Donald Trump uttered the first inaccurate claim about two minutes in and a few minutes later, ticked off at least four hyperbolic claims about his own accomplishments.
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By Linda Qiu
Nov. 16, 2022, 8:16 p.m. ET
Trump’s Announcement of His 2024 Run
Highlighted passages are false or inaccurate. Highlighted passages are false or inaccurate.
Thank you very much and on behalf of Melania, myself and our entire family, I want to thank you all for being here tonight. It’s a very special occasion at a very special place. You and all of those watching are the heart and soul of this incredible movement, the greatest country in the history of the world. It’s very simple. There’s never been anything like it, this great movement of ours. Never been anything like it, And perhaps there will never be anything like it again. There’s never been anything to compete with what we have all done.
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, and my fellow citizens, America’s comeback starts right now — America’s comeback starts right now.
Two years ago, when I left office, the United States stood ready for its golden age. Our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and prestige, towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies and striding into the future confident and so strong.
In four short years, everybody was doing great: men, women, African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, everybody was thriving like never before.
There was never a time like this. We turned the page on decades of globalists, sellouts and one-sided trade deals. Lifted millions out of poverty and together we built the greatest economy in the history of the world. When the virus hit our shores, I took decisive action and saved lives and the U.S. economy. And by October of the same year, America was roaring back with the No. 1 fastest economic recovery ever recorded. How about that?
All of the incoming administration and all they had to do was just sit back and watch. Inflation was nonexistent. Our southern border was by far the strongest ever. And because the border was so tight, drugs were coming into our country at the lowest level in many, many years. Importantly, after decades of rising energy costs, the United States had finally obtained the impossible dream of American energy independence, which soon would have turned into energy dominance.
For the first time in memory, China was reeling and back on its heels. I had never seen that before, because the United States was outdoing them on every single front and China was paying billions and billions of dollars on taxes and tariffs. The farmers know that because they got 28 billion of it. No president had ever sought or received one dollar for our country from China until I came along and we were getting hundreds of billions of dollars. Many people think that because of this, China played a very active role in the 2020 election. Just saying. Just saying. I am sure that didn’t happen. Instead of jobs in factories leaving America for China, they were for the first time ever leaving China for America.
Businesses were pouring back because of our historic tax and regulation cuts, the biggest in both categories in history, bigger even than what Ronald Reagan was able to produce, and he produced a lot. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea were in check. Respected. They respected the United States. And quite honestly, they respected me. I knew them well. I knew them well.
The vicious ISIS caliphate, which no president was able to conquer, was decimated by me and our great warriors. In less than three weeks, al-Baghdadi, its founder, was hunted down and killed. North Korea had not launched a single long-range missile since my summit with chairman Kim Jong-un, nearly three years before we developed a relationship. And that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. It’s a good thing. Very good thing, actually. Because look at what is happening today. My opponents made me out to be a warmonger and just a terrible person who would immediately go into war. They said during the 2016 campaign that if he becomes president, there will never be a war within weeks. We will have wars like you’ve never seen before. It will happen immediately. And yet, I have gone decades, decades, without a war. The first president to do it for that long a period.
The world was at peace, America was prospering, and our country was on track for an amazing future, because I made big promises to the American people, and unlike other presidents, I kept my promises. I kept them.
Thank you very much. Under our leadership, we were a great and glorious nation, something you haven’t heard for quite a long period of time. We were a strong nation and importantly, we were a free nation. But now we are a nation in decline. We are a failing nation. For millions of Americans, the past two years under Joe Biden have been a time of pain, hardship, anxiety and despair. As we speak, inflation is the highest in over 50 years. Gas prices have reached the highest levels in history and expect them to go much higher, now that the strategic national reserves, which I filled up, have been virtually drained in order to keep gasoline prices lower, just prior to the election. Joe Biden has intentionally surrendered our energy independence. There is no longer even a thought of dominance, and we are now begging for energy help from foreign nations, many of whom find us detestable. Our southern border has been erased and our country is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people, many of whom are entering for a very bad and sinister reason.
And you know what that reason is. We will be paying a big price for this invasion in our country for years to come. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of deadly drugs, including very lethal fentanyl, are flooding across the now open and totally porous southern border. The bloodsoaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes, which are being watched all over the world, as leadership of other countries explain that this is what America and democracy is really all about. How sad. The United States has been embarrassed, humiliated and weakened for all to see. The disasters in Afghanistan, perhaps the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, where we lost lives, left Americans behind, and surrendered $85 billion worth of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world.
And Ukraine, which would have never happened if I were your president – are something —
And even the Democrats admit that. That’s something I have seen them admit over and over again. But our enemies are speaking of us with scorn and laughter and derision because of those two events. But there are many more, even just today, a missile was sent in probably by Russia, to Poland, 50 miles into Poland. And people are going absolutely wild and crazy and they are not happy. They are very, very angry.
Now we have a president who falls asleep at global conferences. Was held in contempt by the British Parliament over Afghanistan. Thanks to the words of wisdom, he said thank you to the wrong country for inviting him to a major summit on the environment, of all things.
They fly for days to get there and then he calls the country a name that was actually a country on another continent. He is leading us to the brink of nuclear war, a concept unimaginable just two short years ago. You cannot mention the nuclear word. It is too devastating. The Green New Deal and the environment, which they say may affect us in 300 years is all that is talked about. And yet nuclear weapons, which would destroy the world immediately, are never even discussed as a major threat. Can you imagine? They say the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years. But don’t worry about nuclear weapons that can take out entire countries with one shot. Something is wrong with their thinking. Under Biden and the radical Democrats, America has been mocked, derided and brought to its knees, perhaps like never before.
But we are here tonight to declare that it does not have to be this way. It does not have to be this way.
