Remarks #2 transcript, Jul 24, 2026 (Donald Trump)

A number of other potential "Dumocrat" contenders sadly refused to show up tonight. We invited Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren. She's referred to "Pocahontas" because—in fact, I had to apologize. People came up and they said, "We want you to apologize to Elizabeth Warren for calling her 'Pocahontas.'" And I ended up apologizing to the real Pocahontas. But Elizabeth Warren was supposedly of Indian heritage, and then she took the test, and she only had 1,024th Native American. And I said, "You know what? I have—I think I'm more of an Indian than she is." So this is what we have to deal with.

But Senator Warren did not accept our invitation to debate. I wanted to debate her on various and sundry things, and she decided not to do it. And I decided to bury the hatchet. [ Laughter ] It doesn't matter.

And she—well, I'm not going to say this next one. Do you want to hear this one? How bad? She wasn't high up on her totem pole. Who the hell wrote that? [ Laughter ] No, she's bad news.

I wanted to make sure that Jack Smith—Deranged Jack Smith. Remember? He went after me for about 2 years. How did he do? Not too good. I'm in the White House, and he's not doing as well. I was going to say he's in a different kind of a house, but he's a deranged human being. He's a bad prosecutor.

You know, prosecutors are very important—a great prosecutor, a fair prosecutor. But that's the great prosecutors, the ones that are fair. They're very important to a country. But this guy was a deranged lunatic. I saw his invitation tonight. He was invited because, you know—but I put it in a private text to Chuck Grassley, and Chuck saw him, and he did a certain thing.

And then you—one man that we had who should be here, he turned Palestinian. This was a man who was 100 percent for Israel. One hundred percent. Chuck Schumer. Cryin' Chuck. Remember, he cried at the airport over illegal immigrants. They were the fakest tears. There were people throwing water in his face. But now he's a proud, very proud Palestinian. In fact, I'm going to send him a beautiful Palestinian outfit tomorrow so he can greet Bibi Netanyahu when he comes to town next week, along with the mayor, who I'm sure would love to meet Bibi. They're not treating Bibi too well.

But Chuck wanted to join us tonight, but he didn't want to be violating many parts of the Palestinian rules, regulations, and certainly he didn't want to violate Sharia law, his new founding.

And all joking aside, I do think we need term limits in Congress. I think term limits are very important because I see what's happening. I see what's happening. The other day, a Senator I knew got a text—a great guy—from his wife. And she said: "When you get home, I want to have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me." And he said, "I can't do both." You know what—[ laughter ]—you know? In other words—[ laughter ]—can't go up the stairs and make love.

Does anybody get that? Well, I thought that was actually pretty good. That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole frickin' stupid speech that they wrote. [ Laughter ] That was the only good one, and that went down with not exactly great laughter. No, think—you know, in other words, you can't go up the stairs and make love. Too old, you know? So we're looking for term limits. Does anybody understand this stuff? [ Laughter ]

But I really do wonder whether the Democrats are trying to lose the midterms. In Maine, they nominated a guy with a Nazi tattoo. But don't worry, "Dumocrats." Word is that Platner's replacement, he throws bottles at women. This guy throws bottles. This guy is another lunatic, by the way. Although, I think Platner might have done surprisingly well because we're in the age of Trump. [ Laughter ] Call it what you want. People can do well today. Platner, I don't know. But, you know, people don't have the guts to stick it out. But it looked like he was guilty of a lot of stuff. He certainly didn't defend himself very well.

In Texas, the Democrats are running a candidate named James Talafreako, who hates guns, hates oil, hates sex, hates women, and who said he is, quote, "a Christian who hates Christianity." Other than that, his—I think his platform is quite good. [ Laughter ] And that means that he's not going to do very well against Ken Paxton, who, hopefully, in Texas is going to win.

But Talafreako, he's Alfred—you know what he looks like to me? Alfred E. Neuman. Do you remember Alfred E. Neuman? Mad magazine. I said, "That guy is Alfred E. Neuman." Can't imagine he'd win.

