we have now one that's much faster, much faster than that. That's like a slow missile. That's like considered a slow missile.
But I said it was incredible. Two weeks ago I said, "We have the finest, the best, the most incredible, sadly, the most deadly, and we never wanna use it, but we have the greatest weapons ever in history by a factor of 10, by a factor of 10." And they said—they went crazy. "He's given away classified—" These people are sick. All I'm doing is saying that we rebuilt our military, 2.5 trillion dollars, all built in the USA, every single ounce of it. [cheers and applause]
We have fighter jets, F-35, that are so good, you can't see it. And I went to see the program, and I met some of the pilots, and these guys are better-looking than Tom Cruise. [laughter] They're tougher. They're stronger. They're bigger. They're more powerful. They're smarter. And I like Tom Cruise, by the way, because you can't get much better than Top Gun, right? Great movie, right? You can't get better. I like Tom Cruise. But these guys are better-looking than Tom. They got that crew cut, they got the crap under their eyes, they got the whole deal. They're smart as hell.
So I said, "So captain, let me ask you, how good is the F-35?" "They're really good sir, best plane we've ever had." "Oh, great." I said, "How do you compare that with what Russia has?" "Well, ours is better for a specific reason, sir. You can't see it." "What does that mean?" "Well, when we fight, they cannot see us, that we are so stealth."
Now, that doesn't mean in three years that it won't be obsolete because that's what happens. That's the problem with that business. You come up with a new computer, and two weeks later it's obsolete. [laughter] That's why I always like real estate, you know, you have a piece of real estate. [laughter] But no, it's true. I wouldn't be good in that business. Sha--work, work, work, and then you're starting the next one because the last one is gone. That's why I always talk about walls and wheels, right?
When the Democrats were saying, "Walls are old-fashioned." Well, they're right about that. But they work. Remember that? All we hadda go through in Congress? And that wall is going up, think of that. We're building 10 miles a week, 10 miles a week of the top. All—and our numbers on the border are the best they've ever been. [cheers and applause] The best they've ever been. [cheers and applause]
But we're building 10 miles of wall a week. We're up to about 330 miles, and we'll have it finished very soon, and it's having a tremendous impact on drugs. It's having a tremendous impact on all of the different things. Human trafficking—in women, in women. It's not even children. [cheers and applause]
They're trafficking women, it's because of the internet. You know, you think of that as almost an ancient kind of a crime, right? But it's not. It's a very modern crime, and it's an unbelievably profitable crime. They traffic in women, little bit children, but mostly women. Where they'll put three or four women in the back, in the trunk of a car and they'll go through the border. They can't do it anymore. And we, we're catching them. We have people that do nothing but look for the traffickers. To me, the traffickers are the biggest scum in the world. [cheers and applause]
And thank heavens for ICE, and thank heavens for border patrol because these people do a job that you don't want. I know Mike doesn't want it. You wouldn't even be good at it, Mike, he'll do a commercial about it. That's what he'll do. [shouting] Does he have the longest commercials in history? I say, Mike Lindell. I say, Mike, the pillow man. I say, Mike is the single greatest purchaser of commercials in history. [laughter] I want him to buy my commercials.
I say, "You know, we spent 20 million dollars, I saw, like, two commercials." He spends two dollars and he's got the whole day on Fox. [laughter] I said, "Let Mike buy our commercials. Will you?" I don't know what the hell you do, but whatever it is, you better tell me the secret. Greatest purchaser of commercials.
But we have done some job with that. And, uh, the traffickers and drugs are way down. Now we got upset with the pandemic, but I watched Biden today talking about, "If only Trump moved one week sooner." One week. So let's go, ready? So, you know he was against the ban, right? Because he didn't think we had a problem. So he was against the ban. He didn't know that China was heavily infected. He doesn't even know where China is, in my opinion. [laughter]
But he was against the ban. These guys write stuff out for him, and he tries to read it. Doesn't do well with it, but— So he was against it, but now his new thing is, if only I moved one week earlier, but I was earlier than everybody. If you think about it. I had—nice guy, Dr. Fauci, I had another nice guy, a lot of doctors. They were all telling me, "No, no, you don't have to do that." Right? Tom knows that very well. "You don't have to do that, sir. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that at all."
And, uh, you know, one of those things, I was very early and I banned, and everybody admits that had I not banned highly infected Wuhan, Wuhan province, right? Highly infected, we would have had hundreds of thousands of more deaths. And then you had the chart. I put it up yesterday, I'm doing these news conferences. We're finally getting the word across that we did a great job, but I'm doing news conferences now every day.
You know, even if they last—highly—I call them the highly rated news conferences. And I go before these crazy people [gestures to media], they're screaming at—you know, screaming like maniacs, you know? It's not the way they treat Sleepy Joe, he'd melt. If they ever did a number on—this guy would be there, he'd be laying on the floor crying, "Get me out of here, darling. Where is my wife? Get me out of here, please, darling. They're so nasty to me today. What happened?" We go through it every single day.
