JD Vance Tried to Turn an Emergency into a Weird Dig at Harris
It turns out, there isn’t a single thing JD Vance isn’t willing to politicize.
During a town hall in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Thursday, Vance made a weirdly hostile joke after a woman in the audience fell down, letting out a shriek of terror.
Vance stood up and walked over to see what had happened, while security rushed to her. “We OK?” Vance asked. There was a moment of silence and awkward laughter from the crowd.
“Kamala Harris built this platform behind us, that’s what happened,” Vance joked, and the audience started to laugh and clap.
“We doing OK, ma’am, we good?” Vance asked again, before returning to his seat on stage.
Someone fell over behind JD Vance and seemed to be in some distress just now during his town hall event in North Carolina. Vance's response? "Kamala Harris built this platform behind us." pic.twitter.com/j7ZhAX5gzW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 10, 2024
While awkwardly joking about bleachers was just one weird moment of divisiveness, Vance also politicized the federal response to Hurricane Helene, claiming that Donald Trump would not abandon the people of western North Carolina.
When speaking about his favorite topic, illegal immigration, Vance tried to connect it back to what was happening in North Carolina by falsely claiming that programs for immigrants come at the expense of North Carolina residents.
“And if the message that our country sends after 25 million illegal aliens coming into this country is you get to stay here, you get to collect housing benefits, you get to collect welfare benefits, while folks in western North Carolina are struggling to survive, we will never have a border in this country again,” Vance said, according to The Independent.
Vance’s appearance in North Carolina comes as the Republican ticket pushes the lie that the federal government has been using money meant for FEMA to assist immigrants. Similar versions of this claim have been repeated by Trump, Elon Musk, and other Republican lawmakers. Both FEMA and a White House spokesperson have said the claim is false.
Vance also repeated his racist attacks against immigrant children. While he pretended to soften his hard-line message, he still managed to baselessly claim that immigrant children were somehow decreasing the quality of American education.
“It’s nothing against those kids,” Vance said. “It’s saying something against Kamala Harris who let those kids come in and deprive Americans of good education.”
Earlier this week, Vance falsely claimed that second-generation immigrant students, who by definition were born in the U.S., were creating a strain for schools.
At one point, moderator Danica Patrick referred to “globalists” who want Americans to own nothing. Vance agreed with Patrick, noting that “they want you to live in a pod, eat bugs, and own nothing.”
While Vance may have put on the sheen of civility during his vice presidential debate performance, his appearance in North Carolina shows that he is anything but civil, and his talking points rely on the most base of misinformation and fearmongering.