Remarks: Donald Trump Attends the Congressional Picnic on the South Lawn - May 19, 2026

Hello. Good evening and welcome to the White House on this beautiful evening. I have a breaking news. Today, the House passed the Fostering the Future Act. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Chairman LaHood, Ranking Member Davis, and the House of Representative for voting unanimously to lift America's foster children above parties and politics.

Senators, we have momentum. Now it's your turn to bring the Fostering the Future Act across the finish line. Let's support our next generation and swiftly get this to the President for his signature. The White House congressional picnic has been cherished American tradition for a great part of our nation's 250 year history.

Beyond politics, it provides an important social ritual where our nation's leaders share a moment of lightheartedness as we transition into the warm summer months. This evening's beautiful setting brings families from both sides of the political aisle together to enjoy Americana. The Marine band's wonderful music, great food, and some friendly gaming competition.

This great American social tradition remind us that some fun and laughter with our families can bring unity, especially with our children and loved ones, uh, by our side. I have seen firsthand how much can be accomplished when Republicans and Democrats come together with a shared purpose, particularly for the betterment of our children.

We experience great bipartisan success with the TAKE IT DOWN Act. I saw the spirit of American unity shine once again during my recent engagement with the House Ways and Means Committee as we began to shape legislation to protect America's foster care community. Young Americans deserve every opportunity to learn, grow and succeed, and I believe we will continue making meaningful progress on their behalf.

Make the most of this evening so that we can be impactful together with greater alignment in the future. And now it's my pleasure to introduce my husband, President Donald J. Trump.

Great job. What a great job. I have to follow that. I hate it. [Laughter]

Yeah [Laughs]

I never like following our great First Lady because it makes me look not so good. I wanna thank all of you for being here. It's amazing, actually, and thank you, Melania. We're truly blessed to have such a First Lady. She's been, uh, so popular. She did a movie, it became number one. She then went to streaming, it became number on. And, uh, I say there's only room, remember this, for one star in a family, so I better get rid of that.

That's not, that's not so good. But, uh, she's been amazing and people love her as you can see by the results and that was a big thing today. Congratulations on that vote. She had a bipartisan vote. I should use you for some of the things I wanna try and pass. [Laughter] But I joined Melania and congratulating the House of Representatives on passing the Fostering the Future Act, which is a big deal, this afternoon to modernize foster care, an issue close to the First Lady's heart, and hopefully it will quickly pass in the Senate.

I'm sure it will. It's great. It's a great thing. And I wanna thank everybody. We have a lot of senators. We have a lot of Congress people and, uh, I wanna thank you all. And I'm thrilled to welcome you all to the White House this evening for a very special annual tradition, the Congressional Picnic. It's been going on for many years and we're joined by many of the members of the House and the Cabinet, Senate.

And, uh, I just wanna say a special hello to the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. He's gonna go down as one of the great speakers. We've done a lot together. We've done a lot. Where are you, Mike? Where are you, Mike? Hi, Mike. [Laughs] Oh, there he is. He's, uh, he's a great guy, actually, and he's done, he's worked so hard.

I wanna thank also John Thune, who's worked so hard and he's, uh, been really a, he's a terrific person. He really is a terrific person. And we have a lot of things to pass, but one of the things we did pass was a great, Big Beautiful Bill and that covered a lot of territory. I wanna tell you, we said, "Let's do it all in one time." And it was four years worth in one bill.

Everyone said that couldn't be done. And I wanna congratulate and thank the Senate, House, uh, for the unbelievable job. And while there are too many members in the House and Senate, I'd like to, I see half of you right here and I'd like to introduce everyone, but I wanna let people enjoy themselves tonight [Laughs] So, uh, but we have so many representative.

This evening, uh, it will be something very special to remember that all of us here tonight continue a priceless tradition. This really is a great tradition. We represent the oldest and most extraordinary constitutional republic on the face of the earth, and a special privilege and a unique responsibility it is. It's really something very special.

I'm standing here and I'm looking at our great American flag and it's hard to believe, but I put that in two months ago. That, I put one on the other side. You know, this is actually in theory, this would be, I consider them both, we have two fronts. I've never figured out, nobody else has either for, since, uh, if you think about it, 1792, nobody's figured out which is the front and which is the back of the White House.

So when I'm speaking here, I say the front and I speak, when I speak over there, I say the front. It actually has two fronts. And I put two flags up and it's a great pole and it's a beautiful flag and, uh, it's amazing that it wasn't up before. We have another flag slightly smaller on the top of the White House, but it's a little bit on the smaller side.

But everybody loves that pole. It's a beauty and it represents so much. And I want to thank the company that put it up. They're the best. I think they make the best. It's hard to believe. I have so many different developments all over the world. I always like putting the flag up and I know a lot about flag poles and that's the best flag poll there is, okay?

