Vice President JD Vance Delivers Remarks in Middletown, OH

Wow. I'm going to start with a giant thank you. Thank you to everyone in this room, everyone working at the Middletown Ironworks. You make our world possible, our life possible. I'm honored to stand here in this, what is truly a cathedral to American industrial might. This is how America became the greatest nation ever in history and the ultimate land of opportunity for 300-plus million Americans. I met the Vice President about 10 years ago, right after his stirring memoir came out. I had quite an impression when we first dialogued. It's a classic American story, a pursuit of the American dream. It doesn't matter where you're from, it's about where you're going. The Vice President had a plan and he created and lived the American dream. But it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy. We've had forces over the last few decades, the deindustrialization of our country that were simply tragic and colossal mistake. Coastal leftist democratic ideas that somehow big, strong, powerful things were out of fashion. We should push those overseas to be made in Asia and we'll just buy the products when they come back. We should be pencil pushers and computer keyboard tappers. That was a vision of America, but a very narrow and false vision of America. There is no great power, no great nation without industrial might. The United States became the largest producer of steel in the world in the late 1880s. It went hand in hand because they go together with the rise of America's economic, industrial, and military power. At the end of World War II, the United States produced almost 70% of total global steel production. 70%. That's American power. America is the best. We have the best workers, the best businesses, and the best values to pass on our jobs, our ideas, our skills to our children and our grandchildren. As I said, we lost our way. We decided politicians would make it hard to build stuff in America. I think you know which politicians. Democrats lost belief in our industrial might and made it so hard to build things in our country. Our steel industry declined to only 5% of global steel production. That is not America. That's not where we're going to stay. That's the wrong place. President Trump and Vice President Vance, they ran for election on a simple idea. We're going to reindustrialize America. We're going to sweep out the nonsense, bring back common sense, double down on American workers, and bring America's industrial might back to Ohio and back to all 50 states in this incredible country we're all honored to live in. I will tell you a renaissance is possible. The United States oil production peaked in 1971. It declined for 35 years. We became the largest importer of oil in the world, largest importer of natural gas in the world, just like we are in steel, completely dependent on the rest of the world. For the backbone of industrial society is energy and steel. Those are the backbones of industrial society. What happened with our oil production and our natural gas production is we had a renaissance. Today we're by far the world's largest producer of oil, by far the world's largest producer of natural gas. In fact, we're the largest net exporter of oil and natural gas on planet Earth. We did it with oil and gas. We can do it with steel also. That's a setup for my partner, my friend, and the Vice President of the United States of America. What transformed his story from an American success story into a hero story is when he achieved success, he didn't coast. He didn't lay back. He doubled down and dug deep, deciding to fight every day relentlessly so that all of you, all of Americans, could have a better shot at the American dream, could have a fairer shot at the American dream, to move the barriers and the bad decisions out of the way that made life in industrial America so hard these last few decades. We betrayed our children. We betrayed our grandchildren. Vice President Vance and President Trump are committed seven days a week to reverse that, illustrated right here by our Department of Energy's partnership with this fantastic company, Cleveland Cliffs, to invest a billion dollars to make this the best steel planet on planet — best steel plant on planet Earth. I'm now going to welcome to the stage someone who's an inspiration to me, the leader of the reindustrializing the United States of America, working with the senators in Ohio, the governor in Ohio, and the leadership to make our country great again. God bless you. God bless Middletown Works. God bless the fabulous state of Ohio. God bless the United States of America, and God bless our unbelievable vice president, J.D. Vance. It is great to be home. It is great to be back in Middletown, Ohio, and it is great to be with the greatest group of American patriots anywhere in the world. God bless you all, and thank you for having me. Before I get started, I've got to give some shout-outs here, because we have a lot of amazing political candidates. We have some leaders and future leaders, and I'm going to try to get through as many as I can. But first, I've got to give a shout-out to my great friend and the next United States senator — my replacement as the next United States senator for the state of Ohio — John Houston. John, please stand up. Thank you. We've also got, I believe, a great gubernatorial candidate, a great governor of Ohio, but also a great next governor of Ohio, my friend Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek, please stand up and say hello. So you all may not know, but I have a six-year-old son, our second child named Vivek, and when I came back home a couple of weeks ago to vote in the primary elections — my favorite internet meme, Vivek — I don't know if you saw this, but — so I brought my six-year-old little boy with me, and we had a day of travel all over the country, actually, and I hold his hand into the polling booth, and, you know, he votes for, like, whether he prefers, you know, caramel apples or watermelon or something. They have some kid polling ballot to fill out, and then somebody posts on the internet, JD brought his son Vivek to vote today, and then somebody used, like, AI or something and put me and Vivek holding hands, walking to the polling location together. But I don't think that anybody needed to encourage Vivek to go to the polling location that day. When your name is on the ballot, nobody needs to make you go vote, but Vivek's going to make a great