(NewsNation) — Here is the transcript of the NewsNation town hall with Sen. JD Vance, prepared with Otter.AI.
Chris Cuomo
Chris. All right, welcome to News Nation. I’m Chris Cuomo, you know Senator JD Vance, thank you all for being here. A round of applause for the Senator. Thank you for taking the opportunity. Appreciate it. We are, of course, in Michigan. All right, this is a hotbed state. I haven’t seen polls this close in this state in a long time. We have Republicans, we have Democrats, we have independents, and we have an added feature. We have the folks at X working with us. They’ve been posting all week that this is going to go on. You’ll get some of their questions as well. And people online get two bites at the apple, because we are taping this earlier in the day to accommodate the campaign’s schedule. So we will air it, and then we will let you watch it live at that time and take more questions afterwards. So, Senator, let me start with just a little news of the day. Specifically, housing prices are, once again, pricing millions of Americans out of the market. The new data shows that the problem is only getting worse. We have dealt with both campaigns giving pieces of ideas, criticism of your campaign as its concepts of ideas. What specifically can you tell the people at home and in this room you could do as Vice President with President Trump to make housing prices decrease.
JD Vance
So, first thing is, I want to thank all of you for being here, Chris, thanks to you and your team for hosting. I think it’s an important conversation, and hopefully I can persuade some of you to vote for President Trump, but at the very least, I just appreciate you caring enough about the country to pay attention and to listen to the answers that I’m given here for the next hour. But let me, let me think, when we talk about housing, it’s useful to talk about two separate sides of the housing problem. There’s a supply issue, there’s a demand issue, okay? So the supply issue is we don’t build enough houses for the people that we have in the United States of America, and there are complicated reasons why we don’t do that, right? One is that energy prices are too high. So if we drill baby drill, open up America’s energy markets, lower the cost of energy, then we make it easier to build houses. There’s also a lot of stuff that we do on the regulatory side, both at the state and the federal level, to make it harder to build homes. Organizations like NEPA, which make it harder for the United States to build and I always remind people that our ancestors went to the moon with pocket calculators and slide rulers, and now our government makes it way too hard to build the homes that we need. Now that’s the supply side of it. I think most people actually agree with that. And you’ve asked most Democrats, they’d probably agree with what I just said, what I’m going to say about the demand problem is a little bit more controversial, but I think it’s just as important, which is that when you let 25 million illegal aliens, and I think that’s the number that we have in our country right now. When you let those folks in your country at the level that we have, well, you got to put them somewhere, right? They have to live somewhere, and that means that those are homes that aren’t going to American citizens. In other words, if you take a neighborhood and you add hundreds, or you take a city and you add 10s of 1000s, you take a country and you add 25 million people competing against Americans for scarce homes. That’s going to drive the cost of housing through the roof too. And there’s no coincidence that when we’ve seen under Kamala Harris’s open border, the highest levels of immigration, illegal immigration in our country, basically in our history, that’s coincided with the highest levels of house price increases that we’ve seen in our country in a very long time. I think in Michigan, the numbers about 50% rents and housing prices have gone up by 50% we could do a lot better, but simply, we got to build more houses, and we got to make sure those houses go to American citizens, people who have the legal right to be here.
Chris Cuomo
So you got a little of a correlation versus causation, right? You have illegal immigration. But many analysts will say that’s not what’s driving the demand problem. The demand problem is interest rates pricing people out and wages not coming up enough. So give a nod to that on the wage side. Of course, not just immigration. But how do you how do you argue that you will get wages up in America? What mechanism can government do?
JD Vance
Well, one is we got to promote prosperity for everybody, right? If you’re creating more jobs in the United States of America, especially the good middle class manufacturing jobs that built the middle class in our country, but also particularly in the state of Michigan. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen under present leadership, under Kamala Harris’s leadership, is we’ve had a lot of investment in things like electric vehicles manufactured in China, not nearly enough investment in the types of auto jobs that have actually powered the Michigan economy for the last nearly 100 years, right? So you got to create better jobs. You’re absolutely right about that. You mentioned mortgage interest rates, and that’s something I should have talked about, but didn’t in the original answer, mortgage rates are so high because inflation is so high, right? Mortgage mortgage rates track with the broader inflation. So when you talk about Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote on trillions of dollars of new spending, when you talk about going to war against American energy, which makes everything more expensive, when you drive up prices, you do drive up interest rates. And one final point I make about this Chris is. When you talk to young Americans, and obviously, I’m the first millennial on a major party ticket, it’s actually funny, because I used to complain about the fact that I turned 40 after Donald Trump made me as vice presidential nominee. And then people would come up to me and say, I just turned 60, or I just turned 70. Stop complaining about turning 40. So I’ve stopped doing that. But man, so many people in my generation, they’re delaying having families. They’re delaying getting married because they can’t afford a place to raise a family. This is the biggest threat to the American dream, I think, that we’ve seen in a generation, young people who would like to build a life in our country, but can’t afford to buy a house. We’ve got to do better.
Chris Cuomo
All right, so let’s go to the audience. We have Chris, who has a related issue here about the cost of living in childcare for him and his family, it’s good to have you. Chris, thank you. Appreciate it.
Audience Member
Senator Vance, as a fellow Father, I have a toddler, and over the past three years, my family spent over $120,000 on child care that’s not including diapers. Fortunately, my wife and I have great careers, but this raises a major concern, how can families like ours, or those with fewer resources and more kids sustain the rising costs of raising children today? Do you have any plans to address these affordability gaps?
