FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump Town Hall In Fayetteville, North Carolina

We’ll do it. But they don’t have the money to take care of. That’s why they’re giving you lousy treatment in North Carolina in particular. And we don’t like that. So we’re going to let it be known. And they have to get a lot better because people are not happy.

Introduction of Silk

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Well, you’re absolutely right, Mr. President. And before we start with that town hall, I actually wanted to mention that one of your friends here is Silk. Silk, are you here? Where are you at? Where? Oh.

DONALD TRUMP: I’ll tell you, she is my friend, too. And she is my friend.

SILK: Oh, wow. Hey, North Carolina. Real, real quick now. I want y’all to listen up. I’m a little ticked off. I just want you to know I’m a little ticked off, and I’m going to tell you why. $750. Where American tax dollars is being used to fund illegal aliens into our country. And these illegal aliens didn’t pay one dime or one red cent into our system. And all Kamala Harris and Tampa Timmy want to give us $750?

Listen, you all. We only have one choice. One choice. And that’s President Donald J. Trump. We can’t afford, we cannot afford another four years of this, or you’re going to have to vote like your life depends on it. Like when you’re taking your breath, and it’s your last breath, and you need that vote in order to breathe, that’s what you’re going to have to do.

So you’re going to have to, I’m almost finished, Mr. President. So what you’re going to have to do, you’re going to have to overvote the cheats, you’re going to have to outrun the runway, and we’re going to have to make it too big to rid. Now I can feel, I can feel a diamond, I can feel a diamond rising up in me. Because you have to vote right so you won’t get left again. Vote red. R-E-D. Remove every Democrat. They got to vote. They got to vote. Now, while the media continue to play the race card, we’re going to continue to play the Trump card so we can win! Win! And win!

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. Thank you. So, you know, it was nine years ago, and my beautiful wife, our First Lady, she, we love our First Lady. Did you see her interview on Sean Hannity and with Ainsley in the morning? She did great. But nine years ago, she came to me, she said, you know, there are two women, and they are really incredible. I said, who the hell are they? Let me, she said, you got to see this, you’re not going to believe it. And we fell in love like almost immediately. And her sister was just unbelievable, too. And she passed away like a couple of years ago now. It’s a long time ago. It seems it goes fast. Right.

But what a great combination. We love you both. They were loyal to me from day one when they heard stuff. They said, that’s a lot of crap. They were with me from day one. And that Trump sign gets bigger and bigger. I said, that’s so nice. I want to buy one for myself.

SILK: Don’t you worry, Mr. President, I’m going to give you one. Don’t worry.

DONALD TRUMP: But you know what? You know what? We appreciate your loyalty, your friendship. And I saw Silk backstage. I said, I’m bringing you upstage. I’m going to bring you upstage. And we miss your great sister. And we love you. And thank you very much. Thank you.

First Audience Question

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Thank you. All right, Mr. President, are you ready?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I’m going to be very careful with these. These weren’t designed for me, exactly.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: All right, Mr. President, our first question comes from Ali. She was one of the residents here in North Carolina that was directly impacted by the hurricane and it destroyed her community. Ali, where are you at?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Good evening, President Trump. My name is Ali, and I’m from the foothills of North Carolina. Our entire community has been decimated. Thank you, President Trump, for visiting the disaster sites to bring attention and donating millions in relief. This week, this week, we have learned that not only did 13,000, 13,000 murders illegally cross our border, but FEMA is out of money because they have been providing $9,000 to every illegal. Enough, enough is enough. We must put Americans first. How soon will you start deporting the murderers?

DONALD TRUMP: So let me just tell you that you’re right about that. It’s 13,000, 099 to be exact. And murderers, many of these people murdered more than one person. Some one did seven. These are not people we want in our country. So this was, I guess, released by somebody that loves us, maybe in Border Patrol. We don’t know exactly where the numbers, but these are certified numbers. And you had 16,000 drug traffickers. You had numbers that nobody’s ever seen, 645,000 criminals overall. They’re in our country. They nobody has any idea. They’re from places unknown. Nobody knows who they are, what they are.

But we know that we have over 600,000 people released into our country, along with the ones that you were talking about, the 21,000. But of them, 13,000, more than 13,000 are murderers. And some were on schedule to die. They were scheduled for the death penalty. And we have them now nicely ensconced in our country.

I’ll tell you what, we have the worst president and the worst vice president in the history of America. They are horrible. They are horrible. That could happen. And just the concept of open borders doesn’t make sense. You know, we built 500 miles of wall more, and we’re going to add another 200, much more than I said I was going to do. And that’s why we had the best numbers ever.

Ooh, the chart. So you know the chart? My favorite chart, Ali. My favorite piece of paper, my favorite chart. But we had a chart. Do you have something up here that could show? I love that. I love that chart. Oh, I love that chart. If I didn’t look to the right, I wouldn’t be going to Butler tomorrow. You know, we’re going to Butler tomorrow. If I didn’t look over, so, no.

But if you look at the chart, at the arrow on the bottom, that shows the lowest number in the history of our country. That was the day I left office. And these clowns took over, and what they’ve done to our country, between that and so many other things, what they’ve done to our country. But, you know, I view inflation was the worst we’ve ever had, I think. They say, oh, it was only in 48 years. Somebody, one of the fake news back there, they corrected me one time. They said, no, 48 years. Oh, okay. But it wasn’t. I believe it was the worst that we’ve ever had. And that’s been one of the big problems.

