Speech: Donald Trump Delivers Midterm Remarks from the Lincoln Memorial - November 2, 2026

Thank you very much, everybody. That's very exciting, very exciting, especially you. I want to thank you. You're doing a fantastic job, parks, incredible people. Please be seated. A very special place with the Lincoln Memorial behind us. It's been something that -- for a long time, generations, they've looked at what's behind me from 1922. And believe it or not, it's never worked, and it's never worked because it was always loaded up with leaks and problems.

But today I'm thrilled to announce the official opening of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Now we're giving serious thought to changing the name to the Trump Reflecting Pool. We'll announce that sometime tomorrow. I'm sure that Secretary Doug Burgum will have a lot of fun in announcing that. No, I'm only kidding.

I'm only kidding. Please don't report it, just -- they'll cut it off and they'll say he's changing the name. No, we've done a great job here, though. The people from Interior have been incredible. And the pool is now better and more beautiful than it's ever been before, and we're very proud of it. We went through a lot with vandalism.

The vandalism was unprecedented. People don't like talking about it. But built more than a century ago, in 1922, this is the largest reflecting pool in the world. It's almost as tall as two Empire State Buildings laid on its side. And it's really amazing. It's a fixture of our National Mall, and it's a crown jewel of the capital city.

We've done it with many other monuments and statues. Unfortunately, from the time of its construction, the reflecting pool struggled with leaks and algae and very severe problems having to do with weather and heat and cold. Presidents Obama and other presidents long before him worked on it, but President Obama and President Biden together spent over $144 million trying to figure it out and fix it, renovate it and it was closed almost during the entire time.

They were unable to get it working and the close of the pool was, uh, usually for periods of a year or two years and, uh, the project was never completed. And when it was almost completed, they tried opening they had 40,000 gallons a day leaking. They were unable to find the leak and it became a very dirty, filthy, stagnant mess.

It was a real problem. They actually tried using the water from the Potomac, and the water from the Potomac doesn't work because of certain reasons that I won't go into, but it didn't work and it was a mess, but they spent a tremendous amount, over $144 million. And other presidents also, you can look at them as teams, but they've been trying to figure this one out for a long time.

And it's a -- it's a tough one because of the length. It's actually the largest pool -- the longest pool anywhere in the world, by far. But I decided to get involved in this, especially over the last few months, and we've done a, I think, a really great job. We had -- the vandals went to work, but we also went to work on the vandals.

And behind me, you'll see where we actually caught someone who's going to have, I guess, big problems, doing the World War II memorial, some other damage and the damage in the grass. But we decided to get very much involved and I want to thank Secretary Doug Burgum, because we worked together. In everything, we work together.

You know, we -- we talk about this, but we've actually fixed 83 statues and fountains throughout the city. And maybe the most important thing we fixed is the crime, because the crime is down close to 90 percent. It will be 100 percent, I -- if there's such a thing, it'll be very close to 100 percent. Washington DC is now -- yeah.

Washington DC went from one of the most unsafe places in this country to one of the safest cities in the country. So we decided to get involved with the reflecting pool once and for all, for America's 250th anniversary. And it was our goal to open it temporarily for the July 4th weekend. That was the big weekend where we had so many incredible things take place, the UFC fight and so many other things. we wanted to get it all open by a certain time, and our goal was July 4th. We got it open a little sooner than that.

Uh, and we were going to close it then and redo the pipes, because the pipes are very old and in bad shape, but we wouldn't have been able to do that, so we closed it and we started to do that. We had, uh -- we opened it quickly and there was great vandalism with slashing. We have pictures of it. We have photographs of it. In fact, I must say, Jesse Watters of Fox did a whole long piece on it and, uh, it was sad to watch because the vandals really went to town.

Uh, a lot of people tried to protect the vandals, but we got it done. We opened it just now with the pipes. The pipes now are totally renovated. They're brand new pipes put in and the pipes being very important in terms of the algae and other things. And it's a complete job and we're very proud of it. We got, uh, really a -- got it done for a small fraction of what the Obama and Biden spent on it. They spent a tremendous amount.

They never got -- they never got it done, that's why we had to do it. So we fixed the leaks, we resurfaced the bottom in a beautiful dark blue, very dark blue. They call it American flag blue, but it's very dark. And if you had a regular blue, like I personally love the lighter color blue, but then you wouldn't have any reflecting.

It wouldn't be a reflecting pool. So the flag -- the fact that the water is very dark pool, and it's like a -- sort of a soft dark blue, they call it, gives you great reflectivity, especially when the sun's out. We don't have the sun out today, but when the sun's out, it's a beautiful thing to see. And we preserved the beauty for generations to come.

