FULL REMARKS | JD Vance speaks in Toledo Thursday

TOLEDO, Ohio — Vice President JD Vance visited the Glass City Thursday morning, where he delivered remarks emphasizing a variety of topics, including wages, affordability, immigration and taxes. 

RELATED: Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks in Toledo | BLOG

Below is a full transcript of Vance’s speech, as well as remarks from the Republican leaders who accompanied him, which were delivered in the Midwest Rail terminal in east Toledo. 

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome John Marshall, senior pastor of Hope Baptist Church.

Let’s bow our heads in prayer. Father in Heaven, we’re thankful today for the freedom we have to assemble. We are thankful for the law enforcement that we have here today, we ask that you would encourage and strengthen them in their jobs. We do ask that you would protect our leaders. We’re so thankful for our President, Vice President, our national and state and local leaders. We ask that you would give them wisdom. They have a very difficult job.

I pray you to strengthen them, encourage them, give them courage. Lord, as we gather here today to, uh, talk about small business and entrepreneurship here in Northwest Ohio, we recognize that the idea of hard work comes from you. Lord, you worked six days and rested on the seventh. You said if any should not work, neither should he eat. Lord, I pray that the hardworking men and women that are represented here today would be rewarded with a revitalized area or that Toledo would continue to move forward in progress. I ask that you would help those who work hard to have not only sweat on their face but a smile. We ask that as well, we would balance our hard work and entrepreneurship with generosity.

Lord, you said that the love of money is the root of all evil, so may we not be greedy but grateful. And as we value hard work, And the reward that comes from it. Help us to remember that we can’t take our stuff to the next world. There’s never a U-Haul behind a hearse. Lord, you said, what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? I thank you. I thank you today.

That there’s no amount of human effort that can purchase an entrance to Heaven. Or that even though the wages of sin is death, The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And it it is in his name, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, that we ask these things. Amen.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Barbara Orange, chairwoman of the Lucas County Republican Party.

Good morning, everyone. If you would please rise and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. 

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,

And to the Republic for which it stands, 

Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Gina Campbell, US Army veteran. God bless America.

O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light, 

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming, 

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, 

O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? 

And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, 

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; 

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave 

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Jim Brennan, owner of Brennan Equipment Services.

Well, good morning I’m Jim Brennan, our company’s Brennan Equipment Services, and we are proud partners with Ironville and Midwest Terminals in business and many other things. This is exhibit A of what we provide for the fine people here, and I’d like to give a special shout out to some of the Brennan folks. We’ve got Bill Smith, raise your hand, please. Yo, Bob Hartman.

All right, and out here, Ben Dewitt. Welcome Eric, Eric Huffman, excellent, excellent, thanks guys for coming. So our economy is great. Third quarter gross domestic product was 4.3%. That is a wonderful number.

Alright. So confidence is the foundation of our economy. President Trump and Vice President Vance invoke great confidence. Both are very successful private sector businessmen. They know what it takes to run a great economy, and we’re seeing that happen. Here are some of the accomplishments.

The Big Beautiful Bill made the 2017 tax cuts permanent, so we know what’s out there. All right. No tax on overtime is a very big deal. It’s a huge tax cut. It is, uh, it is new to us in 2025. My understanding is that it will will create tremendous money back in April and uh should help stimulate the economy as well but it’s a wonderful thing and we thank President Trump for that. We’ve also made big cuts in regulations, which is from a business standpoint, that’s wonderful. We want the government to stay away. We want to be able to run the show and do the right thing.

We’ve opened up all forms of energy production for dependable, cheap power, and that is very, very important, the key being dependable. The wind does not blow all the time. We’ve canceled the electric car mandate. Yeah, that is very cool. All right, so inflation is 2.7% annual. In 2022, it was 9.1%. What a big deal that is. You think that helps out with the, uh, lower prices, bigger paychecks, right? Absolutely. So all actions put us on a great track for 2026 and beyond.

There’s also an additional $19 billion in investment commitments that President Trump has received from other countries, other companies. And I don’t know about you. But I think we really can’t imagine what that’s going to look like when that all starts flowing through the economy. I know one thing though. I know two things. It will be very big and very beautiful.

So lower prices, bigger paychecks are the theme. We’ll get there. Thank you very much for having us. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Vivek Ramaswamy.

Thank you, thank you, I appreciate the warm welcome, everybody. It’s a, it’s a great morning. Thank you for coming out on an early morning like this on a cold day. Give yourselves a round of applause in Toledo. Welcome our vice president here to Northwest Ohio. And I want to uh congratulate him. I hope several of us do today on his newly announced fourth child, his fourth kid and a son coming up. Let’s give JD a round of applause for that. And, and it, uh, resonates deeply with me and with my wife.

We were texting with him and his family because we are expecting our first daughter in about 2 weeks and uh. I’ve got my phone on, so if I have to run off stage, you’ll know, you’ll know what the what the reason was, but I bring that up because I know that is why we are both in this. I speak for JD and myself. We’re young fathers and we’re in this for our kids and their generation. That is our skin in the game.

And one of the things that I hope to do as governor of this state with your help when we get there is to restore and revive civic education in our young people that teach our young people, that next generation. To be proud of our country, to teach them why we are the greatest nation known to the history of mankind, right here in the United States of America.

And to also teach them in Ohio schools why Ohio was a state that allowed America to be that top state in the country and in the world. Think about our state, look at where we are today near Toledo. Just a half century ago, at the turn of the last century, we were the leaders of the first industrial revolution. Toledo was the glass capital of the world. Akron was the rubber capital. Youngstown and Cleveland, where I was last week, were the steel production capitals of the Western Hemisphere.

