GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, a 2016 presidential candidate and billionaire businessman, for the first time ever brought his wife and kids on stage before a rowdy crowd in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on Tuesday night.
Appearing before more than 10,000 riled up supporters, Trump’s wife Melania and their son Barron, Trump’s daughters Tiffany and Ivanka and Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner, and Melania’s parents joined the candidate on stage as the crowd went wild.
“Good evening, isn’t he the best?” Melania Trump said when she took the microphone. “He will be the best president ever. We love you!”
As Melania stepped back from the podium, Trump urged his family to get back in their seats. “We have some work to do folks,” he said as the crowd cheered.
In the speech, Trump took shots at the media and at Hillary Clinton and laid out his pathway to victory in 2016.
“We have something very special, all over, no matter where we go, we’re getting massive crowds,” Trump said after showing off a giant crowd behind him. For this event, his advance-staff set up a special area for folks to watch his speech from behind him, so the media can’t keep hiding his crowd size.
We had in Dallas, at the Mavericks’ arena, we had 20,000. Oklahoma, 20,000 people. Mobile, Alabama: we had 35,000 people. We’ve had by far the biggest crowds. Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, we’ve had the biggest crowds. Nobody has crowds like we have crowds and I will tell you—it’s amazing—I will tell you it is a movement. It’s beyond anything.
I got a call the other day from one of the biggest reporters, really a good reporter but big and legit. And he said: “Mr. Trump, how does it feel?” I said: “How does what feel?” He said: “What you’ve done, nobody has ever done it in politics.” Nobody’s ever done it in the history of politics with what we’ve created and this movement. I said: “I haven’t done anything because unless we win it doesn’t mean a damn thing.” It’s really true, it doesn’t mean anything. It won’t mean anything unless we win.
About Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, Trump cited the new Fox News poll that has him far ahead of her.
She’s going to be so bad—if she gets in, she’s going to be a disaster… She will be so bad, people don’t realize. First of all, she’s being protected. She shouldn’t be allowed to run. She shouldn’t be. You know, in a certain way, I want her to run because she really is so beatable—we’re going to beat her and we’re going to beat her badly—but she shouldn’t be allowed. She’s being totally protected. What’s happening is a disgrace. People are now in jail—and you look at General [David] Petraeus, his life was ruined for doing five percent of what she did. It’s a disgraceful situation.
Later in the speech, after hammering Clinton for using a teleprompter just like President Barack Obama does, Trump repeated multiple times as well: “Hillary Clinton doesn’t have the strength or the stamina—she doesn’t have the strength or the stamina—to be president. She doesn’t. She doesn’t have it. She does not have it.”
He poked fun at Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s lagging poll numbers. “We’re beating the sitting governor of Ohio in his own state,” Trump said. “Which is great. Which is great. And I think it’s going to stay that way. Ohio is great. You know we just got back from Ohio; we had 14,000 people—it was unbelievable.”
Trump noted how the recent Quinnipiac poll found that Iowans think he’s best suited to handle the economy, stop terrorism, and deal with immigration policy. “We’re going to build a wall,” he said, echoing his trademark line.
We’re going to build a wall. We’re going to build a wall. We’re building the wall, Mexico’s paying for the wall—they’re paying for the wall. You know, we have a trade imbalance with Mexico, $45 billion a year. Building the wall is peanuts. It’s peanuts. Now the politicians, they’re all talk no action.
After poking fun at his critics who argue Mexico would never pay for the wall, Trump returned to his plan for a wall.
If you have the right messenger—which will be me—they will pay for that wall and they’ll say “Thank you, thank you very much.” And it’s going to get built. By the way, it’s going to be a real wall—a really tall wall, taller than that ceiling, it’s going to be a real wall that if somebody gets up to the top they’re not going to want to get down. Believe me, it’s going to be a long way. It’s going to be a real wall.
And, Trump added, as he says he “always” says when he talks about his wall plans, it’s going “to have a big, fat, beautiful door right smack in the middle of the wall—meaning we’re going to have people come into our country but they’re going to come in legally through a process. They’re going to come in legally.”
Trump said 2016’s election is “going to be an election based on competence.”
“You know what we’re really tired of? Stupid people,” he said. “Stupid people. That’s what we’re really tired of. Stupid people.”
When talking about his poll numbers in early states, Trump laid out how he’s way ahead of the rest of the field in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida. Discussing Florida, he said he’s “around 32 and [Sen. Marco] Rubio went past [former Florida Gov. Jeb] Bush. I mean, not really hard to do right? When you have one who’s a senator—sitting—who doesn’t show up for votes, I don’t know how—if I were in Florida, I would never vote for Rubio.”
He lambasted Rubio some more after that:
He gets his job, he never shows up. He’s absent all the time. He doesn’t go to the Senate. You elect a person, he’s supposed to be in there voting for you. He misses votes on the most important subjects like Homeland Security last week.
He was raising money in California and he has a very important meeting on Homeland Security [that he missed]. Then today I see a billionaire—not nearly as rich as me by the way—a billionaire named [Frank] VanderSloot. I don’t know who the hell that is but he’s supposed to be a rich guy and he announced he’s backing Rubio. He was on one of the shows and was explaining, “Oh no, I just like him.” Let me tell you, I want to know what deal did he make? Okay? What deal did he make?
