FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump’s Roundtable in Drexel Hill, PA

And he serves us and works for us. A bottom-up government rather than a top-down government. And we’re long overdue for it. That is for sure.

Well, this afternoon, what a privilege to be here with seven distinguished people from Southeast Pennsylvania, and also Congressman Lee Zeldin, the distinguished former congressman from New York, who is one of the smartest and most articulate people that we have in our political system today. But we’re going to get started with this opportunity to just discuss some issues with some of these folks who live right here in your area. And I want to start with Donald Clark, who is right down here to my left. I don’t think that’s his political position to my left, although I don’t think you could possibly be to my right, Donald. Not possible. He’s a retired police lieutenant. He served 32 years with Upper Darby Township. He is going to be one of our panelists.

And all of these folks are going to be talking. But before we get to the panelists, I know the person you came to hear was neither Donald Clark or me. It is our next president, ladies and gentlemen, President Donald J. Trump.

Trump’s Opening Remarks

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody. Great to be here. Yeah, this was supposed to be just a little group. We’re talking about senior issues. It’s a lot of people in here. Thank you very much. It’s an honor.

And I want to tell you, likewise, this man is a fantastic man. He has been from the day I met him, from the day I met him. And he’s smart and he can be tough. Oh, he can be tough. He can be. You know, you don’t know that. Rightly, we know he can be a brutal guy, but always on the side of right. It’s just a great guy. And he’s been my friend. I think we have never had a little. We haven’t. We’ve never even had a spat, have we? With all the years, right? Not very, very good man. And I’m not that stupid. I’m not going to fight with you. I love having him around.

I want to also thank, as you know, we have Congressman Lee Zeldin, who’s fantastic, almost almost did a big upset in New York. He ran against everybody’s advice and he pulled it. I mean, what you did was incredible. You showed it could be done and maybe it can be done. We’re going to find out because we had something the other night. It was incredible at Madison Square Garden. We could have filled it up many times.

We could have filled that up, Mike, many times. We had it going down all the way down to people all the way back, if you’re familiar with it, all the way down to the Hudson River. And nobody’s seen anything like it. Even the owners, good, good people, very good people. And they said, we’ve never seen anything like this. And they’ve had some pretty big championships there over the years, Madison Square Garden. And Wesley Hunt, a person with a tremendous leadership. Thank you, Wesley.

Trump on the State of the Country

And this is an election that’s really a choice between whether or not we’ll have four more years of total failure. This has been the worst four years I’ve ever seen. Gross incompetence, but total failure, disaster under Kamala Harris. Nobody knows. You know, if you I say all the time, if you say Harris, nobody knows who the heck we’re talking about, right? Harris. And this is what we have or whether we’ll begin the four greatest years in the history of our country.

And we’re starting. We’re starting a little bit from behind because we’ve been set back. We’ve been set back badly in every single way with inflation. I mean, the costs are way too high and inflation still higher than it’s supposed to be with all that they’ve done to try and get it down. But they use the number, Mike, 20 percent, but it’s probably 40 or 50 percent if you really look. Look, interest rates with us were 2 percent and now they’re 10 percent and you can’t get the money. They don’t include interest rates. That’s a big deal if you’re buying a house or anything else. And so many other things they don’t include, just like they don’t include in their crime statistics to places that have the worst crime.

We had that during the debate where David Muir of ABC said, “no, no crimes.” I said crime is through the roof. He said, “no, sir, it’s down. It’s down. Crime is down.” The next day they release it. I said it’s up 45 percent and it’s up.

Trump on Immigration and the Border

We have tremendous migrant crime. If you look at just that, it’s been a disaster, a very dangerous crime. It’s terrible what’s happened at our border, what they’ve done to our country at the border. You know, Mike, I think it’s interesting to say because every poll has inflation and the economy is the number one thing. And third is the border. I don’t think it’s that. I think inflation is horrible. It’s destroying people. It’s a country buster. But I don’t think it’s inflation. I think it’s I don’t think it’s the economy. I think the number one thing is the border that millions of people are being sent into our country.

It was announced last week. You saw that by the Border Patrol, which, by the way, endorsed me. They endorsed me so nicely. They’ve endorsed me every year, even though they’re not supposed to. You know, I think they’re not supposed to. And they said, we can’t we have to do what we have to do. But we had the best border ever in the history of our country. And now we have the worst border in the history of the world. This is the worst border. There’s never been a border like this. They have open border. Anybody can come in.

When I heard they were going to do that, you know, we built 571 miles of wall. We had another 200 miles, far more than I said I was going to build. We had another 200 miles. It was going to be could have been put up in three weeks. It was all there laying there waiting to be lifted, could have been put up in three to four weeks. And they said, “we don’t want to do it.” And I said, “wow, that’s strange.” If they don’t want to do it, that means they must really want open borders.

But I can’t imagine wanting open borders. Who would want open borders? But they want open borders. Who would want men playing in women’s sports? They want it. Who would want transgender operations for almost everybody in the world? They want that. This is a sick group of people, I’m telling you. And there’s a great evilness. You know, we want to come together as a country, but there’s a lot of there’s a lot of evil there. There’s a lot of you’d say, why do they want it?

And so there’s basically three reasons. Number one is they’re stupid, which they’re not, because I can tell you in Lancaster County, which we know very well, they found two thousand six hundred fake voter registrations. You heard that it’s a big story. Well, where is it now? I think we have a very good D.A. and he’s probably going to do his thing and I hope he will. But it’s it’s all written by the same hand. OK, maybe that’s just coincidence. Maybe everybody has exactly the same handwriting. So we just found that that was one.

And then we have in York. I remember York easy to remember because I used to lift weights for about a week. I realized I don’t want to. I realized I don’t like it like that. And York was the barbells and all that stuff. I think that’s moved to China, along with a lot of other things. Well, maybe we’ll bring it back. We’re going to tear up the hell out of them. We’ll bring it back. I’d love to.

No, it’s true. I actually I like to build it. So I’m building a gym. I’m building this gorgeous gym in my house, in the basement of my parents’ house, and I’m putting it up. And I was having it was so I couldn’t sleep at night. I was so excited. I was going. It was really beautiful. I’m really good at that. And then the barbells came and I said, “oh, this was no fun.” I like building the place after it was built. I sort of they sat there for a long time.

But I remember they came from York, Pennsylvania, and it was big. It was big stuff. But the other reason, I mean, if you think the other reason would be that they really they really would like to sign these people up to vote. Right. And that’s crazy.

