JD Vances Holds Back to Back Solo Rallys

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the next Vice President of the United States of America, Senator J. D. Vance, accompanied by Usha Vance.

Wow, wow. Well, I love you guys too. Just because we're in Middletown, I can say that, right? Man, it is so good. It is so good to be back home for once, isn't it? Wow, we had an amazing crowd here. We have an amazing crowd here. We had hundreds of people outside that couldn't even get in, and I'm just so grateful to Middletown for welcoming me home. It is good to be here. Thank you, guys. God bless you. Where can I get a good fried bologna sandwich right now? All right, this is the guy. This is the guy who makes it. All right, before we get started here, I have to say a few things. (02:13) First of all, I want to take a moment to thank some outstanding Republican leaders that we have today. If you can stand and be recognized, I'd appreciate it. Attorney General, Dave Yost. Where's Dave? The great Congressman representing Middletown, Ohio, Warren Davidson. Where's Warren? We've got the Ohio GOP Chairman. I call him Alex T. I'm probably going to butcher your name, Alex. Alex Triantafilou. Pretty good? Got it. All right. I've learned. Of course, the next Senator for the United States of Ohio, Bernie Moreno. Don't get too excited. This is my event, not Bernie's event. We got Orlando Sonza, a great congressional candidate. Got a good chance of winning a very tough race. If you can help out Orlando, please do. And look every single one of these officials, state and local. If I didn't see anybody or didn't remember anybody, I apologize. We've got a great slate of state and local officials who are ready to make this state in this country great again. God bless you, guys. God bless you for your service, and thank you for stepping up. And I got to say hello, Middletown, Ohio. Hello to the great Middletown Minis. I'm so grateful to be here. I'm so grateful for this turnout. So many of you know my story, but I graduated from Middletown, Ohio School in 2003, 21 years ago. And a lot of the story of my family, a lot of you... I mean hell, a lot of you are my family actually. If you count fourth and fifth cousins, half of you're probably related to me in this room. But this town was so good to me and I could tell so many stories about my Mamaw, my grandmother. I could tell stories about my mom and my sister. I could tell stories about Aunt Wee. I know Aunt Wee's here. We've got so many great... I think all those people were here, actually. I think Cheryl... Where's Cheryl? You here, Cheryl? I love you, Cheryl, my stepmom. We just got so many good people who've been so good to me. But even if you cast a wider net, Ron Selby was my math teacher in high school. Ron's got to be around here somewhere. I know he is. (04:53) Now I'll tell a story. Now I don't know if this story is actually true or if it's just the legend of Ron Selby, but Ron, if it's not true, don't tell me because I've gone 21 years believing it and I don't want to be contradicted now. But the story is that at some point... Ron, of course, was a tough teacher. He demanded a lot of his students and I was a beneficiary of that. But the story goes that at one point, Ron Selby had a student who really didn't want to take one of those world-famous Ron Selby math final exams. And so somebody called in a bomb threat to Middletown, Ohio School. So everybody goes outside, of course. Everybody remembers was a student at one point or another. You get a bomb threat, you got to go stand outside. The fire department comes. But Ron was really pissed off that somebody was messing with his schedule. (05:37) So he walked to the kid's locker, got what was allegedly the bomb, threw it in a trash can, and said, "I know this kid, he's not smart enough to make a bomb. Let's get back to school." That's the legend of Ron Selby. I could go through half an hour and longer just talking about so many of you who made me who I am, and I'm so grateful to you. And I said at the RNC Convention, which was the craziest speech and the craziest environment I've ever given, it's like all of you times a hundred people. They were just as excited as you guys are, times about a hundred people. You could barely hear yourself think. But I said, "I will never forget where I came from. Ladies and gentlemen, I came from Middletown, Ohio. I'm proud of it. And I will never forget where I came from." In fact, I might make the Secret Service take me to Central Pastry afterwards to get some... I'm dead serious. They get nervous. They do not like unexpected... And I love Milton's too, of course. Both. I love both. (06:56) But Milton's has expanded a little bit. I feel like you can get Milton's not just at the place that's there on a... What is that, Roosevelt? I feel like you can get Milton's anywhere now, or at least a lot of other places. So it's cast a wider net. Anyway, let me talk about donuts all day. You can tell what... I skipped lunch, so my mind's on donuts here, but I'll tell you another story. My Mamaw was just an incredible woman, and a lot of you knew her and a lot of you knew her personally. And I talked at the RNC Convention, and I'll repeat this story just because I think it illustrates how tough she was. (07:33) Mamaw died in 2005, and I was a United States Marine at that point, and I was just about to leave for Iraq. And when Aunt Wee and the rest of us went through her things, they discovered 19 loaded handguns in Mamaw's... That is not a made up... No, that's... That's right. That's right. Well, when she introduced herself, sir... She is an Appalachian American. And when she introduced herself to my uncle, my Aunt Wee's husband for the first time, she said, "I'm from Breathitt County, Kentucky where a woman isn't fully dressed without her gun." So that was Mamaw's attitude. (08:20) And she was tough and she was disciplined, and she is the reason why I've had so many of the good opportunities that I've had in my life. But people don't realize she was an incredibly sweet and kind and caring person too. And I'll never forget, I was probably 10 or 11 years old, and she picked me up from school and there was just this very... I'd never seen this person. She was probably 14 or 15, a young girl who was sitting in the back of the car and she was clearly a little freaked out. (08:47) And I'm going to get emotional telling this story, and I don't think that I've ever told this story before, but I said, "Who this person who's in our car?" And Mamaw said, "Don't worry about it. It's none of your business." And I said, "Okay, I'll shut up." And eventually we dropped her off and then we went back home and I asked Mamaw, "Well, who was that?" And she said, "Well, that was a little girl." And I guess there was some pretty bad abuse in her house. And when that little girl ran away from home and tried to find a safe space, she asked, "Where could I go?" And everybody said, "You can go to Bonnie Vance's house." (09:24) And that is the Mamaw, but that is the Middletown that I knew. You guys were always so good to me. I could talk about any number of public school teachers from Ron Selby to a number of others. I could talk about people who looked after us when we were riding our bikes around. Mamaw was... She was always worried about safety, but she was never that worried about safety in Middletown, Ohio because she trusted the people who lived here and she knew they were good human beings who would look after all of us. They would look after all their kids and grandkids. IO. Now I need to be careful about that because Michigan is one of the most important battleground states. (10:14) So I cannot give the state of Michigan any reason to vote against the Trump/Vance ticket. We got to work hard for every single vote. But look, my point in telling some of these stories is just that I love every one of you and I love this town, and I'm so grateful to have been formed by it because I wouldn't be who I was without it. And people will sometimes say, "Well, you had a tough life." And in some ways things weren't always easy, but a lot of you will know, a lot of you read my book, my Life wasn't all that different from a lot of people who grew up in Middletown, Ohio. It was tough, but it was surrounded by loving people. And it was surrounded by something that if we don't fight, it's not going to be around for the next generation of kids, and that's opportunity. Middletown had opportunity and we got to make sure it's there for the next generation. When President Trump asked me to be his running mate, I really had no idea what was coming. What happened is I left my home in Cincinnati, so we lived not too far from here, about a 35-minute drive, 45 minutes depending on traffic. And we went to Milwaukee on Monday morning, and I had no idea. I thought maybe he was going to ask me, but I thought he might ask somebody else. There were a lot of good guys running. Marco Rubio, a dear friend of mine, really great public servant, a number of other folks as well. (11:32) So I had no idea what was coming. And when the President called me and asked me, he said, "Would you like to run as my vice presidential running mate?" I said, "Well, yeah, of course, right. Wouldn't come all this way to say no." But he did something that was really amazing afterwards. He said, "Well, what do you think about this statement I'm about to put out?" Of course, he put it out on social media. It's one of the things I love about President Trump is that he speaks directly to people. He doesn't allow a bunch