But to me, and I know that you talk about the bad economy, you talk about all of the costs, and the costs are so bad. To me, the worst is the border. Because it’s like, what they’re doing is they’re destroying our country. And it’s not easy. We’re going to get them out. We’re going to have the largest deportation in history. I’m not proud to say that, either. But it’s a tough thing to do. And we’re going to get, Anna, we’re going to get the criminals out. We’re going to start with the worst of them, and we’re going to get them out. And you know who’s going to help us? Local law enforcement. Local law enforcement. They’re going to be great. They know their names. They know their serial numbers. We’re going to get them out.

And, you know, very simply, we have a little thing called MAGA. Everybody here knows MAGA. It’s called Make America Great Again. That’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to make America great again. Thank you, darling. Really good question. Thank you.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: You know, Mr. President, to your credit, too, I think that’s largely why you’ve actually outpaced every other candidate for president with the support from the Hispanic American community. Because it’s not just a race thing. We all want border security. So thank you, Mr. President.

DONALD TRUMP: We have an incredible community that we – I don’t know, it’s just very energetic. You know that, right? It’s energetic. And they’re very entrepreneurial, and they just – they love our country. And we have – we’ve gotten record numbers with the Hispanic community. And I don’t know, it just works. It just works. So I appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thank you, darling, very much.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Thank you, guys.

Second Audience Question

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: All right, Mr. President, our next question is from John. He was a Green Beret captain who was actually kicked out of the military. I think he’s going to share his story with you. One second.

DONALD TRUMP: Hi. Good-looking guy.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Thank you. Good evening, Mr. President. I’m John Frankman. I was a Special Forces Green Beret who was forced out of the military because of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s good stuff, right? That’s good. That’s good.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: The Biden-Harris COVID-19 vaccine mandate was very damaging to the military. It forced thousands of service members out, and thousands do not want to join now. The Biden-Harris DOD has the lowest recruiting in modern history, and now they’re pushing more woke training. So how do you plan to repair the military from the damage that was done and hold military leaders accountable?

DONALD TRUMP: So I want to have them come back into the military with pay. And, you know, they’ve been talking about that, but it never happened. They never did what they said they were going to do. There should have never been a mandate. That should have never happened. We should have been given choice, as we say. We want choice in education, and we want a choice there, too. And that should have never happened.

And, you know, we’ve lost some of our best people in the military, too. Did you leave? Did you leave? Did you ever take the vaccine?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I never did, sir.

DONALD TRUMP: So you want a choice, yeah. Would you go back in if they were able to?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: As long as there’s accountability, potentially.

DONALD TRUMP: I think accountability is right. They’re going to fire their asses. We don’t want to lose this guy. He’s central casting. We want to get him back in. Yeah, we’re going to take care of it. I hope you do come back. Or I hope you do very well outside, to be honest. Wherever you are, I just want you to do well. But we’re going to get a lot of people coming back. They should have never had the mandate. The mandate was a big mistake, and they treated people terribly. Terribly. Okay? Thank you very much. Thank you.

We lost a lot of great people. Also another, you know, with police forces. I mean, a lot of people were forced into doing things they didn’t want to do. But I love that question. That’s a great question. Thank you very much.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: I also, too, if I could, Mr. President, I don’t think I’ve told you this story yet, but actually we had some of our friends that had been deployed, and one of our friends actually was shot pretty badly and ended up going to Walter Reed. And to put it in perspective, there’s a lot of politicians that will take photos with the military, but they don’t care. But President Trump actually went privately, didn’t ask for a photo opportunity, and he said thank you to our friend that had been shot in combat at Walter Reed. His heart’s in it. He loves our community. And when I say that he has your back, he’s going to make sure that they’re accountable. He will.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much. And I’ll tell you, you know, we have a great military, and we really do. But Walter Reed, you mentioned the name, and that hospital was unbelievable. The doctors are unbelievable. They had a lot of problems with getting there, getting to it, you know, managerially getting in to see. But we had the best doctors. They could do things that nobody else could do, and they got to see some really badly hurt people. And the level of talent at Walter Reed, it’s just an incredible hospital. So we have to pay our due respects. You know, you hear so much about government-owned or whatever. I don’t think there’s a better hospital in the world than Walter Reed. So we should say that, right?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes, sir.

DONALD TRUMP: Yes, sir.

Third Audience Question

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Mr. President, our next question comes from an active-duty service member here at Fort Bragg. They like it. Austin, where are you at? Oh, front row. That was good.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Good evening, Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: President Trump. I’ve never done this before. I’m an active-duty soldier here at Fort Liberty, and I want to start off by saying I’m here in personal compadre for you.

DONALD TRUMP: He met Fort Bragg, right?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes.

DONALD TRUMP: Fort Bragg. I know. Are you not a soldier now?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: No, I am a soldier. I’m currently active-duty.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, you are. But on a – Oh, shit. I think it’s on.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’m here in my personal capacity, not speaking on behalf of the Army or DOD in any way. This week we saw the missiles flying into Israel from Iran, and how impressive the Iron Dome is in protecting Israel. What are your thoughts on the Iron Dome for America?

