Trump Holds First Event Since Second Assasination Attempt

… Stand here tonight as the former White House Press Secretary, a job that I absolutely loved, and now, as the 47th governor and the first woman to ever lead my state. And while I’m incredibly proud of those things, the most important job I have, the greatest title I have, is that of being a mom. I have three kids that are 12, 10, and nine, and my kids serve as a permanent reminder of everything that is at stake in this country, and it’s why I’m here tonight. Because I want somebody who’s going to stand up and fight for my kids. And I know that there is nobody in the country more suited, more qualified, and more prepared to step in and lead and make our country strong, free and great again as Donald Trump will.

(01:15)
Not only do my kids serve as a permanent reminder of what’s important, they also keep me humble. You can walk into a room like this, where people cheer when you step onto the stage, and you might think for a second that you’re kind of special. Then you go home and your kids remind you, very quickly, you’re actually not that big of a deal. And ours are pretty good at it.

(01:36)
My daughter, Scarlett, who’s 12, a couple years ago, was getting ready for her first ever father-daughter dance. Big deal at our house. Scarlett didn’t just want to go to the dance, she wanted a big reveal. She wanted to come down the stairs and her Prince Charming, my husband, to be there and everything to be this magical special thing. I’m sitting at the top of the stairs putting the finishing touches on Scarlett, making sure she’s ready for the night of her life. And as I’m talking to her, I’m telling her how proud I am of her, how thankful I am that God chose us to be her parents, how beautiful she is on the inside and out. And as I’m having this moment, I start to get a little bit emotional, teared up. As my eyes fill with tears, my sweet daughter reaches up, pats my shoulder and says, “It’s okay, mommy. One day you can be pretty too.” So my kids keep me humble.

(02:33)
Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble. You would think, after four years of straight failure, she would know a little humility. Unfortunately, she doesn’t. You would think, after four years of wide-open border, skyrocketed inflation and an embarrassment on the national stage, she would be held accountable for the failures of this administration, but she thinks she can walk away and get out of it.

(03:08)
But we’re not going to let her, because the future of my kids and the future of our country depends so much on who our next president is. It’s why I know you’re here tonight. It’s why it is so important that we show up, in the biggest way possible, and send a very clear message: We are finished with the failures of the Biden-Harris administration and we’re ready to bring our fighter back. Ladies and gentlemen, please help me welcome the greatest president our country has ever seen, our friend, our fighter, Donald J. Trump.

And I’m proud to be an American.

(04:05)
Where at least I know I’m free.

(04:05)
And I won’t forget the men who died.

(04:05)
Who gave that life to me.

(04:05)
And I’d gladly stand up next to you and defender her until today.

(04:11)
Because there ain’t no doubt.

(04:13)
I love this land.

(04:13)
God bless the USA. From the lakes of Minnesota.

(04:47)
To the hills of Tennessee.

(04:51)
Across the plains of Texas.

(04:53)
From sea to shining sea.

(04:58)
From Detroit down to Houston.

(05:01)
And New York to LA.

(05:04)
Where there’s pride in every American heart.

(05:08)
And it’s time we stand and say.

(05:09)
That I’m proud to be an American.

(05:09)
Where at least I know I’m free.

(05:09)
And I won’t forget the men who died.

(05:09)
Who gave that life to me.

(05:09)
And I gladly stand up next to you.

(05:09)
And defend her still today.

(05:09)
Because there ain’t no doubt I love this land.

(05:09)
God bless the USA.

(05:09)
And I’m proud to be an American.

(05:09)
Where at least I know I’m free.

(05:09)
And I won’t forget the men who died.

(05:09)
Who gave that life to me.

(05:09)
And I gladly stand up next to you.

(05:09)
And defend her still today.

(05:09)
Because there ain’t no doubt I love this land.

(05:09)
God bless the USA.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. That’s a lot of people for a town hall. Nobody’s ever seen a town hall like this. A town hall’s supposed to have about 300 people. You have about 8,000 people here. And equally as important, you have about 8,000 people that are not here. They’re walking away. But I think we have television outside, right? They’re watching from outside. Would anybody like to change places with them? I thought you were going to say that. Thank you, everybody. Hello, Sarah.

Mr. President, nobody’s ever seen anything like it.

It’s been a great experience. It’s a dangerous business, however, being President. It’s a little bit dangerous. They think race car driving is dangerous. No. They think bull riding, that’s pretty scary, right? No. This is a dangerous business and we have to keep it safe.

Mr. President, I don’t think there’s a person, certainly in this room tonight, and probably anywhere in the country, that doesn’t remember exactly where they were on July 13th, that Saturday when a horrific thing happened. An attack not just on you, but what I see as an attack on our entire country. We know that you were tough. We saw it every day on the campaign. We saw it when you were president, but I don’t think anybody was prepared for what we saw that day. And now it’s happened not once, but twice. You’ve literally taken a bullet for our country and yet you keep fighting. You never give up. The reason that you’re going to win in November is because America needs a fighter. And we’ve never needed a fighter more and we’ve never had somebody more qualified to step in and lead our country than you. I’d love for you to tell us why do you want to be president and why do you continue fighting even after they keep attacking you every single day?

Thank you, everybody. A lot of love in this room. I love you, you love me and we love Sarah. We ran in 2016 and it was amazing. It was amazing. And we won. We then ran in 2020 and we did much better than 2016. People don’t like to hear it. “Oh, he’s a conspiracy theorist.” We got millions and millions more votes. We did much better. It wasn’t even a contest. I was telling one of the papers, they said, “what was the difference?” I said, “the difference is we did much, much better the second time,” but we had a lot of things happen. We know what those things are. What difference?

(10:43)
Because now, in 48 days or whatever it might be, we’re going to do something that will be… I don’t think it’s going to shock the world, actually. I think the world is going to be maybe prepared already. In Europe, they want it to happen, even though they would not prefer dealing with me in terms of the economics, they still want it to happen because the whole world is blowing up and they know it’s not going to blow up if I’m president here. We did great.

