carolina republican convention in greensboro. live coverage here on c-span. >> hello, north carolina. i bring greetings from the free state of florida and i am pleased to report that our great

american comeback will begin when we send joe biden back to his basement in delaware where he belongs. i want to congratulate the legislators for their success in the last election. our party did not have great success nationwide. we did in florida and you did by earning the super majority here. congratulations on that and congratulations on fixing your state supreme court and to have constitutional government back in the tar heel state. i know you guys will do even better when we elect a republican governor here in north carolina. you are one of the few in the southeast that don't have a republican governor. i can tell you it is better when you do. i also look forward to, as president, restoring the name of fort bragg to our great military

base in fayetteville, north carolina, and thank the people that have served there and are proud of their service there. it is an iconic name and iconic base, and we will not let political correctness run amok in north carolina. look, we all know this country is going in the wrong direction. we see it every day. we can feel it. we see the open border. we see the inflation. we see cities hollowed out with violent crime. we see an administration trying to kneecap our own domestic energy production. we see the weaponization of federal agencies. we see woke ideology run amok across all these institutions. we have seen the federal government attempts to impose biomedical security restrictions in the name of covid mitigation. and of course, tragically, we saw the loss of 13 american

service members in afghanistan due to joe biden's gross dereliction of duty. now, there's a lot of people that are pessimistic about the country's future. i was a blue-collar kid growing up. my parents were working-class. they told me you are not entitled to anything, you've got to work. from the time i was a teenager, i worked a minimum-wage jobs to put myself through school, get in a position to be able to do something with my life. i only did that because i believed in america, if you work hard and you make the most of your god-given ability, you will have a chance to do big things. i wonder how many people believe that nowadays. i don't think it is as much as when i was growing up, but here's the deal. american decline is not inevitable. it is a choice. it is a choice we will make as americans over the next 18 months, and i am running for president to reverse this decline and end the insanity we

have seen going throughout our country. [applause] if we are united, 2024 will be the year when america fights back. and fight back we will. i can tell you it can be done because we have done it in the state of florida. we in florida chose fax over fear. we chose education over indoctrination. we chose law and order overriding and disorder. when the world went mad during covid, we stood as a refuge obscenity and a citadel of -- as a refuge of sanity and a citadel. we in florida held the line when freedom itself hung in the balance. we refused to let our state just send into some type of faucian dystopia where

people's livelihoods were destroyed. we protected people's rights. we protected their job. we protected people's businesses. we make sure our kids had a right to be in school in person. in short, we chose freedom over faucism and we are better off as a result of doing that. here's the thing -- when you are elected to an executive position, you got to be right on policy. lord knows the current guy gets everything wrong. you've got to be right on policy, but that's not enough. you've also got to demonstrate leadership, particularly in situations where the chips are down and the going gets tough. you've got to be the one that holds the line and stands up for people. during covid, we made the decision early on that we were going to chart our own course. we were not going to subcontract our leadership out to people

like dr. fauci. we were going to take on the left. we were going to take on the media. we were going to take on the bureaucracy, and even we took on some republicans who were criticizing what we were going to do. it was not easy doing that. a lot of incoming -- probably more incoming than any governor has faced in the modern history of our country, and i had supporters tell me, man, i know you think you are doing the right thing, but you may need to reverse course because you are getting filleted politically. i don't think you are long for this world. you are not going to be able to win elections in two years if you keep this up. you know what? a leader at the end of the day cannot be concerned with short-term calculations over doing what is right. i have the responsibility -- [cheers and applause] i have the responsibility to look out for the people that i represent, and i had to care more about protecting their jobs than i did about saving my own political hide, so we stayed the

course. we took the hits. i did not know how it was going to work out politically, but you know what? i would rather do the right thing, be able to look in that mirror and know i did the right thing for the right reasons then try to contort myself into some pretzel and be what i'm not. we stood our ground, and lo and behold, we were right and florida has thrived as a result. leadership is about doing what is right when you have intense opposition, when people are throwing errors at you. sometimes you have to stand all alone principle. leadership at the end of the day is not entertainment. it is not brand building. it is not virtue signaling. leadership is about delivering results for the people you represent, and i'm pleased to say in florida, we have delivered results. we are ranked number one as the fastest-growing state in this country. we have led the nation in

