(Milwaukee) JD Vance posed as the defender of an America forgotten by its political and economic elites Wednesday night during his speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee.
Accepting his party’s nomination as vice presidential candidate, the Ohio senator also thanked fate for allowing Donald Trump to survive an assassination attempt.
“As we gather tonight, we cannot forget that this evening could have been very different,” he said after receiving a warm welcome. “Instead of a day of celebration, it could have been a day of sorrow and mourning.”
And he praised the former president’s response to the attack that nearly cost him his life.
PHOTO JEENAH MOON, REUTERS
JD Vance speaking at the Republican convention in Milwaukee.
“Think about the lies they told you about Donald Trump. Then look at the picture of him standing there defiantly with his fist in the air. When Donald J. Trump stood up in that Pennsylvania field, all of America stood up with him. And what did he ask us to do for our country? To fight. To fight for America,” he said.
“They accused him of being a tyrant,” he added. “They said he had to be stopped at all costs. But what was his response? He called for national unity after an assassin nearly took his life.”
At 39 and less than two years in the Senate, J.D. Vance is one of the youngest and most inexperienced vice presidential candidates in American history. He used his speech to introduce himself to those who may not have read his 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegyor the film that was made from it, which tells the story of how he overcame a childhood marked by poverty, abuse and his mother’s drug addiction.
“Never in my wildest imagination would I have believed that I would be here tonight,” he said. “I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke plainly, built with their hands, and loved their God, their family, their community, and their country with all their hearts. But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by the American ruling class in Washington.”
JD Vance denounced Joe Biden’s role in trade deals that he said have devastated American cities like Middletown. He also discussed the president’s support for the Iraq War.
“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician named Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good American manufacturing jobs to Mexico. When I was a sophomore in high school, a career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweet trade deal that destroyed even more middle-class jobs. And when I was a senior in high school, Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.
“And at every step, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan and other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war.”
“From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnant wages, this country’s leaders have failed and failed again,” he added.
In contrast, JD Vance portrayed Donald Trump as “America’s last hope to restore what, once lost, may never be regained: a country where a working-class child, born far from the halls of power, can step onto that stage.”
PHOTO J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
JD Vance and his mother Beverly Vance
During his speech, Vance acknowledged his mother, who was in the audience, saying that her fight and that of Donald Trump were aimed in part at helping single mothers like hers, “who have struggled with money and addiction, but never gave up.”
“And I’m proud to say that tonight, my mother is here, sober for 10 years,” he added.
He also spoke about his grandmother, his “Mamaw,” who raised him and who died before he left to serve in Iraq with the Marine Corps. (He later attended Ohio State University and Yale Law School before practicing law and becoming a venture capitalist in San Francisco.)
“When we went through her belongings, we found 19 loaded handguns, and they were hidden all over her house – under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer… We realized that toward the end of her life, Mamaw wasn’t getting around very well. So this frail old woman made sure that wherever she was, she had what she needed to defend her family,” he said.
The crowd roared at the gun story.
After entering the Finserv Forum to the rhythm of James Brown’s song It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s WorldDonald Trump attended his running mate’s speech from the podium reserved for his family and favorites.
His running mate summed up his protectionist, isolationist and populist philosophy.
“We’ve heard about the bad guys and the bad guys. But let me tell you about the future,” Vance said. “President Trump’s vision is simple: We won’t cater to Wall Street, we’ll fight for working people. We won’t import foreign labor, we’ll fight for American citizens. We won’t buy energy from countries that hate us, we’ll have it produced right here by American workers.”
“We will not sacrifice our supply chains for the sake of unrestricted global trade, we will put MADE IN THE USA on every product [Fabriqué aux États-Unis]. We will build factories again, we will put people to work making REAL products for American families, made by American workers. Together, we will protect the wages of American workers, union and non-union, and we will stop the Chinese Communist Party from building THEIR middle class on the backs of OUR hardworking citizens.
PHOTO PAUL SANCYA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Donald Trump attended the Republican convention again on Wednesday night.
Vance was preceded at the microphone by his wife, Usha Vance, a lawyer he met at Yale University, and by Donald Trump Jr., one of the most important promoters of his candidacy along with entrepreneur Elon Musk and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, among others.
The Republican convention will conclude Thursday night when Donald Trump accepts his party’s nomination for president for the third time. The former president will address delegates and his fellow citizens at a critical moment in American history.
According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released Wednesday, as many as 80 percent of voters – including a similar proportion of Democrats and Republicans – agree after the attempted assassination of the former president that “the country is spiraling out of control.”
The barometer also indicates that last Saturday’s attack does not seem to have had a major impact on the race for the White House. The Republican candidate has won 43% of voting intentions against 41% for his Democratic rival, an advantage that is within the poll’s margin of error of three percentage points.