Vice President JD Vance accused Democrats of causing “millions of orphans” during a Friday stump speech in his Ohio hometown.
Vance, 42, spoke at a local steel factory in Middletown, Ohio, on Friday, stumping for gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Jon Husted, 57, while laying out his vision for consolidating Republican gains among working-class voters. The vice president, widely considered the odds-on favorite for the 2028 Republican nomination, framed his remarks around economic dignity, border security, and the human costs of prior administrations’ policies.
“It’s not my job to tell you who to fall in love with, how to worship, or even whether to root for the Bengals or the Browns,” Vance said at the steel factory. “My job … is to fight for you. It’s to fight for your blessings of liberty, for a neighborhood that’s safe, a job that’s dignified, a church that’s protected.”
Vance said prior administrations had unleashed a wave of carnage by allowing the outsourcing of US jobs and the importation of fentanyl, which has killed about 400,000 Americans across the past seven years. He told the story of California computer programmer Kevin Flanagan, who shot himself in 2003 when Bank of America laid him off after requiring him to train his outsourced Indian replacements.
“It’s not just Kevin, as you all know. Economists have measured the ways in which the opioid crisis exploded in the very locations where jobs were shipped overseas,” Vance said.
“The open borders demanded by those same people brought some innocent people, of course it did. But we also know that it brought a lot of cartels. It brought the fentanyl trade, and it left us with millions of orphaned children being raised by aggrieved grandparents.”
“The blood of those people, in my view, it pools at the feet of those who would sell out their country for a cheap bottom line,” the VP added.
“If you were unlucky, as I know many people in this room were, you were left raising a grandchild while you were mourning the child killed by the very poison brought across that wide-open border.”
Vance touted the Trump administration’s dramatic reduction in illegal border crossings and an increase in US citizen employment since last year. He then hailed the “great southern populist” Huey Long, a Louisiana governor and senator who was assassinated in 1935, for having the right idea of how government should improve the lives of its citizens.
“I want you to have peace, and I want you to have security, and I want you to have the real freedom that comes along with knowing that you are the lord of your own manor,” Vance said.
“Huey Long … once said ‘every man a king’ was the goal of his political program, but no man is a king if their castle is under siege by criminals. No man is a king if they can’t take their family out to dinner without being mugged or having their car jacked.
“And of course, ending the Biden border invasion was a big part of why we have changed that over the last 18 months. For four years, the Democrats invited millions of illegal immigrants into this country to take over our communities and compete with us for jobs and housing,” Vance went on.
The Trump-Vance Republican ticket won the 2024 election by focusing on inflation and illegal immigration, along with a raft of policies aimed at the working class, including since-enacted tax cuts on overtime pay and tips.
Vance criticized prominent left-wing Democrats who have won primaries so far this year, including Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed — whose defense of Islamic Sharia law Vance said was out of line with the politics of his own Democrat-voting grandparents who raised him.
Turning back to Ohio, Vance reminded his audience that the Democratic Senate candidate — former Sen. Sherrod Brown — is “a friendly enough guy,” but “never once raised his voice against Joe Biden’s border crisis or against the inflation that was brought on by Joe Biden underinvesting and trying to destroy American industry.”
In the viral moment that drew national attention, Vance’s “millions of orphans” line capped a sustained attack on Democratic immigration policies that he said had devastated American families through fentanyl deaths and economic displacement. The speech represented some of his most pointed rhetoric yet as vice president, blending personal narrative, historical reference, and sharp partisan criticism as he positioned himself for a potential future presidential run.
Vance is scheduled to deliver remarks at the Air Force Academy commencement in Colorado Springs on May 28.