Remarks by White House Chief of Staff and Archon REINCE PRIEBUS
“I’m just so honored to be here with everybody. Obviously, with our wonderful Archbishop, who took me in, in New York and we had that great meeting in 2011, His Eminence. Father Alex who, I think everyone in this room has benefitted from the wisdom of Father Alex and the friendship of Father Alex. Michael, his son, who also became very close to me over the last six years. I will tell you that the leadership of the Orthodox Church became woven into the fabric of the things that we did at the Republican National Committee. Maybe not all obviously policy-wise, but the integrity and the discipline of the Orthodox Church is something that everyone can learn from: attention to detail, checking boxes, doing things properly, doing things correctly. For those of you that have been altar boys as a young kid, you know what I’m talking about. And when you get brought in by a great priest, Father Peter at the Kimisis Tis Theotokous church in Racine, Father John, obviously, it started with Father Tzikas in New Jersey, his son became a priest in San Diego. He ended up baptizing my two nieces in San Diego, went to Florida, he’ll be at the ball tomorrow, as well as Father John. But, the Orthodox faith, and the discipline and the commitment to recognize that nothing is by accident. All of us didn’t get into this room by accident. Because God did, as John said, put his hands on all of us to be here. To bring us together. Nothing happens if it is not in God’s wiH. We are here because of God’s will. And, so now we need to take the opportunity that God has given us, and accomplish the goals that our great new President has talked about in making this country great again.
Let me tell you something that I think you’ll take from this that will matter to us here. We want to put the concept of religious freedom, our Patriarch, Constantinople, the recognition of the struggle of the Orthodox church front and center in this White House. I’d love to see the day that the President of the Untied States shows up in Constantinople, at the Patriarchate, and recognizes the oppression and the struggle, that really is not just a symbol for the Orthodox Church, but it is a symbol for people of faith around the world.
When you have Christians’ heads laying on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast, and you have ISIS gaining a foothold across the world, it’s no wonder why people across the world, people here in America, in the United Kingdom, throughout Europe, just wait, wait for Germany next, people are tired, they want someone to fight for them. People are hungry for somebody that is real. John talked about sixteen knock out punches. You know what? In the end it didn’t matter. Because you know what people are starving for in this country, in this world? They are starving for real. They are tired ofplasticized politicians, whether they are from Athens or whether they are from Washington, DC, plasticized doesn’t work anymore. Real does.
No matter where you’re from, and I’m proud that my son Jack, and I think Grace is here somewhere, my aunts and uncles from California and cousins, my wife Sally, my mother, my sister and brother-in-law, and very special guests, my Aunt Nellie and my cousin Harry from Greece are here (inaudible). But, in the end, it’s freedom. And it is what God put in our heart. God put the hunger for freedom in everybody’s heart. So when the Orthodox Church is feeling oppressed, it’s an oppression from freedom. When people are tired of Washington, when they want something to get done, they are hungry for freedom. Freedom to put more money in their pockets. Freedom to know that they can travel overseas and not get killed. The freedom that their sons and their daughters are going to be able to go to school and get a great education and job that can actually pay the loans, pay the mortgage, have a car to drive, put money away for your kids and your retirement. But people ask me, but what is this all about? I would encourage you, even if you go for fifteen minutes, do it. You drive past it. Go to the World War II Memorial. Go to the site. And just take fifteen minutes and walk around. You’ll see the quotes from Nimitz and Eisenhower and all of those heroes from the time. And you walk up to that wall. And you have those 4,000 golden stars on that wall. And you figure it out. For every one of those golden stars, for every one of the 4,000 golden stars, a hundred little guys, a little bigger than Jack, a hundred for every one, did not come home to mom and dad. And in front of those golden stars, in gold on the black granite, it says ‘Here we mark the price of freedom.’ Freedom (inaudible).
And lastly, let me just make a comment that some of you have heard before. But I want to just frame it in a way that I know you can all understand because it’s important. I walked into this job and it was a catastrophe. The Greek community, the Orthodox community, starting with the Archbishop, Father Alex, the Archon society, my good, good friend and like my uncle and second father John Catsimatidis took me under his wing and always said yes every time I called. This group of people here in this room is family. You helped save the Republican party.
You helped save the Republican party, to build the Republican National Committee, to put a ground game and a data operation in place so that a person that I believe is going to be an incredible president, in Donald Trump, who is going to be sworn in tomorrow. To not just save our party, but save our country but to bring freedom back. The reason he’s going to be successful is he’s going to be a person of his word. We’re going to talk about Obamacare, tax reform, things that we know the American people and the American worker are hungry for. If we become the party of the president of the American worker, people that work with their hands people that are skilled every day, we’ll never lose another election. What you all did, together as the Greek community, was extraordinary.
And lastly, let me just close with this, I don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for my papou, his name was Hercules, and that’s who I’m named after. This was the person who I looked up to the most of any person in my life. I don’t really know how it all happened but for you guys out there that remember your grandfathers. There, for whatever reason, whatever they did, you wanted to be alike. Anything. The notes, the papers, the routines that he would go through. I just wanted to be like him.
And I remember the days where we would go, or he would come for a couple months, because you know the Greeks don’t come for two weeks, it’s a three month deal, right? They’re living with you. He would come for three months and, for whatever reason, I remember he would take the encyclopedias off the shelf. He would just read the World Book. He would take the letter P off the shelf for president and start flipping through those
presidents. And it didn’t matter, Republican or Democrat, every one of them was a hero, to him, the person I looked up to. But the thing that I took from that was that it didn’t matter who it was, but, and he wasn’t from this country, but he loved every single crumb and morsel about the United States of America. So as a little guy, the person I looked up to most, my papou, loved somewhere he wasn’t from the most and it made me proud to be an American. And I’ll never forget that and I’ll never forget the folks here. Father Alex, the Archbishop, John, Gus my friend who took me in on Capitol Hill. You made this happen. But, ultimately, we know that God made this happen. The Lord made this happen. And we couldn’t be here without him (inaudible). With that, thank you and God bless you.”
