Thank you, John, for the kind introduction and thank you all for the warm welcome. It’s a great honor to be speaking again at the beautiful Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
It’s sadly fitting that we gather tonight at this monument to the great man who defeated Soviet Russia, brought down the wall, and raised the Iron Curtain. For today, a new Iron Curtain threatens to fall upon Ukraine.
I recall the words of President Reagan when the people of Poland resisted the same brutal aggressor. “There is a spirit of solidarity abroad in the world tonight that no physical force can crush. It crosses national boundaries and enters into the hearts of men and women everywhere.… We the people of the Free World stand as one with our Polish brothers and sisters.” Tonight, we stand with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
I was invited to offer my thoughts on the future of our party. I know the war on Ukraine is foremost on our minds tonight and I’ll have more to say shortly. But a strong America abroad depends on a strong America at home, and that in turn depends on a strong Republican Party.
Two presidents helped make me a Republican. Growing up on a small farm in Arkansas, the first, unsurprisingly, was Bill Clinton.
But the second was Ronald Reagan, the first president I can remember.
I was too young to follow the political dramas of Reagan’s presidency, but I recall the feelings he inspired in my young mind—confident and safe from the Russian threat, comforted after the Challenger disaster, proud of America, and optimistic about our future.
But Reagan’s greatness went beyond the feelings he inspired. Many people talk about President Reagan’s optimism, but he wasn’t simply an optimistic person; rather, he helped build a nation that had good reason to be optimistic. No doubt the smile and Hollywood charm helped, but it was his ideas, his patriotism, and his unerring strength that revitalized the American dream.
Ronald Reagan understood what every officeholder must remember: we are elected first and foremost to protect the American people, their prosperity, and their freedom. Circumstances have changed since his time, but the truth then is the truth today. This grand old party’s objectives remain the same: to protect and preserve a proud, strong, safe, and wealthy nation.
Yet some believe we’ve reached a crossroads. One hears a lot these days about the future of the Republican Party. Some can’t imagine how the same party sent both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump to the White House. They contend that our party must somehow “choose” between the legacies of these two men.
I disagree.
For all their differences in temperament and style, there’s a deeper continuity in the beliefs of our 40th and 45th presidents. I could sketch out the similarities with great details about policies and programs. Instead, I’ll illustrate it with a painting.
Both presidents adorned the walls of their Oval Office to reflect their own tastes and personalities—but they each chose a painting that was nearly identical. It wasn’t a painting of a great battle or a beautiful American landscape. It wasn’t even a portrait of a great Republican president. No, it was a portrait of a Democrat. A Democrat who Reagan called one of “our nation’s greatest heroes” and who Trump called a “hero and genius.”
That Democrat was Andrew Jackson.
Both presidents belong to a political tradition that might properly be called Jacksonian.
This tradition is concerned first and foremost with protecting normal Americans and advancing their interests.
Andrew Jackson championed the cause of these Americans, especially the striving and self-sufficient frontiersmen, farmers, and workers. Just as today, our nation’s elites tended to look down on these Americans—the Deplorables of their day. Indeed, when Jackson’s supporters came to Washington for his inauguration, the elites called them a “rabble” and a “mob” and compared them to the “barbarians” who sacked Rome. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Andrew Jackson created the modern Democratic Party in his image. Its very logo, the donkey, comes from his critics’ insults that he was “a jackass.” And for nearly two centuries, Democratic Party faithful celebrated Jackson, seeing themselves as the party of the common man aligned against the forces of wealth and inherited power.
Rank-and-file members attended Jefferson-Jackson Dinners, Democratic presidents made pilgrimages to Jackson’s Hermitage, and they all proudly held high the torch of Jacksonian Democracy.
Not anymore.
Democrats today are busy cancelling their party’s founder. They’ve erased his name from their dinners. They’ve denounced his legacy as evil. They’ve even tried to remove his image from the twenty-dollar bill.
The Democratic Party today is hardly democratic and certainly not Jacksonian. They reflect the tastes and prejudices of a small, over-educated elite clustered in a few of our great cities. They serve the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. They speak the alien language of the campus-seminar room and import its culture into the corporate boardroom.
While Democratic intellectuals attack our history, their street militias attack our heroes. When you’re tearing down statues of Washington, Lincoln, and Grant, it’s not because you’re protesting historic wrongs—it’s because you hate America.
