Donald Trump Delivers Keynote Speech in Florida 4/21/22 Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:00)
(singing)

Speaker 2: (01:23)
Welcome to stage, Heritage Foundation president, Dr. Kevin Roberts.

Kevin Roberts: (01:32)
Thank you folks so much for being here. We are in for a treat tonight, as you gather yourselves and find your seats. It is such a great pleasure to make an observation quickly and then make an introduction that you’re all waiting for. And that observation is at least for those of us old enough in this room to remember, in 1989, when Ronald Reagan’s presidency came to an end, I thought as I was coming of age as a young conservative, having recently discovered the Heritage Foundation as a teenager, that I would never again, in my life as an American, have another president as good as Reagan and I was wrong. Praise God.

We had a president in Donald Trump who fought for us regardless of where we were from, for people like me growing up in a working class, blue collar family in Louisiana, even though he obviously was not from Louisiana. My family would say extended family would say, many of them lifelong Democrats until his presidency, that he was a man for them. And I think that he is a man for our age. And obviously tonight, we’re looking forward to hear from him regarding his reflections of being our president, also thinking about the policies he achieved, the judges he appointed. All of us, all of us, regardless of where we’re from, what we’re thinking about regarding the future know that this is a man who will stand up for what’s right, who will shatter all of the walls that stand between our freedom and the administrative state. And therefore, it is a great privilege on behalf of all of you, our one and a half million members of Heritage over the last decade, to introduce President Donald Trump.

( singing)

Donald Trump: (03:53)
Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s a great song, but we’ll cut it short and we’ll make the speech a little bit longer. And if you have anything to say, don’t bother, just interrupt me, just don’t worry about it. But I want to thank Kevin. He’s going to be so incredible, I know that for a fact, because I know what he did and where he came from and he’s going to be outstanding and congratulations to his very exciting new role and a very important role. And thanks also to Kevin’s wonderful young handsome Wesley Coopersmith, because Wesley, where’s Wesley? He’s great. He’s going to do a job, but he’ll never be Kevin, right? Kevin, because if he is right? You know that story, right? You can’t allow that to happen. That’s right. He has better hair than you, Kevin, is that right? Kevin sort of acknowledging. Anyway, both great people. They’re great people and they’re going to do tremendously.

Let me also express my gratitude for Heritage board chairman, Barb Van Andel-Gaby. I love that name. Where are we, Barb? Where are we? What a name, I love that name. Thank you very much. I got it okay. I practiced that one a little bit. And Barb, Steve Bore is so fantastic. And Steve, I want to thank you very much, because you’ve been there right from the beginning. Wanted to put him on the fed, and we just about got there, but some extraneous things happened, meaning very unfair things, but we’ll do it again except at a higher level. Okay? I promise you that, and I mean it too.

A friend of mine and a man of great courage, and just a really terrific person, especially when you see what’s happening on our border, Tom Homan. Tom. Tom is just amazing. And likewise, Mark Morgan, right from the beginning he’s been with us. Mark. Where’s Mark? Mark thank you. Thank you, Mark. Those two, great people and so many other incredible patriots in the room. Is that Sean? I think so. Yeah. Will you stand up? You know, now he’s a movie star. That hair is so perfect. He did a hell of a job too and they appreciate now really a lot, and he danced very well too. We were putting in those Trump votes, we almost got you to the end, right? We almost got you to the end, but you did a great job. Thanks Sean, very much.

It’s a true honor to join you this evening. For nearly 50 years, this legendary institution, which is what it is, has been at the forefront of the conservative movement, helping lead the fight to defend our cherished American history, culture and traditions. Everyone here tonight, very special people, is United by the same key ideas and the same core values. We believe that the Declaration of independence and the American Constitution represent the pinnacle of human civilization. Our founding documents are not a source of shame. They are a source of pride, and great pride. We believe that the United States of America is the greatest republic in the history of the world. In America, the people do not answer to the politicians, the politicians answer to the people. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We reject the discrimination and oppression of so-called equity, and we embrace the eternal principle of equality under the law.

Speaker 3: (07:46)
[inaudible 00:07:46]

Thank you. So true. Law and order must be upheld without bias or prejudice. And the Constitution means what it says, as written. We condemn censorship, blacklisting and cancel culture because we know that the lifeblood of a free society is free speech, which is being taken away from us very rapidly, in case you haven’t noticed, very, very rapidly. We don’t have a free press or a fair press and free speech has been eroded, but we’re going to get it back. We believe that America is a sovereign nation with a sovereign people, which means that we must have strong, secure sovereign borders. Not what we have now, Tom, right? Not what we have now. So sad to watch what’s happening to our country. And we’ve believe that economic security is national security. We believe that America is safe and the world is calm when America is strong. We want peace through strength. We believe that the first duty of government is to protect and defend the interests of its own citizens. In other words, to put America first.

We believe that America’s destiny depends on upholding the Judaeo-Christian values and principles of our nation’s founding, and above all, we know that freedom is not a gift from government. Freedom is a gift from God.

There are traditions that have sustained and strengthened our country through nearly 250 years. And when I say strengthened, I mean really strong. It’s held it together. I don’t think there’s ever been a time where a country has been in a position like it is today, and it’s very, very sad to say, very, very sad to see. Yet today, each of these principles is threatened like never before. They’re under assault by a radical left move that seeks to demolish everything this organization exists to defend. The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside. The greatest danger is the destruction of our nation from within. But while the challenges for our country may loom large, our opponents are far weaker and more vulnerable than they appear. And we are far stronger than anyone can fully understand.

I stand before you today, bearing a simple message. As long as America First Conservatives have the courage to fight boldly for an agenda that defends American workers, American families, and America’s glorious cultural inheritance, then the radical left will lose and we will win bigger than anyone thought possible.

Over the past 15 months, Americans have been horrified by the cascade of total disaster. Inflation is the highest in 40 years, and it’s going much higher. Sorry to inform you of that. Steve, I think you can say that perhaps better than anybody, but it’s going much higher. Gas prices are now $4, $5, or even, and $6 a gallon, and likewise they’re going much higher. It was $1.87 just a very short time ago. Think of that, $1.87. And we had so much, we didn’t know what to do with it.

Our border is being overrun by millions of illegal aliens from over 140 different countries, countries that many people have never even heard about. We have no idea who these people are, where they come from. There’s no checks, there’s no balances, there’s no nothing. They just stream into our country by the millions. We now have the weakest border in history and just one year ago, a little more, we had the strongest border in the history of our country, strongest that we’ve had in American history and that included drugs, and it included all of the other things that come into our country that are so bad, human trafficking, mostly in women. And it was at record lows, and now it’s at record highs. Nobody’s even keeping count anymore. It’s so bad. It’s become so bad.

Our communities are under siege from a bloody wave of violent crime with murders, the highest in nearly 30 years. Our children are being indoctrinated in school with wicked anti-American ideologies and demented left wing gender theories. Our nation has been humiliated in Afghanistan, where we had soldiers killed, left American hostages behind, and left $85 billion in American military hardware, the best anywhere in the world. We handed it over to the Taliban. They weren’t even expecting it. They just got it. We surrendered. We surrendered. And remember for 18 months, think of it for 18 months, not one American soldier was killed. I spoke to the leader of the Taliban, Abdul. I said, “Abdul,” I won’t tell you exactly, but I said, “Don’t do it.” And they didn’t do it. They didn’t do, it 18 months, until that horrible day where 13 soldiers were killed and nobody mentions the ones that were so badly, horrifically injured, no arms, no legs, just blown to pieces for no reason what so ever.

