Donald J. Trump
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Ladies and gentlemen, the 45th and 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
And Jeff Sprecher, the other half of that incredible family, is he here?
Is he here?
He's a fantastic guy, international, intercontinental exchange.
He's been a friend of mine for a long time, the husband of Kelly, who's really doing a good job.
So I'll bring it into sports talk, a signing bonus.
You are really doing a good job.
Small business, which is actually big business if you add it all up, right?
It's probably the biggest bank there is, but they call it small business, and she's done a fantastic job.
Thanks, Kel.
Say hello to Jeff.
As we gather this afternoon, we're still in the earliest days of one of the most important technological revolutions in the history of the world.
Like you have signing bonuses too, I understand.
Around the globe, everyone is talking about artificial intelligence.
I find that too artificial.
I can't stand it.
I don't even like the name.
You know, I don't like anything that's artificial.
So could we straighten that out, please?
We should change the name.
I actually mean that.
I don't like the name artificial anything because it's not artificial.
It's genius.
It's pure genius.
And its potential to transform every type of human endeavor and domain of human knowledge from medicine to manufacturing to warfare and national defense.
Getting a lot of money, 100 million, that's not bad.
Whether we like it or not, we're suddenly engaged in a fast-paced competition to build and define this groundbreaking technology that will determine so much about the future of civilization itself because of the genius and creativity of Silicon Valley.
And it is incredible.
Incredible genius, without question the most brilliant place anywhere on Earth.
America is the country that started the AI race, and as President of the United States, I'm here today to declare that America is going to win it.
We're gonna work hard, we're gonna win it.
But that's not as good as the signing bonus we got.
Because we will not allow any foreign nation to beat us.
Our children will not live on a planet controlled by the algorithms of the adversaries advancing values and interests contrary to our own.
We don't want to have contrary interests.
We want to get along.
And we'll get along with other countries.
We're having a...
Great relationship, as I told you, with those countries that we mentioned, with Japan and Indonesia and so many others.
The European Union, we're getting along very well with China.
A lot of respect for President Xi.
We have a great relationship.
And we'll see how it all works out.
But we're getting along with countries.
We got a $550 billion signing bonus for the country.
It's really been pretty amazing, I will say that.
And it's a good thing.
It's a good thing, not a bad thing.
So from this day forward, it'll be a policy of the United States to do whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence.
Such an important thing happening.
This is really something that nobody expected.
It just popped out of the...
popped out of the air, and here we are.
But we will defend our nation, our values, our future, and our freedom, and it will be really great.
But what we really need to be successful is a very simple phrase called common sense, and that begins with a common sense application of artificial and intellectual property rules.
It's so important.
You can't be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book, or anything else that you've read or studied, you're supposed to pay for.
Gee, I read a book.
I'm supposed to pay somebody.
And, you know, we appreciate that, but you just can't do it because it's not doable.
And if you're going to try and do that, you're not going to have a successful program.
And we had the tariff.
I think most of the people in the room know what I mean.
When a person reads a book or an article, you've gained great knowledge.
That does not mean that you're violating copyright laws or have to make deals with every content provider.
And that's a big thing that you're working on right now.
I know, but you just can't do it.
China's not doing it.
And if you're going to be
beating China, and right now we're leading China very substantially in AI, very, very substantially, and nobody's seen the amount of work that's going to be bursting upon the scene
At 25%, as you know, we had a tariff at 25%.
but you have to be able to play by the same set of rules.
When you have something, when you read something, and when it goes into this vast intelligence machine, we'll call it, you cannot expect to every time, every single time say, oh, let's pay this one that much, let's pay this one.
It just doesn't work that way.
Of course, you can't copy or plagiarize an article.
But if you read an article and learn from it, we have to allow AI to use that pool of knowledge without going through the complexity of contract negotiations of which there would be thousands for every time we use AI.
And this was, these are great people that we negotiated with, but we agreed to reduce it to 15 based on the fact that Japan has agreed for the first time ever to open up its country to trade so that all of our American businesses and business geniuses, including many in this room,
We also have to have a single federal standard, not 50 different states regulating this industry of the future.
And some people would say, gee, that's an unpopular thing to say.
I was told before I got up here, this is an unpopular thing because some people
They don't want that.
But I want you to be successful.
And you can't have one state holding you up.
You can't have three or four states holding you up.
You can't have a state with standards that are so high that it's going to hold you up.
You have to have a federal rule and regulation.
Hopefully you'll have the right guy in this position that's going to...
that's gonna supplant the states.
If you are operating under 50 different sets of state laws, the most restrictive state
of all will be the one that rules.
So you could have a state run by a crazy governor, a governor that hates you, a governor that's not smart, or maybe a governor that's very smart, but decides that he doesn't like the industry and he can put you out of business because you're gonna have to go to that lowest common denominator.
We need one common sense federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody,
So you don't end up in litigation with 43 states at one time.
You got to go litigation free.
It's the only way.
And we also have to watch Europe, Asia, and all foreign countries so that they don't make rules and regulations that likewise make it impossible for you to do business and where you'd have to make everything in AI cater to them.
Because again, you'd have to cater to the toughest country or to the toughest state.
You can't do that because it would ruin it.
I just terminated all of the, as an example, California car emissions rules, which were a disaster, a disaster.
It cost them just billions of dollars as an industry, but thousands of dollars per car, the emission rule standard,
because they were making the production of an automobile almost impossible and at a tremendously higher cost, much more expensive than it should cost, for very little gain, for actually, in my opinion, negative gain.
The automobile was worse.
Under this administration, our innovation will be unmatched and our capabilities will be unrivaled.
And with the help of many of the people in this room, America's ultimate triumph will be absolutely unstoppable.
We will be unstoppable as a nation.
Again, we're way ahead and we want to stay that way.
We can't let
individual smaller units stop it, because that's the only thing that can stop it and can really mess it up.
As with any such breakthrough, this technology brings the potential for bad as well as for good, for peril as well as for progress.
But the daunting power of AI is the, really it's not going to be a reason for retreat
from this new frontier.
On the contrary, it is the more reason we must ensure it is pioneered first and best.
We have to have the best, the first pioneer.
We are the best and the first pioneers.
can go out and do business openly and freely in Japan, a very rich and prosperous and profitable and wonderful country, frankly.
And we're going to be really putting a nation that we love, America, we're going to be putting it first.
I have an expression, America first, make America great again.
A lot of great expressions, but they're all so true.
We're gonna make America great again.
We're gonna make this industry absolutely the top because right now it's a beautiful baby that's born.
We have to grow that baby and let that baby thrive.
We can't stop it.
We can't stop it with politics.
We can't stop it with foolish rules and even stupid rules.
At the same time, we want to have rules, but they have to be smart.
They have to be brilliant.
They have to be more brilliant than even the technology itself.
Surely there will be challenges on the path ahead, but together we will meet them and transcend them all.
We are Americans, and we are Americans first.
I have a couple of people I know that don't happen to be from here, but I wish you a lot of luck anyway.
I'm looking at three people that are not Americans, but very good people.
Please treat them nicely.
But we do not shrink from the future or cower in the face of uncertainty.
We dominate the future.
We conquer new frontiers and we control our own fate.
And we determine by doing that our own destiny.
Winning this competition will be a test of our capacities unlike anything since the dawn of the space age.
Believe that.
It's hard to believe as the president the amount of enthusiasm for this
One industry, I mean, I can talk about cars, where we're doing incredibly well.
We have car companies moving in all the time.
And we will pay a zero tariff as we do business in Japan.
But I talk about other industries.
Everybody's saying this is gonna dominate the world.
It's gonna dominate every industry that ever conceived.
I don't know if that's true.
I don't know if it's true, but I can tell you that a lot of very brilliant people think it is true.
It'll dominate everything.
