J.D. Vance Campaigns in Michigan

Let the rest of the world help us for a change.

How you doing? Wow. Thank you all.

JD, JD, JD, JD, JD.

Please, please, please. Thank you. Thank you all. Please. It is great to be here in Michigan. It’s a little hot today, but it’s a beautiful state. All right. Let me talk a little bit about what we’re going to do to take this country back. We’re going to take back the White House. We’re going to restore American manufacturing. We’re going restore our whole country, and it’s going to start right here in the state of Michigan. I love Byron Center. I’ve been here just about a couple hours, but Byron Center has been cast aside, and a lot of places in this country have been cast aside by America’s ruling class in Washington D.C. Now, politicians come into places like Michigan. They say nice things, but they crush our industries, they offshore our jobs, and they undercut American wages with illegal labor. You, my friends, have been betrayed. And the people who have been doing the betraying have gotten rich off of this country’s decline. And it’s time to call them out and it’s time to kick them out of office.

(01:28)
Now, when Kamala Harris raised the price of American energy, Michigan suffered, you suffered, good American jobs suffered. But you know who made a lot of money? Kamala Harris’s donors, the people who benefit from some of these green energy scams where they do things like build windmills in salt water off the coast of Nantucket, and of course they fall apart and get washed up ashore, right? Crazy stuff. Now, when she forced Americans, using your tax dollars, by the way, to buy EVs made in China, it made Michigan a whole lot poorer, but it made the green energy lobby a whole lot richer. And this is a theme with Kamala Harris. I don’t know if you noticed, but every time she makes a decision that makes us poorer or makes our country weaker, there is somebody standing behind her who benefits. Just for example, when she let in millions of illegal aliens, it made our communities less safe but it did give the Democrats a lot of voters. And they’re trying to give illegal aliens the right to vote in major cities all across this country.

(02:36)
Now, here’s the thing. On November the 5th, this great betrayal from Kamala Harris, it’s going to stop because we’re going to elect Donald J. Trump President of the United States. Now, I grew up in a town not all that different from Byron Center, and I watched in my own community as jobs were sent overseas. And of course, it’s not just people’s checkbooks that suffer when they lose a good manufacturing job or they lose a good job in any industry. I remember seeing friends whose parents never fought, but started to have their marriages unravel under financial stress from a lost job. I saw families torn apart as China built its middle class on the back of the American middle class. And as much as things were sometimes tough in my hometown, and I know sometimes it’s often tough in Byron Center, I was one of the lucky ones. I managed to achieve my American dream. I managed to build a life, because I had a mamaw who was tough as nails. Thank you.

(03:42)
She was my grandmother, she was my guardian angel, and she had a foul mouth on her. She was a good person, but she had a foul mouth on her. And I remember when I was a little kid, probably five or six years old. We had a lot of family in Eastern Kentucky. We have any Appalachian connected people here in Byron Center? More than a few? Yeah. Going out 75 to visit Kentucky and East Tennessee. I know that story. I remember I was taking one of those trips myself and I remember there was a guy. My aunt was driving, my mamaw was in the passenger seat and I was in the backseat. There must have been… Somebody got cut off or something because this guy was driving like crazy, he was cutting us off. He was in a motorcycle, actually. He was flipping us off, and you could tell he was just in a bad mood.

(04:27)
And my aunt was telling me the story recently. She said, “JD, you remember what happened next?” And I said, “Yeah, Aunt Wee, I do.” I remember that Mamaw reached underneath her car seat, pulled out a .44 Magnum and tapped it on the window, and that was the end of the aggressive driving on the highways of Eastern Kentucky. But that woman, by the grace of God, I had her in my life and I was able to achieve my American dream. I just wanted to be a good husband and father. I wanted to be able to give my kids the things that I didn’t have when I was growing up in a poor family in Middletown, Ohio. And I was able to do it, yes, because of my mamaw, but also because this is the greatest country in the world, the American dream is still real, and we are here to fight, to protect it, and to build upon it. Every single day that’s what we’re going to do.

(05:13)
Now, one of the things that bothers me about our opponent in this race, Kamala Harris, she pretends to stand for normal Americans. She pretends to stand for their jobs, for the education of their children. But it is normal Americans, we know this, who suffer the most when politicians like Kamala Harris fail to do their job. I remember my mamaw negotiating with somebody from Meals on Wheels. She was trying to get that person to give her more food so that she could share some more with me. And I think about that story and I think about that moment in the context of this grocery affordability crisis that’s affecting our people. It is people like my grandmother who suffer the most when food and rent become unaffordable for normal people. And this November, we’re going to turn the page, my friends, on a generation of failed leadership, we’re going to make America great again, and we’re going to do it by electing Donald J. Trump President of the United States.

(06:12)
Now, that’s the most important thing, of course, is the top of the ticket because we all know the president controls so much in this country. We’re also going to need a lot of help up and down the ballot. So I want to introduce a few people who are great Michiganders, who are great American patriots, and they’re fighting every day for you and for this state. I want to start out with Michigan Senate Republican Leader Aric Nesbitt. Where’s Aric? There’s Aric right here. Beautiful family, by the way. Two beautiful kids. We have a Republican candidate for Michigan’s 3rd District, and I understand Paul Hudson’s going to win this race. Right, Paul? Where’s Paul? There’s Paul right here. We’ve got Representative Brian Mast, the great Brian Mast. Semper fi, Brian. Thank you, man. We’ve got Representative John Molinari. Where’s John? There’s John right there. Did I get your name right, John? Close enough? Close enough. And we have got a great guy running who’s going to be the next senator for the great state of Michigan. Mike Rogers. Where’s Mike? There he is. Now, let’s just compare the record of failure of Kamala Harris with the record of success of Donald J. Trump. President Trump created the strongest economy in history, at least within living memory, of this country. Before the pandemic, in four years, America gained 7 million new jobs. Isn’t that crazy? 7 million new jobs in just four years. Unemployment dropped to the lowest rate in 50 years. We lifted more than 10 million people off of welfare and household incomes soared to a new record. And after losing, in the previous two administrations, one Democrat, one Republican, we lost 60,000 American manufacturing jobs, 60,000 factories under the two previous administrations. And under four short years of President Trump’s leadership, we built 12,000 new factories. That is what we can achieve when America’s leaders put the citizens of America first. Now, after COVID, President Trump set America on the path to a powerful inflation-free recovery. All Kamala Harris had to do was leave it alone. And by the way, while we’re on the topic of Kamala Harris, we’ve got some of our friends in the media. I just can’t quite get over how dishonest the American media is about Kamala Harris. Isn’t that the craziest thing? Now, we have to remember, for three and a half years, for three and a half years, people like the likes of Slotkin, who’s running for Senate here in Michigan, and Democratic leaders all across the country, they would say things, and the American media would back them up, that President Biden, for three and a half years, he’s as sharp as he’s ever been. He’s sharp as a tack. Remember that? The American media acted for three and a half years like this guy was Albert Einstein. And now they want to tell us that Kamala Harris is the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. We don’t buy it. We don’t believe it.

No. No.

What she actually did, what the actual record is, is that she inflicted the American people with the worst affordability and inflation crisis in generations. Now, this is not rocket science, my friends. When inflation happens, when the government spends and prints money that we don’t have, that makes your hard-earned money worthless. And that makes Kamala Harris directly responsible for this inflation disaster because she cast the tie-breaking vote on nearly $2 trillion in reckless spending. Not just that, she then cast another tie-breaking vote on a radical left-wing spending wish list, which spent millions and billions of dollars on green energy scams. That was another couple trillion dollars. And while they weakened the dollar, Biden and Harris cracked down on American energy. That is a recipe for the terrible affordability crisis that we have in this country. You combine that with the regulatory agenda, you combine the energy problems, you combine the trillions of dollars in reckless spending, and you have got inflation into the stratosphere.