China no longer respects us. Iran no longer fears us. And with their monstrous invasion of Ukraine, Russia showed just how weak they think our leaders are. They would never have done that under the Trump administration, never, not even a possibility. Not even a possibility. This is the most dangerous period in the history of our country. Right now, in my opinion is the most dangerous in the history of our country. Never before has our world been so unsafe and that’s because of the massive power of weaponry. The weaponry today is at a level that nobody’s ever seen before. We have it and others have it, but there’s never been anything like it.

I rebuilt our military, spent two and a half trillion dollars and we redid the nuclear capability. We had weapons that didn’t even work. We had weapons that nobody had any idea if they did work, and everything is even the new or renovated. And it’s an incredible thing that we did, but you just hope to God we never have to use them. But now the word nuclear is being thrown around like it’s candy, and you can’t do that. You can’t do that. That’s not a word that can be thrown around. It was never talked about, it was never discussed. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Too big a problem, too catastrophic. You look at what’s going on between Russia and Ukraine, the whole thing, everything that you see, every person that you see dying, it would not have happened if the Trump administration were there. And it didn’t happen for four years. People say, “Oh, do you think that’s true?” Well, it didn’t happen, nor was it even thought of. Russia took Georgia under President Bush. They took Crimea under President Obama. They took nothing under me, nothing. And I took our trips by the way, out of Syria and Iraq, and was just months away from getting out of Afghanistan. I’m the one that brought it down to 2,000 soldiers. It was a number much higher than that, as you know, Sean, way, way, way up, and we got it down to two. We were all set to leave. We were going to leave with dignity, great dignity and great strength. And they respected us.

Remember, not one soldier killed in 18 months. I told them, “Don’t kill our soldiers. You do, we’re going to hit you so hard nobody will ever have been hit hard like you’re going to get hit,” and they didn’t do anything. They didn’t do it. They were all set. They wanted us to leave. It was great. They wanted us to leave. They weren’t going to kill. And what they did was terrible, and what we did was terrible. We did it through weakness. We were going to keep Bagram, but everybody was going to be out. The reason we were keeping Bagram is because of China. It’s one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. It cost billions of and billions of dollars to build many years ago. And right now, it looks to me like China’s going to end up owning and operating Bagram. We fled, left the lights on late at night and we fled, and they did leave all the dogs behind, by the way, for those people that loved dogs. They tried to say, “Oh we didn’t,” but they did.

Under Biden, they got everything. So you look at Georgia, you look at Crimea, and under Biden, they got everything. And under me, they got nothing, except we pulled troops out of other countries. They always said that I was very nice to Russia, the fake news, these people back there. They said that I was always very nice, but I was the one that killed the pipeline, the biggest thing they’ve ever done.

I funded NATO with $$430 billion by saying, if you don’t pay up, we’re not going to defend you. And they all paid up, or most of them paid up, but the rest is coming in. They never saw anything like it. The Secretary General said that it’s the most incredible thing he’s ever seen because his Bush made a speech, Obama made a couple of speeches. They never mentioned the fact that everybody was delinquent, they didn’t pay. And they asked me, one of the presidents of the country’s at a closed meeting, 28 countries at that time, they said, “Well, sir, are you saying that if,” because they knew I was very unhappy because we were paying a very, very… We were paying for most of it, in my opinion, but a very high amount. So we’re defending Europe, at the same time, they rip us off on trade. Very, very seriously rip us off. And he said, “Does that mean that you won’t protect if we don’t pay? You won’t protect us from Russia?” It wasn’t the Soviet Union, but now Russia.

I said, “That’s exactly what it means.” Now, if I said, “No, I don’t mean that,” then why would they pay? So somebody had to say it. I was amazed it didn’t get out. I was amazed. The fake news didn’t pull it out. I don’t know, maybe nobody wanted to talk about it. I said, “No that’s exactly.” And the money’s started to flow in. And the Secretary general said, “I never saw money like this in my life.” It started to flow in. I had to give them that answer. It was a risky answer to give too, because people would say, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing to say,” but that’s the way you have to do it, I guess.

But I put more sanctions on Russia than anyone else. I gave Ukraine javelins, while Obama gave them blankets. You remember this statement, “Oh, he’s terrible. He’s giving javelins, and the other one’s giving blankets.” Well, it turned out, I was right when I gave the javelins. I was the one that gave them the weaponry to do that very big and important first part of the war, and show something very special. They said I was very nice to Putin. The only person didn’t think that was true was Putin. He used to say, “You’re killing me on the pipeline. How the hell… Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2, nobody, until I came along. I heard of it. I said, what is Nord Stream 2?” It’s biggest pipeline. Imagine all of Europe, but in particular to Germany, and I ended it.

But we have a leader now who is incapable of understanding what the hell is happening. And these are very dangerous times. Immediately approved the pipeline, by the way. I ended it and they approved it. You’ve heard it a thousand times, he killed Keystone, which is our Keystone XL as they call it officially. But he let them have their big pipeline going from Russia into Germany and other parts of Europe. And he let them have it virtually the first day. The only things Democrats are really good at is cheating and elections and assaulting Republicans like never before with law enforcement. That’s what happens. That’s what they do. All you have to do is take a look around. They cheat like hell, and they assault with the law enforcement.

You could take the five worst presidents in American history and put them together and they would not have done the damage that Joe Biden has done in just a little more than one year. Yet, this is also one of the most precious moments of opportunity in the history of our country. Because of the extremism of the Biden administration and the left, our opponents are fully and completely exposed. We know it doesn’t work. So when we go back in, we can do it the right way, and we can do what has to be done. And nobody can really criticize us very badly. That’s probably the good thing about what is going on. If we do our jobs, their sinister and corrupt left wing system will be-

… our jobs, their sinister and corrupt left wing system will be discredited, defeated and discarded forever. Socialism, wokeism and left wing fascism and communism will be tossed into the ash heap of history beside every other twisted ideology that has tried and failed to destroy the United States of America. But we got very close and we’re coming very close. We have to act quickly because they are trying to destroy our country. Nobody can be so stupid to do the things they’re doing with open borders and no voter ID for elections. Why do they want no voter ID? When you went into the Democrat National Convention, they had an ID that was bigger than the person’s chest. It was like a prison card, actually. Massive picture, fingerprints, this, that, but they don’t want any form of ID to vote. Now that only means one thing, they want to cheat. That’s the only reason. There’s no reason in the world not to have it.

But to achieve this goal, we must continue to stand on the America First platform that brought millions and millions of new voters to our Republican Party and to our side. If you look at what’s happened with the Hispanic populations, people don’t even believe it. Look at my numbers during the election in Miami, in Florida and along the Texas border, mostly Hispanic and we won it all. We won it all. Never happened. The governor called me, said that not since reconstruction, I said, “By reconstruction, I assume you mean Civil War.” He said, “That’s right. Not since the Civil War has anything happened like happened in the last election with Hispanics.”