(11:13)
And honestly, if I didn’t do great, if we know what happened, and if that didn’t happen, if I didn’t do well in 2020, I wouldn’t even think about doing this. But we did phenomenally well and bad, bad things happened and we’re not going to let it happen again. And now I’ll tell you, 2016, a lot of spirit. 2020, we had unbelievable spirit. And then we got let down because what happened should never be allowed to happen in this country again.

(11:40)
But I have never seen the spirit like I’ve seen right now for this race. Never. Ever. Never seen anything like that. Never seen anything like that. It blows it away from 2016, from 2020, and basically it’s very simple. You’re saying what? We’re going to seal the border immediately. We’re going to drill baby drill. We’re going to drill at a level… We’re going to bring your energy prices down. We’re going to try and get rid of a lot of that big lump of inflation that this administration has given us.

(12:18)
And I have to say that President Biden called me yesterday. He was very nice. We had a very nice conversation. I appreciated that he called about what happened the other day, and he says… He’s committed. He’s committed. No, and today, a little while ago, I got a very nice call from Kamala. No, it was very nice. It was very nice. It was very, very nice. And we appreciate that. But we have to take back our country. We have to win. We’re going to win and we’re going to make America great again. That’s all there is there to it. Very simple.

I think it’s safe to say that this crowd will all be voting for you.

When I think of this state, it’s so sad. Years ago, I was given… Thank you very much. But years ago I was given an award, as Man of the Year or something, from an area that nobody knew and the press said, oh, it never happened. Then it did happen. They found out where it was. But it was 15 years ago. A beautiful area, but nobody remembered it. Nobody remembered it all. All of a sudden, like through a miracle, they found out it did exist. And it was there. And I had the speech. And the speech was don’t let them take your automobile industry away, they’re taking your automobile industry away. And I don’t know why you do it now, I wasn’t a politician, I was an entrepreneur. I was a real estate developer, doing great, having a lot of fun, doing a much simpler life than this.

(14:05)
Who would think that a developer’s life is simple, but it’s a lot simpler than this. But I said, don’t let them do that because here I am, in Michigan, and I was getting an award and I’m making a speech, I’m saying, what am I going to say? But I just watched common sense. I saw them leaving for Mexico, leaving for China. Do you know that right now, and they weren’t building them with me, they weren’t building anything in Mexico having to do with cars with me, because I said, if you build it, we’re going to put a 200%… You’re not going to sell one car into this country.

(14:33)
But right now, they’re building some of the largest auto plants anywhere in the world ever built. I have a friend that does that for a living. Very good at it. He’s the best, I think. And he’s actually a contributor, a supporter. But he builds the plants. And I say, I’d like to go see a plant, a really great auto plant. It’s amazing technology, amazing what they do. Really incredible the amount of automobiles they can produce and the size of these things. I’d like to see a real modern plant. And he’s the one that does them. And I said, so where would we go? I was hoping he’d say Detroit or someplace up here, but anywhere in this country, I’ll take anywhere in this country, right? So will you. My greatest guy right over here. Stand up, will you please? He’s such a great guy.

(15:26)
Oh. Hi, everybody. We’re going to bring them back. We’re going to bring them back. We’re not just going to keep… You’re losing your jobs, the whole thing. But they’re building, so I said, where would I go and let’s go take a look at a beauty. He said, we’ll have to go to Mexico. I said, wait a minute, I’m not interested. I’m not interested. No, I want to know here. He said, here, we don’t build top of the line. We build smaller plants. There’s just not that kind of a thing. And I said, isn’t it sad? He feels that too. He’s a United States guy. But he said, if you want to see the big ones, you’re going to have to go to Mexico. They’re owned and built by China and Mexico, and there are a number of them going up right now.

(16:11)
And they think they’re going to make their cars there and they’re going to sell them across our line and we’re going to take them and we’re not going to charge them tax. We’re going to charge them, I’m telling you right now, I’m putting a 200% tariff on, which means they’re unsellable in the United States. And then you wonder why I get shot at, right? Only consequential presidents get shot at. When I say something like that, you have countries saying, this guy.

(16:41)
But what can you do? You have to do what you have to do. We have to be brave, otherwise we’re not going to have a country left. What’s happening is they’re building these massive auto plants and they think they’re going to make tens of thousands of automobiles and sell them in here. No tax, no nothing. It’s not going to happen. When you put on tariffs, tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented. I took in $467 billion from China. Nobody else took in anything. And China’s economy is not even doing that well.

(17:14)
And Biden and Kamala, they have not been able to take those tariffs off because there’s so much money. And frankly, if they did take them off, this country would be flooded with Chinese cars. You don’t have the Chinese cars. We put a pretty good tariff on. It was going to be lifted at some point. Then we had COVID. We did a tremendous job in COVID. We gave you a stock market that was higher than just prior to COVID coming in. And we did a great job. We never got credit. We got credit for the best economy maybe ever. We got credit for having defeated ISIS and having rebuilt our military. Sarah, we shouldn’t have given $85 billion worth of equipment to the Taliban, to Afghanistan

And I think the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, that whole thing was the most, when we were leaving, we were leaving with me. I was the one that got it down to the right number. But we were going to keep the big air base, which is exactly one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. Think of that. One hour away. And we gave it up. We just gave it up. One of the biggest, one of the most. We spent billions and billions of dollars many years ago. The runways can hold more weight than any runway ever built. Think of that. They’re, I think, 19,000 feet long, which is three times what a normal runway would be. It’s called Bagram. And we were going to keep that because of China, not because of Afghanistan. One hour away from where they make their nuclear weapons.

