Vance Holds Rally in Detroit

In the Motor City, it’s great to be in the state of Michigan. And I believe that it is in just 28 days we’re going to turn the state of Michigan red, take back this country, and make Donald Trump the next President of the United States. Now, we are in one of the great capitals of American craftsmanship and American manufacturing. That’s one of the things I love about the city of Detroit, that’s one of the things I love about this community, is for a generation, for many generations, the people in the state of Michigan, the people in the city of Detroit made great American products, they were proud of it, and they had every single right to be.

(00:51)
And I’ve already met some autoworkers here today, I’m sure there are many autoworkers in the audience with us right now, we’re proud of you, we’re grateful for you. And I promise you that when Donald Trump is back in the White House, autoworkers in the city of Detroit are going to have an ally once again. Not somebody who’s trying to destroy their jobs like Kamala Harris, but who’s going to fight for their jobs every single day.

(01:22)
Now, I want to give a couple shout-outs here. I know we’ve got the great Congresswoman Lisa McClain. Lisa, thank you for being here. Here we are, Lisa, thank you. You guys have got a great Michigan GOP Chair, Pete Hoekstra, where is Pete? Thank you, Pete. I think it was Pete who said hello to me and said, “I’m a little disappointed you’d only been in Michigan two times this week, not three times this week.” Pete, we do what we can. And of course, the person I’m most thrilled to have here, no offense to anybody else, but is my lovely wife, Usha, we’re so… It’s a great honor and a lot of fun to be able to go around and campaign for vice president with the most beautiful person in the world by your side, honey, I love you, thank you for doing this.

(02:19)
And I want to talk… Because we are in a great capital of American craftsmanship, I want to talk about the fact that unfortunately we have got a leadership in this country that is trying to destroy the auto industry instead of build it. And let’s just be honest about that, under Kamala Harris the American auto industry is suffering more than it has in at least 20 years. And I want to read off just a couple of statistics, especially for those folks who are watching at home. Here in Michigan Stellantis announced it would permanently lay off 2,500 of the Michigan auto workers, the folks who make the Ram 1500 Classic, a great American automobile. Unfortunately, those Michigan auto workers lost their jobs. Last year, GM let go 1300 workers at two Michigan plants. And we know that a lot of these companies are shipping manufacturing to Mexico and to China, let’s get back to the leadership of Donald Trump and make things in America and only in America.

(03:20)
Now Ford, we see headlines consistently is rolling back a lot of its EV production, and we know that thanks to Kamala Harris’s electric vehicle mandate 117, 000 American auto jobs, a lot of them right here in Michigan, are under threat. Well, here’s something different we’re going to do when Donald J. Trump is president, instead of forcing Americans to buy electric vehicles manufactured in China, we’re going to let Americans buy whatever the hell they want to because this is America, we believe in freedom, and we believe in letting people choose their own automobile. And of course, my friends, when they do pick the automobile that they want and that they choose, we know they’re going to buy something made in the great state of Michigan, they’re going to buy American because that’s what so many Americans want, the best products.

(04:15)
Now, I don’t know if y’all saw this, but I guess this morning Kamala Harris had an interview with The View. Wait a second, I am shocked that we don’t have a whole lot of The View watchers here in the Motor City. Sir, you don’t watch Kamala Harris on The View, no? Well, I do the job sometimes that you folks don’t want to, I actually watched Kamala Harris’s interview on The View. Now, I got to tell you to go into The View as a Democrat politician, that’s like the easiest interview in the entire world. I mean, if I walked into The View, that’d be like… Well, that’d be like walking into this room with an Ohio State jersey, that’s something you just don’t do.

(05:13)
But she walks into The View, and you would think that would be an interview. And you know what they asked her? They gave her a softball, an easy question, really propaganda. They said, “Can you name a single thing where you disagree with Joe Biden?” Now, let’s back up for a second, because remember Kamala Harris’s entire campaign is to pretend that she hasn’t been the vice president for the last three and a half years. She stands up before crowds, and she’ll say, “On day one, we’re going to tackle the affordability crisis. On day one, we’re going to secure the border.” And you listen to her for five minutes and you think, Kamala, are you going to vote for Donald Trump? Because you’ve been vice president for 1400 days, you haven’t done anything.

(05:59)
So you think after all this time, all this time of thinking about how she would do things differently from Joe Biden, she would have a well-prepared answer for the interviewers on The View. Well, they ask her one thing you would do differently from Joe Biden, you know what she says? “I can’t really think of anything off the top of my head.” Now, in her defense, I’m not sure she could think of anything off the top of her head, whether about Joe Biden’s policies or anything else. But think about this, for the last two months, Kamala Harris has been telling the American people that she’s going to do things differently than Joe Biden, where she increased the cost of groceries by 25%. The average Michigan family is paying $1,000 more per month, that’s $12,000 per year to afford today what they could have afforded when Donald Trump was president.

(06:58)
The border is wide open thanks to our illustrious border czar Kamala Harris, and her entire campaign has been to pretend that she doesn’t bear any responsibility for the policies, even though she’s the sitting vice president. And here’s the difference between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. There are so many of them. But the big difference is that Donald Trump has a record to be proud of, and Kamala Harris has a record to be ashamed of. Because when President Trump stands before a crowd, he doesn’t try to pretend that he wasn’t president, but she tries to pretend she wasn’t the vice president. He doesn’t pretend that he didn’t have any decision-making authority over his own administration, because of course he did, but Kamala Harris runs from her own administration. And you know why Donald Trump isn’t afraid to talk about his record? Well, number one, because he’s actually honest with the American people. But most importantly, it’s a record to be damn proud of, low inflation, rising take-home pay, and a secure southern border.

