Remarks by President Trump at the Presidential Social Media Summit | Eastern North Carolina Now

    SENATOR HAWLEY: Thank you. Well, first of all, can we just give another round of applause to the President of the United States for his leadership on this issue? (Applause.)

    You know, the media - the media says - the establishment media, the fake media - they say, "Oh, there's no censorship in social media. That's all made up. That's all fake." You and I know that that's not true. You and I know the truth is that the social media giants would love to shut us down. They would love to shut us up. They would love to shut him up more than anything else. And we can't let them. And that's why we need to step up now.

    And I think we need to say to them, "Here's the deal." Google, Facebook, Twitter - they've gotten these special deals from government. They've gotten a special giveaway from government. They're treated unlike anybody else. If they want to keep their special deal, here's the bargain: They have to quit discriminating against conservatives. Do you agree with that? No more! (Applause.) No more discrimination. It's that simple. (Applause.) That's all we're asking for.

    They ought to abide by the same principles of free speech and the First Amendment that this country embraces, that we love and call our own. And I don't think it's too much to ask for these huge tech platforms - who've gotten rich off our information, right? Off of our data, off of everything we've given them - they've gotten rich off of it. They've gotten rich off their special privileges from government. If they want to keep those, they shouldn't discriminate. They shouldn't censor. They shouldn't shut us down.

    I want to thank the President again for his incredible leadership. Thank you for allowing me to be here. Thank you, Mr. President, for all that you do. (Applause.)

    THE PRESIDENT: And, you know, Josh is doing - right now, he's doing some very important legislation because we have to do something about what's happening. I never hear about the other side. I can tell you - I think I'm pretty good at getting out a message, but, technologically, I would think I'm okay. Just okay. But I'll tell you, a lot of bad things are happening.

    I have people come up to me, "Sir, we want to follow you. They don't let us on." And it was so different than it was even six, seven months ago. I was picking up unbelievable amounts of people. And I'm hotter now than I was then, okay? Because, you know, you also cool off, right? But much hotter. (Laughter.) Especially with a nice, new stock market like it is, right?

    But, no, I'm hotter now. And I go to Dan, and I say, "Hey, what's going on here? It used to take me a short number of days to pick up 100,000 people." I'm not complaining; we're like 60-some-odd million. But then we have five different sites. We have another site with 25 million. We have another site with 10 or 12. Then we have Facebook. Then we have Instagram. We have a lot - you know, a lot of people - way, way over 100 million.

HbAD0

    But I used to pick them up, and I - when I say "used to," I'm talking about a few months ago. I was picking them up 100,000 people every - very short period of time. Now it's, I would say, 10 times as long.

    And I noticed things happening when I put out something - a good one - that people like. (Laughter.) Right? A good tweet. It goes up. It used to go up - it would say "7,000, 7,008, 7,017, 7,024, 7,032, 7,044." (Laughter.) Right? Now it goes "7,000, 7,008, 6,998."

    Then they go, "7,009, 6,074." I say, "What's going on?" It never did that before. It goes up, and then they take it down, and then it goes up. I never had that. Does anyone know what I'm talking about with this?

    AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Yeah!

    THE PRESIDENT: I never had that before. I used to watch it. It would be like a rocket ship when I put out a beauty. (Laughter and applause.) Like when I said - remember I said somebody was "spying on me?" That thing was like a rocket. I got a call two minutes later. "Did you say that?" I said, "Yeah, I said that." "Well, it's exploding." (Laughter.) "It's exploding." I turned out to be right. I turned out to be right. And we turn out to be right about lot of things. (Applause.)

    But I never had it. I'm just saying from - you know, from the standpoint of a - of somebody that maybe has used social media better than anybody, Josh, because I became President. I'm sure I could have done it, as we said, much - I would have - there's no question I would have done it either way.

    I said to Mark Burnett the other day - I said, "So, The Apprentice..." Had I never done "The Apprentice" - because it was a tremendous hit for 12 seasons. I said, "Had I never done The Apprentice, would I be President?" He said, "Maybe not." And I said, "I think I would have." But I'm always going to say that. (Laughter.) I'm always going to say it. But it was a great show.

    But with social media - so I've never seen it before where I go up and then come down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Now, ultimately, you get - but it goes very slowly. But I've never seen where it's subtracted. And I really believe people are - they're taking it up as it goes up. And it - sometimes it comes down substantially.

    A number of months ago, I was at a certain number - you know, many millions - and then all of a sudden, I was down over a million. And then I came down - I said, "What's going on?" And you checked, Dan, and you said, "They say they're doing adjustments. They say they don't like some of the people."

HbAD1

    And I don't have the fake people. You know, a lot of people buy people. I don't want to do that because, first of all, if I did it, it's a front page story all over the place. (Laughter.) but I know a lot of people - there's no question about it, because I see some numbers that are phony numbers where they have these, you know, many, many millions of followers. And I say, "There's no way because nobody has any interest in these people." (Laughter.) There's - they have no -

    Now, Herman Cain, they have interest in, okay? (Applause.) But they have no interest in these people. They're playing games. They're playing games.

