Donald Trump addressed a crowd of more than 8,000 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, April 13, 2016.
The following segment may contain language from the audience that may be inappropriate to younger or more sensitive listeners.
This is the full, unedited recording.
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DONALD TRUMP:
Thank you, Pittsburgh. We love Pittsburgh. (audience cheers)
Thank you very much. Wow, a great crowd huh? Just beautiful, thank you. So nice, so nice.
We are going to bring back your coal industry your steel industry. We're bringing it back. Remember that, we're bringing it back, folks.
So I know Pittsburgh, have a lot of friends — Big Ben is a friend of mine, Big Ben, do we love Big Ben? A lot of friends, and I will tell you this — I asked when I came over, I said, "Give me some stats on how Pittsburgh's doing." And it's no different really than the country. The country is doing lowsy, we're losing our jobs. They're moving to other countries. They're moving to Mexico. They're moving all over the place. They fire their people, they make their product, they send it in here — no tax, no nothing. Give me a break, OK? It's not gonna happen.
There are few places in America that have been more devastated economically by our trade policies than Pittsburgh. We know that. We know what's happened. Don't worry, we're bringing it all back. Don't worry about it, OK? Don't worry.
According to the Federal Bureau of — these are just stats, I'm just getting them from the books — according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pittsburgh has lost one-third of its manufacturing jobs since 2001. One-third. (audience boos)
This happened to be, by the way, the year that China entered the World Trade Organization (audience boos) and started ripping us off.
From the Pittsburgh Business Times, United States Steel Corp said Wednesday it would be cutting about 25 percent of its non-unionized workforce, including jobs in Pittsburgh. All over the country, we're getting just devastated. Also, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pittsburgh also lost 20 percent of its construction jobs since 2007. (audience boos)
And we love the place. You know — just so you understand — I went to school in this state. We know that, right? So, I know, I know a lot about Pennsylvania and it’s great. How's Joe Paterno, we gonna bring that back? How about that whole deal?
And we do love Penn State, do we love Penn State? I mean, in all fairness? We love Penn State, but we love Pittsburgh, right? (audience cheers)
The state of Pennsylvania has lost more — listen to this one — more than 40 percent of its manufacturing. I mean when you think of it, 35 percent since 2000. So it’s lost 35 percent of its manufacturing since the year 2000. Pennsylvania, we know this, provided steel to the entire world. It'll happen again. (audience boos, cheers)
A wage-earner could support their entire family on an income in the mill, and you know that's a different thing now and now they're being laid off all over the place. And by the way, I have to tell you something, steel — we're bringing it back. And, I said it, coal — clean coal, clean coal — we're bringing it back, big league. Big league. (audience cheers)
The politicians, who are a little bit smarter than you think by the way, some are dummies, but a little bit smarter. Just so you understand, I'm self-funding my campaign. When I come here, I'm paying for it. OK? But the politicians are all taken care by their special interests. They’re all… You look at a guy like Cruz, he's in favor of TPP, TPP, lyin' Ted. Lyin' Ted. A big liar. (audience chants)
So he wants the Trans-Pacific, ya know, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is a big rip-off — that'll be another NAFTA deal that'll be disastrous for our country. And he made it impossible for us to negotiate their single greatest weapon against us, which is currency devaluation. He wouldn't let it happen, and it's no good to start off with. But without currency devaluation and their big league, it's a disaster. It'll take so many jobs from this country, from this area. We're not gonna let it happen.
You know the agreement is 5,000 pages long, many countries involved, those countries have read every single little word. They've analyzed it 15 different ways from China, and you know what? Although China's not in the deal, I have to be honest. But they will be in the deal if the deal turns out to be as good everyone's saying for those competing with us, China will come in through the backdoor and they'll be there, too. Don't worry about it. But when you look at it, think of it. They, 5,000 pages, every word by those countries, and we — I get most of the people doing it — they don't even read the documents, folks. They don't even read the documents. And in the end, I refuse to use bad language, but in the end, we will be taken advantage of. You know why? Because the United States is represented by incompetent people and/or dishonest people, and we're gonna have that practice stopped. We're gonna use our toughest, our smartest (audience cheers) and we're gonna stop it. So, it's one of the great betrayals, it really is.
This is the town of the Pittsburgh Steelers, which we love, we do love the Pittsburgh Steelers. And you're gonna have a good season coming up. We've gotta keep Ben good and healthy. You're gonna have a good season. It’s Steel City, and when I'm president, guess what? Steel is coming back to Pittsburgh and a lot of other things are coming back. So that's the way it is.
