Speech: Donald Trump Holds a Rose Garden Dinner for Law Enforcement Officials - May 11, 2026

[Music fades] We could have kept that going. What a great song. I won a lot of races with that song. Uh-oh. I thought that was a drone. [Laughter] They make them in all different sizes nowadays. They can be very destructive as you probably heard. So this is, oh, you can sit down. Come on. It's an honor. Now, if you found, if you find it really exciting, stand up, pop up again. [Laughter] But it's a great honor.

Welcome. These are my friends. These people voted for me 98%. That we're looking for the other two. [Laughter] But I want to welcome you to the Rose Garden. You know, this is a whole new thing. This used to be grass. And, uh, took a little heat from my wife. She said, uh, "Darling, what did you do with my grass?" I said, "People got tired of standing in mud.

You know, the White House, you don't realize it's, it's built on a wetland. So when it doesn't, it, it didn't have to rain. Uh, the grass was always soaking wet. If you had a news conference, the reporters who were back there, I think, the reporters, they walk out with their shoes. The female reporters in particular, they weren't thrilled.

But I said, "We're going to get a gorgeous stone," which we did. "And we're going to put this up here." I don't know if you got this here. It's just completed with the granite, the black granite. And Mr. Secretary, right? You just, you saw it, you gave it your approval. Do we have a good news sec- -- would you please stand up, Mark White?

We have a great secretary. He's a great wrestler, by the way. You know, he's a championship wrestler. You don't want to fight him. But you don't know some of these guys might be able to take you, but probably not. [Laughter] I would be very disappointed in you if that happened. [Laughter] But we're honored to be joined by Vice President JD Vance.

Where's JD? JD. Doing a terrific job. Thank you, JD. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. Doug. And we'll be opening up the reflective pond. It's called the reflective pond. Goes from the Lincoln to the Washington, the Washington, uh, monument. And it goes all the way. It's, uh, 2,500 feet. Think of this. And President Obama, a man who was a great divider, president of, he, he spent 54 million trying to fix it, and it made it worse.

They've been trying to get it fixed for the last 40 years. So I got involved with Doug. They were gonna spend, think of this 350 to 400 million. You have to understand, it's longer than the tallest building in the world laying sideways. It's two empire state buildings, and it's almost 200 feet wide. It's a lot.

It's a big area. It was gonna take four years and it was gonna cost 350 to 400 million. I said, "I think we can do it for less." So I called people that do swimming pools and I said, "Go take a look at it." They were gonna take stone out. They were gonna put new stone in. It would've taken forever. It would've taken three or four years.

That's before overruns and over at cost. So they were for, think of this 350 million without cost overruns and four years versus three million dollars, and it'll be finished this week. Like, think of that. And somebody said, somebody said, and by the way, a very sophisticated job. They ground the stone. They ground everything.

They sealed it. They did a lot. They had to have a good base. And, uh, because I read in the New York Times, we just gave a little paint job. This is not paint. This is highly sophisticated stuff. But, uh, I said, "Get me the heavy duty industrialized and it's thick." It's amazing. Actually amazing stuff.

It'll be good for 50 years probably. So somebody said, "Well, it's not the same job." No, it's better. It's gonna be beautiful. And I think we'll have it open, Doug, next week, sometime, next week, week after. So this would've been under construction for four years, cost all of that money. It would've been over 400 million dollars with cost overruns, which of course are a normal, a normal cost of building if you don't know what the hell you're doing.

And we did it for a couple of million bucks, and we did it in one week. I said, "One week." That's not including the preparation, which was two weeks alone because it was so filthy, dirty. We were getting complaints from people. For years it's been dirty and disgusting and rotting, rotting garbage, and it's terrible.

We took away 16 loads of garbage out of that only two feet deep pool. So, I just wanna mention 'cause Doug has been great and he went with me 100%. So, we put this magnificent coating, it's almost complete, not a paint job. New York Times, fake New York Times. I call it the failing New York Times. They're losing subscribers.

