Thank you for saving my life.
Oh, there's my -- [Inaudible] that's great. Well, thank you very much, everybody. What an honor this is. Yeah, it's six times. Can you believe it? Moving along, but we like it, a healthy guy. Between you and you. You've done very well medically, I can tell you. But there's a lot of -- it's too long a story to tell, but these two guys are very special.
I want to thank our great speaker. He's a great speaker, actually.
Hear, hear.
He's a great speaker. Because when you think of everything that we've passed with a sometimes majority of one, when we get back to two, three and four, Mike, we have -- we think we have it really made. We lost a couple and we had a couple of people -- they're in heaven now. They're looking. And that didn't help us with the vote, but we're doing all right and you're getting things done like really nobody.
I think there's never been anything like it. So I just want to thank you. You're doing a fantastic job. And I want to thank that beautiful -- you're not allowed to say that about women anymore, but I say it anyway. Usually, it's the end of your career. You're not allowed to use the word beauty in any form to introduce a woman, but she happens to be beautiful.
Kelly, thank you very much. All Irish. I'm in deep trouble. I'm in deep trouble. They'll be headlines when I get out of this room, but I'm -- I'll stick with it. But -- and then your -- your family is so incredible too. So thank you very much. And to every friend of Ireland in this room today, I just want to wish you a very happy Saint Patrick's Day, special day.
It's a very great day. And to -- to Chuck, you are a man that I've gotten to know and you mean business. And he can tell a story like nobody can tell a story. And then he said, how did you speak for almost two hours a couple of weeks ago at a call, I called State of the Union. I said, you could do it very easily.
I guarantee you that, he could do it. But we've -- uh, we've have a really great relationship. And Mary, thank you very much. Uh, terrific. Thank you very much to be with you both. I hope you enjoy your stay. Also with us is House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Steve, great job. Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and they get along so well.
I saw that. You get along very well together. That's the way it's supposed to be, huh? I don't know if I should be promoting merger. I love mergers, but I don't know. We're going to get in a little trouble. We're going to get in more trouble -- more trouble with that than the beauty. But Emma Little-Pengelly.
Thank you very much, Emma. Thank you very much. And the ambassador from the Republic of Ireland, Geraldine Byrne Nason. Geraldine? Thank you, Geraldine. Thank you very much. Ambassador from the United Kingdom, Christian Turner. Christian, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Christian. Thank you very much. And the US Ambassador to Ireland, a great golfer.
This guy can play golf. He can play golf, Walshy, right? Can't you, huh? But Trump's not bad.
No, he's not.
I know he's a great player and he's -- he's having a lot of fun over there.
Thank you.
What -- is that -- for a guy who loves golf, is that the best location? Can you imagine, Ambassador to Ireland? It's got to be the greatest job in the world. Anyway, have a good time. Have a good time. You're doing a good job. As many of you know, this year we're celebrating something that is very special, the glorious 250th anniversary of America's founding.
That's a big deal and I'm very happy to be here. I didn't -- I wasn't supposed to be president right now. It was supposed to be maybe in Ireland, taking it easy or someplace, taking it easy. But I'm president now and I got the Olympics, I have the World Cup and I have the 250th year and we all have it together.
And I just do want to say that the war is proceeding very, very strongly and we're doing very, very well in Iran, knocking the hell out of them. And you have to do that. We can't let them have a nuclear weapon. They were two weeks away -- in my opinion, two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. If those beautiful magnificent machines, those B-2 bombers, if they didn't do their job seven or eight months ago, they would have had -- they would have had a nuclear weapon and there would have been no talking to them, no talking at all.
They would have used it very gladly, very happily. And you sort of see that by the fact that they were sending missiles, ballistic missiles, powerful missiles to all of their neighbors. And for the most part, they were supposed to be somewhat friendly with their neighbors. They were going to blow the hell out of them.
And that was going to be the Middle East between Israel, the Middle East. And Europe would have been there and we would have been there. There would have been no stopping. We did a good job and a lot of people appreciate it. A lot of presidents know they should have done it. It was 47 years of terror. Every time you see somebody with no legs, no arms, a face that's been really so badly damaged, so badly hurt, uh, lives destroyed, uh, 95 percent chance it was -- it came right out of Iran.
They loved that bomb. They loved -- they love that bomb. And, uh, the father of that was, as you know, Soleimani, General Soleimani, and we got rid of him in my first term. And if we didn't get rid of him, I think it might have been a different story because he was a bad guy, but he was a brilliant guy, if you like to fight dirty.
And he fought as dirty as you can. So we've done something that a lot of people said that other people should have done long before I got here. But it's my honor to do it and we've had a very big day today. We knocked out things that nobody thought were possible to knock out. Today was a very big day already.
