TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Addresses a Reception for Business Leaders in Davos, 1.21.26
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President Trump: Well, thank you very much. And he's a hell of a guy, but we have an audience. I recognize so many. I know so many. We have the king of soccer, the king of sports over here. Johnny. [Laughter] When you have Johnny -- and I heard you -- I just got a report on the sales of tickets. It's -- there's never been anything like it. So that's good, you know, break every record.
So thank you for choosing us. We appreciate that. He's another spectacular person. And so many people in the audience. And you know, I have this beautiful speech. [Laughter] Page after page and I just said I just made a speech and they were all here. They heard it one way or the other and I said the last thing we want to do is waste our time and hear it again. [Laughter] But I do want to say the people in this room are amazing.
Most of you were in the other room also. And the United States is doing really well. Doing like nobody thought was actually possible, certainly not this soon. It's one year. It's exactly a year, if you think about it. Time flies. It's 25 percent. It's a long time, but it went very, very fast. We've had tremendous luck.
I think it's been reported by even people that aren't lovers of Donald Trump that it's been maybe the best first year for any president, I think, in terms of what we've accomplished. It might very well be, but we've accomplished a lot including ending eight wars. I have one to go. I thought that was going to be one of the easiest ones and it's turning out to be one of the tougher ones.
But you heard me say before, 25, 30,000 people are dying a month. It's ridiculous. And I think we're getting close. Jared's here and Steve Witkoff is here. A lot of people that are working on that are here, and they've done a good job. I think it could have gone into a world war if we weren't here. That was -- it was out of control.
But I think we're going to get it resolved and I'm doing it to save 30,000 people a month. If you can imagine your kid -- I mean, take your -- your son leaves home. Waves. You're proud of him, you're so beautiful and then two weeks later you hear he had his head blown off fighting Ukraine or fighting Russia.
It's both of them. The total are averaging 30,000. Actually 30,000 young people. Generally soldiers. A little bit in towns, but for the most part, it's soldiers. Every single month, they're dying. So I think we're going to do well there. But we have Scott Bessent, who everyone knows, and Howard Lutnick and these guys are doing a fantastic job with what we're doing.
They were both -- they were both recommended by many of the people in this room. I said, what do you think of, Scott? Oh, he's fantastic. What do you think of, Howard? Very different times. I would say these are two exact opposites. [Laughter] And I like that. I like that. They are the exact opposite. You know, I never thought of it that way.
I'm just saying that. I'm looking at you two. You are in every way -- but they're tremendously talented people and very successful people. And I like bringing successful people in because there's a reason for success. It's one of the reasons that we've had such success. You know, we -- we took over a country with a border that was a disaster where millions of people were coming in, millions of people were coming in every single week.
I mean, literally a week we'd have millions of people and a lot of -- and they weren't vetted. Totally open border. You'd have people come in, you could look at them. I don't want to say what -- how do I define that because they always discriminate. So I don't discriminate, but you can look at some people and say they're criminals.
And we took in tremendous numbers of murderers, drug dealers, mental institution, insane asylum people, people that were in insane asylum, institutions for the mentally ill and dangerous, very dangerous. They dumped them into our country like we were -- like we were dirt and we're doing a great job of getting them out.
But it's a -- you know, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort and it's -- it's a nasty business, too. But if they were bad someplace else, they're going to be bad here. They killed people in their country, whether it was Venezuela or the Congo or any of the countries where they came. In the Congo, they emptied out their jails into our country.
In Venezuela, they did the same thing and in many other countries, they did the same thing. So when you read all these stories about ICE, you'll understand they're -- they're doing a hell of a job because we can't have those people in our country and we're getting them out. But we're doing numbers in terms of people investing in the United States like we've never had before.
I guess it's because of November 5th, the election, but the election gave us a view and it's a view on tariffs to protect our country because our country is being plucked like you pluck a chicken. Our country was being plucked and it wasn't good. And you know, you can only take so much of it and we've changed it around very quickly.
And we've had -- we'll have, Scott, I'd say, $600 billion worth of tariff money coming in. And I think we're going to have maybe more than that by -- yeah, by next year, it'll be much more than that. That's not including the countries that -- the countries and companies -- we have countries coming over and building.
