Speech: JD Vance Addresses the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas - September 10, 2026

Hello, Dallas. [Audience chants "JD"]

I gotta say, it's, it's pretty cool to hear a crowd that is this fired up chant your name. So go ahead and do it again. [Audience chants "JD"]

I have to, I have to start, ladies and gentlemen, with a note of gratitude to each and every single person in this room and each and every single person who's watching, whether you're in the convention hall with us or watching from home on TV, you are here tonight because you love this country and we're not gonna let it go backwards.

Two years ago, we have to remember, our nation, ladies and gentlemen, was tired. We were tired of seeing our factories close. We were tired of our neighbors dying of drug overdoses. We were tired of not being able to afford anything. We were tired of seeing the cartels and the criminals given free rein over our great country.

And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poor and less safe and less prosperous. By the end of 2024, you were tired. We were tired as a country, but you were not defeated. The radicals in Washington, they could take much from us, but they couldn't take our will to fight back.

And so all of us came together on November the 5th and we sent the toughest SOB in American politics back to the White House and we made Donald J. Trump the 47th President of the United States. Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is a, uh, this is a joyful occasion for me. I see the great state of Ohio right here in the front row.

But I gotta be honest, it's also a somber occasion for me personally, and I know for so many of you out there, because the last time that I addressed the convention of my fellow Republicans, remember just two years ago, I had just become the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States. I was, I was a brand new senator.

I'd been in politics for all of a year and a half. I guess the president likes outsiders. I was nervous. Think about it. I was speaking on the biggest stage of my life and I had been in politics for barely a year and a half. But I will never forget that as I made that speech, as I dressed the country on the biggest stage of my life in the front row, right about there, my dear friend Charlie Kirk was smiling and cheering me and reminding me that I had a good friend right here in the convention hall.

And of course, after I was elected Vice President of the United States one year ago today, on September the 10th of last year, that good friend was taken from us when Charlie was assassinated. Now, Charlie left behind two children, two little kids, they were too young to fully understand, and a wife, the amazing Erika who has carried on his mission with more courage and resolve than most of us will ever be asked to show.

And we love you, Erika. But to those sweet kids, I don't imagine they're watching tonight. They're still very young, but I hope that one day they will watch and they will know and they will understand what I'm trying to say to them tonight. Though they may not appreciate it today, history will record that your father was a great man. [Audience chants "Charlie"]

For those of us who loved your dad, we knew him as something even better than a great man. He was a good man. And I want you to know what your dad knew. Scripture says that God is a father to the fatherless, that every one of us is adopted into His family. And as the apostle Paul told us, as he wrote to the Romans, "If we are his children, then we are also his heirs.

We have inherited, we are entitled to inherit something straight from God the Father." Now, we live, of course, in an imperfect world of fallen men. We live in the city of man, not the city of God. But I believe that our founders built this nation on a promise that echoes our creator, that every American child is born an heir, is born with a birthright, born with the right to inherit the blessings of the greatest country on earth, not because of who their parents are, not because of what they look like or where they come from, but because they are Americans, and this is our country.

And that birthright, ladies and gentlemen, is what this November is all about. Now, Charlie spoke to young men in particular. He was a young man himself, and he understood where they were coming from. He understood that there was no greater calling for a young man, and he would tell people this, than falling in love, starting a family, and becoming a father.

He would tell young men around the country that ultimately, you wouldn't care what your job was or where you went to school, but you would care about your family. And of course, I thought a lot about those words. A lot of tho- -- about those words in the last year, but particularly a lot about those words over the last six weeks 'cause as many of you know, in July, my beautiful Usha gave birth to a baby boy, little Alec, just six weeks ago.

And I will say that you should have been there when the organizers of the midterm RNC asked my wife, who had a two-week-old baby and three other kids that are very young, if she would come to Dallas, Texas to into, to introduce her husband and she said, "Hell no. I got four kids to take care of." [Laughter] But she sends her love and I know she's watching at home. [Laughter] And I, I've thought a lot, ladies and gentlemen, about what is the birthright of this newest of Americans.

