As you know, he was the 70th Secretary of State of the United States, but he was also, in fact, the first U.S. Secretary of State to advocate for “America First,” so let me introduce my father, Mike Pompeo.
Thank you for the warm welcome, it’s a blessing to be at the same podium as your own son, but it’s also a little embarrassing. I got to see all of you and I really felt at Home, thank you!
Last year, I came here as the 70th Secretary of State of the United States, President Trump‘s Secretary of State. And before that, I came here as a congressman from south central Kansas. Yes, go Kansas.
But this Time it’s different, it sounds different. In the last few months, we’ve been called clowns, deplorables and ignorant rednecks, and we’ve been called an evil resistance force. The New York Times thinks I’m the worst secretary of state ever.
Yes, since I last saw you, China (Communist China) has sanctioned me and the Iranians look at me with disdain. But I’m proud of our fight, I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, and we’ve really turned the current system (in Washington) upside down.
We have shown great resistance, resistance to socialism, resistance to the so-called “awakening movement,” the “Culture of abolition. I’ll talk about that later. We refuse to see the theft of our free institutions and individual liberties. This is a noble, worthy battle, and we are fighting it.
We are fighting, we are fighting in almost all areas, and we will always fight to the end. I remember they called us disruptors and said they were against the existing system, and we said, exactly.
Now let me tell you this story, I think it’s natural for me to be called “disruptive” and outspoken in the Pompeo Family, because I was compared to my grandfather. Grandpa Earl always said what he thought, he was rough and tough, a typical Kansan.
He worked hard, and he never won the “Mr. Congeniality” trophy, even in (tiny) Mitchell County. But in times of crisis, you want Grandpa Earl by your side. In the 1930s, Grandpa Earl was sheriff of Mitchell County, Kansas, a county with a population of less than 6,500 today.
My mother, Dorothy, was one of 10 children of Earl (Grandpa Earl) and Grace (Grandma Grace). I have an uncle, Richard, who is the youngest. He is planning to run for re-election as sheriff. Richard also thought he could make a good income by making his own gin.
So he built a gin distiller in his basement bedroom. Everything was going well, the campaign and the illegal distillery business were doing well, until that distillery exploded in the basement, blowing up the basement and ruining the campaign.
Grandfather Earl served only one term as sheriff of Mitchell County. He moved his family further south. He raised my mother in Wellington, where he opened a billiard court. How was the transition from sheriff to billiard-court operator? The best chili sauce in Kansas.
I tell this story because I think those of us conservatives who have been involved in the conservative movement for years can learn some lessons from it. First of all, he was an amazing sheriff, and he was seen as amazing because he never showed his true colors.
He was never afraid to tell people the truth. He followed what the people of Mitchell County expected of him to do, and he respected them. The second lesson learned from the brewing incident is that plans change and accidents happen.
Things don’t always go the way we want them to, but we should never give up. We should always be true to ourselves, and if we do, we will succeed in all areas. Grandfather Earl also knew that the truth is important.
So today, I’m going to give arm you with some facts, some of what (we’ve accomplished) in the last four years. We have protected each and every one of you and our great Bill of Rights at every turn of the road.
The good news today is that I’m not your 70th Secretary of State today because when you’re a diplomat and you’re the 70th Secretary of State, you can’t go out of bounds (you need to stay in your bounds) and I’m not a diplomat today and I can rip some of that today.
So look, where do we start? We start with you. We started with all the workers in America (speaking) and we brought back jobs, we brought back jobs for women, we brought back jobs for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans, everybody, all of them went back to work. We did that. President Trump did that, and our team knew it was important. We focused on the economy and bringing Americans back to work.
We did that, and we also secured the border, gave Americans the opportunity to earn a good wage, gave them the opportunity to take care of their families. We also, and I’m from Kansas, don’t forget, we also created energy jobs for Americans (jobs in the energy sector) we rolled back regulations that impacted (limited) job creation and we want Americans to take risks, to grow their businesses and create opportunities for all people across America
I’ve heard this message time and time again. I remember when I was in Congress in 2010, when President Obama was in charge, (when) employers and workers had no confidence (in the future). We restored their confidence. They knew we had their support, they knew we had their back, not their burden, and (they knew) we wanted them to succeed.
The hallmark of our work in America is that we are brave and fearless. And when I heard today, I heard that the Democrats seem to (pretend) they care about American jobs, but before the Oval Office chair is even warmed up, they’ve destroyed 10,000 jobs in the plumbing industry.
I said to my predecessor, “Green Geek” Kerry, who thinks all these people can go out and produce solar panels, tell you what, ask the good people in Central Texas, Oklahoma or Kansas, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, you think the petroleum engineers and riggers can go out and produce solar panels, and you dare bet that these solar panels can beat the cheap, Chinese-made solar panels that are flooding into the United States in ways that people have never seen before? This policy is (dare I say it) bad for America.
Make no mistake, we’re being condemned for not caring about the environment, we’re creating jobs, but those jobs are destroying the market, and that’s not true. We didn’t do it that simply. We are not protecting the environment in a way that is costly to American workers.