... bunch of consultants to filter him. He is who he is and that's why a lot of us love him. (12:09) But he's talking about this statement and I've got him on speakerphone and my kid's in the background, my seven-year-old son, we've got three kids, and our seven-year-old is our oldest. His name is Ewan. And Ewan is talking in the background of Pokemon or some other God forbidden subject. I'm like, "Son, I love you, but could you please, this is the most important phone conversation I've ever gotten. So, please stop talking about Pikachu for one second. Let me take his phone call." (12:32) And my son comes over to the phone and the president hears him and President Trump says, "Who is that?" And I say, "That's my seven-year-old son." And he says, "Well, put him on the phone." I'm like, "Oh, God, here it is. He's going to offer it and take it back because my seven-year-old's going to say something really weird right now." And he reads off the statement. He reads where he talks about my military service and my business background and he says, "Young man, what do you think about that? Do you like what I said about your dad?" And my son goes, "Yeah." And then that's it. That was the endorsement he needed. The statement went out three minutes later. (13:04) But that is the kind of guy that Donald Trump is, and that's the guy that the media doesn't let you see. He actually cares about people's families. He cares about my family, but he cares about your family too. And he wants to believe that his generation left this country off in a better place than when they found it, that's why he's done this. (13:26) I mean, talk about myself all day, but let's talk about the man who was a business leader, who had billions of dollars, who didn't need any of the sacrifices that public service created, and yet he went out there and he did it anyway. That's the type of people we want to become public servants. And thank God he served for four years as President of the United States. (13:56) And now, ladies and gentlemen, after four years of Joe Biden's presidency or whoever actually is calling the shots in Joe Biden's White House, are we ready to reelect President Donald J. Trump again? (14:22) Now, when I was researching what I would say at the RNC, and I mostly write my own stuff, I mean, I'm not going off a teleprompter right now, you can probably tell that. The president actually came up, he called me right before I went on and gave my speech and he said, "JD, you're going to do great. Just give me a little pep talk. You're going to be wonderful. The crowd out there is great. Just go out there and speak from your heart." And I said, "Sir, that's right. That's exactly what I'm going to do. But got to be honest with you, if I totally screw it up, it's too late. No take-backs, right? You've already asked me. I've already accepted. No take-backs." So, this speech is just going to be icing on the cake.

You were born for this.

