Vance Speaks at Religious Event

Let the rest of the world help us for a change, and let's rebuild America first. Our Highways and bridges are falling apart.

Hello. Well, how are we doing? I don't know which microphone to use here. Is this one on? Hello? There we go. All right. First of all, it is great to be in the state of North Carolina. It is great to be in a state that I think we're going to carry, and carry in a big way, and send Donald Trump to the White House. So I know we've got a lot of great religious leaders here from all over the state of North Carolina. And before we get started here, I just want to call attention to something that you probably have seen in the news, which is that a Charlotte police officer was seriously injured in a traffic incident last night. And I know we're all people of prayer in this room, so I'd ask us all to take, let's just take a moment of silence actually, and pray for the officer's full and complete recovery. And let's do that right now. (01:24) Thank you all for that. And I want to just, while we're on the message of officers getting unnecessarily injured, we know we had a lot of police officers all across the city of Charlotte, but all across the state of North Carolina in our country, who fight and serve every single day to keep our communities safe. Frankly, in an environment that has gotten a lot more dangerous, thanks to the open border policies of the last three years. And we want to send a message, loud and clear. We will always back the blue in this country. Donald Trump and I will always serve our police officers. Thank you. So I want to recognize a few VIPs here. First of all, you guys just heard from the great RNC chair Michael Whatley. He's doing a great job of the RNC. Thank you, Michael, wherever you are. I think he's backstage now. We're also joined by Congressman Greg Murphy, where is Greg at? Greg, thank you so much for being here. We've got Republican nominee for North Carolina Attorney General, one of the great people in Washington. We're sad to lose them, but the federal government's loss is going to be the gain to the people in North Carolina. Dan Bishop, one of my favorite people in Washington. Dan, thank you, man. (02:50) And then, we've also got Congressional candidate Mark Harris. Mark, please stand up and say hello. A lot of good people. We had a lot of good people in the state of North Carolina who are serving this state, serving our nation, and we're grateful to them. But we're only going to get them across the finish line if every single one of us do what we need to do to win this race, to save our country, and to take Washington back for the American people, and the people of this great state. So I want to talk just a little bit about my faith, because I know that everybody here is a person of faith or you wouldn't have come to this particular event. And I actually was a person who was raised in a Christian household, by a grandmother who loved me deeply and took care of me, because my own mother was unable to take care of me, because my mom struggled with opioid addiction for a big chunk of my early life. (03:45) And you know, Mamaw was one of these people who, despite the fact that she really loved the Lord and she took her Christian faith very seriously. I mean, she was a woman who hadn't graduated from high school, much less college, but she thought more about what her faith required than any person I have met before or since. But Mamaw wasn't a regular churchgoer. Sometimes we'd go to church, most of the time we'd watch Trinity Broadcasting Network at home on Sunday. (04:10) And one of the things that we watched a lot of growing up is a lot of Billy Graham Revivals. And it's a very cool thing for me personally, because we started the day here in North Carolina, visiting the gravesite of Billy Graham, just of course, probably 15 miles from here. And it's unbelievable, because one of the people who actually helped me encounter the Christian faith for the first time, is Billy Graham with my grandmother. And I just say, you guys have a great tradition of faith and service here in the Charlotte area. Billy Graham's a great one, but there are a lot of great ones just in this room. So thank you. (04:47) And you know, Mamaw was, that's what I called my grandmother. I called her Mamaw. She was a woman of many contrasts. She was a very firm disciplinarian, but she also gave me a loving and stable home, which we know all children ultimately need. She was, again, a woman of very deep and profound Christian faith. She also really loved the F word. And both of those things could coexist within Mamaw at the same time. And I will tell you, of all the VIPs I am happy to have here, the one that I'm most glad to have is my lovely wife Usha. And I love being on the campaign trail with my wife. It's fun to do this as a team. We do everything as a team, but this one in particular has been a great joy for me. But I think that the one thing that my wife would change about me is that sometimes I talk a little bit like my Mamaw does. And the problem is, we've got a seven-year-old, a four-year-old and a two-year-old. And so, they start to talk like their daddy does. (05:54) And we are in a house of worship, so I will not repeat some of the things that have come out of the mouth of my four-year-old in the last few weeks. But honey, I promise you, I'll honor the curse jar. I'll get better, and the kids will stop talking like me and stop talking like Mamaw. And that's going to be a very, very good thing for our family. But also a good thing on the campaign trail, because sometimes we have a bunch of reporters back there, and this is not a cuss word, but I sometimes worry that one of my kids is going to look at the media and says, "Daddy, is