TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Attends a Southern Boulevard Naming Ceremony at Mar-a-Lago, 1.16.26
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President Trump: That is something that's very special, that was a beautiful introduction. And it was from the heart; I could see that. Sometimes I get introduced not from the heart. We know that. We know about that, Danny. But this was amazing to see so many dignitaries, political leaders from Florida and beyond. It's really nice.
It looks very nice that you're carrying it. That's beautiful. Thank you. Wow, that's the real deal. Thank you very much, we appreciate it. All top people in this room, really amazing people. And we have a lot of media back there and we appreciate that you're here. We very much appreciate that you're here.
See, I'm being nice today to the media. I think I have -- but a very special thanks to State Representative Meg Weinberger, the job she's doing is amazing. And she's going to do very well politically. I used to tell her, I don't know, that's a tough race. That's a tough race but go do it. And she did it and she won.
And then a lot of people didn't think she was going to be able to win, beating people that were doing it for a long time. You weren't doing it for a long time. But you've become a veteran very fast and you've done very well. Congratulations. We appreciate it. They call her MAGA Meg. And now and now when you have that you can never lose a race.
You can't lose. People just didn't understand that you can't lose a race, right, with that. Thank you, darling. Where's your husband, by the way? Where is he? Eric?
Meg Weinberger: My arm candy.
Trump: Wow, great job. Thank you very much for that reference. That was a very important reference. Thank you, Eric, very much. And speaking of Eric, I have Eric Trump right here -- Who's a great guy. He's a great young guy and he's done a fantastic job. When I'm away, I don't know, I've looked at -- I see things happening all over the world and him -- the whole family has been so terrific.
But Eric has been right there at the front, and I appreciate it very much. He's a great boy. We love that boy. We love that boy. Thank you, honey, appreciate it. And I'm thrilled to be back in my home state of Florida and this truly incredible privilege. I moved down here, I love New York, but it was just -- just worked that way.
And you know, we won Florida so much and by so big and it's been -- and it continues, just continues. We even have Club 47 here. Look at these Representatives. It used to be Club 45, then they said I think we're going to change it to Club 47 and we're having a good time. Let me tell you, we're doing really -- we're doing a job for our country.
We're saving our country because if they would have gotten in this country would have been a place known as Venezuela on steroids. It would have been in big trouble. So, we did job and so many of the people, Gina, so many of the people in the room, they helped so much, it's incredible. So, I'm tremendously honored that the main boulevard from Palm Beach International Airport to the beautiful Mar-a-Lago is being renamed in my honor.
That's a very important stretch. A lot of people, a lot of important people -- and I don't care if they're important or not, but important and not important people travel on that road. But I love the people of Florida. I love the entire Palm Beach area. I've been here for a long time, and I want to thank you all for being here.
I'll remember this amazing gesture for the rest of my life and in particular, Meg and Eric and all of the people that worked so hard for this. I also want to thank a man who's amazing. He's an administrator. He's one of the most talented people in the country at what he does. Joe Abruzzo. He's here someplace.
Joe? What a talented guy. There's nobody better in the whole country at what he does and what he does is not easy. But everybody respects him and everybody listens to him and he's got great values. But he's got a great sense of design and everything else that you need. You need a lot of capability in that job, and you have every bit of it. Thank you, Joe, very much.
I appreciate it. Thank you. And who is that young lady?
Unidentified: [Inaudible]
Trump: Thank you very much. Fantastic. It's good to have you both. Let me also express my gratitude to all of the members of the Florida House, many of whom I've gotten to know over the years, and the Senate -- incredible people. I mean, literally incredible people -- who united behind the legislation granting me this great honor including the Speaker of the House, Danny Perez, who I think has a hell of a future.
I don't know what you're doing, Danny, but what a future. Wow. Because he has an unlimited political future. But whatever you choose, I'm behind you 100 percent. You know that, Danny. Thank you for a great job, great job. And state Senate President Ben Albritton. I want to thank you, Ben. Good job you're doing.
