Everything he does he does with honor and distinction. A persons word is what you need, its about all you have. Its a great honor that i introduce Governor Desantis, the next president of the United States. [applause] how are you all doing . Its great to be at the grand again and thanks to the veterans of foreign wars for hosting us. I am a lifetime member. I think my home post is still Saint Augustine but we have a lot of great veterans in florida and we appreciate all the great veterans in South Carolina so thank you for your service and god bless each and everyone of you. Thanks to representative goose toes for the introduction thank you for your service and captain dick, thank you for coming out and doing it again. I am excited to be here. I know our country has a lot of problems and was seen that day after day. You have this situation in israel for suffered where they have suffered a brutal terrorist attack from hamas for joe biden flow. He didnt take a 2 a. M. Phone call. Its really important to do that as president. He did that floundering around in what i said that day was America Needs to stand with the state of israel and its people as they fight to defend themselves. They have a right to defend themselves to the hilt. They have a right to eliminate hamas entirely. The media reported that israel struck a hospitals what was there evidence for that . There evidence was a press release from hamas. Thats what they relied on. This caused a lot of people around the world that was a total lie because they are trying to pursue a narrative and thats what the narrative is all about. I think you have to be strong in these situations and they have to be able to do what they are going to do. Its about them doing what they can do. Hamas has peaceful has people hostage right now and americans are being held hostage and yet biden wants to send 100 million to the gaza strip. That will get commandeered by hamas. We know thats the case. Ive been very clear, not one red cent to hamas, not one red cent. That will not happen. [applause] the other thing we saw was before the blood was even dry on the civilians in israel who had been massacred, you had people in our own country on College Campuses demonstrating in favor of hamas. Are you kidding me . What is going on . There is a sickness and a lot of these universities. I will look at the statements put out by the president s of our universities which is different. [applause] thats a huge problem for our country to see that. Some of those people demonstrating are not even american citizens. They are here in a student visa. When im president , youve got foreigners here on student visas, if they are making common cause with hamas, im canceling their visas and sending them home. [applause] and you now here calls from the very leftwing politicians saying that the u. S. Should be absorbing refugees leaving the gaza strip. I was the first one to come out on this and i said we are not going to do any gaza refugees in the United States and the reason is, its not our responsibility first of all. The arab country should be taking them in. It used to be refugees, you leave the danger but you stay close by. You dont go halfway around the world. Nevertheless, the people will say not everyone in the gaza strip is hamas. Thats true. They did elect hamas. Most people were cheering in the streets when the attack happened so the idea that hamas does not have support is ridiculous. Thats not even the question. They teach the kids in the gaza strip to hate jews. They teach the kids to seek the destruction and annihilation of israel. There is a toxicity to the culture they have created their. When you are doing things, we need to do things that are in the interest of our people. Is it in the interest of americans to be importing some of that toxic culture from the middle east into our country . Its not in our interest to do that. You see what europe is done with their immigration policy. They have basically brought in these middle eastern blood feuds to germany and england and these places. It is not the right way to go. You can count on me, we will not do that. It will not happen. Its important we are honest about that. So much of the problems in our country are selfinflicted. There are bad decisions being made by people in our ruling class and d. C. This is one of them. When biden commit to office, he relaxed sanctions on iran. Theyve gotten massive amounts of infusion for oil revenue which should have been made tighter. What have they been doing since 1979 since the ayatollah took power, the regime is dedicated to fomenting jihad in the middle east and throughout the world. They were responsible for the death of over 240 u. S. Marines in beirut in 1983. That was funded and directed through hezbollah by iran. When i was in iraq, and im the only one running for president who served in the military, by the way, and i would be the first president [applause] i would be the first president since 1988 elected with service so i served in iraq and at that time, there was a lot about al qaeda in iraq. Most of the combat debts for americans were not done by al qaeda in iraq. It was done by militia groups Shia Islamist militia groups funded and orchestrated by iran. They were responsible for killing hundreds of our Service Members and maybe even over a thousand. They fomented attacks against israel for years through hamas and hezbollah. When youre doing that like biden did, course they will plow into terrorism. If you think you can do a deal with iran, you need to turn the screws on them and deny them the oil revenue. If you starve them financially, they will not be able to further the jihad through the middle east. You have to worry about whats coming to our country. You watch whats going on there and you understand we have an open border at the u. S. Mexico border weve had 7 Million People come to this country illegally and i said publicly many times before the hamasisrael war i hope im wrong but the math doesnt lie, there will be a terrorist attack in this country