What a crowd. Well, I just want to say a very special hello to Iowa. We have had a good time. We won so much here. We didn't know what to do. There was so much winning here, but we love Iowa and we won all three times, so that's pretty good and won by a lot. But I'm thrilled to be back in a state that I love and I really do love it too, with thousands of proud, hardworking patriots at the world-famous Iowa State Fairgrounds.
Thank you. Thank you. 18 months ago, the people of Iowa braved sub-zero temperatures. You remember that night? Oh, that was cold. It was cold. But we were warm inside because we won by a landslide to turn out the first in the nation caucuses and you delivered 98 out of 99 counties. What the hell county didn't? What's the name of that county?
Let's get them outta here. 98 out of 99, that's not bad, Susie, I guess, right? We'll take that. But for President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, thank you very much everybody. Then in November we won Iowa by a, a landslide 13 points and it was the single-largest presidential victory in your state's history.
That's not bad. And now we're back where it all started to celebrate five months of incredible success for our nation and wish the Iowans and all Americans a very happy 4th of July. It's an honor to be with you. You know, a lot of people wanted us. When you president, they want you, and if you're not president, they don't want you so much.
But they really wanted us and I said, "Nope, I'm going to Iowa 'cause I promised I would go to Iowa. Sorry." I said, "No way." There could be no better birthday President for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago when Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill to make America great again, right? [Laughs] And in the last election, the people gave us a historic mandate to cut taxes, raise take-home pay, bring back jobs, stop the invasion, that horrible invasion.
Who would do that? Who would do that? That horrible -- Who would do that to us? Who would do that to us? Deport the illegals and slash hundreds of billions of dollars of waste and fraud and that's what we're doing. With this bill, every major promise I made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept.
You know, we -- Actually had a report today on some crazy fake station, but it wasn't fake in this regard. They said, "You know, this guy actually did more than he promised." I did. And I have another hat back there, it says, "Donald Trump was right about everything." And I said, "No." [Laughs] I said, "No, no, that sounds a little too conceited," but it happens to be true.
I must tell you, this bill includes the largest tax cut in American history, the largest spending cut in American history, the largest border security investment in American history. Although I must tell you, if you saw last month, they had zero people coming through our borders. Zero. I'm not sure that's even possible.
You know, I, I'll take it, but somebody must think I -- The other character had hundreds of thousands of people every time, sometimes in a day they'd have over 100,000. We had zero, I don't know, for the month. So it must be a little wrong. Maybe they're two or three or something, but I'll take the zero.
And the group that makes up those no -- uh, stats, you know, they're radical left Democrats, so it's probably true, we did a great job in the border.
The largest welfare reforms and military upgrades in modern times. That's what we're doing. We rebuilt our military in 2016 in their first term. We rebuilt it. They gave some of it away to Afghanistan in the most embarrassing day in the history of our country. You remember that? You remember that? We don't have days like that.
We have days like we just had in Iran. That's the kind of days we had. Complete obliteration. It turned out that was complete obliteration. Think of these, guys. Flying way up in the air on a dark night, no moon, no nothing, and they hit every single target. It's the size of one half a refrigerator door.
A little size, two by two.
But this is a declaration of independence from a really national decline. We had a national decline. We were a laughingstock all over the world. We had a man as president who shouldn't have been there. You know that. He shouldn't have been there. But we really had, uh, independence. Now over the, if you look at it, the over-taxation, where we were being taxed out of our lives.
Independence from overregulation. We have independence now from radical-left bureaucrats and independence from the largest alien invasion that I think any country has ever seen. We've never had anything like that. These people were fools. They allowed it to happen. You know, we've already cured inflation.
Your gas prices are way down. Everything I said is done. But the one thing, it's hard. It's hard. Think of the time we spent on having murderers and gang members and prisoners from all over the world come into our country. We're getting them out fast. But it's a terrible thing what they've done to our country, and I hope you remember it, what they've done to our country, our beautiful country. 11,888 murderers came into our country.
And some we've already gotten out, but, uh, it's terrible. Many of them -- more than 50% murdered more than one person, can you believe it? And they let them come into our beautiful country. Just as I promised. We're making the Trump tax cuts permanent and delivering no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.
Right? Front Row Joe. We got a lot of Front Row Joes here. That's very nice. Thank you. Thank you. And we have Mr. Wall. Someday I'm buying that suit. I'm telling you I like that suit. I'll walk up one day. I'll be dressed like a wall just like you. I think he's come to about 200 rallies, and that means you like us. And I think he's a very successful guy too.
Believe it or not, he's a top accountant. Can you believe this? And he comes to rallies. He likes the rallies, front-row Joes. They're all successful. But this is what they do for entertainment. But now it's not entertainment. We've saved our country. We've got the hottest country anywhere in the world, as said by many, many leaders of other countries.
And we will ignite trillions of dollars and economic growth increase, take-home pay for the typical family by more than $10,000 a year. And very importantly for Iowa, this bill rescues over 2 billion family farms from the so-called estate tax, or the debt tax. In other words, before Trump, you were losing farms to the banks.
Before Trump, you were losing the farms like nobody's ever seen before. You, you love your children, you don't feel so well, you pass away, you leave everything to your children, and they have to pay a big estate tax or a death tax, as we call it. And they couldn't do it. They go out and borrow money, and all of a sudden the bank is foreclosing on the farm.
Not gonna happen. You have no more estate tax. You have no more death tax to pay. Now, that's if you love your children. If you don't love your children, it doesn't matter. Just forget about what I said. It's not gonna help you. But if you love them or if you love somebody that you're leaving it to, think of that: no death tax.
No estate tax, no going to the banks and borrowings from, in some cases, a fine banker, and in some cases, shylocks and bad people. But they took away a lot of, a lot of, uh, family. They destroyed a lot of families. But we did the opposite. So just remember, to me, it's so important. And it was mostly important for places like we're at right now.
It's really, uh, I'm so proud of it. At the same time, this bill cuts $1.5 trillion in spending. So wasteful spending is being cut by one and a half trillion dollars. And I gotta tell you, I wanna thank Republican congressmen and women because what they did is incredible last night. And the Senate, the Republican Senate, we got, not with all of the things we did with the tax cuts and rebuilding our military, not one Democrat voted for us. And I think we use it in the campaign that's coming up, the midterms, because we gotta beat 'em. But all of the, all of the things that we've given, and they wouldn't vote, only because they hate Trump.
