Keynote transcript, Jun 26, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Thank you.

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

Thank you. Thank you very much.

And I want to thank Ralph for the introduction. He's a great guy and a friend of mine for a long time.

And thank you to all of the true American patriots of Faith and Freedom Coalition. You've been with me from the beginning and pretty much like nobody—nobody else, I don't think, can top you. You were just great right from the beginning. You got it. You understood what we had to do, and we got it done, and we're continuing to get it done at levels that nobody has seen before.

With the help of many people in this room, 18 months ago, we won the most consequential election victory in American history, winning all 7 swing States, the Electoral College by 312 to 226, the popular vote, and 86 percent of all counties in America—2,700 to 525. That's called a big victory.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition was with us every step of the way. You knocked on 97 million doors. It's true. Ralph actually told me 10 million, so I had—checked. It was 9.7 million. You reached 18 million voters—think of that—voters of faith. You sent 28 million text messages and made 10 million phone calls to help us win a mandate like no other administration in modern history. It was a mandate like we have not seen before.

And, together, we saved our country and we saved religious freedom in America. We—really, we saved religious—it was going down. And you've always stood with me, and I will always stand with you. I'll always remember it. I'll always remember how hard you worked and your spirit.

I especially want to thank Pastor Paula White, who's with us—Paula—wherever you may be. Thank you, Paula. Great person.

Director of the White House Faith Office Jenny Korn. Terrific. Jenny, thank you very much.

Bishop Kevin [Kelvin; White House correction] Cobaris. Where is Kevin [Kelvin; White House correction]? Thank you, Kevin [Kelvin; White House correction]. Good job. Nice-looking man.

President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Pastor Sam Rodriguez, who's been with me from the beginning.

This place is crowded. I remember this place. Not so long ago. I remember. [ Laughter ] Hopefully, we'll have a little more pleasant—we're going to have a little more pleasant experience. I remember this room very well. [ Laughter ]

A friend of mine who has been just incredible: Dr. Alveda King. Doctor. Doctor. Thank you. Thank you, darling. She's been with me also from the beginning.

So many from the beginning. You can tell so much. The ones from the beginning—I don't know. They tend to be the ones—they're the ones—they stay, and they stay like nobody. And we appreciate all of those people.

And Ambassador to the United Nations, who's doing a really great job, Mike Waltz. He's around here someplace. Mike. Doing a really good job.

And just over 1 week from now, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, marking two and a half centuries of glorious American freedom. And thanks to the extraordinary work and incredible devotion of patriots like those people in this very, very crowded ballroom, today I can proudly report that on the edge of our 250th year, America is back. It's back. It's back, I believe, better than ever before.

And I am especially pleased to say that, likewise, religion is back in our country, bigger and stronger than it has been in many, many years.

Been reading all of those reports. Religion is really——

It's going up. If that were stock, we'd be very, very rich—all of us. It's been great to watch.

And, as I've said before, to be a great nation, you have to have religion and you have to have God in your nation. If you don't have that, it just doesn't seem to work out, does it? And we have it. We have religion, and we have God now.

Remember when I first started? Twenty-sixteen. They wanted to take the "Christmas" out of Christmas. Remember that? We ended that little drive. But we ended a lot of other drives too.

From the very beginning of our country, American greatness has been forged by people of faith. And the very first settlers who set foot upon this new world at Jamestown got off their ship, raised up a cross, and bowed down to the Lord in prayer.

It was faith that strengthened the Minutemen and—who stood up at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge.

In Philadelphia, 250 years ago next week, our Founders invoked the Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Four times. I wasn't mentioned once. I'm very upset. [ Laughter ] Not once.

Faith pushed the pioneers to journey west, faith led Americans to abolish slavery, and faith built this country into the most exceptional Nation in the history of the world.

It was going very badly a couple of years ago. Very badly. But it's back really strong, but we have to be very careful because bad things are happening. Got to watch what's happening, and we're going to be discussing that in just a minute.

