Donald Trump & Greg Abbott Texas Border Security Visit Speech Transcript

Speaker 1: (03:19)
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the [inaudible 00:03:22] president of the United States. Donald J. Trump and Governor Greg Abbott.

Governor Abbott: (04:29)
Howdy everybody, and let me tell you, this is governor Greg Abbott and join me in welcoming back to Texas, a great friend to Texas, President Donald Trump. He’s always been a great friend and a lover of the people of Texas, but I got to tell you what, he did more than any other president has ever done to secure our border. And we’ve seen what’s happened in the aftermath of his presidency with the Biden administration. You look at this border, right? And you look what you see, you see an unfinished border. This is Biden’s fault because president Biden is not continuing what President Trump began. President Biden needs to start right there and finish building the border wall that President Trump began putting back up.

As you can tell, President, it’s far different than it was when you were president of, but it’s more than just the wall. It’s the consequences of what has occurred because of the lack of a wall. You get these numbers because look at year over year, the increase in the number of people coming across the border from last April to this April is almost 1000%. The percent of apprehensions from last May to this May is increased almost 800%. And we are having people coming, not just from three or four countries across the globe, people are coming across our border more than 150 countries across the entire globe. It is time to make sure we seal this border and close it down.

The difference is the open border policies that the Biden administration has put in place, but that difference is felt most harshly among our communities, among the families who live here in Texas, as well as across the entire United States of America. Because including the people coming across the border are cartels and gangs and smugglers and human traffickers. And we have the Texas Department of Public Safety that we’ve launched what’s called Operation Lonestar and the Texas Department of Public Safety, they are stepping up to assist in trying to secure our border. And now we need to take a moment and we need to express our gratitude for the men and women of the Texas to Department of Public Safety, who are working to do their part to secure our border. We have deployed about 1000 Texas Department of Public Safety Officers, and on top of that, we’ve also deployed Texas National Guard and they also deserve a big round of applause for the Texas National Guard for everything that they are doing to help secure our border.

So in just the past few months, the Texas Department of Public Safety has arrested almost 1800 criminals who have come across the border. And in addition to that, apprehended almost 40000 illegal immigrants who crossed that border. Also, the Texas Department of Public Safety has raided 41 stash houses. And get this, they’ve apprehended such a dramatic increase in fentanyl, it is a 2000% increase in fentanyl they’ve apprehended for the first six months of this year, compared to the first six months of last year. This fentanyl is deadly and it’s dangerous and it’s going throughout communities across the entire State of Texas, as well as communities in other states of the United States and the Biden administration is doing nothing to slow the spread of deadly fentanyl across our country. And that is exactly why we need the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard on our border.

But get this, this is a story I’m going to tell you that was tweeted yesterday by a Border Patrol officer about an arrest they made yesterday. This happened yesterday. Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol agents arrested seven criminal immigrants. Four were gang members, two have been convicted of sex crimes, one had been convicted of negligent homicide. There is a 500% increase in criminal migrants apprehended coming across the border. That must be stopped.

And let me tell you who’s trying to help stop it. And he is. However, we need to recognize somebody else’s trying to stop it. And that is the men and women who serve in the Texas Legislature. Thank you all for what you do, because here’s what they did. They appropriated more than a billion dollars for Texas to step up and do the federal government’s job and to secure the border. And then on top of that, there was an additional appropriation of almost a quarter of a billion dollars for Texas to begin building the Texas border wall, and that process has already begun. We’ve already begun clearing out land, acquiring land, and we’re going to begin the process of putting the border wall up, just like-

You want to begin the process of putting the border wall up just like President Trump did, just like what President Biden should be doing. But let me go back to one final point. We need to emphasize exactly why we’re doing this. We’re doing this because our fellow Texans and our fellow Americans, they’re being threatened every single day. I’ve talked to people in this region all the way up to Del Rio. Their lives and their property and their families are being overrun with the people who are coming across the border. I cannot tell you the number of people have told me that they’ve had guns brandished in their faces. Their children live in fear about just playing in their own yard. Neighborhoods overrun, properties being broken into, ranches are being destroyed. And the federal government and the Biden administration does not care about it. As a result, Texas has to step up and protect the safety of our fellow Texans and we will continue to do so. But we know that the person who led the charge to get us there in the first place, a person who loves Texans, who loves America, he puts Texans and Americans first, and that is the man who began to build the wall, the man who did more to secure the border than anybody and any president ever has and that is, President Donald J. Trump.

