Thank you, Marines. It's great to be with you tonight. I wanna thank our great Commandant, General Smith. Thank you so much for everything that you do for our Marine Corps. Let me ask y'all, how we doing Marines? That was pretty good. How we doing Marines? That was better. That was better. Well, I, uh, I figured I'd just stand up here and tell a lot of stories about the Marine Corps because what else should we do when we're among friends on the 250th birthday of the United States Marine Corps than talk about the incredible stories that make our Corps great?
And I'm so proud to be here. I'm so proud to be the first Vice President of the United States to have been a United States Marine. I am proud to have so many of my dear friends from my own time in the United States Marine Corps, and I was joking with some of them earlier this evening. We were at a reception with generals and colonels and magistrates and noblemen, and I thought to myself that when we were at our last Marine Corps ball, we were drinking Jim Beam Eight Stars with a bunch of corporals and Lance corporals and sergeants.
And now we're drinking fine wine with the Commandant of the Marine Corps. We've come pretty far, my friends. It's good to see you all. But the thing I love about the Marine Corps is that for 41 years, for the entire time that I have had the Marine Corps in the back of my mind, since I stepped foot on those yellow footprints in Paris Island, I was a 19-year-old kid.
That entire time, the Marine Corps has kept me honest, and even tonight, the Marine Corps has kept me honest because you saw our guest of honor, that incredible Iwo Jima veteran corporal, it's such an honor to be with you. And, uh, I was, I was shaking his hand earlier and spending some time with him, and I said, "Sir, if you need to lean on me, if you need to grab onto me, please feel free to do so." And he said, "If you need to grab onto me, feel free to do so." And then I shook the hand of his fellow Iwo Jima veteran because we have a corpsman here who served in Iwo Jima.
And how much Marines do we love our corpsman who keep us safe? We know that to our corpsman, there is no illness so severe, no malady, so significant that it cannot be cleared by two Motrin and a fresh pair of socks. But I shook the hand of this corpsman who's probably close to 100 years old, and he said, you know, we talked for a little bit, we chatted for a little bit.
He said, "You know, you have a very nice personality." And I'm a, I'm a vain politician just like all the rest of them, and I really appreciated that. And then he said, "What the hell is up with that beard?" And I thought to myself, "I'm the Vice President of the United States, and this guy is busting my balls for having a beard." But that, that, my friends, is what the Marine Corps does, whether we're a young Marine or an old Marine, whether we're a lance corporal born in 2006, or a veteran of Iwo Jima, the Marine Corps keeps us honest because it is the proudest organization of war fighters in the world, and we are proud to celebrate its 250th birthday.
Now I got this great big speech here. I could talk about Dan Daly. I could talk about Chesty Puller. I could talk about John Basilone. I could talk about all of the incredible Marines. I could talk about my friends, some of whom came home from Iraq or Afghanistan, and a couple of whom didn't. We know that the reason why this organization is so special is fundamentally because we take the very best, young Americans.
We turn them into something even better, which is United States Marines, and we go and ask them, even when they're teenagers, even when they're not even old enough, some of them to drink, we go and ask them to do the hardest thing in the world, which is to fight our nation's battles and to represent the United States all over the world in the proudest and most profound way possible.
And I'm proud to tell you this evening that tonight, as we celebrate at the Commandant's Birthday Ball, from the young Marines to the old Marines, I, as your Vice President, am proud of you, and we're gonna keep on winning America's Wars for the next 250 years after this. Now, I remember when my cousin Rachel, she's my older cousin, my, my grandmother's eldest grandchild, when she encouraged me to, to enlist in the United States Marine Corps, and at the time it sounded like the craziest idea I had ever heard.
I couldn't run a mile, much less three miles, and I, I, I never thought to myself that I could join the military, but I'm telling you that the confidence the Marine Corps gave me, the trajectory that it set me on has started, again, from those yellow prints, footprints in Paris Island, led me directly from where I was then to where I stand today.
And it wasn't always an easy journey. Of course, these things never are, but I, I remember, for example, my very first Marine Corps birthday as a young recruit in Paris Island. I went to bootcamp in September of 2003, and so, of course, my first Marine Corps birthday was in Paris Island. Now I'll tell you a little story.
At the time, I thought that I was deathly allergic to shellfish. And the reason I thought I was deathly allergic to shellfish is because when I was 16 or 17, I had some terrible allergic reaction. I assumed it was because of shellfish. And for two years, I had not touched shellfish. I thought it was the thing that was gonna kill me. And so on November the 10th in Paris Island, South Carolina, I was sitting there and they served steak and lobster.
And you all know, y'all were recruits. You know how hungry young recruits get? And I thought to myself, "Well, on the one hand, I could be hungry and maybe save my life. On the other hand, I could roll the die with this lobster, and the very worst thing that's probably gonna happen to me is a corpsman's gonna take care of me. I'll get to sleep in tomorrow." And so what did my dumbass do? I ate the lobster and I was fine, and I haven't been allergic to shellfish ever since.
