“It’s very close to my heart because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”
“It’s very close to my heart because I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen down at 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center right after it came down, and I saw the greatest people I’ve ever seen in action.”
— Donald Trump, April 18
May 1, 2017
Remarks by the President
The White House
President Trump: I want to welcome all of my Cabinet secretaries here for this meeting. We have completed our first 100 days in office and already we have made America Great Again. Amazing! The best!
I know everybody took a Big Gulp when I changed 9/11 to 7-Eleven last year. They thought I was a stupid person. A loser! Erin Gloria Ryan of Vocativ said I would start talking about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Jam and the Native Americans’ Trail of Sears. Other terrible people — the worst! — thought I would refer to the eBay of Pigs, the Normandy landing on DQ Day, the Dodge Challenger disaster, Black &Decker Tuesday of 1929, the 1906 San FranCisco Systems Fire and the 1814 burning of the White Castle by the British.
Wrong! Turning 9/11 into 7-Eleven was the beginning of something huge. Phenomenal! The people at 7-Eleven — great retailer, decent coffee, convenient! — loved it. Loved it! They said to me: Mr. Trump, if you could mention us and other corporations more often at unexpected moments, we think it would really help to Make America Great Again. And I said: We will do even better. We will Make America Great Again by selling some of our greatest assets to you and to America’s other great corporations.
We are meeting here in the MapQuest Room of the Trump National White House because our new Crate &Barrel Cabinet Room is being refurnished. Next we’ll have a drink in the Johnnie Walker Blue Room, and we’ll eat in the Allstate Dining Room. Look out the window there and you’ll see amazing billboards going up on the Washington Mutual Monument, across the reflecting pool from the Lincoln Financial Group Memorial. In the distance you’ll see the white dome of Capital One, the Tide Basin and Boeing National Airport. Huge!
Jeff Sessions, our phenomenal secretary of Homeland Depot Security — great guy! — tells me Mexico has already paid for the wall. It’s now the Aeromexico Wall — “because the only way around it is over it!” Great slogan! We are making only the best deals, throughout the Federal Express government and across the entire United States of American Eagle Outfitters.
They said I couldn’t unify the Republican Party. But then I renamed the Navy the Ted Cruz Line. They said I couldn’t hold on to the evangelical Christians. But then I renamed the Liberty University Bell and Niagara Falwells.
Most of all, they said I couldn’t get rid of the entire federal debt — $19 trillion! — in one year. They said I was stupid — a loser! But I traveled this land, from the Redwood Inn forest to the Gulfstream G650, and knew that everybody wanted to buy American! So I sold the Treasury Department to Citigroup, the Pentagon to Lockheed Martin, the Food and Drug Administration to Pfizer, HHS to CVS, the EPA to Waste Management, the FBI to Apple, the NSA to Google and the Grand Canyon to GMC. Great deals! China gave up all $1.3 trillion of our debt — and all I had to give them was the Walt Disney Company. Phenomenal deal!
Now we are placing corporations’ names in amazing places — the greatest — and we are winning, winning, winning, and we are making a lot of money. A lot.
We are bringing out the best in America, the fast and convenient spirit of 7-Eleven, and I say: Oh, thank heaven. We are Making America Great Again.
(APPLAUSE)
Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post whose work appears Mondays and Fridays. Email him at danamilbank@washpost.com.