Speech: JD Vance Holds a Political Rally in Brewer, Maine - August 24, 2026

How we doing, Brewer? Thank you, Roy. Please, please take a seat. I wanna give a thank you to our incredible, incredible small business administrator, Kelly Loeffler, who, in addition to supporting our small businesses better than almost anybody else, um, is also one of our real MVPs when it comes to fighting fraud in the federal government.

She has found tens of billions of dollars of your tax dollars and given it back to you rather than the fraudsters. So give it up for Kelly Loeffler for doing a great job. I need a few other thank-yous as well. First, thanks to House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham and Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart.

Where are you guys? Stand up. [Audience member calls out, inaudibly] Gotta give a few shout-outs here to, uh, a few people who couldn't be with us today. The first is Bobby Charles, who I know is running for governor. Give a round of applause for Bobby Charles. Now, Bobby has got, as you all know, an amazing record of standing up to the drug cartels and the international criminal gangs.

He has been an amazing fighter for the state of Maine. He's gonna make a more amazing governor for the state of Maine. And of course, the second shout-out I gotta give is to my dear friend, Susan Collins, the Senator for Maine. Thank you. Now, I always, whenever I'm in the great state of Maine, which is one of my favorite states, it's beautiful.

It's got hardworking people, amazing industries. I love a state like Maine, which has got this incredible natural beauty, but is also a place of hardworking Americans. So I love to be here. And whenever I'm in Maine, I gotta give Susan a little bit of crap, because as you know, Susan is the most independent member of the United States Senate.

And as the President of the United States Senate, she sometimes makes my job just a little bit harder. But she makes it harder because she is coming to work every single day and fighting not for a political party or not for any abstraction. She comes to work every single day, and she fights for the great people of Maine.

And I've seen it. Susan has been, I'll tell you a little story about Susan. She has been in my house probably a half dozen times, the vice president's residents at the Naval Observatory. And I've never seen a person who is more attuned to the details of every single thing. She's always asking, "What does this do for Maine?

How is this good for Maine? How is this bad for Maine?" And she tries to get as much good for this state out of Washington and as little bad out of the, the, out of Washington for this state, which, by the way, is a very hard job. But she does it an amazing job. And so please give it up to our very independent friend, Susan Collins.

And last but certainly not least, we are here to celebrate and give a big shout-out for former Governor Paul LePage, who is gonna make a great congressman for the state of Maine. This guy is so much fun to be around, and his love for Maine is infectious. This is not a politician who punches the card. This is a guy who loves this state.

And we gotta remember, when he was the governor of this state, Maine went from a place that couldn't pay its own Medicare bills, Paul remembers this, to a state with huge budget surpluses. And Paul didn't just do that. Paul used those surpluses to do what? He cut your taxes. He tamped down on welfare fraud, and he eliminated the shortfalls that existed in Maine's pension system while all at the same time protecting the most vulnerable members of this state.

He stood up for you. He stood up for retirees. He stood up for the disabled. He stood up for every law-abiding citizen that required Maine's public services to function, but to function for the people who actually paid into them and actually need them. So take it from me. A guy like Paul LePage, he is not a go-along-to-get-along politician.

He is an independent-minded guy, but he is independent for you. There's one thing I know that Paul cares about, and that's fighting hard for his people every single day. We gotta send Paul LePage to Congress. Now, I'm here in Brewer to tell you that the Trump administration, we're here to send a signal. We're here to send a signal that we fight for you.

We here, we're here to send a signal that we're standing with Paul LePage. And most importantly, we're here to send a signal that we are standing up for the good people of Maine every single day. We're standing up for your workers. We're standing up for your families. We're standing up for the incredible natural beauty of the state of Maine and every single citizen who relies on it, who enjoys it, who has made this place their home for generations.

Because here's the thing. I am sick of towns like Brewer falling behind. I want towns like Brewer to get ahead. I want Brewer to thrive. We want great manufacturers like the one that we're standing in right now, Compatec, the fastest-growing manufacturer in the state of Maine. I wanna reward companies like Compotech that invest in their workers rather than in trying to ship jobs overseas just to make a quick penny. [Audience member calls out "Yeah"] So with the help of our friends in Congress and future friends like Paul LePage in Congress, the Trump administration enacted the single biggest tax cut in history for Maine's workers.