DONALD TRUMP: I love it. I mean, I love it. How can you not? I love it. We’re going to have it. One of the things I say, we’re going to have an Iron Dome. Why shouldn’t we have an Iron Dome? And you see how effective. So the other day, 287 big missiles, ballistic missiles, were shot into Israel. Every single one of them was taken down. Well, why shouldn’t we have that?

Discussion on Iron Dome and Military Strategy

DONALD TRUMP: And it’s all going to be made in the United States. You know, it was our technology. It’s all going to be made in the U.S., and a lot of it’s going to be made in a place called North Carolina, if you don’t mind, okay? And I think I just learned the secret.

Look, we’re going to win. I believe you’ve got to get out there. You’ve got to vote and all that. But I think I just learned the secret to winning absolutely and by massive margins. I’m going to promise to you, as I said at the beginning, that we’re going to change the name back to Fort Bragg, because I think when that word gets out, I just see this great-looking soldier just accidentally said Fort Liberty, and he got almost booed the hell out of the place. That was very—that was not good.

Anyway, I believe it’s absolutely something that we want to have for safety, and we’re a target for a lot of different places. I listened to Biden yesterday. You know, since I went under the wing—you know, I used to go under the wing of the aircraft. Nobody ever did that before. I did. All of a sudden, Biden started. But he only takes like a half a question. He usually can’t answer it.

But they asked him, what do you think about—what do you think about Iran? Would you hit Iran? And he goes, as long as they don’t hit the nuclear stuff. That’s the thing you want to hit, right? I said, I think he’s got that one wrong. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to hit? I mean, it’s the most—it’s the biggest risk we have. Nuclear weapons. The power of nuclear weapons. The power of weaponry.

You know, I rebuilt the entire military. Jets. Everything. I built it, including nuclear. And I hated to build the nuclear, but I got to know firsthand the power of that stuff. And I’ll tell you what, we have to be totally prepared. We have to be absolutely prepared. But when they asked him that question, the answer should have been, hit the nuclear first and worry about the rest later.

And that’s where they should—if they’re going to do it. If they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it. But we’ll find out whatever their plans are. But great question. Thank you very much. Thank you.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Thank you, Austin. Mr. President, I don’t think you get enough credit for what you did with the Abraham Accords. I mean, that really was historical.

DONALD TRUMP: I agree. I agree.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: But realistically, because of the failed foreign policy out of this current administration, we are on the verge of World War III. When you get back in office, what are you going to do to change it?

DONALD TRUMP: So a lot of things are happening very fast. And, you know, we could end up in World War III before we get there. The way it’s going right now, look at Russia with Ukraine. That’s a disaster. Look at the Middle East. It’s exploding all over the place.

And we have people that—look, we have a president that spends most of his time on the beach. Sleeping. I never saw a guy could sleep in front of a camera. Does anybody think of it? I don’t sleep that much. I toss and turn. I think. I think. I think. I’m always thinking. Do you ever do that? You’re sweating and you’re thinking and you’re trying to figure out how to beat this one, that—look, how to make our country great.

But I toss and I turn. This guy just falls asleep on the beach like there’s nothing to it. I wish I had that ability. That’s one ability he has that I do not have. And I wouldn’t mind having it. I could use a little extra sleep. But we are going to—we are going to do things with our country. We just have to be respected again.

You know, Viktor Orban, he’s—you know, the fake news—a lot of fake news back there, by the way. But the fake news—the fake news—you know, they call him a strong man. He’s the head of Hungary. And we have—and he’s a very strong guy, a very tough guy. But, I mean, more than anything, he’s a very smart guy. And they said, why is the world blowing up? You have the Middle East is blowing up. You have Russia, Ukraine. That could lead to catastrophe. You talk about nuclear weapons. That could be a total catastrophe. Why is it?

He said, if you put Trump back in the White House, it’s all going to end. You’re going to have peace. You know, we had four years. We didn’t have any wars. We didn’t have any terrorism. We didn’t have anything. And I won’t tell you exactly what he said. Maybe I will. He said, because they were afraid of Trump. I don’t want to be the one saying that, but they were probably afraid of me because they couldn’t—they think I was crazy. And that’s a good thing to think, right, soldier? That’s a good—they said, this guy is crazy.

But, no, he said, if you put Trump back in the White House, you’re not going to have all of that stuff. It’s going to heal. October 7th would have never happened. The attack on Israel would have never happened. Remember, Iran was broke. They weren’t giving money to Hezbollah. They weren’t giving money to anybody. Any of these—they call them delegates of terror. A lot of different names, but it’s always of terror. And there was no money for Hamas. And now you look. We had no—we had—you know, because you were such a big part of it, we had no attacks. We had no terrorism. We had no nothing. For four years, we had—and I wanted to talk about it during the four years, but that’s never smart. Right, Robert? That’s never smart to do. So I didn’t. But I talk about it a lot now. We had no attacks.

