Remarks at a Dinner With Republican Members of Congress

The President. Hello.

That's the first word I said in this beautiful setting. We have worked very hard to bring it to fruition. And not an easy situation, but it's something that I think we're all going to enjoy for many, many years to come.

It's a tremendous place. This is the Rose Garden. We never touched a rose. The roses are in full bloom, and they will be in full bloom during certain seasons. But we never touched.

I tell you what we did. The grass was not usable. Every time we'd have a press conference, women, in particular, were sinking deep into the mud. And at some point, I said, "You know, it's time to make the change." And we picked a great stone, and we have a great speaker system, I hope. I hope everybody hears this perfectly.

But a lot of people are wondering why you're here tonight, and I'll tell you very simply why you're here, because you are the ones that I never had to call at 4 o'clock in the morning. [Laughter] You are the ones that have been my friend. And you know what I'm talking about. And you're smart and even brilliant people, but you would tell people, "You know, I don't speak to the President much because I always vote with the President."

And Mike Johnson, who's going to go down as one of the great Speakers of our time or any other time. Mike, thank you very much. I said, "Mike, I want to do something. I want to reward the people that have confidence in their President, have confidence in you, and vote for us." And that includes some of the Senators that are here. We have Senators. We have Congressmen. This was originally going to be for Congress only. We're going to have the Senators sometime, but a couple of the Senators really wanted to be here.

And I'm going to start off by—one of them, who is a really good friend of mine, comes from a state where I was, I think, 77 out of 77 district or areas. I won them all three times. Ronald Reagan was second. He got 56. Is that right? I got 77 out of 77, and I did it three times. So, I happen to love the state of Oklahoma.

And I'm going to ask James Lankford to come up and say grace, and he's very good at it. He's a religious guy, and we love him. And you've done a fantastic job as Senator. And thank you for doing this, James. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please.

Senator James P. Lankford. Thank you. They're going to hand this one right here. Yes.

The President. Oh. Oh, good.

Sen. Lankford. Well, let's pray together.

Father, thank you for allowing us to be here and the privilege we get to be able to serve this Nation. In all the work and all the long hours and all the time, we just want to say thank you again for entrusting us with this task. And I ask for wisdom for all of us to be able to lead well by example and by task.

Father, we pray for the President of the United States. We pray that you would overwhelm him with the insight and wisdom he needs for each day. The challenges around the world are on his shoulders, but we are grateful that the Government is on yours, and you are the one who sustains us.

So we pray for President Trump, for his family, pray for the Vice President, pray that you continue to be able to instill in them the joy of the task so that they'd be able to fulfill things well.

Pray for our members of the military and intelligence community and law enforcement, so many first responders, that they are in harm's way tonight, as we are in safety. So we pray that you would protect them and their families.

God, thanks for this food and for the privilege to be able to be here together with each other. In the name of Jesus, I ask tonight. Amen.

Audience members. Amen.

The President. James, beautiful. Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Sen. Lankford. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. President.

The President. That was very nice.

So, getting back to why you got invited. So I'd get a call from the Speaker, and he'd say, "Sir, we have 16 hard noes." It's 4 o'clock in the morning, and we have one of many bills, because this happened many times, and it tended to be the same 16, 18, 19 people all the time—4 o'clock, 5 o'clock in the morning, I call them. I say: "Jim. How you doing, Jim? Everything okay?" "Yes, sir. It's 5 o'clock in the morning." "How are you voting for us, Jim?" "Well, what do you think, sir? Tell me. What should I do, sir?"

And he broke my ass. And they had about 16 others. That doesn't mean we don't like them, but we had about 16, 17, or 18 others. And they made life very difficult, but we got them there, because we had a period where we had a majority of one—is that right, Mike?—one. We were one heart attack away from losing the House. Think of that.

And nobody could have done that, but that man right there. And I think I helped a little bit. I think I helped a little bit. But, Mike, unbelievable.

And we passed legislation—you know, our—I call it the "Great Big Beautiful Bill." I add the word "great," because it is. It gives the greatest tax cuts in the history of our country. When you think, no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime—these are working class things.

We get a deduction—if you buy a car, you borrow money, we deduct the interest, Jason, which is so incredible. Nobody ever heard of that. Middle class, nobody ever got deductions like that. The bill is unbelievable.

In fact, we really don't need any other votes, because we have everything in that. We got—that's why it's the "Great Big Beautiful Bill."