governor for the state of Ohio. I believe we have my friend Jay Edwards, who's going to make a great treasurer for the state of Ohio. Jay. And then we've also got Frank LaRose. Frank, thank you so much. A great leader in the state of Ohio, a great Army veteran. And I got a lot of other people I could shout out, but I don't think any of you are up for election in a few months, so you're going to have to — that's going to be it. Because I'm going to talk about steel, I'm going to talk about America's comeback, I'm going to talk about the fact that this is a great day to be a resident of Middletown, Ohio. This is a great day to be right here in southwestern Ohio. And you all know my story. I look at what you all are wearing, and I remember my papaw going to work in an outfit not all that different and coming to this very place to work for nearly 40 years as a welder at what was then Armco Steel. And I can't help but think about the last time a James Vance stood in this very place. He had spent nearly 40 years as a welder at Armco Steel, now, of course, Middletown Works of Cleveland Cliffs. He was not an educated man by any means, but he was a brilliant one. He was a complicated man, a man of faith who never went to church. He was an alcoholic since middle school, but he quit cold turkey as a grandfather. But if he was a complicated man on the inside, he was a man with very simple ambitions. He didn't want to get rich. He had no desire to build a business. That's not who my papaw was. His American dream was well-fed kids, a car engine to tinker with. He loved to build out cars. A lukewarm cup of coffee, never cold, never hot. And, of course, a doughnut from either Central Pastry or Milton's Donuts. That was his American dream. I went to Central Pastry today because, of course, I had to go get an ugly doughnut while I was in town. And the ladies behind the counter, they said, you've lost way too much weight. What's going on? And I said, well, I don't have a Central Pastry in Washington, D.C. That's what's going on. My papaw, it's funny. He voted in every election. He loved this country, but he did not care for politics. Now, back then, he said that Democrats were the party of union men, so he usually voted Democrat. But he thought way too many politicians were just plain old corrupt. And he was right. All he asked for from his political leaders was very simple. He asked that his taxes be reasonable. He asked that his community be safe. He asked that our politicians ensure that there were good jobs for men and women who are willing to work for them. And he asked that America never be asked to be the policeman of the world. Now, he was my grandfather. I called him Papaw. And he toiled in this very place to give our family the little extras, like I said, for nearly four decades. 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 40 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 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 40 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 of 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 any time somebody dared to put an obstacle in front of that set of ideas, any time 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 40 years, they told you back then exactly what they were trying to do. 16 years later, when I was in high school, right here, Middletown High School. 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. And every single person in this room knows the consequences and what they look 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. They opened 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 orphan children being raised by grieved grandparents. That was the story, of course, of my mammal in 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 pulls 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 of 2024, you made a choice to reverse 40 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 18 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 spelters, build new manufacturing facilities, build new mills, build new everything. 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 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've 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. 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 into 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. 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 manor. The great southern populist, probably most of you 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 18 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 18 months, it didn't require a new law to close down that border, it just required a new U.S. 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, and as a result of that, this is maybe the thing I'm the most proud of in the last 18 months. Do you know that all net job growth over the past 18 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 complexes. 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. 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, 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 under-investing 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 and stain. In one case, we were working to deport a convicted child rapist in the state of Minnesota, Tim Walz. 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, 10-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? We in this room believe in America, and we're going to fight for it, my friends. You know, when I reflect on 250 years of American history, what 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 10 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 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 papal 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 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. 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 under underweight it, but she's, this little girl is expected to survive after she gets her course of treatment. 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 gotta 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. 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 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, from 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 hard-working 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? 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 John Houston for the United States Senate and for Vivek for the Governor of Ohio. 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.