They're losing subscribers so badly, they don't know what the hell to do. But they said we did a paint job. We didn't do a paint job. The place would leak and we're gonna have it totally sealed. It's basically, if you think of a swimming pool, a heavy swimming pool coating, and the pool person said, "Sir, we're going industrial." What is industrial?

It's a heavy duty, it can handle anything. And, uh, it's gonna be beautiful, beautiful color. I picked American flags. See the blue? I picked American flag. It was called American Flag Blue. I couldn't make up my mind. I had a hard time. I was having a very hard time, "And here the colors are, sir." There were like, 70 colors.

I said, "Couldn't you give me three? 70's a lot." They had every color you could imagine. And they called them and they, I looked and looked. I said, "What is this?" "Sir, that's American Flag Blue." I said, "I'll take that one." And, uh, I think it's gonna be beautiful and, uh, you're gonna see something.

So, this is, 1922 it was built and it was broken for most of the time. And you are now, with Doug and myself and the great staff you have, uh, and the people that did it. And by the way, these people did not work for me. They told, they said they worked for me, they didn't work for me. They come from a different part of the country.

But, uh, but they were good. The people that worked for me recommended it, and they recommend we do it this way. But I recommended it to them because I'm very good at construction. So, we saved at least, think of it, I saved $349 million and I saved four years of construction, and the New York Times said I didn't bid it. I didn't bid it. Uh, it's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable, but I had nothing to do. I blame Doug. They gave it out. I didn't even give it out. So, the other people we have, and we have some of the greatest people on earth here tonight, Homeland Security. The Homeland Security team has been unbelievable, I have to tell you. And I came up with an idea that I thought was brilliant.

I think all my ideas were brilliant, actually. But this one, I knew I was brilliant. Then I got a call from Tom Holman, he wasn't thr- -- where's Tom? Is he here? I love Tom Homan, said I'm the greatest president in history. I said, "Tom, you can't do better than that?" Thank you, Tom. So, I get a call from Tom Homan, he didn't like it, but everyone else liked it. I wanted to change the name of ICE, which is a tough name, you know, to Nice, so that when the fake news reports, they said, "It was a nice day with Nice.

We spent a beautiful day with Nice." I said, "You will screw them up so badly, they won't know what to do." But they said the people that worked there didn't like the name as much. I love the name. Hello, Jeanine. How are you doing? I love Jeanine. One of the greats of all time, in my opinion. I lived in New York when she was the toughest DA, fair, toughest fair DA. We had some tough ones, but they were crooked DAs like, sort of I would say like, a dirty cop.

Like, Comey was a dirty cop, you know, and others were dirty cops. She was a clean cop, but she was tough and fair. So, we have Secretary of Homeland Security, Markwayne. So, stand up again, Markwayne, you love standing up. We have a man who's doing a great job, I'll tell you. I knew it because he kept me out of jail for years.

Acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, he kept me out of jail. They would indict me left and right, the crooked Democrats. You know, it's amazing, they impeach me, they indict me, and then when I get in office, if I say something like, "Well, maybe that should be looked into." Weaponization, I go through court cases, I win them, but because there were fake indictments.

But when I even mentioned, like I said the other day that some of that stuff should be looked into, they said, "Weaponization, he's a terrible human being. Weaponization," right, [inaudible 00:04:23]? They blame me for weaponization. They are a crooked bunch and, uh, we wanna keep it the way it is, what we have now.

We have great law enforcement now. We have law enforcement that loves our country, not law enforcement that's sick and dangerous. White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who's fantastic. Stephen, thank you, Stephen. He's great. He's an MVP candidate, that's all I can say. FBI director Kash Patel, does he get enough publicity?

If you could get a little more publicity, it'd be very, [Laughs] Thank you, Kash. DEA administrator, Terry Cole. Oh, what a job Terry's doing. What a job Terry's doing. So Terry, you know, uh, with all of them, Kash and Jeanine and everybody, we took Washington, DC, which was a very, very dangerous place, horrible.

