JD Vance, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate for the November presidential election, said in his speech on Wednesday night (17) that a Republican government will prioritize the working class and asked allied countries to share the burden of maintaining peace in the world.
After accepting Trump’s nomination as vice presidential candidate, Vance called on the Republican National Convention, gathered at a large sports complex in Milwaukee, to “choose a new path.”
Vance, 39, was applauded by Republican delegates as Donald Trump watched, who was in a box, still with a bandage on his right ear, after being injured last Saturday during an assassination attempt.
In his speech, Vance praised Trump’s “extraordinary vision,” called for applause for his mother, a former addict who has been “abstinent for 10 years,” and paid tribute to his late grandmother, the woman who raised him and who owned 19 firearms.
– Workers vs. Wall Street –
Raised in a declining industrial region of America, Vance served in the Marine Corps and graduated from Yale Law School. He spent time in Silicon Valley and in 2022 won the Senate election from Ohio, with Trump’s support.
Vance rose to fame in 2016 with his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” a story about his white working-class Appalachian family in the so-called Rust Belt, a deteriorating industrial region in the Northeast and Midwest.
“It’s hard to imagine a more powerful example of the American dream,” his wife, Usha Chilukuri Vance, who spoke before Vance and embraced him onstage, said Wednesday.
And one of the first topics he addressed in his speech was, precisely, support for workers.
“We are done, ladies and gentlemen, with catering to Wall Street. We are going to commit to the worker,” he declared, before accusing President Joe Biden of making the country “more fragile and poorer.”
“The import of foreign labor is over. We will fight for American citizens, their jobs and their wages,” he said.
“We will protect the wages of American workers and we will prevent the Chinese Communist Party from building its middle class on the backs of American citizens,” he added.
The Ohio conservative, who turns 40 next month, will be the third-youngest vice president in history — and one of the least experienced — if Trump secures victory in November.
Vance was a vocal critic of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. Now, he is a leading proponent of the far-right MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) ideology.
– Diplomacy and migration –
Tall, bearded and with blue eyes, he is a vocal critic of aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Without directly mentioning the issue, he vowed on Wednesday to ensure that Washington’s allies “share the burden of maintaining peace in the world.”
“No more free travel to nations that betray the generosity of American taxpayers,” he added.
Critical of the wave of migration affecting the United States, Vance also accused the Democratic government of having “flooded the country with millions of illegal immigrants”.
An advocate of closed borders and isolationism, Vance is descended from Scots-Irish migrants and his wife, with whom he has three children, has Indian roots.
– Extremist agenda –
His comments were criticized by President Joe Biden’s campaign team.
“Backed by Silicon Valley and the billionaires who bought his VP pick, Vance is Project 2025 in human form: an agenda that puts extremism and the very wealthy ahead of our democracy,” a Democratic source said.
“It’s working families and the middle class who will suffer if he wins,” he added.
Earlier, at a meeting on the sidelines of the convention, Vance highlighted the former president’s courage after surviving an assassination attempt during a rally in Pennsylvania.
A gunman, who was neutralized, opened fire on Trump and injured the former president’s right ear.
“I thought we had just lost a great president, which would be terrible for our country (…) Was Trump upset? He called for national unity, he called for calm, he showed leadership, and the media keeps saying they want someone to tone it down. They took shots at Donald Trump and he tone it down. That’s what a true leader does,” Vance said.
The vice presidential candidate said that “the media has lied in the most aggressive and slanderous way” about his boss, but that “he continues to move forward, persevere and fight.”
Republican convention delegates unanimously nominated Trump as their presidential candidate on Monday.
The businessman will give a speech on Thursday, when he will accept the party’s nomination in front of almost 50,000 Republicans who have gathered since Monday in Milwaukee.
After the convention, Trump will travel to Michigan for a rally on Saturday, a week after the assassination attempt.
2024-07-18 12:06:46