NRA Formally Endorses Donald Trump for President

NRA Formally Endorses Donald Trump for President

Today at its Annual Meeting the NRA formally endorsed Donald Trump for President of the United States.  Immediately following Trump gave a nearly 30 minute speech to a packed room and was met with frequent applause and several standing ovations.

The following reflects my rapidly-typed contemporaneous notes as Trump spoke.  I’ve phrased them as if I were quoting Trump, and mostly that’s the case, but there is also some necessary paraphrasing here and there when he spoke too quickly for me to keep up.  The paraphrases accurately reflect the gist of Trump’s comments.  There are also some passages of Trump’s talk that I didn’t capture in my notes.  Finally, I came into the speech after it had begun, but believe I only missed a couple of minutes.

My sons have been members of the NRA a long time. They have so many rifles and guns, sometimes even I get concerned. That’s a lot of guns. They’re really surrogates for me, they go around.

So often we talk about Paris or San Bernardino, nobody had guns, Paris is probably in the world the toughest place in the world to have a gun France generally but Paris in particular, and when these thugs came in, not masterminds, thugs …

The press has stopped using the term, radical Islam, they are very dishonest people the press, the most dishonest I know. If you look at Paris, 130 people killed hundreds of people still in the hospital, horribly wounded, they’ll never be the same, and these people just came in, boom boom. No guns on the other side. If they had tried that here [at the NRA Annual Meeting], there wouldn’t have been 130 people killed and hundreds in the hospital, it might not have happened, but if it did happen there would have been bullets going in the other direction and there would not have been the same carnage.

Same with San Bernardino, two people, I guess she radicatlized him, who knows, we’re in a mess, radical Islamic terrorism, we have a President who doesn’t want to say it, and if you won’t say it you can’t solve the promblem. We have a president who doesn’t want to say a word. If there had been guns on the other side, it wouldn’t have been the same.

And then you have the gun free zones, the gun free zones.  Our military, they’re told to put their guns away, and this wacko came in and shot all five, killed all five of them. We’re getting rid of gun free zones.

We should have non-teleprompter speeches only when you’re running for president, you find out about people.  With tele-prompters you don’t find out about people. [Laughter.]

The Second Amendment is under threat like never before. Crooked Hillary Clinton is the most anti-gun, most anti-Second Amendment candidate ever to run for President. The NRA, and the late hero, Charlton Heston, who many of you knew, I met him a few times he was a an incredible guy, he batttled with the Clintons to protect the Second Amendment. The NRA has led the fight again and again to defend our Second Amendment.

Chris [Cox, Executive Director of the NRA-ILA, the NRA’s political arm] and Wayne [LaPierre, NRA Executive Vice President] , great guys! [They would have made talks preceding Trump’s remarks.]  Of course if they didn’t endorse me maybe I wouldn’t say that.  No, I’m kidding, I still would.

JUST IN: NRA endorses Trump https://t.co/3pdEQRuVDY pic.twitter.com/0WgTVS0ppS

— The Hill (@thehill) May 20, 2016

Hillary wants to reverse the Supreme Court decision DC v. Heller on the right to keep and bear arms. She said the Supreme Court is wrong on the Second Amendment. That’s bad. Jus like the miners, what she said about the miners.

If Hillary gets to appoint her judges, defense is number one, the economy is important, with out defense we don’t have a country. Our military is being decapitated, what they’re doing to our military is terrible. Our fighter jets are running out of parts, these are fighter pilots they are going to plane graveyards with junk planes and cannibalizing their planes. And I’m saying is this the US, why don’t we have new equipment? The equipment, the way its maintained everything it’s like a different world. [When I’m President] nobody is going to push us around. Nobody. [Standing applause.]

And by the way, as part of that, we are going to take care of our great veterans, I have to tell you, the proper way. Thank you.

If Hillary gets to appoint her judges, one of the biggest and most important reasons to win this time, it’s very unusual, sometimes you get no judges to appoint, sometimes you go years with no judges, probably there will be a minimum, Scalia, was great, great, and you’ll probably have three or it could be four and it could even be five judges, and we’re talking about a 4-year period, and of course, we intend to make it 8 years, but we’ll make it so good in four years you’ll probably say to me we don’t need you anymore, Mr. President, it’s so good.

If it’s Hillary, assuming she’s allowed to run, because what she did with her emails is criminal and shocking that she shouldn’t be allowed to run, but it looks like she will be allowed.  And I do want to run against her, I really do.

If Hillary gets to appoint her judges she will as part of it end the Second Amendment. It’s like what she said about the coal miners.

Hillary wants to disarm vulnerable Americans in high-crime areas, Hillary wants them to be defenseless, to take away any chance thay have of survival. You have men and women sitting in apartments, and outside there is terrible crime. And if you take that gun away from them it’s going to be a very unfair situation. That’s why we’re going to call her “Heartless Hillary.”

I put forth a list of judges, who will protect and defend all of our freedoms including the Second Amendment. The judges will follow the Constitution, they were vetted by the Heritage Foundation, Jeff Sessions, Everybody is really happy, we’ve got A-plus reviews on that.

American use guns to defend themselves agains violent crime more than a million times a year, and they want to take them away. heartless Hypocrites like the Clintons want to take them and want to get rid of guns and yet they have bodyguards. So in addition to having them name judges [they plan to appoint], we’ll call on them to have their bodyguards immediately disarmed, and let’s see how they feel walking around without the guns on their bodyguards.

President Obama tries to take guns from law abiding, but has reduced prosecutions of violent criminals He is releasing violent criminals from jails, including criminals with gun crime convictions, and they are being let go by the thousands.

Many of these are also, illegal immigrants.

Two weeks ago 16,500 border patrol agents endorse Donald Trump. I have the endorsement from NRA today and the endorsement from border patrol agents. They’re told to stand back, don’t do their job, they want to do their job. Its’s the first time they’ve endorsed a Presidential candidate, and 16,500, and I’m very proud of that.

This is Hillary’s agenda to release the violent criminals from jail, she wants them all released, and whether it’s Kate in San Francisco or Jamile, was shot in the face three times by someone who wasn’t supposed to be here, a 65-year-old woman was raped and killed by an immigrant who wasn’t supposed to be here. 

We’re going to build a wall, it will be a great wall, and people will come into the country, but they will come in legally. We’ll keep our borders open, but people will come in legally. Hillary just wants the border open.

She’s putting the most vulnerable Americans in jeopardy and this is the risk we can’t afford. We’ve had enough. Can we just say that we’ve had enough? In trying to overturn the Second Amendment Hillary is telling everyone, and every woman, living in a bad community that they can’t defend themselves. That is so unfair and so egregious.

You know my poll numbers with women are starting to go up, I couldn’t believe it, but now they should really go up. My poll numbers with men are through the roof, but I like women more than men. [Laughter.] And people know that about me. [Laughter.]

I’m going to put criminal behind bars and guaranteed that law abiding mareifcan have the right to self-defense, 100%

There are 13 million right to carry permit holders in the US. I happen to be one of them. Nobody knows that. Boy, would they be surprised if somebody tries to hit Trump. If I wasn’t surrounded by the largest group of Secret Service people, who are by the way fantastic people, and our police are fantastic people, we have to give a standing ovation to police, we have to, they are fantastic people, amazing. They do such a great job, they are so unfairly treated, but they know, and they know how the people feel about them.

In the past 30 years the number of right to carry states has gone up 7-fold. These are among the most law-abiding folks, statistically, in the entire country. So they have the right to carry, they are among the most law-abiding. In fact, they are at the top of the list. In Florida they’ve issued more than 3 million concealed carry permits in 30 years, only 168 have been revoked, That’s 0.006% So very few, and no difficulty. Hillary wants to go in the opposite direction. She says Obama has not gone far enough.

Some of those terrible executive orders, they’ll be unsigned so fast, they’ll be unsigned the first hour I’m office, the first hour.

Hillary’s pledged to issue new antigun executive orders. She’s not equipped to be President in so many ways, but this is the thinking of a person who is not equipped to be the President of the united states. She’s got bad judgment, you know where it came from, it came from me, and her current opponent, who’s doing pretty well, by the way. Talk about a rigged system, he wins every week and he keeps losing. I think Bernie should run as an independent [applause,] I do.

The Second Amendment is on the ballot in November, the only way to save the Second Amendment is to vote for a person, and you all know me, Donald Trump. I will never let you down, I will protect the Second Amendment, I will protect the country, our military will be strong, our borders will be enforced, we will get rid of common core and education will be local, we will get rid of Obamacare, Obamcare is out of control, the new costs will be revealed November 1, and don’t let this happen, Obama is trying to get the costs revealed after the election, they will be so astronomical and they will show what a disaster Obamacare is, we will repeal it and replace it with something great.

Strong borders, and the greatest, every country worldwide is ripping off our great country, like we’re children, taking candy from a baby, our trade deals which I will renogetiate, we won’t have trade deficits of $5trillion, they won’t be taking our jobs and moving them to Mexico. That’s not happening with me. When they make their air conditioners and they sell them across our border, there is gong to be tax, we’re going to have great trade agreements, we’re going to become a strong national again, we’re going to save Social Security, we’re going to save Medicare, you’re going to be proud of your President, but I don’t care about that, you’re going to be proud of your country. we’re going to start winning again, we never win any more.

We’re going to knock the hell out of ISIS.

So, we’re going to start winning again, we’re going to win with military, border, trade, we’re going to win at everything, some of you are going to come to me and say Mr. President, we can’t take it anymore, please we win too much, and I’m going to say we’re going to KEEP winning, we’re going to make American great again.

That’s all I’ve got folks.

[Featured image via Twitter]

–-Andrew, @LawSelfDefense

BREAKING! The fully updated newest edition of our best-selling book has launched, “The Law of Self Defense, 3rd Edition”!

Attorney Andrew Branca and his firm Law of Self Defense have been providing internationally-recognized expertise in American self-defense law for almost 20 years in the form of books, live seminars & online training (both accredited for CLE), public speaking engagements, and individualized legal consultation.
“Law of Self Defense, 3rd Ed.” /Seminars / Instructor Program / Twitter /Facebook / Youtube

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.