It will challenge us to marshal all of our strength and flex the muscles of American ingenuity and resolve like probably never before.
It will require us to blast through obsolete systems, cut through thickets of regulation.
We've got to get rid of some of the regulation, but we want good regulation and rebuild the industrial bedrock of our country.
So we're paying zero, they're paying 15, we're getting $550 billion.
And perhaps most importantly, winning the AI race will demand a new spirit of patriotism and national loyalty in Silicon Valley and long beyond Silicon Valley.
For too long, much of our tech industry pursued a radical globalism that left millions of Americans feeling distrustful and betrayed.
And you know that.
Everybody knows that.
Everybody in this room certainly does.
Many of our largest tech companies have reaped the blessings of American freedom while building their factories in China, hiring workers in India, and slashing profits in Ireland.
And to be exact, it's 90% of that, but we control the whole lot of it.
You know that?
All the while dismissing and even censoring their fellow citizens right here at home.
Under President Trump, those days are over.
We need U.S.
technology companies to be all in for America.
We want you to put America first.
You have to do that.
That's all we ask.
That's all we ask.
To partner with our tech geniuses in achieving this vision, today we're releasing the White House AI Action Plan.
Big stuff.
We're signing it right after this.
In fact, I see it sitting right there.
Maybe I should just sign it right now.
Who the hell has to make the rest of this speech, right?
But here are the pillars of the strategy.
First, my administration will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the United States can build and maintain the largest, most powerful, and most advanced AI infrastructure anywhere on the planet.
And it's really been great.
America needs new data centers, new semiconductor and chip manufacturing facilities, new power plants and transmission lines.
And under my leadership, we're going to get that job done.
And it's going to be done with certainty and with environmental protection and all of the things that we have to do to get it done properly.
Thank you.
Virtually all of these large capital investments can be and should be made by the private sector.
And they want to do that.
They just want to be able to do it.
But for that reason, America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape so they can't move, so they can't breathe.
And they're very happy, and their stock market went up, and our stock market went up, and that's supposed to be the way it is.
And that's not going to happen.
You're going to see things that you've never seen in this country before.
So often, and I've been watching for many years, I've watched regulation.
I've been a victim of regulation.
A zone change that takes six years for a building in Manhattan or whatever.
But I was good at zone changes, but it took a long time.
By the time you got to zoning, the market changed.
You didn't want to build the building.
You say, well, but in some cases that made you lucky, didn't it?
And some could, not too many people understand that in this room, but in some cases, waiting for that approval as the market collapsed was a good thing, not a bad thing.
But it's time to reclaim our heritage as a nation of builders, and that's why, upon taking office, I signed a historic executive order directing that every
And this is so important.
For every new regulation, 10 old regulations must be immediately eliminated.
So we have old regulations.
Ours went way up, and theirs went up.
But clog up the books that don't even mean anything anymore.
You know, my first term, I had more regulation cuts than any president in history times four.
And that included two term presidents where you're talking about eight years.
We had more than any other president.
And I think we may even top it this year.
We may very well be able to top it during this period of time because you're really
You are a regulation-prone group, and we're looking to get those regulations out of your way so you can use your genius.
Earlier this month, we also enacted the largest tax cuts in American history when I signed the one big, beautiful bill into law.
And I think the most important thing in the whole tax cut, in terms of pure economics, and I think one of the reasons that my first, you know, we had the most successful economy in history during my first term, and I think this is gonna blow it away, so far it is, and I think this is gonna blow it away,
And we've made numerous other deals like that, but the opening up of a country is very important to us.
But the reason we had was they had expensing at 100%.
And what we did is we included 100% in this bill, expensing for all capital expenditures, including investments in factories and equipment and structure.
Structure wasn't included last time, so even structure,
And you're able to write it all off immediately.
That's the biggest thing.
Not 38 years, not 42 years.
You're able to write it all off immediately.
And this time, we've made it for 10 years, not for one year.
We've made it for 10 years, so you have a much longer...
period, but I'd say get out and take advantage of it.
I think that's one of the reasons that we had such an incredible success with the first tax cuts.
And one of the things that this bill does is it extends the first tax cuts and makes them permanent.
And in addition to that, we were granted other taxes like
No tax on tips, no tax on social security, no tax on overtime, a lot of great things.
One of the things that I mentioned, not so pertinent here, but if you're in the automobile business, it's pertinent.
We have numerous countries that have opened their doors, just made some incredible transactions, but we're gonna have
I said, why is it that people like us always are looking for expenses and deductions
And people that buy automobiles that really have to go out and borrow money to buy a car, why aren't they allowed to deduct the interest on their loan to buy a car from their income tax?
And we got it approved.
We got it approved.
And that is such a big thing.
And I think that's going to be such a big thing for the automobile industry.
We're going to be making more cars.
Within a few years, we're going to be making more cars that we made in the very beginning, in the super prime.
You know, we lost...
almost 50% of our automobile business to Mexico, Canada, and various other places, as you know, in Europe and in Asia.
And now we're getting it back.
We're getting it back in record numbers.
And I think we're going to be topping any amount.
In a few years, we'll be making more automobiles than we've ever made in the history of our country, including what I call prime time.
My administration is also pursuing a future of all-out American energy dominance.
And on day one, I terminated the Green News scam.
You know what that was?
You were all victims to it.
Perhaps the second or third greatest scam in the history of our country.
I would say the first was Russia, Russia, Russia.
And we had a couple of others, too.
But the Green News scam was one of the greatest.
It's so ridiculous what they've made you do.
The carbon footprint.
They talked about the carbon footprint, and then Obama hops onto a 747 Air Force One and flies to Hawaii to play a round of golf and comes back.
a very, very simple tariff for some of the countries.
What about the carbon footprint?
No, we didn't like that.
And what Biden has done is...
is absolutely terrible.
He made it impossible, almost impossible for people to do business, not even talking about the border.
where millions and millions of people float into our country, many from prisons, from jails, from gangs, from mental institutions all over the world.
No, we're not doing that.
We have to get them out.
We've got 11,888 murderers.
Many of them committed more than one murder.
Many of them, more than 50% committed more murders.
We're getting them out of our country, or in some cases, they're so bad,
We're not getting them out, we're having to lock them up because we don't want them ever to come back no matter how good we're doing.
You have so many countries, you can't negotiate deals with everyone.
You know, last month you probably read we had zero
people enter our country illegally.
And over the last number of years, you'd have hundreds of thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of people a week pour into our country, totally unvetted and unchecked.
So we'll have a straight, simple tariff of anywhere between 15 and 50%.
And what the hell were they thinking?
What they've done to our country is so sad, and we can never forget it.
But we're unleashing all forms of energy, including natural gas, oil, and clean, beautiful coal.
I instructed my people, in the form of Chris and Doug in particular, you are not allowed to say the word coal without saying clean, beautiful in front of it.
You can only say clean, beautiful coal.
It's a little embarrassing because we had somebody making a speech the other day, right?
And he mentioned the word coal about 30 times because that was the subject.
And he kept going clean, beautiful.
I wanted to say, okay, just take it easy.
You could just...
Got a little bit crazy, right, Doug?
But it's, you know, China's using it.
They're building now 57 big power plants, all fueled by coal.
And we have to compete.
We have to win.
And we're going to have clean, beautiful coal.
But we have more coal than any.
We have more anything in terms of energy than anybody.
A couple of we have 15 because we haven't been getting along with those countries too well.
Oil and gas.
We also have more coal.
In May, I also signed an executive order to rapidly begin construction of safe, reliable nuclear reactors.
That's a big thing now.
And many of you will... Many of you are going to be using nuclear.
You know, I had...
problems with nuclear, I saw some of the things, but what they've done with nuclear is like what you've done with AI and other things, it's incredible actually.
It's long-term, it's inexpensive, it's just, it's safe.
What they've done is really amazing.
