- Via Teleconference – January 23, 2025
This has been a truly historic week in the United States. Three days ago, I took the oath of office, and we began the golden age of America. The recent presidential election was won by millions of votes and all seven — every one of them — all seven swing states. It was a massive mandate from the American people like hasn’t been seen in many years. And some of the political pundits, even some of my so-called enemies, said it was the most consequential election victory in 129 years. That’s quite nice.
What the world has witnessed in the past 72 hours is nothing less than a revolution of common sense. Our country will soon be stronger, wealthier, and more united than ever before, and the entire planet will be more peaceful and prosperous as a result of this incredible momentum and what we’re doing and going to do.
My administration is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we’ve inherited from a totally inept group of people and to solve every single crisis facing our country.
This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration. Over the past four years, our government racked up $8 trillion in wasteful deficit spending and inflicted nation-wrecking energy restrictions, crippling regulations, and hidden taxes like never before. The result is the worst inflation crisis in modern history and sky-high interest rates for our citizens and even throughout the world. Food prices and the price of almost every other thing known to mankind went through the roof.
President Biden totally lost control of what was going on in our country but, in particular, with our high-inflation economy and at our border. Because of these ruinous policies, total government spending this year is $1.5 trillion higher than was projected to occur when I left office just four years ago. Likewise, the cost of servicing the debt is more than 230 percent higher than was projected in 2020.
The inflation rate we are inheriting remains 50 percent higher than the historic target. It was the highest inflation probably in the history of our country. That’s why, from the moment I took office, I’ve taken rapid action to reverse each and every one of these radical left policies that created this calamity — in particular, with immigration, crime, and inflation.
On day one, I signed an executive order directing every member of my Cabinet to marshal all powers at their disposal to defeat inflation and reduce the cost of daily life. I imposed a federal hiring freeze, a federal regulation freeze, a foreign aid freeze, and I created the new Department of Government Efficiency. I terminated the ridiculous and incredibly wasteful Green New Deal — I call it the “Green New Scam”; withdrew from the one-sided Paris Climate Accord; and ended the insane and costly electric vehicle mandate. We’re going to let people buy the car they want to buy.
I declared a national energy emergency — and it’s so important — national energy emergency to unlock the liquid gold under our feet and pave the way for rapid approvals of new energy infrastructure. The United States has the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we’re going to use it.
Not only will this reduce the cost of virtually all goods and services, it will make the United States a manufacturing superpower and the world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.
My administration has also begun the largest deregulation campaign in history, far exceeding even the record-setting efforts of my last term.
In total, the Biden administration imposed $50,000 in additional regulatory costs on the average American household over the last four years. I have promised to eliminate 10 old regulations for every new regulation, which will soon put many thousands of dollars back in the pockets of American families.
To further unleash our economy, our majorities in the House and Senate — which we also took, along with the presidency — are going to pass the largest tax cut in American history, including massive tax cuts for workers and family and big tax cuts for domestic producers and manufacturers. And we’re working with the Democrats on getting an extension of the original Trump tax cuts, as you probably know by just reading any paper.
My message to every business in the world is very simple: Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth. We’re bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts. But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then, very simply, you will have to pay a tariff — differing amounts, but a tariff — which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our Treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.
Under the Trump administration, there will be no better place on Earth to create jobs, build factories, or grow a company than right here in the good old USA.
Already, American’s economic — and you can see this, I think, maybe even in your — in your wonderful, wonderful room that you’re all gathered together — so many of my friends — but, Americans, the economic confidence is soaring like we haven’t seen in many, many decades, maybe not at all.
Upon my election, it was just announced that small-business optimism skyrocketed by 41 points in a single month. That’s the highest ever. There’s never been anything like that.
SoftBank has announced between a $100 and $200 billion investment in the US economy because of the election result. And just two days ago, Oracle, SoftBank, and OpenAI announced a $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure. Other companies, likewise, have announced billions and billions and billions — adding up to trillions — of investment in America, in the United States.
And it’s also reported today in the papers that Saudi Arabia will be investing at least $600 billion in America. But I’ll be asking the crown prince, who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around $1 trillion. I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them. And I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil. You got to bring it down, which, frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election. That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that.
