Hello, CPAC.  Oh, it's great to see you. It's great to be back here and with you. You know the last time that we were here together just a year ago, they were trying to censure us, silence us, cancel us, muzzle us. In fact they had just told me that because I stood up an objected on January 6th, that I ought to be run out of the United States Senate. And I've got news for you. I wasn't backing down then; I haven't changed my mind now.

Election integrity matters, standing up for the rule of law matters, and our stand on that day and since is key for the liberty that we are fighting for.

I don't know about you, but I thought the Biden administration was going to be pretty bad, didn't you? But they turned out even worse than I could possibly have imagined. I mean just look at what Joe Biden has tried to do in the space of one short year to this country.

He has turned the FBI of the United States on the parents of the United States. Can you believe it? Treating school board parents at school boards as if they are domestic terrorists, sending FBI agents to go and knock on people's doors if they have the temerity to stand up and say I don't want my kids to have to be masked in school. I don't want my kids to be taught critical race theory.

He's tried to use the instruments of our own government to divide us, to separate us, to turn off speech that he doesn't want, that he doesn't like, that he doesn't approve of. And that's just getting started.

Look at what he's done on the southern border. He's opened up the southern border and said to every cartel on the north American continent, come on in, the southern border—.  You know sometimes we say it's chaos at the southern border. That's not quite right. Actually somebody is in control of the southern border. The problem is, it's the cartels who are in control of the southern border—not the United States, the cartels, who are running drugs across our border, who are running children across our border; human trafficking is exploding.

And I don't know about you, but in the state of Missouri where I'm from, we like to say that we're a border state too. Because the drugs that are flooding into our schools, that are flooding into our neighborhoods, that are flooding into every part of the state are coming across that southern border that Joe Biden has thrown open and has said "come on in."

It's chaos on the border, it's the rule of the cartels on the border, it's the use of the FBI against parents, and then look at what he did in Afghanistan. I have never seen an American president who would leave behind hundreds if not thousands of American citizens to the enemy and say that the operation was an extraordinary success. Do you remember that. Afghanistan wan't an extraordinary success. It was an extraordinary failure by Joe Biden; it was an extraordinary collapse by this administration. It was the worst foreign policy disaster since the Vietnam War.

Thirteen American servicemembers. Brave Marines, other members wearing the uniform were lost in Afghanistan guarding ABBY gate, because Joe Biden wouldn't order an evacuation when his own military told him to do it. Because days before the terrorist attacks, Joe Biden hadn't even planned how he was going to get Americans out of the country, and yet he would go before the people of the United States and say that the evacuation was an extraordinary success, and he was proud of it. That was the day, Ladies and Gentlemen, that I called on Joe Biden to resign. He should have resigned then; he should resign now. He's not fit to be president. He can't lead this country.

He's trying to shove critical race theory down our throats and in every aspect of our government. It's in the military, it's in government training, it's in our universities. All backed now by the power of the Biden administration.

I have sat in the United States Senate and asked nominee after nominee. Will you pledge to oppose critical race theory? Will you pledge to stop it from being taught, from being promulgated in the United States government. And the answer is no. They're radical on this issue. They believe in critical race theory. They believe that America is systemically racist. They believe that America is systemically broken. They believe that we're a nation of oppressors. Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, I've got news for you and for them. We're not a nation of oppressors; we're a nation of liberators. We're proud of our history, we're proud of our heritage, and we're going to stand up for it.

And now you look at what's happening in Ukraine. You talk about weakness on the part of Joe Biden. He comes to office and what does he do? He shuts down American energy production and greenlights Russian energy production. He greenlights Putin's pipeline and he shuts down American pipeline. Is it any wonder; is it any wonder that Vladimir Putin feels emboldened to do whatever the heck it is he wants to do? Is it any wonder that China feels emboldened to do whatever the heck it is that they want to do, when we have a president who doesn't believe in American strength, who doesn't believe in American energy, who doesn't believe in American jobs, and who has no sense of the priorities and the challenges that are threatening this country.