The Democratic Party has abandoned the soul of Jacksonian Democracy, grounded in a deep and simple love of country, community, and American culture. They have cast aside those attributes embodied by the likes of Jackson and Washington: duty, honor, loyalty.
The Republican Party has assumed the mantle of this proud, patriotic, and populist tradition. We’re the party of the common man, the worker, the farmer, the cop on the beat. Unlike Democrats, we remember the forgotten man.
We protect and champion his liberty, which of course is a chief reason to have a government in the first place, as our founders understood. We protect every American’s right to speak their mind, worship their God, own their gun, and keep the bread they earned from the sweat of their own brow.
That means we must protect Americans from the sprawling and entrenched administrative state that purports to dictate what cars we can drive, who can work where, and under what conditions and when our kids can go to school. This administrative state—a deep state, if you will—insulates itself from the consequences of its folly and arrogance, no matter how severe its mistakes and abuses. The deep state claims the right to rule by “scientific expertise,” but our Constitution rests on rule by consent of the people, not rule by self-appointed so-called “experts.” Our party must hold deep-staters accountable and ensure that they serve the public, not the other way around. And we must return power to elected legislatures precisely because they are accountable to the people, just as our founders envisioned.
After two years of painful lockdowns and mandates, I know just where to start to make an example: Tony Fauci should be fired and held accountable for lying to Congress and the American people.
Andrew Jackson famously battled the federal leviathan in his day and waged war against the corrupt National Bank, which bribed opponents and was willing to destroy the American economy to maintain its own power. The administrative state is as determined today as the National Bank was then. In response, we must show the same firmness that Jackson demonstrated when he warned, “The bank … is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.” He made good on that promise and we must make good on the promise to rein in the administrative state.
As conservatives, we must also remember that the government is not the only threat to liberty. Big Tech monopolies and social-media mobs can immediately and permanently destroy one’s reputation and livelihood for no crime worse than holding views that Barack Obama professed just a few years ago, such as that men shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports. We shouldn’t continue to provide extraordinary legal protections to these companies—some of the most powerful companies in the history of the world—while they censor and de-platform our views and our voters. And we shouldn’t be cowed by a dishonest media that conspires with the Democrats and Big Tech to cancel, censor, and smear normal Americans.
Republicans must not only protect our liberty, but also transmit it to the next generation. Yet our education system is failing utterly to do this.
It’s bad enough that so many of our schools were closed at the behest of Democrats and their bosses in the teachers unions. On behalf of America’s parents, the Republican Party should make clear that shutdowns and mask mandates will never return, and our kids will get back to normal.
What’s worse is the curriculum when our schools are open. For years, our kids have lagged behind in basic achievement. Now, radical activists are shutting down AP and gifted-and-talented programs because they don’t like the racial mix of students in them. The same goes for public schools with selective admissions. These radicals even claim that English, math, and standardized tests are somehow racist.
These same radicals who can’t teach our kids to read or do long division would, however, teach them to have contempt for their parents’ beliefs and customs. They indoctrinate our kids with their extremist theories about race and sex. They preach that America is racist and that we should be ashamed of our country.
Republicans have to protect America’s kids from this madness. As Reagan understood, a nation cannot long survive if its schoolchildren don’t learn basic skills but do learn to hate their country.
Most Americans are good and honest citizens who want their children to love America, worship God, and learn the skills necessary to succeed. That’s a pretty good education platform for the Republican Party, if you ask me.
We’re the party of opportunity, achievement, and excellence for all. We’ll keep schools open, involve parents as partners in their kid’s education, teach kids the skills they need, and restore patriotic education.
We’ll remove Critical Race Theory from our schools and teach kids to venerate our Declaration of Independence and Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.
And if the public schools can’t do these things for you, we’ll be sure you have the choice to send your kids to charter schools or religious schools or teach them at home.
Along with protecting our liberty and preserving it for our posterity, our founders also understood that protecting our people from violence, crime, and the breakdown of law and order is another chief responsibility for the government. Here, too, the Democrats have abandoned the American people—especially our most vulnerable citizens.
In many Democratic-run cities, prosecutors simply refuse to prosecute. These so-called “progressive” or “Soros prosecutors” haven’t just abused prosecutorial discretion, they’ve embraced prosecutorial nullification, ruling entire categories of serious crimes out of bounds for prosecution.