We brought down drug costs, Trump Rx, and ensured that our nation's housing supply goes to citizens, not to private equity investors. And we provided historic tax relief for Maine parents and families. We have invested a thousand dollars in every new baby born in the United States of America thanks to Trump accounts, which we're very proud of. And as you all know, the Second Lady and I just welcomed about five weeks ago, a beautiful fourth child, baby Alec.

Thank you. [Audience member calls out "Congratulations"] Somebody behind me is very excited about that. Trust me, I'm excited too. But, you know, the Second Lady, when the president asked me to join the running, the ticket and become his running mate, the Second Lady said, "Well, you can have one of two things.

You can be vice president or you can have a fourth child." Ladies and gentlemen, I must be pretty, pretty persuasive because I got both. But, but I got it in part. I like to joke because, you know, she was not sold, that, Usha was not sold on having a second child. And then I said, "Honey, the Congress just gave us the $1,000 Trump account and the working families tax cuts." She was like, "All right, I guess we're gonna have to have a fourth baby to take advantage of this." But when you hear Kelly Loeffler rightfully talk about the rise of socialism, one of the things we believe in the Trump administration is that the way to defeat socialism, it's not to throw slogans at people.

It's not politician talk and repeating the same old thing. It's giving people a real stake in the future. Now, $1,000 may not sound like much, but you take $1,000 to a child born tomorrow in the United States of America, and you give that child 18 years of compounding, 18 years of interest accrued, 18 years of investing in something, and that's how we make the next generation of Americans have a real stake in the next generation of the American economy.

And that's what you gotta do if you wanna fight socialism. Give people a stake in the future. The Democrats are running a very corrupt game, which is they're trying to tear down this country, tear down our young people, tear down our military. And what's left over with the ashes of what they've torn down is socialism.

Well, we've got a different approach, my friends. We wanna invest in you. We wanna fight for you, and we wanna fight for your children's future. We're gonna defeat socialism by giving you a stake in the American dream, and that's how we're gonna win the future. But I gotta say that what we're doing isn't, it's not just a two-year or even a four-year process.

Think about this. This country was plundered over a generation. Our goal is to reverse a consensus that has screwed over communities like this one for decades. I gotta be honest, it was Republicans and Democrats that did it together. For 40 years, places like Brewer have been told that it doesn't matter.

That it doesn't matter if we make things here in Maine or 5,000 miles away with foreign workers. Think about this. The people who are running our country, the people who were supposed to be devoted and dedicated to this community, they said that we were stupid or stuck in the past if we wanted good manufacturing jobs right here in communities like Brewer.

What we really needed, they told us, was just to juice the short-term profits of a few big corporations. We needed to open that border and prioritize foreign workers over our own citizens. They would cheer on the corporate raiders as they slashed headcount and shifted all those businesses either to foreign countries or brought in illegal aliens to employ.

And as our politicians and some of those corporate cronies got rich, who bore the cost? We know it was us. You bore the cost. We bore the cost. Communities like mine in Middletown Ohio and communities like this one in Brewer, Maine. Men and women who built their lives around a factory or around the community that existed and was supported by that factory, they were left powerless and they were left destitute when decisions by far off politicians made this community poorer so that a few people could earn a few quick bucks.

And it wasn't just the businesses, my friend, it was the politicians. But just as it was a policy choice by people in Washington to let that happen to you and to your community, in 2024, Brewer made a new choice to reverse 40 years of American decline and send Donald J. Trump back to the White House. And if you think about it, in just 18 months, we have seen an industrial Renaissance all across the United States of America.

Nationwide, all across our country, factory construction employment has exploded. 83,000 new jobs in factory consunc- -- uh, construction, just since Donald Trump came back into the White House. Trillions of dollars, trillions are pouring into our country to support new facilities, new jobs, and of course, new workers and to train workers in the new jobs of the future.

And as companies start building, orders for new factory machine- -- machinery and other capital goods are breaking records. We're seeing the very foundation laid for a manufacturing renaissance all across this country. Did you know demand for metal cutting and machine tools has hit its highest level in almost 40 years in the United States of America?

In all that construction, my friends, it's supporting, as Kelly said, an America first manufacturing boom, with last month's activity and the manufacturing sector reaching its highest level in years. We've created in just 18 months, 29,000 new manufacturing jobs, and we've reversed years of wage decline where people were getting poorer.

