Donald Trump (01:13):
(Music).
(01:13)
[inaudible 00:00:42].
(01:13)
Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much. It's a real honor to be here with you. I got back from the Middle East where [inaudible 00:00:59] really historical [inaudible 00:01:03] tremendous progress on peace in the Middle East, which … A term that hasn't even been used in 50 years probably. And it's 3000 years we're playing with, so people thought that was something, and it really was incredible. We have tremendous friendships, and we've developed some friendships even over the last few days and it's going very well. And we got the hostages back, which was a big deal. [inaudible 00:01:43].
(01:43)
Unbelievable.
(01:44)
But [inaudible 00:01:44] other things are happening. Even today, things are happening that are very positive. Everyone wants to see it happen. Countries that didn't get along with each other are now seemingly in love with each other.
(01:54)
Now the Middle East hasn't changed perhaps, but the deal will still be there. I think it's going to be something to remember. We've settled now eight wars, if you think. We've settled now eight.
(02:04)
Now we have another one left. One of the easier ones I thought was going to be Russia. I thought the Russia and Ukraine would be easy. It would've never happened, it should have never happened. But a lot of people are being killed in that war. That was … It's the bloodiest war since the second world war. I think that we'll get that one too. We'll stop it.
(02:29)
You know, it's not from the US these soldiers that are dying all over the place. 7,212, they say last week. Yeah, 7,212 soldiers. For no reason. Should have never happened. If the right person were here, it wouldn't have happened. I can guarantee you that. But it did happen, and we've made some good progress.
(02:51)
We've interestingly made a lot of progress today because of what took place in the Middle East. Only the deep thinking business people would understand that, of which we have a lot of them. We have a lot of legends in the room tonight. And that's why we're here, to celebrate you because you've given tremendous amounts of money to see a ballroom built for the first time at the White House.
(03:15)
The White House, for 150 years plus, they've wanted to have a ballroom, and it never happened because they've never had a real estate person. For me, I like it. For me, it's like … I love it. In between China and Russia and everything else that we deal with, it's going to be a great ballroom. Going to be a great ballroom.
(03:38)
As an example, this has really been the ballroom for many years, and it holds a hundred people, of which we have 125 today, I think. But you know, we have 128 and I've never seen it with 128.
(03:51)
And by the way, you're going to have a little good entertainment from the military band right after this. You'll see some really talented musicians. They're going to do a few songs and you're going to love them. They're very talented people.
(04:03)
So for years they've wanted to have it. And when they have the head of China, the head of any country, many, many of the countries came, they'd always put the tent out on the lawn. And if it was not raining, you'd get away with it a little bit, but it's still a tent. And the biggest [inaudible 00:04:26] not only political, but in many other ways too, and so I always said that if I pull it off again, we are going to build the ballroom and I'm going to start right at the beginning. And we had it designed by one of the top architects in Washington who's very, very respected and … Very, very respected actually. And we started the process and we have it concluded, and it's actually starting right behind us.
(04:53)
And if you look, this is really a knockout panel. Should I show you? I guess maybe [inaudible 00:05:00] so you can see, you know?
(05:03)
So we don't really want you to walk on there, but you can take a look if you want. [inaudible 00:05:09] there it is. Because we took out all the strength from underneath. We'll collapse that over the next few days. It's going to be demolished. Everything out there is coming down and we're replacing it with one of the most beautiful ballrooms that you've ever seen.
(05:24)
And you have some pictures and basically it's right here. Here's your White House, here's the West Wing; and here's the east side, which has been tinkered with for years and years and years. And they had originally a very beautiful building, they called it the East Wing, but that was sort of semi knocked down about five times and changed and redone. Everything else was originally done by McKim, Mead & White, you know? So that came down and mostly it's taken down already, and we've started excavation.
(05:59)
I'm very good at building things on time, on budget, and I can tell you, you're not going to see like the fed where they're up to $4 billion or something to paint some walls. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen. This guy, he's too late. He should have been too late with that one. Not done it. It would've … It didn't need to be done. He could have painted the ceilings. They ripped down a gorgeous ceiling like this, and then they said, "Oh, we have a problem. Now we have to put one up. How do you do a ceiling like this?" And they're way over budget.