We installed 330,000 square feet of a very strong coating, not strong enough to withstand box knives and knives, but by normal standards, pretty -- pretty much the strongest coating you can get, and replaced nearly all of the miles of joints. Does somebody have those pictures for me, the pictures? Yeah, do you want to stand up here, Greg?

It'd be great. If you could show some of the previous conditions of how it looked before we started, I think people would understand very much. Thank you. These are the pipes. So the -- this is a -- it's painted blue for purposes of it was all rusted. So this is what we took out and this is the pipe inside here.

And as you can see, it was totally -- you know, it's been there since 1922, I guess, and it's in bad shape. They've been replaced, and we replaced them after July 4th. So -- OK? And do you want to -- this was the, uh, the joints that were here that we took out. They were put in there a long time ago, and we took that out.

And, uh, Obama and Biden put in much of it, but it was all very defective material. And that's one of the reasons it leaked so badly, so we removed all of this. This was put in. It was not very high quality material, wouldn't last very long. This was what we inherited. This is the way the pool was just prior to, uh, just a little bit below the surface.

When you wonder why it leaked, I guess it's not too hard to -- it's not too hard to see. That's what it looked like. And by the way, we -- we resurfaced the granite. The granite was all resurfaced and it's, you know, because it's granite, it's got a, uh, in many cases, granite will have a million -- what they call a million year life.

It's the strongest stone, but we're able to resurface it largely. And the areas around the pool, we resurfaced, either fixed or -- fixed, resurfaced. And in some cases we had to replace, we tried not to replace because you can really never match stone, but some places we had to. This is a -- this is another example of what it looked like just at water level and below.

So it was a mess and it was leaking like a sieve. And this has been for many, many years. This was long before Biden and Obama. And this was sad because this was the grass, and it was totally vandalized up here, and this was put out on the surface, 86 47. You know what that means. That was a Comey phrase, 86 47. That means kill 47. That's a mob expression that Comey, I guess, was the first one that I heard put it out.

So not nice. OK. He's a dirty cop, you know, in case anyone doesn't know who Comey -- Comey was a dirty cop. Here's another 86 47. Now, this was after we sprayed it because there was a -- it was done with acid and it was put out over the lawn. It was vandalism, pure vandalism, probably the same people that did the pool.

But, uh, actually the person that was caught up here was maybe related. We'll find that out pretty soon. So that says 86 47. You don't see it as clearly because we -- we sprayed it until we had it -- then ultimately, we came back, we ripped out the grass and put new grass. This was brand new and they came and vandalized it. It was in beautiful shape.

I looked at it two days before and I said, what beautiful grass. And they went out and they -- I think it was the same people that did the pool. I mean, I think I know who did it, but, uh, bad people, sick people, only sick people. So that's, uh, brand new grass that was vandalized, so we took it all out and we start it all again.

And the grass now is beautiful, and we have a lot of cameras up now that they should have had before. They had cameras, but not to the extent, not good enough cameras. And here's another one of how it looked prior to what we did. So you can see that that -- I was generally speaking, you can even see where the concrete gets the rebar behind.

So this was just really worn out. It was in very bad shape. That was one of the original, very original area. And this is a similar thing. This was as -- fixed up by, uh, Biden and, uh, the Obama administration. They sort of worked, uh, it was a similar group of people that worked -- And it didn't work, tremendous algae problems.

And you have that picture with the algae? Yeah, let me see that. This is -- this was a picture taken when it was -- they -- just before they closed it down. And this picture, this was in the Biden era right after. It didn't work. They closed it down for two years. They spent a fortune. They just spent money after money after money.

It's -- look, it's not an easy thing. The algae's brutal. It forms easily. And we haven't -- I don't think you'll see too much. We have great equipment in there now that this doesn't happen. But the green, that's not grass. That's algae. That -- it took over the entire pool, and then they closed it down but they didn't remove any of the dirt and the filth.

And it looked like that for -- not like this. They took out the water, so all you saw was dirt and filth and paper and everything else for years under the Biden and -- and Obama administration. It was pretty -- pretty bad. So. we now have it really good. We hope that nobody comes along with the box knives.

And I want to thank you, Greg, for working so hard on it. You've been -- you and your team have been incredible, Doug Burgum. And -- and by the way, the police have been great. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. So, we took that and we made it -- I mean, if we took a picture, we're not showing that, but this would be all sealed up. This is granite, so it's pretty strong stuff.

And we fixed the granite. We re-caulked it. All of this has been re-caulked. And if you go around the pool, you'll see it's in very good shape, very pristine shape. We didn't have to replace it because the granite stone is so strong. It literally has a -- thousands of years of life, which is the only stone that does.

