Thank y'all. Thank you. Thank y'all. Thank y'all. Please, please take a seat and, uh, we've got- got some time to spend with one another. So I wanna first thank a few of the great people who are here who make this possible and are leading- I think, helping us lead Americas and North Carolina's comeback. So first of all, to our great Senate candidate here in the state of North Carolina, Michael Whatley, thank you, Michael, for everything that you're doing.
For our great congressional candidate in this district, Laurie Buckhout, where are you, Laurie? Thank you so much. It's good to see ya. An officer in our military and now a person who wants to serve this great district and actually do something good for the people of this district instead of just voting with Nancy Pelosi, which is exactly what Don Davis does every single day he's in Washington, D.C. So Laurie, thank you.
We're gonna talk a little bit more about your race here in a second, but a lot of you know that this state has a very special place in my heart because I grew up in a poor family. I was raised by my grandmother. And then when I graduated from high school back in 2003, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
And I really spent the first four years of my adulthood not too far from here, in the eastern part of our state, um, you know, becoming a- a young Marine and, and frankly becoming a young man. And I'll never forget, one of the- the first major purchases I ever made in my entire life was when I wanted to buy- for the first time I wanted to buy my own car as a young Marine.
I was probably 19 years old. And I go to one of these off-base used car dealerships and I find a Honda Civic. It's practical, it's cheap, it does everything I need it to do, and I'm gonna get the dealer's low, low interest rate financing of 21%. And... And by the grace of God, I had a great United States Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, Gunny Arledge.
I went back, I said, "Gunny, I got a great, great news for you." He said, "What?" He said, "I'm gonna... I'm gonna buy my first car." He said, "Congratulations, Marine. That's a big step for young Marine." He said, "What's your interest rate?" I said, "21%." And he nearly smacked me upside the head. And he said, "Stop being an idiot." And he didn't say that.
He used more colorful language, but I said, "We have a couple of- couple of young people out there." He said, "Go to Navy Federal Credit Union." And I got an 8% interest rate and bought my car without breaking the bank. So that was my- that was one of many, uh- many lessons the state of North Carolina taught me. But what we're trying to do, I talk about, uh, the difference between a 21% interest rate that the used car dealer offered me and the 8% interest rate that I got offered at a credit union.
And that's pretty much the difference between the Joe Biden and Donald Trump economic plan for the United States of America because in just a very brief time, we've seen new home purchases rise to their highest level in five years since the last time Donald Trump was president. We've seen the cost of rents drop for six months in a row.
We've seen the average tax refund that's gonna come to the people of North Carolina, about $3,700 per family, and we see interest rates that are the lowest they've been since the last time that Donald J. Trump was president. My friends, the president is impatient, he's the most impatient person I have ever met, in fact.
He constantly is pressing on the gas, he wants us to do more, but I stand here proud to say that after the first year of President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans' leadership, we are rebuilding the American dream and we're taking back this country for the people of this state. Now, there are a- a number of things that I'm proud of, a number of things I wanna brag on, but I actually want to take a little bit of- of an audience poll because I was looking at some of the things that we put in the Working Families Tax Cuts, this one big, great, big, beautiful bill.
Now, there- that bill is over 1,100 pages long, and unlike most of these bills that are way too long, this is chock-full of good stuff for the people of this district, the people of this state. But there are a few things in particular that I think are important for this state. Number one, number one, that piece of legislation, the Working Families Tax Cuts, had the biggest tax cut for social security benefits that we've ever seen in the United States of America.
Number two, it wasn't just social security recipients. Number two, that legislation had the biggest tax cut for people making under $100,000 that we have ever seen in tax legislation in this country. And number three, that wasn't in the Working Families Tax Cut, but one of the things I'm very proud of is that we forced all localities, whether they're red states or blue states, to report crime accurately so we could go to war against violent crime and the criminals who do that violent crime.
Now, the... Now, those are three things, and I- on- on this part, I only want you to clap once, because again, I'm gonna take an audience poll here. I'm gonna ask you what your favorite of those three pieces of legislation, those three accomplishments are that we've had so far in the Trump administration.
So if your favorite thing of those three is no taxes on Social Security, let me hear it. Okay? If your favorite thing is that we've gone to war against violent criminals, let me hear that. Okay. Now, I said only applaud once, and there's a guy up here. He applauded at least twice. He cheated the system, but I guess he wanted to save, he wanted to save his applause 'til the very end.
But we all heard the response. You know who did not clap for a single one of those great accomplishments of the Trump administration? Don Davis, because he voted against every single one of them. Don Davis voted against cutting taxes on Social Security. Don Davis voted against cutting taxes on those making under $100,000 a year, and Don Davis voted against going to war against violent criminals.
Don Davis is not a man who stands for the people of this state or this district. He is a person who does exactly what Nancy Pelosi tells him to do, and in November, we're gonna send him home and get him out of Washington, D.C. Now, the crazy thing, y'all, about the crazy thing about a guy like Don Davis is, you know, sometimes you, you, you, you meet a, a Democrat in a red district, and you know, I don't agree with him on everything.
Of course, Democrats, Republicans disagree on politics from time to time, but you at least have some people out there, or maybe you used to, who would vote their conscience or vote the interests of their district. What makes Don so unusual is that we are in a common sense district here in the state of North Carolina, and this guy still votes every single time with Nancy Pelosi.
In fact, I asked my team, I said, "Find a major piece of legislation. Find something easy where Don Davis could vote against the Democrats and vote with his district, the, the moderates, the independents, even the conservative Democrats. Find me one example where this guy defied the leadership of his own party." He has never done that on any major issue that we could find.And here, here's, here's just a, an easy, a layup, Don, an easy layup that we gave you.
Frankly, it would have been bad for Lori's, poor Lori's campaign chances, but he couldn't even take the bait on the Save America Act. Now, if you know anything about this legislation, what the Save America Act does is that it makes it impossible for illegal aliens to vote in our elections. Pretty common sense.
Now I think that's pretty easy, right? We don't want a legal aliens voting in our elections. [Laughs] My favorite thing is whenever I bring this up, you'll have some Democrat on TV who will say, "Well, we don't have to worry about that because illegal immigrants voting in our elections is very rare." Well, number one, how about we put it to zero, okay?
Even if you're right. Number two, you're not right. It happens way more often than a lot of people appreciate. In fact, just this week, ICE arrested an illegal immigrant, I'm going to read this because I want to make sure I get it right, an illegal immigrant from Mauritania who's voted in seven federal elections since 2008. And I have it on good authority that in every single election he voted for Don Davis.
No. I don't know about that. I don't know where he voted, but I guarantee it wasn't for us. Okay? It wasn't for America first policies. Now, here's the thing though, even if you take the Democrats at their word, even if a legal alien's voting is very rare, then why don't we ban it anyway? It's not that complicated.
It is one thing to say, "I don't get it." The Democrats say, "This never happens, or it happens only very rarely," on the one hand, and on the other hand, we must not stop it. It doesn't make a bit of sense. We need to get all illegal aliens stopping from voting in our elections. It's very common sense stuff.
But even on that, even on that, Don Davis could not be persuaded to vote for the people of this district. That's like an 85% issue. You look at the majority of even Democrats across our country, a solid majority of Democrats want to pass the Save America Act, but not the guy who allegedly represents the state of North Carolina who represents his district.
So you got to kind of ask yourself, if you got a guy who votes against so- tax cuts for Social Security, if Don Davis votes against tax cuts for people making a hundred, the, under $100,000 a year, if Don Davis votes against going to war against criminal illegal aliens and violent criminals, then Don Davis doesn't really represent you.
Let's vote for Laurie, a person who will and will do so proudly. Now, I want to say a couple other things because I've- I've, uh, I've- I've given Don Davis a lot of attention here, and now I'm gonna [Laughs] go on to Roy Cooper. [Laughter] So- [Laughs] so first of all, on every single thing, now Roy wasn't in Washington DC. But on every single one of these critical wins for the Trump administration to have gotten for the people of this district, the people of the state, Roy Cooper would've voted against all that.