Donald Trump: (11:26)
Thank you Greg. Thank you. What a great partner you’ve been for four years and we worked together. I endorsed your last week very strongly. I say complete and total. I gave him a complete and total endorsement, and I’m glad to see that you went up like a rocket ship. You were up high anyway, but now you’re really high. And I guess a lot of people that were thinking about running, they say, “We’re never going to beat this guy,” and they shouldn’t be able to beat you. You have done a great job and it’s an honor to be with you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

We have the largest contingent of Congress ever at one point. I wasn’t going to read your names because there’s too many of you, unless you want me to. Should I read them Billy? Tell me. Should I read them? Your name is not even on here, but I got my guy there. But I want just thank everybody. I think I should really. First, I have to start. Unrelated, a friend of mine, the head of my campaign in Texas, remember they said, “Oh, Texas will be very close.” Well, it wasn’t close. We won in a landslide and you have a Lieutenant governor who’s been a friend of mine from day one, from the day we met him and he’s gotten more gray over the years. Okay.

In fact, over four years, you’ve gotten a lot grayer and you look fantastic and you did a fantastic job for me and Dan Patrick, I want to thank you very much. What a job you did. What a job you did. And Ken Paxton, I call you an activist. You are active and you helped us a lot. And if you did the same job that they did in Georgia and couple of other places, we might not have won Texas, but we won because we had strong laws and strong access, people had access, but people that was supposed to vote had access and the job you did, I’d like to congratulate you and Dan and the governor because the election was an incredible thing. It ran smooth and we won like we was supposed to win as opposed to other states that we won, but they don’t show that way. And as you know, the border was a big, big factor for the first election. Somebody said, “How big was the border?” I said, it was so big that it helped me win the first election and we did such a good job that frankly, it wasn’t a factor in the second election. That’s all it was.

And yet, remember we got 12 million more votes in the second election. So with or without… Thank you, Lauren. I appreciate that. But with or without the border, we won at a level that nobody’s ever seen before and we got 12 million more votes. One of the fake news media was saying to me the other day, “Tell me what was the difference between the first election and the second?” I said, “Well, the difference was I did much better in the second,” which is true. And those rallies, we had 58 rallies, average crowd, 25,000 people and we’d do some of them on one day’s notice and you’d get there, you’d have 40, 50,000 people. Butler, Pennsylvania, 58,000. Florida, 71,000 people on two days notice. And by the way, we were great in Florida. We were great all over. And I just want to thank everybody. The election was incredible. What we did in this election was incredible. And it’s a shame what happened because we’re talking about something that we shouldn’t even be talking about right now.

But when you think about it, we did so well that it wasn’t an issue. We did well in the election for other reasons because we built our military and we came up with a vaccine in nine months that everybody said couldn’t be done in three or four or five years and so many other things. And I also want to thank because I see him, Jim Banks is here. The study group was Jim… Jim, Jim, where are you, Jim? And he’s another guy that I’ll tell you, he’s called strong, silent. Not all of our Congressman are strong and silent and certainly our Congress women aren’t strong and silent. That we know for sure right Lauren? So Jim, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Great job. You’re doing too. I want to thank you.

And Jim Jordan, what a great job Jim Jordan has been doing too. He’s an activist, but he’s an activist for good. So some of the names we have, Jody Arrington. Thank you. Good. Thank you Jody. Doing great. Brian Babin, I loved watching you on television yesterday. Brian, wherever you may be, you did a great job yesterday on television. I watched that. August Pflueger. Where’s August? August, great job. Fantastic. And my doctor, Ronnie Jackson. He came to me. He said, “You know something about running for Congress where?” Texas. Well, Texas, you got to shout up there. And what do you have? 24 people in the race and we endorsed him. And I said, “Just get him into a runoff.” He got into a runoff with it. I’m sure he was a very nice man, but I didn’t like him because he wasn’t from [inaudible 00:16:10].

And I don’t know if he’s a better doctor or a Congressman. He actually said I was the healthiest president in history by far. And he said jokingly, of course, they’d take it… he said, “If he would stop eating fast food, he’d lived for 200 years,” and they really went after him on that one. Didn’t they? But Ronnie is great. And he’s doing an incredible job already in Congress and it’s great to see you out here. And I’m proud of you really. I mean, you had like 22 people. I think it’s the most Trump district in the United States, somebody said. So Ronnie, hopefully you’re not going to be running for anything else for a while because you’re going to be there for a long time. You’re going to be there for a long time and I know how good you’re doing because people are so happy.

Andy Barr. Where’s Andy? Andy Barr, what a great guy. Hi Andy. Lauren Bovert, nobody going to walk into your house, that I promise you. The guns will be blazing, but you have been fantastic right from the beginning. Thank you Lauren for being here. Michael Burgess. Michael, thank you. Buddy Cotter. Thank you Buddy. Great job you’re doing Buddy. Really good.

