Photo of Donald Trump

Remarks at the Renaissance Hotel in Columbus, Ohio

October 13, 2016

Thank you.

I am so happy to be back here in Columbus. Make sure you request your absentee ballot to vote by mail. And remind your friends and family to do the same.

We are now 26 days away from the most important election of our lifetimes.

And we've only begun to fight.

If we win, we will create a booming and thriving economy for young Americans. We will create safe communities, lower taxes, leaner government, affordable childcare and healthcare, and a government that is honest and decent and fair.

We are the campaign of change.

We will deliver jobs, opportunity and justice for future generations.

I've wanted this race to be about the issues. But the Clinton Campaign has refused to discuss the issues. They only place they want to go is the gutter.

So they have slandered and libeled me with false accusations – but we will not let these lies distract us from our campaign.

In an earlier speech today, I addressed the fact that I was falsely accused. It is disgraceful that you can have front page articles in the New York Times inventing false claims, without any evidence, any witnesses, anything at all.

I want to talk about the policies affecting our lives, and your future.

Right now, our government has been taken hostage by global special interests that will stop at nothing to drain every last ounce of wealth from this country for their personal benefit.

The greatest weapon wielded by the Clinton Machine is the media. The WikiLeaks emails show that the Clinton Machine and the Corporate Media are one in the same – they collaborate and conspire together.

This Washington establishment will stop at nothing to stop all of us.

These are the people who have given us decades of endless wars producing only death and bloodshed, but no victory.

These are the same people who have flung our doors open to Radical Islam, putting us on the same path to France of multigenerational struggles with violence and extremism embedded in our communities.

These are the people who've allowed violent international cartels to invade our country and prey on our most vulnerable citizens. Victims like Marilyn Pharis, raped by an illegal immigrant with a lengthy criminal record and beaten to death with a hammer.

These are the people who've let drugs pour into our country and poising our children.

These are the people who emptied the jobs out of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina and shipped them to other countries.

The political powers trying to stop us are the people who've stripped the jobs form our inner cities, trapped millions of African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans in impoverished, crime-besieged neighborhoods, and left 70 million American women and child in poverty or near the brink of poverty.

At the center of this assault on American prosperity is the Clinton Machine. They don't work for you, they don't work for America, the work only for themselves and their donors – including foreign government and foreign actors.

Hillary Clinton is a criminal who destroyed 33,000 emails after a Congressional Subpoena.

She ignored hundreds of requests for security in Benghazi, causing the deaths of four brave Americans – and then she lied to the faces of the grieving parents about the reason for the attack.

She defended a man who violently and viciously raped a 12 year-old girl by horribly smearing and blaming the victim – and the she laughed about getting the rapist off the hook.

Speaking in secret to a foreign bank, Hillary pledged her support for "open borders." That means tens of millions of new foreign workers to compete against you for your jobs, your wages, your futures – she's selling out the future of young American, of all backgrounds, to enrich her donors.

We won't let it happen.

Hillary and her special interest allies want to keep children in our inner cities trapped in failing schools.

Under a Trump Administration, disadvantaged children will be able to attend the public, private, charter or magnet school of their choice.

Under President Obama and Hillary Clinton, the national debt has almost doubled.

$20 trillion-dollar national debt is a weight around the future of every young person in this country. It would require $120,000 from every millennial in the country to pay off.

The new debt added under Obama and Clinton would have been enough to pay off all the outstanding student loans in the United States 6 times over.

Yet, not one penny of that new debt has gone to lowering your tuition.

The share of 16-to-28-year-olds not in the labor force has increased to 45 percent during the Obama administration.

In a Trump Administration, we will work every day to make America great again for millennials.

First, we will Lower the Cost of College and Solve the Student Loan Crisis.

Tuition at public four-year institutions was 40% higher in the last school year than it was ten years ago.

In all, Americans owe $1.3 trillion on their student loans--more than auto loans, credit card debt, or home equity loans nationwide.

Students should not be asked to pay more on their loans than they can afford, and the debt should not be an albatross around their necks for the rest of their lives.

That is why under my student loan program, we would cap repayment to an affordable portion of a borrower's income--12.5%. And if borrowers work hard and make their full payments for 15 years, we will let them get on with their lives.

That's the nature of the deal we give many public employees today.

Every American deserves the same deal, so we will equalize treatment so everyone can start saving for their families and retirement by the time they are 15 years out of college.

In addition, I will take steps to push colleges to cut the skyrocketing cost of tuition. If the federal government is going to subsidize student loans, it has a right to expect that colleges work hard to control costs and invest their resources in their students.

If colleges refuse to take this responsibility seriously, they will be held accountable--including by reconsidering whether those with huge endowments deserve to keep those endowments tax-exempt.

Some schools are paying more to hedge funds and private equity managers than they are spending on tuition assistance--while taxpayers are guaranteeing hundreds of billions of dollars of student loans to pay for rising tuition.

We want universities to spend their endowments on their students, not themselves. They need to use that money to cut the college debt and college tuition.

Much of the skyrocketing cost of college education is due to the tremendous bloat in college administrators and bureaucrats. According to the Department of Education, the number of college administrators is up more than 60 percent since 1993--ten times the increase in tenured faculty positions.

Federal regulations are responsible for much of this administrative bloat. Vanderbilt University estimated that it spends $150 million per year---11 percent of the university's budget--to comply with government regulations.

As president, I will immediately take steps to drive down college costs by reducing the unnecessary costs of compliance with federal regulations so that colleges can pass on the savings to students in the form of lower tuition.

I will also make it a priority to protect students' rights to free speech on campus. In the past few decades, political correctness has transformed our institutions of higher education from ones that fostered spirited debate, to a place of extreme censorship where students are silenced.

We will end the political correctness, and foster free and respectful dialogue.

We also have to recognize that traditional four-year degree programs are not the only path to a good job and a good career. We should support schools that allow people to learn skills and practice a trade so young people can have access to the education that's right for them. And we must hold all schools equally accountable for their performance.

I will make sure that students have the information they need about all of their options before starting school, and for repaying their student loans upon leaving school.

There is a lot of room for improvement in this regard. Currently, students navigate 16 complex repayment plans, 8 forgiveness programs, and 32 deferment and forbearance options—each of these programs has their own nuances and qualifications. I will simplify this confusing maze into a single Income-Based Repayment Program, similar to those that have proved so popular in recent years.

We also have to make sure that those who have graduated college and those who are soon to graduate can find a good job to start a good career when they do.

Many mothers across this country are worried their kids won't find jobs, and they are right to be worried. One of the biggest threats is outsourcing – jobs for college-educated kids are being sent to other countries. At the same time, companies are importing low-wage workers on H-1B visas to take jobs from young college-trained Americans.

We will protect these jobs for Americans.

My economic plan – including tax, trade regulatory, and energy reforms – will create 25 million new jobs and allow the private sector to grow at 4 percent per year.

This includes reforms to protect and expand the sharing economy--startups like Uber--that have managed to provide great services to consumers, and create lots of jobs in the process.

Finally, and most importantly, the foundation for a new prosperity will be a rededication to the constitutional rule of law.

A vote for me is a vote for change, and a vote for me is really a vote for you.

Together, we are going to make America great again.

NOTE: As prepared for delivery.

Donald J. Trump, Remarks at the Renaissance Hotel in Columbus, Ohio Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/319610

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