Two years ago, we were a great nation and soon, we will be a great nation again.
The decline of America is being forced upon us by Biden and the radical left lunatics running our government right into the ground. This decline is not a fate we must accept. When given the choice, boldly, clearly and directly, I believe the American people will overwhelmingly reject the left’s platform of national ruin. And they will embrace our platform of national greatness and glory to America, glory.
Exactly one week ago, our citizens voted in the important midterm elections. Despite a ridiculously long and unnecessary period of waiting, far longer in fact than any third-world country, just a short time ago, the Republicans won back control of the House of Representatives.
And it was with a great Trump-endorsed candidate, Congressman-elect Kevin Kiley, who was a fantastic person, a fantastic person.
And I am very happy it was his vote that did it. So we now won back — this happened just an hour ago. Much criticism is being placed on the fact that the Republican Party should have done better. And frankly, much of this blame is correct. But the citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through. And the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold. They don’t quite feel it yet, but they will very soon. I have no doubt that by 2024, it will sadly be much worse and they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country and the voting will be much different. 2024.
Are you getting ready?
And I am, too. I am, too. I do want to point out that in the midterms, my endorsement success rate was 232 wins and only 22 losses. You don’t hear that from the media.
This is an elegant night and an elegant press place. And I am not going to use the term “fake news media.” So we are going to keep it very elegant, but you don’t hear that from the media. But I think you will because people are starting to see what happened.
That score, in the primaries, it was 98.6 percent. But they were still trying to blame me. And the reason for the success and that unprecedented success rate is that the Trump administration changed our nation on trade, on securing the border with the strongest safest border ever in the history of our country, on Islamic terrorism, we had practically just about, not that I can think of, no Islamic attacks, terrorist attacks during the Trump administration. In fact, we got along well with the various countries.
Including coming up with the Abraham accords. It’s a great thing. But it is because of cutting taxes and regulations at the highest level ever and building the greatest economy. Any time in the history of the world, there has never been an economy like we had just two years ago. Despite the outcome in the Senate, we cannot lose hope and we must all work very hard for a gentleman and a great person named Herschel Walker, a fabulous human being, who loves our country and will be a great United States senator. Herschel Walker.
Get out and vote for Herschel. He deserves it. He was an incredible athlete. He’ll be an even better senator. Get out and vote for Herschel Walker. We elected a group of incredibly talented America First leaders who will be stars of our party for many years to come. In the popular vote, another thing that’s not discussed for the House, we must remember that Republicans won five million more votes, the largest margin in many, many years over the Democrats, five million more votes. That’s a big thing. Breaking the radical Democrats’ grip on Congress was crucial. So in other words, because of our great congressman and all of our great congressmen and congresswomen, we have taken over Congress. Nancy Pelosi has been fired.
I told them, I said, “If you just keep a little bit lower standard, you are going to have a big victory.” They said let’s win by 40 seats, let’s win by 50. I said, “If you win by two seats, be happy.” But she’s on her way to another country right now. She’s been fired.
But we always had known that this was not the end. It was only the beginning of our fight to rescue the American dream. And it’s a word you don’t use, it’s two words, I don’t want to be Joe. It’s two words: American dream. That was not good what he did, a lot of bad things. Like going to Idaho and saying welcome to the state of Florida, I really love it. In order to make America great and glorious again, I am tonight announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.
Thank you, all of you. So many incredible friends and family here tonight. It’s such a beautiful thing. Some people say, “How do you speak before so many people all the time?” When there is love in the room, it is really easy. You ought to try it sometime. Together, we will be taking on the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests imaginable. Our country is in a horrible state. We are in grave trouble. This is not a task for a politician or conventional candidate. This is a task for a great movement that embodies the courage, confidence and the spirit of the American people. This is a movement, this is not for any one individual. This is a job for tens of millions of proud people working together from all across the land and from all walks of life: young and old, Black and white, Hispanic and Asian, many of whom we have brought together for the very, very first time.
If you look at the numbers, if you look at what’s happened with Hispanic, with African American, with Asian, just look at what’s happening, this is a party that has become much bigger, much stronger, much more powerful, can do much more good for our country. This is a job for grandmothers and construction workers, firefighters, builders, teachers, doctors and farmers who cannot stay quiet any longer. You cannot stay quiet any longer. You’re angry about what is happening to our country. Our country is being destroyed before your very eyes.
It’s a job for every aspiring young person and every hard-working parent, for every entrepreneur and underappreciated police officer who was ready to shout for safety in America. The police are being treated so badly. These are great people that can straighten out the crime. They are the ones who know how to do it. We have to give them back their respect and dignity.
This will not be my campaign. This will be our campaign, all together.
Because the only force strong enough to defeat the massive corruption we are up against is you, the American people. It’s true. The American people, the greatest people on earth. We love them all, we love both sides. We are going to bring people together. We are going to unify people. And it was happening in the previous administration, and what was bringing them together was success. Prior to Covid coming in, the people were calling me, that were calling me, you wouldn’t believe it. People that were so far left, I figured they would never speak to me and I would never speak to them, but our success was so incredible, like never before. And then Covid started coming in from China. We call it the China virus. Some people call it other things. But it was devastating, and we built it back and did an incredible job. But when people say Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives, I say we can get together. And we were doing that. That was happening just prior.
Because the success was greater than this country has ever had. We were leapfrogging China and leapfrogging everyone else and everyone wanted a piece of it. But just as I promised in 2016, I am your voice. I am your voice.
The Washington establishment wants to silence us, but we will not let them do that. What we have built together over the past six years is the greatest movement in history because it is not about politics, it’s about our love for this great country, America. And we’re not going to let it fail. I am running because I believe the world has not yet seen the true glory of what this nation can be. We have not reached that pinnacle, believe it or not. In fact, we can go very far.
