I can tell you one was in front of political people, the other one was in front of our people, right? The people. And we had 7, 8,000 people at that one. That was a big one. Um, now, I heard that you didn't do it because I wasn't in office and I wasn't in Washington. And when they had the prep breakfast in the big one, the Hilton, which, uh, which is a, you know, very big room, uh, you weren't getting a lot of people. And you didn't want to be associated with an empty room because you're political people.
I don't blame you. But we're gonna -- we had a big packed that week. They couldn't even get into the room. It was, sort of, a great, a great morning. And next year, I know they're gonna do it together. But we're gonna -- we just have great unity. And the media, which I let in for a little while, but they can hear anything I have to say, I'm an open book, they can say any, they can have anything.
We had a great news conference today with, uh, the press the, uh, the, uh, prime minister, uh, Japan. They wanted to buy U.S. Steel. I said, "I can't let you buy it. I can't. I cannot. You know, other companies, you wanna buy it, it's okay."
But U.S. Steel was one of the greatest companies in the world for 17 years. It was the number one company in the world, like, 80 years ago. It was a long time ago during the, a certain heyday, I think we're in the heyday now. You wanna know the truth? I think we're soon gonna be in the heyday. We're gonna be hotter than any period of time.
And I told them two weeks ago, they came in to see me, the people from U.S. Steel with some, uh, Japanese representatives. And I said, "I can't let you have U.S. Steel. You cannot buy it. Uh, we loved Japan. We're not allowed -- I'm just not gonna let you buy it. It's U.S. Steel. This is one of the great companies of the world."
And uh, you know, and that was real stuff. That was, that was steel. That was guys in nice big arms here, taking that steel in that building, building. Today, we have Google and Facebook. And that's fine, too. But it's a little bit different. And they become dear, dear friends, you know, I say that it's amazing how they become -- they spent $500 million on lock boxes and the last one, they're sitting on the stage with me. That was, that was a who's who of the world sitting on the stage. It's very different.
The first one, I didn't have a lot of support, but I had a lot of people support. But, you know, we did great. Then we had the second one where we did much better. We got 10 or 12 million more votes and we did phenomenally on the second one. But then we said, "Look, we did great, but a lot of bad things happened. Very seri- terrible things. Terrible, terrible things. And look what happened to our country because of it."
But then I said, "We gotta do it again, but we're gonna make it too big to rig."
And if anybody here thinks they didn't try, they tried, like, you wouldn't believe, but it was just too big to rig. They walked away. 9:02 in the evening, they knew it was over. It was, there was nothing they could have done. And that's what we had. We had an election that was too big to rig. And, uh, it was such an honor.
We won every swing stay. We had seven. And remember, John, they were talking about, well, maybe Trump could win three or four. We won all of 'em and we won 'em by a lot. It wasn't close. None of 'em. Uh, we had a lot of good things. Uh, no tax on tips that helped me in Nevada quite a bit [Laughter]. Well, I hope we're gonna be able to get that, okay?
We've gotta try and get it. Uh, very important are -- some of the things that are very important, I think, is the, the one-year deduction, you know, where you can do something in one year. I know we haven't -- a lot of people haven't been talking about that. I can tell you in the first one that was so, so big, where they go out and they invest and they're allowed to do the one-year deduction.
That, that really revved up. Uh, and I've had so many people say, "Could you do that again?"
Could -- people were doing jobs that they didn't even want to do? Build building jobs. They were creating jobs or building jobs. And Tommy, you know about that, that one-year deduction was such a big deal. So, I hope you guys can start thinking about that and putting it in the bill. But we had a great meeting the other day and, uh, yesterday, in the Oval Office, with about 22, uh, house members. And they were from all sides, super conservative and slightly on the progressive side.
I use progressive 'cause tonight I wanna be nice. Plus, we got a lot of cameras rolling back there. I wanna be nice. But they were very different. And I said, "You know."
