Stephen K. Bannon (34:43)
Thank you very much. What a great group this is. You have to see outside. It's going wild outside. With a lot of love for all of us, I guess. But thank you, Richard, for the introduction and thank you to all for such a warm welcome. It's great to be back in beautiful Miami where I've actually built a lot of great buildings with the Deser family and some others. We've had tremendous success in Miami. We have Trump Towers and Sunny Isles Beach. It's four beautiful buildings right on the ocean. The Trump Grande put the little E in the end for a little class it up a little bit. Trump Grande and the 700 acre Doral. It's a tremendous country club and it's actually the most successful country club in the US where I was just given approval to build 1500 units, and I couldn't care less about building units. When you're president, who the hell wants to build units? I've been building units all my life. I don't want to build units, but they gave us permission to do it. But today is a tremendous honor. Become the first American president to address the Future Investment Initiative Institute. That's the first one. That's very. It's always known. And I want to thank Mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez for being here. Thank you very much, Francis, wherever you may be. Hi, Francis. And thank you for the endorsement. When I ran, I was very appreciative, along with the mayor of Miami Beach, Stephen Minor. Stephen, thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you very much. And numerous American business leaders, some of the biggest business leaders, actually, anywhere in the world. And many distinguished guests from the Middle east. And in particular, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a special place with special leaders and including FII Institute Chairman and governor of the Public Investment Fund, which is a seriously big fund. Yasser, I see you there. Stand up, Yasser. Everyone knows Yasser. Thank you. Great guy. Great, great person. And Finance Minister Mohammed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Right. Thank you very much. Good to see you again. That's pretty good. Finance Minister of that part of the world. That's not bad. Other parts of the world, not so good, but that one is good. And many other senior government leaders. I also want to recognize the kingdom's ambassador to the United States, Her Royal Highness, Princess Rima. Ooh, Very popular, very popular, Very popular. Wow, that's very nice. Sitting next to Elon. Wow, that's. You couldn't do better than that, huh? As well as my own special envoy to the Middle east who's really done a fantastic job, Steve Witkoff. Thank you, Steve. He's been busy. And Michael Waltz is here. Where is Michael? Michael's been so busy. They've been going back and forth and back. And a woman who is just voted the most powerful woman anywhere in the world. No, I'll go with. I'm going to go with Princess Rhema. But she was voted the most powerful woman anywhere in the world, Susie Wiles. Thank you. Thank you. Most powerful woman. That's pretty good. We have to talk to you about that, Susie. It's pretty good. And also, we all know Jared Kushner, a very special guy. Thank you, Jared. Thank you, Jared. And Elon Musk, he's been making a little news lately, hasn't he though very positive news. Stand up, Elon. He's a great guy. We did a little show last night. I heard they got very good ratings too. By the way, we did Hannity. Sean Hannity is fantastic, a fantastic man, a fantastic guy. And he did a show and it was great being on the show with you last night. I come today with a simple message for business leaders from all across the nation and all around the world. If you want to build the future, push boundaries, unleash breakthroughs, transform industries and make a fortune, because you want to make a fortune. Most of you have already made a fortune. I don't want to say that there's no better place on earth than the current and future United States of America under a certain president named Donald J. Trump. I think that you're going to do very well. They're saying that November 5th, election day 2024, will go down as one of the most important days in the history of our country. They said in 129 years, the most consequential election. I don't know if they're right about that or not, but it sounds good. I wanted to see if I could get a couple of more years tacked on, but I figured the fight wasn't really worth it. 129 is a lot. And as of January 20, 2025, the dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization. Oh, I know about weaponization. And total incompetence will be gone forever. They'll be gone forever because the United States is back and open for business and the golden age of America has officially begun. You see it happening. Since my election, America's economic engines have come roaring back to life in just a very short period of time. Think of it. From November 5, the progress that's been made has been amazing. The NASDAQ is up nearly 10% in just a few months. And that's a lot. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 2,200 points and Bitcoin has set multiple all time record highs. Because everyone knows that I'm committed to making America the crypto capital. We want to stay. We want to stay at the forefront of everything. And one of them is crypto. And Miami seems to be the center of the action, come to think of it. And maybe it'll stay there. Business optimism skyrocketed. 42 points. Think of that. In a single month, the most in history by far. That's the biggest increase in history by not even close. The ISM index of manufacturing activity surged into positive territory for the first time in many years. Amazing. And it was just announced. This is an interesting one. I didn't realize it was that bad for so long. But it was just announced by one of the nation's most historically accurate and respected pollsters, Rasmussen, that the number of Americans who believe our country is on the right track now exceeds those who think it's heading in the wrong direction for the first time in 20 years. Can you believe that? 20 years. And this is really a seismic 27 point swing from just before the election. That's. Nobody's ever seen anything like that one. Yes, sir. I want to tell you that's a big one. The best and most successful business leaders on earth are now racing to invest in the United States. Since November, DMACC has announced plans to invest $40 billion in the US creating at least 10,000 jobs. Software bank has announced investments of between 100 and $200 billion, creating at least 100,000American jobs. Oracle and OpenAI and SoftBank are now collectively committing 500 billion to keep the United States on the cutting edge of artificial intelligence. And so many more. I mean, so many companies that want to come to the White House and have a little news conference all the time. I said why don't you just announce it? But they want to come and I'll do that. I don't mind doing that. I say anytime they want to go $10 billion or more, I'm there. $10 billion or more. But on his recent visit to the White House, the Prime Minister of Japan announced he anticipates Japanese investment in the United States of well over a trillion dollars. And we're working on an Alaska pipeline already which is the closest point to Asia. And as you know, the anwr, which we've started, Ronald Reagan couldn't get it approved. Nobody could get it approved for so many years. Couldn't get it approved. I got it approved, actually, I got it approved twice. I got it approved and Biden ended it. That was a shocker. But we just got it approved again and we're going to be. It's probably the largest deposit maybe anywhere in the world just by itself. It's, they say of similar size to Saudi Arabia. So we hope that's correct. But all of this is only happening because of the world changing results of the 2024 election. We won the House, we won the Senate, the White House and the Electoral College and the popular vote in a landslide. We also won all seven swing states and all 50 states shifted in the Republican direction for the first time ever. So every state, every single state of the 50 states shifted Republican. It's never happened before. Either way, it's never happened. And 85% of counties voted for Trump. Think of that. So you have 2,600 counties versus 525, 2,600. Think of that. That's why when you look at the election map, after it was all done, the certified map, the whole thing was red, 2,600 versus 500. It's a big, big difference. Nobody's seen anything like it, actually. So as a result of this very historic victory, investors from all over the planet once again have confidence in America's future and respect for America's leaders. And it's about time we get a little respect. The last administration was the worst and most incompetent in the history of our country. But we are moving quickly to fix every sing disaster Joe Biden created and make America stronger and more prosperous than ever before. Our first and most urgent mission is to remove the criminals that Biden allowed into our country with the ridiculous and very dangerous open borders policy. They came from all over the world. They came from prisons and jails, they came from mental institutions and insane asylums. They were gang members, they were drug lords, they came from all over and they were allowed to come into our country. And we're getting them out in record levels, just like they came in in record levels. I want to thank Tom Holman and Christy, who is just doing, she's doing a fantastic job, Governor of South Dakota and Tom Holman, you know, they are doing a fantastic job and the results are incredible. And every country is taking them back. They're sending their criminals to us and they're all taking them back. We had a little problem with a couple of them that ended very quickly. And Kusum said, we don't really want MS.13 back in our country. But I said, congratulations, you're taking them back. And they take them back. And by the way, Europe and other places ought to start also doing that. They better start looking at immigration because it's really hurting Europe very, very badly. And they better get smart and they better get tough before it's too late. We're also working to end the highest inflation in our country's history, all caused because they played with our energy policy and wasted money on the green news scam and other things such as that. And they wasted monies at, at never seen before levels. If Joe Biden had simply held federal spending at the pre pandemic levels we had in 2019, we right now we would have virtually no inflation. We're trying to balance the budget immediately. And because of the tariff income, which is really. It's already turned out to be amazing, actually. It's really meant more for bringing countries and companies into our country. But it's. The numbers are rather staggering because we're the big piggy bank that everybody wants to be, and they can play games and they can say, well, there'll be retribution and, you know, equal this and that, but they can't be equal. But we want to keep it so that we're the big piggy bank. And if we had years like we did the last four years, that wouldn't be. Have lasted too long. We're not promising it, but, you know, all of these things could happen. We hope to balance our budget. So I don't want to promise it, because if I do and we come about $10 short, the fake news media back there would say, we have breaking news. He did not make it. He did not make it. But we'll get it done very soon. It might not be this year, but it could be this year. Actually, we have a chance at getting it even this year, which people would be shocked at, because they were talking about 10 years, 15 years, 20 years from now. When I took office last month, we inherited the consequences of inflation. That was more than four times what it was when I left four years ago. Think of that. I left, it was at 1.4% and the annual government spending over $1.5 trillion more than projected in 2020 alone. $1.5 trillion. But under the Trump administration, all of that is changing faster and more dramatically than anyone ever thought possible. They didn't think it was possible to do what we've done in just a very short period of time. We've accomplished more in four weeks than most administrations accomplish in four years. On my first day in office, I imposed an immediate federal hiring freeze, a federal regulation freeze, and a foreign aid freeze. I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge. Thank you, Elon, for doing it. Thank you very much. And he's doing a great job. I wish you could have seen him last night. It's really, you know, he's a very