Good afternoon. Hello, and thank you for your warm welcome. The president and I are grateful to be with you to honor the passion you share through unmatched bravery, resilience and service to our great nation. Thank you for defending our freedom. It is with immense pleasure for me to address the Fort Bragg and Pope Army Airfield community today.
To our great armed forces of the United States station all over the world, I have a nostalgia-filled message, happy Valentine's Day. Love letters have symbolized the union of patriotism and family devotion among our soldiers for 250 years. The harmony of love, of country and love of family is what make us uniquely American.
It is very balanced, which strengthens our military and builds our communities. And now it is my distinct honor to introduce your Commander in Chief, our leader who maintains a mission of peace through strength, President Donald J. Trump.
[Donald Trump walks to the microphone. Section removed from video due to rights issues with music.]
Thank you, everybody. I love that song. I must tell you. I was really referring to the song. They turned it off. That's terrible, but that's all right. Honey, thank you very much.
Thank you.
I appreciate it. Please.
Thank you.
So we have, uh, an amazing group of people before me, amazing. And, uh, very proud of you. Somebody said -- I was just watching a little news coming down. They said, oh, it's amazing he can find the time in his busy schedule. Believe me, you have -- you're the time. My schedule is not the time, although we do have a couple of interesting things happening.
We just had fantastic reports on inflation, way down; costs of products, way down. We inherited a mess, a total mess and now it's really coming along. We have the greatest numbers that we've ever had. We're hitting all-time high stock numbers. We're hitting all time high S&P and Dow numbers. You saw that a few days ago, at the end of the first year.
They said that it was going to take maybe four years, the end of the term, to hit 50,000 on the DOW. We did it in one year. And -- and likewise to hit 7,000 on the S&P was going to take at least four years, could be five or six. We did it in one year. So -- and all I know is forget about the stock market, forget about Wall Street, your -- your 401(k)s are doing very well.
I don't have to ask you. Is anybody doing poorly with their 401(k)? If they were, you're a pretty bad investor, I'll tell you. But I want to thank Melania. Our country is truly blessed to have such a phenomenal first lady. And now she's a movie star on top. Can you believe? She did a movie. It's the hottest thing you've ever -- it's crazy.
Congratulations, by the way. Very good. You know, who loves that movie, the ladies. They go see it three or four times. That's what I heard. They go see it with the husband, husband really likes it a lot, but the women go back and see it. But she's a great First Lady. And I'm thrilled to be back on one of the greatest and most celebrated military bases in the history of the world, Fort Bragg.
We have your name back. We got your name back from the radical left. The radical left is not happy about it. It's another reason you have to vote for us, because they'll change it back to whatever it might be. This is the home of the legendary Green Berets, the home of the Sky Dragons and the All American 82nd airborne.
And particularly here that we are joined by many exceptional soldiers from the first Brigade Combat Team, also known as the Devils in Baggy Pants. What's that all about? The Devils -- they are devils and you are devils, I will say. And I have no higher honor in life than to be your commander in chief. I'm so proud of you all.
And so let me begin by saying a very, very big thank you to our great warriors and the men and women of the United States Army. Unbelievable. Very special thanks also to all of the incredible military families who are here today. You know, without that family, uh, our soldiers would not be the same. It's a whole big deal.
I don't think they get enough credit, but they do get credit with me. That's why I sent you a $1,776 a couple of weeks ago, a little while ago. We had a lot of money coming into our country from tariffs and I said, let's send a little to our -- you know, they came in, they said, sir, we can do $1,775. I said, oh, that's good.
They put the number -- I said, you know, if we had one more dollar, it's $1,776. I said, add a dollar, add a dollar. Did everybody get $1,776? I think so, right? Do you think the Democrats would have done that? Forget it. But it's really because of your incredible sacrifices to keep America safe and free.
There's nobody more respected than the people in this room. We're also joined by General Gregory Anderson, General Brandon Teftmeier, Secretary Howard Lutnick, Senator Ted Budd. He's doing a fantastic job, too. Members of Congress, Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan, Brad Knott, David Roser, Addison McDowell and your own Congressman from right here in the district, a really great guy.