Our theme was make America great again and I believe it was the most successful theme in politics and the history of our country and maybe anywhere in the world, make America great again. We grew the conservative movement into a working people’s movement and we transformed the Republican Party into the working people’s party and we are never, ever going back. We’ve increased our size massively, we’re winning areas now that we never thought possible. I think we’re going to have a tremendous 22. We had a tremendous 20, but bad things happened, very, the very bad things happened and we’re going to have a great, great 24, but we have to watch the vote counters. Our movement must continue to pursue a populous nationalist economic agenda that puts working families before globalist politicians and woke multinational corporations who are mentally ill in many cases, they’re sick. What are they doing? The people that they cater to are not believing, and you see what’s going on in Florida and other places and the people aren’t going to take it and they’re not taking it. They’re fighting back finally. After decades of spilling blood and spending treasure on everyone’s interests but our own, we must have a foreign policy focused on the core mission of defending our country, our citizens and our people and we must have a social policy that is pro family, pro life, pro God and 100% pro America, has to happen. Already we have shown the power of our winning formula, working closely with many of the great people at Heritage over the four incredible years that we’ve worked with you a lot and we were just discussing it with Kevin [inaudible 00:24:46], they’re going to work on some other things that are going to be very exciting, I think, Kevin, I think maybe the most exciting of all. We passed the largest tax cuts in reforms in American history and I’m all for reducing taxes further, not the other way. They want to raise taxes. They want to raise taxes and they’re supposed to get elected. All of these things they want to do, how do you get elected? You get elected by cheating, that’s how they get elected. We cut a record number of job killing regulations, greatest in history. Frankly, I think it was a bigger and more important element than even the tax cuts, which are the biggest in history.

We fixed our broken trade deals. We replaced the worst trade deal probably ever made, NAFTA, with the USMCA, that’s Mexico, Canada and you’ve probably heard, they want to renegotiate the deal because they’re not happy with it. I said, “Well, we lived with NAFTA for so many decades. Why don’t you live with this deal for a few decades and then we’ll start talking about it?” You have to stop it from happening. They want to renegotiate the deal, because it’s a great deal for us and it’s fine for them but it ain’t what they had, let’s put it that way. They had one of the worst deals for this country ever. They made typos in the deal when it was originally done decades ago, three decades ago, NAFTA, and they were big typos, numbers and percentages that were much higher in their favor and they never changed them. They were too lazy. They’d go, “So, we pay an extra 5%.”

You’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars, you know that, right? They made changes, they didn’t even ask for them, but they made mistakes, typos, and they didn’t change them, they just left them that way. “To hell with it. Don’t worry about it, it’s only a few billion a year,” and we stood up to China like no president in history, charging them billions and billions of dollars in taxes and in tariffs when they had never paid us 10 cents. We saved our steel industry. We saved a lot of industries and we were bringing back a lot of business, too. We created over seven million new jobs. We lifted seven million people off food stamps. We lifted 10 million people off of welfare in a short period of time. We achieved the largest poverty reduction in more than 71 years and we had the lowest African American and Hispanic American in almost every single group, in fact, every single group, in terms of poverty rate in recorded history.

We had, for the first time, over 160 million Americans working and it’s not even close today. We keep hearing about their employment numbers, their employment numbers are phony numbers. Steve, you’ll get up and devote about 10 minutes to that later, please. But you don’t need 10 minutes, you need about 30 seconds. It’s ridiculous. Their numbers are bad. But we had 160 million people working a year and a half ago. We approved the Keystone XL, the Dakota Access Pipelines. We opened ANWR for energy development. ANWR is perhaps the biggest site in the world for energy in Alaska. We got it done. Then Lisa Murkowski blew it, Republican, she approved somebody who’s first day in office, she ended ANWR. I didn’t know too much about ANWR. A friend of mine called who was in the oil and gas business. I was opposed to certain things. I was a little bit angry, so I said, “To hell with ANWR, what is ANWR? I don’t care.”

But he called up. He had no flesh in the game. He called up, he said, “You know, I hear you’re close to getting ANWR approved.” I said, “IS that a big deal?” He said, “The biggest,” he said, “Reagan tried and he failed. Everybody tried and they failed. Never been done. 60 years they’ve been trying to get it approved, never been done. It’s the biggest thing. It’s the biggest oil site, biggest drilling site, maybe bigger than Saudi Arabia they say.” I said, “Really, that big a deal?” He said, “The biggest, and by the way, how’s everything else?” He was just telling me this. I said, “Everything else is fine, get off the phone. Goodbye.” I said, “By the way, you know when I said don’t worry about ANWR? Get it approved.” We got it approved. That’s right. He talked me into it unknowingly. He still doesn’t know that.

But unleashed energy resources like never before and we achieved something that had never been done, American energy independence, never been done. We actually had a period of time where energy was so low, we had so much that we called Russia, we called Saudi Arabia, we had to hold it back, we’re going to lose our energy industry. They had a period of time where it didn’t work for Wall Street, because you actually had to take the oil with you, you take a barrel of oil free and they pay you $37. There was only about a two hour period, but during a lot of that area, in that area, we filled up the strategic national reserves, which I’ve been hearing about for so long, and we filled it up for practically nothing. But if you were strong person, you would take a barrel of oil and they would pay you to take the oil. That’s how good we did. We did too good, so, we had to pull it back, Steve, right, a little bit quickly. But we did some job.

We appointed nearly 300 federal judges to defend our constitution. We confirmed three incredible Supreme Court justices and they have some very big decisions coming up. We’ll see how that works out. We achieved the most secure border in American history. Ended catch and release and built nearly 500 miles of border wall. Frankly, we were going to have the wall finished in three weeks, they could have finished it. It took us two and a half years, Tom, right, to get all of the lawsuits done, mostly brought by Democrats in Congress. Two and a half years, we won them all, and then we built the wall and we did some job, but they never gave us credit.

If there was a broken pipe lying rusted on the floor where there once was a tiny little wall that would stop a car and it was rusted and rotted, they called that a renovation, even though we were building brand new, we threw the pipe away. Stuff was so decayed, but they’d call that a renovation. “That’s not a wall, that’s a renovation.” No, that’s a wall. But we had a lot of it just laying down dead, been lying on the ground for 30 years in some cases, and we did a great job with the wall. It could be done in three weeks. They wouldn’t even let Texas use the material. It was all built, ready to be put up, it could have been done so quickly and nicely, and it’s exactly what border patrol wanted. Tom, that’s what you guys wanted, right? That exact wall. They said, “We want steel and we want rebar and with want concrete and then we want technology hooked into it.” I said, “I thought I could just throw up a nice slab of concrete.”

But they want it exactly. They had to have vision. They had to have see through and they got to paint the wall, they got to paint it. When you have steel, you have to paint it. They don’t want to do that either. We rebuilt the US Military with nearly two and a half trillion dollars worth of a lot of big, beautiful dollars, and we created the first new branch of the United States Military in 75 years since Air Force and that was Space Force, and it’s turned out to be very important. They laughed when they got into office, they wanted to end Space Force and they were decimated. Do you remember that? They laughed at it, “Space Force, that’s so funny.” There was nothing funny to the people that knew, you know that. There was nothing funny at all and it’s very important. Now we’re taking the lead again in space. Russia and China were just eating our lunch in space, and now we’ve taken the lead.

To take care of our amazing veterans we passed VA Accountability and VA Choice. We had veterans that were waiting online for months to see a doctor and I said, if you have to wait more than four hours, you go out, you get a doctor, we pay the bill and it actually made economic sense, but we did it really for the veterans and it was incredible. Then we also had accountability. We fired 8,000 people that were sadists and sick people and horrible people that they couldn’t fire. In one case, 52 years, in the other case, 57 years they’ve been trying to get them passed. We got them passed through Congress, they stay, and it’s really been incredible.

