Donald Trump Speech Transcript at North Carolina GOP Convention Dinner June 5

Donald Trump: (00:00) Thank you very much to Lee. Thank you, Lee. Well, he's been so great. Michael, thank you very much and congratulations on your reelection today as chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. We love this state. You've done a great job, Michael, and we thank you very much. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. I love you too. I love you too. Donald Trump: (02:31) It's great to be back in Greenville with so many proud North Carolina Patriots who love our country, support our military, respect our police, honor our flag and always put America first. We don't put America second. As we gather tonight, our country is being destroyed before our very own eyes. Crime is exploding. Police departments are being ripped apart and defunded. Can you believe that? Is that good politics, defund our police? Number one, it's bad for our country, but think of it, defund our police. You know, I've long said they're vicious, they're violent. They in many cases, hate our country and they have bad policy. Now, the bad news from our standpoint, they stick together. They don't have some of the people like we have where they go on their own and they do what they have to. They stick together, and that's the one thing they have. They stick together, but their policy is so bad. Donald Trump: (03:34) We're going to have a tremendous 2022, just like we did frankly, 2020. Think of it. More votes than any sitting president in the history of the United States by far. We had a great election. Bad things happened, but we had a great election. You look at our border, is wide open. Illegal immigration is skyrocketing at a level that we've never seen before, and this is over a period of a few months. Drugs are pouring in. Gas prices are soaring. Our industries are being pillaged by foreign cyber attacks. That's a lack of respect for our country and for our leaders. Speaking of our leaders, they're bowing down to China. America is being demeaned and humiliated on the world stage. Our freedom is being overtaken by left wing cancel culture, and the Biden administration is pushing toxic critical race theory and illegal discrimination into our children's schools. Donald Trump: (04:39) Now you tell me, we take this? Joe Biden and the Socialist Democrats are the most radical left-wing administration in history. Even Bernie Sanders can't believe it. He said, I can't believe this happened. This is worse than I ever was. I don't know if they even know what the hell they're signing. Somebody is drawing these documents and putting it, and it's getting signed. It's a disgrace what's happening to our country. The survival of America depends upon our ability to elect Republicans at every level, starting with the midterms next year. We have to get it done. We have to get it done. We have no choice, actually. We have to get it done. Together, we're going to defend our freedoms. You just take a look at what's happening. We have to defend our borders. We have to do all of these things and the cancel culture, the defunding culture, the defending culture and they defend the wrong things, we're not going to let it go any longer. Going to stand up for our values. We have to stand up for our values, and we're going to take back our country and we're going to take it back at a level that is very, very good for our country and it's good for citizens because we can't allow bad things to happen to our country. Bad, bad things are happening to us, perhaps like never before. You'll be seeing what goes on and perhaps like never before. Donald Trump: (06:12) With us, this evening are many outstanding North Carolina Republican leaders who are fighting right by our side, including one of the strongest and bravest new voices in the Republican party, has been a great supporter of mine and I'm a great supporter of his, your incredible Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson. Stand up, Mark. Good job. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. We're also joined by some of your terrific representatives in Congress. I think Virginia Fox is here, who I just endorsed. Where's Virginia? She's around here someplace. Virginia, thank you very much. Thank you, Virginia. I thought, Virginia, you should have a better seat than that. I'm sorry. A great guy and a friend of mine, a tremendous supporter, David Rouser. David, thank you very much. Thank you, David. Dan Bishop, right from the beginning, been so good. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Great job. We had a big victory that night. Didn't we, Dan? Huh? They said, I don't know if he's going to win. He won. He won big. Donald Trump: (07:35) Richard Hudson. Richard, thank you. Great job, Richard. Great job. Somebody I've gotten to know very well, and he is a handsome sucker. Where's Madison? Madison Cawthorn. Where is Madison? Where is our Madison? Thank you, Madison. Thank you. What a great guy. What a good future you've got. Where the hell is Madison? Thank you, Madison. Great job. Thank you very much. If I had a face like him, I would have been president 20 years earlier. 20 years earlier, Madison. Thank you very much. Great job. Thank you. Greg Murphy. Where's Greg? Thank you, Greg. You're doing a really great job. We're proud of you. A friend of mine and somebody that's really been incredible, respected by everybody, congressman Ted Budd. Where's Ted?Good job, Ted. Good job. Here as well are two people that you may know of, actually, I probably like her better because she was a supporter of mine before he was. People don't know that. Deb Meadows, stand up. Stand up, Deb. We have to say Deb, he wasn't far behind. It wasn't like many, many months. No, he had somebody else in mind, but he switched over very quickly. I don't know if he had a choice. Right, Deb? Mark Meadows, everybody, a real great guy. Donald Trump: (09:24) With the spirit and energy and commitment of everyone in this room and the voters all across this state, 2022 is going to be a banner year for North Carolina Republicans. You know, they said this state was... If you look back 10 years ago, Michael, they said this state was finished. It was not going to be a Republican state at all, and they had elected a Governor, and it really looked bad. Then these guys, some of them that I just announced but others also, we all got together, and you've never been in a stronger position, and now you're going to have another Senator. We just elected a wonderful friend of ours, and Tom is going to be great. I think Tom, he got off to a little rocky start with protect Bob Mueller, but you know what, he flipped in the other direction totally, and he's been terrific. He had a great race. He ran a great race. He really did, and he had my total support. He called me just a little while ago to tell me, enjoy the state because I love the state. I love being in this state. I just want to say that this was going to be a Democrat state, and here we are and we're really dominating when you look at everything that's happened, so congratulations. It's really great. To you, congratulations. Donald Trump: (10:38) I think we're going to gain two or even three US House seats. We're going to take over, if you look over the House today and get rid of Nancy Pelosi. Remember, they stick together. On an impeachment hoax, not one Democrat, not one voted against. Well actually, we had one that came over to our side who is a terrific person, actually, but you take a look and they didn't want to do that, but they just do it a little bit differently. They play very tough, very dirty, and we just can't let it happen. We're going to win north Carolina's all important US Senate race, and we're going to lay the groundwork for making sure that Republicans, once again, carry the great state of North Carolina, in a number, a year, that I look very much forward to, 2024. Donald Trump: (11:34) We're going to do numbers like you've never seen before. So many things are happening right now, but they're... We're going to do things like you've never, ever seen before. I stand before you today, confident that the people of North Carolina will decisively reject Joe Biden and the radical Democrats, the war on the American worker, the American family and the American nation. I have to tell you that I have a very special person, she's been... I love my family. I love my family. I happen to love this particular young man that she's married to. He's a very tall person by the way, but not as tall as Baron. Baron is six foot seven, can you believe it, and he's 15. Eric is short. He's only six foot six, but we love our Eric and we love them all. They're all great. He is married to a very special woman, Lara, and I'd like to have her... You know, she was born in this particular state. She loves this particular state, and maybe I'd like to ask Laura Trump to come up and say a few words. Laura, please. Come on up. Lara Trump: (13:15) Okay, my people. Can we just start off really quickly, and I'll keep this brief, but Donald Trump is two and O in the state of North Carolina folks. How about it? Not bad. I got to thank all of you because I promised my father-in-law that we would win this state for him, and we won it in two elections, so thanks to all of you. I really, you guys know, I was born and raised in this state. I absolutely love the state of North Carolina. My parents, Bob and Linda are here with my brother, Kyle. They drove in from Wilmington to be here