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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump Greets Inauguration Crowd At Capitol. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired January 20, 2025 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00]

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I better say I'm only kidding or the press is going to pick that one up, right? Loud and clear.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: No, but she said, "No, I -- I -- I think it's -- I think it would be terrible. It's such a nice speech. I think it's -- you know, it all depends on your delivery."

How was the delivery? Was it good? (inaudible)?

(APPLAUSE)

But she said, "It's such a beautiful -- such a beautiful speech. You can't put things in there that you were going to put in." And I -- I was going to talk about the J6 hostages. But you'll be happy because, you know, it's action, not words, that count, and you're going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages.

(APPLAUSE)

You'll see a lot of it.

And I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the "unselect committee of political thugs"...

(BOOING)

... where they literally -- I mean, what they did is they destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings -- practically not a thing left. They deleted all the information on Nancy Pelosi having turned down the offer of 10,000 soldiers. You wouldn't have needed 10,000. You could have had 500, and they would have stopped. Because we may have had a million people that day, with the people that were there. You don't see any photographs, but we have a lot of great photos. But you don't see those photographs. They don't put them in. They show the people at the Capitol.

But I was talking about that. I was going to talk about that. They said, "Please don't bring that up right now. You can bring it up tomorrow." I said, "How about now, in front of the very..."

(LAUGHTER)

I'll bring it up right now.

You know, this little time delay is good because we're getting great reviews on the speech. Now watch: They'll take the speech and say, "I didn't like it because he left there, and he talked to people." But we're giving you a little more information than we gave upstairs.

But no, they pardoned a lot of people. They pardoned -- before we even get to today, they pardoned, what is it, 33 murderers? Absolute murderers, the worse murderers. You know, when you get the death sentence in the United States, you have to be bad, because they don't give it much. And he pardoned almost everybody having a death sentence. And if you went through the crimes that were committed, you wouldn't even believe them, the level of violence, the people that were killed, the innocence of people that were killed, and children killed by these people. And he pardoned them for whatever reason. He spared them, and -- but they didn't spare the people that they killed, and you know, who knows what happens in the future. It's one of the worst, because a lot of times, they let them out early after that. You know, they say you're going to be in for life, but then all of a sudden, they get let out for good behavior, and then they go on a rampage, you know? It's one of those little things, right? But I was going to talk about that.

But I was really going to talk about the -- the level of, you know, what's going on. Why are we doing this? Why are we trying to help a guy like Milley? Why are we doing Milley? He was pardoned. What he said -- terrible, what he said.

Then why are we helping some of the people -- why are we helping Liz Cheney? I mean, Liz Cheney is a disaster. She's a crying lunatic, and crying -- crying Adam Kinzinger. He's a super-crier. I never saw the guy not cry. He's always crying. I look at him. I remember years ago, he was actually on my side, and then one day, you know, when you don't want to kill people in wars, they turn against you. Liz Cheney hated the concept of -- of not going to war with everybody. "Let's kill everybody. Let's spend a lot of money on military equipment." You know where her father works, right? And -- but what she did was incredible.

Think of it: They destroyed and deleted all of that information that went on for almost two years against Trump. And the reason they did -- because it was all false, like the person that said I tried to strangle a Secret Service agent that's one of the toughest human beings I think I've ever seen. I actually had a friend say, "Please don't change that, sir. You are the coolest sucker in history." Remember, she said I put my hands around his neck because he wouldn't go to the Capitol -- made up fiction. And -- and I was rebuffed, and the guy on the right is a massive weightlifter, probably stronger than me.

Do you think he's stronger than me, honey? You know who I'm talking -- possibly stronger than me.

Slightly younger than me, like I won't say how many years, because I don't want to talk about that, but a lot of years. But I had a friend that said, "Why are you disputing that story? That's the coolest story I've ever heard!" That I would attack a karate champion, get slightly rebuffed, then throw my arms around a guy with a neck about this big.

(LAUGHTER)

[13:35:00]

TRUMP: Even though there are bars. You know, there are bars that you can't really do that anyway, so -- so I wanted to talk about that.