It was dangerous to, for four years under the Biden administration, Sleepy Joe. And, uh, we took it from a really dangerous, horrible, uh, situation into one of the safest cities anywhere in our country in a period of really a few months, and now it's just continued. And we have crime down by 90% in Washington, DC and I wanna thank the National Guard.

I wanna thank our park police. I wanna thank Doug Burgum. I wanna to thank Kash and Jeanine. I gotta thank Jeanine. But didn't thank Jeanine, I'd be in very big trouble. But you did, uh, a great job, everybody. We're proud of you. Look, the fake news, you showed up. [Laughter] They missed the best part. I wanna thank also, uh, a friend of mine, Secret Service Director, Sean Curran.

I see you back there, Sean. Thank you very much. And I thought you did a great job two weeks ago. You know why? Because I'm here, okay? [Laughter] We consider being here a success. And I, I'll tell you what, your people are all over the place. You know, you got a little, they, uh, no matter how well, no matter how well you do, they're gonna find fault.

But I, I will be the one to find fault if I think there was fault. They had great professional people, and they came out and within seconds, I saw them take JD by the shoulders and lift him up like he was a little boy. They -- [Laughter] I said, "How come they didn't lift me up so fast?" They lifted JD, got ripped out of the chair.

That was a f- -- that was a, a View of the Week. But, uh, they did the job, JD, right? I think so. The, uh, director of the US Marshal Service, Gady Serraltas. Gady, where are you, Gady? Great job. [Audience cheers] And you, with what you've done in DC, you, the whole team. But I'm so proud of DC because, you know, uh, they all said that it really couldn't be saved.

You gotta remember, we took over 5,000 people out of here. There were career criminals. They came in through the border, through Joe Biden's open border. One of the dumbest things I've ever seen, open border. We had 6,000, thousands. I won't even go into numbers 'cause who knows? Who knows what they represent.

But we had thousands of criminals. We had numerous murderers, people that were in for murder, people that were taken out of jails. They murdered more than one per- -- people, more than one person. And we got them out of here. We got them out and, uh, overall, I think we took over 5,000 people, career criminals out of DC. And one stat that's really good, that 2% of the people create 92% of the crime.

And I love that stat because we can solve that problem. We get rid of 2%, and you get rid of your crime, and that's essentially what we did. We took a large number of people, but not incredibly large. We took, got them out and now we have a safe place. And you know, people that work in the White House, whenever I'm out, uh, people come up to me, and they say, "Thank you, sir." And I almost know what they, they mean.

They say, "Thank you, sir." And I said, "I think I know, uh, go ahead. Thank me for what?" "You made Washington, DC safe. We live here. We couldn't leave our apartment. We couldn't go out to dinner. The restaurants were closing." I mean, it was horrible. Restaurants, half of the restaurants closed, you couldn't have run a restaurant.

Even, uh, your car services, Uber, they being robbed when they were in the car. It was horrible. It was a horrible situation. And they come up to me and they say, "Thank you. It's a safe city again. We walk to work. We walk to the White House." They wouldn't even think about walking to the White House before.

Now they all, I see them all over, walk into the White House. It's safe and it's a beautiful thing. And restaurants are opening. Restaurants are opening. Uh, it's, the place is like hot. It's very hot like our country. You know, our country was a dead country. We were a dead country, and a laughing stock all over the world.

One and a half years ago we were dead as a doornail. We had no future. Our country was laughed at, disrespected. Our president was disrespected. He couldn't, he couldn't walk without falling down the damn stairs, I'd say. [Laughs] You know, some people thought it was funny. I didn't like it. I didn't like watching it. Should have never been there.

And I'm very careful when I walk by the way because if I ever fall, I'm just, the fake news will, oh, they're gonna have, that headline will go on for years, you know. Sometimes like I walk out of the plane late, I'm not looking to set any records. You go nice and easy. But we had a guy who's just, what a horrible president.