So congratulations. We have two of them. We got actually two for the price of on. We negotiated a tough deal. But we have, finally, we have a really representative flag pole and flag up in front of our White House, so that's good. I also want to recognize the incredible congressional spouses, families, and children who make enormous sacrifices so that their loved ones can serve.

So that their loved ones can get beat up by the fake news. So that their loved ones can also beat up the enemy [Laughs] And they do that. They do. They're warriors. It's not easy and, uh, I wanna give them, the spouses a very special hand today. Thank you. Thank you, darling. Thank you very much. Thank you.

You do, you put up with a lot. It's not easy. But on the eve of the 250th year, there's so much for our country to celebrate regarding our, really the party. Uh, we have a party that's, uh, really at a, a point that I don't think we've ever been at. And America's thriving, America's winning, and America's respected, perhaps like it has never been respected before.

If you go back two years, we were not respected. We were a dead country. I'll tell you what. We were a dead country and today we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. There's nobody even close. And, uh, the, they, I don't know if you saw the numbers today, but the stock market's at an all-time high.

We had 67 all-time highs, so we've been here for a little bit more than a year now and we had 67 all-time highs. And I wanna say that in our first term, we finished the term out despite COVID and all the other things, we had a great, we had really an amazing period of time and we finished at the highest point in the history of the stock market.

And now we're blowing it away. We're blowing everything away. And we're gonna end that war very quickly. They wanna make a deal so badly. They're tired of this, this shoulda happened for 47 years. Somebody should have done something about it and it's gonna happen and it's gonna happen fast and you're gonna see oil prices plummet.

They're gonna come down. There's so much oil out there, they're gonna come plummeting down. But even with that, the stock market's at an all-time high. Jobless claims recently hit the lowest level and since 1969, the best numbers since 1969. And more Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country.

Think of that. And we have a war. We have something happening that I, I, you know, we just hit, it was very interesting. Two and a half months ago, we hit the best numbers that we've ever hit as a country. Jobs the best. Everything was the best. Stock market the highest. And I called my people in. I called them in. I said, "Congratulations everybody, but we're gonna have to make a little journey down to a place called Iran.

We have to stop them. They have nuclear on their mind and we're not gonna let them have a nuclear weapon." And we've done a hell of a job and we're, I think we're gonna be finished with that very quickly and they won't have a nuclear weapon and hopefully we're gonna get it done in a very nice manner. Factory construction as you heard today also is up. Housing starts are up, and consumer spending is up. All things that we have an economy, people aren't seeing it yet.

When we inherited, when we started, we had the highest inflation in the history of our country and we actually had just before the war, before the energy forced other things up, but up or down, uh, we had the best numbers. We had inflation was at 1.6% for the last three months just prior to the war and now, uh, j- -- you're gonna see numbers like that again.

We inherited high prices and we got the prices down and we got them down to numbers that in some cases people have not seen before. But think of it, inflation at 1.6%. Manufacturing right now is booming. American companies are purchasing core capital goods at the highest amounts ever in the history of our country.

Our previously wide-open border is now the most secure border in the history of the United States of America. And last year, r- -- last, remember, we inherited a mess. And last year we had the largest drop in murder rate ever recorded to the lowest level in 125 years. That's year 1900. Think of that. And working alongside many of you and you are unbelievable, the senators, the cabinet members.

We have such a great cabinet and all of the congressmen and women, you're the most incredible people, but working alongside of many of you here, we passed that very important. And again, remember I went to John and I went to Mike. I went to a lot of the senators and Congressmen and women and I said, "We can try and do this at one time, get four years worth." That's why we call it the Great Beautiful Bill.

We can do it at one time, give it a shot, but everybody says it's impossible to get approved. Well, we got four years worth of goodies approved in a period of time and at a period of time that they said would be impossible. And we're lucky we did and it's gotten a little bit harder as time goes by. In fact, the only one that gets things approved now are Melania and her friends.

She gets them approved bipartisan. I'm gonna have a, I'm gonna talk to her later. I'm gonna say, "What are you doing?" But, uh, it's great. It's great stuff. But what we did do is we got something done and we've got, we're getting a lot approved. Uh, we're getting a lot. You're gonna be seeing that too. You've been watching it amazing with really small majorities, we've gotten record setting numbers approved.

And when you add no tax on tips and no tax on social security, uh, all of the things, think of this, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security for our great seniors. And that's just the start. Uh, deduction, you buy a car and you get a deduction for the first time on the interest you're paying on your loan.

If you're borrowing money, you take out a loan, you get a deduction. It's never happened before. We have so many different things. One other thing I have to say because it's affected so many people, estate taxes or the death tax, you love your children. You wanna pass on your estate to your children. Well, in the old days, meaning not so long ago, uh, your children would have to go out and borrow tremendous amounts of money to go and take care of the farm or the small business, whatever it may be. But it especially affected those in small business, but more than anything, farmers.