Now finally, we're seeing wages up 4.2% just over the last year. And who are the beneficiaries? The workers at companies like Compotech are reaping the benefits. Now, you don't have taxes on overtime. If you work a little bit harder, the federal government ought to keep its hand out of your pocket, and it is, thanks to the Working Families Tax Cut.

And this business is the perfect example of what we wanna see thrive. Our vision of America is that we want businesses and workers investing in their communities, investing in their homelands, and thriving together, where p- -- previous generations of Washington leadership re- -- would reward the people who are shipping factory jobs overseas.

We are rewarding factories and manufacturers right here in Brewer, Maine like Compotech. Now, now, one of the reasons I'm so happy to be here is because I think this factory has an amazing story and it exemplifies a lot of the rise and fall. And under President Trump, the rise again of American industrial might.

If you visited this very facility 16 years ago, you'd have seen a much, much different site. In 2010, the previous tenant closed up shop, cutting 100 good paying jobs in the community and leaving this massive, beautiful space completely empty. Fast-forward today, 16 years later, and what you've got is the perfect example of the revolution in smart manufacturing occurring under the Trump administration.

This is a business that's gone from two to 85 employees hiring back a whole lot of the men and women who lost their jobs in 2010 under the administration of Barack Obama. And it's not just that they've got great jobs, they're doing something really important in the process. They are building the critical defense tech that keeps our service members safe overseas.

I was in one of these, these cans, and it was unbelievable how strong it was and how capable it was, and you can put them up almost anywhere in the blink of an eye. So they're not just working good jobs. They're not just making good wages. They're investing in their own community. And they're hiring local and they're teaching technical skills to Mainers in the process.

I wanna give a, a special shout out to one of the very impressive people, Jamie Beers, who I believe is behind me. Jamie? Now, they didn't tell me that Jamie was a good-looking guy with a beard. And Jamie, I, I hate good-looking guys with beards because they make me feel jealous. But I gotta say, Jamie is an amazing human being.

He's a maintenance manager here, who worked his way through high school to learn his trade, so he could take care of his three daughters. Uh, Jamie is a real son of the state of Maine, having been born and raised in Northern Maine. This is his home. And I wanna give him a quick congratulations as well, because this past June, he got married to the love of his life, the beautiful Danielle.

So congratulations, my man, which is right there. Not just the love of your life, but a fellow employee at Compotech. All right. Man, this company's been better to Jamie than I realized. [Laughter] Now my friends, this is exactly, ah, this is exactly what I love to see in states like Maine. This is exactly what we wanna support in the Trump administration.

We want companies that buy American, that hire American, and that invest in American communities. You know, the Democrats have this idea that business is bad and everybody else is good. Our attitude is much more subtle, but it's much more real and true that if you're a business that's building in your backyard, if you're investing in your workers and trying to make a great American product, then we are on your side because you are on the side of American workers and American patriots.

We, we want companies that help our country and our workers lead the world in innovation without selling anybody short. And thanks to the efforts of folks like Kelly at the SBA and, of course, the Working Families Tax Cut, we're lifting them up. We're making it easier and rewarding them for investing right here in Brewer so they can continue to expand, continue to build, and hopefully have a couple more love stories like Jamie's. Now our administration's policies [Laughs] -- is that really your brother?

Okay. Well, God love you guys. This is a family affair. Our administration's policies, look, we've allowed manufacturers like Compotech, we've encouraged manufacturers like Compotech to invest more in tooling and then to get reimbursed for the training and the apprenticeships that they are actually working on and that their people are doing.

And we took action to allow our small businesses to worry less about ridiculous red tape that had been put in place by congressional Democrats. Here's the basic principle. If you run into issues with federal contracting, they can work directly with Kelly's team at the Small Business Administration so they can go to toe-to-toe with their bigger peers. 'Cause think about it. The big businesses, they've got an army of lawyers that can cut through that red tape.

Compotech does it. So what have we done? We have put the government on the side of companies like Compotech and the workers who are building this community, the great thing. And when places like Brewer thrive, when Compotech thrives, they make our whole nation safer. But it also means good wages. It means stability and dignity for the men and women who work here.