(18:47)
So that was a good one. We left. We left, and the way we got out was so embarrassing. And because of that, first of all, 13 dead soldiers, I’ve gotten to know their families. They’re incredible families, but they’ll never be the same. Many badly injured. Nobody, Sarah, nobody ever talks about the soldiers that are badly. They talk about 13 dead. And we always have to say that, number one, and great families. But nobody ever mentions the fact that some of the soldiers were hurt so badly. The arms, the legs, the face, like obliteration. We left American citizens behind and they’re not too happy, I can imagine. But if they’re living, if they’re living, and we also gave them $85 billion worth of the best military equipment. All beautiful, brand new. Between the goggles and the planes and the armor-plated cars. We gave them armor-plated trucks and cars and vehicles and so much.

(19:47)
And they’re one of the largest sellers now today of military equipment in the world. They’re selling this stuff, 777,000 rifles and guns. Think of that. How do you have that anyway? Who would put that? We have 71,000 trucks and cars. And again, many of them armor-plated. So what happened is when Russia looked at that, they said, we’re going and we’re going to invade. We’re going to go into Ukraine. If that didn’t happen, I don’t think, and I guarantee you, if the election were a straight election, we won that election, we should have won that election. Everybody knew we won the election.

(20:26)
They would’ve never attacked Putin. Putin never would’ve attacked, but the oil prices got driven up at a hundred dollars a barrel. He made money. He’s the only guy fought a war, and you make money fighting a war. But it got driven up because of their bad energy policies. But when he saw that, and you wouldn’t have had, think of this, you wouldn’t have had, how different would the world be? You wouldn’t have had Ukraine being attacked by Russia. You wouldn’t have had October 7th in Israel where that horrible situation took place because Iran was essentially broke. They had very little money and we would’ve made a great deal with them. All we want is we don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. That’s all we want. We don’t want you to have a nuclear weapon. We would’ve made a good deal with Iran. They would’ve been happy, and I think they’re going to end up being very unhappy.

(21:16)
But it’s very dangerous. They’re very close to a nuclear weapon. And the other thing, you wouldn’t have had inflation. You wouldn’t have had inflation because inflation was driven up by their bad energy policy. And you remember your gasoline started going up to five and $6 a gallon. And then what happened is they said, oh, we’re going to get killed. We have an election. We’re going to get killed. And they went back to my policy. So they went back to the same, and they say, we produce the same amount as Trump. Well, they went right back to my policy or you would’ve been buying, you would’ve had $25 a gallon gasoline. So they went back. What they don’t say is though, I would’ve been producing four times as much. And I took us from third into first place by a lot, but we have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world, including Saudi Arabia, including Russia.

(22:08)
And we would’ve been so dominant in energy. We didn’t need any energy from anybody. We didn’t have to protect any other countries in order to get their oil, which we’ve done for many years in the Middle East. We were energy independent. Sounds so beautiful to say it. We were energy independent. We were soon going to be energy- dominant, and we would’ve been now having so much money coming out of the energy. We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done. In their first week they terminated it. Check that one out. Bagram, check that one out. No, think about this, between Bagram, between you go to Anwar, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up.

(23:08)
We should be, we should have that airbase. We should have that oil. We would’ve had a whole different country. But to give up Anwar, to give up the biggest airbase, military airbase in the world, and they left it in the dark of night with the lights on and they did leave the dogs behind. There are a lot of people, they say, what about the dogs? They left the dogs behind. But we would’ve been a much different country right now, but we’re going to get it back and I promise you we’re going to get it back, with guys like this and people like that.

(23:45)
Sarah, just one thing because this is the world’s longest answer to an otherwise simple question. But the difference is I give an answer that’s productive as opposed to an answer that is not very productive, like in the debate. But just to end this, we are going to, for Michigan, because we want to be a little bit Michigan-centric. You used to be the capital of the world in cars. Today you’re an afterthought in cars, and I don’t know the head of your union. I’ve never met the gentleman, Sean, I’ve never met him. But what he’s done to your union and what he’s done by agreeing to allow this country to say we’re going all electric, which at some point they’re going to end up taking back that mandate because that mandate is insane.

(24:35)
They want to go all electric basically by 2030. And for him, think of this, for him to do that, just real fast, you are right now at 25% of where you used to be and heading south because the electric cars are all going to be made in China and Mexico, but they’re all going to be made basically in China. We are going to bring so many auto plants into our country. You’re going to be as big or bigger than you were 50 years ago because they won’t be able, if they’re not willing to build a plant, we don’t want their product. And that’s enough. That’s all I wanted.

USA, USA, USA, USA, USAS.

And it’ll happen fast. It’ll happen very fast.

I think it’s safe to say that Michigan is happy that you’re going to be president again and Mr. President, we don’t mind that you give long answers because you actually have something to say because you actually got something done when you were president.

It’s a very interesting, because she said, I said, I don’t think I’ve ever said this before. So we do these rallies. They’re massive rallies. Everybody loves, everybody stays till the end, by the way. When she said that, well, your rallies, people leave. Honestly, nobody does. And if I saw them leaving, I’d say, and ladies and gentlemen, make America great again and I’d get the hell out, okay, because I don’t want people leaving. But I do have to say, so I give these long, sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs, but they all come together. I do it a lot. I do it with Raising Cane, that story. I do it with the story on the catapults on the aircraft carriers. I do it with a lot of different stories. When I mentioned Dr. Hannibal Lecter, I’m using that as an example of people that are coming in from Silence of the Lambs.

(26:44)
I use it. They say it’s terrible. So they say, so I’ll give this long complex area, for instance, that I talked about a lot of different territory. The bottom line is I said the most important thing, we are going to bring more plants into your state and this country to make automobiles. We’re going to be bigger than before, but the fake news, and there’s a lot of them back there for a town hall. There’s a lot of people, but the fake news likes to say, the fake news likes to say, oh, he was rambling. No, no, that’s not rambling. That’s genius. When you can connect the dots, you got to connect.

(27:21)
Now, Sarah, if you couldn’t connect the dots, you got a problem. But every dot was connected and many stories were told in that little paragraph, but there is something. But they say that. The other thing I say is this, we had 107,000 people show up in New Jersey. We had 68,000 people show up in Alabama. We had 79 or 81,000 in South Carolina. And they’d never said I’m a great speaker. And I said, “Am I a great speaker?” They say, oh no, he rambles. What the hell are all you people showing up for if I ramble? You don’t want to show up for a rambler. So anyway, thank you very much.

Mr. President, no one has done more to fight for the American worker than you to bring back jobs and manufacturing to this country. Tonight there’s obviously a lot of people that really care about the auto industry here, and tonight we have a question from one of the auto workers, Isaiah, here in the audience that would like to ask a question.

Good. Sure. Where’s Isaiah?

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

We’ll build a brand new beast. We’re going to build a beast right here.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President, for having us here tonight. I just want to let you know that I’ve attended one of your rallies. I did not leave early and I did not fall asleep. Just want to let you know that, sir. I did not do it. I did not do it. I didn’t see anybody else doing it either, sir. My name is Isaiah, I’m a third generation UAW worker, working hard to build trucks here in America. Yes, yes.

Get ready. You’re going to be doing plenty of it.

Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I work for Ford and you actually came and visited the plant that I work at.

That’s right.

You did. And my question to you, sir, is what do you see as the major threats to the future of Michigan manufacturing, auto working jobs, and what will you do to eliminate those threats, sir?

Okay, so I’ll get into another little bit of a long answer because when you say major threat, to me we have one really major threat that’s called nuclear weapons. We have other countries that are hostile to us. They don’t have to be hostile to us. I always say, if you have a smart president, you’ll never have a problem with China, Russia or any of them. Okay? I got along great with Putin. I got along great with President Xi. I got along great with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Everybody said, “Oh, you can’t get along with him”. He liked me. I got along great with him, and he has a lot of nuclear force, but you essentially have five countries and you’re going to have more. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to have more. It’s the single biggest threat to the world, not only Michigan, to the world, and you’re not going to care so much about making cars if that stuff starts happening.

(30:36)
And we have people that are not good at negotiation. The war should have never happened. President Biden, I want to be nice, he was so nice to me yesterday, but in one way, I sort of wish the call wasn’t made because I do feel he’s so, so nice. I’m so sorry about what happened and all that, but I have to lay it out. We have very important, and the same with Kamala today. She could not have been nicer, but the fact is we have to have people that are respected by the opponent, by the other side, by other countries that have this. Even Pakistan has nuclear way. We have countries, India has a lot of nuclear force. We have countries that have tremendous nuclear power. And when I hear these people talking about global warming, that’s the global warming you have to worry about.

(31:28)
Not that the ocean’s going to rise in 400 years and eighth of an inch, and you’ll have more seafront property if that happens. I said, is that good or bad? I said, isn’t that a good thing? If I have a little property on the ocean, I have a little bit more property. I have a little bit more ocean. But the fact is that it’s a tremendous problem and we are closer to World War III today than we’ve ever been. And the difference is, and I say this a lot, this isn’t army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. This is obliteration. The power of these weapons, and I’m the one that revived it, and I hated to do it, but we had stuff that was 48 years old. They didn’t even know if it worked. We have incredible stuff. So does Russia.

(32:12)
China has much less, but they’re going to catch up over four or five years. It’s the single biggest threat by far to civilization, and nobody talks about it. They talk about global warming. Used to be, remember, used to be global warming. They changed the name. You know why? Because the planet’s getting cooler now. So now what they call it is climate change because that covers everything. See, climate change, if it gets hot, cooled, these people, I don’t know if they’re for real, but if they’re not, they’re covered by the words climate change. If it gets cooler, that’s good. If it gets hotter, that’s good. Global warming wasn’t working so well, but the single biggest threat, okay, now let’s assume we have a really smart president, and that’s not going to be a threat because we have a lot of power. Doing business with China is a good thing, but you have to have a fair deal. Doing business with Russia. They have so much in terms of minerals and things. The size of their land mass is like four times bigger than the United States. The minerals and things they have, we can do great business, and you keep everybody happy, you can solve that problem. But let’s talk about the local problem. The local problem is that you have countries stealing your business. Mexico is a very big one. Mexico this year, we have a deficit with Mexico of $250 billion. Think of this with Mexico, little Mexico. You think of it as a little innocent place. We’re losing our ass to Mexico. China, you don’t even have to talk about, we have over a trillion dollars this year. I was charging them numbers that were unbelievable, and now he’s just totally given up the ghost, and we’re going to lose a trillion dollars in deficits to China, a trillion. That’s not sustainable.

(33:54)
We’re going to turn it all around and we’re going to do it through taxation and tariffs. It will be done in 24 hours and it’ll change the whole planet. Just so you know, Sarah, China became powerful because they charged, they don’t call them tariffs. They call it a tax, they call it. They don’t call it tariffs. The word tariff is a beautiful word to me, but to a lot of people that don’t understand, it’s not a beautiful word. You have a lot of people that are paid off by these countries. They’re taking care of these countries, and they don’t care about destroying the United States. They want millions of dollars in fees and consultation, but we will literally, in a period of 24 hours, we can change the whole trading of the whole world.

(34:36)
They’ve taken advantage of our country for years. I stopped it. I stopped so much of it, and then we had a focus on Covid, which a lot of people said was put in there for a reason. It came out of the Wuhan lab, which I said right from the beginning, all of you know. It didn’t come out of a cave. They said a cave. It didn’t come from France. They blamed France. They blamed- I call it the China virus because I like to be accurate.