JD Vance
Yeah, Chris, I appreciate your question and stand up here because it’s a little bit easier to talk to talk to people when you’re actually standing I can’t. I will tell you the secret service told us that if we left this red box that that would be a problem. So hopefully they won’t tackle me if I come down and get a little closer. But no, no, Chris, first of all, how old your toddler? She’s three. She’s three. Okay, great. Look, I hear this a lot, and I know that child care costs are a big issue. I think, you know, there are a couple things that we should be doing. Think, first of all, I know this as the husband of a very, very proud mother, but also a very successful corporate litigator, I think you probably admit that sometimes these issues are a little bit harder for working moms and working dads, though it’s harder for everybody, right? And I think that we have to give young women and young men more options to actually build the kind of child care that works for them, right? Because when you talk to people, right, some people would like to stay at home maybe for a couple years. Maybe they’d like to stay at home for a few months and then go back to the workforce. Maybe they’d like to go back to the workforce right away. Right now, the child care regime that we have in this country basically tries to force a one size fits all model on the entire country. And there’s a program called the Community Development Block Grant. Probably most people haven’t heard of it, but it’s one of the main ways the federal government actually funds child care, and it only unfortunately goes to one kind of model for people who want childcare. Now you ask yourself, how do you bring down the cost of childcare? One of the things you got to do is get more people who are willing to are willing to be childcare providers. And I think that, again, the federal government has tried to pursue a kind of one size fits all model that hasn’t been good for most American families. So like say, for example, that you’re you have grandparents that would like to help out with the grandkids, but for some financial reason, it’s just not possible. Maybe the grandparents have to work, of course, and in the present area, you have a lot of grandparents who are working, because under Kamala Harris is inflation, they just can’t afford to make ends meet unless they go and take a job. Maybe they weren’t planning to take maybe it’s aunts and uncles, right? Or maybe you’re part of a church community that would like to provide childcare. The federal government actually makes it really hard for anybody other than the people who are currently providing childcare to get into that job. And if you have too few people who are providing childcare, the cost is going to be so much more expensive. So what President Trump and I would like to do is create more flexibility, make it easier for grandparents, aunts and uncles, church communities, nonprofit centers, to participate in providing childcare, and then I think we’ll be able to drive down the cost for all American families, whatever model of childcare they ultimately choose. That’s what we’d like to do.
Chris Cuomo
Are you open to pushing corporations to do better on family leave, not just for women, but for men as well?
JD Vance
No, I think so. Absolutely right. I mean, and look, I’m a I’m the father of three beautiful children, and one of the good things that I can say about my my working life, is it provided an opportunity for me to spend time with my kids. I know a lot of dads would like to spend time with their kids, but unfortunately, their careers, or their jobs, the companies that they work for, make it harder. I do think that we ought to be open, especially for big companies, where there should be more flexibility to force them to actually be a little bit better on the childcare stuff. I do think that would relieve some pressure on families. I also think again, we got to make it easier for these nonprofit and local community organizations to provide childcare. A lot of them would like to help out, but they don’t get the same federal benefits as other organizations, and that’s a big problem.
Chris Cuomo
Alright, got another question from the audience, Robert, on rising costs, but for farmers.
Audience Member
Thank you, Senator. Appreciate the opportunity. I’m a fourth-generation farmer. In fact, we sell our produce right across the street here at the Eastern Market. How will your administration, after seeing what we went through after COVID and the important respect to domestic food production, help the American farmer to survive the increasing inflationary costs of doing business and global competition.
JD Vance
Well, thanks for the question, Robert. And you know, one thing you probably know, Robert, because you’re a farmer, but a lot of people don’t realize, and this is maybe the scariest statistic of the last few years, is that America, just last year, became a net importer of food. What that means is that we grow less food than our people consume, which makes us relying on other people for the very food that we feed our children. I think that’s very, very dangerous, and part of the reason is because we’ve made it so hard on our farmers. Now there, when I talk to farmers, and you know, Ohio, I represent the state of Ohio, don’t hold it against me Michigan, but I talked to a lot of farmers in the state of Ohio, because we’ve got a lot of them. I know Michigan has has a lot of farmers too. You know, one of the things that I hear is that between natural gas prices, because natural gas is a big part of the fertilizer that farmers use, between diesel costs, between gasoline costs, the cost of energy has made it really, really hard for our farmers to actually do what they do and grow the food that we need. So we got to bring down energy costs to make it more affordable for farmers to do what they do. The other thing is that we have to make sure that foreign competitors aren’t flooding our markets with cheap agricultural products that destroy Thank you, that destroy the wages and the livelihoods of farmers, but again, it makes us more reliant on countries that ultimately don’t like us. This is something we got to be very, very worried about. What we learned you mentioned this, I think, Chris, during COVID, is that we became so dependent on foreign countries for the supply chains, right? We couldn’t get like, hospital masks and hospital gowns in the midst of a pandemic, because China made a lot of that stuff. Well, if we’re worried about manufactured goods, how much worse is it to rely on other countries for the very food that we provide to our families? We’ve got to go in the other direction and cut down on agricultural dumping. One of the ways you do this, and this is a big difference between President Trump and Kamala Harris, is Kamala Harris has really criticized the idea of using tariffs. President Trump has said, rightfully, in my view, obviously, I’m a little biased, but that unless you’re willing to use tariffs to go after countries that are manipulating our own markets, whether it’s food, energy or manufactured goods, you’re going to be giving up on American productive workers. We can’t do that. We’ve got to protect our farms, protect our manufacturers, make more of our own stuff, grow more of our own food, and that’s fundamentally the President Trump approach to these things.
Chris Cuomo
You have to qualify the understanding based on what we just saw with those 20 plus Nobel winning economists who said, “If you do tariffs the wrong way, you wind up spiking prices here that get passed on to the consumer.” That was also additive to inflation, and they criticize the Trump administration and its future plan for being at risk of doing exactly that.
JD Vance
Sure. So I know that’s a criticism that’s been out there. Here’s why don’t buy it. So first of all, these are the same experts that said shipping our entire manufacturing industry to China, to East Asia, to Mexico would lead to greater American prosperity. They were wrong. It was a mistake to do that. We followed their advice, and now, frankly, a lot of Americans can’t afford a good life. Can earn a middle class wage because we listen to some of those very same people. But the more immediate reason why I don’t buy that argument, Chris is look, Donald Trump was already president, right? These aren’t just plans and proposals. He was already president, and when he was president, he did use tariffs, right? And you had the fastest rising take home pay in 40 years in this country. You had inflation at 1.5% so look, you don’t have to agree with everything I say or everything that Donald Trump says, but when you actually look at the policy accomplishments, we had low inflation and rising take home pay, and I think tariffs were a big part of that.
Chris Cuomo
Jennifer, thank you very much for being here. You have a question, change a topic, border, immigration concerns, yes, thank you. Senators must say, I love your socks.
JD Vance
This is our, this is our, I don’t know if the camera can zoom in, but this is our dog for 12 years. We actually lost him six months ago, but he was a good he was a good boy. So I try, I carry around the memory in my socks. Thank you. Thank you. I
Audience Member
My question is, there’s a lot of focus on crime by undocumented migrants in big cities, but I live in a I live in the country. What do you think can be done for the rural areas
JD Vance
That are feeling it? Yeah, yeah. Well, what part of Michigan Do you live in? I live in Belleville, but outside of the city, so
JD Vance
I’m like, 15 minutes from the airport. Oh, got it? Okay, sure, sure. So one of the things that’s been really striking about running for vice president is is we, you know, we campaign everywhere. We go to Detroit, we go to everywhere. But you go into some rural areas and you find out, like, from the local sheriff, that a local drug cartel member was arrested the week before you were there, and you think to yourself, how did the drug carbon to tell member get into rural Wisconsin or rural Michigan? Like it doesn’t make sense, but this is fundamentally what the open border has done, and this is one of the reasons why I really don’t like to segment rural versus urban versus suburban, right? Like we’re all Americans, and unfortunately, I think we’re confronting the same problems. I hate to say this, ma’am, but I think the reason why it’s so bad is really because of our failed current leadership. When Kamala Harris became vice president, she was appointed the border czar. They bragged about suspending deportations, they bragged about stopping construction of the border wall. They bragged about expanding what’s called Catch and release, where if somebody comes into our country, they claim asylum. They’re released into our country, rather than having to wait in Mexico while that asylum claim is processed. That is encouraged this massive increase in illegal immigration. Now, of course, a lot of those folks are good people. They just want to work now, I think they should come through the proper channels, but I’ve got nothing against them personally. But when you open up the border that way and lead to that level of chaos, you’re going to get 10s of 1000s of, unfortunately, pretty hardened criminals who have come into our country. And I think the number that I saw recently Chris is approximately 425,000 violent criminal illegal immigrants are in the United States of America right now. That’s double the size of the United States Marine Corps. I mean, I served in the Marine Corps for four years. It’s hard to even imagine twice the number of US Marines that we have are illegal immigrant criminals in this country. And we just got to get back to deporting people who shouldn’t be here, finishing the border wall, just enforcing our immigration laws would make so much of this problem go away. And I, ma’am, I don’t know you know, of course, anything about your background, but I imagine your community, there are a lot of people who are dealing with fentanyl problems. There are a lot of people who have lost kids or grandkids from this terrible epidemic. But I was raised by a woman who struggled with opioid addiction, and I’m very proud of her. If you’re watching Mom, I love you, but she’s been clean and sober for almost 10 years. But I often wonder, okay, what if mom was dealing with addiction in 2024 would she have gotten that second chance? Would she have gotten the ability to be clean and sober for 10 years? Because the poison that’s coming across the border today is more dangerous than anything that has ever been in this country. We’ve got to give people those second chances, but we’re not going to do it without good border enforcement, and that’s what I really want us to get back to. And by the way, again, that’s not just a proposal from Donald Trump. When he was president, we had the lowest number of illegal border crossings in a very long time for through simple common sense law enforcement. We just have to do it again.
Chris Cuomo
So you have an under weighted criminality among immigrants in general, over weighted in terms of the organized crime activity, correct? So why shouldn’t the cell not be that they’re poisoning our blood, which we hear from Trump on a regular basis, but that the cartels should be treated like the criminal organizations they are, some argued, terrorist organizations. So it’s not all the immigrants, it’s targeting, and the cartels need to be targeted. Would your administration be in favor of targeting those cartels differently?
JD Vance
100% and actually President Trump, and he’s been attacked in some ways by the media, but I don’t understand this, because, again, I’m biased, but I think it’s one of the most common sense proposals, is, if we’re going to use the US military against criminal organizations in the Middle East, why wouldn’t we use it against a criminal organization that’s on our southern border that’s killing almost 100,000 of our citizens every single year? Absolutely, I think we should do that. Now, you’re right, Chris. I want to be clear here. I do not think that all, or most illegal immigrants are violent criminals. I think they should go through the proper channels. I think that doesn’t mean they have the right to be in our country, but we have let in far too many illegal immigrant criminals, too many criminal gangs, because of what we’ve been doing with our border policy for the last three and a half years. I mean, one other thing that I’ve been like, really shocked by, this just happened a couple years ago. So this, this data is a couple years old. I was sitting next to a DEA agent on an airplane, and I asked him, like, you know this guy, he fights the Mexican drug cartels. And I asked him to sort of give me an update on what’s going on. And this was probably in late 2022 he said the cartels have gone from making a billion dollars a year when Donald Trump was president to making $14 billion per year in 2022 and it’s probably even higher than now than it was then. Well, think about all of the weapons. Think about all of the criminal activity. They’re funding because they’re getting rich, and they’re getting rich because of our own leadership. We could do so much better. We got to get away from more of the same border policy under Kamala Harris.
Chris Cuomo
Here’s our first question from X. All right, a post from user Elaine. If you became president, whom would you rely on for advice?
JD Vance
Well, you’re looking at her right there in the front row. I She’s the smartest and most level headed person I know. She also, you know, I’ve got a bit of a temper. Bucha is the person who’s always extremely even keeled, and so certainly I would rely on her advice a lot. But look, let me say two things about this. Number one, Donald Trump is as healthy as an ox. There is. No chance that he’s not going to be able to complete a full four year term. I think he’s going to do it. He’s going to do it with a ton of energy. I mean, just look at the campaign schedule that Donald Trump has kept compared to his Democratic opponents. He’s doing like three public events for every event that Kamala Harris has done. I have no doubt that Donald Trump is going to be a good president, but a good president for all four years. But of course, you know, things happen. That’s one of the reasons why you have a vice president, is for those unforeseen circumstances. And I’ve got, you know, a lot of friends, a lot of very smart policy people that I rely on. If, God forbid, something happened and I had to sit in that chair, I think we’d be we’d be good but certainly the most important person I take advice from is my wife.
