FULL TRANSCRIPT: JD Vance’s Town Hall With Tulsi Gabbard in Bedford, PA

So we’re – look, driving in here, the beautiful Appalachian Mountains, I just – I love being here. I love this part of our country.

I love this part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And in six short days, we’re going to win, my friends, and make Donald J. Trump the next president. So with that, I’m looking forward to tonight.

Tulsi, thank you for doing this. We’re thrilled. Let’s give another round of applause to Tulsi Gabbard. Thank you.

TULSI GABBARD: Thank you so much. Well, we are right here at home tonight, J. D. , not only because we are surrounded by so many great patriots who love our country as we do, but we’re also surrounded by many men and women who have worn the uniform as we have.

And I’m looking forward to the conversation that we have. So we’ll kick it off. First, we have David, who’s got a question for you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hey, hello. My name is David. I’m a three-tour Afghanistan combat veteran, flew Apaches there.

JD VANCE: Thank you for your service, David.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I spent a lot of time in that country. And let me just say thank you both for your service and your continued service, ma’am, and for all the other veterans that are here, too. Thank you for giving me the chance. I appreciate that. If anybody’s not noticed, outside the gate or the hangar there is the Abbey Gate 13, the people that died on August the 26th, 2021.

And I’m kind of saddened that there has been no accountability for that. So I’d like to know, what is President Trump going to do to help get accountability for that event?

J. D. VANCE: David, I appreciate the question, and it’s an important one, and thank you for your service. But most importantly, thanks to everybody, including David, for their service in this room. We’re thrilled to have you, and we’re thrilled to put a president back in the White House who actually respects the sacrifice of American military veterans. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

You know, David, like President Trump, I’ve spent a lot of time with the families of the 13 brave Americans who died at Abbey Gate. And one of the things that has really affected me is the recognition that a lot of these guys, they’re not mad. They’re, of course, heartbroken, but they’re not angry that their loved ones lost their lives because they recognize that when you put on the uniform of the United States, sometimes that’s what happens, right? That’s what a lot of people sign up for. What they’re really angry about is the fact that their loved ones died, and there’s been no accountability for the disaster that led to their death in the first place.

That’s what pisses them off. You know, they’re heartbroken to have lost their kids, but they’re angry that no one has paid any price for the fact that those kids died because our leadership failed to do its job. I mean, think about this. You get out of Afghanistan, and I think it was the right decision to get out of Afghanistan eventually, but you don’t close down the airport before you get out.

We basically turned brave Americans into TSA agents in the most dangerous, terrorism-infested area of the entire world, and frankly, we may have been lucky that only 13 Americans died. It could have been much, much higher given the chaos of the situation that was going on on the ground, and not one person, not a single general, not a single Pentagon bureaucrat, not a single person who controlled how that withdrawal was conducted has faced any consequences.

But I believe that the first person that we are going to fire, and there’s going to be more after that, but the first person we get to fire who had a role in Abbey Gate, her name is Kamala Harris, and we’re going to fire her in six days. But the last thing I’ll say, David, is after that, after we fire Kamala Harris, we have got to get some accountability. Who made the decision to close down Bagram before we had everybody out of Afghanistan? Who made the decision to put our troops in that situation to begin with? Who made the decision to not evacuate any of our $80 billion worth of equipment before we closed up shop and left? There has to be answers when people fail.

And one of the things you’ll see is the media, of course, attacks Donald Trump because there are people that criticize him, and what is almost always true is that the people who are most loudly criticizing Donald J. Trump are people that he fired because they screwed up. Those are the people that are attacking him. And I’d actually, I think I speak for every person in this room, I’d rather have a president who fires the people who screw up than the president who protects their jobs when they screw up, and that’s why we’ve got to get new leadership.

Thank you.

TULSI GABBARD: I think that’s something that President Trump understands very clearly, is that when you are a leader of any organization, you’re responsible for what happens under your leadership. And President Biden, obviously, as you said, fired no one, but it shocks me even that within our military, none of these leaders did the right thing and said, I resigned. Not a single one.

J. D. VANCE: That’s right. That’s a very good point.

TULSI GABBARD: All right, next we’ve got a question coming from Ron. Here we go.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator, Congresswoman, thanks for being with us today. I appreciate it. I’m Ron. I’ve retired from the Air Force after 30 years.