Thank you, ma'am. God bless you. I was. (15:08) But here's the thing, I was researching what I was going to say about the president, and I realized that over a lifetime of business leadership, and then of course a few years of public service, the country has made a lot of stupid decisions. And President Donald Trump was right about every single one being a mistake. You go back to 1994, I was a third-grader at Roosevelt Elementary School on Central Avenue, which doesn't exist anymore. We've got some Roosevelt people in here. God bless you. And 1994, this country gave a sweetheart trade deal to Mexico that sent hundreds of thousands of good manufacturing jobs, many of them in our communities to Mexico. That was a bad idea. We shouldn't have done it. And Donald Trump said it was a bad idea, right? The current administration, by the way, supported it. (16:08) In 2000, towards the end of the 1990s, I should say, we gave a sweetheart trade deal to the communist Chinese. We allowed them to build their middle class off the backs of the American middle class. And you know who supported it? The current people in power. You know who opposed it? Donald J. Trump. And in 2003, and look, it was Republicans and Democrats, a lot of people supported this, I'm not just beating up on the other side, but in 2003, we went to war in Iraq. And remember, it was supposed to be just a few weeks, few weeks and then everything would be over. And I was an 18-year-old kid. I supported it and I was wrong. And you know who was right? President Donald J. Trump. He knew. He somehow knew, even though he was a real estate developer in New York, that this thing would become a quagmire, it would cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. (17:08) And I think we want the kind of president who sees around corners, who doesn't follow the stupid conventional wisdom right off the cliff, who fights for American citizens, puts them first and has the wisdom to know how to lead this country.

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. (17:23) He has an IQ of 210 too.

That's right. He probably does have an IQ of 210, but don't tell him that. Don't tell him that. (17:43) So, the problem is when our leadership makes all these dumb decisions, we know exactly who suffers the consequences. It's the people right here in this room and the communities that we live in. (18:02) So, I want to say, and I know there's some TV cameras here, and I'm sure this rally is being covered in any number of media channels, I want to talk about the future, and I want to talk about what a President Trump and Vice President Vance ticket will mean for the American people, who we're going to fight for and how exactly we're going to do it. (18:20) So, let's start with who we're going to fight for. Number one, we're going to fight for every single worker in this country. If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to put a good dinner on the table and send your kids to whatever vacation and whatever school you want to. Work hard and play by the rules, you get a good life. It's that simple. (18:45) We're going to fight for every single parent to send their kids to a school where they get a good education and not an indoctrination, right? (18:57) Thank you. Now, I got a great education at Middletown High School. I graduated in 2003. I joke that I got a PhD, a public high school diploma, and I'm very proud of it.

[inaudible 00:19:13]. Welcome home.

And there are great school teachers in public and private schools all across our country. But for some reason, the Federal Department of Education is trying to lean into indoctrination at our schools instead of teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic in our schools. Let's get back to common sense for our teachers and the students they depend on.

[inaudible 00:19:46].

God bless you, sir. Now, look, we fight for the grandmothers who are raising, and the grandfathers and the aunts and the uncles who are raising a generation of grandkids that they didn't expect to raise. That is who we represent and that is who we fight for. (20:11) My book came out in 2016, and one of the coolest things about my book is, I heard from a lot of Americans from all walks of life, but especially from Black Americans who would come up to me and say, "Our story is your story." Whether it's the drug epidemic or whether it's this epidemic of crime and violence that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris unleashed in our country, we have got a lot of grandparents, white, Black, and every skin color that are raising kids that they didn't expect to raise. And they're doing it because it's the right thing to do and they do it because they love their communities. My message to them simple, I will fight for you because if it wasn't for a grandma like that, I would not be standing here today getting to run as your next Vice President of the United States. (21:15) And to those grandmas and grandpas, the nanas, the mamas and the papas, let me just say from a kid who was not as grateful as I should have been when I was 15 and 16 years old, kids when they're that age, I hear they're not that grateful, I'm sure I'll learn the hard way here in a few years, but let me just say that from the bottom of my heart, thank you. You may never hear it from the kid that you're raising, but trust me, in their heart, they appreciate it and they know they wouldn't be anywhere without you. So, God bless you guys for stepping up. God bless you and thank you. (21:46) We are going to fight for the energy worker in this country who doesn't understand why Kamala Harris and Joe Biden want to buy energy from tin-pot dictators all over the world, but won't buy it with our own citizens, from our own citizens, and from the hands and from our own land.

Drill, baby drill.

Drill, baby drill. It's a very, very simple concept, but it's profound because we've got great energy workers in Pennsylvania. We've got great energy workers in Ohio and all across our country. They want to do a good job, they want to earn a reasonable wage, and they want to power the American economy. Why don't we have a president that lets them do exactly that, ladies and gentlemen? Unleash American energy; drill, baby drill; and let's turn the page on this craziness. (22:52) And it's not just about the energy workers, it's about workers all across our country, because I happen to believe in this crazy thing, that we ought to make more of our own stuff in this country, and I know President Trump agrees. (23:08) But think about this, you know where 95% of the ibuprofen, Advil, 95% of it, you know where it's manufactured? China. You know where the gross majority of the antibiotics that we put in the bodies of our children come from? China. Now, I don't know if you were alive the past five years, but do you remember maybe why we shouldn't trust the Chinese attitude towards public health? (23:41) I got to be honest with you, I don't trust the damn plastic toy coming from China, I sure as hell don't trust the drugs that we put in the bodies of our children. Let's make our own stuff, my friends. (23:58) But you can't manufacture