in-migration since i have been governor every year. we are number one for new business formation. we rank number one for economic freedom. we, of course, have no state income tax. yell should try it -- y'all should try it some time. it works out very well. i'm just saying. we are number one most recently by "u.s. news & world report" for education, number one for education freedom, and number 14 parental involvement in education. -- number one for parental involvement in education. we have been able to take these great ideas and values and principles that we all share and not just talk about them but actually implement them as policy. in washington, there will be a big conservative victory once or twice a decade. in florida, we deliver big victories every single day. we have done the following -- we

have prohibited the purchase of land by the ccp and related entities in the state of florida. no farmland, nothing. [cheers and applause] we have enacted legislation to kneecap esg in our state. no pension esg. no social credit scores. no woke banking discriminating against conservatives. when hurricane and hit southwest florida in september 2022, it almost hit category five. it did a lot of damage, but some of the most extensive damage was it knocked out a bridge going from the mainland to pine island and severed the causeway going from the mainland to sanibel in three different places. these were not state bridges or state roads. was not our responsibility, and the locals were being told it would take six months before those bridges could be up and running again, so they came to me and asked for help. some of these elected officials

would say, i don't want to get involved in that because if i get involved, it does not work out, they are going to blame me. i'm like, no, of course i'm going to help. i got my guys together and said i don't want to hear about any democracy or redtape or any excuses. get this done, and i'm not waiting six months. we took over the job for pine island bridge, and not six months later or three months later, we reopened the bridge three days later and people were back to their homes. sanibel we did two weeks later and reopened that. incidentally, i told president biden i will take my florida builders and send them to the border wall. put them in. let's get it done. [cheers and applause] but it just shows you, you can always make excuses about why you cannot do something. the job of a leader is to figure out how you can get it done and we got those bridges done, and

those islands are doing a lot better. we enacted a record $2.7 billion in tax relief posted on families. we now have no sales tax on all baby items. cribs, strollers, diapers, wipes . you raise babies tax-free in the state of florida. we are proud of that. we have enacted universal school choice. parents have the right to send their kids to the school that they want to. we assigned a heartbeat bill to protect unborn life in the state of florida. we defended second amendment rights by implementing constitutional carry legislation . and like north carolina, florida use to a very liberal state supreme court.

i inherited a liberal court, maybe the most liberal in the country. i have since been able to appoint seven conservative justices and we now have the most conservative supreme court in the entire country. we are tough on crime and we signed legislation to hold people accountable who commit serious crimes, if that is dealing fentanyl, ensuring people must post bail before they are released -- we have even authorized the death penalty for pedophiles in the state of florida. and we are not going to allow anyone to defund the police. we are standing with the men and women in law enforcement. we provided bonuses to our police officers, and if you move from some of these other states where they are not treated well and you get a job as a cop in florida, you get a $5,000 signing bonus right off the top and we are proud of standing for the police.

we in florida have recognized in minutes posed by left-wing prosecutors who get elected usually with campaign donations from people like george soros, and they get into office and decide they are not going to enforce laws they don't like, so they let criminals get away with crime after crime after crime. of course, the crime rate goes up, the community hall is out, and it is a total disaster. when we had a prosecutor like that in florida who said he was not going to enforce laws he did not like, i removed him from his post. he is gone. [cheers and applause] we have taken strong stands against illegal immigration in the state of florida. we banned sanctuary cities. we are cracking down on human smuggling. i currently have hundreds of personnel on the southern border to help texas, and we even helped transport illegals to

martha's vineyard. very beautiful place. [cheers and applause] florida has acted aggressively to protect our citizens from the implementation of a central bank digital currency. if you don't know what they are trying to do with that, read up on it. they don't have your best interests at heart, i can tell you, so we are fighting back on that. we are also the first state in the u.s. to eliminate the ei -- di -- dei from our public university system. they say it is diversity, equity, and inclusion, but in reality, it is ideology they are trying to impose not just on students but on faculty and staff. better -- it better stands for division, exclusion, and indoctrination, and that has no

place in our public institutions. if i were here 20 years ago as a florida resident, much less a governor, i would probably not be touting our success with conducting elections. we had some bumps in the road back in the day, but we now have the most efficient, transparent election system in the country. we have band ballot harvesting in florida and we require voter id, not just in person, but also if you want an absentee ballot, you must do voter id. we are doing it right and we are ensuring the integrity of our elections. florida has also enacted legislation to protect citizens from president biden's attempt to impose the world health organization lockdown treaty on the american people. we will never give up our sovereignty to the who in florida, and as president, we will never do it for the united