We’re going to have to go far. First we have to get out of this ditch. Once we are out, you will see things that nobody has imagined for any country. It’s called the United States of America. It’s an incredible place.
We are Americans, and we do not have to endure what has taken place in Washington, D.C. This is our country, our government. And the corridors of power, they are our corridors. They are not their corridors, these are our corridors. We are coming to take those corridors back.
From now on until Election Day in 2024 — which will come very quickly, we will go, “Look at how time flies. Look at how fast it is all going,” — I will fight like no one has ever fought before. We will defeat the radical left Democrats that are trying to destroy our country from within. And likewise protect us all, we want to protect us. We have to be protected from all of those nations out there that are looking to destroy us from beyond our shores. There are lots of nations that hate us, gravely. And that’s the problem.
When they look at us in disarray like we are now, when we go to them begging for oil and we have more liquid gold under our feet than they have, or any other nation has, and we don’t use it because we’re going to them? It’s crazy what is happening. We can’t let it continue. Joe Biden is the face of left-wing failure and Washington corruption.
He had a big G20 dinner tonight. Everyone flew over to wherever they flew over. And guess what? He never showed up. They’re still looking for him. What’s going on?
G20, I used to love that. The leaders, I used to make deals for our country like you wouldn’t believe. It was one, give me the next one, give me the next one. We got them to stop taking advantage of our country. Every nation took advantage of our country. We renegotiated deals with Mexico and Canada, USMCA, we got rid of the worst trade deal ever made. Ever made. NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made. That is why the farmers love Trump. Because we did a great job. The manufacturers also. We did a deal, we restructured our terrible deal – terrible deal – with Japan. I did it with Prime Minister Abe, a great man, who, unfortunately, it’s so sad, he was a great friend of mine, great man, loved his country so much. We restructured and made it a really terrific deal. With South Korea and other countries.
The best of all is what we did with China. We made an incredible deal. But after Covid, I don’t even bother talking about it, because the devastation that it caused the entire world was too much to bear. I will ensure that Joe Biden does not receive four more years in 2020. Can’t do it.
Our country could not take that. I say that not in laughter, I say that in tears. Our country could not take four more years. It can only take so much. It’s all very fragile to start off with. It can only take so much. In 2020, I received the largest number of votes of any sitting president in history. By a lot. And we will do it again, but with even more votes this time.
Many have noted the huge gains we have made with Latino voters. And I believe we will set even greater records with this crucial vote in 2024.
The Hispanic voter, the Latino voter, has been unbelievable. Great people. Very entrepreneurial people. And they want security. Everyone thought when I did the wall, when I built the wall, they thought it would hurt me with the Hispanic vote. No, it helped me because they understood. They wanted safety. They wanted security. They understood the border better than anybody else. So they were amazed that we started that trend and now we are continuing with that trend. Look at what we have done in Florida and what everybody is now doing in Florida. In Texas, along the border in Texas, won every single community. I won every single community.
The governor of Texas called, great gentlemen just got re-elected. He said to me, “I would like to talk to you for a second. I said you’ve done something no one else has done. You’ve won every single area along the border. The longest since Reconstruction.” I said, “Reconstruction? I guess you call that the Civil War.” That’s what I call it. That’s what I call it.
Governor Abbott, very good man. It’s horrible because what is happening is they are sending hundreds of thousands of people right through his state, right through Arizona, right through all of the states. What is happening is they are coming up all of the states. And we can’t have it anymore. This campaign will be about issues, vision and success and we will not stop. We will not quit until we achieve the highest goals and make our country greater than it has ever been before. We can do that. We can do it.
Our victory will be built upon big ideas, bold ambitions and daring dreams for America’s future. We need daring dreams, it is not enough merely to complain or oppose. We don’t want to be critics, we don’t want to be complainers. I never wanted to be a critic. I never respected critics. They tell people what is wrong but they can’t do it themselves. We will win, because we will fight with every measure of our strength, with every ounce of our energy, to lift up the working men and the working women of America and restore the fabric of this nation. The radical left Democrats have embraced an extreme ideology of government domination and control. Our approach is the opposite: one based on freedom, values, individual responsibility, and just plain common sense. It’s common sense.
In two years, the Biden administration has destroyed the U.S. economy. Just destroyed it. With victory, we will again build the greatest economy ever. It’ll take place quickly. We will build the greatest economy ever. And if you remember, I did it twice. I did it before Covid and handed off something where the stock market was higher than just prior to Covid coming in.
And we did it twice and we will do it again, but this time we will do it bigger, stronger, better than anybody could ever imagine.
One of the beautiful things of the polls, if there is such a thing, a beautiful thing, one of the important factors of the polls, is that we see how bad they’ve done. We will be able to do it properly and it will be much easier. Everybody will agree with us because everybody sees what a bad job that has been done during this two-year period and it will be a four-year period. Everybody sees that. It will be much easier for us to do what has to be done.
We will immediately tackle inflation and bring down to a level that it was. You know we were at zero, but actually the best number is 1 percent, you know that. You don’t want it really zero. But we were at zero. We got to exactly 1 percent, the perfect number, one thing every economist agrees, don’t have it at zero, have it at, like, 1 percent. They even say 1 to 2. But I said, “Listen, do 1.” We had it at 1 percent and we had it there for a long period of time. And we had the value of the dollar, we had it so that this country could make a lot of money. And I fought other countries where they devalued their dollar, they devalued their currency. Whether it was the pound, whether it was the yuan or the yen. And I used to fight like cats and dogs with the leaders of other countries because they were stealing from us when they did that, they had artificial devaluations of their currency. It’s a very important thing. I haven’t even heard it mentioned in two years. It’s a very important thing. It’s very hard for us to compete when they do that artificially. They had to pay a big price when they did it. They never really did it for very long. I said we’re not going to do business with you any more as a country. They believed me. They let it go back up.
Instead of putting America last, as the Biden administration has done very, very openly and bravely, because I can’t imagine saying, “Let’s put America last” — I think it takes courage – we will again put America first. Every policy.
Thank you very much. We do love our country. That’s why we are here. I didn’t need this. I had a very nice, easy life. This is something I didn’t need. A lot of you people don’t need either. But we love our country, we have to take care of our country, we have to save our country.
Every policy must be geared toward that which supports the American worker, the American family and businesses, both large and small, and allows our country to compete with other nations on a very level playing field, which we never had until I came along and the Trump administration came along. And now we are losing it. They are moving back into China, they are moving back into other countries. It’s horrible. That means low taxes, low regulations and fair trade. Much of which I’ve already completed, but now will even greatly enhance.
Other countries should pay for the privilege of coming into the American marketplace. They have to pay to come into our country and make all of that money, take it away from us. Thanks to the Trump administration, still the best and biggest country in the world is what we have. We have the best and biggest. If you remember, for many years, you can look in your projection books, China was going to take over from us as the largest economy in the world in 2018 or 2019. I said I don’t like that timing.
I was with President Xi, who is now president for life. I call him king. He said “No, no, I am not the king.” I said, “Yes, you are the king, you’re president for life, that’s the same thing.”
But I said, “President, President, you can’t do these things.” Remember they had China 25? That means China was going to take over virtually the whole world economy by ‘25. I said that’s not a nice sign, I don’t want that sign. They took it down, they took down the whole slogan. It will probably be coming back in the near future. But I found it very insulting. I said, “I find that very insulting.”
On Day 1, we will end Joe Biden’s war on American energy. You will see when that happens, you will see energy costs come down. Because energy is so big and important, you will see inflation dropping, dropping, dropping. You will see it come down. It’s a thing of beauty. You wouldn’t think it’s that complicated. What has been complicated a little bit is what has happened with so many other things, I believe originally started by this energy disaster. We were $1.87 for gasoline, now it is hitting $5, $6, $7 and even $8 and it’s going to go really bad. The socialist disaster known as the Green New Deal, which is destroying our country, and the many crippling regulations that it has spawned, will be immediately terminated so our country can again breathe and grow and thrive like it should.
It’s very very much hurting our country. Germany tried it.You know, Germany tried it. They were up for about a year. Remember, I said to Angela, do you remember Angela? Do you remember Angela? Nobody is remembering her now. Angela Merkel. I sent her a white flag of surrender. She said, “But why do you send this to me, Donald?” I said, “Angela, I sent it to you because this is a flag of surrender, you’re getting 78 percent of your energy from Russia.” When that happens, history has proven that it’s not good for Germany. Just take a look over the last 150 years, it hasn’t been good.
What I didn’t know is it would take place so fast. Germany closed, as you know, all of its coal plants, all of its nuclear power plants, they closed everything. Now they’re building coal plants and they’re building them fast. China’s building a coal plant every week. Every week, they open up another. They talk about all of the things that they do environmentally. They are watching us die with the Green New Deal, with our windmills and solar that doesn’t have the power to fire up our great factories and great plants. They are watching us die and they are laughing as it happens. Remember, economic security is national security. That’s what it is. We need economic security.
That is why we will launch an all-out campaign to eliminate America’s dependence on China. We will bring our supply chains, which are a disaster right now, you can’t get anything, and good luck getting a turkey for Thanksgiving. No. 1, won’t get it, and if you do, you will pay three to four times more than you paid last year. We will bring our supply chains and manufacturing base back home, as we were strongly doing during the Trump administration. We will systematically bring back health, wealth and success to the American middle class and to America itself.
Please, sit down.
I feel so guilty having you stand. You’ve been standing for the whole event. I feel very guilty. I don’t want that to happen.
To every worker and family struggling to survive in the Biden economy with inflation destroying your family and your life, this campaign will be for you. Help is on the way. Joe Biden has abolished America’s borders. We are going to restore and secure America’s borders just like we had them before. Best ever. We built the wall and now we will add to it. Now we built the wall, we completed the wall and then we said, “Let’s do more,” and we did a lot more. And as we were doing it, we had an election that came up. And when they came in, they had three more weeks to complete the additions to the wall, which would have been great. And they said, no, no, we are not going to do that. That is when I realized that they actually want to have this disaster known as open borders. Hard to believe, isn’t it.
But one of the reasons we had so much success at the border was because of the fact that — two things. We got Mexico to give us free of charge 28,000 soldiers. That helps. The president of Mexico is a great gentleman by the way, a socialist but that is OK. You can’t have everything. But he is a great man and a great friend of mine. Twenty-eight thousand soldiers while we were building the wall. And then when the wall was finished, that’s how we set all these records, we have records that no one can even compete with right now. It’s a disaster. I believe it’s 10 million people coming in, not three or four million people, they’re pouring into our country. We have no idea who they are and where they come from. We have no idea what’s happening to our country. We are being poisoned. Within moments of my inauguration, catch and release will be gone forever. Remain in Mexico —
— Remain in Mexico, which was so important. Everybody came in here and they remained here and never left. If you couldn’t get them, you couldn’t find them. I had a policy, remain in Mexico. And if you think it was easy for me to get the president of Mexico to agree to that, it wasn’t but we got it. And they terminated it. Now they come here and stay and we have no idea where they are, and they get lost. It’s very dangerous for our country. And again, I’ll say: We are going to pay a big price someday for what they are doing. We will begin the process of safely removing the illegal alien criminals that have been unlawfully allowed into our country. We have no choice. We have no choice.