They’ve contributed to the worst increase in murder rates on record and the most drug-overdose deaths ever. There’s only one answer to these radicals: Republicans must work to recall, remove, and replace every last Soros prosecutor in America.
This growing crime wave is also fueled by the single largest exodus of criminals from jail in our history. The U.S. prison population dropped by more than 400,000 inmates in 2020 alone.
Much of this decline was motivated by the faddish claim that our nation has an “over-incarceration problem.” In fact, we have an under-incarceration problem, because nearly half of all murders and the vast majority of other crimes go unsolved.
Sadly, some in our party have contributed to the “over-incarceration” myth. With the best of intentions but dangerous naivete, they have aligned with the Democratic Party on questions like incarceration rates and mandatory minimums.
And no piece of legislation did more to harm our status as the party of public safety than the First Step Act. That deeply flawed law reduces sentences for crack dealers in the midst of a drug epidemic and it granted early release to child predators, carjackers, and gang members.
For four years, I led the fight against the First Step Act, when nearly everyone was on the other side, including former President Trump, in the worst mistake of his tenure. What I predicted then has come true many times over: criminals released from prison under the First Step Act have committed many more heinous crimes. Our party should reverse this and once again put hardened, career criminals where they belong—back behind bars.
It’s time to declare a new war on crime that won’t stop until the carnage stops. We shouldn’t stop until little kids in Chicago and Baltimore are no longer gunned down on their way to school, until fentanyl overdoses are no longer the leading cause of death for our young people, and until law-abiding citizens can walk our city streets without fear of being the next victim on the evening news. We must not stop until the American Dream is no longer mugged, murdered, or strung out in communities throughout our nation.
Here we can take inspiration once again from Old Hickory. In 1818, criminals and marauders used lawless portions of Spanish Florida as bases to attack and kill American citizens. In response, General Jackson invaded Spanish territory, rooted out those responsible, and then conquered the Spanish capital just for good measure. We should show the same resolve in the face of crime and lawlessness today.
We must also show unerring resolve when protecting the livelihoods, wages, and jobs of Americans. We must rebuild an economy that works for all citizens, especially the forgotten men and women left behind by decades of open borders, unfettered trade, and globalization.
That starts with a basic truth rejected by Democrats and, unfortunately, too many Republicans: we are a nation with an economy, not an economy with a nation. We are a people with principles, not a set of principles with a people.
It’s often said America is an idea and it is, but it is far more. America is a real, particular nation, with real borders and real, flesh-and-blood people who share a language, a history, and a culture.
America’s leaders owe our loyalty to the American people. We must put their interests and aspirations first. The phrase “America First” gives the vapors to globalists in both parties, partly because of its World War Two-era disrepute, but to the Jacksonian ear, it sounds like simple, obvious common sense. If we don’t put America first, who will?
Our party must reject the ideology of globalism, which claims that wide-open borders and wide-open markets are the path to prosperity for all. America’s shuttered factories, boarded-up main streets, and derelict drug dens stand as grim monument that rebuke this theory.
There is no right of free movement of a foreign people or foreign products into our nation. We don’t owe the privileges of citizenship to those unbound by the obligations and responsibilities of citizenship. Put simply, our immigration and trade policies should protect and serve the interests of the American people.
America has always welcomed immigrants who share our principles, want to assimilate to our customs, and bring valuable skills that enrich our country. Many immigrants are our greatest patriots, leaving behind impoverished, dangerous, and unfree countries for this land of hope. America takes great pride in them, their accomplishments, and their attachment to our shared nation.
But the level of immigration—legal and illegal—has been too high for too long. And too many immigrants come here without needed skills or any means of support. They’re admitted instead by the random chance of geographic proximity or family connections.
We must reform our legal immigration system by ending chain migration, which allows a single migrant to bring in extended family members, who in turn do the same. When so many impressive and highly skilled foreigners yearn to immigrate, it’s both unfair and unwise to admit new immigrants solely because of ties of blood. We should allow immigrants to bring their spouses and minor children, but that’s where the chain should end.
We should replace chain migration with a skills-based system that selects immigrants with valuable skills, English-language ability, and the like.
As for illegal immigration, I propose a simple, guiding principle: the right amount of illegal immigration is zero. We ought to adopt policies that reflect this simple principle. We should start by calling the border crisis what it is: a national emergency. We must surge resources and personnel to secure the border, strengthen and modernize our ports of entry, and yes, we must finish the wall. We must also change the antiquated asylum system that allows cartels, traffickers, and illegal aliens to game the system and play our nation for suckers.
