You guys in the doors, you need to come in, love each other. Give them some room, let them come in so they could hear. Chris, youve got a lot of friends. I will first say you see this . The story behind this is one chris and i were talking, he was like what winter stuff do you do . Do you ski . I go i dont ski. But it is cute, right . Then he said do you snowboard . Im like i dont snowboard. Hes like do you do any Winter Sports . I go i sit inside and watch it. I am a beach girl at the end of the day. So ive come prepared with my sweater and there is no snow. Now that is on you. [laughter] anyway, it is great to be back in the north country. We do love coming here. We stayed in the glen house last night and had a great time. We will be doing town halls all day today. This looks like a lot of new friends. How many of you are hearing me for the first time in a town hall . Wow. You are allnew new, where have you been . Welcome. I want to welcome some friends in the press pool who have been following me for months. They have been all the chatter about something that happened at a town hall last night in berlin. I want to address that before i address you in the town hall. Last night i was asked about the civil war. And what i think of the civil war, what was the cause of the civil war. Of course the civil war was about slavery. We know that. That is unquestioned, always the case, we know the civil war was about slavery. But it was also more than that. It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government. For 80 years, america had the decision and the moral question of whether slavery was a good thing, and whether government economically, culturally, any other reasons, had a role to play in that. By the grace of god, we did the right thing and slavery is no more. But the lesson of what the bigger issue with the civil war is lets not forget what came out of that. Which is governments role, individual liberties, freedom for every single person. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do and be anything you want to be without anyone or government getting in your way. That should be the goal of what we always try and take away from that. We never want to return back to that place. But we always want to remember the lessons of what it means to be a free individual and that everyone deserves to be a free individual. We stand by that. I say that as a southerner and southern governor who removed a Confederate Flag off of the state grounds. I say it as a proud american of how far we have come. I will tell you about myself. We are going to talk about the state of the country and how to save her. I was born and raised in a small rural town in South Carolina. 2500 people, two stop lights. You could not think about doing something wrong without telling your mom. My mom started a business out of the living room of our home. 30 years later, it was a successful business. I started doing the books for the Family Business when i was 13. It wasnt until i got to college i realized it was child labor. Im not an ivy leaguer, i went to clemson university. Go tigers. I graduated with a degree in accounting. Accountants are our problem solvers. And i went to the corporate world. Then i came back to the Family Business. One thing i happened to be sitting with my mom telling her how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it. And my mom said quit complaining about it, do something about it. I truly did not know you are not supposed to run against a 30 year incumbent primary. Ignorance is bliss, i had never been politically active. Once i realized he was related to half the district, the only option was to win. I said we had way too many lawyers at the statehouse, they need a really good accounted. The district took a chance on me and we won. I spent the next three to four years really fighting for Small Businesses. I think Small Businesses are the heartbeat of america. I think if we take care of them, we take care of all of our economy. [applause] in those fights, i kept on going. In South Carolina, most legislation was passed on a voice vote. But one day, they passed a bill that would give legislators a pay raise. All in favor, say aye, all opposed, silence. Get to this day, you cannot find anyone who said they voted themselves a pay raise. I was furious. We had a republican house, republican senate, and republican governor. I found a bill that said anything important enough to be debated on the floor of the house or the senate is important enough for people to know how their legislators voted. The speaker of the house said put the bill away, we dont need to have it, we will decide what the public needs to see and what they dont. Long story short, when i refused to put the bill away, when i went around the state telling citizens what was happening with voice votes, they stripped me of everything. I lost my seniority, i was demoted off of my committee assignment, i could sponsor a bill but no one would cosponsor it. So i ran for governor. I am proud to say one of the first bills we signed into law is now in South Carolina. Anything important enough to be debated on the floor of the house or the senate requires a legislative vote and we took it a step further and did it on every section. I love music. You were listening to my playlist. I hope you enjoyed it. On the day of the signing, we blasted through the statehouse, pat benatars hit me with your best shot. When i came as governor, South Carolina was hurting. We had unemployment, thousands of people on welfare, and South Carolina was the butt of the jokes. And we got to work. By the time i left, we were building planes with boeing, more bmws than any place in the world, we brought in mercedesbenz and volvo, they were referring to South Carolina as east of the southeast, which i still loved. We moved the 11 unemployment down to 4 . We announced jobs in every county in the state. We also acknowledged truths. We