We also passed a thing called Right to Try. Right to Try is we have the greatest labs in the world, the greatest doctors in the world, we have medicines that are very advanced, but they won’t be approved for a number of years with the FDA. The FDA, they like to take their time. We push them very hard, but now people can use these medicines. Right to Try, they sign a document. Everyone said, “You can’t get it because there’s liability to the company, there’s liability to the nation. Even though they’re terminally ill, if somebody dies, they’ll blame the nation, they’ll blame the company.” I said, “Here’s what we’ll do. Instead of having them travel to China, travel to Europe, or if they have no money, they go home and die, instead of that, we’ll do something very simple. They’ll sign a document and they’ll hold harmless our country and they’ll hold harmless to drug companies.”

Then the drug companies said, “But we don’t want people that sick in our portfolio because we want to show good results.” I said, “You know what we’ll do? We’ll have a separate list. You can have this and then you have a separate list so that you won’t look bad. We’ll have a totally separate list.” We have saved so many lives. There’s so many people that have come up to me now and said, “I’m alive today because of you and because of some other great people,” some in this room, by the way, that helped us with Right to Try. I don’t want to take too long on something, but I will tell you something we’re very proud of. That was an incredible thing. People had no hope, no nothing, and we have things that work right now. It also happens to be the greatest test. Somebody’s terminally I’ll, there’s no hope, and all of a sudden, they get better. Guess what, that medicine works, right? It’s been a great thing.

A lot of people living right now and living without problems right now because of Right to Try. One of our greatest achievements was getting the vaccine done in the nine months instead of five and a half to 12 years. We saved tens of millions of lives all over the world, but I can’t talk about it because our beautiful base, of which some of you are there, you get angry when we mention the word vaccine. Don’t get angry. We did it in less than nine months, and frankly, a lot of people are living today because of that. I’ll talk about it. I think the other side actually poisoned people on it because they want to try and take credit. Remember when Biden said, “He didn’t come up with the vaccine,” except he got a shot two months before he said that. Even his own side stopped him on that one.

But we did a great job on that and it’s very important and I’m very proud of it. Think of it, nine months, we pushed the FDA, they hate me so much. They hate me. They cannot hate anybody as much as they hate me, but we had to get them to move and we did and worldwide, millions and millions, and this country, millions and millions of lives.

We obliterated the ISIS territorial caliphate and terminated al-Baghdadi and Soleimani. Remember that? We had a hell of a thing. Does anyone know the story about Raisin Cane? Anybody ever hear this story? We have great generals. We have a great military. Did anybody hear that story? No? General Raisin Cane. I’m flying over to Iraq and I meet a group of people, but before we land, they come in and they say, “Sir, I’m sorry, we’ll have to turn the lights off on the plane.” “Why?” “We’re landing in Iraq.” I said, “You mean we spent six trillion dollars,” this is toward the end, “and we can’t land the plane, especially Air Force?” Went, “Sir, we don’t want to have any lights whatsoever in the plane.” I said, “All right, good, do it.” They turn off all the lights. I’ve never seen this. I’m in this dark cabin. Then on top of that, they put down the shades. We’re flying in. I go up and I sat with the pilots because I love watching them. Really, these are great pilots, they’re the greatest pilots in the world, the ones that fly the president. They past every test. They did very well, which makes sense, doesn’t it?

Good looking guy, better looking than Tom Cruise. I said, “Captain, are you sure we’re okay? We’re landing, right?” There’s not a thing. We’re landing, and there’s open space. It’s dead dark. We’re landing at night, no lights in the plane and no lights on runways. I’m looking up and I’m used to it, I do it a lot, I like to watch it. I’m saying, “Captain, are we okay?” Then he goes, “900,” that means 900 feet, that’s very low, “800, 700, 600, 500, 400,” I’m saying, “Captain, are we okay? I don’t see any lights up there,” we’re ready to land, a few hundred feet over, they’re going, “300, 200.” “Captain, we got to make it, captain.” Boom, we land, no lights on the runway, no lights in the plane, totally dark. These guys, they’re genius. The equipment is genius, but they’re genius. I say, “That was a close one.”

In fact, I told my wife how brave I was. That’s my form of bravery. I don’t know, that captain probably just didn’t think too much of me, but it was a little disconcerting. We land and we get out and there’s a good looking general. “What’s your name?” He says, “Cane, sir. General Cane.” I said, “Good, that’s nice. What’s your first name?” “Raisin.” I said, “What?” “My name’s Raisin Cane.” I said, “You mean like a raisin or raisin?” He said, “Either way is okay with me, sir. My name’s Raisin Cane.” I said, “You’re the kind of guy I’m looking for.” Because we had Mattis saying it was going to take three years to get rid of ISIS. Mattis, one of the world’s most overrated generals, I would say Milley’s in that same category.

Here’s the purpose of this story, we have great generals, great people, great military. Then we have the television guys, they’re not good, but they’re not nearly as important. This man takes me inside into a bomb shelter and a real war place and he’s with another general and then he’s with a drill sergeant who’s central casting. There’s nobody in Hollywood that looks like this guy, the crew cut, the face, the muscles, he’s going to take anybody on and he’s perfect human being. I said, “I wish I had arms like that soldier.” He said, “You could if you work out.” I said, “No, thanks. It’s not worth that much.” I said, “It’s too late for that.”

But we had a good meeting. I said, “Let me ask you a question, general. I’m hearing it’s going to take three years to get rid of ISIS. What do you think?” I said, “They’re wrong, sir.” He said, “Well, General Mattis told me three years.” “He’s wrong, sir. He’s wrong.” “Then how long would it take?” “We can do it in three weeks, sir.” I said, “What?” This is Raisin Cane. I said, “What are you talking about?” “We can do it in three weeks and we’ll have some time left over, sir.” I said, “How come my Washington generals are telling me three years and you’re telling me … “Well, sir, they came here and they told us how to do it.” I said, “Well, why didn’t you do it the way you wanted?” “Because that’s not my job, sir, I have to take orders from Washington.” I said, “Aren’t you allowed to correct them or fight them or recommend?” “Sir, I really can’t do that. I really have to do what they say. They come in, whether they know what they’re talking about or not, that’s what we have to do, sir. They’re out superiors.”

I said, “I don’t know, we may have to change that system a little but,” but I said, “I don’t know.” He said, “Why can you do it?” “Well, sir, they had us going from this base and we’re very far away from ISIS and by the time the plane got there, we had to turn back and come back. We hardly had any fuel left and we have many different places that we can take off, and I’d take off from every one of them, sir. I’d hit them from the left. I’d hit them from the right. I’d knock the shit out them, sir. We’d hit them all over. We’d hit them from the top and from the bottom. They wouldn’t know what the hell was happening.” “You think you can do it in three weeks?” “Yes, sir. Less time than that, sir.”

I said, “I’m going to have to go back to Washington and think about this, Raisin Cane.” I did, and I spoke to him on Monday. I said, “You sure about that, Raisin Cane?” “Yeah, I’m sure about that, sir.” I said, “We’ll call you back,” and sure as hell, we called back a short number of weeks afterwards. “Sir, they’re all finished except there’s a large group out there, a very large group and I’d like permission to finish it off, sir.” I said, “Well, these are human beings.” “No, sir, they’re animals. These aren’t-

And he said, “Well, these are human beings.” “No, sir. They’re animals. These aren’t human beings. These are tough, hardened people, sir.” And I said, “Well, let’s see what you can do, [inaudible 00:42:11], maybe you can talk about of it.” And he said, “You can’t do that, sir.” I said, “Will they surrender, maybe surrender?” “They don’t know what surrender means, sir. They have no idea. When you say the surrender, these are not people that surrender.” I said, “You know what? Take some of those F-18s or F-16s or F-15s or F-35s, whatever the hell you’re flying and you fly them over them and do it for a day or so. Let’s see how they react.” He said, “I can tell you now, but I’m going to do that, sir.” And he did. Calls back, he said, “Sir, Just give me the order please.” Said, “What happened?”