But I hate them too. You know that. So, it's sort of, I hate, I really do. I hate them. I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country. You want to know the truth? But it kicks illegal aliens off of Medicaid and food stamps and allows us to hire 3000 new border patrol agents and 10,000 new ice agents.
And they are great patriots, the border patrol and ICE to carry out the largest deportation operation in the history of our country. And, and I don't like saying that. I don't like saying that, but we have a country, we have a country to run and we have so many people coming in that shouldn't be here. And they did.
They came in from prisons and they came in from drugs and gangs and drug lords, the worst in the world. They, they came in from mental institutions. They emptied mental institutions into our wonderful country. And I know exactly what's going on in Iowa. You had some horrible crime in Iowa caused by illegal aliens, but we're getting 'em the hell outta here.
We have no choice. And our great, big, beautiful bill, it will build the Golden Dome missile defense shield. We're gonna have the best shield. And you saw that just the other day where the missiles are being shot down one after another. You know, they called me to tell me they have to take a shot at us. This was Iran.
Very respectful. That means they respect us because we dropped 14 bombs. They said, "We'd like to take 14 shots at you." I said, "Go ahead. I understand." They said where they're doing. I said, good. We emptied out the fort. It was a beautiful military base in Qatar who treated us really fantastically well.
And they said, "Sir, one o'clock okay?" I said it was fine, we could make it later. And we had nobody but four gunners. We had four, they call 'em gunners and they shoot the Patriots, they shoot the missiles up. It's hard to believe. So, all of a sudden they said, "We're ready." And they were a little nervous about doing it, [Laughs] I want to tell you.
Can you imagine, they were nice enough, this is Iran, to call me and tell me that they would like to shoot me at 14 times? So, they want to shoot us. And I said go ahead. And they shot 14 high-grade, very fast missiles. Every single one of them was shot down routinely by these four unbelievable gunners. And they did their job.
And that was the end of that. But the big thing was the attack on their nuclear facilities. What those people did, and you know, they're gonna be in Washington tomorrow at the White House. We're gonna be celebrating. We took, not only the pilots, but the people that flew the other planes, but also the mechanics that had these planes going for 37 hours without a stop.
You know, we had fif- It was so far away, we had 52 tankers. Think of that, 52 that's loaded up with oil. I wouldn't want to fly one of those suckers over a random -- I say, "What happens if they're shot at?" Well, sir, that's a tough situation. It's not a pretty sight. But they were unbelievable 52 tankers to load 'em up. They followed the planes in and they, uh, never had to stop for fuel.
They went 37 hours actually. And, uh, how incredible. What equipment, what equipment. And, you know, China, Russia, they were all watching. Everybody was watching. We have the greatest equipment anywhere in the world. We have the greatest people anywhere in the world, and we have the strongest military anywhere in the world.
But we're gonna fully modernize our air traffic control system and expand school choice. And ma- really so much more. By the way, the air traffic control, you probably don't have that problem here. You know, you have planes land like they -- but in some congested areas, you saw what happened with the helicopter and the plane and a lot of other things.
If we had great equipment and we should have had. It was all set up to go, and then Biden canceled the order when he came in. But he canceled a lot of orders 'cause he didn't know what the hell he was doing. If that was the case, would've never happened. Bells would've gone off, whistles would've gone off.
Everything would've gone off. It would've never happened. Very simply, the one big, beautiful bill would deliver the strongest border on earth, the strongest economy on earth, the strongest military on earth, and ensure the United States of America will remain the strongest country anywhere on this beautiful planet of ours. 165 days into the Trump administration, America is on a winning streak like frankly nobody's ever seen before in the history of the presidency.
I said -- they said, you know, sir, you're gonna go down as one of the greatest presidents ever. I said, really? No. I said, really? I said, better than Washington. They said, yes, sir. I said, better than honest, Abe Lincoln. They said, yes, sir. I said, I like this guy that said that. I said, guy --, that's a smart guy.
He's up for a big promotion right now. But just a few months ago, our country was cold as ice. We were laughed at all over the world. We were laughed at --. Think of it a year ago. We were laughed at. We were a bunch of clowns. They were laughing at our president. They were laughing at everything having to do with our country.
I was in Saudi Arabia, I was in Qatar. I was in UAE. Great leaders, -- strong, powerful, very rich leaders too, by the way. But great leaders, very smart people. And they said to me, the king of Saudi Arabia. But the three said the same thing. Essentially. They said, you know, a year ago we thought your country was finished.
We thought it was dead. Dead. Horrible word. Dead. And they were right. The country was close to death. And he said, and you know what, you've been in there- at that time was four and a half months. It was a couple of months ago. He said, uh, right now you're in the hottest country anywhere in the world.
There's no country in the world.
You're talked about all over the world. You got the hottest, smartest, sharpest country. And by the way, look at our stock market. We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars on tariff with no inflation. And today we just set another record. The highest stock market in history, no inflation. And one of the great economists from the Wharton School of Finance where I happened to go, he apologized.
He says, you know, I think Trump outsmarted us all. And yesterday, with the poll, and out of 77 economists, I came in second. I wanna find a guy that came at first. Somebody came in first. Can you believe it? But we, uh, we said what was gonna happen, and it's happening. And I'll tell you what, we had the greatest economy in the history of my first term.
This is gonna blow it away. You watch, this is gonna blow it away. For the first time in years, this 4th of July, the economy is roaring. Incomes are soaring, wages are up, prices are down. Gasoline. You see what's going on with gasoline? It's way down. See what's going on with eggs? Eggs are way down. Remember I came in my first week, the fake news, those guys right there, look at all of 'em. Wow, that's a lot of fake.
No, but we like them. It just shows you when you can get every story, 100% of the stories, no matter what you do, that's good. They make it as bad as possible. And then you win in a landslide. There's something --, there's something wrong. But the fake news hit me with eggs. Remember the first week, four days, eggs are through the roof.
