J.D. Vance bashes Harris, Walz during campaign stop in south Philly
U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance speaks at a rally in south Philadelphia on Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, during his first visit to Pennsylvania since former President Donald Trump selected Vance as his running mate. (Capital-Star photo by Peter Hall)
PHILADELPHIA — U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) heaped blame on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris for crime and economic issues he claimed stem from the Biden administration’s border policy in his first visit to Pennsylvania as former President Donald Trump’s running mate.
At a rally where Vance took questions from reporters Tuesday in south Philadelphia, Vance was also critical of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who Harris announced hours earlier would be her choice for vice president.
Vance said Walz’s record on transgender health care, protecting American jobs and handling of the civil unrest in Minneapolis after a city police officer murdered George Floyd would not endear him to voters in Philadelphia.
“Do you think the Black business leaders in Minneapolis are grateful, the working class business leaders are grateful, that Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down their businesses?” Vance said when asked for his thoughts on Harris’ choice. “There’s no way the American people are going to buy it.”
Vance said Harris’ decision to run with Walz is illustrative of what he and Trump have characterized as her “dangerously liberal” policies.
“When given an opportunity, she fits the needs of the most radical elements of her party. That’s exactly what she did here. That’s what she’s going to keep doing as president,” Vance said.
Vance, who built his brand on his working-class upbringing in rural Appalachia, was touted as a vice presidential nominee whose story would resonate with voters in rust-belt swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
Addressing a crowd of about 350 people, Vance spoke about his childhood with a mother who struggled with addiction and is now nearing 10 years in recovery, recalling that he prayed for her to wake up after an overdose. At the start of his talk, Vance allowed two local families who had encountered similar struggles with addiction to share their stories of pain, hope and eventual loss.
Denise Trask, with her husband Mike by her side, spoke about the death of their daughter Jackie as a result of an overdose on heroin laced with fentanyl when she relapsed after two years in recovery.
“The fentanyl that is flooding into our country, our cities, and our neighborhoods is killing thousands and thousands of people every day,” Denise Trask said. “We’re losing our loved ones at an alarming rate.”
Overdose deaths in the United States, including those involving opioids and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, decreased 3% to 107,543 in 2023, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
And although Trump and other Republicans have blamed U.S. border policy for allowing trafficking from Mexico, fentanyl enters the United States through U.S. ports of entry from a variety of sources that also include China, India and Canada, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
“I’ve got to admire the courage of the two families behind me, but I have to ask why is it necessary? Why are they suffering?” Vance asked. “The answer is because we have a leadership that is failing.”
Vance on Tuesday claimed Harris was responsible for actions to “open the southern border.”
“I want the leadership to make our streets safe where our kids can make a mistake without it taking their lives. I want a nation where the leaders put the interests of our citizens first and I want Donald J. Trump back in the White House,” Vance said.
Republicans have falsely labeled Harris as the Biden administration’s “border czar,” according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit political watchdog FactCheck.org. Harris was, in fact, responsible for a diplomatic mission to the nations where migrants originate and pass through to address the root causes of migration and improve those nations’ border enforcement.
With Pennsylvania considered a must-win for either party, the Trump campaign said it would “park” the first-term senator in Pennsylvania for the final months of the campaign.
Harris spoke at Temple University’s Liacouras Center arena Tuesday evening, where she formally introduced Walz. Vance’s schedule for this week closely tracks Harris’ with both set to speak in Wisconsin and Michigan later this week.
Noting that Harris has not given an interview since before President Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign July 21, Vance said his strategy would be simple.
“We know that there are six or seven states that will decide this election. We think it is shameful that Kamala Harris is running from tough questions from the media,” Vance said. “So I’m going to go to every single battleground state that I can and I’m going to answer tough questions and talk to people because that is the minimum you should do if you want to be president or vice president.”
Trump lost his reelection bid in 2020 by a 64% margin in Philadelphia, although he won more than a dozen precincts in traditionally working-class south Philly as well as other parts of the city.
Harris’ campaign said Monday that Vance’s appearance was unlikely to smooth things over with Philadelphia voters.
“Philly voters rejected Trump in 2020 because he failed them as president, presiding over record-high unemployment, overseeing all-time high levels of gun violence in Philly, and sending uninsured rates soaring while giving massive handouts to billionaires and big corporations,” the campaign’s Pennsylvania spokesperson Jack Doyle said in a statement.
Doyle added that Pennsylvania voters will reject the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan, which is described as a deeply conservative plan for the transition to a second Trump administration. Vance has worked to distance himself from the 1,000 page document and Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts in the last week after the Associated Press reported Vance had authored the foreword to Robert’s upcoming book “Dawn’s Early Light.”
Trump has claimed that he has nothing to do with Project 2025 and doesn’t know its authors, but CNN reported at least 140 people who worked in Trump’s first administration were involved in the document’s production.
Vance, a venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” a memoir of growing up with a troubled family in small-town Ohio, emerged into politics as a vocal critic of Trump. Vance described himself in 2016 as a “Never Trump” guy and the former president as “cultural heroin” for offering empty promises to solve the nation’s problems.
By the time Vance ran for U.S. Senate in 2022, his views had evolved enough to overcome suspicion among members of his party and earn the support of national GOP groups that bankrolled his campaign. He defeated Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and vaulted beyond his freshman status in the Senate as an ardent advocate for Trump’s policies in Congress.
Update: This story was updated at 2 p.m. August 6, 2024 and again at 4:40 p.m. with additional details from the rally.