(10:37)
Now, instead of buying energy from every dictator around the globe, which is what Kamala Harris wants to do, under President Trump, we’re going to embrace a very simple principle. We’re going to get American energy from American workers in American territory. We are going to drill, baby, drill. That’s going to cut down prices and that’s going to create a lot of prosperity for the American people. Now, Kamala Harris and her Democratic friends, they didn’t just shut down American energy, print trillions of dollars. They also extended — we forget this — the economy-crushing lockdowns, and then they overran the country with tens of millions of illegal aliens. Now, you bring in 30 million people and you weaken the dollar, that is how you get the inflation crisis that we have. Now, here just in Michigan, and it’s similar in Ohio, and it’s similar in a lot of states across the Midwest, the average family is spending $1,000 more a month just to buy what they were buying four years ago. That’s $12,000 a year just to live the same normal middle-class life. And have wages gone up $12,000 under Kamala Harris?

No.

No, they haven’t. So I ask a very simple question. President Trump asked it just a couple of days ago. Are you better off than you were four years ago?

No.

Absolutely not. So let’s bring Donald Trump back, right? It’s that simple.

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump.

Thank you. So, under Kamala Harris gas prices are up 50% and I know we’re a trucking company. You think truckers benefit when gas prices go up 50%? No.

No.

And neither do the people who depend on truckers, which is every single one of us. Housing costs have doubled. Grocery prices are up 21%. A record number of Americans are working multiple jobs. And I happen to believe in a simple principle that if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to afford a good life in the country your parents and grandparents built. Isn’t that simple?

Yeah. Yes.

Now the housing market is the least affordable it’s ever been. Mortgage rates have doubled and that’s thanks to Kamala Harris’ spending policies. The average new car costs nearly $50,000 a year. And this November, my friends, we are going to send the message that Michigan chooses prosperity over poverty and that we will never accept four more years of Kamala Harris. She’s out of there.

(13:06)
But inflation isn’t the only scourge that Washington and Kamala Harris have reflected on American workers. In fact, let’s talk about the news of the day. Just a few days ago, Stellantis announced that it was going to permanently cut nearly 2,500 proud Michigan auto workers who make the iconic Ram 1500. Do y’all hear that? Now, Kamala has done nothing. Now remember when Donald Trump, when American businesses threatened to shut down factories and move to Mexico and China, remember what Trump did? He picked up the phone and said, “If you do that, I’m going to introduce you to a little word called the tariff.” And a lot of American workers benefit because he was willing to fight for the interests and for their American jobs.

(13:57)
Now, her policies have been decimating the American auto industry for years. Remember, this is the woman who voted to preserve NAFTA. To extend NAFTA. The very trade deal that sent American auto jobs to Mexico by the tens of thousands and turned American dreams into nightmares. She supported these EV mandates that taxed you, took your money, and sent it to electric vehicles that are made in China instead of made right here in the state of Michigan, destroying thousands of Michigan auto jobs in the process. And it’s not just the car jobs themselves. Y’all know this. It’s the carburetors. It’s the transmissions. It’s the people who are making the components. They are the ones who suffer when Kamala Harris sends your tax dollars to Chinese-made cars. Well, Kamala Harris now is standing here in Michigan asking us for a promotion. I think it’s time to say to Kamala Harris, “No thank you. You are fired.”

(14:52)
Now even when Harris sold your jobs to the lowest bidder overseas, trashed your paychecks with unprecedented inflation, as America’s border czar she did something maybe even worse. Flooding this country with millions of cheap, illegal alien laborers, stealing your jobs, depressing our wages in the process. On day one … Just remember what they did. They promised they were going to do it, and then they did it. On day one, Biden and Harris suspended deportations. They stopped building the wall. I was at the wall a week ago and you see it just laying on the ground ready to be completed and Kamala Harris won’t let them. They reinstated catch and release, meaning that even if border patrol catches an illegal alien, oftentimes they get released into our country anyways.And they proposed amnesty for millions of illegal aliens.

(15:49)
Kamala Harris turned border patrol into a travel agency for violent criminals and freeloaders from around the world. Now, President Trump and I have a different message. If you’re in this country illegally, start packing your bags because Donald Trump is going to send you home and he’s going to do it on day one. Now, we’re in this incredible company and we’re at this incredible company and I want to introduce just to a few people who make this place possible, people who’ve been building American dreams, some of them for over a half a century. So we’ve got the great Mary Jane Cordes. Mary Jane, thank you so, so much for having me. I love you. It’s great to have you. Thank you. She’s the co-founder of Cordes Inc. and her sons Steve and Charlie now run this company. And sadly, after nearly 60 years in business, they’re struggling to keep the company afloat under Kamala Harris.