Capture anything unless you've got low cost energy, which we've got it. We are sitting on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas the next 100 years. We could be energy dominant, which helps our people pay lower energy costs. It helps our citizens who work in the energy sector and it helps our manufacturers make more of our own stuff and become more self-reliant in our own country. It's a win-win. We just got to get the current crop of crazies out of there and replace them with President Trump. (24:37) That's right. We do need to do that. We need voter ID in this country, ladies and gentlemen. If you're going to cast a ballot, show a piece of identification. It is the weirdest thing to me. Democrats say that it is racist to believe, well, they say it's racist to do anything. I had a diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they're going to call that racist too, but it's good. I love you guys. These people were telling jokes up in the front row. You guys might not be able to hear it, but I'm getting caught up in it. But look, here's the very simple thing. We believe that we want to make more of our own stuff and we believe that we want to have secure elections and we believe we want to have schools that don't indoctrinate our children. That's not racist, ladies and gentlemen. It is common American Middletown sense, and I'm proud to be from this town and to take the wisdom from it. (25:46) Now, let me talk just a little bit about how we're going to do it. The number one thing that we're going to do, because you can't do anything unless you get there to govern, is we are going to win this election, ladies and gentlemen. Over the next four years... (26:08) Over the next four years, we are going to do a lot of good for people all over this country. Well, sir, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Knock on wood. We got to win this race first. But to get there the next four months, we've got to do everything that we can. And I'd ask you, all of you, if you can find something to do to get involved, please do it. There are doors that we can knock on. There are people that we need to deliver to the polls. There are people who are going to vote for President Trump and Vice President Vance and for Bernie Marino, but we got to get them to the polls, right? So that's one thing you can do, is remind your friends to get out there and vote and make sure they get to the polls. (26:49) The second thing that we have to do is push back on every channel that we can. The media is never going to be fair to President Donald J. Trump, but you're going to be fair. So use the voice that you have, use it on Facebook and Instagram, go on social media and actually make the case for President Trump and Vice President Vance. That is the thing that every single one of you can do. And if you take the people in this room and you magnify it by a 100, which you can do with your own platforms and your own voices, that is way more powerful than the lion media and the corrupt democratic establishment. Let's get to work, ladies and gentlemen. Let's win this thing. I would not be here if it were not for the generosity and the incredible opportunity of this country, and I just want every single kid, every single parent to know, that because they live in America, they can dream big dreams. I remember my friends so many moments in Middletown, Ohio, riding my bike down, well central, which mama was kind of okay with, and then down university, which she was not okay with. If you've got kids and you know this town, you know what I'm talking about. But I just remember looking to the future and the thing that I wanted most in the whole world. I just wanted to be able to give my kids a little bit of stability and comfort that I didn't have when I was growing up. That's all I really wanted. (28:26) And when I think about the American dream, I don't think about writing a book. I don't think about becoming a business guy. I don't even think about running for Vice President of the United States, even though it is pretty cool to do that. I think about becoming a husband and a father, and that is the way in which this community and this country, was best to me. (28:52) And while we're talking about it, did my wife do a good job the other night or what? Didn't she do great? She is... There she is. She's too embarrassed to stand up, but get used to it, honey, it's going to be four months of me embarrassing you. That's what we do. But I just think when I consider how good this country has been to me, I just think about how much I owe to it. That gratitude should come with a sense of responsibility. And when I think about Kamala Harris, who I guess is our vice presidential candidate officially, but I guess she's going to run for president now, because Joe Biden dropped out of the race. (29:48) See... Want to take bets here, want to start a betting pool just in this auditorium. But I wonder when I see her give a speech and she talks about the history of this country, not with appreciation, but with condemnation. And look, of course, every country, just like every family, certainly mine, has its pockmarks, right? Not everything's perfect. It's never going to be. But if you want to lead this country, you should feel grateful for it. You should feel a sense of gratitude. And I never hear that gratitude come through when I listen to Kamala Harris. And that's what we've got to do. (30:37) Fundamentally, you're going to agree, hopefully since you're here, you're going to agree hopefully with most of what President Trump and I want to do. We're going to drill, baby drill. We're going to shut down that border. We're going to put America's citizens first, because that's what America citizens are going to elect us to do. It's common sense. But thank you, sir. But even when you disagree with us, nobody's ever perfect. No politician is perfect, certainly not me, but you deserve to be led by people who are grateful, who are grateful for the community they came from, who are grateful for this country and it's boundless opportunities, who are grateful for the service of our veterans and the people who put their lives on the lines, from police and firemen on down. (31:46) I believe that you deserve to be led by people who are grateful. And I know that President Trump is grateful for this country, and I know that I am, and I know we're never going to stop fighting to give you the same opportunities that we got. That's what this whole thing's all about. Now, look, I'm going to go really off script here and all my communication staffers back there are going to get a little nervous. I was hanging out with my kids yesterday, we're actually swimming at the swimming pool, and somebody brought over their phone and showed me the news that Joe Biden had announced he was dropping out of this race. And look, I don't like Joe Biden and I don't like his policies, and I'm not a Democrat primary voter. I never have been and I never will be. Unless something goes really wrong, ladies and gentlemen. But look, what is going on in this country is absolutely disgraceful. Let me get a little philosophical here. I imagine most of you did not vote for Joe Biden. If you did, welcome aboard. We're glad to have you. (32:47) But if you want to run for president, you've got to make your case to voters. You make your case to voters. That's what President Trump did, even though he would've already been the President, and even though he was by far the most popular person in the Republican Party, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination. He faced some good competition and he made his case to voters the idea of selecting the Democrat party's nominee, because George Soros and Barack Obama and a couple of elite Democrats got in a smoke-filled room and decided to throw Joe Biden overboard. That is not how it works. That is a threat to democracy, not the Republican Party, which is fighting for democracy every single day. (33:42) This is not okay, ladies and gentlemen. You cannot, for three and a half years, take a guy who clearly didn't have the mental capacity to do the job. Kamala Harris lied about it. My Senate Democratic colleagues lied about it. The media lied about it. Every single person who saw Joe Biden, knew that he wasn't capable of doing the job. And for three years they said nothing until he became political dead weight. That is not a way to run a country. That is not a way to run a political party. That is an insult to voters. (34:14) And I really believe, even though I think the leadership of that party is corrupt, I really believe that most Americans are fundamentally good, whether they're democrat, republican, or independent. My life has taught me to put my faith in people, because they put their faith in me and gave me a lot of opportunities. So my message to Democrats who are disgusted by this process, disgusted by how anti-democratic it is, you are welcome in the Republican Party where we think we should persuade voters and not lie to voters. Come on in, the water's warm. Thank you guys. (35:24) We love you too, man. God bless you. I just got to say this entire system of ours is about you got to persuade voters. You got to win their votes. You don't decide who the president is in smoke-filled rooms with billionaires and senior elected officials. You let the people decide. That's what we believe in this room, and that's what we're going to fight for. I promise you. (35:54) And by the way, think about take backs. I was told I was going to get to debate