(35:04)
They call it the Spanish flu. They call it all different names. When something comes from a country except for China, we have to call it Covid. What the hell does Covid mean? It’s a China virus. And a lot of people think they did that because they were not happy with me as president. I actually had a great relationship with President Xi, and in his own way, he probably liked me the most, but maybe and maybe not. I saw that Putin the other day endorsed Kamala. And you have to understand, these are major chess players. So when he endorses Kamala, he may say, well, I did that because I love you, and it’s better to be doing it, so who knows? But he endorsed Kamala, which is a little unusual. I was watching, I said, “That’s interesting”. I think that’s a good thing, isn’t it? It really is. But look, we have to turn it around and we can. We’re going to have a reciprocal trade tax. So if China

… charges 152%, which they do in a car, if we sell a car made here into China, which you don’t do because the tax is too high, they say, to all your companies and to others, and to Elon Musk, who gave us… He is a great guy, he gave me the strongest endorsement, and he’s a really wonderful guy. But they say to them, “We don’t want your car, unless you build your plant in China.” And there’s nothing wrong with saying that. Smart people say that. We haven’t said it for many years. I said it. We have a lot of plants going up with Apple and other things. I said, “You got to build plants. You don’t build plants here, we’re going to put the tariffs on your products coming in from China.”

(36:42)
So, we can do it quickly, but we’re going to have what’s called a reciprocal trade act. Now, I dealt with a senator, a very good senator, actually, but he knows nothing about trade. I said, “Here’s what I want to do, Senator. I want to take the reciprocal trade. If they charge us 100%, we charge them 100%.” He said, “You mean they charge us, we charge them? You got me. How simple could it be?” It was sort of cool, because he doesn’t care. He’s a senator, doesn’t care about trade. But so we’re going to call it the Trump Reciprocal Trade Act, or I’ll leave the name Trump off, as long as we do it.

(37:15)
So when India, which is a very big abuser… He happens to be coming to meet me next week, and Modi is fantastic, fantastic man. A lot of these leaders are fantastic. You have to understand one thing. They’re dealing, they’re 100%. These people are the sharpest people. They’re not a little bit backward, they are at the top. You know the expression, “They’re at the top of their game”? And they use it against us. But India is very tough, Brazil’s very tough. There are certain countries, I can tell you every one, I can give you, from top to bottom. China’s the toughest of all. But we were taking care of China with the tariffs.

(37:55)
So, we’re going to do a reciprocal trade. If anybody charges us 10 cents, if they charge us $2, if they charge us a 100%, 250, we charge them the same thing. And you know what’s going to happen? Everything’s going to disappear, and we’re going to end up having free trade again. And if it doesn’t disappear, we’re going to take in a lot of money, okay? But the biggest beneficiary, I believe, is going to be your state. And I won’t say that to other states, I promise. Your state, you are going to have plants built at a level that you haven’t seen in 50 years, okay? Great question, thank you. Thank you.

Mr. President, one of the other things I think that you did that helped protect the American worker as much as anything else, and also make our country and our community safer, was you actually did something about the border. Just this month, there was a woman in my home state of Arkansas who was killed by an illegal immigrant who was drunk driving, that was deported during your administration, and came back under this administration, because they have failed to protect our country. It’s one of the great threats that we face that you actually did something about.

A lot.

Tell us what you will do on day one to help protect our country.

So, we’re going to be, day one, we’re doing two things: closing the border and drill, baby, drill. Two things. We’re going to get down the prices. Thank you. Nice people. I like this crowd. I like this crowd. You know what? You’re smart people. So, Sarah, thank you.

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

(39:55)
[inaudible 00:40:04].

So, over the last couple of years, I’ve been talking about the border. I got elected in 2016 because of the border. But that border was peanuts compared to what this border is. That border was like a safe border, compared. And I did it, I did a great job. And it also includes drugs came to a much lower…

(40:26)
Look, unless you have the death penalty for drug dealers, you’ll never get rid of the drug problem. Put that through your head, okay? Put that through your head. And I don’t know if our country’s ready for it. When I was with President Xi, and again, until COVID, I had a great relationship. Once that happened, I really didn’t want a relationship, because $60 trillion, millions of dead people all over the world. I was not exactly thrilled with him. But before that, I had a great relationship. And I said, “Do you have a drug problem?” “No, no, no, we have no drug problem.” “Oh. How come?” “Death penalty. Immediate.” I said, “What does that mean, immediate?” “Immediate. We have what’s called a quick trial.” Do you know what a quick trial is? Like in one day, the trial is over. Over here, it’ll be 25 years. They’ll get some nice, liberal lawyer, and they’ll have it tied up for 25 years. The guy dies of old age.

(41:14)
But they have a death penalty. In Singapore, they have a death penalty. In a lot of countries, they have a death penalty. You sell drugs… Because the average drug dealer kills, during his or her life, 500 people. The average one. The big ones, much more. But when you hear that, when people start to hear that… And I set up blue-ribbon committees, I put nice people, dilettantes from New York and from Los Angeles, people that know nothing about drugs, and they’re dealing with very smart people. These dealers are smart as hell, they’re tough as hell, and they make a fortune. They make a fortune. And if you don’t have the death penalty for drug dealers, you’re just wasting your time. No, we can keep it down, and we can do better than we’re doing now, and a lot better than we’re doing now, because what’s happening now is out of control. But we had the lowest human trafficking. Mostly in women, I hate to say, mostly in women. But we had the lowest human trafficking in 32 years.

(42:08)
You know my favorite chart? The chart I put down. When I look to the right… That’ll be my all-time favorite chart in history. That was basically a chart showing what a good job I did on immigration. But even if it showed I did a bad job on immigration, it will be my all-time favorite chart, because I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t look over. “Let me see that chart!” That was not good. My all-time favorite chart. Blue, yellow, red. It was beautiful. Oh, there it is! There it is. That was good. These guys are very good, back… I didn’t… That’s so good.