tonight. My brother graduated from ECU right here in Greenville. He's a pirate. This state truly made me the person that I am today. I love this state so much, I named my daughter Carolina. Okay? I don't want any of you UNC fans to get any ideas because y'all know I'm Wolf Pack for life. All right? I just want to set that one straight. Lara Trump: (14:23) Now, you may have heard a rumor that I have been considering possibly running for a Senate seat here in North Carolina. I have been considering it, and it's a big decision in case nobody knew. It's a very big deal, and look, it's something I did a lot of soul searching, a lot of thinking, talking with my father-in-law, my parents, my husband, Eric, and because of the values my parents instilled in me, they taught me that when you do something, you give 100%. That is the only way to operate. Because of my two kids who are very young, one and three, Carolina and Luke, it is going to be very hard for me to enter this Senate race right now, but I am saying no for now, not no forever, just so you know. Lara Trump: (15:17) I came here tonight with my father-in-law because there is a very special person who is going to do an amazing job as your next Senator from the state of North Carolina, that he is going to announce tonight here in this room. I can promise you this: just because my name is not on the ballot does not mean I am not fighting every step of the way with you here in North Carolina because if we're being honest, this is so much bigger than a Senate seat. It's about the future of America. We have to fight for our conservative values. We have to have a person in that Senate seat who represents North Carolina and is going to lead this country in the right direction. Lara Trump: (16:00) I want to say thank you to everybody. I have so much support and so many people that were so sweet and poured out so much love for me with the thought of me possibly running, so again, no for now, not no forever. At the right time, I would absolutely love to come back and consider running for something here in my home state because I love it dearly. Before I turn it back over to my father-in-law, here's what I want to say. We are two and O, but what do you say we go three and O, guys?Let's do it. I love you guys. Thank you. Donald Trump: (00:09) Oh, those polls, if you believe in those polls, Lara. But she also explained I love my family. I love your son. I love those beautiful children and I have to take care of them. And there's something very refreshing about that. I don't hear that from everyone. Sadly, I hear a lot of the opposite actually, but that's why you're such a special part of the family because you look at the numbers and you look at the polls and the love that this state has for you. It's incredible. So thank you. And I've been putting a little pressure. I said, "Make your decision please," because we have to pick somebody. And what I don't want is I don't want a lot of people joining a race that are big Trump supporters and then I have to go with somebody because there's somebody in this room that I think is very special. Somebody that I've worked with, always been with me, always been with Mark and Deb and all of us. Donald Trump: (01:04) He's a man that hasn't been pushing me at all, unlike some of the others that are running, that won't win. They won't win. We have another race after this one. This man's a great politician, but more importantly, he's somebody that loves the state of North Carolina. He loves the country and I'm going to do it now, because again, I don't want a lot of people running and then they're going to be disappointed. And in many cases, they're friends of mine. They're great people, they're thinking about running. They want to run and they wanted to wait, frankly, till Lara made her decision, because she would have been tough. She would have been tough. Donald Trump: (01:37) And she's very outstanding, but I think she did the right thing for her and for our family. But this gentleman is going to be your next senator. He's going to be somebody that you're going to be so proud of. He will fight like hell, would you agree with that Mark? He will fight like nobody fights. And a lot of you don't know him that well, but you're going to know him probably within about two minutes. Ted Budd, please come up, please come up, please come up, Ted. I am giving him my complete and total endorsement. We're going to work with him. We're going to campaign with him. You can't pick people that have already lost two races. You can't pick people that have already lost two races and do not stand for our values. So I'm going with Congressman Ted Budd, complete and total endorsement. Come on up, Ted. Ted Budd: (02:38) Thank you Mr. President, thank you. Wow, Mr. President, thank you so much. And go back to 2016, I was in a 17 way race and won that primary and got here. I was the business guy that never run for office. I think maybe had an 18 way primary, right? 18 way. We came in and we fought for their forgotten men and women of America. And Lara, I think you're out there, your father-in-law and you, you fought for me in 2018. The Dems outspent me two to one in the worst Republican district. And with your help, Mr. President and Lara, you coming in to help, we won. In 2020, Lara, we fought together. We fought to help Thom Tillis win, we fought to keep the North Carolina legislature, we fought for North Carolina judges. You're a heck of a teammate and you'd be a heck of a Senator. Mr. President, Lara, this means the world to me. Thank you. We got a lot of hard work ahead. So let's win this together and let's get back to making America great again. Donald Trump: (04:12) Well, thank you very much, Ted. Honestly, he did not know about this until about 15 minutes before I walked to the podium and he was very taken by it. And I have read this on numerous occasions, so I'm not saying it myself, the wonderful... That's a lot of media. That's good. It's hard for them to cancel when you get great ratings, isn't it. They may edit that out. They don't want to have that. They don't like that. They may have to edit that out, Ted, but that's okay. They don't like those endorsements, but we've been very, very successful. Literally hundreds to one, hundreds to two in terms of the endorsements and the power of the endorsement, because people respect that I do want to make America great again. We were doing that. We were doing that at a level that nobody's ever seen and putting America first ahead of China and ahead of all of these countries. Donald Trump: (05:17) And people know that, that's where we were. And before the pandemic came into our shores, we were doing numbers. In history, there's never been anything like it. Unemployment for everybody, for every group, everybody was the best it's ever been. We're up to 160 million people. We were never even close to a number like that. And then we had this horrible thing come in from China. And we got that one right too, by the way, do you notice, you see what's going on over the last, it's called the lab, that was an easy one. Wuhan. But you had this horrible problem come in. And like every other country, we went down and they were saying how well India was, look how well India is doing. Well, India is not doing too well now. And we've done an incredible job. And most importantly, with the vaccine coming up with it, but we've done an incredible job. Donald Trump: (06:09) So many things have happened and we built the economy not once, we built it twice, think of it because we built it. We had the highest stock market ever, the best job numbers. And then we had to regroup. We had to do a lot of things. We became the ventilator factory of the world. We were making them for everybody. Our cupboards were bare. The federal cupboards were bare and the state cupboards were bare and we've done a tremendous job. We never got the kind of credit that we deserve for that. One thing we do get the credit for, from everybody, even the other side, although they try and disparage it as much as possible, was the vaccine, coming up with a vaccine, but we did something else that people don't talk about it. I made a bet and I shouldn't call it a bet because maybe you say speculation, as opposed, but it was somewhat of a bet. Donald Trump: (06:58) We bought billions and billions of dollars worth of vaccine and all forms of getting that vaccine into your body. The needles, the bottles, the whole thing. We bought millions and billions actually of dollars worth of the vaccine. And we saved a period of a year, maybe more, you wouldn't have the vaccine right now. This room would be empty because they would ask me to be here and I would say, "No, thank you." And you would say the same thing. This would be an empty room right now. And your state would be in a lot of trouble and the country would be in a lot of trouble because you wouldn't have the vaccine until probably October. It might've even been later than that. And one of the things I'm most proud about is we did the vaccine, developed the vaccine, and I pushed the FDA. They have never been pushed would you say, Mark Meadows? Donald Trump: (07:46) They have never been pushed like that. He was there at a lot of those meetings. Those were not nice meetings. They do not like me too much, that I can tell you. And frankly, the drug companies don't like me too much either because I did a thing called favored nations where we have to pay whatever the lowest is in the world. That's what we have to pay. Nobody can believe I instituted that. If they leave it alone, you'll soon have the lowest drug prices that we've ever had by... But that doesn't mean that they like me. They spend millions of dollars against me and that's okay. They have to do what they have to do, but we did things that nobody has ever done. I'm very proud of the biggest bet. This was maybe the greatest bet ever made in the history of the world because we saved a year. Donald Trump: (08:26) We bought billions of dollars of this vaccine before we even knew it worked. And because of that, most of you, I guess, all of you, just about, in one form or another, you've had your shots or jabs as they like to call it. I actually like the other word better, but we've saved a lot of lives. We've saved all over the world. We've saved millions and millions of lives and we're very proud of it. And nobody can ever take it away from us because that's something that's very, very special. And the people in this room are very, very special. The Biden administration seems to be putting America last. You look at these negotiations where so many bad things have happened. 