(08:10)
So for anybody watching at home, just ask yourself the very basic question, Kamala Harris has been in charge for four years, are you better off than you were four years ago? And I think any honest person would say the answer is no. And you know who is certainly not better off than they were four years ago? Michigan auto workers. I mean, we just walked through thousands of job losses just in the state of Michigan, because Kamala Harris would rather tax American citizens and force you to buy electric vehicles made in China. You know what Donald Trump wants to do? He wants to reward Michigan auto workers, he wants to give working people in this country a tax cut, and he wants to let Americans buy the cars that Americans want to buy. And we know when they do, they’re going to buy a lot of Michigan-made automobiles. So let’s just talk a little bit. We talked about manufacturing, we talked about automobiles, let’s talk about inflation. Because the media, they’ll tell you… And this is one area where Kamala Harris, she can’t quite figure out what she thinks. Because whenever they stick a microphone in front of her face, and that’s rare, Kamala Harris very rarely does interviews, especially with hostile media, what she’ll say, she’ll actually brag about the fact that inflation is lower than it was when she took over. Now, that’s a bald-faced lie, and I’d ask anybody think about the fact that Kamala Harris… Anybody watching, think about the fact that Kamala Harris is bragging about inflation being lower. When you go to the grocery, does inflation feel like it’s lower?

No.

Are American houses actually affordable for American citizens?

No.

Everywhere you look, prices are higher, things are more expensive, and American citizens can’t afford the basic necessities. Look, I grew up in a family where my mama sometimes struggled to buy the things that she needed, sometimes she wouldn’t buy prescription drugs so that she could afford to put food on our family table. I know what it’s like when Washington leaders fail to do their job. And so Kamala Harris, instead of running a victory lap over your own policy failures, why not get out there and talk to the American people and tell them how you’re actually going to fix this terrible inflation problem caused by your policies?

(10:39)
Gas prices are up 45% under Kamala Harris, that’s just in Michigan. In Michigan, home prices are up 41%. I know we have a lot of parents and a lot of grandparents in this room, speaking as the father of three young children, I would like my kids when they grow up and move out… And hopefully that eventually happens. But when they grow up and they move out, I want them to be able to afford homeownership in the United States of America, that’s a core part of the American dream. And we know a lot of our young people right now cannot afford to own a home in the United States of America. Kamala Harris has failed to deliver the basic necessities of an economic prosperity for our citizens, and I think that we ought to say something very simple to Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump’s very fond of saying it. You’re fired, go back to San Francisco where you belong, we’re getting a president the American people deserve.

(11:42)
I really worry… By the way, we don’t talk about this enough. I see we’ve got a lot of young people in this crowd. It’s great, we’ve got some great generational diversity in this crowd, and I love that. I love that about our events. But to young people, I want you to be able to own a slice of your own country, I want you to be able to build something, to build some wealth for yourself and for your family. Under Kamala Harris’s policies, we’ve got credit card debt that is through the roof, we’ve got young people who can’t afford to buy a home. We are creating a country where my generation, the millennial generation and everybody younger, they’re going to be paupers in their own country. And I think that’s a disgrace, I want the American dream to be affordable again, and it’s only going to happen when we put Donald J. Trump back in the White House.

(12:42)
My friends, I did not realize this, we are joined by a real celebrity, Brick Suit Man, right here in the second row. A way bigger celebrity than I am this guy. But if you’re going to talk about housing and the media, they don’t like to talk about the fact that one of the biggest drivers of housing costs, one of the biggest reasons why our young people can’t afford to buy a home, is because under Kamala Harris’s leadership we have let in millions upon millions of people who don’t have any right to be here. It’s a big driver of housing costs.

(13:21)
So illegal immigration, we care about it for a whole host of reasons. We care about it because we want to raise our children in safe communities, we care about it because we want people in our country who respect the rule of law, who don’t violate our borders. We of course care about it because I know a lot of us know somebody who’s been affected by this terrible drug epidemic. We want to give people second chances to get sober and to get clean, and that’s not happening when Mexican drug cartels are bringing fentanyl into our country, killing our people.

(13:50)
So we care about the border for all the reasons that we discuss, and there’s a lot of them. But something the media just doesn’t talk enough about, is think about this, when you bring in… And I think the number’s about 25 million illegal aliens that we have in the United States of America right at this minute. When you let 25 million people into this country, think about it, you got to house them somewhere. Most of them aren’t living on the streets, we got American veterans living on the streets, but we’ve got illegal aliens living in first class hotels and American cities all across our country. But when you do that, you have American homes that are going to people who have no right to be here in the first place. And you know what that means? That means American citizens can’t afford to own a slice of their own country. President Trump believes in this very simple principle, American homes for American citizens, not for people who have no legal right to be in the United States of America.

