Well, thank you very much and thank you to Pastor Paula. Paula's an incredible woman. She's been with me a long time, right from the beginning. This is a beautiful American tradition and it's a true honor to be back with so many incredible leaders and people of faith at the National Prayer Breakfast. I think I've been here just about every time.
It's hard to turn it down. I don't have the courage to turn it down. Sometimes I want to -- come back from a horrendous trip fighting people that can't stand us, keeping us out of wars and seeing things that nobody would believe that anybody would see. And last time I came, it was -- I got in at 4:00 in the morning.
They said, sir, you're going to be speaking at seven. I said really, oh, that's wonderful. I said where. National Prayer Breakfast. I said I'll be there, I'm afraid not to be. I need all the help I can get. And you know, I never get a fair break from the fake news which is back there. That's a lot of fake news, aye yai yai.
Because last time I was having a lot of fun, we had a big room, we had 60,000 people and I'm talking about the fact that I will never make it to heaven. I will never ever -- and I was being funny; I was trying to be. You know, you can't be sarcastic with them because they write your words and they don't -- the people who are reading the words are much different than that.
But I said I'm never going to make it to heaven. I just don't think I qualify. I don't think there's a thing I can do. But all of these good things I'm doing, including for religion. You know, religion is back now hotter than ever before. I mean, I have to tell you. But I said even though I did that and so many other things, I named things, I said I won't qualify, I'm not going to make it to heaven.
And The New York Times did a front-page story that Donald Trump is questioning his life and the meaning of his life. No, I was just having fun. [Laughter] I really think I probably should make it. I mean, I'm not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people. That's for sure, right, right, Mr. Speaker?
But I want to thank the dozens of members of Congress here this morning, including a man of immense faith and immense talent. He's a very talented man. He is a small minority. It's really because we go back and forth between minority and majority and, half the time, we're minority and we still win. How do we win with a minority?
You know, we have a couple of people that I consider to be negative. But we're one up, two up, sometimes we're three up. In fact, we'll have two more victories very soon. We'll be three up, and we consider that having a massive majority, OK. Right, Mike? That's like, that's considered -- we're not spoiled.
Can you imagine if we ever picked up like 20 or 30 seats? Wouldn't that be great? That would be too easy. I think it would be too easy. It wouldn't be fun. [Laughter] I get these calls from Mike. Sir, could you speak to so and so, 3:00 in the morning. You know, we have two types. We have the type that goes along with us and believes in us and they're with us all the way.
And that I would say is 95 percent, right. And then we have the type that needs a little love all the time, no matter what it is. For the easiest thing on religion or republicanism, the easiest thing to pass, they always make it difficult, but they always get there. But I have to call them always at three in the morning.
I'll always get that call. Sir, Speaker Johnson's calling. So, I get up, hi, Mike, what's up? What time is it? It's three in the morning. Sir, we have nine names that're giving us difficulty. They want to have a phone call. I said, all right, let's go. Here we go. Same nine all the time, right? You know? So I call up. I say, uh, Chip, how you doing, Chip?
Hello, sir. Sir, I can't quite get there. I just don't know. Could I come over for breakfast? You know, we have a 9:00 vote, right? I said, uh, really, is it not -- Sir, I just -- you got to get me there, sir. Let's have breakfast, Chip, great. Then I get others, pretty much the same nine. I don't want to name too many, but I would -- and they always get there.
We have one that doesn't get there. We have one guy, he's an automatic no, no matter what. If we did welfare reform, if we did the greatest thing in history for religion, no matter what we did, no matter how good it is, greatest tax cuts in -- we just did the greatest tax cuts in history. He voted against.
He voted -- no matter what we do, this moron, no matter what it is. We could put them all together. I think, Mike, what would you say the top five things, name them, we'll put them in one bill and we'll put them before, we'll get 100 percent vote, except for this guy named Thomas Massie. There's something wrong with him.
We call him Rand Paul Jr. You know, it's like they just vote no. They love voting no. They think it's good politically. The guy's polling at about nine percent. It's not good, but we have great support and we have great support for religion. You know, I've done more for religion than any other president. When Paula was saying that, it was so nice.
I was proud of it and I said that's true. I told the people backstage, what she said is true. Who else would say that, right? But it is true. But then I said, but that's not saying much because not too many presidents have done too much for religion. I want to tell you that, certainly modern day. Certainly modern day presidents, they didn't. They bailed out on you.
They bailed out. They want to be neutral. They want to be neutral or against. You know, the Democrats are against. I don't know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat. I really don't. And I know we have some here today and I don't know why they're here because they certainly don't give us their vote.
I certainly know that we're not going to be convincing them to vote for a little thing called voter ID. It polls at 97 percent, and even the Democrats -- the people, the voters are at 82 percent for voter ID, but the leaders don't want to approve it. They said they will strike, they will not allow it to happen.
It's polling at over 90 percent. It's called voter identification. When you go to the polls, you show, yes, my name is so-and-so and I live in the country. I'm here, I can vote. They say, that's not allowed and everyone's trying to figure it out. And they do something to win. You know what it is, they cheat, but let's get on to another subject.
No, at that, they're the finest, probably anywhere in the world, I would say. But we're trying to pass voter ID and other things and other things having to do with your religion. And getting the Democrats to vote is very, very tough. But we're grateful to the co-chairs of the breakfast, Representatives Ben Kline and Jonathan Jackson and Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And I want to thank a man who's been with me for a long time. We've been friends. And I used to be interviewed by him and all he wanted to talk about was war. I said, this guy. You know, he's very smart, went to the top, top schools and was a top student.
He's like me. I was a very good student too, but nobody would think so, you know? And nobody thinks Pete was a good student. They think of him as a tough cookie, flamethrower, which I like actually in the position of secretary of War. I just -- but he has done some job, Pete Hegseth. You know, he was very popular.
He turned down a very large five year extension contract for millions of dollars a year. Oops, I don't want to say that. Your wife is here. She's saying, are you crazy? He's got the greatest wife, but -- but it's true that Pete has just been incredible. And I used to go and be interviewed on Fox and Friends.
Remember those beautiful days? And I'd say, what do you want to talk about? Sir, I want to talk about, uh, releasing about 25 prisoners. They have arrested American soldiers because they taught them -- they taught them how to fight and they fought really well and they won every battle. And now they put them in jail because they said they were too tough.