We had a few of them, but he was a beauty. And we have safe now. We have a country that's respected all over the world. So think of it, we were a dead country a year and a half ago and now with the hottest country anywhere in the world, there's nobody close and our military is great. We are kicking ass. Another great guy, ATF Director Robert Cicada.

Robert, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Robert. Good job. And Chief of the US Park Police Scott Bract. Where's Scott? Scott. Thank you, Scott. All the way back there, Scott. That's very nice. And I'm pleased to report that the US Park Police Officer, Ryan McDermott, who recently took a bullet in the line of duty will soon be returning to work, getting better.

It's gonna be all 100% in a short period of time, so we wanna pay our respect to Robert. We're grateful also to be joined by the President of the National Fraternal Order of Police, Patrick Yoes. I'll tell you how I know Patrick. I'll tell you, you know what I'm gonna say, Patrick. I got a call, early on I've said I'm gonna run.

I ran the first time I won. I ran the second time, I won by even more. Unfortunately, they rigged the election. And then I said, because we did so good, I said, "Well, uh, if I didn't think we did, I wouldn't have run." I ran the third time. I got a call from a guy named Yoes. I said, "Who the hell is that?" He's the head of the Fraternal Order of Police.

He said, "Sir, I'd like to endorse you on behalf of the Fraternal Order." I said, "How many people are you?" Remember, he, he said, "412,000." I said, "I'll accept that." [Laughs] "I'll accept. That's pretty good." Thank you very much. Patrick, I don't forget that. I figured what the hell is this guy? Where is he working?

Who is he? I have no idea who he is. He said, "412,000 police." I said, "I like you very much. I never forgot to call." President of the National Sheriff's Association, Chris West, and a great guy. Thank you, Chris. Thank you very much. President of the National Border Patrol Council, my friend. This guy, for years, along with others, he worked on the border.

He never got a call from the borders are. The borders are was Kamala, who is, by the way, leading the polls in the Democrat. She's leading all Democrats, which tells you they're not deep. They're not too deep. Can you believe that she's leading? So he never got a call. Where the hell are you? There he is. Uh, so in four years, did you ever get a call from Kamala like, "How are we doing on the border?" She never went there, she never called, but she did a, quite a good job.

We had about 25 million people come through, totally unchecked, unvetted, murderers, killers, drug dealers, drug addicts all over the place, right? Mental people from mental institutions, insane asylums. We had, uh, 11,888 murderers come through. Other than that, it was quite a nice situation. And she never once called and I said, "Boy, that's a big story of the fact that she never called.

She never called you one time. Is that right? Never one time. She was the border czar. She was great. She would have made a great president, but she's leading in the polls and, uh, we have to respect that. We have to respect it. I just hope she gets that. President of, how about, how about Gavin Newsome though?

He went out and he said he's a stupid person. He got bad test marks, he got bad this, he got bad that. He can't read a speech. In other words, well, I'm not reading too much of the speech either. But said he can't read a speech. He's not a smart person. He said, "I'm dumb just like all the people in this room." And now he was accused of being a racist.

I mean, that was the stupidest, this guy, what he said is so bad. It was the worst interview I've ever seen by a professional politician and he's running and he's in second place. So we got a lot of, uh, a lot of beauties out there, JD. I en- -- I envy you and other people. I don't know. Who's, who's it gonna be? Is it gonna be JD? Is it gonna be somebody else?

I don't know. Who does, does anybody have, okay, let's go. You ready? Who likes JD Vance? Who likes Marco Rubio? All right. Sounds like a good ticket. JD [Laughs] is a perfect, that was a perfect ticket. By the way, I do believe that's a dream team, but these are minor details. That does not mean you have my endorsement under any circumstance.

But you know, it's a perfect, it was a big and then a very nice, I think it sounds like presidential candidate and vice presidential candidate. Uh, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Mathew Silverman, another winner. Thank you, Mathew. Good to see you, Mathew. So we're gathered here tonight and it's exciting, because this place was not properly taken care of. I was told by my wife, "You have to act presidential, so don't use foul language." I won't. Therefore, normally I would have said it was a shit house, but I, I don't wanna say that.