Dayton led in computing. My hometown of Cincinnati was known around the world as the Queen City. That’s who we were as a state, and there’s a special thing that happens when you’re a young person who grows up in that state, at the heart of the greatest nation known in the history of man. As a young person, you gained the self-confidence to achieve the things that you were taught to believe were impossible.

It’s not an accident that that was the same Ohio that raised Neil Armstrong to become the first man in human history to walk on the moon, born, raised, living right here in Ohio as he did it, the same Ohio that raised John Glenn, the first American to make it into orbit around the Earth, born, raised, living in Ohio as he did it. The same Ohio that raised the Wright brothers, that raised Thomas Edison, that is who we were as a state and we can be that state again.

All we need is leaders who believe in us to actually get there. I know our vice president, JD Vance, an Ohio native, proudly so believes in us. I know John Husted, who you’re about to hear from, a senator representing this state, believes in us, and I will tell you that hopefully with your help as your next governor, I believe in us to be that state again, leading Ohio to represent to the country and to the world what we did back in 1950. That doesn’t mean we’re going back to 1950.

It means the Ohio of 2030 will be the Ohio that we were at the turn of the last century once again, taking back our rightful place as the top state in the country to raise a young family, to give your kids a world-class education. And to make that American dream affordable once again. That’s what’s what’s coming, coming very soon. President Trump and JD Vance, they’re doing their part, and we’re going to do our part here in Ohio.

Now I know a lot of people are struggling, especially younger people who may not be able to afford their first home, may not be able to quite get ahead with that first job in the workforce, or skeptical of that American dream, and I understand that skepticism.

But the truth of the matter is the best defense against rising grocery prices, the best defense against rising insurance premiums, which I know are hitting many of you, home insurance premiums, auto insurance premiums, the more expensive way of just living your daily life, the best defense against that is actually to put more money in your pocket to improve your after-tax take home pay, to create a regulatory environment that is so attractive and a tax environment that is so attractive here in Ohio that businesses are moving back here, back into Ohio, staying in Ohio, bringing higher paying jobs that allow you to keep more of what you earn, taking our income tax down to zero and yes, rolling back our property taxes, been the biggest property tax rollback our state will ever have seen in our history. That is what is coming soon because it is your money, not the government’s. This is how we make. The American dream more affordable again, but we have our work cut out for us this year. 2026 is not to be taken for granted.

We have a major opportunity for Ohio to be the state that leads the United States of America back to greatness, for us to be the state that Texas and Florida aspire to rather than the other way around. That’s what’s coming soon. But it will require every one of us and every one of you doing your part. You’re already doing your part by working hard every day, by caring about this country, by coming out here on an early cold morning in northwest Ohio to welcome our vice president from our great state of Ohio.

You keep doing your part. And I promise you JD Vance will do his, John Husted will do his, and I will do mine to make sure that Ohio’s best days and through Ohio, America’s best days are actually still ahead of us. Thank you for coming out today guys. God bless you and your families and our great state of Ohio. Thank you.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Senator John Husted.

Good morning everyone. All right, I am, uh. Your newest U.S., I’m actually America’s newest US senator. I’m John Husted, and guess whose job I took? JD Vance’s. I got appointed a year ago yesterday, uh, to take the seat that JD Vance had, uh, won a few years ago, but he had a new job. I don’t know if you heard about this.

He’s our vice president and uh I was so thrilled, uh, I was so thrilled when I read the news and and Vivek mentioned this that that he and Usha were gonna have a. Uh, a new baby, a fourth. I think this is like the first time since the 1870s a sitting vice president and his wife had a child in office. That’s an amazing thing, and it’s great to hear that Vivek and Apoorva are, are gonna have, a new child as well.

And it’s interesting. Tina and I are a little past the child years, all right, but we are gonna have a grandson in April, so that’s, uh, an exciting thing for us. Because it’s what it’s about, it’s about working, it’s about families, but it’s not about our families, it’s about your families. It’s about your families, uh, it’s about helping them get ahead in this world, and I know that the, by the way, last time I was here at Midwest Terminals, they let me drive a locomotive.

Alex said he’d let me drive that one if I wanted to, but I think we’ll wait till after this is all over, um. But it has been, uh, it’s been a true honor over the course of the past year to work with JD Vance, uh, under the leadership of President Trump. We are taking America back. We are moving things forward. We’re securing the border. We’re looking out for America first, aren’t we?

But I, but I remember I stood there. I got, by the way, I, it was great that I got to wait to take the oath of office after JD had been sworn in, so I got to take the oath, uh, uh, to become a US senator from JD Vance who as vice president is president of the, of the Senate, and, um, and it was a great thing because I was told that was the first time that any sitting vice president had sworn in his successor in the U.S. Senate.

That was it was quite an honor, but I knew, I knew what we were gonna do. Like I was so excited to get started because it is about working families. It it’s about America first. It’s about made in America because you can’t do made in America without Made in Ohio, because we make the things that people need to live and thrive, from the food you eat to the cars you drive, the trucks that deliver it all, the airplanes that fly, the steel, and the chips, and all the things that are part of the modern economy, you can’t supply the things that people need to live and thrive without Ohio, and a made in America policy is great for Ohio. You’re seeing companies like Stellantis and Whirlpool invest more in the Toledo area because of it. That helps companies like Jim Brennan’s and all the other small businesses that are part of that supply chain.

It’s a huge deal, but it’s not enough. We want great jobs. We want people to have great jobs, but we also want them to be able to keep more of what they earn, and that’s what the working families tax cut plan was all about. This is what the Democrats wanted. They wanted taxes to go up. They wanted to see the average family of four in Ohio get a tax hike of $3,500.