Chris Cuomo
All right. Senator, good first block. Let’s take a break when we come back here on news nation, we have a town hall event based in Michigan, but we’re taking questions from posts from x from all over the country. So please stay with us. Thank you all you.
Part 2
Chris Cuomo
Welcome back here to the news nation town hall with Senator J D Vance. We’re here in Michigan. We’re in Detroit, and we’re talking about issues that represent the entire country. Let’s get right back to a real person instead of me. Aisha is with us, and you have a question where you want to talk about the socio economic divide. What’s your question for the Senator? Okay, so I’m an independent voter, and my question is, why do you think the electorate is split between urban and rural communities? We all have the same concerns, be it jobs, crime, addiction? Why divide us? Sure,
JD Vance
That’s a very good question. And actually, I really appreciate you asking that question, because we normally just talk about some of the same old stuff, and I think that’s one of the most important things is, why are we so divided as a country? And I think, frankly, part of it is because of failed leadership. I think it’s very easy to sort of segment people into rural versus suburban versus urban, and make people seem different, when in reality, they’re actually very similar. And one of the cool things I wrote this book called Hillbilly Elegy, that came out seven or eight years ago, and it’s sort of about growing up in a poor family, a family that was affected by job loss and addiction and all that stuff. And one of the really cool things that happened is a lot of black people would come up to me afterwards and say, Your family’s story is my family’s story. In the same way that your family came from Appalachia into Ohio and Michigan, my family came from the deep south into Ohio and Michigan, and we did it for factory jobs, right? Because we wanted our ancestors, wanted an opportunity at a better life. And I think maybe just talking to each other more is actually the solution to the urban rural divide. One thing that really bothers me about about the current political climate is there’s too much censorship. There’s too much whether it’s going to use big tech or some other platform, we’re going to try to silence people. And I think if we talk to each other more, we’d realize that we actually have a lot more in common. And I also think that, you know, I really do believe that the biggest divides in our country are between people who feel like the American Dream is available to them and people who feel like it’s getting further and further out of reach. So maybe the way to heal that divide is, you know, lower prices and make the American dream more affordable again, and give people good job opportunities. Because if people are doing well, and we’re all doing well together, then we’ll have much less division in our country, right? Because the person who can unite, any candidate who can unite both urban and rural, will like, do an electoral sleep.
JD Vance
I agree. Yeah. So even just as a politician, it’s in my self interest to say this, i By the way, I think it’s one of the things that you’re really seeing that’s new about the Republican coalition that we’ve got in this election. And I understand, like, look, my I was raised by blue collar Democrats. My grandmother probably never voted for a Republican her entire life. I think my grandfather voted for a Republican once, there is this really interesting combination of rural people, urban people, people who were Republicans 20 years ago, people who were Democrats 20 years ago. But we just believe in common sense, and we believe in prosperity, and one thank you, and one other, just really interesting thing, and we talked about the Marine Corps earlier, one of the great things about the US military is you’ve got white, black, brown, you’ve got rich people, you’ve got poor people, you’ve got people from the East Coast and the West Coast, and we’re all part of the same team. It’s one of the great things that I took away from my military experience is that we’re all Americans. As my drill instructors used to say, you’re either dark green or light green, but you’re all equally worthless. That’s what the drill instructors would say. And I think that out of that, we got this sense that we were all part of the same American family. I think our leadership has to get back to that attitude. Thank you, ma’am. How
Chris Cuomo
Do you deal with the fact that your running mate is known for division, who has made a lot of progress in creating a movement that is based on concerns about others.
JD Vance
Well, Chris, I guess I just see it differently, right? And I understand I mean, look, I look, if any of you know anything about my background, I was very critical of Donald Trump in 2016 and I came around, because I probably bought into the idea that he was all about division in 2015 and 2016 and then I listened to what he said, and I saw the results, and I recognized that actually, the media story about Donald Trump is not always the full truth. In fact, it’s often the exact opposite of the truth. So when I go to a Donald Trump rally, what I hear is people from all walks of life. I hear people of all skin colors coming together, celebrating the country and talking about how we’re going to redeliver prosperity in the United States of America. Again, I really do think that Donald Trump wakes up every day, and whether you’re living in inner city, Detroit or rural Michigan, he thinks, how can I make your life better and more prosperous. And I really do think that’s the way to heal the divisions. I tend to think the divisions are the result of people feeling left behind. Make people feel left less left behind. And again, when you’ve got inflation at 1.5% and wages rising faster than they ever have, that’s how you bring people in. The American fold and make them feel like we’re all on the same team, and I think that’s Donald Trump’s approach to governing.
Chris Cuomo
All right, another question. Who do we have here? Michael, Michael, you have a question where you want to talk about foreign issues, specifically the war that’s going on in Ukraine. What’s your question? Yes, I am. Michael, I’m a student at the University of Michigan and a undecided voter, and I want to ask what the practical steps that your administration plans to take to end the war in Ukraine are?
