Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start. Trump addressed an audience at the Justice Department and accused the media and his critics of breaking the law. It is not hard to see his remarks as a directive to prosecute them.
Alex Woodward at The Independent:
Donald Trump continued his assault on the press in front of the nation’s top federal law enforcement officials on Friday while taking a victory lap against a justice system that failed to hold him to account.
In remarks at the Department of Justice, which presidents typically avoid to preserve the independence of the work of law enforcement agencies, Trump labelled news outlets with adversarial coverage of his administration “political arms of the Democratic party.”
CNN and MSNBC “literally write 97.6 percent bad about me” and are “political arms of the Democrat Party,” Trump said.“In my opinion they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal,” he said.
He also listed off a list of what he called “fake news” outlets including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, baselessly alleging they are conspiring with Democratic officials to influence prosecutions and investigations against him.
"It’s totally illegal what they do,” he said
He suggested that press coverage that criticized judges influenced their decisions in cases against him and should be “illegal.” Trump himself, however, continues to rage against judges that have blocked parts of his agenda, while his allies call for their impeachment and removal from the bench
Newspapers “are really no different than a highly paid political operative,” Trump said.
“And it has to stop. It has to be illegal,” he said. “It’s influencing judges. It’s really changing law. And it just cannot be legal. I do not believe it is legal.”
Transcript of President Trump Remarks at the Department of Justice March 14, 2025
[PRESIDENT TRUMP:] Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Pam, very much. What a job you’re doing. And it’s a true honor to be with you today.
This is a storied hall, if there ever was one. And based on the crowd, I think we broke the all-time record. But as we begin a proud new chapter in the chronicles of American justice, this really is something.
We’re turning the page on four long years of corruption, weaponization, and surrender to violent criminals, and we’re restoring fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law. And you’re the people that are doing it. I’m very, very proud of all of you.
Under the Trump administration, the DOJ and the FBI will once again become the premier crime-fighting agencies on the face of the Earth. People ask me, what am I going to do about law enforcement all the time? The fake news back there, they’re asking me that all the time. What am I going to do? And when are you going to do it? And I answer them by saying I’ve already done most of it by appointing the people that I’ve appointed.
They’re sitting right here. They’ve done most of it. I don’t do it. They do it. Right, Pam? Oh, you are so tough. They just don’t know yet.
Let me begin by congratulating the incredible people who will lead these historic reforms. And we start with somebody that you just saw, Pam Bondi. She’s extraordinary, and I’ve known her very well for a long time.
I watched her for a long time in Florida, for years in Florida, and highly experienced. She seems so young, but she’s highly experienced, that I can tell you. She was a phenomenal attorney general in Florida, and she’s going to do a really amazing job.
Also, our new director of the FBI, Kash Patel. Kash, right. A man that I’m very proud of. I’ve known him and Emil for a long time under tremendous pressure. I saw these guys under some of the most corrupt judges. It’s not even imaginable how corrupt they were.
And these guys never wilted. They were not shy. They fought. They weren’t afraid. And they were brilliant. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney Emil Bove. And thank you both very much. They’re great people. They’re great people.
The Chief of Staff, who’s so highly respected, Chad Mizelle. Thank you, Chad. Chad? Thank you, Chad. Our next administrator of the DEA, Terry Cole. Terry? Thank you, Terry. Good luck. It’s going to be great.
Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. Boy, I’ve been watching him on television the last couple of weeks. He is really a tough one, and he’s a great one. Leo Terrell. You watch how good he’s going to be. He’s going to be so good. Thank you, Leo. Great guy.
Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division, who’s got an incredible reputation. She’ll do very, very well. Gail Slater. Thank you, Gail. Good luck. Great job.
Now, we’re joined by many, many great friends and terrific friends that I won’t be able to—too many to name, but some that I just see very quickly. General Flynn, thank you for being here. Here’s a man who went through hell, by the way, and he shouldn’t have. He’s a patriot. He went through hell.
We’re also pleased to be joined by Senator Chuck Grassley and House Majority Whip. Hi, Chuck. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Tom, great job you’re doing.
Representative Guy Reschenthaler. One of the toughest names to say, but I got it. I got it perfectly, I think. And State Attorney General Ken Paxton. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Somebody who was with us early on, and she’s really become a big star and very popular. Brenna Bird. Thank you, Brenna. Thank you very much. Steve Marshall, Alan Wilson, James Othermeyer, Chris Carr, Dave Sunday, Marty Jackley, as well as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. What a man Stephen is. Become a big star. Right, Emil? Steve Miller. Steve has been something very special.
For generations, the Federal Department of Justice was one of America’s most revered institutions. The men and women of the DOJ brought down the mafia, hunted down the killers, kingpins, and spies, tracked down terrorists and traitors, and tore down corrupt political machines all across America. This department commanded the respect and admiration of the entire world.
And with Pam and Kash and all of the people I introduced, and far more big numbers than all of you sitting back there, I recognize so many of you. But with you leading the way, it will soon be the most admired and most respected of all. You’re going to be more respected, and I really believe that there’s also a lot of things to solve, a lot of problems to solve.
But that’s going to put you in the upper tier and maybe the top tier, and I believe that’s going to happen. I’m so proud of the people in this room. But first, we must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls.
Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations. They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people. You remember the 51 intelligence agents that said, as an example, that Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell came from Russia when they knew it came right from his bedroom.
They knew that. It was a big lie, and they knew it so well. They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff, and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the President of the United States.
With the help of radicals like Marc Elias, Mark Pomerantz, and these are people that nobody has ever seen anything like it, so many others, but these are people that are bad people, really bad people. They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third-world country, but in the end, the thugs failed and the truth won. Freedom won, justice won, democracy won, and above all, the American people won.