Instead, we passed the working families tax cut plan under President Trump’s leadership, JD Vance’s leadership, and what happened for the average family in Ohio? They’re gonna see a net benefit of $7,000 as a result of that passage of that plan. It’s a big difference.

No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, cutting taxes for Social Security, uh, $2,200 per child tax credit to help working families, to help them afford things like childcare and the other things that are an essential part of, of having a, uh, being part of a working family in this nation, uh, and we’re also helping people get job training. Uh, we set up a system we’re now under Pell Grants, you can get workforce training.

We’re trying to push for more apprenticeships so that people can learn and earn and not have to pay, uh, uh, the high cost of college. We’re building up career tech so that more high school students will graduate career ready and they can leave high school and go directly into a job. All of these things help build opportunity and hope for the people of our state and our nation. And that’s what’s happening.

And I’ve recently introduced the Upward Mobility Act to end the poverty trap where literally in America we pay people not to work and trap them in poverty rather than helping them earn the ability to get ahead and live their version of the American dream. And as we begin the celebration of the 250th anniversary in America, our great nation, a nation that was founded on freedom.

And the opportunity to live what we now call the American dream. We are putting the fundamentals back in place. We’re supporting working families. We’re doing made in America-first policies. It’s driving more investment back home to help put more people to work, to see their wages rise, and to see them have more hope for the future.

And as we celebrate this 250th anniversary, let’s give a gift to ourselves of lifting up our families, of lifting up the American economy, and showing people that we will be the greatest nation in the world for many, many centuries to come. Thank you for being here. God bless you and God bless America.

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kelly Loeffler, United States Administrator of the Small Business Administration.

Well, thank you, Toledo. It is great to be in the Buckeye State. I feel your warmth. Thank you so much for being here at Midwest Terminals. I am always so thankful when I get to travel with our great vice president, JD Vance, especially when it means he’s coming home to Ohio. And what I’m most excited about, however, is the chance to stand with you to celebrate year one of the America first comeback.

And let me be clear, this milestone is all about you. You are the hardworking Americans who get the job done every single day. You are rebuilding this nation brick by brick, and you are the ones that endured four long years of Bidenomics. And you proudly put Donald J. Trump back into the White House.

Now, I can tell you firsthand, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have not slowed down for one minute and neither has their cabinet. The reason we all work so hard is because we’re inspired by patriots like you. We know that you make this country great. And for me, I think of my family back home, 5 generation farm family with a small trucking company on the plains of Illinois. I know the blood, the sweat, the tears, the prayers, the dreams realized.

That’s the America we grew up in, where grit, not government, determined the opportunities that you had, and this administration is working with urgency because of it. We’re working with resolve, and we are working unapologetically to make America great again.

Now you know what we’re doing, you’ve seen it, we’re cleaning up massive fraud, massive government waste that sent millions of dollars to Somalia and the open borders that created chaos and imported crime to your cities and towns. And now after four disastrous years, it only took President Trump one year to start fixing it. He didn’t break it, but he is fixing it. He restored America’s – yeah, let’s give him a hand. [Applause.]

Now you’ve seen him, he’s restored our strength and dignity on a world stage. He ended the globalist trade deals that shipped our jobs out of this country, and he brought back American energy dominance and American industry. He proudly defends faith every day and stands against the radical transgender and DEI ideologies. And now the mainstream media and the liberal elites, they said it couldn’t be done. We had to accept managed decline.

Well, they were dead wrong. All we needed was a new president. Now you can see it, it’s coming. The America first comeback is real and it’s starting right here in great cities like Toledo. Core inflation just reached its lowest level in five years. Wages and take-home pay are up.

Fair trade is bringing back American industry, and with about 700,000 jobs in their first year due to $18 trillion of investment that’s going to come into America, we’ve never seen anything like it.

And the working family tax cuts will put thousands of dollars back in working families’ bank accounts starting this year because President Trump and JD Vance are fighting courageously for you every single day, not the special interests, not the Washington bureaucrats and the coastal elites, but for workers.

For our main streets, for our families, and there is no one who knows better, everyday Americans than Vice President JD Vance. You know his story. You know his humble beginnings in Kentucky and right here in Ohio, but now he stands in the Oval Office as the second most powerful man in the entire world, probably the universe. Uh, he’s also the coolest vice president we’ve ever had in American history.

But what’s really amazing, he’s a man of deep faith. He’s husband to our beautiful second lady, Usha Vance, and he’s soon to be the father of four amazing children. So, yeah, congratulations Vice President Vance. He and President Trump do it all for you, for hardworking Americans, and it’s why he’s come back home today, because he’s standing proudly with you to restore the American dream for generations to come.

Please welcome the 50th and the greatest Vice President of the United States, JD Vance.

Well, thank you. It is, uh, I gotta say it’s great to be back in Toledo, but it is cold. I got a little tour of the facility just before I came on stage actually while Kelly was speaking – and thank you Kelly Loeffler, our great SBA administrator. She’s doing a great job we’re proud of her, but I, I think I’m still shivering from the tour I got outside.

You guys are a hell of a lot tougher than I am to be able to manage this cold every single day, and I can’t wait for the mainstream media stories today that the vice president is suffering from unnamed tremors. And what I’m suffering from is Toledo in January. It is cold up here. I, I will say, I will say that when I was flying in here, you know, sometimes when you’re vice president, you travel over the country, you travel over the world, and you’re not always sure exactly where you’re going.

I was very excited to be back in Toledo today, but for a brief second I forgot where I was coming. I opened the window and I thought the president had sent me to Greenland. Which is going well, by the way, which is going well, but let me give a few shout outs here besides Kelly Loeffler, I wanna thank a few people here here in, in the front row here we have our great United States Senator for the state of Ohio, John Huston, my replacement, and, uh, he’s doing a great job. He’s helped us a great deal. We have the next governor of the state of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy.