states of america. we codified the strongest protections for medical freedom in america. no vaccine passports, no covid shot mandates for school children for jobs, no mrna mandates, no emergency use mandates, and we have even banned gain -- data function research in the state of florida. of all the things we have been able to accomplish, though, probably one of the ones closest to my heart is we have drawn a very clear line in the sand. in the state of florida, the purpose of our schools is to educate kids, not to indoctrinate kids. [cheers and applause] and i'm passionate about it because i am from a governor's perspective want to ensure the integrity of our school system

but i'm also the father of a 6, 5, and three-year-old and my wife and i believe very strongly parents should be able to send their kids to school, kids should be able to watch cartoons -- kids should be able to be kids without having some agenda shoved down their throat all the time. in florida, we are standing for the rights of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their kids, including the right of every parent to know what curriculum is being used in their kids' school. we have enacted legislation for curriculum transparency, and parents, unfortunately, have had to blow the whistle on very inappropriate materials that will be in classrooms, like pornography in a fifth-grade library? i mean, are you kidding me? when the parents suggest a book gets removed, the media on the left will say that is akin to banning books, but of course, schools have to curate what is in and what is out. you may have one book on george washington, there is 50 others

you can have. you are not banning those other 50. anyone can buy them if you want, but you have to make decisions about what is appropriate for education. we fought back against it. i did a press conference that we called exposing the book band hoax because it is a hoax, but i played on a video screen the images that the parents had actually objected to. the local news cameras, they had to cut their feed because they said it was too graphic to put on the air. if it is too graphic for the 6:00 news, how is it ok for a 10-year-old schoolchild? [cheers and applause] we have also eliminated critical race theory from our k-12 schools. we are not teaching kids to hate each other or to hate our country with your tax dollars. instead, we place a renewed emphasis on american civics,

about teaching kids about our constitution and our bill of rights and about what it means to be an american because no matter what avenue they choose in life, they are all going to be citizens of our republic, and it is our responsibility to graduate them with a proper foundation in understanding why our country is unique. we cannot just produce listless vessels who go out there and have no conception of what it means to be an american. in florida, we are fighting for principles and i will tell you, it is making a huge difference. we have also had major fights to ensure that gender ideology has no place in our schools. it is wrong -- [cheers and applause] this is wrong for a teacher to tell a second-grader that their gender is a choice or that they were born in the wrong body, and we made sure that that is not happening in florida. i can tell you parents in florida, not just republicans --

all across the spectrum were thankful that we are focusing education on basics and not allowing an agenda to take over our schools. the left did not like it. the media did not like it, and there was even a little business in central florida that some of you may have heard of that also did not like it named walt disney company. and i know in florida, they basically call the shots for many decades, but there is a new sheriff in town, and we don't subcontract our leadership to local corporations -- two woke -- to woke corporations and they can say what they want, but we will do the right thing. i have some republicans standing up to me standing for the kids and siding with disney. let me be clear -- we stand for our children. we reject the sexualization of

our children. we will fight against anybody who seeks to rob them of their innocence and on that principle, there will be no compromise. [cheers and applause] we are standing for florida values. we are not standing for burbank values. it is had that we have had to do some of this other stuff. i'm happy to do it. we signed legislation a couple of years ago protecting women's athletics. how do you have someone swimming on the men's team for three years and then switching to the women's team and then winning the women's national championship? that is wrong. that is not true, and that takes away opportunities for our girls and our women athletes and asked the father of two daughters, i think they should have good opportunities. and it is even sadder that we

have to talk about this, but in florida, we reject the idea that a physician can pump some minor with puberty blockers or do sex change operations on the. we have prohibited the practice. they are trying to fight us on it, but we are going to win. it is mutilation and it is wrong, and it has no place in our state. [cheers and applause] here's the thing about what we have done in florida. it shows that this can be done. we are not unique. we are kind of a microcosm of the country. you go to miami, that is one thing. you go to the panhandle, that is another. if you can do it in florida, you can do it anywhere. here's what we did -- we did all that stuff by leading with purpose and conviction against conventional wisdom. i got elected by 32,000 votes out of over 8 million cast. people told me florida is an

evenly divided state politically. don't rock the boat when you get in there because you could upset that balance and you may end up on the wrong side of that and i understand the advice, but i rejected that advice. my view is you lead boldly. you wield the power you have to advance an agenda that reflects the core principles that we all share, so we did that. we never in four and a half years now as governor, have ever taken a poll about what to do on a given issue. a leader does not put their finger in the wind and try to follow the polls. a leader sets out a vision, executes on the vision, delivers results, and guess what? the polls change in your favor once you are getting things done, so we were able to convert and lot of our side. fast-forward four years later, we did not win by 32,000 votes. we won by over 1.5 one million, the largest republican governor landslide in the history of the

