Vice President Vance’s Claremont Institute Speech: Complete Annotated Transcript

Plus: Marketplace on declining rents

Vice President Vance speaking to the Claremont Institute (Via YouTube).

Vice President Vance gave a speech July 5, 2025, accepting the Claremont Institute’s Statesmanship Award. You can watch it on YouTube (34 minutes, ten seconds at normal speed) or read the transcript (about 5,000 words) below. I’ve annotated the transcript in brackets below.

It’s newsworthy because Vance is a possible successor to President Trump and, like Trump, has a tendency to speak more directly than typical politicians and in ways that can be unconventional.

There are at least six ways it is noteworthy:

1. There’s an extended discussion of the moon landing. This was a Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon government scientific project so it’s a bit surprising to see Vance dwell on it.

2. There’s an extended discussion of what it means to be an American. This is something that Vance addressed briefly in his 2024 Republican National Convention speech. It’s become a contested issue, at least for Vance and his circle. It’s higher-level-of-abstraction stuff than details about tariff rates or immigration enforcement, and it gets into some more philosophical questions.

3. There’s a negative reference to the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group that fights antisemitism. The National Education Association, a teachers union, has also been in the news lately for a resolution that is negative about the ADL. In any event, given the outbreak of antisemitism in the U.S. and worldwide, Vance may want to leave the ADL-bashing to the teacher union rather than piling on himself.

4. There’s a lot of talk about Zohran Mamdani, the Israel-hating socialist who is the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City. Republicans seem more than pleased to elevate Mamdani as a kind of national spokesman for the Democrats.

5. Some of the people Vance bashes—“Big Pharma lobbyists,” “pharma companies,” derivatives traders, “the 30 years of failed GOP politicians during my lifetime”—used to be Republican voters, not targets.

6. There’s a mixed message on immigration, with Vance both praising it—“I believe, and my own story is a testament to that, that yes, immigration can enrich the United States of America”— and condemning it, claiming, “It’s hard to become neighbors with your fellow citizens when your own government keeps on importing new neighbors every single year at a record number.”

Anyway, here is the transcript and my commentary: