In battleground NC, JD Vance rallies supporters on immigration and economy
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance took the stage at Raleigh’s Union Station on Wednesday afternoon to criticize Vice President Kamala Harris’ record, particularly on energy and the economy.
He also spoke at length about illegal immigration and said that “we are allowed, under the First Amendment to this country, to tell our leaders that they’re doing a bad job,” and “we’re allowed, Kamala Harris, to tell you, you can’t jack up the cost of housing by giving foreigners homes instead of American citizens. We’re not bad people for loving this country.”
Throughout his speech, Vance blamed the increased cost of housing in the U.S. on immigrants in the country without legal authorization — something he has done on numerous occasions, calling for mass deportations. Home prices spiked during the pandemic and have remained high. Economists who spoke with Forbes cited the need for mortgage rates to cool off and inventory to grow for prices to drop.
Vance, an Ohio senator, said Harris “is a dangerous San Francisco liberal now pretending that she is a moderate. But the record, ladies and gentlemen, speaks for itself. Don’t we know exactly who Kamala Harris is because she’s been governing that way for the last three and a half years?” he said. Harris was formerly the district attorney for San Francisco, the attorney general of California and a senator.
“She pretends now that she supports American energy, but for the last three and a half years, they have increased regulations on American energy, they refused to do permitting reform, they refused to do anything that would actually allow our great American energy producers to do their job, to lower prices,” he said.
Harris embraced U.S. oil and gas production during the presidential debate with Trump, who has been aggressively pro-fossil fuels.
Vance also tied energy policy to Harris’s economic policy, saying the cost of living is up in North Carolina and the way to lower costs on American consumers “really is, drill, baby, drill.” Rally-goers started chanting “drill, baby, drill.”
Vance said Harris “is practically just running on the Trump agenda right now.”
Vance took questions from reporters, after saying during his speech that he believes “that if you want to be the American people’s president, you ought not be afraid of friendly American media. And that’s exactly what they are, of course, to Kamala Harris.”
Harris has done a joint interview on CNN with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz but has faced scrutiny over lacking accessibility to media.
Shifting to foreign policy, he questioned how Harris would work with American adversaries if “she won’t even sit down for a friendly media interview?”
After accusing Harris of talking too much about her past in response to policy questions, he began speaking on his own past, saying he grew “up in a family where we very often lived paycheck to paycheck.”
He said he believed “if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to afford a good life in the country that your parents and grandparents built.” But he said, Harris made it harder to build homes. He said housing prices went up because interest rates have gone up and because of the Biden-Harris administration allowing people in the country illegally.
“We gotta get ‘em out of here,” he said.
“I think it’s the most disgraceful thing that Kamala Harris has done this cycle, is not just flood this country with cheap labor and people who are competing with you for homes, but to then tell you that you’re a bad person for daring to speak up and to have a voice about what’s going on in your own country,” he said.
“What’s interesting about it is that very often, the people who have suffered the most from Kamala Harris’s open borders are people of Latino descent, or they’re Black Americans whose family has been in this country for nine or 10 generations,” he said.
People starting chanting “build the wall.”
Vance also claimed Harris “wants to bankrupt Medicare by giving Medicare to illegal aliens.”
Harris co-sponsored in 2017 a “Medicare for All” proposal that would have established a national health insurance program and would have covered all U.S. citizens.
The GOP has previously cited a Harris interview as proof of her support for coverage to those in the country illegally. In the interview, speaking on Medicare for All, Harris said she was “opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.”
Joined by NC Republicans
The program kicked off with state Republican Party Chair Jason Simmons and retired U.S. Army Colonel Alan Swain, who is running to represent North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District.
Simmons spoke on the need to vote, encouraging people to get friends and family to head to the polls.
“We have great candidates up and down the ballot and back up again that are depending on you to make sure” they get elected, he said, including Trump and the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
“We’ve got a fight in front of us. We’ve got a task. You know the challenges that our country is facing. You see what’s going on. You see the out-of-control prices. You see what’s happening at our southern border,” he said.
The GOP candidate for lieutenant governor, Republican Hal Weatherman, spoke shortly after Simmons. “I love America but I’m afraid we’re falling from within,” he said, citing train derailments, rolling blackouts, attacks on electrical substations and actions by China.
Immigration, economy key issues
In answering questions from reporters, Vance:
▪ touted Trump’s plan to eliminate taxes on Social Security income.
▪ called for expanding natural gas pipelines.
▪ spoke on the need to manufacture more products and grow more food in the United States.
Asked how this increased production could occur while deporting migrant workers, Vance said, “if you talk to farmers, farmers are as upset about the open borders as almost anybody else.”
“I reject the idea that the only way to have a productive farm economy is to allow 25 million illegal aliens into this country.”
Asked about a plan for health care, Vance said health care “works really well for most Americans and it works really poorly for a lot.”
“We’re going to actually implement some regulatory reform in the health care system that allows people to choose a health care plan that works for them,” he said.
Questioned about what a Trump-Vance administration would do with the Haitian migrants in Ohio who arrived legally, Vance said Harris used mass parole and temporary protective status “to wave a wand and to say, we’re not going to deport those people here.”
“Well, if Kamala Harris waves the wand illegally and says these people are now here legally, I’m still going to call them an illegal alien,” he said. He said parole under law can be used on a “case by case” basis and not en masse.
Battleground state
Vance’s visit comes as the Trump campaign attempts to shore up support in North Carolina, a critical battleground state. Despite initially leading in the polls, Trump’s support began to drop after the change at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Trump himself will speak in Wilmington on Saturday, marking his fifth trip to the state since Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee.
Vance’s visit to Raleigh is his fourth trip to North Carolina since becoming Trump’s running mate. In August, he rallied with Trump in Asheboro. He has visited Greenville twice this month, for a private fundraiser and an East Carolina University game.
The rally comes just days after a second alleged assassination attempt on Trump. A North Carolina man, Ryan Routh, was arrested in connection with the incident.
As supporters filled the station, several told The News & Observer that immigration and the economy were the key issues driving them to support Trump.
“I’ve lived through both administrations and I don’t think our economy will do well under another four more years of basically Biden’s policies,” Christian Lockamy, a Raleigh-based graphics designer, said.
He cited Harris’ decisive vote in passing the Inflation Reduction Act as one of the reasons he opposes her candidacy.
Aura and Christopher Kenney, a couple based in Cary, said they’d never been to a campaign rally like this before, but they were excited to see Vance. Aura said she’d just finished reading his book, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“He seems genuine, for sure, he seems like he’s bold,” Christopher Kenney said. “He came from nothing and really made something out of his life — and he’s a fighter.”
Republicans for Harris call Trump a ‘threat to our democracy’ ahead of rally
Prior to Vance’s rally, the Harris campaign held a virtual press conference featuring Republicans who say they’ll vote for her over Trump.
Robert Brown, a High Point attorney who served as the North Carolina state director for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said he didn’t agree with Harris on everything, but he did agree that Trump and Vance are “wrong for our country.”
“I’m speaking directly to Republicans when I say that Donald Trump poses a great threat to our democracy and to our economy — and those are things that we may never recover from if he’s elected,” he said.
Former Illinois Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh said more Republicans are abandoning Trump and supporting Harris instead.
“The Trump-Vance ticket is all about dividing us,” Walsh said. “...There’s overwhelming opposition among a lot of Republicans nationally and locally, and the movement is growing everyday.”
Washington correspondent Danielle Battaglia contributed to this report.
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