(14:58)
You know something else that happens when you let in too many legal aliens? Hospital wait times get really big. When I was growing up, that’s often how we went to the doctor, is mama would take us to the emergency room. And you know what? Emergency room wait times have skyrocketed in the last few years. So why are we allowing illegal aliens to come into our country and get healthcare that ought by right go to American citizens, why don’t we take care of our own people and put American citizens first for a change? It’s got to stop. The final thing I want to talk about with the border, because I mean, look, you could talk about the border for the next half hour. But the other thing that is crazy about the border, is in the state of Michigan, I didn’t know this statistic until today, there are 85,000 students in Michigan public schools who are the children of illegal aliens, 85,000. Now think about that, think about what it does to a poor school teacher who’s just trying to get by with what they have, is trying to educate their kids. And then you drop in a few dozen kids into that school, many of whom don’t even speak English. Do you think that’s good for the education of the American citizens?

No.

No, it’s not. So what really bothers me is when Kamala Harris talks about the southern border, she talks about how we need to be compassionate to illegal aliens. And look, I think we’re a great country, we can be compassionate and we ought to be compassionate, but our compassion has to start with our fellow citizens, the people who deserve to be in the United States to begin with. And this is what I think is fundamentally different about Donald Trump’s immigration policies versus Kamala Harris’s wide open southern border, is Donald Trump believes, yes, we can be compassionate, but the best way to be compassionate is to enforce our border laws and take care of American

… citizens first. That is where the responsibility of America’s leadership ought to be. So, I want to talk about one other thing, and then we’ll take some questions from the press. But we’ve got 28, or, depending on how you count, 27 days left in this election. That is not a whole lot of time. And I know that in states all across our country, including in some of the battleground states, people are already voting. People have already been sending me photos where they went out and voted for me and President Trump. That’s obviously an incredible honor, by the way. To come from my family and to be sitting up here and asking all of you to make me your next Vice President of the United States, it’s very humbling. It’s an incredible honor.

JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD!

Now, y’all are way too kind. I appreciate it.

You deserve it.

But look-

We love you.

Look, we’re going to win this election, I really do believe. We’re going to win the State of Michigan. We’re going to win this election. But we’re going to win this election not just to beat the Democrats, as fun as that’s going to be. I’m going to really enjoy beating Kamala Harris. But we want to beat Kamala Harris because we want the American people to have a government that they deserve, a government that puts them first, a government that takes care of the American people’s problems and not the problems of illegal aliens and people who don’t deserve to be here.

(18:45)
So, let’s just think about the contrast between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. We talked about illegal immigration earlier. Well, Kamala Harris has rolled out the red carpet to illegal aliens, has said we’re going to give Medicare and Social Security benefits. That’s the message that she has sent to people who want to cross the border illegally and come to this country. You know what Donald Trump’s message is to illegal aliens? “You got four months. Pack your bags because you’re going home when Donald Trump is back in the White House.”

(19:18)
Kamala Harris’s entire economic policy is to tax American citizens and to force them to buy things they don’t even want to buy that are made overseas. That’s terrible for American workers. That’s terrible for American taxpayers. Donald Trump’s plan is to cut taxes on American citizens, cut taxes on American workers, and penalize corporations that are shipping our jobs overseas. That is an America first economic plan.

(19:50)
Donald Trump’s basic energy policy is, “Drill, baby, drill,” and it is a hell of an energy policy because, look, we have got the most bountiful natural resources anywhere in the world. So, why does Kamala Harris want to put American energy workers out of business and force us to buy energy from tinpot dictators all over the world? Let’s buy it from our own people, from our own territory. And that’s how you build American prosperity.

(20:24)
And that’s actually, by the way, my friends, another big difference between Donald Trump’s policies and Kamala Harris’s policies. When they ask Donald Trump, “What is your most important thing you can do to lower inflation?” he actually gives a very simple but a very specific answer, “Drill, baby, drill.” Because energy goes into the cost of everything, right? Think about it. If the truck drivers are paying more for gas, then the groceries they deliver to the grocery store are going to get more expensive. If the truck drivers are paying more for diesel, then they deliver lumber to a job site to build a house, that means housing’s going to get more expensive too. And of course, we know, ask any manufacturer, one of their biggest costs is the cost of energy. So, you lower the cost of energy, you create good jobs, you create great prosperity, and you bring down the cost of goods for everyday American citizens. It is a win-win economic policy. It is the smartest and most important thing we can do.

(21:25)
But Kamala Harris’s economic policy, you heard her state on The View today, it’s to do exactly what Joe Biden did, and it’s going to lead to the exact same place: higher inflation, fewer Americans with good jobs, and a manufacturing sector that we’re shipping to China instead of building right here in the great city of Detroit. That is a lose-lose economic plan, and I think we ought to have the win-win economic plan of Donald J. Trump.

(21:56)
So, before I take questions from reporters, I want to ask a very simple thing. Absentee voting has started in Michigan. That means that you can request and return a ballot right now. And we got to do everything. We got to take care of every opportunity to vote that the State of Michigan is providing. Because, look, I talk to a lot of people. It’s one of the things you do when you run for vice president, you talk to a lot of people. And 95% of the people I meet will say, “I wanted to vote for Donald Trump in 2020, and I did.” But then a few of them will tell me, “I wanted to vote for Donald Trump, but I didn’t because I planned to vote on election day, but then my kid got sick and I had to go pick him up from school,” or, “I had a really late day at work and I didn’t expect it. And so by the time I got out of work, working those overtime hours, the polls were already closed.”

