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Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and First Lady Melania Trump. [Applause] Good afternoon and welcome to the White House. It's honor to join you here today for the signing of the Take It Down Act, a national victory that will help parents and families protect children from online exploitation.

This legislation is a powerful step forward in our efforts to ensure that every American, especially young people, can feel better protected from their image or identity being abused through non-consensual intimate imagery of ICI. Artificial intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation. Sweet, addictive, and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children.

But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shaped beliefs, and sadly affect emotions and even be deadly. Over the past few months, I have met with brave survivors, deeply loving families, and caring advocates who now who know firsthand the emotional and psychological toll of NCI and deep fake abuse. Aliston Barry stood boldly for change despite the risk posed to her and her family by speaking out and making her voice heard.

Elliston, your voice and the voices of so many like you made this bill a national priority. Many thanks to members of Congress, both parties for passing this legislation, including Speaker Johnson, Senator Cruz, Senator Kolbachar, Congresswoman Salazar, Congresswoman Dean, and Congressman Gotthri, and so many more. Thank you all for coming together to prioritize people over politics.

As first lady, my be best initiative is focused on improving children's well-being, encouraging kindness, and creating a safer online environment for our youth. Today, I'm proud to say that the values of be best will be reflected in the law of the land. I want to thank my husband, President Trump, for standing with us on this effort.

His signature on this new law is now is not where our work ends of the on this issue. Now we look to the Federal Trade Commission and the private sector to do their part. Today through the Take It Down Act, we affirm that the well-being of our children is central to our future of our families and America.

Now, it is my pleasure to introduce the president. Thank you. Good job.

Great job. That was a great job. Well, I want to thank everybody.

We just spent two and a half hours talking to Vladimir Putin, and I think some progress has been made. It's a terrible situation going on over there. 5,000 uh young people every single week are being killed.

So uh hopefully we we did something. We also spoke to the heads of most of the European nations and uh we're trying to get that whole thing wrapped up. What a shame that it ever started in the first place.

So but I want to thank Milani and for your leadership in this very important issue. It's an amazing issue. America is blessed to have such a dedicated and compassionate first lady.

I would tell you she is very dedicated. Uh in fact uh if you look at just what I heard Putin just said they respect your wife a lot. I said what about me?

No they will. They like they like Melania better. That wasn't good.

I don't know if that was good. I I'm okay with it. I'm okay.

I also want to congratulate the first lady in securing $25 million in the first fiscal year 2026 budget to provide housing and support for youth transitioning out of the foster care and uh I can say that she loves children and you really worked very hard on this and you had a lot of help from some friends of mine right here and uh a lot of the senators are here and congressman and I appreciate you all being here. We're also grateful to be joined by uh people that are just in love with what we're doing. It's such an important situation and commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission and the CEO of X, Linda Yakarina.

Where are you, Linda? Where are you, Linda? Thank you.

Thank you, Linda. Stand up. Thank you, Linda.

Great job. Doing a great job. It's a big deal, right?

That's great. Today, it's my honor to officially sign the Take It Down Act into law. It's a big thing, very important, so horrible what takes place.

This would be the first ever federal law to combat the distribution of explicit imaginary posted without uh subjects consent. They take horrible pictures and I guess sometimes even make up the pictures and they post it without consent or anything else. And very importantly, this includes for forgeries generated by artificial intelligence known as deep fakes.

We've all heard about defects. I have them all the time, but I don't. Nobody does anything.

I asked Pam, "Can you help me, Pam? " She says, "No, I'm too busy. Too busy doing other things.

Don't worry, you'll you'll survive. " But a lot of people don't survive. That's true.

And so horrible. With the rise of AI image generation, countless women have been harassed with deep fakes and other explicit images distributed against their will. This is the wrong and it's just so horribly wrong.

And it's a very abusive situation like in some cases people have never seen before and today we're making it totally illegal. Thank you. upon hearing the stories of so many women affected.

Our first lady made stopping these abuses a top priority and she was given tremendous support because people she'd go up to people and talk about it. They say, "Yeah, we know about it. We have the problem.

