[Audience chants "USA"] Thank you. Thank you. Please, you guys, what a crowd. We love you too. Thank you, guys. It's good to see you. It's great to be back in the great state of North Carolina. Thank you all so much for having me. I want to thank, first of all, these incredible law enforcement officers we have behind us. Thank you all for your service and for what you do. It's a good-looking crew.
It's a little hot in here. If those of you who are watching at home don't know, it's a little hot in here and they've got their navy blue uniforms on over here. I bet they're even hotter than we are standing up there under the spotlight. But they've done much tougher jobs, I think, before. So, we're thrilled to have you guys here.
And I just want to say to all the law enforcement who are in this building, to all the law enforcement who are watching at home -- we love you, we're grateful to you and we're always going to stand behind you. Thank you, guys. Now I have a few other thank yous before we get to the meat of what I wanted to say here.
First of all, we're in this incredible hangar and it belongs to Dennis and Kay Yates. Where are Dennis and Kay at, where are you guys? Thank you all so much. Thank you, guys, for having us. And of course, we're also thrilled to be joined by the hangar's previous owner, Jack Roush. So, Jack, thank you so much for building this thing and for having us it's good to be here.
Now I'm joined by one of my favorite former Senate colleagues, and that is the great Senator Ted Budd from North Carolina. Ted, thank you so much. A very good guy. And I assume we have some other Republicans in here. So, are we going to send Ted Budd a great fellow Senator in Michael Whatley from the state of North Carolina?
Now Michael Whatley I got to know. He was the RNC chair. He was a great friend of me and of the whole administration during the race. But Michael loves the state of North Carolina. He's going to fight for law enforcement. He's going to fight for law and order. He's going to fight for good jobs. He's going to fight for North Carolinians and nobody else.
Michael Whatley, God bless you, man. Thank you so much for being here. We've got Congressman Addison McDowell. Addison, where are you? Stand up and be recognized? Thank you, Addison. This is your first term, right? Are you happy what you signed up for? That's good. OK. Let's be honest, he couldn't say no even if he wanted to, but he loves serving the great people of North Carolina.
In Washington he does a very, very good job. And then I also want to give a shout out to Mark Harris. Mark, where are you? Please, Mark? You're a great guy. Thank you for everything. But I want to just say that, being here in North Carolina, we're here to talk about law and order. We're here to talk about law enforcement and we're here to talk about the basic fact that you all pay your taxes, they go to safe streets and safe cities.
You ought to be able to enjoy the places that were built by your tax dollars. You ought to be afraid -- or excuse me, the criminals ought to be afraid of you; you ought not be afraid of the criminals. It's very simple. And I think for too long in this country, we actually took the exact wrong approach. We told people that if you were walking down a city street and there was a crazy person over there yelling and screaming at your kids, you ought to walk to the other side of the street rather than possibly be accosted by a violent person.
Well, you know what I think? I think that if a person is being violent and threatening to young children and young families, they ought to send their asses to prison instead of telling people that they got to cross the other side of the street. Now -- and Ted is going to be mad at me. Ted is a good Christian man; he does not cuss.
So, Ted, forgive me, but I get a little fired up sometimes when I'm talking about this. Look, I have gotten in arguments with people before. You know, a couple of years ago I took my family to New York City. This was when I was in the United States Senate. We spent a few days there. It was a wonderful trip in a lot of ways.
But you know, every time we went to the subway, I'd have one of my kids grabbing on to my leg or afraid because there was a crazy person yelling, hollering and screaming at a three-year-old little kid. Why do we live like this? Why do we accept this in our communities? And the answer is because of bad political leadership.
We have accepted for too long this idea that we ought to give over our streets to criminals and to vagrants and to people who are screaming at us instead of taking back our streets with our incredible law enforcement. And there are so many things that we can do. You know in Washington DC, the first two months that we surged the National Guard, that President Trump surged the National Guard into Washington DC, there were no murders.
