Vice President JD Vance Swears-In Colin McDonald

Good morning. Welcome. We are here today because America has a fraud crisis. This is the most generous country on the planet. Every year, everyone in this room, your friends and your family, part with trillions of their tax dollars to help out their friends, families, and neighbors in tough times. And all the programs we pay into are premised on a high level of social trust. That our neighbors and friends will honestly participate in these programs, and the government will make sure that everyone is being honest. And what President Trump has discovered is that this has largely not been going on. A coalition of poor government within the federal government under the previous administration and blue states have made it so that billions and billions of dollars of American tax dollars go to fraudsters, both citizens and foreigners who come here to take advantage of America's generosity and largesse. That is ending today, and that is ending today because the President has convened the Anti-Fraud Task Force, led by the Vice President, to make sure that these funds don't go out the door to fraudsters anymore, and equally as importantly, today we are here to swear in a brilliant prosecutor to restore deterrence, to make sure people are afraid to commit fraud because they are afraid of the consequences, and to make sure that people who do commit fraud go to jail where they belong. And that prosecutor is Colin McDonald, a brilliant career prosecutor from California who's worked for our brilliant Deputy Attorney General for the last year, helping get the Justice Department into shape after the Biden administration. He's prosecuted fraud cases, guns and drugs, political corruption. Colin McDonald has done it all. He is exactly the man for this job, to restore deterrence and to put the bad fraudsters in jail where they belong. And that is why we're here with his beautiful family to swear in Colin to his new position as Assistant Attorney General. And so with that, it's my honor to introduce the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, and Colin McDonald. Well, thank you all for being here. Thanks, Andrew, for the introduction and for leading this important task force. I want to thank a few people before I get to Colin and his beautiful family. So we're going to go on for about 35 minutes just to see how well-behaved your kids are, Colin and Janessa. First, let me say thanks to Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, our Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, for supporting this mission. One of the things that we realized when we started to get into this job of combating fraud is that because the government had never really focused in such a holistic way on eliminating the fraud that's being committed against American taxpayers, we actually needed a new division within the Department of Justice. Colin is obviously leading that division, but it wouldn't have been possible without Todd and Pam helping us in setting up this office. I want to thank Colin, your beautiful family. You have five kids here, and I guess an age from two to eleven, is that right? Thirteen. Two to thirteen. So you're thirteen. Great. A beautiful crew, a great American family, and this is really a great American mission. As Andrew said, our entire social safety net, our entire idea of neighbors helping out neighbors, of Americans helping out Americans, is premised on the idea that only the people who really need these programs get them, and that when the American taxpayer sends money to a program, it goes to somebody in their community who has the legal right to be here, who has the legal right to actually benefit from these programs. If you don't do that, the whole thing falls apart. Our sense of social trust, our sense of belonging, our sense that we help each other out, but we help out the people in our community, not the fraudsters who are getting rich off of our generosity. That whole thing falls apart unless we take fraud seriously, and that's what Colin is going to do. You know, one of the things that Colin has talked to me about, and that I've been kind of shocked by, even though we've been sort of living this anti-fraud mission for the past couple of months, is that when you have fraud being committed in this country, the Department of Justice has largely turned a blind eye towards it if it's under a certain dollar amount. One of the things Colin is going to do is make sure that no fraud, no matter how big or how small it is, no fraud is small enough or big enough to look away from, and I think that's going to reimpose deterrence, it's going to make fraudsters know that they're going to suffer some consequences, and it's going to make the American people know that these programs are being protected for the people who need them, because there are a lot of them out there, we want to help them, but we've got to get rid of the fraud in order to do it. So, without further ado, what we're going to do is I'm going to swear Colin in, we're going to take some photos, and then I think Colin, actually, we'll swear Colin in, Colin will say a few words, and then we'll take some photos afterwards. So thank you all for being here, this is a great mission, this is a great family, and we're grateful to you guys for taking this mission on. God bless you. Without further ado, come on, kids come on up, they are looking sharp today, so, please raise your right hand, and repeat after me, I, Colin McDonald, do solemnly swear, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith, and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation, or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully, discharge the duties, of the office on which I am about to enter, of the office on which I am about to enter, to help you God, to help you God. Thank you all for being here today, this is an important day for the United States of America, and for the Department of Justice, and to begin, I want to say some words to some select groups of people that have made today possible. First, I want to start with a word of thanks to the President, to the Vice President, to Mr. Ferguson, to the Attorney General, to the Deputy Attorney General, Mr. Blanche, for having the vision to create this new division to ensure that the American taxpayer is protected, and to ensure that there is confidence in our financial security within the United States. A hearty thank you goes out to those visionaries for creating the division that we are launching today. Next, to my teammates led by Deputy Attorney General Blanche and Attorney General Bondi, I thank you for the work that we have achieved together to ensure the safety and prosperity of America over the last year. Your hard work does not go unnoticed, even while the people of America may not get to see it, they are sleeping well at night because you are not sleeping at all at night, tending to the public safety mission of the United States of America. To the American people, my promise to you is this, that I will work tirelessly day after day to ensure that if someone out there dares to steal your taxpayer dollars, that there might just be a federal prosecutor on the end of that bad decision, that no longer will we be uninterested in low levels of fraud, we will be interested in all of it, and if someone out there right now is deciding and determining whether they will file a false application to try to steal your taxpayer dollars, we're going to care about it, and we're going to find it, and we are going to prosecute you as hard as we can. What is the goal of this division? The goal of this division is to ensure deterrence, so that people who are right now being dishonest and stealing the hard-earned taxpayer money, that they make right decisions, that they are deterred. That is what justice is for, to ensure right and honest and good conduct. That is what the mission of this division is. And finally, to my family in front of me, this task that Daddy is embarking on is a big, big task, but it is not bigger than my task with you. You are my biggest task, and the devotion that I have for you will be the same devotion that I give to the people of the United States to fight for them, to ensure that they have the confidence that their government is doing the right thing to identify fraud and to prosecute those and bring justice to those who are perpetrating against it. That is my message to my children here today, and to all the rest of us, it is time to get to work. I am grateful for this opportunity to work on behalf of the United States, and I'm thankful for the confidence that the Vice President and the President has given and placed in me, and I look forward to honoring that confidence by doing the best job possible. Thank you. Okay, so I know the plan is to have the family back there for photos, but this is a much prettier building, a much prettier room to do the photos, so why don't we just have the family join us up here, but before that, two more quick things. This nomination, this department wouldn't exist, more importantly, this effort to focus on fraud wouldn't exist without the President's leadership, so I want to thank the President of the United States for making this possible, and second, very, very importantly, the United States Senate actually did a quick, efficient job of confirming Colin McDonald. He got, I believe, every single Republican vote. He didn't get many Democrats, which reveals in some ways the Democrats don't care that much about the fraud mission. That's unfortunate, but as Colin told me before we went out, while the Democrats are so obsessed with not going after fraud, they didn't, many of them didn't vote for him, I think by the end of this, the Democrats are going to realize what a mistake it was not to support this guy at this important mission of protecting the American people's money and protecting the social programs that we all, many of us have relied on for many points in our lives, so God bless you all for being here. Thanks for supporting Colin, and kids, why don't we come up and take a photo? Thank you. You can come back. You guys are welcome. Bye, guys. Take care.