[laughter] [applause] we fight for the truth. we stand up for the truth. that is what won us of the american revolution. what reunited us after the civil war. that is what one, us two world wars and the cold war. that is what still gives hope to the free world. and if we can revive that dream over group identity and grievance and victimhood, then a nobody in the world, not a nation, not a corporation, not china, is going to defeat us. that is what american exceptionalism is all about and that is what this year in 2024 , we will revive to save this great nation. thank you all for coming today, guys. god bless you and your families, and may god bless our united states of america. do not stop fighting for this nation until we get the job done. this is a nation worth saving, and we will. god bless. thank you guys.

thank you. [applause] ♪ carolina. this is nearly 40 minutes. [applause] ♪ gov. burgum: good evening north carolina! are you ready for a great evening to get even better?

[scattered applause] you should be, we have your next governor backstage, he and yolanda are coming out after me so get ready to take it up to the next level. i want to say right off theat, how fantastic to be here. you have to say when you are in a place like north dakota or north carolina, that this is the best of america. you start off at a dinner like this with a prayer and pledge surrounded by people who you know care about your communities and your kids in your schools and care about the future of this country and if they didn't, they wouldn't be here. we did that in such a great way. i want to take a minute and say thank you to all the people who prepared that food and that service tonight as well? [applause] you have had a lot of attention, there are great speakers running through here, you had eric and lara here last night. how wonderful. you must know how important

north carolina is when we have the cochairs of the rnc both from where? north carolina? the state is so important. if you are so important to the future of this country. what happens here could determine the actual direction of our country and, therefore, the world. i went to■ say it's an honor to be here. it's an honor because of the gratitude i have for all of you. i think when the chairman said it when he came out, he said, we know sometimes when you are a republican or conservative these days, you will get attacked left and right and sometimes you will think you can't even talk to a neighbor. but you have the courage to stand up here and be counted. we want you to have that courage going forward. we have to have independents. we have to be out talking to

people. with these great statewide candidates, all the leaders here. all of you. theodore roosevelt, one of our great republican presidents, we are building a presidential library to theodore roosevelt in the middle of the badlands. an audacious project. four hundred million dollars state-of-the-art presidential library. in a town of 120 people. [laughter] that is true. but it is right next to the entrance to theodore roosevelt national park, the only national park named after an individual. one of the famous quotes that he had, it's not the critic that counts, the credit belongs to those in the arena, those whose faces are marred by sweat and dust and blood. if you have decided you will be in the arena, if you have decided you will knock on doors, or volunteer and make phone calls, you are in the arena. if you are here tonight and you have been here since thursday and you are going to the prayer breakfast tomorrow, you are in the arena.

you matter. i want to start with gratitude to all of you. thank you for being in the arena. give yourselves a hand for being here. [applause] the other reason whytold -- we e driving this training is this have been from new york. in 2012, there was a new york businessman that gave a keynote at the same dinner, in this same venue and smashed all party records. who was here that night? a few hands going up. i know that north carolina, it makes sense there for years befe he was elected president. you could even say at the beginning of president trump's political career, it blasted off here in this ballroom and this is where it will keep going because of all of you, so way to go, north carolina. [applause] we get further into this. no one has brought up the fact that i am from north dakota.

[applause] as opposed to north carolina. but i just want to tell you because many of you probably have never been to north dakota or you don't know anybody from north dakota. take a minute and think what it's like every time you see a list of all the states alphabetically, we are behind you guys. [laughter] and so i am proposing that there is a new list. that if you have a state that has a geographic label in front of it like the word "north," it should be listed in order of those that are actually the farthest north one. [applause] it would be ahead on that list. that is what i am thinking. i don't know where that is going to go. but just a thought. we don't have a toast in our state, we don't have a state toast. afteryou have a state toast and i am looking at the state toast and we are the strong, growweak are, grow stro. but the word north carolina is not in there.