But you think about it, and, uh, he said, "If only Trump moved faster," but he's the one that two months later called me xenophobic, and he called me a racist because I was banning China, which was heavily infected. And then he said, "Don't ban Europe." Well, I looked at Italy, big problem. I love Italy. I love the people of Italy, but they were heavily infected. France, I looked at France, I looked at Spain, they even had spikes recently. Did you see?
And we're doing great. We're rounding it with or without, but we're gonna have with, but you know, with is better, but with or without, we're rounding that corner, and we're rounding it fast and they [gestures to media] don't wanna give us any credit because they wanna keep this up 'til November 4th. And on November 4th, the press will probably say—let's say something stupid happened. The press will say, "I got to admit he did a damn good job." [cheers and applause] Right? No, no. And the other clown will be in office. You know, we did a thing called price transparency. I signed it. It's effective, as a very complicated. It's on your medical. And we did price transparency. It's the biggest thing. It's bigger than healthcare. Wait 'til you see. Your prices—you can go now to hospitals, you can price operations, you can price everything. It's a massive thing. The man who did it, the man who did it, it's a—and I took a lot of heat.
And I'm doing favored nations drugs, meaning whatever the lowest in the world is, we have to pay the same, you know. That's the good news. The bad news is the drug companies, the doctors, everybody's angry at me. Actually, under price transparency, the good hospitals and the good doctors benefit tremendously, but the bad ones don't, and you have price transparency. And it goes into effect on January 1st. Could you imagine if this sleepy guy gets in, and they say like, February, March, April, something, they say, "Unbelievable what happened to prices, it's dropping like crazy. It's—" And they'll say, "What a job he's doing as President." And I'm the one that signed it. I said, "Could you put it into effect?" But statutorily, it has to mature, mature, mature. So the earliest I could get is January 1st. It's like, it's like crazy.
You know another one? I'll give you another one. I'll give you another one. So Air Force One, so that's the 757, but they have a 747, which is the big Air Force One. I think they just disrespected the people of Minnesota today, they gave us the little one. [cheers and applause] No, actually it's because of the runway. In fact, when we landed, you know, they said, "Sir, we have a very short runway, could you please hold on?" I said, "I trust these pilots." By the way, these pilots are the best pilots. When you fly the president of the United States— [cheers and applause]
Look at that, he's waving from the window. When you fly the president of the United States, you are the best flyer. They take the best Air Force guys, they take the best Marines in the helicopters, Marine One. But when you're flying these planes, you can land that sucker, you have no problem. There's no mishits. There's no, "Let's go around. I can't quite make it, sir." [laughter] These guys are phenomenal. You gotta see what they look like. You know, everyone's in perfect shape. I look at them, central casting, every one of them, they're great. Thank you, fellas. Thank you.
But I'll tell you a little story. [cheers and applause] So Air Force One is a very old plane. It's beautiful, but it's an old 747, right? It's 31 years old and other people didn't wanna do it, but it was time to get a new one, right? It was time. You got to get a new plane. And actually Air Force One, I'll give you a little secret, it's actually two planes. They get two. It's a hell of a way to travel. You know, if one's not working perfect, you use the other one, okay? [laughter] But they get two.
So Air Force One, they negotiated a price and they had it down for 5.7 billion dollars, now that sounds expensive, and it's ridiculous, but that was done by the Obama Administration, right? It was done by the Obama Administration. And that's okay. But no administration, Obama, Bush, they didn't wanna do it because it sounds luxury. But at some point you gotta buy a plane for the country. And these Arab countries would have their beautiful 747-800s, -900s pour in, and they were gorgeous.
And believe it or not, the new plane is a much bigger plane. Much bigger wingspan, it's a much more beautiful plane. It's modern, you know. Think of it, 31 years old, Air Force One is 31 years old, the main Air Force One, not this. This is a great plane, but the big one, 31 years old. So you're representing the country, but they didn't wanna do it because it shows luxury.
So I said, uh, I get to the office, I said, "Whatever happened to Air Force One, how's it doing?" "Sir, we made a deal for a new one under the Obama administration." "Oh, you did, good. How much?" "5.7 billion." I said, "That's a lot of money, 5.7," for two planes, in all fairness. Now it's very technical, it's very—you know, there's a lot of stuff. I won't talk about it because I don't wanna give away any classified information. [laughter] Just trust me, it's the most sophisticated sucker you've ever seen in your life, okay? [laughter]
Think of getting into a plane that cost 5.7 billion. Right? But it's the most sophisticated, two planes. So I said, "How much is it? 5.7?" A general came, an Air Force general, great guy, handsome guy. They're all so good-looking, these people. I said, "So general, what are we paying? What're, what's the price?" "Sir, uh, it's 5.7 million [sic] dollars and we're ready to go, sir, could you sign it?" "It sounds like a lot of money to me, general, 5.7 million for two airplanes. Uhhh, can't we get a better price?" "No, sir. This was negotiated by the Obama Administration. The Obama Administration. This was negotiated, sir, by Barack Hussein Obama."