And the third reason would be they hate our country, because who would want to have millions of people coming into our country? Many of them are murderers. Many of them are terrorists. Many of them are gang members from the street, MS-13 and and almost worse. You know, the Venezuelan gangs are almost worse. And these countries are taking their prisons and they’re taking their prison population, putting them in buses and bringing them to our border.

Venezuela’s got half their prison population has been brought to the United States of America and dumped like where you like where a garbage can, like where a garbage can for their people. And these are rough prisoners. These are really rough people. These are not people that you want to say, “oh, gee, let’s have dinner tomorrow night.” These people are tough and mean.

And they’re coming into our country by the hundreds of thousands. And we have over 21 million people in three and a half years if they ever got possession. And, you know, we have a real problem. We have to get we have to take these criminals out of this country. We have to deport these criminals. And we’re going to do it. And I know this is a senior, very much a senior oriented little meeting. But Mike and I were talking, I think this is a biggest senior issue. There’s no this is the biggest issue we have. They’re destroying our country. They’re ruining our country. You’re not going to be able to walk outside anymore.

And they’re depositing them. So they were saying, “come on, Kamala.” Kamala was saying yesterday, “no, no, I really think walls are fine.” Well, for her whole life, walls are forget it. And the only two things you remember that work without obsolescence are walls and wheels. Right. And walls work. And they worked with us and they worked brilliantly with us. And she was against the wall. She voted against it. She sued us to try and have it taken down as we were building it. It was very hard to get approval.

And what I did is I just said, “you know, this is crazy” because I rebuilt the entire military, the entire U.S. military. They shouldn’t have given a lot of it to Afghanistan. They gave a big chunk to Afghanistan in the most embarrassing moment. But we rebuilt the entire military. We’ll do it a little bit again because they’ve given a lot of a lot of it away. We defeated ISIS. We did all of these things. We got you the largest tax cut in the history of our country, the larger even than Ronald Reagan’s tax cut, the largest regulation cuts with the best economy in the history of our country. We did so many. We did so many things.

And what we want to do is we want to make it safe for everybody, for seniors. This is a big senior issue, but for seniors and all these are people that these are high end criminals. You have six hundred and twenty nine thousand all released by everyone. These numbers were given to us by Border Patrol. They never did it before either. They never talked about specifically. They say a lot of people coming in, but they were given to us by Border Patrol. Hundreds of thousands of high end criminals are released. And she’s the border czar. She was put there by sleepy Joe Biden. And then he went back to sleep. He said, “oh, no, it’s in good shape.”

DONALD TRUMP: And, you know, when they endorsed me, the question was asked of the top person who made a beautiful speech. Paul, I would call them all the time. I’d call them. “How are we doing on the border?” Once a week, twice a week? I just like, you know, I was the president and they’re destroying our country. And these guys are great. They want to do their job, but they’re sort of not let. But I let them do their job. That’s why we got the lowest number.

But she said that I said, “did she call you often?” “No.” “Oh, in three and a half years. How many times did she call” thinking, you know, be dozens? She never called. I said, “when she’s the border czar, she’s the one that’s in charge of the border. She was put there by Biden and she never got no.” So she never called one time.

And when they endorsed me, they said “he’s the greatest president on the border, but he’s the greatest president overall that we’ve ever had.” I said, “Mike, I said, does that include” I said they said “he’s the greatest president we’ve ever had.” And then one of them said, “sir, he’s the greatest president of my lifetime.” I said, “I like the first one more than we’ve ever said.” So greatest president that we’ve ever had. I said, “does that include Abe Lincoln?” “Yes, sir.” “Does that include George Washington?” “Yes.” I said, “that’s good.”

But but they also said, I mean, more importantly, for purposes of this, they said the best border president. And without question that I was that I was. So we’ve got to we’re going to talk about some other things that, frankly, in many cases are a lot less interesting because this is a big thing and it’s very interesting.

Trump Discusses Victims of Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants

We we had some people over at Mar-a-Lago today and we had a press conference and we had a mother who lost her beautiful 12 year old daughter to a illegal migrant that came and should have never been in the country. And we have them by the thousands. Lake and Riley, so many so many people, you know, Lake and Riley from Georgia. I could name 30 of them right now. And I’ve gotten to know in many cases, the parents, they’re just devastated. I don’t know if they ever recover. I’m not sure that you ever recover from that. Like what they’re going through and meet these people and they’re just devastated. And it’s all because they have an open border policy. People come into our country from places unknown and they have they just walk in. They just walk right through everybody.

And nobody wants this. Nobody can want this. How do you win an election with this? You only can win elections if you cheat with this. Who wants that? Who wants all the stuff that they do? All the transgender stuff, all of the the woke military. We don’t have a woke military. We have a great military. They knocked out ISIS in a matter of weeks when I was there. They said it was going to take five, five years. It took about four weeks. And and they’ll never be woke, by the way. These are people I got to know very well. These are not woke people.

You have guys like Milley on the top who was should have been fired immediately. No, I mean, he should have he should have been fired. He had whoever was involved with Afghanistan in that horrible period of time, that horrible day. But it was a little more than a day where we lost 13 great soldiers. We had they never talk about the ones that lost the arms, the legs, the face was obliterated. They never talk about them. They act like, “oh, this is fine.” It’s not fine. We had many, many people lost their legs and many people died and many people on the other side that I count them to. I mean, people on the other side, hundreds of people died that day and it should have never taken place. We gave up Bagram. When you leave, you take the soldiers out last. You don’t take this. So they took the soldiers out first. Our soldiers came out first and it was totally just a horrible situation.

Trump on Putin and the Russia-Ukraine Conflict

And I think Mike, Putin saw that and he said, “well, these people, they’re a paper tiger. Let’s go into Ukraine.” I don’t — I know Putin would never have done it if I was president. Not even a chance. I used to know it’s not a chance. I used to talk to him about “don’t do it. Vladimir, don’t do it.” It was the apple of his eyes. “They don’t do it. I mean, don’t do it. This is going to be terrible. Vladimir, if you do that, not going to be good.”

You know, don’t forget, I ended their pipeline Nord Stream 2. Nobody ever heard of Nord Stream 2 until I came along. They were building the biggest pipeline in the world to Germany and all over Europe. And I said, “no, you’re not going to do it. I mean, we’re defending you from Russia and you’re paying Russia billions of dollars a month for oil and gas. We’re not going to do that. I mean, it’s so ridiculous under NATO.” And we stopped it.

And then Biden comes in. He approved it, but he stopped the Keystone pipeline, which we needed. That’s our pipeline. He stopped that, but he approved. And then they say Trump was not tough on Russia. I was so tough on Russia. It was the biggest project they’ve ever had. I stopped it.