(06:26)
They decided they wanted to do a basement, but unfortunately the basement is right next to you and you're right next to the Potomac. And when we went down, they should have stopped immediately, because they should have known, but they have a little thing called the Potomac River where the basement is. But they said, "We're going to get it done anyway." So you build what's called the reverse bathtub. And it's not that uncommon, but it is actually a reverse ceiling.
(06:51)
The problem is nature always wins. I know a lot about reverse bathtubs. I've done it. And it's something you only do in an emergency. There was no reason to do it there. They could have actually … If you think about it, they could have added three floors on top, but it would've cost about $2 billion less. So they ended up in this disaster of building a basement in the Potomac River and keeping the water out. It's very hard to do as you're pouring your concrete, which has to be dry, and it's been a disaster.
(07:20)
And this is the same guy that keeps your interest rates too high. We should be much lower in interest. We're doing so well, but we would've been as good as that or even better.
(07:31)
I don't think it's affected us much. You can't. We have an all-time high stock market. Everybody in this room is extremely happy with Trump. If you weren't, I would've postponed it. I would've said, "Let's do it some other time." But the stock market hits records almost all the time. Every once in a while we'll have a little situation come up that drives it down, but it comes right back.
(07:54)
We're doing really well in trade. We're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars on the tariffs. The tariffs are making this country so rich, and they're making it powerful. We stopped a lot of these wars using trade. We had …
(08:08)
As an example, India and Pakistan were going at it really hard. Seven planes were shot down. It was going to happen. Bad things were happening. And I was talking to both of them about trade, and I said, "How are we doing with those two?" "Sir, we're doing very well." I went, "Great. Well, we're not going to do well. We're not going to do a trade deal unless they stop the war."
(08:27)
And I got them on the phone and I said, "Listen, we're going to put a 200 percent tariff on your country for any product you sell into the United States unless you stop this war, because I'm not going to be a party to it." You have two nuclear nations, by the way. "No, no, no. You can't do that." I say, "I can do that. Very easily I can. We're not going to lose millions of people from the planet." And frankly, that dust can blow over here too. It affects everything. It's a powerful, powerful weapon. Too powerful. So powerful you don't want to talk about it.
(09:01)
So they said, "No, no." And I said, "Yes, yes. And here's the story. If you're going to go and do it, we're cutting off all negotiations. There'll be no trade with the United States of America." Both nations, spoke to them both. I like both the leaders, I like them both a lot. But I said, "That's the way it is."
(09:19)
And I get a call the next day, "We have decided to de-escalate." I said, "I thought you would actually." "We have decided that we will not fight." I said, " Have you come to a conclusion?" "Yes, we're not going to do any more of this stuff."
(09:33)
It's just like that. This could have been a nuclear war. Probably would've been. In fact, the Prime Minister of Pakistan came and saw me and he was emotional about it. And in front of a group of people, he said, "This man saved 3 million, 5 million, maybe an untold number of lives." And it was just recently that this happened, so …
(09:55)
And we did numerous of them like that, and part of the reason we did it was
Donald Trump (10:00):
…this trade. I think of the eight, I would say five were because of trade, the power of trade, but the power of tariffs. Tariffs have made us a very kind nation, because a lot of people aren't dying. I use it for purposes of stopping wars. I love stopping wars. And sort of interesting, I'll be the only president… I don't think any president has stopped one war. I stopped eight wars in eight months. Did I get a Nobel Prize? No. Could you believe it? Even I said, "Man, that's an impossible one," but it's all right. I suspect they think next year will be better, but I don't know. I don't think. You know what I care about? I saved maybe hundreds of millions of lives, but certainly I saved [inaudible 00:10:52].