said if you had to show picture id to get on a plane, you should have to show picture id to protect the integrity of the election process. We pass voter id in South Carolina. [applause] we passed one of the toughest illegal immigration laws in the country. We cut taxes. We paid down our debt. We did pension reform, we built up our coffers. By the time i left being governor, South Carolina was named the friendliest state in the country, the most patriotic state in the country, and the number two state in the country people were moving too. Then i got the call for the United Nations. And my honest answer was i dont even know what the u. N. Does. I just know everybody hates it. I wasnt wrong about that. But i went into the you and wanting countries to know what america was for and what america was against. I did not care if they did not like me. But i wanted them to respect america. And we got to work. We pulled ourselves out of the iran deal. We moved the embassy to tel aviv from tel aviv to jerusalem. We acknowledged the farce and got out of the human rights council. We made sure we focused on getting out of the paris climate agreement because it just helped china and india. We focused on making sure no taxpayer dollars went to the Palestinian Refugee organization. And we pushed china to pass the largest set of sanctions against north korea in a generation, stopping them from testing ballistic missiles. But the most important thing we did, we took the kick me sign off of our back and america was respected again at the u. N. Now im running for president. And i dont need to tell you how bad things are. You dont have to turn on the news to see it. You feel it when you go to the grocery store. You feel it at the gas station. You feel it in your mortgage payment, insurance payment, everything we have to pay has all gone up. I would love to tell you biden did that to us. And that hes sent us down this roller coaster of socialism that we have to stop and is dangerous. But ive always spoken in hard truths. We will continue to speak in hard truths today. Our republicans did that to us, too. You go back and look at the 2. 2 trillion dollar covid stimulus bill they passed with no accountability, they expanded welfare, which has left us with 80 million americans on medicaid , 42 million americans on food stamps. That is one third of our country. Did republicans try and make it right . No. They doubled down and opened up earmarks and pet products for the first time in 10 years, pushing through 7000 last december. Want to know what they spent your money on . 30 million on an Honors College in vermont, 10 million to tear down a hotel in alaska. 7. 5 million on a courthouse in colorado. The list goes on. In the 2024 appropriations budget, republicans put in 7. 4 billion worth of pet projects and earmarks. Democrats put in 2. 8 billion. Now you tell me who the big spenders are. All while one in six American Families cannot afford their utility bill . 60 of americans are living paycheck to paycheck . 50 of American Families cannot afford diapers . Homelessness is 12 , over 650,000 americans are homeless . Social security will go bankrupt in 10 years. Medicare will go bankrupt in eight years. You look at our education system, everybody wants to blame covid for education. We had problems with education before covid. Right now in america, only 31 of eighth graders in our country are proficient in reading. 31 . Only 27 of eighth graders are proficient in math. If we dont do something quick, we are going to be in a world of hurt 10 years from now. Then you look at the border. The images are appalling. This is a total dereliction of duty. And i have been to the border. I didnt pull a kamala, go and come back. I went 400 miles down the border. You are not ready for what i saw. Mounds of clothes, paraphernalia, rape areas the women and girls have to walk through. When you get up in the morning you watch the news. When the ranchers get up in the morning, they get their coffee and see if anybody died crossing the fence. They pick up whatever little kids were left behind and turn them over to Border Patrol. I met with multiple sharers. They said before 7 00 a. M. , they wound up whatever Illegal Immigrants they could find and turned them to Border Patrol. Border patrol documents and releases them until their court date years from now. And when i asked Border Patrol about their job, they said you want to know what we do . We are glorified babysitters. They dont let us do our job. 8 million american lead Illegal Immigrants have come to the border. 250,000 last month. 17 on the terrorist watch list. We had enough fentanyl cross the border last year that would kill every single american. Number one cause of death for adults 18 to 45 . Fentanyl. And dont think for a second china does not know what they are doing when they send it over. And my parents always told me you take care of those who take care of you. Im going to ask if we are taking care of those who take care of us. Right now in america, over 35,000 veterans are homeless. One in three suffer from ptsd or thoughts of suicide. We lose 22 heroes a day to suicide. A veteran needs a doctors appointment . On average, it takes 29 days. On the 30th day, they can go to the doctor or hospital of their choice. Midway through the 29 days, they get a call to reschedule. And the clock starts over again. It is shameful how we treat our veterans. Then you turn on the tv and you see congress. What have they done for you lately . Nothing, right . Congress has one job. They are supposed to give us a budget. Do you know congress has only given us a budget on time four times in 40 years . Four times in 40 years. Dont you think it is time we tell them no budget, no pay . [applause] dont you think we need to have term limits in washington, d. C. . Dont you think we need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75 . Im not being disrespectful when i say