that the fake news?" So I got to be a little bit more filtered. (06:39) I got to be a little bit more filtered. And like I said, honey, I'm going to commit to that work every single day. Now, I think like a lot of young people and a lot of people who were raised in the Christian faith, I started about the time that I was towards the end of my Marine Corps service, started to feel like I was smarter than the woman who raised me and that I knew things that she didn't do. I think a lot of 21-year-old kids, they get this idea that they know everything and they forget the wisdom of prior generations. And that was certainly me when it came to my faith. And so, by the time that I got out of the Marine Corps, which was in 2007 and went to college, I really considered myself a non-believer. I might've even called myself an atheist from time to time, because I sort of assumed that Mamaw was wrong, and that the only people who believed that what she believed were superstitious and backwards. (07:29) And I was arrogant. There was an arrogance there. And one of the things that really led me back to the Lord is a recognition that I didn't know everything, and that there was some wisdom, even though my grandmother was not an educated woman, she was a very brilliant woman. And there was a lot of wisdom in the faith that I had discarded as a young man. In particular, when I met and fell in love with my wife Usha, and I started to think about the big questions, not about getting more education credentials or about where I was going to work, or trying to make more money. When I started thinking about the important stuff, like what kind of a father did I want to become, and what kind of a husband did I want to be to this lovely person who I'd fallen madly in love with? (08:09) That led me back to the Lord, because I found the answers in the Christian faith, in my grandmother, for what I needed to be as a husband and father. And that recognition that God didn't care about how much money I made, God didn't care about where I went to school. God didn't care if I wrote a bestselling book or ran for Vice President, but God really did want me to be a virtuous husband and a virtuous father. And that made me realize that the Christian faith that I had discarded was in fact the best solution to the problems that confronted me as a young man. And that got me back on the journey to my faith and my wife, despite not being a Christian herself, not growing up in a Christian household, was incredibly supportive. And eventually, I was actually, in 2019, I was baptized for the first time. And that was... (09:09) And I tell you that story in part so a little bit more about this guy who's standing up here asking you to support him to be Vice President of the United States, but also because I do think that there is a lot of wisdom in the Christian faith and in the Christian tradition, a lot of solutions to the problems that confront our country. And I think we as Christians are called to be a light in a dark place. And unfortunately, there is a lot of leadership coming from Washington that is in a very, very dark place. And we are called to be the light that counteracts it. And I think in some ways this election is fundamentally about whether Christians are going to be allowed to live our faith, whether Christians are going to be allowed to advocate for our principles, and whether Christians are going to be able to raise our children and build communities that are consistent with our values. (09:57) And I don't think that's an overstatement. When I was asked by Donald Trump to be his running mate, and it was a crazy moment for us and our family, I remember the President called me on the Monday of the RNC, and that was the deadline for him to make a decision. He had to make the decision on Monday. And he called me probably about one o'clock on Monday. And I don't answer the phone, of course, the most important phone call in my life. And I don't answer the phone, and I get a text message from a campaign staffer. It says, "You just missed a very important phone call." (10:30) So I think, "Oh." (10:32) Call him back. He answers the phone, says, "JD, you missed a very important phone call, and now I might have to pick somebody else." (10:42) So I almost have a heart attack right there in Milwaukee. Our flight had just landed in Milwaukee for the RNC convention, and then the President proceeds to ask me to be his Vice Presidential running mate. And then hysterically, here's my seven-year-old son in the background, and puts my seven-year-old son on the phone, so that he can read the statement that he's about to put out on social media. Of course, my seven-year-old has no idea what's going on. So the President of the United States is talking to my seven-year-old Ewan. He's like, "Ewan, what do you think about this statement?" (11:11) And Ewan's like, "Oh, it sounds pretty good." (11:13) Has no idea he's talking to, he has no idea what's going on. But of course, our lives changed in that moment, but I want to take it just a couple of days forward from that. And I was laying in bed Tuesday night, probably three in the morning, and I'm unable to sleep. And I think all of us have had this moment, right? We've got something big going on in our lives. We're feeling that pressure, but we're also feeling that excitement. And I was just unable to sleep. And I remember thinking to myself and getting kind of stressed out about the fact that I couldn't sleep, because I've got the most important speech on Wednesday of my entire life, and here I am unable to fall asleep, and I'm just worried that I'm going to go out there and make a complete idiot of myself, because I don't have enough sleep. And I remember just laying there