JD Vance
Yeah, thanks, Mike. I appreciate that question. And look, I You’re obviously a student The University of Michigan. I think that your generation should care, especially a lot about this, because if we don’t get this right, then we know that when the world gets set on fire, and unfortunately, it’s gotten very tumultuous under Kamala Harris’s leadership. It’s young men and young women from America who have to go overseas to pick up the pieces. And so one of the biggest and most important arguments I can make for Donald Trump is I really believe that he is the candidate of peace. And so let me, let me say two things about this. The first and most important thing, the best way to stop a war is to prevent it from happening in the first place. And if you notice, when Donald Trump was President, we didn’t have any new wars. For the first time in 20 years, you had four years where there were no new war started. And the reason is that Donald Trump followed a very simple principle of peace through strength to be more direct. People were afraid of him. They were afraid that if they did something crazy, Donald Trump would respond to it. And so the bad actors all across the world, whether in Russia or North Korea, they were more in check when Donald Trump was president, the first thing that we got to do is prevent it. But you asking now, of course, about a war that’s already in progress, and how do we stop it? And I think that the seeds of peace and Russia and Ukraine come from recognizing that is unfortunate as it is, and Russia shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine in the first place. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are exhausted. They’re both struggling to find men, because primarily men in those countries that are fighting the war. But they’re struggling to find women too. They’re struggling to get the equipment necessary to send to the front lines. Their economies are exhausted. Whole parts of their country have been destroyed. Both of these parties want this war to end. And I think unfortunately, you’ve got a lot of American leaders who like to beat their chest and say, Well, this is the good guy and that’s the bad guy. Look, yes, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine, but we are where we are, and what’s in the best interest of America, and what I believe is in the best interest of Ukraine and Russia is for the killing to stop. The longer this goes on, the worse. It risks becoming a nuclear war. It risks engulfing the entire European continent. I mean, we talked about food prices earlier. Ukraine produces a large amount of the world’s food supply. If this war goes on for much longer, you’re going to have whole continents, I mean, Africa, Europe, that are starving because we’re prolonging a war instead of bringing about peace. And I think the specific plan is you’ve got to get the Russians and the Ukrainians. You got to get them in a room together. You have to engage in actual diplomacy, which, unfortunately, our current leadership is completely unwilling to engage in diplomacy. And he asked the Ukrainians, what do you need? And you ask the Russians, what do you need, and you try to force them to come to a peaceful settlement. It could look different ways. It’s going to depend on the skills of the negotiator and what their needs are at that moment in time, but I actually think that with Donald Trump’s leadership, we can get to a peaceful settlement in Ukraine very quickly.
Chris Cuomo
You think Ukraine will be put into a situation where it has to cede some of the land that Russia had taken during this conflict?
JD Vance
I honestly think that the Ukrainians are going to have to make that decision themselves. But, Chris man, they’re already so exhausted. When you talk to you know, Ukrainian leaders, especially in private, but even in public, they’re starting to say this now. They’re saying this can’t go on forever. They don’t have the manpower, they don’t have the equipment, they don’t have the money. And so I think ultimately, again, Ukraine is going to have to make that decision. Russia is going to have to, course, make the decision about what it will do to stop the fighting, but we’re going to have to get these guys together. We don’t have to like Russia, we don’t have to agree with them invading, but we’ve got to get them together and engage in some real diplomacy. This thing’s going to go
Chris Cuomo
on forever. But do you think America’s starting position should be, you got to give back what you took, or do you think that’s part of the compromise? I
JD Vance
think that our starting position should be, the killing must stop and we’re going to use American power to bring about peace in the world. That’s what I really believe. I mean, I’m a Christian. Blessed are the peacemakers. Unfortunately, American foreign policy is far too often used to exacerbate and prolonged conflicts. I want American foreign policy to be about bringing about peace wherever we can. Let’s take a break. Our thanks
Chris Cuomo
We’ll come back here on news nation, and we’ll have questions about a range of what’s happening in America. Stay with us. You.
Part 3
Chris Cuomo
Joe, welcome back to the News nation town hall with Senator J, D, Vance here, of course, the running mate to former President Donald Trump. We’re in Michigan. We’re in Detroit, but we’re getting a range of questions from Republicans, Democrats and independents, and we have our partner x, where they’ve been posting all week. We’re going to give you some of those questions, and then when we air this live, we’ll get live posts, and we’ll address them in the after show. So here’s a question from x, the user unnamed, we’ll call them user x, how do you justify campaigning for someone who does not share your beliefs on abortion law, exceptions or a nationwide ban if you become president over the next four years? Would you favor a ban?
JD Vance
Well, first of all, Donald Trump’s view is very clear here, and he won the Republican primary, right so I don’t agree with the user that Donald Trump and I have some massive difference of opinion here, but Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, so his policy determines what we’re going to do as a Republican governing coalition, and what he said is very simple, that he wants to first of all, make it easier for people to choose life to begin with, make it less expensive, help address child care costs and make it easier for young families to choose life in the first place. But on abortion policy, specifically, what happened when the Supreme Court made its decision is that individual states, meaning the people in those states get to make this decision. And that’s been Donald Trump’s, I think, consistent view, not just over the last couple years, but really over his entire time in public life. Now look, I come at this, and I’ll be honest with you, I do care about protecting the vulnerable. I do think about this issue and how to how to make it easier for people to choose life. And I also recognize Chris. I mean, look, I was raised in a family. I was raised in a neighborhood where I saw a fair number of young women have unexpected pregnancies and choose to terminate those pregnancies because they felt like they didn’t have any other options. And I think that very often what we miss on my side, what we miss as Republicans, is that this is not people who are like enthusiastic about having abortion. Sometimes they feel like that’s the only option available to them. And so what we, I think, ought to do, as somebody who does want to promote the cause of life, is to make it easier to choose life to begin with. And I think that if we do that, if we stop the crazy medical bills that young women come home with when they have a baby. If we make it easier to access childcare, I actually think one will earn the trust of the American people, but two will actually be pro family in the fullest sense of the word. I think a lot of Democrats, when they hear pro life, they assume, well, you know, and I even hear people say this on the campaign trail that say, well, you’re pro birth, but you don’t care about the baby. You don’t care about the mom. I think we’ve got to earn people’s trust, because I do care about the babies, and I do care about the moms, and I care about the dads. And I think there’s something really scary happening in our country right now where so many young families are choosing not to have children at all. They’re choosing not to bring new life into the world, even though they say they would like to, they feel like they can’t afford it. That is such a failure of our present leadership that a lot of people would like to have families, but can’t? We got to change that. Do
Chris Cuomo
You think that reproductive rights being on the ballot this time may affect the outcome of the election?
JD Vance
You know, it might, Chris, it might not. I’m not a political prognosticator. All I can do is make my best case to the American people, tell them what we actually plan to do when we’re in office, and make our case and let the chips fall where they may. I mean, ultimately, I don’t decide who the next president and vice president is, I guess, get one vote out of over 100 million, but it’s going to be the voters who make those decisions, and so I leave the prognostication to other people. I just try to make the case that I think we can, we can actually have a reasonable compromise position on this issue, where California makes its abortion policy, Michigan makes its abortion policy, Florida makes its abortion policy, and at the federal level, we make it easier for young families to choose life to begin with. All
Chris Cuomo
Right, we’ve got a question from the audience, Douglas, political rhetoric. What could that mean? That could mean anything. What do you have?