So one of the great things the Marine Corps can do is it can apparently cure a shellfish allergy. There are so many things I'm proud of about this Corps. One of the things I'm proud of is that the life, that the attitude and the life of service continues from the people who become generals in our Marine Corps to sergeant majors in our Marine Corps to the people who get out and lead in the civilian world.
My dear friend Dave Warrington is here, the White House Council. I'm gonna embarrass Dave a little bit because though he's one of the most important people in our White House team, a brilliant lawyer, a very proud Marine, I didn't know until tonight that young David, his son, is a captain of Marines and he's here with us tonight.
So let's give it up for a family of service. There he is. Gonna embarrass my friend a little bit and, and of course you all know that, you know, when, when you get around soldiers and sailors and airmen, we like to poke fun at each other. And I was, I was talking to a, uh, to an Army Colonel in the White House not too long ago.
And I said, "Colonel, you know what they call a soldier with an IQ of 80?" And he said, "What, sir?" And I said, "They call him a Colonel." And he, and he, and he chuckled. And then he said, "You know what they call a Marine with an IQ of 60?" I said, "What's that Colonel?" He said, "The Vice President of the United States." And guess what, Colonel?
I've got the last laugh because your ass is going to Siberia on diplomatic duty. So I hope you had your fun in the West Wing, but unfortunately I get the final say. That's one of the good things about this job. But let me, let me just say first of all, from our Department of War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, uh, a great soldier but a person I know who loves the Marines deeply, and of course from the President of the United States, they are proud, they are proud of you.
They know that the United States Marine Corps is the greatest weapon the political leadership of this country has. And when you hear this phrase, peace through strength, we are fighting for peace every single day in the White House, every single day in the Oval Office. We achieve peace because you, the Marine Corps are our strength and we won't forget it and we never have.
Thank you, Marines. And I know we're gonna do a little toast with the Commandant here, but I just wanna say something else because there, there are two things that your political leadership cares a great deal about. I have to put on my Vice President hat and tell you about it because one of the, the mistakes that I think we made over the past 40 years, over my entire life, and let's be honest, it was Democrats and Republicans, this is not even a partisan point, is that we were too willing to send our Marines and our soldiers and everybody else off to war without giving you clear guidance about what you needed to do and clear guidelines for when you would come home.
And that is one thing the President of the United States and everybody in the White House, we promise we will never do. When we send you off to fight our nation's battles, we will do it with full confidence. We will give you the knowledge and the tools you need to win, and we will make it clear that your job is to kick the enemy's ass and come back home safely.
That is our sacred promise from the President of the United States on down. That's what we owe every single one of you is a clear mission and a clear promise that when you do that mission, you're gonna come home safely. That's the first point that I wanna make. And I wanna make a second point because we live in an era of technology.
You saw it in that incredible video. I, I, I forget who even said it, but he said, "You know, in World War II, we had planes, we had boats, we had tanks, and we had Marines, and here we are in 2025, 80 years later, and we still got tanks, we got boats, we got airplanes, and we got, we got United States Marines." But let's be honest, we all know the battlefield has changed in an incredible and profound way.
We've got technology that would've been inconceivable, even when I was a little kid, is now driving the face of the modern battlefield. We got cybersecurity, we got satellites in space, we got artificial intelligence, we've got all this incredible technology, and of course, the United States is the most significant leader of technology in the world.
But I happen to believe that the most important war fighting technology is not a new airplane. The most important war fighting technology is not artificial intelligence or anything on a computer. The most important war fighting technology is a well-trained and well-armed United States Marine, and we won't forget it. So let me say Marines, at the age of 250, not a single one of you looks older than 249. Look pretty, pretty good out there.
This is a good-looking crowd, but I just wanna say that, that everything the Marine Corps has done for me. The Marine Corps gave me great training. It gave me a sense of purpose. It gave me lifelong friends that across the political spectrum, just in the, in the table of people that were dear friends of mine during the United States Marine -- My own Marine Corps service.
We've got radical leftists and radical right-wingers, and we're all dear friends because we all bleed the same Marine Corps green. The Marine Corps has done a lot for me. The Marine Corps has done more for me than I can possibly repay, but the thing that I promise so long as I have the honor of being your Vice President is that I will continue to honor the United States Marine Corps.
I will continue to remember that you are the most profound war fighting technology that exists on the planet earth, and I will fight every single day on this 250th birthday of the United States Marines to make sure that the next 250 years is just as damn proud as the first 250. Happy birthday, Marines. It's an honor to be with you.
I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
[Inaudible]
Well, you know, I'm speaking from the heart.
Q1371925Ladies and gentlemen, please join Vice President JD Vance as he offers a toast in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States Marine Corps.
All right, Marines, I'm gonna keep this simple and keep this sweet because I'm the last thing standing between you and a very delicious glass of champagne. But let's, let's raise our glass from Chesty Puller to everybody else, for every Marine who came home and every Marine who didn't. Here's to 250 more years of our glorious Marine Corps.
God bless you.
[The attendees drink the toast.]
Great.
Well done, sir.
General, thank you.