LIVE: Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Mike Lawler Make Announcement

Okay. Yep. Okay. Have a good day, sir. Well, good morning, everybody, and thank you for being here. Mr. Speaker, welcome back to Rockland County. We're here to talk about my opponent, carpet-bagging Kate Conley, and the millions in dark money support she's receiving from groups that are now seemingly skirting federal election law. In March of last year, Conley announced her campaign to great fanfare and a big mistake. Politico ran the headline running for New York from Virginia, where it reported that Kate Conley's launch video was actually filmed in the garage of her house in Virginia, not in Ossining, as Kate's video and campaign claimed. And get this, Kate doesn't live in Ossining either. Despite her claims that she does, the Hudson Valley Digger, found that she had actually moved to Millwood in the town of Newcastle, where the Clintons live, sometime in 2025, not Ossining, as Kate wrote on one of her posts. And even worse, carpetbagging Kate Conley was caught by Politico for misspelling several other towns in this district, including the one that she claimed to live in. The truth is Kate still owns the house in Virginia, where she filmed her launch video. Since January of last year, she's paid Fairfax County almost $11,000 in property taxes and county charges. How much has she paid in property taxes in this district? Anyone? Anyone in the press want to answer the question? Bueller? Bueller? The answer, of course, is zero, because she doesn't own a home here. She wants to represent this community but wouldn't give up her residence in Virginia. That matters to many families in Rockland and Westchester because they want a representative who understands that their property tax bill is usually the biggest one they get all year. On October 7th at the NAACP forum at Rockland Community College, Kate Conley said this, and I'm quoting her. The best thing that Congress could have done for New Yorkers was absolutely nothing and just let it go away. She was talking about the tax bill and the cap on salt, which was a stance that would have resulted in millionaires and billionaires getting the biggest benefits. But let's play along with Kate's idea of tax relief for a moment. If Congress had done nothing and the whole 2017 tax law expired. The standard deduction would have been cut roughly in half. The child tax credit would have dropped from $2,000 to $1,000 per child. Almost every American's taxes would have skyrocketed. Every rate would have gone up, and it would have been the largest tax increase in American history, over $4 trillion. Now, the Tax Foundation says it would have cost the average family here over $4,000 more a year. Now, it was clear when I told my own party I wasn't voting for a tax bill that didn't fix SALT, right? Yes. The SALT caucus worked together and got the cap raised from $10,000 to $40,000. Now, that's significant money for people paying some of the highest property taxes anywhere in the country. The Speaker could have told us to take a hike, but I know many families around here are happy that he didn't. Speaker Johnson sat down with us, he worked it out with us, and that's a big part of why he's here today. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. Thanks so much. It's great to be back in Rockland County. I think I've been here more than your opponent. I have campaigned so much in Mike Lawler's district, I'm afraid I'm going to get a tax bill from the state of New York. but we soldier on. I'm delighted to be here with you all. This is a fateful moment for the United States of America. On our 250th anniversary, we are now just a week away from a midterm that will decide the fate of the country. We're at a crossroads. It's a very, very important time. We've been traveling and campaigning nonstop for weeks now. I'll be in, I think, 21 more congressional districts across 13 states between now and election night. But there's no place that I would rather be right now than with you here in New York 17. Everybody around America is watching this election. Everybody. It will be one of the most expensive races in the history of Congress because the stakes are so very high. And I'm so grateful that even though it's listed officially as a toss up election, crazy as that is, Mike Lawler is going to be reelected once again in this district. And I'm grateful for that. So is America. I brought a couple of reinforcements from around the country. Where are my members standing in the back? Back here, Jimmy Patronis from the state of Florida. He's one of our outstanding leaders in the incredible freshman Republican conference that we have in 119th Congress. I've got the chairman of one of the most powerful committees, maybe the most powerful committee in Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee, and that's Brett Guthrie back here. Where is he standing there? Waving. Okay. And then all the way from North Carolina, Brett's from Kentucky, and all the way from North Carolina is Richard Hudson. He's Congressman, the chair of the NRCC for this cycle, and he's doing an extraordinary job. Richard, thank you so much for your work. And of course, we're surrounded by local leaders here as well. Everybody's united in this cause to make sure that Mike Lawler gets elected. The stakes could not be higher for the country right now. We have summarized this around America as a contrast election. It truly is a contrast between common sense and crazy. And the opponent here is emblematic of the kinds of people who are running for Congress under the Democrat banner. Not just carpetbaggers, but radical leftists. Socialists, they call themselves, but they're Marxists in their ideology. This is not our father's Democrat party. They have taken a far leap to the left, and it will only continue. These people with this radical ideology have published their plans. The DSA, the Democrat Socialists of America, is the flag that they wave above their heads, and they want to abolish the border, abolish prisons, defund the police, defund the Department of War. They want to abolish the Senate, remove the president, pack the Supreme Court. And