state of florida, and we did it by, yes, having our base come out and winning republicans overwhelmingly. of course you do that, but we also won independent voters by 18 percentage points. we got over 60% of hispanic voters. we won women voters. we even took counties like miami-dade, 2.8 million people, 70% latino -- hillary clinton had won that in 2016 by 30 percentage points. we won it by double digits in 2022. but it was not just us. it is a team effort and you need to have a rising tide lifts all boats. we now have super majorities in the florida legislature, the largest majorities we have ever enjoyed. we added 4 new republican members to the u.s. house of representatives, without which we may not have the majority there, and we even helped to elect 29 conservative school board members across the state

of florida, and now for the first time since the reconstruction era, there's not one single solitary democrat elected to statewide office in the sunshine state. that's what you call winning. [cheers and applause] the other thing florida shows is when we tell you that we will do something, we are not making idle promises. most people run and they just want to tell you what you want to hear in the moment. they get into office and forget they ever said that. i don't make idle promises. if i don't think it's possible, i don't think i can do it or i don't support it, i will tell you that, but when i tell you i'm going to do something, even my worst critics in florida will tell you, governor says he's going to do something, he will do it, so buckle your seatbelts. that's the attitude we have to have if we want to fix this country. i think there's a lot we have to do, but i think we can get it

done. we must restore sanity in communities throughout this country. we must restore normalcy throughout this country, and we must restore integrity to the institutions in this country. truth must be our foundation, and common sense can no longer be an uncommon virtue. i pledge to be an energetic executive that will take these issues on head on. we will not back down from a fight, and we will do everything we said we will do. we will not lead by merely words. we will lead by deeds, and we will begin by reversing biden's disastrous economic policies that are have -- harming the average american family. he is fueling inflation with the big spending, and we need to stop driving this country deeper into debt. i can tell you in florida, we run budget surpluses. we have the second lowest per capita debt ratio in the entire country. our economy is $1.2 trillion in

florida. we would be the 13th largest economy in the world if we were a separate country and yet, our debt is only $17 billion. with the federal government, the debt is way more than our entire economy as americans, so they need to stop driving us more into debt. i will tell you what i did in florida -- i used the veto pen to reduce spending. i vetoed 10% of the budget last year because there was excessive spending. you've got to be willing to lean in on that. it will not only help with inflation, it will obviously help with the next generation. we are also going to make sure we have somebody at the that's not going to print trillions and trillions of dollars like they did. focus on a stable currency. you do not have a right to be an economic central planner. we are going to make sure we rein that in. we are also going to open up america's energy resources for production. we should be energy independent. we should never rely on another

country for our energy needs, and the economy -- you know, since covid -- the thing that happened with covid, all the big companies did very well. amazon, facebook, they never did better. small businesses, particularly in the lockdown states, got crushed. big government helps big business and hurts a small business. our economy has got to be focused on small business. that's the life of the community throughout the country. that's who we need to be able to succeed in this country. i can also pledge that as president, i will finally be the one to bring the issue of our southern border to a conclusion. i am sick of hearing about it. i'm sick of the empty promises. i've been hearing this my entire adult life about the problems of this border. we are going to shut the border down. we are going to marshal all resources including the military, to construct the border wall. we will end mass migration into

this country, and we are going to hold the mexican government and the mexican drug cartels accountable for the carnage they have caused in our country. [cheers and applause] we will usher in a reckoning about the disastrous lockdown policies propagated by our federal government. mandates, restrictions. all of that had devastating impacts on communities throughout this country. in fact, there are some urban areas that clung to this for far too long that still have not recovered from the cupboard restrictions. my fear is that a lot of the people that have been involved with this, such as dr. fauci -- they think what they did was right and they will do it again if they have the opportunity, so we are going to bring accountability to everybody so that this never happens in our country ever again. [cheers and applause]

we also pledge to wage a war on woke ideology. at the end of the day, woke is a form of cultural marxism. it seeks to deemphasize core values like merit and achievement in favor of things like identity politics. woke represents a war on truth itself. there are people that say, who cares about it now? i tell you why you care about it. you care about it because your society needs to be rooted in what is true. don't tell me that a man can get pregnant. if we accept that as a society, how are we going to get big things right? we are not. there is a value in making sure that the truth will set us free, but there's also an impact on woke ideology on people's everyday lives. when woke takes over the economy through things like esg, it makes the average american

family poorer. when woke takes over our education institutions, it makes the average student number. when woke does things across the bureaucracy, we see how that gets corrupted. i will speak about the military in a minute, so woke when it takes over the criminal justice system, it makes people less safe, so this has a direct impact on people's lives, and i would tell you that all these failed leftist governments, if it's san francisco, illinois, los angeles -- the one thing they have in common is that they are all pursuing a woke agenda. in florida, we thought the woke in the school, in the legislature, in the corporations. we refused to surrender to the woke mob. we made our state the state where woke goes to die and we will make sure as president we leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.