We had none of this stuff going on. We defeated ISIS, by the way. We took ISIS. We defeated them in four weeks. It was supposed to take five years. I rebuilt the military, and we had a military—and we have great generals. Not the television guys, by the way. The real generals. I’m talking about, like, Raisin Cain, General Raisin Cain. You know who that is? But we defeated ISIS quickly. It was supposed to take five years. We did it in four weeks. We have a great military, and we have a military that’s not woke. You may have a few people on the top that are woke, and we’re going to get rid of them so damn fast your head’s going to explode.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Yeah, he’s not kidding. I mean, we’ve traveled around the world just on CODELS, and every single world leader that we met with said that they needed you back because you’d be tough on China. They know that other people won’t be tough on China, but you’ll be tough on China.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, even China likes us back. You know, China wants to see a little stability, too. But I charged China hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes and tariffs, and they paid it. And, frankly, we had a good relationship with President Xi, but they paid hundreds of billions of dollars. No other president got them to pay 10 cents. Not—literally, not 10 cents, but hundreds of billions of dollars.

And you know what? More importantly, they respected your country. They don’t respect us anymore. They respected your country, and they’ll respect us again.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Amen, sir. Peace through strength.

Question from VA Advocate

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Our next question is from Sarah. Sarah is a VA advocate. Sarah, where are you at? Oh, perfect. Hi, Sarah. Go ahead.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: We’re working now. As you know, you talked about Walter Reed, sir, and I’ll just say my husband is one of the most catastrophically wounded surviving service members, and you visited with him there many times.

DONALD TRUMP: Wow.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And this past July, you saw him in Charlotte.

DONALD TRUMP: Yes, sir. Is he here now?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Not tonight, but you just saw him this summer, so he was so happy to see you this summer.

DONALD TRUMP: Good. That’s great.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. But I want to talk about all the advancements you made for community care, and you empowered veterans to choose their own providers. And, Secretary, we’ll see. And I was so proud to stand with you many times in the White House as you signed historic legislation and executive orders to take care of our military and veteran families. We’ve watched that community care access, where a veteran can choose his or her own provider, we’ve watched that be actively limited and actively rolled back. President Trump, how are you going to bring that back as a day-one priority and give veterans a choice for the best medical care back again?

DONALD TRUMP: That’s such a great question, and thank you. And what a good wife that is, and I’ll bet your husband’s great. You love your husband, right? You know, the people like you. What is your first name?

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Sarah.

DONALD TRUMP: People like Sarah are so important to our country because they take care of people that are great heroes, real heroes, and they take care. And if they didn’t take care, the hospitals would be unable to do it. They just would be their right now. I mean, with all of the migrants, the migrants have taken over our hospitals, they’ve taken over our schools. We don’t have anything. But people like Sarah, the job they do is incredible, and they do it out of pure love. They don’t do it for any other reason. They do it out of pure love. And we have to help them. We have to help them because the medical costs would be unaffordable by our nation. It would be totally unaffordable.

And it was better before, and I heard it sliding. I spoke with Robert before, who did, by the way, an incredible job. You did an incredible job. Stand up, please. And, Sarah, we had, thank you, Robert, you know, we had a 92 percent approval rating at the VA, 92 percent. Now it’s down into the 40s. We had a thing called choice, where if you had to wait too long for a doctor, you know the story, if you had to wait too long.

Guys were waiting four, five, six months. They go in with a minor problem, and they end up being terminally ill because they didn’t take care of it. It could have been taken care of with a shot, with a pill, with a minor operation. They end up dying. And we changed it, and we had choice. We also had accountability, remember? Accountability.

So on choice, they tried to get it for 52 years, accountability for 58 years. Accountability. You couldn’t fire anybody at the VA. And I said, that’s no good because you had sadists in the VA. You had bad people in the VA. We had some bad people. And we fired about 9,000 people, and we replaced them with 9,000 good, loving people that love our heroes, right, that love our patriotic heroes. And that was a big thing.

And I just said to Robert, how’s it going nowadays? How is it going? And he said, they’re getting rid of choice rapidly. Choice is when you can’t see a doctor rapidly. You go outside, you find a doctor, you get yourself fixed up, and, Sarah, we pay the bill. And it was a great thing. And he said it’s rapidly not being used, not being allowed to be used. And, you know, I think it actually didn’t cost. I think it was probably – in the end, we probably saved on it.

But money isn’t the big thing here. I think it actually – we saved money on it because people would get very, very sick. These are people that would wait four, five, six months to see a doctor. If you had to wait more than one day, you go out, you see a doctor. We had bills negotiated, fees negotiated. You know, we can’t be totally crazy with this because the doctors are pretty good business people, I will tell you, right? But we had a lot of fees negotiated. But you go out, see a doctor, get yourself fixed up, and you have no problems.

It was one of the best things we ever did. And now this group of lunatics that don’t give a damn about the military, they’re making you go through that waiting of four, five, six months again. And our people can’t – we have great doctors, but they can’t handle the loads. And we’re going to go back – we get back in. We’re going back to that, right? We’re going back to it immediately. You’re going to be in great shape, Sarah. You and your husband are going to be in great shape. And thank you very much.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Incredible. Thank you, Sarah. Mr. President, we actually have someone that – and before we ask his question, I wanted to read this to the crowd. He had actually written a letter to you after you’d been shot in Pennsylvania. “Dear President Trump, watching you during the butler rally and you getting back up, both my wife and I gave a sigh of relief as well as a few tears. I would be honored if you would accept this small token that I received as a young Marine in Vietnam. My wife and I both thought it appropriate. From us to you, your family, and the United States of America. Sincerely, Dwight.” Dwight, where you at?

