Episode 5162: President Trump Honors Angel Moms In Angel Families Remembrance Ceremony
President Trump honors victims of crimes tied to illegal immigration at the Angel Families Remembrance Ceremony, declaring February 22nd as National Angel Family Day while citing cases like Lakin Hope Riley’s 2024 murder by a released gang member and Marie Vega’s family, shot in 2014 by cartel-linked criminals. He blames Biden-era open borders for surging violence—25M illegal crossings, including 11,888 murderers—and claims his policies, like the Lakin Hope Riley Act, led to 21K arrests and a "100% closed" border. Vega, a grieving mother, credits Trump’s leadership for reducing murders but condemns media bias and sanctuary cities shielding predators. The ceremony blends policy critique with emotional tributes, framing border security as a wartime necessity against cartel expansion into U.S. cities. [Automatically generated summary]
We got a new video this morning showing the violence and destruction across parts of Mexico following the death of that country's most wanted drug cartel boss, Nemesio Aseguera Cervantes, also known as El Mencho, the head of the powerful Jalisco New Generation cartel, was killed in a special operation carried out by Mexican Army Special Forces.
The White House says the U.S. provided intelligence support for it.
The killing sparked widespread unrest, suspected gang members torched cars and businesses.
The U.S. State Department urged U.S. nationals to shelter in place.
There's been some panic at airports that tourists have been stranded there because some of the airlines have canceled flights in and out of Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara.
Oscar Blue for Real America's voice news another burned vehicle by the organized crime in the cartel as a sign by the eradication and the execution of Nemesio Oseguera Diaz, better known as El Mencho, leader of the CJNG cartel.
In the middle of the highway, these cartel criminals they just burned another vehicle of pick a truck to send a message to the government and also to the population that they're still in control of several communities.
Just now, breaking news as CBS has revealed that an official of the Department of Defense has said that there was a collaboration by special forces of the United States of America with the federal government of Mexico to execute Nemesio Oseguadia, better known as El Mencho.
But the ones that they led the operation was the federal government of Mexico to have a perfect execution of this leader of the Cartel Jalisco Neva Caneracion.
Behind me, you'll see another burned vehicle just steps away from the border wall.
This is a national security issue.
The cartel is relentless and it is operating and it is sending a message not only to the Mexican people and to the Mexican government, but also to the United States of America that are next door right here to the border wall and sending a message that they are going to continue.
this morning, the security detail detected that an individual had made his way into the inner perimeter of Mar-a-Lago.
A deputy and two Secret Service agents on the detail went to that area to investigate.
They confronted a white male that was carrying a gas can and a shotgun.
He was ordered to drop those two pieces of equipment that he had with him, at which time he put down the gas can, raised the shotgun to a shooting position.
At that point in time, the deputy and the two Secret Service agents fired their weapons and neutralized the threat.
He is deceased at the scene.
I'll give you a picture of the shotgun and the gas can to have with you.
New York Times is reporting this morning, as are many others, that the president is juggling all options right now, might continue with the negotiations, might try a limited strike, pull back, and if that doesn't work, go all the way in.
So, Joe, I'm hearing that the president is engaged in what you might call coercive diplomacy.
Steve Witkoff, one of his envoys to Iran, said yesterday that he was frustrated, Trump was frustrated that Iran had not yet capitulated to this enormous show of force, huge buildup of air and naval assets in the region, preparing for some kind of strike.
Trump has said he wants this resolved within 10 to 15 days, so that clock is ticking.
There is a meeting scheduled in Thursday in Geneva where the Iranians will show up with a new proposal.
It's hard to see now how that will be sufficient to close the gap fully between the U.S. and Iran.
And so there's a possibility that, as the White House has been saying, the president will take limited action, coercive action, to try to push Iran to make further concessions.
That often doesn't work very well.
And so we're on the lip of what might be a much longer, open-ended military action by the United States to coerce Iran into fundamental changes, maybe to regime change.
That worries a lot of people.
I just would note, finally, the New York Times had some outstanding reporting yesterday taking us into a meeting in the Situation Room last Wednesday where the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, the chairman, Joint Chiefs, Dan Kane, were asked by the president to give assurances in effect that this would be a successful big mission against Iran.