Vivek, give it up for Vivek. I believe we have Vivek’s new running mate Rob McCauley. Rob, where are you there? Hey Rob, good to see you, man. Thank you for being here. And I see your great Secretary of State Frank LaRose. Thank you, Frank. Now Rob, I’ll give you advice as a number two. Here’s my advice:

What you need to do when you’re governor, or when you’re lieutenant governor when Vivek is governor – because you guys are gonna win and John Huston is gonna win in November. We gotta make sure that happens, right? You guys gonna get out there and make sure these guys win? We’re gonna be with you every step of the way, but when Rob is lieutenant governor, the secret to being a successful number two is to take credit for every single good thing the administration does.

And when anybody criticizes the administration, you can step back and say, “That was not me, that was number one.” That is how that is how you be a successful lieutenant governor for the state of Ohio. That’s my approach as vice president of the United States and I see my dear friend Jay Edwards who’s running for treasurer. Jay, it’s good to see you, man. Thanks for everything that you’ve done for our state and our country.

Now I’m headed from here to Minneapolis where we’re gonna talk with some of our ICE agents, talk with local officials about how we can turn down the chaos, and my simple piece of advice to them is gonna be, look: If you want to turn down the chaos in Minneapolis, stop fighting immigration enforcement and accept that we have to have a border in this country. It’s not that hard.

If you look all across our country, what’s happened in Minneapolis is happening almost nowhere else in the United States of America and that’s because whether it’s in Texas or Tennessee, it’s in red states, it’s in blue cities, even within our country, most people are cooperating with the simple principle that we ought to be able to enforce our immigration laws and get illegal criminals the hell out of the United States of America. It’s really not that complicated.

But in a few distinct cities you see this craziness because the far left has decided that the United States of America shouldn’t have a border anymore and they are willing to fight, and penalize, and dox and even assault our law enforcement officers in order to fight for the basic principle that anybody ought to be able to come into the United States of America. Well, I’ll tell you right now, the Trump administration, we reject that. We’re going to get illegal criminals out of our country and we’re not going to let a few left wing radicals stop us.

But I’m here in Toledo to talk about the great American comeback, and that is what I believe we are one year in. We’re one year in raising wages for workers instead of declining wages for workers. We’re one year in $18 trillion of new investment for the United States of America instead of investment going to every other country but the United States of America. We’re one year in getting illegal aliens out of our country so that American home can go to American citizens, which is exactly where they ought to go, and we’re one year into seeing lower inflation and bigger paychecks and more opportunity for the American worker. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that we are on the cusp of the greatest economic year in the history of the United States of America because we’re doing something new for a change. We’re investing in you. We’re investing in American workers. We’re investing in American businesses and we’re saying.

To everybody that the United States is open for business, but only if you invest in our great American people and our great American businesses. We’re done with the old approach of shipping American jobs overseas and investing in everybody else. We’re back to investing in the American worker and we’re not going to stop fighting for you until we return America to the true golden age of great American prosperity.

Now, even a year in, we’ve already seen incredible success from the Trump administration’s economic policies. The IRS says that this is going to be the biggest tax refund year in the history of the United States of America, and I know there are a lot of far left Democrats like Marcy Kaptur who don’t like it when the government gets you gives you back your hard earned money, but the Trump administration believes that you earned it, you ought to keep it, and we ought to keep our hands the hell out of your pocket in Washington DC.

So why are we going to have the biggest tax year, the biggest refund year in the history of the United States of America? It’s because the President, working with the Republican Congress, got no taxes on tips. It’s because we got no taxes on overtime. It’s because we got no taxes on Social Security. Three promises that we ran on, three promises the President of the United States kept, and because of it, every single person in this room and every single person in the state of Ohio is going to benefit from it.

That’s what we said we were going to do. We’re going to end the green energy scam and invest in American energy workers, and we did it. We’re going to reward companies for investing in the United States of America and penalize companies for trying to invest in communist China and places all over the world.

We said we’re going to do it and we did it and because of it, we’re starting to see the benefits for American workers every single day. We have the lowest inflation that we’ve had, well, since the last Trump administration. We have rising wages for American workers. You know that under the Biden administration – those terrible, terrible times – under the Biden administration you lost an average of $3,000 over that four years because inflation was out of control and wages were stagnant for our country.

You know, under the first year of the Trump administration, you’ve already gained over $1,300 in real wage gains, and my friends, we are just getting started because what the President of the United States says every single day is we are not done fighting for the American worker until we get everything back that the Biden-Harris administration took away. And more beyond that. I don’t want you to just struggle to get by, I don’t want you to worry about paying your credit card bill or your medical benefits. I don’t want you to think, “do I buy prescription drugs or do I buy food?” That is the legacy of the Democratic Congress under the Biden-Harris administration, and it’s something we can’t go back to. A lot of you know my story. I mean this, this is my home. You all, well, you voted for me, at least most of you did.

Actually in this room I probably got about 100% of the vote. I think I see a few people who weren’t old enough to vote for me in 2022, but. But look, you know my story you know the fact that I grew up in a family. I was raised by a grandmother who would look at a credit card statement every single day and wonder, “What can we afford? Can I buy my medicine this month or do I need to focus on food?” 

Can I, can we take a little bit extra maybe and buy those pills that she needed in order to stay healthy and keep our family afloat. These are the decisions that way too many families had to take under the Biden administration and under the Trump administration we want better for you and we’re fighting better for you every single day. We want you to have enough prosperity to yes buy the things that you need to yes buy those medications and put food on the table, but maybe to take a little vacation.