I said, so how many are there, 22. And some of these guys were on the -- they were fairly tough, wouldn't you say, Pete? But you know, it's true, we teach people how to fight and then you put them in jail because they fought a little bit too hard. And we -- we took care of a lot of business, but that's all.
We didn't talk about the things -- the normal things that a interview would be talking about, right? But I saw that and I saw his love for the military. It was obvious. He was always looking to protect soldiers. And I said, you know, he's a really smart guy. If I ever get this thing, I got to get it. It wasn't easy.
You know, they rigged the second election. I had to win it, had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life. No, I really have a big ego, though. Beating these -- beating these lunatics was incredible, right, what a great feeling, winning every swing state, winning the popular vote.
The first time, you know, they said I didn't win the popular vote. I did, but they said. So they'd always say -- it would always start, they'd introduce me, while Donald Trump did not win the popular vote -- You know, I'm sitting up being introduced by a Democrat or somebody and they say while Donald Trump did not win the popular vote, he won the presidency, here he is. I said, that was terrible.
I said, we got to -- we won the popular vote by a lot. We didn't want to play any games. This has been a much different -- We had a great first term. We had the greatest economy in history, but this one's going to blow it away. Already, it's blowing everything away. We have $18 trillion coming into our country, blowing everything away.
But we had a great first term. We rebuilt the military. You know, Biden gave a little chunk of it to Afghanistan, brilliantly. He left -- left tanks and planes and, you know, little things. I said, why didn't you fly the planes out? He said, well, nobody thought of it. You could have flown -- he said, it's very hard to remove the equipment.
Really, you couldn't fly an airplane? Buy 150 brand new -- $150 million brand new airplane. Sir, I think it's better to leave it. Why? It's more cost effective. So we leave them a brand new jet. I said, these people are crazy, but we have it under control now like you've never seen, and our military has never been stronger.
And you saw that with the B-2 bombers in Iran and -- and you saw it with -- recently with Venezuela, where we're getting along fantastically with leadership, really -- become a great relationship. I don't think there's been anything quite like it, ever. In fact, we have 50 million barrels of oil floating right now over to Houston and we're, uh, you know, we're working with them really well.
It's -- I don't think I've ever seen anything -- the cooperation that we have is -- and it's great for them because they were, uh, they were in big trouble economically. And yet they have more oil than any other country in the world, I think except us, but they have more oil just about than any -- and by the way, us and them, we have 68 percent of the world's oil.
Now I know that doesn't mean too much to people of great religion. I know you want to hear about -- but, you know, we got to keep our country strong and we're doing really good. But that's been an amazing operation. I would say when people saw that, I was just talking to a great leader from El Salvador and he said, man, that was some attack, I've never seen anything like that one.
Right? Right? That was good even by your high standard, right? That was a hell of an attack. But we have, uh, we have a great -- a great country. We have tremendous, uh, leaders, we have a fantastic, uh, cabinet. We have unbelievable bench and one of them is Attorney General Pam Bondi, who may be here. Where's Pam?
Is she here? Where? Where are you, Pam? Where? See, she wants to keep it nice and low key. You're really catching fire, by the way, Pam. You know, they were saying about Kristi Noem yesterday. I did the Super Bowl interview, sir, are you going to relieve Kristi Noem of her duties? No. Oh. I said, why would I do that?
We have the strongest border in the history of our country. We have the best crime numbers we've ever had, going back to the year 1900. That's 125 years. We have the lowest crime numbers. Despite the fact that this horrible, world's worst -- this is the worst president we've ever had, Biden. He had no idea he was president, so he doesn't take it personally.
I don't want him to take it personally. Fortunately, he has no idea what the hell I'm saying and he's watching right now. He's happy with what he just said. OK. This is what we had running our country. But no, he was our worst president. We had some bad ones. We had -- Obama was very bad, terrible divider of our country.
He divided our -- he was a divider. And believe it or not, we're bringing the country together. You know what's bringing it together? Tremendous success. We're having tremendous success. We have more investment being made in our country now than any country has ever had by many times. If you go back 10 years, a certain country, not us, $3 trillion.
We have in 11 months, because that 12th month is coming out next week, we have $18 trillion of investment coming in; the biggest ever was $3 trillion, many years ago. And one of the reasons for it is secretaries Doug Burgum and Doug Collins, they are drilling like -- you know, my whole thing was drill baby drill.
Where are they sitting? I love those two guys. Come on, stand up. And is Catherine there? That's Catherine. Yes, hi, Catherine, Chris. What -- they are drilling like nobody. I spoke with Chris yesterday, Doug, I said how are we doing? Sir, we're drilling more oil than anybody's ever drilled by double, right, by double, we're doing it. That's why -- I was in Iowa last week with the farmers who were doing very well.
We just handed them $12 billion out of tariff money because they were taken advantage of by foreign countries, various foreign countries. And I said how much was it that they got hurt for? $12 billion. I said good, let's write them a check. I gave the farmers $12 billion. And they don't even want it; they just want to be treated fairly.
But we're getting it from that. But we're getting it, nobody's ever in history and it's -- we've never done it either, like anywhere close, we're taking out more energy out of our beautiful land, oil and gas, clean oil and gas. And I always say clean, beautiful coal. You know, I told -- the only thing I told these two guys they have to do, because they're the greatest energy people in the world, the best.
I said, when you mention the word coal, anytime you mention coal, c-o-a-l, anytime you mention it has to be preceded by two words, clean and beautiful. So, Doug was making a speech the other day, and I sort of tried to pass a note because he said -- he mentioned coal about 40 times and he kept saying clean, beautiful coal, clean.
It really only works a few times, right? I said no, no. When you say coal -- clean, beautiful. You know, we buy all that wind from -- we don't anymore. So, we haven't approved anything in wind, right, Doug, nothing? Because it's, you know, just it's a quick way of losing money, losing beauty, losing your fields, killing your birds.
And other than that, it doesn't work. And Europe is getting -- you know, Europe is so bad with the windmills they're destroying their country with wind. And I was over there, it's not even recognizable what they've done. They've got a big problem on their hands. Between immigration and energy, Europe is destroying itself and they'd better get smart.
And I love them all, I'm friends with every one of every country over there. I've helped them a lot. Got the GDP up from two percent to five percent, which is -- you know, for spending, for military spending. Nobody thought that was possible. Nobody thought two percent was possible, got them to five percent.
