Melania Trump (00:39):
Good afternoon, and welcome to the White House. It's an honor to join you here today for the signing of the Take It Down Act, a national victory that will help parents and families protect children from online exploitation.
(01:01)
This legislation is a powerful step forward in our efforts to ensure that every American, especially young people, can feel better protected from their image or identity being abused through non-consensual or intimate imagery of NCII.
(01:24)
Artificial intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation: sweet, addictive, and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children. But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shape beliefs and sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly.
(01:54)
Over the past few months, I have met with brave survivors, deeply loving families and caring advocates who know firsthand the emotional and psychological toll of NCII and deepfake abuse. Alison Barry stood boldly for change despite the risk posed to her and her family by speaking out and making her voice heard. Alison, your voice and the voices of so many like you made this bill a national priority.
(02:34)
Many thanks to members of Congress, both parties, for passing this legislation, including Speaker Johnson, Senator Cruz, Senator Klobuchar, Congresswoman Salazar, Congresswoman Dean, and Congressman Guthrie, and so many more. Thank you all for coming together to prioritize people over politics.
(03:01)
As First Lady, my Be Best initiative is focused on improving children's well-being, encouraging kindness, and creating a safer online environment for our youth. Today, I'm proud to say that the values of Be Best will be reflected in the law of the land.
(03:28)
I want to thank my husband, President Trump, for standing with us on this effort. His signature on this new law is not where our work ends on this issue. Now we look to the Federal Trade Commission and the private sector to do their part.
(03:57)
Today, through the Take It Down Act, we affirm that the well-being of our children is central to our future of our families in America.
(04:10)
Now it is my pleasure to introduce the president. Thank you.
Donald Trump (04:14):
Thank you, honey. Good job, sweetie. Want to sit down?
Melania Trump (04:31):
Yeah.
Donald Trump (04:31):
Because I'm a gentleman. Nobody knew that. Great job. That was a great job.
(04:33)
Well, I want to thank everybody. We just spent two and a half hours talking to Vladimir Putin, and I think some progress has been made. It's a terrible situation going on over there. 5,000 young people every single week are being killed. So hopefully we did something. We also spoke to the heads of most of the European nations, and we're trying to get that whole thing wrapped up. What a shame that it ever started in the first place.
(05:02)
But I want to thank Melania for your leadership in this very important issue. It's an amazing issue. America's blessed to have such a dedicated and compassionate First Lady. I would tell you, she is very dedicated. In fact, if you look at just what I heard, Putin just said, "They respect your wife a lot." I said, "What about me?" "No, they like Melania a better." That wasn't good. I don't know if that was good. I'm okay with it. I'm okay.
(05:31)
I also want to congratulate the First Lady in securing $25 million in the first fiscal year, 2026 budget to provide housing and support for youth transitioning out of the foster care. I can say that she loves children and you really worked very hard on this and you had a lot of help from some friends of mine right here. And a lot of the senators are here and congressmen, and I appreciate you all being here.
(05:57)
We're also grateful to be joined by people that are just in love with what we're doing. It's such an important situation. And commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission and the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, where are you, Linda? Where are you, Linda? Thank you. Thank you, Linda. Stand up. Thank you, Linda. Great job. You're doing a great job. It's a big deal, right? That's great.
(06:24)
Today, it's my honor to officially sign the Take It Down Act into law. It's a big thing, very important. So horrible what takes place. This will be the first ever federal law to combat the distribution of explicit imaginary posted without subjects consent. They take horrible pictures and I guess sometimes even make up the pictures and they post it without consent or anything else. And very importantly, this includes for forgeries generated by artificial intelligence known as deepfakes. We've all heard about deepfakes. I have them all the time, but nobody does anything. I asked Pam, "Can you help me, Pam?" She says, "No, I'm too busy, too busy doing other things. Don't worry, you'll survive." But a lot of people don't survive. That's true and so horrible.
(07:12)
With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deepfakes and other explicit images distributed against their will. This is wrong and it's just so horribly wrong, and it's a very abusive situation, like in some cases people have never seen before. And today we're making it totally illegal. Thank you.
(07:40)
Upon hearing the stories of so many women affected, our First Lady made stopping these abuses a top priority, and she was given tremendous support because people, she'd go up to people and talk about it. They'd say, "Yeah, we know about it. We have the problem. Can we do something?" And she did something about it with the help of a lot of the people, especially the political people sitting here today.
(08:00)
Among Melania's guests in the gallery during my address to the Joint Session of Congress was a fifteen-year-old young person, Alison Barry, whose image was turned into an illicit deepfake by a peer. Alison, where are you? Are you around? Stand up, darling. That's fine. Beautiful. It's great. Thank you. You look fantastic. Alison quickly became a powerful advocate, committed to preventing other girls from suffering the same abuse. Alison, we salute you and we thank you very much and it's an honor to have you with us today. Great job you've done.