And in restoring border security, we will stop the flow of deadly drugs and horrible human trafficking, which both have been set upon us like never before. The human trafficking, you think of it as an ancient thing. It’s not ancient, because of the internet, human trafficking is worse than it’s ever been in history. We stop them at the southern border, which is the No. 1 port all over the world, the southern border. So much comes through the southern border. No. 1 port and we stopped them. Now, it’s at levels that are many, many times what it was just two years ago. Biden and the radical left have let loose on this total breakdown of law and order. It was a total breakdown of law and order. I will restore public safety and American cities and other communities that need our help. If they don’t want our help, we’re going to insist that they take our help this time. Because you know, the Democrat governors, these are all Democrat cities, the governors and mayors are supposed to ask for the help, they would never ask for help. And yet people are being shot and killed at random, like nobody has ever seen before. And we sent in the National Guard in Minneapolis and other places. In Seattle, we went and we were getting ready to go and they took over part of the city. The governors, the Democrats don’t want to ever ask to do anything because they don’t want to shake things up. In the meantime, the cities are rotting. They are indeed cesspools of blood. So we’re going to go help them, even though they don’t want our help. We will give our police back their authority, resources, power, legal protection, and we will give them back their respect. They’re great people. I will immediately launch a no-holds barred national campaign to dismantle the gangs and clean out the nests of organized street crime.
The worst criminals, the worst gangs are MS-13, under the Barack Hussein Obama administration, they were unable to take them out because the countries where they came from wouldn’t take them. And I learned about that. My first day, I should say. And I learned about it and I said, “Which countries?” And it was Honduras, Guatemala, it was El Salvador, some others. And I said, “How much do we pay them?” “Sir, you pay them $750 million a year. That’s a lot of money.” I said, all right, stop payment. We’re not paying them anymore. Because they wouldn’t accept them. They would put planes on the runway so when our plane would come out with these gang members from MS-13, the plane couldn’t land because other planes were on the runway. The buses weren’t allowed to get through their borders because they had stronger borders than we did by far. We don’t have borders, they did. Other countries that we defend have borders. We defend other countries’ borders but we don’t defend our own. These countries — I got to know all of the presidents, prime ministers. I got to know them all. I said, all right, stop payment of the $750 million a year. They would not take them. You cannot get anybody back in. They didn’t just come out, they sent them out. They want to keep their good ones. They don’t want the bad ones. These are gang members that will kill, and they like using knives because a knife is more painful than a gun. You’ve read the stories. MS-13, these are savages. They say, “Please do not use that name, they are people.” I say, “No, they are savages.” And so we went along and I said stop payment of the $750 million and I get a call the next morning from the presidents of every country that we are talking about.
“Sir, there seems to be a misunderstanding, what is the problem? Is there anything we can do?”
“Yeah, you’re not taking your MS-13 gang members back that you sent to us in the caravans.”
I love the name, I came up with it. I love the name, the caravans, thousands and thousands of people. And in those caravans you have rough, rough people. I said, “You are not taking them back.”
“Well, we didn’t know this was a problem, sir. Is there anything we could do?”
I said, “Yeah, take them back.”
“We would be glad to take them back.”
They took ’em back. I still didn’t give them the 750. By the way, now Biden wants to give them $4 billion. They were happy with 750 and now they want to give them $4 billion. Somebody, someday is going to explain that one to me. It actually makes you rage with anger when you hear that. They wanted 750 so badly and now they’re getting $4 billion. We will wage war upon the cartels and stop the fentanyl and deadly drugs from killing 200,000 Americans per year.
And I will ask Congress for legislation ensuring that drug dealers and human traffickers, these are terrible, terrible, horrible, people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over our country. Every drug dealer during his or her life on average will kill 500 people with the drugs they sell, not to mention the destruction of families. But we’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts. Because it’s the only way. We don’t need any more blue-ribbon committees. I don’t like to say this. I don’t even know if the American public is ready for it. A lot of my people say, please don’t say that, sir. That’s not nice.
They kill 500 people each on average. If you don’t do this, in China, when I was with President Xi, I said, “President, do you have a drug problem?” No, no, no, we don’t. He looked at me like I didn’t know what I was doing. He said, “No we don’t have a drug” — how come you don’t have a drug problem?
He said quick trial. “What is a quick trial?” I sort of knew. “What is a quick trial?” That’s where if you get caught dealing drugs, you have an immediate and quick trial. And by the end of the day, you’re executed. That’s a terrible thing but they have no drug problem.
The only drug problem they have is they make the fentanyl that comes into our country, and I had him stopping it. Then, when I was gone, no one mentioned it to him again. We were stopping it. That was way down, that number, but they send it in. But they don’t have a drug problem. Other countries like Singapore – has no drug problem, no drug — you ask them, they don’t even know what you’re talking about, when you say drug problem, they don’t even know what you’re talking about, they have no drug problem.
Why should they sell there and risk their lives every time they sell, when they can come to the United States and nobody even cares. They can do whatever they want to do and become rich. It’s a disgrace. If you want to get rid of that and also bring down your level of crime probably 75, 80 percent, that is the only answer. No more blue-ribbon — I refuse to create them anymore, it was just a joke, it was New York people wanting to be on a committee for publicity reasons, no more blue-ribbon committees. That’s the only way you’re going to solve the problem. I hope politicians are listening because they should do it quickly. Joe Biden has also proven he is committed to indoctrinating our children, even using the Department of Justice against parents who object. It’s a terrible thing. It’s so sad what’s happening. When I am in the White House, our schools will cease pushing critical race theory as they were.
Radical civics and gender insanity, or if they do that, they will lose all federal funding. But we’ll get them to stop. I will be the president who finally fixes education in America. We were doing great. We were starting to really get it right. We will not let men, as an example, participate in women’s sports. Is that OK? No men. No men.