Kamala Harris, and now President Trump's going to get to debate her. I'm kind of pissed off about that if I'm being honest with you. So I just want to say to Middletown and a lot of forgotten communities all across our country, because we really have been forgotten in Middletown, Ohio. They think that we're backwards, they think that we're bad people, they think that we don't know how to do anything, and we do, ladies and gentlemen. This is where things are made. This is the source of America's greatness. But I just want to say, I promise you this, I will fight every single day to restore an America that works for Americans. I will fight for policies that lower the costs of your groceries, lower the costs of your housing, make life more affordable, not less affordable as it has been under the Democrats. I will fight for energy policies that make it easy to heat your home in the winter and cool it in the summer because I lived with a mamaw who sometimes worried whether there was money enough to heat the house in the winter. I will fight for every single one of your children when they lay their head down at night before they fall asleep to dream about the future as one of hope and possibility. Your children deserve the inheritance of this country, and the inheritance of this country is that their lives will be better than their parents' and their children's lives even better than that. That is the American dream that we fight for, and I will never stop fighting for that America dream. (38:26) And I really believe this, my friends, the best way to do it, the best way to bring energy and food and housing costs down, the best way to seal that border and stop the fentanyl and the poison from coming into our communities, the best way to bring common sense back to our education system and our foreign policy is to re-elect Donald J. Trump president of the United States. And you know, it's so funny, the media says, "Well, JD said some critical things about President Trump 10 years ago," and Kamala Harris of course called Joe Biden a racist and then ran with him two months later. I think, my friends, because I was critical of President Trump in 2016, I realized two things. One, the media lies about this guy nonstop. They really do. It's unreal. He's a good husband, he's a good father, good grandfather. All of his family from Melania on down, they love the guy. (39:40) And that's why, by the way, we were so scared last Saturday when an assassin almost took him from us. But he cares about human beings. He is not the caricature or the lie that the media has told you that he is. He is a person who believes this very simple thing, and they call him a radical for it, but it happens just to be common sense. His radical idea is that America should make more stuff in its own country for its own citizens, and that the American nation belongs to the American people. Let's reelect Donald J. Trump, let's get this country back on track. Middletown, I love you, I wouldn't be here without you, and I will never forget where I came from. Go Middies and God bless you guys. Thank you.

Young man, there's no need to feel down. (40:21) I said young man, pick yourself off the ground. (40:21) I said young man, 'cause you're in a-

I was just going to get your call.

I just have my shot up, but I'm going to get an advanced boarding Trump Force Two, but-

You still on the same line?

Yeah. I'll put on bars and tones if that helps. [inaudible 00:47:25].