So, if you want to have that, we'll put that out. So, we did something that people have been trying to do for -- since 1922. It was built -- it was actually opened to great fanfare. And within two -- two days, they realized this thing is leaking like a sieve. And they didn't have modern day materials. They used two -- they basically used stone and cement.

And, you know, that's not a very good thing to hold water. But this project should be a project that unites all Americans. It should be something we're very proud of. We're proud of it. We had to go through a long process to get it done. Again, we -- we closed it. We wanted to get it fixed for July 4th weekend, and we did.

And then we were going to close it, and we were sort of -- it was sort of mandated by what happened with respect to these sick people that came around. But we've now fixed -- all the piping is in great shape. And that -- that is the thing that not only gives you water input, it also is drainage, and it's also something very important in terms of the algae.

It creates the bubbles and creates what's necessary that the algae doesn't form. Because from the beginning algae formed -- I mean, they've had years here where you couldn't see any water. It was just algae. And it had a bad aroma, to put it mildly. A lot of bad things happened. So, I just want to thank your -- your whole department, from everybody in the Department of Interior, because it -- what -- this has been -- this is a massive piece of -- piece of pool.

There's never been anything like -- when you look at the size, it's the biggest anywhere in the world by far, and was treated with a lot of love and then it was treated with a lot of hate. And we've gotta stop the hate because they came in and should never have done what they did. And despite all that we went through, the Reflecting Pool right now looks better than it ever looked, and it is better.

It's in better health and better shape. All of those pictures that I showed you, they're now obsolete. It's in -- it's -- it's really a beautiful thing. It's a work of art in many ways, but it was a work of art that never worked, but now it will work. And I want to thank Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, the National Park Service, the men and women of the US Park Police, who are phenomenal, the skilled construction workers and tradesmen.

We had a lot of great people. They didn't get the credit they deserve. And everyone else that made the magnificent renovation possible. And across all of the entire capital, we are making DC safe and beautiful again. And our National Guard and other law enforcement partners have made over 16,000 arrests, including over 3,000 narcotics arrests, hundreds of gang members, and dozens of murderers.

Crime is down -- could be 90 percent, 91 percent, and Washington, DC is one of the safest cities anywhere in the United States of America. It was one of the most dangerous. We were losing, on average, to death three people a week, and now we don't have that. We don't have that. And I want to thank the National Guard and all the people from the military that came in, and they really worked very hard to make sure that some bad people are taken out.

We removed about 5,000 career criminals. A lot of them came through the open border from the previous administration. And I've been thanked maybe more for that than anything I've done in Washington. We've had a great success in less than two years, and we've created 25 -- think of it, $25 trillion in wealth in the country since the beginning, $25 trillion in wealth with what we've done with tariffs, where businesses are pouring in in order not to pay tariffs.

And they're building factories right now. $22.5 trillion is being invested in the United States right now as we speak. And we're building factories, car factories, SI factories. We're building pharmaceutical plants and laboratories, hundreds of billions of dollars of factories. And as you know, Audi just announced a $40 billion expense, and they're building one of the largest auto plants in the world.

They're going to produce over 200,000 cars a year. Toyota likewise, they're spending a lot of money on building new plants. We only lost auto plants. We were losing -- we went 49 years without building a new one. Now we're building more auto plants that we've ever built before. And our whole country is booming.

We're booming like we've never boomed before. We've cleaned hundreds of sites of graffiti, fixed over 2,300 lighting fixtures in Washington, DC, cleaned and renovated over 83 statues and fountains and monuments, removed hundreds of squalid homeless encampments. We had encampments on most of the parkland that you now see with -- in many cases, it's going to start in the spring, but we're replacing all of the grass on all of the parks because, like the human being, grass has a life also.

You have to replace grass -- grass. And in this case -- in Florida, it's once every 12 years with Bermuda grass. Here we can take a lot longer. But this grass has never, ever been replaced, and we're replacing much of it. We were given a gift of grass from a great company, Scotts, of the White House. The White House, they did it free of charge.

They did it with love too, the grass in front of the White House. If you take a look at the new helipad and all of the grass and surroundings, that's brand new and it's -- it's beautiful. It's never looked like that. They put topsoil down and they put grass. It -- it had no topsoil. They were surprised you could even have grass.

The grass in front of the White House was a very inferior grass for many, many years, and now it's beautiful. It's all brand new, and people have commented. What happened to the grass that's so beautiful in front of the White House? We've -- in front and in back, they've -- free of charge they've agreed to do the entire White House.

So, they've done the entire front section surrounding the new ballroom and the brand new helipad, which has been getting, by the way, rave reviews. The helipad was desperately needed. They were landing helicopters -- big, new helicopters, they were landing it literally in the mud, and it was dangerous. I mean, things can topple over, except that the pilots are the best in the world.

