Search Posts

- For nearly 60 years, Preford has been building ranch equipment for America's ranchers. - Right here in Mount Pleasant, Texas. - We really don't know a whole lot of difference. I mean, just born and raised in it. I am actually third generation in the business. - 2024 was a very difficult year for us. No one was binding the border, as we all know. As we approached customers, they were getting better prices from across the border. - We've been somewhat reluctant on growth because you just don't know where everything's gonna be going. Is there a future? Is there any hope for a future? I've got five kids myself. I have four boys and a girl. What kind of future is there? - The day after the election, the phone's picked up. Business picked up. Everybody's mood in the whole country picked up. - The moment that the tariffs went into effect, we knew finally someone cared about leveling the playing field. Other countries do not have the rules and regulations and the laws that they have to follow. So they're able to bring goods in here at an unfair level. The moment those tariffs came into place, we had instantly a level playing field, and now we can compete. - Getting fair trade. Well, it's not been fair. Empty trucks going out, loaded trucks coming in. - When the economy's down, of course, we're very concerned. It's not just about steel. It's about 1,000 families that we're feeding right here in Mount Pleasant, Texas. If we don't thrive, they don't survive either. So it affects all of us. Never mind our customers that we're shipping product to. They have to have good prices. They have to have product. They have to have a reliable supply chain. Without American manufacturing, all companies in America are at risk because we're held hostage by the prices of the overseas folks bringing cheap goods into this area. - But with Trump in there, you actually have hope for the future. So now it's kind of like, okay, let's go, let's grow. Let's keep going and keep building what we are. - Manufacturing brings pride back to America. That's who we are. We are excellent at manufacturing. And if you will let this manufacturing beast be unleashed without the constraints of all the outside, unfair influences, you will see America thrive like it's never thrived before. - God put us exactly where we're at to do exactly what we're doing. There's nothing more American than mama, apple, pie, baseball, and ranch equipment. - Thank you, President Trump, for everything that you're doing. And thank you, you, for unleashing us to be able to make manufacturing great again.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

(Applause.) And it's really nice of you that we're going to have our captains give Mr. President Mr. Vice President. (Applause.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.) (End of Audio.) (Applause.)

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

That let me call to the stage the 45th President of the United States, the 47th President-elect, and the Person of the Year from Time, Donald J. Trump. [music] Across the plains of Texas From sea to shining sea From Detroit down to Houston And New York to LA Where there's pride in every American heart And it's time we stand and say That I'm proud to be an American Where at least I know I'm free And I won't forget the men who died Who gave that right to me And I gladly stand up next to you And defend her still today 'Cause there ain't no doubt I'd love this land God bless the USA And I'm proud to be an American Where at least I know I'm free And I won't forget the men who died Who gave that right to me And I gladly stand up next to you And defend her still today 'Cause there ain't no doubt I'd love this land God bless the USA [applause] Well, thank you very much. This is an honor, a tremendous honor. I brought some of our compatriots along with us. They're going to do a beautiful job for you for the next four years. And it's really been something very special. And I have to say, Time Magazine getting this honor for the second time. I think I like it better this time, actually. But we did a good job. We had a great first term despite a lot of turmoil. Caused unnecessarily. But the media's tamed down a little bit. They're liking us much better now, I think. If they don't, we'll have to just take them on again, and we don't want to do that. But I do want to thank Time Magazine. I've been on the cover many times. I don't know who has a record, but I can only probably talk well about 25% of the covers. 25% are great. The others I just sort of hide. But it's been an honor. And every time it's an honor, I will tell you. And thank you very much for doing it. And thank the whole group at time. Really very professional people. Thank you very much. And to Jeff and all of the people from the New York Stock Exchange. He knows how much I like it because many years ago I bought a building across the street. I wasn't going to buy it. Then I said, you know, it's right next to the New York Stock Exchange. I'm going to buy it. We've had great success. 40 Wall Street, we've had tremendous success with it. But you've really had success with the New York Stock Exchange. It's an incredible group of people. And Jeff, you have done an incredible job. You and your group, and what a beautiful speech you made. Thank you very much. That was some introduction of all of us. But we've gone up since the election. I was just told by Scott, everybody said, you have to speak Scott. Scott Basanti has to be the one chosen for Treasury. Where is Scott? Let's see. He's around here someplace. He's around here. He told me we picked up three trillion dollars since the election day. And I said, well, that's good. But what about before the election day? He said, we picked up some money there because they thought you were going to win. I said, I like this guy. He's going to be my Treasury Secretary. I think we're going to have a tremendous run. We have to straighten out some problems, some big problems in the world. When we left, we didn't have any of these problems. We didn't have Russia with Ukraine. We didn't have Israel October 7th. We didn't have the Afghanistan disaster. We didn't have inflation. We had no inflation. And we had a very strong economy. And we're going to do that again. But I think we're going to even up it because now we have experience that we didn't have. And now I know everybody. When I first came in, we came down. Melania and I, a great first lady, who's very popular, by the way. She rang in. She rang in the bell. She rang in the bell. But we came down and we're driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, and it was so beautiful. I said, you know, I've never done this before. I didn't know anybody. I got to the Oval Office, and I'm picking all these big positions. And I didn't really know the people in Washington, but boy, did I get to learn fast. And now we do. And I think we have an incredible staff behind me and others that aren't here. And we're going to do a fantastic job. We're going to create the incentive theory again. In fact, I just announced yesterday, I didn't announce it for this reason. But anybody investing a billion dollars or more gets a very expedited approval process. Because, you know, the approvals, when people come into the country, it takes them, in many cases, 14, 15, 16 years to get the approval. We have Lee is around here someplace. He's in charge of the environment. And that's Lee Zeldin, who ran an incredible race for governor in New York, was a very, very successful guy. Before that, he was a great congressman. And he's a fantastic lawyer. He's in charge of environmental. And we'll try and push him as much as possible to get those permits very quickly. Like a nuclear power plant, I would say a week would be enough time. What do you think? Is that okay? We're going to get fast approvals. And it's great that we have Lee and all of the people behind. They're all stars in their own way. But it is an honor. And this is a double. Because usually they don't coordinate the man of the year, or the person of the year with the ringing of the bell. And brilliantly, you picked him both at the same time. And you were all friends. And you said, let's do it. And you only -- it takes one trip. It doesn't take two trips. That's okay. We like to save. We like to be able to do it properly. But this is a special group. So many friends in the audience, too, John. Great job you've done at ABC. I'm really proud of you. And you've been so nice to me. Otherwise, I wouldn't actually acknowledge you at all. But you -- you have been. That really is -- it's a terrific job you've done. But again, I want to thank you. We're going down to ring the bell now. And I could just say that the economy, I believe, is going to be very strong. We do have to solve some problems. We have wars going on that we didn't have. We have a lot of things happening that we didn't have. That would have never happened. They would have never happened. But now they have happened. And I want to get them solved. We have to get them solved. Because ultimately, the power of weaponry today is the biggest threat we have, in my opinion. It's not some of the other things that you read about. It's the power of weaponry. The weapons are so powerful, so devastating. And I rebuilt our military. I got to know every one of them, including nuclear weapons. I hated to do it. Actually, I hated to do it. But we did some nuclear weapons that are so devastating. It almost makes you very sad as you get them. And as they come online, it makes you very sad. Because you know what the purpose of them is. And you just hope to God that you never have to use them. Because if you do, the world will never be the same. So we have to be very, very smart. We have to be very sharp. We have to be very special to do a job. And I think we'll get it done. And I think we're going to get a lot of people in the room. We've seen it. We were in France, where President Macron did a fantastic job with the cathedral. An absolutely fantastic job of Notre Dame. And it was beautiful. The opening was the opening. And I just got back. And it was something really beautiful. And a lot of world leaders there. We had about 80 world leaders, different countries. And they were all coming together. They all wanted to meet us and meet me as representative of the U.S. And there was a lot of goodwill. But we're going to get some really tremendous goodwill. I was even thinking about inviting certain people to the inauguration. And some people said, wow, that's a little risky, isn't it? And I said, maybe it is. We'll see. We'll see what happens. But we like to take little chances. But that's not a bad chance. Here's a gentleman that's going to do a great job at HUD. Good luck, my friend, right? He's going to be a -- he's going to be a -- he's been my friend for a long time. It's nice to see you. I haven't shaken his hand yet. Come on. Congratulations. Thank you. Really, Terry, you're going to be great. And Ben Carson is your biggest fan in the world. You know that. Ben has been with us for a long time and he's done a fantastic job. Thank you. Good. So, ladies and gentlemen, go on. We're going to put it straight. We're going to give tremendous incentive like no other country has. We're cutting your taxes. We're going to cut them very substantially. We got them down to 21 percent from probably 42 or 44 percent, depending on where you are. And we got them down to 21. Everyone said that was a miracle. Now we're getting them down to 15. But only if you make your product here. Otherwise, you pay 21, which is not bad. It's in the middle of the pack. But 15 brings you down to among the lower. (Applause.) And for those that are running the big companies, those great, big, beautiful companies, nobody is going to be leaving us. You're going to be coming back. You're going to be bringing it back to the United States. We are incentivizing everybody to come back to the United States. We want you back here, car manufacturers, everybody. And we have one product that nobody has really to the extent that we do. It's called oil and gas. There is no country in the world that has more. We're number one. I brought it to number one during my first term in terms of production. We're going to be number one plus. We'll do numbers that nobody will really see before. And when that happens, prices are going to start coming down, because people can't afford their groceries and they're going to be affording their groceries very soon. I tell the story about a woman who -- an old woman, an old woman, no money, went to a grocery store, had three apples. She put them down on the counter and she looked and she saw the price and she said, "Would you excuse me?" And she walked one of the apples back to the refrigerator and came back to pay for the two apples. And she left with two apples. And the woman at the counter said that was so sad. And when I heard about the story, I said, "That should never happen in America and it's not going to happen in America. We're going to do it right and we're going to take care of our people and we're going to do things that nobody ever thought even were possible. But we're going to have an economy the likes of which nobody's ever seen before and everybody's coming back to America." I saw that the other day at the cathedral. They're all saying, "We want to come back. And with a couple of changes done by Howard and Scott and some of the great people up here with me, we're going to bring them all back. They're all coming back." So thank you very much. This is a great honor and ringing the bell will be fantastic. And go out and get them. We're with you all the way. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

