Vice Presidential candidate, JD Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, smile as they walk onto the stage in front of a crowd of about 1,300 people at the Liberty Arena in downtown Williamsport.
WILLIAMSPORT – To the late, great country music legend’s Merle Haggard’s song “America First,” Republican vice presidential nominee and running mate of former President Donald J. Trump, JD Vance, brought his wife, Usha, out Wednesday afternoon to an adoring crowd inside Liberty Arena in Williamsport.
“It is great to be in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and I’ve got some great news, my friends. I think in 19 days we are going to make Donald Trump the next president of the United States,” Vance said to a thunderous roar inside the arena, where about 1,300 people gathered.
Vance acknowledged several dignitaries, such as Congressmen Glenn “GT” Thompson and Dan Meuser, state Sen. Cris Dush, and Lycoming County Commissioners Scott Metzger and Marc Sortman.
He offered homage to Liberty Arena, joking that his son and Usha were behind him playing laser tag, one of the entertainment options there. He also referenced the big bounce house, joking about the children’s play area being made for Joe Biden.
Vance quickly turned his focus toward the Nov. 5 general election, aiming darts at Vice President Kamala Harris repeatedly, including her upcoming interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, which, he hinted, would not be one filled with softball questions.
He also made reference to a recent Harris’ interview with ABC’s talk show “The View,” where he said the problem with softball interviews is “you still have to be able to hit a softball.”
He dug further at Harris’ record as vice president, which pleased the partisan crowd.
“Unfortunately, our illustrious vice president, every time that she speaks, I think Donald Trump and I gain 100,000 votes,” he said.
He called that a bit “frightening,” claiming Harris does not care to answer basic questions, even when those answers are “very, very easy.”
Harris was the deciding vote on trillions of dollars in spending and bragged about being in the room with Biden when decisions were made, yet now she is sometimes distancing herself while on the campaign trail, Vance said.
“Kamala Harris is going around the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the whole country saying, ‘I don’t know who this guy is and I had nothing to do with it,’” he said.
Some of the evidence on tape that is available contains Harris’ own words. Vance pointed out, when she did an interview on the talk show “The View” and was asked to name one thing she would have done differently than Joe Biden in the last three and a half years, “You know what she said? ‘Nothing comes to mind.’”
“That is, I think, the official tagline of Kamala Harris for president – ‘nothing comes to mind.”‘
As an author of 2016’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance is, admittedly, proud of his life story. He came from a poor family and was raised by his grandmother because his mother was addicted to drugs. But he beat the odds, he said, and studied at Yale Law School, served in the Marines and became a U.S. senator.
Vance throughout his speech drew multiple contrasts between the Trump team policies, which he said, are promising to restore energy independence, reduce skyrocketing inflation, rebuild the border wall and control what has become a steady stream of illegal immigrants.
He dove headlong into the difference in policy between the Republicans and Democrats in this election. He claimed the average Pennsylvanian was paying $1,000 more per month in various costs, a hike that was higher than most any other state – and happening in the last three and a half years under the Biden-Harris administration.
Recognizing the response he received on illegal immigration issues, he contended the administration has allowed there to be a wide-open southern border, which, he said, contributed to the flood of people entering the country illegally and allowed drug cartel-driven fentanyl to flow across the border into American communities.
He said the Trump team offered “common sense” policy, such as Trump vowing to put an end to the electric vehicle mandate, still allowing those who want to purchase an electric car that choice, but also not ending the manufacturing of gasoline-powered vehicles.
He said Trump-Vance would not seek to defund the police or promote sex change operations for illegal aliens.
He touched on how the Biden-Harris administration has scuttled the American dream of homeownership and promised that, if elected on Nov. 5, Trump and Vance would drive down mortgage costs and thereby make homeownership more available for more Americans.
In terms of energy policy, Vance compared what was beneath Saudi Arabia to what was under Pennsylvania soil. “Drill, baby, drill” has been the Trump-Vance motto, a reference to the fracking industry getting back into full gear after, they say, Biden-Harris stifled the industry and tried to end it with overregulation and concentration on more green energy than tapping the abundance of fossil fuels.
He discussed lowering costs for medical insurance through competitive markets and touched on addressing the Trump team’s intention to provide more opportunity for students who wanted to enroll in technical education as opposed to a four-year college, which is a choice for many students.
He fielded a number of questions from reporters, and when asked by two of them why he would not say Trump lost the election, waited for the boos to die down in the room before answering.
Vance said it was more important to not look back but to look ahead.
“Go volunteer to be a poll worker, go volunteer to knock on doors, go volunteer to participate in this democratic process because if you don’t there is nobody coming to save us,” he said.
“If you are a local voter in a place like Williamsport, the people who are counting your ballots are often your neighbors,” Vance said. “Local elections, especially our small and rural areas, it’s your neighbors who are counting these ballots. I think we have to focus on the real problem. The real problem is two weeks ago Democrats killed a bill that would have made it harder for illegal aliens to vote. That is out there in the open. We have to make sure we pass the laws to make sure that only legal ballots count.”
Mark Maroney is a reporter for the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.