Well good afternoon, CPAC. You sound all wound up. Listen, I am so honored to be here with the patriots in the state of South... of Florida, the free state of Florida. Listen, you could be in South Dakota, but I'll, I'll be honest with you. The temperatures are a little bit low in South Dakota right now in February. In fact, they're almost as low as Joe Biden's approval ratings.

Listen in all seriousness, let me start by saying this, our hearts and our prayers are with the people of Ukraine. We're thinking of those families, their children and the people who are being targeted right now. The hell of war has come to their country. And if we ever needed a reminder that leadership has consequences, that it matters the last 48 hours have shown us what happens when America projects weakness.

That is exactly what President Biden has done. A strong American president, a strong president would put their citizens first and they would take these actions right away.

Number one, they'd start and expedite the Keystone XL Pipeline immediately.

They'd reopen our federal lands for drilling and oil and natural gas exploration.

They'd revoke the bans on oil and gas leases on the Outer Continental Shelf.

They would sign an executive order to cut all the regulations on domestic energy production and its transport to American and European markets.

They would immediately, a strong American president would work with European allies and partners to replace their part, replace their supply of Russian oil supplies with American energy.

And they would hit Putin right where it actually hurts by enacting heavy sanctions on the Russian energy sector.

They'd lead NATO and other Western allies to cut Russia off from the Western economy banking financial systems, including SWIFT.

If Joe Biden can't or if he won't do these things, then he should resign.

He should resign before his weak leadership and poor decision making drag America back into another needless war. Now that's just common sense.

But sadly, almost every major institution in our society today has been compromised against common sense, truth and freedom. The Democrat Party and their allies in big tech, Hollywood and the media, well these experts they're all the same crew that brought us mask mandates and vaccine mandates. They ignored science. They trampled civil liberty. They preach critical race theory. And they're driving inflation that steals wealth, especially from the poor and the most disadvantaged, younger families. Violent crime is surging in cities and disproportionately hurting minority families. And no one should ever forget the disaster in Afghanistan.

Despite all these failures, they look down on you. They look down on anyone who thinks for themselves, and yet most Americans agree with you. They're just afraid to say it out loud. Well, conservatives, conservatives are not afraid. We are going to fight for our country.

Now we are not the first generation to face such a pivotal time. And that's why today I want to look at America, and I want to look at where we've been, where we are, and where we're going.

First, where we've been, as conservatives, what do we want to conserve? What do we want to save and keep for our kids and our grandkids? We are saving and keeping the greatest country in human history.

Our founders they built something that the world had never seen before. They took the best of Western civilization from Jerusalem to Athens to Rome to London. They brought together faith, reason, law and representative government and in Philadelphia in 1787 they put all of that together in to craft the Constitution of the United States of America.
 
They set out a Bill of Rights making clear certain rights could never be infringed on: the right to speak and to assemble, the right to worship, the right to act on those beliefs in the public square, the right to arm ourselves against standing armies, the right to a fair, equitable criminal justice system. They acknowledged that our rights come from the Creator and free people honor their Creator when they exercise those rights to govern themselves wisely. And the founders spelled out exactly where the government gets its power. The people.

Read Federalist 49. The people are the only legitimate fountain of power. Sadly today in 2022, every one of those rights is under attack. The American people are being coerced.

When the National School Board Association works with the White House to get the FBI to identify parents as domestic terrorists for opposing critical race theory and their kids in schools, you've got big problems.

If you haven't read up on the special counsel probe of the FBI investigation into President Trump's campaign. Here is the Cliff Notes version. President Trump was right. The Clintons spied on him. They paid a British spy to spy on the president. And then they paid a tech executive to spy on the president. And we're learning more and more all the time about how they abused our government to try to take down President Trump. Now every sane America across this country is quietly thinking to themselves, if they can do that to the President of the United States, they can do that to me and to my family.

If you think cancel culture is bad right now wait until they force financial institutions into freezing your account because of something you said on Facebook. It's already happening in the world. And I'm not talking about communist China's social credit system. I'm talking about Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister and the emergencies act he passed. Trudeau froze truckers bank accounts and canceled insurance on trucks. He used the anti-terrorism finance laws to cover crowdfunding platforms like GiveSendGo.

And this is why the Founders gave us the Constitution in the first place. They knew human nature had a dark side that craves power.