(22:45)
I got to be honest with you, I don’t like the fact that we’ve gone from election day to election season in this country, but it is what it is. And if the Democrats are going to take advantage of every avenue to vote, then Republicans, we’ve got to do it too. So get out there, make your voice heard, and get out there and vote. There’s a website I want you to take down. I’m going to ask you to do two things here. Number one, take down this website, swampthevoteusa.com, swampthevoteusa.com. On that website, you can check your registration, you can check your polling location. You can make sure your registration is up-to-date. That is a very good resource for you to use. The other thing I want you to do is I want you to take out your phone and take a photo right now. You can take it of you and your friends at this event. You can take it of me up here on the podium. This is making the Secret Service very nervous, by the way. So please move slowly, my friends.

(23:41)
But here’s the thing, we’re never going to have the power of the dishonest national media behind us, but we do have people power. We can talk about why we’re voting for Donald Trump, and we can do it in our capacity as citizens of this country. So, I’m sure you all have some social media, or maybe you just text. Whether you do email, text, put it on X.com, put it on Facebook, put it on Instagram, just say why you’re voting for Donald Trump for president. Because if every single person does that and 100 people see what you put out there, then that means thousands upon thousands of people are going to hear the truth about Donald J. Trump and not the dishonesty from the media. That is the biggest and best thing that we can do. So, before we hit the road, we’ll take some questions from reporters. I want to thank you all for being here. Thanks for having me. I’ll leave you with some final thoughts, but it’s such an honor to be here and to get this welcome in the Motor City. God bless you all. Thank you so much. Yeah.

JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD!

All righty. All righty. So, let me take a few questions from reporters. I’ll answer them, and then we’ll have to hit the road. But we got a microphone I’m sure we’re passing around over there. Yep, go ahead.

Great. This is Clara Hendrickson. I’m with the Detroit Free Press. We’re in the city of Detroit today, where we learned in a recent Jack Smith filing that the Trump campaign aid in 2020 allegedly urged supporters to riot at the ballot counting center. So, I want to make sure that the senator-

Go ahead.

… can hear my question, which is, would you discourage the campaign from engaging in that behavior and from Trump supporters in engaging in that kind of chaotic scene?

So, let me answer that question a few different ways. So first of all, of course, we discourage rioting. We do not riot. Nobody in this room and nobody in this movement is going to riot. Second of all, your question is about a Trump campaign staffer. And I’ll tell you that if you get 1,000 people together, and the Trump campaign probably has a lot more than 1,000 campaign staffers, you’re going to find somebody who’s willing to say anything, especially in a leaked message or private communication. The idea that the Trump campaign, either in 2020 or 2024, is encouraging people to riot is disgraceful. Of course, we’re not doing that. And by the way, these fine people are law-abiding citizens who work and pay their taxes. They’re not going to riot no matter what anybody says to them.

We love you. We love you.

And here’s the final point. I think it’s interesting that the media is so focused on a random message from a random staffer in 2020. If you want to talk about rioting, let’s talk about the summer riots of 2020 that killed 20 people that the media seems uninterested in. Next question.

Hello, my name is Sasha Kalvert. I’m a reporter with The Michigan Daily. So, the University of Michigan, all campuses, has historically had some of the largest student voter turnout in the US. Why should students in Michigan cast their vote for the Trump-Vance ticket? And additionally, how will your administration support students specifically concerning gun violence, where you have rejected calls for tougher gun laws and bans on bump stocks? Essentially, why should students concerned about their safety on campus vote for you?

Yeah. Let’s be honest here. I don’t know if a Ohio State graduate is the best messenger to University of Michigan students. So I hope-

Go Ohio State.

In fact, thank you, sir, maybe we should get a clip of me saying something nice about Kamala Harris out to the University of Michigan, because then maybe they’d all vote for Donald J. Trump. If you just told them I was a Buckeye. I’m always a little nervous about injecting myself into the OSU-Michigan rivalry here. But I think that we all, all kidding aside, look, we all care about the country. And that’s why I think every person in this room is going to help me make Donald J. Trump the next President of the United States. And it’s in that spirit that I want to answer this question.

(29:12)
If I’m a young person in Michigan… Here’s one thing that Donald Trump and I want to do. First of all, we want to make it easier for you to build a life, and to have a good career, and to have a good job in your home. Not to ship all the good jobs overseas, but to build a great middle-class economy right here in the United States of America. I think that’s something that matters to a lot of Michigan students. I think the second thing that matters to Michigan students is I don’t want young people in this country to be permanently indebted because we built an economy that turns American citizens into paupers in their own country. I want them to be able to own a home, build some wealth for themselves, and start a family right here in the State of Michigan, and do it because we’ve got smarter economic policies that are going to allow them to thrive.

(30:05)
Michigan students, meaning at the University of Michigan and all across the state, because know there’s a lot of great universities in the State of Michigan, we are turning an entire generation of American young people into folks who don’t have enough money to own anything. That is a terribly destructive direction for this country to go in. Donald Trump and I want you to be able to own a slice of your own country, and we’re going to pursue economic policies that make that possible. That’s what we’re going to fight for every single day.

