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

    People come up to me and they say, "Sir, I can't get you. I can't follow you. They make it impossible." These are people that are really good at what they do. They say, "They make it absolutely impossible." And, you know, we can't have it. We're not going to let it happen. Josh, we're not going to let it happen.

    And, you know, if they did it on both sides, if it were done to the other side, to the other group - and I'm representing everybody. I do. I represent everybody. I fully understand liberal. I fully understand Democrat. We want to get along. We want to make sure that everybody loves each other, if that's possible. And, maybe, I really believe it is. Someday it will be.

    I, for a while, have said that the thing that's going to bring us together is great success. Now we have tremendous success - greater than we've ever had before. I mean, our country picked up trillions of dollars in value and worth. China has gone down trillions of dollars. The tariffs have hurt them. I don't want to hurt them, but I want to give us a fair playing field. But China has gone down trillions. We've gone up tril- - not billions, trillions. We've gone up in value and worth.

    I want everybody to do well, but they've got to treat us fairly. They've got to treat - everybody has to be treated fairly. Their side, our side - we all have to be treated fairly.

    And, you know, the farmers say, "We just want a level playing field, sir." I love the farmers. They're patriots. And China, as you know, targeted the farmers because they think they could get to me by hurting the people that I love and that we take care of. And it had no impact.

    I would watch, even on networks that don't exactly like me, and I'd watch as they interview farmers. And they'd have 10 or 12 people sitting around. They're saying, "We don't care. The President is right. We've been ripped off for many years. Somebody has to do - somebody had to do this."

    China made, over the last 10 years, hundreds of billions of dollars. You could say four to five hundred billion dollars a year. That's not sustainable. That's not - we built China. And you know what? They've done a great job. I don't blame them; I blame our former Presidents and the leaders of our country for allowing this to go on ever since the World Trade Organization opened up. They allowed this to go on. They allowed hundreds of billions of dollars a year to be taken out of our country and to be used to rebuild China. So those days are over.

    So, right now, they're paying 25 percent on $250 billion. A lot of money coming in. You know, we had a 3.2 GDP for the first quarter. Everyone said, "I wonder how that happened." Because first quarter is the weakest quarter always - almost - almost always. And we had like this great quarter.


    But I don't consider 3.2 great. I consider much higher. And, frankly, if we had lower interest rates - you know, we're forced to pay more money than other countries because we have a rate that's high. We have somebody that likes raising rates. Now, I think he's maybe going to change, but we'll find out. But if we had lower, we'd have another 10,000 points. We're doing - we just set a record. You know, I'm a very greedy person. We just set a record: 27,000. I said, "We could be 10,000 points higher." We could be 10,000 because there's no inflation. A big thing is inflation. There's no inflation. But we're doing so well. We're going to keep it that way.

    So, I just want to introduce - because a person that I've admired for a long time who is a great lawyer, Harmeet Dhillon, and she's one of the leading First Amendment lawyers in our country. And, Harmeet, could you come up - just say a few words, please? Thank you. (Applause.)

    MS. DHILLON: Thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.) Thank you, Mr. President. It's a tremendous honor to be here with a lot of people who I really respect and admire.

    The corrupt establishment that you talked about and the mainstream media have told a lot of people in this room that the social media censorship and the banning that we're experiencing is all in our heads. They're gaslighting us with this lie.

    Let me tell you about a couple of people I represent in my law practice and the civil rights work that we do. David Horowitz is a great American, who is a supporter of yours - has been in the movement for many decades. Well, Twitter abruptly de-platformed him one day - took him off, said he was banned. And then, he complained and then they let him back on. And then, the next day, they did the exact same thing to him. That's not an accident.

    James Damore is another great American who I represent. Mr. Damore complained internally about Google's discriminatory practices against conservatives and pushed for more balance. Not only was he fired for daring to do that, but then these social media platforms used their platforms to humiliate him publicly, weaponize their platforms, and make sure that he could not get a job in Silicon Valley. That's a disgrace.