... in the bed, Ushua sleeping soundly next to me, and I just say, "Lord Jesus, please let me go to sleep." And the last thing that I remember was that prayer and I woke up feeling great five hours later. (12:20) One of my favorite theologians is a guy... is a movie character played by Samuel L. Jackson in the movie Pulp Fiction. You ever seen that movie? Well, if you haven't seen that movie, it's very R-rated, but Samuel L. Jackson is almost shot in that movie and he's a gangster and he basically decides because he believes that God has saved him from getting shot, that he's not going to be a gangster anymore. And I'm going to butcher what he says exactly when he's talking to his friend, his fellow gangster, who's like, "That was not a miracle. That was just something that happened." (12:55) And I think that exemplifies the debate that we sometimes have, those of us who are spiritual people, who are people of faith, have with non-believers is we see the work of God in a lot of what's going on in the world, and they just see random coincidence. And so he says to his friend, who just sees random coincidence, said, "Look, whether this was an according-to-Hoyle miracle is insignificant. There are a lot of things that happen that people think are miraculous. God finds my car keys, God changes Coke to Pepsi. But what is significant is that I felt the touch of God." And I remember feeling in that moment, even though, yeah, okay, I said a prayer and I went to sleep, but I felt the touch of God. And that's what makes it a miracle to me. And I think that what we have to think about in this election is we have to remind our fellow Americans, whether they're believers or not, that the touch of God is still a very real thing in this country, and we have to make people see it, feel it, and experience it every single day. So for that to happen and for us to be, I think real soldiers for our faith, we've got to get out there and talk about it. But we've also got to get out there and make the case to people, whether they're secular or religious, whether they're people of faith or nonbelievers, we've got to get out there and we've got to make people see that this election, I really think will determine the course of religious liberty in our country. (14:28) Because when we talk, my friends, about persuading people or when we go and knock on doors or talk to people about our faith, or when we try to raise our children to share our values, what we're really doing is living in a country that is blessed with religious liberty. And of course you wouldn't know it according to the reports of the mainstream media, but I believe the most persecuted faith in the world today is the Christian faith. (14:55) There are places all over the world... I mean, there are hundreds of millions of Christians who are living under threat of violence right now because they live their faith. So don't believe that it can't happen here. If it can happen anywhere, then it can happen anywhere else. And I think that we're living through a time where we have the biggest opponents of religious liberty and people of faith running for office that we have seen anywhere in my life. And I don't like to say that, and I wish that it weren't so, but you just have to look at the record. I want to talk a little bit about that record. (15:29) But when we went and visited the Billy Graham Library today and we went and saw his grave site, you know what really jumped out at me, is that over 50 years Republican or Democrat, Billy Graham advised presidents, he prayed with presidents, he worked with presidents because while we might disagree about things like tax policy, or we might disagree about things like which regulations are going to best promote the public safety, we all agreed that people of faith deserve to have a place and a voice in this country. And that has changed. (16:07) Now, let's just run through a number of ways in which the Kamala Harris administration has been a chief opponent of freedom of conscience, of free speech, and of religious liberty in this country. (16:20) Number one, Kamala Harris, despite the fact that she says that she stands for working people, despite the fact that her running mate has the slogan, "We believe in America that people ought to mind their own business," both of them pursued policies that would have people fired for refusing to take the COVID vaccine shot. Remember that? (16:47) And there are a lot of people, a lot of military veterans, a lot of nurses in our hospitals at a time of a terrible healthcare and hospital shortage, a lot of workers, millions of them across this country who felt the pressure of Kamala Harris's war on freedom of conscience and on bodily autonomy when it came to that vaccine. (17:07) So this is not an abstraction. This is not just a difference of what two candidates are proposing. This is a difference between two candidates and their records because whether you believe that you should take the COVID vaccine or not, Donald Trump and I believe that is your decision, and you shouldn't be fired for making a decision according to your conscience. Now, I believe that the Republican Party is the pro-life party. We're going to talk a little bit more about freedom of conscience. Now we're the pro-life party because we believe that every life is precious from the moment of beginning until the moment of natural death. That is our belief as Republicans. And by the way, we're going to have disagreements from time to time about how best to advocate for all of the most vulnerable people in our society. But I think that is a fundamental principle of the Republican Party ,and it will stay that way. (18:05) But Kamala Harris is not just disagreeing with us on the particulars of public policy, she is trying