48,000 jobs were lost by president Biden's day one rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. Why? For what reason did they do that? Donald Trump: (09:21) And if you like the environment, the pipeline is much better than railroad tracks and it's much better than trucking. It's great. And they ended it on just about day one, 48,000 jobs, not 8,000. They said 8,000, it's 48,000. Think of it. He rejected our pipeline, but he approved the Russian pipeline, which I had completely stopped going into Germany and all parts of Europe. So I stopped Russia and I have a very good relationship with President Putin, but there's never been anybody as tough on Russia than I was. And you look at these horrible cyber attacks. You look at all of the things that are happening. We're in a different world than we were in just a few months ago. Yet there's no better example of Biden's failed agenda than the catastrophic, and you look at it what's going on with the southern border. Is there anything that you've ever seen, like what's going on, on the southern border? And people are coming in from South America, Latin America, but they're coming in from the Middle East. Donald Trump: (10:24) They're coming in from all over. When I left office, we gave the new administration the most secure border in US history. We had the most secure border in the history of our country and that included drugs, that included human trafficking, which is a magnificently horrible and big business, mostly trafficking in women. And the numbers were down to levels that they hadn't seen in many, many years. And all they had to do is just leave it alone. Just leave it alone. If you leave it alone, it would have gotten better and better. And the fact that we built almost 500 miles of wall, and just a few months, it would have been completed, took two and a half years of litigation to get to build the wall and what an impact it had. But it would have been completed, totally completed in just a couple of months. Donald Trump: (11:18) And they stopped it. Now I understand they're starting it again. That one was just too easy, but wait till they find out, hey, wait till they see what those contractors are going to do to them. Well this is going to cost us five times more money now because we weren't prepared. It's the old story. They're the greatest negotiators in the world. They may not have gone to the greatest business schools, but they're the greatest negotiators. But we negotiated historic agreements with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, to stop illegal immigration. We ended asylum and asylum fraud. The fraud of what was going on at our border was unbelievable. We instituted rapid removals on the border and that's really rapid. I call it one day turnaround of criminals coming into our country, sending people home in record time. We have times that nobody ever heard of before. We ended catch and release. Donald Trump: (12:17) That's where you catch somebody, could be a horrible criminal. You catch somebody, a rapist, a murderer, could be a drug dealer. And we release them. It's called catch. We catch them and we release them into our country. Well, we didn't do that. We empowered ICE to do their jobs. ICE is incredible. The border patrol is incredible. By the way, your police force in North Carolina, I've gotten to know very well. They are incredible. Thank you very much. A lot of them are here tonight. We cracked down on sanctuary cities, deported gang members by the thousands, and dealt a crippling blow to MS-13, that's the most vicious gang of all. And we took them out of here by the thousands. Thousands and thousands brought back to where they came and those countries didn't want them back. And a little story. I said, "Well, what do you mean they don't want them back?" Donald Trump: (13:15) They weren't taking them back. They didn't want them back. They sent them out. They didn't want them back. And I said, "That's bad." And they told me that, "Sir, we can't take them. They won't let us land planes. They're putting other planes on the runway. So we can't land planes. They won't take the buses." I say, "How much do we pay those countries?" "Sir, we pay them $500 million a year." "Oh, you do? Tell them we're not paying them anymore." And the next day I got a call from all three countries. "We'd love to have Ms-13 back. We think they're wonderful people. We never had a problem." And now they blew that one too. They blew that one too. I'll never forget it. "We'd love to have them back. It would be a great honor to take them back." Those runways opened up like you've never seen anything open up. Donald Trump: (13:59) After we instituted these policies, the number of illegal aliens coming across our border declined by an astounding 91%. But under Joe Biden, illegal crossings are up nearly 1000% compared to the same period last year. They're emptying their prisons. They're sending murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others just as bad to the United States. Let the United States take care of them. Remember it's called America last. In April alone, over 175,000 illegal aliens were apprehended and mostly released. You know where they were released, right? They were released into our country and we saw the largest number ever of unaccompanied minors. We've never seen anything like it. If you just watch some of the semi-fair tell. You don't have to watch fair, semi-fair. They talk about it. Because I think they have no choice and I think they're going to see it more and more. Donald Trump: (14:56) You don't see it too much on the evening news yet, but you're going to see it because they're destroying our country, but it is much worse than that because there are at least 1000 aliens who are simply getting away every single day as the radical Democrats have intentionally, ruthlessly, and systematically dismantle the sovereign borders of the United States of America. We have people just walking into our country. Nobody knows who they are, where they're from. There's no vetting, there's no anything. And some of these people are very, very bad people, much as I said on that beautiful morning when I came down with our future first lady at the time, Melania, who sends her regards. But we came down that beautiful gold escalator in Trump Tower and I made that statement and people hated it. It turned out that my statement was very minor compared to the actual facts. Donald Trump: (15:59) It was very, very minor. It's another thing we were right about. Without a border, you cannot have a nation, certainly not a great nation. We fight for other country's borders, but we don't fight for our own border. Think of it. We fight for other country's borders, but not for our own. That changed under my administration but now they're going back more rapidly than anyone ever thought possible. Nobody ever thought that they could do this kind of destruction to our country so quickly. Some of those executive orders that are signed are absolutely insane. Biden has halted wall construction, suspended removals, and even removals of just horrible, horrible people, stopped enforcement, shredded our groundbreaking remain in Mexico. So we had that groundbreaking plan that took us a long time to get, because Mexico, like the other countries, were taking advantage of the United States. Everybody was taken advantage of us and we have an agreement. Stay in Mexico as opposed to stay in the United States. Donald Trump: (17:11) And a lot of people weren't coming when they realized they had to stay in Mexico. So the enforcement was so much better and it was getting to a level that nobody's ever seen. And then we finally hit that level. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. They turned America into a sanctuary for criminal aliens and effectively, they were abolishing ICE through agency directives. What they've done to ICE and what they've done to our border patrol heroes is incredible. It's incredible. And these are some of the finest people you'll ever meet. I got to know so many of them and they're among the finest people you'll ever, ever meet. It's true. They love our country. Despite the worst border crisis in history, we've had the smallest number of illegal alien removals ever. Donald Trump: (18:03) ... had the smallest number of illegal alien removals ever recorded. 