Transcript: Vice President JD Vance Remarks in Middletown, OH

Now I’m very honored because the welders of this facility made me this incredible, beautiful, artisan plaque to commemorate me coming here. And those of you who don’t know, Papaw was a welder, so it’s particularly meaningful for me and for all the welders behind me and in front of me.

Thank you all. It means a great deal. But Papaw was a welder in this place for forty years, and today his grandson stands here as the vice president of these United States. It’s an amazing thing. And I’m here with a message from the president of these United States.

The Fight for American Industry

The future of America, the future of the United States, the future of our homes and communities is going to be built right here in Middletown, Ohio. My Papaw hated the politicians who ignored this place. He hated the people who saw this as the place of the past. He hated the people who forgot about this town when they should have been fighting for this town. And the unfortunate reality is that they came from both political parties. And they spent the last forty years telling you it didn’t matter if we made things right here or whether we made them in overseas countries.

They said it was irrational, sentimental, old fashioned to want to preserve the things that make the United States of America special. What we really needed, they said, was to compete and have complete market integration with every nation in the third world. Places where you could pay wages at pennies on the dollar, but didn’t have to give your workers health care or good benefits in the process. And anytime somebody dared to put an obstacle in front of that set of ideas, anytime they said, you know what? We need to put tariffs or tough immigration policies to stop that, those people were called backwards.

They were called wrong. Now in 1984, just to date myself a little bit, don’t hate me. One month before I was born, the Wall Street Journal, the voice of big business in the United States of America proposed, and I quote, a five word constitutional amendment. “There shall be open borders.” Now they weren’t joking.

They weren’t being tongue in cheek. Because if you look at what they tried to do over the next forty years, they told you back then exactly what they were trying to do. Sixteen years later, when I was in high school right here at Middletown High School. Go Middies. Go Middies.

The newspaper’s lead editorial writer doubled down on that same set of ideas. They said someone who believes, this is a quote, “in the free trade and free movements of capital,” they declared, “will quite naturally believe in the free movement of labor.” That means they’re going to ship your jobs overseas and they’re going to let anybody who wants to come into the United States of America with no vetting and no care. Being replaced by foreign workers, in other words, it was not an accident, my friends. It was the desired outcome of a generation of American elites.

Stories of Loss

And every single person in this room knows the consequences and what they looked like over a generation right here in Middletown, Ohio. Now growing up here, I remember, oh, I remember when somebody would come to school and tell me that their dad had just found out that he had lost his job, that the factory that employed their parents was going overseas to China or to Mexico. In other cases, American workers didn’t just have their jobs destroyed, they got told they were being replaced by a foreign worker, and then they had to train that worker before they got replaced. Some of these stories have made national news, and they’ve stuck with me. Three years after the Wall Street Journal called for the free movement of labor, a computer programmer, not a mill worker, a computer programmer by the name of Kevin Flanagan was let go at the bank that he worked at.

And the business, the bank, they told him, you’re only going to get your severance package if you trained a foreign replacement to do your job instead. And it’s a heartbreaking story because he did it. He dutifully did what he was asked to do. And on his last day, he packed up his things, he walked to the office parking lot, he got in his truck and he shot himself. It’s not just Kevin, as you all know.

Now economists have measured the ways in which the opioid crisis exploded in the very locations where jobs were shipped overseas. The open borders demanded by those same people, brought some innocent people, of course it did. But we also know that it brought a lot of cartels, it brought the fentanyl trade, and it left us with millions of orphaned children being raised by aggrieved grandparents. That was the story, of course, of my mamaw and Papaw. Now the blood of these men and women, these so called deaths of despair, I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase, but it’s almost too abstract for me. Because the blood of those people, in my view, it pools at the feet of those who would sell out their country for a cheap bottom line.

Our politicians and frankly, the cronies in the private sector, people who didn’t want to build in America like Cleveland-Cliffs, but people who were happy to build overseas, they got rich and communities like this one got poor. Politicians, think about this, who came to Washington with a few thousand dollars in their bank account, left after decades of public service with millions in stock portfolios. And what did all of you get? What did we get? If you were lucky, your neighbor’s job got shipped to a foreign country while your tax dollars got shipped to fraudsters.

And if you were unlucky, as I know many people in this room were, you were left raising a grandchild while you were mourning the child killed by the very poison brought across that wide open border. But just as it was a policy choice to let that happen, my friends, it was a policy choice to reverse that decline. And in November 2024, you made a choice to reverse forty years of American decline and make Donald Trump the president of the United States. And I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or it’s all going to happen overnight, but in just eighteen months, we have seen an explosion of rebuilding in the American heartland. We have seen trillions, with a t, trillions of new dollars of investment pour into the United States of America to build new smelters, build new manufacturing facilities, build new mills, build new everything.

