PHOENIX, Arizona – Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, concluded his visit to Phoenix Thursday with several stops, including a large rally at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.
His speech focused mainly on border security and Vice President Kamala Harris’s poor record as border czar. Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda and former GOP gubernatorial candidate Karrin Taylor Robson also spoke at the event.
JD Vance brought his entire family with him on the trip: his wife, Usha Vance, their three young children, and their German Shepherd. He joked, “I’ll tell you, after about 15 minutes this morning in the Arizona heat, [my children] were all tapped out.”
He said, “I want to talk a little bit about the border, my friends, because you guys see it more than anybody else. The American Southern border is a disaster, and we’re going to talk about the ways in which Kamala Harris has broken it,” he said. “We’re going to talk about the ways in which Donald Trump has fixed it. And then we’re going to talk to the American media.”
JD Vance reviewed Harris’s poor record regarding Trump’s reality TV show The Apprentice, where he fired contestants, stating that the “San Francisco liberal” needs to be “fired.” Harris, who JD Vance referred to as “a crazy person,” previously served as San Francisco District Attorney, where she caused outrage by dropping charges against an illegal immigrant who murdered someone shortly afterward.
“This is a person who became the vice president of the United States on a promise of open borders,” he said. “And she actually delivered on day one. Kamala Harris said, ‘We’re going to suspend deportations on day one.’ Kamala Harris said, ‘We’re going to stop Donald Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy. … You go to the border wall, of course, all across the state of Arizona, you see it sitting there on the ground, and she did this crazy thing where they did parole for millions upon millions of illegal aliens.”
He said, “I bring a message from Donald J Trump, if you are in this country illegally in six months, pack your bags.” He went on, “We are going to reimplement deportations in this country. We’re going to finish that beautiful border wall along that beautiful water… We’re gonna stop pension release, and we’re gonna stop giving Medicare benefits and healthcare benefits to illegal aliens. They deserve to go to Americans.” V
JD Vance said the largest fentanyl bust in the nation’s history took place last month, with law enforcement seizing $12.6 million of the drug.
He told a story about his grandma, “Mamaw,” who became famous due to his autobiographical book and movie about his humble roots, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The “working class Appalachian woman from Eastern Kentucky” helped raise him, which he credited for keeping him out of trouble and on a path to success. “I was able to live the American dream,” he said. However, he said Mamaw could use colorful language, which wore off on him. “[My wife] gets mad at me from time to time because, you know, sometimes I talk like Mamaw, and that means sometimes our four-year-old talks like Mamaw.”
JD Vance explained how his mother was addicted to opioids for much of his upbringing, but fortunately, she has been sober for 10 years. He tied it into the current crisis with illegal drugs.
“For all of you who have a loved one struggling with addiction, there is hope on the other side of addiction, there is hope in recovery, and there is grace out there, but only if we make our streets safe enough to give people second chances. Because one of the things that I really do believe is that as the poison that Kamala Harris has invited into this country in 2024, if it was coming across when my mom was still struggling with addiction, I don’t think I would have gotten that second chance with my mom,” the Ohio Senator said.
He spoke of visiting law enforcement in Valdosta, Georgia, recently, where he saw candy laced with fentanyl that agents had seized. He said the drug cartels hide fentanyl in candy to sneak it across the border and lamented how terrible this is for children.
“Let’s stick people who use children’s candy as a disguise for deadly drugs, and what a sick person we have as vice president who invites these people in our country to do business,” he said. “It makes me realize that you’ve got kids who are going to get into a packet of candy on a playground or in their school, and it’s going to take their lives. … What kind of a person lets drug cartels do business in their country. What kind of a person allows the drug cartels to disguise fentanyl as candy, and what kind of a person invites these people to get rich off of our country while our own citizens die?”
JD Vance criticized the Harris campaign’s emphasis on “joy.”
He said, “The Democratic National Convention was all about joy, and I thought to myself, well, you know, what does Kamala Harris have to be especially joyful about? She’s been the vice president for three and a half years. Americans can’t afford groceries. Americans can’t afford to buy a home, especially young families. Sixty-five percent of young Americans are not going to be able to be able to buy a loan because of Kamala Harris’s policies. We talked about the fentanyl coming into our country. Now, what Kamala Harris is joyful about is that she got promoted to the presidential nomination without earning a single vote.”
JD Vance listed some non-MAGA endorsements the slate has received, including Nikki Haley, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard.
A theme JD Vance brought up multiple times during his visit to Arizona was how Harris frequently says, “We’re not going to go back.”