Because if you work hard every single day you ought to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Maybe you wanna buy something extra for your kids. Maybe you wanna do something that you couldn’t do when you were a kid because that is the promise of the American dream that we leave the next generation a little bit better off than the generation that came before. And what we had under the Biden-Harris administration is lower price, excuse me, lower wages. We had higher prices. We had more people struggling to get by and more people who gave up on the essentials instead of buying the things that they needed to buy. 

What we have under the Trump administration is a totally different approach, and what we’re trying to do and what we’ve already done a lot over the last year has made you wealthier, has made your communities safer, has gotten those illegal aliens out of the United States of America, and is trying to rebuild that all important American dream. So I have a very simple question.

Do we, one year into this great American recovery, do we want to go back to the failed policies of the Biden-Harris administration? No, we don’t. So let’s keep doubling down on American prosperity. Let’s keep doubling down on the American worker, and let’s tell Marcy Kaptur and the rest of the crazy congressional Democrats that we are not going back. We are going forward to a brighter future for every single one of our citizens.

You know there are things the media doesn’t talk about that I think are so important to highlight because they show real progress for the American people. Did you know that for four years under the Biden-Harris administration, Americans paid the highest prescription drug costs anywhere in the world? And we did it because we had an administration that refused to go to Big Pharma and say this is ridiculous that you’re charging one-tenth the price in England or in France that you are in the United States of America. So what did the president do?

One of the first things President Trump did is he hauled these pharmaceutical executives into the Oval Office. He wasn’t getting any help from Congress, though we certainly would have, would have appreciated Marcy Kaptur helping us lower prescription drug costs, but we weren’t getting that help. So what did he do? He brought the farm executives into the Oval Office and he said, you are done forcing Americans to pay more for prescription drugs than any other country anywhere in the world.

And so now thanks to the president’s leadership and thanks to the support of our congressional allies like John Huston, we have prescription drug costs coming down in this country for the very first time. Whether it’s antibiotics or whether it’s cancer drugs, whether it’s the the the most advanced therapeutics that exist anywhere in the world, Americans are seeing lower costs and they’re gonna keep on seeing lower costs because the president of the United States had the courage to fight for you rather than international pharmaceutical companies.

Now the media doesn’t talk about that because of course it makes us look good, but these are the victories that depend on having smart, wise leadership in Washington, D.C. You know, another thing the media doesn’t talk about is that under four years of the Biden administration, the average cost of a home in the United States of America nearly doubled, and in certain jurisdictions it actually got way worse than that. There are certain places where the cost of a home in four years went up by 200%.

What’s happened over the last five months? Rents have gone down over the past five months. And so though there’s still a lot of work left to do, we’re finally seeing more Americans being interested, especially our young families being interested in buying a home for the first time. We’re seeing those rents come down. We’re seeing the cost of housing flatten out a little bit, and one of the biggest reasons is because on the one hand, we lowered the regulatory burdens to build houses in this country, while on the other hand, we got illegal aliens out of the United States of America who are taking American homes. That is how you lower prices, focus on American workers, and invest in American home building. You don’t give all of our homes to illegal aliens. That is the legacy of the Biden-Harris administration.

But on all these things we know there is still so much work to do and this is something I want you to hear. The Democrats talk a lot about the affordability crisis in the United States of America and yes there is an affordability crisis, one created by Joe Biden’s policies. You don’t turn the Titanic around overnight. It takes time to fix what was broken.

I said earlier that the average American has seen $1,300 of real increase in their wages just in the past year. Well, Joe Biden, they saw a $3,000 decrease. Now on the one hand, I’m proud of that I’m proud of the fact that you’re $1,300 richer than you were just a year ago, but you know what really pisses me off that compared to when Donald Trump left office after his first term, you’re still about $2,000 poor because that’s what happened under the Biden administration. 

They did so much damage that it’s gonna take us time to rebuild the great American prosperity that we had at the end of the first Trump administration, but what I’m telling you is that we’re committed to doing it as much as the media focuses on distractions every single day in the Oval Office, the president looks at us and says, “Why haven’t we done more? Let’s do more, do more.” He’ll tell us, person by person, from the Secretary of Commerce to the Secretary of the Treasury to our SBA administrator to the Vice President of the United States, fight every single day for better home prices for Americans, for lower prescription drug prices, and of course for rising wages. That is what we’re going to do. That is what we have done, and that is what we promise will be the legacy of the second Trump administration, more prosperity for you.

Now I wanna take a few questions from the media, but before I do, I just wanna close with this, this thought. So you know, growing up in, in Middletown, Ohio, which is, uh, pretty much due south on I-75, a lot of you probably spent time in Middletown in the same way that growing up I spent a fair amount of time in Toledo. The story of towns like Toledo, the story of towns like Middletown when I was growing up, was one of decline.

It was a story of factories closing down, of good people losing their jobs, of families that were fracturing under the financial stress that sometimes comes when people lose that access to a good job. That is not the future that we should expect for our children.

We should demand better from our leaders, and that’s exactly what the Trump administration is promising, not a story where you open up the morning paper or you turn on the TV and you see a factory that’s closed down, but you see a new factory that’s being built, not a story where your neighbor lost their job, but a story where your neighbor gets a new and better job because of what is being built right here in towns like Toledo.

Not communities that are unsafe where you get mugged or murdered walking down the street, but where every single person, rich or poor, black or white, can enjoy their God-given right to public safety in their own community because we’re fighting for law enforcement as opposed to against law enforcement like the last administration.

I want the grandmothers like my grandmother who are raising grandkids they weren’t necessarily planning to raise – I want them to not have to choose between putting food on the table or buying their medicine. That is the future that we’re fighting for and that is what the Democrats in in DC have fought against every single day of this administration. Now I don’t wanna say all Democrats because my mamma, the woman who raised me, was one of those blue dog Democrats. She was socially conservative.

