37:04

Hello, everybody. Hello, Pennsylvania. We love Pennsylvania, that are very special. Hello to La Trobe. Oh, I love La Trobe. You know why? The home of Arnold Palmer. This was the home of my friend, Arnold Palmer, and he loved La Trobe. He turned out to be one of the greatest golfers in the world. He started off very, very poor. He had no money, just had a lot of talent and a lot of muscle. He was a strong guy. And his father worked at La Trobe golf course, and he was a laborer there. Actually they called him in those days sod carrier. He’s a very strong man. He carried sod. They didn’t have trucks that trucked it. They had strong people carrying. He was the strongest of them all. And he had a son, but they had no money. And he worked at La Trobe, and they treated him good because he could do more work than anybody else.

38:02

And his son had started to grow up and he realized his son was very strong like him, but he never had a chance to play golf. He had no money at all. And his son was named Arnold. And when Arnold was four and five years old, they had no money to buy a club. He couldn’t buy one club, not one. And they used to go to the back of… This was all told to me by Arnold, so I have it firsthand. They used to go to the back room where the members were and they took out members’ clubs and they’d use the members’ clubs, two or three of them at night, late at night. And he hit balls with his son and he’d watch his son’s every move1. And he realized his son had great talent. And then his son got older and stronger, and then he got stronger and stronger.

38:48

And his father started saying, “Wow, this is really crazy, what’s going on with this kid.” And finally he was able to save up enough money to get him some clubs, but they weren’t strong enough. Arnold was breaking them. He’d swing a regular club and it’d break the hell out of it because he was so powerful. And they went back to the members’ bags because they couldn’t afford another set and used very stiff shafted clubs, very strong for those of you that aren’t golfers. That’s for good golfers with power, very stiff shafted. And he’d get better and better. And then he went to high school and he won all sorts of championships, one after another. He’d beat the rich kids, he’d kill them. He’d beat them so badly. He loved beating them, even though he was a nice guy but he was tough. He was a tough cookie, Arnold.

39:35

I got to know him really well, and he’d beat them over and over again. And then he got a set of clubs and he got even better. And he won every championship. And he got into Wake Forest. You know that, right? Wake Forest. And he was immediately, as a freshman, the captain of the team. And there was a man named Mark McCormack. And Mark McCormack founded IMG2. That’s one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world today. And he wanted to be a professional golfer. He didn’t go to Wake Forest, he went to another college, another school, and I won’t say which, because honestly I didn’t want to look it up. It wasn’t worth it, but a good golf college. And he wanted to be a pro. He was a very good golfer, very, very good. And he had the privilege of playing Arnold Palmer in a match between Wake Forest and his college.

40:29

And the way he tells it, he was playing fantastically well, Mark McCormack, a very famous man actually, founder of the biggest entertainment company3. And he was playing very well, playing Arnold. Arnold was just Arnold. He was just better than anybody else in college. And somebody shouted over to Mark McCormack, “How are you playing?” He said, “I’m playing great. Can’t play better.” “How are you doing?” “I’m six down.” And he realized at the end of that match that he would never be a pro because he could never beat a guy like this. It wasn’t close. He said, “He was longer, straighter, chipped better, putted better, and thought better. Other than that, they were very close.” But he gave it up. He said, “I’m not going to be a golfer,” but he went to Arnold. He said, “Arnold, you’re going to be turning pro and you’re going to make a lot of money. And my second choice was to start representing people that are talented and I’d like you to be my first client.”

41:33

And they made a deal where Arnold owned a big piece of the company and Arnold started winning immediately, started winning immediately, made a lot of money for him. And Mark McCormack became the agent. And then because of Arnold’s success, IMG, which most of you know, it’s very, very big now, Hollywood stars, everything, IMG became well-known. And he started signing a lot of other players and a lot of other people. And then he started with Hollywood and they signed Hollywood stars. And it became the biggest of those companies like William Morris and all of them. And it was all because of Arnold. Arnold owned a big piece of it. Arnold was a very rich man. And I said to Arnold… I got to know him when he was 69 years old.

42:18

And I played pretty much with him, a lot of them. And as he got older… When you get older, you start to lose a thing called distance. And I’m a good golfer. Not like that but I’m a good golfer. And I felt so good because I was hitting it a little bit longer than Arnold. But he was by this time about 75, 76, and I’d hit it four or five yards past him. I said, “Arnold, let me ask you, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, was I longer than you?” He said, “Donald…” I wasn’t president or close at that time. That was long before I decided to have this fun.

42:58

But you’re talking about a great man. I said, “Arnold…” And he was still plenty long, but I said, “Arnold, do you think I was longer than you like I am now 30, 40 years ago?” He goes, “Donald, let me tell you a little secret. You weren’t even close.” He said, “You see that tree out there?” He pointed to a tree that was about 70 yards in front of us. He said, “That’s where I would drive it. And you’re about 70 yards short of that tree. You would’ve been even worse then.” And it’s true. He won, I think it was Pine Valley, one of the great courses. He won the US Open. He drove a par four, only person ever to drive that hole until that time. He drove it in a playoff, to win the playoff. He went over the trees, very risky shot.

