CNN —
President-elect Donald Trump took a victory lap on Sunday night, telling his supporters at a campaign-style rally that his first day in office will come with a flurry of executive actions to fulfill his 2024 campaign promises.
Trump also vowed quick action to restore TikTok and to release long-classified files on high-profile assassinations in the 1960s. And he implied he would pardon supporters who rioted at the US Capitol four years ago as he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
The president-elect’s comments came at the Capital One Arena in Washington, where supporters and incoming administration officials gathered for a final celebration of his win over Vice President Kamala Harris before Trump is sworn in at noon Monday.
Here are the key lines from Trump’s speech:
Trump pledged to release all the classified records connected to the assassinations of former President John F. Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., as well as “other topics of great public interest.”
“It’s all going to be released,” he told supporters.
Despite previous pledges from presidents, including Trump, to release those records, the CIA, Pentagon and State Department all still have documents they’ve refused to release. The justification for those documents remaining classified largely stems from efforts to protect the identities of confidential sources who are still alive, or might be alive, and protecting methods.
When Trump was president, he agreed at the time not to release the full tranche of records related to Kennedy’s assassination at the request of national security agencies. But Trump on the campaign trail said he would release the remaining documents.
Robert F. Kennedy’s son Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump’s pick to run the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Trump took credit for TikTok coming back online hours after the app shut itself down in response to a new law banning it in the US.
“As of today, TikTok is back,” Trump said, as he bragged about how many of his young supporters used the app owned by a Chinese company.
Hours after Trump said Sunday he would issue an executive order following his inauguration to delay enforcement of the divest-or-ban law, TikTok’s app and webpage began to return for US users. TikTok credited Trump for its return.
“We won on TikTok, and Republicans have never won the young vote, the youth vote,” Trump said, adding, “So I like TikTok.” (Harris won 18-29-year-old voters last year 54% to 34%, according to CNN exit polls.)
Trump previewed an aggressive push to implement executive actions on his first day in office, telling the crowd he’d rebuffed advisers who urged him to space out signing them over a period of weeks, rather than immediately after his inauguration.
“Somebody said yesterday, ‘Sir, don’t sign so many (executive actions) in one day; let’s do it over a period of weeks.’ I said, ‘Like hell we’re going to do it over weeks, we’re going to sign them at the beginning,’” Trump said. “We’ll have plenty to sign in the future, don’t worry about it. It’s not going to stop.”
Trump is planning to issue dozens of executive actions — more than 100 just on Day 1, at least in his own telling — in his first week in office, sources familiar with his plans told CNN, including those aimed at ramping up US energy production, tightening border security, reeling in regulations and other top policy priorities.
“Every radical and foolish executive order of the Biden administration will be repealed within hours of when I take the oath of office,” Trump told the crowd at Capital One Arena. “You’re going to have a lot of fun watching television tomorrow.”
Though President Joe Biden is still in office, Trump claimed credit for a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas to free Israeli hostages, claiming that “this agreement could only have happened as a result of our historic victory in November.”
Three freed Israeli hostages, the first of 33 to be released by Hamas and its allies over the next six weeks, have already been released. In exchange, 90 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released, according to the Israel Prison Service.
“Our incoming administration has achieved all of this in the Middle East in less than three months. Without being president, we’ve achieved more … than they’ve achieved in four years with being president,” Trump said.
Trump credited his incoming Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. The cooperation between Trump and Biden’s teams in negotiating the deal was “almost unprecedented,” a senior Biden administration official said after the deal was clinched, made possible by a rare intersection of interests between bitter rivals who both saw an opening following Trump’s victory.
Trump said he will visit California on Friday to survey the damage caused by devastating wildfires that have killed at least 27 people.
He also said the city will be rebuilt ahead of the 2028 Olympics, which are set to take place there.
“Together we will rebuild Los Angeles better, more beautiful than ever before. We’re going to get it going,” Trump said. “We have the best builders in the world. It’s the only people that could do it. Nobody else knows what the hell they’re doing. And in 2028, the Los Angeles Olympics will be one of the great sporting events and patriotic celebrations in history.”
Trump has frequently criticized California’s Democratic officials, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, and previously said he has not spoken to the governor since the outbreak of the fires. But on Sunday, he sent he wanted to “send our love to everyone affected by the terrible wildfires raging in California.”
“We’re praying for you all. We love you all. We’re going to be there very soon,” he said. “I’m going to go out there on Friday to see it and to get it moving back.”
Trump did not explicitly say what he will do with his supporters who were convicted for their role in the January 6, 2021, attack at the US Capitol.
But he implied — as he did many times on the campaign trail — that he will pardon many or most of those rioters. And, as he has in the past, Trump referred to them as “hostages.”
“Tomorrow everybody in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision on the J6 hostages,” Trump said.
The president-elect and his team have drafted a slate of pardons for people convicted to be issued on Day 1, shortly after Trump is sworn in as president, two sources familiar with the plans told CNN earlier Sunday. The extent of the initial pardons is still unclear; however, one of the sources described them as enough to be seen as “delivering on his long-held promise.”
One of the big questions has been whether he’d issue pardons for some of the roughly 174 defendants charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon against police officers.
Over the last four years, nearly 1,600 Capitol rioters have been charged and about 1,270 convicted — with some being sentenced as recently as last week. Prosecutors and judges, though, have anticipated the pardons Trump has repeatedly previewed.
Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over the president-elect’s now-dismissed criminal case stemming from his role in January 6, told a defendant who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge on Friday: “I’m fully aware you may never serve a sentence in this case.”
Trump’s coziness with tech businesses, and particularly billionaire Elon Musk, was on display Sunday when he invited Musk and his son onstage to speak.
Musk — who has spent much of the post-election period with Trump at Mar-a-Lago — is set to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, which will recommend ways to cut government spending.
Trump praised Musk’s work with Tesla and SpaceX. “I always say we have to be protective of our geniuses because we don’t have too many. But that one is a good one,” he said.
Trump also said he’d spoken to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and that the iPhone manufacturer would be making a large investment in the United States. CNN has reached out to Apple.