“Nothing, sir. Zero. They have no fear, sir. They’re a different kind of person, if you want to call them a person at all.” I said, “All right, General, I guess you have to do your job, don’t you?” “I do my job, sir.” And that was the end of ISIS. We destroyed ISIS, the entire ISIS caliphate. Think of that. We have great generals. We have the most incredible military, which I totally rebuilt. We had planes that were older. The grandfather, you’ve heard, the grandfathers are flying planes, we’re flying planes that now the grandchildren are flying same exact plane. All of that stuff’s been replaced. It’s all new or it’s coming in, but we did two and a half trillion and we’re very proud of it. And I tell you this, though, because we have incredible soldiers. We have unbelievable, tough, brave soldiers and not what you see. It’s not what we did in Afghanistan.

Most of the military when they saw that, they moved the soldiers out first. You could ask a child, “What do you do?” I told a story where I asked a five year old child, “What would you do?” I said, “We have this situation. We have soldiers. Would you move them out first? Or would you move them out after our American people come in and our hostages come in and after we take out our $85 billion worth of equipment.” The child says, “I’d leave the soldiers to last, sir.” And I said, “You’re right about that.” But these people didn’t do that. They took the soldiers out first and that’s when everything happened. It was a disaster. It was probably the most embarrassing moment, in my opinion, in the history of the United States. And we’ve had a lot of pretty big embarrassments over the last year and a half, including at the border. The border’s so bad.

But I think it was the most, single most embarrassing. And I don’t think that Putin would’ve gone in had he not seen that, even with them there. I think when he saw that, he said that’s gross incompetence. I can finally do the Ukraine thing because Trump is not here. Trump is here. If Trump is here, he’s not doing it. But I think that’s what happened. He saw the incompetence. He saw what happened. He saw our military. That’s not our real military what happened there. We lost 13, great, great young people. And I met many of the parents and they are just devastated because that should have never happened. And all of those horribly wounded soldiers, horribly, horribly wounded soldiers should have never happened. We recognized Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and built and opened the American embassy in just three months.

Recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. They weren’t even expecting that one. I got them that. They were working on that fulfill 52 years. They’d have meetings once a year. The planes would fly in. They’d fly out. Just a waste of time. I got it done immediately. Created peace in the Middle East with the historic Abraham Accords. And we brought our troops back home. We brought them back home.

And most importantly, I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which would’ve I think meant perhaps the end of Israel. I think it meant perhaps the end of Israel. That was the most important of all. And now they want to put us in a new Iran deal and it’s just not even believable. It’s not even believable. And you know that representing us on certain other deals happens to be Russia and China. You know about that. We have Russia and China representing us on a certain deal. How do you think that’s going to work out? Do you think that’s going to work out good? It’s not even, believe me, this stuff isn’t even believable. They’re our primary representative. With the help of many people in this room, we saved our country once and together, we swear that we will save our country again.

Because our country is going to hell. The critical job of institutions, such as Heritage to lay the groundwork. And Heritage does such an incredible job at that. And I’m telling you, with Kevin and the staff, and I met so many of them now, I took pictures with among the most handsome, beautiful people I’ve ever seen. I didn’t like that picture. If you could lose that picture, please would you Kevin? But this is a great… No, he says I won’t do that. But this is a great group. And they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America and that’s coming. That’s coming. Because nobody can stand what’s happening right now. Only a fool, only a fool or somebody that hates our country could like what’s happening right now.

Never been in this position before and already we know a very big part of our agenda. Every policy of the administration, you take a look at this whole thing coming out of the Biden group, the Biden administration should be quickly reversed by a new Congress. And every policy of the Trump administration should be immediately restored on day one when the next president sets foot in the Oval Office or even better or before. All they had to do is go to the beach. Just go to the beach. The border was, Tom, the border was the best in the history of recorded history of the border. Everything was good. We had guys like Homan. They have very gentle people, very nice people. I don’t even think they’re nice people. They’re causing massive death. They’re causing massive, massive death. You have to see these caravans.

People are coming up, they’re dying. The women are being raped at a level that nobody’s ever seen before. It’s a horrible thing that’s happening. But that all means restoring energy independence, ending catch and release, stopping the socialist spending spree, confirming pro Constitution judges. We had a thing called Remain in Mexico. How good is that? How simple a term is that? Just like Right to Try is a great term, Remain in Mexico, meaning they couldn’t come into our country. Mexico, you think that’s easy getting that from Mexico? Everyone laughed when I said, “No, we’re going to have them remain in Mexico.” They said, “Sir, you got to be kidding. We’ve been trying that for 40 years. Are you kidding, sir.” They actually, were they thinking about an article 25 when I said that? They don’t think about it now the 25th amendment. They don’t think about that now at all.

They never mentioned the 25th, but they would mention anytime I had a great idea, 25th amendment. There’s something wrong with it. That’s why I took the aptitude test and I aced it according to doc Ronny and a whole group of doctors. I aced that aptitude test. And that’s a test that even some geniuses in this room will not do that well on. I will tell you. It’s not that easy a test. They show the first one or two questions. They’re pretty easy, Sean. You know the first ones? When you get up to question number 28, then 29 and 30, you got to be okay. Believe me.

But it is amazing. When I did that, it all stopped. Then they said, “He’s a dictator.” First they said, not too smart. Then I did that, they said, well, that all went away. I really did that. I said, “Doc, Ronny, I got to take a test.” He said, You know what the problem is, sir, this is essentially a public place. One of the great hospitals of the world.” He said, “But you have a series of doctors sitting there and all. If you do badly, the word’s going to get out.” I said, “I know that. How tough is it?” He said, “It’s very tough.” I said, “Ooh, let’s give it a shot.” And I did it in front of a panel and we aced it. And the one person said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone ace it.” Isn’t that nice? So all of that stuff stopped, Steve, it was very nice.

Okay. But then they made me a dictator instead. In other words, I don’t know, which would you rather be, a dumb person or a dictator? I don’t know. Perhaps a dictator would be better. I don’t want to be a dumb person. With the right leadership, we can erase the Biden nightmare. We can rescue the American dream faster than anyone ever thought possible. But we cannot be satisfied merely to turn back the clock to 2020 or 2019. The potential of our movement and the Republican party itself is so much greater than that. We need an organization like yours working on the next generation of policies for a post-Biden, post-COVID world. And if I didn’t have confidence in your new leadership and all of the people that I’ve met and so many that I knew of, but didn’t know, I wouldn’t be here tonight.

I’d be sitting home, enjoying myself. Now I’m working my ass off and enjoying myself. But I want to congratulate Madam, Chairman. I want to congratulate you and Kevin on everything that you’re doing to encourage new thinking, embrace new directions and keep Heritage at the vanguard of the conservative movement. And the conservative movement is making tremendous strides and everyone knows it. And every mistake they make is one thing good, they realize that we got it right. One of the most urgent tasks, not only for our movement, but for our country is to decisively defeat the climate hysteria hoax. The ocean is rising. It’s rising. It’s coming. It’s within 300 year years, we’re going to gain one, 100th of an inch in the ocean and have a little more beachfront property. It’s going to be a terrible thing. No, it’s a hoax. The whole thing is a total… It’s so crazy.