(10:44)
So, now we'll get back to the point on hand. And you're really here because you've contributed to this incredible building that people have wanted for so many years. And we show another building, it's an Ark. It's the Ark. So, that circle, that's Arlington Memorial Bridge, as you know. That's the most important one, a very important structure. And at the end of it, you have a circle that was built 150 years ago. Nobody knows really when. And in fact, they put a couple of columns on each side. So, you have two columns on one side, two columns on the other. But yet, in the middle, just a circle. And everyone in the past has said, "Something was supposed to be built there," and that's true. But a thing called the Civil War interfered. That's a good reason. I would say that would be a good reason, the great hight promo.
(11:43)
The Civil War, if you said you're having a war, I think they have a good reason not to build. Again, they were building the Washington Monument, then they stopped. And you could see where they stopped, because the stone is a little different color when you get up to the middle. But anyway, they stopped here. And then in 1902, they were going to put a statue of Robert E. Lee up. Would've been okay with me. A lot of people wouldn't have liked it. Would've been okay with me. It would've been okay with a lot of the people in this room, but they didn't do that. And so, for years and years it sat. And every time somebody rides over that beautiful bridge going right to the Lincoln Memorial, it's so beautiful.
(12:22)
They literally say, "Something's supposed to be here." And so, we have versions of it, sizes of it. And it's going to be really beautiful. I think it's going to be fantastic. There's a rendering of what it will look like. You have three sizes. That would be the largest one. This is just a model of what it would look like in either of the three, any of the three sizes, which is right here. I don't know if you can see it. That's Lady Liberty. Did you ever hear of Lady Liberty? On top? So, the sizes would be very different. And it is lengthy. And this is [inaudible 00:13:09]. They did this. They didn't do that. So, this would be small, medium, and large. [inaudible 00:13:22] whichever one to look good. I happen to think the large ones. Why are you shocked to hear that? So, we're going to just do something for the city, because we're so proud of what we've done with crime. This is a very safe city now. This went from a very unsafe city where you were afraid to go out to dinner to a city that's extremely safe. The people that we have working on this, it's been a miracle almost. It took 12 days. We took out 1,700 people, brought them back to their countries from where they came. Many of them were led in through the Biden open border. Brilliant thing where they let people in from jails, from prisons, and mental institutions, insane asylum. That's a mental institution on steroids. And I mean, they were literally emptying out insane asylums into our country. This is Venezuela, but other countries also, not only Venezuela. And speaking of Venezuela, we have a lot of drugs.
(14:21)
We had a lot of drugs coming in by water and that stopped. In fact, nobody wants to go fishing anymore. Nobody wants to do anywhere, anything near the water. They might have a beautiful boat and they might as well get rid of their boat, because they're very nervous about going on the water. It's been amazing. So, now, we were having literally a subway train of people and drugs coming in [inaudible 00:14:50]. A lot of them coming from Venezuela. A lot of them come from Mexico and Colombia in general, all fairness. But we wanted to knock out one track. And I can tell you, we cannot find anybody anymore. We're looking down there, looking down there. There's not a boat on the entire ocean that we can see outside of the ocean line. Is it even there? I'm a little bit concerned about [inaudible 00:15:12]. But it shows you the power, and the strength, and the technology of our great military.
(15:21)
I rebuilt the military in my first term. We had a great first term. We have the best economy ever. We had a rebuilding of the military. We had the big tax cuts and the wonderful… all of the assets of the tax cuts, including the one-year depreciation. You write it off in one year. Now we have better under the Great Big Beautiful Bill, because we have no tips for… Think of this, you have no tax on tips and you have no tax on Social Security you have for your workers. You have no tax on overtime. It's really, I would say a middle-of-the-road bill from the standpoint of who is it representing. It's the workers. It's the biggest bill ever passed in the history of Congress. And I'm glad we did, because we don't need any more bills. We have everything in that one.
(16:08)
Plus, we have the deductibility every single year for 10 years. The other one had it for one year. You had a rush. This year and this time you don't. Actually, I was in favor of Russia, because that's awfully good for elections, but it's not about elections. It's awfully good. So, you have deductibility, you have so many different things. We have great social programs. $50 billion going to rural hospitals. So, the Great Big Beautiful Bill, and we got it all in one. I was very happy, because we had little arguments about that. A lot of people wanted to do it in small chunks. I said, if you do it in small chunks, we'll never get it approved. You'll get some approved, but not all of it. And not even close. You get much less. I would say less than 30%. So, they've never done this before. But every single thing that I wanted for four years, in one bill, and we call it… Some people call it different.