And Scott Bessent is here, who's done a fantastic job. And he's one of the people—one of the—one of the writers of it, gave plenty of good ideas.

And I think Howard is here someplace. Where's Howard Lutnick? Howard, thank you very much.

I call them the Bobbsey Twins. They're the most different human beings I've ever met. They're both great, but one is a little bit different than the other, like by about 200 yards. And they're fantastic, and they get along great.

But we all—the administration has been amazing. And what we've done has not been done. A lot of people, even the people that are not necessarily lovers of President Trump—and some of them are right there in the fake news—but they said that nobody's done what we've done in seven months—a little more than 7 months.

When you think of it, we stopped seven wars. And the war that I thought was going to be the easiest is probably the most difficult. That's the Ukraine and Russia. I thought that would be easier. The relationship with President Putin, all of that, it didn't matter. It's ended up being probably the most difficult.

But we stopped wars that—one was going on for 31 years. They said it was unstoppable. I got it done in about two hours. Another one, 35 years, and another one, 37 years. And we got them all done. But we got seven of them done.

We ended up stopping the nuclear—potential nuclear disaster in Iran with, I think, one of the greatest military trips ever taken. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. We flew the B–2 bomber. They flew for 36 hours, not a single mishap, not a single problem.

And those pilots were great. I invited them to the Oval Office a month ago, and they came in. Handsome. They looked just like Tom Cruise. They looked just like I'm telling you, they were great. They were—every one of them.

And they were looking forward to that mission. I said, "Did you really want to go?" They said, "Sir, we've been waiting for 22 years." They said, for 22 years their predecessors have been practicing three to four times a year that mission, because they knew someday they had to take it out. And they said, "No other President had the courage to let us go, sir, and you did." I said, "Were you happy or unhappy about that?" And they could not have been happier. They loved it.

They were so disappointed when—I heard one of the news outlets give the information as to when we were taking off, when we were landing. I called our great General Caine. As you know, he's doing a phenomenal—I don't know if he's here, but he did a phenomenal job, and he's done a phenomenal job. Head of the Joint Chiefs now, because he wiped out ISIS.

So, you know, General Caine—I was told it would take 4 years to defeat ISIS. He did it in 4 weeks. I said, "He's my guy for the top." And he knows—he really knows how to win. But what we've done has been incredible. I'm so happy about that.

But I'm really happy, when you see almost $17 trillion will be invested in this country over the next few months, actually. We started from the day we came in. November 5 was a big day. It was "Liberation Day" in a lot of different ways. It's a lot of different forms of liberation.

But what we really have is something that I don't think any country has ever had. We're going to have over $17 trillion—and that number is going to go much higher than that—invested in our country, and it's being invested right now as we speak.

We have factories from all over the world coming in. We have car plants that were stolen from us. We had 40 percent—47 percent of our car industry stolen from us over the last 40 years. And I think the number is actually much higher than that. They say 47. I think it's a lot higher. It's all coming back.

The AI plants are massive. Some of them cost $50 billion. We're allowing them to build electricity with their plant. Nobody ever heard of that before. They're building—and if we didn't do that, they couldn't hook into the grid. We wouldn't have AI.

We're substantially leading China. China knows it. We're substantially. And most of those people were here.

You know, you're the first ones on this great place. We call it the Rose Garden Club, and it's a club for Senators, for Congresspeople, and for people in Washington, and frankly, people that can bring peace and success to our country. And you're invited as Congressmen—mostly, we have Congressmen and Senators tonight.

Again, you know why you're first? Because it rained last night. I had the high-tech guys—we're going to here—and they didn't want to have rain on top of their beautiful heads. We had the highest IQ last night in the history of the world, and we took them inside, because two reasons. Number one, I wanted you to be number one, and you were. They could have endured the little rain, but I wanted you to be number one.

And I would say I would match IQ tonight here with what we had last night, meaning IQ of common sense and survival. [Laughter] Okay? I think you have a higher IQ in certain ways, let me tell you.

But we had a great group last night, and they're investing tens of billions—they're investing trillions of dollars. Some of the companies are investing literally trillions of dollars in this great country of ours.

So we've turned it around to a level—we were given a very bad hand. We had 25 million people allowed to come into our country—come in from mental institutions; prisons—from all over the world, emptied their prisons out into this country; drug dealers, drug addicts. We have everything. They were allowed to come in. Murderers—11,788 murderers, 50 percent of whom killed more than one person during their life. They were allowed to come into our country by the Democrats and by Sleepy Joe. And that was a thing.