There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked, and that’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before. And it’s exactly what you saw with Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and their cronies to do the building of the last four years. They ripped. What they’ve ripped down is incalculable, but what you’re going to build up is likewise something that will be breaking all sorts of records.
They set loose violent criminals while targeting patriotic parents at school board meetings. They dropped charges against Antifa and Hamas supporters while labeling traditional Catholics as domestic terrorists.
We did very well with the Catholic vote, so I want to thank them for that. They really did. Record numbers. I would say, what’s with the Catholics? They’re really after the Catholics, so I don’t know. They’re after a lot of people. Maybe they didn’t even know why.
They imported illegal alien murderers, drug dealers, and child predators from all over the world to come into our country while putting elderly Christians and pro-life activists on trial for singing hymns and for saying prayers. They went to jail for that.
Our predecessors turned this Department of Justice into the Department of Injustice, but I stand before you today to declare that those days are over, and they are never going to come back. They’re never coming back.
So now, as the chief law enforcement officer in our country, I will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.
The American people have given us a mandate, a mandate like few people thought possible. We won every single swing state. We won the popular vote by millions and millions of people. We won districts 2,750. Think of that. 2,750 districts compared to 505. So we won it at levels that have, I don’t believe, ever seen before.
That’s the one where you see the map of the United States, and it’s all red. Red for Republican, not for communist. Red for Republican. They would like it to turn red for communist, but it didn’t work out that way.
The American people have given us a mandate and really just a far-reaching investigation is what they are demanding into the corruption of our system. And that’s exactly, I’m sure, what Pam and Kash and everyone else mentioned here and not mentioned is going to be doing.
We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government. We will expose and very much expose their egregious crimes and severe misconduct, of which was levels. You’ve never seen anything like it.
It’s going to be legendary. It’s going to also be legendary for the people that are able to seek it out and bring justice. We will restore the scales of justice in America, and we will ensure that such abuses never happen again in our country.
And that’s why on day one I signed an executive order banning all government censorship and directing the removal of every bureaucrat who conspired to attack free speech and many other things and values in America. My administration stripped the security clearances of the disgraced intelligence agents who lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop from hell. We revoked the clearances of deranged Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, and the crooked law firms that aided their partisan persecutions.
And I went through it. These are state and city courts, and the corruption is unbelievable. We also terminated the clearances of the Biden crime family and Joe Biden himself. He didn’t deserve it. In fact, he was essentially found guilty, but they said he was incompetent, and therefore let’s not find him guilty, I guess. Nobody knows what that ruling was, but I didn’t want any part of it.
I think I would have rather been found guilty than what they found with him. They said he didn’t know what the hell he was doing, and therefore he’s let him go. I said, you know, I’d rather be convicted, Pam, I think, than that. That was not… I said, please convict me. Don’t say that.
I pardoned hundreds of political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated. We removed the senior FBI officials who misdirected resources to send SWAT teams after grandmothers and J6 hostages. And it was a great honor for me to fire, I will tell you this, a great honor to fire James Comey. A great, great honor.
That was nothing. There was no better day. A lot of people said, oh, that’s too bad you did that. And they said that’s going to be… And you know what? A year later, they said that actually saved the administration because the level of corrupt things that we learned after that turned out to be that they were doing, in fact, really bad things. He was a terrible person, did terrible things, and persecuted people. And all in the guise of being an angel. But he wasn’t an angel.
We created a brand new DOJ task force, an anti-Christian bias. And under Director Patel, we’re getting the FBI agents out of the headquarters in Washington, D.C., and back on the streets in pursuit of dangerous criminals where they belong and where they want to be.
And, you know, you have that big FBI building and it’s a very big building. And they were going to build an FBI headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state, but that has no bearing on what I’m about to say. But we’re going to stop it. Not going to let that happen. We’re going to build another big FBI building right where it is, which would have been the right place because the FBI and the DOJ have to be near each other. That’s one thing I did learn from this persecution.
The FBI and the DOJ work together. Now, in my case, they work together for bad purposes, but they do. They were always together. So how can you have one that’s three hours away? But one thing I said to Kash, well, we’re going to get a great building built. It’s going to be a magnificent building. He said, sir, we don’t need that kind of room.
I said, what do you mean? He said, I’m just going to take an old Department of Commerce building that’s about 25 percent the size and that’s what I need. We’re going to have the best staff that you’ve ever seen and that’s what I need. It’s in a nice location, but I don’t need that big building. Why don’t you just sell the site to somebody and we’re going to be very happy. And they want to have far fewer people. But we also want to have them in D.C.
And if for no other reason, we like having law enforcement walking the streets of our capital because when the bad guys are out there and they see there’s an FBI agent, that’s the ultimate in law enforcement and they’re not going to be acting so bad.
We’re cleaning up our city, we’re cleaning up this great capital and we’re not going to have crime and we’re not going to stand for crime and we’re going to take the graffiti down and we’re already taking the tents down and we’re working with the administration and if the administration can’t do the job, we’re going to have to take it back and run it through the federal government. But we hope the administration is going to be able. So far, they’ve been doing very well.
The mayor has been doing a good job. We’ve said there are tents galore right opposite the State Department. They have to come down and they took them down right away. And so, so far, so good. But we want to have a capital that can be the talk of the world when Prime Minister Modi of India, when the President of France and all of these people, the head of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, they all came to see me over the last week and a half. And when they come in, I like to… I had the route run.
[DONALD TRUMP:] I didn’t want to have them see tents. I didn’t want to have them see graffiti. I didn’t want to have them see broken barriers and potholes in the roads and we had it looking beautiful.
And we’re going to do that for the city. And we’re going to have a crime-free capital. When people come here, they’re not going to be mugged or shot or raped. They’re going to have a crime-free capital again. And it’s going to be cleaner and better and safer than it ever was. And it’s not going to take us too long.