I said, I just got here. What's going on with eggs? Tell me, I didn't hear about it. They're up five times higher than they should be. They were going through the roof, but they were blaming me. I said, I just got here. And within two months, our great Secretary of Agriculture, who I think is with us tonight, Brooke, where's Brooke?
Oh, look at you. Look, she is here. She flew all the way from-- she comes from Texas, but I think she likes Iowa. Maybe even better. Look at her. You did a good job with groceries and with eggs. We will tell you it's true. They said, we, we have 'em this time finally. It took an egg to get me. But that didn't happen either.
Now they're down to a normal price and people are ordering like crazy. But inflation is dead. 401 Ks and retirement accounts just hit an all-time record high. Did I hear what I think I heard? But we've achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings in U.S history. Zero illegals. Think of it. We had zero.
And as I said, and I'll say it again, I love it because I have never seen any country suffer. No country has ever --. There's never, don't worry. It's only fireworks. I hope. Famous last words, my famous last words, Trump said, don't worry it's only fireworks. You always have to think positive. I didn't like that sound either.
But last month, American-born workers gained 830,000 new jobs, a record. That's American-born. While the illegal aliens lost 340,000, and we don't want bad for them. But, look, we have a country to run and we wanna have them come in and we wanna have them help our farmers. You know, you probably saw, I got myself into a little trouble because I said, "I don't wanna take people away from the farmers." And we're gonna do, uh, something, I think, that's gonna be good, because we want all the criminals out.
Everybody agrees that we're finding the criminals, the murderers, the drug dealers. We're getting them the hell out of here. But the farmers, some of the farmers, many of you sitting right here, I have f- four friends right in the fifth row. But some of the farmers were -- You know, they've had people working for 'em for years, and we're gonna do something.
We're working with Kristi and we're gonna do something that, uh -- We're gonna sort of put the farmers in charge. And if somebody of a po- -- if a farmer has been with one of these people that work so hard, they bend over all day, we don't have too many people can do that. But they work very hard and they know 'em very well.
And some of the farmers are, literally, just, you know, they cry when they see this happen. If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people, in some way, Kristi, I think we're gonna have to just say, that's gonna be good, right? You know, we're gonna be, we're gonna be good with it, 'cause we don't wanna do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.
We want the farms to do great like they're doing right now. So, uh, Kristi Noem has done a fantastic job, and, uh, Tom Homan. And we're working on legislation right now, Susie, right? We're working on legislation right now where farmers -- Look, they know better. They worked with them for years. You had cases that where -- Not here, but just even over the years, where people have worked for a farm, on a farm for 14, 15 years, and they get thrown out pretty viciously.
And we can't do it. We gotta work with the farmers. And- and people that have hotels and leisure properties, too, we're gonna work with them and we're gonna work very strong and smart. And we're gonna put you in charge. We're gonna make you responsible. And I think that that's gonna make a lot of people happy.
Now, serious radical right people, who I also happen to like a lot, they may not be quite as happy, but they'll understand, won't they? Do you think so? Madam Secretary, look at you with a white hat on. Do you think they'll understand that you're the one that brought this whole situation up? Brooke Rollins brought it up and she said, uh, "So we have a little problem.
The farmers are losing a lot of people." And we figured it out and we have some great stuff being written in. Let the farmers be responsible. And then if the farmers don't do a good job, we'll throw them the hell out of the country. We'll let the guys -- We'll let the illegals stay and we'll throw the farmer the hell out.
Okay? Get- get ready farmer. I'm telling you. But violent -- Now the -- Okay, so the fake news will write that. "Donald Trump will throw farmers out of our country." They will write it, 'cause whenever I'm sarcastic -- You know, when you -- You can't be sarcastic as a poli- -- well, if you're me, you can't be if you're sa- -- so I wanna say, "I was only kidding." [Laughs] No, no. The fake news will write it. "Donald Trump wants all farmers thrown the hell out of our country.
The audience booed the hell out of him." There was no boo. No, they're fake news, that's why nobody watches them anymore. Violent crime is plummeting and we're on track to reach the lowest murder rate ever recorded by the year -- The end of this year. It looks like we're doing way, way, way, way good. And that's knowing that we have a lot of people in the country that we didn't have in the country four or five years ago.
I mean, we have a lot of people that they allowed into the country that are serious criminals. A lot of them are on their way out, however. Iran's nuclear enrichment has been obliterated. Remember when CNN said, "It wasn't obliterated. It was maybe damaged, or damaged badly, but obliterated is too strong a word." No, it was obliterated.
That's now been proven. The Atomic Energy Commission's, everything that's been obliterated. And they were trying to demean me by saying that. But they were really demeaning those great pilots and people and mechanics that got those planes over there and were able to shoot from high up in the air, going very, very fast, with potentially a lot of things being shot at 'em and hit every single one.
Every single -- They're trying to demean me, but to me, they were demeaning them. And they got out of the plane and they said, "What the hell? We- we hit every single target." They know better than anybody. But now that's been proven as CNN fake news and scammers that work for 'em. Scam writers that work for 'em. But we understand it and we, uh, fight it back.
And a lot of people said, "Sir, don't- don't criticize it because they're beneath you." No, they're not beneath me. Nobody's benea- -- you gotta put it -- Otherwise people don't understand. If you don't say something about it, you gotta say it. These people did one of the greatest military hits and maneuvers in the history of our country, and I want them to be appreciated for it. So they're coming, they're coming to the White House tomorrow night and I'm signing the bill with the Speaker of the House.
And by the way, Mike Johnson did a great job. [Audience responds affirmatively]
John Thune did a great job to everybody. This was, this whole two weeks has been incredible, hasn't it? You know, when you think of all of the victories. We stopped five nations from going to war, and somebody else will get the Nobel Peace Prize for their writing about Donald Trump. [Audience laughs]
A professor at some school that you've never heard of has received the Nobel Prize for his writing about Donald Trump and what Donald Trump did. I'll say, "What about me?" I don't get it, but that's one of those things. But think of it, we stopped, we stopped India and Pakistan, we stopped Kosovo and Serbia.
They'd been fighting for a long time. And a lot of it was trade. I said, "You're not gonna trade with us if you're gonna go to war." And India, Pakistan was big, very big for a different reason. I mean, they have little things called nuclear weapons. You would've had pretty soon a nuclear war. We stopped that.