He's a real leader, too, Richard Hudson. Where are they? Where are they all? Look at them. They're all dressed up. They have to be nice to you because without your vote, forget it, they're out of -- they're out of commission, right, fellas?
They've got our vote.
But what a good job. And Richard, this is your area, congratulations. He's always bugging me for more money for Fort Bragg. I said, Richard, get off my back. And we're going to do that. You know, they're talking about a big compound, right? And we're going to get that done. We're going to get it done for you.
Now, if the Democrats get in, it's not going to happen, I guarantee you that, but we're going to get that done. That's your number one priority, I think.
Yes, sir.
Richard Hudson. So, uh, you have another man who is running for the Senate, who is phenomenal. The only thing is he's not as well known. He was behind the scenes. He was the head of my three campaigns. I won all three times here by a lot. It wasn't even close. And he was responsible, along with Lara Trump.
Lara is fantastic. Born here and loves the area, but they work together. But Michael Whatley, if he's here. I don't know. Michael? Michael. Michael, will you come here for a second, please? He's running for the Senate and if he gets in, you're going to be taken care of. If he doesn't get in, we're going to be stripping the military like they always do, the Democrats.
This is a man who was the head of North Carolina, so -- he did so well that I said, who is that guy that did so well? Because when it came time to picking the head of the Republican Party, I picked him and you saw what happened in the last election. We won in a landslide. We won every swing state, all seven swing states.
We won by millions of votes, the popular vote. You know, the first time, I won, but they say I didn't win the popular vote. You know I did. I won it by a lot, but they say I didn't. So every time they'd introduce Donald Trump, who didn't win the popular vote, but he -- you know, whatever. I was always -- I said, I don't ever want that to happen again.
But we did, we won everything and this is the man that was in charge of this state. He did so well here. There was nobody else that I even considered to run the RNC. That's the whole country. And we had a big, big victory just recently that you know very well, a victory like they've never seen. So I'd just like you to say a couple of words, Michael.
Well, thank you, sir.
Congratulations.
Absolutely. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Good to see you. In 2015, Donald Trump came down an escalator and said that he was going to make America great, that he was going to protect our country, that he was going to make sure that our men and women in uniform had what they needed to protect our interests and our allies around the world. And North Carolina stood up and said, that's our guy.
And in his term in office and in this term in office, there has never been a president who has fought for Fort Bragg, who has fought for the men and women in uniform in North Carolina, as well as our veterans, more and harder and better than Donald J. Trump, our 45th and 47th president of the United States of America.
I am thrilled that he has asked me to run for Senate in North Carolina and is giving me an opportunity to represent you and to fight for you and every other base that we have in this great state, to protect our interests, to make sure that America and our allies are going to be protected. Because the highest most important function for any government is to keep its communities and its citizens safe.
And we have the best president right now to do that. And I am honored to be with him today. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael.
Thank you.
Good to see you. And the word is he's doing really well, but when I heard they were taking the name Fort Bragg off, I said no, no, no, they're kidding. They're not going to do -- they did -- they took the name off. We got it back very quickly, but they took it off. And if we don't win the midterms, they'll take it off again.
They'll take it off again. You can't let that happen. And this man is exceptional, I'll tell you right now. So with the help of everyone in this room, America has the strongest military on the face of the earth. We rebuilt it. We really did. We rebuilt it in my first term. We had a great first term. We had the best economy in history, but this is blowing it away.
But we had a great economy in the first term. We did everything, but we really created a tremendous military. Now, some of it was given away, actually a lot, but small compared to what we did to Afghanistan. You remember that, where they left all the military equipment behind? We didn't -- We wouldn't have left anything.
We were going to get out with dignity and strength, respect. We looked like we were running. We don't run from anybody. That was a Biden embarrassment. What a -- what a terrible president. But we came back and we, uh, already have rebuilt our military to stronger than it was even then, and we don't leave equipment behind.