92% of illegal aliens we removed in 2020 had criminal records. You believe that? Over 90 and very substantially probably higher than that. I think around 92% had criminal records. Now, they're all being set free and released back into your communities. They don't want to bring them back. If they are back, they actually have a new policy that, if we took them out, they're going to let them come back in. It's the most incredible thing I've ever heard. Donald Trump: (18:34) But the border is just the beginning of the Biden disasters. As you know, we handed the new administration the greatest economy in the history of the world. We passed massive tax cuts. The largest ever. Larger than our great friend, Ronald Reagan. Record regulation cuts, historic pro-American trade deals, and achieved American energy independence. How's your gasoline price doing? Actually, I guess, you were hit worse than any state from what I understand on the cyber attack. It's incredible. It's a lack of respect. After the pandemic began, we launched the fastest economic recovery on record. We produced three vaccines and numerous therapeutics to defeat the virus. They don't talk about the therapeutics, but we came up with things that are incredible and I think extremely effective. All Joe Biden had to do was sit back and do nothing and it was taking off like a rocket ship. Nobody's ever seen it between the economy and all of the other things we did, the border. Instead the economy is going to Hell and inflation is going to cause a catastrophe in the near future. The New York Times, who I don't often quote, just stated 1,000,000 jobs a month seemed within grasp not long ago. Think of it, 1,000,000 jobs a month seemed within grasp not long ago, but now it looks like wishful thinking. Isn't that sad? Now, we would have done much better than that. But that's the New York Times saying it. Monthly jobs numbers have missed expectations the last two months in a row and you saw what was released on Friday. They were devastating numbers, job numbers. Inflation is now at the highest level in 13 years and it's going to go up very substantially. It's going to cost you a lot more. Imposing a stealth tax on hard-working Americans and especially on middle income Americans. Biden re-entered the job killing Paris Climate Accord, a terrible deal that is pro-China, pro-Russia, and anti-American and will cost America trillions of dollars over the years. This is a deal that is so one-sided against us like practically no other deal. But they're all bad, but this one's a real beauty. But it sounds so nice, right? The Paris Environmental Accord. Gas prices have increased almost 71% since one year ago. Think of it. Donald Trump: (21:18) Democrats are now attempting to pass the largest tax hike in American history and it will affect everybody. They're saying it's against the rich. It's against everybody. A lot of the rich will take off to go to other countries. A lot of the companies that I brought back are going to leave and go back to other countries where they can not have to pay all of their profits out in taxes. They're talking about the biggest tax hike in history by far. Donald Trump: (21:43) They're also pushing a $2.25 trillion infrastructure bill that's not infrastructure. It's the kind of things that you don't want. 9% looks like it might be infrastructure, but mostly it's not infrastructure at all. The Democrat legislation also includes an extreme plan to abolish single family home zoning, which would obliterate your home values, increase crime, and destroy the suburbs all to satisfy the far-left agenda of AOC, Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar, who is telling us how to run our country. It's a great experience. She comes from a country that's done a wonderful job running their country. Now, she's telling us how to run our country. While Democrats push economic policies designed to punish American workers, Republicans must keep on fighting to protect, promote, and uplift the American worker who we cherish. Donald Trump: (22:53) That begins with standing up to Communist China. Last year, China inflicted an estimated $ 16 trillion of economic damage onto the United States with a virus that I call the China Virus because I want to be accurate, that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. Look at the world. Look at what happened to the world. It's not just us. It's the world. Had we not come up with a vaccine, you would have had a 1917 Spanish Flu number. They lost, they say, up to 100 million people. You would have had those kind of numbers. You would have had numbers that are just unthinkable. But because of what we've done as a nature and because of the speed that we came up with a vaccine, the world will not have that. Many places in the world are getting better. Even India today announced that they're starting to heal. Donald Trump: (23:51) The media, the Democrats, and the so-called experts are now finally admitting what I first said 13 months ago. The evidence demonstrates that the virus originated in a Chinese government lab. Couldn't say it. You couldn't say it. Dr. Fauci, who I actually got along with, he's a nice guy, he's a great promoter. Not a great doctor, but he's a hell of a promoter. He likes television more than politician in this room and they like television. But he's been wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also. Very wrong. We ended the payments. They were started in 2014 and then I can tell you Mark Meadows came in and I talked to him and he saw what I saw. I said, "What the hell's going on? When did that start?" It started in 2014 and we ended it, our administration ended it. Donald Trump: (24:50) But generally speaking, I went the opposite way of Dr. Fauci, what he was saying. For instance, Fauci said, "Do not close our borders to China or Europe," but I did it anyway. Months later, he said I made the right decision and saved thousands and thousands of lives. He said it was the right decision, but he did not want to close that border. I said, "Wait a minute, there's tremendous infection over there. We can't let this happen." We closed it and I think we saved hundreds of thousands of lives. You remember the number? It was 2.2 million people in our country who were expected to die. Fauci said powerfully at the beginning no masks. You remember that? No, masks don't work. Masks don't. Then he went into masks and then he became a radical masker. I recall him... If you have three, if you have four. Get a pair of goggles also ideally. Let's wear them for another five or six years. Donald Trump: (25:48) But Fauci has, perhaps, never been more wrong than when he denied the virus and where it came from. The time has come for America and the world to demand reparations and accountability from the Communist Party of China. We should all declare within one unified voice that China must pay. They must pay. The United States should immediately take steps to phase in a firm 100% tariff on all goods made in China. You saw what was happening with our tariffs. In fact, the Democrats were fighting the tariffs, "Oh, we don't..." Well, he hasn't taken those tariffs off. He doesn't want to. Billions and billions of dollars. 25% tariffs on China. Billions and billions of dollars is pouring in. Donald Trump: (26:51) Frankly, if you raise them, a lot of things would happen to China. I think they'd stop building their military. I think a lot of companies would move back to the United States. I'm not only talking about China. I'm talking about others. Because you know what China does is they'll sell through other countries. They're very ingenious. They're very smart. Had a great relationship with President Xi until the China Virus came in and it was real tough. Donald Trump: (27:16) We made a tremendous deal for the farmers. Farmers are doing better than they've ever done because of us, because of me, because of what we've done with our administration. Better than they've ever done. Look at wheat prices and virtually all prices. The farmers are doing the best and one of the reasons is China is buying tremendous amounts. They want to keep us happy. They want to keep me happy. I don't think they want to keep Biden happy. I don't think they care too much about Biden to be honest. But they wanted to keep me happy and they were investing with our farmers. They were buying so much of our product and they continue to do so. We made a great deal. Donald Trump: (27:49) But after the virus came in, I just felt differently. A trade deal with China didn't mean very much. To me, it was a whole different mindset. Does that make sense? I used to talk about the trade deal. I'd drive these guys crazy. That trade deal was great. Look at our farmers. They're starting to do great. You look at beef, you look at cattle, you look at all of the different things. Corn, wheat. You look at it. What a great deal. When the virus came in, I don't even talk about the trade. This is the first time in a long time I've even mentioned the trade deal. It's really been very beneficial. But it's so tiny compared to the devastation that's been caused. We should reinvest 100% of all of that money that we collect from tariffs to help bring back jobs and factories from China and other places back to America and back to the great state of North Carolina where they belong. Donald Trump: (28:46) Over the years, I've built lots of hotels and lots of things. I used to buy my furniture from North Carolina. Are you a furniture guy? Stand up. There's only one in the room I think. Right? But I