And I said, "Oh, that's good. It sounds very high. So here's what I'm gonna do. Tell Boeing we're not taking the plane. We have no interest in, it's too much."
Crowd Member. Hell yeah!
The President. Right? This is what I did. By the way, this is one of many stories. [cheers and applause] Isn't this better than going and saying, "I saved your Iron Range?" And I say—But please remember I did this too. And I can do away with this stuff, but I did this too. I did this too. Please remember that because, you know, I have all this list of incredible things I've done for Minnesota, I won't even touch it, because frankly I'm tired of repeating what I've done for all these different states. I mean, I did all this stuff, and then I hear I'm nine down. I don't believe it by the way, suppression.
Crowd. No!
The President. So I said to the general, I said, "General, 5.7 billion, billion, not mi—, billion. That sounds very high to me, general. I bought a lot of planes in my life and a lot of helicopters. I know a lot about it. How could it be five?" "Sir, that's the best price they could get. We only have one day to do it." I said, "Cancel it, general. Cancel the order." It was signed actually. "Yes, sir."
I said, "Do you have the right to cancel it?" "Yes, sir. I do. We negotiated a great deal." I said, "Oh good. Cancel it." "Yes, sir. I'm pleased to tell you something, sir. We have a breakup fee. We made a great deal, sir." I said, "You did? Oh, you have a breakup fee. You mean you can't just cancel it for nothing? Then cancel it. You don't have to pay a breakup fee. I know about breakup fees." "No, sir, we have a breakup fee." "Okay. How much is it?" "Sir, we can break it up for 250 million dollars."
I said, "Wait a minute. So you mean to tell me that to cancel the order costs 250 million dollars?" In other words, we give them 250 million, we get nothing. I said, "General, don't cancel the order. Just tell him I'm very unhappy." Right? This is what these guys—they're good businessmen, by the way. These guys, right here, Mike, they might be better than you. I don't even know. [cheers and applause] He may be the next governor.
You know, Mike Lindell, maybe you should run. You should run. [cheers and applause] He is my complete and total endorsement. You should run. You'd be a hell of a governor. At least, you know one thing. Minnesota would be well promoted. [laughter] [cheers and applause] Minnesota. Mike, run for governor, please. So he says, "250 million dollars. It's 250, sir, I'm so proud of that." I said, "You may be proud, but I'm not." So I said, "General, don't, uh, give them notice because I don't wanna write a check for 250 and get nothing. I don't think I could explain that to the American public. So tell 'em you're really unhappy, we're not gonna make the deal, but just do it verbally."
And, "Yes, sir." And then I spoke to the head of Boeing, a very nice guy. They had some rough times since then. They had a couple of really bad things happen. Terrible, really terrible. This was early on, before the problems that they had. But he is, he's a high-quality guy. And I said to him, "Ah, Dennis, we have to start it with a—It's gotta have a three on the front of it."
What do I know? I just know that if they're 5.7, and if I do something with a three—He said, "No, I can bring it down to 5.5 billion." So I say, "Well, that's not bad. I save 200 million dollars in about a minute and a half phone call. So, so far I'm not too—But it's not good enough. I'm not happy." I said, "No, we gotta really think about canceling it." And I can't go to Airbus, which is made in Europe. You know, it's a little hard, I gotta go to the competitor. I can't say I'm gonna buy the Air Force One from a European company, that doesn't work too well.
So I just said—my only option was to say, "Look, I just don't want it, just put it aside, put it aside." He calls me up a few days later, "Well, we can do a little bit better than that." I said, "Dennis, has to have a three in front of it, Dennis." Gotta have a three. Like a three, three anything, but gotta have a three in front of it. So he said, "No, no, no." After one month, we signed a contract for 3.9 billion dollars. Same exact one. [cheers and applause] Same exact one. Actually slightly better, we got an extra generator. [laughter]
And then Boeing came to me, and I know how to neg—you know, I love to negotiate. I do. Got that from my father. My father was a good negotiator, and I love to negotiate. So they came to me, "Sir, we can put an extra stairway." This is the big 747. And remember this is a big, much bigger than the old 747. "Sir, it gets very windy up there. I noticed that your hair's blown all over the place. [laughter] But we can buy a stairwell for the plane. And it comes under, it's like a corkscrew right at the bottom of the plane." You know, you're very high off the ground, big, big thing. "And it opens up, and you'll—if it's raining or windy, you're covered, Sir, because it's under the plane. You're totally sheltered." I said, "That sounds great." So it's a corkscrew stairwell.