So we opened up the industry,
So we just say, let's pay 50.
Very strict rules, but we opened up the industry and some of you are going to choose nuclear over oil and gas or whatever it might be.
Under the last year of Biden, China added 11 times as much power generation capacity as
did the United States.
Can you imagine that 11 times under the Trump administration, we will be saying those very famous campaign words, drill, baby, drill, and build, baby, build, and we will be adding at least as much electric capacity as China.
And that's the way it is.
We think we're going to catch them and maybe even have something a little bit extra.
They're going very rapidly, but so are we.
And we'll be doing at least as much, and every company will be given the right to build their own power plant.
So when you build, you can build your power plant with it.
And you are essentially going to become your own utility.
But remember, we get countries that were closed, always closed.
It's a utility to yourselves.
And as I said, any excess energy you're going to sell back to the grid.
and make plenty of money doing it as a result of these pro-American policies since my election, we're seeing trillions and trillions of dollars in new investments.
So at this moment, we have almost $17 trillion coming into this country.
There's never been a period of time like that.
And that's in a period of a few months.
In a few months, Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft are all investing $320 billion or more in data centers and AI infrastructure this year.
Those companies are really going at it and they're
very smart people, very good people.
I got to know a lot of them.
I didn't like them so much the first term when I was running.
Everyone in this room would never remember any of them to be open.
I wouldn't say I was thrilled with them, but I've gotten to know them and like them.
I think they got to like me, but I think they got to like my policies maybe much more than me.
NVIDIA has committed $500 billion over the next four years.
Thank you, Jensen.
I'm sure that'll be a good investment.
If you're doing it...
It's good.
Thank you very much.
It's a great statement.
Last week, I was in Pennsylvania as 20 companies announced $92 billion with David McCormick, Senator, a great guy from Pennsylvania.
We've offered such a deal to the European Union where we're in serious negotiations.
$92 billion in energy and data center projects, including what will soon be the largest natural gas power plant anywhere in North America.
They're going to town.
It's already under construction.
The largest in North America by far.
For decades, we had leaders who spent their time focused on building up foreign nations.
Under the Trump administration, we are going to have leaders who are going to build up our nation.
This colossal investment in AI infrastructure and many other industries, for that matter, such as automobiles and so many other things, will also create thousands and thousands of great paying jobs, the kind of jobs we want, including lots of blue-collar jobs and
You know, our numbers are very good right now, but wait till you see these numbers in two years from now.
It will mean higher wages and more opportunity for millions of energy workers, HVAC technicians, engineers, electricians, and the hardworking citizens who make our country run.
These are great people that make our country actually run.
to ensure America maintains the world-class infrastructure we need to win today, I will sign a sweeping executive order to fast-track federal permitting, streamline reviews, and do everything possible to expedite construction of all major AI infrastructure projects.
And if they agree to open up the union to American businesses, then we will let them pay a lower tariff.
And this will be done.
You will get so good a service in so many ways, not only from Lee with the environment, but you need many other types of permits, and you're going to go so fast.
You're gonna say, well, wait a minute, this is too fast.
I didn't expect to go this quickly.
This is a problem.
I may cause a problem in opposite, but including factories, data centers, and power plants of all kinds, the United States will have total industrial and technological supremacy.
The second pillar of our action plan for AI dominance is to get the entire world running on the backbone of American technology, and I think that's very much happening right now, and I think it's going to happen.
The last administration was obsessed with imposing restrictions on AI, including extreme restrictions on its exports.
As you know, they made it very difficult to export
This alienated American partners and drove even our friends into the arms of China and other countries.
That's why upon taking office, I repealed the so-called Biden diffusion rule.
So the tariff is very important, but the opening of a country, I think, can be more important if our businesses do the job that they're supposed to be doing.
Can you imagine that?
That crippled American AI exports, the Biden diffusion rule.
I wonder who came up with that name, because he has no idea what it is.
He had no idea what it was.
He came up with a rule.
I wonder who drew that one.
I wonder was that signed by the auto pen, I think, because they went to him and said, we're gonna do a diffusion rule.
Mr. President, what?
What?
It's okay, the auto pen will take care of it.
It's one of the greatest scandals in the history of our country, let me tell you.
Under my administration, we will maintain necessary protections for our national security, but we will never forget that the greatest threat of all is to forfeit the race and force our partners into rival technology.
We're not gonna do that.
We're not gonna do that.
I'm not gonna let that happen.
That could be the end.
When I traveled to the Middle East in May, every leader I met was thrilled to do business with American tech firms and with America, and they were all thrilled to meet me, believe it or not.
It's hard to believe, isn't it?
But they were, by the way, most powerful woman in the world is here today.
Susie Weil, stand up, please.
Susie Weil.
Chief of staff.
She can take out a country with a mere phone call.
No, they just voted her the most powerful woman anywhere in the world.
She might be the most powerful person in the world, I think, but she's done a fantastic, she's done a good job though, huh?
But we're going to come home with trillions and trillions of dollars in deals, and that's the way it is.
Such openings are worthy of many points in tariffs, and they're
But the king of Saudi Arabia met three great leaders.
I went to three countries predominantly.
King of Saudi Arabia said, and I can say that Qatar and UAE, the leaders, brilliant guys, great people.
They said the same thing.
They said, you know what?
That one year ago,
your country was dead.
It was a dead country.
They were looking at China, they were looking at other places, but you had a dead country.
And today, Mr. President, you have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
They said that and they meant it so strongly.
And when I went to NATO two weeks ago, where we made the deal where they pay 5% instead of 2%, they said the same exact thing.
They said, boy, I tell you what a difference it is.
It's a year ago, you people were dead.
a good thing not only for, as an example, Japan or Europe, but certainly a great thing for America because it allows our businesses to go out and fairly compete and do really well if they compete properly like the people that I know.
We didn't think you were going to make it as a country.
Today, you're the hottest country in the world.
They all said it.
All those leaders said it, 30 of them.
So today, I'm signing another major executive order that will turn America into an AI export powerhouse.
Under this order, Secretary Lutnick and Secretary Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio's doing a great job as Secretary of State, will work to rapidly expand American AI exports of all kinds, from chips to software to data storage, of all kinds.
And that's very important.
That's going to give you the freedom to do what you want to do.
And third, once and for all, we are getting rid of woke.
Is that okay?
Because I know you had to hire all woke people.
I heard you had to hire all woke people under some of these things.
How about the chips where they give you the chip nonsense, where they give you billions of dollars if you only build a chip company?
These people have plenty of money.
They don't need the money.
They need the permits.
They need the rights to do it.
They don't want to pay tariffs, so they come and they build here.
That's why they're coming here.
Number one, they like me.
But they like not having to pay tariffs even more.
And they're coming.
But Biden gave billions of dollars to companies that have nothing but cash.
And they don't say where to build.
Let's just give them money.
But here's the problem.
They have to hire lots of woke people.
They say woke isn't for this particular industry.
We've noticed that.
They're not for a lot of industries if you want to know the truth.
The guidelines were impossible.
They're going to give you money, but you got to hire this and this and this and that.
I don't want to get into it too much because I don't want any controversy today.
You have to hire a lot of people that were not into this particular world that you're in.
And so therefore all the money they gave didn't mean a damn thing.
One of Biden's worst executive orders established toxic diversity, equity and inclusion ideology as a guiding principle of American AI development.
So you immediately knew that was the end of your development.
But the American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries.
They don't want it.
They don't want anything to do with it.
That's why on day one, I very proudly terminated Joe Biden's order on woke AI effective immediately.
You don't have any of those crazy rules.
Crazy rules.
And in just a moment, I will be signing an order banning the federal government from procuring AI technology that has been infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas such as critical race theory, which is ridiculous.
Everyone in this room practically I know has competed very successfully.
And from now on, the US government will deal only with AI that pursues truth, fairness, and strict impartiality.
