Opening and Inspiration
It is truly awesome and energizing to be here with all of you. I hope that you are feeling energized and inspired by all of the incredible speakers, Brett Cooper, Riley Gaines, and everyone coming through here. But I just want to tell you that you inspire me. Seriously. In DC, there are some good days and there are some dark days, but what keeps me going are people like you. People like you who made it possible for President Trump to get elected and create this truly transformational and historic moment that we are living in today.
We are here because thousands of young leaders like you, great Americans all across the country, put partisan politics aside and recognized the opportunity to bring in a president who would fight for every single American. That’s exactly what we’re doing in Washington every day.
Reflecting on the Election and the Deep State
When we look back, it feels like it’s been about six months since President Trump has been in office. What happened in that year leading up to the election feels like such a long time ago. But I want to spend a moment on this because it’s important for us to recognize what Steve Bannon was just talking about—the deep state. We go back and look at all those days that President Trump had to spend in a courtroom because of the constant lawfare waged against him by his political opponents and the deep state, who were terrified that the American people might choose to elect him once again. You look at all the propaganda, the lies, the smears, the attacks thrown his way, how many times they actually tried to throw him in jail. Even at that, that mug shot will go down in history as one of the best pictures ever.
All of their attempts to take him off the ballot—when we were going through that, I often reflected on what was really behind it. They were thinking, “Okay, we have all this power. We need to silence him,” undermining our democratic republic as they claimed to be doing so to save democracy. But when we really take a step back, we recognize that they were acting out of fear. They were terrified of losing their perceived power, their own personal position, fame, profit, or whatever it was. Ultimately, they were afraid of us—afraid that in the United States of America, built on the foundation of freedom and liberty for every single American, we might actually use our freedom, lift up our voices, and stand up for and work hard to bring about the vision our founding fathers had for us: a government truly of, by, and for the people.
The America First Agenda and Ongoing Challenges
To me, that is what President Trump’s America First agenda is all about. That’s why the deep state fought so hard to try to stop us from even having the freedom to choose who we wanted as our president and commander-in-chief. And despite their best efforts, we the people prevailed.
This memory, which every one of us played a role in bringing about, is so important to keep at the forefront because the deep state has not gone away. They exist within every single agency of the federal government, in the national security state, and the propaganda media. They are continuing to fight hard every single day, in spite of the fact that the voices of the people delivered this resounding victory for President Trump and to our country, saying unequivocally, “We are coming together.” Americans from all different backgrounds and walks of life are saying we choose freedom, we choose peace, we choose to come together for truth—not my truth or your truth or their truth, but fundamental objective truth. We come together for common sense.
With President Trump’s election, we the people have brought about this revolution that brings us back to our founding principles, our founding documents, our Constitution. This is the oath that we all swore—to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. By the way, it is the same oath that every person who works within the intelligence community takes. Every employee swears this oath. It’s important for us to keep it front and center because it is foundational to who we are, that we remember what we are fighting for.
Freedom, Rights, and Government Overreach
When we talk about freedom, we are talking about freedom of speech. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that we had parents speaking up for the safety and well-being of their children at board of education meetings who, under the Biden administration, were then targeted as domestic violent extremists. We have to remember how—and these are documents that we will be declassifying and releasing very soon—on day one of the Biden administration, his national security advisor issued a memo essentially laying the groundwork for who they would be targeting as domestic violent extremists. One of the directives was to the director of national intelligence to come up with a document that went into very specific descriptions of what to look out for when looking for domestic violent extremists. What you’ll see are detailed descriptions of what we would later see the Biden administration target: those who were complaining about or unhappy with COVID-19 mandates and policies, parents afraid their children might be forced to get the vaccine against their wishes, people expressing anti-authority views.
I could go on in this list of people, groups, thoughts, free speech—they labeled as domestic violent extremists and then used that label to force tech companies, some willing, some unwilling, to censor Americans’ free speech in the name of going after domestic violent extremists. We have to expose their tactics and the playbook of the deep state so that we the people can make sure we never allow this to happen again.
By electing President Trump, we chose our Constitution. We chose freedom of speech. We chose freedom to worship, so that we can know that as we go to our place of worship, or if we worship in the privacy of our own homes, we won’t have to worry about the FBI thinking we are suspicious or need to be surveilled, as they did to those they labeled as radical traditionalist Catholics simply for attending Latin mass.
By electing President Trump, we chose freedom—the freedom to exercise our right to bear arms. There’s already work being done and more to come to undo the damage that has undermined that fundamental right. By electing President Trump, we chose our right to privacy and the protection of our civil liberties as guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment. Under President Trump, we chose our Declaration of Independence.
Personal Reflections and Call to Action
I’m smiling because I think it was on Thursday, I was there delivering the intelligence brief to the president, and towards the end, he had a couple of guests coming in to join him for lunch. Just seeing the pride and excitement he shared as he wanted to show them the Declaration of Independence that he put on the wall right next to the Resolute desk in the Oval Office. That declaration reminds us all that all men are created equal, endowed by our creator—not by anyone in government, but by our creator—with certain inalienable rights, among those our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
So, the historic moment that we live in—it’s important sometimes to step away from the noise to recognize what happened in order to create this opportunity that we have, and therefore to inform the great work that we have ahead of us. You think the campaign was hard. You think what President Trump went through was hard—and it was. The road ahead will not be easy. I can attest personally that in my work as the director of national intelligence, the deep state is fighting us every step of the way. It exists within every single federal agency. I feel the same frustration that I see many of you expressing on X or in different platforms about why things aren’t going faster, why we aren’t getting results more quickly. I feel this frustration every single day. We are pushing hard. Know that they are pushing hard back. It’s okay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re here to fight for you and to fight for the red, white, and blue that’s behind you.