Not a single murder for two weeks in the streets of Washington DC. And you know, we have all these world leaders who come and we'll tell them, you know, we haven't had a murder in Washington, DC in two weeks. And these world leaders will look at us and say, is that supposed to impress us? Like that doesn't sound very good, but to Washington DC, which averaged last year, a violent murder every other day, two weeks without a murder was a hell of a track record.
And then we just surged the National Guard to Memphis, Tennessee. Again, a Democrat city -- a Democrat city in a red state, but where the mayor said, we are sick of our people being afraid to walk safely on the streets. So, why don't you help us? And that's our basic attitude in the Trump administration is, look, we should not allow people to take over.
We should not allow these violent criminals to take over city streets. And if the local government wants our help, if the local authorities want our help, then we are going to help them because we stand for American safety everywhere, whether it's a big city or a small one. Thank you, young man. So, this is what it means, being pro law and order is actually not that difficult.
There are some things we do, some issues we address that are so complicated and so challenging, but supporting our local law enforcement is actually pretty easy. It's just a question of political willpower. Here's thing number one, very simple, if we -- if our great police officers find a violent criminal and lock them up, we ought to keep them locked up instead of letting them back on our streets with a slap on the wrist.
That means we want to give our police officers the very best equipment and the very best protection anywhere in the world. We want you guys to have the very best and we're going to fight every single day to make sure that they have it. It means punishing state and local jurisdictions that restrict your ability to do police work.
They just want to do their jobs. They ought to be allowed to do it. And it means pursuing enhanced sentences for violent criminals, like the violent criminal who murdered that poor innocent girl in Charlotte, North Carolina just a couple of months ago. And I want to talk about her for a second because I think -- Oh, we've got a beautiful baby over there.
How you doing ma'am. How -- I would like to -- how old is she? Six months old? Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you for bringing her. We want law and order for her above all else, right? That's why we're doing what we do. But we all know a couple of weeks ago, and it's one of these things that got bumped out of the news because of the political assassination of Charlie Kirk.
And so, let me talk just a bit about that. You all know Charlie, he was a great guy. He was a great husband, a great father. He believed in two things, I think, above all else. Number one, the second most important is he believed in political debate in the United States of America, that we ought to talk about our disagreements and not attack one another over our disagreements.
And he gave his life dying for that principle. And the second thing he believed, and it was the most important, is that he wanted to be a Christian evangelist. He wanted to bring the gospel everywhere, and he saw connecting with people and debating politics as an opportunity to talk about his faith. And I think it's important to honor him by recognizing that this is a kid -- and he was, he died at 31 years old.
This is a kid who every single day, he would go to these college campuses, he would talk for three hours with anybody about whatever they wanted to talk about. And he believed in the civic virtue of open debate. He gave his life to protect that civic virtue and he gave his life serving that civic virtue at the highest level.
He was a great guy, and his loss was the loss. And Erika, we love you. Erika is his beautiful widow. And I think you all will join me in saying that what happened to Charlie was disgusting, it was unacceptable, and it is the most anti-American act of violence that we've seen in the last couple of weeks in this country.
It was a disgrace. But -- Thank you all. I appreciate that. And the thing is, it actually bumped out of the news this terrible story in Charlotte. And here's the basic summary as far as I can recall, you have a violent criminal who has been arrested 14 times, often for very violent offenses, who gets on a bus with an innocent young girl, 22 years old, and slits her throat and she dies.
She died because she was coming home from work. She worked at a pizzeria. She came from a beautiful family. She had a young boyfriend. She had her entire life ahead of her and she was actually a refugee from Ukraine. So, she came from a war-torn country, she sought shelter in the United States of America and, because of soft on crime policies, she was murdered here, not in the war-torn country she came from.
Isn't that a disgrace? And isn't that an insult to the incredible law enforcement officers who arrested this person 14 times? They did everything they could to keep this thug off the streets and it was the political leadership that failed, and we've got to be honest about that. I saw governor -- former Governor Cooper say, and this is Michael Whatley's opponent.
