Remarks transcript, Sep 17, 2026 (Donald Trump)

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'd like to listen to that whole song. I can hear it over and over again. It's just good. From day one, we used that, the introduction. Lee Greenwood, he was a—he's a great guy, and he—really, he's got that voice. I've heard it sung by other people; it doesn't work the same. But we like it.

Thank you very much, all, for being here. You could sit, if you'd like or stand. I don't care. [ Laughter ]

Oh, yes, this is the new Rose Garden that's become so important and so beautiful. This was a very wet—I call it—it wasn't grass; it was really mud. For years, people would stand in the mud and listen to somebody like me speak, and it was not pleasant. Women, in particular, weren't thrilled as they walked in with their high heels, and they sunk about 6 inches into the ground. They walk out holding their shoes. So this works out really well.

And at the end, if you'd like, you can go look at the new heliport. It's incredible what they've been able to do with stone, with granite. Six inches thick, carved with a beautiful eagle, it's a helipad where the helicopters can land. Never had that before. And frankly, the new helicopters that were purchased are so powerful that they ripped the grass out. I said, "What about trying to build a helipad?" And it really came out good, very good.

And at the very end, if you'd like, when you finish, a lot of people would like to see the Oval Office, which is right behind me. And so we're going to have it open, and you can walk through the Oval Office and take some pictures, if you like, have a good time. But you'll get to see the Oval Office because there's no place like it anywhere in the world. There's nothing that represents our country, just about. Here's a beauty and connected to the White House, connected then to the Oval Office: the West Wing. It's pretty exciting stuff.

So a lot of you haven't been here before. We're talking about outdoorsmen, and so we'll give—we'll show you a very good indoor. But it's—I think you're going to like it a lot.

We've done a lot of work on the White House. I've resurfaced the exterior. It was in bad shape. Very, very bad shape. I get—I have a lot of fun. Don't devote too much time to it, but I know what I'm doing when it comes to that. And if you look at it, it's in perfect shape now. The—it was in really bad shape. I don't want to even discuss it, it was so bad. Moldings falling off the building—moldings off the building for 24, 25 years, in some cases, and it was all replaced.

And we'd make copies of the one on the other side. They'd have a window with a molding on one side, and a—the molding on the other side had fallen off. Other Presidents were not big into it. I can tell you Joe Biden definitely wasn't.

And we made it beautiful. It's a beautiful building now. It was in bad shape, but now it's in beautiful shape. It's in better shape now than when they built it in 1792. Can you believe it?

But tonight I'm thrilled to welcome to the White House a group of true American patriots, our great hunters, fishers, and outdoorsmen. I think I got 99 percent of your vote. And why the hell wouldn't I? You're going to vote for Kamala? [ Laughter ] I don't think so. I don't think she's into the world of hunting.

But I want to thank Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum, who is, by the way, doing a fantastic job. Where is Doug? You have done a—stand up, Doug. He is great. He's doing great.

You know, he's fixed, along with—all work together—82 statues, monuments, fountains outside and all over Washington. They were neglected for 40, 50 years, in some cases. We had one, it was over 70 years, nothing was—they were terrible. They had graffiti stained. They were—had grass growing through the cracks. They were in horrible shape, an embarrassment. Now they're beautiful. Eighty-two, I think, is the number at this point, and that's a lot. You're just about running out.

But it's incredible what you've done. You've been a great Interior Secretary. We appreciate you being here, Doug.

Along with Representatives Addison McDowell, August Pfluger, and Bruce Westerman. Stand up, fellas. You guys have been fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Good job. Three warriors. They're warriors. That's what they are, and they fight for you.

Thanks as well to the founder and CEO of Bass Pro Shops, Johnny Morris, who's a fantastic guy, great businessman. And Johnny—stand up, Johnny. Come on. What a job he's done. Built a nice golf complex too. Built a beautiful golf complex, and what a job he's done. Thank you very much.

A friend of mine, NASCAR icon Richard Childress. He's won so many races he can't even tell me how many. How many did you win? I have no idea. He won so much. Richard, stand up. Great job. Really, an amazing competitor. Thank you.

And executive vice president, CEO of the National Rifle Association, Doug Hamlin. Doug. Thank you very much, Doug. Good job. We're keeping the Second Amendment going. You know that, Doug. And you think it's easy, Doug. He thinks it's easy. We haven't made a change to it, but, boy, oh, boy, it's a fight. You know that, right? And we've done a good job working along with you.

And we have many other outdoors industry people, champions—many champions, incredible champions at this event. We're honored—very honored to have you.

