Good morning.

Thank you for being here.

We are now nine days away from the inauguration of the next president and vice president of the United States.

It's an opportunity to be here today to allow the president elect to take your questions.

I want to take you back to another time before this year's presidential election.

Before the pandemic, before Donald Trump officially took office.

January 11th, 2017.

You do this to all of you, my friend, and the president elect of the United States of America Donald Trump.

Thank you very much. It's very familiar to our news conferences because we used to give a lot of money.

So on this day in 2017, at Trump Tower, Donald Trump stood in front of a row of American flags,

and he talked about plans for his presidency.

And he also denied any deals with Russia and to address how he might separate business Trump from president.

As a president, I could run the Trump organization, great great company, and I could run the company.

I do a very good job, but I don't want to do that.

Now, all of these papers that you see here, yes go ahead.

I remember one of the things that press conference, I mean, you know, people might remember it so much has happened since.

But maybe they remember it because it was his first press conference as president elect.

This is Andrea Bernstein.

And he was standing in front of this table with all of these file folders and butterfly clips.

These papers are just some of the many documents that I've signed, turning over complete and total control to my sense.

And from all the evidence that we can see, those papers were blank.

Wow.

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