One of the funniest aspects of Sen. JD Vance’s involvement in the 2024 election as former President Donald Trump’s running mate is that he has a way with words and is able to utterly scorch his attackers, whether in person or online, as was recently seen on X (formerly Twitter) when a woke commenter tried attacking him.
That woke commenter was Krystal Ball, the political commentator and media personality known mainly for her current gig, The Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar podcast, which is billed as something of a non-partisan podcast that approaches subject from what the hosts claim is the perspective of truth rather than political leanings.
Krystal, in any case, tried attacking Sen. JD Vance over his perspective on massive numbers of Haitian migrants being brought to a small town in Ohio, amongst many other towns and cities across the United States. In fact, for merely pointing out the problems with such a policy, Krystal tried to label him as a “neo-Nazi.” Vance destroyed her in response.
It began with a poster named Zaid Jilani attacking Sen. Vance for posting about the Haitian situation, saying, “Springfield was declining for years until they saw an increase in jobs and growth driven by people moving in. That’s means more wealth, healthier budgets, etc. Are there no upsides to immigration in your view? What about Ushas parents, should they have stayed in India?”
Sen. Vance, in response, fired back, saying, “Dude, I’ve always liked you, so maybe this should be a longer conversation. But come on. “Are there no upsides to immigration?” is a radically different question from “Should we drop 20,000 people from a radically different culture in a small Ohio town in a matter of a few years?” First of all, remember that I’ve been on this issue for months, well before it became viral. You have actual leftists who will say, “look, housing prices have gone up, it’s great for the local residents.” What about the people who don’t own homes? What about the grandparents who do own homes but would like their kids to have a chance to buy a home?”
Continuing, he said, “Look at the number of Medicaid recipients who are newcomers. Do you not think that stresses the local hospital system? I have constituents who say they’ve lost their jobs, or been told they won’t be getting a raise, because new migrants are willing to work for cheap. There are homeless people who can’t get homes. Look at the number of ESL students in a small school district–increasing over three fold to nearly 1,000 kids. Do you think it affects the quality of the education for locals when their schools are flooded with a bunch of people who don’t speak the language? I could go on and on.”
He added, “Again, a longer conversation, but I don’t know why your automatic assumption is that the only reason people are complaining about this is that they have bad motivations. And I cannot stand the condescension directed at all of these people who–on the record–are giving very specific testimonials about how their lives were made worse.”
It was to that response that Krystal lost it, trying to connect Vance’s points to Nazism and saying, “When you insist on spreading neo-nazi fueled smears about immigrants leading to bomb threats, it kind of closes the space for this intellectual discussion about pluses and minuses of immigration that you’re now retreating to, dude.”
Sen. Vance, responding, toasted Krystal for her veneer of populist anti-neo-liberalism while simultaneously defending one of the most egregious current things the neo-liberal regime has done, saying, “Krystal Ball: I really hate neoliberalism. I’m a populist! Also Krystal Ball: Anyone who doesn’t think 20,000 cheap laborers should be dropped on a small Ohio town is a neo-nazi.”
For that unapologetic response, Sen. Vance was heartily cheered by the online right. For example, conservative X personality Greg Price, for example, said, “Our VP dishing out ratios in the replies of libs🫡🇺🇸” Another wrote, “Krystal is nauseating and has become more nauseating as Breaking Points has grown. She lacks any sort of critical thinking and her conclusion always eventually ends at ‘well, you’re racist.’”
Yet another X commenter wrote, noting, like Vance, the absurdity of the supposed populist’s take on the situation, “Krystal Ball lashing out at people less fortunate than her from inside the walls of her gated community because they are complaining about real issues in their community is the sort of AOC crying in a white suit virtue signaling that helps nobody but her.”
Watch Sen. Vance toast a reporter live on TV here:
Featured image credit: By Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America – J. D. Vance, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149633340
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