The Vice President: How are we doing, Georgia? (Audience cheers and chants.) Thank you, thank you. Please. It’s great to be in Peachtree City, and I’ve got to say, you guys have got a hell of a congressman. How much do we love Brian Jack here in the Third District of Georgia? Thank you, Brian! (Applause.)

Now, we’ve got a few other people I want to thank—of course, the great EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin. Lee, thank you so much. (Applause.) And proud Atlanta native Kelly Loeffler—thank you for all you’re doing at the Small Business Administration. (Applause.)

All right, you guys are lucky to have a great, Trump-endorsed lieutenant governor—Burt. Burt, good to see you, man. How we doing? (Applause.) Burt greeted me on the tarmac today. He had been on the tarmac, I think, for a few minutes, because he was sweating bullets in that hot Atlanta sun. I felt bad for him. But Burt, thank you—you’re going to make a great governor for the state of Georgia, and we’re with you every step of the way.

Now, I understand we got a little preview—this is my idea—a little preview of the Senate race here in the great state of Georgia. How’d they do, ladies and gentlemen? Did they do good? (Applause.) Let me thank Coach Derek Dooley—Derek, thank you for being here. Let me thank Representative Buddy Carter—Buddy, thank you, good to see you, man. And of course, the great Mike Collins—Mike, thanks for everything that you do. It’s good to see you, man. (Applause.)

Now, here’s the thing: we’re at a great American facility. I want to thank these great workers behind me. I feel bad for these guys because they’ve got to stand up the whole time I’m talking. You guys get to take a seat—and boys, strap in, because we’re going to be up here for about three hours. You give a politician a microphone and it’s always tough, boys and girls. We’ve got a few ladies back there, too.

But here’s the thing: this facility, this manufacturing plant, represents what makes America great, because the products that you build, the jobs created here, the ingenuity and the technology and the development—and all the things that actually make America run—are built right here at this incredible facility. So thank you to ALTA, thank you to the workers, and thanks to the people who make this facility run.

Now, I heard something before I went on, because there’s this big refrigerator right behind me, right? Somebody told me it was 13 tons. Is that right? That’s a big refrigerator. Now, am I also right that a lot of the products that you guys make go into Chick-fil-A? Is that right? Okay. I know that’s a great Atlanta company, but as a customer—a frequent customer—of Chick-fil-A, I’ve got a personal connection, because you guys make a great American company run, and that’s what I love about this country. When you guys make a great product, it enables more great products to be made. That creates more jobs for our people, that creates more American innovation, and it creates more prosperity for the American worker.

And I’m here, of course, as a representative of the President of the United States who has done more for the prosperity of the American worker than any president in a generation. So can we give it up for President Donald J. Trump? Because I know he’s watching. (Applause.)

And I know what the President ran on and what the President cares about: building things right here in the United States of America. It’s another reason why I’m proud to be at ALTA today. Because for a generation in this country we had American presidents and American political leaders—and let’s be honest, folks, it wasn’t just Democrats; it was Democrats and Republicans—who would ship our jobs overseas, close our factory doors, and do not a damn thing for the American worker.

So how nice is it, in Washington, D.C., to have a government that is going to protect your jobs—that’s going to fight for this facility—and say, very simply: if you’re building it here, if you’re making it here, if you’re producing it here, we are going to give you, and already have given you, a big, fat tax cut. That’s a good thing. (Applause.)

But if you make it overseas—if you try to do something with a foreign worker as opposed to an American worker, if you try to ship our great American jobs and great American factories overseas—then you are going to pay a big, fat tariff before you bring that crap back into the United States of America. (Applause.)

And that’s what President Trump’s economic policies are all about, my friends. It’s the carrot and the stick. We want to make it easier to build in America. We want to make it harder to build overseas. We want to make it easy to rely on our great American workers—because we’ve got a lot of them. American businesses ought to employ American workers. And we want to make it harder to employ foreigners to take those jobs from the Americans who deserve them.