A man that I think has got the best face in the business, he’s a terrific guy and he’s a friend of mine and he comes from an incredible state, an incredible state where they were very nice to me, we won. And there was no question about it. Madison Cawthorn. Madison, thank you. I’m not going to get into the little tricks that say, “Well, in 1867, there was somebody…” Forget that stuff. It was like a temporary… He’s the youngest Congress person ever in the history of Congress. Are you still 25 or? You’re still 25. Wow. So he was a young 25 when he got it. That’s something. Billy Long. Does everyone know Billy? Does everyone know Billy? I could have you do your thing. Do you want to do it? Do you want to say a couple of words? Go ahead. Let’s auction off, not the governorship, not the presidency. How about auctioning off the rest of the wall that should have been built? Go ahead Billy. Great job Billy. Great job. We appreciate you being here. Michael Cloud. Michael, great job this morning. Great job. Thank you Michael. Pat Fallon. Way to go Pat. You’ve been right there from the beginning. A man who’s quiet, but very special to me and he’s tough as hell. He’ll come, “Sir, I don’t like the way they’re treating you here or there and you got the wrong guy in this job,” and he’s usually right about that. Louie Gohmert. Thank you, Lou. You’ve been a real friend of mine, Louie. You’ve been a real friend of mine and a great friend to Texas. You love this place, huh? You love it. They love you too. Bob Good. Thank you Bob. Fantastic, Bob. Yvette Herrell. Thank you Yvette. Thank you. Thank you Yvette. Clay Higgins. Thanks Clay. Thank you Clay. Darrell Issa. There’s a guy who’s tough as hell I’ll tell you. Man, oh man. He went into that district. Really great job Darrell. And he’s our friend for a long time. Chris Jacobs. Chris upstate New York, upstate New York. Thank you Chris. Mike Johnson, lotta job. They don’t even mind having you in Texas, Mike. What a great guy. What a good politician because you love it and you love the people and you really are. You’re a natural. Thank you very much. I appreciate you being here, Mike. Michael Martin-

… Very much, I appreciate you being here, Mike. Michael Martin. Michael, thank you. Thank you, Michael. Lisa McLean. Good, thank you, Lisa. Thank you, sweetheart. Mary Miller. That was a great job you did, huh? That worked out pretty well, didn’t it, huh? Great, Mary. A man that was winning by so much and he had an election and everybody thought he’d win by like 30, 40 points. And it was nip and tuck at the end because everybody thought he was going to win, right, Ralph? Ralph Norman, everybody thought he was going to win by so much. And boy, that was a scary deal. So it tells you, don’t be so popular, Ralph, okay? We’ll never forget that evening. We said, “What the hell happened?” But he’s been, and since then it’s just blowouts all the time, blowouts, and they love you. They love you in your state. Thank you very much, Ralph.

Lisa Reynolds. Lisa, thank you very much. She’s done an incredible job with the staff. John Rose. John, John, congratulations by the way, great job. Chip Roy. Where’s Chip? Hi Chip, how are you, Chip? Talk to you later, Chip. Pete Sessions. Pete, thank you, Pete, thanks, Pete. Greg Stuby, another one who has been a tremendous guy. Where’s Greg? He has been fantastic. Tom Tiffany, we had our special election. Remember that time I went on and did one of those calls where we had like 25,000 people in the call? Where is Tom? Hey, Tom. We did pretty well with that call that night, right? We did well, we had 25,000 people in a call. They call it a teleconference telecall. Strange name but very effective, and he won, that morning he woke up, he said, “Guess what? We’re winning this thing,” and you won it big, and now they love you. They really love you. Thank you, Tom. That was a lot of fun.

Randy Weber. Randy is terrific. Randy, thank you, Randy. Great job. Roger Williams. I’ll tell you, he’s a hero. He can take shots to the leg or the body, it doesn’t matter. He’s still out there kicking and he’s still a handsome guy. That was some ordeal we all went through, wasn’t it, with Steve and everybody? It was incredible. And Lauren Ziegler. Lauren, thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Lauren. Thank you very much. So we have others, but I think what we’re going to do, see those reflexes? They’re pretty good. I think what we’re going to do is talk just for a couple of seconds about how well we did. Nobody’s ever done what we’ve done. And when I say we, all of the sheriffs who I love, who are here, many of whom are friends of mine, they’re incredible.

