Remarks: JD Vance Campaigns for GOP Candidates in Greensboro, North Carolina - September 21, 2026

Greensboro, how we doing? There are a bunch of people I've got to thank before we get started, so bear with me for a moment because we've got an amazing collection of congressmen and future congressmen and future senators, uh, who are fighting every single day to lower your taxes, to stop the fraud, and to create new jobs for the great people all over North Carolina.

So first, let me give a shout-out to Addison McDowell, Mark Harris, Richard Hudson, and especially the amazing Virginia Fox. Give it up for those congresswomen. Of course, Virginia is hosting us in the amazing Fifth District of North Carolina, so we gotta give a special shout out to the great congresswoman for the Fifth District.

We're also thrilled to have with us North Carolina GOP chairman, Jason Simmons. Jason, thank you- -- so much for everything you do. He's one of the very good ones, and I've got to a- also thank my very dear friend, Ted Budd, who fights every single day to support working families in North Carolina. Give it up for Ted Budd.

Okay, and I got just three more. Bear with me. The first is State Representative Jennifer Balkcom, your next Congresswoman, for the 11th District of North Carolina. Jennifer has one of the largest congressional districts in the entire United States. You got a lot of driving to do over the next couple of months.

Jennifer has been an amazing fighter for lower costs and parental rights in Raleigh, and she's gonna take that exact same spirit, that exact same spirit of fighting for North Carolina to Washington, DC, and that's where we need it. Thank you. Next, we have the amazing Laurie Buckhout. Laurie, where are you?

Laurie is an amazing public servant and she is the exact right person to send Don Davis packing. Send him back home to North Carolina. We don't need him in Washington, DC, Laurie. This will be her second time serving the American people because, of course, she honorably served in the United States Army. Like Donald J. Trump, Laurie doesn't need this job.

Laurie's gonna take a pay cut to take this job, but Laurie wants to do this job for the simple reason that the people of North Carolina, they need good congressional representation. They don't need radical left Don Davis. They need Laurie Buckhout. So let's send Laurie to Congress to fight for you. And last, but certainly not least, let's give it up for my friend and North Carolina's next Senator, Michael Whatley.

Now, you all know Michael as the best RNC chair that we have ever had, a man who fought for election integrity and fought so hard that we won a landslide victory in 2024. And before I talk about the Senate race and, importantly, before I talk about his opponent, I've gotta talk about the significance of Michael's hard work and the efforts of all the conservative fighters that we have all over the state of North Carolina today.

Last month, we hit one million new jobs created under the Trump administration, and unlike the last administration where all the net job growth went to the foreign born under Donald Trump's leadership, 100% of the new job growth over the past 18 months has gone to American citizens for a change -- which is exactly how it should be. [Audience chants "USA"] I would say in just 18 months, but actually it took about one month to end the Biden border crisis because for 16 months straight, we have released precisely zero illegal aliens at the American Southern border.

We've delivered the largest drop in violent crime in the history of the United States of America, and we've done it for the simple reason that we have stood with our police instead of fighting against them. And, because of that, because we've stood with the police and because we got the violent criminals out of the United States of America, we have the lowest murder rate in 126 years.

Ladies and gentlemen, that is something to celebrate. We took on big pharma and drug prices are falling faster than they have fallen in 60 years. We banned Wall Street from buying up all of America's homes. And despite the efforts of congressional Democrats, like Don Davis, we have delivered no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, and no taxes on social security.

My friends, we came to Washington D.C., the incredible congressional representation and the President of the United States. We came to Washington D.C. to put the American people back in charge of their government. Not the lobbyists, not the bureaucrats, not the people who have been running Washington DC for decades.

You. You deserve to be in the lead in Washington, DC. You deserve to have congressional representation that fights for you. Ted Budd, Virginia Foxx, Richard Hudson, Addison McDowell, Mark Harrison. These are the people who came to Washington to fight for you, and thanks to your leadership, we are getting it done for the American people every single day. [Audience chants "USA"] But, for years, for four years under Joe Biden and congressional Democrats, America was run by a party that prioritized the needs of everybody else.

Everybody but you. They prioritized massive corporations. They prioritized the far-left NGOs. They prioritized illegal immigrants. And, of course, as I've learned over the past few months, they prioritize a whole lot of fraudsters. And we know exactly what happened as a result. America became a place where you had to be rich to enjoy what used to be an ordinary life for all of our citizens.

Workers' wages under Joe Biden fell by $3,000 over four years. Prices rose by 20% across the board. And the cost of a home for a middle-class family doubled. In just four years, the cost of a home for our young people doubled. Americans who were finishing school suddenly found themselves competing with 25 million illegal aliens for precious jobs and homes that ought, by right, have gone to the American people.