I just did Sean Hannity. We did big, beautiful show right from a little bit different location in Pittsburgh. So it's on tonight if anybody wants to watch. By the time we finish, you will have had enough. You'll go home saying, “I don't wanna watch anymore, I've had enough.” Don't watch Sean tonight, but it's a pretty good show. We just did it. We had a packed theater, it was an incredible place, and we had it packed and there's love in that room. There's tremendous love in what we're doing. This is a move… (inaudible shout from the audience) … I love you too, man. I love you.
What we have going, folks, we have a movement going. You know, I've been in upstate New York now for the last four or five days, and when you see what's happened to upstate New York in particular and different places in New York, it could make you absolutely cry. It really could. Jobs being taken, 60 percent, 70 percent of the jobs. The manufacturing, forget about it. The people are incredible. Like you, the people are incredible people, they stick with it. They wanna make it great, and they wanna make America great again, but they wanna bring it back. They wanna bring it back, and I'll tell you what, we're going to. When you see these companies, you saw recently Carrier Air Conditioner, where they fired 1,400 people like it was nothing and they're moving to Mexico. And then they're gonna make their air conditioners, they're gonna make their air conditioners. They're gonna send them over… (inaudible shout from the audience) …he says “build a wall.” You're right. We're gonna build the wall. Don't worry about it. We're gonna build the wall. (audience chants “build-that-wall”)
Are you ready? And who's gonna pay for the wall? (audience shouts “Mexico”)
One hundred percent, OK? (audience cheers) One hundred. You know, Mexico — and I have great relationships with Mexico, the Mexican people, Hispanics — thousands of them work for me, they're fantastic in Nevada. Which I won, I won the state of Nevada. They did a poll, and the poll came out where the Hispanics — “Who's most popular?” Donald Trump. People that live here legally, they love Donald Trump, because they don't want their jobs taken away. They don't want crime. They don't want the problems that are being caused in our country. We have huge problems. So we are, in fact, we're going to have a strong border. Just so you understand, 15,500 border patrol people last week endorsed me. They've never endorsed a presidential candidate before, ever. And you know they're great people. They wanna do their jobs, and they're told to stand back. We're like Swiss cheese, stand back, let everybody just walk in. Not gonna be anymore. We either have a country or we don't. If we don't have borders, we don't have a country. And people are gonna come into our country, but they're coming in legally, legally, legally. (audience cheers)
Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona, who does he endorse? Donald Trump, right? We have so many great endorsements, so many great. You know, if you just look, Sarah Palin endorsed. Jeff Sessions, Senator Jeff Sessions endorsed. So many… (inaudible shout from the audience) Michael Savage, you're right. Michael Savage endorsed.
But so many, unbelievable, Jerry Falwell Jr.'s been so incredible. Liberty University. Jerry Falwell Jr.'s been has so incredible, and when I win with the evangelicals so often, I go to South Carolina and they said, “Well, that's a Cruz stronghold." I don't think he has any strongholds. Lyin' Ted. Lyin' Ted. (audience chants “Lyin’ Ted”)
Yeah, no, the evangelicals do not like liars. You know I say, he walks in with the Bible held high, he walks in, it's lyin' Ted, Bible held high, puts it down and then he starts to lie. Remember what he did with Ben Carson, who endorsed me? A great guy, great guy. And he goes to Iowa during the election, election day, and he said, “Ben Carson is out of the race” — this is people who are voting — “So vote for lyin' Ted.” And they all believed him. And then right after the election was over, he called Ben to apologize. This is what we have representing us.
Worse than that, how about this? He's always saying “I'm the only one that can beat Donald Trump. I have proven it. I won Utah.” Now the week of Utah was the week of Arizona, which I won in a massive landslide, many more delegates right? So he goes, “I won Utah.” He doesn't say that I won Arizona and got many more delegates, but he said, “I beat Donald Trump.” So he's got 10, and I've got 21 or 22 states. But he doesn't say that. (audience cheers) Lyin' Ted.
It's an unbelievable situation. Somebody said, “What've you learned about politics and politicians?” Now, you know, all my life I've dealt with a lot of politicians and many of them are very dishonest people. I've known that for years. But — (someone shouts “Hillary”) — I have no —
Oh, Hillary? You talk about Hillary? (audience boos) She's the most dishonest of all. That's the one, that's the one, Hillary. What. They're saying that maybe, well, she can't be president for a number of reasons. She'll probably skirt by, what do you think? They're protecting her, they're protecting her. Did you see where Bernie Sanders said? Bernie Sanders, do you believe this? (audience boos) Did you see where Bernie Sanders said she's not qualified to be president? And then he sort of low-keyed that a little bit ‘cause he was getting heat, and he said, what did he say? Do you know what he said? “Bad judgement.” Got bad judgement, she does have.