(08:41)
Also with us are several other brave Americans whose lives were rocked by online harassment, including Francesca Mani, as well as a South Carolina state representative, Brandon Guffey and his family, who have lost their son to suicide after he was targeted in an internet extortion scam, of which you have a lot of them, a lot. I want to thank you both for your incredible work to reach this important day. Could you stand up please? Thank you. Thank you very much. Great job. I've read about it. Thank you very much. It's a real honor to have you here. There's no place like the White House, I found out. You have a lot of places and I just left some of the richest places and we loved them and they gave us a nice contribution of about $5 trillion, but this is a special place. Even they talk about it. So it's great to have everybody here.
(09:36)
Under the law I'll sign in just a moment, anyone who intentionally distributes explicit images without the subject's consent will face up to three years in prison. In addition, this law establishes new civil liabilities for online platforms that refuse to take these images down promptly upon request. We will not tolerate online sexual exploitation, and especially it's gone on at levels that nobody's ever seen before. It's getting worse and worse. And I think this is going to hopefully stop it and not easy to do. People talked about all sorts of First Amendment, Second Amendment, they talked about any amendment they could make up, and we got it through because of some very brave people, including some very brave politicians in the audience.
(10:25)
I want to thank the bill sponsor, Senator Ted Cruz. Ted, stand up, please. Great. Great. Thank you, Ted. That's great. Very effective person. And Congresswoman Maria Salazar, friend of mine. Thank you, Maria. Thank you very much for their amazing work. And thanks also to the 99 senators and 408 members of Congress who voted in favor of the bill. Wow, I wish we could get that vote from other things. We have another bill coming up. Do you think we'll get that vote? Maybe not. We should, but we probably won't.
(11:03)
But working with our First Lady, we've shown that bipartisanship is still possible. That's true. With 99 senators, that's incredible. Senator, stand up. Look at that. John, you're here. Look at all of the senators. This is big up stuff. I'm in trouble because I don't have your names. They didn't give me these names. We have so many… We have half of the Senate here. Now they're all going to hate me because I can't introduce you. We don't have the time for that. I have to get back to Putin and people, but thank you very much for being here, all of you and Congressmen, a lot of them and women.
(11:35)
Working with our First Lady, though we've shown that that bipartisanship is possible. It's the first time I've seen such a level of bipartisanship and it's a beautiful thing to do. I'm not even sure you realize, honey, a lot of the Democrats and Republicans don't get along so well. You've made them get along, and she didn't even know about that. She didn't know we had a problem. She didn't know we had our problem. But I want to thank you. Honey, you've done amazing, that this was done when you started and I said, "I don't know, it sounds like a tough one" and yet a very important one, and you got it done. So I congratulate you and I congratulate Ted, Maria, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you.
(12:15)
And we'll sign the bill. Thank you.
(12:16)
You're going to sign it, too.
Melania Trump (12:16):
[inaudible 00:12:25].
Donald Trump (12:27):
I see a name, Chuck Wesley. He's been around a long time, huh? Come on around. That's beautiful. Come on around. Hey, look at that.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
You did it. You got it.
Speaker 4 (12:32):
Thank you, Mr. President.
Ted Cruz (12:32):
Thank you. Your leadership made this happen, so thank you.
Donald Trump (13:33):
That's fantastic. Okay, you ready? Okay, honey, you signing something? You want to sign it? Come on, sign it anyway. She deserves to sign it.
(13:33)
Okay, there we have it.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
There we are.
Donald Trump (13:43):
That's a big one. Thank you very much, everyone. You have some pens here, most importantly, right?
Speaker 7 (13:46):
Yeah.
Donald Trump (13:47):
Grab one of them.
Speaker 7 (13:47):
[inaudible 00:13:48].
Donald Trump (13:48):
Oh, look at these white pens. I've never seen that before. I want one of them. I've never seen them. Here, Pamela, take that.
(13:57)
Thank you very much.
Speaker 7 (13:57):
Thank you.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Thanks.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
Thank you so much.
Donald Trump (14:05):
Go ahead.
Speaker 8 (14:06):
Appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Ted Cruz (14:08):
Mr. President, let me introduce you to Brandon, who lost his son Gavin.
Donald Trump (14:11):
Let me get up.
Ted Cruz (14:12):
State legislator in South Carolina has been incredibly brave and his whole family [inaudible 00:14:17].
Speaker 9 (14:34):
Ladies and gentlemen, please remain at your seats until the President and the First Lady has departed the Rose Garden. Thank you.