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Whoa. Looks like a check. It’s a check. It’s cash. Thank you.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: For those of you who may not know, Dwight had given President Trump his Purple Heart.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s right. That’s right. I couldn’t think of anybody more deserving of a Purple Heart. Thank you very much.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You took it, you lay down there, you got back up, and the first words out of your mouth was, fight, fight, fight. You didn’t even have anything to shoot back at.

DONALD TRUMP: He doesn’t do this, but he’s better than anybody as far as I’m concerned. No, I’m hardly better than you. You’re great at this. And I wanted to thank you. I know that most of you all watched the President on that day and were very fearful that some terrible happened when he went down on the ground. But it was such a relief. Our hearts were so filled with joy because we saw what happened. And it was a minor wound, but it was close to being a terrible. We were relieved.

I said, Dwight, I said, how does it, why was there so much blood to the doctor? I said, it’s bleeding like crazy. This is a little fact. Some of you might have heard this, but you get hit in the ear, and it bleeds more than any other part of the body. So I didn’t mind being hit that way. I don’t want to be hit that way. This way. This way. If I didn’t make the turn, I would have been hit the other way. That’s no good. That would not have been too good. But it is true. And I got very lucky. And maybe it wasn’t so much luck. Maybe there’s something else. Right? Maybe there’s something else up there. But that’s great. Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You also took the time out to write me a beautiful letter and gave me a challenge coin. I never expected that from the President of the United States.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. It’s been a great honor, and I remember it very well when you gave it.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, I will.

DONALD TRUMP: Really nice. Thank you.

Question from Vietnam Veteran

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I served as a Marine in Vietnam, proudly served as a Marine in Vietnam. And I…

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. There were quite a few that did.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And when I came back from the service and stuff like that, we didn’t get quite the greatest greeting. But a lot of the veterans nowadays are homeless. There’s 7% were homeless before Biden and Harris took over. Now there’s 14%. I would like to know what you’re going to do to prevent this from getting any larger and also kicking these illegal aliens out of the freaking hotels and surviving this money before we do it to our homeless vets.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s so interesting. So one of the things that most angers me about this is the 21 million people plus. You know, they say it’s 10, it’s 12. Whether it is or not, it’s much more than that. It’s 21 million and it’s probably with the gotaways and everything a lot more than that. But one of the things that most angers me is that you have veterans on the streets in front of a hotel and you have illegal immigrants. Some of them are serious killers and drug dealers and all the people that we talked about before and terrorists. And those people being walked into a hotel and they’re staying in a hotel and they walk by veterans who are sleeping on the street.

And it could be cold, it could be hot. And it bothers me if we stop, if we close our walls, we’re going to be able to handle it. They are spending so much money on taking care of the illegal migrants now we call them. We used to call them illegal aliens. I call them whatever the hell I want to call them. So do you. But they’re not supposed to be here.

And we’re going to close the wall first day. We’re going to do a couple of things first day. We’re going to drill, baby, drill. And we’re going to close the wall. We’re going to close it up. And we will be, we’re going to have to take people out. We cannot have killers. Do we agree? Does anybody want to leave the murderers, the drug dealers in our country?

Do you know one of the little facts that’s very sad but makes sense, that all these things I predicted three, four years ago. I was saying this is going to happen. Now it’s happening. The migrant crime, it’s a massive, it’s a massive crime. But all of this that’s happened, everybody, it’s common sense that it was going to happen. And we’re going to have to get them out because we have no choice. It’s not sustainable by any country.

We have done things that are so stupid. Like, as an example, I consider it to be less important, but it’s very important still because it’s a way of life. Men playing in women’s sports, okay? Who wants that? And who wants open borders? Because open borders are so, you say, how does a thing like that happen? All of these policies we’re going to be changing. And we have now somebody running as a radical left person. You know, more left by far than Pocahontas. You know who that is. More left by far than crazy Bernie Sanders. She’s more left, and we can’t have it.

So we’re going to take care of your people and your friends. You’ve got a lot of friends out there that don’t have a place. And we’re going to do it, and we’re going to do it faster. And we’re going to put money to it. First of all, we’re standing on the greatest power. It’s called liquid gold. We have more than any other country. We don’t use it. We get oil and gas now from Venezuela. Do you believe it? We’re going to take our own, and we’re going to make a lot of money. So we’re going to make a lot of money. We’re going to take care of our veterans properly. We’re not going to have that happen anymore, okay?

Thank you. Thank you, Dwight. Thank you. Beautiful guy. Beautiful guy. I think I’m going to stand. This chair is the most uncomfortable chair I’ve ever… First of all, it spins. And the one thing I don’t want is to fall on my ass, because that’s going to be… That will be the only story. They’ll say, sir, you did great. Too bad you fell. That would be the only story. So I’m not sitting in that sucker. I think it’s a booby trap. That was put there by Kamala.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Well, that brings me to my next question. So you’re talking on immigration and border security. So we all know that that’s tied to national security. And the one thing that ticks me off is you have Kamala Harris, who runs on the fact that she’s a minority woman, but yet she’s done nothing about the 300,000 migrant children that have gone missing. Just real quick, how many parents are in this room? How many women are in this room that support Trump? As mothers, grandmothers, sisters, wives, would you ever tolerate children being trafficked? If you were in Kamala’s position, wouldn’t you have stopped that?