so i am taking that thing home. [laughter] [applause] i mean, to me, executive order tuesday morning right after memorial day. [laughter] the official toast of the "north state, the northernmost of the states named north," will have a new toast. [laughter] [applause] so thank you for that. but it's tough growing up when you have got "north" in your name. maybe you don't have this for south carolina. but we were a territory and they came in and they barely knew hoa line between north and south dakota that was not quite right. so a few years ago they were doing work to make sure the line was actually accurate. there was a rapture that i know in -- a rancher in north dakota. his headquarters were on the north dakota side and right at the border. but then they came through and

re-surveyed and it turned out his house was actually in south dakota. in the press asked him, how do you feel about this? he said, thank goodness, because i could have taken one more of those north dakota winters. [laughter] [applause] ok. i just wanted to say, i have allowed my -- my adult children allow me one dad joke for speech and i have used it up. that was it. [laughter] you guys know how when a joke actually becomes a dad joke? it becomes ap-parent. [laughter] sorry, does that count as a second one? did i go over my limit? alright, i grew up in a small town in north dakota called third. population 300. there were 16 kids in my class.

fantastic. learned to deal with a lot of change. our minister moved away. nancy was in her class then we went down to 15. [laughter] then when i was in third grade, kevin and his family moved in so we were back up to 16. prepared me for life dealing with a lot of change. [laughter] but it was a great, fantastic life. my mom was a stay-at-home mom, involved in the community, farm.l board, church, every job i had growing up was a job where you took a shower at the end of the day. i really understood how things work. and my dad was a world war ii navy vet. i learned so many things from him. [applause] and i just want to take a minute this memorial day weekend. on veterans day silk we celebrate special

where we talk about those people who have given it all. one thing i learned from my dad -- we know in his generation about mia's because of the tragedies in korea and vietnam and what went on there. but in world war ii, there was 80,000 mias in the history of america wars permit 40,000 of those mia's art world war ii specific who never came back, a lot of those are like ty dad. my dad was on a destroyer in okinawa, 100 51 destroyers there and 139 were hit with, because the -- were hit by the kamikazes. freedom is not free. we would not be celebrating weekend. if you have served in our country in any service or branch

and if you are still active, please stand so we can give you our appreciation on this memorial day weekend. [cheers and applause] look at that. wow. go, north carolina! [applause] thank you all, why am i not surprised? by the way, i had a great life. then as a freshman in high school, my dad passed away up from a brain tumor. my mom was a widow with three kids and went back to work. she put food on the table and guys in the car and paid the mortgage and keeping a roof over our head. i understand a lot of americans are going through right now with joe biden's economics, there is economic uncertainty across this country. i have a great appreciation for those heroic efforts of working parents and single parents and working moms as well as a deep respect for everyone in uniform. when i was in college, i said,

hey, to i've got to pay my way through college. i was an entrepreneur. one of the things i found out, the minimum wage was $1.75 going to 2.35 dollars. i thought if i started a chimney sweep company, i can get paid $40 an hour. that was more than plumbers and what electricians were getting paid. so i was doing that while going to school in north dakota. it is 20 degrees below, you are climbing around on roofs wearing a top hat and a tux, singing was extra. [laughter] but it was great. people would say way to become a chimney sweep? i said, i always wanted a career where i could move up fast and always stay in the black. [laughter] was that the third one? [applause] ok, you guys are too quick. anyway. fact forward that after grad

school, when i was working, like a lot of young people i said, young people were moving away, there wasn't much opportunity, that of the high inflation of the jimmy carter era. but ronald reagan got elective. i was walking to work and i saw somebody with an apple ii computer. with the earliest electronic spreadsheet. i said well, that is going to change everything. it is changing what i did the last two nights with a piece of paper. i said, i've got to get into that business. so i moved back to north dakota, got 160 acres of ground. in north dakota you would need 1000 acres in those days to farm. now you might need five acres. i bought the farm to start a software company. we had 10 kids. we started as a start up. everybody thought we were crazy.