We're not gonna go through the craziness that we've gone through for the last
four years, and then we skip four, and then you go back, and it started then.
But it hung around a little while.
Now it's not hanging around at all.
Now it's actually very uncool, as somebody told me the other day.
It's so uncool to be woke.
I encourage all American companies to join us in rejecting poisonous Marxism in our technology.
It'll be very interesting to see what's happening in New York.
I haven't seen any, and I know the losers just like I know the winners.
because they're actually thinking about electing a communist in New York.
They like to call him a socialist.
He's not a socialist.
He's a communist.
But don't worry, you're going to be okay.
He still has to get his money from the White House, and that's not going to happen until he shapes up.
But as an example, we are not going to allow men to play in women's sports.
That's just an example.
That's one example.
And they say that's an 80-20 number.
They say 80% would be against it.
No, it's not 80-20.
It's about 97-3.
And I don't know who the three are.
I've never seen anybody.
I've never had a person.
I've seen everybody.
I'm a very open person.
They come up to me and they talk to me.
I've never had anybody come up.
Sir, you have to let men play in women's sports.
I've never had it.
I deal with hundreds and thousands of people.
Every time I talk to somebody, nobody's ever... They talk about AI, they talk about everything, but they've never said, you've got to allow... This is ridiculous.
I don't see any of the losers here.
Men should be allowed to play in women's sports.
It's sort of crazy, isn't it?
You have to see.
Did you see the race?
It was a race, a long-distance marathon, one of those all-day deals.
We had one of the great female runners, and we had one of the great male runners, and at the end of the day, he won the race by...
Five hours and 14 seconds.
They waited around for the really good athlete female.
But now if some of the countries that pay 25% or more on orders complain, remember that Japan was willing to pay upfront the $550 billion for that privilege of negotiating with the United States of America.
It's very demeaning to women, I want to tell you that, but they waited.
Her parents were waiting for hours.
Somebody said, why don't you go back to the hotel and sleep for a few hours and come back and meet your daughter?
This is what they do.
You got to see the weightlifting records, though.
They're the best of all.
A woman lifted 212 pounds.
It was a world record.
It held for 18 years.
And now a man who transitioned came up and looked at the bar.
How much is it?
212 pounds.
Oh, let me try it.
Bling, bonk.
I think he broke the record by 109 pounds.
It's going to be a long time.
It's going to be a long time before a woman catches that.
And these are great athletes and great people, and it's demeaning.
And who the hell wants this?
We're off of that whole standard, because I just tell you those as examples.
We're off of it.
The reason the last administration was so eager to regulate and
Restrict AI was so they could limit this technology to just a few large companies, allowing them to centralize it, censor it, control it, weaponize it, and they would weaponize a very dishonest group of people.
You probably saw that because we caught them in the act.
We really caught him.
We had him before, but now we really have him.
We have it where it counts.
This is the exact opposite of my approach.
The unique strength of the American tech industry has always come from its startups and small tech.
It comes through small.
Jensen was small.
Were you ever small?
I think so.
When you started in your bedroom, I think you were small, right?
He started as very small, and now he's really become very amazing.
If you regulate them too much, you kill the source of American genius and technological power.
I believe that Joe Biden had a plan to lose the race.
I think he wanted to lose it because his plan would never have worked.
It would have never been successful.
You would have spent a lot of money and you wouldn't have been able to win.
They didn't allow you to win.
But we have a plan which only admires and respects the winners.
Every citizen should take incredible pride in the inspiring feats of American innovators who are pushing the bounds of human knowledge and achievement.
The people of open AI, Google, Meta, and countless startups are proving once again that America is impossible.
You are just impossible to beat.
You're not going to be beaten.
We also made a deal yesterday with the Philippines and Indonesia, which in both cases will be opening up their country.
We're not going to let that happen.
When you do your best, when you work your hardest, and when you're allowed to be free of horrible, foolish regulation, and you're going to have regulation, but it's going to be sensible, smart regulation.
There's nobody who's going to beat you.
As we push even further into this exciting frontier, let us never forget that all of this prosperity and progress has come from the culture of freedom and hard work, merit, ambition, and risk-taking passed down from one generation of Americans to the next.
Silicon Valley rose to wealth, fame, and glory by exemplifying these values, and it will win this race, not by rejecting them, but by embracing them like they have never been embraced before.
We must put America first.
This is a nation that invented the light bulb, the telegraph, the television, the telephone, the computer chip, the smartphone, the GPS, the integrated circuit,
And even the Internet.
Basically, we invented everything.
What is left?
We invented everything.
And now it's AI.
We invented everything.
Does anyone have anything else to say?
And now we're going to take it to a new level.
But Americans were the first to fly a plane, first to harness the atom and first to plant our flag on the moon.
And we're in the process of completing our deal with China.
We mastered the industrial age.
We created the digital age.
And now we are leading the world into the golden age.
Indeed, the golden age of America.
With your help, that golden age will be built by American workers.
It will be powered by American energy.
It will be run on American technology, improved by American artificial intelligence, and it will make America richer, stronger, greater, freer, and more powerful than ever before.
And I will now do my share by going and signing a name without an auto pen.
I will sign it
If we had one, I wouldn't use it anyway.
But we will sign it, auto-penn-free, and we will say, Donald J. Trump, God bless America, and God bless you, and good luck, because the race has just begun, and you're going to win it.
And as you know, the UK, we made a deal.
Thank you very much, everybody.
It was a very good deal for everybody.
Everybody's happy.
It's always nice when everybody can be happy.
But mostly, we'll be charging straight tariffs to most of the rest of the world, because we have over 200 countries.
Thank you, everybody.
Thank you very much, everybody.
Good luck.
Good luck.
People don't realize that's a lot of deals.
Even if you're like me, a deal junkie, that's a lot of deals.
That would be too much for anybody.
How did we do with this country that I never heard of?
We got a lot of deals cooking.
But America is taking in hundreds of billions of dollars.
like it never has before, investments into our country at the highest point ever in history, and we've just really been opened up for business for three of the six months.
The first couple of months, we got ourselves all set, done a great job with our military, as you know.
You saw that two weeks ago when you saw the way those incredible B-2s flew into Iran and took out an entire nuclear potential
deadly force.
But I want to thank some of the incredible people that I see before me, including White House AI Czar David Sachs.
Thank you very much, everybody.
He's been great.
For organizing this very important summit, and especially for putting it in D.C., where it's a little bit easier.
I don't know if it's easy for you, but it's a hell of a lot easier for me.
along with his colleagues at the All In podcast, which is very good.
What a great song that is, but we'll cut it a little short, because we have some business to discuss.
I did that podcast a year and a half ago, and I said, this is something, it was pretty new, pretty raw.
Everybody I knew saw that podcast.
I said, well, he's got something pretty good.
Who is that guy?
He's a smart guy, by the way.
I think if I ever get in,
which at the time, people were saying I had a shot, not as good a shot as it turned out.
We won in numbers that nobody believes.
We won every swing state.
We won by millions and millions of votes, winning the popular vote.
We won with the districts, as they would call them, 2,750 to 505, and that's why the map is almost completely red, except for a couple of little blue areas on each side of it.
But it was a great experience, frankly, for me.
And hopefully it's a great experience and been a great experience for our country because they're saying we had the greatest six months that a president has ever had, the opening six months.
And I'm not even sure, maybe six months.
I'm not sure it's the opening, but let's call it the opening six months.
It sounds a little bit nicer.
I want to also say hello and thank to Chamath and his wonderful wife, Nat.
Thank you very much for being here.
Thank you very much.
It was great seeing you again.
Great couple.
What a group of smart ones we have in front of me today.
David Friedberg and even, as we know, Jason Calacanis.
I say even.
Thank you, Jason.
Thank you, Jason.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, he's a good person.
