This excerpt from a speech at the Republican National Convention by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), former President Donald Trump’s vice presidential nominee, focuses on populist themes that run deep in the heart of America.
“My message to the American people is that we should be governed by a party that is not afraid to debate and come up with the best solutions,” Vance said in prepared remarks.
That is what the Republican Party will be for the next four years — a party united in love for America and committed to free speech and the free exchange of ideas. So tonight, I stand here humbled and grateful to formally accept my nomination for Vice President of the United States.
Vance’s comments are reminiscent of his famous childhood story. The New York Times Bestselling memoir, Hillbilly EleganceFrom his experience growing up in economic despair in a small town in southeast Ohio.
“I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built their towns with their own hands, and loved God, their families, their community and their country with all their hearts,” Vance said, “but it was also a place that had been abandoned and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”
When I was in the fourth grade, a politician named Joe Biden supported NAFTA, the bad trade deal that cost countless good American manufacturing jobs their jobs in Mexico.
When I was a sophomore in high school, a politician named Joe Biden made sweet trade deals with China that destroyed even more good middle-class jobs. And when I was a senior in high school, Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq. And every step of the way, jobs were shipped overseas and children were sent to war in small towns like mine in Ohio, and next door in Pennsylvania, and in Michigan, and other states across the country.
Vance’s comments praise Trump’s longstanding opposition to job-killing international free trade agreements.
“Somehow, Donald Trump, a real estate developer from New York, was right on all these issues and Joe Biden was wrong,” Vance’s statement read. “Donald Trump knew even then that we needed a leader who would put America first.”
“Because of the policies put in place by Biden and naive politicians in Washington, our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, cheap foreign labor, and, over the next few decades, deadly Chinese-made fentanyl,” Vance’s statement continued. “Joe Biden failed, and my community paid the price.”
Things weren’t going well for a lot of the kids I grew up with. Every now and then, I’ll get a call from a relative back home asking, “Did you know so-and-so?” And I’ll remember a face from years ago. And then I’ll hear, “He died of a drug overdose.”
As always, America’s ruling class wrote the check and communities like mine paid the price.
For decades, the gulf between the few who enjoy power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us has only widened. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnant wages, those who govern this country have repeatedly failed.
That was, until President Donald J. Trump came along.
Vance’s comments also blast Wall Street bigwigs who have benefited from record inflation, soaring home prices and economic decline under the Biden administration.
“A few months ago I overheard a young family talk about how their parents’ generation, the Baby Boomers, were able to afford to buy a home when they first started working. ‘But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to buy a home,’ they said sadly,” Vance said.
The skyrocketing price of housing is the result of so many failures in American leadership. And I can explain exactly how it happened. Wall Street bigwigs crashed the economy and America’s builders went out of business. Home construction ground to a halt as craftsmen competed for work. A shortage of good jobs led to stagnant wages.
Then Democrats let illegal immigrants flood the country, so people had to compete for precious housing with people who shouldn’t be here. Joe Biden’s inflation crisis is actually a home affordability crisis. Many people of the generation I grew up with can’t afford to pay high prices for groceries, gas, and rent. And Joe Biden’s economy gave them exactly that. So prices soared and dreams were shattered. And China and the drug cartels pumped fentanyl across the border, adding an addictive edge to the heartache.
Vance ended his remarks with a hopeful message about rebuilding the country under a future Trump administration.
President Trump’s vision is simple: We don’t cater to Wall Street, we work for workers. We don’t import foreign labor, we fight for the American people. We don’t buy energy from countries that hate us, we get it directly from American workers. We don’t sacrifice supply chains for unlimited global trade, we put a Made in America stamp on every product that’s made in America. We get our factories built again, making real products made by American workers for American families.
“Together, we will protect the wages of American workers, union and non-union, and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building a middle class at the expense of hardworking Americans,” he continued.
“Together, we will hold our allies to share the burden of ensuring world peace. We will no longer allow a free ride from nations that betray the generosity of American taxpayers. Together, we will send our boys to war only when necessary,” Vance’s statement read. “But when we hit, we hit hard, as President Trump has shown by taking out ISIS. Together, we will put the American people first, regardless of the color of their skin.”
“The bottom line is, we’re going to make America great again,” Vance said.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter. here.
