Former President Donald Trump said Saturday that he was ready to go back and tackle the corruption in Washington, D.C., because he spent his first term in the White House learning who the good people were.
Speaking at Turning Point USA’s Action conference in Florida, Trump admitted to his audience that he hadn’t been terribly savvy when it came to choosing the right people for jobs in his administration in 2016 – but he said that his time in the White House had taught him who to choose and who to avoid if he got another shot.
WATCH:
TRUMP: “We are going to put AMERICA FIRST like never before, and FINISH the job that we started.”
“We are going to OBLITERATE the DEEP STATE.”? pic.twitter.com/SAvFwv1MTi
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 16, 2023
“That’s was only the beginning,” Trump said of his first term, adding that he had plans to finish the job he had started when he took office six years earlier.
“When I get back to the Oval Office, I will totally obliterate the Deep State, they will be obliterated,” he said. “And we know all the good ones now, you know, when I went there, I’d only been to Washington 17 times in my life, according to the fake news, and — 17 times, and never stayed there, so I wasn’t a Washington establishment person.”
“I didn’t know the people, I had to rely on people to give me names, and largely, we got great names, you know, we got the tax cut, we did so much, we rebuilt our military … but there are people that I wouldn’t have put there, and I will fire all of these corrupt bureaucrats,” he continued.
“Now, better than maybe anybody else, I know the great ones, I know the smart ones, I know the dumb ones, I know the weak ones, I know the stupid ones — but I know the ones because I know everybody in Washington,” he said. “I got a — I got a PhD in learning about the people of Washington.”
Trump went on to promise to create a “truth and reconciliation” commission that would be tasked with declassifying and making public all documents pertaining to censorship and spying.
He concluded by saying that he could help bring about an end to the war in Ukraine before he even took office, promising to broker a “deal” that would be fair to everyone involved.
Trump’s speech comes just one day after he declined to appear at a presidential candidate forum hosted by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
