and an increase in the federal minimum wage. this legislation now goes to the senate. ♪ >> you are watching c-span, your unfiltered view of government. c-span was created by america's cable television companies in 1979. today, we are brought to you by who provide c-span to viewers as a public service. >> tonight on c-span, a look at our coverage from the 2021 political -- conservative political action conference, also known as cpac, this year being held in orlando, florida. first, we hear from former secretary of state mike pompeo, then house minority leader kevin mccarthy and congressman jim banks of indiana.

later, south dakota governor kristi noem addresses the conference. now, former secretary of state mike pompeo. ♪ [applause] ♪ mr. pompeo: thank you for that warm greeting. it's always a blessing and a little unnerving to have your son at the podium. [laughter]

i looked out here and i see you all and i feel really at home, and thank you for that. [applause] last year, i came here as america's 70th secretary of state, president trump's secretary of state. and before that, i was a member of congress from south-central kansas. yeah, go kansas. but this is different. in the last few months we have called clowns, deplorables, egner and rednecks, we have been called the people -- the evil resistance. some said i was the worst secretary of state of all time. since i last saw you, the chinese have sanctioned me, the iranians don't think much of me either. but i am out of our accomplishments, and that we have truly upended the status quo.

[applause] we have demonstrated enormous resistance to socialism, cancel culture. i will talk about that. we have resisted seeing our liberties and our freedoms slipping away. this is a noble, worthy fight, and we are in it. we fought hard on nearly every front, and we will always fight for it. i remember when they were calling us disruptors and said we were against the establishment. and we said, of course. now, i will tell a story. i think i come by this disruption issue very naturally. in the pompeo family, i have been compared to my grandfather, earl. grandpa earl always said what was on his mind. he was pretty rough cut, he was from kansas, he worked hard, he never won a miss congeniality

contest but when the going was tough, you wanted grandpa earl around. in the 1930's, grandpa earl was the sheriff of the county, population less than 6500. uncle richard was the last of the lot. and he was going to run for reelection as sheriff, and richard decided there was really good money in homemade gin. [laughter] so he built a still in the basement bedroom, everything was good, the campaign and the bootleg business, all good. until the still exploded in the basement. it blew up the basement and the campaign. grandpa earl was a one-term sheriff in mitchell county. he moved his family south where he raised my mother in wellington and opened a pool hall. how is that, going from sheriff

to pool hall operator? i tell the story because i think those of us who believe that you have been a part of the conservative movement for so long can learn from this. first, he was a great sheriff because he never tried to be anything he wasn't. and he was never afraid to tell people the truth. he did with the people of mitchell county expected of him he respected them. , second, the lesson from the jen -- gin problem is that plans change, things happen, we don't always see it going where we want but we should never give up , and we should always be true to ourselves and we will succeed. [applause] grandpa earl that facts mattered, so today, i am going to arm you with some fact from the last four years. we protected you and our bill of rights at every turn. and when you are a diplomat, you are secretary of state, you have

to stay in your lane. i don't have that because i am not a diplomat. [applause] so where do we begin? we began with workers across america we put back to work we -- put back to work. we put back to work women, african-americans, asians, hispanics, everyone was back to work. president trump did that. president trump and our team we , understood it mattered. [applause] we focused on the economy to put americans back to work. we did it by also securing our borders, giving americans a chance to make a good wage and a chance to take care of their families. [applause] we also -- i'm from kansas, don't forget -- we built american energy jobs. we rolled back regulations and wanted everyone to grow their business and have great opportunity for people all across america. i heard this time ed time again -- i remember i ran for congress , in 2010 when president obama was in office.