They're the best in the world. And we fully repaired dozens of previously broken down -- we have fountains that were -- weren't touched for 50 years, hadn't worked for 35 years. They had grass growing through them. They had graffiti, red graffiti mostly. And -- and that's pretty bad. Because when you spray the red paint on limestone and certain types of stone that isn't hard like a granite, you spray them, it sinks in and it's a very bad thing.

And we were able to do a real job and bring them back around Columbus Circle, Lafayette Park. Lafayette Park, by the way, is coming out. It's almost finished. That's the front entrance to the White House. And we've spent -- I made a donation, a big one, and a lot of other people did, and Lafayette Park looks incredible again.

And Meridian Hill Park, we brought them all back, Columbus Circle. While past administrations tore down statues, allowed thugs and murderers to run wild and let our capital fall into shameful disrepair, we're treating our capital city with the love and the honor that it deserves. We respect it. Millions of visitors each year come from all over the world, and they're all coming back to Washington.

It's booming again because it's safe and beautiful again. All of the homeless encampments have been removed, by the way, as of last month. And the parks are really looking good. And again, they're going to be -- they're all being regressed. And that's a big deal, regressing. It's a -- it's a lot of -- lot of area, but they're all being regressed.

Our country is strong, respected and prosperous once more, and our capital is cleaner and safer and more spectacular than ever. You see the Lincoln Memorial and you see how all of it, they had graffiti stains on it, they had -- That's just terrible. I mean, who would do it? But we got it -- well, we don't have graffiti in Washington anymore.

And if you get caught putting graffiti on any of our beautiful Corinthian marbles, there's so many buildings, the Corinthian, the Corinthian columns are the most beautiful in the world, you get caught doing it, you're going to -- going to serve a long time in prison. As you know, this is the last day before the midterm elections, the most important midterm, I believe in our lifetime.

The Democrat Party has nominated the most extreme and dangerous slate of candidates in American history. These are the most dangerous candidates ever put up. There's never been anything like what we're seeing, jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood members and people that nobody can even believe what we're looking at. And all committed to the same radical agenda, open borders, raising your taxes by trillions of dollars, taking away your guns, transgender mutilization of your children, abolishing oil and natural gas, sending energy costs skyrocketing, and opening the floodgates to millions of migrants from all over the world, hoping to get them to be able to vote.

That's the only reason they're letting them in, they want them to be able to vote. With your vote, we will decide these extremists will be given power or not power, will either keep America strong -- I think we're having -- this is the golden age of America, we've never done anything like it. When you hear $25 trillion in wealth created in a short period of time, it's not even two years, a long way from two years.

January 20th it's two years that we took over, but there's never been a time like this. We have -- we fought for 250 years to make it great, we're not going to let it be torn down by a bunch of people that have failed everywhere. They've been -- because the ideologies that you're talking about, various ideologies, they've always failed, every single time.

So we'll defend our country, our culture and our heritage for generations to come. We're going to keep it the way it is. We're going to make it better and just. So two days ago, it was reported that the Democrat nominee for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, qualified for the ballot by campaigning and soliciting signatures at radical mosques and called the United States the House of Satan.

They call it the House of Satan, and we changed that. We call the United States the House of God. They call it the House of Satan. We don't want people that call the United States the House of Satan. When you vote, remember, a party that hates America cannot be allowed to rule over the people who built our country.

Many of you are right in front of us. I saw them last night. I saw them in Kansas, I saw them in Iowa, I saw them in Mississippi, I saw them in Texas and many other places. We did 29 stops and we had big rallies, the biggest rallies ever by far for a midterm election. Nobody's ever seen anything like it, and that means there's love.

And those -- those rallies were love. Recent news has also proved that, again, the Dumocrat Party is very, very corrupt. In Alaska, the Dumocrats conspired to get a fake Dan Sullivan on the ballot to confuse voters and run against the real Dan Sullivan. So they got somebody named Dan Sullivan to run against Dan Sullivan and hoping that -- And it would -- it would do that.

It would -- it's corrupt. It's, uh, it's really a fraud -- fraudulent election. We've achieved more in less than two years than any administration in American history, and I've kept every single promise I made, except far more. I've actually kept far more promises than I made. We've done much more than I promised.

And we have the most secure border in American history. Right now, we have a border that the people that make up the list, and I don't make them up, we've gone 17 months without one person entering our country illegally from the southern border. Before that, it was 25 million came in, and they came in from mental institutions and prisons, and they were drug dealers, and very sick people in many ways.

We passed the largest tax cuts in American history, with no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. And oil today is down $10, which is the biggest drop in oil in history. There's never been any single day where oil is -- has gone down that much, down $10, and it's going to go down a lot further because we're winning with Iran, easily winning.

