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Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States accompanied by head coach Todd Golden. [Music] It's a big crowd. That's really, really nice.

I just met you, coach. Now I see why you won. But they had to put Yeah.

tall. Tall guys. Good-looking guys.

Congratulations. Fantastic job. That's not easy, right, coach?

No. But today, we're delighted to welcome the 2025 NCAA basketball champions, the University of Florida Gators. Congratulations.

Hello, Tim. Congratulations also to a really great young head coach, Todd Golden, on the entire job he did, the season, the inspiration that he gave these players. He's unbelievable as a coach.

I heard a lot of great things about him. Oh, would I like to be his agent? We don't go anywhere, coach.

Stay stay coach. You can't leave. And joining us this afternoon is University of Florida's interimm president, Kent Fox.

Kent, good. Congratulations. Attorney General Pam Bondi who's doing a phenomenal job.

Phenomenal keeping us safe. And of course, there's no bigger Florida fan than Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Is Marco.

Pam, why don't you and Marco come up? Come up, Senator. Come on up.

Get up here. Come on up here, Senator. And uh I see Marco's son Anthony is a running back for the Gator football team.

Whoa. That's not bad. That's pretty good.

We're also joined by Senators Rick Scott, Ashley Booty, Rick Scott. Where's Rick? Rick, come on up.

Rick, Ashley's up. Representatives Aaron Bean, Gus Billis, Vern Buchanan, Kate Kamik, and if you want, come on up. This stage is meant for a lot of people actually.

Byron Donald's Randy Fine. Randy, come on up. Randy, congratulations on your election.

I was worried about you, Randy. I was right. He ended up winning by 16 points, right?

I wasn't too worried. Scott Franklin. Scott, thank you very much.

Carlos Gimenez, where's Carlos? Come on up, Carlos. Good guy.

Mike Herodopoulos. Laura Lee. Laurel.

Laura Lee. Look at this. Hi, Greg.

They don't have your name down. Greg, get up here. Greg.

Greg Subie. Anna Paulina. Luna.

Anna. Anna. Come on.

Anna. Jimmy Patronis. Jimmy.

Congratulations. That was a big That was a big election. We got them all.

We have Greg up here. Thanks as well to the wonderful members of the Florida State Legislature and a very special thanks to the NFL legend and University of Florida. I mean, one of the greatest players I've ever seen.

I'll tell you what, uh, as a college player, maybe the best ever. And you did damn well. And you did damn well in the pros, too.

He was great. despite being on the Jets, you did damn well. Come on up here, Tim.

You got to come up here. Timbo. And he's a he's a terrific guy.

He is a terrific guy. He's a winner. Boy, he was a winner.

Well, you win two, right? And you almost won a third. There's nobody did much better.

Nobody did that. I think we, you know, he goes down really as one of the best, maybe the best college football player if you think about it with based on, we can only base it on results, right, Tam? Which is all that count.

A great guy, too. The 2025 University of Florida basketball team was one for the history books, and I saw few of those games, and they were tough games against great teams. You brought home the third national title in program history and made Florida the only division one program ever to win three national titles in both basketball and football.

That's not bad. The team was hot from the very beginning, starting off the year with a 13-game winning streak and roaring to a 27-4 record in the regular season against really, really good competition, including two wins over number one ranked opponents. In one of the pivotal moments early in the season, the Gator found themselves in a fierce battle with South Carolina.

Great team trailing the Gamecocks 52-38. Coach, that's pretty good, coach. They're not too happy about it, are they?

That's one of those, you know, you're happy, but they they're not happy when that happens. With 12 minutes left in the clock, fighting against time, the gator is clawed your way back into striking distance. With just 5 seconds left in the clock, senior guard Will Richard sees his moment.

and drove in hard to sink a game-winning layup, earning Florida a 70-69 come from behind victory. Well done. Where is uh where's Will?

I want to see this guy. That's great. That's great.

Will boy oh boy. These are good-looking guys. And they're definitely they're definitely tall.

One of my guys said downstairs, he's a big guy. He said, "These are the tallest human beings I've ever seen. " You know, I have a son who's 6' n, but 6'9's not I now see, you know, he always says, "Dad, I'm not that tall compared to some of these guys.

" And now I understand what he's talking about. By the SEC tournament, Florida truly caught fire. The Gator even set a new tournament scoring record when you beat Alabama 104 to 82.

In the closing minutes of the SEC championship game against Tennessee, the Volunteers cut the Gator 13-point lead down to five. Ooh, that's called sometimes choke time, coach. That's never good when you take that big lead and you're all you're thinking about your victory speech.

You forget to play basketball, right? You forget you got to play golf or basketball or whatever and then all of a sudden you say, "Oh man, we could lose this sucker. " Huh?

That's never good. But you handle it. The pressure was on.

You handle it. That's when star senior guard Walter Clayton Jr. I tell you, I I hear he's he's really good.

See, he's really rich, too. You know that. Seize control of the game.

Not yet. Not yet. Yeah.

Not yet. Not yet. Is he coming back, coach?

No, he's he'll be playing the NBA next year. Well, then he switched. No, I hear he's unbelievable.

Special. Going to be a very early draft choice, sir. I think if they're smart.

If they're smart. Seize control of the game and scored eight straight points, leading the Gators to your first SEC championship in 11 years and earning himself a title in uh tournament MVP. That's great.

A lot of MVPs up there. Up next was the big dance. Florida opened March Madness with a commanding win over Norfolk State and followed it up by edging out two-time defending champ Yukon.

That's tough and a thrilling 77 to 75 win. Some of these games are close, coach. You know what they say about those close?

That means they have a good coach. I don't know about that. You won a lot of close games here.