But it's not recognizable, Europe. If you go through the different cities, it's a very sad thing. And I tell it -- I went over to Davos, they invited me. And when I left, they said that may have been the stupidest invitation we ever gave to somebody, Switzerland. But they have to -- I just say it like it is, they're destroying their country.
Their energy is ridiculous what they've done, and the immigration is -- I'm telling you, it's a place where many of these countries are not recognizable and I'd like to see them straighten it out. Very soon it's going to be impossible for them to straighten it out. We have our director of National and International Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who's doing a great job.
Where's Tulsi? She took a lot of heat two days ago because she went in -- at Pam's insistence, she went in and she looked at votes that want to be checked out from Georgia. They say, why is she doing it? Right, Pam? Why is she doing it? Because Pam wanted her to do it and, you know why? Because she's smart.
And they said, well, this has to do her position, has to do -- it's really not so, but her position has to do with international. I say, well, the same people that said that they've been saying Russia, Russia, Russia has been screwing our elections, OK? So, let's assume Russia had something to do with it. They say no, no, Russia didn't have.
So, now they're saying Russia had nothing to do with it because if I say Russia that it's perfectly fine. But you could add China and about five other countries to it. But she's done a great job, and Pam has done a fantastic job and we appreciate it, both. I haven't seen you in a couple of days. And I have one of the greatest negotiators.
I'm so proud of him. He's a great negotiator. He's smart and respected by everybody. Jamieson Greer, US Trade. Where is Jamieson? He's around here someplace. Thank you, Jamieson. Boy, he's good. We have a great team. We have a great economic team, a great military team. We have "Razin" Caine helps, Pete, "Razin" Caine, General Caine.
He wiped out ISIS in three weeks. I was told by General Mattis and General Milley, sir, it will take five years. I said what. Sir, it'll take five years. I said, you mean we have the best equipment in the world and we're finding guys that use bad rifles, knives preferably. They're very good with a knife, but a knife shouldn't do it. And I said why, and I flew over to Iraq and I met a guy named Caine.
I came out of the plane and there's this handsome general standing there, three generals. I went there to find out why the hell we couldn't win the war. Why aren't we winning the war against ISIS? They've been playing games with us. So, I wanted to see and I met -- that's where I met "Razin" Caine. I said what's your first name. "Razin", sir?
They call me "Razin". I said what the hell kind of name is that, right? [Laughter] We've learned a lot about him. Now we get it and this very quiet manner. He's brutal, just ask Venezuela, ask Iran. They're negotiating now. They don't want to -- they don't want us to hit them. You know, we have a big fleet going over to Iran.
But so, "Razin" was there at the bottom of the plane. What's your name? "Razin". What's your last name? Caine. I said, so your name is -- let's get this straight, your name is "Razin" Caine, right? Yes, sir, that's what they call me. You're the guy I'm looking for. [Laughter] And then he said, sir, if you'd like, you can go and sleep -- you know, it's a 20-hour trip.
If you'd like, you can go and sleep, we have quarters prepared for you. I said no, no, I don't have to sleep. I've been on a plane sleeping for 20 -- I mean I sleep on the plane. I don't sleep on planes. I don't like sleeping on planes, you know. I like looking out the window watching for missiles and enemies actually. [Laughter] But he said, sir, we have a place prepared for you and we can meet after you've rested.
I said no, no, no, let's go right now. So, we did that. And I said to him, I said they tell me it's going to take five years to defeat ISIS. No, sir. I said, well, how long would it be, General Caine? Sir, we can do it in four weeks. I said what? We can do it in four weeks, sir, and I should have maybe a couple of weeks left over.
You mean you can do it in less than four weeks? Yes, sir. I said, well, how come they tell me -- our television generals as I call them -- two very poor generals. I mean, these guys, they looked nice, they were nice guys. They didn't have what it took, believe me. Some people have that; they don't have what it takes no matter what.
I said, how come they tell me it's four to five years? He said, well, I don't want to speak badly about anybody, sir, I'd rather not comment on that. I found that to be nice, OK. But I said all right, tell me how you're going to do it. Well, sir, we use this one base here and we're hundreds of miles away.
And by the time the planes get to the target, they have to come back and refuel and we're too far. I said why do we do that? Because we don't want to offend any of the other countries. I said we have a lot of portable airports, right, Pete? We have portable airports all over the Middle East, runways that are portable.
You put them down; you take them up. We have equipment, nobody has the stuff we have. We have airports that look better than Kennedy Airport and they're built in sand and it took us about two minutes to build them. No, the equipment is incredible. You can land any plane on them, right, portable. And we've got many of them, sir.
We have to use them. I said why don't we? Because we didn't want to offend another country. I said, let me ask you a question. You're in the middle of the desert. Would another country know if we're taking off from some strip in the desert? They would have no idea, sir. They don't have radar. They don't have anything.
So he explained it, so we want to hit them, sir, from 17 different locations and we want to hit them left, and we hit them. And he would go, and we want to hit them right. Sir, and we want to hit them from the top and we want to hit them from the bottom, east, west, north, south, sir, they won't know what the hell -- and we'll knock them out.
We did it politically correct. Five years, we'd call up the country head and we'd tell them we'd like to attack ISIS today. As soon as the call was made, they'd call ISIS and tell them, you're going to be attacked, get the hell out of -- this is what we were doing for years, not with -- but not with "Razin" Caine and not with Pete Hegseth.
Right, Pete, we don't do that. And we have a little different [Inaudible] so I went back to Washington and I said, you know, this guy, he said -- and then I checked up on him and he was so respected. I said, he's really like respected and I called him back. I said, General, go at it, do -- good luck. God bless you.
And he said -- I say that to the people going out every time. And they say it, when we give the OK for like the attack on Venezuela or the attack on Iran, he says, I say, we all say, we're all in a room together, watching. We watch it. We watch these attacks. We always say, God bless you, have a safe journey.
It's a dangerous journey. These are dangerous journeys, flying through the middle of Iran. They know you're coming and you're in a B-2 bomber, the most incredible thing, and they weren't able to see it because it's stealth. So good we ordered 20 more of them, brand new, updated version. I actually said, don't get the updated, just take the one you have.
They said , no, sir, the new one's even better. We have a military -- nobody has a military like we do. I rebuilt it, by the way, during my first term. I mean, I think it's one of the best things I did. I rebuilt the military during the first term and now we're really rebuilding the military, right? But the bottom line, I called him, I said, so you think you can do it, General?
Yes, sir, I can do it, and it was over in three weeks. It was incredible. And I mean over. And then the election is rigged and I wasn't there and for four years, ISIS rebuilt, rebuilt, rebuilt and they have a little bit of ISIS now again. And we knocked the hell out of them the other day in Nigeria because they were killing Christians.
You know about that. They were killing Christians. I said, you can't do that. When Christians come under attack, they know they're going to be attacked violently and viciously by President Trump. I know it's not a nice thing to say, but that's the way it is. So we're also delighted to welcome visiting leaders and dignitaries from more than 110 countries.
They're here, including one of my favorite people, President Bukele of El Salvador. He has been so incredible. He has been such a great ally of this country. Thank you very much. Such a great ally. He's -- some of you have seen, he operates rather large prisons, like prisons that's so large you can't see from one side to the other, unless you have perfect 20/20 eyesight with binoculars.
That's how long and big. And they do a job. They do a very humane job, but they're very strong prisons. And we send a lot of the people that we capture, the murderers, the drug dealers, the people that came into our country illegally and have already committed massive crimes. We had 11,888 murderers and many of them are in your prisons right now, right?
And he does a fantastic job. I mean, he really -- sounds like a different kind of -- you know, this is a religious breakfast. You're going to walk away and say, he's the meanest son of a gun I've ever seen. But I'm not, I just want to keep our country safe. It's very simple. We have to keep our country safe.
So I want to thank you, Mr. President, for a great -- amazing job you do with our people too. They work together so well, appreciate it, not easy. This prayer breakfast comes at a special time for our country as we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American Independence. And we're also very shortly going to have the Olympics and the World Cup.
And you know, I got them. I was the one that got the Olympics and I was the one that got -- and I was so upset because I got them. I tried to move them up, but I couldn't. And my first term, I was getting them and Barack Hussein Obama would refuse to call the Olympics because in all fairness, they took advantage of him.
Remember, he went there. He flew all the way to whatever country, some beautiful country in Europe and he sat, he made his presentation and he ended up coming in last. And that shouldn't happen to a president. You know, if you're a president, you have to get a wink. I'll go there, but are you going to give us the Olympics?
Otherwise, I'm not going there. I don't want to -- so he sat there and made a very nice presentation. He came in last, came in fourth place. So he hated those people. He won't say that, I don't think, but I'll say it for him. And so he refused to be involved with the Olympics. I got a call from Democrats, the Democrat mayor of Los Angeles called me, sir, we have a problem.
We have a president that refuses to call the Olympic Committee, and I just won the presidency. I was president elect. And so I wasn't even in office. And I called this gentleman from, I think Denmark, can you believe? They own a large piece of ice that we're negotiating for, extremely -- it's the biggest piece of ice in the world.
The largest -- world's largest piece of ice. They'll never run out of water. But I called the president, I called the various people, but the head of the Olympic Committee, a very nice guy and I couldn't get him off the phone. He was starving for love because nobody called him. They just wanted to know from the president, does the United States want the Olympics?
They didn't want to choose the United States and then, you know, have somebody say, like, you know, we don't care. I said, I desperately want it, we're going to get it, blah, blah, blah. And I spoke to him, I spoke to other people and I got it. I called up the Democrat from Los Angeles, happened to be the mayor of Los Angeles.
He was devastated. He couldn't get the -- all they wanted to do is have an acknowledgment from the head of the country, wouldn't do it. But I did it. We got the Olympics and we got the World Cup. But then I was -- I don't know if Gianni is here from the World Cup, but that guy is great. He's great my friend.
But I got them both. And I was really upset because I got him and then I said, I won't be -- think of it, I won't be president because they're in the following term. Because, you know, when you get the Olympics, usually it's 10 years in advance. I said, so I did all that good work. It wasn't that easy. I got it. Then I got the World Cup.
They both were happening now in a year, another year and a half, a year, right after the 250. I didn't get 250. I tried to claim it a couple of times. I said -- and I produced 250 year anniversary. That was my deal. I got 250 years and the press hit me hard on that one. So I gave that up immediately. But I happen to be president during that.
So think of it. So I'm -- I'm the president and I got these two things and I said, you know what, I got the Olympics to come to the United States and I got the World Cup to come to the United States and I probably won't even be invited to be there. And I was really angry. And then they rigged the election.
And then I said, I'm coming back. And I got the Olympics and I got the World Cup, right? And at some point, I'm going to get right back onto the teleprompter and you're going to say, that was a wonderful speech. On that momentous day in 1776 -- isn't that -- this is so much easier. You know, it takes real talent to -- to do the other.
The other is much more talent, but that's why we're president, I think. But we have, uh, very important words to say and this is such an important group, and we have plenty of time to say it because when it comes to religion, I have all the time. I'm one of the few that say we have all the time in the world.
But in that momentous day in 1776, history changed forever when our founders proclaimed the immortal truths that echoed around the world and down all the way through time. They declared that all of us are made free and equal by the hand of our creator. A lot of presidents refused to say that. They refused to say that they.
Some -- some refused. Some major politicians refuse to say the word, God. They don't want to say it. I say it, that we are endowed with our sacred rights to life, liberty and not by government, but by God Almighty himself. And those words rang out from Philadelphia and launched a revolution, not just in America, but in the hearts of all humanity.
The principles of the Declaration of Independence, which is one of three sitting right beautifully in the Oval Office. I took it out of the vaults and it's beautiful, it's beautifully protected and it's a magnificent document. I stare at it all the time and I read it as often as I can, a true brilliant work of art.
They've stirred the spirit of patriots in every nation, liberated millions from tyranny and lifted billions from poverty. And it's doing now more than ever before. We're doing better than this country has ever done -- in one year. Think of what we can do, we just have to keep it going, Mr. Speaker, if you don't mind, OK, got to keep it going.
But no -- and they -- I mean the Democrats admit this, no president in his first year has ever done the things we've done. When you think, we've gotten the largest tax cut in history, largest -- larger than even in the first term. But we've done something else and I think we brought back spirit to our country.
You know, two years ago, two years ago, you couldn't get anybody to go into the military. They laughed at you and they said they didn't respect our country. They didn't respect our president. They thought he was a joke. They thought our country was a joke. Other countries laughed at us and took advantage of us with tariffs, and we weren't allowed to charge, and they were allowed to charge.
But we are allowed to charge, and I hope we get that Supreme Court decision because we have taken in hundreds of billions of dollars of money, we're a rich nation again, doing what other nations have done to us for many, many years. But the biggest thing is what's happened to me, the spirit of our country, and that goes for religion, but it also goes for the military.
