President Trump participated in a Black History Month reception in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday. “We thank God for the strength and courage and grit and devotion of black Americans who have helped make America the most powerful country in the history of the world we now have,” Trump said. “And you saw that with our attack a few weeks ago on Venezuela. We have the greatest military in the world. We make the greatest equipment in the world. There’s nobody even close. Nearly 10,000 African Americans fought for the Patriot cause and the Revolutionary War. Did you know that? 10,000 and actually a number even, I’ve heard even higher than that.”

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I like the historically black colleges and universities, which I saved. Leo 2.0 said it, but which I saved. We saved them. They had no funding, and every year they come back, and I got to know some of the heads, and every year they come back, and after my third year first term, I said, you guys keep coming back. Why do you keep coming back? He said, we have to come back every year. For years and years, they had to come back, and one of them said, one of the heads, a great guy, said, they make us feel like beggars. We have to come back. I said, I’m going to get you long-term financing, and I got it for them, and I said, the only bad thing, I’ll never see you guys again. I’ve never seen too many of them, but we took care of the historically black colleges and universities, right? And it was a great thing to do, and so many others are in the audience that are just friends of mine. I look at so many, but if I introduce all of you, we’re going to be here a long time, and that’s unacceptable. Not only are we celebrating the century of Black History Month also, as you know, this year we’ll also be celebrating the 250th anniversary of Nation’s founding, and the good thing, when they cheated on the election, they made me wait four years, and because I waited four years, I get the 250th year. I get the Olympics, which I was the one that got it, and I get the World Cup. So I got the World Cup, and I said, you know, it’s too bad. Before all this nonsense takes place, took place, I said, it’s too bad. I got the World Cup to come here. Johnny, another Johnny, we got the World Cup. It was fantastic, the head of it, one of the great people, and I said, the only bad part is I won’t be in office because my four years will be up. This would have been the more traditional route, and then they cheated on the election, and I said, now we won by millions of votes, but they cheated. It was during a COVID period, and they cheated, and we did it again, and we made it too big to rig, too big to rig, and by doing that, I ended up getting the Olympics. I ended up being responsible for both of them, and we’re going to have a great year, but we’re going to have a great three years. We’re going to have, hopefully, a great century, because that’s ultimately what it is. We’ll get it started. But as we honor America’s 250, and I can’t say that I got the 250. I tried doing that a couple of times, Bruce. I said, I got the Olympics, I got the World Cup, and I got the 250th year. They said, you didn’t do that. I said, you’re right about that. I didn’t do too much. We happened to be here at the right time, that’s all that was, but we thank God for the strength and courage and grit and devotion of black Americans who have helped make America the most powerful country in the history of the world we now have. And you saw that with our attack a few weeks ago on Venezuela. We have the greatest military in the world. We make the greatest equipment in the world. There’s nobody even close. Nearly 10,000 African Americans fought for the Patriot cause and the Revolutionary War. Did you know that? 10,000 and actually a number even, I’ve heard even higher than that, helping secure our independence in every generation since from the Buffalo soldiers to the Tuskegee Airmen, black Americans that have stepped forward to defend the flag and to defend our country. Like few others, really, like few others. And you’ve never really been given the recognition that you should get for that. You know that, Ben? They never, I don’t think a lot of people have given the kind of recognition, but everyone knows all about the Tuskegee Airmen. They were great and amazing. The Buffalo soldiers. Do you know the Buffalo soldiers? Good stuff, right? From jazz to the blues. That, you know, that you do get recognition for. Jazz, the blues, from rock and roll to rap, black artists like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters. How about Nicki Minaj? Do we love Nicki Minaj? I love Nicki Minaj. She was here a couple of weeks ago. So beautiful. Her skin’s so beautiful. I said, Nicki, so beautiful. Her nails, her nails are like that long. I said, Nicki, are they real? She said, she didn’t want to get into that. But she was so beautiful. It’s so great. And she gets it. You know, more importantly, frankly, she gets it. But black leaders from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King, right? Little relative over here. Have made our country freer. And really what they’ve really done is made life more just. And black athletes have inspired billions around the globe from Sugar Ray Robinson, Sugar Ray Leonard. Also, by the way, great. What a great fighter. Mohammed Ali, who is a friend of mine. I put a picture of myself and Mohammed. It was another piece of work. You talk about a piece of work. But he could fight, couldn’t he? Mike Tyson. Boy, I tell you, Mike has been loyal to me. Whenever they come out, they say, Trump’s a racist. You know, it’s like a saber. Trump’s a racist. Mike Tyson goes, he’s not a racist. He’s my friend. He’s been there from the beginning. Good times and bad. But Mike Tyson’s a great guy. And he was so loyal, always been loyal. And Herschel Walker is speaking about loyal. How good a football player was Herschel? Herschel Walker. Now he’s ambassador to the Bahamas. I don’t know. Bahamas, Bermuda. Is he Bahamas? Whatever. It’s nice. A nice place. You’d like that, Bruce, wouldn’t you? Bruce wants it. And a friend, a guy that became really, he liked Trump, Jim Brown. He was tough. He’d come in. He was very silent. He was silent but deadly. He’d come in