Their Navy is gone. Their air force is gone. It's laying all over the runways of Iran in little pieces. The anti-aircraft, their missile capacity is way down and their missile building capacity is way down, and they have no money and they have about -- the only thing they have is the highest inflation in the last 15 years for any country, over 300 percent inflation, and they want to make a deal.

And that could happen. So personal incomes are the highest in history. The poverty rate is at an all-time record low, meaning good, best poverty rate we've had ever in history and best personal incomes we've had ever in history. American exports are at an all-time high, and more people are working today than at any point in the history of our country.

And the United States is now by far the largest supplier of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world. And when you add our conquest of Venezuela, we won the war in Venezuela in one day, and we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars of oil. Every single day, it's coming in from Venezuela, which, as you know, is a very vital source.

And when you add the United States and Venezuela together, and then you add Greenland, if you'd like, because we also have Greenland now, we worked out a great deal, uh, we want to thank Denmark and Europe for making that possible. But, you know, when you heard, oh, Greenland, you're not -- well, it was very vital to us. We got Greenland on an unlimited basis.

But when you add just Venezuela and the United States, we have almost 50 percent of the world's oil. We have more than Saudi Arabia and Russia by far put together. Because our country is doing so well, also as you know, and I say it, say it because we've done it with $1,776 for our soldiers, $1,776 and our soldiers got that.

But we're going to do -- if we win the election, everybody is going to get $5,000. Every adult is going to get $5,000, but you have to spend it in the United States of America. The Democrats want to blow all of this up by electing communist jihadists and the United States Congress will not allow that to happen.

We've got some big races tomorrow. I guess some of the voting has already gone on, but tomorrow's election day, more traditional, and we can't let that happen. We have to keep our Congress strong, free. A little bit of apple pie is something very nice about that. We're not looking to have a jihadist be in our Senate, as an example.

And I've traveled all across the country, spoken at all of these rallies I've done over the last two and a half weeks, and America is ready to go. They're ready to vote. I hope they're ready to do the right thing. If they vote, because I won the last election, we had record numbers. We won many states in records, Florida, Texas and so many states.

I won almost every state that I went to. I was saying we have the all-time record. But with all of those records, it all doesn't matter if we're going to be foolish and let people that hate our country win an election. Because if the people that voted for me and voted in the last election where we had such a great victory, if they go out and vote just a good portion of them, we will win in a landslide.

Now, that doesn't happen because usually whoever the sitting president is, Republican or Democrat, good or bad, good president, great president, bad, for some reason the sitting president doesn't win the midterms, but we gave this a very strong shot. So, in terms of things, we have the most secure border in our history.

We have the largest tax cuts in our history. We stopped foreign fraudsters and welfare amnesty for illegals. And we were able to catch billions and billions of Democrat approved fraud in Minnesota and other places, and that's just beginning. We're going to catch hundreds of billions. We've already got tens of billions.

We actually already have over $100 billion. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, so corrupt, a lot of states, Maine, Minnesota, many, many states, mostly -- I will say, mostly run by Dumocrats. Low cost energy versus the green new scam and record inflation, that's what they had. They have -- they had literally record inflation, the highest prices in history, the highest inflation in history.

They had the green new scam, where everybody was going to be dead in 12 years, and here we are. Here we are. We're not dead. We're a long way from dead. And we had an expression: drill, baby, drill. And that's what's happened, and we're making an absolute fortune in our country, again, more than Saudi Arabia and Russia.

They're the second and third. We would be -- if I weren't president, we would be in no place, and now we're in first place. And we have no nuclear weapons for Iran. We're not going to allow Iran ever to have a nuclear weapon. And they understand that. They -- they've understood that. And they've said it even recently, "We will not have a nuclear weapon." And we want to protect our Second Amendment, and we're not going to let you -- we're not going to let these people do anything to disturb the Second Amendment of our country.

It's a very important thing. And we're going to protect our children from the transgender sexual violations, the -- the horrible treatment that they've gotten. So, I just want to say that we're very proud of what's behind me, but we're much -- even more proud of all the statues that we've done all over Washington, and even more proud than that of having stopped crime in Washington.

And the police have been unbelievable. The -- the -- you guys have done a great job. Once you had a little leadership it was sort of easy, wasn't it? But you've done a great job. We let you do your job. Nobody does it better. That goes for New York, too. You know, in New York, if they would call us, if Chicago or Illinois would call us, and if California, namely Los Angeles, would call us, we would love to go there.

We would solve the problem. We did in Memphis, Tennessee. They had the worst crime rate in the whole country, and it's down 83 percent. And a friend of mine who was leaving Memphis is going to stay now. He said I've never seen anything like it. The difference between now and one year ago, the -- they have to ask.

