Chris Christie: 'Donald Trump wants you to be angry every day because he’s angry', end of Presidential bid - 2024

11 January 2024, Windham, New Hampshire, USA

Good evening. Good evening. Thank you all for coming tonight. This is one of the cooler venues we’ve been to here, right? Happy to be here in Windham. Thank you all for taking the time to come. Glad we’re having better weather than we had yesterday. We were up in Rochester yesterday and it was snowing like real New Hampshire snow, so it was good to experience that. Thank you all for coming tonight. I appreciate you being here. I appreciate your support.

We started these town halls the same way. I started them the same way ever since we were up at St. Anselms in June to tell you why, why we’re in this race. We’re in this race to tell the truth. From the beginning, we’ve been in this race to tell the truth. Fact is that as we were watching this race come together from where Mary Pat and I were sitting at home in New Jersey, we were really concerned that nobody would tell the truth in this race about what’s really at stake and no one would tell the truth about Donald Trump. No one would tell the truth about his divisiveness, his stoking of anger for his own benefit in putting himself before the people of this country, myself included, who gave him the honor of being President of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Personal ambition is a necessary element for any political candidate. You got to get out of bed in the morning and be able to really believe in your heart that you have something to offer to folks that’s better and different. I have no argument with people who are involved in politics being ambitious. You need to have it, but it can’t be what governs your decision making. Ambition can’t be what makes you decide how to do things as a public figure. It could just be the fuel that gets you out of bed, that gets you in front of a room like this, that gets you on the phone raising money, that gets you working for people who you believe in and gets you working for yourself.

I made a political decision eight years ago when I dropped out of the race in 2016. I looked at the polls and I decided that Donald Trump was going to be the nominee and that since I’d known him for 15 years, that I could make him a better candidate and if he won, maybe a better president. I knew his flaws, but I also knew he was going to win the nomination so I decided that I would get behind him and support him. I let the ambition get ahead and in control of the decision-making. After I figured that out, I promised myself and I promised my wife that I would never, ever do that again, and I’m not going to.

For all the people who have been in this race, who have put their own personal ambition ahead of what’s right, they will ultimately have to answer the same questions that I had to answer after my decision in 2016. Those questions don’t ever leave. In fact, they’re really stubborn. They stay, and so I know how I’m answering those questions. I’ve never believed that Donald Trump was a foregone conclusion as our nominee in this race, and I knew that the case had to be made against him. Now, there are people in our party who are resigned with the fact that he was going to be the nominee, resigned with the fact that the case didn’t even need to be made because it would be a waste of time.

They sat on the sidelines and all they did was voice their opposition in private, behind closed doors quietly so no one could hear. That’s not leadership everybody. That’s cowardice. It’s cowardice and it’s hypocrisy. As a party, we need to be willing to take the responsibility for the part we’ve played in getting here. Our country is angry. It’s divided. It’s accomplishing little, and it is leading our citizens to be exhausted. You just look at what’s happening just in the last few days, good people who got into politics, I believe for the right reasons. People like Senator John Barrasso, people like Congressman Tom Emmer stand up and endorse Donald Trump.

They know better. I know they know better. People who continue to deny the results of the 2020 election. People in leadership in the House who go on TV and say that the people who attack the Capitol on January 6th are hostages. I’ll tell you who hostages are. The Israelis who are still being hidden in tunnels in Gaza against their will out of no fault of their own. These people speak louder for the folks who attacked our Capitol on January 6th than they are willing to stand up and speak for the people of Israel who are in tunnels in Gaza. That’s not leadership. That’s ambition and cowardice, which is outstripped their otherwise good judgment.

We want to change this party, and if we want to change this country, it’s hard work. It’s not easy. From the moment I got into the race, the decision that I made was really simple. I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win. I feel no differently today because this is a fight for the soul of our party and the soul of our country. Why have we resisted the calls to drop out of this race? Because unlike some of the other candidates, we’re fighting for something bigger than ourselves. We’re fighting for something bigger than self-interest. We’re fighting for something bigger than the next title. I’ve got plenty of titles, enough titles to last me the rest of my life. US Attorney, governor, husband, father, son, brother. I have enough titles to last me for the rest of my life. We are fighting for something bigger.

It’s something that conventional wisdom thinkers just can’t possibly understand. And so they’ve been saying for weeks and weeks and weeks because some polls that I should drop out of the race that I should get out for that reason. The smallness of the campaigns who spend more time arguing and worrying about who should get out of the race than they have spent going after the front-runner. They spend all their time saying, “Oh, Christie should get out. Scott should get out. Pence should get out. Hutchinson should get out. Burgum should get out. They and their donors have a different target every day to try to minimize the attention for their own campaign. How their own campaign is a campaign that doesn’t play to win. It’s a campaign that plays to not offend.” The problems in our country, the divisions and influx at our border, the problems with our enormous debt, the failures of our education system,

All of those things and much more will not be solved by people who are too afraid to talk about what the real problems are. If we ever have a hope of restoring this party to be a governing party of principles, we have to be willing to do the hard work and take some of the heat that comes with it. We have candidates in this race who have run away from forums where they’re afraid they were going to be booed. I run into the forums where I know I’m going to be booed because being booed for telling the truth is a badge of honor.

I’m proud of everything we’ve said and done so far, and I’m proud of all the people who have supported us and are willing to do what needs to be done to restore the soul of our country. See, because in the end, all those issues that we’ve talked about at all the town halls, they’re all really important, but they’re no more important than the most important issue, and that is the character of the candidate.

You don’t know what’s going to come across the next President’s desk. You think you can predict it, but you can’t. No one asked George W. Bush or Al Gore what they would do if four airliners were hijacked and flown into symbols of American power and killing thousands of Americans. No one asked them that in New Hampshire in 2000, but I was glad we had a man of character sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office when that attack came, because I knew George Bush would do everything he needed to do to protect this country and its people and put them first, not himself first.

Imagine just for a moment, if 9-11 had happened with Donald Trump behind the desk. The first thing he would’ve done was run to the bunker to protect himself. He would’ve put himself first before this country. And anyone who is unwilling to say that he is unfit to be President of the United States is unfit themselves to be President of the United States.

Campaigns are run to win. That’s why we do them. I see the chairman here in New Hampshire. He knows we run campaigns to win. My goal has never been to be just a voice against the hate and the division and the selfishness of what our party has become under Donald Trump. It’s also been the win the nomination and defeat Joe Biden and restore our party and our country to a new place of hope and optimism in this country. I’ve always said that if there came a point in time in this race where I couldn’t see a path to accomplishing that goal, that I would get out. And it’s clear to me tonight that there isn’t a path for me to win the nomination, which is why I’m suspending my campaign tonight for President of the United States.

I know, and I can see it from some of the faces here, that I’m disappointing some people by doing this. People who believe in our message and believe in what we’ve been doing. I also know though it’s the right thing for me to do because I want to promise you this. I’m going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be President of the United States again, and that’s more important than my own personal ambition.

So we have to decide now. We have to decide in the next 10 months, who do we want to be as a country? We forget that people are walking thousands of miles still to get here. We talk about the problems in the border and there are problems and we have to fix them, and we have to secure our border, and we have to do it in a way that’s smart and sensible and will work, because it’s not right to have a porous southern border in this country.

But I want you to remember something. Those people who are coming over that border, many of them are walking hundreds if not thousands of miles to get there because here is where they see hope. Here is where they see freedom. Here is where they see success. Here is where they see that flag, which means for them, thousands of miles away in other countries, all of those principles. We are still the indispensable nation for the rest of the world. We need to be the indispensable nation once again to each other. We need to believe in America as much as they believe in America. Right now, they believe in America in a way that this country, angry, divided, with selfish leadership, who puts their own ambition first, isn’t doing for our country anymore. We need to change that, and every election is an opportunity to change it.

We have people in this race, all they will do is tell you how bad everything is, how angry we should be. And there’s certainly sufficient reason for anger at the failures of the leaders we’ve selected, but they’re doing it not for that reason. It’s not a moment of honesty and transparency. Believe me, it’s not. It’s because they believe when we get angry, what we’ll do is naturally relate to the angriest voice in the room.

Donald Trump wants you to be angry every day because he’s angry. He wants you to be angry so that you’ll relate to his anger and then to vote for him. Please understand this. I have known him well for 22 years, more than anybody else in this race has known him, and I can promise you this. If you put him back behind the desk in the Oval Office and the choice comes and the decision is needed to be made as to whether he puts himself first or he puts you first, how much more evidence do you need that he will pick himself? And if that is what we have there, then people are going to remain angry, remain divided, and become even more exhausted than they are today.

The country that I think we should choose is the country that recognizes that our differences have always been our strength, not a weakness. Not something to divide us and anger us, but our differences have been our strength. We’ve come from different countries at different times to different places with different skills, with different religions, and yet only here can those people become an American. Can’t go to Germany and become a German, can’t come to Great Britain and become British, but you can come here and become an American, a real part of this country.

The moment we become a place where people no longer want to come in search of a better, freer, stronger nation, that will be the real problem that will be harder to solve. We back our allies

Around the world and they shouldn’t have to think twice about having America’s support. Yet, we have petty politics interfering with supporting freedom fighters in Ukraine. We have petty politics interfering with defending our friends in Israel. We have petty politics interfering with making sure Taiwan is armed to fight off the Chinese. They use the border as an excuse not to do those things.

How about we have a country where we can do all those things because leadership aspires to something greater? Not to appealing to the lowest common denominator, which is what the leadership of the last decade and a half in the White House has done, including the current president.

We need a country that once again feels like everyone has a stake in what we’re doing, that we can bring people together. It’s hard. It’s hard to do that. I did it for eight years in New Jersey, in a Democratic state with a Republican governor, and it’s hard. Because we have real disagreements, but those disagreements are small compared to the things that we have in common.