committed person. He's a very serious person, and he's a very high IQ people. You know, I like high IQ people. Not all have to be, but, you know, it'd be nice to have some people up there that he's a seriously high IQ individual. Now he's got his Faults also, I will tell you that, but not too many of them, which is now really waging war on government waste, fraud and abuse. And they're curbing inflation and saving taxpayers billions and billions of dollars every single day. And there's even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the doge savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt. Because the numbers are incredible, Elon. So many billions of dollars. Billions, Hundreds of billions. And we're thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens and 20% down to pay back debt. And pay down debt, which is, if you look at value, if it were a real estate balance sheet, the debt is tiny. But we still. We still want to pay it down. Doesn't matter. We don't look at it as a piece of real estate. It's America. We're going to get it down through intelligence, hard work, and, as Elon said, a word called caring. You have to care. By doing this, Americans will tell us where there's waste. They'll be reporting it themselves. They participate in the process of saving money. So many of the men and women in this room, as an example, they pay tremendous amounts of taxes. And here are just a few examples of where your money was going before I came along. These are just some of the. Just taken at random. Oh, there are much worse examples than this. I was just looking at them before the speech, and I can tell you they were much worse. And there are some that are horrible, but I don't want to really say them because they're very, very embarrassing to people. Very, very embarrassing. And they're really something. But you'll be seeing it and you will be reading about it. But just some. Taking a random $2 million for sex change operations in Guatemala, $20 million for Sesame street performances in Iraq, 20 million. That's a lot of money. You know, I know what it costs to do those things. You get a cast over for 50,000, give them a couple of bucks. Tip. That's it. Not 20 million. 20 million. That's. That's Gone with the Wind on steroids. $101 million for 29 diversity, equity and inclusion contracts at the Department of Education. Wow. And we've also canceled. We've canceled all of these, saved all of this money. And again, this is just a small sample. This could go on. I could read them all day. $520 million for a consultant. I want to know who is that consultant to do ESG. That's environmental, social and governance investments in Africa, $25 million to promote biodiversity conservation and licit livelihoods by developing socially responsible behavior in Colombia. $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that even means. None of this stuff. Nobody. Everyone's trying to figure out what the hell does it all mean? $42 million for social and behavior changes in Uganda. 40 million is a lot of newspaper ads in Uganda. $70 million for research of evidence based solutions for development challenges. $10 million for Mozambique Medical male circumcision. What is that? What does that mean? $2.3 million for strengthening independent voices in Cambodia. $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia. $486 million to the consortium for Elections and Political process strengthening, including $22 million for inclusion inclusive participatory political process in Moldova and $21 million for voter turnout in India. What do we need to spend? 21 million for voter turnout in India. Wow, $21 million. I guess they were trying to get somebody else elected. Well, we ought to tell the Indian government because when we hear that Russia spent about $2 in our country, it was a big deal, right? They took some Internet ads for $2,000. This is a total breakthrough. $21 million for India elections, $29 million to strengthen the political landscape in Bangladesh, $20 million for fiscal federalism and $19 million in addition to the $21 million for biodiversity conversion in Nepal. $1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia. We need voter confidence too. When you Read this list. $14 million for social cohesion in Mali. $2.5 million for inclusive democracies in South Africa. $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia. Asia is doing very well. We don't need to give them money. And in another program, $50 million plus another $50 million for condoms for Hamas. You know about that? $100 million for condoms. Condoms. Does everybody know what a condom is for Hamas? $100 million. And these are just. I could read this list all day long. I just don't want to bore you, but these are just some and not nearly as bad as others. And some are just. I just don't want to say them because they're too incendiary. We're also finding tremendous abuse, waste and fraud. And Social Security. Social Security is what's happening. There is going to be one of the great potential scandals in history. On the program, There are over 4.7 million Social Security numbers from people from 100 years old to 109. Think of that now. Over 100. There aren't a Lot of people that make it. Hopefully most of the people in this room will make it. But historically you don't have thousands and thousands of people. But Listen to this. 3.6 million people are on Social Security rolls from the age of 110 years old to 119. Do you think there are really that many? Those people are seriously old. But it gets worse. 3.47 million. 3.47 million people are on Social Security from the age of 120 years old to 129 years old. 3.9 million people are on the age of Social Security from 130 years old to 139 years old. Now the all time record I heard is a woman who was 100. She was 127 years old. That's the record. A woman from a certain country where they have actually people that live pretty long actually. And she was 127 years old. That's pretty old. But we're topping her by millions. Millions of people. 3.5 million people from the age 140 to 149 years old. 1.3 million people are on Social Security from the age 150 to 159. And over 130,000 people are on Social Security over the age of 160 years old. Okay, including 1039 people. Think of it. Over 1000 people between the ages of 220 to 229. And one person between the age of 240.