But we have companies, great companies coming in. Apple is spending $650 billion. I mean, so many are -- one just announced $10 billion. Toyota. Met Mr. Toyota in Japan said "What's your name?" "Toyota." I said, "Oh, do you own the car company?" "Yes, 92 percent." I said, "You didn't have to be that specific." [Laughter] But I said, "You're rich," "yes, yes.
I rich." But he's -- he just announced he's going to do $10 billion worth of plants. I mean, it's amazing what's going on. Look, it's -- it's amazing. We've never had anything like it or close. Nobody else has either. So I think in terms of your investments, you're in great shape. I don't even ask anybody how you're doing now.
It's like everybody is making so much money. Oh, look, who I see, Tim. Hi, Tim Cook. He's been good for 650. [Laughter] Think of it. $650 Billion dollars, OK. Can you imagine? That's what he's going to be investing. More than that. I think it's going to end up being more. He's great. You know, he's great.
He's done some job. You have done really some job and we have so many people in this room that have done a job. I don't know how many have done better than Tim, but some are right up there with you. We better -- you better get your ass moving, I'll tell you. [Laughter] But fantastic people. Fantastic people.
But I go around and I say -- meet the biggest people, biggest business people. I say, "Congratulations." They say, "On what?" I said, "You've doubled your net worth since I've been president, right?" He said, "Yeah, even more than that." They would say even more. We're doing even better than that. And you know, we've given you a platform where you can really put your genius to work.
We have a lot of brilliant genius people in this room and you can put that genius to work. And it's an honor to do it. In a way, I'm jealous. In a way, I'm upset. A couple of people in the room, I can't stand them and they become very rich. There's nothing I can do about it. [Laughter] I would screw them if I could, but I can't do it. Right, Dina?
I can't do it. [Laughter] I would -- if I had a chance, if I could just take them and say you can't do what Apple's doing, but you're not allowed to do that. Newt Gingrich, right? We can't do it. [Laughter] But I would love to do it, really. You know, it's one of those things, but everybody's making a lot of money and everybody's investing money in the United States and our jobs are through the roof.
And I made a statement the other day, thank goodness for robots because we're never going to have enough people to run all these places that are being built. And I think robots are actually going to be a very big business. I think it's going to be surprisingly big, but I think we're going to need it. We're going to need it. So, we have a country that's becoming very safe.
We had the best crime numbers that we've had in -- ever in recorded history. Perhaps they were better 100 years ago. I'm not sure, but the recorded history is 67 years and in 67 years, they're the best numbers. And that's despite having a lot of people in the country that shouldn't be here. We're getting out.
But we're -- you know, we've got tough law enforcement, smart law enforcement, and patriotic law enforcement. You know, they've been amazing. One example is Washington, DC. You couldn't -- you couldn't walk down the street in Washington, DC. You'd get mugged. You'd get killed. They were losing 100 people -- think of it, 100 people a year and -- dead.
You call up the parents. They come in from Iowa. They come in from Indiana to see the Washington Monument and they end up being killed. It's not happening anymore. And I said in the other room, people are going to dinner, they're walking -- they're meeting their wives in the middle of the -- the street and they're walking across the street to have dinner.
New restaurants are being built at records that nobody's ever seen. They were closing -- we lost half of the restaurants in the last four years during the Biden administration. Now they're -- they're all opening again, I even went to have dinner just to show, I guess, to make a point, I went to a restaurant in Washington, I walk right down the middle of the street.
I wouldn't say that Secret Service was thrilled. [Laughter] But if I did it a year before, believe me, it wouldn't work. Here's my other friend Hussein. How are you? OK? Are you good? Boy, you got a lot of good people here. This is a very good place. But so it's amazing what's happened there. Memphis is amazing.
When you go to Louisiana, what we've done there has been incredible. Always much more helpful if we could have a little participation. In the case of Louisiana, we have Jeff Landry, the governor, Republican governor. We have a couple of Democrat governors. We have a couple of -- actually we have a couple of Democrat mayors who very quietly are begging us for help and we're making them all look very good.
But I would -- I would do it. If I were a Democrat, if I were a mayor or a governor, I'd be saying, "Mr. Trump, could you quietly come over here? And would you do this, President, for me? Send about a thousand troops in here." And we do it fast and we get rid of the criminals and it's amazing how effective.
