Remarks by President Trump During a Roundtable on Transition to Greatness: Restoring, Rebuilding, and Renewing | Eastern North Carolina Now

Press Release:

Gateway Church Dallas Campus  •  Dallas, TX  •  June 12  •  3:43 P.M. CDT
    THE PRESIDENT: Nice place. Wow. I've been hearing about this one. Great job. (Laughter.) Great job. Thank you very much for being here. It's an honor. And very important time in our country. A lot of things are happening. And I think when it all ends up, it's going to end up very good for everybody.

    It's an honor to be at Gateway Church with the Attorney General — our great Attorney General, William Barr. Thank you. (Applause.) And my friend, Ben Carson, who's done a fantastic job at HUD. Secretary. (Applause.) And a young star, Jerome Adams, General. Where is Jerome? Jerome? (Applause.) Along with a lot of my friends out in the audience. In fact, a lot of the great political leaders from Texas, I see. Some great, great friends.

    And I want to thank you all for being here: faith leaders; members of law enforcement, so important. We want law and order. We have to have a lot of good things, but we have to have law and order. (Applause.)

    Got to have some strength. You have to have strength. You have to do what you have to do. And you look at a Seattle — we just came in; we just see over the screen, and we've been hearing about it. Bill and I were talking about it: the law and order. Look at what happened in Seattle: They took over a city. A city. A big city — Seattle. Took a chunk of it — a big chunk. Can't happen. That couldn't happen here, I don't think, in the state of Texas, could it? (Laughter.) I don't think so. (Applause.) I don't think so.

    So I want to thank Pastors Robert Morris and Steve Dulin. They're great people. (Applause.) Great people with a great reputation. I have to say that. Great reputation. And Gateway Church — the team has been incredible in hosting us.

    And I'd now like to ask Pastor Morris and Bishop Jackson to lead us in prayer. Thank you.

    PASTOR MORRIS: Thank you.

    Lord, we need you. We need you at this time in our country. And I thank you for our President. I thank you, Lord, for our leaders. I thank you, thank you, thank you.

    I know in the Bible that, when something was emphasized, it was repeated: "holy, holy, holy." Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lord, that we are about to bring tremendous progress to a problem that's been here for a long time. And I thank you for this administration. And, Lord, we pray your blessings and your guidance today on this meeting, in Jesus name.

    BISHOP JACKSON: Father, we thank you so much for what you're doing today. You have revealed so many things that are untoward, even evil. But we ask, according to Isaiah 50, verse 4, that you would give us the tongue of the learned that we should know how to speak to the heart of this nation.

    Give us a word in season to Him that's weary, and waken us morning by morning, God, that we would hear and speak. We have a great, courageous President who's a problem solver. And let him speak as your mouthpiece and act as your instrument. And we thank you for this time. Amen.

    AUDIENCE: Amen. (Applause.)

    THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Bishop. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to thank you, Bishop, and thank you very much, Pastor. That's great. And we're going to be

    discussing some pretty important things today, I think. It's all important, but the timing of this is very appropriate. This was set up, actually, a long time ago, but the timing is very appropriate.

    We are here to listen to community and faith leaders — going to be hearing from a lot of the good ones; some of the great ones, but a lot of the good ones — and to present our vision of advancing the cause of justice and freedom.

    From day one, I've been fighting for the forgotten men and women of America, and I think we've been doing a great job of it. We've been doing a lot in many other ways, but it gets lost a little bit sometimes. Bishop, you know that. It gets lost. We've done so much. And a lot of the things that we've done that we're very proud of gets lost. Like, we got criminal justice reform passed, and they've been trying to do it for many years — (applause) — and they haven't been able to do get it passed.

    We secured permanent and record-setting funding for HBCUs. That's historically black colleges and universities. (Applause.) It's all done.

    We created tens of thousands of jobs with Opportunity Zones. Tim Scott. And we had a great senator from South Carolina that many of you know. He came with an idea, and I thought it was a great idea, and we got it done. A lot of people said that could never happen, but nobody thought it would be successful like it is. Tens of thousands of jobs and investment in communities where that money wouldn't go.

    And we achieved the lowest black unemployment in the history of our country, prior to the plague coming in from China. (Applause.) And we'll get it back again soon. It'll happen soon. That'll happen very soon.


    In recent days, there have been vigorous discussion about how to ensure fairness, equality, and justice for all of our people. Unfortunately, there are some trying to stoke division and to push an extreme agenda, which we won't go for, that will produce only more poverty, more crime, more suffering. This includes radical efforts to defund, dismantle, and disband the police. They want to get rid of the police forces. They actually want to get rid of it. And that's what they do, and that's where they go. And you know that, because at the top position, there's not going to be much leadership; there's not much leadership left.

    Instead, we have to go the opposite way. We must invest more energy and resources in police training and recruiting and community engagement. We have to respect our police. We have to take care of our police. They're protecting us. And if they're allowed to do their job, they'll do a great job. And you always have a bad apple, no matter where you go. You have bad apples. And there are not too many of them. And I can tell you there are not too many of them in the police department. We all know a lot of members of the police.

    I was listening today; a friend of mine was on. A very important person said some of the best people he's ever met are policemen, law enforcement people. And they're taking care of people that, in many cases, they never even met before, and at great danger, at great risk. They get shot for no reason whatsoever, other than they're wearing blue. They get knifed. You saw that the other night. It was a horrible thing.

    But there is no opportunity without safety. In Chicago, 48 people were shot, and 18 people were killed in one day. Sunday, May 31st. Think of that. Forty-eight people shot; eighteen people killed. You don't hear about it too much.

    Every child should be able to grow up in a safe community, free from violence and fear. They've taken a lot of the police protection away in Chicago, and they have great, great police in Chicago. I know Chicago very well, but they're not allowed to do what they can do better than anybody. They could do the job very easily.

    Americans are good and virtuous people. We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appear. But we'll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of millions of decent Americans as racists or bigots. We have to get everybody together. We have to be on the same — the same path, I think, Pastor. If we don't do that, we have — we have problems. And we'll do that. We'll do it. I think we're going to do it very easily. It'll go quickly and it'll go — it'll go very easily.

    We have so many different elements of strength in this country. We have such potential in this country. We have the greatest potential. We have the greatest country in the world. But we get off subject. We start thinking about things that don't matter or don't matter much. And the important things, we don't even discuss. But we're here to discuss some very important things.

    Today, politicians make false charges, and they're trying to distract from their own failed records. They have some very bad records. And these are usually the ones that cause the problems or can't solve the problems. These are the same politicians who shipped our jobs away and took tremendous advantage of all Americans. But African American middle class — so much of that wealth and that money and those jobs went to China and other countries. And they get trapped. They get trapped. They get trapped in a government morass. They get trapped in bad government schools.

    So I'm going to be announcing four steps to build safety and opportunity and dignity:

    First, we're aggressively pursuing economic development in minority communities. We're doing it very powerfully. We've done it with Opportunity Zones, but we're going to go above that. At the heart of this effort is increasing access to capital for small businesses, and that's with minority owners in black communities. And we're going to get it done, and it should have been done a long time ago. It's been very difficult — very, very difficult for some people. It's been unfairly difficult.

    Second, we are confronting the healthcare disparities, including addressing chronic conditions and investing substantial sums in minority-serving medical institutions. We have medical institutions in some areas of our country that are a disgrace. I was going to say "not up to standard." They're much worse than "not up to standard." They're a disgrace. We'll take care of it.

    ...

    Read the full transcript HERE.


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