We don't leave jets behind. I said, why did you leave those jets behind? Sir, I thought it was cheaper to leave it behind. You know, $150 million plane. All they had to do was put a little jet fuel in there and fly it to wherever they want to fly it. These people were the worst. We can't let it happen again.
Our military, if the Democrats get in, will be severely mis-served. But we rebuilt it in my first term and now we're making it stronger and bigger and better than ever before. The recruiting is through the roof. You know that. After years of recruiting shortfalls, as an example, new enlistments have soared to record highs.
We had -- a year and a half ago, nobody wanted to join the military. They didn't want to join the Army. You know that. It was, like, terrible. They didn't want to join the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard or my beloved -- how about that, Space Force? Do we like Space Force? It's turning out to be very important.
But they tried to end that and actually, the military refused to allow that to happen. But they -- you couldn't get people to join. And as soon as we won the election, that election took place on November 5th. From November 5th on, it was like a miracle. Now we have waiting lists for every branch of the military, waiting lists of people to get in. In other words, your jobs are wanted by everybody.
And isn't that a better feeling? I'm looking at smiling faces. We got a lot of smiling faces. You should be smiling. Last year, the Navy and Air Force and Space Force all surpassed their recruiting goals by five months early, and the numbers are through the roof. In fact, be a very good time to expand. You know, it's a good time to expand.
But the Army did even better than the others and you shattered your annual recruitment by almost five months and lots of days. But more importantly, the number and the quality of recruit has never been higher. This year, the Army is beating its recruitment goal by 116 percent and I'm very proud of that. I was very embarrassed for a period of years as I watched how badly this country was run, standing outside and hearing constantly that we couldn't get people to join our -- our great forces.
We ended the scourge of political correctness in our military. We renamed the Department of Defense to the Department of War. Think of it, we won World War I. We won everything, World War II and everything before, during and a little bit after, except we fought a little bit differently. We fought to be politically correct.
We -- we were a politically correct force with the presidents. But now we have a real force and you see that with, uh, what we did in Iran with the B-2 bombers. A lot of you were involved in that. And what we did recently in Venezuela, nobody ever Saw anything like that happen. A Venezuelan general who was on the site, but he moved out fast enough that he lived, because most of them didn't. But he was on the site.
He said, we were totally prepared. We saw the planes coming. We saw everything coming. You know, they're a good, strong force. And he said, we got hit like nobody's -- they were hit from 17 different directions. They said, there's never been anything like that. It was over in like literally a minute. Everybody was running for the hills.
And that's what we have, we have the strongest military in the world by far. We have the best equipment. We have the greatest people, soldiers. We brought back merit as the sole consideration for advancement and promotion in our military. We won the Supreme Court case, shockingly in that case. It took courage to come up with that decision.
It's based on merit. Now you want to get into a college, it's based on merit. It's not based on anything else. You want to get into the military, you've got to have a little muscle. You got to be strong, like these people here. It's like -- you're like central casting. I'm looking at all these beautiful-looking people.
But you have to be a certain type to do well and we were taking anybody that wanted to get in, because we wanted to be politically correct. No, no, it's based on merit now. You get into the military based on merit and other places also based on merit. There might be advantages to other people in other fields, but this is all based on merit.
As long as I'm president, we will be the best led, the best trained, the best equipped, the most disciplined and the most elite fighting force the world has ever seen. That's what we've turned out to be and everybody knows it. They all know it. Every -- every country knows it. I speak to all of them. They know exactly what they would be up against.
Hopefully, we'll never have to test them. And because of our strength and because of what we do, we probably won't have to be tested. That's why this year we're investing also $1 trillion in our armed forces, most we've ever spent. And next year it's being raised. In fact, we're going to be building a number of battleships.
You ever hear of battleship? You know, World War II, you saw those big ships, the Iowa, the Alabama, the Missouri. They're going -- they're sailing through that water like it's nothing -- those big waves are crashing into the front. The hulls are made of seven inches of steel, not aluminum. Aluminum is fine, by the way.