And—most importantly—if you’re working hard every single day right here in the United States, or if you’re building a business right here, you ought to have a tax code that rewards you instead of punishes you. And that’s what happened when we passed the Working Families Tax Cut just a couple of months ago. And, of course, Brian Jack was a critical part of that, so you should be proud of your congressman. (Applause.)

Now, what does this law mean for you? What this law means is that your take-home pay is going to go up over $10,000 over the next few years. What that means is that if you’re working an hour of overtime, the federal government is going to keep its hands the hell out of your pocket. Because if you are working hard, the government ought to leave you alone. Ain’t that the truth? (Applause.)

Any single moms out there? Any single dads? Any people who work hard every single day? I had a single mom, and for a time my mom worked at a restaurant. She waited tables—like a lot of folks out there. And you know what we did in this new law? We said that if you’re working hard and you’re making your income via tips, we are not going to tax tips anymore, because we want to give everybody out there who’s working hard for those tips a little bit of relief. (Applause.) And that’s what the Working Families Tax Cut did.

No matter where you are in this country, if you’re working hard and play by the rules, you ought to have a government that stands up for you instead of fights against you. That’s why we increased the child tax credit in the Working Families Tax Cut. That’s why we eliminated taxes on overtime and on tips. And that’s why we had the biggest tax cut for families that this country has ever seen—because we believe that you ought to keep more of your hard-earned money, and we believe that if you’re busting your rear end every single day, the government ought to make it easier for you and not harder for you. And that’s why we fought for that legislation. (Applause.)

Now, I am just a vice president—I’m just a lowly politician—but I’m going to try my hand at prophecy today, ladies and gentlemen, because I see the future of the state of Georgia. And in about a year, you are not going to be able to turn on the television without Senator John Ossoff pretending that he supported the Working Families Tax Cut when, in reality, he voted against it. And I saw a TV clip of him today. You know why he said he voted against no taxes on overtime? You know why he said he voted against no taxes on tips? You know why he voted to raise your taxes by the biggest amount in a generation in this country? Because he’s allegedly worried about people getting kicked off their health care.

We know that the President of the United States made a promise—a sacred promise—that the only people who are going to lose access to health care are illegal aliens who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with. (Applause.) Because I happen to believe that Medicaid belongs to American workers and American families. I happen to believe that when you are struggling in this country, we’re a generous people and we want to help you—but we want to help the people who have the legal right to be in the United States of America.

So it’s not about kicking people off of health care; it’s about kicking illegal aliens the hell out of this country so that we can preserve health care for the American families who need it. (Applause.) And that’s what the Democrats never talk about. That’s what they’ll never tell you. They’ll say, “Well, Republicans want to do this to health care, they want to do that, they want to do all these terrible things,” when, in reality, if you look at what the Democrats have done, what they’ve tried to do is to allow millions and millions of illegal aliens into this country, to give them benefits that ought to go—by right—to American citizens, and then to attack Republicans when we dare to stand up for the American citizens who have the right to be here.

So when you watch those TV commercials in a year—and Jon Ossoff, I tell you, he’s going to pretend to be a reasonable moderate; he’s actually going to run TV advertisements, I promise you, because I ran against a guy like this in the state of Ohio—where he says that he supported President Trump’s agenda. But in reality, while Jon Ossoff pretends to be moderate when he comes to Atlanta, he is a far-left liberal in Washington, D.C.—and that’s the only place that it actually counts if you’re a United States senator. So why don’t we ask JonOssoff: Why did you vote to raise taxes? Why did you vote to keep illegal aliens on Medicaid? Why did you vote to bankrupt Medicare? Why did you vote to make sure that people who work overtime and earn their income from pay as much to the federal government as possible?

And the simple answer is: because Jon Ossoff—whatever he pretends to be in his television commercials—doesn’t give a damn about the Third District, and he doesn’t give a damn about the people of Georgia. But we do, and we’re going to fight for you every single day. (Applause.)

Let me just leave you, my friends, with a final thought. I want to thank you all for being out here. And again, thanks to the folks behind me—the great workers of this facility. And I’ll take a few questions. Should I take a question from the media? I’ll do that. So we’ll take a few questions from our great reporters—hopefully some local reporters back there, but I’m sure there’s some national fake news as well.