My people tell me, “Sir, that’s politically incorrect to say.” I said, “That’s OK. I’ll say it anyway if you don’t mind.” We’ve had tremendous, tremendous problems and you know, it is very unfair to women, just very, very unfair. We will defend the rights of parents and we will defend the family as the center of American life.
But who would think, standing up here, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, that a politician, and I don’t like to think of myself as a politician, but I guess that’s what I am. I hate that thought. But that a politician would be up saying, We will defend parental rights. Of course we would defend — who would think we would even have to mention this? Who would think it should even be a subject to be talked about? We have to defend parental rights, can you believe this? As commander in chief, I will get Biden’s radical left ideology out of our military. And I did, I did.
And the first day, they put it back. The first day, they signed an executive order and they put it back. It was gone. We will abolish every Biden Covid mandate and rehire every patriot who was fired from our military, with an apology and full back pay.
Thank you. And they deserve an apology. And they deserve full back pay and they’ll get it. And unlike Biden possibly getting us into World War III, which can seriously happen, I will keep America out of foolish and unnecessary foreign wars, just as I did for four straight years.
We will again have peace through strength. That is all it is. As events overseas have shown, to protect our people from the unthinkable threat of nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, the United States must also build a state-of-the-art, next-generation missile defense shield. We need it. The power of these missiles and the power of a word I refuse to say: nuclear. We have to have it. We need a defense shield. We have to do it. We actually have the technology and we’re going to build it. Just as I rebuilt our military, I will get this done.
I rebuilt our entire military, which nobody talks about. When I got there, we had jet fighters that were 48 years old. We had bombers that were 60 years old. We had bombers where their grandfathers flew them when they were new. And now the grandchild is flying the bomber, but not anymore. But as I’ve said before, the gravest threats to our civilization are not from abroad but from within. None is greater than the weaponization of the justice system, the F.B.I. and the D.O.J. We must conduct a top to bottom overhaul to clean out the festering rot and corruption of Washington, D.C.
Thank you. And I’m a victim, I will tell you. I’m a victim. Think of it. The F.B.I. offered $1 million to Christopher Steele, who wrote the fake dossier, if he will lie and say that the fake dossier was true. And he refused to do it, so it had to be really fake. And then they hired somebody, Danchenko, for $200,000 a year, to focus on Trump and to get Trump and other things, including the raid of a very beautiful house that sits right here. The raid of Mar-a-Lago, think of it. And I say, “Why didn’t you raid Bush’s place, why didn’t you raid Clinton? 32,000 emails. Why didn’t you raid Clinton’s place? Why didn’t you do Obama, who took a lot of things with him?”
We will dismantle the deep state and restore government by the people. To further drain the swamp, I will push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, it’s time. And I will ask for a permanent ban on taxpayer funding of campaigns. A lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and cabinet members.
No, I see what they make, they leave the White House or they leave Congress and they’re paid millions and millions and millions of dollars a year. No, you have to have a ban. We want a ban on members of Congress getting rich by trading stocks with insider information. And many of our great members agree with that. They actually agree with that, and of course, we will do whatever it takes to bring back honesty, confidence and trust in our elections.
To eliminate cheating, I will immediately demand voter ID, same-day voting and only paper ballots. Only paper ballots.
France just had an election — 36 million people voted. It was all done by 10 o’clock in the evening, no complaints. You had a winner, you had a loser, the loser went home. The winner, he’s a friend of mine, nice guy, but he was happy. But there was no complaints. And if there was a complaint, you check it out and you can fix it very easily, you can find out what’s going on. No, paper ballots, same-day voting, voter ID, so simple. And we want all votes counted by election night.
They spent all of the money for machines and all of the stuff and they end up two weeks later, three weeks later, by that time, everyone forgot there was even an election. It’s horrible. This doesn’t happen, I’ve said it before, it doesn’t happen in third-world countries, they do better than we do. It’s horrible what’s happening with our election and our election process. And I’ll get that job done. That’s a personal job for me. I take that very personally. But this is just the beginning of our national greatness agenda. And that’s what we call it: a national greatness agenda.
Because our country can be greater than it ever was. Our country was great. Our country is not great anymore. Our country is a laughingstock right now, but our country can be greater than it ever was before, by a lot. There will be more, much more, to come in the months ahead. There are so many things we can do, many of them are not even hard to implement. The journey ahead of us will not be easy. Anyone who truly seeks to take on this rigged and corrupt system will be faced with a storm of fire that only a few could understand. Right?
I happen to have some children in the front row. They understand. In fact, my one boy, stand up, Eric.
I think he got more subpoenas than any man in the history of our country. So, unfair. Al Capone, you all heard of the great gangster? Al Capone got far less. Billy the Kid almost got none. Jesse James, no. Eric Trump got more subpoenas. He is a Ph.D. in subpoenas. They come from Congress.
I appreciate the job you do and the abuse you’ve taken. I really do.
It hasn’t been a joyride for our great first lady either. It hasn’t been a joyride. Stand up.
I go home and she says — they do love her. I go home and she says, “You look angry and upset,” and I say, “Just leave me alone.” It hasn’t been the easiest thing, but she’s been a great first lady and people love her.
We will be resisted by the combined forces of the establishment, the media, the special interests, the globalists, the marxist radicals, the woke corporations, the weaponized power of the government, the colossal political machines, the tidal wave of dark money and the most dangerous domestic censorship system ever created by man or woman, the most dangerous system we’ve ever had. We will be attacked. We will be slandered. We will be persecuted, just as I have been, I mean I have been. But many people in this room have been. But we will not be intimidated. We will persevere, we will stand tall in the storm, we will march forward into the torrent. And we in the end will win. Our country will win. We will win.