We can’t do this alone. It will take all of us who love our country and deeply cherish our freedoms to stand united in this fight. It’s going to come with hardship and sacrifice. As you know, it comes with name-calling and smears and lies and attacks. But here’s the beautiful thing: the harder they push back, the more smears and lies that are published in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Atlantic and many others, the more we know that we are exactly on the target.
Perseverance and Service
On those days where you might feel a little tired and discouraged—and we all get there at some point—I go back and think about what President Trump has been through. He has sacrificed more than anyone else. He has been attacked and targeted more than anyone else. Most significantly, one year ago tomorrow was the day in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman tried to take his life, missing by just a hair. So on those days when you feel like you’re not quite sure if you have any more fight left in you, think back to that day when he popped right up. He was not cowed. He was not afraid. He was not running away. What did he do? He raised his fist and looked at all the people who were there, just as you are here today, and he said, “Fight, fight, fight, fight.”
That’s exactly what we have to continue to do—not motivated by hate for those who are trying to take our freedoms away, but by love. I know President Trump is motivated deeply by his love for our country. This is where his strength and resilience come from. He is motivated deeply by his care for every one of you, every one of us, the American people, and his commitment to make the most of every single day that he has in the White House to bring about this reality of a country where we can live in peace with prosperity and security and freedom for all Americans.
This is why I’m so grateful to have earned President Trump’s trust and confidence to be able to serve as a member of his cabinet in the role that I am in, because we have a lot of work to do.
Empowerment and Encouragement
The thing I want you to go home with is the knowledge that not a single one of you should underestimate the power of your voice, your energy, your work, and your role in bringing about this historic change that we have all embarked on together. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this is not your time, or that you’re too young, or maybe you’ll go and do something in a few years or five or ten or twenty years. The time is now. Electing President Trump was just the first step to be able to get to work, to do this important work. It is tough, but it is our purpose that drives us.
I’m grateful to have experienced from a young age that I was happiest when I was doing things for others, when I was trying to be of service to others, trying my best to be pleasing to God with my life by making a positive impact and being of service to God’s children. That’s really what motivated me to choose service as a path for my life. I didn’t know what form it would take or where it would take me, but I knew that this is what I wanted to do. It’s taken me through elected office in different arenas and through the military now for over 20 years, and now as director of national intelligence. But I first started when I was 21 years old.
For any of you who are thinking of running for office, maybe you’re being told some of the things I was told. I was 21 and people said, “Oh, okay. You have a bright future, but you’re too young. Maybe you should go and take some more college classes and wait around until somebody feels like you’re qualified to go.” But I knew that the most important qualification was my desire to serve, to have that positive impact in my community. So I didn’t listen to any of them and I ran and got elected at 21. They told me the same thing when I ran for Congress at 31: “Tulsi, you’re great. You got a bright future. It’s not your time. Come back in 20 years.” I had come back from multiple deployments at that point, understanding and feeling to my core the cost of war and knowing that I needed to be in a place to make a greater impact. Where better than Congress, where I could help to influence some of these decisions about peace and war and share the experiences of my brothers and sisters who I served alongside, honor the memories every single day as I continue to do, as Secretary Hegsth does. I know President Trump has the lives and well-being of our service members on his heart every day, knowing the sacrifice that’s made.
Faith, Service, and Making Every Day Count
We must remain undeterred. For me, I have always turned to my faith in God in those difficult moments and these challenging times, finding that strength, confidence, peace, shelter, and courage that can only come from having faith in God’s unconditional love for me and knowing that all I have to do is do my very best every day to be pleasing to him and have faith that whatever the outcome, it will be his will that is done.
As we forge ahead together, I encourage you to stand strong, to be joyful warriors, to always remember that with God all things are possible. We can change our mindset. Somebody brings me a problem—it happens on a daily basis—I say thank you. Good. Now I can solve it. Hard challenge comes my way or maybe I am having a difficult day—awesome. It’s my opportunity to say, “Yes Lord, here I am. Send me.”
It is inspired by God’s unconditional love that we are charged to live and lead and serve in a reflection of his love for all of us, with this eternal gratitude in our hearts for the blessings and the freedoms that he has and continues to bestow upon every one of us. When I was deployed to Iraq in 2005, I served in a medical unit where there was a sign at one of the main gates where our security patrols, infantry patrols, went in and out every day. The first day I saw it and many days thereafter, I was stopped in my tracks because that sign said in big block letters, “Is today the day?” It was this ever-present reminder—certainly there in a war zone in 2005 during one of the heights of that war in Iraq—that any day could be our last. It was an opportunity to reflect and to pray and to know that I needed to do my best to make every single day count.
We look to the tragedy that just happened in Texas, where at a camp where girls were going, families were camping over a long holiday weekend, in a moment, they lost their lives in this tragedy. Is today the day? Every single day that we wake up with breath in our bodies, we are blessed with the opportunity to take advantage and make the very most of that day. Today is the day. Today is the day for us to stand up for all that we believe in. Stand up for each other. Stand up for our country. Stand up for our freedom and a future that truly realizes the vision that our founders had for this great country.
I’m grateful to stand alongside you in this honorable and just fight. We will make this happen together. Thank you so much, everybody. It’s great to see you. God bless you. God bless America. Aloha.
