Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance used a speech Wednesday at the Republican National Convention to outline a conservative agenda for America.
On day three of the RNC, the U.S. Senator took center stage to call for an American-first agenda focused on the working class, which is central to former President Donald Trump’s re-election effort.
“President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what if lost may never be found again, a country where a working-class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage, as the next Vice President of the United States of America,” Vance said.
Vance, who joined Trump’s campaign on Monday, spoke before 2,400 delegates and thousands of others packed inside Milwaukee’s Fiserv Arena. It was his first speech since Trump named the 39-year-old senator from Ohio as his running mate.
Vance recounted the struggles of his early life, his mother’s addiction and being raised by a single mother without enough money. He also talked about his grandmother, who used the f-word often and left loaded guns all over her house.
“Now, my Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005, and when we went through things, we found 19 loaded handguns. They were stashed all over her house, under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer, and we wondered what was going on,” he said. “And it occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around so well, and so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for. That’s American spirit.”
Vance railed against the high price of housing in the U.S., illegal immigration and inflation.
“Joe Biden’s inflation crisis, my friends, is really an affordability crisis, and many of the people that I grew up with can’t afford to pay more for groceries, more for gas, more for rent, and that’s exactly what Joe Biden’s economy has given them,” he said.
Vance promised a better future for America.
“We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street; we’ll commit to the working man,” he said. “We’re done importing foreign labor. We’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages. We’re done buying energy from countries that hate us. We’re going to get it right here from American workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio and across the country.”
He said America must come first.
“People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home,” Vance said. “And if this movement of ours is going to succeed and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.”
Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022 and sworn into office in January 2023. In 2016, Vance said he was a “never-Trump guy” in an interview with Charlie Rose. He said he changed his opinion after seeing Trump’s successes.
Vance served in the military during the Iraq War. He then graduated from Ohio State University and, later, Yale Law School.
The vice president is second in the line of succession to the president. The Constitution names the vice president as the president of the Senate. The vice president has the power to break a tie vote in the Senate and formally presides over the receiving and counting of electoral ballots cast in presidential elections.
Over the years, the position has been labeled everything from a do-nothing dead-end political job to a stepping stone for political aspirants.
The RNC will conclude on Thursday. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to begin on Aug. 19 in Chicago.