Former Governor Cooper said just a couple of days after the attack that we have got to do more when it comes to law enforcement to keep people like this off the streets. And my response was, governor, he was arrested 14 times. Law enforcement did their job. It's time for you to do your job. And it's so amazing to me, political Democrats -- I don't think it's all Democrats.
I actually think most Democrats want what most Republicans want, which is safety in their communities, but they always manage to turn issues of crime into a distraction about race. They always try to say that law enforcement, locking violent criminals up is inherently racist. And I've got to be honest with you -- that's an insult to white people.
It's an insult to black people, too, because all of us just want to live safely in our communities. It doesn't make an ounce of sense to me. But I actually -- because of these Democrat talking points, I went and looked up. Do you know that in most big cities, the gross majority, over 90 percent of violent crime is committed by fewer than 1 percent of the city's residents?
This is not a black-white issue. This is -- we've got a small percentage of violent criminals in our communities, Democrats want to let them out of prison and Republicans want to put them in prison and keep them there so that all of us are safe in the process. I think that's common sense, don't you. So, I've also got to talk a little bit about another law-and-order problem.
I said Charlie Kirk's assassination was the most political and disgusting violence that we've had in this country in the last couple of weeks. And that was true maybe until this morning, because I don't know if you all have followed the news, and we're still learning a little bit about it. But what we know is that in Dallas, Texas, an ICE facility, an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility was opened fire upon by a violent left-wing extremist, a person who wrote anti-ICE messaging on their bullets.
And there's some evidence that we have that's not yet public, but we know this person was politically motivated. They were politically motivated to go after law enforcement. They were politically motivated to go after people who were enforcing our border. I think that is the most disgusting thing. The very people who keep us safe, honored and protected and --
[Audio gap; technical issues]
-- Democrats and Republicans alike, it is time to stop the rhetorical assault on law enforcement. Because here's what happens -- because here's what happens when Democrats like Gavin Newsom did, say that these people are part of an authoritarian government when the left-wing media lies about what they're doing, when they lie about who they're arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement, what they're doing is encouraging people to go and commit violence.
You don't have to agree with my immigration policies. You don't have to agree with Donald Trump's immigration policies. But if your political rhetoric encourages --
[Audio gap; technical issues]
-- violence against our law enforcement, you can go straight to hell and you have no place in the conversation of the United States of America.
Just yesterday, NBC news, maybe the worst of all the fake news, and I'm sure we have an NBC reporter out there. It's a tough competition --
[Audio gap; technical issues]
-- but maybe the worst, I said maybe the worst is NBC news. And they said that immigration enforcement -- you know what they said? That immigration enforcement --
[Audio gap; technical issues]
-- in order to get to that girl's father. Turned out that story was a complete fabrication. It was a complete dishonest lie. But when you go around and lie about our law enforcement and you tell them that they're mistreating five-year-old girls, what do you think is going to happen? When Democratic politicians incur doxing, when they encourage us to unmask ICE enforcement officers, what do you think is going to happen?
When the mayor of Los Angeles encourages violent protesters to get in the face of our law enforcement, what do you think is going to happen? What's going to happen is political violence and political violence has gotten out of control in this country. We've got to stop it, we've got to condemn it and that starts, unfortunately, at the very top of the Democratic Party.
If you want to stop political violence, stop attacking our law enforcement as the Gestapo. If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi. If you want to stop political violence, look in the mirror. That's the way that we stop political violence in this country and we've got to do it. And while we're all mourning and rooting for and praying for everybody who was injured at that ICE facility -- and as far as we know, it looks like some of the detainees, in other words, some of the potential illegal aliens were some of those who were affected.
Look, just because we don't support illegal aliens, we don't want them to be executed by violent assassins engaged in political violence either. So, we're praying both for our ICE agents, but also for everybody who's affected by this terrible attack. But that was an ICE facility. And as these guys behind me know and a few of our police officers know, police officers, writ large, face too many threats of violence all across the United States of America.