(30:38)
And on the question about gun violence, what I have said is that 90%, upwards of 90%, of the gun crime that’s committed in this country is committed using an illegally obtained firearm. So, my point is making it unlawful to own that gun has not stopped 90% of these gun crimes. So, what we’ve got to do is take some common sense security measures. And I think the best way to reduce gun crime in the United States of America, I don’t think this, I think this is a statistical fact, is to lock up people who are committing violence against their fellow citizens. That’s the most important thing.

JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD! JD!

And I’m going to butcher the statistics, so I don’t want to give them exactly, but if you look, whether it’s in Detroit or New York City, any of our major cities, and you look at the violence problem, it is always a very, very small number of people who commit the gross majority of violent crimes. So, why don’t we get back in this country, whatever your racial background is, whether you’re rich or poor, get back to locking up that small number of violent criminals? That’ll make everybody safer, everybody more secure, and it’ll actually give people public safety. And I think that’s the biggest way we can reduce violent crime in this country. Thank you. Next question.

Senator Vance, Ken Coleman from michiganadvance.com. Detroit is 77% African American. The state is 14% African American. Why should African American Michiganders vote for the Trump-Vance ticket?

[inaudible 00:32:28].

Well, we’ve got a great number of Black Americans in this crowd right now. They could probably answer that question better than I could, but without calling everybody up here, because a politician, I don’t like to share the microphone with anybody as much as I like them, what I think they would agree with is, number one, Donald Trump wants to bring back public safety and an economy that brings prosperity for everybody. Good wages for good jobs. That’s the Trump promise, and I think that’s a great promise to Black families in Michigan and to everybody else.

(33:23)
Here’s something else. I mean, there is this idea in the media, and I don’t know where it came from, that somehow Black Americans don’t believe in public safety in this country. Well, we know whether you’re Democrat, Republican, or independent, Black Americans do care about public safety in this country. They want to empower our law enforcement officers to do their job. Of course, do it respectfully, and make sure we’ve got good relationships between police and community. But we can have a good relationship between police and the communities they serve while we lock up the violent criminals and keep everybody safe in the process. I think that’s very possible.

… and look, I mean, the story of Black Americans, especially in a city of Detroit, is actually very similar to the story of Appalachian white Americans who came from West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee. We moved to places like Detroit, Black and white together because there were good jobs for people who were willing to work hard and play by the rules. And it wasn’t always perfect, but for a generation in this country, people, Black and white worked together, raised their families, built things in this country, and created prosperity for the entire country.

(34:41)
That was the story, by the way, in the steel mill that my grandfather worked in for almost 40 years, you had Black folks and white folks living together, working together, and they… Again, it wasn’t always perfect, but it worked. You know why it worked? Because we had good jobs for people who were willing to work hard and play by the rules. The destruction of the manufacturing economy in the state of Michigan has been disastrous for Black Americans, and it’s been disastrous for a lot of middle-class white Americans too. We can make things in this country again. We can build things in the United States of America again. And when we do, it’s going to bring prosperity to Black and white alike. Next question.

Is it on? Good afternoon, Senator Vance. My name is John Enod from Avanti Moda Magazine, and I’m a member of the local independent media here in Detroit. So hopefully I’ll get a little safer reception. I’m a native Detroiter, and I think Michiganders are really worried about a lot of things during this election cycle. And I think a couple that I hear all the time as they’re very nervous about their First Amendment and their Second Amendment rights. So the question is, what will the Trump administration do to guarantee the people of Michigan that their rights will be protected? And what’s your view on those amendments? And then also to what extent should social media companies, if any, be able to moderate and control what people say online if it’s legal?

Yeah. So let me try to answer that question as completely as I can. Number one, I love the First and Second Amendments. There’s a reason they’re number one and number two is because they’re the most important. But you go back to the question a gentleman asked earlier about Black Americans, and particularly what Black Michiganders have to gain from a Trump presidency. And if you look at the censorship and the vaccine mandates, the idea that you should be fired from your job for speaking your mind, that fell oftentimes hardest on Black Americans as much as anybody else because it was often Black Americans who are going on and saying, “Well, wait a second…” And again, this is everybody, but it was happening a lot in the Black community.

(37:04)
“Why are we forced to take this shot in order to earn a living and provide bread for our children? Why are we being silenced by some of the biggest corporations in the United States of America?” I think that affects everybody. But your question about technology companies, the biggest threat to the First Amendment in the United States of America is big technology companies who are trying to silence Americans for speaking their mind. And the Trump presidency, we’ve got no use for it. And you asked about the Second Amendment. Look, we believe in the Second Amendment. We believe that people ought to be able to keep their families and their children safe. And it’s that simple. And I think there is a big difference between the Kamala Harris campaign. Kamala Harris has explicitly endorsed gun confiscation. Donald Trump has explicitly endorsed the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. I’d rather be on that side.

Hi. This is Jordyn Pair with MLive and the Ann Arbor News. You’ve talked a lot about EVs and that kind of stuff today. What would you say to voters who maybe agree with a lot of your policies, but are concerned about climate change and environmental impact of the automotive industry?

So here’s what I’d say, Sarah, and I appreciate the question. So first of all, the most important thing that we can do to ensure clean air and clean water is to build more and make more stuff in the United States of America. That is the biggest thing. Look, I would be lying to you if I told you that carbon emissions was my number one issue, okay? It’s not. But if your number one issue is carbon emissions, look at the two countries that have emitted the most carbon in the last 20-30 years, it’s China and it’s India. Make more stuff in the United States of America. That’s how you make sure we have clean air and clean water. And Kamala Harris policies have done the opposite.