[cheers and applause] we also have to restore the integrity of our military services. [cheers and applause] i was somebody essentially -- i'm a blue-collar kid, scrapping to get ahead, playing baseball, doing all these things, getting degrees, having the opportunity to advance myself. i have the opportunity to make a lot of money coming out of school. i had great credentials, but this was after 9/11, and i felt a calling to serve and raise my hand and volunteered. we joined the navy, we deployed to iraq, we did a lot of other things. i'll tell you that when you wear the cloth of your country and when you are serving alongside other patriots, when you are pursuing a mission greater than your own personal interest, there is value to that that money just cannot buy, and is it something i know veterans are very proud of their service, and i'm very proud, and it pains me when i have veterans coming up to me now saying i don't know

that i would recommend my kids or grandkid join today's military. why are they saying that? i think our military has driven off a lot of white warriors over recent years. first of all, the ridiculous covid vax mandate. you're telling some navy seal who has already had covid that they have to take an mrna shot? give me a break. they drove off a lot of people, and they are driving off a lot of people with social engineering and the political agenda they are trying to impose on the military. why is recruiting so low? when i was in fallujah, people were still signing up for the army or marine corps because they believed in the country and felt a duty to serve. now it is harder to get people to join because they have lost focus. they are not focused on the mission. as president and commander-in-chief on day one, we rip it all out of the military, all the obama-buy-in nonsense is gone, and we are restoring to its glory that we

deserve -- all the obama-biden nonsense is gone and we are restoring it to its glory that we deserve. as we restore our military services, we will also restore integrity to our constitutional system. america's founding fathers did not design a constitution with four branches of government. they designed 3 -- legislative, executive, judicial. they did not design a fourth branch of government, and administrative state that is not accountable to the american people and abusing its power. that is not in the constitution. that is there because congress has neglected its role for many decades, and presidents have been derelict in their duty in using their article to powers to discipline the bureaucracy. that stops when i get in. we are not going to allow the most significant issues facing our society and economy, if it's what kind of car you can drive, what kind of energy you can use -- those decisions are not even

being made anymore by your elected representatives. they are being implemented by nameless, faceless bureaucrats who you will never have the opportunity to vote out of office, so we are going to be constitutionalize the administrative apparatus of government. we are not going to let these agencies run our country, and -- [cheers and applause] and what happens is when there is no constitutional accountability, our founding fathers would have absolutely predicted the weaponization we have seen with these agencies, particularly justice and fbi because when you don't have constitutional accountability, human nature is such that they will abuse their power, and that is what has happened. nobody has held them accountable. when i was in congress, i remember hillary had the emails that were classified. my view was, well, gee, as a naval officer, if i would have taken classified to my

apartment, i would have been court-martialed in a new york minute, and yet, they seem to not care about. there are different standards for a democrat secretary of state versus a former republican president. i think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. let's enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules. you cannot have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions it does not like. here's the thing -- there is obviously very high-profile examples of ordinary people who may not get the same headlines. a pro-life advocate may have 20 fbi agents storing their house at 6:00 in the morning. you may have parents going to a school board meeting in virginia being surveilled by the fbi. the weaponization of these agencies strikes at the heart of what it means to have a free society, and it is not just affecting people at the top. it is affecting people throughout our country and what i can tell you is this. we need to have a president that

is going to do something about that. you cannot get cowed by the left. you cannot get cowed by the media from doing what is right. you've got to be willing to go in on day one and spit nails. with me, you know you will have a new fbi director on day one. you know we will clean out all these agencies on day one. we are going to have a major overhaul. we are going to use our authority, and here's the thing -- if you have, like, an agency working with big tech to censor information like hunter biden stuff, i am going to fire those people when they abuse their power. i am not just going to let them stay in our government. they are gone. we are going to have a very quick vote and make sure that we are instituting accountability. at the end of the day, we will once and for all and weaponization of government under my administration. that will happen. [cheers and applause]