While I have all of the press here in one place, I have to say that we're having an amazing load of accomplishments that the media never talks about. For example, under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled. Their former leaders have been removed, and they're now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I, for one, wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. [ Laughter ] She's a wonderful woman.

Most of the press lives here in Washington, DC, and you should be thankful for me for what my administration and I have done to make our Nation's Capital—which was one of the most dangerous and unsafe cities anywhere in the world—one of the safest cities in the United States. Crime is down 88 percent, and our Capital is shining again with 62 monuments, statues, water fountains looking more beautiful. The graffiti is all gone. The tents are all moved out of the parks. The fences are all done. Our Capital looks like it's really in good shape.

And people coming here, people in the White House, they work in the White House, they all say—young women, young guys walk up—they say, "Thank you, sir." Two years ago, we lived in a dangerous city. We lived in a city where 150 people were killed a year, and now we are—we have almost a crime-free city. Our National Guard has done an incredible job, and we've removed over 5,000 career criminals. You know, we removed—there's one stat—I think it's a great stat. It's—to me, it's fantastic: 2 percent of the people create 91 percent of the crime. That's something you can fix, and we fixed it. We moved out over 5,000 career criminals out of Washington, DC.

And we have the greatest Capital in the world again. It's beautiful, it's thriving, the restaurants are thriving. You couldn't get into a restaurant because they didn't have—all the restaurants were closing, and if you even got in, you felt unsafe. People were getting into Ubers and they were being attacked when they were in an Uber. It's not happening anymore. We have tough, smart people, and they have done a fantastic job.

Washington, DC, is safe again. You can't get into a restaurant. The restaurants are opening up. They're opening up all over the city. They can't get—it's the exact opposite. They can't get space.

But mostly, I've given up on—you in the media saw that now I just gave up on you, and I'm number one on TikTok. Did you see that I'm number one? Steven, is that true? I'm number one on TikTok. So how can they be so bad? Five hundred and twenty—think of this: 425 billion views. Can you believe that, Peter? I mean, let's go, Peter. [ Laughter ] I gave up on you people. I gave up on traditional press, and it obviously worked because we did win in a landslide. I mean, somebody has got to be saying something good about me. But TikTok, good 'ole TikTok.

And I was able to get it sold to a group of very wealthy people, mostly Americans. I told President Xi, who's a man that I get along with very well—he was a hard no for the sale of TikTok. They all said, "He's a hard no." I said, "Well, let's call. Put your group together." They put it together, billions—hundreds of billions of dollars. I called up President Xi. I said: "President, look, these are American people. They're wonderful people. In fact, one of them happens to own CBS." Actually, I mentioned his name. I said: "These are wonderful people, and it will be a good thing. Doesn't mean anything, President. It's nothing. It's nothing. They love your country. We'd love to see you approve the deal." And he goes, "All right." That was it. It was done. And we sold TikTok. And he's a friend of mine, and he's not contributing to problems like other people contribute to problems. So we get along. But we made the deal. But number one on TikTok is Trump, and that's probably why we won.

But for all of the trouble that you give me—you give me a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache—I hope all of you know that I believe in the free press more than anyone in this room does. Hmm, maybe not quite. [ Laughter ] But that's why I'm proud to be the most open and transparent President in history. They call me that. You know who calls me that? Karoline. That's about it. Would anybody else call me that? I think Peter would call me that. Am I the most transparent? Biden never used to answer your questions. He'd ask Biden 20 questions; he'd never get an answer. Who's the most transparent President, Peter?

Should I stand up?

Who? Who? I look at him, I—it's the first time he's tongue-tied. I cannot believe it. Oh. [ Laughter ] He's not going to be happy tomorrow.

But you people have no idea how lucky you are. When I'm gone, you're all going to be broke. Your business model is going to be finished. [ Laughter ] No, it's true. When I'm not around, you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

The New York Times the other day had five stories about me. You know, before I got into politics, in my whole life I had seven front-page stories. This is years of success. I think six were good, one was bad. I had five stories—seven, five good. Yes, I had a total of seven stories on the front page of the New York Times. That's not bad. Now I average about three or four a day, all different topics. All bad. Everything bad.