There’s a new phenomenon that is taking place with these violent, vicious lawyers that we have all over. They play the ref. You know what playing the ref is? Like the great Bobby Knight basketball coach. He’d scream and scream at the ref. He’d scream.
By the way, I love Bobby Knight because he endorsed me. And having Bobby Knight’s endorsement in Indiana was an extremely good thing. A friend of mine said I was running in Indiana at the time.
This was early on, 2016. And I was doing great. But a friend came up and said, do you know Bobby Knight? I said, no, I don’t. But I hear he was a tough cookie. He said, not only tough, he was beyond tough. But he’s the most popular guy you can imagine.
It turned out he wanted to endorse me. He called me about two years before. He said, “Sir, I’d like to endorse you.”
I said, “Is this really Bobby Knight?” He said, “It’s me.” I could tell it was Bobby Knight. He had been known for throwing the chair across the court and slapping a player. Can’t do things like that, right? And the man that came in fired him. He was the new administrator for the coach. That guy didn’t last very long.
They were like 14-0 and they fired Coach Knight. That was not good. But he had a little chip on his shoulder. But he loved Trump and he came in and he said, “I’d love to endorse you.” He said, “If you ever run, please call me.” So he said, “Do you know Bobby Knight?” I said, “Well, I don’t know. But he called me a couple of years ago.” It was an amazing phenomenon. I took his number.
And on each side of my desk in New York, I had stacks of paper. Like, nice and neat, but about two feet high each. And I said, you know, I wrote his number down and I put it here two years ago.
And I said, let me see if I can find it. It was almost like a miracle. I had other miracles that happened, too. My ear is still throbbing. That was a miracle. That was a miracle also, wasn’t it? That was a miracle also.
Thank you. Thank you, Leo. Thank you. Thank you, my man. That was a miracle. Anyway, okay, that’s very nice. So he said, “Bobby Knight.” So I said, you know, I put his name down and I wrote it down. It’s in one of these stacks. I lifted it up. It would have to be 2,000 or 3,000 pages in each stack.
I lifted it up, the first one. I had no idea. And there was his name on the little card, Bobby Knight with his number. It was, like, incredible. I tell that story all the time. And I called him and dialed the number.
He said, “I’ve been waiting for you to call.” And he went out and he made a speech for me in Pact Arena in Indiana. And it was over. It was over. He was a tough guy. He actually went a little far, you know, if you remember.
He made a great speech because he was actually a motivational-type guy, to put it mildly. But he left the stage and then comes talking and he walks back onto the stage. I said, uh-oh, this is trouble.
Why is he coming back? He was a big guy, too. I said, why is he coming back? He said, “May I say a few more words?” I said, “Yeah, go ahead, Bobby, say a few more words.” He was a little different.
And he said, “Let me tell you something about this guy, Trump. This guy, if he has to, will use the nuclear weapons that we have. He will use the nuclear weapons. He has no fear he’s going to use, and that’s the kind of guy.” And he walked off the stage. I said, I think I’m in big trouble, Pam.
That was not good, but it worked out okay. In the meantime, we won the state in a landslide and it was great. And it was just an amazing period of time.
But this is the most amazing period of time. I think this is more amazing, what’s taken place. It’s been more amazing. I think it’s more consequential. And if we do the job, you know, one of the big media outlets said what we did was the most consequential election in the last 129 years.
Well, if we do the job that we’re all capable of doing, I think it’s going to prove to be that and then some. And that’s what we want to do. We have a real big shot at making this country so great, so great. What happened to our country was so sad.
What they’ve done in four years to our country with the borders, with Afghanistan, the embarrassing, most embarrassing period of time, allowing the Russian situation, was never going to happen with Ukraine. Allowing October 7th to happen would have never happened because under me Iran was totally broke. They had no money.
They weren’t giving any money to Hamas or Hezbollah. Totally broke. But allowing inflation, look at what inflation has done to people. Been so devastating. And now you see that, by the way, price of eggs is down 35% in the last week and a half. We’re doing a good job.
Brooke is doing a good job. Brooke Rollins and everybody. And inflation is down, interest rates are down, gasoline has come down to a level that we haven’t seen in a long time.
All things that we wanted to do because then everything else is going to be coming down. We want it to come down. We want bacon to come down and groceries. A term I used to use, it’s sort of an old-fashioned term, but I used to use it on the campaign trail those last 90 perfect beautiful days. We just hit it. And I want to thank Suzy.
You have done a great job, Susie Wiles. Great job, Susie. A big magazine just named her the most powerful woman in the world. And that’s okay with me. She is the most powerful woman. You think about it, John, right? The most powerful woman in the world, but she’s great.
And we had a great 90 days. It was a perfect 90 days and it was a great result. But we want to put that result to good use by doing a phenomenal job.
And I want to tell you that Todd and Emil know this very well. We had an amazing judge in Florida and her name is Aileen Cannon. And I didn’t know her. I still don’t know her. I don’t believe I ever spoke to her, even during the trial. But I did appoint her federal judge.
And these fake lawyers, these horrible human beings were hitting her so hard, public relations-wise. They were playing the ref. I don’t think it’s legal. I don’t think it’s legal. They might as well go out and just shout it in a courthouse. They were saying she was slow. She wasn’t smart.
She was totally biased. She loved Trump. I didn’t know her other than I saw her the couple of days that I was in court and I thought her decorum was amazing. Anything bad they could say, though, they were saying about her. It was whatever they could say bad about a human being. But it was all made up because, actually, she was brilliant.
She moved quickly. She was the absolute model of what a judge should be. And she was strong and tough.