And according to the New York Times, neither of them could offer that kind of endorsement.
So I think that's a clear sign that this is this is still a policy debate that's ongoing and difficult.
It's Monday, 23 February, in the year of lore, 2026.
As fate would have it, we're about to go to the East Room of the White House because it is Angel Moms Appreciation Day where they're going to, for the angel moms and the angel families, President Trump's going to sign a proclamation and give some appropriate remarks.
We're going to go there live.
Our own Ben Berquam is actually there as a guest because Ben's done such a magnificent job over the last, I don't know, six, seven years of making sure that the angel moms had a platform.
Of course, from Breitbart to the war room, we've been a major platform for the angel moms.
Also, a huge day for them.
President's going to talk, and the irony is that there was a joint, at least U.S. intelligence, U.S. Special Forces, and Mexican military attack yesterday.
That Oscar Blue Ramirez was just incredible about coming on and giving live reports yesterday.
We're packed.
We got from Eric Prince to Sam Fattis to Oscar Blue Ramirez, Art Del Cueto from the Border Patrol Union, and of course, Niño, David Rodriguez.
Many of the experts are going to talk about the war that we definitely have to fight and should be fighting.
Sounds like we kicked it off already, and that is the war against the cartels in Mexico.
President Trump had warned long enough, if he did not see action, there would be interdiction.
So yesterday there was interdiction, and it looks like it was a joint operation, or as the media said, it was led.
I put up there the buried lead.
It was led by the Mexican military, as it should be at this time.
We believe that this may lead to a bigger campaign.
There's obviously chaos in particularly in Puerto Villarta and other these resort towns as American citizens try to figure out how they're going to get out of the country since air traffic has been has been halted.
One of the reasons they burned aircraft on the tarmac yesterday.
It just wasn't cars and buses, which is always a symbol of the cartels that they're going to block.
Let me go quickly to Oscar.
We are going to cut to the president as soon as the president walks into the east room.
We're going to skip commercial breaks to do that, but let's go.
Well, the violence has started escalating after the assassination and execution of Nemesio Sagera El Mencho.
This was a mission that apparently from the government's statements, it was a cooperation between the intelligence of the United States of America and the ones that led the operation for the execution was the federal government of Mexico.
This tells you the bilateral relationship that right now, President Trump has executed perfectly with the Mexican government so they can execute these kind of missions.
After that, violence escalated and got it completely out of hand in the part of Puerto Vallarta, part of Jalisco, and part of Michael Cano, where the Cartel Jalisco new generation had massive control.
This escalated into the borders as yesterday in Tijuana, the city that we are located, more than 22 incidents.
Why they call incidents?
Because they were burning businesses.
They were burning automobiles as these narco blockades to send a message to the government that they still have control of these communities and that ultimately that they are going to unstabilize and they're going to send a message to the population that they are going to try to terrorize the population to let them know that they have control of this.
Now, get this to know under the Biden administration, the Cartel Jalen.
We'll cut out of the commercial break if the president takes the stage in the East Room on a fantastic day of a proclamation to support the angel moms and the angel families.
The irony of this, the people that have tormented them are now, we're taking a torch to the enemy.
The war that we definitely should be fighting, the one in Mexico.
Take your phone out.
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And like I said, we're going to cut to the White House Eastroom as soon as the president takes the stage.
Sam, you have advocated, having spent your entire career virtually overseas and seen the mess that we've gotten into many, many times.
Back here, you are one of the big proponents that there's a red-green alliance in this country right now.
That's the war that we have to win.
You've been also on this show over the last four or five years, continuing to point out that we have a massive problem in a failed narco-state just south of our border, and it must be dealt with hard.
And once we start to deal with it, you need to take it to its ultimate conclusion.
Sam Fattish, your thoughts of what you see in the last 24 hours.
Let me ask you, when the media is reporting that the U.S. government set up a multi-department task force called cartel control, basically intelligence-based.
And all the reports yesterday's I tried to put up on Getter and let people see the buried lead said that these strikes were led by the Mexican military.
We now know that the target acquisition and much of this came from this joint U.S. command intelligence operation, which was not set up to be a law enforcement operation.
It means we're picking the targets, we're providing the information, and at least for right now, it is Mexicans from whatever unit carrying the guns that are actually hitting the target.