(16:56)
I call it the Great Big Beautiful Bill, because that's what it is. And this will keep us… What we want to manage it now, we're going to manage it. All you have to do is that, but we got it all approved. And one of the things I thought, though, while I do, because it's so relaxing for me, real estate is relaxing. For a lot of people, real estate is a very trying business. I've always liked it. I've always done well with it. I love building things. And this way I can build some beautiful things. And this, again, has never been built. And we're going to start that pretty soon. It's going to be great. And then the ballroom for the White House is the thing that you people have really, really been very generous with. And we're going to build a room that's going to be able to hold literally the inauguration, if we want.
(17:44)
All of the glass on the sides is bulletproof. It's 999 people it can hold. So, if we figure we have 125 people in here approximately now, which I've never seen before. I've always heard it's less than 100. But it's amazing when you have too many people, you can fit them in. You can always fit a few more people in and pardon the fact that you're a little tight at your table. That's okay. That's better than lots of room for everybody, because nobody shows up. But you've been so generous in your contributions, very substantial money, fully financed. It's fully taken care of now. And in fact, we'll have money left over and we'll use that for something. We'll use that probably maybe for the Ark or something else that will come. But we love to fix up Washington. If you went to the Oval Office, you'd see the Presidential Walk of Fame. And you've heard about it.
(18:38)
And with the exception of one particular picture, there's no controversy. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. It's this beautiful long wall that existed for… It's just literally a wall with half windows on top. And that was originally built as a swimming pool. Now it's where the press is on the other side of the wall. And it's very interesting. All these people over here with all their cameras, although they've been very respectful, I'll tell you what, they've been very respectful for what's taken place over the last week. So, I want to thank you. This is just a small little group. They have a big group downstairs.
(19:18)
They have a lot of reporters downstairs wanting to be where they are. I don't know. I guess, are you special? This is Doug. He won the highest awards there is in photography, including Pulitzer Prizes. He won many Pulitzer Prizes for his great work. One that I wasn't so happy with. He had one with a bullet moving along. He caught the bullet. Can you believe this? He got another Pulitzer. But anyway, it's great to have you, gentlemen. It's really good. They have a whole group down… It's a big group downstairs. I didn't think you'd like to have that up here, because some of them are sort of violent towards some of you, but not bad. So,
Donald Trump (20:00):
So we did a design that is being just lauded for the ballroom, showed it to the top people. One of the things that I like the most, I came in and I said to the people in the building, so I said, "If I make it back, I want to build a ballroom for the country, really. Because this is really, they call it the people's house, it's the country's house. I want to build a ballroom. It needs it badly. And a ballroom that could seat six or 700 people, so that when you have state dinners… Or more, if it's possible." And I said, "How long would the process take?" Because I'm so used to zoning, and I've gotten a lot of zoning over the years to these two guys, these two geniuses, like movie stars. And they have a good brain, besides. It's pretty nice to have you guys both with us.
(20:55)
I said, "How long would it take?" They said, "Sir, you can start tonight." I said, "What are you talking about? You have zero zoning conditions, you're the president of…" I said, "You've got to be kidding. You mean I can actually do something that I really want?" Because I'm used to sitting with heads of community boards and politicians. And it's fine, it's part of the beauty, if you want to call it that. Or sometimes it's not so beautiful. Being a real estate developer, especially in New York, it takes you years and years and it's heartache. And they say, "Well, sir, we'd like you to cut off 40 stories." I had one where I headed, 67 stories was approved, and we go to the end and I get an emergency phone call from the head of the board, "Certainly we see you."