A special thanks—I'd like to make this very strongly too—to the president of the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, Jeff Crane, who will be retiring in December after 25 years of doing a fantastic job. So, Jeff, congratulations. You're a young guy. What the hell? He's retiring. What about me? I'm a little older than you. You're going to retire, 25 years. You look like you're 45 years old. It's ridiculous—[ laughter ]. But you'll go into other things, I guarantee. You got a lot of time left, Jeff.

Just a short time ago, I signed two Executive orders that deliver something that everybody at this event was fighting for for years, and it's historic victories for the American sportsmen.

With the first order, we're opening up millions of acres of Federal land for our hunters and fishers, and Doug and his group really worked hard on it. This builds on our actions in August that opened up another 92 million acres of Federal land across thirty-two States. Does anybody have any idea? You know, when you say, "I own 2 acres," and everyone says, "Wow, he's really rich." Ninety-two million acres of Federal lands across have been opened up.

Under the Trump administration, we believe that public lands belong to the American people and to the public. And hunters, fishers, and outdoorsmen should be able to access them, and they weren't able to. They'd be arrested if they even walked onto certain property.

And this order also protects the use of affordable, traditional lead—well, this is pretty good. Is that—I never knew this was a problem, Doug. You're going to have to educate me, but you put it in. Lead ammunition. Is ammunition—lead ammunition was a problem, huh? Is it better than other ammunition, I assume? Huh? That's pretty good. I don't know what the hell that means—[ laughter ]—but I know one thing: You wanted it. You wanted it, and I'm here for you. [ Laughter ] So, in order to—so the order protects the use of affordable, traditional lead ammunition. That sounds good to me.

As President, I will always protect your Second Amendment. On day one, I ended Joe Biden's war on gun owners. That was a war. And National Rifle Association, we worked together, but we all worked together. Everybody worked together. It was terrible. But it was an absolute war.

I abolished Biden's so-called zero tolerance policy that put law-abiding gun dealers out of business. They were out of business. And I eliminated the $200 Federal tax on suppressors. I restored gun rights to more than 70,000 American veterans, and I terminated America's involvement in the United Nations' globalist Register of Conventional Arms, which was an absolute disgrace.

And the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed on at all, and we have orders in that are so strong that even somebody someday following me is going to have a hard time breaking it. So congratulations, everybody.

And we have that signed right here. And nice signature. Do you recognize the signature? That's signed right here. I thought I'd bring it down.

Doug, you want to take this? Here you go, Doug. You deserve to take it. I have another one coming up too.

The second order I signed today eliminates absurd Federal regulations on our saltwater anglers, boaters, charter captains, and coastal communities, something you've been after for, they say, 28 years. I don't know why 28. Why is it so accurate?

But they had, a long time ago, a little restriction, and then they opened it. And then they restricted it for many, many years. The Biden administration tried to bludgeon the boating and maritime industry with a ridiculous boating speed limit of no more than 10 miles per hour. That doesn't sound very exciting. [ Laughter ] Can you imagine? You're going out 2,500 miles, going 10 miles an hour. I saw that.

I saw it recently where some boat owners came up to me and they thanked me so profusely. Ten mile—I said, "Tell me, what's 10 miles an hour in a boat?" He said, "Slow." [ Laughter ] Very slow. It would take them 6 hours to get to their fishing location, and by the time they got there, they were exhausted; they wanted to come back. It is crazy.

Well, I guess they had 10 miles. They didn't want to hurt something in the water. Some—they didn't want to hurt sharks. It's unbelievable—10 miles per hour.

But just as I promised you in the campaign, we're eliminating those restrictions, and we're doing it immediately. And the American boaters can now once again enjoy the open ocean, and you can go slightly faster than 10 miles an hour—like 120 miles an hour, if you're crazy. But you can go as fast as you want.

And we have that order. It's all signed, sealed, and delivered. You're all set to have it. And so, congratulations.

I hope—don't hurt yourself. Don't go too fast. Don't go too fast, Johnny. Keep them slow, Johnny. [ Laughter ]

But it's an honor to do it. It's—you know, it's common sense. We won with common sense. This stuff is common sense.

They also—as you know, they wanted to make all boats electric, only electric. And you remember during the campaign, because I went to a great boat owner in a boat company in South Carolina and stopped by, and they make boats, mid-sized boats. And I said, "So what's your problem?" They talked about, "Well, the speed limit." And at that point, it was 3 miles an hour. They wanted to go three miles an hour. And after you got, like, 25 miles out, you could go a little bit faster.