The vast majority of illegal immigrants are economic migrants looking for jobs, so we must turn off the jobs magnet and mandate E-Verify. I know that globalist CEOs who complain about American workers will protest this policy, but here’s my answer: invest more in American workers, pay them more, and treat them better. The days of importing their replacements must come to an end.
And we cannot tolerate Democratic demands for amnesty in return for a secure border, a tougher asylum system, and E-Verify. We can’t solve one crisis by laying the foundations for the next. We must learn from President Reagan’s greatest mistake: we must never agree to any form of amnesty in return for mere promises of enforcement.
For too long, cheap foreign labor, legal and illegal, has flooded our economy, driving down wages and driving many Americans out of their jobs. This has greatly enriched corporations, especially in the tech industry, at the expense of American workers and their families.
The same warped priorities have guided our trade agenda. For decades, Washington has adopted a policy of “cheap goods at any price,” as if cheap stuff could substitute for lost jobs and a dying industrial base.
Indeed, both parties are complicit in one of the single worst mistakes of this generation: granting Communist China Permanent Most Favored Nation status and admitting it into the World Trade Organization. Now China is our most dangerous enemy.
Since then, China’s economy has grown 12 times over. China is now the largest exporter in the world and controls over a quarter of global trade. It’s done so by waging a brutal economic world war. The Chinese Communist Party has committed every economic crime in the book: product dumping, intellectual-property theft, illegal subsidies, economic espionage, currency manipulation, even using slave labor.
No country has been harmed more by China and its crimes than our own. China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 began a hollowing out of America’s industrial base, economy, and working class. Many states, like mine, have lost a quarter of their manufacturing jobs. Factories closed, families splintered, and opportunities crumbled. The opioid crisis filled the void left in so many lives.
In the name of security, fairness, justice, and prosperity for our people, it’s time to end our economic reliance on China. It’s time to decouple our supply chains.
But decoupling is not enough.
We ought to ban U.S. investment in strategic Chinese industries and encourage reshoring of U.S. factories and jobs—and punish off-shoring to China. Further, we need to scrutinize and regulate Chinese investment in America much more closely.
Some of our orthodox libertarian friends may say that all this violates the principles of free trade. And perhaps it does. But whereas libertarian ideas have helpfully influenced domestic tax and regulatory policy, these ideas often falter in a world of borders. There’s no natural level of people, goods, or money moving across borders; it’s a policy choice that must be made by the people and their representatives. Reagan understood this, which is why he firmly protected America’s auto and steel industries when they were deluged with cheap subsidized imports—and he cracked down on trade abuses when they occurred.
Free trade isn’t free unless it flows both ways. China isn’t engaged in free trade, not even close, and therefore it’s not entitled to preferential market access in America.
But despite all the recent tough talk, too many in Washington are still championing trade with China. Just last year, at the last minute, leaders of both parties dumped a massive, several-hundred-page amendment into an allegedly anti-China bill in the Senate. This amendment slashed tariff rates on hundreds of Chinese-made products. The Senate overwhelmingly approved the amendment. I was one of only four Senators to vote no. Such trade concessions to the Chinese Communist Party should never happen again.
For too long, our leaders have adopted short-term and short-sighted economic policies, selling off the inheritance of our ancestors for short-lived profit. We’ve been governed from quarter to quarter—as if America is a corporation, not a nation. This era must come to an end.
Our economic policies should enrich the lives of Americans in this generation and the next. This principle goes beyond trade. The Republican Party’s policies must protect the American Dream for all our citizens.
That means alleviating the tax burden on normal, middle-class Americans and raising their wages.
And Republicans must ensure that the dollar retains its value. Inflation isn’t so much a burden on the rich, who invest their money in the market, but on ordinary workers who keep their money in checking and savings accounts. For these Americans, a strong dollar both encourages and rewards a lifetime of saving and thrift—not spending and debt.
The Republican Party must always remain the party of work, protecting the opportunity to work, the dignity of work, and the value of work. We support policies to protect the truly needy—orphans, the elderly and infirm, and those with genuine disabilities. These are our neighbors in need, and we have a duty to help them.
Likewise, we must defend Medicare and Social Security. American workers deserve a secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work and paying taxes. We must oppose risky Democratic plans like Medicare for All, which in truth would be Medicare for None.