The Numbers

Under President Trump’s leadership, factory construction employment has exploded. We’ve added 83,000 factory construction jobs just since inauguration day. And as companies break new ground on new facilities and they start building new assembly lines, imports for capital goods are reaching historic peaks. Because when we build these facilities, we’ve all also got to put the beautiful equipment that go into them. Demand for metal cutting and similar machine tools is hitting its highest levels in a century in the United States of America.

And all this new construction is building on a strong base with manufacturing activity last month reaching its best rate in many, many years. We created more than 29,000 new jobs in the sector in 2026 so far, reversing years of decline in manufacturing employment. And year over year, manufacturing workers wages actually went up 4.2% where they went down under the Biden administration, and frankly, they’ve been higher in the industries where you’ve seen that decline in illegal immigration into our country like construction and commercial trucking. And that brings me to why I’m here today. Because we’re not just here to talk about the celebration and the good news and the numbers.

The Billion-Dollar Announcement

We’re here to announce that Cleveland-Cliffs is making today, right here in Middletown, Ohio, a $1 billion investment in transformational manufacturing right here in our home. Now that’s going to protect and create tons of new jobs. We’re going to upgrade the iron making furnace. We’re going to implement cutting edge new technology to optimize furnace operation and improve Middletown’s air qualities because as much as the far left says that you can’t have industry, but also clean air and water, we’re going to show in this facility that’s exactly what you can have. You can have both of it, and you can have it in spades with smart leadership.

Now this is only possible because of my friend Chris Wright’s and the president’s energy dominance agenda. And I got to say it’s great to have a business that is putting power in the grid rather than just taking it away, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do here in Middletown. But we also recognize in our administration that real dignity, it’s not just about what happens in the factory. It’s not just about what happens in the office. We don’t just want you to have a good job as much as I very much want that for every single person in this room.

Safety and Security

I want you to have peace, and I want you to have security, and I want you to have the real freedom that comes along with knowing that you are the lord of your own manner. You’re the great southern — the great southern populace, probably most of you in the — in the room don’t know who I’m talking about, but he’s an interesting guy, kind of a crazy guy. His name was Huey Long, and he once said, “every man a king” was the goal of his political program. But no man is a king if their castle is under siege by criminals. No man is a king if they can’t take their family out to dinner without being mugged or having their car jacked.

And of course, ending the Biden border invasion was a big part of why we have changed that over the last eighteen months. For four years, the Democrats invited millions of illegal immigrants into this country to take over our communities and compete with us for jobs and housing. They let in murderers. They let in gang leaders. They let in fraudsters, and they let in drug traffickers, and they did so by the tens of thousands.

And for months, we heard Democrats, including people like Sherrod Brown, people who pretend to be the friends of the workers in this facility saying that they couldn’t do anything to fix it, that we needed a new law. We needed a new statute. We needed Congress to pass a new regulation in order to fix Joe Biden’s open border. But as we’ve learned over the past eighteen months, it didn’t require a new law to close down that border. It just required a new US president.

And what we did is we told American corporations that if you wanted new workers, you got to start by training and hiring your own countrymen. And we rewarded the corporations like Cleveland-Cliffs that wanted to do that, and we were willing to tell the corporations that wanted to hire foreign labor that if you wanted to bring that stuff back in the United States, you were going to pay a big fat tariff for doing so. And so for the first time in my life, America saw net migration out of the country as we sent millions of illegal immigrants back home. And as a result — yeah. And as a result of that, this may be the thing I’m the most proud of in the last eighteen months.

Do you know that all net job growth over the past eighteen months went to native born Americans, reversing a trend for four years where it all went to other people? We got a lot of work to do, but we’re making progress on all the things that matter the most. On the affordability question, we know that under Joe Biden, the cost of a median price home nearly doubled. Now, for the first time in over five years, rents are falling for the first time. We got a lot of work to do, but we’re finally seeing that American dream of homeownership become accessible again to our young people.

And it’s not just affordability, America’s getting safer too. We’re currently experiencing in the United States of America the largest reduction in violent crime in the history of our country, homicides. You know, homicides are at their lowest level in our country, the lowest level in 126 years. That’s almost hard to believe. Cities like Aurora, Colorado, where if you remember, I had an interview with somebody in the mainstream media.

It was the October before the election, right when we were getting into crunch time. And we were talking about how these violent Venezuelan drug gangs had taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado. And I said this to the anchor. And the anchor comes back and says to me, she says, “well, they’ve only taken over one or two apartment complex.” And I remember at the time, I guess I wouldn’t be a good poker player because I got so excited.

