What follows is a transcript of Donald Trump’s “speech” at the Treasure Island on Thursday, a trip into a rhetorical heart of darkness that makes Dennis Hopper in “Apocalypse Now” sound coherent.
This is the GOP frontrunner for president in 10,000 words. I should annotate but I’ll let it speak for itself.
Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. So nice, thank you. Thank you very much. What a great group. You know they have hundreds and hundreds of people standing outside; they can’t get in. They didn’t get the good real estate. You got the good real estate. I feel badly. I feel badly. So Phil Ruffin, you know, Phil owns this hotel. And he’s been a friend of mine and we did deals together. We had a great success at Trump International Hotel together. I hope you all know that hotel. Most beautiful building in Las Vegas, I have to say. But, it’s a great thing to be involved with somebody that is so talented, so smart, such a great businessperson as Phil Ruffin. And he’s a great poker player! You know, I always put my money on him in a game of poker and he just looks away very quietly, just takes everybody’s money and goes on to the next one, right? That’s what we want. So, I want just to thank you (Shouts of “We love you.”) I love you, too. I love you, too.
I want to just start by saying, you know Kevin McCarthy is out. You know that, right? And they’re giving me a lot of credit for that, because I said, “You really need somebody very, very tough and very smart.” You know, smart goes with tough, not just tough. I know tough people that are not smart. That’s the worst. Okay? That’s the worst. You got to be smart. But we smart, we need tough, we need the whole package and it’s a positive, like me, thank you. (Shouts from crowd.) I like that. I like this guy over here, whoever he is. But, it’s bedlam in Washington right now, bedlam. It’s a mess. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve always been in politics. People said, “Well, for three months I’ve been a politician, though.” Can you believe it? It’s so embarrassing. I’m a politician. I never wanted to be a politician. But at some point I said, “We’re going to make our country great again!’ And, I mean, we’re going to do it, so. Had to do it.
But Kevin is a nice guy. I just hope now that they find somebody that’s going to be… you know, have those qualities where we can negotiate, where we can use that debt ceiling that’s coming up very rapidly and do something really, really significant, because if we don’t, we’re going to be really; we’re going to be in very big trouble. We’re going to be in very, very big trouble. We’re in a big, fat, beautiful bubble right now, and you watch… and I predicted the last couple, and I’m telling you, we’ve got to get our act together, or we’re going to be Greece on steroids. That’s what’s going to happen. No, that’s what’s going to happen. And there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the Republicans taking a tough stance and sticking with it. You know, I wrote The Art of the Deal. And The Art of the Deal is, I think, the biggest selling business book of all time. Yeah, look it’s all over the place. Who doesn’t have The Art of the Deal? By the way, I’m coming out with a new one in about three weeks. You know what it’s called? Crippled America. Can you believe? What a difference. What a difference in… One’s The Art of the Deal, everything rosy, let’s go make money, everybody good. And that was a long time ago. Now, I’m doing one called Crippled America and as much as I hate to call it that, we had all these titles. And it sort of happened by mistake. We had a photographer. It’s a great book publishing company, Simon and Schuster. The best. Rolls Royce, or Cadillac? Maybe I should say Cadillac, right? We want to keep it here. We want to keep it here, but, you know, they’re a really great company and they sent this fantastic photographer. Very talented guy and he took pictures. And I’m smiling. You know, like life is a bowl of cherries. Like, we’re doing great. In the meantime, China’s taking our jobs, we’re losing to ISIS, Russia’s dictating, we don’t know what we’re doing, right? I mean, is it true? So, I have all these pictures, smiling, but I had a couple I guess I wasn’t prepared and I was nasty looking. Nasty. And then I said, “Maybe we should use that picture. Instead of the nice pictures. I’m not going to give it to my family or anything, but maybe we should use…” So I have the nastiest looking picture, like, because honestly for a period of time, that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to put our head down, and we’ve got to straighten out this mess. And nobody can do it like me. Nobody. Nobody can do it like me, honestly. I will bring our jobs back. You know, it’s very interesting, CNN did a good debate, and I’m on live with CNN. Look at all those cameras up there. Real life. And every time, they have me on live. All these other guys, they make the same speech over and over and over they read it. Just blah, blah. If I say the same thought twice, I get criticized. “You said that three weeks ago!” I mean, how many thoughts can you have? Jobs, the military’s in trouble. The vets are being taken poorly care of. And we’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to repeal Obamacare! (Huge applause.)
We have to! We have to! We have to! We don’t have a choice. You know, it’s interesting, look at the response that gets. And sometimes it’s not the biggest response. I mean, my stance on immigration is, first of all, I just met with a whole group of Hispanics…And what Phil said (that Trump’s Hispanic employees love him), I really appreciate. I didn’t know he was going to say that, but I’ve employed thousands and thousands and currently thousands of Hispanics. These are incredible people. Incredible. My relationship is great. They did a poll, and everybody probably saw the poll. I won with Hispanics in the state of Nevada. You know. They’re incredible people! And I think I won for two reasons; one of them is they know I’m going to bring jobs back to this country. We’re going to take our jobs back. And people are going to have jobs! Because this 5.3 percent and 5.5 percent, it is nonsense. We have close to a 100 million people that are out of the workforce. That are out of the workforce. We have 50 million people that are in poverty. They consider it poverty, like third world, not even as good as some of the third world nations. Our infrastructure, our airports are worse than third world nations. You fly into LaGuardia, you fly into the Kennedy, LAX, you fly into some of these airports, we’re like a third world country. And I go and I deal with these people. I get along with everybody, okay? By the way, I do. I do. But I deal… and I don’t dislike China, I love China. In fact, they’re my tenants in New York. I have the biggest bank in the world as my tenant, Chinese Bank. Like, seriously big. The rent comes in, boom, like clockwork. I don’t have to worry.
But, I have tremendous relationships with Mexico, with China, I have with everybody. The problem is, we’re not being led right. When China, Japan, Brazil, I mean any county. Name a country, anybody. Name any country that are taking advantage of us. France, they’re taking advantage of us. You know that, because you know what they’re doing with the Iran. (Someone yells “France.”) You see, she says France. You could name any country, right? Russia? Well, that’s a pretty easy one. Russia, that was the one I was hoping… That one, we don’t have to say too much about Russia. Oh he’s having a field day dealing with our leaders, because our leaders are incompetent. They’re incompetent. They’re incompetent. So, we’ve had an amazing… Well, even Israel, if you look at Israel, we’re actually taking advantage of Israel if you think about it, because what we did with that stupid deal with Iran, is the worst thing that has probably happened to Israel since the initial Israel, since day one, I would say maybe, maybe, potentially the worst thing that’s ever happened to Israel. And I have so many Jewish friends, where they go, “I don’t know what happened to Obama. They’re supporting him.” And they say, “I don’t know what happened.” And some continue to support him. It’s almost like, it’s almost like what are we doing here? They support him; they’re having fundraisers for him. But they say, “Yeah, he’s treated us very badly.” Then he walks into the room, they give him a… The whole thing is crazy! He has been so bad to Israel and Bibi is a great guy. I know him. I was, I think, and I thought he made a great speech the other day in the United Nations. You know, I was one of the few people, I think the only, but he asked me to make an ad for him for his campaign. So, I was greatly honored. I made an ad, he won, I was happy. I took full credit for it. Full credit. Full credit.
But, you know, we have a problem with so many different things and we’ll talk about… I love talking about this, the media. Do we all love the media? Do we love the media? (Huge boos.) No, the level of dishonesty is incredible. It’s incredible. And you know, I always have to preface. I’ll give a quick… not all of them, because some are fine, but let’s end it with that. But, some are fine. But the level of honesty in the media, they’re so dishonest. You know, I’ll do a crowd and I’ll have like a crowd like this and like the cameras, they never pan the room. They never, ever pan the room. Yeah. They never pan the room. No, it’s true. They don’t do it. They don’t do it. Pan the room; go ahead, pan it. But, you know, they won’t. They won’t pan it. I was in Oklahoma the other day, unbelievable. We had 20,000 people, it’s a band shell in this massive park, more than 20,000… I’m now going low because if I have two people more, they’ll say, “Oh, it wasn’t…” I mean I had one crowd, where a group from Politico, which is totally dishonest. These people, very liberal, totally… this Politico, they cut numbers down. But Bernie Sanders, and then you look, and I have far more people than him, but you know it’s important because it shows the dishonesty. But I was in Oklahoma the other day, and we had 20,000 people at least….They had a thing in the back, you know, all concrete, a real beautiful band shell, all concrete. You can’t see anything. We must have had 2,000 to 3,000 people behind the band shell. I was saying, “They can’t see anything.” Because it’s a stage with this massive wall behind me. But they couldn’t fit them into a park, so we had much more than 20,000, but I say 20,000. I’ve actually become very conservative, because this is where I don’t get criticized, and I said to the press, I said… I went home. My wife said, “Well, how was it?” She watched it on television. She said, “Was the crowd big?” I said, “What do you know?” It’s true, because she said, “They had the camera on your face the entire time. They never panned the crowd.” They never. No, they’re terrible. They’re terrible. No, they’re terrible. The media is terrible. I’m going to go into a whole thing, but, no, they’re terrible. Hey, hey, pan, look. They won’t turn the cameras, see? They won’t turn it. And they won’t put this part on, because they never put it on, because you know, but why don’t you pan the cameras? You know, they don’t want to do that. Terrible. They don’t do it. Look, they don’t move. But my wife tells me, she said, “So, how was the crowd in Oklahoma?” I said, “It was, it was amazing.” I said, “But, I thought you watched.” “I did watch, but they never showed how many people were there.” And then the reporter got up, “Donald Trump was here. He made a speech in Oklahoma. And he left.” I set every record. “He was here. He made a speech. Yeah, a little controversial. He’s a little controversial.” They don’t say. They’re really dishonest people. Same thing in Dallas, you know, I went to Dallas and they treated me fairly good there. But we had a full place, plus the floor was full. And Mark Cuban called me up, who’s a good guy, and he said, and he owns the Mavericks, and he said, “I’d love you to use the place.” I said, “When?” “Wednesday.” I said, “What’s today?” It was like, Thursday, when he called. I said, “How many seats you have.” He said “20,000 seats. But then we have 20,000 plus the floor.” So we have the floor filled up, we have the place a few days. After the first day, I think they sold either 12,000 or 15,000 the first day, and it was a holiday. And I got there, it was incredible. But they don’t really want to… They want to belittle.
I’ll tell you a great story. So today, in one of the big newspapers, The New York Times, we’ve never done better. We’re hotter than ever. We just had a poll, the Morning Consult came out. I think we’re either 32 percent or 35 percent. That’s massive. Remember this. Remember this. While the Times, I mean it’s disgusting, and the reporter that did the story, he’s done other stories that are totally inaccurate, calls up my people and said, “Oh. I want to meet with Mr. Trump. I want to meet…” Never even called me, never even spoke to me. Never even spoke to me. So, they did a story, ‘Is he waning?’ Now, I just won, listen to this. So, yesterday morning, before the story was out, I won the state of Florida. I was at 28 percent or 29 percent Now, think of this. The governor of the state, Bush, former. No, hey, honestly and Rubio, the senator. Well, Rubio is the Gang of Eight. That was the one that everybody come in don’t worry about it. You know, immigrate… very weak on immigration. But, and Bush is weak on immigration. Bush is in favor of Common Core. Okay? So, that means your children, right? That means your children are going to be educated by the bureaucrats in Washington. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. So this reporter calls up my people. I have great people. Calls up Hope, “Oh, I’d love to speak to Mr. Trump.” I go, “Okay, well, we’ll work it out.” “I’d love to speak to him. When can we speak? I’d love…” “We’ll work it out.” So, she writes this horrible story. And she said, she didn’t say that we have 24 million people at the debate, the biggest audience in the history of CNN, then Fox had the biggest audience in cable, I think they said. Right? Right? And by the way, it got bigger. Bigger that was the original – it’s called preliminary numbers. I know so much from The Apprentice. Oh, wasn’t that the greatest of all ratings? Was I the greatest? You know I have a big chunk of The Apprentice, I get a lot of the profits from The Apprentice. So, you can always tell the enemies.