I can tell you, the question regards the Armed Forces recruiting and retention. You know, services are having difficulty making goals just now. Went through the COVID era with a mandated vaccine. I know DOD discharged thousands of troops for refusal to take that vaccine. And we have a lot of young people today who are just frankly unfit to begin military service. And I know you’ve got a Make America Healthy plan. Could you talk a little about that and how that can address some of these issues?

J. D. VANCE: Yeah, well, Ron, I’m happy to take a first stab at that question. And, Tulsi, I’d love to hear your thoughts, too, because, of course, you know, I think Tulsi understands as well as anybody why the military might be having recruitment challenges in the 21st century. I think there are a couple of things going on, Ron, is, number one, you hit the nail on the head. Why were we firing brave, young and healthy Marine soldiers, sailors and airmen because they wouldn’t take the COVID shot?

We should let people make these decisions themselves, not throw them out of the military because of it. You know, but of course, that’s not just thousands of Americans who were thrown out of the military. And it was a disgrace. And Donald Trump and I have promised that we’re going to offer all of those people a return to service with back pay on top of it. That’s important. But, Ron, think about the effect that has on morale. What does it do when you fire people for simply exercising their own judgment about what they want to put into their own body? What does that say to the next generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines?

What does it say to their family members? Because we know, I mean, in my family, my grandma, my mamaw had six grandchildren. Three of us enlisted in the United States Marine Corps out of high school. Very often, military service is a family affair.

So what we did, I think, was a massive slap in the face to our troops. But it also really, really hurt morale. And the final thing I’ll say, and again, I want to hear Tulsi’s views on this too, is people want to sign up for the United States military because they love their country and they want to engage in public service. They don’t want to sign up in the military because of a bunch of progressive ideas.

They don’t want to be enforcers of one political party’s dogma. They want to serve the whole United States of America. And I think, unfortunately, whether it’s DEI training or you have our State Department funding progressive politics in foreign countries, why do your tax dollars need to be funneled through the State Department to do trans pride parades in the Czech Republic? What does that have to do with America’s national interest?

Even if you agree with that, and I imagine none of us do, but even if you agree with it, that has nothing to do with America’s national interest. So why are our taxpayers funding that stuff? But when you do that, it makes people not want to serve their country because they’re worried. They’re not serving the whole United States of America. They’re serving Kamala Harris’s radical agenda, and that’s going to stop the minute Donald J. Trump becomes president.

TULSI GABBARD: You know, J. D., I want to go back to what you said in response to the first question that we had. With the fact that every single one of us who’s here, anyone watching from home, any one of us who’s raised our right hand and volunteered, the less than 1% of all Americans who volunteer to serve in our armed forces, we do so, and our families know, that that service and that volunteerism may require us to pay the ultimate price.

And we do so willingly because of love for our country and our commitment to defending the safety, security, and freedom of the American people. What we don’t sign up for is to be used as cannon fodder by politicians who are trying to fund the military-industrial complex or make themselves look tough. And so the least, the very least that our men and women in uniform deserve, that our veterans deserve, from our leadership, the president, our commander-in-chief, leaders in Congress, is to have our back.

And so when you talk about make America healthy again, too often, and we all got stories, we all got stories, but too often, you know, they make investments, say, okay, you walk in in basic training. I enlisted and went to basic training at Fort Jackson, and you know, you go through that training, you know, you serve in the Air Force. They invest in turning civilians into warriors.

Then you go and spend your time in service, and when it’s time to go and you get your final DD-214 and you walk out, for a lot of folks, they feel lost because for the first time, you kind of feel alone. That you can’t just go to the military hospital or you can’t, you know, you don’t have your sergeant major telling you what time to wake up and when you get to eat and when you get to sleep. And so when we look at the Veterans Affairs Department, for example, when we have our brothers and sisters who are struggling, who’ve gone and fought in war zones and have come home and are struggling with those internal battles, too many of them are feeling like their only choice is to take their own lives to end their pain. That means our leaders have failed our brothers and sisters.

Why is it, even at that point, they are still not able to get the care that they need? I’ve had friends who’ve gone into the VA. At that moment where they felt like they had no other option, they were ready to take their own lives. They either couldn’t get an appointment or when they did walk in, they were handed a bag full of drugs. A bag full of drugs that made their problems worse, not better, and that didn’t actually deal with the real challenges they were facing.