But Republicans must also insist that everyone who can work, does work. The hard-working Americans we represent expect that of their fellow citizens, and they expect us to protect good jobs and honest wages.
Just as our economic policies should put America first, so should our foreign policy. Our citizens deserve a foreign policy that puts their interests over ideology. That does not seek war, but will not tolerate defeat. That deters foes and rewards allies. And that understands that the purpose of our military is to destroy adversaries, not to build nations.
This is a foreign policy, above all, of peace through strength.
Because only the strong can survive in a dangerous world.
Only the strong can preserve their freedom.
Only the strong can protect the weak.
And only the strong can afford to be merciful.
“One of the most effectual means of preserving the peace is to be prepared for war.” Wisdom of the ages as true today as it was when George Washington spoke those words in his first State of the Union address.
Andrew Jackson was another man of great strength and resolve. He reportedly cautioned secessionists that if one drop of blood was shed in defiance of federal law, he would hang the first man he could get his hands on from the first tree he could find. When some doubted Jackson would go through with a hanging, one man warned that when Jackson starts talking about hanging, it’s time to start looking for ropes.
America’s enemies likewise must never doubt our resolve. While we should never stumble again into vague, ill-defined missions, we also cannot hesitate to employ military force to protect our nation and our people. The killing of Qasem Soleimani was a righteous strike, and it didn’t start a so-called “endless war.” President Reagan sank half of Iran’s Navy in the Tanker Wars, yet World War III didn’t break out.
Another Republican president, U.S. Grant, stated my view of the matter: “The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.”
This is our party’s legacy, and the Republican Party must always remain the party of American strength, confidence, and honor. Because weakness invites war, and strength deters it.
The Democrats certainly don’t have what it takes to defend America.
Just last year, Joe Biden recklessly withdrew from Afghanistan, throwing away two decades of American sacrifice. He abandoned hundreds of Americans and thousands of brave Afghans who fought alongside us. Our Afghan allies were left at the mercy of barbarians. President Biden’s incompetence cost us thirteen brave American troops and his incompetence humiliated American power before the world. Yet he called this debacle, amazingly, an “extraordinary success.”
What Joe Biden calls “extraordinary success” was in reality defeat with dishonor, yet another example of a sad truth: our warriors have never—never—lost a war, they’ve only had politicians squander their victories. And Republicans must never allow that to happen again.
Now let me return to Ukraine. Vladimir Putin has always harbored imperial ambitions against Ukraine. He seized Crimea and eastern Ukraine during the Obama era. Now, he’s going for the jugular.
Why? What’s changed? He perceived the weakness of President Biden, and thus opportunity to achieve his long-standing imperial ambitions. Putin wagered that if the American president wouldn’t stand up to a depraved gang of seventh-century savages in Afghanistan, there was no way he would stand up to Russia. After all, Joe Biden had signaled weakness, conciliation, and appeasement to Putin from the very beginning. He extended a one-sided nuclear treaty with no concessions. He waived sanctions against Russian pipelines, again with no concessions. He rewarded this new czar with a glitzy summit, which accomplished nothing but elevating Putin. He even suggested that Russia might get away with a “limited incursion” into Ukraine. The wages of Joe Biden’s weakness are Russian tanks rolling through eastern Europe.
Even now, the president hesitates and falters. He pats himself on the back for assembling a diplomatic coalition, which is akin to Neville Chamberlain celebrating the coalition that declared war on Germany after it invaded Poland. He won’t share timely, actionable intelligence with the Ukrainians. He won’t sanction Russian oil and gas; he won’t even ban Russian oil imports to America, which even Nancy Pelosi has called for. American dollars are funding Putin’s war machine while Ukrainian mothers and their children huddle in subway tunnels making Molotov cocktails. Of course, Joe Biden has done nothing to unleash American energy to offset Russian oil and reduce Americans’ pain at the pump.
Where President Biden has failed to rally the world, President Zelensky has succeeded. President Zelensky embodies the resolve, courage, and indominable will of all Ukrainians. It is therefore fitting that the Reagan Foundation has just announced that President Zelensky will receive its coveted Ronald Reagan Freedom Award. President Zelensky will join the ranks of Lech Walesa and the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, in the roll call of heroes who have received this honor.