We couldn't recruit anybody to go into our great military. We were the worst, I think, it's ever been, two and a half years ago under the sleepy Joe Biden administration. I call him Crooked Joe and Sleepy Joe. I find them to be equal actually. I say -- I do polls, which is better, Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe?
And they poll about even, so I use both. But we have now the greatest recruiting that we've ever had. Everybody wants to be in the military. We're hot as a pistol. We couldn't get anybody to go into the -- not me, they -- the last administration, nobody wanted to be in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, the Coast Guard, Space Force, which is turning out to be -- I'm so proud of it because I was the -- I'm the father of Space Force, I'm the one that wanted it, so. But we couldn't get people, we couldn't get people.
They couldn't get people to go into any of them, including our police departments and our fire departments. They weren't proud of our nation. They had no spirit. And now we have had the single greatest recruitment in the history of our country. There's never been anything like it. We have waiting lists of people wanting to get in. In fact, if we want to expand the military, Mr. Speaker, this would be a very good time to do it. We have so many people who want to get into the military that, you know, we just -- but we also won in the Supreme Court, as you know, based on merit.
It was a merit -- and we take people based on merit. Like we prefer a strong person in the military as opposed to a weak person. We prefer somebody that's a strong, powerful person with extremely good vision that can shoot a rifle very well to a person that's extremely weak, non-muscular, can't shoot a rifle, has no idea where the hell he is. We have a military where they all look like Tom Cruise only bigger. [Laughter] No, we hire on merit now.
And that goes for colleges, people get into colleges now. If you have great boards and great marks and you worked and worked and worked, and then somebody else gets in that's not nearly as qualified. Now it's a merit system. It's tough in one way, but it's -- you know, our country was built on a system of merit and then we went away from it a number of years ago.
We got it back. That was a brave decision by the Supreme Court, I'll say, and it's tough on some people. Actually, it makes people work harder, I think. But we have to base our country on merit, or we won't have a country. We were going in such a bad direction, it's incredible. And I give a lot of credit on that one to the Supreme Court and they give me some bad ones too.
But I give a lot of credit; that took a lot of courage to do it, but they understood it was the right thing to do. To be a great nation, however, I think -- and I may be wrong, but I don't think so because I've watched a lot and I study a lot. You have to have religion; you have to have it. You have to have faith; you have to have God.
And thankfully as we gather today, there are many signs that religion is coming back and now it's no longer signs. It's just coming back; it's coming back so strong. You know, your churches are filling up. You didn't have that two years ago. It was hurt by COVID, but it really -- and they treated you terribly, the Democrats treated you terribly.
Sorry, Mr. Congressman, but the truth is -- I mean, you had pastors holding services outside. The people were standing 15 feet away from each other and everybody was arrested. You know, this was -- it was like they -- they ran it. You know, they always like to say Trump is a dictator. They love that. I'm not a dictator, but they were like dictators.
They were like the Gestapo; they were arresting people for going to church and they were arresting people and treating people like, horribly. And I've made a lot of amends to those people. Those people were treated very badly for wanting to go to church. It had a huge impact, negative impact on churches, but the churches are now coming back stronger than ever.
Nobody's ever seen anything like it actually, so. You're all hot, OK. You know, it's like the king of Saudi Arabia, he said -- and you probably heard me say it, I love it, I was with him. And he said -- a year and a half ago, he said, you know, a year and a half ago, he said we thought your country was dead and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
We're the hottest country anywhere in the world right now, nobody even close. I think you can say that, Mr. -- I mean, El Salvador is very hot, but I think we can say that right. [Laughter] We have the Congo here. I don't know. The Congo is hot. We just ended a war -- one of our eight wars that we ended, right?
We have -- he's a great guy, too. He's a great guy. You talk about people that suffered. Those people suffered. In 2025, more copies of the Holy Bible were sold in the United States than at any time in the last 100 years. Now how about that? How about that? Did you know that, Mr. Speaker? You know, Mike Johnson's a very religious person and he does not hide it. He'll say to me sometimes at lunch, sir, may we pray?
I say, excuse me, we're having lunch in the Oval? It's OK with me. But he's a very religious person and he is popular and he's doing an unbelievable job. So, I think God is watching over you. God is watching over him. I don't know about me. So, I hang around with him because I feel I'm protected a little bit.
In the last 12 months, young Americans attended church at nearly twice the rate as they did four years ago. And many churches, you see the stats, I mean people are talking about it. The radical left is not happy about it. Many Democrats are not happy about it. This, by the way, will be the last year that Democrats show up to this event, I tell you. [Laughter] But I've got to say, how the hell do you vote for these people?
But some churches are seeing a 30 percent, 50 percent or even 70 percent increase in the number of converts. And also, the number of people going to church every week. To support this exciting renewal this morning, I'm pleased to announce that on May 17, 2026, that we're inviting Americans from all across the country to come together on our National Mall to pray, to give thanks and to re -- we are going to do something that everyone said like, that's tough.
We're going to rededicate America as one nation under God. You know, a lot of people Yeah. Thank you very much. That's great. That's what I mean by -- that's what I mean by the spirit. It's so incredible to see it. I see it so much. I've never seen anything like it, in one year. I thought it would take two years, three years, four years to be where we are.
We've done it in, I mean, really 10 months. We're at 12, but now it's just getting to a level that we've never reached before as a country, but that includes religion. I mean, maybe that's part of the reason that we're doing so well. There's great -- such great spirit. It's all spirit and it includes religion.
I've always said, you just can't have a great country if you don't have religion. You have to believe in something. You have to believe that what we're doing, there's a reason for it. There has to be a reason for it. We're all working and we're doing -- we're behaving. I mean, I behave because I'm afraid not to, OK, because I don't want to get in trouble.
No, it's such a positive thing. And people are starting to see it and they're going to church and they're meeting people and families are developing. It's really -- things are happening in our country right now and we have to get the bad ones out. We have to do it. We can't let that happen and we're being very tough on law and order and crime.
And I hate to say it because it doesn't seem to go hand in hand, but you can't have people going to churches and coming out and have criminals taking advantage and doing things that nobody wants to even describe. And that's not happening anymore. You know, Washington, DC is a very safe city now. When I took over, Washington, DC was a death trap.