In 2020 when most states were shutting down their economies and they were forcing unconstitutional lockdowns, we did something very different in South Dakota. Our state motto is "under God, the people rule," and I followed it.

As Governor, I believe that the best way to fight a danger in our country was through an informed and free American people who made decisions for themselves. I refused to use unconstitutional powers. We never issued mask mandates. We didn't  mandate vaccines. We never kept anybody from going to church and we kept kids in the classroom.
 
I didn't arrest or ticket or fine a single individual for exercising their basic rights. South Dakota was the only state that didn't even define what an essential business was. Every business is essential.

Looking around the world today, we see fundamental freedoms evaporating because of COVID lockdowns, but not in South Dakota. We drew a clear line, and the line between tyranny and freedom is getting more clear every day across our country.

The left divides us based on our differences. Conservatives, we unite around our shared values.

The left crushes free speech. Conservatives celebrate free expression.

The left says America is racist and that it's evil. Conservatives know America's not the sum of our past mistakes.

The left says only an elite class of so-called experts is smart enough to solve our problems. But conservatives know that everyone can contribute, and that experts are often the last group who should be put in charge.

I want to tell you a brief story about a man who was not an expert, but he saved America at a crucial time in our history. In 1775 in Boston, there was approximately 11,000 British soldiers occupying the city during the Revolutionary War. Now George Washington's ragtag army of Continentals surrounded them, but they were outnumbered and outgunned. The Americans carried only their personal muskets. They didn't have any cannons. They didn't have any ammunition. General Washington knew that as soon as the warmer weather would come, they'd be in trouble. Now the British, they were going to break out of Boston when a warmed up storm his position, and that they would end the Revolutionary War.

But then a 25 year old bookseller named Henry Knox came to General Washington with a proposal. Now Knox had never been in combat, but he had plenty of common sense. He was self educated in military matters. He sold books for a living, but he read them too. Now Knox volunteered to lead a group of individuals to retreat cannons that were recently captured at a fort in New York. Knox and his team traveled to that fort. They disassembled 59 different pieces of weapons. They loaded them onto boats and shipped them 30 miles across Lake George. In fact, the lake froze solid just as they reached the other side. Next, they loaded these cannons up on to sleds, they hitched them up to oxen, and dragged over 60, 60 tons of artillery over 300 miles of frozen rivers and mountains, and they did it in less than two months. On St. Patrick's Day 1776 with Knox's guns in place, General Washington and his troops forced the British to evacuate Boston, and America won the battle

Now, that's tough. That's American Grit. And that's the kind of thinking and doing that we need today. It's not easy. And it won't be overnight, but it is simple. The question is, how much pain are you willing to go through to be free? You are part of a story that began a long time ago. It's the story of human freedom. Many chapters have already been written today, but you are writing a chapter of that story too. And what will it say? What should we do?

First, number one, speak the truth. The left lives on lies. It's part of their power to frighten people into falling in line. Take that power away. No one in this room is afraid to speak the truth. But we all know people in our lives who are. So I need you to encourage them, strengthen them, let them know that they are not alone in thinking that. Remind them that there is a reality and a truth still in this world. We can know it and we can live by it. It sets us free and that makes us happy.

Second, never give up. We won on mask mandates because people got involved in their communities, and we are going to win on life, first at the Supreme Court and then also in the States.

And when we do it will because thousands of ordinary people across our country simply said enough. National politics starts on your streets, it starts in your neighborhood. Get involved. Lead. Find the best fighter that you can and have their back in the trenches. That's the beauty of federalism. Remember what we are fighting to conserve.

When I served in Congress. I'd often walk past the National Archives, and there's an inscription on the outside of the building that says this: The glory and romance of our history are here preserved in the chronicles of those who conceived and built the structure of our nation. Think about those words. Glory. Romance. The left never talks about such things. They don't even know what they are. We should talk about them more.

There is an old strength to our national character. We have it as Americans. Remembering the strength and calling it forth once again, that is our calling. It is our duty. We have inherited the greatest legacy of freedom in human history. And we have to fight to hold on to it.

And we have, we have some fantastic fighters like President Donald Trump, but he's not alone. The American people are on our side. We will win if we remember what we are conserving, if we keep relentlessly focused on defending freedom, and if we never give up.

Thank you so much today for allowing me to be with you. May God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.