I said, "How much is that, general?" "Fifty." I said, "50, what a deal, So for 50,000 dollars I can get a stairway?" [laughter] "No, sir. Fifty million dollars." I said, "Forget about the stairwell. Forget it." [laughter] He said 50. I really thought he meant 50,000 dollars. So these are just some little stories. I guess I must like Minnesota to go on one of these deals. But boy—[cheers and applause]—did you get your money's worth tonight? Did you get—Is anybody having a bad time?
Crowd. No!
The President. Did you get your money's worth? Because you've heard the other one. We've done this, and we've cut your taxes, and we built up the military bigger and better. And we're the number one in history in regulation cuts, which is the biggest thing. And the judges, which we've done at a level—I mean, at a level like nobody's ever done, everything we've done. Nobody has done more in three and a half years, no administration, three and a half. Those first three and a half years, nobody even comes close.
And you know, it's a funny thing. I say it all the time. I've been saying it for a long time, and the fake news, nobody even questions me about it. And you know if I was wrong, they would, but they can't question me because when you see Right to Try, we took care of our vets. We just got a 91% approval rating from the vets, 91. It's never happened before. [cheers and applause]
We got Choice approved, we got Accountability approved. Drugs are way down. We've got a little setback with this whole situation where, you know, uh these shutdowns cause a lot of problems with drugs, a lot of everything, but drugs were way down. We had our best year in the history of our country last year. And we're gonna have the best year—we're gonna have a better year coming up. That's why you have an obligation to vote for the guy that got you there. [cheers and applause] And—
Crowd. [chanting] Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
The President. And remember this, and I really appreciate this, thank you. But I appreciate this, because nine Democrat mayors of cities in the Iron Range, you know that, have endorsed me—[cheers and applause]—over Sleepy Joe. What do you like better? Sleepy Joe or Slow Joe? What's better? Huh? Let's do a poll. We do a poll. We do a poll. I do free polls. You know, these polls, they're all—they charge you a fortune for this stuff. They interview three people, you know, and then they charge you a million dollars.
"We interviewed 233 people," I got thousands of people here, let's do a free—What do you like better as a nickname? Slow Joe or Sleepy Joe? So let's go. Wait, Slow Joe first. Okay? So just scream if you like it. So you have a choice, Slow Joe, they're both very appropriate. Slow Joe or Sleepy Joe, ready? Slow Joe. [cheers and applause] I think we're gonna have a winner. Sleepy Joe. [louder cheers and applause]
No, a lot of people say I'm too nice with Sleepy Joe, that I'm actually being too nice, I don't know. [laughter] He's a sleepy guy, but Biden is gonna shut down your Iron Range. Remember, it wasn't just the tariffs I put on your competitors that were dumping iron ore and steel and everything else in our country like it was garbage. Okay? And it was garbage steel. It was all sand-based steel, real crap.
It wasn't that, but when you think of it, they wrote it out. It was—You didn't have, environmentally, the right. You know, somebody said, "Oh, well he got a bid because he was good with negotiating with these other countries." It wasn't that. I opened it up. I signed an order. I signed an executive order because Obama took your Iron Range and Biden took your Iron Range away.
And I'll never forget. The day I did it, and Tom was there, a man, I don't know who he is, he's probably in this massive audience, but he came up to me ,and he was a rough guy and he never cried in his life, including at childbirth. He didn't cry at childbirth—[laughter]—but he was crying. And he said, "Sir, you gave our life back to us—"
Crowd Member. Yes you did!
The President. "—because Obama took our heart out when he closed up the Iron Range." He said, "You gave our heart back." [cheers and applause]
It's true. So I just wanna thank those, uh, cities. I mean, you know, when a Democrat mayor, we have now a lot of—now we have additional— So these are Democrat politicians and they came to—they had not crame [sic]—Two weeks ago they endorsed us, and, you know, it's a great thing. We're finding that all over the country. Democrats for Trump. Politicians that got elected as Democrats. I don't think they changed their party affiliation, but they endorsed Trump. They're all in the Iron Range area.
And Larry Cuffe is here. Larry Cuffe. [cheers and applause] Where's Larry? Where is he? Where? Larry, how are you? I really—why did you do that, Larry? That's so nice. I appreciate it.
Larry Cuffe. [speaking inaudibly from audience]
The President. Boy, are you good. I wish you had a mic. He said, "Because you're the best candidate we could ever—" I love this guy. Said, "You're the best candidate we could ever hope for." Larry. [cheers and applause] Thank you Larry, that's beautiful. I appreciate it. We'll do a good job. We're not gonna let you down. And they're doing a good job over there. So dig in, dig in, dig we must, right?
