In full: Read JD Vance’s first speech as Trump’s VP at RNC

JD Vance gave his first speech since being chosen as Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick on day three of the Republican National Convention

Greetings, Milwaukee. My fellow Americans and my fellow Republicans, my name is JD Vance, from the great state of Ohio.

Tonight — O-H-I-O.

You guys, we gotta chill with the Ohio love. We gotta win Michigan too here, so.

My friends, tonight is a night of hope. A celebration of what America once was, and with God’s grace, what it will soon be again. And it is a reminder of the sacred duty we have to preserve the American experiment, to choose a new path for our children and grandchildren.

But as we meet tonight, we cannot forget that this evening could have been so much different. Instead of a day of celebration, this could have been a day of heartache and mourning. For the last eight years, president Trump has given everything he has to fight for the people of our country. He didn’t need politics, but the country needed him.

Now, prior to running for president, he was one of the most successful businessmen in the world. He had everything anyone could ever want in a life. And yet, instead of choosing the easy path, he chose to endure abuse, slander and persecution. And he did it because he loves this country. I want all Americans to watch the video of a would-be assassin coming a quarter of an inch from taking his life. Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump. And then look at that photo of him defiant — fist in the air. When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field — all of America stood with him. And what did he call for us to do for his country? To fight. To fight for America.

Even in his most perilous moment we were on his mind. His instinct was for us, for our country. To call us to something higher. To something greater. To once again be citizens who ask what our country needs of us. Now consider what they said.

They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be stopped at all costs. But how did he respond? He called for national unity, for national calm literally right after an assassin nearly took his life. He remembered the victims of the terrible attack, especially the brave Corey Comperatore, who gave his life to protect his family. God bless him.

And then president Trump flew to Milwaukee and got back to work.

Now that’s the man I’ve gotten to know personally over the last few years. He is tough, and he is, but he cares about people. He can stand defiant against an assassin one moment and call for national healing the next. He is a beloved father and grandfather, and, of course, a once-in-a-generation business leader. He’s the man who’s feared by America’s adversaries, but two nights ago, and I’ll share a moment, said good night to his two boys, told them he loved them, and made sure to give each of them a kiss on the cheek. And I will say, Don and Eric squirmed the same way my 4-year-old does when his daddy tries to give him a kiss on the cheek. Sorry, guys.

He is all those things, but tonight, we celebrate.

He is our once and future president of the United States of America.

Now, I want to respond to his call for unity myself. We have a big tent on this party, on everything from national security to economic policy.

But my message to you, my fellow Republicans, is — we love this country and we are united to win.

Now I think our disagreements actually make us stronger. That’s what I’ve learned in my time in the United States Senate, where sometimes I persuade my colleagues and sometimes they persuade me. And my message to my fellow Americans, those watching from across the country, is shouldn’t we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution?

That’s the Republican party of the next four years: united in our love for this country, and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas.

And so tonight, Mr Chairman, I stand here humbled, and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude to say I officially accept your nomination to be vice president of the United States of America.

Now, never in my wildest imagination could I have believed that I could be standing here tonight.

I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts.

But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.

When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.

When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class manufacturing jobs.

When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

And at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.

And somehow, a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J Trump was right on all of these issues while Biden was wrong. President Trump knew, even then, that we needed leaders who would put America first.

Now, thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us, our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor— and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl.

Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price. Now, I was lucky. Despite the closing factories and the growing addiction in towns like mine, in my life, I had a guardian angel by my side. She was an old woman who could barely walk but she was tough as nails.

I called her “Mamaw,” the name we hillbillies gave to our grandmothers.

Mamaw raised me as her own — excuse me —

Mamaw raised me as my mother struggled with addiction. Mamaw was in so many ways a woman of contradictions. She loved the Lord, ladies and gentleman. She was a woman of very deep Christian faith.

But she also loved the F word. I’m not kidding. She could make a sailor blush.