So when we talk about what does President Trump’s plan to make America healthy again look like for our men and women in uniform and for our veterans, it’s investing in the person, our fellow American, from the time they joined the military, throughout their time in service, making sure that they’re getting the care that they need, not just drugs or Band-Aids to cover up the visible or invisible wounds. Making sure that when you go into that dining facility, you actually have healthy and nutrition options to eat, not just crap that’s going to make you sick. That when you go to the doctor, they’re not just going to give you pills to cover up whatever pain you are experiencing.

And that when it comes time to lay down the uniform, when your service is complete, that you’re able to go, as with President Trump’s accomplishment in passing the Choice Act, that you’re able to go to the provider of your choice, whether that be at the VA or in your local doctor’s office, and get the care that you need. And I just want to close by sharing a personal story, because I experienced what a difference this made in my own personal life.

I was a member of Congress representing Hawaii. I was the second congressional district, the rural parts of the state. And there was a Vietnam veteran named Andrew Jamila. He’d been awesome. He was a local leader. He was like the unofficial mayor of his hometown of Waimanalo on the island of Oahu. He called me up one day. Thank God he had my personal cell phone number. And he said, “Tulsi, I just had a heart attack, and I’m at the hospital down the street.” We live like 20 minutes from each other.

“I’m at the hospital down the street. They tell me if they can’t have open-heart surgery right now, that I may not survive. The VA hospital, which was about a 40-minute drive over the mountains to the other side of the island, said they would not cover this surgery that would save his life, that he had to get into an ambulance and take that 40-minute drive to get to the VA.” His doctor said, “You might not make it, Andrew. You might not survive.” And so thankfully I was able to help him, and it was because of the CHOICE Act that he was able to get the care that he needed, that he survived that heart attack and was able to live another day.

JD VANCE: That’s awesome.

TULSI GABBARD: Where is Cindy at? Our next question is coming from Cindy. Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Welcome to Bedford County. I want to thank you for recognizing the veterans in the audience and our concerns. Thank you both for your service then. Thank you for your service now, as they are both equally important. When my dad, who I’m very proud of, came home from Vietnam, he wasn’t educated on the health benefits and services that he earned and was entitled to. When I got out of the Marine Corps in 1996, I was not educated on the health benefits and services I earned and was entitled to.

When my nephews, whom I am also very proud of, got out of the military in the mid-2000s, they were not educated on the benefits that they earned and was entitled to. The first time I registered and voted was for President Trump because we needed change. We still need change. What will you and your administration do to help educate the veterans on the health benefits and services they’ve earned and health benefits they are entitled to? Semper Fi, thank you.

J. D. VANCE: Cindy, Semper Fi, and thank you for the question. Thank you for not just your service but your whole family’s service. That’s an amazing testament to the American tradition of military service.

I actually have a somewhat similar story, though luckily it didn’t have the same personal consequence for me. When I got out of the Marine Corps in 2007, I went straight to Ohio State University. Don’t hold it against me. I know we’re in Pennsylvania. I signed up for a student health plan, and it was a lot of money. I didn’t have anybody helping me out. I was on Pell Grants, and things were pretty tight because I didn’t come from a family of means. I didn’t come from a family of money.

And I had no idea that because of a law that had been passed while I was in the Marine Corps that I could get free health care through the VA. I think it was for five years after I got out of the United States Marine Corps, and I had no idea. And so I spent hundreds of dollars on health insurance premiums until somebody kind of just said, “Hey, why don’t you go to the VA and get health care service?” And I said, “I don’t think I’m allowed to.”

And they said, “I know that you are,” and that’s what changed that for me and saved me probably thousands of dollars of health care expenses over the next few years. And I think that what we have to do is the Veterans Administration needs to cooperate with Department of Defense and make sure that whether it’s the last month or the last week, when folks are getting out of active military service, they need to be educated about what the services that are available so they can take advantage of what they’re owed by their own government. That’s got to change.

And to Tulsi’s point, this is really about keeping the commitments that American taxpayers and the American nation makes to its people who put on the uniform and offer to risk it all for our shared freedom and certainly for our shared prosperity as a country.