(21:38)
They come in, "Sir, we're going to really not be able to approve it. We want you to cut off 42 stories. Cut off." In other words, I'm going to lose 42 stories. I said, "There's no way you're doing it." So we fought it out for two years. You end up getting what you want, but it's a brutal process. Saw over here, I said, "How long will it take me, sir? You can start tonight. You have no approvals." I said, "You've got to be kidding." He said, "Sir, this is The White House. You're the President of the United States. You can do anything you want."
(22:05)
So with that came great responsibility and we did something that was really appropriate to The White House. We didn't want to dwarf anything. We didn't want to make it so that it's inappropriate. And I was watching them very carefully and that's what we did. And so, we're going to have a phenomenal ballroom, it's going to be one of the best anywhere in the world. There won't be anything like it, actually. And it's four sides of glass, beautiful glass, but totally appropriate in color and in window shape and everything else with The White House moldings. So it's going to be very much in keeping with The White House.
(22:44)
A new thing is you build a super modern building next to an old-fashioned building. And I think that's good, but I don't have the courage to do that with The White House. It's good for a lot of places, it's not good for here. So everything is very much in keeping. And we'll be able to have state dinners. We would literally not even have state dinners, because it's not set up. But for all those years they wanted it and now they're going to get it. And because of you, they're going to get it. And me too, we're all in this together. And I mean, I have so many friends and so many of you have been really, really generous. I mean, a couple of you, sitting here and saying, "Sir, would $25 million be appropriate?" I said, "I'll take it." It doesn't take too many 25s to get it done.
(23:27)
But a lot of you have been really fantastic. I thank you very much. You were great. You were great [inaudible 00:23:35]. And they just felt it was something that's really good. It's the preservation of something, there's nothing like it. To me, there's nothing like The White House. Even after I won the first night, I went up and I'm standing in the residential hallway with Melania, where I'm looking into the Lincoln bedroom, that was a surreal experience, I'm saying, "Do you believe this? We're in The White House and that's the Lincoln bedroom." And it takes a while to get used… I'm still not probably really used to it. It's just a special place. What can I say? So we have to take care of it.
(24:14)
And we have little things, like at the Lincoln bedroom, the bathroom was done by the Truman family a long time ago, and it's done in a green tile and it's done in a style that was not exactly Abe Lincoln, it's a style that's not good. It's actually art deco, and art deco doesn't go with 1850 and civil wars and all of the problem. But what does do is statuary marble. So I ripped it apart and we built a bathroom. It's absolutely gorgeous and totally in keeping with that time, because the Lincoln bedroom is so incredible. For those of you that have seen it, we have so many different… Downstairs we have the palm room and they had one by one tiles that were put there probably 20 years ago by somebody, and they were broken and bad. It's embarrassing. And I took it out and we did a magnificent book matched statuary marble floor. We fixed the room and we put up the proper lighting and chandeliers and it looks… When people walk up, they can't believe how beautiful it is.
(25:25)
And so, we like to fix it up and it's a little bit of my heritage, fix up and clean up and make it nice. And we're doing that with The White House. So the largest room in The White House was the East Room. That's this room right here, by far. And it currently holds, let's say, as we said, 100. And for this reason, during major functions and events, administrations going back many, many decades were forced to severely limit the number of events they had and certainly limit the number of people. And they had some catastrophic events. Some of the biggest events were a tent being built on the lawn and the rain started. And for some reason, every time they put up a tent here, it rains, and that's not good. And they tended to use a lower level, which is, they have pretty big land here, but they used a lower level where the rain would just seep into the ballroom and it wasn't pretty.
(26:18)
When you're sitting down having dinner, talking about, "Hello, President Xi, how have you been? And hello, Emmanuel from France," and all the different people that we've had here. And you've got about four inches of water. Literally it's going over your shoes and you're trying to pretend that it's not happening, but it's happening. So we won't have that stuff anymore and it'll be great. We really need it. The United States is the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, and American presidents need to be able to host events at The White House that reflect the demands of the time and that can carry out the prestige of what we're all doing.
(26:57)
I mean, we are a country that a year ago was dead. We were a dead country a year ago, as many of you know, and today we're the hottest country anywhere in the world by far. Everybody admits it. King of Saudi Arabia told me that. You've heard me say it, but Qatar, UAE, the European Union came in, every country, they said, "It's unbelievable what has happened with the United States. We're hot." And I'll tell you why. Had this other group of lunatics been elected, this country, I think you would've actually failed.
(27:32)
So we went from being a country that was dead, a country that was really in trouble, open borders, everything they did wrong, men and women's sports, transgender for everybody. Every single thing they did was wrong. Just go the opposite and you couldn't miss. And we had an election that was a landslide. It was so big. We won the popular vote by a lot. We won all seven swing states or seven swing states, as you know. And if you win three or four, you do great. But to win seven, it's very rare that you see that happen. We won all seven.
(28:06)
We won the electoral college by a lot. We were 312. Remember, they said, "Well, I don't know if he can get above 250." No, we didn't, we got 312 and it was great. We beat them by a lot. But we have another where you would call it districts, or you would call it… There's a map split up, beautifully split up in tiny little quadrants and they call them districts, they call them just areas, and we were 2,750 to 525. That's why when you look at a map of the election, it was all red with two blue stripes down on one end and the other. And even them, I worry about, because I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I think we did great there.
(28:50)
And so, we've had an amazing time. It's the most powerful nation on earth now. You see that. You see the weapons, we have the greatest weapons, the greatest manufacturer of weapons. Some of you are in that world and some of you, yeah, the greatest in the world. We have the greatest in the world. I wish we could make them faster. If you want to know the truth, everybody, all of our allies want them and they want them as quick as they can. And the American presidents need to be able to showcase our country.
(29:22)
So we'll begin the historic, really historic effort to add the, we'll call presidential ballroom that'll expand the space for… Tens of thousands of people will be able to come during the course of a year, if you add it all up, and have the kind of space that you need. It's very exciting. To me, it's exciting as a person in real estate, because you'll never get a location like this again. Even contracts, I give out the contracts myself. Can you believe it? And we just gave out the excavation contract, and I guess he was in for 3.2 million. I said, "Can you do it for 1.5?
Donald Trump (30:00):
"Now, I can't do that, sir." I can't. I said, "This is once in a lifetime. This is the excavation of the White House grounds for what will be one of the best, most beautiful ballrooms in the world." "Sir, I can't, I can't." But I got them down to two million so it's not terrible. So we got to…
(30:18)
And so many people were so great. Carrier, it's a great company, air conditioning. He called, he said, "Sir, we'd like to donate the air conditioning." I said, "That's a beautiful thing. I appreciate that," donating it to the… Not giving it to me, giving it to the country, he donated the air conditioning. A steel company, a great steel company, a great man actually, he said, "Sir, I'd like to donate the steel for your ballroom." I said, "Well that's nice." And I found out, how much is the steel? I called the contractor, "Sir, it's down for 37 million."
(30:56)
I said, "This is a nice donation, right?" He wants the steel and he wants to make it great steel as opposed to garbage steel because they dump a lot of garbage around. Steel is like everything else, including human beings, steel could be high quality and it can be low quality. He wants to make sure it's high quality. And so many different people are donating services and they're donating products to the ballroom. It's amazing. If we keep going like this, I may be able to build it for nothing, we'll get it built for nothing. But we're going to be projecting a cost that's going to be, we're going to come in under budget. We started with a much smaller building and then I realized, I mean we have the land, let's do it right, and so we built a larger building that can really hold just about any function that we want.
(31:45)
It'll be done with really exquisite taste, the finest designers, and I consider myself an important designer, because they come in with things that, they may be good designers, but boy, the things they can recommend are horrible. And we wanted classic, the utmost respect for the historic beauty and grandeur of one of the most iconic buildings anywhere in the world. I mean, you go to the White House and you see that picture, when you ride up in the drive like tonight, probably some of you realize, you drive up that drive and you're looking at that building all lit up and gorgeous and perfect. And we take good care of it too. It wasn't taking good care of. The Oval Office is now at a level that it's never seen before. We take really great care of it. They weren't taking good care of it for four years, I'll tell you that.