The Elite 8 brought to a faceoff with Texas Tech down by nine with under four minutes left. Florida responded with a furious rally led by sophomore Thomas Hawk who made back-to back three-pointers backto back. He's got good hair, too.

Nice hair. He's got no hair loss problem. I can tell you Thomas was still on full display as he earned his fourth double double of the season by recording 20 points and 11 rebounds while against the Red Raiders.

And with an 84 to 79 victory over Texas Tech, you punched your ticket to the Final Four. Not easy to do. Thank you.

Not easy to do, fellas. Facing off against top-seated Auburn, Walter Clayton again. Walter Clayton.

This guy Walter Clayton has to be very Walter Clayton Jr. turned in another big performance, dropping a career-high 34 points and became the first player since Larry Bird. How good was Larry Bird in 1979 to score 30 points or more in both the Elite 8 and the Final Four?

That's some competition. They like they like Larry Bird. I do too.

So, in the championship game against the Houston Cougars, what became one of the most hardfought title games in college basketball history, the first half was a battle over every point. With both teams playing ferocious defense and the lowest scoring first half of a championship game since 2011, the Gator fell behind and it was looking bad. But in the second half, Florida stormed back with a 14 and3 run.

That's not bad. With less than 60 seconds left on the clock, Houston led by one point. Did you think you were going to win?

I did. That's That's what he gets paid for. This guy's good.

Houston then fouled Elijah Martin. Okay. Where's Elijah?

Giving him two free throws, which he easily sang. Were you nervous? I always like here's a guy.

He's got to sink the It's not that easy. I can name a couple of very big players that didn't do too well in that circumstance. Were you uh nervous when you were?

No. Huh? That's pretty good.

He sank them both, coach. Right. Oh, if you didn't sink him, you wouldn't be up here right now.

And nobody would ever call you again. That's great. That's a lot of pressure.

That's a tremendous thing. But Houston fouled junior guard Denzel Aberdine who expanded Florida's lead again. And that's great.

Where's Denzel? I love that name. Denzel Aberdine.

I have a place in Aberdine, Scotland. I like that name, Aberdine. And he's good player, coach.

I wouldn't I'd like to have him say, "No, not that good. You look like a good player. " On Houston's final possession, the Gator clamped down, pressured the ball.

That's right. I saw that game. That was crazy game.

And forced a turnover. The ball rolled loose and the Gator clinched the national championship 65-63 in one of the most exciting games and championships they've ever had. That's true.

Great coaching. Lesser teams would have crumbled. That was a hell of a game.

Tim, what do you think? Pretty good, right? The best, huh?

That was pretty good. And uh under that pressure, very few teams could have withtood that. That was an amazing moment actually.

And those two uh throws of free throws by Denzel were pretty amazing. But time after time, you refused to let up. I mean, think of it.

All these close games and against great teams and a lot of those guys are going into the NBA and you won, coach. You just kept winning. You refused to let up when the odds were against you.

And that's uh the mark of true champions, all of you. the coach is great and the team is great and the coach feels really I asked him first question how do you think you'll do this year you know in other words forget about last year how you doing this year right we always think forward coach but he said he thinks he's going to have a fantastic team will you go in ranked top five or so or one or maybe I think we'll be top five five good coach that's good well if you're top five that means with you as a coach you're going to win right so I think so so again congrat Congratulations to a well-earned victory. And all I can say is go Gators.

We love you in Florida. We love you in Florida. And now, Coach Golden.

Coach, thank you, coach. [Applause] Who my passport. First of all, thank you, Mr President, uh, for inviting my team and our program to the White House to celebrate our national championship.

It means everything to us. So, thank you very much. We're going to take you to the Oval Office.

We're going to go to the Oval Office after this. The Oval Office, right? Yeah.

It's uh And then we just want to thank all of our friends and family and supporters of our program that are here today uh enjoying this moment and celebrating with us. If it wasn't for your all support all year, we wouldn't be here. So, thank you all very much.

Um Mr President, I like to think of our program uh similarly to how you think of the United States. We're a meritocracy. All right?

We work really, really hard. No matter what you look like or where you come from, if you put the team first and win, we're going to play you. And uh we we have a program full of that.

Guys that have great attitudes, great work ethics, most importantly, want to be at the University of Florida. All right. We have uh young men that have great physical tools, great basketball talent.

In fact, as uh Mr President said, a number of these guys will be participating in the NBA next year or when their time at Florida is up. But the reason why we were successful this year is we had incredible team talent. We had guys that were willing to play together, sacrifice individual stats and records for the greater uh good of the group.

And it led us to a 36 and4 record and a trip to the White House. I'm incredibly proud of my players and our staff and the work that we've done over the last year. Uh and and our goal is to do everything we can to put ourselves in position to be here again next year.

But we got a lot of work to do in the meantime. Uh but again, Mr President, thank you so much. And uh to show a token of our appreciation, we have an autographed team basketball and a a Donald Trump jersey with number 47 on it.

All right. To honor your 47th term as president of the United States of America. Thank you very much.

That's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you all very much.

Go Gators. I'm not sure they'll want to. I think the most exciting room anywhere in the world is called the Oval Office.

And I'm going to invite the coach and the team down to the Oval Office. I might even ask our great representatives, senators, Marco, everybody to come down with them. And we'll take some pictures in the Oval Office.

And I have a special little coin for them. a really nice coin. I hope they never lose it cuz if they do, it's a lot of money that coin.

But uh so let's see. Do you want to go to the Oval Office? Yes, sir.

I thought they were going to say that. Uh thank you all very much. Great team.

Great great everything. Thank you. Fantastic.

Thank you very much. [Music] Heat up here. [Music] [Music] [Music] Heat.

Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat.