Remarks: JD Vance Addresses Troops at Naval Air Station Oceana - July 1, 2026

Thank you, thank you. Wow! It's amazing to be here. You know what I'm thinking as I'm coming down the steps is don't fall and bust your ass in front of all of you and in front of all these cameras, because they would never let me live that one down. You know, the previous president I'm trying to be nonpartisan.

You ever seen these old cartoons where you've got the angel on the shoulder and the devil on the shoulder? Well, because I'm speaking to all of you, our great Patriots and service members, I've got the angel on my shoulder saying, JD, don't be partisan, we're going to make this nonpartisan. And then I've got the devil on my shoulder who wants to talk about every time that Joe Biden fell up or down the stairs.

And the media didn't care about that but if I did it one time, if I did it one time, it would be a major, major story. But let me just say to all of you, first of all, I'm so proud of you and I'm grateful to be here and I can't think of any better group of people to spend this week before America's 250th birthday.

Give it up, ladies and gentlemen. It's an honor to be here with you. Now naval Air Station Oceana is, of course, one of the proudest military installations we have and one of the great parts of American military history. And I know that we've got, obviously, sailors, we've got marines. I believe we have representatives from every single one of our six branches of the Armed Forces.

And I just want to tell you, from the president of the United States and the entire cabinet, we are proud of you guys. You guys have done more in the last 18 months; the president of the United States has asked you to do more than I think any group of service members has ever been asked to do and yet you've done it. Every single time you've answered the call.

Every single time we've given you a mission, you have accomplished it with pride and vigor. Ladies and gentlemen, you are what make America great and you should be celebrating our 250th birthday better than anybody in the United States of America, because you've earned it. I want to give a shout out to a couple of people before I get into the meat of our remarks here.

First of all, you guys are all active-duty service members, so you're most worried in the cabinet about our great Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. But all of you will eventually hit a point where you need the help, or you rely on the services of our great Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Doug Collins. Doug -- give it up for Doug, he's doing a great job at the V.A. I also want to give a special note of gratitude to Jen Kiggins, one of the great Congressmen -- Congresswomen in the entire United States Congress, somebody who comes to work every single day and fights for you.

And I just learned this on the airplane over here. But you know, Jen, the last place that she served as an active-duty service member was right here at Naval Air Station Oceana. So, Jen, thank you for being a rock star for our veterans. Thank you for being a rock star for our troops. Thank you for fighting for them because, ladies and gentlemen, you fight for us every single day.

And finally, as much as every single one of you have served and done an amazing job, I want to give a special shout out a little bit later, but I want to give a special shout out to the members of Carrier Air Wing A. Where is Carrier Air Wing A? Where are you guys at? Got some of y'all around. So, this wing just finished, came home in May from a historic 11-month deployment.

The wing logged nearly 12,000 launches across the deployment and over 5,500 flight hours in support of Operation Epic Fury alone. All of the great things that we've accomplished, you guys are the reason that we've been able to accomplish it. So, thank you and welcome home. A little bit late, but welcome home; we're proud to have you guys back.

So, I mentioned that we are not just in a proud naval air station, but we're also centered in one of the proudest geographies of military history in the United States of America. Just, as I understand it, a few miles away, General George Washington, the day after we won at Yorktown, commissioned a religious service to give thanks to Almighty God. And at that service, he said something -- he asked everybody to show gratitude of heart.

Gratitude of heart for our young and fledgling nation, gratitude of heart that we were able to win a military victory against the longest odds, the most powerful empire in the history of the world. But I think that gratitude of heart is so much a part of what we do and what we fight for in the United States military.

When I think about gratitude of heart, I am, of course, most grateful for all of you. That we have the best people, the best of us, from every walk of life, from every geography in the United States of America, who are willing to put on the uniform of this country and serve to create that protective blanket.

When we talk about the Declaration of Independence that protects life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is your protective blanket that guarantees the life of every single one of our citizens. It is your dedication that ensures the liberty of every single one of our citizens. And it would be impossible for our fellow Americans to pursue happiness were it not for the hard work, the dedication, the sacrifice, and yes, sometimes the ultimate sacrifice provided by the people who wear the uniform.

I know because I, of course, was an enlisted marine for four years, that sometimes you get into this mode where you're thinking about the day to day of the job, you're thinking about the tasks that you've got to accomplish, you're thinking about how do I make sure that the sergeant or the gunnery sergeant or the second lieutenant who's in charge of me doesn't chew my ass today?

But remember that when you're going to work every single day, even though it is routine to you, it is not routine to your fellow citizens who know that they would not have their life, their liberty, or their ability to pursue happiness were it not for the sacrifices of you. Now, I have had this job for all of 18 months, and the thing that I know, the thing that I see every single day, is that part of the reason why we in our political leadership are able to do what we do is because the world over, bad guys and good guys, friends and foes, allies and enemies are afraid of you.

They know that if we ask, you guys will go and make the impossible possible. They know that when we demand that a bad guy does something, if they say no, you are the ones who are going to enforce that demand. And that is an amazing thing and it's why we have the great nation that we have today. So, what I'd ask for you as we all get ready to celebrate America's 250th birthday, is have that gratitude of heart that General Washington talked about almost 250 years ago -- grateful for yourselves, grateful for the men and women to your left and right, and grateful to the nation that makes it possible for every American to pursue their dreams and to pursue the American dream in whatever way that they ultimately decide.

Now, here's what I want to talk about next -- I want to talk about what we owe to you. You know, when I was in the Marine Corps, I spent four years from '03 to '07 in the United States Marine Corps. And I'll say this to the other marines. There are a lot of reasons why I wanted this job. But one of the reasons why I wanted this job is because it's pretty cool to have the Commandant of the Marine Corps have to salute a member of the E-4 Mafia.

That's pretty cool. Call it an ego thing. But I left the Marine Corps as an E-4, as a Corporal of Marines. Some of the proudest things that I ever did I did in the Marine Corps and some of the best friends that I've ever made were in the Marine Corps, with marines, with sailors, with all the people that I served with and had the pleasure to get to know.

But one of the things I learned in the United States Marine Corps, serving from '03 to '07, is that we sometimes had leaders who would ask you all to go to war, but would not give you a clear mission on the other end. And one of the reasons why I'm proudest of what the president of the United States has done over these last 18 months is because when he has asked you to go to war, he has given you a defined mission.

He's asked you to go and accomplish it and, most importantly, he's given you the tools to kick the hell out of the enemy and to come home safely. That is what you should expect of me, of our great Secretary of War, of the president of the United States. You put on the uniform, you offered a sacrifice, ultimately, for the benefit of this nation.

But what you should demand in return is that when we ask you to go and do something, we tell you exactly what we want you to accomplish. That is what this administration has promised, and that is what this administration has delivered on. Because when I think about what happened when I was a young marine in '03 to '07, is we had a lot of people who were asking our military to do the impossible, but they weren't giving them clearly defined missions and clearly defined objectives.

To the members of the air wing that just came home in May, what did the president of the United States ask you to do? Something very discreet and very specific. Number one, he asked you to ensure that we destroyed Iran's conventional military and, as we sit here today, their navy is at the bottom of the ocean, and they have no ability to project power like they did even 12 months ago.

What else did he ask you to do? He asked you to destroy their nuclear program and now -- and trust me, I know because I look at the intelligence estimates. If you look at what our own intelligence says about their nuclear program, they are further away from developing a nuclear bomb than they have ever been since basically the last 20 or 30 years.

And that is because of you and because of your hard work. And finally, what the president asks you to accomplish is to destroy the defense industrial base of that country so that if they ever decided to rebuild their military, or if they ever decided to rebuild that nuclear program, they would be hard pressed to do it. And you did that exactly as well.

But today, as I sit here, there are people in this country who want you to just keep going and keep going and attack the president of the United States for using the leverage that you gave him to engage in negotiation. And why do we engage in negotiation? Because of you it's not out of weakness, but it's out of strength.

And again, I go back to that time that I served in the United States military from '03 to '07. We made a lot of mistakes back then. We did a lot of stupid things back then. You performed ably, but your political leadership did not. And what I remember about that time is that number one, there were people who learned all the wrong lessons from that moment in history.

There were people who learned the lesson that we could never use the military again. But that's not the right lesson, because the military isn't who screwed up in 2003 and 2007, it was the political leadership that screwed up. So, that was the wrong lesson to learn. There were also people who learned a different lesson, an equally wrong lesson, that the solution to the problems that we had in the early 2000s was to ask you to do more and more and more and more, without giving you a clearly defined objective.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think that you deserve to have a clearly defined objective. I think you deserve to have a president of the United States who believes in you and gives you the weapons to win. And I believe that you have a presidential leadership today that will never ask you to go to war unless he's telling you why you're going to war.

And most importantly, when he sends you to war, he gives you the tools you need to kick the hell out of the enemy and come home safely. That's what you deserve. And I look at the American media these days, and I hear people who are attacking the president of the United States for negotiating, even though the president is negotiating from a position of strength because of you.

He's negotiating from a position where Iran's nuclear program has been destroyed and their conventional military has been destroyed, too. And what I notice about the people who are attacking the administration for negotiating is that they're the very same people who, for example, encouraged us to just go a little bit further and just drop a few more bombs in places like Afghanistan.

But again, if you go back to the mistakes that were made, those very same people, they refuse to say what were we dropping bombs for? Now, the president of United States maintains a lot of options today in 2026. But if he ever asks you to go and drop bombs, it's going to be for something specific, to accomplish something that matters to the American people.

We dropped some bombs a couple of days ago. You know why? Because the Iranians were shooting at commercial ships. So, we dropped some bombs, we applied some leverage, and we've had free commercial transit for the last three days. If the Iranians try to rebuild the nuclear program, the president's got options, again, because of you.

If the Iranians try to threaten their neighbors or fund terrorism, we've got options, again, because of you. But what we must never do is drop bombs just for the sake of dropping bombs. And that is what the president will never ask you to do. He'll ask you to go to war, yes, but when he asks you to go to war, he'll tell you exactly what you're going for, and I think that is what you should expect out of your political leadership.

You should expect something else, too -- and this is where I get into the great work of Jen Kiggins and Doug Collins. You know, one of the most formative experiences of my entire life was after I got out of the Marine Corps, and I was a law school student, and I worked on the Veterans Legal Clinic, helping veterans deal with some of their legal challenges.

And we actually represented the Vietnam Veterans of America. And a lot of you are maybe too young to appreciate this, but the Vietnam Veterans of America experienced one of the most shameful periods in the history of the United States of America. They came home, many of them, not to fanfare, not to flag waving, not to a grateful nation.

They came home to people who spit on them, who attacked them and criticized them simply because they did the job the political leadership asked them to do. Now, I go back to what General Washington said about gratitude of heart. And when I sat down with these Vietnam veterans, these people who had quite literally been spit on by their fellow citizens for doing the job Washington asked them to do, do you know what they had?

They didn't have resentment, they didn't have hatred, they didn't have anger. They had a simple motto that never again would America do to a generation of veterans what happened to the veterans from Vietnam. It was an amazing thing. And so, when they came to us and they wanted legal help, it wasn't for themselves, it was for all of you.

And it was for the generation of veterans that I represented, the veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they committed themselves, these old red hatters, some of them were the saltiest people you've ever met in your entire life. But they committed themselves to help all of you because they wanted to make sure that the United States would never again treat a generation of veterans the way that it treated the Vietnam veteran generation.

And that's an amazing thing. That is the spirit of gratitude. And what we've done is we have taken that charge, and we have run with it. What Doug Collins has done, as we have seen working with Jen Kiggins and some of our other great rock stars in Congress, is we've seen veteran backlogs at their lowest level in 30 years.

When you call the VA, whenever you get out of the military and you call the VA, somebody ought to actually answer the telephone. And that's what we've done because of Doug Collins and Jen Kiggins. If you or your family needs medical care, it should be there and that's what's happening because of Doug Collins and Jen Kiggins.

Ladies and gentlemen, some of you will serve four years, and some of you will serve 34 years, but the simple promise that I make to you, that Doug Collins and Jim Kiggins fight every single day, is that whenever you call on the Department of Veterans Affairs, somebody should answer the phone and give you the services that you need.

So, I want to say thank you to Doug; I want to say thank you to Jen Kiggins. We are fighting for our veterans every single day. And the thing that I'd ask all of you, because one day you're going to be veterans; you won't be active-duty service members, you will be veterans -- are we going to continue to fight for our veterans just as the Vietnam veteran generation has fought for you?

Absolutely we will. That's what we need from every single person in this room and that's what you should expect and that's what you have from your political leadership. Now, let me make just a couple of final comments here. You know, one of the things that we've tried to do in our Department of War is to recognize that you guys are able to do amazing things, but only if you're empowered to actually do them.

Why have we gotten rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion? Because we recognize that Americans from every walk of life, from every ethnicity, from every race and religion, that you all can exceed, that you all can succeed if you're empowered by your leadership. Why have we given you the best equipment anywhere in the world?

Because when you go to war, you shouldn't be looking down the barrel of a gun of somebody who's got something better than you have, you ought to have the very best stuff. But I think the thing that I'm proudest of is that we have empowered you to do great things again. We're not telling you to look behind you.

We're not telling you to think about whether your warfighting abilities or your warfighting capabilities are going to be second guessed by a politician back in Washington. We're sending you overseas if we have to, we're giving you clearly defined missions, and we're making it possible for you all to do exactly what you need to do. So, from one enlisted marine to all of you, I just have a couple of final thoughts.

Number one, I am grateful to you. You may not realize this, but I spend my time with a lot of political hacks back in Washington, DC. Not Doug and Jen, but there are some political hacks back in Washington, DC. You are the people who make this job worthwhile, and you are the people who make this job something proud to do. I know it; you may not see it, but I've looked in the eye of a lot of bad guys, and those bad guys respect the United States because they fear you.

So, number one, thank you. And number two, I want to say, as we get ready to celebrate 250 years of great American history, I want you all to know that that celebration belongs to you as much as it belongs to anybody in the United States of America. For 250 years, it is people like you who have put on the uniform of the United States of America and made sure that our Constitution actually has meaning.

Who have put on the uniform of the United States of America and made sure that those backyard barbecues and those celebrations we're going to see over the next few days exist under a blanket of liberty and protection. Ladies and gentlemen, you are the very best part of the United States of America. So, Happy 250th Birthday, let's keep on celebrating.

And because of you, my friends, the next 250 years of the United States of America are going to be better than the last 250 years. God bless you and Happy Independence Day, my friends. I'm proud of you.