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Mike Pence’s remarks to the Republican Jewish Coalition [Full Transcript]

[additional-authors]
February 27, 2017

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence delivered the following remarks on Feb. 24 at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas to a gathering of supporters of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), after being introduced to the more than 500 people at a Shabbat dinner by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Thank you Vice President Cheney, thank you for that kind introduction. It’s hard to describe what a privilege it is for me to have the opportunity to sit behind the same desk where you once sat, and let me take this moment to say thank you to personally, President Trump and I are both grateful Mr. Vice President for your steadfast support…

As a congressman, as a secretary of defense, and as vice president of the United States you [Cheney] served our country with integrity.

Would all of you [the audience] mind standing for a moment? Get on your feet and join me in thanking the 46th vice president of the United States…

It’s a great privilege to be back with the Republican Jewish Coalition, I want to thank [former] Senator Norm Coleman for stepping up in a leadership role [Coleman was named chairman of the RJC during the leadership meeting in Vegas], [RJC Executive Director] Matt Brooks for leading this great organization at such an important time in the life of our nation and in the life our most cherished ally, Israel.

On behalf of myself and my wife of 31 years, Karen Pence, Karen and I want to say Shabbat shalom to you all.

Last time I was here was nearly 2 years ago. It was April 2015, right as the presidential campaign was starting to take shape.

It is deeply humbling for me standing here tonight — thanks to all of you for your generous support and your hard work — as vice president of the united states.

I’m here because of the confidence of our new president. And because of all of you. Because of your hard work, your support and your prayers, my family and I now have the privilege to serve.

More importantly, because of all of you, my friend, Donald Trump, is the 45th president of the United States.

President Trump personally asked me to join you tonight. He told me to pass along his greetings, and a message: he asked me to say thanks, and to give you his great respect. The Republican Jewish Coalition endorsed President Trump last May [not exactly] and you stood with us every step of the way on to victory, to the American people’s victory on November 8.

The President and I both know you took a lot of flak for your courage. But you stuck with it, you stuck with us, so thank you all. This room is filled to the brim with true leaders and true patriots…that description, there is none who deserve it more than two great Americans who are with us tonight, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson [applause].

Sheldon and Miriam, your patriotism and your leadership of this organization, in this country and your efforts on behalf of the people of Israel, in so many ways have given America a second chance. Your leadership I believe will impact this nation and the Jewish state of Israel for generations to come, and may God bless you.

So many here tonight I want to thank. I want to assure all of you that President Trump and I will never forget your unwavering support and rest assured we’re going to keep our end of the bargain, too.

Because President Donald trump is going to fulfill the promises he made to you and made to the American people, this White House is in the promise-keeping business.

Tonight I would like to focus on a few of those promises but before I do, know this community has been on our minds and in our hearts a great deal. I would like to address for a moment the recent threats against the Jewish community across this country, including the appalling act of vandalism at a historic Jewish cemetery in Missouri. Speaking on Tuesday [Feb. 21] President Trump aptly called those attacks horrible and painful. He said they were in his words “a sad reminder of the work still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.” Let me be clear, we condemn these vile acts of vandalism and those who perpetrated them in the strongest possible terms. Hatred and anti-Semitism have no place in America.

The Jewish community is a beautiful thread in our national fabric. And rest assured under President Trump we will protect this community from all who would ever dare threaten it. Our Jewish communities have a special place in the heart of every freedom loving American.

I saw that love and compassion in everyday American for their Jewish neighbors just a few days ago in Missouri where with the leadership of Governor Eric Greitens [applause] hundreds of volunteers from every walk of life and every background came out to rake and restore that hallowed ground. [“Thank you, Mike Pence,” crowd member yells out.].

It was a truly inspiring moment and I want to thank Gov. Greitens, who is with us here tonight … [applause drowns out Pence’s words].

America’s support for the Jewish people doesn’t end at our nation’s border. In the days to come under President Trump let me assure you of this: If the world knows nothing else, the world will know this: America stands with Israel. [cheers]. …Her cause is our cause, her values are our values, her fight is our fight.

