Disclaimer: The views and opinions of authors expressed within do not necessarily state or reflect those of Scribie.com. We’re transcribing the following political speeches in their entirety for posterity and use as a resource in aiding the flow of information. We’re transcribing major speeches from both presidential candidates as well as other public figures as we go into the heat of the election season. Read more about our stance here.
01:04 Warren Buffet: Thank you. Thank you.
[applause]
01:11 WB: I think you made it pretty clear who you’ve come to hear, so I’ll… In just a minute, I’m going to talk about my favorite subject, which is going to be what Hillary can and will do in the eight years following January 20th.
[applause]
01:44 WB: But before that, there have been a couple of things said by Donald Trump in the last few weeks that I’ve… Wait ’till you hear them, then you’ll really boo. I’d like to clarify a little bit. And these are important points that he’s made, and it’s important that you hear the answer on them. The first point was when he was asked about revealing his income tax returns, which every presidential candidate has done for 40 years. He said, “None of your business,” which did not go over so well. And then he started giving various explanations. And one of the explanations was that he had given his financial statement to the Election Commission that listed his assets and liabilities, but believe me, as someone who’s filled out financial statements and someone who has filled out an income tax return, I can tell you, they are two very different animals.
[applause]
03:04 WB: You will learn a whole lot more about Donald Trump, if he produces those income tax returns. And so, that’s why I’d like to make him an offer. An offer I hope he can’t refuse.
[applause]
03:26 WB: Donald Trump, at one point… He says various things at different times, but at one point, and he said it several times, he said he can’t do it, can’t release it because he’s under audit. Now, I’ve got news for him. I’m under audit, too. And I would be delighted to meet him anyplace, anytime, between now and election, I will bring my tax return, he can bring his tax return, nobody’s going to arrest us. It is not… There are no rules against showing your tax returns, and just let people ask us questions about the items that are on there.
[applause]
04:19 WB: How many of you would be afraid to have your tax return made public? No.
[laughter]
04:31 WB: You’re only afraid if you’ve got something to be afraid about.
[applause]
04:45 WB: And he’s not afraid because of what? Of the IRS. He’s afraid because of you.
[applause]
05:00 WB: So I will meet him in Omaha, or MiraLago, or he can pick the place, anytime between now and election. I’ll bring my return, he’ll bring his return, we’re both under audit, and believe me, nobody’s gonna stop us from talking about what’s on those returns. And send the word to him, if you will.
[applause]
05:25 WB: Now, another thing he said, is he says, “America isn’t great anymore.” You need him. Because America just isn’t great anymore. Now, everybody’s entitled to their opinion. I disagree with him violently on that subject, which I’ll say a little bit about more later. But it’s how he explains what he would do about that, because I’m gonna quote his exact words. I’m gonna read this because I want to make sure I’ve got it exactly right. He says, “No one knows the system better than me, which is why I, alone, can fix it.”
[background conversation]
06:00 WB: Well, la-di-da, you know what I mean? He says, only he can fix it.
[applause]
06:17 WB: I didn’t really realize we were in such grave danger. I mean, there’s 325 million Americans, and if this guy leaves for Canada, it’s supposed to be hopeless for the rest of us. Although he alone can fix it. It takes some kind of nerve, or something else, to really have the notion that out of 325 million people, you’re the only ones that can fix it. Now, I think when someone makes a statement like that, you should look at his record when he has appealed to the American public before. Now, Donald Trump has been in a lot of businesses, he’s had a lot of bankruptcies. But usually, that’s just involved borrowing money from the American public. But in 1995, to my knowledge it’s the only time, Donald Trump went to the American people and he said, “Join me, I’m a winner. Join me and invest in my company. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts.” It’s the only time he asked the public. But now, you got a chance to join the great man in this investment. That was in 1995. They listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Mr Trump, very modestly, made the ticker symbol DJT. Guess what that’s for. So he names the company after himself. He gets the ticker symbol after himself. The next 10 years, the company loses money every year, every single year. He takes out $44 million in compensation during that period. In 1995, when he offered this company, if a monkey had thrown a dart at the stock page, the monkey on average would have made 150%.
[laughter]
08:03 WB: But the people that believed in him, that listened to his siren song, came away losing well over 90 cents on the dollar. They got back less than a dime. And you know the history of his enterprises, where he was borrowing money. Well, one time after another, he went into bankruptcy. I’ve really never known another businessman that brags about his bankruptcies.
