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JD Vance vows to fight for ‘forgotten communities’ in hometown rally

Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, takes the stage with his wife Usha Vance during a rally at Middletown High School in his home town of Middletown, Ohio, Monday.
Paul Vernon
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AP
Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, takes the stage with his wife Usha Vance during a rally at Middletown High School in his home town of Middletown, Ohio, Monday.

For more on Biden's decision and the now open 2024 race, head to the NPR Network's live updates page.


MIDDLETOWN, Ohio –– Ohio Sen. JD Vance said Monday he would fight for “forgotten communities all across our country” if elected as vice president, channeling his small town Ohio upbringing into a populist economic message.

“My life wasn't all that different from a lot of people who grew up in Middletown, Ohio,” he said. “It was tough, but it was surrounded by loving people, and it was surrounded by something that if we don't fight for is not going to be around for the next generation of kids, and that's opportunity.”

The first-term Senator was named as former President Donald Trump’s running mate last week at the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, a weeklong celebration for a party unified and remade in Trump’s image.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrive a campaign rally, Saturday in Grand Rapids, Mich.
Evan Vucci / AP
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AP
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrive a campaign rally, Saturday in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Vance’s speech combined biography – rattling off anecdotes from his time at Middletown High School – and philosophy, connecting things like American trade policies enacted in the 1990s to the decline in manufacturing jobs in the Midwest.

“We're going to fight for every single worker in this country,” he pledged. “If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to put a good dinner on the table and send your kids to whatever vacation and whatever school you want. To work hard and play by the rules, you get a good life. It's that simple.”

Hundreds of supporters packed the auditorium of Middletown High School and waited for hours outside to hear the hometown hero share his vision for America in his first solo rally since accepting the vice presidential nomination.

A one time vocal critic of Trump when he first ran for president in 2016, Vance has evolved over time to be one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in Congress, online, and now on the campaign trail.

“He is not the caricature or the lie that the media has told you that he is,” Vance said of the former president. “He is a person who believes this very simple thing, and they call him a radical for it, but it happens just to be common sense: his radical idea is that America should make more stuff in its own country for its own citizens, and that the American nation belongs to the American people.”

MIDDLETOWN, OHIO - JULY 22: Guests begin arriving at Middletown High School for a campaign rally with Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) on July 22, 2024 in Middletown, Ohio. Vance, who graduated from the high school in 2003, will be holding his first solo rally as a vice presidential candidate in the school's performing arts center.  (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Scott Olson/Getty Images / Getty Images North America
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Getty Images North America
MIDDLETOWN, OHIO - JULY 22: Guests begin arriving at Middletown High School for a campaign rally with Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) on July 22, 2024 in Middletown, Ohio. Vance, who graduated from the high school in 2003, will be holding his first solo rally as a vice presidential candidate in the school's performing arts center. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Vance’s selection as the GOP’s vice presidential nominee is widely seen as a deepening of Trump’s populist and dire message that America will cease to exist if he is not elected this fall instead of broadening his appeal to more voters.

The sometimes fatalistic language of Trump’s campaign was echoed by Ohio state Sen. George Lang, who warned of violence if Trump did not take office again.

“I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County's JD Vance are the last chance to save our country,” Lang said at the rally. “Politically, I'm afraid if we lose this one, it's going to take a civil war to save the country – and it will be saved.”

The rally comes just 10 days after a failed assassination attempt against Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., where the former president was grazed in the ear, one attendee was killed and two others were injured.

Many in the audience wore shirts emblazoned with the iconic image of Trump, surrounded by Secret Service agents, chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight” with an upraised fist.

Vance spent most of his speech focusing on populist policies that a second Trump administration would enact, railing against China, Democratic economic plans and supporting Trump, whose “radical idea is that America should make more stuff in its own country for its own citizens, and that the American nation belongs to the American people.”


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Stephen Fowler
Stephen Fowler is a political reporter with NPR's Washington Desk and will be covering the 2024 election based in the South. Before joining NPR, he spent more than seven years at Georgia Public Broadcasting as its political reporter and host of the Battleground: Ballot Box podcast, which covered voting rights and legal fallout from the 2020 presidential election, the evolution of the Republican Party and other changes driving Georgia's growing prominence in American politics. His reporting has appeared everywhere from the Center for Public Integrity and the Columbia Journalism Review to the PBS NewsHour and ProPublica.