Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. I am thrilled to be here. Thrilled. And if you think that was an easy trip, you're wrong. But I am thrilled.
Nineteenth Boy Scout Jamboree, wow, and to address such a tremendous group. Boy, you have a lot of people here. The press will say it's about 200 people. It looks like about 45,000 people. You set a record today. You set a record. That's a great honor, believe me.
Tonight we put aside all of the policy fights in Washington, D.C., you've been hearing about with the fake news and all of that. We're going to put that aside. I said, who the hell wants to speak about politics when I'm in front of the Boy Scouts? Right?
You know, I campaigned to be president with a simple slogan: Make America Great Again. And tonight I want to explain how all of you can do that. But this isn't a campaign speech. It's not. I'm sorry if that disappoints you, but it's not. What I want to tell you isn’t about politics — well, it is but it isn't. It is but it isn't, because what I want to tell you is Americans talk too much about politics.
I live in Washington, D.C., now — I had to move there from New York after the election; they made me do it because I won — and politics is all anyone there wants to talk about. But not only there. Everything, everywhere, seems to be about politics. It wasn't always that way. It wasn't. When I was a kid people argued about politics, and often the things they argued about were important, just like today; there's a lot that's important going on, and we have to talk about it. We have to.
But you know, back then people would argue about those things, and then they'd stop. They'd stop. And they'd talk about something else. Or go do something else. And they'd get away from politics. You know, you can't do that anymore. Everything's about politics. You watch an NFL game, or the Oscars, or go to a concert, and there's politics. You can't get away. You want to, but you can't.
America is about so much more than politics. It's about the Boy Scouts, and schools, and faith, and businesses — great, amazing businesses, like mine — and so many other things. But today lots of people want to bring politics into all those things.
And it's making us worse as Americans. It really is. We don't know how to live with each other anymore, because we talk about politics so much, and we blog about it, and we — you know I love Twitter, I love to tweet — we tweet about it, and we just get so angry at each other. So angry. And it's so sad.
We can have different opinions and still get along, but that's hard when we bring our politics into everything we do. And we're creating an America where it's not just hard to get along, but where it seems like we don't even want to, because we think we're enemies. But we're not enemies. We're not. We're Americans, and we can't be enemies, because there are already plenty of people in the world who want to be our enemies, and we may have to fight them, so we can't be fighting each other. So argue, debate, try to beat each other — you know I love winning, just like in November; so much winning — but be able to walk away from it.
I said I would tell you how to help Make America Great Again, and it's very easy, so unbelievably easy: Don't be like the adults you see in Washington, and on television, and on the internet. All of you here tonight from across America, don't be like that. America needs you not to be like that. Be good citizens, be trustworthy, loyal — all those things the Boy Scouts are; I never learned them all, but they're great things, really great — and participate in your government. Have an opinion, but don't bring it into everything. You know, if even the Boy Scout Jamboree started being about politics, because I talked about it here, people would get very upset. Believe me. Very, very upset.
And I just want to end by saying, very importantly, God bless you. God bless the Boy Scouts. God bless the United States of America. Go out, have a great time in life, compete, and go out and show me that there is nobody, nobody like a Boy Scout.
About the Author