My little boy, he is now our fellow citizen, though he doesn't know it. And I think about what the Democrats have said about our shared birthright as Americans or frankly, the lack thereof. In Michigan, one Democrat in particular, one candidate has said, and I quote, "Ef the nuclear family." [Audience boos] "Ef the nuclear family," what are you even talking about?

These hateful words come not from a love of country, they come not from a desire to serve you or our fellow Americans, but they come from a very deep emptiness in the soul. It is the nuclear family, it is inside of that nuclear family where I watch my four-year-old little girl, little Mira, beg to feed a bottle to her new baby brother.

It's inside of the nuclear family where Alex's older siblings just a couple of weeks ago witnessed the wonder of a new baby's very first smile. It's inside of that family where I've seen Usha show an almost divine patience with those four kids. [Laughter] And so to the radicals who wish to abolish my family and the thousands and millions of other families all across our country, we have a simple message for them: stay the hell away from our kids.

Now, because we got a new kid around, I can't help but look at the future of this country through the eyes of the future of my son. And I can't help but think about what it is that we're fighting for and what it is that we want for all of our children. Now I, of course, I want my son to grow up healthy and strong.

I want him to have access to clean water and real food. I want him to live in a country where you don't need a PhD in chemistry to understand the ingredient list in the grocery store. I want to live in a country where my son's doctors answer to parents and to the Hippocratic Oath, not to a bunch of far-left bureaucrats.

I want him to get a real education. He's gonna grow up and go to school. I want him to go to a school that teaches him to read, to write, that reaches him arithmetic, that teaches him to love his country and his fellow citizens. And -- and what I want for my family, I want for your family, too. That's my job.

My job is to fight for every single person in this room, every person watching at home as if they were my own family, as if they were my own kin. And so I don't just want these things for my kids, I want them for your kids too. I want our daughters to compete on a fair field where no politician, where no politician tells a little girl she's got to surrender her trophy, her scholarship or her locker room to a man.

I want our sons to have a fair shot at a good job and I want that for our daughters too. I want whether they work in tech or manufacturing American businesses to hire American workers, to rely on American people and to ensure that we build the next generation of great American products with American hands.

I want our children to be safe, ladies and gentlemen. I want them to be safe on their streets, safe in their schools, living peacefully in neighborhoods where the law protects the innocent and throws the violent criminals in prison where they belong. I want them to be free to worship to the dictates of their own conscience.

And I want our children to grow up in a country that doesn't roll its eyes at people who pray but remembers that this country itself was an answer to prayer 250 years ago. And I think like most parents, I want my kids to do the most important thing. I want them to fall in love. I want them to find somebody who's worth building a life with.

And I want them to be able to afford a home where they can raise their children in peace and prosperity and comfort. I want them to know the pride of saving up for something, of buying something big and real that they're proud of without being outbid by Wall Street tycoons. I want them to keep what they've earned when they work hard.

And that is the birthright that I'm talking about. That is the country that Donald J. Trump is fighting every single day to defend and to build upon. And while the president works every day to build upon that great nation, every single day, the far left is working right now to make sure that your children never see that birthright. [Audience chants "USA"]

So what, what the people at home missed is that we just had a protestor interrupting us and waving the Mexican flag. [Audience boos]

Well, well, my friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there, I'll buy you the plane ticket. [Audience chants "USA"]

[Laughs] I had, ladies and gentlemen, I had a whole speech written, but I think I got to change it because we just discovered the symbol of the far left, an idiot waving an American fla- -- or a Mexican flag at a protest when he should be waving the flag of the United States of America. [Audience chants "USA"] Now, we, we all know, of course, that as much as that person might wave around a foreign flag, he'd much rather live in Dallas or in Cincinnati or in any one of our great cities than Mexico.

But while we wave the American flag and fight for the American dream, we have to remind ourselves tonight that the good life that is the foundation of this country's promise is not guaranteed. We have to remember that a safe home, a good school, a happy family, a future that is better than the past, every generation of Americans has had to fight for these things when it's our turn.