And we know where it started. We all remember the summer of 2020 when all of these violent protesters were encouraged to treat police as the enemy instead of as the solution. You take 1,000 police officers; you'd find one person who didn't do something perfect and use that one guy to tarnish the other 999 police officers.
Well, I would like everybody, whether a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent, especially those in political leadership -- can we all just agree that our police officers are heroes, that they are public servants. And that the first and most important step of keeping all of us safe is to keep our police officers safe, because they are the thin blue line between civilization and chaos.
Thank you all. It just happens too much. Our police officers being assaulted, our police officers being attacked. You have these crazy attacks where you have a cop in a squad car who's enjoying their lunch break, and somebody comes up and summarily executes them before the cop even had a chance. It happens way too much.
And it happens because too many of our political leaders have encouraged it. And it's not just that; it's not just the rhetoric that encourages violence against our law enforcement. You know, when I was in the Senate, there was a big bill that was going around and it was basically that we were going to try to eliminate qualified immunity from police officers, one of the most disgraceful and worst ideas that I've ever seen.
In other words, that we were going to make it easy for criminals to sue police officers for doing their job. Now does anybody think -- when you see the fake news media and the way they attack our police officers, does anybody think that we need to make it harder for our police to do their job? [Audience responds "No"] Some of America's cities today -- some of America's cities today have worse murder rates than the very worst third world cities all over the world.
That's not a joke. You go to Port-au-Prince, Haiti, or you go to some of the poorest countries all over the world, even those countries have a better murder rate than Washington DC or some of the major American cities. Some of them have better murder rates than Charlotte, North Carolina, that's a disgrace.
All of us should be asking how do we make that better. How do we make people safer in their communities? How do we make it easier for a young family to walk down the street in security and comfort? But unfortunately, we've got a crew of violent radicals in the United States of America who think we ought to make it harder for police to keep us safe than easier for police to keep us safe.
So, here's one thing I'd like to do. I'd like every single Democrat starting today, and every Republican too, while we're at it, to say that we are going to defeat these efforts to strip immunity from our police officers. We're going to make it easier for them to do their job, not harder for them to do their job.
Let's fight for it every single day. [Audience member calls out "And to cram it up their ass"]
That's exactly right, sir. That's exactly right. You can say that, but I can't -- I've hit my quotient for cuss words today. I don't want Ted Budd to disown me. So, I'm not going to say that. But we can run the clip back later. [Laughter] But let me just leave you with one final thought here. Look, I was asked earlier today by a reporter -- a reporter I actually like, but a reporter who said, well, don't both sides have crazy people.
And of course, obviously, a country of 330 million people, of course, both sides have crazy people. But if you look at the political violence in our country over the last couple of months, the last couple of years, it is not a both sides problem; it is primarily on one side of the political aisle. So, if we are going to truly go after the political violence in this country, we need the Democratic leadership of Washington DC to look in the mirror.
We need them to renounce all political violence. When a poor kid like Charlie Kirk is gunned down in cold blood, we need them to start with condemning the violence instead of condemning something that Charlie Kirk said that they disagreed with. When you have -- when you have an entire network of left-wing organizations that encourage, that promote, and then apologize for violence, you know what you're going to get out of it? You're going to get political violence.
So, here's my sacred obligation to you, to all the law enforcement, but every person, whether they wear a uniform or not. Over the next couple of years, the Trump administration is going to do everything that we can to dismantle the networks, to destroy the funding, and to make it harder for people to kill one another just because they disagree with what somebody says.
That is what we're going to do. We're going to fight for it. Let me just leave you with this one final thought. Now, most of the time when I go around to events like this, I'm talking about our Big, Beautiful Bill, our Working Families Tax Cuts. And I want to leave us just with a reflection on that because, while we're talking about law and order today and we're honoring the police, one of the ways in which we rebuild the American dream is by allowing you to keep more of your hard-earned money.