In Africa, uh, you look at what was going on in the Congo with Rwanda, that war was going on for 30 years. 30 years, and we stopped it, and it was vicious. 6 million people killed, and it was a bad one. It was killed and killed badly, machetes, a mache- You know what a machete is? You don't want to know.
And we just did a really great job.
And then of course you cap it off with the hit, the perfect hit in Iran where they were talking awfully badly, you know, "Death to America, death to Israel." They were talking awfully badly, and they're not talking badly anymore, to be honest with you. And we might even meet with them and see if -- They wanna meet.
They wanna meet and we'll see if we can do something. But they wanna meet, [Laughs] I think they want to meet very badly. But our allies have agreed to pay over a trillion dollars a year for our defense. You saw what happened in NATO. In fact, we have our ambassador to NATO here. Where's our am- You know that guy?
In Iowa they know us. Big Matt, Matt Whitaker. We have Matt Whitaker from Iowa. I wasn't gonna hire him, but then I said, "Matt, you come from Iowa, don't you?" "Yes sir, I do." "Okay, you're hired." I'm kidding. Anybody -- [Audience laughs]
-- anybody comes from Iowa, I'd hire. And every branch of the US Military is setting records for new enlistments. You know, remember a year ago? It was embarrassing. They couldn't get anybody to go into the military. They couldn't get anybody to go into the police or fire departments. They couldn't get anybody to go into government.
And now we just set a record, a new record of enlistments in every single branch of the military and in all police forces. One year. One year ago, I remember saying to our great First Lady, I said, "You know, First Lady?" I call her First Lady 'cause it makes me feel good. [Audience laughs]
First Lady, isn't it terrible? Saying, "Good night, First Lady, my darling." [Audience laughs]
'Cause it reminds me that I'm president, that's all. [Audience responds affirmatively]
No, I said, "First Lady, it's terrible, nobody wants to join our military force." And, and you know, that was very demeaning to the people that are in there, that have been in there for a long time, doing a good job. And then all of a sudden, like we get elected and there's a spirit in the country and we start doing well, we have victory after victory in so many different things, especially economically, we're doing so good.
We have hundreds of billions of dollars flowing in from other countries. We have plants being built all over. I mean, a little less here because you have enough with your farm. Oh, by the way, but I did get beef and I got ethanol into Europe. You saw that. You saw that. United Kingdom, they didn't wanna do it. You know, they never took our beef and they never took our ethanol, and we said, "You gotta do it," and they did, and they were great.
We, we made a wonderful trade deal with them, but we're doing that all over. Is ethanol very important still for Iowa? Is it still? Yes? Anyway, so they've taken it in the United Kingdom, and beef, they never took it 'cause they wanna do their own. You know, they have a lot of farms and a lot of farmers so they wanna do their own, but they took it and it's gonna be great.
You're gonna do -- I'll tell you what, the farmers here are gonna do incredibly. Plus we have tariffs on a lot of this stuff that was coming in and absolutely killing you, where they have different -- different forms of vegetation coming in at prices that were very, very bad for you. And a lot of it comes in because they wanna put you outta business and then they wanna raise the prices.
And we're not letting that happen to the farmers and to Iowa, to Nebraska, and Wisconsin, and all these other places that have been so good. And in breaking news, just yesterday we reached a historic trade agreement with Vietnam to open their markets to American exports with zero tariffs. They get zero tariffs.
And you're gonna be giving them vast amounts of farm product, including beef, pork, poultry, dairy, and pure Iowa ethanol. You're gonna be given all of those, all of those products. And the fact is, I could go on and on, but the fact is really strong, and it's stronger than it's ever been, and stronger than I've ever seen.
The Golden Age of America is upon us. This is a golden age. This is a, such a beautiful, such a beautiful term, the Golden Age. And I couldn't have even said it in my first term. I'm telling you, this is gonna blow the first term away. And we did great. We got great marks in the first term, and this is gonna blow it away.
This incredible national resurgence is happening just in time for one of the biggest events in the history of our country. Exactly one year from tomorrow, we will celebrate the 250th anniversary of America's founding with a birthday party the likes of which you have never seen before. Two years ago, I came to Iowa and promised that the festivities would begin right here at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.
And tonight, here I am. Okay? Promises kept. Promises kept. It's an honor, too. It's an honor because you've been with me from the beginning. [Audience chants "USA"]
Thank you. [Audience chants "USA"]
Thank you very much. No, it is an honor. You've been with me from the beginning. It was without doubt -- In fact, I had some moments when I said, "Maybe they might not." You know, fake stories were put out there like, I don't like corn. I don't like corn, I love corn. [Laughs] I just like -- But they give you fake news.
I said, "You think that's gonna hurt me in Iowa?" My numbers went up. I don't know. I can't figure you people out. [Laughs] This evening, we're officially launching America250, an enormous year-long, nationwide celebration of our heritage. It's really also a celebration of our flag, our great American flag, and our glorious American freedom.
Did anybody see the beautiful flag I put up in front of the White House? [Audience responds affirmatively]
Right? Everyone's liking it. Everyone's liking it. I actually put two up. I put one in the front and one in in the back. I didn't want to go too crazy. I thought that would be enough. They're that big. [Laughs] They're about as big as you can get. We're proud of it. We will be announcing many more details in the weeks to come, but they are just some of the things that we have planned.
And I have to say first in honor of the wonderful tradition of fairgrounds like this one -- This is a great fairground as you know, I've been here before. We'll be orchestrating what we're calling the Great American State Fair, and it will start right here in Iowa. Right? So we're starting it off in Iowa.
Now, we're starting it off in your great fairgrounds and we're gonna have a big crowd just like we do tonight. That's a big crowd. I can't even see the end of it. [Laughs] So thank you back there. I, I'd like to move the press back so they could see better. But the Great American State Fair will bring America250 programming to fairgrounds across the country, culminating in a giant patriotic festival next summer on the National Mall featuring exhibits from all 50 states.
And all 50 states are excited. And I was excited. You know, when I, uh, did the 250, there was nothing I could do. It was 250 was two 50, so I can't say that was my baby. The country happened to be 250 years old. But what I did do is during my first term, I got the Olympics and I got the great soccer. You know that whole deal, right?