Here’s another thing that’s very unusual to me is you’ve got a lot of Americans right now who are veterans, who are sleeping on park benches, who are sleeping under bridges, who don’t have access to the care that they need. Well, my attitude is if the politicians and the Pentagon bureaucrats want to send people off to war, they ought to keep their commitments to people when those folks come home from war. We’ve got to stop this. We just have to do better.

TULSI GABBARD: What you just said, J. D. , I think is so central to the changes that we need to make in a very simple thing of making it so the DOD and the VA work together.

J. D. VANCE: That’s right.

TULSI GABBARD: A lot of people, those of us who have gone through this know, but the fact that you spend your time in service and whether you’ve deployed or not, you’ve got a probably pretty thick medical record. The VA has no access to your DOD medical records. No access. So you’ve got to go and bring pieces of paper, and they’ve got to literally scan those pieces of paper into a different database.

When I first got to Congress, I asked why. Like, that’s crazy. That doesn’t make sense. I asked for a printout of every single veteran in my district so that I could help inform them of the services that were available to them. They literally printed out on an old dot matrix, and gave me this huge stack. But the reason why they said that the two systems don’t talk to each other was because of some government contract that someone signed.

President Trump’s a problem solver. I guarantee you he’ll find a way to solve this problem.

JD VANCE: That’s exactly right.

TULSI GABBARD: All right. Next up, we have Julie.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello, Senator, Colonel. I’m a retired United States Army soldier. Since I’ve left service, I’ve continued my education by obtaining a master’s degree in counseling as well as a Ph. D. in criminal justice. So according to the research, 14% of our homeless population in America are veterans. Well, that number includes 7% of an increase just in the last four years under the Biden-Harris administration. Our veterans watch as the current administration puts illegal migrants up in hotels. What will you do to change that policy, and will you help find solutions for those homeless veterans?

J. D. VANCE: Yes, ma’am. Thank you. Well, thank you, Julie. And here’s a basic principle that I think that we could do on practically day one of the Trump administration. We could say that no American tax dollars go to housing illegal immigrants while veterans are homeless in the United States of America. Again, to me, this is about duties and obligations, right? Veterans understand duties and obligations as well as anybody. We make a sacred compact between our nation’s veterans.

We say we’re going to send you off to places, sometimes places, to Tulsi’s point, that you never should have been sent to in the first place. But when you come home, there are certain obligations we’re going to meet. And God forbid, if you don’t come home, we’re going to meet those obligations to your family. The fact that we have so many people who did their end of the bargain and the government doesn’t do its end of the bargain is a scandal, and it needs to stop on day one of the Trump administration.

It’s so unacceptable. But, you know, Julie, your point drives home a related point here, which is that—or your question drives home a related point, which is that veterans are very much members of the community, and veterans are affected by the same policies and the same problems that everybody else is, right? Sometimes they’re affected more significantly, sometimes a little less significantly. But why do we have 14 percent of our homeless population who are veterans, and why have we seen such a significant increase?

Making Housing More Affordable

Because housing has gotten totally unaffordable over the last four years. There is a direct connection between increased housing costs and increased homelessness. I believe in the state of Pennsylvania, housing costs have increased by about 40 percent just since Kamala Harris became the Vice President of the United States. So if we want to fix the veterans homelessness problem, let’s make housing more affordable for all America’s citizens, and let’s do it starting immediately.

And I know we’re focused on veterans’ issues, and I don’t want to derail this too much, but it’s very important to talk about the three obvious things that we should be doing to make housing more affordable. Number one, we should be doing more home building in the United States of America. Think about this. We are descendants of people who built rockets that flew to the moon, and all they had was pocket calculators and slide rules, and thanks to government policy, we don’t build enough houses to house American citizens.

What is this? Sixty years ago, we built rockets that went to the moon. Now we don’t build enough houses for American citizens. If we got rid of some of the ridiculous regulations out there, we’d create a lot of prosperity in the construction industry. We’d also build a lot more homes for American citizens.

Number two, we’ve got to pursue common-sense economic policies that lower mortgage interest rates so that people can afford to borrow and get into a home in the first place. And here’s the final thing, and it goes back to Julie’s point about illegal immigration. It doesn’t matter how many homes we build, if we allow millions upon millions of people who don’t have the legal right to be here to go into houses that ought by right go to American citizens, we are going to have a housing crisis.