I left, the head of Comcast, who is an amazing guy, Steve Burke, he came up to see me, along with the Head of Reality Television for NBC, Paul Telegdy, and they come up to my office – this is like six, seven months ago.
And they said, “We want you to extend. We want you. We’ll do anything. We want you to extend.” I mean Steve Burke doesn’t do that. He is one of the biggest executives. Comcast owns NBC. And he’s fantastic.
So, I said, “Steve, you know honestly, I think I’m going to run. I want to make our country great again. I think we’re going to run. I think.”
And, he said, “Well, I don’t know, but just in case.” So they had their up-fronts. That’s a big deal, you know usually it’s at the biggest place in Manhattan, it’s a big deal and they announce their fall schedule. So they announce that The Apprentice is going to be extended with Donald Trump. So I’ve done 14 seasons, it’s going to be Season 15, and they even want to go beyond that.
I say, “But I told you I’m probably going to run, you can’t do that.” Because if you run, they have stupid laws. It’s called equal time, so that if I do The Apprentice, as an example, you have to let other people, like let’s say Lindsey Graham do a two-hour show on television. I don’t think so, right? So you have equal time. So basically you’re precluded, essentially you’re precluded from the – so what happened is,
I said, “no, no, no.”
“Well we’re going to take a chance because we’re going to…” So they announce it. They sell all the advertising. It’s one of the easiest shows on television to sell. Big success, even after all these years. Twelve years, 15 copies, think of it, and now they extend, and I’m honored, and I get a call from Mark Burnett.
He said “I can’t believe it, you’re turning down an extension. Nobody, nobody turns down an extension.” I turned down an extension. I’m giving up a lot, believe me, to do this. I’m giving up a lot. And I’m, on top of it, on top of it, on top of it, I’m self-funding my own campaign. I’m putting up my own money. I’m the only one. So, it’s the amazing the response. I mean people love that, you know, because all these guys are totally controlled by the special interest and the lobbyist. Believe me. I’ve been there. I’ve been there. I was the one that used to give all the money. Now all of sudden, I went like this.
So with The Apprentice, so I turned it down and we, we get a story from a very dishonest paper. “Donald Trump Gets Fired From NBC by NBC.” Now think of it. Now they know it’s not true. And, in fact, I get a big chunk of the show. You now I have, I created it with Mark Burnett. And so, they said fired, and they said, “Trump, Trump Gets Fired by NBC.” And they know it’s not true, so they call up,
They say, “Yeah we knew, but it just, sounds better, it plays better, doesn’t?”
“Oh great.” They’re such dirty, rotten liars. It’s disgusting. So, so I gave up The Apprentice and then I said, “You know we had to put down in filing certified numbers.”
And they said, “Oh, well maybe Trump won’t run because that’s a big thing. So he’ll never announce.” So I announced.
Then they say, “He’ll never do Form A.” Form A is like where you sign your life away. Phil would never do it. He would never do it, too smart. You would never do this, Phil, believe me. You should, that’s the kind of guy we need, but he’s not going to do it. He’s happy, got a great family, got a great hotel, got lots of great things.
But, so they’ll say, “He’ll never file form A.” I filed form A.
Then they’ll say, “Oh, but he’ll never file his financials because maybe he’s not as rich as people think.” Okay, so I filed. By the way, I was one of the few that filed on time and I had almost 100 pages. These guys have one page. You know I work for some company. No, it’s true, and they were late. They needed extensions. And I filed on time. I wanted to file on time. I actually filed ahead of schedule. You are entitled to do 45-day extensions automatically, and I just filed. And they found that my company, and Phil would know, because he knows my company, is much bigger, much stronger, much better, much richer than they ever thought possible. They couldn’t believe it! So that’s done now.
So what I did, is I did this filing. And from the day I’ve done this, and my wife said to me, it’s very interesting, and Ivanka, has anyone ever heard of Ivanka? Yes, right? And Melania, they’re two great women, and you watch, they’re going to come out, they’re going to start campaigning pretty soon. And they’re going to be great. They believe so much and so strongly in the women’s health issues that Bush by the way didn’t want. I saw that, he didn’t want to fund them.
And Hilary puts on the vote, “Oh how dare he talk about.” She said she acted indignant could you imagine, here’s woman cheating the United States government for years with her emails. I mean they gave Petraeus a criminal record. He’s got a criminal record now, they destroyed five other people for doing about one-tenth of what she did, and I don’t now, I think she’s going to get a way with it. Can you believe it, can you believe it? No, I think she’s going to get away with it! They destroyed Petraeus, General Petraeus, good guy, they destroyed his life. What he did is 2 percent of what she did. So you tell me it’s fair. But I look forward to running against her because frankly that is going to be such a big issues, believe me, it’s going to be such a big issue. And don’t forget, I mean, she will fight very hard because she has to win, because the statute of limitations is six years. Do you know what that means? No, do you know what that means? There’s some guy up there that’s probably a lawyer, he’s laughing like hell. I mean if a Republican gets in, it’s got to be fair. But if a Republican gets in, you’re going to have to look at that, six years, so she’s fighting for her life. And, I think the Democrats are going to leave her alone because it’s a corrupt system, and we have a corrupt system. And I think they’re going to leave her along. But if a Republican gets in, I don’t say that she’s guilty, they have to check, but if a Republican gets in, we have a six-year statue of limitations, and I guarantee at least there will be a fair investigation to give it a look, so she’s really fighting. So she’s really for her life in a sense, and she’s, so she’s you know gotten, it’s very interesting and the same day,
She said, “I don’t like Donald Trump’s tone.” My tone. “I don’t like his tone.” And Bush said the same thing, and Rubio said it too. They said, “I don’t like Donald Trump’s tone.”
And I say, “Wait a minute. We need a tough tone, don’t we? Isn’t it time? Aren’t we tired?” We’re tired of these weak, pathetic, sad people that don’t have a clue, that won’t do anything. We are going to make the country better than it’s ever been before. We have a chance to do that.
So they said, so they said, “We don’t like Mr. Trump’s tone.” They want to low-key. Huh. Let’s fall asleep.
And China, you ever see China’s tone? They walk through the door, believe me I deal with them. They don’t talk about, “Oh isn’t a beautiful day Mr. Trump, the weather’s beautiful, the sky is so beautiful, look Mr. Trump, outside.” It’s all business. “We want to extend lease.” Right? There’s no games, there’s no small talk, there’s no small talk, how’s the weather outside, “Oh it’s raining, it’s not too bad, I’ll have to call my wife.” It’s all business with these people. And they hit you in waves. You know when I deal with China, and I love China. I love the people, they’re great. I love the Mexican people. They’re great. But I deal with China and they walk in with waves of people, smart people. I have so many…
He’s says, “Build a wall.” We’ll build, don’t worry and Mexico is going to pay, don’t worry. We’ll build a wall. No, I want people, but they have to come in legally we know that okay.
But, but I will tell you China they come in, and they negotiate and you’re sitting there by yourself and you got like 25 people across the table, and everyone of them is a genius. But if you’re good, you can take it, you can do, you can do deals that are unbelievable. So I ask my people last week.
I said, “Go back and tell me what is the trade imbalance with China.” And I was surprised, because it was so, I thought it was big, but I didn’t know it was this big. It’s almost $400 billion a year. Think of it. Essentially, that means we’re losing $400 billion. Now, it’s worse than that because they’ve devalued their currency so they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our base, they’re taking our manufacturing, and then on top of it we them, think of this one, you know we owe, China is our larges creditor along with Japan, they’re actually exactly the same. We owe each of them $1.5 trillion.
So they steal our jobs, they steal our jobs, they take our money, we owe them money. How do you figure that one? No too good, right? All these geniuses in there for – not too good. I call it a magic act, it’s incredible. They take our money and we owe them money. It never ends. But we owe them $1.5 trillion. We owe total $19 trillion. We owe Japan $1.5 trillion.
Then I said. So I was in Los Angeles three weeks ago. I saw the biggest ships I’ve ever seen. The biggest and cars are pouring out these ships, they’re from Japan, like the Long Island Expressway. I never saw cars go so fast. They’re going 50 mile an hour off a ramp - vroom, vroom, vroom – it’s almost like the ramp, I don’t know if you saw it last week, it was a picture in one of the papers, the ramp they built, they have a wall that’s this big, a great wall, between the borders. Okay, they have a wall, and they built a ramp. Rather than tear down the wall. The wall was so small, they didn’t have to bother tearing it down, they just built a ramp and they have trucks going back and forth, and nobody’s doing anything. I mean how stupid are we? How stupid?
But China, so they owe, so we have, an imbalance with them, almost $400 billion a year. Now, if that’s the number you know it’s worse than that, right? Because when the government gives you numbers, like, they say 5.3 percent unemployment, the number is probably 32 percent I saw one report done by a pretty credible guy saying our unemployment rate is 42 percent because when you add back the 100 million people you’re right up to those numbers, but add back half of the 100, so we have a 20 percent, 25 percent unemployment rate. But this was done by politicians so that they look good. Because if you stop looking for a job, statistically you are considered that you have a job.
So then they say, “Oh unemployment is down. We’re down to 5.3.” We’re not down. Nobody has jobs. I mean I wouldn’t have caught on, to be honest, I wouldn’t have caught on, leading every pole, I wouldn’t have been catching on, I think if the economy were real, it’s not a real economy. It’s a phony set of numbers. They cook the books. Did you ever hear the expression? Right? They cook the books. The politicians cook the books.
So what happens is, I get the reports yesterday, and the reports are amazing. I love polls.
And somebody said, “He talks about polls and the other people don’t.” That’s because I’m winning. The other people are losing. It’s true. No, I saw it on television. No, no I saw it last night on television. Now there may be a time when I stop talking about polls, if I’m number two, or three, or four, five, or twelve. Some of these guys have nothing. They have zero out of 20,000 people. Then you get one vote, they have zero. How do you do that? To me, that’s more impressive than leading if you want to know the truth? No, it’s true.
So they said, I saw on television tonight, they said, “Oh, he talked about...,” because I was in Iowa yesterday. It was amazing. Packed. Packed. Overflow. Amazing people. Like you they want to see the country be strong. They want to see our Country. Amazing people. So, I was talking about the polls, and one of the reporters, who is actually here today, one those live people, and, barely, barely alive.
No, no, they said on television, “Mr. Trump talked about the polls.” Well the polls just came out.
And I thought to myself, “Maybe I do talk about polls too much.” And then I realized that I’ve been leading since I came out. Since I came out! And Melania, my wife, and my daughter said, “You know Dad, if you ever run you’re going to win.”
And I said, “Why do say that?”
They said, “It’s because nobody thinks you’re running, and if they poll you, nobody’s going to give you.” When they poll you, before I announced it, before I signed my life away. Because that’s what you do, you sign you’re life away. You know, it takes guts to run for office. Especially, especially if you’re not a politician. I never did this before folks. That’s why nobody understands what’s going on. These guys are governors, senators; these guys are all, and, and so here’s what happens, so Florida winning big, big, Florida! 28 – 29 percent.
Pennsylvania, big, big, great important state, anybody from Pennsylvania? We love Pennsylvania! I love Pennsylvania. I’m there a lot. Pennsylvania. I’m leading Big. Big.
Ohio, Ohio! So, the poll comes out and it’s…. which is a great company, great polling company, the real deal. And they just hate it, they just hate it. And I’m leading Ohio, and I’m beating a very nice guy, and good governor, named Kasich by a lot, Kasich is a good governor, he’s good guy, and he’s you know, I’m leading by a lot, and people say, “what’s going on,” you know, “what’s going on.” Then, they have a poll come out ****, which a great poll and I have 35 percent 35 percent, 35!