    James Woods. I don't know James, but he's an interesting guy and he's a conservative guy. And he is a straight shooter. He's tough. But when they want to take him off - and other people like him; many in this room, some in this room - it's a very, very bad - it's a very bad thing.

    So I have many millions of followers across various accounts. And together, everyone in this room, we reach over a half a billion followers. And I think that's probably a low number. Because one of the things I get that's a little benefit - I'll go, "Watch." Like, I did Golan Heights. I gave Israel the - the real credit over - and, you know, Golan Heights in Israel. Very important.

    But I gave representation, in the strongest form, of the Golan Heights - Israel. And I talked about it in a little quick tweet. They've been looking at it - for 52 years, they've been trying to get it. They couldn't get it. They'd have many summits where people would fly in, talk about the Golan Heights, and then fly out. This went on many, many summits. It's about a 52-year period. I said, "What happened?" They said, "Nothing." They'd fly in. They'd fly out. Some had beautiful planes. Some didn't. Some probably didn't get there by plane. But they'd have many summits.

    said, "Watch, I'm going to do this." And I said, "We recognize the Golan Heights as being part of Israel." It was a big thing. I go, "Watch this." Boom. I press it and, within two seconds, "We have breaking news." John Roberts of Fox was over, and he said, "We have breaking news. Please, break it up." Doesn't matter what they're talking about, John, does it? He breaks it up.

    Now, that's Twitter. That's social media. I call Twitter a "typewriter." That's what I really call Twitter, because it goes onto Facebook automatically and it goes onto Instagram. And it goes onto television - more so Fox than it does CNN. If it's something bad, they'll put it on. (Laughter.)

    If I have a spelling deal, they will put it on. (Laughter.) It's - "Donald Trump spelled the word 'the' wrong." You know? (Laughter.) "He doesn't know how to spell, 'the.' He spelled it 'T-H-I.'" (Laughter.) You know, I couldn't care - any kind of a punctuation mistake, they put it on. So I'm very, very careful. I really - I'm actually a good speller. But everyone said, "The fingers aren't as good as the brain." (Laughter.)

HbAD2

    But - but it is true. And it's - it's incredible what it does. I put out a social media statement. And I was telling Kellyanne the other day, I said, you know, I used to put out like a press release, right? And people would pick it up, sort of, you know, in the next day, two days. They'd find it sitting on a desk. If I put out - we hardly do press releases anymore because if I put out, on social media, a statement - like I'm going to in a little while on something totally unrelated, but a very important statement. Now they're going crazy. "What it is? Tell me what it is." Watch. (Laughter.) But it's very important.

    But if I put that out in a press release, I'm telling you, Kevin, people don't pick it up. It's me - same. If I put it out on social media, it's like an explosion. Fox, CNN, crazy MSNBC - they're stone-cold crazy. (Laughter.) I made them a lot of money with "The Apprentice." And I gave them a top show when they were dying on NBC. But they don't like me too much. They wanted a big extension. They used Arnold Schwarzenegger instead - a big movie star. You know what? He died. He died. (Laughter.) I was there 12 - 12 years, 14 seasons. And then they pick a movie actor and he dies on us. (Laughter.)

    You know, I own that with Mark Burnett and some people. And I said - they said, "Would you rather have him had been like this tremendous massive success?" You own it, so you benefit, financially. "Or would you rather have him die?" So they just say, "You did it for 14 seasons, 12 years." I said, "I think I'd rather him die at it." (Laughter.) That means you don't need the money. I'd rather have him die at it. Anyway.

    But with amazing creativity and determination, you're bypassing the corrupt establishment - and it is corrupt - and you're bypassing the very, very corrupt media - which not all of it, but much of it is far greater percentages than anyone would understand. As the cameras start to go off. There go the red lights. Look, boom. I can always tell. (Laughter.)

    I can always tell. Like, when I talk about - and I'll be in the stadium. The red lights are all on. Everyone has got - and then we start talking about, like, the media - how dishonest it is, how corrupt it is, how fake it is. And you see lights going off. (Laughter.) Lights immediately go off. And, usually, they don't come back. They say, "This guy is impossible." (Laughter.)

    But I want to just say it because you people have a lot of courage. To each and every one of you, I say: Thank you very much, on behalf of a nation. Thank you very much. It's very important what you're doing. You're getting the - you're getting, in many cases, the honest word out - not in all cases, but in many cases.

    When historians look back at this time, they will see that many of the biggest news stories of our era were totally ignored. I - I can tell you that I deal with the media, and the spin they put on it - or sometimes they'll leave it out, and then if there's something slightly negative, they'll make it, you know, headline news. They'll put it down as headline news. Or even covered up by the media - they were broken up by citizens.
Go Back



Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published)
Enter Your Comment ( no code or urls allowed, text only please )




President Donald J. Trump Approves Oklahoma Disaster Declaration News Services, Government, State and Federal Remarks by President Trump on Supporting the Passage of the U.S-Mexico-Canada Agreement | Milwaukee, WI

HbAD3

 
Back to Top