THE PRESIDENT: That's fantastic, thank you. That's fantastic. Thank you very much. Beautiful.
That was so incredible, and now I don't have to make my speech.
I had
the most beautiful speech written out. I was so proud of it. Look. And I
thought you would leave out Iwo Jima, but you got that in the end, too.
(Laughter.)
And I want to tell you -- you said you're 90 years old? That's great,
because
you have good genes.
That means the press has got me to kick
around for a long time. (Laughter.)
That was beautiful. I loved that and I loved your delivery. And the
Code Talkers are amazing. And seriously, it is what I said.
So what I'm
going to do is give you my speech, and I want you to hold that. And I
know you like me, so you'll save it. But that was so well delivered,
from the heart. That was from the heart.
So I want to give you this speech because I don't want to bore them
with saying the same thing you just said. And you said it better,
believe me, because you said it from here. And I mean it from there too.
And you have a lot of great friends. Tom Cole is here, and you know
Tom. And you know Jeff. So I want to thank you both, Jeff Denham. I want
to thank you both for being here, and you too for being here.
Also, General Dunford, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General
Kelly. And I have to say, I said to General Kelly --- I said, General,
how good -- here he is right there, the Chief; he's the General and the
Chief. I said, how good were these Code Talkers? What was it?
He said,
sir, you have no idea. You have no idea how great they were -- what
they've done for this country, and the strength and the bravery and the
love that they had for the country and that you have for the country.
So that was the ultimate statement from General Kelly, the importance.
And I just want to thank you because
you're very, very
special people.
You were here long before any of
us were here, although we have a
representative in Congress who,
they say,
was here a long time ago.
They
call her
"Pocahontas."
But you know what, I like you because
you are special.
You are
special
people.
You are really incredible
people. And from the heart, from the
absolute heart,
we appreciate what
you've done, how
you've done it, the
bravery that you displayed, and the love that you have for your country.
Tom, I would say that's as good as it gets, wouldn't you say?
That's as good as you get.
General Kelly, just come up for one second. I want to just have you say
what you told me, a little bit about the Code Talkers. Because it
really has been -- learning about you and learning about what you've
done has been something that I'd like General Kelly to say to the press.
Go ahead, General.