[laughter]
08:31 WB: To tell you the truth, why not? I mean. It’s his claim to stardom. I don’t know anybody else that’s had six bankruptcies, but there he is. Now, the final straw occurred this weekend, and you know about it. Donald Trump managed to get in front of George Stephanopoulos after Mr. And Mrs. Khan had told about their gold star son. Mr. Khan offered Mr. Trump a copy of the constitution. And Donald Trump said this, asked by George Stephanopoulos about what Mr. Khan first said, “You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” quite an accurate statement. And Trump said, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I worked very, very hard. I’ve created thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. Built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success.” And George, a little overcome, said, “Those are sacrifices?”
[laughter]
[applause]
09:47 WB: And Trump, believe it or not said, “Oh, sure, I think they’re sacrifices.” Now, the young son of Mr. And Mrs. Khan died a dozen or so years ago. In that dozen of years, we’ve employed a lot of people. And I’ve had fun doing it, we’ve made money just like Donald Trump has made. I have made no sacrifice. No member of my family has gone…
[applause]
10:27 WB: No member of the Buffett family has gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. No member of the Trump family has gone to Iraq or Afghanistan. We’ve both done extremely well during this period. And our families haven’t sacrificed anything and Donald Trump and I haven’t sacrificed anything. But how in the world can you stand up to a couple or parents who’ve lost a son and talk about sacrificing because you were building a bunch of buildings. When I heard that, my mind went back. And this goes back before most of you were born. But they went back to the McCarthy hearings. And at the time of the McCarthy hearings…
[applause]
11:12 WB: At the time of the Senate McCarthy hearings with the Army, Joe Welch had a young assistant of his maligned by Senator McCarthy. And McCarthy went on and on implying this guy was a communist and doing all kinds of things. And finally, Joe Welch couldn’t take it anymore and he said, and I’ll quote him, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
[applause]
11:53 WB: And I ask Donald Trump, “Have you no sense of decency sir?”
[applause]
12:07 WB: Thank you.
[applause]
12:07 WB: And I add, I just add one thing. McCarthy’s career went straight downhill after that.
[laughter]
[background conversation]
12:28 WB: Let’s move on to more pleasant subjects. Unlike what Mr. Trump says, America is great.
[applause]
12:58 WB: Let’s talk about the USA, ’cause 240 years ago, we started with a piece of paper. It was a blueprint for a new society, a society unlike anything the world has ever seen before. And in 1776, that blueprint started us on a path that has finally led to the next woman president. It is imperfect.
[applause]
13:30 WB: But it is aspirational. Now, that blueprint has done wonders for this country in terms of overall prosperity. When I was born in 1930, if my parents had seen what the world would look like in 2016, they wouldn’t have believed it. The GDP per capita is six times what it was when I was born. That’s never happened in the history of mankind. It’s a miracle. And the miracle, the miracle is America and it still has all the qualities that it had in 1930, and which propelled us forward like this. So America in terms of delivering wealth has been incredible. In terms of distributing wealth, it has not been living up to, what I consider it’s potential.
[applause]
14:32 WB: I just described to you $56,000 of GDP per capita, and that means a family of four on average would have 224,000 of GDP per capita, but it hasn’t worked out that way. This country, while making some people enormously wealthy, has left people behind, and those people were just as willing, probably more willing, to go to Afghanistan, as they were as willing to go to Normandy 70 years ago. And then…
[applause]
15:10 WB: And in Hillary Clinton, you have somebody that cares about that. And I would venture…
[applause]
15:21 WB: Let me give you just one more statistic, and I’ll get away from that, but I know how popular that is. But in the first year of the Forbes 400 back in the 1980s, the aggregate wealth of the 400 was 93 billion. You can look at up on the internet. Currently, it’s $2,374,000,000,000. That’s 25 for one. Now, I’d like, everybody that’s had 25 for one themselves, if they’d raise their hand. It hasn’t happened. They told us it would trickle down. But what has happened… What has happened is that it’s flooded upward, and that almost 2.4 trillion from 400 people in this country, they’re not bad people. I know a good many of them. I’d like to know more, actually.
[laughter]
16:16 WB: But they have benefited from the system that, frankly, is tilted towards people like me, and the rest of that group. It’s not because they’re evil, but they’ve taken advantage. They are the ones with the lobbyists, they’re the ones that have come up carried interest, where their income is taxed at rates far lower than almost all of the people in this room. And it’s going to take somebody with strength, resoluteness, brains, energy…
[applause]
16:58 WB: It’s going to take that somebody to affect change. There’s no question about it. It won’t happen by itself. It takes guts. It is a tough, tough job when you’re trying to change the code on people who are making millions and millions of dollars a year in order to give a better break to the people who work just as hard, maybe harder, and take home a few hundred dollars a week. It’s really wrong that in a country where $56,000 of GDP per person for anybody that works 40 hours a week, not to be able to provide a decent living for their family. It just doesn’t make any sense.