employers that lost confidence. we restored the confidence. they knew we have their back. they knew we would support them, not burden them. we wanted them to be successful. [applause] the hallmark of our work in america is that we were bold and fearless. and when i here today, i hear democrats pretend they care about jobs in america. but before the seats were warm in the oval office, they destroyed 10,000 jobs on the pipeline. i say to my predecessor's predecessor, green geek john kerry, he thinks these folks are all going to make solar panels. you ask the people in south dakota, do you think they are -- do you think rigging engineers and oil engineers are going to go out and make solar panels? you can expect the cheap solar panels from china to start flooding in, and this will not be good for the united states of

america. don't get me wrong, we get accused of saying we don't care about the environment and create jobs that destroy the environment. and that is doubly not true. we couldn't do it and protect the environment on the back of the american workers. there were more job openings than people looking for work for much of these past four years. it was an amazing accomplishment. [applause] and when the chinese wanted to steal your job, we just said, no way. for two years, bipartisan, 40 years of failure letting made in china crush us was going to stop. we demanded fair and reciprocal trade. never forget, china depends more for us that we do on them. president trump understood that and our foreign policy understood that, and we protected the american worker from the chinese communist

party's predation in america. [applause] now my job often we overseas. ,we protected our freedom abroad. we did it like grandpa earl did. we were honest, hard-working, we treated the world as it is and not how we wish it were. i will tell you, i walked out of some very quiet rooms in europe. [applause] we had a restrained foreign policy, but when the time came, when the situation so required, we led, we came hard, we came heavy. i sent messages repeatedly to bad guys around the world that if you touch an american, you , will pay dearly. [applause] now, we all know that strength deters bad guys, weakness begets

war and we wanted to stay out of wars. we did. i was with the president on many trips, and he would say i am , going to put america first as the president of the united states and i expect you will put your people and we will work first. together to accomplish this for both, and we did that. [applause] you know america first is right , for america. it is right for each of us. america first secures our freedom and the entire world , benefits when we are fearless and bold and strong. let me just tick through a few ways. first, the parents climate accord, we said it was a joke and we said au revoir. we all want clean drinking water, but the paris accord was a fantasy for diplomats to just want to virtual signal. when president biden rejoined it, president xi jinping was

smiling every minute. and americans lost. we defended americans and israelis in the middle east. this is establishment foreign policy. we were told that you can't sanction the ayatollah in iran and you can't stop sending gas to the leadership. there would be a war. well, we did and there wasn't a , war. [applause] we were told you can't move the united states embassy in israel to jerusalem. there will be a war. well we did, and there was not a , war. [applause] we were told you can't allow israel to have its rights in judeo and samaria -- judea and samaria and the golan heights. there will be a war.

we did that and there was no , war. [applause] we were told, and this was believed, that you can't secure peace in the middle east and without buying off palestinian kleptocrats, you will create world war iii. but we did, and the accords forged peace in the middle east. [applause] thank you. you know, the abraham accords rewrote decades of failed shuttle negotiations. because we were able to go against the elites and champion your values. it looks like the new team , team biden appears to be , heading back to be appeasing iran.

this will be a disaster for the united states of america and the region as well. the president sent me to pyongyang to prepare for the summit with chairman kim that was ultimately held in singapore. we threatened fire and fury. we threatened fire and fury not to go to war but to deter it. and peter it did. since those two summits, one in singapore and one in hanoi, the north koreans haven't tested a long-range ballistic missile and they have not tested their nuclear weapons. zero tests up and conducted. that israel foreign policy. -- zero tests have been conducted. that is real foreign policy. [applause] it was humbling because on the second trip i had a chance to bring home american hostages from pyongyang. [applause] three men, at 3:00 in the

morning. america first always means never forgetting about our warriors. pastor brunson, who stayed in turkey and was detained for far too long, and we brought back so many remains of our fallen in korea as well. this was amazing and right and america first. [applause] how many of you remember qassem soleimani, allah, rest his soul? it was the rainy and general who -- this was the iranian general who was trying to cause trouble for america. he was on a mission to harm americans, but we were a few steps ahead of him. and in the end, he didn't cause trouble for americans or anyone else ever again. [applause]

did you know that to this day , most of the liberals and most of the team biden still won't acknowledge that america getting rid of terrorists was a good thing. when the syrians gassed women and children and told them -- and we told them don't do that again, 70 beautiful american-made tomahawk missiles let them know that we weren't going to allow them to kill women and children. [applause] america first. america first takes real courage . it takes a secretary of state willing to walk into a room and tell them like it is that a president who had his back. we had that. [applause] speaking of backs, i hear president biden saying, america is back. back to what?