helped you a lot, right? Good. Thank you. It's great to have you. The quality was incredible. Now it's so much of it's made in China, right? So much. We were stopping that. It was all stopping. Then we had to slow it down a little bit after the pandemic, but it was all stopping. It was all starting to come back here and to other places. I will tell you, I bought a lot of furniture, a lot of things. A lot of times, you'd put furniture made in China into a hotel room and it would break. Somebody sits down in a chair. If you don't sit down lightly, the damn thing would collapse. Then I'd get sued as usual. But nobody ever made it like you made it here and you make it here. So just stay tuned, okay? Because we were all set to bring it all back. It was all coming back. Donald Trump: (29:47) In addition, all nations should work together to present China a bill for a minimum of $10 trillion to compensate for the damage they've caused. That's a very low number. The damage is far, far greater than that. As a first step, all countries should collectively cancel any debt they owe to China as a down payment on reparations. The nations of the world should no longer owe money to China. China has destroyed so many nations. I mean, we came out better than anybody. Our economy's stronger now than any other nation. Nobody's recovered like us because of what we've done, because we laid a great economic foundation, and because of what we've done with a vaccine and also what we've done with the distribution of the vaccine. But China should owe money to the nations of the world. They've been destroyed. These nations have been destroyed. Donald Trump: (30:45) Sadly, the current administration is very timid and frankly corrupt when you look at all of the money that they've been given as a family by China. That, instead of holding China accountable, the Biden Administration shut down the US government's investigation into the origins of the virus shortly after taking office. What's going on? Now, Hunter, who had no experience, walked out with $1.5 billion to manage. You know how much money you make on $1.5 billion to manage? They needed Hunter's advice. They don't use the smartest people on Wall Street. They don't want their advice. I spoke to somebody on Wall Street. I won't mention his name. We'll get him in trouble. But I spoke to somebody. I said, "Who's one of the biggest?" I said, "Do they do this?" He said, "I can't get money." This guy's record is better than anybody. Now, that's a disgrace. Donald Trump: (31:34) We must never forget that Joe Biden and his family took millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party. They bought them off. They flagrantly lied about it to the American voters. If you remember, it was a big deal at the time and then all of a sudden, it was canceled. They didn't want to talk about it. The Big Tech and the fake news media didn't want to talk about it. You could talk up a storm. In fact, I'll guarantee you those cameras are starting to go off right now. It's true. Yeah. Those red lights. Well, there's one over there. What the hell network are you with? This guy's going to lose his job. The American voters and now Joe Biden are doing... What they're doing is just terrible to the American voter and to our great country, our great country. Donald Trump: (32:27) Because we are greater than China. There is nobody like us. Nobody has the people that we have. Nobody has the genius that we have. Nobody has the things or the system that we have when it works, but it's broken right now. It's corrupt. It's broken. Whether it's elections, whether it's business, whether it's taxation. Whether it's so many different things. Nobody has what our country has. The Biden Administration has been one shameful and embarrassing foreign policy disaster after another. You know the former Secretary of State, he said, "Joe has never made a good foreign policy decision." Donald Trump: (33:09) Biden cravenly lifted sanctions on Iran. Oh, Iran. Oh. I would have had a deal in one week. One week. I even told them. I said, "You know what? Let's get the election over with and we'll make a deal." It would have been a great deal. Now, they're actually asking for money. Here we go again. Remember? They got $150 billion plus $1.8 billion in cash. Now, they're actually asking for money. They never asked me for money. It's unbelievable. It's so sad to see. So many things. That's one. Donald Trump: (33:40) Look at what's happening with North Korea. Remember when I first came in? We were going to war with North Korea. War is inevitable. Nuclear war we're talking about. He's pretty well stocked up and I got along with him. It started out a little rough, but we got along great. I liked him, he liked me. We got along great. You don't even hear about North Korea. Now, you're starting to hear. Because he doesn't seem to like Biden very much. There's nobody to talk to Kim Jong-un. He's a different kind of guy. Takes a different kind of a guy to talk to him too, but I got along with him. Got along with him. Remember when I had the meeting? They said, "He's given so much. He's given..." I said, "I haven't given anything." They said, "Hmm, that's a problem. All right." Then they said, "No, no. You agreed to meet." I said, "Well, what the hell is that? It's a plane trip and it's back and forth." That's okay. Donald Trump: (34:38) But you know the sanctions were all left. Nobody's ever been sanctioned like them. Or Russia, by the way. Russia. Not only the pipeline, but Russia, look at the sanctions on Russia. Nobody's ever, yet I got along great with Putin. But I got along great with Kim Jong-un. Got along great with everyone. Not all of them liked me. Germany's ripping us off on trade. They understood that. So when I want to reduce 52,000 soldiers, take out 25,000 soldiers, which costs us just tens of billions of dollars, everyone goes crazy. But I did the right thing and they would have done anything, but now they want to put everybody back. It's a shame. Donald Trump: (35:15) Biden's also beholden to America's enemies and so beholden, nobody's ever seen anything, that he actually criticized Israel while the Jewish homeland was under attack by thousands and thousands of rockets and missiles launched by Iran. It was launched by Iran. It was a betrayal of Israel when you look at what happened in Congress. It used to be, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, everybody was with Israel. Today, I guess it's just not in vogue. But look at some of these radicals that they have in the House of Representatives, you have to deal with them all the time. Israel's almost out. It's almost out. It's a very, very- Donald Trump: (36:03) ... out. It's almost out. It's a very, very terrible thing, and Biden foolishly eliminated the travel ban on terror-afflicted countries. I said, "I don't want people in from countries that blow up each other. I don't want them in. I don't want people in that are going to blow up our shopping centers. I don't want people in that are going to blow up our cities." Donald Trump: (36:20) And I won in court. They said I didn't win, and they were right. I lost at the lower court, I lost at the second court, and then I won at the Supreme Court, or we have a travel ban, and now they want to give it up. When the press talks about the travel ban, do you ever notice that, "He lost him court"? And they're right. I lost here, I lost there. And then I won. We got the travel ban. They don't mention the last one, but we have a travel ban, and they are ending the travel ban, as I understand it. So they don't mind people coming in that like to blow things up and kill people. Donald Trump: (36:52) And he's taking action to increase the number of refugee admissions by 700%. This is [inaudible 00:37:01] stuff. But it'll soon be by over 2,000% and that'll go up and up and up, and I don't know what they're doing. They don't need them for voting. And a lot of people say they want them for voting, but they don't need them because they cheat so much in the voting you don't have to go through this process. Okay? They don't need them. I keep saying, "They don't need them for voting. They just throw the ballots in there. Why do we need people coming in? We don't need that. We'll just throw those ballots in there," and many other things. Donald Trump: (37:29) Yep, they're destroying our country, and now Biden is being openly mocked by China's negotiators and Russian president Putin. And they're taunting him and they're laughing at him and they're humiliating our country. And do you ever notice when he had a hard time going up the stairs on the plane, nobody talks about that. Nobody talks. The news didn't cover. Not one network covered it. Now, when I made the best speech I've ever made, they said it was at West Point and it was pouring, and I a ramp that was an ice skating rink. And I called, I said to the general, I said, "General, I may have to grab you, because the last thing I'm doing is going down." Donald Trump: (38:07) So I walked gingerly down. That was on every newscast in the world, and I never went down. I never went on my ass, I'll tell you. I wasn't going to fall. I think that was a booby trap. I'll never forget that ramp. That was like a sheet of ice. It was cold, rainy, and that ramp was long and steep. I said, "General, I might have to grab you, but I'm not going down under." And unfortunately, I wasn't wearing American shoes. I had Italian shoes, nice leather. Leather. It's like an ice skating rink, but they