It means workers can raise their families. It means people can not suffer under financial stress, but can have the space to fall in love and spend a little bit of extra time with their f- -- families. Maybe take a vacation. That's what this is really about, ladies and gentlemen. It's not about, you know, you hear people talk about growth and the importance of growth.

Why do we, why do we talk about those things? Because we want good jobs. We want dignity. We want the dignity of knowing that if you work hard and you build something, if you play by the rules, your country is gonna have your back for a change. And work naturally. That's the only thing that is actually gonna give people that real dignity.

A welfare check is never gonna replace a job. And we've got a choice in November. Do we want a party that provides good jobs or a party that provides a lot of welfare checks? I vote for good jobs. How about you? But it's not just good jobs that protect your dignity. Another, another thing that we've gotta do and that we've been doing to protect your dignity is stopping that terrible poison that was flooding across the southern border and costing thousands of thousands of Maine citizens their lives.

By closing the Southern border, the media and the Democrats, they say that it's heartless. It's heartless to enforce your border. But our border enforcement is not based in fear or hatred of anybody else. It's based on a love of our countrymen, of a love of the people, the men and women in this room. Because what we did is that we helped keep drugs out of Maine communities.

Don't take my word for it. Last year in 2025, did you know that overdoses in the state of Maine were down by 20%? And already in 2026, they're down by another 17%. We sealed the border and that's what happened, my friends, and that's why we did it. So even as Democrats call for abolishing the police or for slashing the funding of the people who are keeping that border secure, we have backed the blue and fought for our police officers because they fight for us every single day.

Let's give a shout-out to our great law enforcement officers. They deserve it. To our police officers, our sheriffs, and everybody else, our firefighters, we are never gonna abandon the men and women who put their lives on the line to keep communities like this one safe. And because of their work, and because of our efforts to support them in Washington, America is undergoing one of the largest reductions in violent crime in the history of the United States of America.

Did you know that homicides in this country plummeted to their lowest levels in 126 years? That's amazing. That's an incredible thing. Now it's not rocket science. On the one hand, you back the blue. And on the other hand, we've deported thousands of violent predators, criminals, fraudsters, and other people who are making it harder for law-abiding citizens to live their lives.

And it's not just the effect on crime. You know, I would al- -- I was always asked during the campaign. They'd say, "What are, what are the, one of the things that are causing housing prices to go up?" And I'd say common sense, it's supply and demand, that if you bring in millions and millions of illegal aliens, you gotta put them somewhere.

And when you give them houses that ought go by right to American citizens, that's gonna increase the cost of housing for everybody else. Well, it's 18 months, ladies and gentlemen, and the verdict is in. Where housing doubled under the leadership of Joe Biden, rents are falling for the first time in a decade under the leadership of Donald Trump because we got people who shouldn't be here the hell out of our country.

It's very simple. Now you hear me talk a lot about job growth, and obviously that matters. We care a lot about job growth, but I don't just care about job growth. I care about where the job growth goes. And did you know this is the craziest statistic of, of the entire last administration, that all of the net job creation under Joe Biden's leadership went to foreign-born Americans, mostly illegal aliens.

Under this administration, all of the net job growth has gone to native born American citizens. It's gone to you, because that's who we're here to fight for. Now, we in the Trump administration, of course, joined by our good friend, Paul LePage, we operate under a simple principle. The government exists to put you first.

But who do the Democrats put first? Well, unfortunately, everybody else, not you. At every turn, the far left has opposed our work to put law-abiding American citizens first. They opposed our effort to cut your taxes. They opposed our effort to secure the border. They opposed our effort to support the police, and they opposed our effort to bring down those fentanyl overdoses.

And unfortunately, I gotta say, Maine has been a perfect example of this, because as amazing as this community is, natural beauty, hardworking people, Maine has every single bit to be a recipe for success. But if we compare the last couple of years to when Paul LePage was governor, what do we see? We saw that Paul LePage cracked down on the epidemic of welfare fraud and abuse happening in cities like Lewiston.

He doubled the number of investigators he had in the state going after fraud. And meanwhile, the current group of jokers running the state of Maine, they have doubled down on fraud. They have doubled down on stealing your tax dollars and giving it to people who shouldn't deserve it. They've doubled down on making it harder to find and cr- -- catch and prosecute the fraudsters.