Hello, Virginia. It is great to be in Radford, wow. I love you guys, too. I grew up in a place a lot like this one called Middletown, Ohio. That's where I learned the values of loyalty, family, duty, and honor, and that's where I decided to enlist in the United States Marine Corps when I graduated from high school in 2003. (00:53) Now, it's also where I learned that if you grew up poor, come from a chaotic family, and get Ds and Fs in English, you can still, by the grace of God, write a bestselling book and become the nominee to be your next Vice President of the United States of America. (01:11) Now, my friends, I want to say I make a simple pledge. President Trump and I make a simple pledge that we will pour out every last drop of sweat, we will work our tails off and we will make America great again, and we're going to do it together. (01:43) Now, we got to talk about the news of the day here. I was swimming with my kids yesterday and my wife told me that Joe Biden had decided to withdraw from the presidential race. Now, see, you guys are excited about that. I don't know, I was looking forward to debating Kamala Harris, actually. To the Democrats who are watching, please find some way to make Kamala Vice President. I was promised a debate with Kamala Harris, and that's what I plan to get. (02:32) Now, history will remember Joe Biden as not just a quitter, which he is, but one of the worst presidents of the United States of America but my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse and everybody knows it. She signed up for every single one of Joe Biden's failures and she lied about his mental capacity to serve as president. Our country has been saddled for three and a half years with a president who cannot do the job and that is all because Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democrats lied about his ability to be our president. I think we ought to kick them all out come November, and replace him with some people who care about this country. (03:40) Now, remember this. Let's talk about some of those substantive failures. Kamala Harris is America's Border Czar, and how's our border doing, ladies and gentlemen? She hasn't talked to the chief of Border Patrol a single time in her entire tenure as Borders Czar. Remember, on our very first day in office, she and Biden suspended deportations, they stopped construction of the border wall, and they re-implemented catch and release. The border crisis is a Kamala Harris crisis. Let's not let her ever forget, let's never stop reminding her of that fact, and let's never stop reminding people the fact that when President Trump was president, we had a secure border and we put our citizens first. (04:38) Now, it doesn't stop there. Harris is actually even more extreme than Biden, even though that's hard to believe. She wants to totally decriminalize illegal immigration. Kamala, if you stop making it a crime to come into this country illegally, you're just going to invite more and more illegal aliens and we know that communities like Radford and Middletown, we are the ones who suffer the consequences. (05:08) Now, I know this area has been affected by a lot of stupid trade deals, a lot of deals that have shipped good American manufacturing jobs overseas. Biden supported NAFTA back in 1994, but Kamala Harris voted to keep NAFTA again and again even after it was obvious that it was disaster for our people. I agree. (05:31) She voted to eliminate the filibuster and pass the green news scam, destroying energy jobs in Virginia and Pennsylvania, and driving up the cost of goods. That's why we've got an affordability crisis in this country, my friends, because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, they'd rather buy oil and gas from tin pot dictators all over the world. I say they should buy it right here from American workers and from Americas who are- (06:21) It's simple. Drill, baby, drill. It's not that complicated. We've got it right here. Our own workers want to get it out of the ground. Why don't we just let them? It'll make our country stronger. We all know that's the case. It gets even worse. She supported abolishing ICE and wanted to defund the police. Even Joe Biden never went so far as to say he wanted to defund the police. (06:49) Now, of course, he supported all these policies because him or somebody else... We don't know who's been in charge of this country the last three and a half years, but Joe Biden supported it every step of the way, or at least the person who's actually running the show. She wants to ban fracking. She said that. You can go and look it up. She said that she wanted to ban fracking, that is going to destroy hundreds of thousands of energy jobs all across our country. It's going to empower the very worst and the very most dangerous regimes in the world. This is crazy. (07:22) There is simply no way that you can sit here and say the policies of Joe Biden have worked, which is to say that we got to kick Kamala Harris out the Oval Office. Don't give her a chance. Don't give her a chance to run away from the Biden record. The Biden record is the Kamala Harris record and given what we know about Joe Biden, Kamala Harris probably did a lot more than Joe Biden does over the last three and a half years. (07:57) While we're on the subject of Joe Biden, can anybody just admit that if Joe Biden is not fit to run for president, he ain't fit to serve as President of the United States either. If Kamala Harris is too blind or too corrupt to admit to the American people that Joe Biden should have never been in there, she's not fit to serve either. We're going to get them both out of there. We're going to get President Donald J. Trump back in the White House. They both have to go. It's that simple. It really is. (08:47) Now, look, the thing is I am a member of a community that has been affected by all these terrible policies. I grew up in a working class family. I grew up in a family where kids said, other people said, "That kid's not going to turn out to be anything." I remember when I didn't have any hope for my future, I didn't have any hope for my community. I thought that chaos and instability was going to be the narrative of my life, that there was no future. Now I'm running. Now I'm running as Donald J. Trump's vice president. It turned out pretty well for me. (09:29) Now, here's the crazy thing, speaking of President Trump, and by the way, I'll tell you a story. On Monday morning, when President Trump... I guess it was Monday afternoon, early afternoon, President Trump called to offer me the job as his vice presidential running mate, and I didn't answer the phone. Now, it went straight to voicemail or something. I never heard it ring. I was staring at my phone hoping that he would call me but of course, I called him back and we had