And as Democrats were running the country into the ground, something else was happening inside their very own party. The old establishment, the few reasonable Democrats in Congress, were giving way to a new generation of far-left activists. These were not normal pol- -- politicians. These were radicals who are hellbent on ripping this country up from its very foundations.

And that brings us to today. This November, the Democrat Party is running candidates for Congress who call for "destroying the American way of life," who call for ending the nuclear family, who call for "the total eradication of Western civilization." Some of them say that we brought 9/11 upon ourselves. Some of them say that criticizing Sharia law is white supremacy.

Others of them proclaim, in celebrating the 250th anniversary of our great country, that the 4th of July is not about American freedom, but it's about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico, which always, always makes me laugh a little bit, because I try to imagine the founding fathers sitting down with their quill pen, thinking about the liberation of Palestine and Puerto Rico.

Ladies and gentlemen, these people declare explicitly that they're going to Congress to fight for Mexico and not for America. They campaign with far-left surrogates, who say that the United States is a terrorist state that is worse than Al-Qaeda. These are the choices on the ballot this November. From Colorado to New York to Michigan and everywhere in between, particularly here in North Carolina.

We have got to reject the radicals. We've gotta tell the Democratic Party that, "If you want to keep on sending radicals to the ballot, we're gonna send those radicals packing and we are gonna elect American patriots to fight for us in Washington, D.C." And that brings us to the great state of North Carolina, because we got to ask ourselves a question.

Do we want a man who will stand up fearlessly to these lunatics or do we want one of these lunatics who pretends to be a moderate? I mentioned a minute ago that in recent years, the story of the Democrat party has been, that the establishment has surrendered to deranged radicals. We all know that the Democratic Party, we may not have agreed with them on tax policy or regulatory policy, but they had some reasonable people out there.

Unfortunately, that is not the story of the Democrats today. Here in North Carolina, that establishment that has surrendered to the radicals, it is perfectly embodied by one man in particular. And you know that his name is Roy Cooper. For eight years, Governor Roy Cooper had left-wing activists in his ear, screaming at him to do their bidding.

And each time they shrieked, each time they threatened, each time they demanded that Roy Cooper bend the knee, do you know what he did? He obeyed them. A few years back, your state legislature here in North Carolina passed an amazing piece of legislation with the help of Michael Whatley. It was simple, to require voter ID because in the Republican Party, we believe, and frankly, most in the Democratic Party believe, that if you've got to show an ID to get on an airplane or show an ID to buy a six-pack of beer, you've got to show an ID to do the most important thing we do as citizens, which is to elect our leaders.

And to their great credit, my friends, I know that we're all Republicans here, but North Carolina Democrats working with North Carolina Republicans in the state legislature, they got that bill passed. But we all know how it ended because far lect- -- left activists, they got in Roy Cooper's face and they said that he was a bigot if he signed that legislation into law.

So Roy Cooper, ever the loyas- -- loyal servant of the hard left obeyed them and he vetoed voter ID in the state of North Carolina. Your elections are less safe because instead of being a patriot, instead of having the courage to stand up to the far left, Roy Cooper bent the knee. So I ask a pretty simple question, ladies and gentlemen, do you want a person in Washington representing you who bends the knee to the far left? [Audience responds "No"] Absolutely not.

And because we need somebody who will fight back against the far left, we need Michael Whatley in the United States Senate. [Audience chants "Michael"] Now, you may not have even heard that, but I actually, I usually don't misspeak, but I just called them the fart left, not the fart left. That, I promise that was an accident. [Laughter] So to the fake news who will accuse me of bad language, I promise I did not mean to call them the fart left.

I meant to call them the far left. But in [Laughs] another case, we're not done with Roy Cooper's record, ladies and gentlemen. In another case, your general assembly passed important legislation to cut non-citizens from the state's voter rolls. And again, to give credit where it was due, it was not just our fellow Republicans.

North Carolina Democrats working with North Carolina Republicans in the General Assembly tried to kick fraudsters off of the voter rolls. And you know what Roy Cooper did? Again, he bent the knee to the far left. He did what he was told, and he killed the bill. This is who he is, ladies and gentlemen. Give Roy Cooper a choice between upsetting the crazies and doing his job, and he will side with the crazies every single time.

And that's why we don't need a coward in the United States Senate. We do not need a person who bends the knee to the far left. We need a fighter in the United States Senate. We need somebody who's gonna stand up for the integrity in our elections. We need somebody who's gonna pass the Save America Act, not fight against it. We need someone who will never back down when it comes to making sure American elections are decided by American citizens.