But, you know, I went to Union Station in Washington, D.C., yesterday. Anybody here ever been to Union Station? Okay. It’s a beautiful, beautiful building—really a monument to American greatness. I was walking around; I was looking up at it—these beautiful high ceilings. It looks like something out of a fairy tale. And I remember that two years ago, when I took my kids to Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, I actually had a crazy person screaming at my three-year-old kid. Because, for some reason—and I never understood this—American leaders decided it was compassionate to allow people to fester on the streets, yelling at our young families, instead of giving them the medical care that they need and getting them off the streets. Which, by the way, makes it easier for us to all enjoy these great public spaces in our country.

And I haven’t been to Atlanta in a little while—at least not with the Secret Service detail. I haven’t walked around Atlanta in a little while. But I bet that, as great as Atlanta is, and as beautiful of an American city as it is, there are places in Atlanta where you wouldn’t take your family today. Is that correct? Just like in Washington, D.C.—the national capital of the greatest nation in the history of the world—there are no-go zones where you would not take a young family, or you would not take young children. And that’s true, I’m sure, all across the state of Georgia, all across our country—because our leaders decided that they would make our streets safe for criminals instead of safe for the people who pay our taxes and keep our communities going.

And I think that, of all the things that I’m most proud of in the President, the thing that I’m most proud about is that he finally put the government to work for the people who actually make this country function and run in the first place. We’re cutting taxes for American taxpayers. We’re securing the border. We’ve got a 99 percent reduction in illegal border crossings in this country because we’ve got a president who empowered Border Patrol to keep us safe. (Applause.) And we’ve got a president who’s standing with law enforcement to make it easier to clean up our streets—to make them safe for our young families.

If you’re a person—I don’t care what your political party is—but if you’re family and you want to take your kid to a nice meal in downtown Atlanta—it’s about a 40-minute drive—take your kids to a meal in downtown Atlanta, you ought to be able to do it without being harassed by a criminal. We’ve got to take America’s streets back for the American people, and that’s what the President of the United States is doing every single day. (Applause.)

And as a person who grew up in a family where we often struggled with money, you know, it is never the rich people that lack public safety in this country. When we go to war against our cops, when we flood the border with illegal immigration, when we close down great American factories, it is the people the Bible calls “the least of us” that struggle the most and hurt the most. So I’m proud to be here as your vice president. I’m proud to be here as a representative of President Trump. Thank you. (Applause.)

But I’m most proud that we have an administration that is making it easier—whether you’re rich or poor—to walk down the street with a semblance of public safety. I’m most proud we’re fighting for the jobs of the people behind me and the jobs of every single working person in this country, and we’re fighting to make sure that you pay low taxes instead of a bunch of garbage to the federal government. I’m proud that we serve an administration that cares more about American citizens and our public safety than giving Medicaid and Medicare to illegal aliens—which is what John Ossoff wants to do.

In other words, I am proud that the kind of family that made me who I am finally has a representative and a fighter in Washington, D.C. I promise you we’ll keep on fighting for you every step of the way. God bless you, and thank you for having me. (Applause.)

The Vice President: Thank you. I don’t think I’m going to have the same chant from the fake news media, do you? But we’ll let them ask some questions anyway. Let’s take a few questions back there from the rafters. I would prefer to take at least a few local media questions first, and then we can get to the national folks. Semper Fi, sir. God bless you. I think we have a microphone back there. If we could pass it around—sir, go ahead.

The Press: Mr. Vice President, I’m Richard Elliott with WSB-TV here in Atlanta. You’ve heard the criticism from Democrats that making the Trump tax cuts permanent comes at a cost to Medicare, SNAP benefits, and other things like that. How would you answer some of those criticisms by the Democrats?

The Vice President: Yeah, well, I appreciate that question. Look, there are a couple of responses to that criticism. First of all, the only people that we say should not get free government health-care benefits are illegal aliens and those who refuse to even look for a job. It’s very common sense. We want—and look, I… We are going to bankrupt this country if we keep on giving the people’s benefits—the people’s Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits—to illegal aliens who have no legal right to be in this country and never paid into the system to begin with. That is never the design of those programs—to give them to every person all over the world. They ought, by right, to belong to the American citizens who paid into those programs to begin with, and that’s what we’re fighting to make sure happens. (Applause.)