As part of this great celebration, we also honor 250 years of cherished Irish-American friendship and 250 years of fierce, proud, tenacious Irish-American heritage. These are incredible people. I know so many Irish. They're difficult, though. You know, they're very difficult, and they're great politicians.
You know, I was just told, right, that 23 American presidents have some Irish blood in them, right, some. Some a little bit and some a lot, right? That's a pretty big number. I don't think any -- nobody else competes with that. But out of the 56 signers of our Declaration of Independence, 11 were patriots with roots in Ireland back in July 4th, 1776. It was a son of Ireland who actually printed that sacred document for the first time.
Who knew that? And it was also an Irishman who first read its immortal words to the American public proclaiming aloud that we are all made free and equal by the hand of our creator and endowed by God with rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That came out of the blood of Ireland. The Irish did not come to America, they helped found America, the fact is, and they helped build America.
These are incredible people. I know them well. And with a little bit of Irish luck, they helped make America into the most exceptional nation the world has ever seen. And we're doing better. We had to do a little excursion, if you don't mind, a little excursion to take care of nuclear weaponry in the hands of maniacs.
But other than that, in a couple of weeks and won't be much longer, it's moving along fast. We're way ahead of schedule. Did you know that, Mr. Speaker? I'm trying to save a lot of money by being ahead of schedule. We're way ahead of schedule. Nobody would have thought -- somebody, a great war historian told me today, nobody would have thought you could do that much damage in that little time, two weeks.
But we're way ahead. But we had, prior to that and, really, I guess you could say after that but prior to that, and it'll bounce back so fast, the oil prices will drop like a rock and the economy is so powerful, so strong. And, uh, you know, we hit 50,000 on the Dow. Think of that, 50,000. I was told you'll never hit 50,000, not for the first three years.
Maybe at the end of the fourth year, you might be able to hit it. We hit it in the first year. And we then hit 7,000 on the S&P and that was even more of a long shot, Steve. That was a -- a chance that they said you couldn't do that. That was harder than 50 on the Dow. 7,000 on the S&P, with that before the end of the first yea.
And all of those things and then I said to myself, well, we're doing great, we're doing great. I went to Susie, my beautiful, Susie Wiles. There's nobody likes Susie. I went to Susie -- right? And everybody's with her and she's a great woman, really. She's a great woman. But I went to Susie, I always go to Susie.
I said, Susie, do you mind if I take a little excursion here? Do you mind if I -- you know, we're hitting all these records, right? Most -- more people are working in the United States today than ever before. I could name this -- I don't want to bore you because this is all about Ireland. This is all about -- but you're a big part of it because you're a big part of this country.
But, uh, I said, do you mind if I take a little excursion, my chief of staff, because I want to do this? I have Marco here. We have a lot of our great people. JD is here. They're all here and I say, let's -- let's do this, we got to do it right, should have been done by many presidents, should have been done long before 47 years.
It's 40 years of living in terror. You know, they're called the bully of the Middle East, but they're really the bully of the world because they used oil to bribe -- right? They used oil to bribe and to, you know, gain power. I don't know what they gained. What did they gain? What the hell -- how are they doing, not so good.
They're all gone now. Every one of them, they're all gone. We don't even know who -- our biggest problem, we don't know who to deal with. Over here, I can call the speaker of the House. He's so powerful. I can call him. I can make a deal, maybe. I can even call your Democrat counterpart, this guy. I said to Kelly, what do you think of your counterpart?
He said, he's a great guy. This is Republican, Democrat. I never thought I was going to hear that about you. Let me shake your hand, please. When Kelly tells me that, I said, that's the way it used to be. You know, that's the way -- not so long ago and maybe someday, that's the way it'll be again.
It's really great. But I said, do you mind if I take a little excursion, because we have to do something? And it'll be a short term excursion, but we have all these great things going. And we had a -- you know, we could have -- we could have gone up, up, up. It was only going in one direction, but I think now it's going to go much higher than it would have gone had we not taken this little journey.
And so I appreciate all of the people that -- that worked with us. It was not an easy decision to make. We have a country that was hotter than any country anywhere in the world and doing great in every way. And I say, oh, we have to put out this -- this cancer. It's a cancer. We had to take that operation and we did.
And it was very successful. And it continues, frankly, as somebody said very -- they could leave today and it would take 10 years to rebuild the damage that's been done. But I think we have to make it a little bit more permanent because no other president has to go through this and we shouldn't have any other president having to go through this kind of a thing.
And if they didn't want to do it, if for some reason they didn't want to do, we'd have the same problem. We don't ever want to have that problem again, not with lunatics. We can't have lunatics controlling nuclear weaponry. So I just want to thank everybody. Let's get back to Ireland. Do you mind?