Same as we've been, a Ukrainian's been pressing a button on a missile to hit a target in Russia for some time.
But all of the decision-making and all the intel involved in where that missile is going to strike is us, which is what Putin's been saying for some time.
So that's where we are.
Mexicans doing the shooting, at least for now, but we're calling the shots and given the direction.
And therein is another concern, obviously.
How good is that intelligence?
I mean, our SIGIN intelligence and our satellite imagery and our drones are better than anybody on the planet.
If anybody thinks CIA has sources on the ground in Mexico inside those cartels, you know, they're in dreamland.
They've just opened the doors for the commander-in-chief to come in.
And as soon as he does and takes the podium, we will cut live.
Let me make sure I can see that.
Okay, there you are right there.
I want to go to Oscar Blue Ramirez.
I've got Art Del Cueto from Border Patrol and Nino is going to talk about what the reality of the situation in Mexico is, particularly with American tourists.
And as Sam just alluded to, hits here in the United States.
Oscar, there's been this debate and this theory between the Mexican government and American intelligence and the American military about do you go and try to do decapitations of the heads?
It's like, do you take out the senior guys or do you go in broader and try to take out their infrastructure and take out some of their some of their Sicarios?
Obviously, yesterday, the argument that you start at the top and try to explode it there worked out your thoughts.
Yeah, you know, this was a mission that it was greatly executed and it was led by the federal government.
But ultimately, it tells you how much intelligence of the United States of America it is in Mexico.
This tells you the high level of intelligence that they have to extract information and to ultimately lead this to execute one guy.
And it was the elimination of the most atrocious, more, most violent and more terrorist guy that has right now terrorized the whole country of Mexico that he perplexed and had a lot of presence also inside of the United States of America.
Thanks to the open border policies of Joe Biden, the Carter Jaliz Cunyo generation started moving forward in several cities inside of the United States of America.
This is why I said yesterday, Steve, in the report that it was that burned car, that burned perkup truck just steps away from the border wall.
This is a national security issue for the United States of America and also for the border towns close to the border inside outside of Mexico.
Why?
Because these people are burning cars in front of cameras, international cameras of the customs agents and of the border patrol agents to let them know that they have presence on the other side, Steve.
He's going to address and I'm sure he's going to have some comments.
The president, this was previously scheduled.
Ben Berkholm's in the audience.
We have Neil McCabe is actually as a reporter.
This is the East Room.
It is a proclamation, a signing of a proclamation, a signing of a proclamation to honor the angel moms and family, the White House East Room, President of the United States.
Should be important for everybody, including the media.
But they don't really cover it fairly, I will tell you that.
It's shocking.
Please sit down.
Thank you.
We're gathered here today for a truly solemn occasion.
Throughout this hall, I am joined by heartbroken Americans who have lost parents, siblings, children, grandchildren, and treasured loved ones to the scourge of illegal immigration led in by the past administration.
Millions and millions of people from jails, millions and millions of people from countries that we don't want to know about.
Drug dealers, murderers, 11,888 murderers were allowed into our country by the Biden administration.
These are the angel families that we love that for decades our government betrayed and our media totally ignored.
And I've seen it.
When I first got involved with the angel families, I had a meeting was so sad.
And they got up and spoke, and the media literally just turned off the cameras.
They didn't want to hear them.
It was my first glimpse as to what was happening.
These are sick people that cover stories like that, or that don't cover them, which is worse.
Everyone in this room not only suffered an infinite loss, they were the victims of politicians who put the comfort of foreign criminals before the safety of American citizens and American patriots.
Their stories were censored and suppressed like maybe almost never before so that the politicians could open our borders and allow our nation to be invaded.
If we didn't win the election, our nation would right now be destroyed.
But under the Trump administration, their suffering is forgotten no longer.
In just a few moments, I officially signed a proclamation that I've been waiting to sign for a long time, including my first administration.
There were so many different legal roadblocks, it was incredible.
We got it done, and I'm doing it today.
February 22nd is going to be National Angel Family Day.
Very important.
So many incredible family members and friends, parents and children.
On February 22nd, two years ago, a brilliant 22-year-old nursing student named Lakin Hope Riley went out for a run on a college campus in Georgia.