I've got a suggestion for Joe Biden tonight. I'd just say this. Mr. President, have some confidence in the American people. Show some strength to the world. Open up American energy production full throttle. Open it up right now. Put Americans back to work. You know, I notice that redneck and roughnecks get a lot of bad press these days, but hey, here's a true thing. Rednecks and roughnecks are the core, the backbone of the American economy, and it is time to allow the good, strong American worker to go out there and start drilling for oil, to start exploring for natural gas, to start fracking again. Let them do what we do best. Show America, show the world the strength of this nation. Put America back to work. Open up American energy.

And I'll tell you this. I am not willing to wait around an see what Joe Biden does. On Monday, the United States Senate comes back into session, and on Monday, I will introduce legislation to open back up American energy production in this country 100-percent. Open it up. Put people back to work. Get the oil flowing, get the natural gas pumping, get the biofuels going. All of it. We are the number one energy producing nation in the world, or we should be. Joe Biden gave that away. It's time to take it back.

And if you want to send a message to Vladimir Putin, here's a message to send him. We're going to be the ones who supply the oil and gas in the world. We're going to shut down your energy sector and we're going to open ours up like you've never seen it before. That's the message we ought to send; that's the message of American strength.

This president, he doesn't believe in American strength. This president believes that there's something fundamentally wrong with the soul of this nation. And that at the end of the day is really what we're fighting for, isn't it? We are fighting to defend the soul of America.

You know, Joe biden has spent a year—if you think about what all of his policies put together mean—he has spent a year telling this country that we are broken, that we are backwards, that we are racist, that we are weak. He thinks the soul of America, he thinks the heart of America is warped and wicked.

Well, I'm from the heartland of America. I was born there, I was raised there, I know the heart of this country and it is true and it is good and on the basis of America's heart we will rebuild our strength. There's nothing wrong with America; there's something wrong with Joe Biden. That's what we have to take our stand on. This is our time to rebuild our strength on the principles and the fundamentals that we hold most dear.

To strengthen our families, to strengthen our neighborhoods, to strengthen our churches, to strengthen our nation. This is a time for American strength. The world needs America's strength. The world needs to see that we are ready to stand strong again.

You know Ronald Reagan used to say that in the 19th century, we built the greatest industrial economy that the world had ever seen, and in the 20th century we built the greatest technological economy the world had ever seen.

And now in the 21st century we seem to have spent most of it, thanks to our friends on the left, apologizing. And I don't know what in the world we're apologizing for. We have nothing to apologize for as Americans. We have everything to be proud of and to stand up for.

So here's what I propose we do. I propose that in this critical year in 2022, when we have the opportunity to take back the United States House, to take back the United States Senate, that we stand up and say that the fight for America is about the soul of America and we are going to take our stand on the goodness of America, and we are going to renew America's strength. We're going to open up our energy production, we're going to open up our economy, we're going to bring back jobs to this country.

Why is it that we should be dependent for our energy, our critical goods on other nations and not just on any other nations, but on our enemies?

Why is it that Joe Biden has tried to make us more dependent, has tried to make us subservient to China and Russia and Iran and OPEC?

Why is it that Joe Biden now has to go to the OPEC countries and beg them, beg them to increase oil production?

I say enough of that. America's the strongest nation in the history of the world and it's time we started acting like it. This is the time.

So no matter what this administration tries to do to divide us— And by the way, that's all they have left. Have you noticed that. All they have left is division and accusation. All they have left is the attempt to make us live in fear. That's what they've been trying to do since last January.

They've been trying to tell us we've got to live in a state of constant emergency. COVID, a constant emergency. January 6th, a constant emergency. They've been saying that we've got to trust the government to tell us what we can do, where we can go, what we can teach our kids, what we can say. And the message is: fear, fear, fear, fear.

Well I don't know about you, but I am an American. I refuse to live in fear. I refuse to be afraid. I refuse to bow down. I refuse to say the government can tell me what to do.

And so here is my hope for 2022. This is going to be the year, my fellow Republicans, my fellow conservatives, this is going to be the year that we lead this nation out of fear, that we lead this nation back to strength, that we lead this nation to take a stand on the principles that we hold most dear, that we say there's nothing wrong with America. That America is the hope of the world, it's the future of the world, and it's still even now the last, best hope on Earth. God bless you. Thank you so much for having me, and God bless CPAC. Thank you so much.


ed. note: Compared to many of the other speeches, Hawley's speech seems to have an unusually high proportion of rhetoric and is lacking in specific policy proposals.