Under this President’s watch, the bond between our nations and our peoples is already growing stronger. I’ve seen firsthand the president’s firm commitment to Israel. It was the morning after the election where he and I had about two hours sleep, he was already at his office at 9 in the morning, and I had the great privilege of being in the room when Prime Minister Netanyahu called President Trump to congratulate him. I also heard President Trump in that moment express strong and unwavering support for the United States for Israel. I saw it again last week when President Trump hosted Prime Minister Netanyahu at the White House [cheers]. …[it has] been evident in the actions our President has taken over the past month, starting with naming Nikki Haley to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations.

Ambassador Haley is already fighting tirelessly to defend Israel from the endless bias in the U.N., especially when it comes to nations neither democratic or free.

You can also see it in the president’s decision to nominate David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel. [applause]. After he is confirmed … I say with confidence he will be confirmed. The president and I know he will be an unabashed advocate for a stronger Israel-America relationship.

We’re also reviewing additional steps to demonstrate America’s support including assessing whether the American embassy in Israel should be relocated to Jerusalem.

President Trump is personally invested in forging a last peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sheldon [Adelson] and I were talking about that issue just tonight. Under President Trump, let me assure you, America will support the negotiation process but as the president said any agreement must be reached by both sides and where there will undoubtedly will have to be compromises know this, the Trump administration will never compromise the safety and the security of the Jewish State of Israel.

National security: making America safe again is actually where the Trump agenda begins. Under President Trump America will be strong, strong enough to defend out nation, our allies and our interests around the word. As we speak, President Trump is making plans to make the United States military the greatest fighting force the world has ever seen… we will rebuild our military, we will restore the arsenal of democracy, we will provide our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guard with the resources and training they need to accomplish their mission and come home safe and we will hunt down and destroy ISIS…

We will stand strong in the face of ongoing provocations and efforts by Iran to destabilize the region … President Trump already put the leading state sponsor of terrorists on notice. We told the Ayatollahs in Tehran they should check the calendar: there’s a new president in the Oval Office. [cheers, whistles]. For too long Iran has been funneling weapons and cash to terrorists in places like Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip, gone to great lengths to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and due to the disastrous end of the nuclear related sanctions under Iran they have more resources to devote to these efforts.

Let’s be clear … President Trump will never allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. [cheers drown out his words]. … President has been focusing on security all over the world, we’re also working tirelessly on president’s three-part agenda, you might remember it from the campaign: jobs, jobs and jobs.

President Trump has already taking action putting America back to work…and I’m pleased to report to my friends at the Republican Jewish Coalition it’s been exciting to watch. Right out of the gate he authorized the Keystone and Dakota pipelines. He ordered every federal agency and department to find two regulations to get rid of before issuing any new federal red tape.

…[requested] businesses across the country to keep tens of thousands of jobs here at home already and create tens of thousands of new ones too. When Ford Motor Company canceled plans to build a plant in Mexico a little while back and chose to create those jobs in Michigan they said it was a “vote of confidence in the leadership and vision of President Donald Trump.”

And we’re just getting started folks. I’ll make you a promise I said last night at a gathering in Washington D.C. [at CPAC]: America’s Obamacare nightmare is about to end. Despite the best efforts of global activists at town halls across the country, the America people know better. Obamacare is a nightmare, and Obamacare must go…Talk about your fake news: just look at the promises Obama and the liberals made about Obamacare, they told us the cost of health insurance would go down, not true. They told us if you liked your doctor you could keep him, not true. They told us if you like your health plan you can keep that too, not true. Now we all know the truth.

Today Americans are paying $3,000 more a year on average for their health insurance. Last year premiums skyrocketed by a stunning 25 percent and millions of Americans have lost their plans and lost their doctors. Highest costs, fewer choices, and worse care. That’s Obamacare.

And if that weren’t bad enough, Obamacare is also a job killer…we’re about to change all that, by repealing Obamacare once and for all and eliminating its mandates, and taxes, and intrusion into our lives and into our businesses.

