President Donald Trump traveled to Iowa on Thursday evening for early Fourth of July festivities.
Trump’s visit commenced a yearlong run of the Iowa State Fair that will continue through next summer to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday. The president jubilantly opened his remarks by touting the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, his gargantuan tax cuts and spending reconciliation bill that passed in the House earlier in the day.
The president had launched a heavy pressure campaign, both publicly and in private, to pressure Republican holdouts to flip in favor of the legislation over the past two weeks as GOP opposition threatened to undercut Trump’s July 4 deadline. But Thursday’s afternoon passage in the House allowed Trump to schedule an Independence Day signing ceremony at the White House on Friday evening.
“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago when Congress passed the one big, beautiful bill to make America great again,” he told the crowd in Iowa. “I must say this bill includes the largest tax cut in American history, the largest spending cut in American history, the largest border security investment in American history.”
Trump specifically pointed out to the crowd that the bill will eliminate the “so-called estate tax, or the death tax,” a major concern for family farmers in Iowa and other central agriculture-producing states.
The president has stated for weeks that the reconciliation bill includes critical funding to advance his deportation agenda, even as his supporters in agricultural states are concerned about the effect Trump’s deportations will have on their workforce.
Trump and other top administration officials have hinted at possible exemptions for deportations for the agriculture industry, and he told the Iowa crowd Thursday that his team is working on a solution.
“Let the farmers be responsible, and then if the farmers don’t do a good job, we’ll throw them the hell out of the country. We’ll let the illegals stay, and we’ll throw the farmer the hell out. OK, get ready, farmer, I’m telling you,” the president joked, before catching himself midsentence.
“OK, so the fake news will write that ‘Donald Trump will throw farmers out of our country,’ they will write it. Because whenever I’m sarcastic, you know, you can’t be sarcastic,” he continued, earning laughs from the crowd. “Well, if you’re me, you can’t be sarcastic. So I want to say I was only kidding.”
BEHIND THE SCENES OF TRUMP’S FULL-COURT PRESS BEFORE FINAL ‘BIG, BEAUTIFUL’ VOTE
You can watch Trump’s remarks in full below.