-USA! USA! USA! -Well, I want to thank everyone. This is quite a group. I have so many friends sitting there. There's one that I -- he was calling me early on. He was saying, "Why are you going through this process? You know he's going to win. He's big, he's strong. I will never fight you, I'm going to tell you that." But right from the beginning, right? Right from the beginning. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Great guy. So, how about Sean? Is Sean just great, you know? And he said every single thing that I was going to say, and what the hell? I can't say it again. But he's a special guy. He's been my friend for a long time. I probably shouldn't say a friend, but he is really a friend. He's a friend to the country, and I just want to thank Sean Hannity, he's a great guy. His ratings are very good, too, which is very important. Which is very, very important, and you really do. You have incredible people at Fox. You have incredible people at every level of Fox, really. A couple I don't like, but that's all right. I shouldn't name them, should I? I don't think so. I shouldn't name them. But, you know, we had an incredible -- we had just a spectacular election. They were -- [ Cheers and applause ] They were thinking it was going to be close and it wasn't close. We won the popular vote by millions and millions of votes. We won all seven swing states. [ Cheers and applause ] And we won the most votes ever gotten by millions by a Republican candidate. And I think I can say also a Democrat candidate, but I won't bother getting into that. We had -- we had tremendous -- I just -- it was a tremendous day, a tremendous night, a tremendous period of time, 72 days. It really started 72 days before. No day off, no play, no golf, no nothing. I didn't want to even play golf, even though sort of a good thing to run through, of course. Thank you, darling. Thank you. It was all work. It was all work, because we have a very important job to do. We have to win, and we have to bring our country back. When you look at all of the people that flow through open borders, who could ever want open borders? Who would want that? And when I heard that, I heard it three and a half years ago. And, you know, we built 571 miles of wall. We ordered another 200, which is far more than I said we were going to do, but we ordered another 200. And I heard that they weren't going to use it, because we had a very bad result in that election. You remember that, tight? That was not the pleasant night. But we had a very bad result, very unfair situation. We're going to get things straightened out of this country, including elections. We've got to get the elections. This one was too big to rig, you know? It was too big to rig. They tried. They tried. They tried, and then they just dropped their placards and went home. They said, "This is a slaughter." But we're going to do things that have been really needed for a long time. And we are going to look at elections. We want to have paper ballots, one-day voting, voter ID, and proof of citizenship, a little thing. A little thing like proofs. And we have a hard time, because, you know, in California, they just passed a law that you're not even allowed to ask a voter for voter ID. Think of that. If you ask a voter for their voter ID, you've committed a crime. They have to get Judge Jeanine -- where's Judge Jeanine? -- to lock him up. You're supposed to lock up somebody that I don't think -- she won't do it. She won't do it. She'll say, "I'm not doing it." But we're going to get it straightened out. We're going to get the whole country straightened out. And the first thing we have to do is get the criminals out of our country. They've allowed 21 million people into our country, coming through open borders from many, many countries. They came from jails. They came from mental institutions, insane asylums, even. And we're going to have to get them out. And when you think about it, who would do such a thing? Who would do such a thing? Who would think it's good to allow countries from all over the world -- who would think it's good to allow countries from all over the world to allow people in from prisons and from all of these different places? Countries that have -- countries that have serious, serious problems with crime, and they're all coming out. You know, in Venezuela, they took their drug dealers, their criminals, they took the people from areas of the city that were -- you couldn't even walk in. And they took them out, and they brought them into our country. They dumped them into the United States of America, and we're getting them the hell out of here fast. (Applause.) And as you know, I spoke with Canada, and Justin came flying right in because we talked about 25 percent tariffs. That's just a beginner. (Applause.) He's a hell of a nice crowd. I like this one. This is a nice crowd. Yeah, that's an interesting statement. Thank you very much. I do appreciate all that pent-up anger and love. It's everything at one time. It's everything at one time. But we're going to do things that a lot of people thought we're going to drill, baby, drill. We're going to get your prices down. (Applause.) And we're bringing the costs down. You know, when we were campaigning, a lot of people thought the biggest thing was the economy, and it is. It probably polled the best, but I never believed it was as important as immigration and the border and stopping our country from being invaded because this was a massive invasion of our country. And I spoke with, as you probably read, I spoke the other day to the President, the new President of Mexico, a very nice woman, and we had a very nice conversation. But she said, "Why are you doing this to me?" I said, "I'm not. I'm just putting a lot of tariffs on because you're allowing criminals to pour into our country. And we can't allow that anymore." It stopped. It stopped. It was so fast. It stopped. But we have great people. You know, Tom Holman. Is he central casting, by the way, Tom Holman? Is he central casting? We'll stop him. And we'll stop him fast. We shouldn't have to be doing this, but we have no choice. But we'll stop him. But I figured -- I really always felt that was bigger than inflation. We're going to take care of inflation. We're going to take care of that. By bringing the energy prices down, everything else, this is what they did. They messed up our energy. We had inexpensive -- how about $1.84 for gasoline? (Applause.) And now they're saying they're doing well. It's at $3.75, but it was going up to $5, $6, $7, and $8. And they went back to the Trump plan. But the Trump plan, the real Trump plan, would have had double the production that we have right now. And we're going to have that very shortly. We have the best energy people in the world, all lined up to go. But I just want to say we're going to bring prices down. We're going to make our country safe. We're going to stop people from robbing our stores and hurting our people. We're going to -- and we'll get involved with governors, including Democrat governors, because that's -- unfortunately, whether you like it or not, that's where the crime is. It's -- in virtually every case, it's with Democrats. It's with Democrat-run cities and states. And we're going to stop it. We're going to work with the governors and the mayors, even if they're Democrats. And we're going to get it down. And we're going to bring our country back, and it's going to be bigger and better and stronger than ever before. (Applause.) And we're going to be proud of our country again. Right now, we're not so proud of our country. We're going to be very proud of our country again. It's going to be -- it's going to be better than ever before. It's going to be more successful than ever before. We're going to be more respected throughout the world than ever before. Countries are going to respect us again. They already do, actually. I think you have seen more happen in the last two weeks than you've seen in the last four years, and we're not even there yet. (Applause.) We're not even there yet. So, I just want to thank -- this is a fantastic group of people. This is a fantastic turnout. This is very impressive. (Applause.) But -- and you're my friends, you're my friends, and we're going to be friends with this country. And we're going to do something that I've been talking about for eight years. We had it done. We created the most successful economy in the history of our country. We were doing so good, our border was the lowest numbers ever, the lowest number of illegal immigrants coming into our border that we ever had. The famous chart -- do you remember the chart that I looked over to the right? Ooh. Ooh. I have that -- I still have that throbbing feeling. (Laughter.) That beautiful chart that I looked over. Well, that chart showed we had the best immigration, the lowest number of people in the history of our country recorded, and the history of our country were -- I mean, that's what we achieved. And we're going to achieve it again and very fast. It's going to be very fast because we have no choice. But we're going to do something that I've been talking about for eight years. We're going to do it again. And we have to do it again. And that's -- we're going to make America great again. Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tyrus. Thank you, Tyrus. Good man. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. It's a great honor. ♪ Unhealthy young man ♪ ♪ There's a place you can go, I said young man ♪ ♪ When you're short on your dough, you can stay there ♪ ♪ And I'm sure you'll find many ways to have a good time ♪ ♪ It's fun to stay at the YMCA ♪ ♪ It's fun to stay at the YMCA ♪