they want one unicameral body of the House to run everything because they have calculated that over two or three cycles, they can confuse and fool enough Americans to elect enough Marxists to take over the means of production. That means no more private property ownership. It really is madness. And so this election is about what's best for you and your family, what's best for maybe your aging parents, your children. It's common sense versus crazy. Now, we've got a great record to run on, and the reason I'm so proud to campaign with Mike Lawler is because he is the secret sauce in what has been one of the smallest margins in U.S. history. We have one of the smallest majorities, and yet we have had one of the most productive houses of representatives in the modern era, and Mike Lawler has been at the center of all of that, and I do not exaggerate when I tell you that he is one of just a handful, two, three people, that's the top negotiator. He's negotiator-in-chief almost in the Republican conference. It's true. When everybody's running around with their hair on fire and there's lots of division, I bring Mike in as the secret weapon to help negotiate the final product. And because he has been so good, because he's so effective for New York and for America, we've had an extraordinary record. You know, we gave the largest tax cut in U.S. history. That's the one your opponent said she would vote against. OK, well, you know what it means for New Yorkers? The average taxpayer in New York, the average New Yorker has four thousand seventy nine dollars in their pocket right now that they did not have to send to Washington because we cut their taxes because Mike Lawler got the bill through Congress the average household that's right that's right the average household has a real wage increase of eight thousand dollars in the state of New York because Mike Lawler got everybody to yes you have 3.3 million seniors in the state of New York who are no longer paying taxes on their social security that's a big deal for a lot of people and Mike delivered that right and as mentioned we call him Mr. Salt so does the president Mr. Salt okay, because he pushed through the increase from $10,000 to $40,000. That's a big deal for a lot of people, a big win for New York. We also gave over $220 million now in New York to rural hospitals and healthcare for people that are outside the major cities. Mike helped engineer all this. No taxes on tips and overtime, big thing for lots of New Yorkers. He delivered that. We also did the biggest spending cut in U.S. history by cutting fraud, waste, and abuse, ineffective, inefficient government. That makes government work better for the people. Do you know you're enjoying the lowest violent crime rate nationwide in 126 years because we restored law and order. We also secured the border tight, okay, and that was the biggest issue in 2024. We haven't had a single illegal alien released into America in 17 straight months. You have the biggest decline in prescription drug costs in 60 years. We're restoring, thank you, that's good staff work there, Mike. We're restoring American manufacturing. We're bringing jobs back, reshoring to America. One million private sector jobs added just in the last 19 months alone. It goes on and on and on. American energy dominance again, peace through strength. The first ever nationwide school choice program was codified on our watch. We have Trump accounts for every newborn. So many victories. And I'm telling you that almost everything I just recounted, by the way that every Democrat in Congress voted against, every single one of them, almost every one of those victories is delivered because Mike Lawler was in the room making it happen. Now he's delivered for New York. delivered for America, he certainly deserves to be reelected and I am confident that he will be. At the end of the day, people are evaluating these two candidates, this choice that will decide the fate of the country, the future of freedom. We are not exaggerating this. If this crazy group of Marxist Democrats took over, you can kiss your freedom goodbye, okay? That's what would happen. This is a progress. They would spend every waking hour for the next two years investigating the president, cabinet, leaders in business and industry, it would be retribution. They would try to reopen the borders. They would try to repeal the tax cuts and everything that I just recounted for you. We cannot go down that road. You have to keep steady hands at the wheel. We have much more work to do. And I wouldn't rather do it with anybody than the exceptional congressman that you have here, Mike Lawler. So we want to thank everybody from New York 17, reminding you that every single vote is going to count. This is going to be close. This will be probably all in close to a $60 million dollar race, both sides. But this race is bigger than New York. It's for the entire country. So thank you all so much. And I'll yield back to my good friend here. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And before we wrap up, just want to introduce some of our local officials that are here as well. State Senator Bill Weber, County Executive Ed Day, a town supervisor in the town of Orangetown, Teresa Kenney, a deputy town supervisor in the town of Ramapo, Brendel Logan Charles, Highway Superintendent Jim Dean in the town of Orangetown, and Town Clerk Rosanna Sfraga. Look, thank you, Mr. Speaker. One more thing before we take questions, and I want to address some recent mailers from yet another dark money group supporting Kate Conley. They claimed I'm for amnesty, which I'm not, for criminal illegal immigrants. They're from a group calling themselves the American Forge Coalition. Look at the bottom of the mail and it says paid for by American Forge Coalition. That's all it says. There's no address, no website. The phone number, 845-201-2060 is my district office in Pearl River. And as of yesterday, the FEC has no record of this group And most importantly, no 24-hour filing for an independent expenditure. Dozens of outside groups have reported spending money in this race this year. This is not one of them. The Department of Justice has confirmed to