In the last four years, far more new jobs have opened up than people looking for work, which is an amazing accomplishment. And when the Chinese want to come and steal your jobs, we just say “No way!”
Forty years of bipartisanship (Republican and Democrat) and their 40-year-long (policy) failure to let “Made in China” crush us has to stop. We need fair and mutually beneficial trade and let’s not forget that China is more dependent on us than we are on them. President Trump understands this, our foreign policy knows this, we protect American workers from being preyed upon by the Chinese Communist Party in the United States, –
We protect our freedom overseas, we’re very much like grandfathers or older generations, we’re honest, we work hard, we treat the world as it is, not as we expect it to be, we don’t live in a fantasy land, I’ll tell you, I’ve been out of some very quiet meeting rooms in Europe, and we’ve been in the middle of the world.
We have a very restrained foreign policy, but when the situation requires us to lead, we strike hard and we can be very firm. I have repeatedly sent messages to the bad guys in this world that if you try to touch an American, you will pay a huge price.
Now, we all know, we all know that strength deters the bad guys, and weakness starts wars, and we want to stay out of wars, and we did.
I traveled with the president so many times, he would tell the heads of other countries, he would say, as president of the United States, I will put America first, and I expect that you will put your people first, and I will work with you and make that happen for both of our countries, and we did that. You know, “America First” is right for America is right for each of us.
“America First ensures our freedom and the whole world benefits when America is fearless, brave and strong. Let’s mention just a few aspects, right?
First, we think the Paris climate agreement is a destructive joke, so we’re saying “goodbye” to it.
We all want clean air, safe drinking water, but the Paris agreement is a pipe dream of elite diplomats who want nothing more than a so-called virtue label. And when President Biden rejoined this agreement, I can say that Xi Jinping snickered all the time, and (in this agreement) American workers lost. We spent a lot of time, we defended American (interests) in the Middle East, we also defended Israel in the Middle East, and on several things we were warned that this was establishment foreign policy.
We were told by the establishment that you can’t sanction the Shiite leaders in Iran, you can’t stop giving cash to leaders who are at war or war will break out, and we did that and no war broke out. We were told we could not move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem or war would break out. We did that and no war broke out.
We were told that Israel could not be allowed to have its rights in Judea and Samaria, and in the Golan Heights, or war would break out. We did that, and no war broke out. We were told, and this view has been believed for a long time, that you cannot bring about a real peace between the Arab states and Israel in the Middle East unless you buy off the stolen government of Pakistan and you will start World War III. But we did it, and we made the Abraham Accords, which forged a real peace in the Middle East.
The Abraham Accords rewrote history and (ended) the failed negotiations of the past decades because we opposed the foreign policy of the elite, the foreign policy of the establishment, left or right, and we were willing to ensure the freedom of Americans and defend our values.
Unfortunately, it looks like the new (administration) team, it looks like they’re going back to the old ways, appeasing Iran, which would be a disaster for the United States, and a disaster for the region.
I remember when President Trump sent me to Pyongyang, when I was the director of the CIA, to meet with Kim Jong-un in preparation for the historic summit in Singapore, do you all remember that? That sparked a great deal of anger, we were threatened not to do that or war would break out, but we turned it around, we deterred it, we did it, and no war broke out.
Since these summits, there have been two summits, one in Singapore, one in Hanoi, and North Korea did not test a single long-range ballistic missile, they did not test their nuclear weapons, they conducted zero tests, and that’s real foreign policy.
I humbly say here that on this second trip to North Korea, I had the opportunity to bring back the American hostages that were being held by North Korea, and I brought back three hostages at 3:00 a.m. that morning.
America First means never forgetting our generals, and we brought back the American Reverend Brunson, who had been wrongly detained in Turkey for far too long, and there could be no greater honor than that.
We also brought back the remains of many soldiers who died in Korea, which is amazing, that’s what’s right, America first, how many of you remember Qasim Soleimani, a lot of people were arrested because of him, he was an Iranian general trying to cause trouble for America, he was preparing to harm Americans, but we were a few steps ahead of him.
In the end, he wasn’t able to cause trouble for Americans or anybody else again, and you know, to this day, most liberals, there’s still a lot of academics who don’t think that it’s a pipe dream that the United States is doing a good job of killing terrorists.
We also draw red lines, when Syria gassed women and children, we warned them not to do it again, and when they crossed that red line, President Trump ordered the launch of over 70 American-made Tomahawk missiles to let them know that we will not allow them to kill women and children.
It takes real courage to put America first, it takes an American secretary of state who is willing to walk into the room and tell it like it is, and it takes a president who has his back, and we have that.
Speaking of “back,” speaking of “back,” I heard President Biden say that America is “back.” Back to what? Back to giving two pallets of money to religious leaders (in Iran) so they could build missiles that threaten us; back to apologizing to Iranians who forced American soldiers and sailors to kneel at gunpoint. Back to President Biden shutting down the U.S. pipeline, back to all those things that hurt America, back to getting the U.S. to support Europe to build the pipeline and give away a lot of jobs in Europe.