But all of that stuff got deleted, and the reason it got deleted is they were all caught in lies. You know, Secret Service testified and they said it didn't happen. Actually, the two guys were pretty embarrassed. They're suffering because their friends are saying, "Did Trump really do that to you?" But they gained a whole new respect for me. But it was just make believe stuff, and there were a lot of make believe stories made up.

So rather than suffer the wrath, like the story with Nancy Pelosi -- I offered her 10,000 soldiers. She knows it. She admitted it on tape that her daughter made. She's a videographer or whatever you call her, which I'm glad she is. So she can't be in good stead with Nancy. But Nancy said, "It was my responsibility" as she's leaving the Capitol. She said it was her -- and it was. She's in charge of security at the Capitol. But I offered them up to 10,000 soldiers, even more -- one time, I said, "More, as many as you need." But you needed 4 or 500 -- a -- four or five -- you're 10,000, that would be more than the number of people there by a lot.

But we offered her 10,000. Think of it, 10,000 soldiers. In other words, J6 wouldn't be J6, there would've been no J6. But she rebuffed them. She didn't like it. No, she didn't like it. Maybe she wanted that to happen. But she's guilty as hell.

And now, we would have to go through the process because they destroyed all evidence, they deleted everything. There's virtually nothing left. The other fake story and so many other fake stories -- and many people came out on our side, and those people now -- we're -- got to find them. There's nothing left. So that's a criminal offense. If that were a civil case, it would be a criminal offense. If that were -- if that happened civilly where you did that, it would be a criminal offense.

So I decided I'm not going to make this speech complicated, I'm going to make it beautiful, I'm going to make it a unifying speech. And then when they said we have a -- a group of people that are serious Trump fans, I said, "This is the time to tell those stories."

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

He knows -- he knows. (Inaudible). But seriously, I'd like to -- I think it was a tremendous success. I think we're very lucky we put it inside, because it is really cold. We just went to -- to the helicopter out of respect. It's something that's taken place for a long time. I guess it's as old as helicopters. You used to get into a stagecoach, now you get into a helicopter. Times change.

(LAUGHTER)

But it's a pretty, pretty old custom, and it's a beautiful custom actually, it's a beautiful custom, but I wish we could have had a -- a better relationship -- I wish we could have had a better relationship between Republicans and Democrats.

I was with Senator Schumer. I said, "Chuck, I think it's time we all start getting along a little bit because it doesn't make sense." I mean, we literally never get a Democrat vote, they never get a Republican vote almost, and -- although there is a bill coming up very shortly that we have a lot of Democrat votes, right? That's going to be a -- a very beautiful bill. We're going to have it -- a signing, I would say, within a week or so, I think, and it's going to be a very good bill. You all know what I'm talking about.

So I -- I just want to thank you all for being here. You have been our fans from day one, all of you (inaudible) all of these people all over. You've been our fans.

(APPLAUSE)

This has been -- this has been a -- a -- there's never been anything like it -- there's never been anything like it. This has been a movement like no movement ever in history for probably any country, let alone this country.

You know, if somebody's running for President and if they go out and they announce they're going to Arizona or they're going to Nevada, they're going to some place, if you have 200 or 300 people, that would be standard. Ronald Reagan would go out -- I mean outside of the last couple of days where people get a little excited, but even then, you have a couple of thousand people.

But if you're going to go some place, any place, any one of the swing states, any one of the other states -- I mean, the -- how about the non-swing states? We won Alabama by 48 points. We won Tennessee by massive numbers. Wyoming, we won by numbers that are -- nobody's ever seen numbers like that.

TRUMP: And, you know, places like California, we did great, but, you know, when they send out, like, 38 million ballots and nobody knows where the hell they're sending them and then they come pouring back, the whole thing -- you know, they passed a law in California that if you work in an election bureau and if you so much as ask for a voter ID, if you say, "Sir, ma'am, could I please look at your voter ID?", they have the right to put you in jail, you're a criminal. Can you believe that?

[13:40:08]

There's only one reason that happens: They want to cheat.

So, they had it where voter ID wasn't accepted. But now if you even ask for it, this is seriously a bill that was just signed, passed in, in their legislature, and it was signed.

