As President Trump prepares to leave office, he issued a farewell address boasting of “tough battles” and American “values, history, and heroes” and wishing for the new administration’s “success in keeping America safe and prosperous.”
“I took on the tough battles, the hardest fights, the most difficult choices — because that’s what you elected me to do,” Trump said in a prerecorded video made public on his final full day in office.
“No nation can long thrive that loses faith in its own values, history, and heroes — for these are the very sources of our unity and our vitality,” read his prepared remarks. “America is not a timid nation of tame souls who need to be sheltered and protected from those with whom we disagree.”
Trump’s remarks come as his soon-to-be successor, President-elect Joe Biden, arrives in Washington on Tuesday ahead of his Wednesday inauguration.
After a monthslong effort to overturn the presidential election results and a deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol waged by pro-Trump supporters, the president acquiesced to an “orderly” transition of power.
He acknowledges the transfer in his statement, which calls on people to “pray for its success in keeping America safe and prosperous.”
And in a nod to his 2016 inaugural address, where Trump promised that the “forgotten men and women of our country” would be “forgotten no longer,” his farewell states that his presidency helped to elevate the voices of ordinary people.
“Above all, we have reasserted the sacred idea that in America, the government answers to the people,” Trump said. “We restored the idea that in America, no one is forgotten — because everyone matters, and everyone has a voice.”
Trump added, “We did what we came here to do — and so much more.”