we had never heard of software. the 1980's, what was that? if they knew what it was, they said, you can't do it here. i had had people telling me my whole life what you can and can't do. we started with young folks and we had a dream. 18 years later we were an overnight success story. [laughter] [applause] in between all of that, we had experiences and also had a lot of hard work. but i learned a lot of lessons. we built a company of 2000 people. 1200 in fargo, 400 in the rest of america and 400 in the rest of the world. so i was young and still at the time simple. we had 140 thousand customers in over 120 countries around the world, making software in fargo, north dakota. we had partners and customers, and they didn't have the right to free speech in some of these

countries. they didn't have the right to vote for him at the right to bear)y■■0 arms. so you grow appreciation like wow, we had a chance to build these businesses and communities jobs and change people's lives and bring young people back to north dakota and thrive and prosper because of the united states of america, and the customers we were serving didn't have the freedoms we had. so starting with my dad and with that experience, i am, like, this place is special. america. it's amazing. so in 2016, kids were growing up. we had an open seat and i decided to run for governor. lake jason said, i had never run for office before and i got elected the scene first time president trump did in 2016. i'll tell you, that was a party that night, we went in thinking i was going to have to be governor and a hillary clinton. [laughter] yikes. and we came out of that and it was, like, yeah, baby, this was

going to. be great i had endorsed president trump earlier that year. it was easy to endorse him this year. and i can tell you right now, just one thing, i had a chance to serve as governor under president trump and president biden. people say why are you going around the country hoping to campaign for president trump? i said i don't want anything, i don't want a single thing for president trump other than that he gets elected. and the first lady feels the same way. i have a front row seat. what you aren't reading about in the papers, we as a natural resource state, north dakota, we are under a full blown attack, a regulatory regime of biden bureaucrats. there has been over 30 rules and mandates that have come down on our state they are trying to shut down how we produce energy, shutdown the oil and gas industry. they will also kill agriculture in the process, because if you

kill internal combustion machines and say all of the united states will have a future builds on evs, you get rid of the combustion machine, you know what happens to agriculture from the midwest to north dakota? half the land in iowa, half the corn crop goes towards fuel. it doesn't go towards food. half the soybean crop in this country goes towards biodiesel. you kill internal combustion machines, you have killed agriculture. every piece of land is going to drop. every small town will be crippled. they have some idea that somehow we are going to save the planet by buying batteries from the world's largest polluter, china, they country that controls 85% of the rare earth minerals. we spent 40 years and under president trump, got out from underneath the uke of opec and now they want to enslave our future to a country that is our number one strategic threat. the existential threat right now is china. that is why i am doing this.

because i see it firsthand. we decided we couldn't run for a third term, so we better spend our time this year making sure president elected, versus us winning in north dakota and joe biden being in office. [cheers and applause] it cracks me up when they talk about republicans being a threat to democracy. the opposite of democracy is dictatorship. dictatorship -- when i say a rule, a rule is 1400 pages long. that's the stuff they are sending out us. our battle revenue as a state, i told the legislature three weeks ago which is rare, but i testified in front of the budget committee and said look, if president trump wins, we will have higher revenues in the state of lower expenses. if biden wins we will have less revenue coming to the state and higher expenses.

we will have to hire a bunch more lawyers because we will be spending our time doing what we're doing now, suing the government. anyway, despite his war on natural resources, we are still fighting because we have a state where we have cut taxes by the largest margins that have ever been done in our state. we have that got the lowest unemployment rate in america. number one in gdp growth. people are fleeing the blue metros coming to places like nortdating younger. families are staying there and people are having kids and more kids, which is great. you probably figured out already, i am a competitive guy. when you are number one, it's great. and number one on birthrate, north dakota, we are number two. i said, what do we have to do to get to number one? [laughter] and, -- they said, sir, that could be tough. i said, why? they said, utah is number one. [laughter]

we might have to be happy with number two, but we have some young people working on this at home. [laughter] but we have to turn this country around, and we have to turn it around. it's simple. i talked about this last year campaigning, biden is wrong on three things. he is wrong on national security and th includes border security. we have talked about everything. we are a border state, 325 miles of border with canada and we have issues up there. as a governor and commander-in-chief, we have had the north dakota national guard deployed there. i have been down there more times than biden or harris combined, not posting stuff, oh, look at me, i am at the border. i am there talking to the troops down there helping to secure our country and i tell you, it is super underreported. [applause]