Cuffe. It's going because of you.
The President. It's all going because of me. That's cool, man. Thank you. That's cool. [cheers and applause] No, he signed an executive order shutting it down. Just shutting it down. And I hear it's got the best iron ore anywhere in the world. That's what I hear. The quality is the best. And it's, like, an unlimited amount. I'm talking about a little, this is a massive operation with thousands of people and everything else. And for me, it was very easy. Andrea Zupancich, where is she? Where's, where's Andrea? Thank you very much. That's really nice. I'm glad that at least you got a good location, right? That's great. I appreciate it very much. You're all friends, I guess. Chris Vreeland, where's Chris? Chris Vreeland. Chris? Where's Chris? The mayor? Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. Kathy Brandau. Kathy Brandau. Thank you, Kathy. I hope you're having a good time tonight. We're not gonna let you down. You know that. We're open. That sucker is open. We're not closing it.
Well, think of this though. If Biden gets in, it's closed. He said he's gonna close it. How about this guy? No fracking. You're not gonna frack. Onstage with all these crazy people and they don't want any energy. You know, they think everything's going to run by wind, which costs you a fortune, about 20 times more than what we have and doesn't work. But think of it, all of these people—And they say, "What about fracking?" Fracking is the modern technology. And so they all said, "No, no, we're all against—Everyone's against fracking. What about you?" "Yes, I'm against it too." Now he's against it for months. He gets it, now he's in favor of it. But he's sort of grandfathering it. You know, it's a very weak—"Well, I'd like to grandfather fracking." If I'm a fracker, I don't wanna be grandfathered. I wanna have it or not have it, right? He wants to grandfather fracking. Always go with their first statement, okay?
So I was in Texas two weeks ago, we had crowds. Mike, we had crowds that went from the airplane to the well, to the drilling well, where we went to see a well. And we saved the industry because I got Russia and Saudi Arabia to cut back 10 million barrels. It actually was probably 18. Ended up being, I think, 18.5 million barrels. And it saved the industry. And yet you're still paying very low gasoline prices at the pump, but we saved 10 million jobs. You know? [cheers and applause] But I'm in Texas, and let me tell you, Texas appreciated it because that industry was in deep trouble because all of a sudden with the pandemic, there was no demand. There was nobody driving, there was no demand. Nobody ever saw anything like it.
So I'm in Texas and I said to the crowd, it was a great crowd, and we must have had a hundred thousand people on the road, on the highways and roadways waving. And they had the most beautiful Trump flags. I wanted to stop, "Where did you buy that flag?" [laughter] The most beautiful flags of me and our great vice president. Is Mike Pence doing a good job by the way? [cheers and applause] He did such a great—He worked 29 hours a day. I mean, this guy works day and night. He worked not the 24, he worked 24 plus at least five, okay. This man is a worker and he's a wonderful human being. And when they try it, a guy like Biden that can't carry his jockstrap. When Biden—[laughter]—when Biden goes, "Oh, they should have closed one week earlier", and here's the guy that said I made a mistake when I banned China, that nothing's gonna happen.
It's so phony. This politics is a very phony business. I haven't been doing it long. I told one of the senators that came in, he came into my office, "Sir, I've been doing this for 30 years. I've won many elections, I've only lost twice in my life. I've been a senator for a long time. I know what I'm doing, sir." I said, "Yeah, and I've done it for four years. And I've only won one election—[laughter]—but it's for the president of the United States." Remember, remember when they said—[cheers and applause] I remember a certain man on television that didn't like me too much. He said, "They put together the greatest field ever assembled," the Republicans, remember? Seventeen plus me. "They put together the greatest field of talent ever assembled. I hear Trump wants to come in. He's not going to do it, number one. Number two, if he does, he's just doing it for fun and he'll be out by September and then he'll go about leading his life, but he's not gonna do it. But we don't really need him because this is the greatest single assemblage of talent ever assembled for one party."
The greatest talent he's ever seen. And then I did it and just week after week, one out, two out, three out, four out. And then we've done changes. Oh, he said, "He can't do it because he doesn't have any experience." But I actually do on the other side. I contributed to politics. I always found it very interesting. So in a certain way, I had a lot of experience probably. Maybe I had too much experience. That's why I can tell you about AOC. Check out the two million dollars, please, check it out, check it out. Check out Omar, check out Omar, get to that great writer, he should get—Oh, so the New York Times won all these Pulitzer Prizes, right? I was gonna tell you before. All these Pulitzer Prizes, these people, and they all got it wrong, right?