we can trace back to the southern border. Youve had people from china who have come, iran, russia, all these countries in the middle east because people from all over the world are pouring in, we have no idea who these people are but we know some of them are on the terrorist watch list. You think Bidens Administration will admit they are on the terrorist watch list . We also know there is criminal agents coming across the border. We know the mexican drug cartels are involved in drug and Human Trafficking and bringing in massive amounts of fentanyl. This border is a National Security risk and threat to our citizens and their country. Much as i look at israel in one israel to defeat hamas, that is much less likely to directly affect is than our own open border is and yet the people in d. C. Dont give a dam about what is happening. They havent lifted a finger to do anything on any of this. There is a lack of leadership in this country. They have created this mess with their bad policies we need a new direction. As president on day one, i will declare the border to be a national emergency. [applause] we will mobilize all available resources including our u. S. Military to stop the invasion at the southern border cold. What will happen is you have to say when people come illegally, the pendley for that test the penalty for that is to take commence on the back to their home country and thats what we are going to do. [applause] we will build the border wall and i will actually have mexico pay for that wall. [laughter] i remember going to the rallies in 2016 candidate trump would talk about that and that was my favorite because i knew the border was a big issue then. It is of is the gotten worse but it was a big issue. It didnt work out to where the wall was paid for by mexico but i think trump has said recently, he said he had no mechanism to do it. There actually is a way you can get them to pay for it. Mexico will not just pony up money. What you do is you impose fees on the remittances people sent back to mexico, Central America and south america from the United States. That will raise billions of dollars per year that goes right into constructing that wall. We will get that done. [applause] even more important than that is no president has been willing to until i get into treat the mexican drug cartels like foreign terrorist organizations. If you look at what they are doing, they are invading our country and they are killing our people. We have tens of thousands of people who are dying from fentanyl overdoses. In florida, new england, its not just border states. Every state has become a Border Community because of the drugs and ive had a chance to meet a lot of mothers who have lost a child through fentanyl overdose. Drug addiction is tough and thats part of it, no question but what you find is when you have young people in high school and college in their 20s, they may think they are taking some pill that is not fentanyl but if its laced with fentanyl, they can die on the spot. Come in florida, family was renting in airbnb and the baby was crawling on the carpet and there was fentanyl residue left over in the baby died. Can you imagine that is apparent , child crawling on the carpet and all of a sudden they die . This is happening all over the country. We are having americans die in severe numbers. People in d. C. Shrugged their shoulders but i care about it. I wanted to stop and we will do something about it. We will treat them as foreign terrorist organizations. As president , i not only have the right but the responsibility as commanderinchief to fight back when people are coming in and killing your citizens. We will authorize the use of deadly force against domestic drug cartels. You have cartels trying to bring in through our southern border and we catch him and we will shoot them dead at the southern border. [applause] speaking of shooting yourself in the foot with the people in d. C. , all the prices you had to deal with with groceries and gas , by the way, i will talk about gas in a minute, but all the stuff was created by government. Government started borrowing and spending starting with covid and how would botched the response. Trillions and trillions of dollars, federal reserve, all the stuff, course you will have inflation. There is no way you couldnt have inflation. Now youre in a situation where people in d. C. Are continuing like nothing needs to be done. They can even elect a speaker of the house now up there. I is that inspiring any confidence in whats going on. So much of politics washington has devolved into political theater. Its all about drama but there is no results being delivered. We need results. In florida we do the opposite. There was no drama and anything we do. We just get the job done. My job as a leader is not to create trauma and sideshows, my job is to get the job done for the people i represent. Just recently, you had the situation with israel and i knew instinctively this would be an issue for florida because we have so much back and forth with their citizens and friends and family. Couple of days go by and people in florida and all americans, people are stranded in israel in the middle of this conflict. The state department wasnt helping them. The embassy in israel wasnt helping them. I said, i will do it. We did an executive order last week and scrambled our Emergency Management resources and we sent planes to pick up american citizens and bring them back to florida from israel. [applause] weve now done, i think weve done probably between 5700 and we have more planes coming. We will end up doing between 7001000 rescues of people. Notice, we are doing it, i have the ability to do it and i have the wherewithal to make it happen. The federal government has decided that we will help you and we will dump you ingreece. Then they are charging them for the transportation. Wait a minute, you come across that southern border and they will fly you all over the country free of charge. They will put you up in hotels free of charge as an illegal but somehow