This very simple principle, and it’s going to benefit veterans most of all, but it’s going to benefit everybody, is American homes should go to American citizens, not to people who don’t have the right to be here. Thank you.

TULSI GABBARD: All right, our next question is going to come from Jessie.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: My name’s Jessie. I am a proud Puerto Rican first and foremost, Army veteran, served as a drill sergeant. I’ve lived in Pennsylvania for over 20 years now, and I’m proud to call Pennsylvania home. So with all of that being said, I also have an almost 17-year-old son who’s looking to join the military. He would love to go to an academy.

So my husband and I are getting ready to send him off to do something like this. As someone who has served, I deeply value the importance of peace and stability. In President Trump’s first term, he showed a willingness to take bold steps by engaging with leaders across the world to promote peace. Given the current global landscape, can we expect the same level of commitment, proactivity, and diplomacy from him if reelected, especially given that I am now sending my son?

J. D. VANCE: Yes, ma’am. So first let me say a couple things. So you said your son might try to apply to an academy. Is that next year? Okay, so the rules are if you need to go to an academy, you need a letter of recommendation from either your senator or your congressman or from the vice president. And I’ll say that while I don’t know the Pennsylvania senators especially well, if all goes according to plan, I might know a guy who could help with that letter in six days. So please reach out to us.

No promises, but reach out to us. But I’m so thrilled to hear about your background because I’m actually going to see him tomorrow at an event that we’re doing in North Carolina. One of my best buddies in the Marine Corps was a Puerto Rican guy who grew up in the Bronx. You grew up in the Bronx too? Oh, that’s awesome. He grew up in just incredibly tough circumstances. I mean, he grew up in a very, very poor family. He was the best Marine that I ever served with. He’s just a great, great guy, and I’m going to see him tomorrow. I’m very excited about it.

But to answer your question, we are absolutely going to engage in robust diplomacy, robust statecraft. And one of the things I love about Donald J. Trump is, yes, sometimes there are problems in the world that require a military response. Sometimes there are problems in the world that require smart diplomacy, and you’ve got to use both if you want to solve the American people’s problems overseas. You can’t just send everybody off to war. That doesn’t keep our trust with our veterans, and it sure as hell doesn’t honor our commitment to the people who put on the uniform if we send them to be the policemen of the world instead of honoring their service and honoring their sacrifice by treating it as the precious resource that it is.

So, yes, we will absolutely be very careful about how we engage in foreign diplomacy. And this is, you know, one of the things that, you know, I imagine most of us are Republicans or at least are going to vote for President Trump. I know we’ve got a lot of Democrats and Independents in the audience too, including, of course, our great friend up here. And, you know, one of the things that my fellow Republicans will say about Donald Trump’s foreign policy is that it was strong, that weakness invites aggression, and that’s right.

I do think that Kamala Harris’s weakness has invited aggression, but I actually think that’s only half of the equation because Donald Trump’s foreign policy wasn’t just strong, it was also smart. It recognized that sometimes you have to talk to people, sometimes even people you don’t necessarily like or agree with, but you’ve got to engage in smart diplomacy, and that is sometimes how you keep a war from starting in the first place. Thank you.

TULSI GABBARD: I was a Democrat serving in Congress when President Trump was elected.

J. D. VANCE: Yep.

TULSI GABBARD: And one of the things that he did very early on in his term of office was really, really important to the people of Hawaii, my home state. As you know, we’re the most remote island chain in the world.

J. D. VANCE: Yep.

TULSI GABBARD: We are very well within North Korea’s proximity of their intercontinental ballistic missiles. At that time, they were still developing their nuclear capability. They are much farther along today than they were back then. But we had a missile scare where we thought early one morning on a Saturday in 2017, every single cell phone went off with an alert that said, “Ballistic Missile Incoming to Hawaii.”

J. D. VANCE: I remember this. This was a big news story at the time.

TULSI GABBARD: It was massive for residents and tourists alike, people sitting on the beach in Waikiki watching the sunrise, and their phone goes off and it says, “Ballistic Missile Incoming to Hawaii. Seek shelter immediately. This is not a test.” And you can’t really imagine what that is like until you experience it.