They've made it harder for your tax dollars to go where they ought to. And this is where I wanna close out, because everything that I've talked about, all of the good work that we're doing, the tax relief, everything is gonna be jeopardized unless we stop allowing fraudsters to take advantage of the state of Maine.

We gotta put the fraudsters behind bars and fight for you for a change. Now I asked Paul, I said, "How in the name of God did a state that was doing so well when you were governor and has the most amazing people anywhere in the world, how did Maine become one of the main capitals of defrauding the American taxpayer?" And the answer turns out is, well, I've heard a lot of answers.

All of those are right. But look, one of the answers is somehow you guys hired an auditor who is not actually an auditor and failed the auditor exam. Well, call it old-fashioned common sense, but if you want somebody managing your money, maybe they oughta actually meet the constitutional requirements to do the job.

And, and for Matt Dunlap, if you've got a guy who cannot protect your tax dollars from fraudsters who has turned your state into one of the fraud capitals of the United States of America, maybe you should be saying to Matt Dunlap, "You're fired, not promoted to the United States Congress." So when I look at the choice before you, it's very simple.

Are we gonna choose somebody who fights for businesses like CompoTech or gonna choose for people who encourage companies to ship jobs overseas? If we're gonna fight for companies like CompoTech, we need to fight for Paul LePage. Are we gonna fight for the people of Maine who have been victimized by the fentanyl coming into our communities?

Or are we gonna fight for the drug traffickers who have brought it in? If we're gonna fight for Maine, we gotta fight for Paul LePage. Are we gonna fight for the fraudsters who are stealing your money? Are we gonna fight for your children to have a safe and prosperous community right here in the state that they love?

Because if we're gonna fight for the children of Maine, we gotta fight for Paul LePage. Are we gonna crack down on the food stamp fraudsters so that the food stamps can go to the needy Maine children who actually depend on that program? If you're fighting for the people of Maine, for the food stamps for the people who actually deserve them, and not for the fraudsters, we gotta send Paul LePage to Congress.

At every step of the way, you guys are blessed to have a congressional candidate, who has actually fought for you, rather than the fraudsters, rather than the criminals, rather than the illegal aliens. So I'm gonna say very simply, my friends, everything that we've accomplished over the past couple of years, it could be undone if you send a lot of crazy people to Congress to fight against us. What I'm asking is that you send an independent voice, a voice for Maine.

You send somebody who's gonna fight for you and against the fraud. Send Paul LePage to Congress, and let's get to work to save our country. God bless you. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, guys. All right. Now, please, have a seat. Sorry, I told the media I'd take a few questions. I forgot about that. So, um, I would like to start with the local press, and if we've got a little time, we'll take some questions, uh, for the national pool after that.

Local press, fire away.

Vice President Vance, Grace Blanchard, ABC7 and Fox 22 News here in Bangor. On the topic of fraud, just a few months ago, you were across the river in Bangor addressing fraud concerns and expressing an openness to work with the Mills Administration. Can you speak on any progress that has been made since then in terms of corro- -- regarding cooperation between the Trump administration, the fraud task force, and the Mills Administration?

Well, what I said back in, in Bangor a few months ago, and I'll repeat it here today, is we don't want the anti-fraud issue to become partisan. We really don't. Democrat, Republican or Independent, whatever, whoever you voted for, for president in 2024, you should be standing behind the principle that the hard-earned tax dollars of the people in this room ought to go to what they paid for, not to the fraudsters.

That simple. So we've reached out to the governor, to the attorney general. We've gotten, you know, some, some people in their office have been responsive. But I hate to say it, that after a few months of working with these guys, I don't have a great amount of confidence that they're gonna lean into this anti-fraud effort.

And I think the problem is that their incompetence, or their something worse, is one of the reasons why Maine has become such a capital of fraud. And particularly, it's a lot of healthcare fraud. You think about this, the two big federal programs, Medicaid and Medicare. Medicare is the program that you paid into if you're an elderly American for your entire life to ensure that you've got good healthcare on retirement.

Medicaid is the program that ensures that our low-income Mainers and low-income folks across the country have access to basic medicine. And I, and I like that. I don't, I don't want a kid who can't afford to go see a doctor to suffer. We say, in the United States of America, we're gonna take care of our fellow citizens when they're, when they're down on their luck.