(39:15)
The other thing I’d say to folks who are worried about the environment is, look, I’m worried about the environment too, but here’s what I really worry about. I worry about our food supply. What has gone wrong with our food supply that we have got an obesity epidemic in this country unlike we’ve ever seen in the history of the world? That really worries me. What are we putting… We have all of these weird childhood diseases that we did not have three decades ago, five decades ago. Does that suggest that we’re putting too much weird stuff in our water or too much weird stuff in our food supply? One of the people that I’m really proud has endorsed this campaign is Bobby Kennedy Jr. And I say that as somebody who was raised by blue collar Democrats.

(40:14)
The people who would’ve been Democrats in the sixties and seventies in this town, those folks have been abandoned by Kamala Harris’s Democratic Party. But Bobby Kennedy has this slogan that is so true, and there’s a lot of real depth built into it. Make America healthy again. I mean, you look at our young people, we have skyrocketing rates of mental health problems in the United States of America. We use five times as much antidepressants as some of our peer countries in the world. Why are Americans five times as depressed as some of these other countries? I think it suggests that we’ve got to do a better job at real environmental protection, not the fake Kamala Harris environmental protection, which apparently the only thing it means is ship all of our jobs to China. Let’s make Americans healthy again. Let’s make our water cleaner and our air cleaner. And that’s something Donald Trump and I believe in.

Okay, thank you, Senator. Historian with CBS News. You said in an interview with Newsmax yesterday that that Disaster Relief was being used to focus on migrants rather. Donald Trump also said on Truth Social that most, if not all of the money that FEMA spent is on migrants. FEMA officials say that’s just not true. What evidence do you guys have to suggest that?

So here’s the evidence. And by the way, I actually want to make an observation about these reporters, and I appreciate the question. When people say that they feel endangered by a crowd voicing their opinion, well, look, my friends, the First Amendment goes in both directions. And so you haven’t made this criticism to be clear, but I read some article, it was in some… I forget who published it, but they were like, “Well, journalists don’t feel safe at some of our events.” Look, not a single person here is going to harm you. They’re just going to speak their mind, and they have every right to do it. So God bless you guys. The First Amendment, we believe in it in this country.

(42:37)
But sir, my point is about the focus of our current administration. And if you use resources, but most importantly, if you put people on the task of dealing, let’s say, with a massive influx of illegal immigration, then they’re going to be distracted from doing their core job of keeping Americans safe in response to a disaster. Each of us… This is true of me. It’s true of everybody in the world. We only got so much time to focus, and there’s only so much time in the day. And if you take FEMA and you turn it into an agency that resettles illegal immigrants, that’s going to take their focus away from keeping people safe after a hurricane. That’s basic human reality. And I think there’s no way around it.

(43:21)
Now what the fact-checkers say… And we will try to be as fair to the other side as possible, my friends, what the fact-checkers will say is, “Well, there’s a bucket of money that goes to illegal immigrants, and that’s a different bucket of money that goes to disaster relief.” Well, I’m sure the Biden administration has never moved money from one bucket to the other. In three and a half years, we know that Kamala Harris and Joe Biden are more than willing to move money from one bucket to another if it suits their purpose. They ought to be moving money to the bucket that supports American citizens in the wake of these terrible storms. That’s what I would like them to do.

(44:05)
But the final point I want to make about this is just bureaucratic focus. Look, I’ve seen a lot of wild stuff out there on the internet. The problem with what I’ve seen from the Biden administration is that they’re not focused on getting resources to people that need it. When Kamala Harris is out at a fundraiser in San Francisco, meanwhile North Carolina is drowning, North Carolinians have every right to say, “Where the hell is our Vice President? And why isn’t she focused on us?” That focus has got to change. The 82nd Airborne, this was in 2010… You’re never going to hear me praise Barack Obama. You rarely hear me praise Barack Obama. But in 2010, there was a terrible earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. A ton of people lost their lives. A ton of people had their livelihoods destroyed. The 82nd Airborne was in Port-au-Prince, Haiti under Barack Obama 48 hours later. North Carolina is an hour away from the 82nd Airborne’s headquarters. Why did it take a week to get the 82nd Airborne on the ground helping American citizens? It’s disgraceful. Go ahead, ma’am.

Hello, Senator. Andrea Shalal with Reuters. I have two questions for you, but both of them are local. So one of them is that Senator Sanders was at a rally on Saturday, and he talked about-

Is this Bernie?

Bernie, yes.

I actually like Bernie. He’s kind of like a grumpy old man. I like Bernie. Go ahead.

Well, so he brought up the comments that you’ve made where he said you’ve declined to honor the commitment or to say if the Trump administration would honor the commitment to invest $500 million in the GM plant and to convert the Cadillac plant to EVs. I wonder if you can just clear that up for us. And then the other question has to do with the very large population of Arab and Muslim Americans here in the area. And I’m wondering whether you’re going to meet with them. I know that several mayors, for instance, the Mayor of Hamtramck have endorsed your campaign.

They’re here. Yeah.

But just yesterday, President Trump, former President Trump said that he had been to Gaza Later, a campaign staffer said that he had been to Israel, and Gaza is in Israel, which is not true. I wonder if you could just say a few words about Gaza and also why you think Arab Americans and Muslims would do better by voting for your campaign. Thanks.

