REMARKS

Remarks by President Trump in a Fox News Town Hall | Green Bay, WI
Issued on: June 25, 2020

Jet Air Hangar
Green Bay, Wisconsin

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Thanks for joining us. We’re going to take some audience questions throughout the hour. You’re here in Wisconsin. One of the things everybody is looking for — and we’ll get into more detail throughout the hour — is the economy. You are going to leave this town hall, and you’re going to announce that you’re building 20 new ships. You’re rebuilding the military.

THE PRESIDENT: That’s right.

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, we have arrested, I think, almost — but it could be over the number — hundreds of people. We have arrested a lot of people for what they’ve done. They’ve created bedlam. They’ve destroyed very important things.

I mean, you’re also talking about statues of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln. They’d like to get Jesus — you know that, right? They said, “We want to get Jesus.”

Q Yeah. It’s Shaun King, the radical. Yeah.

THE PRESIDENT: These are nothing to do with any particular event, other than they’re troublemakers or agitators, and they’re anarchists. The big thing they want is they want to really destabilize our country, and we don’t let them.

So I said to my people, “If you’ve arrested so many, how come we don’t know about it?” They said, “We don’t talk about it, sir. We do it.” But I said, “I think the public should know it.” And, you know, we have a statues act — a monument act, which puts you in jail for 10 years if you do what they’ve done.

So we’ve got that. We’ve got all the tapes — because the nice part is it’s all on television. Like the character on the horse the other day, he’s up there putting on the ropes — he’s in trouble — on the Andrew Jackson. Beautiful. It’s beautiful — right opposite the White House.

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: If I’ve ever seen a case — I know it’s very controversial to say “stop and frisk.” Okay? “Stop and frisk.” You take guns away. Chicago is the greatest example I think I’ve ever seen of that.

{snip}

By the way, in all cases, it’s Democrats; they’re Democrat run in all cases. And Joe Biden would have that be the whole country. It’s so crazy what’s happening. Here’s a guy who doesn’t talk. Nobody hears him. Whenever he does talk, he can’t put two sentences together. I don’t want to be nice or un-nice. Okay? But, I mean, the man can’t speak. And he’s going to be your President because some people don’t love me maybe. And, you know, all I’m doing is doing my job.

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: Well, the big thing with Wisconsin was that — I came here; I’ve been here a lot — a lot. I love the state.

And they had specialty milk. Do you know what I’m talking about? And it wasn’t the biggest deal, but a couple of farmers came up to me — specialty milk. It’s a tiny fraction of milk, but it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back. And they said, “Sir, Canada, what they’re doing to us with tariffs on specialty milk — we do this; we work so hard, sir; and they’re taking our business away.”

And it was the day I happened to be up here — totally unrelated. We were trying to get a company to move into Wisconsin, so I was here with the company. And what happened is it just hit me a certain way. And because of the little specialty milk, you know, you’re totally free now. You have, now, a great deal with Canada.

Canada was ripping off Wisconsin and Iowa and other farm states. You have no idea what they — 287 percent tariff. They were charging on farm products, on — they would call it “dairy products” — 287 percent. And I stopped it. I stopped it.

But it was specialty milk — I’ll never forget it — a tiny little subdivision of the overall. And it hit me, right? Because these people came up, and they said — they were almost resigned to it. You know why? Because they’d been ripped off by so many different — on every other form of butter, everything, they were ripped off. And they said, “This is just so terrible, sir.” And it was the way they said it. And I straightened it all out.

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: Terrible. Well, he didn’t say it. They have people that write. You know, I’ll make a statement. It’ll be a nice statement. It’ll be a little complex, or maybe it’s not complex. And they will have that statement analyzed. And they’ll say, “Vice President Biden said…” And they’ll have it broken down to dif- — and I said, “He didn’t say that.” He never said “xenophobic” because I don’t think he knows what the word means. But he said it was “xenophobic”; it was horrible.