The columns were falling down. The plaster was falling off. You made a speech and I was saying, "Couldn't you fix up the paint job up there?" You know, it looked a, and this place is tippy top now, including all the brand new, beautiful stone. I paid for it myself. All of the stone, all of the different things we have and we're bringing the White House back to shape.

I don't know if you got to walk into the, the marble, the Statu- -- it's called Statuario. Uh, the statuary marble. The white, I don't know if you got to walk in there. They probably see your law enforcement. They don't want you to walk into the house. They want to keep you as far away as possible. But it's beautiful, bookmatched.

And, uh, I spent a lot of time on bringing this house back because this house was in very bad shape. Those walls were in horrible shape. I'm looking at them now. Look at them. They're perfect. The plaster was falling off and it was terrible. It's a White House. It's got to look incredible. It's got to be in pristine.

And the big thing is we're building a ballroom in the back, which will be, I think, the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world. You'll never see anything like it. And it'll also be very safe. It's going to be a very safe ballroom. It's got glass this thick. It's amazing. The glass is this thick, like six inches thick and you look through it and you can see as perfectly as though it weren't there.

Now, how'd they do that? I don't know, but it's at the highest level of safety and, uh, you won't have a situation like you had two weeks ago on Saturday night. We gathered here to begin police week, very important. My friends, I won about 98% of the police in this country and we're trying to figure out who were the other 2%, because nobody can figure that one out.

Figure that. And, uh, we pay tribute to the heroes who keep America safe and they are heroes indeed. This week especially, our thoughts turned to the office who gave their lives and the line of duty to all of the incredible police officers, sheriffs, sheriffs, deputies, law enforcement officers, all law enforcement.

We want to thank you. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I respect nobody more than I respect you. Without you, we have bedlam. Without you, we have, without you, we have Somalia. Okay? A fine place where we have a Congresswoman who brilliantly came over to the country by marrying her brother. That was the first law she broke.

That was the least of them. And, uh, she comes from a country where they have nothing but crime, bedlam, filth, a horrible place. They say it may be the worst place. Comes to our country and then she tells us how to run the United States of America. It's an amazing thing, Ilhan Omar. [Laughs] It's an amazing thing how they can get away with it and the people don't want that to happen, and hopefully you'll figure it out, but a very terrible thing.

I can't stand it. She says, "The Constitution gives me certain rights." Go back to your own country, talk about a constitution. They don't have, [Laughs] they don't have a constitution. They never will. That's why upon taking office I signed an executive order directing the Attorney General who is doing a great job, by the way, McGee. You're doing a great job, [Laughs] Todd.

He's been good that anyone convicted of killing a police officer should face the death penalty, 100%. That's an easy one. From day one, my administration has made public safety and the support of our law enforcement our absolute highest priority. Last year the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history to the lowest level in over 125 years.

Before where my father was born, my father, I had a great father. Before my father was born, 125 years ago, 1900, the year 1900, Janine, pretty good, right? Probably because they don't want to mess around with you. [Laughs] You haven't been there quite that long. I deployed our National Guard and federal law enforcement to restore law and order to our most dangerous cities, including, as I said, right here in Washington, D.C. And as we prepare for America's 250th anniversary celebration, we're planning a large public safety surge here in Washington.

We're going to have it nice and safe. And we're going to also, if requested, help other cities like Los Angeles, New York. They're fools if they don't ask for help, absolute fools. Since I took office, our administration has made nearly 200,000 criminal arrests nationwide, a record, and we're getting them off the streets and putting them in jail, or, in many cases, sending them back to their lovely countries where they came from.

And sometimes their country will say, "We don't want them. We're not taking them." I'll say, "That's okay." Slap about a 25% tariff on their country, and they call back, "We would love to have them back immediately." In addition, the Department of Homeland Security has removed nearly 615,000 illegal alien criminals from our country for the past 12 months in a row.