They worked with Ken and they worked with Dan and the Governor and myself, and the job they’ve done is unparalleled. There’s never been anything like it. One of the folks, before we had a meeting, we had a round table, and they were talking about fentanyl, and it was virtually not coming into the area. It wasn’t coming through the border at all. We had the border so closed, the best ever, and now it’s coming through at levels that they’ve never seen before. It’s just pouring in. Because we’re not only talking about people, millions of people are coming in, but we’re talking about drugs. We’re talking about human trafficking, the human trafficking. And by the way, mostly women, I hate to say, not children, not men, mostly women. The human traffickers, we had them down to a halt and now they’re going at a level that they’ve never even thought imaginable.

We had it close to stopped. Now, this is a worldwide problem. It’s all over the world. But we had them, this part of the world it comes through the southern border, human trafficking, and it’s a terrible thing. Nobody, no lower form of life than people that do that. And they make a lot of money. They make more money than the drug dealers, they say. And we stopped them and the drug dealers, we did a job like nobody thought was possible. And we made deals with Mexico and we made deals with Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador. And I told the story just before, I don’t want to bore you with it, but most of you weren’t around that round table. And by the way, Brandon, I see my Brandon, how good is Brandon, border patrol? And Mark, thank you very much. And Tom, there’s Tom, Tom Home. And he’s central casting.

If I’m doing a movie and I want to get a tough guy to play something, I’m going to pick Tom Home. And I said, ” You guys better be there and your whole group.” Thank you all for being here. We appreciate it. Really fantastic. Just a fantastic job. You know, I say all Biden had to do is go to the beach. If he would have just done nothing we would have now the strongest border we’ve ever had. It was even getting better and better and better because it was all kicking in.

But I tell the story about, they couldn’t bring MS13 back into the various countries from which they came. I said, “Why is that?” “Well, sir, they don’t take them, they didn’t take them under the Obama administration. Sir, They just don’t take them. I’m sorry.” I said, “Do we pay them money?” Because we’re a sucker, we pay everybody all this money, like every nation. We pay money to China. You saw that with the Wuhan lab, we give money to the Wuhan lab. By the way, did you notice who stopped it? They don’t like to say. I stopped it when I heard. And I must say, I stopped it rather innocently, Governor. I said, “Just let me ask you a question. We’re giving money to China.” It wasn’t about virus at that time. I stopped it because I say, “Why the hell are we giving money to China?” It was a very simple, but they started it. I heard we were giving money to China and I stopped it.

I said, “They don’t need our money. They’re doing just fine.” What I did give him is massive tariffs. That’s what I did. They were paying us billions and billions of dollars. We saved our steel industry and everything else. But when you look at what’s happened and when you look at the job that we’ve done, and when you look at the results that we have had and all of the statistics, no matter what you look at it’s the greatest job ever done in history. And I thought the Governor’s choice of this location, number one, it’s a very active location, but you see the wall there, you see the wall here, and they have to get a paint job on the wall.

It doesn’t sound very elegant, right? The wall is a steel wall with very powerful concrete, 5,000-pound concrete in each bollard. And then in that you have rebar, very powerful rebar. It’s very, very hard to cut, very hard to do anything about. And we have to get that painted now. They have to paint it, because if they don’t paint it, bad things are happening. I’m looking, and it has to be painted. And the best color to paint it is black. Because if you paint it black, it’s so hot nobody can even try to climb it. Not that they’re successful anyway, those are anti-climb panels on top, which I didn’t want to do. But they said, “Sir, we need them.” And they are great protection. It’s the exact wall, we worked with the Governor on this, it’s the exact wall that border patrol, ICE, and all of the professionals wanted, the sheriffs. I said I didn’t want to give him any choice. Let’s build it right and do it right.

So what happened is all of these things came together. We produced the safest, best border we’ve ever had. And now in a short period of time, it was over. I was going to say that when they wouldn’t take them back, they would put airplanes on their runways when we had MS13 in our planes to bring them back to Honduras, to bring them back to Guatemala. They had these airplanes. They said, “Sir, they won’t let us in. The buses they turned around.” They gave up. For years they never brought them back. I said, “How much money do we pay?” $500 million. I said, “Oh, that’s right. We’re not paying any more. Explain to them that they are delinquent in so many ways we’re not paying any money.”

I got calls from the three heads of the three countries, who I get along with very well. And they said, “Sir, you’re not paying us any more.” I said, “That’s right.” They said, “Sir, we would love to have MS13 back in our country. We think they are wonderful people.” And we were bringing them in by the thousands, getting them out. And now they’re sending them back because what they’re doing is opening their prisons and prisoners, murderers, human traffickers, all of these people, drug dealers, are coming back into our country. They’re coming in through the caravans, not everybody, but they’re dotted all over the place. You remember the CNN reporter? “What did you do?” “Murder.” And she goes, “What?” “Murder.” And they immediately turned off the camera. Remember that?