And that bill that these great Congressmen worked on and the great Senator here, what it did was very simple. It increased the child tax credit. It meant that we're going to increase take home pay by about $10,000 over the four years of the Trump administration. It means that if you're working on tips or if you're working an overtime shift, the government is going to take less of your money.
And I think that's a pretty good idea, because if you're working hard, I think the government ought to keep its hands out of your pocket. We're going to do all those things -- because I believe the American dream is fundamentally about this principle. It's about the principle that, for all the parents and grandparents out there, and I'm now the parent of three beautiful young kids, I just want them to have a better life than the life that I had.
That to me is the core of the American dream, the promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, we're going to give our kids and we're going to give our grandkids something that's just a little bit more prosperous, a little bit more secure and a little bit more proud than what we were given when we were kids.
That is, I think, our sacred obligation. That by inheriting a great country from our parents and grandparents, we've got to pass on something even greater to the next generation. But none of that -- none of that matters without law and order and public safety. How can you have the American dream if you can't walk down your neighborhood in safety?
How can you have the American dream if you're worried about getting mugged when you're taking your family out to a nice meal downtown? How can you have the American dream when every celebration, every big moment in a person's life, you're too worried about violent crime and not focused enough on the things that make life worth living.
One of the things that we have got to get back to remembering is that if we want to preserve the American dream, we've got to preserve the right of everybody, rich or poor, to live in safety and security in their neighborhoods. You know, when I grew up in Middletown, Ohio in the '90s, We didn't have a whole lot of money.
I was raised by a woman who struggled very often to put food on the table and clothes on our back, Mamaw. Everybody loves Mamaw, most of all me. But you know what? For all of the problems that we had, for all the times that Mamaw was worried about where our next meal would come from, for all the times that Mamaw was sometimes terrified that she wouldn't be able to make an important bill payment, we never worried about public safety.
And the reason we never worried about public safety, the reason she knew I could go across the street and play in the park in safety and comfort is because we had something in this country, and that was a recognition, Democrat and Republican, that we stood with law enforcement and we stood with their mission.
It didn't matter what your political affiliation was. We wanted to support people who kept our communities safe. And that's something we've gotten away from because a lot of the people who report on the news, a lot of the people who actually make policy in Washington DC, let's be honest, they are wealthy people who can block themselves off from the consequences of the policies they impose on the rest of us. Now maybe -- maybe they never had to call a police officer because they can call a private security guard.
Maybe they've never had their home broken into because they live behind a gated community. Maybe they don't have to worry about walking down the streets of a city safely because they've got a driver in a big fancy car who can take them from point A to point B, but that is not true of the gross majority of our citizens.
So, I want to tell you, when I talk about protecting the American dream, when President Trump talks about fighting for the American dream, at the very top of that list is fighting for your ability, whether you're rich or poor, to be safe in the home that you love. It is our sacred obligation. It's their sacred obligation.
And we're going to work for it every single day. God bless you. Thank you for having me. [Audience chants "JD"]
Now I forgot, I told the -- I told the fake news, and I'm sure there are some real news back there. I told them I'd take a few questions. So, I'm not getting out of here just yet. We'll take a few questions from the reporters. I would prefer to start with some of the local North Carolina folks, and then we can take some national questions after that.
Do we have a microphone back there?
Hey, vice president. I can't see you. Over here.
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Mr. Vice President, thank you for taking questions from us and thank you for visiting Concord. You referenced the awful death of Irina Zarutska. I'm just curious, have you had the chance to watch that awful video that was released by CATS and what your thoughts are after viewing it?
Well, yeah, you know, I've honestly seen a lot of gruesome footage, some involving my friends over the last couple of weeks. But the footage of Irina getting stabbed to death is very hard to watch. And I have not seen the whole video from start to finish. I actually -- I had to cover my eyes for part of it because it is so gruesome.
And maybe I should just stare at it. Maybe all of us should stare at it to know the kind of evil that we're actually confronting. Because what happened to her was really, really disgusting, and I think it comes from a deep and dark and evil place that exists thankfully in a very few number of people. But those people we ought to lock up in prison so they can't get anybody else.