And that's why this fall we are gonna send Michael Whatley to Washington to get the job done for the great people in North Carolina. But, as much as I would criticize Roy Cooper on the cost of living, as much as I would criticize Roy Cooper on election integrity, as much as it is obvious that this is a man who bends the knee to the far left every time he's given an opportunity, where his record is worst is on crime.

Because when he was governor, the far left repeatedly demanded that Roy Cooper turn his back on our great men and women in law enforcement. Let me give you a couple examples. During COVID, activists sued him to empty your state's prisons and flood North Carolina streets with violent criminals. And, no surprise, Roy Cooper did what he always does.

He bent the knee. In 2021, Roy Cooper released thousands of inmates from jail, half of whom, half of whom went on to commit another crime in this great state. The year went on to be the deadliest in state history when it comes to violent crime, thanks to the people that he released onto your streets. Now, of course, the argument was that it was unsafe to keep these prisoners during the outbreak of a pandemic, but I don't know why Roy Cooper prioritized the safety of prisoners over the citizens of this s- -- great state.

What he should have done is kept those prisoners in jail and kept the people on the outside of the prison safe. On decision after decision, Roy Cooper has made choices that put the public safety and put the citizens of this state at risk. And, as the murder rate ticked up under Ro- -- Roy Cooper, a culture of lawlessness took root.

And then, most horrifyingly, we saw what can happen when violent criminals are allowed to remain on the streets, when we saw that beautiful girl, Iryna Zarutska, killed in sk-, in Charlotte. Now, you all remember the story and you remember the video. It's so hard to watch. She was a young woman who'd fled the war in Ukraine, seeking to build a promising new life in this country, thinking that the United States would be safer than Ukraine, only to have her life snuffed out by a violent psychopath who should have never been on our streets to begin with.

It's unacceptable. It's disgusting. It's not who you are, it's not what North Carolina is, and it's not what this state will ever have, so long as you elect Michael Whatley. Ladies and gentlemen, we're fighting for the American dream here, but you can't have the American dream if you're afraid to walk down your street.

You can't raise a family, or build a business, or enjoy the fruits of your own hard work if your community isn't safe. We used to believe that, Republican and Democrat in this country, we used to believe that whether you were rich or poor, you deserve to have public safety, that if you went and worked a hard day's work, you ought to be able to take your kids out to a nice meal downtown again, whether you were Black or white, or whether you had the ability to afford private security.

But, Roy Cooper surrendered that public safety to the far-left criminals. And what we need to say to Roy Cooper in November is we are done with your B.S. We are done with you prioritizing the criminals over us. We're going to send Michael Whatley to fight for us because you won't. For eight years, for eight years, he surrendered on, we gotta be honest, not just on crime, not just on election integrity.

We have a whole rap sheet against Roy Cooper. For eight years, he treated North Carolina families, moms and dads and the kids that they're trying to protect, like garbage. As governor, Roy Cooper, again, listened to the far left and vetoed the parents' Bill of Rights. This was a bill that said that parents, not hospitals, not teachers' unions, not anybody, should make big decisions about their kids' healthcare and education.

It was a bill that said schools shouldn't teach about sexual topics to kindergartners or secretly call those kids by their pronouns. Why would a kindergartner ever need a preferred pronoun unless somebody else in their life is a sicko? And Roy Cooper, now we know, of course, that 99.9% of our great teachers in the state of North Carolina would never do this.

But if you're unlucky enough to have one of those teachers who wants to give your kid, a five-year-old, a different preper- -- preferred pronoun, you need a senator who's gonna fight for you, not fight for the sicko who's [Laughs] trying to give your five-year-old a different pronoun. It's just common sense, ladies and gentlemen.

It is common sense to say that, of course, there are certain topics that are not appropriate for a five or six-year-old child. Another issue of common sense is that we wanna have girls' sports for girls and boys' sports for boys. But again, Roy Cooper vetoed legislation to keep boys out of girls' sports. And he vetoed legislation that would've stopped these terrible mutilating surgeries on kids.

And while Roy Cooper kept throwing normal moms and dads to the curb, you know what he managed to find time to do? To create what he calls Gender Expansive Parents' Day. Does anyone even know what that means? [Laughter] Well, to use Roy Cooper's words, we're gonna help you out. It's to celebrate, and I quote, "The work and sacrifice of non-binary, agender, and other gender expansive parents." Roy, I don't know if you're still listening, but I still have no earthly idea what gender expansive parents means, and I gotta be honest, I'm not sure you do either. [Laughter] But given that you've literally run away from reporters after being asked softballs, like how many genders there are, I don't think any of us should hold our breath waiting for an answer. [Laughter] Now, I know this all seems funny, but the cowardice that Roy Cooper has shown before the far left is part of a bigger trend in the Democratic Party, and most importantly, it is a trend that is gonna make it so that Roy Cooper doesn't listen to you.