And this Fall, the Democrats are running candidates who will tell your children what they're allowed to say, how they're allowed to live, and importantly, who they ought to hate, because that's what the Democrat Party is about in 2026. It's not about you. It's about foreign fraudsters and it's about who they hate.

And we gotta send their asses packing in November. We gotta send a message to this nove- -- we gotta send a message this November that the country does not belong to the radicals. It does not belong to the bureaucrats. It does not belong to the highest bidder. This country was handed down to us by our parents and their parents before them.

We received this national birthright and we are gonna fight for it by electing Republicans this November. [Audience chants "Fight"]

If you're ever feeling down about our country, ladies and gentlemen, just take a look at the beautiful ladies right behind me. And I, ladies, I'd like to know what you had to drink because I'll take two of them when I'm done. [Laughter] We gotta take stock, my friends. We gotta take stock of what we've accomplished.

When we, when we came into office -- [Audience chants, inaudibly]

Let's, can we please? We gotta take care of business this November, then we'll worry about what comes next. When, when we came into office, when we came into office just 18 months ago, so many of our fellow Americans sensed that they'd been robbed of their chance to build a good life. They worried they'd never be able to afford a home, a family, or a real stake in the country that all of us love.

Consider how life changed for Americans coming of age during those terrible Biden years. Workers' wages fell by three grand. That's not exaggeration. Prices rose 20% across the board, the worst inflation in a generation. And I always love when we said this, the President and I would go during the campaign, we'd say, "You know, inflation is as high as it's been in 100 years." And the fake news would say, "No, no, no. It's as high as it's been in 68 years." [Laughter] That ain't good, ladies and gentlemen.

In just four short years, the cost of a home under Joe Biden doubled. And Americans who were finishing school suddenly found themselves competing, not against their fellow Americans for jobs, but against 25 million new illegal immigrants, not just for jobs, but for homes as well. [Audience boos] Our nation became a place where you had to be rich to enjoy what used to be the birthright of every ordinary middle class life.

It became a country where violent crime exploded unless of course you could afford private security. And it wasn't just that things became more expensive, it's that our country was stolen from us and then handed out to strangers. Think just one case, one of the fraud cases that we charged last May, were two women, one of them born in Somalia, defrauded Medicaid of $46 million. [Audience boos] How did they do it? They did it by creating fake autism clinics and then having their friends sign up and pretend to have kids on the spectrum.

And that's millions of dollars that ordinary American parents needed to help their special needs children, but instead went to foreign kickbacks and spending sprees for fraudsters. [Audience boos] And what, and what did the Democrats do when the fraud they turned a blind eye to reached these catastrophic levels?

We found $250 billion of fraud just since the president made me the fraud czar. When, when Medicaid programs for homeless or expecting mothers in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, they began to fall apart because the money that you had paid to support those expectant mothers was going to fraudsters. Here's what the Democrats did.

They refused to prosecute the crime. And by the way, they called everybody who noticed their fraud racist for noticing that there were people stealing from our children and our new and expectant mothers. [Audience boos] The Democrat legacy of the last few years was that they bankrupted our country and left us poor.

They left our country weaker. They left our border wide open and our communities less safe. Their record, my friend, speaks for itself. And rather than admit error and change course, of course, they are doubling down on the crazy. And primary after primary, we have watched the few reasonable Democrats lose to extremists who openly hate our nation.

Our flag waving friend over there is actually the new congressional delegate for New York 14. He's here campaigning. But you got to ask if it's not love a country, what is it that drives this new generation of radical Democrats? It's not new policies. They'll say the same stuff, defund the police, abolish the border, the green new scam.