Americans have always deeply believed in the promise of Christ's words in the Gospel of Matthew: "With God, all things are possible." "With God, all things are possible." Right? All things.

That's why, as we prepare to enter the 250th year, last month tens of thousands of patriots came together on our National Mall, and we officially rededicated America as "one Nation under God." And we're not changing. We're not changing. And we always have been, and we always will be. We're not going to let them take it away.

But as we celebrate this anniversary, we must also remember that our country could have been marking this occasion under very different circumstances.

The last administration carried out a reign of persecution and repression against Christians and people of faith like America has never seen before. It was terrible.

They turned a nation founded on freedom for believers into a place where Catholics were targeted by the FBI, where pro-life grandmothers were put in jail for praying, and where members of our military were thrown out of the Armed Forces for their religious beliefs.

The radicals responsible for these offenses would have loved nothing more than to mark America's 250th anniversary by driving God from our public square once and for all.

They wanted to do that. I don't know how anybody could vote for these people. They were so bad. They were so evil and yet, in many ways, incompetent—certainly incompetent on policy: open borders, transgender for everybody, men in women sports—just grossly incompetent ideologies—and so many more. But they did not get that chance, because they lost an election in a landslide, and we won an election in a landslide.

And while I am in the White House, I will defend Christians and all Americans of faith 100 percent. You have it a hundred percent, and you've seen it already.

So, upon taking office, I created the first-ever Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, led by Texas Lieutenant Governor—a great guy. I don't know if he's here. I know he's coming over to my office in a little while—a thing called the Oval Office. A beautiful office. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick—and my friend, Dr. Ben Carson.

I don't know. There's so many people in this room. I don't know if they're here. They may be here. But they're two great people.

And later today at the White House, they will present me with their official report and recommendations to ensure that America continues to uphold the first right in our Constitution, and that's religious liberty. We have to uphold religious liberty. Most important thing.

On day one of my administration, I ended the weaponization of law enforcement against religious believers. You know that. I pardoned the Christians Joe Biden threw in jail for saying prayers.

He threw him in jail. And he didn't know what the hell he was doing. The guy is grossly incompetent, but he was surrounded by very smart—in some cases, brilliant—lunatics. [ Laughter ]

I got rid of the sinister Johnson Amendment so that pastors can speak the truth at their pulpits. We created the very, very popular White House Faith Office. First time that's ever happened. And I set up an official Department of Justice Task Force To Eradicate Anti-Christian biases. Anti-Christian bias, who would think? At a large—high level too. Although, it's fading. Going to fade fast.

That Task Force just produced a new documentary revealing the abuses of religious freedom that they uncovered. It's called "By Dawn's Early Light," and it's out right now. And it's really supposed to be—I have not seen. I cannot tell a lie. I have not seen it, but I've heard about it, and I hear it's great. And I will see it, I hope, soon.

I also signed a historic Executive order to combat the scourge of anti-Semitism in our country. And we reinstated the warriors who were thrown out of our military by the Biden vaccine mandates and restored them to their former ranks, and we let them back with full pay. Is that good? We want to cut costs, but we figured we have to do—we have to take care of them.

And we're protecting our churches and synagogues by prosecuting mobs of radical-left lunatics and agitators who try to harass and intimidate people in their places of worship—not so long ago.

And to help parents send their children to schools that share their values, I signed the largest expansion of school choice in the history of our country, including in Texas. And, at my direction, the Department of Education issued new guidance protecting the right to prayer in public schools. That was a big thing.

And these are all things that we were—you know, they fought us very strongly—very, very strongly. Hard to believe they'd fight us on that, but we had to fight the good battle, but we won every time.

We slashed Federal funding for any school that pushes transgender insanity on our youth. We expanded the Mexico City Policy to stop taxpayer dollars from being used to promote radical gender ideology around the world. Radical gender ideology, it is.

I made it the official policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders: male and female. That wasn't too tough. That was sort of an easy one. But you know, we have a man running in Texas who thinks there are six genders. I don't know what—[ laughter ]—he's going to have to discuss that with us. Can you believe it? Six genders.

