FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump Holds Town Hall In Michigan

I was an entrepreneur. I was a real estate developer doing great, having a lot of fun, doing a much simpler life than this. Who would think that a developer’s life is simple, but it’s a lot simpler than this. But I said, don’t let them do that, because here I am in Michigan and I was getting an award and I’m making a speech, I’m saying, what am I going to say? But I just watch common sense. I saw them leaving for Mexico, leaving for China.

Do you know that right now? And they weren’t building them with me. They weren’t building anything in Mexico having to do with cars with me because I said, if you build it, we’re going to put up 200 percent. You’re not going to sell one car into this country. But right now, they’re building some of the largest auto plants anywhere in the world ever built.

I have a friend that does that for a living. Very good at it. He’s the best, I think. And he’s actually a contributor, a supporter. But he builds the plants. And I say, you know, I’d like to go see a plant, a really great auto plant. You know, it’s it’s amazing technology, amazing what they do. Really incredible, the amount of automobiles they can produce and the size of these things. I’d like to see a real modern plant. And he’s the one that does them. And I said, so where would we go? I was hoping to say Detroit or someplace up here, but anywhere in this country, I’ll take anywhere in this country. Right. So will you. My greatest guy right over here. Stand up. Will you please go. He’s such a great guy. Oh, hi, everybody. We’re going to bring him back. We’re going to bring him back.

The Auto Industry and Trump’s Tariff Strategy

We’re not just going to keep you know, you’re losing your jobs, the whole thing, but just so they’re building. So I said, where would I go? And let’s go take a look at a beauty. He said, well, we’ll have to go to Mexico. I said, wait a minute. I’m not interested. I’m not interested. No, I want to know here. He said here we don’t build top of the line. We build smaller plants. We build. We just you know, there’s just not that kind of a thing. And I said, isn’t it sad? He feels that, too. You know, he’s a United States guy. But he said, if you want to see the big ones, you’re going to have to go to Mexico. They’re owned and built by China and Mexico. And there are a number of them going up right now and they think they’re going to make their cars there and they’re going to sell them across our line and we’re going to take them and we’re not going to charge him tax.

We’re going to charge him. And I’m telling you right now, I’m putting a 200 percent tariff on which means they’re unsellable, unsellable in the United States. And then you wonder why I get shot at right. You know, only consequential presidents get shot at. When I say something like that, you have countries saying this guy. But what can you do? You have to do. You have to do what you have to do. Right. You have to. We have to be brave. We’re not going to have a country left.

So what’s happening is they’re building these massive auto plants and they think they’re going to make tens of thousands of automobiles and sell them in here. No tax, no nothing. It’s not going to happen. When you put on tariffs, tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented. I took in four hundred and sixty seven billion dollars from China. Nobody else took in anything. And China’s economy is not even doing that well. And Biden, you know, they they have not been able and Kamala, they have not been able to take those tariffs off because there’s so much money. And frankly, if they did take them off, this country would be flooded with Chinese cars. You don’t have the Chinese cars. We put a pretty good tariff on. It was going to be lifted at some point.

Trump’s Reflections on COVID and Foreign Policy

Then we had COVID. We did a tremendous job in COVID. We gave you a stock market that was higher than just prior to COVID coming in. And we did a great job. We never got credit. We got credit for the best economy maybe ever. We got credit for having defeated ISIS and having rebuilt our military. We shouldn’t have given Sarah. We shouldn’t have given eighty five billion dollars worth of equipment to the Taliban to Afghanistan in. I think and I think the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. That whole thing was the most when we were leaving. We were leaving with me. I was the one that got it down to the right number. We were going to keep the big air base, which is exactly one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. Think of that. One hour away. And we gave it up. We just gave it up.

One of the biggest one of the most we spent billions and billions of dollars many years ago. The runways can hold more weight than any runway ever built. Think of that there. I think nineteen thousand feet long, which is, you know, three times what a normal runway would be. It’s it’s called Bagram. And we were going to keep that because of China, not because of Afghanistan. One hour away from where they make their nuclear weapons. So that was a good one. We left. We left. And the way we got out was so embarrassing.

And because of that, first of all, 13 dead soldiers have gotten to know their families are incredible families, but they’ll never be the same. Many badly injured, you know, nobody, Sarah. Nobody ever talks about the soldiers that are badly and they talk about 13 dead. And we always have to say that number one and great families. But nobody ever mentions the fact that some of the soldiers were hurt so badly. The arms, the legs, the face like obliteration. We left American citizens behind and they’re not too happy, I can imagine. But if they’re living, if they’re living and we also gave them eighty five billion dollars worth of the best military equipment, all beautiful, brand new between the goggles and the planes and the armor plated cars, we gave them armor plated trucks and cars and vehicles and so much.

And they’re one of the largest sellers now today of military equipment in the world. They’re selling this up. Seven hundred and seventy seven thousand rifles and guns. Think of that. How do you how do you have that anyway? Who would put that? We have seventy one thousand trucks and cars. And again, many of them armor plated. So what happened is when Russia looked at that, they said, we’re going and we’re going to invade. We’re going to go into Ukraine. If that didn’t happen, I don’t think.