made that a big story, but they didn't make the Biden fall, the triple fall. I call it the triple fall. Donald Trump: (38:47) Under my administration. America was respected again, totally respected. We withdrew from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. We stood with Israel, recognized Jerusalem as its eternal capital, and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. They've been working on that for 55 years and I got it done. We decimated the ranks of the world's top terrorists. You know that. We got our allies to pay their fair share. We stood up for our freedoms and for our country. And we stood up to America's adversaries, like never before. Donald Trump: (39:29) Nobody's ever done what we've done. I got other countries with NATO to pay. We were paying for NATO. We were paying for NATO. I got them to pay $430 billion. Nobody knows. Nobody. You don't read about that. The head of NATO is probably my single biggest fan, the secretary general of NATO. They couldn't believe. So we were getting ripped off on trade. Okay? And on top of it, we were protecting them militarily. And how about Germany? They pay Putin, they pay Russia billions of dollars for energy. And then we protect Germany from Russia. How does that work? Donald Trump: (40:09) Think of it. They pay Russia billions and billions for the pipeline that nobody even knew was being built until I started making it a big case, because I said, "Why are you doing this? You're paying them billions of dollars, and then we're protecting you from them. What the hell kind of a deal are we? What are we doing?" It's not believed. I could name so many. I could say so many different things. South Korea. I got them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year. They hadn't paid for years and years and years anything substantial. And my deal was, they're going to pay billions of dollars and it would have already taken place. And I refused to renew the deal. The deal expired. He knows better than anybody. I said, "We'll go on a month-to-month basis." Do you believe it? "We want a five-year deal." I said, "No, no, no, because you're not paying us. Why are we protecting you? You took our television business, you built the ships, you built everything, you're making a fortune and you're not paying us for military protection, and we're protecting you against a very hostile nation. Why?" Donald Trump: (41:11) And they were very angry. They're great negotiators. But finally, they agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was because their budget had already been passed. I said, "That's okay, but in January, February, we're going to meet and you're going to pay us $5 billion a year," and they said, "No, no, no," but I can tell when they're about ready to fold. So we didn't renew the deal, and we were going to get billions and billions of dollars from South Korea, who we protect. And they're great. They're wonderful. Everything's wonderful. But we were being taken advantage of. Donald Trump: (41:45) Again, kill us on trade and kill us on the military. And what happened? They just renewed it for a cost-of-living increase. Think of it. A cost-of-living increase. So we've been protecting them for 85 years, and they'll pay if you ask them. Nobody asks. In fact, they said. I said, "Why are we paying for your military?" "Because that is the way it has always been." Well, that's not a great answer, I didn't think. I said, "But that won't be the way." But I guess he turned out to be right, because they just got a cost of living, think of that, a cost-of-living increase of less than 1%. Donald Trump: (42:24) We would have gotten at least $5 billion from them. We fully rebuilt the U.S. military and created the first new branch of the United States armed forces in 75 years, called the Space Force, so desperately needed. A lot of people, a lot of things happening right here on this Space Force too. We ended the forever wars in Iraq and Syria and Somalia and Afghanistan. We brought them back home, and this is just the finishing little. We brought them back home. We're down to very few soldiers in any of those places. Donald Trump: (42:55) And I'm very proud of it. These were the endless wars. So bad, so bad. I'd visit soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, where the doctors are truly fantastic what they can do, but I'd see these young people that were just blown to pieces, and it's so sad. I'd be at Dover where these magnificent machines would come in, the big cargo planes, and that door would open up and there'd be a coffin in the back. And the military, the soldiers, would take that coffin and walk it off the plane. And I'd be with the parents an hour before and we'd be talking, and I'd say to the general in-charge, "General, the parents seemed to be okay," and he'd say, "No, they're not, sir. They're not okay." Donald Trump: (43:45) I said, "General, I'm having a great conversation." And the mothers oftentimes would say, "Oh, my son was such a great football player. Sir, he had an arm that was so powerful. He was so strong and he could throw a ball so far. He was such a good player," or other things. They'd tell me these stories. They just were so in love with telling the stories about their son or their daughter, in some cases, their daughter. Donald Trump: (44:08) And then, I'd look at the general. I'd say, "Well, it's amazing the way they can handle it." And then, the plane would come in and the general would say, "Sir, it's not going to be good." And that door would open up, that big back door, right, would open up from this incredible, powerful machine that can lift up Army tanks like it's nothing. And it would open up, and there'd be one or two or three or four coffins, and I'd see the same people that were talking to me so jubilant about their child, how great the child was, would start screaming, screaming. Screams like I've never heard before. Donald Trump: (44:50) It was the most terrible thing to watch. And the general in charge would say, "Sir, you're going to see things that you maybe will not have seen." "Like what, General?" He said, "Mothers and wives, and even fathers sometimes, breaking through the military ranks and jumping on top of the coffin." And I got to see that one time where a mother, she was devastated. She jumped on and these incredible, extremely fit soldiers are taking that coffin, and would jump onto the coffin, and hey wouldn't do a thing, they would just keep walking. Donald Trump: (45:35) And the mother was on the coffin, and this is for Afghanistan and for Iraq, and for these other places, where so many mistakes were made, where we shouldn't be, and we can't do that. And we're moving them out. We're moving them back. 21 years. You know, you've heard 19 years, but it's not 19. Now it's 21 years in Afghanistan. It's enough. And we haven't lost a soldier in Afghanistan since January of last year. Not one single soldier's been lost. Pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. Donald Trump: (46:15) So it's hard to believe the records the Biden administration is doing. And I'm very glad that he's continuing to move them out. I think it would be very hard to stop, to be honest. I think, frankly, stopping would be very, very hard, but so I'm very honored by the fact that they're continuing to bring those soldiers home where they belong. And we have other things to possibly get ready for, because the bigger ballgame, we have to be respected as a military power, because if we're not respected, these other countries that are very big, very powerful countries, they will take advantage of us, and you know what I mean by that. Donald Trump: (46:49) So we cannot be doing what we've been doing for the last very long period of time. When we got into Iraq, I said, as a private individual, many years ago, "Don't go. But if you're going to go, keep the oil." We didn't keep the oil, and they make a lot of money with that oil. I know how much money they make. They make a lot of money. And we are looked upon as not very smart people and not a very smart country. So we're doing things that nobody thought were possible. The radical Democrat Party has become consumed by the unquenchable thirst of power. You know that. I don't know. It's a term that I've heard for a long time. They want power, power, power. I don't know. I think it's power, it's money. I think it's a lot of things. I don't think it's just power. It's too ridiculous. They want to take away freedom of speech. They want to take away religious liberty. And Biden has already introduced legislation in Congress to take away your guns. You know, your guns are under siege. You do know that. I told you all these things. Donald Trump: (47:55) Again, nobody ever thought what is happening would happen. In Texas, I said, "We're going to win." We won Texas by a lot. We won Texas, but they were against oil, guns, and God. And then you'd listen to the fake news. It's going to be a very close race in Texas. It wasn't very close at all. Republicans must never waiver in protecting the second amendment and keep and bear arms. We have to keep. We have to have that power to keep and bear arms. If we don't, we will have a problem like nobody's ever seen before. Donald Trump: (48:33) But they want to take away your guns. And I said it before the election and I say it after the election. The Biden administration has also issued regulations to indoctrinate America's school children with poisonous and divisive left-wing doctrines, such as critical race