here's the thing, though. you cannot just do that, snap your fingers. this has happened over decades. the president has got to have some humility. you've got to understand you cannot do it alone. you need a cadre of people surrounding you who believe in the mission and who will put the mission ahead of their own self-interest, and you cannot just recycle people from inside washington, d.c. you have to get people from outside of pc. we are going to ask people from around the country -- a comment in north carolina, you may need to uproot your family for 2, 4, 6, 8 years to serve in the administration because we need to re-constitutionalize this government, and i think it is a noble calling. i don't think constitutional government will survive if we continue to have it operate without accountability like we have. at the end of the day, this bureaucracy are far too long has impose its will on us. it is about time we impose our will on it and we will do that.

[cheers and applause] and we -- look, there's so much more we are going to do. we will talk about a lot more stuff over the coming weeks and months, but here's the thing -- none of that matters if you don't win. there is no substitute for victory, and we have a task in front of us to shape the culture of losing that has affected the republican party in recent years. we were supposed to have massive red wave in november 2022. biden is one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history. it is trust, you don't even have to campaign, some said. you are going to be senate, house, big majority. we had a red wave in florida. we had good stuff in some other states, but we had huge disappointments across the board. we had what he republican u.s. senators. we should have 55 republican u.s. senators right now. -- we have 49 republican u.s.

senators. we should stop frittering away winnable elections. we are not getting a mulligan. democrats are playing for keeps. if they are able to sweep and win the white house, when the house, when the senate, they are going to pass the u.s. supreme court. they are going to eliminate the electoral college. they are going to make washington, d.c., a state, and they are going to eliminate voter id in every jurisdiction in this country and mandate that every state allow ballot harvesting. that is not an agenda speaking to the kitchen table concerns of the average american family. that is an agenda where they are trying to ensconced themselves in power for a generation and if we let them get a -- get away with it, it will take us a generation to dig out of the hole that they dig. so we have a lot of work to do. president reagan used to say freedom is one generation away from extinction. it is not pass along in the bloodstream. for most of my adult life, i

thought that was a little bit of an exaggeration. i mean, we are americans, right? isn't this just something in our dna? i don't think anyone could have lived through the last four or five years and not have an appreciation for how fragile freedom really is. each generation does have a responsibility. our founding fathers understood this. when they went to philadelphia to craft our constitution, they came armed with the knowledge of having studied every republic in the history of mankind because they wanted to draw weapons from those experiences that they could apply in america. what they figured out was all those republics -- there was really only one thing they all had in common, and it was this -- every one of them had failed. they understood it fell to the united states of america to determine, can people really govern themselves? can you have a society based on the idea that our rights come from god, not from government, that we live under a rule of

law, not under rule of individual men, or was mankind destined to live under various forms of despotism? they fully expected that this country would be the one that ultimately decided the fate of freedom in the world, and when benjamin franklin walked out that convention, he was asked, dr. franklin, what have you given us, a republican hour monarchy? he said, a republic if you can keep it. they understood you can have the best constitution in the world. these things do not run on autopilot. they require citizens to be engaged and to fight for the preservation of these freedoms. our duty is to preserve what the founder of our country calls the sacred fire of liberty. it is a fire that burned in independence hall in 1770 61 56 men pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to establish a new nation conceived in liberty. it is a fire that burned at a

cemetery in gettysburg when our first republican president pledged this nation to a new birth of freedom. the fire that burned 79 years ago on the shores of france when a merry band of brothers stormed the beaches of normandy, defeated the nazis, and preserved freedom in this world. it is a fire that burned at the foot of the brandenburg gate at the berlin wall in 1987 when a republican president said, mr. gorbachev, tear down this wall, and defeated communism in the process. so we are -- our generation now is called upon to carry this torch. it is a responsibility that we should not shy away from. it is a responsibility we should welcome. we have to stand firm for the truth, and we have to remain resolute and -- in defense of core american and enduring principles. i believe we have it in our power to reverse american decline, and here's my pledge to

you -- if you help me be the republican nominee for president in 2024, set your clock to january 20, 2025, high noon on the west side of the capital, because i will have -- west side of the capitol, because i will have his hand on the bible, this hand in the air, and i will be taking the oath as the 47th president of the united states. no excuses. i will get it done and we will restore the great united states of america. thank you all. god bless the great people of north carolina. on victory in 2024. republican governor here. a republican president for our country. thank you so much. god bless you all. thank you. [cheers and applause] ♪