They got for Russia, Russia, Russia. We give the Pulitzer Prize. I won't use names. I won't use names, but we give the Pulitzer Prize to the New York Times. They got it wrong. We give the Pulitzer Prize to the Washington Post and all of these real sleazebags. I have to be honest with you. Very dishonest people, very dishonest. I call it the Amazon, I call it the Amazon Washington Post. He uses that as his lobbyist because he owns the Washington Post. He gets crap that other people wouldn't get, okay. That means it's a lobby. It's a lobbyist deal. But they got the prize, right? They got the Pulitzer Prize. All the guys that got it right, that really got it right, they all got it wrong, totally wrong. And they should return the Pulitzer Prize. And Pulitzer Association, the committee, should ask for those prizes back. They got it all wrong. They were a hundred percent wrong. There was no collusion. They couldn't believe. Remember the day when it was announced after three years, there is no collusion. I could have told them that a day one, they could have saved 48 million dollars. [laughter] [cheers and applause]
Right? They got the Pulitzer. And then you take guys—So many, so many. Solomon, Sara Carter, Bongino. How about Dan Bongino? [cheers and applause] So many, so talented guys. How about that great gentleman who wrote The Witch Hunt? Remember that? That was the first, right? You know what I'm talking about. He's fantastic. All great. These people should have won the Pulitzer Prize. Now I would say Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs and Laura and Tucker. In all fairness, Tucker was very good. [cheers and applause] Tucker was great, but these are all people that got it right. Now they don't do, I guess, the Pulitzer Prize for that stuff, but they probably should. But these guys all got it right. And all they did was get a lot of money because they're very successful, and that's okay, I guess. But they should give the Pulitzer Prize to the people that got it right and they should withdraw from all of those writers, many of whom are back there right now, all of those writers, they should do that.
So just to finish up, just to finish up, I wanna just say that we have some great congressmen here. I'd love you guys to come up here because I just wanna have you come up. Would you come up? They deserve it. [cheers and applause] Because, you know, I told them, they're busy guys, and they're big warriors and all that. And I told them, "I'm gonna introduce you right at the beginning. Be here, and then you can get out of here." They've been waiting now for an hour and 20 minutes. Come on up. So just walk to the end, shake their hand. Everybody sign a slip that you're voting for them, please. They've got no problem. But you have members of Congress here, Jim Hagedorn, Tom Emmer, Pete Stauber, great hockey player. [cheers and applause] And hopefully your next US Senator who's a man who's done a fantastic job, run a great campaign, Jason Lewis [cheers and applause]
And a candidate for Congress, Michelle Fischbach, who's supposed to be fantastic. [cheers and applause] And Michelle has my complete and total endorsement. But Jason, you're in good shape, wow. You're in better shape than these congressmen, Jase. By the way, Jason is fantastic and he's doing a fantastic—Where's Michelle? Is she there? Be careful. It's not worth the broken legs. Look at her. Oh, she's a warrior, I can tell. Come on up. [cheers and applause] But thanks, Michelle. And they have my complete endorsement. They're great people. They love your state. They love our country.
So just in conclusion, I wanna say that over the next four years, we will make America into the manufacturing superpower of the world. And we will end our reliance on China once and for all. [cheers and applause] We will make our medical supplies right here in the United States. [cheers and applause] And you probably heard me today. You know, it used to be, Puerto Rico did tremendous dollars in medical supplies. And then what happened? They made a lot, they did a good job, and Obama-Biden destroyed it. They took away the incentive, all of the taxes. And they took away the incentive and Puerto Rico went down a long way. We'll get some of that back to Puerto Rico and we'll get it back fast. Take it away from China. You heard that, yes? They took it away.
And then people automatically vote. You know, it's like a habit. Will I vote for the Democrat? The Democrat was so bad to you. And how bad were the Democrats to Israel? We did Jerusalem, right? We broke up the Iran deal, right? [cheers and applause] And then they vote for a Democrat. It's out of habit, but I think the habits, we're breaking those habits very quickly.
Crowd Member. Yeah!
The President. But we've helped Puerto Rico and we've really helped—If you look at what we've done for Israel, it's been, it's been incredible. They say nobody, nobody's done more. And it's my honor. [cheers and applause] But we'll hire more police, increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement, and we will ban deadly sanctuary cities, which are a disaster. [cheers and applause] We'll appoint tough on crime prosecutors. We will nominate judges and justices who interpret the Constitution as written. [cheers and applause] We will ensure equal justice for citizens of every race, color, religion, and creed. We will defend the dignity of work and the sanctity of life. [cheers and applause]
And that's why the Supreme Court is so important. The next president will get one, two, three, or four Supreme Court justices. I had two. Many presidents have had none. They've had none because they're there for a long time. [shouting] They tend to be appointed young. They're there for a long time. But the next one will have anywhere from one to four. Think of that. That will totally change when you talk about life, when you talk about Second Amendment, when you talk about things that are so important to you. You're gonna be stuck for 40 years, 35 years, a long time. So this is going to be the most important election, in my opinion, in the history of our country. You gotta get it right. Because if you don't get it right, we will not have a country anymore. You're not gonna have a country. Not as we know it. You won't have a country anymore.