theory, and exact opposite of the American belief that we all are created equal in the holy image of God. We have a group of people, I don't know where they come from, but it's hell, I think. Donald Trump: (49:03) Just as the state house of representatives has done right here in North Carolina, Republicans at every level should move immediately to ban critical race theory in our schools. And we should ban it in workplaces. We should ban it in our states, and we should ban it in the federal government, that it should be done immediately. It should be done very quickly. Donald Trump: (49:41) Washington Democrats are also pushing legislation to spend billions and billions of dollars on phony civic education, giving students academic credit to show up at protests. Can you believe that? And make themselves into left-wing activists. And how badly do they treat people that tend to be on the right compared to people that are on the radical left? Look at what happened in Portland. Nothing's happening with these people, and they do kill people and they burn down buildings and they go after federal buildings and nothing happens. And people are damn angry about it. Donald Trump: (50:19) If government-run schools are going to indoctrinate children with radical ideas, Republicans must immediately pass legislation to empower every parent in America to opt out of the insanity and send their child to the public private charter or religious school of their choice. The socialist Democrats quests for whatever it is they're looking for, because nobody knows, I don't even think they know, truly knows no bounds. Donald Trump: (51:03) The slander that they cause, they slander our country, disparage our founding, divide our children. And as we've seen time and time again in recent years, the left is willing to weaponize the law itself to persecute their political opponents. There are people in this room that have been persecuted. In New York, radical left prosecutors are right now spending vast amounts of time and money threatening families and trying to destroy the lives of innocent people, really, really good people, in their crusade to inflict pain on me, the radical left movement in New York. Donald Trump: (51:43) There's no place where it's worse or more corrupt. And most importantly, to stop our movement, 75 million voters plus, plus, plus. That's what I say. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of radical-left Democrat money had been paid to these prosecutors in the form of campaign contributions. Go get Trump. Go get him. And now, a new group of far-left Democrats are seeking the prosecutor's office, all fighting for who will be the toughest on Trump. Donald Trump: (52:13) They're going to get elected, whoever's the vicious the most tough. They don't know anything about me. "We're going to get Trump." "What did he do?" "Well, we don't know, but we'll figure it out." Washington Post reported the other day, they've gotten millions of pages of documents. Well, when did he do a deal? Did he do another deal? They're going through every deal I've ever done, millions and millions of pages. If there's a comma, mistake, if there's a misspelling, it's problems. You know what? It's a disgrace to our country. It's prosecutorial misconduct. Donald Trump: (52:48) They're in search of a crime. It's a fishing expedition, and the Supreme Court of the United States should not have allowed it to happen. Shouldn't have allowed it. And they mentioned, it can't be a fishing expedition. This is the ultimate fishing expedition. It's been a five-year long witch hunt, hoax after hoax, Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, the Mueller hoax. Look at the Mueller scam. How well did he do before Congress? It wasn't too good, was it? Donald Trump: (53:19) Lie after lie, corrupt investigation after corrupt investigation. Do you remember when they found out it was Hillary Clinton and the Democrats that paid for the dossier, the fake news dossier, the fake dossier? It was Hillary Clinton. And they got more than the great James Patterson. This guy, Christopher Steele, I don't know who the hell he is, but he sure as hell hated me. Donald Trump: (53:44) It was a total phony deal paid for by the Democrats and crooked Hillary Clinton. And nothing happens to them. And by the way, where's Durham? What happened to Durham? Where is he? Has anyone seen Durham? All of this for nothing. It's a shame, it's a shame. They do things a little bit differently. We'll never let it happen. Donald Trump: (54:03) It's a shame. They do things a little bit differently. We'll never let it happen again. Now they just send the same information from the no collusion Mueller investigation to corrupt politicians in New York, they send everything that they've already gone over and over, send it into New York, let the radical left prosecutors go after Trump. Just give it a shot, they say, give it a shot. They failed in Washington. They failed all over the place. Between the impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, all of these investigations, ah shit, we failed. Let's send it to the radical left prosecutors in New York, maybe they can have more luck. They'll never stop until November of 2024. They won't stop. There's no better example of the Democrat and media corruption than the 2020 election hoax. As you know, the evidence is too voluminous to even mention. All you have to do is read the article in Time magazine, cover story in Time magazine. I'm not a big fan, I was on the cover a lot, perhaps a record, a lot. I got to a point if I was ever on the cover, I was on the cover of Time magazine before I did this political thing and I read every word. I said, I wonder what that means. It was actually a very good story, I used to actually get good press, can you believe it? I guess that's how I got to be president when you think about it. But I used to get great press. But Time magazine did a story. They couldn't help themselves. They had to brag about what they did in November. They had to brag and that story just goes 25% of the way. Donald Trump: (55:51) But if you take it a little bit further, you'll just read that and you see how corrupt, but that's the least of it. You look at what happened on that evening when the election was won and all of a sudden vast amounts of votes were taken in just in certain states, swing states. Swing states that I was leading by a lot. Then all of a sudden, oh, something happened. It was a disgrace to our country and if you think people don't see it, people see it. People have seen it. The 2020 presidential election, that election, the 2020 presidential election was by far the most corrupt election in the history of our country. There's never been anything like this. They used COVID and they used the mail-in ballots to steal an election. It was the third world country election like we've never seen before. Look at what took place. I want to congratulate by the way, Republican state senators in Arizona and other places for their great work that they are doing in exposing this fraud. Donald Trump: (57:08) And maybe again, I have nothing to do with the Arizona situation, they're doing it, the state senate of Arizona, because they have so many discrepancies, so many problems. And they've heard from so many people about the corruption and what took place, so they're doing it. Let's see what happens. They'll be finished in three or four weeks. It'll be very interesting, but I'll tell you, and maybe they'll find nothing. Maybe they'll say, oh, it was a wonderful, perfect election, but maybe not. And now they're looking at it in Pennsylvania and they're looking at it in Georgia. And they're looking at it in many other states because they're saying the same things happened to us. Donald Trump: (57:48) That election will go down as the crime of the century and our country is being destroyed by people who perhaps have no right to destroy it. Zuckerberg broke the law spending millions of dollars. Don't you think he broke the law? Millions of dollars to get out the vote efforts in highly Democrat areas. He used to come to the White House. He would call, "Oh, could I have dinner with you, sir?" "Sure." "Could I bring my wife?" "Oh, absolutely." He actually walked into the office one day in front of numerous people, "Congratulations, sir." "Why?" He said. "You're number one on Facebook." He said to me, "You're number one on Facebook." I said, "Thank you very much. I appreciate it." We had a nice dinner. The day I was out he became a rather, well, I guess it's human nature. But we can't let our country be run by that kind of human nature can we? Zuckerberg, it's another beauty. Donald Trump: (58:48) But they say they may allow me back in two years. No, I'm not too interested in that. They may allow me back in two years, we got to stop that, we can't let it happen. So unfair, they're shutting down an entire group of people, not just me. They're shutting down the voice of a tremendously powerful, in my opinion, a much more powerful and a much larger group. Because you know what, when the Democrats say defund the police, open borders, sanctuary cities, all of these horrible, horrible cancel culture things, their policy is terrible. And I say a lot now there's no way they go 50, 50, who the hell wants to defend the police? Look at what's happening where they're defunding the police, the crime rate is going up by 50, 60, 100%. 