First of all, she voted for the war in Iraq. She wanted to go to Libya. You know who's got Libya right now? Her baby? You know who's got Libya right now? And the oil? ISIS. (audience shouts)
And you know what our country does about it? Do we do blockades? Do we blow the hell out of it? Do we do it? No, they're making a fortune. They have some of the finest oil in the world. Nice and high, highest quality. ISIS has it. What do we do? Nothing. They do whatever they want. Remember I said, “Keep the oil?” Remember? “Keep the oil. Don't go into Iraq.” I was always against it. They went in, destabilized the Middle East, then Obama gives a certain date when we're gonna go out, takes everybody out — that's when you should've kept some there — but I always said, “Keep the oil. Keep the oil.” We didn't do it. We didn’t do it. So we left.
Now I say knock the hell out of the oil. We don't do that, because it may have an environmental impact. Can you imagine? Can you imagine General George Patton, one of the toughest guys, General George Patton, General Douglas MacArthur — Would they say “We don't wanna bomb the oil because it may have an impact on the environment?” What, what are we doing? What are we doing? So we now have Libya in play, Benghazi, all of that. That was Hillary's baby, and now what do we have? Now wha— Remember the famous phone call? Who would you want answering your phone at three in the morning? (someone shouts “Donald Trump”) She wasn't there to answer it. You're right, me. (audience cheers) I'll be there. I'll be there. I'll be there, folks.
Bad judgement, she's got bad, bad judgement. I'll tell you what, if Hillary Clinton becomes president — and we'll beat her, and we'll beat her easily — if Hillary Clinton becomes president and Ted Cruz can't beat her, first of all, I have a chance of winning New York. You win New York, you have a whole different (Trump: inaudible word) — nobody else can do that. And the numbers are incredible. If you look at New York, I think I had a 43 point lead. 43 points. And, you know, everybody knows my relationship to Pennsylvania, and I’ve been here. I used to play Cobbs Creek — does anyone know where Cobbs Creek is? Cobbs Creek? I used to play it, believe me. But everyone really knows my relationship to Pennsylvania and it's a special relationship, and we're gonna keep it going.
But here's what we have to be careful of. In Colorado right now they're picketing and going wild because the bosses and the establishment and the people that shouldn't have this power took all of the power away from the voters. So the voters never got to vote, and the voters didn't know that except when I got up and complained because they did it after I joined the race, and they figured I'd probably win Colorado. Which I would, I would win Colorado. Like my polls here, and I'll explain that. So in Colorado, they're all delegates. And we had delegates that go in, they don't take them, and then they take these others so they get the delegates without voting, the people don't vote. Here's what's happening here. So we vote, and whoever wins gets 17 delegates. But whoever doesn't win can get like 35 or whatever the difference is between. So think of it, you beat somebody badly with the people, because it's a rigged system, folks. The Republican system is a rigged system and so is Democrats' system by the way.
Because, you know, whether you like Bernie Sanders or not, I happen to think he's terrible but that's OK, but whether you like him or not, whether you like him or not, you turn on television every week: “Bernie Sanders wins, Bernie Sanders wins.” Next week, “Bernie Sanders wins.” He wins every weekend. And then you listen to the pundits, “But he can't win.'” I say, wait a minute, he's won every week for the last seven weeks, right? But he can't win, and you say what's going on? Then I say, oh, it's a rigged system. You know they have things called superdelegates, and we have a different system, which is equally rigged. And what is does is allows the bosses to pick whoever they want, and whoever they want is a guy like Romney, who's a stiff, who frankly blew the election last time. (audience boos) He blew the election, because that was an election that should've been won. Look, I backed John McCain, and that was tough, because he inherited a problem. But I backed John McCain and he lost. I backed Romney, and he lost, that one should've been won. And this time I said, “You know what, we're gonna do it ourselves.” Let's do it ourselves. We're gonna win. (audience cheers)
But you can't let the bosses take it away so I would, let's say I win the state because we're up by like 20 points — a lot — the polls just came out, and we're up by a lot. And you see these crowds, same thing with Sean Hannity for tonight. They had this theater, it was packed. He said, “I've never seen anything like it.”
This great spirit, this great movement, this is a movement like they haven't seen. People are saying they've never seen anything like this. They've never seen anything like it. Actually, a pundit who hates me, I won't use his name but maybe you saw it (inaudible shout from audience) said whether you like him or not it's the one of the great phenomenas (sic) that we've ever seen in the history of this country. I said, “Was he talking about me? I can't believe it.”