to throw people in prison who share our values for having the audacity to advocate for those values in the public space. (18:20) Now, we saw a couple of years ago a pro-life Catholic father of seven treated like a common thug in his own home for daring to go out and advocate for the unborn. And I think our message to Kamala Harris is, look, we welcome disagreement on the question of how best to protect life, we can have that debate, but we can only have the debate if we have a president who believes in the First Amendment. We shouldn't be throwing anybody in jail for pro-life advocacy. We ought to be celebrating their exercise of their rights. Now, we possibly forget a few years ago, now Kamala Harris would love for you to forget that her administration has been the biggest advocate of letting progressives take over the public schools in this country's history. Now, I happen to believe that whether you're going to a private school or a public school, parents ought to be able to raise their kids according to their values, and let the... let the parents determine the values, let parents impart morals onto their children. And why don't the teachers teach reading, writing, and arithmetic? Which by the way, is what most teachers want to do. (19:53) I'll never forget this. I was talking to... this is during my Senate race, and I was talking to somebody in Ohio, but she had actually been a teacher in North Carolina when there was the big debate about whether we were going to let biological males in girls bathrooms. That was a big debate in the state of North Carolina a few years ago. Of course, it's still a live debate all across our country. As crazy as it is to me, we want to protect our young girls. And part of the way you protect them is to ensure that sex predators are not allowed in the restrooms. Very common sense. (20:23) But she was the voter of mine, and she was much more socially moderate. She actually came up to me and said, "Look, I actually didn't have a strong view on that particular issue. In fact, I actually, if anything, probably disagreed with your perspective on it." (20:39) But she was voting for me for a whole host of reasons. But she made an observation that before she had moved, that what that policy had done, when the federal government orders progressive politics into our local public schools, even if she disagreed with the federal government on that issue, she didn't like being deputized by the federal government against the parents in her school district. (21:04) And I thought that was really interesting that even if she agreed with them on a particular issue, she didn't want to be made to go to war with the values of the parents in her school district. (21:13) And I happen to believe, and I think this is a core part of Christian social teaching in our country, is that we want to build strong communities. We want to build strong neighborhoods, and we want to build strong families. But you can't have strong neighborhoods and strong communities if the federal government is ordering teachers to do something against the will of parents. (21:40) So Donald Trump and I promise a federal government that will be allies of parents in teaching their children their values, and also allies of parents and teachers who just want to teach kids reading, arithmetic, and writing at school, let the progressive politics stay out of the classroom. Now, not only did Kamala Harris pursue a lot of this ridiculous progressive policy in the classroom, but she decided to weaponize the federal government against any parent who dared to speak up. Now, we remember, this was a few years ago, and Kamala Harris would love people to forget about it because it's politically damaging for her, but they were labeling parents who are going to school board meetings to raise their voice, "Domestic terrorists in their own country." (22:28) Donald Trump and I believe that if you're going to a school board meeting to speak your voice, you are a patriot and not a domestic terrorist. And you ought to have a federal government that stands up for you. (22:47) And if you look on issue after issue after issue Tim Walz, as governor of Minnesota, pursued legislation that one, would do abortion right up to the moment of birth, even to the point where doctors wouldn't be required to provide life-saving care to a baby who survived a botched abortion. And we can disagree about abortion policy, but that is just sick. That is just sick. Nobody like that should be anywhere near the Oval Office. (23:21) But then you talk about Kamala Harris pursuing policy after policy after policy to censor Christians, to silence people, to prevent them from exercising their rights. And I think the contrast in this election couldn't be any more clear, whether you're a person of faith or not, whether you're a Christian, a Jew, or any other faith, Donald Trump and I believe the First Amendment protects your right to live your faith as you see fit, and raise your children in the values that matter to you. (23:56) And Kamala Harris would rather censor you, rather silence you. And