But when I saw that video, you know what really got me as a father? I've got three little kids, two boys and my youngest is a baby girl. She's three years old. She is the apple of my eye, as you dads will know. Daughters just have an effect on us. They get away with more stuff. They -- don't they? It's kind of annoying actually.
She gets away with things she should not get away with that her brothers would never get away with. But I look at this girl, who's 22 years old, and I think to myself, you know, I would love for my daughter to have the kind of life where she never has to worry about that. And there's this moment where she looks up at her attacker and she covers her mouth, and you realize what's going through her head.
She knows that something very terrible has happened to her and I hope that she didn't realize it for too long because that is unimaginable suffering. But if you're a man, I don't care what skin color you are, I don't care whether you're rich or poor. But if you're a man and you see the pleading eyes of a girl looking up for protection, then we have to protect our girls and our women in this country.
And that was my reaction to it. That was my thought when I watched it. Now young man, this is a very earnest young man. I don't -- he doesn't look like a journalist to me but go ahead and shout out a question because I'm not going to deny that level of energy and that level of passion. First of all, what's your name?
Henry.
Henry, it's good to meet you, Henry. Ask your question, please.
[Inaudible; Laughter]
Come up here. Henry said I skipped school. Can I have a picture with you? Well, I guess you got to have some excuse to skip school. So, I might as well get a photo with Henry. Come here, buddy. How old are you?
I'm 12.
12, all right. Okay, Henry, all right. Now the next reporter is going to be, hey, I'm from CNN. Can I get a photo with you too? I wish that I got questions that easy. I'm not holding out hope. Sir? Can we get you a microphone? I can't hear you, sir.
Gotcha, I'm Jordan Green with Raw Story. President Trump and other speakers here have blamed former Governor Cooper and the mayor of Charlotte for Irina Zarutska's death. Do you also hold the North Carolina General Assembly responsible who set the laws governing pretrial release that may have affected this crime?
Well, look, I think every politician who didn't work hard to keep violent criminals behind bars deserves to have some of the blame. But at the very top of that list is Governor Cooper because at the time that we were pushing these soft on crime policies, Governor Cooper was the man in charge. Now I know we've got some great North Carolina legislators, and I might call them out if they're here.
Do we have North Carolina House Speaker Destin Hall? Where's Destin at? Destin? Thank you, man. We've got Phil Berger here. Phil, thank you so much, Senate President pro tem. We've got county sheriff Van Shaw, where is county sheriff Van Shaw? Thank you, sir. We've got Cabarrus County DA Ashlie Shanley. Is it Shanley?
I got that right, OK. Of course, we've got North Carolina GOP Chairman Jason Simmons. Jason Simmons is That's a celebrity in the Trump White House there. North Carolina Labor Commissioner, Luke Farley. Luke, where are you? Luke, thank you. And I know -- look, I know that our great North Carolina local legislators here have worked very hard to solve some of these soft on crime policies and make it harder to let violent criminals out so easily.
And to demand that when you have a violent criminal who goes in, the person stays there and doesn't get a slap on the wrist and released to commit more crime in the community. That's what we want. We don't want a criminal justice system that goes after innocent people. We also don't want a criminal justice system that lets obviously violent felons out of prison without any real consequences.
It's just very simple. And again, I go back to the statistic where we've got such a small number of people who commit so much of the violent crime. If we just locked them up. And I mean, look, I believe in repentance, and I believe in forgiveness. But I believe that forgiveness often only comes on the other side of real punishment and real regret, which is why we've got to lock some of these guys up in the first place.
So, yeah, I blame the political leadership. And I just -- I can't get over a governor who pursued soft on crime policies, Roy Cooper who pursued soft on crime policies, who let violent criminals out of prison. And then after Irina was murdered, to have the audacity to blame our law enforcement. Law enforcement arrested this guy 14 times.
