During a recent campaign stop in Michigan, Republican Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance shut down a reporter’s question regarding claims the Trump-Vance campaign has made about FEMA funding. Vance explained that the time and resources of the federal government have been strained by the disastrous impact of the Biden-Harris administration’s open border policies.
Vance maintained that the “focus” of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ government has been more concerned with dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants that have poured over the southern border and strained local budgets and infrastructure. The Ohio senator explained that trying to mitigate the migrant crisis has detracted from the ability to help American citizens impacted by Hurricane Helene.
The reporter asked Vance at the Detroit rally, “Uh, thank you, Senator, historian with CBS News, you said in an interview with Newsmax yesterday that…that FEMA was disaster relief was being used to fund migrant to focus on migrants rather…Donald Trump also said untruth social that most, if not all, of the money that FEMA spent is on migrants. FEMA officials say that’s just not true. What evidence do you guys have?” he asked.
At this reporter questioned Vance, the crowd booed, presuming the question to be hostile and biased against the Trump-Vance campaign. Before answering the question, Vance took a moment to call out critical articles that suggested the crowd at Trump rallies was threatening toward journalists. However, Vance emphasized that it was their First Amendment right to boo.
Getting to the question on FEMA, Vance said, “My point is about the focus of our current administration, and if you use resources, but most importantly, if you put people on the task of dealing, let’s say, with a massive influx of illegal immigration, then they’re going to be distracted from doing their core job of keeping Americans safe in response to a disaster each of us.”
Trump’s running mate further outlined how if FEMA has been directed to help fight the ongoing illegal immigration crisis, it will invariably take away from time and resources that could go toward the American citizens across the southeast who have lost everything in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
“This is true of me. It’s true of everybody in the world. We only got so much time to focus, and there’s only so much time in the day. And if you take FEMA and you turn it into an agency that resettles a legal immigrant that’s going to take their focus away from keeping people safe after a hurricane. That’s basic human reality. And I think there’s no way around it,” he continued.
Calling out the fact-checks on comments from him and former President Trump, Vance stated that he didn’t trust the Biden-Harris administration to have not reallocated money toward illegal immigrants. “Now, now what the fact checkers say and we’ll sort of you know, we’ll try to be as fair to the other side as possible. My friends what the fact checkers will say as well. There’s a bucket of money that goes to illegal immigrants and that’s a different bucket of money that goes to disaster relief. Well, I’m sure the Biden administration has never moved money from one bucket to the other,” he said.
Watch Vance below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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