Everybody's respected in this group. You know, they get along down in Florida, although I can't say that's necessarily always the case. I guess you probably have a couple of people that you're maybe not as friendly with, but you are great people. Ben, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Along with state Representatives Danny Nix, Chuck Brannan, Chip LaMarca, Mike Redondo, Juan Carlos Perez and state Senator Debbie Mayfield.
Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we're also pleased to be joined by many distinguished guests including Congressman -- a friend of mine for a long time, Brian Mast. Thank you, Brian. What a great guy. People love that guy. And another friend of mine and somebody -- I mean you talk about attorney generals; there's no better attorney general than this one.
He better win this race because I think he's going to -- we're four, I'm 407 and 0, and I gave him my strongest endorsement and -- James Uthmeier. So, where is James? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. You're doing good. How are the polls doing? Pretty good? It's a blowout, but let's not say that let's say you're winning by one or losing by one, doesn't make any difference, get them out to vote, right?
It was an honor to endorse you and congratulations. Doing a great job. And I want to thank Ron too because Ron has been really behind this with Meg and everybody else. And we did have his backing 100 percent. I appreciate it. And it's a great honor. Thank you very much. See you. Florida Agricultural Commissioner, Wilton Simpson, who I've been with for a long time, right?
I've been with him for a long time and I appreciate it. Thanks, Will, I appreciate it very much. Executive Director of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Dave Kerner, who had so much to do with this. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. Mayor of Palm Beach, Danielle Moore. She's a terrific woman.
Where is Danielle? Thank you, Danielle. We're working on a little project, nice, beautiful, clean, crisp water, right? And she's leading it and she's incredible just like her mother was incredible and is -- oh, where's mom? I want to see mom -- oh, you look good, you look very good. I haven't seen -- a former mayor of Palm Beach and highly respected.
Who's respected more, you or your mother? I don't know, it's pretty close, right, pretty close. She says mom is respected more. That's good. A daughter better say that, right? Thank you, darling. Appreciate it. That's great. Thank you, Danielle. I'm glad you told me she was here. Former Mayor Lesly Smith is here who's great and a very -- formally a very good golfer. I think she's still a good golfer. Lesly, where's Lesly? Lesly? Thank you very much, Lesly.
Lesly Smith: [Inaudible]
Trump: Thank you. Thank you, darling. I appreciate it. We've known each other for a long time. Incredible people. And the members of the Palm Beach Town Council are here. Thank you all very much. You do a great job. You love the town. I love the town too. I had a lot of choice on towns, and I said this is the town I want to be in. So, we all love it and it's an honor to have saved Mar-a-Lago.
You know, most of these great houses went down, they went down rapidly and they were subdivided into 25 homes, etc., etc. And I'll tell you what, this was an honor. But they like me because I saved the house. Somebody said they like me because you're a great president, but they like you more because I saved Mar-a-Lago. Saving Mar-a-Lago was to them more important.
Unidentified: Saved America.
Trump: Thank you very much. I like you, thank you very much. Mayor of Palm Beach County, who I endorsed by the way, Sarah Baxter. Sarah. Hi, Sarah. Congratulations, Sarah. So, we're at 407 and 0; we have to make sure that you're going to -- but I think it's going to work out very well. Congratulations. You had so many people that said you got to be with her, I said I am, I am. So, good luck with the election.
I know it's going to work out very well. Thank you. Good luck. The members of the county commission and the West Palm Beach City Commission, who are unbelievable people, they love the area. They just -- they work hard and they're good. Where are you? Can you raise your hands a little bit? Great, great, great, great, great.
Thank you. Thank you. Great job you're doing. You know, we're all working together, this place. We have -- we're working on a little water project and if we can get the water perfect, that'll be great. Mayor, you're -- you're heading it up from this part of the world, and I know they're working in West Palm Beach, in the area.