And so we have a country that’s been run by fools. It’s been run by stupid people, low IQ individuals. They really are. They’re low IQ. He was low IQ. Biden was a low IQ guy 35 years ago. He was a low IQ guy when he went to school. When he went to college, he was always a low IQ guy. But he put somebody in who’s actually worse than him. And if we put her in office, this country is finished. I really believe it. This country is finished.

The Importance of Trump Winning the Election

One of the reasons the stock market’s going up, Scott Besant, who’s one of the biggest, most respected people on Wall Street, he’s a very brilliant guy. Of course, if he said differently, I probably wouldn’t be saying this. But he said the only reason the stock market’s going up is because everybody on Wall Street thinks that Trump is going to win the election.

So we have to keep you safe. In addition, from a medical standpoint, Mike, we have to keep them safe physically from these people that are coming in. And we’re going to do the I mean, I don’t like doing this, but we’re going to do the largest deportation in the history of our country to get all of these criminals out. And it’s not going to be easy.

And, you know, I say that. And you know who has the record? Dwight Eisenhower. And I call him a moderate. But he hated to see people coming in from other countries and violating our borders. He was right. But he has he was a very big deporter. He deported people when they walked into our country, take them out. And he has the record. And I don’t it’s not a record that I want either. We all have a heart, but we have no choice.

Plans to Finish the Border Wall

Now you have also and you also have others. And we’ll also finish that. No, we’ll we’re going to put up sections of the wall that would have been put up in three in a matter of weeks. It could have. You know, they did with this wall. Much of it. They sold for five cents on the dollar for scrap metal. And we’re going to have to buy it again. But we’re not going to pay five cents. We’re going to pay a lot. It was a very expensive.

This was a wall designed specifically for. In fact, I often talk about it. I never liked the panel on top. You know what? It was called an anti-climb panel. It looked beautiful when you had just. But when you put the panel on top, it didn’t look as good. And I said, “why do you do that?” They said, “it’s anti-climb.” I said, “I don’t believe it is.” And we actually had mountain climbers and drug climbers. We’ve got a couple of them. It’s unbelievable. They can carry a hundred pound sack on their back. They can go up that thing. You and I could never do that. I think you and I can. No, they go up it like it’s like it’s nothing. And actually, the anti-climb panel worked. So I said, “good.”

So it was built specifically out of steel, concrete and rebar and hardened steel, very hardened to concrete. So we built so many miles of it and it worked. And we had we had the best. And by the way, Mexico did pay. They paid a big price. They weren’t able to pay for the wall, but they gave us tens of thousands of soldiers. I said to the president, “you’re letting these people into our country. You have to give us soldiers to protect us while we’re building the wall.” “I can’t do that. I can’t do that.”

I said, “if you can’t do that, then I’m going to put tariffs on every product that you make and we’re going to charge you 25 percent.” And he said to me, like I said, “I’d love to do that.” That’s what happened. Millions and millions, maybe billions, but millions and millions of dollars they spent on. They gave us and they said free. I don’t want to pay for your soldiers. I want to free because they’re coming through your country into our country.

Trump’s Accomplishments

And we did a lot of things. We did great things. And very important was the rebuilding of our military. But in part of the rebuilding, I said, “look, this is an invasion into our country” because you couldn’t deal with Congress. You had guys like Mitch McConnell and others that were just absolutely terrible. I tell you, he can be Republican. He can be. I’m a I’m a person that says it like it is. And guys that guys that were guys that were really not guys that were really not on our side very much.

And I will tell you, I said, “this is an invasion of our country. I’m going to take it out of the military” because the military had a tremendous I was able to get tremendous amounts of money to rebuild our military. We we have jets that were 50 years old. We had Mike would often hear stories where you had the bombers, where the grandfather flew the plane, the son flew the plane, and then the grandchild was flying the plane. It was the same plane. It was like so old. And we rebuilt our almost our entire military. We’re going to be upgrading that.

Right to Try Legislation

So we did a lot of things and we did a lot of things medically. One thing I’d like to talk about is right to try. So you know what that is. I hope nobody in the room needs it. But we have the best labs, doctors, technicians. But our laboratories are the best for new medicines and everything. They’re really amazing. And but you can’t get it approved. I mean, and rightfully, you can’t get it by the FDA. They can’t stand me, by the way. I used to push them. I got it down from 12 years to five years, but they need certain times. I mean, they do need I wanted it. I want everything to be rushed, but you can’t necessarily do that.

But we have a situation where we have things that are really good. We’re pretty sure they work. They may not, but we’re pretty sure they work. And I said, “why isn’t it if a person’s terminally ill, why can’t they use this stuff that may or may not work?” “Sir, it’s been going on 48 years. They couldn’t get it worked out.” The country didn’t want it because our country would be sued. The insurance companies definitely didn’t want it. The labs didn’t want it because they didn’t want a terminally ill person to be using something that’s going to be like show badly where they have to put it down. They have to do their their lists and they don’t they don’t want to be. They call it a list. They don’t want to be on the list. Somebody is terminally ill and dies and using the medicine. I understand that.

So I got everybody in a room, every one of the doctors, the labs, the insurance companies and even the country representatives, the Justice Department. They all came in because they couldn’t get it done. I said, “here’s what we do. Somebody can use it.” And, you know, these people were going all over the world. They were going to Asia. They were going to Europe. If they had money and they would get scammed many times, but they go all over the world. We couldn’t do it here. And most of them had no money and they’d go home and they’d die.

DONALD TRUMP: I’d say, “look, if somebody’s terminally ill, I want to give them a shot at life.” It’s a great feeling, at least. At least they can say, “well, you know, I’ve got something and maybe it’ll work and maybe it won’t.” But what you know, the expression, what the hell do we have to lose? Somebody is terminally ill. Why? They were saying “we’ll be sued.” I said, “you’re not going to be sued.”

So we worked out and it didn’t take that long after 48 years within a period of about a month. And then I got it approved by Congress. Believe it or not, we could get things done. But think of this. We got it approved and everybody agreed. Anybody that signed that document, you wouldn’t sue anybody. If something happened to your family, the family would sign. The person would sign. No liability for anybody. And you have the right to try. We have saved thousands and thousands of people.

And it’s very interesting. Some of the biggest some of the biggest proponents of it now are the people that fought it the hardest to get it, like the laboratories, the medical companies, because it actually showed that it worked. People are terminally ill. And in many cases, they came back. They had absolutely no problems. They have no disease. They have no anything. It’s called right to try. We did that.

Nobody thought we could get it approved. We got it approved. They signed a waiver of liability and which in business you sort of do. But I got everybody into a room. I said, “we got to do this.” And we’ve used a person who works for me was saved because of that. A very great person that works for me was saved because of right to try. There was no medicine. There was nothing was going to work. But there was a space age something, you know, medicine that they were going to use and that they did use.

And it saved anyway, saved millions of lives, all these different things that they’re developing. And in some cases, it doesn’t work. But in many cases, it does. I would say in many more cases, it does. So, Mike, we save thousands and thousands of lives. And again, I hope nobody in this room needs it. But it’s so awfully good. It’s awfully good. At least it gives you a hell of a shot. And it turned out to be really.

So I’d like to ask Mike to now take over and go around the room. I’d love to hear from Ed and Ted and everybody. And we’ll see how we’re doing. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s a great honor. Thank you. Thank you.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Well, Mr. President, you certainly just gave us a good reason to be happy about next Tuesday. You reminded us why you’ve been fighting for the people. And every one of these folks who are here at the table are here because they live in this area. They all come from different perspectives, but they have a unique understanding of what’s needed in this country and why we need you to be back in the White House.

Discussion with Donald Clark, Retired Police Lieutenant

And I’m going to start with Donald Clark. He’s a retired police lieutenant. He served 32 years and he did a variety of roles for patrol officer, field training officer, canine officer, was on the SWAT team. I think it’s interesting, Donald, you were in the police business 32 years. You’ve been married 36. You might tell us which was the hardest of those two careers, but I want you to speak specifically.

DONALD TRUMP: Don’t do it. You’ll get yourself in trouble. He wanted to be cute.

DONALD CLARK: I love my wife very much.

MIKE HUCKABEE: You’ll be careful on this. But speak to the issue of crime. Would you go back into police work today knowing the kind of challenges police officers face that maybe weren’t faced in? And then as a retiree, how difficult it is to live on retirement income given the economy that we currently have?

DONALD CLARK: I’d be totally honest. I would not want to go back and work on the street again. I spoke with a lot of my colleagues and the biggest thing that is really challenging now is it’s burnout, the inability of retention and recruitment of the officers that we need due to the lack of respect and hatred towards the law enforcement prevalent in our big cities today. Coupled with that is the lack of support from administration, budget cuts, and the lenient and soft on crime policies of the district attorney’s in those cities.

In turn, a trickle-down effect into the surrounding communities comes down from this. And just because Philadelphia has it now, all of a sudden, Upper Darby has the same issues. And then with this, it’s forcing law enforcement to do more with less. And one thing I always told my officers when I was in roll call was, “everybody showed up to work tonight. Everybody goes home tonight.” What we need is to be back to law and order. Now that I’m retired, and I retired in 2020, and I do have a good pension, but it is a fixed income. My wife, who is a registered nurse, Lori, she retired in 2022.

But with the unstable economy, the high cost of living, high inflation, we were not comfortable with what we had put away for our savings for retirement. So Lori took another job, and actually she just retired last week, but we were not comfortable with what we had in our savings, and we weren’t sure how far it was going to go. And as less things change with this economy right now, I don’t know if I’m going to have enough when I do, if I’m going to live that long. It’s terrible.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Berger.

Discussion with Dr. Maribel Valdez, Occupational Therapist

Dr. Maribel Valdez was born in Puerto Rico and came to the United States. Came to the United States when she was 17 and got her doctorate in occupational therapy. She spent nearly 40 years as an occupational therapist, working primarily with the elderly in nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, and home health. In private practice, she was a Medicare and Medicaid provider for occupational therapy services. So Maribel, you have had a lot of experience working with Medicare, both as a provider and now as a customer. Would you mind speaking to your experience working with the 1-800-MEDICARE-HOTLINE?

MARIBEL VALDEZ: Mr. President, I just wanted to tell you that I moved here in 1981 from Puerto Rico, and I want you to know that Puerto Rico stands behind you, and Puerto Rico loves you.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Well, we love it. I know it very well, and we helped you through a lot of bad storms, I’ll tell you. We had some really bad ones. You remember, you were there when I brought the hospital ship against everyone’s advice, and we got it in there and took care of a lot of people. But I think no President’s done more for Puerto Rico than I have. So thank you. That’s really nice of you to say. Appreciate it. Thank you, Maribel.

MARIBEL VALDEZ: My experience with the 1-800-MEDICARE-HOTLINE has actually been very positive. As a customer, I was personally surprised. The wait time is really no longer than about 10 minutes. The automated system tells you how long you’re going to wait, and if you do not want to wait, they will call you back. You could leave your message, and they will call you back, and they call you back promptly.

It also tells you when the height of calls is at, so you want to call on a different day when they don’t have that many calls you could call on that day. The information has always been very helpful, has been my experience. They share a lot of resources with me. They take their time. They even go through the website and say, “let’s go to Medicare.gov, and let me show you which page you can find this information.” If I’m not by my computer, they will email me the publication or the policy for me to look at later. I have had a really good experience.

Right now, especially, it’s open enrollment from October 15th to December 31st. I always call it an open enrollment because there’s always changes coming up, and I have never had any difficulty.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Maribel, what would you think if I was to tell you that the Biden-Harris administration was seeking to end, as we know it, this exceptional customer service that you love?

MARIBEL VALDEZ: I wouldn’t know what to do. I mean, what will happen to an open enrollment if I have heard that there’s an upcoming change to my Medicare benefits and that they’re going to change, and I have nowhere to call, or nobody replies to my phone call, or I have to maybe only go to the internet and rely on information that is not accurate or reliable?

DONALD TRUMP: Can I ask a question? Sure. I’m watching how sharp and smart and beautiful you are, and we’re not allowed to say that, you know, politically. That’s the end of your career, but she is beautiful. But I’m just watching, and I see it says retired. Why are you retired? You should not be retired. You’ve got a lot of strength.

MARIBEL VALDEZ: Unfortunately, I was at a grocery store shopping, and I passed out. I had an aneurysm in my brain that I didn’t know I had, and it caused me to have a stroke, and I had to retire. So I’m currently on Medicare as a consumer because I’m too disabled to be able to do my job, but I still work part-time 15 to 20 hours a week.

DONALD TRUMP: You look fantastic. Thank you. Great job. Thank you.