And in the case sometimes of some of these crazy transgender bills, where you see children taken from their parents because their parents won't consent to life-altering gender reassignment surgery. We are the party of conscience. We are the party of, you get to raise your children as you see fit. And by the way, we are the party of common sense. And all Christians, I think need to unite behind this ticket. Now, the president, it's interesting, the president called me about... Well, what is today? Monday. He called me. By the way, when you're running for vice president, you don't know what day it ever is. It's actually amazing I came up with Monday so quickly because half the time, I really don't know what day of the week it is. But eight days ago, the President called me and he told me that he had been... They had taken another assassination attempt at him. And of course my first reaction was disbelief. But the first thing that I said is, "Sir, are you okay?" Not just physically, are you okay? But that's a traumatic thing to go through. And he's now gone through it twice in as many months. And I'll tell you, Donald Trump, I really believe when you see that clip of an assassin's bullet missing him by just a few millimeters, I believe that Donald Trump is here by the grace of God, and all of us should be grateful for it. (25:27) But of course, the President, when he called me, he was totally fine. I mean, I think I was more shaken up, even though I was sitting in my home safely in Cincinnati, Ohio, I think I was more shaken up by it than the President. And I said, "Sir, are you okay?" And he responds, "Yeah, I'm doing fine, but I'm kind of mad because I was on the sixth hole and I was about to make a birdie and they wouldn't let me finish." And yeah, I chuckled a little bit, but then I thought to myself, isn't this the kind of person that we want to be the President of the United States. A person who can literally take a bullet, stand up and raise his fist in defiance. A person who's more worried about missing a birdie putt than he is about an assassin's attempt on his own life. Because that is the definition of courage under fire. And Donald Trump has it in spades. Because look, you're going to disagree with us from time to time. I think in this room we probably agree on 95% of issues, but you're not always going to agree with even your favorite politician in the whole world. But what we need in office is not just a person who has the right ideas on public policy, or who substantively agrees with us more than the other candidate. What we most need in the Oval Office is somebody who shows courage and grace under fire because we know my friends, we know that eventually some crisis is going to break out somewhere in the world. And we know that the President of the United States is going to be the person who gets the phone call when that crisis breaks out. Who do we want representing the American people and fighting for our interests? Kamala Harris, who's afraid of the American media or Donald Trump, who can take an assassin's bullet in stride and get back to work the very next day? (27:47) So while we may not always agree on every issue, I think it's so important that we win this race and reject the politics of censorship, violation of people's rights of conscience and violation of Christians' right to raise their children as they see fit. I think we need to send a message, from this room, from the entire state of North Carolina to Kamala Harris that we reject the politics that tells people that Christians can't live their values. We reject the politics that tries to silence people. We reject the politics that tries to fire people for not wanting to take a COVID shot. We reject the broken politics of Kamala Harris, and we're going to send her back to San Francisco where she belongs. So, normally at these events, whenever I go out and talk to people, I always try to talk to the media afterwards. We're actually running a little bit behind schedule. And so I'm just going to say a few more things, I want to talk about Get Out The Vote and how all of you can play a major role. And then I want to move on. But the reason why Get Out The Vote is so important, especially with Christians, especially with people of faith, is because the media in this election has shown a willingness to completely cover for Kamala Harris' radical record. Now, we talked about a lot of issues that are important for people of religious faith, of course, obviously so, we're in a church talking about religious liberty. But let's talk about, Christians care about the economy, of course, because Christians believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, no child should go hungry and no family should be unable to provide the basic necessities of life. (29:57) But one of the things that we're seeing is under Kamala Harris' policies, a lot of people are really, really unable to live a good life. And I think the media ought to talk about that more and maybe even ask her some questions about why Kamala Harris said that she wanted to defund the police, but now she doesn't. Or why she said that she wanted to end all deportations, but now she doesn't. Or why she said she wanted to end fracking and offshore drilling, but now she allegedly doesn't. Because on all of these issues, what her actual policies have done have caused real suffering all over the United States of America. We want American children to be able to have a nice meal with their families. That's harder, because Kamala Harris made grocery prices 25% higher. We want everybody, rich or poor to be able to turn on their heat in the middle of a cold winter night. But that's become harder because energy is 40% more expensive, thanks to Kamala Harris' policies. (30:58) We want our young people and our beautiful families to be able to afford the American dream of home ownership, but that's harder because Kamala Harris' policies. And most importantly, at least to me, is that we want this country, we want the American dream to be an American dream of second chances. Because as I told you, my mom struggled with addiction for most of my life. And now I'm proud to say by the grace of God, she has been clean and sober for nearly 10 years, and we're so proud of her and so grateful to her. (31:29) But I remember being a teenager, and I remember praying at my mom's hospital bed because she had taken something that we didn't even know