(16:48)
I’m going to ask if it’s not going to embarrass him too much. Steve and Charlie, would you both come up and tell your story a little bit? Let’s welcome up Steve and Charlie Cordes. Great American business leaders.

Do you want to go first?

Go ahead.

Yeah, JD’s right. The last four years with fuel prices, inflation, we just have to work so hard. Steve and I are here all the time. We’ve tried to give raises to our guys, but when inflation goes up 20% since 2021, under this administration in Michigan, it’s a little hard to keep up. We’re doing the best we can. Our margins are getting thinner. We’re going to keep going. We got great employees. There’s a bunch of them here and we’re just going to keep rocking it out. But we got to get this guy elected. We got to get Donald Trump elected with JD as his VP.

And I agree so much on what JD has to say. We try to use the best parts we can. We do not want to put Chinese parts on our vehicles. The safety of the road is at stake. We always buy American made as much as we can, and it’s getting harder because they ship the jobs overseas. So we need to bring them back with the tariffs like Donald Trump did before and keep America great. Thank you.

Thank you guys. Well, I thank y’all so much and thanks so much for what you’re doing. Isn’t that crazy to think you’ve got great American entrepreneurs who want to buy American and it’s getting harder and harder because Kamala Harris means that there’s fewer and fewer things being built in this country. What a disgrace. We can do so much better. We got the best workers, the best people, we’ve got the best country. We just need American leaders to stop screwing it up. I also want to introduce one of their employers, Chuck Bixby, who’s a very, very good dude. I met him earlier. He’s a great Trump fan. Chuck, thank you so much for being here. You want to come on up and say a few words? Come on. Come on, Chuck. We’re going to embarrass Chuck a little bit.

Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

Thank you sir. As they all said before, we need him. Not only is Donald Trump going to do the next four years, I got dibs of him doing the four after. Yeah, I see it. We’re there. Everybody get people out, get them to vote. The more votes that we can get out, the harder it’s going to be for them to cheat.

Yeah.

Everybody have fun.

Sorry to embarrass you.

Chuck. Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

Chuck, I’m sorry for embarrassing you. I had to make you come up and say a few words. So let me just tell you a little story. Chuck reminds me of a lot of people that I knew growing up in Middletown. Hardworking people. People who keep this country running. And it reminds me, sometimes Kamala Harris, she talks and the Democrats talk about the old economy versus the new economy. I like to talk about the real economy versus the fake economy. And the real economy is for the people who build things with their hands, who get it to our stores, who transport it from one place to another. Chuck is working in the real economy. Without a lot of American workers like him, this country would be screwed. So thank you, Chuck. Thanks for what you do.

(20:40)
I want to leave you with just this thought because it’s a story that I’ve been thinking a lot about a lot. I’ve been on the campaign trail as the vice presidential nominee for all of about four weeks, and what an honor it is. But not long ago, I met a woman on the campaign trail and she told me a story that really stuck out to me. She is a nurse and her husband is recently retired. They’re just middle class people raising their grandchildren for reasons she didn’t explain to me, but I’m sure all of us can guess why she’s raising her grandchildren. And though this woman hasn’t had an easy life, she told me about her home and her family without an ounce of complaint or resentment.

(21:17)
Now, she wasn’t angry at Kamala Harris for firing thousands of American healthcare workers for refusing to get a vaccine. She wasn’t mad about that. She wasn’t angry at her grandchildren for depriving her of an easy retirement because she’s a little on the older side and now she’s got to take care of these grandkids. And she wasn’t even angry at her daughter for leaving her an unexpected set of kids to care for. She lived her life, she cared for her family, and she did it without a hint of complaint. Now, this my friends reminds me of my grandmother. This is the American spirit. A woman who does her duty. She does it well, and she doesn’t expect a handout for doing it. God bless her. But if there wasn’t any entitlement, there was a bit of sorrow. Because in a lifetime of trials and tribulations, there was one thing about this moment that frustrated her, that the price of food had gotten so high that she could no longer do steak night. Every Friday she told me, for years, we have done steak night in our house. And I’m not talking about a steak house or filet mignon, but in good times and bad, we made sure that Friday we go to the grocery store, we get a nice steak and make it a special occasion. That was her family tradition every single Friday. And now she told me, it’s gone. We just do hamburger. There’s nothing wrong with hamburger, but it’s not a steak.