131% in one city. They don't even know what to do, but they keep doing it. Donald Trump: (59:40) The policy is so bad. You know what, they're smart and I said, they're vicious and they stick together. But I don't believe it's 50, 50 because our country isn't there. We're not a 50, 50 country to defund the police and to have sanctuary cities where criminals are allowed to be protected. I'm telling you, I think a lot of these elections where they always seem to have an advantage, I don't believe it. I can't believe that some of these states that are blue, that they're blue. I know those people, they're smart people. And I see so many people. They love me because they love what I stand for. And they're not into these things. There's something going on and we have to be very, very careful with our election process because I don't believe we're a 50, 50 nation where these states are split evenly. They can't be split. This is corrupt elections possibly and we can't allow it to go on. Donald Trump: (01:00:37) And I can tell you, and you'll see it because more and more it's coming out. The things that happened in the recent election, dead people voting, dead people. Worse is dead people voting who had to apply to vote. It's true. You had people that are dead that applied to vote. And by the way, I'm talking about thousands of people, thousands and thousands of people, dead people. Illegal aliens voting. Indians getting paid to vote in certain states, including Arizona and Nevada, getting paid to vote. You're not allowed to get paid to vote. It's a terrible thing that's going on. We have to clean up those rolls, we have to do so many things or we're not going to have a country. If you don't have election integrity and if you don't have strong borders, our country can be run like a dictatorship and that's what they'd like to do. Donald Trump: (01:01:26) I don't even think Biden is the dictator. If anybody knows who the hell is running that operation, could you let us know? Because I don't think it's Joe but who the hell knows maybe it is. Maybe it is. And with all of the things currently going on, especially the prosecutorial misconduct that's going on at a level like nobody's seen for many, many years, that's all that's happening. And that's what they're doing. They want to silence you, they want to silence your voice. Remember, I am not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I'm the one that's trying to save it, please remember that. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Donald Trump: (01:02:28) We all know what happened with the election and we can never ever let that happen again. And we're going to go forward and we're going to continue to look, and things are being found that is not even believable. But we have to do that because without going back, you're not going to go forward. The thing that I get most is, "Sir, we can't let that happen again. If we're going to work and work, and spend money, and make contributions. Sir, will the same thing happen in 2022 to Ted and to other people? Will the same thing happen has happened in '20?" We have to be able to say absolutely not. That's why I love what they've done in Texas. I love what they're doing in Florida and done in Florida. I would like to see Georgia be much tougher, they don't have signature verification, they don't have things, that Georgia has to be tougher. But I love what's going on in so many states, 41 different states. Because they saw what happened in this last disaster and they don't want it to happen again. Donald Trump: (01:03:34) And the only way you're going to be able to really solve that problem is to figure out exactly what happened. And you know what, they're going to be able to do that. In light of so many outrageous wrongs, Republicans across the country are pursuing voting reforms to ensure election integrity. One of the biggest things that I hear is election integrity. Joe Biden called these common sense reforms un-American. But the thing that is really un-American is an election scam, that's un-American. All over the world, they used to say, oh, they're the land of the free, they have great elections. We don't have great elections. We have elections like probably very few countries have. And that's in a bad way, not in a good way. What happened to this country in that last election was a disgrace and it's being laughed at, and viewed all over the world. Donald Trump: (01:04:24) And I can tell you, China is extremely happy about it. And Russia is extremely happy about it. They're all very, very happy about it. Probably in order, I would say China and then I would say Iran, and then I would say many countries. I could go through a list of them, but China is certainly happy. Iran is certainly happy. And think of it, if the bill passed by the House Democrats, HR1, is ever signed into law, there will never be another fair election in our country. It can't get worse but it would be almost as bad as the recent presidential election. To fully secure every future election, we must have photo ID, universal signature verification, citizenship confirmation, chain of custody, integrity controls, updated voter rolls for every election. You got to update those voter rolls, not people that have been dead for nine years. Donald Trump: (01:05:25) We can't have illegal aliens allowed to vote. Strong protection of poll watchers, our poll watchers, our poor, poor poll watchers. What happened to them in Philadelphia, what happened to them in Detroit, where they were literally thrown out of election for days, and were actually afraid for their lives. And we can not have dropboxes paid for by Facebook and Zuckerberg. Where, by the way, massive numbers, 95, 96% of the vote is for Joe Biden, doesn't happen. You ever see these dropboxes, some of them came back very late. They got lifted, taken. Where are they a day later? Where are they? Oh, they're coming. Oh great, that's wonderful. 96% for Joe Biden. We must eliminate the absurdity of mass mail-in voting and people should vote in person on Election Day. Not over weeks and months where all sorts of things can happen and they're not good things for our country. And there should have to be a legitimate reason for someone to vote absentee. There are people that deserve it. They're sick, they're at a certain age, they can't make it, and they love our country. There's a certain group of people, military, but to do what you did, where you were sending out millions and millions... Donald Trump: (00:40) By the way, I don't know if, those of you that are really into the world of politics, you know that I called this long before what I heard what they were doing, how they were allowed to do this. Millions and millions of ballots, some people got six, some people got seven ballots. To send out millions of ballots, to allow that to happen to our country... We know the radical left will stop at nothing in their efforts to destroy the America we love, but with the help of righteous American Patriots like all of you in this room, they will fail. Our movement is far from over. In fact, it is just getting started. Donald Trump: (01:19) Here in North Carolina, across the country ,the Republican party will continue to fight for strong families, safe communities, and secure and sovereign borders. We will fight for more jobs, lower taxes, and pro-American trade deals that result in more North Carolina workers, forging more products, stamped with beautiful, beautiful phrases, but in particular made in the USA, Mr. Furniture Manufacturer. We will shut down outsourcing, bring back our supply chains, crack down on trade cheaters and violators, and ensure that America, not China, dominates the future of the world. We will protect innocent life. We will defend our glorious constitution and we will uphold the Judeo-Christian values and principles of our nation's founding. Donald Trump: (02:28) We will break up the big tech monopolies, reject left-wing cancel culture, restore free speech in America, and demand free, fair and honest transparent elections. We will strengthen our military, support our great police, and always take care of our amazing veterans. Do you know that we got a 92% approval rating with respect to the VA. They rated us 92% approval rating. It's never been anywhere even near that number. Very proud of that. With the American pride that fills our souls, we will teach our children to love their country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag. Donald Trump: (03:23) Tomorrow marks the 77th anniversary of one of the most epic military trial in the history of the world, the allied invasion of Normandy on D-Day. As we remember this incredible achievement, let us summon the spirit of generations of Americans before us who gave their blood, sweat, and tears for our beloved country. All of us in this room inherit the legacy of the selfless patriots who won the battles, crossed the oceans, forged the steel, made the breakthroughs, climbed the summits, these great, beautiful summits, tamed the frontiers and seized the victories that built America into the single greatest nation in the history of the world. That's where we want to keep it. That is our magnificent American inheritance, and there is nothing like it anywhere in the world, and there never will be. Let us go forward tonight, moved by their sacrifice, motivated by their example, inspired by their resolve, committed to their values and more determined than ever to make America prouder, freer, stronger, and greater than ever before. Thank you, North Carolina. God bless you, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.