But here we are. I mean, here we are. In fact, when I finish, I'm going right back to the Oval Office, so I have to be doing okay. But we are all doing good together.

That's why tonight, to show just how much I care about the press, and I want to save your ratings, I'm pleased to announce my intention to—and this is a somewhat of a scoop—my intention to run for a fourth term as President of the United States. I will be doing that. I will be having an official—in fact, I think I have—yes. I won—I won three times. Now I'm going to do it again.

[ Laughter ] Thank you. I'm going to do it again. It should be easy. I'm getting very good at running for President.

No, I won three times. Did very well the second time, by the way. It was rigged election, but we don't have to talk about it. You know, it's interesting, when you come back and you do a good job like we did, and you don't care about it so much, but we do have to tighten up these elections because they really are in seriously bad shape.

But, on a serious note, I want to say once again, I just want to thank you all. It's been an interesting evening. I didn't really know what to expect, and it's far worse than I actually thought. [ Laughter ] But—if you want to know the truth. But I didn't know exactly what to expect, and I've made a lot of friends tonight. I've made a lot of good friends tonight. Probably made some enemies also.

But it's been an experience that is something that we've all shared together, because we're all in this room tonight because most of us went through a period of trauma from just a short while ago. And, you know, some people said they wanted to come, but they were afraid to come, and you people weren't afraid to come. There were a lot of people that said, Jacqui, they don't really—you know, they didn't have the courage to come. And we don't want that to happen. And I'm sure it's not going to happen. We're going to do things.

Again, I want to thank our law enforcement. Keeps us safe. All law enforcement. It's—we have the greatest people on Earth. You know, we had—2 years ago, we had the worst record of recruitment in, as an example, the military: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the Coast Guard, Space Force. I love Space Force. Look at all that shooting we're able to do from space. That was my baby. But all of the branches of—you couldn't get people to join. This was 2 years ago.

And last week—you probably saw; some of you wrote the story—we have the single best recruiting of people into our Armed Forces than we have ever had in the history of our country. We have—they are brimming over with great people. And that's a big statement.

And that also goes for the police departments where they were having a tremendous problem recruiting. You can't get into a police department now if you're looking for a job. It's very tough. And that also includes our great fire departments, because people forget about them. They're unbelievable, the job they do.

So I just want to thank you. Look, we're on the cusp of something big, and I call it—and this—I'm being very serious when I say this, that this is the golden age of America.

We have $19.2 trillion being spent in our country. A record was China—I think it was 10 years ago—$3 trillion. Trillion is a lot. Four years they went less than $1 trillion under Biden, and we have $19.2 trillion. And this is a period of, actually, 13 months, not even current, because we're here a little bit longer than that, but that was as of reporting dates. Nineteen-point-two trillion dollars is being spent.

Factories are coming. Toyota just announced they're going to be building the biggest car plant in the world. They're leaving Mexico. They're coming here. Tariffs did that. Tariffs did that. And maybe November 5 did that too, the election.

But our country is doing things that nobody has ever seen before. And it is true: We were—and you've heard me say this—we were a dead country 2 years ago. Other leaders would see me, and they'd say it's a miracle. President Xi told me that a few weeks ago in China, and he's coming here on September, I think 24. Coming in September, the end of September. Going to be exciting. But he said the same thing. The King of Saudi Arabia said it. Everyone said almost the same words: "We thought you were a dead country. We never thought you had a chance. You were never going to make it back. And in a period of a year, period of 1 year, you made it the hottest country anywhere in the world." We all did that together. It's not me. We all did it together.

And we do. We have the hottest country anywhere in the world, and we're going to keep it going.

And I just want to say this is a room—I have tremendous respect for the people in this room. Sometimes I don't feel you treat me fair. Maybe you do. I don't know. I don't feel that, but sometimes you treat me very fairly, and I have a lot of respect for your profession. Your profession is amazing. And I just want to thank you for having me. And it's been fun, and I've met a lot of great people.

And you know, I used an expression—I've used it right from the beginning. I did this for one reason: to make America great again. And that's what's happening right before your very eyes. We have made America great again. It's going to get a lot greater.

So thank you all very much. It's an honor to be with you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.