Donald Trump's full NRA speech 5/27/22 Transcript

Donald Trump: (00:00) ... We gather. This week citizens across this state and across this nation are filled with grief in the wake of the heinous massacre of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. You know all about that and what a horrible, horrible thing it was to see it, to watch it, to hear about it. The terrible murder of 19 innocent children and two adult teachers, with many badly injured, was a savage and barbaric atrocity that shocks the conscience of every single American, so horrible. I want to ask for a brief moment of silence as I read the names of these beautiful people, all young, wonderful lives ahead of them. Their brave teachers whose lives were destroyed by an out of control lunatic. Donald Trump: (00:55) So we'll start. Alexandria Rubio, Alithia Ramirez, Amerie Garza, Annabel Guadalupe Rodriguez, Eliahana Cruz Torres, Ellie Garcia, Jacklyn Cazares, Jailah Nicole Silguero, Jayce Luevanos, Jose Flores, Layla Salazar, Makenna Lee Elrod, Maite Rodriguez, Maranda Mathis, Nevaeh Bravo, Rojelio Torres, Tess Marie Mata, Uziyah Garcia, Javier Lopez. Two great and beautiful, brilliant teachers, Eva Morales, Irma Garcia. And thank you very much. It's a beautiful moment of silence for something that should never have even been thought about, let alone happened. Each precious young soul that was taken is an incomprehensible loss, literally not comprehensible, stolen from us by a malice that no words can describe, sickness. The monster who committed this crime is pure evil, pure cruelty, pure hatred, absolute pure hatred. And while those he slaughtered are now with God in heaven, he will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of hell. Donald Trump: (03:40) As we mourn for so many beautiful victims, I know that everyone here joins me in praying for the families who are suddenly missing the brightest light in their lives. We see their agony, we ask God to ease their suffering and to heal their pain and together we grieve side by side as one great American family. Now is the time to find common ground. Sadly before the sun had even set on the horrible day of tragedy, we witnessed a now familiar parade of cynical politicians seeking to exploit the tears of sobbing families to increase their own power and take away our constitutional rights. Every time a disturbed or a demented person commits such a hideous crime there's always a grotesque effort by some in our society to use the suffering of others to advance their own extreme political agenda. Even more repulsive is their rush to shift blame away from the villains who commit acts of mass violence and to place that blame onto the shoulders of millions of peaceful law abiding citizens who belong to organizations such as our wonderful NRA. Donald Trump: (05:09) When Joe Biden blamed the gun lobby, he was talking about Americans like you. And along with countless other Democrats this week, he was shamefully suggesting that Republicans are somehow okay with letting school shootings happen, they're not okay with it. This rhetoric is highly divisive and dangerous, and most importantly it's wrong. It has no place in our politics. As always in the wake of these tragedies, the various gun control policies being pushed by the left would have done nothing to prevent the horror that took place, absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, ever since Columbine, we've been afflicted by a contagion of school shootings carried out by deeply evil, violent, and mentally disturbed young men. Donald Trump: (06:04) While we don't yet know enough about this week's killing, we know there are many things we must do. We need to drastically change our approach to mental health. There are always so many warning signs, almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile. When people see something, whether on social media or in school, they need to say something. Teachers, parents, school officials, and community members need to be recognizing and addressing these alarm bells promptly and very, very aggressively. And our school discipline systems, instead of making excuses and continually turning a blind eye, need to confront bad behavior head on and quickly. Donald Trump: (06:58) And clearly we need to make it far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions. We have also very importantly, got to deal with the problem of broken families because no law can cure the effects of a broken home. There is no substitute for a strong mom and a great dad. But while we work to address these deep, complicated issues and deal with this scourge, all of us must unite, Republican and Democrat in every state and at every level government, to finally harden our schools and protect our children. Donald Trump: (07:55) What we need now is a top to bottom security overhaul at schools all across our country. Every building should have a single point of entry. There should be strong exterior fencing, metal detectors, and the use of new technology to make sure that no unauthorized individual can ever enter the school with a weapon. No one should ever be able to get anywhere near a classroom until they have been checked, scanned, screened, and fully approved, so important. In addition, classroom doors should be hardened to make them lockable from the inside and closed to intruders from the outside. And above all, from this day forward every school in America should have a police officer or an armed resource officer on duty at all times. Donald Trump: (09:18) Moreover, at every police department in America, we need a rigorous training on active shooter protocols to immediately locate and eliminate the target, took too long. And we need to expand funding, recruiting, and training for police departments nationwide. This is not a matter of money, this is a matter of will. If the United States has $40 billion to send to Ukraine, we should be able to do whatever it takes to keep our children safe at home. Thank you. That's true. Speaker 2: (10:04) Thank you. Donald Trump: (10:05) That's true. We spent trillions in Iraq, trillions in Afghanistan, we got nothing. Before we nation build the rest of the world we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation, right? Last year alone, Biden and congressional Democrats sent 122 billion in so-called COVID relief funds to K through 12 schools, even while they were keeping many of our schools totally shut down, no doubt, severely worsening the mental health challenge of many youth. I mean, many of these young people really suffered very greatly. It became very ill. They may have been ill to start, but they became very, very ill. Congress should vote immediately to take back every penny of unused COVID relief money, take it back from the states and use that money to quickly establish impenetrable security at every school, all across our land. Donald Trump: (11:09) As many have noted inner city schools rarely have these kinds of mass shootings, I didn't know that until just recently. Think of that, they rarely have this problem despite being located in very tough neighborhoods, in many cases where there's tremendous levels of high crime and violence. They're much more dangerous outside the school than inside. The reason is that for decades, inner city schools have had much stronger security measures in place in the school itself, including metal detectors, and yes, armed guards. They had guns, armed guards. Whatever our differences may be on other issues, what on earth is stopping Democrats from immediately passing measures to ramp up school security? Donald Trump: (12:12) How many more tragedies will it take until they agree to set aside their far left political agenda and do what is really needed and what actually works? This is not about virtue cycling and signing, this is about blaming your enemies, no, we don't want to do that. This is about saving our children's lives. Yes, that's what we want to do. Surely we can all agree, our school should not be the softest target, our school should be the single hardest target in our country. And that's why as part of a comprehensive school safety plan, it's time to finally allow highly trained teachers to safely and discreetly concealed carry. Let them concealed carry. And again, they have to be able to handle it, they have to be highly trained, all of those things, but let them do that. It would be so much better and so much more effective even from a cost standpoint. Donald Trump: (13:24) Because there is no sign more inviting to a mass killer than a sign that declares a gun free zone, most dangerous place. I know it sounds good, and it really does, doesn't it sound wonderful? But it's not. And statistically, it's a total disaster. Gun free zone, they look at that sign and they say, "That's where I'm going." We cannot have that because if somebody goes into that building all of those innocent people will be taken out, will be killed, will be tortured, bad things will happen, have to get rid of it. As the age old saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Have you ever heard that? No, you've never heard that. And in the absence of a member of law enforcement, there is no one you would rather have nearby when a crisis strikes than an armed, expertly trained, member of the NRA, true.