an american citizen fleeing a war zone, they will send them a bill for this . Talk about putting americans last. Weve done it and when the planes go back to israel, we bring cargo and other things that a been donated to help the effort. Thats just what leadership is about. People have said some of these governors will now go to israel for a photo op. Im not doing it because im here in the United States making this happen and getting the job done. We need to stop with the carnival show and show we can actually get the job done. When we come in in washington in january of 2025, we will bring order to the chaos. We will bring leadership, we will get behind our vision like we did when president reagan came in in 1981 and we will get this stuff done because we dont have a lot of time to waste. We got to get congress to stop spending this country into oblivion because they are hurting us and youve got to be willing to exercise leadership there. We will take bidenomics there and put them in the trashcan. We will take care of that. [applause] maybe the easiest thing we can do to get inflation down is to expand Energy Production here in the United States. We will be funnily energy cash we will be fully energy independent. We have so many resources in places like the marcellus shale, Permian Basin and these different things. That will lower your gas prices. Our target is to dollar gas again. The only way you do that is by producing more. We want to use federal lands in alaska and pipelines and we will do all of that, that will be a day one thing and part of it is because its important for peoples pocketbooks. It affects everything that goes into the economy. It affects all the power all the goods and Services Provided to this country. It will be good for jobs and good for our Industrial Base but also good for our National Security. When we are the dominant energy producer, that hurts russia and iran and china area when we go with bidens green new deal, it kneecaps our Energy Production. It weakens us against china, iran and russia. Its a nobrainer to be able to do that so we will do that day one and turn it on. It will make a big difference and we will be aggressive at permitting and the things we need to do to overcome the bureaucracy. That will make a big difference for everyone. I look at congress and i look at how inapt its become. We need term limits for members of congress. [applause] its got to get done. We will work on that and you have to do it through the states. I think its important we do that. How is it you have people up there who have been up there for 40 years, a lot of them are in their 80s. Im from florida and i love people and their 80s. Is that really what you want is people claim to power for so long . When eat a balanced Budget Amendment added to the constitution and we will have views on that pretty soon. You got to do all those things which is important. Right now, the American Dream is out of reach for millions and millions of americans. Its cost prohibitive just to raise kids. In florida, we make baby items, everything tax free permanently. You pay no tax on raising a kid in florida which is our way of trying to help families cope with the rising costs. If you are working hard and youre getting it all in the field, you cant do better if you fall behind when you do everything right. You will just not succeeds we need to have the ability for people to get ahead and aspire again. That will come when we reverse bidenomics. We have a lot of veterans here and we will make veteran issues a top shelf priority in my administration. Veterans have been ignored for a long time and i think they been mistreated by different agencies. We need to stop that and we will focus on a couple of things. One is we need to get the veterans linked with all the help thats out there. The bureaucracy cannot solve these problems. [applause] with cut organizations and businesses that want to help. In florida, what we do for a welfare system, we dont rely on the government to solve the problem. The government just writes a check and people come back and thats not the way to do it. We enlist churches and charities and businesses and volunteers to come in. If somebody need something, we have a portal and people snap into action and help. Then they dont go back to government assistance anymore. We have so many great veterans organizations to help with posttraumatic stress, help with employment, businesses that want to get involved and help. We have volunteers want to do it. I remember when i left activeduty, i got a packet of veteran stuff and i didnt understand it. It was like bureaucracy after bureaucracy and people just get ground down and dont know where to look. Our government for veterans need to facilitate those connections to all these resources out there. We will start doing that and we will focus on helping with Veterans Mental Health and reducing the suicide rate in reducing the substance abuse. [applause] theres other Veterans Issues we will talk about but when veterans come to me and i hear about all those things. The number one thing i hear from veterans is not what you can do for them, they want to see the current military. They see whats happened and they see the culture has changed and they see there is a lot of folks with orientation going on and woke ideology. They see the leadership of civilian driven. They have for their eye off the ball. You saw how many people got carved out for this covid rna shot. You do check your freedom at the door when youre in the military. Who are part of a unit and cannot just say what you want. Its different. I remember you have to take shots from time to time and that happened in my day. On this one, it was very clear early on the thing wasnt preventing you from getting infected. People had covid and they were still making them take it. They lost a lot of warriors and there were people that decided not to join. I think the cultural change, we now have the lowest recruiting we have had since the end of the vietnam war when the draft ended. We