She was patriotic, but she was a Democrat, and I know that in Toledo there are a lot of those Democrats still today. But I got to tell you, in Washington DC, those Democrats do not exist. They disappeared from Washington, D.C. They care more in Washington about using this country as one big fraud scheme than they do about fighting for your prosperity, and that’s why we cannot reward these people come November.

What are they actually fighting for? Well, we know what they’re fighting against. They hate Donald Trump obsessively, and they talk about it every single day. They want men to play in women’s sports, which is crazy, but even aside from it’s crazy, why the hell are you talking about that instead of figuring out how to fight for the American people.

They want the Somali fraud ring in Minneapolis and frankly in other states too to continue while a lot of Americans can’t afford the cost of child care, they want to take the very programs that we use to make child care more affordable and give them to fraudsters who are illegally in our country to begin with. These are not politicians who care about you. They care about keeping the fraud going. And the question in November is very fundamental.

It’s gonna be, do we reward the people like John Husted who cut your taxes, who fights for lower housing costs, who fights for lower prescription drug costs, or do we reward the crazy far left Democrats who think that America is one big get rich scream scheme for fraudsters? That’s it. That’s simply the question. So I’m asking you, are we gonna fight for the people who are fighting for the American dream?

Are we going to send a message to the far left radicals that this country belongs to American citizens, not to illegal aliens? Are we going to fight for the American dream for people like my grandmother and people like your children every single day? So let’s remember what we’re fighting for this November.

It’s to have political leadership in country, in this country that fights for the American people, that fights for the American dream. Don’t forget it, my friends. Let’s work hard. Let’s elect these great candidates to higher office because that’s the only way we’re going to send a message to the Democrats that this country belongs to Americans and that the American dream belongs to the citizens who built this nation. God bless you and thank you for having me.

Now I appreciate that, but I’m going to take a few questions from the reporters and then we’re going to hit the road. 

Reporter: Mr. Vice President, John Kosich from News 5 in Cleveland. President Trump outlined the framework of a future deal with on Greenland yesterday. NATO this morning, however, said the Secretary General did not propose any compromise on sovereignty.

What’s your understanding of what is in this plan, and would you stand for something that Not include ownership, ownership even beyond where the bases are located. 

Vance: So John, it’s first of all, it’s good to see you again. John is, and I, this is gonna ruin his reputation among his liberal media peers, but John is one of my favorite journalists in the state of Ohio.

He’s a great TV journalist from Cleveland, and I, I used to joke with John that if he ran for high office maybe back in, you know, 2012, 2013, he would have won because his name is almost exactly the same as John Kasich. And that if he ran in 2024, he would have got his ass kicked. So it’s amazing how things change, John. But I see you’re still doing great things on on Greenland. First of all, we’re, we’re here to talk about the great American comeback, and that’s what the president is focused on. That’s why the president went to Davos.

You know why? Because he wants more investment from all over the world in the United States of America. You’ll hear this number thrown out $18 trillion of new investment. You know what that means? That means new factories. That means new plants. That means, you know, new oil refineries and new energy. Facilities in the United States of America because for so long our government had the policy that we were gonna invest in other countries.

No, no, no, we want other countries to invest right here in the United States of America and that’s why the president went to Davos to say that America is open for business, but America is open for business so long as you’re building right here in Toledo and all across our great country. That is the message now on Greenland. Simple fact is Greenland matters to American national security because our entire missile defense relies on security in the Arctic.

This is something the media who’s obsessed with Greenland, Greenland, Greenland, they completely forget why Greenland matters. What if, God forbid, I’m not saying it’s gonna happen anytime soon, but what if a foreign country launched a missile at the United States of America? We would need control over the Arctic in order to shoot that missile down. Our entire missile defense system depends on the Arctic security. Meanwhile, the Chinese and the Russians and even the Danes who control Greenland admit that they want to control that facility.

They want to control that island, that land mass that would make us weaker, that would make our country more in danger. That would mean that if the president is negotiating with a foreign leader, he would have less leverage because they would be able to realistically threaten the sovereignty and the territorial safety of the United States of America. We’re not going to let that happen. The negotiations with NATO are going fine. I believe, having seen this for the past year, that when the president sets his mind to accomplish something in negotiation, he accomplishes it.

And fundamentally, NATO and the Danes and everybody else have to recognize the simple fact that this matters, not just to American security, but to world security. So we’re going to keep on trying to make sure that we secure that landmass so that we can protect the American people as we’ve done and will continue to do. Thank you. Whoever’s next, the lights are very bright, so I can’t see, but whoever’s got the microphone, just shout out a question. 

Reporter: Mr. Vice President Henry Gomez, NBC News, uh, President Trump this week said that ICE has made some mistakes. I’m curious what steps the administration is taking to rectify those, and do you think your presence in Minneapolis today will calm the tensions there?

Vance: Well, certainly one of my goals is to calm the tensions, to talk to people, to try to understand what we can do better, you know, when the president says that there are that that mistakes have been made, you know, my, my, my thought on that is that, well, of course there have been mistakes made because you’re always gonna have mistakes made in law enforcement. I mean we all know this, we, uh, probably every single person in this room knows a police officer. 99% of our police officers, probably more than that, are doing everything right. Some people are gonna make mistakes. That’s the nature of law enforcement.

