Ghosting for Donald Trump

Anyway. So a great win in Indiana. And I’m going to be the GOP nominee. But I want to be the president, not just a nominee. I don’t like second place. I want to win. To make America great again. Better, in fact, than ever before. To do that I need three things, three things I’m going to lay out right now. So you press people, keep rolling. The biggest news is at the end.

First, I need all of you who have worked so hard, I need you to keep working and, and, this is important, you have to stop beating up on the people we beat. We are winners. Act like it. Seriously, good coaches say — and I have great coaches, coaches like Bobby Knight and Lou Holtz, the best coaches — great coaches tell their players, when you score a touchdown, act like you have been there before. That’s what we all need to do. Lay off with the craziness ok? Really. It’s ugly and we don’t need it and it isn’t me or my family. You want to hate people? Join Hillary’s campaign. I’m a uniter, not a hater.

All along people wanted me to do a “Sister Souljah moment” — remember that? Bill Clinton — oh, are we going to have fun with “crooked Bill and crooked Hill” — but Bill Clinton once brought the hammer down on one of his craziest supporters, a singer, with lyrics about going after the police.

Well, he did one good thing, I guess. Anyway — and how about our police, I’m going to get a hundred thousand police behind me because I’m behind them. Maybe not their unions. Maybe their unions, I don’t know, I get along with unions. Anyway, this crazy singer was attacking the cops and crooked Bill hammered her. And since last August media…don’t you hate those people, see ’em back there, waiting for me to make a mistake and jump on it?… media people have wanted me to attack my supporters. The crazy ones, the media says. “You have white supremacists, you have Nazis, you have gangsters,” they said.

Look. Every candidate has people hanging on they don’t want and absolutely despise. I can’t spend all my time shedding the stuff that clings to the bottom of my boat. But let me be clear. I don’t want haters. I don’t want you racist lowlifes trying to sabotage me. That clear enough for you media? They are not my people and you can’t make them my people. I don’t want them. I never have. Many of them are plants but you never look that up.

Now Bill Ayers and all the terrorists from the ’60s, they are Obama’s people. They are Hillary’s people. Ask Hillary about them, would you? And every time you play Jake Tapper asking me about David Duke, every time you play me and Tapper, you should play crooked Bill saying “I did not have sex with that woman.” That’s equal time. You play that gotcha game with me, every time, every single time, I’m going to come out here and talk about crooked Hillary saying she was broke when they left the White House, and Bill saying he didn’t know Monica. Every time. I don’t play by your rules. I make the rules. I know you are going to do your best to elect your pal, crooked Hillary. But I know how to fight back. I know how to beat her and I know how to beat you.

So that’s number one. If you are my supporter you lay off the people I beat. Win with class. We won. It was tough. I had to be tough. I had to brand people and it was tough. Low energy Jeb, little Marco, lyin’ Ted — just branding. Take a flaw, amplify it, repeat it, that’s what great sellers do. I’m a great seller. OK. Maybe the best ever. So I took their flaws, defined them by those flaws, and beat them.

But I don’t need to keep beating them. They are done. They are out. That was yesterday. Part of the process. And you know, it was hard. Many good people. Jeb, Marco, Ted, all good people. But not the president we need right now. But do you hear that, supporters? Good people. Lay off of them. Lay off all the GOP. We need them to win. We will need them to govern. Ok. This is about winning and making America great again. So get with it or get going.

Number two. I need the party to come together—now. Right now. It was a fair fight. I took on what, 15, 16 people and beat them all. I’m going to name a VP today, at the end of this speech in fact. That’ll keep the cameras going, right? I haven’t talked to this person yet. Don’t know if this person is going to say yes or no. But I am going to ask this person to be my vice president. And I hope that helps bring us together. And here’s another thing. I swear, I solemnly swear to you, that my first nominee to the United States Supreme Court is going to be Senator Mike Lee. For Justice Scalia’s seat. I solemnly swear to you my second nominee when another seat comes up is going to be Judge David Pryor. My third is going to be Judge Diane Sykes. This won’t change unless somebody gets sick. My fourth is going to be a judge down in Texas, on the Supreme Court down there, Justice Don Willett. Big on Twitter. Funny guy. Great guy. I started seeing these Tweets. Great stuff. Big on the Constitution. Funny. So I had my people check him out. Turns out this Justice Willett loves the Constitution. That’s number four. Lee, Pryor, Sykes, Willett. Those are my first four Supreme Court justice nominations. So to the conservatives, is that worth fighting for? I think so.