(22:42)
“Grocery bills are just too high,” she said. Her nurse’s salary isn’t high enough and her husband, who’s a retiree, his social security is just a little too small. America, I think was built on a very simple promise that each of us would have a say in our own government. That each of us would be secure in our own property, however tiny a slice of our country we got to own. Now, the old way was that we were to be ruled by some foreign king in a faraway land, than in America every man and every woman is a king. And yes, if you work hard, you got to be able to afford a steak on a Friday night for a special occasion. Now, I was listening to Kamala Harris give a rally recently. She doesn’t talk to the media, she just talks behind the teleprompter. We’re going to take some questions from the media after this as a matter of fact. But she said she’s going to tackle the affordability crisis affecting American families on day one. Think about that. Kamala, day one was January of 2021. Day

Day one was four years ago, Kamala Harris, and because of your policies, too many children can’t afford a nice meal, too many children have been killed by fentanyl, too many grandparents are raising kids they didn’t plan for, and too many families can’t afford a special meal on a Friday night.

(24:20)
Now the media, our friends in the back, they make a lot of noise, make a lot of news about the new tone of Kamala Harris’ campaign. Have you seen this? They say Kamala Harris, you can tell she’s excited. But I’ll tell you what she’s excited about. She’s excited that she just got a promotion without earning a single American vote. She says she’s having fun, but while she’s having fun, Americans are suffering under her policies. When she laughs during a speech, remember that there are American families crying this very day because they cannot afford groceries. When she does these rallies and does these events and does these fake dances, remember that there are parents who lost their children to drugs or violence who will never see their children move again, much less dance again.

(25:15)
When she tells you, and this is her new slogan, We’re not going back, remember that for three and a half years, that is exactly what we’ve been doing. We’ve been going back to a place where Americans aren’t kings in their own country, but paupers begging their government for precious scraps of safety, security, and food. We are going back, Kamala Harris, because of you, and we’re going to fire you because we want to take this country forward.

(25:47)
Now, I cannot get over, my friends, about everything about her campaign is fake, a fake joy that comes from being promoted to a new position, instead of using the position you already have to do your job and make the lives of the citizens of this country better. It’s a fake ticket that never earned a single Democrat primary vote. It’s a fake platform that offers no specifics about how to do the people’s businesses, and a fake promise to change the government, even though she’s been in charge of that very government for almost four years and hasn’t done a damn thing.

(26:28)
Donald J. Trump’s campaign, instead, offers something very, very different. Not a fake optimism, but a very real hope, a hope and a vision to see that hope become reality in this country once again; a hope that we have the best workers in the world so we’re going to stop shipping their jobs to China and build more things right here in the United States of America; a hope that if we unleash American energy and American farmers, food and energy will become affordable in this country again; a hope that if we build more homes and stop foreigners from buying the homes that we have, the American dream of home ownership is going to become real again. It is a hope that we can close the border and stop the drugs if we empower the border patrol and back the blue in Michigan and everywhere else.

(27:25)
It is a hope in the moms and dads and grandparents of our country that though they do have the spirit to survive under the policies of Kamala Harris, they have the ability to thrive under the leadership of Donald J. Trump. When we say that we will make America great again, we mean something simple, safe streets for our families, a secure border, affordable food for our children and the American dream, whether it’s to buy a home or to see your children do better off than you did, that is achievable again. Let’s get it done. We’re going to start here in Michigan. It’s going to start a fire that goes across the United States of America. Let everybody hear that America is ready to reelect Donald J. Trump be president again, and Michigan, it’s going to start with you. God bless you all. Thank you for doing everything you do, and thank you for having me. Thank you. Love that flag. Thank you, man. You guys, love you. Now I believe if y’all are willing to stick out the heat a little bit longer, we’re going to do some interviews with some real news and some fake news. So I think we have some reporters up here in the front. And what I’d ask is that if you’re a local reporter from Michigan, raise your hand first, I’d like to take your questions first, and then I’ll go on down the line. So everybody, get ready ’cause we’re going to have some fun with the American media.

