VALDOSTA, Georgia — Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), former President Donald Trump’s running mate on the Republican presidential ticket, told Breitbart News exclusively here on Thursday that Democrats cannot win over working-class people with substance-free platitudes such as the camouflage hats that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz are peddling.
“The Democrats reveal how little they know about working people in this country because all of their changes are stylistic and there is nothing substantive,” Vance told Breitbart News. “Their solution to losing working class voters, to losing rural voters, to losing veterans is to sell camo hats with Kamala Harris’s and Tim Walz’s name on them. I think if they really want to reach out to veterans they might have selected somebody who didn’t lie about their military service record before running on the Democratic ticket. If they want to reach out to working class Americans, they could do things that protect our manufacturing jobs from theft by the Chinese. They could pursue energy policies that drive down the cost of manufacturing and drive down the cost of energy for American workers. Instead, they’re trying to do this stylistic rebrand where they wear camo hats but it’s the same old policies of the Democratic Party that have been very, very bad for working people for a generation.”
Capping off the night. https://t.co/pgF98PaOLr pic.twitter.com/DwAQ4hoKkY
— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) August 7, 2024
When it comes to the actual policies they are pushing, Vance said Harris and Walz would devastate working-class Americans. Harris said in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) shortly after this interview that she would oppose tariffs on imports of key products, thereby undercutting American workers, and she and Walz have both made clear they want to codify the importation of millions upon millions of migrants every year that would take jobs from U.S. workers. She also supports banning fracking — an anonymous Harris campaign aide said she changed her view on this but Harris herself has not confirmed that or explained anything on this — thereby undercutting energy production in the U.S. and driving prices up. That’s not to mention Harris’s consistent and continued support for electric vehicle production, which only benefits China and crushes American auto workers.
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Vance, in his interview with Breitbart News here at the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office where he received a briefing on drug trafficking, also reacted to Walz in his DNC speech last Wednesday attacking him for going to Yale Law School. Vance’s personal story of course is powerful — he rose from poverty in Appalachia to make it to the highest levels of U.S. politics — but Walz’s efforts to smear Vance living the American dream, while surrounded by people speaking at the DNC who attended Yale and other Ivy League schools themselves, is hypocritical in the extreme.
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“It’s funny — Tim Walz is surrounded by a bunch of people who went to Yale and a bunch of people born with silver spoons in their mouths,” Vance told Breitbart News. “And he wants to attack me for getting an education. I’m not ashamed for being able to live the American dream. I mostly see it as a testament to the sacrifice of my grandmother and the people who raised me and made me who I was. I don’t think we should make people feel ashamed for sacrificing for their kids and their grandkids. If Tim Walz wants to attack my education story he’s more than welcome to attack it.”
Vance then lit up Walz for supporting a running mate who wants to decimate working people with illegal immigration, crime, drugs, and economic policies that make food and health care unaffordable.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, right, and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at a campaign rally on August 10, 2024, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson)
“My question for Tim Walz is why is the person you’re running with, Kamala Harris, supporting policies that make it harder for American children to live the American dream and make it harder for American parents to afford groceries and health care?” Vance said. “That’s the actual conversation we should be having in this country. What’s going on politically I think is they must have seen something in some polling or something, or some focus group that if he can attack me as some out-of-touch elitist it’s somehow going to trick people into forgetting that Kamala Harris has been horrible for working-class Americans. It’s the working class that suffers when you import 20 million illegal aliens and undercut their wages. It’s the working class that suffers when you flood their communities with fentanyl. That’s what I’m focused about, not some stupid quip from Tim Walz.”
More from Vance’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News is forthcoming.