(32:28)
This addition will be completed in the classical style that complements everything else around it, including the Treasury Department, which is right next to it. We have been working very closely with the incredible people of the National Park Service, they really are, they love this place, they're very proud of it, the architects, historians and everyone else and many others to ensure that the project will be beloved and loved for years to come, for such years to come. It's going to be up for a long time, I hope. To the cherished White House staff and everyone else that worked so hard, I want to thank you very much. And it's from James Monroe who added the South Portico, I don't know if you know that, South Portico, to Andrew Jackson who added the North Portico to Theodore Roosevelt who added the West Wing. Did you know that? Theodore Roosevelt, a long time ago. And Harry Truman, who added the Truman Balcony, he wanted the Truman Balcony, that's right up here. So you have the balcony off the residential. Chief executives throughout the history have contributed to making the White House special and nothing of this magnitude has been done. But the really big recent renovation was the West Wing and the Oval Office. And that's pretty major in terms of what it stands for. It's actually not big, but it's really big in another way. It's the biggest, I would say, in another way. And that was around 1900, so that's a long time ago. That's a long time ago. And this is going to be something that's going to make you all very proud.
(34:09)
So now we have the presidential ballroom, we're ensuring that the people's house will continue to serve the American people properly and we can have all the people in the world come and they'll say, boy, what a place that is. But I want to thank and just leave it by thanking everybody in this room. You've been unbelievable. Some of you have been just incredible. You really felt it was very important to do this and it happened so quickly.
(34:34)
I mean, I thought I'd have this dinner in a year from now, a year and a half from now, and we have it already because it's fully taken care of. And I just want to thank you all. You're very special people, really. But somehow the ballroom at the White House, it really hit a nerve with a lot of people. They wanted it. You love the country. This country has spirit again, this country didn't have a lot of spirit two years ago, three years ago, four years ago. It developed spirit on November 5th where a lot of you were with me. Some of you weren't, but you quickly became with me. It's amazing the way a victory can change the minds of some people. But most of you were with me.
(35:14)
And Pepe, you were fantastic. He's got a little sugar business. He has a monopoly on the world's sugar. I would say that's a good business. I know nothing about sugar, but I would say a monopoly on sugar is pretty good, Pepe. Thank you both very much. Thank you darling for being, well, thank you both for… Yeah, that's right. He ends up with good real estate. It starts off as sugar, then all of a sudden he's in the middle of a city and he ends up… But he's been great and a supporter right from the beginning for years. And I see you sitting out there and I appreciate it and so many others.
(35:45)
So I just want to say thank you all. Simply behind me so is a knockout panel. This panel, the next time you come here will be opened up and gone. No problem with any of the surrounding areas. This room will be fixed. This will be like a cocktail, the whole floor will be cocktails or pre-briefings or whatever it may be. Lots of different things. So you come in, the entire floor sets up, we didn't have to do any of that. Usually you have to do that. You need different rooms to go along with the ballroom. They're already built and they're built better than anybody would ever build because this is beautiful stuff. It doesn't get better. So we have this one, we have another one similar on the other side. And then we have various meeting rooms and rooms in between that are served for different dinners for different people. And all of this is utilized just the way it is. It'll be enhanced. It'll be even more beautiful, and really brought into the future a little bit from the standpoint of life and lifespan.
(36:52)
So this will be your area, and then you get the bell, bing, bing, bing, and you walk into the ballroom and you'll have close to a thousand seats if you need them or much less. We have separating panels, so it could be less or it could be actually even more than that. So I think it'll be something you'll be very proud of. And what we're going to do is when we open up, you'll be among the first groups, maybe the first group if I still like you at that time, which I'm sure I will, but you'll be here and we'll be here, and you're going to be very happy. You're going to be very impressed when we get it done. So I want to thank everybody very much and it's so many friends in the audience. And I just want to thank you all. You're very special people. You love the country, you love the White House and what you've done is very important. And we'll have a little dinner and we'll ask the press to now go home to your wives, family. Say hello to them. If I don't like you, don't even bother. But you've been great. Thank you very much. And Doug, thank you very much and congratulations on a great career. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much.