I don't want to hurt the industry. We're doing very well. But I'll take steel. And it's going through those waves like it's a hot knife through butter, right? And, uh, it was incredible. It was a great thing. It was a great act of beauty when you looked at that, the scenes, Victory at Sea. I don't know -- has anyone ever seen Victory at Sea?
Probably, the ones that have would have joined the armed forces when you have, but Victory at Sea. And you looked at those battleships. So now we're building 10 of them, initial order, 10. And I said what about reinstating the old ships? We have some of them in dry dock. Some of them are in museums right now, like the Iowa is in Rancho Palos Verdes in California.
You have a couple of them and they're still very powerful-looking to me. So I said, what about bringing them back? They said, sir, it'd be no good. Why do you say that? The new battleship that we have, which I've seen and helped design, I put a little more spirit in the hull, a little more -- give me a little bit more hull and give me -- I want that ship to look gorgeous.
You know? Forget about stealth. They say, oh, it's stealth. They design ugly equipment for stealth. Well, we're designing great-looking equipment, also stealth. But I said, well, what about bringing it back? Sir, the new ships, the new battleships that we have -- almost, very soon under construction will be, listen to this, 100 times more powerful than the ships that we got to sea in the 1940s. Think of that, 100 times more powerful.
We need that. This way, nobody messes with us, right? We need it. For every service member in our military, this historic investment also includes a well-deserved across the board pay raise, not including $1,776. And in my request just before Christmas, we did the -- and really in honor of the 250th anniversary, we did that a little special payment, which everybody appreciated.
And it was an honor for me to do it. As part of the One Big, Beautiful Bill that we got approved, which was amazing because it really encompasses all four years of the term, we'll also be investing over $1 billion to improve on-base housing, and a lot more than that at Fort Bragg. We're going to be doing -- if we get the Congressman's wish, we're going to be doing a lot more than that.
We're also going to spend billions of dollars on improving here and around the area. We're going to make it great, because the people in this area have been so incredible, the spirit they had. When they changed the name of this base, the spirit, not even military people, they were so proud of that name, Bragg.
They said, we have to -- we have to bring it back and keep the area safe. It's a great area. In fact, I'm thinking about moving here someday. Maybe I'll -- maybe I'll move here with our great movie star. I'll move here with our first lady. We'll move to Fort Bragg. Would you like that darling?
Very much.
Ah, she loves you. It's a possibility. Actually, it's not a bad idea, because we love it. But we want to keep this area safe and we can't do that without the leaders. And, uh, your ex-governor is not one of them. It'll be a disaster if he got in. And one of the things that I just mentioned and saw, you saw the monster that killed an innocent young, Ukrainian girl a couple of months ago, slitting her throat from behind.
And this was the man -- the governor that allowed this man to get out and to do that. We don't do that. We don't do that. Everybody knew he was trouble, many, many crimes, one of the worst pasts I've ever seen. And she sat down, she had her throat slit, and that's not going to happen with Michael Whatley.
That I can tell you. So I just want to tell you, it's very important. Because our military has to be protected. Our people have to be protected and they will decimate our military. Every time you come in as a Republican -- a lot of Republicans, they come in, they don't do anything about it. I do beyond what anyone's ever done, not even close.
To give you all of the equipment you need, we're also purchasing 30 new and modified Abrams tanks. Still the best tank, right, still? It was named in honor of Stacey Abrams. Only a few very political people would understand that. Congratulations. Thank you very much for a great name, Stacey. But brand new Abrams tanks, 48 new Blackhawk Chinook and King Stallion helicopters, the best in the world, the -- the latest equipment, and 86 armored multi-purpose fighting vehicles, all of the things that you've been wanting to get, all brand new.
And not only we're going to be reviving our strength, we're going to be doing many other things that nobody thought was even possible. And we're actually using that strength to defend the core and vital interests of the United States. And very simply put, America first. You know, it's all about America first.