I heard them. I listened for a little while. And then I said, "You know, why don't we just balance the budget? Why don't we cut certain things and balance the budget? Don't touch social security. Don't touch Medicare. Medicare, just leave them alone."
Now, there are people that are illegally in there 'cause we have a lot of illegal immigrants that have found their way in, and we just can't do that. We just can't do it. But, uh, just let's see if we can balance the budget. And they started and they started screaming and shouting. And, and within about an hour, it was amazing, uh, what they, uh, they found 750 billion in the green new scam.
Uh, and, uh, commonly referred to as the Green New Deal, conceived of and de- dedicated by a young lady who never studied the environment, who knows nothing about the environment, who was a semi-poor student, not a good student who's not particularly smart, but has some magic. I actually said -- I watched her campaigning when she campaigned the first time in Queens, 'cause Queens is my territory. [Laughs] I grew up in Queens.
And, uh, she was running against a friend of yours, Joe, right, you know, Joe. [Audience member speaks, inaudibly] And Joe was gonna be the, uh, next speaker, right? He was gonna be the next speaker. It wasn't gonna be Nancy Pelosi, who's probably one of the most dishonest people. You know, she became a rich person.
She never was anything. She was a politician. And she's worth now 100 million, $125 million. How about the one where she sold her stock a couple of months ago in a company that announced everything. She had the company for years and then she sold the stock. And the following day, they announced that that company's under major investigation and the stock crashed.
Nothing happens. Nothing happens. They're crooks. So, uh, she was running AOC, I say AOC plus three, but she was running. And I watched her run, and I said, "Oh, she's pretty good. She's got a spark."
And, uh, I called Joe, who I don't know too much. I said, "Are you running, uh, against her?"
"Yeah."
"But are you not debating her?"
"No, she's got no chance."
And he's been in there for, like, 25, 26 years, unlike Tim Scott, who absolutely destroys his opponents all the time. You really do, too. And by the way, he was the greatest surrogate. He was our greatest surrogate. I'd said to him, he was brutal. He was very nice. You know, when he ran, he was nice. For himself, he was nice.
He was such a gentleman. But unfortunately, that doesn't get elected all the time. And I said, "How do you think Tim would be as a surrogate?"
And I watched him the first time and he destroyed everybody. And then he went again. And he said to me, I never -- and I thought it was beautiful, actually, 'cause it's like the opposite of me. He said, "I've never been able to speak well about myself 'cause I don't like bragging."
And I said, "This -- Isn't that nice? Wouldn't -- Isn't it nice that somebody's like that?"
And it's true. He would, he was, he was always a great campaigner, but he was, it was a good campaign, but it wasn't a vicious, violent campaign, right? But for me, he was vicious and violent. You just destroy people. So, I wanna, so I wanna, so I wanna thank you. I just see you sitting with your new beautiful wife, and I just wanna thank you. He's a great guy.
Everybody in this room, as far as I'm concerned, everybody -- Look at Mark Wayne back there. Don't fight him. Just don't fight him. Remember, he almost got into a fight with a tough cookie. I know, I know that tough cookie, right? Head of the team says he's fan- he's a fantastic guy. Sean. Well, he almost got -- But he could have been, uh, in trouble with this one though.
But Sean's pretty tough. But he, he would've been in trouble. But I see everybody in this room and, I mean, there's nobo -- And if I didn't like somebody, I would tell you. I like them all. I really would. I really would. You know what I like about Chuck Grassley? He wa -- He made Comey choke because he's got this voice, and he wasn't meaning -- But he said, "Did you lie?"
And Comey was like -- He -- It was unbelievable. Remember? And he said, "Yes, yes."
I said, "He just admitted he lied."
And he just said it like -- He's just got this way about him. He made him choke. That was good. He deserved to choke, too. But everybody in this room has been -- It's been really, uh, amazing. It's been amazing. The relationships have been good. And we don't always agree on everything, but we get there, we get there.