Think of that. Zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States through our southern border and that's a, think of that. Think of that. Zero. And you know, the people that make those, uh, charts are inclined toward being a Democrat or a new name I came up with yesterday was a Dumbocrat because I was talking about this guy, I think that could be a good one.

And I've come up with some extraordinary names, but I was talking about Hakeem Jeffries. He's a low IQ person. And he was asking, he was talking about, uh, all these things. He was saying things that were so stupid, so basic and so stupid. He called our Supreme Court illegitimate. I don't agree with our Supreme Court all the time, I can tell you that, but you can't call it illegitimate.

If I ever said that, you can imagine what would have happened, but there wasn't a big stir. But he was talking and I said, "You know, he's a dumb guy." And then I said, "He's a Dumbocrat." And I don't know if people are going to like that term or not. It maybe catches on and maybe it doesn't, but it's true.

Their policies are insane and they would drive our country into ruin and we've got to do great in the midterms. And if we don't, they will do everything they can to destroy our country. There's something wrong with them. The flow of deadly fentanyl across our border is down, by the way, by over 60%, which is a record.

Nobody ever thought it was even possible. And coming in by sea, it's down by 97%. And again, we're trying to find the 3% because we consider them to be among the bravest people anywhere in the world. Anybody willing to get into one of those boats after what they've witnessed, we would consider them to be among the bravest in the world.

These gains have been the result and, and what a job our military and others are doing with respect, is that right, Paul, with respect to drugs coming in by sea. Meaning drugs coming in by water, by the ocean, by the sea. A lot of people don't know what I mean by sea. They think I'm talking about vision. I'm not, I'm talking about sea, like the sea.

These gains have been the result of our administration bringing together law enforcement at every level through our new Homeland Security Task Force, including ICE, or, as I call it, NICE. CBP, Homeland Security, the US Marshals, the ATF, the FBI and state and local police are all incredible patriots, are incredible people.

I also want to recognize one hero who exemplifies the amazing courage our police officers show each and every day, Assistant Chief Aaron Edwards from the NYPD, New York's finest. Where's Aaron? Where are you, Aaron? Great. Hello, Aaron. Good looking guy. I love the NYPD. Uh, great people. They've got to be respected by our elected officials.

They have to be respected. Last March, he was on duty when there were clashing protestors outside of Gracie Mansion and two radical Islamic terrorists through explosive devices into the crowd, violently into the crowd. He reacted instantly, jumping over a metal barricade and sprinting to apprehend one of the men.

As fate would have it, this 23-year-old veteran of the New York PD was inspired to join the force when he saw police running into Twin Towers on September 11th and had a profound impact, 2001. And now he's helped arrest terrorists from all over the world, some really bad ones. So I just want to say Assistant Chief Edwards, I want to thank you very much.

I've heard about your record. Your record is very legendary. Congratulations. Thank you very much. That's great. So this Police Week, we pray for the families of our fallen officers, those great, great families. And we thank the heroes who wear the badge and risk their lives every day on behalf of our nation.

You are restoring the foundation of law and order for our country and to our country. You're amazing people. You don't really understand, one thing, you don't know how much res- -- uh, respect. People respect you. They love you. You don't hear that, but they all feel it. I know it, and they tell me about it all the time as much as anybody else and more.

So I just wanna welcome you as great professionals, as unbelievable people and patriots to the beautiful White House, the new and improved White House. And, uh, it's an honor to be with you. And I said, "I'm very busy tonight. I don't have time for dinner." And they said, "Oh, it's the police we're honoring." "Oh, I'll have dinner." So I'm gonna join you for dinner.

Is that okay? I'll set aside, I'll set aside the Iranians for an evening [Laughs]. I'll put the Iranians aside and we're gonna have a little dinner. So I wanna thank you all, you're really specially, uh, just amazing people. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you.