he's wrong on national security. biden is wrong on energy policy. as i talked about, he's completely wrong-headed on that. he's wrong on the economy. because if you blow up energy, that's going to be the core thing that drives inflation across every product that you consume or buy. doesn't matter whether it's the shoes on your feet or the appliances in your home. energy costs are high, everything is going to be high. we got to get to somebody in the office. you know who understands? that president trump understands that. he is a legendary businessman. he did so many great things. he created so many great things. he understands the plight of working people. we've seen that in recent weeks. i was with him in new jersey when there was 107,000 people there. [applause] i had someone from the liberal media say, oh, there couldn't possibly have been 107,000

people there. and yeah, i think you're probably right, it was 107,000. because when we were driving in, i saw about 15,000 people on the way in that couldn't get into the thing. they were lined on the side of the road for miles, in blue new jersey. we drove by, we were in the motorcade. we drove by new jersey fire houses that had fire trucks out, flags flying, firemen were in uniform. we drove by an exit where they were doing traffic control, and there was a new jersey highway patrolman standing and saluting. and then we got there, and you know who there was? not a demographic, it was americans, and it was americans who work. there wasn't anybody in the 107,000 people that came there to see there today to see if someone was going to get their student loan forgiven. they care about the country. they care about their communities. and they care about their

future. and they want to make sure that someone is going to preserve the american dream for them, and they knowhat person is donald j. trump. and, of course, when you've got high inflation, you've got high prices for food, gas, electricity and high interest rates, and you can't fortify a house, that was the definition of killing the american dream, and that's bidenomics, but with maganomics with trump, we had low interest rates, low inflation, incredible job creation, boredders were secure, and the world was safe. it's exactly the opposite. and so it is important that with all the noise you hear, when i said important for all of you in the arena, you've got to talk independence, talk to people you may not talked to in a while. i'm sure everybody in this divisive said has said, oh, i've got relationships that have ended because of politics. i'm telling you, now is the time to reach out. ask them, ask them how they're

doing, because every single one of them, there isn't a person in america that's escaped the biden inflation tax. and this tax is insidious. if you're part of the americans, if you're like 40% of americans that have savings, like all of you in this room, work to put your savings and you've got a savings account that says this is how much is in my 401k or savings account, yeah, the number is the same. the value has gone down by 20% under joe biden in a matter of three years. it's become a thief in the night and stolen your savings. if you don't have savings and you're just a working mom or dad and you're trying to, you have to check out line at the grocery store and said i got to put a few i bbecause i don't have enough cash to take food home, and that's happening every day in this country right now. inflation is just incredible. we used to talk about tax and spend. this is borrow and spend. it's not tax revenue.

they're borrowing money and spending it on their ideological agenda, most of it is driven by the idea that somehow they're going to be the ones with the moral authority to save the environment, and i just want to challenge that right here, because if you shut down u.s. energy production, and i can tell you as annergy-producing state, our nation produces energy cleaner, smarter, than ae world. if you shut down the u.s. energy the way they want to shut it town, you know what happens? you know who produces more? iran. russia. venezuela. those three right there were in conflict, proxy wars, and you know what they do with their increased revenue? under joe biden, oil production in north dakota is down. production in iran is way up. and when they have that money from selling that, president trump had iran almost bankrupt. he had sanctioned that actually

worked. joe biden's lifted all those. they're trying to go back to the obama nuke l.a. deal. iran funds hezbollah, hamas, houthis, and then all of us, we get to listen about how congress is debating how much money we're going to give to our team. we're paying for the other side. joe biden's energy policy is paying for russia's war, paying for iran's war. we don't need to be funding both sides of the war. if we were producing u.s. energy, the environment would be cleaner, and our adversaries would not have the money to fight wars against us.h this thd the other thing is complete craziness. they want to have everything in our country be electrified. they got a whole bunch of agencies saying we're going to electrify our stove and home and put in this, and they come to places like north dakota, where we produce enormous amount of baseball energy, and they go, here's a bunch of rules to shut down the power plants.