I got, we call it soccer, they call it football. I got 'em both. I got the Olympics. First, I got the Olympics and I got it. I was president and I said, you know, "It's a shame. It's a shame. I got the World Cup and I have the Olympics and I did it." And you have no idea. President Obama didn't wanna make a call to the Olympics.
You know why? 'Cause he went to Switzerland or wherever and he said, you know, if a president goes to get the Olympics, you have to have a deal. You have to be chosen. He went there and he came in forth. So he hated them, I guess, and he was unwilling to make a call, and they called me up. Democrats called me up actually from Los Angeles, and I said, uh, "I'll do it." I made the call, and I couldn't get the people off the phone because they were so starved for love 'cause nobody would call him from. [Audience laughs]
Anyway, we made a deal. I got the Olympics, then we got the World Cup with Johnny, we got the World Cup, and I got 'em both. And I looked at my people, I said, isn't it a shame I got these two? But it wasn't in the next four years. It was right after that. And the one after that, and I got the Olympia, I got the World Cup, and we also have two 50. So it's a pretty wild term.
But I got these two things that are incredible. Nobody else could have done it. I'm telling you, everybody wanted it. Nobody could have done it, and I said, "And I won't be president 'cause I'll be president for four more years, but it won't be." And then they cheated and rigged the election. [Audience responds affirmatively]
They rigged. You know, they don't even turn off the cameras when I say that now because now they know it's true too. But they knew it was true before. [Audience responds affirmatively]
Remember the cameras used to immediately turn off. You see all those beautiful red lights go off. Now I can say whatever I want because then they know it's true. But they knew it was true before. It's fake news. That's why they call it. But you know what? Uh, this term is much more consequential than if I had done it the more traditional way.
This was slightly harder, believe me. Uh, it's slightly more dangerous because there are criminals on the other side that tried to put your president in jail and went after him just like they do in Third World countries. And, uh, we all beat 'em together. We beat 'em because our level of popularity was so high. [Audience responds affirmatively]
And it was high because I explained the situation when these thugs came around, I explained it to the people. Unfortunately, I was able to be on a lot of television, a lot of -- I did whatever you had to do. I had to explain it. Then they say, "Wow, that's fake stuff. It was fake." There were a bunch of bad people, but we kicked their ass, and we're gonna continue to do well. [Audience responds affirmatively]
And I appreciate it. And there was nobody more loyal than Mr. Kaufman, who's fantastic, in Iowa, and his son whose maybe more fair? Where the hell is he? Where it stand up? Where's your boy? His son is better than him, I'm telling you. [Laughs] And he doesn't mind. I have a lot of fathers would be very insulted if I said that, but they're bad people.
He's a good guy. He's got a son who's fantastic. You know that. I think he's probably here someplace down there. Where is -- [Audience members point out Bobby Kaufman]
Oh, he's better looking than you, too. [Audience laughs]
Good. Thank you. Great job. Nobody more loyal than the people of Iowa during that period of time when we had to show our stuff. But we just celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Army at Fort Bragg. You know, they changed the name and we changed it back to Fort Bragg. The people of North Carolina came up. They said, "Sir, we wanna really have the name of Fort Bragg back." Everybody was saying that.
They kept calling it Fort Bragg. I changed it back. You know, these radical left lunatics changed the name of Fort Bragg. So we won World War II. We won World War I. We won other wars, we won everything from Fort Bragg and other places, that we are also changing many of them back, and then we decide to change the name.
Now, I tell people, you know, it's incredible. We're the only people. We win two world wars from a place, and then we say, "Let's change the name." So we change it back, and the people are very happy in North Carolina right now. [Audience responds affirmatively]
And we just celebrated because the 250 was for the Army, was one year earlier than the -- Which makes sense. You know, we had a little army, we did well, and you know, we have a nation. So it was one year earlier than the nation itself, and we had a beautiful parade in Washington, D.C. The other day. It was fantastic.
You know, it was amazing because it was so -- The weather was so overcast and it looked so bad. And a week before they said, "Oh, it's gonna rain." I said, oh man, we're bringing all these army tanks. We're bringing all these people, these men and women, they're gonna march down Fifth Avenue or wherever.
This is terrible.
It's gonna rain." And then on the day, we woke up, rain is projected all night long, heavy. Oh, I'm saying, "I, I'll get my hair soaking wet, my hair's gonna be soaking wet." I'll be, I'll be, I'll be crazy. I say -- I'll say, "You know, this is terrible. It's gonna rain one o'clock in the afternoon." The thing was at 8 o'clock in the evening.
One o'clock rain is forecast at levels you haven't seen before. I said, "Oh, this is --." And so the generals called me, "Sir, we could change it, but this is the army. We're sort of used to bad weather." I said, "No, don't change it. I'll wear a raincoat. I'll wear a big fat hat so I don't get totally drenched.
I'll be okay. I'm such a tough cookie." And then what happens? We get there and there's no rain and we go one hour, two hours, three hours of watching these great guys marching down Fifth Avenue. It never rained. And then I thought to myself, "Global warming. They're telling us what's gonna happen in 250 years to our planet, but they can't tell us it's gonna rain three hours before the event." In 250 years from now the planet's gonna burn up or freeze up. And you know, remember when they said, uh, they called it global warming, then global cooling, they had all different things.
Now they just change it to climate change. 'cause climate change you can't miss. How's it doing? Climate change every time. If it's cold, if it's hot, if it's rainy, if it's sunny, if it's too crazy, we have climate change. But think of it, they're telling you what's gonna happen 100 years. The oceans are gonna rise a quarter of an inch and everyone's gonna be wiped out.
No, you're gonna have more ocean foot property, if that happens, it's okay. Not the worst. And think of it with all of the nuclear weapons. Remember Biden at those? He's like, "It is an ex, ex. It's an existential threat." He loves the word existential. It's an existential threat. What is? Uh, I don't know, climate change or something?
Remember that always --? That's dangerous too, because they're gonna take that sentence and they're gonna say he couldn't say existential. So you can't imitate people either. Remember I used to imitate Biden couldn't get off the stage, and I'd walk into walls and I called my wife 'cause it's always on television.
