Republican vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, of Ohio, speaks at a rally at JWF Industries on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance campaigned Saturday in the key battleground of Pennsylvania, where early mail-in voting is already underway as just 25 days remain in the heated 2024 race that will be decided by a handful of states.
Former President Donald Trump’s running mate rallied a crowd of a few hundred at a sprawling riverside manufacturing facility in Johnstown, adhering to the ticket’s main themes of immigration and the economy.
During a question-and-answer session with the press following his prepared remarks, States Newsroom asked Vance if he will commit to the peaceful transfer of power no matter the winner in November.
The coming presidential election is the first since a mob of Trump supporters violently breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, delaying Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results. More than 1,500 defendants have been charged with crimes associated with the attack on the Capitol, during which 140 police officers were assaulted.
“Yes, of course,” Vance replied. “Look, this is very simple. Yes, there was a riot at the Capitol on January 6, but there was still a peaceful transfer of power in this country, and that is always going to happen.”
Vance, Ohio’s junior U.S. senator, in his speech painted Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, as “a tax-and-spend San Francisco liberal who wants to open our borders and destroy American manufacturing.”
“Are we going to give Kamala Harris a promotion to president of the United States? Hell no. We are going to tell Harris ‘You are fired,’ and we are voting Donald J. Trump to be our next president,” Vance said to cheers.
Vance spoke from a stage inside JWF Industries, a local plant that manufactures transportation, energy and defense equipment and vehicles.
Four military tactical utility vehicles framed the stage, where roughly 80 spectators lined the stage behind and to each side of Vance. A couple hundred people sat below the stage, with several empty rows behind them and an empty section to the left.
New poll numbers
Both campaigns and their surrogates are blanketing seven must-win swing states, as the presidential contest remains incredibly tight.
Trump holds an advantage in Arizona, while Harris has a slight lead in Pennsylvania, according to the latest poll results for the key battleground states released Saturday morning by The New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College.
Vance urged the crowd to check their voter registration status and talk to family and friends about going to the polls.
“It’s the only way that we’re going to make Donald Trump the next president, so let’s get out there and vote, my friends,” he said.
Vance spent the majority of his remarks faulting Harris and President Joe Biden for economic suffering, including inflation and credit card debt delinquency.
A consumer price index report released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed inflation is at its lowest since February 2021.
Vance also attacked Harris for participating in “softball interviews,” citing her recent appearances on podcasts, as well as daytime and late-night TV.
Vance took credit for the Trump campaign ad that features a clip from Harris’ interview on “The View” in which she declined to distance herself from decisions of the Biden presidency.
“The problem with a softball interview is that you still have to be able to hit a softball,” Vance said.
In addition to appearances this week on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” as well as a town hall for Univision, Harris also sat for an interview with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” on Monday. Trump backed out of his own promised appearance on “60 Minutes.”
Jan. 6 protesters ‘knuckleheads’
Vance implied accusations of voter fraud during his speech, telling the crowd that “you have to make the margins so big in Pennsylvania that it doesn’t matter what shenanigans Democrats pull at the last minute.”
“We will never have the fake media or the Democrats telling the truth. We do have our own voices, and our own networks, our family and friends. That is the people power that is going to make Donald Trump the next president,” Vance said.
During the reporter Q and A, the crowd jeered when a student journalist from a Pittsburgh university asked if Vance condemned the Jan. 6 violence.
Vance defended Trump’s actions on that day, saying the former president encouraged the crowd to protest “peacefully.”
“And the fact that a few knuckleheads went off and did something they shouldn’t do, that’s not on him. That’s on them,” Vance said to cheers.
Vance chafed at journalists asking more than once about Trump’s refusal to accept that Biden won the 2020 race. The former president continues to repeat the falsehood that he won. Trump challenged election results across dozens of lawsuits in multiple states following the 2020 election and lost them all.
“What Kamala Harris and the media are doing is trying to tell us that we should hear more about what happened four years ago than about her failure in governance,” Vance said. “I think that on November the 5th, we are going to reject it.”