I was like, did she really just say it’s okay for a Venezuelan drug gang to only take over one or two apartment complexes, I was ready to jump out of my seat and make this point that a single apartment complex or a single home taken over by a foreign drug gang is one too many, which is why we got to get those people the hell out of the United States of America. But as we systematically address the failures of the past, I got to be honest, as much as I wish we had, we have not gotten a lot of help from Democrats in Washington. Bernie, have we? No. This is not unfortunately JFK or FDR’s Democrat party.

What Do Democrats Stand For?

Hell, it’s not even Bill Clinton’s Democrat party. This is the party of diversity quotas rather than opportunity for all. This is the party, the Democrat party of graduate students rather than the union and non union workers who make this facility run. It’s sometimes actually hard to understand, like what do these modern Democrats actually stand for? But look what they say.

Pay close attention and they’ll leave these little hints of what they actually care about. Now Abdul El-Sayed, this guy running for senate in Michigan, he once argued not too long ago that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy. I’d love to go back in time and tell my papaw that there’s a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a white supremacist. That’s not my Papaw’s Democrat party, my friends. Now I served for two years in the senate with Sherrod Brown.

He was a friendly enough guy, but he was a man who claimed to represent this state, but never once raised his voice against Joe Biden’s border crisis or against the inflation that was brought on by Joe Biden underinvesting and trying to destroy American industry. If you look at it at every step of the way, these Democrats have voted for foreign workers and fraudsters over American citizens and hard paying taxpayers. They have voted for corporations who sent jobs overseas rather than good American businesses who invested in you, invested in your communities, and increased your jobs. Who do these Democrats put first? Everyone else.

You know who the Trump administration puts first? Americans. You, my friends. That’s who we fight for. But you know these Democrats, they’ve opposed every turn our work to make trade fair again, to stop letting foreign countries take advantage of us.

They screamed and cried as we protected our communities from illegal immigration. They sued, they boycotted, they protested, they rioted, and they obstructed all in the name of defending the interests of foreigners over American citizens. That’s right. Now some of the stories sound insane. In one case, we were working to deport a convicted child rapist in the state of Minnesota.

Tim Walz. Do you remember Tim Walz? Caught wind. And you know what he did? He pardoned the guy.

He pardoned a literal child rapist to prevent him from being deported out of the United States of America. Now we went ahead and got this guy out of our country anyways, and Walz — it gets better. Walz asked us — Walz asked the country what good it accomplished. “Did that make us any safer?” That is a direct quote from the Democrat governor of Minnesota.

To which I’d say, as the father of four young children, ten year olds and everybody else can breathe a little bit easier in Minnesota. Yes, Tim. Of course, it’s good to get violent criminals the hell out of the United States of America. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we’re up against in November. Whether it’s child predators, Somali fraudsters, foreign gang members, or even visa fraudsters who are working to undercut American wages and steal from American taxpayers, the Democrats know who they stand for.

It’s anyone but you. Think about it. Every single Democrat, everyone voted against no taxes on tips, voted against no taxes on Social Security, voted against no taxes on overtime, and voted against no taxes on car loans so long as those cars were made right here in America. Now we got to ask ourselves, imagine if they get back in power, what are they going to vote for? If these radicals take control of Congress, they’re going to pass the craziest agenda America has ever seen.

You’re not going to have to take my word for it. You just got to hear these guys actually talk about it themselves. One incoming Democrat congresswoman wants to abolish prisons, she wants to abolish police, and she wants to abolish the borders. And let me just say, that’s the only real question on the ballot in November. Do we believe in America or do we believe in nothing?

Gratitude and the American Story

We in this room believe in America, and we’re going to fight for it, my friends. You know, when I — when I reflect on 250 years of American history, what I — I — I can’t help but feel above everything else is gratitude. I reflect on this incredible life that I’ve been able to lead thanks to the generosity of so many of the people in this community, people who are here today, friends and family, my stepmom is here, teachers, people who made it possible for me to live the American dream when everything else was fighting against it. The cool thing about this nation is that in our own way, making our own contribution, we’ve built this country together as one American family. Black and white, rich and poor, whether you’ve been in this country for ten seconds or whether your family has been in this country for 10 generations, think about it.

Every accomplishment of American greatness has a long line of people, many of them who don’t get their — their part in the story, but we all know we’re very much part of it. Now, of course, I grew up in an era where we had already gone to the moon. But think about this. When we went to the moon, of course, it was the astronauts. Everybody wanted to be an astronaut when I was growing up.