And how do you get them to stop if you’re a judge? How do you get them to stop with the playing the ref? Bobby Knight would play the ref. That’s why I brought up the Bobby Knight story. He would play the ref. He’d scream at the ref. He’d scream so hard. Oh, boy, it was terrible, actually.
And the people would come up. His assistant coaches would come up to the players. “Coach, coach, don’t do that. Don’t do it.” He said “He’s not going to change his tune, coach. He called it. He’s not changing it.” I don’t care. And he’d scream.
And that’s when he threw her in a chair. He starts going crazy. And he said, “No, he’s not going to change this time, but he’s going to change for the next play.” And sure as hell he did. Bobby, by the way, had the last undefeated team in basketball. And relatively speaking, he had a team.
He always had a team. He had a couple of great players, obviously, some top NBA players. But very few, relatively. He had a team, but he won the national championship three times. But he had the last undefeated team in basketball. And he would play the ref, and he would scream at him.
He knew exactly what he was doing. They’re doing the same thing. He said, “No, he’s not going to change now, but he’s going to change for the next one.” That’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to scare the hell out of the judges. And they do it.
And how do you stop it if you’re a judge? Because you want to go home, you have a family, you have children, and the New York Times will write whatever these people say, and the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, and MSDNC, and the fake news CNN, and ABC, CBS, and NBC, and they’ll write whatever they say. And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump. All you have to do is be really tough on him and ultimately convict him.
And they leave you alone. It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.
And it was so unfair what they were doing to her. But they do it all the time with judges. But in her case, she was very courageous, and it only made her angry. Wouldn’t you say? It just made her angry. She didn’t like it. A lot of them say, “Oh, please don’t say that about me. My family, what’s my husband going to say? What’s my wife going to say? Or my kids? Please don’t say that.” And it had absolutely no impact on her. And the case against me, which was a case, I will not use a bad word.
I promised my wife I would never use a bad word. So just a little bad. The case against me was bullshit. And she correctly dismissed it. She correctly. She correctly.
Look at Emil. That’s interesting. But these two guys were warriors. You got a warrior here. You got two warriors, I can tell you that. You got a whole bunch of them. And they wouldn’t quit. They wouldn’t take no for an answer. They just wouldn’t quit.
These two people right up here and some others that are involved with it indirectly. And what the lawyers do is they’re doing it to the Supreme Court justices, hoping that they’ll be overcome by the horrible things they say about them. They say things about Supreme Court justices and judges that are just horrible.
They’re playing the referee. Remember the way they treated Justice Thomas and Justice Alito and Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Gorsuch. Chief Justice Roberts gets treated unbelievably badly.
And they’re hoping that they can sway them to go along because, again, what do they do? They’re humans. It would be wonderful if everybody was just a perfect computer machine. But they’re not. They’re humans. And they don’t want to be accused of many, many things, including gross incompetence. They don’t like it and they don’t want it.
There’s not much they can do about it. You know, they’re in a position they can’t really fight back really very well. And so what they do is sometimes they get weak.
I would say a majority, maybe, of the times. That’s why I’m so impressed with Judge Cannon in Florida, how strong she was, how she held up. It actually made her more resolute than anything I’ve seen. I mean, it was amazing because they were hitting her so hard. It was so sad to watch this. But it’s sad what they do to other judges.
It’s very sad what they do to the Supreme Court. And all of a lot of the judges that I had, if you look at them, they take tremendous abuse in the New York Times and the Washington Post, all of the different networks. They take such abuse.
And, honestly, they’re very simply, they’re afraid of bad publicity. They don’t want bad publicity. And it’s truly interference, in my opinion, and it should be illegal and it probably is illegal in some form.
There’s no difference than speaking to a judge or shouting to a judge or doing whatever you have to do in a courthouse. They’re doing it behind the back. They’re usually doing it anonymously.
They’re saying anonymously. Off the record, the judge is no good, but everybody knows where it’s coming from. And it’s totally coordinated. It’s a campaign, and it’s by the same scum that you have been dealing with for years, like guys like Andrew Weissman, Derange Jack Smith. There’s a guy named Norm Eisen. I don’t even know what he looks like.
His name is Norm Eisen of Crew. He’s been after me for nine years. Now, Crew is a charitable organization. And the reason I’m saying this, Todd, is I’m only going to get one chance to say this. But these are bad people. I don’t know who he is.
I don’t know what he looks like. But everything I read is Norm Eisen of Crew. And Crew is a charitable organization. And that’s a political thing. His sole life is to get Donald Trump. And he’s been vicious and violent. And he’s trying. And he probably had pretty good success over the years. But with me, how did he do? I think I’m President.
[DONALD TRUMP:] Am I here because I’m President? But we had to take all of that abuse. Even during the trials, we had to take tremendous abuse. These wonderful guys – they’re not legitimate people.
They’re horrible people. They’re scum. And you have to know that. And you’re going to have these cases where you can’t allow yourselves to be deflected. You just can’t let it happen. You have so many — you have such a higher calling.
And I believe that CNN and MSNBC, who literally write 97.6 percent bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat Party. And, in my opinion, they’re really corrupt and they’re illegal. What they do is illegal. It makes no difference how big a victory I had. I can have the biggest victory in history. It makes no difference what kind of a failure the other side has.
These people are going to go after me. And I said it during the other night, during the big speech on Tuesday night. I said about Democrats, and I don’t like that. I have great respect, by the way, for what Schumer did today. He went out and he said that they have to vote with the Republicans because it’s the right thing to do. I couldn’t believe what I heard.
But, you know, I think he’s going to get some credit for it, I think. Let’s see what happens tonight with the big vote as it comes. But these networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative.
And it has to stop. It has to be illegal. It’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law, and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal. And they do it in total coordination with each other. And everything we do, we’re restoring law, restoring order, and restoring public safety in America.