And I’m going to find the best men and women to recommend other federal judges to me. Maybe Mark Levin. Maybe this professor, John Eastman, that guy. I’ll get a third. I don’t know if Judge Edith Jones can recommend to me. She should have been on the Supreme Court, not David Souter. I’m not going to make that mistake. I’m getting the best people, the best people to find the best judges, The Federalist Society, the people who think about this stuff a lot, a lot —like all the time— and they are going to say “President Trump, here is who you need here, here and here. And I’m going to take their advice. I mean, we will check them out, the FBI and the whole thing, but if they pass, on they go.

And if Chuck Schumer gets in my way I’ll break him and the filibuster. I’ll talk to Mitch McConnell and we will break it like Harry Reid did. The Court is going back to being a court, not a congress in robes. So look, that’s a glimpse of why the GOP needs to come together behind me —saving the Supreme Court from crooked Hillary.

One more thing. Lindsey Graham. He hates me right? Hates me. Said we’d get destroyed if I was nominated. I don’t care that he said that. He wanted his guys to win. He was trying to win. And I understand that. Graham knows the military. Here’s the thing about business and building huge tall skyscrapers. You don’t care if someone hates you if they make the best windows. You hire them anyway. So I’m going to say “Lindsey, come and work with me. Go to Defense, be my Secretary of Defense, but there are two conditions.

First, I want a plan in one month on how we get to 350 ships in the Navy in eight years built around 12 carriers. And I mean real carriers, not carriers on paper. I want four at sea at all times, four getting ready to deploy out to replace them and four getting major repairs with a couple more on the drawing boards. And I want a new nuclear sub —one of the boomers, with nuclear missiles, to replace the Ohio Class subs— in the water, in the water or under the water, you know what I mean, by the time I leave in eight years. Full speed ahead, Lindsey.

I’m a builder and you are going to get these built for me, for us, for the country. And, two, get me a plan on killing off ISIS once and for all. And putting the fence up around Iran and North Korea. I guess that’s three. Not a real fence like the one on the border. You know what I mean. But we are done with getting walked on. And everyone is paying their fair share. We are bringing order back to the world and the good guys are going to work together on this.

That’s what I’m going to say to Lindsey Graham and if he says yes, great. And if he says no, I’ll find another smart secretary of defense who will take those bottom line goals and implement them.

So to the Republican hand-wringers: There you have it, that and my vice president. If that’s not enough then you don’t really care about this country. I’ll fill out the cabinet when I accept the nomination in Cleveland. I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do and then I’ll do it and you’ll know with whom I’ll do it. That’s why I’m here today. That’s what I did throughout this campaign. And I’m not stopping. We are bringing America back and Republicans need to get on board. You got whipped but the fight is over and I need you and you need me. I’m going to campaign by the way for every Republican senator because we can’t let Chuck Schumer run the Senate. I know him. I have given him money, a lot of money. A lot. He does anything anyone who gives him money asks him to do. He is the the most corrupt guy of them all. Crooked Hillary and corrupt Chuck. Look it up. I have had lots of meetings with Chuck Schumer. Always the asking for money stuff. Well, I’ll knock him over if he gets in the way.

I won’t be knocking over Speaker Ryan. Good man. Tough man. Very principled. Not sure he likes me too much. Certainly his pal Mitt doesn’t but that’s ok. He has his job to do. It’s in the Constitution. We are going to sit down. Talk about tax policy and getting rid of Obamacare —what a nightmare, Obamacare. You see people’s premiums? Their deductibles? Poor people can’t get an appointment with a doctor or even a nurse. A disaster. That’s all changing. Ryan and I are going to get together with McConnell and —this will surprise you all— we are going to to get stuff done. The old fashioned way. The constitutional way. Like Reagan. Like Ike. We are going to all do our jobs and make America great again. Together. We need to come together.

Third thing, Hillary. Crooked Hillary. I don’t need to say anymore, do I? She may get indicted before this is over. She should be indicted but she’s being protected. She builds a server with all our secrets on it. The Russians know. The Chinese know. The Iranians know. Every kid in pajamas with a computer knows what she is doing and planning every day. Every day they know what she is thinking, where she is going, what she is telling the president. Like wearing a microphone for our enemies only. Every day sending the most classified stuff like it was a recipe for banana bread. Her server.

Criminal stuff. Very bad stuff. Look what they did to General Petraeus. A great American. Look what they did to him. But Hillary, a thousand times worse. And I’m going to point that out. Every day. And her “we were broke” comment. And the Foundation. All of it. Every day I’m talking about these things. And if she calls me a racist or says I hate women or whatever nonsense she spouts, the gloves come off. I am not putting up with it.