President Trump, you’ve done more for not just the Hispanic American community, but I think women in this country. I’m just going to toot his horn for a second. He’s put women in positions of power, but the media won’t cover that. They won’t because it doesn’t fit their narrative. They want women to hate him, but guess what? We don’t hate him. We love him, don’t we?

DONALD TRUMP: But I don’t do it. I don’t do it really for a pure, really great reason. I just do it because I want results. And I just find women to be smarter than men. Men, you don’t mind I do that every once in a while. It’s not bad. Thank you.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Well, Mr. President, to follow up on that question, as a grandfather and a father, what are you going to do to stop the trafficking of women and children in this country, and specifically with the migrant children as well?

DONALD TRUMP: So we had it down to the lowest number. You saw that on the graph. That included drugs. That included trafficking in women, mostly women and children. But you mentioned the numbers. To be exact, 325,000. Now, think of that. You could fill up the biggest stadiums many times with this. 325,000 children are missing during the Biden reign. Now, let’s say her, because they made her. And you know, it’s funny. When you say Harris, right? Nobody knows who the hell I’m talking about. You say the Harris team. Nobody knows. They have to say Kamala. So Kamala.

But Kamala and Biden, 325,000 just during this almost four-year reign. That’s missing. But many of them are dead. Many of them are in sex slavery. Many of them are slavery, period. And they’re gone. And never to be seen probably by their parents again. Never to be seen. Their parents are all over the world looking. They’re looking for them. And what we’ve done here is so horrible. 325,000. Can you imagine if that were me where they were missing? This would be the biggest story. The fake news media never talks about it.

You know what they’re not talking about? And you know, Ana, you know what they’re not talking about? They’re not talking about something else that’s very important. They are doing, this is Katrina, they are doing the worst job on a hurricane that any administration has ever done. And these people don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to talk about it. People are saying it’s the worst job. And you people know it. A lot of you people know it because you’re here. But they’ve done the worst job.

Kamala has done the worst job. And it’s really like her because she was put in charge. Now she said, I wasn’t the Border Czar. They shouldn’t call. Well, she was always the Border Czar. She never went to the border until a little while ago. And then she made a speech like, I’m going to start getting very tough. Why didn’t she do it four years ago? You know, you could always say, why didn’t? And all she had to do is leave our policies.

We had Brandon Judd. We had Tom Holman. You know Tom Holman? I see him a lot. He’s great. Like Central Casting, he was great. All these people are great. We have great people there right now. But we have some tremendous people. And you know, it’s interesting with Border Patrol and ICE. It’s really easier for them not to do their job. But they love the country. They really want to do the job. They’re so disgusted when they have to let people. And you look at some people, you know they’re criminals. And they have to let them go walking right by into our country. No, we’re going to straighten it out. It’s going to be straightened out right.

But 300, remember this number, 325,000 children are missing. That means many dead, are missing during this administration. And that’s almost unthinkable. And I can just imagine if that were us, it would be the worst, the worst story. They’d never talk about it. And the other story they don’t talk about, and I’m doing this because we’re on all that television Look at all that television. The other story they don’t talk about is what a rotten job they’re doing in North Carolina and other places with respect to the hurricane. They are doing a terrible job.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Mr. President, to follow up on that, because the media is here, I do believe that they’ve intentionally, and this is my opinion, not helped out those residents because it’s red communities that are impacted. Let’s call a spade a spade. Do your job and do better.

DONALD TRUMP: One thing, so Elon Musk, we all love Elon, you know, Elon. We have to take care of our brilliant people. We don’t have too many of them, right? There aren’t too many brilliant people. But I got a call, an emergency call two days ago to speak to Elon. And he endorsed me very strongly. He endorses me almost every day. He wants us to win so badly.

But Elon is a brilliant guy. Between the Tesla and this, that, the rockets. But he also does something called, you know, the Lynx, Star Lynx. So here’s Star Lynx. Now, I’m not too familiar with it. All I know is it’s really supposed to be great. So they call because in North Carolina and parts of North, and a little bit Georgia, but in parts of North Carolina, every line is down. There was no calls, no anything. Nobody could get through to anybody. And I got a call from a big person in North Carolina. Could you possibly call Elon Musk? Because we need help with Star Lynx. Could we get Star Lynx, you know, really?

And I did, and he was great. And, you know, he did something. He had it ordered. I got a call during my phone call. They called me up, the people from North Carolina. And they said, thank you very much for helping us with Mr. Musk. I was talking to him. He wasn’t off the phone. I said, do you have some kind of a thing that we’re talking and you’re ordering people? This was the craziest thing. He’s like, I’m talking. So, Elon, thank you very much. I appreciate it. I’ll see you. He’s going to Butler tomorrow, you know. Elon is going to Butler.