That’s what we want to do. And we’re bringing honor and integrity and accountability back to the highest levels of the FBI, DOJ, and throughout our government. We’re bringing our country back faster than anyone ever thought possible.
We’re working so hard at doing it. And we want fairness in the courts. The courts are a big factor. The elections, which were totally rigged, are a big factor. We have to have honest elections. We have to have borders.
And we have to have courts and law that’s fair. Well, we’re not going to have a country. Crooked Joe Biden got us into a real mess with Russia and everything else he did, frankly, but he didn’t know about it.
And he, generally speaking, signed it with Autopen. So how would he know? That Autopen is a big deal. I don’t know. You know, they’re having — who’s doing this? When my people come up — Will and all of the people, Steve — they come up and, “Sir, this is an executive order.” They explain it to me. And, you know, 90 percent of the time, I sign it.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, I say, “Do it.” But they come up and I sign it. But you don’t use Autopen. It’s — number one, it’s disrespectful to the office. Number two, maybe it’s not even valid because, you know, who’s getting him to sign? He had no idea what he was doing. If he did, all of these bad things wouldn’t be happening right now.
But we’re going to get you back into a great position, and we’ve already started. They say that we had the most successful first month of President. It’s not a long time, but it’s still a lot. It’s like if you’re a golfer. Sinking a three-foot putt on the first hole gives you confidence to sink something on the second hole. But if you miss that first putt, you don’t like to have the putt on the second hole and the third hole.
It could be a very bad experience. It’s nice to get that first month. And now we have more than a month. Now we have a month and a half, and it’s going really, really well. I can tell you it’s a little secret, although the cameras are blazing back there, so it’s not that much. But I think we’re doing well, as you have been hearing about Ukraine.
I think we’re doing now well with Russia. We’re speaking with President Putin. We want to get the war over. Not only have we spent maybe $350 billion to Europe’s — think of that, $350 billion to $100 billion, and yet we’re across the ocean, far away. So it shouldn’t have been that way, but Biden let that happen too. And we’re getting a deal where we’re going to get that back.
But much more importantly are the lives that we’re talking about. On average, 2,000 young people are being killed every single day. Now, they’re not from here. They’re from nowhere close to here. But they’re young people. They’re human beings. And they have parents. They have sisters and brothers. The mothers and fathers.
The friends and the families and the towns where they grew up. And they’re losing, on average, 2,000, even 2,500 a week. And I want to get it stopped. And we’ve had some very good calls today with Russia and with Ukraine. They’ve agreed for a ceasefire, if we can get it with Russia. And it’s not easy.
It’s a tough one. But I think we’re doing it. And as the Secretary General said yesterday of NATO, a terrific guy, he said, “Without Trump, we wouldn’t be talking about it.” It would just go on for years. And millions more people — millions of people have been killed, but millions more people would be killed. And he said it was a great honor.
Without me, it would just keep going on. We’re looking for the ceasefire now with Russia. And we’ve had some very good talks about it. We’ve had some very good responses. And I can tell you that there was a case where there would have been no war if I were President. And it’s just 100 percent would not have happened, would never have happened.
I used to speak to President Putin a lot about it. I said, “Don’t do it. Don’t do it.” I won’t tell you what the consequence was. I won’t tell you what he said. But if he believed even 5 percent of what I said, then he would say, “I’m not going to do it.”
And I think he did. But we had a good relationship, and we had a professional relationship. And here’s respect for this country.
And I think we had — I think we’ve had some very good results. So, you know, I haven’t been able to say that to anybody else. I haven’t wanted to say it until just before I came here. I got some pretty good news. So — but we have to see what happens. It’s still a long way to go.
The fighting is unbelievable. Russia has a large group of Ukrainian soldiers, as we speak, surrounded and in grave danger. They’ve been able to surround them. They’re in grave danger. Biden should have never let this war happen. First of all, you don’t want to pick on somebody that’s a lot larger than you, even with the money.
There’s a lot of money that we gave them and a lot of equipment. We make the best military equipment in the world. But even with all of that, it’s unbelievable.
Right now, you have a lot of Ukrainian soldiers that are encircled and in grave danger. And I’ve asked them not to kill those soldiers, please. Not to kill those soldiers. We don’t want them killed. It’s such a shame to see what’s happened. A thing like that would have never happened.
Inflation would have never happened. October 7th would have never happened. Israel — Iran had no money. They were totally broke. Think of it. They had no money to give to anybody.
They were totally broke. And within a short period of time, as soon as Biden came in, he took out all the sanctions in China. And everybody else that wasn’t buying oil from Iran was buying it at levels that they’d never spent before.
And it was — it was a sad thing. And if you look at Afghanistan, that was probably what got Putin started. Because when he looked at how horribly — horribly we looked, I think the most embarrassing day — not that we got out, because we were getting out.
I would have been out faster than them. I was the one that got it down to the right level. But we would have kept Bagram, the big Air Force Base. We would have kept it. Right now, China occupies Bagram. And the reason we would have kept it is because they were one hour away from where China has and builds its nuclear missiles and weapons.
And they gave that up. At the dark of night, they left the lights on. And they left the dogs behind, by the way. A lot of people say, what about all the dogs? They had a lot of dogs. And they left the dogs behind. And what a shame.
What a shame. The way we got out, I think it was the most humiliating time in the history of our country. The way it happened — not that we were getting out, because we wanted to get out — but we would have gotten out with dignity and strength.
And what a difference a rigged and crooked election had on our country, when you think about it. And the people who did this to us should go to jail. They should go to jail. So I just want to say, God bless America. Because we have to say, God bless. We’re lucky.
We’re still here, frankly. And this whole thing could lead — I think — I think we have it. I think we have it. But this could lead to World War Three. Very easily. It could very easily lead to World War Three.