Well, because let me answer the first question first. So neither me nor President Trump has ever said that we want to take any money that’s going to Michigan auto workers out of the state of Michigan. We certainly want to invest in Michigan auto workers as much as possible. What we’ve said is that Kamala Harris is offering table scraps. $500 million, when you have an EV mandate that’s going to cost 117,000 auto worker jobs. I think that Michigan auto workers deserve more than the table scraps of Kamala Harris’s green new scam. That’s what we’re talking about. And again, you talk to auto makers, you talk to the manufacturers, they’ll tell you that electric vehicles are sitting on the lots for 90 days, for 120 days. Meanwhile, the gas powered cars are sitting on the lots for 15 days or 20 days.

(47:42)
If you force Americans to buy electric vehicles they don’t want that are made in China, you are going to throw this entire state into poverty. And Donald Trump and I will not stand for. We’re going to fight for these people. We’re going to fight for their jobs. We’re going to fight for their prosperity. Now, the second question about Arab Americans, I mean, look, we’re thrilled to have the Mayor’s support, and to your question, I’m not meeting any Arab American or Muslim American leaders on this particular trip, though we certainly will in future trips to Michigan. You all are going to get sick of me. I’m going to be in Michigan like 30 times the next 28 days.

(48:22)
And to be clear for the fact-checkers, when I said I would be in Michigan 30 times, that was a slight exaggeration. That was exaggeration used to affect… It’ll probably be like six or seven times over the next 27 days. But look, I think the reason why… And this is one of these issues where obviously Arab Americans often have different views than Jewish Americans on what’s going on in Israel, what’s going on in Palestine. But I think both Jewish Americans and Arab Americans recognize that what’s in the best interest of Israel and Palestine is peace. And Donald J. Trump was the president of peace. And I really think that’s it.

(49:08)
I saw Kamala Harris said the other day that the biggest threat to the United States of America is Iran. And look, I think Iran’s a big threat, but Iran is nothing compared to China. China is the biggest threat confronting this country. But I think, ma’am, it revealed that Kamala Harris seems to be totally fine with starting or escalating a conflict in every continent all over the world. Donald Trump believes peace through strength, stop the killing, get Americans out of harm’s way, and focus on building a peaceful globe. That is how you help Palestinians. That’s how you help Israelis. But most importantly, it’s how you help American citizens, is peace. We’ll do a couple more and then we’ll have to hit the road. Sir.

James Dixon, New York Post. When I was a kid, Detroit was the king of manufacturing. In that time, China and Mexico, their rise has come on Detroit’s decline. How do you make Detroit build again and what can you do from the White House?

So two big things. First of all, it goes back to President Trump’s… I think his most simple, but also is most specific public policy: Drill, baby drill. The the big advantage we have over China, over Russia, over any manufacturer, is that we could have effectively free energy right here in the United States of America. Unleash American energy workers, and we’ll manufacture much more. But here’s something… And this is something that is a real, real problem for Kamala Harris. She attacks Donald Trump when Donald Trump says that he wants to impose tariffs to protect the jobs of American workers. Well, think about this. Let’s say for example, that you want to manufacture in China and the wage in China… Because sometimes they’re employing literal slaves

… slaves in China, actual slave laborers is $3 a day. So you can make a product in China paying somebody $3 a day using a literal slave, and then you bring that product into the United States of America. That is the destruction of American manufacturing because Americans won’t, and most importantly, Americans should not be expected to compete with Chinese slave laborers. They deserve to have a good life in their own country. And the only way to protect them from those Chinese companies using slave laborers is to say, “If you want to come back into the United States, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you do it.” That is an important part of our pro-manufacturing policy. And anybody, anybody who tells you, you can bring back American manufacturing without penalizing companies that are using slave laborers, they are lying to you. Let’s get real. Let’s penalize the people using slave laborers. Let’s reward the folks using American workers to build great products. Do one more question.

Thank you, senator. I wanted to ask you about Bob Woodward’s new reporting, specifically about Trump and Putin’s calls. Have you had conversations with the former president about his relationship with Putin and what those calls entailed?

I honestly didn’t know that Bob Woodward was still alive until you just asked me that question. Little I know about Bob Woodward is that he is… I’m going to use a word here, he is a hack. The guy is a hack. So have I talked to Donald Trump about his calls with Vladimir Putin? No. I’ve never had that conversation with Donald Trump in my life. But if Donald Trump, even if it’s true, look, is there something wrong with speaking to world leaders?

No.

No. Is there anything wrong with engaging in diplomacy?

No.

Kamala Harris’s approach has been to hide in a basement, hide from the American people and hide from world leaders. And you know what that’s gotten us? We are on the verge of World War III. It’s a disgrace and it’s a complete failure of a foreign policy.

(53:25)
One of my favorite Donald Trump moments of his first presidency, you all may remember this, but do you know Kim Jong Un?

Yeah.