I said: "That's crazy. What's your bigger problem?" They said, "They want all boats to be electric." I said, "How does that work?" "Not well, because electric is about three times heavier than your similar power, if it were operated by gas or gasoline." And they said, "Well, let me ask"—and I got myself into a lot of trouble. The fake news said, "Why does he say a thing like that?" I was only kidding, but not really. I said, "What's the biggest problem?" He said: "The weight is enormous. We can barely carry that much weight," because, you know, electric is a much heavier form of propulsion. And they said, "The weight is enormous."

I said, "Let me ask you a question: If you get a little leak and the water starts coming in your boat, and you're in electric, do you get electrocuted or not?" He said, "You know, nobody has ever asked me that question." And I said, "So here's my question." You remember this? I used to say it during the campaign, driving the press crazy, but people found it sort of amusing. I said, "So if I'm in an electric boat and I see I'm going down and the water is pouring in, so I know I'm going to be electrocuted, but 5 yards away there are sharks, do I take the electrocution, or do I go swimming with the sharks?" And you know what my answer was? I'll take the electrocution. Okay? I'll take the electrocution—but he didn't know how to answer the question, Johnny. [ Laughter ] He said, "No idea."

And—but what I did do is it didn't matter because I ended that nonsense. That was another mandate. They had to have all boats be electric.

And I asked the guy simply. I said, "Well, is it good?" He said, "No, it doesn't work, sir." So, when he said that, that was good enough for me. We opened it up, and now you have the best of all worlds. You have any kind of—and by the way, if you want to buy an electric boat, you can buy an electric boat. But you're going to go traditional, and you have no restrictions.

This order also expands fishing seasons and fishing quotas, undoing another Biden disaster. That means you can sell a lot of fishing rods, Johnny. You're going to sell a lot of rods. I could have made it so you couldn't sell—you couldn't sell anything. [ Laughter ] I could have banned fishing.

The—I'll tell you what: The power of this office is crazy. I could have banned fishing and driven Johnny right the hell out of business. Okay? [ Laughter ] That's a—I think I'm going to do that just to—maybe just a quick order, just for a day or two, until he calls me and he says: "Please, President, please. You're putting me out of business, sir."

Anyways.

But since I took office, we've delivered historic levels of funding in wildlife and sport fishing restoration grants. We gave tremendous grants to—for restoration, wildlife, and sports fish, and approved all State permits for the 2026 red snapper season. Approved way ahead of schedule.

And we also strongly support your duck hunters. The duck hunter—hunters thing is a big deal, and they came to us and they met with my people. And they came to me, my people, and we are fully in favor of our duck hunters. Who would think that's a big deal? [ Laughter ] But I hear I got a hundred percent of the duck hunters' vote, right? What did I get there? A hundred?

If there was 150, I would have gotten 150 percent. I mean, the competition wasn't that tough.

But America's outdoorsmen have not had a better friend in the Oval Office for many, many years. Probably the late, great President Theodore Roosevelt was very good.

In my first term, I was proud to sign the Great American Outdoors Act, the single largest investment in our Nation's national parks and public lands in American history. That's the biggest investment in American history.

And I look forward to signing—thank you.

And I look forward to signing the Great American Outdoors Act 2—so that's 2.0—at some point in the very near future. We're working out the final details. It's going to be something that's going to make you very happy. But I'm not doing it to make you happy. I'm doing it to do what's right.

It was crazy what they were doing. These people had no idea. They had no clue what they were doing to you and so many people. It was just terrible, and terrible for our country.

And we'll continue to work with farmers and ranchers to strengthen habitat and conservation efforts. And for generations, our hunters and fishers and outdoorsmen have been part of a tradition older than our nation itself. Actually, substantially older than our country itself: 250 years.

From Davy Crockett to Daniel Boone to Teddy Roosevelt, we've always been a nation that loves the outdoors. And with patriots like you, it will continue for a long time.

So I just want to congratulate you all on your tremendous success. There's tremendous success on this beautiful stone surface. There's tremendous success, and you've done an incredible job.

And we're going to hand you a little coin as emblematic of your visit. And, again, if you want, you can walk over, check out the new helipad. If you don't like it, let me know. I won't do a damn thing about it. [ Laughter ]

Everybody loves it, actually. People are talking about it all over the country. It's really taken on a whole—it's really taken on a whole life. The size of it, the beauty of it, the stone cutting—it's really special.

But also, and very importantly, for those that want to come later and just walk in and see the beautiful Oval Office, you'll be my guest.

So thank you all, and congratulations on really doing a fantastic job in life. Thank you.

And, Doug, thank you very much.

Thank you, everybody. Thank you.