And she said. I said, "How was it baby? How good was that? We had 44,000 people. Nobody else could do it." I have to brag a little bit, you know, 'cause what the hell? It's a little truth to that. But I brag a little bit. I say, "How good was I?" "You were really good. But you know what happened? You couldn't find the, you couldn't get off the stage." I said, "No, I was imitating Biden." "No. Well, that's not the way it showed up. They showed you hitting walls bonking your head on wall." So even like the word existential, when I imitate him saying it, tonight, it's gonna be on CNN. He couldn't speak, he couldn't say the word.
These are seriously sick people. But now this fall, we're also going to be celebrating 250 birthdays of the United States Navy and the United States Marines. They're all there. And I'm a little prejudiced and one of 'em is gonna be really great. It's called Space Force 'cause that was my baby. Remember, they wanted to terminate first year of Biden's administration.
They wanted to terminate Space Force and the military wouldn't let 'em. And it's turned out to be one of the most important there is. I was very proud of that Space force. And they're doing great. In addition, just as I promised five years ago tonight of my speech at Mount Rushmore, where a certain governor at that time, who's now our Homeland Security chief, Kristi Noem, stand up. Kristi.
Now I don't have to introduce you later. You know, I hired Tom Homan for the border and I said, "Tom, I want you to give me who'd be the best to be the Secretary of Homeland Security," which is essentially his boss. He said, "Kristi Noem, sir." I said, "Kristi Noem, you gotta be kidding. She's a great person.
She's smart. But I mean, is she tough enough?" "Sir, she's the toughest person around." I said, "You." And she is. She's tough as hell. I've learned. I'll tell you, a lot of, a lot of bad people have learned and she's done a fantastic job. Thank you. Thank you. But we're gonna be officially opening the National Garden of American Heroes, a vast outdoor park featuring statues of the greatest Americans.
Whoever lived, you know, they took down a lot of our statues. They took down statues of some of the greatest people that we've ever had living. I stopped them from taking down Thomas Jefferson. They wanted to take the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. They wanted to rip the hell out of the statue inside. You can imagine who they were gonna put up. Let's get rid of Thomas Jefferson.
So we stopped him. We signed the Lord. Do you remember that night? It was crazy. And they were marching toward the Jefferson Memorial, and I took out an old bill from 1909, and it was a bill that if you so much as touched -- Old, because today they don't do these things, they don't do it like they used to. Today, you could never get it passed.
It said, if you so much as touch a monument or a statue, you go to jail for a 10-year period. No anything. So they were marching down there and in the middle of their march I gave a news conference. I said, anybody that touches, and I'm signing, immediately goes to jail for a 10-year period, that march broke up so quickly, you've never seen.
They said, "It's a miracle. What happened?" I signed a little bill that said, you go to jail for a 10-year period. It was a great thing. It was an old bill that wasn't used. In fact, I don't know, I hope we don't have to use it again. But they're learning that, you know, we saved Los Angeles. If we didn't send in the National Guard, I would've sent in the military if they needed it. But if we didn't send in the National Guard, Los Angeles would've been burned down to the ground, just like half of their houses were burned down to the ground because they didn't give water that they had plenty of. I'm pleased to report that the One Big Beautiful Bill includes full funding for those statues, and we're gonna do statues to our greatest Americans, and we're gonna let the people choose who they are.
You better choose me, no, I'm only kidding. I should take myself out. I think I should take myself out, Susie, our great Chief of Staff, the first woman Chief of Staff, can you believe it? Susie Wiles, stand up. And that beautiful exterior, don't let it fool you, she's rough and tough. She got rated the the most powerful woman anywhere in the world.
She could take out a country with a mere phone call, which is true. Actually, it's very true in her case. And she's done a great job. We're doing okay, Susie? Looking good. We had a good two weeks, right? This was had to be the best two weeks. Has anybody ever had a better two weeks than that? Next, to bring back our people together through the power of sports.
America250 will also host a brand new first of its kind youth athletes. It's a competition known as the Patriot Games. And it features top high school athletes from all 50 states. It's gonna be great. And this phenomenal patriot exporting event will be nationally televised and it'll be led by our great Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who's really [Inaudible] -- he's great.
And he's, uh, he's a little different, right? He's a little -- We needed somebody different. You know, autism, you go back, I guess 18 years, 10,000, think of this, out of 10,000 people, okay? 10,000 people. And I'll go it a little different way, right now, out of 10,000 people, 18 people don't have, we, they're safe, 18 people.
We have a, we have a statistic on autism. That's the worst I've ever seen. And he's gonna change it. He's gonna change it. It used to be 20 years ago, you just didn't have it. And now it's numbers that are unbelievable, unbelievable. Where the numbers are so bad, it's gotta be artificially induced. And we're gonna find out what it is and when, we're gonna find it out as soon as possible.
I mean, you think about it, uh, the numbers have increased by 200 fold, and that's really something. And we're gonna get to the bottom of it. That's a terrible situation. Likewise, under the leadership of Secretary Burgum, who's here right now, he was the great governor of North Carolina, great governor of North Dakota.
Where is he? Where is he? Mr. Secretary. And he's in charge of energy plus a lot of land. He's the biggest landlord, I guess in the world. But he was a great governor of North Dakota and he was, uh, very special in so many ways. He became an energy expert. And he came to me and I said, "I want you to be the head of energy." He said, "No, we have one man that's better than me." And that was Chris, right?
And, uh, put him in charge, and we merged the two. And he's got all the land with all the oil, and the other one has all the expertise to get the oil out of the land. And Chris is doing great and you're doing great, Doug, and I appreciate it. And say hello to Catherine and everybody. We're doing a great job.
We have a great cabinet. So every one of our national park, battlefields and historic sites are gonna have special events in honor of America250. And I even think we're gonna have a UFC fight. We're gonna have -- Does anybody watch UFC? The great Dana White? We're gonna have a UFC fight. We're gonna have a UFC fight, think of this, on the grounds of the White House.