a nice conversation, talk a lot about this, he put my son on the phone, he talked to my little seven-year-old boy. It was great. (10:17) But the first thing he said actually, when I called him back, is he said, "You know, JD, you just missed a very important phone call and maybe I should offer it to somebody else." Now, he was messing with me, of course, because here I stand. I'll tell you something else about President Trump, and I want to get to the fact that the media lies about him. So many people don't realize the real President Trump. Here's the real President Trump. (10:43) President Trump called me right before my RNC convention speech on Wednesday. It was a great time, and didn't my wife do such a good job? I was so proud of her for introducing me. He called me and he said, "JD, you're going to do a great job." It was just a nice pep talk, he said, "Don't worry about anything you're going to do great." I said, "Sir, I agree with you. I think I am going to do a good job, but it's too late now. No take backs. We've already gotten here." (11:15) The crazy thing is the media says that that guy is mean-spirited. They say that he's a threat to democracy. But first of all, we all saw the President Trump the media doesn't want you to see when he took an assassin's bullet, stood up a minute later, raised his fist in the air and said, "Fight, fight, fight." That's the President Trump I know, the guy who stood in defiance of an assassin's bullet and then just a few moments later, called for national calm and unity, and they say that he's mean-spirited. That's not the Donald Trump I know, that's not the Donald Trump that any of us in this room know. (12:06) They also say that he's a threat to democracy but if I recall, Donald Trump won the Republican primary in 2016, won the election, and won another Republican primary just a few months ago. Democrats are the ones who want to throw out 14 million ballots and not elect Kamala Harris, but select Kamala Harris with a bunch of billionaires, and Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi making the decision instead of Democrat voters. It's disgraceful, and that's the threat to American democracy, that corruption and that broken process. (12:50) Now, I'm obviously not a Democrat primary voter, and I imagine none of you are either, but if you are, welcome. The Republican Party's happy to have you. But if you are a Democrat primary voter, they don't give a damn about you because they don't give a damn who you voted for. If you are a Democrat and you look at this corrupt process, I invite you to the Republican Party. We want to make America great again. We believe in elections, we believe in persuading voters not lying to them for three and a half years and then doing a switcheroo. (13:34) It really doesn't matter who we run against, let's be honest, because every Democrat in leadership has supported these broken policies and every last Democrat in leadership lied about Joe Biden's fitness for the office, about his mental competency, about whether he could basically function and do the job. Aside from that, every last Democrat contenders wants open borders, more legal immigration, they want more trade giveaways, and they supported him from the very beginning. They want more endless wars and more criminals on the streets. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a crappy platform, whoever they put as the figurehead of the Democratic Party. (14:26) Now, I want to say something about our likely opponent, Kamala Harris, because she said a couple of days ago that I showed no loyalty to the United States, that I have no loyalty to the United States. I don't know, Kamala. I served in the United States Marine Corps, and I built a business. What the hell have you done other than to collect a government check for the past 20 years? (15:04) I want to say, my friends, whether it's Kamala Harris or anybody else, it's the same Democrat machine, it's the same lies and corruption, it is the same broken promises, inflation crisis, border crisis. We don't need any of it. We need President Donald J. Trump back in the White House. (15:39) Now, before we keep going, I want to take a moment to thank some of the outstanding Republican leaders that we have with us today. Republicans who I think are going to turn Virginia red in the coming decade, and we're so grateful to have them. You guys of course have a great governor in Glenn Youngkin and I understand he's working on behalf of the state. Couldn't join us today, but we do have Attorney General, Jason Meares. Thank you so much for being here, Jason. Thanks for your great service. (16:20) We've got Congressman Morgan Griffith. Where's Morgan at? There you are, Morgan. Thank you, man. Now, we've got former Congressmen, Virgil Goode and Bob Goodlad. Where we got... Where they at? Right here. Great. Thank you, guys. A guy I've gotten to know a little bit, an incredibly special veteran of armed forces, a true patriot, and the next Senator from the state of Virginia, Hung Cao. Thank you, Hung. (17:01) Now, these are great candidates and of course, we're joined by numbers of the General Assembly and state and local officials who are doing fantastic work on behalf of this commonwealth and like I said, they're going to help turn Virginia Red. (17:15) Now, for those of you who don't know me, let me just give you a little bit of background on where I come from and who I am. I'm a former Marine. Hurrah. Semper Fi. I graduated from the Ohio State University and Yale Law School. I started a business to create jobs in places like the one that I grew up in, places that have been left behind by Washington's leadership, but still have a lot of grit, a lot of determination, and a lot of opportunity if we could stop screwing up in Washington D.C. (18:00) Now, I was raised by my working class grandmother. I called her Mamaw. Do we have any other Mamaws in the room right now? We're in Appalachia, right? We've got a lot of Mamaws. I just want to say to all of you, thank you for everything that you do, especially those who are raising... The Mamaws and Papaws, the grandparents, the aunts and the uncles that are raising kids they didn't expect to raise because of this terrible opioid problem. Trust me, it's appreciated. We love you and we're grateful to you. God bless you. (18:38) Now, my Mamaw raised me because my mom struggled with addiction, opioid addiction, for a big chunk of my early life. Now, Mamaw was a tough old bird. She was a very devout Christian and a very thoughtful Christian, but she also loved the F-word. She was a woman of contradiction. She could make a sailor blush, I'm not kidding you. She was my guardian angel in so many ways, and thanks to her, I had a chance to live the American Dream. If there's anything that President Trump's leadership