And I think when we get things cleaned up and we get back to a little bit of normalcy, I'm going to ask the speaker to really get involved because I think we would have won the state of California because, you know, if you look at my numbers with Hispanic, we're 56 percent. And we were winning -- we won the Texas border that had never been one. As the governor said, he's doing a good job. The governor, by the way of Texas. But as the governor said, it hasn't, oh, did I get lucky? Did I get lucky. Supposing I said, you know, he's not here, but the governor of Texas has done a terrible job.

Wow. Look at you. You mean we couldn't get you up in the front row? I'll tell you.

(APPLAUSE)

Supposing I said, J.D., the governor of Texas is not doing his job. You heard what I said. See, I didn't know you were there. I said he's doing. He's doing a great job. He's doing a phenomenal job. But now you're going to have a partner that's going to work with you because you didn't have, not only didn't he have a partner, he had people selling the wall, right?

(APPLAUSE)

We have a fence structure that we worked on, the governor worked on with me, and I didn't love it to be honest with you. I wanted a nice, uh, precast concrete, you know, 40, 50 feet high, like a beautiful, could have been a T-shape, Y-shape. I love construction. I wanted that sucker to go up maybe 50, 60 feet. It would have looked beautiful. A nice Y-shape. And they said, the problem is, sir, they climbed that like a rabbit. I said, what do you mean? No way. And they brought some of these guys out. They climbed it like, and the other thing is you hit it with acid and the thing will disintegrate. You know, they have things for concrete.

So, they needed very hardened steel, very special steel. And then they did 7,000-pound concrete inside that steel unit inside that steel. And then they have a rebar. That's the toughest steel made. Very hard to cut. So, this is why very little is cut. I mean, it's right. And then they put a anti climb panel on top. I hated it. I said, it's so unattractive. And -- and I said, why would that work? I don't believe it works. And I went to watch the border patrol. Gave a display. We had actually two sets of climbers. The guys that climb up walls with drugs on their back. I mean, they got like 60, 70 pounds of drug and they go as fast as you can walk. They go, up, up, up (ph) or we have Mount Everest type climbers. And honestly, the drug guys were much better. I couldn't (inaudible) -- the drug guys blew them away, right?

But it's true. The anti-climb panel, they couldn't get around it. They just couldn't win it. You didn't have it. So sometimes you sacrifice beauty for efficiency. And we did. So, we built this wall and we had -- we built over 500 miles of wall. That's why we had such good numbers. The famous chart that came down very thankfully, the chart that came down on my right governor. Had I not looked over there. I'm not speaking right now. You might be speaking here. You want to know the truth. You, J.D. have got a lot of great people in this party, but it was -- I got very lucky, but we had the best numbers we've ever had.

But I bought, you know, what happens is when you fill it up, it's like water. You fill it up. Now we have 571 miles of wall. And they would always say, you know, when we renovated a wall, so there'd be like a piece of plywood sitting there for 60 years or a two by four sitting for 60 years on the ground and rotting because, you know, and they'll say, you didn't build a new wall here. We're building 50 feet up in the air, 30 feet sections, 50-foot sections, all steel, all concrete, all everything. And all, by the way, they don't even want me to say this, but what the hell, doesn't take that long time. They're all wired for all of the equipment. We put wires in everything, so they can easily wire for all the different types of equipment.

And if there's a doubt, we have to wire. Whenever we just look, you just find the wires all over the place up top, so we can just hook it up. We don't have to have wires on the outside, which wouldn't do too well. Right.

So anyway, so we built an extra 200 miles of wall and the governor wanted to buy it. He tried to buy it and they wouldn't sell it to him. He wanted to put it up himself. Could've done, been done in three to four weeks, 200 more miles, because when you do it now, they just keep going further out, further out, further out, getting around. So we did an extra 200 miles and it's -- it was all bought. And they announced that they're not going to put it up.

[13:45:05]

TRUMP: And that's when I realized they wanted open borders and that's when I realized the people are going to come pouring through the wall, like nobody has ever seen before, but you've seen it. A lot of you are here because of that. I made it my number one issue.