But I asked him about Star Lynx. Would you be able to get a certain section of Georgia? They’re going to fly them in with helicopters and everything else. Would you be able to? And as I’m talking to him, they’re calling me in the other line, thanking me for getting it. So I got to ask him, what the hell that was all about, right? He’s probably got some little contraption that he’s going like this as he’s talking to him. He’s incredible, that guy, I’ll tell you. But he got a tremendous for Georgia and for North Carolina, the Star Lynx. They got it.

Here’s the one thing they have to do. They have to distribute it. They have to get it out there. He got it here. But they have to get it out there. They’re not getting it out. That’s FEMA. They’ve got to get it out. So important. But he’s really done a great job, so we appreciate it.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for all you’re doing continuously. Our next question is from Pete, who is a Marine Corps veteran. And his question is going to be covering the withdrawal of Afghanistan. Pete?

Question on Afghanistan Withdrawal

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Mr. President, I am Pete from North Carolina and also a Latino for Trump.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. I knew I liked him.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: And I proudly serve the United States Marine Corps, first as enlisted and as an officer. Despite what the Vice President says, we sadly lost 13 under her watch. It sickens me, many of my fellow Marines, as well as my friend, Lieutenant Colonel Scheller. There has been zero accountability for the terrible withdrawal. What will you do to make sure we have accountability for what happened?

DONALD TRUMP: Okay, it’s great. It’s like, I know more about that subject than any subject we spoke about, because I think it was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. There was never anything. I don’t think Putin would have gone in and invaded Ukraine if that didn’t happen. He saw that. He said, hey, these people are stupid people. They’re idiots. And, you know, they only respect power and force when they saw that. By the way, if I were President, Putin would have never done it, period. And you would have never had the attack, and you wouldn’t have had inflation, and you wouldn’t have had the problem that we’re talking about.

Because, you know, I had it down to 5,000. I was getting out. They were there for 20 years. But a couple of things were done wrong. Number one, they should have kept the military base, right?

Continued Discussion on Afghanistan and Military Bases

DONALD TRUMP: So you have a military base, one of the largest bases in the world. We left it. It’s one hour – forget about Afghanistan. It’s one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons, okay? You’ve got to keep that. And they didn’t. They fled. They left.

We had, as you know, 18 months. I called up Abdul. Abdul is the head of the Taliban. That’s the ones who do the shooting, okay? Not the Afghans. It’s called the Taliban. And the press said, why would you call them? Because that’s where the shooting is.

And I called them up. We didn’t have – it was nasty – we didn’t have one soldier killed because they were killing a lot of our soldiers, the snipers, and a lot of them with the Obama-Biden administration before I got there, and a lot of them. And I called them up. I had a rough call.

And after that call, we didn’t have one soldier killed for 18 months. We didn’t have one soldier shot at for 18 months. And then we had a terrible election. We’re not going to let that happen again. We can’t ever let that happen again. We’re not going to have a – what a shame that was. But we had an election, and these guys took over, and it all started up again. And what they did with that withdrawal was so bad.

Number one, we lost 13 great soldiers. And as you know, I know the parents of a lot of them. But we lost the soldiers. We left $85 billion worth of equipment behind. We left Americans behind. Everything was wrong, and we embarrassed our country. I really mean it. I think it was the most embarrassing.

The one thing you do is you take the soldiers out last, okay? They took the soldiers out first. A five-year-old child would tell you that. The other thing you do is you fire every general that was involved in that case because those guys were incompetent. And you haven’t heard the last of that, I promise you. You have not heard the last of it. What a terrible – what a terrible thing that was. Worst, one of the most embarrassing – me, as a person that loves our country, that was the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, in my opinion.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Thank you. We’re going to take care of that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I’ve got to get back in. Mr. President is such a good title for him, isn’t it?

DONALD TRUMP: You do know she’s the congresswoman, right? And a highly respected one. She’s actually a killer with her husband and the most beautiful baby you’ve ever seen backstage. But she’s a congresswoman from Florida, and I have to say she’s a highly respected person. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.

Question on Military Pay

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Mr. President, our next question is from Terry in regards to military pay. And Terry is from the 82nd Airborne.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you for being here. My name is Terry. I have had the honor of serving with the mighty 82nd Airborne. I’m also a proud member of the Lumbee tribe, the largest tribe in North Carolina. We have one of the highest percentages of military service in the nation, a higher percentage of the overall population. My question, sir, is about military pay. You provided the largest pay raise in history to our military. Unfortunately, we have seen inflation skyrocket and more and more service members and veterans are on fixed incomes and are finding it hard to pay for basics like grocery. What will you commit to increase military pay and bring down prices?

DONALD TRUMP: Very good, Terry. I appreciate it, too. And it’s very unfair. So I gave the largest pay raise in the history of the military, and I thought that was wonderful. But then when these clowns came in, these incompetent fools came in, they allowed inflation, and because of the energy policies, I think, mostly, but also because of their spending, but they allowed massive inflation. So your pay stayed here, and you were happy, and then all of a sudden the cost of bacon doubled and the cost of everything else doubled and tripled and quadrupled. Interest rates went to 10 percent, so you could no longer. We were at 2 percent, and they went to 10 percent, so you could no longer buy a house. So many things happened.