So we get, as I said highest rating in FOX, highest ratings in the history of CNN for these debates, the highest ratings, and by the way, all the polls, and they poll everything, oh I love these things, they poll who won the debate, every single poll, Time Magazine, Drudge, Slate, places I never even heard of, everyone said Trump! But, then I go, I turn on the television,
“Oh Donald had a bad night tonight.”
I’m saying, “What did I, I thought I won. I thought I won.”
And then they said, “Well you know…” First of all, just to show you, so CNN, I like CNN, they’re good guys. I think Jeff Zucker is a good guy. … I think Roger Ailes is great from Fox. Great guy. But, I tell you, I go home and I watch it and I say, "I'm going to watch myself on television. Who wouldn't do it?" Who wouldn't do it, right? We have to do it. So I say, "Oh, that was good." Then, I see the pundits coming. You know, these highly-paid guys that don't have a clue. They don't have a clue. And they say that they didn't like it. I was good in the first debate, but they say… Then they said, "Here's the beauty. For 28 minutes, I didn't say anything at the end. And then you faded in the end." I wasn't asked any questions. I wanted to say… They're so dishonest.
So here's what happens. So, for the first two hours, everything was me. It was either a question to me, right? These guys are honorable guys even though they all have suits. Stand up and take a bow. They're rich guys. These guys are loaded. That's why they're in the first row. Of course, I've always heard in the theater, fourth row is the best. We're going to teach you guys. Fourth row is actually… But, you know, so they went out and they do this thing on television and they hit me. And I'm saying, "I can't understand it." My daughter comes up. She says, "Dad, every single polling number says you won. They're all saying you won." And I just think… But, on the CNN debate, it was two hours, right? A two-hour debate. Now, they were supposed to get… No. No. It was two hours, and then they made it three hours. No, it was a two-hour debate when I got there. When I got there. Don't ruin my story! No, it was a two-hour debate. And then, about a day and a half or two days before, what happened is… It was in Variety. It was in Hollywood Reporter, which is a terrific group. They did a nice cover story on me. I like them… Janice.
But they did a story about rates. They took the rates from, in the case of Fox, I think in the case of CNN, from $4,000 for probably a 30-second ad, took $200,000. So it was a 4,000 percent increase. Now, Phil Ruffin's really perking up. And he is. That's your language, right? So they went from $4,000 to $200,000. And they sold out. So I get there and I didn't know this, because Cory and Hope and all my people, they didn't tell me this. They said, "It's a three-hour debate." Now, the room, the Reagan Library, nice place, but it wasn't meant for that many people. And it was about 100 degrees in there. It was pretty hot. I didn't care. I didn't care. But you had a couple of people on that stage that were seriously… They were melting. Right? They were melting. It was actually good for them. And it was actually good. They went home, they lost ten pounds. It was probably… It was probably good.
But they go out and I get there and I hear it's now a three-hour debate. I said, "That's a long time….” I really have no problem. Actually, I was always a good athlete. But I don't have a problem. But, you know what? Who the hell wants to watch a three-hour… Gone with the Wind is three hours, right? Gone with the… But they did it just to make money. Just to make money. So the first question was mine. Second question was mine. Third question, fourth question was to another guy. "Mr. Trump said you're a horrible human being; is that true?" Then they go, "Mrs. Fiorina, Mr. Trump doesn't like your face. What do you say? What do you say? How do you respond?" "Well, the world will watch." And then they say, "Oh, she debated so brilliantly." Give me a break. No, the entire thing, the entire thing was either a question to me or a question to the other candidates having to do with me. And I think they came out specifically 48 percent. Then, in the third hour, it got to be too obvious, because I am a ratings machine. Okay? It got to be too obvious. So, for 28 minutes, they didn't ask me a question. So here's the press, "He didn't do well in the final 28 hours. It's almost like he disappeared." They didn't ask me any questions, okay? It's so dishonest. So we have fun with it. We have fun with it. But I have fun what I'm doing. And I'll tell you what, we're making an impact like I never thought possible. Like I never thought possible.
I've seen great dishonesty in other ways too. Politics, you know, I always thought that real estate guys in New York and elsewhere are pretty tough cookies, right? A lot of real estate guys in the room I guess? But I always thought real estate guys are tough. Politics is a much dirtier business. So I get a call, this guy from Club for Growth. I've never even heard of it. But my people said, "Oh, see, you know, Club for Growth." What is Club for Growth? You know what it is? They're growing a wallet in their pocket. That's what it is. So Club for Growth, supposedly a conservative outfit. So a guy wants to see me. So he comes up to my office. We have a perfectly nice talk. He's telling me about Club for Growth, which is nice. And that was the end of it. He then sends me a letter, asks me if I'd make a $1 million contribution. Well, think of it. A $1 million… I said, "One million?" You know, I may be rich, but that's stupid, right? A million? A million dollars? So he wants a million dollars in a letter. He's stupid enough to put it in a letter. And he asked me for a million dollars. We told him and, obviously, how many in the room would say, "Oh, good. He was up in my office for a half hour or whatever it was, let's give him a million bucks." I just can't do that. I can't do it.
So what happens is, we say, very politely, "No." And we figured that's the end. All of a sudden, he comes out, has a news conference, goes vicious against me. "I'm not a conservative. I'm not this. I'm not that." I believe in eminent domain, which I don't believe. I said, "Sometimes the city has to use it to build a roadway, right? You know, every once in a while you have to build a road. Or you have to build a plant that's going to employee 5,000 people or something." I don't love it. But, I mean, sometimes you need it. You wouldn't have any roads. You wouldn't have any econ… I mean, sometimes you need it. And they did this ad. The good news was it had no impact. The pictures were so beautiful. I want to find… Where did they get them? I was like 20 years younger. I looked so handsome. I never knew I was that good looking in a suit. I looked so good. So they spent $2 million or a million dollars on advertisements all because I turned them down. That shows you how dishonest politics is though. Here they are, the come up, Club for Growth. I'll never forget the experience, because I was shocked. My people came in, "Oh, Club for Growth just had a news conference. They absolutely lambasted you." Oh, they also said, "He raises taxes." I just came out with a tax bill where I'm lowering far more than anybody else. In fact, so much so that the Wall Street Journal, which was bought for $5 billion dollars, and is now worth $500 million dollars, but they'll criticize me. They did an editorial. "It's too much." Now, you tell me, you buy something for $5 billion, it's now worth $500 million, maybe not that, and maybe a couple of bucks more. And then they write these nasty editorials about me. Can you believe this? Can you believe it?
So I get criticized. But, you know, one of the things I was criticized for is my tax break is too big. They think it's too big. And what I'm doing is taking care of the middle class. And, frankly… Because we've lost… We've lost the middle class. We've lost them. So then, they give you bad editorials all the time. And here's the good news, I've had the worst editorials in the Wall Street Journal. I have never heard one person say, "Gee, that was a bad editorial." Nobody cares. I don't think anybody cares. Do they read these things or not? I get these editorials. I say, "Oh, that's devastating." But they're criticizing also, [inaudible] other things. Well, there's a personal dislike. Has to be their personal dislike. But the amount of the tax reduction is massive. And it's going to put people to work. And people are going to be energized. And the middle class is going to come back.
You know, we have, and I put them in the same category, because people have forgotten about the middle class in this country. And that's what built… That's what built…. Middle-income people. That's what built the country. And you know who else they've forgotten about big time? Maybe even worse… The veterans. They've forgotten the veterans. They have totally forgotten the veterans. And I'll tell you what, if I get elected. Everyone says when, when… Don't say if. But, look, I'm running against… It was 17. No, it was 17. I seem to have one great power. If I could sell it, I'd be 100 times richer than I am. And I'm rich, you know? I'd be a hundred. And you know what the power is? So far, maybe, I have to knock on wood. But, so far, when people attack me, they get creamed. They go down. It's true. So I get attacked by Rick Perry. Governor of Texas, right? He attacks me viciously. He was a friend of mine. I got along with him great. Now, I'm leading again. I'm leading, practically from the time I got in. I think it's almost three months now. They say Michele Bachman, well, she led for a week. They say, Herman Cain, great guy, but he led for a week. They said, "Well, they were there." But I'm there for three months. [Inaudible] for like three months, right? That's a long time. It's a long time. But you get, never! Stand up! Stand up! Say it! You are right! Do we love this guy? We love him.
But if I win… Right. I like [inaudible]. But, again, you know what? You know what? When puts too much pressure on you. I always say to people, they say how do you react? Pressure is very interesting. Because I've seen people that are really smart that don't make it. I've seen people that are great athletes that don't make it. They put unforced pressure on themselves. If I say, if, there's much less pressure. Do you understand? Not win. Right? I am right? You know? Hey, I got a call from one of the biggest reporters, who actually I do have great respect for. One of the biggest. And, I don't know him at all. And he's from a major, major newspaper, whose name I already mentioned. And he said to me, he said to me, "Could I ask you one question?" He went, "How does it feel?" I said, "How does what feel?" He said, "You've done something that nobody else has ever done." He said… It's very interesting. I think I'm on 14 covers. I'm on more covers than any supermodel in history. Can you believe it? No, can you believe it? I mean, every magazine. By the way, People magazine. I love the people. I didn't love the picture. I don't know. They did something with my nose. They played around… It's true. I don't understand. I loved People magazine. I love the people at People magazine. The story was nice, but I didn't like what they did. They screwed around with… I said, "Just leave me alone." But Melania looked good. Barron looked good. I looked like hell. I have a feeling maybe they picked the picture. They might have picked it. I don't know. But I've been on… There it is. Come here. Let me have that. Come here…
So let me see this. (Woman comes on stage.) Where are you from? Colombia! And is this a setup? Did I ever meet you before? Huh? Thank you. [Inaudible]. I swear to you. I think she's totally beautiful and great. I never met her before, I swear. This all started with People magazine. So here's the story. So I loved the story. They couldn't have been nicer. Nice story, right? Couldn't be nicer. But I don't know what happened. They played with my nose. I don't want touching. I don't want touching. So I'm looking… Now, you'll tell me. How's my nose, right? Fine, right? Says it's beautiful. I have a wart on the end of my nose! Can you believe it? I said, "Oh, my… I don't have… Look, it's terrible." But, that's okay. Because they meant it well. I think they wanted to make me look like Cary Grant. Do we remember Cary Grant? And I've always wanted to look like Cary Grant. But, anyway, you are beautiful. Will you make sure she doesn't fall? Come here. Thank you very much. [Inaudible]. Thanks, you're beautiful. Thank you, darling. Thank you. Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you. Thank you. Be careful. That was… Great. That's so great. Never met her before. She's amazing. She is amazing. Thank you, hon. Appreciate it. But that's my relationship with Hispanics. That's why when they did… They did the poll in the state, in Nevada, and I led the… And nobody believes it. But that's my relationship. And, you know, in New York, we have a Hispanic station. And the MC of the station's a good guy. I don't know him. But I watched him interview on television and he goes, he's talking about Trump. "What about Trump? How bad is Trump? Is he a…" Well, he said, "I don't know. Every viewer that goes on, they all love him. They love him." All Hispanic. They love Trump. Because they know I'm going to do what's the right thing. I love the Hispanic people. I employ thousands of them. And they know I'm going to do what's right.
So, a couple of more things. I want to just talk about two things. So we have the Second Amendment. And they want to take your guys away. And we can't let it happen. We can't let it happen. And it's not going to happen. And I just put a policy paper. You know, the press wants me to put policy papers. Because, at the beginning, they said, "We agree he's leading in the polls. But he can't go much longer, 'cause he doesn't put policy papers out" you know? I guarantee my IQ is much higher than any of these people. Like my… My uncle was one of the great professors at MIT. I mean, believe me it’s good genes, we believe in genes right? We’re allowed to say that?