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

"America, I have a message for you, if we allow Borders R Harris to win this election, every city, every community in this great country is going to go to hell. The untold millions of people, unvetted, who she has allowed into this country that are committing murders, rapes, robberies, burglaries, and every other crime will continue to put our country in peril. Only one man can fix that. That is Donald J. Trump. He has always stood with the men and women who protect this border, who put their lives on the line for the country, a man who knows about putting his life on the line for what is right. This November, we have a choice to make. Continue the chaos. Allow the criminal cartels to control the border, to allow drugs and fentanyl across our country, or put an end to it once and for all. On behalf of the 16,000 men and women represented by the National Board of Patrol Council, we strongly support and endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.

>> The one thing about the former president, he wants to be the next president again. You know a fighter's heart, you stare in more fighters' eyes than anybody else to see what's in there. Where does he rank at 77? >> Number one, number one, take any of the greatest fighters of all time. Trump is number one, the most resilient human being that I've ever met in my life. >> In what respect? >> Why keep doing this? You know, you've got money, you've got a great life, you've got whatever. Why keep doing this? And the one thing that I can tell you, and this is a fact, this guy loves this country, right? And he loves all Americans, regardless of what color, religion, or whatever it is. He's not a racist, he's a good human being, and he loves America, and he cares about this country. Period, end of story. If he wasn't that type of guy, I would never even associate myself with him.

Transcribed automatically. Expect errors in names and numbers.