And that's a good and amazing and generous thing. What do you see? You see fraudsters taking advantage of those programs. You see people saying that they're providing healthcare services, collecting a whole lot of money, but not doing a single bit of healthcare. It's got to stop. And what I'd say to the governor and the attorney general of the state, we continue to have open arms.

Come and work with us, fight against the fraud, fight for your own people. We'd love to work with you.

Uh, Rachel Ohm from the Portland Press Herald. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the negotiations over the tariffs with Canada, um, and particularly what, what might you say to businesses and consumers that are worried about the impacts of those tariffs and how those negotiations are going?

Sure. Well, first of all, I'd say we're very mindful of the fact that Maine is a border state with Canada. There's a lot of cross-border transaction between Maine and Canada, and what we're trying to do here is just make sure that Maine actually gets a fair deal. If you look at the amount of tariffs that have been applied, not just on Maine, but on a lot of our northern states that are doing cross-border trade with Canada, Canada and China have been the two worst countries when it come to trade policy anywhere in the world.

What a shame that is. China, you, of course, expect. They're our biggest economic competitor. I would expect that from China. I would not expect that from Canada. We have to remember, Canada is a state. Sorry. Freudian slip. [Laughter] That was actually an accident. Canada [Laughs] is a country that has under invested in its military that quite literally would get invaded by a foreign country were it not for the umbrella of protection provided by the United States of America.

And so how does, how does Canada actually respond to that? By treating the people of Maine fairly? No. They apply ridiculous tariffs and other non-tariff duties on Maine products coming into, to Canada, and they don't expect Maine or anybody else to fight back. We're sick of that. We are actually gonna fight back against unfair trade practices, whether it's coming from China or Canada.

Now, and le- -- and let me get, let me just give you a very, very simple and concrete example. If you buy dairy, cheese, butter, milk that comes from Canada into Maine, you probably are buying a product that has 0% tariffs on it, okay? And, and by the way, if Canada applied 0%, that would be one thing. But you know, if a Maine farmer sends dairy products into Canada, they could be pu- -- paying as much as a 250% tariff.

Now, how, how is it fair to the farmers of Maine that, that they pay 250% when the Canadian farmers pay nothing? That unfairness is something that we just have to fix. And here's what happened with the most recent round of negotiations. They're still ongoing, and I wanna be respectful of the process, but we know that Canada allows itself to be used as a backdoor for Chinese goods.

They treat Chinese goods more fairly than they do the goods that come from the people of Maine. It's insanity. And what we've said to Canada is stop it. Apply a basic principle of fairness to the trade that you're doing between North Dakota and Canada, between Maine and Canada. And what happened at the very end is they came in with a bunch of unreasonable last minute demands.

I frankly thought we had a deal, I think that we should have a deal, but I think that we need to send a message loud and clear to the Prime Minister of Canada. Stop taking advantage of the people of Maine, stop taking advantage of America. It's over, we expect fairness in our trade policy. I'll take a question from this gentleman up front.

[Inaudible]

Well, I, I appreciate that question. The question was, how do we ensure accountability for the people who've committed fraud? And, uh, I, I do know that the main wire and Paul LePage and really everybody who is a patriot in this community has been on top of the fraud issue, frankly, well before I was. Paul LePage has been the biggest advocate in state or federal government anywhere in the state of Maine at protecting your tax dollars and protecting these programs.

It's one of the reasons why we gotta get Paul LePage to Congress. I need the help, ladies and gentlemen. You gotta send Paul to help me. But the two big things that we have to do to ensure that there is real accountability. Number one is when somebody commits fraud, they've got to go to prison and we've got to prosecute them, and that's what we've been doing.

If you look, if you look at the number of anti-fraud prosecutions you've already seen, but also at a new, we, we, we set up a special position within the Department of Justice, an anti-fraud guy within the, uh, a deputy attorney general who's just going after fraud, that's his 100% day-to-day job, and we've massively ramped up the prosecutions.

The second thing you gotta do, and this was shocking to me when I started this work, is that if you had low level fraud in the United States of America, we would largely, it wasn't an official policy, but if you committed fraud of, let's say, $1 million, the federal government would just look the other way.