Thanks as well to the Hill and Valley Forum and our future Undersecretary of State, Jacob Hellberg.
Good work.
Stand up, Jason.
That's about as good as it comes.
I met him a year and a half ago, and I was very impressed.
I said, let's bring him in.
We bring in a lot of smart people.
And David's been unbelievable as the job he's doing.
along with Secretaries Doug Burgum, who's been incredible, Doug.
Thank you.
Thank you, Doug.
Great job.
He's producing low-cost energy.
We're down to $64.
I want to get it down a little bit further if we can.
Up here, the brain power, the greatest power of them all.
I don't know if the oil companies love that or not, but we want to have very inexpensive electricity so that you can power up the plants because you need more electricity than any human beings ever in the history of the world.
When I heard what you really need, I said, you've got to be kidding.
Double what we produce right now for everything, right?
I don't know.
Jensen, you're going to have to explain that to me someday, why they need so damn much.
Couldn't you do with a little bit less?
My father always used to say, turn off the lights, son.
But you guys are turning up the lights.
I want to thank Howard Lutnick for doing a terrific job.
the brain power.
He was involved in the...
Big deal that we just completed with Japan.
Howard, wherever you are, Howard.
Where is Howard?
Well, I'm thrilled to be here with so many tech leaders and luminaries as we take historic action to reassert the future, which belongs to America, always has belonged to America.
Hi, Howard.
Great job you did.
Appreciate it, really.
That was an interesting negotiation, wasn't it?
These are tough people.
These are good negotiators, I will tell you, Japan.
But they love their country and they do what's right for their country.
I want to thank Chris Wright, if Chris is around.
Chris is here because he's helping with the tremendous
energy success that we're having.
We're having tremendous energy success.
We're the biggest.
We have more energy than anybody else in the world.
Nobody knew that until I came along, but we have more energy than anybody else in the world.
We're making incredible deals on energy, including
deals in Alaska while we sort of, that's the mother load.
That's the big one.
And we're making deals with various Asian countries that need it.
And it's actually hard to believe you don't think of it, but Asia is very close to Alaska, relatively speaking.
It's not the closest, but it is pretty much the closest when it comes to oil and gas and energy.
And we're making some incredible deals.
And I want to thank Chris.
Chris's fantastic works in partnership really with
This gentleman who's the head of all of, you've got the land and he's got the energy, right?
But you really, they formed a great partnership, Doug.
So that's one of the greatest partnerships I've seen in a long time.
They work hand in hand and they have done a great job.
Administrators, Kelly Loeffler, I think is here.
Kelly, thank you very much.
Hi, Kelly.
Hi, Kelly.
And probably the most important man in the room, and I say it in all sincerity, more important than Doug and Chris and all that energy they're producing.
He's a man that produces fast permits on the environmental impact statements.
He gets them done.
I said, Lee, you have one week, one week for nuclear.
And you have a couple of days for oil and gas, okay?
For the approvals.
And we kid, but you know, he really is, he's knocking them out fast.
He's knocked out a lot.
A lot of you guys have started your plants already and you've already had your approvals.
So where's Lee Zeldin?
Is he here?
He is so great.
This guy.
We just lost sight of it on occasion.
He is so great.
That's why he has a slightly better seat than I gave to Doug, you see?
Nah, he's doing a fantastic job in a lot of ways, but he's doing a great job, and he's getting fast permits, and safe and good and everything else, but he's moving them along rapidly, already given some.
And one of the most exciting things we'll talk about in a second is the fact that you're gonna build your own electric producing plants when you build
whatever you're building.
And it could be, it's different things, including automobile factories, which are going up all over the place.
You'll see them starting soon.
They're moving into our country because of the tariffs, because they don't want to pay the tariffs.
They're moving into our country at a record speed.
But the ability to build your own electric plant, not having to rely on a 100-year-plus old grid.
And I just want to start by stating that we've just concluded our
And then if you have electric capacity extra, you're going to sell it into the grid, make some money.
But you'll sell it right back into the grid.
Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratios.
Michael, thank you very much.
Thank you, Michael.
As well, oh, it's supposed to be taking a vote right now.
Big vote.
Senator Ted Cruz.
Is Senator Cruz here?
Oh, look at my senator.
Why aren't you voting?
I think we lost David McCormick, who's voting.
So why aren't, is David here?
Because you're supposed to be voting, Ted, I don't know.
I'll tell you what, this man works hard.
Ted works hard and he works good.
And a very special thanks to some of the top industry leaders here, including somebody that's amazing.
Big trade deal with Japan and numerous other countries in addition, as you know.
I said, look, we'll break this guy up.
This is before I learned the facts of life.
I said, we'll break him up.
They said, no, sir, he's very hard.
I said, why?
I said, what percentages of the market does he have?
Sir, he has 100%.
I said, who the hell is he?
What's his name?
His name is Jensen Wong, NVIDIA.
I said, what the hell is NVIDIA?
I've never heard of it before.
He said, you don't want to know about it, sir.
I figured we could go in and we could sort of break them up a little bit, get them a little competition.
And I found out it's not easy in that business.
I said, supposedly we put the greatest minds together.
They work hand in hand for a couple of years.
He said, no, it would take at least 10 years to catch him if he ran NVIDIA totally incompetently from now on.
So I said, all right, let's go on to the next one.
And then I got to know Jensen, and now I see why.
Jensen, we used to end up, what a job.
But on the Japan deal, because it was literally just signed, letter was just signed, it gives us a sort of signing bonus.
What a job you've done.
Great, it's a great, he's a great guy too.
Lisa Sue of AMD, Lisa?
Lisa?
Thank you, congratulations, great job.
Sham Sennikar of Palantir, we buy a lot of things from Palantir.
Where are you?
Are we paying our bills?
I think so.
They just made a deal with the European Union where they're gonna pay the United States of America 100% of the cost of all military equipment.
They're gonna ship it to the European Union, and then they'll distribute it, and much of it will go to Ukraine.
It's been a long time since you've heard those words, because we're in for $350 billion.
But now we send it to Europe, and Europe pays.
They were great.
We had a tremendous NATO meeting a few weeks ago, and it was pretty amazing, actually, what happened.
They agreed to go from 2% to 5%, and they had 2% where they didn't pay.
They had 5% where they've already paid.
That's a big difference.
That's trillions of dollars, actually, trillions.
But they're going to spend that money in the United States with our defense companies, and we're going to send it to them, and they'll distribute the equipment that we send.
So that's the way it should have been three years ago, frankly.
And we're going to look into this, because I think it's a RICO case against him.
I've been speaking to the attorney general about bringing RICO against some of the people that you've been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation.
So he said the left — radical left lunatics — may have all the money in the world, but they can never outwork me.
I will wake up as early as I need to about himself.
I will stay up as late as I need to, and I will never stop fighting for our country.
And he did this until his dying breath.
That's what he was doing.
That's what he was doing.
Think of it.
Wow.
What a horrible moment.
I was in the Oval Office when I heard.
They came in, and I — it was like a surreal experience.
A terrible, terrible — I had some very big people in the Oval Office.
And I was in the midst of a very important conversation for our country.
Big people.
The biggest.
And I said, you have to leave now.
When they told me that, they told me in front of a group of very powerful people.
I said, you have to leave now, right now, please.
Right now.
You have to leave.
Go.
By his own determination and skill, Charlie Kirk built Turning Point from his humble beginnings.
beginnings, the beginnings that nobody believed could ever end up something like this, into a great movement and a juggernaut of American politics.
And, you know, we have a massive stadium loaded up with people, but he got tremendous crowds before he had this kind of horrible news and before we had to hear what happened so terribly.
He delivered more than 250 speeches a year at over 200 colleges and universities.
And that was
at a time when it was not really vogue to go to colleges and universities if you were a conservative.
He was violently killed because he spoke for freedom and justice, for God, country, for reason, and for common sense.