(29:05)
Question in the air, especially if you’re from Michigan.

I’m from Michigan, but I’m from the National…

Anybody, any local reporters from Michigan? I guess maybe we got them all back there. Okay, they’re on camera. Well, you’ll catch on camera what I say. So we’ll start with the person who’s from Michigan, but represents the National Press.

Senator [Inaudible 00:29:25] I want to ask you so some people want you [inaudible 00:29:29] they are urging the former president to do less personal attacks on Harris, focus on messaging or policy. Do you agree with that?

Well, look, the question, I’m not going to repeat that question ’cause it’s kind of insulting to our president, so I’ll repeat the ones that aren’t insulting to our president. Look, here’s the answer. To the people who say that Donald Trump should do something different, they had an opportunity to make Donald Trump do something different by challenging him over three separate primaries, every single one of which he won. So I think that Donald Trump has earned the right to run the campaign that he wants to run. And look, if you listen to what Donald J. Trump says, if you look at what I say, we are prosecuting the case against Kamala Harris on policy. We’re reminding people that Donald Trump delivered peace and prosperity, and Kamala Harris has delivered war all over the world and unaffordable groceries and housing here at home. That is the message we’re going to take forward.

(30:29)
But of course, President Trump, the reason people love him is because he’s his own man, he’s unfiltered and he lets the American people see who he is. And I will say that as his running mate, I obviously can’t always speak for the president, but I think I speak for the president. I think I speak for the American people in saying this, that we’d much rather have an American president who is who he is, who’s willing to offend us, who’s willing to tell us the truth, who isn’t a fake who hides behind a teleprompter, but lets the American people see exactly who he is. So that’s my view. Ma’am.

From Ohio. Hi, I’m from Ohio.

Oh, that’s not a good thing in this crowd. She’s from Ohio, ladies and gentlemen, but I will say we-

I have Michigan friends.

We love our country enough that you guys are willing to give this Buckeye a nice warm welcome. So thank you, guys, and God bless you. Ma’am.

Senator Vance, thanks for taking my question. I’m Janice Hisle with The Epoch Times, and my question is we do hear about cost of energy relating directly to grocery costs being up.

Of course.

What other steps besides drilling can the Trump-Vance administration take to lower those grocery prices for people?

[Inaudible 00:31:42].

That’s right. Well, the first is we’re going to fire the agriculture secretary, right? She’s not doing a very good job. But look, a couple things, first of all, Drill, Baby, Drill is a big part of lowering the cost of food. Because if you think about the farmers, their tractors run on diesel fuel. To ship the food, they got to get it to go somewhere, and that requires fuel. The fertilizer a lot of times comes from natural gas. If we Drill, Baby, Drill and take advantage of the incredible bounty of this nation, we are going to lower food prices in a very big way for American consumers. That’s just a matter of fact.

(32:24)
But the other thing that we ought to do is stop printing trillions of dollars that we don’t have and sending it to China. We should keep our money right here at home, build in America, buy in America, manufacture in America, and that gives Americans the wages necessary. But it also means that you’re not printing a bunch of money, which makes our dollar more and more worthless. You do those two things, you can make food affordable again in this country. It’s very simple. Great. Ma’am.

What do you have to say when people say Kamala has an advantage over the young people’s vote because she is popular on social media and TikTok?

Well, look, I’d say the reason that Kamala Harris does a lot of social media, but we do a lot of social media, too, but she doesn’t have any ability to be unscripted. What is she going to do other than play around on TikTok? She sure as hell isn’t giving interviews. She’s not standing before the American people answering questions, right? Now, at least from what I’ve seen, President Trump and I have great presence all across social media. He just did an interview with Elon Musk on X that had hundreds of millions of American listeners that sounds like a lot of people in the audience. So I think we’re doing great on social media.

