In his first public remarks since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump thanked his allies and gloated over winning “the most consequential election” in a Thursday night speech at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
“So we swept all the swing states. We won the popular vote. Oh, I love that, you know,” Trump said at a gala for the America First Policy Institute. “In my first term, they said, ‘He won the election,’ but they always followed by, ‘but he didn’t win the popular vote.’ ... Nobody can say that anymore about us.”
He used the roughly 20-minute speech to thank various allies and Cabinet picks, including Newt and Callista Gingrich, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump has tapped the latter two to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE.
He also delivered what was probably intended as a glowing endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
“He wants to make people healthy. It’s driven him pretty wild over the last number of years,” he said. “And today I nominated him for, I guess — if you like health, and if you like people that live a long time — it’s the most important position.”
It’s not the first time Trump has associated the word “wild” with Kennedy ― a prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who’s vowed to overhaul the department in charge of the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Democracy In The Balance
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“I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines,” Trump said at a campaign rally last month.
Trump also thanked Linda McMahon, co-chair of the America First Policy Institute, which is a think tank founded to promote Trump’s policy agenda.