We had a couple of people that had to get a little bit, uh -- They had to study a little bit further to get some of our nominees. I think you're gonna find our nominees are very good. I think it's very important. You know, when we talk Bobby Ke- Kennedy, I think he's up there having dinner tonight. It's very interesting.
But he's a good person and he's not a radical. He said, "You know, I'm getting sort of this, uh, reputation of being anti vaccine and everything else."
He said, "I'm not anti -- "
And I, I understand through the campaign that he actually -- His kids had vaccines and all. He said, "You know, I grew up in a slightly political family."
Would you say that was the Kennedys? He said, "I grew up in a political family. I mean, I'm not a crazy person. I'm very moderate in a certain way."
And I never forgot that, and I think it's true, but I think we need somebody like this and Dr. Oz working with him because if you look at autism and you go back 20 years, it was -- I think it was, like, one in 10,000 children. But actually, I think the number's even higher than that. One in 10,000, one in 20,000 children had autism, and now it's one in 34. What's that all about?
What's that all about? One in 34. And, uh, I think we're really gotta get to the bottom of it. I really believe we're gonna figure the reason, and I don't know, maybe it's pesticides or maybe it's something, but we're gonna figure the reason. We spend more money on food, on cleaning it, on spraying it, on doing all this stuff and, uh, we're gonna find out what it is. B ut I think we probably needed somebody that, you know -- That's a little bit outside of the box and he's also very popular outside of the party.
I mean, if you look, uh, overall, I mean very, very popular and, uh, people gave him great support. But I just appreciate the people that got there. And, uh, it showed great unity. And if you didn't get there, the press, these same people that have the cameras rolling, they would be -- They'd be saying, "Trump has lost total control of the party."
Now I have somebody who's I think fantastic, Elon. And Elon was a recluse. You know, he was a r- very reclusive person, but I knew him. He's a brilliant guy. But he was reclusive. And I think we got him to be very unreclusive, right? He -- I said, "Man, has he changed."
With the hat on. Did you see the hat yesterday? But he's a great, he's a great guy and he loves the country and he's wanted to do this for a long time. If he could have done it himself, he would've done it himself. And, you know, he went into this, uh, group of people and you see what they've been spending money on. The, the horrible USAID, the horrible things that they're spending money on. It's, it's gotta be kickbacks.
You know, they send the money to the guy, he takes the money and he sends them back most of the money and he keeps some from himself. In my opinion. I think that's because you can't send the money to this -- These groups of people. It's a terrible thing. And I think it's like that in others, too. And I said, "Go to the next, uh, go to the next one. I'd like you to look at Department of Education. And I think you're gonna find us very similar, different but similar. And go into the military, go into everything. I mean, I want you to go into everything."
But I said, uh, to the congressman yesterday that, "Why don't we balance the budget? Why don't we balance the budget? Why should we wait 10 or 15 or 20 years to balance it?"
You know, they were talking about little cuts. We can have big cuts that don't affect anybody. Waste, fraud, and abuse. And we're finding it now. That's one of the beauties of what Elon's doing. He's got -- He started with a group of 25 super geniuses. They wear undershirts, they wear -- They look like -- I mean, I look at 'em. I said -- But then I realize he's got 182 IQ. That's what we need. And they go in and they'll ask people that aren't nearly as smart as them, "Why is it that you made this ridiculous paper? Why is it?"
And the guy gets all tongue-tied, he can't talk because he's against somebody that's much smarter. And it's amazing, actually, what they've exposed and to a level where they cut 97% of the people out. The whole thing is a scam. And you look at some of the people working there, they're very political people, they're relatives, and it's just terrible.
But you're gonna find that elsewhere. And then I think we're gonna see something tremendous with respect to the tariffs, because, you know, other countries tariff us and we don't tariff them. And with Lindsay, I don't know if you remember the conversation, Lindsay, but I had a conversation with Lindsay, who's so talented on so many things, but I would say finance, he's less interested.
No, no. He's very -- Look, he, he gets it, but he's, he's less interested. And I said to him, "You know, certain countries, they, uh, charge us a tariff and I want to charge them the same thing. And I like that and I want to charge them the same thing."