The governor and the mayor called and they asked. New Orleans, Louisiana, New Orleans, as they call it, the crime rate was out of control. I got a call from Jeff Landry, the -- the governor of Louisiana. He said, please, we have a big event coming up. We have our biggest event coming up, and he said it's a -- it's a crime haven so many people are being killed.

They have Mardi Gras. And they said could you please help us? This was six, seven months ago. We did. Crime rate's down 82 percent. So, think of it, Memphis and New Orleans, but more importantly, I mean, from my standpoint, Washington, DC, our great capital, has to be crime free. And it is now just about crime free.

Soon it'll be crime free, and it's also a beautiful place. And the beauty is very important. But without the great stats that I gave you on crime, it all wouldn't matter. So, we're not calling people now from Iowa to tell them that their son has been killed. He'll be coming home in a casket. Somebody from Indiana -- a family from Indiana, I'm sorry to inform you but your son was standing at the base of a very beautiful monument, and he was killed instantly and he'll be coming home to you in a coffin.

We don't do that anymore. We have a safe city. And if people do things that are wrong -- we've removed over 5,000 career criminals. We've removed them. They're out of here. And, you know, one stat -- I'll just leave this with you on crime. 2 percent of the people create 91 percent of the crime. So, we can handle those numbers.

It was 50 percent or 20 percent or 10 percent. 2 percent create 90 percent, 91 percent of the crime. And we've removed those 2 percent from Memphis and we removed them from New Orleans, and we really removed them from Washington. So, I just want to thank everybody. The reflecting pool is great. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch.

And it's been -- again, 1922. I'm not blaming anybody. It's 1922. It's never worked the way it should, and now it's a beautiful reflection. The pipes have just been changed. The whole thing is in great shape. And we're going to make sure nobody vandalizes it, and I'm going to ask the Park Police and the people to really watch, because a lot of people were sort of watching as this group of people slashed the hell out of it. And I think they were a little bit -- like, as a weird feeling came upon them and they didn't -- they didn't get it. But we learned a lot.

We learned a lot. So, I just want to thank everybody. You've all done a -- and in particular, I'd like to thank Doug Burgum, what a job you're doing. You're a real leader. Would you like to say a few words, Doug? Please.

Well, good afternoon, everybody. It's an amazing day. And so many things you heard from -- the president talk about the incredible statistics related to our safe and beautiful capital. But none of those statistics would happen without leadership, and that leadership happened on the day that President Trump signed the executive order that empowered all of us to go do that job.

So, I've got a lot of people I want to share gratitude with, but no one more than President Trump for what he did on his leadership to make this happen. And those of us who get an opportunity to work with President Trump every day know why he signed that. He signed it because he cares deeply about this country and the people that live here.

And of course, he -- he -- he -- he -- he knows that this is the greatest country in the world. But then, very simply, he asked the question why wouldn't -- if we have the greatest country in the world, why wouldn't we have the safest and most beautiful capital in the world. And -- and he also had a perspective.

He'd been president four years earlier. And when he left, you know, things weren't in that bad of shape. But over the four years that happened with COVID and everything else, the hollowing out of the city, the people working remotely from home that never came back, you know, all of the hundreds of thousands of people from the federal government that were no longer working in the city, killing small businesses, and then -- and then again, just the takeover.

Almost every triangle and circle park in the -- in the city, those are also federally driven parks. Those were -- all became homeless encampments. You know, people would arrive at -- at Union Station, and -- and it was a mess. And then they'd walk out on Columbus Circle, and you wouldn't -- you didn't -- I'd -- congressmen that had been here for 20 years didn't even know it was a fountain, graffiti covered Carrara marble.

And President Trump saw that when he was driving around. He's got an eye as a builder. And he would call me and he'd say, hey, there's graffiti at X, Y, Z. What about this homeless encampment there? Can we help take care of these people? And the answer was always yes, we can take care of it. But that led to the -- this -- this executive order.

And so, today is a day of gratitude for President Trump and all the people that executed that. But as he said, it's about love, it's about honor, it's about respect. And when you clean up your capital, it's about honoring the past. It's about gratitude for the present, but it's also inspiration for the future.

It's our 250th anniversary celebration. Over 40 million people are going to visit this capital this year. It's -- across all of our national park sites, the National Mall is the most visited place. And so, again, I want to thank President Trump's -- give him a shout out. But we've got Scott Brecht and leadership here from the US Park Police.

This is the oldest federal law enforcement. George Washington created them in 1791. They've doubled in size. We've given them their authorities. They've gone back. They've led the charge. The guns, the crimes, the criminals that they've taken off the street, they've been a key part of driving these stats to the lowest level we've seen in 125 years.