But it takes effort. We have to work at it. We have to believe that the other person has a rightful place in our country. We have to believe that whether we agree with them or not, they got elected too and they have a right to have a voice, and to be heard, and to have a vote and to have it count.

This race has always been bigger than me. It’s bigger than any one person if you do it the right way. I tried to change conversation in this race. I tried to force the conversation in this race, the conversation about the real thing that’s going on here. I stood on those debate stages, every one of them. The pundits in the media and the professional politicians who worked for other campaigns said I wasn’t going to make any of them right before every debate. No, Christie won’t make this one. He won’t make this one. I made every one of them.

But when I stood on there, I watched the other candidates arguing with each other as if the race was between us. Pretending as if the guy who’s in front and wasn’t there, wasn’t to be spoken about like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books. He who shall not be named, because they feared even bringing up his name would make him appear with his magical mystical powers to end their political careers. So they say ridiculous things, make ridiculous points.

Let me tell you, if Donald Trump becomes the nominee of this party, the moment that it happened was when Nikki Haley, and Ron DeSantis, and Tim Scott and Mike Pence and Doug Burgum and Vivek Ramaswamy stood on that stage in Milwaukee in August, and when we were asked, would you support someone who is a convicted felon to be President of the United States, they raised their hands. Give Ron credit. He had to look at everybody else first to see if he wanted to raise his hand, but then he raised his hand. Kind of like cheating off somebody’s paper in high school.

They raised their hands and I did not and will not, and I cannot countenance that behavior. I want you to imagine for a second that Jefferson, and Hamilton, and Adams, and Washington and Franklin were sitting here tonight. Do you think they could imagine that the country they risked their lives to create would actually be having a conversation about whether a convicted criminal should be President of the United States? I can’t tell you how many people in New Hampshire have asked me, “Why isn’t there a law against that?” The answer is because nobody ever thought that someone would have the audacity to run for President as a criminal and they never thought that any American electorate would actually support it. It’s not their fault that they didn’t put it in the Constitution along with 35 years old and a natural-born American citizen. They didn’t think let’s throw in here and not a criminal. They thought maybe we’d get that part. We’re going to show them now whether we do or we don’t in the next 10 months. Do we get it or don’t we? I’m out here saying what I’m saying for the last eight months because I didn’t want to take the chance that you might not get it. I wanted to be the voice that was telling you, this is unacceptable. We deserve better.

Now there’s some people who want the courts to save us. It’s not up to the courts to save us. I remember what Benjamin Franklin said, I’m sure many of you do too. When he was walking down the street in Philadelphia after the Constitutional convention and a woman approached him on the street and said, “Mr. Franklin, what kind of government did you give us?” He said to the woman, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Benjamin Franklin’s words were never more relevant in America than they are right now. The last time they were this relevant was the Civil War, which of course we know was caused by slavery. The last time those words were that relevant back in those days, and now we are confronted 160 years later with that question again.

A republic, if we can keep it. It’s up to you. I’ve been running ads all over New Hampshire, ending it saying, “It’s up to you,” and it is. It’s not up to me. I’ve done everything I can and it’s not about me. The other candidates, some of them have made it about them. It’s okay, but you forget that the privilege to serve in public office is not about you, but about the people who give you the privilege, then you lose your way.

So tonight is a sad night for me and for Mary Pat because believe it or not, we really love the people in this state. We loved being here. Both, of our experiences in 2016 and in 2024 and coming to New Hampshire and holding two hour town hall meetings and answering every question has been one of the great joys and honors of our lives. The relationships we’ve made here have been lifelong relationships now that we’re going to keep going forward, no matter what else we do with our lives and our careers.

I look around this room and see so many people who have been to so many of these meetings and have been so wonderfully supportive of us. I’d start to name names, but then I’d screw that up and I’d forget somebody who is really important to us. So I’m not going to do that. You know who you are and you know how much we treasure our relationships with you. But I will mention one person, because she texted

… with me, either last night or this morning. And she said to me, “Please, please don’t drop out. We need you.” And that was our friend Tony Papas. And because I had decided at that moment in my heart, and so had Mary Pat that we were going to, I didn’t respond to you.

Tony Papas (27:27):

I understand.

Chris Christie (27:29):

Because I didn’t want to lie to you. But I turned to Mary Pat and I handed her the phone and showed her. I said, “These are the kind of people that we’re fighting for. The people who believe that what we have to offer is something important and special, and that what we’re talking about matters.” And it meant a lot to me to get that text from you, Tony, because I know that you’ve been through a lot of campaigns here in this state. And to hear from you that you wanted me to stay made me feel guilty, but also made me feel wonderful. And both those feelings can exist at the same time. And I thank you for that. And what Tony, and I pointed out what Tony is represented by a lot of people in this room who we’ve heard from over the last few weeks, and we appreciate it very much.

We appreciate your friendship, your hospitality, your warmth, your questions, your challenges, and everything that you’ve provided to us in this state, both eight years ago and over the last eight months. I’ll just end with this. I believe and have always believed that this is the greatest country That the world has ever seen. And I still believe that today. The phrase “Make America Great Again” has always offended me because it implied that America wasn’t great. America is great. It was great long before those red hats showed up, and it will be great long after they are consigned to history. This country is a great country and the only thing that stops us from having it be greater is our willingness to work hard enough to make it greater.

It is not easy to stand up and fight for what we believe in when the wind is blowing in our face. It is not easy to stand up and fight the loudest voice in the room. It isn’t easy to look at someone who we know is unfit and unable to represent what the heart of this country really is and tell them, ” Thank you for your service. It’s time for you to go home.” But that’s what we need to do in the next 10 months if we are going to keep in concert with the spirit of this country. I don’t know how anybody could want to be President of the United States if they don’t love America. And you cannot love America if you don’t love every American. Love the Americans who look different than you. Love the Americans who speak different than you. Love the Americans who think different than you. Love the Americans who believe and have faith that is different than yours. We have had Donald Trump and other candidates in this race say they don’t want people coming to this country if there’s not of our religion.

We don’t have a religion in America. Our Constitution is founded on there being no national religion. Yet we’re abandoning that too by continuing to respond positively to the siren song of someone who would actually say something like that as a candidate for President of the United States meant to only divide. If we don’t stand for those principles, we will be the generation that gave this country away. I refuse. When I got into this race, I refused. And tonight, even though I’m suspending this campaign, I am not going away and my voice is not going away. And I’m going to continue to say all the things that I’ve said and whatever platforms are permitted to me as we go forward, the very same things and new things that I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to comment on as we go forward. Because I’m not going to be part of the generation that gives this country away. I am not going to be part of a generation who willingly stands by and says, “It’s too hard. He’s too loud, he’s too strong.”

That’s what defeat looks and sounds like. And the only country that can defeat America is America. And the only people that can stop it are us. So I thank you for the enormous honor to have the chance to run for President of the United States again. I thank you for your time to listen to what I’ve had to say and to give it thought and consideration. I thank you for the opportunity to come into your homes, into your neighbor neighborhoods, into your schools, into your churches, and to be able to make the case for the kind of America that I hope we have. And I thank you most of all for with your attendance at these events for and your questions for continuing to renew my faith in America and Americans.

I love this country because my heart is open to every American and every person who cares about making this a better place. And so while I’m disappointed by the results of this election, I will never be disappointed by the opportunity and experience that I’ve had. And I promise you that in whatever way, Mary Pat and I can figure out, we are going to continue to fight for you and for this country in a way that will make you proud that we met. As I’m proud to have met all of you through this process. So thank you for coming tonight and thank you for all your support. I appreciate it very much.

Ronald Reagan: 'A banner of bold, unmistakable colors with no pale pastels', RNC endorsement speech - 1976

19 August 1976, Kansas City, Missouri, USA

Thank you very much.

Mr. President, Mrs. Ford, Mr. Vice President, Mr. Vice President to be, the distinguished guests here and you ladies and gentlemen:

I am going to say fellow Republicans here, but those who are watching from a distance—all of those millions of Democrats and independents who I know are looking for a cause around which to rally and which I believe we can give them.

Mr. President, before you arrived tonight, these wonderful people here, when we came in, gave Nancy and myself a welcome. And that, plus this, plus your kindness and generosity in honoring us by bringing us down here, will give us a memory that will live in our hearts forever.

Watching on television these last few nights, and I've seen you also with the warmth that you greeted Nancy, and you also filled my heart with joy when you did that.

May I just say some words. There are cynics who say that a party platform is something that no one bothers to read and it doesn't very often amount to much.

Whether it is different this time than it has ever been before, I believe the Republican Party has a platform that a banner of bold, unmistakable colors with no pale pastels.

We have just heard a call to arms based on that platform. And a call to arms to really be successful in communicating and reveal to the American people the difference between this platform and the platform of the opposing party, which is nothing but a revamped and a reissue and a running of a late, late show of the thing that we've been hearing from them for the last 40 years.

If I could just take a moment—I had an assignment the other day. Someone asked me to write a letter for time capsule that is going to be opened in Los Angeles a hundred years from now, on our Tricentennial.

It sounded like an easy assignment. They suggested I write something about the problems and issues of the day. And I said I could do so, riding down the coast in an automobile, looking at the blue Pacific out on one side and the Santa Ines Mountains on the other, and I couldn't help but wonder if was going to be that beautiful a hundred years from now as it was on that summer day.

Then, as I tried to write—let your own minds turn to that task. You're going to write for people a hundred years from now who know all about us. We know nothing about them We don't know what kind of a world they'll be living in.

And suddenly, I thought to myself as I write of the problems, they'll be the domestic problems of which the President spoke here tonight; the challenges confronting us; the erosion of freedom that has taken place under Democrat rule in this country; the invasion of private rights; the controls and restrictions on the vitality of the great free economy that we enjoy. These are our challenges that we must meet.