Many people were being killed, two, three a week. They were being killed. Come in from Iowa to look at the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson, the George Washington, the monument and they call the parents, I'm sorry, sir, your son has been killed. What? Your son has been killed. That doesn't happen. You know, we took out 2,000 monsters out of Washington, DC. It's not just that we have the troops and they are central casting.
I love them. I think, to me, it looks much more beautiful. You walk down the street, you have three guys that are six foot six and angry-looking people, but they actually are very nice. They're angry when they see criminals, that's all. They get angry. They took Tren de Aragua. And honestly, I don't want to say this, but they beat the crap out of them.
They beat the crap out of them. They found that they were doing bad things and Tren de Aragua didn't want anything to do with these guys. Then we put them in the paddy wagon, we took them back to where they came from. You know that. But we took out over 2,000 hardcore criminals. You know, two percent of the population produces 90 percent of the violent crime.
Think of that. Think of that. And Washington now is a very safe place. I get it all the time. I go into the White House and people that work in the White House come up, sir, I want to thank you so much. Young woman, man, they say, I walk to work. I couldn't have walked to work. I wouldn't have even thought to walk to work before.
They walk to work. The place is booming. Restaurants are opening up. The restaurants were almost going to be all closed. It would have been all closed. You couldn't even go. Even if you got there, the restaurant would be robbed with people sitting there. Hold up your hands, everybody, give us your money, and then they'd whack people with the butt of a gun.
And oh, it doesn't -- Washington is a very safe city. We have almost no crime. And it's a miracle, but it took place very quickly and it's the same thing for every other place we've gone. In Louisiana, New Orleans, I got a call from the governor, Jeff Landry, great guy, great governor. He said, could you send the troops?
Because I'll tell you what, this is -- this place is out of control. I did and in a period of two weeks, we got crime down by 25 percent. Now it's been about seven or eight weeks. We have it down 77 percent. And within another month, they're not going to have any crime -- they're not going to have any crime in that wonderful city of joy that people go up and down, right?
They're not going to have any crime there. It's -- uh, it's amazing. Uh, Memphis, Tennessee is another one. The mayor works with us. And, uh, you know, it's nice when they work with us. It's just so much easier. Sometimes we -- we can't work with them. Like in Minnesota, they -- they won't work with us, but we still driven crime down 25 percent.
If we didn't have to fight this horrible governor and this horrible fake mayor, Frey. You know, this is the Constitution of the United States. People don't want to be mugged. They don't want to have a murderer living next door, that was -- you know, killed three people in a certain country and is now living beautifully here.
Because generally speaking, if they've killed in another country, they're not going to be the best of citizens. And they're rough people. Remember in the campaign, I used to say that their criminals make our criminals look like babies. It's true. These are some of the meanest, most vicious people. They only gave us the worst.
They don't send -- you know, they're very smart, guys like the president over here, El Salvador. He's sent us a few. I don't want to talk to him about it. But he's -- he's -- he sends us some real bad ones. He's not -- I -- look, you just say -- we'll do it more positive. Isn't it true that you will not send your good people to the United States?
Wouldn't you say? Look at him. He doesn't know -- he said, what's going on here? But no, he sends bad people to the United States, and I'm going to talk to him after this. But I love him. He's done a great job. Right? He's not going to -- he's not -- they're smart people and they're very street wise. You know, when you're running some of these countries in South America, Latin America, you got to be street wise, you got to be smart.
He's very smart, very street wise. But these leaders of those countries, they're not sending -- they cherish, they cherish they're good people. They only send us their bad people. But we have done some job. And we have -- uh, in Minnesota, crime is down just -- despite that we have to fight these lunatics over there, that are stealing money, by the way, also.
I believe it's actually a cover up of the $19 billion at least that they've stolen. I actually think they do this as a cover up. Under the Trump administration, we're standing strongly behind Americans of faith, stopping the attacks on our values, our traditions, defending religious liberty, like no president -- I believe like no president has ever done before.
I do believe that. We got rid of the sinister Johnson Amendment so that pastors can speak the truth and they can speak it without having their tax exempt status revoked. I was with a large group of ministers, pastors, priests, rabbis. We had a group of people that were -- great group. And I asked them for help.
Paula White was there. Remember, Trump Tower, the top of the building, beautiful building, and they were so enthusiastic. For the first election, they were so enthusiastic. And I didn't want to be pushy because I'm not a pushy individual, but I didn't want to be overly aggressive. So I figured I'll ask them in the second meeting.
So the second meeting came, the similar group, ministers. We had, uh, Muslim leaders there. We had everybody there. But there were about 55 of them, beautiful boardroom on the top floor, tall building, beautiful building in New York. And I said, I'd like to ask -- and they were so good. They, sir, we love you, you're great, blah, blah, blah.
I figured this was going to be the easiest endorsement I ever got. And I said, I'd love to have your endorsement. And it was like ice. It was like death. I said, what the hell, what happened? And I said, could I ask what's going on? You were really nice. And now you've just clammed up and you're -- you're like scared.
And one of them stood up, that Paula knows very well. He said, sir, we're very concerned because if we speak about religion, if we ever endorsed you, as an example, we would lose our tax exempt status immediately and our church would go out of business. I said, what's that all about? And it was the Johnson Amendment.
Lyndon Johnson had a fight with somebody in Dallas or Houston with a minister and he didn't like him and they didn't like each other. And the minister thought he was terrible. And I guess he didn't like the minister and he was a powerful president. He knew how to do things and he got something passed called the Johnson Amendment, which basically takes away your right of speech.
And people like me, and people like a lot of people, they want to hear from ministers. They want to hear from priests. They want to hear from them. And you were restricted from talking about very important things, like who to elect. If you said that, you were gone, you couldn't do it, even if you said it in a very nice way because they were going to be better for the church.
And we worked hard and we're going to make that permanent pretty soon, I think, Mike. But we worked hard on getting rid of the Johnson Amendment. It's gone as far as -- you can say anything you want. Now, if you do say something bad about Trump -- I will change my mind and I will have -- [Laughter] I will have your tax-exempt status immediately revoked. [Laughter] If I go into one of these services, we will stop Trump.
You ever hear some of these guys? They said -- not too many, I can tell you, because we won like 94 percent of the vote. People got it, people got it. We had an unbelievable -- we had a lot of people pretending. They pretended to be very religious, but I don't believe they were. But the people ultimately -- they ultimately got it. You know, you have a Robert Jeffress.