So, I made the deal. That was at the end of January. That’s very early — January.

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: Especially minorities. And especially black and Hispanic. It’s so unfair. And I said, “Why wasn’t this done before?”

Now, Obama didn’t try. If he did, he may come out and say, “We did try.” But you know, he didn’t get it done. I got it done. People said you wouldn’t be able to get it done. I got it done with the help of some very good Republicans that, frankly, they could have gone either way on it, to be honest. Although we had some very strong conservative Republicans like Mike Lee — Republicans that wanted it very much — Chuck Grassley. Some great, strong conservative Republicans that wanted it very much.

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, if that. If that. And then you have these prosecutors who were Mueller-related — the whole Mueller-related thing.

One friend said to me, “You have to be the most innocent man in the history of the United States.” I had 18 angry Democrat geniuses — all smart; smart as hell. Mueller lost it, but they were all smart as hell. All these guys were after me. They spent 45, 49, 55 — I hear all different numbers — million dollars over a period of two and a half years. And they got nothing on me.

Q It was all —

THE PRESIDENT: I think I am the probably — a friend of mine said, “You have to be the most perfect person.” Isn’t that true? (Applause.) Think of it.

{snip}

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a question for you. I appreciate so much what you have done for this country, and I know it’s been tough. What do you think is your greatest accomplishment, in your eyes?

THE PRESIDENT: So a lot of people think it’s the fact that we will have — I think, before I finish this term, we’ll have close to 300 judges — federal judges. A lot of people think — because that’s a record. That’s a number that nobody can even believe. And part of it was that President Obama was unable to get judges approved in a large number — about 142 judges. So I took it off, got them approved, and then got a lot approved beyond. So we’ll be close to 300, and 2 Supreme Court judges — great ones. And so I think a lot of people would say that.

I think one of them, though, is our military. We have Space Force, which we’ve added. After 76 years, we’ve added a new branch of the military. It’s a big deal — a very important deal because space is going to be very important. It already is.

I would say the rebuilding of the military and the taking care of our vets. We had a 91 percent, Sean, approval rating the other day — the VA. The VA was a disaster. All of my life, I’ve seen these horror stories. I don’t want to — I don’t want to really jinx it because they’ll go around and find somebody that’s unhappy. But you don’t see that anymore. And our Administrator, our Secretary has done a fantastic job. And we’re at 91 percent approval rating with the VA.

And we got Veterans Choice approved and Veterans Accountability. That’s where you can fire people that do a bad job. You couldn’t do it before. Very hard to get; they tried to get it for 50 years. Because of civil service unions, et cetera, you couldn’t, you know, get it. I got it.

And the other thing is Veterans Choice, where if they can’t see a doctor — we have great doctors at the VA. But if you can’t see a doctor, you go out, and you get a private doctor. We pay the bill. And it’s — you have no idea how great it’s been. And it’s actually — you save money, believe it or not. But you have no idea. We save lives — a tremendous number of lives. And I would say that’s an achievement.

But, you know, we’ve done a lot: the largest tax cuts ever, the largest regula- — if you look at our regulation cuts, Sean, more than any other administration in history, whether it’s eight years or, in one case, more than that, we cut regulations. And we have — we still have a lot more we’re going to be cutting over the next month and a half, two months.

So we’ve done a lot, and we’re very proud of it, and we had the best — you know, until this artificial problem — because I call it an artificial problem. We had to turn off our country to save millions of lives. And now we’ve turned it back on, and it’s coming back much faster than anybody thought possible.

So we’ve done a lot of things. But, you know, it could be judges. It could be the military.

Thank you.

{snip}

You know, we have great journalists. Look at the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer Prize is very embarrassed; it’s lost a lot of its credibility because all these writers got Pulitzer Prizes on the “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and they were all wrong.

But John Solomon and all of the people that you — that you deal with — and you, by the way — Laura, Lou Dobbs, your “Fox & Friends” people that are great — great group in the morning, including the weekends, to be honest, with Pete. But — but you have some great people.