my campaign that it has referred the matter to the FBI. So somebody is spending real money in the last weeks of this election lying about my positions on criminal illegal aliens, and they won't say who they are. There's nobody to my right on the ballot, and voter suppression is illegal. You can figure out who comes out ahead if voters stay home. Kate Conley's own website says it's time to get rid of dark money flooding our elections. She says she spent her time at CISA working to protect our election systems. Well, here it is in her race. And the question is, will Kate Conley condemn the far left groups that are very clearly trying to suppress voters in the waning week of this election? That's the question. And every reporter here should ask her. So let's take some questions. Yes, David, congrats on your wedding. You're a pretty astute journalist, David, and I'm sure you're going to get to the bottom of it and you're going to dig into it. right? Because the fact is, this is very much similar to what the Democrats did two years ago when they tried to attack me from the right in the waning months of the campaign to try and suppress Republican turnout. And the only person that would have benefited from that was Mondaire Jones at the time. There's no candidate to the right of me. There's no conservative running on another ballot line here. I am the Republican and conservative candidate. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who's behind this. Yes. would not seat those Democrats to not change the guard. So I want to ask you in January, regardless of what the results are. It's a little silly you have to ask the question. Of course, we'll have a peaceful transfer of power, but it will not be transferring because we are going to keep the majority and I'm going to be the Speaker of the House and I will keep steady hands at the wheel, okay? Look, you know my background. I'm a constitutional law attorney. We're going to follow the Constitution. The Constitution says when a state certifies the election of members of Congress and they're administered the oath. That's what I'll be doing on January 3rd to everybody who's there. I may not like some of those outcomes, but that's our system. And for anybody to suggest otherwise is absurd. Yes. Yes. Look, we delivered the largest tax cut in American history. And I said from the very beginning that I would never support a tax bill that did not lift the cap on salt and provide real tax relief to my constituents. Look, we live in New York is the highest tax state in the country. We have the worst business climate. We lead the nation in out migration. We have the most incompetent governor running our state. And I have stood up to both parties to deliver for my constituents. Rockland and Westchester counties and Putnam are in the top 16 highest property tax counties in America and Dutchess County is in the top 35. So my constituents have been besieged by high taxes under one-party Democratic rule in Albany that has continually driven up state spending, driven up the cost of everything, housing prices, health care, energy. Utility rates are up 58 percent under Kathy Hochul because Democrats shut down nuclear power. They banned natural gas extraction. They blocked pipelines. So we have fought to deliver real, not only tax relief, but we passed the largest bipartisan housing bill through Congress in 36 years. And we're going to get a permanent reform deal done before the end of this Congress to increase domestic production of energy, which is vital to actually driving down costs. So this Republican Congress has actually delivered on three of the most important things, taxes, housing and energy, which is vital to actually bring down cost of living. So we're going to continue to work at it. But, yes, I do believe that's going to be vital to my success. Can I add something to that? Yes. Yeah, I'm going to. Yeah, I'm going to move around. But you can. Well, just just I just want to briefly say this. The tax bill, the working families tax cut, the reason it's called that it was originally the big, beautiful bill. But we've made it more specific in its description because that's what it was for, for lower and middle class earners. And it's the greatest thing that's been done for them in generations. One of the things we did in that bill to make sure that we provided more jobs, created more jobs, is we incentivized that growth for small business owners. So if you're a small business owner, which many of the jobs in the state of New York and here in Rockland County are provided by small business owners, if you invest in your business, you add, you know, upgrade equipment, add a new manufacturing facility. If you invest in research and development, those kinds of things, you write them off on your taxes immediately. That has been jet fuel to the economy. That's why we provided over a million private sector jobs just in the last 19 months as a result of legislation that Mike Lawler got done. There's more and more jobs being created. The joblessness numbers are at record levels. The stock market indexes, of course, have been breaking records. The economic conditions are in place for the economy to take off like a rocket. And I believe that's going to happen in very short order when the Strait of Hormuz is reopened in Iran. That's the after effect of us making sure that the largest state sponsor of terrorism does not have a nuclear weapon. That's why your gas prices are too high right now. But that will change when under the Biden-Harris administration, everybody has to remember, they brought us to 40-year high inflation, 9.1 percent at peak. They brought us to $5 gasoline in the Biden-Harris administration. But they did it intentionally, as Mike was saying. They cut permitting, production, exploration, and exports of things like liquefied natural gas. We believe the opposite, and our record is restoring American energy dominance. That brings down those costs, and that will continue. We have much more work to do, but you cannot shift gears right now and turn this over to Marxists. Their solution for everything is more government, higher taxes, which leads to higher prices and less freedom. This