And just in a simple way, China has a very dirty country. India is very dirty, air is very dirty, water is very dirty. In Japan even, and many others, they dump in the ocean. Russia has a very dirty country. You look at arctic ice, it’s black. They call it black ice. Do you know how it got black? Factories. So we’re going to have nice and clean. The problem is the air goes up and then it starts to move. It moves. The air goes up in China and it moves. It takes about a week and a half and it moves across the Pacific and it hits Los Angeles. May it be Los Angeles. But it hits our country. And they dump their garbage in the ocean and the ocean tides flow and they hit guess what? Our west coast. And did you ever see the tons and tons and tons of garbage that we pull out?

It comes from Asia. It comes from India, comes from all over, a lot comes from China, tremendous from China. They dump in the ocean. It floats over to the United States. And then we clean our air and we clean everything. How stupid are we? How stupid are we? It goes up and then we say, “There’s something wrong with our air. What’s wrong?” In the meantime, our factories can’t perform. They want us to use wind, wind, intermittent wind. I always say when I was running and we ran a great race, we did much better the second time that we did the first time, much, much better by many millions of votes, but we’re running and I tell the little, it’s sad, it’s a joke, but it’s not a joke. “Darling, I’d like to watch the president tonight on television.” “No you can’t. The wind isn’t blowing. The wind isn’t blowing. There’s no television tonight, darling, the wind isn’t blowing.”

And by the way, our house went down to about 30% of the value because we’re near a windmill that makes a lot of noise, kills all our birds and ruins a landscape. Other than that, it’s a wonderful thing for the environment. These people are crazy. But they’re radical climate people and I don’t believe they mean it. They can’t mean it because it’s too easy. They can’t mean it. The radical lefts fear mongering about climate and our future is no longer just scaring American youth, it’s destroying America’s economy, weakening our society and eviscerating our middle class. It’s really hurting us. And we don’t have the power with green energy. I’m all for it, but we don’t have the power to fire up our plants. And I took you out of the Paris hoax Accord and it was costing us trillions, trillions and trillions of dollars.

It sounded nice. The Paris Climate Accord, that was the good part. The rest of it was a disaster. And by the way, China doesn’t kick in for another 14 years. Russia kicked in at the dirtiest point. Russia, they’re having a hard time, but they kicked in at the dirtiest point. India hardly kicks in at all. But us, we kick in immediately and we have to pay a lot of money to other countries because they’re developing. Like China is a developing country. India is a developing country. This is the craziest deal. Anyway, I ended it and now I understand they’re going right back into it, except it’s going to be even worse than the one I ended. The deranged ideology of the Green New Deal is a massive self inflicted economic wound. It was developed by a young woman who doesn’t know a thing about the environment. She knows a lot about con jobs, but she doesn’t know about the… I wonder if she goes home, AOC plus three. You know AOC plus three? It’s AOC plus her three people. And they’re getting worse and worse and they’re hurting our country very badly. I wonder if they go home and laugh when they’re in a room together. What do you think, Sean? Do you think they go home and say “What a bunch of stupid fools.” They’re believing some… I don’t think she ever took a class on the climate. I think she knows nothing about it. She wasn’t a good student anyway at the classes she did take. It’s helping fuel runaway inflation. It’s causing cost of food, cars, housing, and raising a family to absolutely skyrocket. And perhaps worst of all, it’s putting our country at the mercy of Iran, Russia, Venezuela.

That’s our new source of oil. We’re going to get it from Venezuela. We’re not going to take it right from there. We’re standing on liquid gold. We’re going to get it from Venezuela. It’s not even believable. All the while we’re sitting on this really incredible wealth. We have our own wealth. We have more than anybody in the world, especially with [inaudible 00:56:37]. We have much more under our feet than any other country in the world and we’re going to make deals with OPEC. We’re back to OPEC again. You never heard the word OPEC in four years, right, Steve? Four years, nobody ever… In fact, they were going out of business. They had a we’re going out of business sign up in their door, wherever the hell they’re located. We are going out of business because of President Trump. Now they’re back in business at a level and they don’t want to do anything.

Can you imagine Biden, I don’t think it’s him they called, I don’t think so. But he has somebody called, no, I don’t think he has anybody call. Somebody calls and they talk to OPEC. OPEC isn’t doing anything. We won’t send you more. We’re not going to lower the price. We’re not going to do anything to help you. “Oh, okay. Good. Thank you very much.” Can you believe that we put up with this stuff? It’s hard to believe.

But they were effectively out of business. We didn’t hear that term OPEC for four years plus. But just as they did with the COVID lockdowns, the radical left is advancing hysterical predictions and catastrophic power gains, power plays to control our entire society. That’s what they want to do. Do you notice the masks are back again? A Trump judge ruled the other day, meaning Trump appointed, very proud of her. But a Trump appointed judge ruled the masks have to go. But already they’re starting again because they want to have masks and mandates for the next election so they can cheat like hell and they really want to have it for the 24 election because it’s the only way they can win.

I’m telling you, with their policy, they’re not a 50/50 party. I believe that. I believe that with their policies of horror show policies, all of the horrible things that they want and do with the raising of taxes. Your taxes would go up through the roof if they ever allowed it to happen. So far, the Republicans are able to hold the Trump tax cuts. It’s a great thing to see. But when you see all of the things with the sanctuary cities and all of the stuff they have and defund the police, these are just not take away your guns in Texas, no oil in Texas and no God in Texas. And then you hear “Trump’s going to have a tough race in Texas.”

We won in a landslide by the way. But they were saying “It’s very close in Texas before the election, there’s going to be a very tight race in Texas.” I said, “Wait a minute. They don’t want guns. They don’t want God. And they don’t want oil and I’m going to have a tight race?” It didn’t turn out to be a tight race. You know why they say that? If they can cheat enough, people won’t be that surprised. Does that make sense? Because they will try. They did it in Pennsylvania. They did it in Georgia. They did it in Arizona. They did it in Wisconsin. Did you see Wisconsin? Where almost everybody in the nursing home voted and yet, historically, almost nobody voted in the nursing. You know why? Because they have other problems. They’re not looking to vote. And people came up, the daughters and the sons, they said “My mother’s comatose. She hasn’t spoken in years. She did not vote. You have her down for voting.”

This happened many times, sons and daughters and all. They didn’t vote. But they had almost a hundred percent of the people in nursing homes voted. But over the last long period of time, the number was a very small number. Now it’s so, and you have a justice Gableman up there, highly respected, one of the most highly respected people in Wisconsin and he’s having none of it. He’s having none of it. In other states too. Look at what’s happening now in Pennsylvania. They got it. Conservative leaders, think tanks and intellectuals must be fearless in calling out the lunacy of what you’re seeing and what you’re being led into. The world is not ending. Our future is not dying. We have to defeat the climate hoaxsters once and for all. They said we only had 12 years to live.

Donald Trump: (01:00:30)
That was four years ago. Remember? They said our country has 12 years. And that was, like I said, “Oh, what happened? What happened?” They said, “It’s the climate.” I said “Really? Oh, that doesn’t make sense.” So that means we only have eight years. That’s ridiculous. The real problem is with nuclear weapons, we may only have six months. You talk about global warming. That’s the real global warming. Not that global warming hoax that they don’t even use it anymore. They call it climate change. Remember they used to call it global warming? The planet is warm, but that wasn’t working out too well because a lot of places were extremely cool. So they were getting killed. We were getting killed and then they changed it all of a sudden, climate change. Because you can’t miss on climate change. It can go up, it can go down.