Lacan was viciously attacked, brutally beaten, and murdered by an illegal alien gang member, who the last administration heartlessly released into our country.
No problems.
Let them in.
They let in everybody.
They didn't check anybody.
They let in everybody.
Among the first bills I signed into law after taking office last year was the Lake and Riley Act.
I'm so proud of it.
To ensure illegal alien criminals are rapidly removed from the United States of America, if that's okay with the media.
That bill has already been really playing a big role in the life of our country.
Resulted in over 21,000 illegal alien arrests.
21,000.
We're joined this morning by Lakin's parents, who I have gotten to know.
These are incredible people.
And I want to ask Lakin's mother, Alison, to please come forward and say a few words, please.
Well, this is unexpected, but I think that a lot of people feel like that President Trump is maybe different than the person I've gotten to know.
And I just can't thank you enough.
You have said from the beginning, literally the day after this happened, that you would not forget about Lakin.
You weren't president at that time, and you have not forgotten.
You have fought a fight that most people would not want to have to fight.
Most people wouldn't.
They would just say it's just easier not to do this.
And President Trump has a thankless job that most people just wouldn't do.
And I just can't thank you enough.
There are just not enough words to say.
Because if you've lived the nightmare that we have lived, you understand the importance of the job that he's doing in securing our nation and fighting for our families.
Because this could be any family.
This happened to my family.
This could be any one of your families.
And Lakin was the most responsible, hardworking, kind, selfless, beautiful Christian.
And she wasn't somebody that put herself in bad positions.
She didn't make bad choices.
She was just a good girl.
And she just wanted to go for a run that morning after she'd gotten up at 4 o'clock the morning before to decorate her roommate's door for her birthday.
And she did everything for everyone else.
She expected nothing in return.
She just wanted to be a good friend and a good sister and a good daughter and a hardworking nurse she was working so hard for.
And I'm beyond blessed and thankful that you're honoring not just Lakin because she's one a ton of people that have suffered at the hands of illegal immigrants.
She's not the only one.
And so thank you for honoring all of them, not just Lacan.
And we're just beyond grateful.
Thank you.
unidentified
Thank you so much, Joe. Thank you. Thank you very much.
It's been a while now and it doesn't get that much easier.
But I want to thank you for your incredible courage.
We're all courageous in a sense.
Everybody in this room is courageous and we're willing to tell the story.
And that I don't know why the news doesn't want to hear it.
The Democrats don't want to hear it.
The radical left, they don't want to hear it.
What's not to hear?
We want to stop murderers and criminals from coming into our country.
I watched the mayor of Minneapolis.
I watched these people saying, we want to protect murderers.
I don't get it.
Something's sick.
They're sick.
Can't have a country like that.
So we appreciate the bravery of everybody in this room, actually.
And Christy, I want to thank you, and I want to thank Tom in particular for we have a border that's 100% closed now.
100%.
So Lakin's story is even more tragic because her death was completely preventable.
It shouldn't have happened.
Guy should never have been here.
Not only should her killer not have been released into our country in the first place, but he was released a second time after being arrested in New York City.
Here today is a great gentleman, the police officer who arrested that illegal alien, only to watch him be set free to kill.
I mean, he was arrested and they let him go free.
They knew he was in trouble, big trouble.
Many of them are like that.
They release him, knowing it's going to kill again.
But they released him and set him free to kill Lakin.
So I'd like to have Ethan Carreri come up, please.
He's a great, highly respected police officer, and you can explain what happened.
I have to do a little check-in before I introduce people, otherwise, I get in trouble.
Sometimes I introduce people and they say, sure, did you know this or that?
But you checked out very, very well.
Wow.
Stories like Lakins are one more reason why my administration will do everything in our power to end the scourge of sanctuary cities once and for all.
They protect criminals.
Why do people fight?
They protect criminals with a vengeance.
They fight for these criminals like murders, protecting murders.
They fight for them so hard.
I can't, there's something wrong with them.
We're joined today by so many angel families who are grieving a terrible loss.
They've gone through hell.
Steve Ronabeck was the father of 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck, beautiful, a beautiful guy, who was shot and murdered by an illegal alien while he was working behind the counter of a convenience store in Arizona.