And then again there is that challenge of which he spoke, that. we live in world in which the great powers have poised and aimed at each other horrible missiles of destruction, nuclear weapons that can in a matter of minutes arrive in each other's country and destroy virtually the civilized world we live in.

And suddenly it dawned on me, those who would read this letter a hundred years from now will know whether those missiles were fired. They. will know whether we met our challenge.

Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now, will depend on what we do here. Will they look back with appreciation and say, thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom; who kept us now a hundred years later free; who kept our world from nuclear destruction? And if we failed, they probably won't get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom and they won't he allowed to talk of that or read of it.

This Is our challenge. And this is why, here in this hall tonight, better than we've ever done before, we've got to quit talking to each other and about each other and go out and communicate to the world that we may be fewer in numbers than we've ever been, but we carry the message they're waiting for.

We must go forth from here united, determined, that what a great general said a few years ago is true: ‘There is no substitute for victory. ‘

Mr. President.

Ronald Reagan: 'Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end', Farewell address to the nation - 1989

11 January 1989, Oval Office, Washington DC, USA

My fellow Americans, this is the 34th time I'll speak to you from the Oval Office, and the last. We've been together eight years now, and soon it'll be time for me to go. But before I do, I wanted to share some thoughts, some of which I have been saving for a long time.

It's been the honor of my life to be your President. So many of you have written the past few weeks to say thanks, but I could say as much to you. Nancy and I are grateful for the opportunity you gave us to serve.

One of the things about the Presidency is that you're always somewhat apart. You spend a lot of time going by too fast in a car someone else is driving, and seeing the people through tinted glass - the parents holding up a child, and the wave you saw too late and couldn't return. And so many times I wanted to stop, and reach out from behind the glass, and connect. Well, maybe I can do a little of that tonight.

People ask how I feel about leaving, and the fact is parting is "such sweet sorrow." The sweet part is California, and the ranch, and freedom. The sorrow? The goodbyes, of course, and leaving this beautiful place.

You know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the President and his family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there that I like to stand and look out of early in the morning. The view is over the grounds here to the Washington Monument, and then the Mall, and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac, and the Virginia shore. Someone said that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the battle of Bull Run. Well, I see more prosaic things: the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work, now and then a sailboat on the river. Reflections at a Window

I've been thinking a bit at that window. I've been reflecting on what the past eight years have meant, and mean. And the image that comes to mind like a refrain is a nautical one - a small story about a big ship, and a refugee, and a sailor.

It was back in the early Eighties, at the height of the boat people, and the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat - and crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship, and safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on deck, and stood up and called out to him. He yelled, "Hello, American sailor - Hello, Freedom Man."

A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn't get out of his mind. And, when I saw it, neither could I.

Because that's what it has to - it was to be an American in the 1980's; We stood, again, for freedom. I know we always have but in the past few years the world - again, and in a way, we ourselves - rediscovered it.

It's been quite a journey this decade, and we held together through some stormy seas. And at the end, together, we are reaching our destination.

The fact is, from Grenada to the Washington and Moscow summits, from the recession of '81 to '82 to the expansion that began in late '82 and continues to this day, we've made a difference. Two Great Triumphs

The way I see it, there were two great triumphs, two things that I'm proudest of. One is the economic recovery, in which the people of America created - and filled - 19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale: America is respected again in the world, and looked to for leadership.

Something that happened to me a few years ago reflects some of this. It was back in 1981, and I was attending my first big economic summit, which was held that year in Canada. The meeting place rotates among the member countries. The opening meeting was a formal dinner for the heads of government of the seven industrialized nations. Well, I sat there like the new kid in school and listened, and it was all Francois this and Helmut that. They dropped titles and spoke to one another on a first-name basis. Well, at one point I sort of leaned in and said, "My name's Ron."

Well, in that same year, we began the actions we felt would ignite an economic comeback: cut taxes and regulation, started to cut spending. Soon the recovery began.

Two years later, another economic summit, with pretty much the same cast. At the big opening meeting, we all got together, and all of a sudden just for a moment I saw that everyone was just sitting there looking at me. And then one of them broke the silence. "Tell us about the American miracle," he said.

Well, back in 1980, when I was running for President, it was all so different. Some pundits said our programs would result in catastrophe. Our views on foreign affairs would cause war, our plans for the economy would cause inflation to soar and bring about economic collapse. I even remember one highly respected economist saying, back in 1982, that "The engines of economic growth have shut down here and they're likely to stay that way for years to come."

Well, he - and the other "opinion leaders" - were wrong. The fact is, what they called "radical" was really "right"; what they called "dangerous" was just "desperately needed." 'The Great Communicator'

And in all that time I won a nickname - "The Great Communicator." But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference - it was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation - from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries.

They called it the Reagan Revolution, and I'll accept that, but for me it always seemed more like the Great Rediscovery: a rediscovery of our values and our common sense.

Common sense told us that when you put a big tax on something, the people will produce less of it. So we cut the people's tax rates, and the people produced more than ever before. The economy bloomed like a plant that had been cut back and could now grow quicker and stronger. Our economic program brought about the longest peacetime expansion in our history: real family income up, the poverty rate down, entrepreneurship booming and an explosion in research and new technology. We're exporting more now than ever because American industry became more competitive, and at the same time we summoned the national will to knock down protectionist walls abroad instead of erecting them at home.

Common sense also told us that to preserve the peace we'd have to become strong again after years of weakness and confusion. So we rebuilt our defenses - and this New Year we toasted the new peacefulness around the globe. Not only have the superpowers actually begun to reduce their stockpiles of nuclear weapons - and hope for even more progress is bright - but the regional conflicts that rack the globe are also beginning to cease. The Persian Gulf is no longer a war zone, the Soviets are leaving Afghanistan, the Vietnamese are preparing to pull out of Cambodia and an American-mediated accord will soon send 50,000 Cuban troops home from Angola. 'We Changed a World'

The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours.

And something else we learned: once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it'll end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

Countries across the globe are turning to free markets and free speech - and turning away from the ideologies of the past. For them, the Great Rediscovery of the 1980's has been that, lo and behold, the moral way of government is the practical way of government. Democracy, the profoundly good, is also the profoundly productive.

When you've got to the point where you can celebrate the anniversaries of your 39th birthday you can sit back sometimes, review your life and see it flowing before you. For me, there was a fork in the river, and it was right in the middle of my life.

I never meant to go into politics: it wasn't my intention when I was young. But I was raised to believe you had to pay your way for the blessings bestowed on you. I was happy with my career in the entertainment world, but I ultimately went into politics because I wanted to protect something precious. 'We the People'

Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: "We the People."

"We the People" tell the Government what to do, it doesn't tell us. "We the people" are the driver - the Government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which "We the People" tell the Government what it is allowed to do. "We the people" are free.

This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I tried to do these past eight years.

But back in the 1960's when I began, it seemed to me that we'd begun reversing the order of things - that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the Government was taking more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, "Stop!" I was a citizen-politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.

I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. Actions Based on Deeds

Nothing is less free than pure communism, and yet we have, the past few years, forged a satisfying new closeness with the Soviet Union. I've been asked if this isn't a gamble, and my answer is no, because we're basing our actions not on words but deeds.

The detente of the 1970's was based not on actions but promises. They'd promise to treat their own people and the people of the world better, but the gulag was still the gulag, and the state was still expansionist, and they still waged proxy wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Well, this time, so far, it's different: President Gorbachev has brought about some internal democratic reforms and begun the withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has also freed prisoners whose names I've given him every time we've met.

But life has a way of reminding you of big things through small incidents. Once, during the heady days of the Moscow Summit, Nancy and I decided to break off from the entourage one afternoon to visit the shops on Arbat Street - that's a little street just off Moscow's main shopping area.

Even though our visit was a surprise, every Russian there immediately recognized us, and called out our names and reached for our hands. We were just about swept away by the warmth - you could almost feel the possibilities in all that joy. But within seconds, a K.G.B. detail pushed their way toward us and began pushing and shoving the people in the crowd. It was an interesting moment. It reminded me that while the man on the street in the Soviet Union yearns for peace, the Government is Communist - and those who run it are Communists - and that means we and they view such issues as freedom and human rights very differently. 'Keep Up Our Guard'

We must keep up our guard - but we must also continue to work together to lessen and eliminate tension and mistrust.

My view is that President Gorbachev is different from previous Soviet leaders. I think he knows some of the things wrong with his society and is trying to fix them. We wish him well. And we'll continue to work to make sure that the Soviet Union that eventually emerges from this process is a less threatening one.

What it all boils down to is this: I want the new closeness to continue. And it will as long as we make it clear that we will continue to act in a certain way as long as they continue to act in a helpful manner. If and when they don't - at first pull your punches. If they persist, pull the plug.

It's still trust - but verify.

It's still play - but cut the cards.

It's still watch closely - and don't be afraid to see what you see.

I've been asked if I have any regrets. Well, I do.

The deficit is one. I've been talking a great deal about that lately, but tonight isn't for arguments, and I'm going to hold my tongue.

But an observation: I've had my share of victories in the Congress, but what few people noticed is that I never won anything you didn't win for me. They never saw my troops; they never saw Reagan's Regiments, the American people. You won every battle with every call you made and letter you wrote demanding action. Much to Be Done

Well, action is still needed. If we're to finish the job, of Reagan's Regiments, we'll have to become the Bush Brigades. Soon he'll be the chief, and he'll need you every bit as much as I did.

Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time.

But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past eight years; the resurgence of national pride that I called "the new patriotism." This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.

An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?

Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American, and we absorbed almost in the air a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions. If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio. Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school. And if all else failed, you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture. The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-Sixties. Ahead, to the Nineties

But now we're about to enter the Nineties, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.

Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom - freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise - and freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs protection.

We've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important: Why the pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant. You know, four years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day. I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach. Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did. Well, let's help her keep her word.

If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are. I am warning of an eradication of that - of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.

Let's start with some basics - more attention to American history and a greater emphasis of civic ritual. And let me offer lesson No. 1 about America : All great change in America begins at the dinner table. So tomorrow night in the kitchen I hope the talking begins. And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American - let 'em know and nail 'em on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

And that's about all I have to say tonight. Except for one thing.

The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the shining "city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. What he imagined was important, because he was an early Pilgrim - an early "Freedom Man." He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat, and, like the other pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free.

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind swept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace - a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.

That's how I saw it, and see it still. How Stands the City?

And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that: after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm.

And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the Pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

We've done our part. And as I "walk off into the city streets," a final word to the men and women of the Reagan Revolution - the men and women across America who for eight years did the work that brought America back:

My friends, we did it. We weren't just marking time, we made a difference. We made the city stronger - we made the city freer - and we left her in good hands.

All in all, not bad. Not bad at all.

And so, goodbye.

God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

Richard Nixon: 'What America needs is leaders to match the greatness of her people!', RNC acceptance speech - 1968

8 August 1968, Florida Beach, Florida, USA

Mr. Chairman, delegates to this convention, my fellow Americans.

Sixteen years ago I stood before this Convention to accept your nomination as the running mate of one of the greatest Americans of our time -- or of any time -- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Eight years ago, I had the highest honor of accepting your nomination for President of the United States. Tonight, I again proudly accept that nomination for President of the United States.

But I have news for you. This time there is a difference.

This time we are going to win.

We're going to win for a number of reasons: first a personal one. General Eisenhower, as you know, lies critically ill in the Walter Reed Hospital tonight. I have talked, however, with Mrs. Eisenhower on the telephone. She tells me that his heart is with us. And she says that there is nothing that he lives more for and there is nothing that would lift him more than for us to win in November and I say let's win this one for Ike!

We are going to win because this great Convention has demonstrated to the nation that the Republican Party has the leadership, the platform and the purpose that America needs. We are going to win because you have nominated as my running mate a statesman of the first rank who will be a great campaigner and one who is fully qualified to undertake the new responsibilities that I shall give to the next Vice President of the United States.

And he is a man who fully shares my conviction and yours, that after a period of forty years when power has gone from the cities and the states to the government in Washington, D.C., it's time to have power go back from Washington to the states and to the cities of this country allover America.

We are going to win because at a time that America cries out for the unity that this Administration has destroyed, the Republican Party -- after a spirited contest for its nomination -- for President and for Vice President stands united before the nation tonight.

I congratulate Governor Reagan. I congratulate Governor Rockefeller. I congratulate Governor Romney. I congratulate all those who have made the hard fight that they have for this nomination. And I know that you will all fight even harder for the great victory our party is going to win in November because we're going to be together in that election campaign.

And a party that can unite itself will unite America.

My fellow Americans, most important -- we are going to win because our cause is right.

We make history tonight -- not for ourselves but for the ages.

The choice we make in 1968 will determine not only the future of America but the future of peace and freedom in the world for the last third of the Twentieth Century.

And the question that we answer tonight: can America meet this great challenge?

For a few moments, let us look at America, let us listen to America to find the answer to that question.

As we look at America, we see cities enveloped in smoke and flame.

We hear sirens in the night.

We see Americans dying on distant battlefields abroad.

We see Americans hating each other; fighting each other; killing each other at home.

And as we see and hear these things, millions of Americans cry out in anguish.

Did we come all this way for this?

Did American boys die in Normandy, and Korea, and in Valley Forge for this?

Listen to the answer to those questions.

It is another voice. It is the quiet voice in the tumult and the shouting.

It is the voice of the great majority of Americans, the forgotten Americans -- the non-shouters; the non-demonstrators.

They are not racists or sick; they are not guilty of the crime that plagues the land.

They are black and they are white -- they're native born and foreign born -- they're young and they're old.

They work in America's factories.

They run America's businesses.

They serve in government.

They provide most of the soldiers who died to keep us free.

They give drive to the spirit of America.

They give lift to the American Dream.

They give steel to the backbone of America. They are good people, they are decent people; they work, and they save, and they pay their taxes, and they care.

Like Theodore Roosevelt, they know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it is a good place for all of us to live in.

This I say to you tonight is the real voice of America. In this year 1968, this is the message it will broadcast to America and to the world.

Let's never forget that despite her faults, America is a great nation.

And America is great because her people are great.

With Winston Churchill, we say: "We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies because we are made of sugar candy."

America is in trouble today not because her people have failed but because her leaders have failed.

And what America needs are leaders to match the greatness of her people.

And this great group of Americans, the forgotten Americans, and others know that the great question Americans must answer by their votes in November is this: Whether we shall continue for four more years the policies of the last five years.

And this is their answer and this is my answer to that question.

When the strongest nation in the world can be tied down for four years in a war in Vietnam with no end in sight;

When the richest nation in the world can't manage its own economy;

When the nation with the greatest tradition of the rule of law is plagued by unprecedented lawlessness;

When a nation that has been known for a century for equality of opportunity is torn by unprecedented racial violence;

And when the President of the United States cannot travel abroad or to any major city at home without fear of a hostile demonstration -- then it's time for new leadership for the United States of America.

My fellow Americans, tonight I accept the challenge and the commitment to provide that new leadership for America.

And I ask you to accept it with me.

And let us accept this challenge not as a grim duty but as an exciting adventure in which we are privileged to help a great nation realize its destiny.

And let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth -- to see it like it is, and tell it like it is -- to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth -- that's what we will do.

We've had enough of big promises and little action.

The time has come for honest government in the United States of America.

And so tonight I do not promise the millennium in the morning.

I don't promise that we can eradicate poverty, and end discrimination, eliminate all danger of war in the space of four, or even eight years. But, I do promise action -- a new policy for peace abroad; a new policy for peace and progress and justice at home.

Look at our problems abroad. Do you realize that we face the stark truth that we are worse off in every area of the world tonight than we were when President Eisenhower left office eight years ago. That's the record. And there is only one answer to such a record of failure and that is a complete housecleaning of those responsible for the failures of that record. The answer is a complete re-appraisal of America's policies in every section of the world.

We shall begin with Vietnam.

We all hope in this room that there is a chance that current negotiations may bring an honorable end to that war. And we will say nothing during this campaign that might destroy that chance.

But if the war is not ended when the people choose in November, the choice will be clear. Here it is.

For four years this Administration has had at its disposal the greatest military and economic advantage that one nation has ever had over another in any war in history.

For four years, America's fighting men have set a record for courage and sacrifice unsurpassed in our history.

For four years, this Administration has had the support of the Loyal Opposition for the objective of seeking an honorable end to the struggle.

Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively.

And if after all of this time and all of this sacrifice and all of this support there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership -- not tied to the mistakes and the policies of the past. That is what we offer to America.

And I pledge to you tonight that the first priority foreign policy objective of our next Administration will be to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam. We shall not stop there -- we need a policy to prevent more Vietnams.

All of America's peace-keeping institutions and all of America's foreign commitments must be re-appraised. Over the past twenty-five years, America has provided more than one-hundred and fifty billion dollars in foreign aid to nations abroad.

In Korea and now again in Vietnam, the United States furnished most of the money, most of the arms; most of the men to help the people of those countries defend themselves against aggression.

Now we are a rich country. We are a strong nation. We are a populous nation. But there are two hundred million Americans and they're two billion people that live in the Free World.

And I say the time has come for other nations in the Free World to bear their fair share of the burden of defending peace and freedom around this world.

What I call for is not a new isolationism. It is a new internationalism in which America enlists its allies and its friends around the world in those struggles in which their interest is as great as ours.

And now to the leaders of the Communist world, we say: After an era of confrontation, the time has come for an era of negotiation.

Where the world's super powers are concerned, there is no acceptable alternative to peaceful negotiation.

Because this will be a period of negotiation, we shall restore the strength of America so that we shall always negotiate from strength and never from weakness.

And as we seek peace through negotiation, let our goals be made clear:

We do not seek domination over any other country.

We believe deeply in our ideas, but we believe they should travel on their own power and not on the power of our arms.

We shall never be belligerent but we shall be as firm in defending our system as they are in expanding theirs.

We believe this should be an era of peaceful competition, not only in the productivity of our factories but in the quality of our ideas.

We extend the hand of friendship to all people, to the Russian people, to the Chinese people, to all people in the world.

And we shall work toward the goal of an open world -- open skies, open cities, open hearts, open minds.

The next eight years, my friends, this period in which we are entering, I think we will have the greatest opportunity for world peace but also face the greatest danger of world war of any time in our history.

I believe we must have peace. I believe that we can have peace, but I do not underestimate the difficulty of this task. Because you see the art of preserving peace is greater than that of waging war and much more demanding. But I am proud to have served in an Administration which ended one war and kept the nation out of other wars for eight years. And it is that kind of experience and it is that kind of leadership that America needs today, and that we will give to America with your help.

And as we commit to new policies for America tonight, let us make one further pledge:

For five years hardly a day has gone by when we haven't read or heard a report of the American flag being spit on; an embassy being stoned; a library being burned; or an ambassador being insulted some place in the world. And each incident reduced respect for the United States until the ultimate insult inevitably occurred.

And I say to you tonight that when respect for the United States of America falls so low that a fourth-rate military power, like North Korea, will seize an American naval vessel on the high seas, it is time for new leadership to restore respect for the United States of America.

My friends, America is a great nation.

And it is time we started to act like a great nation around the world. It is ironic to note when we were a small nation -- weak militarily and poor economically -- America was respected. And the reason was that America stood for something more powerful than military strength or economic wealth.