I don't know if he's here, is he here? Robert, is he here? Robert Jeffress was on television in 2016 when I just sort of announced I was running, and he said I know every candidate very well. There were 17, 18 candidates, me and 17 others. He said I know every candidate very well, and I know Trump a little bit.
But he may not be as good with the Bible as some of them. He may not have read the Bible as much as some of them. In fact, he may not have ever read the Bible, but he will be a much stronger messenger for us, and he will get things done that No other man has the ability to get done. And I endorse him fully.
And I said, you know, that guy -- I didn't want to admit anything, but that was very interesting. And I think we've gotten more done, Paula, than anybody could have ever gotten done. What we've done, nobody else would have been able to do it. We reinstated also servicemembers who were thrown out of our military over religious objections.
That was a big deal. They were thrown out of religious objections to vaccine mandates and all of the other things. They used any excuse they could. We restored those patriots to their former ranks with full pay. We've given them full pay. They were taken advantage of, and I really think it was over religion.
I actually think that they used the vaccines as a way of really punishing people over religion. I don't know how you can vote for these people, I really don't -- I don't know how you can. We passed the largest ever expansion of school choice so that every parent has a chance to send their child to a school that shares their values.
And today, I'm also pleased to announce that the Department of Education is officially issuing its new guidance to protect the right to prayer in our public schools. That's a big deal. Now the Democrats will sue us, but we'll win it, we'll win it. They'll sue us, they sue us for everything. I'm the most sued human being in history. [Laughter] They've sued me for everything.
I got impeached twice over nothing, but the Republicans were great, just wiped them right out. But I got impeached. I got indicted, wiped them out. There's never been -- you know, there's never been, to the best of our knowledge, any politician that's ever been indicted who won an election. Very popular politicians got indicted, they lost.
I got indicted so much; I got tired of calling my wife. I'd say, darling, I was just indicted again. [Laughter] She said, oh, darling, what, oh, what does that mean? You know, she's very elegant. You saw that from the movie. She's not into the world of indictments. Not Melania, she doesn't know what an indictment -- you know, it's not her deal.
Her movie, by the way, big success. That movie is a big success, right? Yeah, I called up so many times. I'd say, you know, honey, I just got indicted again, don't worry about it, it's fine. But think of it many times, and then they say Donald Trump is using the Justice Department to get even. And I don't -- but wouldn't I have a right to? Think of it, there's never been in history a president treated like I got treated.
But they say I use it, and it's amazing. I did that interview yesterday and they said there, they said the question -- are you using the Justice Department for your own personal gain. They said they indicted me 87 times. It's the most incredible thing. But we don't do that, Pam, do we? Yeah, we do what's right.
We do what's right, and Pam does it. We have great people. We have great people working there. But we do what's right. We expanded the Mexico City policy to stop taxpayer dollars from being used to promote radical gender ideology all around the world. No other president would do that. No other president would do it. And my administration also rejoined the Geneva consensus declaration to affirm the right to sovereign nations to protect life, defend the family and to be faithful to God.
Nobody ever did that. I signed an executive order to slash federal funding for any public school that pushes transgender insanity. This is crazy, on our youth. Who would think about that? Who would think, if you go back 15 years, you're talking about -- and I stopped the mutilation of children, the mutilation.
The word is mutilation. They mutilate -- the mutilation of children. I stopped it. Who would think? If you said that 15 years ago, they'd say what the hell is he talking -- is he crazy? It's levels you've never seen. We're still fighting it. But transgender for everybody, they want transgender for everybody.
We stopped it. And we also, very importantly, we got men out of women's sports. You know, it's enough of that nonsense. We created the White House Faith Office, first time ever, which has its one-year anniversary this month and headed up with Paul and Jenny and some incredible people. And we created the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty.
We do a lot -- that's a great commission by the way. That's a phenomenal commission. I signed it, everybody wanted to be on that commission. It was really something, that was a good sign too. And we have incredible people on it. I signed an executive order to combat the vile scourge of antisemitism, which is really raging, rising -- surprising.
Nobody thought they'd see that -- happened very, very rapidly during the four years of Biden. And I set up an official Department of Justice task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias because you do have a lot of that. They don't talk about that. They're always talking about other religions and other different.
But a lot of anti-Christian bias. And you see it going in foreign countries. I mentioned Nigeria, there are others. We're hitting them very hard. My administration is confronting head on the militant and really intolerant campaign that tried to drive religious believers out of public life and out of society.
I mean, religious leaders -- and now religious leaders are respected as much or more as any leader of any type anywhere in the world. Religious leaders are respected again and that's the way we have to have it. They really are respected again. They were having a hard time. They were having a very hard time.
The last four years previous to the one that we served, the last four years were brutal on religious leaders. They were brave. Some were very brave. Some couldn't take it and that's -- a lot of people understand it. Some were brave, really brave. The Department of Justice recently charged nine individuals for storming a church in Minnesota during a worship service and trampling on Americans' First Amendment rights.
I watched that tape and, you know, that was violent. I saw the people sitting there, Pam, and they were scared. They were -- well, some were scared and some were holding up their hands like I believe in God. But they were violent people -- screaming your parents are Nazis. Your parents are Nazis, to people sitting there.
And I thought the minister was great. He was so calm and good. They're screaming at him, terrible, right in the middle of a church service. It's got to be illegal. I mean, Pam is doing it. I'm not doing it. But Pam is doing it and I'll tell you, people are happy with the job that's taking place because they're bad people.
They're bad people. You have one Trump hater in particular that just -- I watched his performance. It was terrible. They try and use freedom of the press and all this to get out of a criminal event. But they were -- that was a horrible thing to witness. And if we allowed that to go on, you wouldn't be able to have a church.
Everybody would be afraid to go to church and that we are not going to allow, are we, huh? And in the audience today is an incredible woman who reminds us what a precious gift of religious liberty we have here in America. A tradition that sadly is not shared in the -- in so many places in the world and even -- even in our country.
And our media is so bad. If we had a good media, it would be so much easier. But think of it, we're doing this all with a really corrupt and bad media. Mariam Ibrahim is a Christian from Sudan, and I'm working hard to end that war. We're very close to getting it done. That'll be number nine. If we don't get Russia, Ukraine first, but we're -- we're working hard to end that whole war.