But I think we’re in pretty good shape. A lot better than we were before we got involved. That, I can tell you. It was going — that was heading into World War Three territory, and that would have been a war like no other because of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons that people — you don’t even want to know about. But as many of you do know, we’re focused on persecuting. And these people were really focused on persecuting Republicans.
The last administration presided over the worst increase in violent crime in our country in many, many decades. We had levels of violence and crime, and a lot of it had to do with the illegal immigrants that came in. And remember when I used to complain about it? Because I knew how tough they were, how mean they were.
And they said, “No, no, people that come into our country are all wonderful people.” No, they’re not wonderful. These are stone-cold killers. These are killers like — they make our killers look nice, by comparison. They make our killers look nice. These are rough, tough people with the tattoos all over their face.
Historically speaking — I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but historically speaking, they’re not going to be the head of any major bank that we know of. These are rough people. These are rough, rough killer people, and they allowed them in by the millions.
In major cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington, mothers can’t walk their children to the park without fear of being shot or killed or raped or anything. Women can’t ride the subway without worrying that a hoodlum will shove them onto the train tracks. In New York, it’s happened twice in the last couple of weeks.
They’re standing there — a perfect Wall Street gentleman, in one case, and another person who was a worker — good worker, electrician — gets pushed into a train going 45 miles an hour just prior to the train. Not stopping. And to go through that — I know the stations very well.
I used to take the subway. I used to feel safe. When I was young, I’d go to the — my parents would drop me off at the subway. I’d take the subway to my school. Can you believe it? Today, they wouldn’t be doing that. And we want to get a country back.
Maybe we can do that again, Pam. But it’s so sad to see what’s taking place. Under the Biden regime, average monthly homicides increased by 14 percent.
Property crime rose tremendously. Violent crime went up at least 37 percent, that they know of. Rape soared by 42 percent. Car theft rose by 48 percent. And robberies surged to 63 to 100 percent. They don’t even know what the number is.
And I have no higher mission as President of the United States than to end this killing and stop this lawbreaking, and to making America safe again. And that’s what you’re all about in this room. We want to protect Americans, and we protect everybody that’s in our country, American or not American.
We want to have a safe and proud country. We’re joined today by dozens of police officers, sheriffs, and sheriff’s deputies from all across the country. My message to these law enforcement heroes is simple.
With me in the White House, you once again have a President who will always have your back. We’ll always have your back. Thank you, fellas. Thank you. That’s a lot of good-looking people, I will tell you. I feel safe. I’m glad you’re in the room. I feel even safer. It’s a lot of great people.
On day one, I signed an executive order directing Attorney General to ensure that anyone who murders a police officer immediately, with as fast a trial as we can have, gets the death penalty. And last month, I fired all the radical-left, pro-crime U.S. attorneys appointed by Joe Biden. There were so many that were bad.
And I know there were some that were probably very good, but there were so many that were so bad and so evil, so corrupt. Instead of having Marxist prosecutors who want to put police officers in handcuffs and go after a police officer rather than a criminal, I appointed patriotic, tough-on-crime warriors who will partner with police to put dangerous offenders behind bars, put them in jail. We’re fully reviving 1033 program to provide state and local law enforcement with surplus military equipment.
We have so much of it. I did it in my last administration. And I remember Obama wouldn’t do it.
[DONALD TRUMP:] He wouldn’t do it before me. Would not do it because he thought it made them look too strong, too military. I said, no, that’s what I want them to look like.
I want them to look strong. And it was protective, defensive equipment. We had billions of dollars. I gave it out, and now I’m going to have a chance to give it out again. They didn’t want to do it with Biden. And Biden didn’t know why.
They said my press conference yesterday was longer than all of Biden’s press conferences put together for the last four years. And I don’t know if that’s true, but it was close.
And perhaps most importantly, we’re securing our border and repelling the invasion of America. You see the numbers have come down. Tom Homan and Kristi Noem have been incredible.
Kristi Noem, Secretary. She’s done great. And Tom Homan is fantastic. He’s a brave guy. Over the past four years, other countries emptied out their prisons and jails, mental institutions and insane asylums, and sent the killers, drug smugglers and bloodthirsty inmates from the filthiest dungeons of the world straight into the USA and open border. We had an open border policy.
Anybody could come in no matter what you were, no matter where you came from, no matter what you look like, no matter what you were doing, no matter what you did, no matter how many people you murdered. You could come right into our country. We have murderers right now walking the streets.
We’re joined today by Tammy Nobles, whose 20-year-old daughter Kayla was attacked in her home three years ago, horrifically assaulted and strangled to death by an illegal alien MS-13 monster set loose into our country under the open border Biden regime. Kayla was one of countless American victims ripped away from their families by the open border policies of that administration.
And we’re also joined by Kayla’s stepfather, Jeremiah, and several other courageous angel families here today. And I’d love you to all just stand up and take a bow because you are incredible people. Please. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I want you to know that we are working every day to expel these savages from our country and ensure that what happened to your loved ones will never happen again. So their legacy is going to be a great one. Thank you all very much. We appreciate it.
On day one of my administration, I declared a national emergency on our southern border.
In our first full month in office, we achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded. Even lower than four years ago. For years, Democrats and the media kept saying that we needed new legislation.
We had to have new legislation. We needed it immediately. And I’d never had legislation. I had the best border in the history of our country for almost four years. And by the time I got out, we had the lowest numbers ever. My favorite chart of all time was brought down that day.
And on that chart, it said we had the lowest numbers ever. But it turned out that we really didn’t need new legislation. All you needed was a new President. And I said that. I said that the other night. That’s all you needed was a new President saying, close the borders because the Border Patrol is unbelievable.
ICE is unbelievable. And all of our law enforcement is just incredible. All of you guys are amazing.
