WATCH: Trump speaks at TPUSA Student Action Summit 2022
Former President Donald Trump is in Tampa, Florida, speaking at Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit Saturday evening.
The former commander in chief previewed some of his remarks while speaking to a group of TPUSA college chapter presidents and vice presidents, who serve as top activists for the mammoth conservative youth group. In a private call with the group, according to Fox News, Trump teased that he would deliver a “barn burner” speech.
“I hope you’re all there because we’re going to give you a barn burner. We’re going to give you a lot of different things that a lot of people won’t talk about,” the 45th president was quoted as saying.
Trump’s Saturday address comes one day after he held a rally in Arizona for his MAGA-allied candidates of choice ahead of the state’s August primaries.
“You could take the five worst presidents in American history and put them together, and they would not have done the damage Joe Biden has done to our country in less than two short years,” Trump told the crowd in Prescott Valley, Arizona, as he began his Friday rally. He spent the night repeatedly referring back to a group of topics: the migrant crisis at the southern border, rising crime, and his claims of a stolen election.
Follow along here to see how the speech unfolds.
Trump just ended his speech, which closed on a positive note.
“My fellow young citizens,” he said to the crowd of high school and college aged conservatives. “This incredible journey we are on together has only just begun, and it’s time to start talking about greatness for our country again. We are one movement. One people, one family and one glorious American nation.”
“Everything this corrupt establishment is doing to me is all about preserving their power and control over the American people. They’re sick. They want to damage me in any form so I can no longer represent you,” Trump said. “Obviously they want me not to be the candidate, because they never talk about anybody else. And you know, everything’s disinformation.”
After discussing Doug Mastriano, Trump’s endorsed gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, he mentioned his debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen, a claim he said he would not let go of, adding: “The fake news media is totally complicit in this whole deal.”
“And if I renounced my beliefs, if I agreed to stay silent, if I stayed home, if I announced that I was not going to run for office, the persecution of Donald Trump would immediately stop,” he continued, appearing to reference the Jan. 6 select committee.
“We know that, everybody knows that. But that’s what they want me to do. And you know what? There’s no chance I do that. There’s just no chance I do, but I can’t because…I love you and I love this country,” Trump then said. “We can’t let this happen. They’re coming after me because I am standing up for you. That’s why they’re coming after me, and because you’re a force. Remember this in the history of our country. There has never ever been a movement like we are all proud to be a part of.”
“Nancy Pelosi, she’s nuts. I’m telling you, she’s a nut job. I mean, you talk about people in politics, look at her husband. Every time something happens, he goes out and he buys stuff. He’s made a lot of money, he made $100 million. He started off with nothing,” Trump said, referencing Paul Pelosi’s long history of investments.
“She does have a big wall around her house by the way, even though she fought us like crazy on the wall,” he continued. “But she’s crazy, she’s nuts. I’m telling you she’s a psycho. Never forget everything this- I mean, how can they allow a person to make all that money and the press barely wants to cover it? It’s cold inside trading.”
Trump complained that Republicans needed to fight harder against Democrats for political gain before saying: “We just don’t have the people that want to do that. You have the Mitt Romney’s, you have the Lisa Murkowski’s and Susan Collins’s.
“You have people that, look at this Liz Cheney, is she unhinged? Let’s use the word ‘unhinged,’ a horrible word that they like to use a lot of times,” he continued, appearing to reference the media. “But I watched her the other day. And by the way, I think she’s 35 points down in the great state of Wyoming. It’s great. They get her, they’ve understood her for a long time. Her with the endless wars, the wars that never stopped so that the corporations can keep selling missiles.”
Trump began blasting the mainstream media for losing trust with the American people while warning about censorship.
“The media has taken a place in our culture and our history that nobody ever thought would be possible, they are no longer respected. They are just- they’ve become terrible, biased, partisan because they’re partners, actually they’re really partners,” Trump said. “If you look at it with the Democrats, they get their marching orders or they give the Democrats the marching orders…But it’s so bad for our country because they used to be like the police for honesty, and now they have no credibility whatsoever.”
“If debate can be silenced, if dissent can be suppressed, if conservative ideas can be systematically shut down, then very simply, we do not have a free country anymore,” he continued. “That’s what happens. That’s what happened with Communism in various countries, that’s what happened with Venezuela.”
Speaking about concerns about wokeness and political ideology being injected into children’s school curriculum, Trump said: “The conservative movement must liberate America’s children from the captivity of these Marxist teachers unions. What they’re doing to our children in our country is incredible, incredible. This is a matter of national survival, if we don’t fix this our country is going to be in a very sad state. It already is.
“Our country has never been in a position like this before, it happened all in a short period of time across the United States,” he continued. “We need to implement strict prohibitions on teaching inappropriate, racial, sexual, and political material to America’s children in any form.”
Trump said he predicted three years ago that Germany’s economy would eventually suffer if it abandoned it’s nuclear power to rely mostly on Russian oil.
The former president reiterated his debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread fraud, before claiming that he won by a bigger margin in 2020 than in 2016.
He then teased: “Now we may just have to do it again.”
After telling a story about how his administration and military took out ISIS, Trump explained that he wanted the audience to understand how incredible America’s armed forces are. He then said it was important to honor U.S. service members, whose greatness could be hidden from the country in the wake of military failures like the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“So I wanted to tell you the story because when you see the, in my opinion, the most humiliating day in the history of our country — that was to me the most humiliating day in the history of our country, the most humiliating time,” he said. “Getting out of Afghanistan, we were going to do it with dignity and strength, and it would have been done very quickly on a very similar time, scope.”
“I wanted to tell you the story about those other great soldiers and how they can fight and they’re unbelievable. I’m not talking about Milley and the guys on television, I’m talking about the real guys that we have out there,” he continued, referencing the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman. “They’re unbelievable people. They’re unbelievable fighters. And it’s something you have to hear.”
“We had China in check,” Trump said of his approach to the global superpower. The country, he added, was “paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. Think of it, we’ve taken in hundreds of billions that — millions, billions of dollars from China with our tariffs and our taxes against them.”
“Not one president has ever taken in literally 10 cents from China,” he continued. “We’re taking in hundreds of billions of dollars, and they were willing to do anything to get rid of that. And by the way now, if you look at the Biden administration, I’m hearing they want to give up the taxes and tariffs that we’re charging China. And if you do that, they will own us very quickly.”
While talking about the impact of COVID-19 on the global community, Trump made mention of Japan, which led to him offering a brief comment on the assassination of Shinzo Abe, whom he called “a wonderful gentleman.”
Abe, who was murdered earlier this month, “so senselessly died,” Trump said, adding: “He was a great friend of mine.”
Trump aimed to differentiate the conservative agenda and the goals of liberals, saying: “The difference between our movement and the forces we’re fighting against could not be more stark. They believe in censorship, cancel culture, intolerance, and rigid conformity. We believe in free thought, free assembly, free expression, and a thing called free speech.”