So anyway, but I don’t put…So I decide I’ll put policy. So I put policy out in texts, I put policy out on immigration, I put policy out on the Second Amendment. Which is basically, you are allowed to protect yourself, okay, you read it, and I said, they said don’t you think it’s important to start talking about policy? I said I have. I said it’s only important for you, it’s not important for the people. Because they know I’m going to do the right thing, and they know my stance, and they know my stance. But now we’re keeping the press happy. They’re all saying, “Oh he’s actually very policy oriented,” because I put in a 14 page paper.
But in the end it’s all very simple and I will say this. I love being here with you. I loved yesterday my trip to Iowa. I loved the other day my trip to… I was in New Hampshire I was in South Carolina I am all the time….somebody said, “Are you doing deals?” A deal came over my desk last week, because I’m running a business. But more and more I’m giving it to my kids to run and they are good, and I have great executives. Because I can’t be doing this all the time right? But I have to. Because we want to win. We want to win, and deals come across my desk that are great deals, and I say I don’t want it, I don’t want to focus on the deal, it’s just not important any more. You know, it’s not important to me any more. What’s important is turning our country around. It’s so important.
What’s important to me, is, and I’ve been saying it over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve never said much before that. I can’t even remember having said it before that. So one of the networks today said I’ve trademarked the expression, “Make America Great Again,” can you imagine? Who else is sick enough to trademark? Who would think of it? Because I had a couple of candidates, I had a couple of candidates using it. They see I go and I say, “Make America Great Again,” everyone stands and they go crazy. So they started using it, but the response isn’t the same. They go, “Oh great”, because they don’t believe them, their politicians.
Their politicians, and you know, I was going to tell you before that… so all these guys that came out. They’re all friends of mine, but then they came out viciously against me, viciously – it’s a horrible business actually. Or profession or whatever the hell you call it. It’s horrible! So Perry came out and he went from five to zero, and he left.
Walker, he was a friend of mine, he was up in my office a year ago, gave me a plaque because I supported him. They are professionals you support somebody you get a plaque. Okay, I get a lot of plaques. Bing! You know what I do? I use them to put pictures of my family in there. But he came up and he gave me a plaque, and he thanked me very much, and he was so nice, and then one of his guys came out and said bad things about me. Like I said, “Well is that really?” yeah, said, “Bad, Trump’s bad – he’s a bad guy”! I said, “Oh, thank you,” and then I hit Walker very hard, and he was supposed to win. Do you remember? He was favored to win. They said, “Governor of Wisconsin,” while I gave the real numbers, and I saw a magazine. It was a puff piece on him, but in one paragraph, it said, “big deficits, big strife, schools are in trouble, roads are in trouble.” I said, “I didn’t know this, I thought it was all good.” So I just gave those facts in Iowa standing in Iowa, big news conference, and he got wiped out, and then he left. Now when he left it was nasty he said, “Everybody has to leave, and leave one person to take on Trump. We’ve got to beat Trump!” Can you believe that? I just want to do the right thing, and then we have….now think of it, and then we have Lindsey Graham, no, he was always nice. He called me, he wanted a reference on something, and then he wanted campaign contributions, and he left me his number. He gave me his phone number, his cell number, and this was like three years ago. It’s true! I don’t know why, I found it! I just have a whole pile of junk I call that junk, see? That’s junk stuff that will never be used again. All of a sudden I found his phone number, and I had a news conference, and I held up his number. Here it is, and they said, “Read it out!” Probably the press said that because you know the press. I read it out, and then I read it out a second time, and it destroyed… his phone blew up. It blew up. It was all over town. But he was a nice guy and he wanted contributions and he wanted support and all that, and that was fine, and you know in my previous life… You know I have two lives right? That previous life, I have my non-politician, the last little, I’m politician. But I gave him, I gave him a hard time. He went from 3…I only counter…you know I’m a counter puncher. I don’t start these things. Everyone says he’s a bad person, he’s mean! I’m not mean. I get hit by these people. So he goes out hit me! Right! Look at her with that beautiful red hair. Look at her, stand up with that hair! Oh I wish I had that hair! Looks good!
Okay, so he hits me really hard. He’s at like 2 or 3 percent, and I’m in the 20’s and 30’s and he hits the hell out of me. I said, Wow! The guy wanted like a campaign…he was a nice guy what happened? He goes down to…he’s at zero. Now they asked him the other day, “Will you leave?” “I will never leave, I…if I won”! Just leave! It’s not working.
Oh and then they have the poll in South Carolina. Now here’s this Senator from South Carolina, and I’m at 29 or 32 I think, something like that, and he’s at three! Right? So something’s wrong! He’s probably not going to run for office again. Honestly I think these guys have been mortally wounded! I don’t even think they can go back into that group.
And then we have Rand Paul, Rand Paul…but he was another one. He was expected to win, and then he goes around before the last debate, and he’s telling everybody, “I’m going to attack Trump! He’s not a true conservative!” People are saying, “Yeah but I like his ideas, I mean you know…and I am…I’m a conservative guy, and he’s vicious! He’s a vicious guy! He’s a vicious little guy, and I say, “Rand, easy, cool it, chill, just take it easy!” But he’s had news conferences telling everybody what a bad guy I….now he was another one who was expected to win. Now in the meantime, he’s running in Kentucky and he’s running here, and I have great respect for the people of Kentucky. I love that state, I love the people. But what are they? Second class citizens? Why is he running here and running there? I mean pick your place! But he’s running here running there. So, and I told that, and I think it’s unfair for the people of Kentucky. I don’t know. How do you do that? How do you do it? So he starts getting really, really vicious. I mean every time I see him. The things he was saying. I won’t even say them because eh! I’ll say it, no…I won’t even say it! So what happens is…then he said “I will get him in the debate!” I mean you will…is this right? I’m going to get him in the debate! I’m gong to go after him, he’s not going to have a chance! I’m going to do numbers on him that are unbelievable. So my first question, I attacked him. I mean, after that, he was perfectly nice. In fact, he backed me up twice! He backed me up! He was perfectly nice. So this is sort of a crazy thing.
Jeb Bush, he was doing great. No? Well he’s a nice guy. But he was doing great, but I immediately… you know, when I think of the President I think of somebody… you need somebody with tremendous drive, tremendous energy, and really up here big **** right, and I didn’t see the fire in Jeb. Low Energy! Stand up – what was the expression? Low energy he said. I don’t know what… you know sometimes you’ll say something about somebody, and it sticks, it just like sticks?
Sometimes you’ll say, like I called Rubio a lightweight. I don’t know that might stick, it might not stick, I don’t know. To me…water, yeah water. Remember the response on live television to the President’s State of the Union speech? So they pick him because he’s the young rising star, and he’s talking, and he’s sweating, sweating, and I’m watching I’m saying, “Is he going to be okay?” And he’s sweating, and he keeps sweating, and the water’s pouring down all over, and finally he goes, [motions] and I said, was that live television? But I called him a lightweight, and you know, he may be a nice guy. I really don’t know him. I really don’t. But, you know, he attacked me viciously, and Bush attacked me viciously. As viciously as he could be, which isn’t really that vicious. Because he’s a nice person, and I said, “He’s a low energy individual”, and somehow that one stuck. I don’t know if lightweight is going to stick with Rubio.
Then, you know, then I attacked Carly’s record. Because her record running a business is a disaster. She was named to the CEO Hall of Fame as one of the worst in the history of the country. Right? But she’s got that good pitter patter, but but but but but like a machine gun lalalala, but I said if you listen for 10 minutes you get a headache. You get a headache! You get a headache! And then…it’s funny…boy the press loves her, they love her. I see these polls where I’m at 29, she’s at 6 and they’re saying, here’s the headline, “Carly is surging!” I’m at 29…surging. I mean honestly she’s surging.
And Ben I like. Because Ben said something very nasty to me. I do, I like him. He said something really nasty, remember, about my faith? I’m a religious person. I’m protestant, can you believe it I’m protestant. I’m Presbyterian, I’m religious, and Ben hit me on my faith. I was all set to go after him, and then he took it back, and I can’t, I can’t do that. He took it back, I was all set, I was disappointed that he took it back. I didn’t want him to take it back. No I didn’t want him to take it back, I was all set to go! And I couldn’t do it! Because he stood up and he said, “No, the press tricked me into saying something that I didn’t mean, and I’m taking it back”, and I said, “that’s cool, that’s really nice.” I thought it was nice. Please say something bad about me Ben, please! In fact, yesterday I stuck up for him, because the press killed him. You know the press was saying…he made a statement essentially that if there were some maniac over there shooting people, he’d charge. Okay. They said, “Oh that’s terrible, that’s disrespectful to the people that were killed,” and I didn’t see it that way and I said, “I think he was treated unfairly by the press”, and it became a big story, that I stuck up…so I actually stuck up for him. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that…you know I don’t do that. I don’t do it.
So, I just want to tell you. We’re going to bring jobs back to this country….We’re going to have Carl Icahn, on of the great business people of all time, Phil can tell you. We’re going to have Phil, we’re going to have the smartest, the best, negotiators in the world, and I know most of them and believe me I know people you’ve never heard of who are better than the ones you did hear of. We’re going to have people…it’s not going to be because they gave me campaign contributions, because I turned down millions. I feel so foolish, I feel so foolish. You know, my whole thing in life has been accumulation, right? Now these guys come up…one guy wants to give $5 million dollars to my campaign. He’s a lobbyist. Wants to give a fortune. I don’t want it. I feel like a jerk. I said no, I don’t. And I go like….now I do it very weakly, because I’m self funding. I don’t even know…do people in this room know that I’m self funding?
So we’re going to bring back our jobs. We’re going to negotiate great trade packs. This last trade deal is a disaster. By the way, Hilary came out, you know, she came out… the same thing I’ve been saying for five months. I took a commercial saying the trade deal was no good. The one that they’re…it’s no good. Eleven countries, they’re ripping off the Unites States, they’re taking our jobs, and China is not part of it. They’re going to come in the back door, they’re going to make a great deal. They always make a great deal with us, because we’re stupid. Okay? We’re led by very stupid people.
So Hillary, Hillary came out against it. Now Obama wants it…Hillary came out against the President. Be careful, Hillary. You may be indicted. Be careful, be careful. That’s very dangerous for her to do. I give her credit. But the reason she did is that she thinks that someday she is going to be debating me about this trade deal as one of the things. I already have the pipeline which I love that debate, okay. Whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent it’s a lot of jobs. Not going to hurt anybody, environmentally nothing. It’s not going to have any impact. And she made a mistake. But I love that. But she changed her mind yesterday on the trade deal. You saw that. And I’m telling you, Obama is angry at her. This could be the end on the emails. This could finally be the end. She could end up like General Petraeus, seriously. This could be another—this could be the beginning of the end. But I want to run against her. I really do. I want to run against her. So, I don’t want to run against Bernie. It’s too easy, right? Bernie? Some people say communist, some people say socialist, I don’t know. I have always wanted to run against a socialist/perhaps communist, right? In this country I don’t think it plays. I don’t think. But we’re going to take our jobs back. We are going to make our military so strong, so powerful that nobody is going to mess with us. And we will not have to use it, in my opinion. But nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. As part of that we are going to make our vets the cherished people that they should be. They are cherished, special, special people. Our wounded warriors, our vets, they are going to be taken care of properly. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them.
We’re going to come up with a healthcare program that’s going to be unbelievable. Your premiums will not be rising 55 percent like they are doing now. We’re going to terminate Obamacare. We’re going to come up with a plan that is so good and works and everybody is going to be taken care of, but we’re going to come up with a plan that works. So just remember you look at your neighbor, you look at the people that you are sitting next to, because this is more than just a group of people listening to a speech. If you came here and listened to other candidates you would have ten rows in the front and you’d have a nice little chat and everybody would walk home and they would be bored stiff and they would say, boy, was that boring. This is a movement. This is a movement what is going on. This is a movement. This is a movement to take our country back….