We were putting America last. These people that were running our country were putting us last. We're now America first and we'll help other countries. We have a very good relationship with NATO, but NATO took advantage of us for many years. We were paying for almost 100 percent of NATO. Now they're paying their own bills.
I got them to pay. We took them from not paying two percent GDP to paying in full, five percent GDP, big difference, like day and night. With the help of our military, we stopped the invasion on our southern border. For nine straight months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted into the United States and that's done by the radical left.
Those charts are made up by the radical left. So I can't imagine that they could be wrong, because it seems hard to believe we could have had zero. My friends, these are early supporters. I have so many supporters up here. How the hell did you get into the military base? It's amazing. I'm a little worried about that.
Let's check security. But no, I have so many. You know, I have women from North Carolina, it's about 50 or 60 of them and they followed me all over the place. Where are they? They got to be here. Oh, yeah, there they are. They're great. Oh, there they are. They -- uh, there are sometimes 50 and I don't know what the hell is going on with their husband because they're, you know, traveling to California.
They're all over the place. But they've gone to almost 200 rallies and it's, uh, it's so -- it's so great. It's so great. We have Susie Wiles here also, who's the first female chief of staff. And she's done a fantastic job. And she's standing right next to those great patriots from North Carolina. No, they would go all over.
It didn't matter where I was. Sometimes I'd see them -- like, I made a speech in London. They ended up being -- they must be pretty wealthy. That's all I know, because they do a lot of traveling. But thank you very much for being here and for your support for years, because they were there right at the beginning, 2015, even 20 -- 2015, before we started.
They were -- some of them were there before I even announced. They said, he'll be a good president, we need a good president. But they're amazing patriots. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And last summer, I ordered devastating strikes on Iran's key nuclear facilities and something that was called Operation Midnight Hammer.
That's exactly what it was. 1:00 in the morning at midnight with no moon. You couldn't see a thing. And I got the message, sir, they have entered Iranian airspace. And I got to see it all on -- on -- take place. It was amazing, the B-2s, the flying wing. And I didn't understand the B-2s until then, but now I understand it very well.
So does -- we just ordered a lot more super-duper new model, right? But they flew in, they were totally undetected. And those pilots, I met the pilots, I had them down to the White House in the Oval Office. I gave them all medals, actually. And I said, do you really like doing this stuff? You know, they're flying into very hostile territory.
And, uh, they said, sir, we couldn't wait. In fact, they wanted to wait. You saw what was happening. People wanted to wait. And the pilots and their commander called me and said, sir, we're ready to go, don't worry about that, that weather is nothing. We want to go, sir, we want to go. Now, if it were me, I'd say take it easy, let's relax.
But you know, you people have a lot of courage, amazing, amazing. So we gave them medals. But that was Operation Midnight Hammer, achieving total obliteration of the Iran nuclear potential capability, totally obliterated. And think, every single one of those 100,000 pound bombs hit its target, which happens to be an air shaft that goes directly into the facility.
I don't think they'll be building airships anymore. That's not a good concept. They wanted to get a little air. They wanted to get a little fresh air. It didn't work out too well. No other country on earth could have done what we did. No other country has the weapons. No other country has the skill. No other country has the guts and no other country has the extraordinary warriors that we have.
We have the best warriors in the world. Because you can have the greatest equipment, but if you don't have the warriors, the equipment doesn't mean much. Last month, we proved this truth once again, when some of our greatest soldiers, right here, to ever live, frankly, successfully captured the outlaw, dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro and brought him back to face American justice, where he's now, right now waiting.
And that was an amazing night. People saw that. They -- they've never seen anything like it. You know, it's a pretty military country. It was a big base, one of the biggest bases in South America, where he lived. And it was in a matter of minutes before he was on a helicopter being taken out of there. They had to go through steel doors, the steels were like -- It was like papier mache.