JD VANCE: They were just trying to prepare you in case Kamala Harris became president. That’s what’s going to happen if that nightmare ever becomes real.

TULSI GABBARD: But we went through, I mean, people sitting on the beach are like, “Where do I go to find shelter?” That we’re here, as if we got that alert tonight, where would we go to find shelter? If we got an alert that Putin was launching a nuclear weapon, where would we go? There is no shelter to be found. It was a huge wake-up call to realize that fact and that reality.

And so when President Trump chose to go and meet with Kim Jong-un, the first president ever to step into North Korea at the DMZ, as a Democrat in Congress, I was loud and proud to say, “This is the kind of leadership that we need” because President Obama, in the previous four years, I had been urging them. I was on the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Armed Services Committee, urging them to do this, de-escalate tensions, try to de-nuclearize the Korean Peninsula. President Obama refused to do it because he said he didn’t want to reward Kim Jong-un with a meeting. So, J. D. , I’m just wondering if you can talk about how, you know, there are critics of President Trump who say that his foreign policy is isolationist.

J. D. VANCE: Yep.

TULSI GABBARD: Talk about and tell us why they’re wrong.

J. D. VANCE: Well, they’re wrong in part because of exactly what you just said. You know, it’s funny. The people who have been wrong about every foreign policy disaster for the last 30 years are the very same people who say that it’s terrible to engage in diplomacy. And it’s interesting that they were wrong about, remember how they said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and remember how they said that it was going to be really easy to turn Iraq into a, you know, American-style democracy.

And they said it was going to be really easy to turn Afghanistan into a Western liberal society. And, of course, that became a 20-year quagmire. My attitude is, after 20 years of being wrong about everything, why don’t these people at least acquire some humility and shut up and stop trying to tell us what to do with the foreign policy in the United States of America. And, you know, the idea that somehow showing up in North Korea and having a conversation is going to reward somebody, what we should be doing is actually having conversations with people and trying to de-escalate situations before they become massive military conflicts.

And, again, this goes back to the strong versus smart distinction and why both are important. You need both in an American leader. Remember how they all accused, and I’ve been accused of this, Tulsi’s been accused of this, of course President Trump has been accused of being in bed, of colluding with Russia, and yet when George W. Bush was president, Russia invaded a sovereign country.

And when Barack Obama was president, Russia invaded a sovereign country. And when Joe Biden was president, Russia invaded a sovereign country. Who was the one guy who prevented the Russians from invading a sovereign country? It was Donald J. Trump. And they never talk about that. But, again, it’s because he was strong, certainly some of the bad guys were afraid of what Donald J. Trump would do, but it was also because he was willing to communicate with people and open those diplomatic lines up in a way that prevented a hotspot from becoming a full military conflict.

And, Tulsi, you’ve probably heard the president tell this story, but it’s one of my favorite stories of his time in office, where, you know, I guess Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, was trying to posture about his nuclear weapons and talk about how tough and big of a guy he was and said, you know, “I have a little red button on my desk that will launch nuclear weapons.” And President Trump said, “I have a bigger red button on my desk.” And I actually, this is such a profound change between the President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, common sense view of American foreign policy and the broken consensus of the last 30 years, is that we have got to recognize that the best way to advance America’s interest is, yes, to build a strong military and, yes, to be willing to use it when we have to, but also to engage in diplomacy.

Why have a military if you’re never going to engage in diplomacy? Why always use your fellow citizens, as Tulsi said, as cannon fodder? Why not instead actually communicate from time to time, you might save the lives of your citizens and prevent a bigger disaster down the road? Thank you.

TULSI GABBARD: You know, that really, for me, was one of the major driving reasons why I chose to endorse President Trump.

David, I’m glad you brought up the 13 who were killed at Abbey Gate. I was honored to announce my endorsement of President Trump on the third anniversary of their sacrificing their lives for our country because it is essential that every one of us as Americans always keep the memories of those who have paid that ultimate price on our hearts and that we hold our leaders accountable. The most important responsibility the president has is to serve as our commander-in-chief. Our founders told us that the government only exists with the consent of the governed.

We face a no-fail mission, every one of us, a no-fail mission to save our country and save the world, and President Trump is the only choice in this election that will lead us back on that path towards peace, freedom, and prosperity.