This is the GOP frontrunner for president in 10,000 words. I should annotate but I’ll let it speak for itself.
Thank you everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. So nice, thank you. Thank you very much. What a great group. You know they have hundreds and hundreds of people standing outside; they can’t get in. They didn’t get the good real estate. You got the good real estate. I feel badly. I feel badly. So Phil Ruffin, you know, Phil owns this hotel. And he’s been a friend of mine and we did deals together. We had a great success at Trump International Hotel together. I hope you all know that hotel. Most beautiful building in Las Vegas, I have to say. But, it’s a great thing to be involved with somebody that is so talented, so smart, such a great businessperson as Phil Ruffin. And he’s a great poker player! You know, I always put my money on him in a game of poker and he just looks away very quietly, just takes everybody’s money and goes on to the next one, right? That’s what we want. So, I want just to thank you (Shouts of “We love you.”) I love you, too. I love you, too.
I want to just start by saying, you know Kevin McCarthy is out. You know that, right? And they’re giving me a lot of credit for that, because I said, “You really need somebody very, very tough and very smart.” You know, smart goes with tough, not just tough. I know tough people that are not smart. That’s the worst. Okay? That’s the worst. You got to be smart. But we smart, we need tough, we need the whole package and it’s a positive, like me, thank you. (Shouts from crowd.) I like that. I like this guy over here, whoever he is. But, it’s bedlam in Washington right now, bedlam. It’s a mess. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve always been in politics. People said, “Well, for three months I’ve been a politician, though.” Can you believe it? It’s so embarrassing. I’m a politician. I never wanted to be a politician. But at some point I said, “We’re going to make our country great again!’ And, I mean, we’re going to do it, so. Had to do it.
But Kevin is a nice guy. I just hope now that they find somebody that’s going to be… you know, have those qualities where we can negotiate, where we can use that debt ceiling that’s coming up very rapidly and do something really, really significant, because if we don’t, we’re going to be really; we’re going to be in very big trouble. We’re going to be in very, very big trouble. We’re in a big, fat, beautiful bubble right now, and you watch… and I predicted the last couple, and I’m telling you, we’ve got to get our act together, or we’re going to be Greece on steroids. That’s what’s going to happen. No, that’s what’s going to happen. And there’s nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong with the Republicans taking a tough stance and sticking with it. You know, I wrote The Art of the Deal. And The Art of the Deal is, I think, the biggest selling business book of all time. Yeah, look it’s all over the place. Who doesn’t have The Art of the Deal? By the way, I’m coming out with a new one in about three weeks. You know what it’s called? Crippled America. Can you believe? What a difference. What a difference in… One’s The Art of the Deal, everything rosy, let’s go make money, everybody good. And that was a long time ago. Now, I’m doing one called Crippled America and as much as I hate to call it that, we had all these titles. And it sort of happened by mistake. We had a photographer. It’s a great book publishing company, Simon and Schuster. The best. Rolls Royce, or Cadillac? Maybe I should say Cadillac, right? We want to keep it here. We want to keep it here, but, you know, they’re a really great company and they sent this fantastic photographer. Very talented guy and he took pictures. And I’m smiling. You know, like life is a bowl of cherries. Like, we’re doing great. In the meantime, China’s taking our jobs, we’re losing to ISIS, Russia’s dictating, we don’t know what we’re doing, right? I mean, is it true? So, I have all these pictures, smiling, but I had a couple I guess I wasn’t prepared and I was nasty looking. Nasty. And then I said, “Maybe we should use that picture. Instead of the nice pictures. I’m not going to give it to my family or anything, but maybe we should use…” So I have the nastiest looking picture, like, because honestly for a period of time, that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to put our head down, and we’ve got to straighten out this mess. And nobody can do it like me. Nobody. Nobody can do it like me, honestly. I will bring our jobs back. You know, it’s very interesting, CNN did a good debate, and I’m on live with CNN. Look at all those cameras up there. Real life. And every time, they have me on live. All these other guys, they make the same speech over and over and over they read it. Just blah, blah. If I say the same thought twice, I get criticized. “You said that three weeks ago!” I mean, how many thoughts can you have? Jobs, the military’s in trouble. The vets are being taken poorly care of. And we’re going to straighten it out. We’re going to repeal Obamacare! (Huge applause.)
We have to! We have to! We have to! We don’t have a choice. You know, it’s interesting, look at the response that gets. And sometimes it’s not the biggest response. I mean, my stance on immigration is, first of all, I just met with a whole group of Hispanics…And what Phil said (that Trump’s Hispanic employees love him), I really appreciate. I didn’t know he was going to say that, but I’ve employed thousands and thousands and currently thousands of Hispanics. These are incredible people. Incredible. My relationship is great. They did a poll, and everybody probably saw the poll. I won with Hispanics in the state of Nevada. You know. They’re incredible people! And I think I won for two reasons; one of them is they know I’m going to bring jobs back to this country. We’re going to take our jobs back. And people are going to have jobs! Because this 5.3 percent and 5.5 percent, it is nonsense. We have close to a 100 million people that are out of the workforce. That are out of the workforce. We have 50 million people that are in poverty. They consider it poverty, like third world, not even as good as some of the third world nations. Our infrastructure, our airports are worse than third world nations. You fly into LaGuardia, you fly into the Kennedy, LAX, you fly into some of these airports, we’re like a third world country. And I go and I deal with these people. I get along with everybody, okay? By the way, I do. I do. But I deal… and I don’t dislike China, I love China. In fact, they’re my tenants in New York. I have the biggest bank in the world as my tenant, Chinese Bank. Like, seriously big. The rent comes in, boom, like clockwork. I don’t have to worry.
But, I have tremendous relationships with Mexico, with China, I have with everybody. The problem is, we’re not being led right. When China, Japan, Brazil, I mean any county. Name a country, anybody. Name any country that are taking advantage of us. France, they’re taking advantage of us. You know that, because you know what they’re doing with the Iran. (Someone yells “France.”) You see, she says France. You could name any country, right? Russia? Well, that’s a pretty easy one. Russia, that was the one I was hoping… That one, we don’t have to say too much about Russia. Oh he’s having a field day dealing with our leaders, because our leaders are incompetent. They’re incompetent. They’re incompetent. So, we’ve had an amazing… Well, even Israel, if you look at Israel, we’re actually taking advantage of Israel if you think about it, because what we did with that stupid deal with Iran, is the worst thing that has probably happened to Israel since the initial Israel, since day one, I would say maybe, maybe, potentially the worst thing that’s ever happened to Israel. And I have so many Jewish friends, where they go, “I don’t know what happened to Obama. They’re supporting him.” And they say, “I don’t know what happened.” And some continue to support him. It’s almost like, it’s almost like what are we doing here? They support him; they’re having fundraisers for him. But they say, “Yeah, he’s treated us very badly.” Then he walks into the room, they give him a… The whole thing is crazy! He has been so bad to Israel and Bibi is a great guy. I know him. I was, I think, and I thought he made a great speech the other day in the United Nations. You know, I was one of the few people, I think the only, but he asked me to make an ad for him for his campaign. So, I was greatly honored. I made an ad, he won, I was happy. I took full credit for it. Full credit. Full credit.
But, you know, we have a problem with so many different things and we’ll talk about… I love talking about this, the media. Do we all love the media? Do we love the media? (Huge boos.) No, the level of dishonesty is incredible. It’s incredible. And you know, I always have to preface. I’ll give a quick… not all of them, because some are fine, but let’s end it with that. But, some are fine. But the level of honesty in the media, they’re so dishonest. You know, I’ll do a crowd and I’ll have like a crowd like this and like the cameras, they never pan the room. They never, ever pan the room. Yeah. They never pan the room. No, it’s true. They don’t do it. They don’t do it. Pan the room; go ahead, pan it. But, you know, they won’t. They won’t pan it. I was in Oklahoma the other day, unbelievable. We had 20,000 people, it’s a band shell in this massive park, more than 20,000… I’m now going low because if I have two people more, they’ll say, “Oh, it wasn’t…” I mean I had one crowd, where a group from Politico, which is totally dishonest. These people, very liberal, totally… this Politico, they cut numbers down. But Bernie Sanders, and then you look, and I have far more people than him, but you know it’s important because it shows the dishonesty. But I was in Oklahoma the other day, and we had 20,000 people at least….They had a thing in the back, you know, all concrete, a real beautiful band shell, all concrete. You can’t see anything. We must have had 2,000 to 3,000 people behind the band shell. I was saying, “They can’t see anything.” Because it’s a stage with this massive wall behind me. But they couldn’t fit them into a park, so we had much more than 20,000, but I say 20,000. I’ve actually become very conservative, because this is where I don’t get criticized, and I said to the press, I said… I went home. My wife said, “Well, how was it?” She watched it on television. She said, “Was the crowd big?” I said, “What do you know?” It’s true, because she said, “They had the camera on your face the entire time. They never panned the crowd.” They never. No, they’re terrible. They’re terrible. No, they’re terrible. The media is terrible. I’m going to go into a whole thing, but, no, they’re terrible. Hey, hey, pan, look. They won’t turn the cameras, see? They won’t turn it. And they won’t put this part on, because they never put it on, because you know, but why don’t you pan the cameras? You know, they don’t want to do that. Terrible. They don’t do it. Look, they don’t move. But my wife tells me, she said, “So, how was the crowd in Oklahoma?” I said, “It was, it was amazing.” I said, “But, I thought you watched.” “I did watch, but they never showed how many people were there.” And then the reporter got up, “Donald Trump was here. He made a speech in Oklahoma. And he left.” I set every record. “He was here. He made a speech. Yeah, a little controversial. He’s a little controversial.” They don’t say. They’re really dishonest people. Same thing in Dallas, you know, I went to Dallas and they treated me fairly good there. But we had a full place, plus the floor was full. And Mark Cuban called me up, who’s a good guy, and he said, and he owns the Mavericks, and he said, “I’d love you to use the place.” I said, “When?” “Wednesday.” I said, “What’s today?” It was like, Thursday, when he called. I said, “How many seats you have.” He said “20,000 seats. But then we have 20,000 plus the floor.” So we have the floor filled up, we have the place a few days. After the first day, I think they sold either 12,000 or 15,000 the first day, and it was a holiday. And I got there, it was incredible. But they don’t really want to… They want to belittle.
I’ll tell you a great story. So today, in one of the big newspapers, The New York Times, we’ve never done better. We’re hotter than ever. We just had a poll, the Morning Consult came out. I think we’re either 32 percent or 35 percent. That’s massive. Remember this. Remember this. While the Times, I mean it’s disgusting, and the reporter that did the story, he’s done other stories that are totally inaccurate, calls up my people and said, “Oh. I want to meet with Mr. Trump. I want to meet…” Never even called me, never even spoke to me. Never even spoke to me. So, they did a story, ‘Is he waning?’ Now, I just won, listen to this. So, yesterday morning, before the story was out, I won the state of Florida. I was at 28 percent or 29 percent Now, think of this. The governor of the state, Bush, former. No, hey, honestly and Rubio, the senator. Well, Rubio is the Gang of Eight. That was the one that everybody come in don’t worry about it. You know, immigrate… very weak on immigration. But, and Bush is weak on immigration. Bush is in favor of Common Core. Okay? So, that means your children, right? That means your children are going to be educated by the bureaucrats in Washington. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. So this reporter calls up my people. I have great people. Calls up Hope, “Oh, I’d love to speak to Mr. Trump.” I go, “Okay, well, we’ll work it out.” “I’d love to speak to him. When can we speak? I’d love…” “We’ll work it out.” So, she writes this horrible story. And she said, she didn’t say that we have 24 million people at the debate, the biggest audience in the history of CNN, then Fox had the biggest audience in cable, I think they said. Right? Right? And by the way, it got bigger. Bigger that was the original – it’s called preliminary numbers. I know so much from The Apprentice. Oh, wasn’t that the greatest of all ratings? Was I the greatest? You know I have a big chunk of The Apprentice, I get a lot of the profits from The Apprentice. So, you can always tell the enemies.