I said, "So, let's get this -- They charge us, like, 100%, we charge them nothing."
I said, "That's right."
He said, "So, you want to charge them 100%?"
I said, "I want to charge him whatever. If it's 80% or if it's 25%, I want to -- "
Lindsay looked at me, h goes, "You got my vote."
And it was very simple. And he's a great guy and he is running for office and I'm going to endorse him and, uh, he's gonna do very well. I think he's gonna do very well. Well, we're batting -- I think we're 299 and zero in the Republican. But you know what? We're 355. Brian Jack. Where's th- the great Brian Jack? 355 out of 355 general elections, we won, I think, 234. That's not bad either. But with the Republicans, it's been almost flawless.
So, I think w -- Let's not congratulate Lindsay yet, but I think, I think you're in good shape, okay? He's, he's been -- Actually, he's been a fantastic, in my opinion, a fantastic senator and he's a nice guy. He's a little more left than I am, a little more left than you are. [Laughs] But he is a, he is a great guy and he's gonna have no problem. So, I appreciate all of the unity.
I appreciate this tremendous support. There's Doug Bergum as an example. What a, a great -- He was fantastic. And Catherine. Thank you, Catherine. And, uh, he was a big part of today's event because, uh, he and Chris Wright -- You know, Chris Wright -- I don't know if Chris is here, but, uh, Chris Wright is the number one guy in the world in oil and gas. And I'll never forget, I had a meeting here with a lot of the oil companies and Doug and some senators, a lot of people.
And I said, "Doug, I really want you to be Department of Energy."
And he looked, he said, "Look, there's a man in this room right now who's so much better than me. He's the most talented oil guy in the whole country."
I said, "Who the hell is that?"
'Cause he's done -- You know, he made a lot of money with the, uh, internet stuff and, you know, different things. Not oil. I thought it was an oil -- He was an oil and gas guy. He was, and he sold his company to Microsoft for a tremendous amount of money. Very successful. Became the governor of North Dakota and ran a great state.
And he became an expert in energy 'cause they have energy on fracking in particular. But I said, uh, "I want you to be the, if I win this,"
this was even before I won, but I thought we were gonna win early on. I said, "I want you to be the head of energy."
He said, "Look, there's a man in this room right now who's better than anybody in the world, Chris Wright. And he was sitting there and I said, uh, "
This man over here."
"Yeah, that man, he's better than me. He's better than anybody for what we want. Getting the oil outta the ground properly."
And I said, "Well, let's talk."
And so I talked to Chris and I was impressed by him. But more importantly, he was impressed by him. And it was interesting. So he became the secretary of the Interior. And it's interesting for a different reason because Chris is energy, but there is no energy. He's involved -- There's some nuclear, but there's no energy.
He's Interior, he's got all the energy. So I said, "Why don't you merge together and work together?"
And they've essentially done that. Doug and Chris are working together 'cause he's got more energy than any country anywhere in the world under his auspices but he's not department of energy so he can't drill. But now he's got a, a man that he knows very well, that's, I assume, a friend of his or whatever.
But he got the job because of you. And, uh, and he didn't need a job. He was doing very well. This guy didn't need a job. He's the top guy in the whole world. But, uh, I see that so often, so many people, they wanna be a part of this. They wanna do what you're doing, John. They wanna do what all of you senators are doing.
I mean, you don't make money like they make. You could if you did it. Many of you're so talented, you could do whatever you wanna do, but they wanna do what you're doing. It's very interesting. And you don't wanna do what they're doing. You'd rather be a senator. It's crazy. In other words, you like power.
And that's okay too. But, uh, and that's what you have. You have a tremendous amount of power. But so Chris and Jo-, uh, Chris and Doug have gotten together and essentially, they're like unbelievable. And what you're gonna be doing is unbelievable. And, uh, we have a lot of confidence in you, and if we bring the energy prices down, everything's gonna follow.