MARIBEL VALDEZ: You’re welcome.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Mr. President, as you know, the Biden-Harris administration’s forced unionization of this critical hotline is going to hurt seniors to reward their big union bosses. If it’s okay, Mr. President, we wanted to ask you, when you’re back in the White House, will you be able to talk about your plans to put seniors ahead of these special interests to make sure that we protect 1-800-Medicare?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they are special interests. There’s no question about it, but they’re no special interests with me. I don’t care. I don’t need it. I don’t need the money. I don’t need anything. I want to do what’s right, but Maribel’s going to be my consultant. She’s only the special interest. She’s going to be my consultant. All right? You let me know. You know more than those guys that get paid a lot of money doing what you do, and you do it so well. It’s really great. Thank you very much. Yeah, the answer is absolutely we’ll do what’s right.

Thank you, Maribel.

Discussion with Military Veteran Couple Joe and Beth Rooney

MIKE HUCKABEE: I love the idea that you’re going to use her as a consultant. I think that’s smart, and it’s also one of the reasons that people recognize that you listen to people who are actually in the middle of something.

We have a couple with us here today, Joe Rooney and his wife, Beth, both of whom have been military aviators. Joe, a Marine Corps pilot career. The Marines are here. We’re in good shape. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. He’s been flown for Delta Airlines for many years in the private sector. His wife, Beth, pretty remarkable life, 24 years as a naval aviator, the very first U.S. Navy female jet test pilot ever, retired as a commander. Very impressive, both of them. They’ve served our country honorably and very significantly, and I think I’ll just ask them as a couple to express in terms of speaking to the president, tell them which one of you is the better pilot. That’s what we really want to know.

BETH ROONEY: I’ll answer that. My husband has retired, and I’m still flying.

MIKE HUCKABEE: There you go. What do you hope from the president in terms of policies that will affect people who are retired, whether they’re military or private sector? But you’ve both done your service for this country.

JOE ROONEY: I’ll start out, if that’s okay. And if you don’t mind, I’ll make a quick digression. Mr. President, have you ever seen the movie True Grit?

DONALD TRUMP: Yes. John Wayne.

JOE ROONEY: Yes. So it was my honor to live under you and help get you elected four, eight years ago, and then I watched those four years. And I have seen what’s happened in intervening four years to everything that was done with you leading up to the calamity of Butler, PA. And I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but you have true grit. Okay? It is our honor to do all we can. I live in Montgomery County in Abington Township, and the GOP in Montgomery County and Abington Township is working every day from now through November 5th to get you elected. And we’re doing it.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much.

JOE ROONEY: I know I digress, but I honestly mean it. And my wife will add some more. But you asked about how we can help seniors. Mr. President, for four years, you showed us what a strong economy looks like. A strong economy helps seniors. A strong economy helps people on fixed income. A strong economy helps people who are below the average amount of money or maybe struggling, and we have them in our own neighborhood.

What a strong economy we need is low energy prices, and I know you’re all for low energy. We need an all-of-the-above solution. We need nuclear, we need natural gas, we need coal, we need electrical coming from wind, and we need it from water and everywhere else that we can get it. But it’s all of the above. That will lower our prices for food prices, gasoline prices, the prices that seniors and fixed income people pay in the wintertime, and basically it’s going to lower inflation, which is the tax equivalent of all. We’ve had that before, and we’ll have that with you.

From what I understand of the Harris plan, it consists of two things. One is divide people, and the second one is raise taxes. That doesn’t solve anything, and any economist will tell you. You tax things, you get less of it. You lower the taxes on things, you get more of it.

And the other thing I’d like to say, and folks, I hope you understand this, Tim Walz is the governor of Minnesota. Minnesota is one of only 10 states that tax social security income at the state level. So she chose him, so for all of us in Pennsylvania, we don’t have that right now. What can we expect? That is anti-fixed income, that is anti-senior, and I’m afraid that that’s what we may look forward to.

And the last thing I’ll ask you, just because I don’t know the answer to this, what does 10 million plus illegal aliens coming into our country look forward to as far as the social security trust fund is concerned, as far as Medicare is concerned? How can we look at our own kids and go forward and say, we have any idea about it, because nobody does. This is a catastrophe. So those are my thoughts.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they’re good thoughts. And the only mistake that this great husband of yours made was it’s not 10 million, it’s probably 21 million, you know, which is, and that doesn’t include the gotaways. You know, the gotaway, that’s the people that just pour in and, you know, they’re just, they’re all pouring in. And we’re not going to stand for it, number one. And number two, number two, we can’t.

And, you know, the reason they come is because we say “we’ll give you,” I mean, they actually tell them, “we’re going to give you health care, we’re going to give you this, we’re going to give you social security, we’re going to give you education.” We have a community in Springfield, Ohio, where 32,000 illegal migrants were put into a 50,000-person community. And you can’t get into the hospitals, you can’t get into the schools, you can’t do anything. It’s a disaster.

And it’s all going to change. It’s not sustainable. I mean, it’s not. You had a nice community, Springfield. And now it’s, you heard about this, Mike, 32,000 illegal migrants. Now, they sort of made it legal by playing cutesy with the law, but they’re illegal migrants. And it’s just not sustainable. This is happening all over the country.

In terms of pricing, what you’re really alluding to is drill, baby, drill. Because when we bring the energy costs down, everything’s coming down. And we have more energy under our feet than any other country, including Saudi Arabia and Russia. And we were, as you know, energy independent four years ago, and now it’s a mess. We’re buying it from — we’re buying tar, big batches of tar from Venezuela, and we’re refining it. It’s a mess. And we have the best energy. We have the best oil. We have the most oil. And we don’t want to — we don’t want to use it. We want to go and give money. You know, Venezuela is the enemy, and we now are making them a very rich enemy. It’s not even believable what they’re doing. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

But we’re going to drill, baby, drill. We’re going to use our stuff. We don’t need anybody else’s. And we’re going to open up ANWR in Alaska, which is as big as Saudi Arabia, they say. The biggest in the world. I got it open. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. For 60 years, they couldn’t do it. I got it done. And Biden comes in and he decides to not let it happen. I’ll get that thing open so fast we’ll supply to everybody, and we’ll start paying down our debt and all of those good things. But your costs are going to come down. You bring energy. Energy is really more than anything else. It was their spending, but it was also energy. That’s really what brought up the costs, because energy, you need it for everything.

If you make donuts, you need it for the stove, you need it for the trucks, for delivery, you need it. And we’re going to have so much energy. And one of the pledges that I make is that we are going to have energy costs, which are very high right now. And that includes gasoline. We’re going to get rid of the mandate, by the way, the electric mandate for your cars. That’s going to come off. And that’s great. You know, if somebody wants an electric car, I mean, Elon Musk gave me the biggest endorsement you’ve ever seen, and his cars are great. But not everybody needs to have an electric car or wants to have an electric car. You’re going to be able to get hybrids. You get regular gasoline-powered cars. But we’re going to bring your energy costs down by 50 percent within one year. By the way, it’s going to be easy. We can do it. Nobody else can because we have so much. It’s right under us.