And we officially banned the chemical and surgical mutilization of our children. And now we have to pass the SAVE America Act to protect our sacred American elections. Have to pass.

Hard to believe, right? Hard to believe that we even have to fight for this. We have to fight for everything. Nothing comes easy. Nothing.

All voters must show photo ID. Not so bad, right? All voters must provide proof of citizenship. Is that so hard? And we're fighting the Democrats and a few Republicans, who are doing a tremendous disservice to this country.

We have a few Republicans that are fighting it. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. You should call her——

Boo!

——and tell her to get on the ball. She'll never win another election, I can tell you. She has got to get—she's got to vote.

It's called the SAVE America Act. It's voter ID—ideally, a photo ID, right? So you can look and you can say, "Oh, that person's okay," or, for lots of reasons, "That person is not the same person."

We want proof of citizenship, and we want no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, and military deployment or travel. We'll be very judicious.

Look what's happening in California, where the ballots still aren't in. They're still not—can you believe it? [ Laughter ] Weeks afterwards. You know what's happened? They're cheating.

The kid won, or he was certainly in the top two. I don't know him. I never met him. Spencer Pratt. And he went away quietly. We didn't go away quietly, but he shouldn't go away quietly. He should protest, because it was—in my very strong opinion, that was a rigged election. That kid should be in the runoffs.

The woman who edged him out after, like, a long time. Like days—days and days. And then you'd hear reports, "Spencer Pratt is not doing so well," even though he was strongly in the lead. And then you hear, "Spencer Pratt has a 20 percent chance of being in the runoff." I said, "They just rigged the election." And then you hear that a woman who nobody ever heard of is in the runoff, not him.

And then they tried to hurt Steve Hilton too. And I called the U.S. attorney, and I said, "You have to look into this," because Steve Hilton did great. He's running for Governor.

And you could see it. The election was there. He was doing great. Then, day after day, you'd hear reports about vote counting. You—they go on for weeks.

You know, Colombia just had an election—the country of Colombia—30 million voters. And I endorsed—I now—are—I'm endorse—we do so well with endorsements, like almost a hundred-percent success. But I endorsed somebody running, El Tigre. El Tigre.

I liked him. You know why? Because he likes me. I don't know. [ Laughter ] He used to talk about Trump. "I like President Trump." I don't know. How can you not let—so I endorsed him. I don't know. [ Laughter ]

He was in—way down the list. He was not going to win. No chance of winning. I endorsed him, and he won. They just announced he won.

But think of it. They had 30 million votes. By 9:30 in the evening, every single vote was counted. And there were no complaints. He won. Every vote was counted.

Here we are in California. They're going to go for weeks and weeks and weeks. And you know what they do: They cheat. "How many votes do we need? How many votes?" That's why they take their time. "How many votes do we need? Okay. Here they are." [ Laughter ] It's—honestly, it's terrible. We're a third world country with elections.

And we will also enshrine a permanent law that says, very easily and succinctly, no men in women's sports and no transgender surgery for our children.

Never forget, if the radical left ever gets the chance, they will bring all of this insanity right back at levels that you've never seen before. You will never have seen anything like it. If they ever get their chance, and they're trying like hell.

I call them the "Dumocrats." I exchanged an "e" for a "u." The "Dumocrats." And that's counter—it's trending number one, that word, "Dumocrat." [ Laughter ] I just can't believe I didn't think of it 9 years ago. [ Laughter ] I should have thought.

The "Dumocrats," they are horrible. They want to resume the transgender mutilization of our children. They want to restart the war on Christians and churches. And as you saw with the Communists elected in New York City recently—they're Communists. They're not Social Democrats. They want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life.

Communism is very easy to sell. It destroys everything, but it's very easy. I'd be—I'll be honest: I think I'd be the greatest Communist in history. [ Laughter ] I'd give free rent. "Ladies and gentlemen, from now on, you don't have to pay any rent. From now on, anybody wants a house—don't worry about it, just pick the house you want." [ Laughter ] "Everybody gets free food. Everything is free from this point forward." Everyone's going to vote for me.

The problem is, after 2 or 3 years, the country is a disaster area. The country fails. They always do. It always does.

So easy to sell. That first year, boy, you're the most popular—it's happening right now in New York and California—but you'll start living in squalor. You'll live in squalor. There will be no food. There will be no housing. There will be no military. There will be no law and order. There will be no nothing. There will be no nothing. You'll be a third world inhabitant in every way, and everyone will suffer or die. You'll suffer or die. That's what happens.

For thousands of years, it's been happening by different names. Thousands of years.

I would be—I'm telling you, I'd be the greatest Communist in history. It would be so easy. You wouldn't have to work. You could stay home. The problem is, a couple of years go by, the whole place collapses. Always does. Always has.

But I'm sorry to say—but assassinations of those who oppose them is a very important element of their ideology. Assassination is a big deal for them. They're animals. They're animals. In many cases, they're not smart. But in some cases, they are.

It's easy for them to get followers because they make promises that they know they can't keep, and the "Dumocrats" aren't fighting back. That's why they're dumb. They're not fighting back. They're afraid.

I watch Schumer. He's afraid to fight. I watch guys that are pretty normal, and guys that we oppose, they're afraid to fight.

The "Dumocrats" have taken a tremendous turn left. And many of these people—I looked at some of the people that got elected the other night in New York. These are, in many ways, stupid people. [ Laughter ] In some ways—and intellectually, probably—pretty smart. But they're people that want to destroy our country. They hate our country. They hate our people. They hate the Democrat Party.

The Democrat Party is in big trouble because this isn't stopping with New York. This is going all—too easy to get elected. Giving everything away. Too easy to get elected. Very dangerous. But you'll soon have nothing left. That's the problem.

In many ways, they're allowing them to just go their own way. "Do your own—we don't want to take a chance on saying anything bad, because we're afraid we're going to lose our jobs if we do." They're afraid they're going to lose their election if they even think about saying anything bad about this new breed of sick people.

They're not smart enough or tough enough to fight the plague that's happening. It's happening right before your very eyes. If they fought them the way they fight Republicans or the way they fight me, they'd be victorious.

They didn't beat us, but they'd be victorious against the Communists. But they don't have the courage to do so, so they're turning Communist themselves. It's becoming a communist party.

These are not "social Dumocrats." These are hardcore, godless Communists. They're godless Communists. All Communists are godless. They don't believe in God.

This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. This is a major threat to our country. It isn't something that's easily solved, but with a little love and help, some hard work—because it's ironic we're celebrating a very important birthday—our most important birthday so far, 250 years—and instead of speaking about Christ—and instead of speaking about freedom and victories of all different kinds, we're speaking about yet another threat to the foundations of America.

These ruthless Communists will attack all religions but, in particular, Christianity. They always do. They're after Christianity more than any other religion. It seems to be more and more throughout the world. Maybe because we're doing so well. I don't know. Maybe if we weren't doing well—but you see the numbers, how they're growing, how the churches are filling up. It's a beautiful thing to see. I mean, look, it happens to be during my Presidency, so I don't mind taking credit for it. I'm very proud. [ Laughter ] But a lot of great things are happening. All Communist countries attack religions violently. It's part of their deal.

As you know, we recently struck Nigeria and largely ended the slaughter of great Christian populations. They have a great Christian population. They were being butchered. Butchered. Thousands and thousands of people were being killed—children, women, old people just being slaughtered, hatched to death.

They know that if they go further, the attack will be far greater and that they don't want to really get involved anymore so much, you know. We hit them very hard. We knocked out their leader. We knocked out their second leader and their third leader.

Sounds a little bit like Iran, actually. That's all about a different cause that we have to do, because we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. Can't let it happen.

So I'm saving Christians throughout the world, even though we are not in those various countries where you read about this. But they'd like to make our country just like those countries. That's where they started. They started right where we are right now.

