In First Solo Rally Since Convention, JD Vance Talks Up Trump, Flails At Kamala Harris

Sen. JD Vance returned to his hometown high school Monday for his first solo rally since Donald Trump chose him as his 2024 running mate, reminiscing about his time as a student and the local haunts in Middletown, Ohio, he used to visit.

The Ohio Republican pledged to “never forget where he came from” in the 40-minute stump speech, where he rehashed his story about his grandma keeping 19 loaded guns in the house, fawned over Trump’s policies, and claimed that after he published his book “Hillbilly Elegy” in 2016, “Black Americans… would come up to me and say, ‘Our story is your story.’”

In one particularly servile moment, Vance said he realized while writing his acceptance speech for the Republican National Convention that “the country has made a lot of stupid decisions” in the past 30 years, and that Trump “was right about every single one being a mistake.”

That includes the Iraq War, which Vance told the audience Trump didn’t support, when in fact he did.

Vance also tried out a few attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris, whom President Joe Biden has endorsed to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket. Vance claimed that Harris only got the nod because wealthy Democratic donor George Soros and former President Barack Obama “got into a smoke-filled room,” and accused Harris of lying about Biden’s cognitive capabilities.

He then expressed outrage at the idea that Trump would be the one to face Harris in a debate instead of himself: “I was told I was going to get to debate Kamala Harris, and now President Trump is going to get to debate her? I’m kind of pissed off about that, if I’m being honest with you.”

Politico reports that Trump, in fact, doesn’t want to debate Harris and is coming up with ways to get out of