At Fox News awards ceremony, Trump boasts about recent conversations with foreign leaders, promises to ‘look at’ election system

After receiving Fox News’ “Patriot of the Year Award” Thursday night, President-elect Donald Trump spoke about recent conversations with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, promised a review of U.S. elections and repeated his campaign promise to deport undocumented immigrants.

It was one of the few TV appearances Trump has made since winning the Nov. 5 election.

Regarding his meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week, Trump boasted, “And as you know, I spoke with Canada and Justin came flying right in because we talked about 25% tariffs — that’s just the beginning.”

Trump again suggested Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum agreed to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border despite her denying the claim last week.

“I spoke the other day to the president, the new president of Mexico — very nice woman — and we had a very nice conversation. But she said, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I said, ‘I’m not. I’m just putting a lot of tariffs on because you’re allowing criminals to pour into our country and we can’t allow that anymore.’ And it stopped. It stopped. It was so fast,” Trump said.

Railing against what he called an “invasion” of the U.S., Trump praised his pick for border czar Tom Homan, calling him “central casting.”

Trump also boasted about his victory while criticizing the U.S. election system, claiming his political opponents tried to rig the 2024 election but failed because his support was “too big to rig.”

“We won the popular vote by millions and millions of votes. We won all seven swing states, and we won the most votes ever gotten, by millions, by a Republican candidate,” Trump said.

Recalling the 2020 election, when President Joe Biden defeated Trump by more than 7 million votes, Trump called it “not a pleasant night” and a “very unfair situation.” He added, “We’re going to get things straightened out in this country, including elections.”

He then promised to “look at elections,” as he argued for one-day voting, voter IDs and proof of citizenship.

Throughout his short 10-minute address, Trump repeated his campaign promises of expanding U.S. oil production and lowering energy prices. He also again promised to fight crimes and deport undocumented immigrants.

“It’s going to be more successful than ever before. We’re going to be more respected throughout the world than ever before. Countries are going to respect us again,” he said.