That's reason number one, we can't send the guy to the Senate. We want a senator who represents you. We want a senator who doesn't represent illegal aliens and fraud, but who represents hard work and the good people of the State of North Carolina. And because we want those things, we w- we need Michael Whatley in the United States Senate, not Roy Cooper.
Michael. Now, he stood up and clapped for that. It would've been a bad sign -- [Laughter] -- if he wouldn't have stood up and clapped for that. But he- he passed the test there. So- so here's- here's the thing about Mike, uh, about, uh, Roy Cooper, okay? So there's been a lot of debate about what exactly our- our foreign policy should be with regards to Russia and Ukraine.
The President of the United States has been very clear. He wants the killing to stop. He wants to get back to commerce. He wants to stop the innocent people who are losing their lives in that conflict. I happen to admire that. Of course, I think it's- I'm biased, but I think that's the right idea. Now here's- here's the crazy thing though about Roy Cooper.
Roy Cooper is one of these people who clearly cares way more for foreign countries than he does the United States of America. You see the passion in his voice when he talks about protecting illegal aliens. You'll never hear that passion when he's talking about the people in this room. You hear the passion in his voice when he talks about sending hundreds of billions of dollars to the war in Ukraine.
And yet, and yet, the one Ukrainian Roy Cooper didn't care about was this innocent girl, Iryna, who had her throat slashed by a person who should have never been on the streets of this country to begin with. So ask yourself. So ask yourself, why did he spend his entire career making it hard to lock up violent criminals?
Why did he spend his entire career going after our brave police officers who are trying to keep our streets safe? Why does he care so much about the war in Ukraine 6,000 miles away, but doesn't give a damn about an innocent Ukrainian girl who lost her life in our backyard because he wouldn't do his job? And the simple fact is that Roy Cooper doesn't stand for you, he doesn't fight for you.
He will never fight for you, but Michael Whatley will. He better. He better. But he will. I know he will. He's a good man. I know he will. Let me just say a couple of final things, because I want to brag on the president. I want to brag on what we've been able to accomplish in Washington. First of all, we- we- under the Biden administration, we dug ourselves a hole in this country.
We got to be honest about that fact. The- the average American family under Joe Biden's leadership lost about $3300 in take-home pay. Now that was a combination of higher taxes, but also that terrible inflation crisis that we had when Joe Biden was president. When Joe Biden was president, not a single month did we see inflation as low as it was last month and the month before under Donald Trump's leadership.
That's something big to brag on. That's something big to celebrate, because what that means is that you and your families can afford to live a better life. When Joe Biden was spending all that money on green new scams, when he was driving up the cost of everything, he was making it hard for you and your families to get by in this beautiful country that all of us love.
So I happen to think it's a pretty nice thing that we've got a President of the United States that is not fighting to give away hundreds of billions of dollars to green energy scams, but is fighting to keep the American people's money in the American people's pocket because that's exactly where it belongs.
But what we've seen in about, you know, a year and a month, I guess, of President Trump's leadership is that the average American family, while, while they lost $3,200 when Biden was president, they've gained about $1,300 while Donald Trump was president. Now that's dollars and cents. Now, there's a good news and a bad news to that.
The good news is that means you're $1,300 richer than you were about a year ago. That's what we're fighting for, that's what we care the most about, is your prosperity. The bad news is we are still gonna dig ourselves out of that hole that Joe Biden put us in. I think the best way, the best way to confront this problem is to be honest about it. And we all know Joe Biden put us in a big hole.
So to the Democrats who talk about affordability a lot of the time, why don't you look yourselves in the mirror? Because the president who caused an affordability crisis was Joe Biden, and the president who has made the American people $1,300 richer is Donald J. Trump. We got all these things we could talk about.