And we'll see whether it's desalinization or filtering. There's a couple of different ways we can do it. But whatever we can do, I think it would be great. We're working along with West Palm Beach also. So thank you and thank you, Mayor. Dan Newlin is here and Gina Loudon is here and Linda Stotch is here and Larry and Sue Snowden is -- are here.
Thank you, Larry and Sue. Thank you. And basically, just sort of like everybody's here, and it's really something special. We're pleased to be in the same legislation, as it renames another section of Southern Boulevard, in a very nice section indeed, I know it well, in honor of three brave motorcycle deputies from the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office who were killed last year in a horrific accident, horrible.
It was a horrible situation, but I saw a lot of -- I saw so much love. I saw everybody in this room was there, plus, plus, plus, at our -- we had a ceremony in honor of these three incredible people. Corporal Luis Paez Jr., who is just -- Luis Paez was somebody who was loved and respected by so many people.
They all said, thank you for being there in honor of her and Deputy Sheriff Ralph Butch Waller Jr. and Deputy Sheriff Ignacio Dan Diaz. The three of them, what happened to them, this was unbelievable. The ceremony was one of the most beautiful and saddest ceremonies that I've ever attended, but I was deeply honored to be there.
On May 1st, I bestowed the honor of first ever -- these were medals that were worked on by my son, Eric, very hard. We had a great jeweler. Can I say the name of the jeweler? Tiffany. And they -- they came up with a really incredible medal. And it's called the Medal of Sacrifice, and they did a beautiful job.
And it was really led by Eric Trump. So I want to thank you, Eric, too. Thank you. And unfortunately, when events -- certain events happen like that, and they do happen, they do happen, they shouldn't happen but they do happen, we're going to do the medal ceremony and it's going to be something special. So today, we pay tribute to them and to those -- to the loved ones.
Some of their family members are here and we love their family members, what they went through. Those deputies will live in our hearts forever. In Florida, we'll remember them always with the PBSO Motor Men Highway, PBSO Motor Men Highway. It's great, beautiful thing. I'm going to see it every time I go up that road.
Today's dedication ceremony for President Donald J. Trump Boulevard is special meaning to me because I've always had the unique bond with the great state of Florida. We had tremendous success here. I've been part of the community for more than 40 years. We won big here in Florida all three times. We set every record every time.
And in 2024, we swept 61 of 67 Florida counties. Nobody's ever done that, and carried the state by almost two million votes, which is the record. And then I was followed also from the governor's standpoint, with Ron, who did fantastically also. And we really -- we've turned this state -- there are a few Democrats in this room.
I don't want to get into this, but we've turned the state extraordinarily red, I would say, wouldn't you say? You'll find out. You're going to see. But over the past 12 months, Florida's trust and confidence has really paid off because you made a correct choice. One year ago, we were -- I say it, a dead country.
The king of Saudi Arabia -- I was over in Saudi Arabia, getting money for the -- for the country. He put up $2 trillion, gave us -- I'd like to invest in the United States, $2 trillion. It's a lot of money. And then I went to Qatar, $2 trillion. And I went to the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed, $2 trillion.
So, we took in $6 trillion. That's why we have $18 trillion, because we got $6 trillion from three countries. That helps, right? Laura, is that right? Hi, Laura.
Laura Loomer: Good to see you.
Trump: Boy, you are something. What spirit you have. Laura Loomer, thank you, honey, for being here. I appreciate it. She said -- you know, she can be a little nasty, but to me, she's always nice. So that's all that matters. I want her to stay that way too. But uh, I was over there and he looked at me, the king of Saudi Arabia, he said, you know, I can't believe it. This was a few months ago, took back all that money for the country.
He said, I can't believe this is happening because one year ago you were a dead country and now you're the hottest country in the world. And I use that quote all over. And it's true. We were a dead country and now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're taking in more income than any country.