Trump’s Perspective on the 2020 Election and Global Affairs

DONALD TRUMP: And I guarantee you, if the election were a straight election, we won that election. We should have won that election. Everybody knew we won the election. They would have never attacked Putin. Putin never would have attacked. But the oil prices got driven up at one hundred dollars a barrel. He made money. The only guy fought a war and you make money fighting a war. But it got driven up because of their bad energy policies.

But when he saw that and you wouldn’t have had think of this, you wouldn’t have had how different would the world be? You wouldn’t have had Ukraine being attacked by Russia. You wouldn’t have had October 7th in Israel where that horrible situation took place because Iran was essentially broke. They had very little money and we would have made a great deal with them. All we want is we don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. That’s all we want. We don’t want you to have a nuclear weapon. We would have made a good deal with Iran. They would have been happy. And I think they’re going to end up being very unhappy. But it’s very dangerous and very close to a nuclear weapon.

Trump on Inflation and Energy Policy

And the other thing, you wouldn’t have had inflation. You wouldn’t have inflation because inflation was driven up by their bad energy policy. And you remember your gasoline started going up to five and six dollars a gallon. And then what happened is they said, oh, we’re going to get killed. We have an election. We’re going to get killed. And they went back to my policy. So they went back to the same what they don’t. And they say, we produce the same amount as Trump. Well, they went right back to my policy or they would have you would have been buying. You would have had twenty five dollars a gallon gasoline.

So they went back. What they don’t say is, though, I would have been producing four times as much. And I took us from third into first place by a lot. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world, including Saudi Arabia, including Russia. And we would have had we would have had we would have been so dominant in energy. We would have you know, we were we were we didn’t need any energy from anybody. We didn’t have to protect any other countries in order to get their oil, which we’ve done for many years in the Middle East. We were energy independent. Sounds so beautiful to say it. We were energy independent. We were soon going to be energy dominant and we would have been now having so much money coming out of the energy.

Trump on Energy Resources and Infrastructure

We just have the best. We have Bagram in Alaska. They say it might be as big, might be bigger than all of Saudi Arabia. I got it approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. I got it done in their first week. They terminated it. Check that one out. Bagram. Check that one out on it. It’s it’s you know, think about this between Bagram, between you go to Anwar, you take a look at the kind of things that we’ve given up. We should be. We should have that air base. We should have that oil. We should have. We would have had a whole different country.

But to give up and work to give up the biggest air base, military air base in the world. And they left it in the dark of night with the lights on and they did leave the dogs behind. There are a lot of people. They say, what about the dogs? They left the dogs behind. But we would have been we would have been we would have been a much different country right now. But we’re going to get it back. And I promise you, we’re going to get it back with guys like this and people like that.

Trump’s Speaking Style and Campaign Rallies

And there is just one thing because this is the world’s longest answer to an otherwise simple question. But the difference is I give an answer that’s productive as opposed to an answer that is not very productive. Right. Like in the debate. But just to just to end this, we are going to Michigan because we want to be a little bit Michigan centric.

You used to be the capital of the world in cars. Today you’re an afterthought in cars. And I don’t know the head of your union. I’ve never met the gentleman, Sean, I’ve never met him. But what he’s done to your union and what he’s done by agreeing to allow this country to say we’re going all electric, which at some point they’re going to end up taking back that mandate because that mandate is insane. They want to go all electric basically by 2030. And for him, think of this, for him to do that, just real fast. You’re right now at twenty five percent of where you used to be and heading south because the electric cars are all going to be made in China and Mexico, but they’re all going to be made basically in China.

We are going to bring so many auto plants into our country. You’re going to be as big or bigger than you were 50 years ago because they won’t be able to build a plant. If they’re not willing to build a plant, we don’t want their product. And that’s enough. That’s all I wanted. And it’ll happen. It’ll happen fast. It’ll happen very fast.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: I think it’s safe to say that Michigan is happy that you’re going to be president again. And, Mr. President, we don’t mind that you give long answers because you actually have something to say, because you actually got something done when you were president.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, it’s a very interesting, Chrissy, she said, I don’t think I’ve ever said this before. So we do these rallies. They’re massive rallies. Everybody loves, everybody stays till the end, by the way. You know, when she said that, well, your rallies, people, honestly, nobody does. And if I saw them leaving, I’d say, and ladies and gentlemen, make America great again. I get the hell out, OK, because I don’t want people leaving.

But I do have to say so. I give these long, sometimes very complex sentences and paragraphs, but they all come together. I do it a lot. I do it with Raising Cain, that story. I do it with the story of the catapults on the aircraft carriers. I do it with a lot of different stories. When I mentioned Dr. Hannibal Lecter, I’m using that as an example of people that are coming in from Silence of the Lambs. I use it. They say it’s terrible. So they say so I’ll give this long, complex area, for instance, that I talked about a lot of different territory.