They all said inflation was the number one issue. I said I disagree. I think people coming into our country from prisons and from mental institution is a bigger institution for the people that I know. And I made it my number one. I talked about inflation too.

But you know, how many times can you say an apple has doubled in cost? I'd say it, and I'd hit it hard, but then I go back to the fact that we don't want criminals coming into our country. We don't want the jails of every country in the world virtually being deposited into the United States. And that man had to suffer with it, and he did an unbelievable job.

I'll tell you, he was a very popular governor. But now he's like an unbeatable governor because of your border policies. He was fantastic. And he really was. So.

(APPLAUSE)

Governor Abbott, he's a great man, a great leader. And -- but it did make him very more -- did you do it -- you didn't do that for politics. You did it because you wanted to do the right thing. But I'll tell you, it sure as hell worked for politics too.

It's self preservation. That's right. But no, because the people are demanding it. The people of Texas, they're demanding it, the people are demanding it all over. So anyway, so we built it, and they wouldn't let us use it. They wouldn't let the governor use it and other governors they wouldn't let them use it. But he was the leader of the pack, and did a great job.

And then we heard about a month ago that not only wouldn't they let us use it, they were sell it -- they were going to sell it for five cents on the dollar. Now, five cents on the dollar then. But today, it would cost more than twice as much to build because we bought it like six years ago. And it was just sitting on the ground and that does not do well for the whole thing, but it was just sitting on the ground.

And I heard about it, and I called the governor and I called a lot of people, your attorney general. And here's the story, they were going to buy it and these are great business people. They were going to buy it for five cents on the dollar or less. And they were calling us up, we'll sell it to you for 200 cents on the dollar.

In other words, it will cost you twice as much, so it's 200 cents on the dollar. I said can somebody explain that to a judge? I mean how corrupt is that? You'd think they'd say maybe well sell it to you for 20 cents, 30 cents, but not 200 cents. So they were going to buy something for five cents and they were going to sell it to us for a fortune. They're going to make -- it would be -- they'd have it down in -- in Fortune Magazine they'd put it, the deal of the year, OK, you buy something like that. But it was so corrupt and so horrible.

And when we told that to the administration, they didn't care. They just kept going forward. They couldn't care less, and they kept going forward. They knew that they were trying to sell it back to us. They would have sold it back to us. You would have ended up buying it, you would have paid probably 50, 60 cents, who knows. But they were going to use it for scrap metal but then they made a much better deal.

They could just buy it and sell it for us 15, 20 times what they paid. 20 times -- think about it, like 20 times what they paid. And we wouldn't let it happen. And the governor with his attorney general, Ken Paxton, they made a fantastic -- very good lawyer. He's pushed around pretty good by people, right.

I said you've got a great attorney general. They should leave him alone. He was with me. And -- but Ken and the governor went to court, and a judge actually became incensed and actually called for an investigation. How could a thing like this happen? So he stopped it.

So we're waiting to put that wall up. And now that you have a new president, that wall will go up so fast. The governor won't complain, sir.

(APPLAUSE)

This is Greg Abbott's, please, the wall is going up too fast. Please don't do that. You know the story about winning? No, no, were going to win too much, were winning too much, please. People always love that one. Well do this with the wall. Governor Abbott calls, sir, the wall is going up too fast, we can't take it. We just can't take it, no. I think you'll be very happy if the wall goes up too fast, right? But we'll get that done and we'll work with you on that, but it was a great decision by a great Texas judge, right?

And it was beautiful. Beautiful to watch. We see -- stopped them right in their tracks. I mean they were literally loading the stuff onto their trucks, it was terrible. Honestly, it was terrible, and he wouldn't take it. So I'm so glad I mentioned they have a really good governor in Texas.

And I swear, I didn't know he was here. I swear to you. It sounds like a setup. I didn't know you were there. And I'd -- did I get lucky? I said the right thing. Because there would have been moments when I wasn't so happy with him, you know, but not too many, I can tell you that.

[13:50:07]

So anyways, good to see you too, Governor. Great.