Audience Member
Hi guys. Good afternoon. As you said, I’m Doug. I’m with a local utility if elected, God forbid something happens to President Trump. Are you prepared, or how are you prepared to lead this country?
JD Vance
Yeah, well, Doug, I thank you for asking that question. And again, I want to say that President Trump, trust me, I’ve gotten to know him extremely well. He’s going to be president for four full years, and I think he’s going to do a very good job for the American people. But you’re right. God forbid, sometimes things happen, and I think that what I’ll draw most on, of course, is my life experience. I think that’s true for anybody in any job, right? And look, I served in the United States Marine Corps, so I saw the consequences of bad foreign policy from our leaders. I built a business, I created jobs, so I saw the consequence of bad economic and regulatory policy, and of course, I’ve served in the United States Senate, so I know a little bit about government, and I think that that’s what we need in Washington, is people who know a little bit about government, but not people who are career bureaucrats or career politicians. And I think that in some ways, we’ve really failed to solve the big challenges in our country, because we keep on going back to the well of the same people, the people who have been in government for 3040, years. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this a little bit. It’s really interesting. People who have been in government for too long, they get this idea that big things can’t happen anymore. Think about this. In 1969 within the lifetimes of a lot of people in this room, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, went to the moon. We went to the moon. We haven’t been to the back to the moon in 40 years. Like, why are we not thinking about doing big things in the United States of America anymore, and I think it’s because we’ve got this bureaucratic mindset in government, and it’s one of the things that I really like about President Trump, is he built great buildings. He built great things. When somebody says no, you can’t do that in government, he often says, Well, let’s find a way to get it done, even if a bureaucrat says no, because that’s how you ultimately create prosperity. We’ve got way too much nay saying in our government, I actually believe, in the American nation, I believe we can do big things again, but sometimes sending the same old people to do the same job. That’s not how you do big things. That’s how you get more high inflation, more open borders and more small thinking from our government officials like Kamala Harris.
Chris Cuomo
So Senator, you’re going to want to sit down for this one. Oh no, not unlike Betelgeuse, if you invoke the former president’s names too many times in a row, he’s going to want to weigh in on what is being said about we have a call right now from former President Donald John Trump. He wants to weigh in, Mr. President, I know there’s a little bit of a delay. Can you hear us, and what is your question for the Senate?
Donald Trump
Well, I can hear you, Chris and I do have a question, and I think it will be quite an interesting one. The answer should be easy. How brilliant is Donald J Trump,
Chris Cuomo
Take your time.
JD Vance
Well, first of all, sir, this is supposed to be undecided voters. I would hope that I have your vote of all people, but I here, here’s first of all, sir, of course, you’re very brilliant. And we, we both agree, we both agree that it’s important to have very smart people running our government. But he but here’s, here’s the thing about President Trump, that aside of you, sir, if you’ll forgive me for telling this story that I think often people don’t see. And of course, I got my beautiful wife here in the front row. And one of my favorite moments with President Trump is we were hosting an event forum near our home in Cincinnati a few months ago. And of course, you know, my wife was a little bit nervous to really talk to the President of the United States, and he asked her, What do you think about your husband being in public service? And she gives, if you know, my wife, a very diplomatic answer, you know, sir, he really cares about the people of Ohio. He’s thrilled to be able to serve them, and I’m happy to support him however I can. And President Trump chuckles and goes, Yeah, my wife hates it, too. And and the thing that it did is it just immediately broke the barrier. And it wasn’t the former president, it was just a person talking to my wife, and I think you guys were able to have a nice conversation, but that ability to relate to anybody in any environment, I think that’s the true brilliance of Donald J Trump.
Donald Trump
That’s very nice, and I appreciate it. Maybe I’ll ask a second one I watched, believe it or not, CNN last night, and in watching it, I watched the town hall with Kamala. Now let me ask you a second topic that was not good. How brilliant is Kamala?
JD Vance
That’s a very tough one, sir. I’m supposed to say something.
Donald Trump
Don’t say we don’t need any more. We’re doing just fine, and by the way, Chris JD is doing a fantastic job. Could not be happier. He’s really captivated people, and they love him, and we’re leading by a lot. As you know, the early voting. We don’t, people don’t want to talk about it. I shouldn’t be talking about leading by a landslide, as they say. And we’re very happy about it. And again, we’re very happy with you, Chris, take care of yourself. All
Chris Cuomo
Right. Thank you, Mr. President, thank you. Well, take care of myself. Was that kind of some kind of veiled threat, but you have some kind of policy for journalists in the next administration.
JD Vance
If you went, No man, we’re pro First Amendment. We’re the only candidate that the candidates that are pro First Amendment in this race. But we, you know, here’s the president. Asked me How brilliant is Kamala Harris? I’ll give a more diplomatic answer than maybe, maybe I won’t. Up to what really bothers me, actually, when I see Kamala Harris do these interviews, is I think that there’s something a little insulting about answering and slogans and avoiding every question rather than just saying what you actually think. And look, I’m not perfect, and I’m sure there are many issues where even the people in this room disagree with me on some of it or a lot of it, but I think it’s important for the person who wants to be your president or vice president to just answer the question and say what you want to do. And it really bothers me that she it’s like, every time somebody puts a microphone in front of her, she doesn’t answer the question. You know, it’s like, what do you want to do to lower prices on American families? And she like, I grew up in a middle class family. It’s like, Okay, that’s interesting. But then what are you going to do for those middle class families to lower the price of groceries and of rent? And I think it’s really, it should really worry us about having that person represent us in a private meeting with Vladimir Putin when she can’t even answer questions to the American people.
Chris Cuomo
All right, we’re going to keep asking the questions. We’ll keep getting answers. Let’s take a break here. Please come back to us here at news nation, we have more questions from a range of undecided voters about what matters to you and America. We’ll be right back you.
Part 4
Chris Cuomo
All right, welcome back to news nation’s town hall with Senator Vance here. We’re in Michigan, in Detroit, but we’re getting a range of questions from a range of undecided voters back to the audience with Rocky what is your question, sir?
