Donald Trump’s final speech as president: Full transcript

Just prior to his final Air Force One flight as president, Donald Trump promised: ‘We will be back in some form.’

President Donald Trump, accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, waves as he boards Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, January 20, 2021 [Carlos Barria/Reuters]

Ahead of Joe Biden’s swearing-in as president, Donald Trump departed the White House for the last time on Wednesday, delivering one final speech as president at Joint Base Andrews in front of family, staff and supporters.

Following his remarks, which ran just under 10 minutes, he and First Lady Melania Trump walked up a red carpet to Air Force One for his final flight as president, after which they will begin their post-White House life in Florida.

Here is the full transcript of Trump’s final remarks as president:

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

[Crowd chants: “We love you”]

Thank you very much, and we love you. And I can tell you that from the bottom of my heart.

This has been an incredible four years. We’ve accomplished so much together.

I want to thank all of my family and my friends and my staff and so many other people for being here. I want to thank you for your effort,  your hard work. People have no idea how hard this family work. And they worked for you.

They could have had a much easier life, but they just did a fantastic job. I just want to thank all of you, everyone. I want to thank Mark Meadows who’s here someplace right there I want to thank Mark.

But it’s been, it’s been something very special, we’ve accomplished a lot, our first lady has been a woman of great grace and beauty and dignity. And so popular with the people, so popular with the people, in fact, honey, would you like to say a few words?

[Melania Trump]: Being your first lady was my greatest honour. Thank you for your love and your support, you will be in my thoughts and prayers. God bless you all. God bless your families, and God bless this beautiful nation.

President Donald Trump gestures as first lady Melania Trump looks on before giving a speech to supporters at Andrews Air Force Base, January 20, 2021 [Luis M. Alvarez/AP Photo]

[Donald Trump]: What else has to be said, right? But what we’ve done – that’s true, honey. Great job. What we’ve done has been amazing, by any standard, we rebuilt the United States military, created a new force called Space Force that, in itself, would be a major achievement for a regular administration, we were not a regular administration.

We took care of the vets – 91 percent approval rating they’ve never had that before, the vets have given us the VA, the vets have given us an approval rating like has never been before. We took care of our vets and beautiful vets they were very badly treated before we came along. And as you know, we get them great service and we pick up the bill and they can go out and they can see a doctor, if they have to wait long periods of time. We got it so that we can, sadly, get rid of people that don’t treat our vets properly. We didn’t have any of those rights before when I came on. So, our vets are happy, our people are happy. Our military is thrilled.

We also got tax cuts, the largest tax cut and reform in the history of our country by far. I hope they don’t raise your taxes. But if they do, I told you so!

If you look at the regulations which I consider the regulation cuts to be maybe even more important. That’s why we have such good and have had such good job numbers. The job numbers have been absolutely incredible.

What we started had we not been hit by the pandemic, we would have had numbers that would never have been seen. Already our numbers are the best ever.

If you look at what happened until February, a year ago, our numbers were at a level that nobody had ever seen before. And even now we really built it twice. We got hit, nobody blames us for that, the whole world got it and then we built it again. And now the stock market is actually substantially higher than it was at its higher point prior to the pandemic. So it’s really – you could say, we built it twice.

And you’re gonna see, you’re gonna see incredible numbers start coming in. If everything is sort of left alone and be careful, very complex. Be careful. But you’re gonna see some incredible things happening. And remember us when you see these things happening, if you – remember us because I’m looking at – I’m looking at elements of our economy that are set to be a rocket ship up. It’s a rocket ship up.

We have the greatest country in the world. We have the greatest economy in the world and as bad as the pandemic was, we were hit so hard just like the entire world was hit so hard, places that don’t they got away with it didn’t get away with it, they’re suffering right now. We did something that is really considered a medical miracle. They’re calling it a miracle. And that was the vaccine.

We got the vaccine developed in nine months instead of nine years, or five years, or 10 years. A long time. It was supposed to take a long time, many, many years to develop a vaccine. We have two out. We have another one coming almost immediately, and it really is a great achievement. So, you should start to see really good numbers over the next few months. I think you’re going to see those numbers really skyrocket downward.

President Donald Trump speaks before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, January 20, 2021 [Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo]

And I can always say this. We’ve worked hard. We’ve left it all, as the athletes would say, we’ve left it all in the field. We don’t have to – we don’t have to come and say we’ll never say in a month when we’re sitting in Florida, we’re not going to be looking at each other and say you know if we only worked a little bit harder, you can’t work harder. And we had a lot of obstacles and we went through the obstacles.

And we just got 75 million votes and that’s a record in the history of – in the history of sitting presidents. That’s an all-time record by a lot. By many millions. In the history of sitting presidents, it’s been really just an honour.

One of the things we’re very, very proud of is the selection of almost 300 federal judges and three great Supreme Court justices. That’s a very big number that’s a record-setting number and so we’ve done a lot and there’s still things to do.

The first thing we have to do is pay our respects and our love to the incredible people and families who suffered so gravely from the China virus. It’s a horrible thing that was put onto the world. We all know where it came from, but it’s a horrible, horrible thing. So be very careful. Be very, very careful, but we want to pay great love, great love to all of the people that have suffered, including families who have suffered so gravely.

So with that, I just want to say, you are amazing people. This is a great, great country. It is my greatest honour and privilege to have been your president.

I will always fight for you. I will be watching, I will be listening. And I will tell you that the future of this country has never been better.

I wish the new administration, great luck and great success. I think they’ll have great success. They have the foundation to do something really spectacular. And again, we put it in a position like it’s never been before. Despite the worst plague to hit since I guess you’d say 1917, over 100 years ago. And despite that, despite that, the things that we’ve done have been just incredible. And I couldn’t have done it without you.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump are greeted by a military honour guard as they board Air Force One, January 20, 2021 [Luis M. Alvarez/AP Photo]

So, just a goodbye. We love you. We will be back in some form.

And again, I want to just, in leaving, I want to thank our Vice President Mike Pence and Karen. I want to thank Congress cause we really worked well with Congress, at least certain elements in Congress. But we really did. We’ve gotten so much done that nobody thought would be possible but I do want to thank Congress and I want to thank all of the great people of Washington, DC, all of the people that we worked with to put this miracle together.

So, have a good life. We will see you soon. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Source: Al Jazeera