But I just want to thank everybody. You've been incredible. I recognize so many of you. It's so crazy. But this has been a long journey, and this was a journey that started in 2015; probably started 20 years before that. People used to say, "Are you going to run for president? Are you going to run, run, run?" And I always said, "No, no, no. I don't want --" -- and then one day, I said, "Let's give it a shot.? And what I talked about then was the border, too. I think it probably was the number-one issue for me back in 2015, 2016. I talked about the border. And now, I talked about the border, but this border is much worse. We fixed the border. It was totally fixed. There was nothing to talk about.

And 2020, by the way, that election was totally rigged, but these are the -- that's OK. It was a rigged election.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, the only thing good about it? It showed how bad they are; showed how incompetent. And -- and frankly, historically, this is a much bigger event, if that would have gone like it should have, and the only -- the bad thing about it is some bad things happened, like a lot of people in our country that wouldn't be in our country right now. So you know, that's the -- that's the bad part.

But I will say that it started in 2015, and right from the beginning, we went -- went to the top, the -- day one, they announced Trump, and Trump went to number one and stayed there for the whole primary.

And then, we took on Hillary. She didn't look too happy today.

(LAUGHTER)

We took on Hillary, a very nice person, but we took on Hillary and we defeated Hillary, and then we did much better the second time in 2020. You know, we got millions more votes. We got millions, like 10-, 12 million more votes than we did the first time. No president has ever gotten that many more votes. I -- I got, like, nine million more than anybody else had ever gotten, and they said we lost.

And because of that, I said to Melania, "What do you think?" And she said, "You want to do this again?"

(LAUGHTER)

And -- and had I -- had we lost and had I felt we lost, I wouldn't do it again because that's like the ultimate poll, right? But I knew how well we did, and this time we -- we made it too big to rig. It was so big. They tried, they tried.

(APPLAUSE)

They tried like hell, but -- they tried, they tried to do it, and around 9:02, they gave up. Last time, they did bad things, but this time, they just said, "Esh..."

You know, I don't know if you saw, Mr. Speaker, in Washington, they had placards. They were all set to march. They thought it'd be closer. A gentleman asked me -- a very respected gentleman asked me yesterday, "How come the polls were so wrong? They showed you winning, but not in a landslide." I said, "Because people that are true Trumpers are so angry at the whole polling system and about -- and -- and at the writers, the fake news, that they don't want to talk to anybody." So when you call somebody from Trump: "Who are you voting for?" they say, "It's none of your business. I'm not telling you." And that was probably 40 percent of the people they called, so they would discard that one, and they didn't show that. And then, when the election happened, you know, the vote came and it was much different, much higher than -- we're going to win, but they thought -- they really thought -- they couldn't believe. The one man said, "I mean, it was so much higher."

You -- we won all seven swing states. We won the popular vote by millions of votes, which is hard for a Republican. I'll tell you who came through. The unions came through. The autoworkers were great. The Teamsters were great. The firemen were great. I think every -- almost every union was great. The only one that weren't great, although he -- Sean was great, and -- and the Teamsters, the head of the -- Sean O'Brien, the head of the Teamsters was fantastic. But generally speaking, the head of the union was against Trump, but the union would be with us for, like, 80, 85 percent. Look what we did with the autoworkers in Michigan. Look what we did with the Teamsters. The Teamsters were unbelievable. They were a solid Democrat vote, and they voted for Trump.

So we had a great experience. This has been -- now, we have to go to work and get it done because we have to do something that's going to be great.

(APPLAUSE)

We're going to turn our country around, and we're going to turn it around fast. And I think this was a better speech than the one I made upstairs, OK?

(CHEERING)

I think this was better, J.D. I think this was much better, and I got to see my friend.

So Governor, take care of yourself. You call me. We'll start working.

You know what that means with him? He's going to be calling me tomorrow morning at about 6:00. I said, "How about next week?"

No, you call me, and we're going to get it started real fast. We'll really help you a lot. You've done a fantastic job, protecting something which is -- it's not supposed to be for the states. And amazing job you've done. Thank you very much.

[13:55:04]

And I want to thank everybody. And I have a first lady who's been incredible.

(CHEERING)

I shouldn't say this, I'm going to get hell when I say this, but her feet are absolutely aching. You know, those heels.

