JD Vance: ‘We’re going to fight for American citizens’

JD Vance had a great speech back in July and this was one of the good lines from it. Here’s a segment of the speech that this video comes from.

VANCE: We’re done importing foreign labor. We’re going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages.

VANCE: We’re done buying energy from countries that hate us. We’re going to get it right here from American workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio and across the country.

VANCE: We’re done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade and we’re going to stamp more and more product with that beautiful label, “made in the USA.”

CROWD: USA! USA! USA!

VANCE: We’re going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families made with the hands of American workers. Together…

VANCE: … we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.

VANCE: Together we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.

VANCE: Together, we will send our kids to war only when we must. But as President Trump showed with the elimination of ISIS and so much more, when we punch, we’re going to punch hard.

VANCE: Together, we will put the citizens of America first, whatever the color of their skin. We will, in short, make America great again.

VANCE: You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear…

VANCE: You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty, things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation.

But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation. Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.

VANCE: That’s the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.

VANCE: And let me illustrate this with a story, if I may. I’m, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country. Incredible people, people who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways. And of course, I’m biased because I love my wife and her family, but it’s true. Now, when I proposed to my wife, we were in law school, and I said, honey, I come with $120,000 worth of law school debt and a cemetery plot on a mountainside in Eastern Kentucky.

VANCE: And I guess standing here tonight, it’s just gotten weirder and weirder, honey.

VANCE: But that’s what she was getting. Now, that cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky is near my family’s ancestral home. And like a lot of people, we came from the mountains of Appalachia into the factories of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

VANCE: Now, that’s Kentucky coal country, one of the ten —

VANCE: Now, it’s one of the ten poorest counties in the entire United States of America. They are very hardworking people, and they’re very good people. They’re the kind of people who would give you the shirt off their back even if they can’t afford enough to eat. And our media calls them privileged and looks down on them.

But they love this country, not only because it’s a good idea, but because in their bones, they know that this is their home, and it will be their children’s home, and they would die fighting to protect it.

VANCE: That is the source of America’s greatness. As a United States Senator, I get to represent millions of people in the great state of Ohio with similar stories, and it is the great honor of my life. Now, in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War.

And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country, who have built this country, who have made things in this country, and who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.

VANCE: Now, that’s not just an idea, my friends. That’s not just a set of principle. Even though the ideas and the principles are great. That is a homeland. That is our homeland.

VANCE: People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.

VANCE: Now, we won’t agree on every issue, of course, not even in this room. We may disagree from time to time about how best to reinvigorate American industry and renew American family. That’s fine. In fact, it’s more than fine. It’s good.

But never forget that the reason why this united Republican Party exists, why we do this, why we care about those great ideas and that great history, is that we want this nation to thrive for centuries to come.