The American Revolution was a shining example of freedom in action which caught the imagination of the world.

Today, too often, America is an example to be avoided and not followed.

A nation that can't keep the peace at home won't be trusted to keep the peace abroad.

A President who isn't treated with respect at home will not be treated with respect abroad.

A nation which can't manage its own economy can't tell others how to manage theirs.

If we are to restore prestige and respect for America abroad, the place to begin is at home in the United States of America.

My friends, we live in an age of revolution in America and in the world. And to find the answers to our problems, let us turn to a revolution, a revolution that will never grow old. The world's greatest continuing revolution, the American Revolution.

The American Revolution was and is dedicated to progress, but our founders recognized that the first requisite of progress is order.

Now, there is no quarrel between progress and order -- because neither can exist without the other.

So let us have order in America -- not the order that suppresses dissent and discourages change but the order which guarantees the right to dissent and provides the basis for peaceful change.

And tonight, it is time for some honest talk about the problem of order in the United States.

Let us always respect, as I do, our courts and those who serve on them. But let us also recognize that some of our courts in their decisions have gone too far in weakening the peace forces as against the criminal forces in this country and we must act to restore that balance.

Let those who have the responsibility to enforce our laws and our judges who have the responsibility to interpret them be dedicated to the great principles of civil rights.

But let them also recognize that the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence, and that right must be guaranteed in this country.

And if we are to restore order and respect for law in this country there is one place we are going to begin. We are going to have a new Attorney General of the United States of America.

I pledge to you that our new Attorney General will be directed by the President of the United States to launch a war against organized crime in this country.

I pledge to you that the new Attorney General of the United States will be an active belligerent against the loan sharks and the numbers racketeers that rob the urban poor in our cities.

I pledge to you that the new Attorney General will open a new front against the filth peddlers and the narcotics peddlers who are corrupting the lives of the children of this country.

Because, my friends, let this message come through clear from what I say tonight. Time is running out for the merchants of crime and corruption in American society.

The wave of crime is not going to be the wave of the future in the United States of America.

We shall re-establish freedom from fear in America so that America can take the lead in re-establishing freedom from fear in the world.

And to those who say that law and order is the code word for racism, there and here is a reply:

Our goal is justice for every American. If we are to have respect for law in America, we must have laws that deserve respect.

Just as we cannot have progress without order, we cannot have order without progress, and so, as we commit to order tonight, let us commit to progress.

And this brings me to the clearest choice among the great issues of this campaign.

For the past five years we have been deluged by government programs for the unemployed; programs for the cities; programs for the poor. And we have reaped from these programs an ugly harvest of frustration, violence and failure across the land.

And now our opponents will be offering more of the same -- more billions for government jobs, government housing, government welfare.

I say it is time to quit pouring billions of dollars into programs that have failed in the United States of America.

To put it bluntly, we are on the wrong road -- and it's time to take a new road, to progress.

Again, we turn to the American Revolution for our answer.

The war on poverty didn't begin five years ago in this country. It began when this country began. It's been the most successful war on poverty in the history of nations. There is more wealth in America today, more broadly shared, than in any nation in the world.

We are a great nation. And we must never forget how we became great.

America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people -- but because of what people did for themselves over a hundred-ninety years in this country.

So it is time to apply the lessons of the American Revolution to our present problem.

Let us increase the wealth of America so that we can provide more generously for the aged; and for the needy; and for all those who cannot help themselves.

But for those who are able to help themselves -- what we need are not more millions on welfare rolls -- but more millions on payrolls in the United States of America.

Instead of government jobs, and government housing, and government welfare, let government use its tax and credit policies to enlist in this battle the greatest engine of progress ever developed in the history of man -- American private enterprise.

Let us enlist in this great cause the millions of Americans in volunteer organizations who will bring a dedication to this task that no amount of money could ever buy.

And let us build bridges, my friends, build bridges to human dignity across that gulf that separates black America from white America.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency.

They don't want to be a colony in a nation.

They want the pride, and the self-respect, and the dignity that can only come if they have an equal chance to own their own homes, to own their own businesses, to be managers and executives as well as workers, to have apiece of the action in the exciting ventures of private enterprise.

I pledge to you tonight that we shall have new programs which will provide that equal chance.

We make great history tonight.

We do not fire a shot heard 'round the world but we shall light the lamp of hope in millions of homes across this land in which there is no hope today.

And that great light shining out from America will again become a beacon of hope for all those in the world who seek freedom and opportunity.

My fellow Americans, I believe that historians will recall that 1968 marked the beginning of the American generation in world history.

Just to be alive in America, just to be alive at this time is an experience unparalleled in history. Here is where the action is. Think.

Thirty-two years from now most Americans living today will celebrate a new year that comes once in a thousand years.

Eight years from now, in the second term of the next President, we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the American Revolution.

And by our decision in this election, we, all of us here, all of you listening on television and radio, we will determine what kind of nation America will be on its 200th birthday; we will determine what kind of a world America will live in the year 2000.

This is the kind of a day I see for America on that glorious Fourth -- eight years from now.

I see a day when Americans are once again proud of their flag. When once again at home and abroad, it is honored as the world's greatest symbol of liberty and justice.

I see a day when the President of the United States is respected and his office is honored because it is worthy of respect and worthy of honor.

I see a day when every child in this land, regardless of his background, has a chance for the best education our wisdom and schools can provide, and an equal chance to go just as high as his talents will take him.

I see a day when life in rural America attracts people to the country, rather than driving them away.

I see a day when we can look back on massive breakthroughs in solving the problems of slums and pollution and traffic which are choking our cities to death.

I see a day when our senior citizens and millions of others can plan for the future with the assurance that their government is not going to rob them of their savings by destroying the value of their dollars.

I see a day when we will again have freedom from fear in America and freedom from fear in the world.

I see a day when our nation is at peace and the world is at peace and everyone on earth -- those who hope, those who aspire, those who crave liberty -- will look to America as the shining example of hopes realized and dreams achieved.

My fellow Americans, this is the cause I ask you to vote for. This is the cause I ask you to work for. This is the cause I ask you to commit to -- not just for victory in November but beyond that to a new Administration.

Because the time when one man or a few leaders could save America is gone. We need tonight nothing less than the total commitment and the total mobilization of the American people if we are to succeed.

Government can pass laws. But respect for law can come only from people who take the law into their hearts and their minds -- and not into their hands.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

A President can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

And tonight, therefore, as we make this commitment, let us look into our hearts and let us look down into the faces of our children.

Is there anything in the world that should stand in their way?

None of the old hatreds mean anything when we look down into the faces of our children.

In their faces is our hope, our love, and our courage.

Tonight, I see the face of a child.

He lives in a great city. He is black. Or he is white. He is Mexican, Italian, Polish. None of that matters. What matters, he's an American child.

That child in that great city is more important than any politician's promise. He is America. He is a poet. He is a scientist, he is a great teacher, he is a proud craftsman. He is everything we ever hoped to be and everything we dare to dream to be.

He sleeps the sleep of childhood and he dreams the dreams of a child.

And yet when he awakens, he awakens to a living nightmare of poverty, neglect and despair.

He fails in school.

He ends up on welfare.

For him the American system is one that feeds his stomach and starves his soul. It breaks his heart. And in the end it may take his life on some distant battlefield.

To millions of children in this rich land, this is their prospect of the future.

But this is only part of what I see in America.

I see another child tonight.

He hears the train go by at night and he dreams of far away places where he'd like to go.

It seems like an impossible dream.

But he is helped on his journey through life.

A father who had to go to work before he finished the sixth grade, sacrificed everything he had so that his sons could go to college.

A gentle, Quaker mother, with a passionate concern for peace, quietly wept when he went to war but she understood why he had to go.

A great teacher, a remarkable football coach, an inspirational minister encouraged him on his way.

A courageous wife and loyal children stood by him in victory and also defeat.

And in his chosen profession of politics, first there were scores, then hundreds, then thousands, and finally millions worked for his success.

And tonight he stands before you -- nominated for President of the United States of America.

You can see why I believe so deeply in the American Dream.

For most of us the American Revolution has been won; the American Dream has come true.

And what I ask you to do tonight is to help me make that dream come true for millions to whom it's an impossible dream today.

One hundred and eight years ago, the newly elected President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, left Springfield, Illinois, never to return again. He spoke to his friends gathered at the railroad station. Listen to his words:

"Today I leave you. I go to assume a greater task than devolved on General Washington. The great God which helped him must help me. Without that great assistance, I will surely fail. With it, I cannot fail."

Abraham Lincoln lost his life but he did not fail.

The next President of the United States will face challenges which in some ways will be greater than those of Washington or Lincoln. Because for the first time in our nation's history, an American President will face not only the problem of restoring peace abroad but of restoring peace at home.

Without God's help and your help, we will surely fail; but with God's help and your help, we shall surely succeed.

My fellow Americans, the long dark night for America is about to end.

The time has come for us to leave the valley of despair and climb the mountain so that we may see the glory of the dawn --a new day for America, and a new dawn for peace and freedom in the world.

Sarah Palin: 'I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA', acceptance of VP nomination, RNC - 2008

3 September 2008, XCel EnergyCenter, St Paul, Minnesota, USA

Mr. Chairman, delegates, and fellow citizens, I will be honored to accept your nomination for vice president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

I accept the call to help our nominee for president to serve and defend America. And I accept the challenge of a tough fight in this election against confident opponents at a crucial hour for our country.

And I accept the privilege of serving with a man who has come through much harder missions, and met far graver challenges, and knows how tough fights are won, the next president of the United States, John S. McCain.

(APPLAUSE)

It was just a year ago when all the experts in Washington counted out our nominee because he refused to hedge his commitment to the security of the country he loves.

With their usual certitude, they told us that all was lost, there was no hope for this candidate, who said that he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war. But the pollsters...