You know what papier mache is, that's weak paper. These guys blasted through every door. They got up to him before he got to the big safe. But that wouldn't have worked either because they had equipment that was going to knock that out in a matter of minutes, but he never got there. It went so fast. Think of it, in a matter of minutes when people realize what happened, they're looking up and there's the helicopter heading back to aircraft carriers.
So that night, the entire world saw what the full military might of the US military is capable of. And that was an unbelievable operation, but that was a smaller operation. But it was so precise, so incredible. Nobody thought a thing like that could happen. They even talk about the discombobulated because they never got a shot off.
The Russian equipment didn't work. The Chinese equipment didn't work. Everyone's trying to figure out why it didn't work. Someday you're going to find out, but it didn't work. It's nice when you can fly in and not get shot at. Although we did have three helicopter pilots who were wounded pretty badly in the legs, landing on a couple of -- machine gunners seemed to have make it through a thicket of bombs.
But they were taken out rapidly by our snipers who were stationed on platforms, actually unbelievable helicopter platforms all the way the line and they were taken out immediately. And those pilots were incredible and really brave. I may see some of them very shortly. They were hit pretty bad in the legs.
You know, they're landing a big chopper and they're being shot at from close range by a machine gun, so that's not a comfortable feeling. They landed it perfectly and they got out of there perfectly. And they're just brave guys and very talented, skilled people. With your help, America is winning again. America is respected again.
And perhaps most importantly, we are feared by the enemies all over the globe. They fear us. And you know, I don't like to say fear, but sometimes you have to have fear because that's the only thing that really will get the situation taken care of. We have a situation right now where we sent a very big carrier group to Iran.
I'd love to see if we could make a deal. They've been difficult to make a deal. I thought we would have had a deal last time. They wished they did and that's why we did Midnight Hammer. But uh, with the restored strength and the tremendous power that we've now built up over the last number of years, even though we were -- there was an interlude with Biden, who was the worst president in the history of our country.
But the interlude fortunately was ended quickly and we started the process again and -- and built upon what we had already done the first four years. But we're also bringing peace all over the world. I ended eight wars in just 10 months. Eight wars are ended and we have a couple of more to go but one in particular, Russia, Ukraine.
It's a mess, it's a horrible thing and I think we'll get there. It takes two to tango. You have to remember that. And we have to get there. Tremendous casualties, number of casualties. There's a war that if we were involved in that war, it would have been over very quickly and effectively. But we're not, fortunately.
In fact, we're not spending any money. We are spending and sending weapons to NATO. And because of the increase from two percent to five percent of GDP that the NATO countries are paying, they pay us full for the weapons and then they distribute the weapons to mostly, I guess Ukraine, but that's up to them.
They buy them. And we do make the greatest weapons of any country in the world by far, most effective weapons. So my message to all of the warriors here today is that your commander in chief supports you totally. I have -- I support you more than -- I know you've had a couple of good ones, not that many, if you want to know the truth.
But we support you more than any of them and you're going to get out and when needed, you're going to fight, fight, fight, you're going to win, win, win. And we're going to continue to make our country bigger and better and stronger than ever before. And that's exactly where we are right now. We are the most respected country anywhere in the world.
And I say it, the king of Saudi Arabia told me when I was there, he spent $2 trillion. We have $18 trillion being invested right now in our country from other companies and countries all over the world. The most any country has ever had is $3 trillion that was a long time ago and it didn't happen to be us, it was another country.
It starts with a C. Can you imagine what I'm talking about, China? But we have $18 trillion being invested. As an example, in the Biden four years they had less than a trillion. Think of this, less than a trillion over four years. We have $18 trillion in 11 months because we haven't gotten the final numbers on the 12 month, so that's only going to go up. There's never been anything like it. But the king of Saudi Arabia looked at me and says, you know, a year and a half ago, I thought the United States of America was finished.
I thought it was dead. And now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world. We have the hottest country anywhere in the world. And you're a very, very big part of it. Thank you to the Army. Thank you to everybody here. Thank you also to our great politicians. They're great leaders and they love you as much as I do. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.