But what we've got, forget about me, what we've got is one of the great phenomenas (sic). I go to Dallas, Texas, we fill up the Maverick stadium. I go to Mobile, Alabama, 35,000 people. We have 20-25,000 people. The other night, we had 20,000 people in Albany, New York.
And the people want results. They're tired of it. They're tired. The politicians talk, and you know a lot of times I'll give a speech, I'll say how to fix a solution because nobody's gonna be better at bringing jobs back than me, nobody. Nobody's even close. (audience cheers) And I'm not going to be affected by people that gave me money because I've turned down tens of millions of dollars. I feel, like, so stupid for doing that.
My whole life I take money. Money — that's my business, right? I take! I keep taking, taking, taking! I built this incredible company. I started off, I mean, think of it. I started with a million dollar loan, I built a company that's worth more than $10 billion. More. Over a relatively short period of time, some of the greatest assets in the world, very little debt, tremendous cash flow, and I say that not to brag. I say that because that's the kind of thinking, at least for a little while, that's the kind of thinking we need in our country of $19 trillion. We're sitting on a bubble, we've gotta straighten out our country. We've gotta rebuild our military, our military is being decimated. It's being decimated. We gotta knock the hell out of ISIS. (audience cheers) We gotta knock 'em out.
We've gotta take care of our great veterans. Our veterans are not being taken properly care of and we're gonna take care of them.
We've got repeal and replace Obamacare, which we've gotta do. We will. Obamacare is a disaster. You look at your premiums, they're going up 25, 35, 45 percent. Nobody can use it, the deductible is so high, you can't use it unless you're close to death or probably dead, it's impossible. The deductibles are so high. Obamacare is a catastrophe. By the way, in '17 it's gonna implode anyway, OK? It's dead. Unless the Republicans revive it again, you know they did a budget two months ago, the Omnibus budget. It pays for the Syrians coming in. It pays for illegal immigrants coming in. It pays for Obamacare. (audience boos)
Folks, those days are over. Over. (audience cheers)
So I only say to you, you gotta go out and vote. We're gonna make this so incredible. You're gonna be so happy. You gotta go out and vote, and when you vote remember this evening. But you gotta go out and vote, and for those of you that are trying to be delegates, and a lot of times they're rejected. And I'm not blaming Pennsylvania. I'm not blaming anything. I'm just saying the system is a corrupt system. It's a rigged system. We gotta change it.
You know what, if I just accomplish that, where you can the people that you vote for — I have millions of more votes than Cruz. You know, if you add up the different primaries, millions and millions more than Kasich — he's only got one state. I mean, John, who voted for NAFTA, by the way. Anybody votes for NAFTA, it's a problem. But John, we have 32 states right now that we went through the process.
So John's one for 32, and that's his state. And had I campaigned there for two more days, you know what happened? I was winning Florida — it was Florida and Ohio. And I had to win Florida. That was a big one. And I campaigned, and what happened is they came out with a poll that I thought was a dirty poll. You know what a dirty poll is? It's a phony poll. It was done by NBC, Wall Street Journal, and I was leading by 14 points, 15 points, 18 points. I'm doing great, and then all of a sudden right before, a couple of days before, they came out with this phony poll. Wall Street Journal, remember, NBC. And I said to myself, “Wow.” I was only up like 6 points. I said, “Oh!” And they had a story: “Trump is imploding! It's over, Trump is a disaster!” This, and I'm saying, “Oh no, I'm gonna lose the state of Florida. I can't believe it. I was just up almost 20 points.”
So instead of going to Ohio for two more days, which I was all set to do, I stayed in Florida and the, the poll turned out to be wrong. And I won by 20 points. I won by a landslide. (audience cheers) And if I would've gone to Ohio for two more days, I would've won Ohio. I would've won it.
But you know, I had to stay, and we did great in Florida and we did great in Ohio, too. But I wasn't able to go, because I believed this phony, phony, dirty poll. And that's the way it is. That's the way politics is. Somebody said, “What's the difference between the tough businessmen?” Because I deal with toughest people in the world in terms of business — and we're gonna use some of those people, the smartest and the best, to negotiate our trade deals. (audience cheers) Folks, to negotiate our trade deals.
They said, “What's the difference between them and politicians?” I said, “Well, one is” — and I'm not talking about every politician, just most of them — “politicians are much more dishonest.” OK? And that doesn't mean that the business guys are honest. The business people are much tougher. They're much, much tougher. But the politicians are much more dishonest, much more deceit, many more lies. And it's a big difference, to be honest.