Now, she once told me, when she found out that I was spending too much time with a local kid who was known for dealing drugs, that if I ever hung out with that kid again, she would run him over with her car.

That’s true. And she said, “JD, no one will ever find out about it.”

Now, now thanks to that Mamaw, things worked out for me.

After 9/11, I did what thousands of other young men my age did in that time of soaring patriotism and love of country: I enlisted in the United States Marines. Semper Fi to my fellow Marines.

Now I left the Marines after four years and went to The Ohio State University. I’m sorry Michigan, I had to get that in there.

Come on, come on. We’ve had enough political violence. Let’s —

Now after Ohio State I went to Yale Law School, where I met my beautiful wife, and I then started businesses to create jobs in the kinds of places I grew up in.

Now, my work taught me that there is still so much talent and grit in the American heartland. There really is. But for these places to thrive, we need a leader who fights for the people who built this country.

We need a leader who’s not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike. A leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations, but will stand up for American companies and American industry. A leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Green New Scam and fights to bring back our great American factories.

We need President Donald J Trump.

Some people tell me I’ve lived the American dream, and of course they’re right. And I’m so grateful for it.

But the American dream that always counted most was not starting a business or becoming a senator or even being here with you fine people, though it’s pretty awesome. My most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad. Of being able to give — I wanted to give my kids the things that I didn’t have when I was growing up.

And that’s the accomplishment that I’m proudest of.

That tonight I’m joined by my beautiful wife, Usha, an incredible lawyer and a better mom. And our three beautiful kids, Ewan who’s seven, Vivek who’s four, Mirabel who’s two.

Now they’re back at the hotel, and kids, if you’re watching, Daddy loves you very much but get your butts in bed. It’s 10 o’clock.

But, my friends, things did not work out well for a lot of kids I grew up with. Every now and then I will get a call from a relative back home who asks, “Did you know so-and-so?”

And I’ll remember a face from years ago, and then I’ll hear: “They died of an overdose.”

As always, America’s ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price.

For decades, that divide between the few, with their power and comfort in Washington, and the rest of us only widened.

From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again.

That is, of course, until a guy named President Donald J Trump came along.

President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what — if lost — may never be found again. A country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.

But, my fellow Americans, here in this stage and watching at home, this moment is not about me; it’s about all of us, and it’s about who we’re fighting for.

It’s about the auto worker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs.

It’s about the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship.

It’s about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators across the world, when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country.

You guys are a great crowd. Wow.

And, it’s about, our movement is about single moms like mine, who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up.

And I’m proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober.

I love you, Mom.

And, you know, Mom, I was thinking. It’ll be 10 years officially in January of 2025, and if president Trump’s OK with it, let’s have the celebration in the White House.

And our movement, ladies and gentlemen, it’s about grandparents all across this country, who are living on Social Security and raising grandchildren they didn’t expect to raise.

And while we’re on the topic of grandparents, let me tell you another Mamaw story. Now, my Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq, in 2005. And when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns. They were —

Now, the thing is, they were stashed all over her house. Under her bed, in her closet. In the silverware drawer. And we wondered what was going on, and it occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around very well. And so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arms’ length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for. That’s American spirit.

Now, Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I’ve been alive. Thirty-nine years old. Kamala Harris is not much further behind.

For half-a-century, he’s been the champion of every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.

And in four short years, Donald Trump reversed decades of betrayals inflicted by Joe Biden and the rest of the corrupt Washington insiders.

He created the greatest economy in history for workers. It really was amazing. There’s, there’s this chart that shows worker wages. And they stagnated for pretty much my entire life, until president Donald J Trump came along. Workers’ wages went through the roof. And just imagine what he can do with four more years in the White House.

Months ago, I heard some young family member observe that their parents’ generation — the baby boomers — could afford to buy a home when they first entered the work force. “But I don’t know,” this person observed, “if I’ll ever be able to afford a home.”