My fellow Americans, we will join together and reverse this staggering American decline and it is staggering indeed and we will again restore the spirit of our nation. And then, we must build and raise up a legacy that will stand without equal in the entire history of the world. With your help, we will create communities where our children will grow up safe and strong. And a nation where they will grow up free and prosperous and well. We will re-establish the principles of hard work and merit and end the scourge of homelessness that is plaguing our beleaguered Democrat-run cities. We will heal our divisions and bring our people back together through incredible success. We will defend life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We will expand the frontiers of human knowledge and extend the horizons of human achievement and we will plant our beautiful American flag very soon on the surface of Mars, which I got started. But we need everyone involved. We need everyone’s help. We need to look out for one another. We need to be friends. And we need every patriot on board.
Because this is not just a campaign. This is a quest to save our country. I am talking about saving our country.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I am asking for your vote, I am asking for your support, and I am asking for your friendship and your prayers on this very incredible but dangerous journey.
If our movement remains united and confident, then we will shatter the forces of tyranny and we will unleash the glories of liberty for ourselves and for our children and for generations yet to come. America’s golden age is just ahead. And together, we will make America powerful again.
We will make America wealthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. We will make America glorious again. And we will make America great again.
Thank you very much. God bless you, all.
By Lazaro Gamio / The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Former President Donald J. Trump announced his third bid for the presidency on Tuesday night in a speech that was like many others that have come before it: packed full of falsehoods.
Mr. Trump uttered the first inaccurate claim about two minutes in: that his administration “built the greatest economy in the history of the world.” That was inaccurate even for recent American history. Annual average growth, even before the coronavirus pandemic decimated the economy, was lower under Mr. Trump than under Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan.
Two minutes later, he ticked off at least four hyperbolic statements about his accomplishments as president. He pointed to drugs coming across the border at “the lowest level in many, many years.” (The total flow of drugs is unknowable.) He claimed to have “finally attained the impossible dream of American energy independence.” (Before Mr. Trump took office, the country had been projected to become a net exporter of energy, and it still relies on some imports.) He said that “no president had ever sought or received one dollar for our country from China,” which handed over “hundreds of billions of dollars” under his administration. (His tariffs on Chinese imports have so far raised $161 billion, with much of those tariffs passed onto consumers, and duties had been placed on Chinese imports before he took office.) And he repeated his perennial falsehood of delivering “the biggest” tax cuts in American history. (Several others were larger.)
Over the next hour, Mr. Trump repeated many familiar exaggerations about his own achievements, reiterated misleading attacks on political opponents and made dire assessments that were at odds with reality.
Here’s a fact-check of some of his remarks:
The Economy and Energy Policy
In Mr. Trump’s telling, he had made America “great and glorious” and President Biden “destroyed it.” Not content with accurately pointing out that inflation had soared in recent months to the highest point in decades and gas prices had broken records, Mr. Trump embellished even more.
He added: “I expect them to go higher, now that the strategic national reserves, which I filled up, have been virtually drained.”
Mr. Trump did not completely fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, nor has Mr. Biden almost emptied it. Since the first oil was delivered to the stockpile in 1977, it stored the most oil under President Barack Obama, about 726 million barrels. Under Mr. Trump, the amount fluctuated between 634 million and 695 million barrels. Under Mr. Biden, it has fallen to about 445 million barrels in August, the month with the most recent figures.
“We will immediately tackle inflation and bring down to a level where it was: We were at zero,” Mr. Trump claimed.
The Consumer Price Index was at 1.2 percent in 2020, the last full year he was in office, and 1.4 percent in January 2021, his last month as president.
“We were $1.87 a gallon for gasoline. Now it is sitting at $5, $6, $7 and even $8,” Mr. Trump exaggerated. “The socialist disaster known as the Green New Deal, which is destroying our country, and the many crippling regulations that it has spawned will be immediately terminated so that our country can again breathe and grow.”
Understand the Outcomes of the 2022 Midterm Elections
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What we know. It seemed as if the conditions were ripe for a red wave in the 2022 midterms, but in the end Republicans generated no more than a red ripple, leading to an improbable election. Here’s what the results tell us so far:
Biden beat the odds. President Biden had the best midterms of any president in 20 years, avoiding the losses his predecessors endured and maintaining the Democrats’ narrow hold on the Senate, which will provide him with a critical guardrail against a Republican-controlled House.
G.O.P. faces a reckoning. A thin Republican majority in the House appears likely, but a poor midterms showing has the party wrestling with what went wrong: Was it bad candidates, bad messaging or the electoral anchor that appeared to be dragging the G.O.P. down, Donald J. Trump?
Trump under fire. Ignoring Republicans’ concerns that he was to blame for the party’s weak midterms showing, Mr. Trump declared his intention to seek the White House again in 2024. While Mr. Trump is counting on his faithful supporters, he appears to be losing deep-pocketed donors.
Abortion mattered. In the first major election since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion rights broke through, as Democrats seized on the issue to hold off a red wave. In all five states where abortion-related questions were on the ballot, voters chose to protect access or reject further limits on it.
Voters rejected election deniers. Every 2020 election denier who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state lost at the polls this year. Voters roundly rejected extreme partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.
Moderation won. In battleground states and swing districts, voters shunned extremists from the right and the left. Republicans received an especially sweeping rebuke from Americans who made clear they believe that the G.O.P. has become unacceptably extreme.
Nationally, the average price for gas was $2.39 a gallon in the last week of January 2021. Last week, it was $3.76. The Green New Deal is a proposal by some Democrats in Congress to tackle climate change, and has not been enacted into law.
Immigration and Border Security
Much as he did in his speech announcing his presidential bid seven years earlier, Mr. Trump devoted considerable time to discussing border security.
Several times, he falsely heralded the completion of his long-promised border wall. The Trump administration constructed 453 miles of border wall over four years, and a vast majority of the new barriers reinforced or replaced existing structures. Of that, about 47 miles were new primary barriers. The United States’ southwestern border with Mexico is over 1,900 miles.