(33:36)
But my message to young people, look, I’m the only millennial, the first millennial in the history of a national ticket and my message to young people is we want you to be able to build a life in this country. If you work hard and play by the rules, we want you to be able to afford a house. We want to bring mortgage interest rates down so that you can actually get a loan to buy that house. We want you to be able to raise a family if you so choose without having it destroy your checking account, and we have got the policies to make that happen. So I think that Kamala Harris, assuming that she can run this filtered campaign or hiding behind a teleprompter, young people are smart and they know that life has gotten more unaffordable under Kamala Harris.

(34:15)
And the final point that I’ll make is Donald Trump and I believe that America ought to be tough and America ought to have a strong foreign policy. But when people like Kamala Harris send our sons and daughters, our young people to fight in stupid wars, it is the young generation that carries the burden of that. We’re going to stop sending our young people to far away lands. We are not the policemen of the world. We need to use our young people here at home as the resources that they are and not send them all over the world, and I think that hopefully is a message that’s going to appeal. We’re going to carry it forward and we’re going to see how the chips fall. But look, I feel very confident we’re going to win young people, we’re going to win the whole country. Sir.

Aaron from The New York Times, I wanted to ask you about the latest economic news from this morning with inflation now being under 3%, the lowest rate since mid-2021. What is your reaction to that news?

Well, I think the crowd reaction says it all. Look, when they say that inflation is down, they mean from a baseline where groceries are already 30% more expensive than they were when Donald Trump was president. And they’re not saying it’s coming down. They’re just saying it’s not going up as fast as it was three years ago. That is not a reputation or a record to brag on. That’s a record to be ashamed of. Why did it take them so long to get inflation to where it is and why are prices so high? It’s because Kamala Harris failed to do her job. So if they want to go around… And it’s funny, Kamala Harris, on the one hand, will say on day one, we’re going to tackle the affordability crisis. And like I said earlier, Kamala Harris has been the vice president for three and a half years. And I think ladies and gentlemen, she’s in effect been the acting president ’cause we all know Joe Biden isn’t home. So she’s

… Been the one controlling government policy for three and a half years. She says she wants to tackle the affordability crisis on day one, and then on the other hand, she’ll say, “Oh, we’ve already got inflation under control.” Well, which is it, Kamala? Which is it? The simple truth is Americans’ credit card debt is getting higher. Americans are finding the basic necessities in middle class life less affordable. Americans are becoming, especially young people, are becoming poppers in their own country. If we don’t do better, our young generation, they’re not going to own anything. They’re not going to have anything. They’re going to be renters in the country that their parents and grandparents built. Inflation is a disaster. Kamala Harris does not have a leg to stand on. Sir?

Thank you, Senator Josh Alburtus with WZZM here in Grand Rapids. In the last few cycles, we’ve seen a lot of people based on the results of the election here in Kent County, describe Kent County as a lot more of a battleground than it used to be when it came to the era of Jerry Ford, for example. Contextualize to what extent you believe the campaign is trying to put resources into Kent County, specifically what narrowed that down?

Well, look, we love Kent County and we think that it’s going to be an important part of the election, but we think, look, the entire State of Michigan is important, right? There are areas in Michigan like Detroit where we’re not going to do quite as well as we want to, but we’re going to put as much resources as possible because we believe there are a lot of voters in Detroit who want to vote for Donald Trump and JD Vance. We just got to get into the polls and we’re going to work hard for every vote.

(37:36)
We believe there are rural parts of Michigan where we’re going to win by 85%, but why not make it 90%? So we’re going to work hard for every single vote all across the state of Michigan. I wouldn’t say any one county is more or less important. The whole state is important because look, there is no state that perfectly exemplifies what is broken about American policy in Washington. This was one of the wealthiest states in the entire country for pretty much the entirety of the post-World War II era. This is a state that had a proud manufacturing tradition where whether you went to college or graduated from high school or did something in the middle, you could build a middle class life so long as you worked hard and played by the rules. And then thanks to a generation of failed leadership, Michigan has seen thousands of manufacturing jobs disappear.