You know, I didn't campaign on this. I campaigned on law and order, but I didn't know it would be this type of law and order. But the cities -- some of these cities, we've lost these cities and we're bringing them back and we're bringing them back quickly. Washington took us literally six weeks to make it safe and eight weeks to make it really safe and now it's really safe.
And I don't know, you know, some people disagree, but I like seeing those big strong soldiers. You know we won -- we won in the Supreme Court a very important case; merit. Our country was built on merit and then all of a sudden we got away from that and people with A averages and high college boards and everything were not able to get into colleges and people that had C averages and low college boards were getting in. And you know, it's not fair, but our country is based on merit.
The whole concept and the whole system only works on merit. It doesn't work on anything else. And our military works now on merit. And when you see the soldiers and the street in Washington or in Memphis or in New Orleans or in some of these places, including Chicago, you know, we have crime down in Chicago despite the fact that we have an idiot governor and a mayor that, I mean, very low IQ person.
He's a low IQ person and it's amazing. You have these wonderful beautiful black women with Make America Great Again, MAGA caps on. They're all over Chicago. They want MAGA to come in. And we went in in a pretty quiet way as opposed to the way we did it in Minnesota. You know, in Minnesota we took it -- we took out over 10,000 hard line criminals.
People with big convictions that came in here that shouldn't be here, brought them back to countries. In some cases, we bring them to jails because if you bring them back to the country, they'll find a way, despite the strong borders, they'll find a way in because a lot of them are really evil, but they're not stupid.
So we're doing a real job. The country's the hottest country anywhere in the world. The best place to invest. The great Big, Beautiful Bill is incredible. You get that one year deduction. You build something and you take the whole thing down and I always say that's what made my first term so successful because, I mean, people were buying things that -- I have a friend bought an airplane.
He never used it, he just bought it. He said I get a -- I deducted it. He's on the plane. I think he's got -- Steve, you could buy it. He's got about four hours on the plane. It's been three years. I think he's got -- it would be a great plane to buy, actually, because he'll never use it. But they -- it really spurred people to do things and do projects that they really would have delayed or hold -- you know, held.
And the beautiful thing about the great Big Beautiful Bill, the one that we just did, is over there, you had a two year window to do it. Now, we have a 10 year window, which I hate to tell you because people will take their time. So in one way I didn't want that. I call that not good, but it is good, ultimately.
Think of it. It gives me a chance to use it if and when I ever get out of this position. [Laughter] There's a big question. It gives me a chance to use it. Otherwise, I'd be precluded. That would be terrible, right? But it's 10 years. But it's -- you're able to -- you build something, you build a factory, you write the whole thing off.
One year. Nobody's ever thought that was possible. It was always 38. Sometimes 40. Sometimes 41 years. You know, you get a little here a little there, nothing. You write it all up. So it's been -- it's been really amazing and you are the people that made it happen. Really, largely -- largely, it's you. It's you and a group of others.
Not a lot more, I mean, the people here I guess because of Larry, the people that came to this event, it's really incredible. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. We had somebody as you know, that ran it for many, many years and I'm not sure what happened there, but I figured well that's all right.
They had a hell of a run in Davos. Then I heard Larry was taking it over more or less. And he called me. He said, "Would you do me a favor? Would you be there?" And we've had some great business dealings together, and he's a great -- he's one of -- he's one of you. He's one of the greats and it was an honor.
We had a -- we had a good speech. We got great reviews. I can't believe it. We got good reviews on that speech. Usually they say he's a horrible dictator type person. I'm a dictator. [Laughter] But sometimes you need a dictator. But they didn't say that in this case. And no, it's common sense, it's all based on common sense.
You know, it's not conservative or liberal or anything else. It's mostly I'd say 95 percent common sense, and that's what we have. So, I just want to thank everybody for being here. It's such an honor and if we can ever help, you're going to let me know and I have a pretty direct line. Marco Rubio is here, too.
He's done a fantastic job as Secretary of state. He'll go down as maybe the best Secretary of state if he keeps going like he's going. That's a big question. I don't know that he will. [Laughter] But for the first year, he's right -- he's headed to the top.
And I just want to thank everybody very much for being here. Thank you very much. Take care of yourselves. Thank you.