And the people of our country respect you and they love you. And a lot of times, you don’t hear that because you have to listen to the fake news back there. But they have great respect for you.
And you know, that includes our fire departments, too. They don’t get spoken about enough. They go into some of the areas I read where they’re shooting them off ladders. Can you believe it? They go up to put out a fire, and they shoot them off a ladder.
It’s just unbelievable. These firemen and women are incredible. So I want to put them in the same category because they’re just incredible. I also like the fact they voted for me, like, at 94 percent. So I have to mention them. I have no choice, right? But the truth is they’re phenomenal people.
The law enforcement, fire, everybody, they’re phenomenal. Basically, first responders, because that’s what they are. They’re first responders.
And we’re ending the migrant occupation of a lot of America. And what we’re doing now is we’re liberating our cities and our suburbs and our towns. And you see a big difference.
I’m getting calls all the time from even leaders of other countries saying, “Sir, the whole world feels liberated now. It feels like there’s a light over America, but there’s a light over the whole world.” I hear that so much. It’s so nice to hear, too. And I feel it. I mean, I feel it.
I look at it. I see the polls. I don’t know if the polls are right, but they’re certainly very good. It’s amazing what’s taking place in such a short period of time. Really, six weeks. But it’s longer than that. It’s really November 5th. I think that hopefully will go down as one of the most important days in the history of our country.
You know, July 4th, 1776, was pretty important, too. But let’s see if we can top it.
Last month, we officially designated MS-13 and Tren de Aragua, that’s the Venezuelan gang, the toughest gang, they say, in the world, and the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. That’s a big deal.
Nobody wanted to do that in the past. And, by the way, we’ve caught hundreds of them — the Venezuelan gang, which is as bad as it gets. And you’ll be reading a lot of stories tomorrow about what we’ve done with them, and you’ll be very impressed.
And you’ll feel a lot safer, too, because they are a vicious group. They went into Colorado. They took over areas of Colorado. They sort of were like me. They were in the real estate business, but they didn’t go out and get financing. They just took over a building and kept it.
And they said to the tenants, “Get the hell out of here.” One man called the police, and they cut off his fingers. And they said, “You call again, your other fingers, and you call a third time, and you’re dead.”
These are tough people and bad people, and we’re getting them out of our country. And some are so bad, we don’t want to get them out. We have to put them in jail because we don’t want to even take a chance that they can come back.
Thanks to our efforts, Mexico recently handed over 29 of the biggest cartel leaders, including the depraved kingpin charged with the 1985 murder of DEA agent Kiki Camerena. And that was a big deal. They’ve been looking for this person for years, many years.
And we got him. This evil killer will now be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. It’s a very strong case.
We’re stopping the criminals pouring across our borders at record levels, and we’re also stopping the massive quantities of deadly drugs.
In 2023 alone, drug overdoses killed more Americans in 12 months than they did during the entire decade between 1980 and 1990. More Americans died from fentanyl last year than died in the Korean War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War – all of them combined.
That’s why I placed large tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. And they will remain in place until these deadly poisons stop pouring into our country. And I will tell you, as soon as I put on the tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China, unbelievable results have been seen in the last few weeks. Unbelievable results. They weren’t happy about it.
You probably read they weren’t happy, but they are working like hell to end it. They weren’t working very hard before I did that.
With us today is a brave mother and advocate, Anne Fundner, who lost her beautiful 15-year-old son, Weston, to fentanyl. And, Anne, if you would, I’d like to ask you to come up and say a few words, please. Thank you.
[ANNE FUNDNER:] Thank you. Well, first, I want to say thank you. I think this is the biggest honor of my entire life, being on stage with President Trump.
But I want to tell you a little bit about my son, Weston, who absolutely loved President Trump. He had a beautiful Trump 2020 flag hanging in his bedroom, and he had it on the beach one day, and we took a picture, and it became our 2020 Christmas card with the most perfect slogan for President Trump, “Peace on Earth.”
What would happen in the next four years would be devastation to our country and our safety of our children.
And in 2022, Weston lost his life, a freshman in high school at the age of 15, from a single pill that took his life. The cartels were allowed to operate on American soil and took hundreds of thousands of American lives. And so we knew there was only one person that could save us from the devastation on our American soil, and that was President Trump.
And so in 2024, we did the best thing that we could do to keep America safe again. And we elected President Donald J. Trump. And he’s done everything that he has promised.
We have a 98 percent decrease in border crossings, and he has labeled the terrorist cartels terrorist organizations. And he has instilled tariffs because there is no price on human life. And so I feel like I can speak for the entire fentanyl-fighting community when I say thank you to President Trump.
And thank you to Pam Bondi and everyone out here who is fighting this fight. God bless you. God bless you, President Trump.
God bless America. Thank you.
[DONALD TRUMP:] Thank you. He’s up there watching you. He’s up there watching you. And he’s so proud of you.
Thank you, Anne, very much. Weston is — as you said to Anne, Weston is up in heaven watching his mom, and he’s so proud of you. He’s so proud of you. We’re also joined today by a number of other American families who have lost loved ones to fentanyl. And I’d love you to just stand up for a second, and we want to acknowledge you.
And also, your daughters, your sons, they’re looking down on you, and they’re loving you like crazy. So, thank you very much.
This department will not rest until we have ended the fentanyl epidemic in America once and for all. In less than two months since I took office, the DEA and FBI have seized nearly 1 million deadly doses of fentanyl, and that’s just the beginning.
At my direction, and working with Pam and everybody else, we’ve launched an all-out war on fentanyl traffickers, and it’s a war that we’re going to win. We’re going to win this war.
I spoke with the President of Mexico. Very nice woman. Very fine woman. And I said, “Let me ask you, you’re sending a lot of drugs into our country. We’re not liking it at all. Can’t do that.”