You know, I spent some time with President Trump in his first election.
President Trump talked about Grant even before he was elected, 2016.
And finally, we had hope.
We had hope that it was going to end.
I was just talking to Secretary Noam that we all sat around a table one day during one of our visits to Washington.
And again, the word preventable came up.
All these deaths at the hands of illegal immigrants are preventable.
They could have been stopped.
We could have done so much more.
Unfortunately, at the hands of an election that we questioned, somebody took their foot off the brakes and put their foot on the accelerator to let these people into our country.
And it wasn't just regular people.
It was criminals.
It was murderers, killers, rapists.
And now, now today, we are finally going to see that somebody's going to remember all of our loved ones.
They're going to remember the names.
And they're going to remember what we've all been through.
I think that's as crazy as they won't approve voter ID.
They won't approve proof of citizenship.
They won't approve no mail-in ballots, even though they know it's crooked as hell.
Where the ballots are sent to, in many cases, Democrats.
Republicans don't get theirs, and they're calling frantically to get their ballot.
A Democrat will get three, four, five, six, and even seven ballots.
And then we're supposed to win.
That's what they're good at.
They're professional cheaters.
But we wouldn't be here right now.
I'm just thinking as we're going through it, because we've suffered through it together.
I suffer for the country.
I mean, it's the people I've gotten to know, the mothers and fathers, mostly mothers and fathers, husbands in some cases, wives in some cases, but mostly mothers and fathers, what they have to go through.
Also with us is Marie Vega, the mother of Javier Veger Jr., a retired U.S. Marine and Border Patrol agent, so respected, who was murdered in front of his family by two illegal aliens, bad ones, really bad ones.
People you could look at them and you could say, trouble, trying to steal his family's trucks.
He wanted to take everything the family had, but the trucks in particular.
President Trump, on behalf of my family and I, thank you for hosting this beautiful remembrance in honor of our loved ones who were killed by illegal aliens.
As you said, August 3rd, 2014, my husband Javier, my son, Marine and Border Patrol agent Javier Harvey Vega, his wife, two of his sons, and a friend, and I were fishing in Santa Monica, Texas.
Within minutes of settling in, we were ambushed by two illegal aliens with many priors.
Without warning, they jumped out of their stolen vehicle with guns that were not supposed to be in their possession in an attempt to steal two four-wheel drive vehicles while trying to defend us.
Harvey was shot in the chest and killed.
My husband, Javier Sr., was shot in the back.
Remember you all?
Children were there fishing with their friends, and they just kept shooting.
You could hear the bullets just whizzing past you.
Javier Sr. Returned fire with this weapon, and I grabbed the AR that Harvey had attempted to defend us with, and I returned fire as well.
Had we not fired back, they would have killed everyone there, including the children, so that there wouldn't be any witnesses.
And they killed an amazing man, a loving and honorable dad and husband.
Thank God we have you in office.
Without you, America and the world would not know the consequences of open borders.
Thank you for restoring law and order.
Thank you for acknowledging us, the angel families.
Every day I think of you and the heavy weight of a nation that you carry with you.
I can't imagine what it must be like to wake up every morning, work so diligently amid attacks and resistance from the left, to deal with the craziness, the fraud, and the swamp.
But you get it done day in and day out, all while finding solutions to making America great again.
You absolutely amaze me.
Please know that we see it, and we, the masses, your constituents, are behind you 100%.
When you were elected the first time, for the first term as president, I remember saying to my boss, this is exactly what this country needed, a businessman.
You did an outstanding job then, and although you were cheated out of the second term, by the way, you won that election as well, and we know it.
I knew the third term was going to be epic, and here we are, mega.
Before I end this, I have to share a sweet story with you about my daddy.
He absolutely hated the way people treated you and attacked you.
On your third run for office, he said to me, Mijita, which means my little daughter in Spanish, can you check to see if I'm up to date and still registered to vote?
We need to make sure President Trump gets into office.
I said, Of course, daddy.
And I did, and I checked, and he was registered to vote.
We lost a great man April the 3rd of 2025.
And that would be my daddy.
Again, thank you for everything.
Thank you for backing Border Patrol and ICE and backing these families.