(APPLAUSE)

The pollsters and the pundits, they overlooked just one thing when they wrote him off. They overlooked the caliber of the man himself, the determination, and resolve, and the sheer guts of Senator John McCain.

(APPLAUSE)

The voters knew better, and maybe that's because they realized there's a time for politics and a time for leadership, a time to campaign and a time to put our country first.

(APPLAUSE)

Our nominee for president is a true profile in courage, and people like that are hard to come by. He's a man who wore the uniform of his country for 22 years and refused to break faith with those troops in Iraq who now have brought victory within sight.

(APPLAUSE)

And as the mother of one of those troops, that is exactly the kind of man I want as commander-in-chief.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: I'm just one of many moms who will say an extra prayer each night for our sons and daughters going into harm's way. Our son, Track, is 19. And one week from tomorrow, September 11th, he'll deploy to Iraq with the Army infantry in the service of his country.

My nephew, Casey (ph), also enlisted and serves on a carrier in the Persian Gulf.

My family is so proud of both of them and of all the fine men and women serving the country in uniform.

(APPLAUSE)

AUDIENCE: USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

PALIN: So Track is the eldest of our five children. In our family, it's two boys and three girls in between, my strong and kind- hearted daughters, Bristol, and Willow, and Piper.

(APPLAUSE)

And we were so blessed in April. Todd and I welcomed our littlest one into the world, a perfectly beautiful baby boy named Trig.

You know, from the inside, no family ever seems typical, and that's how it is with us. Our family has the same ups and downs as any other, the same challenges and the same joys.

Sometimes even the greatest joys bring challenge. And children with special needs inspire a very, very special love. To the families of special-needs...

(APPLAUSE)

To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message for you: For years, you've sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. And I pledge to you that, if we're elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.

(APPLAUSE)

And Todd is a story all by himself. He's a lifelong commercial fisherman and a production operator in the oil fields of Alaska's North Slope, and a proud member of the United Steelworkers union. And Todd is a world champion snow machine racer.

(APPLAUSE)

Throw in his Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and it all makes for quite a package. And we met in high school. And two decades and five children later, he's still my guy.

(APPLAUSE)

My mom and dad both worked at the elementary school in our small town. And among the many things I owe them is a simple lesson that I've learned, that this is America, and every woman can walk through every door of opportunity.

And my parents are here tonight.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: I am so proud to be the daughter of Chuck and Sally Heath (ph).

(APPLAUSE)

Long ago, a young farmer and a haberdasher from Missouri, he followed an unlikely path -- he followed an unlikely path to the vice presidency. And a writer observed, "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," and I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

I grew up with those people. They're the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, and run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America.

(APPLAUSE)

I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA.

(APPLAUSE)

I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.

(APPLAUSE)

So I signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids' public education even better. And when I ran for city council, I didn't need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and I knew their families, too.

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska...

(APPLAUSE)

... I was mayor of my hometown. And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involved.

(APPLAUSE)

I guess -- I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.

(APPLAUSE)

I might add that, in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they're listening and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening.

(APPLAUSE)

No, we tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.

(APPLAUSE)

As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes and whoever is listening John McCain is the same man.

(APPLAUSE)

Well, I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment. And...

(APPLAUSE)

... I've learned quickly these last few days that, if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

PALIN: But -- now, here's a little newsflash. Here's a little newsflash for those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.

(APPLAUSE)

Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reason and not just to mingle with the right people. Politics isn't just a game of clashing parties and competing interests. The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

(APPLAUSE)

No one expects us all to agree on everything, but we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant's heart.

And I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE) This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau, when I stood up to the special interests, and the lobbyists, and the Big Oil companies, and the good-old boys.

Suddenly, I realized that sudden and relentless reform never sits well with entrenched interests and power-brokers. That's why true reform is so hard to achieve.

But with the support of the citizens of Alaska, we shook things up. And in short order, we put the government of our state back on the side of the people.

(APPLAUSE)

I came to office promising major ethics reform to end the culture of self-dealing. And today, that ethics reform is a law.

While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for. That luxury jet was over-the-top.

(APPLAUSE)

I put it on eBay.

(APPLAUSE)

I love to drive myself to work. And I thought we could muddle through without the governor's personal chef, although I got to admit that sometimes my kids sure miss her.

(APPLAUSE)

I came to office promising to control spending, by request if possible, but by veto, if necessary.

(APPLAUSE)

Senator McCain also -- he promises to use the power of veto in defense of the public interest. And as a chief executive, I can assure you it works.

(APPLAUSE)

Our state budget is under control. We have a surplus. And I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending, nearly $500 million in vetoes.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: We suspended the state fuel tax and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that Bridge to Nowhere.

(APPLAUSE)

If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves.

(APPLAUSE)

When oil and gas prices went up dramatically and filled up the state treasury, I sent a large share of that revenue back where it belonged: directly to the people of Alaska.

(APPLAUSE)

And despite fierce opposition from oil company lobbyists, who kind of liked things the way that they were, we broke their monopoly on power and resources. As governor, I insisted on competition and basic fairness to end their control of our state and return it to the people.

(APPLAUSE)

I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.

(APPLAUSE)

That pipeline, when the last section is laid and its valves are open, will lead America one step farther away from dependence on dangerous foreign powers that do not have our interests at heart.

The stakes for our nation could not be higher. When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we're forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And families cannot throw more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.

With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

(APPLAUSE)

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil discoveries and its deliveries of that source, Americans, we need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And...

(APPLAUSE)

And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: We've got lots of both.

(APPLAUSE)

Our opponents say again and again that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems, as if we didn't know that already.

(LAUGHTER)

But the fact that drilling, though, won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.

(APPLAUSE)

Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines, and build more nuclear plants, and create jobs with clean coal, and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources. We need...

(APPLAUSE)

We need American sources of resources. We need American energy brought to you by American ingenuity and produced by American workers.

(APPLAUSE)

And now, I've noticed a pattern with our opponent, and maybe you have, too. We've all heard his dramatic speeches before devoted followers, and there is much to like and admire about our opponent.

But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the State Senate.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting and never use the word "victory," except when he's talking about his own campaign.

(APPLAUSE)

But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed, when the roar of the crowd fades away, when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot...

(APPLAUSE)

... when that happens, what exactly is our opponent's plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet?

(APPLAUSE)

The answer -- the answer is to make government bigger, and take more of your money, and give you more orders from Washington, and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it. Victory in Iraq is finally in sight, and he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions.

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

(APPLAUSE)

Government is too big; he wants to grow it. Congress spends too much money; he promises more. Taxes are too high, and he wants to raise them. His tax increases are the fine print in his economic plan.

And let me be specific: The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, and raise payroll taxes, and raise investment income taxes, and raise the death tax, and raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

My sister, Heather, and her husband, they just built a service station that's now open for business, like millions of others who run small businesses. How are they...

(APPLAUSE)

How are they going to be better off if taxes go up? Or maybe you are trying to keep your job at a plant in Michigan or in Ohio...

(APPLAUSE)

... or you're trying -- you're trying to create jobs from clean coal, from Pennsylvania or West Virginia.

(APPLAUSE)

You're trying to keep a small farm in the family right here in Minnesota.

(APPLAUSE)

How are you -- how are you going to be better off if our opponent adds a massive tax burden to the American economy?

Here's how I look at the choice Americans face in this election: In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers, and then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: They are the ones whose names appear on laws and landmark reforms, not just on buttons and banners or on self-designed presidential seals.

(APPLAUSE)

Among politicians, there is the idealism of high-flown speech- making, in which crowds are stirringly summoned to support great things, and then there is the idealism of those leaders, like John McCain, who actually do great things.

(APPLAUSE)

They're the ones who are good for more than talk, the ones that we've always been able to count on to serve and to defend America.

Senator McCain's record of actual achievements and reform helps explain why so many special interests, and lobbyists, and comfortable committee chairmen in Congress have fought the prospect of a McCain presidency from the primary election of 2000 to this very day.

Our nominee doesn't run with the Washington herd. He's a man who's there to serve his country and not just his party, a leader who's not looking for a fight, but sure isn't afraid of one, either.

(APPLAUSE)

Harry Reid, the majority of the current do-nothing Senate...

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

... he not long ago summed up his feelings about our nominee. He said, quote, "I can't stand John McCain."

Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man.

(APPLAUSE)

Clearly, what the majority leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain and that is only...

(APPLAUSE)

... that's only one more reason to take the maverick out of the Senate, put him in the White House.

(APPLAUSE)

My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of personal discovery.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

This world of threats and dangers, it's not just a community and it doesn't just need an organizer. And though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they're always, quote, "fighting for you," let us face the matter squarely: There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you.

(APPLAUSE)

There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you in places where winning means survival and defeat means death. And that man is John McCain.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, in our day, politicians have readily shared much lesser tales of adversity than the nightmare world, the nightmare world in which this man and others equally brave served and suffered for their country.

And it's a long way from the fear, and pain, and squalor of a six-by-four cell in Hanoi to the Oval Office.

(APPLAUSE)

PALIN: But if Senator McCain is elected president, that is the journey he will have made. It's the journey of an upright and honorable man, the kind of fellow whose name you will find on war memorials in small towns across this great country, only he was among those who came home.

To the most powerful office on Earth, he would bring the compassion that comes from having once been powerless, the wisdom that comes even to the captives by the grace of God, the special confidence of those who have seen evil and have seen how evil is overcome. A fellow...

(APPLAUSE)

A fellow prisoner of war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio...

(APPLAUSE)

... Tom Moe recalls looking through a pinhole in his cell door as Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway by the guards, day after day.

And the story is told, when McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would turn towards Moe's door, and he'd flash a grin and a thumbs up, as if to say, "We're going to pull through this."

My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us through the next four years.