The answer is yes. I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to take care of our law enforcement. And you know who else I’m going to take care of? Our teachers. Our teachers are very underpaid. We’re going to take care of our teachers, okay? We’re going to take care of them. And I did it. I did it. I felt strongly. But you know, the fact is that they got wiped out, what we gave you got wiped out by their inflation that they should have never had. That’s another thing. You would have never had inflation, because it was caused largely by really dumb energy. The energy went through the sky. That brought everything with it. So we’re going to take care of it. But law enforcement also, and your teachers, okay?

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Thank you, Mr. President. We now have time for one last question. So our last question.

DONALD TRUMP: Make this a good one.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: Our last one comes from Matthew. Matthew? He was an F-15 pilot.

DONALD TRUMP: I won’t hold that against you.

Final Question on Military Training

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Mr. President, first off, I want to speak on behalf of everyone here and say thank you for taking time tonight to speak with our troops.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much. We’ve got a lot of good-looking men in this audience, don’t we, huh? And a lot of good-looking women also, by the way. Thank you very much. Okay, go ahead.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I’m going to revisit something you’ve talked about already. My name is Matt Lohmeyer. I was an Air Force F-15 pilot, and I was a commander in your newly created U.S. Space Force. I am also the first veteran of the Space Force because under the Biden-Harris regime, I was fired from my command and lost my pension for criticizing DEI trainings that were rampant in the military. Those trainings are still dividing our troops, and thank you for saying you would fire those few woke generals who are a big problem. I’m going to suggest that it might in fact require ongoing oversight and a persistent, consistent, watchful eye within the Pentagon to ensure this monster never returns to the Defense Department. Will you consider establishing a special task force, office, or position to ensure that these monsters never return to the Defense Department?

DONALD TRUMP: Yes, I’ll do. And I’m pretty good at this stuff. Sometimes you get it wrong. I’m going to put you on that task force. I think it’s good. Not going to do better than him. I’ll put you on. Make sure you give the name. Beautiful, right? I have your approval.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes, sir.

DONALD TRUMP: I have your approval. We’re not going to get better than him. You’re right about it. You’re right. Thank you.

ANNA PAULINA LUNA: I’m cut. Mr. President, that wraps it up for the evening. Do you have any closing statements to everyone?

Closing Statements

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I just want to say that it was very important that I got to North Carolina. You know, Laura, my daughter-in-law, gave me the most beautiful grandchildren. But Laura’s here. I don’t know if she’s right here or where is Laura. Would you come out here? She is absolutely the greatest. Come on up here. Come on. She comes from right around here, and she loves this state. And, you know, you better be careful because I’m going to blame her if anything happens in this state. That’s true. I’m going to blame her. But we’re going to win North Carolina, are we not?

LAURA TRUMP: I am from right down the street a little ways in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I was born and raised. And I know I don’t even have to ask this audience this question. But are we ready to send Donald J. Trump back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? All right. Here’s what I need from everybody. You might know that I am right now the co-chair of the RNC. Thanks to my father-in-law calling me one evening. But here’s how we are going to make it too big to rig. Here’s how we’re going to swamp the vote. Is everyone in here registered to vote? If you are not, go right now to SwampTheVoteUSA.com and get registered. Go vote early and take every person you know to go vote early. We will win this big league, as Donald Trump says, on November 5th.

DONALD TRUMP: All right, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, guys. I love you, North Carolina. Thank you. I have to thank you because you gave me a great, really a great daughter-in-law. She’s really special. And she is along with Michael, who’s here, Michael Whatley. They’re essentially the co-chairmen of the Republican Party. This is a very upwardly mobile person. She’s doing good. But you know the truth? She’s so good, I’m very conscious of, like, nepotism. But what I did with her, I recommended her. All I did was recommend, and everybody couldn’t believe she’s even doing it. She is really a person that’s incredible. She’s respected by everybody. They love her. She comes from here. And there is no place she likes better than North Carolina. So get out there and vote in honor of this wonderful person, this wonderful person.

Where is Michael? Will you get up here, Michael, please? Don’t worry about the time. The networks will stay with us, right? Michael, would you say a few words? So Michael Whatley, I mean, I guess I like North Carolina because he was the head of the Republican Party. We won the state twice. And last time, when all of a sudden, around 3 or 2 in the morning, we started to fall off on a lot of things, it was ridiculous. But with this state, there was no fall off. He had 602 lawyers working for him. And I said, Who the hell is the guy that did such a good job in North Carolina? Because we were leading in Pennsylvania. We were leading all the way along. And these people will do it. They have no shame. And he did the job.

And I said, I want to get him. And he’s chairman of essentially the Republican Party. And I just want to say you’re doing a great job. But I don’t want to say it too early. Let’s wait till November 6th. I want to wait till the morning after, right? Then I feel confident that we’ll say it. But so Michael is from North Carolina. He was the head of your party. And he did a great job. And he went to the top. And please say a few words, Michael.

MICHAEL WHATLEY: So to win North Carolina, we are going to get out to vote. We are going to protect the ballot. We are going to expand our majority in the House. We are going to flip the Senate. And we are going to send Donald J. Trump back to the White House as the 47th president of the United States.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, Michael. Thank you, sir. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you, everybody from Fort Bragg. Thank you.

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