The bottom line, as I said, the most important thing, we’re going to bring more plans into your state and this country to make automobiles. They’re going to be bigger than before, but the fake news is and there’s a lot of them back there. You know, for a town hall, there’s a lot of people. But the fake news likes to say the fake news likes to say, oh, he was rambling. No, no, that’s not rambling. That’s genius. When you can connect the dots. You got to. Now, now, Sarah, if you couldn’t connect the dots, you got a problem. Every dot was connected and many stories were told in that little paragraph.

But there is something that they say that the other thing I say is this. We had one hundred and seven thousand people show up in New Jersey. We had sixty eight thousand people show up in Alabama. We had seventy nine or eighty one thousand in South Carolina. And they’ve never said I’m a great speaker. And I said, am I a great speaker? They say, oh, no, he rambles. What the hell are all you people showing up for by rambling? You don’t want to show up for rambling. So anyway, thank you very much.

Question from an Auto Worker

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Mr. President, no one has done more to fight for the American worker than you to bring back jobs and manufacturing to this country tonight. There’s obviously a lot of people that really care about the auto industry here. And tonight we have a question from one of the auto workers, Isaiah, here in the audience that would like to ask a question.

DONALD TRUMP: Good. Sure. Where’s Isaiah?

ISAIAH: Thank you. Thank you very much.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. We’ll build a brand new beast. We’re going to build a beast right here. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

ISAIAH: Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President, for having us here tonight. I just want to let you know that I’ve attended one of your rallies. I did not leave early and I did not fall asleep. Just want to let you know that I did not do it. I did not do I didn’t see I didn’t see anybody else doing it either, sir. My name is Isaiah. I’m a third generation UAW worker working hard to build trucks here in America.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Yeah. Get ready. You’re going to be doing plenty of it.

ISAIAH: Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. I work for Ford and you actually came and visited the plant that I work at.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s right. You did.

ISAIAH: And my question to you, sir, is what do you see as the major threats to the future of Michigan manufacturing autoworking jobs? And what will you do to eliminate those threats, sir?

Trump’s Response on Major Threats and Nuclear Weapons

DONALD TRUMP: OK, so I’ll get into another little bit of a long answer, because when you say major threat to me, we have one really major threat that’s called nuclear weapons. We call it we have other countries that are hostile to us. They don’t have to be hostile to us. I always say if you have a smart president, you’ll never have a problem with China, Russia or any of them. OK, I got along great with Putin. I got along great with President Xi. I got along great with Kim Jong Un of North Korea. Everybody said, oh, you can’t get along with them. He liked me. I got along great with him.

And he has a lot of nuclear force. But you essentially have five countries and you’re going to have more whether you like it or not. You’re going to have more. It’s a single biggest threat to the world, not only Michigan, to the world. And you’re not going to care so much about making cars if that stuff starts happening. And we have people that are not good at negotiation. The war should have never happened.

President Biden, I want to be nice. He was so nice to me yesterday. But, you know, in one way, I sort of wish the call wasn’t made because I do feel he’s so, so nice. I’m so sorry about what happened and all that. But I have to lay it out. We have very important the same with Kamala today. She could not have been nicer. But the fact is, the fact is we have to have people that are respected by the opponent to buy the other side, buy other countries that have this.

Even Pakistan has nuclear war. We have we have countries. India has a lot of nuclear force. We have countries that have tremendous nuclear power. And when I hear these people talking about global warming, that’s the global warming you have to worry about. Not that the ocean is going to rise in 400 years, an eighth of an inch and you have more seafront property. Right. If that happens, I said, is that good or bad? I said, isn’t that a good thing? If I have a little property on the ocean, I have a little bit more property. I have a little bit more ocean.

But the fact is that it’s a it’s a tremendous problem. And we are closer to World War three today than we’ve ever been. And the difference is and I say this a lot. This isn’t army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. This is obliteration, the power of these weapons. And I’m the one that revived it. And I hated to do it. But, you know, we had stuff that was 48 years old. They didn’t even know if it worked. We have incredible stuff. So does Russia. China has much less, but they’re going to catch up over four or five years. It’s the single biggest threat by far to civilization. And nobody talks about it.

Trump on Climate Change and Global Threats

They talk about global warming. Used to be. Remember, used to be global warming. You know, they changed the name. You know why? Because the planet is getting cooler now. So now what they call it is climate change because that covers everything. See, climate change. If it gets hot, cool, you know, these people, I don’t know if they’re for real. But if they’re not, they’re covered by the words climate change. If it gets cooler, that’s good. If it gets hotter, that’s good. Global warming wasn’t working so well.

But the single biggest threat. OK, now let’s assume we have a really smart president and that’s not going to be a threat because we have a lot of power. Doing business with China is a good thing, but you have to have a fair deal. Doing business with Russia, they have so much in terms of material, minerals and things.

Trump on International Trade and Economic Strategy

DONALD TRUMP: The size of their land mass is like four times bigger than the United States. The minerals and things they have. We can do great business and you keep everybody happy. You can solve that problem. But let’s talk about the local problem. The local problem is that you have countries stealing your business. Mexico is a very big one. Mexico. This year, we have a deficit with Mexico of two hundred and fifty billion dollars. Think of this with Mexico, a little Mexico. You think of it as a little innocent place. We’re losing our ass to Mexico, China. You don’t even have to talk about. We have over a trillion dollars this year.