But I'm saving them by hitting these terrorists very violently and very hard. We're hitting them very hard by the greatest weapons on Earth—taking them out. We know where they are, we hunt them down, and we take them out. Think of it. They go into a village, and they just kill everybody. It's, like, crazy.

They will close your churches in this country if they go communist, and they're trying to. They will kill your people. And that's what they're about. They want to end religion. They have to end religion because their ideology doesn't work if you have strong religion—people like you that are so incredible and love our country so much and love God.

This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding, in my opinion, 250 years ago, what's happening right now.

It's the greatest threat. People don't look at that, "Well, oh, three people were elected." No, no. It's many more than three people. And the other people are being swayed because they don't have the sense to see what's happening. They don't have the sense. Their followers are not leaders, even though they're politicians—in some cases, successful ones.

For the first time in history, the powerful rent stabilization board, as an example, that sets rents in New York City—just happened today. They've done it for years and years, and they've been very far left. They're run by Democrats, and they give landlords a hard time. For years and years. Called "rent control." They give landlords a hard time. But they always give some increases so they can survive.

But they just came out, first time ever, with a ruling: zero rent increases for landlords—zero for the next 2 years, despite the fact that energy supplies, real estate taxes, and just about everything else has gone up.

They're supposed to allow you to have that. Zero. They're giving them none. They're basically confiscating their property. And the one representative for the landlords who's on the board—I think they have eight or nine people on the board. And you had one who was representing—one—one out of like eight, but at least you had somebody. But that person walked off in disgust. Walked off and got booed.

Mayor Mamdani, who came to the White House and seems like a nice guy—but he said he was going to do this in his campaign. Nobody thought he was serious. He said he was going to make sure that people don't have a rent increase, even though energy went up.

It's going to come down. It's coming down fast right now. I hope you're watching what's happening. We had a low number just now. It's $69 dollars a barrel. That was—some people said it was going to be $350 by now. Sixty-nine. It was going to be $300, $350. Never hit those numbers at all, even in the height of it all.

But what the mayor doesn't say is that these buildings will soon turn into ghettos and slums and that everybody will continue leaving New York. And as this spreads throughout the country, very much like an uncontrollable form of cancer, the country itself will be taken down. It will be third world—strictly third world.

And it's happened many times before to very big and very powerful countries, but it's not going to happen to the United States of America. No way. Because Communism, really, is the past, and freedom is the future. That's what we are—all we want is freedom. Freedom is going to be—freedom gets you everything.

Everyone needs to get out and vote in the midterms. We have to win this election. This election is very vital. If we don't, everything that we've gotten—

We've gotten so much. I mean, religious liberty—but we've gotten so much. Our military is the strongest in the world. I built it during my first term. Strongest in the world. And people respect us again. They respect us maybe like never before. We were laughed at. A year and a half ago, we were laughed at, and now we're the most respected nation anywhere in the world.

And in our 250th year, we will make our Nation stronger and safer, better, more prosperous, and more faithful—very important—more faithful than ever before.

Today we have the largest economy on Earth. We're expanding at a degree and to a degree that nobody thought possible. They never thought what we're doing for the last year and a half—it's only a year and a half. What we're doing for the last year and a half, nobody thought was possible.

We have the strongest military on Earth. We have the most powerful technology on Earth. We're winning on AI. We're winning with automobile manufacturing.

Do you see how many plants are coming back into the United States? Tariffs. Tariffs. If they don't come in, they have to pay massive tariffs. Make your car outside, but you have to pay massive tariffs to come in. If you build your car in the United States using U.S. workers—our great American workers—you don't have any tariffs to pay.

So they're all pouring in. It should have been done years ago by other Presidents.

We have the greatest culture on Earth. And, above all, we have the greatest people on Earth. We do. We have the greatest people.

But think of it. I was with the King of Saudi Arabia, and he said: "Mr. President, 2 years ago, your country was dead. It was a dead country. And today, you're the hottest country anywhere in the world." It's amazing what's happened.