You know, I was thinking, as you were saying, that running again for a third time after having gone through what we went through the second time, which was so horrible, so much cheating, so much deception and viciousness, and you could see what they were going to do.
And I'm here now, and it's a much more powerful term than my second term would be and much more powerful.
And one of the reasons is everybody sees how bad they were.
And I had to go through, and I still do, fake stories, fake polls.
I mean, I had polls for the election that showed I was going to get swamped, and I won in a landslide.
They were fake polls because polls are tough.
You know, when you get a fake poll, I get them today.
I saw one today that I'm at 40%.
40%.
I'm not at 40%.
I'm at much higher than that.
I mean, I'd love to run against anybody.
The real polls say you kill everybody.
It wouldn't even be close.
But you go through the fake polls, you go through the fake stories.
And I said, you know, it was good because this is really a much more powerful term than I would have had if I had run because it was just one of those things.
There would be nothing to compare it to.
And now they compare it to Biden and that horrible, horrible administration.
And I mean it, it is more powerful.
Our military is much more powerful.
We rebuilt it mostly in the first term.
Then they gave away a chunk of it.
And as much as it was, it's very small relatively, Tom.
But we gave it to the Taliban.
Just walked out.
We could have taken it with us.
They said, oh, I think it's cheaper to leave the planes.
Just put a little jet fuel and fly it to a neighbor or fly it right home.
Sir, I think it's cheaper.
I think we'll save money by leaving a $150 million jet on the runway.
These people are crazy.
But I said, and I've said to a lot of people, it's much better what happened, but not for you people, it's not.
And then I go back and say, but I wish it didn't, because every one of your loved ones would be alive today.
Everyone in this room, I think, every, maybe there's one where could have sneaked through during our term, but I don't think so.
We had a very tough border.
We had a, you know, we solved it in 2016, and we had a very strong border.
I would say nothing is as strong as what we have now, but we had a very strong border.
We had a good border.
We had a sane border.
It was sane.
And I say, I like this much better.
Much more respect.
You know, you read about all these crazy shooters, but they only go after consequential presidents.
They don't go after non-consequential presidents.
You know, if you take a look, Abraham Lincoln, some big one, John Kennedy, in a certain way, was very consequential.
He represented something very important.
He was there for a thousand days, as you know, the book, thousand days, but he was consequential.
There was a glamour.
There was something good for our country, right?
But they're consequential.
And I was told that.
I saw that the other day.
They said they only go after consequential.
So maybe I want to be a little bit less consequential.
Can we hold it back a little bit, please, Tom?
Can we just, like nice and easy, let's be a normal president for a little while?
Because we had the greatest first term, I think, of any president in history.
A lot of people have said that.
Even radical left people have said that.
And so it's, you know.
But the one problem is that, and every time I say it, I go back to the one thing.
I said, but we wouldn't have had 25 million people allowed to come into our country, totally unchecked, totally unvetted.
And those are the people that destroyed your lives.
They destroyed your lives.
They wouldn't be there.
So I always say, I like it better, but there's one thing I don't like better, and that's what they did.
Because I think that's the single biggest problem.
You know, he gave us inflation, highest inflation we've ever had.
I solved that.
Right now, inflation's at a low, very low number.
How about gasoline?
I was in Iowa, $1.85 a gallon.
You know, I solved that.
I did a great job with that.
Prices are coming way down, and I'll get them down further.
But, you know, Christ, no matter.
By the way, if I came up with a cure for cancer, they would say, he should have done it years ago.
There is not a thing I can do where these people are going to give me credit.
And that's okay, because we wanted a landslide.
So the people understand.
The people understand.
But the one thing that I regret about the election and the process, because it's a much bigger, more important, you look at what we're doing throughout the world.
We're respected like we've never been before.
But the one thing that I can't do anything about is that he allowed 25 million people, many of these murderers, drug lords, criminals, people from mental institutions.
They emptied their mental institutions, Tom, is that right?
All over the world, not just in South America.
They emptied their jails, many of them from all over the world.
And with one operation, that will take a very short period of time.
Hope you have a good doctor.
He's an expensive, he's an expensive doctor, top of the line, right?
But you know what?
You're going to have 20-20 vision because I noticed you're wearing glasses.
I saw you yesterday on television wearing glasses, and I said, well, but anyway.