(42:48)
You know the interesting thing? It’s always on my left. When I do rallies, it’s always on my list. I only do it about 15, maybe 20% of the time, so I don’t do it much, and it’s always at the end of a speech. But it’s always here. For some reason, they dropped it here. It was at the beginning of the speech, the very beginning couple of sentences. And I turned like a deer bolting, I guess, right? They say good hunters say this. Every once in a while, a deer will bolt prior to the shot. And I don’t know, I guess mine was the former. But I turned around to look at it. It was right here, behind me, actually. And my head was at a perfect angle. It got me. But if you got to be hit, that’s the best place. Although the doctor, I said, “How come so much blood?” He said the ear bleeds more than any… I said, “I’ll take it. I’ll take it.” But it was an amazing thing.

(43:42)
And I have to say, because I have to, while we’re on the subject, because people do like to talk about it. A few days ago, we had an incident. I have to say, Secret Service did a hell of a job. They really did. They caught one of the gentlemen that… One of the agents was walking a couple of holes in front, and he saw a rifle. AK-47, that’s serious stuff, right? You know more about that. My sons know more about this stuff. But AK-47, that’s a bad one. The other one was an AR-15, this was an AK-47. And he saw the barrel of the gun coming out from a bush. Can you believe it? This guy was all set. He was all set to do his number.

(44:29)
And there was no talk. He didn’t say, “Hello, what are you doing here, please?” And he ends up getting shot himself. He took his gun, started shooting him. And this guy ran. No, great job. I don’t know if he’s… Where is he? Not here, right? These guys do a great job. Now, they do need more people, and they’ve been complaining about that for a long time, but he did a great job.

(44:57)
But you want to know another sort of a miracle? So, the guy’s now running for his life, and he’s got a car a block away or whatever. And a woman, this is a woman, not a man, a woman, see? Women are smarter than men. I hate to say. How does that sound? Our great First Lady is very happy now. Let me just tell you. Think of this, who would do this? I actually asked, I was with the sheriff this morning, I was with a couple of people from Secret Service, “Who would do this?” So, you now have a man running, not with a gun, he dropped the gun. We found the gun, but he was gone. And a woman driving in a car saw a man on the street, pretty busy street, running. And she followed him. And he got into the car, and she stopped because she thought he was trouble. He looked different. He’s like trouble. She followed him, it wasn’t very far, and parked the car behind his car, and started taking pictures of his license plate. So, think of it. And Sarah, think of it. No, no, seriously, who would do that?

[inaudible 00:46:11].

The women.

Not for good or bad, not from strength or heroism. No, just you see somebody running. I see people running all the time. She saw something in this guy that was bad. She may have heard, maybe, gunshots, because there were four, I guess four gunshots. Actually, the shots, he never got off a shot. The shots were from Secret Service. But think of it, who would do this? If you took a thousand of these incidents, would even one person have done it? This woman was, I haven’t met her, but I’d like to meet her, I’m going to meet her, I hope.

We love you!

But think of this. She goes in, she takes pictures of the plate, and then she sends the pictures into the sheriff’s office, and the sheriffs are saying, “Wow, this is pretty amazing.” And they were able to get this guy within 10 minutes at a high-speed chase on the highway. They got him.

(47:07)
Otherwise, we’d probably have an AK-47, they had the camera, they had the… He had the whole thing. He was a sophisticated guy, even had the serial number taken off the rifle, the gun. But think of this. So, we’d have all the stuff, but I’d be walking around saying, “I wonder where this guy is? Is he in this audience?” We would have a maniac out there. This woman was unbelievable. Because I actually asked the sheriff, “If it happened a thousand times, would anybody have done that?” He said, “Maybe, but not much. Not much.” So, she was really amazing. Amazing job.

We’re glad she did. I think there are a couple takeaways there. One, the women of this country love Donald Trump, and are going to wait to eventually do our part.

USA! USA! USA! USA!

And I think one of the other things that we all know in this room, certainly, is that God is not finished with you, and he has big plans.

Sarah, I just want to say one thing. So, when I heard about this tonight, I said, “So, where am I speaking? Michigan? Good, I like Michigan. I want to talk about cars.” I love talking about the cars, because it’s so simple. It’s so ridiculous that this is happening. You don’t want the electric… You do want electric cars. 7%, 8%. Elon makes a great product. But you know what? And I have, hey, I’ve driven, his car is incredible. Other cars are incredible. But you have a little thing. But you want to have gasoline-propelled cars, you want to have hybrids, you want to have all sorts. They say a new one is going to be hydrogen. Who the hell knows? They said it has a slight problem: it blows up. And if you’re in the car, that could be a little problem. But you want to be able to have whatever it is, whatever the market is, and all that stuff.

(49:24)
But they said, “Sir, you’re having a town hall tonight.” And I said, “A town hall? What the hell? They want a rally, they don’t want a town hall. Town hall?” And I said, “So, who is the host? Host or hostess?” And they said, “Sarah Huckabee Sanders.” And I said, “Oh, that’s good. I like that.” But I figured, Sarah, you know I love these rallies. You go and you say, “We will make America great.” Everyone’s going crazy, we had one the other night.

Love you, Donald!

But you know what? Can I be honest? This was more fun than a rally today. This was fun. This was good, right? This was very good.

[inaudible 00:50:11]. Make America great again!

We’re going to take another question from the audience. Maybe the only job in the country harder than being president of the United States is being a mom, especially under this administration, because they’re making everything harder. And tonight, we have a mom here in the audience, Barbara, that’s behind us, that has a question for you.

We love you, Trump!

Hi, Barbara. Hello, back there.

We love you, Trump!

Good evening. Good evening, President Trump.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking our question.

Thank you.

My name is Barbara. I’m a mom of three, a grandmother of seven, and three great-grands. A registered nurse, retired, retired nurse. So, I know the cost that goes into raising children and running a household. People just can’t survive now. How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?