But the number one way where we could lower the mistakes that are happening, at least with our immigration enforcement, is to have local jurisdictions that are cooperating with us. There are some very basic things that would make Minneapolis look like, look, Memphis, Tennessee, a blue city, where you do not have this chaos in immigration enforcement because the local police and the local authorities are cooperating with us so when you look at Memphis, Tennessee or Austin, Texas or any other community virtually across the United States of America and you don’t see the same level of chaos in Minneapolis, the natural conclusion is that it’s not what ICE is doing in Minneapolis, it’s what Minneapolis authorities are doing to prevent ICE from doing their jobs, and that’s exactly what’s happening.

So, let, let, let me give you just a couple of very real world examples of some of the problems that we face. So let’s say you have a sex offender. We’ve, we’ve arrested a number of sex offender illegal aliens in Minneapolis just in the last couple of months. But that person, because they’re an illegal alien, we don’t know where they live. We don’t know their address. If local authorities were cooperating with us, it would be easier to send an ICE agents to the person’s house to arrest them, to have local law enforcement protecting our immigration officers.

They throw the sex offender in the back of a car, deport that person, throw them in jail, whatever, and then they go home safely to their families. That’s not what’s happening. What’s happening instead is that the Minneapolis authorities are refusing to tell us where that sex offender lives, why are they protecting sex offenders? That’s anybody’s guess, but it’s crazy. Meanwhile, the local police are being told by the mayor, “don’t help them.”

So if there are protests and there are people trying to not just protest but interfere with what ICE is doing, we don’t have the support of local law enforcement to keep the peace. So when I talk about lowering the temperature, those are the two things that we want those local authorities to do help us find sex offenders and get them out of their community. And again, this is bonkers. Think about this. If you’ve got a neighbor who’s a sex offender and somebody wants to go and take that person away, I’m gonna raise my hand and say, “yes, please get that person away from my children.”

What is wrong with Minneapolis authorities? They so hate the idea of enforcing immigration laws that they’re telling their people not to get sex offenders out of their community. It’s crazy and it’s why we see so much chaos in Minneapolis but not elsewhere.

Reporter: Sean Haggerty, sir, 13 Action News here in Toledo. In the city itself, affordable housing is a real problem. Supply is low, rents are going up. What specifically can your administration do to increase the supply and get people, especially in the city of Toledo, into long-term, stable, good housing?

Vance: So we’re working on a number of things on this front. First of all, one of the things the president just announced a couple of weeks ago that again hasn’t gotten a lot of media attention, but I think it’s very important is that he said we want American homes to go to American citizens. That means no illegal aliens buying American homes. It means no mortgages going to people who have no legal right to be in this country, but it also means that we’re gonna stop large institutional investors from buying up American homes. That was a major announcement from the president, and we’re working on that now.

And and you see this all the time. You see this massive beautiful new subdivision where every single person there is renting because that subdivision was bought up, bought up by a massive institutional investor. That, that investor, by the way, is very often paying a lower price for their debt than an American citizen. So we give these people special rules. We give them cheaper access to money and then we let them buy homes that all by right go to American families, that is one of the main reasons why we believe homes have gotten unaffordable in this country.

So again, the last administration did nothing about it. We’re gonna do something about it. We’ve already started. Here’s another thing. If you look in the at the 20 biggest metros in the United States of America, the 14 with the most illegal aliens have seen the biggest decrease over the past year in rent prices. Now why is that?

Again, if you get people out of the country who are taking up homes that ought to go to American citizens, that’s gonna put downward pressure on prices that’s gonna make it easier for young American families to afford to buy a home. There are three exceptions to that, three places where you’ve seen rents increase as opposed to decrease and every single one of those places are sanctuary cities.

So in addition to causing chaos, being a sanctuary city makes your communities less safe and it also makes housing less affordable. It is very simple. Enforcing immigration law lowers prices for Americans and makes our communities safer. It’s a no-brainer, so we’d encourage local authorities to continue to collaborate and work with us instead of fighting against us. Next question.

Reporter: Good morning, Mr. Vice President. Thank you so much, Kyle Maza, freelancing for Andalou Ajansi today. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced at today’s summit for the World Economic Forum that Ukraine, Russia, and the US will hold their first trilateral talks Friday and Saturday, the 23rd and 24th in the United Arab Emirates. I’m seeing what your reaction is to that about talks, and in Minneapolis, sir, the attacks on law enforcement, the attacks on ICE, what is your message to the law enforcement community at this time when they look for the Trump and the Vance administration to calm their nerves, to, to ease their burdens? Families are reacting to this as well. So as you stand there on that stage today, how does that make you feel?

Vance: Well, you know, one of the things that we wanna do is send a message to our local law enforcement, to our federal law enforcement, that we stand with them, and we’re not gonna abandon them or we’re not gonna do what the last administration did, which is throw them under the bus to appease a bunch of left wing radicals. We’re actually gonna fight for them because I believe, look. I continue to be fundamentally optimistic about our country.

I think that whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, and an independent, most people in this country fundamentally still support law enforcement. They love what people do to keep them safe. They recognize it’s dangerous. But what happened in the Democratic Party over the last few years is they allowed a very small band of left wing crazies to drive the agenda and that makes our cops and our federal law enforcement feel less safe, makes it feel like their government doesn’t have their back. Well, I promised them every single police officer in this country, and every single federal law enforcement officer in this country, we have your back, and that’s one of the messages I’m trying to send by going to to to Minneapolis and talking to our ICE officers there. So that, that’s number 1. Number 2, you talk about attacks on law enforcement, it is insane. I understand. Look, I, I’m biased, obviously. I think the Trump-Vance administration has got the right approach to immigration.

I think it’s insane to let tens of millions of people flood across your country, many of them with violent criminal records, and then to say you’re not allowed to do anything to get those people out of your country. That’s crazy to me. Fine, if you disagree, if you think that we ought to let sex offenders be in your community even if they’re illegal aliens fine make that argument, but make that argument at the ballot box write an op ed in the newspaper argue about it on social media.