ok, if we have less supply and more demand, what's going to happen? the price of electricity under joe biden, it was flat for 30 years. price of electricity was up 30%. but then now, if the electricity is going to come from intermittent sources, it will be less reliable. i don't want to say it's too late, president trump will do everything he can, but if joe biden is re-elect, it's not going to be 2035. in 2025 we would have biden blackouts across this country, because their policies are destroying our electric grid at a time when we could be heading towards world war iii. it's completely irresponsible and another reason why we got to get president trump back in office. and then the last thing when tied back to energy, the facilities, liquid natural gas,

president trump shut down in order streamt down. it was coming from russia into europe, all. allies, your relatives and others fought for in world war ii so we could free western europe, been our allies for 70 years, and then president trump, that would be a bad idea. russia is our adversary. and then what does joe biden do? and he set down our l.n.g. export capacity, which would supply it to our allies. so literally, it's like, it's so simple. president trump will sell american clean energy to our friends and allies. joe biden wants our allies to buy it from our enemies much that's the opposite between the two of them. when we do that, that's how we end up in two wars, a war with russia, a war with iran, and a cold war with china. china is the most dependent nation in the world on energy. and you can walk softly, carry a big stick, like theodore

roosevelt. you can send over leaders from biden and say, if you guys need food and energy to run your country every day, how about this? we've got food and energy. have you ever heard them talk about that ads a point of leverage? no, they go over there and talk about, oh, could you please start reducing your emissions and then china is literally building two coal plants a month. it is absolutely ridiculous what's going on. i don't understand it. and then like we just saw, joe biden drained the strategic petroleum reserve of the united states in half, before the midterms. he turned the strategic petroleum reserve, which was s up for world war ii, turned it into his own private petroleum reserve, because he was trying to get the price down before the midterms, because he drained about 400 million barrels. and then this last, before memorial day weekend to try to take credit in case gas went down. a million barrels. we produce that by supper time.

i mean, serious. so again, they're hoping that americans don't understand the size and scale, because at one time it was two years ago, it was strategically horrible for america, and this is just a■> press release. so they manipulated it on both ends of the thing. but president trump will fix all of that, and we're not just going to be energy independent. but he's going to reduce inflation, protect national security, he's going to win the world war with china, he's going to unleash america's energy, and america will become what we should be, which is energy dominance, because when we're energy dominant, your prices go down and the world becomes safer and the environment becomes more cleaner. that's what happens when the u.s. leads. [applause] joe biden has been so weak on foreign affairs, and president trump, he was the he pit knee of peace through strength. --&right now, what's happening on our campuses around the country, it's happening for political reasons, in part

because joe biden can't stand up to one wing of the party, and the wing of the party is the hamas wing of the democrat party that are actually, he's afraid of them. he needs their votes to win in michigan and wisconsin. if you had an ally and someone was your ally, you would say things like this. you'd say, look, we're with you. we're allies. and then you'd say to hamas, hey, you want aid? release the hostages. you want a cease-fire? release the hostages. just release the hostages. release the hostages, and then we'll talk. and joe biden says to israel, stop fighting hamas. make sure you give them aid. he's actually negotiating for hamas, he's negotiating, president trump would never negotiate with terrorists. joe biden is negotiating for the terrorists. it's, again, completely opposite. but here we go, as crazy as all those liberal protests got, and there was one great example of

student leadership right here in north carolina, where the from a temperature guys stepped up to protect the2o flag. where the fraternity guys stepped up to protect the flag. there was a go fund me account for them, and there was people around the country sending in small checks like $10,000, whatever. they raised $500,000 for a patriotic rager or something they were going to do. but it was fantastic that they were out there. because there we are in washington, d.c., george washington university, and they've got, you know, a statue of george washington draped for days with the flags of terrorists. and so kudos to north carolina, best of america going on here, way to go. let me close with a couple of final thoughts. it's been said many times, but that 2024 election is coming up in november. it may very well be the most