Good. Very good. Thank you. So, we have to start, always, with energy. Always. I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject. It covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal. And we’re going to get that. It’s my ambition to get your energy bill, within 12 months, down 50%. If I can do that, we’ve done a hell of a job. 5-0, 5… Not 15, 50.

(51:59)
Interest rates are going to follow. And actually, they’re going to follow for another reason. The economy is now not good. And interest rates, you’ll see, they’ll do the rate cut and all the political stuff tomorrow, I think. And, “Will he do a half a point? Will he do a quarter of a point?” But the reason is because the economy’s not good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to do it. But we’re going to get interest rates down.

(52:19)
And we got to work with our farmers. Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated. And one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country, and we’re going to have to be a little bit like other countries. We’re not going to allow so much. We’re going to let our farmers go to work. And I don’t know if you remember, I love the farmers, because I had many meetings as president. I had this gorgeous room with this beautiful table that seats about 35 people. And I was with the farmers. Usually everybody wants something, they all want subsidy. But I was with the farmers, and I think you might’ve been there actually, Sarah. I said, “Look, fellows, we’re going to get you such a beautiful subsidy.” Meaning, I’m going to do things. And one of the people raised his hand. “Sir, honestly, we don’t want a subsidy.”

(53:09)
This is the first time this ever happened to me. Everyone wants. They want money, they want to build windmills. “We want money for these windmills.” Ay-yi-yi. Anyway. But you know what? It was amazing. He said, almost tears in his eyes, they were getting decimated, “We don’t want a subsidy. We just want a fair, level playing field.” And I said, “Nobody’s ever said that.” And I had many industries and many groups of people from different things. They do all different things. It’s probably the most dramatic I’ve ever seen. He didn’t want anything. All he wanted was to be able to compete fairly.

(53:45)
And the problem we have is other countries, they treat us very badly in that way also. They really are. And sometimes, the worst countries are our so-called allies. I say “so-called” because in many ways, they’re not allies at all. They take advantage of

… Of us, they really take advantage. But we’re going to do with the farmers, we’re going to do what we have to do with the farmers. We’re going to put our farmers… Do you remember the expression… When I was negotiating with China, china said we’re not going to deal with this, because they never had anybody negotiate, they did whatever they want. They just took us for a bunch of suckers.

(54:18)
But I told the farmers it’s going to be… They have very good negotiators. You’re going to suffer for six months and then they’re going to fold. That’s exactly what happened. They folded and they agreed to buy $50 billion… You might’ve heard this story. I said, “How much…” I went to the Secretary of Agriculture, “How much did they buy?” He said “15.” I thought he said 50, so when they’re ready to make a deal at 15 billion, I said, “No, I want 50. That’s what they’ve been buying.” He said, “No, it’s 15.” I said, “You said 50.” He said, “No, we said 15.” I said, “That’s okay, ask for 50 anyway.” And we got it. We got it. And they buy a lot of our product. It’s just a great… Interest rates, energy, and common sense. A lot of it’s common sense, everything. I like to say we’re the party of common sense. We want to have a strong border. How about that we want a strong… All of a sudden, they’ve changed. They didn’t want any border. They said walls don’t work. Two things work. What are the two things? Wheels and walls. If I do… There’s a gorgeous computer down here. In about two weeks, it’s going to be obsolete. A friend of mine is in that business, he hates it. He said, “We come up with a new model and it’s the greatest.” About three and a half weeks later, the damn thing’s totally obsolete. The only thing that never gets obsolete is a wall and a wheel. The wall is what we’re talking about now.

(55:42)
We built hundreds of miles of wall, we then added more than I ever said I was going to do, and then we had that bad election result, that disgusting result, and they never put it up. You know what they did with it? They sold it for 5 cents and it was expensive wall. It was exactly what the border patrol wanted with the anti-climb plate on top, which I always hated because I didn’t like the look of it, but they demonstrated it. We had mountain climbers and a couple of drug climbers too. These guys are amazing. They put 100 pounds of drugs on the back and they go up the wall like it’s nothing, but they couldn’t get over the plate, so all of a sudden I said, “Okay, I’ll put the plate on.” I didn’t like it. I liked it better without the plate, but it didn’t work quite as well.

(56:23)
This is what we did. We had it. We had the best… We had a thing called remain in Mexico. You don’t have to be a genius to know remain in Mexico is a very good thing, and you think that was easy to get? I think Tijuana, Mexico was probably the fastest growing city in the history of the world. They had hundreds of thousands. They couldn’t come in. When they got in, they let everybody pour into our country.

(56:45)
The border, just to finish with the border, when I talk about energy, to me it’s exciting, but to a lot of people it’s not but it gets exciting because we’ll bring down your costs, all that. What people want to hear, and when I got elected, I believe it was the border that was the biggest thing and I fixed it, and I did a great job, and I wanted to mention it in 2020 and my people would say, “Sir, nobody cares about the border. They don’t care,” because I had it fixed. Now I got to fix it again. I believe the border is of the greatest interest.

(57:21)
When you look at what’s happening in Aurora, okay, take a look at Aurora. When you look at what’s happening in Ohio, the great state of Ohio, I love it, I’m way the hell up. I wish I was up 18 points in your state, but we are up. We are up. I think when people hear what I have to say, I don’t know how you can possibly lose it. I’ll tell you this and I’ll say this for Michigan, if I don’t win, you will have no auto industry within two to three years. It’ll all be gone. I know you got a little bit of an increase. It doesn’t mean… That’s the small stuff because it’s just a temporary thing because you will not have any manufacturing plants. China’s going to take over all of your business because of the electric car and because they have the material don’t.

(58:05)
What we have is a thing called gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline, we don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline, so why are we making a product that they dominate? They’re going to dominate. You will not have a car industry left, not even a little bit of a car industry, and you’re going to have electric cars, but you’re going to have 7%, you’re going to have 9%, whatever it may be, and maybe someday the technology becomes so good that you can do more. It’s fine, but right now the battery technology isn’t there for long term.