and he’d look at people. And if he didn’t like him, he’d just look at me and he got it no good. He wanted to rip the heart out. I would say there can’t be a better football, a greater football player than Jim Brown. By the way, Lawrence Taylor, great friend. Lawrence, the great Lawrence Taylor, the greatest defensive player probably in the history of football. He’s a great friend of mine. And but I’m longer off the tee than him. You know why? Because they take the club back further. He takes the club back this far and he hits it 200 yards. When you can do that, you’re strong. He’s a great guy, I’ll tell you that. And all of this is a part of the legacy that we celebrate on July 4th, 2026, because Black History Month is really all about American history. And this is a big year. This is a big year for you. During my first term, I was honored to deliver unprecedented victories for Black Americans and all Americans, frankly. But Black Americans, I single-handedly secured record long-term funding for. I told you the historically Black colleges and universities, I created nearly 9,000 Opportunity Zones with our great secretary. And also, I think we have to do it. As I said before, Tim Scott really, really, he came to me with that idea. And we put it into use, right, Scott? And I signed historic criminal justice reform into law. We got criminal justice reform. Just so you know, for 30 years, you, more than any other group of people, has been trying to get criminal justice reform, and they couldn’t do it. And a group of people came to my office, and they asked me to do it. They couldn’t get it. They needed five conservative votes in the Senate, and conservative was five conservative white votes in the Senate. And of the five, all five of them were totally against, and I called them up, and they were great. They were great. And one of them was Senator John Kennedy, to be honest with you. He was not in favor of it, and I spoke to him, and he was 100%. He’s a great senator, a great guy, and you know that he was a tremendous help. So we got criminal justice reform done and approved, and nobody thought it could be done. And it’s no wonder that in 2024, we won more African-American votes than any Republican presidential candidate in history. And just over one year ago, we had a dead country. We were a dead country. Scott just said it. We were dead as a doorknob. We had an idiot as a president. We had a man that was not a president. Number one, he didn’t win the election. He was not a president. Yeah, right. He was a real beauty, wasn’t he? He allowed 25 million people into our country. Many of them should not have been here. And now we have, by the way, we went from the worst border in history to the best, by far, the best border in history. But I had the support of many people, Bruce. I had the support of many people in this room, and we’ve got right now the hottest country anywhere in the world. King of Saudi Arabia told me that. He said, you were a dead country a year and a half ago. Now you’re the hottest country. We’re the hottest country right now anywhere in the world. And you’re a big part of it. And you’re a big beneficiary. Take a look at your 401ks. Has anybody got a 401k that’s lower than it was? Put your hand down. Lower than it was a year ago? They’re double. I mean, they are through the roof. The stock market has hit 53 all-time record highs since the election. And earlier this month, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above $ 50,000 for the first time ever. Right, Scott? First time ever. And also, you know, they don’t talk about this. The S&P broke 7,000. So when I got elected, they said, for the S&P to break 7,000 within four years would be a great achievement for the President. And for the Dow Jones to break 50,000 would be a great thing, but it’s not possible. They were talking about it in four years. Scott, they said, in four years, it would not be possible to break 50,000 or 7,000 under these two very important column of metrics. And you know what happened? We broke it before the end of my first year. So, right? So we did something. So they said, we couldn’t do it in four years. We did it in one year. More Americans are working today than at any time in American history. So we have more Americans right now working than at any time. And, you know, when I say this stuff, I get the fake news back there. A lot of it. Thank you. I agree. Sometimes we have to be very careful because they’re actually going. It’s not pretty, Leo. We have to get Leo and the DOJ involved. But think of that. Leo, think of that. More Americans are working today than any time in history. And since I took office, African-American employment has increased by 182,000, the highest ever. Jobs. 182,000, nearly half a million black Americans have rejoined the labor force since we took office. Half a million wages for workers have increased $ 1,000, $ 2,000, even three, and even sometimes, in some cases, $ 5,000 a year. That’s faster than inflation. So wages have gone up at a much faster clip than inflation. We took over the worst inflation in the history of our country. They say 48 years or 49 years. I said that, you know, I said, inflation under Biden has went up more than at any time in the history of our country. They said, he’s not right about that. It’s 49 years. They said, all right, I’ll accept that, too. Actually, I think it sounds worse. I mean, I think for some reason, because when you say the worst ever, but when you say the worst in 49 years, I’ll take that, right? The fake news got me on that one. I think I was right, by the way, but I’ll accept 48 or 49 years. But for the first time in many years, 100 percent of all net job creation is going to American-born citizens. Think of that. 100 percent. And in the last administration, it was going mostly to illegal aliens that came in, many of them murderers and others. Last summer, we passed the largest working-class tax cuts in the history of our country. That includes no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security for our great seniors. And you’re going to see that. You know, just kicked in on January 1st. You’re going to see tremendous results, and they’re already seeing it. And I think we’re going to have GDPs.

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