But the business people are much tougher. The tough ones, the top, you take the top, and they're much, much tougher. But we're gonna use those good ones. I know the best in the world. And right now we have political hacks negotiating the biggest deals in the world, which is trade deals. They're bigger than any deal you can make with companies. These are countries making deals with us, and just ripping us. They're ripping us apart.
And that's why when I come to Pittsburgh, when I go to upstate New York, no matter where I go I look at these — and you know I ask for this work from every place I go. I say, “Do me a favor. Give me a little chart of how the community is doing.”
Whether it's Pittsburgh or Albany, New York, or Rome, New York, or any place. I was in Rochester the other day, we had 15,000 people. I mean, it's unbelievable. I say, “Give me a chart” — and I have a guy that does this stuff, I don't even know where he gets it, it's all the top stuff. And he gives me like a page or two pages like some of the stuff I read you, I didn't even read you the bad stuff, I don't wanna make you depressed. (audience laughs) — but, I say, “Give me a chart, and do it quickly.” I want it.
You know, every time I go make a speech and so far — I made so many speeches — every chart is negative. There's no chart that's positive. It's like every chart. They're losing their jobs. Manufacturing's out. In your case, the steel business has been decimated. The coal business has been totally decimated. We're gonna bring it all back. OK? We’re gonna bring — I'm so good at this. I'm so good. We're gonna bring it all back. You're gonna be so happy. You’re gonna be so happy. (audience cheers)
So just a couple of things, just a couple of things, because then you'll go back home. You'll go home, and you'll watch Sean Hannity, OK? (audience cheers)
I'm saying that as the CNN camera rolls, OK? (audience laughs) Oh let me tell you, by the way folks, folks, these are the most dishonest people. These people are far worse (audience cheers) They're far worse than the politicians. (audience boos) They are far worse than the politicians, OK. It's called, the media. The media, they are the worst. (audience boos)
You know, I have to tell you, I sort of get a kick out of it, so we've won a lot of states that I wasn't supposed to win. Like we won the entire South, you know, a little thing like we won the South — Alabama, Arkansas — so many, everything. And Cruz, Lyin' Ted, was supposed to win. So we had a little mishap because of the dishonesty of the system in Colorado. And The New York Times writes an article today, like, you know, negative. And I said, “Well, why don't they mention all the states that I won?” They don't do that. They don't talk about that. They never talk about positive. If people call me like, like, for instance, “We wanna talk about a certain deal 14 years ago, the deal didn't work.” I said, “What about all these deals that worked out so great? You know, I built a fortune.” “Uh, we're not interested in them. We wanna talk about something.” And I'll say, “But wait a minute, that's been written about 97 times, and actually a lot of times by the time you really rejigger it, it turns out to be successful.
You know a really good businessman, when the economy crashes and you’re in the middle of a big job, maybe it’s a building, or a deal or a factory or something, right. The really good ones are the ones that can take a catastrophe and make it good. I’ve taken some deals that should be terrible and made ‘em better than if the economy stayed strong. And the reason you lose it is sometimes the economy, and you know, who’s going to be blamed for the economy? The politicians, maybe. But the really good ones are the ones that can take a bad condition, and you go in and you beat up the banks, and you go in, you know, the people don’t like the banks, but you know, frankly, they’re fine. But you go in and you have to make deals with the banks, you do sorts of things. But the beauty and the really best ones are you can take what, what should be a bad deal and make it a phenomenal deal and then sometimes make it better than if the economy had remained strong, it’s really a true story.
But I say, sometimes they’ll call, they say, “We want to talk about a certain deal.” I said, “Man, when was it?” “Well, it was 18 years ago.” And I say, “What about the good deals? Do you ever want —” “No, we’re not interested in them.” These are the most dishonest human beings, I’m telling you, they are the worst. So, that’s a start. That’s a start. That’s a start. Do we agree on that folks? Terrible. Terrible human beings.
So, look, here’s a story. Here’s a story. We can’t let them, and I think I’ll probably do well with the delegates. Who knows, you know, if the bosses don’t like Trump, they’re going to put their own delegates, etcetera. But you can’t let them win, you can’t, (After a protester yells), no that’s alright, let him, weak voi — he’s got a very weak voice, very weak voice. Very weak. You know, it’s, it’s funny, let me see, who is that person? Let me see, raise your hand, who are you? Are you a, are you an agitator? Let me see, who is it? Who is it? Are you the one? Your voice is very weak. (audience cheers, applauds) No, it’s so weak, look he’s leaving now. Who is he? Bye. (audience boos) He’s going home to mommy.