I want six debates with her, not three. And I want our vice presidents to debate twice, not once. Let America get a real good look at us. Let America decide. Her friends in the media, they are going to attack me and attack, and attack and attack. Fine. I can handle it. She can’t. She is going to try and hide out like Butch Cassidy or something. Hide out and win from the caves or tunnels or wherever she is hiding. Not take questions. She can’t pull that off. Every time she does an interview it is a disaster. A disaster. Push her, America. Have her sit down as I have with Megyn Kelly and Chuck Todd and Hugh Hewitt and Krauthammer and Will.

These last two guys, they don’t like me at all. They really, really hate me. Fine. Let Hillary see if she can get through an hour with them. Or with O’Reilly. She can’t. She can only get through interviews when people play paddycake. I take them all on. Bring it on I say. She can’t say that. Voters will know. If you can’t handle Bill O’Reilly how you going to handle Putin?

So I need my people to lay off the folks we beat, I need the folks we beat to come together and I need Hillary to come out and fight like a president has to fight if America is going to be great again. I need the whiners in the media to stop whining and start doing their jobs. And if I ask you to be part of the team, be part of the team.

Ok. By now some of you know this speech sounds very much like a speech that one of those talking heads suggested I give. Well, it does. I stole much of that speech. Not all of it it. But a lot. A lot. Because it made sense. That’s what builders do. They take the best ideas and they put them together. The architect says do this, the elevator guy says do that, the engineers say you can’t do this. The noise at these meetings you wouldn’t believe.

But the guy at the top, the developer, he listens. Then he hears what makes sense and he jumps on it and he steals it. Makes it his own. It works. Trump Tower. Most beautiful building in America? Think I picked the windows?Think I designed the sinks? Well, I did pick the windows, but you know what I mean. I didn’t design the windows. I picked the best windows. And I’ll pick the best ideas. The best people.

So I read this idea about vice president. Someone young since I’m not so young. Someone who has been elected but not so many times that they are corrupted by the Senate. A vet. A combat vet in fact. Someone who knows this war, who can advise me on the conflict. Help me figure out and Lindsey Graham figure out what to do and where to do.

So I am picking Senator Tom Cotton. He is a farm kid. And a Harvard kid. And a Harvard Law School guy. And an Army Ranger and a combat veteran of Iraq. Led foot patrols of Baghdad during the surge. Think he knows about the enemy? Yes he does. Think he knows about the sacrifices of our vets? Yes he does. And he took on an incumbent Democrat, big name in Arkansas in 2014, Bill Pryor. The Clintons think they are taking Arkansas back. No they aren’t. Trump-Cotton is winning Arkansas.

And, oh, by the way, Michigan. And Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and New Hampshire and Maine and Virginia and Florida and Colorado. It’s a new map. It’s a serious map. We may even win New York. Certainly we are going to try. It’s my home. I love New York. Like Florida. It’s my home too. Going to win them both. I’m even going out to California and tell those folks “Hey, this is a great state. You are killing it with Brown and this crazy train to nowhere and all this not building this and not building that. We need to build things again.” Maybe we win California. I don’t know. We are going to try.

But we are going to win. Because this country is sick to death of losing and being told we have to lose. It wants to throw up when they hear losers telling us we have to lose. We are done with political correctness and universities not teaching our kids anything and taking all their money, putting them 100 thousand dollars in debt for basket weaving 101. Done with it. This is a time for tough, straight talk.

I know what the hand wringers say. I’m a racist. I’m Mussolini or worse! Some of them say worse. But I’m the guy who actually hired tens of thousands of all kinds of people. I don’t care about color or religion or if they are black or white or brown or a rainbow. I don’t care straight or gay. Can you build the building? That’s what I ask. I think Cotton can help me build the country. And Lindsey Graham. Believe it or not I am going to need Mitt, who said all those bad things about me, and George Will, and the Black Lives Matter kids. I don’t care what they have said. I want their votes and I want their help. We are getting the best people on this starting today. We won Indiana. And we will get the nomination in Cleveland and I am going to be president. I hope you join me in making America great again. Thank you all. You are fabulous. You are great. Thank you all. Now I got to go call Senators Cotton and Lee.

Hugh Hewitt is a nationally syndicated talk radio host, law professor at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law, and author, most recently of The Queen: The Epic Ambition of Hillary and the Coming of a Second “Clinton Era.” He posts daily at HughHewitt.com and is on Twitter @hughhewitt.