Even in New York State, they don’t realize that New York State is sitting on a tremendous amount. And if they used it, Lee would – I told Lee – Lee would have opened that up in two seconds. They don’t want to drill for the environment. And the people in Pennsylvania, they’re sitting there. They have a Cadillac, and the people across the line – the line is right here – and they don’t have a car. And it’s just – absolutely. We have so much energy in this country. We’re going to bring down the prices. That’ll bring down everything else, and you’ll be in great shape. But that’s fantastic.

Trump Discusses the Challenges of Landing on an Aircraft Carrier

I’m fascinated by you. So they say that, as a pilot, the hardest thing you can do is land on an aircraft carrier. Have I heard – is that a correct statement? Do you land on an aircraft carrier? You’ve got to be kidding me. She might be better than you, Joe. All the airplanes have hooks on the back, so you’ve got to use them to go land on a carrier. That’s fantastic. It’s a great story. Thank you very much, Joe. Appreciate it.

Discussion with Ed Grove, Telecom Union Member

MIKE HUCKABEE: All right. Ed Grove is a telecom union member and a proud American patriot. I understand he’s also a talented musician and singer, a jack of all trades, and the proud father of four grown children. Ed, you’re a longtime telecom union member, and we see a lot of unions acting far more political than they ever have in the past. And it’s interesting that it seems like a lot of union leaders are not aligned with the rank and file. In your personal opinion, do you see this where union leaders, with regards to political matters, are in conflict with their leadership?

ED GROVE: First of all, thank you for having me. My personal opinion, of course, I can’t speak for the unions, but there is a silent majority. Political stuff we really don’t care about. Being representative is what matters most to us. Personally, I just don’t believe union bosses speak for all union membership. I support Donald Trump because he supports keeping manufacturing jobs in-house. It was proven in your first term.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you for that. Thank you.

ED GROVE: You also take care of the American worker instead of going overseas or out of country to do so. I very much appreciate that.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much, Ed. Very nice. I appreciate it.

Lee is alluding to the fact that the Teamsters took a vote, and 61 percent — this is nationwide — 61, 62 percent of them support Trump. And they have a very good head. They have a man named Sean O’Brien, who’s a great guy. He’s the head of it. And — but he released those numbers, which is, you know, something I appreciate very much. And the firefighters, the same thing. They support me, the rank-and-file, which we — so we have a lot of the union — a lot of the unions beyond that.

I think the autoworkers in Detroit, they’re — we’re going to bring back a lot of plants into Michigan. We’re going to bring them back very fast. And you probably read, Mike, where I killed — they were building a giant plant in Mexico, sponsored and owned by China. And I let them know. And that would have destroyed Michigan. That would have — this plant would have made as many cars as all of Michigan. This was going to be the largest plant in the world, and I let them know, “You build that plant, and we’re going to put the biggest tariffs on those cars you’ve ever seen.” And, you know, that was about two weeks ago, they’ve just announced they’re not going to build the plant. That’s a great thing. Isn’t that good?

Now, if they want to build it in the U.S., that’s okay, Ed. If they want to build it, Mike, in the U.S., that’s okay. But they’re not going to build it in another country and send the cars in here and destroy all of — that’s what’s happening — that’s what’s been happening for 50, 60 years. So they just announced — China just announced they’re not going to build the plant. I’m very happy about that. Thank you very much, China.

ED GROVE: Absolutely. Thank you, sir.

DONALD TRUMP: Great. Thank you.

Discussion with Dr. Kathleen McGuire, Gerontologist and Caregiver

MIKE HUCKABEE: Mr. President, I want to introduce you to Dr. Kathleen McGuire. She is just to my right here. She has a very esteemed academic career in gerontology, but I think she brings something else to the table — not just the academic study of gerontology, but, more importantly, she cared for her own mother for two and a half years. And, Dr. McGuire, if you could express, when you went from the academic side, studying and teaching others about gerontology and then taking care of your mother, what were the big challenges and what kind of assistance did you find from the government when you were trying to be the caregiver to your own mom?

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: Thank you. I appreciate being invited here. The challenges were not being able to navigate the system, not knowing how to navigate the system. Yes, I taught the class, but it’s different when it’s your own family member. You can tell everybody else “how to do this. Make sure you give them resources here.” But if you don’t know it yourself, that’s even more difficult. When you live that experience, living with my mom — and I’ll tell you, it was very challenging.

And I’ll tell you a little bit about her history. What happened was that she was living alone in the Pocono Mountains on a mountain, 100 miles away from family. She’s a widow. I was trying to keep up her health. And according to the Department of Human Services, she was not able to get any assistance because she was not under the federal poverty level. Even though she was on a fixed income, getting Social Security, and she had an Advantage Plan, which was also more money, she had one big asset. And that asset was her home. So she was asset-rich and cash-poor. All right? So it was difficult. She wanted to live there, and she wanted to die there. But it was being — it was more difficult.

She had to make difficult decisions. Do I pay my taxes? Which she had to pay her taxes. She had to pay association fees. She had to pay utility bills with, what, $1,400 a month, maybe? She had to pay for food, maybe. And she had to come up with a decision. What do I do? Do I maintain my home, or do I eat? She chose to maintain her home, rather than her well-being. She decided — well, as her health deteriorated, we brought her back to my house in Bucks County, Upper Southampton, rather than Lower Southampton. Not far from Mickey D’s, where you were.

DONALD TRUMP: Yes. That’s right.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: That was — that whole day was very well appreciated. And so she was not really willing — if you get to a certain age, my mom was 83 years old, they don’t want to leave their home. She wanted to stay in her home. She wanted to die in her home. But she was not safe anymore to be alone. And so we had to quickly find out and navigate the Medicare system. And so what we found for my mother, and maybe for other seniors, because remember, she was asset-rich and cash-poor, that Medicare does not pay for adult care services, adult day care services, hospice. She was in the hospital in April. If I went to switch her from this room to another room, $14,000 a month. Cash. Cash. Okay? All right? She came to us, and she didn’t have any — there was no respite care. That is not covered.