Ireland, we don't mind. Ireland is a nice place. I love Ireland. In fact, we're going to have the Irish Open at a property that happens to be owned by yours truly. But I have nothing to do with it. I own it, but I have no -- I don't even like to talk to my son. He says, dad, we're doing great with the -- I'm allowed to, I'm allowed to run it, but I don't choose to. Dad, we're doing great.
Eric calls up. He's doing a good job. Do you like Eric? I think so, right? Who doesn't like Eric? But he calls up, dad, we're doing a great job in Ireland. What's going on? Well, we're doing this and that. He told me -- I said, don't tell me about it. I don't want to know about it. I don't want to know about it. Of course, if things were -- if we were treated badly, I'd let him know very quickly.
But, uh, but I think -- I think you are very -- I think you are very proud of what's been done over there by the Trump Organization. Right? It's one of the greatest places, one of the greatest golf courses in the world and it's an honor to hold the Irish Open there. It's coming up very shortly and it's a great honor.
Thank you. And say hello to Rory McIlroy and all of those great players because they are truly great talents and they're wonderful people, friends of mine. But over the centuries, 130 members of the House and Senate have been born in Ireland and been elected to work in these great halls. Think of it, it's a lot.
Our national anthem itself was signed by the sight of the Star Spangled Banner waving over the fort named for the son of Ireland, Fort Henry, Fort McHenry. When Americans ventured west on the Oregon Trail, they were guarded by troops stationed at Fort Riley, named for the Irish-American warrior who President Grant called the finest specimen of physical manhood I've ever looked upon.
We didn't know that about President Grant. I think we just learned something. But I could say that about your sons, OK? Kelly, I could say that about your sons. One's a boxing champion. They're like champions. Who would think from this one? It's got to be from her. Well, I didn't know about your Italian roots either.
I thought he was a super wasp. You know, to me -- no, to me, Mike was always a wasp. Now I learned that this is serious Italian stuff, right? Well, that'll -- that'll be good for you, I think. You know, your image -- his image has changed a hell of a lot, very quickly. Uh, he's great. Even today, when Americans visit Gettysburg, they find a Celtic cross honoring the soldiers of the famed Irish Brigade and defended our union in it's pivotal hour, our most pivotal hour.
And they were there and it said that more than 50 percent of all Congressional Medals of Honor awarded -- think of that, 50 percent went to people who had parents, one or the other, Irish-American. That's a lot. We're going to have to look -- that's because we have so many Irish politicians. That's how that works, but we can't let that -- we got to make some changes in that.
That's too many. Don't you think, Kelly? I think -- but from 1776 to today, our country has stood strong and free in no small part due to the spirit of the warriors. You really are warriors. You're incredible. And the Fighting Irish, you know Notre Dame, the Fighting Irish is the reason for it. I don't know how many Irish people are playing on the team though.
How many Irish people do we have in the team? I'm not sure we have so many. Well, you got him. You have Kelly. Kelly's, a warrior, let me tell you as the Taoiseach has said and the presidents reminds us today, the United States and Ireland continue to build upon the age-old bond. Together we are strengthening the ties of culture.
Uh, we have a tremendous deficit, by the way. I want to tell you right now. I looked at the numbers. You guys are much better business people than our past politicians. We have to talk about that deficit. Are we allowed to talk about that today? It's a substantial deficit.
Tomorrow.
OK. Tomorrow. Walsh said tomorrow. And cooperation that really does stretch back many, many generations. Under our leadership, as we speak, Irish companies are investing more than $6 billion into the United States, including $45 million in Pennsylvania, $70 million in Colorado and over $100 million in New Mexico and Ohio.
And I'm hopeful that we'll soon reach a deal to let American liquefy natural gas. And that will bring down your deficits a lot, so I think you have to make this deal with us. You know, got to do something. But these companies are going to be fueling your homes and factories and all of the other things. We got a lot of -- we have a lot of energy in this country.
We have more than anybody. We have the most energy of any country in the world by far. So we want to sell a little of that to you and the deficit will come down, down, down and everybody's going to be happy. So you got to buy a lot of our stuff. But in this small and beautiful -- it's a beautiful room. I love this room.
It's been a very warm room. I've had a good time. I have so many friends and so many relationships that I've gotten from this room, mostly from this event. But on this Saint Patrick's Day, as we press ahead toward the opportunities that await, let us remember the beautiful words of Saint Patrick himself, may, the power of God preserve us, may the wisdom of God instruct us, may the hand of God protect us, may the way of God direct us, may the shield of God defend us and may the host of God guard us. That's beautiful.
Thank you. And today we add, may God bless the people of Ireland and may, God bless the United States of America and it's great to be with you. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm happy for you.
Thank you so much. [Inaudible]
[Inaudible] good to see you.
Thank you. Thank you.