I left, the head of Comcast, who is an amazing guy, Steve Burke, he came up to see me, along with the Head of Reality Television for NBC, Paul Telegdy, and they come up to my office – this is like six, seven months ago.
And they said, “We want you to extend. We want you. We’ll do anything. We want you to extend.” I mean Steve Burke doesn’t do that. He is one of the biggest executives. Comcast owns NBC. And he’s fantastic.
So, I said, “Steve, you know honestly, I think I’m going to run. I want to make our country great again. I think we’re going to run. I think.”
And, he said, “Well, I don’t know, but just in case.” So they had their up-fronts. That’s a big deal, you know usually it’s at the biggest place in Manhattan, it’s a big deal and they announce their fall schedule. So they announce that The Apprentice is going to be extended with Donald Trump. So I’ve done 14 seasons, it’s going to be Season 15, and they even want to go beyond that.
I say, “But I told you I’m probably going to run, you can’t do that.” Because if you run, they have stupid laws. It’s called equal time, so that if I do The Apprentice, as an example, you have to let other people, like let’s say Lindsey Graham do a two-hour show on television. I don’t think so, right? So you have equal time. So basically you’re precluded, essentially you’re precluded from the – so what happened is,
I said, “no, no, no.”
“Well we’re going to take a chance because we’re going to…” So they announce it. They sell all the advertising. It’s one of the easiest shows on television to sell. Big success, even after all these years. Twelve years, 15 copies, think of it, and now they extend, and I’m honored, and I get a call from Mark Burnett.
He said “I can’t believe it, you’re turning down an extension. Nobody, nobody turns down an extension.” I turned down an extension. I’m giving up a lot, believe me, to do this. I’m giving up a lot. And I’m, on top of it, on top of it, on top of it, I’m self-funding my own campaign. I’m putting up my own money. I’m the only one. So, it’s the amazing the response. I mean people love that, you know, because all these guys are totally controlled by the special interest and the lobbyist. Believe me. I’ve been there. I’ve been there. I was the one that used to give all the money. Now all of sudden, I went like this.
So with The Apprentice, so I turned it down and we, we get a story from a very dishonest paper. “Donald Trump Gets Fired From NBC by NBC.” Now think of it. Now they know it’s not true. And, in fact, I get a big chunk of the show. You now I have, I created it with Mark Burnett. And so, they said fired, and they said, “Trump, Trump Gets Fired by NBC.” And they know it’s not true, so they call up,
They say, “Yeah we knew, but it just, sounds better, it plays better, doesn’t?”
“Oh great.” They’re such dirty, rotten liars. It’s disgusting. So, so I gave up The Apprentice and then I said, “You know we had to put down in filing certified numbers.”
And they said, “Oh, well maybe Trump won’t run because that’s a big thing. So he’ll never announce.” So I announced.
Then they say, “He’ll never do Form A.” Form A is like where you sign your life away. Phil would never do it. He would never do it, too smart. You would never do this, Phil, believe me. You should, that’s the kind of guy we need, but he’s not going to do it. He’s happy, got a great family, got a great hotel, got lots of great things.
But, so they’ll say, “He’ll never file form A.” I filed form A.
Then they’ll say, “Oh, but he’ll never file his financials because maybe he’s not as rich as people think.” Okay, so I filed. By the way, I was one of the few that filed on time and I had almost 100 pages. These guys have one page. You know I work for some company. No, it’s true, and they were late. They needed extensions. And I filed on time. I wanted to file on time. I actually filed ahead of schedule. You are entitled to do 45-day extensions automatically, and I just filed. And they found that my company, and Phil would know, because he knows my company, is much bigger, much stronger, much better, much richer than they ever thought possible. They couldn’t believe it! So that’s done now.
So what I did, is I did this filing. And from the day I’ve done this, and my wife said to me, it’s very interesting, and Ivanka, has anyone ever heard of Ivanka? Yes, right? And Melania, they’re two great women, and you watch, they’re going to come out, they’re going to start campaigning pretty soon. And they’re going to be great. They believe so much and so strongly in the women’s health issues that Bush by the way didn’t want. I saw that, he didn’t want to fund them.
And Hilary puts on the vote, “Oh how dare he talk about.” She said she acted indignant could you imagine, here’s woman cheating the United States government for years with her emails. I mean they gave Petraeus a criminal record. He’s got a criminal record now, they destroyed five other people for doing about one-tenth of what she did, and I don’t now, I think she’s going to get a way with it. Can you believe it, can you believe it? No, I think she’s going to get away with it! They destroyed Petraeus, General Petraeus, good guy, they destroyed his life. What he did is 2 percent of what she did. So you tell me it’s fair. But I look forward to running against her because frankly that is going to be such a big issues, believe me, it’s going to be such a big issue. And don’t forget, I mean, she will fight very hard because she has to win, because the statute of limitations is six years. Do you know what that means? No, do you know what that means? There’s some guy up there that’s probably a lawyer, he’s laughing like hell. I mean if a Republican gets in, it’s got to be fair. But if a Republican gets in, you’re going to have to look at that, six years, so she’s fighting for her life. And, I think the Democrats are going to leave her alone because it’s a corrupt system, and we have a corrupt system. And I think they’re going to leave her along. But if a Republican gets in, I don’t say that she’s guilty, they have to check, but if a Republican gets in, we have a six-year statue of limitations, and I guarantee at least there will be a fair investigation to give it a look, so she’s really fighting. So she’s really for her life in a sense, and she’s, so she’s you know gotten, it’s very interesting and the same day,
She said, “I don’t like Donald Trump’s tone.” My tone. “I don’t like his tone.” And Bush said the same thing, and Rubio said it too. They said, “I don’t like Donald Trump’s tone.”
And I say, “Wait a minute. We need a tough tone, don’t we? Isn’t it time? Aren’t we tired?” We’re tired of these weak, pathetic, sad people that don’t have a clue, that won’t do anything. We are going to make the country better than it’s ever been before. We have a chance to do that.
So they said, so they said, “We don’t like Mr. Trump’s tone.” They want to low-key. Huh. Let’s fall asleep.
And China, you ever see China’s tone? They walk through the door, believe me I deal with them. They don’t talk about, “Oh isn’t a beautiful day Mr. Trump, the weather’s beautiful, the sky is so beautiful, look Mr. Trump, outside.” It’s all business. “We want to extend lease.” Right? There’s no games, there’s no small talk, there’s no small talk, how’s the weather outside, “Oh it’s raining, it’s not too bad, I’ll have to call my wife.” It’s all business with these people. And they hit you in waves. You know when I deal with China, and I love China. I love the people, they’re great. I love the Mexican people. They’re great. But I deal with China and they walk in with waves of people, smart people. I have so many…
He’s says, “Build a wall.” We’ll build, don’t worry and Mexico is going to pay, don’t worry. We’ll build a wall. No, I want people, but they have to come in legally we know that okay.
But, but I will tell you China they come in, and they negotiate and you’re sitting there by yourself and you got like 25 people across the table, and everyone of them is a genius. But if you’re good, you can take it, you can do, you can do deals that are unbelievable. So I ask my people last week.
I said, “Go back and tell me what is the trade imbalance with China.” And I was surprised, because it was so, I thought it was big, but I didn’t know it was this big. It’s almost $400 billion a year. Think of it. Essentially, that means we’re losing $400 billion. Now, it’s worse than that because they’ve devalued their currency so they’re taking our jobs, they’re taking our base, they’re taking our manufacturing, and then on top of it we them, think of this one, you know we owe, China is our larges creditor along with Japan, they’re actually exactly the same. We owe each of them $1.5 trillion.
So they steal our jobs, they steal our jobs, they take our money, we owe them money. How do you figure that one? No too good, right? All these geniuses in there for – not too good. I call it a magic act, it’s incredible. They take our money and we owe them money. It never ends. But we owe them $1.5 trillion. We owe total $19 trillion. We owe Japan $1.5 trillion.
Then I said. So I was in Los Angeles three weeks ago. I saw the biggest ships I’ve ever seen. The biggest and cars are pouring out these ships, they’re from Japan, like the Long Island Expressway. I never saw cars go so fast. They’re going 50 mile an hour off a ramp - vroom, vroom, vroom – it’s almost like the ramp, I don’t know if you saw it last week, it was a picture in one of the papers, the ramp they built, they have a wall that’s this big, a great wall, between the borders. Okay, they have a wall, and they built a ramp. Rather than tear down the wall. The wall was so small, they didn’t have to bother tearing it down, they just built a ramp and they have trucks going back and forth, and nobody’s doing anything. I mean how stupid are we? How stupid?
But China, so they owe, so we have, an imbalance with them, almost $400 billion a year. Now, if that’s the number you know it’s worse than that, right? Because when the government gives you numbers, like, they say 5.3 percent unemployment, the number is probably 32 percent I saw one report done by a pretty credible guy saying our unemployment rate is 42 percent because when you add back the 100 million people you’re right up to those numbers, but add back half of the 100, so we have a 20 percent, 25 percent unemployment rate. But this was done by politicians so that they look good. Because if you stop looking for a job, statistically you are considered that you have a job.
So then they say, “Oh unemployment is down. We’re down to 5.3.” We’re not down. Nobody has jobs. I mean I wouldn’t have caught on, to be honest, I wouldn’t have caught on, leading every pole, I wouldn’t have been catching on, I think if the economy were real, it’s not a real economy. It’s a phony set of numbers. They cook the books. Did you ever hear the expression? Right? They cook the books. The politicians cook the books.
So what happens is, I get the reports yesterday, and the reports are amazing. I love polls.
And somebody said, “He talks about polls and the other people don’t.” That’s because I’m winning. The other people are losing. It’s true. No, I saw it on television. No, no I saw it last night on television. Now there may be a time when I stop talking about polls, if I’m number two, or three, or four, five, or twelve. Some of these guys have nothing. They have zero out of 20,000 people. Then you get one vote, they have zero. How do you do that? To me, that’s more impressive than leading if you want to know the truth? No, it’s true.
So they said, I saw on television tonight, they said, “Oh, he talked about...,” because I was in Iowa yesterday. It was amazing. Packed. Packed. Overflow. Amazing people. Like you they want to see the country be strong. They want to see our Country. Amazing people. So, I was talking about the polls, and one of the reporters, who is actually here today, one those live people, and, barely, barely alive.
No, no, they said on television, “Mr. Trump talked about the polls.” Well the polls just came out.
And I thought to myself, “Maybe I do talk about polls too much.” And then I realized that I’ve been leading since I came out. Since I came out! And Melania, my wife, and my daughter said, “You know Dad, if you ever run you’re going to win.”
And I said, “Why do say that?”
They said, “It’s because nobody thinks you’re running, and if they poll you, nobody’s going to give you.” When they poll you, before I announced it, before I signed my life away. Because that’s what you do, you sign you’re life away. You know, it takes guts to run for office. Especially, especially if you’re not a politician. I never did this before folks. That’s why nobody understands what’s going on. These guys are governors, senators; these guys are all, and, and so here’s what happens, so Florida winning big, big, Florida! 28 – 29 percent.
Pennsylvania, big, big, great important state, anybody from Pennsylvania? We love Pennsylvania! I love Pennsylvania. I’m there a lot. Pennsylvania. I’m leading Big. Big.
Ohio, Ohio! So, the poll comes out and it’s…. which is a great company, great polling company, the real deal. And they just hate it, they just hate it. And I’m leading Ohio, and I’m beating a very nice guy, and good governor, named Kasich by a lot, Kasich is a good governor, he’s good guy, and he’s you know, I’m leading by a lot, and people say, “what’s going on,” you know, “what’s going on.” Then, they have a poll come out ****, which a great poll and I have 35 percent 35 percent, 35!