We will uphold religious liberty, free speech, and the right to keep and bear arms. [cheers and applause] We will strike down terrorists who threaten our citizens and we will keep America out of these ridiculous, horrible, endless foreign wars. Countries you've never heard of. Coming home. We will maintain America's unrivaled military might, and we will ensure peace through strength. This is what we have now. Peace through strength. Remember what I told you about those weapons, we don't wanna use, ever, we don't wanna use those weapons. We will end surprise medical billing, require price transparency, January 1st. He doesn't even have to do anything now. Ay-ay-ay, I'll be so angry if he—They'll say, "What a job he's done on transparency, can you believe it?" And he won't even know what transparency is. [laughter] And it's complex. And further reduce health insurance premiums and the cost of prescription drugs. We've done that already. We will strongly protect Medicare and Social Security, and we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. [cheers and applause]
America will land the first woman on the moon and the United States will be the first nation to land an astronaut on Mars. [cheers and applause] And we brought NASA back. NASA, when I got in three and a half years ago, grass was growing through the cracks of the runway. It was over, it was closed. It was nothing. Now it's the number one space center in the entire world by a factor of five. [cheers and applause] We will stop the radical indoctrination of our students and restore patriotic education to our schools. [cheers and applause] We will. We will teach our children to love our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag. [cheers and applause] And we will live by the timeless words of our national motto, "In God we trust." You know, you know that the Democrat National Convention and the Pledge of Allegiance at a caucus, two of them, not one. I heard the first one, I said, "Oh, they must've made a mistake." They left "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance. [booing]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now they then said, "Oh, well we didn't mean that." They meant it. That's what they're going to do. They're gonna take God out of it. Just like I was saying before, Texas, they don't want God, they don't want oil, they don't want guns. I don't think they're gonna do too well in Texas. Do you agree with that? [cheers and applause] I don't think they're gonna do too well in Minnesota either. [cheers and applause] No, but could you imagine, you're campaigning, and it doesn't play too well here, but could you imagine you're in Texas and you have a guy say, "No oil, no God, no guns." "Oh, I think I'm gonna vote for Joe Biden, everybody." [laughter] And then they say, "Texas is in play, it's a very close—" I have a friend in Texas. He said, "I think you're winning by 15 points." These people are crazy. "Texas is in play." They don't wanna let you have oil. Think of it. It's unbelievable. "Texas is in play." That's the fake news back there.
For years—They said it last time too, remember? You know, Texas, when they say "in play," that means it's too close to call. It's in play. Too close. We've heard that for a long time, "in play," right? Too close to call. And they said it four years ago, "Texas is in play. This could be a terrible defeat, losing Texas." Big state, great state. "This would be a tremendous defeat." And they said it about Ohio too. I think we won by like nine points, right? They said, "Ohio is in play. Utah's in play." We won by a lot. Remember we beat a guy named McMuffin. Remember the guy? [laughter] He was gonna take the state of Utah. And then he was going to be able to negotiate. But that didn't work out. He came in third. Even Hillary beat him. [laughter] But they said, "Texas is in play." And I'd go around telling my people, "Damn it, Texas is in play, how the hell? Every time I go there, I have 35,000 people at the stadium, how could it possibly be in play?" They said it's in play. My people would say, "I don't think so."
And we had a big Texas rancher. He was on one of the shows. He was, like, wearing a big, beautiful hat. I wish I could wear those hats. It wouldn't work for me too well. I don't think it works for me, right? But it worked for him. And he said, "I don't know too much about a lot, but I know one thing. Texas is not in play. And this guy is gonna win Texas by a hell of a lot of votes." And that's what happened that night, the night of the election. [cheers and applause] The night of the election, they called the results. I've been listening for six months, "Texas is so close, we can't even imagine it, it's so close. This is big." And they only call the election, you know, immediately if you win in a landslide, it's gotta be, like, tremendous. And they said, "Texas has closed its doors. Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump has won the state of Texas." They didn't even say the polls were closed. They forgot to say the polls were closed.
I wanted to say—I said, "How come I won?" I called my people, "How could I have won? It was so close they called it before they even said the doors closed." [laughter] And I heard from the governor of Texas, great guy, Greg Abbott. I said, I said, "How are we doing compared to four years ago?" We did great four years ago, big, big win. He said, "Sir, you're doing much better." But these guys keep saying it's in play. It's the same way that I'm down nine points in Minnesota. If I lose Minnesota—[booing]—if I lose Minnesota, Jason, I'm gonna blame Jason if I lose. Boy, we almost had it last time. But we did the right thing. We went to Michigan, we won Michigan, first time in many, many years that Michigan was won. It's a great state. [cheers and applause]
For years you had a president who apologized for America. And now you have a president who is standing up for America and standing up for Minnesota. [cheers and applause] So get your friends, get your family, get your neighbors, get your coworkers, and get out and vote. And you know, it's starting today in Minnesota. [cheers and applause] That's why I'm here. It started today. Go outta here. You know what? If they're closed, what the hell time is it now? [laughter] If they're closed, just stand in line like you do. You know, people were here two days ago trying to get in here. It's crazy. So do the same thing at the voting booth, please.