It really took great courage.
And we used to talk, and I said, you know, I think they're much more conservative than we know.
And he agreed, but it just wasn't something that was happening because the radical left would do very bad things, very dangerous things.
But Charlie set up chapters on 2,200 campuses and spoke at more than
1,000 churches.
He launched a podcast and radio show that grew to an audience of 1 million Americans a day, one of the bigger shows on radio.
And Charlie didn't just bring young people into the movement.
All of a sudden, it started to grow by leaps and bounds by 2024.
We won more young people than any Republican candidate in the history of our country, including, for the first time, a majority of males under 30.
Can you believe it?
Remember when Republican presidential candidates would get 4%?
No, we did unbelievably with young people.
And he was a big, big factor.
Unbelievable.
But he made me work for it.
Sir, you have to make a speech here.
You have to make a speech there.
But we did it, and we won.
And our country is doing unbelievably well now.
We had a country that was dead one year ago, and now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
And Charlie helped us make it that.
He was assassinated because he lived bravely, he led boldly, and he argued brilliantly without apology.
One of the great people.
But through it all, the core of Charlie's message and his basic method never changed.
It never really changed.
He stayed the same person also.
At every campus event, Charlie asked the people who disagreed with him to come forward, and instead of silencing them, he handed them a microphone and let them speak.
And he'd convinced so many of them.
It was a pretty amazing thing to watch, actually.
Shortly before Charlie arrived on campus, the day he was assassinated, a staff member texted him that there were many critics and students who were opposed to his views and rather strenuously in the crowd.
And that actually made him feel good because he wanted to convince them.
He understood.
He really did.
He understood what was right.
And he was right about that.
A lot of it was based on common sense, by the way.
Charlie wrote back to the staff member, saying, I'm not here to fight them.
I want to know them and love them, and I want to reach them and try and lead them into a great way of life in our country.
In that private moment on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was.
He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose.
He did not hate his opponents.
He did what was right for our nation.
He wanted the best for them.
That's where I disagreed with Charlie.
I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them.
I'm sorry.
I am sorry, Erica.
But now Erica can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
Charlie's angry.
Looking down, he's angry at me now.
He wasn't interested in demonizing anyone.
He was interested in persuading everyone to the ideas and principles he believed were good, right, and true.
Before each appearance, he prayed these words, God, use me for your will.
Always said the same thing.
Use me for your will.
And that is exactly what God did.
When you think, that's exactly what he did.
And so, on that terrible day, September 10th, 2025, our greatest evangelist for American liberty became immortal.
The more success Charlie had, and he was getting more and more successful, the more dangerous his mission became.
On campuses all over the country, his quest for open dialogue was met with menacing hate.
There were bomb threats, pulled fire alarms, and countless rage-filled radicals who tried to shout him down.
It was nasty.
I used to say, Charlie, this is nasty stuff you're doing.
At one event, police had to build barricades to protect students from an angry mob of thugs.
Many of these people, by the way, are paid a lot of money to do this.
They're agitators.
They're paid agitators.
Remember that.
When you see they all have the same beautifully printed sign, every sign is identical.
It comes out of a top-level print shop.
That's not the signs that are made in somebody's basement.
Those are paid for by very bad people, and hopefully we're going to be finding out through the DOJ who those people are.
At another college, Antifa terrorists shattered windows, threw rocks, and tried to storm the building where Charlie was speaking.
It was a really bad one.
Often, dozens of police officers were needed to prevent left-wing violence.
And the violence comes largely from the left.
You don't hear that from too many people, do you?
And virtually every day for years,
Before he was murdered, Charlie received these horrible death threats.
People don't know.
I used to talk to him about it.
He said, I got some threats.
He always felt that when they actually made the threat, they were not the ones to worry about.
The ones to worry about were the ones that don't make the threats.
He's a martyr now for American freedom.
I think you know what I mean.
He knew the risks, but he
And I shared a certain motto, never back down and never, ever surrender.
Just don't surrender.
Never back down.
He believed in it so strongly.
So strongly.
And he's right.
He's totally — he's totally right.
The radicals and their allies in the media — sometimes referred to, as my son said, the fake news media — tried to silence Charlie for
A simple reason, because he was winning, and he was winning big.
He was taking over college campuses.
Colleges that had, in theory, only very liberal, or as they like to say, progressive.
I call them liberal, but they like to call themselves, because it's such a beautiful word, progressive.
They're the opposite of progressive, if you think about it.
But they were...
really nasty, and he would go into these colleges.
All of a sudden, within two years, three years, they turned into bastions of conservatism.
I know I speak for everyone here today when I say that none of us will ever forget Charlie Kirk, and neither now will history.
It was really quite amazing to see.
They lied about him because they did not want you to listen to him or to learn from him because what he was talking about and even preaching made so much sense.
Everywhere he went, he won the debates.
He won the hearts.
He won the minds.
And, yes, he won the elections for people.
He helped us.
He helped other people.
We won the biggest election in the history of our country, I believe.
Charlie Kirk was, without a doubt, among the most influential figures in the most important election in the history of our country.
The election of — oh, that beautiful day, November 5th, 2024.
Do you remember that day?
It was nine months ago.
What a day that was.
I mean, we had a pretty good day in the first one.
And I must tell you, on the second one, we had a phenomenal day.
But a lot of bad things happened, and now that's not even questioned.
They cheated like dogs, but we got them back, didn't we, huh?
We got them back.
But we owe Charlie a profound and eternal debt of gratitude.
Now, just like Charlie and Erica made Turning Point hot, we are looking at a country that has the chance to attain a level like never before.
Tariffs are making us rich again, richer than anybody ever thought was possible.
And the only one challenging them are people that hate our country or foreign countries that are paying a price, because they did the same thing to us for years.
They took advantage of us.
But we're making money.
We're becoming richer and richer.
And we're taking care of our people better and better when we do that.
And we can take care of other countries better and better.
But we're doing unbelievably well.
The tariffs have really been a hold.
The election was big.
But the tariffs, because of the election, came in.
And remember, other nations do that to us.
And Charlie understood that.
He saw the money.
He saw what was coming into our country.
And we can use that for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security — all of these things that we fight so hard for.
And that's exactly what's happening.
The numbers are incredible.
When the news finally came out on election night last November that the race was officially won — came out pretty early in the night.
Charlie was live on camera.
In that moment, he was overcome with emotion.
I've never seen him like this.
He was so happy.
For a long while, he said nothing.
His eyes were filled with tears.
And then he buried his face in his hands, and he started crying.
That wasn't the Charlie I knew, but in thinking about it, it actually was the Charlie I knew, because he had a tremendous heart.
Because while Charlie has been reunited with his Creator in Heaven, his voice on Earth will echo through the generations, and his name will live forever in the eternal chronicle of America's greatest patriots.
He just wanted what was good for our country, and he saw us going in such a horrible direction.
Lovingly, Eric.
And this was so beautiful.
Erica put a MAGA hat on to cover his bowed head.
I like that very much.
MAGA, we love.
Does everybody love MAGA?
Make America great again.
When Joe Biden used to get up, remember the speeches?
We will stop MAGA.
We will stop MAGA.
You know, he could barely get the words out.
We will stop.
I said, can somebody inform him that MAGA means Make America Great Again?
How do you say you're going to stop it?
And Charlie understood that.
When Charlie finally looked up and spoke, he smiled through the watery eyes and simply said, I am humbled by God's grace.
That was his statement that night.
I was watching him.
I was very impressed, actually.
Thank you.
It showed he had a big heart.
Every single American should take a long, hard look at the twisted soul and dark spirit of anyone who would want to kill a young man as good as Charlie.
To kill anybody, but to kill a man like this, he didn't deserve this.
He didn't deserve this.
Our country didn't deserve this.