So, let's give it up for the US Park Police. And I want to say they do put their lives on the line. During this last year, there was one of our officers that was shot. Fortunately, he was -- he survived that and he's actually back at work. But -- but -- Ryan McDermott, who I had an opportunity to do a ride along with.

But when he got shot, the first person that wanted to call him to make sure he was okay was President Trump. And he did -- he did call him. Ryan thought it was a crank phone call. He didn't answer. President Trump left the greatest voicemail in history, and I think every park police officer's heard it because Ryan sent it to everybody.

But President Trump cares about the people in law enforcement. They're on the front line. He cares deeply. Another group he's had a chance to work greatly all the time with is the National Park Service, the incredible team. Someone asked President Trump if he'd ever visited a national park, and his answer was, well, I actually live in one, because the White House is national park property -- beautiful, is amazing, but our -- the National Historic Preservation Crew, the National Park Service folks, the folks that have gone out and fixed these monuments and these fountains, the contractors and the workers, the president's a builder, we can't -- you can't keep him away.

We came out here in June just to say thank you to the people that were working day and night, around the clock to try to get the pool ready for the -- for the 250th celebration. But we got a group of them here, uh, Jessica Bowron, who -- our acting director of the National Park Service, the whole group, Frank Lands, everybody that's worked on this, uh, just know that it's not just those of us in interior and the president, but the whole country respects you for what you do, both here and around the country.

So let's give it up for the National Park Service. And, of course, uh, under President Trump's leadership, we also had an opportunity just -- just, you know, hundreds of yards away from here, opening up yet another memorial to our veterans just 10 days ago. 700,000 veterans served in Desert Storm and Desert Shield.

That project had been driven by private sector volunteers and veterans for 16 years, but here we are under President Trump's leadership, dedicating that beautiful memorial on a Saturday morning just a few weeks ago. And that, you know, brings in line all of -- when we talk about the monuments that we've restored across the city, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, this mall is about honoring our veterans.

I don't know anybody that cares more about our veterans than President Trump. But to all those veteran groups and again, to President Trump, let's thank everybody for the great work, as part of this restoration is about honoring our veterans. And then the last thing right here on the reflecting pool, this is just a symbol of the great work that's gone on, but as we stand at this historic location, and what an honor to be here with President Trump, uh, and an honor to be here as the 55th Secretary of the Interior.

Of course, the Secretary of the Interior should be renamed a number of different things, but some people jokingly call it the Department of Everything. 14 time zones, 500 million acres of land, 700 million acres of subsurface, $1.3 billion of offshore, uh, and, of course, when President Trump talks about the prosperity that we're seeing in our nation, that is also his policies in action, because our nation is a nation that's now getting back to being -- food security, more grazing for our country, more timber production for affordable homes, and more oil and gas to drive the price and affordability of energy down in our country.

Uh, and of course, uh, everything else that goes on, those working families that help make America great, he cares about them. I saw it when I was with him yesterday in Iowa and Kansas. And, uh, and of course, energy security and -- and, uh, food security lead to national security, and we have an opportunity to do that.

But right here on this -- in Washington DC, where we stand today, the reflecting pool is part of the Lincoln Memorial. It is an extension to Lincoln Memorial. People that would vandalize this pool is no different than throwing a bucket of red paint on the statue of Lincoln itself, and it's a physical connection between the monument that you see behind the president and I, the Washington Monument, the founder of our country, and this monument, the Lincoln Memorial, in honoring the person who saved our union.

And so it's at this intersection, at this memorial, it's a direct reflection of respect for our history. And that's why President Trump said, I want to go and be on the steps, I want to stand in front of the reflecting pool at this intersection and to deliver the message that his administration, under his leadership, cares about how our country is viewed to the world.

He cares about the safety of the visitors that come here from around the country to see this country. And he understands that beauty matters and safety matters, but he also understands that that's a choice. And when he talks about his offer to other cities, President Trump has laid out a blueprint for what any large, major metro in the country could do. Any one of them could be standing up today talking about cleaner monuments and less homelessness, more care for their people, less graffiti and lower -- and lower crime.

Any city in America could do, it's a choice. And President Trump has chosen and proven that he -- that with leadership, we can choose to have beauty, we can choose to have safety and it can be done but it takes a leader. It takes a leader like President Trump. So again, the results speak for themselves. Uh, the news can print whatever they want, but you can't change the fact that this city is cleaner, safer than it ever has been.

And it is a model for every American city and we're standing here today because President Trump asked us all to go do the work and deliver that for the American people. So one more time, thank you, President Trump, for all you've done. Fantastic, fantastic.

I just want to add, we're working with Doug and the group very hard. We're going for a final approval of the triumphal arch military complex, and that's in the circle by Arlington Bridge. Uh, it's -- it's spectacular. It will be more beautiful, and to me, the most beautiful arc. 59 cities have them. The most beautiful arc to me is the one in Paris.