I was charging them numbers that were unbelievable. And now he’s just totally given up the ghost. And we’re going to lose a trillion dollars in deficits to China, a trillion. That’s not sustainable. We’re going to turn it all around and we’re going to do it through taxation and tariffs. It will be done in 24 hours and it’ll change the whole planet. Just so you know, Sarah, China became powerful because they charge. They don’t call them tariffs. They call it a tax. They call it. They don’t call it tariffs.

The word tariff is a beautiful word to me, but to a lot of people that don’t understand, it’s not a beautiful word because you have a lot of people that are paid off by these countries. They’re taking care of these countries and they don’t care about destroying the United States. They want millions of dollars in fees and consultation, but we will literally in a period of 24 hours, we can change the whole trading of the whole world.

They’ve taken advantage of our country for years. I stopped it. I stopped so much of it. And then we had a focus on COVID, which a lot of people said was put in there for a reason. You know, it came out of the Wuhan lab, which I said right from the beginning. All of you know, it didn’t come out of a cave, and they said a cave. It didn’t come from France. They blamed France. They blamed. They blamed. I call it the China virus because I like to be accurate, you know, they call it. They call it the Spanish flu. They call it all different names. When something comes from a country except for China, we have to call it COVID. What the hell does COVID mean to China virus? And a lot of people think they did that because they were not happy with me as president.

Trump on International Relations

I actually had a great relationship with President Xi and in his own way, he probably liked me the most, but maybe or maybe not. I saw that Putin the other day endorsed Kamala. You have to understand, these are major chess players. So when he endorses Kamala, he may say, well, I did that because I love you and it’s better to be doing it. So who knows? But he endorsed Kamala, which is a little unusual. I was watching. I said, that’s interesting. I think that’s a good thing, isn’t it? It really is.

Trump’s Proposed Trade Policies

But look, we have to turn it around and we can. We’re going to have a reciprocal trade tax. So if China charges 152%, which they do in a car, if we sell a car made here into China, which you don’t do because the tax is too high, they say to all your companies and to others and to Elon Musk who gave us, he is a great guy. He gave me the strongest endorsement and he’s a really wonderful guy, but they say to him, we don’t want your car unless you build your plant in China.

And there’s nothing wrong with saying that. Smart people say that. We haven’t said it for many years. I said it. We have a lot of plans going up with Apple and other things. I said, you got to build plans. You don’t build plans here. We’re going to put the tariffs on your products coming in from China so we can do it quickly.

But we’re going to have what’s called a reciprocal trade act. Now, I dealt with the senator, a very good senator, actually, but he knows nothing about trade. I said, here’s what I want to do, Senator. I want to take the reciprocal trade. If they charge us 100 percent, we charge them 100 percent. He said, you mean they charge us, we charge them? You got me. How simple could it be? It was sort of cool because he doesn’t care. He’s a senator, doesn’t care about trade, but, you know, so we’re going to call it the Trump reciprocal trade act or I’ll leave the name Trump off as long as we do it.

So when India, which is a very big abuser, he happens to be coming to meet me next week and Modi is fantastic. I mean, fantastic man. These — a lot of these leaders are fantastic. You have to understand one thing. They’re dealing. They’re one hundred percent. These people are the sharpest people. They’re not a little bit backwards than that. They are at the top. You know the expression. They’re at the top of their game and they use it against us. But India is very tough. Brazil is very tough. There are certain countries. I can tell you everyone I can give you from top to bottom. China is the toughest of all. But we were taking care of China with the tariffs.

So we’re going to do a reciprocal trade. If anybody charges us 10 cents, if they charge us two dollars, if they charge us one hundred percent, two hundred and fifty, we charge them the same thing. And you know what’s going to happen? Everything’s going to disappear and we’re going to end up having free trade again. And if it doesn’t disappear, we’re going to take in a lot of money, OK? But you know, the biggest beneficiary, I believe, is going to be your state. And I won’t say that to other states, I promise, about your state. You are going to have plans to build at a level that you haven’t seen in 50 years. Great question. Thank you.

Border Security and Immigration

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Thank you. Mr. President, one of the other things I think that you did that helped protect the American worker as much as anything else and also make our country and our community safer was you actually did something about the border just this month. There was a woman in my home state of Arkansas who was killed by an illegal immigrant who was drunk driving that was deported during your administration and came back under this administration because they have failed to protect our country. It’s one of the great threats that we face that you actually did something about. Tell us what you will do on day one to help protect our country.

DONALD TRUMP: So we’re going to be day one. We’re doing two things. Closing the border and drill, baby drill, to get down the prices. Thank you. Nice people. I like this crowd. I like this crowd.

You know what? You smart people. So, Sarah, thank you. Thank you. So over the last couple of years, I’ve been talking about the border. I got elected in 2016 because of the border. But that border was peanuts compared to what this border is. That border was like a safe border compared. And I did it. I did a great job. And it also includes drugs came to, you know, much lower.