But, you know, speaking of your family, it would be a lot different right now, except for the election.
So I always say, it's too bad that happened.
And if I had it to do again, despite the tremendous job we're doing now, I wish it could have been the other way because we wouldn't even be having this meeting right now.
There'd be nobody.
I wouldn't have gotten to know you.
But it's gotten to know you under very bad circumstances, right?
The worst circumstances.
So one of those things.
But the thing I can't understand is why the press isn't more supportive.
They're so dishonest.
The stories, the polls, they poll you, they say, oh, the angel moms.
I think the angel moms are the finest people I've met.
I mean, the angel moms and families and dads, but these are unbelievable people.
What's to be, why are they so angry with angel moms?
They had their child killed.
Stories that are so horrible, I'm not going to mention.
A couple of people are in the room.
what they did with the child after they murdered the child.
It's not even, and these people are actually on the side of the criminal.
I don't get it, Tom.
Someday you're going to explain it to me.
But I don't think you can either.
It's crazy.
Laura Wilkerson is another American mom whose 18-year-old son, Joshua, Joshua was horribly beaten, tortured, and murdered by an illegal alien who went totally crazy and just went to school.
And I'd like to ask Laura to come up and say a few words about Joshua.
My name is Laura Wilkerson, and I want to thank everybody for their help in gathering us here, the American Border Story, and the White House, and all of your helpers.
I thank you for that.
I met a man about 11 years ago who was running for office.
And he sat with us a couple of days, and he watched as the tears rolled down my face as I told him the story of how our youngest son, Joshua, was brutally beaten, tortured, strangled to death, and his body set on fire.
The man next to me was President Trump.
He never ever looked away from my pain.
He looked me straight in the eye, and he said, I will never forget the story of your sweet son, and I will never give up fighting for the American family.
I looked at him and I believed him.
And here we are these years later, and you can tell all of the work he's done.
He's never missed a day of fighting for the American family.
I don't know if I've ever met a man who is more interested in this country and running his country and getting it back in shape.
And I'm so grateful for what he does every single day.
I can't even pretend to understand the spiritual battles that swirl around the office of the presidency and the man who owns that office.
I would ask that God breathe a fresh breath of air through this administration so that he can calm those spiritual battles and allow our president to continue to do the hard work.
Jesus works on my family every day, still healing us today.
And I am just so incredibly grateful for the man who's in office who never quits.
He is sidelined so many times, but we know the man, Jesus, who can take care of that.
And we pray today in his name that he will sweep through this country and make it right again.
I get introduced often and I'm getting introduced by people.
In many cases, they hate me.
And they don't give me nice introductions like that.
But all we're doing is the right thing.
It's sort of simple, right?
It's sort of simple, but not simple for you.
And that's when I was running, actually.
That was before I won.
You know, I didn't know if I was going to win or not.
I was running against 17 politicians.
You knew.
But no, I never forgot that.
Jody Jones is a loving brother whose cherished sibling Rocky was killed by an illegal alien monster, monster, real monster, who went on a deranged crime spree after being released from prison as part of a California Sanctuary City policy.
Well, I have the speech, but I'm not going to give it.
What I'm going to tell you is from my heart.
I want to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, first of all, before I do anything.
I want to thank the American border story, and I absolutely want to thank President Donald J. Trump.
Thank you, sir, for putting America first and putting these angel families first and letting everybody know their stories because we matter.
Thank you, sir.
My brother Rocky Jones was murdered by a criminal legal alien.
He was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.
This man was arrested, released, and within 24 hours, he went on a shooting spree in Central California.
Unfortunately, my brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This man shot my brother eight times at point-blank range.
I pray that no other family has to go through that, and fortunately, they will.
And just know, President Trump, I want you to know: no matter what the fake media says about you, the American people love you, and we will support you all the time because we love you.
I'm sick and tired of hearing these Democratic politicians stand up on these podiums and say how sorry they are for seeing these criminal illegal aliens being ripped apart from their families.
What about us?
What about the American family?
What about us?
We mean something too.
And this man right here understands it.
I was listening to Grandma Cook, and she said thank you to President Trump.
And I love that lady.
I don't even know her.
I just heard her.
I got the fire inside of me.
I'm like, wow, that's an American.