is about, it is about ensuring that your kids have access to the American Dream, that your kids have access to the incredible opportunity of this country. (19:25) Now, for years, Washington insiders and both parties have sold out places like Middletown, Ohio, like Radford, Virginia. Both parties shipped millions of good manufacturing jobs overseas. They decided that we didn't need to make anything in America again, and now were way too dependent on the Communist Chinese to make the critical things that we need from our weapons of war to the drugs that we put into the bodies of our children. (19:53) 95% of the ibuprofen in this country is manufactured in China. Guess where the majority of the antibiotics that we put into the bodies of our children are made, in China. That was a decision, ladies and gentlemen, by broken leadership that decided we didn't need to make anything in this country again. President Trump has a different vision. Let's make more things in America, let's make our own country self-reliant, and let's do it with American workers making good wages. Isn't that simple? (20:37) Now, the left calls President Trump and his supporters radicals, but what's radical about thinking that we should make more of our own products in Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania? There's nothing radical about that, it's common sense. Under President Trump's leadership, my friends, we're going to change some things around and you're going to see more and more products stamped with that beautiful logo, made in the USA. It's time. (21:14) Now, there's nothing radical about having a national security that is strong and smart, who is sick of sending America's sons and daughters off to foreign lands they have no business in. We got to focus on our own problems right here at home. Sometimes, we do have to go to war, our national security depends on it. But as President Trump showed when he took out ISIS, when we punch, we punch hard and we punch to win. (21:56) There's nothing radical about telling the drug cartels and the violent gangs, America is closed for business. We don't want you in our country, you got to go back. Obey the law and go back. We are going to secure that border under President Trump's leadership, we're going to stop the poison fentanyl that's coming into our country, and we're going to make America safe for Americans again, not the drug cartels and the criminals. (22:34) Now, I mentioned that my own mom struggled with addiction for a big chunk of my life, and I stand here and I'm very proud to say, and I don't know if you saw this at the RNC Convention, but she had a really lovely moment. Mom has been clean and sober for almost 10 years. It'll be 10 years in January. Thank you. But I got to be honest with you, if the same poison that's coming across the border now was coming across the border 20 years ago, I don't know that I would've gotten a second chance with my mother. (23:09) There are a lot of families all across this country who're not getting second chances with their loved ones because the cartels are bringing poison across this country at a level we have never seen. We have got to shut that border down, make America safe again. It's common sense, it's not radical, and we're going to do it under President Donald Trump's leadership. (23:42) Now, I don't know if any of you watched the RNC Convention, did you? Went pretty well, right? But something happened. There was a speaker at the RNC Convention, she spoke about her 15-year-old son who had taken one pill under peer pressure and it happened to be laced with fentanyl, and it took his life. Isn't that so sad? A handsome, gorgeous little boy, one mistake, and now his mother will mourn him for the rest of her life. That is the fruit of Joe Biden's open border, and I'm sick of it. (24:20) I'm sick of allowing this stuff into our country. I heard people say, after this woman gave her speech, really disgraceful discussing, people say well, maybe he shouldn't have taken that pill to begin with. I've got three little kids myself. I've got a 7-year-old, a 4-year-old, and a 2-year-old, and we all know kids make mistakes. I want to grow up in a country, I want them to grow up in a country where a simple childly mistake doesn't cost our kids their lives. (24:57) I want to grow up and I want my children to grow up in a country where they can work a good job whether they went to college or didn't go to college. They can work in a manufacturing economy where we make things with our own hands and we do it with American workers. I want my children to grow up in a world where they go to school and they learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, not indoctrination from crazy progressives who want to talk about sex in the classroom instead education. (25:49) I want my kids to grow up in a country where the police are respected and they're empowered to keep our children safe and secure in their own neighborhoods. I want my children to grow up in a country where the leaders of this country put their citizens first, and I want my children to grow up in that country, and the only way it's going to happen if we make better decisions in Washington D.C, we have got to send Donald J. Trump back to the White House to do all these things and so much more. (26:56) My friends, I'm so grateful to be here with you today. I'm grateful to stand on this stage. I'm grateful for the incredible opportunities that this country has afforded me, and I'm grateful to be President Donald J. Trump's running mate.

JD! JD! JD! JD! JD!

We've got an incredible opportunity here. We've got an opportunity to win races up and down the ballot, we have the opportunity to reestablish American energy dominance, restore American manufacturing, defeat this crazy inflation, and kick the drug cartels the hell out of our country. (27:54) To everybody listening, certainly to Radford, Virginia, but all across this commonwealth and forgotten communities in Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, I make this very simple promise to you. I will fight, President Trump will fight, we will fight every single day to restore an America that works for you, for your children, and for your grandchildren. (28:41) We will fight to bring down the cost of groceries and housing. Isn't it a shame that our young people can't afford to buy a home in Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's economy? We'll fight to bring down the cost of energy, we'll fight to close the border, we'll fight to get this fentanyl out of our communities. We will do all of these things, but the only way to do it is to reelect President Donald J. Trump, President of the United States. Let's get to work, my friends. Let's do it together. I know that we can. Thank you all. God bless you, and God bless America.