important election in your lifetime, the most important election your kids' lifetime, and the most important election in your grand kids' lifetime. president trump is remarkable individual. he's running full steam ahead. presidential campaign, while being attacked by a two-tiered justice system, a chance to be in court with him a week ago tuesday, and to see the strength of what he goes through, to see the unfairness of that system, sit there five weeks when they haven't even been clear about what they're -- they can't articulate what a crime may or may not have been, the whole thing is absurd to me as a businessperson. and then what happened that night? then he's got phone call to world leaders, he had a meeting in person with the prime minister of australia on the night that i was there, so he does that all day after he's been up early in the morning. and then he does court all day. then he's on the night. then he's meeting with world leaders. then he goes to a fundraiser. and then he starts making more

phone calls and repeats it again. i had an opportunity to work as a corporate officer, c.e.o., chairman in public companies for over 20 years. i never in my career saw a c.e.o. in my industry work as hard as he works every single day, and when he's working that hard, he's working that hard for all of you and for our country. that's why he's doing it. i think one question you could ask when you're talking to your neighbors that might be undecided about where to go in this thing is this classic question. ronald reagan brought it up. one of the most powerful, simple questions we can ask in an election year, are you better off than you were four years ago? just simple, are you better off than you were four years ago? if this person is honest about living in joe biden's america and with bidenomics, what's the answer going to be? the answer is going to be no.

that alone should be the strongest indicator that if you just had the regular election, don't vote for the incumbent, take a chance on the next person, but what do we have going on here? we have something that's never happened in our lifetime and won't happen again. hasn't happened since grover cleveland. we as a country have been given a chance. we don't have to guess what the next president is going to be like, number 47, because we know, because we know when president trump was in office, we know that the world was at peace. we know that our country was prosperous. we know that interest rates were down. we know all that. so this is the easiest choice ever for a voter, because you can think about what do you have now versus what you had before. and if what you have now is not better than what you had before, that should be the end of the whole discussion. so forget all the other distractions and everything that cable news is trying to shout about and just ask people in their hearts, in their family, are they better off than they were before? and the answer, if they're

honest, is going to be no, they're■- not. unless they have a lot of student loans or something. dd i'm just saying, again, i want you to leave with that. when i leave here tonight, i know one thing, because i know how important north carolina is, and i know how committed all of you are, and i know that the leadership in this party, i know that those of you here, the supporters, the core folks, this, your friends, all the people here as delegateshe last few days, maybe they go back to their families, but you've got the power right here in north carolina to ensure that our party and our nation once again is heading in the right direction. and i want to say to all of you on those of us that live in other states that may or may not begin with north, but around america, the other 49 states, they're counting on north carolina, and they're counting on you to do what it takes to make sure that we win, because that engine at the top of the ticket, when that engine is pulling hard, you know who's going to get elected? you know what's going to happen?

we're going to make america safe again. we are going to make america strong again. we're going to make our borders secure again. we're going to make america affordable again. we're going to make america prosperous again. and when we do that, and that engine called donald trump is driving, we are going to put mark robinson in the governor's residence here in this state, and all those states elected officials are going to ride that train all the way through. i got to say one thing about mark. i've been involved the last seven years as a governor. r.g.a. is coming in strong behind mark robinson. can't coordinate, but i can say those words, we're going to support him in this race and supporting him big. this is the race that matters. in all the other governor races around the country, we've got republicans teed up to win, this is the one that right now is a close race. we're going to be in it. we want you to be in it. we want you out there supporting mark, but the way this thing works for everybody on that ticket is, you can't take, if you see a poll that says donald

trump is up by five, let's get him up by 10, as we say, we got to win this thing so big it pulls everybody with them. [applause] if we're doing all that together, north carolina, you're going to have the happiest night in november. with mark robinson as your governor, donald trump as your president, all these other state officials working together, and we're going to make north carolina great again. we're going to make america great again. thank you, north carolina. thanks for having me here tonight. great to be with all of you.jw