Trump Goes on Diatribe About Transgender Surgeries, Olympics, Dead Russian Soldiers in Unwieldy Davos Speech

President Donald Trump delivered a long, rambling speech via videoconference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Thursday, ping-ponging between topics that ranged from transgender surgeries, the upcoming 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the war in Ukraine — and a slew of critiques slung at his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.

Below, a selection of quotes from Trump’s over fourteen-minute speech before he took questions.

Touting his election victory

This has been a truly historic week in the United States. Three days ago I took the oath of office and we began the golden age of America. The recent presidential election was won by millions of votes and all seven — every one of them — all seven swing states. It was a massive mandate from the American people, like hasn’t been seen in many years, and some of the political pundits, even some of my so-called enemies, said it was the most consequential election victory in 129 years. That’s quite nice.

What the world has witnessed in the past 72 hours is nothing less than a revolution of common sense. Our country will soon be stronger, wealthier, and more united than ever before, and the entire planet will be more peaceful and prosperous as a result of this incredible momentum and what we’re doing and going to do.

Criticizing “totally inept” Biden administration 

My administration is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we’ve inherited from a totally inept group of people, and to solve every single crisis facing our country. This begins with confronting the economic chaos caused by the failed policies of the last administration.

Over the past four years, our government racked up $8 trillion in wasteful deficit spending and inflicted nation-wrecking energy restrictions, crippling regulations, and hidden taxes like never before. The result is the worst inflation crisis in modern history, and sky high interest rates for our citizens. And even throughout the world, food prices and the price of almost every other thing known to mankind went through the roof. President Biden totally lost control of what was going on in our country, but in particular with our high inflation economy and at our border. Because of these ruinous policies, total government spending this year is $1.5 trillion higher than was projected to occur when I left office just four years ago. Likewise, the cost of servicing the debt is more than 230% higher than was projected in 2020. The inflation rate we are inheriting remains 50% higher than the historic target. It was the highest inflation probably in the history of our country. That’s why from the moment I took office, I’ve taken rapid action to reverse each and every one of these radical left policies that created this calamity, in particular with immigration, crime, and inflation.

Promising business leaders “lowest taxes” on Earth if they make products in U.S. — threat of tariffs if they don’t

To further unleash our economy, our majorities in the House and Senate, which we also took along with the presidency, are going to pass the largest tax cut in American history, including massive tax cuts for workers and families and big tax cuts for domestic producers and manufacturers. And we’re working with the Democrats on getting an extension of the original Trump tax cuts.

As you probably know, by just reading any paper, my message to every business in the world is very simple. Come make your product in America and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth. We’re bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts. But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply you will have to pay a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars and even trillions of dollars into our Treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.

Under the Trump administration, there will be no better place on Earth to create jobs, build factories, or grow a company than right here in the good old USA.

Asking Saudi Arabia to invest $1 trillion in U.S.

Softbank has announced between a 100 and $200 billion investment in the U.S. economy because of the election result. And just two days ago, Oracle, Softbank and OpenAI announced a $500 billion investment in A.I. infrastructure. Other companies likewise have announced billions and billions and billions, adding up to trillions of investment in America, in the United States. And it’s also reported today in the papers that Saudi Arabia will be investing at least $600 billion in America. But I’ll be asking the Crown Prince who’s a fantastic guy, to round it out to around 1 trillion. I think they’ll do that because we’ve been very good to them.

Asking Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down cost of oil to end war in Ukraine 

And I’m also going to ask Saudi Arabia and OPEC to bring down the cost of oil. You got to bring it down, which frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election. That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it. I was a little surprised by that.

If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately. Right now, the price is high enough that that war will continue. You got to bring down the oil price, you’re going to end that war, they should have done it long ago. They’re very responsible actually, to a certain extent, for what’s taking place. Millions of lives are being lost.

With oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over the progress that you’re seeing is happening because of our historic victory in a recent presidential election, one that has become quite well known throughout the world. I think a lot of things are happening to a lot of countries. They say that there’s light shining all over the world since the election, and even countries that we aren’t particularly friendly with are happy because they understand what there is a future and how great the future will be under our leadership. America is back and open for business.

Claiming he “saved free speech”

In addition, I’m pleased to report that America is also a free nation, once again. On day one, I signed an executive order to stop all government censorship. No longer will our government label the speech of our own citizens as misinformation or disinformation, which are the favorite words of censors and those who wish to stop the free exchange of ideas and, frankly, progress.

We have saved free speech in America, and we’ve saved it strongly with another historic executive order this week, I also ended the weaponization of law enforcement against the American people and frankly, against politicians, and restored the fair, equal and impartial rule of law.

My administration has taken action to abolish all discriminatory diversity, equity and inclusion nonsense. And these are policies that were absolute nonsense throughout the government and the private sector. With the recent yet somewhat unexpected great Supreme Court decision just made, America will once again become a merit-based country. You have to hear that word, merit-based country.

Transgender operations “will occur very rarely”

And I’ve made it official, an official policy of the United States that there are only two genders, male and female. And we will have no men participating in women’s sports. And transgender operations, which became the rage, will occur very rarely.

Ending the war in Ukraine because people are “laying dead all over the flat fields”

Our efforts to secure a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine are now hopefully underway. It’s so important to get that done. That is an absolute killing field. Millions of soldiers are being killed. Nobody’s seen anything like it since World War II. They’re laying dead all over the flat fields. It’s a flat field, farmland, and there’s millions of Russians and millions of Ukrainians. And nobody’s seen anything like it since World War II. It’s time to end it.

Upcoming celebrations

And here in America, we have big events coming up next year. We have the 250th anniversary of America — talking about it for ten years. We also have the [2026] World Cup, and I understand [FIFA President] Gianni, Gianni, is in the room, Infantino, he was very instrumental in helping us get it. He’s there with you someplace, I think, and I want to thank him for that.

And then we have the [2028 Los Angeles] Olympics coming up, which I was instrumental in getting also, in my first term. And who would have known that by skipping a term, I would get the Olympics? I was upset, I said, you know, I got the Olympics to come and I won’t be president. But it turned out, through a stroke of luck, or whatever you might call it, that I’m going to be president during the World Cup and the Olympics and the 250th anniversary. So that’s going to be three big events.

Promising to come to Davos in person next time

I want to thank everybody, for being with you, I would have been there myself, except the inauguration was two days ago. I thought it might be a little bit quick, to make it the first stop, but we’ll get there one day, we hope to get there, but I do appreciate — I heard the audience is fantastic and many of my friends are in the audience and I will be taking questions now from some very distinguished people. Thank you all very much.

Watch the clip above via CNN.