I’m Rocky Rocha ski and Semper Fi. Senator firavi supporter. I’m a retired military officer, a lieutenant colonel from the United States Army, and a proud Polish American, we strongly support the president, or I support this President’s Middle East policy, in your Middle East policy and the past Abraham accords little bit concerned with your Ukrainian policy, understood, but you’re going to inherit a $37 trillion debt when you come into office. How do we maintain that debt, debt payments in our national security, for ourselves, for our national security and for our allies? Yeah,
JD Vance
very good question, and I appreciate that you don’t always agree with us on everything. Hopefully we can have a reasonable conversation here, because I think that’s what the country really needs. And I appreciate your question. I appreciate the spirit and what you asked it most of all, I think, on the debt in particular. Look, there are three big reasons why we have a sky high debt, and you’ll forgive me, maybe for getting into the weeds a little bit here. But if you go back to 2019 the federal government spent $4.4 trillion and now in 2024 we’ll probably spend about $6.8 trillion now you ask yourself, Okay, that’s $2.4 trillion in a very short period of time. The big thing that happened is that all the emergency spending that we did during the COVID pandemic to prevent people from losing their jobs and losing their business, this was important stuff. We made that spending permanent under Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, and that’s why the debt is so sky high that $2.4 trillion most of that is is hangover from 2020, and 2021, we’re not in the emergency, right? Thank God we’re not in the pandemic times anymore. So let’s get federal spending back to a reasonable level. That’s the first thing that we ought to do to tackle the debt. Now, you mentioned debt service payments, right? And that’s another big issue is we’re spending about a trillion dollars not on anything, not a program for our people, not on, you know, food for poor Americans, not on Social Security, but on interest payments on the debt. And the big reason why we’re spending so much is because the interest rates are way too high, right? The same mortgage interest rate that you’re paying that is way higher than it was three years ago. That means our debt service payments have shot through the roof. So what do you do? You unleash American energy, you lower the cost of goods, you lower the cost of interest rates, and then we could probably save hundreds of billions of dollars a year just from lowering interest rates for American families. And the third thing that I’d say is, look, I’m a big believer in the American people and the engine of prosperity. If we bring more good middle class jobs back to our country, if we rebuild the manufacturing and industrial base the United States of America, that means you’re going to have a lot of people who are working instead of not working, and when they’re working and they’re paying taxes and they’re supporting their families. Of course, it’s not just good from a federal budget perspective, it’s good from the perspective of we want people to have dignified work and good jobs. Final thing I’ll say, Sir, and this is, again, this is not good enough attention in our country. You look at the amount of money from housing benefits to Medicare to Social Security that we’re spending on illegal aliens in this country, it is going to break our country. We have got to make sure that American benefits go to American citizens, because when you allow millions of people in, you roll out the red carpet and then you give them benefits again, I don’t think they’re bad people, but my job as your next vice president is to look out for American citizens, and that means our tax dollars ought to go to our people.
Chris Cuomo
Have you ever talked to the former president about lessons learned from 2016 as you know, Trump offended a lot of traditional conservatives with his spending after the tax cuts in 2016 which absolutely led to the deficit and the debt. Do you believe it would be done differently this time? Well,
JD Vance
I think if you go back to what really increased spending was that COVID emergency spending, actually, I think we were in a pretty good place for the federal budget and the federal debt until COVID came along. And look, he had a decision to make. I think it was the right decision. It was, look, do we actually save people’s jobs and save people’s businesses, or do we allow the economy to drive off a cliff? I think President Trump made the right decision in saving people’s jobs and businesses. The problem is that was an emergency response to the worst pandemic we’ve seen in 100 years. You can’t keep that going. You can’t keep those same levels of spending going after the pandemic is over. That’s why we have the debt problem we have today.
Chris Cuomo
I mean, he spent a lot before also, but you’re right. It’s both things at once now, related to what the answer is that you had given I want to go back to X, a post that is related to that. Do you believe there’s a simple solution? This is from user Judy for homelessness, especially for the mentally ill.
JD Vance
Yeah, that’s a very good question, and I know Judy, I appreciate it, and any of us who live near. Or even just visit a big city to go to dinner or have a nice, nice night out. Know that the homelessness problem in this country, especially in our big cities, is completely out of control, and this actually goes something. I’m going to criticize President Reagan going back 40 or so years, because President Reagan made a decision to cut mental health care in this country, and the decision that we made, collectively as a nation, was we were going to let people live on the streets instead of sometimes being committed to inpatient mental health facilities. Now what that has meant is that our taxpayers have picked up the burden of caring for those mentally ill folks. If you go to a county lock up, we have, we have law enforcement officers here today. If you talk to a local sheriff, a lot of times, our local jails have just become housing facilities for people who suffer with mental illness. I don’t think that it’s compassionate to let the mentally ill fester on the streets. Some of them have addiction problems. Some of them have other health problems. I think we need to get back to saying that if you have real mental health problems, you’ve got to go to an inpatient treatment facility, get the care that you need, and not stop harassing people on our streets. That’s not compassionate. It’s not compassionate for the mentally ill. It’s not compassionate for our residents in our cities. We’ve got to get back to something that actually it wasn’t perfect, and I wouldn’t say that it was perfect, but our model now of just letting people hang out in the streets. Some of them are freezing to death, some of them are dying of overdoses. It was a mistake, and I think all leaders should be able to say, we made a mistake. Let’s let’s try something. Actually works this time.
Chris Cuomo
Many of the cases, you can’t even compel care. So if people don’t want to go in, they can’t. Over 30,000 of the homelessness country of veterans, and boy, if that’s not an emergency, I don’t know what is all right? What is your name and what is your question and what is your topic?