that. We all know people over 75 who can run circles around us. And then we know joe biden. Congress is the most privileged nursing home in the country right now. These are people making decisions on our National Security. These are people making decisions on the future of our economy. We need to know they are at the top of their game. We cannot play games with this. So that is a lot of bad. It is hard to find anything good. But now im going to tell you what i told south carolinians when i became governor. No more whining. No more complaining. Now we get to work. How do we fix it . When it comes to the economy, we call back over 100 billion of unspent covid dollars that are out there. Instead of 87,000 irs agents going after middle america, lets go after the hundreds of billions of dollars of covid fraud. One out of every seven dollars was spent fraudulently. If 8 of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards. You have to balance a budget every day. I have to balance a budget as governor. Chris had to balance a budget as governor. Why is congress the only group that refuses to balance a budget . We will stop the spending and borrowing and eliminate the earmarks. And i will not v i will veto any spending bill that does not take us back to precovid levels. That will save us trillions. [applause] we are going to call back bidens green subsidies, take back as many federal programs we can and pass them to the state. That way we reduce the size of the federal government but empower people on the ground. Hugely important. Then we want to make sure we open up the middle class. Right now in america, we are watching the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. In the middle class is disappearing. That is why i want to eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax in this country. I also want to cut taxes on the middle can last middleclass and simple if the brackets. And we want to make the Small Business tax cuts permanent. They made them temporary, they made Corporate Tax cuts permanent, but the Small Business tax cuts temporary. If we truly think there is a heartbeat of our economy, lets make the tax cuts permanent. [applause] that is how we will start to get our economy back on track, get our budget under control and pay down some debt. In South Carolina, we knew when it came to education that if a child could not read by third grade, they were four times less likely to graduate high school. So we started holding them back rather than pushing them forward. We brought in their parents, we did reading remediation programs and set them up for success. Weve got to do that all over our country. Weve got to get our kids reading again. [applause] and no parent should ever wonder what is being said or talked to their child in the classroom. We need complete transparency in the classroom. Parents have one job. Our one job is to do right i our kids. That is why parents need to decide where their child goes to school or what mode of education they get. We know our kids best. Every child deserves an education regardless of where they are born and raised. Lets stop mandating education based on a zip code. And lets build things in america. Lets put vocational classes back in our high schools. [applause] when i was in South Carolina, we had apprenticeships all over our state. We taught kids how to build the things we were making. That way we get them invested in the economy before they get out. Then a point of personal privilege. For all of you girl dads out there, and all of you strong moms, we have to raise strong girls. Strong girls become strong women. Strong women become strong leaders. None of that happens if we have biological boys playing in girls sports. We got to cut that out. [applause] and when it comes to the border, we will take what i did in South Carolina and go national with it. We will do a national Verify Program that requires every business to approve the people they hire are in this country legally. [applause] we will defund sanctuary cities once and for all. No more safe havens. We will put 25,000 Border Patrol and ice agents on the ground and let them do their job. We will go back to the remain in mexico policy so no one even stepped foot on u. S. Soil. Southern border or northern, which chris has been fighting hard for. Instead of catch and release, lets go to catch and deport. That is how we stop everything happening on the border. [applause] then when it comes to our veterans. We have all seen the images when our men and women deploy and the tears that are shed. Then we see the images when they come back to us safely and the prayers that are answered. Im the wife of a combat veteran. My husband deployed to afghanistan. The day he returned home to us, that was a lot of prayers answered. But that was the easy part. The hard part is when we got home. Michael could not hear loud noises. He could not be in crowds. Life had passed him by for the year he was gone and the transition was tough. We cannot just love our men and women when they are gone. Got to love them when they come back home. Lets focus on the transition. You cannot do two weeks, its got to be for the rest of their life we make sure they are taken care of. Let them go to the hospital of their choice, they have earned that right. I think the best way to deal with Veterans Health care, every member of congress should have to get their health care the v. A. You watch how fast that gets fixed. [applause] you know it is going to be the best health care weve ever seen if we do that. And there were two things at the United Nations that russia, china, and iran never wanted us to have. They never wanted us to have a Strong Military and they never wanted us to be energy independent. We will not just be end energy independent, we will be energy dominant. We will get the epa out of the way. They care more about than they do whether we can afford our power bill. We are going to ma