Home care assistance is not covered, and you have to have basically four hours of service from these, you know, agencies. So what happened was that I’m fortunate enough and very proud of my immediate family. We became the caretakers. We became the elder care supporters. My family supported her. It was challenging sometimes. It was a team effort. She was able to get to her doctor’s visits, go to the dentist. Any money that she didn’t have according to pay, our family supported her. She had three meals a day. She had significantly lost a lot of weight. She was down to 100 pounds at 5’6″. Well, she’ll probably be less than that as you shrink, but she gained 20 pounds with us. Gained 20 pounds. Had to buy new clothing.

Yep. Thanks, Mom. That’s for my son’s cooking, but she wasn’t allowed to leave the table until she finished everything. So that was — you know, what goes around comes around, right? All her activities of daily living were supported by us. We took her everywhere she needed to go. She was our best — my best bud. She went with me door-knocking. She — yes, she did.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s very nice. I knew I liked her. Eighty-three minutes out, door-knocking.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: Sometimes I’d leave her in the car, and I forgot that she was there. I was too busy talking. But she was with me, wasn’t she? So — but the most important thing, because, okay, Medicare — we had a difficult time. She had her family, and that is who her support was. And unfortunately, it took two-and-a-half years for being assigned a case manager to help us. Did that work? After six weeks of being into a facility, she had passed away. And at lower than — you know, probably about 100 pounds. But you know what? It’s difficult to navigate this system, and it’s difficult when you need to help and assistance because there’s no one there to help you. And I’m very proud of my family for that. So asset-rich and cash-poor.

DONALD TRUMP: What did they do with the house? What happened with the house?

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: Oh, my gosh. Well, I was showing so many pictures earlier. She’s having a real estate business, so it’s always interesting. Yeah, yeah. My mom, she lives in the Perkins. And what happened was, I was there one day, visiting my son in New York. And I came home, I noticed mold. There was black mold all over. And she was hiding it. So we had to take the whole roof off. You could look into the house. She dropped everything off during the winter. And so her utility bills were $1,000 a month. So what did I say? She ended up with $1,400 maybe to $1,200, $1,000 for utilities. What did she have left to pay for the rest of her bills? So as the work progressed… Now, insurance does not cover a new roof.

DONALD TRUMP: Right, right.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: So as work progressed, the workers walked off the job, off the construction job, went out of business with her money, and did not finish the job. So the house now is sitting there. Not sitting there, we’re going through her things, which is the worst, horrible thing to have to go through. Going through her things, and we’re going to have to put it up for sale.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s a good area, good area.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: Oh, and the Pope and his Albrightsville, right by Hickory, if anybody knows Hickory, right in State Park, Big Boulder, Lake Harmony.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Mr. President, you announced a tax break for Americans like Dr. McGuire, that people have to serve as caregivers. So, I mean, it’s like, you’ve already thought about how that could help her.

DONALD TRUMP: It was suggested to me by a very, actually a very smart reporter. If you can believe this, right? There’s some smart ones out there. Good one, actually, a good person. And suggested a tax deduction for caregivers, because they, you know, you devote the time as a family to it. And if you had to hire people, I mean, you wouldn’t have enough people. You wouldn’t be able to do it. Families take care of their children. You know, when we have service members coming back from wars, sometimes the wives, and sometimes the wives don’t want to do it. They won’t.

Bad things happen. You understand. They come back and they’re injured, badly injured. The mother takes care of the son and has to take care of the son for a long period of time. It’s very sad when you see it happening. They go out to war and they come back and they have problems, difficulties. And so I want to make it so that we’re getting tax credits for those people that take care of people. Because, honestly, if these people, a lot of them are called angel moms, and they’re called a lot of different things, but they’re beautiful names, actually beautiful names. They’re beautiful people. And not everybody’s like that, to be honest with you. But when we have people like that, I think they should be given that tax credit that we talked about. I mentioned it the other night at Madison Square Garden.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: That’s a stroke. You’re right. Because if some families are — the caretakers have to leave their jobs as well.

DONALD TRUMP: Right.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: And I’m on a Social Security. I’m over —

DONALD TRUMP: Will you be able to finish the house yourself? Will you be able to?

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: My husband, who’s behind me, he is — and my children will probably finish the work. And we have — we’re trying to —

DONALD TRUMP: Well, if you need a little extra, am I allowed to do this? I will. Because I’m not in office now, so I could do it. But you’ll come to me a little bit, okay? You’ll call up my — my children. So if you need — if you need a little extra, we’ll help you out. Okay? All right?

You get — you live. And I’ll have him be the guy to figure it out. All right? All right? Thank you. That’s a beautiful story. Thank you very much. Thank you. Lovely. You’re a lovely woman. Beautiful. Beautiful. I’m glad the palace didn’t give me any story like that, right? Thank you. Well, good luck with it. Beautiful story.

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: Yes. Thank you. I appreciate it.

DONALD TRUMP: No, no, no. That sounds like a great mother, actually, right?

DR. KATHLEEN MCGUIRE: We were very close. My mother was very young when she had my — I have a — she hates it when I say it, and I hope she sees it. My older sister. She’s only about 15 months older. And so, yes, she was my best — my best friend, basically.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s right. Beautiful story. Thank you. Thank you, Kathleen. Thank you.

Discussion with Ted Murphy, Immigration Attorney and Veteran

MIKE HUCKABEE: Mr. President, as I introduce our last panelist here, it’s a little closer to our heart with Wesley, a fellow Army veteran. As I introduce — as I introduce a fellow 82nd Airborne Division veteran, Ted Murphy. Thank you. There are a lot of military branches up here well represented, but at this event that has a lot of seniors, we have one person in particular who is a member of our nation’s greatest generation. He served in the Pacific from 1944 to 1946. Ed Buckman is here. Ed.

DONALD TRUMP: He’s great. Thank you, Ed. I saw Ed backstage, by the way. He looks like he’s, like, 60. He’s great. He’s got the best skin. I said, “What do you do with your skin? It’s so beautiful.” Look at you. He’s got good hair. He’s got the whole package. Am I allowed to say your age? Am I allowed to say that? Oh, no. You’d be shocked. It’s great to be with you. You are a character, too. He’s got his beautiful wife. But you are really something. Thank you very much. Thank you.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Mr. President, it was an honor to be with you in Normandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. I remember sitting in a room full of organizers filled with World War II veterans. They were all hollering after you, trying to get your attention. The amount of love with all these veterans there at that moment. I’ve had the opportunity. I signed up when the military went, when President Clinton was in office, serving with different commanders in chief. There has never been a commander in chief who has had the back of our military service members like President Trump.

And our veterans have never had a commander in chief who’s had our back like President Trump. And we need to get you back next Tuesday.