Trump on Drug Policy

Look, unless you have the death penalty for drug dealers, you’ll never get rid of the drug problem. Put that through your head. Put that through your head. And I don’t know if our country is ready for it. When I was with when I was with presidency and again, I had until COVID, I had a great relationship. Once that happened, I really didn’t want a relationship because 60 trillion dollars, millions of dead people all over the world. I was not exactly thrilled with him. But before that, I had a great relationship.

And I said, do you have a drug problem? No, no, no. We have no drug problem. Oh, how come? Death penalty. Immediate. I said, what does that mean? Immediate. Immediate. We have what’s called a quick trial. You know, the quick trial is like in one day. The trial is over. Over here. It’ll be twenty five years. They’ll get some nice liberal lawyer and they’ll have it tied up for twenty five years. The guy dies of old age.

So but they have a death penalty in Singapore. They have a death penalty in a lot of countries. They have a death penalty. And they sell drugs because the average drug dealer kills during his or her life, 500 people. The average one. The big ones, much more. But when you hear that, you know, when people start to hear that and I set up blue ribbon committees, I put, you know, nice people, dilettantes from New York and from Los Angeles, people that don’t nothing about drugs and they’re dealing with very smart people. These dealers are smart as hell. They’re tough as hell. And they make a fortune. They make a fortune. And if you don’t have the death penalty for drug dealers, you’re just wasting your time.

No, we can keep it down and we can do better than we’re doing now and a lot better than we’re doing now, because what’s happening now is out of control. But we had the lowest human trafficking, mostly in women. I hate to say mostly in women. But we had the lowest human trafficking in 32 years.

Trump’s Favorite Chart and Recent Incident

You know, my favorite chart, the chart I put down when I look to the right, my that’ll be my all time favorite chart in history. That was basically a chart showing what a good job I did on immigration. But even if it showed I did a bad job on immigration, it will be my all time favorite chart because I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t look over. Let me see that. That was not good. My all time favorite chart, blue, yellow, red. It was beautiful. Oh, there it is. There it is. That was good. These guys are very good back at it. That’s a good you know, the interesting thing. It’s always on my left when I did rallies. It’s always on my list. I only do it about 15, maybe 20 percent of the time, so I don’t do it much. And it’s always at the end of a speech. But it’s always here.

For some reason, they dropped it here. It was at the beginning of the speech, the very beginning couple of sentences. And I turned like a deer bolting, I guess. Right. And the deer say this every once in a while, a deer will bolt prior to the shot. And I don’t know. I guess mine was a former. But I turned around to look at it. It was right here behind me, actually. And my head was at a perfect angle and it got me. But if you got to be hit, that’s the best place. Although it’s a it’s a blood, the doctor said, how come so much blood? He said the ear bleeds more than I said, I’ll take it. I’ll take it.

But but it was it was an amazing it was an amazing thing. And I have to say, because I have to while we’re on the subject, because people do like to talk about it. A few days ago, we had an incident, I have to say, Secret Service did a hell of a job. They really did. They caught one of the gentlemen that one of the agents was walking a couple of holes in front and he saw a rifle, AK-47. Serious stuff. Right. You know more about that. My friends know more about this stuff. But AK-47. That’s it. That’s a bad one.

Trump on Recent Security Incident

DONALD TRUMP: The other one was an AR-15. This was an AK-47. And he saw the barrel of the gun coming out from a bush. Can you believe it? This guy was all set. He was all set to do his number. And there was no talk. He didn’t say, hello, what are you doing here, please? And he ends up getting shot himself. He took his gun, started shooting him. And this guy ran. I don’t know where is it? Not here. Right. This guy. These guys do a great job now. They do need more people than they’ve been complaining about that for a long time. But he did a great job.

But you want to know another sort of a miracle. So the guy is now running for his life and he’s got a car a block away or whatever. And a woman is a woman, not a man to woman see. A woman is smarter than men. I hate to say it, how does that sound? Our great first lady is very happy now. Let me just let me just think of this. Who would do this? I actually asked. I was with the sheriff this morning. I was with a couple of people from Secret Service. Who would do this?

So you now have a man running, not with a gun. He dropped the gun. We found the gun, but he was gone. And a woman driving in a car saw a man on the street, pretty busy street, running. And she followed him. And he got into the car and she stopped because she thought he was trouble. He looked different. He’s like trouble. She followed him. It wasn’t very far and parked the car behind his car and started taking pictures of his license plate.

So think of it. And Sarah, think of it. No, no. Seriously. Who would do that? It’s the women. Not from good or bad. Not from, you know, strength or heroism. No, just you see somebody running. I see people running all the time and, you know, she saw something in this guy that was bad. She may have heard maybe gunshots because there were four, I guess, four gunshots. Really the guy, the shots, he never got off a shot. The shots were from Secret Service.