Now, before I hand it over to JD, I just want to say that when I heard the rumor mill spurring, you hadn’t been announced yet, but I heard the rumor mill spurring that President Trump was going to announce that you were his pick for vice president, my heart was happy and I felt at ease because in the time that you have served in the U. S. Senate, while it hasn’t been as long as many others who’ve been there for decades, you have lived an experience that many others haven’t.

You have seen the cost of war and you’ve used that experience in your time leading in the U. S. Senate to take a stand against the military-industrial complex and for peace, and you standing shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump, the rest of us can sleep peacefully at night. Thank you.

J. D. VANCE: So, thank you, Tulsi, that was very kind of you to say, and most importantly, it’s very kind of you to go around the country and convince people to elect Donald J. Trump the next president of the United States, and we couldn’t do this without you, thank you.

You know, I always try to encourage folks to remember why we’re fighting, because it’s not red team versus blue team, there are a lot of Democrats, a lot of Independents who are going to support this ticket, and of course we’re proud to have their support. It’s not even just to beat Kamala Harris as much as, I’ll probably enjoy beating Kamala Harris more than any person in this room, trust me about that.

The point here is we want to beat Kamala Harris to give the American people the leadership that the American people deserve, and that’s ultimately what this election is about. You know, ma’am, you asked the question earlier, I mentioned my friend who I’m going to see tomorrow, I think, assuming all the logistics work out, and think about what the Marine Corps meant to this kid that I served with. He grew up in the Bronx. He actually, as I understand it, had some drug use and even drug dealing in his past.

He shows up in North Carolina at a Marine Corps base as a young kid, and again, he’s the best Marine that I ever served with. In fact, I want to tell you a funny story, because he knew gang stuff, because he’d grown up in such a tough neighborhood and such a tough circumstance, and we were near a big city in North Carolina. It was late at night. It was probably 2 in the morning, and he pointed at some guys over in a car at a gas station.

We were stopped to get gas, and he said, “I think those guys are Bloods,” in other words, like members of a gang. And I said, “Well, why do you think that they’re Bloods?” And he said, “Well, because they’re dressed a certain way. They’ve got a certain kind of red dress. I’m just telling you, man, I think that they’re Bloods. I grew up seeing this, and I think that’s what’s going on.” I called him Squeeze. I said, “All right, Squeeze, well, what would you go up and say to these guys if they were actually members of the Bloods gang?”

And he said, “Well, I’d go up to them, and I’d say, ‘What that red be like?'” And I said, “Oh, that’s interesting. So what would happen, Squeeze, if I went up to those guys and said, ‘What that red be like?'” And I’ll tell you exactly what they’d say, J. D. They’d say, “I’m sorry, officer, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And if you think about the Marine Corps, it took a guy who was raised by hillbilly grandparents from eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio and put us into the same unit with a guy who grew up around Bloods gang members from the Bronx in New York City, and it made us part of the same United Marine Corps and American team. And that is an incredible thing that our U. S. military does. But we’ve got to ask ourselves, is it going to keep doing that? Is the military going to serve that same important function?

As Tulsi said, it takes civilians and turns them into warriors. It also takes people from every walk of life and makes them part of the same team. The former Marine Corps commandant, General Charles Krulak, said the most important thing that the military does is it wins battles, but it also turns our young people into really proud servants of the United States of America. Is that still going to happen? Is it still going to have that same function for the United States of America if we put Kamala Harris into the Oval Office? I think the answer is no.

So what we’re up against and what we’re fighting for is to preserve the most important and proudest traditions of the United States military to ensure that our veterans get access to the benefits that they were promised. And the only way that is going to happen is if we fix the broken leadership in Washington, D. C. , and give the American people a president that we can all be proud of. And so I want to ask you, over the next six days, I want every single person in this hangar to get out there and vote ten times. The legal way, the legal way, the legal way you get out there and vote ten times is you take yourself to the polls and you get nine of your friends and family to join you.

So with gratitude to Tulsi Gabbard, the incredible elected officials that we have here today, and most of all with gratitude to all of you for being here, we’ve got six days to go. Let’s vote ten times and let’s make Donald Trump the President of the United States. God bless you all. Thank you.

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