Isn't that crazy? So what we've done is we've said, "No fraud is too small. If you are defrauding the American taxpaper- -- payer, we're gonna do everything that we can to put you in prison." And send a message to the other fraudsters, "The gig is up, commit fraud against America and go to jail." Let's do one more.

Jackie Mundry, I work at WMTW, the ABC station in Portland, Maine. You touched on immigration a little bit, and I know immigration enforcement has been a priority of the Trump administration. I'm sure you're also aware there was a fatal shooting at the hands of an immigration agent in Biddeford six weeks ago.

Last week, there was a shadow hearing with Democrats that say the Trump administration is not investigating this shooting. Where are we on that investigation that happened in Biddeford six weeks ago?

Well, well, that, first of all, that's not true. There was a, a shooting, as you mentioned, about six weeks ago. And of course, the Trump administration, our Department of Justice, everybody investigates this stuff because we want everybody, whether they're political friends or not, everybody has to follow the law in the United States of America.

It's that simple. [Audience member calls out, inaudibly] Now, in, in, in, in that particular case, I don't wanna comment on, I wanna prejudge all of the details, but look, when you have a law enforcement action, when you have somebody who is committing a crime in the United States of America, and you go and arrest that person.

Now, I believe the person who was shot was not part of the underlying investigation, but when the officers approached the person they were trying to arrest, that person, like, drove away from the scene. And what at least the law enforcement officers argue is that that person posed a danger to the community.

Again, I'm not gonna prejudge the case because I think everybody is entitled to their, their case, not in the court of public opinion, but a court trial by their juries, an actual real investigation if that's what ultimately happens. Um, we, we ha- -- everybody is entitled to understand what's going on, whether what they're being accused of is actually legitimate.

And ultimately, of course, if there is a criminal prosecution, then they're entitled to a jury by their peers. But when I look at that case, what I see is inevitably a country that is trying to enforce its laws, and it hasn't for a long time. And while Democrats get extremely agitated about this case, again, we're investigating that case.

They're being dishonest if they say that we're not investigating that case. But what I see from Democrats is people who are far more worried about a shooting involving an illegal alien than they are about the fact that tens of thousands of Mainers died from fentanyl overdoses by that poison brought into our community.

And so, and so my message to the Democrats who are so worried about that situation is to say, have a little bit of perspective. We can absolutely investigate every shooting and we will, but we can also secure our border and ensure that that poison stops coming into our country, and that is our priority, and that's our emphasis.

Now, we're gonna hit the road here, so let me just say one final thing, and then, uh, I'll, I'll, uh, I guess it's Monday. Tomorrow is my six-year-old, his first day of kindergarten, so we're very -- excited about that. I have some kids here who are not, looks like they're not excited to get back to school, but let me, let me just say that, you know, even though I grew up in a different part of the country, I have a, a, a certain feeling of comradery with communities like this one because I grew up in a town, a steel mill town where everybody said it was the town of the past.

People just accepted that the steel mill jobs were going away, that all of my buddies' dads would have to lose their jobs, that my papaw would lose his job, and that that's just the way that it was. And I remember growing up and remember how many people, how many grandparents and parents said to their kids that if you want a future, you're gonna have to go somewhere else.

You're gonna have to go off to school somewhere else, you're gonna have to find a career somewhere else, you're gonna have to get job training somewhere else. And I remember thinking to myself, how heartbreaking is it for a mom or a dad or a grandpa or a grandma to invest in this community, to love this community, to raise their kids in this community, but to not believe that there is any opportunity in the future in this community that they love?

That's one of the things, it's one of the reasons why we love Compotech. It's one of the reasons why we're trying to invest and reinvest in communities all across the state of Maine, because I don't want you to look at your own community as something that needs to be left behind. I want you to recognize that there is a great American future for your children, for your grandchildren, for your entire family right here in Brewer, Maine, right here in the state that you all love.

So when you ask yourself, "Why do we do what we're doing?" It's not just because we want jobs. Of course, we want that. Of course, we want dignified wages. We want good healthcare benefits for everybody. Why we're doing what we're doing is because we know that the future of America cannot be rebuilt if we write off certain communities or leave certain communities behind.

So my message to you, my message from Paul LePage is the future is right here in Maine so long as we're willing to fight for it. I'll stand by your side, fight along with me. God bless you guys, and good to see you.