But think of it. Who would do this if you took a thousand of these incidents? Would even one person have done it? This woman was I haven’t met her, but I’d like to meet her. I’m going to meet her. I hope. But think of this. She goes in. She takes pictures of the plate and then she sends the pictures into the sheriff’s office. And the sheriff’s are saying, wow, this is pretty amazing. And they were able to get this guy within 10 minutes at a high speed chase on the highway. They got him. Otherwise, we’d probably have an AK-47. They had the camera. They had the whole he had the whole thing is a sophisticated guy, even had the serial number taken off the rifle, the gun.

But think of this. So we’d have all this stuff. But I’d be walking around saying, I wonder where this guy is. Is he in this audience? We would have a maniac out there. This woman was unbelievable because I actually asked the sheriff if it happened a thousand times, would anybody have done that? He said, maybe, but not much. Not much. So she did. She was really amazing. Amazing.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: We’re glad she did. I think there are a couple of takeaways there. One, the women of this country love Donald Trump and are going to eventually do our part. And I think one of the other things that we all know in this room certainly is that God is not finished with you and he has big plans.

Trump on the Town Hall Format and Auto Industry

DONALD TRUMP: Sarah, I just want to say one thing. So when I heard about this tonight, I said, so where am I speaking? Michigan? Good. I like Michigan. I want to talk about cars. I love talking about the cars because it’s so simple. It’s so ridiculous that this is happening. You don’t want the electric. You do want electric cars, seven percent, eight percent. Elon makes a great product. But you know what? And I have. Hey, I’ve driven. His car is incredible. Other cars are incredible. But you have a little thing. But you want to have gasoline propelled cars. You want to have hybrids. You want to have all sorts. They say a new one is going to be hydrogen, who the hell knows. They said there’s a slight problem. It blows up. And if you’re in the car, that could be a little problem. But you want to you want to be able to have whatever it is, whatever the market is and all that stuff.

But they said, sir, you’re having a town hall tonight. And I said, a town hall? What the hell? They want a rally. They don’t want a town hall. Town hall. And I said, so who is the host? Because host or hostess. And they said Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And I said, no, that’s good. I like that. But I think it’s Sarah. You know, I love these rallies you go and we will make America great. Everyone’s going crazy. We had one the other night. But you know what? Can I be honest? This was more fun than a rally today. This was fun. This was good, right? This was very good.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: We’re going to take another question from the audience. Maybe the only job in the country harder than being president of the United States is being a mom, especially under this administration, because they’re making everything harder. And tonight we have a mom here in the audience, Barbara, that’s behind us that has a question for you.

Question from Barbara on Cost of Living

DONALD TRUMP: Hi, Barbara. Hello back there. Hi, Barbara. Hello back there.

BARBARA: Good evening. Good evening, President Trump. Thank you for taking our question. My name is Barbara. I’m a mom of three, a grandmother of seven and three great-grants. A registered nurse, retired, retired nurse. So I know the cost that goes into raising children and running a household. People just can’t survive now. How are you going to bring down the cost of food and groceries?

Trump’s Response on Cost of Living and Energy Policy

DONALD TRUMP: Very good. Thank you. So we have to start always with energy, always. I don’t want to be boring about it, but there’s no bigger subject. It covers everything. If you make donuts, if you make cars, whatever you make, energy is a big deal. And we’re going to get that. It’s my ambition to get your energy bill within 12 months down 50 percent. If I can do that, you’ve done a hell of a job. 5-0. Not 15, 50.

Interest rates are going to follow. And actually, they’re going to follow for another reason. The economy is now not good. And interest rates, you’ll see, they’ll do the rate cut and all the political stuff tomorrow, I think. And, you know, will he do a half a point? Will he do a quarter of a point? But the reason is because the economy is not good. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to do it. But we’re going to get interest rates down, and we’ve got to work with our farmers. Our farmers are being decimated right now. They’re being absolutely, absolutely decimated.

And, you know, one of the reasons is we allow a lot of farm product into our country. We’re going to have to be a little bit like other countries. We’re not going to allow so much. We’re going to let our farmers go to work. And I don’t know if you remember, I love the farmers because, you know, I had many meetings as president. I had this gorgeous room with this beautiful table that seats about 35 people. And I was with the farmers. Usually everybody wants something. They all want subsidy. But I was with the farmers. And I think you might have been there, actually, Sarah. I said, look, Charles, we’re going to get you such a beautiful subsidy, meaning I’m going to do things. And one of the people raises his ear. Honestly, we don’t want a subsidy. It’s the first time this ever happened to me. Everyone wants it. They want money. Why? They want to build windmills. We want money with these windmills.

Anyway, but you know what was amazing? He said almost tears in his eyes. We don’t. They were getting decimated. We don’t want a subsidy. We just want to play a fair level playing field. And I said, I said, nobody’s ever said that. And I have many industries and many groups of people from different things. You know, they do all different things. It’s probably the most dramatic I’ve ever seen. He didn’t want anything. All he wanted was to be able to compete fairly. And the reason the problem we have is other countries. They treat us very badly in that way. Also, they really are. And, you know, sometimes the worst countries are our so-called allies. I say so-called because in many ways they’re not allies at all. They take advantage of us. They really take advantage.