Vladimir Putin, by contrast, must pay for this unprovoked, naked war of aggression. If Joe Biden won’t make him pay, then the Republican Party must. As I said at the outset: we stand with the Ukrainian people—and we will arm every last one of them as long as it takes. We will never accept a new Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe.
And just as Putin watched Joe Biden’s shameful retreat in Afghanistan, so now China is watching us today. If we fail to impose the steepest price for Russia’s invasion, not only will Ukraine become a captive nation, but soon Taiwan will also find itself in the crosshairs. The stakes and the flames will rise higher.
When Republicans reclaim power, we will send the world—and particularly our enemies—a message. The word will go out that America truly is back. And those words won’t be the meaningless promises and empty assurances spoken in luxury hotels at European conferences. They’ll be spoken with fear in Beijing and Moscow.
In order to restore American strength, we must rebuild a military that’s second to none. America’s troops have been hamstrung by years of Democratic defense cuts and social engineering. We must reverse the Democrats’ devastating budget cuts, revive our ailing shipyards and industrial base, and bring the Arsenal of Democracy roaring back to life.
We also must refocus our military from the Biden administration’s woke obsessions to actual warfighting. Our troops fight for the flag on their shoulder and the buddies to their left and right. They don’t fight for abstractions like the “rules-based international order,” or “diversity,” or “climate change.” So we will arm them and train them to fight U.S. Grant’s way of war.
America’s leaders may be frail and indecisive now, but our enemies should not fool themselves. Joe Biden’s weakness is not our weakness. Americans are a strong, proud, and fearsome people capable of shattering nations. We wish for peace and goodwill among all mankind. But we will not suffer aggression, insult, and dishonor. Our great people want to remain at home with their families, but time and again we have shown that we’ll annihilate armies, break empires, and topple tyrants if we’re provoked. And we can do it again if we have to. The American Dream has been secured by those, generation after generation, willing to endure the nightmares of war. We do not seek conflict, but we do not shrink from it either.
So long as our enemies know this, we will keep the peace.
Our nation faces many serious challenges, but like Ronald Reagan, we should have confidence that America’s best days are yet to come.
Our failures, for the most part, haven’t been forced upon us from the outside but instead self-inflicted from within. And what has failed at home can be repaired at home.
The architects of decline are still in power, but their grip is loosening. Americans are rejecting the Democratic Party. They’re turning to the Republican Party because we will protect and restore the American Dream, for every American. We will govern with strength, pride, and honor, just as Reagan did.
I’ll close with one final story about that old Democrat, Andrew Jackson, and the Republican inheritors of his legacy.
In the Nullification Crisis, Jackson confronted John Calhoun and other politicians who rejected our founding principles and believed that our country was founded not on liberty but on bondage, as the New York Times might say today. The nation’s future hung in the balance and the forces of disunion threatened to destroy our republic.
In the run up to the crisis, Jackson, Calhoun, and others attended a prominent banquet in Washington to honor Jefferson’s birthday, where they offered many toasts. When it was his turn, Jackson rose from his seat and declared, “our Federal Union, it must be preserved.” Then he sat down. The room fell silent as Calhoun and others recognized the ominous strength and resolve behind those seven words. When the crisis came a few years later, Calhoun and his ilk surely remembered those words.
Those words in part inspired President Lincoln to hang a portrait of Andrew Jackson in his presidential office—a third Republican president who gave a place of honor to this old Democrat.
President Reagan called those seven words, “among the most important any American has ever spoken.”
Today, you can read those words on the base of the first bronze statue cast in the United States. That iconic statue of Andrew Jackson astride a rearing horse stands across the street from the White House with sword raised, surrounded by cannons captured during Jackson’s military campaigns.
In the summer of 2020, a mob of Calhoun’s progeny, filled with hate for America, came with ropes and chains to tear down that statue. But no matter how much they pulled, and struggled, and screamed, that statue of Old Hickory would not fall, would not yield, would not crumble.
One hundred seventy-five years in the grave and his legacy still captures so much about America. Defaced by radicals, but still standing tall.
This is not a time when America, or the Republican Party, can fall. Not a time when our principles can yield or when this movement can crumble.
We are the party of the people. The party of union, and freedom, and emancipation. The party of peace, prosperity, patriotism, and protection. The party that tore down the walls of Russian communism and that will send Chinese communism to the ash heap of history. We are the party that inspires terror in those who seek to spread it. We are a grand, and old, and a proud party. We are the party of America and we shall prevail.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
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