He said, “How long would you talk about ‘we’re not going back?’ To what? To low inflation, I’d like to go back to all those things. I realized, my friends, that when she says we’re not going back, we’re going back to a very ancient and dark time in human history. … Kamala Harris wants to send us back to a place where you have to be rich to enjoy public safety, where you have to be wealthy to afford to buy a home in this country, where if you want to have a nice steak on a Friday night, you’ve got to make a lot of money.”
“I happen to believe that middle class Americans ought to be able to afford a nice thing. Kamala Harris wants to take us back to a point where the country and the world don’t actually work unless you’ve got connections, and unless you’ve got a lot of money,” the vice presidential candidate said. “But the promise of this country, the promise of liberty and justice for all, is that whether you’re rich or poor, you get to live in a safe community. ”
He added, “So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to end catch and release. We’re going to close down that border. We’re going to wage war against the American — or, excuse me, against the Mexican drug cartels, not against the American citizens who are suffering because of those drug cartels. And we are going to make this country great again.”
He said, “They’ve been raising taxes on American citizens to get health care benefits to illegal aliens and people who shouldn’t be here. They’ve been raising your taxes and sending it overseas to Chinese companies that are building electric vehicles, and Donald Trump says … that is garbage. We’re not doing it anymore. So if America First means anything, it means we’re prioritizing the American worker. We’re prioritizing the American citizen, and we are rebuilding our country. Wherever you came from, whatever your background is, whoever your parents were, liberty and justice for all, not just for the well connected, and not just for Kamala Harris’s donors.”
JD Vance took a few questions from the media afterward. In response to a question from The Arizona Sun Times about what is being done to prevent election fraud in the 2024 election, he said the Republican National Committee has filed over 100 election-related lawsuits. “We want every legal vote to count, and we want every illegal vote to be thrown out,” he said. “It’s very simple, if you shouldn’t be voting in our elections, you should not have your ballots count.”
He referenced the SAVE Act in Congress, which would require individuals to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. “The [Democrats] want illegal aliens to steal everybody’s job, and now they want illegal aliens to steal everybody’s vote,” he said.
JD Vance brought up the 2022 Election Day fiasco in Maricopa County when hundreds of thousands of Republican voters were disenfranchised due to the ballot-on-demand printers printing out the wrong image size on ballots. “The other thing, the other thing I know the Republican Party is working hard on, is making sure that you don’t have a bunch of broken machines … the machines actually work on Election Day. We’re going to do everything that we can to make sure that happens,” he said.
In response to another question from The Sun Times, about how to talk to independents who hear negative things about his views regarding women, he responded, “I was raised by strong women.”
JD Vance explained how the media took his remarks about women out of context.
“There of course, are comments that I made, sometimes even before I was running for Senate, that were sarcastic, where the mainstream media has repeated them, instead of repeating the policy failures of the Kamala Harris campaign and the Kamala Harris presidency. And I just ask all independents, all Democrats, all Republicans, whether you’re a man or woman or just whatever your political stance, whatever your background is, what do you think is more important: a sarcastic comment that I made four years ago, or the fact that Kamala Harris has opened the southern border?” he said.
The senator said. A sarcastic comment that I made four years ago, or the fact that Kamala Harris has made it hard for strong women to send their kids to schools that actually teach them instead of indoctrinating them?”
JD Vance emphasized the importance of raising children, which the media interpreted as criticism of working women. However, Vance’s Usha Vance continued working while having three children and only quit her job a few weeks ago to assist with the campaign.
Taylor Robson focused her speech on criticisms of Harris. “It’s time the American people say ‘you’re fired,’” she said. Although Robson Taylor ran a contentious race against Lake, with Lake calling her “the most Liberal ‘Republican’ Arizona has ever seen,” she has shown Republican unity recently. In an op-ed last month for Tucson.com, she blasted Harris. “Kamala Harris has given no indication she is ready to address the top issues facing Americans,” she said. “Arizona and the country deserve better than a candidate who has zero credibility to sit in the Oval Office and run our country.”
During her talk, Swoboda stressed the importance of volunteers chasing ballots. She also urged attendees to go to protectthevote.com, the Republican National Committee’s election integrity website, to sign up to assist with election integrity.
“There’s two gentlemen that are going to give up their lives,” she said about Trump and Vance. “One has literally given up everything and almost lost the breath out of his body for us, and that is not looking for -” The crowd started cheering and yelling so loudly that Swoboda could not finish. She concluded, “We can’t do anything without God. It starts with God and ends with God.”
WATCH: @AZGOP Chair @GinaSwoboda takes the stage in Phoenix ahead of @JDVance’s remarks.
Are you going to answer the call to save our country? pic.twitter.com/eABCvld2fu
— Republican Party of Arizona (@AZGOP) September 5, 2024
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