So we get, as I said highest rating in FOX, highest ratings in the history of CNN for these debates, the highest ratings, and by the way, all the polls, and they poll everything, oh I love these things, they poll who won the debate, every single poll, Time Magazine, Drudge, Slate, places I never even heard of, everyone said Trump! But, then I go, I turn on the television,
“Oh Donald had a bad night tonight.”
I’m saying, “What did I, I thought I won. I thought I won.”
And then they said, “Well you know…” First of all, just to show you, so CNN, I like CNN, they’re good guys. I think Jeff Zucker is a good guy. … I think Roger Ailes is great from Fox. Great guy. But, I tell you, I go home and I watch it and I say, "I'm going to watch myself on television. Who wouldn't do it?" Who wouldn't do it, right? We have to do it. So I say, "Oh, that was good." Then, I see the pundits coming. You know, these highly-paid guys that don't have a clue. They don't have a clue. And they say that they didn't like it. I was good in the first debate, but they say… Then they said, "Here's the beauty. For 28 minutes, I didn't say anything at the end. And then you faded in the end." I wasn't asked any questions. I wanted to say… They're so dishonest.
So here's what happens. So, for the first two hours, everything was me. It was either a question to me, right? These guys are honorable guys even though they all have suits. Stand up and take a bow. They're rich guys. These guys are loaded. That's why they're in the first row. Of course, I've always heard in the theater, fourth row is the best. We're going to teach you guys. Fourth row is actually… But, you know, so they went out and they do this thing on television and they hit me. And I'm saying, "I can't understand it." My daughter comes up. She says, "Dad, every single polling number says you won. They're all saying you won." And I just think… But, on the CNN debate, it was two hours, right? A two-hour debate. Now, they were supposed to get… No. No. It was two hours, and then they made it three hours. No, it was a two-hour debate when I got there. When I got there. Don't ruin my story! No, it was a two-hour debate. And then, about a day and a half or two days before, what happened is… It was in Variety. It was in Hollywood Reporter, which is a terrific group. They did a nice cover story on me. I like them… Janice.
But they did a story about rates. They took the rates from, in the case of Fox, I think in the case of CNN, from $4,000 for probably a 30-second ad, took $200,000. So it was a 4,000 percent increase. Now, Phil Ruffin's really perking up. And he is. That's your language, right? So they went from $4,000 to $200,000. And they sold out. So I get there and I didn't know this, because Cory and Hope and all my people, they didn't tell me this. They said, "It's a three-hour debate." Now, the room, the Reagan Library, nice place, but it wasn't meant for that many people. And it was about 100 degrees in there. It was pretty hot. I didn't care. I didn't care. But you had a couple of people on that stage that were seriously… They were melting. Right? They were melting. It was actually good for them. And it was actually good. They went home, they lost ten pounds. It was probably… It was probably good.
But they go out and I get there and I hear it's now a three-hour debate. I said, "That's a long time….” I really have no problem. Actually, I was always a good athlete. But I don't have a problem. But, you know what? Who the hell wants to watch a three-hour… Gone with the Wind is three hours, right? Gone with the… But they did it just to make money. Just to make money. So the first question was mine. Second question was mine. Third question, fourth question was to another guy. "Mr. Trump said you're a horrible human being; is that true?" Then they go, "Mrs. Fiorina, Mr. Trump doesn't like your face. What do you say? What do you say? How do you respond?" "Well, the world will watch." And then they say, "Oh, she debated so brilliantly." Give me a break. No, the entire thing, the entire thing was either a question to me or a question to the other candidates having to do with me. And I think they came out specifically 48 percent. Then, in the third hour, it got to be too obvious, because I am a ratings machine. Okay? It got to be too obvious. So, for 28 minutes, they didn't ask me a question. So here's the press, "He didn't do well in the final 28 hours. It's almost like he disappeared." They didn't ask me any questions, okay? It's so dishonest. So we have fun with it. We have fun with it. But I have fun what I'm doing. And I'll tell you what, we're making an impact like I never thought possible. Like I never thought possible.
I've seen great dishonesty in other ways too. Politics, you know, I always thought that real estate guys in New York and elsewhere are pretty tough cookies, right? A lot of real estate guys in the room I guess? But I always thought real estate guys are tough. Politics is a much dirtier business. So I get a call, this guy from Club for Growth. I've never even heard of it. But my people said, "Oh, see, you know, Club for Growth." What is Club for Growth? You know what it is? They're growing a wallet in their pocket. That's what it is. So Club for Growth, supposedly a conservative outfit. So a guy wants to see me. So he comes up to my office. We have a perfectly nice talk. He's telling me about Club for Growth, which is nice. And that was the end of it. He then sends me a letter, asks me if I'd make a $1 million contribution. Well, think of it. A $1 million… I said, "One million?" You know, I may be rich, but that's stupid, right? A million? A million dollars? So he wants a million dollars in a letter. He's stupid enough to put it in a letter. And he asked me for a million dollars. We told him and, obviously, how many in the room would say, "Oh, good. He was up in my office for a half hour or whatever it was, let's give him a million bucks." I just can't do that. I can't do it.
So what happens is, we say, very politely, "No." And we figured that's the end. All of a sudden, he comes out, has a news conference, goes vicious against me. "I'm not a conservative. I'm not this. I'm not that." I believe in eminent domain, which I don't believe. I said, "Sometimes the city has to use it to build a roadway, right? You know, every once in a while you have to build a road. Or you have to build a plant that's going to employee 5,000 people or something." I don't love it. But, I mean, sometimes you need it. You wouldn't have any roads. You wouldn't have any econ… I mean, sometimes you need it. And they did this ad. The good news was it had no impact. The pictures were so beautiful. I want to find… Where did they get them? I was like 20 years younger. I looked so handsome. I never knew I was that good looking in a suit. I looked so good. So they spent $2 million or a million dollars on advertisements all because I turned them down. That shows you how dishonest politics is though. Here they are, the come up, Club for Growth. I'll never forget the experience, because I was shocked. My people came in, "Oh, Club for Growth just had a news conference. They absolutely lambasted you." Oh, they also said, "He raises taxes." I just came out with a tax bill where I'm lowering far more than anybody else. In fact, so much so that the Wall Street Journal, which was bought for $5 billion dollars, and is now worth $500 million dollars, but they'll criticize me. They did an editorial. "It's too much." Now, you tell me, you buy something for $5 billion, it's now worth $500 million, maybe not that, and maybe a couple of bucks more. And then they write these nasty editorials about me. Can you believe this? Can you believe it?
So I get criticized. But, you know, one of the things I was criticized for is my tax break is too big. They think it's too big. And what I'm doing is taking care of the middle class. And, frankly… Because we've lost… We've lost the middle class. We've lost them. So then, they give you bad editorials all the time. And here's the good news, I've had the worst editorials in the Wall Street Journal. I have never heard one person say, "Gee, that was a bad editorial." Nobody cares. I don't think anybody cares. Do they read these things or not? I get these editorials. I say, "Oh, that's devastating." But they're criticizing also, [inaudible] other things. Well, there's a personal dislike. Has to be their personal dislike. But the amount of the tax reduction is massive. And it's going to put people to work. And people are going to be energized. And the middle class is going to come back.
You know, we have, and I put them in the same category, because people have forgotten about the middle class in this country. And that's what built… That's what built…. Middle-income people. That's what built the country. And you know who else they've forgotten about big time? Maybe even worse… The veterans. They've forgotten the veterans. They have totally forgotten the veterans. And I'll tell you what, if I get elected. Everyone says when, when… Don't say if. But, look, I'm running against… It was 17. No, it was 17. I seem to have one great power. If I could sell it, I'd be 100 times richer than I am. And I'm rich, you know? I'd be a hundred. And you know what the power is? So far, maybe, I have to knock on wood. But, so far, when people attack me, they get creamed. They go down. It's true. So I get attacked by Rick Perry. Governor of Texas, right? He attacks me viciously. He was a friend of mine. I got along with him great. Now, I'm leading again. I'm leading, practically from the time I got in. I think it's almost three months now. They say Michele Bachman, well, she led for a week. They say, Herman Cain, great guy, but he led for a week. They said, "Well, they were there." But I'm there for three months. [Inaudible] for like three months, right? That's a long time. It's a long time. But you get, never! Stand up! Stand up! Say it! You are right! Do we love this guy? We love him.
But if I win… Right. I like [inaudible]. But, again, you know what? You know what? When puts too much pressure on you. I always say to people, they say how do you react? Pressure is very interesting. Because I've seen people that are really smart that don't make it. I've seen people that are great athletes that don't make it. They put unforced pressure on themselves. If I say, if, there's much less pressure. Do you understand? Not win. Right? I am right? You know? Hey, I got a call from one of the biggest reporters, who actually I do have great respect for. One of the biggest. And, I don't know him at all. And he's from a major, major newspaper, whose name I already mentioned. And he said to me, he said to me, "Could I ask you one question?" He went, "How does it feel?" I said, "How does what feel?" He said, "You've done something that nobody else has ever done." He said… It's very interesting. I think I'm on 14 covers. I'm on more covers than any supermodel in history. Can you believe it? No, can you believe it? I mean, every magazine. By the way, People magazine. I love the people. I didn't love the picture. I don't know. They did something with my nose. They played around… It's true. I don't understand. I loved People magazine. I love the people at People magazine. The story was nice, but I didn't like what they did. They screwed around with… I said, "Just leave me alone." But Melania looked good. Barron looked good. I looked like hell. I have a feeling maybe they picked the picture. They might have picked it. I don't know. But I've been on… There it is. Come here. Let me have that. Come here…
So let me see this. (Woman comes on stage.) Where are you from? Colombia! And is this a setup? Did I ever meet you before? Huh? Thank you. [Inaudible]. I swear to you. I think she's totally beautiful and great. I never met her before, I swear. This all started with People magazine. So here's the story. So I loved the story. They couldn't have been nicer. Nice story, right? Couldn't be nicer. But I don't know what happened. They played with my nose. I don't want touching. I don't want touching. So I'm looking… Now, you'll tell me. How's my nose, right? Fine, right? Says it's beautiful. I have a wart on the end of my nose! Can you believe it? I said, "Oh, my… I don't have… Look, it's terrible." But, that's okay. Because they meant it well. I think they wanted to make me look like Cary Grant. Do we remember Cary Grant? And I've always wanted to look like Cary Grant. But, anyway, you are beautiful. Will you make sure she doesn't fall? Come here. Thank you very much. [Inaudible]. Thanks, you're beautiful. Thank you, darling. Thank you. Thank you, sweetheart. Thank you. Thank you. Be careful. That was… Great. That's so great. Never met her before. She's amazing. She is amazing. Thank you, hon. Appreciate it. But that's my relationship with Hispanics. That's why when they did… They did the poll in the state, in Nevada, and I led the… And nobody believes it. But that's my relationship. And, you know, in New York, we have a Hispanic station. And the MC of the station's a good guy. I don't know him. But I watched him interview on television and he goes, he's talking about Trump. "What about Trump? How bad is Trump? Is he a…" Well, he said, "I don't know. Every viewer that goes on, they all love him. They love him." All Hispanic. They love Trump. Because they know I'm going to do what's the right thing. I love the Hispanic people. I employ thousands of them. And they know I'm going to do what's right.
So, a couple of more things. I want to just talk about two things. So we have the Second Amendment. And they want to take your guys away. And we can't let it happen. We can't let it happen. And it's not going to happen. And I just put a policy paper. You know, the press wants me to put policy papers. Because, at the beginning, they said, "We agree he's leading in the polls. But he can't go much longer, 'cause he doesn't put policy papers out" you know? I guarantee my IQ is much higher than any of these people. Like my… My uncle was one of the great professors at MIT. I mean, believe me it’s good genes, we believe in genes right? We’re allowed to say that?