Other questions from the press focused on western Pennsylvania, veterans’ benefits and Project 2025, the 900-page “mandate” for the next government, produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Vance said the conservative project has “no relation” to the Trump campaign. An CNN investigation in June found at least 140 several former Trump administration officials were involved in the project.
Vance spoke for 23 minutes and addressed reporter questions for just under the same amount of time.
Fielding audience questions in Reading
Later on Saturday, Vance headed east to Reading for a town hall discussion moderated by former ESPN anchor Sage Steele.
Unlike his event in Johnstown, he didn’t take questions from the media, instead fielding questions from audience members. It wasn’t clear how the audience members and questions were selected.
When one audience member expressed concern about government overreach, Vance said the most important job after president in the next administration would be attorney general. “You need an attorney general who believes in true equal justice under law,” adding “we’ve got a few good candidates” without naming anyone specific.
He encouraged the audience to vote for Republican Dave McCormick for U.S. Senate to ensure an AG nominee would be approved, and called current Attorney General Merrick Garland “one of the most corrupt” attorney generals who should be fired
Trump, who was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in May, has often criticized the Justice Department for what he views as unfair treatment. During a visit to Reading on Wednesday,Trump reiterated his plan to conduct the largest mass deportation operation for undocumented migrants in American history.
Vance relayed the story of meeting “a Latino immigrant to this country” and her thoughts on immigration.
“She came here 25 years ago, she paid thousands of dollars in fees and legal expenses just to become an American citizen and she is pissed off at the illegal immigration problem because it’s insulting to her,” he said.
Saturday was Vance’s second appearance in Berks County of the 2024 campaign.
According to 2020 Census data, Reading has a Hispanic population of 69%, while 23.2% of Berks County residents are Hispanic, making it the county with the second largest Latino population in Pennsylvania.
In 2020, 69% of Latino voters in Pennsylvania voted for Biden, while 27% voted for Trump, according to exit polling. However, recent nationwide polling shows Trump making significant inroads with Latino voters in the 2024 race against Harris.
On Wednesday, the Harris campaign announced the launch of a group aimed at encouraging support from Latino men titled “Hombres con Harris,” with events planned in Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.
The Harris campaign sent out a statement ahead of Vance’s visit to Reading, criticizing the GOP ticket’s position on abortion and tax policy.
“Pennsylvanians are sick and tired of Trump and Vance’s extremism and divisiveness, which is why they are ready to back the only candidate in this race who is fighting to take our commonwealth forward: Vice President Kamala Harris,” Harris campaign spokesperson Onotse Omoyeni.
An audience member who said she was an immigrant from the Dominican Republic asked Vance what the Trump administration would do to assist small businesses like hers.
Trump, Vance said, would lower business taxes “but only for the businesses that are hiring American workers, we’re not going to reward people for shipping jobs overseas” he added.
In 2019, reports surfaced that undocumented immigrants were previously hired to work at Trump’s resort in New Jersey.
Vance told an audience member who asked about competing with China that he wants to protect the U.S.manufacturing sector and reaffirmed the ticket’s position that tariffs are the most effective way to compete with China.
“When Kamala Harris goes against tariffs and she attacks tariffs all the time, what she’s effectively saying is we’re going to let slave laborers build products and then bring it into our country, undercutting the jobs and the industries of America,” Vance said. “We’ve got to cut that crap out.” Vance said, claiming China “pays slaves $3 a day.”
Several times during the event in Reading, Vance encouraged those to go to a website run by the Trump campaign that promotes voting by mail. Trump criticized vote by mail during his previous presidential election, but has appeared to embrace it over the past few months. But on multiple occasions in Pennsylvania this year he’s criticized vote by mail, calling it “corrupt.”
Vance will be in Pennsylvania for several additional campaign events next week. Harris and Trump will both be in Pennsylvania on Monday; she will appear at a rally in Erie, and Trump will campaign in Montgomery County.