Neil Armstrong just lived up the street when I was growing up. They were amazing men. They tested the limits of physical realities. They had quite literally out of this world courage. But it was not just them.

It was the scientists. It was the computer programmers who designed the rockets, who designed the software that went in it. It was the janitor who made sure that facility was a clean and orderly place to go to work so that these guys could build the rockets that took us to the moon. It was men like my Papaw who worked at steel mills all across America and who built parts and materials that were American strong and good enough to test the limits of interplanetary travel for the first time in human history. It was the moms and dads doing the quiet and as I know often thankless work of raising the kinds of boys and girls who could become astronauts or become scientists or become welders or eventually become moms and dads themselves.

The story of our beautiful nation and its greatest achievements has been written by all of us together. Some of us contributed a few sentences and others contributed whole chapters of the book, but it is the story of our people. It is the story of our parents before we were born, and it will be the story of our grandchildren long after we’re gone. The story of this country is one of a foundation laid by normal, common, and good people who make the great achievements of Western civilization possible. One of my kids is ready to go back to school next week, and I learned through him of a classmate who suffered from a terrible illness.

The Little Girl

Little girl, beautiful little girl. And as fate would have it, just a crazy coincidence, I actually knew a little girl when I was growing up in Middletown, Ohio, who suffered from the exact same illness. And what I remember is that back then, it was considered a death sentence. And now, it’s serious. It’s — I don’t want to underweight it, but she — this little girl is expected to survive after she gets her course of treatment.

Now think about this. In just a single generation, a disease has gone from a death sentence to another very difficult problem that Americans together can fix. From the people who are making the therapeutics, to the people who are designing and building the facilities where they’re made, to the men and women who manufacture the steel where the medicines that saved that little girl’s life were made. It’s not possible without all of us working together. And when I look at this girl’s life, the fact that she’s going to be able to grow up and live a normal life, I cannot help but feel gratitude for every piece, every chapter of the American story that made it possible.

To the researchers and scientists, think about this, who have toiled for decades finding treatments to the world’s most difficult diseases. To the businesses, the parents, the private citizens, the philanthropists who funded the kind of moonshot research to take this disease to be something that could be treated, to the government that created a climate of innovation for the world’s deadliest diseases. Think about all the teachers who made it possible for this little girl, my son’s teacher too, who made it possible for this little girl to come to school despite her illness. And I got to brag on my little boy a little bit, and I hope I won’t feel emotional or get too emotional, but I can’t help but feel gratitude to him. Because I got a note a couple months ago, every father will appreciate this, and he told us that in this girl’s weakened state, even though she was still trying to come to school most days, that their daughter was worried about going down the steps to the playground, but that every day our little boy volunteered to hold her hand and make sure she got to go to recess with confidence.

Closing

Now our founding fathers wrote in the constitution that the purpose of this union was to secure the blessings of liberty. And what greater blessing of liberty than to know that this little girl has a good chance to know that the work of an army of doctors and researchers made it possible for your little girl or your little guy to show a moment of compassion to this little girl, to show that greatness that I believe God places in the heart of every human being, made possible because this little girl happened to grow up at a time and in the greatest country in the history of the world. That’s the American story, my friends. Look, it’s not my job to tell you how to live your life. It’s not my job to tell you who to fall in love with, how to worship, or even whether to root for the Bengals or the Browns.

Though, sorry, John, you should be rooting for the Bengals. YouTube — actually, Bernie — Bernie, you’re probably more of a Cleveland fan than — than John is. But my job, the job of the president of the United States, the job the president demands of every single person in his administration, for the vice president on down, is to fight for you. It’s to fight for your blessings of liberty, for a neighborhood that’s safe, a job that’s dignified, a church that’s protected, and a community of citizens where every single person has both the right and the duty, but also the obligation to write their story in the chapter of the United States of America. And so my fellow Americans, my fellow Ohioans, my fellow Middletonians, I believe that this November, you and I and our fellow citizens, we’re going to go to the ballot box and we’re going to face a choice.

Do we believe in the United States of America? Do we believe in the hardworking men and women who built this great nation? Do we demand that our government serve us and our children rather than fraudsters and criminals? Do we demand that the American president fight for the American people first? Yeah.

Then my friends, I ask you, each and every one of you to stand on your own conscience, to vote for patriots, to vote for people who are going to fight for you, to vote for Jon Husted for the United States senate, and for Vivek for the governor of Ohio. Oh, yeah. Get out there and fight for yourself by telling the far left radicals who have taken over the Democratic Party, this is not your country, it’s our country, and we’re going to fight for it. God bless you, and thank you for having me.

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