We have a lot of land there. We're gonna build a little -- We're not, Dana is gonna do it. Dana is great. One of a kind. Gonna have a UFC fight, championship fight, full fight like 20,000, 25,000 people. And we're gonna do that as part of 250. Also, we're gonna have some incredible events, some professional events, some amateur events, but the UFC fight is gonna be a big deal too.
And to fund improvements and enhanced experiences across the park system, for this anniversary, I've just signed an executive order to raise entrance fees for foreign tourists while keeping prices low for Americans. And we're gonna do that, the national parks will be about America first. We're gonna take it America first at the national parks.
And these are just a few of the many programs, initiatives, celebrations that will renew for our national pride. We're gonna have great pride. I think we do have great pride. I think we have more pride and more spirit in our country right now than we've had in 50 years. [Audience chants "USA"]
And together we're going to ensure that America's 250th anniversary is the single greatest year in the history of our country. We wanna have a lot of great things, a lot of the things that Bobby and health and human services are doing are gonna come up during that period of time. And we're gonna come up with a lot of tremendous things for health and safety.
And economically, we're gonna have the strongest country anywhere in the world. And uh, the bill that we just got approved today was, uh, think of that, all of those votes, two negative votes, but we had no Democrats, two negative votes in the Republicans out of all that. So I want to thank those great Republicans that, uh, voted to get it in. You know, we can only lose three if we lost three.
If we lost three trouble. Now we didn't lose three, we lost two and I'm sure if I needed the two, I could have gotten them too. But we're pleased to be joined tonight by many friends who will help make that possible, including, and I introduced Doug Burgum already from North Dakota and just a great -- He was really one of the best.
Was he a better governor than you? Would, would you say Christie, was he better than you? [Audience laughs]
I don't know. Because they were neighbors. You know, you had North Dakota, you had South Dakota. Brooke Rollins, thank you Brooke. Great job. She's now the agricultural secretary. Kristi Noem, great governor also. And she will, but she's doing a -- I don't know this. Do you like this better than being governor?
Don't say. Don't say. [Audience laughs]
They love you in the state, don't say. Maybe the most important guy in this whole place, you know, a lot of projects that stopped using environmental stuff, a lot of projects have stopped. They use it as a weapon, the radical left and others. They use it as a weapon. This man is the greatest, he's doing a job.
That's incredible. Doug would tell you that. Everybody will tell you that. Lee Zeldin, he's the head of the EPA and the Environmental Protection Agency. He's the head of it. Great guy. He was a great politician, a tremendous congressman. He ran for Governor of New York, which is tough. And he almost, he almost won.
I'm glad he didn't win, actually, [Laughs] , I wouldn't have you right now. And I said, Lee, a nuclear power plant, we give you one week to get me the approval. So, uh, but he's been doing great. And we, you know, we have factories that we have plants all over the world right now and they're being built and they're going up. Also, Governor Kim Reynolds from Iowa.
Thank you Kim. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. And Lieutenant Governor Chris Cournoyer. Where's Chris? Chris Cournoyer. Thank you Chris, very much. Great job. You have Senator Chuck Grassley. And Joni Ernst. Chuck. Hi Chuck. That's great. He's doing great too.
He's, boy he's got more energy than all of us. [Audience laughs]
And, uh, where's Joni? Is Joni here? Hi Joni. Very good. Good job. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Joni. And you have members of Congress, Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, Randy Feenstra. Good group. We flew in together and boy, they were nice. I love, they were so happy at that victory today, weren't you?
Randy, thank you very much. Thank you very much. That was great. We had a good flight. We have an ambassador who's been my friend for a long time, Monica Crowley. She's, she would, uh, I heard her speak. I thought she did really well. Thank you Monica. And you know Matt Whitaker, a man from Iowa, Ambassador to NATO. We also had a person, I have to give her credit, Brenna Bird, Attorney General.
She came out and she endorsed me very early and I appreciate it. Where's Brenna? Where, hi Brenna. She came out, she endorsed me, I said, "Thank you very much. Who the hell is that? She's great.". Former state Senator Brad Zaun. Oh, my man. There he is. I haven't seen you. He was the first man in the entire country that endorsed me, right?
Not just from Iowa. He'd, he endorsed me three months before I ran [Laughs] . He said, "That guy from New York should run." So I want to thank you. Really great. You're looking good too. He's like the Marlboro Man. You know? He looks like the Marlboro Man. Handsome guy. Iowa Speaker, Pat Grassley. Pat, thank you very much, Pat. Nice to see you, Pat. Iowa Senate majority leader, Jack Whitver.
Thank you Jack. Thank you, Jack. Iowa house majority Leader-Elect Bobby Kaufmann. Thank you, Bobby. Great future. Right? Great future. A friend of mine, Dan Newlin, who's the most generous human being, he gives away, he hears somebody's in trouble, he hears somebody's in trouble and he goes wild, and he's just a very good guy.
And Jeff Kaufmann, the head of your party here is so, come on, stand up, Jeff. You can stand up. Thank you, Jeff. Great job. And Jeff was with me right from the beginning. When I was complaining about things, I'd call him, he'd do it sometimes. He was better as I started winning, winning, winning, right?
But, but Jeff has been great.
He's a great leader. Thank you very much, Jeff, for being here. And I have to say that, uh, Lee Greenwood has been unbelievable. That song, where is Lee? Is he around here? That song, it's the hottest song of, it's got number one of its kind. You know, it's a certain genre. But thank you Lee, very much. A real great song and great talent.
This Independence Day, let's also give a very special thanks to every veteran and military service member here tonight, for their outstanding devotion to our country. And I also want to thank and thank you, fellas, stand up. Now Look at 'em. They're in good shape. Thank you very much. Wow. That's a lot of of veterans.
Thank you very much. What an honor. I also want to thank the large group of Iowa pastors and faith leaders for their beautiful prayers, including pastors, Joshua Kent, Tammy Hall, Joseph Hall, Corinne Sturtz, Maureen Prakash, Ajay Prakash, Dan McCoy, Rose Kessler, Michael De Jong, Jose Rodriguez. And ministry leaders, Virginia Calgary, Sarah Kent.
And thanks also to Bob Vander Plaats. Thank you very much everybody. Thank you. Stand up. You're the people we wanna listen to. Stand up. Thank you. There they are. Look at that group. I want to be with them, they have the real power. They have more power than all of us. Thank you. You've been so good and so supportive.