    But it goes beyond that. These social media CEOs have come to Congress in front of the - many of these members of Congress here, and they've lied about what they do. They've lied about the data theft. They've lied about the media manipulation. And they can't get away with that.

    Now, Senator Blackburn knows, from what happened to her on Twitter, that these companies are trying to stop the ordinary men and women who you represent from hearing their voices. I'm very concerned that they affected the outcome of the 2018 election. And if we let them do what they're going to - what they've been doing, it's going to affect the outcome of the 2020 election as well.


    So, Mr. President, thank you so much for inviting everybody here to talk about these issues. And we're all behind you joining the fight to make sure that every American's voice is heard. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

    THE PRESIDENT: And what Harmeet said is so, so true. I mean it's - it's really incredible. You know, I've watched and I've watched some of these scenes that have been taped and gotten through - talented people, by the way - but gotten through and gotten to the public where you see the hatred of - of our party, of our people, of our voice. And you say, "That's the collusion." It's a collusion between the Democrats and the media and - and social media and these platforms. It's a disgraceful thing. (Applause.)

    And another thing, I believe you're representing a young man who just got slugged, viciously slugged. I think it's a disgrace. Do you ever notice they pick on certain people? I mean, he would tell you he's not the toughest person in the world physically, right? They don't go after Bikers for Trump. (Laughter.)

    Do you ever notice that? They don't go after our construction workers, who love us. They don't go after the police. They don't go after - we have incredible people. You know, we're the elite. They say they're elite. You know. Do you ever hear this? Hey, I live better than all of them. (Laughter.) Great education. The greatest houses. The great- - but I guess I'm not elite. They live like in the basement of their mom's home. (Laughter.) Their arms are this big. Look, like this.

    But they have the black - they have the black masks on, and they have sticks. And they hit people. They hit people in the face, in the head - this Antifa.

    But do you ever notice the Antifa is never there when we have a bikers rally? (Laughter.) They're never there when the construction workers and the unions are honoring the President. They're never around. They're always there when you have a single guy protesting in front of a school.

    And as you probably know - I think all of you know - we did something very serious. I signed an executive order recently. We're taking money away from those schools. (Applause.) We're going to - you know, we give them billions and billions of dollars, and they don't allow free speech. (Applause.) And we don't want anything special, but we want free speech.

    We're also joined by someone affected by this troubling bias very, very much - and President of Live Action and somebody I've watched, really, with great admiration. Lila, please come up. Lila Rose. Thank you. (Applause.)


    MS. ROSE: Thank you so much, Mr. President. It's really an honor to be here. Thank you for doing this important summit.

    I represent Live Action. I'm the founder and president, and we are a pro-life organization which reaches millions of people every week with the truth about abortion and human dignity.

    We have been, for four years, banned from doing any advertising on Twitter. And they told us that, in order to reinstate our accounts, we'd have to stop calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood and stop sharing our pro-life content. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups continue to advertise.

    Last month, we were permanently suspended from Pinterest, and they accused us of spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation with our pro-life content, with no evidence. And then, news media groups picked up the narrative and spread it around. Meanwhile, abortion groups, including abortion clinics, post freely on Pinterest.

    And then, recently, our videos have been viewed more highly than almost any other abortion-related content on YouTube. But YouTube - we made it to the first page of search results, but YouTube buried our pro-life videos and boosted pro-abortion videos. So this double standard and bias is a growing problem in big tech, even though they say that they are politically neutral and they don't discriminate. They even testified before Congress and said that.

    So thank you so much to the administration and to you, Mr. President, for holding this very important summit. Thank you. (Applause.)

    THE PRESIDENT: Great job. Thank you very much.

    So, one of the advantages of being President is when you ask for a meeting, you get it, generally. I don't know - I can't think of too many I haven't gotten. And you say, "I'd like to see you in Oval Office." Or you have somebody call - Oval Office.

    I have been with all of these people at the highest level - one-on-one, just recently, with Google. Just recently, with Twitter. The top. All right? And you talk to them and you swear they're like your best friend. "Oh, sir. No, we're - we're - we believe - we - freedom of speech. Oh, yes. Absol-..."

    AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)