The statements by Trump on the campaign
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 5:51 am
Based on interest from our letter that mentioned our raising money to make a copy of Internet Archive’s digital collections in Canada, press and others have asked a bunch of good questions. Here is a compendium of our answers:
Q. Were you working on a back-up before the election of Trump?
Yes, we have a partial copy of the Internet Archive in Alexandria, Egypt, and in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
And also before the election we had been planning with the University of telemarketing data Toronto and University of Alberta to host the materials digitized from Canadian libraries at the Internet Archive Canada, which is a completely separate nonprofit from ours.
trail (see below) have ramped us into higher gear, moving us further and faster than we would have. The election led us to think bigger.
Q. Was there anything specific about Trump’s win that made you want to step up your game in terms of a backup archive? What in particular concerns you about what he has said/done? What potential risks do you see?
Upon his election we looked through our archive to find what his stand might be on the Internet policies and found announcements.
At this point, I think it would be prudent to take President-elect Trump at his word. Here are some of his statements, preserved in our Television News Archive.
CNN Republican Presidential Debate
CNN December 15, 2015
Wolf Blitzer: Mr. Trump, are you open to closing parts of the internet?
Donald Trump: I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our internet. Yes, sir, I am.
Donald Trump quote at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown in South Carolina CSPAN broadcast speech on December 8, 2015
Donald Trump: So the press has to be responsible. They’re not being responsible, because we are losing a lot of people because of the internet. We have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what is happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some way. Some of you will say, “Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.” these are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have got to maybe do something with the internet because they are recruiting by the thousands.
Q. How does this work? What goes into creating a backup of this magnitude (in whatever brief lay terms you can condense it to)?
There are stages we can take to achieve our overall goal. The first stage would be done with the University of Toronto and University of Alberta: to make a copy of what has been digitized from these Canadian collections (books and microfilm) and move that onto their university servers.
The next stage is to create a partial mirror at the Internet Archive Canada, which we have been planning to do.
Then the next stage is to create a “backup copy” in Canada for researchers. The best case scenario would be to have an active organization running a live copy of as much of the Internet Archive’s collections as makes sense. This is what we would like to do.
Q: Is there a specific dollar amount that you are aiming for?
To build a running archive in Canada will cost approximately $5 million, which is our goal. But we can take steps in this direction with less. Then there is ongoing support.
Q. Were you working on a back-up before the election of Trump?
Yes, we have a partial copy of the Internet Archive in Alexandria, Egypt, and in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
And also before the election we had been planning with the University of telemarketing data Toronto and University of Alberta to host the materials digitized from Canadian libraries at the Internet Archive Canada, which is a completely separate nonprofit from ours.
trail (see below) have ramped us into higher gear, moving us further and faster than we would have. The election led us to think bigger.
Q. Was there anything specific about Trump’s win that made you want to step up your game in terms of a backup archive? What in particular concerns you about what he has said/done? What potential risks do you see?
Upon his election we looked through our archive to find what his stand might be on the Internet policies and found announcements.
At this point, I think it would be prudent to take President-elect Trump at his word. Here are some of his statements, preserved in our Television News Archive.
CNN Republican Presidential Debate
CNN December 15, 2015
Wolf Blitzer: Mr. Trump, are you open to closing parts of the internet?
Donald Trump: I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody. I sure as hell don’t want to let people that want to kill us and kill our nation use our internet. Yes, sir, I am.
Donald Trump quote at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown in South Carolina CSPAN broadcast speech on December 8, 2015
Donald Trump: So the press has to be responsible. They’re not being responsible, because we are losing a lot of people because of the internet. We have to do something. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what is happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some way. Some of you will say, “Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.” these are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people. We have got to maybe do something with the internet because they are recruiting by the thousands.
Q. How does this work? What goes into creating a backup of this magnitude (in whatever brief lay terms you can condense it to)?
There are stages we can take to achieve our overall goal. The first stage would be done with the University of Toronto and University of Alberta: to make a copy of what has been digitized from these Canadian collections (books and microfilm) and move that onto their university servers.
The next stage is to create a partial mirror at the Internet Archive Canada, which we have been planning to do.
Then the next stage is to create a “backup copy” in Canada for researchers. The best case scenario would be to have an active organization running a live copy of as much of the Internet Archive’s collections as makes sense. This is what we would like to do.
Q: Is there a specific dollar amount that you are aiming for?
To build a running archive in Canada will cost approximately $5 million, which is our goal. But we can take steps in this direction with less. Then there is ongoing support.