I actually wanted to talk to him. I actually want to. Because, you know, when you think — first of all, my rallies, you know, they give us the bad press, first of all, they never tell about how, look at this place, it’s packed, and we set it up a few days ago. They never talk about the size, when I have 25,000, 35,000, they say, “Donald Trump had a, gave a speech today and it was fine,” but that’s it. I say to my wife, I come home, I say, “Did you see the size of that crowd?” Because they always put it on because I get good ratings, so it’s always on, but they always show just my face. In fact, that’s the one thing I like about the protester. The only thing that gets those cameras to move into the audience to show how big the crowds are is protesters, because they view it as a negative, so they move the — You know, for years, I’m telling you, for the last year, I didn’t think that cameras could move, ‘cause they’re always like this. Except when there’s a protester in the back corner of the room. The camera, it looks like a pretzel it does so many turns, it’s crazy. So, I love my protesters because it’s the only way people, in fact somebody said the other night, “Man that crowd in Albany was big.” I said, “Did they actually show it?” “Yeah, there was a protester in the audience and they panned to the —” That’s the only way they show it. Otherwise they never show it. We have the biggest crowds, we have the most loyal people.
You know, a woman was on television three nights ago and the announcer, you know coming on with a negative question, said, “Let me ask you,” because I’ll tell you, honestly, I think I’m going to do fantastically with women. We’re going to bring security to the country. We’re going to bring. Look at the crowd, look at how many, women please raise your hand, how many? Look at this. They went, this was like three days ago, and they had this really negative wise guy announcer and they went up to these fantastic women. She was a woman, probably 50 years old, a fantastic person, she had 10 people behind her, friends of hers and she had a Trump sign and Trump buttons and they said, “What does it take to get you off Trump? So that you wouldn’t support? What could he do?” She said, “Stop talking right now. There is absolutely nothing he can do to get me not to vote for him.” And I said, “Aah,” it’s true. Now that’s a fear, I agree, but that’s OK. And then the women, her 10 friends behind her said, “That’s right, that’s right.” And you know what I wanted to do, I wanted to get up and I wanted to grab that television set and just kiss it, I just love those, I love, I love our people. Our people, you know, they say, first of all, I think we have the smartest people. I think we have, and in some of these demographics, we are, we are just winning by every age group. In fact, in New York, I’m leading with women, I’m leading with high education, I’m leading with low education. I’m winning in every category. We’re winning with the military, we’re winning with the vets, always. We always win with the police, our police do an incredible job, OK. Our police do an incredible job.
So folks, so when I started this, it was about borders, because I know about borders, and it was about jobs, it was about the economy, it was about all of that. It was about trade, because our trade is being taken. China, we have a trade deficit with China of $500 billion a year. Then they say, you know these people, they think they’re conservatives, OK, I’m a conservative OK, but I’m conservative on a lot of issues, more conservative than them on a lot. And free trade is fun, I like free trade. But you need smart people to have free trade, we need smart leaders, smart negotiators. And we don’t have that. We have very dumb people doing this for us folks, very dumb. So, I like free trade. I like free trade. But here’s the problem. So we have $500 billion trade deficit. Now I consider that semi-loss, OK. You know, a lot of, it’s loss. They like to say that doesn’t mean we’re losing, believe me it means we’re losing. Somebody said, “Well you have to pay more for the product if you make it here.” Because we’re going to start making Apple computers and Apple products and other products in this country, not in China. (audience cheers) So, so some genius said, “Well Donald Trump doesn’t know the product will cost –” and I said, “You know what? It might cost a little bit more, but we’re going to have a lot more jobs. We’re going to have a lot more jobs. Add the two of them together and I’ll take the second category. Because we’re going to have jobs again in our country. Because our jobs are all leaving. So, that’s the deal.” But here’s the story. So we lose $500 billion, billion, not million, billion, it’s so much, it’s inconceivable, and then they’ll say, “This is terrible. He’ll start a trade war.” Well, when we lose that kind of money, maybe we’re better off. Just don’t do business. (audience cheers, applauds)
And here’s what’s going to happen in the real world. As soon as they realize a guy like me is in there, that’s serious. A guy like me is in there, that can’t be bought off by the special interests, where I say, “Oh, OK. Uh, we’ll let China continue to rip us off,” because some of these guys own companies that do business in China that make a lot of money off our economy. Me, I’m working for you folks. That’s what I’m doing this for. (audience cheers) That’s what I’m doing this for. That’s 100 percent what I’m doing this for. You know, this country’s been great to me. This country, I don’t need this, this is not something I needed. My family always says to me, “Dad, why’d you do it? Why, why do you?” I do it because this country has been so great to me, so great to my family. And I’m going to give back and we’re going to give back the ultimate way. We’re going to give it back. We’re going to make our country so strong, so great and it’s got so much potential. You know, when I go around and I see crowds like this and I see people like this. We have phenomenal people, we can do better than anybody.