Don’t go to the streets and start assaulting federal law enforcement officers because you disagree with the policies of our administration. It’s cowardly bullshit and it’s gotta stop. And here’s And, and, and here’s the, here’s the, excuse my language to all the kids there, I’m sorry, got a little fired up. I was raised by a woman who cussed a lot, so sometimes I do too. My my wife’s on me. We’re we’re we’re working on it.

But here, here’s the final point about this. People who assault federal law enforcement or local law enforcement will be shown no quarter. Uh, I just probably five minutes before I got on stage. I got a message from our great Attorney General Pam Bondi. You know what Pam said to me? That they finally arrested the the ringleader of those church protests in Minneapolis.

So, so here’s the thing. Again, you don’t have to agree with my immigration policies, but if you wanna protest by going to an innocent church service on a Sunday, you see these images they’re scaring little kids who are there to worship God on a Sunday morning those people are gonna be sent to prison so long as we have the power to do so. We’re gonna do everything that we can to enforce the law whether you’re protesting at a church, which is a violation of federal law, or you’re assaulting a law enforcement officer, which again is a violation of federal law, there are gonna be consequences. There already have been consequences and they’re gonna be a lot more to come. So my message is if you’re thinking about assaulting a law enforcement, don’t because we’re gonna lock you up if you do. Now you asked about Zelensky and and Russia and Ukraine look. The president, he talks about this all the time. This has been the hardest war to solve.

Of the eight wars that the president has solved, he thought this would be the easiest. It’s ended up being the hardest. The fact that they’re sitting down and talking is progress, and I think we’ve made a lot of progress here. But look, you’ve got two people who really hate each other. The President of the United States’ attitude is quite simple, and I happen to think that it’s exactly right. Peace is what is in the best interest of the United States of America. We want commerce between those two countries. We want Europe to be less focused on war and more focused on investment in the United States of America and the best way to do that is to get that war to a peaceful resolution. 

We’re gonna keep on working on it. I’ve been disappointed in the past where I thought we were close to a peace deal, so I’m not gonna predict that anything is gonna happen in the next couple of weeks, but I know under the president’s leadership we’ve made great progress and we’re gonna keep on making progress so we can stop the killing and get back to actually building things all over the world as opposed to people killing each other and tearing things down.

And I’ll take um and I’ll take one more question. 

Reporter: Thank you, Mr. Vice President. This is Mary Margaret Olihan with the Daily Wire. I know you were here in September in Minneapolis after an attack on a church that killed school children. What does it mean to you that this attack, another attack happened on a church last weekend, and do you want to see more arrests for this attack? 

Vance: So, uh, Mary, yes, I certainly want to see more arrests because I’ve seen the videos and they’re very clearly more people who have violated the law.

Now I’ll let the Department of Justice speak to that because as you know, uh, actually getting an arrest warrant is not a walk in the park necessarily. There’s a legal process that we have in this in this country and rightfully so, but I know the Department of Justice continues to work on bringing every single person who is involved in that church protest, but it’s not just a protest when you interrupt people during a worship service that is a violation of the law just as you have the right to protest, they have a right to worship God as they choose, and when you interrupt that, that is a violation of the law. 

So yes, I think we’re gonna see more prosecutions there. I certainly hope that we’re gonna see more prosecutions there, but I’ll let the Department of Justice speak to the timeline there and uh on, on that, on that note, let me just say um. I see a lot of people here. I see a few young people. I see a lot of people work at this great factory. I, I just want you to know that you are the people who make the United States of America a great country. When I think about all the great things about our nation, all the great things that we’ve accomplished, the world wars that we’ve won, we’ve gone to the moon, we’ve cured diseases that nobody else thought could be cured, the foundation of that is the prosperity of the American working man and American working woman.

You guys are the reason why we’re able to do incredible things as the United States of America. We talk about our great foreign policy accomplishments that starts right here in Toledo, Ohio. We talk about, talk about peace in the world that starts right here in Toledo, Ohio. We talk about prosperity. For the entire nation that starts right here with building things and making things and employing good people and dignified work that starts in Toledo, Ohio.

The cars I see on the road all over the United States of America, many of them built right here, the steel that builds our bridges and so many of our great buildings happens a stone’s throw away from this very facility. I want you to know That for too long your leadership, your government, your politicians have looked down upon you, have ignored you, and that’s not happening anymore.

There are so many great things I could point to, so many policies, no taxes on tips, the regulatory reform, the fact that we’ve unleashed American energy, but every single one of those specific policy wins is about a simple fact reinvesting in you and ensuring that your family has the same great shot at the American dream that I had. This is very personal to me. I don’t know if you saw the announcement.

I guess we made it yesterday or the day before, but our wonderful second lady is pregnant with our 4th child, and I’m very, very happy about that. You know, we were debating having a 4th child and I said, honey, you know the the the new Trump accounts and the increased child tax credit are coming online. We got to take advantage of this stuff. She’s gonna be pissed at me about that one, that’s OK.

But look, this is personal to me just as I know it’s personal to you we’ve got skin in the game. Our great governor or governor candidate, not governor yet but we’re getting there, our great senator, all of these great leaders, they love people in the state of Ohio they love people in this community who are gonna rise or fall based on whether leaders in Washington make wise decisions.

I’m not saying you’re going to agree with everything that we do, though I know in this room we’ve got a lot more agreement than disagreement, but what I am promising you is that every day for the next three years, so long as I am the Vice President of the United States, so long as Donald Trump is the president of the United States, we will remember that you are what makes America great and we’ll never stop fighting for you. God bless you. It’s good to be home. Thank you.