We're doing better than any country. The stock market's doing better than anyone's ever seen before. We have the best stock market we've ever seen. 401-Ks are doing better than they've ever done before. They're up 78 percent in many cases. But starting on day one, we fully secured our Southern Boulevard and stopped the -- and think of it, as we were securing Southern Boulevard, making Florida great, we're also securing a thing called the southern border and making that great.
And we stopped the invasion of our country. So Florida's been ahead of our time. Florida was ahead. It led the way, but we stopped the -- this was an invasion on our border. And you know, I don't know if this is correct because it can't be correct. It's too good. But for the last eight months, there have been no people that came into our country illegally.
Now, I don't know if that's possible. How do you go from 25 million people in four years, to zero people? But the people, Wilton, the people that report this are Democrats, so it must be true. I mean, they got -- but it's like eight months now and they report it every month. No people came into our country, so I don't know, illegally.
A lot of people are coming in legally. They're going through a process, but we don't want the illegal coming in. You look at what's happening in Minnesota, it's so sad. And it's so sad because ICE -- you know, ICE is taking out murderers. They're taking out drug lords. They're taking out people from mental institutions, bringing them back to their country.
They're taking out the roughest -- roughest people, Tren de Aragua. The jails are emptied out from Venezuela. Now I like Venezuela very much. I say good things. I don't talk about Venezuela in a negative. I think it's a wonderful country. We just -- uh, we just were -- it's very interesting. It was -- it's so much different.
It's changed so much in literally a week. Uh, it was one of the great military maneuvers of all time. It was like, flawless. It was one of the greatest of all time. But we're dealing with a new president. We're dealing with a lot of the people that were running the country and they had -- our first thing is they said, we have 50 million barrels.
Hard to believe, Eric. I said, is there such a thing as 50 million barrels? 50 million barrels of oil. And we have to get it processed immediately because we have no room. Will you take it? I said, we'll take it. I didn't have to consult with anybody on that. I didn't have to call up our great attorney general.
I said, we will take it. And it's the equivalent of $5.2 billion. That was the first day and it's now traveling nicely to the United States. And we've had a great relationship with the people that that are currently the -- they call -- they say the interim president and everybody else. And it's been -- I think a lot of pressure has been released, because, you know, that was a great country 20 years ago.
And then it went bad because it had the wrong system. It had bad system. And we can't ever fall into a position where we have that -- where we have that system because that system isn't going to work. That system can make a lot of people that are good people, bad people or incompetent people. But we passed the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulatory cuts in history and the largest spending cuts in history.
And that got done, we call it the Great Big, Beautiful Bill. We have no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. People that buy a car, they get a deduction now on their interest, if they buy a car and borrow money, it never happened before. You know, rich people got used to taking deductions.
People in middle-class situations or lower than middle class, they never got deductions on anything. They can now. I think it's going to have a huge impact. We're building more factories in the United States now than at any time in our history, and we have $18 trillion being invested. We have $18 -- think of that, $18 trillion, more than any country has ever had by five times.
Think of that. There's never been anything even close. $3 trillion is the record. We're going to be, I think, at over $18 trillion. Through 10 months, it was $18 trillion. We could crack $20 trillion by the time we have our first year, which will be in a little while, January 20th. So I just -- uh, I mean, it's been -- it's been amazing.
We also did a couple of other things. Critical race theory and transgender insanity is out of our schools and out of our lives. And -- and we got men out of women's sports, officially out of women's sports. And everyone said, well, that's an 80/20 issue. No, that's a 98/2 issue. I don't even think it's 98/2. Military recruitment is setting records.
A year ago, uh -- and now you have to go a year and a half ago, I guess, but a year ago, military recruitment was at an all-time low and that included for police and firemen. And now military recruitment, police and firemen is the highest it's ever been. We have never had this many people apply for jobs, we've never seen anything like it. And we hire now on a merit-based system because we won the court case, the Supreme Court case.