He doesn't fight for you. He doesn't defend you. He's gonna defend the far lef- -- left activists. Why are we talking so much about Roy Cooper's record and the way in which he bent the knee to the far left radicals? It's not just to beat up on him for what he's done in the past, it's because it tells you exactly what he's gonna do in the future.

A man who vetoes the Parents' Bill of Rights, a man who defends Gender Expansive Parents' Day, a man who cares so much about the pronouns that a radical person could foist on a six-year-old little girl, that person is not gonna fight for your jobs, he's not gonna fight for your wages, he's not gonna fight for your dignity, and he's not gonna fight for your security.

We cannot send a man who has made a career out of bending the knee to the far left. We need to send a man who will fight for you every single day, and that's why we gotta send Michael Whatley to the Senate. Now, now that trend to the Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen, it threatens to erase the most fundamental part of who we are as Americans, of who we are as human beings even.

It's the same thing that's happening in Kathy Hochul's New York where Democrats are replacing mothers with their new preferred term, gestating parents. Friends, none of this is normal. None of this is normal. We shouldn't expect it in our neighbors and we sure as hell shouldn't expect it from our political leaders.

It's an affront to our common sense and our basic dignity as human beings. And we owe it to ourselves. We owe it as parents, as citizens, as Americans, to tell any politician who won't stand up and fight. We owe it to ourselves to tell that politician to get the hell out of the way and make room for people who will.

Now more than ever, because we've got the far left radicals, we need men and women like Michael Whatley, like Jennifer Balkcom, and like Laurie Buckhout standing up for us. We need them to help us bring down costs to keep cutting your taxes. We need them to protect the border and keep the dangerous criminals out of our communities and inside the prisons.

But above all, we need them to fight. Because this November is not like the elections that most of us grew up with, you know, where the debates were about taxation or how much we should regulate this or that. This midterm election is between people who believe this country should have a future and those who would rather see it destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. We don't have time for politicians who wanna play both sides, who promise you that they're moderates while giving the crazies everything they want.

My friends, this November is make-or-break. You either stand up to this insanity or you will stand with it, and we're gonna stand up for it and fight against it. [Laughs] Thank you. Look, I, uh, I know, and you all are here because you love what we're doing in the administration. You love these great patriots, but there are a lot of people in the State of North Carolina who haven't made up their minds yet.

There are some out there who voted for us before even, but don't necessarily agree with everything that's happened over the last 20 months. And I understand that. But my message to anyone who's still making up their minds is ins- -- is very simple. If you're unhappy with the pace of progress, don't hand power back to Democrats who drove our country to the ground in the first place.

The choice that we're facing is stark. It is common sense versus craziness. It's about keeping taxes low. It's about rooting out fraud. It's about making it easier for hardworking families to buy a home, to buy the medications they need, to put food on the table. It's about keeping the Southern border closed.

It's about putting criminals in jail, and it's about sending dangerous illegal aliens out of this country, which is where they belong. My friends, there is more work to do of course, and it will take more time, and the support of course of our great American people to finish the job. But we can't get it done.

We can't keep growing our economy. We can't secure the border. We can't support American workers or fa- -- and families unless we've got allies in Congress, people like Michael Whatley and the great Congressional candidates we have gathered here today. And I know the people of North Carolina, we are ready for this fight.

You've made your voices heard before, and I know you're gonna make 'em heard again in just a couple of months. So my question to everybody here is this. On November the 3rd, are you gonna turn the page on Roy Cooper and the Democrats? [Audience responds affirmatively] Are we gonna stand up to the insanity of the left? [Audience responds affirmatively] Are we gonna keep fighting for a commonsense America-first agenda? [Audience responds affirmatively] Are you gonna stand with Michael Whatley? [Audience responds affirmatively] Are you gonna stand with Jennifer Balkcom? [Audience responds affirmatively] Are we gonna stand with Laurie Buckhout?

And are we gonna stand with all of our great North Carolina warriors to keep North Carolina fighting for great American patriots? [Audience responds affirmatively] Ladies and gentlemen, I think this election is actually very simple. If you want the Democrats to return to common sense, we've gotta kick out the crazy.

If you want the Democrats to hear your voice, that if they want your vote, they've gotta stop el- -- nominating far-left radicals. You've gotta vote for Republicans. If you wanna tell the Democrats, "It's time to stop the madness and stop the craziness," you've gotta vote for Republicans. So this November, let's get out and vote for Michael Whatley.

Let's send a message to the Democrats. Cut out the crazy. We're taking our country back. God bless you all and thank you for having me. Thank you.