President Trump Remarks to Fort Bragg Military Families (Transcript)

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 commission. Right, fellas? 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. Richard Hudson.

Introducing Michael Whatley for Senate

So, 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 Laura Trump. Laura 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 at 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 said, and so every time they’d interview Donald Trump, who didn’t win the popular vote, but he, you know, whatever this I was always, I said, “I don’t ever want that to happen again.” But we did. We won everything.

And this is a 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, congratulations.

MICHAEL WHATLEY: 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.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank 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, no, they’re kidding. They’re not going to do it.” 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.

America’s Military Strength

So, with the help of everyone in this room, America is the strongest military on the face of the Earth. We rebuilt it. We 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 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 terrible president.

But we came back, and we already have rebuilt our military. It’s stronger than it was even then. And we don’t leave equipment behind. We don’t leave jets behind. They said, “Why do you leave those jets behind?” “Sure, I thought it was cheaper to leave it behind.” You know, $150 million plane. All they had to do is 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 misserved.

Record Military Recruitment

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 terrible. They didn’t want to join the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard, or my beloved 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 you couldn’t get people to join.

And as soon as we won the election, that election took place on November 5th. And 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 his smiling faces. We’ve 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, it would 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 great forces.

Ending Political Correctness in the Military

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 were a politically correct force with the Presidents. But now we have a real force, and you see that with 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. He 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.

Merit-Based Advancement

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, 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 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 a battleship? You know, World War II, you saw those big ships. The Iowa, the Alabama, the Missouri, they’re going there, 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 it was incredible. It was a great thing. It was a great act of beauty.

When you looked at the scenes, Victory at Sea. I don’t know if anyone has 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 museums right now, like the Iowas and 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 would 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 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 them 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 see in the 1940s.” Think of that. One hundred times more powerful. We need that. This way, nobody messes with us, right? We need it.

Pay Raises and Base Improvements

For every servicemember in our military, this historic investment also includes a well-deserved, across-the-board pay raise, not including 1776. And at my request, just before Christmas, we did the, and really, in honor of the 250th anniversary, we did that 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 a billion dollars 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 this, 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. We’ll move here with our First Lady. We’ll move to Fort Bragg. Would you like that, darling? 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 your ex-governor is not one of them. It would 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 Watley. 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.

Military Equipment Investment

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. Forty-eight new Black Hawk, Chinook, and King Stallion helicopters. The best in the world. The latest equipment. And 86 armored multipurpose 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.

America First Policy

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 2 percent GDP to paying in full 5 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.

Recognizing Supporters

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’re 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 so great. It’s so great.

We have Suzy 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 met his 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 2015, before we started, 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. One o’clock 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 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. We just ordered a lot more. The 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, the Oval Office. I gave them all medals, actually. And I said, “Did you really like doing this stuff?” They’re flying into very hostile territory. And 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’s 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. We gave them medals.

Operation Midnight Hammer

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 air shafts 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.

The Capture of Nicolas Maduro

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’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-mâché. You know what papier-mâché is? It’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 the aircraft carriers.

So, that night, the entire world saw what the full military might — the U.S. military is capable of. 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 discombobulator because they never got a shot off. The Russian equipment didn’t work. The Chinese equipment didn’t work. Everyone is 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 lakes, landing.

And a couple of machine gunners seemed to have make it through with 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. You’re going to 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 there’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.

America Winning and Respected Again

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 wish they did, and that’s what we did, Midnight Hammer.

But 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 built upon what we had already done the first four years.

Bringing Peace Around the World

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 2 percent to 5 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.

Commander-in-Chief Support for Warriors

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.

Record Investment in America

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? 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 in the 12 months. 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. Thank you. Thank you.

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