(APPLAUSE)

For a season, a gifted speaker can inspire with his words. But for a lifetime, John McCain has inspired with his deeds.

(APPLAUSE)

If character is the measure in this election, and hope the theme, and change the goal we share, then I ask you to join our cause. Join our cause and help America elect a great man as the next president of the United States.

Thank you, and God bless America. Thank you.

Donald Trump: "Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation", Republican National Convention - 2016

21 July 2016, Republican National Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Friends, delegates and fellow Americans: I humbly and gratefully accept your nomination for the presidency of the United States.

Who would have believed that when we started this journey on June 16, last year, we — I say we because we are a team — would have received almost 14 million votes, the most in the history of the Republican party?

And that the Republican Party would get 60 percent more votes than it received eight years ago. Who would have believed it? The Democrats on the other hand, received 20 percent fewer votes than they got four years ago, not so good.

Together, we will lead our party back to the White House, and we will lead our country back to safety, prosperity, and peace. We will be a country of generosity and warmth. But we will also be a country of law and order.

Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation. The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life. Any politician who does not grasp this danger is not fit to lead our country.

Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally. Some have even been its victims.

I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon — and I mean very soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored.

The most basic duty of government is to defend the lives of its citizens. Any government that fails to do so is a government unworthy to lead.

It is finally time for a straightforward assessment of the state of our nation. I will present the facts plainly and honestly. We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.

So if you want to hear the corporate spin, the carefully-crafted lies, and the media myths — the Democrats are holding their convention next week. Go there.

But here, at our convention, there will be no lies. We will honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else.

These are the facts:

Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this administration's rollback of criminal enforcement.

Homicides last year increased by 17% in America's fifty largest cities. That's the largest increase in 25 years.

In our nation's capital, killings have risen by 50 percent. They are up nearly 60 percent in nearby Baltimore.

In the president's hometown of Chicago, more than 2,000 have been the victims of shootings this year alone. And almost 4,000 have been killed in the Chicago area since he took office.

The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50 percent compared to this point last year.

Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.

The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total of 2015.

They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources.

One such border-crosser was released and made his way to Nebraska. There, he ended the life of an innocent young girl named Sarah Root. She was 21 years old and was killed the day after graduating from college with a 4.0 grade point average. Her killer was then released a second time, and he is now a fugitive from the law. I've met Sarah's beautiful family. But to this administration, their amazing daughter was just one more American life that wasn't worth protecting. One more child to sacrifice on the altar of open borders.

What about our economy? Again, I will tell you the plain facts that have been edited out of your nightly news and your morning newspaper:

Nearly four in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58% of African-American youth are now not employed.

2 million more Latinos are in poverty today than when the president took his oath of office eight years ago.

Another 14 million people have left the workforce entirely.

Household incomes are down more than $4,000 since the year 2000. That is 16 years ago.

Our trade deficit in goods reached — think of this — our trade deficit is $800 hundred billion dollars. Think of that. $800 billion last year alone. We will fix that.

The budget is no better. President Obama has almost doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing.

Yet, what do we have to show for it? Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third world condition, and 43 million Americans are on food stamps.

Now let us consider the state of affairs abroad. Not only have our citizens endured domestic disaster, but they have lived through one international humiliation after another. One after another.

We all remember the images of our sailors being forced to their knees by their Iranian captors at gunpoint. This was just prior to the signing of the Iran deal, which gave back to Iran $150 billion and gave us absolutely nothing. It will go down in history as one of the worst deals ever negotiated.

Another humiliation came when President Obama drew a red line in Syria and the whole world knew it meant absolutely nothing.

In Libya, our consulate, the symbol of American prestige around the globe was brought down in flames.

America is far less safe and the world is far less stable than when Obama made the decision to put Hillary Clinton in charge of America's foreign policy. I am certain it is a decision he truly regrets.

Her bad instincts and her bad judgment, something pointed out by Bernie Sanders are what caused the disasters unfolding today. Let's review the record.

In 2009, pre-Hillary, ISIS was not even on the map. Libya was stable. Egypt was peaceful. Iraq had seen a big reduction in violence. Iran was being choked by sanctions. Syria was somewhat under control.

After four years of Hillary Clinton, what do we have? ISIS has spread across the region and the entire world. Libya is in ruins, and our ambassador and his staff were left helpless to die at the hands of savage killers. Egypt was turned over to the radical Muslim Brotherhood, forcing the military to retake control. Iraq is in chaos. Iran is on the path to nuclear weapons. Syria is engulfed in a civil war and a refugee crisis that now threatens the West. After 15 years of wars in the Middle East, after trillions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, the situation is worse than it has ever been before.

This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: Death, destruction and terrorism and weakness.

But Hillary Clinton's legacy does not have to be America's legacy. The problems we face now — poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad — will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them. A change in leadership is required to produce a change in outcomes.

Tonight, I will share with you for action for America. The most important difference between our plan and that of our opponents, is that our plan will put America first. Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.

As long as we are led by politicians who will not put America first, then we can be assured that other nations will not treat America with respect. The respect that we deserve. The American people will come first once again.

First, my plan will begin with safety at home which means safe neighborhoods, secure borders, and protection from terrorism. There can be no prosperity without law and order.

On the economy, I will outline reforms to add millions of new jobs and trillions in new wealth that can be used to rebuild America.

A number of these reforms that I will outline tonight will be opposed by some of our nation's most powerful special interests. That is because these interests have rigged our political and economic system for their exclusive benefit. Believe me. It is for their benefit. For their benefit.

Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. They are throwing money at her because they have total control over every single thing she does. She is their puppet, and they pull the strings. That is why Hillary Clinton's message is that things will never change. Never ever.

My message is that things have to change and they have to change right now. Every day I wake up determined to deliver a better life for the people all across this nation that had been ignored, neglected and abandoned.

I have visited the laid-off factory workers, and the communities crushed by our horrible and unfair trade deals. These are the forgotten men and women of our country, and they are forgotten, but they will not be forgotten long. These are people who work hard but no longer have a voice. I am your voice.

I have embraced crying mothers who have lost their children because our politicians put their personal agendas before the national good.

I have no patience for injustice. No tolerance for government incompetence. When innocent people suffer, because our political system lacks the will, or the courage, or the basic decency to enforce our laws, or worse still, has sold out to some corporate lobbyist for cash I am not able to look the other way. And I won't look the other way.

And when a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can't see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no no consequence — I know that corruption has reached a level like never ever before in our country.

When the FBI director says that the Secretary of State was "extremely careless" and "negligent" in handling our classified secrets, I also know that these terms are minor compared to what she actually did. They were just used to save her from facing justice for her terrible, terrible crimes.

In fact, her single greatest accomplishment may be committing such an egregious crime and getting away with it, especially when others who have been far less have paid so dearly.

When that same Secretary of State rakes in millions of dollars trading access and favors to special interests and foreign powers, I know the time for action has come.

I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves.

Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders. He never had a chance.

But his supporters will join our movement, because we will fix his biggest issue: Trade deals that strip our country of jobs and the distribution of wealth in the country.

Millions of Democrats will join our movement, because we are going to fix the system so it works fairly and justly for each and every American.

In this cause, I am proud to have at my side the next Vice President of the United States: Governor Mike Pence of Indiana. And a great guy. We will bring the same economic success to America that Mike brought Indiana, which is amazing. He is a man of character and accomplishment. He is the right man for the job.

The first task for our new administration will be to liberate our citizens from the crime and terrorism and lawlessness that threatens their — our communities.

America was shocked to its core when our police officers in Dallas were so brutally executed. Immediately after Dallas, we have seen continued threats and violence against our law enforcement officials. Law officers have been shot or killed in recent days in Georgia, Missouri, Wisconsin, Kansas, Michigan and Tennessee.

On Sunday, more police were gunned down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Three were killed, and three were very badly injured. An attack on law enforcement is an attack on all Americans.

I have a message to every last person threatening the peace on our streets and the safety of our police: When I take the oath of office next year, I will restore law and order to our country.

I will work with, and appoint, the best prosecutors and law enforcement officials in the country to get the job properly done. In this race for the White House, I am the law and order candidate.

The irresponsible rhetoric of our president, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment than frankly, I have ever seen and anybody in this room has ever watched or seeing.

This administration has failed America's inner cities. Remember, it has failed America's inner cities. It's failed them on education. It's failed them on jobs. It's failed them on crime. It's failed them in every way and on every single level.

When I am president, I will work to ensure that all of our kids are treated equally, and protected equally. Every action I take, I will ask myself: Does this make life better for young Americans in Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, and Ferguson who have really come in every way, have the same right to live out their dreams as any other child in America?

To make life safe in America, we must also address the growing threats from outside the country. We are going to defeat the barbarians of ISIS. And we are going to defeat them bad.

Once again, France is the victim of brutal Islamic terrorism. Men, women and children viciously mowed down. Lives ruined. Families ripped apart. A nation in mourning. The damage and devastation that can be inflicted by Islamic radicals has been proven over and over. At the World Trade Center, at an office party in San Bernardino, at the Boston Marathon, and a military recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And many other locations.

Only weeks ago, in Orlando, Florida, 49 wonderful Americans were savagely murdered by an Islamic terrorist. This time, the terrorist targeted LGBTQ community.

No good. And we're going to stop it. As your president, I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology. Believe me. And I have to say as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.

To protect us from terrorism, we need to focus on three things.

We must have the best, absolutely the best, gathering of intelligence anywhere in the world. The best.

We must abandon the failed policy of nation- building and regime change that Hillary Clinton pushed in Iraq, Libya, in Egypt, and Syria.

Instead, we must work with all of our allies who share our goal of destroying ISIS and stamping out Islamic terrorism and doing it now, doing it quickly. We're going to win. We're going to win fast. This includes working with our greatest ally in the region, the state of Israel.