We've heard all this stuff before. But I think that what's new about them is what motivates them is a new type of hardcore hatred. Now don't take my word for it. Listen to what these people have actually said in their own words. In Manhattan this November, you have Democrat candidates who declare their life goal is, and I quote, "The total eradication of Western civilization." [Audience boos]

A few years ago, they cheered on the most horrific slaughter of innocent civilian Jews that we have seen in a generation. In Lansing. [Audience boos]

In Lansing, you have Democrats who call for quote, "destroying the American way of life." [Audience boos]

And in Texas, you have Democrats, grown men who seem to be pretty obsessed with trans children. [Audience boos]

I gotta say the president's very good at nicknames, but "Talafreako" maybe tops the list. But this Talarico guy, he will not shut up about how there are six genders. He will not shut up about how quote, "God is non-binary." I don't know what the hell that even means, my friends. He won't shut up about having traditional Christian values makes you a bigot.

And I gotta say, a guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don't know about you, but I never wanna see that guy's web browser history. It's not a good place. We'd rather be here. In Denver, Colorado, you have Democrats who say that 9/11 was inevitable, who offered justifications for terrorists who murdered 3,000 of our fellow citizens.

And in Michigan, it's even worse. They're campaigning with radicals who explicitly say that America deserved the 9/11 attacks. [Audience boos]

These are candidates who when they're not calling to repeal the Second Amendment, they will attack you as a literal white supremacist if you dare to criticize Sharia law. [Audience boos]

In the great state of New York, congressional Democrats tell us that the July 4th celebration is really about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico. I can't even say that without laughing. [Laughter] Can you just imagine Thomas Jefferson right away, all about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico. [Laughing] And these aren't media personalities.

These aren't weirdos on social media. These are the candidates that congressional Democrats have put forth for you to vote for in November. They asked, my friends, for a one-way ticket to Washington to legislate and regulate and wield power over your lives. Instead, in my opinion, they need a one-way ticket to a mental hospital.

Now, we're all having a good time as fellow Republicans celebrating what we've achieved and looking forward to accomplishing a lot more. But I know there are a lot of people who are watching on TV who aren't always sold, and I wanna speak directly to them, not to the faithful, but to the people who are still making up their minds.

The people on the margins, the people who are still a little unsure who they're gonna vote for. So people who love some of our policies, but maybe don't agree with others. Young men, many of whom felt inspired by Charlie Kirk, but are unhappy with some of what has happened in the wake of his death. And I wanna speak directly to that group because I think Charlie is a great example of how to disagree, but still participate in the work of saving this country. [Audience member calls out, inaudibly]

Charlie, Charlie, ladies and gentlemen, was dedicated to this movement and this country. He loved, and I do mean loved the President of the United States. But in the eight months or so that we were in office before Charlie died, I talked to him a lot, almost every day. And Charlie was still a free thinker with his own principles and views.

He did not always agree with us. Let me just give you one example. Charlie hated war. Whether it was Europe or Africa, the Middle East, he didn't care. He just hated war. That was his view. Now, of course, there are people who love what we've done and people who don't. I'm not here to litigate the disagreements between Charlie and some of the people that he disagreed with.

But what I'm asking you to do is do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Don't -- don't give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there. Look, I'm not asking anybody to agree with me on every single issue.

I'm not asking anybody to agree on every single policy of the administration. What I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months. We have done a lot, my friends, and we can do a lot more if we fight together. [Audience chants "USA"]

You know, Donald Trump's administration, it's not just the first government in the last 80 years to actually stop a border invasion. It's the first in the last 80 years to reverse the border invasion. Under, under Donald Trump's leadership, we have seen the foreign-born share of our population drop by three million people.

That's illegal aliens that we sent back home. Under Donald Trump's leadership, we've created one million new jobs. And unlike the last administration where most of the job growth went to illegal aliens, 100% of the job growth in the United States of America is going to American citizens, which is exactly where it belongs.

For my entire life, I saw corporations ship jobs overseas and be rewarded by Washington. Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime to crack down on people shipping our jobs overseas and fight for American businesses and American workers for a change. We've seen the largest drop of violent crime in the history of the United States of America because we back the police and throw the bad guys in prison.

It's not rocket science. We've ended taxes on social security. We've ended taxes on tips, and we've ended taxes on overtime. We have banned corporate tycoons from buying up our housing stock because we hold the simple belief that American homes ought to go to the American people. And this is my favorite, under the leadership of the president and Bobby Kennedy we did what generations of Democrat politicians promised but failed to do. We actually took on big pharma and lowered drug costs for all of our citizens.