Obamacare is going to be replaced with something that actually works, something that is built on freedom and individual responsibility. President Trump and I want every American to have access to quality and affordable health insurance which is why we’re designing a better law, working with many of the members of the congress who are with us tonight that focuses on the lowering the cost of health insurance without growing the size of government. We’re going to let American people purchase health insurance across state lines, just like you buy health insurance, just like you buy car insurance. We’re going to make sure Americans who have preexisting conditions have access to health insurance, and the security they need, and we’re going to get states across the country the flexibility and freedom they need to take care of the least fortunate in their states…

Despite the fear mongering from the left, make no mistake about it: we’re going to have an orderly transition to a better healthcare system that finally puts the American people first.

And once we repeal and replace Obamacare, we’re not going to stop there. We’re going to get this economy moving again by cutting taxes across the board, for working families, small businesses…

We’re going to roll back Dodd Frank and wasteful government spending.

We’re going to keep slashing job killing regulations and we’re going rescind unconstitutional executive orders signed by Barack Obama.

We’re going to enact real immigration reform that gives families more choices and will end the broken system that puts the status quo ahead of our kids and we’re going to uphold the constitution of the United States of America and the values we hold dear.

When it comes to the highest court in the land, in Judge Neal Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominated justice to the Supreme Court, we’re going to keep faith in our constitution, the God given liberties enshrined there, in the tradition of the late and great justice Antonin Scalia…

Men, women of the Republican Jewish Coalition it’s time. And I promise you the president and I will work our hearts out to make America safe again, to America prosperous again.

The success of our cause, and more importantly – so much more importantly – the success of our country depends as much on all of you as it does on us.

We must in the moment always rise to the challenge before us, today and tomorrow and every day thereafter.

It should be obvious on your television screens the other side is not sitting idly. And their allies in the media are more than willing to amplify their defense of the fatal status quo.

Now more than ever (as we did before, the Republican Jewish Coalition was apart of [it] when we won back the Congress in 2010 and won back the White House in 2016) we need to mobilize, we need to march forward, as if this was the most important time in the history of our cause because there is no time like the present to make America great again.

From this day forward, in that cause, President Trump and I need every ounce, every ounce, of your energy and enthusiasm, your conviction, your courage, your passion and your prayers. I know we will succeed, the American people and the world depend on American leadership and strength. I was poignantly reminded of this just last Sunday, Karen and I had traveled to Munich, Germany to speak at an international security conference. We took time to travel to the first Nazi concentration camp, a place called Dachau. I’d been there as a young man touring through Europe. But we wanted our daughter to see it too. We arrived at the camp in early morning fog, we were accompanied on our tour by a Dachau survivor. … he was imprisoned in Dachau when he was a 17-year-old boy. He described the hellish life he endured there, toiling away as a slave while those around him were taken one by one, never to return. At 92-years-old, he lives in Israel but he comes back to travel through Bavaria … and to hear his account of his experiences in that place was chilling. As we walked and the fog began to lift, he stopped…[and began] talking around the march he was on in the waning days of the war. And then looked up to me with his tears in his eyes and said words I’ll never forget, in the midst of that hellish experience, he said, “Then the Americans came [applause].”

Those words made me proud to be an American, and they underscored the imperative of American strength and the immutable bond between our people and the people of Israel. It’s a bond of faith, it’s a bond of shared values, and it’s a bond of heritage and it’s a bond I promise you, in the days that come under the leadership of President Trump, it is a bond that will only grow stronger, and stronger, and stronger for the benefit of our people and theirs.

Over the mantle in our home since the first year I was elected to congress are framed and ancient words that inspired our family to serve this nation with confidence and faith. They come from the book of Jeremiah, and they read, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” With faith in those promises, with …confidence in the American people and in all of you gathered here, I know we will make America safe again, I know we will make America prosperous again, I know America will stand strong with our most cherished ally again and under the leadership of President Donald trump, I know we will make America great again. Thank you, god bless you, and God bless America.

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