Audience Member
Hi, I’m Rebecca, and I’m an account manager for an automotive supplier here locally. And my question is, two weeks from today, half of our country is going to be devastated. And so, you know, looking at it from the winning side versus the losing side, do you have any thoughts on how the winning side can help, you know, outreach or Sure, lend a hand to those that might not like the outcome? Yeah,
JD Vance
Well, Rebecca, I really appreciate that question, and I think it’s important, because you’re right, and I think we’re going to win. And so maybe, like 49% of the country, or 45% or whatever number it is, it’s going to be a lot of our fellow Americans who didn’t vote for us. But I think one leadership can really set the tone. And you know, people forget this after the election of 2016 and you know, I’m going to brag on my running mate here a little bit that after the election of 2016 Donald Trump talked a lot about the importance of unity, about the importance of bringing our country back together. He talked a lot about how there were people in the Republican Party who wanted to him to arrest Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump said, No, it’s time for us to heal as a country, actually realize that we’re on the same team. So I think the most important thing, ma’am, is, of course, President Trump most importantly. But also, I we just have to set the tone right. We have to set the tone that we’re all Americans, we’re all in this together, and that we’re all part of the same American family. But then I think also, we all have responsibility here. I mean, you know, one of my favorite quotes about American citizenship is that it’s not easy, right? American citizenship is hard. You’ve got to be smart about the issues. You’ve got to know our history. You’ve got to pay attention and study to what’s going on. We’ve got to be better at communicating and talking to one another. The biggest thing that I worry about, we’re talking about threats to democracy. That’s a term that you hear a lot. To me, the biggest threat to democracy is the rising tide of censorship, the idea that we should be trying to silence our fellow Americans rather than persuade them and talk to them. That’s always going to that’s always going to lead to people being pissed off because they don’t like to be told what to think or what to say. They like to talk to one another, and that’s one thing that I’ll always commit to, as you know your vice president for the next four years. I’ll always try to talk to people. We’ll go out there and we’ll do events with people who disagree with us. We’ll answer questions from people who don’t always see eye to eye. But I think if we set the tone at the top, the leadership of this country is all about communicating with one another, I think that’s how we start to heal the divide, but we all have a role in it. And one final point I’ll say about this. And you know, don’t get too personal all the time. But you know, one of the things I’ve seen, especially from, you know, some of my my wife’s friends and some of my friends, is that they disagree with us on politics. Sometimes they’ll get very personal about it. And if you’re discarding a lifelong friendship because somebody votes for the other team, then you’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake, and you should do something different, like, don’t, don’t, cast aside, like, most of my family obviously is going to vote for, you know, Donald Trump and JD Vance, and if they they’re not, actually, I need to talk to him, but, but I’ve got friends who, like me personally, acquaintances who aren’t necessarily going to vote for me. That doesn’t make them. Bad people, and you can’t. We can’t. This is my most important advice, whether you vote for me, whether you vote for for Donald Trump, whether you vote for Kamala Harris, don’t cast aside family members and lifelong friendships. Politics is not worth it, and I think we follow that principle will heal the divide in this country. Thank you. Have a seat. A
Chris Cuomo
Couple questions about who you are for the American audience, and then I’ll say, thank you. Okay, the it was interesting watching the debate with Governor Walz. You surprised a lot of people with your demeanor in that there was an expectation that you were going to come out there swinging, and there was illegal Chris, it depends, but that there was an accommodation, there was a decency. So when people hear you in the mode of what was happening in Springfield, Ohio, and what you said then, and the combativeness that has been attributed to you, what do you want them to know about who you are when those statements are made?
JD Vance
Well, I guess what I would want people to know is that all of us are complicated, right? I mean, sometimes I meet people in this country. I met a woman who was talking about struggling to pay for groceries, but then she spent three minutes telling me that she said a prayer, not just for me and for my wife, but for our children by name every single night. That’s incredible generosity of spirit. So sometimes I meet people like that, and I feel incredibly optimistic and hopeful about our country. Sometimes I see it, you know, flying into Michigan today, the the entire countryside is orange and red and green and yellow. And I think, My God, we’ve got a beautiful country. And then sometimes I see that Kamala Harris has done something else to open the border, and I get kind of pissed off. But I guess I just think that’s most people right. Sometimes you’re frustrated with our leadership, but you can still love our country. Sometimes you can agree with somebody, even if you plan to vote against them. It’s just nobody is one emotion all the time, and that’s certainly true of me. Sometimes, you know, I’m a happy go lucky guy. I’m playing with my dog and playing with my kids, and then sometimes I read about, you know, just happened two days ago to me, a young family came up to me and told me that their son, a United States Marine, had gotten killed by the Mexican drug cartels, and that pissed me off. And I think we can be complicated people. We can have a multitude of emotions, and that’s who I am, and I imagine that’s who most American people are too. So
Chris Cuomo
On the issue that is really motivating the domestic agenda right now, which we’re not really used to seeing, which is immigration, right? We don’t usually see it being dominant in an election dialog the way it is now, although maybe it played a role in 2016 that we just didn’t give enough of an audience to. The truth is enough about what’s happening at the southern border. When you think about these statements about who’s eating dogs and cats in Springfield. Do you wish that had been handled differently by you and others?
JD Vance
Well, what I said then, and I’ll say now, is, you’re hearing a lot of things from your constituents. They’re telling you things, and I think it’s important for me to listen to the people that are coming to me with their problems. Now, do I think that the media certainly got distracted on the housing crisis and the health crisis and the crisis in the public schools by focusing on the eating the dogs and the cats things. Yeah, I do and do. I wish that I had been better in that moment, maybe. But it’s also people in my community, people that I represent, are coming to me and saying, this thing is happening. What am I supposed to do? Hang up the phone and tell them they’re a liar, because the media doesn’t want me to talk about it. One of the things that I’ve learned in my in my time in the United States Senate is that sometimes the media doesn’t always listen to people, and sometimes people say something that seems outlandish and it turns out being false, and sometimes people say something outlandish that turns out being true. I mean, I remember in East Palestine, if you remember, there was a terrible train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and people were telling me that the rivers were contaminated, the creeks were contaminated. I was like, that sounds kind of crazy, but I went up there, I stuck a stick in the mud, and I realized there’s a rainbow in the water. That’s not natural. What I took from that is, I’d rather listen to the people I represent than listen to bullies in the American media. And that is something that –
Chris Cuomo
Will do as long as the truth wins Senator, as long as the truth wins. Senator JD Vance, thank you very much. Thank you very much all of you. Thank you for joining news nation. Please.
Chris Cuomo
The campaign continues, and we’ll be with you.
JD Vance
Thanks, man, all right. Well done, Senator. And thanks guys.
Thank you all for spending some time with us. You us. You.