“When the wall was finished, that’s how we set all these records,” he claimed.
Apprehensions of unauthorized border crossers had decreased in the 2020 fiscal year, Mr. Trump’s last full year in office, to about 400,000. That decline was not because of an incomplete physical wall, but in part because of his hard-line immigration policies and in part because migration and travel had dipped in light of the pandemic. Nor were those figures the lowest recorded. The 2016 and 2015 fiscal years yielded similar numbers: 400,000 and 331,000.
Those figures have increased sharply under Mr. Biden to over 2.3 million in the 2022 fiscal year, breaking records. But an accurate comparison was not stark enough for Mr. Trump, who inflated the numbers even more.
“It’s 10 million people coming in, not three or four million people; they are pouring into our country. We have no idea who they are and where they come from. We have no idea what is happening to our country,” he said, offering no evidence.
Foreign Policy
Mr. Trump made several assessments about global conflicts and geopolitics that required further scrutiny.
The Islamic State, he said, “was decimated by me.” The extremist group suffered territorial losses in 2019, but analysts and Mr. Trump’s own military officials warned that ISIS fighters remained an insurgent force in the country. Just last month, U.S. Special Forces carried out major strikes against the group.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “never would have happened if I were your president,” he declared. “Just today, a missile was sent in probably by Russia to Poland, 50 miles into Poland.”
This statement, cautious by Mr. Trump’s standards, nonetheless contained an exaggeration. At the time of his remarks, Poland had said a missile most likely made by Russia had killed two citizens about four miles — not 50 — from its border with Ukraine, but Poland’s president said there was no conclusive evidence. By Wednesday, Poland and NATO had said the missile was more likely a Ukrainian air defense missile and characterized the explosion as an accident.
Mr. Trump also mocked the Biden administration’s and other world leaders’ focus on climate change: “They say the ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 200 to 300 years.” Sea level along the United States coastline is projected to rise by 10 to 12 inches in the next 30 years alone.
Attacks on Trump Investigations
As he often does during campaign rallies, Mr. Trump used misleading claims to portray himself as the victim of what he described as corrupt investigations by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.
“The F.B.I. offered $1 million to Christopher Steele, who wrote the fake dossier, if he will lie and say that the fake dossier was true,” Mr. Trump said. “And he refused to do it, so it had to be really fake.”
The bureau offered Mr. Steele, a British former spy who compiled a salacious dossier of unproven rumors about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia, up to $1 million if he could prove those allegations, an F.B.I. analyst testified in court in October. Mr. Steele could not and did not receive the money.
“And then they hired somebody, Danchenko, for $200,000 a year, to focus on Trump and to get Trump and other things, including the raid of a very beautiful house that sits right here,” he added. “The raid of Mar-a-Lago, think of it.”
He was referring to Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who provided much of the research for the dossier. Mr. Danchenko was recently acquitted on four counts of lying to the F.B.I. about his sources, in an investigation examining the origins of the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s ties with Russia. During Mr. Danchenko’s trial, an agent testified that the F.B.I. had paid him $200,000 over three years — not one, as Mr. Trump said — for his work as a confidential source.
Moreover, Mr. Danchenko’s trial and the investigation that spurred it had nothing to do with the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s home and private club in Florida. That court-ordered search was focused on retrieving government documents, some classified and marked top secret, that Mr. Trump took from the White House and stored there.
“Why didn’t you do Obama, who took a lot of things with him?” Mr. Trump continued.
But unlike Mr. Trump, former President Barack Obama had not kept documents and instead turned them over to National Archives and Records Administration, as required by a 1978 law.
Election Results
The outcome of the midterm elections and the fact that the Republican Party fell short of expectations were almost an afterthought to Mr. Trump.
He claimed premature victory, saying Republicans took a majority in the House of Representatives “just a short time” before his speech though the party was only on the verge of taking control. The race was officially called for Republicans on Wednesday night.
Though Mr. Trump refrained from repeating his bogus claims of outright electoral fraud, he still complained about the voting process, which he characterized as “a ridiculously long and unnecessary period of waiting, far longer in fact than any third-world country.”
Mr. Trump singled out France, where President Emmanuel Macron won re-election in April. Mr. Trump was largely correct that the first projections declaring Mr. Macron the winner occurred shortly after the last polling locations closed at 8 p.m. But the relative speed of that call, compared with the first projections of the midterm elections in the United States, can be attributed to the more straightforward election process in France. It was a single race compared with multiple local and state-level races on the ballots in the United States; was administered by a centralized authority, the Interior Ministry, rather than by local election officials under different rules and procedures; and occurred across a single time zone, rather than multiple ones, as in the United States.
Moreover, he is wrong that the United States takes longer than “any” country to count votes. In recent presidential elections, Indonesia took more than a month to count the votes in 2019, Afghanistan five months to declare a winner after its September 2019 vote, and Bosnia weeks to declare a winner this fall.
Mr. Trump also briefly defended his position as kingmaker: “I do want to point out that in the midterms, my endorsement success rate was 232 wins and only 22 losses.”
Left unsaid: Many of those 200-or-so victories came in deeply conservative districts where Republicans were expected to easily win re-election. In 114 districts where the margin of victory was less than 15 percent, candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump underperformed their baseline by five percentage points, according to Philip Wallach, a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. An analysis from the Upshot showed a similar result.
And Mr. Trump reminisced over past electoral successes, exaggerating again when he claimed to have “won every single area along the borders” in Texas. (In reality, he won seven out of 14 border counties in the state in 2020 and five in 2016.)
“In 2020, I received the largest number of votes of any sitting president in history,” Mr. Trump recounted, ignoring that Mr. Biden had even more votes.
Source: nytimes.com