And they'd go out. The children would go out, borrow money from their bank, wouldn't be able to pay it back. Uh, bad, bad things happened to them. Many of them couldn't handle life, actually. And we got it. There's no estate tax, there's no death tax on your farm, on your small business. Nobody thought that was possible.

So if you love your children, you can leave your business to your children, you can leave your farm to your children and they'll be very happy. Now, if you don't love your children, don't bother. Then it doesn't matter. What I'm saying is just a big waste of time. But if you love, think of it, you have no death tax, you have no estate tax.

You can leave it to your children and we love that. It was so important to me. We've restored the American strength on the world stage. We're respected all over the world. You might have seen. I was in China a few days ago with President Xi and it was some display. We had a great time, but we also got a lot of business, done a lot of great business for our farmers with soybeans record, purchases of soybeans and lots of other things.

And, uh, they're buying many, many Boeing airplanes and they're buying a lot of other things too. We had a great relationship. I've always had a great relationship with President Xi. Together, on a bipartisan basis we passed the Laken Riley Act to get dangerous criminal aliens off our streets. We love Laken.

We passed the Genius Act to keep America at the forefront of finance and new technology and working with Melania and the group. Congress passed the Take It Down Act to protect our nation's children. So that was something. And everyone here tonight has a lot to look forward to so that in the coming months we're gonna have some very amazing events.

One of them is gonna be right there where you're standing. Uh, it's gon- -- The hardest ticket I've ever, I have never seen anybody want anything so much as people want those tickets. It's a one of a kind. UFC, that's, uh, gonna be something, UFC event on the South Lawn. Right there, we're gonna build an arena.

It's gonna hold probably, I would say, 4,000, 5,000. The great Dana White is putting it on, you know, we'll get it up to the max. And behind you in the park, the beautiful park, beautiful open piece of land, we're gonna have anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000 people all free of charge. We're building, uh, eight giant screens back there.

So we have a small arena here that we're building. Never happened before. And in the back, we're going to have close to 100,000 people watching the fight. They're gonna be all championship fights. It's gonna be great. We also have as, as you know, the Indy, Roger Penske is doing the Indy around the Capitol and that'll be in August.

That's gonna be unbelievable. They've been trying to, he said he's been trying to do that for 25 years. He's made 129 trips to Washington. He was never able to do it. Then he met me one trip, took a half an hour and we got it done. And, uh, it's gonna be fantastic. And we have then, of course, FIFA, Johnny.

Uh, good old Johnny. He's great. He's doing a fantastic job. Johnny Infantino. We have the FIFA World Cup and our great American State Fair on the National Mall and the Freedom 250 Grand Prix here. And then on July 4th we have an unbelievable display. And don't forget, we have a thing called the Olympics coming up. I got the Olympics during my first term and then I got FIFA during my first term and I said, "Oh, I won't be able to see it because it happened now." But then strange things happened with an election and I didn't get to serve the air, the four years that I was supposed to serve.

I don't wanna say it. I don't wanna be controversial. The election was rigged. And we came back and we did something very special and I ended up getting the Olympics and getting FIFA and we got 252. I wanna take credit for 250 years, but that I'm not gonna get away with. But we're gonna have an amazing period of time.

So we have exciting things happening. I just wanna leave by saying our country is so strong. Our military is the greatest in the world. You saw that with Venezuela. You see it now with Iran. We wiped out their Navy. The Navy is gone. The Air Force is gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone. Uh, all of their material that they use for warfare is gone.

Just about everything is gone. I don't wanna say their leaders are gone because it's not very nice, but that happens to be true. And, uh, they're not gonna have a nuclear weapon. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. We won't, we won't be able to put up with that and we're not going to put up with it. And just to say one final thing, in the history of the world, there's never been anything like happened over the last short period of time. 18 trillion, with a T, dollars is being invested in the United States.

There's never been anything close. As an example, the previous administration in four years, the previous administration in four years had less, substantially less than $1 trillion. We have $18 trillion in 11 months. We haven't gotten the results from the eight, from the last month, from the 12th month. But think of that. 18 trillion.

In the history of the world, there's been no country with anywhere even close to that number. And all of that money's going to building factories that I mean car plants, auto plants. Everything is coming back A- -- AI plants. We have everything coming back. We've never had a situation like it. We're building plants, thousands of plants all over our country, $18 trillion.

It's many times greater than another country, a certain other country that I just visited. Uh, if you go, I won't mention names. If you go back 10 years that had the record at three trillion, we're at 18 trillion. There's never been anything like that in history. So I just wanna thank you all. You're spectacular people, the political people out there.

I love you all and we're gonna have one hell of a time for the next few years and hopefully the next few years will lead to greatness for many, many years to come. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.