43:53

He ended up driving the green and he won with a birdie in the hole. And nobody till that point had done anything like it. But I said to Arnold… He became very rich because of the investments and the IMG and all of the different things. And I said to Arnold, “Just out of curiosity, you could live anywhere in the world. You could live on the Pacific Ocean, you could live on the Atlantic Ocean, you could live anywhere in the world. Why did you choose to stay?” And part of the beauty is that because he made money right away… A lot of times it takes a pro years before they start making the money. It’s a very, very difficult sport actually. But he started right away making money, and the first thing he bought was La Trobe Golf Club. And you know the first thing he did? He took his father from a laborer to make him the course superintendent.

44:51

How cool is that? And then ultimately his father became the manager of the club. And Arnold was so proud, and his father was good. He said, “One thing with my father, nobody’s going to steal on me.” He said that. And I said that too. I said, “There’s something nice.” And then I took Arnold when he was quite old in all fairness… We took a helicopter from where he was in Florida to Doral. I own Doral, which is a great place. And it’s got four courses, many championships. Many of the best championships were at Doral. And I was building these beautiful… They call them villas, about 88 units in each one, hotel Villas. And I named them after the 10 greatest golfers, including like Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Slammin’ Sammy Snead, all great players. And I said, “Arnold, I really want to name one after you. Would you like it?”

45:54

He said, “I’d love it. I’d be honored to have that.” And we flew down for the opening ceremony to cut a ribbon for the Arnold Palmer Villa. And to this day, people just love it. And I’ll never forget the day, he was having a little hard time. He was a little older. He hit the eighties. He hit the eighties, but when he got up there, he had that magic like nobody had. And there were a few golfers that could… You could say maybe slightly better, a few, not many, but there was nobody that had his magic. He was a thriller. He was unbelievable. He knew how to win and he knew how to just do whatever it was that electrified a crowd. If I had him here right now with me, this crowd would be going absolutely crazy.

46:48

They’d say, “Trump, get off the stage. We want Arnold Palmer to speak.” He would electrify a crowd and he would go for shots that nobody else could do and they were risky as hell. And sometimes it wouldn’t work out, but usually it did with him. He was an incredible man. He was an incredible champion. And he came from La Trobe. And so when I said… A couple of days ago, I said, “Where are we going to be today?” They said, “Sir, we’re going to be at La Trobe.” I said, “Do you know what that means?” “No, sir. What does it mean?” I said, “That means Arnold Palmer,” because Arnold told me he could be, and I knew he could be. They wanted him everywhere. Just like I wanted to name a villa after him. Everybody wanted him. He could have been in any place he wanted.

47:32

He said, “No, this is where I want to be. This is the place I love. I mean, how good is that, right? And he died a very proud owner of this course. And he was always tinkering with it. I said, “Arnold, what are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m moving the whole four yards back.” I said, “Nobody knows the difference, Arnold.” He said, “I don’t care. I love it. I love this place.” He could not get enough of La Trobe. So I’ve been here before, and I told the story before, not in this kind of detail, because you have these teleprompters. If I would read it off a teleprompter, it wouldn’t be so good and it would be a lot shorter. It wouldn’t be as good. And I didn’t want to do that. I said, “When I come here, I’m going to tell them the real story of Arnold.”

48:18

But Arnold Palmer was all man. And I say that in all due respect to women, and I love women, but this guy, this is a guy that was all man. This man was strong and tough. And I refuse to say it, but when he took showers with the other pros, they came out there, they said, “Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.” I had to say it. We have women that are highly sophisticated here, but they used to look at Arnold, this is bad, but he was really something special. Arnold was something special. So I just want to tell you, you’re very lucky, the people that live in La Trobe, and it’s an honor for me to be here because of him. Actually, he was a great man. And I don’t think there would be golf… To the extent that you have it today, it probably wouldn’t be that way without the great Arnold Palmer. So enjoy it, everybody.

49:27

And I had to tell you the shower part of it, because it’s true. What can I tell you? We want to be honest. We want to be upfront. It’s true. But I’m thrilled to be back in this incredible Commonwealth with thousands of proud, hardworking American patriots. I’d like to begin by asking a question. Are you better off now than you were four years ago after living through this nightmare of inflation, invasion, and humiliation? You know what the invasion is, right? Invasion by the southern border. What they’ve done to our country is unbelievable, allowing more than 21 million people into our country. Many of them are murderers, many of them are drug dealers, and they’re from mental institutions. He says, “Send the back.” You right. Do you come from the drug business? Yeah, he does. But Americans are ready to be free from Kamala Harris.

  1. @RalphHightower: Uh, how could Arnie handle a full-sized club, an adult’s club as a four or five year old? ↩

  2. @RalphHightower: Are you counting? This is the first time that Trump mentioned Mark McCormack as the founder of IMG in less than a minute. ↩

  3. @RalphHightower: This is the second time that Trump mentions Mark McCormack as the founder of IMG ↩