And the second response I’d say to that is, look, we did a lot in this legislation—Brian worked on it, the other representatives here worked very hard on this—to make sure that a lot of our rural hospitals, which are struggling because of some of the policies of the Biden administration, can stay open. So what we did is we put a lot of resources and a lot of changes in regulations to make it possible for our rural hospitals to stay open despite what the Biden administration did to them for four years. So our policy is very simple: whether you’re in a big city or a small town, we’re going to fight for your access to health care. Whether you are an American citizen who’s been here for 70 years or an American who’s been here two years, we are going to be fighting for your health care through a government that serves you. But if you’re an illegal alien, you do not deserve government-paid health-care benefits. You need to get out of our country—and that’s as simple as that. (Applause.)

The Vice President: Next question.

The Press: Mr. Vice President, Greg Bluestein with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Thanks for being here. I have a follow-up to Richard’s great question on those health-care funding cuts. There are Georgia Republican leaders who are legitimately concerned that more than 100,000 people could be knocked off the Medicaid rolls—not just people who are here undocumented or illegally, but working-class people who are struggling to get their health care. What message do you have for state Republican leaders on what they should do to reconcile those issues?

The Vice President: Well, the first thing I’d say is: state Republican leaders—and, frankly, state Democratic leaders—if you’re worried about American citizens losing access to health care, the Trump administration always has an open-door policy. And we’ve worked with a number of our colleagues—Democrats and Republicans—at the federal legislature, but also at the state level, to make it possible to ensure that American citizens have access to the medical benefits that they need. It’s as simple as that. So you’re always going to have an open door.

Now, we understand that reforms are complicated sometimes; this stuff takes time to work itself through the system. Many of the changes in the Working Families Tax Cut to Medicaid—you’re not going to see that stuff… some of it doesn’t even go into effect for six or seven years, in part because we want to give enough time to work with people to make sure that American citizens do not lose access to those critical benefits. So if you look at the way we designed the law, if you look at the way those reforms are implemented, and if you look at all the other things that we’re doing, we want to work with people to make sure that American citizens get what they’re entitled to. What we do not want is people who have no legal right to be here benefiting from the generosity of the American taxpayer and bankrupting those programs.

So long as you’re willing to work with us on those goals, we’ll work with anybody—whether you’ve got a D or an R next to your name—because we care about this country; we want to make sure it’s secure and healthy. (Applause.)

The Vice President: Next question. We had a couple of hands back here, but… okay, we’ve got a school back there. Okay, let’s give them a microphone.

The Press: My name is Virgil Garrett. Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

The Vice President: Of course—thank you.

The Press: I’m here with the Central Educational Center, CEC-TV. The CEC is a college-and-career academy focused on training high-school students to enter technical and trade industries. Can you tell us how the “Big Beautiful Bill” will impact us and our respective jobs? And also, how is the administration focusing on schools like ours?

The Vice President: So, tell me—you say your name is Virgil? Virgil, tell me a little bit more about your school.

The Press: The Central Educational Center—we have classes focusing on trade and other industries. We have audio, video, aviation, cosmetology, dentistry, and students have the option—

The Vice President: Okay, thank you. He asked me—Virgil—he asked me to comment on the school. I figured I should learn a little bit about it before I commented on it, but I appreciate the clarification there.

I mean, our proposal and our principle in the Trump administration is quite simple: we want Americans to be able to pursue their American Dream. Whether that means going to a trade school or going to a four-year education, going to the military—we want to give you as many options as possible. And what happened for a long time in this country is that you had both parties—both sets of leaders—saying, “No, no—the only pathway that we’re going to fund, the only pathway we’re going to help you with, is if you want to get a four-year degree.” If you want a four-year degree, great. But if you want to be a plumber or an electrician or a pipefitter, your government ought to fight for you, too. And that’s exactly what we want to make happen. (Applause.)