He’s the leader of North Korea. And let’s be honest, Kim Jong Un hasn’t skipped many meals. Okay? So Donald Trump goes to Kim Jong Un and he meets with him and all the photographers come in and President Trump looks at the photographers and he says, “All right, everybody, make us look good. Make us look very thin.” And Kim Jong Un shoots up like this. He is kind of offended a little bit. But what it showed is Donald Trump’s… I see a lot of you laughing, but I’m not just trying to make fun of Kim Jong Un. The point is you have to go and talk to people. You have to be willing to engage in diplomacy, engage in conversations. That’s how you keep the world from falling into disarray and war. And Donald Trump was better at it than anybody over the last 50 years. We’ll do one more. We’ll do one more here, if we can.

[inaudible 00:54:34].

I know I said that was the last one, but this guy really wants to ask me a question. It better be a good one, man because you’re…

Thank you. Senator, I represent Polish media [inaudible 00:54:49] conservative media. Poland is the best ally America ever had in Europe. [inaudible 00:54:58] you know that.

That’s right.

Beautiful speech of Donald Trump in 2019 in Warsaw. Sir, Kamala Harris claims that Polish American Catholics will vote for Harris-Walt ticket. What is your message to Polish American Catholics and Catholics all together?

Vote Trump.

Well, she said it better than I could. My message is vote Trump and make sure everybody you know votes Trump. Look, Kamala Harris has been the biggest disaster for religious liberty in the history of this country. Kamala Harris, she wants to force Catholic nuns to engage in procedures that violate those Catholic nuns’ conscience. Donald Trump and I think we’re a big enough country to let Catholic nuns live their lives as they choose and to live out their values as fully as they want to.

(55:58)
Kamala Harris has tried to make it so that religious organizations can’t do the things that they want to do. Donald Trump and I love our churches and want to empower them to minister to people because we think that the best people to minister are those on the ground, supporting our fellow citizens and making their lives more blessed and easier.

(56:26)
Donald Trump, when he was president, you know who Vladimir Putin was invading? Nobody, nobody. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin kept in his own country, which is where we’d like to keep him, under the policies of Kamala Harris. Vladimir Putin seems to want to invade a lot of people. And so if you’re a Polish Catholic, if you’re a Polish American, if you just care about common sense foreign policy and you want religious people to be able to live their faith, Donald Trump is the only ticket in town. Vote Trump for religious freedom. Vote Trump for prosperity, vote Trump for world peace.

(57:05)
So that unfortunately is going to be the last question, but let me leave you with one final thought I got to say to you, other than raising a family with this beautiful person, to my right here, the greatest honor of my life is to be able to run for vice president of the United States. It is the coolest thing. You get to see this country in a totally different light. I mean, Michigan, one of these reporters asked me earlier when we were doing a private conversation backstage. He said, every time you come to town, the weather is good in Michigan. And I guess my response is, Michigan, elect me vice president. I’ll come into town all the time and we’ll keep Michigan weather looking pretty good.

(57:51)
But this is the most beautiful country anywhere in the world. We have the best natural resources, natural resources that the Russians, the Chinese would literally kill for. And on top of it, we’ve got the most gracious and most generous people anywhere in the world. I really do believe that. I will meet people who tell me that they’re struggling to buy groceries under Kamala Harris’s economy. But then they’ll spend 30 seconds telling me about their life, and then they’ll spend three minutes telling me that they’re praying for my family and asking me how I’m doing.

(58:26)
And what that teaches me, what that teaches me is that we have a generosity of spirit in the United States of America that though we have bad leadership, it is never going to destroy what makes this country great in the first place. And that’s our people. That’s all of you. And I’m so grateful to you. But what I do really worry is that this country is never going to be able to live to its full potential with the broken leadership of Kamala Harris. Groceries are never going to be affordable if we have the broken leadership of Kamala Harris.

(59:02)
We’re not going to have peace in the world if we have the broken leadership of Kamala Harris. So over the next 27 days, what I’d ask you all to do is to do everything that you can to give the American people a president who is fit to lead and fit to serve this great country. Elect Donald J. Trump. Let’s go get it done. Let’s do it together and let’s take this country back. God bless you all. Thank you for having me. And thank you for seeing me in the great state of Michigan.

Why don’t we liberate these United States?

(59:53)
We’re the ones who need it worst.

(59:57)
Let the rest of the world help us for change.

(01:00:02)
And let’s rebuild America first.

(01:00:07)
Our highways an’ bridges are falling apart.

(01:00:11)
Who’s blessed, who has been cursed.

(01:00:15)
There’s things to be done all over the world.

(01:00:19)
But let’s rebuild America first.

(01:00:42)
Who’s on the Hill, and who’s watchin’ the valley?

(01:00:46)
Who’s in charge of it all?

(01:00:50)
God bless the army an’ God bless our liberty.

(01:00:55)
Dad gum the rest of it all.

(01:00:59)
Yeah, the men in position are backin’ away.

(01:01:04)
Freedom is stuck in reverse.

(01:01:07)
Let’s get out of Iraq an’ get back on the track.

(01:01:12)
And let’s rebuild America first.

(01:01:25)
Once more.

(01:01:25)
Why don’t we liberate these United States?

(01:01:38)
We’re the ones who need it the most.

(01:01:43)
You think I’m blowin’ smoke?

(01:01:45)
Boys it ain’t no joke.

(01:01:46)
I make 20 trips a year from coast to coast.

(01:01:49)
Play it again.

(01:01:49)
I got chills, they’re multiplying.

(01:01:49)
And I’m losing control.

(01:01:49)
‘Cause the power you’re supplying.

(01:01:49)
It’s electrifying.