Trump on Trade Negotiations and Agriculture

But we’re going to do with the farmers. We’re going to do what we have to do with the farmers. We’re going to put our farmers in. Do you remember the expression? When I was negotiating with China, China said, well, we’re not going to deal with this because they never had anybody negotiate. They did whatever they want. They just took us like, you know, for a bunch of suckers. But I told the farmers, it’s going to be a very good negotiators. You’re going to suffer for six months and then they’re going to fold. And that’s exactly what happened.

They fold it and they agreed to buy 50 billion dollars. You know, you might have heard the story. I said, how much? I went to the secretary of agriculture. How much did they buy? He said 15. I thought he said 50. So when they’re ready to make a deal at 15 billion, I said, no, I want 50. That’s what they’ve been buying. He said, no, it’s 15. I said, you said 50. And he said, no, we said 15. I said, that’s OK. Yes, but 50 anyway. And we got it. We got it. And they buy a lot of our products.

So we’re going to, it’s just a great interest rates, energy and common sense. A lot of it’s common sense. Everything. You know, I like to say we’re the party of common sense. We want to have a strong border. How about that? We want a strong, you know, all of a sudden they’ve changed. They didn’t want any border. They said walls don’t work. Two things work. What are the two things? Wheels and walls. You know, if I do, there’s a gorgeous computer down here. In about two weeks, it’s going to be obsolete. A friend of mine is in that business. He hates it. He said, we come up with a new model and it’s the greatest. About three and a half weeks later, the damn thing is totally obsolete. The only thing that never gets obsolete is a wall and a wheel.

Trump on Border Security and Wall Construction

And the wall is what we’re talking about now. And, you know, we built hundreds of miles of wall. We then added more than I ever said I was going to do. And then we had that bad election result, that disgusting result, and they never put it up. You know what they did with it? They sold it for five cents. And it was expensive wall. It was exactly what the Border Patrol wanted with the anti-climb plate on top, which I always hated because I didn’t like the look of it. But, you know, they demonstrated it. We had mountain climbers and a couple of drug climbers, too. These guys are amazing. They can they put 100 pounds of drugs on the back and they go up the wall like it’s nothing. But they couldn’t get over the plate. So all of a sudden I said, OK, I’ll put the plate on. I didn’t like it. I liked it better without the plate, but it didn’t work quite as well.

So this is what we did. We had it. We had the best. We had a thing called Remain in Mexico. You don’t have to be a genius to know. Remain in Mexico is a very good thing. And you think that was easy to get.

Trump on Border Security and Immigration

DONALD TRUMP: I think Tijuana, Mexico, was probably the fastest growing city in the history of the world. They had hundreds of thousands. They couldn’t come in. When they got in, they let everybody pour into our country. The border, just to finish with the border, when I talk about energy, to me, it’s exciting. But to a lot of people, it’s not. But it gets exciting because we’ll bring down your costs. All that. But what people want to hear and I believe when I got elected, I believe it was the border that was the biggest thing. And I fixed it. And I did a great job. And I wanted to mention it in 2020. And my people would say, sir, nobody cares about the border. They don’t care because I had it fixed. Now I got to fix it again. I believe the border is of the greatest interest.

When you look at when you look at when you look at what’s happening in Aurora. OK, take a look at Aurora. When you look at what’s happening in Ohio, the great state of Ohio. I love it. I’m way the hell up. I wish I was up 18 points in your state, but we are up. We are up. I think when people hear what I have to say, I don’t know how you can possibly lose it.

Trump on the Auto Industry and Electric Vehicles

I’ll tell you this and I’ll say this for Michigan. If I don’t win, you will have no auto industry within two to three years. It’ll all be gone. And I know you got a little bit of an increase. It doesn’t mean that’s the small stuff because it’s just a temporary thing because you will not have any manufacturing plants. China is going to take over all of your business because of the electric car and because they have the material we don’t. What we have is a thing called gasoline. We have gasoline. We have so much gasoline. We don’t know what to do. They don’t have gasoline. So why are we making a product that they dominate? They’re going to dominate. You will not have a car industry left. Not even a little bit of a car industry.

So and you’re going to have electric cars, but you’re going to have seven percent. You’re going to have nine percent, whatever it may be. And maybe someday the technology becomes so good that you can do more. I mean, you know, it’s fine. But right now, the battery technology isn’t there for long term. I always say I love the electric car, but they don’t go far enough and they don’t do well. You know, in Iowa, it was 20 degrees below zero when we had our great success in Iowa. We had a great and there were cars all over the place. I said, what’s wrong with those cars? They don’t work well in cold and they don’t work very well in heat.

But Elon’s going to figure it out because he’s great. He gave me the greatest endorsement. He figures everything out right now. He’s got he’s got other things to think. He’s got to get a rocket up to get those two people out of there. I said, Elon, let’s get going. No, they’re relying on Elon to get the two people who would like to be up there right now saying we’re coming back home, maybe in February. So that was not so good. But Elon will solve the problem. He’s great, great guy. And he loves this state and he loves your whole everything you’re doing here. And he’s done a fantastic job. He really has. And if he didn’t endorse me, I would not be saying that. OK, I have a problem. I wouldn’t be saying that.