But they got Pulitzer Prizes on “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and they were wrong. Now, the committee should meet —

Q We were right on the Deep State. They were wrong.

THE PRESIDENT: No, you were right on everything.

Q For three years — they were wrong for three years.

THE PRESIDENT: You were right on Ukraine. The Ukraine thing was a hoax. It was a pure hoax. They took a — think of it: They impeached a duly elected President of the United States on a perfect conversation.

Actually, there were two conversations. The first one was “Hello,” “Goodbye.” They don’t even talk about that. The second one was about the same thing.

They impeached a President of the United States. Now, in all fairness, the Republican Party was great, because I got 196-to-nothing Republican votes in the House. And 52 and a half to a half — Romney. Romney. Too bad. But he — half. You know, I call it 52 and a half to a half because he had two votes, and one was yes.

But we did — they were great. The Republican Party was great. They were steadfast because they knew it was a hoax. It was purely a party-line impeachment. Nothing like that has ever happened before.

{snip}

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Great to have you with us. My question for you is: With all the unrest we’ve seen across the country, and right here in the state of Wisconsin last night, in our capital city —

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: — a senator was beaten. Lady Forward was ripped off her pedestal. We lost some other statues. What steps is the administration taking to give us back our streets?

THE PRESIDENT: So, very strong. You happen to have a Democrat governor right now. If you would have had Governor Walker, that wouldn’t have happened.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: That’s right.

THE PRESIDENT: Wouldn’t have happened. (Applause.) I mean, I’m not saying it. If Scott were your governor, that would not have happened. But it did happen, and it was a shame. And the person they beat up was a Democrat who happened to be gay. And he was probably out there rooting them on or something, because Democrats think it’s wonderful that they’re destroying our country. It’s a very sick thing going on. Nobody has ever seen it.

{snip}

Q Let’s talk about a second term. If you hear, in 131 days from now, at some point in the night or early morning, “We can now project Donald J. Trump has been reelected the 45th President of the United States,” let’s talk: What’s at stake in this election as you compare and contrast? And what are your top priorities items for a second term?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, one of the things that will be really great — you know, the word “experience” is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word “experience” is a very important word. It’s in a very important meaning.

I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times. All of a sudden, I’m President of the United States. You know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our First Lady, and I say, “This is great.” But I didn’t know very many people in Washington. It wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York.

Now I know everybody. And I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes. Like, you know, an idiot like Bolton, all he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.

Q If John Bolton, in fact, released classified material, should he be prosecuted?

THE PRESIDENT: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Well, he did release classified. Actually, he had a judge said that they released the book early so he couldn’t do it. He said —

Q Yeah, he said he couldn’t stop it.

THE PRESIDENT: But he said, “This very dangerous what you’ve done for yourself. And also, any money that you made, it’s — you know, good luck.” This was very a powerful opinion that we had.

No, he’s — he’s sort of a sick guy. There’s something wrong with him. But I noticed that earlier, and he made two very bad mistakes. He made a mistake where he talked about the Libyan model. And I won’t go to explain that, but some of you understand. He was on “Deface the Nation,” and he talked about the Libyan model. I said, “That’s a disaster because you know why.”

{snip}

THE PRESIDENT: We took 100 percent of the caliphate. When I took it over, it was all over the place. It was a disaster. That’s the ISIS caliphate.

Q It won’t be on your second-term agenda to drop cargo planes of cash for mullahs in Iran? I’m just guessing.

THE PRESIDENT: Think of it: 1.8 billion in green, beautiful cash, but in cash. 1.8 billion. I think it was five planeloads of cash. Five planeloads.

{snip}

Q Mr. President, thank you for being with us. The great people of Wisconsin: 131 days — you all ready to vote? (Applause.)

Thank you for participating. That is all the time we have left this evening. As always, thank you for being with us.

END