We were laughed at. We were laughed at. We had a man who couldn't speak, couldn't think. He didn't know what the hell was happening, kept falling down all over the place. If he was standing here now, he would have been off the stage before he started. [ Laughter ] But if he were standing here now, he wouldn't know how to get off the stage. They had to lead him off the stage.

It was a disaster, and it was a rigged election. But we did it again, and we did—and we got it right. Too big to rig. We made it too big to rig.

It was a rigged election. And look what happened because it was a rigged election. Twenty-five million people came in—many criminals, murderers. Eleven thousand eight hundred and eight murderers, more than 50 percent of who created more than one murder—murdered more than one person. These are not going to be the citizens of our country. There's not a thing you can do to change that.

But drug dealers at the highest level. The worst—some of the worst people on Earth came in through open borders—Joe Biden's, but really, it was the ideology's open-border policy where everybody could come in. They came from all over the world. They emptied their prison populations into the United States of America. Think of that. But we're getting them out. We're getting them out faster than anybody can imagine. And we're going after the bad ones first. We're getting them out.

Last week, we signed a historic agreement to accomplish what no President has ever been able to accomplish before: that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon. We're not going to let that happen.

And thanks to the power and skill of the United States Armed Forces, Iran today has no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft capability, no radar, virtually no manufacturing. Their drone capacity has been cut by 82 percent. Their missile capacity has been cut by 80 percent. Their rocket launchers have been cut by 90 percent. Their leadership has been killed a first time, and their leadership has been killed a second time.

And nobody wants to be the leader of Iran anymore. They said, "Who would like to be the President?" And everyone said, "No, thank you." [ Laughter ]

It's amazing. And then the fake news, like the New York Times, which is a failing publication—but the fake news—ABC, so bad. ABC television network. Fake ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN.

They actually said, for a little while—it didn't play well—that, "Iran was much stronger today than it was 4 months ago." Think of it. They have no navy. They have no air—they said, "they're stronger."

They're dying to make a deal. They're giving us a lot. This should have been done over the 47-year period that they've reigned with terror. And that's what they did. They reigned with terror.

When you see a young man or woman walking around without legs or without arms or a face that was obliterated, it happened from the roadside bomb that was created—the creation of General Soleimani, who I killed in my first term. And that was a big killing.

He was a mad genius. But he was going to—he was going to knock out five of our military installations. I found out about it. And in all fairness, Israel was supposed to do it with us. And the night before that took place, we heard from Israel that they will not be doing it. They don't want to do it.

And I said to a couple of generals that we had, who were very good—I said, "What do you think, generals? Can we do it?" Because we worked on it for 30 days. Worked on it with Israel. They said, "We'll do it, sir." "Can we do it as well?" "We'll do it better." And he was dead the next day. He was dead in the "valley of death." He died in the valley of death.

We had them all—we knew when he was coming, where he was coming, how he was getting there. We knew everything, but we lost our partner. I don't blame them that much, to be honest with you, because it's tough stuff.

But they told us the night before they won't be doing it. We did it ourselves, and we did it so incredibly well.

We also took out the head of Iraq's ISIS division, and we took out both of them by luck—by luck, with Iraq.

But had he lived, because he was a brilliant general—a very sick man mentally, but he was a brilliant general—it may have been a different story. I don't think so. I think we would have knocked the hell out of them, whether he was there or anybody else was there.

But he was a brilliant general. It's one of the biggest things ever to happen in the Middle East, the killing of Soleimani. People have said it's the biggest thing to happen in a hundred years, because he was a dominant force. I actually think that Khamenei and all of the people in Iran were happy about it, because they were afraid of him too.

Over the past few weeks, the stock market and your 401(k)s skyrocketed upward like pretty much nobody's seen before, oil prices are plummeting downward, and the world is a much safer place.

We had to take that detour to knock out Iran. If we didn't do that—and we're still—you know, we still have a fight. They have some capability. Not much. They're not winning or anything, but they have some—they can still shoot.