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Thank you. We’ve got time, I think, for just one more question. When you were president, you built one of the strongest economies our country’s ever seen. One of the ways you did that was by passing the largest tax cut in American history. We have a question from Willie who wants to ask you something about taxes and what you’re going to do.

Question on Taxes from Willie

WILLIE: Good evening, President Trump. I’m a local contractor in this town.

DONALD TRUMP: He’s a cool looking guy, too. He’s better looking than you.

WILLIE: I’m a local contractor in this town and I live here my whole life. And I’m going to tell you, I’m kind of concerned about crucial Kamala’s tax increase. Can you outline for the people what you plan on doing about taxes?

Trump’s Response on Taxes and Economic Policy

DONALD TRUMP: Great. It’s a great question. Look, she’s going to double up your taxes. She wants to terminate the Trump tax cut. Just that is going to lift up your taxes by 44 percent. Just that one move. And remember, I have it so that like if you’re a farmer, a small businessman, you have no inheritance tax. They’re going to give that up. They’re going to give everything. You know, a lot of people don’t realize I’ve been a lot of people didn’t talk about it.

But if you have a small business, if you have a farm someplace, a lot of farmers, they have beautiful land, but they don’t have the cash and they leave it to their children and they’re so proud of their children. And the children end up going bankrupt because they have to borrow money to pay off the estate tax. There is no estate tax. And that’s something that nobody even talks about. But that’s helped. That saved a lot of families from having to sell their farm or losing their farm.

But she’s got one thing that’s incredible, an unrealized capital gain tax that will drive every business out of the United States. So what that is, is I don’t know how they can possibly administer. The only ones that are going to make money are appraisers and accountants. So they’re taking a business might have not a lot of money, but it might have great land and they’re valuing it. And what was it this year compared to next year? You’ve got to put down a value and then you’ve got to go out and you have to pay tax, even though you haven’t sold anything. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. And I don’t know how any rich person or any person that’s in business can even think of supporting her. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.

And they’re going to raise the capital gains tax really a lot. Now, as far as regular, people are going to have to pay a lot more tax. Your taxes, she said, 70 to 80 percent. Some people will pay 70 to 80 percent. You have to understand, a lot of these people are international business people. A lot of these companies are international. They don’t care if they’re here or someplace else. They go for the best deal. They go for their shareholders. If they raise the taxes like that, they go to other countries. You know who got a lot of our companies is Ireland. Years ago, they took our pharmaceutical industry because they gave them a better deal. They will leave our country. They will leave all those jobs that we created.

And I want people to pay fair taxes and all that. But she’s going to be raising your taxes to 50, 60, 70 percent. And it’s not sustainable. And even for the companies, if they have to pay too much, they’re going to leave the country and you’re not going to have any jobs. So we have to be very, very careful about it. We have to be very, very careful.

Trump’s Closing Remarks

And I have to tell you that this has really been an honor. I just this will be the most fun of any state because we’re going to bring back an industry that you can do it. You know, we’re going to bring back an industry and mark my words. If for some reason some tragedy happens, because it would be a tragedy beyond the auto business for the whole country, I really believe that. If a tragedy happens and we don’t win, there will be zero car jobs, manufacturing jobs. It will all be out of here. And that includes South Carolina. That includes other places that are competitors of yours. You won’t be making cars here anymore. You won’t be making anything in our country anymore. We’re going to bring it all back.

But the one and I say this and I said it to another state the other night. And this is not a good thing to say to another state. But I said Michigan’s going to be the most fun because you have you’re so set up for greatness. All you need is somebody smart at the top to say you can’t flood our market with cars. You just can’t do it. And if I say you have to pay 100 percent, you know, China pays a big but I didn’t do the big number yet. But if I say you have to pay 100 or 200 percent, it doesn’t matter because I’m going to say second sense. I hope you don’t mind this. However, if you build your plant in Detroit or if you build it in Michigan or if you build it anywhere in the United States, for that matter, it seems to be the right location. But we’re going to have more fun.

So I’m telling them about Michigan and I’m saying, you know, the story is getting a little bit long because I’m talking about Michigan. I happen to be in another state, but everybody loved it because they know you. You’re recognized for this. We’re going to get now they go from paying 100 percent tariff to paying nothing. All they have to do is build their factory and spend their hundreds of millions of dollars in your state. This will be like taking candy from a baby. I’m going to give you the credit.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Closing Remarks

SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Well, I don’t think there’s any question that America was better off under Donald Trump, and we know that it’s going to be even better the second time around. Before tonight, I knew you were going to win the presidency. I had no doubt Arkansas is going to come in huge. But now I know you’re going to win Michigan by epic.

Ladies and gentlemen, we need you to show up. We need you to vote because the future of my kids, your kids, our grandkids depends on whether or not Donald Trump goes back into the White House. And I know you’re not going to let us down. More importantly, I know President Trump is not going to let us down because he’s shown us time and time again that no matter what comes at him, no matter what the left throws at him, he’s going to get back up and keep fighting for this country that he loves so much. Thank you, Mr. President.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. Thank you.

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