And anyone who would make excuses for it are just out of their mind.
Charlie's murder was not just an attack on one man or one movement.
It was an attack on our entire nation.
That was a horrible attack on the United States of America.
It was an assault on our most sacred liberties and God-given rights.
The gun was pointed at him, but the bullet was aimed at all of us.
That bullet was aimed at every one of us.
Indeed, Charlie was killed for expressing the very ideas that virtually everyone in this arena and most other places throughout our country deeply believed in.
But the assassin failed in his quest because Charlie's message has not been silenced.
It now is bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and it's not even close.
And it's rare that such a thing happens, but Charlie is bigger today than he was — think about it — just two weeks ago.
He's bigger today than he was two weeks ago.
Now, that may not help his friends and loved ones, of which there are so many.
It may not help Eric and those beautiful children who have to suffer so horribly through this moment, but they know it's true.
He's bigger now than ever before, and he's eternal.
He will live forever.
He's eternal.
And I just want to say we love him.
And he's looking down at us right now, and he's saying, wow, that's a great crowd.
He's saying, that's a great crowd.
And it's a great crowd of patriots.
But that's why I will soon award Charlie
the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
It's the highest civilian honor.
To Charlie's incredible and beautiful widow, Erica, we know the weight of this monumental loss is almost unbearable.
And we will do the ceremony at our beautiful White House in a very safe Washington, D.C., a place that Charlie truly revered.
You know, we stopped the crime in Washington.
It took 12 days.
Now you can go to restaurants.
You can walk down the middle of the street with your wife.
You can have your wife walk alone down the middle of the street.
She's going to be in good shape.
What a difference.
What a difference good management really makes.
But it's — I'm so proud of that Washington, D.C.
You know, it's one of the worst in the nation — in the world —
And now it's considered a very safe city.
And it's also — I passed it yesterday.
I went through it.
And the lawns are good.
It's like a different place.
It's like the tents are gone.
The threats are gone.
The gangs aren't there.
We got rid of — you know, we took out 1,500 career criminals.
1,500.
If you have three career criminals, that can make a —
a big difference.
But I'm so proud of Washington, D.C., and now we're going into Memphis, and we'll get that one straightened out fast.
And then we're going into some others, but we're going to go to Chicago, and we're going to have Charlie very much in mind when we go into Chicago.
And we'll get that one straightened out.
You have an incompetent governor who — he thinks it's okay when 11 people get murdered over the weekend.
He thinks you don't have any crime when 11 people get murdered.
And 28 people get shot.
He says he's got crime.
No, they don't have it under control.
But even in the midst of heartache and pain too great to even fathom, you have somehow found the strength and deep faith to be a comfort to millions and millions of people.
But we'll have it under control very quickly.
So we're going to be doing that.
And Charlie loved what we were doing.
He was so proud of what happened.
He was there to see it.
He was so proud of what happened in Washington, D.C.
As you know, the depraved assassin who planned and executed Charlie's killing has been arrested and charged with capital murder.
God willing, he will receive the full and ultimate punishment for his horrific crime.
It's a terrible thing.
Because you can't let that happen.
You can't let that happen.
You can't let it happen to a country.
The Department of Justice is also investigating networks of radical left maniacs who fund organized fuel and perpetrate political violence.
And we think we know who many of them are.
But law enforcement can only be the beginning of our response to Charlie's murder.
Over the last 11 days, we have heard stories of commentators, influencers, and others in our society who greeted his assassination with sick approval, excuses, or even jubilation.
You've heard that.
So have I. Couldn't believe it.
Some of the very same people who spent the last eight years trying to sit in moral judgment of anyone who disagreed with them about politics suddenly started cheering for a murder.
Incredible.
You know the names.
They're major losers, by the way.
That will be proven out in a short period of time.
Some of the very people who call you a hater for using the wrong pronoun were filled with glee at the killing of a father with two beautiful young children.
And the same commentators who this week are screaming fascism over a canceled late-night TV show where
The anchor had no talent and no ratings.
Last week, we're implying that Charlie Kirk deserved what happened to him.
No side in American politics has a monopoly on disturbed or misguided people.
But there's one part of our political community which believes they have a monopoly on truth, goodness, and virtue, and concludes they have also a monopoly on power, thought, and speech.
And thank you very much, Erica.
Well, that's not happening anymore.
We've turned that corner very quickly.
Tragically, atrocities of this kind and the kind that we saw in Utah, of all places, are the eventual consequence of that kind of thinking.
Thank you very much.
If speech is violence, then some are bound to conclude that violence is justified to stop speech.
And we're not going to let that be justified.
The tradition of reason and open debate that Charlie practiced is not a pillar of our democracy.
In many ways, it's the basis of our entire society.
It's the right and inheritance of every free American, the greatest legacy of the Enlightenment, and among the most treasured achievements of civilization.
We will defend it at all costs, and we will carry forward the torch of liberty that Charlie Kirk held so proud and so high.
He was so proud, and he did hold that torch high.
We will never, ever let it fail.
We will never let it fail.
But we're going to raise it higher than ever before.
It's going to be raised.
And this is the beginning.
Perhaps it should be no surprise that Charlie, who spent his life speaking with the critics of these traditions, ultimately became convinced that we needed not just a political realignment, but also a spiritual reawakening.
We did.
And we have to bring back religion to America, because without borders, law and order, and religion, you really don't have a country anymore.
We want religion brought back to America.
We want to bring God back into our beautiful USA like never before.
We want God back.
Today, an entire nation wraps its loving arms around you and your beautiful children.
Charlie would have been so pleased to hear his friends and colleagues today giving testimony and
giving glory to God.
Within minutes of the gunshot in Utah, millions of Americans, young and old, heard the news and dropped to their knees and started praying.
Even many who rarely prayed asked God for a miracle.
Please, God, save Charlie.
But although Charlie's time with us on Earth has ended, those prayers for a miracle have already been answered.
Look at what's happening.
Look at what's happening.
In the days since Charlie's death, we have seen how his legacy has touched so many millions around the world.
In Calgary, Canada, thousands gathered at City Hall to sing the American National Anthem and raise up posters with the name Charlie Kirk.
We share in your immense and overwhelming sorrow, and we vow that we will do everything we can to ensure that your children grow up in a land where their father is honored and revered as a great American hero.
In Seoul, South Korea, crowds gathered to wave American flags and shout,
We are for Charlie Kirk.
His memory has been honored in the streets of Berlin, Warsaw, Vienna, Sydney, Madrid, London, Tel Aviv, and all over the world.
So beautiful to watch.
A man as far away as rural Australia texted a pastor, I'm going to come to church tomorrow for the first time ever.
The pastor asked, why is that?
The man replied, because of Charlie Kirk.
Can you imagine?
The lesson of Charlie's life is that you should never underestimate what one person can do with a good heart, a righteous cause, a cheerful spirit, and the will to fight, fight, fight.
Have to fight.
They're saving our country.
And Charlie is a big factor, such a big factor.
Charlie Kirk started with only an idea to change minds on college campuses.
And instead, he ended up with a far greater achievement, changing history.
He changed history.
Today, Charlie Kirk rests in glory in heaven for all eternity.
He has gone from speaking on campuses in Wisconsin to kneeling at the throne of God, where he is right now.
We grieve for the friend and leader that we have lost, but we go forward strengthened by his faith and bolstered by his courage and inspired by his example to defend the country he lived for, for the freedoms he died for, and the values in which he so deeply believed.
He believed in values
that we should all believe in.
Charlie created something very special.
It's called Turning Point USA.
And under the leadership and love of Erica, it will become bigger and better and stronger than ever before.
So, Charlie, we all want to thank you.
We want to say a very loud God bless you, Charlie.
That's what he is.
God bless you for what you've done.
incredible.
And God bless Erica and the children.
God bless the United States of America.
And could I ask Erica, please come out.
