A viral video released Monday shows Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) talking about his childhood in Middletown, Ohio, emphasizing that he is from the area he wants to represent. Contains content.
Republican strategist Andrew Slavian published the video on .
“This is it,” Slavian's JD Vance posted, adding the hashtag “#HillbillyEnergy,” a play on Vance's words. bestseller Hillbilly Elegy:
I think the world that I grew up in was really the first time in American history that my parents' generation didn't necessarily expect their children to have a better life than they did. . And I've seen it in all sorts of different ways, but the feeling I had growing up in Middletown in the 1990s was that a lot of people didn't expect the future to be better than the past. It's truly unique and truly amazing. Tragic thing.
Jobs have been lost from Middletown, once one of the nation's largest manufacturing cities, while drugs and “despair” have become more prominent, Vance said.
Attention — Vance: Media and Harris campaign 'call Springfield residents racist':
“I wrote 'Hillbilly Elegy' because I wanted to tell people what it was like to live in a community like mine. Too many stories about white working-class Americans “I didn't think that was being talked about,” he said.
“I didn't think that a lot of stores weren't informed about people who are struggling with some of the issues that we have, like unemployment and drug addiction,” he continued. “And I thought maybe I could tell a story that would help people understand my family a little better. IIn the process, understand the struggles of many families. ”
Vance added that the nation has to start actually electing people from the communities it wants to represent in Washington, D.C.
“I'm from a place that I want to represent, and what we need is to stop sending people from the D.C. swamp. We're sending people from places that we want to represent. We need to,” he concluded.