Everything is based on merit. So, we get people in merit as opposed to putting people in jobs that maybe shouldn't be there. Whether it's nice or not, it's how our country grew. It's how our country became great. So we have a merit-based system. In less than a year, we made eight piece deals and ended the war in Gaza.
We have peace in the Middle East. Nobody thought that was going to be possible. We stopped India and Pakistan from fighting, two nuclear nations, they say many millions of people. The -- the Pakistani prime minister said Donald Trump saved at least 10 million people and it was amazing and it's an honor. And we obliterated Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity with Operation Midnight Hammer.
That was another operation that was incredible. And then you have Al Baghdadi, we got out. That's a founder of ISIS, was rebuilding ISIS. We got him and Soleimani. He's the one that -- the roadside bomb. And frankly, he was a strong general that maybe we wouldn't have been so successful. I think we would have, but maybe we wouldn't have been so successful in Iran had he been around, but he destroyed a lot of lives and a lot of young people that walk around with no legs, no arms, a face that was just -- you know, just smashed.
He was the father of the roadside bomb and he knew how to do it. We got him. And as I announced earlier this month from right here at Mar-a-Lago, we apprehended the outlaw known as dictator Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela for his crimes against the United States and the rest of the world. And actually, no other nation in the world could have done that and they actually admit that there's no other nation could have done what we did a week ago.
Every single day of my administration, I will continue to put America first and fight for the great state of Florida. I love this state, special place. I don't know. It's just special. You know it. I know it. A lot of people know because a lot of people are coming here. So that when people see that the beautiful sign is all lit up nice at night and it says Donald J. Trump Boulevard, they'll be filled with pride, just pride, not in me, pride in our country, pride in this state, because our nation will be stronger, richer and more successful, which is what it is right now.
We're stronger, richer and more successful than we have ever been before. And I didn't know, the biggest surprise is that we could do this quickly. I thought it would take us a couple of years, maybe, but we did it very quickly. I mean, it's been 11 months, and we've never had anything like it. More factories, more everything, there's never been anything like what we've done.
And that means car factories too, not just the AI. The AI is unbelievable, what's happening there. We're leading China by a lot, but we're building more car factories than at any time in the history of our country. Who would think that? And that's largely because of tariffs. They don't want to pay the tariffs.
It's pretty simple formula. You know, China became powerful because of that. They don't want to pay the tariff, but it only works, really, here. It works best here. What a lot of people don't understand, it doesn't work in most countries, but here it works great. So because of that, we have more things happening than we've ever had and I think you're going to see an explosion.
You already see it, in all fairness, but this next year could be just an explosion of success. So once again, I want to express my gratitude to every official who contributed to this great honor, in particular, Meg, who's an incredible -- what a future. She's got a good future too, daddy, right? Right? Come on. And I want to thank, especially, my son and I want to thank the great people of Florida.
This is just an amazing day for me and it's an amazing place and we're going to have three more great years, but hopefully, we're going to have many, many decades of greatness in this country. We have it off to the right start. Thank you all very much, what an honor. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good luck. Thank you, fellas. Appreciate it. Want to -- oh. Wow.
Unidentified: [Inaudible] any special way. You've done this before. I haven't.
Trump: That's a serious sign. Well, you want to come up here? Look at that. Come on. I don't know if you're going to compete with it. Well, this is -- all of a sudden, you're looking a little bit -- a little bit squeezy here.
Unidentified: [Inaudible]
Trump: Let's see. Good.
Unidentified: We had these made for you.
Trump: Oh, that's great. Wow. I love that. The greatest president in our lifetime. Wilton, how old are you? That's not very --
Unidentified: [Inaudible] Mr. President.
Trump: And you do a great job too. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'll take it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. You know, we have a wedding here now. So they said, sir, is there any way you can move it quickly? I said, I'm not moving it quickly. We're not. And the people getting married are outside and they said, take your time, sir, this is an honor.
So, it's sort of cute. Have a good time. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.