Crowd Member. We love you! We love you Mr. President!
The President. From St. Paul to St. Cloud, from Rochester to Duluth, and from Minneapolis, thank God we still have Minneapolis—[cheers and applause]—to right here, right here with all of you great people, this state was pioneered by men and women who braved the wilderness and the winters to build a better life for themselves and for their families. They were tough and they were strong. You have good genes. You know that, right? You have good genes. [cheers and applause] A lot of it's about the genes, isn't it? Don't you believe? The racehorse theory you think was so different? You have good genes in Minnesota. They didn't have a lot of money, they didn't have a lot of luxury, but they had grit, they had faith, and they had each other. That's what you have now. You have each other. [cheers and applause]
They were miners and lumberjacks, fishermen and farmers, shipbuilders and shopkeepers. But they all had one thing in common. They loved their families, they loved their countries, and they loved their God. It's true. God. [cheers and applause] Proud citizens like you helped build this country. And together we are taking back our country. We are returning power to you, the American people. With your help, your devotion, and your drive, we are going to keep on working, we're going to keep on fighting, and we are going to keep on winning, winning, winning. [cheers and applause]
Crowd Member. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
The President. And don't forget, you went through years where you weren't winning, right? Years and years, they closed down. Even with Obama, he closed that iron. I think he just wanted to get even with you, I don't know. He wasn't good. Not a good—We've knocked out about 84% of the things he did. Then you say, "I wonder if he likes me?" [laughter] But you're getting used to winning and you're gonna see winning like you've never seen before. You had your best year and you're gonna win so much. You've heard this, right? I haven't said it in a long time because we've been doing a lot of winning, but you're gonna win so much. And you're gonna send Jason to the US Senate. [cheers and applause] And you're gonna keep winning and winning and winning.
You're gonna win on trade, you're gonna win on the military. You're gonna win on everything you touch. Minnesota's gonna keep on winning and you're gonna get tired of winning because Minnesota doesn't wanna win all the time. Your football team is gonna win in the big 10 they say, right? No, we're gonna keep on winning in Minnesota and you're gonna get so tired you're gonna say, "Jason, Jason, please, please Jason, go to the president. See him in the Oval Office. Stop him from winning. We're winning too much in Minnesota. We can't stand it, Jason, please, please Jason. Stop him from winning so much for Minnesota. We can't take it. We're not used to it because we went through years and years and years where it was tough," right? The mayors know that. That's why they all endorsed the president.
And I'm gonna look at Jason, I'm going to say, "No, Jason, I'm sorry. The people of Minnesota wanna win, you're wrong, Jason. They wanna win. We're gonna keep on going, Jason, we're going to keep on winning. And they're gonna be happy as hell, Jason." Get Jason in, he's a great guy. By the way, you have a senator that he's running against. I won't even mention names. She does nothing, nothing. Nobody even knows who the hell she is.
Crowd Member. No we don't!
The President. She goes to a meeting the other day, everyone's trying to figure out, who is she? This guy—He even looks the role. Central casting, right? You know, if you can get the look for free, that's good too. Right? But he's gonna be fantastic. Tremendous guy, really successful. And he loves your state and he loves our country. So Jason, please knock them out. Knock them out. [cheers and applause]
But you're gonna win. We're one movement. We're one people, one family, and one glorious nation under God. [cheers and applause] And together with the incredible people of Minnesota, and you know what's gonna be operating at strength? Because I owe it to these incredible mayors that were so nice to me. That was such a nice thing. And I didn't politick you at all. I never politicked you. I said, what, how nice. And it's happening with so many other things. We have other endorsements from police forces that I never asked and all of a sudden they're coming from very hostile territory. So I just appreciate your being here. And I'm saying this for you and I'm saying it for all of you. Okay. Thank you. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. [cheers and applause] We will make America safe again. [cheers and applause] And we will make America great again. Thank you, Minnesota, thank you.
[Music: Village People, Y.M.C.A.]
NOTE: The president spoke at Bemidji Aviation Services. The president began speaking shortly after 6 PM CST and spoke for about 1 hour and 48 minutes.
This transcript was prepared for the American Presidency Project by UCSB student research assistant Katya Kiseleva.
Donald J. Trump (1st Term), Remarks at a "Great American Comeback" Rally in Bemidji, Minnesota Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/351224