It can go 15 different directions. It’s climate change. It’s killing us. Now these people have got a lot of problems. And another key priority for our movement is to develop policy to end the tidal wave of violent crime in Democrat cities. In addition to fighting the real corruption in our country, the FBI must be reformed to once again and I know so many people in the FBI is so great, but we want them to be a crime fighting organization. We live in an age when transnational gangs, you know all of these gangs, you take a look at all of the gangs coming out of South America and they head up going into South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, New York, Long Island, all over the place.

They’re wreaking havoc with impunity. Street gangs are murdering our citizens and murdering our young people, killing people with knives because it’s more painful, killing 16 year old girls, two of them walking across the street because they didn’t want to shoot them because they wanted it to last the pain, and conducting organized robberies and massive networks of drug dealers and traffickers are poisoning our youth by the hundreds of thousands. And we had them with ICE. This ICE, Tom Homan, I have to tell you, and Mark, ICE is unbelievable. They would run into a nest of these guys that were brutal killers and they’d do it like every day. We have some very tough people. Definitely not you, you don’t want to do it. I know you. But neither do I, don’t feel bad. But these are incredible people. These are tough, strong people who love our country and if they don’t do it, nobody else will. Nobody.

… strong people who love our country, and if they don’t do it, nobody else will. Nobody in this room wants to do it. Nobody. If the FBI spent less time trying to take down Republicans, because that’s what’s happening, they might have really the resources. And I think they will have to liberate our country from the plague, because I think most of the people in the FBI agree with us. I really do. I know so many of them. I really believe they agree with us. A lot of people don’t know what the hell is going on there. As one example, Congress and the FBI should be working together to ensure that we find, arrest, detain and, where applicable, deport every single sex trafficker in the United States, of which we have many. We got a lot of them out. We got a lot of them out.

Another urgent task for America first conservatives is to design and implement a detailed national strategy to bring back our critical supply chains. Did you ever think you were going to have that problem? I did a book. It was a very successful book. Our Journey Together sold hundreds of the thousands of copies. We go back to the printer. We need more. “Sir, I don’t have any paper.” He’s one of the largest printers in the country. “Sir, I don’t have ink. I don’t have glue and I don’t have leather.” Other than that, he’s doing very well. I said, “What’s the problem?” He said, “I’ve been in business 42 years. I never thought I’d say it. I cannot get paper. I cannot get ink or glue. I can’t get anything.” The supply chains and you see it all over. We have empty shelves.

In all fairness, this was never even a topic. I think we never even discussed that topic. There was no topic. Supply chains? Everybody had supply. Now you don’t have it because they’ve so screwed up our country. But the manufacturing bases of American [inaudible 01:04:43] are just different. It’s just different. It’s so different than it was just a year and a half ago. Between COVID, China, the supply chain shortages and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, all of which would not have happened. The COVID, we were doing so well with the others, would not have happened. We’ve been given one glaring warning sign after another. Economic self sufficiency is no longer an option. It’s an urgent national security imperative. Has to be, Kevin, has to be. If we’re to maintain our own sovereignty and control of our own destiny, our future must be built right here in America. We have to build right here with American heart and with American hands. We will not be able to stand up for our values and interests abroad a very long, long period of time.

And it will take a long period of time if we don’t build up our critical industries here at home, and I worked very hard to do that with the steel industry. The steel industry is dead. Many industries dying, and we got them going again. We had to do a lot of big things and we had to do a lot of things with regard to taxation and tariffs on China and other countries and it worked. So many people in the steel industry say, “Thank you, sir. You saved my business. I was dying. I was dying. I couldn’t have lasted another two years if you didn’t tax all of the excess dump steel that was being sent into our country.”

In addition, conservatives need a detailed plan and bold new initiatives to reclaim every single inch of ground that has been aggressively conquered and occupied by the woke left, and they are making progress, but we’re going to stop it quick. We must get critical race theory and far left gender ideology out of our schools, out of our military, out of our places of business. Out of our court system, out of our criminal justice system and out of every part of our federal state and local governments, and I did that. I rode it out, but Biden came in. I believe the first day, he did an executive order, put it right back in. We had it all gone.

At the same time, we have to stand up for parental rights. For two generations, we have allowed the radical left to indoctrinate America’s children from kindergarten to college and enough is enough. Every mom and dad in America must be given the right to send their child to public, private, charter or religious schools of their choice. And no teacher should ever be allowed to teach transgenderism to our children without affirmative parental consent. And men should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports.

Did you see the swimmer? The swimmer? So for 11 years, this record stood and one young woman, she was going to break it by one hundredth of a second. She was going to do it, and then this guy comes along, nice guy. He broke it by 38 seconds. In fact, he swam so fast by her, it was like she got wind burned while she was swimming. The greatest is the weightlifters though. They had a record. Sean, they had a record. This one woman is so strong. She’s got it. It’s 208 pounds. It was going up and they put a little tiny piece here, a little there. It stood for 18 years, I believe. And she almost had it, didn’t quite make it. This guy comes along. Bing. We said, “Have you lifted before?” “No, I haven’t.” Really? It’s a disgrace. We cannot have men participate in women’s sports, and the scary part is they don’t even want to talk about it. The swimmers that are getting absolutely clobbered are afraid to say anything, because they think it’s politically incorrect. So I’m the king of being politically incorrect, and I’ll tell you, “It’s not right.”

And we need a food and drug administration that cracks down hard or an off-label use of drugs such as puberty blockers. These are all drugs that nobody’s ever even thought about. Opposite sex hormone drugs. It’s a disgrace that big pharma is profiting from pushing this medical malpractice, and it’s a travesty that Biden’s HHS, and mine did a phenomenal job, far from stopping this abuse is instead trying to force these chemicals down the throats of our children and in the veins of our children, in addition to a complete overhaul of the FDA. And I did a good job. It was taking 12 years to get something approved. I got it down pretty much to five, but five is still too much, and that’s why the right to try was so great. But five is still too much. We also need a fundamental reform of the CDC that you read so much about. We must return it to being a scientific agency focused on preventing the next pandemic, and hopefully that won’t happen, rather than a political agency trying to prolong and last the one that we have.

The path back to American unity is not to surrender the culture wars. The path back to national unity is to decisively win the culture wars. Thank you. That includes winning the war to restore free speech in America. The most important job of any president when it comes to democracy is safeguarding our democracy at home, which we are losing to collusion between big government and big business. No longer can anyone claim that these are just normal private companies. They are operating as a coordinated arm of a corrupt ruling class and a very corrupt media. We’re going to need majority regulatory and legal changes under the next administration. Has to happen. We do not have free speech any longer. If you don’t have free speech, you don’t have a free country. If we don’t have borders, we don’t have a free country, and we don’t have either. Finally, conservative public and policy organizations must devote themselves to solving an existential threat to our very way of life. We must systematically restore the integrity of our elections.

If anyone still needs convincing that the 2020 election was rigged, there are two very explosive new documentaries that show, once and for all, exactly how parts of it were done. These are just parts of it, but they’re conclusive. Citizens United has a brand new, just out, film that details the over $400 million, 417 to be somewhat exact, that Mark Zuckerberg, another beauty, spent to buy local elections. Most of that money, as you know, went to democrat areas. And in two weeks, a big blockbuster, another documentary, this one by Dinesh D’Souza will show irrefutable video and digital proof from True the Vote. Incredible women. A large group of incredible women that went around and analyzed tapes and every other thing you can… Pings from your cell phones and they have it all on tape. Of ballot boxes being illegally stuffed with untold numbers, millions and millions of ballots and absentee ballots. The truth is that I ran twice. I won twice and now we may have to do it again. We may have to do it again.