(LAUGHTER)

And we thought we were leaving, we were going home. "Sir, would you be able to go down and say hello to some of your other fans in here?" I said, "Oh, I didn't know that. Wow." Did you get to see pretty clearly the picture, I hope? Good. That's good.

(APPLAUSE)

But -- cause you wouldn't want to make the same speech again, right?

(LAUGHTER)

But she said, "Darling, I love you so much, but my feet are killing me."

(LAUGHTER)

I said, "Honey, let me just see how far it is." I asked the person. "Oh, not that long, maybe four or 500 yards. That's five football fields." I said, "Can you make it?" She said, "We're going to make it no matter what. We're going to make it cause we have to (inaudible)." Right?

(APPLAUSE)

Right? And then we went out to the helicopter though just prior to this and said goodbye -- and it's a custom. And the wind is blowing like crazy. And with the hat that she's wearing, she almost blew away. We almost lost our... (LAUGHTER)

MELANIA TRUMP: Thank you for...

TRUMP: She was being elevated off the ground. She almost blew away. No. So we all appreciate it cause you -- she's been a great First Lady -- a beautiful and a great First Lady, and they love our First Lady.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, J.D., whenever I make a speech, I -- I see hundreds of signs, "We love our First Lady, we love" -- and they do, and they should. She's great.

So I just want to thank you. Thank you very much. I just want to thank everybody. And I felt that -- I said to J.D., "Should we give them the A treatment, the B treatment, the C, the D, or the F?" You know what the F is? "Hello, everybody. Thank you for being here. Bye-bye."

(LAUGHTER)

I gave you the A-plus treatment. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you all.

[13:57:08]

Thank you, Governor. Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.

(APPLAUSE)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right, President Trump, the 47th president, there speaking in Emancipation Hall, actually speaking longer to his supporters there than he did in his actual inaugural address in the Rotunda.

He -- there were a lot of falsehoods he just uttered, and we'll get to Daniel, our fact checker, on that.

But he also did make some news talking about the January 6th rioters that he is going to pardon. We'll have more on that from our justice correspondent, Evan Perez.

But before we do that, Kaitlan Collins is in the room right there. And before they kick her out, let's go to her.

Kaitlan, who exactly is he speaking before in that room? We saw obviously Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Who else is there?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: It's a mix, Jake, of a lot of supporters and media figures who played a key role in Trump's election. Jake Paul, Logan Paul, Conor McGregor is here.

Mike Turner, who was just removed from the House Intelligence Committee is here, and several other Republican lawmakers. I also saw Kari Lake was here. A lot of the governors are seated.

So certainly, a lot more politically friendly crowd to Donald Trump. There's not a lot of Democrats that I've seen. I haven't really seen any elected Democrats in the room as we've been looking from our vantage point, our perch over here.

But, Jake, that speech that the president just delivered there, that was really his real inaugural address. That was the speech he wanted to give inside the Rotunda earlier.

And he acknowledged there saying that J.D. Vance, the vice president, and Melania Trump, the first lady, both talked him out of going into certain areas and certain themes in his inaugural address that he just delivered a short time ago, one that, as you noted there, was actually shorter than the address he just delivered here.

And the first thing was the January 6th pardons that we know he plans to issue later today. We're waiting to see how broad and far ranging they're going to be.

But he did say essentially actions speak louder than words. He said the crowd here will be very happy with what he does later with those pardons.

But Jake, we also heard him respond, for the first time, to the pardons that were issued this morning by President Biden to General Mark Milley and former congresswoman, Liz Cheney. He was very clearly incensed that they got pardons. He was questioning why they would get pardons.

And that, of course, was precisely the reason that President Biden said in his statement this morning that he offered them to them because he was worried that they would face any kinds of calls for vengeance from Trump and his team that he's installing inside the federal government.

And, of course, on January 6th there, he started relitigating the 2016 election. He was saying that Hillary Clinton did not seem happy to see him. And he also was claiming that the 2020 election was stolen and that was why he ran in 2024. Of course, it wasn't.

And he made false claims that he's repeated many times about Nancy Pelosi and the National Guard.

But I just think, Jake, listening --