It's called the Arc de Triomphe. And we will be doing this, the -- uh, the triumphal arc military complex. It's going to have tremendous drone capability. Uh, I would say sniper or shooter capability. Its height, its platforms, its storage capacity is incredible. It's right smack in the middle of everything.

So very important for our military. But from a beautification standpoint, it will be the most beautiful arc in the world. It's more beautiful than the Arc de Triomphe. It's -- the quality of material we're using is at a better, higher level. The -- the size is about 20 percent larger and it's -- it's going to be beautiful.

I think it will be one of the great -- it'll compare to that and that, it'll be one of the great things we've ever done. We're also going to be doing, working with Doug and Greg and all of the great people, and we're also going to be doing right behind us, right behind us, you know, the Lincoln Memorial was supposed to be fronting on the Potomac River, but it never got there because they started building roads back there.

And we're going to be doing a promenade, which is a beautiful project. It's a flat project. It's not going to impede. It's basically a walkway down to the water, and it's -- we call it a promenade, and that's going to have a great -- it's a great architectural concept, simple and beautiful in white stone.

And you'll be able to then walk to where it was -- originally, that was going to be -- obviously, that was going to be the entrance to the Lincoln Memorial, the Potomac, but it then got cluttered with two -- a roadway, another roadway, a highway, and lots of things got built and you never were able to get back.

Well, we solved that problem and you're going to have a promenade. We're building the National Garden of American Heroes, and that's going to be spectacular. That we're working on right now and the work has already started. And that will be, uh, from 250 to 500 great American heroes in statue form, done by the greatest, uh, the greatest artists in the world.

They'll be done by many artists, but the greatest artists will be doing statues to our great American heroes and we're actually forming lists right now to find out who's going to be there. It could go from 250 to 500 statues. It'll be incredible. It's on about 45 acres [Inaudible] right on the Potomac. and right next to that, we're doing a renovation of the golf course, which is in a horrible condition, very dangerous and horrible condition.

The walls are caving in. The whole thing is a mess. And we're doing a renovation of the golf course, and we're going to make it a world championship course for the US Open, for the PGA Championship, for the Ryder Cup, President's Cup. It'll be in shape to play that on one day's notice. It's going to be built to the highest standards of golf and it will be unbelievable.

And you know you have views of the different monuments and it's going to be open to the public and we're going to give a discount to people that live in Washington DC, substantial discount, so they can play it. But it's in very bad shape right now. It's -- it's -- as they say, it's had it. It's a mess. And we will be building a -- a world-class golf course open to the public.

And it will be something really great. So we have a lot of great things planned for Washington and I could get into the nation, but for that, you don't have enough time. But I can only say that we're, uh, we had a war with Iran, we won. We had a war with and, you know, I don't know if you even call it a war because we haven't been doing any fighting for months.

You know, we just -- we control the -- we control the Strait of Hormuz. We control it, and strongly control it. We took out -- Wall Street Journal reported, we took out last week more oil than at any time in the history of the Strait. And again, oil prices are plunging now. They're plunging, a record. Nobody's ever seen a plunge like this, and they'll be down.

I hope people realize that when they go into the voting booth, because we had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. If -- if we allowed Iran to have a nuclear weapon, this country could never function the same way. The whole world would be a different place, so we've stopped that. We stopped that a year ago with those beautiful B-2 bombers, which hit every single mark, and just put hundreds of tons of rock on top of everything.

But we continue that, but, you know, if you think, we're talking about war, it's not a war. We haven't -- We've done very little fighting. We -- we wiped out their military, their air force, and we did everything we had to do. We wiped out their leaders, too. We wiped out their leaders, the first level of leaders, their second level of leaders.

And they've asked us please stop doing that, and we will. But it looks like that's coming together very nicely, very, very -- and that's why, I guess, the oil prices dropped so precipitously. People found out about it. So, we're doing well. Our country is doing great. I think it's the greatest we've ever done.

We had a great first term. In terms of the economy, we had the best term ever. We had the most successful economy. I believe that this economy, with all that's happening, with the $22.2 trillion being invested and with already the creation of $25 trillion, with a T, $25 trillion of wealth, we've never done anywhere even close to that.

We did -- we'd do -- we'd go negative with the way we were going. But with $25 trillion in wealth, a number that no country's ever even come closer to doing, and I think this is indeed -- as I said before, it's a golden age of America. We have a country that we can be proud of again. We were laughed at all over the world.

For four years, we were laughed at like we were stupid people. We were laughed at by every ruler, every president, every prime minister, every king, every queen. But they don't laugh anymore. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it. Thank you.