But I said, “Does Mexico have much of a drug problem?” She said, “No, we’re not a consuming nation.” I thought it was an interesting term. And I said, “Why?” Which I’ve heard, also, by the way.
They’re not a consuming nation. They distribute, but they don’t consume. But I said, “Why are you not a consumer?” “Well, we’re very close to family.”
And I said, “So we’re very close with family, too. I mean, our families are being devastated, and we’re just as close. Why else?” She said, “Well, we spend a lot of money on advertising saying how bad drugs are.”
They’re very rough ads. They show the skin falling off and the teeth falling out, and going blind, and losing hair, and everything that these things do that you look like you just came out of a horrible concentration camp. And she said they’re rough ads.
And it’s not often that I feel I’ve learned something from a phone call, because I’ve had a lot of phone calls all of my life. But I realized, right then and there, what a great idea that is. And we have hired, Suzy, a great person who did a lot of our campaign work.
And we’ve come up with an advertising campaign that’s, I think, really incredible. More than anything else, it’s terrible to watch. Terrible to watch. It’s the only way it’s going to work. Because we got the numbers down. Eighteen percent would have a blue-ribbon committee headed by the First Lady of the United States, who everyone loves, and some of her friends.
And, you know, it’s a tough deal. They’re dealing with very smart and very vicious people. You know, some of those businesses, those cartels, are run better than any business in America. They say they’re run incredibly — not just here, they’re all over the world. They’re run like a major business, but in many cases, better.
And I said, we got it 18 percent down. Well, 18 percent is incredible. It’s like a record.
The Death Penalty and Drug Enforcement
[DONALD TRUMP:] But when you think of it, it’s not very much. And the way you get it down, if you want to get it down to close to 100 percent, is with a death penalty. But I think maybe America is not ready for that.
China has a death penalty. Singapore has a death penalty. Various places have the death penalty. Wherever you have the death penalty, you don’t have drugs. But I just don’t know if this country is ready for it. So I tell people, and it’s always an option, but I don’t know.
I just don’t know if you’re ready for it. And that’s okay. It’s nothing you can do.
But what we’re going to do is we’re doing this campaign. And I think we can get it down 50 — 5-0 percent with this campaign. Because when people see all the horrible things that these drugs do to you — we’re especially focused on fentanyl.
When they see all of the horrible things that happen when you take drugs, how you look — you lose your look. Everyone is vain. They don’t want to lose their look. The look is so important. And I think when they see these things, they may say, “You know what? I’m going to take a pass.” But there is big danger.
Pam and I were talking about it before. A lot of people are taking fentanyl and not even knowing. They think they’re doing something else or maybe taking another drug, but at a much lower level.
And they die. You can put on the pin — think of this — the head of a pin, fentanyl, and it’s too much and it will kill the strongest person in the room. And it’s amazing.
But we’re going to do this campaign. It’s going to be launched fairly soon, Susie. And I think it’s going to have a big impact. I think if we got it down by another 30, 35 points — and I really believe we can. I think that’s an incredible idea. So I thank the President of Mexico, actually.
It was a call on tariffs, and we talked about drugs. And she gave me an idea that I think will be very successful. And based on what I saw, it’s going to be amazing.
Under our leadership, this department is, once again, laser-focused on protecting the American people. We’re defending our borders, our streets, our children, and our good — really, God-given — this is God-given rights and liberties once and for all. We’re going to defend our country, and we’re going to defend our rights.
Etched onto the walls of this building are the words — English philosopher John Locke said, “where law ends, tyranny begins.” And I see that, and I saw it over the last four years, when somebody was allowed to attack viciously with this department and the FBI. His political opponent — how did that work out? Didn’t work out too well, but it wasn’t pleasant.
It wasn’t pleasant. I was attacked by a political opponent. And probably it helped that I was attacked more than anybody in the history of our country.
Alphonse Capone — the great Alphonse Capone, legendary, Scarface — was attacked only a tiny fraction of what Trump was attacked. And maybe it worked out well. I don’t know.
If I had to give it up, I probably wouldn’t, but only because I’ve gone through it. But I wonder what the difference would be. Maybe they helped get me elected by those margins — the big margins, the big mandate that we received.
But you can’t go after your political opponent. Nobody has ever seen anything like it, actually. And hopefully, they won’t see anything like it.
But now, with the return of law and order, the entire world is witnessing the triumph of American justice and American freedom. That’s why we’re here today, gathered with people that have love for our country. In the coming years, we will revive the storied legacy of this department.
It’s happening right now, as you can feel it. And rekindle the spirit of the great lawmen and legal lions of the past — Americans like Wyatt Earp, Eliot Ness, Frank Hammer, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani had to suffer greatly.
Greatly. He’s the greatest mayor in the history of our country. He had to suffer greatly.
Ed Meese, Antonin Scalia, Robert Jackson, and Robert F. Kennedy. We will rebuild pride in our institutions. We will restore the prestige of this great department, and we will bring back faith in our justice system for the citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed.
And I want to just tell you that this has been a great honor. I was asked to do it, and I said, is it appropriate that I do it? And then I realized it’s not only appropriate, I think it’s really important. And I may never do it again.
I may never have another chance to do it again because this is something that I’m leaving to the greatest people I know — the best people, the smartest people, the toughest people I know. And they’re going to do an incredible job. And it’s an honor for me to have won this election so that I can appoint these people to do their job.
And they’re going to do it like you have never seen. So I just want to wish all of you good luck. It’s going to be an interesting journey.
It’s not going to be easy, but you’re going to win. And you’re going to win, win, win, and fight, fight, fight. And it’s going to end up being a tremendous result for this country.
So thank you all very much. God bless America. God bless you all.