Ted Murphy comes from a family of military service. Ted has served his country in uniform in the U.S. Army, in government at the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security, as well as inside of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia and with ICE National Security Law Division in D.C. He is one of the top immigration attorneys in the country. So, Ted, as a top immigration expert and as a veteran, can you speak to the impact of illegal immigration on the safety of our citizens?

TED MURPHY: Yes. Thank you for having us here today to listen to these important issues. As mentioned, I come from a family of veterans. I’m one of five – well, one of seven siblings, five of us were active duty, three are retired military. My two sons are medically retired from the military. And even my mother, at the age of 55, she joined the Medical Reserve Services with the Army and served until the age of 69, ended up as a field commander in Bosnia. Included in that group are four paratroopers and two combat medics. And those are just the guys. The tough ones are my mother and my sister.

So, veterans – it’s taking five months now to process their medical claims. It’s taking a long time. Claims that shouldn’t take that long. Veterans desperately need care when they apply for those services. But at the same time, VA staff are being used to process medical claims for those thousands of individuals who come across the border illegally who are detained by immigration along the southern border, taking time that should be devoted to processing veterans’ medical claims.

In the past two years, nearly one and a half million illegal immigrants who were paroled into the United States are eligible immediately for taxpayer-funded housing through HUD. Other public benefits to include SSI, Medicaid, CHIP, the Affordable Care Act subsidies, while at the same time, low-income and homeless veterans seeking benefits through the VA and HUD are often denied by those programs or moved out of those facilities to make room for immigrants.

DONALD TRUMP: Not even – that’s what they’re doing. It’s not even possible to believe, actually.

TED MURPHY: With Homeland Security transferring millions of the other illegal immigrants throughout the United States with no federal funding available, the cost for their housing, medical care, and education falls on states and local governments as unfunded mandates, depleting resources and funding available not only for our veterans and our seniors, but for all of our citizens.

As a former federal immigration prosecutor and private attorney, I know that many of those entering illegally include persons involved in drug cartels, gangs, sex trafficking, human trafficking, and much more. Homeland Security personnel have admitted that very few are properly vetted, yet they’ve been allowed to come into the United States and are continuing their trades here. That puts all of us at risk.

So, Mr. President, after you win your re-election, how fast can we address these issues?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, we’ll do it immediately. So we – I think I mentioned before that we have the highest rating of anybody in – maybe ever at the VA. We did a lot of things. We also did something where we were allowed to get rid of civil servants that were really bad people that were – and I love civil servants, but this was a group of civil servants, a certain percentage. It turned out to be 9,000 people. We got rid of them. These were people that treated the vets unbelievably. I mean, these are sick people. And we fired them and we replaced them with people that can take care of our people that love our country and love our vets. It was a great thing. We’ll get it done fast.

You mentioned the word, parole. That’s a word they use now. They bring people in and they just say, “yeah, you’re paroled.” And now they’re all of a sudden like it’s supposed to be some form of citizenship. That’s what they’re doing in Springfield, Ohio – 32,000 people. They’re under parole and people that are in this country. And you take a look at – they’re putting a lot of the people that come in illegally. And some of these people are really – these are – I’m trying to be nice. These are really rough people.

Our soldiers are laying out on the streets in New York and other cities, and these people are walking through the main entrance of a hotel that’s right there. They’re laying here and the people are walking right by them and they’re going into hotel rooms – in some case, luxury hotel rooms. The government is paying a fortune to these hotel companies that have them. And the hotel company no longer – they don’t even want to deal with regular people anymore. They get a bigger check than they’ve ever made in their life. They’re making more money than they ever made in their lives running it as a migrant hotel.

But you have veterans that are sleeping on the streets outside. It’s freezing or it’s hot. And it’s all going to be changed, Ted. But, I mean, you brought it up beautifully, but I’m glad you mentioned the word parole, because that’s a bad word right now. That’s a bad word to a lot of people right now. They’re using that word to get people illegally into this country, as far as I’m concerned. Thank you very much. We’ll take care of it. We’re going to work on it. Thank you.

MIKE HUCKABEE: Thanks. Mr. President, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being willing to put yourself out there for us. You could have had such an easier life if you weren’t doing this for us. You sacrificed so much. God bless you. Any final thoughts, Mr. President?

Trump’s Closing Remarks

DONALD TRUMP: Well, thank you. Now, first of all, you are a fantastic young guy, and he’s a great lawyer, great everything, and a very successful congressman, and he’s a friend of ours. And he’s really been great, Mike. I know how you feel about him, but I appreciate it. And, Wesley, likewise, you didn’t get a chance to speak as much. I was going to say, let’s let him speak for about a half an hour, because he’s a very impressive guy, but he doesn’t need to do that. Just to say that we’re going to take care of things. We’re going to do things.

And, you know, you are right. I didn’t need this. I could have been on the most beautiful beaches in the world. I could have had a wonderful life like some other people. I would have had that. But, you know, if I had it to do again — a lot of people say, “if you had it to do again” — and Joe was nice enough to mention, it was — I mean, they’ve been brutal, these people. They are horrible people. A lot of them are just absolutely horrible people that do not love our country.

But if I had it to do again, would I rather be on the beach with the water, that beautiful salt water hitting me in the face, my white skin getting all nice and tanned, or would I rather be here with you in Pennsylvania, making sure that people aren’t going to cheat or to vote? Right? And I will — I will thank you and Pennsylvania every single day. I will. I will do it. No. And the reason is, Joe, and the reason is me and Wesley and Mike. And it’s so great that we’re all together because we’ve all been friends for a long time. But the reason is that we’re going to make America great again.

We’re going to do something that nobody — you know, a lot of people were worried about our country. This country is in very bad shape. We’re a failing nation. We really are. We’re a nation in decline, as some people would say. But we are a nation in decline, and we’re not going to be a nation in decline for long. We’re going to turn it around very fast, and we’re going to make America great again.

And I want to just thank everybody. And it’s a real honor. The spirit — you see the spirit, Mike? It’s incredible. The spirit that we have right here. It’s all over. It’s all over the country. And, you know, there’s a word called hope. People really want — we did great the first time. We did much better the second time we were in, in 2016. Then we were — and, as you know, we did — Joe, we did much better. We got millions more votes.

But there’s never been anything like this — this spirit. And part of it is that — let’s assume I haven’t changed that much. I had these similar ideas and everything. But they see how badly our country is run. It’s being destroyed by incompetent fools. And we’re not going to let it happen. We’re going to turn it around.

We got to win. We got to win. We have six days. Six days to go, Joe. We got to win. So — and thank you very much. A great honor to be with you. Thank you. Thank you very much, everybody.

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