And I do—you know, Virgil—part of that is policy: part of it is making sure that things like Pell Grants and other federal benefits don’t pick and choose; they don’t discriminate against our great trade schools. But part of it is leadership. And I think it’s important for those of us who are in positions of leadership to say that there are so many great careers—so many careers that require that you use your hands and your head at the same time—where you can earn a great living, you can build something great for your fellow citizens and people in your community. We’re not going to have enough housing; we’re not going to have plumbing that works; we’re not going to have lights that turn on unless we’ve got enough people going into our trade schools. We’ve got to have more kids doing it, more young people doing it, because they’re the ones building the American Dream of homeownership. They’re the ones building the future—and we’re going to fight for you every step of the way. Thank you for your question, Virgil. (Applause.)

The Vice President: Let’s do a few more questions here, and then I’m going to have to hit the road. Sir?

The Press: Good afternoon, Vice President. Raul Vallee, WABE Radio here in Atlanta. Wanted to ask you about something—your final topic on safety. Do you see the administration putting soldiers in the city of Atlanta?

The Vice President: Well, look, what we’ve done is we have focused on Washington, D.C., because it’s a federal city under our jurisdiction. But we certainly hope that—whether it’s Atlanta or anywhere else—people are going to look around and say, “We don’t have to live like this.” It turns out, if you just go and arrest the bad guys, you can have cities and streets that are safe again. And we hope that people see what we’re doing in Washington, D.C., and follow our example all across the country.

I’m a big fan—look, I grew up in a small town. I love our beautiful countryside and our rural areas. But I love our big cities, too. And I want you to be able to go shopping or go and get a nice meal with your family without the fear that you’re going to get mugged—or even worse—because you have the audacity to take your family out for a day in one of our great American cities. We don’t have to live like this. All we need is politicians who actually care more about public safety for American citizens than they do for violent criminals.

In Washington, D.C.—in 10 days, 10 days of what Donald Trump has done in Washington, D.C.—did you know armed robberies are down 55 percent in our nation’s capital? It’s amazing. (Applause.) You know, murders in Washington, D.C., are down over 35 percent—again, that’s in a week and a half of just taking crime seriously.

And there’s something—you know, Democrats had this weird sickness in the head five, six years ago, where they decided that all law enforcement was racist. You know who suffers the most, especially in our urban areas, when you don’t allow the police to enforce the laws against bad guys? It is the good citizens—disproportionately Black Atlantans—who suffer the most from high violent crime, because you’ve got more, or at least a disproportionate number of, Black Georgians living in Atlanta compared to other places. So when you empower police to prosecute violent criminals, that’s not racism. That’s empowering everybody—Black or white—to live safely in their communities. And that should be the God-given right of every American citizen: to walk down the street in safety and comfort. God bless you, sir. (Applause.)

The Vice President: Next question.

The Press: Vice President, thank you for answering our questions. I’m Doug Reardon with Atlanta News First. I know you’re here to talk about business and manufacturing. I wanted to ask you about the spending bills’ impact on individuals. There was a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that came out last week showing that the bottom 10 percent—the poorest Americans—would lose about $1,200 a year on their income while the top 10 percent would add about $13,000 annually to their income. Can you justify, for those poorest Americans, those differences?

The Vice President: Well, first of all, the Congressional Budget Office—sometimes they put out reports that are absolutely atrocious, and I think this is a good example of a very atrocious report. The most important thing for people who are living at the bottom of the income ladder is that they not pay taxes on their income sources. So if you’re working hard and you’re working overtime, you’re going to get a big, fat tax cut. If you’re working at a restaurant or some other business where you’re earning your wages primarily through tips, you’re going to get a big, fat tax cut. And—most importantly—the President’s economic policies are going to prevent your job from being shipped off to Asia or to Mexico. That is the very best thing for people at the bottom of the income ladder—and that’s why we have the economic policies that we do.