(38:23)
We have got to do better and I think the reason you see Michigan… People used to call it a blue wall state. I think Michigan is a red wall state now because people are sick of losing their livelihoods and losing their jobs and they know Donald J. Trump is going to be good for both. And I’ll take two more questions here.

Senator, yesterday on America Decides I’m with CBS News, by the way, the UAW President said that Donald Trump and Elon Musk sneered at labor workers when talking about how Elon Musk fired folks looking to organize. The Teamster president, who also spoke at the RNC, called this economic terrorism. What’s your reaction to the backlash that Donald Trump’s getting from that interview?

Well, look, I like the Teamsters president. I think he’s a good guy, but I think he’s wrong about this because Donald Trump was not talking about firing Michigan auto workers. He was talking about firing the employees of Twitter who use their power to censor American citizens. Those people ought to be fired. If you censor Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights, you absolutely should be fired. Donald Trump’s exactly right.

(39:27)
Now, what Donald Trump has also done, again, more than any president in my lifetime, again, 60,000 factories closed in the 16 years before Trump became president. And just the four years that he was president, he reversed that trend and opened 12,000 factories. This is a guy who’s fighting for American jobs and my message to Shawn Fain, who’s the Head of the UAW and stands up next to Kamala Harris and sounds like a communist is, trust me, I talked to a lot of UAW workers. They want a president who fights for their jobs. They want a president who will shut down this garbage at the border. They want a president who will stop sending American money to buy Chinese-made cars. American money ought to buy American cars and UAW workers and non-union workers, we all believe in that message. That’s why Donald J. Trump is going to win Michigan and he’s going to win the whole industrial Midwest. And then we’ll do one more question. Any other Michigan people, Taylor? Yes, sir.

Josh Berry, Fox 17.

Hey, Josh.

WXMI Grand Rapids.

All right, I take it we’ve got at least two good reporters here. Is that what I’m hearing?

I’m rounding out the local journalist here. Look, this is a unique showing right here, taking questions from local journalists, not necessarily, it’s been unorthodox for a local rally like this. What are you hoping to show or say to voters? Or is this a message to the Harris campaign, taking questions at a rally in front of people here?

Look, it’s a message to everybody that if you want to be the American people’s vice president, you ought to answer their questions and try to earn their vote. It’s really that simple. You think about this, and I am only 40 years old, but I’ve been in public life long enough to know that sometimes you need to explain certain things or sometimes new things come up and you’ve got to answer people’s questions. How are you going to address that issue? How are you going to address this issue? You have got to stand before the American people and answer tough questions if you want to do this job. And it is scandalous that Kamala Harris is running from the media, but more importantly, she’s running from the American people. That’s a disgrace. I’ve never seen a presidential campaign in the history of my life where a person is asking to be the President of the United States, but she’s afraid of you guys.

(41:47)
Now look, I’d say that some of you I think are perfectly fine journalists. Some of you, no offense, are fake news, but whatever your background in journalism, if you can’t answer questions from the media, do you think you’re going to be able to take on Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping? If you’re afraid of answering before the American people, how can we possibly trust you to sit in a room with world leaders and represent the American people?

(42:19)
And I think what it shows is fundamentally, Kamala Harris has no vision. She has no policies. Go to her website. Ask yourself, “What is it that Kamala Harris wants to do for this country?” And the answer is she has no idea. None of us have any idea. What Kamala Harris is going to do for the American people is exactly what she’s done for the last three and a half years, which is fail. So we cannot give her a promotion. We got to say, “You are fired.” God bless you all. Thank you so much for being here. Michigan, get out and vote. Get your friends and family to vote. Volunteer if you’re able. I love you guys. I’ll see you soon. We’ll be back in Michigan in quite a bit. God bless you all.

Why don’t we liberate these United States? We’re the ones who need it the worst. Let the rest of the world help us for a change and let’s rebuild America first.

(42:57)
Our highways and bridges are falling apart. Who’s blessed and who’s been cursed? There’s things to be done all over the world, but let’s rebuild America first. Who’s on the Hill and who’s watching the valley? Who’s in charge of it all?