No, they had the worst inflation in history. We've got the inflation down, but inflation is nothing compared to what I just told you. To allow 25—I believe the real number is 25 million people into this country, many of whom should never have been allowed into this country.

And we're doing a great job in getting them out. And we're getting them out by the thousands—by the thousands every month. Every week, in some cases.

And one example is right over here: Washington, DC. It was the most unsafe city anywhere in the country, our Capital. And after 12 days, it became known as a safe city. And then after 2 more days, it's now one of the safest cities in the country. And people are going out to dinner. They're walking down the middle of the street. Women are walking by themselves alone, and they feel totally safe.

And if you leave here right now and if you walk back to wherever you happen to stay, you're going to feel totally secure, totally safe. We've done an incredible job, and we'll be doing that with other cities throughout the country.

I mean, when you look at Chicago, we have a Governor that says that things are okay with crime. Except that last weekend, 11 people were killed and 68 people were wounded by gunshot. The week before, 5 people were killed, 28 people were wounded. The week before, 6 people were killed, 19 people were badly wounded. Many of the wounded are going to die. And he said, "Oh, well, we have a safe city."

These people are sick. There's something wrong with them. But we're going to make some other choices pretty soon.

I watched Portland, Oregon, last night, burning to the ground—just burning—with people—and these are agitators. These are professional agitators—these are not people that are protesting. These are professional, paid agitators. And they're paid by the left, not by the right. And we're going to stop them. We're going to stop it all.

So we're pretty much—I don't think you can do much better than zero crime. They said, "Crime is down 87 percent." I said: "Really? Who are the 13 percent?" Okay, I don't think they exist.

So I—we're so proud of what—because this is our Nation's Capital. Now we're going to be coming to you for a small amount of money. We're going to beautify Washington. We're going to fix the roads. We're going to fix the medians. We're going to clean up the place. We're going to put new grass in all the parks.

You know, you don't know this: Grass has a life. Do you know that, Mike? Grass has a life like we have a life. It's so long. Guess what? It expired about 40 years ago in these parks. There's no grass on half of them.

We're going to regrass them with the best guys in the country. We're going to grass them by people that do Augusta, in Georgia, people that do the great golf courses of the world. We're going to have the most beautiful parks. We're going to fix the curbs.

I noticed some of your curbs are broken. You know why? They're hitting them with a hammer so they can pick it up and throw it at the police. But not anymore they're not. Not anymore.

So we have the safest place—Washington, DC—and we'll be going to other cities to help out. Preferably, we'd like to be asked. But, in some cases, that just won't happen, because they're people that don't understand the word "ask." They're people that don't understand they're in trouble, or they're stupid. There's something wrong with them.

But these are high-crime areas, as high as there is in the world. You can go to Afghanistan. You can go to places that you think of are, like, unsafe, you're safer there than you are in Chicago at night. But we're going to make Chicago like this.

We're going to make Louisiana—we're going to—we have a great Governor there. We're going to make—and a great—by the way, had a great Speaker there, that's true. But we're going to come into New Orleans, and we're going to make that place so safe.

It's got a little problem right now—a couple of headaches, like murders—a lot of little murders going on, and we're not going to stand for it. And we're going to come in, we're going to clean it up. You're going to be safe within 2 weeks. That's going to be the safest place, just like this is the safest place. And then we'll be going elsewhere throughout the country. We're going to bring crime down, because we can't have cities that are unsafe.

I just want to thank you, for—this is a special group, and it is true. There's not one person in this audience that I had to call to ask for help that we needed your vote. You're unbelievable people.

That includes you, Jason. There's nobody that knows more about tax and money than that man right there. I'll tell you, there's nobody. It's true. And I'm saying that in front of a lot of television, Jason. So I can't ever take it back, but it's true. [Laughter] You do a phenomenal job.

Mike, you surround yourself with—whether it's Defense or anything else, everyone—I could name every single person here and—amazing. But you make my life easy. You trust me, you trust Mike, you trust leadership, you trust yourselves, and you don't make us make the call.

One of you said: "You know, I don't speak to the President much. I like the President, but I always vote for him. I don't want him to have to waste"—I have people, and you know who they are, that I have to call, speak to them—James, is that right?—for hours. Hours. I know they're going to vote for us, but I have to speak to them for hours, and it's brutal. And it's not like at 3 in the afternoon. It's like 3 in the morning, right? 3 in the morning.

You hear that sound of the train? The train is safe now. We don't have to worry about it. [Laughter] Isn't that a beautiful—it's a much nicer—you know, it's a much nicer sound now than it was three months ago.

But—so this is a very special group. And I say that with love for all those other people that have to work so hard, but they vote for us. They do vote for us. Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing. But you are the people that I like—I was—I called Mike, I said, "We have to reward the people that I don't get to speak to that I like so much."

Doc Ronny. Where's Doc Ronny? Unbelievable doctor. He was the doctor in the White House. He was a great admiral. And he's one of the most popular politicians in—in this country. He won his district by 50 points, but I think I won it by more. I don't—[laughter]. He's got one of the great districts.

But Doc Ronny—the reason I like him, he was a doctor—the White House. He took care of Bush, took care of Obama, took care of Trump. And the fake news right over here, they said to him, "Doctor, could we ask you a question?" "Yes. What would you like?" "Who's the healthiest: Bush, Obama, or Trump?" He said, "There's not even a contest. By far, the healthiest is President Donald J. Trump." I said, "I love that guy." That guy is great. I'm sure that Bush and Obama don't feel the same way, but who the hell cares, right? [Laughter]

But I want to thank you, Ronny. You've been great in every way, and you've been a great Congressman. And you're not a Congressman that I had to call. I never had to call you at 2 in the morning to get your vote, did I, huh?

But you're the same, and I just want to thank everybody. You're a special group of people, and you're the first people that I've had at the White House at the Rose Garden, and it's an honor to have you. Now I want you to sit down, have a great meal—the food is seriously good. We'll say goodbye to the press, but it's an honor to have you.

And actually, the press has been very good lately, except for one rumor that they spread. I did about eight press conferences in a row, day after day after day, then I missed one because I was in the Oval Office. And I also went out at—to a club, because I had meetings at a club, and they saw that I was there. And there were—rumors started spreading—this horrible rumor that Trump is no longer with us. They said—no, and they said—I got to the club: "Sir, are you okay? Are you okay?" The fake news was at it again. But because I missed 1 day of press conferences.

So today I gave them about a 3-hour press conference—[laughter]—on changing the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

Because, you know, we won World War I, World War II, everything in between, and everything in front of it. It was called Department of War. And then we went woke after the Second World War, incredible victory, and we said, "Let's change it to Defense."

And look, war means something. It means we're not going to have any problems. We don't want problems with people. And I've kept us out of wars. I've solved wars. But the way you solve wars is through strength, and that's what we are. We make the best equipment in the world. We have the best soldiers. We have the most powerful military anywhere in the world.

We rebuilt it in my first term. As you know, we rebuilt it in our first term. And we have the greatest military—we gave some away to Afghanistan, which was not exactly good. That was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. The Biden—that day in Afghanistan was the most embarrassing day in the history of the country. And they kept military equipment. But fortunately, it's a very small percentage compared to what it was, but the fact that they could keep any—but I just want to thank you all. You've been unbelievable. I'll be with you—for the rest of my life, I will be with you, and you're going to be with me and with leadership.

And, Mike, I want to thank you for being a great Speaker. You've been really outstanding, and working with you has been an honor. And thank you—and congratulations on being number one. This is historic, because you're number one here.

And this little circle—this little, beautiful grouping of some of the finest stone in the world. This is, I think, going to go down as a very important place over the period of time for news conferences, for celebrations, for dinners, and we're going to bring people together here.

We're going to bring, maybe, some of the Democrats—we'll say, "The Democrats are invited." Now, we'll do that for about a week or two, and then we'll find out, well, it just doesn't work, perhaps, and keep them the hell out of here. [Laughter] We'll say, "You're going to have to win the White House to get here." But maybe it will work, you never know. We're going to give it a shot. We're going to let Democrats come, and we're going to let Republicans come, and you're going to mingle.

You know, in the old days, Republicans and Democrats got together, and they'd go out to dinner, and then they'd fight a little bit during the day, and a lot of times they'd get 20 percent, 30 percent of one or the others' vote, and today that doesn't happen. It's solid blocs, one way or the other, and probably that shouldn't be. But we'll see what happens.

I just want to thank you all. You've been unbelievable. You're warriors, and we're going to make America so great, so much better than anybody ever thought. We're going to make America great again, but much, much better than anybody ever envisioned.

Thank you all for being with us. A great honor. Thank you.