That’s not the kind of return we want to go back to at all! And we certainly don’t want to go back to those past trade agreements with mainland China (Communist China) to continue to kill our jobs. We can’t afford that. We can’t afford it. It’s not the right thing to do. We can’t do that, we have to be tough, we have to always put America first.
We spend a lot of time talking about the “culture of cancellation,” and I’m really glad that it’s on TV here, so there’s no – muffled, at least for now. We have worked tirelessly and with great success in spreading our values that make America such a special, unique country. This country was founded on the ideas of our Founding Fathers, with human rights law after the Constitution. They built a nation that recognizes that our individual authority comes from our creator and not from any form of government. Every time we defend our sovereignty and defend our borders, our union becomes more perfect. I am proud that we have been the most cherished administration in the history of the United States of America.
It is my job to veto the use of hard-working American taxpayer dollars to fund the performance of abortions around the world. And, we promote child adoption around the world. And let’s not forget that President Trump has appointed a lot of judges who understand the meaning of Life, fundamental freedoms and words that have real meaning. I work with the Mexican government, my counterpart, the Mexican foreign minister and the Mexican president to secure our borders. We also work hard to make sure that drugs and other items do not cross the border. We also protect your right to own guns. Our Second Amendment is important. It helps build communities. It helps build strong families and ensures that each of us has the power to protect ourselves by following exactly the founding fathers’ will.
It always amazes me that so-called “liberals” pretend to care about the poor. Then they take the side of the union bosses against the workers. They pretend to represent the kids, while the kids in the Democrat-led inner city are not sitting at the computer (using the computer) like they should be. These kids are trying to figure out how to stay safe from drug dealers and how to find Food. They are not good leaders. They are not pushing the “America First” leadership. They are not taking care of protecting the people they have a responsibility to take care of and protect. We need to get every one of our kids back in school, and we need to get them back now.
I used to be a soldier, and that was 25 or 30 years ago, and I weighed about 100 pounds less than I do now.
When I hear Democrats say that they want a strong America, I know that what they are doing is weakening America. Unfortunately, and remember what I said, they will cut our defense budget that we are putting so much effort into restoring.
They are going to use that money to pay for the so-called “Green New Deal” and that pisses me off, doesn’t it? It’s a very, very bad deal for them to empty the military to pay for the AOC’s so-called “Green New Deal,” and as I said earlier, we shouldn’t be hurting our young people. We shouldn’t let them go to war, but when we are weak at home, when we can’t stand up for our troops, when deterrence is reduced, the risk of war increases; we can’t allow that to happen.
They want to stop the financial allocations to the police, yet they have put Capitol Hill under siege, which is perverse. They are taking away our basic freedom to assemble peacefully, and they are politically censoring our speech on the Internet. They are acting in opposition to what our founding fathers understood America to be.
You know, this reminds me, when I went to school at West Point, my Parents dropped me off at the airport because they couldn’t pay for a flight to New York. I grew up in southern California. My mother was so happy and had a million thoughts. The high school graduate’s mother was a smoker. She was the thickest, toughest woman I know, and she called me as she was dropping me off, and she called out, “Mike,” and she pulled me aside, and I think she didn’t want my father to hear at the time. She said, “Mike, I know you’re a crusher. Don’t let the enemy crush you, but crush them.” I will never forget what my mother told me that day, and we should all remember it. Always crush h the enemy and always embrace American values.
To tell another story, he was the smartest and best city official I’ve ever known, the one I worked closely with, a former U.S. Air Force Special Forces soldier, and I would ask him for his opinion of the other colleagues on our team who worked together. I asked him, “What do you think of that guy?” He said: “I like that person, he (she) is the one who will do everything to complete the mission. He meant that person can get the job done. They are crushers. They will fight to the best of their ability.
You all know that the next four years will test us, and we need each and every one of you to be “the one who will do what it takes to get the job done” and make things happen. Keep fighting, be a “do-it-yourselfer”, be a “do-it-yourselfer” at church, be a “do-it-yourselfer” at your PTA, and don’t let them do it in the classroom. “Do your best to accomplish your mission” in your church, “Do your best to accomplish your mission” in your PTA, don’t let them teach crazy stuff in the classroom, and “Do your best to accomplish your mission” in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) by leading the team to continue to support our military’s The VFW is a “do-it-yourself person” who leads the team to continue to support our soldiers in the military. When they tell you to shut down a coal mine or project because of the so-called “green philosophy,” come out and be a “do-it-yourselfer” and keep the plant running.
President Reagan was a true “man on a mission” and Reagan always got the job done. He warned that if we lost our basic freedoms in the United States, we would have nowhere to go, because the United States is the last stronghold of basic freedoms on earth. I saw that. As your Secretary of State, I saw that.
I’ve seen it all over the world, and I believe he’s right. I believe the American star will continue to shine in the sky as long as we properly understand that at the heart of the question of “who we are” is our God-given right to be fundamentally free as human beings.
I will fight with you as we continue to seek the freedom of our people and of all humanity.
God bless you all, and God bless America!!!
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