We're very close to doing -- we've almost done it. In 2014, a Sharia court in that country, sentenced her to 100 lashes and death for marrying a Christian man. At the time, she was eight months pregnant with a daughter. Mariam was ordered to renounce her faith in Christ, but she refused to do so and gave birth to that daughter, Maya, while she was in shackles, being beaten and living in a condition that nobody in this room would even be able to imagine.
Believers all over the planet rallied to Mariam's cause, prayed for her protection and successfully pressured for her release. I did that. I did that. I did that with one phone call, actually. And she had such support. It was so easy. And when I explained it to the powers that be, yes, sir, we will do it right away.
I just wish I knew earlier, but it's a big world with a lot of people. Mariam and Maya are here this morning and now live safely in America, where we protect Christians. We don't kill them, we protect them, and you're getting protected better now than you've ever been protected before. So Mariam and Maya, thank you.
Where are you? Are they here? They're here someplace. Where are you? Please, stand up. Stand up. Thank you. That's great. A lot of bravery. No administration in modern history has done more to confront the plight of persecuted Christians around the world than we have. With us, it's a -- it's a mission. It's actually a mission.
On Christmas Day in close coordination with the government of Nigeria, we worked with them but they got to get tougher, I ordered powerful airstrikes to decimate the ISIS terrorists who have been slaughtering Christians in that country by the thousands. It's not even believable. We hit them so hard, they still don't know what the hell happened.
And we were going to do it on a different day. I said, no, do it on Christmas so they understand it. Remember, Christmas was -- when I ran in 2015, when I announced, I said, we're going to bring back Christmas, because the word Christmas was almost gone. And we did. People use Christmas anymore. We -- we brought back the word Christmas.
They didn't want to use it, and we're using it again. But I specifically told Pete, I said, hit him on Christmas Day, not earlier and not later, right, Pete? And man did he hit him. So then we hit him again recently. We hit him again pretty hard. But we're honored to be joined today by the first lady of Nigeria, who also happens to serve as a Christian pastor at the largest church in Nigeria, a very respected woman.
First lady, please, where are you? Thank you very much. It's a great honor. Thank you very much. Very respected person too. Thank you. I'm also working tirelessly to end dangerous conflicts and help move past ancient hatreds. In October, I ended the war in Gaza, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. It's amazing.
We have peace in the Middle East, by the way, first time in 3,000 years. We have peace. They're little -- little embers, but it's nothing much. You know, we got back the last hostage, dead hostage. We got back all the hostages now, all of them. We got the 20, but we got many -- you know, we got hundreds back before that, but we got back the last hostage, dead hostage and Hamas helped us get it back.
It was a big -- big statement. Now they have to disarm. Some people say they won't, but they will. And if they don't, they're going to not be around any longer. But they agreed to disarm. As the Bible tells us, blessed are the peacemakers. That's true. The peacemakers are very important. But you can only have peace, I find, through strength.
If you don't have strength, peace is very hard, and we have strength. In one year, I've ended eight raging wars such as Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, Armenia and Azerbaijan. These are all wars that were -- President Putin called me up in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
He said, I've been working 10 years to get that war. How did you do it? And I got it done. I got it done, two really good leaders. All they knew was fighting each other. They were fighting each other for many years. That's all they knew. And we got it worked out pretty quickly. A few months ago right here in Washington, we signed a historic peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, which provides the first ever pathway to peace to end a 30 year unbelievably violent conflict.
And we're joined today by a very, very brave and wonderful man, the president of the Congo, President -- President, would you stand up please? You are so -- President, thank you. And you really are -- you're brave -- you're a brave man. I know what you've been through. I know that one very well. That was a hard one.
That was many, many years and it's working out OK. Nothing's easy. Every once in a while, I have to call them both back and -- but it's working out OK. It's going to work out good. But you are brave and we appreciate you being here, great honor, great honor, good guy. Together, he and I have also signed the largest minerals deal in US Africa history.
And you know, Congo has magnificent land. It's incredible land and he's going to -- he's doing very well with it, so we appreciate it. But we've signed the largest deal with some of our big companies and they're going in. So thank you very much, Mr. President, and, uh, you call me for anything. Right? Thank you.
And just in closing, scriptures always tell us that blessed are the pure in heart. I don't know if that applies to me, necessarily. I'm not so sure. I don't know. Paula, does that apply to me? I'm not sure. I try. But we're joined this morning by two incredible young American patriots and believers who show that, you know, that's so true.
Last summer, Emma Foltz and London Smith were both camp counselors at Camp Mystic, the Christian girl's camp in central Texas. One of the worst things I've ever seen. On that fateful night, 20 inches of rain fell in a matter of minutes. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And the river rose 20 feet in literally 30 minutes, leaving utter devastation and destruction.
Emma bravely helped lead 14 precious little girls to safety. And London, seeing the water rise, gathered with other girls at the top of their building and prayed. They just prayed and prayed. And as they prayed, the water miraculously stopped rising, just a few inches from their feet. It was going to overwhelm them.
Anybody in the cabins -- the cabins were gone. Anybody in the cabins were gone. Who would have known? They thought the cabins were the safe place to be. It wasn't. Then the water began to retreat and many hours later, they were finally rescued. As you know, many young people died that night. When asked what she hopes others to take away from her story, London said, this life is not promised.
Our breath every minute is not guaranteed. Because of that, we shouldn't take life for granted and we should just live it well. I mean, it was an amazing statement. I saw her make the statement, young girl making that statement. Incredible, actually, very complex statement and smart, but true. London, I know exactly what you mean and I want to thank you both for being here and your remarkable, incredible courage.
It's been really amazing. And if you could at least stand. You know, I said, would you like to speak? And they said, well, we're a little shy. But you know what? You may be shy but you're very brave. Would you please stand? Thank you. I went to the camp a few days after the flood with the first lady, and it was devastating.
I met parents, they were just -- there could be nothing worse than that. It was a horrible, horrible moment. Almost 250 years after our founding fathers took one of the greatest leaps of faith in human history, the story of Emma and London shows us that faith of the American people remains unbroken -- actually became stronger than ever.
And it reminds us that prayers strengthen, prayers heal prayer empowers and prayer saves. Quite simply, prayer is America's superpower. It really is a superpower, and it always has been and it always will be. And I have no doubt that with the love, devotion and patriotism of the people in this room and our friends from all over the world, some great ones right here, we can make our country and the world a safer, stronger, more peaceful and more faithful place than ever before.
And it's all happening right before your very eyes. And I want to, again, thank you. God bless you and God bless America. Thank you, everybody, very much. Thank you.