So anyway, but I don’t put…So I decide I’ll put policy. So I put policy out in texts, I put policy out on immigration, I put policy out on the Second Amendment. Which is basically, you are allowed to protect yourself, okay, you read it, and I said, they said don’t you think it’s important to start talking about policy? I said I have. I said it’s only important for you, it’s not important for the people. Because they know I’m going to do the right thing, and they know my stance, and they know my stance. But now we’re keeping the press happy. They’re all saying, “Oh he’s actually very policy oriented,” because I put in a 14 page paper.
But in the end it’s all very simple and I will say this. I love being here with you. I loved yesterday my trip to Iowa. I loved the other day my trip to… I was in New Hampshire I was in South Carolina I am all the time….somebody said, “Are you doing deals?” A deal came over my desk last week, because I’m running a business. But more and more I’m giving it to my kids to run and they are good, and I have great executives. Because I can’t be doing this all the time right? But I have to. Because we want to win. We want to win, and deals come across my desk that are great deals, and I say I don’t want it, I don’t want to focus on the deal, it’s just not important any more. You know, it’s not important to me any more. What’s important is turning our country around. It’s so important.
What’s important to me, is, and I’ve been saying it over the last couple of weeks, and I’ve never said much before that. I can’t even remember having said it before that. So one of the networks today said I’ve trademarked the expression, “Make America Great Again,” can you imagine? Who else is sick enough to trademark? Who would think of it? Because I had a couple of candidates, I had a couple of candidates using it. They see I go and I say, “Make America Great Again,” everyone stands and they go crazy. So they started using it, but the response isn’t the same. They go, “Oh great”, because they don’t believe them, their politicians.
Their politicians, and you know, I was going to tell you before that… so all these guys that came out. They’re all friends of mine, but then they came out viciously against me, viciously – it’s a horrible business actually. Or profession or whatever the hell you call it. It’s horrible! So Perry came out and he went from five to zero, and he left.
Walker, he was a friend of mine, he was up in my office a year ago, gave me a plaque because I supported him. They are professionals you support somebody you get a plaque. Okay, I get a lot of plaques. Bing! You know what I do? I use them to put pictures of my family in there. But he came up and he gave me a plaque, and he thanked me very much, and he was so nice, and then one of his guys came out and said bad things about me. Like I said, “Well is that really?” yeah, said, “Bad, Trump’s bad – he’s a bad guy”! I said, “Oh, thank you,” and then I hit Walker very hard, and he was supposed to win. Do you remember? He was favored to win. They said, “Governor of Wisconsin,” while I gave the real numbers, and I saw a magazine. It was a puff piece on him, but in one paragraph, it said, “big deficits, big strife, schools are in trouble, roads are in trouble.” I said, “I didn’t know this, I thought it was all good.” So I just gave those facts in Iowa standing in Iowa, big news conference, and he got wiped out, and then he left. Now when he left it was nasty he said, “Everybody has to leave, and leave one person to take on Trump. We’ve got to beat Trump!” Can you believe that? I just want to do the right thing, and then we have….now think of it, and then we have Lindsey Graham, no, he was always nice. He called me, he wanted a reference on something, and then he wanted campaign contributions, and he left me his number. He gave me his phone number, his cell number, and this was like three years ago. It’s true! I don’t know why, I found it! I just have a whole pile of junk I call that junk, see? That’s junk stuff that will never be used again. All of a sudden I found his phone number, and I had a news conference, and I held up his number. Here it is, and they said, “Read it out!” Probably the press said that because you know the press. I read it out, and then I read it out a second time, and it destroyed… his phone blew up. It blew up. It was all over town. But he was a nice guy and he wanted contributions and he wanted support and all that, and that was fine, and you know in my previous life… You know I have two lives right? That previous life, I have my non-politician, the last little, I’m politician. But I gave him, I gave him a hard time. He went from 3…I only counter…you know I’m a counter puncher. I don’t start these things. Everyone says he’s a bad person, he’s mean! I’m not mean. I get hit by these people. So he goes out hit me! Right! Look at her with that beautiful red hair. Look at her, stand up with that hair! Oh I wish I had that hair! Looks good!
Okay, so he hits me really hard. He’s at like 2 or 3 percent, and I’m in the 20’s and 30’s and he hits the hell out of me. I said, Wow! The guy wanted like a campaign…he was a nice guy what happened? He goes down to…he’s at zero. Now they asked him the other day, “Will you leave?” “I will never leave, I…if I won”! Just leave! It’s not working.
Oh and then they have the poll in South Carolina. Now here’s this Senator from South Carolina, and I’m at 29 or 32 I think, something like that, and he’s at three! Right? So something’s wrong! He’s probably not going to run for office again. Honestly I think these guys have been mortally wounded! I don’t even think they can go back into that group.
And then we have Rand Paul, Rand Paul…but he was another one. He was expected to win, and then he goes around before the last debate, and he’s telling everybody, “I’m going to attack Trump! He’s not a true conservative!” People are saying, “Yeah but I like his ideas, I mean you know…and I am…I’m a conservative guy, and he’s vicious! He’s a vicious guy! He’s a vicious little guy, and I say, “Rand, easy, cool it, chill, just take it easy!” But he’s had news conferences telling everybody what a bad guy I….now he was another one who was expected to win. Now in the meantime, he’s running in Kentucky and he’s running here, and I have great respect for the people of Kentucky. I love that state, I love the people. But what are they? Second class citizens? Why is he running here and running there? I mean pick your place! But he’s running here running there. So, and I told that, and I think it’s unfair for the people of Kentucky. I don’t know. How do you do that? How do you do it? So he starts getting really, really vicious. I mean every time I see him. The things he was saying. I won’t even say them because eh! I’ll say it, no…I won’t even say it! So what happens is…then he said “I will get him in the debate!” I mean you will…is this right? I’m going to get him in the debate! I’m gong to go after him, he’s not going to have a chance! I’m going to do numbers on him that are unbelievable. So my first question, I attacked him. I mean, after that, he was perfectly nice. In fact, he backed me up twice! He backed me up! He was perfectly nice. So this is sort of a crazy thing.
Jeb Bush, he was doing great. No? Well he’s a nice guy. But he was doing great, but I immediately… you know, when I think of the President I think of somebody… you need somebody with tremendous drive, tremendous energy, and really up here big **** right, and I didn’t see the fire in Jeb. Low Energy! Stand up – what was the expression? Low energy he said. I don’t know what… you know sometimes you’ll say something about somebody, and it sticks, it just like sticks?
Sometimes you’ll say, like I called Rubio a lightweight. I don’t know that might stick, it might not stick, I don’t know. To me…water, yeah water. Remember the response on live television to the President’s State of the Union speech? So they pick him because he’s the young rising star, and he’s talking, and he’s sweating, sweating, and I’m watching I’m saying, “Is he going to be okay?” And he’s sweating, and he keeps sweating, and the water’s pouring down all over, and finally he goes, [motions] and I said, was that live television? But I called him a lightweight, and you know, he may be a nice guy. I really don’t know him. I really don’t. But, you know, he attacked me viciously, and Bush attacked me viciously. As viciously as he could be, which isn’t really that vicious. Because he’s a nice person, and I said, “He’s a low energy individual”, and somehow that one stuck. I don’t know if lightweight is going to stick with Rubio.
Then, you know, then I attacked Carly’s record. Because her record running a business is a disaster. She was named to the CEO Hall of Fame as one of the worst in the history of the country. Right? But she’s got that good pitter patter, but but but but but like a machine gun lalalala, but I said if you listen for 10 minutes you get a headache. You get a headache! You get a headache! And then…it’s funny…boy the press loves her, they love her. I see these polls where I’m at 29, she’s at 6 and they’re saying, here’s the headline, “Carly is surging!” I’m at 29…surging. I mean honestly she’s surging.
And Ben I like. Because Ben said something very nasty to me. I do, I like him. He said something really nasty, remember, about my faith? I’m a religious person. I’m protestant, can you believe it I’m protestant. I’m Presbyterian, I’m religious, and Ben hit me on my faith. I was all set to go after him, and then he took it back, and I can’t, I can’t do that. He took it back, I was all set, I was disappointed that he took it back. I didn’t want him to take it back. No I didn’t want him to take it back, I was all set to go! And I couldn’t do it! Because he stood up and he said, “No, the press tricked me into saying something that I didn’t mean, and I’m taking it back”, and I said, “that’s cool, that’s really nice.” I thought it was nice. Please say something bad about me Ben, please! In fact, yesterday I stuck up for him, because the press killed him. You know the press was saying…he made a statement essentially that if there were some maniac over there shooting people, he’d charge. Okay. They said, “Oh that’s terrible, that’s disrespectful to the people that were killed,” and I didn’t see it that way and I said, “I think he was treated unfairly by the press”, and it became a big story, that I stuck up…so I actually stuck up for him. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that…you know I don’t do that. I don’t do it.
So, I just want to tell you. We’re going to bring jobs back to this country….We’re going to have Carl Icahn, on of the great business people of all time, Phil can tell you. We’re going to have Phil, we’re going to have the smartest, the best, negotiators in the world, and I know most of them and believe me I know people you’ve never heard of who are better than the ones you did hear of. We’re going to have people…it’s not going to be because they gave me campaign contributions, because I turned down millions. I feel so foolish, I feel so foolish. You know, my whole thing in life has been accumulation, right? Now these guys come up…one guy wants to give $5 million dollars to my campaign. He’s a lobbyist. Wants to give a fortune. I don’t want it. I feel like a jerk. I said no, I don’t. And I go like….now I do it very weakly, because I’m self funding. I don’t even know…do people in this room know that I’m self funding?
So we’re going to bring back our jobs. We’re going to negotiate great trade packs. This last trade deal is a disaster. By the way, Hilary came out, you know, she came out… the same thing I’ve been saying for five months. I took a commercial saying the trade deal was no good. The one that they’re…it’s no good. Eleven countries, they’re ripping off the Unites States, they’re taking our jobs, and China is not part of it. They’re going to come in the back door, they’re going to make a great deal. They always make a great deal with us, because we’re stupid. Okay? We’re led by very stupid people.
So Hillary, Hillary came out against it. Now Obama wants it…Hillary came out against the President. Be careful, Hillary. You may be indicted. Be careful, be careful. That’s very dangerous for her to do. I give her credit. But the reason she did is that she thinks that someday she is going to be debating me about this trade deal as one of the things. I already have the pipeline which I love that debate, okay. Whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent it’s a lot of jobs. Not going to hurt anybody, environmentally nothing. It’s not going to have any impact. And she made a mistake. But I love that. But she changed her mind yesterday on the trade deal. You saw that. And I’m telling you, Obama is angry at her. This could be the end on the emails. This could finally be the end. She could end up like General Petraeus, seriously. This could be another—this could be the beginning of the end. But I want to run against her. I really do. I want to run against her. So, I don’t want to run against Bernie. It’s too easy, right? Bernie? Some people say communist, some people say socialist, I don’t know. I have always wanted to run against a socialist/perhaps communist, right? In this country I don’t think it plays. I don’t think. But we’re going to take our jobs back. We are going to make our military so strong, so powerful that nobody is going to mess with us. And we will not have to use it, in my opinion. But nobody, nobody is going to mess with us. As part of that we are going to make our vets the cherished people that they should be. They are cherished, special, special people. Our wounded warriors, our vets, they are going to be taken care of properly. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them.
We’re going to come up with a healthcare program that’s going to be unbelievable. Your premiums will not be rising 55 percent like they are doing now. We’re going to terminate Obamacare. We’re going to come up with a plan that is so good and works and everybody is going to be taken care of, but we’re going to come up with a plan that works. So just remember you look at your neighbor, you look at the people that you are sitting next to, because this is more than just a group of people listening to a speech. If you came here and listened to other candidates you would have ten rows in the front and you’d have a nice little chat and everybody would walk home and they would be bored stiff and they would say, boy, was that boring. This is a movement. This is a movement what is going on. This is a movement. This is a movement to take our country back….
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