JD Vance rallies voters at wealthy Republican donor’s business in Bucks County

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Ohio Sen. JD Vance made a campaign stop in Bucks County yesterday to rally voters in one of the most narrowly partisan split areas of the country.

The Republican nominee for vice president hit the usual themes in his speech, accusing Vice President Kamala Harris of failing on policies ranging from inflation and immigration to crime and fentanyl.

As he has in recent speeches, Vance pointed to the price of eggs as evidence.

“In the state of Pennsylvania, thanks to Kamala Harris, eggs are about 115% higher,” he said.  “That’s more than double the price than when she took office. And I got three little kids, my friends, we buy a lot of eggs.”

A dozen eggs costs more than $3 nationally, down from a high of $4.82 last year — however, prices in Pennsylvania are higher than that national average. While inflation is part of the cause, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported recent outbreaks of the bird flu affected the supply, which is now beginning to recover.

Vance also blamed the “wide open Southern border,” and a member of the audience shouted, “It’s an invasion.”

“That’s exactly right, it is an invasion,” Vance said. “We’re going to build the wall. We’re going to re-implement deportations, and we’re going to go to war against the Mexican drug cartels.”

When a reporter asked what “mass deportations” would look like in Bucks County and around Pennsylvania, Vance responded that the Trump administration would “empower” local law enforcement for it.

“You arrest them and tell them to get the hell out of our country,” he said. “I mean, that’s about as simple as a plan as we could have.”

Another journalist asked Vance whether he could guarantee that the Affordable Care Act would not “be dismantled until there is [another] plan put in place.”

Vance did not answer whether a Trump-Vance administration would seek to repeal the ACA but said that they “want to make sure Americans have the best health care, the best health care options, and of course, we’re going to protect people with preexisting conditions.

“But the way that you do that is by promoting transparency,” Vance said before repeating Trump’s claim that he actually reduced insulin costs to $35, which he said Biden and Harris take credit for.

During his presidency, Trump did initiate a short-term program that provided around 800,000 Medicare recipients with access to insulin co-pays capped at $35. As the program was voluntary and only applied to Part D, it wasn’t available to everyone who needed insulin, and it also expired at the end of last year. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, on the other hand, made a permanent price cap applicable to Medicare plans across the board.

Fallon Roth of the Philadelphia Inquirer introduced herself to ask a question, and the crowd jeered.

“Let her ask her question,” Vance told the crowd. “And then we can boo afterwards if it’s a ridiculous question.”

“Why did you choose Bucks County, and how can Republicans win back the suburbs in 2024 after President Trump lost in 2016 and 2020?” Fallon asked.

Vance responded, “I don’t believe in this segmentation of urban, suburban, rural, we’re all Americans.”

Both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden won Bucks County by slight margins in the last two presidential elections. However, voter registrations now favor Republicans — also by a small margin.

The venue for the rally, the Newtown Athletic Club Sports Training Center, is owned by Jim Worthington, a wealthy donor to Republican candidates and political action committees. According to the most recent campaign finance records, Worthington has given more than $100,000 to Republican candidates and PACs, including a maximum contribution to the Trump campaign and more than $88,000 to the Republican National Committee.

Vance called Worthington “one of the MVPs of the Trump campaign.”

Earlier that morning, Vance spoke at an event in Monroeville hosted by Lance Wallnau, an evangelical who has said that Harris has “the spirit of Jezebel” and used witchcraft to win her debate with Donald Trump.

Wallnau did not appear onstage with Vance but introduced Pastor Jason Howard, who led the discussion. Howard told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he had never publicly supported Trump and was, therefore, surprised to be invited by the campaign to host the event. He agreed on the condition that the event would be about combating addiction.

It started as such and Vance even pointed to his mother who was in the audience, saying how proud he was of her for getting sober. He had documented some of her struggles with addiction in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.”

However, Vance also took the opportunity to blame Democrats for the fentanyl crisis in the country.

“We need a border policy that protects American citizens, that helps facilitate people getting on the path to recovery, not facilitating Mexican drug cartels to kill our citizens,” he said.

He also accused the federal government of trying to “destroy” Christian charities and public schools of teaching “socialism” and “racial craziness.”