Erica, please come out.
To Charlie's parents who lost their beloved son, and to the entire Kirk family, we know that no words can ever be enough to fill the void he leaves behind.
Thank you very much.
And good luck.
God be with you.
Thank you.
That's a void that just can't be filled.
But I hope the extraordinary outpouring of emotion over these past 11 days has comforted you with the knowledge that your son brought more good and love into this world in his 31 short years.
than most people, even very, very successful people, can bring in a lifetime.
Charlie Kirk loved America with everything he had.
And as we can see so clearly today, America loved Charlie Kirk.
And he could always draw a big crowd.
Look at this today.
Look at what's gone on.
This is a big crowd.
Here today, we have the Vice President of the United States, J.D.
Vance.
We have the Speaker of the U.S.
House of Representatives, Mike Johnson.
We have countless members of the United States Senate.
And I'm sorry I'm not going to introduce you, but I'll be up here.
They're all over the place.
And likewise, the House of Representatives.
They're all over this big stadium.
This is not an arena.
This is a stadium.
Our great Cabinet and this stadium packed with rafters of people, not to mention the one
across the street that also has tens of thousands of people.
And they're watching us on screen right now.
And I'm sorry we couldn't get you in.
If anybody would like to give up your seat, please walk across the street.
But this is like an old-time revival, isn't it?
An old-time revival.
For millions of Americans, especially young people, it is agonizing and unthinkable to say goodbye to a patriot whose heart still had so much to give.
It's so much.
Raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Charlie was filled with a patriotic spirit from his youth, and he was an All-American in everything he did.
And one of the last things he said to me is, please, sir, save Chicago.
We're going to do that.
We're going to save Chicago from horrible crime.
In high school, he was the quarterback of the football team and the captain of the basketball team.
He was a good athlete.
A lot of people don't know that about Charlie.
He was an Eagle Scout who spent his school lunch breaks listening to another champion for liberty.
somebody that he greatly admired, Rush Limbaugh.
But what was even more important to Charlie than politics and service was the choice he made in the fifth grade, which he called the most important decision of his life, to become a Christian and a follower of his Savior, Jesus Christ.
Well, I want to thank you very much, Lee.
Inspired by faith and his love of freedom, Charlie did something remarkable when he was just 18 years old on the advice of a mentor who told him to put off going to college because he was doing so well.
You've been there from the beginning with us, Lee.
He devoted his life to converting young people to the conservative cause.
How did he do?
Take a look.
How did he do?
In 2012, two days after graduating high school, and with just $1,800 in his pocket, the young man from Illinois, who no one had ever heard of, started an organization whose grand ambitions were captured in its name, Turning Point USA.
Appreciate it.
Great name.
Nobody can sing that song like Lee Greenwood.
And I have a feeling it's going to be bigger and better than ever before.
Does that make sense?
It's going to be bigger and better than ever before.
Look at what's happening.
Twelve years ago, Charlie walked onto his first college campus, the very liberal University of Wisconsin at Madison.
He set up a card table and put up a sign with three words.
Big government sucks.
Can you believe that?
That's Charlie.
That day, Charlie talked to every student who approached him, most of whom were probably quite a bit older than he was.
Thank you very much, Lee, very much for being here.
Finally, after many hours, he found the first-ever Turning Point chapter leader.
His first year out of high school, Charlie traveled 300 days, raising money and taking his message to campuses all over the country.
He lived out of his parents' basement.
And they actually loved having him there.
They loved Charlie.
Everybody loved Charlie.
And on the couches of friends and supporters.
He lived off couches for two years, three years.
Then life started getting a little bit different.
But he was always the same.
For five years, he refused to take a paycheck.
Day after day, he worked from 5 a.m.
in the morning until 11 p.m.
in the evening, always.
His staff remembers that he wore Walmart jeans and T-shirts from the Goodwill store.
And his voice has not changed.
Remember the Goodwill store.
It wasn't easy, but Charlie wasn't in it for money at all.
Do you know?
Never has been.
Money was never his thing.
He was always in it for the mission.
As he liked to say, even back then, we have a country to save.
Pretty amazing.
Just what he did.
He'd call me all the time.
Sir, we have a country to save.
I said, Charlie, thanks very much for telling me that.
I appreciate it.
Charlie volunteered for my 2016 campaign and traveled the nation with my son Don and Eric.
I got to know him very well and saw immediately that Charlie was actually a master builder, master builder of people.
And a special thank you to Erica, because today, America is a nation in grief, a nation in shock, and a nation in mourning.
It was Charlie who first started organizing young black conservatives hungry for support and leadership.
It was Charlie who stood up for persecuted Christians and Jews on college campuses.
It was Charlie who helped bring online censorship.
free speech, and cancel culture to the fore of our political debate.
He was right up there with me.
It was Charlie who helped unite MAGA.
And you know what M-A-H-A is?
That's right.
Make America Healthy Again.
And tomorrow, we're going to have one of the biggest announcements, really, medically, I think, in the history of our country.
We're going to be doing it with...
Bobby and Oz and all of the professionals.
I think you're going to find it to be amazing.
I think we found an answer to autism.
How about that?
Autism.
Tomorrow, we're going to be talking in the Oval Office and the White House about autism, how it happens so we won't let it happen anymore.
and how to get at least somewhat better when you have it so that parents can help their child, their beautiful child.
That's a big one.
I've been — I've been bugging everybody over there.
Get the answer to that.
You know, 20 years ago, one in 10,000 were born with autism.
20 years ago.
The most recent survey says 1 in 12.
How bad is that?
That's for young boys, baby boys, but also girls, a little bit better.
It's about 1 in 20.
But we can't — because obviously there was something really wrong, and we think we know what that is.
Less than two weeks ago, our country was robbed of one of the brightest lights of our times, a giant of his generation, and above all, a devoted husband, father, son, Christian and patriot.
It's going to be
I think it's going to be one of the most important news conferences I'll ever have, and I look so forward to it.
And, you know, who else looked forward to it?
Because he knew.
I tell him a little bit about what was going on.
It was Charlie.
He would have been front-row center, believe me.
We'll be missing him tomorrow.
It was such a big deal for him, too.
He brought together Donald Trump.
Bobby Kennedy, right here in the great state of Arizona.
One year ago, remember that?
What a night, what a day that was.
And it was Charlie who was among the first to speak to me about a man from Ohio by the name of J.D.
Vince.
Have you ever heard of him?
He's doing a good job.
But Charlie would often call me, sometimes the night before a big event, the other side of the country.
And he'd ask me, he'd say, do you think you could come and speak at the event the following day, right?
I'd say, Charlie, give me a break.
I'm the President of the United States.
You want me to travel four hours by plane?
And, you know, sometimes I did it.
He was a very good guy.
He was a very convincing guy.
He didn't stop.
But he would ask for things like that.
Sir, could you be tomorrow in California?
I said, Charlie, give me a break, please.
He just wouldn't stop.
And he succeeded.
But I almost always went because you never wanted to let Charlie down.
He worked so hard.
You just didn't want to let him down.
I felt guilty.
He'd make me feel very guilty.
As President, many people asked me for things, but Charlie was one of the few who always gave more than he took.
He was a giver much more than a taker.
And no matter how big Charlie became, no one was too small for him to notice.
He was good to everybody.
It didn't matter.
Several years ago, a fourth grader asked Charlie to appear on his podcast, which was probably only watched by the parents of that fourth grader.
Charles James Kirk was heinously murdered by a radicalized, cold-blooded monster for speaking the truth that was in his heart.
And Charlie, who was actually pretty hot at the time, to be honest, he agreed, and the boy asked for advice.
Charlie replied, the left, the left.
I call it the radical left.
I call it sometimes the radical left lunatics.
But Charlie didn't say that.
He called it the left.
He was probably right, but I can't help it.
I can't help it.