Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the Republican vice presidential nominee for 2024, told Breitbart News exclusively that he chose Merle Haggard’s “America First” as his walk-out song at the event because it “captures the themes” of a cause he believes in “more than any song I’ve ever heard.”
Vance, who performed the song at multiple appearances at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, including during his rousing acceptance speech on Wednesday night, had actually been using it as his exit song at major events since his 2022 U.S. Senate campaign. But the song reached an entirely new level and appeal to a much wider audience this summer when Vance performed it at the RNC after former President Donald Trump, who will again be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, selected Vance as his running mate.
“I love the opening lyric: ‘Why don’t we liberate the United States? They’re the ones who need it most,'” Vance told Breitbart News last week in his first print interview since becoming the vice presidential candidate. “And it’s really saying, why don’t we stop using the American military to bring freedom and democracy to the far corners of the world? Why don’t we bring freedom and democracy to our own country first and focus on rebuilding our own country before we look at the problems in other parts of the world? We have veterans who sleep under bridges and on park benches in this country, and we take in 20 million illegal immigrants and give them luxury hotel rooms in New York City. It’s a total insult to all the people who actually served this country and love this country. And I think this whole movement is about getting American leaders to put the people first. And I think this song expresses that theme better than any song I’ve ever heard.”
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What’s interesting about Haggard’s 2005 song is that it criticizes the Iraq War, one of the key events under the administration of former President George W. Bush, the last Republican president before Trump, and the lyrics clearly state that the United States should withdraw from Iraq. Vance criticized the Iraq War in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention as vice presidential candidate, something that would have been unthinkable at the Republican convention just a few years ago. When asked about this and how the Republican Party has changed so much, Vance replied, “Exactly.” He went on to say that Trump has been right about many of the things that globalists have been wrong about throughout his life, adding that this election is an “opportunity” to return to the Oval Office someone with the “foresight and wisdom” to see the globalist “catastrophe” coming and prevent it.
“Our party is the party of President Donald Trump and no one else,” Vance said. “I think the transformation is complete. Eight years ago at the Republican National Convention, there were a lot of people who were skeptical of the party’s nominee, but in 2024 we saw extreme unity around the party’s nominee. President Trump deserves a lot of credit for being right about some of the great disasters that the globalists have led us into over the years. He was right about NAFTA, they were wrong. He was right about not letting China get a sweet trade deal, they were wrong. He was right about not invading Iraq, they were wrong. I think it’s really important that over the 40-plus years that this guy was not in public office, or at least not a political leader, he had the foresight to actually know when American leaders were leading us into disaster. I think what we want in a president of the United States is someone who had the foresight and wisdom to see that these disasters were coming. That’s exactly what you want in a political leader. Unfortunately, for most of my lifetime, we didn’t have that kind of person. But now we have it. We have a chance to bring it back to the Oval Office, and of course that’s what our campaign is about.”
Merle Haggard’s “America First” played as J.D. Vance and his wife, Usha, entered the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee shortly after Vance was named President Trump’s 2024 vice presidential running mate. pic.twitter.com/dNpCArYr6N
— American Conservative (@amconmag) July 15, 2024
Senator J.D. Vance comes on at the Republican National Convention to the tune of Merle Haggard’s “America First” as the crowd chants “JD! JD! JD!”
— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) July 18, 2024
Interestingly, in his first weeks as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Democrats tried to portray Vance as a “knockout” or an extremist, but in his two years as a senator, he has a deep and serious bipartisan record of working with Democrats to advance an agenda that includes rail safety and other infrastructure priorities after the East Palestine, Ohio derailment, banking regulation after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and other banks by Democratic President Joe Biden and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, and protecting American manufacturing jobs from overseas globalist predators that Biden and Harris have empowered. When asked about this bipartisan record, Vance said he praises it because it’s “common sense.”
“I don’t think we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas when we have problems at home,” Vance said. “I don’t think we should be able to allow CEOs of major banks to fail their banks, then demand taxpayer bailouts, and then pay themselves huge bonuses. If taxpayers have to bail them out, they should pay back some of those bonuses. I don’t think a trade policy that moves manufacturing jobs to our biggest enemy country is rational. These are actually bipartisan issues, and as you say, I could work with Democrats on these issues. Of course, the media thinks it’s radical to put your own people first, but I happen to think it’s common sense, and I think most Americans would agree.”