They did their job. It's time for the politicians to do their job too. Next question.
Vice President Vance, thank you so much for taking questions. I'm Kaci Jones from WCCB Charlotte. When it comes to cracking down on crime in cities like DC, Memphis, Chicago, sending the National Guard, what specific metrics does the administration use to decide where those resources go? And can we expect that kind of response here in Charlotte anytime soon?
Well, look, if the mayor of Charlotte and the governor of North Carolina ask for our help, we would absolutely send it because we believe in helping people regardless of whether they're Democrats or Republicans. We would love to have the mayor of Charlotte reach out for our help. And that's -- you asked what the metrics are.
That's one of the most important metrics. We want to go where we can have a real partnership between local law enforcement and the federal officials so that we can root out the crime. And that goes to the second metric. What is the most important thing -- you can tell how many people are being murdered in a community.
You can tell how many carjackings there are. You can tell how many armed robberies there are. There's way too much violent crime happening in our country. And when we look at an American community, again, we don't care about their politics. When we look at an American community where people are suffering because of violent crime, our response is we want to help, just let us. And I'd encourage everybody to talk to your local officials.
I know we're a little far away from Charlotte, but to talk to your local officials and encourage them to ask for the help of the Trump administration. We are willing to provide it. We want fewer people to be affected by violent crime. But these guys have actually got to play a partnership role with us. And, unfortunately, way too many of them -- some of these people, it's crazy, they are ruling over cities that have violent crime rates that are worse than Mogadishu and they say no, no, no, we don't want Donald Trump to come in. Well, excuse me, if you don't need the federal help, then why is your murder rate so terrible in the first place?
You do need the help, you just need to admit it. Thank you, Kaci. Next question.
Vice President, Michael Warrick, I'm with WBZ-TV. Welcome to race and country, first of all. Irina's law was just passed by Republican lawmakers. It's now on Governor Stein's desk. It addresses cashless bail, it would allow magistrates to involuntarily commit people who they believe to be sick. However, opponents of that bill don't think it goes far enough for the mental health side of things.
It also opens the door to the death penalty which I know some opponents are against. Why would you encourage the governor, politics aside, to sign that bill?
Well, because I want to keep violent criminals off the street, and I want Americans to be safer, and this bill does it. Irina's Law does it. Congratulations to the Senate president and House speaker for getting it over the finish line. The governor's got to sign it. I guarantee if this bill is signed into law, it will help our incredible law enforcement keep the streets safe.
And that's ultimately all I really care about. Again, it breaks my heart to think that you have young kids, especially in poor communities, whether they're black or white, who don't feel like they can walk outside. You've got grandmothers who are taking care of grandkids who don't want to sit out on their front porch because they're worried about drive-by shootings.
That should break everybody's heart. And the way to solve the problem is to empower these cops to go after the bad guys and to do it with their full skill and their full force. Now, I don't know, have I read every detail of the law? I know some of the things that it does, I know that it ends cashless bail, which would be huge for the people of North Carolina.
I know it makes it harder for some of these local magistrates to let people out with a slap on the wrist. That would be huge for the people of North Carolina. But could there be more? There could always be more. But don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good this bill is going to make North Carolinians safer.
They ought to sign it.
Hi, Mr. Vice President, it's Kit Maher representing the White House TV pool today. I just have two questions for you if you'll allow it.
Go ahead.
Number one, on Ukraine, President Trump said that Ukraine should -- can fight and win back its territory. Can you explain the shifting stance there from stopping the bloodshed, immediately ending the war and now saying that Ukraine should fight? Is that a tactic to pressure Putin back to the table?
Well, go ahead and do the second question while this one [Inaudible]
Yes, second question, last year when I was covering you on the campaign trail, you told Joe Rogan that the difference between Harris and Trump is that Trump is not trying to censor his fellow Americans. I'm wondering if you can square your fervent belief in free speech with what's going on now with Jimmy Kimmel and the FCC pressure.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on both of those.