I love America.
I want you guys to understand this.
Americans are not racist.
We're not xenophobic because we want a safe America and we want to put Americans first.
This man's not racist because he wants to put Americans first.
Are you kidding me?
I know you guys hear it all the time, but we are not.
We'll continue to fight, though, and we'll stop this horrible situation.
And we have stopped a lot of it.
A big thing, you know, you saw that murders are down for the most in 125 years.
That's before my father was born in 1905.
Five years before my father was born.
My father was great.
But so in 1900, 125 years, the murders the lowest rate.
You know why?
Because I closed the borders and we got a lot of people out.
It's not just closing, we got a lot of people out.
Washington, D.C. is now a safe place.
We don't want to close the borders with them anyway.
We got a lot of them out, and we got many of the worst ones out.
Go for them first.
But I want to conclude by reading part of a letter I received earlier this year from two heartbroken grandparents who will never again see their eight-year-old granddaughter after an illegal alien ran her over with his truck purposely.
They wrote to me, We are hurting so badly and now know that the hurting in our family will never go away.
It never, ever will go away.
We're not seeking notoriety.
We don't care about press coverage, but we do want our girl to be remembered.
We want people to actually know how preventable this murder was.
And lastly, we want the American government to be accountable to its citizens.
True.
They should be accountable for what they did.
That's my administration, and I will tell you, fighting, and we're fighting so hard.
All of them, everybody together is fighting.
We're putting American citizens first.
We're defending American lives.
And we're fighting for every angel family.
Angel families are beautiful families.
They're beautiful families.
That was my first early on when we first met.
That was my first, I didn't know about angel families, you know.
I never did this before, right?
I was building buildings and things.
But I said, I can't believe it.
My first meeting, they were so angry at the press, at a mom who lost her daughter so violently, right?
You might have been there.
The first meeting, I said, this is strange.
What's going on?
It was anger from the fake news.
But the angel families, I realized very early on, I never changed.
I could see how you changed them.
You know, you have to go through this stuff.
But never changed.
I thought they were among the greatest people I've ever met.
I've met the heads of countries.
A lot of them aren't so nice, but they do have some power.
And we've done very well with all of those people.
But among the finest people I've ever met are the people in this room and many people outside of this room.
I know many, many more than just in the room.
But we restored our border, and that's now totally secure.
And our country is at the safest level it's been in many, many years.
How could anyone possibly say we want open borders?
Knowing, especially, let's say you did that because you're foolish or stupid or something.
And you did it.
But after a couple of weeks, you're going to know that the people coming here, if you're running a country, you want to send your bad people out.
That was the way I looked at it.
I didn't know anything about it.
I ran for office, but I have a lot of sense.
And I said, well, open borders are no good because if I'm running the country nearby or far away, I had no idea how far away.
They came from the Congo in Africa.
They came from all of not just South America.
Congo let vast numbers, hundreds and hundreds, and probably thousands of people out of jail.
They brought them through Mexico and they dropped them into our country.
But you would say that common sense, well, and I said it right from almost the first day.
I said, how could you have an open border?
All the countries are going to be dropping their prisoners into us.
That's exactly what happened.
And mental patients and others.
So we have a country that's now doing well.
We have the greatest economy we've ever had.
We have the most activity we've ever had.
I'm making a speech tomorrow night, and you'll be hearing me say that.
I mean, it's going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about.
But Americans like Lacan and Grant and Javier and Joshua, Rocky, Rachel, Kayla, these are great people, and we're never going to forget them.
I'll never forget them.
I don't know how long I'll be around.
Got a lot of people gunning for me, don't I?
But I will not forget them.
I'm never going to forget them.
And I just think you're among the most brave people.
I meet a lot of brave people.
I meet warriors.
I give out Congressional Medals of Honor where people recommend, like these two in front of me are so wonderful, but they recommend, and I meet the greatest people.
But this is a group of people that, for whatever reason, I just feel maybe the warmest about.
So at least you have one friend, and we don't understand why you don't have many.
And maybe you will.
I don't know.
So I'm going to go sign the proclamation, and then we're going to sit in the audience.
I'm going to sit with you for the reading of the victims' names, and I'll then depart to a song sung by our incredible, talented military, Amazing Grace.