You know, they shot a drone yesterday at a big ship going into the Hormuz Strait. They shot four of them. We knocked down three of them. One of them, I guess—we didn't miss it. Nobody saw it coming. And it hit a ship and did some damage. But they can't do that stuff.

But very soon they will be—we're going to be at $2.50 gasoline.

You know, I was in Iowa making a speech the day before we did the attack.

And again, we had to turn it around. Everything was going so well. It's, like, you're doing so well. We have the best economy—everything's great. And I say—I brought my people into the room—my financial people and other people. I said: "Listen, we just set a record in the stock market. We just set a record in every single thing, including 401(k)s."

Your 401(k)s—most of you have 401(k)s—are at the highest they've ever been. Everything. But this was true 3½ months ago, before the attack. Everything was good. We had records in everything. We were doing great.

And I said: "I hate to tell you, but we're going to have to take a detour, and we're going to have to go to war—or go to a military operation," which my people would prefer that I use as a term, because "war" means things that they don't like. But whether you call it war or not, it is what it is. "And we're going to go down to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and we're going to have to hit them very hard."

And don't forget, when Barack Hussein Obama did the JCPOC [JCPOA; White House correction], if you look at that—Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him? He was a disaster. [ Laughter ] He was a disaster.

He gave them $1.7 billion in cash—$1.7 billion in cash and tens of billions of dollars. Gave it to Iran. Thought he could buy their friendship. And it was just the opposite. They used the money, and they built missiles and everything else.

And I terminated the JCPOA. It was his agreement. It was the Iran nuclear deal. It was a disaster. By the way, it expired a long time ago, but I terminated it long before it expired. If I didn't do that, Iran would have had a nuclear weapon. If I didn't send the B–2 bombers in 10 months ago, they would have had a nuclear weapon. We obliterated that nuclear dust. Very important.

And then you wouldn't have Israel. Israel would be gone. I know you have a lot of good fans of Israel in this room. And Israel would have been gone, and probably the Middle East would have been gone. And we—they could have taken a shot. We would have wiped them out pretty quick, but they could have taken a chunk of us too.

But in my first term, I created the greatest economy in the history of the world. The first term was a great success—and rebuilt the military. Did everything. But now we're blowing it away. We're doing much better this time.

And again, we did have to make that excursion. How would you like to be given the best numbers we've ever had as a country and tell people: "Guess what? We're going to war"? And nobody in the room knew what I was talking about, because they weren't—it wasn't their thing. And I said, "We've got to stop them from having a nuclear weapon." Because you want to see problems? Let a crazy country have a nuclear weapon. You'll see problems like you've never seen before.

The stock market has set 73 alltime record highs since the election, and more Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country. That's pretty good.

In January 2025, we inherited the worst, most dangerous, most wide-open and insecure border in history. I actually think in the history of the world. I don't think it's just here. You could just walk into the country.

And again, they were letting prison populations—they were taking busses and dropping them off at our border, and people coming out—murderers coming out of prison; drug dealers. The worst—the worst people. They made our criminals look like nice people.

That's the only thing nice. Our criminals, for the first time, looked very nice by comparison to these people. But they dropped 25 million people over 4 years into our country, and it's the single hardest job I have: getting them out. We're getting them out pretty rapidly, but it's a very hard thing.

But it's—think of it. Prison populations from the Congo, from all parts of South America—from all parts of the world—were taken in, driven through Mexico, and dropped off at our border, and they would walk right into our country.

And we've quickly turned it into the strongest and most secure border in the history. We have the strongest border we've ever had now.

And, for the past 13 months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States. Zero. We have zero. And those are the numbers. They report them. And they're taken by sort of a left kind of a group—the stats. You know, if anybody did, they'd like to report them, but we have zero.

And they don't even try because they know they're probably not going to get in, so they're not going to make this very dangerous march. We're saving a lot of lives, because in those caravans—remember, I named them "caravans." They'd have 25,000 people. Sometimes more.