The absurd cost of housing is the result of so many failures. And it reveals so much about what’s broken in Washington. I can tell you exactly how it happened.

Wall Street barons crashed the economy and American builders went out of business.

As tradesmen scrambled for jobs, houses stopped being built.

The lack of good jobs, of course, led to stagnant wages.

And then the Democrats flooded this country with millions of illegal aliens.

So citizens had to compete — with people who shouldn’t even be here — for precious housing.

Joe Biden’s inflation crisis, my friends, is really an affordability crisis.

And many of the people that I grew up with can’t afford to pay more for groceries, more for gas, more for rent, and that’s exactly what Joe Biden’s economy has given them. So prices soared, dreams were shattered.

And China and the cartels sent fentanyl across the border, adding addiction to the heartache.

But ladies and gentlemen, that is not the end of our story.

We’ve heard about the villains and their victims; I’ve talked a lot about that. I’ve talked a lot about that. But let me tell you about the future.

President Trump’s vision is so simple and yet so powerful. We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man.

We’re done importing foreign labor, we’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages.

We’re done buying energy from countries that hate us; we’re going to get it right here, from American workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio and across the country.

We’re done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade, and we’re going to stamp more and more products with that beautiful label: “Made in the U.S.A.”

We’re going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families, made with the hands of American workers.

Together, we will protect the wages of American workers — and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.

Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.

Together, we will send our kids to war only when we must.But as President Trump showed with the elimination of ISIS and so much more, when we punch, we’re going to punch hard.

Together, we will put the citizens of America first, whatever the color of their skin.

We will, in short, make America great again.

You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty. Things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation. But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.

Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms. That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future. And let me illustrate this with a story, if I may.

I am, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country. Incredible people. People who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways.

And, of course, I’m biased, because I love my wife and her family, but I it’s true.

Now when I proposed to my wife, we were in law school, and I said: “Honey, I come with $120,000 worth of law school debt, and a cemetery plot on a mountainside in Eastern Kentucky.”

And I guess standing here tonight it’s just gotten weirder and weirder, honey. But that’s what she was getting. Now that cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky is near my family’s ancestral home. And like a lot of people, we came from the mountains of Appalachia into the factories of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Now that’s Kentucky coal country, one of the 10 — now, it’s one of the 10 poorest counties in the entire United States of America.

They’re very hardworking people, and they’re very good people. They’re the kind of people who would give you the shirt off their back even if they can’t afford enough to eat.

And our media calls them privileged and looks down on them.

But they love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it.

That is the source of America’s greatness.

As a United States senator, I get to represent millions of people in the great state of Ohio with similar stories, and it is the great honor of my life.

Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.

Now. Now that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle. Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.

Now we won’t agree on every issue of course, not even in this room. We may disagree from time to time about how best to reinvigorate American industry and renew American family. That’s fine. In fact its more than fine, it’s good.

But never forget that the reason why this united Republican party exists, why we do this, why we care about those great ideas and that great history, is that we want this nation to thrive for centuries to come.

Now eventually, in that mountain cemetery, my children will lay me to rest.

And when they do, I would like them to know that thanks to the work of this Republican party, the United States of America, it is strong, and as proud and as great as ever.

That is who we serve, my friends. That is who we fight for. And the only thing that we need to do right now, the most important thing that we can do for those people, for that American nation that we all love, is to re-elect Donald J Trump president of the United States.

Mr President, I will never take for granted the trust you have put in me.

And what an honor it is to help achieve the extraordinary vision that you have for this country.

Now I pledge to every American, no matter your party, I will give you everything I have. To serve you and to make this country a place where every dream you have for yourself, your family and your country will be possible once again.

And I promise you one more thing. To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and every corner of our nation:

I promise you this — I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.

And every single day for the next four years, when I walk into that White House to help President Trump, I will be doing it for you. For your family, for your future and for this great country.

Thank you, God bless all of you, and God bless our great country.