Recently I have said that NATO was obsolete. Because it did not properly cover terror. And also that many of the member countries were not paying their fair share. As usual, the United States has been picking up the cost. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that NATO will be setting up a new program in order to combat terrorism. A true step in the right direction.

Lastly, and very importantly, we must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time as proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place. We don't want them in our country.

My opponent has called for a radical 550 percent increase — think of this, this is not believable, but this is what is happening — a 550 percent increase in Syrian refugees on top of existing massive refugee flows coming into our country already under the leadership of president Obama.

She proposes this despite the fact that there's no way to screen these refugees in order to find out who they are or where they come from. I only want to admit individuals into our country who will support our values and love our people. Anyone who endorses violence, hatred or oppression is not welcome in our country and never ever will be.

Decades of record immigration have produced lower wages and higher unemployment for our citizens, especially for African-American and Latino workers. We are going to have an immigration system that works, but one that works for the American people.

On Monday, we heard from three parents whose children were killed by illegal immigrants Mary Ann Mendoza, Sabine Durden, and my friend Jamiel Shaw. They are just three brave representatives of many thousands who have suffered so greatly.

Of all my travels in this country, nothing has affected me more, nothing even close than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our borders, which we can solve. We have to solve it. These families have no special interests to represent them. There are no demonstrators to protect them and none too protest on their behalf.

My opponent will never meet with them, or share in their pain. Believe me. Instead, my opponent wants sanctuary cities. But where was sanctuary for Kate Steinle? Where was sanctuary for the children of Mary Ann, Sabine and Jamiel? Is so sad to even be talking about this. We can solve it so quickly. Where was sanctuary for all the other Americans who have been so brutally murdered, and who have suffered so horribly? These wounded American families have been alone. But they are not alone any longer.

Tonight, this candidate and this whole nation stand in their corner to support them, to send them our love, and to pledge in their honor that we will save countless more families from suffering the same awful fate.

We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.

I have been honored to receive the endorsement of America's Border Patrol agents, and will work directly with them to protect the integrity of our lawful, lawful, immigration system.

By ending catch-and-release on the border, we will stop the cycle of human smuggling and violence. Illegal border crossings will go down. We will stop it. It will not be happening very much anymore. Believe me.

Peace will be restored by enforcing the rules for the millions who overstay their visas, our laws will finally receive the respect they deserve.

Tonight, I want every American whose demands for immigration security have been denied and every politician who has denied them to listen very closely to the words I am about to say: On on January 20 of 2017, the day I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced.

We are going to be considerate and compassionate to everyone. But my greatest compassion will be for our own struggling citizens.

My plan is the exact opposite of the radical and dangerous immigration policy of Hillary Clinton. Americans want relief from uncontrolled immigration. Which is what we have now. Communities want relief. Yet Hillary Clinton is proposing mass amnesty, mass immigration, and mass lawlessness.

Her plan will overwhelm your schools and hospitals, further reduce your jobs and wages, and make it harder for recent immigrants to escape from the tremendous cycle of poverty they are going through right now and make it almost impossible for them to join the middle class.

I have a different vision for our workers. It begins with a new, fair trade policy that protects our jobs and stands up to countries that cheat — of which there are many.

It's been a signature message of my campaign from day one, and it will be a signature feature of my presidency from the moment I take the oath of office. I have made billions of dollars in business making deals. Now I'm going to make our country rich again. Using the greatest businesspeople of the world, I'm going to turn our bad trade agreements into great trade agreements.

America has lost nearly-one third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997, following the enactment of disastrous trade deals supported by bill and Hillary Clinton. Remember, it was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA, one of the worst economic deals ever made by our country. Or frankly, any other country. Never ever again.

I am going to bring our jobs back our jobs to Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York and Michigan and all of America and I am not going to let companies move to other countries, firing their employees along the way, without consequences. Not going to happen anymore.

My opponent, on the other hand, has supported virtually every trade agreement that has been destroying our middle class. She supported NAFTA, and she supported China's entrance into the world trade organization. Another one of her husband's colossal mistakes and disasters. She supported the job killing trade deal with South Korea. She she supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership which will not only destroy our manufacturing but it will make America subject to the rulings of foreign governments. And it is not going to happen.

I pledge to never sign any trade agreement that hurts our workers, or that diminishes our freedom and Independence. We will never ever sign bad trade deals. America first again. American first.

Instead, I will make individual deals with individual countries. No longer will we enter into these massive transactions with many countries that are thousands of pages long and which no one from our country even reads or understands. We are going to enforce all trade violations against any country that cheats. This includes stopping China's outrageous theft of intellectual property, along with their illegal product dumping, and their devastating currency manipulation. They are the greatest that ever came about, they are the greatest currently manipulators ever.

Our horrible trade agreements with China, and many others, will be totally renegotiated. That includes renegotiating NAFTA to get a much better deal for America and will walk away if we don't get that kind of a deal. Our country is going to start building and making things again.

Next comes the reform of our tax laws, regulations and energy rules. While Hillary Clinton plans a massive, and I mean massive, tax increase, I have proposed the largest tax reduction of any candidate who has run for president this year, Democrat or Republican. Middle-income Americans will experience profound relief, and taxes will be greatly simplified for everyone. I mean everyone.

America is one of the highest-taxed nations in the world. Reducing taxes will cause new companies and new jobs to come roaring back into our country. Believe me. It will happen and it will happen fast.

Then we are going to deal with the issue of regulation, one of the greatest job killers of them all. Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end and it very quickly.

We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.

My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work and out of business. That will never happen with Donald J trump as president. Our steelworkers and are miners are going back to work again.

With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans. We will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of our tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions of more jobs.

We will rescue kids from failing schools by helping their parents send them to a safe school of their choice. My opponent would rather protect education bureaucrats than serve American children. That is what she is doing and that is what she has done.

We will repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare. You will be able to choose your own doctor again.

And we will fix TSA at the airports, which is a total disaster. Thank you.

We are going to work with all of our students who are drowning in debt to take the pressure off these young people just starting out in their adult lives. Tremendous problems.

We will completely rebuild our depleted military. And the countries that we protecting at a massive cost to us will be asked to pay their fair share.

We will take care of our great veterans like they have never been taken care of before. My just-released 10 point plan has received tremendous better support. We will guarantee those who serve this country will be able to visit the doctor or hospital of their choice without waiting five days in a line and dying.

My opponent dismissed the VA scandal, one more sign of how out of touch she really is.

We are going to ask every department head and government to provide a list of wasteful spending projects that we can eliminate in my first 100 days. The politicians have talked about this for years, but I'm going to do it.

We are also going to appoint justices to the United States Supreme Court who will uphold our laws and our constitution. The replacement of our beloved Justice Scalia will be a person of similar views, principles and judicial philosophies. Very important. This will be one of the most important issues decided by this election.

My opponent wants to essentially abolish the 2nd Amendment. I, on the other hand, received the early and strong endorsement of the National Rifle Association. And will protect the right of all Americans to keep their families safe.

At this moment, I would like to thank the evangelical community because, I will tell you what, the support they have given me — and I'm not sure I totally deserve it — has been so amazing. And has been such a big reason I'm here tonight. They have much to contribute to our policies.

Yet our laws prevent you from speaking your mind from your own pulpits. An amendment, pushed by Lyndon Johnson, many years ago, threatens religious institutions with a loss of their tax-exempt status if they openly advocate their political views. Their voice has been taken away. I will work hard to repeal that language and to protect free speech for all Americans.

We can accomplish these great things and so much more. All we need to do is start believing in ourselves a in our country again. Start believing. It is time to show the whole world that America is back, bigger and better and stronger than ever before.

In this journey, I'm so lucky to have at my side my wife Melania and my wonderful children Don, Ivanka, Eric, Tiffany, and Barron: You will always be my greatest source of pride and joy. And by the way, Melania and Ivanka, did they do a job?

My dad, Fred Trump, was the smartest and hardest working man I ever knew. I wonder sometimes what he'd say if he were here to see this tonight. It's because of him that I learned, from my youngest age, to respect the dignity of work and the dignity of working people.

He was a guy most comfortable in the company of bricklayers, carpenters, and electricians and I have a lot of that in me also. I love those people.

Then there's my mother, Mary. She was strong, but also warm and fair-minded. She was a truly great mother. She was also one of the most honest and charitable people I have ever known, and a great, great judge of character. She could pick them out from anywhere.

To my sisters, Mary Anne and Elizabeth, my brother Robert and my late brother Fred, I will always give you my love. You are most special to me. I have loved my life in business.

But now, my sole and exclusive mission is to go to work for our country, to go to work for you. It is time to deliver a victory for the American people. We don't win anymore, but we are going to start winning again. But to do that, we must break free from the petty politics of the past.

America is a nation of believers, dreamers, and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics. Remember: All of the people telling you you can't have the country you want, are the same people, that would not stand, I mean they said Trump does not have a chance of being here tonight, not a chance, the same people. We love defeating those people, don't we? Love it.

No longer can we rely on those same people. In the media and politics who, will say anything to keep a rigged system in place. Instead, we must choose to believe in America.

History is watching us now. It's we don't have much time. We don't have much time. It's waiting to see if we will rise to the occasion, and if we will show the whole world that America is still free and independent and strong.

I am asking for your support tonight so that I can be year champion in the White House. And I will be a champion.Your champion.

My opponent asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge. It reads: "I'm with her."

I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads: "I'm with you the American people."

I am your voice. So to every parent who dreams for their child, and every child who dreams for their future, I say these words to you tonight: I'm with you, and I will fight for you, and I will win for you.

To all Americans tonight, in all our cities and towns, I make this promise:

We will make America strong again.

We will make America proud again.

We will make America safe again.

And we will make America great again!

God bless you and goodnight! I love you!