RNC CHAIRWOMAN RONNA MCDANIEL

WINTER MEETING 2020: GENERAL SESSION

JANUARY 24, 2020

MIAMI, FLORIDA

REMARKS AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

Thank you, Tommy for that warm welcome. Tommy is as tough as Texas and a great fighter for President Trump’s America First Agenda.

I also want to thank all of our incredible RNC staff, including: Our Chief of Staff Richard Walters, Tinna Jackson, our COO, Our Member Services Team: Mariana Herrera, Callie Estes, Anna Dorsey, and Sarah Valdez, and all of the RNC staff for their hard work.

Thank you to all of you. I want to congratulate Leora Levy who was recently nominated as U.S. Ambassador to Chile. I also want to thank my amazing family – my husband Patrick, and our kids Abigail and Nash, who light up my life and are the greatest blessing.

This year we suffered the sudden loss of a beloved member of our RNC family, Jackson Greene. Jackson’s kindness and genuine spirit was infectious, and he was such a joy to work with. We cannot help but feel his absence from this year’s meeting. They say our lives are not measured in years, but measured in the lives of those we touch around us. Our lives have certainly been touched by his, and we are grateful to have known Jackson for the short time he was here. We continue to keep his family in our thoughts and prayers.

The next time most of us will see each other is the RNC Spring Training in Washington, DC from April 21-23. Then it’s on to Charlotte to re-nominate the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump!

I want to thank our President for taking the time to speak to us last night- what an incredible honor. 

Today, I am delighted to be here in Doral with each and every one of you. I am so proud to serve as Chairwoman of a Party that is united, in a country that is thriving and ready to re-elect President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to Four More Years!

Because of your dedication and devotion to our common cause, our Party has never been better positioned for victory. We are raising the resources needed to win. Last year, we raised close to half a billion dollars in coordination with the Trump Campaign, the most ever in a non-presidential election year. That includes over $200 million cash on hand.  Over double what the Obama team had at the same point in their re-election push! 

Meanwhile, we are raising more than we spend month after month and investing those resources wisely—into our unprecedented field program. Our data-driven field operation is the largest in Party history, and by February, we will be up to 700 staff across our 18 target states and thousands of more trained volunteers. All this  success without a single red cent of debt. In contrast, the DNC continues to drown in debt and have no ground game. 

The stakes in the upcoming election have never been higher. We are at a crossroads. The actions all of us in this room take will help decide the future of this country. Make no mistake: if we take a sharp left turn to go down the road of socialism that Democrats would have us take, a dark cloud will descend upon our country. We want our country to stay on our current path: one of prosperity, freedom, and the American dream.

We have a President who continues to deliver on the promises he made to the American people, and our country has never been stronger!

Consider the progress we’ve made in the past three years. We have a booming economy that is the envy of the world. Over seven million new jobs created thanks to tax cuts, deregulation, and energy independence. We have more job openings than workers to fill them! Record low unemployment for Hispanic, Asian, and African Americans. For the first time ever, more than half of the new jobs created in 2019 went to women! We didn’t hear even a peep of praise from the liberal media about that. More Americans are working today than at any point in history. Wages are rising at the fastest pace in years. Seven million people lifted off food stamps and now on a path from poverty to prosperity.

After decades of watching our factories shutter and millions of American jobs get shipped overseas, President Trump is finally putting our workers, manufacturers, and farmers first! In just the last 100 days, President Trump has signed deals with our four largest trading partners: Canada, Mexico, China, and Japan. We are securing our southern border. 450 miles of border wall will be built by the end of the year.

We have two new Supreme Court Justices: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. This on top of the more than 180 justices already confirmed who will honor the Constitution and defend our God-given rights. Our veterans are being taken care of. We are holding our allies accountable and getting them to pay their fair share. We are ushering in a new era of American energy dominance. We are strengthening our national security, rebuilding our military, and giving our troops the tools they need to succeed.

Now both friend and foe alike understand that unlike his predecessor, when President Trump draws a line in the sand, he means it! Our President has shown strength and resolve and demonstrated time and time again that no matter the issue or how great the challenge on top of unprecedented obstruction from Democrats, he will never stop fighting for the American people. Just imagine how much more he will achieve in a second term!

In 2016, the American people made it loud and clear that they were tired of empty promises from politicians – they wanted a leader and a change agent. They were sick of the broken culture of politics as usual in our nation’s capital and wanted an outsider who would Drain the Swamp! 
They were fed up with a federal government that was running roughshod over them and wanted someone who could rein it in and return power back to “We the People.” It is the American people – especially our nation’s forgotten men and women – who President Trump is fighting for every day. 