what it was, and we were worried she was never going to wake up. I think anybody who knows anyone who suffered from addiction, knows this combination of hope, but also frustration with anybody that's dealing with it. Because at the same time that I'm mad at Mom for taking those drugs in the first place, I'm just praying, "Lord Jesus, please let her wake up. Let this mistake not be the one that takes her life." (32:10) And for me, those prayers were answered, and I'm so grateful for it. And I remember thinking when my mom was in the depths of addiction, that I wanted to be a father more than anything else. I wanted to be a good husband and a good father. Thinking to myself, my mom, as smart and as funny as she is, because of this terrible addiction, she's never going to meet her grandchildren. She'll never meet my kids. And now I sit here and I've got a seven-year-old, a four-year-old, and a two-year-old, and she's the best grandma to those grandbabies that they could ever ask for. It's an amazing thing. (32:46) So we got that second chance with Mom. She spoils them a little bit, but the grandmas in the room will know that's just par for the course. But we got that second chance with Mom. And I believe that the reason we got that second chance is because the poison that's coming across the border in 2024 is not the poison that was coming across, thank God 15 years ago. And to Kamala Harris, who has increasingly taken this campaign messaging that if you dare complain about the border, you're a racist or a bad person. Even though a lot of the people most frustrated by her border policies are Black, white, brown and everything else. She attacks people for daring to complain about her failures. But we don't believe that we need a southern border because we hate anybody. We believe we need a southern border because we love the citizens of our own country and we want them to have second chances. And that has got to happen. (33:41) And I think the audacity for them to say that we're bad people for caring about the border, to say that we want to separate families, when thanks to Kamala Harris' policies, there are 325,000, that is not an exaggeration. 325,000 children that are missing in this country right now, because Kamala Harris has allowed the drug cartels to take over the southern border of this country. And we know, in a lot of your industries, and a lot of the work that you do in your churches addresses and helps these people every single day. I know it. We know that a lot of these poor children have been sex trafficked. A lot of them have been used in drug trafficking. A lot of these innocent young girls are dealing with horrors that are, thank God, unimaginable for most American citizens. And we want to keep it unimaginable by reimposing strong border policies that saves the lives of those children, but saves the innocence of American citizens and the families that they're raising right here at home. It's very simple. (34:48) But we are not going to do that. We're not going to get that chance to improve this country and to solve the people's problems unless we win. But I got some good news for you. 43 days from now, we are going to do exactly that. We're going to win the state of North Carolina and turn the entire country red. (35:28) Somebody back here has a sign "The outlaw and the hillbilly." I like that. I like that. But look, we're not going to do it unless we work our tails off. Because as confident as I am that if the election were held today, we would win. And the election, of course, is going to be held on November 5th, and we're going to win then. But my friends, it is tight and there's a lot that needs to happen between now and then to ensure that we win this race for the American people. But we're never going to get a fair shake from the media,

... And we're never going to get a fair shake, of course, from the Democratic operatives but of course, I repeat myself because the Democratic operatives in the media very often one and the same, but what we do have is the power of our voice and the power of the American people. (36:16) For people of faith in particular, you all know this better than I do, but every single day we see people in church who are devoted to their families, who love their nation, who love the Lord but when it comes to election day, they just don't show up because they say politics doesn't matter. They don't care about politics. My friends, when you've got Kamala Harris, the biggest threat to religious liberty we have had in at least a generation, you better care about politics because Kamala Harris's politics... They care about you. It's very simple. (36:54) What we've got to do is use our voice, use our platform, use our pulpit, use the connections that we have to make sure that people of faith get out there and reject the Kamala Harris politics that is an assault on religious liberty and parental rights. The only way that we're going to do that is if you talk to people. Every single day over the next 43 days, I want you to do everything that you can to get out there and fight for this country and make sure people get out to vote. (37:24) I'm going to make two very specific requests. Now, the first is, if you would, stand up and take out your phones. Everybody here, stand up, take out your phones. All of us, we use social media, whether it's X, or Facebook, or Instagram, or whatever social media network you use. What I want you to do, whether you take a selfie or you take a photo of me, take a photo right now, and here's what I want you to do with that photo. (37:50) I want you to post it on whatever social media you use, and I want you to tell people why you're voting for Donald Trump in November because even though they're not going to tell the full