Can we do something? " and she did something about it with the help a lot of of a lot of the people especially the political people sitting here today among Melania's guests in the gallery during my address to the joint session of Congress was a 15year-old young person Elliston Barry whose image was turned into an illicit deep fake by a peer Ellison where are you are you around stand up darling that's fine Beautiful. Great.

Thank you. Look fantastic. Ellison quickly became a powerful advocate committed to preventing other girls from suffering the same abuse.

Ellison, we salute you and we thank you very much and it's an honor to have you with us today. Great, great job you've done. Also with us are several other brave Americans whose lives were rocked by online harassment, including Francesca Manny, as well as a South Carolina state representative, Brandon Guffy, and his family who've lost their son to suicide after he was targeted in an internet extortion scam, of which you have a lot of them.

A lot. I want to thank you both for your incredible work and to reach this important day. Could you stand up, please?

Thank you. Thank you very much. Great job.

I've read about it. Thank you very much. It's a real honor to have you here because there's no place like the White House.

I found out, you know, you have a lot of places and I just left some of the richest places and we loved them and we they gave us a nice contribution of about$5 trillion dollars. But this is a special place. Even they talk about it.

So, it's great to have everybody here. Under the law I will sign in just a moment. Anyone who intentionally distributes explicit images without the subject's consent will face up to three years in prison.

In addition, this law establishes new civil liabilities for online platforms that refuse to take these images down promptly upon request. We will not tolerate online sexual exploitation. And it's especially uh it's gone on at levels that nobody's ever seen before.

It's getting worse and worse. And I think this is going to hopefully stop it. and not easy to do.

People talked about all sorts of first amendment, second amend. They talked about any any amendment they could make up and uh we got it through because of some very brave people including some very brave politicians in the audience. I want to thank the bill sponsor, Senator Ted Cruz.

Ted, stand up, please. Great. Great.

Thank you, Ted. It's great. Very effective person.

and Congresswoman Maria Salazar, friend of mine. Thank you, Maria. Thank you very much for their amazing work.

And thanks also to the 99 senators and 408 members of Congress who voted in favor of the bill. Wow. I wish we could get that vote from other things.

We have another bill coming up. Do you think we'll get that vote? Maybe not.

We should, but we probably won't. But working with our first lady, we've shown that bipartisanship is still possible. Well, that's true.

With 99 senators, that's incredible. Senator, stand up. Look at that.

John, you're here. Look at all of the senators. This is big stuff.

I'm in trouble cuz I don't have your names. They didn't give me these names. We have so many.

We have half of the Senate here now. They're all going to hate me because I can't introduce you. We don't have the time for that.

I have to get back to Putin and people. But thank you very much for being here. all of you and congressmen, a lot of them and women.

Working with our first lady, though, we've shown that that bipartisanship is possible. I mean, it's the first time I've seen such a level of bipartisanship, and it's a beautiful thing to do. I'm not even sure you realize, honey, you know, a lot of the Democrats and Republicans don't get along so well.

You've you've made them get along, and she didn't even know about that. She didn't know we had a problem. She didn't know we had a problem.

She got a but I want to thank you honey. You you've done amazing that this was done when you started and I said I don't know it sounds like a tough one and yet a very important one and you got it done. So I congratulate you and I congratulate Ted, Maria, everybody.

Thank you very much. Thank you. And we'll sign the bill.

Thank you. You did it. pleasure.

That's fantastic. Okay, you ready? You signing something.

You want to sign it? I might sign it anyway. She deserves to sign it.

[Applause] Okay, there we have it. There we are. That's a big one.

Thank you very much everyone. And you have some pens here. You most importantly, right?

Oh, look at these white pens. I've never seen that before. I want one of them.

I've never seen Pamela, take that. Take that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Mr President, should we introduce you to Brandon who lost his son?

Let me get up state legislator in South Carolina. Incredibly brave and his whole family. Thank you so much.

[Music] [Music] [Music] Thank you. You are started. Congratulations.

[Music] [Music] Ladies and gentlemen, please remain at your seats until the president and the first lady has departed the Rose Garden. Thank you.