We can talk about the fact that we have homicides in this country at the lowest level that they have been in 125 years. Unreal. Just absolutely unbelievable progress on so many of these issues. And, and, and we ought to talk about why is it that we got homicides so low. And I'll give you two reasons. Number one, the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States happened to believe that we ought to be using federal power to support our cops instead of fighting against them.
Isn't that common sense? But, but we also believe that the best way to lower homicides and carjackings and other violent crime is to get the illegal alien criminals out of the United States of America, and that's what we've been doing. And I, I, I just can't get over the fact that Democrats are so passionate about defending the rights of illegal aliens over American citizens.
It is the one thing that will get the Democrats really fired up. You know, a few weeks ago, we had the State of the Union address. And, and like the Speaker of the House, I- I'm one of the people who has a very unique perspective into the State of the Union because I'm sitting directly behind the President of the United States.
And maybe my favorite point in that whole speech [Laughs] is when he's... And he actually added this line towards the end of the day before he gave the speech. But where he says, "I'm gonna say something and I want you to stand up and applaud if you agree with it." And he says, "We believe that the American government should serve the interests of the American people, not illegal aliens." Okay?
Again, a layup for our friend, Don Davis. He should have been up there clapping and cheering, who could possibly disagree with that? But of course, he did nothing like the rest of the Democrats. But the, the funny thing about it is, they were so miserable because they realized that we had them in a bind.
You could tell even a few of them were looking around like, "Well, this is... Like, we should be standing up and clapping for this." [Laughter] But, like, what are... Is our, our leaders gonna get mad at us? Is, is Nancy Pelosi gonna, you know, gonna, gonna take away some of our campaign money? You could tell they didn't know what to do. And that's maybe the biggest indictment of the modern Democratic Party.
We talk about all these policies that you and I care about. We talk about lowering taxes on social security, about putting more money in your pocket. We talk about bringing tons of resources into this country to rebuild the American economy. Public safety, all this stuff matters. But the thing that maybe matters way more than any single issue is that Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C., they cannot stand up for the simple principle that they fight for you and not an illegal alien.
They can't stand up and clap for the fact that we're gonna go to war on fraud in this country like we've never done, instead of taking your hard-earned money and giving it to people who don't deserve it. The entire Democratic Party, all of these policy disagreements, all of that stuff doesn't matter compared to the fact that they don't see themselves as your advocates.
And Republicans, we do. Now, I'm not saying that's true of the Democrats all across our country. I think there are a lot of Democrats like [Inaudible] were Democrats, conservative Democrats who love their country, but the Democrats that we have in Washington, D.C., they are a different breed. And we cannot fool ourselves that something has gone fundamentally wrong in that party.
Their reason for existing is to fight for fraud, to fight for corruption, and to fight for people who have no right to be in this country. And Michael Whatley and Laurie Buckhout, their reason for being is to fight for you, and that's why we're here today. Now, I have just a couple final thoughts, and I'll take a, a few questions from the media, and then we'll have to get on the road.
So, so one final thought is... And, and Kelly knows this, Michael Whatley knows this. By the way, I forgot to say thank you to our great SBA administrator, Kelly Loeffler. Thank you, Kelly, for everything that you're doing. Kelly has already identified hundreds of millions of dollars of fraudulent payments and has cut that stuff out of our system.
I think it'll be billions by the end of, of, of the year. She is fighting for you every single day like all of us are trying to do in the Trump administration. And as Kelly knows, when you give a speech, you talk to people and it's, you know, I'm sure it's being televised right now because I am the vice president.
The [Laughs] the President, thank you. The [Laughs]... When the President always called me and he'll always say like, she talked about coal earlier. You know, I've talked so many times about ending the war on coal. We've got great coal resources. And I'll come off stage and think I did a great job and the President will call me and say, "JD, you did a great job, great speech, but it's not coal.
It's clean, beautiful coal [Laughs]." So for the President, you gotta know, his, his strong political advice is it's not coal anymore. It is clean, beautiful cold. But I actually was with the President earlier today in the Oval Office. We were talking about, you know, a lot of issues that are going on. And he said, "JD, tell the people in North Carolina two things." And I was, I almost forgot this and I was gonna get in trouble.
I was gonna get one of those phone calls, Kelly. But the President said, "Tell the n- people in North Carolina two things. First of all, tell them I love them and we're gonna be with them every single step of the way." That was the first message from the President, so I've now delivered that. And tell them that their great furniture industry, you know, all the, the cabinetry, the beautiful craftsmanship that this region of our country was known for, sa- tell them that we are gonna fight for that industry like never before.
And if, and if you're building something, if you're building a furniture facility, a furniture business right here in the state of North Carolina, we're gonna cut your taxes. But if you're trying to bring in foreign furniture to undercut the jobs of the people in North Carolina, we're gonna raise your taxes by 50%. We're gonna put a big fat tariff on those foreign companies bringing that stuff into the United States.
So Mr. President, I've delivered that message too. I hope I get an, an A+ on this particular speech. But here, let me, let me just leave you with one final thought. You, you heard Kelly and Michael and, and, and everybody's talked about this. This is one of, as I know very personally, one of the proudest states for military leadership and military service anywhere in the country.
And I know you all are proud of that and you should be. We've got incredible bases from all across the services. We've got great Marine bases, Army bases and so forth in the great state of North Carolina. And I know it's such an important part of this state, not just economically. That, that, that matters, but set to the side, the dollars and cents, you all... I mean, raise your hand if you've served in the United States military.
Let's give those guys a round of applause. So thank you to all of our veterans. A, a pretty good chunk of veterans just here in this audience. But here, here's, here's the thing. You all know that right now, we are engaged in a military operation to ensure, as the President has said repeatedly, that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.
That is a simple, simple principle and standard. Frankly, every president said that they believed it. Donald J. Trump has taken affirmative steps to ensure that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Now, but we also know that there are a lot of people from the state of North Carolina who are in harm's way right now.
And so I want all of us, when we go home, we leave this event, I want all of us to say a prayer, not just for the North Carolinians, but for the people of all of our 50 states who put on the uniform and are willing to sacrifice for the safety and security and freedom of the United States of America. I want every single person, and I want you to tell every single person who is serving overseas in harm's way that this crowd in North Carolina has their back.
Thank you all. So with that, let me take a few questions from our media, and then I'll, uh, and then I'll have to hit the road here. I, I'd like to start with the local reporters. We'll get time to the national folks, uh, if we got it.
Hi, I'm Danielle Battaglia. I'm with the News & Observer. You've spoken a lot today about Irina Zarutzka's death, and, uh, that resulted in Operation Charlotte's Web. Senator Tom Tillis has asked a lot from the Department of Homeland Security about what happened with Operation Charlotte's Webb. He said his answers are, or his questions are unanswered by DHS.
And one of those questions is if American citizens were arrested during Operation Charlotte's Web. I was wondering if you could answer that today.
Well, look, o- o- Operation Charlotte's Web is fundamentally an operation to try to make our country safe by getting violent criminals off the streets of the United States of America. Now, I was not aware that Tom Tillis, who's a friend of mine, he and I have had our disagreements, but Tom Tillis and I know each other.
Um, I, I'll go back and, and, and offer to speak with Tom about this. I didn't know that he said his questions had been unanswered by DHS. Now, that may be because he asked those questions a week ago and they haven't had time to answer them. You may have seen we've had a little bit of turnover in the Department of home- Homeland Security.
But what I do promise Tom is that the new leadership at DHS is gonna get him a response to his questions, but we're gonna keep on using the Department of Homeland Security to do the very simple thing of making the Homeland more secure. That's why it exists and we're gonna keep on doing that.
Hi, Mr. Vice President. Bill Barrow with the Associated Press. Uh, what did you advise the President initially as he considered his actions in Iran and what are you urging him to do now, especially with Americans seeing higher prices at the pump and some of the fallout from that across the economy? Do you express any concerns like those you've expressed in the past on the possibility of these extended wars?
Well, Bill, I, I appreciate the question. I know you guys have to ask it, but, but e- but imagine the situation. We're, we're in the situation room where you can't even take your, you know, iPod in there or your, your AirPods, I guess what they're called. You can't take your iPhone in there. You can't take anything in there because it is the most classified space anywhere in the world.
And I sit there with Pete Hegseth and General Caine and Marco Rubio and the entire White House team. And the president and I and the entire senior team are talking about the options and about what we need to do and about how we must best protect the American people. I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not gonna show up here and in front of God and everybody else tell you exactly what I said in that classified room, partially, 'cause I don't wanna go to prison and partially because I think it's important for the President of the United States to be able to talk to his advisors without those advisors running their mouth to the American media.
Thank you all. Now, now that said, one thing I can promise you is that Chris Wright, our great Secretary of Energy, and Scott Bessent, our Secretary of the Treasury, have been running the administration's response to the economic element of this, because we know, obviously, when the President takes action to make sure the American people are safe, we've gotta do everything that we can to deal with the consequences of that economically.
And it's not just, you know, oil, there's a whole host of things that we're focused on in the administration to try to ensure that we do the right thing by the American people. What the President has said very clearly is that he does not like oil price, higher i- oil prices, and neither do I, but he also believes that we're gonna make the American people safer, and that we're to bring those prices at the pump back down to the levels they need to be for the American people.
Now, here's the interesting thing. All this conversation happens where Joe Biden left us in a terrible situation, and the reason why gas prices are where they are today is because of Donald Trump's work to get them lower, because in the Biden administration, they were crazy high. The gas prices we're seeing today are nothing like what we saw at the peak of the Biden administration because the President has set us up for energy dominance.
And one of the lessons we all have to take away, frankly, every time we get involved in anything overseas, whether it's in the Middle East or anywhere else, the thing we gotta take away from it is energy dominance and energy independence. Rely on our own people, rely on our own energy.
Mr. Vice President, thank you. I'm Dina with CBS 17 right over in Raleigh. Um, Eastern North Carolina, Western North Carolina, two communities that have been really, really impacted by disasters.
Sure.
Hurricanes, uh, over in Eastern North Carolina, they happened decade ago. Uh, Western North Carolina still dealing with Hurricane Helene recovery. We heard from Governor Josh Stein several times that North Carolina has only gotten a fraction of what other states have gotten in federal funding for recovery for both communities.
Can you talk a little bit about what your administration is doing to help the people that are still out of their houses, still not having businesses the same?
Yeah. So one of the things I love about Michael Watley is, look, he obviously is a Republican, he's committed to the conservative agenda, he's a great guy, and obviously I'm, I'm aligned with him politically, but he's not afraid to say to me or to the President of the United States or anybody else, "We've got to get these resources out faster to protect the people of North Carolina." So I actually, before you asked that question, I heard that from Michael Watley, and I actually talked to the Secretary of the Treasury because I knew Michael was gonna ask me about it again when I saw him here today.
The simple fact is we have made this a priority. We are gonna get the resources to the people of North Carolina that are necessary. We recognize that they're... Um, we recognize frankly that we needed the new leadership to hasten that delivery of resources to the people of North Carolina. A lot of people in the media have said that, you know, the reason why we made a change at DHS is because the Trump administration is backing off of its illegal immigration enforcement policy.
That couldn't be further from the truth. The reason that we're making this change is because Kristi Noem has a great opportunity to serve in this new shield of the America's position. I think she's gonna do a great job. And on the other hand, we think it's useful to have somebody come in and focus on some of this disaster relief and recovery stuff, and that's exactly what we're gonna do. But I appreciate Michael bringing that to my attention, and I appreciate all the great people that represent North Carolina, even many Republicans, okay, who you might think just 'cause they're politically aligned, trust me, to all the people I want them to know that even maybe especially the people who are politically aligned are more willing to be independent and more willing to tell us, "We gotta quicken those resources to the people of North Carolina."I admire them for their courage and it's gonna mean better results for the people in this district." Thank you.
Why don't we take one more question.
Mr. Vice President, Preston Mizell with Fox News Digital. I want to ask you real quick, you're leading the anti-fraud task force. I wanted to get a quick update on that, maybe some of the findings that you've found in Minnesota, but also you've mentioned before that you're interested in targeting other states as part of that task force.
Are there other states that you've been looked at, that you've looked at, or that you may have flagged for potential fraud?
Well, you know, we know there's a lot of fraud in California, and we're trying to get to the bottom of exactly what it looks like. And what we've done in the Trump administration, the president has really empowered us to do this, is to take the first national look at the way the American people have been defrauded over many, many years.
And I'll give you a few very concrete examples. So in the state of Minnesota, you know, you, you asked about Minnesota, we think that there's probably been $19 billion at least of fraud just committed in Minneapolis and the surrounding areas. Let me give you an example of this, 'cause it's not just the American people being defrauded.
It's not just your tax dollars that are being stolen outta your wallet and given to fraudsters. It's the fact that the services we need to deliver to needy people are not getting delivered 'cause they're going to fraudsters. So for example, there's a program that we have, and I believe it's under Medicaid, where we try to help kids who have, you know, autism, Asperger's, and so forth.
Sometimes they need a little extra help. Sometimes they need somebody to sit with them after school. Sometimes they need somebody to provide transportation to certain places. And we have a program within Medicaid to ensure that these needy kids get the resources that they need. Now, and it's one of the things, by the way, I love about the United States of America.
We want everybody to work hard. We want everybody to play by the rules, but if we've got a needy kid in our community, we're not going to let that person fall down on their own. All Americans are going to lift that kid up together. That's an amazing thing about our country. [Audience cheers] But you know what was happening for this program that was meant to help needy kids is you would have Somali fraudsters, many of them illegal immigrants, who would go and say that they had an autistic kid even though they didn't. They would collect that money for themselves.
You had businesses that were going around and rewarding families for engaging in this fraud, so the businesses were skimming off the top and getting rich in the process. How disgraceful is it that Democrats allowed a program that was meant to help needy American children to go to Somali illegal aliens? The President of the United States stopped it, and there's a lot more fraud beyond that that we're gonna stop as well.
The one last point that I'll make here before we have to hit the road is, I, I, I hate to say this, and it's been shocking to me as we've gotten in this, and we wanna, you know, frankly, we wanna arrest the people who engaged in criminal fraud. We wanna make sure that the people who did this stuff realize there are serious consequences for it happening.
We wanna make sure that the needy kids all across our communities get what they need. There are so many layers to this anti-fraud initiative that the president has directed the administration to focus on, but you know what's so crazy about this? That nobody until Donald J. Trump thought to focus on it. Now, I, I, obviously, I love the president, I admire the president, but this fraud was staring us in the face and nobody was doing anything about it. This is not rocket science.
When you have [Laughs] a Somali fraudster come into the United States illegally and then set up a school to collect tax dollars, and the name of the school is the Quality Learning Center, Learning Center. But when they put the sign up, they take the in- out, so it says Quality Learing Center. [Laughter] And that group, the Quality Learing Center -- I don't know about you, [Laughs] but I don't wanna send my kids to a school where they can't spell learn. [Laughter] That group was getting millions of dollars from the American taxpayer.
There is so much fraud in our system. There are illegal aliens who shouldn't be here, who are on Medicaid. There are, there are, are companies that are, that are set up to provide medical devices, you know, knee joints, and hip joints, and other medical devices that are necessary for people's health, that have collected hundreds of millions of dollars and have produced precisely zero medical devices that have helped our people.
This stuff has been going on forever and every single person in this audience should be scandalized by it. But here's the crazy thing. It's not that all of you are scandalized that you're getting stolen from. The crazy thing is that we had a Democratic leadership who didn't do anything about it. And so here is what I promise every single person here, every single person watching, every single person in the state of North Carolina, that we are done allowing you to be stolen from.
We are done allowing you to be defrauded. We are gonna go after the fraud and we are gonna rebuild the American dream by making sure that it goes to Americans first and Americans only. God bless you all, and thank you for having me.