That's what got it up. We had a great energy policy. We did great. We had oil. We had, uh, gasoline at $1 and 84 cents. We actually had it much lower than that for a little period of time, but we had it at $1.84. And then they took my, uh, my policy and they really messed it up. And then they went back to my policy.
You know, they always said, "Well, we were drilling just as much."
What they don't say is if I were there, we would've been double or triple that number. But, uh, they basically took my policy because it was going through the roof. They said, "We're really in trouble."
So they went back to my policy as much as they could, uh, but not all the way back. And, uh, the energy is what caused us the problem. They went up at the beginning, if you remember. Then they, they went back to try and bring it down. They had to harness that horse, but they went back and, uh, it went up and it went up really dramatically.
And that caused everything else to go up. And energy goes up and energy when it comes down, we're gonna bring a lot of things. So we're counting on you guys to supply and demand to bring that cost of energy down. You bring that down and everything else is gonna follow. All of the, the cost of food. I hear so much about the word groceries.
I used to use groceries a lot on that trail. Uh, a word, it's like sort of an old-fashioned word, groceries, but groceries is the word. That's the most accurate word. And uh, the price of groceries went through the roof. Bacon was levels like nobody's ever seen. Uh, you take a look at eggs today. I mean, the eggs are double, triple, quadru -- They're going through the roof.
Now there's some problems that may, you know, a little outside problem with eggs maybe. But, uh, you know, we inherited a mess. We inherited a country that's a mess. There was no reason to allow millions of criminals into our country. Millions. People that were -- I'd say 3 million, 4 million, 21 million people all total but 3 million, 4 million criminals.
Many, many, thousands and thousands of murderers. People that murdered people, killers, people that murdered two people, three people, and even four people from -- in jail in solitary confinement. They let 'em out of jails from all over the country, but really from all over the world. Venezuela let out so many people.
You know, their crime rate is down, uh, 78%. I can't believe they haven't allowed ev -- Every single, some of these countries allowed every single prisoner. And they put 'em on buses and they bus 'em in or they put 'em on planes. Because these are countries also from Africa, from Asia, not just South America, a lot, a lot from South America, but not even the most.
I mean, we have them coming from all over the world and we're letting them in. They let 'em in from the Congo. For whatever reason, the Congo is prime territory to come into our southern border. They get 'em up to the border and they let 'em in with the stupid open borders policy. So this would've never happened if, uh, if the election were proper.
In other words, if the election weren't rigged, which it was, and it would've never happened. But I will say this, uh, it's much bigger. Historically, this is much bigger. Uh, it showed what this ideology that some people are facing throughout the world, it showed how bad this ideology is, how incompetent the people are, but how bad the ideology is. The ultra-left stupid policy.
And I don't think they can get elected for a long time. They're still -- You know, they just suffered a big election defeat. They're very depressed and they're using the same things, right? We just signed a bill yesterday. It was so incredible that no more men playing in women's sports, right? Right? And stand up, big boy.
Stand up. How about this guy? Okay, now, now I'm using him as he was our great player. He played on the Jets for what, 10 years. Ohio said, uh, "Is he gonna play in, in sports with his wife?" [Laughter]
Wouldn't that be lovely? She's the size of his leg. Maybe, maybe somewhat smaller. The whole thing was ridiculous. You saw, I was reading off some of the stats yesterday in the, uh, room. And I said -- Uh, there was a long-distant race, they had the best female racers and the best male racers, long-distance running race. And the man won by five hours and 24 minutes.
I mean, that's not -- The greatest though, are the weightlifting records where they break the record, a record that stood for 18 years. And they'd go and they'd put a quarter of an ounce here, a quarter of an ounce -- And they go and they couldn't quite get it up. And this guy came in and he was a poor man weightlifter, not a good one. He was at the lower realm of weightlifting.
And he goes up, boom! Like, and he ends up like 127 pounds more. He was a bad.. He was one of the worst. That's, I dunno, maybe that's why he decided to transition, as the expression goes. I've gotten very good at that. I have to, because if I make a mistake, these guys are gonna get me in big trouble. We're perfect.
