President Donald Trump traveled to Miami, Florida, on Wednesday to deliver remarks at the America Business Forum, where he sought to shake off major warning signs for Republicans in light of Tuesday night’s elections.
Democratic candidates campaigned heavily this year against Trump’s own economic policies and rode that “affordability” messaging into major wins in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, California, and beyond.
However, Trump claimed during his speech on Wednesday, the one-year anniversary of his 2024 presidential election victory, that he had “rescued” the economy, despite ongoing inflation, a floundering labor market, skyrocketing electricity costs, and the future of the president’s tariffs yet to be determined by the Supreme Court.
“I really believe that if we can have a few more nine months like this, you’d be very happy. You’d be very satisfied, but it’s been pretty incredible, with trillions and trillions of dollars being poured back into our country by other countries and other places and people,” the president told the friendly crowd at the Kaseya Center. “We have the greatest economy right now. A lot of people don’t see that. But if you look at what’s happening with all the factories, AI, auto plants all over the country being built, that if you would have thought about that two or three years ago, it was the opposite.”
“Think that we can honestly say, and I think you’re going to see it even more so over the next 12 months, that this is the golden age of America,” he continued, before rattling off his economic policy moves since entering office in January.
Furthermore, Trump suggested that Republicans lost big Tuesday night because candidates and elected politicians couldn’t effectively communicate the president’s platform to voters.
“It’s really easy to win elections when you talk about the facts, and we have more people working now than at any time in the history of our country. Right now, we have more people working. These are things you have to talk about,” he stated. “It doesn’t just happen. You got to tell them. It’s wonderful to do them, but if people don’t talk about them, then you can do not so well in elections.”
Earlier in the day, while urging Senate Republicans to ditch the filibuster, Trump suggested that the government shutdown itself was one of the two major reasons behind the GOP’s losses on Tuesday night, with the second being Trump’s absence from the ballot. The president reportedly ramped up his rhetoric behind closed doors, telling the gathered lawmakers that the GOP is “getting killed” on the shutdown debate and arguing that only by eliminating the filibuster could he continue to implement his agenda.
Republican lawmakers had previously rejected the president’s filibuster overtures. Lawmakers gave reporters no indications that the caucus’s position had shifted upon their return to Capitol Hill, and the president did not raise the subject in his speech.
You can watch Trump’s remarks in full below.