Well, look, on the free speech conversation, I'm pretty sure that Jimmy Kimmel was back on the air last night. And to the extent that he's not back on the air, it's because he's not funny and has terrible ratings. This is not a federal government problem. This is -- and look, I want to answer your question in good faith.
What people will say is, well, you know, didn't the FCC commissioner put a tweet out that said something bad? Well, compare that, the FCC commissioner making a joke on social media, what is the government action that the Trump administration has engaged in to kick Jimmy Kimmel or anybody else off the air?
Zero. What government pressure have we brought to bear to tell people that they're not allowed to speak their mind? Zero. We believe in free speech in the Trump administration; we are fighting every single day to protect it. Now compare that to the Biden administration where we found out just yesterday that conservatives on YouTube and on a number of social media platforms were being censored.
Why? Because the Biden administration picked up the phone and said we want you to censor our political opponents. That is real government censorship and it left the White House when Joe Biden left the White House. Now to Ukraine. Look, I've answered a version of this question probably 100 times over the past three months.
And one of the things I'll say about the president is that he is responsive to the reality on the ground. And the reality on the ground is that number one, we have engaged in incredibly good faith negotiations with both the Russians and Ukrainians. And I believe the president is growing incredibly impatient with the Russians right now because he doesn't feel like they're putting enough on the table to end the war.
That's number one. Number two, the president has grown very confident that this war is bad for Russia. You hear me say this all the time; you hear the president say this all the time. The war is bad for Russia, it's bad for Ukraine, it's bad for America. We want the killing to stop. That remains the president's position.
But the president also can look at reality on the ground. He sees the economic numbers that are coming out of Eastern Europe. He sees the number of dead people, both Russians and Ukrainians, that are happening in that war. And the president is telling Vladimir Putin it is time to stop the killing. He would say that to Zelenskyy, in fact has said that to Zelenskyy.
He wants this war to end and he's doing everything he can to stop it. But look, if the Russians refuse to negotiate in good faith, I think it's going to be very, very bad for their country. That's what the president made clear. It's not a shift in position; it's an acknowledgment of the reality on the ground.
We're going to keep on fighting for peace every single day in the Trump administration. I'll do one more question here. Another question. Sir.
I don't want to take it from you. Good afternoon, Mr. Vice President, Monica Casey. WRAL out of Raleigh. We are coming up on the one year anniversary of Hurricane Helene's devastation. What is the administration doing to speed up the distribution of federal aid for that disaster?
Yeah, so just in the last week, the Secretary of Homeland Security put another, I believe, $64 million into the disaster relief effort. We inherited, I'm going to be honest with you, a FEMA that was mired in bureaucracy and red tape. The president has made very clear from day one, we want to get relief to the people of North Carolina as quickly and as rapidly as humanly possible and that's what we're trying to do. The second thing I'll say is that I understand the governor had a very good call with the president, I believe on 9-11, actually, about a week and a half ago.
It may have been the day before or the day afterwards, but he had a good conversation with the president about some of the disaster relief needs that are there. We're going to keep on working on this. We're going to keep on working with some of our colleagues and the federal Congressional delegation from North Carolina.
But let me just say, I visited the devastation myself. I want the people there to know we continue to think about them, we continue to work on this issue, and we're going to make sure that we never forget that area of North Carolina and the devastation that storm caused. Great. All right. On that note, I just want to say you guys have been an incredible group to get to spend some time with.
Henry, I hope you got the photo you needed. So, are you going to get like a tardy, Henry, or what's the deal? If you get a photo with the Vice President you're allowed to have an excused absence, is that how that works? OK. He doesn't know actually. Henry is not as confident in that question as I would have hoped, but it's great to meet you, my friend.
It's great to be with all of you. Just remember, we've got a very, very important job and each and every single one of us has a role to play. To our law enforcement, thank you for the job that you do. We're going to keep on fighting for you in the Trump administration. We're going to keep on fighting for safety and security all across the state of North Carolina.
God bless you. Thank you for having me.