Susie will get very upset with me if I make a mistake. And by the way, Susie deserves a great round of applause. The Ice Maiden, we call her the Ice Maiden. You know, she's the daughter of Pat Summerall, who was a smart guy and who was a, a very good football player. But a great announcer for 27 years for the NFL and worked with John Madden. And John was a difficult guy, but he had, you know, great -- He'd just, "Come on, John. You gotta like these executives."
You know, he'd talk a little rough to the executives at CBS. They weren't in love with him, actually. But, "Come on, John. John, you gotta be nice to 'em, John. Paying you a lot of money."
And he did this for 27 years. He was the only one that could deal with John Madden. He dealt with him very easily, right? Isn't that true? So he was great. But Susie is, uh, like that. I mean, she's amazing. She's respected by everybody. Democrats too, by the way. A lot of Democrats, in fact, that bothers me a little bit, John.
But, but the Democrats, the Democrats respect her and they like her. But we all like her. But, uh, we call her the Ice Maiden because she's very nice until she decides not to be, then she's brutal. She can be- she can be brutal. But you know, we ran a perfect campaign. We did that final three months, 90 days.
I didn't sleep. We did speeches every day. We did rallies. We did three or four rallies a day. And sometimes the last few days we did more rallies than, than, uh, anybody could believe. And they were packed to the -- We went up to Milwaukee. We had 28,000 people in that beautiful new basketball arena. We'd use the basketball arenas, but they were way too small.
We went to Madison Square Garden, we could have sold it out 10 times. The people went all the way back to Fifth Avenue and all the way down to the river, which is five blocks down. And I don't mean a line, I mean just massive crowds. The owner of the garden, Jim, he told me, uh, he's never had any, he's never seen anything like that.
With all the big sporting events and championships and everything else, they never had anything like it. So I just want to thank everybody. It's been an amazing run. Uh, we did a good job for you and you did a good job for me. And, uh, we have some incredible, talented new people in the party. And, uh, we're gonna work with you.
We've raised a lot of money that we're gonna be using on midterms. And, uh, we've raised a lot of money. I did something that I don't think anyone's ever done before. I said, "Listen, we just won."
And see, the good thing about not having done this so long, John, is that I come up with ideas that nobody else has thought of. Usually when you win, you let your people rest, your donors rest. And you let 'em rest for two or three years, and then you're gonna run again. If it's a congressional race, you let 'em rest for at least a year, year and a half. So we won and everybody was euphoric.
Everybody, they were so happy. And I called up Meredith, where's Meredith? I said, "Meredith."
Where are you, Meredith? She's incredible. Thank you. And I called up Meredith. I said, "Meredith."
The morning- this is the morning after the win. So everyone is so -- I said, "Call the donors and ask if they'd like to make a major contribution."
"Uh, sir, the election, it's like, just like eight hours old."
I said, "That's all right."
And we raised over $500 million very quickly, right? 500 million. And, and the people were so happy, they were happy to do it. You know, we could have waited two years. But you know, the press will beat us up for two years and you don't know. Maybe they wouldn't have been as happy, but I think they're gonna be happy 'cause we, we're dealing -- Because we've become the party of common sense. And when you have common sense and where you are the party of common sense, we're gonna do well for a long time.
We're not gonna do badly in midterm. A lot of people say, oh, that you always will do badly in the midterm. I don't think there's any reason for that. These people were fighting. When I did the thing with the men playing in women's sports, I watched today, Democrats fighting me on this. They don't learn.
And I hope they don't learn. Because, you know, they're still with the open borders.
"We want open borders."
Uh, open borders are never gonna sell. Men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody, it's never gonna sell. And they, they haven't changed. They haven't learned. And frankly, I hope they don't play this because I hope they don't learn, because we have to beat them and we're gonna be them. And, uh, I just want to thank everybody in the room.
Everybody in this room has been special. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.