If you go back 50, 60 years—what is the fastest period for blue-collar wages rising in the United States of America? It is the time that we are living in right now, thanks to the economic policy of Donald J. Trump. You know what the worst thing for the people at the bottom of the income ladder is? It’s when you flood the country with millions upon millions of illegal aliens and force our poor Americans to compete for jobs against low-wage foreigners who don’t even have the legal right to be here. That is what destroys the wages and the livelihoods of people who are struggling in this country. We want to empower them to live the American Dream. That’s why we’re protecting their jobs, lowering their taxes, and fighting to make their country safe again. (Applause.)

The Vice President: And I’ll do one more question.

The Press: Sir, I’m George Chidi. I write for The Guardian. I live in a small town—less than a thousand people. I’m also a military veteran. I am a (inaudible) just like you.

The Vice President: Thank you for your service, George.

The Press: In 1996, in Atlanta—when the Olympics were coming through—Atlanta very famously rounded up people who were homeless on the street downtown, bought them bus tickets, and sent them out of town and out of state. There was a lot of negative sentiment about that later; it’s one of the things that people remember. I am concerned that, in the press to eliminate encampments in D.C., something similar is happening. What is happening to the people who are homeless—often poor, often with a mental-health problem or a drug problem? Where are they actually going when these camp beds are being broken?

The Vice President: So first of all, George, I was 12 years old when the 1996 Summer Games happened in Atlanta, so I don’t remember exactly the background there. I was worried about football and fishing and doing all the things that a 12-year-old in southwestern Ohio was worried about. But I think that the question betrays a certain misunderstanding of what we’re trying to do and what is the nature of real compassion.

I talked earlier about my son being harassed at Union Station a couple of years ago. Now, first—as a father—you have some vagrant screaming crazy stuff. I’m sure a lot of us have had this experience—where you have vagrants screaming crazy stuff at your three-year-old. As a father, my first reaction is: grab my son closer, make sure that he’s safe. Okay, then you realize the person’s not going to maybe run and charge and attack us; we’ll just keep our distance. But then you think, “Wait a second—why have we convinced ourselves that it’s compassionate to allow a person who’s obviously schizophrenic or suffering from some other mental illness—why is it compassionate to let that person fester in the streets?”

You see them—many have clear mental-health issues. A lot have clear physical-health issues; they’re not properly clothed; they’re not properly cared for; some of them are wasted away. The compassionate thing is to have people who are having mental-health crises get treatment—not to let them sit on the streets and yell at our people while they’re walking by. (Applause.) And so the President actually signed an executive order to make it easier for some of these people to get access to mental-health treatment. And I don’t know, for the life of me, what happened in this country where we decided that the compassionate thing was to let somebody fester on the streets instead of get the treatment that they need. It’s very simple to me.

And I know why we accept it—as parents and as grandparents and as people who just want to walk down the street in comfort—why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family. Those are your streets—paid for with your tax dollars—and you ought to be able to use them like any other citizen in this country. (Applause.)

So let me close—I know I said that was the last question—so let me just close with this thought. You know, there are a number of things I could say about President Trump’s leadership, and a number of things I can say about what we’re trying to accomplish in the Trump administration. Put very simply, we’re trying to make America great for Americans again. When you hear that phrase “Make America Great,” we want you, as a taxpayer, as a worker, as a business owner—we want you to be able to enjoy the incredible benefits and bounty of the United States of America.

This country was built by your grandparents, by your parents, by your forebears. You ought to have the right to live a good life in this country that wouldn’t even exist were it not for the hard work of so many generations who came before us. They didn’t put in that work, they didn’t build this great country, they didn’t carve the greatest civilization in the history of the world out of a wilderness so that their descendants could see it fall into disrepair.

They did not build—look at Atlanta; it’s a beautiful city, one of the most beautiful anywhere in the world. The people who built Atlanta did not build it so that you would not be able to walk down the streets safely at night. They built it so you could enjoy it. They built this country so that we could make an even greater America out of it. And the policies of the Trump administration are meant for one simple reason: to empower you—to live a great life in this country that all of us love.

We’ve gotten a lot of work done in the last seven months. We’re going to do a hell of a lot more work in the next three and a half years, and we’re going to fight for you every single step of the way. God bless you, and thank you for having me here in Peachtree City. (Applause.)