JD Vance tried to strike a chord of unity in remarks at a rally in Selma — though struggled to overcome his running mate’s violent rhetoric. (Photo: Brandon Kingdollar)
In a rally in Selma Friday, vice presidential nominee JD Vance closed with a pledge that would be ordinary in any other election: Donald Trump would be “the president for all of us,” not just his supporters.
But the message was overshadowed by the former president’s own words from the prior evening, when he told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that he’d like to see his political opponent Liz Cheney “with nine barrels shooting at her” — a violent remark that dominated the headlines Friday.
Vance, the junior senator from Ohio, tried to paint Democrats as divisive and his own ticket as unifying — condemning President Joe Biden for calling Trump supporters “garbage” while countering that he and Trump had never attacked Harris’s voters. Trump, though, has repeatedly referred to Democratic voters as “lunatics” and an “enemy from within.”
The former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., joined the rally in Selma unannounced. He condemned Harris for accepting the support of the Cheney family — provoking raucous boos when he named Dick and Liz Cheney — before mounting a defense of his father’s remarks.
“My father says: It’s strange, if Liz Cheney wants to be in all of the wars, she should pick up arms, but it seems like the people that get us into these wars never seem to be the people fighting them,” Trump Jr. told the crowd of several hundred. “The media says: Donald Trump thinks Liz Cheney should be shot!”
Trump’s remarks, which did center on the Cheney family’s support of wars in the Middle East, went further than his son suggested. “Let’s see how she feels about it when the guns are trained on her face,” Trump said Thursday.
Former Rep. Cheney, R-Wyo., said the remarks by Trump are exactly how dictators destroy free nations.
“They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country and our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant,” she wrote on the social media platform X.
‘Garbage’ remark looms large as Vance calls for unity
From supporters clad in orange reflector vests and trash bags to a large white truck from Patriot Sanitation Management, reminders of Biden’s garbage comment were strewn all throughout the event in Selma Friday.
“I am a proud piece of garbage,” said state auditor candidate Dave Boliek, warming up the crowd ahead of Vance’s arrival. “I’m a businessman and a leader who has made decisions in the face of liberal opposition.”
Vance used the comment — which Trump seized on during a rally in Rocky Mount earlier this week — to stake his claim that he and Trump would build a prosperous economy that leaves no one behind.
“If you’re struggling with the price of groceries, you’re not garbage. If you’re pissed off about Kamala Harris’s open border, you’re not a bad person,” Vance said. “I do think that in four days, we oughta take out the trash in Washington, D.C.”
Despite Trump’s caustic rhetoric toward his opponents, Vance insisted that the former president would work to better the lives of all Americans if elected.
“Whether you vote for Donald J. Trump and make the right decision or whether you vote for Kamala Harris and make the wrong decision, we are going to usher a golden age of American prosperity whoever you voted for,” Vance said. “Not just the people who agree with him politically.”
Trump, though, has a history of wielding the powers of the presidency to inflict hardship on his political detractors — on multiple occasions withholding disaster aid to states overseen by his opponents — and has repeatedly vowed to exact retribution on his enemies if reelected.
On Friday, though, Vance called to end the strife and division of contemporary American politics.
“I’m sick of Americans losing friends and losing family members over politics,” Vance said. “I’m sick of Americans following Joe Biden and Kamala Harris into thinking that the people who disagree with them politically are bad people — they’re not bad people.”
Johnston Democrats condemn Trump’s violent rhetoric
Ahead of the Vance rally, Johnston County Democrats condemned the GOP ticket for spreading violent rhetoric and misinformation.
Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) zeroed in on Trump’s violent remarks about Cheney — linking it to a litany of other inflammatory statements by the candidate, including his past vows to be a “dictator on day one” and to purge the federal bureaucracy of officials deemed disloyal.
“That is a death threat against a political opponent,” Nickel said. “This is Trump — as we know, a fascist, a clear and present danger to the United States of America.”
Nickel also called out false claims by Trump that the Biden administration had abandoned North Carolinians in the wake of Hurricane Helene, calling it “par for the course for GOP misinformation.”
“The only people who are spreading those lies are Donald Trump and JD Vance,” he said, praising officials for undertaking an “unprecedented federal, state, and local response” to provide aid to disaster victims.
Anderson Clayton, the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, said a second Trump administration would severely undercut future disaster preparation efforts, noting that Project 2025 — a conservative policy platform developed in part by former Trump administration officials — would see the National Weather Service shut down.
“Anybody that’s politicizing a natural disaster like that does not belong in the White House,” she said.
Clayton projected confidence about early vote returns despite ballots by registered Republicans outpacing those from Democrats by a slim margin. She said she believes those votes are subtracting from Republicans’ Election Day total and do not represent “new Republicans that are turning out to vote.”
She pointed to Trump’s decision to hold rallies across North Carolina on Sunday and Monday as a sign of weakness.
“Republicans don’t win the White House unless they win North Carolina, so I’d say he’s pretty f—ing scared,” Clayton said.
Vance pledges to solve border crisis and affordability woes
If his calls for unity were a diversion from the campaign’s ordinary tone, Vance centered the rest of his pitch on familiar terrain — immigration and the economy.
“Pack your bags, illegal immigrants, because in three months, you’re going back home,” Vance said. “Kamala Harris refuses to do her job as border czar — that’s a disgrace, and we can do so much better.”
He blamed undocumented immigrants for a lack of affordable housing in the U.S. and said that under a second Trump administration, he would “make sure that American homes go to American citizens.” Vance added that if elected, they would slash housing regulations to ensure many more new homes were built.
Economists have disputed Vance’s claim about immigrants and housing costs.
Trump Jr. said that under Biden, America had gone from “a time of prosperity to a time of poverty” — a state of affairs that would only change if Trump won in 2024.
The vice presidential nominee is set to appear with Trump Jr. in Nevada and Arizona on Saturday. The pair will return to North Carolina for an appearance in Raleigh Sunday.
Vice President Kamala Harris returns to Charlotte on Saturday. It will be her second visit to the battleground state this week.