is a stark contrast. I believe that people are going to make the right choice. Just two things to add on that. My opponent, Kate Kelly, has spent the last month attacking me over the 100 percent expensing, somehow claiming that we provided 80 billion in tax breaks to data centers. She's talking about the 100 percent expensing. How could you possibly be against small businesses expensing investment in plant property and equipment to fuel growth and to hire more people? It's insane. And it just speaks to the fact that she truly doesn't understand the issue she's talking about. But moreover, Democrats want to eliminate oil and gas production in this country. My opponent in the Journal News just two weeks ago said she wants to eliminate fossil fuels. Can somebody explain to me what gas prices will be if oil and gas production in this country goes down? Yes, sir. Well, if you look at what's happening in Alaska and I was just campaigning up there a couple weeks ago, we're going to win there. But they're trying to obscure and confuse voters. It is by definition election fraud when they put someone on the ballot named Dan Sullivan, which is the incumbent senator who is running. They literally recruited a guy who had no intention of running for office, doesn't know anything about it, has put no effort into it at all. It's a fraud on the people. They're trying to confuse voters by design. So the question is, if we don't address that, if the DOJ doesn't call it out, do we want that to happen in every congressional race going forward? Do we want that to be the precedent? It's easy to recruit a Mike Johnson. I don't know about a Mike Lawler, but they'll find somebody. New York's a big place. I mean, and you don't have to live in a congressional district to run there, as exhibited by your opponent. So they can just go across the country and find someone with the same name of every incumbent in Congress and confuse the voters. It's madness, and everybody knows that. Again, common sense. We've got to make sure that we have free and fair elections in this country. Election security is critical to maintain a republic. And when people are playing games, they're doing these false mailers and making stuff up, you have to follow the law. You have to make sure that that's ensured so that people can trust the vote. That's so important. Other questions. Yeah. So she's blaming the Jews for people hating Jews. I mean, look, this has become the Democratic talking point. Oh, it's Netanyahu. Give me a break. How about you just speak out and condemn the anti-Semitism that has risen within the Democratic Party to record levels? How about you just condemn the fact that the mayor of New York City's October 7th statement blamed Jews for their own slaughtering on October 7th? Look, Kathy Hochul is about as feckless a governor there is. So it's no surprise she'll just try to blame the Jews for people hating the Jews. It's it's embarrassing, honestly. Look, we'll see what the election results are in Israel and in short order. But fundamentally, to me, we have a major problem with anti-Semitism in this country, in this state, in which Letitia James can't be bothered to prosecute anti-Semitic hate crimes. Over 90 percent of them not prosecuted, despite the fact that Jews are continuously the victim of hate crimes across this state. And they are doing nothing about it. You know, but to me, that's just rich coming from Kathy Hochul to fall right into the anti-Semitic trope. Well, first of all, the TV ads that ran in the primary were pointing out her record on those issues and the fact that she was tied to two companies that were paying her and And she was claiming that they were that nothing to do with ICE enforcement when, in fact, they did. And voters have the right to know about that. There was no coordination between anybody. Those those ads came forward. Here you have a very direct attempt to suppress voters by claiming something that is fundamentally not true. Okay? The companies that paid her do business with the Department of Homeland Security, do business with ICE. She was lying to voters saying that they do not. Here, you have ads that are saying that I support amnesty for illegal immigrants and criminals. I mean, you've covered this race. Have I ever said that I support that? So would you agree that's a pretty false statement to be mailed out? That's the problem here. You have people that are intentionally lying and trying to suppress the vote in that election that you're talking about the primary you had a super PAC run an ad rightly highlighting her ties to two companies that do business with the Department of Homeland Security despite her lies that they don't with a full disclaimer to the chairman's point last question I don't think it's happening I think that the president is on a nonstop tour. I talked with him yesterday. He and I are crisscrossing the country. I think he has 14 more rallies just this week alone. His rallies have record numbers, record crowds. It feels just like 2024 to us. Look, the polling is wrong. I've been saying this in all the national media. They're trying to suppress and depress Republican turnout in the elections. The polling has underestimated Republican vote. CNN ran a story, I think it was this morning, And they acknowledge that 15 out of the last 16 elections, listen to what I'm about to tell you, in the October generic ballot, they underestimated Republican votes by an average of 4%. Don't believe the polls. Republicans are not responding to polls anymore, in increasing numbers, not responding. And so I think we are due for a great election. I believe we're going to hold the majority, and I believe President Trump is a big part of that. He's energized the base as is necessary. He works harder than any president. And you can't ever think of a second-term president. There's no other example of this in history who has been out on the trail running like he's still a candidate. He cares that much about the country. He wants to make sure we keep the Congress in safe, responsible hands. And I'm, for one, very grateful for his effort. Thank you all so much for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you.