Politicians are all controlled, 100 percent controlled by special interest donors—you know that—all controlled by the special interests, the donors and whoever else wants to give them a lot of money.
Shortly after that, he poked more fun at Bush, noting how he had a 4,500-strong crowd one evening in New Hampshire, while the former Florida governor could only draw 129 people. “Here’s the good thing: They all fell asleep and they got a good night’s rest, okay?” Trump joked about Bush’s lackluster event.
Many times throughout the event, Trump kept referencing the loud and rowdy crowd. “Look at all those people standing there in the back!” he shouted. “You got to get here earlier! Thank you very much. I appreciate you being here.”
“WE LOVE YOU TRUMP!” one man yelled back at the frontrunner.
“I love you too, man—although, I don’t know, some big guy’s calling me,” Trump said in response. “He’s a big guy—he’s a big hairy guy. I don’t know if I love him. I do love you. I love your soul.”
Trump hit 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and top GOP establishment consultant Karl Rove too:
A couple of things, they said “This is the end, oh this is the end, what he just said,” and I liked what I said, but they say all the time—these dopes like Karl Rove. He’s a dope. He still thinks Romney won the election. “I think Romney won. I think Romney won. I’m telling you he won.” Remember that evening on Fox when he went around he couldn’t believe—he just couldn’t believe it? It wasn’t even a close election.
Romney let us down, folks. He let us down. Say what you want—he’s probably a nice guy. Who cares? I supported him. I supported [John] McCain [the 2008 GOP nominee]. McCain had a problem because I don’t know if Abraham Lincoln could have won that race because they had a little problem with the economy toward the end, right? A little tough? I supported him, then I supported Romney.
Romney disappeared—I don’t know what happened the last month, month and a half. He did terrible in the debates, the last two debates. And then all of a sudden he went in—I think he applied for a permit for like a nine-car garage. You don’t do that just before you’re going to get a vote. People don’t want to hear about a nine-car garage.
Trump then stopped his speech to bring a supporter on stage. “Do you believe this guy? I don’t believe that—look at this guy, come here a minute,” he beckoned to the rally-goer. When the man, wearing a Trump-esque blonde hair wig and a suit that looked like the billionaire’s, finally made it through security onto the stage, he said: “I’ll tell you what: This man’s a real supporter.”
“Are you married?” Trump asked him as he signed something for him. The man pointed out his wife in the crowd, and Trump asked her: “Are you happy with your husband?”
When she replied, Trump announced her answer to the world: “SHE SAID YES!”
“She fantasizes that he’s really the real Donald Trump, can you believe that?” Trump joked.
Trump then laid out his vision for the country.
We have to get very, very tough and we have to get very, very smart and we have to do it rapidly. We have to do it quickly. We don’t have a lot of time left. I’m convinced, however, that our country can be bigger and better and stronger and more productive than ever, ever, ever before. I’m convinced.
But here’s the problem: The Wall Street Journal this morning—who’s starting to treat me nicely, can you believe that? They’re really starting to treat me nicely, which I respect because I respect the Wall Street Journal. If they write poorly about me, I’ll disrespect them very quickly. But now I respect them—in fact, I had a beautiful editorial today and had a beautiful big full-page editorial the other day—the full-page. I love it.
He then held up the front page of the Wall Street Journal for everyone to see, and he showed off the picture on it while bashing Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s leaders.
“Look at that picture,” he said as he showed off the newspaper’s front page:
I’m going to explain what that picture is. Look at it. That picture is a picture of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and the leader of Iran getting together and they’re now forming a major partnership. A major coalition and they were both forced into it because our president has no clue. So now we just gave Iran $150 billion, we made one of the worst transactions I’ve ever seen in my life—forget about deals with countries, this is the most incompetent negotiation I have ever seen in my life.
We get nothing. We get nothing. All we do is get nuclear weapons within 10 years and probably a lot sooner than that. We get nothing. And they get $150 billion and they get 24-day periods and they even in many cases can self-police. Can you imagine? “We think you’re building nuclear weapons.” Oh, “Well, we’ll call you and tell you. We’re okay.”
This was done by grossly incompetent people. This was done by people that have no idea what they’re doing. And we don’t even get our prisoners back. We give them $150 billion and we don’t even get our prisoners back. We get nothing. We get nothing.
So, we’ve now made a terror-state—Iran—look at him, he’s sitting there, and Putin looks like he’s nervous sitting with the other guy can you believe it? Because they’re now a wealthy terror state. We could have made a great deal. We should have said we want our prisoners back in the first meeting three years ago. Three years ago. I mean, one of them is there because he’s a Christian—he’s a pastor. He’s a Christian. We should have said “We want our prisoners back, fellas, doesn’t mean anything to you. Our people want ‘em back.” It’ll set a nice tone because I like negotiation.
Trump hit Obama for focusing on “global warming” rather than terrorism. “He thinks that global warming is our biggest problem,” Trump said.
Can you believe this? Global warming. I’ll tell you what our biggest problem is and I hate to even say it: Our biggest problem is nuclear warming. That’s our biggest problem. And unless we’re smart—and I mean smart and tough and cunning—there’re gonna be problems like you’ve never seen. You think Paris was bad? You think that’s bad? You think that’s bad? We better get smart.