Now I'm obviously biased, but I think that's a great record of achievement. But compare it to the Democrats who want to allow open borders, allow pharma companies to experiment on your kids. They want to raise your taxes and they want to abolish their family, in their own words. We just want common sense and we want you to have a better life.

The contrast in this election, ladies and gentlemen, it's not about this or that policy. It's about the party of common sense beating the party of the crazies. Let's send these lunatics packing and govern our country for the future. [Audience chants "JD"]

Uh, uh, a few, a few weeks back, I got to visit the steel mill. [Audience chants "JD"]

I love y'all. [Laughter] [Audience chants "JD"]

A few weeks back -- [Audience chants "JD"] I gotta tell you, a, a, a very personal and, and important thing to me is a few weeks back, one of the most amazing honors I've had as vice president is I got to visit the steel mill where my grandfather worked for 40 years in my hometown of Middletown, Ohio. And standing on that floor, I though about my Papaw, that's what I called him, and I, and the 40 years he spent there as a union welder.

I thought about what he wanted out of this country, out of this government. He wanted happy, healthy families. He wanted low taxes. He wanted a government that would look out for him and make sure his people had good jobs so long as they were willing to work hard and play by the rules. Simple stuff, easy stuff.

Common sense, good government stuff. And despite everything that's changed since he died, the things he wanted are the things that I want and I think the things that every But right after that visit, something interesting happened. The man the Democrats are running for Senate in the great state of Michigan, his name is Abdul El-Sayed. [Audience boos]

He saw me describing what a decent man and my Papaw was genuinely a decent and good man. He saw me talking about my Papaw and his work and his history and what he loved and what he cared about. And you know what old Abdul did? He asked mockingly whether I'd be willing to bring Usha back in time to meet Papaw.

This is what he thinks of my grandfather, a man I loved and who loved his family unconditionally. Abdul looks at him, sees the color of his skin, sees his background, and decides that he could never have loved my wife. [Audience boos]

Now, the shocking thing -- [Audience boos]

-- shocking thing is that Abdul himself was raised by his own white step grandparents. He knows exactly that kind of bond and what it looks like in a family and he chose anyway to say that a man like my grandfather couldn't have loved from the bottom of his heart someone who looks like Usha. Well, thanks be to God that my Papaw was a better man than Abdul El-Sayed because I guarantee you, he'd love my family every bit as much.

But like I, I, I'm not just here to defend the honor of my Papaw. I'm here to tell you, "This is who the Democrats are now, my friends." They're not just the party of little higher taxes, maybe some dumb regulations. They're not the party of FDR or JFK. Hell, they're not even the party of Bill Clinton anymore.

The Democrats are the party of hatred. [Audience members call out "Devil"]

They are the party that despises America and the people who built it. They are the party that can find sympathy for the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11, but they say that people with names like James Vance are incapable of loving people with names like Usha and they couldn't be more wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, because the Democrats have become such a nightmare, we can never, we will never let them win.

We're gonna beat them back in November. So I'm asking you, my fellow Republicans, to remember that this November is so much more than red team versus blue team. It's so much more than having good politicians in Washington. It's about sending a message to the Democratic Party that if you send your crazies, we're gonna send you packing.

It's about, it's about fighting for our fellow citizens for their dreams and for the inheritance of a great nation that all of us are gonna leave behind. So I've gotta ask, my fellow Republicans, are we ready to do what we need to do in November? [Audience members respond affirmatively]

Every American, whether they've been here for 10 years or 10 minutes, deserves the sacred inheritance of the United States of America. Ladies and gentlemen, this November, let's give it to them. Let's fight for our people, let's send the Democrats packing, and let's never forget that America belongs to those who love it, not those who hate it. God bless you and thank you for having me. [Audience chants "JD"]

And without further ado, I've got to introduce the man who is gonna introduce the greatest president. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the great Lee Greenwood and the President of the United States.