If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price; you’re going to end that war. They should have done it long ago. They’re very responsible, actually, to a certain extent, for what’s taking place — millions of lives are being lost.
With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And, likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us.
All over, the progress that you’re seeing is happening because of our historic victory in a recent presidential election, one that has become quite well-known throughout the world.
I think a lot of things are happening to a lot of countries. They say that there’s light shining all over the world since the election. And even countries that we aren’t particularly friendly with are happy because they understand what — there is a future and — how great the future will be.
Under our leadership, America is back and open for business. And this week, I’m also taking swift action to stop the invasion at our southern border. They allowed people to come in at levels that nobody has ever seen before. It was ridiculous. I decided a — and declared to do — and very, very importantly — a national emergency on our border; immediately halted all entry of illegal border crossers, of which there were many; and began properly returning the illegal trespassers back to the place from which they came.
That action, as you’ve probably seen, has already started very strongly. I have deployed active-duty US military and National Guard troops to the border to assist in repelling the invasion. It was really an invasion. We will not allow our territory to be violated. After four long years, the United States is strong and sovereign and a beautiful nation once again. It’s a strong, sovereign nation.
In addition, I’m pleased to report that America is also a free nation once again. On day one, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship. No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas and, frankly, progress. We have saved free speech in America, and we’ve saved it strongly.
With another historic executive order this week, I also ended the weaponization of law enforcement against the American people — and, frankly, against politicians — and restored the fair, equal, and impartial rule of law.
My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion nonsense — and these are policies that were absolute nonsense — throughout the government and the private sector. With the recent, yet somewhat unexpected, great Supreme Court decision just made, America will once again become a merit-based country. You have to hear that word: merit-based country.
And I’ve made it official — an official policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female, and we will have no men participating in women’s sports, and transgender operations, which became the rage, will occur very rarely.
Finally, as we restore common sense in America, we’re moving quickly to bring back strength and peace and stability abroad. I’m also going to ask all NATO nations to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, which is what it should have been years ago — it was only at 2 percent, and most nations didn’t pay until I came along; I insisted that they pay, and they did — because the United States was really paying the difference at that time, and it’s — it was unfair to the United States. But many, many things have been unfair for many years to the United States.
Before even taking office, my team negotiated a ceasefire agreement in the Middle East, which wouldn’t have happened without us, as I think most of the people in the room know. Earlier this week, the hostages began to return to their families. They are returning, and it’s a beautiful sight. And they’ll be coming in more and more. They started coming back on Sunday.
Our efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now, hopefully, underway. It’s so important to get that done. That is an absolute killing field.
Millions of soldiers are being killed. Nobody has seen anything like it since World War II. They’re laying dead all over the flat fields. It’s a flat field — farmland, and there’s millions of Russians and millions of Ukrainians. Nobody’s seen anything like it since World War II. It’s time to end it.
And here in America, we have big events coming up. Next year we have the 250th anniversary of America’s founding. I’m so honored to be president during that. That’s been a big event. They’ve been talking about it for 10 years. We also have the World Cup, and I understand Gianni — Gianni is in the room — Infantino. He was very instrumental in helping us get it — he’s there with you someplace, I think — and I want to thank him for that.
And then we have the Olympics coming up, which I was instrumental in getting, also, in my first term. And who would have known that by skipping a term, I would get the Olympics? I was upset. I said: “You know, I got the Olympics to come and I won’t be president.” But it turned out, through a stroke of luck or whatever you might call it, that I’m going to be president during the World Cup and the Olympics and the 250th anniversary. So, that’s going to be three big events.
And we’ve accomplished more in less than four days — we have really been working — four days — than other administrations have accomplished in four years, and we’re just getting started. It’s really an amazing thing to see, and the spirit and the light over our country has been incredible.
Under the last administration, our nation has suffered greatly, but we are going to bring it back and make it greater, bigger, stronger, better than ever before.
I want to thank everybody for being with you. I would have been there myself, except the inauguration was two days ago. I thought it might be a little bit quick to make it the first stop, but we’ll get there one day. We hope to get there.
But I — I do appreciate — I heard the audience is fantastic, and many of my friends are in the audience. And I will be taking questions now from some very distinguished people.
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