In a powerful rebuttal to an attack on him and former President Donald Trump launched by a reporter with the Associated Press, Senator and now-Trump running mate JD Vance shut down the attempted avenue of attack and then counter-attacked with his own terrific response. The incident occurred in December of 2023, before Vance was made Trump’s 2024 running mate.
The incident came after Trump sounded off on illegal immigration and said that the illegal immigrants are “poisoning” America. As background, Trump said in a Truth Social post around the time of the Vance incident, “ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS POISONING THE BLOOD OF OUR NATION. THEY’RE COMING FROM PRISONS, FROM MENTAL INSTITUTIONS — FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. WITHOUT BORDERS & FAIR ELECTIONS, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Similarly, in a New Hampshire rally from around the same time, he said, “They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country.” He continued, “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”
So, Sen. Vance was asked about the situation and fired back that Trump was referring to the fentanyl crisis when he made the comment. “First of all, he didn’t say immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country. He said illegal immigrants were poisoning the blood of this country, which is objectively and obviously true to anybody who looks at the statistics about fentanyl overdoses,” Vance said.
Then, sounding off on the framing of the reporter’s question, Vance said, “‘Why do you think that Donald Trump’s language is targeted at the blood of the immigrants and not at the blood of the American citizens who are being poisoned by the fentanyl problem?’ This is ridiculous. If you watch the speech in context and look at what’s going on, it’s obvious that he was talking about the very clear fact that the blood of Americans is being poisoned by a drug epidemic.”
Next, ridiculing the claim of some that Trump’s “poisoning” remark was Hitlerian, Vance said, “To take that comment and then to immediately assume that he’s talking about immigrants as Adolf Hitler was talking about Jews is preposterous.” He added, “You guys need to wake up. … It’s an absurd question. It’s an absurd framing.”
Listen to Vance’s spat with the reporter here:
Here’s a new spin from Senator Sycophant (R-Palm Beach). Vance says that when Trump talks about migrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” he’s just talking about fentanyl. pic.twitter.com/CeNOK0Vc1o
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 19, 2023
The Biden campaign, attacking Trump for his comments on illegal immigration and blood, said, “Donald Trump channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy. Trump is not shying away from his plan to lock up millions of people into detention camps and continues to lie about that time when Joe Biden obliterated him by over 7 million votes three years ago.”
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