story of what happened here today, and even though we're not always going to be able to get our message out through the left wing media, we can get our message out through one another. Please get out there, talk to as many people as you can, talk to them at church, talk to them on social media, make the case for Donald Trump, and we will win. (38:21) Now, the second thing I want you to do, and I want to read this, I want to make sure I get this right. I think it's swampthevote.com. I want you to go to that website swampthevote.com because that has a lot of good information and gives you an ability to sign up and participate in what we have going on. It is shocking. Millions of church-going Christians will not vote in the 2024 election unless we convince them to. (38:51) I have a colleague of mine, he loves to say, when he's standing in front of a big crowd like this, he'll say, "Well, we need to make sure and get out there and vote 10 times." That'll make everybody uncomfortable because they'll say, "Well, we follow the law, you can only vote once, legally," but what he means is vote 10 times the legal way. The way you do that is you take yourself to the polls and then you get nine friends and family to go to the polls with you. (39:15) Here's another thing that you may not realize. I talk to a lot of people of course, I'm running for Vice President of the United States, but I talk to many people who will say... If I talk to 100 Trump voters, 95 of them will say, "I voted for Donald Trump in 2020," but five of them will say, "I wanted to vote for Donald Trump in 2020, but something came up." My son got sick and I had to get him home and take him to the doctor, or something happened with mom, I had to take her to surgery, or maybe I just had a late day at work and I couldn't get out there and cast my ballot. (39:47) Look, I don't love that this country has gone from election day to election season, but it is what it is and we got to play by the rules that are set. Use early voting, use mail-in voting, use voting on election day, whatever you can to get out there and make sure that if 100 people plan to vote for Donald Trump, 100 people actually get out there and do vote for Donald Trump. (40:13) I'll leave you with just this final thought, my friends. One of my dear friends, who he actually was very influential in me returning to my faith, I remember before I ran for Senate, this was probably February of 2021 when I was thinking about running for Senate, I had never participated in the political process, and I was talking to my good buddy and I said, "Man, there's so much that's wrong with this country." (40:35) I was frustrated with so much, and I went through at the time, some of the big corporations in Georgia were going after the state for passing very moderate voter ID laws and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were out there arresting pro-life Catholic fathers of seven. I was so frustrated, just running through the litany of things that were going on in this country that I was frustrated by. (40:58) He snapped me out of it because you know what I was doing? There's a technical term for it, whining. I was whining, and he snapped me out of it. He said, "Yes, JD, you're right. There are all these problems and all these issues, but despair is a sin." I thought a lot about that over the last few years. I talk to a lot of people and I talk to a lot of Christians, and I think we're all good people, but I do think that sometimes we Christians give to this idea that things have gotten so bad under Kamala Harris's policies that we should despair. (41:34) I'll tell you what my friend told me almost four years ago. Despair is a sin. They want us despairing, they want us depressed, they want us disconnected from this political process, but our faith is in the Lord God Almighty and our God is a God of hope, so let's go win this thing and let's do it together. God bless you guys, and thanks for having me.

We're going to wrap this night the same way that we started it, in prayer. Can we do that? Can you stretch your hands out in faith?

Come on, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for tonight. Thank you for just Senator Vance and for his willingness to stand and fight, Father, alongside President Trump and to fight for our country, fight for the freedoms that come directly from you since the beginning of time, God. We understand tonight that all authority comes from heaven, Father.

Yes.

Tonight, we pray that, God, just like your word says, if we would humble ourselves, if we would pray and seek your face, if we would turn from our wicked ways, that you would hear and you would come back and save our land. Father, you would heal our land. Right now, we're praying that you would come back and heal us, Father. (43:12) Father, I pray protection over Senator Vance and his campaign, every person, Father, not a hair on his head would be harmed, Father. We thank you tonight for every soul, every household that's represented here. Let us go out encouraged and strengthened in Jesus Christ to fight for this nation that's under God. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Awesome. You'll see some calls to action come up on the screen, certainly Senator Vance talked about that, but make sure you register to vote and more importantly, make sure that you exercise that right and that civic duty to cast your ballot on election day. (43:52) You'll see those come up here. Take a picture of that, there's some websites you can go to if you're looking to be a captain within your church, or if you want to be part of the Trump campaign, there's information there. Thank you all for attending tonight. Be safe, go home, be with your families, and let's fight for this nation.