We make better products that China. The problem is China cheats. They devalue their currency. They’re not supposed to do it and they do it because we have so many other problems, they get away with it. There was a period about a year ago where they had just maxed out on currency, they had just maxed out on devaluation. Then Obama gets into this big thing with Russia and this and that, so many problems. You know what China does? They give themselves the biggest devaluation in two decades, OK, 20 years. They give themselves the biggest devaluation in many, many years. You know why? ‘Cause they figure, we’re run by stupid people, nobody’s watching. Not gonna happen anymore folks. And then the heads of China come over and we give them steak dinners, magnificent steak dinners. And they’re ripping us blind. Now, just so you understand, I do a lot of business with China. I have the largest bank in the world in one of my buildings in Manhattan, they pay me rent, a lot of rent. And it’s a massive bank, biggest in the world, it’s from China. I sell condos from tens of millions of dollars to people from China. I have the Bank of America building in San Francisco with a great partner. It’s from China, that’s how I got it, from China. I’ve made a lot of money with China. China’s great, I have no problem with China. China’s wonderful, I’m not angry at the Chinese leaders, I’m angry at our leaders for being so damn stupid.
So, so when we have a trade deficit with China of more than $500 billion. And we have a trade deficit with Japan that’s through the roof. You gotta see these cars they come pouring off the largest ships you’ve ever seen. You go to Los Angeles, the docks. And I looked at cars. It looks like a NASCAR, which by the way, the owner of NASCAR, Brian France, a great guy, endorsed me. And he is a phenomenal, phenomenal. But when I see those cars, it reminds me of NASCAR, they come pouring off those boats, it looks like they’re going 50 miles an hour, boom, boom, boom into our system. And you know what, you talk about trade and balance. They send us millions of cars, we send them practically nothing. And what do we get? And then we defend them and then it’s all wonderful. But, we gotta get paid something. We gotta get a little, I mean, we gotta do something.
Folks, we’re getting ripped by everybody. We’re getting ripped in NATO. And I don’t want to break up NATO. You know, I said, the countries that we’re giving a free ride to, 28 countries, they gotta pay up. Most of them have a lot of money, they gotta pay up. You know why they don’t pay up? Because nobody asks them to pay up. So we pay for the biggest percentage of NATO, to protect them, we pay. So I said, listen, and I said it to The New York Times and I said it to The Washington Post and then they totally print it differently than what I say. I said, “They gotta pay up,” I say NATO’s obsolete because it doesn’t cover terrorism. It was, it’s 68 years old, it’s time. And you know the funny thing about it, some experts that do nothing but study NATO, and I don’t, you know, I don’t much about NATO, but I have a lot of common sense, I mean a lot, lot, lot. Some of these experts that have been studying NATO all their lives, they said, “Huh, we never thought of that.” You know what, they’re so close. You ever do something where you’re so close to it you don’t see the forest for the trees, right? You’re so close to it. They said, “Wow, Trump said it was obsc—you know it’s obsolete, we never thought of it.” That’s all we do all day long and they’re geniuses. And then they said, “Well wait a minute, they owe us tremendous amounts of money.” Well, they do. And I don’t want them to pay currently. I want them to pay all of the money that they owe us for many years in the rears. They owe us a lot of money. We’ve been protecting them. Without them they would be a part of Russia. They would be a part of something, lots of bad things would happen. I don’t mind keeping NATO together. But people have to pay up. People have to pay up.
We defend Saudi Arabia, one of the richest countries in the world. So much money. Before the oil went down, now they’re making a fortune. But before the oil went down, they were making $1 billion a day. We defend them. They wouldn’t be there for a very long if we weren’t around. Right. Every time there’s a little problem, we start sending our beautiful planes, our beautiful ships, costs us a fortune. They don’t pay us. Oh, that’s such an easy negotiation. They have so much money. Why aren’t they paying us? And I’m not talking about protection money. I’m saying they gotta pay a fair price. Because we can’t continue to be the policemen of the world, defend all of these countries and continue to lose money. We can’t do it. We can’t do it. So I said, Japan, Japan’s a phenomenal country, I have so many friends from Japan. But I said, “They have to pay us.” So, The New York Times said, “Donald Trump wants Japan to arm.” Because you always have to be prepared to walk. It’s possible they’ll say no, in which case we’ll say, “Sorry, we can’t do it. We can’t do it.” And if they arm, they arm.