He’s fighting for people like Ramona in Arizona, who has a special needs daughter with autism. Arizona’s public schools were failing her. Now, thanks to the President’s pro-family policies along with Arizona’s school choice program, Ramona’s daughter has a special education assistant who is helping her to succeed in a charter school classroom.

He’s fighting for people like Bill, also from Arizona, an Air Force veteran and up until now, a lifelong Democrat. Like so many others, Bill didn’t leave his Party, his Party left him by lurching so far left. Now Bill is a proud registered Republican! There are many more like Bill. In fact, at the Milwaukee rally last week, 58% of attendees were NOT even Republican – they were independents and Democrats. While Democrats are dealing with defections in their own ranks, our Party is more united than ever and growing. 

In a country like ours, it can be easy to take the freedoms we enjoy for granted. The reality for most people throughout history hasn’t been one of freedom but one of oppression. There are those who bring those stories to life and remind us just how wonderfully exceptional America is. People like Michael.

Michael bravely escaped Castro’s regime in Cuba by boat after his house was set on fire and his father was arrested for having the audacity to disagree with his government. Michael sees America as what President Lincoln called the “last best hope of Earth,” and President Trump as someone who is defending our democracy against the kind of tyranny he witnessed growing up in Cuba. 

Or take Tony from Tampa. Tony fled Venezuela after seeing how socialism sapped his home country of its vast wealth and natural resources. Now, Tony is living the American Dream after starting his own small business, which is booming in no small part thanks to President Trump’s tax cuts.

In these stories and countless others like them we see how President Trump is working to help people in every stage of life in every corner of the country. Compare President Trump’s record of results with the frightening rhetoric we hear coming out of the progressive Democrat Party. If they ever capture the reins of power they so desperately crave, Democrats would use every lever at their disposal to alter the character of our country and dismantle the American Dream. 

Just look at the platform their presidential candidates are running on. They want to raise taxes to subsidize their socialist takeover of healthcare. The Green New Deal would cost close to $100 trillion and put our energy producers out of business. They believe in completely open borders, no laws, and free health care and college for people who come here illegally. The Party that once believed abortion should be “safe, legal and, rare” now wants taxpayer funded abortion on demand, up to and after the point of birth.

It’s not a stretch to say that Bernie Sanders’ political ideology is more in line with Lenin and Marx than with Lincoln and Madison. What’s really scary is that his beliefs have become mainstream in today’s Democrat Party. Democrats want to stack the Supreme Court so they can legislate from the bench instead of doing the hard work of democracy. 

The not so secret irony about Democrats crisscrossing Iowa ahead of the caucuses is that many of them advocate for abolishing the Electoral College so they never have to campaign in rural America again. Democrats have disdain for those living outside their elitist enclaves, and right now they are in many of your states trying to diminish the importance of your vote. All this and more is on the ballot in this upcoming election. That is why our work is so important. Although we have a fight ahead of us, we can be confident knowing our country has been tested and prevailed before. 

Sixteen years before being elected President, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech on the eve of the 1964 Election called “A Time for Choosing.” Reagan asked the American people whether they still believed in their own ability to govern themselves and if they would still know the freedoms intended for us by our Founding Fathers.

So today, as we find ourselves at a similar “time for choosing,” we can ask the same question. 
The contrast has never been clearer. It’s a choice between real results versus Democrats’ tired talking points. A choice between a president who puts America First and politicians who pander and poll-test their strategy on supposedly “solemn and serious” issues like impeachment.
 
Above all, it’s a choice between whether our country’s future will be forged by freedom, or if we are going to succumb to socialism along with unfettered government control over every aspect of our lives.
 
Fellow RNC Members, I am confident that when confronted with that choice, our fellow countrymen and women will choose freedom every single time.  I’m confident they will choose the cause our Founders first pledged “their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” to. That has shone bright as a beacon of hope throughout the world in every generation since. 
 
So today, let us resolve to fight for that same freedom. Let’s resolve to give every ounce of energy we have between now and November to deliver wins for Republican candidates up and down the ballot. And let’s resolve to reject socialism once and for all by re-electing President Donald J. Trump so we can Keep America Great by Keeping America Free. 
 
I’m proud to be in this fight with our President and alongside each and every one of you.  So with confidence in our cause, and faith in freedom’s holy light, let us go from here to fight and win! Thank you, God Bless you, and God Bless the United States of America!