[applause]
17:57 WB: And it won’t cure itself. And it certainly won’t be cured with Donald Trump. It’s going to take Hillary Clinton, it’s going to take powers of persuasion, it’s going to take a mandate from the people in her election, but she’s spelling out like she’s going to do as contrasted to the other candidates. She is telling you what she is going to do about the tax code. And when that gets enacted, I’ll be a little worse off, and believe me I can take it. And you’ll be better off.
[applause]
18:39 WB: I’d like to make a little news, and this a surprise even to Hillary. It’s very easy, there were 129 million votes cast in the last presidential election. It’s very easy to think if you’re watching a TV show or the weather is a little bad or something to think, “Well, my vote really doesn’t count, what difference it could make with 129 million?” Well, I’ve got some real news for you. It doesn’t make much difference if you’re a Democrat in Idaho or a Republican in California, you are in the state where the electoral vote is gonna be decided by majority vote. And you’re on the short side in that case. But we live in a very special place.
[applause]
19:30 WB: And in Nebraska and Maine, we also cast electoral votes by Congressional district. And we don’t have to think about 129 million popular votes throughout the country, we have to think about 538 electoral votes. And…
[applause]
19:57 WB: And yesterday on that same George Stephanopoulos show, they had four people predicting how the election would come out. And Jonathan Karl of ABC News had gone state by state, and he came up with his notion as to who was going to carry each state, and how that would cause the electoral vote to come out. And those of you who watched the show yesterday saw that he came out 269 to 269. He absolutely said that he did not try to come out that way, he just looked state by state, 269 to 269. Now, there’s one district in the United States…
[applause]
21:00 WB: I am looking at the people that can change that 269 to 270.
[applause]
21:21 WB: It happened in 2008. By 3200, or 3325 votes, by… We actually gave a vote separate than the rest of Nebraska. So it’s been done, it’s been done.
[applause]
21:35 WB: But we’re gonna help that process along this time. I have pledged today that on election day, November 8th, I will take at least ten people to the polls who would otherwise have difficulty getting there.
[applause]
22:02 WB: And when you go home tonight, you can go to our website called Drive2, that’s for the second Congressional districts, the number two. Drive2Vote. And if you go there, it will offer you information on three things. How to register, how if you need a ride on November 8th, you may find someone who will take you, we’ll take care of that. And it’ll also give you the chance to volunteer to take some people, whether it’s ten or a lesser number. Today, I reserved Ollie the Trolley for November 8th and…
[applause]
22:51 WB: It seats 32, I’m gonna be out the whole day, I’m gonna do selfies, whatever it takes, and…
[applause]
23:01 WB: If it’s snowing, if it’s cold, my goal, and the goal of the people who’ll join me on this, in this Drive2Vote, my goal is to have the turnout in Douglas and Sarpy County, the second district, is to have the turnout here be the highest percentage of potential voters of any district in the country. Let’s…
[applause]
23:50 WB: Let’s give America a civics lesson, how about it? Everybody in the second district, yeah?
[applause]
23:58 WB: And if the people in this room, if each one of you would pledge to take 10 people, I can almost guarantee, that will be the march to the victory. So, join me, if you can take 20 do that, if you can only take three or four, that’s fine, too. But get that neighbor who you know is watching that television program, who feels it’s a little cold, and shame them, and they’re coming with you to the polls. Now, just remember, Drive2Vote, okay.
[applause]
24:37 WB: Now, if you’ve read the Constitution, which apparently, some people haven’t.
[laughter]
24:45 WB: If you read Article Two, it deals with the presidency. Article Two of the constitution, look it up. That’s where they described the presidency. We wrote that constitution, 39 men signed it. How would you ever guess? You’ll find out in a minute. 39 men signed it, and in Article Two, describing the qualifications for the President of the United States, male pronouns ‘he,’ ‘his,’ and ‘him’ were used 20 times. Just imagine that, and that’s still in the Constitution 227 years later. He, his, and him. No hers, no shes. Well, on January 20th, we’re going to elect the best president we’ve ever had, and somebody’s gonna change those pronouns.