So we did a job like nobody’s ever done. The only thing I disagree with, I’ve heard a lot of you people say, “We have to go immediately back to the Trump policy.” Not that easy. I made a deal with Mexico, stay in Mexico. You can’t come into this, stay in Mexico. They let the deal lapse. Not that easy. I love the President of Mexico. We have a great relationship. We have a slightly different political philosophy, but he loves Mexico and we made great deals for both countries. We made great deals. And we made that deal, stay in Mexico. You think that was an easy one to make, Billy? You think, Louie, when I tell him, “Sorry, it’s called we’re not going to tariff your cars, but if you do, we’re going to tariff …” You know, they did take 32% of our automobile, they make 32% …

Over the years, not with me, they took 32% of the automobile manufacturing in the United States. Can you believe it? So I said, “I hope we can do this. Otherwise we’re going to put a 10%, then 15%, then 20%, then 25% tariff on.” And they agreed immediately, immediately to do it. So we have stay in Mexico. We ended catch and release. Catch and release, you catch a murderer, you take his name, they don’t have phone numbers or addresses, by the way. Take his name and you release him into our country. And you tell him, “Come back in three years for your trial.” Nobody comes back. Only the really stupid ones come back. It’s like 2%. They don’t come back. So we did that. So many other things we did. It doesn’t go that fast. You’ve got to work on it because they are destroying our country. Biden is destroying our country, and it all started with a fake election. And you take a look at-

And it all started with a fake election, and you take a look at New York right now. New York went through an election for the Mayor of New York, and it is so mixed up and messed up, nobody’s ever seen anything like it, but I did, because if you look at the Congressional Election in New York, or go to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, or go to many other places, the same thing. And now we talk about the big one, because the big one was won by a very different person. And you wouldn’t have these problems. This wall would have been completed. Within two months, everything could have been completed. It would have been painted, not sitting there rotting and rusting. It would have been perfecto. It was all set. The contractors were great. Now they’re contacting contractors and saying, “Would you go back?” You have to understand contractors, nobody’s smarter. They don’t have the best education, but they’re smarter than the Wharton School of Business guys. They’re smarter than the Harvard School of Business guys.

They’re saying, “Well, we can’t go back. It’s going to cost us a fortune.” “How much do you want?” “Quadruple.” “Oh, okay. Here it is.” They’re going to make a fortune. All they had to do is leave it alone. The wall was being sealed up, these were the final areas. We were bringing all the equipment back because we didn’t want to leave it in Mexico. We didn’t [inaudible 00:31:18] the trucks, cranes, tractors in Mexico. We were bringing it all back. Two months, we would’ve had it finished, and they wanted to stop it. They stopped the first day, a thing called the Keystone Pipeline. Think of it, the Keystone Pipeline, 48, not 8,000 jobs, 48,000 jobs. And those people are devastated. And the head of the union should be overthrown immediately because this idiot supported Joe Biden. The head of the pipe fitters, he supported Joe Biden. How do you think he’s doing? I just say that, working with the Governor, working with Dan, and Ken, and with all of the Republican Congress, because we didn’t have any support from the Democrats. And just to finish, they are in a major disinformation campaign now.

The Democrats are trying to say, “The Republicans…” Listen to this one, “wanted to defund the police.” Now they’re saying also, they wanted to build the wall, but we got in the way. They wanted to stop the border, but we got in the way. It’s like Russia, Russia, Russia. Trump was friendly with Russia. I heard the story first time. They said, “Sir, do you know anything about Russia?” “No. No, not at all.” A month later, “Sir, do you know anything about Russia?” “No.” After four or five times, they said, “What the hell is going on with Russia, sir?” They said, “You’re very close to Russia.” No, they turned out to be the ones. After two years of the Mueller hoax, they turned out to be the ones who were close to Russia. I just want to say, great Governor, great Attorney General, an incredible Lieutenant Governor who’s my friend. What a job you did. Are you going to be my campaign manager if I do this again?

Okay. Think I should do it again? You think? Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe we won’t even have to. Yeah, we’ll win it three times, make it a little bit different. I just want to thank everybody. You’re an incredible group of people. It’s an unbelievable state. And thank you, Jim, and everybody, thank you for all of these incredible congressmen that came, and women. We appreciate it. Thank yo, Lauren, very much. I’ll see you soon. Thank you. Governor, congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you, everybody. Congratulations.

Donald Trump & Greg Abbott Texas Border Security Visit Speech Transcript

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