(58:37)
I always say I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough and they don’t do well. In Iowa, it was 20 degrees below zero when we had our great success in Iowa, we had a great… And there were cars all over the place. I said, “What’s wrong with those cars?” They don’t work well in cold and they don’t work very well in heat, but Elon’s going to figure it out because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything out. Right now, he’s got other things to think… He’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there.

(59:09)
I said, “Elon, let’s get going.” No, they’re relying on Elon to get the two people. Who would like to be up there right now saying we’re coming back home maybe in February? That was not so good, but Elon will solve the problem. He’s great, great guy. He loves this state and he loves your whole… Everything you’re doing here, and he’s done a fantastic job. He really has. If he didn’t endorse me, I would not be saying that. I wouldn’t be saying that.

Thank you. We’ve got time, I think, for just one more question. When you were president, you built one of the strongest economies our country’s ever seen. One of the ways you did that was by passing the largest tax cut in American history. We have a question from Willie, who wants to ask you something about taxes and what you’re going to do.

Good evening, future President Trump

Hi, Willie.

I’m a local contractor in this town.

He’s a cool looking guy too. He’s better looking than me.

I’m a local contractor in this town, and I lived here my whole life, and I’m going to tell you, I’m concerned about crucial Kamala’s tax increase. Can you outline for the people what you plan on doing about taxes?

Great. It’s a great question. Look, she’s going to double up your taxes. She wants to terminate the Trump tax cut. Just that is going to lift up your taxes by 44%. Just that one move. Remember, I have it so that if you’re a farmer or a small businessman, you have no inheritance tax. They’re going to give that up, they’re going to give everything.

(01:00:39)
A lot of people don’t realize… A lot of people didn’t talk about it, but if you have a small business, if you have a farm someplace, a lot of farmers, they have beautiful land, but they don’t have the cash and they leave it to their children, and they’re so proud of their children, and the children end up going bankrupt because they have to borrow money to pay off the estate tax. There is no estate tax, and that’s something that nobody even talks about, but that’s saved a lot of families from having to sell their farm or losing their farm.

(01:01:13)
She’s got one thing that’s incredible, an unrealized capital gain tax. That will drive every business out of the United States. What that is is… I don’t know how they can possibly administer it, the only ones that are going to make money or appraisers and accountants. They’re taking a business, might have not a lot of money, but it might have great land, and they’re valuing it and what was it this year compared to next year? You got to put down a value, and then you got to go out and you have to pay tax even though you haven’t sold anything. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, and I don’t know how any rich person or any person that’s in business can even think of supporting her. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.

(01:01:56)
They’re going to raise the capital gains tax, Willie, a lot. Now, as far as regular, people are going to have to pay a lot more tax. Your taxes, she said 70 to 80%, some people will pay 70, 80%. You have to understand, a lot of these people are international business people. A lot of these companies are international. They don’t care if they’re here or someplace else. They go for the best deal, they go for their shareholders. If they raise the taxes like that, they go to other countries. You know who got a lot of our companies is Ireland. Years ago, they took our pharmaceutical industry because they gave them a better deal.

(01:02:29)
They will leave our country, they will leave all those jobs that we created, and I want people to pay fair taxes and all that but she’s going to be raising your taxes to 50, 60, 70% and it’s not sustainable. Even for the companies, if they have to pay too much, they’re going to leave the country and you’re not going to have any jobs. We have to be very, very careful about it. We have to be very, very careful. I have to tell you that this has really been an honor. This will be the most fun of any state because we’re going to bring back an industry that you can do it… We’re going to bring back an industry.

(01:03:09)
Mark my words, if for some reason, some tragedy happens, because it would be a tragedy beyond the auto business for the whole country, I really believe that. If a tragedy happens and we don’t win, there will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs, it’ll all be out of here. That includes South Carolina, that includes other places that are competitors of yours.

(01:03:33)
You won’t be making cars here anymore, you won’t be making anything in our country anymore. We’re going to bring it all back. But the one, and I say this, and I said it to another state the other night, and I said this is not a good thing to say to another state, but I said Michigan’s going to be the most fun because you’re so set up for greatness, all you need is somebody smart at the top to say you can’t flood our market with cars. You just can’t do it. If I say you have to pay a 100%, you know China pays a big… But I didn’t do the big number yet. If I say you have to pay 100 or 200%, it doesn’t matter because I’m going to say second sense, I hope you don’t mind this, however, if you build your plant in Detroit or if you build it in Michigan, or if you build it anywhere in the United States for that matter, it seems to be the right location, but we’re going to have more fun.

(01:04:29)
I’m telling them about Michigan and I’m saying you know, this story’s getting a little bit long because I’m talking about Michigan, I happened to be in another state, but everybody loved it because they know you. You’re recognized for this. We’re going to get… Now they go from paying 100% tariff to paying nothing. All they have to do is build their factory and spend their hundreds of millions of dollars in your estate. This will be like taking candy from a baby. It’ll happen first and you get the credit. I’m going to give you the credit.

I don’t think there’s any question that America was better off under Donald Trump, and we know that it’s going to be even better the second time around. Before tonight, I knew you were going to win the presidency. I had no doubt. Arkansas is going to come in huge, but now I know you’re going to win Michigan by epic margin.

(01:05:53)
Ladies and gentlemen, we need you to show up. We need you to vote because the future of my kids, your kids, our grandkids depends on whether or not Donald Trump goes back into the White House, and I know you’re not going to let us down. More importantly, I know President Trump is not going to let us down because he’s shown us time and time again that no matter what comes at him, no matter what the left throws at him, he’s going to get back up and keep fighting for this country that he loves so much. Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, man. See you. Thank you, everybody.