No president has ever gotten even near the number of votes we have, almost 75 million votes. The election was corrupt. The evidence keeps coming and we are watching it very, very closely as it comes in, and it’s coming in bigger and bigger and better. And many of the people, Republican local leaders that were very complicit, very weak on the subject, they’re getting tough. Like in Pennsylvania, they’re getting very tough. In Wisconsin, they’re getting very tough. They see what happened and they get it. We cannot let this ever happen again, and the radical left is trying to do it again with the masks and the lockdowns. We’re just not going to sit back and watch. We won’t let it happen. In 2020, they use COVID among many other things to rig the election, but they’re trying to do it again. We can’t let it happen again.

The masks, the mandates and then the mail-in ballots. You can never have a secure election with mail-in ballots. You can’t have it, doesn’t work. Thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions and millions of ballots in California, tens of millions of ballots shipped to everybody. Many people, probably people in this room, less in this room, because you’re not Democrats or you’re not radical left, but millions and millions of ballots being sent out. Many people got more than one, more than two, more than three, more than five. Many of the people probably in this room. Is there a show of hands in this room? That’s it. Don’t be ashamed. Not Tom Homan. You didn’t get? Tom Homan, if he ever got… I thought Tom raised his hand. If Tom ever got, there’d be a lot of trouble.

Speaker 4: (01:14:06)
[inaudible 01:14:06].

I know that. That’s why they don’t send them to Republican [inaudible 01:14:09]. Republicans will not be able to win elections if we continue the mail-in ballots, and if we have weeks and weeks of voting. They have weeks of voting. The voting takes forever. They have storage areas where they put the ballots. A lot of things are happening to those ballots during all those weeks. We should have same day voting on paper ballots. Same day voting. We used to do it. We could do it very easily. And I hope you’re watching France, where they are having one day voting on paper ballots. There’s no conflicts. It’s very simple, very nice. It’s working out very well. I don’t know if you like what’s happening, but it’s working out very well. And other places have paper ballots and one day voting. They don’t store them for 38 days, and then you get in. “Gee, where are those boxes?” It’s a disgrace. We’re like a third world country when it comes to elections and voting, and I think a few things that you’ve learned during this administration.

Number one, our elections are very dishonest. Number two, the media is very dishonest. Very, very dishonest. And that we also have horrible, horrible borders and our country is being poisoned by prisoners, gang members and so many others that are coming into our country, and nobody wants to talk about it, but I talk about it. I don’t know if it’s a good thing to talk or a bad… I did such a good job on the border. When I first got elected in 2016, one of the reasons was I talked about the corrupt open border and all of the problems that we’re having with the rape, with all of the drugs and everything that was happening on the border, and I got elected.

I did such a good job that in 2020, it was no longer an issue and then quickly it became an issue again. But I did such a good job that it was no longer an issue. So in one way, I was proud of that, but I did get many more votes than I got the first time. Remember, we got almost 12 million more votes that we did the first time, more than any other president. So I guess maybe that wasn’t that much of a factor, but we didn’t even talk about that under any circumstance, because nobody cared about the border anymore because…

That’s the problem. When you do too good a job, they don’t give you credit for a long term. They take it away from you. So the border was no longer a problem. So you do too good a job. Sometimes that’s not good, but we also do the right thing for our country. We did a great job and it was not even an issue in 2020 until a year later, and when it became a very big issue. Now, it’s a bigger issue than it ever was, because we’ve never had borders so bad. Every person here knows full well that there is a vast and lavishly funded network of left wing activist groups that do nothing at all but to try and riddle our voting laws with gaping loopholes engineered to facilitate massive fraud and you know it, unless you’re very foolish, I want to be nice, or dumb.

Meanwhile, with a few notable exceptions, the conservative movement has spent comparatively little money and little effort to counteract and defeat these corrupt criminal efforts and our country is paying a very steep price. We cannot ignore it. We have to confront it. There can be no more third world elections in the United States of America. These are third world elections. We have to get to the bottom of what happened in 2020. That’s important or it’ll happen again. Never forget, we are not the ones trying to undermine American democracy. We are the ones trying to save American democracy. So important. The only way the radical left has ever gained power in this country is by deception and by deceit. It’s the only way because people are too smart to believe the kind of things that they’re selling for decades. They lie to the American people about what they really believe.

They lied about what policies they would pursue. They flooded the airwaves with biased coverage. They fabricated hoaxes and pushed fake news. How about the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax? How about the Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine hoax? How about the Mueller fake investigation? How about all of the things that we’ve gone through and still we’ve done more than just about any other president in the history of our country, and this administration has been amazing at what we had to put up with. The other day, the New York Times admitted that they did not pursue Hunter Biden, and the reason, I think we can say, is because it would’ve had a huge impact on the election, so they admitted it. It’s a terrible thing. I suspect they’ll be sued for that. What they did is a terrible thing, but it’s not only them. It’s other media.

It’s almost all of the radical left media. They mutilated our history. They took over our schools. They rewrote our constitution with left wing judges and they cheated and cheated and cheated and then they stole our elections. But now everything has changed. We are in a very different world because we’ve seen it and we’ve seen what happens and we’ve seen it actually take place because the radical left and their partners in the media have blown their cover. Their mask is off. Their credibility is shot and no one trusts them any longer. No one believes in them and they have nowhere left to hide. They’ve exposed themselves by doing such a bad job. Right now, in these next few years, we have the biggest opportunity for the conservative movement since Heritage was founded.

Bigger than 1980, bigger than 1984, bigger than 1994, Kevin. Bigger than ever before and much bigger than even 2016, one of the great days and years in the history of our country and I hope you all agree. Now is the time to build a new American consensus. Thank you. And it’s a consensus on the ruins of the radical Democrat party. Now is the time for our movement to lead a rebirth of national pride, a restoration of America’s strength, a Renaissance of American achievement and a resurgence of American common sense because it’s all about common sense after all, isn’t it? When they say, “Are you a conservative? Are you a liberal? What are you?” Really, it’s common sense, no matter how you define it. It’s all common sense solutions to problems and things that really do make our country great. We need confidence and we need resolve. America, our country, has lost its confidence. I’ve never seen anything like it. Our country has lost its confidence and that’s a very terrible thing, but we’re going to bring its confidence back and we’re going to bring it back very quickly. Now is the time, not only to make America great again, but to make America greater and more inspiring, more ambitious, more vibrant and more united than ever before. That is our vision. That is our mission so that each of you here tonight, I ask you to think big, dream bigger, aim higher, get ready to work, get ready to fight and get ready to win, win, win. Let’s go save our country. Let’s go make history.

Let’s go build a legacy of freedom, liberty and greatness that will endure for centuries and centuries to come. I want to thank Heritage. I want to thank Madame Chairman, you. I would like to thank the entire group that you’ve so brilliantly put together, and I think tremendous things are going to be coming out of Heritage. I know how wealthy the people in this room are, so start shelling out to Heritage, okay? I had to say that. I had to say that, Kevin. I’m sorry. Shell out because ultimately, it’s all about the success of our country and that’s what they want. They want our country to be great again. They want our country safe and successful again. Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Thank you.

Donald Trump Delivers Keynote Speech in Florida 4/21/22 Transcript

Other Related Transcripts

Stay updated.