Trump, Vance deliver remarks in Arlington National Cemetery for 2026 Veterans Day.

Well, thank you, Doug. And thanks to all of you for your service. And let me just be another voice that says to all of our nation's veterans, to their families, to their friends, to their children, to everybody who has served the United States of America in uniform, but also to the people who made it possible for them to serve the United States in uniform. This is your day. Happy Veterans Day, my fellow veterans. We're proud of you and we're never going to stop fighting for you. So 22 years before Abraham Lincoln was president, he observed that it was that our veterans who were the memorial to generations past, to the wars that they fought, and to the freedoms that they earned. And in his time, he was talking about the generation of Revolutionary War veterans who had served their country honorably, and they were passing away. And he likened it to a massive beautiful forest where every day we would lose one or another giant beautiful oak tree. Think about what those veterans represented before we had these beautiful monuments, before we had stone temples built to honor those who served. The first memorial to our nation's freedoms and the wars that made them possible were our veterans. You saw them in the friends that you served with, you saw them in the people who lost limbs, you saw them in the headstones that represented a life that had served the United States of America. We are of course proud in this amazing city, in this beautiful capital of ours, we're proud of all these incredible monuments, but we know that the most important monuments to our generations who served in the military, our most important monuments are you. It is the people who have the courage and the willpower and the fight to put on the uniform of the United States of America and say, Don't send my neighbor, send me. That is the greatest monument to America. It's you all. It's the fact that you serve. But just as in Lincoln's time some of those monuments were disappearing, one of the amazing responsibilities and the humbling responsibilities as a veteran is that we have to pick up the torch when one generation sets it down. Now when I first started doing work with the generations ...of veterans in Vietnam. One of the things they told me, one of the most important things they took to heart is that they did not want to leave the next generation of veterans behind. Anybody who's talked to a veteran of Vietnam knows that they were fighting not just for their benefits, not just so that the country honored the promises that were made to the generation of Vietnam, they were also fighting. So that the generations that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, so that the government honored those promises as well. Because one of the most important things our veterans do is not just fight for their country, they fight for their fellow veterans. And let me say as one veteran to the next, we are picking up that torch every single day. We will never leave our veterans behind, ladies and gentlemen. That is my most sacred promise to every person here today. But just as in Lincoln's time he was witnessing that amazing Revolutionary War generation lose an oak tree every single day, so in our time we are watching fewer and fewer World War II veterans who still remember what it was like to serve in one of our nation's greatest and most historic triumphs in 251 years of proud history. And so I want to give a special shout out To three World War II generation veterans who are here with us today and I ask that they be recognized and that is Dave Yoho, Clifford Richardson, and Julian Smith. Thank you for your service. Thank you for coming. Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow veterans, this is your day of course and I want you to celebrate. I want you to have a good time and in my family our great tradition because veterans ate free at Golden Corral was to go to Golden Corral. Could one guy in the back stand up and clap, or whatever your tradition is. I want you to enjoy this day, but I also want you to take some special commitment just as the generations of World War II veterans and the generation of Vietnam veterans fought for my generation of veterans. It is now our time to pick up the torch and to fight for the next generation of veterans. So yes, ladies and gentlemen, let's celebrate our veterans. But I want every single veteran here, every single veteran in our country to remember that our job is to fight for the next generation of veterans and that is exactly what we're going to do. I want to just thank the Vice President. He's doing a fantastic job. I appreciate it very much. We come today to these hallowed grounds and they are indeed very special. Rolling Hills and Hold the names of our great heroes etched in stone to honor 250 years of service, valor, and sacrifice unsurpassed in all of the ages. On Veterans Day, we reaffirm our undying gratitude to every patriot who has answered the call of duty. We pay tribute to all of those who have won the wars and worn the uniform, Who faced the enemy, who have Beating the enemy at every turn, who have borne the burdens of fate and destiny to stand as our protection in battle. You are indeed our protection in battle. And we thank Almighty God for the noble warriors of the United States military who have always stepped forward so that America might always stay free. To every veteran here at Arlington and across the nation, today we render you the highest salute. We offer you our deepest respect and love, and we pledge you our utmost loyalty and devotion. Please join me in thanking every American veteran of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, and the United States Marine Corps, and we want to thank you very much. As we salute our veterans, let us also express our profound love and appreciation for our military families, past and present. They are amazing. Thank you very much. They are really awesome. Among the very best of our nation, we're honored to be joined as well by the First Lady of the United States. Thank you very much. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. I had a feeling that was going to happen. He's done a fantastic job, and he loves you, and he protects you. He's all about you. Secretary of Veterans Affairs with a 92% approval rating, the job he's doing. That's pretty good. Maybe we'll get it up to 100 pretty soon, Doug. Doug Collins, thank you, Doug. What a job. 50 points higher than his predecessor, I must tell you. That's a big difference. Many members of my cabinet, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan Cain. It's fantastic. Thank you very much. Representatives of our amazing veteran service organizations and the countless members. Of the United States Armed Forces who are with us today, thank you all. We respect and appreciate you. Thank you all. To inherit a free nation is among the rarest blessings that any people in history have ever known. To defend that freedom is among the hardest and highest obligations, one of the most difficult tasks imaginable. Across every generation, American liberty has been preserved by legions of selfless patriots who have raised their right hands and sworn an oath of flesh and blood for a cause whose full cost could not be measured in advance. There's no way it was doable, they thought. In every era, they stood watch. They've held the line. They've... Hold a charge bravely into the fray that few people would have wanted to do or could have done. It's something that lies between order and chaos, freedom and tyranny, civilization and barbarism, and good and evil. The exact opposite ends in the spectrum. Time and time again, for 250 years, the American warrior has returned victorious. Our republic has triumphed and today our country is stronger than it has ever been before. A nation without heroes is like a sky without stars or a heaven without angels, but in America we've never known that darkness because we have the men and women of America's armed forces, our guiding lights, our greatest heroes and our guardian angels. Americans must always remember that our way of life is not the natural condition of mankind. Everything we've achieved, everything that we are, everything that we hope to become is built on the courage of those willing to endure and unimaginable and to some just unbearable and to stand strong when all else gives way, stand stronger than anybody that's ever stood before. And I will never allow anyone to hurt our country. We're not going to allow anyone to hurt or damage our country with bad, foolish, horrible, and you can let it happen. America did not start a war with Iran. Iran has been waging war on America since 1979. This should have been taken care of a long time ago. Under this administration, under this administration, and it was about time, somebody fought back. All of us fought back. We fought back. And we seriously fought back, and we won. It's just a question of when we want to end it. We want to make sure we have a total victory, not a 93% victory. It's going to be total. It will take them 25 years to rebuild back what we have destroyed, and hopefully we won't have to destroy any more of that country. We've got a lot of work to do to put it back. U.S. involvement in the Korean War lasted four years, and we lost 36,500 great people. The Vietnam War lasted 21 years, and we lost 60,000 people. Iraq went on for eight years, and we lost more than 4,400 people. Afghanistan was almost 20 years, and we lost 2,500 service members and got very little from any of these wars. In our case, we had Venezuela, where we're taking out billions and billions of dollars of oil, And Iran, where we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon to beat two bombers, they took them out. We began operations against Iran seven months ago, of which only a few weeks were active hard fighting. We lost 18 beautiful souls, but when this conflict is over, and it will be soon, the entire world will be a much safer and better place, a more peaceful place, a place without the kind of danger that we had to suffer, because the bravery and skill of our amazing Amazing American warriors is. Absolutely been incredible. So in the case of Venezuela, we have millions of barrels of oil coming out on a weekly basis and billions and billions of dollars. And China left when I called them. Got to leave. And Russia left when I called them. They were all nibbling at the edges. Said, you got to leave. They left, but we didn't leave. But when the battle ends, our commitment to those who serve is... Only just beginning. It's only just beginning. It's going to go on forever. Things that you would never even think about. We have to be strong. We have to be brave. And we have to be respected like we are right now. We've never been any more respected. I would say we're right now more respected than this country has ever been before. If you go back two years ago, it wasn't pretty. The world was laughing at us. But that's all why I'm very proud to have done more to improve care for American veterans than any president in modern history