And frankly, you have the maniac in North Korea, we take care of South Korea too, we have 28,000 soldiers on the line. But you have the guy in North Korea, and he’s probably crazy, gotta be pretty smart. You know, any guys who takes over a country like that, is that young, can’t be a dummy, right? Is that right? But he takes over the cou— now they’ll say, “Donald Trump respects him.” I don’t respect him. I’m just saying he’s probably a smart guy. I mean, who goes in and takes over a country at his young age? With all these generals that are all killers, I mean you gotta give him credit. Watch, the press will say, “Donald Trump thinks he’s wonderful.” I don’t think he’s wonderful. You know, Putin said Donald Trump is a genius, so the press said he should disavow the statement that Putin — Donald, Putin said Donald Trump’s a genius. Now, you know what, he’s not gonna get me with that statement, but he said, “Donald Trump is a genius and he’s gonna be a great leader,” or something. The press and the guys I’m running against, wanted me to disavow the statement. I said, “I’m going to disavow a statement when somebody calls me a genius? I’m not disavowing anything.”
Besides that, honestly, wouldn’t it be great if we actually got along with Russia? Wouldn’t it be great? Is there anything wrong with that? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get Russia and they’ve already been doing some of it, but maybe not as much as we’d like, wouldn’t it be great if we could get Russia to be dropping bombs all over ISIS? I would not mind. It’s very expensive. Very expensive. And then you have guys like Lindsey Graham, where he gets up and starts, “We should be doing that, Russia should not be involved, we—,” I don’t mind if they, you know how expensive it is, where they spend a half-a-million-dollars a bomb. In fact, they left. Now they said, “We’ve had—,” you know why, it was probably so expensive they said, “We gotta get the hell out of here,” they just left.
But here’s the story folks, we’re gonna get smart again, we’re gonna get smart. We’re gonna get smart with our military. We’re gonna make our military so strong, so powerful that nobody’s gonna mess with us. We’re gonna go from making the worst trade deals in history, in the history of any country, to having great trade deals, where we bring jobs back, where we bring money back, where we bring factories back, where we bring your steel industry back. China is dumping steel all over the United States, OK. It’s killing you. Now, maybe we get a little lower price, but we lose all the jobs. Remember that. They never talk about the second part. We’re going to create jobs, so people can pay. We’re going to create good jobs too, real jobs. We’re going to build United State Steel back, we’re going to get these coal companies back, they’re dying, they’re dying (audience cheers). I mean, I’m going to West Virginia very soon and I look at West (audience cheers), are you from West Virginia? Oh, I love West Virginia, what a great place. I was there twice (Trump: inaudible word) I have a great friend in West Virginia, I think he’s going to run for governor, actually, going to do a good job. But I have a great friend in West Virginia, but what they’ve done to the coal mines, what they’ve done to the energy world, the energy that we have. What they’ve done to stop us from taking our energy out of the ground is incredible. So, what, and I look forward to being in West Virginia by the way, I do (audience cheers). I’ll bet you, I must poll awfully well in West Virginia, I think I do. I think I do.
So, here’s the story. We don’t win anymore. We don’t win with trade. We don’t win with our military. We can’t beat ISIS. We don’t win with anything. Our health care stinks. We don’t win with anything. Folks, we’re going to start winning again. We’re gonna win with trade. We’re going to win with our military. We’re gonna take out ISIS very strongly. We’re gonna win with our vets. We’re going to take care of our veterans. We’re going to win with education. We’re getting rid of Common Core. We’re gonna bring it local. We’re gonna win with health care. We’re gonna win with our borders. We’re gonna build a wall and Mexico’s gonna pay for the wall. It’s gonna be there. And we’re gonna start winning again, because we don’t win at all. We don’t win at all.
You look back over the last long period of time. Where have we won? We don’t win on trade. We don’t win with military. We don’t win with anything anymore. We’re going to start winning so much that you’re going to be calling me saying, “Mr. President, I was at your rally in Pittsburgh. We don’t want to win anymore. It’s too much. We can’t take it.” You know what I’m going to say? “I don’t care. We’re going to keep winning, because we’re going to make our country so strong again.”
And you’re gonna go out, and you’re gonna vote and you’re gonna remember this evening and you’re gonna say it was a great evening. But more importantly, when you vote, you’re gonna say that was most important vote that you ever cast at any time in your life, ‘cause we’re gonna bring our country back and we are going to make America great again.
Thank you very much Pittsburgh. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. (audience cheers)