back to pallets of caster the ayatollah? back to apologizing when iranian's tell our soldiers -- when iranians tell our soldiers and sailors to take to their knees at gunpoint? back to president biden killing pipelines? backed all the things the put america at risk, ducted supporting a pipeline in europe for european jobs. this is not what we want to go back to at any time at all, and we certainly don't want to go back to letting china have trade deals to kill our jobs right here in america. [applause] we can't afford it. we can't afford it. it is not the right thing and we don't have to do it. we must be bold and we must always put america first. we spend a lot of tim -- time talking about being canceled. i'm glad that this is being aired on television not

canceled, at least for the moment. we worked tirelessly and with great success to deliver on our american values that make us integrate nation. it is what our founders understood, and the bill of rights came behind the constitution. they built a nation that understood our rights come from our creator and not from any government. [applause] our union becomes more perfect every time we defend our sovereignty and our borders and i and probably other most pro-life administration in the history of the united states of america. [applause] -- and i am proud we are the most pro-life administration in the history of the united states of america. [applause] it was my job to deny that any taxpayer dollars from any hard-working american ever went to perform an abortion anyplace in the world, and we promoted that everywhere.

and don't forget president trump appointed a lot of judges that understand the words life and liberty, words that have real, real meaning. i worked for the mexican government, my counterpart in mexico and the president to secure our borders. we worked hard to make sure drugs and other things didn't traffic across the border and that meant protecting your right to own firearms. our second amendment mattress to build strong communities and strong families and makes sure each of us have the right to defend ourselves precisely as our founders intended. liberals pretend to care about the poor and then they side with union bosses against the workers. they pretend to stand for children while kids in democrat-led inner cities aren't in front of computers like they think they are, they are struggling to stay safe from drug lords and get a meal. that is not america first leadership. that is not taking care of those people you are charged with

protecting. and we need to get everyone of our children back in school, and we need to get them back in now. [applause] i was a soldier 25, 30 years ago and about 100 pounds ago. and when i hear democrats say they want a strong america, i know they are working to undermine it, sadly. mark my words, they are going to gut the defense budget to pay for the green new deal. it makes me mad. they are going to trade army green for aoc green. that is a bad trade. as i said before, our young men and women, we don't want to put them in harm's way. we don't want them to go to work, but when we are weak at home and stand up for our military, the risk of war increases when deterrence fades. we can't let that happen. they want to defund the police

while they barricade the capitol? this is backwards. they want to censor our communications online, antithetical to what our founders understood about america. it reminds me, when i headed to west point, my parents couldn't afford to fly at new york so they left me at the airport. my mother was happy, all kinds of feelings. my mother was a cigarette smoking high school graduate who was the most decent and toughest woman i have ever met. [applause] she said, mike, she pulled me aside, didn't want my dad to hear this, michael, i know you are a grinder, don't ever let them wear you down, wear them down. [applause] i have never forgotten what my mom told me.

we will all remember, keep grinding, keep championing american values. one more story about an officer i came to know, air force special operations officer. i would ask him about someone on our team and i would say, what do think of him or her? and he would say, love that guy, nice hitter. he meant that person got stuff done. they were grinders. they kept banging away. you know that these four years are going to test us. i need each of you to be keep grinding and get stuff done. ba pipe hitter -- be a pipe hitter at church, at your pta meeting, don't let them being --

bring crazy enter classrooms. ba pip -- be a pipe hitter when they tell you they are closing the mine the factory because of some green vision. keep it open. president reagan, a real pipe hitter, president reagan got stuff done and he said, if we lose freedom here, if we lose freedom here, there is no place, this is the last stand on earth. i saw that as her secretary of state as i traveled around the world, and i am confident that he was right and i am confident that the american star will shine across the heavens so long as we keep a proper understanding of our god-given rights, the center of who we are , and we keep our quest to secure freedom for our people and for all of mankind. i will be with you in the fight. god bless you, and may god bless the united states of america. [applause]

♪ [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2021] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] ♪ >> he likes that. >> he's not too bad, is he? kevin mccarthy was in the back sayingee