We were supported with the evangelicals, 89%. And we, we're looking for the other 11%. We don't believe it. As we prepare to celebrate two and a half centuries of freedom, I'm inviting America's great religious communities to pray for our nation and for our people. From the beginning, this has always been a country sustained and strengthened by prayer.
So important. If we bring religion back stronger, you're gonna see everything get better and better and better. We're gonna see it get better and better. So as we chart our course for the next 250 years, let us rededicate ourselves to one nation under God. Right? And as you know recently we've seen some of our political system attempting to overthrow the timeless American principles and other pillars of our liberty, and replace them with some of the most noxious ideas in human history, ideas that have been proven false.
Members of Congress and even former presidents have been openly embracing vile creeds such as socialism, Marxism, and straight up communism. In New York, they're trying to elect a communist, Zohran Mamdani, the guy who wants to defund the police, take over the stores, and run the stores, and have the people hand out goods.
And when everything falls apart, it's always does, it always works that way, it never has worked any other way. Anarchy and dictatorships prevail. This guy is a communist at the highest level, and he wants to destroy New York. I love New York, and we're not gonna let him do that. Generations of Americans before us did not shed their blood only so that we could surrender our country to Marxist lunatics on the eve of our 250th year as. President of the United States I'm proclaiming here and now that America is never going to be communist in any way, shape, form, and that in includes New York City.
And under my administration, we're bringing back freedom and liberty, law and order, and above all we're bringing back common sense, right? Common sense. On day one, I stopped the weaponization of government against people of faith, and we created the Department of Justice Task Force combating anti-Christian bias.
And I have to tell you, Pam Bondi is doing a great job. Pam Bondi is doing a great job, Attorney General. I ended the Green New Scam and terminated the [Inaudible] -- this is insane. The electric vehicle mandate where everybody had to have a car that happened to be all electric in the next few short years, the mandate.
Some people wanna have gasoline-powered, some people wanna have hybrids, maybe even someday hydrogen, right now I don't like it because when they blow up, they don't ever find the body. [Audience laughs]
They find the body about five blocks away, that does not sound promising to me. They said, "No, it's getting better." I said, "That, that's okay, let somebody else use it." [Audience laughs]
But, uh, we're not gonna have all electric. We're gonna have electric if people want it. Electric is great, but gasoline people like better in many cases, but you can have whatever you want. But it's ridiculous to mandate that everybody's gonna be driving an electric car in five years from now, so I ended it. I signed an order to begin eliminating the Federal Department of Education and send education back to the states.
That means Iowa's gonna run their own education. You're gonna have to run your own education, Iowa will. Uh, you know, I use you in, uh, in my thoughts, I always, whenever I say, I always say Iowa and Indiana, and I mention certain states, but, uh, you wanna run your own education because you don't want the bureaucrats in Washington doing it. And I made English the official language of our country.
You would think that would be an easy one, it was not as easy as you think. [Laughs] I directed the reinstatement of all patriots expelled from our military by the Biden Vaccine Mandate, returning them to their former rank with full back pay. And I signed executive orders to abolish critical race theory and transgender insanity from our schools and from our military.
And I made an official policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female. And if it's okay with Iowa, we are keeping men out of women's sports. Is that okay? I also renamed the Gulf of Mexico, I renamed it to the Gulf of America. And we're restoring the name of the greatest president, one of the truly great presidents, somebody that made our country very rich, William McKinley to Mount McKinley in Alaska.
So in conclusion, in everything we do, we're once again defending the values, traditions, and beliefs that made every generation before us so very proud to be American. You know that better than anybody in Iowa. And here in Iowa and across this land, we believe that America is an exceptional nation, blessed by God. It's really destined to be the freest, strongest, the greatest country ever to exist on the face of the earth, and we're gonna make it that way much more so than it's ever been.
We believe in the wisdom of our founders who declared that our rights do not come from bureaucrats in Washington, our rights come from our Creator in Heaven. That's where our rights come from. And we reject government discrimination and so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates. They're just about washed out the window, actually.
They're just about over with. We're just about finished. In this country, we believe in hard work and we believe in merit. And by the way, we're allowed to have merit. We're now back to being a merit-based system. We had a decision in the United States Supreme Court. Our country is now a country based on merit.
We oppose censorship, price controls, open borders, and sex changes for children. We support our troops, respect our police, and salute the heroes of ICE and Border Patrol. We cherish our constitution, and we defend free speech, free assembly, religious liberty, and the right to keep and bear arms, our Second Amendment.
We take our pride in our heritage, and we want it in a beautiful heritage that we have, and we teach our children to love our country, honor our history, and always respect our great American flag. You have to respect our flag. From Philadelphia to Phoenix, from Gettysburg to the Golden Gate Bridge, and from factories of Detroit to the fairgrounds of Des Moines, we stand on the shoulders of heroes and legends who crossed the oceans, blazed the trails, tamed the wilderness, settled the continent, raised up those beautiful skyscrapers, and stood tall and defiant in the face of tyranny and death.
From 1776 all the way through today, American patriots have won triumph after triumph, we've had victory after victory, and let nothing stand in the way of the USA, which we love so much. It was hardworking citizens like you who won our independence, secured our liberty, and built this country with courage, grit, and skill.
And starting right here in Iowa. Such a great place and I hope you love it. But it's such a great place. You should love it. You should love it. You know, sometimes you take things for granted. This is one of the really great places, but I've been all over. It was hardworking citizens like you who saved our country in November 2024. Think of that, November 25th. Who would've thought there'd be this much of a change this fast?
I didn't even think it would happen this fast. Happened at a level that nobody even thought possible. Again, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. Today, with your help, America is free, America is proud, and America is sovereign once more, and this 4th of July, our magnificent destiny is closer than ever before.
We are one people, one family, and one united American nation. We will never give in, we will never give up, we will never back down, and we will never, ever, ever surrender. We will fight, fight, fight. We will win, win, win because we are Americans and our hearts bleed red, white, and blue. And together, as we look forward to the 250th year of American independence, we will make America powerful again.
We will make America wealthy again. We will make America healthy again. We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again. Thank you, Iowa. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Iowa.