President Trump’s greatest speech: West Palm Beach, FL -October 2016
The date was October 13th, 2016. Seven years ago, Donald J. Trump gave one of the greatest speeches in all of American history.
At the time, Trump was only weeks away from facing Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. He was down by roughly 6% in national polls according to 538 and the RCP average. Facing an overwhelmingly negative press, Donald Trump was campaigning hard in the final few weeks of the presidential election cycle. His campaign held numerous rallies and events throughout all of the major swing states.
One of those swings states in 2016 was Florida. Prior to 2016 , the state of Florida had sided with 8 of the last 9 presidential election winners–making it an electoral bellwether and a hotly contested state
Twenty-six days before the 2016 presidential election. Donald Trump held a rally in the illustrious beach town of West Palm Beach, Florida. What was supposed to be a typical stump speech ended up becoming one of the key speeches that defined the 2016 Trump campaign. This speech criticized International Finance, Globalist special interest, and the pro-Clinton “fake news media” complex.
In today’s post, I would like to review several key passages from Trump’s iconic October 2016 speech in West Palm Beach.
To kickoff his speech, Donald Trump got to the heart of the key theme of the 2016 presidential election–political corruption. Donald Trump’s opponent “crooked Hillary” Clinton was viewed as a corrupt political figure. Her and husband Bill Clinton enriched themselves and their family after decades of “public service” and numerous political scandals.
In contrast, President Trump was seen as the ultimate political outsider. Going into 2016, he had never held public office nor served as a military general before running for President. After decades of economic and cultural stagnation, the American people sought a political outsider to fix the long-running issues plaguing our nation.
Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt — now, when I say “corrupt,” I’m talking about totally corrupt — political establishment, with a new government controlled by you, the American people. There is nothing the political establishment will not do — no lie that they won’t tell, to hold their prestige and power at your expense. And that’s what’s been happening.
The Washington establishment and the financial and media corporations that fund it exist for only one reason: to protect and enrich itself. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. As an example, just one single trade deal they’d like to pass involves trillions of dollars, controlled by many countries, corporations and lobbyists.
For those who control the levers of power in Washington, and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don’t have your good in mind. Our campaign represents a true existential threat like they haven’t seen before.
One of the key issues of the 2016 presidential election was trade. Free trade under the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations hollowed out America’s manufacturing base in Middle America—all for the benefit of the multinational corporations and international finance. Donald Trump highlighted this issue throughout his campaign and promised an “America First”, protectionist trade policy that would benefit American workers.
It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. Just look at what this corrupt establishment has done to our cities like Detroit; Flint, Michigan; and rural towns in Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and all across our country. Take a look at what’s going on. They stripped away these town bare. And raided the wealth for themselves and taken our jobs away out of our country never to return unless I’m elected president.
The Clinton machine is at the center of this power structure. We’ve seen this first hand in the WikiLeaks documents, in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.
A little later in the speech, Donald Trump gave one of the most insightful observations about the 2016 election. In the minds of tens of millions of Americans, the 2016 election presented the last opportunity for American patriots to take back their country from a corrupt political establishment and globalist special interests.
This election will determine whether we are a free nation or whether we have only the illusion of democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged. This is reality, you know it, they know it, I know it, and pretty much the whole world knows it. The establishment and their media enablers will control over this nation through means that are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe, and morally deformed.
Many forget that President Trump awakened the American public about the deep corruption within the American media landscape. The “fake news” media’s overwhelmingly negative coverage of President Trump highlighted just how deeply the America’s ruling class supported Hillary Clinton. The media was fully in the tank of Hillary Clinton, and the barrage of attacks against President Trump’s character in October 2016 was just another example of this reality.
I will not allow the Clinton machine to turn our campaign into a discussion of their slanders and lies, but, will remain focused on the issues facing the American people.
Thank you, thank you. But, let me state this as clearly as I can, these attacks are orchestrated by the Clintons and their media allies. The only thing Hillary Clinton has going for herself is the press, without the press, she is absolutely zero.
And you saw that the other night in the debate, where some people said she made virtually a fool of herself. This is not presidential material, believe me. What they say is false and slanderous in virtually every respect. We are now less than a month from the most election of our lifetime. Indeed one of the most important elections in the history of our country.
“America First” was the rallying cry of the MAGA movement in 2016. With Donald Trump as the figurehead, the “silent majority” of American patriots were willing to take back their nation at the ballot box in November 2016.
The corrupt political establishment is a machine, it has no soul. I knew these false attacks would come. I knew this day would arrive; it’s only a question of when. And I knew the American people would rise above it and vote for the future they deserve.
The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people.
We are going to have a policy: America first.
Before running for office, Donald Trump was a successful real estate mogul, businessman, and media personality. He gave up all that fame and glory for a thankless job—the American presidency.
In my former life, I was an insider as much as anybody else. And I knew what it’s like, and I still know what it’s like to be an insider. It’s not bad. It’s not bad. Now I’m being punished for leaving the special club and revealing to you the terrible things that are going on having to do with our country. Because I used to be part of the club, I’m the only one that can fix it.
I’m doing this for the people and for the movement, and we will take back this country for you and we will make America great again.
The corrupt establishment knows that we are a great threat to their criminal enterprise. They know that if we win, their power is gone, and it’s returned to you, the people, will be. The dark clouds hanging over our government can be lifted and replaced with a bright future. But it all depends on whether we let the corrupt media decide our future or whether we let the American people decide our future.
To close out this incredible speech,
“We will vote for the country we want. We will vote for the future we want. We will vote for the politics we want and we will vote to put this corrupt government cartel out of business and out of business immediately.
We will vote for the special interests and say lots of luck, but you’re being voted out of power. They’ve betrayed our workers, they’ve betrayed our borders and, most of all, they’ve betrayed our freedoms. We will save our sovereign rights as a nation. We will end the politics of profit. We will end the rule of special interests. We will end the raiding of our jobs by other countries. We will end the total disenfranchisement of the American voter and the American worker. Our Independence Day is at hand, and it arrives finally on Nov. 8.“
I firmly believe that this speech in October 2016 is one of the definitive moments of the Trump Revolution in 2016, and I would give anything to bring back that same Trump from 2016.
As I’ve stated in some of my previous articles here on RVIVR, the 2024 Trump campaign does not have nearly the same revolutionary spirit that the 2016 possessed. In many ways, the 2024 campaign shows little difference between the failed campaigns of previous Republican presidential campaigns—such as John McCain, Mitt Romney, and others.
The 2016 Trump campaign was about building a wall on the US-Southern border, ending America’s “forever wars”, and bringing back American manufacturing. In contrast, the 2024 Trump campaign has supported mass legal immigration, starting a war with Iran, and corporate tax cuts.
The rhetoric between the 2016 and 2024 campaigns is night and day, and this 2016 speech is a distinct reminder of how good we had it in 2016.
Anyways, I highly recommend that you fully listen to Trump’s iconic speech in West Palm Beach from October 2016.
